all velvet mornings

[teded]

Hey Tumblr!  We thought you might enjoy a little behind-the-scenes look at the making of our latest lesson on the Voynich Manuscript. This time-lapse sequence is sped up from 4+ hours of work. If you’re interested, you should totally try your hand at stop motion animation at home, check out our guide and have fun!

From the TED-Ed Lesson The world’s most mysterious book - Stephen Bax

Animation by TED-Ed

[nevver]

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

[allvelvetmornings]

I have them all

[archatlas]

100daysofadulting

A series of hilarious images created by Cristina Vanko that you are sure to relate to (and if you don’t yet you will soon enough) ! These is a selection of the ones that spoke to me the loudest.

[teded]

Animation & Inspiration

In honor of Henri Rousseau’s birthday (today!), we wanted to share how his work influenced the animation for one of our very own lessons.

When designing the rainforest scenes in our lesson on Biodiversity, we couldn’t help but thinking of Henri Rousseau’s The Dream. Our color palette was inspired by the richness and depth of greens in his forest scenes. And we love the way the blue & ivory flowers pop out against the many shades of green.

The Dream, by Henri Rousseau (1910)

Rousseau’s color choice for the Sun in many of his paintings is fairly difficult to replicate digitally. It took a lot of layers of brushstrokes and color washes to try to mimic his skies - which offer a perfectly soft contrast to the detailed leaves and fronds in the foreground foliage.

Three apes in The Orange Grove, by Henri Rousseau (1907)

We love the placement of wildlife in Rousseau’s paintings - as if the leaves parted momentarily to allow us to peer in on the secret lives of the lions and monkeys going about their business. While designing the Biodiversity lesson, we wanted to similarly highlight the variety of species in the rainforest, while also allowing the audience to imagine that much, much more lurks behind the leaves.

The Repast of the Lion, by Henri Rousseau (1907)

Animated GIFs from the TED-Ed lesson Why is biodiversity so important? - Kim Preshoff

Animation by TED-Ed

[allvelvetmornings]

Recently saw a bunch of Rousseau at the Barnes Foundation and they are fantastic. Underrated artist, deserves to be as popular as Renoir.

[disconaivete]

Metronomy return to their skewy 2008 pop on Old Skool

After The English Riviera (2011 - excellent) and Love Letters (2014 - excellent), Metronomy return to their up-beat 2008 patch-pop Nights Out sound (2008 - also excellent). With the lead single appropriately titled Old Skool, the skewy, glossy electronic pop still sounds modern as ever. Joe recorded the record in two week’s time, it’s called Summer ‘08 and will soundtrack Summer ‘16 as it’s out on July 1. And oh, it features a song with the one and only Robyn - who have (sneakily) done together a song last year as Tony Primo and Nixie. Excellent.

[allvelvetmornings]

Feat. Dolorous Edd

[violaboss]

I’ve seen a lot of curious people wanting to dive into classical music but don’t know where to start, so I have written out a list of pieces to listen to depending on mood. I’ve only put out a few, but please add more if you want to. hope this helps y’all out. :)

stereotypical delightful classical music:

battalia a 10 in d major (biber)

brandenburg concerto no. 5

brandenburg concerto no. 3

symphony no. 45 - “farewell” (haydn)

if you need to chill:

rondo alla turca

fur elise

anitra’s dance

in the steppes of central asia (borodin) (added by viola-ology)

if you need to sleep:

moonlight sonata

swan lake

corral nocturne

if you need to wake up:

morning mood

summer (from the four seasons)

buckaroo holiday (if you’ve played this in orch you might end up screaming instead of waking up joyfully)

if you are feeling very proud:

pomp and circumstance

symphony no. 9 (beethoven; this is where ode to joy came from)

1812 overture

symphony no. 5, finale (tchaikovsky) (added by viola-ology)

american (dvořák)

if you feel really excited:

hoedown (copland)

bacchanale

spring (from the four seasons) (be careful, if you listen to this too much you’ll start hating it)

la gazza ladra

death and the maiden (schubert)

if you are angry and you want to take a baseball bat and start hitting a bush:

dance of the knights (from the romeo and juliet suite by prokofiev)

winter, mvt. 1 (from the four seasons)

symphony no. 10 mvt. 2 (shostakovich)

symphony no. 5 (beethoven)

totentanz (liszt)

quartet no. 8, mvt. 2 (shostakovich) (added by viola-ology)

young person’s guide to the orchestra, fugue (britten) (added by iwillsavemyworld)

if you want to cry for a really long time:

fantasia based on russian themes (rimsky-korsakov)

adagio for strings (barber)

violin concerto in e minor (mendelssohn)

aase’s death

andante festivo

if you want to feel like you’re on an adventure:

an american in paris (gershwin)

if you want chills:

danse macabre

russian easter overture

if you want to study:

eine kleine nachtmusik

bolero (ravel)

serenade for strings (elgar)

scheherazade (rimsky-korsakov) (added by viola-ology)

pines of rome, mvt. 4 (resphigi) (added by viola-ology)

if you really want to dance:

capriccio espagnol (rimsky-korsakov)

blue danube

le cid (massenet) (added by viola-ology)

radetzky march

if you want to start bouncing in your chair:

hopak (mussorgsky)

les toreadors (from carmen suite no.1)

if you’re about to pass out and you need energy:

hungarian dance no. 1

hungarian dance no. 5

if you want to hear suspense within music:

firebird

in the hall of the mountain king

ride of the valkyries

night on bald mountain (mussorgsky) (added by viola-ology)

if you want a jazzy/classical feel:

rhapsody in blue

if you want to feel emotional with no explanation:

introduction and rondo capriccioso

unfinished symphony (schubert)

symphony no. 7, allegretto (beethoven) (added by viola-ology)

canon in d (pachelbel)

if you want to sit back and have a nice cup of tea:

st. paul’s suite

concerto for two violins (vivaldi)

l’arlésienne suite

pieces that don’t really have a valid explanation:

symphony no. 40 (mozart)

cello suite no. 1 (bach)

polovtsian dances

enigma variations (elgar) (added by viola-ology)

perpetuum mobile

pieces that just sound really cool:

scherzo tarantelle

dance of the goblins

caprice no. 24 (paganini)

new world symphony, allegro con fuoco (dvorak) (added by viola-ology​)

if you feel like listening to concertos all day (I do not recommend doing that):

concerto for two violins (bach)

concerto for two violins (vivaldi)

violin concerto in a minor (vivaldi)

violin concerto (tchaikovsky) (added by iwillsavemyworld)

cello concerto in c (haydn)

piano concerto, mvt. 1 (pierne) (added by iwillsavemyworld)

harp concerto in E-flat major, mvt. 1 (added by iwillsavemyworld)

and if you really just hate classical music in general:

4′33″ (cage)

a lot of these pieces apply in multiple categories, but I sorted them by which I think they match the most. have fun exploring classical music!

also, thank you to viola-ology and iwillsavemyworld for adding on! if you would like to add on your own suggestions, please reblog and add on or message me so I can give you credit for the suggestion!

[chaosacres]

@mazthespaz you are right, classy horses do cross their legs 😉

[nevver]

Mid Century Modern, Michael Nÿkamp

[benedictusantonius-deactivated2]

[nevver]

Anatomy of going out

[allvelvetmornings]

[allvelvetmornings]

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

Albert Einstein

[explore-blog]

Fictitious Dishes – Dinah Fried cooks and photographs meals from beloved books. Pictured here, Proust’s tea and petites madeleines from Swan’s Way. More – including The Catcher in the Rye, Moby-Dick, The Bell Jar, and Alice in Wonderland – here.

[continuations]

Land, Capital, Attention: This Time it Is the Same

We have had all these innovations and have always found new things for people to work on. This is the Lump of Labor fallacy all over again. You are a Luddite! What makes you think this time is different?

This is the rhetoric aimed at people like myself who argue that we need to fundamentally rethink how the economy and society work because digital technologies changing the world. I have taken to replying “you are correct, but you are looking at the wrong time frame.” What all of the above objections share is that they look at a relatively short part of human history. If you look at a larger arc then a different picture emerges.

There have been two fundamental scarcities in human history and we are now moving on to the third. Each time the scarcity shifted, due to a new technology, we had a massive dislocation. So yes, this time is the same, scarcity is shifting again and with it we are experiencing another such massive dislocation.

The first scarcity to emerge was land. We started out as hunter gatherers and eventually developed planting and harvesting and domesticated animals. Agriculture is the first massive technological change. We were horrendously bad at agriculture at first — no surprise it was a brand new technology. If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend reading Sapiens by Yuval Harari. He has a terrific set of chapters on the agricultural revolution that makes clear just how bad we were and how much worse people in early agrarian societies were off compared to their hunter gatherer ancestors.

Because we were so bad at agriculture, land was scarce. It could barely support the people living on it. But it generated just enough local surplus to support the emergence of rulers and armies. And that of course meant one thing for several thousand years: fights over who owns what land. More land meant somewhat less scarcity and a bigger army. Land ownership and control became highly concentrated.

The ruling elites everywhere came from and represented the owners of land. This setup persisted even as the next big technology arrived in the form of machines and industrial production. The transition to industrial society was a horrific dislocation exactly because the political elites were still representing land interests. This is how we wound up with numerous revolutions and ultimately two world wars. Even Hitler’s mad ambitions were still about land — the Nazis pursued “Lebensraum” (room to live), when the real scarcity had already shifted to capital.

We had already become relatively good at agriculture which resulted in a lot of people being “freed” up to move to cities. But industrial production was only getting started and once again, like early agriculture, we were horrendously bad it. Early factories had harrowing working conditions and were massively polluting the environment. A lot of capital investment was required and capital was scarce because there wasn’t much of it yet and capital markets were underdeveloped. So we had lots of unemployment and boom bust cycles (similar to famines in early agricultural mono societies that depended on a single crop).

As it turned out markets were good at producing and allocating capital. That’s why capitalism eventually beat other systems such as communism and socialism during the industrial age. And it also turned out that capital and labor were long-term complements. The owners of capital needed labor to make that capital productive. And workers required a job in order to earn a living. Entrepreneurship and further technical innovation resulted in massive gains in the standard of living. This process is still playing itself out in less developed parts of the world which are being lifted out of poverty.

We now live in a world that has moved almost entirely to capitalism even in China. And much like land before it, the ownership of capital has been concentrating along the way. Only 1% of the global population now controls about 50% of all capital. And in another critical historical parallel, the ruling elites everywhere directly or indirectly represent the interests of capital. Capital has replaced land as the factor against which policies are measured. Take quantitative easing for example, which is aimed at reducing the cost of capital on the belief that this will continue to create jobs.

But the new technological disruption has already arrived and it is digital technology. This is a new set of machines and networks. Unlike their earlier predecessors they are universal machines which as they get better can eventually do anything. And the results are that capital and labor are no longer long-term complements which has been driving down labor’s share of the economy and depressing wages. Digital technology even means that less and less capital is required for most endeavors (see for instance how much cheaper it is to start a new company today than it was even a decade ago). Capital is no longer scarce and labor even less so.

Where is the new scarcity? It is human attention. With birth rates thankfully decelerating almost everywhere, peak population is finally a possibility. We all have only 24 hours in the day and we need to work, eat and sleep. That puts a hard limit on how much human attention exists. At the same time digital technologies are producing unprecedented amounts of information that we could pay attention to. On Youtube alone 100 hours of video is uploaded every minute. Increasingly you can measure how valuable something is by how much attention it controls (e.g., Google, Facebook, etc).

And just like previous scarcities one of the reasons that attention is scarce is that we are bad at this new technology. As society we have lots of information locked up through copyright and patents instead of making it available to everyone. As individuals we too often lack a purpose other than making money and we will happily watch another cat video in our limited free time than read a challenging book. Over time we will get better at all of this and it will let us achieve amazing things as humanity, including free education and healthcare for everyone and cleaning up the mess we have made of the planet. But none of that will happen as long as we keep ourselves trapped in a belief that capital is scarce and that everyone needs a job.

So yes, this time is the same. Once again technology is fundamentally shifting scarcity and the ruling elites are controlled by the prior scarcity, this time capital, which is trying hard to maintain its power. The sooner we all begin to understand this, the better our chances of a peaceful transition. The longer we wait, the more we will be like the land owners who didn’t get industrialization and led us down a path of violent change.

[teded]

10 facts you should know about Vincent van Gogh

1. Vincent van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in Holland. He was named after his grandfather and his stillborn brother who died one year before Van Gogh was born.

2. Van Gogh was 27 years old when he painted his first piece.

3. When Van Gogh first began painting, he used peasants as models. He would later paint flowers, landscapes and himself, mostly because he was too poor to pay the models.

4. Van Gogh suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy, a chronic neurological condition characterized by recurrent, unprovoked seizures.

5. In a short period of ten years, Van Gogh made approximately 900 paintings.

6. During one of his seizures, Van Gogh attempted to attack his friend Paul Gauguin with an open razor. This ultimately resulted in Vincent cutting off a piece of his own ear – but not the whole ear as is often rumored.

7. Van Gogh created his most famous work The Starry Night while staying in an asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France.

8. Vincent Van Gogh visually depicted turbulence, an incredibly complex (and still unsolved) mathematical principle in several paintings during a particularly chaotic time in his life.

9. Vincent shot himself in a wheatfield in Auvers, France, but did not die until 2 days later at the age of 37. His brother Theo, at his side when he died, said that Vincent’s last words were “La tristesse durera toujours” which means “the sadness will last forever.”

10. Vincent only sold one painting during his lifetime and only became famous after his death.

Happy Birthday, Vincent van Gogh.

From the TED-Ed Lesson The unexpected math behind Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” - Natalya St. Clair

Animation by Avi Ofer

[allvelvetmornings]

If you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often get it.

Somerset Maugham

[epic]

[endlessmusing-deactivated202407]

notnumbersix

[notnumbersix]

ooooooo I love this!