5 things in tech, language and human nature that caught my eye this week

1. A restaurant, a swimming pool or a concert hall theater? 16 dormant subway stations in Paris are waiting for re-design. Here‘s how one majoral candidate has imagined them to be.
2. Now your smartphone can help cure cancer, and for free. Thanks to its incredible processing power, your phone can help researchers compute similarities between different protein sequences. All this when you’re asleep.
3. Deborah Fallows has recently asked what you think people actually mean when they ask “Where do you live?” or “Where are you from?”. Here‘s what she found out and it’s really interesting.

   

   Picture: Paul Thurlby

4. The annoying typing indicator in online chats is there for a reason. Here’s the man behind the bubble, justifying his paranoia-inducing invention. The logic behind it is quite smart.
5. Facebook knows when you’re starting a new relationship just by looking at the frequency of your posts. When you think of it, it is rather creepy.

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6 things that particularly struck me in tech, design and human nature this week

1. The Swiss are now gem-ifying cremated ashes of their loved ones into diamonds. Co.Design writes: “instead of wearing your late grandmother’s old jewellery, you can actually wear your late grandmother.”
2. 2014 ArchDaily Building of the Year Awards are out. Over 60,000 architects “got together” to pick projects of unique spatial qualities and materials. And they are beautiful. See the winners here.
   

   Alcácer do Sal Residences by Aires Mateus

3. Book worms, brace yourselves. Sensory fiction is coming. Your “wearable” book will cage you in a vest, control your heartbeat and flash colours to convey the protagonist’s mood. As if you didn’t know what they feel.
   

   “The Sensory Fiction author is provided with new means of conveying plot, mood and emotion while still allowing space for the reader’s imagination,” said the MIT press release.

4. Hockey rink, airport shuttle, rooftop gardens and go-carts – what do they have in common? You will find them in the parking lot. ParkingPLUS design challenge wants to revamp acres and acres of asphalt parking space in Long Island, as infrastructure begins to acquire an increasingly multifunctional (and recyclable) character.
   

   Parking lots of the future look super fun

5. Maths and butterflies – scientific honesty in the illustrations by Venezuelan Rafael Araujo gives art the “comfort” of right and wrong answers.
   

   Araujo’s insane mathematical illustrations

6. And yet another apocalypse. Through “premediation” we practice for many possible scenarios, e.g. the one from The Walking Dead – as explained by the Atlantic.