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Open Culture
Man as Industrial Palace: Watch an Animation of the Famous 1926 Lithograph That Depicts the Human... In 1926, Fritz Kahn, a German gynecologist and anatomy textbook author, produced a lithograph called...
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3 weeks ago
In 1926, Fritz Kahn, a German gynecologist and anatomy textbook author, produced a lithograph called Der Mensch als Industriepalast (Man as Industrial Palace) that depicted the human body as a factory, a chemical plant of sorts. Kahn’s body came complete with mechanical lungs, a...
Open Culture
Isaac Asimov Predicts in 1964 What the World Will Look Like in 2014 Image by Rochester Institute of Technology, via Wikimedia Commons When New York City hosted...
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Image by Rochester Institute of Technology, via Wikimedia Commons When New York City hosted The World’s Fair in 1964, Isaac Asimov, the prolific sci-fi author and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, took the opportunity to wonder what the world would look like 50...
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...
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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...
Handprinted - Blog
Speedball Speedy Carve Block using Process Colours Speedy Carve Blocks are delicious to cut and a joy to print. We have featured them many times in our...
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Speedy Carve Blocks are delicious to cut and a joy to print. We have featured them many times in our blog, but this time we have created a process with a three-layered print. For a layered print like this, it's helpful to start with a drawing. Map out the colours to plan their...
Seth's Blog
The order and the medium of feedback Who do you pay attention to? Do you respond or react to the feedback that’s coming in? Do you seek...
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Who do you pay attention to? Do you respond or react to the feedback that’s coming in? Do you seek it out or wait for it to arrive? Does vivid online feedback from anonymous trolls carry more weight than honest but more subtle feedback from actual customers? Pick your feedback,...
Open Culture
How Disney Fought Fascism with Propaganda Cartoons During World War II & Averted Financial Collapse Today, the Walt Disney Company seems like one of those entities that’s “too big to fail” — but...
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Today, the Walt Disney Company seems like one of those entities that’s “too big to fail” — but during the Second World War, fail it nearly did. Like the big-thinking entertainer-businessman he was, Walt Disney himself had been re-investing the company’s profits into ever more...
Open Culture
Hear the Pieces Mozart Composed When He Was Only 5 Years Old A preternaturally talented, precocious child, barely out of toddlerhood, in powdered wig and...
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A preternaturally talented, precocious child, barely out of toddlerhood, in powdered wig and knee-breeches, capering around the great houses of 18th century Europe between virtuoso performances on the harpsichord. A young boy who can play any piece anyone puts in front of him,...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Fiona Rimmer Hi, my name is Fiona Rimmer and I'm a printmaker/etcher from Hampshire, UK where I live with my...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
Hi, my name is Fiona Rimmer and I'm a printmaker/etcher from Hampshire, UK where I live with my husband, 3 sons and a beautiful dog called Skyla (the humans are beautiful too).  I have a degree in Fine Art from Lancaster University and an MA in Illustration from Falmouth...
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.
a week ago
Seth's Blog
Settling for better Perhaps you’re really good at the job. Hard charging. Focused on every interaction and staying in...
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Perhaps you’re really good at the job. Hard charging. Focused on every interaction and staying in control. It’s easy to justify the hard work because you refuse to settle. It turns out that your community is here and ready to contribute. When you give others the resources, trust...
Seth's Blog
What sort of better? Sneakers are better for running a marathon, but shoes are better for a wedding reception. This is...
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Sneakers are better for running a marathon, but shoes are better for a wedding reception. This is the better of utility. Finding something that does the job it sets out to do. And then there is the better of taste. Yellow mustard might be better than Dijon mustard. Not for me,...
Seth's Blog
Surprising insights People like that, like this. When we can build connections between demographics and psychographics,...
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4 weeks ago
People like that, like this. When we can build connections between demographics and psychographics, it’s easier to surprise, delight and serve our customers. Mail order catalogs have been doing this for years out of necessity. They know something about a person’s geography,...
Open Culture
Emma Willard, the First Female Mapmaker in America, Creates Pioneering Maps of Time to Teach... We all know Marshall McLuhan’s pithy, endlessly quotable line “the medium is the message,” but...
2 weeks ago
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2 weeks ago
We all know Marshall McLuhan’s pithy, endlessly quotable line “the medium is the message,” but rarely do we stop to ask which one comes first. The development of communication technologies may genuinely present us with a chicken or egg scenario. After all, only a culture that...
Open Culture
Curious Alice — The 1971 Anti-Drug Movie Based on Alice in Wonderland That Oddly Made Drugs Look... The Reagan presidency was probably the golden age of anti-drug messaging. America’s school kids were...
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The Reagan presidency was probably the golden age of anti-drug messaging. America’s school kids were told that a brain was like an egg and drugs were like a frying pan. The First Lady told America’s school kids simply to “Just Say No.” The message was stupefyingly simple. Drugs,...
Seth's Blog
Mostly unreasonable It’s tempting to go to an extreme. Unreasonable design standards, quality or hospitality are an...
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It’s tempting to go to an extreme. Unreasonable design standards, quality or hospitality are an effective way to gain share, delight customers and spread the word. To be unreasonable in service of your customers is a practice and a commitment. Along the way, though, reality sets...
Seth's Blog
The menu A while ago, I ate in a restaurant that had no menu. The waiter simply walked over to the table and...
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A while ago, I ate in a restaurant that had no menu. The waiter simply walked over to the table and said, “what do you want?” As bold as statement as this is, it made many diners uncomfortable and often led to people ordering without much imagination. Around the same time, I...
Seth's Blog
Compounding luck Human luck doesn’t even out. Regression to the mean explains that in statistics, outlying events...
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Human luck doesn’t even out. Regression to the mean explains that in statistics, outlying events tend to be overcome by average ones. But in society, the opposite is often true. A small headstart becomes a bigger one, or a small stumble can turn into something that is hard to...
Seth's Blog
The ghost in the machine When a system becomes complex and our knowledge peters out, we’re tempted to assert, in the words of...
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When a system becomes complex and our knowledge peters out, we’re tempted to assert, in the words of Gilbert Ryle, that there’s a ‘ghost in the machine.’ “How does the stoplight work?” “Well, it knows that there’s a break in the traffic so it switches from green to red.”...
Open Culture
Hundreds of Medieval Medical Manuscripts with Strange Cures Get Digitized & Put Online: From Leeches... If any discussion of medieval medicine gets going, it’s only a matter of time before someone brings...
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If any discussion of medieval medicine gets going, it’s only a matter of time before someone brings up leeches. And it turns out that the centrality of those squirming blood-suckers to the treatment of disease in the Middle Ages isn’t much overstated, at least judging by a look...
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...
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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...
Open Culture
The Spinal Tap Sequel Arrives Next Month: Watch the Trailer and a Scene with Elton John & Paul... This Is Spinal Tap came out more than 40 years ago. At the time, says director Rob Reiner in a...
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This Is Spinal Tap came out more than 40 years ago. At the time, says director Rob Reiner in a recent interview at San Diego Comic-Con, “nobody got it. I mean, they thought I’d made a movie about a real band that wasn’t very good, and why wouldn’t I make a movie about the Beatles...
Open Culture
An Introduction to Aleister Crowley, History’s Most Infamous Occultist “Do what thou wilt”: as the central principle of a worldview, it may not sound like much, but at...
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“Do what thou wilt”: as the central principle of a worldview, it may not sound like much, but at least there are always a great many people ready and willing to hear it. So discovered Aleister Crowley, the early twentieth-century Occultist now remembered not just for his...
Open Culture
A Live Studio Cover of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Played from Start to Finish Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is such a work of art that to split it up into nine tracks—like...
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Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is such a work of art that to split it up into nine tracks—like classic rock radio has done for years—always sounds nonsensical. How can you just end “Breathe” on that final chord and not follow it with the analog drones of “On the Run”? How can...
Seth's Blog
Movies, books and paintings No important movie has ever been a solo project. While we can see a director’s point of view from...
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No important movie has ever been a solo project. While we can see a director’s point of view from movie to movie, the collaborative nature of the work is evident. Actors, cinematographers and musicians all change what we see. And because of the huge amount of time and money...
Seth's Blog
The table of contents (and the index) The index is the search bar, the random access to the facts we can look up. The table of contents,...
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The index is the search bar, the random access to the facts we can look up. The table of contents, though, that’s a point of view. It’s a taxonomy of how to understand a complicated idea. It’s the skeleton of the narrative and the pedagogy for learning. We’re at risk of becoming...
Open Culture
W.H. Auden’s 1941 Syllabus Asked Students to Read 32 Great Literary Works, Totaling 6,000 Pages Whether willed, involuntary, or a mix of both, the declining literacy of college students is by now...
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Whether willed, involuntary, or a mix of both, the declining literacy of college students is by now so often lamented that reports of it should no longer come as a surprise. And yet, on some level, they still do: English majors in regional Kansas universities find the opening to...
Seth's Blog
A new tool to help you get unstuck I’ve spent months creating something I’m excited to share: The Mentor Deck. Here’s an invite for...
2 weeks ago
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I’ve spent months creating something I’m excited to share: The Mentor Deck. Here’s an invite for 2,000 people to purchase and test the very first edition. Reading a book changes how you think. But turning those ideas into action? That’s where most of us get stuck. You need more...
Open Culture
Tom Lehrer, RIP: Hear All of His Witty, Satirical Songs in One Playlist Tom Lehrer died last weekend, more than four decades after rumors of his death had first gone into...
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Tom Lehrer died last weekend, more than four decades after rumors of his death had first gone into circulation. He didn’t bother to contradict them, publicly claiming that he figured they would “cut down on the junk mail.” That quip proved not just that he was still alive, but...
Open Culture
A Page of Madness: The Lost, Avant Garde Masterpiece from Early Japanese Cinema (1926) It’s a sad fact that the vast majority of silent movies in Japan have been lost thanks to human...
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It’s a sad fact that the vast majority of silent movies in Japan have been lost thanks to human carelessness, earthquakes and the grim efficiency of the United States Air Force. The first films of hugely important figures like Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, and Hiroshi Shimizu...
Open Culture
A Man Read 3,599 Books Over 60 Years, and Now His Family Has Shared the Entire List Online Dan Pelzer died earlier this year at the age of 92, leaving behind a handwritten list of all the...
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Dan Pelzer died earlier this year at the age of 92, leaving behind a handwritten list of all the books he’d read since 1962. His family had it digitized, put it online, and now it’s gone viral, somewhat to the surprise of those of us who’d never heard of him before. But that, it...
Seth's Blog
Scarcity and abundance There are two ways to think about achievement and the idea of getting ahead: Perhaps it’s a race....
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There are two ways to think about achievement and the idea of getting ahead: Perhaps it’s a race. Getting ahead means beating the competition. But perhaps it’s simply an effort to move forward. A rising tide lifts all the boats, and if you want your boat to have plenty of water...
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...
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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...
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 […]
Open Culture
When Medieval & Early Modern Europeans Cleansed with Poison: The Strange History of Antimony Cups... The history of medicine is, for the most part, a history of dubious cures. Some were even worse than...
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The history of medicine is, for the most part, a history of dubious cures. Some were even worse than dubious: for example, the ingestion of antimony, which we now know to be a highly toxic metal. Though it may not occupy an exalted (or, for students in chemistry class,...
Open Culture
Memento Mori: How Smiling Skeletons Have Reminded Us to Live Fully Since Ancient Times The expression “YOLO” may now be just passé enough to require explanation. It stands, as only some...
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The expression “YOLO” may now be just passé enough to require explanation. It stands, as only some of us would try to deny remembering, for “You only live once,” a sentiment that reflects an eternal truth. Some bodies of religious belief don’t strictly agree with it, of course,...
Open Culture
Watch Meshes of the Afternoon, the Experimental Short Voted the 16th Best Film of All Time It seems not to be documented whether the Santa Ana winds were blowing when Maya Deren and Alexander...
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It seems not to be documented whether the Santa Ana winds were blowing when Maya Deren and Alexander Hackenschmied shot Meshes of the Afternoon. But everything about the film itself suggests that they must have been, so vivid does its atmosphere of luxuriantly arid paranoia...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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
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
“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...
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...
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...
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
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...
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...
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
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,...