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Seth's Blog
On reading the Terms of Service Should you have to? I made a mistake. I used a QR code service a year ago, and now that my year’s...
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Should you have to? I made a mistake. I used a QR code service a year ago, and now that my year’s payment is up, they’re going to delete the code. It turns out I wasn’t buying what they promised, and the fine print of their terms of service back them up. I won’t be […]
Blog - Mac Pierce
And around we go... Making We're So Over, We're So Back The process of making an single purpose art PC that uses an aluminum casting as the radiator for a...
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Seth's Blog
Tasks and projects School is a training ground for task-based thinking. “Will this be on the test?” You finish your...
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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
Revisit One of the Most Polarizing Albums in Rock History: Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, Which... Fifty years ago this month, Lou Reed nearly destroyed his own career with one double album. Metal...
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Fifty years ago this month, Lou Reed nearly destroyed his own career with one double album. Metal Machine Music sold 100,000 copies during the three weeks of summer 1975 between its release and its removal from the market. More than a few of the many buyers who promptly returned...
Seth's Blog
The talking dog First mistake: If you meet a talking dog in the street and it makes a few grammatical errors or...
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First mistake: If you meet a talking dog in the street and it makes a few grammatical errors or speaks with an accent, you don’t use a few errors to dismiss the fact that this is an actual talking dog. It’s amazing. It might even be worth having it join your team. Second mistake:...
Open Culture
How Jackie Chan Filmed the Best Fight Scene in Cinema History Though now in his seventies, Jackie Chan continues to appear on the big screen with regularity. For...
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Though now in his seventies, Jackie Chan continues to appear on the big screen with regularity. For most world-famous actors, that’s hardly notable, but it’s not as if Sir John Gielgud, say, had spent decades filming scenes of hand-to-hand combat and sustaining severe injuries in...
Open Culture
The First Photograph Ever Taken (1826) In histories of early photography, Louis Daguerre faithfully appears as one of the fathers of the...
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In histories of early photography, Louis Daguerre faithfully appears as one of the fathers of the medium. His patented process, the daguerreotype, in wide use for nearly twenty years in the early 19th century, produced so many of the images we associate with the period, including...
Handprinted - Blog
Creating Screen Films using Sumi Ink Sumi Ink is fantastic for making hand-drawn screen films that create exposed screens with texture...
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Sumi Ink is fantastic for making hand-drawn screen films that create exposed screens with texture and loose spontaneous marks. Sumi ink can be painted onto Inkjet Screen Film or True-Grain film to produce a variety of marks.  We experimented by painting Sumi Ink on both types of...
Seth's Blog
Overappreciated It’s all too easy to be familiar with being underappreciated. Customers, clients, vendors,...
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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
The Story Told on the Famous Bayeux Tapestry Explained from Start to Finish They say that history is written by the victors, but that isn’t always true: sometimes it’s...
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They say that history is written by the victors, but that isn’t always true: sometimes it’s embroidered by the victors. Such was the case with the Bayeux Tapestry, which commemorates the build-up to and successful execution of the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Created not...
Open Culture
A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert Back in 2008, Bob Boilen (host of All Songs Considered) and NPR music critic Stephen Thompson...
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Back in 2008, Bob Boilen (host of All Songs Considered) and NPR music critic Stephen Thompson attended a noisy concert where they struggled to hear Laura Gibson perform. Jokingly, Thompson suggested that Gibson perform at Boilen’s office desk instead. She did. And, with that, the...
Seth's Blog
Sunk costs and the framework for forward motion Everything that happened yesterday, and the yesterdays before that, is real. It happened. Perhaps...
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Everything that happened yesterday, and the yesterdays before that, is real. It happened. Perhaps it’s the hard work you did to earn a degree, or a significant error that cost you and others a great deal. Maybe it’s a community you chose to join, or one that you failed to...
Open Culture
The Entire History of English in 22 Minutes When we speak English, we might say we’re speaking the language of Samuel Johnson, the man who wrote...
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When we speak English, we might say we’re speaking the language of Samuel Johnson, the man who wrote its first dictionary. Or we could say we’re speaking the language of Shakespeare, who coined more English terms than any other individual in history. It would make just as much...
Open Culture
50+ Free Charlie Chaplin Films Online A few things to know about Charlie Chaplin. He starred in over 80 films, reeling off most during the...
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A few things to know about Charlie Chaplin. He starred in over 80 films, reeling off most during the silent film era. In 1914 alone, he acted in 40 films, then another 15 in 1915. By the 1920s, Chaplin had emerged as the first larger-than-life movie star and director, if not the...
Seth's Blog
The Superman metaphors Sooner or later, we are all superheroes. Superman wears a costume. As we all do. He isn’t great at...
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Sooner or later, we are all superheroes. Superman wears a costume. As we all do. He isn’t great at time management, always focused on the urgency at hand instead of investing in long-term planning. He rarely works to change the foundational system he’s part of. Supervillians...
Open Culture
How the Ancient Greeks Built Their Magnificent Temples: The Art of Ancient Engineering Doric, Ionic, Corinthian: these, as practically everyone who went through school in the West somehow...
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Doric, Ionic, Corinthian: these, as practically everyone who went through school in the West somehow remembers, are the three varieties of classical column. We may still recall them, more specifically, as representing the three ancient Greek architectural styles. But as...
Open Culture
Albert Einstein Tells His Son That the Key to Learning & Happiness Is Losing Yourself in Creativity... As one particularly astute observer of human emotions might put it, it is a truth universally...
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As one particularly astute observer of human emotions might put it, it is a truth universally acknowledged that we can’t all be Albert Einstein. In fact, none of us can. That unique experience was denied even Einstein’s son Hans Albert, though he did go on to his own...
Open Culture
Watch Queen’s Brilliant Live Aid Performance: It Happened 40 Years Ago Today (July 13, 1985) “The last people anyone expected to come out of that gig as being the memorable ones was Queen,”...
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“The last people anyone expected to come out of that gig as being the memorable ones was Queen,” said Bob Geldof in an interview, looking back at the band’s stunning 24 minute set at Live Aid on July 13, 1985. In front of 72,000 people in Wembley Stadium and millions watching...
Seth's Blog
The four arcs They can carry us away, amplify our work or slowly change everything around us. These arcs can...
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They can carry us away, amplify our work or slowly change everything around us. These arcs can easily become invisible forces, pushing us to make choices and to ignore their origins or consequences. Capitalism is the most common one, along with its shadow, industrialism. We show...
Seth's Blog
Flailing There isn’t much of a correlation between how fast you swim and how much energy you put into it. In...
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There isn’t much of a correlation between how fast you swim and how much energy you put into it. In fact, drowning people burn plenty of calories but they don’t go anywhere. When we’re confronting a new problem, more effort might not be the answer. It could be that we benefit by...
Seth's Blog
The poetry machine [written by claude.] Here’s the thing about ChatGPT that nobody wants to admit: It’s not...
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[written by claude.] Here’s the thing about ChatGPT that nobody wants to admit: It’s not intelligent. It’s something far more interesting. Back in the 1950s, a Russian linguist named Roman Jakobson walked into a Harvard classroom and found economic equations on the blackboard....
Open Culture
The World’s Oldest Cookbook: Discover 4,000-Year-Old Recipes from Ancient Babylon If asked about your favorite dish, you’d do well to name something exotic. Gone are the days when a...
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If asked about your favorite dish, you’d do well to name something exotic. Gone are the days when a taste for the likes of Italian, Mexican, or Chinese cuisine could qualify you as an adventurous eater. Even expeditions to the very edges of the menus at Peruvian, Ethiopian, or...
Seth's Blog
Agency and contribution What’s possible and what’s required? It’s still surprising to me that some of these ideas aren’t...
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What’s possible and what’s required? It’s still surprising to me that some of these ideas aren’t widely held, because they seem so clear to me: Skill is a choice. Talent is overrated, and if we choose to get better at something, we probably can. Responsibility is a privilege....
Seth's Blog
Notes to myself
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Open Culture
Tomorrow Never Knows: How The Beatles Invented the Future With Studio Magic, Tape Loops & LSD “Tomorrow Never Dies” couldn’t be made today, and not just because the Beatles already made it in...
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“Tomorrow Never Dies” couldn’t be made today, and not just because the Beatles already made it in 1966. Marking perhaps the single biggest step in the group’s artistic evolution, that song is in every sense a product of its time. The use of psychedelic drugs like LSD was on the...
Open Culture
Stephen King’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Books Image by The USO, via Flickr Commons So you might think that if Stephen King – the guy who wrote...
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Image by The USO, via Flickr Commons So you might think that if Stephen King – the guy who wrote such horror classics like Carrie and The Stand – were to rattle off his top ten favorite books, it would feature works by the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft or maybe J. […]
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Ben Goodman Hello. I’m a wood engraver and printmaker who specialises in portraiture. I work from my studio in...
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Hello. I’m a wood engraver and printmaker who specialises in portraiture. I work from my studio in South Bristol where I’m lucky enough to have an old Albion Press. I’ve lived in Bristol for 18 years and love the friendly and open-minded spirit which it seems to...
Seth's Blog
Publicity or public relations? Publicity is the hard work of getting media outlets and social media influencers to talk about you....
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Publicity is the hard work of getting media outlets and social media influencers to talk about you. Hustle for attention and mentions. Public relations is the much harder work of engaging with internal teams to make something worth talking about. It’s not spin, it’s story telling...
Open Culture
The Invisible Horror of The Shining: How Music Makes Stanley Kubrick’s Iconic Film Even More... Inexplicable as it may sound to readers of this site, there are movie-lovers who claim not to enjoy...
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Inexplicable as it may sound to readers of this site, there are movie-lovers who claim not to enjoy the work of Stanley Kubrick. But even his most steadfast non-appreciators have to hand it to him for The Shining, his 1980 Stephen King adaptation widely considered one of the...
Open Culture
A Rabbit Rides a Chariot Pulled by Geese in an Ancient Roman Mosaic (2nd century AD) If you head to the Louvre, make sure you visit the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Liberty Leading the...
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If you head to the Louvre, make sure you visit the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Liberty Leading the People. But then swing by the Department of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities. There you might find (no guarantee!) a Roman mosaic featuring a rabbit riding a chariot pulled...
Open Culture
Paradise Lost Explained: How John Milton Wrote His Epic Religious Poem from Satan’s Perspective “Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up...
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“Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again,” Samuel Johnson wrote in the late eighteenth century. “None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction,...
Seth's Blog
The future doesn’t care It doesn’t care whether you’re excited or filled with trepidation. It arrives, regardless. What an...
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It doesn’t care whether you’re excited or filled with trepidation. It arrives, regardless. What an opportunity. Or a threat. Up to us.
Open Culture
Watch Animated Sheet Music for Miles Davis’ “So What,” Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” and Charlie... Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue changed jazz. It changed music, period. So I take it very seriously. But...
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Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue changed jazz. It changed music, period. So I take it very seriously. But when I see the animated sheet music of the first cut, “So What,” I can’t help but think of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts cartoons, and their Vince Guaraldi compositions. I mean no...
Seth's Blog
Not smart vs. stupid Not smart is a passive act, remedied with learning, experience and thought. Stupid is active, the...
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Not smart is a passive act, remedied with learning, experience and thought. Stupid is active, the work of someone who should have or could have known better and decided to do something selfish, impulsive or dangerous anyway. The more experience, assets and privilege we have, the...
Open Culture
J. R. R. Tolkien Reads from The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings & Other Works If you wanted to hear the voice of your favorite writer in the nineteen-sixties — a time before...
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If you wanted to hear the voice of your favorite writer in the nineteen-sixties — a time before audiobooks, let alone podcasts — you consulted the catalog of Caedmon Records. That label specialized in LPs of literary eminences reading their own work. This may or may not be the...
Open Culture
The Genius Urban Design of Amsterdam: Canals, Dams & Leaning Houses It’s common to hear it said that some particular city — usually one of the American metropolises...
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It’s common to hear it said that some particular city — usually one of the American metropolises that sprang into existence over the past couple of centuries — “shouldn’t exist.” And indeed, as urban planner M. Nolan Gray writes in a recent blog post, “no city should exist.” On...
Seth's Blog
Three choices Everything flows from the strategic decisions we make early in the process: Choose your landlord....
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Everything flows from the strategic decisions we make early in the process: Choose your landlord. The rent is due every month. The place we set up (whether it’s a retail storefront, a social media platform or a warehouse) determines our cost structure, our deal flow and the space...
Seth's Blog
Diagnostics “If it breaks, we’ll know how to fix it.” Old cars had an oil light, and that was about it. Often,...
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“If it breaks, we’ll know how to fix it.” Old cars had an oil light, and that was about it. Often, we build things hoping they’ll work. But complex systems are more resilient when we build in the diagnostics for failure from the start. A multi-unit retail chain, a medical...
Open Culture
Igor Stravinsky’s “Illegal” Arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner” (1944) In 1939, Igor Stravinsky emigrated to the United States, first arriving in New York City, before...
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In 1939, Igor Stravinsky emigrated to the United States, first arriving in New York City, before settling in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he delivered the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard during the 1939–40 academic year. While living in Boston, the composer conducted...
Open Culture
How Four Masters—Michelangelo, Donatello, Verrocchio & Bernini—Sculpted David More than a few visitors to Florence make a beeline to the Galleria dell’Accademia, and once inside,...
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More than a few visitors to Florence make a beeline to the Galleria dell’Accademia, and once inside, to Michelangelo’s David, the most famous sculpture in the world. But how many of them, one wonders, then take the time to view the three other Davids in that city alone? At the...
Seth's Blog
Digital editions on big sale As many of my readers get ready for a long weekend, here are two of my books now on discount at...
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As many of my readers get ready for a long weekend, here are two of my books now on discount at Amazon–for another few days. This is Strategy is 90% off on the Kindle. $3! And This is Marketing is discounted as well. If you’ve read or listened to either one, here’s a new AI […]
Open Culture
Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intelligent Person Should Read Image via Wikimedia Commons A number of years ago, a Reddit user posed the question to Neil deGrasse...
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Image via Wikimedia Commons A number of years ago, a Reddit user posed the question to Neil deGrasse Tyson: “Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on the planet?” Below, you will find the book list offered up by the astrophysicist, director of the Hayden...
Handprinted - Blog
Using a Mylar Mask to Reduce Chatter in a Linocut One of the problems to overcome when printing a linocut is ink being picked up by the carved away...
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One of the problems to overcome when printing a linocut is ink being picked up by the carved away areas of the block. These lines print onto the paper causing 'chatter' or 'noise'. Sometimes chatter on a print can add character or interest to a piece but other times it can just...
Seth's Blog
Productivity, AI and pushback Typesetters did not like the laser printer. Wedding photographers still hate the iphone. And some...
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Typesetters did not like the laser printer. Wedding photographers still hate the iphone. And some musicians are outraged that AI is now making mediocre pop music. One group of esteemed authors is demanding that book publishers refuse to use AI in designing book covers, recording...
Open Culture
The Only Painting van Gogh Ever Sold: Discover The Red Vineyard (1888) It may have crossed your mind, while beholding paintings of Vincent van Gogh, that you’d like to own...
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It may have crossed your mind, while beholding paintings of Vincent van Gogh, that you’d like to own one yourself someday. If so, you’ll have to get in line with more than a few billionaires, and even they may never see one go up on the auction block. This would probably come as...
Open Culture
How 16th-Century Artist Joris Hoefnagel Made Insects Beautiful—and Changed Science Forever In English, most of the words we’d use to refer to insects sound off-putting at best and fearsome at...
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In English, most of the words we’d use to refer to insects sound off-putting at best and fearsome at worst, at least to those without an entomological bent. Dutch, close a linguistic relation though it may be, offers a more endearing alternative in beestjes, which refers to all...
Seth's Blog
Versions of reality A sea slug sees far more colors than you do, and you probably see more than a profoundly color-blind...
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A sea slug sees far more colors than you do, and you probably see more than a profoundly color-blind person. Who’s right? We each carry our own version of reality, our own story about what happened, what’s around us and how things work. Our chosen reality serves two useful...
Open Culture
Iconic Animator Chuck Jones Creates an Oscar-Winning Animation About the Virtues of Universal Health... While our country looks like it might be coming apart at the seams, it’s good to revisit, every once...
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While our country looks like it might be coming apart at the seams, it’s good to revisit, every once in a while, moments when it did work. And that’s not so that we can feel nostalgic about a lost time, but so that we can remind ourselves how, given the right conditions, things...
Seth's Blog
Daydream fatigue Spend enough time inventing possible futures in your head and you won’t have any time to build the...
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Spend enough time inventing possible futures in your head and you won’t have any time to build the future we will all share. Time to get to work.
Open Culture
A Visualization of the History of Technology: 1,889 Innovations Across Three Million Years “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So holds the third and most...
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“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” So holds the third and most famous of the “three laws” originally articulated by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke. Even when it was first published in the late nineteen-sixties, Clarke’s third law...