In light of the recent imposition of capital controls in Greece and the looming prospect of a Grexit, now seems like as good a time as any to talk about economists punching one another. He has the mien of a vituperative hobgoblin Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, New York Times colum
You never know what you’ve got until it’s gone. So it is in Moscow, where on the occasion of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s unveiling, the architect Rem Koolhaas told The Guardian “you can say so many things about the Soviet system that were bad, but in terms of public architecture it was g
This is going to be a short article because there aren’t two sides to tell. In Nintendo’s upcoming Fire Emblem Fates, it will be possible for your avatar to bond with an NPC of the same gender during a war and eventually get married. Polygon reports that relationships between men will require the pu
First there was the Bilbao Effect, a quasi-spiritual conviction that erecting architecturally compelling museums would bring in droves of tourists and revitalize woebegone industrial cities. Now we’re starting to what you might call the High Line Effect (after New York’s High Line park). The Bilbao
The only safe thing to say about walking a tightrope between two skyscrapers is that it’s a remarkably stupid idea. One wrong move, and splat! A very stupid idea indeed. But therein lies the appeal of such stunts. You might not think it wise to actually walk between buildings on a rope that bears an
Very few games are telekinesis-friendly. Sure, you use your mind to move objects, but there is always a visible intermediary. Even the illusion of psychic ability cannot survive in most games. SUPERHYPERCUBE, which has been in development since 2008, offers the promise of telekinetic Tetris. Since
Allegedly there are projects on Kickstarter other than Shenmue 3. Allegedly DotCity is one of those projects. DotCity, which was created by Nathan Irondot, is a city simulator that challenges you to manage resources and guide your metropolis out of the industrial revolution and far into the future.
The racing game Trials Evolution was released for Xbox 360 in the spring of 2012. It was well reviewed. It sold reasonably well. It was notable in the sense that all games are notable to someone. Then something strange happened. Actually, a lot of strange things happened. Wooden planks inscribed wit
Brutalism gets a bad name. Ok, let’s be honest, it has a bad name. If tomorrow morning you were tasked with encouraging parents to send their kids to a specific playground, you probably wouldn’t call it brutalist. Or would you? For a brief, wonderful moment in the middle of the 20th century, archite
Knyttan is a fashion startup or, if you would prefer a cultural reference, a 21st century incarnation of Cher’s closet in the opening scenes of the 1995 teen classic Clueless. In practice, the film’s build-your-own-wardrobe app looks an awful lot like the maker movement’s version of fashion design.
At the time of his death in 1527, the political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli had never stated his position on works being placed in the public domain. Fair enough: “public domain,” as presently constituted, was not an idea in Machiavelli’s time. One can, however, suspect that the author of The Se
The terror of Perception, a first-person horror game currently raising funds on Kickstarter, is that entire world around you appears to be hewn from stone. What chance do you stand in a universe where everything is so unnervingly solid? The manor in which Perception is set is not actually hewn from
Benjamin Nordsmark’s Labyrinth Table is not Kramer’s coffee table book about coffee tables—sadly, nothing ever will be—but it’s pretty damn cool nonetheless. “The Labyrinth Table,” writes Nordsmark, “was created to show how a well-known object like a table can be given an extra dimension by creati
Nigeria, Africa’s largest exporter of oil, has recently been suffering from a severe oil shortage. The country’s fuel marketers and distributors have spent much of May on strike over government subsidies that have gone unpaid. In response to the strike, black market fuel prices have soared beyond th
Soccer is a popular sport—by some measures, the World Cup is the most watched sporting event in the world. Soccer videogames, particularly the FIFA franchise, are also quite popular. In all likelihood, the Venn diagram for fans of the sport and fans of the videogame resembles a circle more closely t
Very few people get out of bed and plan to run a horrible sweatshop, but here they are, a collection of young, presumably liberal adults, doing just that. They are participants in Zoe Svendsen’s interactive play, World Factory, at London’s Young Vic Theatre. Audience members form teams. They sit in
