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Seth's Blog
And when it breaks? Most of the pitch and the demo is all about how terrific our plans are, and how well our gadget...
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a month ago
Most of the pitch and the demo is all about how terrific our plans are, and how well our gadget works. But if we hope for resilience, perhaps it makes sense to show off how gracefully the system breaks. Because it will break. Because plans won’t work out. Because we’ll be...
Open Culture
How Scientists Recreated Ancient Egypt’s Long-Lost Pigment, “Egyptian Blue” Photo courtesy of Washington State University. It’s become fashionable, in recent years, to observe...
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Photo courtesy of Washington State University. It’s become fashionable, in recent years, to observe that we live in an increasingly beige-and-gray world from which all color is being drained. Whether or not that’s really the case, all of us still enjoy easy access to a range of...
Seth's Blog
Big scale, big impact The Beatles changed music. Starbucks changed coffee. Perhaps your project is aiming to reach a large...
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2 months ago
The Beatles changed music. Starbucks changed coffee. Perhaps your project is aiming to reach a large audience. Consultants call it market share. What percentage of the available market have you reached with your idea? No one hits everyone, but many organizations seek to be a...
Open Culture
How Art Conservators Restore Old Paintings & Revive Their Original Colors We tend to imagine old paintings as having a muted, yellow-brown cast, and not without reason. Many...
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We tend to imagine old paintings as having a muted, yellow-brown cast, and not without reason. Many of the examples we’ve seen in life really do look that way, though usually not because the artist intended it. As Julian Baumgartner of Chicago’s Baumgartner Fine Art Restoration...
Seth's Blog
Perfect Nothing is perfect… But everything can get better. There’s never enough time… But there’s time...
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Nothing is perfect… But everything can get better. There’s never enough time… But there’s time enough to make a difference. Someone will always be opposed to the change we seek to make. And there’s always someone who wants to help. Anything can happen… But something will.
Open Culture
When the Dutch Tried to Live in Concrete Spheres: An Introduction to the Bolwoningen in the... In the decades after the Second World War, many countries faced the challenge of rebuilding their...
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In the decades after the Second World War, many countries faced the challenge of rebuilding their housing and infrastructure while also having to accommodate a fast-arriving baby boom. The government of the Netherlands got more creative than most, putting money toward...
Handprinted - Blog
How Much Detail on Exposed Screens? When designing artwork for exposed screens it can be very difficult to figure out what level of...
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When designing artwork for exposed screens it can be very difficult to figure out what level of detail you can include. Different mesh counts will be able to handle different levels of detail. The mesh number relates to how many threads there are per cm of mesh: 32T has 32...
Open Culture
Watch Bob Dylan Play “Mr. Tambourine Man” in Color at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival It was at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that Bob Dylan famously “went electric,” alienating certain...
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It was at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival that Bob Dylan famously “went electric,” alienating certain adherents to the folk scene through which he’d come up, but also setting a precedent for the kind of quick-change musical adaptation that he’s kept up into his eighties. At the...
Seth's Blog
Here to please Please who? If you’re on a social media network, are you seeking to optimize for the algorithm, the...
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2 months ago
Please who? If you’re on a social media network, are you seeking to optimize for the algorithm, the owners of the tech stock or your personal goals? If you’re publishing a book, are you working for the book or is the book working for you? You might be able to get the folks in the...
Open Culture
Tibetan Musical Notation Is Beautiful Religions take the cast and hue of the cultures in which they find root. This was certainly true in...
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Religions take the cast and hue of the cultures in which they find root. This was certainly true in Tibet when Buddhism arrived in the 7th century. It transformed and was transformed by the native religion of Bon. Of the many creative practices that arose from this synthesis,...
Seth's Blog
“I made a mistake” This sits right next to, “I made a bad decision,” in things that are hard to say. But there are many...
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This sits right next to, “I made a bad decision,” in things that are hard to say. But there are many moments when we’re confused about what actually happened. You might not have made a bad decision. And it’s also possible you didn’t make a mistake. It could be that there was...
Open Culture
A Grad Student Asks Carl Sagan If He Believes in God (1994) ?si=yeo1Xsu2ZLuCpQbC Most scientists are prepared to answer questions about their research from...
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?si=yeo1Xsu2ZLuCpQbC Most scientists are prepared to answer questions about their research from other members of their field; rather fewer have equipped themselves to answer questions from the general public about what Douglas Adams called life, the universe, and everything. Carl...
Seth's Blog
Orange cars In a given neighborhood, just about all the cars are the same. There are few that are pink, orange...
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In a given neighborhood, just about all the cars are the same. There are few that are pink, orange or purple, for example. There’s nothing inherently wrong with those frequencies of light. Nothing that modern paint technology can’t deliver, nothing that offends the rods and cones...
Open Culture
How Jackson Pollock Redefined Modern Art: An Introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sQ_cfZ8q9kVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled:...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sQ_cfZ8q9kVideo can’t be loaded because JavaScript is disabled: Jackson Pollock: the Myth of the Modern Artist (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sQ_cfZ8q9k) In his lifetime, Jackson Pollock had only one successful art show. It took place at the...
Seth's Blog
The power of a pause The single-most effective way to invest 90 seconds a day is simple (and difficult). 18 times a day,...
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The single-most effective way to invest 90 seconds a day is simple (and difficult). 18 times a day, when you’re about to offer advice, ask a question or blurt out a response, wait five seconds. That pause shifts the way what you say next will be perceived. It also opens the door...
Open Culture
The Genius of Brian Wilson (RIP) and How He Turned “Good Vibrations” Into the Beach Boys’ Pocket... This week, Brian Wilson became the last of the Wilson brothers to shuffle off this mortal coil....
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This week, Brian Wilson became the last of the Wilson brothers to shuffle off this mortal coil. Dennis, the first of the Wilsons to go, died young in 1983 — but not before offering this memorable assessment of the family musical project: “Brian Wilson is the Beach Boys. He is the...
Seth's Blog
Status (and the grass tax) Status shows up whenever humans do, and it is the invisible underpinning of our culture. The front...
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Status shows up whenever humans do, and it is the invisible underpinning of our culture. The front lawn was only invented around the time of Columbus. The idea was to demonstrate that you had time and money to waste. You could take useful land and make it non-productive. You...
Open Culture
An Architectural Tour of Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Iconic Desert Home and Studio By some estimations, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West home-studio complex took shape in 1941. But...
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By some estimations, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West home-studio complex took shape in 1941. But even then, the Arizona Republic presciently noted that “it may be years before it is considered finished.” The Taliesin West you can see in the new Architectural Digest video above...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Holly Nairn Hello! My name is Holly Nairn and I am a full time Art teacher in Hertfordshire, a job I absolutely...
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Hello! My name is Holly Nairn and I am a full time Art teacher in Hertfordshire, a job I absolutely love. I work under the name PaperInkDream and I currently live in Essex with my husband and my cocker spaniel Teddy. Apart from printmaking, I am cycling obsessed and love nothing...
Seth's Blog
Ecosystems come and go Your project doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Your company wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the customers,...
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Your project doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Your company wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the customers, competitors, marketplaces, systems and tech that make it all work. I used to make almanacs. Long, detailed, fact-checked reference books that might save a trip to the library....
Open Culture
Every Wes Anderson Movie, Explained by Wes Anderson That Wes Anderson is perhaps the most assiduous maker of short films today becomes clear when you...
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That Wes Anderson is perhaps the most assiduous maker of short films today becomes clear when you look closely at his recent work. The four adaptations of “The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar” and three other Roald Dahl stories he made for Netflix were presented as a single...
Seth's Blog
Grab and go Every retailer knows that the items that sell the best are at eye level or at the cash register....
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Every retailer knows that the items that sell the best are at eye level or at the cash register. Some people are hungry, rushed, distracted and lazy. If you want to reach them (us), you need to make it convenient. The lesson is simple: We can market to ourselves the same way...
Open Culture
The Dylatov Pass Incident: Has One of the Biggest Soviet Mysteries Been Solved? Most of us would go out of our way not to set foot anywhere near a place the local natives refer to...
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Most of us would go out of our way not to set foot anywhere near a place the local natives refer to as “Dead Mountain.” That didn’t stop the Dyatlov Hiking Group, who set out on a sixteen-day skiing expedition across the northern Urals in late January of 1959. Experienced and...
Seth's Blog
Ready to be… Disappointed Delighted Amazed Offended Ripped off Grateful Loved Sometimes we get what we expect.
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Disappointed Delighted Amazed Offended Ripped off Grateful Loved Sometimes we get what we expect.
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...
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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...
Seth's Blog
Squeaky wheels One strategy is to spend time finding the one wheel and address it. The better approach is to...
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One strategy is to spend time finding the one wheel and address it. The better approach is to realize that if there’s one wheel that’s squeaking, it’s likely that all the wheels need lubrication.
Open Culture
An Introduction to George Orwell’s 1984 and How Power Manufactures Truth Soon after the first election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, George...
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Soon after the first election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four became a bestseller again. Shooting to the top of the American charts, the novel that inspired the term “Orwellian” passed Danielle Steel’s latest opus, the...
Seth's Blog
The Weekly World News version of the future What if someone is just making stuff up? Years ago, I worked with the supermarket tabloid to make an...
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What if someone is just making stuff up? Years ago, I worked with the supermarket tabloid to make an ironic, shouty, somewhat funny book that has turned out to match much of the discourse we find surrounding us. When we flew down to Florida to meet their team, I was amazed to...
Open Culture
William Faulkner Resigns From His Post Office Job With a Spectacular Letter (1924) Working a dull civil service job ill-suited to your talents does not make you a writer, but plenty...
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Working a dull civil service job ill-suited to your talents does not make you a writer, but plenty of famous writers have worked such jobs. Nathaniel Hawthorne worked at a Boston customhouse for a year. His friend Herman Melville put in considerably more time—19 years—as a...
Handprinted - Blog
Jigsaw Block Printing on Fabric Block printing onto fabric is such a fun way to create your own designs. Jigsaw printing allows you...
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Block printing onto fabric is such a fun way to create your own designs. Jigsaw printing allows you to carve just one block to print a multi-coloured design. By cutting our carved block into jigsaw pieces we can ink them up separately and print onto the fabric, knowing they'll...
Seth's Blog
Books (and more) Brad Feld has been contributing to and leading the tech community for more than thirty years. His...
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Brad Feld has been contributing to and leading the tech community for more than thirty years. His books have always been inspiring and useful, but his new book takes it to a higher level. Adam Becker has written two books that I recently devoured. The first is philosophy, history...
Open Culture
The 100 Greatest Paintings of All Time: From Botticelli and Bosch to Bacon and Basquiat It would be a worthwhile exercise for any of us to sit down and attempt to draw up a list of our 100...
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It would be a worthwhile exercise for any of us to sit down and attempt to draw up a list of our 100 favorite paintings of all time. Naturally, those not professionally involved with art history may have some trouble quite hitting that number. Still, however many titles we can...
Seth's Blog
Which inbox? It’s easier than ever to fall into an inbox mindset. There are things to do, and we do them. Inbox...
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It’s easier than ever to fall into an inbox mindset. There are things to do, and we do them. Inbox zero is the unattainable goal that fills our days. But it avoids the real question, which is: which inbox are we emptying? There’s the inbox of urgent texts. Or the inbox of...
Open Culture
Albert Einstein’s Grades: A Fascinating Look at His Report Cards Albert Einstein was a precocious child. At the age of twelve, he followed his own line of reasoning...
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Albert Einstein was a precocious child. At the age of twelve, he followed his own line of reasoning to find a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. At thirteen he read Kant, just for the fun of it. And before he was fifteen he had taught himself differential and integral calculus....
Seth's Blog
What do we do when it breaks? The unexpected happens. Systems fail, humans are unpredictable, interfaces aren’t perfect… The...
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The unexpected happens. Systems fail, humans are unpredictable, interfaces aren’t perfect… The customer service professional demonstrates their strategic insight when they plan for eventual failure instead of denying it’s possible. The first step, of course, is to design things...
Neocha – Culture &...
A Life Laid Bare
2 months ago
Seth's Blog
Paying attention to attention There are people and organizations that are working overtime to redirect and manipulate your...
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There are people and organizations that are working overtime to redirect and manipulate your attention. The question is: Are they more aware and careful in how you spend your attention than you are? The act of focusing on what we focus on pays enormous dividends.
Open Culture
Harvard Lets You Take 133 Free Online Courses: Explore Courses on Justice, American Government,... Image by Rizka, via Wikimedia Commons In South Korea, where I live, there may be no brand as...
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Image by Rizka, via Wikimedia Commons In South Korea, where I live, there may be no brand as respected as Habodeu. Children dream of it; adults seemingly do anything to play up their own connections to it, however tenuous those connections may be. But what is Habodeu? An...
Seth's Blog
Hallucinations and human work “AI is brilliant and it can do everything.” “AI hallucinates sometimes and it can’t be trusted.” “AI...
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“AI is brilliant and it can do everything.” “AI hallucinates sometimes and it can’t be trusted.” “AI is a trick, a clever way to induce people to believe it’s human-like, but it’s not.” It turns out that AI hallucinates all the time. Sometimes, these hallucinations are useful,...
Open Culture
Will Machines Ever Truly Think? Richard Feynman Contemplates the Future of Artificial Intelligence... Though its answer has grown more complicated in recent years, the question of whether computers will...
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Though its answer has grown more complicated in recent years, the question of whether computers will ever truly think has been around for quite some time. Richard Feynman was being asked about it 40 years ago, as evidenced by the lecture clip above. As his fans would expect, he...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet The Maker: Louis Andrews I’m Louis Andrews, multidisciplinary artist with a primary focus on tattooing and printmaking. After...
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I’m Louis Andrews, multidisciplinary artist with a primary focus on tattooing and printmaking. After a brief stint studying painting at Camberwell I quickly found institutionalised “learning” wasn’t doing me any favours so I dropped out and committed myself fully to becoming a...
Seth's Blog
Just the right length Pop songs are 200 seconds long because the mechanical properties of 78 and 45 rpm records can...
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Pop songs are 200 seconds long because the mechanical properties of 78 and 45 rpm records can deliver one song with decent fidelity of that length. They can’t handle ten minutes, and one minute is too short to charge for. The number of books carried by a local bookstore was the...
Open Culture
Ridley Scott’s Cinematic TV Commercials: An 80-Minute Compilation Spanning 1968–2023 “In the future, e‑mail will make the written word a thing of the past,” declares the narration of a...
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“In the future, e‑mail will make the written word a thing of the past,” declares the narration of a 1999 television commercial for Orange, the French telecom giant. “In the future, we won’t have to travel; we’ll meet on video. In the future, we won’t need to play in the wind and...
Seth's Blog
Paddling upstream We notice the current most when we’re headed against it. It’s easy to take our advantage for granted...
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We notice the current most when we’re headed against it. It’s easy to take our advantage for granted when we’re headed the other way and it’s helping us. Related: When I’m on my bike, I generally hope that drivers will cut me some slack–a lesson that’s easy to forget when I’m the...
Open Culture
The World’s Oldest Homework: A Look at Babylonian Math Homework from 4,000 Years Ago Homework has lately become unfashionable, at least according to what I’ve heard from teachers in...
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Homework has lately become unfashionable, at least according to what I’ve heard from teachers in certain parts of the United States. That may complicate various fairly long-standing educational practices, but it doesn’t necessarily reflect an absolute drop in standards and...
Seth's Blog
Worthless noise isn’t information Data becomes information when at least one of two related things are true: If you’re not getting one...
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Data becomes information when at least one of two related things are true: If you’re not getting one of these things, then the data is simply noise. A distraction that wastes our time and confuses us. Breaking news is up to the recipient.
Open Culture
How Bob Dylan Kept Reinventing His Songwriting Process, Breathing New Life Into His Music On his 84th birthday this past Saturday, Bob Dylan played a show. That was in keeping with not only...
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On his 84th birthday this past Saturday, Bob Dylan played a show. That was in keeping with not only his still-serious touring schedule, but also his apparently irrepressible instinct to work: on music, on writing, on painting, on sculpture. Even his occasional tweeting draws an...
Seth's Blog
The 1:1 method The reason that most memos, speeches and edicts fall flat is simple: we get stuck on the idea that...
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The reason that most memos, speeches and edicts fall flat is simple: we get stuck on the idea that we’re talking to a crowd. When we’re speaking or writing, the crowd is just an illusion. What’s actually happening is that there is one person over there, another over there,...
Open Culture
A 3D Model Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Interior Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago Standing atop the Acropolis in Athens as it has for nearly 2,500 years now, the Parthenon remains an...
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Standing atop the Acropolis in Athens as it has for nearly 2,500 years now, the Parthenon remains an impressive sight indeed. Not that those two and a half millennia have been kind to the place: one of the most famous ruins of the ancient world is still, after all, a ruin. But it...
Seth's Blog
1,000 fans (which sort?) Not all customers are fans. And not all fans are the sort of customers you can thrive with. Cadres...
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Not all customers are fans. And not all fans are the sort of customers you can thrive with. Cadres of supporters often migrate into one of two camps… The generous stans (a more positive riff from a twenty-year-old Eminem track), are there for the work and the change being made,...