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The Soviet Union’s repressive state censorship went to absurd lengths to control what its citizens read, viewed, and listened to, such as the almost comical removal of purged former comrades from photographs during Stalin’s reign. When it came to aesthetics, Stalinism mostly purged more avant-garde tendencies from the arts and literature in favor of didactic […]
6 months ago

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More from Open Culture

Watch the Very First YouTube Video, “Me at the Zoo,” Now 20 Years Old

Given the dominance YouTube has achieved over large swathes of world culture, we’d all expect to remember the first video we watched there. Yet many or most of us don’t: rather, we simply realized, one day in the mid-to-late two-thousands, that we’d developed a daily YouTube habit. Like as not, your own introduction to the […]

yesterday 1 votes
Hear Alan Watts’s 1960s Prediction That Automation Will Necessitate a Universal Basic Income

One of the most propulsive forces in our social and economic lives is the rate at which emerging technology transforms every sphere of human labor. Despite the political leverage obtained by fearmongering about immigrants and foreigners, it’s the robots who are actually taking our jobs. It is happening, as former SEIU president Andy Stern warns in his book […]

yesterday 2 votes
Why Bob Dylan’s Unreleased “Blind Willie McTell” Is Now Considered a Masterpiece

Most Dylanologists disagree about which is the single greatest song in Bob Dylan’s catalog, but few would deny “Blind Willie McTell” a place high in the running. It may come as a surprise — or, to those with a certain idea of Dylan and his fan base, the exact opposite of a surprise — to […]

2 days ago 2 votes
The Very First Coloring Book, The Little Folks’ Painting Book (Circa 1879)

Funny how not that long ago coloring books were considered the exclusive domain of children. How times have changed. If you are the sort of adult who unwinds with a big box of Crayolas and pages of mandalas or outlines of Ryan Gosling, you owe a debt of gratitude to the McLoughlin Brothers and illustrator Kate […]

2 days ago 2 votes
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 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 colors that nobody in the ancient world could […]

3 days ago 3 votes

More in history

Vintage Posters for The Royal Court Theatre

Founded by the English Stage Company (ESC in 1956, London’s Royal Court Theatre focuses on contemporary theatre. The building on Sloane Square has put on plays since its completion in 1888. The venue truly arrived when on 8 May 1956, John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger opened – a play that marks the beginning of … Continue reading "Vintage Posters for The Royal Court Theatre" The post Vintage Posters for The Royal Court Theatre appeared first on Flashbak.

14 hours ago 2 votes
The First Punic War: A Clash of Cultures

The story of the Punic Wars is usually told from the perspective of the victors, the Romans, for whom it was the first step towards dominating the Mediterranean. For the Carthaginians, the conflict with Rome initially seemed like a third-party dispute that would be resolved through peace treaties, allowing the mercantile empire to continue […]

15 hours ago 1 votes
England’s Prison Population Problems

England’s Prison Population Problems JamesHoare Thu, 06/26/2025 - 08:58

yesterday 1 votes
9 Myths About the Greek God Hephaestus

Hephaestus, the god of smithing and fire, was counted among the twelve Olympian gods. He does not feature as prominently in Greek myths as the rest of his family, but he is credited with creating all the divine tools used by gods and heroes, from Zeus’ aegis to the armor of Achilles. Hephaestus was […]

yesterday 1 votes
On The Shortness of Life

Seneca’s Advice for Dealing with Death

2 days ago 2 votes