Scientists at Purdue University Create the “Whitest White” Paint Ever Seen: It Reflects 98% of the Sun’s Light

in Science | April 27th, 2021

Xiulin Ruan, a Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor of mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, holds up his lab’s sam­ple of the whitest paint on record. Pur­due University/Jared Pike

Sure­ly, you’ve heard of Vantablack, the high-tech coat­ing invent­ed by UK com­pa­ny Sur­rey NanoSys­tems that absorbs over 99 per­cent of light and makes three-dimen­sion­al objects look like black holes? Aside from its con­tro­ver­sial­ly exclu­sive use by artist Anish Kapoor, the black­est of black paints has so far proven to be most effec­tive in space. “You can imag­ine up in space peo­ple think of it as being real­ly black and dark,” Sur­rey NanoSys­tems chief tech­ni­cal offi­cer Ben Jensen explains. “But actu­al­ly it’s incred­i­bly bright up there because the Sun’s like a huge arc lamp and you’ve got light reflect­ing off the Earth and moon.”

All that sun­light can make cer­tain parts of the world unbear­ably hot for humans, a rapid­ly wors­en­ing phe­nom­e­non thanks to cli­mate change, which has itself been wors­ened by cli­mate con­trol sys­tems used to cool homes, offices, stores, etc. Since the 1970s sci­en­tists have attempt­ed to break the vicious cycle with white paints that can cool build­ings by reflect­ing sun­light from their sur­faces. “Paint­ing build­ings white to reflect sun­light and make them cool­er is com­mon in Greece and oth­er coun­tries,” notes The Wash­ing­ton Post. “Cities like New and Chica­go have pro­grams to paint roofs white to com­bat urban heat.”

The prob­lem is “com­mer­cial white paint gets warmer rather than cool­er,” writes Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty. “Paints on the mar­ket that are designed to reject heat reflect only 80%-90% of sun­light and can’t make sur­faces cool­er than their sur­round­ings,” since they absorb ultra­vi­o­let light. That may well change soon, with the inven­tion by a team of Pur­due engi­neers of an as-yet unnamed, patent-pend­ing ultra-white paint that has “pushed the lim­its on how white paint can be.” Those lim­its now fall just slight­ly short of Vantablack on the oth­er side of the spec­trum (or grayscale).

An infrared cam­era shows how a sam­ple of the whitest white paint (the dark pur­ple square in the mid­dle) actu­al­ly cools the board below ambi­ent tem­per­a­ture, some­thing that not even com­mer­cial “heat reject­ing” paints do. Pur­due University/Joseph Peo­ples

Pur­due describes the prop­er­ties of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary com­pound.

Two fea­tures give the paint its extreme white­ness. One is the paint’s very high con­cen­tra­tion of a chem­i­cal com­pound called bar­i­um sul­fate, which is also used to make pho­to paper and cos­met­ics white.

The sec­ond fea­ture is that the bar­i­um sul­fate par­ti­cles are all dif­fer­ent sizes in the paint. How much each par­ti­cle scat­ters light depends on its size, so a wider range of par­ti­cle sizes allows the paint to scat­ter more of the light spec­trum from the sun.

This for­mu­la “reflects up to 98.1% of sun­light — com­pared with the 95.5%,” of light reflect­ed by a pre­vi­ous com­pound that used cal­ci­um car­bon­ate instead of bar­i­um sul­fite. The less than 3% dif­fer­ence is more sig­nif­i­cant than it might seem.

Xiulin Ruan, pro­fes­sor of mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, describes the poten­tial of the new reflec­tive coat­ing: “If you were to use this paint to cov­er a roof area of about 1,000 square feet, we esti­mate that you could get a cool­ing pow­er of 10 kilo­watts. That’s more pow­er­ful than the cen­tral air con­di­tion­ers used by most hous­es… If you look at the ener­gy [sav­ings] and cool­ing pow­er this paint can pro­vide, it’s real­ly excit­ing.”

Will there be a pro­pri­etary war between major play­ers in the art world to con­trol it? “Ide­al­ly,” Kait Sanchez writes at The Verge, “any­thing that could be used to improve people’s lives while reduc­ing the ener­gy they use should be free and wide­ly avail­able.” Ide­al­ly.

Learn more about the whitest white paint here and, if you have access, at the researchers’ pub­li­ca­tion in the jour­nal ACS Applied Mate­ri­als & Inter­faces.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

YIn­Mn Blue, the First Shade of Blue Dis­cov­ered in 200 Years, Is Now Avail­able for Artists

Dis­cov­er Harvard’s Col­lec­tion of 2,500 Pig­ments: Pre­serv­ing the World’s Rare, Won­der­ful Col­ors

A 3,000-Year-Old Painter’s Palette from Ancient Egypt, with Traces of the Orig­i­nal Col­ors Still In It

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

The Meaning of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights Explained

in Art, History | April 26th, 2021

Over the half-mil­len­ni­um since Hierony­mus Bosch paint­ed it, The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights has pro­duced an ever-widen­ing array of inter­pre­ta­tions. Is it “a paint­ing about sex­u­al free­dom”? A “medieval acid trip”? An “erot­ic fan­ta­sy”? A “hereti­cal attack on the church”? The work of “a mem­ber of an obscure free-love cult”? James Payne, the Lon­don cura­tor behind the Youtube chan­nel Great Art Explained, rejects all these views. In the open­ing of the in-depth video analy­sis above, he describes Bosch’s well-known and much-scru­ti­nized late-15th or ear­ly-16th cen­tu­ry trip­tych as, “pure and sim­ply, hard­core Chris­tian­i­ty.”

Dat­ing from “a time when Euro­pean artists, writ­ers, and the­olo­gians were shap­ing a new, ter­ri­fy­ing vision of Hell and the pun­ish­ment await­ing sin­ners,” Payne argues, The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights is “an intense­ly moral­is­tic work that should be approached as what it is: reli­gious pro­pa­gan­da.”

Depict­ing the Bib­li­cal cre­ation of the world on its out­er pan­els, the work opens up to reveal elab­o­rate­ly detailed visions of Adam and Eve in the Gar­den of Eden, then human­i­ty indulging in all known earth­ly delights, then the con­se­quent tor­ments of Hell. It is that last pan­el, with its abun­dance of per­verse activ­i­ties and grotesque human, ani­mal, and human-ani­mal fig­ures (recent­ly made into fig­urines and even piñatas) that keeps the strongest hold on our imag­i­na­tion today.

Payne’s expla­na­tion goes into detail on all aspects of the work, high­light­ing and con­tex­tu­al­iz­ing details that even avowed appre­ci­a­tors may not have con­sid­ered before. While iden­ti­fy­ing both the pos­si­ble inspi­ra­tions and the pos­si­ble sym­bol­ic inten­tions of the fig­ures and sym­bols with which Bosch filled the trip­tych, Payne empha­sizes that, as far as the artist was con­cerned, “his images were a real­is­tic por­tray­al of sin and its con­se­quences, so in that sense, it was­n’t sur­re­al­ism, it was real­ism.” This bears repeat­ing, giv­en how dif­fi­cult we mod­erns find it “to look at this paint­ing and not see it as sur­re­al­ism or a prod­uct of the sub­con­scious, not see it as a sex­u­al utopia, a cri­tique of reli­gion, or even a psy­che­del­ic romp.” Just as The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights tells us a great deal about the world Bosch lived in, so our views of it tell us a great deal about the world we live in.

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:

Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Hierony­mus Bosch’s Bewil­der­ing Mas­ter­piece The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

Hierony­mus Bosch’s Medieval Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Comes to Life in a Gigan­tic, Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion

Take a Mul­ti­me­dia Tour of the But­tock Song in Hierony­mus Bosch’s Paint­ing The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights

The Musi­cal Instru­ments in Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Get Brought to Life, and It Turns Out That They Sound “Painful” and “Hor­ri­ble”

New App Lets You Explore Hierony­mus Bosch’s “The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights” in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Fig­ures from Hierony­mus Bosch’s The Gar­den of Earth­ly Delights Come to Life as Fine Art Piñatas

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.

Quarantined Dancer Creates Shot-for-Shot Remake of the Final Dirty Dancing Scene with a Lamp as a Dance Partner

in Comedy, Dance, Film | April 26th, 2021

1987’s low bud­get sleep­er hit, Dirty Danc­ing, pro­pelled its leads, Jen­nifer Grey and the late Patrick Swayze, to instant star­dom.

Swayze lat­er mused to the Amer­i­can Film Insti­tute about the film’s remark­able stay­ing pow­er:

It’s got so much heart, to me. It’s not about the sen­su­al­i­ty; it’s real­ly about peo­ple try­ing to find them­selves, this young dance instruc­tor feel­ing like he’s noth­ing but a prod­uct, and this young girl try­ing to find out who she is in a soci­ety of restric­tions when she has such an amaz­ing take on things. On a cer­tain lev­el, it’s real­ly about the fab­u­lous, funky lit­tle Jew­ish girl get­ting the guy because [of] what she’s got in her heart.

Near­ly 35 years after the orig­i­nal release, anoth­er gift­ed male dancer, Brook­lyn-based pho­tog­ra­ph­er Quinn Whar­ton, is tap­ping into that heart… and Grey has been replaced by a lamp.

Whar­ton once told Bal­let Hub that his favorite part of danc­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly with the San Fran­cis­co Bal­let and Hub­bard Street Dance Chica­go was the access it gave him to the great names in dance — William Forsythe, Mats Ek, Christo­pher Wheel­don, Wayne McGre­gor, and oth­ers whose prox­im­i­ty made for “a remark­able edu­ca­tion.”

The first few months of the pan­dem­ic forced him to dance solo, recre­at­ing mem­o­rable film moments in response to a friend’s chal­lenge:

I was hes­i­tant at first but thought I would give it a try to see what I might be able to learn from it. Turns out it was way more fun than I thought and the result was fun­nier than I could have imag­ined.

We agree that his Quinn-tessen­tial Dance Scenes series is very fun­ny, as well as beau­ti­ful­ly exe­cut­ed in the twin are­nas of cam­era work and dance. His self-imposed para­me­ters — no out­side help, no green screen, no film­ing out­side of the apart­ment, and no spe­cial pur­chas­es of props or cos­tumes, con­tribute to the humor.

His hard­work­ing, dis­em­bod­ied, com­par­a­tive­ly well-cov­ered haunch­es elic­it laughs when seen next to the much skimpi­er orig­i­nal cos­tume of Flash­dance’s “Mani­ac” scene, above. 18-year-old star Jen­nifer Beals had three dance dou­bles — Marine Jahan, gym­nast Sharon Shapiro, and leg­endary B‑Boy Richard Colón, aka Crazy Legs of Rock Steady crew. None of them appeared in the orig­i­nal cred­its because, as Jahan told Enter­tain­ment Tonight, the pro­duc­ers “did­n’t want to break the mag­ic.”

In oth­er words, a lot of steamy 80s-era fan­tasies cen­tered on Beals are now known to be a case — pos­si­bly three cas­es — of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty.

Whar­ton’s quar­an­tine project afford­ed him a chance to come at John Tra­vol­ta from two angles, thanks to the dis­co clas­sic Sat­ur­day Night Fever and Pulp Fic­tion’s twist sequence, a sur­pris­ing­ly pop­u­lar fan request. Though Travolta’s dance train­ing was lim­it­ed to child­hood tap lessons with Gene Kelly’s broth­er, Fred, Whar­ton prais­es his “seri­ous range.”

Whar­ton cites the inspi­ra­tion for one of his less­er known recre­ations, direc­tor Baz Lurhman’s first fea­ture, Strict­ly Ball­room, as a rea­son he began danc­ing:

My dad loves this movie and as a kid I can’t count the num­ber of times that I watched it. It’s so much, loud, brash, exu­ber­ant …It also allowed me to bring back my favorite part­ner.

Quinn-tessen­tial Dance Scenes is on hia­tus so Whar­ton can con­cen­trate on his work as a dance pho­tog­ra­ph­er. Watch a playlist of all eight episodes here.

See more of his dance pho­tog­ra­phy on his Insta­gram page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

One of the Great­est Dances Sequences Ever Cap­tured on Film Gets Restored in Col­or by AI: Watch the Clas­sic Scene from Stormy Weath­er

The Pow­er of Pulp Fiction’s Dance Scene, Explained by Chore­o­g­ra­phers and Even John Tra­vol­ta Him­self

The Icon­ic Dance Scene from Hel­lza­pop­pin’ Pre­sent­ed in Liv­ing Col­or with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (1941)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, who can occa­sion­al­ly be spot­ted wan­der­ing around New York City in a bear suit, in char­ac­ter as L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Ray Dalio & Adam Grant Launch Free Online Personality Assessment to Help You Understand Yourself (and Others Understand You)

in Business, Psychology | April 26th, 2021

Back in 2017, Ray Dalio pub­lished Prin­ci­ples: Life and Work, a best­selling book where the cre­ator of the world’s largest hedge fund shared “the uncon­ven­tion­al prin­ci­ples that he’s devel­oped, refined, and used over the past forty years to cre­ate unique results in both life and busi­ness.” You can find a dis­tilled ver­sion of those uncon­ven­tion­al prin­ci­ples in a 30-minute ani­ma­tion video pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured on our site.

To accom­pa­ny his book, Dalio has now released, along with Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia orga­ni­za­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist Adam Grant, a free per­son­al­i­ty assess­ment tool called Prin­ci­plesY­ou. The assess­ment takes about 30 to 40 min­utes to com­plete, and we would strong­ly encour­age you to sign up for an account before you get start­ed, so that you can save the results of the assess­ment after­wards. Oth­er­wise you will lose the results.

Accord­ing to psy­chol­o­gist Bri­an Lit­tle, “Prin­ci­plesY­ou was devel­oped over a two-year inten­sive and cre­ative R&D process with two goals in mind. First, it mea­sures traits that Ray Dalio and his team have observed and stud­ied for many years as crit­i­cal for per­son­al and orga­ni­za­tion­al suc­cess. Sec­ond, it is based on the lat­est research in per­son­al­i­ty sci­ence. The assess­ment pro­vides a person’s score on a com­pre­hen­sive set of traits, their under­ly­ing facets and inter­ac­tive pat­terns, and it has high reli­a­bil­i­ty, inter­nal struc­ture, re-test reli­a­bil­i­ty and valid­i­ty of these traits and facets. A dis­tinc­tive strength is its abil­i­ty to pre­dict an extra­or­di­nary array of actu­al behav­iors observed by the Bridge­wa­ter staff over many years.”

Adam Grant adds: “To achieve suc­cess, you need to know your­self and the peo­ple around you. Although your car comes with an owner’s man­u­al, your mind doesn’t—and nei­ther do your col­leagues. We designed Prin­ci­plesY­ou to help you gain the self-aware­ness and oth­er-aware­ness that are crit­i­cal to mak­ing good deci­sions, get­ting things done, and turn­ing a group of cowork­ers into a great team.”

You can watch Grant and Dalio dis­cuss Prin­ci­plesY­ou above. You can lis­ten to Grant fea­ture Dalio’s insights on his Work Life pod­cast here. And final­ly you can start the free per­son­al­i­ty assess­ment here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

The Prin­ci­ples for Suc­cess by Entre­pre­neur & Investor Ray Dalio: A 30-Minute Ani­mat­ed Primer

Eco­nom­ics 101: Hedge Fund Investor Ray Dalio Explains How the Econ­o­my Works in a 30-Minute Ani­mat­ed Video

How to Raise Cre­ative Chil­dren Who Can Change the World: 3 Lessons from Whar­ton Pro­fes­sor Adam Grant

Freddie Mercury & Rami Malek’s Live Aid Performance: A Side-By-Side Comparison

in Music | April 23rd, 2021

All Hol­ly­wood musi­cals need a big final set piece, one final rous­ing num­ber to bring all the nar­ra­tive threads back togeth­er, and pro­vide redemp­tion to our fall­en hero. Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the 2018 biopic about Fred­die Mer­cury and the band Queen, uses Live Aid as its final num­ber. We’ve writ­ten else­where about how this was not real­ly the final hur­rah for the band, nor was this some kind of tri­umphant return after years in the Wilder­ness. (“Radio Gaga” and “I Want to Break Free” had been in the charts just over a year pre­vi­ous.) Nei­ther was it their biggest con­cert of the 1980s. That would be the Wem­b­ley con­cert of 1986, where they would fill the exact same sta­di­um used for Live Aid, but this time it was just for them.

But Hol­ly­wood cares not for that, so instead lets look at how faith­ful­ly Rami Malek and his fel­low actors (along with what might have been Bryan Singer as direc­tor or pos­si­bly Dex­ter Fletch­er, the man who replaced him after events we’d rather not go into, look it up) faith­ful­ly recre­ate those 20 glo­ri­ous min­utes. After all, it was one of the most watched events in the sum­mer of 1985. There is video evi­dence!

I’ll leave it up to you out there to debate over Malek’s per­for­mance, which is going to suf­fer no mat­ter what he does in a side-by-side with the real thing. Instead, notice how the film­mak­ers use cer­tain parts of the per­for­mance to com­plete the nar­ra­tives of the film. We get a cut­away to Bri­an May (Gwilym Lee) with a “by George he’s actu­al­ly got it” look on his face—relief that Mer­cury final­ly got it togeth­er for the per­for­mance. There’s no equiv­a­lent shot in real life. The kiss that Mer­cury blows to some­body off cam­era is received by his moth­er and sis­ter back at his child­hood home.

After Mercury’s call-and-response with the teem­ing audi­ence, the band dives into “Ham­mer to Fall” and the film cuts to a mon­tage to show Live Aid’s phones ring­ing off the hook, anx­ious view­ers want­i­ng to donate even more because of Queen’s per­for­mance. This is again Hol­ly­wood hokum, as dona­tions only real­ly stepped up after Bob Geld­of got in front of the cam­eras a lit­tle after Queen brought the house down and harangued view­ers.

Still, you have to hand it to the movie for hav­ing the stones to indulge in the full 20 minute set, despite sil­ly moves like cut­ting away to the movie’s “you’ll nev­er go any­where” record exec­u­tive for the line “no time for losers” dur­ing the final song. (D’oh!)

YouTube user Juan Dela Cruz, who assem­bled this side-by-side, has made two oth­er com­par­i­son videos using exist­ing footage and the film: Part One is here, and here’s Part Two.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Queen Rehearse & Metic­u­lous­ly Pre­pare for Their Leg­endary 1985 Live Aid Per­for­mance

Watch 16 Hours of His­toric Live Aid Per­for­mances: Queen, Led Zep­pelin, Neil Young & Much More

Bob Geld­of Talks About the Great­est Day of His Life, Step­ping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Mor­ris

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

3D Print 18,000 Famous Sculptures, Statues & Artworks: Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

in Art, Google, History, Photography, Technology | April 23rd, 2021

To recent news sto­ries about 3D print­ed guns, pros­thet­ics, and homes, you can add Scan the World’s push to cre­ate “an ecosys­tem of 3D print­able objects of cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance.”

Items that took the ancients untold hours to sculpt from mar­ble and stone can be repro­duced in con­sid­er­ably less time, pro­vid­ed you’ve got the tech­nol­o­gy and the know-how to use it.

Since we last wrote about this free, open source ini­tia­tive in 2017, Scan the World has added Google Arts and Cul­ture to the many cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions with whom it part­ners, expand­ing both its audi­ence and the audi­ence of the muse­ums who allow items in their col­lec­tions to be scanned pri­or to 3D print­ing.

Com­mu­ni­ty con­trib­u­tors have uploaded scan data for over 18,000 sculp­tures and arti­facts onto the plat­form.

Chi­na and India are active­ly court­ing par­tic­i­pants to make some of their trea­sures avail­able.

Although Scan the World is search­able by col­lec­tion, artist, and loca­tion, with so many options, the com­mu­ni­ty blog is a great place to start.

Here you will find help­ful tips for begin­ners hop­ing to pro­duce real­is­tic look­ing skulls and sculp­tures — con­trol your tem­per­a­ture, shake your resin, and learn from your mis­takes.

Got an unreach­able object you’re itch­ing to print? Take a look at the drone pho­togram­me­try tuto­r­i­al to prep your­self for tak­ing a good scan — rotate slow­ly, remem­ber the impor­tance of light, and get up to speed on your drone by test-dri­ving it in an open loca­tion.

Keep an eye peeled for com­pe­ti­tions, like this one, which was won by a pho­to edi­tor and retouch­er with no for­mal 3‑D train­ing.

Art lovers with lit­tle incli­na­tion to crack out the 3D print­er will find inter­est­ing essays on such top­ics as the Gates of Hell, scan­ning in the pan­dem­ic, and the his­to­ry of hair­styles in sculp­ture

You can also embark on a vir­tu­al tour of some of the glob­al loca­tions whose splen­dors are being scanned, pro­grammed, and ren­dered in resin.

A vir­tu­al trip to Paris takes in some of the Louvre’s great­est 3‑dimensional hits: the Venus de Milo, Winged Vic­to­ry, and Psy­che Revived by Cupid’s Kiss.

(Any one of those ough­ta class up the ol’ bed­sit…)

The vir­tu­al trip to Aus­tria includes Kierling’s mon­u­ment to Franz Kaf­ka, the Beethoven memo­r­i­al in Vienna’s Heili­gen­städter Park, and Klaus Weber’s trib­ute to Hugo Rheinhold’s Dar­win­ian sculp­ture, Mon­key with Skull. (1,868 down­loads and count­ing!)

A Google map awaits those who would tour the orig­i­nal fla­vor inspi­ra­tions in per­son.

Begin your explo­rations of Scan the World here, and do let us know in the com­ments if you have plans for print­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

3D Scans of 7,500 Famous Sculp­tures, Stat­ues & Art­works: Down­load & 3D Print Rodin’s Thinker, Michelangelo’s David & More

The Earth Archive Will 3D-Scan the Entire World & Cre­ate an “Open-Source” Record of Our Plan­et

The British Muse­um Cre­ates 3D Mod­els of the Roset­ta Stone & 200+ Oth­er His­toric Arti­facts: Down­load or View in Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er, Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine, and some­times, a French Cana­di­an bear known as L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

30,000 People Line Up for the First McDonald’s in Moscow, While Grocery Store Shelves Run Empty (1990)

in Food & Drink, History | April 23rd, 2021

Every­one has wait­ed in a long line — for burg­ers, Broad­way tick­ets, Black Fri­day sales… But few us have the noto­ri­ous queu­ing resilience of the Sovi­ets. “When the first McDonald’s arrived in Moscow in 1990, the city went mad,” Boris Egorov writes at Rus­sia Beyond. “Thou­sands of Mus­covites flocked to the new burg­er joint, form­ing lines sev­er­al kilo­me­ters long in the cen­ter of Moscow on Pushkin­skaya Square.” On its first day, the restau­rant oblit­er­at­ed the pre­vi­ous record for most McDonald’s cus­tomers (9,100 in Budapest), serv­ing over 30,000 peo­ple, a tes­ta­ment to the for­ti­tude of the employ­ees. The CBC news seg­ment on the open­ing above quotes a line from Pushkin to set the scene: “a feast in a time of plague.”

Stereo­types of fast food work­ers as lack­ing in skill and ambi­tion did not find pur­chase here. “The first work­ers,” Egorov notes, “were the crème de la crème of Sovi­et youth: stu­dents from pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties who could speak for­eign lan­guages with bril­liant cus­tomer ser­vice skills.” Their cheer­ful­ness so unnerved some cus­tomers that they were asked to tone it down for Rus­sians “accus­tomed to rude, boor­ish ser­vice.”

Cus­tomers seemed less awed by the iconog­ra­phy than the “sim­ple sight of polite shop work­ers,” wrote an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist. The restau­rant, once a tourist attrac­tion, notes trav­el site Bridge to Moscow, had “more than 700 seats inside and 200 out­side,” and was once the largest McDonald’s in the world.

The Moscow McDonald’s rep­re­sent­ed more for Rus­sians than an Amer­i­can nov­el­ty. Orig­i­nal cus­tomer Kse­nia Oski­na had nev­er heard of McDonald’s before she vis­it­ed. She lat­er saved her Big Mac box. “I used that Big Mac box for a long time and put my sand­wich in there instead of a lunch­box,” she tells The Wash­ing­ton Post. “I’d clean it, dry it on the heater and then use it again.” It was­n’t about brand recog­ni­tion for many who duti­ful­ly lined up to pay half a day’s wages for a cou­ple “thin slabs of meat and sliced veg­eta­bles between buns of bread.” (Sor­ry… “two all-beef pat­ties, spe­cial sauce, let­tuce, cheese, and a sesame seed bun…..”)

What did Sovi­et Rus­sians, who had not been raised to sing fast food adver­tis­ing jin­gles, see in the new restau­rant? Capitalism’s promis­es of abun­dance. One Sovi­et jour­nal­ist wrote of McDonald’s as “the expres­sion of America’s ratio­nal­ism and prag­ma­tism toward food.” Just months after­ward, the first Piz­za Hut arrived. As the Sovi­et Union dis­solved less than two years lat­er, the coun­try saw the cre­ation of more desire for high-calo­rie, ultra-processed foods with West­ern-style TV ads: most famous­ly a Piz­za Hut spot from 1997 fea­tur­ing the U.S.S.R.’s last pre­mier, Mikhail Gor­bachev. (“Because of him, we have Piz­za Hut!”)

The pol­i­tics may have mat­tered lit­tle to the aver­age Mus­covite McDonald’s cus­tomer in 1990. “Vis­it­ing the restau­rant was less a polit­i­cal state­ment than an oppor­tu­ni­ty to enjoy a small plea­sure in a coun­try still reel­ing from dis­as­trous eco­nom­ic prob­lems and inter­nal polit­i­cal tur­moil,” notes History.com. Large, seem­ing­ly abstract prob­lems had tan­gi­ble effects: the emp­ty gro­cery stores for which the fail­ing empire became famous.

The Moscow McDonald’s was a col­or­ful oasis for its first cus­tomers, who had no sen­ti­men­tal asso­ci­a­tions with burg­ers and fries. Now, those tastes are nos­tal­gic. “I love it,” said Oski­na thir­ty years lat­er. “For some rea­son in Amer­i­ca, it’s not as tasty as it is here.” Insert your own dat­ed Yakov Smirnoff ref­er­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Metal­li­ca Play “Enter Sand­man” Before a Crowd of 1.6 Mil­lion in Moscow, Dur­ing the Final Days of the Sovi­et Union (1991)

Watch Andy Warhol Eat an Entire Burg­er King Whopper–While Wish­ing the Burg­er Came from McDonald’s (1981)

The Beau­ti­ful, Inno­v­a­tive & Some­times Dark World of Ani­mat­ed Sovi­et Pro­pa­gan­da (1925–1984)

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

Watch a Newly-Restored Peter Gabriel-Era Genesis Concert Film From 1973 in Stunning 4K Quality

in Music | April 22nd, 2021

There are two late-20th cen­tu­ry rock bands named Gen­e­sis and both of them fea­tured Phil Collins, Mike Ruther­ford, and Tony Banks. The sec­ond Gen­e­sis we know of as one of the biggest-sell­ing bands of all time and authors of such mas­sive hits as “Land of Con­fu­sion,” “In Too Deep,” and “Throw­ing It All Away.” The first we may not know at all, except indi­rect­ly by way of its front­man, Peter Gabriel, bet­ter known as… solo artist Peter Gabriel.

One rea­son Gen­e­sis, the sec­ond, is more famous than its pre­de­ces­sor must be the unabashed pop ambi­tions of the remain­ing three mem­bers after Gabriel depart­ed in 1975 and pio­neer­ing lead gui­tarist Steve Hack­ett left in ‘77. Anoth­er, relat­ed, rea­son must sure­ly be that Gen­e­sis, the first, made music that was not what most peo­ple would call acces­si­ble, even in the ‘70s, though it is unde­ni­ably beau­ti­ful and strange. Lovers of the song “Invis­i­ble Touch” might find them­selves unpre­pared for “The Lamb Lies Down on Broad­way.”

Gabriel, too, went pop in the 80s, though he only got a lit­tle less weird. Yet what large­ly drove the suc­cess of his solo career also drove the suc­cess of Gen­e­sis II: MTV made it impos­si­ble to escape “Big Time” and “No Reply at All.” Can we imag­ine an alter­nate ‘80s, per­haps, in which Gabriel’s odd-pop lean­ings and the earnest bal­ladry of Collins & com­pa­ny found a mid­dle ground? That is to say, if Peter Gabriel-era Gen­e­sis had made music videos? What too-lit­tle visu­al record we have of the first Gen­e­sis looks more and more promis­ing in the YouTube age.…

A few years back, we brought you news of a restored Peter Gabriel-era Gen­e­sis con­cert film from a 1973 show at England’s Shep­per­ton Stu­dios. Now, we have, from that same year, the con­cert above in Paris at the Bat­a­clan in “a 4K restora­tion that is a stun­ning improve­ment over any­thing seen before,” writes Rolling Stone. “Sim­ply put, it’s the most pris­tine video of a Peter Gabriel-era show that has ever sur­faced.”

This is a good thing for fans of Gen­e­sis One. The band played their final album with Gabriel, The Lamb Lies Down on Broad­way, in its entire­ty on all 104 tour stops two years lat­er. It was “the most elab­o­rate pro­duc­tion they’d ever attempt­ed,” and “in a deci­sion they lived to regret, they nev­er both­ered to film it.” The Paris con­cert, if sad­ly incom­plete, may be the clos­est we’ll get visu­al­ly to the glo­ri­ous high weird­ness of the orig­i­nal Gen­e­sis.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Gen­e­sis (from the Peter Gabriel Era) Per­form in a Glo­ri­ous, 1973 Restored Con­cert Film

Peter Gabriel Re-Records “Biko,” His Anti-Apartheid Protest Song, with Musi­cians Around the World

Revis­it Kate Bush’s Pecu­liar Christ­mas Spe­cial, Fea­tur­ing Peter Gabriel (1979)

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

Watch “Hi-Fi-Fo-Fum,” a Short Satirical Film About the Invention of the Audiophile (1959)

in Music, Television | April 22nd, 2021

Some­time in the mid-1990s, my father gave me his hi-end, hi-fi stereo sys­tem from the mid-1970s: a vac­u­um tube-pow­ered ampli­fi­er, pair of stereo speak­ers in wal­nut cab­i­nets, and a turntable. Heavy, bulky, and built with hard­ly an ounce of plas­tic between them, these com­po­nents lacked all of the func­tion­al­i­ty we look for in con­sumer audio today: no 4K HDMI, no Blue­tooth, no sur­round sound of any kind. As such fea­tures became de rigeur, my stereo migrat­ed to the clos­et, piece by piece, then out the door, to make room for new, shiny black plas­tic box­es.

Now, a search for that same equip­ment turns up auc­tions for hun­dreds more than its worth ten, twen­ty, fifty years ago. Why does obso­lete audio tech­nol­o­gy fetch such high prices, when there are appli­ance grave­yards filled with CRT TVs and oth­er relics of the ana­logue past? Blame the audio­phile, a very spe­cif­ic kind of nerd who spends their days obsess­ing over fre­quen­cy response curves, speak­er place­ment, and the opti­mal track­ing force of a sty­lus, immersed in mag­a­zine arti­cles, online forums, and prod­uct reviews.

While the rest of the world con­tents itself with stream­ing MP3s and tin­ny com­put­er speak­ers, audio­philes buy and restore old ana­logue stereo equip­ment, pair it with the lat­est in high-tech engi­neer­ing, wire it togeth­er with con­nec­tors that cost more than your TV, and build spe­cial­ized lis­ten­ing envi­ron­ments more like bou­tique show­rooms than any run-of-the-mill man- or woman-cave. In short, they tend to ori­ent their lives, as much pos­si­ble, around the pur­suit of per­fect sound repro­duc­tion.

Audio­phil­ia has trick­led down, some­what, in the renewed con­sumer love for vinyl records, but to com­pare the big box-store sys­tems on which most peo­ple lis­ten to LPs to the gear of the well-heeled cognoscen­ti is to spit upon the very name of Audio. The snob­bery and end­less dis­sat­is­fac­tion of the audio­phile are noth­ing new, as the 1959 BBC short film above shows, address­ing the ques­tion asked of audio­philes every­where, at all times: “Do they like music? Or are they in love with equip­ment?”

The charm­ing, satir­i­cal BBC por­trait brings this char­ac­ter to life for non-audio­philes, who tend to find the audiophile’s obses­sions unbear­ably tedious. But if appre­ci­a­tion for such things makes audio­philes just slight­ly bet­ter than ordi­nary lis­ten­ers, so be it. What­ev­er the dis­agree­ments, and they are numer­ous, among them, all audio­philes “agree on the fun­da­men­tal facts in life,” writes Lucio Caded­du in a “Survivor’s Guide on Audio­phile Behav­ior.”

Enjoy­ment of rhyth­mic, orga­nized sound may be uni­ver­sal­ly human, but for the audio­phile, that pedes­tri­an plea­sure is sec­ondary to “hav­ing a wide fre­quen­cy response and get­ting a real­is­tic vir­tu­al image, what­ev­er that means.” Audio­phil­ia, for all its priv­i­leged invest­ment in equip­ment the aver­age per­son can’t afford, can be seen as no more than an advanced form of con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion. Or it can be seen as a life “devot­ed,” Caded­du writes, “to for­mal per­fec­tion.”

via Ted Gioia 

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An 82-Year-Old Japan­ese Audio­phile Search­es for the Best Sound by Installing His Own Elec­tric Util­i­ty Pole in His Yard

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

How Old School Records Were Made, From Start to Fin­ish: A 1937 Video Fea­tur­ing Duke Elling­ton

Con­serve the Sound, an Online Muse­um Pre­serves the Sounds of Past Technologies–from Type­writ­ers, Elec­tric Shavers and Cas­sette Recorders, to Cam­eras & Clas­sic Nin­ten­do

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

Godzilla, Kong, et al: Stupid Fun or Channeling Deep Fears? Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #90

in Film, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | April 22nd, 2021

What’s the mean­ing behind the con­tin­ued inter­na­tion­al pop­u­lar­i­ty of kai­ju media in which giant crea­tures stomp on cities and beat each oth­er up? Is this just pro wrestling dra­ma with spe­cial effects, or does it relate to deep-seat­ed feel­ings of help­less­ness in the face of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters? Per­haps both?

Your Pret­ty Much Pop hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt reflect on the Mon­ster­Verse films: Godzil­la (2014), Kong: Skull Island (2017), Godzil­la: King of the Mon­sters (2019), and chiefly Godzil­la vs. Kong (2021). We also go into the his­to­ry of Godzil­la in Japan from the 1954 orig­i­nal to 2016’s award-win­ning Shin Godzil­la. Do we care at all about the humans in these films? Are King Kong films too sad? Is there any legit­i­mate sci-fi or polit­i­cal com­men­tary in this genre? We touch on Pacif­ic Rim, The Host, Clover­field, Colos­sal, When a Mon­ster Calls, Ram­page, giant video game boss­es, and more.

Some sources we used to pre­pare:

• “‘Godzil­la vs. Kong’ Rais­es the Ques­tion: Is Non­sense the New Nor­mal?” by Owen Gleiber­man
• “Godzil­la vs Kong Sug­gests KOT­M’s Vil­lains Were Right” by Nicholas Ray­mond
• “Shin Godzil­la Made Its Kai­ju Mon­strous Again” by Dar­ren Mooney
• “10 Mon­sters Godzil­la Should Fight Next” by Matthew Cher­nov
• “15 Best Kai­ju Movies That Don’t Star Godzil­la” by Patrick Leigh
• “The Top 21 Most Kick-Ass Giant Mon­sters in Movie His­to­ry!” by Bri­an Solomon
• “MST3K: A Guide to the Giant Mon­ster Movies of Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000″ by Gavin Jasper
• “The His­to­ry of Godzil­la (1954)” the begin­ning of a great YouTube series by Big Action Bill

Plus, here’s more on The Great Bud­dha Arrival and Wolf­man vs. Godzil­la.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.