The Rise and Fall of Western Empires Visualized Through the Artful Metaphor of Cell Division

in Animation, History | May 6th, 2019

We can hard­ly under­stand how the mod­ern world arrived at its cur­rent shape with­out under­stand­ing the his­to­ry of colo­nial empire. But how best to under­stand the his­to­ry of colo­nial empire? In ani­ma­tion above, visu­al­iza­tion design­ers Pedro M. Cruz and Penousal Macha­do por­tray it through a bio­log­i­cal lens, ren­der­ing the four most pow­er­ful empires in the West­ern world of the 18th and 19th cen­turies as cells. The years pass, and at first these four cells grow in size, but we all know the sto­ry must end with their divi­sion into dozens and dozens of the coun­tries we see on the world map today — a geopo­lit­i­cal process for which mito­sis pro­vides an effec­tive visu­al anal­o­gy.

Cruz and Macha­do hap­pen to hail from Por­tu­gal, a nation that com­mand­ed one of those four empires and, in Aeon’s words, “con­trolled vast ter­ri­to­ries across the globe through a com­bi­na­tion of seapow­er, eco­nom­ic con­trol and brute force.” We may now regard Por­tu­gal as a small and pleas­ant Euro­pean coun­try, but it once held ter­ri­to­ry all around the world, from Mozam­bique to Macau to the some­what larg­er land known as Brazil.

And the oth­er three empires, French, Span­ish, and British, grow even larg­er in their respec­tive hey­days. That’s espe­cial­ly true of the British Empire, whose dom­i­nance in cell form becomes stark­ly obvi­ous by the time the ani­ma­tion reach­es the 1840s, even though the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca has at that point long since drift­ed beyond its walls and float­ed away.

Would­n’t the U.S. now be the biggest cell of all? Not under the strict def­i­n­i­tion of empire used a few cen­turies ago, when one coun­try tak­ing over and direct­ly rul­ing over a remote land was con­sid­ered stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure (and even, in some quar­ters, a glo­ri­ous and nec­es­sary mis­sion). But attempts have also been made to more clear­ly under­stand inter­na­tion­al rela­tions in the late 20th and ear­ly 21st cen­turies by redefin­ing the very term “empire” to include the kind of influ­ence the U.S. exerts all around the world. It makes a kind of sense to do that, but as Cruz and Machado’s ani­ma­tion may remind us, we also still live very much in the cul­tur­al, lin­guis­tic, polit­i­cal, and eco­nom­ic world — or rather, petri dish — that those four mighty empires cre­at­ed.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Get the His­to­ry of the World in 46 Lec­tures, Cour­tesy of Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty

Watch the His­to­ry of the World Unfold on an Ani­mat­ed Map: From 200,000 BCE to Today

Ani­mat­ed Map Shows How the Five Major Reli­gions Spread Across the World (3000 BC – 2000 AD)

5‑Minute Ani­ma­tion Maps 2,600 Years of West­ern Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

The His­to­ry of Civ­i­liza­tion Mapped in 13 Min­utes: 5000 BC to 2014 AD

Watch the Rise and Fall of the British Empire in an Ani­mat­ed Time-Lapse Map ( 519 A.D. to 2014 A.D.)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How to Memorize an Entire Chapter from “Moby Dick”: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything

in Books, Education, Neuroscience, Science | May 3rd, 2019

Some­times, when I can’t sleep, I men­tal­ly revis­it the var­i­ous homes of my child­hood, wan­der­ing from room to room, turn­ing on lights and peer­ing in clos­ets until I conk out.

Turns out these imag­i­nary tours are also handy mnemon­ic tools, as Vox’s Dean Peter­son explains above.

Hey, that’s good news… isn’t the sub­con­scious rumored to do some heavy lift­ing in terms of pro­cess­ing infor­ma­tion?

Peter­son con­quered a self-described bad mem­o­ry, at least tem­porar­i­ly, by traips­ing around his apart­ment, deposit­ing vivid sen­tence-by-sen­tence clues that would even­tu­al­ly help him recite by heart one of his favorite chap­ters in Moby Dick.

In truth, he was plant­i­ng these clues in his hip­pocam­pus, the rel­a­tive­ly small struc­ture in the brain that’s a crit­i­cal play­er when it comes to mem­o­ry, includ­ing the spa­tial mem­o­ries that allow us to nav­i­gate famil­iar loca­tions with­out seem­ing to give the mat­ter any thought.

What made it stick was pair­ing his every­day coor­di­nates to extra­or­di­nary visu­als.

Chap­ter 37, for those keep­ing track at home, is a mono­logue for Cap­tain Ahab in which he describes him­self as not just mad but “mad­ness mad­dened.” Here’s the first sen­tence:

I leave a white and tur­bid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail.

Not the eas­i­est text for 21st-cen­tu­ry heads to wrap around, though with a lit­tle effort, most of us get the gist.

Let’s not get hung up on lit­er­ary inter­pre­ta­tion here, though, folks. Hav­ing set­tled on his front stoop as the first stop of his mem­o­ry palace Peter­son refrained from pic­tur­ing frothy spume lap­ping at the low­er­most step. Instead he plunked down a funer­al wreath and direc­tor John Waters, pale of suit and cheek, weep­ing. Get it? White? Wake? Pale cheeks?

After which Peter­son moved on to the next sen­tence.

There are 38 in all, and after sev­er­al days of prac­tice in which he men­tal­ly walked the image-strewn course of his apart­ment-cum-Mem­o­ry Palace, Peter­son was able to regale his cowork­ers with an off-book recita­tion.

The time fac­tor will def­i­nite­ly be a let down for those hop­ing for a low com­mit­ment par­ty trick.

Peter­son spent three-to-four hours a day pac­ing his spa­tial mem­o­ry, admir­ing the odd­i­ties he him­self had placed there.

The incred­u­lous com­ments from those ques­tion­ing the effi­cien­cy of giv­ing up half a day to mem­o­rize a page and a half are bal­anced by tes­ti­mo­ni­als from those who’ve met with suc­cess, using the Mem­o­ry Palace method to retain vast amounts of data pri­or to an exam.

That may, ulti­mate­ly, be a bet­ter use of the Mem­o­ry Palace. Peter­son gets an A for spit­ting out the lines as writ­ten, but his expres­sion is that of an actor audi­tion­ing with mate­r­i­al he has not yet mas­tered. (No shade on Peterson’s act­ing tal­ent or lack thereof—even great actors get this face when their lines are shaky. One friend doesn’t con­sid­er her­self off book until she can get all the way through her mono­logue whilst hop­ping on one foot.)

For more infor­ma­tion on build­ing a Mem­o­ry Palace, refer, as Peter­son did, to author Joshua Foer’s Moon­walk­ing With Ein­stein: The Art and Sci­ence of Remem­ber­ing Every­thing, or to his appear­ance on Adam Grant’s TED Work/Life pod­cast. Stream it here:

If you would like to go whale to whale with Peter­son, below is the text that he installed in his Mem­o­ry Palace, com­pli­ments of Her­man Melville:

I leave a white and tur­bid wake; pale waters, paler cheeks, where’er I sail. The envi­ous bil­lows side­long swell to whelm my track; let them; but first I pass.

Yon­der, by ever-brim­ming goblet’s rim, the warm waves blush like wine. The gold brow plumbs the blue. The div­er sun- slow dived from noon- goes down; my soul mounts up! she wea­ries with her end­less hill. Is, then, the crown too heavy that I wear? this Iron Crown of Lom­bardy. Yet is it bright with many a gem; I the wear­er, see not its far flash­ings; but dark­ly feel that I wear that, that daz­zling­ly con­founds. ‘Tis iron- that I know- not gold. ‘Tis split, too- that I feel; the jagged edge galls me so, my brain seems to beat against the sol­id met­al; aye, steel skull, mine; the sort that needs no hel­met in the most brain-bat­ter­ing fight!

Dry heat upon my brow? Oh! time was, when as the sun­rise nobly spurred me, so the sun­set soothed. No more. This love­ly light, it lights not me; all love­li­ness is anguish to me, since I can ne’er enjoy. Gift­ed with the high per­cep­tion, I lack the low, enjoy­ing pow­er; damned, most sub­tly and most malig­nant­ly! damned in the midst of Par­adise! Good night-good night! (wav­ing his hand, he moves from the win­dow.)

‘Twas not so hard a task. I thought to find one stub­born, at the least; but my one cogged cir­cle fits into all their var­i­ous wheels, and they revolve. Or, if you will, like so many ant-hills of pow­der, they all stand before me; and I their match. Oh, hard! that to fire oth­ers, the match itself must needs be wast­ing! What I’ve dared, I’ve willed; and what I’ve willed, I’ll do! They think me mad- Star­buck does; but I’m demo­ni­ac, I am mad­ness mad­dened! That wild mad­ness that’s only calm to com­pre­hend itself! The prophe­cy was that I should be dis­mem­bered; and- Aye! I lost this leg. I now proph­esy that I will dis­mem­ber my dis­mem­ber­er. Now, then, be the prophet and the ful­filler one. That’s more than ye, ye great gods, ever were. I laugh and hoot at ye, ye crick­et-play­ers, ye pugilists, ye deaf Burkes and blind­ed Bendi­goes! I will not say as school­boys do to bul­lies- Take some one of your own size; don’t pom­mel me! No, ye’ve knocked me down, and I am up again; but ye have run and hid­den. Come forth from behind your cot­ton bags! I have no long gun to reach ye. Come, Ahab’s com­pli­ments to ye; come and see if ye can swerve me. Swerve me? ye can­not swerve me, else ye swerve your­selves! man has ye there. Swerve me? The path to my fixed pur­pose is laid with iron rails, where­on my soul is grooved to run. Over unsound­ed gorges, through the rifled hearts of moun­tains, under tor­rents’ beds, unerr­ing­ly I rush! Naught’s an obsta­cle, naught’s an angle to the iron way!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Moby Dick Read in Its Entire­ty by Til­da Swin­ton, Stephen Fry, John Waters & Oth­ers

Play Mark Twain’s “Mem­o­ry-Builder,” His Game for Remem­ber­ing His­tor­i­cal Facts & Dates

How to Prac­tice Effec­tive­ly: Lessons from Neu­ro­science Can Help Us Mas­ter Skills in Music, Sports & Beyond

The Neu­ro­science & Psy­chol­o­gy of Pro­cras­ti­na­tion, and How to Over­come It

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City May 13 for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How to Make a Medieval Manuscript: An Introduction in 7 Videos

in Books, History | May 3rd, 2019

All of us came of age in the era of mass-mar­ket books, bun­dles of text on paper print­ed quick­ly, cheap­ly, and in large quan­ti­ties. Noth­ing about that would have been con­ceiv­able to the many vari­eties of arti­san involved in the cre­ation of just one man­u­script in the Mid­dle Ages. Even here in the 21st cen­tu­ry we mar­vel at the beau­ty of medieval man­u­scripts, but we should also mar­vel at the sheer amount of spe­cial­ized labor that went into mak­ing them.

We might best appre­ci­ate that labor by see­ing it per­formed up close before our eyes, and a new video series allows us to do just that. “The British Library has released a set of sev­en videos to look at the process of cre­at­ing medieval man­u­scripts,” says Medievalists.net.

“Patri­cia Lovett, a pro­fes­sion­al cal­lig­ra­ph­er and illu­mi­na­tor, hosts these 2–3 minute videos, which fol­low the process from the tools used to the tech­niques employed in design­ing an illu­mi­nat­ed page.”

Lovett cov­ers every step in the mak­ing of a medieval book: “how to make quill pens from bird feath­ers”; “the com­plex process behind mak­ing ink for writ­ing in man­u­scripts” (which involves wasps); “how ani­mal skins were select­ed and pre­pared for use in medieval man­u­scripts”; “the tools for rul­ing and line mark­ing in medieval books”; “the vari­ety of pig­ments that were in use in the Mid­dle Ages” to apply vivid col­or to the pages; “how medieval artists paint­ed the beau­ti­ful illus­tra­tions in their books”; and “the work behind paint­ing and embell­ish­ing man­u­scripts and repro­duc­ing a lav­ish­ly illu­mi­nat­ed page.”

“The word ‘man­u­script’ derives from the Latin for writ­ten (scrip­tus) by hand (manu),” writes Lovett and British Library illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script cura­tor Kath­leen Doyle, and who among us will for­get that, after we’ve wit­nessed the care­ful man­u­al labor on dis­play in these videos? For fur­ther insight into the medieval man­u­script-mak­ing process, have a look at the Get­ty Muse­um’s series of videos on the sub­ject fea­tured last year here on Open Cul­ture.

We’ve also fea­tured the alche­my of the pig­ments used to col­or the pages of medieval man­u­scripts; the pages of a medieval monk’s sketch­book that shows what went into the designs for these man­u­scripts’ illu­mi­na­tion; and a look into the mak­ing of The Book of Kells, the Irish cul­tur­al trea­sure that stands as one of the very finest sur­viv­ing exam­ples of the illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script form. (And since you’ll sure­ly get curi­ous about it soon­er or lat­er, we’ve also put up an expla­na­tion of why so many mar­gin­al draw­ings in medieval man­u­scripts include killer rab­bits.)

Just as the books we read today — whether the afore­men­tioned mass-mar­ket prod­ucts or the rel­a­tive­ly arti­sanal small-press cre­ations or even the e‑books — reveal impor­tant qual­i­ties about the world we live in, so medieval man­u­scripts have much to say about the beliefs, the tech­nol­o­gy, and soci­etal struc­tures of the times that pro­duced them. But for those who actu­al­ly devel­oped the skills for and ded­i­cat­ed the time and effort to that pro­duc­tion, these man­u­scripts also showed some­thing else. As Lovett and Doyle quote the 12th-cen­tu­ry scribe Ead­wine as pro­claim­ing about his Ead­wine Psalter, “The beau­ty of this book dis­plays my genius.”

via Medievalists.net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

How the Bril­liant Col­ors of Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made with Alche­my

Behold the Beau­ti­ful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketch­book: A Win­dow Into How Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­scripts Were Made (1494)

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online

800 Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Are Now Online: Browse & Down­load Them Cour­tesy of the British Library and Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France

Killer Rab­bits in Medieval Man­u­scripts: Why So Many Draw­ings in the Mar­gins Depict Bun­nies Going Bad

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Last Duel Took Place in France in 1967, and It’s Caught on Film

in History | May 2nd, 2019

Anoth­er man insults your hon­or, leav­ing you no choice but to chal­lenge him to a high­ly for­mal­ized fight to the death: in the 21st cen­tu­ry, the very idea strikes us as almost incom­pre­hen­si­bly of the past. And duel­ing is indeed dead, at least in all the lands that his­tor­i­cal­ly had the most enthu­si­asm for it, but it has­n’t been dead for as long as we might assume. The last record­ed duel per­formed not with pis­tols but swords (specif­i­cal­ly épées, the largest type of swords used in fenc­ing) took place in France in 1967 — the year of the Sat­urn V and the Boe­ing 737, the Detroit riots and the Six-Day War, Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band and the Sum­mer of Love.

The duelists were Mar­seilles may­or Gas­ton Def­ferre and anoth­er politi­cian names Rene Ribière. “After a clash in the Nation­al Assem­bly, Def­ferre yelled ‘Taisez-vous, abru­ti!’ at Ribiere and refused to apol­o­gize,” writes pro­fes­sion­al stage-and-screen fight coor­di­na­tor Jared Kir­by. “Ribière chal­lenged and Def­ferre accept­ed. The duel took place with épées in a pri­vate res­i­dence in Neuil­ly-sur-Seine, and it was offi­ci­at­ed by Jean de Lip­kowski­in.”

Height­en­ing the dra­ma, Ribière was to be mar­ried the fol­low­ing day, though he could expect to live to see his own wed­ding, Def­ferre hav­ing vowed not to kill him but “wound him in such a way as to spoil his wed­ding night very con­sid­er­ably.”

You can see the sub­se­quent action of this rel­a­tive­ly mod­ern-day duel in the news­reel footage at the top of the post. Def­ferre did indeed land a cou­ple of touch­es on Ribière, both in the arm. Ribière, the younger man by twelve years, seems to have tak­en the event even more seri­ous­ly than Def­ferre: he insist­ed not only on using sharp­er épées than the ones Def­ferre orig­i­nal­ly offered, but on con­tin­u­ing the duel after Def­ferre first struck him. Lip­kowski­in put an end to the com­bat after the sec­ond time, and both Def­ferre and Ribière went on to live full lives, the for­mer into the 1980s and the lat­ter into the 1990s. Just how con­sid­er­able an effect Ribière’s duel­ing injuries had on his wed­ding night, how­ev­er, his­to­ry has not record­ed.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Wit­ty, Grit­ty, Hard­boiled Retelling of the Famous Aaron Burr-Alexan­der Hamil­ton Duel

Drunk His­to­ry: An Intox­i­cat­ed Look at the Famous Alexan­der Hamil­ton – Aaron Burr Duel

A Demon­stra­tion of Per­fect Samu­rai Swords­man­ship

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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53 Years of Nuclear Testing in 14 Minutes: A Time Lapse Film by Japanese Artist Isao Hashimoto

in Art, History | May 2nd, 2019

It’s strange what can make an impact. Some­times a mes­sage needs to be loud and over-the-top to come across, like punk rock or the films of Oliv­er Stone. In oth­er cas­es, cool and qui­et works much bet­ter.

Take the new time lapse map cre­at­ed by Japan­ese artist Isao Hashimo­to. It is beau­ti­ful in a sim­ple way and eerie as it doc­u­ments the 2,053 nuclear explo­sions that took place between 1945 and 1998.

It looks like a war room map of the world, black land­mass­es sur­round­ed by deep blue ocean. It starts out slow, in July of 1945, with a blue blip and an explo­sion sound in the Amer­i­can southwest—the Man­hat­tan Project’s “Trin­i­ty” test near Los Alam­os. Just one month lat­er come the explo­sions at Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki.

From there the months click by—condensed down to seconds—on a dig­i­tal clock. Each nation that has explod­ed a nuclear bomb gets a blip and a flash­ing dot when they det­o­nate a weapon, with a run­ning tal­ly kept on the screen.

Eeri­est of all is that each nation gets its own elec­tron­ic sound pitch: low tones for the Unit­ed States, high­er for the Sovi­et Union—beeping to the metronome of the months tick­ing by.

What starts out slow picks up by 1960 or so, when all the cold neu­tral beeps and flash­es become over­whelm­ing.

If you’re like me, you had no idea just how many det­o­na­tions the Unit­ed States is respon­si­ble for (1,032—more than the rest of the coun­tries put togeth­er). The sequence ends with the Pak­istani nuclear tests of May 1998.

Hashimo­to worked for many years as a for­eign exchange deal­er but is now an art cura­tor. He says the piece express­es “the fear and fol­ly of nuclear weapons.”

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

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:

The “Shad­ow” of a Hiroshi­ma Vic­tim, Etched into Stone Steps, Is All That Remains After 1945 Atom­ic Blast

63 Haunt­ing Videos of U.S. Nuclear Tests Now Declas­si­fied and Put Online

Kurt Von­negut Gives a Ser­mon on the Fool­ish­ness of Nuclear Arms: It’s Time­ly Again (Cathe­dral of St. John the Divine, 1982)

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

How a Clean, Tidy Home Can Help You Sur­vive the Atom­ic Bomb: A Cold War Film from 1954

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When American Financiers and Business Leaders Plotted to Overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt and Install a Fascist Government in the U.S. (1933)

in History, Politics | May 2nd, 2019

Econ­o­mist and colum­nist Paul Krug­man recent­ly wrote about a cur­rent nom­i­nee for the Fed­er­al Reserve’s Board of Gov­er­nors who called cities like Cincin­nati and Cleve­land “armpits of Amer­i­ca” to laughs from an audi­ence of busi­ness lead­ers. This same nom­i­nee has made head­lines for say­ing “cap­i­tal­ism is a lot more impor­tant than democ­ra­cy” and call­ing the 16th Amend­ment estab­lish­ing the income tax the “most evil” law passed in the 20th cen­tu­ry.

As crude as the com­ments are, many wealthy peo­ple who make deci­sions of con­se­quence in the U.S. do not seem like “big believ­ers in democ­ra­cy,” as the nom­i­nee put it. It’s messy and incon­ve­nient for those who would pre­fer not to answer to an elect­ed gov­ern­ment. The same atti­tudes were shared by right-wing bankers, busi­ness lead­ers, and con­ser­v­a­tive politi­cians dur­ing the worst eco­nom­ic cri­sis the coun­try has seen.

Despite the fail­ure of lais­sez-faire finan­cial cap­i­tal­ism after the crash of 1929, financiers, econ­o­mists, and politi­cians refused to admit their prin­ci­ples might have been very bad­ly flawed. But in 1933, when Franklin Roo­sevelt was first elect­ed, “the econ­o­my was stag­ger­ing, unem­ploy­ment was ram­pant and a bank­ing cri­sis threat­ened the entire mon­e­tary sys­tem,” writes NPR, in a descrip­tion of the Great Depres­sion that reads as dri­ly under­stat­ed.

Still, Roosevelt’s elec­tion went too far for his oppo­nents (and not far enough for pro­gres­sives to his left). West Vir­ginia Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Hen­ry Hat­field wrote to a col­league, in a series of ever­green expres­sions, char­ac­ter­iz­ing FDR’s his­toric First Hun­dred Days as “despo­tism”:

This is tyran­ny, this is the anni­hi­la­tion of lib­er­ty. The ordi­nary Amer­i­can is thus reduced to the sta­tus of a robot. The pres­i­dent has not mere­ly signed the death war­rant of cap­i­tal­ism, but has ordained the muti­la­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion, unless the friends of lib­er­ty, regard­less of par­ty, band them­selves togeth­er to regain their lost free­dom.

Wall Street agreed, except for all that stuff about the Con­sti­tu­tion and the wel­fare of the ordi­nary Amer­i­can.

In what became known as the “Busi­ness Plot” (or the “Wall Street Putsch”)—a group of bankers and busi­ness lead­ers alleged­ly cre­at­ed a con­spir­a­cy to over­throw the pres­i­dent and install a dic­ta­tor friend­ly to their inter­ests. The con­spir­a­tors includ­ed invest­ment banker and future Con­necti­cut Sen­a­tor Prescott Bush (father of George H.W. Bush), bond sales­man Ger­ald MacGuire, and Bill Doyle com­man­der of the Mass­a­chu­setts Amer­i­can Legion.

The plot was famous­ly exposed by Major Gen­er­al Smed­ley D. But­ler, who tes­ti­fied under oath about his knowl­edge of a plan to form an orga­ni­za­tion of 500,000 vet­er­ans who could take over the func­tions of gov­ern­ment, as you can see But­ler him­self say in the 1935 news­reel footage above. The mem­bers of the Busi­ness Plot believed But­ler would lead this irreg­u­lar force in a coup. He had pre­vi­ous­ly been “an influ­en­tial fig­ure in the so-called Bonus Army,” writes Matt Davis at Big Think, “a group of 43,000 marchers—among them many World War I veterans—who were camped at Wash­ing­ton to demand the ear­ly pay­ment of the veteran’s bonus promised to them.”

Butler’s will­ing­ness to chal­lenge the gov­ern­ment did not make him sym­pa­thet­ic to a coup. He heard the con­spir­a­tors out, then turned them in. But his alle­ga­tions were imme­di­ate­ly dis­missed by The New York Times, who wrote that the sto­ry was a “gigan­tic hoax,” “per­fect moon­shine!,” “a fan­ta­sy,” and “a pub­lic­i­ty stunt.” A con­gres­sion­al inves­ti­ga­tion cor­rob­o­rat­ed Smedley’s claims, to an extent. The con­spir­a­tors may have had weapons, vio­lent intent, and mil­lions of dol­lars. But no one was ever pros­e­cut­ed. Many, like New York May­or Fiorel­lo La Guardia, waved the coup attempt away as “a cock­tail putsch.”

The same atti­tudes that let the con­spir­a­tors suf­fer no con­se­quences, and let them go on to serve in high office, also seemed to dri­ve their way of think­ing. Roo­sevelt could be brought to see rea­son, they believed. Since his class inter­ests aligned with theirs, he would see that fas­cism best served those inter­ests. Sal­ly Den­ton, inves­tiga­tive reporter and author of a book about the mul­ti­ple plots against FDR (The Plots Against the Pres­i­dent: FDR, A Nation in Cri­sis, and the Rise of the Amer­i­can Right), explains in an inter­view with All Things Con­sid­ered:

They thought that they could con­vince Roo­sevelt, because he was of their, the patri­cian class, they thought that they could con­vince Roo­sevelt to relin­quish pow­er to basi­cal­ly a fas­cist, mil­i­tary-type gov­ern­ment.

What MacGuire pro­posed was more cor­po­ratist than mil­i­tarist in appear­ance, at least, notes Davis. The Pres­i­dent could remain as a fig­ure­head, but “the real pow­er of the gov­ern­ment would be held in the hands of a Sec­re­tary of Gen­er­al Affairs, who would be in effect a dic­ta­tor,” but whose job descrip­tion, as MacGuire put it, was “a sort of super sec­re­tary.”

As for But­ler, not only did he call the plot trea­son, but he also came to feel con­sid­er­able regret for his ser­vice as “a high-class mus­cle man for Big Busi­ness, for Wall Street and the bankers,” as he lat­er wrote in his essay “War is a Rack­et,” pub­lished in the social­ist mag­a­zine Com­mon Sense. “I was a rack­e­teer,” he con­fessed, “a gang­ster for cap­i­tal­ism.” In expos­ing the plot, he decid­ed to side with the flawed, but func­tion­al democ­ra­cy of our own coun­try over the will of cap­i­tal­ists bent on hold­ing pow­er by any means.

via Big Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

20,000 Amer­i­cans Hold a Pro-Nazi Ral­ly in Madi­son Square Gar­den in 1939: Chill­ing Video Re-Cap­tures a Lost Chap­ter in US His­to­ry

How Warn­er Broth­ers Resist­ed a Hol­ly­wood Ban on Anti-Nazi Films in the 1930s and Warned Amer­i­cans of the Dan­gers of Fas­cism

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

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

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Behold the Ingenious Musical Marble Machine

in Music | May 2nd, 2019

Could the return of mar­ble-based mad­ness be a reac­tion to our dig­i­tal age? That we must con­struct real fan­tas­ti­cal machines that per­form hum­ble amuse­ments in the face of CGI-filled block­busters? Do we need to know that if soci­ety col­laps­es we can look to mem­bers of the Swedish folk­tron­ic band Win­ter­gatan to help rebuild it? After watch­ing the above video, friends, I say yes to all those (rhetor­i­cal) ques­tions.

The Mar­ble Con­vey­er Belt does what its name implies in a lov­ing series of cranks, gears, “fish stairs,” ratch­ets, pis­tons, curved tracks, and springs, and no real amount of florid descrip­tion will do jus­tice to the visu­al poet­ry of watch­ing Wintergatan’s Mar­tin Molin operate/play what they have dubbed Mar­ble Machine X.

This is not Molin or the band’s first machine. Accord­ing to Wikipedia, between Decem­ber 2014 and March 2016, Molin built the first Mar­ble Machine, that played instru­ments like a vibra­phone, bass gui­tar, cym­bals, and a contact-microphone’d mini drum kit fol­low­ing a pro­grammed wheel that trig­gered mar­ble release arma­tures.

In fact, we told you all about it in a pre­vi­ous post in 2016, just in case this is all sound­ing famil­iar.

When that was a suc­cess, they dis­as­sem­bled the machine and set about work­ing on Machine X.
Each step of the process was doc­u­ment­ed on YouTube, which is per­fect for this sort of thing. The 79 videos can be watched over at this mas­sive playlist. (Watch it below.) This time, Molin worked with a team of design­ers and engi­neers, along with fan input, to build some­thing big­ger and bet­ter.

Molin pro­vid­ed some specs over at the fin­ished video’s YouTube page:

The Mar­ble Con­vey­er Belt is Com­plet­ed and it deliv­ers Per­fect­ly.
— lifts 8 mar­bles per crank turn.
— thanks to it being dri­ven by ratch­ets and pis­tons, it makes a short halt to load and unload the mar­bles, on exact­ly the same spot every time.
— The pis­tons are con­nect­ed to the crank shaft with a 2:1 gear reduc­tion which means that the con­vey­er belt go in time with the music, and in half time. I can even use the mechan­i­cal sounds from the ratch­ets and the mar­bles climb­ing the fish stair to cre­ate parts of the beats.
— I only had one kick drum chan­nel up and run­ning so the kick drum plays on 2–4 like a snare nor­mal­ly would. Sounds a lit­tle strange but I just made this piece of music to demon­strate the con­cepts are work­ing. (no music you hear in the videos are going to be used for the album, its quick and dirty func­tion­al pieces for the videos only)
— Its been a jour­ney but we are now on our way. Again.
— the throw of the pis­tons s 40mm, the pitch of the chain is 15,875x2 mm, an impe­r­i­al val­ue, and it hap­pens to be exact­ly twice the mar­ble diam­e­ter. All this makes it pos­si­ble to lift exact­ly one row of mar­bles per crank turn. The ratch­ets move 40 mm but only grabs onto the chain to move it exact­ly 31,75mm per crank turn.
The car­ri­ers are flame pol­ished cnc:ed acrylic
— The chain was cus­tom made in Japan and I wait­ed 5 months for it to be deliv­ered. haha. Of all the time con­sum­ing dar­lings on the MMX I love the con­vey­er belt /fish stair com­bo the most.
the mar­bles looks like they are stuck over the demag­ne­tis­er wheel, this is by design, as soon new mar­bles come into the pipes from below, the mar­bles are slow­ly pushed over the demag wheel which ensures per­fect demag­neti­sa­tion.

Molin has some kind of mad­ness, the good kind. Where he goes after this achieve­ment is anybody’s guess.

via thekidshouldseethis.com

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metrop­o­lis II: Dis­cov­er the Amaz­ing, Fritz Lang-Inspired Kinet­ic Sculp­ture by Chris Bur­den

See the First “Drum Machine,” the Rhyth­mi­con from 1931, and the Mod­ern Drum Machines That Fol­lowed Decades Lat­er

200-Year-Old Robots That Play Music, Shoot Arrows & Even Write Poems: Watch Automa­tons in Action

Watch a Musi­cian Impro­vise on a 500-Year-Old Music Instru­ment, The Car­il­lon

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Meanwhile, Inside the Box, Schrodinger’s Cat Plans Its Revenge…

in Random | May 1st, 2019

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