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More than thirty years after the formal dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, few around the world have a clear understanding of how life actually worked there. That holds less for the larger political and economic questions than it does for the routine mechanics of day-to-day existence. These had a way of being […]

FYI. Google and MIT RAISE have partnered to create a free course for teachers and educators, one designed to show teachers how they can use generative AI tools to save “time on everyday tasks, personaliz[e] instruction to meet student needs, and enhanc[e] lessons and activities in creative ways.” According to the course description, in this […]

Here in the twenty-twenties, a hopeful young novelist might choose to enroll in one of a host of post-graduate programs, and — with luck — there find a willing and able mentor. Back in the nineteen-thirties, things worked a bit differently. “In the spring of 1934, an aspiring writer named Arnold Samuelson hitchhiked from Minnesota […]

Fallacies—notes Purdue’s Writing Lab—“are common errors in reasoning that will undermine the logic of your argument. Fallacies can be either illegitimate arguments or irrelevant points, and are often identified because they lack evidence that supports their claim. Avoid these common fallacies in your own arguments and watch for them in the arguments of others.” Purdue’s […]

What did ancient Egyptians sound like? What did they eat and drink? What ancient Egyptian medicine and tools do we still use in modern times? Why did they practice mummification? Above, Laurel Bestock, a professor from Brown University, discusses everything you ever wanted to know about Ancient Egypt. Not a stranger to popular media productions—Bestock […]

If we want to know the precise geographical location of, say, a particular church in Madrid, video arcade in Tokyo or coffee shop in Addis Ababa, we can figure it out in a matter of seconds. This is, in historical terms, a recent development indeed: many of us remember when the most detailed cartographical information […]

Anyone can learn to draw the cast of Peanuts, but few can do it every day for nearly half a century. The latter, as far as we know, amounts to a group of one: Charles Schulz, who not only created that world-famous comic strip but drew it single-handed throughout its entire run. He was, as […]

This past week, the influential psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman passed away at age 90. The winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, Kahneman wrote the bestselling book Thinking, Fast and Slow where he explained the two systems of thinking that shape human decisions. These include “System 1,” which relies on fast, automatic […]

If you suspect that your brain isn’t quite suited for modern life, you’re not alone. In fact, that state of mind has probably been closer to the rule than the exception throughout modernity itself. It’s just that the mix of things we have to think about keeps changing: “The school run. Work calls. Inflation. Remember […]

?si=SRzcFjCCIvDbQ1f7 What could our future world look like if we continue to do nothing about climate change? That’s the question posed by a new TED ED video, written by Shannon Odell and directed by Sofia Pashaei. We are already seeing the effects of climate change. If you’re paying even a little attention, you’re feeling the […]

David Lynch has a variety of notions about what it takes to make art, but suffering is not among them. “This is part of the myth, I think,” he said in one interview. “Van Gogh did suffer. He suffered a lot. But I think he didn’t suffer while he was painting.” That is, “he didn’t […]

For some time now it has been fashionable to diagnose dead famous people with mental illnesses we never knew they had when they were alive. These postmortem clinical interventions can seem accurate or far-fetched, and mostly harmless—unless we let them color our appreciation of an artist’s work, or negatively influence the way we treat eccentric living personalities. Overall, […]

Depending on how you reckon it, the “American century” has already ended, is now drawing to its close, or has some life left in it yet. But whatever its boundaries, that ambiguous period has been culturally defined by one medium above all: film, or more broadly speaking, motion pictures. These very words might start a […]

Pursued to any depth, the question of whether the United States of America counts as an empire becomes difficult to address with clarity. On one hand, the country has exerted a strong cultural influence on most of the world for the better part of a century, a phenomenon not unrelated to the military presence that […]

I doubt I need to list for you the many titles of the 18th century German savant and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but allow me to add one or two that were new to me, at least: color theorist (or phenomenologist of color) and progenitor of abstract expressionism. As a fascinating Booktryst post informs […]

What with the rise of Korean pop culture over the past decade or so — the virality of Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” BTS’ rise on the Billboard chart, Bong Joon-ho’s Academy Award for Parasite, and the worldwide Netflix phenomenon that was Squid Game — the Korean language is now avidly studied around the world. Back in […]

Gertrude Stein considered herself an experimental writer and wrote what The Poetry Foundation calls “dense poems and fictions, often devoid of plot or dialogue,” with the result being that “commercial publishers slighted her experimental writings and critics dismissed them as incomprehensible.” Take, for example, what happened when Stein sent a manuscript to Alfred C. Fifield, […]

In 2006, Sting released an album called Songs from the Labyrinth, a collaboration with Bosnian lutenist Edin Karamazov consisting mostly of compositions by Renaissance composer John Dowland. This was regarded by some as rather eccentric, but to listeners familiar with the early music revival that had already been going on for a few decades, it […]

Founded in 1577, Kobaien remains Japan’s oldest manufacturer of sumi ink sticks. Made of soot and animal glue, the ink stick—when ground against an inkstone, with a little water added—produces a beautiful black ink used by Japanese calligraphers. And, often, a 200-gram ink stick from Kobaien can cost over $1,000. How can soot and animal […]

A heads up on a deal: Between now and March 31, 2024, Coursera is offering a $100 discount on its annual subscription plan called “Coursera Plus.” Normally priced at $399, Coursera Plus (now available for $299) gives you access to 7,000+ world-class courses for one all-inclusive subscription price. This includes Coursera’s Specializations and Professional Certificates, all […]

More than a quarter of a millennium after he composed his first pieces of music, different listeners will evaluate differently the specific nature of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s genius. But one can hardly fail to be impressed by the fact that he wrote those works when he was five years old (or, as some scholars have […]

Everybody can sing. Maybe not well. But why should that stop you? That’s the basic philosophy of Pub  Choir, an organization based in Brisbane, Australia. At each Pub Choir event, a conductor “arranges a popular song and teaches it to the audience in three-part harmony.” Then, the evening culminates with a performance that gets filmed […]

This year has given us occasion to revisit the 1928 Disney cartoon Steamboat Willie, what with its entry — and thus, that of an early version of a certain Mickey Mouse — into the public domain. Though it may look comparatively primitive today, that eight-minute black-and-white film actually represents a great many advancements in the […]

Supply chains—we never thought too much about them. That is, until the pandemic, when supply chains experienced severe disruptions worldwide, leaving us waiting for products for weeks, if not months. That’s when we started appreciating the importance of supply chains and their resilience. Companies like Unilever rely on supply chains to manufacture their goods (e.g., […]