Benedict Cumberbatch Reads a Letter Alan Turing Wrote in “Distress” Before His Conviction For “Gross Indecency”

in History, Letters | May 5th, 2015

A pio­neer of com­put­er sci­ence, Alan Tur­ing’s name comes up in near­ly every con­ver­sa­tion about arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. His “Tur­ing Test” pur­ports to indi­cate whether and when a machine has acquired intel­li­gence and abil­i­ty indis­tin­guish­able from that of a human, and his work with the Bletch­ley Park cryp­tog­ra­phy group dur­ing WWII helped the British break the Enig­ma code used by the Nazis. Those who came to learn about Tur­ing from the recent biopic The Imi­ta­tion Game, with Bene­dict Cum­ber­batch star­ring as the tor­ment­ed math­e­mati­cian, know this part of his life in par­tic­u­lar, as well as the part of his life that trag­i­cal­ly led to his ear­ly death at age 41.

Tur­ing was gay, but forced to hide it because of British law. In 1952, he was con­vict­ed of “gross inde­cen­cy” for his rela­tion­ship with anoth­er man. Before plead­ing guilty to the sup­posed offence, Tur­ing wrote the let­ter below to his col­league and friend Nor­man Rout­ledge.

Employ­ing a dark sense of humor and sign­ing off “Yours in dis­tress,” he gives every indi­ca­tion that he is fear­ful not only for him­self, but for the fate of his work. Just above, see Bene­dict Cum­ber­bach read the let­ter, which begins with a para­graph of small talk from an obvi­ous­ly ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tion then abrupt­ly turns to the trou­ble at hand.

My dear Nor­man,

I don’t think I real­ly do know much about jobs, except the one I had dur­ing the war, and that cer­tain­ly did not involve any trav­el­ling. I think they do take on con­scripts. It cer­tain­ly involved a good deal of hard think­ing, but whether you’d be inter­est­ed I don’t know. Philip Hall was in the same rack­et and on the whole, I should say, he did­n’t care for it. How­ev­er I am not at present in a state in which I am able to con­cen­trate well, for rea­sons explained in the next para­graph.

I’ve now got myself into the kind of trou­ble that I have always con­sid­ered to be quite a pos­si­bil­i­ty for me, though I have usu­al­ly rat­ed it at about 10:1 against. I shall short­ly be plead­ing guilty to a charge of sex­u­al offences with a young man. The sto­ry of how it all came to be found out is a long and fas­ci­nat­ing one, which I shall have to make into a short sto­ry one day, but haven’t the time to tell you now. No doubt I shall emerge from it all a dif­fer­ent man, but quite who I’ve not found out.

Glad you enjoyed broad­cast. Jef­fer­son cer­tain­ly was rather dis­ap­point­ing though. I’m afraid that the fol­low­ing syl­lo­gism may be used by some in the future.

Tur­ing believes machines think
Tur­ing lies with men
There­fore machines do not think

Yours in dis­tress,

Alan

Tur­ing had long wres­tled with his sex­u­al­i­ty, but had also long come to terms with it at the time of the let­ter. As the Cum­ber­batch-star­ring film dra­ma­tizes (with some license), over ten years ear­li­er, dur­ing the war, he had attempt­ed to mar­ry the only female mem­ber of the main Bletch­ley group, Joan Clarke, then con­fid­ed his sex­u­al­i­ty to her.

Clarke was most­ly non­plussed and Tur­ing broke off the engage­ment. You can get much more insight about Turing’s strug­gle, and what he was actu­al­ly like, from two of the women who worked with him, includ­ing Clarke her­self in an inter­view above. Below, anoth­er of the Bletch­ley team—one of the thou­sands of “Bletchleyettes”—named Olive Bai­ly dis­cuss­es her impres­sions of Tur­ing. To learn much more about his life, watch The Strange Life and Death of Dr. Tur­ing, in two parts on Youtube.

via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alan Tur­ing, Bril­liant Math­e­mati­cian and Code Break­er, Will Be Final­ly Par­doned by British Gov­ern­ment

The Enig­ma Machine: How Alan Tur­ing Helped Break the Unbreak­able Nazi Code

Watch Break­ing the Code, About the Life & Times of Alan Tur­ing (1996)

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

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Making Turkish Sand Coffee: Culinary Alchemy on the Streets of Jordan

in Food & Drink | May 4th, 2015

There’s a lit­tle culi­nary alche­my hap­pen­ing in this video shot in Aqa­ba, Jor­dan. It involves cof­fee and sand. And “Broth­er Gantry” on Red­dit has it all fig­ured out. He explains:

He’s brew­ing cof­fee using tech­niques tra­di­tion­al­ly used to make Turk­ish Cof­fee...

Fill­ing each of those ves­sels (called a cezve) part­way is water, very fine­ly ground cof­fee, and pos­si­bly sug­ar. Because this is hap­pen­ing in Jor­dan there might also be a lit­tle car­da­mon in there and/or no sug­ar.

Nor­mal­ly to make prop­er Turk­ish cof­fee you heat it to a point where it just begins to bub­ble, but under a rolling boil, so it begins to foam up into the neck of the cezve before reduc­ing the heat and allow­ing the foam to die, repeat­ing the process 3 or 4 times before the mix­ture is poured into small cups (fin­can) and you’re left with a won­der­ful­ly strong, thick cof­fee with sus­pend­ed grounds which quick­ly set­tle to the bot­tom. Sand over a flame tra­di­tion­al­ly used in the process as a sort of “adjustable dou­ble boil­er” cups left on the sur­face stay warm and the heat used for brew­ing can be adjust­ed by the depth of the cezve in the sand with­out hav­ing to wor­ry about the tem­per­a­ture of the heat source itself.

The guy in this video seems to be mod­i­fy­ing a lot of the steps to make some­thing like a “reg­u­lar strength” cof­fee more the­atri­cal­ly using tra­di­tion­al equip­ment (e.g. he starts with much less ground cof­fee in the pot, judg­ing from the col­or to begin with, over­fill­ing it, not tak­ing time to let the foam die down but pour­ing out some the brew­ing cof­fee into a cup to reduce the lev­el, and pour­ing the results of a cezve made for sev­er­al cups into a nor­mal sized cof­fee cup instead).

Find more infor­ma­tion on mak­ing Turk­ish Sand Cof­fee at Secret Cof­fee Drinks.

via Digg

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and  share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hon­oré de Balzac Writes About “The Plea­sures and Pains of Cof­fee,” and His Epic Cof­fee Addic­tion

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Print­ed Cir­ca 1652

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An Animated Louis CK on How the Colonists Came to America and Screwed It All Up (NSFW)

in Animation, Comedy, Video - Politics/Society | May 4th, 2015

I sus­pect par­ents of school-aged chil­dren will find much to relate to in the Lord’s frus­tra­tion with mankind, above, whether or not they’re prone to vent­ing in come­di­an Louis CK’s patent­ed NSFW lan­guage.

Who among us has not turned our back for a few moments, only to dis­cov­er upon our return the house in sham­bles, the nutri­tious snack we set out passed over in favor of junk.

(“Just eat the shit on the floor! I left shit all over the floor! Fuckin’ corn and wheat and shit, grind it up and make some bread—what are you doing!?”)

It’s no won­der ani­ma­tors are drawn to CK. His dis­tinc­tive voice and impec­ca­ble tim­ing have earned him a star­ring role as a talk­ing dog in a CGI fea­ture to be released in 2016. Pri­or to strik­ing it big with the series Louie, he was a fre­quent vis­i­tor on “Dr” Jonathan Katz’s couch. His over-the-top standup spiels pro­vide the unau­tho­rized flash ani­ma­tor with an embar­rass­ment of rich­es.

Cana­di­an film stu­dent John Roney, whose YouTube chan­nel boasts spoofs of Game of Thrones and the Mag­ic School­bus, keeps his visu­als under­stat­ed, min­ing CK’s 2011 per­for­mance at New York City’s Bea­con The­ater for the 2‑dimensional realm.

It could have been so much gross­er.

Turn down the sound and Roney’s adap­ta­tion could be high qual­i­ty children’s pro­gram­ming, the kind most of us god­like par­ents even­tu­al­ly accept as a nec­es­sary evil. Well, maybe not the part where those Aztec kids bowl Louis’ head down the pyra­mids (right above)…though they, like Roney’s oth­er mild­ly observed human and ani­mal char­ac­ters, add to the fun­ny. Here’s the orig­i­nal clip from the Bea­con The­ater show:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sur­re­al Short Films of Louis C.K., 1993–1999

Louis CK Crash­es Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis & Brad Pitt’s Very Awk­ward Inter­view

Jer­ry Sein­feld and Louis CK in Small Cars and Big Yachts, Get­ting Cof­fee

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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How to Live a Good Life? Watch Philosophy Animations Narrated by Stephen Fry on Aristotle, Ayn Rand, Max Weber & More

in Animation, Philosophy | May 4th, 2015

We recent­ly fea­tured a series of ani­ma­tions from BBC Radio 4 script­ed by philoso­pher Nigel War­bur­ton, nar­rat­ed by writer, per­former, and all-around wit Stephen Fry, and deal­ing with a big ques­tion: what is the self? Those four short videos called upon the ideas of thinkers as var­i­ous as Sartre, Descartes, and Shake­speare. This new fol­low-up draws from the intel­lec­tu­al wells dug by the likes of Aris­to­tle, Max Weber, Ayn Rand, and the Bud­dha to address a still big, some­what less abstract, but a per­haps even more impor­tant prob­lem: how do I live a good life?

Rand, as her many detrac­tors nev­er hes­i­tate to put it, thought the answer lay in fol­low­ing the high­est man­date, our own self­ish­ness. Bud­dhism, for its part, puts its stock into four noble truths: the inescapa­bil­i­ty of suf­fer­ing, the ori­gin of that suf­fer­ing in our own minds, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of chang­ing our lives if we stop crav­ing so many things, and the use­ful­ness of the Bud­dhist “eight­fold path” in doing so. Max Weber argued that the “Protes­tant eth­ic,” as defined by Calvin­ism, made cap­i­tal­ism itself into the big deal it has become today. And Aris­to­tle rec­om­mend­ed liv­ing vir­tu­ous­ly as a means of attain­ing eudai­mo­nia, or flour­ish­ing.

Alas, for all the impor­tant work done by these and oth­er thinkers, the attain­ment of a good life can remain pret­ty elu­sive for us mod­ern folk. Maybe we can do no bet­ter than learn­ing what our pre­de­ces­sors have thought and said on the sub­ject as best we can, and decid­ing for our­selves from there. But for­tu­nate­ly for us mod­ern folk, we have videos like these at our fin­ger­tips which make it not just quick and easy to take a first step toward that state, but which get us laugh­ing along the way. As with the rest of these series of ani­ma­tions on life’s big ques­tions, the best jokes appear sub­tly, so you’ve got to stay atten­tive — sure­ly one of the more impor­tant virtues any­one, ancient or mod­ern, can cul­ti­vate.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

140 Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

What is the Self? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions Nar­rat­ed by Stephen Fry on Sartre, Descartes & More

How Can I Know Right From Wrong? Watch Phi­los­o­phy Ani­ma­tions on Ethics Nar­rat­ed by Har­ry Shear­er

Learn Right From Wrong with Oxford’s Free Course A Romp Through Ethics for Com­plete Begin­ners

How Did Every­thing Begin?: Ani­ma­tions on the Ori­gins of the Uni­verse Nar­rat­ed by X‑Files Star Gillian Ander­son

What Makes Us Human?: Chom­sky, Locke & Marx Intro­duced by New Ani­mat­ed Videos from the BBC

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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96 Drawings of David Bowie by the “World’s Best Comic Artists”: Michel Gondry, Kate Beaton & More

in Art, Comics/Cartoons, Music | May 4th, 2015

Pope Bowie

There is a David Bowie for every sea­son. A Christ­mas David Bowie, a Hal­loween David Bowie, even a David Bowie East­er cel­e­bra­tion. But much more than that, there may be a David Bowie for every Bowie fan, espe­cial­ly for artists influ­enced by his chameleon­ic career. See for your­self how a whop­ping 96 Bowie-lov­ing artists—in this case main­ly what Bowie him­self calls the “World’s Best Com­ic Artists”—see the changling rock star/actor/space alien.

Gondry Bowie

“See my life in a com­ic… The lit­tle details in colour,” writes Bowie on his site of a web gallery of por­traits com­piled by “com­ic artist, writer and crit­ic, not to men­tion huge Bowie fan, Sean T. Collins.” It’s called The Thin White Sketch­book—a clever title that alludes to just one of the myr­i­ad Bowie per­son­ae rep­re­sent­ed in the size­able col­lec­tion of 96 draw­ings (see a nos­tal­gic one by pro­lif­ic illus­tra­tor Paul Pope at the top—the book’s first sketch).

Collins’ impres­sive col­lec­tion includes work from Michel Gondry (Eter­nal Sun­shine of the Spot­less Mind), whose con­tri­bu­tion the edi­tor calls “pret­ty god­damn won­der­ful if you ask me.” See it above. And below, Kate Beat­on, cre­ator of web com­ic Hark, A Vagrant, gives us Bowie as a dandy, a char­ac­ter with whom, writes Collins, she has a “rich his­to­ry.”

Beaton-Bowie

Collins offers brief com­men­tary beneath each image in the col­lec­tion, which also gives us the strange inter­pre­ta­tion below by Bowie-inspired under­ground comics leg­end Charles Burns; the intense and Archie-esque con­tri­bu­tions fur­ther down by Broth­ers Jaime and Gilbert Her­nan­dez, cre­ators of the 80s New Wave clas­sic com­ic Love and Rock­ets; and the out­er space-pro­por­tioned Bowie at the bot­tom of the post, from vocal­ist Tunde Ade­bimpe of TV on the Radio, a band that has both cov­ered and record­ed with Bowie.

Burns Bowie

Hernandez Bowie

Hernandez 2 Bowie

Tunde Bowie

View the full set of Bowie draw­ings, no two remote­ly the same, at The Thin White Sketch­book’s Flickr page.

via Buz­zfeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

David Bowie Releas­es Vin­tage Videos of His Great­est Hits from the 1970s and 1980s

David Gilmour & David Bowie Sing “Com­fort­ably Numb” Live (2006)

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

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A Beautiful Drone’s Eye View of Antarctica

in Travel | May 4th, 2015

If you haven’t seen it already, check it out. When Stock­holm-based film­mak­er Kalle Ljung spent 16 days in the Antarc­tic ear­li­er this year, he “got to expe­ri­ence the most amaz­ing scenery and wildlife” and cap­tured some beau­ti­ful footage with a DJI Phan­tom 2 drone cam­era. Ready for some goose­bumps? Catch the scene (around the 6 minute mark) where Ljung dri­ves the cam­era straight through a hole in an ice­berg. Pret­ty amaz­ing to watch.

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 Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Auschwitz Cap­tured in Haunt­ing Drone Footage

A Eery Drone’s‑Eye View of Cher­nobyl

Drones over Los Ange­les, New York, Lon­don, Bangkok & Mex­i­co City

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Read Noam Chomsky & Sam Harris’ “Unpleasant” Email Exchange

in Current Affairs, Philosophy | May 1st, 2015

In 2013, we doc­u­ment­ed the acri­mo­nious exchange between Noam Chom­sky and Slavoj Žižek, which all start­ed when Chom­sky accused Žižek of “posturing–using fan­cy terms like poly­syl­la­bles and pre­tend­ing [to] have a the­o­ry when you have no the­o­ry what­so­ev­er.” To which Žižek respond­ed: “Chom­sky, … always empha­sizes how one has to be empir­i­cal, accu­rate… well I don’t think I know a guy who was so often empir­i­cal­ly wrong in his descrip­tions…” And so it con­tin­ued.

Two years lat­er, Chom­sky now finds him­self in anoth­er fraught exchange — this time, with Sam Har­ris, author of The End of Faith and Let­ter to a Chris­t­ian Nation. It’s a lit­tle hard to pin down when the dust-up first began. But, it at least goes back to Jan­u­ary, when Har­ris took Chom­sky to task  (hear an excerpt of a longer pod­cast above) for draw­ing a moral equiv­a­lence between U.S. mil­i­tary action and the vio­lence com­mit­ted by some of Amer­i­ca’s his­tor­i­cal foes (e.g., the Nazis dur­ing WWII and lat­er Al-Qae­da).

Over the past week, Chom­sky and Har­ris con­tin­ued the debate, trad­ing emails back and forth. Their corre­spon­dence runs some 10,000 words, but it only amounts to what Har­ris ulti­mate­ly calls “an unpleas­ant and fruit­less encounter” that demon­strates the “lim­its of dis­course.” It’s an exchange that Chom­sky seem­ing­ly pre­ferred to keep pri­vate (his per­mis­sion to print the emails was grudg­ing at best), and Har­ris saw some virtue in mak­ing pub­lic. The final email by Har­ris reads:

May 1, 2015

From: Sam Har­ris
To: Noam Chom­sky

Noam—

I’ve now read our cor­re­spon­dence through and have decid­ed to pub­lish it (www.samharris.org). I under­stand your point about “exhi­bi­tion­ism,” but I dis­agree in this case.

You and I prob­a­bly share a mil­lion read­ers who would have found a gen­uine con­ver­sa­tion between us extreme­ly use­ful. And I trust that they will be dis­ap­point­ed by our fail­ure to pro­duce one, as I am. How­ev­er, if pub­lish­ing this exchange helps any­one to bet­ter com­mu­ni­cate about these top­ics in the future, our time won’t have been entire­ly wast­ed.

Sam

Whether Sam is right about that (is there some­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly instruc­tive here?), you can decide. Here’s the entire exchange.

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:

Noam Chom­sky Slams Žižek and Lacan: Emp­ty ‘Pos­tur­ing’

Slavoj Žižek Responds to Noam Chom­sky: ‘I Don’t Know a Guy Who Was So Often Empir­i­cal­ly Wrong’

Clash of the Titans: Noam Chom­sky & Michel Fou­cault Debate Human Nature & Pow­er on Dutch TV, 1971

Read 9 Free Books By Noam Chom­sky Online

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Hear the “Seikilos Epitaph,” the Oldest Complete Song in the World: An Inspiring Tune from 100 BC

in History, Music | May 1st, 2015

Last sum­mer, we fea­tured a Sumer­ian hymn con­sid­ered the old­est known song in the world. Giv­en the pop­u­lar­i­ty of that post, it seems we may have long under­es­ti­mat­ed the num­ber of ancient-musi­cophiles on the inter­net. There­fore, we sub­mit today for your approval the Seik­i­los epi­taph, the old­est known com­plete musi­cal com­po­si­tion — that is to say, a song that our 21st-cen­tu­ry selves can still play and hear in its intend­ed entire­ty, more or less as did the ancient Greeks who lived dur­ing the first-cen­tu­ry (or there­abouts) era of its com­po­si­tion.

The Seik­i­los epi­taph’s sur­vival in one piece, as it were, no doubt owes some­thing to its short­ness. The Greeks could carve the entire thing onto the sur­face of a tomb­stone, exact­ly the medi­um on which the mod­ern world redis­cov­ered it in 1885 near Aidin, Turkey. Its lyrics, lib­er­al­ly brought into Eng­lish, exhort us as fol­lows:

While you live, shine

have no grief at all

life exists only for a short while

and time demands its toll.

The sur­face also bears an explana­to­ry inscrip­tion about — and writ­ten in the voice of — the arti­fact itself:  “I am a tomb­stone, an image. Seik­i­los placed me here as an ever­last­ing sign of death­less remem­brance.” The Greeks, like many peo­ples in the ancient world of unvar­nished mor­tal­i­ty, rel­ished a good memen­to mori, and this old­est com­plete song in the world offers one whose mes­sage still holds today, and which we can trace all the way to more recent words, like those of William Saroy­an, when he said, “In the time of your life, live — so that in that good time there shall be no ugli­ness or death for your­self or for any life your life touch­es.”

Or for anoth­er inter­pre­ta­tion, you can hear a mod­ern, gui­tar-dri­ven cov­er of the Seik­i­los epi­taph by Vlog­broth­er and famous inter­net teacher Hank Green, in a tru­ly strik­ing exam­ple of two eras col­lid­ing. But of course, the Youtube era has also made every­one a crit­ic. As one com­menter per­fect­ly put it, “I pre­fer his ear­li­er stuff.”

Seikilos epitaph

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Do Not Track: Interactive Film Series Reveals the Personal Information You’re Giving Away on the Web

in Google, Life, Technology, Web/Tech | May 1st, 2015

If Face­book knows every­thing about you, it’s because you hand­ed it the keys to your king­dom.  You post­ed a pho­to, liked a favorite child­hood TV show, and will­ing­ly vol­un­teered your birth­day. In oth­er words, you hand­ed it all the data it needs to annoy you with tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing.

(In my case, it’s an ancient secret that helped a mid­dle aged mom shave 5 inch­es off her waist­line. Let me save you a click: acai berries.)

Film­mak­er Brett Gay­lor (a “lefty Cana­di­an dad who reads sci­ence fic­tion) seeks to set the record straight regard­ing the web economy’s impact on per­son­al pri­va­cy.

Watch­ing his inter­ac­tive doc­u­men­tary web series, Do Not Track, you’ll inevitably arrive at a cross­roads where you must decide whether or not to share your per­son­al infor­ma­tion. No big­gie, right? It’s what hap­pens every time you con­sent to “log in with Face­book.”

Every time you choose this con­ve­nience, you’re allow­ing Google and oth­er big time track­ers to stick a har­poon (aka cook­ie) in your side. Swim all you want, lit­tle fishy. You’re not exact­ly get­ting away, par­tic­u­lar­ly if you’re logged in with a mobile device with a com­pul­sion to reveal your where­abouts.

You say you have noth­ing to hide? Bul­ly for you! What you may not have con­sid­ered is the impact your dig­i­tal easy-breezi­ness has on friends. Your net­work. And vice ver­sa. Tag away!

In this are­na, every “like”—from an acquaintance’s recent­ly launched organ­ic skin­care line to Star Trek—helps track­ers build a sur­pris­ing­ly accu­rate por­trait, one that can be used to deter­mine how insur­able you are, how wor­thy of a loan. Gen­der and age aren’t the only fac­tors that mat­ter here. So does your demon­strat­ed extra­ver­sion, your degree of open­ness.

(Ha ha, and you thought it cost you noth­ing to “like” that acquaintance’s smelly straw­ber­ry-scent­ed mois­tur­iz­er!)

To get the most out of Do Not Track, you’ll want to sup­ply its pro­duc­ers with your email address on your first vis­it. It’s a lit­tle counter-intu­itive, giv­en the sub­ject mat­ter, but doing so will pro­vide you with a unique con­fig­u­ra­tion that promis­es to lift the veil on what the track­ers know about you.

What does it say about me that I couldn’t get my Face­book log-in to work? How dis­ap­point­ing that this fail­ure meant I would be view­ing results tai­lored to Episode 3’s star, Ger­man jour­nal­ist Richard Gut­jahr?

(Your pro­file… says that your age is 42 and your gen­der is male. But the real gold mine is your Face­book data over time. By ana­lyz­ing the at least 129 things you have liked on Face­book, we have used our advanced algo­rithm tech­niques to assess your per­son­al­i­ty and have found you scored high­est in Open­ness which indi­cates you are cre­ative, imag­i­na­tive, and adven­tur­ous. Our per­son­al­i­ty eval­u­a­tion sys­tem uses Psy­cho-demo­graph­ic trait pre­dic­tions pow­ered by the Apply Mag­ic Sauce API devel­oped at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge Psy­cho­met­rics Cen­tre.)

I think the take­away is that I am not too on top of my pri­va­cy set­tings. And why would I be? I’m an extro­vert with noth­ing to hide, except my spend­ing habits, brows­ing his­to­ry, race, age, mar­i­tal sta­tus…

Should we take a tip from our high school brethren, who evade the scruti­ny of col­lege admis­sions coun­selors by adopt­ing some ridicu­lous, evoca­tive pseu­do­nym? Expect upcom­ing episodes of Do Not Track to help us nav­i­gate these and oth­er dig­i­tal issues.

Tune in to Do Not Track here. You can find episodes 1, 2 and 3 cur­rent­ly online. Episodes 4–6 will roll out between May 12 and June 9.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Internet’s Own Boy: New Doc­u­men­tary About Aaron Swartz Now Free Online

A Threat to Inter­net Free­dom: Film­mak­er Bri­an Knap­pen­berg­er Explains Why Net Neu­tral­i­ty Mat­ters

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

Ayun Hal­l­i­day an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine invites you to look into her very soul @AyunHalliday

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Coffee is for People, Not Robots: The New Ad for David Lynch’s Line of Organic Coffee

in Food & Drink | May 1st, 2015

Pay a vis­it to Whole Foods, and you’ll find The David Lynch Sig­na­ture Cup Cof­fee line, which includes three pre­mier cof­fee blends, each taste-test­ed and select­ed by David Lynch him­self. Last year, Lynch talked with Vice.com about the gen­e­sis of his cof­fee line and explained:

One day, a friend came over to me and said, “David, you drink so much cof­fee, you should have your own line,” and one thing led to anoth­er, and I blind test­ed many, many dif­fer­ent cof­fees. Anoth­er friend of mine said, “I know these guys down in Long Beach who have the great­est cof­fee” but I tast­ed it, and it was ter­ri­ble, so I kept tast­ing dif­fer­ent cof­fees and dif­fer­ent mix­tures and kept com­ing back to this [blend] in blind tests over and over again.

Over the years, Lynch has released some uncon­ven­tion­al ads (of course!) for his cof­fee prod­ucts. Per­haps you recall this one from 2011, fea­tur­ing a seem­ing­ly sev­ered Bar­bie head. Or this almost epilep­sy-induc­ing one fom 2012. Now comes the lat­est ad, cre­at­ed by direc­tor Andrew Parkhurst, remind­ing us that cof­fee is for peo­ple, not robots. Kind of like Trix are for kids.

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 Indiewire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch’s Unlike­ly Com­mer­cial for a Home Preg­nan­cy Test (1997)

David Lynch’s Per­fume Ads Based on the Works of Hem­ing­way, F. Scott Fitzger­ald & D.H. Lawrence

David Lynch’s Music Videos: Nine Inch Nails, Moby, Chris Isaak & More

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Klingon for English Speakers: Sign Up for a Free Course Coming Soon

in Language Lessons, Random | April 30th, 2015

klingon

Duolin­go pro­vides free edu­ca­tion­al resources that will help you learn a whole host of ter­res­tri­al lan­guages — lan­guages like Span­ish, French, Ger­man, and Ital­ian. But now they’re expand­ing into extrater­res­tri­al lan­guages too, like Klin­gon. That’s, of course, “the con­struct­ed lan­guage spo­ken by the fic­tion­al extrater­res­tri­al Klin­gon species in the Star Trek uni­verse. Cre­at­ed by Marc Okrand, the lan­guage itself is cen­tered around space­craft, war­fare, and weapon­ry — but it also reflects the direct­ness and sense of humor of the Klin­gon cul­ture.”

Duolin­go’s Klin­gon course — Klin­gon for Eng­lish Speak­ers — is cur­rent­ly under devel­op­ment.  But, so far, almost 18,000 peo­ple have request­ed to be noti­fied when the course is ready to go. You can add your name to the list here, too.

And before you go, make sure you check out our meta list of Free Lan­guage Lessons, where you can find free lessons cov­er­ing 48 dif­fer­ent lan­guages. The list includes ter­res­tri­al lessons from Duolin­go too.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn 48 Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More

Ani­mat­ed Video Explores the Invent­ed Lan­guages of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones & Star Trek

French in Action: Cult Clas­sic French Lessons from Yale (52 Episodes)

Take Free Online Cours­es at Hog­warts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

1100 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

 

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