Follow the Tokyo Public Transport system in realtime, thanks the some super magic by Nagix.
A real-time 3D digital map of Tokyo’s public transport system – nagix/mini-tokyo-3d
Source: GitHub – nagix/mini-tokyo-3d: A real-time 3D digital map of Tokyo’s public transport system
possibly one of the best things to come out of the 2000’s
Half a century after their debut, Japan’s pager services will finally cease on Tuesday, bringing an end to what was once considered a must-have communications tool by high school girls before the advent of mobile phones.Tokyo Telemessage Inc., the nation’s sole remaining pager provider, said it would begin shutting down the radio signals behind its services at around midnight Monday.In recent years, the tiny device had been favored mainly by those working in hospitals, where cell phone use was once discouraged because of concerns about poor reception and the disruptive effect that electromagnetic waves can have on medical devices.Dubbed pokeberu (pocket bells), sales of the devices in Japan began in 1968 with the predecessor of NTT Corp. To reach someone, callers would dial a pager number from a landline, causing the device to beep to notify the owner.Initially, pager services were used by companies to communicate with sales staff who were out of the office. But from the late 1980s onward, their popularity grew because they could be used to display short messages by creatively combining numbers and text characters.In the 1990s, female high school students drove the pager boom further as they came up with clever combinations to exchange messages.Among the short numerical messages were “33414,” which in Japanese can be pronounced “samishiiyo,” meaning “I’m lonely.” Another was “999,” a series of three (san) nines (kyū) that was a casual way to say “sankyū” (“thank you”).Pager users exceeded 10 million in 1996. However, from around that time, beeper services began to decline with the arrival of mobile phones. Subscribers decreased further as email, texting and taking and sending photos by phone became standard.Though NTT’s mobile unit, NTT Docomo Inc., terminated nationwide pager service in 2007, Tokyo Telemessage continued to operate in Tokyo and neighboring Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures.
Source: Japanese pagers to issue last beeps on Tuesday, ending 50-year run | The Japan Times
10 times blacker then Vantablack.
suck it, Anish.
A 16.78 carat natural yellow diamond (Fancy Vivid Yellow SI1, Radiant shape, value $2,000,000) is covered with the blackest black on earth, which makes the diamond appear to disappear.
Grown nanotubes, tiny hallow carbon cylinders, will shape a microscopic ‘forest’ on the shiny surface of the diamond. When a photon enters the spatial forest structure, which is mainly consisting of empty space, it is encaged and bounces around until it dissipates as heat. The carbon nanotubes (short CNT’s) absorb 99.965% of the light.
Any object covered with this material loses all its plasticity and appears entirely flat, abbreviated to a black silhouette, by erasing any shadow in outright contradiction to this we see that a diamond, while made of the very same element (carbon), enacts the most intense reflection of light on earth.
The different structural forms of the arrangement of the carbon atoms create opposing extremes in appearance on exposure to light. In formal respect the project represents the paradoxical combination of two opposites coinciding in the same object. The form that maximizes the return of light (diamond cut) is covered with a surface that maximizes its absorption. In effect the CNT’s material properties appear almost “immaterial”, as the void of a black hole.
The covered diamond is presented on a small elongated golden foot encased in a safety class chamber mounted onto a pedestal. In order to be able to “see” the deprivation as efficiently as possible, the display is equipped with illuminated magnifiers. Part of the display is an armed security guard.
The project explores how material and immaterial value is attached to objects and concepts in reference to luxury, society and to art.
The literal devaluation of an object of highly symbolic and economic value can be understood in respect to the embracing forces of art market mechanism on the one hand, while expressing at the same time questions of the value of art in its more broader sense.We use a new developed method patented by MIT that is measurable the blackest black on earth, that can be used by any artist.
We do not believe in exclusive ownership of concepts, ideas or materials in the arts.Author of the Concept: Diemut Strebe