[best][cinemadography][ever]
[best][unkept promise][ever]
We were promised jetpacks and no one delivered, so, like a bunch of kids of divorced parents who were tired of disappointed weekends, WE are making sure our kids have fucking JETPACKS!
![[worst][ending][ever]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxk2loZget1r0r9t6o1_1280.png)
[worst][ending][ever]
[most inspiring][television ad][ever]
I am of two minds on this ad (what else is new?). First and foremost, it is gorgeous. Contemplative, lyrical, inspiring. On the other hand, it is an advertisement for a pair of jeans that is appealing to patriotic roots of our pioneer culture, by a company that does not make jeans in this country.
The setting for the series is a downtrodden rust belt borough just down the river from Pittsburgh called Braddock. It has lost 90% of its population in the last 50 years. The ad makes it out to be a vision of a DIY utopia brought to you by Terrence Mallick. A place where Brooklyn hipsters, tired of the New York grind, can come and find a home for $5,000 and free studio space to pull artisanal taffy. This seems to be harder than many of the pioneers thought it would be. According to a New York Times article from earlier this year, despite and because of the efforts of Mayor John Fetterman, a young, DIY carpetbagger, the utopian dream is not quite the reality.
I am still intrigued by the concept. That there are still frontiers in America. Not natural frontiers that need to be conquered, but man-made frontiers that need to be reclaimed. Braddock seems to be an opportunity to live the post-apocalyptic life in Allegheny.
We are planning a visit.
[oldest][gps][ever]
I have recently become nearly obsessed with the pinnacle of electro-mechanical technology. The sophistication of pre-digital technology continues to amaze me. This was the mechanical forbear to satellite navigation. You preloaded a map of the route you were going to take and it scrolled along the route at a rate commensurate with your landspeed. This is like the 1930’s equivalent of the self parking sedan. No data connection, no triangulated position, no theory of relativity; a SCROLL. Sign me up.
(Source: howtobearetronaut.com)
[best][sound][ever]
via urlybird
[greatest][jazz composer/arranger][ever]
[scariest][facial][ever]
The internet started out as this utopia of anonymity. Message boards and chat rooms allowed you to become whomever you wanted. As the technology advanced and our comfort with it increased we began to give away more and more of our information, creating an online persona that more often than not reflected our real life personality (or vice versa).
Now there are no secrets, but they weren’t stolen from us by big brother. We are big brother, and we gave away the information willingly, all the tech giants did was store it and use it efficiently.
The technology on display in this video allows us to return to the masquerade ball. The internet once again allows us to be whomever we want to be. It doesn’t even have to be a famous person, you could map to your head the face of someone who is simply better looking than you.
The face is a collection of some of the most complicated muscle structure in the body, arguably the hardest to mimic and map. It should be pretty easy to map someone else’s body to your own. Soon we could be chatting with topless Marilyn Monroe or bottomless Anthony Wiener.
Imagine the application of this coupled with projectors on stage; virtual actors mapped to faceless puppets. As we approach the era of augmented reality contact lenses we could be projecting our ideal onto others; literally seeing what we want to see, hearing what we want to hear. A terrifying hybrid of beer goggles and google goggles. You wouldn’t have to drink until she’s cute, just surf until she’s ridable.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it several more times today; it trully is an amazing time to be alive.
