Swedish pop group ABBA is responsible for hit songs like "Dancing Queen,""Mamma Mia," and "Money, Money, Money."

Made up of two sets of then couples — Agnetha Fältskog and Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad — ABBA has sold over 380 million albums and singles worldwide and is the third-best-selling group of all time, behind the Beatles and Queen and ahead of the Rolling Stones.

But in 1979, at the height of their success, Fältskog and Ulvaeus divorced while Lyngstad and Andersson called it quits soon after in 1981. By 1982, the group was broken up.

In 2000, amid a revival of several of their hits, an American-British consortium offered the group $1 billion to reunite for 100 shows, but they declined the offer, according to E! Online.

To put that into perspective, the group was offered more than the value of 25 different Major League Baseball teams and the GDPs of some countries. That's potentially $250 million that each member of the group refused.

"It's a hell of a lot of money to say no to, but we decided it wasn't for us," Andersson told Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet in 2000.

Andersson and bandmate Bjorn Ulvaeus both argue that popular reincarnations of their songs (many by teen group S Club 7) have been successful because the group never reunited.

"We have never made a comeback," Ulvaeus told the paper. "Almost everyone else has. I think there's a message in that."

Fältskog explained to Radio Times last year: "We said no because they wanted 250 shows or something, it was incredible. No chance. We had done it.

Lyngstad also confirmed this year to Ireland's RTE that "no amount of money would change our minds. Maybe we sometimes say it would be good to do a song together again, just a recording and nothing else, but I don’t know if that will happen — so don’t say that we will!"

Despite the fact that the foursome recently reunited — the "chemistry was still there"— all members said they were not tempted to reunite.

The four founding members are doing just fine since the group's break-up 32 years ago.

Last March, "Mamma Mia," a stage musical based on ABBA's music, became the ninth-longest-running show in Broadway history. Over the show's 13-year run, it has been seen by 50 million people worldwide and raked in over $2 billion.

A star-studded film based on the musical was released in 2008 and went on to be a $609 million hit at the box office.

In 2010, the group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

SEE ALSO: Here's Why 'Jersey Boys' Bombed At Theaters

Join the conversation about this story »

A lot of hot new startups have already launched this year. 

Business Insider has identified some of the most promising startups that got started in 2014, that have potential to make a dent.

Some of these startups are tackling things like ecommerce, news reading, and making the internet more mainstream.

10. Yo is trying to change the way we communicate with people.

Yo, at its core, is pretty ridiculous. Sending a "Yo" to someone merely lets that person know you're thinking about them. 

But a few months after launching quietly on April Fools' Day, Yo rocketed to the top of the app store.

It has raised $1.2 million to date, though, investors have reportedly offered to give Yo more than $2.5 million.

9. Glamsquad is an on-demand beauty services startup.

Glamsquad lets you schedule on-demand hair and makeup appointments. You can kind of think of it as an Uber for beauty services. 

If you're scrapped for time, just open up the Glamsquad app or website to schedule a trained stylist to come to you. The only rule is that you need to have your hair washed and wet when the stylist arrives.

Founded this year, Glamsquad has already raised $1.5 million.

8. Knozen wants to become a personality API.

Knozen recently raised $2.25 million for its iPhone app that lets coworkers rate each other anonymously. 

Knozen pits two coworkers against each other and asks a series of questions like, "Which person is friendlier?" or, "Who is more conventional?"

Down the road, Knozen hopes to turn the product into a personality API simply so that employers can get a better idea of who someone really is.

Click here to see inside >>

Join the conversation about this story »

Before Brian Williams was the Emmy-winning anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News," he struggled to find a job after dropping out of college.

Now earning a reported $10 million annual salary, Williams went bankrupt in his early 20s after "a failed experiment in local news."

It wasn't until a news director in Washington, D.C., took a chance on him that Williams resumed his on-air career years later.

MediabistroTV spoke to Williams, 55, about his big break and success after failure.

Growing up in New Jersey it was "very clear all along that I had to work, I had to support myself. I was working a series of jobs and I had an epiphany [after dropping out of GWU] that I had to at least try something that I always wanted to try."

"My late mother always used to say about people on local news in New York, 'I think you could do better than some of these people.' I don't know what she based that on, but I loaded up what few belongings I had and moved to Pittsburg, Kansas."

"I worked at a small television station for 13 months and started making $168 a week for a seven-day work week."

For all of us normals, living in New York City isn't exactly easy on the wallet. But when the sky's the limit, as it is for many celebrities, you'd expect that they'd have the best homes money can buy.

Our friends at apartment data website AddressReport helped us hunt down the priciest places owned by celebs in the Big Apple.

From the Flatiron district to Williamsburg to the Village, these celebrities' homes will put your 500-square-foot studio to shame.

To estimate the approximate current value of the homes, we spoke to expert source AddressReport, which keeps data in these homes' markets.

30. Daniel Radcliffe's riverside apartment

Estimated value: $5.2 million

"Harry Potter" star Daniel Radcliffe majorly upgraded from the cupboard under the stairs. He purchased the three-bedroom corner apartment at 1 Morton Square for $4.9 million in 2008.

"The boy who lived"lives in luxury, enjoying sunset views of New York Harbor from the curved windows, marble and granite counters, and a 500-bottle wine cellar.

Co-star Alan Rickman, who played Professor Snape, is rumored to live in the building as well.

To estimate the approximate current value of the homes, we spoke to expert source AddressReport, which keeps data in these homes' markets.

29. Nate Berkus' impeccably decorated West Village home

Estimated value: $5.25 million

When he's not buddying up to Oprah or making over homes across the country, Nate Berkus has a six-room co-op in Greenwich Village he can fix up over and over again, according to AddressReport. The celebrity design guru purchased the unit, down the street from his previous co-op, in 2013.

The duplex apartment has a wraparound rooftop terrace, a chef's kitchen with a custom-fabricated greenhouse, and wood-burning fireplaces in the living room and dining room.

To estimate the approximate current value of the homes, we spoke to expert source AddressReport, which keeps data in these homes' markets.

28. Claire Danes and Hugh Dancy's Greek revival townhouse

Estimated value: $6.9 million

This red carpet power couple owns a single famous townhouse in the West Village, decked out with 12-foot ceilings, antique floor boards, a courtyard, and tin ceilings throughout the house.

Built in the 1880s, the Greek revival unit was previously owned by David Shaffer, a famous psychiatrist and Anna Wintour's ex-husband.

To estimate the approximate current value of the homes, we spoke to expert source AddressReport, which keeps data in these homes' markets.

The Dow crossed 17,000 for the first time on Thursday after a monster U.S. jobs report.

"Six months into the year it’s become clear to us that 2014 is likely to be remembered in market history books as a year of big surprises," writes Oppenheimer's John Stoltzfus.

"From our vantage point on the market radar screen it confirms that indeed the economy is getting better, that stocks continue to gather a following among investors after many years of being ignored, untrusted and unloved by more than a few."

Stoltzfus believes that investors and traders will be watching the upcoming earnings season closely.

"Market participants will be looking for further improvements in revenues and earnings growth that along with financial engineering in the form of share buybacks have helped move the market higher through the recovery since 2009," he said. "Guidance as to what corporate leadership sees ahead will likely carry increasing weight."

As the Federal Reserve continues to let up on its easy monetary policy, Stoltzfus warns that the market could experience a ramp up in volatility.

Stoltzfus just published a 35-page presentation putting every corner of the financial markets into perspective.

Thanks to Oppenheimer & Co. for giving us permission to feature this presentation.

Interest rates are slowly climbing to more normal levels.

Utilities have been beating consumer discretionary stocks.

Everything's up a healthy amount from their lows of the year.

Some of Apple's default apps are better than others.

Luckily, the competition within the app industry is fierce and there are plenty of compelling and beautiful alternatives.

From fan-favorites like Spotify and Google Maps to lesser-known wonders such as Vesper and Humin, developers are constantly raising the bar of what our iPhones are capable of doing.

We've collected the best of the best.

Instead of Voice Memos, use Recordium

Apple's Voice Memo app is simple, but it's easy to mess up when saving. Recordium gives you all the functionality of Voice Memos along with the ability to visually edit clips on the fly, annotate recordings, and even adjust the audio quality. It also syncs with cloud storage services like Dropbox and Google Drive.

(Recordium, $4.99)

Instead of Notes, use Vesper

Vesper is an elegant and intuitive way to take notes that plays nicely with photos. Its simple design and the ability to tag and categorize your notes means most of your time will be spent writing instead of trying to figure it out, and that's exactly how note-taking should go.

(Vesper, $2.99)

Instead of Calendar, use Fantastical 2

Fantastical 2 is an intuitive, well-designed calendar that can do everything you want it to along with some bonuses. You can toggle between a light and dark theme, dictate events, and it even fills in the details for you based on how you describe your appointments.

(Fantastical 2, $9.99)

Twenty years ago, one bond-trading hedge fund grew from launch to over $100 billion in assets in less than three years. It saw yearly returns of over 40 percent. It was run by finance veterans, PhDs, professors, and two Nobel Prize winners. Everyone on Wall Street wanted a piece of their profits.

But by 1998, that firm was primed to expose America's largest banks to more than $1 trillion in default risks. The demise of the firm, Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), was swift and sudden. In less than one year, LTCM had lost $4.4 billion of its $4.7 billion in capital.

The entire story is recounted in Roger Lowenstein's book, 'When Genius Failed', with details on the specific strategies and financial theories employed by Long-Term. It's an absolute must-read for anyone working on Wall Street, so we've summarized the basics for you in ten slides.

This story has all the players — the Federal Reserve, which finally stepped in and organized a bailout, and all the major banks that did the heavy lifting: Bear Stearns, Salomon Smith Barney, Bankers Trust, J.P. Morgan, Lehman Brothers, Chase Manhattan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs.

In desperate need of a $4 billion bailout, the crumbling firm was at the mercy of the banks it had once snubbed and manipulated.

Consider this a history lesson.

The idea for LTCM began with John Meriwether, who ran bond arbitrage at Salomon Brothers. He resigned from that bank after an employee was discovered deliberately deceiving the U.S. Treasury.

The groundwork for Long-Term Capital Management began when John Meriwether joined the investment bank Salomon Brothers in 1974.

Meriwether set up a bond arbitrage group within Salomon, and began hiring intellectuals to build formulas predicting market prices and finding outliers. The strategy was to buy or sell bonds when prices deviated from the norm, then wait for prices to converge again to make a profit. 

The Arbitrage Group became known within Salomon for its clique-y culture, its confidence, and its substantial profits. Soon Meriwether was put in charge of all bond trading. Bond arbitrage started to spread across the financial industry. When Meriwether was forced to resigned after an oversight failure with one of his employees, he built his new hedge fund around these same principles.

Meriweather set up his own hedge fund for arbitrage using mathematical models to predict prices. Stocked with industry veterans and respected academics, the firm launched in 1994 with $1.25 billion in capital.

By the 1990s, the number of hedge funds in the U.S. had exploded, arriving at about 3,000 hedge funds from only about 200 in 1968. But Meriwether had high expectations for his hedge fund that would set it on an entirely different level.

First, he wanted to raise capital of $2.5 billion. Second, LTCM's asking fees would be 25 percent of profits on top of an annual two percent charge on assets. Third, investors were required to keep their capital in for a minimum of three years. These standards were incredibly uncommon for a hedge fund to demand.

To justify these, Meriwether recruited respected academics who would bring credibility for the nascent firm, including Robert C. Merton, Myron Scholes, and David Mullins, then vice chairman of the Federal Reserve. Despite numerous rejections from investors including Warren Buffet, LTCM began to pick up speed, even adding foreign investors who did not traditionally deal with hedge funds. 

By February 1994, Long-Term Capital launched with the largest amount of funding ever at $1.25 billion.

In two years, LTCM had risen to over $140 billion in assets. The firm guarded their trades to the extreme, refusing to give details to any banks or investors.

In the first year, Long-Term made almost no mistakes, earning 28 percent when most other bond investors were losing money. Run by a team of all-star partners with record-level funding, Long-Term Capital Management was the new firm that everyone wanted to do business with. 

Long-Term's edge came from its experience reading models and a secure base of financing. The team was skilled in finding pairs of trades, hedging their bets, and leveraging smaller profits for a bigger payout. People didn't really think of Long-Term as a hedge fund, but as a financial technology investment company.

However, Long-Term was very secretive about its operations, to the point where banks found it extremely frustrating to work with them. Partners rarely gave specifics on what strategies they were employing, and scattered trades between banks to avoid giving away too much information to any proprietary desk. Long-Term usually gave a broad overview of models and the economy, but not much else. The partners even bought back photos used in Business Week to erase themselves completely from the media.

The partners were also known to be condescending and conceited, always putting their own interests first. But since Long-Term was flourishing, no one needed to know exactly what they were doing. All they knew was that the profits were coming in as promised.

The "uncanny valley" is a term you'll hear roboticists throw out from time to time.

It gets at the idea that robots are most appealing to us when they either look nothing like a human (a disembodied robot arm, for example) or when they look exactly like a human. The "valley" is that nebulous in-between phase where a robot's physical appearance strives for and falls short of imitating that of a flesh-and-blood person. It's creepy and unsettling.

We rounded up some of the most physically reassuring robots there are. Some are soft and fluffy, others have big eyes that instantly register to us as cute.

Each one has been used for a variety of different purposes, but they all have one thing in common: Widespread appeal to the humans they may one day be working and "living" alongside.

SEE ALSO: The First Person Ever To Die In A Tesla Is A Guy Who Stole One

Furby is a now-classic kid's toy.

Furbies probably represent the first time people had robots in their houses that they interacted with on a regular basis. They were every child's gotta-have-it toy in 1998. Over 40 million of them were sold between 1998 and 2001.

Leonardo is a "social robot" by MIT roboticist Cynthia Breazeal.

Bearing more than a little resemblance to a Gremlin of movie fame, Leonardo is a robot designed to interact with people — a social robot. Completed in 2002, Leonardo is two and a half feet tall and has a suite of sensors designed to make it optimal for communicating with people:

A camera mounted in the robot’s right eye captures faces. A facial feature tracker developed by the Neven Vision corporation isolates the faces from the captures. A buffer of up to 200 views of the face is used to create a model of the person whenever they introduce themself via speech. Additionally, Leonardo can track objects and faces visually using a collection of visual feature detectors that include color, skin tone, shape, and motion.

NEC's PaPeRo is a research bot for exploring how robots will live with us in the future.

NEC's PaPeRo (Partner-type Personal Robot) is cute as a button, though it's only ever been a prototype for research purposes and is not for sale. It has a facial recognition system to facilitate repeated interactions with a number of different people — an essential function for it to fulfill its straightforward "assignment" of helping roboticists figure out what it takes to get humans and robots to live together frictionlessly.

Click here to find out how >>

Join the conversation about this story »

The days of lifetime employment at a single company are long gone, and the trust between employers and employees is broken.

Companies welcome new hires into their "family," with the caveat that they can be fired at any time for any reason.

Employees profess loyalty but leave the minute a competitor offers a better job offer.

This dishonest relationship, argues LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, is causing companies to lose their most valuable people at dangerous rates.

In the new book "The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age," Hoffman and entrepreneurs Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh explain how employers can attract and retain the best employees through the formation of alliances where everyone wins.

The authors created a presentation outlining their book's main principles, which Hoffman and LinkedIn leaders have used to grow the company into a Silicon Valley powerhouse with a market cap of $20 billion.

In the late 1800s, the Detroit Photographic Company began printing a series of color postcards based off photographs of iconic places in America, such as New York City and San Francisco, and peoples such as the Seminole and Pueblo Indians. 

All produced between 1888 and 1924, the postcards were some of the very first color photographs of the United States ever. Though conventional color photography was not in widespread use until the introduction of Kodachrome in the 1930s, the Detroit Photographic Company used a process called Photochrom beginning in the late 1800s that added life-like colors in post-production. In the Photochrom process, trained technicians would transfer black and white photos onto numerous lithographic stones, each inked with a different color.

The postcards were wildly popular at the time, selling by the millions at tourist attractions and in mail-order albums.

Photographer and collector Marc Walter, who specializes in vintage travel photographs, has put together a massive collection of these postcards in a recently released book, An American Odyssey. Taschen Books and Walter have shared a few of the postcards here, but you can see all 600 in the book.

Mulberry Street in Manhattan was bustling at the turn of the century. It was (and is) the heart of Little Italy. The street was part of the infamous Five Points neighborhood, a disease-ridden slum that played host to numerous riots and gangs. The sidewalks were filled with street vendors.The view from Battery Park, New York City in the early 1900s.On "laundry day" in the late 1800s and early 1900s, New York City residents dried their clothes on clotheslines that stretched between buildings. When the weather was wet, residents had to string up lines inside their already crowded apartments. Washing was done by hand.This panorama shows San Francisco when it was still a developing Gold Rush town. Around this time, San Francisco started becoming a major city, as new neighborhoods cropped up in every direction and famous artists and writers began to call the Bay Area their home.The Mount Lowe railway was a scenic railway on Echo Mountain and Mount Lowe in California, built as a tourist attraction for those visiting the Los Angeles area.  It operated from 1893 to 1938, but it was never particularly successful. Here, the railway navigates the Circular Bridge, a feat of engineering at the time that allowed the train to rise 12 feet in elevation over 500 feet of track. You can see Los Angeles in the distance.The Homestake Mine in South Dakota was the largest and deepest gold mine in the United States, producing over 40 million ounces of gold. It was owned and operated by George Hearst, the father of media mogul William Randolph Hearst. The Georgetown loop in the Rocky Mountains was considered an engineering marvel at the time. It connected two mining boom towns and covered an elevation of 600 feet. It was integral in hauling silver and gold during the Gold Rush and later became a tourist attraction.This is one of the first photographs of the Grand Canyon. The area became a popular tourist attraction in the late 1800s, after the Santa Fe Railroad was extended first to Flagstaff (the closest city to the Canyon) in 1882 and, finally, to the Grand Canyon Village in 1901.This is a shipping dock in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Steamboats were integral in developing the Mississippi River in the 1800s because they facilitated large-scale transport of passengers and freight.The magnolias are in full bloom on the Ashley River in South Carolina. The Zuni Pueblo people have been farming and living in pueblos in New Mexico for the last 4,000 years. Here they perform a rain-dance.The Seminole Indians dominated Florida up until the 1800s. A series of wars between the Seminoles and the United States in the mid-1800s established U.S. control in Florida. Most Seminoles were forced to move west of the Mississippi, while a small group refused to leave.

SEE ALSO: 15 Vintage Pictures Of Los Angeles When It Was Still A Beachside Village

Join the conversation about this story »

If you want to trade the markets you have to live the markets — that means turning your trading desk into your second home.

That's why we put out a call to our readers to send in pictures of their oh-so-important spaces, and the response was just awesome.

The desks came in from Croatia to Chicago, Brazil to Switzerland. You sent us everything from massive desks with a bunch of screens to killer views that likely make the day go by a lot faster.

Thanks. Keep 'em coming.

If you would like to include your trading desk set up, feel free to send an email to jlaroche@businessinsider.com and llopez@businessinsider.com with a photo and a brief description. 

This set-up comes from a trader in Switzerland. He uses Interactive Brokers to trade stocks and options and uses various market data tools. The Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 shown is also running Interactive Brokers for his mobile needs.

This desk comes from a trader in Macedonia. This trading desk is an all Apple setup and consists of an iMac 27” mid 2011 edition (for charts) , MacBook Air 13” 2013 edition (trading room activities) , iPad 2 (for news). In addition you will see an iPhone 5 and a e-cigarette.

Here's a European natural gas trading operation. This desk is based in Prague, Czech Republic.

Sometimes words just aren't enough to convey what you have to say.

Emoji has been around since 1999, but these winky faces and seemingly random characters have only fairly recently caught on.

A lot of that is thanks to Apple's iOS 6, which allowed iPhone owners to easily integrate emoji into their keyboard for the first time in 2012. 

Now, it seems that teenagers don't use words any more. 

"We usually just talk using emojis,"18-year-old Hope R. told Business Insider last year.

With the help of Emojipedia— yes, that's a real thing — we can now tell you what some of the most mysterious emoji mean. 

No, this person isn't crying. Use this when you're disappointed, but relieved.

Don't be fooled. This is no nut. In fact, it's a roasted sweet potato.

It's not a hot lava pit, nor is it a steaming pot of soup. They're hot springs.

The Appalachian Trail, or AT, stretches more than 2,000 miles along the U.S. East Coast.

Completed in 1937, the longest marked trail in the country runs from Georgia to Maine, connecting 14 states and passing through ridges and valleys of the Appalachian mountain range.

Stretches of the AT are within a couple hours drive for millions of Americans, but few have walked its full length. Each year, thousands of people attempt to hike the entire AT; only one in four succeeds. 

National Geographic explored the wooded footpath, traveling south to north, in a 50-minute documentary. You can take the adventure in our slideshow or watch the movie on Netflix.

The Appalachian Trail, better known as the AT, stretches about 2,175 miles along the eastern United States.

The AT runs from Georgia to Maine, making it the longest marked trail in the country, and one of the longest in the world.

The trail cuts through 14 states along the way, including New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut.

The Avengers have come to New York City for an extended stay.

Marvel's Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N. recently opened in Discovery Times Square inviting visitors to become agents of Marvel's spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D.

The exhibition worked with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and The Science and Entertainment Exchange to explain the science behind the Avengers characters.

According to the New York Daily News, the 10,000-square-foot exhibit cost approximately $7.5 million to construct, and it's clear why.

The exhibit contains many costumes and real items from the set of the Marvel films including the Tesseract used in 2012's "Avengers" blockbuster.

Though S.T.A.T.I.O.N. officially opened to the public at the end of May, the exhibit wasn't fully functional until last month.

We attended a few times before and after it was open to the public in order to see S.T.A.T.I.O.N. in full force.

Welcome to the Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N.!

Before heading inside to the "restricted area," you're asked to make your own Agent identification card.

You'll need the card once inside to access a bunch of interactive games and features.

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) recently declared the establishment of a caliphate and has changed its name to simply the Islamic State. This declaration came after a series of military successes on the part of ISIS and its affiliates against the Iraqi military in the country's north and west.

ISIS's continued success is at least partially due to its seizure of military equipment from fleeing Iraqi soldiers. When ISIS overran Mosul, they captured weaponry that allowed them a conventional army, rather than a ragtag insurgency. 

"You lost approximately three divisions worth of equipment and probably at least three depots in that area," Anthony Cordesman, a security analyst at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, told The Wall Street Journal. 

A large quantity of the weapons that ISIS seized from Mosul were supplied by the U.S. to the Iraqi Army. ISIS also fields weapons produced in Russia, China, the Balkans, and Iran. 

T-55 Tanks

The T-55 tank series is a Soviet tank line that was produced from the end of World War II through the 1980s. It is estimated that ISIS has around 30 of these tanks, although it is unknown how well the organization can maintain and operate them. 

Despite the tanks' age, they remain operational in up to 50 armies around the world. The tanks feature heavy armor, along with a 100-mm rifled gun and a secondary 7.62-mm machine gun. 

T-72 Tanks

The T-72 tank is the second-generation Soviet battle tank. The tank first entered production in 1971, and they're still rolling off the assembly line. ISIS has an estimated five to ten T-72 tanks, although it is unknown whether they will be able to keep the vehicles in working order. 

The T-72 is heavily armored, and features a 125 mm main gun. It is also armed with a secondary machine gun and an antiaircraft gun. 

Humvees

ISIS acquired U.S.-built Humvees when it stormed Mosul. The U.S. had provided these same Humvees to the Iraqi Army. The vehicles allow for quick and effective movement across rough terrain.

The Humvee's heavy armor also protects forces against small-arms fire, as well as against collateral damage from indirect explosions. The vehicles offer little protection against land mines or buried IEDs. 

Hundreds of shopping malls across the U.S. have been forced to shut down following years of debilitating declines in consumer traffic.

In many cases, the shuttered malls are left to decay for years before developers or local governments raise the funds to bulldoze or renovate the space.

Pseudonymous photographer Seph Lawless traveled the country for years to find these forgotten malls and document their decay from the inside.

The photos he captured are haunting and apocalyptic, featuring dead trees and abandoned shopping carts against landscapes of broken glass and crumbling walls.

He compiled the photographs in a new book, "Black Friday: The Collapse of the American Shopping Mall," and shared some of them with Business Insider.

You can also see his work on Facebook and Instagram.

Lawless said he started taking photos of shopping malls in 2012 for a project focusing on some of the most "abandoned and forgotten cities in America."

He was taking photos of abandoned houses, factories and hospitals, when he decided to focus on dead shopping malls.

Most of his photographs were taken in the Rust Belt, including Michigan, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Before the 1990s, most visual effects in movies consisted of stop motion and people in suits. 

While computer animation was used in “Star Wars” and “Tron” and in title sequences like 1978’s “Superman,” it wasn't until "Terminator 2" (1991) and Steven Spielberg’s "Jurassic Park" (1993) that a movie used lots of computer-generated imagery, or CGI, and mixed it with live action. 

There are only 14 minutes of dinosaur visual effects in "Jurassic Park," about four of which were made with a computer, but its lasting effect on movies has been monumental. 

Two years later, 1995's "Toy Story" was the first full-length computer-animated movie.

Today just about every film — from James Cameron's "Avatar" to summer blockbusters like Michael Bay's "Transformers" series — owes credit to CGI.

But what is CGI, and how is it used in movies? 

The simplest way to explain computer graphics without getting overly technical is to think of typical hand-drawn animation or stop motion, which consists of a series of drawings or photographs to create the illusion of movement.

Similarly, a lot of CGI animation in movies involves series of drawings or renderings on a computer screen. These are used to create that same illusion to make something look photo-realistic.

Business Insider recently spoke with Steve “Spaz” Williams, who was a CG Animator at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), the visual-effects studio that helped bring “Jurassic Park” to life.

Here, with Business Insider, Williams breaks down the steps it took to bring the dinosaurs from paper and pad to the big screen in CGI.

1. They begin with drawn designs and prosthetics of the different dinosaurs. 

The production used CG for velociraptors, brachiosauruses, and the tyrannosaurus rex, which Williams worked on primarily.

2. Next, those renderings needed to make their way into the computer.

They scanned models, including ones for the T. rex and the velociraptors, into the computers."In order to get it into the computer we actually fire a laser at the three-dimensional rubber prosthetic model and extract the data so the computer had it essentially," says Williams.

Williams explains it's like the opposite of 3-D printing with them taking an object and turning it into data.

3. They then reconstruct the data to make it work in the computer.

These are two images of T. rex data from Williams' monitor using software called Alias.

4. An animation piece of software called SoftImage 3D is used to figure out the joint placement on the dinosaurs. 

Here, you can see one of the Brachiosauruses in the beginning of the film.

5. After that, the data has to be "rigged" with a digital armature in wireframes. 

This is the framework for the dinosaur that helps provide its structure allowing it to stand up, move, and run.

"This is the first shot I animated for the movie after I built all of the T. rex data," says Williams. "It took me months to get this run right, but once done, we reused the run data for the rest of the jeep-chase shots and ultimately for the following two 'Jurassic Park' movies."Below is another wireframe for one of the raptors in a kitchen scene where the two children are trying to outsmart the dinosaurs.

6. Next, the dinosaurs get their skin. 

"We used a program called Viewpaint, which allowed us to actually paint the texture of the skin in the computer so now we have this textured map," says Williams.

7. To put all of the separate images together, they needed to be rendered by massive graphics computers.

"Now we substitute in this high-resolution mesh data into a low resolution wireframe. That's all being done in computer," says Williams. "It pretty much took 10 hours to calculate one frame. You have to remember film is 24 frames per second. So it would sit there and crunch all night."

Williams built and animated the image below of the first fully rendered T. rex test. It was this video that convinced the producer Kathleen Kennedy and Steven Spielberg that "Jurassic Park" should be made in CGI rather than stop motion.

Williams also animated all of the shots in a famous T. rex Jeep-chase sequence. He says each frame in the entire sequence took an estimated 12 hours to render. 

The point where the T. rex breaks through the log is 75 frames long. 

"I animated all those shots where the T. rex is chasing the jeep. It took me four months to animate it, just to get the running to work properly," says Williams.

8. From there, the dinosaur needs to be put into a scene through a process called compositing.

This is where all the pieces to the puzzle are assembled together. CGI shots are combined together with live-action shots and any background and foreground imagery referred to as plate photography.

In this case, live-action shots of actors were combined with photography shoots in Kauai and ILM's work on the brachiosauruses and birds.

Here's the final shot with the added dinosaurs:

9. Once it's put together, the images are reviewed to make sure they work. When everything looks good, the scene is put to film.

Final images are reviewed on a high-concentrated projector before translated to film.

All together, Williams says it took about a year to bring the dinosaurs to life.

“Basically May of ’92 to May of ’93 was the entire build and composite time for probably 40 shots,” says Williams. 

After $1 billion at the box office, you can't argue with the result.

You can watch Williams and others from ILM speak more about the creation of the dinosaurs in a featurette from the Academy of Motion Pictures below:

SEE ALSO: Find out why 'Age of Extinction" was the most difficult "Transformers" movie to make

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Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon, is a billionaire who's had an amazing life and career.

Today, his "Everything Store" sells nearly $80 billion worth of goods per year.

Unfamiliar with Bezos' story? 

SEE ALSO: Jeff Bezos Gave A Rare Speech To A Bunch Of Elementary School Kids

Jeff Bezos' mom, Jackie, was a teenager when she had him in January 1964. She had recently married Cuban immigrant Mike Bezos, who adopted Jeff. Jeff didn't learn that Mike wasn't his real father until he was 10 but says he was more fazed about learning he needed to get glasses than he was about the news.

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He was a smart and resourceful child. When he was a toddler, he took apart his crib with a screwdriver because he wanted to sleep in a bed.

Source. 

Between 4 and 16, Bezos spent summers on his grandparents' ranch in Texas, doing farm work like repairing windmills and castrating bulls.

Source.