The Verge - Quick reads

Tracking 'The Warriors' through old New York, in 1979 and 2013

2013-05-23T13:37:04Z

Over 30 years after The Warriors took America on a dangerous midnight tour of New York, the city seems like a different world. Graffiti has been sanded, neighborhoods have gentrified, and citizens no longer fear attacks by roving mimes. But the traces of 1970s New York live on beneath repainted facades, and Scouting New York brings us along in a fascinating three-part attempt to find and photograph every location where The Warriors was filmed. In Part 1, it's revealed that the Warriors' long journey from the Bronx to Coney Island actually started in Manhattan. In Part 2, we meet the abandoned subway station that has appeared in everything from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to a Michael Jackson video. And in Part 3, Scouting New York sums up what makes The Warriors so transcendent:

I complain quite a lot about how everyone films the same cliched fantasy of New York, but it's the cliche I mind, not the fantasy. The singularity of the world the Warriors inhabit is totally original, and one cinematic night wandering through its neon lit, statue-strewn streets is frankly not enough.

Zack Snyder explains why Superman was subversive all along

2013-05-23T13:10:52Z

Ask anyone to name an iconic superhero, and Superman will be on the list. But his movies and comic book story arcs have often failed to capture the public's imagination in the same way as flawed heroes like Batman or Spider-Man. Man of Steel, a new filmic treatment arriving this summer, promises to change this. But while producer Christopher Nolan and director Zack Snyder have made their names in superhero and comic book movies, they've done so by making gritty deconstructions of the superhero mythos, particularly Snyder's adaptation of the notoriously unfilmable Watchmen.

Man of Steel promises to break that mold, whether successfully or not. In an interview with The New York Times, Snyder describes the ethos behind his new film and the process of making it. "I feel like my movies have always been very subversive, even when people haven't perceived how subversive they really are," he says. "For me, what's subversive about Superman is that it's not subversive."

How far would you go to look like Daft Punk?

2013-05-23T12:47:56Z

Daft Punk's Random Access Memories has been one of the most heavily hyped albums of the year. For die-hard fans, though, the holy grail isn't an album but a faithful recreation of a Daft Punk helmet. The Wall Street Journal dives into the world of people who have expertly reverse-engineered and manufactured unofficial helmets that sell for anywhere from a few hundred to several thousand dollars. "People are so desperate for these things that they are willing to wear everyday household buckets," says Daft Punk fansite founder Kevin Sanders. Well-made versions of the futuristic helmets, of course, have nothing everyday about them.

The bitter truth about Greek yogurt: it's producing millions of pounds of toxic waste

2013-05-22T18:21:23Z

Greek yogurt has taken the grocery store dairy aisle by storm, but there's a surprising downside to all those spoonfuls of Chobani we're gobbling up: millions of pounds of waste that industry insiders aren't quite sure what to do with.

The production of Greek yogurt operates somewhat differently than that of conventional varieties. Namely, it yields huge quantities of acid whey, a byproduct that kills aquatic life during decomposition. And because the Greek yogurt boom occurred so rapidly — yogurt production in New York, for instance, tripled between 2007 and 2013 — companies, as well as government officials and food scientists, are still mulling the best ways to dispose of, or profit from, that runoff. As Modern Farmer explains, several intriguing options are currently being explored: acid whey is already being fed to livestock and used to generate electricity, and might one day be incorporated into infant formula.

Damon Lindelof opens up on 'Star Trek,' 'Star Wars,' and 'Tomorrowland'

2013-05-22T09:20:05Z

Damon Lindelof, says Grantland, is the "King of the nerds." After rising to fame as one of the driving forces behind ABC's Lost, Lindelhof produced Star Trek, and wrote and produced Cowboys & Aliens, Prometheus, and, most recently, Star Trek Into Darkness. In an extensive interview with Grantland — which contains a lot of spoilers for the recent Star Trek movie — Lindelof discusses his movies, his thoughts on long-time collaborator J.J. Abrams' upcoming Star Wars Episode VII, and his upcoming project Tomorrowland, which has been shrouded in secrecy.

How a German physicist fooled Albert Einstein

2013-05-22T08:47:42Z

For his work on canal ray sources in the 1920s, German physicist Emil Rupp was regarded as one of the most important figures in his field. His research captured the interest of Albert Einstein, resulting in a collaboration that probed the wave and particle natures of light. Despite flaws and inaccuracies in his work, Rupp's controversial investigations continued for another ten years — until it was discovered he'd forged everything he had ever published. In a profile of the scientist, io9 explains how Rupp was able to deceive Einstein and divide the German physics community, revealing how one bold claim too many led to his downfall.

'Tumblr is David, and David is Tumblr:' the man behind Yahoo's new blogging platform

2013-05-21T14:08:44Z

At age 20, high-school dropout and startup industry veteran David Karp co-founded Tumblr, the now six-year-old blogging platform that was just bought by Yahoo for $1.1 billion. But who is he? The New York Times profiles Karp, who left school at age 14 to focus on programming and web design and worked on several projects before striking gold with Tumblr. Fellow Tumblr co-founder Marco Arment, meanwhile, looks back on his time working with Karp, saying the acquisition by Yahoo may be a great thing for Tumblr. "Tumblr is David, and David is Tumblr," he says. "We — internet users, creative people, publishers, socializers — will be much better served if David can focus on his product's features, design, and messaging instead of worrying about server architecture and raising more money."

'The Pirate Cinema' monitors popular torrents to create a video wall of piracy

2013-05-20T08:58:12Z

The Pirate Cinema is a cinematic collage or sorts. Its creators took torrent database The Pirate Bay's Top 100 video files and monitored each, creating small, fragmented clips based on traffic (torrents are transfered block-by-block in a somewhat random order). The resulting installation, which runs through to May 29th in Montreal's Eastern Bloc gallery, is a mash of sights and sounds, revealing the extent of global file sharing. Head over to We Make Money Not Art for an interview with co-creator Nicolas Maigret.

Space guns, boreholes, and biodomes: the lost dreams of 20th century science

2013-05-20T07:47:11Z

The 20th century, in particular the latter half, played host to some of the most ambitious scientific projects in history. Atlas Obscura's feature Ruins Of Super Science takes a look at some forgotten gems, many of which are in a state of disrepair. There's the Kola Superdeep Borehole, a Russian project to drill as far into the earth as possible, which reached a stunning 7.5 miles deep; the Project HARP Space Gun, which as the name suggests was a joint US-Canadian project that aimed to fire a payload into space (it never succeeded); and Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower and Laboratory in Long Island, NY, the birthplace of many of Tesla's experiments, and the subject of a successful campaign last year to turn the lab into a Tesla museum. There are a total of ten projects in the feature — it's a must-read for anyone interested in the limits of human endeavor.

Inside the private push for consumer space travel

2013-05-20T01:31:32Z

Since the 1960s and PanAm's ill-fated Moon Flights Club, commercial passenger flights to space have been a tantalizing dream, one that's expected to finally come to fruition within the next year. For its cover story this week, New York Magazine takes an in-depth look at the industry, including interviews with Buzz Aldrin, Richard Branson, and several others. In it, Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides discusses Branson's plans to bring his entire family, including his 88-year-old mother, to space with him, which will likely happen "by the end of the year," says Branson. Aldrin also discusses his criticism of fellow Apollo generation astronauts eager for the US to return to the moon while staunchly supporting plans to establish a permanent settlement on Mars, saying it will be “one of the biggest things humans have ever achieved.”