CULTURE

In the trail­er below for the world’s first 3D repli­ca of St. Peter’s Basil­i­ca, Yves Ubel­mann speaks of using “AI for Good,” which isn’t just an ide­al, but also the name of a lab at Microsoft. Microsoft and Ubel­man’s dig­i­tal-preser­va­tion com­pa­ny Iconem...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XjN4DCNt6E 114 years ago today (Novem­ber 20, 1910), Leo Tol­stoy—the author who gave us two major Russ­ian clas­sics Anna Karen­i­na and War & Peace—died at Astapo­vo, a small, remote train sta­tion in the heart of Rus­sia. Pneu­mo­nia was the offi­cial cause....

Pierre-Joseph Red­outé made his name by paint­ing flow­ers, an achieve­ment impos­si­ble with­out a metic­u­lous­ness that exceeds all bounds of nor­mal­i­ty. He pub­lished his three-vol­ume col­lec­tion Les Ros­es and his eight-vol­ume col­lec­tion Les Lil­i­acées between 1802 and 1824, and a glance at their...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKr6Npp4kvQ In April, 1983, 50 mil­lion tele­vi­sion view­ers watched the illu­sion­ist David Cop­per­field make the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty dis­ap­pear, straight into thin air. If you’re north of 50, you per­haps remem­ber the spec­ta­cle. How did he do it? 40 years...

There’s an eXo­dus tak­ing place, and mil­lions are find­ing a new home on Bluesky. In recent days, the decen­tral­ized social media plat­form has been gain­ing 10,000 new users every 10–15 min­utes, or about 1 mil­lion new users per day. Open...

Image by J. F. Horra­bin, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons Bertrand Rus­sell may have lived his long life con­cerned with big top­ics in log­ic, math­e­mat­ics, pol­i­tics, and soci­ety, but that did­n’t keep him from think­ing seri­ous­ly about how to han­dle his own...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s3UogfAGg0 In 1994, Jer­ry Beck edit­ed the book, The 50 Great­est Car­toons: As Select­ed by 1,000 Ani­ma­tion Pro­fes­sion­als, which chal­lenged experts to cre­ate a rank­ing of the best short, cel ani­mat­ed car­toons ever made. To no one’s sur­prise, the experts chose 10 Warn­er Bros. ani­ma­tions...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrXUcEh0ncE More than 120 years after the end of the Vic­to­ri­an era, we might assume that we retain a more or less accu­rate cul­tur­al mem­o­ry of the Vic­to­ri­ans them­selves: of their social mores, their aes­thet­ic sen­si­bil­i­ties, their ambi­tions great and...

A heads-up on a deal: Between today and Decem­ber 2, 2024, Cours­era is offer­ing a 40% dis­count on its annu­al sub­scrip­tion plan called “Cours­era Plus.” Nor­mal­ly priced at $399, Cours­era Plus (now avail­able for $239.40) gives you access to 7,000+ cours­es...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRzpDqqB2fk Burj Al Babas might have been con­struct­ed express­ly to attract the atten­tion of the inter­net. “Sit­ting near the Black Sea, the town is full of half-fin­ished, ful­ly aban­doned mini cas­tles — 587 of them to be exact,” write Archi­tec­tur­al...