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Seth's Blog
For people who don’t care that much If someone snuck into my closet and switched out one brand of sneakers for a similar model from...
7 hours ago
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7 hours ago
If someone snuck into my closet and switched out one brand of sneakers for a similar model from another company, it wouldn’t bother me much. Popular cars like the Camry, the Civic and the Elantra don’t have raving fans the way the Mini or the Rivian do. Go to the rental car...
Open Culture
1,000+ Artworks by Vincent Van Gogh Digitized & Put Online by Dutch Museums It gets dark before dinner now in my part of the world, a recipe for seasonal depression. Vincent...
7 hours ago
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7 hours ago
It gets dark before dinner now in my part of the world, a recipe for seasonal depression. Vincent van Gogh wrote about such low feelings with deep insight. “One feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless.” Yet, when he...
Open Culture
The 1830s Device That Created the First Animations: The Phenakistiscope The image just above is an animated GIF, a format by now older than most people on the internet....
8 hours ago
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8 hours ago
The image just above is an animated GIF, a format by now older than most people on the internet. Those of us who were surfing the World Wide Web in its earliest years will remember all those little digging, jackhammering roadworkers who flanked the permanent announcements that...
Handprinted - Blog
Monotype on Fabric using Screen Printing Inks The satisfyingly fuzzy printed lines of a monotype are usually reserved for prints on paper....
17 hours ago
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17 hours ago
The satisfyingly fuzzy printed lines of a monotype are usually reserved for prints on paper. However, using the method below you can create prints onto fabric with the same texture and line quality, making fast and spontaneous fabric designs to sew up into bags, quilts, or...
Open Culture
Animated Map Shows How the Five Major Religions Spread Across the World (3000 BC — 2000 AD) Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam.… Claims to ancient origin and ultimate authority...
yesterday
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yesterday
Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam.… Claims to ancient origin and ultimate authority notwithstanding, the world’s five major religions are all of recent vintage compared to the couple hundred thousand years or more of human existence on the planet. During most of...
Seth's Blog
Confusing good luck with skill If 1,000 people toss a fair coin three times, 125 of them will get three heads in a row. Perfect...
yesterday
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yesterday
If 1,000 people toss a fair coin three times, 125 of them will get three heads in a row. Perfect score. And 125 will lose every time. We probably shouldn’t give the winners too much credit. Actually, the real work is deciding which games to play and which results are worthy of...
Open Culture
Watch Momijigari, Japan’s Oldest Surviving Film (1899) At first, film simply recorded events: a man walking across a garden, workers leaving a factory, a...
yesterday
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yesterday
At first, film simply recorded events: a man walking across a garden, workers leaving a factory, a train pulling into a station. The medium soon matured enough to accommodate drama, which for early filmmakers meant simply shooting what amounted to stage productions from the...
Open Culture
Franz Kafka’s Anxious Letters to His Fiancée, Read Aloud by Richard Ayoade It can’t have been easy being Franz Kafka. But then, it can’t have been much easier being Franz...
2 days ago
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It can’t have been easy being Franz Kafka. But then, it can’t have been much easier being Franz Kafka’s fiancée, as evidenced by the correspondence read aloud by Richard Ayoade in the new Letters Live video above. “It is now 10:30 on Monday morning,” he wrote to Felice Bauer on...
Seth's Blog
Mirrors and hats No one buys a hat without looking at themselves in a mirror first. Ever. There were hats before...
2 days ago
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2 days ago
No one buys a hat without looking at themselves in a mirror first. Ever. There were hats before there were mirrors, so I’m not sure how it used to be, but that’s how it is now. Even though we may imagine we’re wearing a hat to protect ourselves from the sun, the mirror reminds us...
Open Culture
Seven Philosophy Books for Beginners: Where to Start One especially appealing aspect of philosophy, as a field of study, is that you don’t have to go...
2 days ago
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One especially appealing aspect of philosophy, as a field of study, is that you don’t have to go anywhere to learn it but the library. And these days, you don’t necessarily have to go there, now that so many philosophical texts have become freely available on the internet. In the...
Open Culture
Take a Virtual Tour of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London The story of the Globe Theatre, the ancestral home of Shakespeare’s plays, is itself very...
3 days ago
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The story of the Globe Theatre, the ancestral home of Shakespeare’s plays, is itself very Shakespearean, in all of the ways we use that adjective: it has deep roots in English history, a tragic backstory, and represents all of the hodgepodge of London, in the early 17th century...
Seth's Blog
Job churn Since I was born, humans have created 6 billion jobs. All while technology relentlessly disrupts...
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Since I was born, humans have created 6 billion jobs. All while technology relentlessly disrupts existing industries. The pin making machine replaced the hand-crafted pin. The ox-pulled plow replaced millions of hours of backbreaking work. The amplification and electronic...
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...
3 days ago
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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...
Seth's Blog
“GET OUTTA MY WAY” Pedestrian traffic in Grand Central Station is a bit of a miracle. Thousands of people, all walking...
4 days ago
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Pedestrian traffic in Grand Central Station is a bit of a miracle. Thousands of people, all walking quickly, in almost non-Euclidian chaos, headed toward different trains. And no one collides. We see the same thing at a more dangerous clip when a four lane highway merges. The...
Seth's Blog
Aha! Teaching is not about assignments, textbooks or authority. It’s about the pedagogy, connection and...
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Teaching is not about assignments, textbooks or authority. It’s about the pedagogy, connection and approach that creates the conditions for a willing student to change their mind. Everything else is simply grunt work. Sooner or later, we are all self taught.
Seth's Blog
Centering Conversations and projects usually revolve around an axis. It could be a goal or an urgency or a...
6 days ago
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Conversations and projects usually revolve around an axis. It could be a goal or an urgency or a person. It might be the boss. Wondering what they want, what they need, what sort of mood they’re in, what just happened, what might happen. “What would Jeff do?” It might the clock....
Open Culture
Gustave Doré’s Haunting Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy Inferno, Canto X: Many artists have attempted to illustrate Dante Alighieri’s epic poem the Divine...
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Inferno, Canto X: Many artists have attempted to illustrate Dante Alighieri’s epic poem the Divine Comedy, but none have made such an indelible stamp on our collective imagination as the Frenchman Gustave Doré. Doré was 23 years old in 1855, when he first decided to create a...
Open Culture
Did Paul McCartney Really Die in 1966? How the Biggest Beatles Conspiracy Theory Spread No pop music can have inspired more scrutiny than that of the Beatles. Of course, intense and...
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No pop music can have inspired more scrutiny than that of the Beatles. Of course, intense and sustained attention has been paid to every aspect of the band’s existence — and, in the case of Paul McCartney, his purported non-existence as well. The theory that he actually died in...
Seth's Blog
The violinist problem Two hundred years ago, there were a lot of violinists. Many made a living at it. If you were of...
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Two hundred years ago, there were a lot of violinists. Many made a living at it. If you were of means and wanted to hear music, your best option was to hire someone to play it for you. Of course, the invention of the phonograph and the radio changed all of that. Now, one great...
Open Culture
The Ancient Roman Dodecahedron: The Mysterious Object That Has Baffled Archaeologists for Centuries There isn’t much place for dodecahedra in modern life, at least in those modern lives with  tabletop...
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There isn’t much place for dodecahedra in modern life, at least in those modern lives with  tabletop role-playing. In the ancient Roman Empire, however, those shapes seem to have been practically household objects — not that we know what the household would have done with them....
Open Culture
Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapted from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake In 1942, John Cage composed a short piece of music adapted from the text of James Joyce’s Finnegans...
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In 1942, John Cage composed a short piece of music adapted from the text of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Titled “The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs,” the piece was originally commissioned and performed by amateur soprano and socialite Justine Fairbank, and while we don’t...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Alex Williams I’m Alex Williams, a printmaker and illustrator based in Somerset. I mainly make linocut prints in...
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I’m Alex Williams, a printmaker and illustrator based in Somerset. I mainly make linocut prints in bright and bold colours - I very rarely use any black ink! I also create illustrations, murals and bespoke window paintings and run printmaking workshops for adults and...
Open Culture
21 Rules for Living from Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s Samurai Philosopher (1584–1645) Browse the ever-vaster selection of self-help books, videos, podcasts, and social-media accounts on...
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Browse the ever-vaster selection of self-help books, videos, podcasts, and social-media accounts on offer today, and you’ll find no shortage of prescriptions for how to live. Much of what the gurus of the twenty-twenties have to say sounds awfully similar, and almost as much may...
Seth's Blog
All that torque A screwdriver works because the handle is bigger than the screw. You can twist the handle with...
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A screwdriver works because the handle is bigger than the screw. You can twist the handle with leverage, causing the screw to turn. The bigger the handle, the more leverage you have. We’ve spent a trillion dollars building a worldwide communications and AI network, and you can...
Open Culture
75 Post-Punk and Hardcore Concerts from the 1980s Have Been Digitized & Put Online: Fugazi, GWAR,... Between 1985 and 1988, a teenager by the name of Sohrab Habibion was attending punk and post-punk...
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Between 1985 and 1988, a teenager by the name of Sohrab Habibion was attending punk and post-punk shows around the Washington, DC area. What set him apart was the bulky video camera he’d bring to the show and let roll, documenting entire gigs in all their low-rez, lo-fi glory....
Seth's Blog
“No” is an option “Maybe” is the problem. If you’re serious, say, “yes.” And if it’s not for you, walk away. But...
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“Maybe” is the problem. If you’re serious, say, “yes.” And if it’s not for you, walk away. But endlessly reconsidering opportunities without forward motion is a place to hide.
Open Culture
Yuval Noah Harari Explains How to Protect Your Mind in the Age of AI You could say that we live in the age of artificial intelligence, although it feels truer about no...
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You could say that we live in the age of artificial intelligence, although it feels truer about no aspect of our lives than it does of advertising. “If you want to sell something to people today, you call it AI,” says Yuval Noah Harari in the new Big Think video above, even if...
Open Culture
The Oldest Unopened Bottle of Wine in the World (Circa 350 AD) Image by Immanuel Giel, via Wikimedia Commons It’s an old TV and movie trope: the man of wealth and...
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Image by Immanuel Giel, via Wikimedia Commons It’s an old TV and movie trope: the man of wealth and taste, often but not always a supervillain, offers his distinguished guest a bottle of wine, his finest, an ancient vintage from one of the most venerable vineyards. We might...
Seth's Blog
An invitation to vibration Many organizations have a widget or service, something people already need or want, and they work to...
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Many organizations have a widget or service, something people already need or want, and they work to sell it to people. Some seek monopoly power so they can force others to do what they want them to do. But there’s a third path: we can create a brand or a movement or a community...
Open Culture
Discover the World’s Oldest Surviving Cookbook, De Re Coquinaria, from Ancient Rome Western scholarship has had “a bias against studying sensual experience,” writes Reina Gattuso at...
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Western scholarship has had “a bias against studying sensual experience,” writes Reina Gattuso at Atlas Obscura, “the relic of an Enlightenment-era hierarchy that considered taste, touch, and flavor taboo topics for sober academic inquiry.” This does not mean, however, that...
Open Culture
Why Knights Fought Snails in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts The snail may leave a trail of slime behind him, but a little slime will do a man no harm… whilst if...
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The snail may leave a trail of slime behind him, but a little slime will do a man no harm… whilst if you dance with dragons, you must expect to burn. - George R. R. Martin, The Mystery Knight As any Game of Thrones fan knows, being a knight has its downsides. It isn’t all […]
Seth's Blog
What sort of success? “Who’s it for?” is not simply a question about your target customer. Milton Friedman offered to let...
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“Who’s it for?” is not simply a question about your target customer. Milton Friedman offered to let us off the hook–the only thing the work is for is to maximize shareholder value, he said. Nothing else is worth measuring. I’ve never met anyone who consistently believed this....
Seth's Blog
Disenchanted Where does hope come from? It’s probably hard-wired, the result of an evolutionary process. A...
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Where does hope come from? It’s probably hard-wired, the result of an evolutionary process. A creature with hope is less likely to give up and more likely to raise offspring, thus passing down an ability to find resilience in the face of change. Disenchanted has come to mean...
Seth's Blog
The new Kickstarter is live More than ten years ago, we broke records with my previous Kickstarter. Now I’m back with a suite of...
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More than ten years ago, we broke records with my previous Kickstarter. Now I’m back with a suite of AI-powered cards. For the last five months, I’ve been in full sprint mode, and this is what I’ve been building. We launched the Mentor Deck in beta two weeks ago, and I was...
Open Culture
Watch Joan Baez Endearingly Imitate Bob Dylan (1972) Joan Baez was already heralded as the “Queen of Folk” by the time Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan...
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Joan Baez was already heralded as the “Queen of Folk” by the time Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan arrived in New York City. Many things brought him to the burgeoning folk scene there, but Baez was the siren who called to a young Dylan through his television set long before he met...
Open Culture
What Is Kabbalah? An Introduction to the Jewish Mystical Tradition Though the pop-cultural moment that gave rise to the association has passed, when many of us hear...
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Though the pop-cultural moment that gave rise to the association has passed, when many of us hear about Kabbalah, we still think of Madonna. Her study of that Jewish-mystic school of thought in the nineteen-nineties has been credited, at least in part, with the sonic...
Seth's Blog
“A now, a word from our sponsor” Not really. Just a post about sponsors. Even if you don’t run a media company, the way media...
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Not really. Just a post about sponsors. Even if you don’t run a media company, the way media companies run matters. That’s because media shapes our culture and how we spend our time. There are three kinds of ad models, and it’s easy to confuse them. The most common and...
Open Culture
2,178 Occult Books Now Digitized & Put Online, Thanks to the Ritman Library and Da Vinci Code Author... In 2018 we brought you some exciting news. Thanks to a generous donation from Da Vinci Code author...
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In 2018 we brought you some exciting news. Thanks to a generous donation from Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown, Amsterdam’s Ritman Library—a sizable collection of pre-1900 books on alchemy, astrology, magic, and other occult subjects—has been digitizing thousands of its rare texts...
Open Culture
The Stunt That Ended Buster Keaton’s Brilliant Career https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHoT_Qch7jE Buster Keaton’s penchant and skill for comedic stunts...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHoT_Qch7jE Buster Keaton’s penchant and skill for comedic stunts made him one of the biggest stars of the silent-film era.  Nobody at the time imagined that he would still be engaging in dangerous-looking pratfalls 40 years later in his seventies,...
Open Culture
Tim Burton Visits a Paris Video Store & Talks About His Favorite Movies Tim Burton grew up watching Japanese monster movies in Burbank, which must explain a good deal about...
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Tim Burton grew up watching Japanese monster movies in Burbank, which must explain a good deal about his artistic sensibility. It seems to be for that reason, in any case, that the new Konbini “Vidéo Club” episode above takes him first to the Asian cinema section of JM Vidéo, one...
Seth's Blog
Moving without traveling Moving is physical, travel is an emotional journey. Moving takes us from one place to another, one...
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Moving is physical, travel is an emotional journey. Moving takes us from one place to another, one job to another, one situation to another. But if we seek to insulate ourselves from the emotional labor of travel, we can build a cocoon around our experience and discover nothing....
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...
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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...
Seth's Blog
After the shortcuts The initial adoption of new technology follows a regular pattern. The first group are hobbyists,...
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The initial adoption of new technology follows a regular pattern. The first group are hobbyists, people looking for a fascinating way to spend time. But that’s a small group–ham radio operators, for example, or theremin musicians. It’s the second group that gets the rest of us to...
Open Culture
The Only Time Prince & Miles Davis Jammed Together Onstage: Watch the New Year’s Eve, 1987 Concert A too-precious genre of internet meme depicts departed public figures who did not know each other in...
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A too-precious genre of internet meme depicts departed public figures who did not know each other in life meeting in heaven with hugs, high-fives, and wincingly earnest exchanges. These sentimental vignettes are almost too easy to parody, a kitschy version of the “what if” game,...
Open Culture
How Ancient Greek Technology Was Used to Sculpt Mount Rushmore Designing their new republic, the Founding Fathers of the United States of America looked back to...
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Designing their new republic, the Founding Fathers of the United States of America looked back to reference points in classical antiquity. That instinct continued to shape American endeavors long thereafter, and not just political ones. Take the example of Mount Rushmore, one of...
Blog - Mac Pierce
An (overbuilt) 10" mini rack for a LAN Party Plans, files, and BOM to build your own 10” mini rack using T-slot extrusion and 3D prints.
2 weeks ago
Open Culture
Why Ancient Romans Paid a Fortune for the Color Purple — More Than Even Silver Purple may not be one of the most popular colors in the apparel of our age, but if you want it — as...
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Purple may not be one of the most popular colors in the apparel of our age, but if you want it — as certain cultural figures have amply demonstrated — you can get as much of it as you like, even if you don’t belong to the aristocracy. That wasn’t the case in antiquity, as […]
Seth's Blog
What does it want? A useful way to understand an evolved organism or system is to ask what it wants. What actions does...
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A useful way to understand an evolved organism or system is to ask what it wants. What actions does it need to evoke to survive or thrive? The flower wants bees to visit, the berries want to be eaten by birds. Obviously, they don’t have conscious intent, but this desire guides...
Open Culture
David Lynch’s Weird Espresso Maker Gets Taken for a Test Drive David Lynch loved his coffee. For decades, the filmmaker let coffee fuel his creativity, drinking...
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David Lynch loved his coffee. For decades, the filmmaker let coffee fuel his creativity, drinking five, six, even seven cups per day at Bob’s Big Boy. Famously, Lynch celebrated coffee in Twin Peaks (remember the line, “That’s a damn fine cup of coffee!”), and later directed a...
Seth's Blog
After the chores Each day, I have about 8 hours of tasks to do. Empty the dishwasher, bring in the paper, answer...
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Each day, I have about 8 hours of tasks to do. Empty the dishwasher, bring in the paper, answer emails, queue up a blog post… it’s a very long list. I’m sure you have one as well. If we’re good at the chores, we’ll be offered new ones. And of course, it’s possible to find […]