via The Dai­ly Dish

Some­where dur­ing your day, you spot a great video, an enrich­ing audio lec­ture, or an excel­lent free ebook. And you think, that’s per­fect for Open Cul­ture. So you shoot us a quick note, and the next thing you know, your per­son­al dis­cov­ery is live on the site, being shared with thou­sands of like-mind­ed read­ers from across the globe — read­ers from Lon­don to New York, from Tehran to Ban­ga­lore, from Syd­ney to Sao Paulo and beyond. And our glob­al vil­lage is hap­py … and bet­ter off for it. Sounds good, right? We think so.

So here’s what we ask: When­ev­er you see a great piece of intel­li­gent media, please quick­ly send it our way. (We have a nice “Sug­gest a Link” but­ton on the upper right side of the site.) And, assum­ing it fits with Open Cul­ture’s gen­er­al mis­sion, we’ll share it with your fel­low read­ers, give you full cred­it, and thank you warm­ly. Look for­ward to your sug­ges­tions, and, if you haven’t already, please join us on Face­book and Twit­ter.

Yes­ter­day, Jon Gor­don (the host of Future Tense, a tech­nol­o­gy show aired by Amer­i­can Pub­lic Media) dis­cussed the major tech inno­va­tions of the decade. At the end of the show (around the 49th minute), a caller asked: “What’s the neat­est site, in terms of wow fac­tor, that makes you say holy cow this is so cool?” And, in answer, Jon respond­ed: Open Cul­ture. We’re not cut­ting edge. We’re under-read and under-appre­ci­at­ed. (All prob­a­bly true — any thoughts on how to fix that?). But we deliv­er the goods. Thanks very much Jon, and thanks for allow­ing me the rare self-pat on the back. You can lis­ten to the inter­view below or access it here. And, if you want, you can fol­low us on Twit­ter and Face­book and get updat­ed on all new bits of Open Cul­ture.

Want to see every post that we have writ­ten since 2006? Then look back through our Archive. We just cre­at­ed it and added it to the site, part­ly in response to a read­er request. You can per­ma­nent­ly find the Archive in the sec­ond col­umn, between “Essen­tials” and “Cat­e­gories.” Enjoy.

Voila, the 1899 pre­cur­sor to this amaz­ing 2009 bike stunt video orig­i­nal­ly found on the @courosa Twit­ter stream. And who can doubt that we’re mak­ing progress?

via Andrew Sul­li­van

When you’re read­ing The New York Times and stum­ble upon a word you don’t know, you can high­light it and the Times will give you the def­i­n­i­tion. Nat­u­ral­ly, the Times keeps track of the def­i­n­i­tions it pro­vides. So what are the most com­mon­ly looked up words? You can find the top ten below. (Get a longer list here.) So, smart read­ers, did you know all of them?

1. sui gener­is
2. solip­sis­tic
3. louche
4. lacon­ic
5. sat­ur­nine
6. ante­dilu­vian
7. epis­te­mo­log­i­cal
8. shib­bo­leths
9. penury
10. sump­tu­ary

via @aknopf

A nice cre­ative use of Legos. For $55, you can build The Guggen­heim Muse­um and Falling­wa­ter, two Frank Lloyd Wright cre­ations, with Legos. That’s right up there with Clas­sic Pho­tographs Remade Lego Style.

via Boing­Bo­ing