Full Width [alt+shift+f] FOCUS MODE Shortcuts [alt+shift+k]
Sign Up [alt+shift+s] Log In [alt+shift+l]
Top Categories > creative
#all #programming #history #technology #startups #life #science #literature #creative #architecture #design #travel #finance #comics #AI #indiehacker #cartography Muted Categories [alt+←][alt+→]
Seth's Blog
Evenly distributed For the first time, the only time, everyone on Earth was in the same boat at the same time. We’ve...
a year ago
30
a year ago
For the first time, the only time, everyone on Earth was in the same boat at the same time. We’ve long been divided by privilege, by caste, by accidents of birth or by organized hierarchies. Sure, there have been events that struck us all at once. Landing on the moon caused us...
Open Culture
How Egon Schiele Made Enduring Art from His Troubled Life and Times “May you live in interesting times,” goes the apocryphal but nevertheless much-invoked “Chinese...
2 days ago
3
2 days ago
“May you live in interesting times,” goes the apocryphal but nevertheless much-invoked “Chinese curse.” Egon Schiele, born in the Austria-Hungary of 1890, certainly did live in interesting times, and his work, as featured in the new Great Art Explained video above, can look like...
Anarchy Unfolds
April '24 Myths & Recs Sexual orientation, Cowboy Carter, mental health recovery, and more
a year ago
Prolost
Red Giant & Maxon, Sitting in a Tree Red Giant, where I’ve been Chief Creative Officer for a couple of years now, but making filmmaking...
over a year ago
33
over a year ago
Red Giant, where I’ve been Chief Creative Officer for a couple of years now, but making filmmaking tools for you for 17 years, is merging with Maxon, makers of Cinema 4D. From the Red Giant blog: Hi folks — by now you’ve probably heard the news that Maxon and Red Giant are...
Seth's Blog
Choose your fuel wisely If worrying about paying the mortgage gets you motivated to lean hard into the next project, don’t...
10 months ago
54
10 months ago
If worrying about paying the mortgage gets you motivated to lean hard into the next project, don’t be surprised if that sort of fear arises every time you have hard work to do. If your goal is to teach the naysayers a lesson, remember that you’ll need to find people who you want...
John Reynolds -...
Mammoth Life - Lights Out Music Video Title: Lights OutArtist: Mammoth LifeYear: 2014 --
over a year ago
Seth's Blog
Overappreciated It’s all too easy to be familiar with being underappreciated. Customers, clients, vendors,...
a month ago
22
a month ago
It’s all too easy to be familiar with being underappreciated. Customers, clients, vendors, colleagues–we’d like them to notice and acknowledge our efforts on their behalf. When we pay attention to appreciation, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that there’s rarely enough....
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...
a year ago
73
a year 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...
On the Arts
What does Wabi-Sabi really mean? Explaining an often misunderstood idea in Japanese aesthetics.
over a year ago
Seth's Blog
The next one When asked what his favorite composition was, Duke Ellington said, “the next one.” This is the...
a year ago
28
a year ago
When asked what his favorite composition was, Duke Ellington said, “the next one.” This is the essence of the artistic process. When we’re in the liminal space between now and what is about to come, we’re fully alive.
Open Culture
The 100 Greatest Paintings of All Time: From Botticelli and Bosch to Bacon and Basquiat It would be a worthwhile exercise for any of us to sit down and attempt to draw up a list of our 100...
3 months ago
34
3 months ago
It would be a worthwhile exercise for any of us to sit down and attempt to draw up a list of our 100 favorite paintings of all time. Naturally, those not professionally involved with art history may have some trouble quite hitting that number. Still, however many titles we can...
Open Culture
Behold the Very First Color Photograph (1861): Taken by Scottish Physicist & Poet James Clerk... Since its ancient origins as the camera obscura, the photographic camera has always mimicked the...
3 weeks ago
12
3 weeks ago
Since its ancient origins as the camera obscura, the photographic camera has always mimicked the human eye, allowing light to enter an aperture, then projecting an image upside down. Renaissance artists relied on the camera obscura to sharpen their own visual perspectives. But it...
Open Culture
Archaeologists Discover a 2,400-Year-Old Skeleton Mosaic That Urges People to “Be Cheerful and Live... Image by Dosseman, via Wikimedia Commons In 2012, archaeologists discovered in Southern Turkey a...
a month ago
26
a month ago
Image by Dosseman, via Wikimedia Commons In 2012, archaeologists discovered in Southern Turkey a well-preserved mosaic featuring a skeleton savoring a loaf of bread and a pitcher of wine, surrounded by the Greek words “Be cheerful and live your life.” Dating back to the 3rd...
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...
a year ago
55
a year 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...
Seth's Blog
Waves and tides It’s easy to be distracted by the wave that’s crashing on the shore. On the other hand, the tide is...
5 months ago
53
5 months ago
It’s easy to be distracted by the wave that’s crashing on the shore. On the other hand, the tide is inexorable. It’s the long-term trend, the one that is quietly happening, over time. Sometimes, a big wave comes along and we lose our focus. It’s urgent. But expecting and working...
Handprinted - Blog
Testing your Copper Sulphate Solution When you’ve mixed a fresh batch of copper sulphate mordant, or if you have an old batch that you...
a year ago
47
a year ago
When you’ve mixed a fresh batch of copper sulphate mordant, or if you have an old batch that you haven’t used for a few months, it’s good practice to test the strength of your solution. By creating some test strips for both line and tones, you’ll create yourself a reference point...
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...
a year ago
75
a year 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...
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
44
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...
escape the algorithm
Foreskin’s Comment What a Billie Eilish Youtube comment diarist can teach us about forging meaningful online rituals
over a year ago
Seth's Blog
Invention or discovery? We can agree that Isaac Newton didn’t invent gravity. It was here all along, but he gets some credit...
a year ago
98
a year ago
We can agree that Isaac Newton didn’t invent gravity. It was here all along, but he gets some credit for naming it and describing it. And Columbus definitely didn’t discover North America. There had been people living here for tens of thousands of years before he arrived. After...
Seth's Blog
Simple techniques for complex projects Warm up the machines that take a long time first. Stress test the go/no go parts of the project as...
over a year ago
94
over a year ago
Warm up the machines that take a long time first. Stress test the go/no go parts of the project as early as possible. If the cost is low, replace dependent processes with parallel ones. Do the difficult parts when energy is high and the budget hasn’t been depleted. Ship before...
Seth's Blog
Taken for granted A poignant definition of civilization is all the conveniences, courtesies, standards, insulation and...
11 months ago
66
11 months ago
A poignant definition of civilization is all the conveniences, courtesies, standards, insulation and tools that we hardly notice now but that we would miss if they were gone.
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Nick Morley (with giveaway!) Nick Morley, aka Linocutboy, is an artist, illustrator, author and educator specialising in linocut....
over a year ago
92
over a year ago
Nick Morley, aka Linocutboy, is an artist, illustrator, author and educator specialising in linocut. His prints have been bought by people all over the world and his illustrations have appeared on book covers and in magazines. Nick teaches regular linocut workshops at Hello Print...
Handprinted - Blog
Inking Methods for Etching Once you've made an etching plate, you may be ready to print an edition - or you might want to proof...
9 months ago
94
9 months ago
Once you've made an etching plate, you may be ready to print an edition - or you might want to proof it to decide on further edits. Taking a print is the only way you’ll be able to see how your plate is progressing. This blog is part of a series featuring tips and techniques to...
Open Culture
Enter a Huge Archive of Amazing Stories, the World’s First Science Fiction Magazine, Launched in... If you haven’t heard of Hugo Gernsback, you’ve surely heard of the Hugo Award. Next to the Nebula,...
a year ago
65
a year ago
If you haven’t heard of Hugo Gernsback, you’ve surely heard of the Hugo Award. Next to the Nebula, it’s the most prestigious of science fiction prizes, bringing together in its ranks of winners such venerable authors as Ursula K. Le Guin, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, Neil...
Seth's Blog
Use a lot of words Verbosity is the new brevity. Google felt like a miracle. We could type just a word or two (“blog“)...
2 months ago
25
2 months ago
Verbosity is the new brevity. Google felt like a miracle. We could type just a word or two (“blog“) and it would magically guess what we wanted and take us there. This shortcut spread from Google to the search built into online shopping as well. How convenient. A few words and...
Open Culture
How Choose Your Own Adventure Books Became Beloved Among Generations of Readers We’ve all read plenty of literature written in the first person, and plenty of literature written in...
a year ago
68
a year ago
We’ve all read plenty of literature written in the first person, and plenty of literature written in the third person. The second person, with its main subject of neither “I” nor “he” or “she” but “you,” is considerably harder to come by, and the writers who take it up tend to be...
Marian's Blog
Visualizing 150000 butterflies from the Natural History Museum Click here for the interactive visualization. The Natural History Museum in London has a data portal...
over a year ago
35
over a year ago
Click here for the interactive visualization. The Natural History Museum in London has a data portal in which they provide digital records for many of their specimens. Some of these records have images. I recently learned how to use machine learning tools such as convolutional...
Open Culture
How Sci-Fi Writers Isaac Asimov & Robert Heinlein Contributed to the War Effort During World War II Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague De Camp at the Navy Yard in 1944 Robert Heinlein was...
a year ago
44
a year ago
Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague De Camp at the Navy Yard in 1944 Robert Heinlein was born in 1907, which put him on the mature side by the time of the United States’ entry into World War II. Isaac Asimov, his younger colleague in science fiction, was born in 1920 (or...
Not Boring by Packy...
Weekly Dose of Optimism #138 Isomorphic Labs, OpenAI Round, Streaming Thoughts, Dementia Vaccine?, Lipoprotein(a), Hyperlegible...
5 months ago
Infinite Scroll
Weekly Scroll: Idiot Plots Plus! Gavin's podcast, morning routines, and a good chickpea post
5 months ago
Open Culture
Tracking Pianist Yuja Wang’s Heartbeats During Her Marathon Rachmaninoff Performance The Carnegie Hall YouTube Channel sets the scene: On January 28, 2023, pianist Yuja Wang joined The...
a year ago
61
a year ago
The Carnegie Hall YouTube Channel sets the scene: On January 28, 2023, pianist Yuja Wang joined The Philadelphia Orchestra and conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Carnegie Hall for a once-in-a-lifetime, all-Rachmaninoff marathon that featured the composer’s four piano concertos...
Prolost
New Photography Shortcuts Using ToolBox Pro My love affair with Apple’s Shortcuts took a bit of a hit during the transition to iOS 13, but my...
over a year ago
39
over a year ago
My love affair with Apple’s Shortcuts took a bit of a hit during the transition to iOS 13, but my fascination with this on-device development environment has been rekindled thanks to a new app called ToolBox Pro. ToolBox Pro is a free iOS/iPadOS app that adds powerful new actions...
Handprinted - Blog
Using a Thermal Screen to Print Festive Wrapping Printing your own bespoke wrapping paper or fabric can be very rewarding especially when the gift is...
over a year ago
92
over a year ago
Printing your own bespoke wrapping paper or fabric can be very rewarding especially when the gift is for a loved one. This week we're printing our own kraft wrapping paper using a Thermal Screen.  Here at Handprinted we use a MiScreen Machine to make our Thermal Screens. You can...
Seth's Blog
What comes after trust? Walk into a bank with a stocking on your head and you’re probably going to get arrested. Civil...
over a year ago
87
over a year ago
Walk into a bank with a stocking on your head and you’re probably going to get arrested. Civil society as we know it is dependent on identity and responsibility. A person does something and owns the consequences. This requirement of identity leads to the dynamic of the free...
Seth's Blog
They will lose your data The rules are pretty consistent: We’re all creators now. Podcasting, videoing, photographing,...
over a year ago
88
over a year ago
The rules are pretty consistent: We’re all creators now. Podcasting, videoing, photographing, spreadsheeting… and we’re building a foundation of valuable data as we go. The software companies that produce the tools we use push their engineers in many ways, but not to create...
Seth's Blog
The search tax Amazon took in more than $30 billion in ad revenue last year, money spent to elevate some products...
over a year ago
86
over a year ago
Amazon took in more than $30 billion in ad revenue last year, money spent to elevate some products over others in the hierarchy of attention. It’s probably true that someone shopping on Amazon is going to either buy something or not… the purpose of the “ads” isn’t to amplify...
Seth's Blog
All species are invasive species Human beings as we know them have only been around for 70,000 years or so. Honeybees got to North...
a year ago
26
a year ago
Human beings as we know them have only been around for 70,000 years or so. Honeybees got to North America around the time Columbus did. And the same is true for technologies and companies. Western Union was an interloper, telegrams were the scary new tech that was going to change...
Open Culture
Free: Download Over 33,000 Sounds from the BBC Sound Effects Archive There may be a few young people in Britain today who recognize the name Ludwig Koch, but in the...
11 months ago
62
11 months ago
There may be a few young people in Britain today who recognize the name Ludwig Koch, but in the nineteen-forties, he constituted something of a cultural phenomenon unto himself. He “started recording sounds and voices in the 1880s when he was still a child” in his native Germany,...
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...
a year ago
68
a year 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
The paradox of lottery thinking Tim Brownson points us to this recent poll of people in Great Britain. About one out of four people...
a year ago
92
a year ago
Tim Brownson points us to this recent poll of people in Great Britain. About one out of four people surveyed (of all ages) believe that they could qualify for the Olympics if they trained for the next four years. This is absurd. It’s the very absurdity of it that makes it common....
Open Culture
A 5‑Hour Journey Through North Korean Entertainment: Propaganda Films, Kids’ Cartoons, Sketch Comedy... Over the second half of the twentieth century, South Korea became rich, and in the first decades of...
a year ago
41
a year ago
Over the second half of the twentieth century, South Korea became rich, and in the first decades of the twenty-first, it’s become a global cultural superpower. The same can’t be said for North Korea: after a relatively strong start in the nineteen-fifties and sixties, its economy...
Seth's Blog
Important problems Some problems are easy to solve, others are difficult, requiring a lot more labor, willpower,...
10 months ago
61
10 months ago
Some problems are easy to solve, others are difficult, requiring a lot more labor, willpower, resources and coordination. Some problems have simple solutions, while others are complex in what it takes to move forward. The trivial problems are fun. They’re simple to solve and...
Seth's Blog
“Let’s face it” In 1959, three years after Columbia Records spent a fortune rolling out stereo recording, a senior...
a year ago
36
a year ago
In 1959, three years after Columbia Records spent a fortune rolling out stereo recording, a senior A&R executive named Ward Botsman told the New York Times, “Let’s face it, the craze for stereo has not been as intense as expected,” writing off the format that would end up...
Open Culture
The Origins of Satan: The Evolution of the Devil in Religion The Devil, the Beast, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan: whichever name we happen to call him, we know full...
a week ago
11
a week ago
The Devil, the Beast, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Satan: whichever name we happen to call him, we know full well who the guy is — or at least, we think we do. In fact, the images and evocations of that embodiment of (or perhaps metaphor for) sin, deceit, and temptation that many of us...
Open Culture
The Roads of Ancient Rome Visualized in the Style of Modern Subway Maps Sasha Trubetskoy, formerly an undergrad at U. Chicago, has created a “subway-style diagram of the...
a year ago
65
a year ago
Sasha Trubetskoy, formerly an undergrad at U. Chicago, has created a “subway-style diagram of the major Roman roads, based on the Empire of ca. 125 AD.” Drawing on Stanford’s ORBIS model, The Pelagios Project, and the Antonine Itinerary, Trubetskoy’s map combines well-known...
Stat Significant
The Rise of Faith-Based Films: A Statistical Analysis The economics and origins of the faith-based film industry.
11 months ago
Open Culture
The History of Electronic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001) Photo of Karlheinz Stockhausen by Kathinka Pasveer via Wikimedia Commons You may hear the phrase...
2 months ago
46
2 months ago
Photo of Karlheinz Stockhausen by Kathinka Pasveer via Wikimedia Commons You may hear the phrase “electronic music” and think of superstar dubstep DJs in funny helmets at beachside celebrity parties. Alternatively, you may think of the mercurial compositions of Karlheinz...
Open Culture
Will Machines Ever Truly Think? Richard Feynman Contemplates the Future of Artificial Intelligence... Though its answer has grown more complicated in recent years, the question of whether computers will...
3 months ago
41
3 months ago
Though its answer has grown more complicated in recent years, the question of whether computers will ever truly think has been around for quite some time. Richard Feynman was being asked about it 40 years ago, as evidenced by the lecture clip above. As his fans would expect, he...
Ian Betteridge
When dealing with Musk, Labour needs to understand the world has changed There are plenty of objections to preventing Elon Musk from donating to Reform. The first is it’s...
8 months ago
75
8 months ago
There are plenty of objections to preventing Elon Musk from donating to Reform. The first is it’s politically motivated. A party shouldn’t (the theory goes) use its power in government specifically to target another party. Of course, Labour could do this in a way which prevented...