Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing In The Name” Performed By the North Korean Military Chorus : A Clever Fake

Want to see North Kore­a’s Mil­i­tary Cho­rus per­form Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing In The Name”? You real­ly do? This may be the clos­est you’ll ever get.  Watch it, and thank YouTu­ber Lars von Retriev­er for the clever edit…

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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 

Hip Hop Fan Freaks Out When He Hears Rage Against the Machine’s Debut Album for the Very First Time

A List of 132 Rad­i­cal, Mind-Expand­ing Books from Rage Against the Machine

Tom Morel­lo Responds to Angry Fans Who Sud­den­ly Real­ize That Rage Against the Machine’s Music Is Polit­i­cal: “What Music of Mine DIDN’T Con­tain Polit­i­cal BS?”

When Rage Against the Machine Inter­viewed Noam Chom­sky (1999)

The Depths of Wikipedia: Enjoy a Compendium of the Online Encyclopedia’s Most Bizarre Pages

@depthsofwikipedia If the author­i­ties kill me for mak­ing this tik­tok just know I loved you guys #learnon­tik­tok #tik­tok­part­ner ♬ orig­i­nal sound — Annie Rauw­er­da

What’s your stance on Wikipedia, the free, open con­tent online ency­clo­pe­dia?

Stu­dents are often dis­cour­aged or dis­al­lowed from cit­ing Wikipedia as a source, a bias that a Wikipedia entry titled “Wikipedia should not be con­sid­ered a defin­i­tive source in and of itself” sup­ports:

As a user-gen­er­at­ed source, it can be edit­ed by any­one at any time, and any infor­ma­tion it con­tains at a par­tic­u­lar time could be van­dal­ism, a work in progress, or sim­ply incor­rect. Biogra­phies of liv­ing per­sons, sub­jects that hap­pen to be in the news, and polit­i­cal­ly or cul­tur­al­ly con­tentious top­ics are espe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to these issues…because Wikipedia is a vol­un­teer-run project, it can­not con­stant­ly mon­i­tor every con­tri­bu­tion. There are many errors that remain unno­ticed for hours, days, weeks, months, or even years.


(Anoth­er entry coun­sels those who would per­sist to cite the exact time, date, and arti­cle ver­sion they are ref­er­enc­ing.)

Wikipedia has a clear­ly stat­ed pol­i­cy pro­hibit­ing con­trib­u­tors from close para­phras­ing or out­right copy­ing and past­ing from out­side sources, though in a bit of a cir­cle-in-a-cir­cle sit­u­a­tion, sev­er­al not­ed authors and jour­nal­ists have been caught pla­gia­riz­ing Wikipedia arti­cles.

A list of Wikipedia con­tro­ver­sies, pub­lished on — where else? — Wikipedia is a hair rais­ing litany of polit­i­cal sab­o­tage, char­ac­ter assas­si­na­tion, and “revenge edits”. (The list is cur­rent­ly sub­stan­ti­at­ed by 338 ref­er­ence links, and has been char­ac­ter­ized as in need of update since Octo­ber 2021, owing to a lack of edits regard­ing the “con­tro­ver­sy about Main­land Chi­nese edi­tors.”)

It can be a pret­ty scary place, but Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan senior Annie Rauw­er­da, cre­ator of the Insta­gram account Depths of Wikipedia is unfazed. As she wrote in an arti­cle for the tech pub­li­ca­tion Input:

Wikipedia is a splen­did­ly exten­sive record of almost every­thing that mat­ters; a mod­ern-day Library of Alexan­dria that’s free, acces­si­ble, and dynam­ic. But Wikipedia is char­ac­ter­ized not only by what it is but also by what it is not. It’s not a soap­box, a bat­tle­ground, nor a blog.


It’s also becom­ing famous as Rauw­er­da’s play­ground, or more accu­rate­ly, a packed swap shop in which mil­lions of bizarre items are tucked away.

If your sched­ule lim­its the amount time you can spend down its myr­i­ad rab­bit holes, Rauw­er­da will do the dig­ging for you.

Turn­ing a selec­tion of Wikipedia excerpts into a col­lage for a friend’s quaran-zine inspired her to keep the par­ty going with screen­shots of odd­ball entries post­ed to a ded­i­cat­ed Insta­gram account.

Her fol­low­ers don’t seem to care whether a post con­tains an image or not, though the neu­ro­science major finds that emo­tion­al, short or ani­mal-relat­ed posts gen­er­ate the most excite­ment. “I used to post more things that were con­cep­tu­al,” she told Lithi­um Mag­a­zine,  “like mind-blow­ing physics con­cepts, but those didn’t lend them­selves to Insta­gram as well since they require a few min­utes of think­ing and read­ing.”

The bulk of what she posts come to her as read­er sub­mis­sions, though in a pinch, she can always turn to the “holy grail” — Wikipedia’s own list of unusu­al arti­cles.

In addi­tion to Insta­gram, her dis­cov­er­ies find their way into an infre­quent­ly pub­lished newslet­ter, and onto Tik­Tok and Twit­ter, where some of our recent faves include the def­i­n­i­tion of hum­ster, a list of games that Bud­dha would not play, and the Paul O’Sullivan Band, “an inter­na­tion­al­ly based, pop-rock band con­sist­ing of four mem­bers, all of whom are named Paul O’Sullivan.”

Along the way, she has found ways to give back, co-host­ing a vir­tu­al edit-a-thon and bring­ing some gen­uine glam­our to a livestreamed Wikipedia triv­ia con­test.

And she recent­ly authored a seri­ous arti­cle for Slate about Rus­sians scram­bling to down­load a 29-giga­byte file con­tain­ing Russ­ian-lan­guage Wikipedia after the Fed­er­al Ser­vice for Super­vi­sion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Infor­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy and Mass Media (Roskom­nad­zor) threat­ened to block it over con­tent relat­ed to the inva­sion of Ukraine.

(You can read more about how that’s going on Wikipedia…)

Sub­mit a link to Wikipedia page for pos­si­ble inclu­sion on the Depths of Wikipedia here.

Fol­low Annie Rauwin­da’s Depths of Wikipedia on Insta­gram and Tik­Tok.

via NYTimes

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Lis­ten to Wikipedia: A Web Site That Turns Every Wikipedia Edit Into Ambi­ent Music in Real Time

- 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.

How to Open a Door: A Finnish Instructional Video from 1979

Before you get start­ed, turn on the sub­ti­tles by click­ing the “CC” but­ton on the low­er right side of the video.

Did you know that one out of every three peo­ple opens a door incor­rect­ly. You–yes, you–might be doing it all wrong. But this Finnish instruc­tion­al video from 1979 has you cov­ered. Watch and learn. This clip will–as they say–open so many doors to you…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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 Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Why Fin­land & Den­mark Are Hap­pi­er Than the Unit­ed States

The Bialet­ti Moka Express: The His­to­ry of Italy’s Icon­ic Cof­fee Mak­er, and How to Use It the Right Way

How to Open a Wine Bot­tle with Your Shoe

This Is What It Sounds Like When a Harpist Plays “Amazing Grace” and a String Suddenly Breaks

Lisa War­ren was peace­ful­ly play­ing “Amaz­ing Grace” on her harp, when sud­den­ly the c string broke and–as she says–“scared the day­lights out of me.” Harp play­ing, it’s not for the faint of heart…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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

A Harp Played with a Heavy Dis­tor­tion Ped­al

Pink Floyd Songs Played Splen­did­ly on a Harp Gui­tar: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Wish You Were Here” & More

Visu­al­iz­ing Bach: Alexan­der Chen’s Impos­si­ble Harp

Hear the First Song Record­ed on the Yazh, a 2,000 Year-Old Indi­an Instru­ment

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A Harp Played with a Heavy Distortion Pedal

You’ve had the thought exper­i­ment in your head. What would hap­pen if you run a harp through a heavy dis­tor­tion ped­al? Now you can see how it all plays out. Emi­ly Hop­kins has been play­ing the harp for over 20 years and has recent­ly tak­en to exper­i­ment­ing with harp dis­tor­tion. Above, you can watch her exper­i­ment with the Nepenthes by Elec­tro­foods, the heav­i­est dis­tor­tion ped­al she could find. Oth­er ped­al dis­tor­tion exper­i­ments can be found here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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: 

A Brief His­to­ry of Gui­tar Dis­tor­tion: From Ear­ly Exper­i­ments to Hap­py Acci­dents to Clas­sic Effects Ped­als

Two Gui­tar Effects That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Rock: The Inven­tion of the Wah-Wah & Fuzz Ped­als

Visu­al­iz­ing Bach: Alexan­der Chen’s Impos­si­ble Harp

Pink Floyd Songs Played Splen­did­ly on a Harp Gui­tar: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Wish You Were Here” & More

Take a Trip to the LSD Museum, the Largest Collection of “Blotter Art” in the World

When Ken Kesey and his Mer­ry Pranksters kicked off Haight-Ash­bury’s coun­ter­cul­ture in the 1960s, LSD was the key ingre­di­ent in their potent mix of drugs, the Hell’s Angels, the Beat poets, and their local band The War­locks (soon to become The Grate­ful Dead). Kesey admin­is­tered the drug in “Acid Tests” to find out who could han­dle it (and who couldn’t) after he stole the sub­stance from Army doc­tors, who them­selves admin­is­tered it as part of the CIA’s MKUl­tra exper­i­ments. Not long after­ward, Grate­ful Dead sound­man Owsley “Bear” Stan­ley syn­the­sized “the purest form of LSD ever to hit the street,” writes Rolling Stone, and became the country’s biggest sup­pli­er, the “king of acid.”

What­ev­er uses it might have had in psy­chi­atric set­tings — and there were many known at the time — LSD was made ille­gal in 1968 by the U.S. gov­ern­ment, repress­ing what the gov­ern­ment had itself helped bring into being. But it has since returned with new­found respectabil­i­ty. “Once dis­missed as the dan­ger­ous dal­liances of the coun­ter­cul­ture,” writes Nature, psy­che­del­ic drugs are “gain­ing main­stream accep­tance” in clin­i­cal treat­ment. Psilo­cy­bin, MDMA, and LSD “have been steadi­ly mak­ing their way back into the lab,” notes Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can. “Sci­en­tists are redis­cov­er­ing what many see as the sub­stances’ aston­ish­ing ther­a­peu­tic poten­tial.”

None of this comes as news to San Fran­cis­co fix­ture Mark McCloud. “In the same moral­is­tic man­ner many San Fran­cis­cans pon­tif­i­cate on the health ben­e­fits of mar­i­jua­na,” writes Gre­go­ry Thomas at Mis­sion Local, “McCloud and his friends tout the mer­its of acid.” Next to cur­ing “anx­i­ety, depres­sion and ‘mar­i­tal prob­lems,’” it is also an impor­tant source  of folk art, says McCloud, the own­er and sole pro­pri­etor of the infor­mal­ly-named “LSD Muse­um” housed in his three-sto­ry Vic­to­ri­an home in San Fran­cis­co.

His mis­sion in cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing the muse­um for­mal­ly called the Insti­tute of Ille­gal Images, he says, is to “pre­serve a ‘skele­tal’ rem­nant of San Francisco’s drug-induced 1960s lega­cy, ‘so maybe our chil­dren can bet­ter under­stand us.’”

Specif­i­cal­ly, as Cul­ture Trip explains, McCloud pre­serves the art on sheets of blot­ter acid. As is clear from the many pop cul­tur­al ref­er­ences on blot­ter art — like Beav­is and Butthead and tech­no artist Plas­tik­man (who named his debut album Sheet One) — the 60s blot­ter acid lega­cy extend­ed far beyond its founders’ vision in under­ground scenes through­out the 70s, 80s, 90s, and oughts.

Also known as the Blot­ter Barn or the Insti­tute of Ille­gal Images, McCloud’s house is locat­ed on 20th Street between Mis­sion and Capp. The house pre­serves over 33,000 sheets of LSD blot­ter, treat­ing them like tiny lit­tle works of art. Most of the sheets are framed and hang­ing on McCloud’s walls, dec­o­rat­ing the home with vibrant col­ors and pat­terns, and the rest are kept safe in binders. The house also fea­tures a per­fo­ra­tion board, allow­ing McCloud to turn any work of art sized 7.5 by 7.5 inch­es into 900 pieces, as is typ­i­cal for LSD blot­ter sheets.

McCloud has faced intense scruti­ny from the FBI, and on a cou­ple of occa­sions — in 1992 and again in 2001 — arrest and tri­al by “not very sym­pa­thet­ic” juries, who nonethe­less acquit­ted him both times. Despite the fact that he has a larg­er col­lec­tion of blot­ter acid sheets than the DEA, he and his muse­um have with­stood pros­e­cu­tion and attempts to shut them down, since all the sheets in his pos­ses­sion have either nev­er been dipped in LSD or have become chem­i­cal­ly inac­tive over time. (The museum’s web­site explains the ori­gins of “blot­ter” paper as a means of prepar­ing LSD dos­es after the drug was crim­i­nal­ized in Cal­i­for­nia in 1966.)

“What fas­ci­nates me about blot­ter is what fas­ci­nates me about all art. It changes your mind,” says McCloud in the Wired video at the top of the post. None of his muse­um’s art­work will change your mind in quite the way it was intend­ed, but the mere asso­ci­a­tion with hal­lu­cino­genic expe­ri­ences is enough to inspire the artists “to build the myr­i­ad of sub­ject mat­ter appear­ing on the blot­ters,” Atlas Obscu­ra writes, “rang­ing from the spir­i­tu­al (Hin­du gods, lotus flow­ers) to whim­si­cal (car­toon char­ac­ters), as well as cul­tur­al com­men­tary (Gor­bachev) and the just plain dement­ed (Ozzy Osbourne).”

The muse­um does not keep reg­u­lar hours and was only open by appoint­ment before COVID-19. These days, it’s prob­a­bly best to make a vir­tu­al vis­it at blotterbarn.com, where you’ll find dozens of images of acid blot­ter paper like those above and learn much more about the his­to­ry and cul­ture of LSD dur­ing long years of pro­hi­bi­tion — a con­di­tion that seems poised to final­ly end as gov­ern­ments give up the waste­ful, pun­ish­ing War on Drugs and allow sci­en­tists and psy­cho­nauts to study and explore altered states of con­scious­ness again.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Artist Draws 9 Por­traits While on LSD: Inside the 1950s Exper­i­ments to Turn LSD into a “Cre­ativ­i­ty Pill”

When Michel Fou­cault Tripped on Acid in Death Val­ley and Called It “The Great­est Expe­ri­ence of My Life” (1975)

New LSD Research Pro­vides the First Images of the Brain on Acid, and Hints at Its Poten­tial to Pro­mote Cre­ativ­i­ty

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

A Duck Gets a Prosthetic Leg & Waddles Along

Wad­dles the Duck was born with a man­gled left leg. So what does his care­tak­er–Ben Wein­man, the gui­tarist of Sui­ci­dal Ten­den­cies–do? Gets him a 3D print­ed pros­thet­ic, with the help of Der­rick Cam­pana, a Cer­ti­fied Pet Pros­theti­cist at Bion­ic Pets, notes Laugh­ing Squid. And, for a brief moment, the world’s ok.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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!

Harrison Ford Gets Delightfully Dumbfounded by David Blaine’s Card Trick

Orig­i­nal­ly record­ed back in 2014, this clip of David Blaine per­form­ing a card trick for Har­ri­son Ford went viral this week. (Can we still use this expres­sion in the age of COVID?) Hang with it until the end. It’s worth the 1:50 of your time.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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 Clarisse Loughrey

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Willie Nel­son Shows You a Delight­ful Card Trick

Mon­key Sees A Mag­ic Trick

Orson Welles Per­forms a Mag­ic Trick

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