Solving a 2,500-Year-Old Puzzle: How a Cambridge Student Cracked an Ancient Sanskrit Code

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If you find your­self grap­pling with an intel­lec­tu­al prob­lem that’s gone unsolved for mil­len­nia, try tak­ing a few months off and spend­ing them on activ­i­ties like swim­ming and med­i­tat­ing. That very strat­e­gy worked for a Cam­bridge PhD stu­dent named Rishi Rajpopat, who, after a sum­mer of non-research-relat­ed activ­i­ties, returned to a text by…

Frank Lloyd Wright Thought About Making the Guggenheim Museum Pink

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Image via The Frank Lloyd Wright Foun­da­tion Archives

Seen today, the Solomon R. Guggen­heim Muse­um, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, seems to occu­py sev­er­al time peri­ods at once, look­ing both mod­ern and some­how ancient. The lat­ter qual­i­ty sure­ly has to do with its bright white col­or, which we asso­ciate (espe­cial­ly in such…

Is Andrew Huberman Ruining Your Morning Coffee Routine?

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Andrew Huberman–the host of the influ­en­tial Huber­man Lab pod­cast–has got­ten a lot of mileage out of his rec­om­mend­ed morn­ing rou­tine. His rou­tine empha­sizes the impor­tance of get­ting sun­light with­in 30–60 min­utes of wak­ing; also engag­ing in light phys­i­cal activ­i­ty; hydrat­ing well; and avoid­ing cof­fee for the first 90–120 min­utes. In his words:

I…

The 11 Censored Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Cartoons That Haven’t Been Aired Since 1968

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For decades and decades, Warn­er Bros.’ Looney Tunes and Mer­rie Melodies car­toons have served as a kind of default chil­dren’s enter­tain­ment. Orig­i­nal­ly con­ceived for the­atri­cal exhi­bi­tion in the nine­teen-thir­ties, they were ani­mat­ed to a stan­dard that held its own against the sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions along­side which they would lat­er be broad­cast. Even their…

The Enchanting Opera Performances of Klaus Nomi

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After mak­ing one of the grand­est entrances in music his­to­ry on the stages of East Vil­lage clubs, the BBC’s The Old Grey Whis­tle Test, and Sat­ur­day Night Live, the­atri­cal Ger­man new wave space alien Klaus Nomi died alone in 1983, a vic­tim of the “first beach­head of the AIDS epi­dem­ic.” The dis­ease fright­ened…