Authors

in | November 22nd, 2020

All

Administrator|User role

Author|User role

Contributor|User role

Editor|User role

Premium Subscriber

Subscriber|User role

s2Member Level 1

s2Member Level 2

s2Member Level 3

s2Member Level 4

SEO Manager

SEO Editor

Lou Reed Concert Film Berlin Streaming Free Online for the Next Week

in Film, Music, Theatre | November 20th, 2020

Last laughs can be sweet, and accord­ing to music jour­nal­ist, Antho­ny DeCur­tis, his friend, the late Lou Reed, “rev­eled” in the crit­i­cal drub­bing that greet­ed his 3rd solo album, 1973’s Berlin.

Not imme­di­ate­ly, how­ev­er.

Berlin, which fol­lowed hard on the heels of Reed’s wide­ly adored Trans­former, had a painful, pro­tract­ed deliv­ery.

This was due in part due to RCA execs get­ting cold feet about releas­ing Reed’s grim con­cept record as a dou­ble album. This neces­si­tat­ed a lot of prun­ing, a week before dead­line.

Pro­duc­er Bob Ezrin, who had plant­ed the idea for a con­cept album based on a track from Reed’s epony­mous first solo effort, was detox­ing in the hos­pi­tal, and thus not present for the final mas­ter­ing.

But much of the hell lead­ing to Berlin’s release was a hell of Reed’s own mak­ing.

His depen­dence on drugs and alco­hol ham­pered the writ­ing process, as per Reed’s first wife, Bet­tye Kro­n­stad, who filed for divorce mid­way through the process.

If you want a glimpse of what that marriage’s final days might have been like, look to Berlin.

Kro­n­stad was dis­tressed to find many pri­vate details from their rela­tion­ship on dis­play in the trag­ic rock opera. There was some fic­tion­al­iza­tion, but Reed also put his thumb on the scales when it suit­ed him, in songs like “The Kids,” which recast Kronstad’s late moth­er in a par­tic­u­lar­ly unfair way.

Reed once took a shot at the album’s crit­i­cal recep­tion, sug­gest­ing that peo­ple didn’t like it because its depic­tion of a mis­er­able cou­ple, whose union is marred by infi­deli­ty, domes­tic abuse, addic­tion, and sui­cide, was “too real”:

It’s not like a TV pro­gram where all the bad things that hap­pen to peo­ple are tol­er­a­ble. Life isn’t like that. And nei­ther is the album.

Some­times he bluffed:

I have nev­er been inter­est­ed in crit­i­cal recep­tions, decep­tions, hel­los, good­byes, huz­zahs, hur­rahs. I don’t read them, so I don’t care.

At oth­er times, he raged:

There are peo­ple I’ll nev­er for­give for the way they fucked me over with Berlin. The way that album was over­looked was the biggest dis­ap­point­ment I ever faced.

In a more vul­ner­a­ble mood, he admit­ted:

Berlin was a big flop and it made me very sad. The way that album was over­looked was prob­a­bly the biggest dis­ap­point­ment I ever faced. I pulled the blinds shut at that point, and they’ve remained closed.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, his ear­ly plans for stag­ing a the­atri­cal com­pan­ion piece to the album, with pos­si­ble par­tic­i­pa­tion by Andy Warhol, were shelved.

34 years lat­er…

Cue direc­tor Julian Schn­abel, the Brook­lyn Youth Cho­rus, and St. Ann’s Ware­house, the New York City venue that had pre­vi­ous­ly co-com­mis­sioned Songs for Drel­la, a musi­cal Warhol trib­ute by Reed and John Cale.

In 2006, Reed took cen­ter­stage in Brook­lyn for a 5‑night the­atri­cal run of Berlin that also fea­tured a 35-piece ensem­ble, orig­i­nal gui­tarist Steve Hunter, and dreamy videos by the director’s daugh­ter, Lola, star­ring Emmanuelle Seign­er as an abstract sketch of the doomed pro­tag­o­nist, Car­o­line.

The result­ing con­cert film, which St. Ann’s Ware­house is stream­ing for free through Novem­ber 29, proved far more pop­u­lar with crit­ics than the 1973 record had been. (Three years pri­or to the St Ann’s stag­ing, Rolling Stone upgrad­ed its orig­i­nal opin­ion of the album from career end­ing dis­as­ter to 344th Great­est Album of All Time.)

Stephen Holden’s glow­ing New York Times review of the film made mul­ti­ple men­tion of angels and demons, as is per­haps to be expect­ed when a work com­bines Lou Reed, a Sid and Nan­cy-ish romance, a children’s choir, and the ethe­re­al voice of Anohni, late of Antony and the John­sons.

Read­ers, see for your­self, and let us know—did RCA’s pro­mo­tion­al poster for the orig­i­nal album get some­thing right near­ly 50 years ago? Is this “a film for the ears?”

Lis­ten to the orig­i­nal 1973 album and the live con­cert ver­sion at St. Ann’s for free on Spo­ti­fy.

Stream Julian Schnabel’s Lou Reed’s Berlin, Live at St. Ann’s Ware­house here through Novem­ber 29.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Lou Reed Sings “Sweet Jane” Live, Julian Schn­abel Films It (2006)

Lou Reed’s Mix­tape for Andy Warhol Dis­cov­ered by Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor: Fea­tures 12 Pre­vi­ous­ly Unre­leased Songs

Lou Reed Cre­ates a List of the 10 Best Records of All Time

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

How Errol Morris Became Obsessed with — and Figured Out — the Truth of a Famous War Photograph

in History, Photography | November 19th, 2020

Errol Mor­ris did­n’t go all the way to the Crimean Penin­su­la just because of a sen­tence writ­ten by Susan Son­tag. “No,” he once explained to a friend, “it was actu­al­ly two sen­tences.” Found in Regard­ing the Pain of Oth­ers, Son­tag’s late book-length essay on war pho­tog­ra­phy, these lines deal with the fact that “many of the canon­i­cal images of ear­ly war pho­tog­ra­phy turn out to have been staged, or to have had their sub­jects tam­pered with.” Take Val­ley of the Shad­ow of Death, pio­neer­ing war pho­tog­ra­ph­er Roger Fen­ton’s famous­ly des­o­late 1855 image from the Crimean War. Fen­ton actu­al­ly shot this land­scape twice: in one pic­ture, “can­non­balls are thick on the ground to the left of the road, but before tak­ing the sec­ond pic­ture — the one that is always repro­duced — he over­saw the scat­ter­ing of the can­non­balls on the road itself.”

Or did he? Mor­ris had his doubts — and, as the mak­er of such acclaimed doc­u­men­taries on the nature of truth and its rep­re­sen­ta­tion as The Thin Blue Line and Stan­dard Oper­at­ing Pro­ce­dure and the author of the book Believ­ing is See­ing: Obser­va­tions on the Mys­ter­ies of Pho­tog­ra­phy — he clear­ly has an intel­lec­tu­al invest­ment in the sub­ject.

“I spent a con­sid­er­able amount of time look­ing at the two pho­tographs and think­ing about the two sen­tences,” Mor­ris writes in a 2007 New York Times blog post. “How did Son­tag know that Fen­ton altered the land­scape or, for that mat­ter, ‘over­saw the scat­ter­ing of the can­non­balls on the road itself?’ ” How, for that mat­ter, “did Son­tag know the sequence of the pho­tographs? How did she know which pho­to­graph came first?”

Unable to turn up any per­sua­sive evi­dence, Mor­ris launched an inves­ti­ga­tion of his own, inter­view­ing experts, dig­ging into Fen­ton’s let­ters, and even­tu­al­ly mak­ing his way to the Val­ley of the Shad­ow of Death itself (not to be con­fused with the oth­er, bet­ter-known val­ley across which Ten­nyson’s Light Brigade charged). All of this Mor­ris did in the name of find­ing out which came first, the pho­to with the can­non­balls beside the road, or the one with the can­non­balls on the road. You can hear him dis­cuss this increas­ing­ly obses­sive quest for the truth in the video above from Vox’s Dark­room, the series that pre­vi­ous­ly gave us a break­down of the very first faked pho­to­graph. But then, as this and oth­er inves­ti­ga­tions by Mor­ris into the rela­tion­ship between images, lan­guage, and real­i­ty have under­scored, there is no such thing as a true pho­to­graph.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Errol Mor­ris: Two Essen­tial Truths About Pho­tog­ra­phy

Errol Mor­ris Med­i­tates on the Mean­ing and His­to­ry of Abra­ham Lincoln’s Last Pho­to­graph

How the “First Pho­to­jour­nal­ist,” Math­ew Brady, Shocked the Nation with Pho­tos from the Civ­il War

Why the Sovi­ets Doc­tored Their Most Icon­ic World War II Vic­to­ry Pho­to, “Rais­ing a Flag Over the Reich­stag”

The First Faked Pho­to­graph (1840)

Errol Mor­ris Makes His Ground­break­ing Series, First Per­son, Free to Watch Online: Binge Watch His Inter­views with Genius­es, Eccentrics, Obses­sives & Oth­er Unusu­al Types

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

The Beautiful Video for David Gilmour’s “The Girl in the Yellow Dress,” Featuring 9,000 Hand-Drawn Frames of Animation

in Animation, Music | November 19th, 2020

The ani­mat­ed video for David Gilmour’s “The Girl in the Yel­low Dress” opens on a sax­o­phon­ist with a famil­iar story—one so well-known to his band­mates they can read it on his face. But then the per­spec­tive shifts, and we fol­low instead the woman (or “girl”) of his woes, as she comes to see him play, gets ogled and turned into a fan­ta­sy by the men in the club, pur­sues the res­i­dent lothario, crush­ing the hearts of them all, includ­ing the sax­o­phon­ist, who plays his blues instead of col­laps­ing into a drink.

At least that seems to be the sto­ry, a typ­i­cal nightlife scene ren­dered in a very dynam­ic, atyp­i­cal way. The video, from a track off Gilmour’s 2015 album Rat­tle that Lock, was direct­ed by Dan­ny Mad­den for Ornana Films, who write, “The music video is made of about 9,000 frames of ani­ma­tion that were touched by sev­er­al hands to get the lay­ered con­tours, vibrant col­ors, and exag­ger­at­ed char­ac­ter design of old French Lith­o­graph posters. We want­ed to cre­ate a mov­ing ver­sion of that look, as if each frame had all the lay­ers stamped on the page.”

An incred­i­ble amount of inten­sive artis­tic labor went into cre­at­ing the boozy, swirling effects in each scene. “We ani­mat­ed with pen­cil, then con­tour lines were gone over with a brush tip mark­er. We used gouache to get nice life in the vary­ing brush­strokes, then we lay­ered the con­tours over the paint lay­er in the com­posit­ing step so that the colours would do inter­est­ing things when they ran togeth­er.” Maybe these images could be recre­at­ed con­vinc­ing­ly with dig­i­tal effects… but I sus­pect not.

The song “looks back at [Gilmour’s] ear­li­est musi­cal influ­ence,” writes a Guardian review of the Rat­tle that Lock. If so, it’s a nascent influ­ence that did not emerge often in his Pink Floyd play­ing, though the song may also indi­rect­ly pay trib­ute to the jazz-trained Richard Wright, memo­ri­al­ized else­where on the album. You can see sev­er­al more scenes from this extra­or­di­nary video at Dezeen.

via Laugh­ing Squid 

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

David Gilmour Talks About the Mys­ter­ies of His Famous Gui­tar Tone

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

Watch Tom Waits For No One, the Pio­neer­ing Ani­mat­ed Music Video from 1979

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

Discover the Cyanometer, the Device Invented in 1789 Just to Measure the Blueness of the Sky

in Design, Science | November 18th, 2020

Eng­lish astronomer and physi­cist James Jeans’ 1931 essay “Why the Sky is Blue” has become a clas­sic of con­cise expos­i­to­ry writ­ing since it was first pub­lished in a series of talks. In only four para­graphs and one strik­ing­ly detailed, yet sim­ple anal­o­gy, Jeans gave mil­lions of stu­dents a grasp of celes­tial blue­ness in prose that does not sub­sti­tute nature’s poet­ry for sci­en­tif­ic jar­gon and dia­grams.

Over a hun­dred years ear­li­er, anoth­er sci­en­tist cre­at­ed a sim­i­lar­ly poet­ic device; in this case, one which attempt­ed to depict how the sky is blue. Swiss physi­cist Horace Béné­dict de Saus­sure’s 1789 Cyanome­ter, “a cir­cle of paper swatch­es dyed in increas­ing­ly deep blues, shad­ing from white to black,” Sarah Laskow writes at Atlas Obscu­ra, “includ­ed 52 blues… in its most advanced iter­a­tion,” intend­ed to show “how the col­or of the sky changed with ele­va­tion.”

Saussure’s fas­ci­na­tion with the blue­ness of the sky began when he was a young stu­dent and trav­eled to the base of Mont Blanc. Over­awed by the sum­mit, he dreamt of climb­ing it, but instead used his fam­i­ly’s wealth to offer a reward to the first per­son who could. Twen­ty-sev­en years lat­er, Saus­sure him­self would ascend to the top, in 1786, car­ry­ing with him “pieces of paper col­ored dif­fer­ent shades of blue, to hold up against the sky and match its col­or.”

Saus­sure was tak­en with a phe­nom­e­non report­ed by moun­taineers: as one climbs high­er, the sky turns a deep­er shade of blue. He began to for­mu­late a hypoth­e­sis, the Roy­al Soci­ety of Chem­istry Explains:

Armed with his tools and a small chem­istry set, he trekked round the val­leys and beyond. As his trips car­ried him ever high­er, he puz­zled about the colour of the sky. Local leg­end had it that if one climbed high enough it turned black and one would see, or even fall into, the void — such ter­rors kept ordi­nary men away from the peaks. But to Saus­sure, the blue colour was an opti­cal effect. And because on some days the blue of the sky fad­ed imper­cep­ti­bly into the white of the clouds, Saus­sure con­clud­ed that the colour must indi­cate its mois­ture con­tent. 

At the top of Mont Blanc, the physi­cist mea­sured what he deemed “a blue of the 39th degree.” The num­ber meant lit­tle to any­one but him. “Upon its inven­tion, the cyanome­ter rather quick­ly fell into dis­use,” as Maria Gon­za­lez de Leon points out. “After all, very lit­tle sci­en­tif­ic infor­ma­tion was giv­en.”

The tool did, how­ev­er, accom­pa­ny the famed geo­g­ra­ph­er Alexan­der von Hum­boldt across the Atlantic, “to the Caribbean, the Canary Islands, and South Amer­i­ca,” writes Laskow, where Hum­boldt “set a new record, at the 46th degree of blue, for the dark­est sky ever mea­sured” on the sum­mit of the Andean moun­tain Chimb­o­ra­zo. This would be one of the only notable uses of the poet­ic device. “When the true cause of the sky’s blue­ness, the scat­ter­ing of light, was dis­cov­ered decades lat­er, in the 1860s, Saussure’s cir­cle of blue had already fall­en into obscu­ri­ty.”

via Messy­Nessy/Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A 900-Page Pre-Pan­tone Guide to Col­or from 1692: A Com­plete Dig­i­tal Scan

The Vibrant Col­or Wheels Designed by Goethe, New­ton & Oth­er The­o­rists of Col­or (1665–1810)

A Vision­ary 115-Year-Old Col­or The­o­ry Man­u­al Returns to Print: Emi­ly Noyes Vanderpoel’s Col­or Prob­lems

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

Experience Blade Runner Like You Never Have Before Through a Feature-Length Remastered Soundtrack

in Film, History, Music | November 18th, 2020

There is no one Blade Run­ner. Rid­ley Scot­t’s influ­en­tial “neo-noir” has appeared in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ver­sions over the past 38 years, both offi­cial — the “direc­tor’s cut,” the “final cut,” and lest we for­get, the now-derid­ed first the­atri­cal cut — and unof­fi­cial. So has Blade Run­ner’s sound­track, the first offi­cial release of which lagged the film by about a dozen years, and even then did­n’t include all the music so inte­gral to the unprece­dent­ed aes­thet­ic rich­ness of the futur­is­tic set­ting. Then, about a dozen more years lat­er, fol­lowed an expand­ed sound­track album, which for many fans still proved unsat­is­fy­ing. In the name of com­plete­ness and son­ic fideli­ty, at least five wide­ly dis­trib­uted bootlegs have attempt­ed to fill the gap.

Now, in our 21st-cen­tu­ry age of stream­ing, we have fan-made “remas­ters” of the Blade Run­ner sound­track like the above, the 5.7‑million-times-viewed work of a user called Greendragon861. Run­ning just over one hour and 52 min­utes — near­ly the length of the var­i­ous cuts of Blade Run­ner itself — this son­ic expe­ri­ence includes, of course, the well-known elec­tron­ic pieces by com­pos­er Van­ge­lis, those that come right to mind when you envi­sion the flame-belch­ing indus­tri­al land­scape of 21st-cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les or a police “spin­ner” tak­ing to the skies. But it also incor­po­rates back­ground music, sound effects, and even snatch­es of dia­logue from the movie. The result feels a great deal like watch­ing Blade Run­ner with­out actu­al­ly watch­ing Blade Run­ner.

Despite ini­tial­ly flop­ping, at least in the West, Blade Run­ner has exert­ed an enor­mous influ­ence on oth­er art and media — indeed, on the way human­i­ty envi­sions the future — and one still spread­ing near­ly four decades lat­er. The film seems unsur­pass­able in that regard, an achieve­ment cred­itable to a range of cre­ators: direc­tor Rid­ley Scott, of course; but also Philip K. Dick, author of its source mate­r­i­al; the late Syd Mead, who as a “visu­al futur­ist” gave focus to the world’s look and feel; mod­el mas­ter Dou­glas Trum­bull, thanks in part to whom its built and mechan­i­cal envi­ron­ment has aged so well. The list goes on, and it should­n’t fail to include Van­ge­lis as well as every­one else respon­si­ble for this intri­cate sound­scape, with­out which Blade Run­ner would­n’t be Blade Run­ner, no mat­ter the cut.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Blade Run­ner Cap­tured the Imag­i­na­tion of a Gen­er­a­tion of Elec­tron­ic Musi­cians

Sean Con­nery (RIP) Reads C.P. Cavafy’s Epic Poem “Itha­ca,” Set to the Music of Van­ge­lis

The Sounds of Blade Run­ner: How Music & Sound Effects Became Part of the DNA of Rid­ley Scott’s Futur­is­tic World

Stream 72 Hours of Ambi­ent Sounds from Blade Run­ner: Relax, Go to Sleep in a Dystopi­an Future

Drone Footage of San Fran­cis­co Set to the Music of Blade Run­ner 2049

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Pop Songs with Narrative: Pretty Much Pop (#69) Discusses Tunes Ranging from Bob Dylan’s “Hurricane” to “The Pina Colada Song” with Songwriter/Author Rod Picott

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | November 18th, 2020

Plen­ty of songs pur­port to tell sto­ries, and the nar­ra­tive bal­lad of course has a long enough his­to­ry that the two forms cer­tain­ly aren’t alien. But how do our lis­ten­ing prac­tices con­di­tioned by pop music jibe with rec­og­niz­ing and under­stand­ing nar­ra­tive?

Singer/songwriter and short sto­ry author Rod Picott joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt to talk about clas­sics by writ­ers like Bob Dylan and John­ny Cash, for­ma­tive night­mares like “Leader of the Pack” and “Escape (The Pina Cola­da Song), bor­der­line cas­es like “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” and more. We also con­sid­er how this form relates to musi­cal the­ater, music videos, sound­tracks, and com­mer­cials.

We tried to stick to pop­u­lar songs, but most of us are pret­ty old. You can lis­ten and read the lyrics if you’re not fol­low­ing:

• “Mack the Knife” by Bob­by Darin
• “The Long Black Veil” by John­ny Cash
• “Cow­ard of the Coun­try” by Ken­ny Rogers
• “Leader of the Pack” by The Shangri-Las
• “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” by Queen
• “Hur­ri­cane” by Bob Dylan
• “Scenes from an Ital­ian Restau­rant” by Bil­ly Joel
• “Escape (The Pina Cola­da Song)” by Rupert Holmes (Watch him on Burt Sug­ar­man’s Mid­night Spe­cial. Yes, there was a Taco Bell com­mer­cial that used this song.)
• “Par­adise by the Dash­board Light” by Meat Loaf (writ­ten by Jim Stein­man). Read Tim Quirk’s exten­sive analy­sis of this dis­turb­ing song.
• “Famous Blue Rain­coat” by Leonard Cohen
• “Jack and Diane” by John Cougar Mel­len­camp
• “Glo­ry Days” by Bruce Spring­steen
• “For­tu­nate Son” by Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival
• “Tiger Tom Dixon’s Blues” by Rod Picott

Why these songs? Well, we found a few lists online:

• “Inven­to­ry: 26 Songs That are Just as Good as Short Sto­ries” from the AV Club
• “15 Songs That Tell Bet­ter Sto­ries Than Your Favorite Nov­el” by Josue Broc­ca
• “168 Favorite Pop, Rock, and Coun­try Songs That Tell a Sto­ry” from Flour­is­hAny­way

Hear Mark inter­view Rod on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music. Learn more at rodpicott.com.

Hear more of this pod­cast at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This time, an update on Rod’s music plus polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion and more.

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.

A Free Stanford Course on How to Teach Online: Designed for Middle & High School Teachers

in K-12, Online Courses | November 17th, 2020

Update: You can find the video record­ing of the work­shop here.

This past spring, teach­ers and stu­dents every­where got an abrupt intro­duc­tion to online learn­ing. When class­rooms moved online in March, many teach­ers exper­i­ment­ed with online ped­a­gogy for the first time, often with­out much train­ing or sup­port. To help ease this tran­si­tion, the Stan­ford Online High School–an inde­pen­dent high school that oper­ates entire­ly online–launched a free course designed to help teach­ers get com­fort­able teach­ing in this new medi­um. 7,000 teach­ers signed up. To con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing sup­port, an updat­ed ver­sion of this free course will be offered again this week­end.

“Teach­ing Your Class Online” will take place this Sat­ur­day (Novem­ber 21) and Sun­day (Novem­ber 22),  and run from 9:00 am — 11:00 am Pacif­ic time each day. (Update: The lec­tures are now avail­able online.) Designed main­ly for instruc­tors teach­ing grades 7–12, the course can be help­ful for ele­men­tary and col­lege instruc­tors as well. Top­ics cov­ered will include “chal­lenges [such] as stu­dent engage­ment and dis­cus­sion (includ­ing for large groups, break­out rooms, and hybrid groups), effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion with stu­dents and par­ents, assess­ment and cur­ricu­lum adap­ta­tion for online ped­a­gogy, and strate­gies for sup­port­ing both stu­dents and your­selves.”

“Teach­ing Your Class Online” is sup­port­ed by Stan­ford Online High School and Stan­ford Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies. You can enroll in the course on the Con­tin­u­ing Stud­ies web­site here.

If you know any teach­ers who could ben­e­fit from this free course, please feel free to share this post with them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

200 Free Kids Edu­ca­tion­al Resources: Video Lessons, Apps, Books, Web­sites & More

“I Will Sur­vive,” the Coro­n­avirus Ver­sion for Teach­ers Going Online

How to Teach and Learn Phi­los­o­phy Dur­ing the Pan­dem­ic: A Col­lec­tion of 450+ Phi­los­o­phy Videos Free Online

What Happens When You Spend Weeks, Months, or Years in Solitary Confinement

in Life, Science | November 17th, 2020

The lone­li­ness and iso­la­tion of quar­an­tine is noth­ing to laugh about, though we might have heard grim jokes about soli­tary con­fine­ment in the last few months. We’ve also seen over­wrought com­par­isons of social dis­tanc­ing to prison. These are, I think, release valves for real pain. One hopes the har­row­ing expe­ri­ence of the pan­dem­ic will give Amer­i­cans some com­pas­sion for the lives of pris­on­ers, a shock­ing num­ber of whom spend years, even decades, in soli­tary, most­ly deprived of nat­ur­al light, human con­tact, enter­tain­ment, edu­ca­tion, or a change of scenery. It seems, inar­guably, like a form of tor­ture.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, soli­tary con­fine­ment does real harm to the body and brain. Even inmates placed in soli­tary for a few days expe­ri­ence symp­toms of acute anx­i­ety and depres­sion. “Iso­lat­ed inmates often report symp­toms sim­i­lar to those of hyper­ten­sion, such as chron­ic headaches, trem­bling sweaty palms, extreme dizzi­ness and heart pal­pi­ta­tions,” Mary Mur­phy Cor­co­ran writes at NYU’s Applied Psy­chol­o­gy Opus. “Inmates in iso­la­tion may also have dif­fi­cul­ty sleep­ing, and some may expe­ri­ence insom­nia…. Con­se­quent­ly, inmates report feel­ings of chron­ic lethar­gy.” Over the years, this stress exacts its long-term toll.

In the Slate video at the top, for­mer inmate Five Mual­imm-Ak describes the five years he spent in soli­tary dur­ing a 12-year prison sen­tence. His account and those of oth­ers were recent­ly col­lect­ed in a book with the grim­ly evoca­tive title Hell is a Very Small Place. For­mer soli­tary inmate Ter­rence Slater describes a kind of fur­ther soli­tary of the mind: how impor­tant it is to lim­it the amount of time one thinks about loved ones dur­ing a 23-hour day alone in a cell, or “you’re going to lose your mind in there.” It’s esti­mat­ed that rough­ly 80,000 inmates in the U.S. are placed in such con­di­tions every year.

Giv­en enough time, one may lit­er­al­ly lose one’s mind, as Robert King dis­cov­ered. King was “con­fined in a 6x9-foot cell for almost 30 years,” Elana Blan­co-Suarez writes at Psy­chol­o­gy Today. “King knew that soli­tary con­fine­ment was chang­ing the way his brain worked. When he final­ly left his cell, he real­ized he had trou­ble rec­og­niz­ing faces and had to retrain his eyes to learn what a face was like.” He could no longer fol­low sim­ple direc­tions. “It was as if his brain had erased all those capa­bil­i­ties that were no longer nec­es­sary for sur­vival in a cell no big­ger than the back of a pick-up truck.”

Pro­longed peri­ods of sen­so­ry depri­va­tion can be espe­cial­ly inju­ri­ous for pris­on­ers who go into soli­tary with pre-exist­ing men­tal health issues, and “men­tal­ly impaired pris­on­ers are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly rep­re­sent­ed in soli­tary con­fine­ment,” Kirsten Weir notes at the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion. One 2005 study found that the “preva­lence of men­tal ill­ness in admin­is­tra­tive seg­re­ga­tion” in Col­orado “was greater than 35 per­cent, com­pared with a men­tal ill­ness rate of less than 25 per­cent among the gen­er­al prison pop­u­la­tion.”

Clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado Jef­frey Met­zn­er argues that the “cor­rec­tion­al sys­tem has become our men­tal health care sys­tem for too many peo­ple,” using abu­sive, bar­bar­ic prac­tices that haven’t exist­ed in men­tal health wards for decades. The effects of soli­tary con­fine­ment sug­gest that “it doesn’t make facil­i­ties safer, doesn’t make our com­mu­ni­ties safer, and that peo­ple are devel­op­ing men­tal and phys­i­cal ail­ments because of this prac­tice.”

So says James Burns, a for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed film­mak­er who vol­un­tar­i­ly entered soli­tary con­fine­ment for 30 days in 2016 and livestreamed the whole expe­ri­ence. See his last four hours above and read at Vice about his rea­sons for sub­mit­ting him­self to hell—not a “dark dun­geon,” he writes, but “a very ster­ile, bright hell” which is, “more than any­thing… a mind fuck.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Pris­ons Around the U.S. Are Ban­ning and Restrict­ing Access to Books

Inmates in New York Prison Defeat Harvard’s Debate Team: A Look Inside the Bard Prison Ini­tia­tive

Art Class Instead Of Jail: New Pro­gram Lets Young Offend­ers Take Free Art Class­es Rather Than Spend Time in the Crim­i­nal Sys­tem

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

How Soy Sauce Has Been Made in Japan for Over 220 Years: An Inside View

in Food & Drink | November 17th, 2020

Soy sauce has fig­ured into the cui­sine of east Asia for more than two mil­len­nia. By that stan­dard, the two-cen­tu­ry-old Fue­ki Shoyu Brew­ing has­n’t been in the game long. But in run­ning the oper­a­tion today, Masat­sugu Fue­ki can hard­ly be accused of fail­ing to uphold tra­di­tion: he adheres to just the same prac­tices for mak­ing soy sauce (shoyu, in Japan­ese) as the com­pa­ny’s founders did back in 1879. You can see the entire process in the Eater video above, shot at the Fue­ki fac­to­ry in Saita­ma Pre­fec­ture, just north­west of Tokyo. Fue­ki him­self guides the tour, explain­ing first the sheer sim­plic­i­ty of the ingre­di­ents — soy­beans, flour, and salt — and then the intri­cate bio­log­i­cal inter­ac­tions between them that must be prop­er­ly man­aged if the result is to pos­sess a suit­ably rich uma­mi fla­vor.

That we all know what uma­mi is today owes in part to the prop­a­ga­tion of soy sauce across the world. One of the “five basic fla­vors,” this dis­tinc­tive savori­ness man­i­fests in cer­tain fish, cheeses, toma­toes, and mush­rooms, but if you need a quick shot of uma­mi, you reach for the soy sauce. In bot­tles small and large, it had already become a com­mon prod­uct in the Unit­ed States by the time I was grow­ing up there in the 1980s and 90s.

It must be said, how­ev­er, that Amer­i­cans then still had some odd ways of using it: the now-acknowl­edged West­ern faux pas, for instance, of lib­er­al­ly driz­zling the stuff over rice. But wider aware­ness of soy sauce has led to a wider under­stand­ing of its prop­er place in food, and also of what sets the best apart from the mediocre — as well as a curios­i­ty about what it takes to make the best.

Fue­ki and his work­ers take pains every step of the way, from steam­ing the soy­beans to decom­pos­ing the wheat with a mold called koji to heat­ing the raw soy sauce in tanks before bot­tling. But the key is the kioke, a large wood­en fer­men­ta­tion bar­rel, the old­est of which at Fue­ki Shoyu Brew­ing goes back 150 years. Today, Fue­ki explains, few­er that 50 crafts­men in all of Japan know how to make them: hence the launch of the in-house Kioke Project, a series of work­shops meant to revi­tal­ize the craft. As he climbs down into an emp­ty kioke, Fue­ki describes it as “filled with invis­i­ble yeast fun­gus that’s unique to our place” — far from a con­t­a­m­i­nant, “the most impor­tant ele­ment, or trea­sure and our heart.” The care and sen­si­tiv­i­ty required, and indeed the indus­tri­al tech­niques them­selves, aren’t so dif­fer­ent from those involved in the mak­ing of fine wines. But it sure­ly takes a palate as expe­ri­enced as Fuek­i’s to taste “choco­late, vanil­la, cof­fee, rose, hyacinth” in the final prod­uct.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Short Fas­ci­nat­ing Film Shows How Japan­ese Soy Sauce Has Been Made for the Past 750 years

How Japan­ese Things Are Made in 309 Videos: Bam­boo Tea Whisks, Hina Dolls, Steel Balls & More

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

20 Mes­mer­iz­ing Videos of Japan­ese Arti­sans Cre­at­ing Tra­di­tion­al Hand­i­crafts

The Right and Wrong Way to Eat Sushi: A Primer

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.