A quick heads up for film buffs. For the next 12 hours — or until 2pm ET on Fri­day Octo­ber 10 — you can get 50% off Blu-rays and DVDs in the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion if you use the pro­mo code SPIKE.

Cri­te­ri­on spe­cial­izes in sell­ing “impor­tant clas­sic and con­tem­po­rary films” to film afi­ciona­dos. If you like mas­ter­pieces by David Lynch, Andrei Tarkovsky, John Cas­savetes, Truf­faut, Felli­ni and the rest, you won’t want to miss this rare sale.

If you pre­fer “Free” to “50% off,” I’m sure you can find some­thing that piques your inter­est in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Sign up for our dai­ly email and, once a day, we’ll bun­dle all of our dai­ly posts and drop them in your inbox, in an easy-to-read for­mat. You don’t have to come to us; we’ll come to you!

MOOCs on the beach? Why not. New MOOCs are get­ting start­ed, even dur­ing the dog days of sum­mer. You can find 45 cours­es get­ting going this month. They’re all cap­tured on our com­plete and fre­quent­ly-updat­ed list of Mas­sive Open Online Cours­es. As for me, I think I will be final­ly check­ing out this Uni­ver­si­ty of Rochester course on The Music of the Bea­t­les. It starts on July 6 and runs 6 weeks.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Audio: The Bea­t­les Play Their Final Con­cert at Can­dle­stick Park, 1966

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

MOOCs from Great Uni­ver­si­ties (Many With Cer­tifi­cates)

Take Free Online Cours­es at Hog­warts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

A cou­ple of years ago, I was asked to name the first five sites I vis­it each day. With­out pause, I rat­tled off Metafil­ter, a crowd­sourced blog where intel­li­gent con­trib­u­tors high­light inter­est­ing things and answer each oth­er’s ques­tions. Metafil­ter has been around since 1999, and it’s been the source of count­less posts on Open Cul­ture over the years. Do a search for “via Metafil­ter” on our site, and you will see what I mean.

Two days ago, Metafil­ter’s founder Matt Haugh­ey (see him talk about the his­to­ry of Metafil­ter above) stunned read­ers when he pub­lished a post about his site’s finan­cial sit­u­a­tion. His post begins: “Today I need to share some unfor­tu­nate news: because of seri­ous finan­cial down­turn, MetaFil­ter will be los­ing three of its mod­er­a­tors to lay­offs at the end of this month.” And it ends: “We may have to make hard choic­es in the future as they come up, but the goal will always be towards hav­ing the best place online to share neat stuff, to ask and answer ques­tions, and to have the kinds of thought­ful con­ver­sa­tions that make this place what it is.”

Encour­aged by its read­ers, Metafil­ter launched a fundrais­ing cam­paign today. Through Pay­pal you can sub­scribe to Metafil­ter for $1, $2, $3, $5, $10, or $20 per month or you can make a one-time con­tri­bu­tion. If you’re a fan of Metafil­ter, def­i­nite­ly con­sid­er giv­ing them your sup­port. If you’re not yet a fan, then spend some time at Metafil­ter and con­sid­er giv­ing a hand once you’re hooked.

Read­ers often ask us, “What’s the best way to make sure that I don’t miss any of your posts?” The answer, right now, is pret­ty clear: Sign up for our dai­ly email. Each day, you will receive an email that tidi­ly wraps up every­thing we’ve fea­tured on the site over a 24 hour peri­od. Faith­ful­ly it will appear in your inbox each day. The oth­er great option is our trusty RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/OpenCulture

You can always fol­low us on Twit­ter (or Google Plus), where we high­light our dai­ly posts, plus many oth­er cul­tur­al curiosi­ties found on the web. The only down­side is that a riv­er of mate­r­i­al flows through Twit­ter, so you’ll have to keep a pret­ty close eye on things to spot our posts.

Final­ly there’s Face­book, but you can almost for­get about that. Although near­ly a quar­ter mil­lion peo­ple have liked our Face­book page, Face­book has his­tor­i­cal­ly shown our posts to a frac­tion of that audi­ence (some­thing they’re can­did about). And because of a new algo­rithm change, the frac­tion is get­ting sub­stan­tial­ly small­er. The unfor­tu­nate bot­tom line is that you can’t rely on Face­book to give you what you want. But you can rely on our dai­ly email and our feed. They’re 100% guar­an­teed. Now back to our reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled pro­gram.

A quick heads up: Last week we told you all about how Thelo­nious Monk flubbed his first con­cert in Paris in 1954 and then made a tri­umphant return in 1969. The ’69 con­cert has just been released as a new CD, but, for a lim­it­ed time, you can hear it stream­ing online,  from start to fin­ish, for free. It’s all thanks to NPR’s First Lis­ten site. Enjoy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thelo­nious Monk Bombs in Paris in 1954, Then Makes a Tri­umphant Return in 1969

Advice From the Mas­ter: Thelo­nious Monk Scrib­bles a List of Tips for Play­ing a Gig

Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er

Geor­gia Tech sopho­more and Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing major Nick Sel­by gave a rous­ing wel­come speech at the 2013 Fresh­man Con­vo­ca­tion. It did­n’t take long for the speech to go viral. Or for Gawk­er to real­ize that the speech had been bor­rowed from a 2008 speech giv­en by Andy Stone, once the debate team cham­pi­on at Ari­zona State. (Click here and then skip to the 8:40 mark to see the sim­i­lar part of Stone’s speech.) But here’s per­haps the most straight­for­ward expla­na­tion. It turns out that Sel­by was once coached by Stone, and on his Face­book page, Sel­by writes: “I had an awe­some speech coach in high school by the name of Andy Stone, and was absolute­ly thrilled when he agreed to let me use the end of his award-win­ning speech as the foun­da­tion for my own.”

The Pub­lic Domain Review is a not-for-prof­it project ded­i­cat­ed to show­cas­ing the most inter­est­ing and unusu­al arte­facts in the his­to­ry of art, lit­er­a­ture and ideas — all of which have fall­en into the pub­lic domain and so are free for every­one to enjoy, reuse and share. Start­ed in 2011, the site has cre­at­ed a large and ever grow­ing archive of the beau­ti­ful and bizarre. High­lights from their col­lec­tions include a ghost­ly series of decayed daguer­rotypes, a dic­tio­nary of Vic­to­ri­an slang, a set of 19th cen­tu­ry French post­cards of the year 2000, and a 1930s Michi­gan farmer play­ing the tune of Yan­kee Doo­dle with “hand-farts”.

In addi­tion to show­cas­ing their picks from the world’s dig­i­tal archives, The Pub­lic Domain Review pro­vides a plat­form for lead­ing writ­ers, schol­ars and cura­tors to write about the things they love. A whole host of weird and won­der­ful top­ics are cov­ered, includ­ing an Ital­ian car­di­nal who could speak over 70 lan­guages,  Ger­ard Man­ley Hopkins’s soar­ing mete­o­rol­o­gy of vol­cano sun­sets, Thomas Browne’s list of imag­i­nary arte­facts, and, in an arti­cle from Man Book­er prize win­ner Julian Barnes, a tale of strange encoun­ters with mon­key-eat­ing poets.

It’s a great project, and it needs your sup­port to con­tin­ue. With their ini­tial fund­ing now com­ing to an end, The Pub­lic Domain Review is turn­ing to its com­mu­ni­ty of read­ers to help it con­tin­ue to tell the world about the impor­tance of the pub­lic domain. If you’d like to see the project con­tin­ue, then they need your dona­tions. If you make a dona­tion of $40 or more you’ll get a rather won­der­ful look­ing Tote Bag. Learn more about the cam­paign and donate on their sup­port page. Again, click here to give The Pub­lic Domain Review your sup­port!