Open Culture (Official) 3 months ago

An Introduction to the Codex Seraphinianus, the Strangest Book Ever Published

Open Culture

An Introduction to the Codex Seraphinianus, the Strangest Book Ever Published

Imagine you could talk to Hieronymus Bosch, the authors of the Book of Revelation, or of the Voynich Manuscript—a bizarre 15th century text writt...

Open Culture (Official) 8 months ago

Browse Thousands of Free Vintage Cocktail Recipes Online (1705–1951)

Open Culture

Browse Thousands of Free Vintage Cocktail Recipes Online (1705–1951)

Where do the hipster mixologists of Tokyo, Mexico City and Brooklyn take their inspiration? If not from the Exposition Universelle des Vins...

Open Culture (Official) 8 months ago

How Erik Satie Invented Modern Music: A Visual Explanation

Open Culture

How Erik Satie Invented Modern Music: A Visual Explanation

Once you hear Erik Satie's Gymnopédie No. 1, you never forget it. Not that popular culture would let you forget it: the piece has been, and contin...

Open Culture (Official) 9 months ago

The Intimacy of Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portraits: A Video Essay

Open Culture

The Intimacy of Frida Kahlo’s Self-Portraits: A Video Essay

So says Evan Puschak, who should know: as the Nerdwriter, he runs a popular eponymous channel on Youtube, where everything depends on getting and h...

Open Culture (Official) 9 months ago

Umberto Eco’s List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism #3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.”

Open Culture

Umberto Eco’s List of the 14 Common Features of Fascism

Creative Commons image by Rob Bogaerts, via the National Archives in Holland One of the key questions facing both journalists and loyal oppositi...

Open Culture (Official) 9 months ago

David Lynch Being a Madman for a Relentless 8 Minutes and 30 Seconds

Open Culture

David Lynch Being a Madman for a Relentless 8 Minutes and 30 Seconds

Madman or visionary? A little of both? A genius? A brand? A mensch? David Lynch was all these things and more, and this fan-made video above serves...

Open Culture (Official) 10 months ago

Archaeologists Discover a 2,400-Year-Old Skeleton Mosaic That Urges People to “Be Cheerful and Live Your Life”

Open Culture

Archaeologists Discover a 2,400-Year-Old Skeleton Mosaic That Urges People to “Be Cheerful and Live Your Life”

Image by Dosseman, via Wikimedia Commons In 2012, archaeologists discovered in Southern Turkey a well-preserved mosaic featuring a skeleton savori...

Open Culture (Official) 10 months ago

Prediction: Trump's lackeys in the DOJ will get Ghislaine Maxwell to implicate Bill Clinton. Ghislaine will get pardoned or her sentence commuted. This will all be part of an attempt to remove the focus from Trump and get the MAGA base focused on democrats again. It will probably work like a charm.

Open Culture (Official) 10 months ago

Ozzy Osbourne, pioneering heavy metal singer and Black Sabbath frontman, dies at 76 Very sorry to see this. We're glad that he got to experience his final show and the love of his fans. Makes it all the more poignant.

NBC News

Ozzy Osbourne, pioneering heavy metal singer and Black Sabbath frontman, dies at 76

Word of Osbourne’s death came weeks after he reunited with his original Black Sabbath bandmates.

Open Culture (Official) 10 months ago

How Well Can You Move in Medieval Armor?: Medievalist Daniel Jaquet Gives It a Try in Real Life

Open Culture

How Well Can You Move in Medieval Armor?: Medievalist Daniel Jaquet Gives It a Try in Real Life

If you’ve ever run a marathon in costume, or for that matter, boarded public transportation with a large musical instrument or a bulky bag of ath...

Open Culture (Official) 1 year ago

How Marcel Duchamp Signed a Urinal in 1917 & Redefined Art

Open Culture

How Marcel Duchamp Signed a Urinal in 1917 & Redefined Art

Marcel Duchamp didn't sign his name on a urinal for lack of ability to create 'real' art.

Open Culture (Official) 2 years ago

Watch Metallica Play "Enter Sandman" Before a Crowd of 1.6 Million in Moscow, During the Final Days of the Soviet Union (1991)

Open Culture

Watch Metallica Play “Enter Sandman” Before a Crowd of 1.6 Million in Moscow, During the Final Days of the Soviet Union (1991)

In the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union a “triumphalist discourse” arose in the U.S., writes historian Richard Sakwa, “which ...

Open Culture (Official) 2 years ago

What Happens When Someone Crochets Stuffed Animals Using Instructions from ChatGPT

Open Culture

What Happens When Someone Crochets Stuffed Animals Using Instructions from ChatGPT

Alex Woolner knows how to put a degree in English to good use.

via @npub1l44j...ttpp

Open Culture (Official) 2 years ago

In 1964, Isaac Asimov Predicts What the World Will Look Like Today: Self-Driving Cars, Video Calls, Fake Meats & More

Open Culture

In 1964, Isaac Asimov Predicts What the World Will Look Like Today: Self-Driving Cars, Video Calls, Fake Meats & More

Rochester Institute of Technology, via Wikimedia Commons Isaac Asimov's readers have long found something prophetic in his work, but where did Asi...

Open Culture (Official) 2 years ago

A Curious Herbal: 500 Beautiful Illustrations of Medicinal Plants Drawn by Elizabeth Blackwell in 1737 (to Save Her Family from Financial Ruin)

Open Culture

A Curious Herbal: 500 Beautiful Illustrations of Medicinal Plants Drawn by Elizabeth Blackwell in 1737 (to Save Her Family from Financial Ruin)

Sometimes beautiful things come out of terrible circumstances. This does not justify more terrible circumstances.

Open Culture (Official) 2 years ago

How Cinema Inspired Edward Hopper’s Great Paintings, and How Edward Hopper Inspired Great Filmmakers

Open Culture

How Cinema Inspired Edward Hopper’s Great Paintings, and How Edward Hopper Inspired Great Filmmakers

Edward Hopper is as American as blue jeans, Coca-Cola, and urban alienation, and American in essentially the same way: his work is rooted deeply en...

Open Culture (Official) 2 years ago

700 Years of Persian Manuscripts Now Digitized & Free Online

Open Culture

700 Years of Persian Manuscripts Now Digitized & Free Online

Too often those in power lump thousands of years of Middle Eastern religion and culture into monolithic entities to be feared or persecuted. But at...

Open Culture (Official) 2 years ago

The 5 Innovative Bridges That Make New York City, New York City

Open Culture

The 5 Innovative Bridges That Make New York City, New York City

The Brooklyn Bridge ignites the passions of tourists and locals alike.

Open Culture (Official) 2 years ago

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlikely Duet of "Raise Your Hand" (1969)

Open Culture

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlikely Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

If you’re a fan of Tom Jones and you don’t care who knows it, then no one needs to justify the jovial Welsh superstar’s lounge-soul covers of...

Open Culture (Official) 2 years ago

Botticelli’s 92 Surviving Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1481)

Open Culture

Botticelli’s 92 Surviving Illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy (1481)

Every true Renaissance man needed a wealthy patron, and many Italian artist-inventor-scholar-poets found theirs in Lorenzo de’Medici, scion of a ...