Behold the 1940s Typewriter That Could Type in English, Chinese & Japanese: Watch More Than a Thousand Different Characters in Action

in History, Technology | April 27th, 2021

There was a time, not long after the wide­spread adop­tion of teleg­ra­phy in the 19th cen­tu­ry, when the writ­ten Chi­nese lan­guage looked doomed. Or at least it did to cer­tain thinkers con­sid­er­ing the impli­ca­tions of that instant glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion-enabling tech­nol­o­gy hav­ing been devel­oped for the rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple Latin alpha­bet. And as unsuit­ed as the Chi­nese writ­ing sys­tem must have seemed to the world of the tele­graph, it would have pre­sent­ed a seem­ing­ly even heav­ier bur­den in the world of the type­writer.

Only in 1916, thanks to the efforts of a U.S.-educated Shang­hai engi­neer named Hou-Kun Chow, did the Chi­nese type­writer debut, built around a large, revolv­ing cylin­der that could print 4,000 ideo­graph­ic (that is to say, each one rep­re­sent­ing a dif­fer­ent word or sound) char­ac­ters. From that point the evo­lu­tion of the Chi­nese type­writer was rather quick, by the stan­dards of the day. And it did­n’t only hap­pen in Chi­na: Japan, whose own writ­ten lan­guage incor­po­rates many ideo­graph­ic Chi­nese char­ac­ters, had been sub­ject to more intense tech­no­log­i­cal influ­ence from the West since open­ing to for­eign trade in the 1860s.

The very year after its found­ing in 1939, elec­tron­ics-giant-to-be Toshi­ba (the prod­uct of a merg­er involv­ing Japan’s first mak­er of tele­graph equip­ment) pro­duced the first Japan­ese cylin­dri­cal type­writer. “Most­ly used by the Japan­ese mil­i­tary dur­ing World War II,” says the Vin­tage Type­writer Muse­um, it incor­po­rat­ed 630 char­ac­ters. After the war “Toshi­ba intro­duced a new mod­el, the 1200 A, fea­tur­ing 1172 Japan­ese and Chi­nese char­ac­ters.” In the video above, from Youtu­ber by the name of Type­writer Col­lec­tor, you can see a slight­ly lat­er mod­el in action.

Pro­duced before the intro­duc­tion of “West­ern-style” key­boards, the Toshi­ba BW-2112 has the same inter­face as its pre­de­ces­sors: “The char­ac­ter is select­ed by rotat­ing the cylin­der and shift­ing it hor­i­zon­tal­ly, so that the nec­es­sary char­ac­ter is select­ed with the index point­er,” accord­ing to the Vin­tage Type­writer Muse­um. “When the print key is depressed, the type strip is pushed upwards from the cylin­der, and the type ham­mer swings to the cen­ter to print the char­ac­ter onto the paper.”

These vin­tage Japan­ese type­writ­ers still today strike their view­ers as mar­vels of engi­neer­ing, though their then-vast store of char­ac­ters (which includ­ed not just Chi­nese-derived kan­ji but pho­net­ic kana and even the Latin alpha­bet) have long since been sur­passed by dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy. Now that every stu­den­t’s smart­phone puts all 50,000 or extant Chi­nese char­ac­ters in their com­mand — to say noth­ing of the world’s oth­er writ­ten lan­guages — it’s safe to say they’re not about to fall into dis­use any time soon.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Endur­ing Ana­log Under­world of Gramer­cy Type­writer

Dis­cov­er Friedrich Nietzsche’s Curi­ous Type­writer, the “Malling-Hansen Writ­ing Ball” (Cir­ca 1881)

When IBM Cre­at­ed a Type­writer to Record Dance Move­ments (1973)

Dis­cov­er the Inge­nious Type­writer That Prints Musi­cal Nota­tion: The Keaton Music Type­writer Patent­ed in 1936

Free Chi­nese Lessons

Learn Japan­ese Free

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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 Rolling Stones Jam with Muddy Waters for the First and Only Time at Chicago’s Legendary Checkerboard Lounge (1981)

in Music | April 27th, 2021

What­ev­er mar­ket­ing mate­ri­als may claim, the Rolling Stones did not just hap­pen upon Bud­dy Guy’s Checker­board Lounge on Chicago’s South Side (before it closed, reopened in Hyde Park, then closed again for good) on a night when Mud­dy Waters hap­pened to be there in 1981. And they did not spon­ta­neous­ly get invit­ed to jam, as it seems, when they “climbed over tables” to get onstage with their hero and blues leg­ends Bud­dy Guy and Junior Wells.

A chance meet­ing, of course, would have been mag­i­cal, but the truth is the event was prob­a­bly “planned and coor­di­nat­ed,” writes W. Scott Poole at Pop­mat­ters. These were the biggest names in the blues and rock and roll, after all. “Why,” before the Stones and their entourage arrive, “is there an emp­ty table on the night Mud­dy Waters came back to South­side?”

And why did the Rolling Stones’ man­ag­er claim he “approached the Checker­board high­er-ups a week in advance,” Ted Schein­man writes at Slant, “propos­ing a sur­prise con­cert and prof­fer­ing $500 as proof-of earnest”?

Was it a cyn­i­cal ploy to re-estab­lish the band’s blues cred dur­ing what would turn out to be the largest gross­ing tour of the year — one fea­tur­ing what Jag­ger called “enor­mous images of a gui­tar, a car and a record — an Amer­i­cana idea.” In some sense, Mud­dy Waters was also an “Amer­i­cana idea,” but how could he be oth­er­wise to the Stones, giv­en that they’d grown up lis­ten­ing to him from across the Atlantic, asso­ci­at­ing him with expe­ri­ences they had nev­er known first­hand?

And so what if the his­toric meet­ing at the Checker­board Lounge was stage-man­aged behind the scenes? That’s what man­agers do — they arrange things behind the scenes and let per­form­ers cre­ate the illu­sion of spon­tane­ity, as though they hadn’t spent an entire tour, or decades of tours, mak­ing the same songs seem fresh on any giv­en night. When it comes to the blues, play­ing the same songs over again is a key part of the game, see­ing how much atti­tude and style one can wring out of a few chords, dogged­ly per­sis­tent themes of sex, love, death, betray­al, and maybe a bot­tle­neck slide.

It’s a les­son the Stones learned well, and their ado­ra­tion and respect for Mud­dy Waters is noth­ing less than gen­uine, even if it took some back­stage nego­ti­a­tion to bring them togeth­er this one and only time. Mud­dy is spec­tac­u­lar. “Even as one of the aging elder states­men of the Chica­go blues in 1981,” writes Poole, “he exudes an aura of sex and pow­er, show­ing off every attribute that so inspired Mick and Kei­th and that became an inef­fa­ble part of their own music and their per­sona.”

Mean­while, the absolute­ly boy­ish glee on the faces of Jag­ger, Richards, Ron­nie Wood, and Stones’ pianist Ian Stew­art as they per­form onstage with an artist who had giv­en them so much more than just their name speaks for itself. The con­cert video and live album “began appear­ing as boot­leg and unof­fi­cial releas­es almost imme­di­ate­ly,” All­mu­sic notes, “from LP and CD to VHS and DVD.” Here, you can see them jam out three songs from the night: “Baby Please Don’t Go” (on which Waters brings Jag­ger onstage at 5:30 for an extend­ed ver­sion and Kei­th joins at 6:50), “Man­nish Boy,” and “Hoochie Coochie Man.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

10-Sto­ry High Mur­al of Mud­dy Waters Goes Up in Chica­go

A Visu­al His­to­ry of The Rolling Stones Doc­u­ment­ed in a Beau­ti­ful, 450-Page Pho­to Book by Taschen

The Rolling Stones Release a Long Lost Track Fea­tur­ing Led Zeppelin’s Jim­my Page

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

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Scientists at Purdue University Create the “Whitest White” Paint Ever Seen: It Reflects 98% of the Sun’s Light

in Science | April 27th, 2021

Xiulin Ruan, a Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, holds up his lab’s sam­ple of the whitest paint on record. Pur­due University/Jared Pike

Sure­ly, you’ve heard of Vantablack, the high-tech coat­ing invent­ed by UK com­pa­ny Sur­rey NanoSys­tems that absorbs over 99 per­cent of light and makes three-dimen­sion­al objects look like black holes? Aside from its con­tro­ver­sial­ly exclu­sive use by artist Anish Kapoor, the black­est of black paints has so far proven to be most effec­tive in space. “You can imag­ine up in space peo­ple think of it as being real­ly black and dark,” Sur­rey NanoSys­tems chief tech­ni­cal offi­cer Ben Jensen explains. “But actu­al­ly it’s incred­i­bly bright up there because the Sun’s like a huge arc lamp and you’ve got light reflect­ing off the Earth and moon.”

All that sun­light can make cer­tain parts of the world unbear­ably hot for humans, a rapid­ly wors­en­ing phe­nom­e­non thanks to cli­mate change, which has itself been wors­ened by cli­mate con­trol sys­tems used to cool homes, offices, stores, etc. Since the 1970s sci­en­tists have attempt­ed to break the vicious cycle with white paints that can cool build­ings by reflect­ing sun­light from their sur­faces. “Paint­ing build­ings white to reflect sun­light and make them cool­er is com­mon in Greece and oth­er coun­tries,” notes The Wash­ing­ton Post. “Cities like New and Chica­go have pro­grams to paint roofs white to com­bat urban heat.”

The prob­lem is “com­mer­cial white paint gets warmer rather than cool­er,” writes Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty. “Paints on the mar­ket that are designed to reject heat reflect only 80%-90% of sun­light and can’t make sur­faces cool­er than their sur­round­ings,” since they absorb ultra­vi­o­let light. That may well change soon, with the inven­tion by a team of Pur­due engi­neers of an as-yet unnamed, patent-pend­ing ultra-white paint that has “pushed the lim­its on how white paint can be.” Those lim­its now fall just slight­ly short of Vantablack on the oth­er side of the spec­trum (or grayscale).

An infrared cam­era shows how a sam­ple of the whitest white paint (the dark pur­ple square in the mid­dle) actu­al­ly cools the board below ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture, some­thing that not even com­mer­cial “heat reject­ing” paints do. Pur­due University/Joseph Peo­ples

Pur­due describes the prop­er­ties of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary com­pound.

Two fea­tures give the paint its extreme white­ness. One is the paint’s very high con­cen­tra­tion of a chem­i­cal com­pound called bar­i­um sul­fate, which is also used to make pho­to paper and cos­met­ics white.

The sec­ond fea­ture is that the bar­i­um sul­fate par­ti­cles are all dif­fer­ent sizes in the paint. How much each par­ti­cle scat­ters light depends on its size, so a wider range of par­ti­cle sizes allows the paint to scat­ter more of the light spec­trum from the sun.

This for­mu­la “reflects up to 98.1% of sun­light — com­pared with the 95.5%,” of light reflect­ed by a pre­vi­ous com­pound that used cal­ci­um car­bon­ate instead of bar­i­um sul­fite. The less than 3% dif­fer­ence is more sig­nif­i­cant than it might seem.

Xiulin Ruan, pro­fes­sor of mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, describes the poten­tial of the new reflec­tive coat­ing: “If you were to use this paint to cov­er a roof area of about 1,000 square feet, we esti­mate that you could get a cool­ing pow­er of 10 kilo­watts. That’s more pow­er­ful than the cen­tral air con­di­tion­ers used by most hous­es… If you look at the ener­gy [sav­ings] and cool­ing pow­er this paint can pro­vide, it’s real­ly excit­ing.”

Will there be a pro­pri­etary war between major play­ers in the art world to con­trol it? “Ide­al­ly,” Kait Sanchez writes at The Verge, “any­thing that could be used to improve people’s lives while reduc­ing the ener­gy they use should be free and wide­ly avail­able.” Ide­al­ly.

Learn more about the whitest white paint here and, if you have access, at the researchers’ pub­li­ca­tion in the jour­nal ACS Applied Mate­ri­als & Inter­faces.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

YIn­Mn Blue, the First Shade of Blue Dis­cov­ered in 200 Years, Is Now Avail­able for Artists

Dis­cov­er Harvard’s Col­lec­tion of 2,500 Pig­ments: Pre­serv­ing the World’s Rare, Won­der­ful Col­ors

A 3,000-Year-Old Painter’s Palette from Ancient Egypt, with Traces of the Orig­i­nal Col­ors Still In It

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

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The Meaning of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights Explained

in Art, History | April 26th, 2021

Over the half-mil­len­ni­um since Hierony­mus Bosch paint­ed it, The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights has pro­duced an ever-widen­ing array of inter­pre­ta­tions. Is it “a paint­ing about sex­u­al free­dom”? A “medieval acid trip”? An “erot­ic fan­ta­sy”? A “hereti­cal attack on the church”? The work of “a mem­ber of an obscure free-love cult”? James Payne, the Lon­don cura­tor behind the Youtube chan­nel Great Art Explained, rejects all these views. In the open­ing of the in-depth video analy­sis above, he describes Bosch’s well-known and much-scru­ti­nized late-15th or ear­ly-16th cen­tu­ry trip­tych as, “pure and sim­ply, hard­core Chris­tian­i­ty.”

Dat­ing from “a time when Euro­pean artists, writ­ers, and the­olo­gians were shap­ing a new, ter­ri­fy­ing vision of Hell and the pun­ish­ment await­ing sin­ners,” Payne argues, The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights is “an intense­ly moral­is­tic work that should be approached as what it is: reli­gious pro­pa­gan­da.”

Depict­ing the Bib­li­cal cre­ation of the world on its out­er pan­els, the work opens up to reveal elab­o­rate­ly detailed visions of Adam and Eve in the Gar­den of Eden, then human­i­ty indulging in all known earth­ly delights, then the con­se­quent tor­ments of Hell. It is that last pan­el, with its abun­dance of per­verse activ­i­ties and grotesque human, ani­mal, and human-ani­mal fig­ures (recent­ly made into fig­urines and even piñatas) that keeps the strongest hold on our imag­i­na­tion today.

Payne’s expla­na­tion goes into detail on all aspects of the work, high­light­ing and con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing details that even avowed appre­ci­a­tors may not have con­sid­ered before. While iden­ti­fy­ing both the pos­si­ble inspi­ra­tions and the pos­si­ble sym­bol­ic inten­tions of the fig­ures and sym­bols with which Bosch filled the trip­tych, Payne empha­sizes that, as far as the artist was con­cerned, “his images were a real­is­tic por­tray­al of sin and its con­se­quences, so in that sense, it was­n’t sur­re­al­ism, it was real­ism.” This bears repeat­ing, giv­en how dif­fi­cult we mod­erns find it “to look at this paint­ing and not see it as sur­re­al­ism or a prod­uct of the sub­con­scious, not see it as a sex­u­al utopia, a cri­tique of reli­gion, or even a psy­che­del­ic romp.” Just as The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights tells us a great deal about the world Bosch lived in, so our views of it tell us a great deal about the world we live in.

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:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Hierony­mus Bosch’s Medieval Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Comes to Life in a Gigan­tic, Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion

Take a Mul­ti­me­dia Tour of the But­tock Song in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Musi­cal Instru­ments in Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Get Brought to Life, and It Turns Out That They Sound “Painful” and “Hor­ri­ble”

New App Lets You Explore Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Fig­ures from Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Come to Life as Fine Art Piñatas

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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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Quarantined Dancer Creates Shot-for-Shot Remake of the Final Dirty Dancing Scene with a Lamp as a Dance Partner

in Comedy, Dance, Film | April 26th, 2021

1987’s low bud­get sleep­er hit, Dirty Danc­ing, pro­pelled its leads, Jen­nifer Grey and the late Patrick Swayze, to instant star­dom.

Swayze lat­er mused to the Amer­i­can Film Insti­tute about the film’s remark­able stay­ing pow­er:

It’s got so much heart, to me. It’s not about the sen­su­al­i­ty; it’s real­ly about peo­ple try­ing to find them­selves, this young dance instruc­tor feel­ing like he’s noth­ing but a prod­uct, and this young girl try­ing to find out who she is in a soci­ety of restric­tions when she has such an amaz­ing take on things. On a cer­tain lev­el, it’s real­ly about the fab­u­lous, funky lit­tle Jew­ish girl get­ting the guy because [of] what she’s got in her heart.

Near­ly 35 years after the orig­i­nal release, anoth­er gift­ed male dancer, Brook­lyn-based pho­tog­ra­ph­er Quinn Whar­ton, is tap­ping into that heart… and Grey has been replaced by a lamp.

Whar­ton once told Bal­let Hub that his favorite part of danc­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly with the San Fran­cis­co Bal­let and Hub­bard Street Dance Chica­go was the access it gave him to the great names in dance — William Forsythe, Mats Ek, Christo­pher Wheel­don, Wayne McGre­gor, and oth­ers whose prox­im­i­ty made for “a remark­able edu­ca­tion.”

The first few months of the pan­dem­ic forced him to dance solo, recre­at­ing mem­o­rable film moments in response to a friend’s chal­lenge:

I was hes­i­tant at first but thought I would give it a try to see what I might be able to learn from it. Turns out it was way more fun than I thought and the result was fun­nier than I could have imag­ined.

We agree that his Quinn-tessen­tial Dance Scenes series is very fun­ny, as well as beau­ti­ful­ly exe­cut­ed in the twin are­nas of cam­era work and dance. His self-imposed para­me­ters — no out­side help, no green screen, no film­ing out­side of the apart­ment, and no spe­cial pur­chas­es of props or cos­tumes, con­tribute to the humor.

His hard­work­ing, dis­em­bod­ied, com­par­a­tive­ly well-cov­ered haunch­es elic­it laughs when seen next to the much skimpi­er orig­i­nal cos­tume of Flash­dance’s “Mani­ac” scene, above. 18-year-old star Jen­nifer Beals had three dance dou­bles — Marine Jahan, gym­nast Sharon Shapiro, and leg­endary B‑Boy Richard Colón, aka Crazy Legs of Rock Steady crew. None of them appeared in the orig­i­nal cred­its because, as Jahan told Enter­tain­ment Tonight, the pro­duc­ers “did­n’t want to break the mag­ic.”

In oth­er words, a lot of steamy 80s-era fan­tasies cen­tered on Beals are now known to be a case — pos­si­bly three cas­es — of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty.

Whar­ton’s quar­an­tine project afford­ed him a chance to come at John Tra­vol­ta from two angles, thanks to the dis­co clas­sic Sat­ur­day Night Fever and Pulp Fic­tion’s twist sequence, a sur­pris­ing­ly pop­u­lar fan request. Though Travolta’s dance train­ing was lim­it­ed to child­hood tap lessons with Gene Kelly’s broth­er, Fred, Whar­ton prais­es his “seri­ous range.”

Whar­ton cites the inspi­ra­tion for one of his less­er known recre­ations, direc­tor Baz Lurhman’s first fea­ture, Strict­ly Ball­room, as a rea­son he began danc­ing:

My dad loves this movie and as a kid I can’t count the num­ber of times that I watched it. It’s so much, loud, brash, exu­ber­ant …It also allowed me to bring back my favorite part­ner.

Quinn-tessen­tial Dance Scenes is on hia­tus so Whar­ton can con­cen­trate on his work as a dance pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Watch a playlist of all eight episodes here.

See more of his dance pho­tog­ra­phy on his Insta­gram page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

One of the Great­est Dances Sequences Ever Cap­tured on Film Gets Restored in Col­or by AI: Watch the Clas­sic Scene from Stormy Weath­er

The Pow­er of Pulp Fiction’s Dance Scene, Explained by Chore­o­g­ra­phers and Even John Tra­vol­ta Him­self

The Icon­ic Dance Scene from Hel­lza­pop­pin’ Pre­sent­ed in Liv­ing Col­or with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (1941)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, who can occa­sion­al­ly be spot­ted wan­der­ing around New York City in a bear suit, in char­ac­ter as L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Ray Dalio & Adam Grant Launch Free Online Personality Assessment to Help You Understand Yourself (and Others Understand You)

in Business, Psychology | April 26th, 2021

Back in 2017, Ray Dalio pub­lished Prin­ci­ples: Life and Work, a best­selling book where the cre­ator of the world’s largest hedge fund shared “the uncon­ven­tion­al prin­ci­ples that he’s devel­oped, refined, and used over the past forty years to cre­ate unique results in both life and busi­ness.” You can find a dis­tilled ver­sion of those uncon­ven­tion­al prin­ci­ples in a 30-minute ani­ma­tion video pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on our site.

To accom­pa­ny his book, Dalio has now released, along with Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia orga­ni­za­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist Adam Grant, a free per­son­al­i­ty assess­ment tool called Prin­ci­plesY­ou. The assess­ment takes about 30 to 40 min­utes to com­plete, and we would strong­ly encour­age you to sign up for an account before you get start­ed, so that you can save the results of the assess­ment after­wards. Oth­er­wise you will lose the results.

Accord­ing to psy­chol­o­gist Bri­an Lit­tle, “Prin­ci­plesY­ou was devel­oped over a two-year inten­sive and cre­ative R&D process with two goals in mind. First, it mea­sures traits that Ray Dalio and his team have observed and stud­ied for many years as crit­i­cal for per­son­al and orga­ni­za­tion­al suc­cess. Sec­ond, it is based on the lat­est research in per­son­al­i­ty sci­ence. The assess­ment pro­vides a person’s score on a com­pre­hen­sive set of traits, their under­ly­ing facets and inter­ac­tive pat­terns, and it has high reli­a­bil­i­ty, inter­nal struc­ture, re-test reli­a­bil­i­ty and valid­i­ty of these traits and facets. A dis­tinc­tive strength is its abil­i­ty to pre­dict an extra­or­di­nary array of actu­al behav­iors observed by the Bridge­wa­ter staff over many years.”

Adam Grant adds: “To achieve suc­cess, you need to know your­self and the peo­ple around you. Although your car comes with an owner’s man­u­al, your mind doesn’t—and nei­ther do your col­leagues. We designed Prin­ci­plesY­ou to help you gain the self-aware­ness and oth­er-aware­ness that are crit­i­cal to mak­ing good deci­sions, get­ting things done, and turn­ing a group of cowork­ers into a great team.”

You can watch Grant and Dalio dis­cuss Prin­ci­plesY­ou above. You can lis­ten to Grant fea­ture Dalio’s insights on his Work Life pod­cast here. And final­ly you can start the free per­son­al­i­ty assess­ment here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

The Prin­ci­ples for Suc­cess by Entre­pre­neur & Investor Ray Dalio: A 30-Minute Ani­mat­ed Primer

Eco­nom­ics 101: Hedge Fund Investor Ray Dalio Explains How the Econ­o­my Works in a 30-Minute Ani­mat­ed Video

How to Raise Cre­ative Chil­dren Who Can Change the World: 3 Lessons from Whar­ton Pro­fes­sor Adam Grant

 

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Parrot Sings AC/DCs “Whole Lotta Rosie”

in Random | April 25th, 2021

Here’s the orig­i­nal from AC/DC. And here you can find more sing-alongs from Frank Maglio Tico & the Man. Enjoy.

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.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci­ence Shows That Snow­ball the Cock­a­too Has 14 Dif­fer­ent Dance Moves: The Vogue, Head­bang & More

Hear the Sound Of Endan­gered Birds Get Turned Into Elec­tron­ic Music

Cor­nell Launch­es Archive of 150,000 Bird Calls and Ani­mal Sounds, with Record­ings Going Back to 1929

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Freddie Mercury & Rami Malek’s Live Aid Performance: A Side-By-Side Comparison

in Music | April 23rd, 2021

All Hol­ly­wood musi­cals need a big final set piece, one final rous­ing num­ber to bring all the nar­ra­tive threads back togeth­er, and pro­vide redemp­tion to our fall­en hero. Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the 2018 biopic about Fred­die Mer­cury and the band Queen, uses Live Aid as its final num­ber. We’ve writ­ten else­where about how this was not real­ly the final hur­rah for the band, nor was this some kind of tri­umphant return after years in the Wilder­ness. (“Radio Gaga” and “I Want to Break Free” had been in the charts just over a year pre­vi­ous.) Nei­ther was it their biggest con­cert of the 1980s. That would be the Wem­b­ley con­cert of 1986, where they would fill the exact same sta­di­um used for Live Aid, but this time it was just for them.

But Hol­ly­wood cares not for that, so instead lets look at how faith­ful­ly Rami Malek and his fel­low actors (along with what might have been Bryan Singer as direc­tor or pos­si­bly Dex­ter Fletch­er, the man who replaced him after events we’d rather not go into, look it up) faith­ful­ly recre­ate those 20 glo­ri­ous min­utes. After all, it was one of the most watched events in the sum­mer of 1985. There is video evi­dence!

I’ll leave it up to you out there to debate over Malek’s per­for­mance, which is going to suf­fer no mat­ter what he does in a side-by-side with the real thing. Instead, notice how the film­mak­ers use cer­tain parts of the per­for­mance to com­plete the nar­ra­tives of the film. We get a cut­away to Bri­an May (Gwilym Lee) with a “by George he’s actu­al­ly got it” look on his face—relief that Mer­cury final­ly got it togeth­er for the per­for­mance. There’s no equiv­a­lent shot in real life. The kiss that Mer­cury blows to some­body off cam­era is received by his moth­er and sis­ter back at his child­hood home.

After Mercury’s call-and-response with the teem­ing audi­ence, the band dives into “Ham­mer to Fall” and the film cuts to a mon­tage to show Live Aid’s phones ring­ing off the hook, anx­ious view­ers want­i­ng to donate even more because of Queen’s per­for­mance. This is again Hol­ly­wood hokum, as dona­tions only real­ly stepped up after Bob Geld­of got in front of the cam­eras a lit­tle after Queen brought the house down and harangued view­ers.

Still, you have to hand it to the movie for hav­ing the stones to indulge in the full 20 minute set, despite sil­ly moves like cut­ting away to the movie’s “you’ll nev­er go any­where” record exec­u­tive for the line “no time for losers” dur­ing the final song. (D’oh!)

YouTube user Juan Dela Cruz, who assem­bled this side-by-side, has made two oth­er com­par­i­son videos using exist­ing footage and the film: Part One is here, and here’s Part Two.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Queen Rehearse & Metic­u­lous­ly Pre­pare for Their Leg­endary 1985 Live Aid Per­for­mance

Watch 16 Hours of His­toric Live Aid Per­for­mances: Queen, Led Zep­pelin, Neil Young & Much More

Bob Geld­of Talks About the Great­est Day of His Life, Step­ping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Mor­ris

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.