Here are some things that belong on Tumblr,

(Source: autarque, via slavin)

slavin:

Martin Lindstrom at Fast Company on “How Enemies Power Innovation”

“And yet, to this day, retired executives at [Pepsi and Coke] claim that the real reason why their brands achieved world dominance was, in the fighting words of one executive, “Every day we went to work, we went to war.” Had Pepsi and Coke not had each other, the chances that their brands would spread to more than 100 countries around the world would have been very slim.

Pepsi and Coke are not alone. From the very beginning, the tech powerhouse Apple positioned their product in direct opposition to IBM. And when IBM no longer posed a threat, they took on Microsoft. At almost every opportunity Steve Jobs had to talk in public, he would subtly, and often not so subtly, run down his competition. Today, if we look at where IBM and Microsoft are in relation to Apple, the results of that tactic (among many others) pretty much speak for themselves.

But what happens when the enemy is no longer? It’s hard for Apple to continue claiming its underdog position. Those “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” commercials have lost their relevance. 

[…]

Think about religion and sports. So many different kinds of scenarios can be attributed to an us-vs-them mentality. As human beings and social creatures, we are hardwired to congregate in groups. Our groups share opinions, friendships, and enemies. The more polarized we become, the stronger we feel a sense of belonging, and the more assured we are of our place in space. Imagine going to a football game and vacillating about which team you support. Chances are the real fans of both teams would shun you. “You’re either with us or against us”—a very useful phrase for momentum building and crowd growing.” 

—

Photo (Flickr).

People always ask me what HATEFUCK is supposed to mean, and I always say, equal parts: contempt for what you oppose, and passion for what you aspire to. 

This was my first time sitting for a portrait.

(Source: makemehighart)

unwieldy:

The average New York City taxi cab driver makes $90,747 in revenue per year. There are roughly 13,267 cabs in the city. In 2007, NYC forced cab drivers to begin taking credit cards, which involved installing a touch screen system for payment.

During payment, the user is…

humansofnewyork:

I have seen this man maybe fifty times, in several different locations around Central Park. He could quite possibly be the most obsessed man in New York. All year long, he uses a telephoto lens to photograph a hawk named Pale Male, who nests on the ledge of a 5th Avenue high-rise. 
I’ve tried talking to him a few times. He just keeps looking into his viewfinder, hoping I’ll go away. Obsessed.

Today I saw him near 79th Street, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. It reminded me of this shot I got—two Januarys ago. It’s a dedication I admire. I aim to be to humans what this guy is to hawks.

Here’s his website: www.palemale.com

http://xkcd.com/536/

http://xkcd.com/697/

(Source: noirlac, via david)

moresweetthanbitter:

the washington ballet’s upcoming alice (in wonderland) looks a.ma.zing.
by septime weber, world premiere april 11-15, kennedy center

(via washington life, photos dean alexander, produced by design army)

(via ninakix)

If our current level of organization, having many self-aware entities, is a result of a random fluctuation, it is much less likely than a level of organization which only just creates stand-alone self-aware entities. For every universe with the level of organization we see, there should be an enormous number of lone Boltzmann brains floating around in unorganized environments. In an infinite universe, the number of self-aware brains that spontaneously randomly form out of the chaos complete with false memories of a life like ours, should vastly outnumber the real brains evolved from an inconceivably rare local fluctuation the size of the observable universe.

The Boltzmann brain paradox is that any observers (self-aware brains with memories like we have, which includes our brains) are therefore far more likely to be Boltzmann brains than real evolved brains, thereby at the same time also refuting the selection-bias argument.

— Wikipedia on Boltzmann brains

tanjableibtreu:

I think I know who the killer is.

I loved this show when I was a kid.

(via fuckyeahmurdershewrote)

thingsthatscarelaurenleto:

What if products like Twitter pruned the hedges for me? Implementing a feature that automatically unfollowed people who I haven’t retweeted, at replied, or favorited in the last three or six months. If I haven’t cared about what they’ve had to say in that much time, I’m probably never going to care. Social wars could be won or at least seriously jolted by a product which figures out an innovation on friends.

I think social graph over-saturation is a real, recurring problem faced by all growing services/apps/networks, but I’m not sure Lauren Leto’s proposal is extreme enough. Why do we need explicit representations of relationships – e.g. friending people on Facebook and Foursquare, or following them on Twitter and Instagram – to begin with? We don’t do that in the real world, yet somehow we still manage to communicate with the people we care about.

How might we design services without those buttons that read “Add friend” or “Follow”? What if users had no way to inspect the social graph and see who they followed, or who followed them, or who followed their followers? Could we leverage real-world social conventions to still encourage the desired behaviors and create an engaging and comfortable experience?

I do think Lauren is right though, in that services that do this better will be competitive against the incumbents with static, manually-managed social graphs. The Internet is far from finished.