Listen to James Baldwin’s Record Collection in a 478-track, 32-Hour Spotify Playlist

Photo via Wikimedia Commons
Each writer’s process is a personal relationship between them and the page—and the desk, room, chair, pens or pencils, typewriter or laptop, turntable, CD player, streaming audio… you get the idea. The kind of music suitable for listening to while writing (I, for one, cannot write to music with lyrics) varies so widely that it encompasses everything and nothing. Silence can be a kind of music, too, if you listen closely.
Far more interesting than trying to make general rules is to examine specific cases: to learn the music a writer hears when they compose, to divine the rhythms that animated their prose.





There are almost always clues. Favorite albums left behind in writing rooms or written about with high praise. Sometimes the music enters into the novel, becomes a character itself. In James Baldwin’s Another Country, music is a powerful procreative force:
The beat: hands, feet, tambourines, drums, pianos, laughter, curses, razor blades: the man stiffening with a laugh and a growl and a purr and the woman moistening and softening with a whisper and a sigh and a cry. The beat—in Harlem in the summertime one could almost see it, shaking above the pavements and the roof.
Baldwin finished his first novel, 1953’s Go Tell It on the Mountain, not in Harlem but in the Swiss Alps, where he moved “with two Bessie Smith records and a typewriter under his arm,” writes Valentina Di Liscia at Hyperallergic. He “largely attributes” the novel “to Smith’s bluesy intonations.” As he told Studs Terkel in 1961, “Bessie had the beat. In that icy wilderness, as far removed from Harlem as anything you can imagine, with Bessie and me… I began…”

Ikechúkwú Onyewuenyi, a curator at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, has gone much further, digging through all the deep cuts in Baldwin’s collection while living in Provence and trying to recapture the atmosphere of Baldwin’s home, “those boisterous and tender convos when guests like Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder… Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison” stopped by for dinner and debates. He first encountered the records in a photograph posted by La Maison Baldwin, the organization that preserves his house in Saint-Paul de Vence in the South of France. “I latched onto his records, their sonic ambience,” Onyewuenyi says.
“In addition to reading the books and essays” that Baldwin wrote while living in France, Onyewuenyi discovered “listening to the records was something that could transport me there.” He has compiled Baldwin’s collection into a 478-track, 32-hour Spotify playlist, Chez Baldwin. Only two records couldn’t be found on the streaming platform, Lou Rawls’ When the Night Comes (1983) and Ray Charles’s Sweet & Sour Tears (1964). Listen to the full playlist above, preferably while reading Baldwin, or composing your own works of prose, verse, drama, and email.
“The playlist is a balm of sorts when one is writing,” Onyewuenyi told Hyperallergic. “Baldwin referred to his office as a ‘torture chamber.’ We’ve all encountered those moments of writers’ block, where the process of putting pen to paper feels like bloodletting. That process of torture for Baldwin was negotiated with these records.”
via Hyperallergic
Related Content: 
Why James Baldwin’s Writing Stays Powerful: An Artfully Animated Introduction to the Author of Notes of a Native Son
The Best Music to Write By: Give Us Your Recommendations
The Best Music to Write By, Part II: Your Favorites Brought Together in a Special Playlist
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness.

Listen to James Baldwin’s Record Collection in a 478-track, 32-Hour Spotify Playlist is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Bill Gates Picks 5 Good Books for a Lousy Year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxlx8aZJ6mE





2020 has been a terrible year. But that hasn’t stopped Bill Gates (as is his custom) from choosing, he says, “five books that I enjoyed—some because they helped me go deeper on a tough issue, others because they offered a welcome change of pace.”
Below, you can read, in his own words, the selections he published here.
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein. I started following Epstein’s work after watching his fantastic 2014 TED talk on sports performance. In this fascinating book, he argues that although the world seems to demand more and more specialization—in your career, for example—what we actually need is more people “who start broad and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives while they progress.” His examples run from Roger Federer to Charles Darwin to Cold War-era experts on Soviet affairs. I think his ideas even help explain some of Microsoft’s success, because we hired people who had real breadth within their field and across domains. If you’re a generalist who has ever felt overshadowed by your specialist colleagues, this book is for you. More on the book here.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, by Michelle Alexander. Like many white people, I’ve tried to deepen my understanding of systemic racism in recent months. Alexander’s book offers an eye-opening look into how the criminal justice system unfairly targets communities of color, and especially Black communities. It’s especially good at explaining the history and the numbers behind mass incarceration. I was familiar with some of the data, but Alexander really helps put it in context. I finished the book more convinced than ever that we need a more just approach to sentencing and more investment in communities of color. More on the book here.
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz, by Erik Larson. Sometimes history books end up feeling more relevant than their authors could have imagined. That’s the case with this brilliant account of the years 1940 and 1941, when English citizens spent almost every night huddled in basements and Tube stations as Germany tried to bomb them into submission. The fear and anxiety they felt—while much more severe than what we’re experiencing with COVID-19—sounded familiar. Larson gives you a vivid sense of what life was like for average citizens during this awful period, and he does a great job profiling some of the British leaders who saw them through the crisis, including Winston Churchill and his close advisers. Its scope is too narrow to be the only book you ever read on World War II, but it’s a great addition to the literature focused on that tragic period. More on the book here.
The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War, by Ben Macintyre. This nonfiction account focuses on Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB officer who became a double agent for the British, and Aldrich Ames, the American turncoat who likely betrayed him. Macintyre’s retelling of their stories comes not only from Western sources (including Gordievsky himself) but also from the Russian perspective. It’s every bit as exciting as my favorite spy novels. More on the book here.
Breath from Salt: A Deadly Genetic Disease, a New Era in Science, and the Patients and Families Who Changed Medicine, by Bijal P. Trivedi. This book is truly uplifting. It documents a story of remarkable scientific innovation and how it has improved the lives of almost all cystic fibrosis patients and their families. This story is especially meaningful to me because I know families who’ve benefited from the new medicines described in this book. I suspect we’ll see many more books like this in the coming years, as biomedical miracles emerge from labs at an ever-greater pace. More on the book here.
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Related Content:
Bill Gates Describes His Biggest Fear: “I Rate the Chance of a Widespread Epidemic Far Worse Than Ebola at Well Over 50 Percent” (2015)
Take Big History: A Free Short Course on 13.8 Billion Years of History, Funded by Bill Gates
Bill Gates Recommends 5 Thought-Provoking Books to Read This Summer
How Bill Gates Reads Books
Bill Gates Names His New Favorite Book of All Time

Bill Gates Picks 5 Good Books for a Lousy Year is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

160,000+ Medieval Manuscripts Online: Where to Find Them

“Manuscripts are the most important medium writing has ever had,” declares the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the Universität Hamburg. Under the influence of a certain presentist bias, this can be hard to believe. We are conditioned by what Marshall McLuhan described as The Gutenberg Galaxy: each of us is in some way what he called (in gendered language) a “Gutenberg Man.” From this point of view, “manuscript technology,” as he wrote in 1962, does “not have the intensity or power of extension to create publics on a national scale.” It seems quaint, archaic, too rarified to have much influence.
It may be the case, as McLuhan writes, that the printing press and the modern nation state arose together, but this is not necessarily an unqualified measure of progress. Print has had a few hundred years—however, “for thousands of years,” Universität Hamburg reminds us, “manuscripts have had a determining influence on all cultures that were shaped by them.” McLuhan himself was a distinguished scholar and a devoted Catholic who no doubt understood this very well. One suspects lesser writers might avoid the manuscript, in its incredible complexity, because it’s not only a different kind, it is a different species of media altogether.





Manuscript culture is its own field of study for good reason. We are generally talking about texts written on parchment or vellum, which are, after all, treated animal skins. Paper is easier to reproduce, but has a much shorter shelf life. No two manuscripts are the same, some differ from each other wildly: variants, interpolations, redactions, erasures, palimpsests, etc. are standard, requiring special training in editorial methods. Then there’s the languages and the handwriting…. It can be forbidding, but there are other, more surmountable reasons this field has been so hermetic until the recent past.

The primary sources have been inaccessible, hidden away in special collections, and the scholarship and pedagogy have been cloistered behind university walls. Open access digital publishing and free online courses and materials have changed the situation radically. And it is rapidly becoming the case that most manuscript libraries have major, and expanding, online collections, often scanned in high resolution, sometimes with transcriptions, and usually with additional resources explaining provenance and other such important details.

Indeed, there are thousands of manuscript pages online from well over a thousand years, and you’ll find them digitized at the links to several venerable institutions of preservation and higher learning below. There is, of course, no reason we cannot appreciate this long historical tradition for purely aesthetic reasons. So many Medieval manuscripts are works of art in their own right. But if we want to get into the gritty details, we can start by learning how such illuminated medieval manuscripts were made: a lost art, but not, thanks to the durability of parchment, a lost tradition.

160,000 Pages of Glorious Medieval Manuscripts Digitized: Visit the Bibliotheca Philadelphiensis
800 Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts Are Now Online: Browse & Download Them Courtesy of the British Library and Bibliothèque Nationale de France
The Medieval Masterpiece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Digitized & Put Online
800+ Treasured Medieval Manuscripts to Be Digitized by Cambridge & Heidelberg Universities
Behold 3,000 Digitized Manuscripts from the Bibliotheca Palatina: The Mother of All Medieval Libraries Is Getting Reconstructed Online
Behold the Codex Gigas (aka “Devil’s Bible”), the Largest Medieval Manuscript in the World
The Aberdeen Bestiary, One of the Great Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts, Now Digitized in High Resolution & Made Available Online
New Digital Archive Will Bring Medieval Chants Back to Life: Project Amra Will Feature 300 Digitized Manuscripts and Many Audio Recordings

Learn even more at the links below.
Related Content:
How Illuminated Medieval Manuscripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beautiful, Centuries-Old Craft
How to Make a Medieval Manuscript: An Introduction in 7 Videos
How the Brilliant Colors of Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts Were Made with Alchemy
Behold the Beautiful Pages from a Medieval Monk’s Sketchbook: A Window Into How Illuminated Manuscripts Were Made (1494)
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness
 
 
 
 

160,000+ Medieval Manuscripts Online: Where to Find Them is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

MIT’s Introduction to Deep Learning: A Free Online Course

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njKP3FqW3Sk





MIT has posted online its introductory course on deep learning, which covers applications to computer vision, natural language processing, biology, and more. Students “will gain foundational knowledge of deep learning algorithms and get practical experience in building neural networks in TensorFlow.” Prerequisites assume calculus (i.e. taking derivatives) and linear algebra (i.e. matrix multiplication). Experience in Python is helpful but not necessary. The first lecture appears above. The rest of the course materials (videos & slides) can be found here.
Introduction to Deep Learning will be added to our collection, 1,500 Free Online Courses from Top Universities.  You can also find Deep Learning courses on Coursera.
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MIT’s Introduction to Deep Learning: A Free Online Course is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Are You Happy, David Lynch?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lMxN4pIQS4





Filmmaker David Lynch answers a basic life question from Mary Anne Hobbs, BBC Radio 6 DJ, during a fan Q&A. The accompanying video apparently comes from The Art Life documentary trailer.
The source of Lynch’s happiness? Most likely meditation. Find more on that below.
Related Content:
David Lynch Explains How Meditation Boosts Our Creativity (Plus Free Resources to Help You Start Meditating)
David Lynch Visualizes How Transcendental Meditation Works with Sharpie & Big Pad of Paper
David Lynch Muses About the Magic of Cinema & Meditation in a New Abstract Short Film
David Lynch Creates a Very Surreal Plug for Transcendental Meditation
An Animated David Lynch Explains Where He Gets His Ideas

Are You Happy, David Lynch? is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

For Dave Brubeck’s 100th Birthday, Watch Pakistani Musicians Play an Enchanting Version of “Take Five”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLF46JKkCNg





How’s this for fusion? Here we have The Sachal Studios Orchestra, based in Lahore, Pakistan, playing an innovative cover of “Take Five,” the jazz standard written by Paul Desmond and originally performed by The Dave Brubeck Quartet in 1959. Brubeck–who would have celebrated his 100th birthday today–called it the “most interesting” version he had ever heard. Once you watch the performance above, you’ll know why.
According to The Guardian, The Sachal Studios Orchestra was created by Izzat Majeed, a philanthropist based in London. When Pakistan fell under the dictatorship of General Zia-ul-Haq during the 1980s, Pakistan’s classical music scene fell on hard times. Many musicians were forced into professions they had never imagined — selling clothes, electrical parts, vegetables, etc. Whatever was necessary to get by. Today, many of these musicians have come together in a 60-person orchestra that plays in a state-of-the-art studio, designed partly by Abbey Road sound engineers.





You can purchase their album, Sachal Jazz: Interpretations of Jazz Standards & Bossa Nova, on Amazon and iTunes. It includes versions of “Take Five” and “The Girl from Ipanema.”
For good measure, we’ve added Sachal’s take on “Eleanor Rigby,” something George Harrison would surely have loved.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-tjby6f8fg





Note: A version of this post first appeared on our site back in 2013. But as enchanting as it is, it seemed worth bringing back.
Would you like to support the mission of Open Culture? Please consider making a donation to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your contributions will help us continue providing the best free cultural and educational materials to learners everywhere.
Also consider following Open Culture on Facebook and Twitter and sharing intelligent media with your friends. Or sign up for our daily email and get a daily dose of Open Culture in your inbox. 

Related Content:
How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz Music
Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Performed on a Gayageum, a Traditional Korean Instrument
Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Performed on Traditional Chinese Instruments
An Uplifting Musical Surprise for Dave Brubeck in Moscow (1997)
Ultra Orthodox Rabbis Sing Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” on the Streets of Jerusalem

For Dave Brubeck’s 100th Birthday, Watch Pakistani Musicians Play an Enchanting Version of “Take Five” is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Gratitude and Crunchy Granola recipe

It’s so awesome to be able to share your passion with the world, even if it’s only small part of the world. You feel flow of gratitude every day, you feel supported and loved. With every compliment you get every day, of course your ego is tickled, but with awareness and openness,  you simply get confirmation that you doing what you should be doing. And it feels good.
I don’t even know why I’m doing what I’m doing to be honest with you, but it feels right.  I’ve never been that passionate about cooking and spending so much time in the kitchen. Passionate about food, yes of course,  but more about the consuming part of it, rather then making it. But here I am, on a tropical island,  running a restaurant. I mean if you would tell me that’s what I’ll be doing 2 years ago, I would defo laugh out loud.  On top of that I’m sharing this experience with my man and friends who are always there if u need help.  Seriously,  I must be the luckiest one
With that in mind, I feel like I need to give back in order to keep the energy exchange flow going, so time for another recipe.  This one is on a special requests from a customer, who is trying to recreate our granola back at home, and wasn’t successful so far. It’s super quick and easy to make,  u just need to stock up with a bunch of products, that you can store and use it for other recipes and have them always handy.
And it goes like this:
Crunchy breakfast granola
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup rye flakes
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/2 cup chopped almods
1/2 cup chopped cashews
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup goji  berries
1/4 cup dates
1 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup coconut sugar or any liquid sweetener of your choice
2 tsp cinamon
1 Tbsp Vanilla extract
Preheat your oven to 180 Celsius and prepare baking tray with parchment paper.
Toss together all seeds,  nuts and flakes. In a separate bowl whisk together oil and sugar, cinamon and vanilla and add it to the seed and flake mix. Give it a good shake until all dry ingredients are coated in the sweet stuff. Now spread it evenly on the baking tray, and bake for about 30 minutes. Every 10 minutes move the mixture around the tray with spatula, this way you will ensure all babies are nicely toasted
They are ready when turning ice golden brow  colour.  Take it out and cool it down for few minutes, then add dried fruits and mix together. Tadaaaa.  Super crunchy granola for your breakfast,  or as healthy snack. Of course feel free to add whatever nuts, seeds or dried fruits you feel like.  The beauty of it is that you can always create new blend of flavours here.
Enjoy the fun of making it, and don’t forget to add some love to it.
Love

Is It Right For You? The Nitty Gritty of Quitting Coffee

Coffee is a staple in the lives of millions of people. For many, it’s the friend that’s always there to give you a lift when you need it. It’s warmth on a cold day. It’s capable of making every cell in your body buzz with life and allowing you, if only for a little while, to feel like anything is possible. But what if you’re one of the many who are trying to go off coffee? With all its perks, how can you say no?
It may be your 1st time or your 278th time trying to quit coffee. You may even still be one the fence about the whole thing.  Understanding the “nitty gritty” details of potential challenges and allies can help you quit for good, if that’s what you’re aiming for.
You need to know why you continue drinking it (what purpose does it serve) before you can truly decide if you’re ready and able to live without it. Why?
If you just quit coffee cold turkey, you may find that there are gaping holes (needs) that are left unfulfilled.  When you find others things that can play the roles that coffee once did, it can be that much easier to let it go for good.
Why is coffee so appealing? What purpose does it serve in your life?
#1 – It gets you going when you’re dragging, groggy or tired.
#2 – It can carry you through stressful situations.
#3– It suppresses the appetite – Some people use the “coffee for breakfast” diet to try and lose weight. Not only is this not a healthy way to lose weight, but it stresses the body out and can actually cause negative health effects as well. Busy folks use it not as a diet program, but as a substitute (a poor one, might I add) for taking time to eat a decent breakfast.
#4 – It’s a stimulant that many work places provide to keep you productive through the end of the day (the crash when you get home is on your time, not the company’s).
#5 – It provides warmth and comfort – Nothing like a warm beverage on a cold day to make your insides melt.
#6 – It satisfies the body’s desire for bitter tastes, which we’ve largely cut out of the diet.
#7 – It’s something you do with friends – Many people’s lives have become so busy that meeting for coffee has become one of the easiest ways to connect with others. Cafes and coffee shops are convenient meeting spots for friends or professional connections to gather and talk.
#8 – It can connect you with your community – Visiting your favorite local coffee shops, chatting with the baristas, and feeling like you’re not a hermit (especially if you’re a free-lancer or student) can be an important element of your day.
#9 – It has many proven health benefits – New studies have shown that coffee (in moderation) can have a positive effect on Type 2 diabetes, certain forms of cancer, and even Alzheimer’s disease.
As you read this list, you may be thinking to yourself, “These don’t sound so bad.” In some respects, you’re right. These are all needs that we have, and coffee (up until now) has been the quick fix. The question remains: is coffee solving or suppressing the real issue at hand?
People choose to quit coffee for many reasons: saving money, health conditions, frazzled nervous system, adrenal fatigue, headaches, sugar addiction, etc. Many people experience withdrawal symptoms when weaning themselves off of coffee and caffeine. There are things you can do to make this process less traumatic and more rewarding.
These insights can help you fill the perceived holes and unsatisfied needs that are often created when you give coffee the boot. Not only can they make it that much easier for you to embrace a coffee-free life, but you’re likely to become healthier and happier in the process.
(Crowd roars with applause)
Get good sleep
Allowing your body to fully rejuvenate will mean less need for “energy crutches” like caffeine and other stimulants.
De-stress your life
People often use coffee to get them through the day, to blast through stressors (temporary solution) instead of taking the time to dissolve the stress at the core. Move your body, write, work out, dance, meditate, shower, or do whatever works for you to channel that energy.
Eat a good breakfast
Sorry, but coffee doesn’t count as breakfast. It may suppress the appetite for a bit, but often leaves you ravenously hungry come lunch time. Start the day out right by eating a healthy breakfast that works for your body. It can change the way life unfolds.
Stay hydrated
Every cell in your body needs water to function properly. When you are fully hydrated, you can perform at your peak without the need for stimulants, caffeine or sugar.
Plan ahead for the 3:00pm energy dip
We’ve all experienced hitting the “3 o’clock wall,” feeling like a crash test dummy – lifeless, crumpled, and not good for much. You can avoid this by eating a solid yet light lunch. Heavy meals = “food comas”. Make sure you’re consuming meals full of nutrient dense foods and sources of long-lasting energy—protein, complex carbs, beans, legumes, etc.
Bring snacks
Instead of reaching for coffee when you need energy, grab a handful of nuts, piece of fruit and cut-up raw vegetables. They can give you a much-needed energy boost while improving your health (double win!).
Switch to decaf
I know a lot of coffee drinkers have some pretty strong opinions about decaf coffee. If you do go off coffee (for personal or medical reasons), decaf coffee can still provide a similar taste without the massive levels of caffeine. Choosing organic water-processed coffee is ideal, as it minimizes the pesticides and synthetics used in growing and processing the beans.
Get your bitter taste elsewhere
According to Ayurveda, bitter is one of the 6 tastes call Rasas. There are numerous health benefits of bitter tasting things, including cleansing and detoxifying the body, and reducing fat. To help you transition from dark roasted coffee to herbal, non-caffeinated teas, try roasted dandelion root tea (no caffeine!). It tastes similar to coffee and is beneficial for the liver. Other bitter tastes can be found in dark leafy greens, broccoli, celery, beets, and sprouts.
Give your adrenals a break
Caffeine can be very taxing for your adrenals if you are already suffering from adrenal fatigue. If you lead a high-stress lifestyle, chances are you may fall into that category. Allow the adrenal glands to rest and recover by reducing your caffeine in take. After all, they are responsible for your “fight or flight” response, and that’s one reaction you want to be razor sharp!
Be active
There are countless benefits to movement and exercise – we’ve all heard the drill. When it comes down to it, our bodies were meant to move in dynamic ways. Regular movement—yoga, dance parties, walking, swimming, climbing trees, or bouncing on a trampoline with your favorite little person—is one of the best ways to fuel your energy battery. After a good boogey, a long hike, or an intense workout at the gym, every cell in your body feels alive and buzzing. That is as good as any dose of caffeine and all the side effects are positive ones.
Quitting coffee can be quite a journey. You may be able to simply choose to stop drinking it without any problems, or you may go through withdrawal—headaches, energy rollercoasters, and other less pleasant symptoms. The key is to keep coming back to why you’re cutting back or eliminating it in the first place.
You may have many intentions for quitting coffee. You may have a desire to feel more clean and vibrant in your body. You may wish to be less dependent on substances to show up for life. You might simply want to save your money or give your body a break.
Get real with yourself about what role or purpose coffee serves in your life. Find ways that appeal to you of getting those needs met through other methods. Give yourself a taste of what it’s like to live a coffee-free life.

The Gluten Dilemma: Good or Gastric Disaster?

Everyone these days seems to be going gluten-free. Big grocery store chains are even riding the wave and rolling out their own brand of gluten-free goods. Is this just another health trend or is there substance behind this dietary shift?
The answer is both.
In order to explore this dilemma, you’ll need to know what gluten is, where it can be found, and how to tell if it’s working for you or against you. Ready to dive in?
Defining Gluten
Everyone talks about gluten, but what is it? According to the Oxford English Dictionary,

Gluten (noun) – a substance [a mixture of two proteins] present in cereal grains, especially wheat, that is responsible for the elastic texture of dough.
Origin: via French from Latin, literally ‘glue’

Gluten is the glue that binds everything together. It dough its elasticity, helps it rise and keep its shape, and gives it a chewy texture. We’ve all made dough ball with slices of Wonderbread. That’s gluten at work.
Where You Can Find It
There’s an easy way to remember what grains have gluten in them. They are the BROWS grains, (think eye brows).
Barley
Rye
Oats*
Wheat
Spelt
*Oats do not naturally contain gluten in them, but are often processed in facilities that also process gluten grains. This is very important for those who are allergic to gluten or have Celiac disease (an allergy is different than an intolerance).
Any product that is made with these grains will also contain gluten. This includes common dietary staples such as pasta, bread, and cookies. Gluten can also be found hiding in unlikely places such as energy bars, soups, scrambled eggs, and mashed potatoes. If you’re eliminating gluten from your diet, make sure to ask at restaurants if there’s gluten in their dishes, and be familiar with the sneaky sources the wait staff might not think of.
People have been eating wheat for thousands of years, so why is it all of a sudden becoming an issue? The wheat we eat now is a very different type of wheat that our ancestors ate. According to Dr. Frank Lipman, “American strains of wheat have a much higher gluten content (which is needed to make light, fluffy Wonder Bread and giant bagels) than those traditionally found in Europe.”
Could this be the reason gluten intolerance and celiac disease are on the rise, or is there something else going on? New studies have also shown that Celiac disease may have popped up as a side effect of recent genetic adaptations in humans. That brings it to another level all together.
The combination of increased gluten content in modern wheat, genetic adaptations, and an overuse of gluten grains in processed foods means major gluten overload for the body. Why is that important?
How to Tell if Gluten is Working For or Against You
When it comes to “the gluten dilemma,” there is a spectrum of disease, ranging from mild gluten sensitivity (most common) to full-blown celiac disease (less frequent).
Some suggest that Celiac disease occurs in almost 1% of all Americans. When it comes to gluten sensitivity—or where some form of immune reaction occurs to gluten—the numbers may be as high as 1 in 3 Americans. Could this be why so many people who go off gluten no longer feel an overall sense of unwellness?
Unfortunately, if you get a blood test for celiac, gluten sensitivity doesn’t show up on it. It may not show up on a test, but it can still affect you with physical, mental and emotional symptoms.
Although the majority of the damage occurs in the digestive tract, especially the small intestines, the symptoms manifest in many different ways throughout the entire body.
Here are some signs that you may be suffering from gluten sensitivity or Celiac disease:

Digestive issues such as gas, bloating, diarrhea, acid reflux and constipation
Fatigue, brain fog or feeling tired after eating a meal that contains gluten
Diagnosis of an autoimmune disease such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, ulcerative colitis, lupus, multiple sclerosis or scleroderma
Migraine headaches
Reproductive health issues such as abnormal menstrual cycles and infertility
Swelling and inflammation
Skin problems such as acne and rosacea
Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia)

Like many health trends, there are those who will simply give it a go just to say they’ve tried it. For many people, including myself, going off gluten may actually be the key to healing unresolved health issues and living a better life.
When I stopped eating gluten, so many of my seemly random and unconnected health issues slowly starting resolving. Within a few months of going off gluten completely, I no longer had cystic acne (a 10 year battle), red cheeks, digestive issues (too many to name), or hypoglycemia. I was stunned, overjoyed, and totally bummed out at the same time.
Why would I be upset about resolving so many health issues?
It meant that I could no longer continue to eat unconsciously. I now understood what was causing my symptoms, and could no longer pretend otherwise. I had to and wanted to take responsibility for my health, yet felt completely overwhelmed. This was before the flood of gluten-free products on the market.
To cut gluten from your life is no small feat. It’s in everything. Some of your all-time favorite foods probably contain it. You will need to approach food in a completely new way.
This is a blessing and a challenge.
A blessing in that you get to re-evaluate what’s gong into your body and become more aware of how your food affects you. A challenge in that going out to restaurants, over to friend’s houses for dinner, or grabbing a meal on the road can become complicated.
Luckily, food producers are quick on the uptake and are coming out with gluten-free products that taste good and have a pleasant texture. If you’ve ever had a loaf (aka brick) of rice bread, you know what I mean. You can now enjoy fluffy buckwheat and chia bread, corn and quinoa pasta, rice crackers and almond meal cookies.
Before you go on a gluten-free shopping spree resembling the “Shop Till You Drop” TV show from the 1990s—cart overflowing with items frantically snatched from every possible shelf—gluten-free doesn’t automatically equal healthy.
Lots of gluten-free processed foods contain high amounts of sugar, preservative, and other unhealthy ingredients. In your excitement to explore the world of “gluten or no gluten,” don’t forget to read the labels and incorporate plenty of whole, non-gluten grains in your diet.
If you decide to explore how gluten makes you feel, know that there are plenty of resources out there to help you along the way. Ultimately, the goal is to find the foods that make you feel healthy, strong, vibrant and alive.
Don’t take my word for it. Use your body as a walking laboratory experiment and see for yourself if gluten is in fact a good or gastric disaster.

The Great Courses Offers Every Course for $40 Until Midnight Tonight

Here’s a holiday season deal worth mentioning. The Great Courses (formerly The Teaching Company) is offering every course for $40 in digital format (or $60 in DVD format). The deal lasts through midnight on Black Friday.
If you’re not familiar with it, the Great Courses provides a very nice service. They travel across the U.S., recording great professors lecturing on great topics that will appeal to any lifelong learner. They then make the courses available to customers in different formats (DVD, CD, Video & Audio Downloads, etc.). The courses are very polished and complete, and they can be quite reasonably priced, especially when they’re on sale, as they are today. Click here to explore the offer.
Separately, it’s also worth mentioning that the Great Courses Plus–which makes courses available in streaming format as part of a monthly subscription service–is running a Black Friday deal where you can get a free trial for the service, plus 20% of popular plans.
Note: The Great Courses is a partner with Open Culture. So if you purchase a course, it benefits not just you and Great Courses. It benefits Open Culture too. So consider it win-win-win.
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Hear 11-Year-Old Björk Sing “I Love to Love”: Her First Recorded Song (1976)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rujxXOmYLUU





Several years back, we featured an eleven-year-old Björk reading a nativity story in her native Icelandic, backed by unsmiling older kids from the Children’s Music School in Reykjavík. In this new find, also dating from 1976, you can hear that same eleven-year-old Björk singing in English, in what marks her first recording. Above, she sings the Tina Charles song “I Love to Love” for a school recital. According to Laughing Squid, the “teachers were so impressed with her voice, they sent the recording to the national radio station where it received a great deal of play.” Soon thereafter (in 1977) came her first album, featuring cover art provided by her mom. We’ve previously explored that here on OC.
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Related Content
Watch Björk, Age 11, Read a Christmas Nativity Story on a 1976 Icelandic TV Special
Hear the Album Björk Recorded as an 11-Year-Old: Features Cover Art Provided By Her Mom (1977)
A Young Björk Deconstructs (Physically & Theoretically) a Television in a Delightful Retro Video

Hear 11-Year-Old Björk Sing “I Love to Love”: Her First Recorded Song (1976) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

An Animated Stan Lee Explains Why the F-Word Is “the Most Useful Word in the English Language” (NSFW)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DScnnorHEuw





FYI. The language in this video is not safe for work. And, now, on with the show.
In the last couple years of his life, Stan Lee was ill, his health failing, but he stayed engaged and remained his old wisecracking self. His handpicked successor for editor-in-chief at Marvel, Roy Thomas, tells the story of the last time he saw Lee and showed him his then-new biography of the comics legend, The Stan Lee Story. They talked about the Spider-Man comic strip they’d written together for two decades until a couple years back. Other familiar subjects came and went. Lee “was ready to go” and seemed at peace, Thomas says.
“But he was still talking about doing more cameos. As long as he had the energy for it and didn’t have to travel, Stan was always up to do some more cameos.” Lee’s cameos continue after his death in 2018, as is the way now with deceased icons. He has made three live-action appearances posthumously, in footage shot before his death, one posthumous appearance in an animated superhero film, and another in a Spider-Man video game. Soon, these vignettes may be all popular audiences know of him.
Who knows how much footage–or willingness to create CGI Stan Lees—Disney has in store for future Marvel films. But a memorial in scripted one-liners seems to miss out on a whole lot of Stan Lee. The man could be counted on to make the set on time. (According to Jason Mewes, Lee had dinner with his wife every single night without fail at 6:00 pm sharp.) But he could also be unpredictable in some very delightful ways.
Thomas tells a story, for example, of visiting Lee in the 80s in a California house with marble floors. “At one point he excused himself, and he came back on roller skates…. I’d never seen anyone roller-skating on a marble floor.” The short film above animates another of these unscripted moments, when Lee literally went off-script to deliver an extemporaneous monologue on the f-word. Of course, “I don’t say it, ‘cause I don’t say dirty words,” he begins, before letting it rip in an argument for the f-word as “the most useful word in the English language.”
Lee’s off-the-cuff George Carlin routine rolls right into his reason for being in the recording booth: getting a take of his signature exclamation, “Excelsior!”—the word the creator or co-creator of Spider-Man, Thor, Iron Man, Ant Man, Black Widow, Black Panther (and most the rest of the Marvel Universe) reserved for emphasis in his heartfelt, wholesome letters to fans over the decades. After he says his catchphrase, James Whitbrook writes at io9, he goes “right back into having a laugh with everyone around him. It’s a lovely, if profane, remembrance of an icon,” and, unfortunately, not the kind of thing likely to make it in future cameo appearances.
Related Content: 
Stan Lee (RIP) Gets an Exuberant Fan Letter from 15-Year-Old George R.R. Martin, 1963
R.I.P. Stan Lee: Take His Free Online Course “The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact On Pop Culture”
The Great Stan Lee Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven”
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

An Animated Stan Lee Explains Why the F-Word Is “the Most Useful Word in the English Language” (NSFW) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Watch Digital Dancers Electrify the Streets of Istanbul

Are you open to the idea of otherworldly beings moving amongst us, benign but unseen?
Director Gökalp Gönen seems to be in the above video for jazz innovator Ilhan Ersahin’s “Hurri-Mitanni” (Good News).
Things kick off in a decidedly low key manner—a young woman sets off for a nighttime stroll through the streets of Istanbul, her face deliberately obscured by a snugly tied black and white cloth.
Turning a corner, she passes an anonymous figure, wrapped head to toe in similar stripes.


Does this unexpected sight elicit any discernible reaction?
Our guess is no, but we can’t say for sure, as the camera loses interest in the young woman, opting to linger with the svelte and exuberant mummy, who’s dancing like no one is watching.
Elsewhere, other increasingly colorful beings perform variations on the mummy’s box step, alone or in groups.
As their outfits become more fanciful, Gönen employs CGI and 3D animation to unhitch them from the laws of physics and familiar boundaries of human anatomy.
They pixellate, sprout extra legs, project rays reminiscent of string art, appear more vegetable than animal….
Some grow to Godzilla-like proportions, shedding little humanoid forms and bounding across the Bosporus.
A small spiky version ignores the paws of a curious kitten.
These fantastical, faceless beings are invisible to passerby. Only one, performing on an outdoor stage, seems eager for interaction. None of them seen to mean any harm.
They just wanna boogie…
…or do they?
The director’s statement is not easily parsed in translation:
A group of anonymous wandering the streets. Everywhere is very crowded but identities are very few. Trying to be someone is as difficult as writing your name on the waves left by this fast-moving giant ship. Everyone is everyone and everyone is nobody anymore. This silence could only exist through glowing screens, even if it found itself nooks. On those loud screens, they reminded who actually had the power by entering the places that were said to be inaccessible. But they didn’t even care about this power. The areas where we had passionate conversations about it for days were a “now like this” place for us, but they looked like this to say “no, it was actually like that” but they did not speak much. They had the charm of a cat. When they said, “Look, it was like this,” they became part of everything that made it “like this” and became unnoticeable like paving stones. They just wanted to have a little fun, to be able to live a few years without worry. In five minutes, fifteen seconds at most, they existed and left.
A few creatures who got left on the cutting room floor can be seen dancing on Gönen’s Instagram profile.
via Colossal
Related Content: 
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The Dance Theatre of Harlem Dances Through the Streets of NYC: A Sight to Behold
Istanbul Captured in Beautiful Color Images from 1890: The Hagia Sophia, Topkaki Palace’s Imperial Gate & More
Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine.  Follow her @AyunHalliday.

Watch Digital Dancers Electrify the Streets of Istanbul is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

The Great Courses Offers Every Course on Sale for $60 or Less (Until December 1)

Here’s a holiday season deal worth mentioning. For Cyber Monday, The Great Courses (formerly The Teaching Company) is offering every course for $60 in digital format or less. The sale lasts through the end of December 1.
If you’re not familiar with it, the Great Courses provides a very nice service. They travel across the U.S., recording great professors lecturing on great topics that will appeal to any lifelong learner. They then make the courses available to customers in different formats (DVD, CD, Video & Audio Downloads, etc.). The courses are very polished and complete, and they can be quite reasonably priced, especially when they’re on sale, as they are today. Click here to explore the offer.
Note: The Great Courses is a partner with Open Culture. So if you purchase a course, it benefits not just you and Great Courses. It benefits Open Culture too. So consider it win-win-win.
Related Content:
1,500 Free Online Courses from Top Universities
Masterclass Is Running a “Buy One, Give One Free” Deal (Until November 30)
1,150 Free Movies Online: Great Classics, Indies, Noir, Westerns, etc.

The Great Courses Offers Every Course on Sale for $60 or Less (Until December 1) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Trying To Do Too Much? Adrenal Fatigue May Be Waiting…

Let’s face it—daily living can be stressful. Our days are filled with work, friends, social media, appointments, bills, feeding and bathing, and the basics of keeping house. Sometimes it can feel like we have to do it all. Are you packing your days full in order to try and fit it all in? Do you sometimes feel like a superhero without the extra special outfit? Sorry to burst your bubble, but you are mortal.
It’s okay. You can take off your invisible superhero cape (I won’t think any less of you, promise!). The world won’t collapse if you slow down, give yourself a break, and do what you need to do to avoid the train wreck ahead. If you keep going at this speed, that’s exactly where you’re headed.
That train wreck has a name—adrenal fatigue.
Your adrenal glands may seem insignificant, but these little triangular organs have the power to influence your life in big ways.
The adrenal glands are endocrine glands responsible for secreting important hormones directly into the blood stream. They sit on top of the kidney, and are mainly responsible for regulating your body’s stress response by making hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline.
Studies have shown that these hormones are only meant to be in the body for short periods of time. When there is an excess of these two hormones for an extended period of time, it can be toxic for the body, and lead to adrenal fatigue as well as other diseases.
In short, adrenal fatigue is no one’s best friend.
Without knowing it, I suffered from adrenal fatigue for many years. I was always pushing myself, piling too much on my plate, and had a very strong “superwoman complex”—I can, therefore have to do everything myself. Remind you of anyone you know?
I had no idea why I got tired so quickly, why I couldn’t handle alcohol or sugar, why my blood-sugar levels were always out of whack, and why the dark circles under my eyes never went away. Only once I stepped back to take a look at my approach to life did it start to make sense that I had gone down a path to an undesirable destination—adrenal fatigue.
I want you to be familiar with some of the “red flags” and warnings, know how to identify the most common symptoms, and have a few ideas of where to begin remedying the problem.
Awareness is the first step.
Here are some warning signs that you could be on the path to adrenal fatigue:
You’re always “on.”
You’re “plugged in” to multiple devices at all times. You’re always reachable by text, phone, Facebook, and email. You are there for your kids, your family, your job, your partner, your neighbor, and your 500+ friends on Facebook, even if it means putting your own needs aside. Taking some much needed “You Time”…HA! Fat chance.
Your schedule is always full.
It’s an unusual day when you aren’t running from home to work to appointments to social gathering and back again. Sure, you may be having the time of your life, but there’s no room in your schedule for spontaneity, for down time, or for much-needed self-care—things like joyous movement, time for being creative, or investing in yourself with a course or workshop.
You have a “just push through it” attitude.
There’s a healthy way to push through obstacles and challenges but if that is the constant reality of your life, it may be time to reevaluate. It’s true, sometimes you need to just get through it—like when you’re courageously forging a new career path, pursuing your dreams, starting a new business, or going to graduate school. But if your life just seems to be filled with things that need to be pushed through with sheer willpower, maybe you are actually going against the flow and making everything harder than it needs to be.
You view sleep as a luxury.
Sleep isn’t something you reward yourself with for doing everything on your to-do list. It’s something sacred, something necessary, and something essential for a sustainable and fulfilling life. When you sleep, your systems detoxify, your cells repair themselves, your immune system rejuvenates, and your organs get a chance to come back into balance. This isn’t a luxury, but a bare minimum for maintaining overall health.
You depend on stimulants to get you through the day.
Coffee or black tea in the morning to get you going, energy drink to get you through lunch, soda to ward off the 3:00pm slump, and dessert to help you let go of the day. These stimulants are just a stand-in for the natural energy you don’t have. Imagine what your life could be like if you had an abundance of energy and didn’t need to weaken your adrenals in order to show up for your day.
When the adrenals are tired, over-worked, or exhausted, it may show up in the body in a number of different ways.
Common symptoms of exhausted adrenal glands:

Dark circles under the eyes
Lack of libido
Low stamina for stress
Easily irritated
Lower back pain, especially on the sides of the body
Dry, unhealthy skin
A craving for salt
Low blood sugar
Cravings for sweets and carbs, intolerance to alcohol
Excessive mood responses after eating carbs (e.g. pasta, breads and sugar)
Tired but wired feeling
Poor sleep
Dizziness
Muscle twitches
Heart palpitations
Sensitivity to light, or difficulty seeing at night
Excessive sweating or perspiration from little activity
Chronic infections (bacterial, viral, fungal, yeast)
Low blood pressure
Light-headedness on standing up
Premature aging
Cystic breasts
Tendency to startle easily
Negative response to thyroid hormone

If you think you might be experiencing adrenal fatigue, or possibly on the brink of it, it’s best that you address the problem pronto. Your adrenals need you, and you need them.
5 Things You Can Do To Help
1.  Sleep
Your body repairs itself and gets ready for the busy day ahead while you are in dreamland. Cut that time short and you stop your body from fully recharging. Getting enough sleep means going to bed before 11:00pm (10:00pm is ideal, if you can do it). If you make this a priority and stick with it, your adrenals will get their beauty rest.
2.  Ditch the sugar and processed foods.
Foods loaded with sugar and simple carbohydrates put stress on your adrenals. Your adrenal glands are responsible for regulating your blood sugar, and when you ingest a massive does of sugary junk, you adrenals have to work hard to deal with the influx.
3.  Eat healthy
Include a diversity of fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, beans, legumes, and whole grains. Choosing organic and local whenever possible is ideal, as it reduces the toxins in the food you eat and the impact on the environment. There are many ways to eat healthy when you’re busy. It isn’t as hard as you’d think.
4.  Quit coffee
Caffeine of any kind causes your adrenal glands to produce adrenaline, a jolt that kicks your butt into gear in the morning and keeps you going in the afternoon when you’re falling asleep at your desk. If you require your adrenals to give you this “hit” multiple times a day, every day, they’re going to get tired.  If you want to reduce or get off coffee for good, there are superfoods and teas that can help.
5.  Drink water
Make sure you’re drinking plenty of fresh, filtered water every day. The amount will vary depending on your body weight and activity level—the more active you are, the more sweat and toxins you release, and the more water you need. Hydration is key to healthy and happy adrenals.
If you’re not there yet but see some warning signs, trust me, you’ll thank yourself for taking some preventative measures. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at alani@radianthealthlink.com if you need some support. That’s what I’m here for. In making necessary shifts in your diet and lifestyle, not only will you be nourishing your adrenals and supporting them in coming back into balance, but you’ll be living a healthier life as well.
Win-win.

Learn How to Play Chess Online: Free Chess Lessons for Beginners, Intermediate Players & Beyond

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SM2fcenx7KU





The most desired Christmas gift of 2020? A chess set. It’s certainly desired, at any rate, by the rapt viewers of The Queen’s Gambit, the acclaimed Netflix miniseries that debuted in October. Created by screenwriter-producers Scott Frank and Allan Scott, its seven episodes tell the story of Beth Harmon, an orphan in 1950s Kentucky who turns out to be a chess prodigy, then goes on to become a world-class player. During the Cold War, the intellectual and geopolitical prospect of American and Soviet masters going head to head stoked public interest in chess; over the past month, the surprise success of The Queen’s Gambit has had a similar effect.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21L45Qo6EIY





Whether or not you feel a sense of kinship with the series’ unrelentingly chess-obsessed young protagonist, you may well feel an urge to learn, or re-learn, to play the game. If so, all the resources you need are online, and today we’ve rounded them up for you.


To get started, Chess.com has produced “Everything You Need to Know About Chess,” a series of Youtube videos “designed to give every aspiring chess player the ‘one chess lesson of their life’ if they were only to get one.” Watch them, or explore these web-based tutorials. And even if you don’t have a chess set of your own, you can get started playing immediately thereafter: create an account at Chess.com and you can play against the computer or real players around the world matched to your skill level, all for free.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ao9iOeK_jvU





To shore up your knowledge of the game’s fundamentals, watch this five-video series by instructor John Bartholomew on topics like undefended pieces, coordination, and typical mistakes. The Chess Website’s Youtube channel covers even more, and its basics playlist teaches everything from opening principles to the nature of individual pieces, pawn, rook, knight, and beyond.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5o2d9slUCM





But nobody with a taste for chess can stop at the basics, and the supply of instruction has grown to meet the demand. The St. Louis Chess Club offers a series of lectures from national masters and grandmasters geared toward beginning, intermediate, and advanced players.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdHWAuQRG7E





At Chess School, you’ll find videos on”the greatest chess games ever played, the immortal chess games, the best games from the latest tournaments, world champion’s games, instructive chess games, famous players games and much more.” Among serious players you’ll find many fans of Agadmator, whose extensive playlists examine current masters like Magnus Carlsen, past masters like Garry Kasparov, and examples of techniques like the English Opening and the Sicilian Defense, the later of which enjoyed quite a moment in the era of The Queen’s Gambit.  The series has hardly gone unnoticed in the chess world: on channels like Chess Network, you’ll even find videos about the strategies employed by Beth Harmon, whose style has been programmed into chess-playing AI “bots.” They also have a “Beginner to Chess Master” playlist that will continually build your understanding of the game in a step by step manner.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIMaTKOZG-8





The character’s personality, however, remains a creation of Walter Tevis, author of the eponymous novel The Queen’s Gambit. Tevis’ other works famously brought to the screen include The Hustler and The Man Who Fell to Earth: works of literature concerned, respectively, with mastery of a deceptively complex game and the condition of the social outsider. These themes come together in The Queen’s Gambit, whose author also described it as “a tribute to brainy women.” Perhaps you plan to give such a person in your life a chess set this year. If so, you know which book to wrap up with it — apart, of course, from  Ward Farnsworth’s 700-page Predator at The Chessboard: A Field Guide To Chess Tactics. Or Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess. If you have other favorite resources, please feel free to add them to the list below…


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxzBKhVaRkU





Related Content:
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A Brief History of Chess: An Animated Introduction to the 1,500-Year-Old Game
Vladimir Nabokov’s Hand-Drawn Sketches of Mind-Bending Chess Problems
The Magic of Chess: Kids Share Their Uninhibited, Philosophical Insights about the Benefits of Chess
Garry Kasparov Now Teaching an Online Course on Chess
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.

Learn How to Play Chess Online: Free Chess Lessons for Beginners, Intermediate Players & Beyond is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

“I Can Stop Anytime, I Just Don’t Want To”…Says Your Sugar Addiction

Can we really stop eating sugar, or do we just want to believe that sugar doesn’t have us in its sticky grasp, wrapped around its “Butterfinger?” The mind is a powerful thing, and so is the all-to-common resistance to unpacking the reality behind our sugar cravings.
A moment of honesty…Who doesn’t like to enjoy a dessert with friends, a piece of cake at a birthday party, or an ice cream on a hot day. I sure do. But could these sweet indulgences be distracting you from what lies beneath the sugar coating, and damaging your body in the process?
You bet.
Here’s what you need to know about what sugar does for you and what you can do to reduce your cravings.
Sugar can ruin your health.
Let’s break it down and take an honest look at how your sugar intake affects that beautiful body of yours. Experts have found that…

Sugar can suppress the immune system.
Sugar interferes with the absorption of calcium and magnesium, two essential vitamins.
Sugar contributes to diabetes.
Sugar contributes to obesity.
Sugar can cause hypoglycemia.
Sugar can cause depression.
Sugar can cause a fast increase in adrenaline levels in children (ADHD anyone?)
Sugar can cause arthritis.
Sugar can cause cardiovascular disease.
Sugar can increase cholesterol.
Sugar can lead to uncontrolled growth of Candida in the body (yeast infections)

So if sugar has all these negative effects on the one precious body we’re given, why do we keep going back to it?
Sugar activates the “feel good” response, and makes you craves more.
Stress relief. Comfort. Relaxation. The temporary “ahhhhhh” feeling.
When we eat things that contain a lot of sugar, our body releases a large amount of dopamine—the same “feel good” chemical that’s released with cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines—into the “reward center” of the brain.  Consuming large amounts of sugar actually reduces the number of dopamine receptors. Here’s the problem.
Every time you eat sugar-containing foods, the dopamine effects are lessened, and we have to eat more in order to get the same feeling. Hello addiction!
Sugar is a popular reward.
“If I ____ (insert task or goal), I’ll give myself a treat.”
How often do you reward or treat yourself with a beet salad, your favorite yoga class, or anything that’s actually healthy for you? We tend to reward ourselves with things that we consider to be “bad” or naughty, and tell ourselves “I work hard and deserve it.” But what are you actually rewarding yourself with, honestly?
An increased risk in chronic disease? Wild fluctuations in energy and mood? Hmmm, doesn’t sound like a reward to me.
We already know that sugar acts directly on the reward center of the brain, making it an easy go-to reward. How can we break this pattern?
Find healthy food substitutes or shift your reward systems away from food-related things all together.
It can completely change your relationship to what it means to treat yourselves. Rewarding becomes a true act of self-love, of nourishing your body, and of giving yourself something that will actually enrich your life and fulfill you on a more holistic level.
Sugar cravings can be a message about a deeper soul craving or unfulfilled desire.
Pay attention to your patterns. Do you crave sugar at a certain time of day, when you’re feeling lonely, when you’re stressed or when you’re tired.
I’ve discovered that when I crave sugar, I’m actually craving protein or love/connection. It’s most often the later of the two. Can you relate?
Whenever I have a craving, I ask myself “What is it that I’m actually craving? What desire lies beneath this craving that is not being fulfilled? What can I do to get that deeper need met.”
I always thank my body for communicating with me, and give myself a pat on the back for accurately translating the messages of my cravings.
Your sugar cravings may be related to something else entirely. Everyone is different. I encourage you to explore those connections, to ask yourself questions, and to approach your cravings as you would a secret message written in code—with excitement and curiosity.
Ways to deal with your sugar addiction:
Drink more water.
Cravings for sweet-tasting things are sometimes a sign of dehydration. Next time you find yourself reaching for something sweet, drink a glass of water, wait a few minutes, and see if the desire is still there. Soda and juice don’t count as water, as most of them have tons of added sugar.
Eat sweet vegetables and fruits.
They provide the sweet taste you’re after without all the negative side effects (bonus!). They’re naturally sweet, delicious, and good for you too. Adding them into your diet, especially earlier in the day (get that sweet quota taken care of), can decrease your sugar cravings significantly. Try eating more of these: carrots, onions, corn, winter squash, beets, apples, pears, bananas, berries, and stone fruits.
Get more R & R.
Sugar and simple carbohydrates are the quickest form of energy for the body, especially when your body and mind are tired. When you’re chronically stressed, suffering from lack of sleep, have exhausted adrenal glands and no “Me Time,” the body often craves the fastest form of energy to keep you going: sugar. Getting more rest and relaxation can help break your dependence on sugar by giving your body what it’s actually craving.
Move your body.
You don’t have to go crazy. You can start out with simple things like walking, yoga, or biking to the park, and gradually increase the duration and types of physical activities you do. Being physically active helps your body balance blood sugar levels, increases your mood, boosts your energy, and releases stress. Remember: if you don’t enjoy it, you won’t do it!
Use natural sweeteners.
Processed foods often contain high amounts of artificial sweeteners and added sugar, which both contribute to inflammation in the body. Try using natural or gentler sweeteners like honey, maple syrup, stevia or dried fruit.
Decrease or eliminate caffeine.
Caffeine not only causes dehydration, but it usually results in big ups and downs in energy. This will cause your sugar cravings to be more frequent and powerful as your body seeks balance. If you can’t start the day without a “Cup of Joe” or a latte, there are some highly effective ways to go off coffee. The effects on your life will astound you.
Look at how much animal food/salty food you eat.
From the perspective of the yin/yang principles (energetics of food art link) of eating (such as in Macrobiotics and Traditional Chinese Medicine), having too much of one energy can lead to cravings for the other.
Thus, if you eat too much animal food/salty food (yang and contracting), you will crave sweet foods (yin and expansive) to come back into balance. Everyone’s body is unique in its need for certain foods, so use your intuition and your understanding of your own bio-individuality to find your own balance.
Cook with sweetening spices.
There are quite a few spices that naturally sweeten dishes and bring out the sweet flavor in your cooking. Experiment around with spices such as cinnamon, coriander, nutmeg, cloves and cardamom to see how they affect your cravings.
Find the sweetness in life!
Sugar cravings aren’t always about sugar itself. More often than not, they are about something deeper than food—a “primary food” (relationships, career, movement, spirituality) that is not being met. Cravings normally have a psychological and emotional component to them as well.
By identifying the mental and emotional causes behind your cravings, you can make meaningful changes to your lifestyle and relationships in order to get those deeper needs met. Sometimes it’s as simple as having a conversation with a friend, mentor or coach, establishing a joyous health routine, or paying attention to the sweetness of life around you.
When your life tastes sweet and your deepest desires are fulfilled, you know that no amount of sugar will ever come close to that level of satisfaction.

88 Philosophy Podcasts to Help You Answer the Big Questions in Life

The big questions of philosophy, simmering since antiquity, still press upon us as they did the Athenians of old (and all ancient people who have philosophized): what obligations do we really owe to family, friends, or strangers? Do we live as free agents or beings controlled by fate or the gods (or genes or a computer simulation)? What is a good life? How do we create societies that maximize freedom and happiness (or whatever ultimate values we hold dear)? What is language, what is art, and where did they come from?
These questions may not be answered with a brute appeal to facts, though without science we are groping in the dark. Religion takes big questions seriously but tells converts to take its supernatural answers on faith. “Between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land,” writes Bertrand Russell, “exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man’s Land is philosophy.” Philosophy reaches beyond certainty, to “speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable.” And yet, like science, “it appeals to human reason rather than authority.”


The concerns of philosophy have narrowed since Russell’s time, not to mention the time of Socrates, put to death for leading the youth astray. But professors of philosophy still raise the ire of the public, accused of seducing students from the safe spaces of sacred dogma and secular utility. “To study philosophy,” wrote Cicero, “is nothing but to prepare oneself to die.” It is a poetic turn of phrase, and yes, we must confront mortality, but philosophy also asks us to confront the limits of human knowledge and power in the face of the unknown. Dangerous indeed.
Should you decide to embark on this journey yourself, you will meet with no small number of fellow travelers along the way. Bring some earphones, you can hear them in the trove of 88 philosophy podcasts compiled on the philosophy website Daily Nous. “How many philosophy podcasts are there?” asks Daily Nous, who brings us this list. “Over 80, and they take a variety of forms.” See 15 below, with descriptions, see the rest at Daily Nous, and enjoy your sojourn into “no man’s land.”

5 Questions (interviews about philosophers themselves w/ Kieran Setiya)
Embrace the Void (conversations w/ Aaron Rabinowitz)
Getting Ethics to Work (interviews and discussion w/ Andy Cullison and Kate Berry
Hi-Phi Nation (edited narratives w/ Barry Lam)
The History of Philosophy without any Gaps (mix of monologues and interviews w/ Peter Adamson)
New Books in Philosophy (interviews w/ Carrie Figdor, Alexus McLeod, Marshall Poe, & Robert Talisse)
Partially Examined Life (“reading group” discussions w/ Mark Linsenmayer, Seth Paskin, Wes Alwan, & Dylan Casey)
Philosophy Bites (short interviews w/ David Edmonds & Nigel Warburton)
Philosophy Talk (conversations w/ Stanford Faculty incl. John Perry, formerly Ken Taylor, Ray Briggs, Debra Satz, Josh Landy, et al.)
Political Philosophy Podcast (interviews w/ Tobias Buckle)
Philosophers On Medicine (interviews w/ Jonathan Fuller)
Reductio (edited narratives w/ Andrew Lavin)
SCI PHI (interviews w/ Nick Zautra)
Unmute (interviews w/ Myisha Cherry)
Very Bad Wizards (conversations w/ Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro)

See the full list here. And explore our collection of 200 Free Online Philosophy Courses here.
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Learn Philosophy with a Wealth of Free Courses, Podcasts and YouTube Videos
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Discover the Creative, New Philosophy Podcast Hi-Phi Nation: The First Story-Driven Show About Philosophy
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

88 Philosophy Podcasts to Help You Answer the Big Questions in Life is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Dumpster Diving

Though it offends most people, I admit I have never had much passion for food and have often regarded eating as an interruption or a chore.  I derive a certain pleasure from foods that are nourishing and tasty, but not in the way that other people seem to do. Conversations about cooking, flavor and taste bore me severely.
 Where food is concerned, I am more interested in the ethics of production and how it can benefit my health – in that order.
This story is not about what to eat; there are no recipes attached and no dietetic advice here.
This is about dumpster-diving—obtaining food from the bin.
Beginning with the bins
Roughly a year ago I began dumpster-diving regularly. Needing to sustain my housemates and me, I wanted to gather as much stray food from bins of various supermarkets, bakeries, catering companies and restaurants.  I had a little car that was cheap to run and by spending between two and six hours per week driving to various bins and rifling through the trash of corporate food suppliers, I was able to feed the household of four hungry young men, usually with better or more food than we otherwise could have afforded. The bin always provided quality food and only on occasion was it a laborious process.
 
Becoming “Freegan”
At first the goal was to be completely “freegan,” to only consume food found in bins, not buying any food at all. Despite occasional small purchases, I soon discovered that this wasn’t difficult.  We lived in abundance, regularly eating steak, salmon, brie, fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs and bread – lots of bread.

I would also go to a certain chain of convenience store to find “dirty treats” like meat pies, salami sticks and Krispy Kreme donuts. I knew the stores were contractually obliged to discard excess donuts and pies daily and so took advantage of this.
I considered myself ‘basically freegan’, but if a situation presented itself where I was socially obliged to eat food that wasn’t from a bin, such as at a friend’s place or a restaurant, I was otherwise vegetarian for ethical reasons. I had very little concern for my own health and made my choices regarding food consumption mostly on the basis of environmental sustainability, animal welfare and taste.
The goal was to subvert as much waste as possible, to take as much as I could out of the bins, rather than putting so much in.
This exercise educated me on the level of wasted food in my local area and I found it shocking and deplorable, especially considering the people going hungry in other parts of the world.
 
Wasted Energy
After a while I stopped bothering to check the bins at the convenience store. I realized I could feed my entire household without having to subject ourselves to what I found in those bins. Pies and donuts didn’t make us feel good and I began to question the benefit of eating them.

 That was when the word ‘waste’ changed for me. It seemed more of a waste to put that ‘food’ in my body than to leave it out.
 Now I have become more prudent with how and where I dumpster-dive.

 I get most of my food from the bins of gourmet supermarkets and usually only take what will be beneficial to consume.
 I no longer have a car which has forced me to be more selective about what I am willing to carry home.
 I usually find fruit and vegetables, bread, sometimes cheese and if I’m lucky some rice or couscous, and generally buy nuts, legumes and olive oil, as well as other odd luxuries.

I think it would be better for the environment to buy nothing at all and live from the scraps of a wasteful society, but eating processed cakes and low-grade meat is not beneficial. It feels like those ‘foods’ do more harm than good to my body and brain.
 
Finding Balance
Now I try to balance low impact living with sensible consumerism.  To buy something is to support the production of it. I could quite easily live without buying any food at all but I choose to buy certain products.
The goal now is to dumpster-dive as much good food as possible and, when I can’t find nutrients in the bin, to buy foods that are ethically sourced and healthy.
I still believe eating ethically should be the most important stipulation of sourcing your food, but I have also learned that some things aren’t worth putting in my body.
 
This fantastic food story was contributed by Eat.co community member, Nat Kassel.  To follow more of his daring dumpster diving tales, visit his blog at www.natkassel.wordpress.com
 
Inspired by this story? Do you now dare to dive into bins seeking the discards of perfectly healthy and nutritional foods or other valued items?  Let us know your conquests and experiences in the comments below.  Remember, one man’s trash in another man’s treasure!

 

Salvador Dalí Gets Surreal with 1950s America: Watch His Appearances on What’s My Line? (1952) and The Mike Wallace Interview (1958)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXT2E9Ccc8A





When was the last time you saw a Surrealist (or even just a surrealist) painter appear on national television? If such a figure did appear on national television today, for that matter, who would know? Perhaps surrealist painting does not, in our time, make the impact it once did, but nor does national television. So imagine what a spectacle it must have been in 1950s America, cradle of the “mass media” as we once knew them, when Salvador Dalí turned up on a major U.S. television network. Such a fabulously incongruous broadcasting event happened more than once, and in these clips we see that, among the “big three,” CBS was especially receptive to his impulsive, otherworldly artistic presence.
On the quiz show What’s My Line?, one of CBS’ most popular offerings throughout the 50s, contestants aimed to guess the occupation of a guest. They did so wearing blindfolds, without which they’d have no trouble pinning down the job of an instantaneously recognizable celebrity like Dalí — or would they? To the panel’s yes-or-no questions, the only kind permitted by the rules, Dalí nearly always responds flatly in the affirmative.


Is he associated with the arts? “Yes.” Would he ever have been seen on television? “Yes.” Would he be considered a leading man? “Yes.” At this host John Charles Daly steps in to clarify that, in the context of the question, Dalí would not, in fact, be considered a leading man. One contestant offers an alternative: “He’s a misleading man!” Few titles have captured the essence of Dalí so neatly.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwMs9HBFp_4





The artist, showman, and human conscious-altering substance later appeared on The Mike Wallace Interview. Hosted by the formidable CBS newsman well before he became one of the faces of 60 Minutes, the show featured a range of guests from Aldous Huxley and Frank Lloyd Wright to Eleanor Roosevelt and Ayn Rand. In this broadcast, Wallace and Dalí discuss “everything from surrealism to nuclear physics to chastity to what artists in general contribute to the world,” as Brain Pickings’ Maria Popova describes it. A curious if occasionally bemused Wallace, writes The Wallbreakers’ Matt Weckel, “asks Dalí such gems as ‘What is philosophical about driving a car full of cauliflowers?’ and ‘Why did you lecture with your head enclosed in a diving helmet?'” But they also seriously discuss “the fear of death, and their own mortality,” topics to which American airwaves have hardly grown more accommodating over the past sixty years.
Related Content:
Salvador Dalí Gets Surreal with Mike Wallace (1958)
Salvador Dalí Strolls onto The Dick Cavett Show with an Anteater, Then Talks About Dreams & Surrealism, the Golden Ratio & More (1970)
A Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dali, Narrated by the Great Orson Welles
Q: Salvador Dalí, Are You a Crackpot? A: No, I’m Just Almost Crazy (1969)
Salvador Dalí Explains Why He Was a “Bad Painter” and Contributed “Nothing” to Art (1986)
Salvador Dalí Goes Commercial: Three Strange Television Ads
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.

Salvador Dalí Gets Surreal with 1950s America: Watch His Appearances on What’s My Line? (1952) and The Mike Wallace Interview (1958) is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Quentin Tarantino’s Copycat Cinema: How the Postmodern Filmmaker Perfected the Art of the Steal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9I1J36rdoc





You can call Quentin Tarantino a thief. Call him unoriginal, a copycat, whatever, he doesn’t care. But if you really want to get him going, call him a tribute artist. This, he insists, is the last thing he has ever been: great directors, Tarantino declares, “don’t do homages.” They outright steal, from anyone, anywhere, without regard to intellectual property or hurt feelings.
But great directors don’t plagiarize in the Tarantino school of filmmaking. (Pay attention students, this is important.) They don’t take verbatim from a single source, or even two or three. They steal everything. “I steal from every single movie ever made,” says Tarantino, and if you don’t believe him, you’ll probably have to spend a few years watching his films shot by shot to prove him wrong, if that’s possible.


But, of course, he’s overstating things. He’s never gone the way of blockbuster CGI epics. On the contrary, Tarantino’s last film was an homage (sorry) to an older Hollywood, one on the cusp of great change but still beholden to things like actors, costumes, and sets. Maybe a paraphrase of his claim might read: he steals from every movie ever made worth stealing from, and if you’re Quentin Tarantino, there are a lot of those most people haven’t even heard of.
The Cinema Cartography video essay above, “The Copycat Cinema of Quentin Tarantino,” begins with a reference not to a classic work of cinema, but to a classic album made two years before the time of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is “a signifier of the artist’s status as an icon within a social milieu… this image more than anything explores the social ambiance in which someone lives in pop culture before becoming pop culture themselves.”
To suggest that the Beatles weren’t already pop culture icons in 1967 seems silly, but the visual point stands. On the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s they eclipse even their earlier boy band image and freshly insert themselves into the center of 20th century cultural history up to their present. “Understanding this idea,” says narrator Lewis Michael Bond, “is fundamental to understanding the cinema of Quentin Tarantino.” How so?
“All artists, consciously or unconsciously, take from their influences, “but it’s the degree of self-awareness and internal referencing that would inevitably bring us to the concept of postmodernism.” Tarantino is nothing if not a postmodern artist—rejecting ideas about truth, capital T, authenticity, and the uniqueness of the individual artist. All art is made from other art. There is no original and no originality, only more or less clever and skillful remixes and restatements of what has come before.
Tarantino, of course, knows that even his postmodern approach to cinema isn’t original. He stole it from Godard, and named his first production company A Band Apart, after Godard’s 1964 New Wave film Band of Outsiders, which is, Pauline Kael wrote, “like a reverie of a gangster movie as students in an espresso bar might remember it or plan it.” Tarantino’s films, especially his early films, are genre exercises made the way an adrenaline-fueled video store clerk would make them—stuffing in everything on the shelves in artful pastiches that revel in their dense allusions and in-jokes.
In this school of filmmaking, the question of whether or not a filmmaker is “original” has little meaning. Are they good at ripping off the past or not? When it comes to exquisite, bloody mash ups of exploitation flicks and the revered high classics of cinema, no one is better than Tarantino.
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An Analysis of Quentin Tarantino’s Films Narrated (Mostly) by Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino Explains How to Write & Direct Movies
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness

Quentin Tarantino’s Copycat Cinema: How the Postmodern Filmmaker Perfected the Art of the Steal is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

Sweet Carrot Hummus Dip

Chickpeas are your best friends. You can mix them with whatever comes to your mind and you will get a delicious and filling Hummus. Yes, it’s that simple. Just think about a dish you fancy and make it a Hummus. So did I yesterday, when my high school friend came over for lunch. I wanted to make a light snack, that we could just crunch on while talking about our life’s journeys. I remembered him preparing a “quick snack” during break one day.
I was sitting at his kitchen table trying hopelessly to finish the last chapter of a book for homework before class while he was busy cooking and talking about how good carrots are for the eyes . He would accurately cut them, fry them in a pan with butter and add some honey at the end. I would watch him patiently, thinking why we can’t just through some deep frozen pizza into the oven instead of trying to bring these tasteless vegetables alive (sorry, I was a teenager). But when I tried his caramelized carrots I suddenly felt the bliss of a good surprise.
Holy shit, that was some good stuff. He was the first person to inspire me to experiment with food, with good food (thank’s man!). Anyway, back to Hummus. I prepared a wonderful sweet carrot Hummus for his visit. A little healthy snack that shows my appreciation (and how good of a cook I am). He came, he ate and he loved it. When I told him about my inspiration we were right back down memory lane for a whole afternoon. Thank’s food!
Recipe: Sweet Carrot Hummus Dip


2  medium sized carrots

sugar or honey of your choice

2 tablespoons coconut oil
2 cups of chickpeas (soaked overnight and cooked or can)
1-2 tablespoons of tahini
2 garlic cloves
1-2 tablespoons Juice of fresh lemon or lime
Cumin
Salt


Pepper

Cut carrots in any form (not too small not too big). In a pan let them fry in coconut oil for a few minutes until they get this golden color. That’s when you add some sugar or drizzle some honey to it. Wait another minute and stir carefully so it doesn’t burn. Your carrots should have a golden brownish crust on them. Now bring them to dance in your blender together with chickpeas and tahini and then slowly add the other ingredients. Don’t put everything at once, better taste yourself through the flavors to find a good balance. Once finished garnish with carrot sticks and have it with some yummy pita bread.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Japanese Art Installation Lets People Play Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” As They Walk on Socially-Distanced Notes on the Floor

The global pandemic has revealed the depths of systematic cruelty in certain places in the world that have refused to commit resources to protecting people from the virus or refused to even acknowledge its existence. Other responses show a different way forward, one in which everyone contributes meaningfully through the principled actions of wearing masks and social distancing or the principled non-action of staying home to slow the spread.
Then there’s the critical role of art, design, and music in our survival. As we have seen—from spontaneous balcony serenades in Italy to poignant animated video poetry—the arts are no less crucial to our survival than public health. Human beings need delight, wonder, humor, mourning, and celebration, and we need to come together to experience these things, whether online or in real, if distant, life. Ideally, public health and art can work together.


Japanese designer Eisuke Tachikawa has put his skills to work doing exactly that. When cases began spiking in his country in April, Tachikawa and his design firm Nosigner made some beautifully designed, and very funny, posters to encourage social distancing as part of an initiative called Pandaid. Then they created Super Mario Brothers coin stickers to place six feet (or two meters, or one tuna) apart. In its English translation, at least, the text on Nosigner’s site is direct about their intentions: “As this continues we wanted to value-translate the social constraints of social distancing into something positive and enjoyable.”

Tachikawa and Nosigner have “developed a brand,” they announced recently, called SOCIAL HARMONY “in order to spread the culture of social distancing in a humorous way.” Their latest installation, however, does not incorporate jokes or Nintendo references. Rather it draws on one of the most popular and beloved pieces of minimalist classical music, Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” (proclaimed by Classic FM as “the most flat-out relaxing piece of piano music ever written”). “People stand on a large music sheet on the floor and notes are played the moment you step on them. By respecting social distances and going one note at a time, the public is able to play” Satie’s piece.

Even for such a succinct composition, this must require a rigorous amount of coordination. But it is necessary to play the notes in order: “Since the melody changes with every stop, one can create one’s own Gymnopédie No. 1, since the played melody changes with every step.” The piece was installed at the entrance hall to the Yokohama Minatomirai Hall for DESIGNART TOKYO 2020, where it will remain until the end of the year. Surely there will be other forms of “social harmony” to come from the Japanese designers. Like the practice of social distancing itself, we can only hope such projects catch on and go global, until the widespread vaccination and an end to the pandemic can bring us closer again.

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

Japanese Art Installation Lets People Play Erik Satie’s “Gymnopédie No. 1” As They Walk on Socially-Distanced Notes on the Floor is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.

What Ancient Egyptian Sounded Like & How We Know It

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-K5OjAkiEA





If you’ve seen any Hollywood movie set in ancient Egypt, you already know how its language sounded: just like English, but spoken with a more formal diction and a range of broadly Middle-Eastern accents. But then there are many competing theories about life that long ago, and perhaps you’d prefer to believe the linguistic-historical take provided in the video above. A production of Joshua Rudder’s NativLang, a Youtube channel previously featured here on Open Culture for its videos on ancient Latin and Chinese, it tells the story of “the many forms of the long-lived Egyptian languages,” as well as its “ancestors and relatives,” and how they’ve helped linguists determine just how the ancient Egyptians really spoke.
Rudder begins with a certain artifact called — perhaps you’ve heard of it — the Rosetta Stone. Discovered in 1799 during Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, it “bore two Egyptian scripts and, auspiciously, a rough translation in perfectly readable Greek.” Using this information, the scholar Jean-François Champollion became the first to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. But as to the question of what they sounded like when pronounced, the stone had no answers. Champollion eventually became convinced that the still-living Coptic language was “the Egyptian language, the very same one that stretches back continuously for thousands of years.”


Though Coptic sounds and grammar could provide clues about spoken ancient Egyptian, it couldn’t get Champollion all the way to accurate pronunciation. One pressing goal was to fill in the language’s missing vowels, an essential type of sound that nevertheless went unrecorded by hieroglyphs. To the archives, then, which in Egypt were especially vast and contained documents dating far back into history. These enabled a process of “internal reconstruction,” which involved comparing different versions of the Egyptian language to each other, and which ultimately “resulted in an explosion of hieroglyphic knowledge.”
But the journey to reconstruct the speaking of this “longest written language on Earth” doesn’t stop there: it thereafter makes such side quests as one to a “pocket of Ethiopia” where people speak “a cluster of languages grouped together under the label Omotic.” Along with the Semitic, the Amazigh, the Chadic, and others, traceable with Egyptian to a common ancestor, these languages provided information essential to the state of ancient Egyptian linguistic knowledge today. Given the enormous amount of scholarship required to let us know what to call them, it’s enough to make you want ankhs to come back into fashion.
Related Content:
What Ancient Chinese Sounded Like — and How We Know It: An Animated Introduction
What Ancient Latin Sounded Like, And How We Know It
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What Did Old English Sound Like? Hear Reconstructions of Beowulf, The Bible, and Casual Conversations
Hear The Epic of Gilgamesh Read in the Original Akkadian and Enjoy the Sounds of Mesopotamia
Hear What the Language Spoken by Our Ancestors 6,000 Years Ago Might Have Sounded Like: A Reconstruction of the Proto-Indo-European Language
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.

What Ancient Egyptian Sounded Like & How We Know It is a post from: Open Culture. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus, or get our Daily Email. And don't miss our big collections of Free Online Courses, Free Online Movies, Free eBooks, Free Audio Books, Free Foreign Language Lessons, and MOOCs.