Toronto is one of the many great world cities that has been rendered nearly unlivable by real-estate speculation, both from onshore investors and offshore ones. Read the rest

This is really fun. With Japanese artist Rintaro Hara's latest piece, visitors can make giant bubbles simply by pulling on a rope. By doing so, her Projection Wall raises a grid of ropes that have been dunked in a soapy solution. Then, as it's rising, eight fans blow through to create a rainbow-y wall of extra-large bubbles. And, who doesn't love a wall of bubbles?

The concept behind the piece, she writes, "dates back to the representation of water created by Computer Graphics of SF movie "Abyss" by James Cameron (1989)":

In the Hollywood movies since the 1990s, computer graphics became an indispensable image technology, shooting taking advantage of analog until now was superseded by digital, and it became possible to express images that were impossible to realize. "Projection wall" inquires about the difference between analog and digital by reducing the expression born by the evolution of the video to an analog method daringly.

More of Hara's work can be found at her website and on Vimeo.

(Colossal)

photos via Rintaro Hara Read the rest

Wall Street consultants Quinlan & Associates have published "Fool's Gold: Unearthing The World of Cryptocurrency," a $5000, 156-page report that predicts that Bitcoin will drop to $1800 by next December, and down to $810 by 2020 (it is currently trading in the $14,000 range). Read the rest

Massive infusions of cash by way of the central bank, combined with runaway mass panic-buying has stampeded Chinese people into buying into the property markets in boomtowns like Shenzhen, despite the insane prices that almost guarantee that they will default on their mortgages -- because they fear that rising property prices will shut them out forever if they don't buy now, and the new rentiers who've speculated on all that property are cranking up rents so fast that renting is worse than buying. Read the rest

Lorraine Boissoneault (citing Anne Goldgar) writes that Tulip mania — the wild trade in Dutch tulips that ended with tulips worth more than mansions and a market meltdown illustrative of capitalism's flaws ‐ is mostly fable. Rather than a classic speculator-driven bubble that affected all levels of society, it was a fad among the rich of little economic consequence.

“There weren’t that many people involved and the economic repercussions were pretty minor,” Goldgar says. “I couldn’t find anybody that went bankrupt. If there had been really a wholesale destruction of the economy as the myth suggests, that would’ve been a much harder thing to face.”

That’s not to say that everything about the story is wrong; merchants really did engage in a frantic tulip trade, and they paid incredibly high prices for some bulbs. And when a number of buyers announced they couldn’t pay the high price previously agreed upon, the market did fall apart and cause a small crisis—but only because it undermined social expectations. “In this case it was very difficult to deal with the fact that almost all of your relationships are based on trust, and people said, ‘I don’t care that I said I’m going to buy this thing, I don’t want it anymore and I’m not going to pay for it.’ There was really no mechanism to make people pay because the courts were unwilling to get involved,” Goldgar says.

Goldgar's book, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age [Amazon} sounds like a good antidode to Tulip Fever,a recently-released movie that indulges the myths. Read the rest

In May 2014, 259 Islington homes changed hands; in May 2016, 139 houses were sold in the Borough: this May, it was 89. Read the rest

In a world of expensive urbanization where the spiraling cost of basic shelter has forced ever-more people into debt and fuelled a speculative global bubble of criminal money-launderers who use luxury housing as empty safe-deposit boxes in the sky, London is ground zero. Read the rest

Bitcoin's spiking prices have been driven almost entirely by Chinese money-launderers trying to beat the country's currency controls -- controls that have tightened so much that it's tanking the world's real-estate markets as offshore buyers abandon their deposits and disappear. Read the rest

China has adopted stringent new anti-money-laundering rules that will make it nearly impossible for small investors -- for example, middle-class families who pool their savings -- to get their money out of the country in order to buy condos in Canada's superheated property market (not just Canada, of course!). Read the rest

Bubble porn is where a non-nude photo or video gets a swiss-cheese-like opaque overlay that gives the illusion of nudity. Since its meme heyday, the practice, known as bubbling, now uses translucent overlays that make the effect even more striking. Read the rest

Vancouver has been wracked by a white-hot property bubble driven primarily by offshore speculators, mostly Chinese, who have driven up the price of housing beyond the means of working Vancouverites, crippling the city's daily life as workers, students and families struggle to find somewhere -- anywhere -- to live. Read the rest

Sales of Manhattan co-ops and condos have plunged 20% in Q316, relative to the same quarter last year -- sales in excess of asking price dropped from 35% to 17%; days on market before sale increased from 67 to 72; median growth in sale price fell to 2.6% from 18%. Read the rest

Bubble machines tend to be flakey, touchy things that break a lot. Dan Das Mann, creator of the Funn Machine, the Funn Beast, and now the Funn Pack swears by the Bubbletron.

Designed to be an entire festival-in-a-backpack, the Funn Pack comes complete with lasers, smoke machines, disco balls, and a huge sound system! Nothing impressed me more, however, than the sheer volume of bubbles the thing throws out. Perched a-top Dan's amazing contraption, the American DJ Bubbletron put out hours of uninterrupted bubbles, filling a several thousand square foot roof-top deck with joy!

If you're throwing a party, or a festival, and want to add instant energy, Dan can bring you the Funn. If you just need a bubble machine to fill the air with glistening, soapy fun, go with the Bubbletron!

American DJ Supply Bubble Tron Compact High Output Plastic Bubble Machine via Amazon

The Funn Machine: bring a Funn Pack, the Funn Beast or Funn Machine for your party! Read the rest

Whole regions of England are now owned by holding companies in tax-havens "from Panama to Luxembourg, and from Liechtenstein to the South Pacific island of Niue." Read the rest

The West Village's unique identity made it one of the most valued real-estate spots in the world, which is why its bohemian tenants are being forced out by landlords who jack up the rent and leave the place empty until they can convince a multinational to sign a lease -- it's Mark Jacobs versus Jane Jacobs. Read the rest

Here's a Craigslist ad for a "hub for entrepreneurs" where you can be barracked in one of dozens of bunk-beds ranked in rows for a mere $999/month. But you also get access to plenty of whiteboards and brainstorm areas, and will no longer have to endure the misery of "hop[ping] from coffee shop to coffee shop" as you seek to launch your tech business.

When I moved to San Francisco in the late nineties, I lived in half an illegal sublet for about $2K/month, and that was a deal by the standards of the day. But I had it better than the guy paying $800/month for the Sears shed in the back-yard -- I got a toilet! Read the rest

Economist Tim Harford answers my question: How would you short the London property bubble? in a column that also asks the important question: should you? Read the rest