interesting things
At least 20 closely held U.S. start-ups backed by venture capital are now valued at $1 billion or more, Pinterest and Evernote among them. During the frothy days of the 1990s dot-com bubble, there were just 18 such start-ups valued at $1 billion or more.
via WSJ.com: What's News US http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303879604577410370746959872.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us
A drug dealer who got his start during the crack epidemic of the 1980s and was so good at hiding his whereabouts that he was known as “the ghost” has been arrested along with dozens of others on new charges.
via Yahoo! News – Latest News & Headlines http://news.yahoo.com/notorious-1980s-drug-dealer-arrested-nyc-205622134.html
via Yahoo! News – Latest News & Headlines http://news.yahoo.com/more-twice-many-tweets-supported-gay-marriage-opposed-230200096.html
@jonward11: best thing u’ll read all day: NYT article from on how local officials in China crush dissent bc Beijing turns blind eye http://t.co/CyTh1eqc
A back-of-the-envelope attempt to look at the relationship between income inequality and economic mobility in the 50 states.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/the-great-gatsby-curve-for-the-states/
At Facebook, ground zero for the nouveau tech riche in Silicon Valley, peer pressure dictates that consumption be kept on the down low.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/18/daily-report-the-reticent-rich-in-silicon-valley/
@ryanchittum: JPMorgan’s PR team are slapping backs and smoking stogies after this clinic of a spin job on WSJ page one: http://t.co/PMOvbu2Y
@Goldberg3000: International Olympic Committee rejects idea of moment of silence for murdered Israeli athletes: http://t.co/yPObiJJL
The soon-to-be-in-theaters movie Battleship proves that no idea is too dumb for Hollywood to make a blockbuster out of it. Could other toy-based movies be far behind? How about a film based on Connect Four?
Milton Bradley’s abstract strategy game transforms into an apocalyptic race against time in this sci-fi blockbuster, starring Ryan Gosling and Rihanna as technocratic dictators (and ex-lovers) locked in a perpetual war of mutually assured destruction and reconstruction on the planet Ouroboros. After erecting, then annihilating, exquisite tech-noir skyscrapers and impossibly high vertical farms using strategically placed death discs, it is left to a brilliant but raunchy elderly mathematician (Betty White) to unite the ex-lovers with a perfect-play strategy inspired by James D. Allen and Victor Allis, who solved the game on Earth in the late ’80s. Catchphrases from the game’s TV commercial — “Here, diagonally†and “Pretty sneaky, sis†— are incorporated into the film’s final moments, when the formerly self-centered Gosling asks the formerly obstinate Rihanna how she would like to be kissed.
Read the premises for nine other toy-based films at Underwire. Link
