DESIGN, BUSINESS & INNOVATION

V&A Museum. Photo The Procrastinator (some) Times.

Interesting reflections from RSA about the Power to Create and bitcoin! "Here at the RSA, we’re getting very interested in what we call the ‘Power to Create’: the notion that by unleashing the desire of billions to turn their own, unique ideas into reality, we’ll all end up richer, solve some of our biggest problems and feel a lot more fulfilled along the way." Read full post in RSA Blog. E.T.P. 7'

The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 15th of December Edition

EDITORIAL

This edition of The Procrastinator is harder better, stronger, but not faster. It's a long one. Since we are taking our Christmas holidays we wanted to make this edition special. Ideally you will have enough content to procrastinate meaningfully for the next three weeks. Additionally to the regular sections, you have nice recommendations of photography expos to visit in December/January in New York curated by Andreína in Photoautomat; an amazing Christmas Gifts Guide by La Guía del Perro and our favorite part: our predictions for 2014. Intrigued? Good. Keep reading!

Thanks for your support and hope to see you all back in 2014. If you don't follow us in twitter, go ahead, we're (kinda) fun; if you want to collaborate with us, please do so; and of course, have an awesome Christmas and a beautiful 2014!

Happy Sunday and happy reading.



NEWS

Photo via The New Yorker.

Mandela's Politics of Forgiveness. Jelani Cobb writes in The New Yorker: "it’s one thing to make forgiveness an element of a humanitarian movement; it’s quite another to enact it as public policy. King sagely and sincerely presented racial reconciliation as a function of Christian love; Mandela knew that beyond his own spiritual inclinations racial reconciliation was an imperative of national survival." Certainly, as Cobb says, Mandela emerged at a rare point in history where idealism and pragmatism were practically indistinguishable. In my humble opinion, even though is the hardest thing to do, that is the only thing a broken country can do to be healed. Read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P. 6'

Photo via www.notonthehighstreet.com

The most successful meme. Very close to his birthday The Independent published an article about the book Who’s Bigger? Where Historical Figures Really Rank (Cambridge University Press, 2013), that declares Jesus as the most influential person ever. The authors Steven Skiena and Charles Ward used internet-based metrics to make the claim. Jesus, the Christian Messiah, beat playwright William Shakespeare, philosopher Aristotle and Macedonian King Alexander the Great to the top spot. Notably, there are no female historical figures in the top ten." Read full article here. E.T.P. 6'

Image via Fast Company.

 

The Insanity of Bitcoin explained. Apparently the world thinks that everybody should understand Bitcoin before 2013 is over, so if you missed The Economist article we posted a couple of weeks ago, here's Fast Company's one that include a video made by Duncan Elms that promised to be "as fun as dropping a tab and hitting the planetarium for a Pink Floyd laser show"... whatever that means. It is a nice video and your E.T.P. is only 3'24'' for the video, 6' if you also read the article.

Finally The Economist presents its Calendar 2014, with a seleccion of events around the world in 2014. From Greece taking over the European Union rotating presidency and the beginning of the Chinese horse year, in January, to the release of “The Hobbit: There and Back Again”, the third in the Tolkien film trilogy, in December. Have a look here. E.T.P 7'

The Procrastinator (some) Times Sunday 1st of December Edition

EDITORIAL

First day of December! So many clichés to say about time and the future. I won't say any just because I promised last month not to do it. But I'm dying here people. In this week's edition of The Procrastinator we have an article about Bitcoin for everyone that, like me, still don't understand Bitcoin very much. Interesting articles about Design Thinking, GhostFood and about amazing/crazy plans for the Moon. In Dog We Trust introduce us to Eiconne and Pootle. And finally, cool projects in our Culture & Entertainment section; some lovely like Yoni Lefévre's Grey Power, some bonkers like James Franco & Seth Rogen's parody video, amazing example of massive procrastination.


Happy Sunday and happy reading! x


NEWS

Photo via The Economist.

I have to confess that I don't truly understand Bitcoin yet. I know. I'm making an effort here. This article helped me understand a bit more because it explains how it all began, its popularity and controversy, and I love how it starts: "ALL currencies involve some measure of consensual hallucination, but Bitcoin, a virtual monetary system, involves more than most. It is a peer-to-peer currency with no central bank, based on digital tokens with no intrinsic value. Rather than relying on confidence in a central authority, it depends instead on a distributed system of trust, based on a transaction ledger which is cryptographically verified and jointly maintained by the currency’s users." Read full article in The Economist. E.T.P. 8'

Photo via The New Yorker.

Gregory Gause explains in The New Yorker why the deal between the United States and Iran scares Saudi Arabia. "After the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany concluded a preliminary agreement with Iran on Sunday, it did not take long for regional critics of the deal to react. The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, blasted the agreement as “a historic mistake.” Saudi Arabia, the other American ally in the Middle East worried about an opening to Iran, took a different approach, issuing a carefully worded statement that cautiously welcomed the deal." Read full article in The New Yorker. E.T.P.