Jimi Hendrix Unplugged: Two Great Recordings of Hendrix Playing Acoustic Guitar

in Music | July 11th, 2024

As a young gui­tar play­er, per­haps no one inspired me as much as Jimi Hen­drix, though I nev­er dreamed I’d attain even a frac­tion of his skill. But what attract­ed me to him was his near-total lack of formality—he didn’t read music, wasn’t trained in any clas­si­cal sense, played an upside-down right-hand­ed gui­tar as a lefty, and ful­ly engaged his head and heart in every note, nev­er paus­ing for an instant (so it seemed) to sec­ond-guess whether it was the right one. I knew his raw emo­tive play­ing was firm­ly root­ed in the Delta blues, but it wasn’t until lat­er in my musi­cal jour­ney that I dis­cov­ered his return to more tra­di­tion­al form after he dis­band­ed The Expe­ri­ence and formed Band of Gyp­sys with Bil­ly Cox and Bud­dy Miles. While most of the record­ings he made with them didn’t see offi­cial release, they’ve appeared since his death in com­pi­la­tion after boxset after com­pi­la­tion, includ­ing one of the most beloved of Hendrix’s blues songs, “Hear My Train A Comin’.”

Orig­i­nal­ly titled “Get My Heart Back Togeth­er” when he played it at Wood­stock in 1969, the song is pure roots, with lyrics that bespeak of both Hendrix’s lone­li­ness and his play­ful dreams of great­ness. (“I’m gonna buy this town / And put it all in my shoe.”) Sev­er­al ver­sions of the song float around on var­i­ous posthu­mous releases—both live and as stu­dio out­takes (includ­ing two dif­fer­ent takes on the excel­lent 1994 Blues).

But we have the rare treat, above, of see­ing Hen­drix play the song on a twelve-string acoustic gui­tar, Lead Belly’s instru­ment of choice. The footage comes from the 1973 doc­u­men­tary film Jimi Hen­drix (which you can watch on YouTube for $2.99). Hen­drix first plays the intro, seat­ed alone in an all-white stu­dio, play­ing folk-style with the fin­gers of his left hand. It is, of course, flaw­less, yet still he stops and asks the film­mak­ers for a redo. “I was scared to death,” he says, betray­ing the shy­ness and self-doubt that lurked beneath his mind-blow­ing abil­i­ty and flam­boy­ant per­sona. His play­ing is no less per­fect when he picks up the tune again and plays it through.

Solo acoustic record­ings of Hendrix—film and audio—are incred­i­bly rare. If like me you’re a fan of Hen­drix, acoustic blues, or both, this video will make you hunger for more Jimi unplugged. While Hen­drix did more than any­one before him to turn gui­tar amps into instru­ments with his squalls of elec­tric feed­back and dis­tort­ed wah-wah squeals, when you strip his play­ing down to basics, he’s still pret­ty much as good as it gets.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix Plays “Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band” Days After the Song Was Released (1967)

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Behold Moe­bius’ Many Psy­che­del­ic Illus­tra­tions of Jimi Hen­drix

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

Learn How to Create Your Own Custom AI Assistants Using OpenAI GPTs: A Free Course from Vanderbilt University

in Artificial Intelligence, Television | April 18th, 2024

Last fall, Ope­nAI start­ed let­ting users cre­ate cus­tom ver­sions of ChatGPT–ones that would let peo­ple cre­ate AI assis­tants to com­plete tasks in their per­son­al or pro­fes­sion­al lives. In the months that fol­lowed, some users cre­at­ed AI apps that could gen­er­ate recipes and meals. Oth­ers devel­oped GPTs to cre­ate logos for their busi­ness­es. You get the pic­ture.

If you’re inter­est­ed in devel­op­ing your own AI assis­tant, Van­der­bilt com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor Jules White has released a free online course called “Ope­nAI GPTs: Cre­at­ing Your Own Cus­tom AI Assis­tants.” On aver­age, the course should take sev­en hours to com­plete.

Here’s how he frames the course:

This cut­ting-edge course will guide you through the excit­ing jour­ney of cre­at­ing and deploy­ing cus­tom GPTs that cater to diverse indus­tries and appli­ca­tions. Imag­ine hav­ing a vir­tu­al assis­tant that can tack­le com­plex legal doc­u­ment analy­sis, stream­line sup­ply chain logis­tics, or even assist in sci­en­tif­ic research and hypoth­e­sis gen­er­a­tion. The pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less! Through­out the course, you’ll delve into the intri­ca­cies of build­ing GPTs that can use your doc­u­ments to answer ques­tions, pat­terns to cre­ate amaz­ing human and AI inter­ac­tion, and meth­ods for cus­tomiz­ing the tone of your GPTs. You’ll learn how to design and imple­ment rig­or­ous test­ing sce­nar­ios to ensure your AI assis­tan­t’s accu­ra­cy, reli­a­bil­i­ty, and human-like com­mu­ni­ca­tion abil­i­ties. Pre­pare to be amazed as you explore real-world exam­ples and case stud­ies, such as:

1. GPT for Per­son­al­ized Learn­ing and Edu­ca­tion: Craft a vir­tu­al tutor that adapts its teach­ing approach based on each stu­den­t’s learn­ing style, pro­vid­ing per­son­al­ized les­son plans, inter­ac­tive exer­cis­es, and real-time feed­back, trans­form­ing the edu­ca­tion­al land­scape.

2. Culi­nary GPT: Your Per­son­al Recipe Vault and Meal Plan­ning Mae­stro. Step into a world where your culi­nary cre­ations come to life with the help of an AI assis­tant that knows your recipes like the back of its hand. The Culi­nary GPT is a cus­tom-built lan­guage mod­el designed to rev­o­lu­tion­ize your kitchen expe­ri­ence, serv­ing as a per­son­al recipe vault and meal plan­ning and shop­ping mae­stro.

3. GPT for Trav­el and Busi­ness Expense Man­age­ment: A GPT that can assist with all aspects of trav­el plan­ning and busi­ness expense man­age­ment. It could help users book flights, hotels, and trans­porta­tion while adher­ing to com­pa­ny poli­cies and bud­gets. Addi­tion­al­ly, it could stream­line expense report­ing and reim­burse­ment process­es, ensur­ing com­pli­ance and accu­ra­cy.

4. GPT for Mar­ket­ing and Adver­tis­ing Cam­paign Man­age­ment: Lever­age the pow­er of cus­tom GPTs to ana­lyze con­sumer data, mar­ket trends, and cam­paign per­for­mance, gen­er­at­ing tar­get­ed mar­ket­ing strate­gies, per­son­al­ized mes­sag­ing, and opti­miz­ing ad place­ment for max­i­mum engage­ment and return on invest­ment.

You can sign up for the course at no cost here. Or, alter­na­tive­ly, you can elect to pay $49 and receive a cer­tifi­cate at the end.

As a side note, Jules White (the pro­fes­sor) also designed anoth­er course pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on OC. It focus­es on prompt engi­neer­ing for ChatPG­PT.

Relat­ed Con­tent

A New Course Teach­es You How to Tap the Pow­ers of Chat­G­PT and Put It to Work for You

Google & Cours­era Launch New Career Cer­tifi­cates That Pre­pare Stu­dents for Jobs in 2–6 Months: Busi­ness Intel­li­gence & Advanced Data Ana­lyt­ics

Com­put­er Sci­en­tist Andrew Ng Presents a New Series of Machine Learn­ing Courses–an Updat­ed Ver­sion of the Pop­u­lar Course Tak­en by 5 Mil­lion Stu­dents

The Incubator Babies of Coney Island: How an Early 1900s Boardwalk Attraction Saved Thousands of Premature Babies Lives

in Biology, History, Life, Science | January 10th, 2024

Step right up, folks!

Shoot the Chutes!

Thrill to the Fire and Flames show!

Ride an ele­phant!

See the Beard­ed Lady!

Ear­ly in the 20th cen­tu­ry, crowds flocked to New York City’s Coney Island, where won­ders await­ed at every turn.

In 1902, the Brook­lyn Dai­ly Eagle pub­lished a few of the high­lights in store for vis­i­tors at Coney Island’s soon-to-open “elec­tric Eden,” Luna Park:

…the most impor­tant will be an illus­tra­tion of Jules Verne’s ‘Twen­ty Thou­sand Leagues Under the Sea’, which will cov­er 55,000 square feet of ground, and a naval spec­ta­to­ri­um, which will have a water area of 60,000 square feet. Beside these we will have many nov­el­ties, includ­ing the Riv­er Styx, the Whirl of the Town, Shoot­ing the White Horse Rapids, the Grand Canyon, the ’49 Min­ing Camp, Drag­on Rouge, over­land and incline rail­ways, Japan­ese, Philip­pine, Irish, Eski­mo and Ger­man vil­lages, the infant incu­ba­tor, water show and car­ni­val, cir­cus and hip­po­drome, Yel­low­stone Park, zoo­log­i­cal gar­dens, per­form­ing wild beasts, sea lions and seals, caves of Capri, the Flori­da Ever­glades and Mont Pelee, an elec­tric rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the vol­canic destruc­tion of St. Pierre.

Hold up a sec…what’s this about an infant incu­ba­tor? What kind of name is that for a roller coast­er!?

As it turns out, amid all the exot­i­ca and bedaz­zle­ments, a build­ing fur­nished with steel and glass cribs, heat­ed from below by tem­per­a­ture-con­trolled hot water pipes, was one of the boardwalk’s lead­ing attrac­tions.

Anti­sep­tic-soaked wool act­ed as a rudi­men­ta­ry air fil­ter, while an exhaust fan kept things prop­er­ly ven­ti­lat­ed.

The real draw were the pre­ma­ture babies who inhab­it­ed these cribs every sum­mer, tend­ed to round the clock by a capa­ble staff of white clad nurs­es, wet nurs­es and Dr. Mar­tin Couney, the man who had the ideas to put these tiny new­borns on display…and in so doing, saved thou­sands of lives.

Couney, a breast feed­ing advo­cate who once appren­ticed under the founder of mod­ern peri­na­tal med­i­cine, obste­tri­cian Pierre-Con­stant Budin, had no license to prac­tice.

Nor did he have an md.

Ini­tial­ly paint­ed as a child-exploit­ing char­la­tan by many in the med­ical com­mu­ni­ty, he was as vague about his back­ground as he was pas­sion­ate about his advo­ca­cy for pre­emies whose sur­vival depend­ed on robust inter­ven­tion.

Hav­ing pre­sent­ed Bud­in’s Kinder­bru­tanstalt — child hatch­ery —  to spec­ta­tors at 1896’s Great Indus­tri­al Expo­si­tion of Berlin, and anoth­er infant incu­ba­tor show as part of Queen Vic­to­ria Dia­mond Jubilee Cel­e­bra­tion, he knew first­hand the pub­lic’s capac­i­ty to become invest­ed in the pre­emies’ wel­fare, despite a gen­er­al lack of inter­est on the part of the Amer­i­can med­ical estab­lish­ment.

Thus­ly was the idea for the board­walk Infan­to­ri­ums hatched.

Claire Pren­tice, author of Mir­a­cle at Coney Island: How a Sideshow Doc­tor Saved Thou­sands of Babies and Trans­formed Amer­i­can Med­i­cine, writes that “many doc­tors at the time held the view that pre­ma­ture babies were genet­i­cal­ly infe­ri­or ‘weak­lings’ whose fate was a mat­ter for God.”

As word of Couney’s Infan­to­ri­um spread, par­ents brought their pre­ma­ture new­borns to Coney Island, know­ing that their chances of find­ing a life­sav­ing incu­ba­tor there was far greater than it would be in the hos­pi­tal. And the care there would be both high­ly skilled and free, under­writ­ten by pay­ing spec­ta­tors who observed the oper­a­tion through a glass win­dow. Pren­tice notes that “Couney took in babies from all back­grounds, regard­less of race or social class:”

… a remark­ably pro­gres­sive pol­i­cy, espe­cial­ly when he start­ed out. He did not take a pen­ny from the par­ents of the babies. In 1903 it cost around $15 (equiv­a­lent to around $405 today) a day to care for each baby; Couney cov­ered all the costs through the entrance fees.

The New York­er’s A. J. Liebling observed Couney at the 1939 World’s Fair in Flush­ing, Queens, where he had set up in a pink-and-blue build­ing that beck­oned vis­i­tors with a sign declar­ing “All the World Loves a Baby:”

The back­bone of Dr. Couney’s busi­ness is sup­plied by the repeaters. A repeater becomes inter­est­ed in one baby and returns at inter­vals of a week or less to note its growth. Repeaters attend more assid­u­ous­ly than most of the patients’ par­ents, even though the par­ents get in on pass­es. After a pre­emie grad­u­ates, a chron­ic repeater picks out anoth­er one and starts watch­ing it. Dr. Couney’s prize repeater, a Coney Island woman named Cas­satt, vis­it­ed his exhib­it there once a week for thir­ty-six sea­sons. Repeaters, as one might expect, are often child­less mar­ried peo­ple, but just as often they are inter­est­ed in babies because they have so many chil­dren of their own. “It works both ways,” says Dr. Couney, with qui­et plea­sure.

It’s esti­mat­ed that Couney’s incu­ba­tors spared the lives of more than 6,500 pre­ma­ture babies in the Unit­ed States, Lon­don, Paris, Mex­i­co and Brazil.

Despite his lack of bonafides, a num­ber of pedi­a­tri­cians who toured Couney’s infan­to­ri­ums were impressed by what they saw, and began refer­ring patients whose fam­i­lies could not afford to pay for med­ical care. Many, as Liebling report­ed in 1939, wished his board­walk attrac­tion could stay open year round, “for the ben­e­fit of win­ter pre­emies:”

In the ear­ly years of the cen­tu­ry no Amer­i­can hos­pi­tal had good facil­i­ties for han­dling pre­ma­tures, and there is no doubt that every win­ter many babies whom Dr. Couney could have saved died. Even today it is dif­fi­cult to get ade­quate care for pre­ma­ture infants in a clin­ic. Few New York hos­pi­tals have set up spe­cial depart­ments for their ben­e­fit, because they do not get enough pre­ma­ture babies to war­rant it; there are not enough doc­tors and nurs­es expe­ri­enced in this field to go around. Care of pre­ma­tures as pri­vate patients is hideous­ly expen­sive. One item it involves is six dol­lars a day for moth­er’s milk, and oth­ers are rental of an incu­ba­tor and hos­pi­tal room, oxy­gen, sev­er­al vis­its a day by a physi­cian, and fif­teen dol­lars a day for three shifts of nurs­es. The New York hos­pi­tals are mak­ing plans now to cen­tral­ize their work with pre­ma­tures at Cor­nell Med­ical Cen­ter, and prob­a­bly will have things orga­nized with­in a year. When they do, Dr. Couney says, he will retire. He will feel he has “made enough pro­pa­gan­da for pre­emies.”

Lis­ten to a Sto­ryCorps inter­view with Lucille Horn, a 1920 grad­u­ate of Couney’s Coney Island incu­ba­tors below.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Lit­tle Albert Exper­i­ment: The Per­verse 1920 Study That Made a Baby Afraid of San­ta Claus & Bun­nies

Why Babies in Medieval Paint­ings Look Like Mid­dle-Aged Men: An Inves­tiga­tive Video

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. She greet­ed 2024 with thou­sands of oth­er New York­ers, tak­ing a polar bear plunge at Coney Island. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

51 Propaganda Techniques Explained in 11 Minutes: From Cognitive Dissonance to Appeal to Fear

in Media, Politics, Psychology | January 10th, 2024

The con­cept of pro­pa­gan­da has a great deal of pow­er to fas­ci­nate. So does the very word pro­pa­gan­da, which to most of us today sounds faint­ly exot­ic, as if it referred main­ly to phe­nom­e­na from dis­tant places and times. But in truth, can any one of us here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry go a day with­out being sub­ject­ed to the thing itself? Watch the video above, in which The Paint Explain­er lays out 51 dif­fer­ent pro­pa­gan­da tech­niques in 11 min­utes, and you’ll more than like­ly rec­og­nize many of the insid­i­ous­ly effec­tive rhetor­i­cal tricks labeled there­in from your recent every­day life.

You won’t be sur­prised to hear that these man­i­fest most clear­ly in the media, both offline and on. The list begins with “agen­da set­ting,” the “abil­i­ty of the news to influ­ence the impor­tance placed on cer­tain top­ics by pub­lic opin­ion, just by cov­er­ing them fre­quent­ly and promi­nent­ly.”

Scat­tered through­out the news, or through­out your social-media feed, adver­tise­ments bring out the “beau­ti­ful peo­ple,” which “sug­gests that if peo­ple buy a prod­uct or fol­low a cer­tain ide­ol­o­gy, they, too will be hap­py or suc­cess­ful” – or, in its basest forms, oper­ates through “clas­si­cal con­di­tion­ing,” in which “a nat­ur­al stim­u­lus is asso­ci­at­ed with a neu­tral stim­u­lus enough times to cre­ate the same response by using just the neu­tral one.”

In the even more shame­less realm of pol­i­tics, the com­mon “plain folk” strat­e­gy “attempts to con­vince the audi­ence that the pro­pa­gan­dis­t’s posi­tions reflect the com­mon sense of the peo­ple.” When “an indi­vid­ual uses mass media to cre­ate an ide­al­ized and hero­ic pub­lic image, often through unques­tion­ing flat­tery and praise,” a pow­er­ful “cult of per­son­al­i­ty” can arise. And in pro­pa­gan­da for every­thing from pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates to fast-food chains, you’ll hear and read no end of “glit­ter­ing gen­er­al­i­ties,” or “emo­tion­al­ly appeal­ing words that are applied to a prod­uct idea, but present no con­crete argu­ment or analy­sis.” You can find many of these strate­gies explained at Wikipedi­a’s list of pro­pa­gan­da tech­niques, or this list from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia of “pro­pa­gan­da tech­niques to rec­og­nize” — and not just when the “oth­er side” uses them.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed con­tent:

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

A Field Guide to Fake News and Oth­er Infor­ma­tion Dis­or­ders: A Free Man­u­al to Down­load, Share & Re-Use

An Archive of 800+ Imag­i­na­tive Pro­pa­gan­da Maps Designed to Shape Opin­ions & Beliefs: Enter Cornell’s Per­sua­sive Maps Col­lec­tion

“Glo­ry to the Con­querors of the Uni­verse!”: Pro­pa­gan­da Posters from the Sovi­et Space Race (1958–1963)

The Red Men­ace: A Strik­ing Gallery of Anti-Com­mu­nist Posters, Ads, Com­ic Books, Mag­a­zines & Films

Sell & Spin: The His­to­ry of Adver­tis­ing, Nar­rat­ed by Dick Cavett (1999)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

How to Be Happier in 5 Research-Proven Steps, According to Popular Yale Professor Laurie Santos

in Education, Psychology, Science, Yale | October 13th, 2023

Nature doesn’t care if you’re hap­py, but Yale psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Lau­rie San­tos does.

As Dr. San­tos points out dur­ing the above appear­ance on The Well, the goals of nat­ur­al selec­tion have been achieved as long as humans sur­vive and repro­duce, but most of us crave some­thing more to con­sid­er life worth liv­ing.

With depres­sion ris­ing to near epi­dem­ic lev­els on col­lege cam­pus­es and else­where, it’s worth tak­ing a look at our ingrained behav­ior, and maybe mak­ing some mod­i­fi­ca­tions to boost our hap­pi­ness lev­els.

Psy­chol­o­gy and the Good Life, Dr. San­tos’ mas­sive twice week­ly lec­ture class that active­ly tack­les ways of edg­ing clos­er to hap­pi­ness, is the most pop­u­lar course in Yale’s more than 300-year his­to­ry.

Do we detect some resis­tance?

Pos­i­tive psy­chol­o­gy — or the sci­ence of hap­pi­ness — is a pret­ty crowd­ed field late­ly, and the over­whelm­ing demand cre­at­ed by great throngs of peo­ple long­ing to feel bet­ter has attract­ed a fair num­ber of grifters will­ing to impart their proven method­olo­gies to any­one enrolling in their paid online cours­es.

By con­trast, Dr. San­tos not only has that Yale pedi­gree, she also cites oth­er respect­ed aca­d­e­mics such as the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago’s Nicholas Epley, a social cog­ni­tion spe­cial­ist who believes under­so­cial­i­ty, or a lack of face-to-face engage­ment, is mak­ing peo­ple mis­er­able, and Harvard’s Dan Gilbert and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Virginia’s Tim­o­thy Wil­son, who co-authored a paper on “mis­want­i­ng”, or the ten­den­cy to inac­cu­rate­ly pre­dict what will tru­ly result in sat­is­fac­tion and hap­pi­ness.

Yale under­grad Mick­ey Rose, who took Psy­chol­o­gy and the Good Life in the spring of 2022 to ful­fill a social sci­ence cred­it, told the Yale Dai­ly News that her favorite part of the class was that “every­thing was cit­ed, every­thing had a cred­i­ble source and study to back it up:”

I’m a STEM major and it’s kind of my over­all per­son­al­i­ty type to ques­tion claims that I find not very believ­able. Obvi­ous­ly the class made a lot of claims about mon­ey, grades, hap­pi­ness, that are coun­ter­in­tu­itive to most peo­ple and to Yale stu­dents espe­cial­ly.

With Psy­chol­o­gy and the Good Life now avail­able to the pub­lic for free on Cours­era, even skep­tics might con­sid­er giv­ing Dr. San­tos’ rec­om­mend­ed “re-wire­ment prac­tices” a peek, though be fore­warned, you should be pre­pared to put them into prac­tice before mak­ing pro­nounce­ments as to their effi­ca­cy.

It’s all pret­ty straight­for­ward stuff, start­ing with “use your phone to actu­al­ly be a phone”, mean­ing call a friend or fam­i­ly mem­ber to set up an in per­son get togeth­er rather than scrolling through end­less social media feeds.

Oth­er com­mon sense adjust­ments include look­ing beyond your­self to help by vol­un­teer­ing, resolv­ing to adopt a glass-is-half-full type atti­tude, cul­ti­vat­ing mind­ful­ness, mak­ing dai­ly entries in a grat­i­tude jour­nal, and becom­ing less seden­tary.

(You might also give Dr. San­tos’ Hap­pi­ness Lab pod­cast a go…)

Things to guard against are mea­sur­ing your own hap­pi­ness against the per­ceived hap­pi­ness of oth­ers and “impact bias” — over­es­ti­mat­ing the dura­tion and inten­si­ty of hap­pi­ness that is the expect­ed result of some hot­ly antic­i­pat­ed event, acqui­si­tion or change in social stand­ing.

Below Dr. San­tos gives a tour of the Good Life Cen­ter, an on-cam­pus space that stressed out, social­ly anx­ious stu­dents can vis­it to get help putting some of those re-wire­ment prac­tices into play.

Sign up for Coursera’s 10-week Sci­ence of Well-Being course here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Sci­ence of Well-Being: Take a Free Online Ver­sion of Yale University’s Most Pop­u­lar Course

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

What Are the Keys to Hap­pi­ness? Lessons from a 75-Year-Long Har­vard Study

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

A Lavishly Illustrated Catalog of All Hummingbird Species Known in the 19th Century Gets Restored & Put Online

in Art, Books, Nature | October 12th, 2023

If you don’t live in a part of the world with a lot of hum­ming­birds, it’s easy to regard them as not quite of this earth. With their wide array of shim­mer­ing col­ors and fre­net­ic yet eeri­ly sta­ble man­ner of flight, they can seem like qua­si-fan­tas­ti­cal crea­tures even to those who encounter them in real­i­ty. They cer­tain­ly cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of Eng­lish ornithol­o­gist John Gould, who between the years of 1849 and 1887 cre­at­ed A Mono­graph of the Trochilidæ, or Fam­i­ly of Hum­ming-Birds, a cat­a­log of all known species of hum­ming­bird at the time. As you might expect, this is just the kind of old book you can peruse at the Inter­net Archive, but now there’s also an online restora­tion that returns Gould’s illus­tra­tions to their orig­i­nal glo­ry.

A Mono­graph of the Trochilidæ “is con­sid­ered one of the finest exam­ples of ornitho­log­i­cal illus­tra­tion ever pro­duced, as well as a sci­en­tif­ic mas­ter­piece,” writes the site’s cre­ator, Nicholas Rougeux (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his dig­i­tal restora­tions of British & Exot­ic Min­er­al­o­gy and Euclid­’s Ele­ments).

“Gould’s pas­sion for hum­ming­birds led him to trav­el to var­i­ous parts of the world, such as North Amer­i­ca, Brazil, Colom­bia, Ecuador, and Peru, to observe and col­lect spec­i­mens. He also received many spec­i­mens from oth­er nat­u­ral­ists and col­lec­tors.” Tak­en togeth­er, the work’s five vol­umes — one of them pub­lished as a sup­ple­ment years after his death — cat­a­log 537 species, doc­u­ment­ing their appear­ance with 418 hand-col­ored lith­o­graph­ic plates.

All these images were “ana­lyzed and restored to their orig­i­nal vibrant col­ors in a process that took near­ly 150 hours to com­plete. As much of the orig­i­nal plate was pre­served — includ­ing the del­i­cate col­ors of the scenic back­grounds in each vignette.” You can view and down­load them at the site’s illus­tra­tions page, where they come accom­pa­nied by Gould’s own text and clas­si­fied accord­ing to the same scheme he orig­i­nal­ly used. You may not know your Phaëthor­nis from your Spheno­proc­tus, to say noth­ing of your Cyanomyia from your Smarag­dochry­sis, but after see­ing these small won­ders of the nat­ur­al world as Gould did (all arranged into a chro­mat­ic spec­trum by Rougeux to make a strik­ing poster), you may well find your­self inspired to learn the dif­fer­ences — or at least to put a feed­er out­side your win­dow.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Hum­ming­bird Whis­per­er: Meet the UCLA Sci­en­tist Who Has Befriend­ed 200 Hum­ming­birds

Explore an Inter­ac­tive Ver­sion of The Wall of Birds, a 2,500 Square-Foot Mur­al That Doc­u­ments the Evo­lu­tion of Birds Over 375 Mil­lion Years

What Kind of Bird Is That?: A Free App From Cor­nell Will Give You the Answer

A Beau­ti­ful­ly Designed Edi­tion of Euclid’s Ele­ments from 1847 Gets Dig­i­tized: Explore the New Online, Inter­ac­tive Repro­duc­tion

Explore an Inter­ac­tive, Online Ver­sion of the Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed, 200-Year-Old British & Exot­ic Min­er­al­o­gy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

Death-Cap Mushrooms are Terrifying and Unstoppable: A Wild Animation

in Biology, Food & Drink, Nature, Science | August 18th, 2023

Mush­rooms are just­ly cel­e­brat­ed as vir­tu­ous mul­ti­taskers.

They’re food, teach­ers, movie stars, design inspi­ra­tion…

…and some, as any­one who’s spent time play­ing or watch­ing The Last of Us can read­i­ly attest, are killers.

Hope­ful­ly we’ve got some time before civ­i­liza­tion is con­quered by zom­bie cordy­ceps.

For now, the ones to watch out for are amani­ta phal­loide, aka death cap mush­rooms.

The pow­er­ful ama­tox­in they har­bor is behind 90 per­cent of mush­room-relat­ed fatal­i­ties world­wide. It caus­es severe liv­er dam­age, lead­ing to bleed­ing dis­or­ders, brain swelling, and mul­ti-organ fail­ure in those who sur­vive. 

A death cap took the life of a three-year-old in British Colum­bia who mis­took one for a tasty straw mush­room on a for­ag­ing expe­di­tion with his fam­i­ly near their apart­ment com­plex. 

In Mel­bourne, a pot pie that test­ed pos­i­tive for death caps result­ed in the deaths of three adults, and sent a fourth to the hos­pi­tal in crit­i­cal con­di­tion.

As the ani­ma­tors feast on mush­rooms’ lim­it­less visu­al appeal in the above episode of The Atlantic’s Life Up Close series, author Craig Childs deliv­ers some sober­ing news:

We did it to our­selves. Humans are the ones who’ve enabled death caps to spread so far beyond their native habi­tats in Scan­di­navia and parts of north­ern Europe, where the poi­so­nous fun­gi feed on the root tips of decid­u­ous trees, spring­ing up around their hosts in tidy fairy rings.

When oth­er coun­tries import these trees to beau­ti­fy their city streets, the death caps, whose frag­ile spores are inca­pable of trav­el­ing long dis­tances when left to their own devices, tag along.

They have sprout­ed in the Pacif­ic North­west near import­ed sweet chest­nuts, beech­es, horn­beams, lin­dens, red oaks, and Eng­lish oaks, and oth­er host species.

As bio­chemist Paul Kroeger, cofounder of the Van­cou­ver Myco­log­i­cal Soci­ety, explained in a 2019 arti­cle Childs penned for the Atlantic, the inva­sive death caps aren’t pop­ping up in deeply wood­ed areas. 

Rather, they are set­tling into urban neigh­bor­hoods, fre­quent­ly in the grass strips bor­der­ing side­walks. When Childs accom­pa­nied Krueger on his rounds, the first of two dozen death caps dis­cov­ered that day were found in front of a house fes­tooned with Hal­loween dec­o­ra­tions. 

Now that they have estab­lished them­selves, the death caps can­not be roust­ed. No longer mere tourists, they’ve been seen mak­ing the jump to native oaks in Cal­i­for­nia and West­ern Cana­da.

Childs also notes that death caps are no longer a North Amer­i­can prob­lem:

They have spread world­wide where for­eign trees have been intro­duced into land­scap­ing and forestry prac­tices: North and South Amer­i­ca, New Zealand, Aus­tralia, South and East Africa, and Mada­gas­car. In Can­ber­ra, Aus­tralia, in 2012, an expe­ri­enced Chi­nese-born chef and his assis­tant pre­pared a New Year’s Eve din­ner that includ­ed, unbe­knownst to them, local­ly gath­ered death caps. Both died with­in two days, wait­ing for liv­er trans­plants; a guest at the din­ner also fell ill, but sur­vived after a suc­cess­ful trans­plant.

For­agers should pro­ceed with extreme cau­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Beau­ti­ful­ly Illus­trat­ed Atlas of Mush­rooms: Edi­ble, Sus­pect and Poi­so­nous (1827)

A Stun­ning, Hand-Illus­trat­ed Book of Mush­rooms Drawn by an Over­looked 19th Cen­tu­ry Female Sci­en­tist

Alger­ian Cave Paint­ings Sug­gest Humans Did Mag­ic Mush­rooms 9,000 Years Ago

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Fascism!: The US Army Publishes a Pamphlet in 1945 Explaining How to Spot Fascism at Home and Abroad

in History, Politics | June 1st, 2023

“Fas­cism is a word that’s been used a great deal these last few years,” says the arti­cle pic­tured above (scanned in full here at the Inter­net Archive). “We come across it in our news­pa­pers, we hear it in our news­reels, it comes up in our bull ses­sions.” Oth­er than the part about news­reels (today’s equiv­a­lent being our social-media feeds, or per­haps the videos put before our eyes by the algo­rithm), these sen­tences could well have been pub­lished today. Some see the fas­cist takeover of mod­ern-day democ­ra­cies as prac­ti­cal­ly immi­nent, while oth­ers argue that the con­cept itself has no mean­ing in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. But 78 years ago, when this issue of Army Talk came off the press, fas­cism was very much a going — and fear­some — con­cern.

“Begin­ning in 1943, the War Depart­ment pub­lished a series of pam­phlets for U.S. Army per­son­nel in the Euro­pean the­ater of World War II,” writes his­to­ri­an Heather Cox Richard­son. The mis­sion of Army Talks, in the pub­li­ca­tion’s own words, was to help its read­ers “become bet­ter-informed men and women and there­fore bet­ter sol­diers.”

Each issue includ­ed a top­ic for dis­cus­sion, and on March 25, 1945, that top­ic was fas­cism — or, as the head­line puts it, “FASCISM!” Under that ide­ol­o­gy, defined as “gov­ern­ment by the few and for the few,” a small group of polit­i­cal actors achieves “seizure and con­trol of the eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, social, and cul­tur­al life of the state.” Such rul­ing class­es “per­mit no civ­il lib­er­ties, no equal­i­ty before the law. They make their own rules and change them when they choose. If you don’t like it, it’s ‘T.S.’ ”

Fas­cists come to pow­er, the text explains, in times of hard­ship, dur­ing which they promise “every­thing to every­one”: land to the farm­ers, jobs to the work­ers, cus­tomers and prof­its to the small busi­ness­men, elim­i­na­tion of small busi­ness­men to the indus­tri­al­ists, and so on. When this regime “under which every­thing not pro­hib­it­ed is com­pul­so­ry” inevitably fails to deliv­er a per­fect soci­ety, things turn vio­lent, both in the coun­try’s inter­nal strug­gles and in its con­flicts with oth­er pow­ers. To many Amer­i­cans at the time of World War II, this might seem like a whol­ly for­eign dis­or­der, liable to afflict only such dis­tant lands as Italy, Japan, and Ger­many. But a notion­al Amer­i­can fas­cism would look and feel famil­iar, work­ing “under the guise of ‘super-patri­o­tism’ and ‘super-Amer­i­can­ism.’ Fas­cist lead­ers are nei­ther stu­pid nor naïve. They know that they must hand out a line that ‘sells.’ ”

That some­one’s always try­ing to sell you some­thing in pol­i­tics — and even more so in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics — is as true in 2023 as it was in 1945. Though who­ev­er assumed back then that “it could­n’t hap­pen here” pre­sum­ably fig­ured that the Unit­ed States was too wealthy a soci­ety for fas­cist temp­ta­tions to gain a foothold. But even the most favor­able eco­nom­ic for­tunes can reverse, and “lots of things can hap­pen inside of peo­ple when they are unem­ployed or hun­gry. They become fright­ened, angry, des­per­ate, con­fused. Many, in their mis­ery, seek to find some­body to blame. They look for a scape­goat as a way out. Fas­cism is always ready to pro­vide one.” And not only fas­cism: polit­i­cal oppor­tunists of every stripe know full well the pow­er to be drawn from “the inse­cure and unem­ployed” look­ing for some­one on who “to pin the blame for their mis­for­tune” — and how easy it is to do so when no one else has a more appeal­ing vision of the future to offer.

You can see a scan of the orig­i­nal doc­u­ment here, and read the text here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Umber­to Eco Makes a List of the 14 Com­mon Fea­tures of Fas­cism

The Sto­ry of Fas­cism: Rick Steves’ Doc­u­men­tary Helps Us Learn from the Hard Lessons of the 20th Cen­tu­ry

Wal­ter Ben­jamin Explains How Fas­cism Uses Mass Media to Turn Pol­i­tics Into Spec­ta­cle (1935)

Sin­clair Lewis’ Chill­ing Play, It Can’t Hap­pen Here: A Read-Through by the Berke­ley Reper­to­ry The­atre

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets in a Gun­fight with His Neigh­bor & Dis­pens­es Polit­i­cal Wis­dom: “In a Democ­ra­cy, You Have to Be a Play­er”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

Watch Young David Attenborough Encounter Animals in Their Natural Habitats: Video from the 1950s and 1960s

in Biology, Nature, Television | May 15th, 2023

Expe­ri­ence long ago con­ferred the man­tle of author­i­ty on broad­cast­er, biol­o­gist, nat­ur­al his­to­ri­an and author David Atten­bor­ough, age 97.

In his late 20s, he land­ed at the BBC, pro­duc­ing live stu­dio broad­casts that ran the gamut from children’s shows, bal­let per­for­mances and arche­o­log­i­cal quizzes to pro­grams focused on cook­ing, reli­gion and pol­i­tics.

When an edu­ca­tion­al show star­ring ani­mals from the Lon­don Zoo became a hit with view­ers, the pow­ers that be built on its pop­u­lar­i­ty with a fresh take — a show that sent the intre­pid young Atten­bor­ough around the world, seek­ing ani­mals in their native habi­tats. He was accom­pa­nied by cam­era­man Charles Lagus and two zool­o­gists, whom he quick­ly sup­plant­ed as host.

It made for thrilling view­ing in an era when wildlife tourism was avail­able to a very few.

The New York Times notes that many of the crea­tures who cropped up onscreen in these ear­ly Zoo Quest episodes were shipped back to Lon­don Zoo:

It is not the kind of mis­sion we approve of nowa­days, but with­out it the West might nev­er have got­ten inter­est­ed in wildlife to begin with. We start­ed by shoot­ing exot­ic species for their skins and bones and trap­ping them for our zoos, and only recent­ly moved to wor­ry­ing about their sur­vival in the wild and the health of the plan­et in gen­er­al. This his­to­ry is sym­bol­ized by the trans­for­ma­tion of Atten­bor­ough him­self from a talk­ing and writ­ing croc­o­dile hunter to the great­est liv­ing advo­cate of the glob­al ecosys­tem.

In Bor­neo in 1956, in search for Komo­do drag­ons, he paused for an encounter with an orang­utan, above, and also a big whiff of duri­an, the spiky, odif­er­ous fruit whose aro­ma famous­ly got it banned from Singapore’s ele­gant Raf­fles Hotel, with taxis, planes, sub­ways, and fer­ries fol­low­ing suit.

Soon there­after, the six-episode hunt for the Komo­do drag­on finds Atten­bor­ough in Java, mask­ing his nerves as he uses a cut­lass, a will­ing­ness to climb trees, and a cloth sack to get the bet­ter of a ful­ly grown python.

(Once the ser­pent was set­tled at the Lon­don Zoo, he made the trek to the BBC for an in-stu­dio appear­ance.)

You’ll note that this episode is in col­or.

Although Zoo Quest filmed in col­or, it aired ten years before col­or broad­casts were avail­able to UK view­ers, so most of the folks watch­ing at home assumed it had been shot in black and white.

In 1960, Atten­bor­ough used the lat­est — now severe­ly out­mod­ed-look­ing– tech­nol­o­gy to cap­ture the first audio record­ing of the indri, Madagascar’s largest lemur for Attenborough’s Won­der of Song.

This audio vic­to­ry led him to won­der if he could be the first to film an indri.

Frus­trat­ed by the thick canopy over­head, Atten­bor­ough resort­ed to play­back, suc­cess­ful­ly tempt­ing the ani­mals to not only come clos­er, but do so while vocal­iz­ing.

Mat­ing calls?

No. Atten­bor­ough deduced that they were the indris’ “bat­tle songs”, issued as a warn­ing to the per­ceived threat of unfa­mil­iar indris.

In 2011, Atten­bor­ough returned to Mada­gas­car, lis­ten­ing respect­ful­ly to Joseph, a local hunter turned con­ser­va­tion­ist, who explains how the local pop­u­lace no longer think of indri as a food source, but rather a sym­bol of their com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing the nat­ur­al world around them. Joseph’s rela­tion­ship with the indri affords Sir David a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty, as the indri feed from his hand:

Fifty years ago, I spent days and days and days search­ing through the for­est, with these fir­ing their noise over­head but now this group is so accus­tomed to see­ing peo­ple around that I have been right close up to them, some­thing I nev­er believed could have be pos­si­ble. 

Read more about David Atten­bor­ough’s Zoo Quest expe­ri­ences in his mem­oir, Adven­tures of a Young Nat­u­ral­ist, and watch a playlist of doc­u­men­taries for the BBC here.

via TheKidsShould­SeeThis

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Net­flix Makes Doc­u­men­taries Free to Stream: Design, Pol­i­tics, Sports, Sir David Atten­bor­ough & More

David Atten­bor­ough Reads “What a Won­der­ful World” in a Mov­ing Video

Björk and Sir David Atten­bor­ough Team Up in a New Doc­u­men­tary About Music and Tech­nol­o­gy

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Cookery Course: Free Video Lessons

in Food & Drink, Television | March 6th, 2023

Our def­i­n­i­tion of bud­get cook­ery may dif­fer from celebri­ty chef Gor­don Ram­sey’s.

True, the world famous restau­ran­teur and cook­book author speaks of cheap cuts with mes­sian­ic zeal, but the episode of Gor­don Ramsey’s Ulti­mate Cook­ery Course ded­i­cat­ed to Food on a Bud­get, above, also finds him pay­ing a call to Lina Stores’ SoHo loca­tion to dis­cuss ham, sausages, and sala­mi with the late “deli mae­stro” Anto­nio Sac­co­mani.

It’s not exact­ly Cost­co.

Nor can we buy bone-in Lamb with fried bread as a cost con­scious dish, though the accom­pa­ny­ing milk soaked fried bread — home­made crou­tons real­ly — will cost slight­ly less to make this year, as the USDA is pre­dict­ing that dairy prices will fall after 2022’s his­toric lev­els.

As long as we’re at peace with the idea that the man is not ever going to be found stretch­ing rice and beans to feed a fam­i­ly of four for a week when there’s left­over risot­to to be res­ur­rect­ed as aranci­ni, the series is a gold­mine for chefs of all bud­gets and expe­ri­ence lev­els.

It’s not so much the final dish­es, as the short cuts and best prac­tices on the jour­ney.

His “chef in Paris” might indeed kill him for ugly­ing up a dish with deli­cious­ly hum­ble pan scrap­ings, but his iron­clad max­ims to waste noth­ing and use avail­able ingre­di­ents will ben­e­fit home chefs with an eye on the bot­tom line, as well as pros in high end restau­rants where prof­it mar­gins turn on a knife’s edge.

In an age when any fool can Google up dozens of fool­proof meth­ods for cook­ing rice, some­times it’s reas­sur­ing to get this sort of intel straight from the lips of a glob­al­ly rec­og­nized expert. (We’re big fans of Julia Child’s scram­bled eggs…)

How does your method mea­sure up against Ramsey’s freely shared secret for cook­ing per­fect rice?

Weigh out 400 grams of rice on a kitchen scale

Rinse with cold water

Sea­son with salt and pep­per, and — going up the food chain a bit — 3 pierced car­damom pods and a star anise

Add 600 grams of water (that’s a 1:1.5 ratio for those play­ing along with­out kitchen scales or the met­ric sys­tem) 

Bring to a boil, and steam, cov­ered for 8–10  min­utes 

No peek­ing!

Remove pot from heat and fluff

Such uni­ver­sal tips are the most per­sua­sive rea­son to stick with the series.

Ramsey’s rapid fire deliv­ery and lack of linked recipes may leave you feel­ing a bit lost in regard to exact mea­sure­ments, tem­per­a­tures, and step by step instruc­tions, but keep your ears peeled and you’ll quick­ly pick up on how to extend fresh herbs’ shelf life and keep cut pota­toes, apples and avo­ca­dos look­ing their best.

Oth­er episodes reveal how to grease cake tins, pre­vent milk from boil­ing over, remove baked-on residue, peel kiwis and man­gos, deter­mine a pineapple’s ripeness, seed pome­gran­ates, skin toma­toes, and keep plas­tic con­tain­ers stain-free…

Seri­ous­ly, who needs Tik­Tok when we have Gor­don Ram­sey 2012?

Ramsey’s advice to bypass expen­sive wine when cook­ing those com­par­a­tive­ly cheap cuts of meat low and slow gets a chef’s kiss from us. (In full dis­clo­sure, we would hap­pi­ly swig his brais­ing vin­tage.)

As to the slow-cooked duck, truf­fles and caramelized figs with ricot­ta, we must remind our­selves that the series is over 10 years old. These days even eggs feel like a splurge..

Per­haps some stress free cook­ing tips will low­er our stress lev­el over this week’s gro­cery expen­di­tures?

Here too, there seems to be some dis­crep­an­cy in Ram­sey’s def­i­n­i­tion and the gen­er­al pub­lic’s. His idea of stress free is achieved through lots of prep­work

If your idea of de-stress­ing involves skin­ning & debon­ing a salmon or mak­ing home­made fish stock, you’re in luck.

Obvi­ous­ly the end prod­uct will be deli­cious but the phrase “chili chick­en with gin­ger & corian­der” acti­vates both our sali­vary glands and our impulse to order out…

Watch a full playlist of Gor­don Ram­say’s Ulti­mate Cook­ery Course here.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s First Food-and-Trav­el Series A Cook’s Tour Free Online (2002–03)

Watch 26 Free Episodes of Jacques Pépin’s TV Show, More Fast Food My Way

How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Wis­dom of Michael Pol­lan

– Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo and Cre­ative, Not Famous Activ­i­ty Book. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.