Pigments, the common type of coloring found in almost everything around us, create color by absorbing certain wavelengths of light, or colors, and reflecting others; when the reflected ones bounce to our eyes, we perceive them as colors. Structural colors, like the ones you can see on a soap bubble, work entirely differently. – Nautilus
Tag: 12.19
How Yellow Lost Its Good Reputation
The most significant development was the increasing association of yellow with vice and evil – often with the deadly sin of envy (incidentally, though green may be the traditional colour of envy in high culture, in playgrounds of the 1960s, ‘yeller’ meant ‘jealous’, possibly because it was a close soundalike). – Literary Review
Michelangelo And The “Architectural Project From Hell”
In the early years of the 16th century, Pope Julius II had initiated renovations when it became clear that the ancient basilica, completed around AD 360 on the site believed to be St Peter’s tomb, was at serious risk of collapse. At first, almost no one proposed remaking it entirely. The new St Peter’s took shape slowly, and for all its spiritual symbolism it was the architectural project from hell. Imagine a century of Grand Designs specials with one pope after another playing the despairing client and you get the picture. – Literary Review
The Difficulties Of Reconciling Consciousness With The Physical World
“The mind is not physical, not extended in space. The body and everything else are made of physical substance and located in space. Substance dualism is out of fashion these days, but some philosophers are property dualists, who believe consciousness is an emergent property, a kind of ghostly accompaniment to physical reality.” – BookForum
Social Media Has Made Our Democracy More Toxic. But We Can Fix It
“The problem may not be connectivity itself but rather the way social media turns so much communication into a public performance. We often think of communication as a two-way street. Intimacy builds as partners take turns, laugh at each other’s jokes, and make reciprocal disclosures. What happens, though, when grandstands are erected along both sides of that street and then filled with friends, acquaintances, rivals, and strangers, all passing judgment and offering commentary?” – The Atlantic
The Creative Class In The Bay Area: Meaningfully Employed And Living In A Shack
Housing is such a problem, that it’s difficult to think about actually being creative. How long can this last? A first-person account of trying to make it in Oakland. – Harper’s
Lin-Manuel Miranda On The Role Of Artists In Uncertain Times
“What artists can do is bring stories to the table that are unshakably true—the sort of stories that, once you’ve heard them, won’t let you return to what you thought before.” – The Atlantic