On the internet, everyone is within shouting distance. When you WhatsApp, Slack, or email your friends or colleagues, you probably don’t think much about the path your message follows as it wends its way from your phone to theirs.
Nisha Sondhe lives in Brooklyn but if you look for her there, you may not find her. Nisha is a rover, a professional photographer with the heart of a gypsy. The love that she feels for the places that she visits is echoed in her work—in the images of chiseled stone and sloping snow in Iceland, lavish purple sunsets amid green hills in Scotland, a child standing alone at the end of the hall at a charity ward in Bangalore, India.
About halfway through the documentary Screenagers, one kid lays out the rules of a game he plays with his friends whenever they’re at restaurant: Everyone puts their phone in a pile in the middle of the table during the meal. Whoever pick theirs up first has to get the check.
There was another mass shooting in Florida this week. It seems like this is happening more and more, that this is shaping up to be an awfully bloody summer in the US. What is it? Does the oppressive summer heat bring this on? Are things really worse or is everything just more heightened after a spate of bad news?
I am sitting in an old house on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere surrounded by country dark and silence. Behind the glass on my computer, I watch people scatter on the streets. The sound of a helicopter is overhead and traces of light blaze down as people are strafed by bullets. A man runs, his breath catching as he jumps over a body. Some people are chanting. Some people are praying. I am live-streaming a coup in Turkey.
The Chilcot report, an independent investigation into Britain’s role in the Iraq war, was released today (July 6). It takes 2.6 million words—four times more than War and Peace, according to the New York Times (paywall)—to confirm what everyone already knew: that prime minister Tony Blair joined US president George W. Bush in promoting, launching and executing a war based on flawed intelligence, without considering the possibility that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction and without first exploring peaceful alternatives.
It’s been one week since the UK caught the rest of the world off-guard by voting to split from the EU. How are people feeling about it?
The US Federal Reserve today announced it was leaving interest rates unchanged, releasing a statement about its view of the health of the economy. We decided to step back, and with the help of emoji and some quotes excerpted from the Fed’s statements, recap just how positive its outlook for the economy has been since the beginning of last year.
Deflation stalks the edges of Europe
If you live in Chicago, Illinois, next month (June) a giant stroller, strong enough to cradle a 400-pound baby may be coming to a park near you. Sadly for sleep-deprived parents, it’s not the first in a new product line. It’s a marketing stunt, dreamt up by advertising agency FCB (Foote, Cone & Belding) for baby product manufacturer, Kolcraft.
You know those people who give their toddlers devices at dinner to carve out a little bit of peace and quiet? A decade from now, when those kids turn into teenagers, their parents will be sorry. I know. I’m one of them.
The data-visualization community lives on the web and I am a card-carrying member. We are a small and rapidly growing group of people who are passionate about hard facts. We’re big into show-and-tell since people consume our work by seeing it. And many of us work in code which, if you have been following the technology industry, means there is a strong chance our ranks are skewed toward dudes.
