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• Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and 1,000 Musicians Protest AI with a New Silent Album

  27-02-2025 11:00 via openculture.com
  The good news is that an album has just been released by Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn of Gorillaz, The Clash, Tori Amos, Hans Zimmer, Pet Shop Boys, Jamiroquai, and Yusuf (previously known as Cat Stevens), Billy Ocean, and many other musicians besides, most of them British. The bad news is that it contains no actual music. But the album, titled Is This What We Want?, has been created in hopes of preventing even worse news: the government of the United Kingdom choosing to let artificial-
  
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• A Tour of Ancient Rome’s Best Graffiti: “We Have Urinated in Our Beds … There Was No Chamber Pot” & More

  17-03-2025 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  Apart from the likes of bravo and pizza, graffiti must be one of the first Italian words that English-speakers learn in everyday life. As for why the English word comes directly from the Italian, perhaps it has something to do with the history of writing on the walls — a history that, in Western civilization, stretches at least as far back as the time of the Roman Empire. The Fire of Learning video above offers a selection of translated pieces of the more than 11,000 pieces of ancient Roma
  
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• A Boy and His Atom: Watch The World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Film

  17-03-2025 09:00 via openculture.com
  
  What you’re watching above isn’t your ordinary film. No, this film — A Boy and His Atom – holds the Guinness World Record for being the World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Film. It’s literally a movie made with atoms, created by IBM nanophysicists who have “used a scanning tunneling microscope to move thousands of carbon monoxide molecules, all in the pursuit of making a movie so small it can be seen only when you magnify it 100 million time
  
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• The Ancient Greeks Who Converted to Buddhism

  14-03-2025 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  It would hardly be notable to make the acquaintance of a Greek Buddhist today. Despite having originated in Asia, that religion — or philosophy, or way of life, or whatever you prefer to call it — now has adherents all over the world. Modern-day Buddhists need not make an arduous journey in order to undertake an even more arduous course of study under a recognized master; nor are the forms of Buddhism they practice always recognizable to the layman. What’s more surprising is th
  
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• Puppets of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens & Edgar Allan Poe Star in 1957 Frank Capra Educational Film

  14-03-2025 06:00 via openculture.com
  
  Produced between 1956 and 1964 by AT&T, the Bell Telephone Science Hour TV specials anticipate the literary zaniness of The Muppet Show and the scientific enthusiasm of Cosmos. The “ship of the imagination” in Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Cosmos reboot may in fact owe something to the episode above, one of nine, directed by none other than It’s A Wonderful Life’s Frank Capra. “Strap on your wits and hop on your magic carpet,” begins the
  
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• Watch the Only Time Charlie Chaplin & Buster Keaton Performed Together On-Screen (1952)

  13-03-2025 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were the two biggest comedy stars of the silent era, but as it happened, they never shared the screen until well into the reign of sound. In fact, their collaboration didn’t come about until 1952, the same year that Singin’ in the Rain dramatized the already distant-feeling advent of talking pictures. That hit musical deals with once-famous artists coping with a changing world, and so, in its own way, does Limelight, the film that finally brought Cha
  
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• When Salvador Dalí Created a Chilling Anti-Venereal Disease Poster During World War II

  13-03-2025 05:57 via openculture.com
  
  As a New York City subway rider, I am constantly exposed to public health posters. More often than not these feature a photo of a wholesome-looking teen whose sober expression is meant to convey hindsight regret at having taken up drugs, dropped out of school, or forgone condoms. They’re well-intended, but boring. I can’t imagine I’d feel differently were I a member of the target demographic. The Chelsea Mini Storage ads’ saucy regional humor is far more entertaining, as
  
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• Bob Dylan Explains Why Music Has Been Getting Worse

  12-03-2025 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  One often hears that there’s no money to be made in music anymore. But then, there was no money to be made in music when Bob Dylan started his career either—at least according to Bob Dylan. “If you could just support yourself, you were doin’ good,” he says in an interview clip included in the short compilation above. “There wasn’t this big billion-dollar industry that it is today, and people do go into it just to make money.” He appears to have mad
  
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• How the Moving Image Has Become the Medium of Record: Part 2

  12-03-2025 07:25 via openculture.com
  
  Eastman giving Edison the first roll of movie film, via Wikimedia Commons
  This piece picks up where Part 1 of Peter Kaufman’s article left off yesterday…
  The epistemological nightmare we seem to be in, bombarded over our screens and speakers with so many moving-image messages per day, false and true, is at least in part due to the paralysis that we – scholars, journalists, and regulators, but also producers and consumers – are still exhibiting over how to anchor facts a
  
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• When Charlie Chaplin First Spoke Onscreen: How His Famous Great Dictator Speech Came About

  11-03-2025 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  Charlie Chaplin came up in vaudeville, but it was silent film that made him the most famous man in the world. His mastery of that form primed him to feel a degree of skepticism about sound when it came along: in 1931, he called the silent picture “a universal means of expression,” whereas the talkies, as they were then known, “necessarily have a limited field.” Nevertheless, he was too astute a reader of public tastes to believe he could stay silent forever, though he onl
  
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• How the Moving Image Has Become the Medium of Record: Part 1

  11-03-2025 06:54 via openculture.com
  
  Image via Wikimedia Commons
  How did we get to the point where we’ve come to believe so many lies that 77 million Americans voted into the White House a criminal reality TV star from NBC, one groomed by a reality TV producer from CBS, who then appointed his Cabinet from Fox and X and World Wrestling Entertainment?
  It’s a long story, but the moving image had something to do with it – which is to say, the way we have let television, video, and screen culture run almost entirely u
  
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• Watch “The Birth of the Robot,” Len Lye’s Surreal 1935 Stop-Motion Animation

  10-03-2025 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  Robots seem to have been much on the public mind back in the nineteen-thirties. Matt Novak at Paleofuture gives the example of a moment in 1932 when “the world was awash in newspaper stories about a robot that had done the unthinkable: a mechanical man had shot its inventor.” Despite being a typical example of the experimental-fictive journalistic style of that era, it nevertheless reflected “a time when robots represented something fearful,” and were indeed “a pote
  
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• Why “The Girl from Ipanema” Is a Richer & Weirder Song Than You Realized

  10-03-2025 09:00 via openculture.com
  
  Say what you want about YouTube’s negative effects (endless soy faces, influencers, its devious and fascist-leaning algorithms) but it has offered to creators a space in which to indulge. And that’s one of the reasons I’ve been a fan of Adam Neely’s work. A jazz musician and a former student at both the Berklee College of Music and the Manhattan School of Music, his YouTube channel is a must for those with an interest in the how and why of music theory. If not for Neely&r
  
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• A Tour of the Final Home Designed By Frank Lloyd Wright: The Circular Sun House

  07-03-2025 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  Some remember the nineteen-nineties in America as the second coming of the nineteen-fifties. Whatever holes one can poke in that historical framing, it does feel strangely plausible inside Frank Lloyd Wright’s Circular Sun House. Though not actually built until 1967, it was commissioned from Wright by shipping magnate Norman Lykes in 1959, the last year of the architect’s life. Almost dated though it may have looked by the time of its completion, supervised by Wright’s apprenti
  
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• Watch the Sci-Fi Short Film “I’m Not a Robot”: Winner of a 2025 Academy Award

  07-03-2025 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  Victoria Warmerdam, the writer and director of the short film, “I’m Not a Robot,” summarizes the plot of her 22-minute film as follows: The film “tells the story of Lara, a music producer who spirals into an existential crisis after repeatedly failing a CAPTCHA test—leading her to question whether she might actually be a robot. Through a dark comedic lens, [the film] explores themes of identity, self-determination, love, and technology in a world where the line betw
  
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• Get 40% Off 3 Months of Coursera Plus & Access Unlimited Courses – Offer Ends March 9

  07-03-2025 09:01 via openculture.com
  Now through March 9, 2025, Coursera is offering 40% off a three-month subscription to Coursera Plus. This plan provides access to 7,000+ courses for one all-inclusive price, including programs from 350 universities (e.g., Duke and the University of Michigan) and companies like Google and IBM.
  It’s a great opportunity for anyone looking to learn new skills or earn certificates to boost their resume. Just as Netflix offers unlimited streaming, Coursera Plus provides unlimited access to cour
  
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• The Classic 1972 Concert Film Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii Gets Restored & Will Soon Hit IMAX Theaters

  06-03-2025 11:00 via openculture.com
  Today, when we watch genre-defining concert films like Monterey Pop, Woodstock, Gimme Shelter, or Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, we look upon the audience with nearly as much interest as we do the performers. But Pink Floyd never did things in quite the same way as other rock bands of that era. In 1972, they put out a concert film with no audience at all, substituting for visual interest the majestic ruins of the ancient Roman amphitheater in Pompeii. Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCM
  
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• Historian Answers Burning Questions About The Renaissance

  06-03-2025 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  Courtesy of Wired, historian Alexander Bevilacqua (Williams College) answers the internet’s burning questions about the cultural rebirth that came to be known as The Renaissance. In 30+ minutes, Bevilacqua covers an array of questions, including: When did The Renaissance begin? What exactly was the Renaissance? Why do paintings like the Mona Lisa and The Birth of Venus remain so famous centuries later? What did people’s diets consist of during The Renaissance? How was their hygiene?
  
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• How Stephen King Foretold the Rise of Trump in a 1979 Novel

  05-03-2025 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  Nobody opens a Stephen King novel expecting to see a reflection of the real world. Then again, as those who get hooked on his books can attest, never is his work ever wholly detached from reality. Time and time again, he delivers lurid visions of the macabre, grotesque, and bizarre, but they always work most powerfully when he weaves them into the coarse fabric of ordinary, makeshift, down-at-the-heels America. Though long rich and famous, King hasn’t lost his understanding of a certain do
  
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• Carl Jung’s Hand-Drawn, Rarely-Seen Manuscript The Red Book

  05-03-2025 05:52 via openculture.com
  
  Despite his one-time friend and mentor Sigmund Freud’s enormous impact on Western self-understanding, I would argue it is Carl Jung who is still most with us in our communal practices: from his focus on introversion and extroversion to his view of syncretic, intuitive forms of spirituality and his indirect influence on 12-Step programs. But Jung’s journey to self-understanding and what he called “individuation” was an intensely private, personal affair that took
  
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• How the Nazis Waged War on Modern Art: Inside the “Degenerate Art” Exhibition of 1937

  04-03-2025 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  Before his fateful entry into politics, Adolf Hitler wanted to be an artist. Even to the most neutral imaginable observer, the known examples of the estimated 2,000 to 3,000 paintings and other works of art he produced in his early adulthood would hardly evidence astonishing genius. They do show a certain technical competence, especially where buildings are concerned. (Twice rejected from the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, the young Hitler was advised to apply instead to the School of Architectur
  
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• Where The Simpsons Began: Discover the Original Shorts That Appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show (1987–1989)

  03-03-2025 11:00 via openculture.com
  When it first went on air in the late nineteen-eighties, Fox had to prove itself capable of playing in a televisual league with the likes of NBC, CBS, and ABC. To that end, it began building its prime-time lineup with two original programs more thematically and aesthetically daring than anything on those staid networks: the sitcom Married… with Children and the sketch comedy series The Tracey Ullman Show. Before and after commercial breaks, the latter treated its early viewers to a serie
  
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• The Story Of Menstruation: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

  03-03-2025 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  From 1945 to 1951, Disney produced a series of educational films to be shown in American schools. How to bathe an infant. How not to catch a cold. Why you shouldn’t drive fast. Disney covered these subjects in its educational shorts, and then eventually got to the touchy subject of biology and sexuality. If there was ever a company suited to talk about “vaginas” in the 1940s in a family-friendly way, it was Disney. Hence The Story of Menstruation.
  The film runs 10 minutes,
  
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• The Experimental Movement That Created The Beatles’ Weirdest Song, “Revolution 9”

  28-02-2025 10:03 via openculture.com
  
  As of this writing, the Beatles’ “Revolution 9″ has more than 13,800,000 plays on Spotify. This has no doubt generated decent revenue, even given the platform’s oft-lamented payout rates. But compare that number to the more than half-a-billion streams of “Blackbird,” also on the Beatles’ self-titled 1968 “white album,” and you get an idea of “Revolution 9”’s place in the band’s oeuvre. Simply put, even ultra-hard-core
  
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• Ella Fitzgerald Sings Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” (1969)

  27-02-2025 10:00 via openculture.com
  
  In 1969, Ella Fitzgerald released Sunshine of Your Love, a live album recorded at the Venetian Room in The Fairmont San Francisco. Recorded by music producer Norman Granz, the album featured contemporary pop songs that showcased Fitzgerald’s ability to transcend jazz standards. Take, for example, a version of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love.” Below you can hear what the original (recorded in 1967) sounded like in the hands of J
  
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• What Makes Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas One of the Most Fascinating Paintings in Art History

  26-02-2025 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  Diego Velázquez painted Las Meninas almost 370 years ago, and it’s been under scrutiny ever since. If the public’s appetite to know more about it has diminished over time, that certainly isn’t reflected in the view count of the analysis from YouTube channel Rabbit Hole above, which as of this writing has crossed the 2.5 million mark. So has this video on Las Meninas from Evan Puschak, better known as the Nerdwriter. What element of this particular painting has stoke
  
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• Jimi Hendrix Plays the Beatles: “Sgt. Pepper’s,” “Day Tripper,” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”

  25-02-2025 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  Who invented rock and roll? Ask Chuck Berry, he’ll tell you. It was Chuck Berry. Or was it Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard? Muddy Waters? Robert Johnson? Maybe even Lead Belly? You didn’t, but if you asked me, I’d say that rock and roll, like country blues, came not from one lone hero but a matrix of black and white artists in the South—some with big names, some without—trading, stealing licks, spotlights, and hairdos. Country crooners, bluesmen, refugee
  
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• The 48 Laws of Power Explained in 30 Minutes: “Never Outshine the Master,” “Re-Create Yourself,” and More

  25-02-2025 10:02 via openculture.com
  
  Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power has been a popular book since its first publication over a quarter-century ago. Judging by the discussion that continues among its fervent (and often proselytizing) fans, it’s easy to forget that its title isn’t How to Become Powerful. Granted, it may sometimes get filed in the self-help section, and certain of the laws it contains — “Never outshine the master,” “Always say less than necessary,” “Enter act
  
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• Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists the Best and Worst Sci-Fi Movies: The Blob, Back to the Future, 2001: A Space Odyssey & More

  24-02-2025 11:00 via openculture.com
  
  Neil deGrasse Tyson may not be a film critic. But if you watch the video above from his Youtube channel StarTalk Plus, you’ll see that — to use one of his own favorite locutions — he loves him a good science fiction movie. Given his professional credentials as an astrophysicist and his high public profile as a science communicator, it will hardly come as a surprise that he displays a certain sensitivity to cinematic departures from scientific fact. His personal low watermark on
  
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• David Bowie Performs an Ethereal Acoustic Version of “Heroes,” with a Bottle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keeping the Beat (1996)

  24-02-2025 06:56 via openculture.com
  
  NOTE: You can watch the video here.
  Not long ago I stumbled upon this pretty wonderful video of David Bowie playing an acoustic version of “Heroes,” one of my favorite songs, and I thought I’d quickly share it today. Why wait?
  Appearing at Neil Young’s annual Bridge School Benefit concert in October 1996, Bowie gives us a stripped-down version of the moving song he co-wrote with Brian Eno in 1977. Flanked by Reeves Gabrels on guitar and Gail Ann Dorsey on bass, Bowi
  
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