The Engineering of the Strandbeest: How the Magnificent Mechanical Creatures Have Technologically Evolved

in Art, Technology | December 11th, 2024

Life evolves, but machines are invent­ed: this dichoto­my hard­ly con­flicts with what most of us have learned about biol­o­gy and tech­nol­o­gy. But cer­tain spec­i­mens roam­ing around in the world can blur that line — and in the curi­ous case of the Strand­beesten, they real­ly are roam­ing around. First assem­bled in 1990 by the Dutch artist Theo Jansen, a Strand­beest (Dutch for “beach beast”) is a kind of wind-pow­ered kinet­ic sculp­ture designed to “walk” around the sea­side in an organ­ic-look­ing fash­ion. Jansen has made them not just ever larg­er and more elab­o­rate over the decades, but also more sta­ble and more resilient, with an eye toward their even­tu­al­ly out­liv­ing him.

Improv­ing the Strand­beest has been a long process of tri­al and error, as explained in the Ver­i­ta­si­um video above. Jansen’s process espe­cial­ly resem­bles bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion in that the changes he makes to his cre­ations tend to be retained or dis­card­ed in accor­dance with the degree to which they assist in adap­ta­tion to their sandy, watery envi­ron­ment.

Get­ting them to walk upright in the sand was hard enough, and ulti­mate­ly required com­put­er mod­el­ing to deter­mine just the right angles at which to con­nect their joints. But the joints them­selves have also demand­ed improve­ment, giv­en that the rig­ors of a Strand­beest’s “life” neces­si­tate both flex­i­bil­i­ty and dura­bil­i­ty.

We’ve fea­tured Jansen and his Strand­beesten more than once here on Open Cul­ture, but this new video reveals anoth­er dimen­sion of his life­long project: to keep them from walk­ing into the sea. This chal­lenge has led him to build “brains” that detect when a Strand­beest has drawn too close to the water. Con­struct­ed with sim­ple mechan­i­cal valves, these sys­tems are rem­i­nis­cent of not just the neu­rons in our own heads, but also of the col­lec­tions of bina­ry switch­es that, assem­bled in much greater num­bers, have tech­no­log­i­cal­ly evolved into the basis of the dig­i­tal devices that we use every day. While a com­put­er can the­o­ret­i­cal­ly last for­ev­er, a liv­ing crea­ture can’t — and nor, so far, can a Strand­beest. But now that Jansen has dis­cov­ered their “genet­ic code,” inven­tors all over the world have already begun their own work prop­a­gat­ing this diverse, cap­ti­vat­ing species world­wide.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Behold the Strand­beest, the Mechan­i­cal Ani­mals That Roam the Beach­es of Hol­land

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

When Christmas Was Legally Banned for 22 Years by the Puritans in Colonial Massachusetts

in Uncategorized | December 10th, 2024

Com­plaints about the com­mer­cial-age cor­rup­tion of Christ­mas miss one crit­i­cal fact: as a mass pub­lic cel­e­bra­tion, the hol­i­day is a rather recent inven­tion. Whether we cred­it Charles Dick­ens, Bing Cros­by, or Frank Capra—men not opposed to marketing—we must reck­on with Christ­mas as a prod­uct of moder­ni­ty. That includes the sacred ideas about fam­i­ly, piety, and grat­i­tude we attach to the sea­son.

The Puri­tans of the Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Colony “despised Christ­mas,” notes Boing Boing. They asso­ci­at­ed it with debauch­ery: heavy drink­ing, glut­tony, riots, “row­di­ness and sin­ful behav­ior.” Not only that, but they “saw it as a false hol­i­day with stronger ties to pagan­ism than Chris­tian­i­ty,” writes Rebec­ca Beat­rice Brooks at the His­to­ry of Mass­a­chu­setts blog, and “they were cor­rect, accord­ing to the book The Bat­tle for Christ­mas.”

The His­to­ry Dose video above informs us that in 1659, “the Gen­er­al Court of Mass­a­chu­setts made it ille­gal to cel­e­brate Christ­mas.” Feast­ing, or even tak­ing off work on Decem­ber 25th would result in a fine of five shillings. It seems extreme, but the hol­i­day had a car­ni­va­lesque rep­u­ta­tion at the time. Not only were rev­el­ers, at the end of a long year’s work, eager to enjoy the spoils of their labor, but their car­ol­ing might even turn into a kind of vio­lent trick-or-treat­ing.

“On some occa­sions the car­ol­ers would become row­dy and invade wealthy homes demand­ing food and drink,” Brooks writes. They “would van­dal­ize the home if the own­er refused.” The Puri­tans’ author­i­tar­i­an streak, and respect for the sanc­ti­ty of pri­vate prop­er­ty, made can­cel­ing Christ­mas the only seem­ing­ly log­i­cal thing to do, with a ban last­ing 22 years. In any case, explic­it ban or no, spurn­ing Christ­mas was com­mon prac­tice for two hun­dred years of New England’s colo­nial his­to­ry.

In the end, for all its sup­posed intru­sions into the snow globe of Christ­mas purism, “we can par­tial­ly thank com­mer­cial­iza­tion for sus­tain­ing the domes­tic brand of Christ­mas we have today”—the brand, that is, that ensures we can’t stop talk­ing about, read­ing about, and hear­ing about Christ­mas, what­ev­er our beliefs, in the sev­er­al weeks lead­ing up to Decem­ber 25th.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold! The Very First Christ­mas Card (1843)

John Waters’ Hand-Made, Odd­ball Christ­mas Cards: 1964-Present

Watch Björk, Age 11, Read a Christ­mas Nativ­i­ty Sto­ry on an Ice­landic TV Spe­cial (1976)

Langston Hugh­es’ Home­made Christ­mas Cards From 1950

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Hear the Evolution of Electronic Music: A Sonic Journey from 1929 to 2019

in History, Music | December 10th, 2024

It’s easy to get the impres­sion that enthu­si­asts of elec­tron­ic music lis­ten to noth­ing else. (Not that it isn’t true for some of them, who tend to rel­e­gate them­selves to small­er sub­gen­res: con­sult Ishkur’s Guide to Elec­tron­ic Music for a map of the son­ic ter­ri­to­ry.) And it’s equal­ly easy to believe that, if you aren’t explic­it­ly into elec­tron­ic music, then you don’t lis­ten to it. But in fact, its his­to­ry is one of long-term inte­gra­tion so thor­ough that many of us fre­quent­ly lis­ten to elec­tron­ic music — or at any rate, elec­tron­ic-adja­cent music — with­out being con­scious of that fact.

Watch the video above, a 24-minute jour­ney through the evo­lu­tion of elec­tron­ic music from 1929 to 2019, and take note of how many songs you know after hear­ing them for only a few sec­onds. Ear­ly exper­i­ments by the likes of Olivi­er Mes­si­aen, Hal­im El-Dabh, and Rune Lind­blad may ring no bells (and to the unini­ti­at­ed, may not sound like music at all). Doc­tor Who fans will perk up when the time­line reach­es 1963, with the appear­ance of that show’s theme song — a record­ing by Delia Der­byshire, inci­den­tal­ly, whose pio­neer­ing work we’ve often fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. The first piece of full-fledged pop music is Ger­shon Kings­ley’s “Pop­corn,” from 1969, one of those songs whose melody we all know even if we’d nev­er be able to come up with the title.

In the mid-sev­en­ties, the names now wide­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the devel­op­ment of mod­ern elec­tron­ic music start to emerge: Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” in 1974, Tan­ger­ine Dream’s “Ruby­con” in 1975, Jean-Michel Jar­re’s “Oxy­gene” in 1976. But more impor­tant to the his­to­ry of pop­u­lar cul­ture is the song that rep­re­sents the fol­low­ing year: Don­na Sum­mer’s hit “I Feel Love,” which was co-pro­duced by a cer­tain Gior­gio Moroder. Per­haps the defin­ing fig­ure of elec­tron­ic music’s pas­sage through the dis­cos into the main­stream, Moroder made an even big­ger impact in 1978 with his own instru­men­tal com­po­si­tion “Chase,” which won him an Acad­e­my Award by being includ­ed in the film Mid­night Express.

The movies did a great deal to sell the world on the fusion of elec­tron­ic tech­nol­o­gy and pop music in the eight­ies. Who in the devel­oped world — or indeed, in most of the devel­op­ing world — could fail to rec­og­nize, for instance, Harold Fal­ter­mey­er’s “Axel F”? (And sure­ly nobody who came of age at the time of A Night at the Rox­bury can claim igno­rance of Had­daway’s “What Is Love.”) As this video assem­bles its his­to­ry, elec­tron­ic music finds its way back to the dance floor in the nineties, and it more or less stays there through the twen­ty-tens; per­haps you would’ve had to spend a lot of time in the clubs in that decade to know such seem­ing­ly era-defin­ing names as Marsh­mel­lo, Armin van Buuren, Shapov, Major Laz­er, and DJ Snake. But from an elec­tron­ic-influ­enced hit like Ed Sheer­an’s “Shape of You,” alas, there was no escape.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ishkur’s Guide to Elec­tron­ic Music: An Inter­ac­tive, Ency­clo­pe­dic Data Visu­al­iza­tion of 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music

How Gior­gio Moroder & Don­na Summer’s “I Feel Love” Cre­at­ed the “Blue­print for All Elec­tron­ic Dance Music Today” (1977)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

What is Elec­tron­ic Music?: Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Daphne Oram Explains (1969)

A Huge Anthol­o­gy of Noise & Elec­tron­ic Music (1920–2007) Fea­tur­ing John Cage, Sun Ra, Cap­tain Beef­heart & More

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

99-Year-Old Dick Van Dyke Sings & Dances in a Touching New Coldplay Video, Directed by Spike Jonze

in Uncategorized | December 10th, 2024

There’s one thing right with our world, and it’s Dick Van Dyke. Appear­ing in a new Cold­play music video, Mr. Van Dyke dances bare­foot and sings know­ing­ly a lit­tle off-key—before reflect­ing on a cen­tu­ry of life on this plan­et. What is love? Is he afraid of dying? What does luck look like? He knows the answers. Mr. Van Dyke turns 99 this week. And we’ll be root­ing him on when he turns 100 next year. Enjoy the direc­tor’s cut of the touch­ing new music video, “All My Love,” direct­ed by Spike Jonze.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Dick Van Dyke Still Danc­ing at 96!

Mary Tyler Moore Acci­den­tal­ly Nails a Per­fect Pool Shot on The Dick Van Dyke Show (1962)

Spike Jonze Presents a Stop Motion Film for Book Lovers

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Predicts the Rise of Artificial Intelligence & Wonders What Will Happen to Humanity (1978)

in History, Technology, Television | December 9th, 2024

We now live in the midst of an arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence boom, but it’s hard­ly the first of its kind. In fact, the field has been sub­ject to a boom-and-bust cycle since at least the ear­ly nine­teen-fifties. Even­tu­al­ly, those busts — which occurred when real­iz­able AI tech­nol­o­gy failed to live up to the hype of the boom — became so long and so thor­ough­go­ing that each was declared an “AI win­ter” of scant research fund­ing and pub­lic inter­est. Yet even deep into one such fal­low sea­son, AI could still inspire enough fas­ci­na­tion to become the sub­ject of the 1978 NOVA doc­u­men­tary “Mind Machines.”

The pro­gram includes inter­views with fig­ures now rec­og­nized as lumi­nar­ies in the his­to­ry of AI: John McCarthy, Mar­vin Min­sky, Ter­ry Wino­grad, ELIZA cre­ator Joseph Weizen­baum. It also brings on no less a tech­no­log­i­cal prophet than Arthur C. Clarke, who notes that the dubi­ous atti­tudes toward the prospect of think­ing machines expressed in the late sev­en­ties had much in com­mon with those about the prospect of space trav­el dur­ing his youth in the thir­ties. In his view, we were already “cre­at­ing our suc­ces­sors. We have seen the first, crude begin­nings of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence,” and we would “one day be able to design sys­tems that can go on improv­ing them­selves.”

If com­put­ers were there­by to gain greater-than-human intel­li­gence, it would, of course, “com­plete­ly restruc­ture soci­ety” — not that the soci­ety he already knew would­n’t “col­lapse instant­ly” if its own rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple com­put­ers were tak­en away. Clarke not only asks the ques­tion now on many minds of what “the peo­ple who are only capa­ble of low-grade com­put­er-type work” will do when out­stripped by AI, but more deeply under­ly­ing ones as well: “What is the pur­pose of life? What do we want to live for? That is a ques­tion which the intel­li­gent com­put­er will force us to pay atten­tion to.”

Few view­ers in 1978 would have spent much time pon­der­ing such mat­ters before. But pre­sent­ed with footage of all this now-prim­i­tive pro­to-AI tech­nol­o­gy — the com­put­er chess tour­na­ment, the sim­u­lat­ed ther­a­pist, the med­ical-diag­no­sis assis­tant, the NASA Mars rover to be launched in the far-flung future of 1986 — they must at least have felt able to enter­tain the idea that they would live to see an age of machines that could not just think but, as the nar­ra­tor puts it, pos­sess “the most cru­cial aspect of com­mon-sense intel­li­gence: the abil­i­ty to learn.” Per­haps anoth­er AI win­ter will fore­stall that age yet again — if it’s not already here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Instan­ta­neous Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Remote Work, Sin­gu­lar­i­ty & More

Before Chat­G­PT, There Was ELIZA: Watch the 1960s Chat­bot in Action

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

An Illustrator Creates a Kindle for Charles Dickens, Placing 40 Miniature Classics within a Large Portable Book

in Books | December 9th, 2024


For a design class project, Rachel Walsh, a stu­dent at Cardiff School of Art and Design, set out to explain the con­cept of a Kin­dle to Charles Dick­ens. Rec­og­niz­ing that Dick­ens, a 19th-cen­tu­ry author, wouldn’t under­stand mod­ern terms like ebooks, down­loads or the inter­net, she decid­ed to take a metaphor­i­cal approach. She craft­ed a “book of books,” a large portable book that con­tained 40 minia­ture ver­sions of clas­sics that Dick­ens might have enjoyed. Among the texts, you will find Don Quixote, Pride and Prej­u­dice, and Oth­el­lo. Also some works by Dick­ens him­self: for exam­ple, David Cop­per­field, Oliv­er Twist, and A Tale of Two Cities. And even some more mod­ern selections—e.g., A Street­car Named Desire and The Catch­er in the Rye. You can find images of Wal­sh’s project on Tum­blr. Enjoy!

via The Atlantic

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Napoleon’s Kin­dle: Dis­cov­er the Minia­tur­ized Trav­el­ing Library That the Emper­or Took on Mil­i­tary Cam­paigns

Dis­cov­er the Jacobean Trav­el­ing Library: The 17th Cen­tu­ry Pre­cur­sor to the Kin­dle

The Fiske Read­ing Machine: The 1920s Pre­cur­sor to the Kin­dle

Behold the “Book Wheel”: The Renais­sance Inven­tion Cre­at­ed to Make Books Portable & Help Schol­ars Study Sev­er­al Books at Once (1588)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

What Ancient Greek Music Sounded Like: Listen to a Reconstruction That’s “100% Accurate”

in History, Music | December 6th, 2024

Between 750 BC and 400 BC, the Ancient Greeks com­posed songs meant to be accom­pa­nied by the lyre, reed-pipes, and var­i­ous per­cus­sion instru­ments. More than 2,000 years lat­er, mod­ern schol­ars have final­ly fig­ured out how to recon­struct and per­form these songs with (it’s claimed) 100% accu­ra­cy.

Writ­ing on the BBC web­site, Armand D’An­gour, a musi­cian and tutor in clas­sics at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, notes:

[Ancient Greek] instru­ments are known from descrip­tions, paint­ings and archae­o­log­i­cal remains, which allow us to estab­lish the tim­bres and range of pitch­es they pro­duced.

And now, new rev­e­la­tions about ancient Greek music have emerged from a few dozen ancient doc­u­ments inscribed with a vocal nota­tion devised around 450 BC, con­sist­ing of alpha­bet­ic let­ters and signs placed above the vow­els of the Greek words.

The Greeks had worked out the math­e­mat­i­cal ratios of musi­cal inter­vals — an octave is 2:1, a fifth 3:2, a fourth 4:3, and so on.

The nota­tion gives an accu­rate indi­ca­tion of rel­a­tive pitch.

So what did Greek music sound like? Below you can lis­ten to David Creese, a clas­si­cist from the Uni­ver­si­ty of New­cas­tle, play­ing “an ancient Greek song tak­en from stone inscrip­tions con­struct­ed on an eight-string ‘canon’ (a zither-like instru­ment) with mov­able bridges. “The tune is cred­it­ed to Seik­i­los,” says Archae­ol­o­gy Mag­a­zine.

For more infor­ma­tion on all of this, read D’An­gour’s arti­cle over at the BBC.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Octo­ber, 2013.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear What Homer’s Odyssey Sound­ed Like When Sung in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Hear the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an, the Lan­guage of Mesopotamia

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

The 63 Cuisines of China Explained in 40 Minutes: A Complete Primer

in Food & Drink, Travel | December 6th, 2024

Wher­ev­er in the world you grew up, you prob­a­bly grew up with an inac­cu­rate idea of Chi­nese food. For Amer­i­cans, it can come as a shock to hear that such famil­iar dish­es as chop suey and Gen­er­al Tso’s chick­en are unknown in Chi­na itself. By the same token, almost every coun­try in the world has devel­oped its own con­cept of “Chi­nese food” geared, some­times out­landish­ly, to local tastes. But it could be said that the aver­age Chi­nese per­son in Chi­na also has a skewed idea of their nation­al cui­sine, because they see it through the lens of their own region­al cui­sine — of which, accord­ing to the Chi­nese Cook­ing Demys­ti­fied video above, there are at least 63.

In just 40 min­utes, the chan­nel’s co-host Chris Thomas broad­ly explains all of those cuisines, from the six eat­en in Guang­dong alone to the var­i­ous fusions avail­able in the vast-unto-itself region of Inner Mon­go­lia.

Along the way, he high­lights such rep­re­sen­ta­tive dish­es as beer fish, blood duck, “steamed dou­ble stinky,” lion’s head meat­ball, braised don­key sand­wich, “ol’ bud­dy noo­dles,” lamp-shaped rice cake, hairy tofu, and “every­body’s favorite, penis fish.” Of course, quite a few of the items in between will seem more famil­iar to view­ers who’ve nev­er delib­er­ate­ly sought out “authen­tic” Chi­nese food: even Peking duck, it turns out, belongs in that cat­e­go­ry.

Still, the fla­vors of the Peking duck you can get in Bei­jing sure­ly beat out those of the ver­sions avail­able in, say, Den­ver.  If you want to taste them, as Thomas explains at the video’s end, “you should trav­el to main­land Chi­na. Is it the eas­i­est place in the world to trav­el to? No. If you don’t know Chi­nese, the lan­guage bar­ri­er can get intense” (though you might con­sid­er start­ing to learn it with the resources we’ve round­ed up here on Open Cul­ture). But “if you want easy, go to Dis­ney­land”; if you want to expe­ri­ence “mind-numb­ing culi­nary diver­si­ty,” it’s time to start plan­ning your eat­ing jour­ney through the Mid­dle King­dom — and there are hun­dreds more Chi­nese Cook­ing Demys­ti­fied videos avail­able to make you hun­gry.

Note: Chi­nese Cook­ing Demys­ti­fied has a relat­ed post on their Sub­stack. Titled “63 Chi­nese Cuisines: the Com­plete Guide,” the post fea­tures help­ful maps and com­men­tary. It’s worth check­ing out.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed con­tent:

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

China’s 8,000 Ter­ra­cot­ta War­riors: An Ani­mat­ed & Inter­ac­tive Intro­duc­tion to a Great Archae­o­log­i­cal Dis­cov­ery

The First Amer­i­can Cook­book: Sam­ple Recipes from Amer­i­can Cook­ery (1796)

Bob Dylan Pota­to Chips, Any­one?: What They’re Snack­ing on in Chi­na

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Unlock AI’s Potential in Your Work and Daily Life: Take a Popular Course from Google

in Artificial Intelligence, Google | December 5th, 2024

Gen­er­a­tive AI is rapid­ly becom­ing an essen­tial tool for stream­lin­ing work and solv­ing com­plex chal­lenges. How­ev­er, know­ing how to use GenAI effec­tive­ly isn’t always obvi­ous. That’s where Google Prompt­ing Essen­tials comes in. This course will teach you to write clear and spe­cif­ic instructions—known as prompts—for AI. Once you can prompt well, you can unlock gen­er­a­tive AI’s poten­tial more ful­ly.

Launched in April, Google Prompt­ing Essen­tials has become the most pop­u­lar GenAI course offered on Cours­era. The course itself is divid­ed into four mod­ules. First, “Start Writ­ing Prompts Like a Pro” will teach you a 5‑step method for craft­ing effec­tive prompts. (Watch the video from Mod­ule 1 above, and more videos here.) With the sec­ond mod­ule, “Design Prompts for Every­day Work Tasks,” you will learn how to use AI to draft emails, brain­storm ideas, and sum­ma­rize doc­u­ments. The third mod­ule, “Speed Up Data Analy­sis and Pre­sen­ta­tion Build­ing,” teach­es tech­niques for uncov­er­ing insights in data, visu­al­iz­ing results, and prepar­ing pre­sen­ta­tions. The final mod­ule, “Use AI as a Cre­ative or Expert Part­ner,” explores advanced tech­niques such as prompt chain­ing and mul­ti­modal prompt­ing. Plus, you will “cre­ate a per­son­al­ized AI agent to role-play con­ver­sa­tions and pro­vide expert feed­back.”

Offered on the Cours­era plat­form, Google Prompt­ing Essen­tials costs $49. Once you com­plete the course, you will receive a cer­tifi­cate from Google to share with your net­work and employ­er. Bet­ter yet, you will under­stand how to make GenAI a more use­ful tool in your life and work. Enroll here.

Note: Open Cul­ture has a part­ner­ship with Cours­era. If read­ers enroll in cer­tain Cours­era cours­es and pro­grams, it helps sup­port Open Cul­ture.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Explore an Online Archive of 2,100+ Rare Illustrations from Charles Dickens’ Novels

in Art, Books, Literature | December 5th, 2024

As Christ­mas­time approach­es, few nov­el­ists come to mind as read­i­ly as Charles Dick­ens. This owes main­ly, of course, to A Christ­mas Car­ol, and even more so to its many adap­ta­tions, most of which draw inspi­ra­tion from not just its text but also its illus­tra­tions. That 1843 novel­la was just the first of five books he wrote with the hol­i­day as a theme, a series that also includes The Chimes, The Crick­et on the Hearth, The Bat­tle of Life, and The Haunt­ed Man and the Ghost’s Bar­gain. Each “includ­ed draw­ings he worked on with illus­tra­tors,” writes BBC News’ Tim Stokes, though “none of them dis­plays quite the icon­ic mer­ri­ment of his ini­tial Christ­mas cre­ation.”

“Any­one look­ing at the illus­tra­tions to the Christ­mas books after A Christ­mas Car­ol and expect­ing sim­i­lar images to Mr Fezzi­wig’s Ball is going to be dis­ap­point­ed,” Stokes quotes inde­pen­dent schol­ar Dr. Michael John Good­man as say­ing.

Pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned less with Christ­mas as a hol­i­day and more “with the spir­it of Christ­mas and its ideals of self­less­ness and for­give­ness, as well as being a voice for the poor and the needy,” Dick­ens “had to cre­ate some very dark sce­nar­ios to give this mes­sage pow­er and res­o­nance, and these can be seen in the illus­tra­tions.”

Good­man’s name may sound famil­iar to ded­i­cat­ed Open Cul­ture read­ers, since we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured his online Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery, whose dig­i­tized art col­lec­tion has been grow­ing ever since. It now con­tains over 2,100 illus­tra­tions, includ­ing not just A Christ­mas Car­ol and all its suc­ces­sors, but all of Dick­ens’ books from his ear­ly col­lec­tion of obser­va­tion­al pieces Sketch­es by Boz to his final, incom­plete nov­el The Mys­tery of Edwin Drood. And those are just the orig­i­nals: every true Dick­ens enthu­si­ast soon­er or lat­er gets into the dif­fer­ences between the waves of edi­tions that have been pub­lished over the bet­ter part of two cen­turies.

The Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery has entire sec­tions ded­i­cat­ed to the posthu­mous “House­hold Edi­tion,” which have even more art than the orig­i­nals; the lat­er “Library Edi­tion,” from 1910, fea­tur­ing the work of esteemed and pro­lif­ic illus­tra­tor Har­ry Fur­niss; and even the 1912 “Pears Edi­tion” of the Christ­mas books, put out by the epony­mous soap com­pa­ny in cel­e­bra­tion of the cen­te­nary of Dick­ens’ birth. But none of them quite matched the lav­ish­ness of that first Christ­mas Car­ol, on which Dick­ens had decid­ed to go all out: as Good­man writes, “it would have eight illus­tra­tions, four of which would be in col­or, and it would have gilt edges and col­ored end­pa­pers.” Alas, this extrav­a­gance “left Dick­ens with very lit­tle prof­it” — and with an unusu­al­ly prag­mat­ic but nev­er­the­less unfor­get­table Christ­mas les­son about keep­ing costs down. Enter the Charles Dick­ens Illus­trat­ed Gallery here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

3,000 Illus­tra­tions of Shakespeare’s Com­plete Works from Vic­to­ri­an Eng­land, Pre­sent­ed in a Dig­i­tal Archive

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The BBC Creates Step-by-Step Instructions for Knitting the Iconic Dr. Who Scarf: A Document from the Early 1980s

in Fashion, Television | December 5th, 2024

Knitting-Pattern-4th-Doctor

When Jon Per­twee rein­car­nat­ed into Tom Bak­er in 1974, the Fourth Doc­tor of the pop­u­lar sci-fi show Doc­tor Who ditched the fop­pish look of vel­vet jack­ets and frilly shirts, and went for the “Roman­tic adven­tur­er” style, with flop­py felt hat, long over­coats and, most icon­i­cal­ly, his mul­ti­col­ored scarf.

Fan leg­end has it that cos­tume design­er James Ache­son picked up a load of mul­ti-col­or wool and asked knit­ter Bego­nia Pope to cre­ate a scarf, and Pope, per­haps mis­hear­ing, used *all* the wool, result­ing in a scarf that ran 12 feet long. The mis­take was per­fect, and sud­den­ly many UK grand­moth­ers were being asked by their grand­chil­dren to recre­ate their hero’s look.

The above memo isn’t dat­ed, but comes from some­time in the ear­ly ‘80s when the BBC sent detailed instruc­tions to a fan’s moth­er on mak­ing the scarf. (Click here, then click again, to view the doc­u­ment in a larg­er for­mat.) The col­ors include camel, rust, bronze, mus­tard, grey, green and pur­ple and should be knit­ted with size four nee­dles (that’s #9 US size). The requests must have come reg­u­lar­ly, because a sim­i­lar memo is reprint­ed from many years lat­er to anoth­er fan’s fam­i­ly.

The orig­i­nal scarf only last­ed a few episodes, then was altered, replaced, and sub­tly changed as the show went on. There were stunt scarves for stand-ins.

Come Sea­son 18, cos­tume design­er June Hud­son rethought the entire cos­tume and stream­lined the col­ors to three: rust, wine, and pur­ple, to match the Doctor’s more swash­buck­ling look. It also became the longest scarf of the series, some 20 feet.

The fol­low­ing year, the Doc­tor rein­car­nat­ed again into a crick­et-jumper and striped trouser-wear­ing young blonde man. The Scarf Years were over.

For a very in-depth look at the scarves, includ­ing Pan­tone col­or ref­er­ences and wool brands, there is noth­ing bet­ter than DoctorWhoScarf.com. So, get knit­ting, Who-vians!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Doc­tor Who First Start­ed as a Fam­i­ly Edu­ca­tion­al TV Pro­gram (1963)

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 7 ) |


| Older Entries »

  • Great Lectures

  • Sign up for Newsletter

  • About Us

    Open Culture scours the web for the best educational media. We find the free courses and audio books you need, the language lessons & educational videos you want, and plenty of enlightenment in between.


    Advertise With Us

  • Great Recordings

  • Book Lists By

  • Syllabi

  • Favorite Movies

  • Archives

  • Search

    • Quantcast