How Marcel Duchamp Signed a Urinal in 1917 & Redefined Art

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Mar­cel Duchamp did­n’t sign his name on a uri­nal for lack of abil­i­ty to cre­ate “real” art. In fact, as explained by gal­lerist-Youtu­ber James Payne in the new Great Art Explained video above, Ducham­p’s grand­fa­ther was an artist, as were three of his sib­lings; he him­self attained impres­sive tech­ni­cal pro­fi­cien­cy in paint­ing by…

Richard Feynman Creates a Simple Method for Telling Science From Pseudoscience (1966)

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Pho­to by Tamiko Thiel via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

How can we know whether a claim some­one makes is sci­en­tif­ic or not? The ques­tion is of the utmost con­se­quence, as we are sur­round­ed on all sides by claims that sound cred­i­ble, that use the lan­guage of science—and often do so in attempts to refute…

Hear the Evolution of the London Accent Over 660 Years: From 1346 to 2006

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Read a nov­el by Charles Dick­ens, and you’ll still today feel trans­port­ed back to the Lon­don of the eigh­teen-twen­ties. Some of that expe­ri­ence owes to his lav­ish­ly repor­to­r­i­al descrip­tive skills, but even more to his way with dia­logue. Dick­ens faith­ful­ly cap­tured the vocab­u­lary of the times and places in which he set his sto­ries, and…

George Orwell Reviews Mein Kampf: “He Envisages a Horrible Brainless Empire” (1940)

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Christo­pher Hitchens once wrote that there were three major issues of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry — impe­ri­al­ism, fas­cism, and Stal­in­ism — and George Orwell proved to be right about all of them.

Orwell dis­plays his remark­able fore­sight in a fas­ci­nat­ing book review, pub­lished in March 1940, of Adolf Hitler’s noto­ri­ous auto­bi­og­ra­phy…

How the Oldest Company in the World, Japan’s Temple-Builder Kongō Gumi, Has Survived Nearly 1,500 Years

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Image from New York Pub­lic Library, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you vis­it Osa­ka, you’ll be urged to see two old build­ings in par­tic­u­lar: Osa­ka Cas­tle and Shiten­nō-ji (above), Japan’s first Bud­dhist tem­ple. In behold­ing both, you’ll behold the work of con­struc­tion firm Kongō Gumi (金剛組), the old­est con­tin­u­ous­ly run com­pa­ny in…