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The story of my life in China is here.
Former Chief of Disguise for the CIA, Jonna Mendez, explains how disguises are used in the CIA, and what aspects to the deception make for an effective disguise.
In the second video she breaks down 30 spy scenes from shows like Alias and Bourne Identity.
“We wanted to invite U.S. media to come ask any questions on behalf of American customers,” said Catherine Chen, Huawei’s corporate senior vice president and director of the board.
VICE News took Huawei up on its offer and found out we were the only news organization that showed up.
The gigantic complex contains twelve European style towns.
Ogilvy 12th Floor created two digital billboards for British Airways:
These specific signs were located between the view of people on the street and the flight paths of planes coming and going from Heathrow Airport. Advanced technology was integrated into the display that could track planes as they flew overhead, and that’s when the magic would start.
A video would start to play that showed a child point at the airplane and run off after it. The sign would also give the flight number and location that the plane took off from, and then it would go back to a very simple display about British Airways.
What a smart way of combining traditional with digital marketing.
Emmy-Award winning actor Jeffrey Wright narrates the story of Nearest Green.
This beautifully shot short film tells the extraordinary legacy of the first known African-American master distiller. It’s a story of honor, respect, and an unlikely friendship, that would forever change the whiskey industry. Perhaps the greatest American story you never heard.
German artists Wolfgang Aichner and Thomas Huber went on a 4-week art performance, carrying an oversized pen painting a virtual rectangle over the scenic landscape of three US states.
In the past they pulled a red boat over the alps and carried out a powerwalk in Iceland.
Thomas Huber painted the Buntschwein I bought in 2014.
Saigoneer editor-in-chief Michael Tatarski explains why the water of the Mekong is brown:
“If in the future all of the planned Mekong River dams are built, 96% of sediment will be trapped, while 50% is already trapped by the cascade dams in China,” he adds. “If this happens, the coastal water will become transparent, while right now it’s chocolate-colored for 30 kilometers from shore.”
And why that’s a good thing:
Additionally, the loss of sediment would not only starve sea life of nutrients, but would also expose the delta to dangerous storms and waves, as sediment-filled water is heavier than open ocean water and absorbs wave energy.
I like this thought of James Clear in his 3-2-1 Newsletter:
Concentration produces wealth.
Diversification protects wealth.
For The Atlantic Ed Young followed scientists studying the last giraffes alive.
In 2010, eight times as many Sophie the Giraffe teething toys were sold in France alone as there are actual remaining giraffes. In 2016, the number of Britons who watched a giraffe kick a lion in Planet Earth II exceeded the giraffe population by more than a hundredfold. That same year, the International Union for Conservation of Nature reclassified the giraffe as “vulnerable” to extinction.
He has a wonderful way of telling the story.
She loses her footing and careens forward, her legs splaying out behind her. But her seven-foot-long neck still stretches resolutely skyward. A woman leaps from behind her back, collides with her neck midair, and rugby-tackles it to the ground. People run over, carrying a hood and a drill. The giraffe—an emblem of verticality—is now fully horizontal.
Turns out there are many things we don’t know about giraffes.
Apple prototype collector Giulio Zompetti describes what he thinks might be the company’s development and prototyping process.
Chinese Chingkun Tech crated a 195-gigapixel panorama of Shanghai:
After taking photos in the Oriental Pearl Tower which is 230 m high and after data treatment for two months, we successfully created this picture, the world’s third largest picture and Asia’s first largest picture, marking that our team became a top creative image production team of the world.
I found my old appartment building, my university, friends’ houses, … Pure nostalgia…
The Washington Post’s national security correspondent Greg Miller tells the story of Crypto AG, a trusted cryptography company with many countries among its clients:
But what none of its customers ever knew was that Crypto AG was secretly owned by the CIA in a highly classified partnership with West German intelligence. These spy agencies rigged the company’s devices so they could easily break the codes that countries used to send encrypted messages.
The CIA exited 2018. Imagine what else they might be running.
Chris Humphrey writing for the South China Morning Post:
“Vietnam responded to this outbreak early and proactively. Its first risk assessment exercise was conducted in early January – soon after cases in China started being reported,” Park says.
I’m impressed with Vietnam’s reaction to this crisis. They closed cinemas, bars, karaoke parlors early, then restricted access to restaurants and finally closed everything that’s not absolutely necessary.
Wired co-founder Kevin Kelly was a backpacker before being a backpacker was a thing.
I knew nothing about Asia, or even travelling; I had never even been out of New England. I knew nothing about what to expect. I went to the bookstores and it was really hard to find any information. There were these Fodor’s guidebooks for people who had a lot of money. I didn’t have any money. They barely covered places like Taiwan, so these books weren’t of any use to me. There was no internet, of course, and the libraries didn’t have much. I travelled kind of blindly because I had to.
Visual effects and animation journalist Ian Failes (isn’t that an amazing title?) interviewed the creators of the original Ironman heads-up display.
Kent Seki: I have to say that ‘First Flight’, in which Tony dons his silver Mark II suit, is one of my favourite parts. In the beginning of the sequence, you see components of the armour being applied, followed by a POV of the mask coming up to his face, then the very first HUD shot of Tony as the graphics turn on. This is the moment where the HUDs could succeed or fail. Luckily for us, we got things more right than wrong. The audience was with us.
That’s what it looks like in the movie:
I used to take part in many conference call that were exactly as depicted.
These days I’m doing mostly video calls which are much better.