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io9Futurism from 1878: A Panoramic Photograph of San Francisco
Eadweard Muybridge was a Victorian photographer whose work transformed our understanding of the natural world. He was the first to show that horses gallop with all their hooves off the ground — and in this incredible photographic panorama, he reveals San Francisco in its infancy. To understand how incredible this is, you have to visit … Continued
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Tech News
Watch San Francisco’s Rapid Gentrification Unfold on Google Street View
These days, it’s rare to find a piece of San Francisco news that doesn’t at least make a passing reference to the city’s rapid-fire gentrification. And while numbers like the 115 percent increase in evictions over the past year are certainly astounding, nothing drives the point home quite like seeing the city evolve right before … Continued
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Tech News
Transit Strikes and Corruption: What’s Ruining Our Cities This Week
Another crippling transit strike for San Francisco! A mayor stealing the money that Venice should be using to save itself from flooding! It’s a depressing look at What’s Ruining Our Cities. The mayor of Venice is not only ruining the city, HE COULD BE THE REASON IT DROWNS As thousands of artists and architects from … Continued
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Tech News
San Francisco’s Sights Reflected Upside-Down In Perfectly Clear Puddles
San Francisco’s got a beautiful skyline, but Angela May Chen prefers looking towards the pavement for a crystal clear view. The designer and photographer captured some of the city’s iconic (and lovably hyper-local) sights reflected perfectly in puddles after good hard rains then flipped the pics, resulting in a series that is a delightfully funky … Continued
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Tech NewsSee the Towering Future of San Francisco’s Skyline In a 3D-Printed Model
San Francisco’s skyline is a-changing a lot, with massive new developments going up all over Market Street’s main drag and squeezing in downtown. The pace is fast enough that it’s tough to imagine what it will look like next week, much less next year, but a close look at this oversized 3D-printed model is like … Continued
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Tech NewsSploid
A wall of fog invades the Golden Gate bridge at sunrise
Today is the 77th anniversary of the Golden Gate and, to celebrate, the Department of Interior posted this stunning image of the fog invading the bridge at sunrise. SPLOID is a new blog about awesome stuff. Join us on Facebook
By Jesus Diaz -
Tech News
Vacant Hotels and Unemployed Teens: What’s Ruining Our Cities This Week
An empty hotel that’s symbolic of Vegas’s bust. A parking app that’s about to turn San Francisco into one big $20/hour parking lot. And why it’s really, really important that you spend your formative years working at a Dairy Queen. Let’s look at What’s Ruining Our Cities. A lack of working teens is ruining the … Continued
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Tech News
Why a Raleigh neighborhood wants to tear down a modern house. How a suburb in Cleveland eradicated the school bus. Where Millennials are moving (hint: wherever the transit is). Plus Los Angeles’s Instagramming mayor and Vegas’s quest to legalize weed, all in this week’s Urban Reads. Neighborhood politics at their worst: A halfway constructed home … Continued
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Tech News
What burrowing owls have to do with San Francisco’s housing protests, a luxury apartment for horses in Manhattan, and Boston looks back on the transformation of its civic identity, one year later. Plus, a recap of Gizmodo’s Utopia Week. Climb aboard this week’s Urban Reads. “If you’re wondering why people are protesting you, how we … Continued
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Tech News
108 Years Since the Great Quake
The 1906 earthquake in San Francisco spawned fires that nearly destroyed the city, and defied all scientific theories of the day. You know the broad story; now here’s the science to fill in the details. Blended image of 1906 post-quake damage, and present-day San Francisco. Photography credit: Shawn Clover The 1906 earthquake isn’t one of … Continued
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Tech News
The Plan to Keep People From Jumping Off the Golden Gate Bridge
More people have committed suicide on the Golden Gate Bridge than on any other structure in the world—someone jumps from the bridge to their death about every two weeks. But those figures could be dramatically reduced if a proposed suicide-prevention barrier is installed later this year, as advocates hope. If you’ve walked over the bridge, … Continued
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Tech NewsHow San Francisco Sacrificed a Valley in Yosemite for Water and Power
The electricity that powers San Francisco’s streetlights, schools, and international airport begins as a torrent of water inside—of all places—the supposed natural sanctuary that is Yosemite National Park. A century ago, a pristine valley was sacrificed so that San Francisco could continue to exist. The Hetch Hetchy Power System is still responsible for San Francisco’s … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
Smart Car Tipping and Thom Mayne: What’s Ruining Our Cities This Week
Someone’s doing dumb stuff with Smart cars in the Bay Area. A report says Los Angeles is beyond help. And did architect Thom Mayne’s new building damage a school’s legacy and the neighborhood it calls home? It’s all this week in What’s Ruining Our Cities. Smart car tipping is ruining San Francisco Little cars have … Continued
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Tech News
The Plan to Demolish SF’s Old Bay Bridge Could Be Derailed By Birds
To us, the bridge is a way to get across the water, but to cormorants in San Francisco Bay, the old Bay Bridge is home sweet home. And the 800 protected birds currently nesting there are not very keen on moving to the new Bay Bridge span—despite its shiny $700,000 bird “condos.” If Caltrans can’t … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
ScienceSpace & SpaceflightEvery City Deserves Space Murals This Gorgeous
Space, the final frontier… for street art. No, we’re not quite ready to tag the International Space Station, but a pair of artists in San Francisco is working on bring space down to Earth with a series of murals depicting everything from constellations to nebulae. And, boy, are they pretty. With the help of Nils … Continued
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Tech NewsGoogle
These Time-Warp Photos Show Six Cities In the Past and Present
Cities change: skyscrapers go up, row houses are torn down, neighborhoods gentrify, earthquakes destroy. Vintage photographs of cities can be fascinating in and of themselves, but the familiar unfamiliarity of these time-warped photographs are especially intriguing. From San Francisco to St. Petersburg, here are how cities have changed—and not changed—over the years. See history peek … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech NewsThe Futuristic Liquid Nitrogen Machine That Makes Ice Cream To Order
Despite the warm wood and cheery red accents, Smitten Ice Cream can feel a bit like a mad scientist’s shop. There’s the industrial-sized tank of liquid nitrogen that greets you inside the entrance of its new flagship location in Oakland. And there’s the billowing clouds of nitrogen when the stainless steel ice cream machines churn … Continued
By Sarah Zhang -
Tech News
Climb into a sinkhole of bureaucracy in Pennsylvania (no, really, it’s a cave), explore San Francisco’s most storied structure (not the Golden Gate bridge), and jet off to to Myanmar (or is it Burma?). Plus, SCARY CLOWNS! In this week’s Urban Reads. “The employees here pass thousands of case files from cavern to cavern and … Continued
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Tech News
Text While Driving In The Bay Area And You Might End Up On A Billboard
This month, some residents of San Francisco could discover photographs of themselves engaging in rather embarrassing behavior. A website has been collecting photos of people texting while driving, and some of those photos have now found their way onto billboards throughout the region. The project, called Texting While in Traffic (TWIT) is the brainchild of … Continued
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Tech NewsDesign
A tree so mighty it deforms space itself!
Take a peek at Deformscape, a garden patio in San Francisco. The architectural sculpture is a practical solution to limited space, and a vertigo-inducing illusion of a wormhole ready to suck the neighbourhood into the Japanese Maple tree. Continuing the theme of space-time warping optical illusions used in design, browsing architect Thom Faulders wanted to … Continued