bytatia

Some people seem to think that animal sex wouldn't exist if it hurt. Those people are wrong. The post Hey, Neil deGrasse Tyson, These Animals Have Sex That Hurts appeared first on WIRED.

São Paulo é primeira cidade do Brasil a proibir comércio de peles de animais

The AmazingScience YouTube channel demonstrates how to build a ridiculously simple electric “train” with the help of a few magnets, a battery, and a copper coil. You can also use the same materials to build a little spinning motor-like contraption. (via Twisted Sifter)

Kayaking

Canoeing

Kayaking

Kayaking

Kayaking

Canoeing

Kayaking

Kayaking

Swimming

Ontario-based photographer Stephen Orlando is fascinated with human movement and uses programmable LED light sticks attached to kayak paddles, people, racquets, and other objects to translate that movement into photographic light paintings. The act of recording motion on the surface of water surrounded by reflections creates a surprisingly unique effect, almost sculptural in nature. You can see many more photos in his kayaking, canoeing, and swimming galleries.

For nearly three years, a six-member team of developers called State of Play has been toiling away in a London studio making a new video game. While there are probably thousands of such teams around the world coding away into the night, the members of this team are a bit different. Among them are an architect, a photographer, and a model maker, all needed to help physically construct the game’s environment. Titled Lumino City, the entire video game was first handmade entirely out of paper, card, miniature lights and motors.

While many games appropriate paper textures or have some kind of paper aesthetic, State of Play took things one step further and built the sets for each puzzle, photographed or filmed them, and then set everything in motion with code. The result is a breathtakingly beautiful puzzle game starring an intrepid girl who tries to solve the mystery of her missing grandfather. After an hour or so of extensive research I can confirm the game is amazing. Lumino City is available for the Mac and PC, and is coming very soon to iOS. You can read a bit more over on The Verge.

Bombinhas - Santa Catarina (via Guia Viajar Melhor)

Moqueca

Cupuaçu

Lençóis Maranhenses - Maranhão (via Embratur - Instituto Brasileiro de Turismo)

Clive Wilkinson's design for the Barbarian Group (completed 2014) in New York City, which features an "endless table":


[Barbarian Group | Photo: Michael Moran, from Clive Wilkinson Architects website]

reminds me of a project by Wilkinson from ten years earlier. Mother's, as I referred to the project when I posted about it in 2004, is also based around a looping table that serves 200 people:


[Mother London | Photo from Clive Wilkinson Architects website]

Yet, while Mother London's table is interrupted by columns and stairs, Wilkinson's latest rendition of this idea is more complex:


[Barbarian Group | Photo: Michael Moran, from Clive Wilkinson Architects website]

The Barbican Group table undulates like a long scarf, creating walkways, meeting rooms, libraries and other spaces underneath its high points, which I have to admit is pretty cool.


[Barbarian Group | Photo: Michael Moran, from Clive Wilkinson Architects website]

There's a notion that some people become successful company founders because they have the right "Startup DNA."

The DNA is comprised of characteristics like "resilience" and "ability to accept risk."

Another characteristic many top entrepreneurs share is arrogance. Or worse, just being a huge jerk. 

While reporting a long profile of Travis Kalanick last winter, Business Insider found a lot of people who thought Kalanick was a legendary CEO.

Friends compared him to Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison. 

But some who were in awe of Kalanick also said he was a jerk. 

"Sometimes," one acquaintance said of Kalanick, "a--holes create great businesses."

Inside Silicon Valley, arrogance runs rampant and investors seem to reward ruthless behavior with piles of cash.

There are numerous examples of founders who have had moments of terrible behavior that later became infamous. The founders might not be jerks all the time, of course. Everyone has moments when they behave boorishly. But sometimes the stories are so unbelievable, it can leave a lasting negative impressive of the person — that whether criticism is deserved or not.

For instance, Mark Zuckerberg, who is now worth tens of billions, famously ousted his friend Eduardo Saverin from Facebook. He also stole his business idea from the Winklevoss twins. "Yah, I'm going to fuck them," he told a friend over IM about the pair. "Probably in the ear."

Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel wrote a number of misogynistic-sounding emails when he was in college to his fraternity brothers. Once, Spiegel was so angry with his parents, he reportedly cut himself out of family photos. 

Twitter's co-founders back-stabbed each other repeatedly: Founder Noah Glass was booted out of the company. Ev Williams and Jack Dorsey were both given, and then stripped of, the CEO title. And Jeff Bezos, who runs Amazon, wreaks havoc in his organization by sending a single-character email: "?"

Even Steve Jobs, one of the world's most-praised entrepreneurs, was said to have two sides. Jobs' biographer, Walter Isaacson, portrayed the late Apple CEO as "Good Steve" and "Bad Steve." An example: Jobs once stormed into a meeting and called everyone "f---ing dickless a--holes."

Robert Sutton spent a lot of time conducting research for his book, "No a--hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One that Isn't," What he found was disappointing.

"Even people who worked with Jobs told me that they'd seen him make people cry many times, but that 80 percent of the time he was right, " Sutton said. "It is troubling that there's this notion in our culture that if you're a winner, it's okay to be an a--hole."

It is troubling that there's this notion in our culture that if you're a winner, it's okay to be an a--hole. 

The Atlantic's Tom McNichol agrees. He wrote an article titled: "Be a Jerk: The Worst Business Lesson from the Steve Jobs biography."

Here's an excerpt:

The ease with which people can possess astonishingly contradictory qualities is one of the mysteries of human nature; indeed, it's one of the things that separates humans from, say, an Apple computer. Every one of the components that makes up an iPad is essential to the work it produces. Remove one part and the machine no longer performs its job, and not even the Genius Bar can fix it. But humans are full of qualities that are in no way integral to their functioning in the world. Some aspects of personality have little or no bearing on whether a person performs well, and not a few people succeed in spite of their darker qualities.

So, is it possible to be nice and to be wildly successful in business? And in Silicon Valley, where people praise Steve Jobs' bad habits and founders rag on the homeless, can you be financially rewarded if you're nice? 

One venture capitalist whose firm implemented a "no a--holes policy" passed on an investment in Uber. This person said Kalanick didn't click with any of the partners and that he acted like he was "God's gift."

Other investors struggle with the decision to invest in personalities over returns.

"I want not to invest in jerks," says former Silicon Valley investor, Eileen Burbidge. Burbidge is now a VC at London's Passion Capital, which has invested in startups like Lulu and Go Cardless.  "Personally I believe life is too short. [But] I have wondered if this is actually a bad philosophy as an investor. I'd like to think not but I'm supposed to back founders for the best ROI, not personality."

I want not to invest in jerks ...But I have wondered if this is actually a bad philosophy as an investor. I'm supposed to back founders for the best ROI.

Mark Suster, a Los Angeles-based investor, also isn't sure what to make of jerks in business. He lists "integrity" as a bonus characteristic when it comes to top entrepreneurs' DNA.

"I believe that integrity and honesty are very important to most venture capital investors," he wrote on his blog, Both Sides of the Table. " Unfortunately, I don’t believe that they are required to make a lot of money."

Many agree that being an overly-aggressive entrepreneur tends to pan out.

"As much as [Travis] is inspirational, he is controversial," a former colleague of Kalanick's said. "If he were less brash, I don't think he would get half as far as he did." 

Adds another Kalanick acquaintance: "There is absolutely no way [Uber] would have gotten where it is without Travis and his arrogance. Not without him being like, 'I'm going to take over the world.' He has the Steve Jobs mentality that 'It's my way or the highway.'"

One person who firmly believes you can be nice and succeed is Paul Graham. He runs top startup accelerator Y Combinator and he's made Sutton's "no a--hole" rule popular in tech. He has backed billion-dollar startups such as Dropbox and Airbnb.

Graham says well-known founders like Jobs and Bezos can't be judged by their terror tales. "Famous founders who seem to be a--holes might not be," Graham told Business Insider via email. "I'm not saying they are or they aren't, just that it is extremely hard to tell what a famous person is really like. You can't judge them based on anecdotal evidence, which is all you ever have."

Graham chooses not to invest in jerks because he doesn't want to be around them. Investors and founders end up spending a lot of time together. Getting rid of one or the other can be more difficult than getting a divorce from a spouse. 

"The reason we tried not to invest in jerks initially was sheer self-indulgence," says Graham. "We were going to have to spend a lot of time with whoever we funded, and we didn't want to have to spend time with people we couldn't stand. Later we realized it had been a clever move to filter out jerks, because it made the alumni network really tight. We've funded over 630 startups now, and when founders of different startups meet there is an automatic level of trust and willingness to help one another. Much more than alumni of the same college for example."

His take: Be nice and you can find success.

"It's certainly possible to build a multi-billion dollar startup without being a jerk," Graham says. "We've funded several, and the founders are all good people.  In fact, based on what I've seen so far, the good people have the advantage over the jerks. Probably because to get really big, a company has to have a sense of mission, and the good people are more likely to have an authentic one, rather than just being motivated by money or power."

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This stunning illuminated bike path in Nuenen, Netherlands was just unveiled tonight by Studio Roosegaarde, an innovative social design lab that has risen to prominence for their explorations at the intersection of people, art, public space, and technology; most notably their research with Smart Highways that could potentially charge moving cars or intelligently alert drivers to hazards. The swirling patterns used on the kilometer-long Van Gogh-Roosegaarde Bicycle Path were inspired by painter Vincent van Gogh (who lived in Nuenen from 1883 to 1885), and is lit at night by both special paint that charges in daylight and embedded LEDs that are powered by a nearby solar array. You can read more about the project over on Dezeen.

Dropping things can be fun. Dropping things in a vacuum is even cooler. You might think that dropping things in a giant vacuum chamber would be the ultimate in coolness. Well, it’s close. In fact, this is the best feather and heavy object dropping video. Yes, astronaut David Scott dropped a hammer and feather in […]

The post Dropping Objects in World’s Largest Vacuum Chamber appeared first on WIRED.

Recife - Pernambuco (by Ligia Skowronski)

Lubo Majer - Cirrus Cloud Sofa for Dizajno

lizclimo:

don’t litter, it scares the sharks

With a host of audio-based science experiments from sine waves blasting through streams of water, to visualizations of audio frequencies using sand, and sound waves traveling through flammable gas, this new video by Nigel Stanford has it all. Titled Cymatics, the music video was created for the first single from his new album, Solar Echoes. If you want to learn more about the science, there’s plenty of behind-the-scenes footage with explanation behind each experiment on his Vimeo channel. (via Vimeo Staff Picks)

Have you seen it yet? The New John Lewis advert for 2014. Featuring Monty the Penguin and a soundtrack from Tom Odell. John Lewis have done it again, another heart warming advert for Christmas. 

These fun little flip books made in Japan feature a number of unexpected designs that make use of negative space and secret “compartments” that are gradually revealed as you flip through the books. There are several books in the series published by Mou Hitotsu no Kenkyujo and you can pick them up on Amazon. Here’s the bug one. (via Travelry)

Sewings on fabric and photographs by Yoon Ji Seon

at Yossi Milo Gallery

Periquito-de-encontro-amarelo (Brotogeris chiriri) (by Fabio Nunes)

Corradino D’Ascanio, Piaggio Ape. It was launched in 1948, based on the Vespa Scooter with a single seat. Soon a cabin was added to protect the driver. Advertising from the early 1950s. More: ganzomag.

Tapioca

Tapioca

Pão de queijo

Remember those solar system mobiles and models that used to populate your science classrooms? Remember how you ripped off Pluto in anger once some jerks (fine, astronomers) decided it was now a just "dwarf planet"? Wait, not everyone did that? OK, that's cool. However, for those of us who would stare at those mobiles and dream of building universes of our own design, the new app promoting director Christopher Nolan's upcoming space epic Interstellar enables all of those fantasies to come true.

The post Explore Black Holes and Destroy Planets in the Awesome New Interstellar Game appeared first on WIRED.