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Open Culture
Leo Tolstoy’s Family Recipe for Mac and Cheese In 1874, Stepan Andreevich Bers published The Cookbook and gave it as a gift to his sister, countess...
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In 1874, Stepan Andreevich Bers published The Cookbook and gave it as a gift to his sister, countess Sophia Andreevna Tolstaya, the wife of the great Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy. The book contained a collection of Tolstoy family recipes, the dishes they served to their family...
Seth's Blog
Clarke’s Law (part 2) All sufficiently advanced technology is now widespread. Batman used to have gadgets that gave him an...
3 months ago
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All sufficiently advanced technology is now widespread. Batman used to have gadgets that gave him an advantage over his adversaries. And Henry Ford had machines that allowed him to produce items far cheaper than the competition. Now, almost all technology magic is widely...
Open Culture
The “Dark Relics” of Christianity: Preserved Skulls, Blood & Other Grim Artifacts Christianity often manifests in popular culture through celebrations like Christmas and Easter, or...
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Christianity often manifests in popular culture through celebrations like Christmas and Easter, or icons like lambs and fish. Less often do you see it associated with vials of blood and disembodied heads. Yet as the new Hochelaga video above reveals, the most famed Christian...
Seth's Blog
“How do I get the most of out my people?” Alas, this is the wrong question for a leader or manager to ask. It’s more productive to wonder,...
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Alas, this is the wrong question for a leader or manager to ask. It’s more productive to wonder, “how do we create the conditions for our people to get to where they’re heading?”
Open Culture
How Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd & Jethro Tull Financed the Making Monty Python and the Holy Grail Monty Python and the Holy Grail isn’t a big-budget spectacle, and nobody knew that better than the...
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Monty Python and the Holy Grail isn’t a big-budget spectacle, and nobody knew that better than the Pythons themselves. Necessity being the mother of invention, they turned the project’s financial constraints into one of its many sources of humor, fashioning memorable gags out of...
Seth's Blog
The most important decision “What should I do next?” Not next year or for the rest of my life. Right now. The apparently trivial...
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3 months ago
“What should I do next?” Not next year or for the rest of my life. Right now. The apparently trivial choice–whether or not to open an email, make a phone call or stand up to stretch. The endless list of options, some not even consciously considered, that we work through a...
Open Culture
1980s Metalhead Kids Are Alright: Scientific Study Shows That They Became Well-Adjusted Adults In the 1980s, The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), an organization co-founded by Tipper Gore...
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In the 1980s, The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC), an organization co-founded by Tipper Gore and the wives of several other Washington power brokers, launched a political campaign against pop music, hoping to put warning labels on records that promoted Sex, Violence, Drug...
Seth's Blog
“They’re not paying me enough to care” This is an understandable sentiment. As jobs push people to be automatons and often offer little in...
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3 months ago
This is an understandable sentiment. As jobs push people to be automatons and often offer little in the way of respect, it’s easy to quietly quit. But perhaps, they’re not paying you enough to not care. Spending your days, day after day, not caring is a tragedy. They might not...
Open Culture
Watch Pablo Picasso’s Creative Process Unfold in Real-Time: Rare Footage Shows Him Creating Drawings... Pablo Picasso was born not long before the invention of the motion picture. With a different set of...
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Pablo Picasso was born not long before the invention of the motion picture. With a different set of inclinations, he might have become one of the most daring pioneers of that medium. Instead, as we know, he mastered and then practically reinvented the much older art form of...
Seth's Blog
The Impact Matrix: Moving to the golden quadrant Tactics are tempting. We can lean into them, invest, build our skills and count on results....
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Tactics are tempting. We can lean into them, invest, build our skills and count on results. Strategies are more elusive. And a mismatch between strategy and tactics leads to wasted effort. In this 2 x 2 grid, you can see how easy it is to get stuck. The worst outcome is a...
Open Culture
The World Record for the Shortest Math Article: 2 Words In 2004, John Conway and Alexander Soifer, both working on mathematics at Princeton University,...
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In 2004, John Conway and Alexander Soifer, both working on mathematics at Princeton University, submitted to the American Mathematical Monthly what they believed was “a new world record in the number of words in a [math] paper.” Soifer explains: “On April 28, 2004 … I submitted...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Ian O' Halloran My name is Ian O’Halloran. I am a professional Artist and Printmaker living and working in the...
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My name is Ian O’Halloran. I am a professional Artist and Printmaker living and working in the Sussex Weald near Herstmonceux (UK). I am and always have been inspired by the British landscape. I came to art later in life than most, having had a career in civil engineering first...
Seth's Blog
Embracing the Rotten Tomato gap The site gives movies two scores on a scale from 1 to 100: One is from critics, and the other is...
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The site gives movies two scores on a scale from 1 to 100: One is from critics, and the other is from typical viewers who are taking the time to chime in. Many movies have virtually the same score in each category. But some films have a 40 or 50 point gap. How could the […]
Open Culture
The PhD Theses of Richard Feynman, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein & Others, Explained with... Raise your children with a love of science, and there’s a decent chance they’ll grow up wanting to...
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Raise your children with a love of science, and there’s a decent chance they’ll grow up wanting to be like Richard Feynman, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, or any number of other famous scientists from history. Luckily for them, they won’t yet have learned that the pursuit of such...
Seth's Blog
Effort and value We expend effort. We create value. It’s easy to get confused about which one we’re going to...
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We expend effort. We create value. It’s easy to get confused about which one we’re going to ultimately be compensated for.
Open Culture
How Civilizations Built on Top of Each Other: Discover What Lies Beneath Rome, Troy & Other Cities The idea of discovering a lost ancient city underground has long captured the human imagination. But...
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The idea of discovering a lost ancient city underground has long captured the human imagination. But why are the abandoned built environments of those fantasies always buried? The answer, in large part, is that such places do indeed exist under our feet, at least in certain parts...
Seth's Blog
Energy and systems complexity Wild animals forage. They spend calories and take risks to acquire food. If the required work and...
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Wild animals forage. They spend calories and take risks to acquire food. If the required work and risk expended are more than the food they acquire, they go extinct. The goal is to get as many calories as possible for as little effort as possible. If there’s a surplus, their...
Open Culture
How Frank Lloyd Wright’s Architecture Evolved Over 70 Years and Changed America In the new Architectural Digest video above, Michael Wyetzner talks about a fair few buildings we’ve...
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In the new Architectural Digest video above, Michael Wyetzner talks about a fair few buildings we’ve featured over the years here on Open Culture: the Imperial Hotel, the Ennis House, Taliesin, Fallingwater. These are all, of course, the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, who still...
Seth's Blog
Infinity is not a number Little kids get confused about this… just add a few more to a very big number, and you have...
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Little kids get confused about this… just add a few more to a very big number, and you have infinity. Actually, infinity is a feeling and a concept built on the presumption that it can never be reached. In a metrics-driven world, infinity is a dangerous thing to wish for, because...
Open Culture
How Our Depiction of Jesus Changed Over 2,000 Years and What He May Have Actually Looked Like Whether or not you believe Jesus Christ is the son of God, you probably envision him (or, if you...
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Whether or not you believe Jesus Christ is the son of God, you probably envision him (or, if you prefer, Him) in much the same way as most everyone else does. The long hair and beard, the robe, the sandals, the beatific gaze: these traits have all manifested across two millennia...
Seth's Blog
Activation is not a secret …but it’s often overlooked. A farmer might yearn for twice as much land. But it’s far more efficient...
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…but it’s often overlooked. A farmer might yearn for twice as much land. But it’s far more efficient to double the yield on the land he already has. Marketers often hustle to get the word out. To reach more people. And yet, activating the fans you already have–the ones who trust...
Not Boring by Packy...
Weekly Dose of Optimism #143 Pope Leo, Techno-Industrial Playbook, Stripe, Vulcan Robots, Natural Short Sleep, MenB Vaccine, Ezra
3 months ago
Infinite Scroll
Weekly Scroll: New Popes and Cooked Kids Plus! Meme Wars and 16th Century TMZ
3 months ago
Seth's Blog
Hallucinations are not the same as errors I asked my AI about some obsolete card games, and it wrote a 1,000 word essay about Lansquenet. It...
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I asked my AI about some obsolete card games, and it wrote a 1,000 word essay about Lansquenet. It made up the rules, the strategies, the betting techniques, all of it. Saying that it was raining on July 14th last year is an error. Inventing an entirely new set of rules is an...
Open Culture
How a Student’s Phone Call Averted a Skyscraper Collapse: The Tale of the Citicorp Center The Citigroup Center in Midtown Manhattan is also known by its address, 601 Lexington Avenue, at...
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The Citigroup Center in Midtown Manhattan is also known by its address, 601 Lexington Avenue, at which it’s been standing for 47 years, longer than the median New Yorker has been alive. Though still a fairly handsome building, in a seventies-corporate sort of way, it now pops out...
Seth's Blog
Good-boss friendly Workers have rarely gotten the long end of the stick. The seduction of “do what you’re told and...
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Workers have rarely gotten the long end of the stick. The seduction of “do what you’re told and you’ll win valuable prizes” often doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, and so it’s not surprising that many people are skeptical about delivering something extra–work is called work for a...
Open Culture
How Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton & Harold Lloyd Pulled Off Their Spectacular Stunts During Silent... It can be tempting to view the box office’s domination by visual-effects-laden Hollywood spectacle...
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It can be tempting to view the box office’s domination by visual-effects-laden Hollywood spectacle as a recent phenomenon. And indeed, there have been periods during which that wasn’t the case: the “New Hollywood” that began in the late nineteen sixties, for instance, when the...
Stat Significant
Have Movies Stopped Killing Their Main Character? A Statistical Analysis A data-driven investigation of movie hero mortality rates
3 months ago
Infinite Scroll
The Weak Men of MAGA How Weak Men create Hard Times
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Seth's Blog
Mind reading It’s thrilling when someone reads our minds. Sometimes we call it hospitality, or smart user...
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It’s thrilling when someone reads our minds. Sometimes we call it hospitality, or smart user interface design. Sometimes, it simply feels like being seen. The person or the system knows what you need, perhaps before you even realize what that might be. This is a special sort of...
Open Culture
Take a 3D Virtual Tour of the Sistine Chapel & Explore Michelangelo’s Masterpieces Up Close Today, 133 cardinals from around the world enter the conclave to determine the next pope, during...
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Today, 133 cardinals from around the world enter the conclave to determine the next pope, during which they’ll cast their votes in the Sistine Chapel. Despite being one of the most famous tourist attractions in Europe, the Sistine Chapel still serves as a venue for such important...
Infinite Scroll
Crisis PR for Dummies You too can avoid being cancelled!
3 months ago
Seth's Blog
Tools and the long tail Have you ever made a video that was seen by someone you didn’t know? Or written something that got...
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Have you ever made a video that was seen by someone you didn’t know? Or written something that got shared outside of your inner circle? The odds of either of these things happening a generation ago were close to zero. Now, it’s common. The skeptics said that people wanted to...
Open Culture
A Japanese Zen Monk Explains What Zen Is Really About Despite developing in Asia, as the Chinese form of a religion originally brought over from India and...
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Despite developing in Asia, as the Chinese form of a religion originally brought over from India and later refined in Japan, Zen Buddhism has long appealed to Westerners as well. Some of that owes to the spare, elegant aesthetics with which popular culture associates it, and more...
Seth's Blog
Seeking yoyu 余裕 There are two ways of thinking about doing more than is necessary. It can become a really useful...
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There are two ways of thinking about doing more than is necessary. It can become a really useful marketing tactic. When you deliver more than people expect, your overdelivery creates connection. The surprise and delight is remarkable. People talk about it, seek you out and come...
Open Culture
See Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring in 3D in a New 108-Gigapixel Scan You may believe that you’ve had a close enough view of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring....
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You may believe that you’ve had a close enough view of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. You may have gone to The Hague and seen the painting in person at the Mauritshuis. You may have zoomed into the ten billion-pixel scan we featured here on Open Culture in 2021....
Seth's Blog
Sorting and choosing One is far more important than the other. Sorting puts our options into two piles. One pile is the...
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One is far more important than the other. Sorting puts our options into two piles. One pile is the don’t-like, not-good-enough or wrong stack. These are the flavors we don’t enjoy, the paths that are dead ends and the people we simply don’t want to hang out with. The other pile...
Infinite Scroll
Weekly Scroll: Powerful Group Chats Plus! Every kind of AI - sycophantic, predatory and unethical!
3 months ago
Seth's Blog
Seriously One way to deal with a changing world and new problems is to take yourself very seriously, others...
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One way to deal with a changing world and new problems is to take yourself very seriously, others not so much. The other way is to take the situation quite seriously, but perhaps not focus so much on taking ourselves seriously. As Ani DiFranco points out, rock musicians take...
Infinite Scroll
Podcast - The Culture War and MAGA ft. Cartoons Hate Her How did weird online battles over gender lead to the tariff policies we're seeing today?
3 months ago
Not Boring by Packy...
Weekly Dose of Optimism #142 Neuralink, Joby, Distributed AI, Diabetes Down Under, Hill & Valley
3 months ago
Open Culture
Was William Shakespeare’s Marriage Closer—and Less Estranged—Than We Thought?: A 17th-Century Letter... Image via Hereford Cathedral and Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust At this point, every aspect of William...
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Image via Hereford Cathedral and Hereford Mappa Mundi Trust At this point, every aspect of William Shakespeare’s life has produced more speculation than any of us could digest in a lifetime. That goes for his professional life, of course, but also his even more scantily...
Seth's Blog
The biggest thing you bring to the project is forward Forward motion is an asset, a skill and a job title. Elevators used to need elevator operators. They...
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Forward motion is an asset, a skill and a job title. Elevators used to need elevator operators. They didn’t go anywhere unless someone got on and announced they wanted to go somewhere. Initiative, desire and being willing to take responsibility are powerful because most of us...
Open Culture
How Eyes Evolved: A Fascinating Tour Through the Animal Kingdom Above, Lars Schmitz, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, guides us “through a giant tree of...
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Above, Lars Schmitz, a professor at Claremont McKenna College, guides us “through a giant tree of life mapping the evolution of eyes in the animal kingdom: how they work, why they’ve taken the form they have, and the evolutionary advantages they’ve unlocked across species.” The...
Not Boring by Packy...
Hyperlegible 008: Golden Age with Mike Solana Turning (Parts of) America into Rare Earth Metals Processing Disney World®
3 months ago
Seth's Blog
Every tactic… Has a strategy behind it. Often unsaid, undiscussed and hidden. It’s easier to simply play with the...
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Has a strategy behind it. Often unsaid, undiscussed and hidden. It’s easier to simply play with the tactic of the moment. Tell me what your tactic is trying to accomplish and I’ll be halfway to understanding what your strategy is. But it makes a lot more sense to announce your...
Open Culture
Stream Online Monty Python and the Holy Grail Free on Its 50th Anniversary This year, YouTube celebrated its twentieth anniversary, prompting younger users to wonder what life...
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This year, YouTube celebrated its twentieth anniversary, prompting younger users to wonder what life could have been like before it. The fiftieth anniversary of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which premiered in April of 1975, has inspired similar reflection among comedy...
Handprinted - Blog
Meet the Maker: Rosie Mclay I'm Rosie, a 32 year old female artist who is mostly from Bristol but can't decide whether to live...
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I'm Rosie, a 32 year old female artist who is mostly from Bristol but can't decide whether to live in Bristol or the Welsh borders so is a bit all over the place. I've been a full time artist for eight years, mostly making art about our relationship to mortality and nature by...
Stat Significant
What Are the Greatest Karaoke Songs of All Time? A Statistical Analysis Which songs dominate karaoke night?
3 months ago
Seth's Blog
Uncomfortable ideas The ideas aren’t uncomfortable, we are. You don’t have to like the weather to acknowledge that it’s...
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The ideas aren’t uncomfortable, we are. You don’t have to like the weather to acknowledge that it’s raining.