How Rasputin Inspired the “Fictitious Persons” Disclaimer Commonly Seen in Movies

in Film, History, Law | November 25th, 2024

“This is a work of fic­tion,” declares the dis­claimer we’ve all noticed dur­ing the end cred­its of movies. “Any sim­i­lar­i­ty to actu­al per­sons, liv­ing or dead, or actu­al events, is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal.” In most cas­es, this may seem so triv­ial that it hard­ly mer­its a men­tion, but the very same dis­claimer also rolls up after pic­tures very clear­ly intend­ed to rep­re­sent actu­al events or per­sons, liv­ing or dead. Most of us would write it all off as one more absur­di­ty cre­at­ed by the elab­o­rate pan­tomime of Amer­i­can legal cul­ture, but a clos­er look at its his­to­ry reveals a much more intrigu­ing ori­gin.

As told in the Ched­dar video above, the sto­ry begins with Rasputin and the Empress, a 1932 Hol­ly­wood movie about the tit­u­lar real-life mys­tic and his involve­ment with the court of Nicholas II, the last emper­or of Rus­sia. Hav­ing been killed in 1916, Rasputin him­self was­n’t around to get liti­gious about his vil­lain­ous por­tray­al (by no less a per­former than Lionel Bar­ry­more, inci­den­tal­ly, act­ing along­side his sib­lings John and Ethel as the prince and cza­ri­na). It was actu­al­ly one of Rasputin’s sur­viv­ing killers, an exiled aris­to­crat named Felix Yusupov, who sued MGM, accus­ing them of defam­ing his wife, Princess Iri­na Yusupov, in the form of the char­ac­ter Princess Natasha.

The film casts Princess Natasha as a sup­port­er of Rasputin, writes Slate’s Dun­can Fyfe, “but the mys­tic, wary of her hus­band, hyp­no­tizes and rapes her, ren­der­ing Natasha — by his log­ic, with which she agrees — unfit to be a wife. Yusupov con­tend­ed that as view­ers would equate Chegodi­eff with Yusupov, so would they link Natasha with Iri­na,” though in real­i­ty Iri­na and Rasputin nev­er even met. In an Eng­lish court, “the jury found in her favor, award­ing her £25,000, or about $125,000. MGM had to take the film out of cir­cu­la­tion for decades and purge the offend­ing scene for all time,” though a small piece of it remains in Rasputin and the Empress’ orig­i­nal trail­er.

Things might have gone in MGM’s favor had the film not includ­ed a title card announc­ing that “a few of the char­ac­ters are still alive — the rest met death by vio­lence.” The stu­dio was advised that they’d have done well to declare the exact oppo­site, a prac­tice soon imple­ment­ed across Hol­ly­wood. It did­n’t take long for the movies to start hav­ing fun with it, intro­duc­ing jokey vari­a­tions on the soon-famil­iar boil­er­plate. Less than a decade after Rasputin and the Empress, one non­sen­si­cal musi­cal com­e­dy pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) opened with the dis­claimer that “any sim­i­lar­i­ty between HELLZAPOPPIN’ and a motion pic­ture is pure­ly coin­ci­den­tal” — a tra­di­tion more recent­ly upheld by South Park.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Romanovs’ Last Ball Brought to Life in Col­or Pho­tographs (1903)

Watch an 8‑Part Film Adap­ta­tion of Tolstoy’s Anna Karen­i­na Free Online

Watch the Huge­ly Ambi­tious Sovi­et Film Adap­ta­tion of War and Peace Free Online (1966–67)

An Intro­duc­tion to Ivan Ilyin, the Philoso­pher Behind the Author­i­tar­i­an­ism of Putin’s Rus­sia & West­ern Far Right Move­ments

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 Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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14 Self-Portraits by Pablo Picasso Show the Evolution of His Style: See Self-Portraits Moving from Ages 15 to 90

in Art | November 25th, 2024


15 years old (1896)

It’s pos­si­ble to look at Pablo Picas­so’s many for­mal exper­i­ments and peri­od­ic shifts of style as a kind of self-por­trai­ture, an exer­cise in shift­ing con­scious­ness and try­ing on of new aes­thet­ic iden­ti­ties. The Span­ish mod­ernist made a career of sweep­ing dra­mat­ic ges­tures, announce­ments to the world that he was going to be a dif­fer­ent kind of artist now, and every­one had bet­ter catch up. Even in his most abstract peri­ods, his work radi­at­ed with an emo­tion­al ener­gy as out­sized as the man him­self.


18 years old (1900)

Picasso’s ani­mus and vital­i­ty even per­me­ate his least invit­ing paint­ing, Les Demoi­selles d’Avignon, a broth­el scene with five geo­met­ri­cal women, two with African and Iber­ian masks; “a paint­ing of nudes in which there is scarce­ly a curve to be seen,” writes The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones, “elbows sharp as knives, hips and waists geo­met­ri­cal sil­hou­ettes, tri­an­gle breasts.” The 1907 self-por­trait of Picas­so at age 25 (below) comes from this peri­od, when the artist began his rad­i­cal Cubist break with every­thing that had gone before.


20 years old (1901)

An old­er ver­sion Les Demoi­selles d’Avignon con­tained a male fig­ure, “a stand-in for the painter him­self.” Even when he did not appear, at least not in a final ver­sion, in his own work, Picas­so saw him­self there: his moods, his height­ened per­cep­tions of real­i­ty as he imag­ined it.

The somber Blue Peri­od paint­ings, with their mood­i­ness and “themes of pover­ty, lone­li­ness, and despair,” cor­re­spond with his mourn­ing over the sui­cide of a friend, Cata­lan artist Car­los Casage­mas. The Picas­so in the 1901 por­trait fur­ther up looks gaunt, bro­ken, decades old­er than his 20 years. In the 1917 draw­ing fur­ther down, how­ev­er, the artist at 35 looks out at us with a haughty, smooth-cheeked youth­ful gaze.


24 years old (1906)

Dur­ing this time, as World War I end­ed, he had begun to design sets for Diaghilev’s famed Bal­lets Russ­es, where he met his wife, bal­le­ri­na Olga Khokhlo­va, and moved in com­fort­able cir­cles, though he was him­self des­per­ate for mon­ey. Each por­trait deliv­ers us a dif­fer­ent Picas­so, as he sheds one mask and puts on anoth­er. Trac­ing his cre­ative evo­lu­tion through his por­trai­ture means nev­er mov­ing in a straight line. But we do see his demeanor soft­en and round pro­gres­sive­ly over time in his por­traits. He seems to grow younger as he ages.


25 years old (1907)

The severe youth of 15, fur­ther up, brood­ing, world-weary, and already an accom­plished draughts­man and painter; the grim­ly seri­ous roman­tic at 18, above—these Picas­sos give way to the wide-eyed matu­ri­ty of the artist at 56 in 1938, at 83, 89, and 90, in 1972, the year before his death. That year he pro­duced an intrigu­ing series of eclec­tic self-por­traits unlike any­thing he had done before. See these and many oth­ers through­out his life below.


35 years old (1917)


56 years old (1938)


83 years old (1965)


85 years old (1966)


89 years old (1971)


90 years old (June 28, 1972)


90 years old (June 30, 1972)


90 years old (July 2, 1972)


90 years old (July 3, 1972)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thou­sands of Pablo Picasso’s Works Now Avail­able in a New Dig­i­tal Archive

Pablo Picasso’s Mas­ter­ful Child­hood Paint­ings: Pre­co­cious Works Paint­ed Between the Ages of 8 and 15

What Makes Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca a Great Paint­ing?: Explore the Anti-Fas­cist Mur­al That Became a World­wide Anti-War Sym­bol

15-Year-Old Picas­so Paints His First Mas­ter­piece, “The First Com­mu­nion”

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

 

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How the Ancient Romans Traveled Without Maps

in History, Maps, Travel | November 22nd, 2024

In an age when many of us could hard­ly make our way to an unfa­mil­iar gro­cery store with­out rely­ing on a GPS nav­i­ga­tion sys­tem, we might well won­der how the Romans could estab­lish and sus­tain their mighty empire with­out so much as a prop­er map. That’s the ques­tion addressed by the His­to­ria Mil­i­tum video above, “How Did Ancient Peo­ple Trav­el With­out Maps?” Or more to the point, how did they trav­el with­out scaled maps — that is, ones “in which the map’s dis­tances were pro­por­tion­al to their actu­al size in the real world,” like almost all those we con­sult on our screens today?

The sur­viv­ing maps from the ancient Roman world tend not to take great pains adher­ing to true geog­ra­phy. Yet as the Roman Empire expand­ed, lay­ing roads across three con­ti­nents, more and more Romans engaged in long-dis­tance trav­el, and for the most part seem to have arrived at their intend­ed des­ti­na­tions.

To do so, they used not maps per se but “itin­er­aries,” which tex­tu­al­ly list­ed towns and cities along the way and the dis­tance between them. By the fourth cen­tu­ry, “all main Roman roads along with 225 stop­ping sta­tions were com­piled in a doc­u­ment called the Itin­er­ar­i­um Antoni­ni, the Itin­er­ary of Emper­or Anto­nius Pius.”

This high­ly prac­ti­cal doc­u­ment includes most­ly roads that “passed through large cities, which pro­vid­ed bet­ter facil­i­ties for hous­ing, shop­ping, bathing, and oth­er trav­el­er needs.” With this infor­ma­tion, “a trav­el­er could copy the spe­cif­ic dis­tances and sta­tions they need­ed to reach their des­ti­na­tion.” Still today, some sev­en­teen cen­turies lat­er, “most peo­ple would­n’t use a paper scaled map for trav­el, but would instead break their jour­ney down into a list of sub­way sta­tions, bus stops, and inter­sec­tions.” And if you were to attempt to dri­ve across Europe, mak­ing a mod­ern-day Roman Empire road trip, you’d almost cer­tain­ly rely on the dis­tances and points of inter­est pro­vid­ed by the syn­the­sized voice read­ing aloud from the vast Itin­er­ar­i­um Antoni­ni of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Map Show­ing How the Ancient Romans Envi­sioned the World in 40 AD

The Largest Ear­ly Map of the World Gets Assem­bled for the First Time: See the Huge, Detailed & Fan­tas­ti­cal World Map from 1587

Ancient Maps that Changed the World: See World Maps from Ancient Greece, Baby­lon, Rome, and the Islam­ic World

Down­load 131,000 His­toric Maps from the Huge David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

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 Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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How to Potty Train Your Cat: A Handy Manual by Jazz Musician Charles Mingus

in Life, Music | November 21st, 2024

Charles Min­gus, the inno­v­a­tive jazz musi­cian, was known for hav­ing a bad tem­per. He once got so irri­tat­ed with a heck­ler that he end­ed up trash­ing his $20,000 bass. Anoth­er time, when a pianist did­n’t get things right, Min­gus reached right inside the piano and ripped the strings out with his bare hands — a true sto­ry men­tioned in the BBC doc­u­men­tary, 1959: The Year that Changed Jazz.

But Min­gus had a soft­er, nur­tur­ing side too. If you head to the offi­cial Charles Min­gus web­site, you will find a copy of the Charles Min­gus Cat Toi­let Train­ing Pro­gram, a lov­ing lit­tle guide cre­at­ed for cat own­ers every­where. The trick to pot­ty train­ing your cat comes down to edg­ing the lit­ter box clos­er to the bath­room, even­tu­al­ly plac­ing the box on the pot­ty, and then cut­ting a hole in the cen­ter of the box. Expect to spend about three weeks mak­ing the tran­si­tion. And who knows, Min­gus says, your cat may even learn to flush. The full guide appears here. Or read it below:

1

First, you must train your cat to use a home-made card­board lit­ter box, if you have not already done so. (If your box does not have a one-piece bot­tom, add a card­board that fits inside, so you have a false bot­tom that is smooth and strong. This way the box will not become sog­gy and fall out at the bot­tom. The gro­cery store will have extra flat card­boards which you can cut down to fit exact­ly inside your box.)

Be sure to use torn up news­pa­per, not kit­ty lit­ter. Stop using kit­ty lit­ter. (When the time comes you can­not put sand in a toi­let.)

Once your cat is trained to use a card­board box, start mov­ing the box around the room, towards the bath­room. If the box is in a cor­ner, move it a few feet from the cor­ner, but not very notice­ably. If you move it too far, he may go to the bath­room in the orig­i­nal cor­ner. Do it grad­u­al­ly. You’ve got to get him think­ing. Then he will grad­u­al­ly fol­low the box as you move it to the bath­room. (Impor­tant: if you already have it there, move it out of the bath­room, around, and then back. He has to learn to fol­low it. If it is too close to the toi­let, to begin with, he will not fol­low it up onto the toi­let seat when you move it there.) A cat will look for his box. He smells it.

2

Now, as you move the box, also start cut­ting the brim of the box down, so the sides get low­er. Do this grad­u­al­ly.

Final­ly, you reach the bath­room and, even­tu­al­ly, the toi­let itself. Then, one day, pre­pare to put the box on top of the toi­let. At each cor­ner of the box, cut a lit­tle slash. You can run string around the box, through these slash­es, and tie the box down to the toi­let so it will not fall off. Your cat will see it there and jump up to the box, which is now sit­ting on top of the toi­let (with the sides cut down to only an inch or so.)

Don’t bug the cat now, don’t rush him, because you might throw him off. Just let him relax and go there for awhile-maybe a week or two. Mean­while, put less and less news­pa­per inside the box.

3

One day, cut a small hole in the very cen­ter of his box, less than an apple-about the size of a plum-and leave some paper in the box around the hole. Right away he will start aim­ing for the hole and pos­si­bly even try to make it big­ger. Leave the paper for awhile to absorb the waste. When he jumps up he will not be afraid of the hole because he expects it. At this point you will real­ize that you have won. The most dif­fi­cult part is over.

From now on, it is just a mat­ter of time. In fact, once when I was clean­ing the box and had removed it from the toi­let, my cat jumped up any­way and almost fell in. To avoid this, have a tem­po­rary flat card­board ready with a lit­tle hole, and slide it under the toi­let lid so he can use it while you are clean­ing, in case he wants to come and go, and so he will not fall in and be scared off com­plete­ly. You might add some news­pa­per up there too, while you are clean­ing, in case your cat is not as smart as Nightlife was.

4

Now cut the box down com­plete­ly until there is no brim left. Put the flat card­board, which is left, under the lid of the toi­let seat, and pray. Leave a lit­tle news­pa­per, still. He will rake it into the hole any­way, after he goes to the bath­room. Even­tu­al­ly, you can sim­ply get rid of the card­board alto­geth­er. You will see when he has got his bal­ance prop­er­ly.

Don’t be sur­prised if you hear the toi­let flush in the mid­dle of the night. A cat can learn how to do it, spurred on by his instinct to cov­er up. His main thing is to cov­er up. If he hits the flush knob acci­den­tal­ly and sees that it cleans the bowl inside, he may remem­ber and do it inten­tion­al­ly.

Also, be sure to turn the toi­let paper roll around so that it won’t roll down eas­i­ly if the cat paws it. The cat is apt to roll it into the toi­let, again with the inten­tion of cov­er­ing up- the way he would if there were still kit­ty lit­ter.

It took me about three or four weeks to toi­let train my cat, Nightlife. Most of the time is spent mov­ing the box very grad­u­al­ly to the bath­room. Do it very slow­ly and don’t con­fuse him. And, remem­ber, once the box is on the toi­let, leave it a week or even two. The main thing to remem­ber is not to rush or con­fuse him.

Bonus: Below you can hear The Wire’s Reg E. Cathey read “The Charles Min­gus CAT-alog for Toi­let Train­ing Your Cat.”

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 

Charles Min­gus and His Evic­tion From His New York City Loft, Cap­tured in Mov­ing 1968 Film

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

What Peo­ple Named Their Cats in the Mid­dle Ages: Gyb, Mite, Méone, Pan­gur Bán & More

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

A 110-Year-Old Book Illus­trat­ed with Pho­tos of Kit­tens & Cats Taught Kids How to Read

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

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Google Creates a Career Certificate That Prepares Students for Cybersecurity Jobs in 6 Months

in Google, Technology | November 21st, 2024

In 2023, Google launched sev­er­al online cer­tifi­cate pro­grams designed to help stu­dents land an entry-lev­el job, with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly hav­ing a col­lege degree. This includes a cer­tifi­cate pro­gram focused on Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty, a field that stands poised to grow as com­pa­nies become more dig­i­tal and face mount­ing cyber­at­tacks.

Offered on Cours­er­a’s edu­ca­tion­al plat­form, the new Google Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate fea­tures eight online cours­es, which will col­lec­tive­ly help stu­dents learn how to:

  • Under­stand the impor­tance of cyber­se­cu­ri­ty prac­tices and their impact for orga­ni­za­tions.
  • Iden­ti­fy com­mon risks, threats, and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, as well as tech­niques to mit­i­gate them.
  • Pro­tect net­works, devices, peo­ple, and data from unau­tho­rized access and cyber­at­tacks using Secu­ri­ty Infor­ma­tion and Event Man­age­ment (SIEM) tools.
  • Gain hands-on expe­ri­ence with Python, Lin­ux, and SQL.

The Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate also now includes six new videos that explain how to use AI in cyber­se­cu­ri­ty. The videos cov­er every­thing from using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to help iden­ti­fy bugs and sys­tem vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, to refin­ing code and pri­or­i­tiz­ing alerts with AI.

Stu­dents can take indi­vid­ual cours­es in these pro­fes­sion­al cer­tifi­cate pro­grams for free. (Above, you can watch a video from the first course in the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty cer­tifi­cate pro­gram, enti­tled “Foun­da­tions of Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty.”) How­ev­er, if you would like to receive a cer­tifi­cate, Cours­era will charge $49 per month (after an ini­tial 7‑day free tri­al peri­od). That means that the Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate, designed to be com­plet­ed in 6 months, will cost rough­ly $300 in total.

Once stu­dents com­plete the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty cer­tifi­cate, they can add the cre­den­tial to their LinkedIn pro­file, resume, or CV. As a perk, stu­dents in the U.S. can also con­nect with 150+ employ­ers (e.g., Amer­i­can Express, Col­gate-Pal­mo­live, T‑Mobile, Wal­mart, and Google) who have pledged to con­sid­er cer­tifi­cate hold­ers for open posi­tions. Accord­ing to Cours­era, this cer­tifi­cate can pre­pare stu­dents to become an entry-lev­el “cyber­se­cu­ri­ty ana­lyst and SOC (secu­ri­ty oper­a­tions cen­ter) ana­lyst.”

You can start a 7‑day free tri­al of the Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty Pro­fes­sion­al Cer­tifi­cate here. Alter­na­tive­ly, if you sign up for Cours­era Plus, whose price has been reduced by 40% until Decem­ber 2, 2024, you can enroll in the cyber­se­cu­ri­ty cer­tifi­cate pro­gram at no charge. Find out more here.

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

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An Introduction to the Astonishing Book of Kells, the Iconic Illuminated Manuscript

in Books, History | November 21st, 2024

What­ev­er set of reli­gious or cul­tur­al tra­di­tions you come from, you’ve prob­a­bly seen a Celtic cross before. Unlike a con­ven­tion­al cross, it has a cir­cu­lar ring, or “nim­bus,” where its arms and stem inter­sect. The sole addi­tion of that ele­ment gives it a high­ly dis­tinc­tive look, and indeed makes it one of the rep­re­sen­ta­tive exam­ples of Insu­lar iconog­ra­phy — that is, iconog­ra­phy cre­at­ed with­in Great Britain and Ire­land in the time after the Roman Empire. Per­haps the most artis­ti­cal­ly impres­sive Celtic cross in exis­tence is found on one of the pages of the ninth-cen­tu­ry Book of Kells (view online here), which itself stands as the most cel­e­brat­ed of all Insu­lar illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts.

On what’s called the “car­pet page” of the Book of Kells, explains Smarthis­to­ry’s Steven Zuck­er in the video above, “we see a cross so elab­o­rate that it almost ceas­es to be a cross.” It has “two cross­beams, and these del­i­cate cir­cles with intri­cate inter­lac­ing in each of them, but the cir­cles are so large that they almost over­whelm the cross itself.”

That’s hard­ly the only image of note in the book, which con­tains the four Gospels of the New Tes­ta­ment, among oth­er texts, as well as numer­ous and extrav­a­gant illus­tra­tions, all of them exe­cut­ed painstak­ing­ly by hand on its vel­lum pages back when it was cre­at­ed, cir­ca 800, in the scrip­to­ri­um of a medieval monastery. These illus­tra­tions include, as Zuck­er’s col­league Lau­ren Kil­roy puts it, “the ear­li­est rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Vir­gin and Child in a man­u­script in West­ern Europe.”

This is hard­ly a vol­ume one approach­es light­ly — espe­cial­ly if one approach­es it in per­son, as Zuck­er and Kil­roy did on their vis­it to Trin­i­ty Col­lege Dublin. “When we were stand­ing in front of the book,” says Kil­roy, they “noticed how many folios formed the book itself” (which would have required the skin of more than 100 young calves). Com­ing to grips with the sheer quan­ti­ty of mate­r­i­al in the Book of Kells is one thing, but under­stand­ing how to inter­pret it is anoth­er still. Hence the free online course pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, which can help you more ful­ly appre­ci­ate the book in its dig­i­tized form avail­able online. Even if the cross, Celtic or oth­er­wise, stirs no par­tic­u­lar reli­gious feel­ings with­in you, the Book of Kells has much to say about the civ­i­liza­tion that pro­duced it: a civ­i­liza­tion that, insu­lar though it may once have been, would go on to change the shape of the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece the Book of Kells Is Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

Take a Free Online Course on the Great Medieval Man­u­script the Book of Kells

Dis­cov­er the Medieval Illu­mi­nat­ed Man­u­script Les Très Rich­es Heures du Duc de Berry, “the World’s Most Beau­ti­ful Cal­en­dar” (1416)

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

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

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

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 Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Discover the CIA’s Simple Sabotage Field Manual: A Timeless Guide to Subverting Any Organization with “Purposeful Stupidity” (1944)

in History, Politics | November 20th, 2024

I’ve always admired peo­ple who can suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gate what I refer to as “Kafka’s Cas­tle,” a term of dread for the many gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate agen­cies that have an inor­di­nate amount of pow­er over our per­ma­nent records, and that seem as inscrutable and chill­ing­ly absurd as the labyrinth the char­ac­ter K nav­i­gates in Kafka’s last alle­gor­i­cal nov­el. Even if you haven’t read The Cas­tle, if you work for such an entity—or like all of us have reg­u­lar deal­ings with the IRS, the health­care and bank­ing sys­tem, etc.—you’re well aware of the dev­il­ish incom­pe­tence that mas­quer­ades as due dili­gence and ties us all in knots. Why do mul­ti-mil­lion and bil­lion dol­lar agen­cies seem unable, or unwill­ing, to accom­plish the sim­plest of tasks? Why do so many of us spend our lives in the real-life bureau­crat­ic night­mares sat­i­rized in The Office and Office Space?

One answer comes via Lau­rence J. Peter’s 1969 satire The Peter Prin­ci­ple—which offers the the­o­ry that man­agers and exec­u­tives get pro­mot­ed to the lev­el of their incompetence—then, David Brent-like, go on to ruin their respec­tive depart­ments. The Har­vard Busi­ness Review summed up dis­turb­ing recent research con­firm­ing and sup­ple­ment­ing Peter’s insights into the nar­cis­sism, over­con­fi­dence, or actu­al sociopa­thy of many a gov­ern­ment and busi­ness leader. But in addi­tion to human fail­ings, there’s anoth­er pos­si­ble rea­son for bureau­crat­ic dis­or­der; the con­spir­a­cy-mind­ed among us may be for­giv­en for assum­ing that in many cas­es, insti­tu­tion­al incom­pe­tence is the result of delib­er­ate sab­o­tage from both above and below. The ridicu­lous inner work­ings of most orga­ni­za­tions cer­tain­ly make a lot more sense when viewed in the light of one set of instruc­tions for “pur­pose­ful stu­pid­i­ty,” name­ly the once top-secret Sim­ple Sab­o­tage Field Man­u­al, writ­ten in 1944 by the CIA’s pre­cur­sor, the Office of Strate­gic Ser­vices (OSS).

Now declas­si­fied and freely avail­able on the CIA web­site, the man­u­al that the agency describes as “sur­pris­ing­ly rel­e­vant” was once dis­trib­uted to OSS offi­cers abroad to assist them in train­ing “cit­i­zen-sabo­teurs” in occu­pied coun­tries like Nor­way and France. Such peo­ple, writes Rebec­ca Onion at Slate, “might already be sab­o­tag­ing mate­ri­als, machin­ery, or oper­a­tions of their own ini­tia­tive,” but may have lacked the devi­ous tal­ent for sow­ing chaos that only an intel­li­gence agency can prop­er­ly mas­ter. Gen­uine lazi­ness, arro­gance, and mind­less­ness may sure­ly be endem­ic. But the Field Man­u­al asserts that “pur­pose­ful stu­pid­i­ty is con­trary to human nature” and requires a par­tic­u­lar set of skills. The cit­i­zen-sabo­teur “fre­quent­ly needs pres­sure, stim­u­la­tion or assur­ance, and infor­ma­tion and sug­ges­tions regard­ing fea­si­ble meth­ods of sim­ple sab­o­tage.”

You can read the full doc­u­ment here. Or find an easy-to-read ver­sion on Project Guten­berg here. To get a sense of just how “timeless”—according to the CIA itself—such instruc­tions remain, see the abridged list below, cour­tesy of Busi­ness Insid­er. You will laugh rue­ful­ly, then maybe shud­der a lit­tle as you rec­og­nize how much your own work­place, and many oth­ers, resem­ble the kind of dys­func­tion­al mess the OSS metic­u­lous­ly planned dur­ing World War II.

Orga­ni­za­tions and Con­fer­ences

  • Insist on doing every­thing through “chan­nels.” Nev­er per­mit short-cuts to be tak­en in order to expe­dite deci­sions.
  • Make “speech­es.” Talk as fre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble and at great length. Illus­trate your “points” by long anec­dotes and accounts of per­son­al expe­ri­ences.
  • When pos­si­ble, refer all mat­ters to com­mit­tees, for “fur­ther study and con­sid­er­a­tion.” Attempt to make the com­mit­tee as large as pos­si­ble — nev­er less than five.
  • Bring up irrel­e­vant issues as fre­quent­ly as pos­si­ble.
  • Hag­gle over pre­cise word­ings of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, min­utes, res­o­lu­tions.
  • Refer back to mat­ters decid­ed upon at the last meet­ing and attempt to re-open the ques­tion of the advis­abil­i­ty of that deci­sion.
  • Advo­cate “cau­tion.” Be “rea­son­able” and urge your fel­low-con­fer­ees to be “rea­son­able” and avoid haste which might result in embar­rass­ments or dif­fi­cul­ties lat­er on.

Man­agers

  • In mak­ing work assign­ments, always sign out the unim­por­tant jobs first. See that impor­tant jobs are assigned to inef­fi­cient work­ers.
  • Insist on per­fect work in rel­a­tive­ly unim­por­tant prod­ucts; send back for refin­ish­ing those which have the least flaw.
  • To low­er morale and with it, pro­duc­tion, be pleas­ant to inef­fi­cient work­ers; give them unde­served pro­mo­tions.
  • Hold con­fer­ences when there is more crit­i­cal work to be done.
  • Mul­ti­ply the pro­ce­dures and clear­ances involved in issu­ing instruc­tions, pay checks, and so on. See that three peo­ple have to approve every­thing where one would do.

Employ­ees

  • Work slow­ly
  • Work slow­ly.
  • Con­trive as many inter­rup­tions to your work as you can.
  • Do your work poor­ly and blame it on bad tools, machin­ery, or equip­ment. Com­plain that these things are pre­vent­ing you from doing your job right.
  • Nev­er pass on your skill and expe­ri­ence to a new or less skill­ful work­er.

Note: This post orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site in Decem­ber 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The CIA’s Style Man­u­al & Writer’s Guide: 185 Pages of Tips for Writ­ing Like a Spook

How the CIA Fund­ed & Sup­port­ed Lit­er­ary Mag­a­zines World­wide While Wag­ing Cul­tur­al War Against Com­mu­nism

The C.I.A.’s “Bes­tiary of Intel­li­gence Writ­ing” Sat­i­rizes Spook Jar­gon with Mau­rice Sendak-Style Draw­ings

How the CIA Secret­ly Used Jack­son Pol­lock & Oth­er Abstract Expres­sion­ists to Fight the Cold War

When the CIA Stud­ied Psy­chic Tech­niques to Alter Human Con­scious­ness & Unlock Time Trav­el: Dis­cov­er “The Gate­way Process”

 

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

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Explore the World’s First 3D Replica of St. Peter’s Basilica, Made with AI

in Architecture, History, Technology | November 20th, 2024

In the trail­er below for the world’s first 3D repli­ca of St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, Yves Ubel­mann speaks of using “AI for Good,” which isn’t just an ide­al, but also the name of a lab at Microsoft. Microsoft and Ubel­man’s dig­i­tal-preser­va­tion com­pa­ny Iconem were two of the par­tic­i­pants in that ambi­tious project, along with the Vat­i­can itself. Pope Fran­cis, writes AP’s Nicole Win­field, “has called for the eth­i­cal use of AI and used his annu­al World Mes­sage of Peace this year to urge an inter­na­tion­al treaty to reg­u­late it, argu­ing that tech­nol­o­gy lack­ing human val­ues of com­pas­sion, mer­cy, moral­i­ty and for­give­ness were too great.”

What bet­ter show of good faith in the tech­nol­o­gy than to allow AI to be used to bring the cen­ter of the faith Pope Fran­cis rep­re­sents to the world? In the near­ly 400 years since its com­ple­tion, of course, the world has always come to the cur­rent St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, and will con­tin­ue to do so.

The 3D-repli­ca project “has been launched ahead of the Vatican’s 2025 Jubilee, a holy year in which more than 30 mil­lion pil­grims are expect­ed to pass through the basilica’s Holy Door, on top of the 50,000 who vis­it on a nor­mal day,” Win­field writes. But no mat­ter where in the world you hap­pen to be, you can vir­tu­al­ly enter St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca right now, and spend as long as you like, admir­ing the basil­i­ca itself, the cupo­la, Bernini’s St. Peter’s Bal­dachin, and Michelan­gelo’s Pietà, among oth­er fea­tures.

How­ev­er impor­tant (and atten­tion-draw­ing) arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence was as a tool in the cre­ation of this ultra-pre­cise “dig­i­tal twin” of St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, the four-week process of cap­tur­ing every detail of the real struc­ture that could be cap­tured also neces­si­tat­ed the use of drones, lasers, and cam­eras tak­ing more than 400,000 dig­i­tal pho­tos. The “AI for Good Lab con­tributed advanced tools that refined the dig­i­tal twin with mil­lime­ter-lev­el accu­ra­cy, and used AI to help detect and map struc­tur­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties like cracks and miss­ing mosa­ic tiles,” says Microsoft­’s site. “The Vat­i­can over­saw the col­lab­o­ra­tion, ensur­ing the preser­va­tion of the Basil­i­ca as a cul­tur­al, spir­i­tu­al, and his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant site for years to come.”

It makes a cer­tain sense to apply the high­est tech­nol­o­gy of our time for the ben­e­fit of a build­ing known as the great­est archi­tec­tur­al mar­vel of its time. But in order to bet­ter appre­ci­ate the kind of knowl­edge that will be revealed by the 22 petabytes of infor­ma­tion that went into the dig­i­tal mod­el (which offers its own guid­ed tour) we’d do well to immerse our­selves first in what was already known about St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca. For a brief intro­duc­tion to the con­cep­tion and evo­lu­tion of this grand church as it stands today, we could do much worse than archi­tec­ture-and-his­to­ry YouTu­ber Manuel Bravo’s video “St Peter’s Basil­i­ca Explained.” If you watch it, don’t be sur­prised if you find your­self tempt­ed to engage in pro­longed explo­ration of the mod­el — or indeed, to book a vis­it to the real thing. Enter the dig­i­tal St. Peter’s here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Take a 3D Vir­tu­al Tour of the Sis­tine Chapel, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca and Oth­er Art-Adorned Vat­i­can Spaces

High-Res­o­lu­tion Walk­ing Tours of Italy’s Most His­toric Places: The Colos­se­um, Pom­peii, St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca & More

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

The Vat­i­can Library Goes Online and Dig­i­tizes Tens of Thou­sands of Man­u­scripts, Books, Coins, and More

Rome Reborn: A New 3D Vir­tu­al Mod­el Lets You Fly Over the Great Mon­u­ments of Ancient Rome

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 Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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