Seth's Blog
The opposite of insubordination
“Do as I say.” That’s industrial management in four words. If you don’t follow the instructions to...
11 months ago
“Do as I say.” That’s industrial management in four words. If you don’t follow the instructions to the letter, you’re insubordinate. Not subordinate. Complete subordination might have been the goal in an industrial setting. But now, it’s dangerous, expensive and inefficent....
Seth's Blog
PW1: Two hats for productivity
Welcome to 2024. Back to work, here we go. So it’s Productivity Week on the blog. Productivity is...
11 months ago
Welcome to 2024. Back to work, here we go. So it’s Productivity Week on the blog. Productivity is the measure of the output (value) we get for the time or money we spend. Two hats for productivity: When I’m clearing my inbox, responding to comments in a doc, cooking lunch–these...
The Last...
How Does The Shutdown Relate To Me?
is Obama there?
Everyone knows ads are propaganda, but what happens
when you have an ad...
over a year ago
is Obama there?
Everyone knows ads are propaganda, but what happens
when you have an ad for propaganda? While
you sip your first Guinness and try to figure out why China's
government can only ever shut down once, you can ponder this ad:
The
only reason you...
Seth's Blog
Which agenda?
Every day matters. It seems like a waste to spend one as a to-do list item on someone else’s agenda....
11 months ago
Every day matters. It seems like a waste to spend one as a to-do list item on someone else’s agenda. It’s easy to become so focused on checking the boxes that we forget that there are people involved. Peers, colleagues and friends that with something human to offer, if we only...
The Great Discontent...
Rafael Espinal
Rafael Espinal was just 26 when he became an elected official. For the next 10 years, he worked...
2 months ago
Rafael Espinal was just 26 when he became an elected official. For the next 10 years, he worked within the halls of government, first as a New York State Assemblymember and then as a New York City Councilmember, advocating for artists, independent workers, and underserved...
Open Culture
How the Influential Time-Travel Movie La Jetée Was Made (Almost) Entirely out of Still Photographs
In a future where humanity has been driven underground by an apocalyptic event, a prisoner is...
a month ago
In a future where humanity has been driven underground by an apocalyptic event, a prisoner is haunted by the childhood memory of seeing a man gunned down at an airport. A group of scientists make him their time-traveling guinea pig, hoping that he’ll be able to find a way to...
Seth's Blog
More is More
More hope. More health. More security. More innovation. More breakthroughs. More connection. More...
a year ago
More hope. More health. More security. More innovation. More breakthroughs. More connection. More creation. More joy. The climate movement doesn’t have to be about asking individuals to bear the burden of systemic problems. It’s not about living with less. It’s about demanding...
Blog - Mac Pierce
Enclosing a Prusa MK3, or how to completely overbuild an Octopi setup.
Overbuilding a Prusa enclosure
over a year ago
Overbuilding a Prusa enclosure
Seth's Blog
Plasticity
It’s pretty easy for some kids to switch gears. They can go from sad to ebullient in seconds, and...
5 months ago
It’s pretty easy for some kids to switch gears. They can go from sad to ebullient in seconds, and switch contexts without much fuss. Others have more trouble. As we get older, our natural ability to thrive in a new situation can decrease. But, like a muscle or a skill, it...
Seth's Blog
The empathy device
It’s interesting to realize that mirrors weren’t perfected until a few hundred years ago. Human...
a year ago
It’s interesting to realize that mirrors weren’t perfected until a few hundred years ago. Human beings spend a lot of time considering our own appearance and our own feelings and most of all, our own needs. The market produces a shift. When it’s a fair and open exchange, the...
Open Culture
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Puts 490,000 High-Res Images Online & Makes Them Free to Use
Update: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put online 492,000 high-resolution images of artistic...
a month ago
Update: The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put online 492,000 high-resolution images of artistic works. Even better, the museum has placed the vast majority of these images into the public domain, meaning they can be downloaded directly from the museum’s website for...
Seth's Blog
Brighten up a room
(just by leaving it) Moving into your kid’s college dorm isn’t going to make the experience better...
3 months ago
(just by leaving it) Moving into your kid’s college dorm isn’t going to make the experience better for anyone. A smart founder leaves her company in a moment when it actually does better without her. The expectation that secession is failure causes a lot of damage. If you really...
The Great Discontent...
Brian Eno
From pioneering ambient music and ever-evolving light paintings to innovating production styles,...
a year ago
From pioneering ambient music and ever-evolving light paintings to innovating production styles, installations, and strategies of surrender, Brian Eno’s work occupies a rare space in this world with an imprint as deep as it is wide. For the Roxy Music founder, art is the kind of...
Seth's Blog
Getting the word out
“How do you get the word out?” I’ve heard this from presidential candidates, from small business...
8 months ago
“How do you get the word out?” I’ve heard this from presidential candidates, from small business leaders and nonprofits as well. It’s easy to believe that the goal of marketing is to shout, hype, hustle and otherwise promote. It’s tempting to focus on your story as the top of the...
Open Culture
Ray Bradbury Wrote the First Draft of Fahrenheit 451 on Coin-Operated Typewriters, for a Total of...
Image by Alan Light, via Wikimedia Commons It sounds like a third grade math problem: “If Ray...
6 months ago
Image by Alan Light, via Wikimedia Commons It sounds like a third grade math problem: “If Ray Bradbury wrote the first draft of Fahrenheit 451 (1953) on a coin-operated typewriter that charged 10 cents for every 30 minutes, and he spent a total of $9.80, how many hours did it...
Seth's Blog
Moving toward ease
“Ease” isn’t the same as “easy.” In fact, they’re often at odds. Easy work is hardly worth our...
2 months ago
“Ease” isn’t the same as “easy.” In fact, they’re often at odds. Easy work is hardly worth our effort. It can deaden us instead of giving us the chance to bring our best selves to life. Ease, on the other hand, is the feeling of doing something worthwhile, and doing it well. When...
Seth's Blog
Ideas shared are exponential
If everyone visits a factory and takes a sample, it goes out of business. But if everyone in the...
a year ago
If everyone visits a factory and takes a sample, it goes out of business. But if everyone in the community takes an idea, that idea goes up in value. The best marketing advice I have for someone writing a book is simple: Write a book that people want to share with others. And...
Open Culture
Why You Can Never Tune a Piano
Grab a cup of coffee, put on your thinking cap, and start working through this video from Minute...
3 months ago
Grab a cup of coffee, put on your thinking cap, and start working through this video from Minute Physics, which explains why guitars, violins and other instruments can be tuned to a tee. But when it comes to pianos, it’s an entirely different story, a mathematical impossibility....
Seth's Blog
A really good reason
Do you see the defaults? The question, “What are things like around here?” has two possible answers....
2 months ago
Do you see the defaults? The question, “What are things like around here?” has two possible answers. When a new idea or opportunity arrives, your organization says yes, unless there’s a really good reason to say no. Or your organization says no, unless someone makes a powerful...
Seth's Blog
The unwritten rules get written
…when someone decides to selfishly push. There’s an assumption of civility and fairness in all of...
a year ago
…when someone decides to selfishly push. There’s an assumption of civility and fairness in all of our interactions. When a harsh competitor unilaterally breaks unwritten rules (because it’s “not technically against the rules”) the community then writes down a new rule. The best...
Handprinted - Blog
Using Hawthorn Process Colours
We've been stocking Hawthorn Stay Open Inks for 6 years now! These inks are oil based inks and work...
a year ago
We've been stocking Hawthorn Stay Open Inks for 6 years now! These inks are oil based inks and work beautifully for relief printing. We have a fantastic range of colours including the process range. Process colours are inks specially formulated to create a full spectrum of...
Handprinted - Blog
Making a Copper Sulphate Mordant Solution
Copper sulphate is a non-toxic mordant used to etch aluminium, zinc and steel plates for intaglio...
a year ago
Copper sulphate is a non-toxic mordant used to etch aluminium, zinc and steel plates for intaglio printmaking. Copper sulphate is a safer alternative to acids - and we always opt for safer solutions here at the Handprinted studio!
Metal plates are traditionally etched using...
Seth's Blog
Other people’s problems
It’s surprisingly easy to be generous and find solutions to our friend’s problems. Much easier than...
8 months ago
It’s surprisingly easy to be generous and find solutions to our friend’s problems. Much easier than it is to do it for ourselves. Why? There are two useful reasons, I think. FIRST, because we’re unaware of all the real and imaginary boundaries our friends have set up. If it were...
On the Arts
What are Liminal Spaces? And why are they so popular?
“Liminal spaces” have become trendy in recent years, especially on TikTok, Tumblr, and YouTube. But...
a year ago
“Liminal spaces” have become trendy in recent years, especially on TikTok, Tumblr, and YouTube. But what makes a space liminal? And why are they so popular lately?
Open Culture
The Olympics in the 2020s Versus 1912: See Side-by-Side Comparisons of the Athletes’ Performance...
The Olympic Games have their origins in antiquity, but their modern revival has also been going on...
4 months ago
The Olympic Games have their origins in antiquity, but their modern revival has also been going on longer than any of us has been here. Even the fifth Summer Olympics, which took place in Stockholm in 1912, has passed out of living memory. But thanks to the technology of the...
Seth's Blog
The intentional stance
Dan Dennett explained that it began as a survival mechanism. It’s important to predict how someone...
6 months ago
Dan Dennett explained that it began as a survival mechanism. It’s important to predict how someone else is going to behave. That tiger might be a threat, that person from the next village might have something to offer. If we simply wait and see, we might encounter an unwelcome or...
Seth's Blog
Better at being better
In most competitive markets, when an organization offers a new benefit, others will quickly move to...
a week ago
In most competitive markets, when an organization offers a new benefit, others will quickly move to match it. This means that it’s hard to justify the hard work of creating something better, because it’s just going to become a new standard. It doesn’t pay for a credit card...
Open Culture
Learn Data Analytics & AI with Google, and Fast-Track Your Career
?si=azZbGLEr_9EFWypL We’re living in the age of data and artificial intelligence (AI). Every second,...
2 months ago
?si=azZbGLEr_9EFWypL We’re living in the age of data and artificial intelligence (AI). Every second, vast amounts of data are being generated, processed, and analyzed. And increasingly AI plays a central role in how that data gets managed. For companies, governments, and...
Seth's Blog
Student coach
Big football at colleges in the US costs more than $5 billion a year. And none of these programs has...
5 months ago
Big football at colleges in the US costs more than $5 billion a year. And none of these programs has a student acting as a coach. The same analysis, at a much smaller scale, applies to school theater directors and producers, conductors of the jazz band or orchestra and even the...
Stat Significant
Gender Representation in the Film Industry: A Statistical Analysis
Tracking the evolution of gender representation in acting, directing, and producing.
4 months ago
Tracking the evolution of gender representation in acting, directing, and producing.
Seth's Blog
Spire confusion
When architects show off their work, or propose a bold new building complex or even ask for a zoning...
10 months ago
When architects show off their work, or propose a bold new building complex or even ask for a zoning variance, the public sees the external photos. The tall spire, the innovative use of glass, the weird hole in the center of the building. And when a car company shows off a new...
Seth's Blog
Projects and the red zone
Many projects are never finished. There are countless broken and not-quite-fixed cars in garages....
a year ago
Many projects are never finished. There are countless broken and not-quite-fixed cars in garages. There are crafts projects, massive redevelopments and everything in between. They sit unfinished because of bad planning, lack of resources, and most of all, a lack of resolve and...
Seth's Blog
The half-life of magic
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke Try to...
7 months ago
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke Try to imagine the you of twenty years ago holding a Rabbit R1, or using a cell phone or being able to listen to every song, ever recorded, for just a few dollars a month. We don’t just take...
Seth's Blog
Self restaint vs systemic restraint
It’s not hypocritical to help yourself at a buffet at the same time you counsel the owner of the...
a year ago
It’s not hypocritical to help yourself at a buffet at the same time you counsel the owner of the restaurant to limit the number of trips that people take so that the restaurant can become sustainable. It’s possible to argue for systemic changes to cultural systems while also...
Seth's Blog
Conversations, an early review… (and the free class)
“I have trained companies to treat people better, and SONG is the guidebook I wished I had when...
a year ago
“I have trained companies to treat people better, and SONG is the guidebook I wished I had when doing this work. Now, I will now give it to the enlightened and brutes alike, with a recommendation to take immediate action. Seth Godin has been carefully documenting the end of the...
Seth's Blog
Learning in August
What better time? An hour a day for a month and you can learn a skill you’ll have forever. Beach...
4 months ago
What better time? An hour a day for a month and you can learn a skill you’ll have forever. Beach reads are a fine way to chill out, but a month spent to learn a skill is a fine way to take advantage of a quiet time. My brand new course on Strategy is now […]
Seth's Blog
“What will I tell my boss?”
If you can’t answer that six-word question, you’re selling a commodity. Organizations don’t buy...
6 months ago
If you can’t answer that six-word question, you’re selling a commodity. Organizations don’t buy things, people do. And people at companies aren’t spending their own money, so this is the only question on the table. A cogent story, based on affiliation and status, one that sees...
Seth's Blog
Overconfidence and AI
Human beings are often more effective when we’re a bit self-effacing. “I think,” “Perhaps,” or “I...
a year ago
Human beings are often more effective when we’re a bit self-effacing. “I think,” “Perhaps,” or “I might be missing something, but…” are fine ways to give our assertions a chance to be considered. The solar-powered LED calculator we used in school did no such thing. 6 x 7 is 42,...
Seth's Blog
The long walk
Before buying a house, it makes sense to spend a day on foot, walking around the neighborhood....
3 weeks ago
Before buying a house, it makes sense to spend a day on foot, walking around the neighborhood. You’ll notice things you might have missed in a car. Before starting a business, spend a few shifts working the cash register at a similar establishment. And before going into...
Open Culture
How Audrey Hepburn Risked Death to Help the Dutch Resistance in World War II
Audrey Hepburn may not have had the most prolific Hollywood career, but a fair few of her characters...
3 months ago
Audrey Hepburn may not have had the most prolific Hollywood career, but a fair few of her characters still feel today like roles she was born to play. Perhaps the same could have been true of the part of Anne Frank, had she not refused to take it up. When Anne’s father Otto Frank...
Open Culture
The Hand: An Anti-Totalitarian Animation, Banned for Two Decades & Now Considered One of the...
For obvious reasons, most art produced under oppressive regimes comes off as painstakingly...
a month ago
For obvious reasons, most art produced under oppressive regimes comes off as painstakingly inoffensive. For equally obvious reasons, the rare works that criticize the regime tend to do so rather obliquely. This wasn’t so much the case with The Hand, the most famous short by Czech...
Open Culture
Join Us on Bluesky. We Will Have Fun Together
There’s an eXodus taking place, and millions are finding a new home on Bluesky. In recent days, the...
a month ago
There’s an eXodus taking place, and millions are finding a new home on Bluesky. In recent days, the decentralized social media platform has been gaining 10,000 new users every 10–15 minutes, or about 1 million new users per day. Open Culture is already there, sharing the cultural...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Keith A. Pettit
I am Keith A. Pettit an artist, printmaker and sculptor, born and bred in a small corner of Sussex....
a month ago
I am Keith A. Pettit an artist, printmaker and sculptor, born and bred in a small corner of Sussex. I left school and started work with a signwriter. I thought I was learning a trade for life - alas I was unaware of the digital revolution that was sweeping all before it.
I've...
Seth's Blog
It just barely works
This is the story of every new software innovation, and in fact, just about everything engineers...
2 months ago
This is the story of every new software innovation, and in fact, just about everything engineers have ever created. The first Wright Bros. plane just barely flew. The first version of VisiCalc was just barely useful. The earliest bridges were shaky, unreliable and made of vines....
Seth's Blog
Solving invented problems
Some problems, when well solved, lead to making things better. Some problems give us a chance to get...
a year ago
Some problems, when well solved, lead to making things better. Some problems give us a chance to get back on course. And some problems are opportunities to be generous. But many of the problems that we seek to solve are actually invented, and maybe we could benefit by simply...
Seth's Blog
The natural size
No matter how many people come over for dinner, you’re only going to be able to engage with a few....
a year ago
No matter how many people come over for dinner, you’re only going to be able to engage with a few. And no matter how big the crowd in the arena, the musicians can only see the faces of a few hundred. An investor can only be engaged and smart about a very small number of […]
Seth's Blog
Discernment in creativity
The hard part isn’t good ideas. It never has been. The hard part is choosing. Ask GPT for ten...
a year ago
The hard part isn’t good ideas. It never has been. The hard part is choosing. Ask GPT for ten subtitles for your book, or sixteen ways to hold a surprise party, and you’ll be delighted at how useful they are. Ask Dreamstudio or Kittl for some logo designs, same thing. There is...
Open Culture
Sci-Fi Author J.G. Ballard Predicts the Rise of Social Media (1977)
Say you were a fan of Steven Spielberg’s moving coming-of-age drama Empire of the Sun, set in a...
6 months ago
Say you were a fan of Steven Spielberg’s moving coming-of-age drama Empire of the Sun, set in a Japanese internment camp during World War II and starring a young Christian Bale. Say you read the autobiographical novel on which that film is based, written by one J.G. Ballard. Say...
Seth's Blog
The two bicycle errors
Momentum activities like public speaking, board sports and leadership all share an attribute with...
5 months ago
Momentum activities like public speaking, board sports and leadership all share an attribute with riding a bicycle: It gets easier when you get good at it. The first error we often make is believing that someone (even us) will never be good at riding a bike, because riding a bike...
Seth's Blog
Just looking
Lots of people go to the beach but very few get in the water. 3,000 students go to the football game...
a year ago
Lots of people go to the beach but very few get in the water. 3,000 students go to the football game to watch 20 of their peers play. And we go to a conference to meet people and connect, and then spend most of our time hoping someone else will see us and care enough […]
Seth's Blog
Is it a skill?
If so, it might be worth learning. If so, it might pay to let someone who has learned it take care...
a year ago
If so, it might be worth learning. If so, it might pay to let someone who has learned it take care of it. Coding is a skill. But it’s not clear that the person who knows how to code should be doing your design. Teaching is a skill. But simply because someone is good at […]
Seth's Blog
Toward stickiness
Getting the word out is easy to measure and exciting as well. Focusing on this misses the point. You...
a year ago
Getting the word out is easy to measure and exciting as well. Focusing on this misses the point. You might be able to get a song played on the radio, but will the song motivate listeners to show up at the concert? The math is simple: You can’t build a freelance career or a...
Seth's Blog
Easy/lazy tech journalism
Choose either one: When a new technology comes out, review it breathlessly. Explain without nuance...
10 months ago
Choose either one: When a new technology comes out, review it breathlessly. Explain without nuance or caution how it will instantly change the world. Go into the details of this first instantiation of it and assume it will never change, it’s done, here we go. When a new...
Marian's Blog
Visualizing 150000 butterflies from the Natural History Museum
Click here for the interactive visualization.
The Natural History Museum in London has a data portal...
over a year ago
Click here for the interactive visualization.
The Natural History Museum in London has a data portal in which they provide digital records for many of their specimens.
Some of these records have images.
I recently learned how to use machine learning tools such as convolutional...
The Great Discontent...
Demar Matthews
Emergence Issue: TGD’s fifth issue features a dynamic group of 15 creators who are deeply committed...
over a year ago
Emergence Issue: TGD’s fifth issue features a dynamic group of 15 creators who are deeply committed to addressing systematic challenges in their communities through creativity and emerging ideologies. Buy Now How do you explain your work? I am specifically interested in...
Seth's Blog
I fixed it for you
Creativity is about hope and possibility. It gives us a chance to make things better. Plenty has...
7 months ago
Creativity is about hope and possibility. It gives us a chance to make things better. Plenty has been written about the sad iPad ad that Apple just apologized for. It wasn’t just out of character for the story Apple tells, it was a cheap hack, taking the nihilism and helplessness...
Open Culture
Stanley Kubrick’s Annotated Copy of Stephen King’s The Shining
The web site Overlook Hotel has posted pictures of Stanley Kubrick’s personal copy of Stephen King’s...
a month ago
The web site Overlook Hotel has posted pictures of Stanley Kubrick’s personal copy of Stephen King’s novel The Shining. The book is filled with highlighted passages and largely illegible notes in the margin—tantalizing clues to Kubrick’s intentions for the movie. The site...
Open Culture
9‑Year-Old Edward Hopper Draws a Picture on the Back of His 3rd Grade Report Card
In a 2017 press release, the Edward Hopper House announced that it would receive over 1,000...
7 months ago
In a 2017 press release, the Edward Hopper House announced that it would receive over 1,000 artifacts and memorabilia documenting Edward Hopper’s family life and early years. The collection “consists of juvenilia and other materials from the formative years of Hopper’s life and...
Blog - Amy Goodchild
Coding my Handwriting
Coding my handwriting in Javascript - how I did it and what I’m doing with
it.
7 months ago
Coding my handwriting in Javascript - how I did it and what I’m doing with
it.
Seth's Blog
Captives of memetic desire
How much of what we want, really want, is due to the ideas that culture has given us, and how much...
a year ago
How much of what we want, really want, is due to the ideas that culture has given us, and how much is truly what we need? If memetic desire isn’t making us happy, perhaps we can find some new ideas.
Seth's Blog
The convenience fee
Sometimes it’s obvious, like the $1 that you get charged for using an ATM or a credit card, and it’s...
a year ago
Sometimes it’s obvious, like the $1 that you get charged for using an ATM or a credit card, and it’s simply not worth the hassle to walk a few blocks. And sometimes it’s not, like the cost we all pay for the conveniently wrapped fruits or vegetables at the market–wrapped in...
Seth's Blog
But it’s included…
Perhaps your wedding package includes a cake. It’s paid for, better eat it. Even if you’re allergic...
a year ago
Perhaps your wedding package includes a cake. It’s paid for, better eat it. Even if you’re allergic to wheat. Perhaps the amusement park includes as many rides as you like, even if you’re feeling sick or have had quite enough for today. The thing about included is that it’s free....
Prolost
Lightroom Adds Video Color Editing, with Prolost Presets
From the Lightroom Blog:
The same edit controls that you already use to make your photography shine...
over a year ago
From the Lightroom Blog:
The same edit controls that you already use to make your photography shine can now be used with your videos as well! Not only can you use Lightroom’s editing capabilities to make your video clips look their best, you can also copy and paste edit settings...
Seth's Blog
Hobson’s choice
…is no choice at all. The stable owner gets to pick which horse you get. Take it or leave it. Some...
a year ago
…is no choice at all. The stable owner gets to pick which horse you get. Take it or leave it. Some people prefer this. It means that we’re off the hook and not responsible. It relieves us of the emotional labor of choice. Let someone else worry about it… And so we give up our […]
Seth's Blog
Exceed or maintain?
In just about every group, people decide in advance how they’ll show up when it comes to learning,...
6 months ago
In just about every group, people decide in advance how they’ll show up when it comes to learning, to winning and to responding to opportunities. They’re wearing a hat with a label, and over time, it’s not hard to recognize. This can change based on pedagogy, social conditions...
Seth's Blog
The spark
No matter how big your backpack is, you can’t carry a bonfire with you when you go on a camping...
a year ago
No matter how big your backpack is, you can’t carry a bonfire with you when you go on a camping trip. A match is sufficient. Conversations are like that. Conversations are the tools that change our culture. Someone who cares talking with and teaching and learning from someone who...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Kathryn Green
I am a textile artist and tutor, specialising in dye and print processes to create organic, layered...
10 months ago
I am a textile artist and tutor, specialising in dye and print processes to create organic, layered and textural art textile pieces for exhibition, in addition to capsule collections of wearable art and interior accessories.
Having obtained a First-class degree in textiles, I...
Open Culture
This 392-Year-Old Bonsai Tree Survived the Hiroshima Atomic Blast & Still Flourishes Today: The...
Image by Sage Ross, via Wikimedia Commons The beautiful bonsai tree pictured above–let’s call it the...
6 months ago
Image by Sage Ross, via Wikimedia Commons The beautiful bonsai tree pictured above–let’s call it the Yamaki Pine Bonsai–began its journey through the world back in 1625. That’s when the Yamaki family first began to train the tree, working patiently, generation after generation,...
escape the algorithm
A complete guide to pretending you saw the total solar eclipse
I cannot relate to you
8 months ago
Open Culture
2000-Year-Old Bottle of White Wine Found in a Roman Burial Site
Image via Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Back in 2017, we featured the oldest unopened...
5 months ago
Image via Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Back in 2017, we featured the oldest unopened bottle of wine in the world here on Open Culture. Found in Speyer, Germany, in 1867, it dates from 350 AD, making it a venerable vintage indeed, but one recently outdone by a bottle...
Seth's Blog
Redundancy has a half-life
At first, this stop sign sign makes a lot of sense: Lives are at stake. Break the rhythm, turn...
10 months ago
At first, this stop sign sign makes a lot of sense: Lives are at stake. Break the rhythm, turn something ignored into something noticed. The challenge with “highlighting” is that it fades. When everything is in all caps, nothing is. Exclamation points are like salt. When people...
Seth's Blog
What do we do with our chance?
Everyone needs more chances, more benefit of the doubt, more opportunity. But what turns a chance...
6 days ago
Everyone needs more chances, more benefit of the doubt, more opportunity. But what turns a chance into a big break is what we do with it once the chance arrives.
Open Culture
Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zappa on His Cable TV Show, and Later Recalls, “I Hated Him More Than Ever”...
Had Andy Warhol lived to see the internet–especially social networking–he would have loved it,...
5 months ago
Had Andy Warhol lived to see the internet–especially social networking–he would have loved it, though it may not have loved him. Though Warhol did see the very beginnings of the PC revolution, and made computer art near the end of his life on a Commodore Amiga 1000, he was mostly...
Seth's Blog
The sportscar quadrants
They apply to jobs, relationships, art projects and everything in between: The top right is the rare...
a year ago
They apply to jobs, relationships, art projects and everything in between: The top right is the rare one–a car that goes fast but doesn’t feel like it’s on the edge. The hot rod is a car that is actually pretty safe, precisely because it doesn’t feel that way. You don’t have to...
Prolost
Mac Studio and Studio Display
Mac Studio with M1 Ultra and Apple Studio Display, running Cinema 4D and Redshift.
In October of...
over a year ago
Mac Studio with M1 Ultra and Apple Studio Display, running Cinema 4D and Redshift.
In October of 2021 I got to test a 14″ MacBook Pro with M1 Max processor. It performed so well, that I, along with many Mac power-users, questioned whether it could replace my desktop Mac.
Last...
Seth's Blog
Consider the WordWindow
Computer adventure games were possible in the 1980s because of a bit of code called a ‘parser’. You...
a year ago
Computer adventure games were possible in the 1980s because of a bit of code called a ‘parser’. You could type, “pick up the axe” and the computer would understand the phrase and follow your commands. In italics, because it didn’t understand anything, it simple broke your...
Seth's Blog
The empathy of useful feedback
When a friend shows you work in progress, your best contribution is to imagine the point of view and...
a year ago
When a friend shows you work in progress, your best contribution is to imagine the point of view and preferences of the person it is being created for. “I don’t like it,” isn’t useful, because it’s not for you. “I could imagine that someone who wants x, y or z would be looking...
Seth's Blog
Headwinds
When it’s tough going and it feels fraught, it’s easy to imagine that the headwinds will never end....
9 months ago
When it’s tough going and it feels fraught, it’s easy to imagine that the headwinds will never end. And yet, when all is going well and the wind is at our back, it’s tempting to imagine that this is the way it’s going to stay. Neither is true. The reason we see them as headwinds...
Seth's Blog
Big science
To win a Nobel prize a hundred years ago, you might only need a legal pad and a few pencils. Today,...
a year ago
To win a Nobel prize a hundred years ago, you might only need a legal pad and a few pencils. Today, it takes millions of dollars, scores of people and many years of effort. That’s because the most straightforward problems have been solved. One side effect of this inevitable shift...
Handprinted - Blog
Pigment & Binder - Mixing colours for printing fabric
Using Pigment Colours and Binder, you can mix your own bespoke colours for screen printing and block...
a year ago
Using Pigment Colours and Binder, you can mix your own bespoke colours for screen printing and block printing. Experimenting with different ratio amounts of binder to pigment can create some lovely subtle pale shades and some strong bold colours too.
Keeping a note of your...
Seth's Blog
Play fair & work hard
Two of the building blocks of a resilient society. And the opposite of the lazy shortcut. The...
7 months ago
Two of the building blocks of a resilient society. And the opposite of the lazy shortcut. The meanings of both clauses change over time… Play fair: Work hard: Social media and politics have done a great job of celebrating people who seek selfish shortcuts, simply because it’s...
Open Culture
Watch Philosophy Lectures That Became a Hit During COVID by Professor Michael Sugrue (RIP): From...
If we ask which philosophy professor has made the greatest impact in this decade, there’s a solid...
6 months ago
If we ask which philosophy professor has made the greatest impact in this decade, there’s a solid case to be made for the late Michael Sugrue. Yet in the nearly four-decade-long career that followed his studies at the University of Chicago under Allan Bloom (author of The Closing...
Handprinted - Blog
Glossary of Printmaking Terminology
Scroll through the list below to find definitions and explanations of common printmaking...
a year ago
Scroll through the list below to find definitions and explanations of common printmaking terms:
Acid-free – refers to papers that are made with an alkaline pulp, usually with calcium carbonate added. Acids contribute to the deterioration of paper and therefore of prints.
Aisuki –...
Seth's Blog
Queued
It’s sort of the opposite of “cued.” In addition to being delightful to spell, the idea of work...
10 months ago
It’s sort of the opposite of “cued.” In addition to being delightful to spell, the idea of work that’s queued up is energizing. The chapter ahead of schedule, the process in place for the next quarter, the continued commitment to learning… It is locked, loaded and ready to go....
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: FamousAdolf
My name is Adolf, like the famous one. I was born in Barcelona 37 years ago and I spent my childhood...
over a year ago
My name is Adolf, like the famous one. I was born in Barcelona 37 years ago and I spent my childhood watching TV and eating lots of bread and chocolate. When I got older I got a degree in Advertising and Public Relations that I never really used. I worked as a Graphic Designer in...
Seth's Blog
The 500 ways
There are thousands of ways to express encouragement and enthusiasm and support. Few of them require...
a year ago
There are thousands of ways to express encouragement and enthusiasm and support. Few of them require a blood oath or even much inconvenience. “I’m thrilled that you’re contributing.” “Can’t wait to see how this turns out.” “I know someone who really needs to hear about this.” “Go...
Seth's Blog
Reimagining cities in a few simple questions
What would happen if public transportation were free? What if it were paid for by congestion...
a year ago
What would happen if public transportation were free? What if it were paid for by congestion pricing, digitally implemented? What if public toilets were safe, beautiful, well-appointed and consistently maintained? What if there were a tax on empty storefronts, payable after three...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Sue Lewry
How and where did you learn to print?
A decade ago, when I first stepped into a print workshop, I...
a year ago
How and where did you learn to print?
A decade ago, when I first stepped into a print workshop, I met print technician and artist India Ritchie, who taught me various printmaking methods while studying at Arts University Plymouth.
India taught me intaglio, relief, and screen...
Open Culture
Fritz Lang First Depicted Artificial Intelligence on Film in Metropolis (1927), and It Frightened...
Artificial intelligence seems to have become, as Michael Lewis labeled a previous chapter in the...
7 months ago
Artificial intelligence seems to have become, as Michael Lewis labeled a previous chapter in the recent history of technology, the new new thing. But human anxieties about it are, if not an old old thing, then at least part of a tradition longer than we may expect. For vivid...
Seth's Blog
Hiring for stuck
Once an organization figures out a successful model, it begins to grow. And when it grows, it needs...
2 months ago
Once an organization figures out a successful model, it begins to grow. And when it grows, it needs more staff. And they often hire for specific tasks and the skills that go with them. They need a person who will reliably and obediently deliver what they need right now. And...
Ian Betteridge
Ten Blue Links, “rapid evolution of form” edition
1. Why should Trump deliver for anyone but Trump? This Bloomberg piece forgets one important fact:...
2 weeks ago
1. Why should Trump deliver for anyone but Trump? This Bloomberg piece forgets one important fact: Donald Trump is not going to be on the ticket next time. He doesn’t have to deliver a dime for ordinary voters, and will act accordingly. 2. You can now sync Apple Passwords with...
Anarchy Unfolds
Queer Folk Don't Need Orientation
How decade-old discourse shows us a way out
2 months ago
How decade-old discourse shows us a way out
The Last...
Funeral
do you have a better system?
The funeral is attended by 30 people. It's a military...
over a year ago
do you have a better system?
The funeral is attended by 30 people. It's a military funeral because he was in Korea, and in the front chairs are his wife and two grown children, and they are quietly crying.
When it ends, people disperse hesitatingly, after all, they...
Marian's Blog
16×16 LED Matrix
This is a 16×16 RGB LED matrix, made of 256 WS2812B LEDs. It’s powered by a Raspberry Pi and can...
over a year ago
This is a 16×16 RGB LED matrix, made of 256 WS2812B LEDs. It’s powered by a Raspberry Pi and can display images and animations. With a game controller attached, it can play games.
The pictures below show how I built the frame.
Painting the base plate
Drawing...
Seth's Blog
The low-stakes argument
It’s tempting and fun to argue about the logo. About the way the toilet paper is hung. About how to...
a year ago
It’s tempting and fun to argue about the logo. About the way the toilet paper is hung. About how to load the trunk of the car. These sorts of arguments work precisely because they don’t matter. At all. And they distract us from the incredibly difficult work of discussing the...
Seth's Blog
Fidelity, compression and culture
The alphabet is a miracle, one that is compounded by books. And the lessons we learn from this...
a year ago
The alphabet is a miracle, one that is compounded by books. And the lessons we learn from this cornerstone of modern culture apply to organizations, meetings, tech, politics and almost everything we do together. Your copy of To Kill a Mockingbird contains every single word that...
Seth's Blog
“For what purposes will it be useful?”
In 1840, at the dawn of the information age, the king of Sardinia asked Charles Babbage what nearly...
9 months ago
In 1840, at the dawn of the information age, the king of Sardinia asked Charles Babbage what nearly instant messaging like the telegraph could possibly be good for. Twenty years later, it was obvious. When I first saw Prodigy in 1986, I saw that the consumer internet would have...
Prolost
Visual Effects Compositing in Adobe After Effects: My IBC 2019 Talk
Adobe graciously invited me to speak at their IBC 2019 booth about visual effects compositing in...
over a year ago
Adobe graciously invited me to speak at their IBC 2019 booth about visual effects compositing in After Effects — something I’ve been doing against all advice for many (many!) years. You can watch the entire talk here:
Seth's Blog
Who is undermining your brand?
There’s a high-end grocer in a very expensive neighborhood of New York–and they focus all of their...
a year ago
There’s a high-end grocer in a very expensive neighborhood of New York–and they focus all of their energy on Italian food. Everything is imported, and they spend a lot of time and money earning the premium they charge for an authentic Italian shopping experience. And then a lazy...
Open Culture
The “Nonsense” Botanical Illustrations of Victorian Artist-Poet Edward Lear (1871–77)
Since the Victorian era, Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” has been, for generation upon...
5 months ago
Since the Victorian era, Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” has been, for generation upon generation in the English-speaking world, the kind of poem that one simply knows, whether one remembers actually having read it or not. As with most such works that seep so...
The Great Discontent...
Lucy McRae
Emergence Issue: TGD’s fifth issue features a dynamic group of 15 creators who are deeply committed...
over a year ago
Emergence Issue: TGD’s fifth issue features a dynamic group of 15 creators who are deeply committed to addressing systematic challenges in their communities through creativity and emerging ideologies. Buy Now Can you talk a little bit about where you grew up and how that place...
Seth's Blog
The seduction of compliance
We can tell from the words. “I’m just doing my job.” “Will this be on the test?” “Don’t blame me.”...
a year ago
We can tell from the words. “I’m just doing my job.” “Will this be on the test?” “Don’t blame me.” “It’s what everyone else is wearing.” Keep your head down, do what you’re told, don’t stick your neck out, and most of all, pay attention to what everyone else is doing. All of this...
Seth's Blog
When was the last time you used a compass?
How about an astrolabe? Or even a watch? Technology advances, and sooner or later, the old stuff...
a year ago
How about an astrolabe? Or even a watch? Technology advances, and sooner or later, the old stuff gets left behind. It’s easy to romanticize some of the classic devices that we built civilization on, and it’s worth remembering that the tech we’re wrestling with now will soon be...
Open Culture
The Most Iconic Hip-Hop Sample of Every Year (1973–2023)
Hip-hop was once a subculture, but by now it’s long since been one of the unquestionably dominant...
3 weeks ago
Hip-hop was once a subculture, but by now it’s long since been one of the unquestionably dominant forms of popular music — not just in America, and not just among young people. There are, of course, still a fair few hip-hop holdouts, but even they’ve come to know a thing or two...
Seth's Blog
Bob Dobalina
I considered myself someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of a narrow range of mid-1960s TV and...
a year ago
I considered myself someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of a narrow range of mid-1960s TV and certain strains of pop music as well. I was stunned, then, to hear the song Zilch for the first time recently. Mr. Dobalina, Mr. Bob Dobalina. It’s unforgettable. And it’s from the...
Seth's Blog
Choosing your pacemaker
Roger Bannister ran a four-minute mile by having a relay race of pace runners next to him. If he...
a year ago
Roger Bannister ran a four-minute mile by having a relay race of pace runners next to him. If he could keep up with his pacer, he’d finish the run in record time. If you work in an office where people are regularly shipping breakthrough work, it’s likely your work will ship as...
Seth's Blog
Trying harder
Or trying better? Fast runners aren’t the same as slow runners, but with more effort. And great...
11 months ago
Or trying better? Fast runners aren’t the same as slow runners, but with more effort. And great chefs or violinists or actors… it’s not about doing what you did yesterday, but more of that. It’s something different.
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Ieuan Edwards
I’m a linocut printmaker and illustrator based in Broadstairs on the Isle of Thanet in Kent, which...
a year ago
I’m a linocut printmaker and illustrator based in Broadstairs on the Isle of Thanet in Kent, which is home to a good few other lino folks and a thriving and supportive art scene in general.
Describe your printmaking process.
I tend to print fairly small runs of reduction linocut...
Open Culture
Monty Python’s Michael Palin Presents His Favorite Painting, J. M. W. Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed
Of all the English comedians to have attained worldwide fame over the past half-century, Sir Michael...
7 months ago
Of all the English comedians to have attained worldwide fame over the past half-century, Sir Michael Palin may be the most English of them all. It thus comes as no surprise that the National Gallery would ring him up and invite him to make a video about his favorite painting, nor...
Seth's Blog
Scaffolds and talent
Kindergarten teachers matter more than you think. Chess isn’t a talent, it’s a learned practice....
a year ago
Kindergarten teachers matter more than you think. Chess isn’t a talent, it’s a learned practice. We’re sorting for head starts, not growth. And that’s just the first chapter. I think Hidden Potential is the most important book in Adam Grant’s career. The indoctrination around...
Seth's Blog
Unstable equilibrium
We’re testing a brand new way to host a charity auction, and I’m hoping you can check it out and...
a year ago
We’re testing a brand new way to host a charity auction, and I’m hoping you can check it out and even bid to support BuildOn. In this post, I want to take a moment to explain the attraction and risk of unstable equilibrium, and there’s also a fun contest at the end… If you drop...
Seth's Blog
The close proximity gap
One of the unmentioned causes of division in much of our culture happens because of the shift in...
10 months ago
One of the unmentioned causes of division in much of our culture happens because of the shift in expectations and rules when we begin to live in close proximity to one another. In a non-crowded setting, the default is independence. The expectation is that you can drive as fast as...
Open Culture
The Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants: Explore the 1977 Illustrated Guide Created by Harvard’s...
I mean, the idea that you would give a psychedelic—in this case, magic mushrooms or the chemical...
2 weeks ago
I mean, the idea that you would give a psychedelic—in this case, magic mushrooms or the chemical called psilocybin that’s derived from magic mushrooms—to people dying of cancer, people with terminal diagnoses, to help them deal with their — what’s called existential distress. And...
Seth's Blog
Possibility and opportunity
We have the chance to build something that creates connection and generates value. On the other...
a year ago
We have the chance to build something that creates connection and generates value. On the other hand, a system that diminishes agency and dignity is inherently unstable. When we seek to create scarcity and control and optimize output at the expense of our humanity, it may pay off...
Seth's Blog
Closed/open
I’m told that the hardest part of being a teaching golf pro isn’t helping adult golfers develop a...
a year ago
I’m told that the hardest part of being a teaching golf pro isn’t helping adult golfers develop a good swing. It’s getting them to stop using a bad one. Our position feels so fragile, we hold on very tightly. Competence, status and connection are fleeting yet hard-won. We can...
Seth's Blog
Books don’t sell
That’s not true, actually. Books sell, but book doesn’t. The odds of a particular book selling a lot...
8 months ago
That’s not true, actually. Books sell, but book doesn’t. The odds of a particular book selling a lot of copies are close to zero. The truth of the long tail is that most titles are way out on the fringe. Now that book publishing is unleashed from retail distribution, the math is...
Seth's Blog
Invite: Behind-the-scenes webinar for the new book
In two weeks, I’ll be hosting a live webinar about my new book, answering questions and connecting...
a year ago
In two weeks, I’ll be hosting a live webinar about my new book, answering questions and connecting people to get serious in discussing the new way of work. The details are here. I hope you can make it. It’s possible that I’ve now written more bestselling business titles than any...
Seth's Blog
“Let’s face it”
In 1959, three years after Columbia Records spent a fortune rolling out stereo recording, a senior...
12 months ago
In 1959, three years after Columbia Records spent a fortune rolling out stereo recording, a senior A&R executive named Ward Botsman told the New York Times, “Let’s face it, the craze for stereo has not been as intense as expected,” writing off the format that would end up...
Open Culture
How Rome Began: The History As Told by Ancient Historians
Much attention has been paid to the fall of the Roman Empire, by everyone from august historians...
5 months ago
Much attention has been paid to the fall of the Roman Empire, by everyone from august historians like Edward Gibbon to modern-day observers wringing their hands over the fate of the United States of America. But as every Rome enthusiast knows, that long collapse constitutes just...
Seth's Blog
The simple word replacement for connection
What do we say when a customer or colleague says, “thank you”? For a long time, it was “you’re...
a year ago
What do we say when a customer or colleague says, “thank you”? For a long time, it was “you’re welcome.” This indicates that you put in some effort and you’re willing to do it again on request. Recently “no problem” has become more common. This implies that the effort could have...
Open Culture
Moebius Gives 18 Wisdom-Filled Tips to Aspiring Artists
Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, was a comic book artist who combined blinding speed with boundless...
3 months ago
Jean Giraud, aka Moebius, was a comic book artist who combined blinding speed with boundless imagination. He shaped the look of Alien, Empire Strikes Back and The Fifth Element. He reimagined the Silver Surfer for Stan Lee. And he is an acknowledged influence on everyone from...
Seth's Blog
Typist/Hypist
Not that long ago, you could make a living as a typist. Technology keeps changing the world. Now,...
a year ago
Not that long ago, you could make a living as a typist. Technology keeps changing the world. Now, you’re more likely to find a job doing something that seems a lot less mechanized. But that too will be programmatic soon enough. PS here’s an important new book about perfectionism.
Seth's Blog
Convenience and scams
The scam era is upon us. Aided by AI, borderless currency and the internet of things, there are more...
a year ago
The scam era is upon us. Aided by AI, borderless currency and the internet of things, there are more people than ever before making a living hustling to steal, impersonate, defraud and otherwise violate our trust. When the world was inconvenient, this was difficult. The banker...
Open Culture
George Harrison Explains Why Everyone Should Play the Ukulele
George Harrison loved the ukulele, and really, what’s not to love? For its dainty size, the uke can...
2 months ago
George Harrison loved the ukulele, and really, what’s not to love? For its dainty size, the uke can make a powerfully cheerful sound, and it’s an instrument both beginners and expert players can learn and easily carry around. As Harrison’s old friend Joe Brown remarked, “You can...
Seth's Blog
Remarkable pronouncements
The scientific rule of thumb is simple: When you make a bold claim, you need significant research to...
a year ago
The scientific rule of thumb is simple: When you make a bold claim, you need significant research to back it up. Telling us that eating vegetables is healthy can be justified by a fairly simple high school science paper. But if you want to claim that the moon is made of celery...
Seth's Blog
Rethinking the Sports-Industrial Complex
School sports can have some valuable outputs: And yet, many schools act as if all they have is a...
a year ago
School sports can have some valuable outputs: And yet, many schools act as if all they have is a trophy shortage. They bench kids who might not (yet) have the physical attributes necessary to win, or they build huge stadiums, go on long road trips, berate students that make an...
Open Culture
Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Cannot Stand a Meaningless Life’ (1959)
Carl Gustav Jung, founder of analytic psychology and explorer of the collective unconscious, was...
5 months ago
Carl Gustav Jung, founder of analytic psychology and explorer of the collective unconscious, was born on July 26, 1875 in the village of Kesswil, in the Thurgau canton of Switzerland. Above, we present a fascinating 39-minute interview of Jung by John Freeman for the BBC program...
Open Culture
B.B. King Changes a Broken Guitar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, and Doesn’t Miss a Beat (1985)
The scene is Farm Aid, 1985, attended by a crowd of 80,000 people. The song is “How Blue Can You...
a month ago
The scene is Farm Aid, 1985, attended by a crowd of 80,000 people. The song is “How Blue Can You Get.” And the key moment comes at the 3:10 mark, when the blues legend B.B. King breaks a guitar string, then manages to replace it before the song finishes minutes later. All the...
Seth's Blog
The pitfall of Big Game thinking
In the US, today is a major holiday. The Superb Owl, with nachos, commercials and beer. People who...
10 months ago
In the US, today is a major holiday. The Superb Owl, with nachos, commercials and beer. People who don’t even watch football watch this game, and it’s one of the largest audiences each year on TV. For a certain kind of mass marketer, a Super Bowl ad has been the gold standard for...
Open Culture
The 63 Cuisines of China Explained in 40 Minutes: A Complete Primer
Wherever in the world you grew up, you probably grew up with an inaccurate idea of Chinese food. For...
2 weeks ago
Wherever in the world you grew up, you probably grew up with an inaccurate idea of Chinese food. For Americans, it can come as a shock to hear that such familiar dishes as chop suey and General Tso’s chicken are unknown in China itself. By the same token, almost every country in...
Open Culture
“The Virtues of Coffee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethargy, Scurvy, Dropsy, Gout & More
According to many historians, the English Enlightenment may never have happened were it not for...
7 months ago
According to many historians, the English Enlightenment may never have happened were it not for coffeehouses, the public sphere where poets, critics, philosophers, legal minds, and other intellectual gadflies regularly met to chatter about the pressing concerns of the day. And...
Seth's Blog
What’s a “techie”?
A friend’s email said, “I know many of my readers aren’t techies and you’re thinking of putting this...
a year ago
A friend’s email said, “I know many of my readers aren’t techies and you’re thinking of putting this newsletter aside…” We should get clear about what we’re talking about when we say “techie.” I’m going to argue that involves a combination of two things: But someone who says,...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: MintFlamingo
Hi - I’m Alex! I’m a freelance graphic designer by day, and a self-taught linocut printmaker by...
over a year ago
Hi - I’m Alex! I’m a freelance graphic designer by day, and a self-taught linocut printmaker by night. Although my day job is ‘creative’ I think I really fell in love with making/designing my own linocut prints as it allows me to create whatever I like, without being restricted...
Seth's Blog
Graceful
Long after people forget the details, they’ll remember your kindness. There are many forms of...
9 months ago
Long after people forget the details, they’ll remember your kindness. There are many forms of hospitality, but resilience, goodwill and gratitude are often the ones that matter. PS here’s a short ebook I published almost a decade ago.
Infinite Scroll
Weekly Scroll: Elon's Endgame
Plus! Livestreamers in jail, confused Catholics, and the Immigrant Song
a month ago
Plus! Livestreamers in jail, confused Catholics, and the Immigrant Song
Seth's Blog
Putting up the big numbers
Some people go to the gym for health and energy. Some go to lift more weight than they did yesterday...
8 months ago
Some people go to the gym for health and energy. Some go to lift more weight than they did yesterday (or more than the person next to them). You can start a company to make an impact and surround yourself with people on a similar journey, or you can seek to maximize the stock...
Seth's Blog
The status quo is very good…
at sticking around. In fact, that’s what it’s best at. New research shows that computers and robots...
a year ago
at sticking around. In fact, that’s what it’s best at. New research shows that computers and robots are now better at solving CAPTCHA puzzles than humans. This was inevitable. The interesting question is, “how long before they go away?” First, someone has to decide that it’s...
The Great Discontent...
Britt Reilly
Britt Reilly's work lives at the intersection of immersive visual arts, historic architecture and...
3 weeks ago
Britt Reilly's work lives at the intersection of immersive visual arts, historic architecture and preservation, and modernist design. Britt is the executive director and collections curator at the Irving & Aaronel deRoy Gruber Foundation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and when we...
Ian Betteridge
Ten Blue Links, “ignoring the election” edition
1. UK university fees going up (but not by enough to make the system work) For those of you not in...
a month ago
1. UK university fees going up (but not by enough to make the system work) For those of you not in the UK, the British system of university funding is a weird mash-mash of different stuff, cobbled together from the mistakes made by successive governments. When I was young, the...
Seth's Blog
Bongo is here
And you can be the first on your block to play it. It’s free. Click here to see today’s game. Over...
a month ago
And you can be the first on your block to play it. It’s free. Click here to see today’s game. Over the next week, I’m going to do a few bonus posts to explain how we thought about the creation and game design and marketing of this new project. The last eighteen months of...
Prolost
iPhone ProRes Log in Peru and Taiwan
This is a blog post about a video, which is about new color-conversion LUTs for Apple Log footage...
10 months ago
This is a blog post about a video, which is about new color-conversion LUTs for Apple Log footage from the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max (updated from my first set). The video is also a mini-travelogue of my recent trips to Taiwan and Peru. This post dives a bit deeper into both the...
Infinite Scroll
Flat Earthers and Belief in Belief
What flat earthers can teach us about politics
2 days ago
What flat earthers can teach us about politics
Seth's Blog
How to buy a lottery ticket
There are lots of cultural lotteries around us. The next pop song, the book that everyone is talking...
a month ago
There are lots of cultural lotteries around us. The next pop song, the book that everyone is talking about, the blog post or video that goes viral… it even applies to who gets into a famous college or is selected by the AI screening for a good job. The usual advice is: Fit in....
On the Arts
Do biographies need to start at the beginning?
Alternatives to the predictably linear narratives of most biographies.
a year ago
Alternatives to the predictably linear narratives of most biographies.
Blog - Amy Goodchild
Meaningless
My ArtBlocks debut, releasing on 30th May 2023. Find out how the algorithm
works and explore some...
a year ago
My ArtBlocks debut, releasing on 30th May 2023. Find out how the algorithm
works and explore some conceptual thoughts.
Ian Betteridge
Ten Blue Links “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date” Edition
1. Who rules us? Google changed its rules on what kind of behaviour it regards as “spam” and, of...
3 weeks ago
1. Who rules us? Google changed its rules on what kind of behaviour it regards as “spam” and, of course, the impact on some companies will be pretty negative. The behaviour it is targeting is so-called “parasite SEO”, where a publisher allows a third party to create content for...
Seth's Blog
Misunderstanding bigness
IBM spent a fortune fighting calls for them to be broken up. So did AT&T and Microsoft. In all three...
4 months ago
IBM spent a fortune fighting calls for them to be broken up. So did AT&T and Microsoft. In all three cases, there’s plenty of evidence that they would have been better off if they had simply broken themselves up. Microsoft is still recovering and IBM never will. One computer...
Open Culture
How Editing Saved Ferris Bueller’s Day Off & Made It a Classic
“In our salad days, we are ripe for a particular movie that will linger, deathlessly, long after the...
4 months ago
“In our salad days, we are ripe for a particular movie that will linger, deathlessly, long after the greenness has gone,” writes the New Yorker’s Anthony Lane in a recent piece on movies in the eighties. “When a friend turned to me after the first twenty minutes of Ferris...
Open Culture
16th-Century Japanese Historians Describe the Oddness of Meeting the First Europeans They Ever Saw
Go to Japan today, and the country will present you with plenty of opportunities to buy pan, tabako,...
6 months ago
Go to Japan today, and the country will present you with plenty of opportunities to buy pan, tabako, and tempura. These products themselves — bread, cigarettes, and deep-fried seafood or vegetables — will be familiar enough. Even the words that refer to them may have a...
Open Culture
The Big Map of Who Lived When Shows Which Cultural Figures Walked the Earth at the Same Time: From...
We could call the time in which we live the “Information Age.” Or we could describe it more vividly...
3 months ago
We could call the time in which we live the “Information Age.” Or we could describe it more vividly as the era of Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, Oprah Winfrey and Martha Stewart, Beyoncé and Bob Dylan. Whatever you think of the work of any of...
Seth's Blog
Avert your eyes
There are things we avoid looking at too closely. If we looked, really saw what was happening, we’d...
a year ago
There are things we avoid looking at too closely. If we looked, really saw what was happening, we’d have to change our minds, admit we were mistaken, refactor our priorities or take action. It’s so frightening that we even hesitate to make a list of the things we don’t want to...
Seth's Blog
Skipping the good days
Part of the luxury of living near the ocean or the mountains is that you can be picky. If the surf...
a year ago
Part of the luxury of living near the ocean or the mountains is that you can be picky. If the surf or the powder isn’t great, leave it for the tourists. Good is insufficient, wait for the great moments… When we’re young, or the project is going really well, it’s easy to waste the...
Seth's Blog
All customers are the same
[and all customers are different.] Customers are why you’re here. They pay the bills and they are...
10 months ago
[and all customers are different.] Customers are why you’re here. They pay the bills and they are the primary driver of your growth. But each adds a different amount of value to your organization and the journey you’re on. The customer who spends 100x as much as the average...
Seth's Blog
The bitterness loop
Spoiled leads to bitter. A sense of entitlement is a trap, because bitterness demands more evidence...
3 months ago
Spoiled leads to bitter. A sense of entitlement is a trap, because bitterness demands more evidence and seeks to maintain dominance over the other emotions. When we’re busy looking for more reasons to be bitter, we’re not taking the time to do generative work, to connect and to...
Seth's Blog
The Pizza Principle
Good pizza is rare, even though the method to create it is well known. Any efforts to make it more...
a year ago
Good pizza is rare, even though the method to create it is well known. Any efforts to make it more convenient, cheaper or easier will almost always make it worse. If you think this post is about pizza, I’m afraid that we’re already stuck.
Seth's Blog
Silence vs noise
When a group comes together, noise is easy. Just a few people have to make a commotion for noise to...
4 months ago
When a group comes together, noise is easy. Just a few people have to make a commotion for noise to happen. But silence requires everyone to be in sync.
Blog - Amy Goodchild
A strange kind of physical reality
A long-form generative art project coming to fxhash in partnership with FAB DAO on 11th Jan 2024....
11 months ago
A long-form generative art project coming to fxhash in partnership with FAB DAO on 11th Jan 2024.
This series is inspired, in the abstract, by the images I visualise when reading about quantum theory. Particularly thoughts of particles spreading out as waves and then collapsing...
Open Culture
Simone de Beauvoir Explains “Why I’m a Feminist” in a Rare TV Interview (1975)
In Simone de Beauvoir’s 1945 novel The Blood of Others, the narrator, Jean Blomart, reports on his...
5 months ago
In Simone de Beauvoir’s 1945 novel The Blood of Others, the narrator, Jean Blomart, reports on his childhood friend Marcel’s reaction to the word “revolution”: It was senseless to try to change anything in the world or in life; things were bad enough even if one did not meddle...
Seth's Blog
I was wrong about sun tea
The story is a good one: put some tea bags in a mason jar filled with fresh, cold water. Put it in...
7 months ago
The story is a good one: put some tea bags in a mason jar filled with fresh, cold water. Put it in the sun. Four hours later, smooth and delicious tea is waiting for you. The photons from the sun go through the clear glass and the water, strike the leaves and transfer radiant...
Seth's Blog
The inevitable meeting
When the person you could have been meets the person you are becoming, is it going to be a cause for...
2 months ago
When the person you could have been meets the person you are becoming, is it going to be a cause for celebration or heartbreak? This is something we must work on right now, and tomorrow, and every single day until the meeting happens.
Open Culture
A New Analysis of Beethoven’s DNA Reveals That Lead Poisoning Could Have Caused His Deafness
Despite the intense scrutiny paid to the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven for a couple of...
7 months ago
Despite the intense scrutiny paid to the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven for a couple of centuries now, the revered composer still has certain mysteries about him. Some of them he surely never intended to clarify, like the identity of “Immortal Beloved”; others he...
Handprinted - Blog
In the Studio 2022
We have had the pleasure of hosting lots of new and exciting Fab Friday workshops and wonderful...
over a year ago
We have had the pleasure of hosting lots of new and exciting Fab Friday workshops and wonderful Guest Tutors in 2022, exploring a variety of printmaking techniques. Take a look at this selection of work produced by students throughout the year:
Life Drawing - Mono Screen...
Seth's Blog
Fooled
Now it’s a business model. People are regularly fooled by crypto scams, NFT hype, opioid felons,...
a year ago
Now it’s a business model. People are regularly fooled by crypto scams, NFT hype, opioid felons, algorithmic spam at scale, health claims, illogical political arguments, fundraising pitches, overnight shortcuts on the road to riches or happiness and MLM hustle. Your account has...
Open Culture
The Writer Who Directed, The Director Who Wrote: Every Frame a Painting Explores the Genius of Billy...
When the acclaimed cinema video-essay channel Every Frame a Painting made its comeback this past...
2 months ago
When the acclaimed cinema video-essay channel Every Frame a Painting made its comeback this past summer, its creators Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos took a close look at the “sustained two-shot,” which captures a stretch of dialogue between two characters without the interference of...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Robin Mackenzie
I am Robin Mackenzie, a Wood Engraver and Lino Cutter based in Dorset. I create limited edition...
a year ago
I am Robin Mackenzie, a Wood Engraver and Lino Cutter based in Dorset. I create limited edition relief prints using a combination of hand printing and an Albion printing press. My work explores the British coast and countryside. Beginning with walks and research trips I seek...
Anarchy Unfolds
Genshin Impact & the appeal of open-world games
I’ve been playing a lot of Genshin Impact lately.
2 months ago
I’ve been playing a lot of Genshin Impact lately.
Seth's Blog
Don’t know, don’t care
Clients and customers can be frustrating. Perhaps they don’t know what you know. Perhaps they don’t...
a year ago
Clients and customers can be frustrating. Perhaps they don’t know what you know. Perhaps they don’t care. It’s possible to educate and inspire. It might be more productive to find the few that want to go where you do.
Seth's Blog
Chores
They’re essential. The house begins to stink if we don’t take out the garbage. But at work, while...
a year ago
They’re essential. The house begins to stink if we don’t take out the garbage. But at work, while they might be essential, they may not be important. At least, not important enough for us to spend a lot of focus on. Chores are: The bills have to get paid. But they might not have...
Seth's Blog
Aerodynamic figureheads
That’s sort of an oxymoron. The original figureheads were carved into the bow of a ship. They exist...
5 months ago
That’s sort of an oxymoron. The original figureheads were carved into the bow of a ship. They exist to express the spirit of the boat and to demonstrate its power and resilience. Here’s an AI recreation of the most famous one: The sailors were wise enough to understand that the...
Seth's Blog
In defense of the hard parts
Yesterday’s post was a little glib. Without a doubt, we add more value when we focus on the...
4 months ago
Yesterday’s post was a little glib. Without a doubt, we add more value when we focus on the emotional labor of important work, leaving others the chance to create commodities. But the repetitive, difficult nature of leaning into commodity production can give us insight, humility...
Infinite Scroll
Weekly Scroll: MrBeast Games The System
Plus! A Momfluencer Horror Story and an Important Orca Update
2 weeks ago
Plus! A Momfluencer Horror Story and an Important Orca Update
Open Culture
How the Hugely Acclaimed Shōgun TV Series Makes Translation Interesting
Many of us grew up seeing hardback copies of Shōgun on various domestic bookshelves. Whether their...
3 months ago
Many of us grew up seeing hardback copies of Shōgun on various domestic bookshelves. Whether their owners ever actually got through James Clavell’s famously hefty novel of seventeenth-century Japan is open to question, but they may well have seen the first television adaptation,...
Seth's Blog
Your audiobook
Here’s a useful habit that’s more than a hack… The next time things are going well, when a project...
3 months ago
Here’s a useful habit that’s more than a hack… The next time things are going well, when a project is about to launch, when a meeting has been successful, when the sun is shining… take your phone and go for a walk. Hit record on an audio app and make a twenty-minute audiobook....
Seth's Blog
“Not your best ever”
In order to have a best ever, hearing this is part of the deal. Each thing is not going to top...
6 months ago
In order to have a best ever, hearing this is part of the deal. Each thing is not going to top everything that came before it. Progress is rarely smooth.
Seth's Blog
The social media lottery
Someone is going to end up with 10,000,000 followers. Someone is going to post the next viral...
a year ago
Someone is going to end up with 10,000,000 followers. Someone is going to post the next viral TikTok. Someone is going to build a meme that spreads around the world. But it probably won’t be me and it probably won’t be you. Buying lottery tickets might be fun, but they’re a lousy...
Marian's Blog
Quadcopter Lightpainting
Die Fotos wurden mit einem beleuchteten Quadrocopter, einem Stativ und 15 Sekunden Belichtung...
over a year ago
Die Fotos wurden mit einem beleuchteten Quadrocopter, einem Stativ und 15 Sekunden Belichtung aufgenommen.
Bei diesen Fotos stimmte die Einstellung noch nicht, sodass sie zu dunkel sind:
...
Infinite Scroll
Infinite Scroll Podcast: Worst Tweets ft. Andrew Heaton
It's possible that we might be too online
4 days ago
It's possible that we might be too online
Handprinted - Blog
Easy Christmas Cards Six Ways
We’ve had a lot of fun this week working on easy, quick and fun ways to print your own Christmas...
a year ago
We’ve had a lot of fun this week working on easy, quick and fun ways to print your own Christmas cards! We’ve come up with six simple ways for you to try. Take a look at our instructions below and have a go yourself.
Bah Humbug Lino Printed Card
This two-layered lino card is...
Seth's Blog
The steep part of the mountain
The end of the trail is usually difficult, but without the long and winding approach, there isn’t...
3 months ago
The end of the trail is usually difficult, but without the long and winding approach, there isn’t much of a mountain. The greatest hits reel and the stunning photographs leave out most of the hard work. There’s a lot to be said for showing up, one foot in front of the other. In...
Open Culture
What Is Religion Actually For?: Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury Weigh In
In the nineteen-sixties, the music media encouraged the notion that a young rock-and-roll fan had to...
7 months ago
In the nineteen-sixties, the music media encouraged the notion that a young rock-and-roll fan had to side with either the Beatles or their rivals, the Rolling Stones. On some level, it must have made sense, given the growing aesthetic divide between the music the two world-famous...
Seth's Blog
Product and process
What do we get in exchange for our work? There’s pay, of course, and the satisfaction of a job well...
a year ago
What do we get in exchange for our work? There’s pay, of course, and the satisfaction of a job well done. There’s stress and human interaction, learning and physical exertion. We get the drama of what might happen next and the delight of actually pulling it off. And mostly we get...
Seth's Blog
Choose your customers
…choose your future. It’s an odd way to think about your project, your job, your startup, but...
a year ago
…choose your future. It’s an odd way to think about your project, your job, your startup, but there’s little that matters more. There are two key elements: At one extreme is the first few years of Google’s growth. The salesforce didn’t matter–the customers showed up on their own,...
Seth's Blog
Shields up
Years and years ago, I helped the Weekly World News make a book. While their periodical was weekly,...
a year ago
Years and years ago, I helped the Weekly World News make a book. While their periodical was weekly, it certainly wasn’t news. They were just four people in a small office in Florida. They gleefully made stuff up every week. They had a few filing cabinets of stock photos, and they...
Open Culture
The Isolated Bass Grooves of The Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh (RIP)
This past Friday, the bassist of The Grateful Dead, Phil Lesh, passed away at age 84. Almost...
a month ago
This past Friday, the bassist of The Grateful Dead, Phil Lesh, passed away at age 84. Almost immediately the tributes poured in, most recognizing that Lesh wasn’t your ordinary bassist. As Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times, Phil Lesh held songs “aloft.” His “bass lines...
Marian's Blog
Generating an infinite world with the Wave Function Collapse algorithm
This article describes how I generate an infinite city using the Wave Function Collapse algorithm in...
a year ago
This article describes how I generate an infinite city using the Wave Function Collapse algorithm in a way that is fast, deterministic, parallelizable and reliable.
It's a follow-up to my 2019 article on adapting the WFC algorithm to generate an infinite world.
The new approach...
Seth's Blog
The grey goo
If we take a big enough dataset… Add to it machine learning and autotune and the race to fit in and...
10 months ago
If we take a big enough dataset… Add to it machine learning and autotune and the race to fit in and reach the masses… We end up with a relentless march toward mediocrity. Mediocre is another word for average. It has always happened as industries matured (whether it’s Motown or...
Seth's Blog
A deal’s a deal
A fundamental building block of civilization is the understanding that contracts matter. Regardless...
a year ago
A fundamental building block of civilization is the understanding that contracts matter. Regardless of where someone is on the current political spectrum (from Alinksy to Mises), things can be understood to work better if the boss, the vendor, the client and the freelancer all...
Seth's Blog
The swag is here
To celebrate the new book, here are some limited edition swag options to benefit good causes and...
a year ago
To celebrate the new book, here are some limited edition swag options to benefit good causes and independent craftspeople. You can find them all at seths.store. I went to Brooklyn and worked with Dan at the Arm to create a set of five handmade letterpress posters. They’re 12...
Open Culture
When Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson Debated Capitalism Versus Marxism
Karl Marx was a German philosopher-historian (with a few other pursuits besides) who wrote in...
5 months ago
Karl Marx was a German philosopher-historian (with a few other pursuits besides) who wrote in pursuit of an understanding of industrial society as he knew it in the nineteenth century and what its future evolution held in store. There are good reasons to read his work still...
Handprinted - Blog
Making an Aluminium Plate Etching
We recently covered in our blog how to make marks on etching plates using tools and resists. Now...
3 months ago
We recently covered in our blog how to make marks on etching plates using tools and resists. Now we’re going to put together what we’ve learnt to create a print!
This blog is part of a series featuring tips and techniques to get you started with aluminium or zinc plate etching....
Seth's Blog
Bought or sold?
Most things that consumers acquire are bought, not sold. We decide we’re interested in something and...
a year ago
Most things that consumers acquire are bought, not sold. We decide we’re interested in something and we go shopping to get it. Potato chips, wedding venues and cars are all purchased by people who set out to get them. Selling is a special sort of marketing. It’s interactive,...
Open Culture
Richard Feynman Creates a Simple Method for Telling Science From Pseudoscience (1966)
Photo by Tamiko Thiel via Wikimedia Commons How can we know whether a claim someone makes is...
3 months ago
Photo by Tamiko Thiel via Wikimedia Commons How can we know whether a claim someone makes is scientific or not? The question is of the utmost consequence, as we are surrounded on all sides by claims that sound credible, that use the language of science—and often do so in attempts...
Seth's Blog
Overstuffed
The empty part of the drawer is what makes it a useful tool. Same goes for a filing cabinet, a...
a year ago
The empty part of the drawer is what makes it a useful tool. Same goes for a filing cabinet, a toolbox and a calendar. Slack is underrated.
Seth's Blog
The Net Promoter Score
More than two-thirds of the companies surveyed said that they used NPS methodology with their...
7 months ago
More than two-thirds of the companies surveyed said that they used NPS methodology with their customers. Some are using it to measure employee satisfaction as well. The P stands for ‘promoter’, but of course, it doesn’t actually measure promotion. If that many of your customers...
Open Culture
The Fake Buildings of New York: What Happens Inside Their Mysterious Walls
You can’t go on a walk with a serious enthusiast of New York history without hearing the stories...
2 months ago
You can’t go on a walk with a serious enthusiast of New York history without hearing the stories behind at least a few notable, beautiful, or downright strange buildings. Yet most longtime New Yorkers, famed for tuning out their surroundings to better strive for their goals of...
Seth's Blog
Listening to organizational decline
Great companies and teams often get stale and then fade away. Here’s what we hear as it happens:...
a week ago
Great companies and teams often get stale and then fade away. Here’s what we hear as it happens: “I’m way too important to listen to customers. Send them to the call center.” “It wasn’t a bad idea when we implemented it, so it’s not a bad idea now.” “My boss won’t let me.” “The...
On the Arts
What is the Demoscene?
An Interview with Filipe Cruz on the Influential but Obscure Art Form
a year ago
An Interview with Filipe Cruz on the Influential but Obscure Art Form
Seth's Blog
The expanding frontier of ignorance
Some fields of endeavor continue to narrow down the unknown, in search of the recipe, the efficient...
a year ago
Some fields of endeavor continue to narrow down the unknown, in search of the recipe, the efficient method of industry. And others live on Feynman’s expanding frontier of ignorance, where each closed door leads to several newly opened ones. That’s a fundamental choice in our...
Seth's Blog
Jargon comes and goes
Forty years ago in engineering class, it wasn’t unusual to talk about GIGO or FUBAR. These weren’t...
a year ago
Forty years ago in engineering class, it wasn’t unusual to talk about GIGO or FUBAR. These weren’t technical terms, they were mild complaints that signaled insider status and cultural cohesion. In a closed profession, like airplane pilots, the insider jargon lasts for...
Seth's Blog
Professionals are consistent
Authenticity is for amateurs. We want the surgeon, the broadcaster or the musician to show up fully,...
3 months ago
Authenticity is for amateurs. We want the surgeon, the broadcaster or the musician to show up fully, as the best version of themselves. We know you might be tired from an overnight shift, and authentically feel like phoning it in, but hey, this is the only aorta I’ve got, and I’d...
Marian's Blog
3D printed model of my neighborhood
I 3D printed a model of the street where I live. This post will explain how I prepared the data for...
over a year ago
I 3D printed a model of the street where I live. This post will explain how I prepared the data for it.
Update: I have now automated the entire process and published my code. You can find it here.
I worked with aerial Lidar data that is provided by the state I live in to download...
Seth's Blog
Kazoo lessons
Knowledge and technique used to be closely guarded secrets. Admission to the guild was reserved for...
5 months ago
Knowledge and technique used to be closely guarded secrets. Admission to the guild was reserved for a few, and crafts like typesetting, plumbing and medicine were off limits to most folks. One of the reasons for the explosion in productivity and innovation in the last century is...
Anarchy Unfolds
The big picture, AI, chemophobia, rocket mass heaters
Green Gatherings #1
2 months ago
Open Culture
20 Mesmerizing Videos of Japanese Artisans Creating Traditional Handicrafts
In Japanese “tewaza” means “hand technique” or “handcraft” and, in this YouTube playlist of 20 short...
3 months ago
In Japanese “tewaza” means “hand technique” or “handcraft” and, in this YouTube playlist of 20 short films, various artisanal techniques are explored and demonstrated by Japanese masters in the field. For those who are both obsessed with Japanese art and watching things get made,...
Seth's Blog
The leap
In action movies, there’s a lot of leaping. Brave shifts in which the hero gets from here to there,...
9 months ago
In action movies, there’s a lot of leaping. Brave shifts in which the hero gets from here to there, all at once. It’s easy to imagine that sudden leaps are how we make our impact. This is blog post #9000 (give or take). When did the leap happen? It wasn’t an external leap. The...
The Great Discontent...
Ophelia Chong
Ophelia Chong has had a long and storied career in photography, art, and creative direction that...
a year ago
Ophelia Chong has had a long and storied career in photography, art, and creative direction that spans from magazines and music labels to film festivals and book publishing. When a family member’s medicinal marijuana use inspired her to dip her toes into the world of weed, Chong...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Anita Klein
Hi, I am a painter and printmaker working in London and Italy.
Describe your printmaking process.
I...
a year ago
Hi, I am a painter and printmaker working in London and Italy.
Describe your printmaking process.
I use almost all printmaking processes and choose between techniques depending on the type of mark that suits the picture I want to make. At the moment I am mostly working in...
Anarchy Unfolds
May '24 Myths & Recs
Biden, Kurzgesagt, 90s Christian bands, and more
6 months ago
Biden, Kurzgesagt, 90s Christian bands, and more
Seth's Blog
True/useful
Here’s a simple grid that might change the way you think about internal stories: When we believe in...
a year ago
Here’s a simple grid that might change the way you think about internal stories: When we believe in something that’s useful but not true, it can serve a helpful purpose. The tooth fairy, perhaps. When we act on something that’s useful and also true, we’ve found a resilient path...
Anarchy Unfolds
The Weariness of Work
Why I've been away; why I'm anti-work as well as pro-labor
7 months ago
Why I've been away; why I'm anti-work as well as pro-labor
Open Culture
How Sci-Fi Writers Isaac Asimov & Robert Heinlein Contributed to the War Effort During World War II
Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague De Camp at the Navy Yard in 1944 Robert Heinlein was...
6 months ago
Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague De Camp at the Navy Yard in 1944 Robert Heinlein was born in 1907, which put him on the mature side by the time of the United States’ entry into World War II. Isaac Asimov, his younger colleague in science fiction, was born in 1920 (or...
Seth's Blog
Better pockets
Every coat needs better pockets. There are categories of products or services where there’s a...
3 months ago
Every coat needs better pockets. There are categories of products or services where there’s a universal area for improvement. When in doubt, make the pockets better. The interesting work is in realizing that you might offer a product or service where there are non-universal...
Seth's Blog
“But what if I’m wrong?
If we’re going to come together and invest the time in conversation, in research or in analysis, we...
8 months ago
If we’re going to come together and invest the time in conversation, in research or in analysis, we should begin by understanding what would be required for you or I to change our minds. If you’re not willing to consider that you’re wrong, then, in the words of a Dan Dennett,...
Seth's Blog
No thank you
Failing to acknowledge a favor or a courtesy is a triple mistake, and it’s becoming more common....
a year ago
Failing to acknowledge a favor or a courtesy is a triple mistake, and it’s becoming more common. ChatGPT is now promoting the idea that it can write a thank you note for you, and a text is a lot easier than a handwritten note, and yet, the level of ‘thank you’ seems to be...
Open Culture
Ancient Egyptian Pyramids May Have Been Built with Water: A New Study Explore the Use of Hydraulic...
Image by Charles Sharp, via Wikimedia Commons The compelling but less-than-straightforward question...
4 months ago
Image by Charles Sharp, via Wikimedia Commons The compelling but less-than-straightforward question of how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids has inspired all manner of theory and speculation, grounded to varying degrees in physical reality. Sheer manpower must have played...
Seth's Blog
On being missed
Some friends moved away, and the cake at the party read, “We’ll miss you.” Perhaps it would have...
a year ago
Some friends moved away, and the cake at the party read, “We’ll miss you.” Perhaps it would have been more accurate for it to say, “You’ll miss us.” Because, after all, what’s mostly being missed is the community of friends and neighbors. Even when someone moves away, the...
Seth's Blog
The challenge of N + 1
“Just a little more,” might be a useful way to self motivate, until it isn’t. N + 1 pushes us to win...
7 months ago
“Just a little more,” might be a useful way to self motivate, until it isn’t. N + 1 pushes us to win every race, every argument, every bank balance competition. Sometimes this is simply a self challenge, not designed to hurt others, but the problem with never being satisfied is...
Open Culture
The First Professional Footage of Pink Floyd Gets Captured in a 1967 Documentary (and the Band Also...
British filmmaker and novelist Peter Whitehead has been credited with inventing the music video with...
7 months ago
British filmmaker and novelist Peter Whitehead has been credited with inventing the music video with his promo films for the Rolling Stones in the mid-60s. According to Ali Catterall and Simon Wells, authors of Your Face Here, a study of “British Cult Film since the Sixties,”...
Seth's Blog
Who do you want to become?
Emotional enrollment is at the heart of performance, learning and connection. A coach can quickly...
2 months ago
Emotional enrollment is at the heart of performance, learning and connection. A coach can quickly tell when someone is committed to changing their approach in order to change the outcome–it’s easy to tell this person apart from someone who simply wants what they’re already doing...
Seth's Blog
Practical approaches for more effective teamwork
Give credit, take responsibility Get aligned on timeframes Insist on a spec, write one, improve it...
3 months ago
Give credit, take responsibility Get aligned on timeframes Insist on a spec, write one, improve it Agree on a budget Keep a calendar Don’t hold a grudge Speak up clearly and generously Show your work Share your fears Make promises and keep them Do the reading Talk about people...
On the Arts
Generative AI and the Falling Costs of Art Creation
For individual creators on a budget, the future is bright.
11 months ago
For individual creators on a budget, the future is bright.
Open Culture
George Orwell’s Political Views, Explained in His Own Words
Among modern-day liberals and conservatives alike, George Orwell enjoys practically sainted status....
7 months ago
Among modern-day liberals and conservatives alike, George Orwell enjoys practically sainted status. And indeed, throughout his body of work, including but certainly not limited to his oft-assigned novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, one can find numerous implicitly or...
Open Culture
Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Devil’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Manuscript in the World
Bargain with the devil and you may wind up with a golden fiddle, supernatural guitar-playing...
6 months ago
Bargain with the devil and you may wind up with a golden fiddle, supernatural guitar-playing ability, or a room full of gleaming alchemized straw. Whoops, we misattributed that last one. It’s actually Rumpelstiltskin’s doing, but the by-morning-or-else deadline that drives the...
Marian's Blog
Designing a Lego orrery
I've always been a fan of the Lego Technic series, especially those models that have gears and...
6 months ago
I've always been a fan of the Lego Technic series, especially those models that have gears and cranks and moving parts.
But it seems that Lego is shifting the focus of the Technic series away from functional models, so I had to take matters into my own hands.
I think an orrery is...
Seth's Blog
“Please create more tension”
This rarely comes up in focus group data. It doesn’t come up when a school talks to students, or a...
2 months ago
This rarely comes up in focus group data. It doesn’t come up when a school talks to students, or a conductor asks the orchestra. It doesn’t come up when the gym owner surveys potential members or when a chef or playwright thinks about building something new. But of course, that’s...
Open Culture
The Page That Changed Comics Forever: Discover the Innovative 1950s Comic Book That Almost Went...
If you grew up reading American comic books during the second half of the twentieth century, you’ll...
5 months ago
If you grew up reading American comic books during the second half of the twentieth century, you’ll be familiar with the seal of the Comics Code Authority. I remember seeing it stamped onto the upper-right corner of issues of titles from The Amazing Spider-Man to reprints of Carl...
Open Culture
The Evolution of Cinema: Watch Nearly 140 Years of Film History Unfold in 80 Minutes
The video above from YouTuber Alex Day includes clips from about 500 movies, and you’ve almost...
a month ago
The video above from YouTuber Alex Day includes clips from about 500 movies, and you’ve almost certainly seen more than a few of them. Battleship Potemkin, Dumbo, Rear Window, Dr. No, The Godfather, E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Top Gun, Braveheart, Gladiator, Inception: we’re not...
Open Culture
Solving a 2,500-Year-Old Puzzle: How a Cambridge Student Cracked an Ancient Sanskrit Code
If you find yourself grappling with an intellectual problem that’s gone unsolved for millennia, try...
3 months ago
If you find yourself grappling with an intellectual problem that’s gone unsolved for millennia, try taking a few months off and spending them on activities like swimming and meditating. That very strategy worked for a Cambridge PhD student named Rishi Rajpopat, who, after a...
Seth's Blog
Focusing attention is a skill
Where we choose to direct our gaze determines not only what we learn or believe, but how we choose...
a year ago
Where we choose to direct our gaze determines not only what we learn or believe, but how we choose to see the world. Typing is a skill. Juggling is a skill. So is project management. It’s easy to overlook the fact that we can get better at what we think about, create and consume....
cabel.com
Marching Age
This is a short story about something delightful. In 2014, I did a bunch of music for my friends...
12 months ago
This is a short story about something delightful. In 2014, I did a bunch of music for my friends Neven Mrgan and Matt Comi who were making an incredible iOS game called Space Age. I had never written that much music in my life, and it was incredibly fun for me in every way. (You...
Seth's Blog
Pavlonian coincidence
There are two kinds of coincidences. The first is the one that we often talk about. It’s the...
a year ago
There are two kinds of coincidences. The first is the one that we often talk about. It’s the make-believe magic of two things occurring that we didn’t expect to occur. When you and your long-lost college roommate end up randomly sharing adjacent bowling lanes when you’re...
Open Culture
Is Reality Real?: 8 Scientists Explain Whether We Can Ever Know What Objectively Exists
Ask aloud whether reality is real, and you’re liable to be regarded as never truly having left the...
6 months ago
Ask aloud whether reality is real, and you’re liable to be regarded as never truly having left the freshman dorm. But that question has received, and continues to receive, consideration from actual scientists. The Big Think video above assembles seven of them to explain how they...
Open Culture
A 5‑Hour Journey Through North Korean Entertainment: Propaganda Films, Kids’ Cartoons, Sketch Comedy...
Over the second half of the twentieth century, South Korea became rich, and in the first decades of...
7 months ago
Over the second half of the twentieth century, South Korea became rich, and in the first decades of the twenty-first, it’s become a global cultural superpower. The same can’t be said for North Korea: after a relatively strong start in the nineteen-fifties and sixties, its economy...
Seth's Blog
The network scam
Lana Swartz coined this term in her breakthrough paper on crypto. A scam always involves a...
a year ago
Lana Swartz coined this term in her breakthrough paper on crypto. A scam always involves a transaction. In the traditional fraud, the scammer tells a lie and the buyer, either with or without diligence, believes it and loses everything. You buy the magic beans, but they don’t...
Seth's Blog
Manipulation, indoctrination and addiction
They’re often related. It’s not unusual for someone to have more experience or knowledge than we do....
7 months ago
They’re often related. It’s not unusual for someone to have more experience or knowledge than we do. If they use that knowledge to their benefit, not ours, they might be manipulating us. If we knew what they knew, we wouldn’t have gone along. This is the difference between a...
Open Culture
The Long Game of Creativity: If You Haven’t Created a Masterpiece at 30, You’re Not a Failure
Orson Welles directed the greatest movie ever made, Citizen Kane, at age 25, with only a limited...
4 months ago
Orson Welles directed the greatest movie ever made, Citizen Kane, at age 25, with only a limited knowledge of the medium. When Paul McCartney was 25, he, along with his fellow Beatles, released the era-defining album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. By age 29, Pablo Picasso...
Seth's Blog
Facing the future
The Tofflers explained that Future Shock kicks in when the world changes faster than we’re ready...
2 months ago
The Tofflers explained that Future Shock kicks in when the world changes faster than we’re ready for. We react instead of respond, and often shut down in the face of too much of the new. When our world changes (and it always does, more now than ever) we have four choices. And...
Open Culture
Death: A Free Online Philosophy Course from Yale Helps You Grapple with the Inescapable
It pays to think intelligently about the inevitable. And this course taught by Yale professor Shelly...
3 months ago
It pays to think intelligently about the inevitable. And this course taught by Yale professor Shelly Kagan does just that, taking a rich, philosophical look at death. Here’s how the course description reads: There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to...
Open Culture
Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entirety by Benedict Cumberbatch, Tilda Swinton, John Waters, Stephen Fry...
Image of Moby Dick by David Austen. In 2013, Plymouth University kicked off Moby Dick The Big Read,...
2 months ago
Image of Moby Dick by David Austen. In 2013, Plymouth University kicked off Moby Dick The Big Read, promising a full audiobook of Herman Melville’s influential novel, with famous (and not so famous) voices taking on a chapter each. When we first wrote about it here, only six...
Open Culture
Isaac Asimov Predicts the Future of Online Education in 1988–and It’s Now Coming True
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Though that line probably originated...
7 months ago
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Though that line probably originated with a Canadian novelist called Grant Allen, it’s long been popularly attributed to his more colorful nineteenth-century contemporary Mark Twain. It isn’t hard to understand why it...
Seth's Blog
There are no stupid mistakes
There are mistakes. These are moments when reality teaches us something. And there’s stupid. This is...
a year ago
There are mistakes. These are moments when reality teaches us something. And there’s stupid. This is what happens when we refuse to learn from our mistakes. “Don’t be stupid” is a fine mantra. It’s particularly apt when talking about cultural forces, political agendas and our...
Seth's Blog
Long-term selfish
Everyone is selfish. We do things that increase our chances of survival, help us achieve our goals...
4 months ago
Everyone is selfish. We do things that increase our chances of survival, help us achieve our goals and give us a story we can tell ourselves about our role in the community. But short-term selfish is something we try to grow out of. Short-term selfish runs a red light because...
Ian Betteridge
Ten Blue Links, “stoically facing the end times” edition
1. When is AI coding not AI coding? You might have heard something about how Google now creates a...
a month ago
1. When is AI coding not AI coding? You might have heard something about how Google now creates a quarter of its code using AI. But as with most things concerning everyone’s favourite hot tech, the devil is in the details. And the details, according to this poster on Hacker News,...
Seth's Blog
The challenge of “a risky scheme”
New ideas aren’t adopted all at once. A few people go first while the rest of us watch to see how it...
4 months ago
New ideas aren’t adopted all at once. A few people go first while the rest of us watch to see how it goes. “Look, Mikey, he likes it!” This is the story of tech innovations, dance crazes and even food. Ideas spread horizontally, and people who prefer the status quo will embrace...
Anarchy Unfolds
May all roads lead to solarpunk
Letters to an anarchist - Part 8
3 weeks ago
Letters to an anarchist - Part 8
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Jessie de Salis
I am Jessie de Salis. I run a screen printing textile business with my cousin, Alice. We print...
4 months ago
I am Jessie de Salis. I run a screen printing textile business with my cousin, Alice. We print colourful patterned fabrics from a Somerset barn, a space we share with the sparrows and house-martins.
What inspires you?
I love bold and bright design. I always seem to come back to...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Pia Bramley
I’m an artist, illustrator and printmaker. Having left London after a decade of city life I now live...
a year ago
I’m an artist, illustrator and printmaker. Having left London after a decade of city life I now live and work in The New Forest, squeezing in drawing and printing around caring for a three year old.
How and where did you learn to print?
I did my foundation at KIAD (formerly...
Open Culture
Jimi Hendrix Arrives in London in 1966, Asks to Get Onstage with Cream, and Blows Eric Clapton Away:...
Jimi Hendrix arrived on the London scene like a ton of bricks in 1966, smashing every British blues...
4 months ago
Jimi Hendrix arrived on the London scene like a ton of bricks in 1966, smashing every British blues guitarist to pieces the instant they saw him play. As vocalist Terry Reid tells it, when Hendrix played his first showcase at the Bag O’Nails, arranged by Animals’ bassist Chas...
Blog - Mac Pierce
Back into the FE-AL: Iron Pour at Sculpture Trails Indiana
In which I detail the process of making a cannonball by participating at a
very unique iron...
over a year ago
In which I detail the process of making a cannonball by participating at a
very unique iron casting event.
Seth's Blog
The maverick and the status quo
The future isn’t the same as the past. Technology develops, systems change and most of all, someone...
a year ago
The future isn’t the same as the past. Technology develops, systems change and most of all, someone cares enough to make things better. The maverick isn’t the selfish gunslinger of myth. In fact, she’s focused on resilient, useful interactions that change what we expect, pushing...
Seth's Blog
Assume lack of context
The person you’re working with might not know what you know, might not see what you see. It’s...
6 months ago
The person you’re working with might not know what you know, might not see what you see. It’s tempting to begin where we are. But it’s more useful to begin where they are.
Seth's Blog
The fame/trust inversion
A generation ago, the Generals ruled. General Motors, General Foods, General Mills, General...
4 days ago
A generation ago, the Generals ruled. General Motors, General Foods, General Mills, General Dynamics… they were big, and they had a lot to lose. As a result, people trusted them to show up and keep their promises–it just wasn’t worth letting a few people down at the risk of their...
Seth's Blog
Dreams and roadblocks
The first step is to imagine what the people you serve want and care about it. The second is to...
a year ago
The first step is to imagine what the people you serve want and care about it. The second is to figure out why they don’t have it yet. If you can help people get to where they seek to go, when they’re ready to get there, the stuff called marketing gets significantly easier.
Seth's Blog
Launching GOODBIDS
Over the next few days, I’m going to feature a new project we launched today. A small and mighty...
8 months ago
Over the next few days, I’m going to feature a new project we launched today. A small and mighty team has been working on this for a year. I want to share the highlights along with some of the critical design choices we made along the way Each year, charities in the US raise...
The Great Discontent...
Brad Montague
Brad Montague is an illustrator, speaker, picture book author, video creator, and all-around maker....
3 months ago
Brad Montague is an illustrator, speaker, picture book author, video creator, and all-around maker. He’s a self-proclaimed dreamer and doer. Above all, he’s a storyteller, “working to create a better world for kids with kids” through Montague Workshop, the creative studio he runs...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Creatively Bridge
Hello! I’m Bridget. I'm a part time printmaker based on the south coast in Chichester. My love for...
a year ago
Hello! I’m Bridget. I'm a part time printmaker based on the south coast in Chichester. My love for printmaking was born in the print rooms of Bath School of Art and Design where I studied Graphic Communication. This is where I first got a taste for Screen Printing, Linocut,...
Seth's Blog
The new way of work
Amazon is the last one. They are probably the last huge company where hundreds of thousands of...
a year ago
Amazon is the last one. They are probably the last huge company where hundreds of thousands of people will be surveilled, measured and ordered to follow the rule book. The pandemic didn’t create distributed work, the laptop did. Human interaction is critical, but the office isn’t...
Seth's Blog
High fidelity
It might be the high fidelity of a good LP on a great turntable. It sounds just like the original...
a year ago
It might be the high fidelity of a good LP on a great turntable. It sounds just like the original recording. It might be the high fidelity of loyalty. No shopping around for a momentarily better deal. It might be the high fidelity of genre. This is just what you hoped it would...
Seth's Blog
Promo creep
Hustle harder. Run more ads. Spam people. Interrupt. Make the logo bigger. Post again. Post again....
a year ago
Hustle harder. Run more ads. Spam people. Interrupt. Make the logo bigger. Post again. Post again. Add more blurbs. Push the press release to irrelevant people. Do one more ad. Use AI to create faux intimacy. Get the word out. Burn trust. Get more attention. In the last forty...
Seth's Blog
The clamp and the mallet
While building a project, I found that a key part was stuck. I tapped it with a mallet, then harder,...
a year ago
While building a project, I found that a key part was stuck. I tapped it with a mallet, then harder, and eventually whacked at it. No luck. Then I got smart and put three clamps around the part, gently turning each one, increasing the pressure, until it simply popped out....
Seth's Blog
Yes, but how does it work?
I worked with Arthur C. Clarke at the very beginning of my career. He’s most famous for saying, “Any...
2 months ago
I worked with Arthur C. Clarke at the very beginning of my career. He’s most famous for saying, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Magic isn’t such a bad thing. And we certainly have plenty of advanced technology around. Advanced in the sense...
Open Culture
Medieval Cats Behaving Badly: Kitties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Century Manuscripts
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” –Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808–90) When...
7 months ago
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” –Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808–90) When Emir O. Filipovic, a medievalist at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, visited the State Archives of Dubrovnik, he stumbled upon something that will hardly surprise...
Infinite Scroll
Weekly Scroll: Suckered Yet Again
Influencer boxing, BlueSky winning, and incredible calendar confessions
a month ago
Influencer boxing, BlueSky winning, and incredible calendar confessions
Seth's Blog
Holding on for dear life
That’s a cliche from the movies. Dangling from a railroad bridge, only determination and firm grip...
9 months ago
That’s a cliche from the movies. Dangling from a railroad bridge, only determination and firm grip can save the hero. In our modern world, we often end up holding on to ideas, to grievances or to our view of the world. Ironically, the harder we hold on to the things we’re hiding...
Seth's Blog
Tricked (again)
If you knew then what you know now, would you have made the same decision? In the last fifty years,...
a year ago
If you knew then what you know now, would you have made the same decision? In the last fifty years, more than 25,000,000 Americans have died prematurely due to cigarette smoking. Worldwide, it’s significantly higher. That’s fifty times as many U.S. citizens as died in World War...
Seth's Blog
What do we owe the future?
You are someone’s ancestor. Most immediately, you are the ancestor of the you of tomorrow. That’s...
a month ago
You are someone’s ancestor. Most immediately, you are the ancestor of the you of tomorrow. That’s why we don’t spend every penny in our bank account, why we put leftovers in the fridge, why we earn a degree–it’s a gift to the you of tomorrow. Each of us have a way of thinking...
escape the algorithm
love letters to places i'll never meet
a spooky digital seance
a year ago
Open Culture
How Well Does Medieval Armor Actually Stand Up to Medieval Arrows?: A Historical Re-Creation Lets...
The popular image of the medieval suit of armor looks formidable enough that any of us could be...
6 months ago
The popular image of the medieval suit of armor looks formidable enough that any of us could be forgiven for assuming that, with its steel-plated protection, we’d emerge from even the most harrowing battle without a scratch. Yet if we really found ourselves transported to, say,...
Open Culture
How Art Gets Stolen: What Happened to Egon Schiele’s Painting Boats Mirrored in the Water After Its...
George Clooney may be better regarded as an actor than as a director, but his occasional work in the...
2 months ago
George Clooney may be better regarded as an actor than as a director, but his occasional work in the latter capacity reveals an admirable interest in lesser-dramatized chapters of American history. His films have found their material in everything from the early years of the NFL...
The Last...
Real Men Want To Drink Guinness, But Don't Expect Them To Pay For It
the reason the bubbles go down is because of the drag created by the bubbles rising up the center. ...
over a year ago
the reason the bubbles go down is because of the drag created by the bubbles rising up the center.
yeah, like a metaphor.
"The choices we make reveal the true nature of our character."
Yeah, we're sheep. Message received. That wasn't the message? Are you...
Open Culture
Stephen King Names His Five Favorite Works by Stephen King
Stephen King has no doubt forgotten writing more books than most of us will ever publish. But even...
6 months ago
Stephen King has no doubt forgotten writing more books than most of us will ever publish. But even now, in his prolific “late career,” if you ask him to name his own most favored works, he can do it without hesitation. Stephen Colbert tried that out a few years ago on The Late...
Seth's Blog
Stumbling in the dark
Learning is complicated. While we’re doing it, it’s easy to imagine that those around us are...
11 months ago
Learning is complicated. While we’re doing it, it’s easy to imagine that those around us are completely sure of themselves, moving forward in a well-lit space. In fact, if you visit a growing company, a useful school or anywhere that growth is happening, you’ll quickly see that...
Seth's Blog
Understanding free software
A cup of coffee costs far more than a glass of water. That’s true even though we can’t live without...
10 months ago
A cup of coffee costs far more than a glass of water. That’s true even though we can’t live without water. (Most) people can live without coffee. It’s true even though creating the infrastructure to purify and deliver clean water costs billions of dollars. The critical reason for...
Infinite Scroll
How Gay Marriage Ruined Democratic Activism
The end of Moral Triumphalism
2 weeks ago
The end of Moral Triumphalism
Seth's Blog
Getting it right the first time
How unlikely is this? The artist who paints a masterpiece, from scratch, without hesitation. The...
a year ago
How unlikely is this? The artist who paints a masterpiece, from scratch, without hesitation. The playwright who doesn’t need a workshop or a reading. The architect who designs a food hall that has a layout and vibe that works without one alteration… Evolution is powerful. It...
Seth's Blog
I’ve been doing it wrong all along
This is one of the great benefits of learning. It’s also a common challenge. When we get better at...
a year ago
This is one of the great benefits of learning. It’s also a common challenge. When we get better at something, it is preceded by a moment of incompetence. In that moment, we’re not exactly sure how to do it better, but we realize that the way we’d been doing it wasn’t nearly as...
Seth's Blog
Cheating at golf
Someone who cheats at a friendly game of golf when nothing much is at stake–how can you possibly...
a year ago
Someone who cheats at a friendly game of golf when nothing much is at stake–how can you possibly trust them with something important? And yet, organizations and individuals “cheat at golf” all the time. They put clever clauses in the fine print. Spam a media list. Conceal the...
Open Culture
The Wisdom of Alan Watts in 4 Mind-Expanding Animations
Perhaps no single person did more to popularize Zen Buddhism in the West than Alan Watts. In a...
2 months ago
Perhaps no single person did more to popularize Zen Buddhism in the West than Alan Watts. In a sense, Watts prepared U.S. culture for more traditionally Zen teachers like Soto priest Suzuki Roshi, whose lineage continues today, but Watts did not consider himself a Zen Buddhist....
Open Culture
Watch the Earliest-Known Charles Dickens Film: The Death of Poor Joe
A little over a decade ago, a curator at the British Film Institute (BFI) discovered the oldest...
6 months ago
A little over a decade ago, a curator at the British Film Institute (BFI) discovered the oldest surviving film featuring a Charles Dickens character, “The Death of Poor Joe.” The silent film, directed by George Albert Smith in 1900, brings to life Dickens’ character Jo, the...
Seth's Blog
The strategy sessions
I’m workshopping a new book. For the last few months, I’ve been feverishly writing a book about...
7 months ago
I’m workshopping a new book. For the last few months, I’ve been feverishly writing a book about strategy. Strategy for individuals, small organizations and large ones as well. Strategy for someone seeking to make a difference, and strategy for people who do projects. Starting...
Seth's Blog
How many sparks?
That’s the tempting question. How much hustle, hoopla and initiative do we need to get this idea...
a week ago
That’s the tempting question. How much hustle, hoopla and initiative do we need to get this idea ignited in the marketplace… But the much better question is: How much kindling do we have? Kindling doesn’t happen all at once. It’s the result of investments over time. We can earn...
Seth's Blog
What does reality look like?
Not what we see when we’re present, but what do we see when we imagine we’re present? In the early...
7 months ago
Not what we see when we’re present, but what do we see when we imagine we’re present? In the early days of photography, the world was black and white, and sort of flat. It’s worth noting that no one who saw these pictures complained about the fact that they didn’t exactly match...
Open Culture
Behold the Oldest Written Text in the World: The Kish Tablet, Circa 3500 BC
Image by José-Manuel Benito, via Wikimedia Commons Some refer to the written Chinese language as...
a month ago
Image by José-Manuel Benito, via Wikimedia Commons Some refer to the written Chinese language as ideographic: that is, structured according to a system in which each symbol represents a particular idea or concept, whether abstract or concrete. That’s true of certain Chinese...
Open Culture
Ancient Greek Armor Gets Tested in an 11-Hour Battle Simulation Inspired by the Iliad
By Greek law, every male citizen over the age of eighteen must spend from nine months to a year in...
6 months ago
By Greek law, every male citizen over the age of eighteen must spend from nine months to a year in the Hellenic Armed Forces. As in every country with such a policy of mandatory conscription, this is surely not a prospect relished by most conscripts-to-be. But then, it can’t be...
Handprinted - Blog
Creating Cyanotypes using the Speedball UV Lamp
Cyanotypes are made using a light sensitive solution to create designs on fabric and paper. Prints...
a year ago
Cyanotypes are made using a light sensitive solution to create designs on fabric and paper. Prints are typically created using direct sunlight. Unfortunately here in the UK, sunshine is often in short supply! But we have discovered a work around using the Speedball UV Lamp, a...
Ian Betteridge
Ten Blue Links, “I’m sorry about the politics” edition
1. The Reach saga rumbles on I’ve banged on about the parlous strategy of Reach plc before, but the...
a month ago
1. The Reach saga rumbles on I’ve banged on about the parlous strategy of Reach plc before, but the departures from its senior editorial ranks will continue to make a bad strategy worse. What makes this situation more difficult for the company is its board, which is free of any...
Handprinted - Blog
Inking Methods for Etching
Once you've made an etching plate, you may be ready to print an edition - or you might want to proof...
a month ago
Once you've made an etching plate, you may be ready to print an edition - or you might want to proof it to decide on further edits. Taking a print is the only way you’ll be able to see how your plate is progressing.
This blog is part of a series featuring tips and techniques to...
Seth's Blog
Are you pitching or are you asking?
There are two easy ways to tell: First, if you have a script or a highlighted goal in mind, you’re...
6 months ago
There are two easy ways to tell: First, if you have a script or a highlighted goal in mind, you’re pitching. You’re simply asking questions to create connection, tension or forward motion. Second, if you’re willing to learn and change your point of view as a result of the...
Seth's Blog
Redefining a profession
Pharmacists used to mix chemicals by hand to create prescriptions. Opticians used to grind lenses...
3 months ago
Pharmacists used to mix chemicals by hand to create prescriptions. Opticians used to grind lenses from scratch. Lawyers used to start with an empty page. Graphic designers needed to know how to draw. All of these jobs are still important. None of them are the same as they were...
Seth's Blog
Make or buy?
If you’re a writer, it probably doesn’t pay to chop down trees and make your own paper, or even to...
10 months ago
If you’re a writer, it probably doesn’t pay to chop down trees and make your own paper, or even to set up a little machine shop to make your own pens. That’s pretty obvious. Should the smoothie shop make its own almond milk? It’s pretty clear that Starbucks should have a team of...
Handprinted - Blog
Screen Printing with Permaset Puff Paste
Puff Paste is a great way to add a little something extra to your fabric prints! It adds depth and...
over a year ago
Puff Paste is a great way to add a little something extra to your fabric prints! It adds depth and texture and is so much fun to use. In this project, we have exposed a screen and used it to print with Puff Paste onto a tote bag:
Half-fill the coating trough with photo emulsion....
Open Culture
What is Electronic Music?: Pioneering Electronic Musician Daphne Oram Explains (1969)
Survey the British public about the most important institution to arise in their country after World...
4 months ago
Survey the British public about the most important institution to arise in their country after World War II, and a lot of respondents are going to say the National Health Service. But keep asking around, and you’ll sooner or later encounter a few serious electronic-music...
Seth's Blog
“But what if it doesn’t work?”
The best way to win a short-term game is to bet it all on one strategy. Someone is going to get...
a year ago
The best way to win a short-term game is to bet it all on one strategy. Someone is going to get lucky and it might be you. But we rarely thrive in the long run if we persist in playing a series of short-term games. Instead, organizations, individuals and teams do better when they...
Seth's Blog
Two chicken jokes
“Why did the chicken cross the road” tells us a bit about jokes. It’s a joke about jokes. The first...
10 months ago
“Why did the chicken cross the road” tells us a bit about jokes. It’s a joke about jokes. The first half is a setup, reminding us that an absurd question creates tension, which is then relieved by the punchline. But the second half undoes this by refusing to release the tension....
Blog - Mac Pierce
Readymade Thermal Obfuscation - A few quick tests with a consumer product.
Using the Ikea FREKVENS Raincoat to hide from thermal imaging.
over a year ago
Using the Ikea FREKVENS Raincoat to hide from thermal imaging.
Seth's Blog
Peer support
Treasure it when you find it. Offer it when you can. One of the greatest joys of being an author is...
a year ago
Treasure it when you find it. Offer it when you can. One of the greatest joys of being an author is the other authors. The game theory would indicate that authors are competitors–there are a scarce number of publishers, of bookshelf slots, of readers. But, being the only author...
Seth's Blog
Survivor bias and the mistake of stability
An asteroid has never destroyed the Earth, therefore an asteroid never will. This brand has been...
a year ago
An asteroid has never destroyed the Earth, therefore an asteroid never will. This brand has been involved in scandals before, and it has always come back stronger, so there’s nothing to worry about. There have been technology changes before, but we’ve always managed to find...
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