~openculture | Bookmarks (181)
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Hear the Dying Whistled Language of Laos, Featured in a New Short Film, “Birdsong”
Even by the standards of southeast Asia, Laos is a linguistically interesting place. As a former...
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Why Caspar David Friedrich’s Painting Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) Is a Romantic Masterpiece, Evoking the Power of the Sublime
When Caspar David Friedrich completed Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer, or Wanderer Above the Sea of...
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How This Chicago Skyscraper Barely Touches the Ground
The very first skyscraper went up in 1885 in Chicago. It’s only natural that such a...
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Hortus Eystettensis: The Beautifully Illustrated Book of Plants That Changed Botanical Art Overnight (1613)
If you made it big in seventeenth-century Bavaria, you showed it by creating a garden with...
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How Walking Fosters Creativity: Stanford Researchers Confirm What Philosophers & Writers Have Always Known
Image via Diego Sevilla Ruiz A certain Zen proverb goes something like this: “A five year old...
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My Neighbor Totoro Inspires a Line of Traditional Japanese Handicrafts
We suppose it’s conceivable that a gift of a wooden Totoro figurine, hand-carved from a single...
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Dance Like David Byrne! An Easy-to-Follow Instructional Video Shows You How
This dance is serious. This dance is necessary. Do you feel that change? — David Byrne...
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Watch the Moment When a 13-Year-Old Becomes the First Person to Ever “Beat” Tetris
On December 21, Willis Gibson, a 13-year-old from Stillwater, Oklahoma, became the first person to push...
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Coursera Offers $200 Off of Coursera Plus (Until January 11), Giving You Unlimited Access to Courses & Certificates
A new deal to start a new year: Coursera is offering a $200 discount on its...
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How Londinium Became London, Lutetia Became Paris, and Other Roman Cities Got Their Modern Names
They Might Be Giants achieved pop-cultural immortality when they covered Jimmy Kennedy and music by Nat...
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The Surprising Map of Plants: A New Animation Shows How All the Different Plants Relate to Each Other
Are pinecones related to pineapples? This was the unexpected question with which my wife confronted me...
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What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2024: Enjoy Classic Works by Virginia Woolf, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, D. H. Lawrence, Bertolt Brecht & More
More than thirty years after it was first privately published in 1928, Lady Chatterley’s Lover became...
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The Great Gatsby Explained: How F. Scott Fitzgerald Indicted & Endorsed the American Dream (1925)
When The Great Gatsby was first published, it flopped; nearly a century later, its place at...