Warner Bros. Pictures just released the first full trailer for Game Night, an upcoming mystery thriller comedy film starring Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams. Game Night comes to theaters on February 23, 2018.”Bateman and McAdams star as Max and Annie, whose weekly couples game night gets kicked up a notch when Maxâs charismatic brother, Brooks (Kyle Chandler), arranges a murder mystery party, complete with fake thugs and faux federal agents. So when Brooks gets kidnapped, itâs all part of the gameâ¦right?”..(Read…)
On this episode of “Secret Talent Theatre,” Reese Witherspoon teaches you Southern slang words and phrases. Find out what “caddywonked,” “fit to be tied,” “hoecake,” and other words mean from Reese herself…(Read…)
In Samut Songkhram, about an hour outside Bangkok, is Maeklong Railway Market, one of the largest produce and seafood markets in Thailand. But beyond the selection of fresh fruit and fish, the market has become infamous for one thing—the train that runs directly through it. In 1905, the Maeklong Railway built a commuter train line through the center of the popular market. But rather than move, the vendors adapted to the new conditions, working around the train that passes through eight times a day, seven days a week…(Read…)
Did you know citizenship is for sale? It’s true, many countries are offering it â for a price. This video explores the market for passports, citizenship and green cards…(Read…)
There’s this major disparity between the iPhone 8 and the 8 Plus (or even the 7 and 7 plus for that matter). The latter has a dual camera setup on the back while the former doesn’t, making it vastly superior in the photography department, not only because it can achieve portrait style photographs, but more importantly because it can do more with the fact that it has one telephoto lens and one wide angle lens. A lot of people I know ended up feeling shortchanged because they wanted a small iPhone that was as versatile as the big one.
The reason a wide-angle lens is so integral to camera photography is because A. it essentially means more imagery within your frame, but also B. it captures the world the way you see it. With our 120° field of view (captured by our right and left eye together), we see a great deal and that’s how we compose our photos. A wide-angle lens helps you capture everything YOU see, and with it, your photos can look remarkably better. Having understood that difference, Omvos decided to create the world’s slimmest iPhone case with its very own wide-angle attachment. Sitting at a super-slim 15mm, the SPLENDOR™ case is always on your phone and provides a wide-angle lens that’s much easier to access than those snap-on lenses because, just like with the 7 and 8 Plus, this lens is always with you on your phone.
The Splendor’s 18mm lens gives you a remarkable 110° of wide-angle vision with 0.65x magnification. It even comes with an Anti Smudge and Anti Reflective coating, making sure your pictures are exactly like you imagine them… Crystal clear, near-perfect, and with minimal distortion. The lens can easily be swiped into place when needed and swiped outwards when you want to just click regular pictures. The lens rail even comes with a conical cutout for the video-microphone and a domed mirror cover that rests over the flash, letting you use your new wide-angle attachment to take mesmerizing selfies.
All in all, the Splendor is probably the best way to give your iPhone the instant upgrade it needs. The case comes with a bumper design that protects your screen, and even button overlays that help you work the power and volume switches underneath. To make life just a bit easier, the Splendor’s back comes with a built-in foil that lets you rest your phone on magnetic car-mounts.
With the Splendor, compromise is out of the question. Your phone may have a single camera, but the Splendor gives it dual identities and purposes in a manner that feels almost natural, while making sure your phone stays protected from accidental slips and drops. The Splendor makes the iPhone 7/8 as great as its elder brothers. It gives you power and feeds your potential to take great snaps, because that’s pretty much what iPhones are meant to do!
Made in LA from powder-coated steel, these peace sign-shaped hooks are ideal for hanging coats, scarves, hats, bags and anything else that might be cluttering up closet space. Holding up to 10 pounds each, they come complete with screws and drywall……
Produced by music publication Consequence of Sound and filmed in one continuous take at Reykjavík’s Harpa Concert Hall, “Crack-Up” sees Fleet Foxes joined by all-female Icelandic choir Graduale Nobili. Directed by Eilífur Örn Þrastarson, the video……
This house in Japan’s Tokushima prefecture appears as a nondescript industrial unit from the road, but inside architecture practice CAPD has hidden a bright, high-ceilinged family home.
The Japanese studio designed the 137-square-metre residence to run almost the full length of the plot, with the gabled roof interrupted to create a courtyard and first floor balcony.
From the outside, the bisected roof gives the property the appearance of two distinct volumes, one with an almost flat roof and one sloping.
The architects called it the Hi-Lo house in reference to both the sloping roof and the fact that, despite it’s unassuming “warehouse” exterior, “when you enter, the first impression of the appearance is changed, and it becomes a large space”.
Two poured concrete parking spaces sit at the front of the property, setting the residence back from the road. The entryway is accessed via a path down one side, through a covered porch under the end of the sloping roof.
“It’s just this, but it’s a nifty space to keep your privacy, your bicycle, and your luggage when you open it when it rains or when you lock it up,” explained the architects.
Turning again into the house through the entryway, a cupboard to the right of the door is used for storing shoes.
From here, the room opens out into a double-height open plan space used for living and dining, with a kitchen tucked in to the side.
Partially separated by a kitchen island and under a lower ceiling, the kitchen is bookended by a pantry and a utility room.
Large, black-framed windows look out into the garden, and a ceiling glass door opens onto the internal courtyard. The decked terrace is glazed on three sides and open to the garden on the fourth.
A hallway connects the front part of the house with the sleeping quarters, with a sink room, bath room and toilet off to one side, and a staircase to the first floor.
On the other side of the courtyard the master bedroom and its walk in wardrobe runs the entire width of the building.
Upstairs, the landing leads to a second bedroom with two built in closets, and an outdoor balcony leading to a room above the kitchen that can be used as a study or storage room.
Comprising just over 137 square metres of floor space, the house is built from a wooden frame clad in tall white panels that are ridged at either end and down the roof.
The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the start of a global rush to create physical barriers, according to a new book illustrating how tyrants use architecture and design to control populations.
Theo Deutinger‘s Handbook of Tyranny covers nationalism, terrorism, and the power of multinationals in a globalised economy in a compendium of technical drawings and essays on the topic, published by Lars Müller.
An architect, writer and socio-cultural cartographer, Deutinger maps how the technological advancements since the end of the Iron Curtain in 1989 have lead to increased levels of tyranny around the world, rather than the hoped for “peaceful global future”.
Deutinger’s map of the world with different types of border walls and fences marked in red
The 160-page book is broken down into chapters covering topics from bunker-busting missiles to refugee camps, crowd-control methods to capital-punishment devices, prison cells to anti-homeless benches.
Each chapter begins with an introductory text outlining the politics of the subject. Deutinger has also included two longer essays on the topics, a treatise on border control at the front, and an piece by American journalist Brendan McGetrick on the tyranny of manmade systems.
Designers should “work on making the world a better place”
In his chapter on walls and fences he examines the proliferation of militarised borders and the booming business of “smart walls” equipped with lasers, sensors, cameras and drone surveillance.
Technical drawings illustrating different types of walls, with humans drawn for scale
Speaking to Dezeen, Deutinger said that designers should promise to “contribute something good” to society and endeavour to make the world “a better place”.
“This might sound cheesy but I think it is important to realise that,” he said. “If one is asked to design the wall between two nation states or design an electric chair, the usage is undeniably clear. In any case, the designer has to keep the human cost of the design in mind.”
Deutinger’s drawings highlight the dark side of design
Deutinger was inspired to approach the subject via technical drawings by Ernst Neufert’s Architects’ Data, a reference book first published in 1936 that lays out the relative spatial requirements of 6,000 building types and related objects.
Handbook of Tyranny mirrors the format, but is filled with designs for the dark side of design so that it resembles an “unearthed compendium of blueprints drawn by or for a dictator of our time”.
Graphic illustration of different methods of urban crowd control, from the perspective of a camera mounted on a drone
The book is equally critical of architects who design systems to corral human beings as the leaders who commission these violent technologies.
“Handbook of Tyranny is the attempt to lure architecture away from its desk top computer and confront it with its political dimension, by using its very lingua franca, the technical drawing,” he said.
Functional drawings show the human impact of violent architecture
This is not the first project to try and confronting architects with the reality of their work for governments and powerful individuals. As part of the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 a group of architects and academics created a room of “architectural evidence” room filled with full-size plaster casts of Nazi gas-chamber doors and hatches.
The casts were displayed next to architectural drawings signed by the designers of the highly efficient killing devices, to hit home the disconnect between the capable architect and the absent people their designs destroyed.
Deutinger includes people in his book, but only in vague sketches that help to model the scale of each despotic instrument.
Infographic breaking down terrorist organisations’ flags by colour and symbol
“By adding purely the outline of a human next to a drawing, one immediately and unconsciously understands that a wall is twice as high as a person or a ditch is three times deeper,” he explained.
“There is not one line drawn too much and everything has its meaning and purpose, its pure function. This coldness and rationality of the technical drawing reinforces the content’s brutality.”
In The Tragedy of Territory essay, Deutinger examines how the interrelationship between humans, the land we inhabit and the technology we develop to control it has evolved into a system of governments that control the citizens within their national borders with the law, and their borders with visas.
Deutinger believes tech companies like Facebook have become too powerful
Territorial law, he argues, has now failed to keep up in the age of a globalised economy where multinational companies aren’t contained by the laws of one country.
“The power of companies like Facebook is larger than that of some countries,” he wrote. “It is no coincidence that Apple’s European headquarters are in Ireland, Amazon’s seat is in Luxembourg, and IKEA runs a dubious foundation in the Netherlands.”
Two maps of the world showing countries that require visas to enter, and those that don’t
Understanding these nebulous, unequal, hierarchical systems that enable tyranny is central to combating it, MeGetrick argues in A Vast Conspiracy.
An anti-homelessness device called the Camden Bench is not simply a piece of public architecture that cunningly resists being used as anything but a seat, but a “small piece of a vast ecosystem of urban control”.
By compiling architectural crimes against humanity, MeGetrick writes, “this handbook closes the escape routes often taken by architects, engineers and the rest of us to avoid responsibility for the tyrannical features of modern life”.
The handbook is designed to help identify modern means of oppression
For the layman, Deutinger intends for the Handbook of Tyranny to act as graphic guide to identifying the means of their oppression, from the defences built in to the cities they live in to the freedoms afforded by the passports in their pockets.
“I hope that the book helps people and especially non-designers to rediscover the space around them and question absurdities with which we are faced every day,” he said.
“Today, the Handbook of Tyranny can be used as a document to refer to in heated discussions, in the future it will provide evidence for the insanity we have been living in.”
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