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Open Culture
How Zaha Hadid Revolutionized Architecture & Drew Inspiration from Russian Avant-Garde Art Zaha Hadid died in 2016, at the age of 65. She certainly wasn’t old, by the standards of our time,...
4 months ago
58
4 months ago
Zaha Hadid died in 2016, at the age of 65. She certainly wasn’t old, by the standards of our time, though in most professions, her best working years would already have been behind her. She was, however, an architect, and by age 65, most architects are still very much in their...
Seth's Blog
Wrestling, fighting or dancing? We can wrestle with a challenge or a problem and find energy and possibility while doing it. And we...
a year ago
34
a year ago
We can wrestle with a challenge or a problem and find energy and possibility while doing it. And we can dance with someone else as we seek a mutual way forward. Fighting tends to be more brutal, final and hurtful than is often productive. You don’t want to spend your days...
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...
a year ago
51
a year 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
You Can Buy Historic Italian Houses for €1 — But What’s the Catch? From Abruzzo to Vergemoli, small Italian towns and villages have recently been making their historic...
a year ago
96
a year ago
From Abruzzo to Vergemoli, small Italian towns and villages have recently been making their historic homes available for purchase for as low as €1. Given the picturesque nature of many of these places, such offers have proven practically irresistible to foreign buyers who’ve made...
Anarchy Unfolds
Is Sexual Orientation Obsolete? Not yet, but maybe it can (and should) be soon
a year ago
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Jenny McCabe I am printmaker based up north in Lancaster. I currently work mainly with intaglio printmaking...
over a year ago
70
over a year ago
I am printmaker based up north in Lancaster. I currently work mainly with intaglio printmaking methods, preferring metal plate etchings and card Collagraph constructed plates. I have been making printed items for many years including printed textiles and writing books about...
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...
over a year ago
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over 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
The thing about Hobson People talk about Hobson’s choice as if it’s always a bad thing. A liveryman in pre-industrial...
a year ago
40
a year ago
People talk about Hobson’s choice as if it’s always a bad thing. A liveryman in pre-industrial London, he rented horses. And every customer was allowed to take the horse closest to the door. Hobson’s choice is no choice at all. Of course, this system meant that the horses were...
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,...
11 months ago
56
11 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...
Open Culture
One-in-70-Trillion: An Evolutionary Biologist Explains the Mind-Bending Probability of Our Existence At a 1998 conference on technology and life, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas...
a month ago
16
a month ago
At a 1998 conference on technology and life, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams once proposed the notion of a sentient puddle. Imagine it “waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself...
Stat Significant
Which Celebrities Popularized (or Tarnished) Baby Names? A Statistical Analysis Which public figures impacted baby naming trends?
8 months ago
Open Culture
Stephen Fry Explains Why Artificial Intelligence Has a “70% Risk of Killing Us All” Apart from his comedic, dramatic, and literary endeavors, Stephen Fry is widely known for his avowed...
a year ago
77
a year ago
Apart from his comedic, dramatic, and literary endeavors, Stephen Fry is widely known for his avowed technophilia. He once wrote a column on that theme, “Dork Talk,” for the Guardian, in whose inaugural dispatch he laid out his credentials by claiming to have been the owner of...
Open Culture
Watch Anémic Cinéma, Marcel Duchamp’s Whirling Avant-Garde Film (1926) Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) made some heady art. His whole goal was to “put art back in the service...
a month ago
18
a month ago
Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) made some heady art. His whole goal was to “put art back in the service of the mind,” or to create what Jasper Johns once called the “field where language, thought and vision act on one another.” And that’s precisely what Duchamp’s 1926 avant-garde...
Infinite Scroll
Infinite Scroll Podcast: Substack founder Hamish McKenzie An interview on where Substack sits in the digital media ecosystem
8 months ago
Seth's Blog
The Pizza Principle Good pizza is rare, even though the method to create it is well known. Any efforts to make it more...
a year ago
33
a year ago
Good pizza is rare, even though the method to create it is well known. Any efforts to make it more convenient, cheaper or easier will almost always make it worse. If you think this post is about pizza, I’m afraid that we’re already stuck.
Seth's Blog
Mediocre tools Lousy tools are dangerous. They endanger our safety (physical or emotional) and undermine our work....
8 months ago
95
8 months ago
Lousy tools are dangerous. They endanger our safety (physical or emotional) and undermine our work. Lousy tools are pretty easy to avoid, because they reveal themselves whenever we use them. Great tools are magical. They multiply our effort, amplify the quality of our work and...
Seth's Blog
Pleasant We often use words like “beautiful” or “stunning” or “perfect” when we actually mean “popular” or...
over a year ago
93
over a year ago
We often use words like “beautiful” or “stunning” or “perfect” when we actually mean “popular” or “pleasant.” Every day is beautiful in its own way. But the weather yesterday was pleasant. Hit songs are hits. But they’re rarely perfect. I’m a big fan of pleasant. And I often like...
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...
a year ago
106
a year 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...
Blog - Mac Pierce
The Whys and Hows of the Opt-Out Cap. Why I built the Opt-Out Cap cap, and how it all came together.
over a year ago
Open Culture
Hear the Long-Lost Chants of English Monks, Revived for the First Time in 500 Years Listening to music, especially live music, can be a religious experience. These days, most of us say...
a week ago
10
a week ago
Listening to music, especially live music, can be a religious experience. These days, most of us say that figuratively, but for medieval monks, it was the literal truth. Every aspect of life in a monastery was meant to get you that much closer to God, but especially the times...
Ian Betteridge
Ten Blue Links, “rapid evolution of form” edition 1. Why should Trump deliver for anyone but Trump? This Bloomberg piece forgets one important fact:...
9 months ago
45
9 months ago
1. Why should Trump deliver for anyone but Trump? This Bloomberg piece forgets one important fact: Donald Trump is not going to be on the ticket next time. He doesn’t have to deliver a dime for ordinary voters, and will act accordingly.  2. You can now sync Apple Passwords with...
Seth's Blog
Learning, connecting, deciding (and amazing) My new short LinkedIn class on project management just launched, and I’ll be discussing it live...
a year ago
38
a year ago
My new short LinkedIn class on project management just launched, and I’ll be discussing it live today with Amanda Ruud … we’ll be there if you want to bring your questions. Sooner or later, all important work becomes project work. After the extraordinary feedback from her last...
Open Culture
B.B. King Changes a Broken Guitar String Mid-Song at Farm Aid, and Doesn’t Miss a Beat (1985) The scene is Farm Aid, 1985, attended by a crowd of 80,000 people. The song is “How Blue Can You...
10 months ago
43
10 months ago
The scene is Farm Aid, 1985, attended by a crowd of 80,000 people. The song is “How Blue Can You Get.” And the key moment comes at the 3:10 mark, when the blues legend B.B. King breaks a guitar string, then manages to replace it before the song finishes minutes later. All the...
Seth's Blog
The low-stakes argument It’s tempting and fun to argue about the logo. About the way the toilet paper is hung. About how to...
over a year ago
25
over a year ago
It’s tempting and fun to argue about the logo. About the way the toilet paper is hung. About how to load the trunk of the car. These sorts of arguments work precisely because they don’t matter. At all. And they distract us from the incredibly difficult work of discussing the...
Open Culture
Hear What Shakespeare Sounded Like in the Original Pronunciation What did Shakespeare’s English sound like to Shakespeare? To his audience? And how can we know such...
3 months ago
42
3 months ago
What did Shakespeare’s English sound like to Shakespeare? To his audience? And how can we know such a thing as the phonetic character of the language spoken 400 years ago? These questions and more are addressed in the video above, which profiles a very popular experiment at...
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
27
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.
Seth's Blog
Culture, care and typography I’ve been fascinated by the way we set type since I did my first packaging forty years ago. It’s a...
over a year ago
86
over a year ago
I’ve been fascinated by the way we set type since I did my first packaging forty years ago. It’s a combination of tech, art, systems, culture and most of all, deciding to put in the effort to get it right. [This is a long post, it would have been a podcast, but it doesn’t really...
Seth's Blog
Tasks and projects School is a training ground for task-based thinking. “Will this be on the test?” You finish your...
a month ago
22
a month ago
School is a training ground for task-based thinking. “Will this be on the test?” You finish your homework and then you can go out and play. This is one reason educators are flummoxed by chatGPT–it upsets the calibrated balance of effort in the task of homework and essays. The...
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...
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...
over a year ago
45
over 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
Manipulation, indoctrination and addiction They’re often related. It’s not unusual for someone to have more experience or knowledge than we do....
a year ago
37
a year ago
They’re often related. It’s not unusual for someone to have more experience or knowledge than we do. If they use that knowledge to their benefit, not ours, they might be manipulating us. If we knew what they knew, we wouldn’t have gone along. This is the difference between a...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Rachael Haggerty Hello, I’m Rachael and I am a printmaker based in Bath, UK. I generally work with linocut and mainly...
over a year ago
103
over a year ago
Hello, I’m Rachael and I am a printmaker based in Bath, UK. I generally work with linocut and mainly print in monochrome or bright primary colours. My work celebrates family life, nature and the local area. Describe your printmaking process. I normally sketch out a composition...
Seth's Blog
The length trick It’s possible that the memo or video is simply too long. A 14 minute video explaining how to have a...
over a year ago
24
over a year ago
It’s possible that the memo or video is simply too long. A 14 minute video explaining how to have a 10 minute brainstorming meeting might benefit from some editing. But it might be that your instruction manual would benefit from some more photos and better in depth explanation....
Seth's Blog
Input choice is easily taken for granted We can give instructions to a fellow human by: Most people develop voiceboxes and limbs and facial...
a year ago
25
a year ago
We can give instructions to a fellow human by: Most people develop voiceboxes and limbs and facial expressions that make any of these usable. Computers, over the decades, have had to have them engineered. In 1983, Dan Lovy built a parser for the adventure games I was marketing at...
Infinite Scroll
Should We Ban Gambling on Smartphones? A conversation between two parts of my brain
5 months ago
Seth's Blog
Hallucinations are not the same as errors I asked my AI about some obsolete card games, and it wrote a 1,000 word essay about Lansquenet. It...
4 months ago
30
4 months ago
I asked my AI about some obsolete card games, and it wrote a 1,000 word essay about Lansquenet. It made up the rules, the strategies, the betting techniques, all of it. Saying that it was raining on July 14th last year is an error. Inventing an entirely new set of rules is an...
Seth's Blog
Digital stocking stuffers (and the other kind) Ever since O. Henry wrote about the Magi, it’s been pretty clear that gifts aren’t about the stuff...
a year ago
29
a year ago
Ever since O. Henry wrote about the Magi, it’s been pretty clear that gifts aren’t about the stuff as much as they are the intent. Holidays where gifts are expected undermine this, because it’s hard to tell where obligation begins and intent fades away. One lightweight and quick...
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
31
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...
Neocha – Culture &...
The New Ancient
over a year ago
Seth's Blog
Looking for a handle What if your boots don’t have any straps? Bootstrapping is logically impossible. You can’t pick...
a year ago
34
a year ago
What if your boots don’t have any straps? Bootstrapping is logically impossible. You can’t pick yourself up into the air by lifting on your boots, no matter how hard you try, because gravity isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law. But it’s significantly more difficult if your boots...
Seth's Blog
Cat and mouse games I hope that most of us would agree that driving 50 mph in a school zone where little kids cross the...
a year ago
42
a year ago
I hope that most of us would agree that driving 50 mph in a school zone where little kids cross the street is a significant safety problem. The speed limit is there for good reason, and if you selfishly and recklessly blow through the crosswalk, you ought to get a summons....
Seth's Blog
Just looking Lots of people go to the beach but very few get in the water. 3,000 students go to the football game...
a year ago
23
a year ago
Lots of people go to the beach but very few get in the water. 3,000 students go to the football game to watch 20 of their peers play. And we go to a conference to meet people and connect, and then spend most of our time hoping someone else will see us and care enough […]
Open Culture
The Evolution of Hokusai’s Great Wave: A Study of 113 Known Copies of the Iconic Woodblock Print The most widely known work by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese artist Hokusai,...
a year ago
55
a year ago
The most widely known work by the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Japanese artist Hokusai, 神奈川沖浪裏, is usually translated into English as The Great Wave off Kanagawa. That version of the title reflects the iconic scene depicted in the image well enough, though I can’t help but...
Seth's Blog
The opposite of ‘perfect’ It’s not junk. No, the opposite of perfect is: Meets spec Useful On time Productive Valuable By...
11 months ago
53
11 months ago
It’s not junk. No, the opposite of perfect is: Meets spec Useful On time Productive Valuable By definition, good enough is good enough. If the spec isn’t what you need, change the spec. But perfect is unattainable and perfect is a place to hide.
Handprinted - Blog
Sue Brown Paper Lithography Book Review Our good friend Sue Brown has recently released her new book Paper Lithography! In this step-by-step...
over a year ago
102
over a year ago
Our good friend Sue Brown has recently released her new book Paper Lithography! In this step-by-step guide Sue takes us through the process of making paper lithography prints using the humble photocopy as your plate. Paper lithography is a quick and straightforward process that...
Seth's Blog
Putting up the big numbers Some people go to the gym for health and energy. Some go to lift more weight than they did yesterday...
a year ago
31
a year ago
Some people go to the gym for health and energy. Some go to lift more weight than they did yesterday (or more than the person next to them). You can start a company to make an impact and surround yourself with people on a similar journey, or you can seek to maximize the stock...
Infinite Scroll
Podcast: What should we do about sports betting? ft. Isaac Rose Berman As a follow up to my article from a few weeks ago Should We Ban Gambling on Smartphones?, I’ve...
4 months ago
52
4 months ago
As a follow up to my article from a few weeks ago Should We Ban Gambling on Smartphones?, I’ve invited Isaac Rose-Berman on the show to talk about gambling policy.
Stat Significant
Which Old Movies Stand the Test of Time? A Statistical Analysis An exploration of "timeless" films.
6 months ago
Infinite Scroll
Weekly Scroll: A Time To Kill Globe Emojis Gone Viral and Le Poisson Steve
4 months ago
Marian's Blog
Android-Benachrichtigungen auf dem Schreibtisch Das Ziel dieses Projekts ist, Benachrichtigungen von meinem Android-Handy automatisch auf einem...
over a year ago
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over a year ago
Das Ziel dieses Projekts ist, Benachrichtigungen von meinem Android-Handy automatisch auf einem LoL-Shield (Lots of LEDs) anzuzeigen. Dazu benutze ich einen Raspberry Pi, der sowieso schon auf meinem Schreibtisch steht, einen Arduino für das Schild und auf dem Handy Tasker, um...