Brooklyn–Based Makers of Artisanal Water Let You Sip From America’s Great Cultural Waters

in Uncategorized | July 31st, 2015

The Tim­my Broth­ers, based in Brook­lyn, cre­ate hand­craft­ed water. It’s not just any water. It’s water that lets you trav­el to dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al times and places. Want to drink water that evokes mem­o­ries of Mark Twain’s Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er? Or the great jazz that came out of New Orleans? Well, the Tim­my Broth­ers have just the prod­uct for you.

If you’re in Brook­lyn, also con­sid­er mak­ing a side trip to Bea­con, NY where David Rees lov­ing­ly cre­ates arti­sanal hand­craft­ed pen­cils. You’ll nev­er look at pen­cils the same way again. :-)

via Digg

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1,000 Musicians Perform Foo Fighters’ “Learn to Fly” in Unison in Italy

in Music | July 30th, 2015

Despite break­ing his leg dur­ing a gig ear­li­er this sum­mer, Dave Grohl and the Foo Fight­ers have blitzed their way through Europe and Amer­i­ca, play­ing some­times 5–6 shows per week, in cities often large, but some­times small.

On Sep­tem­ber 16th, the band will make a pit­stop in my home­town, Moun­tain View, CA (pop­u­la­tion 75,000). So it does­n’t seem implau­si­ble for the res­i­dents of Cese­na, Italy (pop­u­la­tion 100,000) to ask the Foo Fight­ers to play a show in their small city, which sits right near the Adri­at­ic Sea.

And boy did they make the request in style. I get chills when I watch this, every time.

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Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins & Grace Jones To Star in Gutterdämmerung, “The Loudest Silent Movie on Earth!”

in Film, Music | July 28th, 2015

Once upon a time, Joe Strum­mer wrote and direct­ed Hell W10, a silent black & white film fea­tur­ing the music of The Clash. And the Pix­ies’ Black Fran­cis cre­at­ed a dri­ving, jan­gling sound­track for one of Weimar Germany’s finest silent films, The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920).

If the meld­ing of vin­tage and mod­ern aes­thet­ics appeals, then get ready for Gutterdämmerung. Direct­ed by the Bel­gian-Swedish visu­al artist Björn Tage­mose, Gutterdämmerung promis­es to be “the loud­est silent movie on earth,” with Iggy Pop, Grace Jones and Hen­ry Rollins play­ing star­ring roles. BEAT describes the premise of the film as fol­lows:

The film is set in a alter­nate real­i­ty where God has saved the world from sin by tak­ing from mankind the Devil’s Evil Gui­tar. As a result the Earth has been cleansed into a puri­tan world with no room for sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll (boo). [Queue] Iggy Pop as the punk angel Vicious, who secret­ly sends the Evil Gui­tar back to Earth, unleash­ing all man­ner of sin upon mankind.

Things get even cra­zier when Hen­ry Rollins, as the puri­tan priest, coerces a girl to destroy the gui­tar, a quest that see’s her face the most evil rock ‘n’ roll bas­tards on the plan­et. Grace Jones plays the only per­son capa­ble of con­trol­ling all the testos­terone of all the no good rock ‘n’ rollers – obvi­ous­ly.

The direc­tor and cast set the scene a lit­tle more in the “launch video” above. To be hon­est, the video feels a bit like a spoof, mak­ing me won­der whether this is all a big put on. But they’ve cer­tain­ly set up a respectable web site where, each week, they’ll announce oth­er per­son­al­i­ties star­ring in the film. So, stay tuned…

via Pitch­fork

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Ger­man Expres­sion­ist Film, The Golem, with a Sound­track by The Pix­ies’ Black Fran­cis

The Clash Star in 1980’s Gang­ster Par­o­dy Hell W10, a Film Direct­ed by Joe Strum­mer

101 Free Silent Films: The Great Clas­sics

Harper Lee Gets a Request for a Photo; Offers Important Life Advice Instead (2006)

in Letters, Life, Literature | July 27th, 2015

Harp­er Lee wrote To Kill a Mock­ing­bird in 1960. More than a half decade lat­er, the nov­el remains one of the most wide­ly-read books in Amer­i­can class­rooms. And stu­dents still write the 89-year-old author, request­ing pho­tographs and auto­graphs.

Occa­sion­al­ly, they get a lit­tle more than they bar­gained for. Take, for exam­ple, a stu­dent named “Jere­my,” who wrote Lee in 2006 and request­ed a pho­to. In return, he got some­thing more valu­able and endur­ing: some pithy life advice. The let­ter Harp­er sent to Jere­my reads as fol­lows:

06/07/06

Dear Jere­my

I don’t have a pic­ture of myself, so please accept these few lines:

As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to oth­ers, and don’t think you are the most impor­tant being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look any­one in the eye and say, “I’m prob­a­bly no bet­ter than you, but I’m cer­tain­ly your equal.”

(Signed, ‘Harp­er Lee’)

Lee’s sec­ond nov­el, Go Set a Watch­man, was just released last week — 55 years after her debut. You can read the first chap­ter (and also hear Reese With­er­spoon read it aloud) here.

via Let­ters of Note

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King Writes A Let­ter to His 16-Year-Old Self: “Stay Away from Recre­ation­al Drugs”

Harp­er Lee on the Joy of Read­ing Real Books: “Some Things Should Hap­pen On Soft Pages, Not Cold Met­al”

74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives

Neil deGrasse Tyson Presents a Brief History of Everything in an 8.5 Minute Animation

in Astronomy, Creativity, Physics | July 24th, 2015

Patre­on, a crowd fund­ing site where fans can auto­mat­i­cal­ly tithe a set amount to their fave artist every time that per­son uploads con­tent, is a great way for pas­sion­ate, under-rec­og­nized indi­vid­u­als to gain vis­i­bil­i­ty and a bit of dough.

So what’s astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson doing there? He’s already famous, and one would think his gig as direc­tor of New York City’s Hay­den Plan­e­tar­i­um, cou­pled with the pro­ceeds from his books and dvds, would prove suf­fi­cient to any finan­cial needs.

(Is it some sort of Aman­da Palmer thing?)

Nope. Turns out Dr. Tyson is there on some­one else’s behalf, nar­rat­ing an episode of Har­ry Reich’s Minute Physics. The video series often employs white­board ani­ma­tions to explain such sci­en­tif­ic phe­nom­e­na as dark mat­ter, wave/particle dual­i­ty, and bicy­cles.

The lat­est Tyson-nar­rat­ed episode, above, shoots the moon by cram­ming the entire His­to­ry of the Uni­verse (and some com­pli­men­ta­ry Stravin­sky) into an 8.5‑minute frame­work (a neg­li­gi­ble amount when you con­sid­er phe­nom­e­na like light years, but still many times the series’ stan­dard minute).

Thus far, 1075 fans of Minute Physics have anted up, result­ing in a take of $2,992.66 per video. (Click here to see how that amount com­pares to the var­i­ous wages and salaries of Dr. Tyson’s cowork­ers at the Amer­i­can Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry…it’s clear Reich devotes a lot of labor to every episode.)

If you’re feel­ing flush (or ner­vous about the upcom­ing school year), you can join these 1075 fans, earn­ing admis­sion to a sup­port­ers-only activ­i­ty feed where you can ask ques­tions, watch out­takes, pre­view upcom­ing attrac­tions, and pos­si­bly even get your name in the cred­its.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert & Neil deGrasse Break Down Our Awe­some 3 Bil­lion-Mile Jour­ney to Plu­to

Neil deGrasse Tyson Talks Aster­oid Physics & “Non New­ton­ian Solids” with Inspir­ing 9‑Year-Old Stu­dent

Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk Radio Show Pod­cast Tack­les the His­to­ry of Video Games

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

School Teachers Turn Old Lockers Into Literary Works of Art

in Art, Books | July 22nd, 2015

At Biloxi Junior High School, the teach­ers are spend­ing their sum­mer pret­ty pro­duc­tive­ly. They’re tak­ing an entire hall­way lined with dull green (cur­rent­ly unused) lock­ers and they’re repaint­ing each and every­one of them — 189 in total. By the time stu­dents return in the fall, each lock­er will look like the spine of a famous book, and the hall­way will be known as the “Avenue of Lit­er­a­ture.” One teacher told WLOX, “We want stu­dents to come back to school in August and … be absolute­ly amazed with what we’ve done and be curi­ous. We want that to be the spark for read­ing in our class­rooms… We’re hop­ing the stu­dents come and they become com­plete­ly immersed in a col­lec­tion” that con­tains every­thing from Water­ship Down and John­ny Tremain to books in the Twi­light series, reports Elec­tric Lit.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps.

Stephen Colbert & Neil deGrasse Break Down Our Awesome 3 Billion-Mile Journey to Pluto

in Astronomy | July 20th, 2015

The Late Show with Stephen Col­bert won’t hit the air­waves until Sep­tem­ber 8th, but Col­bert is already get­ting his Late Show Youtube chan­nel up and run­ning. That’s where you will find this video break­ing down NASA’s amaz­ing fly­by of Plu­to last week, a jour­ney that involved the New Hori­zons space­craft trav­el­ing a stag­ger­ing 3 bil­lion miles. (See pho­tos here.) Join­ing Col­bert is Neil deGrasse Tyson, who needs no intro­duc­tion around here. Enjoy the ban­ter, and don’t for­get that you can down­load Tyson’s short course, The Inex­plic­a­ble Uni­verse. It’s free from The Great Cours­es for a lim­it­ed time.

If the con­cept of Col­bert inter­view­ing Tyson intrigues you, don’t miss this lengthy inter­view orig­i­nal­ly post­ed on OC in 2011.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. And if you want to make sure that our posts def­i­nite­ly appear in your Face­book news­feed, just fol­low these sim­ple steps. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen Col­bert Reads Ray Brad­bury Clas­sic Sci-Fi Sto­ry “The Veldt”

Neil deGrasse Tyson Lists 8 (Free) Books Every Intel­li­gent Per­son Should Read

Neil deGrasse Tyson Deliv­ers the Great­est Sci­ence Ser­mon Ever

Free Online Astron­o­my Cours­es

Read the First Chapter of Harper Lee’s New Book, Then Hear It Read by Reese Witherspoon

in Audio Books, Books | July 10th, 2015

After much press and debate, Harp­er Lee’s new nov­el — a sequel of sorts to her beloved book, To Kill a Mock­ing­bird — will be released on July 14th. You can pre-order Go Set a Watch­man: A Nov­el (already #1 on Ama­zon’s best­seller list). But, even bet­ter, you can head over to the The Wall Street Jour­nal or The Guardian and read the first chap­ter online. The Guardian also fea­tures an audio ver­sion read by the Oscar-win­ning actress Reese With­er­spoon. Stream it right below. (And, fyi, you can always down­load a free audio copy of To Kill a Mock­ing­bird through the free tri­al pro­grams run by Audiobooks.com and Audible.com.)

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter, Google Plus and LinkedIn and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Note: There’s now a way to make sure that our posts show up in your Face­book news­feed. Find info on that here.

Watch Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas and 2001: A Space Odyssey Get Run Through Google’s Trippy Deep Dream Software

in Film, Technology | July 7th, 2015

Last week, The Guardian report­ed:

Google has made its “incep­tion­ism” algo­rithm avail­able to all, allow­ing coders around the world to repli­cate the process the com­pa­ny used to cre­ate mes­meris­ing dream­scapes with its image pro­cess­ing neur­al-net­work.

The sys­tem, which works by repeat­ed­ly feed­ing an image through an AI which enhances fea­tures it recog­nis­es, was first demon­strat­ed by Google two weeks ago. It can alter an exist­ing image to the extent that it looks like an acid trip, or begin with ran­dom noise to gen­er­ate an entire­ly orig­i­nal dream­scape.

Since then a coder, Roelof Pieters, began mess­ing around with the pub­licly-avail­able soft­ware, and decid­ed to take the “Great San Fran­cis­co Acid Wave” scene from Ter­ry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) and run it through “Deep Dream,” as the soft­ware is known. The results (below), now going viral across the inter­net, are pret­ty trip­py and intense. Just when you thought Hunter S. Thomp­son could­n’t get more “out there,” this comes along.

We noticed that Pieters ran a sim­i­lar exper­i­ment with pieces of Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and we could­n’t help but put them on dis­play. Watch above.

via Giz­mo­do

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online: Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Read 18 Lost Sto­ries From Hunter S. Thompson’s For­got­ten Stint As a For­eign Cor­re­spon­dent

Read 10 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

2,200 Radical Political Posters Digitized: A New Archive

in Archives, History, Politics | July 2nd, 2015

I recent­ly heard some­one say his col­lege-bound nephew asked him, “What’s a union?” Whether you love unions, loathe them, or remain indif­fer­ent, the fact that an osten­si­bly edu­cat­ed young per­son might have such a sig­nif­i­cant gap in their knowl­edge should cause con­cern. A his­toric labor con­flict, after all, pro­vid­ed the occa­sion for Ronald Rea­gan to prove his bona fides to the new con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment that swept him into pow­er. His crush­ing of the Pro­fes­sion­al Air Traf­fic Con­trollers Orga­ni­za­tion (PATCO) in 1981 set the tone for the ensu­ing 30 years or so of eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy, with the labor move­ment fight­ing an uphill bat­tle all the way. Pri­or to that defin­ing event, unions held sway over pol­i­tics local and nation­al, and had con­sol­i­dat­ed pow­er blocks in the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape through decades of strug­gle against oppres­sive and dehu­man­iz­ing work­ing con­di­tions.

In prac­ti­cal terms, unions have stood in the way of cap­i­tal’s unceas­ing search for cheap labor and new con­sumer mar­kets; in social and cul­tur­al terms, the pol­i­tics of labor have rep­re­sent­ed a for­mi­da­ble ide­o­log­i­cal chal­lenge to con­ser­v­a­tives as well, by way of a vibrant assem­blage of anar­chists, civ­il lib­er­tar­i­ans, anti-colo­nial­ists, com­mu­nists, envi­ron­men­tal­ists, paci­fists, fem­i­nists, social­ists, etc. A host of rad­i­cal isms flour­ished among orga­nized work­ers espe­cial­ly in the decades between the 1870s and the 1970s, find­ing their voice in newslet­ters, mag­a­zines, pam­phlets, leaflets, and posters—fragile medi­ums that do not often weath­er well the rav­ages of time. Thus the advent of dig­i­tal archives has been a boon for stu­dents and his­to­ri­ans of work­ers’ move­ments and oth­er pop­ulist polit­i­cal groundswells. One such archive, the Joseph A. Labadie Col­lec­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan Library, has recent­ly announced the dig­i­ti­za­tion of over 2,200 posters from their col­lec­tion, a data­base that spans the globe and the spec­trum of left­ist polit­i­cal speech and iconog­ra­phy.

We have clev­er­ly-designed visu­al puns like the Chica­go Indus­tri­al Work­ers of the World poster just above, titled “What is what in the world of labor?” Pro­mot­ing itself as “One Big Union of All Labor,” the IWW made some of the most ambi­tious pro­pa­gan­da, like the 1912 poster (mid­dle) in which an “Indus­tri­al Co-Oper­a­tive Com­mon­wealth” replaces the tyran­ny of the cap­i­tal­ist, who is told by his “trust man­ag­er” peer, “Our rule is end­ed, dis­mount and go to work.” In this post-rev­o­lu­tion­ary fan­ta­sy, the IWW promis­es that “A few hours of use­ful work insure all a lux­u­ri­ous liv­ing,” though it only hints at the details of this utopi­an arrange­ment. Up top, we have an ornate May Day poster from 1895 by Wal­ter Crane, hop­ing for a “Mer­rie Eng­land” with “No Child Toil­ers,” “Pro­duc­tion for Use Not For Prof­it,” and “The Land For the Peo­ple,” among oth­er, more nation­al­ist, sen­ti­ments like “Eng­land Should Feed Her Own Peo­ple.”

“While all of the posters were scanned at high res­o­lu­tion,” writes Hyper­al­ler­gic, “they appear online as thumb­nails with nav­i­ga­tion to zoom.” You can down­load the images, but only the small­er, thumb­nail size in most cas­es. These hun­dreds of posters rep­re­sent “just a por­tion of the mate­r­i­al in the Labadie Collection”—named for a “Detroit-area labor orga­niz­er, anar­chist, and author” who “had the idea for the social protest archive at the uni­ver­si­ty in 1911.” You can view oth­er polit­i­cal arti­facts in the UMich library’s dig­i­tal col­lec­tions here, includ­ing anar­chist pam­phlets, polit­i­cal but­tons, and a dig­i­tal pho­to col­lec­tion. The col­lec­tion as a whole gives us a poten­tial­ly inspir­ing, or infu­ri­at­ing, mosa­ic of polit­i­cal thought at its bold­est and most graph­i­cal­ly assertive from a time before online peti­tions and hash­tag cam­paigns took over as the pri­ma­ry cir­cu­la­tors of pop­u­lar rad­i­cal thought.

via Hyper­al­ler­gic (where you can find some oth­er big, visu­al­ly strik­ing posters)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

Free Online Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Cours­es

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