~openculture | Bookmarks (160)
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Stephen Fry Explains Why Artificial Intelligence Has a “70% Risk of Killing Us All”
Apart from his comedic, dramatic, and literary endeavors, Stephen Fry is widely known for his avowed...
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Watch the 1896 Film The Pistol Duel, a Startling Re-Creation of the Last Days of Pistol Dueling in Mexico
One sometimes hears lamented the tendency of movies to depict Mexico — and in particular, its...
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37 Hitchcock Cameo Appearances Over 50 Years: All in One Video
Early in his career, Alfred Hitchcock began making small appearances in his own films. The cameos...
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Sex and Alcohol in Medieval Times: A Look into the Pleasures of the Middle Ages
Playing video games, road-tripping across America, binge-listening to podcasts, chatting with artificial intelligence: these are a...
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Buckminster Fuller Tells the World “Everything He Knows” in a 42-Hour Lecture Series (1975)
History seems to have settled Buckminster Fuller’s reputation as a man ahead of his time. He...
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Meet Madame Inès Decourcelle, One of the Very First Female Taxi Drivers in Paris (Circa 1908)
If you can read this, you almost certainly know the French word for a professional automobile...
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When the Grateful Dead Played at the Egyptian Pyramids, in the Shadow of the Sphinx (1978)
In September of 1978, the Grateful Dead traveled to Egypt and played three shows at the Great...
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The Page That Changed Comics Forever: Discover the Innovative 1950s Comic Book That Almost Went Unpublished
If you grew up reading American comic books during the second half of the twentieth century,...
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When Slavoj Žižek and Jordan Peterson Debated Capitalism Versus Marxism
Karl Marx was a German philosopher-historian (with a few other pursuits besides) who wrote in pursuit...
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The Cramps Play a Mental Health Hospital in Napa, California in 1978: The Punkest of Punk Concerts
“We’re The Cramps, and we’re from New York City, and we drove 3,000 miles to play...
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Face to Face with Carl Jung: ‘Man Cannot Stand a Meaningless Life’ (1959)
Carl Gustav Jung, founder of analytic psychology and explorer of the collective unconscious, was born on...
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Behold James Sowerby’s Strikingly Illustrated New Elucidation of Colours (1809)
James Sowerby was an artist dedicated to the natural world. It thus comes as no surprise...
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The “Nonsense” Botanical Illustrations of Victorian Artist-Poet Edward Lear (1871–77)
Since the Victorian era, Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat” has been, for generation upon...
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Simone de Beauvoir Explains “Why I’m a Feminist” in a Rare TV Interview (1975)
In Simone de Beauvoir’s 1945 novel The Blood of Others, the narrator, Jean Blomart, reports on...
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How Rome Began: The History As Told by Ancient Historians
Much attention has been paid to the fall of the Roman Empire, by everyone from august...
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Martin Scorsese Plays Vincent Van Gogh in a Short, Surreal Film by Akira Kurosawa
The idea of the auteur director has been a controversial one at times given the sheer...
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Oscar-Winning Director Frank Capra Made an Educational Science Film Warning of Climate Change in 1958
In 2015, we highlighted for you The Strange Case of the Cosmic Rays, a largely-forgotten 1957...
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Eno: The New “Generative Documentary” on Brian Eno That’s Never the Same Movie Twice
Brian Eno once wrote that “it’s possible that our grandchildren will look at us in wonder...
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How Choose Your Own Adventure Books Became Beloved Among Generations of Readers
We’ve all read plenty of literature written in the first person, and plenty of literature written...
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You Can Buy Historic Italian Houses for €1 — But What’s the Catch?
From Abruzzo to Vergemoli, small Italian towns and villages have recently been making their historic homes...
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Jimi Hendrix Unplugged: Two Great Recordings of Hendrix Playing Acoustic Guitar
As a young guitar player, perhaps no one inspired me as much as Jimi Hendrix, though...
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Watch Hardware Wars, the Original Star Wars Parody, in HD (1978)
This past May, YouTuber Jenny Nicholson set off waves of social-media discourse with “The Spectacular Failure...
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Honoré de Balzac Writes About “The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee,” and His Epic Coffee Addiction
174 years after his death, Honoré de Balzac remains an extremely modern-sounding wag. Were he alive...
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Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zappa on His Cable TV Show, and Later Recalls, “I Hated Him More Than Ever” After the Show
Had Andy Warhol lived to see the internet–especially social networking–he would have loved it, though it...