How George Washington Became President of the United States: It Was Weirder Than You Think

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After serv­ing two terms as the first Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, George Wash­ing­ton refused to con­tin­ue on to a third. We now see this action as begin­ning the tra­di­tion of peace­ful relin­quish­ment of pow­er that has con­tin­ued more or less ever since (inter­rupt­ed, as in recent years, by the occa­sion­al trou­bled tran­si­tion).…

Why Perpetual Motion Machines Never Work, Despite Centuries of Experiments

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Accord­ing to the laws of physics — at least in sim­pli­fied form — an object in motion will stay in motion, at least if no oth­er forces act on it. That’s all well and good in the realm of the­o­ry, but here in the com­plex real­i­ty of Earth, there always seems to be one force…

Martin Luther King, Jr. Gives Life-Changing Advice to Teens: Watch His Speech, “What Is Your Life’s Blueprint?” (1967)

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Six months before his assas­si­na­tion, Mar­tin Luther King Jr. spoke to stu­dents at Bar­ratt Junior High School in Philadel­phia, and asked What Is Your Life’s Blue­print?

Address­ing the stu­dents, he observed: “This is the most impor­tant and cru­cial peri­od of your lives. For what you do now and what you decide now at…

The Pixies Perform a Hypnotic Version of “Gouge Away” at the BBC

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In 2018, the Pix­ies per­formed live for BBC Radio 6 Music, play­ing some new songs (“In the Arms of Mrs. Mark of Cain”) and old clas­sics (“Here Comes Your Man”). In that lat­ter cat­e­go­ry, you’ll find a record­ing of “Gouge Away,” which I keep com­ing back to again, and yet again. About the…

AI “Completes” Keith Haring’s Unfinished Painting and Controversy Erupts

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The celebri­ty graf­fi­ti artist Kei­th Har­ing died in 1990, at the age of 31, no doubt hav­ing com­plet­ed only a frac­tion of the art­work he would have pro­duced in a life a few decades longer. Upon first see­ing his Unfin­ished Paint­ing of 1989, one might assume that his ear­ly death is…