Read George Washington’s “110 Rules of Civility”: The Code of Decency That Guided America’s First President

in History, Politics | July 2nd, 2018

Con­trary to a thor­ough­ly abused polit­i­cal metaphor, Wash­ing­ton, DC was not in fact built on a swamp, though any­one who has vis­it­ed in the sum­mer will find that sto­ry plau­si­ble. Hav­ing just returned to my home­town for a few days, I’ve had ample reminder of its stick­i­ness, and have expe­ri­enced its fig­u­ra­tive­ly over­heat­ed atmos­phere first­hand. I needn’t go over the polit­i­cal and moral crises turn­ing the cap­i­tal into a caul­dron of “inci­vil­i­ty.”

But what exact­ly is “civil­i­ty” and what does it entail? Is it just anoth­er word for polite­ness, or a hyp­o­crit­i­cal­ly insid­i­ous code for silenc­ing dis­sent? Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies recent­ly chose the word for its Week­ly Word Watch, cit­ing an Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary entry defin­ing it as “the min­i­mum degree” of deco­rum in social sit­u­a­tions. Deriv­ing from the Latin civis, or “cit­i­zen,” and relat­ed to “civics” and “civ­i­liza­tion,” the word first meant “cit­i­zen­ship,” and con­not­ed the treat­ment sup­pos­ed­ly due a per­son with said sta­tus. As often hap­pens, con­no­ta­tion became deno­ta­tion, and civil­i­ty came to stand for basic respect.

Ner­vous colum­nists now wor­ried about civility’s decline have pinned the prob­lem on cit­i­zen pro­test­ers exer­cis­ing civ­il dis­obe­di­ence and their first amend­ment rights, rather than on the tor­rents of abuse, threats, and lies that pour forth dai­ly from the exec­u­tive, who seems inca­pable of treat­ing any­one with min­i­mal decen­cy. But the very first hold­er of the office—faced with a frac­tious and unciv­il pop­u­lace (some of whom toast­ed to his “speedy death”)—believed it was his duty to set “a stan­dard to which the wise and hon­est can repair.”

What, we might won­der, would George Wash­ing­ton, builder of DC, have thought of the city’s cur­rent state? We can spec­u­late by ref­er­ence to his “Farewell Address,” in which the depart­ing pres­i­dent wrote:

The alter­nate dom­i­na­tion of one fac­tion over anoth­er, sharp­ened by the spir­it of revenge nat­ur­al to par­ty dis­sention, which in dif­fer­ent ages & coun­tries has per­pe­trat­ed the most hor­rid enor­mi­ties, is itself a fright­ful despo­tism. But this leads at length to a more for­mal and per­ma­nent despo­tism. The dis­or­ders & mis­eries, which result, grad­u­al­ly incline the minds of men to seek secu­ri­ty & repose in the absolute pow­er of an Indi­vid­ual: and soon­er or lat­er the chief of some pre­vail­ing fac­tion more able or more for­tu­nate than his com­peti­tors, turns this dis­po­si­tion to the pur­pos­es of his own ele­va­tion, on the ruins of Pub­lic Lib­er­ty.

Wash­ing­ton, argues his­to­ri­an and con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist Richard Brookhis­er, gov­erned his own behav­ior with a strict code of con­duct based on “The Rules of Civil­i­ty & Decent Behav­ior in Com­pa­ny and Con­ver­sa­tion,” a list he care­ful­ly copied out by hand as a school­boy in Vir­ginia. “Based on a 16th-cen­tu­ry set of pre­cepts com­piled for young gen­tle­men by Jesuit instruc­tors,” notes NPR, “the Rules of Civil­i­ty were one of the ear­li­est and most pow­er­ful forces to shape America’s first pres­i­dent,” as Brookhis­er claims in his 2003 book Rules of Civil­i­ty: The 110 Pre­cepts That Guid­ed Our First Pres­i­dent in War and Peace.

Many of these “rules” are out­mod­ed eti­quette, many are baroque in their lev­el of detail, some should nev­er go out of style, and many would be mocked and derid­ed today as “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.” Brookhis­er “warns against dis­miss­ing the max­ims” as mere polite­ness, not­ing that they “address moral issues, but they address them indi­rect­ly. Maybe they can work on us in our cen­tu­ry as the Jesuits intend­ed them to work in theirs—indirectly—by putting us in a more ambi­tious frame of mind.” Or maybe they could induce some humil­i­ty among the already polit­i­cal­ly ambi­tious.

See all of the 110 “Rules of Civil­i­ty” below, with mod­ern­ized spelling and punc­tu­a­tion, cour­tesy of NPR:

1. Every action done in com­pa­ny ought to be with some sign of respect to those that are present.
2. When in com­pa­ny, put not your hands to any part of the body not usu­al­ly dis­cov­ered.
3. Show noth­ing to your friend that may affright him.
4. In the pres­ence of oth­ers, sing not to your­self with a hum­ming voice, or drum with your fin­gers or feet.
5. If you cough, sneeze, sigh or yawn, do it not loud but pri­vate­ly, and speak not in your yawn­ing, but put your hand­ker­chief or hand before your face and turn aside.
6. Sleep not when oth­ers speak, sit not when oth­ers stand, speak not when you should hold your peace, walk not on when oth­ers stop.
7. Put not off your clothes in the pres­ence of oth­ers, nor go out of your cham­ber half dressed.
8. At play and attire, it’s good man­ners to give place to the last com­er, and affect not to speak loud­er than ordi­nary.
9. Spit not into the fire, nor stoop low before it; nei­ther put your hands into the flames to warm them, nor set your feet upon the fire, espe­cial­ly if there be meat before it.
10. When you sit down, keep your feet firm and even, with­out putting one on the oth­er or cross­ing them.
11. Shift not your­self in the sight of oth­ers, nor gnaw your nails.
12. Shake not the head, feet, or legs; roll not the eyes; lift not one eye­brow high­er than the oth­er, wry not the mouth, and bedew no man’s face with your spit­tle by approach­ing too near him when you speak.
13. Kill no ver­min, or fleas, lice, ticks, etc. in the sight of oth­ers; if you see any filth or thick spit­tle put your foot dex­ter­ous­ly upon it; if it be upon the clothes of your com­pan­ions, put it off pri­vate­ly, and if it be upon your own clothes, return thanks to him who puts it off.
14. Turn not your back to oth­ers, espe­cial­ly in speak­ing; jog not the table or desk on which anoth­er reads or writes; lean not upon any­one.
15. Keep your nails clean and short, also your hands and teeth clean, yet with­out show­ing any great con­cern for them.
16. Do not puff up the cheeks, loll not out the tongue with the hands or beard, thrust out the lips or bite them, or keep the lips too open or too close.
17. Be no flat­ter­er, nei­ther play with any that delight not to be played with­al.
18. Read no let­ter, books, or papers in com­pa­ny, but when there is a neces­si­ty for the doing of it, you must ask leave; come not near the books or writ­tings of anoth­er so as to read them unless desired, or give your opin­ion of them unasked. Also look not nigh when anoth­er is writ­ing a let­ter.
19. Let your coun­te­nance be pleas­ant but in seri­ous mat­ters some­what grave.
20. The ges­tures of the body must be suit­ed to the dis­course you are upon.
21. Reproach none for the infir­mi­ties of nature, nor delight to put them that have in mind of there­of.
22. Show not your­self glad at the mis­for­tune of anoth­er though he were your ene­my.
23. When you see a crime pun­ished, you may be inward­ly pleased; but always show pity to the suf­fer­ing offend­er.
24. Do not laugh too loud or too much at any pub­lic spec­ta­cle.
25. Super­flu­ous com­pli­ments and all affec­ta­tion of cer­e­monies are to be avoid­ed, yet where due they are not to be neglect­ed.
26. In putting off your hat to per­sons of dis­tinc­tion, as noble­men, jus­tices, church­men, etc., make a rev­er­ence, bow­ing more or less accord­ing to the cus­tom of the bet­ter bred, and qual­i­ty of the per­sons. Among your equals expect not always that they should begin with you first, but to pull off the hat when there is no need is affec­ta­tion. In the man­ner of salut­ing and resalut­ing in words, keep to the most usu­al cus­tom.
27. ‘Tis ill man­ners to bid one more emi­nent than your­self be cov­ered, as well as not to do it to whom it is due. Like­wise he that makes too much haste to put on his hat does not well, yet he ought to put it on at the first, or at most the sec­ond time of being asked. Now what is here­in spo­ken, of qual­i­fi­ca­tion in behav­ior in salut­ing, ought also to be observed in tak­ing of place and sit­ting down, for cer­e­monies with­out bounds are trou­ble­some.
28. If any one come to speak to you while you are are sit­ting stand up, though he be your infe­ri­or, and when you present seats, let it be to every­one accord­ing to his degree.
29. When you meet with one of greater qual­i­ty than your­self, stop and retire, espe­cial­ly if it be at a door or any straight place, to give way for him to pass.
30. In walk­ing, the high­est place in most coun­tries seems to be on the right hand; there­fore, place your­self on the left of him whom you desire to hon­or. But if three walk togeth­er the mid­dest place is the most hon­or­able; the wall is usal­ly giv­en to the most wor­thy if two walk togeth­er.
31. If any­one far sur­pass­es oth­ers, either in age, estate, or mer­it, yet would give place to a mean­er than him­self in his own lodg­ing or else­where, the one ought not to except it. So he on the oth­er part should not use much earnest­ness nor offer it above once or twice.
32. To one that is your equal, or not much infe­ri­or, you are to give the chief place in your lodg­ing, and he to whom it is offered ought at the first to refuse it, but at the sec­ond to accept though not with­out acknowl­edg­ing his own unwor­thi­ness.
33. They that are in dig­ni­ty or in office have in all places prece­den­cy, but whilst they are young, they ought to respect those that are their equals in birth or oth­er qual­i­ties, though they have no pub­lic charge.
34. It is good man­ners to pre­fer them to whom we speak before our­selves, espe­cial­ly if they be above us, with whom in no sort we ought to begin.
35. Let your dis­course with men of busi­ness be short and com­pre­hen­sive.
36. Arti­fi­cers and per­sons of low degree ought not to use many cer­e­monies to lords or oth­ers of high degree, but respect and high­ly hon­or then, and those of high degree ought to treat them with affa­bil­i­ty and cour­tesy, with­out arro­gance.
37. In speak­ing to men of qual­i­ty do not lean nor look them full in the face, nor approach too near them at left. Keep a full pace from them.
38. In vis­it­ing the sick, do not present­ly play the physi­cian if you be not know­ing there­in.
39. In writ­ing or speak­ing, give to every per­son his due title accord­ing to his degree and the cus­tom of the place.
40. Strive not with your supe­ri­or in argu­ment, but always sub­mit your judg­ment to oth­ers with mod­esty.
41. Under­take not to teach your equal in the art him­self pro­fess­es; it savors of arro­gan­cy.
42. Let your cer­e­monies in cour­tesy be prop­er to the dig­ni­ty of his place with whom you con­verse, for it is absurd to act the same with a clown and a prince.
43. Do not express joy before one sick in pain, for that con­trary pas­sion will aggra­vate his mis­ery.
44. When a man does all he can, though it suc­ceed not well, blame not him that did it.
45. Being to advise or rep­re­hend any one, con­sid­er whether it ought to be in pub­lic or in pri­vate, and present­ly or at some oth­er time; in what terms to do it; and in reprov­ing show no signs of cholor but do it with all sweet­ness and mild­ness.
46. Take all admo­ni­tions thank­ful­ly in what time or place soev­er giv­en, but after­wards not being cul­pa­ble take a time and place con­ve­nient to let him know it that gave them.
47. Mock not nor jest at any thing of impor­tance. Break no jests that are sharp, bit­ing, and if you deliv­er any thing wit­ty and pleas­ant, abstain from laugh­ing there­at your­self.
48. Where­in you reprove anoth­er be unblame­able your­self, for exam­ple is more preva­lent than pre­cepts.
49. Use no reproach­ful lan­guage against any one; nei­ther curse nor revile.
50. Be not hasty to believe fly­ing reports to the dis­par­age­ment of any.
51. Wear not your clothes foul, or ripped, or dusty, but see they be brushed once every day at least and take heed that you approach not to any uncleaness.
52. In your appar­el be mod­est and endeav­or to accom­mo­date nature, rather than to pro­cure admi­ra­tion; keep to the fash­ion of your equals, such as are civ­il and order­ly with respect to time and places.
53. Run not in the streets, nei­ther go too slow­ly, nor with mouth open; go not shak­ing of arms, nor upon the toes, kick not the earth with your feet, go not upon the toes, nor in a danc­ing fash­ion.
54. Play not the pea­cock, look­ing every where about you, to see if you be well decked, if your shoes fit well, if your stock­ings sit neat­ly and clothes hand­some­ly.
55. Eat not in the streets, nor in the house, out of sea­son.
56. Asso­ciate your­self with men of good qual­i­ty if you esteem your own rep­u­ta­tion; for ’tis bet­ter to be alone than in bad com­pa­ny.
57. In walk­ing up and down in a house, only with one in com­pa­ny if he be greater than your­self, at the first give him the right hand and stop not till he does and be not the first that turns, and when you do turn let it be with your face towards him; if he be a man of great qual­i­ty walk not with him cheek by jowl but some­what behind him, but yet in such a man­ner that he may eas­i­ly speak to you.
58. Let your con­ver­sa­tion be with­out mal­ice or envy, for ’tis a sign of a tractable and com­mend­able nature, and in all caus­es of pas­sion per­mit rea­son to gov­ern.
59. Nev­er express any­thing unbe­com­ing, nor act against the rules moral before your infe­ri­ors.
60. Be not immod­est in urg­ing your friends to dis­cov­er a secret.
61. Utter not base and friv­o­lous things among grave and learned men, nor very dif­fi­cult ques­tions or sub­jects among the igno­rant, or things hard to be believed; stuff not your dis­course with sen­tences among your bet­ters nor equals.
62. Speak not of dole­ful things in a time of mirth or at the table; speak not of melan­choly things as death and wounds, and if oth­ers men­tion them, change if you can the dis­course. Tell not your dreams, but to your inti­mate friend.
63. A man ought not to val­ue him­self of his achieve­ments or rare qual­i­ties of wit; much less of his rich­es, virtue or kin­dred.
64. Break not a jest where none take plea­sure in mirth; laugh not aloud, nor at all with­out occa­sion; deride no man’s mis­for­tune though there seem to be some cause.
65. Speak not inju­ri­ous words nei­ther in jest nor earnest; scoff at none although they give occa­sion.
66. Be not froward but friend­ly and cour­te­ous, the first to salute, hear and answer; and be not pen­sive when it’s a time to con­verse.
67. Detract not from oth­ers, nei­ther be exces­sive in com­mand­ing.
68. Go not thith­er, where you know not whether you shall be wel­come or not; give not advice with­out being asked, and when desired do it briefly.
69. If two con­tend togeth­er take not the part of either uncon­strained, and be not obsti­nate in your own opin­ion. In things indif­fer­ent be of the major side.
70. Rep­re­hend not the imper­fec­tions of oth­ers, for that belongs to par­ents, mas­ters and supe­ri­ors.
71. Gaze not on the marks or blem­ish­es of oth­ers and ask not how they came. What you may speak in secret to your friend, deliv­er not before oth­ers.
72. Speak not in an unknown tongue in com­pa­ny but in your own lan­guage and that as those of qual­i­ty do and not as the vul­gar. Sub­lime mat­ters treat seri­ous­ly.
73. Think before you speak, pro­nounce not imper­fect­ly, nor bring out your words too hasti­ly, but order­ly and dis­tinct­ly.
74. When anoth­er speaks, be atten­tive your­self and dis­turb not the audi­ence. If any hes­i­tate in his words, help him not nor prompt him with­out desired. Inter­rupt him not, nor answer him till his speech be end­ed.
75. In the midst of dis­course ask not of what one treats, but if you per­ceive any stop because of your com­ing, you may well entreat him gen­tly to pro­ceed. If a per­son of qual­i­ty comes in while you’re con­vers­ing, it’s hand­some to repeat what was said before.
76. While you are talk­ing, point not with your fin­ger at him of whom you dis­course, nor approach too near him to whom you talk, espe­cial­ly to his face.
77. Treat with men at fit times about busi­ness and whis­per not in the com­pa­ny of oth­ers.
78. Make no com­par­isons and if any of the com­pa­ny be com­mend­ed for any brave act of virtue, com­mend not anoth­er for the same.
79. Be not apt to relate news if you know not the truth there­of. In dis­cours­ing of things you have heard, name not your author. Always a secret dis­cov­er not.
80. Be not tedious in dis­course or in read­ing unless you find the com­pa­ny pleased there­with.
81. Be not curi­ous to know the affairs of oth­ers, nei­ther approach those that speak in pri­vate.
82. Under­take not what you can­not per­form but be care­ful to keep your promise.
83. When you deliv­er a mat­ter do it with­out pas­sion and with dis­cre­tion, how­ev­er mean the per­son be you do it to.
84. When your supe­ri­ors talk to any­body hear­ken not, nei­ther speak nor laugh.
85. In com­pa­ny of those of high­er qual­i­ty than your­self, speak not ’til you are asked a ques­tion, then stand upright, put off your hat and answer in few words.
86. In dis­putes, be not so desirous to over­come as not to give lib­er­ty to each one to deliv­er his opin­ion and sub­mit to the judg­ment of the major part, espe­cial­ly if they are judges of the dis­pute.
87. Let your car­riage be such as becomes a man grave, set­tled and atten­tive to that which is spo­ken. Con­tra­dict not at every turn what oth­ers say.
88. Be not tedious in dis­course, make not many digres­sions, nor repeat often the same man­ner of dis­course.
89. Speak not evil of the absent, for it is unjust.
90. Being set at meat scratch not, nei­ther spit, cough or blow your nose except there’s a neces­si­ty for it.
91. Make no show of tak­ing great delight in your vict­uals. Feed not with greed­i­ness. Eat your bread with a knife. Lean not on the table, nei­ther find fault with what you eat.
92. Take no salt or cut bread with your knife greasy.
93. Enter­tain­ing any­one at table it is decent to present him with meat. Under­take not to help oth­ers unde­sired by the mas­ter.
94. If you soak bread in the sauce, let it be no more than what you put in your mouth at a time, and blow not your broth at table but stay ’til it cools of itself.
95. Put not your meat to your mouth with your knife in your hand; nei­ther spit forth the stones of any fruit pie upon a dish nor cast any­thing under the table.
96. It’s unbe­com­ing to heap much to one’s mea. Keep your fin­gers clean and when foul wipe them on a cor­ner of your table nap­kin.
97. Put not anoth­er bite into your mouth ’til the for­mer be swal­lowed. Let not your morsels be too big for the jowls.
98. Drink not nor talk with your mouth full; nei­ther gaze about you while you are drink­ing.
99. Drink not too leisure­ly nor yet too hasti­ly. Before and after drink­ing wipe your lips. Breathe not then or ever with too great a noise, for it is unciv­il.
100. Cleanse not your teeth with the table­cloth, nap­kin, fork or knife, but if oth­ers do it, let it be done with a pick tooth.
101. Rinse not your mouth in the pres­ence of oth­ers.
102. It is out of use to call upon the com­pa­ny often to eat. Nor need you drink to oth­ers every time you drink.
103. In com­pa­ny of your bet­ters be not longer in eat­ing than they are. Lay not your arm but only your hand upon the table.
104. It belongs to the chiefest in com­pa­ny to unfold his nap­kin and fall to meat first. But he ought then to begin in time and to dis­patch with dex­ter­i­ty that the slow­est may have time allowed him.
105. Be not angry at table what­ev­er hap­pens and if you have rea­son to be so, show it not but on a cheer­ful coun­te­nance espe­cial­ly if there be strangers, for good humor makes one dish of meat a feast.
106. Set not your­self at the upper of the table but if it be your due, or that the mas­ter of the house will have it so. Con­tend not, lest you should trou­ble the com­pa­ny.
107. If oth­ers talk at table be atten­tive, but talk not with meat in your mouth.
108. When you speak of God or His attrib­ut­es, let it be seri­ous­ly and with rev­er­ence. Hon­or and obey your nat­ur­al par­ents although they be poor.
109. Let your recre­ations be man­ful not sin­ful.
110. Labor to keep alive in your breast that lit­tle spark of celes­tial fire called con­science.

via Wash­Po

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er Thomas Jefferson’s Cut-and-Paste Ver­sion of the Bible, and Read the Curi­ous Edi­tion Online

The Poet­ry of Abra­ham Lin­coln

John Green’s Crash Course in U.S. His­to­ry: From Colo­nial­ism to Oba­ma in 47 Videos

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

Color Film Was Designed to Take Pictures of White People, Not People of Color: The Unfortunate History of Racial Bias in Photography (1940–1990)

in Life, Photography, Science | July 2nd, 2018

In the his­to­ry of pho­tog­ra­phy and film, get­ting the right image meant get­ting the one which con­formed to preva­lent ideas of human­i­ty. This includ­ed ideas of white­ness, of what colour — what range of hue — white peo­ple want­ed white peo­ple to be. 

- Richard Dyer, White: Essays on Race and Cul­ture

As the bride in the 2014 Inter­ra­cial Wed­ding Pho­tog­ra­ph­er skit (see below) on her tit­u­lar sketch com­e­dy TV show, come­di­an Amy Schumer cast her­self in a small but essen­tial back­ground role. She is for all prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es a liv­ing Shirley card, an image of a young white woman that was for years the stan­dard pho­tog­ra­phy techs used to deter­mine “nor­mal” skin-col­or bal­ance when devel­op­ing film in the lab.

The Shirley card—named for its orig­i­nal mod­el, Kodak employ­ee Shirley Page–featured a suc­ces­sion of young women over the years, but skin tone-wise, the resem­blance was strik­ing.

As described by Syree­ta McFad­den in a Buz­zfeed essay that also touch­es on Car­rie Mae Weems’ 1988 four-pan­el por­trait, Peach­es, Liz, Tami­ka, Elaine, a col­or wheel meme fea­tur­ing actress Lupi­ta Nyong’o, and artists Adam Broomberg and Oliv­er Cha­narin’s 2013 project that trained an apartheid-era Polaroid ID2 cam­era and near­ly 40-year-old film stock on dark-skinned South African sub­jects as a lens for exam­in­ing racism:

She is wear­ing a white dress with long black gloves. A pearl bracelet adorns one of her wrists. She has auburn hair that drapes her exposed shoul­ders. Her eyes are blue. The back­ground is gray­ish, and she is sur­round­ed by three pil­lows, each in one of the pri­ma­ry col­ors we’re taught in school. She wears a white dress because it reads high con­trast against the gray back­ground with her black gloves. “Col­or girl” is the tech­ni­cians’ term for her. The image is used as a met­ric for skin-col­or bal­ance, which tech­ni­cians use to ren­der an image as close as pos­si­ble to what the human eye rec­og­nizes as nor­mal. But there’s the rub: With a white body as a light meter, all oth­er skin tones become devi­a­tions from the norm.

This explains why the por­trait ses­sion McFadden’s mom set up in a shop­ping mall stu­dio chain yield­ed results so dis­as­trous that McFad­den instinc­tive­ly grav­i­tat­ed toward black-and-white when she start­ed tak­ing pic­tures. Grayscale did a much bet­ter job of sug­gest­ing the wide vari­ety of mul­ti­cul­tur­al skin tones than exist­ing col­or film.

In her 2009 paper “Look­ing at Shirley, the Ulti­mate Norm: Colour Bal­ance, Image Tech­nolo­gies and Cog­ni­tive Equi­ty,” Con­cor­dia Uni­ver­si­ty media and com­mu­ni­ca­tion stud­ies pro­fes­sor Lor­na Roth went into the chem­istry of inher­ent, if uncon­scious, racial bias. The poten­tial to rec­og­nize a spec­trum of yel­low, brown and red­dish skin tones was there, but the film com­pa­nies went with emul­sions that catered to the per­ceived needs of their tar­get con­sumers, whose hides were notice­ably lighter than those of black shut­ter­bugs also seek­ing to doc­u­ment their fam­i­ly vaca­tions, mile­stones, and cel­e­bra­tions.

Indus­try progress can be chalked up to pres­sure from ven­dors of wood fur­ni­ture and choco­late, who felt their dark prod­ucts could look bet­ter on film.

Oprah Win­frey and Black Enter­tain­ment Tele­vi­sion were ear­ly adopters of cam­eras equipped with two com­put­er chips, thus enabling them to accu­rate­ly por­tray a vari­ety of indi­vid­ual tones simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Who knew that Amy Schumer sketch, below, would turn out to have such his­toric sig­nif­i­cance? Once you know about the Shirley card, the com­e­dy becomes even dark­er. Gen­er­a­tions of real brides and grooms, whose skin tones fell to either side of Schumer’s TV groom, DJ Ali Sha­heed Muham­mad of A Tribe Called Quest fame, failed to show up in their own wed­ding pho­tos, through no fault of their own.

via Vox

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Pho­tographs of Snowflakes: Dis­cov­er the Ground­break­ing Micropho­tog­ra­phy of Wil­son “Snowflake” Bent­ley (1885)

Tsarist Rus­sia Comes to Life in Vivid Col­or Pho­tographs Tak­en Cir­ca 1905–1915

New Archive of Mid­dle East­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy Fea­tures 9,000 Dig­i­tized Images

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

The 50 Best Ambient Albums of All Time: A Playlist Curated by Pitchfork

in Music | May 31st, 2018

What makes a good ambi­ent record? I’m not sure I can even begin to answer that ques­tion, and I count myself a long­time fan of the genre, such as it is. Though con­ceived, osten­si­bly, by Bri­an Eno as mod­ernist mood music—“as ignor­able as it is inter­est­ing,” he wrote in the lin­er notes to 1978’s Ambi­ent 1: Music for Air­ports—the term has come to encom­pass “tracks you can dance to all the way to harsh noise.” This descrip­tion from com­pos­er and musi­cian Kei­th Fuller­ton Whit­man at Pitch­fork may not get us any clos­er to a clear def­i­n­i­tion in prose, though “cloud of sound” is a love­ly turn of phrase.

Unlike oth­er forms of music, there is no set of standards—both in the jazz sense of a canon and the for­mal sense of a set of rules. Rever­ber­at­ing key­boards, squelch­ing, burp­ing syn­the­siz­ers, dron­ing gui­tar feed­back, field record­ings, found sounds, lap­tops, strings… what­ev­er it takes to get you there—“there” being a state of sus­pend­ed emo­tion, “drift­ing” rather than “dri­ving,” the sounds “sooth­ing, sad, haunt­ing, or omi­nous.” (Cheer­ful, upbeat ambi­ent music may be a con­tra­dic­tion in terms.)

Giv­en the loose­ness of these cri­te­ria, it only stands to rea­son that “good” ambi­ent must be judged on far more sub­jec­tive terms than most any oth­er kind of music. Next to “atmos­pher­ic,” a pri­ma­ry oper­a­tive word in an ambi­ent crit­i­cal lex­i­con is “evoca­tive,” and what the music evokes will dif­fer vast­ly from lis­ten­er to lis­ten­er. “No one agrees on the lan­guage sur­round­ing this music,” Whit­man admits, “not the musi­cians who make it, not the audi­ence.”

Ambient’s close asso­ci­a­tion with trends in avant-garde min­i­mal­ism, from Erik Satie to Steve Reich, La Monte Young, and Charle­magne Pales­tine, may pre­pare us for its many crossover strains in elec­tron­ic music, but not, per­haps, for the seem­ing syn­er­gy between ambi­ent and cer­tain devel­op­ments in heavy met­al (though Lou Reed seems to have pre­saged this evo­lu­tion). “There are many roads one can take into this par­tic­u­lar sec­tor,” writes Whit­man, “vir­tu­al­ly every extant sub- and micro-genre has an ambi­ent shad­ow.”

Such ecu­meni­cal­ism is a fea­ture: it means that a list like Pitchfork’s “50 Best Ambi­ent Albums of All Time” (stream most of those albums on the Spo­ti­fy playlist above) can pull from an impres­sive­ly wide array of musi­cal domains, from the ear­ly exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ic music of Lau­rie Spiegel to the spir­i­tu­al jazz of Alice Coltrane; the chill-out elec­tron­i­ca of The Orb and The KLF to the ethe­re­al indie post-folk dream­pop of Grouper, a very rare entry with vocals.

If the genre has stars, Tim Heck­er and William Basin­s­ki might be con­sid­ered two of them; if it has august fore­bears, Pauline Oliv­eros, Ter­ry Riley, and of course Eno are three. (Music for Air­ports comes in at num­ber one, though anoth­er very well-cho­sen inclu­sion here is Eno and Harold Budd’s utter­ly gor­geous The Pearl.) Oth­er entries I’m very pleased to see on this list include albums by Gas, com­pos­er Max Richter, and vocal exper­i­men­tal­ist Juliana Bar­wick, artists who might nev­er share a stage, but sit quite com­fort­ably next to each oth­er here.

What’s miss­ing? Maybe the glacial­ly slow, gui­tar and bass drones of Sunn O))) or the deeply unnerv­ing noise of Pruri­ent or the lush elec­tro-acoustic com­po­si­tions of Ash­ley Bel­louin, I don’t know. These aren’t com­plaints but sug­ges­tions on the order of if you like Pitchfork’s “50 Best Ambi­ent Albums of All Time,” check out…. I could go on, but I’d rather leave it to you, read­er. What’s on your list that didn’t make the cut?

Vis­it Pitch­fork’s list here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “True” Sto­ry Of How Bri­an Eno Invent­ed Ambi­ent Music

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

Hear “Weight­less,” the Most Relax­ing Song Ever Made, Accord­ing to Researchers (You’ll Need It Today)

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

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

Patti Smith, The Godmother of Punk, Is Now Putting Her Pictures on Instagram

in Life, Music, Photography, Poetry | May 28th, 2018

This is my Land 250 Polaroid cam­era. These days many images are lost as the film is often expired, being obso­lete, but I had a good run. Its the end of the day but not too late to salute JM Bar­rie on his birthday.Barrie was a sick­ly child and only grew to 5 foot 3, and yet pro­duced a mon­u­men­tal work in Peter Pan. Pic­tured is a polaroid of the won­der­ful stat­ue in Kens­ing­ton Gar­dens where I have spent many hours day­dream­ing, a pas­time that is nev­er lost, nev­er obso­lete.

A post shared by This is Pat­ti Smith (@thisispattismith) on May 9, 2018 at 3:24pm PDT

As evi­denced by her Insta­gram feed the God­moth­er is just like you and me. She posts pic­tures of her kids.

This is my daugh­ter Jesse with the great Eric Bur­don. Sat­ur­day we attend­ed his 77th birth­day con­cert at the City Win­ery. It was a spec­tral per­for­mance from the emo­tion­al Lead­bel­ly song In the Pines, to Spill the Wine, to the Ani­mals great­est songs. I found myself in tears even when danc­ing. His was the voice of dis­en­fran­chised youth, tran­si­tion and the desire for a bet­ter world. As he sang I closed my eyes, trans­port­ed to anoth­er time when we were of the tribe of the mis­un­der­stood search­ing for uni­ver­sal love.

A post shared by This is Pat­ti Smith (@thisispattismith) on May 12, 2018 at 3:22pm PDT

She gives her mom a Moth­ers Day shout out…

This is my moth­er. She gave me life. And I can only give her a life­time of grat­i­tude.

A post shared by This is Pat­ti Smith (@thisispattismith) on May 13, 2018 at 7:48am PDT

She cel­e­brates her friends’ birth­days, posts self­ies, trav­el shots, and pet pics…

This is a Ken Regan shot from 1975. Just reliv­ing one of the thou­sand things to thank Bob Dylan for. The poet­ry, the social aware­ness, the elec­tric ener­gy, the best dark glass­es, and here a moment of shared laugh­ter. One of life’s great­est plea­sures. So hap­py birth­day Bob Dylan, I am cer­tain peo­ple all over the world are lis­ten­ing to you tonight.

A post shared by This is Pat­ti Smith (@thisispattismith) on May 24, 2018 at 12:55pm PDT

She’s not above self-pro­mo­tion if the sit­u­a­tion war­rants.

But the accom­pa­ny­ing cap­tions set punk’s poet lau­re­ate apart. No LOLs here.  It’s clear that the award-win­ning author of Just Kids  and M Train thinks about her con­tent, care­ful­ly craft­ing each post before she pub­lish­es. Each is a bite-sized reflec­tion, a page-a-day med­i­ta­tion on what it means to be alive:

This is day two of my Venice report.

I bummed around think­ing of 

Venice in the sev­en­ties. It had

a strong Ras­ta vibe with Reg­gae

music drift­ing from the head shops

and boom box­es on the beach. 

Burn­ing Spear and Jim­my Cliff

and Bob Mar­ley. Venice has an 

ever chang­ing atmos­phere but 

I always like walk­ing around, 

anony­mous, just anoth­er freak. 

On Pacif­ic next to the Cafe Col­lage

I had steamed dumplings and 

gin­ger tea at Mao’s Kitchen. 

The food is great and rea­son­able.

Because it was ear­ly it was 

near­ly emp­ty. Since I was awake

since 4am i was near­ly hyp­no­tized 

by the turn­ing of their over­head 

fan. Before I left they gave me a

for­tune cook­ie. It was a true one.

Reflect­ing my past and cer­tain­ly 

my future. A very good day.

Fol­low Pat­ti Smith on Insta­gram here.

via W Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

Pat­ti Smith Cre­ates a Detailed Pack­ing List for Going on Tour: Haru­ki Muraka­mi Books, Loquat Tea & More

Hear Pat­ti Smith Read the Poet­ry that Would Become Hors­es: A Read­ing of 14 Poems at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, 1975

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her solo show Nurse!, in which one of Shakespeare’s best loved female char­ac­ters hits the lec­ture cir­cuit to set the record straight pre­mieres in June at The Tank in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

The First 100 Years of the Bicycle: A 1915 Documentary Shows How the Bike Went from Its Clunky Birth in 1818, to Its Enduring Design in 1890

in History, Technology | May 10th, 2018

Back in 1915, French film­mak­ers decid­ed to revis­it the evo­lu­tion of the bicy­cle dur­ing the 19th cen­tu­ry, mov­ing from the inven­tion of the bicy­cle in 1818, to the bikes that emerged dur­ing the 1890s. As the result­ing film above shows, the bike went from being clunky, cum­ber­some and seem­ing­ly per­ilous to ride, to tak­ing on the tried and true shape that we still rec­og­nize today.

This film was pre­served by the Nether­lands’ EYE Film Insti­tute. Hence the sub­ti­tles are in Dutch. But thanks to Aeon Mag­a­zine, you can read Eng­lish trans­la­tions below:

1. The drai­sine was invent­ed only a cen­tu­ry ago, in 1818 by Baron Drais de Sauer­brun.
2. [This sub­ti­tle nev­er appears in the film.
3. The vehi­cle that lies between the drai­sine and the 1850 bicy­cle has an improved steer­ing wheel and a fit­ted brake.
4. In 1863, Pierre Lalle­ment invent­ed ped­als that worked on the front wheel.
5. Around 1868, a third wheel was added. Although these tri­cy­cles were heav­ier than the two-wheel­ers, they were safer.
6. Between 1867 and 1870, var­i­ous improve­ments were made, includ­ing the increased use of rub­ber tyres.
7. In 1875, fol­low­ing an inven­tion by the engi­neer Tri­ef­fault, the frame was made of hol­low pipes.
8. Fol­low­ing the fash­ion of the day, the front wheel was made as large as pos­si­ble.
9. In 1878, Renard cre­at­ed a bicy­cle with a wheel cir­cum­fer­ence of more than 7 feet. Just sit­ting down on one of these was an ath­let­ic feat!
11. At the begin­ning of 1879, Rousseau replaced the large front wheel with a small­er one, and the chain was intro­duced on the front wheel for dri­ving pow­er.
12. The bicy­cle of today.

For anoth­er look at the Birth of the Bike, you can watch a 1937 news­reel that gives its own nar­ra­tive account. It comes the from British Pathé film archives.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

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 Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steven Allen Show (1963)

Watch Boy and Bicy­cle: Rid­ley Scott’s Very First Film (1965)

Watch The Bicy­cle Trip: An Ani­ma­tion of The World’s First LSD Trip Which Took Place on April 19, 1943

The Diderot Effect: Enlightenment Philosopher Denis Diderot Explains the Psychology of Consumerism & Our Wasteful Spending

in Economics, Philosophy, Psychology | April 26th, 2018

In point­ing out the clear and present dan­gers posed by out-of-con­trol con­sumerism, there is no need for Marx­ism 101 terms like “com­mod­i­ty fetishism.” Sim­ply state in plain terms that we revere cheap­ly-mass-pro­duced goods, made for the sake of end­less growth and con­sump­tion, for no par­tic­u­lar rea­son oth­er than per­pet­u­al nov­el­ty and the cre­ation of wealth for a few. Every­one nods in agree­ment, then gets back to scrolling through their social media feeds and inbox­es, con­vinc­ing them­selves, as I con­vince myself, that tar­get­ed adver­tis­ing in dig­i­tal networks—what Jaron Lanier calls “mass behav­ior-mod­i­fi­ca­tion regimes”—could not pos­si­bly have any effect on me!

While 18th-cen­tu­ry French philosophe Denis Diderot in no way pre­dict­ed (as Lanier large­ly did) the mass behav­ior-mod­i­fi­ca­tion schemes of the inter­net, he under­stood some­thing crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant about human behav­ior and the nascent com­mod­i­ty cul­ture tak­ing shape around him, a cul­ture of anx­ious dis­qui­et and games of one-upman­ship, played, if not with oth­ers, then with one­self. Renowned, among oth­er things, for co-found­ing the Ency­clopédie (the first Wikipedia!), Diderot has also acquired a rep­u­ta­tion for the insights in his essay “Regrets on Part­ing with My Old Dress­ing Gown,” which inspired the con­cept of the “Diderot Effect.”

This prin­ci­ple states that mod­ern con­sump­tion requires us to “iden­ti­fy our­selves using our pos­ses­sions,” as Esther Inglis-Arkell writes at io9. Thus, when per­suad­ed by naked lust or the entice­ments of adver­tis­ing to pur­chase some­thing new and shiny, we imme­di­ate­ly notice how out of place it looks amongst our old things. “Once we own one thing that stands out, that doesn’t fit our cur­rent sense of uni­ty, we go on a ram­page try­ing to recon­struct our­selves” by upgrad­ing things that worked per­fect­ly well, in order to main­tain a coher­ent sense of who we are in rela­tion to the first new pur­chase.

The phe­nom­e­non, “part psy­cho­log­i­cal, and part delib­er­ate manip­u­la­tion,” dri­ves heed­less shop­ping and cre­ates need­less waste. Diderot describes the effect in terms con­sis­tent with the tastes and prej­u­dices of an edu­cat­ed gen­tle­man of his time. He does so with per­spi­ca­cious self-aware­ness. The essay is worth a read for the rich hyper­bole of its rhetoric. Begin­ning with a com­par­i­son between his old bathrobe, which “mold­ed all the folds of my body” and his new one (“stiff, and starchy, makes me look stodgy”), Diderot builds to a near-apoc­a­lyp­tic sce­nario illus­trat­ing the “rav­ages of lux­u­ry.”

The pur­chase of a new dress­ing gown spoiled his sense of him­self as “the writer, the man who works.” The new robe strikes a jar­ring, dis­so­cia­tive note. “I now have the air of a rich good for noth­ing. No one knows who I am…. All now is dis­cor­dant,” he writes, “No more coor­di­na­tion, no more uni­ty, no more beau­ty.” Rather than get rid of the new pur­chase, he feels com­pelled to become the kind of per­son who wears such a thing, by means of fur­ther pur­chas­es which he could only new­ly afford, after receiv­ing an endow­ment from Cather­ine the Great. Before this wind­fall, points out James Clear, he had “lived near­ly his entire life in pover­ty.”

Clear gives sev­er­al exam­ples of the Diderot effect that take it out of the realm of 18th cen­tu­ry aes­thet­ics and into our mod­ern big-box/A­ma­zon real­i­ty. “We are rarely look­ing to down­grade, to sim­pli­fy,” he writes, “Our nat­ur­al incli­na­tion is always to accu­mu­late.” To counter the ten­den­cy, he rec­om­mends cor­rec­tive behav­iors such as mak­ing sure new pur­chas­es fit in with our cur­rent pos­ses­sions; set­ting self-imposed lim­its on spend­ing; and reduc­ing expo­sure to “habit trig­gers.” This may require admit­ting that we are sus­cep­ti­ble to the ads that clut­ter both our phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments, and that lim­it­ing time spent on ad-dri­ven plat­forms may be an act not only of self-care, but of social and envi­ron­men­tal care as well. Algo­rithms now per­form Diderot effects for us con­stant­ly.

Is the Diderot effect uni­ver­sal­ly bad? Inglis-Arkell argues that “it’s not pure evil… there’s a dif­fer­ence between an Enlight­en­ment screed and real life.” So-called green consumerism—“replacing exist­ing waste­ful goods with more durable, clean­er, more respon­si­bly-made goods”—might be a healthy use of Diderot-like avarice. Besides, she says, “there’s noth­ing wrong with want­i­ng to com­mu­ni­cate one’s sense of self through aes­thet­ic choic­es” or crav­ing a uni­fied look for our phys­i­cal spaces. Maybe, maybe not, but we can take respon­si­bil­i­ty for how we direct our desires. In any case, Diderot’s essay is hard­ly a “screed,” but a light-heart­ed, yet can­did self exam­i­na­tion. He is not yet so far gone, he writes: “I have not been cor­rupt­ed…. But who knows what will hap­pen with time?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bertrand Rus­sell & Buck­min­ster Fuller on Why We Should Work Less, and Live & Learn More

How Infor­ma­tion Over­load Robs Us of Our Cre­ativ­i­ty: What the Sci­en­tif­ic Research Shows

Every­day Eco­nom­ics: A New Course by Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion Uni­ver­si­ty Where Stu­dents Cre­ate the Syl­labus

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

Braille Neue: A New Version of Braille That Can Be Simultaneously Read by the Sighted and the Blind

in Design | April 26th, 2018

Pho­to via Kosuke Taka­hashi

To those of us who’ve nev­er had rea­son to learn it, the Braille alpha­bet can have an appeal­ing­ly retro-futur­is­tic look, not least because Braille sig­nage in Amer­i­ca seems most often installed in pre-2000s pub­lic build­ings. But it must smack of the past to many of the visu­al­ly impaired as well, who these days have a host of ever high­er-tech read­ing devices avail­able to them (thanks to which, of course, they can read sites like this one). And though pub­lic sup­port for pro­duc­ing mate­ri­als in Braille exists, the edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams need­ed to spread Braille lit­er­a­cy in the first place have few­er cham­pi­ons. Braille itself, per­haps, needs an upgrade for the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Kosuke Taka­hashi may be just the graph­ic design­er to pro­vide that upgrade. He’s come up with Braille Neue, “a uni­ver­sal type­face that com­bines braille with exist­ing char­ac­ters. This type­face com­mu­ni­cates to both the sight­ed and blind peo­ple in the same space.” He has, in oth­er words, designed a read­able alpha­bet that allows for the over­lay­ing of Eng­lish with the cor­re­spond­ing raised Braille dots, keep­ing both leg­i­ble at a glance — or at a touch, as the case may be. Oth­er design­ers have tried their hand at the same project, but unlike Taka­hashi, none of their alpha­bets sup­port pho­net­ic Japan­ese char­ac­ters as well. “Our aim is to use this uni­ver­sal type­set for [the] Tokyo Olympics and Par­a­lympics 2020 to cre­ate a tru­ly uni­ver­sal space where any­one can access infor­ma­tion,” says Taka­hashi’s Braille Neue page.

Pho­to via Kosuke Taka­hashi

Based on the exist­ing Hel­veti­ca Neue font, Braille Neue — whose design­er, accord­ing to My Mod­ern Met, “is still exper­i­ment­ing with cost-effec­tive print­ing and is refin­ing the font pri­or to final release” — has the poten­tial to spread not just aware­ness but lit­er­a­cy of Braille, giv­en that it essen­tial­ly shows sight­ed non-Braille read­ers a key every time they read it. As any non-Japan­ese per­son who has lived in Taka­hashi’s native land knows, even if you start with no idea of how to read a char­ac­ter in an unknown writ­ing sys­tem, you’ll start to get a sense of it almost auto­mat­i­cal­ly if you see it often enough in con­text with your own. They’ll also know that if any coun­try can imple­ment retro­fu­tur­is­tic design in a way that fas­ci­nates the world, it’s Japan.

via Colos­sal/My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Helen Keller Had Impec­ca­ble Hand­writ­ing: See a Col­lec­tion of Her Child­hood Let­ters

The Pra­do Muse­um Cre­ates the First Art Exhi­bi­tion for the Visu­al­ly Impaired, Using 3D Print­ing

Font Based on Sig­mund Freud’s Hand­writ­ing Com­ing Cour­tesy of Suc­cess­ful Kick­starter Cam­paign

How to Write Like an Archi­tect: Short Primers on Writ­ing with the Neat, Clean Lines of a Design­er

Jorge Luis Borges, After Going Blind, Draws a Self-Por­trait

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Radiooooo: Discover the Musical Time Machine That Lets You Hear What Played on the Radio in Different Times & Places

in History, Music, Radio, Technology | April 13th, 2018

Radio has always been a fair­ly trans­portive medi­um.

Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion, entire fam­i­lies clus­tered round the elec­tron­ic hearth to enjoy a vari­ety of enter­tain­ments, includ­ing live remote broad­casts from the glam­orous night­clubs and hotels where celebri­ty band­lead­ers like Count Basie and Duke Elling­ton held sway.

1950s teens’ tran­sis­tors took them to a head space less square than the white bread sub­urbs their par­ents inhab­it­ed.

Dur­ing the Viet­nam War, South Viet­namese sta­tions played home­grown ren­di­tions of the rock and soul sounds dom­i­nat­ing Amer­i­can air­waves.

The Radiooooo.com site (there’s also a ver­sion avail­able for the iPhone and Android) allows mod­ern lis­ten­ers to expe­ri­ence a bit of that mag­i­cal time trav­el­ing sen­sa­tion, via an inter­ac­tive map that allows you to tune in to spe­cif­ic coun­tries and decades.

The con­tent here is user-gen­er­at­ed. Reg­is­ter for a free account, and you too can begin shar­ing eccen­tric faves.

Find a user whose tastes mir­ror your own? Click their pro­file for a stat card of tracks they’ve favor­it­ed and uploaded, as well as any oth­er sundry details they may feel like shar­ing, such as coun­try of ori­gin and age.

There are fun awards to be earned here, with the most sought after pelts going to the first to upload a song to an emp­ty coun­try, or upload a track from 1910–1920. (Cameroon, 1940 … go!)

As with an actu­al radio, you are not select­ing the actu­al playlist, though you can nudge the nee­dle a bit by tog­gling to your desired mood—slow, fast and/or weird.

And you need not lim­it your­self to a sin­gle des­ti­na­tion. Embark on a strange musi­cal trip by using Radiooooo’s taxi func­tion to car­ry you to mul­ti­ple coun­tries and decades. (I closed my eyes and wound up shut­tling between Ukraine and Mau­ri­ta­nia in the 60s and 80s.)

Dot­ted around the map are island icons, where the ever-grow­ing col­lec­tion is sort­ed accord­ing to themes like Hawaii, Nev­er­land (“for chil­dren big and small”), and 8‑Bit video game music. Le Club, float­ing mid­way between Europe and North Amer­i­ca, con­tains brand new releas­es from con­tem­po­rary labels.

The Now Play­ing win­dow includes an option to buy, when pos­si­ble, as well as the artist’s name and album art­work. Share, like, get your groove on…

And stay tuned for Radiooooo’s lat­est baby, Le Globe, an inter­ac­tive 3‑D map of the world and a decade selec­tor dial mount­ed on a “beau­ti­ful con­nect­ed object.”

The bound­aries are extreme­ly per­me­able here.

Have a browse through Radiooooo’s Insta­gram feed for a feast of cov­er art or head to France for one of their in-per­son lis­ten­ing par­ties. (There’s one next week in the secret lis­ten­ing room of Paris’ Grand Hotel Amour.)

Read­ers, if your explo­rations unearth an excep­tion­al track, please share it in the com­ments, below.

Down­load the Radioooo app for Mac or Android here, or lis­ten on the web­site. (You may need to fool around with var­i­ous browsers to find the one that works best for you.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear 1,500+ Gen­res of Music, All Mapped Out on an Insane­ly Thor­ough Inter­ac­tive Graph

Behold the MusicMap: The Ulti­mate Inter­ac­tive Geneal­o­gy of Music Cre­at­ed Between 1870 and 2016

Google’s Music Time­line: A Visu­al­iza­tion of 60 Years of Chang­ing Musi­cal Tastes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her radio dial is set to Roma­nia 1910 in antic­i­pa­tion of the third install­ment of her lit­er­ary-themed vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain , Mon­day, April 23 at the New York Soci­ety Library. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Stream 47 Hours of Classic Sci-Fi Novels & Stories: Asimov, Wells, Orwell, Verne, Lovecraft & More

in Audio Books, Sci Fi | April 10th, 2018

The pro­nounce­ments of French the­o­rist Jean Bau­drillard could sound a bit sil­ly in the ear­ly 1990s, when the inter­net was still in its infan­cy, a slow, clunky tech­nol­o­gy whose promis­es far exceed­ed what it could deliv­er. We hoped for the cyber­punk spaces of William Gib­son, and got the beep-boop tedi­um of dial-up. Even so, in his 1991 essay “Sim­u­lacra and Sci­ence Fic­tion,” Bau­drillard con­tend­ed that the real and the imag­i­nary were no longer dis­tin­guish­able, and that the col­lapse of the dis­tance between them meant that “there is no more fic­tion.” Or, con­verse­ly, he sug­gest­ed, that there is no more real­i­ty.

What seemed a far-fetched claim about the total­i­ty of “cyber­net­ics and hyper­re­al­i­ty” in the age of AOL and Netscape now sounds far more plau­si­ble. After all, it will soon be pos­si­ble, if it is not so already, to con­vinc­ing­ly sim­u­late events that nev­er occurred, and to make mil­lions of peo­ple believe they had, not only through fake tweets, “fake news,” and age-old pro­pa­gan­da, but through sophis­ti­cat­ed manip­u­la­tion of video and audio, through aug­ment­ed real­i­ty and the onset of “real­i­ty apa­thy,” a psy­cho­log­i­cal fatigue that over­whelms our abil­i­ties to dis­tin­guish true and false when every­thing appears as a car­toon­ish par­o­dy of itself.

Tech­nol­o­gist Aviv Ovadya has tried since 2016 to warn any­one who would lis­ten that such a col­lapse of real­i­ty was fast upon us—an “Info­ca­lypse,” he calls it. If this is so, accord­ing to Bau­drillard, “both tra­di­tion­al SF and the­o­ry are des­tined to the same fate: flux and impre­ci­sion are putting an end to them as spe­cif­ic gen­res.” In an apoc­a­lyp­tic pre­dic­tion, he declaimed, “fic­tion will nev­er again be a mir­ror held to the future, but rather a des­per­ate rehal­lu­ci­nat­ing of the past.” The “col­lec­tive mar­ket­place” of glob­al­iza­tion and the Bor­ge­sian con­di­tion in which “the map cov­ers all the ter­ri­to­ry” have left “no room any more for the imag­i­nary.” Com­pa­nies set up shop express­ly to sim­u­late and fal­si­fy real­i­ty. Pained irony, pas­tiche, and cheap nos­tal­gia are all that remain.

It’s a bleak sce­nario, but per­haps he was right after all, though it may not yet be time to despair—to give up on real­i­ty or the role of imag­i­na­tion. After all, sci-fi writ­ers like Gib­son, Philip K. Dick, and J.G. Bal­lard grasped long before most of us the con­di­tion Bau­drillard described. The sub­ject proved for them and many oth­er late-20th cen­tu­ry sci-fi authors a rich vein for fic­tion. And per­haps, rather than a great disruption—to use the lan­guage of a start-up cul­ture intent on break­ing things—there remains some con­ti­nu­ity with the naïve con­fi­dence of past par­a­digms, just as New­ton­ian physics still holds true, only in a far more lim­it­ed way than once believed.

Isaac Asimov’s short essay “The Rel­a­tiv­i­ty of Wrong” is instruc­tive on this last point. Maybe the the­o­ry of “hyper­re­al­i­ty” is right, in some fash­ion, but also incom­plete: a future remains for the most vision­ary cre­ative minds to dis­cov­er, as it did for Asimov’s “psy­chohis­to­ri­an” Hari Sel­don in The Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy. You can hear a BBC drama­ti­za­tion of that ground­break­ing fifties mas­ter­work in the 47-hour sci­ence fic­tion playlist above, along with read­ings of clas­sic stories—like Orson Welles’ infa­mous radio broad­cast of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds (and an audio­book of the same read by Eng­lish actor Maxwell Caulfield). From Jules Verne to H.P. Love­craft to George Orwell; from the mid-fifties time trav­el fic­tion of Andre Nor­ton to the 21st-cen­tu­ry time-trav­el fic­tion of Ruth Boswell….

We’ve even got a late entry from the­atri­cal prog rock mas­ter­mind Rick Wake­man, who fol­lowed up his musi­cal adap­ta­tion of Jour­ney to the Cen­tre of the Earth with a sequel he penned him­self, record­ed in 1974, and released in 1999, called Return to the Cen­tre of the Earth, with nar­ra­tion by Patrick Stew­art and guest appear­ances by Ozzy Osbourne, Bon­nie Tyler, and the Moody Blues’ Justin Hay­ward. Does revis­it­ing sci-fi, “weird fic­tion,” and oper­at­ic con­cept albums of the past con­sti­tute a “des­per­ate rehal­lu­ci­nat­ing” of a bygone “lost object,” as Bau­drillard believed? Or does it pro­vide the raw mate­r­i­al for today’s psy­chohis­to­ri­ans? I sup­pose it remains to be seen; the future—and the future of sci­ence fiction—may be wide open.

The 47-hour sci­ence fic­tion playlist above will be added to our col­lec­tion of 900 Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free: Isaac Asimov’s Epic Foun­da­tion Tril­o­gy Dra­ma­tized in Clas­sic Audio

Sci-Fi Radio: Hear Radio Dra­mas of Sci-Fi Sto­ries by Ray Brad­bury, Philip K. Dick, Ursu­la K. LeGuin & More (1989)

Free: 355 Issues of Galaxy, the Ground­break­ing 1950s Sci­ence Fic­tion Mag­a­zine

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

A Shazam for Nature: A New Free App Helps You Identify Plants, Animals & Other Denizens of the Natural World

in Biology, K-12, Photography, Science, Technology | March 30th, 2018

Do you ever long for those not-so-long-ago days when you skipped through the world, breath­less with the antic­i­pa­tion of catch­ing Poké­mon on your phone screen?

If so, you might enjoy bag­ging some of the Pokeverse’s real world coun­ter­parts using Seek, iNaturalist’s new pho­to-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion app. It does for the nat­ur­al world what Shaz­am does for music.

Aim your phone’s cam­era at a non­de­script leaf or the grasshop­per-ish-look­ing crea­ture who’s camped on your porch light. With a bit of luck, Seek will pull up the rel­e­vant Wikipedia entry to help the two of you get bet­ter acquaint­ed.

Reg­is­tered users can pin their finds to their per­son­al col­lec­tions, pro­vid­ed the app’s recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy pro­duces a match.

(Sev­er­al ear­ly adopters sug­gest it’s still a few house­plants shy of true func­tion­al­i­ty…)

Seek’s pro­tec­tive stance with regard to pri­va­cy set­tings is well suit­ed to junior spec­i­men col­lec­tors, as are the vir­tu­al badges with which it rewards ener­getic upload­ers.

While it doesn’t hang onto user data, Seek is build­ing a pho­to library, com­posed in part of user sub­mis­sions.

(Your cat is ready for her close up, Mr. DeMille…)

(Dit­to your Por­to­bel­lo Mush­room burg­er…)

Down­load Seek for free on iTunes or Google Play.

via Earth­er/My Mod­ern Met

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

Watch 50 Hours of Nature Sound­scapes from the BBC: Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Proven to Ease Stress and Pro­mote Hap­pi­ness & Awe

How Walk­ing Fos­ters Cre­ativ­i­ty: Stan­ford Researchers Con­firm What Philoso­phers and Writ­ers Have Always Known

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