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
Nick Cave Narrates an Animated Film about the Cat Piano, the Twisted 18th Century Musical Instrument...
What do you imagine when you hear the phrase “cat piano”? Some kind of whimsical furry beast with...
4 months ago
What do you imagine when you hear the phrase “cat piano”? Some kind of whimsical furry beast with black and white keys for teeth, maybe? A relative of My Neighbor Totoro’s cat bus? Or maybe you picture a piano that contains several caged cats who shriek along an entire scale when...
Seth's Blog
Tom Peters
Tom announced his retirement today, at 80 years old, after 45 years of Excellence and perhaps...
a year ago
Tom announced his retirement today, at 80 years old, after 45 years of Excellence and perhaps 10,000,000 miles flown. I remember a photo of him sleeping on a bench in an airport in Siberia. I remember him holding my young son just before we went on stage in Florida together...
Seth's Blog
Confusion and certainty
When facing a complex problem, it’s easy to become confused. Lately, it’s become socially acceptable...
a year ago
When facing a complex problem, it’s easy to become confused. Lately, it’s become socially acceptable to express your confusion with certainty. Untrained in the field, make a pronouncement that makes it clear that you have not just an understanding of what’s going on, but also...
Open Culture
How Henri Matisse Scandalized the Art Establishment with His Daring Use of Color
Even those of us not particularly well-versed in art history have heard of a painting style called...
2 months ago
Even those of us not particularly well-versed in art history have heard of a painting style called fauvism — and probably have never considered what it has to do with fauve, the French word for a wild beast. In fact, the two have everything to do with one another, at least in the...
Open Culture
4 Franz Kafka Animations: Watch Creative Animated Shorts from Poland, Japan, Russia & Canada
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari thought of Kafka as an international writer, in solidarity with...
7 months ago
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari thought of Kafka as an international writer, in solidarity with minority groups worldwide. Other scholars have characterized his work—and Kafka himself wrote as much—as literature concerned with national identity. Academic debates, however, have...
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.
Stat Significant
Who's the Greatest Actor in Movie History? A Statistical Analysis
Who's the greatest movie actor of all time, and why?
4 months ago
Who's the greatest movie actor of all time, and why?
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
Communications hygiene (and the demise of texting)
Attention is scarce. Decisions are difficult. Searching takes effort. For thirty years, texting has...
11 months ago
Attention is scarce. Decisions are difficult. Searching takes effort. For thirty years, texting has been a powerful medium. It’s the thing that vibrates in our pocket. It promises something urgent, and a reply that’s demanded equally urgently. “I’m running ten minutes late,” is a...
Seth's Blog
Important problems
Some problems are easy to solve, others are difficult, requiring a lot more labor, willpower,...
a month ago
Some problems are easy to solve, others are difficult, requiring a lot more labor, willpower, resources and coordination. Some problems have simple solutions, while others are complex in what it takes to move forward. The trivial problems are fun. They’re simple to solve and...
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...
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
Stephen Fry Explains Why Artificial Intelligence Has a “70% Risk of Killing Us All”
Apart from his comedic, dramatic, and literary endeavors, Stephen Fry is widely known for his avowed...
4 months ago
Apart from his comedic, dramatic, and literary endeavors, Stephen Fry is widely known for his avowed technophilia. He once wrote a column on that theme, “Dork Talk,” for the Guardian, in whose inaugural dispatch he laid out his credentials by claiming to have been the owner of...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Courtney Arnold
Hello! I’m Courtney, a printmaker specialising in linocut. I live in a little town on the edge of...
a month ago
Hello! I’m Courtney, a printmaker specialising in linocut. I live in a little town on the edge of Dartmoor, nestled between moorland, farmland and the exquisite River Dart.
The wonderful flora and fauna of these rugged and beautiful surroundings is my main inspiration. However,...
Handprinted - Blog
Screen Printing with Speedball Night Glo onto Fabric
As Halloween fast approaches, it’s time to get those costumes ready. We think it’s a perfect...
over a year ago
As Halloween fast approaches, it’s time to get those costumes ready. We think it’s a perfect opportunity to try out Speedball Night Glo Fabric Screen Printing Ink! Print glow in the dark Halloween messages, pictures, or even your kids’ spooky drawings onto their own...
The Great Discontent...
Rick Griffith
Rick Griffith is a British-West-Indian designer, collagist, writer, educator, letterpress printer,...
a year ago
Rick Griffith is a British-West-Indian designer, collagist, writer, educator, letterpress printer, and optimist futurist based in Denver, Colorado. He works at the intersection of programming, policy, and production. He co-founded MATTER—a design consultancy,...
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 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...
Seth's Blog
Leprechauns
Is there a rainbow underneath your pot of gold? Sometimes, we get it backwards.
6 months ago
Is there a rainbow underneath your pot of gold? Sometimes, we get it backwards.
Seth's Blog
Take good notes
Facts are important, but facts don’t create learning. Stories do. A story fits into (and changes)...
a month ago
Facts are important, but facts don’t create learning. Stories do. A story fits into (and changes) our understanding of the world. Good teachers are storytellers, and storytellers are teachers. Notes, then, aren’t recitations of facts. They’re story prompts. A good note reminds...
Open Culture
Google Launches a New Course Called “AI Essentials”: Learn How to Use Generative AI Tools to...
This week, Google announced the launch of Google AI Essentials, a new self-paced course designed to...
7 months ago
This week, Google announced the launch of Google AI Essentials, a new self-paced course designed to help people learn AI skills that can boost their productivity. Taught by Google’s AI experts, and assuming no prior knowledge of programming, the course ventures to show students...
Seth's Blog
“What’s next?”
The way we think about our priorities makes a huge difference. Leaders of every stripe make one...
a year ago
The way we think about our priorities makes a huge difference. Leaders of every stripe make one thing more than any other: decisions. In any environment with constraints (which is, actually, any environment), the decisions about time and resources–about what to do next–change...
Open Culture
The Origins of Anime: Watch Early Japanese Animations (1917 to 1931)
Japanese animation, AKA anime, might be filled with large-eyed maidens, way cool robots, and...
8 months ago
Japanese animation, AKA anime, might be filled with large-eyed maidens, way cool robots, and large-eyed, way cool maiden/robot hybrids, but it often shows a level of daring, complexity and creativity not typically found in American mainstream animation. And the form has spawned...
Seth's Blog
Unfettered
That’s unlikely. You’re rarely going to get the freedom and resources to do your best work...
a year ago
That’s unlikely. You’re rarely going to get the freedom and resources to do your best work unfettered. The hard part (and the opportunity) is to figure out how to get comfortable with fettered. Because fettered is what’s on offer. Boundaries and scarcity aren’t simply...
Seth's Blog
Grandiosity as a form of hiding
A business that says its mission is to, “reinvent local commerce to better serve our customers and...
a year ago
A business that says its mission is to, “reinvent local commerce to better serve our customers and neighborhoods,” can spend a lot of time doing not much of anything before they realize that they’re not actually creating value. A non-profit that seeks to create “fairness and...
Seth's Blog
Later or now?
When we feel like doing something selfish, indulgent, hurtful or short-term, we can simply decide to...
9 months ago
When we feel like doing something selfish, indulgent, hurtful or short-term, we can simply decide to do it later. And when it occurs to us that we might be able to make a useful contribution or do something important, perhaps we could do it now.
Seth's Blog
2 + 2
Arguments about taste are more common than ever before. The long tail makes it easy to find what you...
7 months ago
Arguments about taste are more common than ever before. The long tail makes it easy to find what you like, and to talk about what you don’t. There’s no accounting for taste, and that’s a good thing. Because taste is useful. Flopping the toilet paper under or over the roll,...
Seth's Blog
The lonely zone
For many, the goal is to be the deciding vote, the donation that gets a cause over the goal, the...
a year ago
For many, the goal is to be the deciding vote, the donation that gets a cause over the goal, the person who counts. And often, we enjoy piling on. Once the cause or fashion or tech is clearly working, it’s easy and fun to say “me too.” More rare, more vulnerable and more...
Open Culture
Discover Paul Éluard and Max Ernst’s Still-Bizarre Proto-Surrealist Book Les Malheurs des immortels...
When the names of French poet Paul Éluard and German artist Max Ernst arise, one subject always...
a month ago
When the names of French poet Paul Éluard and German artist Max Ernst arise, one subject always follows: that of their years-long ménage à trois — or rather, “marriage à trois,” as a New York Times article by Annette Grant once put it. It started in 1921, Grant writes, when the...
escape the algorithm
For WIRED: Google's relentless search for answers
I wouldn’t ordinarily email you twice in one week, but I have an essay in WIRED today about Google,...
a year ago
I wouldn’t ordinarily email you twice in one week, but I have an essay in WIRED today about Google, its philosophy of information retrieval, and how its Search history may be a premonition of the future that generative AI is leading us towards.
Stat Significant
What Makes a Movie Hateable? A Statistical Analysis
What makes a movie bad, and what makes a review of a bad movie?
a month ago
What makes a movie bad, and what makes a review of a bad movie?
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
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...
Anarchy Unfolds
Harris/Waltz, tenant unions, Bangladesh, UBI
Red Round-up #1
4 months ago
Seth's Blog
If they know, they should tell us
Asymmetrical information creates real problems. And fixing the flow of useful proxies benefits both...
5 days ago
Asymmetrical information creates real problems. And fixing the flow of useful proxies benefits both sides. Cigarette companies knew a great deal about the addictions they were causing and the illnesses that resulted. If the public had known, they would have made different...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker - Angela Hall
My name is Angela Hall, I’m an artist and silkscreen printer based in North Yorkshire, and I have...
8 months ago
My name is Angela Hall, I’m an artist and silkscreen printer based in North Yorkshire, and I have been making and selling my limited-edition prints for the last 5 years from my studio, specialised print events and regional galleries.
My creative journey started with a degree in...
Open Culture
The Roads of Ancient Rome Visualized in the Style of Modern Subway Maps
Sasha Trubetskoy, formerly an undergrad at U. Chicago, has created a “subway-style diagram of the...
6 months ago
Sasha Trubetskoy, formerly an undergrad at U. Chicago, has created a “subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire of ca. 125 AD.” Drawing on Stanford’s ORBIS model, The Pelagios Project, and the Antonine Itinerary, Trubetskoy’s map combines well-known...
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...
Open Culture
Read the Uncompromising Letter That Steve Albini (RIP) Wrote to Nirvana Before Producing In Utero...
Today, Steve Albini, the musician and producer of important albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey, the Pixies...
7 months ago
Today, Steve Albini, the musician and producer of important albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey, the Pixies and many others, passed away in Chicago, at the all-too-early age of 61. In tribute, we’re bringing you this classic 2013 post from our archive. Journeyman record producer Steve...
Open Culture
Take a Tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, the Mansion That Has Appeared in Blade Runner, Twin...
There are more than a few of us who’d enjoy the opportunity to live in a house that appears in Blade...
2 months ago
There are more than a few of us who’d enjoy the opportunity to live in a house that appears in Blade Runner; there are rather few of us who would value that opportunity at $23 million, the asking price given in the 2019 Architectural Digest video on Frank Lloyd Wright’s 1924...
Seth's Blog
Toward better
In our work to make things better, it’s easy to overlook two things: The best way to make things...
4 weeks ago
In our work to make things better, it’s easy to overlook two things: The best way to make things better is to begin. Create the conditions for others to join you. Persist.
Open Culture
Orson Welles Narrates Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner in an Experimental Film Featuring the...
Around here we subscribe to the theory that there’s no such thing as too much Orson Welles. In years...
2 months ago
Around here we subscribe to the theory that there’s no such thing as too much Orson Welles. In years past, we gave you Welles narrating Plato’s Cave Allegory and Kafka’s “Before the Law,” and, before that, the Welles-narrated parable Freedom River, and the list goes on. Now, we...
Open Culture
Free: Download Over 33,000 Sounds from the BBC Sound Effects Archive
There may be a few young people in Britain today who recognize the name Ludwig Koch, but in the...
2 months ago
There may be a few young people in Britain today who recognize the name Ludwig Koch, but in the nineteen-forties, he constituted something of a cultural phenomenon unto himself. He “started recording sounds and voices in the 1880s when he was still a child” in his native Germany,...
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...
On the Arts
Gore Vidal Was Everywhere and Now He Is Nowhere
The literary afterlife of "...an Augustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and...
a year ago
The literary afterlife of "...an Augustan figure who believed himself to be the last of a breed, and he was probably right."
Seth's Blog
Inverting the vex
Life can be irritating. And sometimes, we can make a choice. The thing that’s vexing you: is it a...
7 months ago
Life can be irritating. And sometimes, we can make a choice. The thing that’s vexing you: is it a situation or a problem? Problems have solutions. If we care enough, we can find a way to solve a problem, but it might cost more money, require more effort or involve more risk than...
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...
Open Culture
James Joyce Picked Drunken Fights, Then Hid Behind Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway seemed to feud with most of the prominent male artists of his time, from Wallace...
6 months ago
Ernest Hemingway seemed to feud with most of the prominent male artists of his time, from Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot to F. Scott Fitzgerald. He had a “very strange relationship” with Orson Welles—the two came to blows at least once—and he reportedly slapped Max Eastman in the...
Seth's Blog
The first draft of your first non-fiction book
Writing a book is good for you. It clarifies your thinking and it’s generous as well. You might not...
4 days ago
Writing a book is good for you. It clarifies your thinking and it’s generous as well. You might not publish it professionally, but sharing it with people you want to teach and lead is a useful practice. The first draft can be challenging. We’re facing a blank page, trying to find...
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
New decisions based on new information
More than ever, we’re pushed to have certainty. Strong opinions, tightly held and loudly proclaimed....
a year ago
More than ever, we’re pushed to have certainty. Strong opinions, tightly held and loudly proclaimed. And then, when reality intervenes, it can be stressful. The software stack, business model, career, candidate, policy, or even the social network habits that we had as part of our...
Seth's Blog
Becoming intentional about virtual meetings
A manual I recently read listed the “cons” of having a meeting virtually: To be accurate, every one...
9 months ago
A manual I recently read listed the “cons” of having a meeting virtually: To be accurate, every one of these points should have “so far” added. The videogame market is far bigger than the box office of Hollywood films. The people who play video games at home for hours at a time...
Anarchy Unfolds
Food Waste is Bad Actually
How we frame the problem makes all the difference
2 weeks ago
How we frame the problem makes all the difference
cabel.com
Firehouse Five and the Cinderella Surprise
My goal was to preserve some never-before-heard recordings of an incredible Dixieland jazz band made...
10 months ago
My goal was to preserve some never-before-heard recordings of an incredible Dixieland jazz band made up of mostly Disney employees, the Firehouse Five Plus Two. But along the way, I accidentally discovered an incredible lost song that was cut from Walt Disney’s Cinderella. And...
Seth's Blog
Modern apologies
The AI driven voice mail system said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you.” Of course, there is no...
3 months ago
The AI driven voice mail system said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you.” Of course, there is no “I” and by most definitions of sorry, it’s not. But it made me feel better. The overworked and slightly bitter front desk person who was the frontline flotsam in a poorly designed...
Stat Significant
Is Music Stardom in Decline? A Statistical Analysis
Is music stardom dying?
a month ago
Seth's Blog
The color-coded wires
Have you ever wondered what the wiring layout behind the control panels at Abbey Road studios was...
8 months ago
Have you ever wondered what the wiring layout behind the control panels at Abbey Road studios was like? Neither have I. The Beatles recorded some of their best work there, and I have no idea if it was a rat’s nest of tangled wires, or if each wire was labeled, coded and perfectly...
Seth's Blog
The Zoom stretch
There are a lot of structural reasons why in-person meetings don’t involve a break every 12 minutes....
4 months ago
There are a lot of structural reasons why in-person meetings don’t involve a break every 12 minutes. It takes too long to stop and start. But those rules don’t apply to Zoom. Screens off! Stand up. We’ll be back in 60 seconds. If it’s not worth coming back, the meeting should...
Seth's Blog
The obligations of the Town Hall
A few hundred years ago, small towns in New England embraced the idea of the town hall. Citizens (at...
7 months ago
A few hundred years ago, small towns in New England embraced the idea of the town hall. Citizens (at the time, just the white men) came together and worked through the town’s agenda. Each person could speak, each person could vote, it was direct and sometimes effective. Part of...
Seth's Blog
Checking the date
After 2022, it’s hard to tell for sure. And going forward, public life is going to be even more...
a year ago
After 2022, it’s hard to tell for sure. And going forward, public life is going to be even more rumor-driven than it is now. Any video, any voiceover, any photograph–we can’t be sure. If YouTube or the Wayback Machine shows us that it happened after 2022, bring some doubt. AI and...
Open Culture
What’s Under London? Discover London’s Forbidden Underworld
When the words London and underground come together, the first thing that comes to most of our...
6 months ago
When the words London and underground come together, the first thing that comes to most of our minds, naturally, is the London Underground. But though it may enjoy the honorable distinction of the world’s first railway to run below the streets, the stalwart Tube is hardly the...
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
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.
Marian's Blog
Computer Vision and Robotics Demo with Raspberry Pi
This spring, I spent some time at SAP’s commercial hackerspace. I wanted to explore how computer...
over a year ago
This spring, I spent some time at SAP’s commercial hackerspace. I wanted to explore how computer vision can be used with embedded devices and robotics. I built a demo that can detect QR codes and similar symbols and point a laser at them. Possible applications of this are putting...
Seth's Blog
Judgment
AI pushes us to do what we actually get paid to do: make decisions. Craft used to drive our hours or...
a year ago
AI pushes us to do what we actually get paid to do: make decisions. Craft used to drive our hours or even days. Get the pen lines just right. Source the Letraset. Get your instrument in tune. Sweat the details, because the details are everything. Now, I can choose from 1,000...
Open Culture
Medievalist Professor Answers Medieval Questions From Twitter: Why Is It called the “Middle” Ages?,...
From Wired comes this: “Professor of English and Medieval Literature Dr. Dorsey Armstrong answers...
6 months ago
From Wired comes this: “Professor of English and Medieval Literature Dr. Dorsey Armstrong answers your questions about the Middle Ages from Twitter. Why is it called the “Middle” Ages? [What did medieval English sound like?] What activities did people do for fun? Why were animals...
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 […]
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
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?
Prolost
Virtual NAB at C4DLive
TLDR;
Hi!
C4DLive is happening this week! Already!
Watch my talk at noon PDT on Thursday, April...
over a year ago
TLDR;
Hi!
C4DLive is happening this week! Already!
Watch my talk at noon PDT on Thursday, April 23! Ask questions!
Buy Cinema 4D, Get Red Giant Complete for 50% Off
Red Giant Complete is free for students and teachers
TGNTR;
If it weren’t for COVID-19, the newly-combined...
Seth's Blog
The paradox of brittle
Optimizing a device or system means squeezing every drop of productivity out of it. In the...
2 months ago
Optimizing a device or system means squeezing every drop of productivity out of it. In the short-run, optimization works as long as the world stays the same. We can optimize a device to work at capacity. However, something working at capacity blows up if you step on the gas when...
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...
Blog - Amy Goodchild
Generating The Alphabet
My current generative artwork-in-progress includes text, but I don’t want to use a font. In browser...
9 months ago
My current generative artwork-in-progress includes text, but I don’t want to use a font. In browser based art work, using a “web safe” font could produce inconsistent results, while including a font file would mean a large file size. Additionally, I don’t want a visual element of...
Open Culture
Watch Patti Smith Read from Virginia Woolf, and Hear the Only Surviving Recording of Woolf’s Voice
In the video above, poet, artist, National Book Award winner, and “godmother of punk” Patti Smith...
6 months ago
In the video above, poet, artist, National Book Award winner, and “godmother of punk” Patti Smith reads a selection from Virginia Woolf’s 1931 experimental novel The Waves, accompanied on piano and guitar by her daughter Jesse and son Jackson. The “reading” marked the opening of...
Open Culture
Hear the Very First Adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984 in a Radio Play Starring David Niven (1949)
Since George Orwell published his landmark political fable 1984, each generation has found ample...
4 months ago
Since George Orwell published his landmark political fable 1984, each generation has found ample reason to make reference to the grim near-future envisioned by the novel. Whether Orwell had some prophetic vision or was simply a very astute reader of the institutions of his...
Handprinted - Blog
Mark Marking - Using Etching Tools
When you’ve degreased and prepared your plate for etching, there are a variety of tools you can use...
a year ago
When you’ve degreased and prepared your plate for etching, there are a variety of tools you can use to mark into the surface. Any marks made into the surface of the grounds will expose your plate to the mordant. When etched, these marks will become sunken areas for ink to sit,...
Seth's Blog
The paradigm flip
Paradigm shifts are appealing but rarely well executed. A paradigm is our mental model of the world....
a year ago
Paradigm shifts are appealing but rarely well executed. A paradigm is our mental model of the world. We’re surrounded by people who share a similar model, and as long as the model is working, we live our lives without thinking much about it. If you lived in a space station, the...
Open Culture
Hear Edgar Allan Poe’s Horror Stories Read by Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, James Earl Jones,...
Here on Halloween of 2024, we have a greater variety of scary stories — and arguably, a much scarier...
a month ago
Here on Halloween of 2024, we have a greater variety of scary stories — and arguably, a much scarier variety of scarier stories — to choose from than ever before. But whatever their relevance to the specific lives we may live and the specific dreads we may feel today, how many...
Seth's Blog
The prevailing conditions
It doesn’t matter how hard you try, you’re not going to change the direction of the wind. That...
4 months ago
It doesn’t matter how hard you try, you’re not going to change the direction of the wind. That doesn’t mean you can’t get good at sailing, though. And yes, if we do try, we can change the conditions in our household, community or workplace. It might feel like wind, but it’s...
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...
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....
Seth's Blog
The leaping curve
The learning curve is familiar to many people. It might be steep, but it’s continuous. Organizations...
a year ago
The learning curve is familiar to many people. It might be steep, but it’s continuous. Organizations (and people) work their way up it, one step at a time (it’s the black line in the graph below). But there’s rarely a continuous learning curve. Instead, it’s often interrupted by...
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
Hungry (vs. not full)
If consumption is the point (the engine of the economy, the focus of our marketing, the driver of...
5 months ago
If consumption is the point (the engine of the economy, the focus of our marketing, the driver of our status) then it’s easy to get confused about the difference between something that’s nearly empty (and must be refilled to ensure we keep going) and something that’s not quite...
Handprinted - Blog
Drypoint - Which plate is right for my project?
Drypoint is a fantastic intaglio technique as it requires limited equipment to create a plate. It's...
7 months ago
Drypoint is a fantastic intaglio technique as it requires limited equipment to create a plate. It's a great way of creating a printed drawing and is one of the printmaking techniques where the positive mark is the one that prints (unlike relief printing for example). There are...
Marian's Blog
Raspberry Pi Wetterstation
Um die Daten, die meine Arduino-Wetterstation liefert, verfügbarer zu machen, habe ich mich...
over a year ago
Um die Daten, die meine Arduino-Wetterstation liefert, verfügbarer zu machen, habe ich mich entschieden, das Projekt jetzt mit einem Raspberry Pi weiterzuführen. Die Sensordaten werden wieder vom ILC-Board geliefert, das ich für den Schülerwettbewerb Intel Leibniz Challenge...
On the Arts
How to Write a Proper Haiku
A Starter's Guide to the Deceptively Simple Poetic Form
a year ago
A Starter's Guide to the Deceptively Simple Poetic Form
Seth's Blog
Confusion about performance
The thing that your product or service delivers could be called performance, and it’s made of two...
a year ago
The thing that your product or service delivers could be called performance, and it’s made of two components: –The story and expectations and cultural impact of what you do (the story). –The deliverables that are objectively measured (the spec). It helps to have both. Many...
Seth's Blog
There’s always a placebo switch
The trick is knowing where it is and using it well. Wanting control doesn’t always mean needing to...
a year ago
The trick is knowing where it is and using it well. Wanting control doesn’t always mean needing to have control. Sometimes it is simply a desire to be acknowledged. HT to Brian.
Seth's Blog
The magic of a page a day
In 1979, the page-a-day calendar was born. It’s basically a book on its side, but the user rips off...
a year ago
In 1979, the page-a-day calendar was born. It’s basically a book on its side, but the user rips off a page each day. My friend Michael Cader took this concept and ran with it, creating calendars that sold millions of copies. Of course, everyone knows what day it is, and if you...
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
“Home is wherever my cello is”
Ben Zander is bringing the Boston Philharmonic and Beethoven to New York in a few weeks. I’m excited...
a year ago
Ben Zander is bringing the Boston Philharmonic and Beethoven to New York in a few weeks. I’m excited to seem them in person, but it’s also streaming live. I hope you’re able to come. While his impact on the musical canon is legendary, Ben’s ruckus extends far into how we lead,...
Seth's Blog
Projects and the long haul
Rome was built in a day. It wasn’t finished in a day. In fact, it’s still not finished. But the day...
5 months ago
Rome was built in a day. It wasn’t finished in a day. In fact, it’s still not finished. But the day someone said, “this is Rome,” and announced the project, it was there. Sometimes we get hung up on the beginning, unwilling to start Rome unless we’re sure we can finish it without...
Seth's Blog
And then that happened
The world changes and we have a choice: • Fight hard to keep it the way it was. • Notice what...
a year ago
The world changes and we have a choice: • Fight hard to keep it the way it was. • Notice what happened and then decide to do something with that insight. Thirty years ago, AOL was my company’s biggest client. They charged users $3 an hour to use their precursor to the internet,...
Seth's Blog
Default to surrender
AI chatbots highight a challenge that is worth understanding. It applies to customer service,...
9 months ago
AI chatbots highight a challenge that is worth understanding. It applies to customer service, bureaucracies and teachers as well… If you ask an AI a question and it’s not confident in the answer, it should say, “I’m not sure.” That could be followed up with, “do you want me to...
Seth's Blog
The stories we tell ourselves
If it happened to us, our memory of it is a story, our record of it with us at the center. Even if...
2 days ago
If it happened to us, our memory of it is a story, our record of it with us at the center. Even if it’s on video, even if other people were there, our narrative and the context and the play by play belong to us. The useful question might be: “Is my story helpful?” And […]
Marian's Blog
Arduino-Wetterstation mit Bluetooth, Datalogging und Android-App
Die Wetterdaten für die Wetterstation werden von einem Board gesammelt, das ich für einen...
over a year ago
Die Wetterdaten für die Wetterstation werden von einem Board gesammelt, das ich für einen Schülerwettbewerb (ILC) bekommen und zusammengesetzt habe. Auf dem Board rechnet ein ATxmega128A3U. Temperatur, Luftfeuchte, Luftdruck, Helligkeit, Regenmenge und Windgeschwindigkeit werden...
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...
Blog - Mac Pierce
p5.js on Squarespace - The Basics
A quick guide on how to get p5.js guides working on Squarespace.
over a year ago
A quick guide on how to get p5.js guides working on Squarespace.
Infinite Scroll
Worst Tweets 2024 - Preliminary Rounds
Vote on which bad takes will make the 2024 bracket!
a week ago
Vote on which bad takes will make the 2024 bracket!
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.
Open Culture
The Night Frank Zappa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Captain Beefheart Too (Belgium, 1969)
Recently an older musician acquaintance told me he never “got into ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ and all...
3 months ago
Recently an older musician acquaintance told me he never “got into ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ and all that,” referring to the “first major space jam” of Pink Floyd’s career and the subsequent explosion of space rock bands. I found myself a little taken aback. Though I was born too...
Seth's Blog
After the emergency
If we need to wait until after the short-term emergency is settled, it’s unlikely we’re ever going...
6 months ago
If we need to wait until after the short-term emergency is settled, it’s unlikely we’re ever going to get to work on the long-term important work. Of course, we want to do “everything we can” when an emergency strikes. But the standard for that has always involved tradeoffs....
Seth's Blog
The first nine minutes
Mixing up a batch of homemade vegan marshmallow Fluff® is an exercise in patience. For the first...
a year ago
Mixing up a batch of homemade vegan marshmallow Fluff® is an exercise in patience. For the first nine minutes of the ten minutes it takes in the mixer, not much happens. And then, it transforms into something fluffy and delightful. Without the recipe, it’s unlikely that most...
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
Stopping a runaway train
It feels urgent because it is. But by the time the train is running away, it might be too late. The...
4 months ago
It feels urgent because it is. But by the time the train is running away, it might be too late. The better strategy is to not sign up for trains that are likely to run away. The first principle of risk reduction is to figure out if you can stop it later. If you can’t, […]
Open Culture
Download Issues of “Weird Tales” (1923–1954): The Pioneering Pulp Horror Magazine Features Original...
We live in an era of genre. Browse through TV shows of the last decade to see what I mean: Horror,...
6 months ago
We live in an era of genre. Browse through TV shows of the last decade to see what I mean: Horror, sci-fi, fantasy, superheroes, futuristic dystopias…. Take a casual glance at the burgeoning global film franchises or merchandising empires. Where in earlier decades, horror and...
Seth's Blog
The answer to every question
If the thing of the moment is the answer to every single question, you might be in a bubble. If,...
a year ago
If the thing of the moment is the answer to every single question, you might be in a bubble. If, regardless of the problem, the answer is crypto, homeopathy, or the internet, or perhaps GPT, essential oils or decarbonization, it’s possible we’re taking an easy way out. A new...
Open Culture
Hear Edgar Allan Poe Stories Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buckley, Christopher Walken, Marianne Faithful &...
In 1849, a little over 175 years ago, Edgar Allan Poe was found dead in a Baltimore gutter under...
6 months ago
In 1849, a little over 175 years ago, Edgar Allan Poe was found dead in a Baltimore gutter under mysterious circumstances very likely related to violent election fraud. It was an ignominious end to a life marked by hardship, alcoholism, and loss. After struggling for years as the...
Seth's Blog
Password stupidity is no longer viable
[Of course, it’s not stupidity. It’s fear and superstition, which often go together. First, the...
a year ago
[Of course, it’s not stupidity. It’s fear and superstition, which often go together. First, the rant.] It’s 2023. Major corporations should not be posting rules like this: This is not just security theatre. It’s a waste of time, the math makes no sense and it leads people to...
escape the algorithm
Be specific
Ode to ᵗᶦⁿʸ ᵗᵒᵒˡˢ
11 months ago
Seth's Blog
The unsurprising confusion about ‘per capita’
A car cut me off on the highway the other day. The car was going nearly 100 mph. Was the car a new...
a year ago
A car cut me off on the highway the other day. The car was going nearly 100 mph. Was the car a new Porsche 911 GT3 or a used Toyota Camry? The thing is, there are more than 1,000 times as many Camrys on the road. But our instinct is to pick the vivid and […]
Seth's Blog
Change your shoes
Like all good metaphors, it might be practical too. Your ‘shoes’ are the point of greatest leverage....
a week ago
Like all good metaphors, it might be practical too. Your ‘shoes’ are the point of greatest leverage. The spot where you have traction and engage with the world most directly. For a freelancer, it might be the way you engage with customers, or your software tools. It might be the...
Open Culture
The Cramps Play a Mental Health Hospital in Napa, California in 1978: The Punkest of Punk Concerts
“We’re The Cramps, and we’re from New York City, and we drove 3,000 miles to play for you...
5 months ago
“We’re The Cramps, and we’re from New York City, and we drove 3,000 miles to play for you people.” So begins one of the oddest but also the punkest of punk rock concerts in history, as The Cramps play for a crowd at a state mental hospital in Napa, California. The date was June...
Seth's Blog
Replacing bad systems with bad systems
A metaphor involving parking meters. Over the years, parking meters in town have evolved into a...
a year ago
A metaphor involving parking meters. Over the years, parking meters in town have evolved into a cumbersome, awkward system. Coins are heavy and you need to have them handy, meters need to be reinforced against theft and breakage, town employees have to empty the coins and...
Marian's Blog
BTduino
BTduino is an Android app that lets you add a custom bluetooth interface to your Arduino project...
over a year ago
BTduino is an Android app that lets you add a custom bluetooth interface to your Arduino project without any programming on the Android side.
Everything is better with bluetooth! Here are some examples:
Download
Android APK file Android 4.0 or higher is...
Seth's Blog
Can’t wait
The urgent problem might actually benefit from a short cooling-off period. But important challenges...
a year ago
The urgent problem might actually benefit from a short cooling-off period. But important challenges can’t wait. Today is a good day to remember that better is possible, and that we shouldn’t wait for the problem to become easy or fade away. Better begins with each of us, but it...
Seth's Blog
The catfight and the construction site
We’re quick to stop to see the car wreck, the billionaire having a meltdown, or the professional...
a year ago
We’re quick to stop to see the car wreck, the billionaire having a meltdown, or the professional wrestlers pretending to be political leaders. But it often seems more difficult to take a moment to watch people building something that matters instead. We’ll probably spend billions...
Stat Significant
How Streaming Elevated (and Ruined) Documentaries: A Statistical Analysis
Unpacking streaming's embrace and erosion of non-fiction storytelling.
2 months ago
Unpacking streaming's embrace and erosion of non-fiction storytelling.
The Great Discontent...
Sheyam Ghieth
Sheyam Ghieth (she/they) is an artist and queer Egyptian-American abolitionist known for her work on...
a year ago
Sheyam Ghieth (she/they) is an artist and queer Egyptian-American abolitionist known for her work on the comedy-drama television series Ramy, FX’s The Americans, and the web series BROTHERS. They now live in Portland, OR, where they are prioritizing queer joy as a radical act of...
Seth's Blog
Digital stocking stuffers (and the other kind)
Ever since O. Henry wrote about the Magi, it’s been pretty clear that gifts aren’t about the stuff...
a year ago
Ever since O. Henry wrote about the Magi, it’s been pretty clear that gifts aren’t about the stuff as much as they are the intent. Holidays where gifts are expected undermine this, because it’s hard to tell where obligation begins and intent fades away. One lightweight and quick...
Open Culture
Explore the World’s First 3D Replica of St. Peter’s Basilica, Made with AI
In the trailer below for the world’s first 3D replica of St. Peter’s Basilica, Yves Ubelmann speaks...
a month ago
In the trailer below for the world’s first 3D replica of St. Peter’s Basilica, Yves Ubelmann speaks of using “AI for Good,” which isn’t just an ideal, but also the name of a lab at Microsoft. Microsoft and Ubelman’s digital-preservation company Iconem were two of the participants...
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...
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
The four cohorts of the status quo
The first group cares about the policy. They benefit from it. They’ve organized themselves around...
10 months ago
The first group cares about the policy. They benefit from it. They’ve organized themselves around it. The second group cares about stability. They have limited bandwidth, and they’re not particularly interested in reconsidering everything, all the time. The third group doesn’t...
Seth's Blog
Adjacent but not relevant
There’s a sale on band saw blades, including a really good deal on one that fits the saw you owned...
4 months ago
There’s a sale on band saw blades, including a really good deal on one that fits the saw you owned years ago. The folks who live next door to the house you used to live in are having a raucous party. A guy with a name just like yours wins the lottery… These adjacencies can […]
Seth's Blog
Confusion and delay
Marketing is generally about action. Marketers seek to create the conditions for a change to happen,...
a year ago
Marketing is generally about action. Marketers seek to create the conditions for a change to happen, for people to accomplish their goals and to satisfy their needs. But since 1950, some marketers have worked in a different direction. To sow confusion and doubt, and most of all,...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Grace Gillespie
Hello! I’m Grace Gillespie, a printmaker specialising in reduction linocuts and based in Bristol....
a year ago
Hello! I’m Grace Gillespie, a printmaker specialising in reduction linocuts and based in Bristol. Most days you will find me in my teeny home studio, adding layers of colour to my prints, thinking about future designs or working on the never-ending administration side of running...
Seth's Blog
On choosing a college
For some fortunate 17 year olds, the end of the year is the day for a momentous decision, one that’s...
11 months ago
For some fortunate 17 year olds, the end of the year is the day for a momentous decision, one that’s largely out of the comfort zone of a 17 year old. A four-year college education in the US can cost nearly half a million dollars once we count the expenses and foregone...
Open Culture
How a 16th-Century Explorer’s Sailing Ship Worked: An Animated Video Takes You on a Comprehensive...
These days, it feels as if you can’t go very long at all before scrolling past another announcement...
3 months ago
These days, it feels as if you can’t go very long at all before scrolling past another announcement about some new technological development (realized or scheduled) related to space exploration. Some react to this by wondering what could possibly be out there in the universe to...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Michelle Hughes
I’m a printmaker and illustrator, living in York, North Yorkshire. I create limited edition linocut...
a year ago
I’m a printmaker and illustrator, living in York, North Yorkshire. I create limited edition linocut prints inspired by the British countryside and British wildlife.
Describe your printmaking process.
When I started making lino prints I used SoftCut lino and a wooden spoon to...
Handprinted - Blog
Using Pearl Ex Metallic Pigments to Enhance Linocuts
Pearl Ex Powdered Pigments are metallic pigments that can be mixed into printing inks, acrylics,...
9 months ago
Pearl Ex Powdered Pigments are metallic pigments that can be mixed into printing inks, acrylics, oils, encaustics and loads more. As printmakers we were keen to see how they could be used in various printmaking applications, starting with linocut.
We began by mixing Apple...
Open Culture
Watch the Original Nosferatu, the Classic German Expressionist Vampire Film, Before the New Remake...
F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, far and away the most influential early vampire movie, came out 102 years...
a month ago
F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, far and away the most influential early vampire movie, came out 102 years ago. For about ten of those years, Robert Eggers has been trying to remake it. He wouldn’t be the first: Werner Herzog cast Klaus Kinski as the blood-sucking aristocrat at the...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Hazel McNab
Hi I’m Hazel, I live in Cornwall. I moved down just before Covid, very lucky me! And spent lockdown...
a year ago
Hi I’m Hazel, I live in Cornwall. I moved down just before Covid, very lucky me! And spent lockdown cutting Cornish Landscapes and really getting into my printing. My background is Fashion and Textiles, St Martins School of Art and I think my love of pattern shows in my...
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...
Seth's Blog
The illusion of concern
When organizations reach scale, digital interactions belie our expectation that someone in charge...
10 months ago
When organizations reach scale, digital interactions belie our expectation that someone in charge actually gives a damn. Once there’s math to do, the CFO does the math. It quickly reveals that no, the search engine shouldn’t bother having a customer support team. That UPS or...
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...
Seth's Blog
But it matters a lot to them…
To get to the Kebab House Cafe, you’ll need to drive past a dozen fast food restaurants, restaurants...
a year ago
To get to the Kebab House Cafe, you’ll need to drive past a dozen fast food restaurants, restaurants you can find off just about any interstate. It’s certainly less convenient to go a few blocks off the beaten path, but the food and service and vibe might be worth it. The thing...
Open Culture
Revisit Episodes of Liquid Television, MTV’s 90s Showcase of Funny, Irreverent & Bizarre Animation
MTV stands for Music Television, and when the network launched in 1981, its almost entirely music...
2 months ago
MTV stands for Music Television, and when the network launched in 1981, its almost entirely music video-based programming was true to its name. Within a decade, however, its mandate had widened to the point that it had become the natural home for practically any exciting...
Prolost
M1 Max MacBook Pro Long-term Report
The 2021 MacBook Pro alongside the cable-management fail of my iMac Pro
Back in October when I got a...
over a year ago
The 2021 MacBook Pro alongside the cable-management fail of my iMac Pro
Back in October when I got a chance to use a pre-release 14″ MacBook Pro with M1 Max processor, I openly questioned whether this laptop could replace my venerable iMac Pro. Four months later, I’m back with an...
Seth's Blog
Return on effort
It’s a pretty simple calculation. How much value per dollar does a freelancer produce for you?...
6 months ago
It’s a pretty simple calculation. How much value per dollar does a freelancer produce for you? What’s the psychic reward for the time you put into your favorite hobby? That machine that takes time and money to set up and run… what does it create when it’s operating? Not...
Open Culture
How Magician David Copperfield Made the Statue of Liberty Disappear (1983)
In April, 1983, 50 million television viewers watched the illusionist David Copperfield make the...
a month ago
In April, 1983, 50 million television viewers watched the illusionist David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear, straight into thin air. If you’re north of 50, you perhaps remember the spectacle. How did he do it? 40 years later, the YouTube channel Mind Blown Magic...
Seth's Blog
The first person
“I” is first person. “You” is second person. “She” “They” “It” are all third person. So far, so...
a year ago
“I” is first person. “You” is second person. “She” “They” “It” are all third person. So far, so good. But how can ChatGPT use the word “I”? And when we talk about ChatGPT, is it “he” or “she” or “they” or “it”? Because anything that is an “it” shouldn’t be able to say “I”. We […]
The Last...
No Self-Respecting Woman Would Go Out Without Make Up
For some reason, one of the most emailed articles from the NYT was an article about whether women...
over a year ago
For some reason, one of the most emailed articles from the NYT was an article about whether women should or should not wear make up. "New York Times? Sounds progressive." Yes.
Seven
people were asked their opinion in a column called "Room For Debate,"
liars, there was no...
Seth's Blog
Doing it step by step
I was surprised to discover that for many AI questions, if you add, “please figure this out step by...
5 months ago
I was surprised to discover that for many AI questions, if you add, “please figure this out step by step,” the AI will provide a dramatically more accurate and useful answer. This works on simple questions like, “how many times does the letter ‘r’ appear in the word ‘strawberry'”...
Open Culture
The Night When Luciano Pavarotti & James Brown Sang “It’s a Man’s World” Together (2002)
Luciano Pavarotti and James Brown are remembered as larger-than-life performers with an almost...
2 months ago
Luciano Pavarotti and James Brown are remembered as larger-than-life performers with an almost mythical-seeming presence and distinctiveness. But it wasn’t so very long ago that both of them were active — and even active onstage together. In the video above, the King of the High...
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
Taken for granted
A poignant definition of civilization is all the conveniences, courtesies, standards, insulation and...
3 months ago
A poignant definition of civilization is all the conveniences, courtesies, standards, insulation and tools that we hardly notice now but that we would miss if they were gone.
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...
Seth's Blog
Comfort and convenience
For the last thirty years, the easiest shortcut has been convenience. If a marketer or a politician...
7 months ago
For the last thirty years, the easiest shortcut has been convenience. If a marketer or a politician or an institution wants to gain acceptance, make it convenient. Tim Wu has pointed out that we’ll trade almost anything to save a few moments of hassle or thought. But that doesn’t...
Stat Significant
Quantifying 'The Kevin Bacon Game': A Statistical Exploration of Hollywood’s Most Connected Actors
Examining 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' and its statistical underpinnings.
2 months ago
Examining 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' and its statistical underpinnings.
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
Chasing cool
The cool thing is always a little out of reach. And for most of us, once we get it, it’s not seen as...
a year ago
The cool thing is always a little out of reach. And for most of us, once we get it, it’s not seen as cool any more. This is not an accident. One definition of cool are things that are just out of reach.
Open Culture
The Longest Drivable Distance in the World: Discover the Ultimate Road Trip
No matter what country we live in, we’ve all fantasized about taking our own great American road...
3 months ago
No matter what country we live in, we’ve all fantasized about taking our own great American road trip, considering a variety of the infinitely many possible routes. The most obvious would be driving between Los Angeles and New York, a distance of 2,800 miles that would take a bit...
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...
Open Culture
Neuroscience Shows That Viewing Art in Museums Engages the Brain More Than Reproductions
We may appreciate living in an era that doesn’t require us to travel across the world to know what a...
2 months ago
We may appreciate living in an era that doesn’t require us to travel across the world to know what a particular work of art looks like. At the same time, we may instinctively understand that regarding a work of art in its original form feels different than regarding even the most...
Seth's Blog
The ghost in the machine
“The computer wants you to click this button.” “It thinks you asked for something else.” “He’s mad...
a year ago
“The computer wants you to click this button.” “It thinks you asked for something else.” “He’s mad at you.” Thousands of generations ago, we evolved our way into a magnificent hack. It turns out that we can more safely navigate the world by imagining that other people have a...
Open Culture
William S. Burroughs’ Scathing “Thanksgiving Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant
“Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986” first appeared in print in Tornado Alley, a chapbook published by...
3 weeks ago
“Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 28, 1986” first appeared in print in Tornado Alley, a chapbook published by William S. Burroughs in 1989. Two years later, Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, My Own Private Idaho, Milk) shot a montage that brought the poem to film, making it at least the...
Seth's Blog
Meaningfully informed
Community requires individuals to have the option of speaking up. If we’re in this together, we...
5 months ago
Community requires individuals to have the option of speaking up. If we’re in this together, we ought to be able to chime in. But while every member of the community can speak out, the ones that are heard also have something useful to say. Being informed is a requirement to be...
Handprinted - Blog
Using Pearl Ex Metallic Pigments to Enhance Screen Prints
Pearl Ex Powdered Pigments are metallic pigments that can be mixed into printing inks, acrylics,...
6 months ago
Pearl Ex Powdered Pigments are metallic pigments that can be mixed into printing inks, acrylics, oils, encaustics and loads more. As printmakers we were keen to see how they could be used in various printmaking applications. We've tested them for relief printing and had some...
Stat Significant
The Fall and Rise of Nicolas Cage: A Statistical Analysis
Nicolas Cage: A Data Story
3 months ago
Nicolas Cage: A Data Story
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Jenny Stringer
I am Jenny Stringer, and I have been block printing fabrics (and sometimes papers) for the last...
4 months ago
I am Jenny Stringer, and I have been block printing fabrics (and sometimes papers) for the last thirty years; as and when possible.
How did you start your creative career?
I was an archaeological illustrator after a brief museum career, and worked with a team of...
Seth's Blog
Language conceals and reveals
When a non-expert brings a strong point of view to a complex discussion, the words might not mean...
3 months ago
When a non-expert brings a strong point of view to a complex discussion, the words might not mean what they seem to mean. What might be being said is, “I’m worried. I’m afraid. I don’t understand. I am looking for solace.” Answering emotional word salad with logical insight...
Open Culture
A Playlist of the 3,300 Best Films & Documentaries on Youtube, Including Works by Hitchcock,...
?si=yCx1pqpcATHND90L Once upon a time, the most convenient means of discovering movies was cable...
7 months ago
?si=yCx1pqpcATHND90L Once upon a time, the most convenient means of discovering movies was cable television. This held especially true for those of us who happened to be adolescents on a break from school, ready and willing morning, midday, or night to sit through the...
Infinite Scroll
Get a Discount on Infinite Scroll
Limited time! 30% off paid access to Infinite Scroll
a month ago
Limited time! 30% off paid access to Infinite Scroll
Seth's Blog
The (very) long tail
The average YouTube video gets five new views every day. Let’s parse that for a second. 5 billion...
a year ago
The average YouTube video gets five new views every day. Let’s parse that for a second. 5 billion YouTube plays a day, spread over about a billion videos means that while some videos live in the short head and get millions of views, there are a huge number of videos that get...
Open Culture
How Kodak Invented the Snapshot in the 1800s, Making It Possible for Everyone to Be a Photographer
We still occasionally speak of “Kodak moments,” making conscious or unconscious reference to the...
2 months ago
We still occasionally speak of “Kodak moments,” making conscious or unconscious reference to the slogan of the Eastman Kodak Company in the nineteen-eighties. Even by that time, Kodak had already been a going concern for nearly a century, furnishing photographers around the world...
Seth's Blog
Amplifying the fringes
Culture is: “People like us do things like this.” We might even have a chance to choose our group....
2 months ago
Culture is: “People like us do things like this.” We might even have a chance to choose our group. Hipsters do this, hippies do that. People in this town wear this outfit, students at this school hang out here on Saturdays… We might be born into a culture. Less agency, but just...
On the Arts
How to Start Learning About Aesthetics
Three ways to improve your knowledge about aesthetics, art theory, and the philosophy of art.
a year ago
Three ways to improve your knowledge about aesthetics, art theory, and the philosophy of art.
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...
Prolost
The M1 Max MacBook Pros
Apple opened their October event with a young musician creating an Apple-inspired music track in a...
over a year ago
Apple opened their October event with a young musician creating an Apple-inspired music track in a dingy garage filled with gear worth tens of thousands of dollars. Some viewers commented on the unrealistic portrayal of a creative professional. But I felt like I was looking in a...
Seth's Blog
And it can also do that
If you were around when the Model T was first announced, you could have built the organizations that...
10 months ago
If you were around when the Model T was first announced, you could have built the organizations that became Disney, McDonald’s and Holiday Inn, all of which were powered by cheap, plentiful cars. You could have become a major developer of suburbs, mortgage banking and even pop...
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 –...
Open Culture
Destino: The Salvador Dalí — Disney Collaboration 57 Years in the Making
In 2003, Disney released a six minute animated short called Destino, finally bringing closure to a...
a month ago
In 2003, Disney released a six minute animated short called Destino, finally bringing closure to a project that began 57 years earlier. The story of Destino goes way back to 1946 when two very different cultural icons, Walt Disney and Salvador Dalí, decided to work together on a...
Seth's Blog
A treaty
Successful treaties calm things down and let us get back to what’s really important. Sometimes, the...
a year ago
Successful treaties calm things down and let us get back to what’s really important. Sometimes, the fight becomes the entire point. Not surprisingly, when we’re busy fighting a war in our head about a previous injustice or slight, we can effectively consummate a treaty without...
Open Culture
Archaeologists Discover an Ancient Roman Sandal with Nails Used for Tread
A recreation of the military sandals. (Photo: Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation)...
4 months ago
A recreation of the military sandals. (Photo: Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation) Whether you’re putting together a stage play, a film, or a television series, if the story is set in ancient Rome, you know you’re going to have to get a lot of sandals on order. This...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Lucy Gell
Hi, I'm Lucy. I studied graphic design and illustration at Staffordshire University and later began...
a year ago
Hi, I'm Lucy. I studied graphic design and illustration at Staffordshire University and later began a career in animation. During this fun and exciting time I was responsible for fabricating the Martians in the Tim Burton film ‘Mars Attacks’. I made many foam latex and silicone...
Handprinted - Blog
Preparing your paper and press for etching
When you’ve created an aluminium or zinc plate etching, you’ll want to have a go at pulling your...
7 months ago
When you’ve created an aluminium or zinc plate etching, you’ll want to have a go at pulling your first print. To do this, you’ll need to learn how to prepare your paper and how to set the correct pressure on your press.
This blog is part of a series featuring tips and techniques...
Open Culture
J. G. Ballard Demystifies Surrealist Paintings by Dalí, Magritte, de Chirico & More
Before his signature works like The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, and High-Rise, J. G. Ballard...
4 months ago
Before his signature works like The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, and High-Rise, J. G. Ballard published three apocalyptic novels, The Drowned World, The Burning World, and The Crystal World. Each of those books offers a different vision of large-scale environmental disaster, and...
Seth's Blog
Responsibility and blame
It’s tempting to hand it to other people. If someone else takes the blame, if they accept the...
8 months ago
It’s tempting to hand it to other people. If someone else takes the blame, if they accept the responsibility, then we get satisfaction and we’re off the hook. Alas, this doesn’t work unless the others do the taking and do the accepting. Which is unlikely. We’re giving power to...
Open Culture
Download 1,600+ Publications from the Metropolitan Museum of Art: Books, Guides, Magazines & More
Many of us in these past few generations first heard of the Metropolitan Museum of Art while reading...
a month ago
Many of us in these past few generations first heard of the Metropolitan Museum of Art while reading E. L. Konigsburg’s novel From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. More than a few of us also fantasized about running away to live in that vast cultural institution...
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
Allocating scarcity
If we’re lucky, we invent something that’s going to be in high demand. Reservations at a hot...
a year ago
If we’re lucky, we invent something that’s going to be in high demand. Reservations at a hot restaurant. Limited edition trading cards. Concert tickets… How to decide who gets them? One attractive option is “first-come-first-served.” It feels fair, after all. The theory is that...
The Great Discontent...
Earlonne Woods and Nigel Poor
When Earlonne Woods and Nigel Poor came up with the idea for Ear Hustle, the podcast they’ve hosted...
7 months ago
When Earlonne Woods and Nigel Poor came up with the idea for Ear Hustle, the podcast they’ve hosted together since 2017, Earlonne was serving a prison sentence of 31 years to life—the result of California’s three-strikes law. The two met at San Quentin State Prison where Nigel, a...
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...
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...
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
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...
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...
Open Culture
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Creative Process: A Look Inside the Books & Techniques That Allowed His Art...
The story of Jean-Michel Basquiat has its unfortunate aspects: not just his premature death, but...
3 weeks ago
The story of Jean-Michel Basquiat has its unfortunate aspects: not just his premature death, but also the aggressive marketing of his work and persona in the years leading up to it. He became a vogue artist of the eighties in part because he could be taken as an unfiltered voice...
Seth's Blog
Simple techniques for complex projects
Warm up the machines that take a long time first. Stress test the go/no go parts of the project as...
a year ago
Warm up the machines that take a long time first. Stress test the go/no go parts of the project as early as possible. If the cost is low, replace dependent processes with parallel ones. Do the difficult parts when energy is high and the budget hasn’t been depleted. Ship before...
The Great Discontent...
Sofía Gallisá Muriente
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 share a little bit about where and how you grew up and what...
Seth's Blog
What are the stakes?
How big a swing do we need to make it feel like it matters? At the casino, some folks play with $5...
9 months ago
How big a swing do we need to make it feel like it matters? At the casino, some folks play with $5 chips, some with $100 chips. Do the high rollers have more fun? Are they more engaged? It’s natural to imagine that bigger swings matter more. That a bigger audience means our...
Blog - Mac Pierce
Decreasing the F.Q. - A talk on Facial Recognition and the Opt Out Cap
Links to a talk I gave on the Opt-Out cap and the state of surveillance via
facial recognition.
over a year ago
Links to a talk I gave on the Opt-Out cap and the state of surveillance via
facial recognition.
Seth's Blog
To be well published
Sooner or later, we benefit from being well-published. Publishing has nothing to do with printing....
10 months ago
Sooner or later, we benefit from being well-published. Publishing has nothing to do with printing. It’s the act of taking risks to bring a new idea to people who want to embrace it. It’s the head of the lab who works behind the scenes to be sure the talented scientist gets a gig...
Seth's Blog
The good china
Once you use your plates every day, they cease to be the good china. Of course, the plates didn’t...
a year ago
Once you use your plates every day, they cease to be the good china. Of course, the plates didn’t change. Your story did. The way you treat them did. The same goes for the red carpet. If you roll it out for every visitor or every customer, it ceases to be red.
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Makers 2022
We've featured some fantastic makers on our Meet the Maker blog this year! Thank you to all that...
a year ago
We've featured some fantastic makers on our Meet the Maker blog this year! Thank you to all that have been involved and those that are yet to come in 2023! We love reading about your printmaking practices and hearing your beautiful words of advice.
Grab yourself a drink, pop...
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...
Open Culture
André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto Turns 100 This Year
People don’t seem to write a lot of manifestos these days. Or if they do write manifestos, they...
7 months ago
People don’t seem to write a lot of manifestos these days. Or if they do write manifestos, they don’t make the impact that they would have a century ago. In fact, this year marks the hundredth anniversary of the Manifeste du surréalisme, or Surrealist Manifesto, one of the most...
Infinite Scroll
Is a Progressive Joe Rogan Impossible?
Why the online environment has broken sharply to the right
a month ago
Why the online environment has broken sharply to the right
Seth's Blog
The rear view mirror
It’s almost impossible to safely drive a car while only looking in the rear view mirror. Only seeing...
a year ago
It’s almost impossible to safely drive a car while only looking in the rear view mirror. Only seeing where you’ve been is a terrible way to figure out where to go. But it’s really unsafe to go forward with no idea of what came before. AI plods along into the future, using machine...
Seth's Blog
The slog, the hobby and the quest
Here’s a simple XY grid to help you think about your next project, freelance career or startup: All...
a year ago
Here’s a simple XY grid to help you think about your next project, freelance career or startup: All too common are ‘fun’ businesses where someone finds a hobby they like and tries to turn it into a gig. While the work may be fun, the uphill grind of this sort of project is...
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...
Seth's Blog
Sharp tools
Professional woodworkers rarely have to be reminded to sharpen their tools. Of course they know...
3 months ago
Professional woodworkers rarely have to be reminded to sharpen their tools. Of course they know this. The rest of us, on the other hand, regularly use digital tools we don’t understand, don’t maintain and haven’t optimized. Sometimes, our lack of care in the choice and use of...
Seth's Blog
The cheap chocolate system
The first step in building a successful and elegant strategy is to see the systems that are part of...
2 months ago
The first step in building a successful and elegant strategy is to see the systems that are part of our lives. October is a fine month to take a moment to look closely at one: the system that brings us cheap chocolate. Like most systems, it’s largely invisible. The people in it...
Open Culture
The First Animation That Hayao Miyazaki Directed on His Own: Watch Footage from the Pilot of Yuki’s...
Hayao Miyazaki began his career as an animator in 1963, getting in the door at Toei Animation not...
4 months ago
Hayao Miyazaki began his career as an animator in 1963, getting in the door at Toei Animation not long before the company ceased to hire regularly. Miyazaki’s equally retirement-resistant contemporary Tetsuya Chiba, already well on his way to fame as a mangaka, or comic artist,...
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...
Open Culture
The Original Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland Manuscript, Handwritten & Illustrated By Lewis Carroll...
On a summer day in 1862, a tall, stammering Oxford University mathematician named Charles Lutwidge...
5 months ago
On a summer day in 1862, a tall, stammering Oxford University mathematician named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson took a boat trip up the River Thames, accompanied by a colleague and the three young daughters of university chancellor Henry Liddell. To stave off tedium during the...
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,...
Seth's Blog
Long form AI
The new version of Claude can read a document of up to 400 pages in about three minutes. You can...
a year ago
The new version of Claude can read a document of up to 400 pages in about three minutes. You can then ask it for criticism, summaries or other insights. I wouldn’t use it on a piece of literature, but if you’re reading for work (aren’t we all), it will dramatically increase how...
Seth's Blog
Childish or childlike?
Childlike involves wonder. It’s the ability to see the world with fresh eyes and create magic....
a year ago
Childlike involves wonder. It’s the ability to see the world with fresh eyes and create magic. Childish, on the other hand, is living as if there are no consequences. Over time, we’ve gotten very good at meauring the long and short-term consequences of our actions. And good at...
Handprinted - Blog
Hand-Painted Textiles: A Practical Guide to the Art of Painting on Fabric by Sarah Campbell Book...
We have recently added some fantastic new books to the Handprinted shop and this one is no...
a year ago
We have recently added some fantastic new books to the Handprinted shop and this one is no exception. Sarah Campbell's beautifully curated and inspirational book explores the art of painting and making patterns on fabric. Even just flicking through the pages of this book makes...
Open Culture
Meet Fanny, the First Female Rock Band to Top the Charts: “They Were Just Colossal and Wonderful,...
When the Beatles upended popular music, thousands of wannabe beat groups were born all over the...
7 months ago
When the Beatles upended popular music, thousands of wannabe beat groups were born all over the world, and many of them–for the first time ever, really–were all-female groups. This Amoeba Records article has a fairly exhaustive list of these girl bands, with names like The...
Open Culture
Carl Jung Offers an Introduction to His Psychological Thought in a 3‑Hour Interview (1957)
In the 1950s, it was fashionable to drop Freud’s name — often as not in pseudo-intellectual sex...
4 months ago
In the 1950s, it was fashionable to drop Freud’s name — often as not in pseudo-intellectual sex jokes. Freud’s preoccupations had as much to do with his fame as the actual practice of psychotherapy, and it was assumed — and still is to a great degree — that Freud had “won” the...
Seth's Blog
ChatGPT is dumber than it looks
That’s not true for a screwdriver. Or a table saw or even a spatula. These are useful tools, but...
8 months ago
That’s not true for a screwdriver. Or a table saw or even a spatula. These are useful tools, but they don’t pretend to be well-informed or wise. They’re dumb, and they look dumb too. That’s one reason that tools are effective. We use them to leverage our effort, but we don’t...
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...
Seth's Blog
No time to waste
Of course there isn’t. Time is all we’ve got. Time is all there is. We can’t waste time because it’s...
a year ago
Of course there isn’t. Time is all we’ve got. Time is all there is. We can’t waste time because it’s not ours to waste. It’s simply the way we keep track of everything else.
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
The paradox of insular language
We often develop slang or codewords to keep the others from understanding what we’re saying. Here’s...
a year ago
We often develop slang or codewords to keep the others from understanding what we’re saying. Here’s an example (thanks BK) of the lengths that some are going to be able to take about Chinese politics. Of course, if you come up with a concealed enough code, the people you’re...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Caroline Whitehead
I’m a printmaker based in East London. For about eight years now, I’ve been obsessed with...
a year ago
I’m a printmaker based in East London. For about eight years now, I’ve been obsessed with alternative forms of lithography (mokulito (wood litho), kitchen litho, prontoplate litho, waterless litho, gum transfer). I also make prints on clay. As well as making my own prints, I also...
Seth's Blog
The defensive arrogance of TL;DR
Every since there has been high school, there has been the instinct to read the Cliffs Notes. The...
7 months ago
Every since there has been high school, there has been the instinct to read the Cliffs Notes. The internet took this idea, added a gratuitous semicolon and perfected Too Long; Didn’t Read. This is the mistakenly proud assertion that we are far too busy and too important to read...
Seth's Blog
When did we lose consciousness?
In medical TV dramas, losing consciousness is something that happens suddenly and dramatically. We...
3 months ago
In medical TV dramas, losing consciousness is something that happens suddenly and dramatically. We can all tell… the body is still there, but the mind is gone, at least for now. Unfortunately, this happens in real life. At work. In our personal lives. For a few minutes or even a...
Open Culture
Oscar-Winning Director Frank Capra Made an Educational Science Film Warning of Climate Change in...
In 2015, we highlighted for you The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays, a largely-forgotten 1957...
5 months ago
In 2015, we highlighted for you The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays, a largely-forgotten 1957 educational science film. The production is notable partly because it was shot by Frank Capra, the influential director who had won not one, not two, but three Oscars for best director....
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Jo Muriel
Describe your printmaking process.
My prints are all one of a kind, mixed-media studies which...
a year ago
Describe your printmaking process.
My prints are all one of a kind, mixed-media studies which combine gestural marks and mainly abstract shape formations. Sometimes, I include figurative elements, sometimes not. I’m mainly concerned with conveying instinctive reactions to natural...
Seth's Blog
Game design and strategy (Bongo part 3)
What’s it for? Making something fun is a good place to start if you’re building a casual word game...
a month ago
What’s it for? Making something fun is a good place to start if you’re building a casual word game like Bongo. But it’s not enough. Lots of things are fun, for a while, but that doesn’t meant that they’re worth the investment of time and money it takes to build them. From 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
Good businesses solve real problems
But not all real problems lead to good businesses. There are problems all around us. People need...
a year ago
But not all real problems lead to good businesses. There are problems all around us. People need housing, health care and food. They want delight, belonging and status. When a company shows up in the marketplace with a product or service that people eagerly choose to buy, it’s...
Seth's Blog
The hierarchy of insight
It looks like this: Which do we measure the most, spend the most obtaining and argue about most...
3 months ago
It looks like this: Which do we measure the most, spend the most obtaining and argue about most often? We might have it backwards. HT Russ Ackoff.
Ian Betteridge
Ten Blue Links, “your time is up” edition
This week… But first, an announcement! TLDR: Over the holidays, I will be migrating this site from...
2 days ago
This week… But first, an announcement! TLDR: Over the holidays, I will be migrating this site from WordPress.com to Ghost. This may mean a little disruption, but I’ll try to keep it to a minimum. Why am I doing this? I’ve been a paying customer of WordPress.com for my site...
Seth's Blog
The coming ubiquity
The fuss about AI might be mis-focused. It’s easy to point to a computer-created essay, song or...
a year ago
The fuss about AI might be mis-focused. It’s easy to point to a computer-created essay, song or illustration and find the defects or errors. Given hard work by 1,000 trained people, it’s likely that a human could make something more useful or inspired than a computer could. But...
Seth's Blog
Choose your fuel wisely
If worrying about paying the mortgage gets you motivated to lean hard into the next project, don’t...
a month ago
If worrying about paying the mortgage gets you motivated to lean hard into the next project, don’t be surprised if that sort of fear arises every time you have hard work to do. If your goal is to teach the naysayers a lesson, remember that you’ll need to find people who you want...
Open Culture
Watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the Influential German Expressionist Horror Film (1920)
In early 1920, posters began appearing all over Berlin with a hypnotic spiral and the mysterious...
a month ago
In early 1920, posters began appearing all over Berlin with a hypnotic spiral and the mysterious command Du musst Caligari werden — “You must become Caligari.” The posters were part of an innovative advertising campaign for an upcoming movie by Robert Wiene called The Cabinet of...
Seth's Blog
Drama at work
A divo (or diva) is an opera singer with skill. Sometimes, though, that skill comes in a package...
a year ago
A divo (or diva) is an opera singer with skill. Sometimes, though, that skill comes in a package that also includes imperiousness, skittishness and a fair amount of unpredictable drama. It’s tempting to imagine that CEOs, painters or poets that bring the noise must also have...
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...
The Great Discontent...
Beatie Wolfe
Beatie Wolfe has beamed her music into space, been appointed a UN role model for innovation, and...
a year ago
Beatie Wolfe has beamed her music into space, been appointed a UN role model for innovation, and pioneered new formats for art that bridge the physical and digital. Wolfe's latest projects include a visualization of 800,000 years worth of climate data, a collective postcard art...
Seth's Blog
Compared to what?
Emotions are often tied to events and events feel absolute. But events are rarely absolute. They’re...
a month ago
Emotions are often tied to events and events feel absolute. But events are rarely absolute. They’re almost always relative. How does this compare to what I was expecting? How does it compare to what others like me are experiencing? How does it compare to yesterday? When we change...
Seth's Blog
Dancing for the early adopters
The traveling circus didn’t have to appeal to everyone. They rode into town with the elephants, the...
a year ago
The traveling circus didn’t have to appeal to everyone. They rode into town with the elephants, the bearded lady and the Tasmanian Devil, and the people who came, came. Once the folks who wanted excitement were exhausted, the circus left. The problem kicks in when the circus...
Open Culture
How Olivetti Designed the First Personal Computer in History, the Programma 101 (1965)
If you were to come across an Olivetti Programma 101, you probably wouldn’t recognize it as a...
4 months ago
If you were to come across an Olivetti Programma 101, you probably wouldn’t recognize it as a computer. With its 36 keys and its paper-strip printer, it might strike you as some kind of oversized adding machine, albeit an unusually handsome one. But then, you’d expect that...
Marian's Blog
Faster Than Life – Global Game Jam 2019 Project
Like in the previous year, I took part in the Global Game Jam.
I joined a team of six programmers,...
over a year ago
Like in the previous year, I took part in the Global Game Jam.
I joined a team of six programmers, unfortunately there was a shortage of artists this year.
During the 48 hour jam, we made a space game that is inspired by Faster Than Light.
You travel through...
Open Culture
How Ancient Romans Traveled Without Maps
In an age when many of us could hardly make our way to an unfamiliar grocery store without relying...
a month ago
In an age when many of us could hardly make our way to an unfamiliar grocery store without relying on a GPS navigation system, we might well wonder how the Romans could establish and sustain their mighty empire without so much as a proper map. That’s the question addressed by the...
Blog - Mac Pierce
The making of A Scanner Darkly
How and why I made A Scanner Darkly, an art piece that reads off text using
spotlights in the...
over a year ago
How and why I made A Scanner Darkly, an art piece that reads off text using
spotlights in the shape of security cameras.
escape the algorithm
Close reading the trees
How competitive Google Street Viewing makes the world feel seen
10 months ago
How competitive Google Street Viewing makes the world feel seen
Seth's Blog
Who’s got the camera?
For years, I’ve been using this picture of Neil Armstrong when I tell the story of meeting him and...
a year ago
For years, I’ve been using this picture of Neil Armstrong when I tell the story of meeting him and hearing his talk at one of his last public appearances: I wasn’t there when this photo was taken, so I relied on a Google image search to find it: I compounded Google’s error....
Prolost
Magic Bullet Suite 14 and Trapcode Suite 16
It’s a big day at Maxon/Red Giant! We’re releasing huge updates to Magic Bullet and Trapcode...
over a year ago
It’s a big day at Maxon/Red Giant! We’re releasing huge updates to Magic Bullet and Trapcode Suites.
Trapcode Particular continues to embody our ethos of power and ease-of-use, with a completely modernized simulation engine that allows particles to behave more naturally, with...
Seth's Blog
The generosity of concealment
Human beings never reveal all of our emotions. We don’t simply blurt out the first thing that pops...
a year ago
Human beings never reveal all of our emotions. We don’t simply blurt out the first thing that pops into our head in a meeting, or insult someone upon meeting them. We’re able to give people the benefit of the doubt (which requires doubt before we can offer the benefit) and to...
Seth's Blog
“I can’t go for that”
Culture has stability. “The way things are around here.” When we are pushed too far from our norms,...
a month ago
Culture has stability. “The way things are around here.” When we are pushed too far from our norms, life gets stressful. Some of the people in the systems that used to keep things stable have discovered that they can make a profit or gain an edge by embracing extremism instead....
On the Arts
From Gothic Invaders to Mall Goths
How an ancient Germanic tribe gave its name to a modern subculture.
a year ago
How an ancient Germanic tribe gave its name to a modern subculture.
Open Culture
Explore and Download 14,000+ Woodcuts from Antwerp’s Plantin-Moretus Museum Online Archive
We appreciate illuminated manuscripts and historical books here on Open Culture, adhere though we do...
3 weeks ago
We appreciate illuminated manuscripts and historical books here on Open Culture, adhere though we do to a much more restrained aesthetic style in our own texts. But that’s not to deny the temptation to start this paragraph with one of those oversized initial letters that grew...
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...
Handprinted - Blog
Using a Thermal Screen to Print Festive Wrapping
Printing your own bespoke wrapping paper or fabric can be very rewarding especially when the gift is...
over a year ago
Printing your own bespoke wrapping paper or fabric can be very rewarding especially when the gift is for a loved one. This week we're printing our own kraft wrapping paper using a Thermal Screen.
Here at Handprinted we use a MiScreen Machine to make our Thermal Screens. You can...
Seth's Blog
99 vs 0
If you get a 99% quality haircut or a 99% close-to-perfect meal, it’s better than good. On the other...
a year ago
If you get a 99% quality haircut or a 99% close-to-perfect meal, it’s better than good. On the other hand, if the scrub nurse only does a 99% job of disinfecting the tools in the operating room, you’re still going to die of an infection. Some projects respond very well to...
Seth's Blog
The sixty-day staircase
In the moment, it’s really difficult. L’espirit descalier means, “the spirit of the staircase.” That...
a year ago
In the moment, it’s really difficult. L’espirit descalier means, “the spirit of the staircase.” That thing you wished you had a said just a moment ago, the bon mot or the clever riposte. It only comes to us as we’re walking away. But this sort of quick comment is good for the...
Seth's Blog
Looking for a handle
What if your boots don’t have any straps? Bootstrapping is logically impossible. You can’t pick...
11 months ago
What if your boots don’t have any straps? Bootstrapping is logically impossible. You can’t pick yourself up into the air by lifting on your boots, no matter how hard you try, because gravity isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law. But it’s significantly more difficult if your boots...
Seth's Blog
Wearing the costume
There’s a huge difference between carrying a stethoscope and being a doctor. And being a clown...
a month ago
There’s a huge difference between carrying a stethoscope and being a doctor. And being a clown requires far more than getting a clown suit. Entrepreneurs with business cards, slick websites and mission statements are confused. That’s not the hard part. If the costume puts you in...
Open Culture
Jean-Paul Sartre Rejects the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964: “It Was Monstrous!”
In a 2013 blog post, the great Ursula K. Le Guin quotes a London Times Literary Supplement column by...
4 months ago
In a 2013 blog post, the great Ursula K. Le Guin quotes a London Times Literary Supplement column by a “J.C.,” who satirically proposes the “Jean-Paul Sartre Prize for Prize Refusal.” “Writers all over Europe and America are turning down awards in the hope of being nominated for...
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...
Open Culture
Coursera Offers $120 Off of Coursera Plus (Until September 30), Giving You Unlimited Access to...
A quick reminder: As the new school year gets underway, millions of students are heading back to...
3 months ago
A quick reminder: As the new school year gets underway, millions of students are heading back to classrooms. And you can too. From now until September 30, 2024, Coursera is offering a 30% discount on its annual subscription plan called “Coursera Plus.” Normally priced at $399,...
Open Culture
Google Creates a Career Certificate That Prepares Students for Cybersecurity Jobs in 6 Months
In 2023, Google launched several online certificate programs designed to help students land an...
a month ago
In 2023, Google launched several online certificate programs designed to help students land an entry-level job, without necessarily having a college degree. This includes a certificate program focused on Cybersecurity, a field that stands poised to grow as companies become more...
Seth's Blog
Spam 3.0
Any fully open system of digital communication will corrode over time. Bad messages will crowd out...
6 months ago
Any fully open system of digital communication will corrode over time. Bad messages will crowd out the good ones. The new normal: Someone finds a database of every residential property, then another of cell phones. An AI is trained to call every homeowner, every day, asking if...
Seth's Blog
Kash’s garden
She doesn’t grow plants. The plants grow themselves. Her job is to create conditions for the plants...
11 months ago
She doesn’t grow plants. The plants grow themselves. Her job is to create conditions for the plants to grow. The soil, the water, the light, the weeds… these are the conditions. But none of it happens if the plants don’t do the thing they want to do in the first place. This is...
Seth's Blog
Amazon Smile gets a frown
I’m pretty sure how the first meetings went almost a decade ago: “Well, we’re paying our affiliates...
a year ago
I’m pretty sure how the first meetings went almost a decade ago: “Well, we’re paying our affiliates 5% for referrals. If we pay charities a tenth of that and call it a donation, it’ll be great PR and we’ll also make a profit on every sale because we won’t need to pay a full...
Seth's Blog
A thoughtful review
Thanks to Francis Wade for emailing me this review of THIS IS STRATEGY. Francis works in strategy,...
a month ago
Thanks to Francis Wade for emailing me this review of THIS IS STRATEGY. Francis works in strategy, and I’m so delighted the book resonated the way it did. Case: You are a corporate strategic planner – someone immersed in defining a future for your organization. But lately, you...
Open Culture
Enter a Huge Archive of Amazing Stories, the World’s First Science Fiction Magazine, Launched in...
If you haven’t heard of Hugo Gernsback, you’ve surely heard of the Hugo Award. Next to the Nebula,...
5 months ago
If you haven’t heard of Hugo Gernsback, you’ve surely heard of the Hugo Award. Next to the Nebula, it’s the most prestigious of science fiction prizes, bringing together in its ranks of winners such venerable authors as Ursula K. Le Guin, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Neil...
Open Culture
The 11 Censored Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Cartoons That Haven’t Been Aired Since 1968
For decades and decades, Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons have served as a...
3 months ago
For decades and decades, Warner Bros.’ Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons have served as a kind of default children’s entertainment. Originally conceived for theatrical exhibition in the nineteen-thirties, they were animated to a standard that held its own against the...
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...
Seth's Blog
The blank page
Sometimes, we’re so afraid of creation that we don’t even leave blank pages around. If your...
8 months ago
Sometimes, we’re so afraid of creation that we don’t even leave blank pages around. If your workspace has a hole exactly the size of a creative idea in it, you’re more likely to fill the hole. When we decrease the number of steps to begin creating, and increase the expectation...
Open Culture
High-Tech Analysis of Ancient Scroll Reveals Plato’s Burial Site and Final Hours
Even if you can name only one ancient Greek, you can name Plato. You can also probably say at least...
7 months ago
Even if you can name only one ancient Greek, you can name Plato. You can also probably say at least a little about him, if only some of the things humanity has known since antiquity. Until recently, of course, that qualification would have been redundant. But now, thanks to an...
Seth's Blog
Consequences
Frederick Lewis Donaldson created a list of seven social sins that was soon popularized by Gandhi....
11 months ago
Frederick Lewis Donaldson created a list of seven social sins that was soon popularized by Gandhi. One hundred years later, it’s more relevant and more urgent than ever. Wealth without work.Pleasure without conscience.Knowledge without character.Commerce without morality.Science...
Seth's Blog
The MVP and fear
The minimum viable product is a powerful way to find out if your solution is going to find a market....
a year ago
The minimum viable product is a powerful way to find out if your solution is going to find a market. Bean-to-bar chocolate in the US didn’t happen because someone raised millions of dollars, built a factory and got shelf space at the A&P. It happened because John Scharffenberger...
Open Culture
Andy Warhol’s One Minute of Professional Wrestling Fame (1985)
Andy Warhol did for art what the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) did for wrestling. He made it a...
2 months ago
Andy Warhol did for art what the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) did for wrestling. He made it a spectacle. He made it something the “everyman” could enjoy. He infused it with celebrity. And, some would say, he cheapened it too. Looking back, it makes perfect sense that Warhol...
Seth's Blog
Understanding pricing
The money we exchange for a service or item isn’t based on how much it cost to make, how hard it was...
3 weeks ago
The money we exchange for a service or item isn’t based on how much it cost to make, how hard it was to produce or how much the producer likes it. That’s hard to hear, because when we make something, we spend most of our time thinking about those very things. Price is based on...
Blog - Amy Goodchild
Packing & Expanding Polygons : An ongoing exploration
I've been packing lots of irregular polygons into the canvas, and
discovered some interesting (and...
over a year ago
I've been packing lots of irregular polygons into the canvas, and
discovered some interesting (and some annoying) geometry along the way.
Open Culture
Explore an Online Archive of 2,100+ Rare Illustrations from Charles Dickens’ Novels
As Christmastime approaches, few novelists come to mind as readily as Charles Dickens. This owes...
2 weeks ago
As Christmastime approaches, few novelists come to mind as readily as Charles Dickens. This owes mainly, of course, to A Christmas Carol, and even more so to its many adaptations, most of which draw inspiration from not just its text but also its illustrations. That 1843 novella...
Open Culture
Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanagawa Now Appears on Japanese Banknotes
If you’ve lived or traveled in Japan, you know full well how much of daily life in that...
5 months ago
If you’ve lived or traveled in Japan, you know full well how much of daily life in that cash-intensive society involves the use of thousand-yen bills. Once considered the equivalent of the American ten-spot, the yen’s lately having fallen to its lowest value in decades means that...
Open Culture
Watch James Earl Jones Read Kurt Vonnegut’s Letter Urging High-School Students to Create Art & Make...
As cultural figures, the late James Earl Jones and Kurt Vonnegut would seem to have had little in...
3 months ago
As cultural figures, the late James Earl Jones and Kurt Vonnegut would seem to have had little in common, but each could easily be recognized by his voice. Jones’ will come to mind as soon as you think of Darth Vader, Simba’s father, or “This is CNN.” Vonnegut’s distinction was...
Open Culture
Bertrand Russell’s 10 Commandments for Living in a Healthy Democracy
Image by J. F. Horrabin, via Wikimedia Commons Bertrand Russell saw the history of civilization as...
a month ago
Image by J. F. Horrabin, via Wikimedia Commons Bertrand Russell saw the history of civilization as being shaped by an unfortunate oscillation between two opposing evils: tyranny and anarchy, each of which contains the seed of the other. The best course for steering clear of...
Seth's Blog
Falling behind
We’re not in races very often. Usually, what we’re doing is more like a walkathon, or perhaps, a...
a year ago
We’re not in races very often. Usually, what we’re doing is more like a walkathon, or perhaps, a hike. And yet, we’ve been pushed to believe that the only performance that matters is a scarcity-based victory. They close the parkway near my house on Sundays. As people pedal along,...
cabel.com
My GDC ’24 Talk: The Playdate Story
In January, I was invited to GDC, the Game Developers Conference, to give a talk about Playdate....
7 months ago
In January, I was invited to GDC, the Game Developers Conference, to give a talk about Playdate. That talk — “The Playdate Story: What Was it Like to Make Handheld Video Game System Hardware?” — has been made available free for all to view. Now, it’s been 10 years since my last...
Blog - Mac Pierce
Bits and bobs, some of the small projects I've been working on.
Rounding up a few smaller projects I’ve been working on here and there.
over a year ago
Rounding up a few smaller projects I’ve been working on here and there.
Open Culture
RIP Paul Auster: Hear the Master of the Postmodern Page-Turner Discuss How He Became a Writer
In the Louisiana Channel interview clip from 2017 above, the late Paul Auster tells the story of how...
7 months ago
In the Louisiana Channel interview clip from 2017 above, the late Paul Auster tells the story of how he became a writer. Its first episode had appeared more than twenty years earlier, in a New Yorker piece titled “Why Write?”: “I was eight years old. At that moment in my life,...
Open Culture
How to Potty Train Your Cat: A Handy Manual by Jazz Musician Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus, the innovative jazz musician, was known for having a bad temper. He once got so...
a month ago
Charles Mingus, the innovative jazz musician, was known for having a bad temper. He once got so irritated with a heckler that he ended up trashing his $20,000 bass. Another time, when a pianist didn’t get things right, Mingus reached right inside the piano and ripped the strings...
Blog - Amy Goodchild
Playing dice: Randomness, determinism and the quantum world
What’s the difference between unexpected, random and chaotic? Does the
universe contain any truly...
over a year ago
What’s the difference between unexpected, random and chaotic? Does the
universe contain any truly random events, or is it operating like
clockwork, ticking from one event to the next?
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...
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...
Ian Betteridge
Weeknote, Sunday 10th November 2024
It’s been a while since I wrote a weeknote, although I’ve kept up with the other kinds of writing...
a month ago
It’s been a while since I wrote a weeknote, although I’ve kept up with the other kinds of writing that I do. But: I work now. I’m working at a small B2B publisher helping them sort out a few things. This was originally going to be an in-and-out job which would take nine months,...
Open Culture
Joan Jett and the Blackhearts Perform a Rollicking Cover of the Mary Tyler Moore Theme Song (1996)
?si=Pblv5Tzpi_F-a6cu Originally written by Sonny Curtis and released in 1970, “Love Is All...
2 months ago
?si=Pblv5Tzpi_F-a6cu Originally written by Sonny Curtis and released in 1970, “Love Is All Around”–otherwise known as the Mary Tyler Moore theme song–has been covered by many acts: Sammy Davis Jr, Hüsker Dü, and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, to name a few. After releasing a studio...
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...
Handprinted - Blog
Monotype with Natural Materials
Like monoprint, a monotype is a print that is one of a kind but does not use a matrix like a cut...
a month ago
Like monoprint, a monotype is a print that is one of a kind but does not use a matrix like a cut block or plate. For this project we're using this simple technique to produce beautifully delicate prints using natural materials and found objects. You can also combine this with...
Seth's Blog
It’s Mac Day (#40)
A lot shifted when the Apple Macintosh was introduced, and it wasn’t about the RAM, the chips or the...
11 months ago
A lot shifted when the Apple Macintosh was introduced, and it wasn’t about the RAM, the chips or the processor speed. Our world changed forty years ago today. Marketing, technology, commerce, luxury brands, communities, communication and our expectations for how we might spend...
Open Culture
Bertrand Russell’s Ten Commandments for Living Virtuously (1930)
Image by J. F. Horrabin, via Wikimedia Commons Bertrand Russell may have lived his long life...
a month ago
Image by J. F. Horrabin, via Wikimedia Commons Bertrand Russell may have lived his long life concerned with big topics in logic, mathematics, politics, and society, but that didn’t keep him from thinking seriously about how to handle his own day-to-day relationships. That hardly...
Seth's Blog
“Won’t get fooled again”
Alas, we probably will. Recurring scams, hustles and deceptions work because we’re eager to be...
a month ago
Alas, we probably will. Recurring scams, hustles and deceptions work because we’re eager to be fooled by them. Vaporware, false deadlines, fake budgets, unrealistic promises and straight out con jobs persist because at some level, we demand them. Divisive arguments, mob...
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,...
Seth's Blog
Effect vs affect
In a culture fascinated by attitude, gloss and performance, it’s easy to believe that adopting an...
a year ago
In a culture fascinated by attitude, gloss and performance, it’s easy to believe that adopting an affect is precisely what you need to make a difference. In fact, the persistent, generous work that happens when no one is looking is what actually makes a difference. Looking the...
Seth's Blog
Get/Want/Have To
Get to, want to and have to are an endless braid. How much of our time do we spend on each? Have to...
a year ago
Get to, want to and have to are an endless braid. How much of our time do we spend on each? Have to is often up to someone else. The things we’re required to do by the system or the people in it. Get to is a matter of perspective. Trust and health and leverage […]
Seth's Blog
The paradox of self skepticism
If we’re to publish, teach, invent, imagine or promote, we need the confidence to believe that we...
5 months ago
If we’re to publish, teach, invent, imagine or promote, we need the confidence to believe that we have something to offer. That we are, in some way, right. But the enterprise of rational thought is based on theories, tests and improvements. We can never be certain, all we have is...
Seth's Blog
Regressing to the mean all by yourself
“The mean” is the average. Another word for “mediocre.” When an organization gets big enough, by...
9 months ago
“The mean” is the average. Another word for “mediocre.” When an organization gets big enough, by definition, it’s the average. When you have enough customers, they represent the population as a whole. If you find yourself seeking to serve the largest possible number of people,...
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...
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