Seth's Blog
The challenge of “a risky scheme”
New ideas aren’t adopted all at once. A few people go first while the rest of us watch to see how it...
4 months ago
New ideas aren’t adopted all at once. A few people go first while the rest of us watch to see how it goes. “Look, Mikey, he likes it!” This is the story of tech innovations, dance crazes and even food. Ideas spread horizontally, and people who prefer the status quo will embrace...
Seth's Blog
But what if we’re wrong?
Of course, we think we’re right. That’s why we’re sharing our opinion. But when there’s a...
a year ago
Of course, we think we’re right. That’s why we’re sharing our opinion. But when there’s a disagreement, or we’re predicting the future, it’s likely that someone will turn out to be incorrect. Sometimes, being wrong is a minor embarrassment, with very little real cost. And...
Seth's Blog
The Jenga situation
When an organization first sets out to have an impact, it discovers that it has no customers, no...
a year ago
When an organization first sets out to have an impact, it discovers that it has no customers, no clients, no constituents. So it shows up, it makes an offer and it listens. The early days are exciting. Customers are seen and heard and served. Variations are created and value is...
Open Culture
Ken Burns’ New Documentary on Leonardo da Vinci Streaming Online (in the US) for a Limited Time
A quick heads up: The filmmaker Ken Burns has just released his new documentary on Leonardo da...
3 weeks ago
A quick heads up: The filmmaker Ken Burns has just released his new documentary on Leonardo da Vinci. Running nearly four hours, the film offers what The New York Times calls a “thorough and engrossing biography” of the 15th-century polymath. Currently airing on PBS, the film can...
Open Culture
37 Hitchcock Cameo Appearances Over 50 Years: All in One Video
Early in his career, Alfred Hitchcock began making small appearances in his own films. The cameos...
5 months ago
Early in his career, Alfred Hitchcock began making small appearances in his own films. The cameos sometimes lasted just a few brief seconds, and sometimes a little while longer. Either way, they became a signature of Hitchcock’s filmmaking, and fans made a sport of seeing whether...
Seth's Blog
The 500 ways
There are thousands of ways to express encouragement and enthusiasm and support. Few of them require...
a year ago
There are thousands of ways to express encouragement and enthusiasm and support. Few of them require a blood oath or even much inconvenience. “I’m thrilled that you’re contributing.” “Can’t wait to see how this turns out.” “I know someone who really needs to hear about this.” “Go...
Open Culture
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Creative Process: A Look Inside the Books & Techniques That Allowed His Art...
The story of Jean-Michel Basquiat has its unfortunate aspects: not just his premature death, but...
3 weeks ago
The story of Jean-Michel Basquiat has its unfortunate aspects: not just his premature death, but also the aggressive marketing of his work and persona in the years leading up to it. He became a vogue artist of the eighties in part because he could be taken as an unfiltered voice...
Seth's Blog
Ice sculpture
There are very few activities that are fully reversible. Ice sculpture might be one of them. Once...
a month ago
There are very few activities that are fully reversible. Ice sculpture might be one of them. Once the ice melts, all the effort and information is lost, and refreezing lets you begin again with a new, fresh block of ice. Of course, it’s not completely gone. The thing you made...
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...
Seth's Blog
The magic of placebos
One of two things is true: A placebo is a force beyond understanding, one that is capable of...
a year ago
One of two things is true: A placebo is a force beyond understanding, one that is capable of disappearing when we do the appropriate double-blind tests and has mechanisms that defy our knowledge of the laws of physics. Or… A placebo is a prompt for our subconscious to do the hard...
Open Culture
How a Bach Canon Works. Brilliant.
Brilliant. This moving manuscript depicts a single musical sequence played front to back and then...
6 months ago
Brilliant. This moving manuscript depicts a single musical sequence played front to back and then back to front. Give the video a little time to unfold and enjoy.
Open Culture
What is Electronic Music?: Pioneering Electronic Musician Daphne Oram Explains (1969)
Survey the British public about the most important institution to arise in their country after World...
4 months ago
Survey the British public about the most important institution to arise in their country after World War II, and a lot of respondents are going to say the National Health Service. But keep asking around, and you’ll sooner or later encounter a few serious electronic-music...
On the Arts
The Sea Has Always Looked the Same
A View of the Ocean as a Connection to the Past
a year ago
A View of the Ocean as a Connection to the Past
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:
Open Culture
Behold a Digital Restoration of 655 Plates of Roses & Lilies by Pierre-Joseph Redouté: The Greatest...
Pierre-Joseph Redouté made his name by painting flowers, an achievement impossible without a...
a month ago
Pierre-Joseph Redouté made his name by painting flowers, an achievement impossible without a meticulousness that exceeds all bounds of normality. He published his three-volume collection Les Roses and his eight-volume collection Les Liliacées between 1802 and 1824, and a glance...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Lorenzo Davitti
Originally from Florence, Italy, I'm a printmaker and tutor now based in London for the past 10...
7 months ago
Originally from Florence, Italy, I'm a printmaker and tutor now based in London for the past 10 years. I work mainly on abstract art, and I am especially interested in the possibilities that printmaking offers when experimenting with colour, shapes and textures.
Describe your...
Open Culture
The Writer Who Directed, The Director Who Wrote: Every Frame a Painting Explores the Genius of Billy...
When the acclaimed cinema video-essay channel Every Frame a Painting made its comeback this past...
2 months ago
When the acclaimed cinema video-essay channel Every Frame a Painting made its comeback this past summer, its creators Tony Zhou and Taylor Ramos took a close look at the “sustained two-shot,” which captures a stretch of dialogue between two characters without the interference of...
Seth's Blog
Now in Spanish
The Carbon Almanac is now available in Spanish. For free. Free to download, free to share and free...
a year ago
The Carbon Almanac is now available in Spanish. For free. Free to download, free to share and free to print a copy at home. While the book has been traditionally published around the world (in Italian, Czech, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Dutch), no Spanish-language publisher was...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Caroline Fearn
Hello, I’m Caroline. I live in London. Two years ago I picked up a carving tool and a block of lino....
a year ago
Hello, I’m Caroline. I live in London. Two years ago I picked up a carving tool and a block of lino. I quite liked it.
Describe your printmaking process
My process is an intuitive one, so I typically just start, and I will see what develops through doing. Experimenting with...
Seth's Blog
What to do with firm footing
If we’ve got tenure, a lifetime appointment or simply a really secure gig, what should we do with...
10 months ago
If we’ve got tenure, a lifetime appointment or simply a really secure gig, what should we do with it? One option is to race to the bottom, to chase short-term self-focused outcomes and to see how much we can get away with. (Probably, quite a bit). The other is to take this rare...
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...
Handprinted - Blog
The Endless Possibilities of a Square Block Repeat
Using a simple square block can create a myriad of possibilities of pattern.
We have used Speedy...
a year ago
Using a simple square block can create a myriad of possibilities of pattern.
We have used Speedy Carve and Versafine inks for this project.
Cut a square from the Speedy Carve using a scalpel.
Draw a quarter circle curve on the block using a pencil. Above the curve draw some...
Open Culture
Inside the Beautiful Home Frank Lloyd Wright Designed for His Son (1952)
Being Frank Lloyd Wright’s son surely came with its downsides. But one of the upsides — assuming you...
8 months ago
Being Frank Lloyd Wright’s son surely came with its downsides. But one of the upsides — assuming you could stay in the mercurial master’s good graces — was the possibility of his designing a house for you. Such was the fortune of his fourth child David Samuel Wright, a Phoenix...
Seth's Blog
Avoiding the trap questions
A trick question is designed to fool us into proposing the wrong answer (example below). A trap...
5 months ago
A trick question is designed to fool us into proposing the wrong answer (example below). A trap question, on the other hand, stops the train completely. A trap question demands an answer, and the answer will paralyze us and keep us from the work at hand. “Yes, but how many...
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...
Open Culture
Watch the Earliest-Known Charles Dickens Film: The Death of Poor Joe
A little over a decade ago, a curator at the British Film Institute (BFI) discovered the oldest...
6 months ago
A little over a decade ago, a curator at the British Film Institute (BFI) discovered the oldest surviving film featuring a Charles Dickens character, “The Death of Poor Joe.” The silent film, directed by George Albert Smith in 1900, brings to life Dickens’ character Jo, the...
Seth's Blog
Hope and expectations
They’re not the same thing. Hope can fuel us. Hope can be refilled. Hope opens the door to...
a year ago
They’re not the same thing. Hope can fuel us. Hope can be refilled. Hope opens the door to possibility. Expectations, on the other hand, are a trap. They make us brittle and lead to disappointment. When we raise our hopes and lower our expectations, we establish a resilient way...
Seth's Blog
Getting the word out
“How do you get the word out?” I’ve heard this from presidential candidates, from small business...
8 months ago
“How do you get the word out?” I’ve heard this from presidential candidates, from small business leaders and nonprofits as well. It’s easy to believe that the goal of marketing is to shout, hype, hustle and otherwise promote. It’s tempting to focus on your story as the top of the...
Seth's Blog
Communications hygiene (and the demise of texting)
Attention is scarce. Decisions are difficult. Searching takes effort. For thirty years, texting has...
11 months ago
Attention is scarce. Decisions are difficult. Searching takes effort. For thirty years, texting has been a powerful medium. It’s the thing that vibrates in our pocket. It promises something urgent, and a reply that’s demanded equally urgently. “I’m running ten minutes late,” is a...
Seth's Blog
It’s Mac Day (#40)
A lot shifted when the Apple Macintosh was introduced, and it wasn’t about the RAM, the chips or the...
11 months ago
A lot shifted when the Apple Macintosh was introduced, and it wasn’t about the RAM, the chips or the processor speed. Our world changed forty years ago today. Marketing, technology, commerce, luxury brands, communities, communication and our expectations for how we might spend...
Open Culture
The Hand: An Anti-Totalitarian Animation, Banned for Two Decades & Now Considered One of the...
For obvious reasons, most art produced under oppressive regimes comes off as painstakingly...
a month ago
For obvious reasons, most art produced under oppressive regimes comes off as painstakingly inoffensive. For equally obvious reasons, the rare works that criticize the regime tend to do so rather obliquely. This wasn’t so much the case with The Hand, the most famous short by Czech...
Seth's Blog
Lost on purpose
…of course, if you’re lost on purpose, you’re not lost. Lost is only possible if you are fixed on...
a year ago
…of course, if you’re lost on purpose, you’re not lost. Lost is only possible if you are fixed on getting somewhere specific.
Seth's Blog
The missing post
I had a great idea for a post, my best blogging of the year, in fact. I worked it all out when I was...
a year ago
I had a great idea for a post, my best blogging of the year, in fact. I worked it all out when I was driving, but when I arrived, it was gone. Vanished. So I went searching for it, trying out dozens of possible ideas. I never found it. But I did find five other […]
Seth's Blog
No lunging
I’ve been working hard on my juggling (actual juggling, not metaphorical juggling). The secret, as I...
a year ago
I’ve been working hard on my juggling (actual juggling, not metaphorical juggling). The secret, as I wrote about in The Practice is the throwing, not the catching. If you get the throws right, the catches are easy. The way to focus on the throws is simple but culturally...
Seth's Blog
The catfight and the construction site
We’re quick to stop to see the car wreck, the billionaire having a meltdown, or the professional...
a year ago
We’re quick to stop to see the car wreck, the billionaire having a meltdown, or the professional wrestlers pretending to be political leaders. But it often seems more difficult to take a moment to watch people building something that matters instead. We’ll probably spend billions...
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 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...
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...
Open Culture
Thomas Edison’s Recordings of Leo Tolstoy: Hear the Voice of the Great Russian Novelist
Born 196 years ago, Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s life (1828–1910) spanned a period of immense...
2 months ago
Born 196 years ago, Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy’s life (1828–1910) spanned a period of immense social, political, and technological change, paralleled in his own life by his radical shift from hedonistic nobleman to theologian, anarchist, and vegetarian pacifist. Though he did...
Seth's Blog
Clear ice
I love Zamboni machines. They’re ungainly, they’re slow but they’re also majestic. Like an elephant...
a month ago
I love Zamboni machines. They’re ungainly, they’re slow but they’re also majestic. Like an elephant for ice hockey. After each period, when the ice is chopped up by play, the Zamboni rolls out and leaves behind a sheet of perfect ice. Cold, smooth and untouched. It’s useful to...
Seth's Blog
“What do you do around here?”
There are lots of useful, honest answers. Some might include: I do what I’m told I challenge the...
a year ago
There are lots of useful, honest answers. Some might include: I do what I’m told I challenge the status quo I show up on time I solve complicated problems I absorb nonsense and create calm for others I raise our standards I help people feel seen I’m steady I don’t cause trouble I...
Seth's Blog
Avoid unnecessary amplifiers
This is extremely unique vs This is unique I’m very upset vs I’m upset and I love you a ton vs I...
a year ago
This is extremely unique vs This is unique I’m very upset vs I’m upset and I love you a ton vs I love you Sometimes, more words aren’t better.
Handprinted - Blog
Drypoint - Which plate is right for my project?
Drypoint is a fantastic intaglio technique as it requires limited equipment to create a plate. It's...
7 months ago
Drypoint is a fantastic intaglio technique as it requires limited equipment to create a plate. It's a great way of creating a printed drawing and is one of the printmaking techniques where the positive mark is the one that prints (unlike relief printing for example). There are...
Seth's Blog
Write for someone
It’s so tempting to write for everyone. But everyone isn’t going to read your work, someone is. Can...
3 months ago
It’s so tempting to write for everyone. But everyone isn’t going to read your work, someone is. Can you tell me who? Precisely? What did they believe before they encountered your work? What do they want, what do they fear? What has moved them to action in the past? Name the...
Open Culture
Honoré de Balzac Writes About “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee,” and His Epic Coffee Addiction
174 years after his death, Honoré de Balzac remains an extremely modern-sounding wag. Were he alive...
5 months ago
174 years after his death, Honoré de Balzac remains an extremely modern-sounding wag. Were he alive today, he’d no doubt be pounding out his provocative observations in a coffice, a café whose free wifi, lenient staff, and abundant electrical outlets make it a magnet for writers....
Seth's Blog
The leaping curve
The learning curve is familiar to many people. It might be steep, but it’s continuous. Organizations...
a year ago
The learning curve is familiar to many people. It might be steep, but it’s continuous. Organizations (and people) work their way up it, one step at a time (it’s the black line in the graph below). But there’s rarely a continuous learning curve. Instead, it’s often interrupted by...
Prolost
What Does and Doesn’t Matter about Apple Shooting their October Event on iPhone 15 Pro Max
A still from Apple’s “Behind the scenes: An Apple Event shot on iPhone” video
Apple Shot Their...
a year ago
A still from Apple’s “Behind the scenes: An Apple Event shot on iPhone” video
Apple Shot Their “Scary Fast” October Event Video on iPhones And We Had Feelings
You’re somewhere on the spectrum of occasionally shooting video on your iPhone to a professional-ish video maker with...
Handprinted - Blog
Separating Your Colour Layers for CMYK Screen Printing
CMYK screen printing is a great way of bringing both your photographic and coloured art images to...
3 months ago
CMYK screen printing is a great way of bringing both your photographic and coloured art images to life through colour separation. This is achieved by layering four colours (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black) on top of each other using only 4 screens.
Photoshop plays a key role in...
Seth's Blog
She’s here!
Some restaurants keep a photo of the local reviewer in the kitchen. The thinking is that if someone...
7 months ago
Some restaurants keep a photo of the local reviewer in the kitchen. The thinking is that if someone notices she’s in the building, everyone can up their game. And some musicians wait eagerly for A&R person to be in the crowd. If they really kill it tonight, a record deal might...
Open Culture
James Joyce Picked Drunken Fights, Then Hid Behind Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway seemed to feud with most of the prominent male artists of his time, from Wallace...
6 months ago
Ernest Hemingway seemed to feud with most of the prominent male artists of his time, from Wallace Stevens and T.S. Eliot to F. Scott Fitzgerald. He had a “very strange relationship” with Orson Welles—the two came to blows at least once—and he reportedly slapped Max Eastman in the...
Open Culture
What Would Happen If a Nuclear Bomb Hit a Major City Today: A Visualization of the Destruction
One of the many memorable details in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop...
8 months ago
One of the many memorable details in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, placed prominently in a shot of George C. Scott in the war room, is a binder with a spine labeled “WORLD TARGETS IN MEGADEATHS.” A megadeath, writes Eric...
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
Brakes and acceleration
Every driver benefits from good brakes. It makes driving safer. Only a few skilled drivers benefit...
a year ago
Every driver benefits from good brakes. It makes driving safer. Only a few skilled drivers benefit from better acceleration. Our habit is to compare top speed, horsepower, short-term returns and status. In every field, not just cars. But it probably pays to make sure that there...
Marian's Blog
Faster Than Life – Global Game Jam 2019 Project
Like in the previous year, I took part in the Global Game Jam.
I joined a team of six programmers,...
over a year ago
Like in the previous year, I took part in the Global Game Jam.
I joined a team of six programmers, unfortunately there was a shortage of artists this year.
During the 48 hour jam, we made a space game that is inspired by Faster Than Light.
You travel through...
Seth's Blog
Spam 3.0
Any fully open system of digital communication will corrode over time. Bad messages will crowd out...
6 months ago
Any fully open system of digital communication will corrode over time. Bad messages will crowd out the good ones. The new normal: Someone finds a database of every residential property, then another of cell phones. An AI is trained to call every homeowner, every day, asking if...
The Last...
Product Review: Panasonic PT AX200U (Hipsters On Food Stamps Part 3)
but how will you afford a steak?
Part 2 here
Three questions, open book:
1. Did Hipster...
over a year ago
but how will you afford a steak?
Part 2 here
Three questions, open book:
1. Did Hipster Gerry get his money's worth from the University of Chicago, either $100k in future income or knowledge? No.
2. Did society get their money's worth in sending him, i.e. by...
Seth's Blog
Customer satisfaction and tipping
In North America, tipping is an unfair system built into the status quo by law. Restaurants aren’t...
10 months ago
In North America, tipping is an unfair system built into the status quo by law. Restaurants aren’t allowed to easily spread tips around, and as a result, they tend to to exacerbate many of the inequities in our culture at the same time that they make it hard to count on a fair...
Open Culture
Death: A Free Online Philosophy Course from Yale Helps You Grapple with the Inescapable
It pays to think intelligently about the inevitable. And this course taught by Yale professor Shelly...
3 months ago
It pays to think intelligently about the inevitable. And this course taught by Yale professor Shelly Kagan does just that, taking a rich, philosophical look at death. Here’s how the course description reads: There is one thing I can be sure of: I am going to die. But what am I to...
Seth's Blog
Facing the future
The Tofflers explained that Future Shock kicks in when the world changes faster than we’re ready...
2 months ago
The Tofflers explained that Future Shock kicks in when the world changes faster than we’re ready for. We react instead of respond, and often shut down in the face of too much of the new. When our world changes (and it always does, more now than ever) we have four choices. And...
Open Culture
Coursera Offers 30% Off of Coursera Plus (Until September 30), Giving You Unlimited Access to...
As the new school year gets underway, millions of students are heading back to classrooms. And you...
3 months ago
As the new school year gets underway, millions of students are heading back to classrooms. And you can too. From now until September 30, 2024, Coursera is offering a 30% discount on its annual subscription plan called “Coursera Plus.” Normally priced at $399, Coursera Plus...
Seth's Blog
Your audiobook
Here’s a useful habit that’s more than a hack… The next time things are going well, when a project...
3 months ago
Here’s a useful habit that’s more than a hack… The next time things are going well, when a project is about to launch, when a meeting has been successful, when the sun is shining… take your phone and go for a walk. Hit record on an audio app and make a twenty-minute audiobook....
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
Is it possible to care at scale?
After 25 years, I stopped using a certain credit card for business. It was easily millions of...
a year ago
After 25 years, I stopped using a certain credit card for business. It was easily millions of dollars worth of transactions over that period. Did anyone at the company notice? Did anyone care? I still remember losing a client in 1987. Small organizations pay attention and care...
Open Culture
Beautiful 19th Century Maps of Dante’s Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, Paradise & More
Even the least religious among us speak, at least on occasion, of the circles of hell. When we do...
2 weeks ago
Even the least religious among us speak, at least on occasion, of the circles of hell. When we do so, we may or may not be thinking of where the concept originated: Dante’s Divina Commedia, or Divine Comedy. We each imagine the circles in our own way — usually filling them with...
Marian's Blog
Infinite procedurally generated city with the Wave Function Collapse algorithm
This is a game where you walk through an infinite city that is procedurally generated as you...
over a year ago
This is a game where you walk through an infinite city that is procedurally generated as you walk.
It is generated from a set of blocks with the Wave Function Collapse algorithm.
You can download a playable build of the game on itch.io and you can get the source code on...
Seth's Blog
Books don’t sell
That’s not true, actually. Books sell, but book doesn’t. The odds of a particular book selling a lot...
8 months ago
That’s not true, actually. Books sell, but book doesn’t. The odds of a particular book selling a lot of copies are close to zero. The truth of the long tail is that most titles are way out on the fringe. Now that book publishing is unleashed from retail distribution, the math is...
Seth's Blog
Unforced errors
In hospitality and customer service, perfect is elusive. Someone is going to miss a shift, have a...
a month ago
In hospitality and customer service, perfect is elusive. Someone is going to miss a shift, have a bad day, or fail to understand a situation. But there’s a second kind of error, the one that’s far more common. When management makes bad choices, or underinvests in systems,...
Open Culture
An Oscar-Winning Animation of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” Painted on 29,000 Frames...
Ernest Hemingway’s romantic adventure of man and marlin, The Old Man and the Sea, has perhaps spent...
4 months ago
Ernest Hemingway’s romantic adventure of man and marlin, The Old Man and the Sea, has perhaps spent more time on high school freshman English reading lists than any other work of fiction, which might lead one to think of the novel as young adult fiction. But beyond the book’s...
Open Culture
The Isolated Bass Grooves of The Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh (RIP)
This past Friday, the bassist of The Grateful Dead, Phil Lesh, passed away at age 84. Almost...
a month ago
This past Friday, the bassist of The Grateful Dead, Phil Lesh, passed away at age 84. Almost immediately the tributes poured in, most recognizing that Lesh wasn’t your ordinary bassist. As Jon Pareles wrote in the New York Times, Phil Lesh held songs “aloft.” His “bass lines...
Seth's Blog
Getting it right the first time
How unlikely is this? The artist who paints a masterpiece, from scratch, without hesitation. The...
a year ago
How unlikely is this? The artist who paints a masterpiece, from scratch, without hesitation. The playwright who doesn’t need a workshop or a reading. The architect who designs a food hall that has a layout and vibe that works without one alteration… Evolution is powerful. It...
Open Culture
Nick Cave Narrates an Animated Film about the Cat Piano, the Twisted 18th Century Musical Instrument...
What do you imagine when you hear the phrase “cat piano”? Some kind of whimsical furry beast with...
4 months ago
What do you imagine when you hear the phrase “cat piano”? Some kind of whimsical furry beast with black and white keys for teeth, maybe? A relative of My Neighbor Totoro’s cat bus? Or maybe you picture a piano that contains several caged cats who shriek along an entire scale when...
Seth's Blog
On the way to professionalism
Professionals make choices. Including: Don’t exploit friends and family. Surgeons shouldn’t do...
a week ago
Professionals make choices. Including: Don’t exploit friends and family. Surgeons shouldn’t do surgery on their kids, and investment advisors shouldn’t manage their dad’s retirement fund. It doesn’t matter if you’re sure you’re the best in the world. Swap with the person who’s...
Seth's Blog
The friendly professional
Friendly doesn’t mean saying ‘yes’ all the time, or changing every policy, or giving up our...
a year ago
Friendly doesn’t mean saying ‘yes’ all the time, or changing every policy, or giving up our principles. Friendly is how it feels, not what it does.
Ian Betteridge
Ten Blue Links, “stoically facing the end times” edition
1. When is AI coding not AI coding? You might have heard something about how Google now creates a...
a month ago
1. When is AI coding not AI coding? You might have heard something about how Google now creates a quarter of its code using AI. But as with most things concerning everyone’s favourite hot tech, the devil is in the details. And the details, according to this poster on Hacker News,...
Seth's Blog
Is it a t-shirt brand?
Not all projects become t-shirt brands, nor should they. The risk is in thinking you’re building one...
a year ago
Not all projects become t-shirt brands, nor should they. The risk is in thinking you’re building one when you’re not. T-shirt worthy brands are a very small subset of the whole. The question is: Would your customers want to wear your logo on a t-shirt? Why? If you’re creating...
Seth's Blog
Market insulation
It’s possible that your day will be more enjoyable if you are insulated from the market. If you have...
6 months ago
It’s possible that your day will be more enjoyable if you are insulated from the market. If you have a boss who has a boss… If you don’t have to review the sales numbers for the products you created or edited… If you have raised a ton of venture investment… If you are embracing...
Seth's Blog
The hubris of creativity
Where’s your permit? Who said you could try to solve this problem? I don’t get it… That’s too...
6 months ago
Where’s your permit? Who said you could try to solve this problem? I don’t get it… That’s too original. It’s not original enough. You missed a comma. That’s not funny. That’s been done before. That’s never been done before. It’s not your best work. None of us are authorized to...
Seth's Blog
What’s the right size?
There are no city buses with just four seats. And none with 400 seats. We get to leverage the...
10 months ago
There are no city buses with just four seats. And none with 400 seats. We get to leverage the driver’s effort if we put in a few more seats, but add too many and the bus is too big to make a turn–and soon we’d have to add conductors and cleaners and then the bus […]
Ian Betteridge
Ten Blue Links, “your time is up” edition
This week… But first, an announcement! TLDR: Over the holidays, I will be migrating this site from...
2 days ago
This week… But first, an announcement! TLDR: Over the holidays, I will be migrating this site from WordPress.com to Ghost. This may mean a little disruption, but I’ll try to keep it to a minimum. Why am I doing this? I’ve been a paying customer of WordPress.com for my site...
Seth's Blog
Confronting consciousness
Everyone knows what it is to be conscious, and we imagine that other people are also aware. That we...
a year ago
Everyone knows what it is to be conscious, and we imagine that other people are also aware. That we have a voice in our heads, apparent agency and free will, a little person inside who is commenting, making decisions and in charge. We’re not sure if dogs have this, and we’re...
Blog - Amy Goodchild
Using ChatGPT to implement Sol LeWitt’s Wall Drawings
Sol LeWitt‘s Wall Drawings aren’t actually drawings but, rather,
instructions for drawings. I...
a year ago
Sol LeWitt‘s Wall Drawings aren’t actually drawings but, rather,
instructions for drawings. I asked ChatGPT to implement them in p5js
Open Culture
See Albert Camus’ Historic Lecture, “The Human Crisis,” Performed by Actor Viggo Mortensen
Back in 2016, New York City staged a month-long festival celebrating Albert Camus’ historic visit to...
5 months ago
Back in 2016, New York City staged a month-long festival celebrating Albert Camus’ historic visit to NYC in 1946. One event in the festival featured actor Viggo Mortensen giving a reading of Camus’ lecture,“La Crise de l’homme” (“The Human Crisis”) at Columbia University–the very...
Seth's Blog
The four cohorts of the status quo
The first group cares about the policy. They benefit from it. They’ve organized themselves around...
10 months ago
The first group cares about the policy. They benefit from it. They’ve organized themselves around it. The second group cares about stability. They have limited bandwidth, and they’re not particularly interested in reconsidering everything, all the time. The third group doesn’t...
Seth's Blog
The blank page
Sometimes, we’re so afraid of creation that we don’t even leave blank pages around. If your...
8 months ago
Sometimes, we’re so afraid of creation that we don’t even leave blank pages around. If your workspace has a hole exactly the size of a creative idea in it, you’re more likely to fill the hole. When we decrease the number of steps to begin creating, and increase the expectation...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Makers 2022
We've featured some fantastic makers on our Meet the Maker blog this year! Thank you to all that...
a year ago
We've featured some fantastic makers on our Meet the Maker blog this year! Thank you to all that have been involved and those that are yet to come in 2023! We love reading about your printmaking practices and hearing your beautiful words of advice.
Grab yourself a drink, pop...
Stat Significant
Quantifying 'The Kevin Bacon Game': A Statistical Exploration of Hollywood’s Most Connected Actors
Examining 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' and its statistical underpinnings.
2 months ago
Examining 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon' and its statistical underpinnings.
Open Culture
Browse 64 Years of RadioShack Catalogs Free Online … and Revisit the History of American Consumer...
“I bet RadioShack was great once,” writes former employee Jon Bois in a much-circulated 2014 piece...
3 months ago
“I bet RadioShack was great once,” writes former employee Jon Bois in a much-circulated 2014 piece for SB Nation. “I can’t look through their decades-old catalogs and come away with any other impression. They sold giant walnut-wood speakers I’d kill to have today. They sold...
On the Arts
Do biographies need to start at the beginning?
Alternatives to the predictably linear narratives of most biographies.
a year ago
Alternatives to the predictably linear narratives of most biographies.
Seth's Blog
Learning in August
What better time? An hour a day for a month and you can learn a skill you’ll have forever. Beach...
4 months ago
What better time? An hour a day for a month and you can learn a skill you’ll have forever. Beach reads are a fine way to chill out, but a month spent to learn a skill is a fine way to take advantage of a quiet time. My brand new course on Strategy is now […]
Infinite Scroll
Infinite Scroll Podcast: Worst Tweets ft. Andrew Heaton
It's possible that we might be too online
4 days ago
It's possible that we might be too online
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...
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
More is More
More hope. More health. More security. More innovation. More breakthroughs. More connection. More...
a year ago
More hope. More health. More security. More innovation. More breakthroughs. More connection. More creation. More joy. The climate movement doesn’t have to be about asking individuals to bear the burden of systemic problems. It’s not about living with less. It’s about demanding...
Seth's Blog
Nothing to ad
A recent discussion about the challenges of direct-to-consumer marketing of a skincare product ended...
a year ago
A recent discussion about the challenges of direct-to-consumer marketing of a skincare product ended with one participant describing the hard part with, “nothing to ad.” She was referring to how much the thread had covered, but the pun wasn’t lost on us. Social media offered an...
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
Open Culture
Behold a Creative Animation of the Bayeux Tapestry
In previous centuries, unless you were a member of the nobility, a wealthy religious order, or a...
3 months ago
In previous centuries, unless you were a member of the nobility, a wealthy religious order, or a merchant guild, your chances of spending any significant amount of time with a Medieval tapestry were slim. Though “much production was relatively coarse, intended for decorative...
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...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Jennie Ing
Describe your printmaking process.
I make linocut prints by the reduction method. This is where all...
a year ago
Describe your printmaking process.
I make linocut prints by the reduction method. This is where all the colours come from the same piece of lino with the successive cutting away of the lino block and printing a new colour over the top of the last. The edition size has to be...
Open Culture
Artificial Intelligence & Drones Uncover 303 New Nazca Lines in Peru
If you visit one tourist site in Peru, it will almost certainly be the ruined Incan city of Machu...
2 months ago
If you visit one tourist site in Peru, it will almost certainly be the ruined Incan city of Machu Picchu. If you visit another, it’ll probably be the Nazca Desert, home to many large-scale geoglyphs made by pre-Inca peoples between 500 BC and 500 AD. Many of these “Nazca lines”...
Seth's Blog
The freedom loop
We spend almost no time teaching toddlers about freedom. Instead, the lessons we teach (and learn)...
a year ago
We spend almost no time teaching toddlers about freedom. Instead, the lessons we teach (and learn) for our entire lives are about responsibility. It’s easy to teach freedom, but important to teach responsibility. Because if you get the responsibility taken care of, often the...
Anarchy Unfolds
Age of Empires but make it Solarpunk
My favorite strategy game re-imagined
2 hours ago
My favorite strategy game re-imagined
Seth's Blog
The second mistake
That’s the avoidable one and the one that usually causes the real trouble. When the first mistake...
a year ago
That’s the avoidable one and the one that usually causes the real trouble. When the first mistake flusters us, breaks our rhythm or messes with our confidence, we’re far more likely to make the second one. It’s almost impossible to avoid making a mistake. But avoiding the second...
Marian's Blog
3D printed model of my neighborhood
I 3D printed a model of the street where I live. This post will explain how I prepared the data for...
over a year ago
I 3D printed a model of the street where I live. This post will explain how I prepared the data for it.
Update: I have now automated the entire process and published my code. You can find it here.
I worked with aerial Lidar data that is provided by the state I live in to download...
Seth's Blog
Good businesses solve real problems
But not all real problems lead to good businesses. There are problems all around us. People need...
a year ago
But not all real problems lead to good businesses. There are problems all around us. People need housing, health care and food. They want delight, belonging and status. When a company shows up in the marketplace with a product or service that people eagerly choose to buy, it’s...
Seth's Blog
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...
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
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...
Seth's Blog
The Santa problem
An echo chamber is created by a marketer to assemble a group of people who are insulated from...
a year ago
An echo chamber is created by a marketer to assemble a group of people who are insulated from conventional discourse. It can happen to sports and music fans, to investors, to companies that have confidence in their view of the world, or to social or political gatherings. We...
Seth's Blog
If it’s all in bold
Then none of it is in bold.
a year ago
Then none of it is in bold.
Seth's Blog
Intuition
Intuition is simply a theory we haven’t yet put into words. Once we write down and share our...
a month ago
Intuition is simply a theory we haven’t yet put into words. Once we write down and share our intuition, it becomes more resilient, focused and useful to others.
Seth's Blog
Consider joining Purple Space
It’s not for everyone, but it might be for you. All the details are at purple.space It’s for...
a year ago
It’s not for everyone, but it might be for you. All the details are at purple.space It’s for creatives, independents, brand managers, strategists, founders, non-profit leaders and lifelong learners.
Seth's Blog
A finite ordered set of interesting objects
The alphabet is one. 26 letters, no more. One order, that’s it. The Beatles are another. John, Paul,...
a year ago
The alphabet is one. 26 letters, no more. One order, that’s it. The Beatles are another. John, Paul, George and then Ringo. The Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, The Supremes. The astrological zodiac gets us to twelve, but I’m having a really difficult time finding a memorable...
Open Culture
Learn Data Analytics & AI with Google, and Fast-Track Your Career
?si=azZbGLEr_9EFWypL We’re living in the age of data and artificial intelligence (AI). Every second,...
2 months ago
?si=azZbGLEr_9EFWypL We’re living in the age of data and artificial intelligence (AI). Every second, vast amounts of data are being generated, processed, and analyzed. And increasingly AI plays a central role in how that data gets managed. For companies, governments, and...
Seth's Blog
The Net Promoter Score
More than two-thirds of the companies surveyed said that they used NPS methodology with their...
7 months ago
More than two-thirds of the companies surveyed said that they used NPS methodology with their customers. Some are using it to measure employee satisfaction as well. The P stands for ‘promoter’, but of course, it doesn’t actually measure promotion. If that many of your customers...
Seth's Blog
Peak infrastructure
Community resources are easy to take for granted. Unevenly distributed, they’re the sort of thing we...
10 months ago
Community resources are easy to take for granted. Unevenly distributed, they’re the sort of thing we miss only when they’re gone. Invisible things are easy to ignore. I was stunned to see a sign in Connecticut that listed the names of dozens of highway workers who had been killed...
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
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...
Open Culture
David Bowie’s Fashionable Mug Shot From His 1976 Marijuana Bust
David Bowie always managed to look cool, even when he was being booked for a felony. In early 1976,...
2 months ago
David Bowie always managed to look cool, even when he was being booked for a felony. In early 1976, Bowie was on his “Isolar” tour, performing as the Thin White Duke, a persona he would describe as “a very Aryan fascist type — a would-be romantic with no emotions at all.” Bowie...
escape the algorithm
The Real Divorcees of Facebook Marketplace
For sale: wife shoes, hardly worn
11 months ago
For sale: wife shoes, hardly worn
Open Culture
Carl Jung Psychoanalyzes Hitler: “He’s the Unconscious of 78 Million Germans.” “Without the German...
Were you to google “Carl Jung and Nazism”—and I’m not suggesting that you do—you would find yourself...
a month ago
Were you to google “Carl Jung and Nazism”—and I’m not suggesting that you do—you would find yourself hip-deep in the charges that Jung was an anti-Semite and a Nazi sympathizer. Many sites condemn or exonerate him; many others celebrate him as a blood and soil Aryan hero. It can...
Seth's Blog
All customers are the same
[and all customers are different.] Customers are why you’re here. They pay the bills and they are...
10 months ago
[and all customers are different.] Customers are why you’re here. They pay the bills and they are the primary driver of your growth. But each adds a different amount of value to your organization and the journey you’re on. The customer who spends 100x as much as the average...
Seth's Blog
Doing presentations virtually
A few years ago, I posted about the hardware setup you can use to look better and feel better when...
a year ago
A few years ago, I posted about the hardware setup you can use to look better and feel better when working in a distributed organization. Since then, I’ve tried many hacks for how to integrate Keynote presentations into this environment. I used some fancy software that was...
Handprinted - Blog
Screen Printing a Repeat Pattern
Printing a length of your own designed fabric is so exciting but most of us do not have the luxury...
a year ago
Printing a length of your own designed fabric is so exciting but most of us do not have the luxury of a fabric registration table. Here's an easy step by step guide to printing a repeat pattern on a length of fabric using an A4 43T screen.
Draw the design motifs onto...
Seth's Blog
Discovery and invention
Isaac Newton didn’t invent gravity. It was there all along. He simply named and explained it. The...
2 months ago
Isaac Newton didn’t invent gravity. It was there all along. He simply named and explained it. The same is true for planets, continents and obscure species. They’re discovered, not invented. Michelangelo talked about removing all the parts of the marble that weren’t the statue on...
Seth's Blog
Indifferent overhead
Every business and individual has overhead. The bills we have to pay and the costs we incur that...
7 months ago
Every business and individual has overhead. The bills we have to pay and the costs we incur that aren’t directly related to our income. You pay them whether or not you’re busy. But there are two kinds of overhead, worth differentiating: Different overhead … the investments that...
Seth's Blog
Transitions are difficult
They’re risky (unknown territory leads to unforeseen outcomes) and a very recent phenomenon. A kid...
10 months ago
They’re risky (unknown territory leads to unforeseen outcomes) and a very recent phenomenon. A kid dropped off at pre-school, a new boss, a food you’re not familiar with. None of this was common for most of pre-history. When the transition occurs, we’re tempted to direct our...
Seth's Blog
Generosity and gratitude
A gift doesn’t diminish the giver. Sharing creates connection, possibility and energy. And the magic...
a year ago
A gift doesn’t diminish the giver. Sharing creates connection, possibility and energy. And the magic of gratitude is that it improves everything it touches, especially the person who offered it in the first place. So, what holds us back? Fear. Fear of connection, of change, of...
Seth's Blog
Freedom of attitude
There are two franchised pack-and-ship shops about equidistant from my home. One has a 4.5 rating...
a year ago
There are two franchised pack-and-ship shops about equidistant from my home. One has a 4.5 rating and is reliably busy. The other has an astonishingly low 1.5 out of 5 rating. The physical plant is virtually identical, and the marketing and promo are the same. The only difference...
Seth's Blog
Consequences
Frederick Lewis Donaldson created a list of seven social sins that was soon popularized by Gandhi....
11 months ago
Frederick Lewis Donaldson created a list of seven social sins that was soon popularized by Gandhi. One hundred years later, it’s more relevant and more urgent than ever. Wealth without work.Pleasure without conscience.Knowledge without character.Commerce without morality.Science...
Open Culture
Unlock AI’s Potential in Your Work and Daily Life: Take a Popular Course from Google
Generative AI is rapidly becoming an essential tool for streamlining work and solving complex...
2 weeks ago
Generative AI is rapidly becoming an essential tool for streamlining work and solving complex challenges. However, knowing how to use GenAI effectively isn’t always obvious. That’s where Google Prompting Essentials comes in. This course will teach you to write clear and specific...
Seth's Blog
The arrogance of improvement
Who are you to make things better? How dare you raise your hand to help, offer an idea, take...
9 months ago
Who are you to make things better? How dare you raise your hand to help, offer an idea, take responsibility… Perhaps it might be helpful to reframe that feeling as the generosity of improvement instead. If not you, who? If not now, when?
Open Culture
How Magician David Copperfield Made the Statue of Liberty Disappear (1983)
In April, 1983, 50 million television viewers watched the illusionist David Copperfield make the...
a month ago
In April, 1983, 50 million television viewers watched the illusionist David Copperfield make the Statue of Liberty disappear, straight into thin air. If you’re north of 50, you perhaps remember the spectacle. How did he do it? 40 years later, the YouTube channel Mind Blown Magic...
Seth's Blog
Portfolio theory
One show can make Netflix’s year. One stock can make the numbers for an investor. One player can...
a year ago
One show can make Netflix’s year. One stock can make the numbers for an investor. One player can drive a team to victory. The key is, “I’m not sure which one it’s going to be, but it’s going to be one of these.” The challenge with falling in love with the potential of just one...
Seth's Blog
The problem with shock design
If attention is what you seek and attention is what you measure, it’s likely you’ll create drama....
2 weeks ago
If attention is what you seek and attention is what you measure, it’s likely you’ll create drama. And drama is inherently short-lived. The managing director of Jaguar said, “We’ve certainly gathered an awful lot of attention over the last few weeks.” Choosing the word “awful” was...
Handprinted - Blog
Pigment & Binder - Mixing colours for printing fabric
Using Pigment Colours and Binder, you can mix your own bespoke colours for screen printing and block...
a year ago
Using Pigment Colours and Binder, you can mix your own bespoke colours for screen printing and block printing. Experimenting with different ratio amounts of binder to pigment can create some lovely subtle pale shades and some strong bold colours too.
Keeping a note of your...
Seth's Blog
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...
Prolost
Magic Bullet Suite 14 and Trapcode Suite 16
It’s a big day at Maxon/Red Giant! We’re releasing huge updates to Magic Bullet and Trapcode...
over a year ago
It’s a big day at Maxon/Red Giant! We’re releasing huge updates to Magic Bullet and Trapcode Suites.
Trapcode Particular continues to embody our ethos of power and ease-of-use, with a completely modernized simulation engine that allows particles to behave more naturally, with...
Seth's Blog
The other choices
The intentional, noticed choices are obvious. “Vanilla or chocolate?” But most of the choices we...
7 months ago
The intentional, noticed choices are obvious. “Vanilla or chocolate?” But most of the choices we live with are unseen. They’re expensive, challenging and invisible. When we plan an event with an outdoor component, we’re choosing to be anxious about the weather in the week leading...
Handprinted - Blog
Batik on Paper
Batik is a fun, dynamic way of creating bold and beautiful designs on cloth but did you know batik...
5 months ago
Batik is a fun, dynamic way of creating bold and beautiful designs on cloth but did you know batik can be made on paper too? We used some Tej Prakrtika paper (as well as testing some others) to create a colourful, abstract batik.
You'll find lots more batik projects here.
Begin...
The Last...
Randi Zuckerberg Thinks We Should Untangle Our Wired Lives
how hard could it be, none of those circles are actually connected
Randi Zuckerberg is...
over a year ago
how hard could it be, none of those circles are actually connected
Randi Zuckerberg is CEO of Zuckerberg Media, which, according to its 10-K, is an iphone. If you have no idea who she is, and you shouldn't, then the answer to your one and only question is yes.
In her...
Open Culture
How Ancient Romans Traveled Without Maps
In an age when many of us could hardly make our way to an unfamiliar grocery store without relying...
a month ago
In an age when many of us could hardly make our way to an unfamiliar grocery store without relying on a GPS navigation system, we might well wonder how the Romans could establish and sustain their mighty empire without so much as a proper map. That’s the question addressed by the...
Seth's Blog
The social media lottery
Someone is going to end up with 10,000,000 followers. Someone is going to post the next viral...
a year ago
Someone is going to end up with 10,000,000 followers. Someone is going to post the next viral TikTok. Someone is going to build a meme that spreads around the world. But it probably won’t be me and it probably won’t be you. Buying lottery tickets might be fun, but they’re a lousy...
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
I fixed it for you
Creativity is about hope and possibility. It gives us a chance to make things better. Plenty has...
7 months ago
Creativity is about hope and possibility. It gives us a chance to make things better. Plenty has been written about the sad iPad ad that Apple just apologized for. It wasn’t just out of character for the story Apple tells, it was a cheap hack, taking the nihilism and helplessness...
Open Culture
Hunter S. Thompson’s Harrowing, Chemical-Filled Daily Routine
E. Jean Carroll’s 1993 memoir of Hunter S. Thompson opens like this: I have heard the biographers of...
6 months ago
E. Jean Carroll’s 1993 memoir of Hunter S. Thompson opens like this: I have heard the biographers of Harry S. Truman, Catherine the Great, etc., etc., say they would give anything if their subjects were alive so they could ask them some questions. I, on the other hand, would give...
Seth's Blog
The paradox of lessons
The people most likely to sign up for coaching or additional learning are the folks who are already...
5 months ago
The people most likely to sign up for coaching or additional learning are the folks who are already good at their craft. “I’m terrible at this,” can lead to, “and I don’t want to be reminded of it.” Or perhaps, “I don’t want to waste their time,” or, “I’m never going to get...
Seth's Blog
Writing your book
I spent time this week with two authors who are showing up to share their lives, their insights, and...
a year ago
I spent time this week with two authors who are showing up to share their lives, their insights, and their generosity in the form of books. A good book will change the reader, but it makes an even bigger impact on the author. Here’s a classic episode of Akimbo. Book publishing...
Seth's Blog
An end to pop
Pop culture depends on scarcity. When there are only a few TV stations or a dozen radio stations,...
a year ago
Pop culture depends on scarcity. When there are only a few TV stations or a dozen radio stations, it’s likely that many of us watch or hear the same thing at the same time. And so a popular TV show or song from fifty years ago probably reached twenty times as many people as a […]
Blog - Amy Goodchild
Playing dice: Randomness, determinism and the quantum world
What’s the difference between unexpected, random and chaotic? Does the
universe contain any truly...
over a year ago
What’s the difference between unexpected, random and chaotic? Does the
universe contain any truly random events, or is it operating like
clockwork, ticking from one event to the next?
Seth's Blog
The art of estimation
If you’re a freelancer or a contractor of any kind, it’s typical to be asked for an estimate or a...
a year ago
If you’re a freelancer or a contractor of any kind, it’s typical to be asked for an estimate or a quote. And if you’ve been doing business for a while, it’s likely that you’ve heard about price more than just about any other factor in losing an opportunity. So the pressure is on...
Seth's Blog
Avert your eyes
There are things we avoid looking at too closely. If we looked, really saw what was happening, we’d...
a year ago
There are things we avoid looking at too closely. If we looked, really saw what was happening, we’d have to change our minds, admit we were mistaken, refactor our priorities or take action. It’s so frightening that we even hesitate to make a list of the things we don’t want to...
Seth's Blog
Time, consquences and opportunities
Dreams have consequences Hisham Matar Time passes, decisions are made, we face the consequences or...
11 months ago
Dreams have consequences Hisham Matar Time passes, decisions are made, we face the consequences or enjoy the benefits. A few books for this moment, about navigating our days, and the possibility of light. It bends toward justice. The Return, by Hisham Matar. A beautiful and...
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
The Night Frank Zappa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Captain Beefheart Too (Belgium, 1969)
Recently an older musician acquaintance told me he never “got into ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ and all...
3 months ago
Recently an older musician acquaintance told me he never “got into ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ and all that,” referring to the “first major space jam” of Pink Floyd’s career and the subsequent explosion of space rock bands. I found myself a little taken aback. Though I was born too...
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
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...
Open Culture
Bringing Tsarist Russia to Life: Vivid Color Images from 1905–1915
History escapes us. Events that changed the world forever, or should have, slide out of collective...
3 months ago
History escapes us. Events that changed the world forever, or should have, slide out of collective memory. If we’re pointing fingers, we might point at educational systems that fail to educate, or at huge historical blind spots in mass media. Maybe another reason the recent past...
Seth's Blog
Possibility and opportunity
We have the chance to build something that creates connection and generates value. On the other...
a year ago
We have the chance to build something that creates connection and generates value. On the other hand, a system that diminishes agency and dignity is inherently unstable. When we seek to create scarcity and control and optimize output at the expense of our humanity, it may pay off...
Seth's Blog
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...
Seth's Blog
How, why and hyperbole
There are three trends in copywriting that have been so overused they should now be avoided. The...
5 months ago
There are three trends in copywriting that have been so overused they should now be avoided. The first two: Headlines with “why” for articles that don’t actually explain why. Headlines with “how” that don’t really teach you how. Explaining why is difficult, which is where the...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Kate Maxwell
Hello! I’m Kate Maxwell from Design and Draw. I’m a printmaker and freelance Illustrator. I make...
a year ago
Hello! I’m Kate Maxwell from Design and Draw. I’m a printmaker and freelance Illustrator. I make colourful screen prints, risographs and other handprinted goods. You can also find my freelance illustrations on wooden toys and in children’s publishing.
Describe your printmaking...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Matt Hooper
My name is Matt Hooper and I’m a relief printmaker working from my rather compact studio I built in...
2 months ago
My name is Matt Hooper and I’m a relief printmaker working from my rather compact studio I built in the garden of my home in a town just outside Leeds. I’m a self taught artist and printmaker, ironically having being in the print industry for 32 years. I left school at 16 with no...
Seth's Blog
Abundance and ideas
A colleague got an angry note. It concluded with, “you should know better.” The transgression? The...
a year ago
A colleague got an angry note. It concluded with, “you should know better.” The transgression? The sender was offended that my friend had written a post about a concept she’s been developing for nearly a decade. Of course, no idea is unique, and the posted idea sort of rhymed...
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
The Story of Fascism: Rick Steves’ Documentary Helps Us Learn from the Painful Lessons of the 20th...
From Rick Steves comes a thought-provoking documentary that revisits the rise of fascism in Europe,...
a month ago
From Rick Steves comes a thought-provoking documentary that revisits the rise of fascism in Europe, reminding us of how charismatic figures like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler came to power by promising to create a better future for their frustrated, economically depressed...
Open Culture
Hear the Evolution of the London Accent Over 660 Years: From 1346 to 2006
Read a novel by Charles Dickens, and you’ll still today feel transported back to the London of the...
4 months ago
Read a novel by Charles Dickens, and you’ll still today feel transported back to the London of the eighteen-twenties. Some of that experience owes to his lavishly reportorial descriptive skills, but even more to his way with dialogue. Dickens faithfully captured the vocabulary of...
Seth's Blog
What are you thinking about?
A philosopher can spend a month, a year or a career thinking about one knotty problem. Making...
4 months ago
A philosopher can spend a month, a year or a career thinking about one knotty problem. Making assertions, testing theories, understanding how others are thinking about it as well. But this exercise shouldn’t be reserved for academics. What are you working on? When will you change...
Seth's Blog
Jargon comes and goes
Forty years ago in engineering class, it wasn’t unusual to talk about GIGO or FUBAR. These weren’t...
a year ago
Forty years ago in engineering class, it wasn’t unusual to talk about GIGO or FUBAR. These weren’t technical terms, they were mild complaints that signaled insider status and cultural cohesion. In a closed profession, like airplane pilots, the insider jargon lasts for...
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...
Open Culture
Hear the Song Written on a Sinner’s Buttock in Hieronymus Bosch’s Painting The Garden of Earthly...
There’s something unusually exciting about finding a hidden or discreetly placed element in a...
7 months ago
There’s something unusually exciting about finding a hidden or discreetly placed element in a well-known painting. I can only imagine the thrill of the physician who first noticed the curious presence of a human brain in Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam: God, his retinue of...
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...
Anarchy Unfolds
The big picture, AI, chemophobia, rocket mass heaters
Green Gatherings #1
2 months ago
Open Culture
Oh My God! Winston Churchill Received the First Ever Letter Containing “O.M.G.” (1917)
Winston Churchill is one of those preposterously outsized historical figures who seemed to be in the...
6 months ago
Winston Churchill is one of those preposterously outsized historical figures who seemed to be in the middle of every major event. Even before, as Prime Minister, he steeled the resolve of his people and faced down the Third Reich juggernaut; even before he loudly warned of the...
Seth's Blog
Which sort of sinecure?
Sooner or later, we find a place to hide. A place of security or sustenance. A place of safety. That...
a year ago
Sooner or later, we find a place to hide. A place of security or sustenance. A place of safety. That sort of foundation can give us peace of mind and open the door to possibility. But, it’s possible that we can turn it into a trap as well. A situation so perfectly created that...
Seth's Blog
Learning from the Amazon gift card snafu
Millions of people got this email last night: It’s legitimate, but it’s a mistake. A mistake...
a year ago
Millions of people got this email last night: It’s legitimate, but it’s a mistake. A mistake because: We can learn a lot about what not to do from this. First, if you make a mistake by email, fix it. Fix it by email AND fix it on your site. Let everyone who got the wrong […]
Seth's Blog
What sort of bicycle?
While it’s likely that you own a bike, you probably don’t have a front-wheel recumbent bicycle in...
a year ago
While it’s likely that you own a bike, you probably don’t have a front-wheel recumbent bicycle in your garage. Even though it’s more efficient, more comfortable and often faster. How did that happen? In 1933, a twenty-year old speed record was broken by a racer on a recumbent...
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?...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Lisa Stubbs
Hi, I'm a printmaker and illustrator living in the Holme Valley in Yorkshire, with a little print...
8 months ago
Hi, I'm a printmaker and illustrator living in the Holme Valley in Yorkshire, with a little print studio in the neighbouring Colne valley.
Describe your printmaking process.
Playful and experimental! I love being curious during my process, combining different processes together...
Open Culture
Hannah Arendt Explains the Rise of Totalitarian Regimes–and the Strategies Needed to Combat Them
“Adolf Eichmann went to the gallows with great dignity,” wrote the political philosopher Hannah...
7 months ago
“Adolf Eichmann went to the gallows with great dignity,” wrote the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, describing the scene leading up to the prominent Holocaust-organizer’s execution. After drinking half a bottle of wine, turning down the offer of religious assistance, and even...
escape the algorithm
The New Turing Test
Changing the AI conversation
a year ago
Changing the AI conversation
Prolost
Apple’s “EDR” Brings High Dynamic Range to Non-HDR Displays
Was it worth buying a Pro Display XDR just for this joke? Yes.
Apple caused quite a stir with the...
over a year ago
Was it worth buying a Pro Display XDR just for this joke? Yes.
Apple caused quite a stir with the announcement of their Pro Display XDR, a High Dynamic Range display that occupies a convoluted space in the market. It seeks to be both a Very Nice Computer Display, and a reference...
Open Culture
Soviet Inventor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Early Electronic Instrument That Could Be...
You know the sound of the theremin, that weird, warbly whine that signals mystery, danger, and...
4 months ago
You know the sound of the theremin, that weird, warbly whine that signals mystery, danger, and otherworldly portent in many classic sci-fi films. It has the distinction of being not only the very first electronic instrument but also the only instrument in history one plays...
Seth's Blog
Make or buy?
If you’re a writer, it probably doesn’t pay to chop down trees and make your own paper, or even to...
10 months ago
If you’re a writer, it probably doesn’t pay to chop down trees and make your own paper, or even to set up a little machine shop to make your own pens. That’s pretty obvious. Should the smoothie shop make its own almond milk? It’s pretty clear that Starbucks should have a team of...
Seth's Blog
“We used to do that”
When electricity came along, there was a swath of industries that were trapped in an old way of...
a year ago
When electricity came along, there was a swath of industries that were trapped in an old way of thinking. The only ones that thrived were able to walk away from what they used to do and eagerly embrace something new. When the internet was young, the major book publishers had...
Seth's Blog
Surprise and uncertainty
Until just recently, a solar eclipse wasn’t a tourist event. It was the cause of real panic. Two...
8 months ago
Until just recently, a solar eclipse wasn’t a tourist event. It was the cause of real panic. Two reasons that are worth considering: Eliminate surprise and explain the circumstances and panic starts to fade.
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...
escape the algorithm
Not your usual subscription confirmation
Or why you shouldn't ignore the back catalog
a year ago
Or why you shouldn't ignore the back catalog
Open Culture
Explore Burj Al Babas, Turkey’s Abandoned Town of 587 Disney-Style Castles
Burj Al Babas might have been constructed expressly to attract the attention of the internet....
a month ago
Burj Al Babas might have been constructed expressly to attract the attention of the internet. “Sitting near the Black Sea, the town is full of half-finished, fully abandoned mini castles — 587 of them to be exact,” write Architectural Digest’s Katherine McLaughlin and Jessica...
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...
Open Culture
Launch Your Project Management Career with Google’s AI-Enhanced Professional Certificate
?si=TMflasoogRfSD14h Back in 2021, Google released a series of certificate programs, including one...
a month ago
?si=TMflasoogRfSD14h Back in 2021, Google released a series of certificate programs, including one focused on Project Management. Designed to give students “an immersive understanding of the practices and skills needed to succeed in an entry-level project management role,” the...
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
A Playlist of the 3,300 Best Films & Documentaries on Youtube, Including Works by Hitchcock,...
?si=yCx1pqpcATHND90L Once upon a time, the most convenient means of discovering movies was cable...
7 months ago
?si=yCx1pqpcATHND90L Once upon a time, the most convenient means of discovering movies was cable television. This held especially true for those of us who happened to be adolescents on a break from school, ready and willing morning, midday, or night to sit through the...
Open Culture
Philip K. Dick Theorizes The Matrix in 1977, Declares That We Live in “A Computer-Programmed...
In 1963, Philip K. Dick won the coveted Hugo Award for his novel The Man in the High Castle, beating...
6 months ago
In 1963, Philip K. Dick won the coveted Hugo Award for his novel The Man in the High Castle, beating out such sci-fi luminaries as Marion Zimmer Bradley and Arthur C. Clarke. Of the novel, The Guardian writes, “Nothing in the book is as it seems. Most characters are not what they...
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...
Stat Significant
How Streaming Elevated (and Ruined) Documentaries: A Statistical Analysis
Unpacking streaming's embrace and erosion of non-fiction storytelling.
2 months ago
Unpacking streaming's embrace and erosion of non-fiction storytelling.
Open Culture
Patti Smith Reads Her Final Letter to Robert Mapplethorpe, Calling Him “the Most Beautiful Work of...
If you go to hear Patti Smith in concert, you expect her to sing “Beneath the Southern Cross,”...
6 months ago
If you go to hear Patti Smith in concert, you expect her to sing “Beneath the Southern Cross,” “Because the Night,” and almost certainly “People Have the Power,” the hit single from Dream of Life. Like her 1975 debut Horses, that album had a cover photo by Robert...
Seth's Blog
What are the stakes?
How big a swing do we need to make it feel like it matters? At the casino, some folks play with $5...
9 months ago
How big a swing do we need to make it feel like it matters? At the casino, some folks play with $5 chips, some with $100 chips. Do the high rollers have more fun? Are they more engaged? It’s natural to imagine that bigger swings matter more. That a bigger audience means our...
Seth's Blog
Making change happen
One way to do it is to get people to want what you want. The other way is to help them get what they...
a year ago
One way to do it is to get people to want what you want. The other way is to help them get what they want in a way that gets you what you want. They’re not the same. Changing what someone wants is very different from helping them see the story and the path that […]
Open Culture
An Introduction to The Babylonian Map of the World–the Oldest Known Map of the World
Taking a first glance at the Babylonian Map of the World, few of us could recognize it for what it...
4 months ago
Taking a first glance at the Babylonian Map of the World, few of us could recognize it for what it is. But then again, few of us are anything like the British Museum Middle East department curator Irving Finkel, whose vast knowledge (and ability to share it compellingly) have...
Open Culture
Édouard Manet Illustrates Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven, in a French Edition Translated by Stephane...
Edgar Allan Poe achieved almost instant fame during his lifetime after the publication of The...
2 weeks ago
Edgar Allan Poe achieved almost instant fame during his lifetime after the publication of The Raven (1845), but he never felt that he received the recognition he deserved. In some respects, he was right. He was, after all, paid only nine dollars for the poem, and he struggled...
Seth's Blog
On reading it in a book
Mike Schur, co-creator of Parks and Recreation, said of his career, “This is not stuff you can read...
a year ago
Mike Schur, co-creator of Parks and Recreation, said of his career, “This is not stuff you can read in a book,” he said. “This is stuff that you have to experience.” I think it’s also useful to flip it around. There are things you will have trouble experiencing until you read...
Seth's Blog
Boundaries and limits
They serve different purposes. The fence near the train tracks is a boundary. You can go near it...
6 months ago
They serve different purposes. The fence near the train tracks is a boundary. You can go near it without risk. The electrified third rail, on the other hand, is a limit. If you touch it, you’re done. Boundaries can give us room to innovate and thrive. Budgets, schedules and...
Open Culture
A New 3D Scan, Created from 25,000 High-Resolution Images, Reveals the Remarkably Well-Preserved...
Photos on this page courtesy of the Falklands Maritime Heritage Few who hear the story of the...
a month ago
Photos on this page courtesy of the Falklands Maritime Heritage Few who hear the story of the Endurance could avoid reflecting on the aptness of the ship’s name. A year after setting out on the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition in 1914, it got stuck in a mass of drifting ice...
Seth's Blog
Are you weather?
The thunderstorm doesn’t know we exist. Rain dances and wishes are ineffective at bringing or...
6 months ago
The thunderstorm doesn’t know we exist. Rain dances and wishes are ineffective at bringing or preventing a storm, because it isn’t caused by our actions. Metaphorical weather is tempting to mistake as a response. When someone cuts us off in traffic or doesn’t engage with us the...
Open Culture
How Édouard Manet Became “the Father of Impressionism” with the Scandalous Panting, Le Déjeuner sur...
Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863) caused quite a stir when it made its public debut in...
7 months ago
Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863) caused quite a stir when it made its public debut in 1863. Today, we might assume that the controversy surrounding the painting had to do with its containing a nude woman. But, in fact, it does not contain a nude woman — at least...
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...
Open Culture
Mary Tyler Moore Accidentally Nails a Perfect Pool Shot on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1962)
Let’s rewind the videotape and revisit a classic moment in The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the 1962...
2 weeks ago
Let’s rewind the videotape and revisit a classic moment in The Dick Van Dyke Show. In the 1962 episode called “Hustling the Hustler,” Mary Tyler Moore (as Laura Petrie) plays pool and sinks three balls in a single shot. The original plan was to splice in footage of a professional...
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...
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
Promises and our best
There is a significant difference between, “I promise,” and “I’ll do my best.” Promises are...
a month ago
There is a significant difference between, “I promise,” and “I’ll do my best.” Promises are difficult to keep and ought to be offered with that in mind. Doing our best is assumed.
The Great Discontent...
Sofía Gallisá Muriente
Emergence Issue: TGD’s fifth issue features a dynamic group of 15 creators who are deeply committed...
over a year ago
Emergence Issue: TGD’s fifth issue features a dynamic group of 15 creators who are deeply committed to addressing systematic challenges in their communities through creativity and emerging ideologies. Buy Now Can you share a little bit about where and how you grew up and what...
The Great Discontent...
Yashas Mitta
Yashas is a creative director and ambitious connector. He was also a self-described outsider for...
a year ago
Yashas is a creative director and ambitious connector. He was also a self-described outsider for much of his life, and his path from Bangalore, India to New York City has been a winding one driven by sheer stubbornness and a keen instinct for creating community wherever he goes....
The Last...
The Dove Sketches Beauty Scam
the only way to win is not to play
"Dude, are you doing the Dove ad now? That was so April...
over a year ago
the only way to win is not to play
"Dude, are you doing the Dove ad now? That was so April 15th...?" Yes, I realize I missed the meme train, but it's better to be right than part of the debate, especially when there is no debate, this is all a short con inside a 50+ year long...
Handprinted - Blog
Hand-Painted Textiles: A Practical Guide to the Art of Painting on Fabric by Sarah Campbell Book...
We have recently added some fantastic new books to the Handprinted shop and this one is no...
a year ago
We have recently added some fantastic new books to the Handprinted shop and this one is no exception. Sarah Campbell's beautifully curated and inspirational book explores the art of painting and making patterns on fabric. Even just flicking through the pages of this book makes...
On the Arts
How to Write a Proper Haiku
A Starter's Guide to the Deceptively Simple Poetic Form
a year ago
A Starter's Guide to the Deceptively Simple Poetic Form
Prolost
Lightroom Adds Video Color Editing, with Prolost Presets
From the Lightroom Blog:
The same edit controls that you already use to make your photography shine...
over a year ago
From the Lightroom Blog:
The same edit controls that you already use to make your photography shine can now be used with your videos as well! Not only can you use Lightroom’s editing capabilities to make your video clips look their best, you can also copy and paste edit settings...
Infinite Scroll
Weekly Scroll: Something Wicked This Way Comes
Theater Kids, BlueSky momentum, and Kai Cenat's big month
3 weeks ago
Theater Kids, BlueSky momentum, and Kai Cenat's big month
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
A labor of love
That’s magical. To have the resources to expend labor on something that fills us with joy. If you’re...
3 months ago
That’s magical. To have the resources to expend labor on something that fills us with joy. If you’re lucky enough to encounter this, perhaps it makes sense not to confuse the issue by also trying to turn it into labor for maximum profit. When we focus on one, we often decrease...
Seth's Blog
“But what if it doesn’t work?”
The best way to win a short-term game is to bet it all on one strategy. Someone is going to get...
a year ago
The best way to win a short-term game is to bet it all on one strategy. Someone is going to get lucky and it might be you. But we rarely thrive in the long run if we persist in playing a series of short-term games. Instead, organizations, individuals and teams do better when they...
Seth's Blog
Living in the future
In a bad 1950s science fiction movie, you might see flying jetpacks, invisibility cloaks and ray...
4 months ago
In a bad 1950s science fiction movie, you might see flying jetpacks, invisibility cloaks and ray guns. What we got instead is a device that fits in our pocket. It allows us to connect to more than a billion people. It knows where we are and where we’re going. It has all of our...
Seth's Blog
Is there a market(place)?
Not all needs have a market (yet). A market is a category. A market is a place with competition. In...
3 weeks ago
Not all needs have a market (yet). A market is a category. A market is a place with competition. In a market, people have habits and budgets and social pressure to engage. There are buyers and sellers. In many cultures, there’s a market for all the items that go with a...
Seth's Blog
Who cares?
A question we don’t ask ourselves very often, but a choice we make every day. It’s tempting to not...
a year ago
A question we don’t ask ourselves very often, but a choice we make every day. It’s tempting to not care. If you choose to not care, you’re off the hook. It’s simply to do as little as possible, avoid too much trouble, ask if it will be on the test, try to stay off the […]
Open Culture
J. G. Ballard Demystifies Surrealist Paintings by Dalí, Magritte, de Chirico & More
Before his signature works like The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, and High-Rise, J. G. Ballard...
4 months ago
Before his signature works like The Atrocity Exhibition, Crash, and High-Rise, J. G. Ballard published three apocalyptic novels, The Drowned World, The Burning World, and The Crystal World. Each of those books offers a different vision of large-scale environmental disaster, and...
Seth's Blog
The marketing department
That’s the first part of the confusion. It’s a group of people who can’t decide what the thing they...
8 months ago
That’s the first part of the confusion. It’s a group of people who can’t decide what the thing they do is supposed to be. Is it: Advertising Publicity Increasing retail distribution Direct and measured response SEO Making the logo pretty Wholesale and trade relationships...
Marian's Blog
Designing a Lego orrery
I've always been a fan of the Lego Technic series, especially those models that have gears and...
6 months ago
I've always been a fan of the Lego Technic series, especially those models that have gears and cranks and moving parts.
But it seems that Lego is shifting the focus of the Technic series away from functional models, so I had to take matters into my own hands.
I think an orrery is...
Prolost
What I Want to Do in Apple Vision Pro
Still frame from Hello! by Goro Fujita, created in VR using Quill
Today’s the day to pre-order Apple...
11 months ago
Still frame from Hello! by Goro Fujita, created in VR using Quill
Today’s the day to pre-order Apple Vision Pro, Apple’s first “spatial computing” device. It’s an expensive VR headset that either represents an opportunity to beta-test the future, or double down on past failings...
Open Culture
Buckminster Fuller Tells the World “Everything He Knows” in a 42-Hour Lecture Series (1975)
History seems to have settled Buckminster Fuller’s reputation as a man ahead of his time. He...
5 months ago
History seems to have settled Buckminster Fuller’s reputation as a man ahead of his time. He inspires short, witty popular videos like YouTuber Joe Scott’s “The Man Who Saw The Future,” and the ongoing legacy of the Buckminster Fuller Institute (BFI), who note that “Fuller’s...
Seth's Blog
Heavy Lemon Tuna
It’s easy to smirk at the ridiculous images one can make in twenty seconds with AI. People used to...
a year ago
It’s easy to smirk at the ridiculous images one can make in twenty seconds with AI. People used to smirk at photographs in the 1800s. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” is no longer a useful thing to say. Truth is real, photos are not.
Seth's Blog
High fidelity
It might be the high fidelity of a good LP on a great turntable. It sounds just like the original...
a year ago
It might be the high fidelity of a good LP on a great turntable. It sounds just like the original recording. It might be the high fidelity of loyalty. No shopping around for a momentarily better deal. It might be the high fidelity of genre. This is just what you hoped it would...
Seth's Blog
Reimagining cities in a few simple questions
What would happen if public transportation were free? What if it were paid for by congestion...
a year ago
What would happen if public transportation were free? What if it were paid for by congestion pricing, digitally implemented? What if public toilets were safe, beautiful, well-appointed and consistently maintained? What if there were a tax on empty storefronts, payable after three...
Seth's Blog
Finding the glitch
Many moths are attracted to light. That works fine when it’s a bright moon and an open field, but...
a year ago
Many moths are attracted to light. That works fine when it’s a bright moon and an open field, but not so well for the moths if the light was set up as a bug trap. Processionary caterpillars follow the one in front until their destination, even if they’re arranged in a circle,...
Seth's Blog
The empathy of magic
Magicians know where the trapdoors are, what’s up their sleeves and how to hide the ball. And yet,...
a year ago
Magicians know where the trapdoors are, what’s up their sleeves and how to hide the ball. And yet, mechanical skill is just the first step in being actually good at magic. The real skill is in finding the empathy to imagine that someone else might believe. To do the trick for...
Open Culture
Leonard Bernstein Introduces the Moog Synthesizer to the World in 1969, Playing an Electrified...
When Wendy Carlos released Switched-On Bach in 1968, her “greatest hits” compilation of the Baroque...
7 months ago
When Wendy Carlos released Switched-On Bach in 1968, her “greatest hits” compilation of the Baroque composer’s music, played entirely on the Moog analog synthesizer, the album became an immediate hit with both classical and pop audiences. Not only was it “acclaimed as real music...
Seth's Blog
Variety and the long tail
In a We Are All Weird universe, there are two sorts of cultural disappointments. The first has been...
11 months ago
In a We Are All Weird universe, there are two sorts of cultural disappointments. The first has been around since the dawn of cable: We don’t all watch the same thing. We don’t all talk about it, hits aren’t really hits, not like they used to be. There’s no comparison in the reach...
Seth's Blog
Belief is contagious
Placebos work and placebos spread. We’re wired to believe something, but the specifics of what we...
a year ago
Placebos work and placebos spread. We’re wired to believe something, but the specifics of what we believe often come from other people. When there were a limited number of channels, mainstream ideas were the focus of our conversations, because the mainstream was all that was...
Open Culture
How Audrey Hepburn Risked Death to Help the Dutch Resistance in World War II
Audrey Hepburn may not have had the most prolific Hollywood career, but a fair few of her characters...
3 months ago
Audrey Hepburn may not have had the most prolific Hollywood career, but a fair few of her characters still feel today like roles she was born to play. Perhaps the same could have been true of the part of Anne Frank, had she not refused to take it up. When Anne’s father Otto Frank...
Seth's Blog
On being missed
Some friends moved away, and the cake at the party read, “We’ll miss you.” Perhaps it would have...
a year ago
Some friends moved away, and the cake at the party read, “We’ll miss you.” Perhaps it would have been more accurate for it to say, “You’ll miss us.” Because, after all, what’s mostly being missed is the community of friends and neighbors. Even when someone moves away, the...
Open Culture
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...
Seth's Blog
Everyone wants to be connected
But we hesitate to be the connector. Everyone wants to be trusted, but we hesitate to trust. And...
11 months ago
But we hesitate to be the connector. Everyone wants to be trusted, but we hesitate to trust. And everyone wants to be respected, but we often fail to offer our respect. What an opportunity.
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
Sex and Alcohol in Medieval Times: A Look into the Pleasures of the Middle Ages
Playing video games, road-tripping across America, binge-listening to podcasts, chatting with...
5 months ago
Playing video games, road-tripping across America, binge-listening to podcasts, chatting with artificial intelligence: these are a few of our modern pleasures not just unknown to, but unimaginable by, humanity in the Middle Ages. Yet medieval people were, after all, people, and...
Open Culture
The Cramps Play a Mental Health Hospital in Napa, California in 1978: The Punkest of Punk Concerts
“We’re The Cramps, and we’re from New York City, and we drove 3,000 miles to play for you...
5 months ago
“We’re The Cramps, and we’re from New York City, and we drove 3,000 miles to play for you people.” So begins one of the oddest but also the punkest of punk rock concerts in history, as The Cramps play for a crowd at a state mental hospital in Napa, California. The date was June...
Handprinted - Blog
Making a Multi-Block Linocut
A multi-block linocut uses more than one piece of lino to create a layered image. Usually, each...
a year ago
A multi-block linocut uses more than one piece of lino to create a layered image. Usually, each block is inked with a separate colour. Where the colours overlap, another colour can be achieved.
Multi-block linocuts allow you to partially print an edition and create complete...
Open Culture
Hear Leo Tolstoy Read From His Last Major Work in Four Languages, 1909
In years past, we’ve brought you rare recordings of Sigmund Freud and Jorge Luis Borges speaking in...
7 months ago
In years past, we’ve brought you rare recordings of Sigmund Freud and Jorge Luis Borges speaking in English. Today we present a remarkable series of recordings of the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy reading a passage from his book, Wise Thoughts for Every Day, in four...
Seth's Blog
Little dents
Deciding to fix a big dent in a car isn’t perplexing. It’s an easy choice. There’s a huge dent, get...
2 months ago
Deciding to fix a big dent in a car isn’t perplexing. It’s an easy choice. There’s a huge dent, get it fixed. It’s the little dents that are a dilemma. But not fixing little dents means that pretty soon, we’re driving a car that we’re not happy with. Either that, or we define...
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,...
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...
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
Are we cannibals?
Part of the challenge of hanging out with cannibals is that it’s very difficult to get a good...
a year ago
Part of the challenge of hanging out with cannibals is that it’s very difficult to get a good night’s sleep. The math of finding a group of people that cares about community is pretty compelling. While individual selfish choices might feel productive in the moment, if they...
Seth's Blog
“No photos”
That’s what it said at the florist shop. I’m guessing because ‘taking’ a photo sometimes feels like...
a year ago
That’s what it said at the florist shop. I’m guessing because ‘taking’ a photo sometimes feels like a taking. The creativity, skill and effort that goes into making a distinctive arrangement might feel uncompensated when someone simply takes the work and posts it. This misses the...
Prolost
Introducing Prolost Beta
Prolost Beta is a new subscription offering on the Prolost Store. It's an occasional email from me...
over a year ago
Prolost Beta is a new subscription offering on the Prolost Store. It's an occasional email from me containing a download or a link to something cool I'm working on, that's not quite ready to become a product yet. Or maybe ever. This will most often be Lightroom presets or...
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
Anonymity and Bugs Bunny
I came across this (ironically) anonymous quote recently: “The offline world is full of sticks, but...
4 months ago
I came across this (ironically) anonymous quote recently: “The offline world is full of sticks, but the internet only has carrots.” When we come together in groups, it can bring out the best in people. When those groups are anonymous, porous and transient, though, the opposite...
Seth's Blog
2 + 2
Arguments about taste are more common than ever before. The long tail makes it easy to find what you...
7 months ago
Arguments about taste are more common than ever before. The long tail makes it easy to find what you like, and to talk about what you don’t. There’s no accounting for taste, and that’s a good thing. Because taste is useful. Flopping the toilet paper under or over the roll,...
Seth's Blog
Invite: Behind-the-scenes webinar for the new book
In two weeks, I’ll be hosting a live webinar about my new book, answering questions and connecting...
a year ago
In two weeks, I’ll be hosting a live webinar about my new book, answering questions and connecting people to get serious in discussing the new way of work. The details are here. I hope you can make it. It’s possible that I’ve now written more bestselling business titles than any...
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
Infinite Scroll
Worst Tweets of 2024 - Dishonorable Mentions
All of the most horrifying posts on Twitter that didn't make the final bracket
5 days ago
All of the most horrifying posts on Twitter that didn't make the final bracket
Seth's Blog
The price of salt
Salt is essentially free. A bag of salted nuts is the same price (or less) as an unsalted one. But...
a year ago
Salt is essentially free. A bag of salted nuts is the same price (or less) as an unsalted one. But salt used to be expensive. Truly expensive, like gold. We keep seeing the deflation of things we were sure would remain expensive. Computer chips, disk storage and now, content....
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...
The Great Discontent...
Luke Zahm
“Everyone eats. There's so much beauty in realizing that humaneness and that oneness.” This is the...
9 months ago
“Everyone eats. There's so much beauty in realizing that humaneness and that oneness.” This is the ethos of Luke Zahm. The James Beard-nominated chef, host of the hit PBS show Wisconsin Foodie, and owner of the widely acclaimed Driftless Café in Viroqua, Wisconsin, believes food...
Blog - Mac Pierce
Magic Wheelchair - a Frozen sled for Angelle
Working on a Frozen themed costume for Angelle.
over a year ago
Working on a Frozen themed costume for Angelle.
Seth's Blog
Willfully uninformed
Access to information used to be scarce. We ranked college libraries on how many books they had, and...
9 months ago
Access to information used to be scarce. We ranked college libraries on how many books they had, and time at the microfilm reader was booked in advance. Today, if there’s something I don’t know, it’s almost certainly because I haven’t cared enough to find out. I don’t understand...
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...
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...
Open Culture
John Waters’ RISD Graduation Speech: Real Wealth Is Life Without A*Holes
John Waters’ rollicking commencement speech at The Rhode Island School of Design offered up some...
3 months ago
John Waters’ rollicking commencement speech at The Rhode Island School of Design offered up some good one-liners and a few pearls of wisdom, though phrased, quite naturally, in an irreverent way. Ready for some sage advice on what really counts as wealth? And what career choices...
Seth's Blog
The fame/trust inversion
A generation ago, the Generals ruled. General Motors, General Foods, General Mills, General...
4 days ago
A generation ago, the Generals ruled. General Motors, General Foods, General Mills, General Dynamics… they were big, and they had a lot to lose. As a result, people trusted them to show up and keep their promises–it just wasn’t worth letting a few people down at the risk of their...
Infinite Scroll
Infinite Scroll on Offline with Jon Favreau
A chat about online media ecosystems
a month ago
A chat about online media ecosystems
Seth's Blog
The end of writer’s block
I was delighted to share this short talk with my friend Sue. I thought it might resonate with you. I...
a year ago
I was delighted to share this short talk with my friend Sue. I thought it might resonate with you. I hope it’s helpful. More interviews and talks are here. And my books are here.
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.
Seth's Blog
Yes, but how does it work?
I worked with Arthur C. Clarke at the very beginning of my career. He’s most famous for saying, “Any...
2 months ago
I worked with Arthur C. Clarke at the very beginning of my career. He’s most famous for saying, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Magic isn’t such a bad thing. And we certainly have plenty of advanced technology around. Advanced in the sense...
Blog - Amy Goodchild
Distributing Randomness
A good pseudorandom number generator gives an even distribution of results
from 0 to 1 but...
over a year ago
A good pseudorandom number generator gives an even distribution of results
from 0 to 1 but sometimes in generative art we might want something
different.
The Great Discontent...
Brad Montague
Brad Montague is an illustrator, speaker, picture book author, video creator, and all-around maker....
3 months ago
Brad Montague is an illustrator, speaker, picture book author, video creator, and all-around maker. He’s a self-proclaimed dreamer and doer. Above all, he’s a storyteller, “working to create a better world for kids with kids” through Montague Workshop, the creative studio he runs...
Open Culture
How to Potty Train Your Cat: A Handy Manual by Jazz Musician Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus, the innovative jazz musician, was known for having a bad temper. He once got so...
a month ago
Charles Mingus, the innovative jazz musician, was known for having a bad temper. He once got so irritated with a heckler that he ended up trashing his $20,000 bass. Another time, when a pianist didn’t get things right, Mingus reached right inside the piano and ripped the strings...
Seth's Blog
Everything costs
But not all costs are the same. There are three kinds of costs that people get confused about, but...
2 months ago
But not all costs are the same. There are three kinds of costs that people get confused about, but understanding them, really understanding them–in your bones–unlocks opportunity. Opportunity cost: If you eat the cupcakes, you can’t also eat the brownies. Every time we choose to...
Blog - Mac Pierce
Fort Emplacements and FDM: making Castle Doctrine
How I made Castle Doctrine, a 1:1 scale fully 3D-Printed American
Revolutionary War era cannon.
a year ago
How I made Castle Doctrine, a 1:1 scale fully 3D-Printed American
Revolutionary War era cannon.
Open Culture
Is Reality Real?: 8 Scientists Explain Whether We Can Ever Know What Objectively Exists
Ask aloud whether reality is real, and you’re liable to be regarded as never truly having left the...
6 months ago
Ask aloud whether reality is real, and you’re liable to be regarded as never truly having left the freshman dorm. But that question has received, and continues to receive, consideration from actual scientists. The Big Think video above assembles seven of them to explain how they...
cabel.com
Firehouse Five and the Cinderella Surprise
My goal was to preserve some never-before-heard recordings of an incredible Dixieland jazz band made...
10 months ago
My goal was to preserve some never-before-heard recordings of an incredible Dixieland jazz band made up of mostly Disney employees, the Firehouse Five Plus Two. But along the way, I accidentally discovered an incredible lost song that was cut from Walt Disney’s Cinderella. And...
Open Culture
Private Snafu: The World War II Propaganda Cartoons Created by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc
Private Snafu was the U.S. Army’s worst soldier. He was sloppy, lazy and prone to shooting off his...
2 months ago
Private Snafu was the U.S. Army’s worst soldier. He was sloppy, lazy and prone to shooting off his mouth to Nazi agents. And he was hugely popular with his fellow GIs. Private Snafu was, of course, an animated cartoon character designed for the military recruits. He was an...
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
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
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...
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...
Open Culture
Meet Madame Inès Decourcelle, One of the Very First Female Taxi Drivers in Paris (Circa 1908)
If you can read this, you almost certainly know the French word for a professional automobile...
5 months ago
If you can read this, you almost certainly know the French word for a professional automobile driver. That’s because we use the same word in English: chauffeur. French nouns, unlike English ones, come in masculine and feminine varieties, and that -eur ending unmistakably...
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...
Open Culture
The World’s First Mobile Phone Shown in 1922 Vintage Film
A number of years ago, British Pathé uncovered some striking footage from 1922 showing two women...
3 months ago
A number of years ago, British Pathé uncovered some striking footage from 1922 showing two women experimenting with the first mobile phone. A spokesman for the archive said: ”It’s amazing that 90 years ago mobile phone technology and music … was not only being thought of but...
Blog - Amy Goodchild
Meaningful Nonsense: How I generate sentences
I’m coding a system in JavaScript that generates sentences of “meaningful nonsense”. Here are some...
6 months ago
I’m coding a system in JavaScript that generates sentences of “meaningful nonsense”. Here are some examples.
I set off on this path because I’m working on a series of generative diagrams and I wanted them to have titles. Immediately I was drawn in by the effect of the diagrams...
Blog - Mac Pierce
+ / - , Actualization
Reposting some writing I did a while back on the subject of how additive
manufacturing is...
over a year ago
Reposting some writing I did a while back on the subject of how additive
manufacturing is necessarily a destructive process.
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Olesya Dzhurayeva
I am Olesya Dzhurayeva, Ukrainian artist. I was born in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, but I...
5 months ago
I am Olesya Dzhurayeva, Ukrainian artist. I was born in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, but I moved to Ukraine as a child. Now I live in Kyiv. Despite the war, I am staying in Ukraine and continue to work.
I am an active member of the international printmaking community,...
Seth's Blog
The seduction of compliance
We can tell from the words. “I’m just doing my job.” “Will this be on the test?” “Don’t blame me.”...
a year ago
We can tell from the words. “I’m just doing my job.” “Will this be on the test?” “Don’t blame me.” “It’s what everyone else is wearing.” Keep your head down, do what you’re told, don’t stick your neck out, and most of all, pay attention to what everyone else is doing. All of this...
Seth's Blog
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...
Seth's Blog
Finding a more useful umwelt
Add up all the senses you use and the things you notice: that’s your umwelt. It’s pretty obvious...
12 months ago
Add up all the senses you use and the things you notice: that’s your umwelt. It’s pretty obvious that your dog has a different one than you do. They see fewer colors and smell far more intelligently. Sea slugs see a much wider range of colors, and bats can sense vibrations. Among...
Seth's Blog
Exceed or maintain?
In just about every group, people decide in advance how they’ll show up when it comes to learning,...
6 months ago
In just about every group, people decide in advance how they’ll show up when it comes to learning, to winning and to responding to opportunities. They’re wearing a hat with a label, and over time, it’s not hard to recognize. This can change based on pedagogy, social conditions...
Seth's Blog
The worst person on our team
A common shortcut to cultural divisiveness is to find the single worst person in a different group...
9 months ago
A common shortcut to cultural divisiveness is to find the single worst person in a different group and highlight and attack their behavior. By making it clear and obvious that this is what THEY (the plural) want and who THEY are, it’s easy to walk away from a larger we. Their...
Seth's Blog
Consider switching sides
One of the spokespeople for the new milk marketing campaign confessed that she doesn’t really like...
a year ago
One of the spokespeople for the new milk marketing campaign confessed that she doesn’t really like drinking milk. Sales are way down, and an entire generation is drinking other beverages. Other than the people who are paid to sell or lobby for milk sales, few people are...
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...
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