Behold a Creative Animation of the Bayeux Tapestry

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In pre­vi­ous cen­turies, unless you were a mem­ber of the nobil­i­ty, a wealthy reli­gious order, or a mer­chant guild, your chances of spend­ing any sig­nif­i­cant amount of time with a Medieval tapes­try were slim. Though “much pro­duc­tion was rel­a­tive­ly coarse, intend­ed for dec­o­ra­tive pur­pos­es,” writes the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, the tapes­try still com­mand­ed…

Do All Roads Lead to Philosophy on Wikipedia?: They Do About 97.3% of the Time

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Pull up the Wikipedia page for Mariya Takeuchi’s “Plas­tic Love,” the 1984 sin­gle now known for re-pop­u­lar­iz­ing the genre of Japan­ese “city pop.” Then click the first of its links (not relat­ed to the lan­guage of the arti­cle itself), which leads to Takeuchi’s own page. If you keep fol­low­ing that same pro­ce­dure,…

Watch the Opening Credits of an Imaginary 70s Cop Show Starring Samuel Beckett

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Samuel Beck­ett: avant-garde drama­tist, brood­ing Nobel Prize win­ner, poet, and…gritty tele­vi­sion detec­tive?

Sad­ly, no, but he had the mak­ings of a great one, at least as cut togeth­er by play­wright Dan­ny Thomp­son, cofounder of Chicago’s The­ater Oobleck.

Some 35 years after Beckett’s death, Thompson—whose cred­its include…

The Longest Drivable Distance in the World: Discover the Ultimate Road Trip

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No mat­ter what coun­try we live in, we’ve all fan­ta­sized about tak­ing our own great Amer­i­can road trip, con­sid­er­ing a vari­ety of the infi­nite­ly many pos­si­ble routes. The most obvi­ous would be dri­ving between Los Ange­les and New York, a dis­tance of 2,800 miles that would take a bit over 40 hours straight through.…

John Waters’ RISD Graduation Speech: Real Wealth Is Life Without A*Holes

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John Waters’ rol­lick­ing com­mence­ment speech at The Rhode Island School of Design offered up some good one-lin­ers and a few pearls of wis­dom, though phrased, quite nat­u­ral­ly, in an irrev­er­ent way. Ready for some sage advice on what real­ly counts as wealth? And what career choic­es will make you tru­ly wealthy? Mr. Waters has this…