How Will AI Change the World?: A Captivating Animation Explores the Promise & Perils of Artificial Intelligence

in Animation, Artificial Intelligence, Technology | December 13th, 2022

Many of us can remem­ber a time when arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence was wide­ly dis­missed as a sci­ence-fic­tion­al pipe dream unwor­thy of seri­ous research and invest­ment. That time, safe to say, has gone. “With­in a decade,” writes blog­ger Samuel Ham­mond, the devel­op­ment of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence could bring about a world in which “ordi­nary peo­ple will have more capa­bil­i­ties than a CIA agent does today. You’ll be able to lis­ten in on a con­ver­sa­tion in an apart­ment across the street using the sound vibra­tions off a chip bag” (as pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.) “You’ll be able to replace your face and voice with those of some­one else in real time, allow­ing any­one to social­ly engi­neer their way into any­thing.”

And that’s the benign part. “Death-by-kamikaze drone will sur­pass mass shoot­ings as the best way to enact a lurid revenge. The courts, mean­while, will be flood­ed with law­suits because who needs to pay attor­ney fees when your phone can file an air­tight motion for you?” All this “will be enough to make the sta­blest genius feel schiz­o­phrenic.” But “it doesn’t have to be this way. We can fight AI fire with AI fire and adapt our prac­tices along the way.” You can hear a con­sid­ered take on how we might man­age that in the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video above, adapt­ed from an inter­view with com­put­er sci­en­tist Stu­art Rus­sell, author of the pop­u­lar text­book Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: A Mod­ern Approach as well as Human Com­pat­i­ble: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence and the Prob­lem of Con­trol.

“The prob­lem with the way we build AI sys­tems now is we give them a fixed objec­tive,” Rus­sell says. “The algo­rithms require us to spec­i­fy every­thing in the objec­tive.” Thus an AI charged with de-acid­i­fy­ing the oceans could quite plau­si­bly come to the solu­tion of set­ting off “a cat­alyt­ic reac­tion that does that extreme­ly effi­cient­ly, but con­sumes a quar­ter of the oxy­gen in the atmos­phere, which would appar­ent­ly cause us to die fair­ly slow­ly and unpleas­ant­ly over the course of sev­er­al hours.” The key to this prob­lem, Rus­sell argues, is to pro­gram in a cer­tain lack of con­fi­dence: “It’s when you build machines that believe with cer­tain­ty that they have the objec­tive, that’s when you get sort of psy­cho­path­ic behav­ior, and I think we see the same thing in humans.”

A less exis­ten­tial but more com­mon wor­ry has to do with unem­ploy­ment. Full AI automa­tion of the ware­house tasks still per­formed by humans, for exam­ple, “would, at a stroke, elim­i­nate three or four mil­lion jobs.” Rus­sell here turns to E. M. Forster, who in the 1909 sto­ry “The Machine Stops” envi­sions a future in which “every­one is entire­ly machine-depen­dent,” with lives not unlike the e‑mail- and Zoom meet­ing-filled ones we lead today. The nar­ra­tive plays out as a warn­ing that “if you hand over the man­age­ment of your civ­i­liza­tion to machines, you then lose the incen­tive to under­stand it your­self or to teach the next gen­er­a­tion how to under­stand it.” The mind, as the say­ing goes, is a won­der­ful ser­vant but a ter­ri­ble mas­ter. The same is true of machines — and even truer, we may well find, of mechan­i­cal minds.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Dis­cov­er DALL‑E, the Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Artist That Lets You Cre­ate Sur­re­al Art­work

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Sci-Fi Writer Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Future in 1964: Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Instan­ta­neous Glob­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Remote Work, Sin­gu­lar­i­ty & More

Stephen Fry Voic­es a New Dystopi­an Short Film About Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence & Sim­u­la­tion The­o­ry: Watch Escape

Stephen Hawk­ing Won­ders Whether Cap­i­tal­ism or Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Doom the Human Race

Hunter S. Thomp­son Chill­ing­ly Pre­dicts the Future, Telling Studs Terkel About the Com­ing Revenge of the Eco­nom­i­cal­ly & Tech­no­log­i­cal­ly “Obso­lete” (1967)

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 or on Face­book.

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The Story of Akiko Takakura, One of the Last Survivors of the Hiroshima Bombing, Told in a Short Animated Documentary

in Animation, Art, History, Life | November 21st, 2022

André Hör­mann and Anna Samo’s short ani­ma­tion, Obon, opens on a serene scene — a qui­et for­est, anda red torii gate fram­ing moon­light on the water.

But then we notice that the water is choked with bod­ies, vic­tims of the bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma.

Akiko Takaku­ra, whose rem­i­nis­cences inspired the film, arrived for work at the Hiroshi­ma Bank just min­utes before the Eno­la Gay dropped the atom­ic bomb “Lit­tle Boy” over the city, killing some 80,000 instant­ly.

Takaku­ra-san, who had been clean­ing desks and moon­ing over a cute co-work­er with her fel­low junior bank employ­ee Sato­mi Usa­mi when the bomb hit, was one of the 10 peo­ple with­in a radius of 500 meters from ground zero to have sur­vived .

(Usa­mi-san, who fought her way out of the wreck­age with her friend’s assis­tance, lat­er suc­cumbed to her injuries.)

Ani­ma­tor Samo, whose style harkens to tra­di­tion­al wood­cuts, based her depic­tion of the hor­rors con­fronting the two young women when they emerge from the bank on the draw­ings of sur­vivors:

With­out craft or artistry to hide behind, the draw­ings told sto­ries unfil­tered, made me hear shak­ing voic­es say­ing: this is what hap­pened to us.

Takaku­ra-san attempt­ed to cap­ture one such image in a 1974 draw­ing:

I saw one corpse with burn­ing fin­gers. Her hand was raised and her fin­gers were on fire, blue flames burn­ing them down to stumps. A light char­coal-col­ored liq­uid was ooz­ing onto the ground. When I think of those hands cradling beloved chil­dren and turn­ing the pages of books, even now my heart fills with a deep sad­ness.

Takaku­ra-san was 84 when writer/director Hör­mann trav­eled to Japan to meet with his­to­ri­ans, nuclear sci­en­tists, peace researchers and elder­ly sur­vivors of the atom­ic bomb. Over the course of three 90 minute ses­sions, he noticed a qual­i­ty that set her apart from the oth­er sur­vivors he inter­viewed :

…the sto­ries that she told me there was always a glim­mer­ing light of hope in the midst of all of the hor­ror. For me, it was a sigh of relief to have this moment of hope and peace, it was beau­ti­ful. It is impos­si­ble to just tell a sto­ry that is all pain. Ms. Takakura’s sto­ry was a way for me to look at this dark piece of his­to­ry and not be emo­tion­al­ly crushed.

Her per­spec­tive informs the film, which trav­els back­ward and for­ward through­out time.

We meet her as a tiny, kimono-clad old woman in mod­ern day Japan, whose face now bears a strong resem­blance to her father’s. Her back is criss­crossed with scars of the 102 lac­er­a­tions she sus­tained on the morn­ing of August 6, 1945.

We then see her as a lit­tle girl, whose father, “a typ­i­cal man from Mei­ji times, tough and strict,” is unable to express affec­tion toward his daugh­ter.

This changed when the 19-year-old was reunit­ed with her fam­i­ly after the bomb­ing, and her father asked for for­give­ness while ten­der­ly bathing her burned hands.

To Hör­mann this “tiny moment of hap­pi­ness” and con­nec­tion is at the heart of Obon.

Ani­ma­tor Samo won­ders if Takaku­ra-san would have achieved “peace with the world that was so cru­el to her” if her father hadn’t tend­ed to her wound­ed hands so gen­tly:

What does an act of love in a moment of despair mean? Can it allow you to you go on with a nor­mal life, drink tea and cook rice? If you have seen so much death, can you still look peo­ple in the eyes, get mar­ried and give birth to chil­dren?

The film takes its title from the annu­al Bud­dhist hol­i­day to com­mem­o­rate ances­tors and pay respect to the dead.

As an old woman, Takaku­ra-san tends to the fam­i­ly altar, then trav­els with younger cel­e­brants to the riv­er for the release of the paper lanterns that are believed to guide the spir­its back to their world at the festival’s end.

The face that appears in her glow­ing lantern is both her father’s and a reflec­tion of her own.

Read an inter­view with Akiko Takaku­ra here.

To Chil­dren Who Don’t Know the Atom­ic Bomb

by Akiko Takaku­ra

8:15 a.m. on August 6, 1945,
a very clear morn­ing.
The moth­er prepar­ing her baby’s milk,
the old man water­ing his pot­ted plants,
the old woman offer­ing flow­ers at her Bud­dhist altar,
the young boy eat­ing break­fast,
the father start­ing work at his com­pa­ny,
the thou­sands walk­ing to work on the street,
all died.
Not know­ing an atom­ic bomb would be dropped,
they lived as usu­al.
Sud­den­ly, a flash.
“Ah ~
Just as they saw it,
peo­ple in hous­es were shoved over and smashed.
Peo­ple walk­ing on streets were blown away.
Peo­ple were burned-faces, arms, legs-all over.
Peo­ple were killed, all over
the city of Hiroshi­ma
by a sin­gle bomb.

Those who died.
A hun­dred? No. A thou­sand? No. Ten thou­sand?
No, many, many more than that.
More peo­ple than we can count
died, speech­less,
know­ing noth­ing.
Oth­ers suf­fered ter­ri­ble burns,


hor­rif­ic injuries.
Some were thrown so hard
their stom­achs ripped open,
their spines broke.
Whole bod­ies filled with glass shards.
Clothes dis­ap­peared,
burned and tat­tered.

Fires came right after the explo­sion.
Hiroshi­ma engulfed in flames.
Every­one flee­ing, not know­ing where
they were or where to go.
Every­one bare­foot,
cry­ing tears of anger and grief,
hair stick­ing up, look­ing like Ashu­ra*,
they ran on bro­ken glass, smashed roofs
along a long, wide road of fire.


Blood flowed.
Burned skin peeled and dan­gled.
Whirl­winds of fire raged here and there.
Hun­dreds, thou­sands of fire balls
30-cen­time­ters across
whirled right at us.
It was hard to breathe in the flames,
hard to see in the smoke.

What will become of us?
Those who sur­vived, injured and burned,
shout­ed, “Help! Help!” at the top of their lungs.
One woman walk­ing on the road
died and then
her fin­gers burned,
a blue flame short­en­ing them like can­dles,
a gray liq­uid trick­ling down her palms
and drip­ping to the ground.
Whose fin­gers were those?
More than 50 years lat­er,
I remem­ber that blue flame,
and my heart near­ly bursts
with sor­row.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The “Shad­ow” of a Hiroshi­ma Vic­tim, Etched into Stone Steps, Is All That Remains After 1945 Atom­ic Blast

This 392-Year-Old Bon­sai Tree Sur­vived the Hiroshi­ma Atom­ic Blast & Still Flour­ish­es Today: The Pow­er of Resilience

Haunt­ing Unedit­ed Footage of the Bomb­ing of Nagasa­ki (1945)

Watch Chill­ing Footage of the Hiroshi­ma & Nagasa­ki Bomb­ings in Restored Col­or

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Tour of Studio Ghibli’s Brand New Theme Park in Japan, Which Re-Creates the Worlds of Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, and Other Classics

in Animation, Travel | November 16th, 2022

Two and a half years ago, we fea­tured the con­cept art for Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s theme park here on Open Cul­ture, and just two weeks ago it opened its doors. Locat­ed on the grounds of Expo 2005 in Japan’s Aichi Pre­fec­ture (a three- to four-hour train trip west from Tokyo, or a two-hour train trip east of Osa­ka), Ghi­b­li Park com­pris­es sev­er­al themed areas like the Grand Ware­house, the Hill of Youth, and Don­doko For­est. Just hear­ing those names sure­ly fires up the imag­i­na­tions of many a Ghi­b­li fan, even before they hear about the park’s vis­i­tor-ready recon­struc­tions of every­thing from Cas­tle in the Sky’s ruined gar­dens to Whis­per of the Heart’s antique shop to My Neigh­bor Totoro’s Cat­bus.

“Unlike Dis­ney­land, Ghi­b­li Park does not fea­ture roller coast­ers or rides,” writes My Mod­ern Met’s Margheri­ta Cole. “Instead, it wel­comes vis­i­tors to immerse them­selves in life-size sets that are har­mo­nious­ly inte­grat­ed with nature.” You can get a sense of how this con­cept has been exe­cut­ed in the fif­teen-minute video at the top of the post from Japan-based trav­el vlog­gers Didi and Bryan.

In it, they pass through the afore­men­tioned spaces as well as oth­ers includ­ing Cin­e­ma Ori­on, which screens ten short films once only view­able at the Ghi­b­li Muse­um, and the Siberia milk stand, which offers the epony­mous sponge cake from The Wind Ris­es, Ghi­b­li mas­ter­mind Hayao Miyaza­k­i’s final ani­mat­ed fea­ture — or rather, his penul­ti­mate ani­mat­ed fea­ture.

The repeat­ed­ly un-retired Miyaza­ki returned to the stu­dio in 2016 to begin a film called How Do You Live?. Though the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic slowed down its pro­duc­tion by forc­ing him and his col­lab­o­ra­tors to work from home, it seems not to have thrown the new theme park’s con­struc­tion far off track. In three years’ time, Cole writes, “Ghi­b­li Park will open its last two sec­tions — Mononoke no sato (‘Mononoke Vil­lage’) and Majo no tani (‘Val­ley of the Witch’) — which are ded­i­cat­ed to the films Princess Mononoke and Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice, respec­tive­ly. There may even be a future ride in store, as some of the con­cept art appears to depict spin­ning teacups inspired by Kik­i’s cat Jiji.” That will require care­ful design­ing: a cer­tain oth­er ani­ma­tion stu­dio with long-stand­ing theme parks has a teacup ride of its own — and lit­tle patience for appar­ent imi­ta­tors, no mat­ter the artis­tic heights to which they soar.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Releas­es Tan­ta­liz­ing Con­cept Art for Its New Theme Park, Open­ing in Japan in 2022

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Makes 1,178 Images Free to Down­load from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & Oth­er Beloved Ani­mat­ed Films

Hayao Miyaza­ki, The Mind of a Mas­ter: A Thought­ful Video Essay Reveals the Dri­ving Forces Behind the Animator’s Incred­i­ble Body of Work

Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Enter the Real World

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 or on Face­book.

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How Did They Build the Great Pyramid of Giza?: An Animated Introduction

in Animation, Architecture, History | October 21st, 2022

The Great Pyra­mid of Giza is a mir­a­cle of geom­e­try, con­struc­tion, and plan­ning ahead.

Pharaoh Khu­fu’s rel­a­tive — like­ly nephew — Hemienu, was put in charge of the project as soon as Khu­fu suc­ceed­ed his father, Pharaoh Sne­feru cir­ca 2550 B.C.E.

Hemienu, an engi­neer, priest and magi­cian whose hon­orifics includ­ed Mem­ber of the Elite, Vizier, King’s Seal-Bear­er, Priest of Bastet, Priest of Shes­me­tet, High Priest of Thoth, and, most impor­tant­ly, Over­seer of All Con­struc­tion Projects of the King, picked wise­ly when choos­ing the Great Pyra­mid’s site  - a rocky plateau on the Nile’s west bank made for a far stur­dier foun­da­tion than shift­ing sands.

His­to­ri­an Soraya Field Fio­rio’s ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son, above, details how the 25,000 work­ers who took 20 years to make Hemienu’s vision a real­i­ty were not enslaved labor, as they have so often been por­trayed — a rumor start­ed by Greek his­to­ri­an Herodotus — but rather, ordi­nary Egypt­ian cit­i­zens ful­fill­ing a peri­od of manda­to­ry gov­ern­ment ser­vice.

Some toiled on the admin­is­tra­tive end or in a sup­port capac­i­ty, while oth­ers got to spend ten hours a day haul­ing lime­stone on mas­sive cedar sleds.

A team of 500 ham­mered out the Pyramid’s gran­ite sup­port beams using dolerite rocks, a task so time con­sum­ing that Hemienu put them to work imme­di­ate­ly, antic­i­pat­ing that it would take them 12 years to pro­duce the nec­es­sary mate­ri­als.

Con­struc­tion sched­ules are always an iffy bet, but Hemienu had the added stress of know­ing that Khu­fu could take his leave well before his glo­ri­ous, gold­en tipped tomb was ready to receive him.

This is why there are three bur­ial cham­bers with­in the Great Pyra­mid. The last and grand­est of these, known as the King’s Cham­ber, is an impres­sive pink gran­ite room at the heart of pyra­mid, where its roof sup­ports over four hun­dred tons of mason­ry. An enor­mous red gran­ite sar­coph­a­gus weigh­ing well over 3 tons is locat­ed in the mid­dle of this cham­ber, but alas, the lid has been ajar for cen­turies.

Khu­fu is not with­in.

What became of him is a mys­tery, but if Scoo­by-Doo taught us any­thing of val­ue in our pre-TED-Ed child­hood, it’s that mys­ter­ies exist to be solved.

Sev­er­al years ago, an inter­na­tion­al team of archi­tects and sci­en­tists Egypt sur­veyed the Great Pyra­mid and its Giza neigh­bors at sun­rise and sun­set, using infrared ther­mog­ra­phy, which seemed to indi­cate the exis­tence of an as yet unex­plored cham­ber.

TED-Ed’s les­son plan directs those inter­est­ed in plumb­ing these and oth­er mys­ter­ies fur­ther to the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic doc­u­men­tary, Unlock­ing the Great Pyra­mid and Egyp­tol­o­gist Bob Brier’s book, The Secret of the Great Pyra­mid: How One Man’s Obses­sion Led to the Solu­tion of Ancient Egypt’s Great­est Mys­tery, both of which are root­ed in the work of French archi­tect Jean-Pierre Houdin, below.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Who Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids & How Did They Do It?: New Arche­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Busts Ancient Myths

Take a 3D Tour Through Ancient Giza, Includ­ing the Great Pyra­mids, the Sphinx & More

What the Great Pyra­mid of Giza Would’ve Looked Like When First Built: It Was Gleam­ing, Reflec­tive White

A Drone’s Eye View of the Ancient Pyra­mids of Egypt, Sudan & Mex­i­co

Pyra­mids of Giza: Ancient Egypt­ian Art and Archaeology–a Free Online Course from Har­vard

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Behold the World’s Oldest Animation Made on a Vase in Iran 5,200 Years Ago

in Animation, History | October 13th, 2022

By some accounts, the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion stretch­es back to the turn of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Since that time, ani­ma­tors have brought an astound­ing vari­ety of visions to artis­tic life. But looked at anoth­er way, this enter­prise — which has so far cul­mi­nat­ed in fea­ture-film spec­ta­cles by stu­dios like Pixar and Ghi­b­li — actu­al­ly has it roots deep in antiq­ui­ty. In order to find the first work of ani­ma­tion, broad­ly con­ceived, one must go to Shahr‑e Sukhteh, Iran’s famous “Burnt City.” Now a UNESCO World Her­itage site, it dates back more than five mil­len­nia, about four of which it spent under a lay­er of ash and dust, which pre­served a great many arti­facts of inter­est with­in.

Shahr‑e Sukhteh was first exca­vat­ed in 1967. About a decade lat­er, an Ital­ian archae­o­log­i­cal team unearthed the pot­tery ves­sel bear­ing designs now con­sid­ered the ear­li­est exam­ple of ani­ma­tion. “The arti­fact bears five images depict­ing a wild goat jump­ing up to eat the leaves of a tree,” says the web site of the Cir­cle of Ancient Iran­ian Stud­ies. “Sev­er­al years lat­er, Iran­ian archae­ol­o­gist Dr. Mansur Sad­ja­di, who became lat­er appoint­ed as the new direc­tor of the archae­o­log­i­cal team work­ing at the Burnt City dis­cov­ered that the pic­tures formed a relat­ed series.” The ani­mal depict­ed is a mem­ber of Capra aega­grus, “also known as ‘Per­sian desert Ibex’, and since it is an indige­nous ani­mal to the region, it would nat­u­ral­ly appear in the iconog­ra­phy of the Burnt City.”

Image by Eme­sik, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

This amus­ing­ly dec­o­rat­ed gob­let, now on dis­play at the Nation­al Muse­um of Iran, is hard­ly the only find that reflects the sur­pris­ing devel­op­ment of the ear­ly civ­i­liza­tion that pro­duced it. “The world’s first known arti­fi­cial eye­ball, with two holes in both sides and a gold­en thread to hold it in place, has been unearthed from the skele­ton of a woman’s body in Shahr‑e Sukhteh,” says Mehr News. Exca­va­tions have also turned up “the old­est signs of brain surgery,” as well as evi­dence that “the peo­ple of Shahr‑e Sukhteh played backgam­mon,” or at least some kind of table game involv­ing dice. But only the Burnt City’s pio­neer­ing work of flip-book-style art “means that the world’s old­est car­toon char­ac­ter is a goat.” His­to­ri­ans of ani­ma­tion, update your files accord­ing­ly.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Art on Ancient Greek Vas­es Come to Life with 21st-Cen­tu­ry Ani­ma­tion

The Ear­ly Days of Ani­ma­tion Pre­served in UCLA’s Video Archive

Ear­ly Japan­ese Ani­ma­tions: The Ori­gins of Ani­me (1917–1931)

700 Years of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

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

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 or on Face­book.

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A Brief History of Dumplings: An Animated Introduction

in Animation, Food & Drink, History, K-12 | August 8th, 2022

Dumplings are so deli­cious and so ven­er­a­ble, it’s under­stand­able why more than one coun­try would want to claim author­ship.

As cul­tur­al food his­to­ri­an Miran­da Brown dis­cov­ers in her TED-Ed ani­ma­tion, dumplings are among the arti­facts found in ancient tombs in west­ern Chi­na, rock hard, but still rec­og­niz­able.

Schol­ar Shu Xi sang their prais­es over 1,700 years ago in a poem detail­ing their ingre­di­ents and prepa­ra­tion. He also indi­cat­ed that the dish was not native to Chi­na.

Lamb stuffed dumplings fla­vored with gar­lic, yogurt, and herbs were an Ottoman Empire treat, cir­ca 1300 CE.

The 13th-cen­tu­ry Mon­gol inva­sions of Korea result­ed in mass casu­al­ties , but the sil­ver lin­ing is, they gave the world man­doo.

The Japan­ese Army’s bru­tal occu­pa­tion of Chi­na dur­ing World War II gave them a taste for dumplings that led to the cre­ation of gyoza.

East­ern Euro­pean pel­meni, piero­gi and vareni­ki may seem like vari­a­tions on a theme to the unini­ti­at­ed, but don’t expect a Ukrain­ian or Russ­ian to view it that way.

Is the his­to­ry of dumplings real­ly just a series of bloody con­flicts, punc­tu­at­ed by peri­ods of rel­a­tive har­mo­ny where­in every­one argues over the best dumplings in NYC?

Brown takes some mild pot­shots at cuisines whose dumplings are clos­er to dough balls than “plump pock­ets of per­fec­tion”, but she also knows her audi­ence and wise­ly steers clear of any posi­tions that might lead to play­ground fights.

Relax, kids, how­ev­er your grand­ma makes dumplings, she’s doing it right.

It’s hard to imag­ine sushi mas­ter Naomichi Yasu­da dial­ing his opin­ions down to pre­serve the sta­tus quo.

A purist — and favorite of Antho­ny Bour­dain — Chef Yasu­da is unwa­ver­ing in his con­vic­tions that there is one right way, and many wrong ways to eat and pre­pare sushi.

He’s far from prig­gish, instruct­ing cus­tomer Joseph George, for VICE Asia MUNCHIES in the prop­er han­dling of a sim­ple piece of sushi after it’s been light­ly dipped, fish side down, in soy sauce:

Don’t shake it. Don’t shake it! Shak­ing is just to be fin­ished at the men’s room.

Oth­er take­aways for sushi bar din­ers:

  • Use fin­gers rather than chop­sticks when eat­ing maki rolls.
  • Eat­ing pick­led gin­ger with sushi is “very much bad man­ners”
  • Roll sushi on its side before pick­ing it up with chop­sticks to facil­i­tate dip­ping
  • The tem­per­a­ture inter­play between rice and fish is so del­i­cate that your expe­ri­ence of it will dif­fer depend­ing on whether a wait­er brings it to you at a table or the chef hands it to you across the counter as soon as it’s assem­bled.

Explore TED-Ed’s Brief His­to­ry of Dumplings les­son here.

For a deep­er dumpling dive, read the Oxford Symposium’s Wrapped and Stuffed Foods: Pro­ceed­ings on the Sym­po­sium: Foods and Cook­ery, 2012, avail­able as a free Google Book.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Japan­ese Restau­rants Show You How to Make Tra­di­tion­al Dish­es in Med­i­ta­tive Videos: Soba, Tem­pu­ra, Udon & More

How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Mas­ter Sushi Chef

How the Aston­ish­ing Sushi Scene in Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs Was Ani­mat­ed: A Time-Lapse of the Month-Long Shoot

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the author of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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What a Disney Version of A Clockwork Orange Would Look Like

in Animation, Film | August 4th, 2022

“Fam­i­ly-friend­ly enter­tain­ment” means dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple, despite near­ly a cen­tu­ry of the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny attempt­ing to asso­ciate the con­cept exclu­sive­ly with its own brand. And on the busi­ness lev­el, Dis­ney has become increas­ing­ly iden­ti­fied with enter­tain­ment itself. “With Mar­vel, Star Wars, Pixar, and their princess con­tent tucked safe­ly in their port­fo­lio,” writes Boing Boing’s Devin Nealy, “Dis­ney is only a few stu­dios away from hav­ing a monop­oly on nos­tal­gia. At this point, it’d be eas­i­er to count the IPs that Dis­ney does­n’t own.”

When it comes to extract­ing all pos­si­ble val­ue from IP — that is, intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty — no com­pa­ny shows quite as much deter­mi­na­tion as Dis­ney. This goes for the cre­ations it has late­ly acquired as well as those it already owned.

Wit­ness, for instance, its recent spate of live-action remakes: The Jun­gle Book direct­ed by Jon Favreau, Aladdin by Guy Ritchie, Dum­bo by Tim Bur­ton. That these are hard­ly the least plau­si­ble prod­ucts to be put out by Dis­ney Stu­dios in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry sends the imag­i­na­tion toward ever more incon­gru­ous pos­si­bil­i­ties for IP-reusage. What if Dis­ney remade, say, Stan­ley Kubrick­’s A Clock­work Orange?

Such is the premise of the uncan­ny trail­er above, cre­at­ed by Youtu­ber Jaba­Toons. Using audio tak­en straight from Kubrick­’s eclec­ti­cal­ly night­mar­ish vision of Antho­ny Burgess’ dystopi­an nov­el, it also ren­ders a host of its scenes not in the style of the CGI extrav­a­gan­zas Dis­ney puts out today, but the more tra­di­tion­al, two-dimen­sion­al ani­mat­ed pic­tures it still did in the nine­teen-nineties. The trail­er announces the film as “Dis­ney’s 35th ani­mat­ed clas­sic,” a posi­tion occu­pied in real­i­ty by Her­cules: also a hero’s jour­ney, albeit with a much dif­fer­ent tone, to say noth­ing of out­come, than A Clock­work Orange. Alex Delarge may look strange­ly plau­si­ble as a Dis­ney char­ac­ter, but a pro­tag­o­nist with a less fam­i­ly-friend­ly set of inter­ests would be hard to imag­ine.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Lccokrkow Gar­neo: All 245,000 Frames of Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange Ran­dom­ized

Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail Re-Imag­ined as an Epic, Main­stream Hol­ly­wood Film

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Don­ald Duck Dis­cov­ers Glenn Beck: A Remix

Mick­ey Mouse In Viet­nam: The Under­ground Anti-War Ani­ma­tion from 1968, Co-Cre­at­ed by Mil­ton Glaser

When Stan­ley Kubrick Banned His Own Film, A Clock­work Orange: It Was the “Most Effec­tive Cen­sor­ship of a Film in British His­to­ry”

The Mak­ing of Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange

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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Watch the Titanic Sink in This Real-Time 3D Animation

in Animation, History | July 11th, 2022

Minute by minute time­lines have become a sta­ple of dis­as­ter report­ing.

Know­ing how the sto­ry ends puts the pub­lic in the posi­tion of help­less bystander, espe­cial­ly at those crit­i­cal junc­tures when some­one in a posi­tion of author­i­ty exer­cised poor judg­ment, result­ing in a larg­er loss of life.

Youtu­ber Phillip W, cre­ator of Titan­ic Ani­ma­tions, allows us to expe­ri­ence the famed lux­u­ry liner’s final two and half hours as a time­stamped hor­ror show, above, with­out resort­ing to the­atrics, or a crowd pleas­ing fic­tion­al romance.

Ver­i­fied crew orders, CQD reports, and vacant lifeboat seats pro­vide ample dra­ma along­side mes­mer­iz­ing CGI recre­ations of the doomed lux­u­ry lin­er, its light­ed port­holes reflect­ed in the dark water.

It took around 2 and a half hours for the Titan­ic to sink, just four days into her maid­en voy­age, after strik­ing an ice­berg around 11:40 pm.

As the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry recounts:

The berg scraped along the star­board or right side of the hull below the water­line, slic­ing open the hull between five of the adja­cent water­tight com­part­ments. If only one or two of the com­part­ments had been opened, Titan­ic might have stayed afloat, but when so many were sliced open, the water­tight integri­ty of the entire for­ward sec­tion of the hull was fatal­ly breached. 

Titan­ic Ani­ma­tions tracks myr­i­ad crew mem­bers from this moment on, using fac­tu­al titles, light­ly sup­ple­ment­ed with sound effects of ocean nois­es, alarm bells, and peri­od tunes that would’ve been in the reper­toire of the band that famous­ly did (or didn’t) play on. The head bak­er directs staff to car­ry arm­loads of bread to pro­vi­sion the lifeboats. These morsels of infor­ma­tion and the rel­a­tive­ly placid views affords our imag­i­na­tion free rein to fill in the con­fu­sion, pan­ic and mount­ing des­per­a­tion of those aboard.

This real time sink­ing ani­ma­tion is ren­dered with­out human fig­ures, but Titan­ic Animation’s Twit­ter indi­cates that Phillip W has been hard at work on a new project that places crew and pas­sen­gers on deck, a — for­give us — titan­ic under­tak­ing that also finds him striv­ing to recre­ate every riv­et and rip­ple. A sta­tus update from ear­li­er this spring reads, “2.5 months in. 52,035 frames completed.178,364 left to go.”

The orig­i­nal ani­ma­tion, above, took mul­ti­ple years to com­plete:

A friend and I start­ed work­ing on the first ver­sion back in 2012/2013 and it was released in 2015. It’s been updat­ed over the years, and now I’m the only one left after my friend depart­ed after los­ing inter­est. So around 8–9 years, give or take, and about $8000 in research and ren­der­farms to com­plete.


If you’re inclined to mess around with your own Titan­ic ani­ma­tions, Philip W. has shared a Cin­e­mat­ic Film­ing Mod­el of the Titanic’s exte­ri­or, fea­tur­ing accu­rate port­hole place­ments, telegraphs, fun­nels, rig­ging, ven­ti­la­tion equip­ment place­ments, lifeboats, and approx­i­mate­ly 95,000 riv­ets.

Sub­scribe to Titan­ic Ani­ma­tions here. Those with an inter­est in 3D ani­ma­tion will appre­ci­ate archived livestreams that give a peek at the process.

Nav­i­gate to key moments in real time sink­ing ani­ma­tion using the links below.

00:00:00 — Intro

00:05:00 — Ice­berg Col­li­sion

00:10:00 — 10 Degree List to Star­board

00:11:00 — Steam begins to escape the Fun­nels

00:15:45 — Mail Room begins to flood

00:25:00 — Mid­night

00:30:00 — Squash Court begins to flood

00:37:15 — Lifeboats ordered to be read­ied

00:42:00 — Band Begins Play­ing

00:49:40 — Thomas Andrews relays news to Capt. Smith

00:51:40 — First Dis­tress Call is Sent

01:01:18 — Dis­tress Coor­di­nates are Cor­rect­ed

01:01:38 — Carpathia Makes Con­tact

01:04:00 — Boat 7 (First Boat) is Launched

01:06:00 — The Straus’ Refuse Entry to Boat 8

01:07:00 — Grand Stair­case F‑Deck Begins Flood­ing

01:08:10 — Boat 5 is Launched

01:10:00 — Box­hall & Smith spot Carpathia

01:12:10 — 1st Dis­tress Rock­et Fired

01:15:00 — Grand Stair­case E‑Deck Begins Flood­ing

01:20:00 — Boat 3 is Launched

01:21:00 — Titan­ic Begins Send­ing SOS

01:25:00 — 1AM Boat 8 is Launched

01:30:00 — Boat 1 is Launched

01:35:00 — Boat 6 is Launched

01:35:15 — Boil­er Room 5 Floods

01:40:00 — Water Climbs Grand Stair­case

01:44:30 — Boil­er Room 4 is Aban­doned

01:45:00 — Boat 16 is Launched

01:50:00 — Boat 14 is Launched

01:55:15 — Boats 9 and 12 are Launched

02:00:00 — Boat 11 is Launched

02:04:00 — Titan­ic lists to Port

02:05:00 — Boat 13 is Launched

02:06:00 — Boat 15 is Launched

02:09:00 — D‑deck Recep­tion Room Floods

02:10:00 — Boat 2 is Launched

02:12:00 — Well Deck is Awash

02:14:00 — D‑Deck Recep­tion Room Goes

02:15:00 — Boat 10 is Launched

02:15:10 — Boat 4 is Launched

02:25:00 — 2AM Boat C is Launched

02:26:10 -  Pow­er Begins to Fade

02:29:00 — Boat D is Launched

02:37:15 — Near­er My God to Thee

02:40:00 — Final Plunge

02:42:00 — Breakup

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Titan­ic Sur­vivor Inter­views: What It Was Like to Flee the Sink­ing Lux­u­ry Lin­er

The Titan­ic: Rare Footage of the Ship Before Dis­as­ter Strikes (1911–1912)

How the Titan­ic Sank: James Cameron’s New CGI Ani­ma­tion

“Titan­ic Sink­ing; No Lives Lost” and Oth­er Ter­ri­bly Inac­cu­rate News Reports from April 15, 1912

- Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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