The Map of Doom: A Data-Driven Visualization of the Biggest Threats to Humanity, Ranked from Likely to Unlikely

in Data, Life, Science | December 9th, 2020

Sure­ly you’ve learned, as I have, to fil­ter out the con­stant threats of doom. It’s impos­si­ble to func­tion on high alert all of the time. But one must stay at least min­i­mal­ly informed. To check the news even once a day is to encounter head­line after head­line announc­ing DOOM IS COMING! Say that we’re all desen­si­tized, and rather than react, we eval­u­ate: In what way will doom arrive? How bad will the doom be? There are many com­pet­ing the­o­ries of doom. Which one is most like­ly, and how can we under­stand them in rela­tion to each oth­er?

For this lev­el of analy­sis, we might turn to Dominic Wal­li­man, physi­cist and pro­pri­etor of Domain of Sci­ence, the YouTube chan­nel and web­site that has brought us enter­tain­ing and com­pre­hen­sive maps of sev­er­al sci­en­tif­ic fields, such as biol­o­gy, chem­istry, math­e­mat­ics, com­put­er sci­ence, and quan­tum physics. Is rank­ing apoc­a­lypses a sci­en­tif­ic field of study, you might won­der? Yes, when it is a data-dri­ven threat assess­ment. Wal­li­man sur­veyed and ana­lyzed, as he says in his intro­duc­tion, “all of the dif­fer­ent threats to human­i­ty that exist.”

When the pan­dem­ic hit last win­ter, “we as a soci­ety were com­plete­ly unpre­pared for it,” despite the fact that experts had been warn­ing us for decades that exact­ly such a threat was high on the scale of like­li­hood. Are we focus­ing on the wrong kinds of doom, to the exclu­sion of more press­ing threats? Instead of pan­ick­ing when the coro­n­avirus hit, Wal­li­man cooly won­dered what else might be lurk­ing around the cor­ner. “Crikey,” says the New Zealan­der upon the first reveal of his Map of Doom, “there’s quite a lot aren’t there?”

Not con­tent to just col­lect dis­as­ters (and draw them as if they were all hap­pen­ing at the same time), Wal­li­man also want­ed to find out which ones pose the biggest threat, “using some real data.” After the Map of Doom comes the Chart of Doom, an XY grid plot­ting the like­li­hood and sever­i­ty of var­i­ous crises. These include ancient stal­warts like super vol­ca­noes; far more recent threats like nuclear war and cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change; cos­mic threats like aster­oids and col­laps­ing stars; ter­res­tri­al threats like wide­spread soci­etal col­lapse and extra-ter­res­tri­al threats like hos­tile aliens….

At the top of the graph, at the lim­it of “high like­li­hood,” there lies the “already hap­pen­ing zone,” includ­ing, of course, COVID-19, cli­mate change, and volatile extreme weath­er events like hur­ri­canes and tsunamis. At the bot­tom, in the “impos­si­ble to cal­cu­late” zone, we find sci-fi events like rogue AI, rogue black holes, rogue nano-bots, hos­tile aliens, and the col­lapse of the vac­u­um of space. All the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble, but in Wal­li­man’s analy­sis most­ly unlike­ly to occur. As in all of his maps, he cites his sources on the video’s YouTube page.

If you’re not feel­ing quite up to a data pre­sen­ta­tion on mass casu­al­ty events just now, you can down­load the Map and Chart of Doom here and peruse them at your leisure. Pick up a Map of Doom for the wall at Wal­li­man’s site, and while you’re there, why not buy an “I sur­vived 2020” stick­er. Maybe it’s pre­ma­ture, and maybe in poor taste. And maybe in times of doom we need some­one to face the facts of doom square­ly, turn them into car­toon info­graph­ics of doom, and claim vic­to­ries like liv­ing through anoth­er cal­en­dar year.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Info­graph­ics Show How the Dif­fer­ent Fields of Biol­o­gy, Chem­istry, Math­e­mat­ics, Physics & Com­put­er Sci­ence Fit Togeth­er

M.I.T. Com­put­er Pro­gram Alarm­ing­ly Pre­dicts in 1973 That Civ­i­liza­tion Will End by 2040

In 1704, Isaac New­ton Pre­dicts the World Will End in 2060

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

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The Hertella Coffee Machine Mounted on a Volkswagen Dashboard (1959): The Most European Car Accessory Ever Made

in Food & Drink, History, Technology | December 8th, 2020

Cur­rent auto-indus­try wis­dom holds that no car with­out cup hold­ers will sell in Amer­i­ca. Though this also seems to have become increas­ing­ly true across the rest of the world, I like to imag­ine there still exists a coun­try or two whose dri­ving pub­lic holds fast against that par­tic­u­lar design vul­gar­ism. Such places would, of course, lie deep in unre­con­struct­ed Europe, where nobody can go long with­out cof­fee. The solu­tion? The Hertel­la Auto Kaf­feema­chine, the first and only known dash­board-mount­ed cof­fee mak­er.

Man­u­fac­tured specif­i­cal­ly for the Volk­swa­gen Bee­tle, this high­ly civ­i­lized auto­mo­bile acces­so­ry has, 60 years after its intro­duc­tion, near­ly van­ished from exis­tence. Judg­ing by the few known exam­ples, it nev­er had the time to evolve past its tech­ni­cal short­com­ings. For one, it lacks a pow­er switch: “As soon as you plug it into the cig­a­rette lighter, it just gets hot,” writes The Dri­ve’s Peter Holderith. “And as far as the type of cof­fee machine that it is, well, you would have to be pret­ty des­per­ate for caf­feine to make cof­fee in this thing.”

“I always thought they were a per­co­la­tor, or espres­so machine like a Moka… but nope,” says Dave Hord of Clas­sic Car Adven­tures, who pur­chased his own Hertel­la Auto Kaf­feema­chine from an own­er in Ser­bia. It seems “you fill the ves­sel with water, put your cof­fee in the (dou­ble lay­er) screen, and heat up the unit. I pre­sume you heat the unit up with the cof­fee in it, which means this basi­cal­ly brews cof­fee as though it’s tea.” Per­haps only a transcon­ti­nen­tal road-trip­per in 1959 would grow des­per­ate enough to drink it.

Still, as Holderith notes, “the machine does have a few clever fea­tures. The porce­lain cups that came with it appar­ent­ly had a met­al disc on the bot­tom of them that allowed them to stick to the machine mag­net­i­cal­ly” and the unit itself “mounts to the dash with a sim­ple brack­et, allow­ing for the pot to quick­ly be removed and cleaned when nec­es­sary.” Per­haps today’s car design­ers, a group once again look­ing to the past for inspi­ra­tion, will resume the pur­suit of dash­board brew­ing begun by the Hertel­la Auto Kaf­feema­chine. If not, Wes Ander­son can sure­ly find a use for the thing.

via Messy Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

The Cof­fee Pot That Fueled Hon­oré de Balzac’s Cof­fee Addic­tion

Wake Up & Smell the Cof­fee: The New All-in-One Cof­fee-Mak­er/Alarm Clock is Final­ly Here!

The Time­less Beau­ty of the Cit­roën DS, the Car Mythol­o­gized by Roland Barthes (1957)

178,000 Images Doc­u­ment­ing the His­to­ry of the Car Now Avail­able on a New Stan­ford Web Site

10 Essen­tial Tips for Mak­ing Great Cof­fee at Home

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Marina Abramović’s Method for Overcoming Trauma: Go to a Park, Hug a Tree Tight, and Tell It Your Complaints for 15 Minutes

in Art, Life, Nature, Psychology | December 8th, 2020

One of the most renowned of Chi­nese poets, Du Fu, sur­vived the dev­as­tat­ing An Lushan rebel­lion that near­ly brought down the Tang Dynasty and result­ed in an incred­i­ble loss of life around the coun­try. His poems are full of grief, as trans­la­tor David Hin­ton notes. The open­ing of “Spring Land­scape” con­tains “pos­si­bly the most famous line in Chi­nese poet­ry,” and a painful com­ment on human­i­ty’s place in the nat­ur­al world.

The coun­try in ruins, rivers and moun­tains
con­tin­ue. The city grows lush with spring.

Blos­soms scat­ter tears for us, and all these
sep­a­ra­tions in a bird’s cry star­tle the heart.

The poem presents a trag­ic irony. Nature invites us in, seems to promise com­fort and refuge. “Du Fu tells us that birds seem to cry for us, and blos­soms weep,” writes Madeleine Thien at The New York Review of Books. But “of course, this is a fairy-tale view, and ‘in the knowl­edge of its fal­si­ty, heart­break­ing.’”

Is nature indif­fer­ent to human suf­fer­ing? It would seem so to the bro­ken-heart­ed Con­fu­cian poet. But nature is not devoid of fel­low feel­ing. Trees talk to each oth­er, cre­ate social worlds and fam­i­lies, and com­mu­ni­cate with the oth­er plants and ani­mals around them. Japan­ese researchers have shown that the oils trees secrete can mea­sur­ably low­er stress lev­els, reduce hos­til­i­ty and depres­sion, and boost immu­ni­ty. Trees may not weep, but they care.

Trees are also, says per­for­mance artist Mari­na Abramović in the short video above, “per­fect­ly silent listeners”—a rare and valu­able qual­i­ty in times of stress. “They have intel­li­gence. They have feel­ings.” And for this rea­son, a tree is the ide­al com­pan­ion when we need an ear.

You can com­plain to them. And I start­ed this a long time ago when I was in the Ama­zon with the native Indi­ans. You know, they will go to the Sequoia tree, which is one of the old­est on the plan­et. And they will make a dance for the tree. These dances for the tree are so incred­i­bly mov­ing an emo­tion­al. So I thought, Wow! Why don’t I cre­ate an exer­cise that real­ly works for me?

Abramović’s tree ther­a­py is one part of her “Abramović Method,” notes Paper, “a set of tech­niques that enables artists to get to high­er states of con­scious­ness.” She rec­om­mends it for any­one who’s reel­ing from the trau­mas of this year. In our own age of dev­as­ta­tion and iso­la­tion, it cer­tain­ly couldn’t hurt, and per­haps we know more than Du Fu did about how nature sup­ports our emo­tion­al lives.

So “please, go to the park near you,” the artist implores. “Pick the tree you like. Hold the tree tight. Real­ly tight. And just pour your heart into it. Com­plain to the tree for a min­i­mum of 15 min­utes. It’s the best heal­ing that you can do.” Includ­ed in the video is a tes­ti­mo­ni­al from an ex-rug­by play­er, who found the Com­plain­ing to Trees method trans­for­ma­tive. “There is some­thing in it,” he says. “It’s almost like you become part of the tree as well.” Trees are not peo­ple. They don’t dis­pense advice. They lis­ten and con­sole in their own mys­te­ri­ous­ly ancient, silent way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

The Secret Lan­guage of Trees: A Charm­ing Ani­mat­ed Les­son Explains How Trees Share Infor­ma­tion with Each Oth­er

The Social Lives of Trees: Sci­ence Reveals How Trees Mys­te­ri­ous­ly Talk to Each Oth­er, Work Togeth­er & Form Nur­tur­ing Fam­i­lies

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

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

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The Sistine Chapel of the Ancients: Archaeologists Discover 8 Miles of Art Painted on Rock Walls in the Amazon

in Art, History | December 8th, 2020

All images by José Iri­arte

Over twelve thou­sand years ago, some of the first humans in the Ama­zon hunt­ed, paint­ed, and danced with the mas­sive extinct mam­mals of the ice age: giant sloths and armadil­los, ice-age hors­es, and mastodons…. How do we know? We have pic­tures, or rock paint­ings, rather–many thou­sands of them made around 12,500 years ago and only recent­ly “found on an eight-mile rock sur­face along the Guayabero Riv­er the Colom­bian Ama­zon,” Hakim Bishara reports at Hyper­al­ler­gic. The pre­his­toric won­der has been dubbed the “Sis­tine Chapel of the ancients.”

The dis­cov­ery, made last year, was kept secret until the release of a new doc­u­men­tary air­ing this month called Jun­gle Mys­tery: Lost King­doms of the Ama­zon. Palaeo-anthro­pol­o­gist Ella Al-Shamahi, pre­sen­ter of the Chan­nel 4 series and a mem­ber of the team that found the site, explains why it may be hard to imag­ine such great pre­his­toric beasts lum­ber­ing through the rain­for­est.

Their exis­tence in this rock art offers a clue to major cli­ma­to­log­i­cal shifts that have occurred in the region over mil­len­nia. As Al-Shamahi tells The Observ­er:

One of the most fas­ci­nat­ing things was see­ing ice age megafau­na because that’s a mark­er of time. I don’t think peo­ple realise that the Ama­zon has shift­ed in the way it looks. It hasn’t always been this rain­for­est. When you look at a horse or mastodon in these paint­ings, of course they weren’t going to live in a for­est. They’re too big. Not only are they giv­ing clues about when they were paint­ed by some of the ear­li­est peo­ple – that in itself is just mind-bog­gling – but they are also giv­ing clues about what this very spot might have looked like: more savan­nah-like.

“We’re talk­ing about sev­er­al tens of thou­sands of paint­ings,” says the team’s leader, José Iri­arte, pro­fes­sor of archae­ol­o­gy at Exeter Uni­ver­si­ty. “It’s going to take gen­er­a­tions to record them.” The rock wall art illus­trates many extinct species, includ­ing pre­his­toric lama and three-toed hoofed mam­mals with trunks, as well as real­is­tic depic­tions of mon­keys, bats, snakes, tur­tles, tapirs, birds, lizards, fish, and deer. Remains found near the site offer clues to the ancient peo­ples’ diets, which includ­ed piran­ha, alli­ga­tors, snakes, frogs, and “rodents such as paca, capy­bara, and armadil­los,” Bishara notes.

Many of the images are paint­ed to the scale of hand­prints left in many places along the wall, and some are much larg­er. Researchers were par­tic­u­lar­ly sur­prised by the method of com­po­si­tion. Some of the art is so high up it can only be seen by drone. “I’m 5ft 10in,” says Shamahi, “and I would be break­ing my neck look­ing up. How were they scal­ing those walls?” It appears the artists used some form of rap­pelling. There are “depic­tions of wood­en tow­ers among the paint­ings,” reports The Guardian, “includ­ing fig­ures appear­ing to bungee jump from them.”

Fur­ther study in the com­ing decades, and cen­turies, will reveal much more about how the paint­ings were made. The why, how­ev­er, will prove more elu­sive. Iri­arte spec­u­lates they served a sacred pur­pose. “It’s inter­est­ing to see that many of these large ani­mals appear sur­round­ed by small men with their arms raised, almost wor­ship­ping these ani­mals.” The pres­ence of hal­lu­cino­genic plants among the paint­ings leads him to com­pare the paint­ings with con­tem­po­rary Ama­zon­ian peo­ple, for whom “non-humans like ani­mals and plants have souls, and they com­mu­ni­cate and engage with peo­ple in coop­er­a­tive or hos­tile ways through the rit­u­als and shaman­ic prac­tices that we see depict­ed in the rock art.”

What­ev­er their pur­pose, the over 100,000 paint­ings on the eight-mile wall con­tain an immea­sur­able store of infor­ma­tion about ancient Ama­zo­ni­ans’ cre­ativ­i­ty and inge­nu­ity. They also add, per­haps, to the moun­tain of rock art evi­dence sug­gest­ing, Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich argued recent­ly, that before orga­nized war became the dom­i­nant prac­tice of civ­i­liza­tions, “humans once had bet­ter ways to spend their time.” The pub­li­ca­tion of the research team’s find­ings is avail­able here. See more images of the site at Hyper­al­ler­gic and Design­boom and watch the first two episodes of Jun­gle Mys­tery: Lost King­doms of the Ama­zon here.

via Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Recent­ly-Dis­cov­ered 44,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing Tells the Old­est Known Sto­ry

Archae­ol­o­gists Dis­cov­er the World’s First “Art Stu­dio” Cre­at­ed in an Ethiopi­an Cave 43,000 Years Ago

Was a 32,000-Year-Old Cave Paint­ing the Ear­li­est Form of Cin­e­ma?

40,000-Year-Old Sym­bols Found in Caves World­wide May Be the Ear­li­est Writ­ten Lan­guage

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

 

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Why Butt Trumpets & Other Bizarre Images Appeared in Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts

in Art, Books, History | December 8th, 2020

In illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts, Medieval Europe can seem more like Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail than the grim tales of grey-faced, mildewed kings, monks, knights, and peas­ants turned out by the Hol­ly­wood dozen. Yes, life could be bru­tal, bloody, dis­ease-rid­den, but it could also be absur­dist and unin­ten­tion­al­ly hilar­i­ous, qual­i­ties that reach their apex in the weird­ness of Hierony­mus Bosch’s “painful, hor­ri­ble” musi­cal instru­ments in his Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights.

While Bosch paint­ed his night­mar­ish cacoph­o­nies, Medieval scribes’ cats peed and left inky foot­prints on 15th cen­tu­ry man­u­scripts, with­in whose illus­trat­ed pages, rab­bits play church organs, valiant knights do bat­tle with giant snails, and a naked man blows a trum­pet with his rear end (a pre­cur­sor to the man in Bosch’s paint­ing with a flute stuck in his rear.) “These bizarre images,” TED Ed notes, “paint­ed with squir­rel-hair brush­es on vel­lum or parch­ment by monks, nuns, and urban crafts­peo­ple, pop­u­late the mar­gins of the most prized books from the Mid­dle Ages.”

The ani­mat­ed video les­son at the top by Michelle Brown “explores the rich his­to­ry and tra­di­tion of illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts” in their eccen­tric­i­ty and seem­ing silli­ness. The ani­mal motifs in mar­gin­al illus­tra­tions were nei­ther aim­less doo­dles nor inside jokes. They were alle­gor­i­cal fig­ures descend­ed from the menageries of Medieval bes­tiaries, repeat­ed the­mat­i­cal­ly to rep­re­sent human vices and virtues. Rab­bits, for exam­ple, rep­re­sent­ed lust, and their music-mak­ing was a vir­tu­ous sub­li­ma­tion of the same.

These asso­ci­a­tions weren’t always so clear, espe­cial­ly when they were explic­it­ly reli­gious. The por­cu­pine pick­ing fruit from its spine could rep­re­sent either dev­il or sav­ior, depend­ing on con­text. The uni­corn, which can only be killed with its head in the lap of a vir­gin, might stand for sex­u­al temp­ta­tion or the sac­ri­fice of Christ. But the few read­ers in this man­u­script cul­ture would have rec­og­nized the ref­er­ences and allu­sions, although, like all signs, the illus­tra­tions com­mu­ni­cate sev­er­al dif­fer­ent, even con­tra­dic­to­ry, mean­ings at once.

And what of the butt trum­pet? It is “like­ly short­hand to express dis­ap­proval with, or add an iron­ic spin to, the action in the text.” The butt trum­pet, ladies and gen­tle­men, is as adver­tised: that most ven­er­a­ble of expres­sions, the fart joke, to which there is no wit­ty reply and which—as scat­o­log­i­cal humor can do—might be sly­ly sub­ver­sive polit­i­cal cri­tique. Lit­er­ate or not, Medieval Euro­peans spoke a lan­guage of sym­bols that stood in for whole folk tra­di­tions and the­olo­gies. The butt trum­pet, how­ev­er, is just objec­tive­ly, crude­ly fun­ny, prob­a­bly as much to the artists who drew them as to those of us, hun­dreds of years lat­er, encoun­ter­ing them for the first time. See sev­er­al more exam­ples here and learn more about Medieval and Renais­sance man­u­scripts here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to a Record­ing of a Song Writ­ten on a Man’s Butt in a 15-Cen­tu­ry Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ing

The Flute of Shame: Dis­cov­er the Instrument/Device Used to Pub­licly Humil­i­ate Bad Musi­cians Dur­ing the Medieval Peri­od

Why Knights Fought Snails in Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts

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

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Why Japan Has the Oldest Businesses in the World?: Hōshi, a 1300-Year-Old Hotel, Offers Clues

in History, Travel | December 7th, 2020

Per­haps, when the state of the world once again per­mits rea­son­ably con­ve­nient trav­el, you plan to vis­it Japan. If so, you’d do well to con­sid­er stay­ing at one of the coun­try’s ryokan, the tra­di­tion­al inns often locat­ed at hot springs. No accom­mo­da­tions could appeal more deeply to those in search of “old Japan,” and many ryokan deliv­er on that adjec­tive in the most lit­er­al sense. Take the Nisiya­ma Onsen Keiunkan, whose 1300 years of oper­a­tion at its hot spring in Yamanashi Pre­fec­ture make it the old­est hotel in the world. But it has yet to get the doc­u­men­tary treat­ment by Fritz Schu­mann, a Ger­man film­mak­er with an eye for Japan pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his video on the “moun­tain monks” of Yam­a­ga­ta.

Schu­mann has, how­ev­er, made a sub­ject of the sec­ond-old­est hotel in the world, Komat­su’s Hōshi ryokan, found­ed in the year 718.  That Japan boasts both the word’s old­est and sec­ond-old­est hotels should sur­prise nobody who knows the nature of its busi­ness­es. “The coun­try is home to more than 33,000 with at least 100 years of his­to­ry — over 40 per­cent of the world’s total, accord­ing to a study by the Tokyo-based Research Insti­tute of Cen­ten­ni­al Man­age­ment,” write The New York Times’ Ben Doo­ley and Hisako Ueno.

“Over 3,100 have been run­ning for at least two cen­turies. Around 140 have exist­ed for more than 500 years. And at least 19 claim to have been con­tin­u­ous­ly oper­at­ing since the first mil­len­ni­um.” These shinise, or “old shops,” include brands like Nin­ten­do, found­ed as a play­ing-card com­pa­ny, and soy-sauce mak­er Kikko­man.

Doo­ley and Uneo high­light Ichi­wa, a shop that has sold mochi — those slight­ly sweet rice-based con­fec­tions often mold­ed into aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing shapes — for over a mil­len­ni­um. “Like many busi­ness­es in Japan,” Ichi­wa “takes the long view — albeit longer than most. By putting tra­di­tion and sta­bil­i­ty over prof­it and growth, Ichi­wa has weath­ered wars, plagues, nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, and the rise and fall of empires. Through it all, its rice flour cakes have remained the same.” At BBC’s Work­life, Bryan Lufkin exam­ines Tsuen Tea, a fix­ture of sub­ur­ban Kyoto since the year 1160, back when Kyoto was still Japan’s cap­i­tal, a his­to­ry that grants the city pride of place among tra­di­tion­al­ists. There, writes Lufkin, “many long-stand­ing busi­ness­es also tout a ded­i­ca­tion to good cus­tomer ser­vice as an ele­ment that keeps them thriv­ing.”

In Kyoto, or any­where else in Japan, this is “espe­cial­ly the case with ryokan,” which “treat guests like fam­i­ly.” Like many things Japan­ese, this aspect of the ryokan expe­ri­ence will both sur­prise first-time vis­i­tors and be just what they expect­ed. Whether in their look and feel, their set­tings, their stan­dard of ser­vice — or rather, in a com­bi­na­tion of all those qual­i­ties and oth­ers besides — ryokan offer some­thing avail­able nowhere else in the world. So do Japan’s oth­er shinise, which also set them­selves apart by hav­ing amassed the resources (finan­cial, famil­ial, and oth­er­wise) to keep going through hard times. This past year has been anoth­er such hard time, and with the ongo­ing pan­dem­ic still caus­ing a great deal of human and eco­nom­ic dam­age around the world, we might look to Hōshi and its long-lived kind for lessons on how do to busi­ness in the future.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Soy Sauce Has Been Made in Japan for Over 220 Years: An Inside View

Moun­tain Monks: A Vivid Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Monks Who Prac­tice an Ancient, Once-For­bid­den Reli­gion in Japan

Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Muse­um Ded­i­cat­ed to Col­lect­ing Rocks That Look Like Human Faces

The Japan­ese Tra­di­tions of Sashiko & Boro: The Cen­turies-Old Craft That Mends Clothes in a Sus­tain­able, Artis­tic Way

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Behold the Steampunk Home Exercise Machines from the Victorian Age

in Design, Health, Physics | December 7th, 2020

The pan­dem­ic has result­ed in a lot of peo­ple rein­vent­ing their fit­ness reg­i­mens, invest­ing in pricey items like Mir­ror and Pelo­ton bikes to turn homes into home gyms.

Per­son­al­ly, we’re sav­ing our pen­nies until some Etsy sell­er repli­cates the mechan­i­cal ther­a­py sys­tems of Dr. Gus­tav Zan­der (1835–1920).

From the mid-19th cen­tu­ry through WWI, these machines were at the fore­front of gym cul­ture. Their func­tion is extreme­ly sim­i­lar to mod­ern strength train­ing equip­ment, but their design exudes a dash­ing steam­punk flair.

If the thing that’s going to help us work off all this sour­dough weight is going to wind up col­o­niz­ing half our apart­ment, we want some­thing that will go with our max­i­mal­ist thrift store aes­thet­ic.

We might even start work­ing out in floor length skirts and three piece suits in homage to Zander’s orig­i­nal devo­tees.

His 27 machines addressed abs, arms, adductors—all the great­est hits—using weights and levers to strength­en mus­cles through pro­gres­sive exer­tion and resis­tance. Spe­cial­ly trained assis­tants were on hand to adjust the weights, a lux­u­ry that our mod­ern world has seen fit to phase out.

Just as 21st-cen­tu­ry fit­ness cen­ters posi­tion them­selves as life­savers of those who spend the bulk of the day hunched in front of a com­put­er, Zander’s inven­tions tar­get­ed seden­tary office work­ers.

The indus­tri­al soci­ety that cre­at­ed this new breed of labor­er also ensured that the Swedish doc­tor’s con­trap­tions would gar­ner acco­lades and atten­tion. They were already a hit in their land of ori­gin when they took a gold medal at Philadelphia’s 1876 Cen­ten­ni­al Exhi­bi­tion.

The flag­ship Ther­a­peu­tic Zan­der Insti­tute in Stock­holm expand­ed, with branch­es in Lon­don and New York City.

The New York Times described the lat­ter as giv­ing the “unini­ti­at­ed observ­er an impres­sion of a care­ful­ly devised tor­ture cham­ber more than of a doc­tor’s office or a gym­na­si­um, both of which func­tions the insti­tute, to a cer­tain degree, fills.”

Sure­ly no more tor­tu­ous than the blood let­ting, blis­ter­ing, and purg­ing that were also thought health­ful at the time…

See more of Dr. Gus­tav Zander’s exer­cise machines here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Amaz­ing Franz Kaf­ka Work­out!: Dis­cov­er the 15-Minute Exer­cise Rou­tine That Swept the World in 1904

Walt Whitman’s Unearthed Health Man­u­al, “Man­ly Health & Train­ing,” Urges Read­ers to Stand (Don’t Sit!) and Eat Plen­ty of Meat (1858)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. This month, she appearsas a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How John Coltrane Introduced the World to His Radical Sound in the Groundbreaking Recording of “My Favorite Things”

in Music | December 7th, 2020

John Coltrane released “more sig­nif­i­cant works” than his 1960 “My Favorite Things,” says Robin Wash­ing­ton in a PRX doc­u­men­tary on the clas­sic rework­ing of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broad­way hit. “A Love Supreme” is often cit­ed as the zenith of the saxophonist’s career. “But if you tried to explain that song to an aver­age lis­ten­er, you would lose them. [“My Favorite Things”] is a defin­i­tive work that every­one knows, and any­one can lis­ten to, and the fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry of its evo­lu­tion is some­thing every­one can share and enjoy.” The song is acces­si­ble, a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful hit, and it is also an exper­i­men­tal mas­ter­piece.

Indeed, “My Favorite Things” may be the per­fect intro­duc­tion to Coltrane’s exper­i­men­tal­ism. After the dizzy­ing chord changes of 1959’s “Giant Steps,” this 14-minute, two-chord excur­sion pat­terned on the ragas of Ravi Shankar announced Coltrane’s move into the modal forms he refined until his death in 1967, as well as his embrace of the sopra­no sax­o­phone and his new quar­tet. It became “Coltrane’s most request­ed tune,” says Ed Wheel­er in The World Accord­ing to John Coltrane, “and a bridge to a broad pub­lic audi­ence.”

Coltrane’s take is also mes­mer­iz­ing, trance-induc­ing, “often com­pared to a whirling dervish,” notes the Poly­phon­ic video above, a ref­er­ence to the Sufi med­i­ta­tion tech­nique of spin­ning in a cir­cle. It’s an unlike­ly song choice for the exer­cise, which makes it all the more fas­ci­nat­ing. The Sound of Music, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s final Broad­way col­lab­o­ra­tion, was an “instant clas­sic,” and every­one who’d seen it walked away hum­ming the tune to “My Favorite Things.” By 1960, it had become a stan­dard, with sev­er­al cov­er ver­sions released by Leslie Uggams, The Pete King Chorale, the Hi-Lo’s, and the Nor­man Luboff Choir.

Hun­dreds more cov­ers would fol­low. None of them sound­ed like Coltrane’s. The modal form—in which musi­cians impro­vise in dif­fer­ent kinds of scales over sim­pli­fied chord structures—created the “open free­dom” in music explored on Miles Davis’ path­break­ing Kind of Blue, on which Coltrane played tenor sax. (It was Davis who bought Coltrane his first sopra­no sax that year.) Coltrane’s use of modal form in adap­ta­tions of pop­u­lar stan­dards like “My Favorite Things” and George Gershwin’s “Sum­mer­time” from Por­gy and Bess was an explic­it strat­e­gy to court a wider pub­lic, using the famil­iar to ori­ent his lis­ten­ers to the new.

The video essay brings in the exper­tise of musi­cian, com­pos­er, and YouTu­ber Adam Neely, who explains what makes Rogers and Hammerstein’s clas­sic unique among show tunes, and why it appealed to Coltrane as the cen­ter­piece of the 1961 album of the same name. The song’s unusu­al form and struc­ture allow the same melody to be played over both major and minor chords. Coltrane’s mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the song reduces it to the two ton­ics, E major and E minor, over which he and the band solo, intro­duc­ing a shift­ing tonal­i­ty and mood to the melody with each chord change.

Neely goes into greater depth, but it’s over­all an acces­si­ble expla­na­tion of Coltrane’s very acces­si­ble, yet ver­tig­i­nous­ly deep, “My Favorite Things.” Maybe only one ques­tion remains. Coltrane’s ren­di­tion came out four years before Julie Andrews’ icon­ic per­for­mance in the film adap­ta­tion of The Sound of Music, evok­ing the obvi­ous ques­tion,” says Wash­ing­ton: “Did he influ­ence her?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jazz Decon­struct­ed: What Makes John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” So Ground­break­ing and Rad­i­cal?

John Coltrane Draws a Pic­ture Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­ics of Music

John Coltrane Talks About the Sacred Mean­ing of Music in the Human Expe­ri­ence: Lis­ten to One of His Final Inter­views (1966)

Stream the “Com­plete” John Coltrane Playlist: A 94-Hour Jour­ney Through 700+ Trans­for­ma­tive Tracks

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

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For Dave Brubeck’s 100th Birthday, Watch Pakistani Musicians Play an Enchanting Version of “Take Five”

in Music | December 6th, 2020

How’s this for fusion? Here we have The Sachal Stu­dios Orches­tra, based in Lahore, Pak­istan, play­ing an inno­v­a­tive cov­er of “Take Five,” the jazz stan­dard writ­ten by Paul Desmond and orig­i­nal­ly per­formed by The Dave Brubeck Quar­tet in 1959. Brubeck–who would have cel­e­brat­ed his 100th birth­day today–called it the “most inter­est­ing” ver­sion he had ever heard. Once you watch the per­for­mance above, you’ll know why.

Accord­ing to The Guardian, The Sachal Stu­dios Orches­tra was cre­at­ed by Izzat Majeed, a phil­an­thropist based in Lon­don. When Pak­istan fell under the dic­ta­tor­ship of Gen­er­al Zia-ul-Haq dur­ing the 1980s, Pakistan’s clas­si­cal music scene fell on hard times. Many musi­cians were forced into pro­fes­sions they had nev­er imag­ined — sell­ing clothes, elec­tri­cal parts, veg­eta­bles, etc. What­ev­er was nec­es­sary to get by. Today, many of these musi­cians have come togeth­er in a 60-per­son orches­tra that plays in a state-of-the-art stu­dio, designed part­ly by Abbey Road sound engi­neers.

You can pur­chase their album, Sachal Jazz: Inter­pre­ta­tions of Jazz Stan­dards & Bossa Nova, on Ama­zon and iTunes. It includes ver­sions of “Take Five” and “The Girl from Ipane­ma.”

For good mea­sure, we’ve added Sachal’s take on “Eleanor Rig­by,” some­thing George Har­ri­son would sure­ly have loved.

Note: A ver­sion of this post first appeared on our site back in 2013. But as enchant­i­ng as it is, it seemed worth bring­ing back.

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!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz Music

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

An Uplift­ing Musi­cal Sur­prise for Dave Brubeck in Moscow (1997)

Ultra Ortho­dox Rab­bis Sing Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” on the Streets of Jerusalem

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Hieronymus Bosch Figurines: Collect Surreal Characters from Bosch’s Paintings & Put Them on Your Bookshelf

in Art | December 5th, 2020

Few painters have cre­at­ed as rich a world as Hierony­mus Bosch did in The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights. The late 15th- or ear­ly 16th-cen­tu­ry trip­tych, which depicts the cre­ation of man, the licen­tious frol­ick­ing of all crea­tures on a par­a­disi­a­cal Earth, and the sub­se­quent fall into damna­tion, draws a scruti­ny — and caus­es an amuse­ment — as intense as ever. As we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, you can now take a vir­tu­al tour of the paint­ing (there’s even an app for it), see it brought to life with mod­ern ani­ma­tion, and hear the song tat­tooed on the pos­te­ri­or of one of the work’s many char­ac­ters.

Bosch not only cre­at­ed a world with The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights, he pop­u­lat­ed it thor­ough­ly. And despite the human-cen­tric sto­ry the work appears to take as its basis, the cast with which it retells it extends far beyond mere human­i­ty: the pan­els fea­ture not just wildlife of all shapes and sizes but a vari­ety of myth­i­cal grotesques, from imps to chimeras to hybrids of man and ani­mal to much more besides.

He drew from the same sur­re­al imag­i­na­tive well to fill his oth­er paint­ings, and you can now pull out a few of these col­or­ful, men­ac­ing, pre­pos­ter­ous, and dark­ly humor­ous char­ac­ters your­self in col­lectible fig­urine form.

Though “not a big knick­knack per­son,” Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Tara McGin­ley admits to dig­ging this selec­tion of “tiny objects” straight from the mind of Bosch, all “kin­da cool-look­ing in their own obvi­ous­ly weird way” and none “too expen­sive. The fig­urines start at around $45, depend­ing on qual­i­ty, size and detail.” (You can find them on Ama­zon.) She high­lights such issues as “Hel­met­ed Bird Mon­ster,” which accord­ing to man­u­fac­tur­ers Para­s­tone fea­tures a sev­ered foot “swing­ing from the bird’s hel­met refer­ring to the hor­ri­ble cor­po­ral pun­ish­ments which could be expect­ed in hell.”

“Dev­il on Night Chair,” one of the most rec­og­niz­able denizens of The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights’ third pan­el, comes cast in his famous posi­tion, “eat­ing a per­son on a chair where he will excrete the human remains.” The con­sid­er­ably less sat­is­fied “Fat Bel­ly with Dag­ger” comes from the third pan­el of a dif­fer­ent trip­tych, The Temp­ta­tion of Saint Antho­ny, the dag­ger in his bel­ly show­ing “the con­se­quences of intem­per­ance. His eyes look out at you in acknowl­edg­ment.” Its mak­ers promise that “you will look at it in won­der as to how Bosch’s mind con­ceived of such an unusu­al lit­tle fel­low.” Find oth­er artis­tic scenes fea­tured on Ama­zon’s Bosch fig­urine page , and con­sid­er them for your­self or as gifts for friends and fam­i­ly. Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

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!

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sal­vador Dalí’s Tarot Cards Get Re-Issued: The Occult Meets Sur­re­al­ism in a Clas­sic Tarot Card Deck

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Cre­ates Stun­ning Real­is­tic Por­traits That Recre­ate Sur­re­al Scenes from Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ings

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

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

Lis­ten to a Record­ing of a Song Writ­ten on a Man’s Butt in a 15-Cen­tu­ry Hierony­mus Bosch Paint­ing

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

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Why Humans Are Obsessed with Cats

in Biology, History, K-12, Life, Nature, Science | December 4th, 2020

A house cat is not real­ly a fur baby, but it is some­thing rather more remark­able: a tiny con­quis­ta­dor with the whole plan­et at its feet —Abi­gail Tuck­er

As part of its Annals of Obses­sion video series, The New York­er invit­ed sci­ence jour­nal­ist Abi­gail Tuck­er, author of The Lion in the Liv­ing Room, to reflect on “how felines took over the Inter­net, our homes, and our lives.”

It goes with­out say­ing that cats and humans have co-exist­ed for a very long time.

Most of us are acquaint­ed with the high regard in which Ancient Egyp­tians held Felis catus.

And we may know some­thing of their sea­far­ing his­to­ry, begin­ning with the Vikings and con­tin­u­ing on through Unsink­able Sam and oth­er cel­e­brat­ed ship’s cats.

An over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of us have spent the last decade or so glued to online exam­ples of their antics—rid­ing robot vac­u­ums, react­ing with ter­ror to cucum­bers, and pounc­ing on humans, some of whom have had the temer­i­ty to write and record voiceovers that sug­gest they have insight as to what goes on inside a cat’s hat. (As if!)

It’s grat­i­fy­ing to hear Tuck­er echo what cat lovers have long sus­pect­ed (and embla­zoned on t‑shirts, cof­fee mugs, and dec­o­ra­tive pillows)—the cats, not the own­ers, are the ones run­ning the show.

For­give us. Dogs have own­ers. Cats have staff.

Cats took a com­men­sal path to domes­ti­ca­tion, moti­vat­ed, then as now, by the food they knew to be stored in our set­tle­ments.

Tuck­er describes it as a series of cat con­trolled takeovers—a process of arti­fi­cial selec­tion, under­tak­en on the cats’ own ini­tia­tive:

House cats are supreme­ly adapt­able. They can live any­where and, while they must have plen­ty of pro­tein, they eat prac­ti­cal­ly any­thing that moves, from pel­i­cans to crick­ets, and many things that don’t, like hot dogs. (Some of their imper­iled feline rel­a­tives, by con­trast, are adapt­ed to hunt only a rare species of chin­chilla.) House cats can tweak their sleep­ing sched­ules and social lives. They can breed like crazy.

In cer­tain ways the house cat’s rise is trag­ic, for the same forces that favor them have destroyed many oth­er crea­tures. House cats are car­pet­bag­gers, arriv­istes, and they’re among the most trans­for­ma­tive invaders the world has ever seen—except for Homo sapi­ens, of course. It’s no coin­ci­dence that when they show up in ecosys­tems, lions and oth­er megafau­na are usu­al­ly on their way out.

Aloof as many of their num­ber may be, cats have engi­neered things in such a way as to be phys­i­cal­ly irre­sistible to most humans:

Their big heads and big eyes are so cute!

Their fur is so soft!

We can car­ry them around!

Dress them in doll clothes (some­times)!

Their cries mim­ic the cries of hun­gry human babies, and elic­it a sim­i­lar response from their human care­givers.

We may not love lit­ter box duty, but with 1 in 3 humans infect­ed by Tox­o­plas­ma gondii, we’ll like­ly be teth­ered to them for all eter­ni­ty.

For bet­ter or worse, we love them. And so do dog lovers. They just don’t know it yet.

But do not ever imag­ine that the feel­ing is rec­i­p­ro­cal.

They’re arch­car­ni­vores who can­not open their own cans. As Tuck­er wry­ly observes:

I think it’s fair to say that we are obsessed and they are not.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cats: How Over 10,000 Years the Cat Went from Wild Preda­tor to Sofa Side­kick

GPS Track­ing Reveals the Secret Lives of Out­door Cats

In 1183, a Chi­nese Poet Describes Being Domes­ti­cat­ed by His Own Cats

How Humans Domes­ti­cat­ed Cats (Twice)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She loves cats, but most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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