⌾Curio #47 - Ethan Hawke, Flags & Kiasmos
Dear readers,
I’ve been putting together these newsletters for well over a year now. It’s been a wonderful way to learn and write about things I find intriguing and share them with each of you. Since starting Curio, the news cycle seems to have become even more noisy and chaotic. Writing this each week became a nice little escape from all of that.
Claude Monet - Impression, Sunrise (1872)
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In the last couple of months my life has changed quite a bit and my priorities and commitments have changed too. The truth is that there are a couple of other projects I am focusing my energies on at the moment and I’m finding that writing a newsletter each week is eating into the time I feel I should be spending on those. As a result, I’m going to pause sending Curio out for the time being. I have no doubt it will resume in some capacity, but perhaps with a different cadence (monthly?) and format that will make it more sustainable moving forward.
I can’t thank each of you enough. I think I agree with John Cheever who said, “I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.”
Stay well,
Oli
Ethan Hawke on Creativity
I’m a big fan of the actor Ethan Hawke, particularly his performances in the Before Sunrise trilogy, Training Day, Boyhood, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead and Dead Poets Society. In the following TED Talk, a bewhiskered Hawke discusses the importance of creativity and how people ought to give themselves permission to be a bit more creative in their everyday life. As he mentions, creativity can take many forms, including listening to some new music or speaking with somebody you don’t usually talk to or trying to cook a meal you’ve never made before. He urges people to channel their inner child when approaching creative activities — to be less driven by habit and to care less about whether you are any good. Ultimately, he believes we should all be willing to “play the fool.”
Flags of the World Trivia (Answers at the bottom)
This hasn’t been a great year for international travel or pub trivia, but that’s no excuse to get rusty in your ability to wow friends, strangers and first dates with niche factoids relating to national flags of the world. See how you go with these questions.
a. While the vast majority of countries use rectangular flags, two countries use square flags. Which countries are they? Hint: both are small European nations
b. Which is the only country in the world without a square or rectangular flag? Hint: this is it
c. The below flag is the only national flag with humans on it. Which country does it represent?
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d. There is only one country in the world whose flag does not have the colors red, white or blue. Which is it?
e. The below flag is the national flag for two (!) totally unrelated countries. Which are they?
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f. Which country’s flag is this?
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g. Which country’s flag is this? (the shade of red is apparently meant to be a fraction darker in this flag compared to the one above)
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h. Which country’s flag is this?
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i. Which two countries didn’t realize they had exactly the same flag (seen below) until the 1936 Olympics opening ceremony? Following the Olympics, both countries quickly changed their flags
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j. Which flag holds the world record for being the oldest continuously used national flag?
k. Which is the only national flag in the world which is different on either side?
Kiasmos
Kiasmos is a collaboration between Ólafur Arnalds, a classically trained pianist and composer from Iceland, and Janus Rasmussen, a synth-pop producer from the Faroe Islands. Together, Arnalds and Rasmussen have created electronic music popping with emotional gravity. Their distinctive and ethereal sound combines minimalist piano and atmospheric string compositions with various synthesizers, drum machines and tape delays. Looped is from their self titled debut 2014 album and is a track that just keeps building momentum. The below video is of Kiasmos performing at the Iceland Airwaves festival in Reykjavik in late 2017.
Flags of the World - Answers
a. Switzerland and the Vatican City
b. Nepal
c. Belize
d. Jamaica
e. Chad and Romania
f. Indonesia
g. Monaco
h. Poland
i. Haiti and Lichenstein
j. Denmark
k. Paraguay
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If you’re interested to learn more trivia surrounding national flags, or if you’re an aspiring vexillologist, this is a great video from the Youtube channel WonderWhy.
“Our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
Karl Popper
Curio is a newsletter for curious minds seeking an escape from the noise of the news cycle. It is put together by Oli Duchesne