The Great Discontent...
Giorgia Lupi
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 speak a little bit about where you grew up and how that place...
escape the algorithm
The Scan Artist
What it means to copy the world
10 months ago
What it means to copy the world
Seth's Blog
Sudare sette camicie
Sweating through seven shirts… That was the definition of work when work was the same thing as...
5 months ago
Sweating through seven shirts… That was the definition of work when work was the same thing as physical labor. For many of us, the physical labor is no longer the way we add value. And it’s tempting to imagine that we simply have to show up for the coffee. But it’s still called...
Seth's Blog
The ledge
Drowning is devastating, a tragic and painful way to go. So much so that feeling like we’re drowning...
3 months ago
Drowning is devastating, a tragic and painful way to go. So much so that feeling like we’re drowning is a trigger, an overwhelming emotion that causes us to grasp, struggle and leave our best self behind. It’s easy to experience this even when we’re out of the water. When the...
Seth's Blog
The lazy jugglers
The best jugglers don’t seem to be trying very hard. That’s because they understand what the work...
5 months ago
The best jugglers don’t seem to be trying very hard. That’s because they understand what the work involves, and they don’t confuse effort with results. Some approaches to keep in mind: Focus on the work at hand Don’t take on more than you can handle Establish a spec, and ignore...
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...
Prolost
Slugline 2
From the Slugline Blog:
Slugline 2 is a new app that replaces the old Slugline for Mac. It has a...
over a year ago
From the Slugline Blog:
Slugline 2 is a new app that replaces the old Slugline for Mac. It has a slick new UI, which includes a lovely dark mode. Big new features include: a drag-and-drop outline, an awesome new timeline, color-coded notes, Final Draft import/export, and Live...
Blog - Amy Goodchild
Pretty much all I want in life…
… is to make things and then have other people look at those things and be
like “woah, cool”
over a year ago
… is to make things and then have other people look at those things and be
like “woah, cool”
Open Culture
Mythology Expert Reviews Depictions of Greek & Roman Myths in Popular Movies and TV Shows
It’s safe to say that we no longer believe in the gods of the ancient world — or rather, that most...
a month ago
It’s safe to say that we no longer believe in the gods of the ancient world — or rather, that most of us no longer believe in their literal existence, but some of us have faith in their box-office potential. This two-part video series from Vanity Fair examines a variety of movies...
Seth's Blog
Feeding the algorithm
The marketing consultant told the client that they have to post three times a day on LinkedIn. “It...
3 months ago
The marketing consultant told the client that they have to post three times a day on LinkedIn. “It doesn’t matter if it’s good.” The SEO consultant explained that the website had to be loaded with keywords, and that a big budget needed to be set aside to develop inbound links....
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...
Handprinted - Blog
In the Studio 2023
We've been looking back on all our studio highlights for 2023, and what a year it's been! If you...
12 months ago
We've been looking back on all our studio highlights for 2023, and what a year it's been! If you took part in one of our Fab Fridays, attended a workshop, or used the studio for open access - thanks for being a part of our studio! We hope to see you back again in 2024!
Workshops...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Fabiola Knowles
Originally from Sicily, I grew up in Australia; however, having settled in the UK in 1996, it has...
5 months ago
Originally from Sicily, I grew up in Australia; however, having settled in the UK in 1996, it has been my home for the largest part of my life. I love the outdoors and I am drawn to open landscapes with big skies.
I am an artist working mainly with various forms of printmaking. I...
Seth's Blog
Cheating at golf
Someone who cheats at a friendly game of golf when nothing much is at stake–how can you possibly...
a year ago
Someone who cheats at a friendly game of golf when nothing much is at stake–how can you possibly trust them with something important? And yet, organizations and individuals “cheat at golf” all the time. They put clever clauses in the fine print. Spam a media list. Conceal the...
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
The rock star conundrum
Forty years ago, the royalty of rock spent the night in a studio to record one of the...
9 months ago
Forty years ago, the royalty of rock spent the night in a studio to record one of the fastest-selling singles of all time. The documentary of the event is just okay, but it’s fascinating in how it shows us just how deep imposter syndrome lies. Only a few stars seemed at all...
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...
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...
The Last...
Still Alive
WHERE DID YOU GO?
I flatter myself by thinking you are asking this question. I am writing a book of...
over a year ago
WHERE DID YOU GO?
I flatter myself by thinking you are asking this question. I am writing a book of and about porn.
IS IT ANY GOOD?
Not sure. I am trying my best. It's a lot of work, complicated by relentless self-doubt. The good news is I am drinking more.
ALMOST...
Anarchy Unfolds
To change everything, start anywhere
Letters to an anarchist - Part 2
a month ago
Letters to an anarchist - Part 2
Ian Betteridge
Weeknote, Sunday 15th December
a week ago
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...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Rosanna Reade
I am a printmaker and illustrator from Northern Ireland, living and working in Edinburgh. I studied...
over a year ago
I am a printmaker and illustrator from Northern Ireland, living and working in Edinburgh. I studied History of Art at University but have reverted back to creating art rather than talking or writing about it!
As a self-taught printmaker, there is quite a lot of trial and error...
Seth's Blog
Survivor bias and the mistake of stability
An asteroid has never destroyed the Earth, therefore an asteroid never will. This brand has been...
a year ago
An asteroid has never destroyed the Earth, therefore an asteroid never will. This brand has been involved in scandals before, and it has always come back stronger, so there’s nothing to worry about. There have been technology changes before, but we’ve always managed to find...
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
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...
The Last...
The Maintenance Of Certification Exam As Fetish
no need to wait for the receipt
(I had reworked an old post for a psychiatry trade journal, which I...
over a year ago
no need to wait for the receipt
(I had reworked an old post for a psychiatry trade journal, which I would happily have linked you to, except that page 2 is behind a login wall. So here is the version I submitted before the editors edited it, slightly longer with more typos. I am...
Marian's Blog
What I learned from building autonomous model race cars for a year
I was part of a university project group that develops autonomous model race cars.
We are a group of...
over a year ago
I was part of a university project group that develops autonomous model race cars.
We are a group of twelve students working on the project in part time for year.
We were provided with a car that meets the requirements for the F1/10th competition.
Even though competing in F1/10th...
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...
Seth's Blog
Spire confusion
When architects show off their work, or propose a bold new building complex or even ask for a zoning...
10 months ago
When architects show off their work, or propose a bold new building complex or even ask for a zoning variance, the public sees the external photos. The tall spire, the innovative use of glass, the weird hole in the center of the building. And when a car company shows off a new...
Seth's Blog
Shields up
Years and years ago, I helped the Weekly World News make a book. While their periodical was weekly,...
a year ago
Years and years ago, I helped the Weekly World News make a book. While their periodical was weekly, it certainly wasn’t news. They were just four people in a small office in Florida. They gleefully made stuff up every week. They had a few filing cabinets of stock photos, and they...
Open Culture
The 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,...
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...
On the Arts
Istanbul's Blue Tile Paradise
The Hidden Mosque of Rüstem Pasha
a year ago
The Hidden Mosque of Rüstem Pasha
Seth's Blog
The two bicycle errors
Momentum activities like public speaking, board sports and leadership all share an attribute with...
5 months ago
Momentum activities like public speaking, board sports and leadership all share an attribute with riding a bicycle: It gets easier when you get good at it. The first error we often make is believing that someone (even us) will never be good at riding a bike, because riding a bike...
Seth's Blog
The right marketing question
The wrong question is, “our project isn’t catching on, how do we promote it better?” The right...
a year ago
The wrong question is, “our project isn’t catching on, how do we promote it better?” The right question is a little more nuanced and far more important, “We’re seeking to make a change in part of the world. How do we find the right people and tell them the right (true) story that...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Madder Cutch & Co.
We are screen printers. We presume everyone knows that this is pushing ink through a mesh, which has...
over a year ago
We are screen printers. We presume everyone knows that this is pushing ink through a mesh, which has a pattern on it, using a squeegee. In our case, the screen and squeegee are quite big!
We print linen by the metre and it is mainly used for home decorations, including...
Seth's Blog
Throwing shade or throwing light?
One takes a little more effort than the other. While throwing shade might be more fun, it eventually...
a year ago
One takes a little more effort than the other. While throwing shade might be more fun, it eventually runs out of energy. It’s designed to end conversations, not start them, to intimidate, not encourage. Turning on lights helps everyone.
Open Culture
Watch a Japanese Artisan Hand-Craft a Cello in 6 Months
Cellists unwilling to settle for any but the finest instrument must, sooner or later, make a...
5 months ago
Cellists unwilling to settle for any but the finest instrument must, sooner or later, make a pilgrimage to Cremona — or rather, to the Cremonas. One is, of course, the city in Lombardy that was home to numerous pioneering master luthiers, up to and including Antonio Stradivari....
Open Culture
Artist Draws 9 Portraits on LSD During 1950s Research Experiment
During the 1950s, a researcher gave an artist two 50-microgram doses of LSD (each dose separated by...
7 months ago
During the 1950s, a researcher gave an artist two 50-microgram doses of LSD (each dose separated by about an hour), and then the artist was encouraged to draw pictures of the doctor who administered the drugs. Nine portraits were drawn over the space of eight hours. We still...
Open Culture
The Evolution of Hokusai’s Great Wave: A Study of 113 Known Copies of the Iconic Woodblock Print
The most widely known work by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese artist Hokusai,...
6 months ago
The most widely known work by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese artist Hokusai, 神奈川沖浪裏, is usually translated into English as The Great Wave off Kanagawa. That version of the title reflects the iconic scene depicted in the image well enough, though I can’t help but...
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...
Seth's Blog
Five lessons from week one of This is Strategy
Once you decide to write a book about strategy, it raises the bar for having a strategy for the...
a month ago
Once you decide to write a book about strategy, it raises the bar for having a strategy for the launch. People generally focus far too much on the launch of a project. Rocketships need a perfect launch, because just about everything after the launch is simply ballistic. But most...
Seth's Blog
The shifting status of more data
How do we know if we’re doing a good job? In some fields, it’s always been pretty easy to tell....
a year ago
How do we know if we’re doing a good job? In some fields, it’s always been pretty easy to tell. Either the building falls down or it doesn’t. Either the car starts after you charge the battery or it’s still dead. We can ask easy questions about how long it took or how much it […]
Seth's Blog
(Free) subscription drive
Every four years, give or take, I make a big but cheap ask: Consider subscribing to this blog. If...
9 months ago
Every four years, give or take, I make a big but cheap ask: Consider subscribing to this blog. If you’re already a subscriber, please ask five colleagues or friends to subscribe. It’s free. You can subscribe by email by putting your email address in the little box. Click below if...
Seth's Blog
The run-on sentence
Periods were an extraordinary invention. It took thousands of years of writing before we settled on...
a month ago
Periods were an extraordinary invention. It took thousands of years of writing before we settled on this simple convention. The most direct way to improve your writing is to make your sentences shorter. I was reading a magazine article yesterday and was rapidly losing interest....
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
Tracking Pianist Yuja Wang’s Heartbeats During Her Marathon Rachmaninoff Performance
The Carnegie Hall YouTube Channel sets the scene: On January 28, 2023, pianist Yuja Wang joined The...
6 months ago
The Carnegie Hall YouTube Channel sets the scene: On January 28, 2023, pianist Yuja Wang joined The Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Carnegie Hall for a once-in-a-lifetime, all-Rachmaninoff marathon that featured the composer’s four piano concertos...
Seth's Blog
The search tax
Amazon took in more than $30 billion in ad revenue last year, money spent to elevate some products...
a year ago
Amazon took in more than $30 billion in ad revenue last year, money spent to elevate some products over others in the hierarchy of attention. It’s probably true that someone shopping on Amazon is going to either buy something or not… the purpose of the “ads” isn’t to amplify...
Open Culture
Buckminster Fuller’s Map of the World: The Innovation That Revolutionized Map Design (1943)
In 2017, we brought you news of a world map purportedly more accurate than any to date, designed by...
4 months ago
In 2017, we brought you news of a world map purportedly more accurate than any to date, designed by Japanese architect and artist Hajime Narukawa. The map, called the AuthaGraph, updates a centuries-old method of turning the globe into a flat surface by first converting it to a...
Open Culture
Take The Near Impossible Literacy Test Louisiana Used to Suppress the Black Vote (1964)
In William Faulkner’s 1938 novel The Unvanquished, the implacable Colonel Sartoris takes drastic...
2 months ago
In William Faulkner’s 1938 novel The Unvanquished, the implacable Colonel Sartoris takes drastic action to stop the election of a black Republican candidate to office after the Civil War, destroying the ballots of black voters and shooting two Northern carpetbaggers. While such...
Open Culture
What It Takes to Pass “the Knowledge,” the “Insanely Hard” Exam to Become a London Taxicab Driver
Anyone who’s followed the late Michael Apted’s Up documentaries knows that becoming a London cab...
4 months ago
Anyone who’s followed the late Michael Apted’s Up documentaries knows that becoming a London cab driver is no mean feat. Tony Walker, one of the series’ most memorable participants, was selected at the age of seven from an East End primary school, already distinguished as a...
escape the algorithm
Gift interfaces, an interview, and how you found me
Some updates on things that have happened and that are coming in the escape the algorithm cinematic...
a month ago
Some updates on things that have happened and that are coming in the escape the algorithm cinematic universe:
Seth's Blog
Better than Google
I haven’t done a Google search in months. Perplexity is more powerful, more pleasant and more...
6 months ago
I haven’t done a Google search in months. Perplexity is more powerful, more pleasant and more effective. Instead of being corrupted by invasive ads, surveillance and sneaky dark patterns, it presents you with a simple, footnoted explanation of exactly what you’re looking for....
Seth's Blog
Kinds of courage
Courage is a generous act that involves risk. It’s not courageous to hang out with friends and make...
8 months ago
Courage is a generous act that involves risk. It’s not courageous to hang out with friends and make a crank phone call. The risk involved might be actual risk (it took courage to go to the moon) or it might feel risky (raising your hand at a meeting to ask a useful question...
Seth's Blog
When the sun is shining
Our job as professionals is to show up and do the work. Not simply respond to incoming or do the...
a year ago
Our job as professionals is to show up and do the work. Not simply respond to incoming or do the chores, but to create and innovate. And yet, some days feel more conducive than others. There are moments when it simply flows. When the surf’s up, cancel everything else. Don’t waste...
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
When 20,000 Americans Held a Pro-Nazi Rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939
Above, two-time Academy Award nominee Marshall Curry presents A Night at The Garden, a film that...
a month ago
Above, two-time Academy Award nominee Marshall Curry presents A Night at The Garden, a film that revisits a night in February 1939 when “20,000 Americans rallied in New York’s Madison Square Garden to celebrate the rise of Nazism — an event largely forgotten from U.S. history.”...
Seth's Blog
The community orchestra
There are people who get paid to play the flute or bassoon. There are far more people who volunteer...
a year ago
There are people who get paid to play the flute or bassoon. There are far more people who volunteer to participate in a community orchestra. For many, rehearsals or performances are the high points of their day. The metaphor is powerful, because it teaches us that we all benefit...
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...
Handprinted - Blog
Easy Christmas Cards Six Ways
We’ve had a lot of fun this week working on easy, quick and fun ways to print your own Christmas...
a year ago
We’ve had a lot of fun this week working on easy, quick and fun ways to print your own Christmas cards! We’ve come up with six simple ways for you to try. Take a look at our instructions below and have a go yourself.
Bah Humbug Lino Printed Card
This two-layered lino card is...
Open Culture
Kurt Vonnegut’s Lost Board Game Is Finally for Sale
Kurt Vonnegut’s life was not without its ironies. Fighting in World War II, that descendant of a...
2 months ago
Kurt Vonnegut’s life was not without its ironies. Fighting in World War II, that descendant of a long line of German immigrants in the United States found himself imprisoned in Dresden just when it was devastated by Allied firebombing. To understand the relevance of this...
Handprinted - Blog
Spooktacular Screen Printing Projects!
Get into the spooky spirit with a Halloween screen printing project! Create t-shirts, tote bags, and...
2 months ago
Get into the spooky spirit with a Halloween screen printing project! Create t-shirts, tote bags, and poster prints that’re hauntingly fun and frightfully easy!
Party Prints - Speedball Night Glo Acrylic Ink on Paper!
If you’re a Halloween lover this project is for you! Using...
Seth's Blog
Fooled
Now it’s a business model. People are regularly fooled by crypto scams, NFT hype, opioid felons,...
a year ago
Now it’s a business model. People are regularly fooled by crypto scams, NFT hype, opioid felons, algorithmic spam at scale, health claims, illogical political arguments, fundraising pitches, overnight shortcuts on the road to riches or happiness and MLM hustle. Your account has...
Ian Betteridge
20241202 Ten Blue Links, the late late late show edition!
Technically this is eight blue links, because I spent the weekend in Bristol and we’re getting...
2 weeks ago
Technically this is eight blue links, because I spent the weekend in Bristol and we’re getting towards Christmas. Next week: five blue links and a bag of wine gums. 1. RIP ChromeOS (sort of) Odd as it sounds today, when I talk a lot about user privacy and avoiding cloud services,...
Seth's Blog
The drift to normal
As an organization grows in scale, the idiosyncrasy and distinctiveness that was originally informed...
9 months ago
As an organization grows in scale, the idiosyncrasy and distinctiveness that was originally informed by the taste of the founders moves toward the mean. Over time, things get more average. That’s because each new customer, each new supplier and each new employee wants or needs...
Open Culture
2000-Year-Old Bottle of White Wine Found in a Roman Burial Site
Image via Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Back in 2017, we featured the oldest unopened...
5 months ago
Image via Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Back in 2017, we featured the oldest unopened bottle of wine in the world here on Open Culture. Found in Speyer, Germany, in 1867, it dates from 350 AD, making it a venerable vintage indeed, but one recently outdone by a bottle...
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
Which team?
Culture seeks shortcuts. The oldest shortcut is: “Friend or foe?” If we know the answer to that, a...
a year ago
Culture seeks shortcuts. The oldest shortcut is: “Friend or foe?” If we know the answer to that, a whole bunch of time gets saved, and fear is reduced as well. The labeling goes beyond which team, cadre, tribe or village someone is part of. It extends to the ways we demonstrate...
Open Culture
How Art Gets Stolen: What Happened to Egon Schiele’s Painting Boats Mirrored in the Water After Its...
George Clooney may be better regarded as an actor than as a director, but his occasional work in the...
2 months ago
George Clooney may be better regarded as an actor than as a director, but his occasional work in the latter capacity reveals an admirable interest in lesser-dramatized chapters of American history. His films have found their material in everything from the early years of the NFL...
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...
Open Culture
Orson Welles Narrates an Animated Parable About How Xenophobia & Greed Will Put America Into Decline...
More than 50 years and 10 presidential administrations have passed since Orson Welles narrated...
2 months ago
More than 50 years and 10 presidential administrations have passed since Orson Welles narrated Freedom River. And while it shows signs of age, the animated film, a parable about the role of immigration, race, and wealth in America, still resonates today. Actually, given the...
Open Culture
T. S. Eliot’s Classic Modernist Poem The Waste Land Gets Adapted into Comic-Book Form
The phrase “April is the cruelest month” was first printed more than 100 years ago, and it’s been in...
2 months ago
The phrase “April is the cruelest month” was first printed more than 100 years ago, and it’s been in common circulation almost as long. One can easily know it without having the faintest idea of its source, let alone its meaning. This is not, of course, to call T. S. Eliot’s The...
The Last...
Ten Extra Seconds Would Have Saved True Detective's Finale
what could it mean?
You just watched a historical TV moment: never before has the audience for a...
over a year ago
what could it mean?
You just watched a historical TV moment: never before has the audience for a show been smarter than its writer. I submit as second evidence the season finale for The Bachelor that was on yesterday, for three hours, drawing ten million "people". Just...
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.
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...
Open Culture
Behold Gustave Doré’s Dramatic Illustrations of the Bible (1866)
One occasionally hears it said that, thanks to the internet, all the books truly worth reading are...
5 months ago
One occasionally hears it said that, thanks to the internet, all the books truly worth reading are free: Shakespeare, Don Quixote, the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, the Divine Comedy, the Bible. Can it be a coincidence that all of these works inspired illustrations by Gustave Doré?...
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...
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
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...
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...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Fiona Black
My name is Fiona Black and I am an artist, folk musician, writer, history geek and lover of stories....
6 months ago
My name is Fiona Black and I am an artist, folk musician, writer, history geek and lover of stories. Home for me is the Highland village of Evanton, just north of Inverness on the shore of the Cromarty Firth. I am happy to have returned to live and create in the Highlands, and I...
Open Culture
George Orwell Reviews Mein Kampf: “He Envisages a Horrible Brainless Empire” (1940)
Christopher Hitchens once wrote that there were three major issues of the twentieth century —...
4 months ago
Christopher Hitchens once wrote that there were three major issues of the twentieth century — imperialism, fascism, and Stalinism — and George Orwell proved to be right about all of them. Orwell displays his remarkable foresight in a fascinating book review, published in March...
Marian's Blog
Raspberry Pi powered fishtank
My fishtank is now internet-connected. It is run by a Raspberry Pi that can do three things: Feed...
over a year ago
My fishtank is now internet-connected. It is run by a Raspberry Pi that can do three things: Feed the fish, switch the lights and take pictures.
To feed the fish, the Raspberry Pi sends commands to an automatic fishfeeder that I modified. It can empty any container in any order....
Open Culture
Behold the Oldest Written Text in the World: The Kish Tablet, Circa 3500 BC
Image by José-Manuel Benito, via Wikimedia Commons Some refer to the written Chinese language as...
a month ago
Image by José-Manuel Benito, via Wikimedia Commons Some refer to the written Chinese language as ideographic: that is, structured according to a system in which each symbol represents a particular idea or concept, whether abstract or concrete. That’s true of certain Chinese...
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...
Blog - Amy Goodchild
What is Generative Art?
Randomness, rules and natural systems. Some non-restrictive definitions and
an exploration of the...
over a year ago
Randomness, rules and natural systems. Some non-restrictive definitions and
an exploration of the form.
Seth's Blog
Too much competition
There are two approaches: Broaden your offerings, make them easier, cheaper and more available. Dumb...
a year ago
There are two approaches: Broaden your offerings, make them easier, cheaper and more available. Dumb them down and race to the bottom. Or… Focus on the customers who care enough about your idiosyncratic and particular offerings that they’ll not only happily walk away from the...
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...
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
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....
On the Arts
Are wind turbines ugly? Could they be beautiful?
How to make ugly things appear less ugly – or appear like something else entirely.
a year ago
How to make ugly things appear less ugly – or appear like something else entirely.
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
Two ways to defend the status quo
Neither is true, helpful or generous. Both happen all the time. Call it out when you see it.
a year ago
Neither is true, helpful or generous. Both happen all the time. Call it out when you see it.
Seth's Blog
The Cliffs Notes paradox
For a decade, Cliffs Notes were the bestselling section of the bookstore. They were a simple way for...
a year ago
For a decade, Cliffs Notes were the bestselling section of the bookstore. They were a simple way for any high school student to get insight, examples and answers about the books they were assigned and read (or didn’t read). When Cliffs published a list of their thirty bestselling...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Moïra Swann
Bonjour everyone! Moïra Swann is an English and Proustian adaptation from my real name Anne-Marie:...
over a year ago
Bonjour everyone! Moïra Swann is an English and Proustian adaptation from my real name Anne-Marie: while Anne-Marie lives in France and works full-time in a wonderful museum dedicated to the French painter Anne-Louis Girodet, Moïra Swann does lino printing whenever she can, as an...
The Last...
True Detective's Detective
taking part in a particular pleasure
[Pastabagel and I have emailed about the show. Some excerpts...
over a year ago
taking part in a particular pleasure
[Pastabagel and I have emailed about the show. Some excerpts of his]:
In Episode 3, the preacher says to Cohle, "Compassion is ethics, detective" when he departs the trailer leaving the reformed pedophile Burt in distress. Cohle replies...
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...
Seth's Blog
The paradox of lottery thinking
Tim Brownson points us to this recent poll of people in Great Britain. About one out of four people...
4 months ago
Tim Brownson points us to this recent poll of people in Great Britain. About one out of four people surveyed (of all ages) believe that they could qualify for the Olympics if they trained for the next four years. This is absurd. It’s the very absurdity of it that makes it common....
Seth's Blog
Project management
A project is a promise. It’s about coordinating unknowable future events to deliver something of...
a year ago
A project is a promise. It’s about coordinating unknowable future events to deliver something of value. Showing up on time for a meeting is a project (airlines! traffic! weather!) and so is building a skyscraper. That next podcast you’re going to publish is a project, and so is...
Ian Betteridge
Ten Blue Links, “rapid evolution of form” edition
1. Why should Trump deliver for anyone but Trump? This Bloomberg piece forgets one important fact:...
2 weeks ago
1. Why should Trump deliver for anyone but Trump? This Bloomberg piece forgets one important fact: Donald Trump is not going to be on the ticket next time. He doesn’t have to deliver a dime for ordinary voters, and will act accordingly. 2. You can now sync Apple Passwords with...
Seth's Blog
Bongo 4 – Thinking about power users (skive!)
Power users are tempting. They know what they want, they’re happy to share their preferences and...
3 weeks ago
Power users are tempting. They know what they want, they’re happy to share their preferences and they show up. But power users can also be a trap, because their specific needs might not match the market you seek to serve. When you pick your customers, you pick your future. Brooke...
Seth's Blog
Widespread resistance
Steve Pressfield defines Resistance as the inertia, stories and excuses we manage to create to avoid...
a year ago
Steve Pressfield defines Resistance as the inertia, stories and excuses we manage to create to avoid powerful or creative work. Writer’s block, procrastination, overconfidence, or a belief in un-delivered talent are all symptoms of resistance. Knowing that it has a name helps us...
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...
Seth's Blog
Sufficient resolution
Robert Johnson is known as the king of the Delta blues. One reason is that his small output was...
a year ago
Robert Johnson is known as the king of the Delta blues. One reason is that his small output was brilliant. The other, bigger reason is that the recordings that remain of his short life are among the earliest that sound good… most audio recordings from before 1936 sound antique...
Seth's Blog
The problem with the movie version
There are lights, camera and action, but mostly there’s the unreality of making it fit. Happily ever...
a month ago
There are lights, camera and action, but mostly there’s the unreality of making it fit. Happily ever after, a climax at just the right moment, perfect heroes, tension, resolution and a swelling soundtrack. Every element is amplified and things happen right on schedule. Consume...
Seth's Blog
Wild Hope Now: The power of books for causes
Non-profits and charities depend on the emotional and financial support of their backers. And that...
a year ago
Non-profits and charities depend on the emotional and financial support of their backers. And that support is always based on a story. A story of possibility, of justice, of community. They serve to right wrongs, to fix problems, to shine a light and to make things better. I’ve...
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
On to the next thing
Vitally important, rarely taught, easily messed up. In order to go onto the next thing, which we all...
a year ago
Vitally important, rarely taught, easily messed up. In order to go onto the next thing, which we all do (unless you’re still wearing pajamas with feet and taking ballet lessons), we need to walk away from the last thing. Wrap it up, learn from it, leave it in good hands. And we...
Open Culture
Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zappa on His Cable TV Show, and Later Recalls, “I Hated Him More Than Ever”...
Had Andy Warhol lived to see the internet–especially social networking–he would have loved it,...
5 months ago
Had Andy Warhol lived to see the internet–especially social networking–he would have loved it, though it may not have loved him. Though Warhol did see the very beginnings of the PC revolution, and made computer art near the end of his life on a Commodore Amiga 1000, he was mostly...
Open Culture
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Explained in One of the Earliest Science Films Ever Made (1923)
Albert Einstein developed his theory of special relativity in 1905, and then mentally mapped out his...
6 months ago
Albert Einstein developed his theory of special relativity in 1905, and then mentally mapped out his theory of general relativity between 1907 and 1915. For years to come, the rest of the world would try to catch up with Einstein, trying to understand the gist, let alone the full...
Open Culture
Free: 356 Issues of Galaxy, the Groundbreaking 1950s Science Fiction Magazine
Along with Astounding Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Galaxy...
a month ago
Along with Astounding Science Fiction and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Galaxy Magazine was one of the most important science fiction digests in 1950s America. Ray Bradbury wrote for it–including an early version of his masterpiece Fahrenheit 451–as did Robert A....
Seth's Blog
Holding on for dear life
That’s a cliche from the movies. Dangling from a railroad bridge, only determination and firm grip...
9 months ago
That’s a cliche from the movies. Dangling from a railroad bridge, only determination and firm grip can save the hero. In our modern world, we often end up holding on to ideas, to grievances or to our view of the world. Ironically, the harder we hold on to the things we’re hiding...
Seth's Blog
Out to get you
It’s easy to believe that in some moments, the world is out to get you. This is unlikely. The world...
11 months ago
It’s easy to believe that in some moments, the world is out to get you. This is unlikely. The world hardly knows you exist. There is injustice and trauma and systems of caste. There are tiny pockets of humanity that hold a grudge. But most of the time, in most situations, what...
Blog - Mac Pierce
10 Billion Minus 1 - Making a 10 digit 7 segment display for Lovepop
The process and steps of making a multi-digit display.
over a year ago
The process and steps of making a multi-digit display.
Seth's Blog
The page-a-day calendar
Time passes. And humans have always kept track. Distribution and technology combined to create a few...
5 months ago
Time passes. And humans have always kept track. Distribution and technology combined to create a few decades where the tear off daily calendar was nearly ubiquitous (read on for details on my new one, a collaboration with Debbie Millman). First, the industry needed to efficiently...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Ariana Martin
Hi, I’m Ariana - a pattern designer and printmaker from leafy Sheffield. I create joyful patterns...
11 months ago
Hi, I’m Ariana - a pattern designer and printmaker from leafy Sheffield. I create joyful patterns and illustrations, which are particularly inspired by 20th century design, and I produce my own range of stationery and homewares.
Describe your printmaking process.
Screen...
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
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...
Open Culture
Twin Peaks Actually Explained: A 4‑Hour Video Essay Demystifies It All
I don’t know about you, but my YouTube algorithms can act like a nagging friend, suggesting a video...
2 months ago
I don’t know about you, but my YouTube algorithms can act like a nagging friend, suggesting a video for days until I finally give in. Such was the case with this video essay with the tantalizing title: “Twin Peaks ACTUALLY EXPLAINED (No, Really)”. First of all, before, during,...
Prolost
Visual Effects Compositing in Adobe After Effects: My IBC 2019 Talk
Adobe graciously invited me to speak at their IBC 2019 booth about visual effects compositing in...
over a year ago
Adobe graciously invited me to speak at their IBC 2019 booth about visual effects compositing in After Effects — something I’ve been doing against all advice for many (many!) years. You can watch the entire talk here:
Prolost
New Photography Shortcuts Using ToolBox Pro
My love affair with Apple’s Shortcuts took a bit of a hit during the transition to iOS 13, but my...
over a year ago
My love affair with Apple’s Shortcuts took a bit of a hit during the transition to iOS 13, but my fascination with this on-device development environment has been rekindled thanks to a new app called ToolBox Pro.
ToolBox Pro is a free iOS/iPadOS app that adds powerful new actions...
Open Culture
The Alphabet Explained: The Origin of Every Letter
Think back, if you will, to the climactic scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which take...
4 months ago
Think back, if you will, to the climactic scenes of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which take place in the hidden temple that contains the Holy Grail. His father having been shot by the dastardly Nazi-sympathizing immortality-seeker Walter Donovan, Indy has no choice but to...
Seth's Blog
“What will I tell my boss?”
If you can’t answer that six-word question, you’re selling a commodity. Organizations don’t buy...
6 months ago
If you can’t answer that six-word question, you’re selling a commodity. Organizations don’t buy things, people do. And people at companies aren’t spending their own money, so this is the only question on the table. A cogent story, based on affiliation and status, one that sees...
Seth's Blog
Other people’s problems
It’s surprisingly easy to be generous and find solutions to our friend’s problems. Much easier than...
8 months ago
It’s surprisingly easy to be generous and find solutions to our friend’s problems. Much easier than it is to do it for ourselves. Why? There are two useful reasons, I think. FIRST, because we’re unaware of all the real and imaginary boundaries our friends have set up. If it were...
Open Culture
The Greatest Shot in Television: Science Historian James Burke Had One Chance to Nail This Scene …...
The 80-second clip above captures a rocket launch, something of which we’ve all seen footage at one...
2 months ago
The 80-second clip above captures a rocket launch, something of which we’ve all seen footage at one time or another. What makes its viewers call it “the greatest shot in television” still today, 45 years after it first aired, may take more than one viewing to notice. In it,...
Blog - Mac Pierce
USB C to 12vDC Adaptors for Camera gear
Making converters to power all of my camera accessories off of USB-C
over a year ago
Making converters to power all of my camera accessories off of USB-C
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker - Rebecca Perdue
Hello! I'm Rebecca Perdue. I am a printmaker and artist based in a small garden studio in Wiltshire....
9 months ago
Hello! I'm Rebecca Perdue. I am a printmaker and artist based in a small garden studio in Wiltshire. I work primarily in linocut and monoprint, but also paint and make occasional silver jewellery pieces and textiles. I'm very interested in linking work across several...
Seth's Blog
Ideas shared are exponential
If everyone visits a factory and takes a sample, it goes out of business. But if everyone in the...
a year ago
If everyone visits a factory and takes a sample, it goes out of business. But if everyone in the community takes an idea, that idea goes up in value. The best marketing advice I have for someone writing a book is simple: Write a book that people want to share with others. And...
Open Culture
Read 20 Short Stories From Nobel Prize-Winning Writer Alice Munro (RIP) Free Online
Note: Back in 2013, when Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature, we published a post...
7 months ago
Note: Back in 2013, when Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize in Literature, we published a post featuring 20 short stories written by Munro. Today, with the sad news that Alice Munro has passed away, at the age of 92, we’re bringing the original post (from October 10, 2013) back to...
Seth's Blog
Software done well
There are a few tools I use regularly that make me smile, because the craftspeople who made them...
5 months ago
There are a few tools I use regularly that make me smile, because the craftspeople who made them decided to build something with extra magic and care. By using and paying for well crafted software, we often get far more than we pay for… Ecamm is the tool I use for all my online...
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?
Handprinted - Blog
Custom Screen Specifications and Artwork Guides
If you're thinking about ordering a custom screen with us, we need your artwork to the...
a year ago
If you're thinking about ordering a custom screen with us, we need your artwork to the specifications laid out in this blog post.
First, these are the technical specifications we require
Flattened PDF format only (no JPG or PNG)
Portrait
300 dpi resolution, no...
Open Culture
Hear Flannery O’Connor Read “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1959)
Flannery O’Connor was a Southern writer who, as Joyce Carol Oates once said, had less in common with...
8 months ago
Flannery O’Connor was a Southern writer who, as Joyce Carol Oates once said, had less in common with Faulkner than with Kafka and Kierkegaard. Isolated by poor health and consumed by her fervent Catholic faith, O’Connor created works of moral fiction that, according to Oates,...
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...
Open Culture
Jimi Hendrix Opens for The Monkees on a 1967 Tour; Then Flips Off the Crowd and Quits
It’s easy to dismiss The Monkees. Critics and listeners have been doing it since the sixties,...
4 months ago
It’s easy to dismiss The Monkees. Critics and listeners have been doing it since the sixties, although the band has also come in for its share of reappraisals, particularly for their psych-rock album Head. (That’s the soundtrack from the 1968 Jack Nicholson-directed art film of...
Open Culture
Aldous Huxley Explains How Man Became “the Victim of His Own Technology” (1961)
Just a couple of days ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted out a video promoting, “the new iPad Pro: the...
7 months ago
Just a couple of days ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted out a video promoting, “the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created.” The response has been overwhelming, and overwhelmingly negative: for many viewers, the ad’s imagery of a hydraulic press crushing a heap of...
Open Culture
“The Virtues of Coffee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethargy, Scurvy, Dropsy, Gout & More
According to many historians, the English Enlightenment may never have happened were it not for...
7 months ago
According to many historians, the English Enlightenment may never have happened were it not for coffeehouses, the public sphere where poets, critics, philosophers, legal minds, and other intellectual gadflies regularly met to chatter about the pressing concerns of the day. And...
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...
Open Culture
Gustave Doré’s Macabre Illustrations of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” (1884)
One of the busiest, most in-demand artists of the 19th century, Gustave Doré made his name...
6 months ago
One of the busiest, most in-demand artists of the 19th century, Gustave Doré made his name illustrating works by such authors as Rabelais, Balzac, Milton, and Dante. In the 1860s, he created one of the most memorable and popular illustrated editions of Cervantes’ Don Quixote,...
Seth's Blog
Facing the future
The Tofflers explained that Future Shock kicks in when the world changes faster than we’re ready...
2 months ago
The Tofflers explained that Future Shock kicks in when the world changes faster than we’re ready for. We react instead of respond, and often shut down in the face of too much of the new. When our world changes (and it always does, more now than ever) we have four choices. And...
Seth's Blog
Thoughts on the manual
We have more ways to offer instructions than ever before, but it’s not obvious that we’re getting...
a year ago
We have more ways to offer instructions than ever before, but it’s not obvious that we’re getting better at it. Not just the operator’s manual, but every way we have to teach and offer instructions… Some (uncategorized) things to consider: The first manual I created, in 1983, was...
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
A Bicycle Trip: Watch an Animation of The World’s First LSD Trip in 1943
On August 16, 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann was synthesizing a new compound called lysergic...
7 months ago
On August 16, 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann was synthesizing a new compound called lysergic acid diethylamide-25 when he got a couple of drops on his finger. The chemical, later known worldwide as LSD, absorbed into his system, and, soon after, he experienced an intense...
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
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...
Seth's Blog
True/useful
Here’s a simple grid that might change the way you think about internal stories: When we believe in...
a year ago
Here’s a simple grid that might change the way you think about internal stories: When we believe in something that’s useful but not true, it can serve a helpful purpose. The tooth fairy, perhaps. When we act on something that’s useful and also true, we’ve found a resilient path...
Open Culture
David Bowie’s 100 Must Read Books
Image by Avro, via Wikimedia Commons In 2013, the curators of the touring museum exhibit “David...
3 months ago
Image by Avro, via Wikimedia Commons In 2013, the curators of the touring museum exhibit “David Bowie Is” released a list of David Bowie’s 100 favorite reads, providing us with deeper insights into his literary tastes. Covering fiction and non-fiction, the list spans six decades,...
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
A transformative summer
Living indoors, connected to a screen, it’s easy for the months and years to blur together. The...
10 months ago
Living indoors, connected to a screen, it’s easy for the months and years to blur together. The seasons used to matter more. But for young adults, they still do. Transitions are built around the seasons, and the headlong rush to a career is still sometimes interrupted by months...
The Great Discontent...
Lucy McRae
Emergence Issue: TGD’s fifth issue features a dynamic group of 15 creators who are deeply committed...
over a year ago
Emergence Issue: TGD’s fifth issue features a dynamic group of 15 creators who are deeply committed to addressing systematic challenges in their communities through creativity and emerging ideologies. Buy Now Can you talk a little bit about where you grew up and how that place...
Seth's Blog
“What’s the catch?”
It’s an important question. Lots of opportunities come with one, and going in with your eyes open...
8 months ago
It’s an important question. Lots of opportunities come with one, and going in with your eyes open helps avoid problems later. Two challenges: Sometimes, a really good opportunity doesn’t actually have a catch. And spending a lot of time looking for one keeps us from the work we...
Seth's Blog
Pet quirks
Peeves make lousy pets. They undermine us and put us on edge. But quirks? Little eccentricities we...
7 months ago
Peeves make lousy pets. They undermine us and put us on edge. But quirks? Little eccentricities we see in the world that offer a cost-free smile. Habits or interactions that always make us a little lighter on our feet and open the door to better… They’re easy to find, not hard to...
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
The next one
When asked what his favorite composition was, Duke Ellington said, “the next one.” This is the...
a year ago
When asked what his favorite composition was, Duke Ellington said, “the next one.” This is the essence of the artistic process. When we’re in the liminal space between now and what is about to come, we’re fully alive.
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...
Open Culture
Stephen King Names His Five Favorite Works by Stephen King
Stephen King has no doubt forgotten writing more books than most of us will ever publish. But even...
6 months ago
Stephen King has no doubt forgotten writing more books than most of us will ever publish. But even now, in his prolific “late career,” if you ask him to name his own most favored works, he can do it without hesitation. Stephen Colbert tried that out a few years ago on The Late...
Seth's Blog
The tooth fairy
Make a list of things you used to believe. Fervently, certainly, completely. Things that you were...
4 months ago
Make a list of things you used to believe. Fervently, certainly, completely. Things that you were sure of, but now, with the passage of time and the benefit of experience, you know to be incorrect or incomplete. Of course, it’s not just mythical creatures beloved by children....
Open Culture
The Evolution of Cinema: Watch Nearly 140 Years of Film History Unfold in 80 Minutes
The video above from YouTuber Alex Day includes clips from about 500 movies, and you’ve almost...
a month ago
The video above from YouTuber Alex Day includes clips from about 500 movies, and you’ve almost certainly seen more than a few of them. Battleship Potemkin, Dumbo, Rear Window, Dr. No, The Godfather, E. T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Top Gun, Braveheart, Gladiator, Inception: we’re not...
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 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 […]
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
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...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Jessie de Salis
I am Jessie de Salis. I run a screen printing textile business with my cousin, Alice. We print...
4 months ago
I am Jessie de Salis. I run a screen printing textile business with my cousin, Alice. We print colourful patterned fabrics from a Somerset barn, a space we share with the sparrows and house-martins.
What inspires you?
I love bold and bright design. I always seem to come back to...
escape the algorithm
Folk search engines
Strategies better than plain Google.
10 months ago
Strategies better than plain Google.
Seth's Blog
Spines out
I lost a cookbook the other day. After twenty more minutes of searching, there it was, right on the...
a year ago
I lost a cookbook the other day. After twenty more minutes of searching, there it was, right on the cookbook shelf. But the spine was much more subtle than the cover, and it hadn’t been what I was looking for or expecting. We spend a lot of time on our (metaphorical) book covers....
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...
Prolost
Apple’s “Let Loose” iPad Event was Shot on iPhone — With Panavision Lenses
Still from Apple’s “Let Loose” video.
Apple unveiled their new line of iPads yesterday in a...
7 months ago
Still from Apple’s “Let Loose” video.
Apple unveiled their new line of iPads yesterday in a pre-recorded video titled “Let Loose.” As with the previous “Scary Fast” MacBook Pro launch video, “Let Loose” ends with a tag proclaiming “Shot on iPhone” — this time adding “Edited on...
Seth's Blog
The opportunity for AI formbots
Forms are a convenient way for bureaucracies to collect information. They’re convenient because they...
a week ago
Forms are a convenient way for bureaucracies to collect information. They’re convenient because they offload the work to the patient/customer/taxpayer. The shift in labor led to an explosion of self-serve forms, but the built-in inefficiencies punish everyone. The fundamental...
Seth's Blog
Choosing your pacemaker
Roger Bannister ran a four-minute mile by having a relay race of pace runners next to him. If he...
a year ago
Roger Bannister ran a four-minute mile by having a relay race of pace runners next to him. If he could keep up with his pacer, he’d finish the run in record time. If you work in an office where people are regularly shipping breakthrough work, it’s likely your work will ship as...
Seth's Blog
The seduction of “why”
It’s classic linkbait. Headlines that explain why something is happening. Questions to AI about why...
a year ago
It’s classic linkbait. Headlines that explain why something is happening. Questions to AI about why something happens. Even kids, asking their parents. Why is easy to sell. Why is hard to deliver. Consultants make a good living explaining the why. And media companies try to. But...
Seth's Blog
Who do you want to become?
Emotional enrollment is at the heart of performance, learning and connection. A coach can quickly...
2 months ago
Emotional enrollment is at the heart of performance, learning and connection. A coach can quickly tell when someone is committed to changing their approach in order to change the outcome–it’s easy to tell this person apart from someone who simply wants what they’re already doing...
Seth's Blog
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...
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...
Seth's Blog
“Let’s face it”
In 1959, three years after Columbia Records spent a fortune rolling out stereo recording, a senior...
12 months ago
In 1959, three years after Columbia Records spent a fortune rolling out stereo recording, a senior A&R executive named Ward Botsman told the New York Times, “Let’s face it, the craze for stereo has not been as intense as expected,” writing off the format that would end up...
Handprinted - Blog
Drypoint with Aluminium Plates
Drypoint is an intaglio printmaking method that involves scratching an image into a plate with a...
a year ago
Drypoint is an intaglio printmaking method that involves scratching an image into a plate with a pointed tool. These lines create a burr that holds ink, meaning that the print reveals the drawing.
Drypoint is an easy technique to get to grips with and is a great method if you...
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
When the future finds us
The future never arrives, of course, but it has a powerful force that’s impossible to avoid. We can...
a year ago
The future never arrives, of course, but it has a powerful force that’s impossible to avoid. We can see it as a threshold, a doorway toward something new. Or we can fight it as an unwanted change, and discover that it has traction, tenacity and leverage. We can influence the...
Seth's Blog
Anti-smart
There’s a difference between intellectual and smart. A plumber is smart, they know how to do a...
a year ago
There’s a difference between intellectual and smart. A plumber is smart, they know how to do a skilled and effective job on the task at hand. Intellectualism isn’t about practical results, it’s a passion for exploring what others have said, though this approach is sometimes...
Open Culture
Martin Scorsese Plays Vincent Van Gogh in a Short, Surreal Film by Akira Kurosawa
The idea of the auteur director has been a controversial one at times given the sheer number of...
5 months ago
The idea of the auteur director has been a controversial one at times given the sheer number of people required at every stage to produce a film. But it hangs together for me when you look at the films of say, Martin Scorsese or Akira Kurosawa, both directors with very...
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
Late-stage technocrats
Water flows downhill, and tech solves the easy problems first. After the launch of Amazon and...
a year ago
Water flows downhill, and tech solves the easy problems first. After the launch of Amazon and Google, when smartphones reached critical mass, an easy problem to solve involved bridging information with stuff. So you could use your phone to summon a car, a case of beer, a dog...
Seth's Blog
I’ve been doing it wrong all along
This is one of the great benefits of learning. It’s also a common challenge. When we get better at...
a year ago
This is one of the great benefits of learning. It’s also a common challenge. When we get better at something, it is preceded by a moment of incompetence. In that moment, we’re not exactly sure how to do it better, but we realize that the way we’d been doing it wasn’t nearly as...
Seth's Blog
Projects and the red zone
Many projects are never finished. There are countless broken and not-quite-fixed cars in garages....
a year ago
Many projects are never finished. There are countless broken and not-quite-fixed cars in garages. There are crafts projects, massive redevelopments and everything in between. They sit unfinished because of bad planning, lack of resources, and most of all, a lack of resolve and...
Seth's Blog
Generosity and fear
Fear is self-focused. Day to day, our fear is about us. What will happen if we give that speech,...
8 months ago
Fear is self-focused. Day to day, our fear is about us. What will happen if we give that speech, launch that project, get stuck in traffic, are eaten by an alligator… And generosity is about others. “How can I help?” Jumping in the water to save a struggling swimmer stops us from...
Open Culture
Eno: The New “Generative Documentary” on Brian Eno That’s Never the Same Movie Twice
Brian Eno once wrote that “it’s possible that our grandchildren will look at us in wonder and say,...
5 months ago
Brian Eno once wrote that “it’s possible that our grandchildren will look at us in wonder and say, ‘You mean you used to listen to to exactly the same thing over and over again?’ ” That speculation comes from an essay on what he calls “generative music,” which is automatically...
Open Culture
Every Frame a Painting Returns to YouTube & Explores Why the Sustained Two-Shot Vanished from Movies
Video essayists don’t normally retire; in most cases, they just drift into inactivity. Hence the...
3 months ago
Video essayists don’t normally retire; in most cases, they just drift into inactivity. Hence the surprise and even dismay of the internet’s cinephiles when Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos declared the end of their respected channel Every Frame a Painting in 2016. We here at Open...
Blog - Amy Goodchild
AI Generations: ChatGPT-3 vs ChatGPT-4 on Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings
I asked GPT-3 & GPT-4 to follow instructions to create drawings in p5js and
compared the results
a year ago
I asked GPT-3 & GPT-4 to follow instructions to create drawings in p5js and
compared the results
Open Culture
James Earl Jones (RIP) Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”
Note: With the sad passing of James Earl Jones, at age 93, we’re bringing back a post from our...
3 months ago
Note: With the sad passing of James Earl Jones, at age 93, we’re bringing back a post from our archive–one featuring Jones reading two great American poets, Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman. These readings first appeared on our site in 2014. For all its many flaws the original...
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...
Open Culture
David Bowie Predicts the Good & Bad of the Internet in 1999: “We’re on the Cusp of Something...
“We’re on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.” The year is 1999 and David Bowie, in...
4 months ago
“We’re on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.” The year is 1999 and David Bowie, in shaggy hair and groovy glasses, has seen the future and it is the Internet. In this short but fascinating interview with BBC’s stalwart and withering interrogator cum interviewer...
Stat Significant
Unpacking Vinyl's Remarkable Revival: A Statistical Analysis
The fall and rise of vinyl and record stores.
3 months ago
The fall and rise of vinyl and record stores.
Prolost
Red Giant VFX Suite
Today Red Giant has released a brand-new collection of plug-ins for visual effects compositing. It’s...
over a year ago
Today Red Giant has released a brand-new collection of plug-ins for visual effects compositing. It’s called VFX Suite, and some of these tools are things I’ve been dreaming about since computers were beige.
There are nine plug-ins in the suite. You can learn about all of them at...
Seth's Blog
When the media is ready (Bongo part 2)
Media isn’t a magazine or a website. It’s a system. We can learn to see the system and contribute to...
a month ago
Media isn’t a magazine or a website. It’s a system. We can learn to see the system and contribute to it with leverage. There are three elements to consider in a media system that’s worth a professional creator’s time: Systems are changed by technology. When desktop publishing...
Seth's Blog
The network scam
Lana Swartz coined this term in her breakthrough paper on crypto. A scam always involves a...
a year ago
Lana Swartz coined this term in her breakthrough paper on crypto. A scam always involves a transaction. In the traditional fraud, the scammer tells a lie and the buyer, either with or without diligence, believes it and loses everything. You buy the magic beans, but they don’t...
Open Culture
Harvard Removes the Human Skin Binding from a Book in Its Collection Since 1934
In June of 2014, Harvard University’s Houghton Library put up a blog post titled “Caveat Lecter,”...
6 months ago
In June of 2014, Harvard University’s Houghton Library put up a blog post titled “Caveat Lecter,” announcing “good news for fans of anthropodermic bibliopegy, bibliomaniacs, and cannibals alike.” The occasion was the scientific determination that a book in the Houghton’s...
Seth's Blog
Avoiding technology
Robert Caro never learned to type. He pecks out his books two fingers at a time on an electric...
11 months ago
Robert Caro never learned to type. He pecks out his books two fingers at a time on an electric typewriter. There are two reasons to avoid learning a proven new technology: You know what it can do and how it will change your life and you don’t want it. You don’t know what it can...
Seth's Blog
Explaining it to a kid
It can be difficult. Explaining atoms or molecules, or decision making, or what you do at your job…...
a year ago
It can be difficult. Explaining atoms or molecules, or decision making, or what you do at your job… The reason that it’s difficult is that in order to explain something, we need to really understand it first. Not simply be able to do the task or ace the test. But understand. And...
Open Culture
The “Nonsense” Botanical Illustrations of Victorian Artist-Poet Edward Lear (1871–77)
Since the Victorian era, Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” has been, for generation upon...
5 months ago
Since the Victorian era, Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” has been, for generation upon generation in the English-speaking world, the kind of poem that one simply knows, whether one remembers actually having read it or not. As with most such works that seep so...
Anarchy Unfolds
Age of Empires but make it Solarpunk
My favorite strategy game re-imagined
3 hours ago
My favorite strategy game re-imagined
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
All customers are the same
[and all customers are different.] Customers are why you’re here. They pay the bills and they are...
10 months ago
[and all customers are different.] Customers are why you’re here. They pay the bills and they are the primary driver of your growth. But each adds a different amount of value to your organization and the journey you’re on. The customer who spends 100x as much as the average...
The Last...
Funeral
do you have a better system?
The funeral is attended by 30 people. It's a military...
over a year ago
do you have a better system?
The funeral is attended by 30 people. It's a military funeral because he was in Korea, and in the front chairs are his wife and two grown children, and they are quietly crying.
When it ends, people disperse hesitatingly, after all, they...
Seth's Blog
Redundancy has a half-life
At first, this stop sign sign makes a lot of sense: Lives are at stake. Break the rhythm, turn...
10 months ago
At first, this stop sign sign makes a lot of sense: Lives are at stake. Break the rhythm, turn something ignored into something noticed. The challenge with “highlighting” is that it fades. When everything is in all caps, nothing is. Exclamation points are like salt. When people...
Ian Betteridge
When dealing with Musk, Labour needs to understand the world has changed
There are plenty of objections to preventing Elon Musk from donating to Reform. The first is it’s...
4 hours ago
There are plenty of objections to preventing Elon Musk from donating to Reform. The first is it’s politically motivated. A party shouldn’t (the theory goes) use its power in government specifically to target another party. Of course, Labour could do this in a way which prevented...
Anarchy Unfolds
April '24 Myths & Recs
Sexual orientation, Cowboy Carter, mental health recovery, and more
7 months ago
Sexual orientation, Cowboy Carter, mental health recovery, and more
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Nick Morley (with giveaway!)
Nick Morley, aka Linocutboy, is an artist, illustrator, author and educator specialising in linocut....
a year ago
Nick Morley, aka Linocutboy, is an artist, illustrator, author and educator specialising in linocut. His prints have been bought by people all over the world and his illustrations have appeared on book covers and in magazines. Nick teaches regular linocut workshops at Hello Print...
Seth's Blog
On building a cathedral
If you’re in need of a gathering place, a dry, functional, centrally located facility for your folks...
9 months ago
If you’re in need of a gathering place, a dry, functional, centrally located facility for your folks to meet, a cathedral is probably way more than you need. It’s far more expensive to build and maintain and not optimal in delivering what’s required. But what if this building...
Marian's Blog
Generating an infinite world with the Wave Function Collapse algorithm
This article describes how I generate an infinite city using the Wave Function Collapse algorithm in...
a year ago
This article describes how I generate an infinite city using the Wave Function Collapse algorithm in a way that is fast, deterministic, parallelizable and reliable.
It's a follow-up to my 2019 article on adapting the WFC algorithm to generate an infinite world.
The new approach...
Seth's Blog
In defense of the hard parts
Yesterday’s post was a little glib. Without a doubt, we add more value when we focus on the...
4 months ago
Yesterday’s post was a little glib. Without a doubt, we add more value when we focus on the emotional labor of important work, leaving others the chance to create commodities. But the repetitive, difficult nature of leaning into commodity production can give us insight, humility...
Open Culture
Watch Tom Waits For No One, the Pioneering Animated Music Video from 1979
Tom Waits For No One, above, is surely the only film in history to have won an Oscar for Scientific...
5 months ago
Tom Waits For No One, above, is surely the only film in history to have won an Oscar for Scientific and Technical Achievement for its creator and a first place award at the Hollywood Erotic Film and Video Festival. Director John Lamb and his partner, Bruce Lyon also deserve...
escape the algorithm
A complete guide to pretending you saw the total solar eclipse
I cannot relate to you
8 months ago
Seth's Blog
The head of marketing
It’s easy to be confused about this job, because it’s not one job, it’s at least three. This is why...
a year ago
It’s easy to be confused about this job, because it’s not one job, it’s at least three. This is why it’s a difficult job to fill, and why turnover is so high–we’re not allocating resources or setting expectations in a way that matches the work to be done. Marketing strategy: This...
Open Culture
Martin Mull (RIP) Satirically Interviews a Young Tom Waits on Fernwood 2 Night (1977)
These days, references to seventies television increasingly require prefatory explanation. Who under...
5 months ago
These days, references to seventies television increasingly require prefatory explanation. Who under the age of 60 recalls, for example, the cultural phenomenon that was Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, an absurdist satire so faithful to the soap-opera form it parodied that it aired...
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
Rethinking the Sports-Industrial Complex
School sports can have some valuable outputs: And yet, many schools act as if all they have is a...
a year ago
School sports can have some valuable outputs: And yet, many schools act as if all they have is a trophy shortage. They bench kids who might not (yet) have the physical attributes necessary to win, or they build huge stadiums, go on long road trips, berate students that make an...
Open Culture
Medieval Cats Behaving Badly: Kitties That Left Paw Prints … and Peed … on 15th Century Manuscripts
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” –Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808–90) When...
7 months ago
“The more things change, the more they stay the same.” –Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr (1808–90) When Emir O. Filipovic, a medievalist at the University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, visited the State Archives of Dubrovnik, he stumbled upon something that will hardly surprise...
Seth's Blog
Nihil hic deest
This page intentionally left blank has a long history. I thought it was an IBM thing from the 1960s,...
a year ago
This page intentionally left blank has a long history. I thought it was an IBM thing from the 1960s, but I was off by a thousand or more years. There are good reasons for a page to be blank. Folding signatures, printing processes, having chapters start on the right or the left…...
Seth's Blog
Crispiness
Crisp faces many opponents: entropy, laziness, time, compromise and false shortcuts. And fear. Most...
a year ago
Crisp faces many opponents: entropy, laziness, time, compromise and false shortcuts. And fear. Most of all, fear. Things rarely become crispy on their own. Instead, it requires care and effort. An ume shiso hand roll begins with a crisp piece of nori, but within a minute or two,...
Open Culture
Johnny Cash & The Clash’s Joe Strummer Sing Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” (2002)
In 1958, Merle Haggard saw Johnny Cash play in San Quentin, and went on to sing honest country songs...
2 months ago
In 1958, Merle Haggard saw Johnny Cash play in San Quentin, and went on to sing honest country songs for country outlaws. In 1982, future Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello saw Joe Strummer play with The Clash in Chicago and went on to play angry righteous rock for...
Seth's Blog
The Coney Island problem
Disney theme parks created more than 20 billion dollars in revenue last year. Coney Island, not so...
6 months ago
Disney theme parks created more than 20 billion dollars in revenue last year. Coney Island, not so much. Coney Island is dozens of small honky tonk vendors and attractions, an ecosystem, not a corporation. Independent local stores got hammered by the more organized stores in the...
Seth's Blog
Foundering or floundering?
Floundering is flopping around and making little progress. A Dutch word for getting mired and lost....
2 months ago
Floundering is flopping around and making little progress. A Dutch word for getting mired and lost. Foundering is what we call it when the ship goes down. It’s an ancient French word based on bottom. Too often, in our desperate attempt to not founder, we flounder. Better, I...
Seth's Blog
A branding exercise
My friend’s organization is working with a branding studio to think about how they appear to people...
5 months ago
My friend’s organization is working with a branding studio to think about how they appear to people who don’t know them well. This is sometimes called ‘rebranding.’ What is almost always done in practice is actually better referred to as re-logo-ing. A brand is not a logo. A...
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
Blog - Amy Goodchild
Maplands
Maplands is a long-form generative art project I released on fxhash on 5th
Jan 2022. It sold out...
over a year ago
Maplands is a long-form generative art project I released on fxhash on 5th
Jan 2022. It sold out 256 pieces in exactly 2 minutes.
The Great Discontent...
Brian Eno
From pioneering ambient music and ever-evolving light paintings to innovating production styles,...
a year ago
From pioneering ambient music and ever-evolving light paintings to innovating production styles, installations, and strategies of surrender, Brian Eno’s work occupies a rare space in this world with an imprint as deep as it is wide. For the Roxy Music founder, art is the kind of...
Seth's Blog
Small doses
If you go to a health food store and buy some pills with selenium, colloidal silver or other...
a year ago
If you go to a health food store and buy some pills with selenium, colloidal silver or other mysterious substances in them, it’s possible that they’ll make you feel a bit better. On the other hand, if you take a large dose, you’ll get sick or possibly die. In very small doses,...
Seth's Blog
Don’t rush
…but hurry. The words matter. Rushing has a built-in excuse. Rushing pushes us to skip steps or ship...
7 months ago
…but hurry. The words matter. Rushing has a built-in excuse. Rushing pushes us to skip steps or ship junk. But hurrying acknowledges how precious this moment in time is. It honors our good fortune to be in this place, able to contribute something generous.
Open Culture
Watch the 1896 Film The Pistol Duel, a Startling Re-Creation of the Last Days of Pistol Dueling in...
One sometimes hears lamented the tendency of movies to depict Mexico — and in particular, its...
5 months ago
One sometimes hears lamented the tendency of movies to depict Mexico — and in particular, its capital Mexico City — as a threatening, rough-and-tumble place where human life has no value. Such concerns turn out to be nearly as old as cinema itself, having first been raised in...
Open Culture
Watch the Opening Credits of an Imaginary 70s Cop Show Starring Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett: avant-garde dramatist, brooding Nobel Prize winner, poet, and…gritty television...
3 months ago
Samuel Beckett: avant-garde dramatist, brooding Nobel Prize winner, poet, and…gritty television detective? Sadly, no, but he had the makings of a great one, at least as cut together by playwright Danny Thompson, cofounder of Chicago’s Theater Oobleck. Some 35 years after...
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...
Seth's Blog
We probably can’t buy our way out of it
That’s what we usually try to do. When technology, comfort, convenience, efficiency and price line...
a year ago
That’s what we usually try to do. When technology, comfort, convenience, efficiency and price line up, the market takes care of itself. On the other hand, seatbelts would never have happened if they weren’t required. But pizza grew to dominate our diets with no centralized...
Blog - Amy Goodchild
Curved Line Jellyfish
I had pictured something quite bold, graphical and geometric but I ended
with gradients and...
over a year ago
I had pictured something quite bold, graphical and geometric but I ended
with gradients and floatiness.
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.
Anarchy Unfolds
Straight Talk About Being Gay
Transcending orientation helps straight men and boys too
4 months ago
Transcending orientation helps straight men and boys too
Seth's Blog
PW 5: Measuring the right thing
Last in the series… Most of us were indoctrinated to believe that completing chores is the...
11 months ago
Last in the series… Most of us were indoctrinated to believe that completing chores is the appropriate measure of productivity. “I did all my homework.” Doing all your homework is a measure for industrial bosses. But what, precisely, did your homework ever do for you? The actual...
Handprinted - Blog
Introduction to Linocut Tools
As printmakers, we know that having good tools can be a game changer when it comes to your...
10 months ago
As printmakers, we know that having good tools can be a game changer when it comes to your printmaking practice. There are lots of lino and wood cutting tools to choose from so read on for a breakdown of the different options available.
All our linocut tools can be found here.
We...
Seth's Blog
Goals and expectations
[a note to a frustrated friend, just starting out on a long career] There are three reasons that our...
a year ago
[a note to a frustrated friend, just starting out on a long career] There are three reasons that our goals might not be achieved. In order of palatability, they are: Perhaps the goals are too lofty, too based on chance, unlikely for anyone to achieve, surrounded by barriers that...
Seth's Blog
Small groups, well organized
And those are the two challenges of anyone seeking to make an impact. First, we get distracted by...
a year ago
And those are the two challenges of anyone seeking to make an impact. First, we get distracted by the inclination to make the group as big as we can imagine. After all, the change is essential, the idea is a good one. It’s for everyone. Except that’s a trap. Because a group...
Open Culture
A New Analysis of Beethoven’s DNA Reveals That Lead Poisoning Could Have Caused His Deafness
Despite the intense scrutiny paid to the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven for a couple of...
7 months ago
Despite the intense scrutiny paid to the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven for a couple of centuries now, the revered composer still has certain mysteries about him. Some of them he surely never intended to clarify, like the identity of “Immortal Beloved”; others he...
Seth's Blog
Success is not an option
In any creative endeavor, it’s possible to define success as the big win, the moment when your...
7 months ago
In any creative endeavor, it’s possible to define success as the big win, the moment when your dreams match reality. Success is the end of imposter syndrome, stability and finally making it to the other side. By this definition, it’s clear that success isn’t going to happen. It’s...
Ian Betteridge
Weeknote, Sunday 8th December 2024
This time of year, work becomes a tension between two opposing forces: the inevitable winding down...
2 weeks ago
This time of year, work becomes a tension between two opposing forces: the inevitable winding down of the year, as fewer projects appear and people begin to drift away, and the equally inevitable rush to get whatever remains to be done. It’s a tension that keeps me awake at night...
Seth's Blog
More vs. better
If every building in the shopping district in a big city was owned by one landlord, rents would go...
a year ago
If every building in the shopping district in a big city was owned by one landlord, rents would go up. So would the prices of everything sold. The landlord would keep a significant percentage of each store’s profits and innovation would suffer as well. Google’s monopoly is real....
Handprinted - Blog
How to Design and Print a Half Drop Repeating Pattern
A half drop is a great way of creating a repeating pattern where the repeat is slightly obscured. It...
a year ago
A half drop is a great way of creating a repeating pattern where the repeat is slightly obscured. It can make for a less gridded-looking structure and add complexity to your design. Here's a simple, analogue way to make one.
Start by drawing around your block. We are...
Open Culture
Is Andrew Huberman Ruining Your Morning Coffee Routine?
Andrew Huberman–the host of the influential Huberman Lab podcast–has gotten a lot of mileage out of...
3 months ago
Andrew Huberman–the host of the influential Huberman Lab podcast–has gotten a lot of mileage out of his recommended morning routine. His routine emphasizes the importance of getting sunlight within 30–60 minutes of waking; also engaging in light physical activity; hydrating well;...
Seth's Blog
Benign vs. normal
We evolved to be wary of change. Our attention is limited, new things can be a threat and the status...
11 months ago
We evolved to be wary of change. Our attention is limited, new things can be a threat and the status quo feels comfortable. As a result, we spend a lot of time and energy being afraid (and arguing about) the upcoming changes in our lives, but almost no time at all thinking about...
Seth's Blog
PW 3: Errors and productivity
If productivity is useful work created by time or money, it’s worth thinking about what we mean by...
11 months ago
If productivity is useful work created by time or money, it’s worth thinking about what we mean by ‘useful’. There are areas where reliability is crucial. It turns out that building an airplane that works 95% of the time is incredibly easy compared to building one that never...
Seth's Blog
Embodied energy
It might only cost $2 in the vending machine, but that can of soda is a complicated battery. It...
3 months ago
It might only cost $2 in the vending machine, but that can of soda is a complicated battery. It stores the energy of the machines that were used to mine the bauxite, the ship that brought the ore to Iceland, the astonishing temperatures used to create the aluminum, then more...
The Last...
Hunger Games Catching Fire: Badass Body Count
sorry old man, I have a dress fitting to go to
Number of people killed: 15
Number of...
over a year ago
sorry old man, I have a dress fitting to go to
Number of people killed: 15
Number of people Katniss kills: 1
Number of times she is saved by someone else: 6
Number of times she saves someone else: 0
But boy oh boy, wasn't she spectacular at practice, 9 targets in 30...
Blog - Mac Pierce
XL Flex Arms, posable mounting for cameras and lighting.
Making a few custom mounts for cameras and camera accessories.
over a year ago
Making a few custom mounts for cameras and camera accessories.
Seth's Blog
It’s simple (it’s complicated)
It’s simple: This surgery will fix your problem and you’ll be better. It’s complicated: Changes in...
a year ago
It’s simple: This surgery will fix your problem and you’ll be better. It’s complicated: Changes in lifestyle, diet and attitude will, over time, help you feel better. Or… Our enemies are bad, and we’re good. Vote for me. The world is a big place that is filled with nuance,...
escape the algorithm
Befriending neighbors and beneighboring friends
The Casement Window Theory of community building
4 months ago
The Casement Window Theory of community building
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,...
Seth's Blog
“It seems…”
What a simple verb. A five-letter modifier that opens the door to discussion. If we state something...
4 months ago
What a simple verb. A five-letter modifier that opens the door to discussion. If we state something as a fact, we’re asking for an argument. But seems opens the door to learning and discussion. What are you seeing that I’m not seeing?
Seth's Blog
Living in hyperbole
In the pre-media world, we bumped into fables, or news from across the village, but mostly, our role...
a year ago
In the pre-media world, we bumped into fables, or news from across the village, but mostly, our role models and experiences were based on reality. Now, when it’s not unusual to spend eight hours a day surrounded by media fueled by greatest hits (worst offender, breaking news,...
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
The Strategy Questions
My new book (out today) contains more than 500 questions. Here are some to get you started:
2 months ago
My new book (out today) contains more than 500 questions. Here are some to get you started:
Seth's Blog
Twenty questions
Your next project might feel like a calling, but it’s a choice. A choice that will have an impact on...
2 months ago
Your next project might feel like a calling, but it’s a choice. A choice that will have an impact on each day you spend on it. There are no right answers here, but before you fall in love with a business or an organization, it may pay to think about these and other options that...
Open Culture
Behold The Drawings of Franz Kafka (1907–1917)
Runner 1907–1908 UK-born, Chicago-based artist Philip Hartigan has posted a brief video piece...
7 months ago
Runner 1907–1908 UK-born, Chicago-based artist Philip Hartigan has posted a brief video piece about Franz Kafka’s drawings. Kafka, of course, wrote a body of work, mostly never published during his lifetime, that captured the absurdity and the loneliness of the newly emerging...
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...
Handprinted - Blog
Inking Methods for Etching
Once you've made an etching plate, you may be ready to print an edition - or you might want to proof...
a month ago
Once you've made an etching plate, you may be ready to print an edition - or you might want to proof it to decide on further edits. Taking a print is the only way you’ll be able to see how your plate is progressing.
This blog is part of a series featuring tips and techniques to...
Seth's Blog
Compounding head starts
When a six-year-old kid beats the other kids at tennis, that kid is more likely to be encouraged to...
a year ago
When a six-year-old kid beats the other kids at tennis, that kid is more likely to be encouraged to play more, or to get a coach, and pretty soon, they’re much better at tennis than the others. When a musical group has a single that gets some buzz on Spotify, they’re more likely...
Prolost
iPhone ProRes Log in Peru and Taiwan
This is a blog post about a video, which is about new color-conversion LUTs for Apple Log footage...
10 months ago
This is a blog post about a video, which is about new color-conversion LUTs for Apple Log footage from the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max (updated from my first set). The video is also a mini-travelogue of my recent trips to Taiwan and Peru. This post dives a bit deeper into both the...
Seth's Blog
Broken (and not worth fixing)
In one corner of the parking garage near my office, car satellite radio doesn’t work. This is...
a month ago
In one corner of the parking garage near my office, car satellite radio doesn’t work. This is clearly broken, but it’s also not a problem. Certainly not a problem worth anyone’s attention when there are so many other problems to be addressed. Problems, by definition, can be...
Seth's Blog
Conspicuous (non) consumption
One way to show status is by demonstrating how many resources you have. A bespoke suit, a huge...
a year ago
One way to show status is by demonstrating how many resources you have. A bespoke suit, a huge graduation party, a fancy building… A bully who physically intimidates or an angry driver who cuts you off in traffic are each working to show their status and strength. But it’s also...
Marian's Blog
No Man’s Starfield
This is a shader I made that renders a flight through a starfield. It’s meant to look like the...
over a year ago
This is a shader I made that renders a flight through a starfield. It’s meant to look like the galactic map that you can see in No Man’s Sky. Here is a link to the project on shadertoy:
No Man’s Starfield
The cool thing about this is that it runs inside a shader. A shader is a...
Seth's Blog
Inconvenient!
That’s great news. The thing you need, the road ahead, the element that will transform your...
a year ago
That’s great news. The thing you need, the road ahead, the element that will transform your project–it appears to be inconvenient. That’s terrific, because it means that most other people can’t be bothered. It’s valuable because the very inconvenience of it makes it scarce. The...
Handprinted - Blog
Choosing Printmaking Paper
Choosing the paper for your printmaking project can have a significant impact on the way the print...
11 months ago
Choosing the paper for your printmaking project can have a significant impact on the way the print turns out. Changing the colour, thickness or texture of a paper can alter the mood, style or success of a print - it can be great fun to experiment.
Although there are no rules...
Open Culture
The First Professional Footage of Pink Floyd Gets Captured in a 1967 Documentary (and the Band Also...
British filmmaker and novelist Peter Whitehead has been credited with inventing the music video with...
7 months ago
British filmmaker and novelist Peter Whitehead has been credited with inventing the music video with his promo films for the Rolling Stones in the mid-60s. According to Ali Catterall and Simon Wells, authors of Your Face Here, a study of “British Cult Film since the Sixties,”...
Seth's Blog
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.
Blog - Amy Goodchild
A strange kind of physical reality
A long-form generative art project coming to fxhash in partnership with FAB DAO on 11th Jan 2024....
11 months ago
A long-form generative art project coming to fxhash in partnership with FAB DAO on 11th Jan 2024.
This series is inspired, in the abstract, by the images I visualise when reading about quantum theory. Particularly thoughts of particles spreading out as waves and then collapsing...
Seth's Blog
The unaware snoop
Here’s a breakthrough that’s about to happen somewhere: A GPT that reads every email that anyone in...
a year ago
Here’s a breakthrough that’s about to happen somewhere: A GPT that reads every email that anyone in your organization has ever sent and makes it easy to ask it questions about what the entire organization knows. A person could probably not find the time, bandwidth or privacy...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Rachel Snowdon
Hello! I’m Rachel Snowdon of Rachel Snowdon Studio, a London-born relief printmaker and illustrator...
3 months ago
Hello! I’m Rachel Snowdon of Rachel Snowdon Studio, a London-born relief printmaker and illustrator who has been based in West Devon since 2009.
Describe your printmaking process.
Having recently introduced more colour into my designs, multi-block lino printing is probably...
Seth's Blog
This time it’s personal
My new book is urgent and it’s personal. Some readers have told me that it’s also their favorite. It...
a year ago
My new book is urgent and it’s personal. Some readers have told me that it’s also their favorite. It opens the door to a better way to work and to find meaning in how we spend our days. I’ve done dozens of podcasts talking about it, but when I talk about it, it’s not nearly […]
Open Culture
Watch 70+ Classic Literary Films Free Online: The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Gulliver’s Travels, Jane...
The term gaslight has gained so much traction in popular discourse so recently that you’d swear it...
a month ago
The term gaslight has gained so much traction in popular discourse so recently that you’d swear it was coined around 2010. In fact, that particular usage goes at least as far back as 1938, when British novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton wrote a stage thriller about a...
Seth's Blog
Jump in the lake
The waters of Buck Lake are cool and clear and restorative. All summer, it’s tempting to go for a...
10 months ago
The waters of Buck Lake are cool and clear and restorative. All summer, it’s tempting to go for a swim. But it’s also a hassle. You need to change your clothes, find someone to guard, bring a towel and most of all, gasp at the transition when the cold water hits. And yet… no one...
Blog - Mac Pierce
The Whys and Hows of the Opt-Out Cap.
Why I built the Opt-Out Cap cap, and how it all came together.
over a year ago
Why I built the Opt-Out Cap cap, and how it all came together.
Anarchy Unfolds
One Year on Substack
Writing the upside-down, plus Pride Myths & Recs
5 months ago
Writing the upside-down, plus Pride Myths & Recs
Seth's Blog
Thoughts on audiobooks
I’m listening more than reading these days, and I find that a good audiobook can make a real impact...
2 months ago
I’m listening more than reading these days, and I find that a good audiobook can make a real impact on the way I absorb and learn from a book. It’s a once in a century sort of shift in this medium. My new book is now available in audio. It’s not on Audible, at least […]
Open Culture
Thousands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Available in a New Digital Archive
If you want to immerse yourself in the world of Pablo Picasso, you might start at the Museo Picasso...
5 months ago
If you want to immerse yourself in the world of Pablo Picasso, you might start at the Museo Picasso Málaga, located in the artist’s Spanish birthplace. But to understand how his work developed throughout his life, you’ll have to get out of Spain — which is just what Picasso did...
Open Culture
16th-Century Japanese Historians Describe the Oddness of Meeting the First Europeans They Ever Saw
Go to Japan today, and the country will present you with plenty of opportunities to buy pan, tabako,...
6 months ago
Go to Japan today, and the country will present you with plenty of opportunities to buy pan, tabako, and tempura. These products themselves — bread, cigarettes, and deep-fried seafood or vegetables — will be familiar enough. Even the words that refer to them may have a...
Open Culture
How Rome Began: The History As Told by Ancient Historians
Much attention has been paid to the fall of the Roman Empire, by everyone from august historians...
5 months ago
Much attention has been paid to the fall of the Roman Empire, by everyone from august historians like Edward Gibbon to modern-day observers wringing their hands over the fate of the United States of America. But as every Rome enthusiast knows, that long collapse constitutes just...
Seth's Blog
Find the others: Worldwide Strategy Meetups
On October 22, around the world, I’m helping to organize hundreds of in-person get togethers. A...
2 months ago
On October 22, around the world, I’m helping to organize hundreds of in-person get togethers. A chance to share your work and have a conversation about your strategy with others. Mutual support and peer connection. All the details are on this page. It’s free. A chance to connect...
Seth's Blog
The seduction of grad school
For a certain cohort of high-performing students at famous colleges, graduate school feels...
a year ago
For a certain cohort of high-performing students at famous colleges, graduate school feels irresistible. If you’re good at school, the challenge and offer of law school, med school or a famous business school means you get to do more of what you’re good at. You’re offered a...
Seth's Blog
Gentle Scrabble hacks
Perhaps these might make a great game more fun: Maximize total score: Exactly the same rules as...
a year ago
Perhaps these might make a great game more fun: Maximize total score: Exactly the same rules as regular Scrabble, but focus on increasing the total score of all players instead of defeating the others. It’s subtle, it can be challenging for a good player, and it creates more...
Seth's Blog
Chores
They’re essential. The house begins to stink if we don’t take out the garbage. But at work, while...
a year ago
They’re essential. The house begins to stink if we don’t take out the garbage. But at work, while they might be essential, they may not be important. At least, not important enough for us to spend a lot of focus on. Chores are: The bills have to get paid. But they might not have...
Open Culture
Michio Kaku Demystifies the God Equation: The Key to Understanding Everything
It speaks to the importance of discoveries in physics over the past few generations that even the...
3 months ago
It speaks to the importance of discoveries in physics over the past few generations that even the disinterested layman has heard of the field’s central challenge. In brief, there exist two separate systems: general relativity, which describes the physics of space, time, and...
Seth's Blog
Why tell the others?
Every internet success works because the network effect kicked in. There’s no other way for an idea...
8 months ago
Every internet success works because the network effect kicked in. There’s no other way for an idea to reliably and economically reach a big enough audience to be sustained. That’s why Super Bowl ads make so little sense in 2024. Ideas that spread win. I wrote a bestseller about...
Handprinted - Blog
How to Design and Print a Straight Repeating Pattern
Here’s an easy way to design a repeat pattern (without using a computer) and to block print it on to...
over a year ago
Here’s an easy way to design a repeat pattern (without using a computer) and to block print it on to fabric. We used MasterCut for our block because it’s an easy to cut stamping material that prints beautifully.
Draw around your block onto a piece of paper.
Draw part of your...
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...
Marian's Blog
16×16 LED Matrix
This is a 16×16 RGB LED matrix, made of 256 WS2812B LEDs. It’s powered by a Raspberry Pi and can...
over a year ago
This is a 16×16 RGB LED matrix, made of 256 WS2812B LEDs. It’s powered by a Raspberry Pi and can display images and animations. With a game controller attached, it can play games.
The pictures below show how I built the frame.
Painting the base plate
Drawing...
Seth's Blog
Thinking about jobs
Since I was born, the planet has invented 6 billion jobs. Technology is said to threaten the...
3 weeks ago
Since I was born, the planet has invented 6 billion jobs. Technology is said to threaten the replacement of human labor, yet, somehow we’ve found useful activities for a rapidly growing population. Coordinated without a coordinator, people go to work each day, often doing...
Open Culture
When Samuel Beckett Drove Young André the Giant to School
Are your idle moments spent inventing imaginary conversations between strange bedfellows? The sort...
4 months ago
Are your idle moments spent inventing imaginary conversations between strange bedfellows? The sort of conversation that might transpire in a pickup truck belonging to Samuel Beckett, say, were the Irish playwright to chauffeur the child André Rene Roussimoff—aka pro wrestler...
Open Culture
The First Recording of Allen Ginsberg Reading “Howl” (1956)
Image by Michiel Hendryckx, via Wikimedia Commons Occasionally I slip into an ivory tower mentality...
7 months ago
Image by Michiel Hendryckx, via Wikimedia Commons Occasionally I slip into an ivory tower mentality in which the idea of a banned book seems quaint—associated with silly scandals over the tame sex scenes in James Joyce or D.H. Lawrence. After all, I think, we live in an age when...
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....
Open Culture
Bruce Springsteen Endorses Kamala Harris & Makes the Case Against Donald Trump
The Boss speaks the truth in a dinner. Find it on Instagram.
2 months ago
The Boss speaks the truth in a dinner. Find it on Instagram.
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...
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...
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