Look where Meerkat and Periscope point. I mean, historically. They vector toward a future where anybody anywhere can send live video out to the glowing rectangles of the world. 1. Mobile phone/data systems will get their gears stripped, in both directions. And it will get worse before it gets better. 2. Stereo sound recording is coming. Binaural recording too. Next… 3. 3D. Mobile devices in a generation or two will include two microphones and two cameras pointed toward the subject being broadcast. 4. VR, or virtual reality. Now pause to dig Facebook’s 10-year plan to build The Matrix. How long before Facebook buys Meerkat and builds it into Occulus Rift? Or buys Twitter, just to get Periscope and do the same? Whatever else happens, the rights clearing question gets very personal. Do you want to be recorded by others and broadcast to the world or not? What are the social and device protocols for that? Some are designed into the glasses above.
None of these gave me the proverbial wiggins, however – rather, it was a seemingly innocuous scene involving Cobb’s estranged wife Sandy (Kay Lenz). Popping over to check on her husband’s rapidly-fraying mental state, she stoops to pick something up. When she re-emerges from under the hallway table, she’s transformed into a bloated, hag-like demon – complete with smeared red lipstick and a lilac silk evening dress. It is not, by any reasonable standard, particularly horrific. But it comes completely out of nowhere, just when you think you’re in a lull between scares and briefly let your guard down. For 12-year-old me, the shock was enough to indelibly sear the image into that corner of the brain that only comes to life late at night. I had strict parents, who wouldn’t let me within a severed-head’s throw of a horror movie. Accordingly, even the mildest of screen-scares got me severely shook up.
Isabel Marant, Versace, Giorgio Armani, and Ferragamo featured handbags in everything from majorelle to robin’s egg to sky blue, while a single cerulean purse was a standout piece in a sea of bright white on the Valentino runway. Flower power will be in full swing for spring, but these are not your grandma’s couch florals. Flowery details are sprouting from all sorts of handbags including 3D blossoms at Balmain and 3.1 Phillip Lim, oversized flower prints at Chanel, and whorls of fabrics and pearls shaped like rosettes at Simone Rocha. If you want to give the trend a try without going all-out bag bouquet, opt for something smaller like a change purse or a mini bag with dramatic petal-like appliqués instead. Photo: Courtesy of Gucci. It’s been a decade since the New York-based brand Mansur Gavriel launched its bucket bag, and still, the style’s popularity endures (searches for “Mansur Gavriel bucket” have over 400 million views on TikTok and the bag continues to be a favorite among stars like Taylor Swift and Sarah Jessica Parker). Add to that similar styles being endorsed by the likes of Alexander McQueen, Stella McCartney, and Miu Miu, and it’s fair to say the trend might just be on the brink of its biggest year yet.
WASHINGTON – The District of Columbia is hardly known as a hotbed of activity for tech startups, certainly not on the order of New York or Boston, let alone Silicon Valley or San Francisco. In fact, the primary association between the nation’s capital and the tech world is found in the thick roster of defense contractors and other IT players that provide software, hardware and services to the departments and agencies of the federal government. But city officials and members of Washington’s nascent startup community, buoyed by new pro-growth economic policies and a surging population, envision a new chapter of economic expansion driven by a flowering of innovative young tech firms backed by angels or venture capitalists. In remarks at a conference organized under the DC Week festival of tech- focused events, Victor Hoskins, D.C.’s deputy mayor for planning and economic development, touted the early results of several initiatives that the city’s administration has taken to boost the tech scene here as a path to new growth that could offset declines in government spending on IT and other areas as federal budgets flatten or contract.