Zoom in on this image. It's not a photograph.
It's called Moonrise, painted in oil in 1884 by Polish artist Stanisław Masłowski, and it hangs in the National Museum in Kraków. It shows almost nothing: a wide, dark sky, a still stretch of water, a low bank of sand, a few bare trees. And just above the horizon, the golden moon, half hidden behind a streak of grey cloud, laying a single ribbon of gold light down across the water toward you.
What makes it extraordinary is that it depicts one of the hardest things a painter can attempt: near-darkness. Most of the canvas is dim, and dim light has almost no color and almost no contrast to work with, one wrong value and the whole thing goes muddy or flat. Masłowski handled that faint light so precisely that the scene glows exactly the way a real night does.
He was only about thirty when he painted it.
"A Whiter Shade of Pale" was Procol Harum's debut single, released in 1967, and became one of the greatest hits of the psychedelic era. Gary Brooker composed the melody, while Matthew Fisher created the Bach-inspired organ part, helping pioneer the fusion of rock with classical influences. The single spent six weeks at #1 on the UK Singles Chart, reached #5 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.
Decades later, Fisher sued for recognition of his contribution to the music. In 2006, a UK court ruled that he was entitled to a share of the song's composition copyright for the famous organ part, bringing an end to one of rock's most notable copyright disputes.
50 legendary internet rabbit holes you can spend hours exploring👇
1. https://t.co/ueX0rgHHma — Watch the world via live satellite imagery
2. https://t.co/ZvRw1wmNsJ — See every plane currently in the sky
3. https://t.co/ysMWhN8eU5 — Track all ships at sea in real time
4. https://t.co/ukJigDtLFY — Live map of winds and storms
5. https://t.co/Y1I20AitIs — Watch lightning strikes hitting Earth in real time
6. https://t.co/LmzpGivPqL — Live list of recent earthquakes
7. https://t.co/VU7EuP5SOm — Ocean cables carrying the internet
8. https://t.co/kAAdHcSNpt — Watch forests disappear from space
9. https://t.co/bbkThFLpz1 — The world's statistics, second by second
10. https://t.co/pMvZJO0YfM — Current number of tweets and searches being posted
11. https://t.co/VhEnQl9oax — Compare the true sizes of countries
12. https://t.co/XyyYYcRjdm — Maps from centuries ago
13. https://t.co/AOXvH90KFK — Archive of 150,000 historical maps
14. https://t.co/u0Zf6LJoDZ — World map drawn by volunteers
15. https://t.co/p2uu9hAQks — Look out the window of a random person around the world
16. https://t.co/powm7RRAmX — Virtual walks through cities
17. https://t.co/bcsy3ybL07 — Teleport to a random spot on Earth
18. https://t.co/5YbDgnYpF7 — Catalog of the world's strangest places
19. https://t.co/SJN9aIxuyM — Interactive knowledge experiences
20. https://t.co/bpyBnZgtz1 — Scale journey from atom to universe (Updated HTML5 link)
21. https://t.co/UP12t0jeRy — Explore the solar system in 3D
22. https://t.co/9xDWk6aGgf — Real sky map in your browser
23. https://t.co/ZSJokVTin1 — NASA's astronomy picture of the day
24. https://t.co/7XrqjHR7BR — NASA's entire visual archive, free
25. https://t.co/3tWvLaeyGu — Visual articles told through data
26. https://t.co/JY8FI1u9ls — The state of the world with real data
27. https://t.co/Ois9J7u7m7 — What we mistakenly think we know about the world
28. https://t.co/NtDVcv2cxN — Visualizing complex data
29. https://t.co/FqijxOqnJL — World Bank's open data
30. https://t.co/NyYgq0wMs7 — Turkey's official statistics database
31. https://t.co/KDjOuBVmft — Archive of millions of books, films, and software
32. https://t.co/9Y8pcXCzKu — 70,000 free books whose copyrights have expired
33. https://t.co/hJt2YM0nzp — Record of every book in the world
34. https://t.co/6kwMQCzdZq — U.S. Library of Congress digital archive
35. https://t.co/GAjugENT89 — Europe's cultural heritage archive
36. https://t.co/LPx73NbK1E — America's digital library collection
37. https://t.co/VjpuQq1BIZ — Tour museums from home
38. https://t.co/lkaoYLTy3S — Download artworks in high resolution
39. https://t.co/AX9cd7YatS — Archive of 250,000 artworks
40. https://t.co/WExwDy3e6F — Forgotten visual treasures of history
41. https://t.co/Bobq0w1hyR — Free archive of culture and education
42. https://t.co/bgBEuHixJo — Met Museum's open collection
43. https://t.co/jxj8X1LuEy — Family tree of music genres
44. https://t.co/d8lZJ9yWc3 — Pick a country and decade to listen to that era
45. https://t.co/avmQLINXhU — Turn Wikipedia edits into audio
46. https://t.co/7WDyOPTfU6 — Random knowledge well
47. https://t.co/4qVlBpRvCf — Time, sunrises, and sky events
48. https://t.co/V2ObL5vTSR — Live stream of science news
49. https://t.co/VFhRaZRXso — Free preprints of scientific papers
50. https://t.co/JUo9A2FPFW — Visualize data with live code
Save this. You’ll definitely need some of these later. 🔖
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#DemsUnited
A message from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that resonates perfectly when you think of Jeffrey Mead walking away from an interviewer because he couldn’t answer what Donald Trump had done for black people.