Crowds

While multi-billion dollar disasters like FTX would lead a reasonable person to believe that the cryptocurrency industry is dead or dying, the unfortunate truth is that it’s doing just fine. Not only has Bitcoin’s market price been on a familiar rollercoaster ride lately, but droves of crypto believers have, in recent weeks, proven themselves willing invest in some of the most ridiculous projects ever.Why Do People Buy into Crypto? | Gizmodo InterviewCase in point: the Slerf token. Slerf is a sloth-themed memecoin that…

Come April 8, a rare total solar eclipse will grace the skies of the United States. The event, however, brings with it a challenge. Traffic mayhem is expected…

For the month of December, some residents of a South Torrance neighborhood can’t order a pizza or Thai food from DoorDash or UberEats and it’s not because of budget constraints.It’s because of their neighborhood tradition of elaborate residential holiday light displays on more than 300 houses and lawns that thousands of families across the city travel to each year to enjoy.Every year for the last 39 years, hundreds of houses in the Seaside Ranchos community of Torrance participate in the Seaside Holiday Lights event by…

Like human armies, army ants spell trouble for anything that finds itself in their path. The insects make…

Tesla has populated its showrooms with Cybertruck units ahead of the launch and it was successful in attracting crowds. Last week, we reported that Tesla has started to bring early Cybertruck vehicles to showrooms around the US. At the time, they were only in two stores, but we noted that it looked like they could be in many more in the next few days. Sure enough, Cybertrucks were in more than a dozen Tesla stores across North America by the weekend. In our report, we noted that Tesla was…

Stay home and eat your turkey. Most stores, other than supermarket and pharmacy chains, aren’t open until Black Friday morning.The frenzied mall mobs characteristic of Black Friday — and Thanksgiving, until COVID shutdowns squashed that retailer move to out-compete one another — had faded even before the pandemic, with the growth of e-commerce and ever-earlier holiday promotions, which this year began well before Halloween. Despite evidence showing that shoppers recently have pulled back, data from consumer surveys…

Like it or not, we are all citizens of the state of Barbieland – or at least we were on the eve of Barbie’s opening.Following a year-long wink-wink, think-pink marketing blitz that shaded every corner of the public consciousness in Pantone 219C, masses of film and pop culture devotees squeezed into their rosiest garments and headed to the cinema to see writer-director Greta Gerwig’s sparkly tribute to the wasp-waisted Mattel doll. Made in conjunction with the Los Angeles-based toy brand, Barbie is the first of 45 Mattel…

Human Swarm experiment: (a) Groups of 10 to 20 participants were asked to walk around a large hall, turning left and right while staying together as a group. Their head positions were recorded with 16 motion-capture cameras (b) Head trajectories were reconstructed using a computer program. The visual model predicted the trajectories of individual participants, using the visible motions of their neighbors as input. Credit: William Warren…

* * *TheatreNo one does it quite like Punchdrunk. In this immense, immersive company’s hands, a crowd is entirely malleable. With the audience anonymised by masks, we can be anything they want us to be. Its current production, The Burnt City, allows us to wander around the fall of Troy, bustled together and split apart as the evening goes on. The event is less about the story and more about the scenery and our exhilarating freedom to roam within it, being at once invisible and a central part of the performance. Inviting…

A 45ft-tall Disneyland dragon caught fire late on Saturday during a show in Anaheim, California, causing those in attendance to flee, local media and officials said. No injuries or deaths were reported.“The dragon’s head started to glow, and I see fire and kind of smoke coming out,” Elaine Gilmer, who was at the event, told ABC News.Video showed the dragon engulfed in flames. Cast members were evacuated from Tom Sawyer Island, where the Fantasmic show was staged.The Anaheim fire department said no injuries were reported.…