"But back to those five minutes. Between 11:49 and 11:54, something extraordinary happened. For about 300 seconds, the computers took over. The stock, which had dropped four points in the five minutes prior, froze in an incredibly narrow five-cent range while two sets of computers put in thousands upon thousands of bids against one another. On one side, the underwriters’ computers were offering to buy hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock to keep it from dipping below the crucial $38 level; on the other, high frequency traders were making veerrryyy slightly higher bids at just above $38 — $38.01, $38.02 — which they would sell, literally seconds later […]

For a few minutes, the most-watched stock in the world behaved like a malfunctioning computer program. The stock that convinced untold thousands of regular people with E-Trade accounts to get back into investing behaved according to rules that literally none of them understood, traded at volumes that none of them could conceive of and effectively followed contradictory orders from two sets of screaming robots. This is what future shock feels like."

How Facebook’s IPO Got Hijacked by Computers (via @wonderlandblog)

Oh, and this doesn’t even get to the part where NASDAQ didn’t boot up correctly and $3MM in trades got DDOSed.

(via slavin)

(via slavin)

"Whereas the Beijing Olympics represented an embracing of China into the coven of Westernism, the London Olympics will show us just how venal unfettered capitalism can be, how its default modus operandi is paranoia, and rather than a celebration of human endeavour and athleticism, it demonstrates more that the power of branding requires such strict parameters of control that nothing can be left to chance. Brand Exclusion Zones are just one manifestation of the privatisation of public space that London is fast-tracking."

Kosmograd: Olympics Brand Exclusion Zone (via worsethandetroit)

(via worsethandetroit)

"This year, the costs of dementia care will be $200 billion. By 2050, $1 trillion. Make no mistake, the purpose of long-term-care insurance is to help finance some of the greatest misery and suffering human beings have yet devised."

A Life Worth Ending is a harrowing piece by Michael Wolff on the care of his elderly mother. As the intro puts it, “The era of medical miracles has created a new phase of aging, as far from living as it is from dying,” while the American healthcare system has become so systematically dysfunctional that “emergency rooms, the last stop for gangbangers and the rootless, at least in the television version, are really the land of the elderly,” with the aged charged hundreds of thousands of dollars (or, at least, taxpayers charged the same) for treatments and the chance to continue a relentlessly bleak life. I was also taken with his description of the “furniture of aging” — “its own horrid story.” There’s much here for those interested in innovation or design to think about and apply when attempting to help design humanity back into (the end of) life. And then the stark conclusion, where Wolff describes “the absurdity of where we are, here on death row, measured not just in our heartache but nationally in hundreds of billions of dollars” and details his plans for his own demise. Devastating. (via thoughtyoushouldseethis)

scipsy:

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is a neutrino observatory located about 2 km underground in Vale Inco’s Creighton Mine in Sudbury, Canada. It was designed to detect solar neutrinos using a 12 meter diameter acrylic vessel filled with 1000 tonnes of heavy water. Neutrinos reacts with the heavy water (D₂O) producing flashes of light called Cherenkov radiation. This light is then detected by an array of 9600 photomultiplier tubes mounted on a structure surrounding the vessel.

Pictures via Interactions.org (#1, #2)

(via darklyeuphoric)

Nine dangerous things you were taught in school →

1. The people in charge have all the answers.
That’s why they are so wealthy and happy and healthy and powerful—ask any teacher.

2. Learning ends when you leave the classroom.
Your fort building, trail forging, frog catching, friend making, game playing, and drawing won’t earn you any extra credit. Just watch TV.

3. The best and brightest follow the rules.
You will be rewarded for your subordination, just not as much as your superiors, who, of course, have their own rules.

4. What the books say is always true.
Now go read your creationism chapter. There will be a test.

5. There is a very clear, single path to success.
It’s called college. Everyone can join the top 1% if they do well enough in school and ignore the basic math problem inherent in that idea.

6. Behaving yourself is as important as getting good marks.
Whistle-blowing, questioning the status quo, and thinking your own thoughts are no-nos. Be quiet and get back on the assembly line.

7. Standardized tests measure your value.
By value, I’m talking about future earning potential, not anything else that might have other kinds of value.

8. Days off are always more fun than sitting in the classroom.
You are trained from a young age to base your life around dribbles of allocated vacation. Be grateful for them.

9. The purpose of your education is your future career.
And so you will be taught to be a good worker. You have to teach yourself how to be something more.

(Source: braddogott, via rafaelfajardo)

hush-syrup:

Likecoholic and Alternative Ending by Asaf Hanuka (via cloudjunky) 

The Trust Molecule →

The changes in individual oxytocin levels at Linda’s [wedding ceremony] could be mapped out like the solar system, with the bride as the sun. Between the first and second draws of blood, which were only an hour apart, Linda’s own level shot up by 28%. For the other people tested, the increase in oxytocin was in direct proportion to the likely intensity of their emotional engagement in the event. The mother of the bride? Up 24%. The father of the groom? Up 19%. The groom himself? Up 13%. … Testosterone is one of several other hormones that can interfere with the release of oxytocin, and the groom’s testosterone level, according to our blood test, had surged 100%.