What Happens When Someone Crochets Stuffed Animals Using Instructions from ChatGPT

in Art, Computer Science, Data, Technology | September 5th, 2023

Alex Wool­ner knows how to put a degree in Eng­lish to good use.

Past projects include a fem­i­nist type­writer blog, retro­fitting stick­er vend­ing machines to dis­pense poet­ry, and a free res­i­den­cy pro­gram for emerg­ing artists at a mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary stu­dio she co-found­ed with play­wright and painter Jason Mont­gomery in East­hamp­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts.

More recent­ly, the poet and inter­na­tion­al edu­ca­tor has com­bined her inter­est in amigu­ru­mi cro­cheted ani­mals and Chat­G­PT, the open source AI chat­bot.

Hav­ing cro­cheted an amigu­ru­mi nar­whal for a nephew ear­li­er this year, she hopped on Chat­G­PT and asked it to cre­ate “a cro­chet pat­tern for a nar­whal stuffed ani­mal using worsted weight yarn.”

The result might have dis­cour­aged anoth­er quer­ent, but Wool­ner got out her cro­chet hook and sal­lied forth, fol­low­ing Chat­G­PTs instruc­tions to the let­ter, despite a num­ber of red flags indi­cat­ing that the chatbot’s grasp of nar­whal anato­my was high­ly unre­li­able.

Its igno­rance is part of its DNA. As a large lan­guage mod­el, Chat­G­PT is capa­ble of pro­duc­ing pre­dic­tive text based on vast amounts of data in its mem­o­ry bank. But it can’t see images.

As Amit Kat­wala writes in Wired:

It has no idea what a cat looks like or even what cro­chet is. It sim­ply con­nects words that fre­quent­ly appear togeth­er in its train­ing data. The result is super­fi­cial­ly plau­si­ble pas­sages of text that often fall apart when exposed to the scruti­ny of an expert—what’s been called “flu­ent bull­shit.”

It’s also not too hot at math, a skill set knit­ters and cro­cheters bring to bear read­ing pat­terns, which traf­fic in num­bers of rows and stitch­es, indi­cat­ed by abbre­vi­a­tions that real­ly flum­mox a chat­bot.

An exam­ple of begin­ner-lev­el instruc­tions from a free down­load­able pat­tern for a cute amigu­ru­mi shark:

DORSAL FIN (gray yarn)

Rnd 1: in a mr work 3 sc, 2 hdc, 1 sc (6)

Rnd 2: 3 sc, 1 hdc inc, 1 hdc, 1 sc (7)

Rnd 3: 3 sc, 2 hdc, 1 hdc inc, 1 sc (8)

Rnd 4: 3 sc, 1 hdc inc, 3 hdc, 1 sc inc (10)

Rnd 5: 3 sc, 1 hdc, 1 hdc inc, 3 hdc, 1 sc, 1 sc inc (12)

Rnd 6: 3 sc, 6 hdc, 3 sc (12)

Rnd 7: sc even (12); F/O and leave a long strand of yarn to sew the dor­sal fin between rnds # 18–23. Do not stuff the fin.

Pity poor Chat­G­PT, though, like Wool­ner, it tried.

Their col­lab­o­ra­tion became a cause célèbre when Wool­ner debuted the “AI gen­er­at­ed nar­whal cro­chet mon­stros­i­ty” on Tik­Tok, apt­ly com­par­ing the large tusk Chat­G­PT had her posi­tion atop its head to a chef’s toque.

Is that the best AI can do?

A recent This Amer­i­can Life episode details how Sebastien Bubeck, a machine learn­ing researcher at Microsoft, com­mand­ed anoth­er large lan­guage mod­el, GPT‑4, to cre­ate code that TikZ, a vec­tor graph­ics pro­duc­er, could use to “draw” a uni­corn.

This col­lab­o­ra­tive exper­i­ment was per­haps more empir­i­cal­ly suc­cess­ful than the Chat­G­PT amigu­ru­mi pat­terns Wool­ner duti­ful­ly ren­dered in yarn and fiber­fill. This Amer­i­can Life’s David Kesten­baum was suf­fi­cient­ly awed by the result­ing image to haz­ard a guess that “when peo­ple even­tu­al­ly write the his­to­ry of this crazy moment we are in, they may include this uni­corn.”

It’s not good, but it’s a fuck­ing uni­corn. The body is just an oval. It’s got four stu­pid rec­tan­gles for legs. But there are lit­tle squares for hooves. There’s a mane, an oval for the head. And on top of the head, a tiny yel­low tri­an­gle, the horn. This is insane to say, but I felt like I was see­ing inside its head. Like it had pieced togeth­er some idea of what a uni­corn looked like and this was it.

Let’s not poo poo the mer­its of Woolner’s ongo­ing explo­rations though. As one com­menter observed, it seems she’s “found a way to instan­ti­ate the weird messed up arti­facts of AI gen­er­at­ed images in the phys­i­cal uni­verse.”

To which Wool­ner respond­ed that she “will either be spared or be one of the first to per­ish when AI takes over gov­er­nance of us meat sacks.”

 

In the mean­time, she’s con­tin­u­ing to har­ness Chat­G­PT to birth more mon­strous amigu­ru­mi. Ger­ald the Narwhal’s has been joined by a cat, an otter, Nor­ma the Nor­mal Fish, XL the Newt, and Skein Green, a pel­i­can bear­ing get well wish­es for author and sci­ence vlog­ger Hank Green.

When retired math­e­mati­cian Daina Taim­i­na, author of Cro­chet­ing Adven­tures with Hyper­bol­ic Planes, told the Dai­ly Beast that Ger­ald would have resem­bled a nar­whal more close­ly had Wool­ner sup­plied Chat­G­PT with more specifics, Wool­ner agreed to give it anoth­er go.

Two weeks lat­er, the Dai­ly Beast pro­nounced this attempt, nick­named Ger­ard, “even less nar­whal-look­ing than the first. Its body was a mas­sive stuffed tri­an­gle, and its tusk looked like a gum­drop at one end.”

Wool­ner dubbed Ger­ard pos­si­bly the most frus­trat­ing AI-gen­er­at­ed amigu­ru­mi of her acquain­tance, owing to an onslaught of speci­fici­ty on ChatCPT’s part. It over­loaded her with instruc­tions for every indi­vid­ual stitch, some­times call­ing for more stitch­es in a row than exist­ed in the entire pat­tern, then dipped out with­out telling her how to com­plete the body and tail.

As sil­ly as it all may seem, Wool­ner believes her Chat­G­PT amigu­ru­mi col­labs are a healthy mod­el for artists using AI tech­nol­o­gy:

I think if there are ways for peo­ple in the arts to con­tin­ue to cre­ate, but also approach AI as a tool and as a poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tor, that is real­ly inter­est­ing. Because then we can start to branch out into com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent, new art forms and cre­ative expressions—things that we couldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly do before or didn’t have the spark or the idea to do can be explored. 

If you, like Hank Green, have fall­en for one of Woolner’s unholy cre­ations, down­load­able pat­terns are avail­able here for $2 a pop.

Those seek­ing alter­na­tives to fiber­fill are advised to stuff their amigu­ru­mi with “aban­doned hopes and dreams” or “all those free tee shirts you get from giv­ing blood and run­ning road races or what­ev­er you do for fun”.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

An Artist Cro­chets a Life-Size, Anatom­i­cal­ly-Cor­rect Skele­ton, Com­plete with Organs

A Bio­sta­tis­ti­cian Uses Cro­chet to Visu­al­ize the Fright­en­ing Infec­tion Rates of the Coro­n­avirus

Make an Adorable Cro­cheted Fred­die Mer­cury; Down­load a Free Cro­chet Pat­tern Online

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Artists Get Famous: A Physicist Reveals How Networks (and Not Just Talent) Contribute to Artistic Success

in Art, Data | September 5th, 2023

“The inhab­i­tants of fif­teenth-cen­tu­ry Flo­rence includ­ed Brunelleschi, Ghib­er­ti, Donatel­lo, Masac­cio, Fil­ip­po Lip­pi, Fra Angeli­co, Ver­roc­chio, Bot­ti­cel­li, Leonar­do, and Michelan­ge­lo,” writes tech investor and essay­ist Paul Gra­ham. “Milan at the time was as big as Flo­rence. How many fif­teenth cen­tu­ry Milanese artists can you name?” Once you get think­ing about the ques­tion of “what hap­pened to the Milanese Leonar­do,” it’s hard to stop. So it seems to have been for net­work physi­cist Albert-Lás­zló Barabási, whose work on the dis­tri­b­u­tion of sci­en­tif­ic genius we fea­tured last month here on Open Cul­ture. Gra­ham’s spec­u­la­tion also applied to that line of inquiry, but it applies much more direct­ly to Barabási’s work on artis­tic fame.

“In the con­tem­po­rary art con­text, the val­ue of an art­work is deter­mined by very com­plex net­works,” Barabási explains in the Big Think video above. Fac­tors include “who is the artist, where has that artist exhib­it­ed before, where was that work exhib­it­ed before, who owns it and who owned it before, and how these mul­ti­ple links con­nect to the canon and to art his­to­ry in gen­er­al.” In search of a clear­er under­stand­ing of their rel­a­tive impor­tance and the nature of their inter­ac­tions, he and a team of researchers gath­ered all the rel­e­vant data to pro­duce “a world­wide map of insti­tu­tions, where it turned out that the most cen­tral nodes — the most con­nect­ed nodes — hap­pened to be also the most pres­ti­gious muse­ums: MoMA, Tate, Gagosian Gallery.”

So far, this may come as no great sur­prise to any­one famil­iar with the art world. But the most inter­est­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of this net­work map, Barabási says, is that it “allowed us to pre­dict artis­tic suc­cess. That is, if you give me an artist and their first five exhibits, I’d put them on the map and we could fast-for­ward their career to where they’re going to be ten, twen­ty years from now.” In the past, the artists who made it big tend­ed to start their career in some prox­im­i­ty to the map’s cen­tral institutions.“It’s very dif­fi­cult for some­body to enter from the periph­ery. But our research shows that it’s pos­si­ble”: such artists “exhib­it­ed every­where they were will­ing to show their work,” even­tu­al­ly mak­ing influ­en­tial con­nec­tions by these “many ran­dom acts of exhi­bi­tion.”

This research, pub­lished a few years ago in Sci­ence, “con­firms how impor­tant net­works are in art, and how impor­tant it is for an artist to real­ly under­stand the net­works in which their work is embed­ded.” Loca­tion mat­ters a great deal, but that does­n’t con­sign tal­ent to irrel­e­vance. The more tal­ent­ed artists are, “the more and high­er-lev­el insti­tu­tions are will­ing to work with them.” If you’re an artist, “who was will­ing to work with you in your first five exhibits is already a mea­sure of your tal­ent and your future jour­ney in the art world.” But even if you’re not an artist, you under­es­ti­mate simul­ta­ne­ous impor­tance of abil­i­ty and con­nec­tions — and how those two fac­tors inter­act with each oth­er — at your per­il. From art to sci­ence to insur­ance claims adjust­ment to pro­fes­sion­al bowl­ing, every field involves net­works: net­works that, as Barabási’s work has shown us, aren’t always vis­i­ble.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Does It Take to Be a Great Artist?: An Aging Painter Reflects on His Cre­ative Process & Why He Will Nev­er Be a Picas­so

An Inter­ac­tive Social Net­work of Abstract Artists: Kandin­sky, Picas­so, Bran­cusi & Many More

21 Artists Give “Advice to the Young:” Vital Lessons from Lau­rie Ander­son, David Byrne, Umber­to Eco, Pat­ti Smith & More

An Ani­mat­ed Bill Mur­ray on the Advan­tages & Dis­ad­van­tages of Fame

Why Ein­stein Was a “Peer­less” Genius, and Hawk­ing Was an “Ordi­nary” Genius: A Sci­en­tist Explains

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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Black Mirror Predicts Our Technological Dystopia — Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #156

in Pretty Much Pop, Television | September 5th, 2023

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Your Pret­ty Much Pop team Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Lawrence Ware, Sarahlyn Bruck, and Al Bak­er talk about Char­lie Brooker’s British anthol­o­gy TV series that began in 2011 and recent­ly released its sixth sea­son.

How has this show evolved from satir­i­cal sci­ence fic­tion to some­thing more often just hor­ror stud­ies that study human nature? We talk about our favorite episodes and what does and doesn’t work. Does the show have to be so dark to make its point? Does it always have a point, or is some of it just fun?

To refresh your­self or learn more about these indi­vid­ual episode names that we keep drop­ping, check out the Wikipedia arti­cle list­ing all the episodes. A Guardian arti­cle rates how well ten of the episodes pre­dict­ed the future, and a Vul­ture arti­cle ranks every sin­gle episode.

We men­tion philoso­pher Charles Mills talk­ing about a Black Mir­ror episode on anoth­er pod­cast.

Fol­low us @law_writes, @sarahlynbruck, @ixisnox, @MarkLinsenmayer.

Hear more Pret­ty Much Pop, includ­ing recent episodes on Bar­bie and Indi­ana Jones. Sup­port the show and hear bonus talk­ing for this and near­ly every oth­er episode at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work. Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

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A Mesmerizing Look at the Making of a Late Medieval Book from Start to Finish

in Books, Design, History | September 4th, 2023

Hand bind­ing a book, using pri­mar­i­ly 15-cen­tu­ry meth­ods and mate­ri­als sounds like a major under­tak­ing, rife with pit­falls and frus­tra­tion.

A far more relax­ing activ­i­ty is watch­ing Four Keys Book Arts’ word­less, 24-minute high­lights reel of self-taught book­binder Den­nis tack­ling that same assign­ment, above. (Bonus — it’s a guar­an­teed treat for those prone to autonomous sen­so­ry merid­i­an response tin­gles.)

Den­nis, whose oth­er recent for­ays into bespoke book­bind­ing include a num­ber of ele­gant match­box sized vol­umes and upcy­cling three Dun­geons & Drag­ons rule­books into a tome bound in veg­etable tanned goatskin, labored on the late-medieval Goth­ic repro­duc­tion for over 60 hours.

For research on this type of bind­ing, he turned to book design­er J.A. Szir­mai’s The Archae­ol­o­gy of Medieval Book­bind­ing, and while the goal was nev­er 100% peri­od accu­ra­cy, Den­nis notes that the craft of tra­di­tion­al hand-bind­ing has remained vir­tu­al­ly unchanged for cen­turies:

The medieval binder would have found many of the tools and tech­niques to be very famil­iar. The sin­gle biggest anachro­nism is my use of syn­thet­ic PVA glue rather than peri­od-appro­pri­ate ani­mal glue. The sec­ond his­toric anom­aly is my use of mar­bled paper, though it could be argued that the ear­li­est Euro­pean mar­bled papers of the mid-17th cen­tu­ry do over­lap with this bind­ing style. The non­pareil pat­tern I have cho­sen for the end­pa­pers, though, dates from the 1820’s, and so is dis­tinct­ly out of place. But apart from those, vir­tu­al­ly all of the oth­er mate­ri­als in this book would have been avail­able to the medieval book­binder.

Those crav­ing a more step-by-step expla­na­tion should set time aside to view the longer videos, below, in which Den­nis shares such time-con­sum­ing, detail-ori­ent­ed tasks as trim­ming and tidy­ing the edges with a cab­i­net scraper and book­binder’s plough, sewing end­bands to sup­port and pro­tect the book’s head and the spine, and dec­o­rat­ing the leather cov­er with a hand-tooled flo­ral pat­tern embell­ished with gold foil high­lights. 

Rather than cut cor­ners, he lit­er­al­ly cuts cor­ners — the met­al clasp and cor­ner guards -  from a .8mm thick sheet of brass.

Only the final video is nar­rat­ed, so be sure to acti­vate closed cap­tion­ing / sub­ti­tles in the YouTube tool­bar to read his com­men­tary.

Mate­ri­als and tools used in this project:

Text Paper: Fab­ri­ano Accad­e­mia 120 gsm draw­ing paper, 65 x 50 cm, long grain

End­pa­pers: Four Keys Book Arts hand­made mar­bled paper, Fab­ri­ano Accad­e­mia 120 gsm draw­ing paper, red hand­made paper

Thread: Undyed Linen 25/3, unknown brand

Cords: Leather, unknown type, rough­ly 3 oz/ 1 mm

Wax: Nat­ur­al Beeswax

Glue: Mix of Acid-Free PVA and Methyl Cel­lu­lose, 3:2 ratio.

Paper Knife (made from an old kitchen knife)

Bone Fold­er (hand­made in-house)

Scrap book board, var­i­ous sizes/thickness

Press­ing Boards (1/2″ maple ply­wood, made in house)

Cast-Iron Book Press (Patrick Ritchie, Edin­burgh, cir­ca 1850)

Stain­less Steel rulers, var­i­ous sizes

Small Stan­ley Knife

Maple Lay­ing Press (hand­made in-house)

Small Car­pen­ter’s Square, unknown brand

Pen­cil (Black­wing)

Steel dividers, unknown brand

Lith­o­g­ra­phy Stone (cir­ca 1925)

Cot­ton Rag

Agate Bur­nish­er

Pierc­ing Cra­dle (hand­made in-house)

Awl

2″ nat­ur­al bris­tle brush, gener­ic

parch­ment release paper

blot­ting paper

Acetate bar­ri­er sheets, .01 gauge

Dahle Van­tage 12e Guil­lo­tine (found at a thrift store)

Scis­sors

Book­bind­ing Nee­dles

Sewing Frame (hand­made in-house)

Brass H‑Keys (hand­made in-house)

Linen sewing tapes, 12 mm

Pins

Watch a full playlist of Four Keys Book Arts’ Medieval Goth­ic Bind­ing videos here. See more of Den­nis book bind­ing projects on Four Keys Book Arts’ Insta­gram.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

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

Won­der­ful­ly Weird & Inge­nious Medieval Books

When Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Recy­cled & Used to Make the First Print­ed Books

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Has Been Dig­i­tized and Put Online

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Oldest Restaurant in the World: How Madrid’s Sobrino de Botín Has Kept the Oven Hot Since 1725

in Food & Drink, History | September 4th, 2023

“We lunched up-stairs at Bot­in’s,” writes Ernest Hem­ing­way near the end of The Sun Also Ris­es (1926). “It is one of the best restau­rants in the world. We had roast suck­ling pig and drank rio­ja alta.” You can do the very same thing today, a cen­tu­ry after the peri­od of that nov­el — and indeed, you also could’ve done it two cen­turies before the peri­od of that nov­el, for Bot­in’s was estab­lished in 1725, and now stands as the old­est restau­rant in con­tin­u­ous oper­a­tion. Found­ed as Casa Botín by a French­man named Jean Botin, it passed in 1753 into the hands of one of his nephews, who re-chris­tened it Sobri­no de Botín. What­ev­er the place has been called over this whole time, its oven has nev­er once gone cold.

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“It is our jew­el, our crown jew­el,” Botín’s deputy man­ag­er Javier Sanchéz Álvarez says of that oven in the Great Big Sto­ry video above. “It needs to keep hot at night and be ready to roast in the morn­ing.” What it has to roast is, of course, the restau­ran­t’s sig­na­ture cochinil­lo, or suck­ling pig, about which you can learn more from the Food Insid­er video just above.

“It’s exact­ly the same recipe and tra­di­tion,” says Sanchéz Álvarez. “Absolute­ly every­thing is done in the exact same way as in the old days,” down to the appli­ca­tion of the spices, but­ter, wine, and salt to the raw pork before it enters the his­toric oven bel­ly-up. “It’s very impor­tant that the skin of the cochinil­lo is very crunchy,” he adds. “If the skin isn’t crunchy, it’s not good.”

Need­less to say, Botín is poor­ly placed to win the favor of the world’s veg­e­tar­i­ans. But it does robust busi­ness nev­er­the­less, hav­ing pulled through the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic (with, at the very least, its oven still lit), and more recent­ly received a vis­it from super­star food vlog­ger Mark Wiens. Its endur­ing suc­cess sure­ly owes to its more-than-proven abil­i­ty to deliv­er on a sim­ple promise: “We will serve you a hearty suck­ling pick with some good pota­toes and a serv­ing of good Span­ish ham,” as Sanchéz Álvarez puts it. Work­ing at the restau­rant for more than 40 of its 298 years has made it “like home to me,” he says, employ­ing the com­mon Span­ish expres­sion of feel­ing como un pez en el agua — though, giv­en the nature of Botín’s menu, a more ter­res­tri­al metaphor is sure­ly in order.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed con­tent:

Free Doc­u­men­taries from Spain Let You Watch the Tra­di­tion­al Mak­ing of Wine, Cheese, Chur­ros, Hon­ey & More

The Incred­i­ble Engi­neer­ing of Anto­nio Gaudí’s Sagra­da Famil­ia, the World’s Old­est Con­struc­tion Project

The Span­ish Earth: Ernest Hemingway’s 1937 Film on The Span­ish Civ­il War

His­toric Spain in Time Lapse Film

A Vis­it to the World’s Old­est Hotel, Japan’s Nishiya­ma Onsen Keiunkan, Estab­lished in 705 AD

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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Jimmy Buffett (RIP) Performs His New Song “Margaritaville,” Live in 1978: The Birth of a Song That Later Became a Business Empire

in Business, Life, Music | September 2nd, 2023

Jim­my Buf­fett wrote “Mar­gar­i­taville” in 1977.  It end­ed up being his only song to reach the pop Top 10. But the song car­ried him for the next 45 years. When you think Mar­gar­i­taville, you think of an easy-breezy way of life. And that sim­ple idea infused the brand of Buf­fet­t’s Mar­gar­i­taville busi­ness empire. Between the song’s birth and the singer’s death this week­end, Buf­fett cre­at­ed a Mar­gar­i­taville busi­ness empire that includ­ed bars, restau­rants, casi­nos, beach resorts, retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties, cruis­es, pack­aged foods, appar­el, footwear, and beyond. This spring, Buf­fett improb­a­bly made Forbes’ list of bil­lion­aires. Above, you can watch a young Jim­my Buf­fet per­form “Mar­gar­i­taville” in 1978, right at the begin­ning of the song’s long jour­ney from hit, to brand, to com­mer­cial empire.

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 and BlueSky.

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!

 

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Tom Jones & Chuck Berry Perform Together, Singing “Roll Over Beethoven” & “Memphis” (1974)

in Music | September 1st, 2023

Anoth­er chap­ter from the Annals of Unlike­ly Per­for­mances…

Last week, we high­light­ed Chuck Berry per­form­ing with the Bee Gees on a 1973 episode of the Mid­night Spe­cial. It’s a pair­ing that does­n’t work on paper. But, on stage, it’s mag­ic. The same goes for when Berry sang with Tom Jones on a 1974 episode of the same show. It’s mag­ic once again.

If you’re a vet­er­an OC read­er, you know that Jones could sing with any­one. On his vari­ety show, This Is Tom Jones, he shared the stage with Janis Joplin, not to men­tion Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young, and Ste­vie Won­der. It worked. Just watch the expres­sion on Janis and Cros­by’s face.

Now 83, Tom Jones and his voice are still going strong. Below, you can watch him sing “Sam­son And Delilah” in 2021.

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 and BlueSky.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Chuck Berry & the Bee Gees Per­form Togeth­er in 1973: An Unex­pect­ed Video from The Mid­night Spe­cial Archive

Tom Jones Per­forms “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young–and Blows the Band & Audi­ence Away (1969)

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

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The Stoic Wisdom of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius: An Introduction in Six Short Videos

in History, Philosophy | August 31st, 2023

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Though it enjoys a par­tic­u­lar pop­u­lar­i­ty here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry, the rig­or­ous­ly equani­mous Sto­ic world­view comes to us through the work of three fig­ures from antiq­ui­ty: Epicte­tus, Seneca, and Mar­cus Aure­lius. Epicte­tus was born and raised a slave. Seneca, the son of rhetori­cian Seneca the Elder, became an advi­sor to Nero (a posi­tion that ulti­mate­ly forced him to take his own life). Mar­cus Aure­lius, the most exalt­ed of the three, actu­al­ly did the top job him­self, rul­ing the Roman Empire from 161 to 180 AD. He also left behind a text, the Med­i­ta­tions, that stands along­side Epicte­tus’ Enchirid­ion and Seneca’s many essays and let­ters as a pil­lar of the canon of Sto­icism.

It is from the Med­i­ta­tions that this series of six videos from Youtube chan­nel Einzel­gänger draws its wis­dom. Each of them intro­duces dif­fer­ent aspects of Mar­cus Aure­lius’ inter­pre­ta­tion of Sto­icism and applies them to our every­day life here in moder­ni­ty, pre­sent­ing strate­gies for stay­ing calm, not feel­ing harm, accept­ing what comes our way, and not being trou­bled by the actions of oth­ers.

Though the impor­tance of these aims can be illus­trat­ed any num­ber of ways, their achieve­ment depends on accept­ing the notion cen­tral to all Sto­ic thought: “the dichoto­my of con­trol,” which dic­tates that “some things are in our con­trol and oth­ers aren’t.” When life hurts, “it often means that we care about things we have no con­trol over, and by doing so, we let them con­trol us.”

All the Sto­ics under­stood this, but for Mar­cus Aure­lius, “being unper­turbed by things out­side of his con­trol allowed him to cope with the many respon­si­bil­i­ties and chal­lenges he faced as an emper­or, and to focus on the task he believed he was giv­en by the gods.” He knew that “it’s not the out­side world and the events that take place in it, our bod­ies includ­ed, that hurt us, but our thoughts, mem­o­ries, and fan­tasies regard­ing them.” To indulge those fan­tasies means to live in per­pet­u­al con­flict with real­i­ty, and thus in per­pet­u­al, and futile, griev­ance against it. The stronger our judg­ments about what hap­pens, “the more vul­ner­a­ble we become to the whims of For­tu­na, the unpre­dictable god­dess of luck, chance, and fate,” forces that even­tu­al­ly get the bet­ter of us all — even if we hap­pen to have the world’s might­i­est empire at our com­mand.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Sto­icism, the Ancient Greek Phi­los­o­phy That Lets You Lead a Hap­py, Ful­fill­ing Life

Every Roman Emper­or: A Video Time­line Mov­ing from Augus­tus to the Byzan­tine Empire’s Last Ruler, Con­stan­tine XI

How to Be a Sto­ic in Your Every­day Life: Phi­los­o­phy Pro­fes­sor Mas­si­mo Pigli­uc­ci Explains

Three Huge Vol­umes of Sto­ic Writ­ings by Seneca Now Free Online, Thanks to Tim Fer­riss

350 Ani­mat­ed Videos That Will Teach You Phi­los­o­phy, from Ancient to Post-Mod­ern

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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