How did life on Earth arise? Three of the biggest inflection points were ~4 billion years ago when life first emerged, ~2 billion years ago when eukaryotic cells appeared, and ~580 million years ago when life got big.
"I’ve been passing as male for six years, and I still have no idea how to do the Slappy Man-Hug."
For CBS News in 1985, Charles Kuralt profiled bike messenger David Leopold. I don’t go slow. I don’t stop for red lights. I go against traffic. I disobey every traffic law there is. Great street footage of NYC from 40 years ago. You might think that Leopold ended up as a
Winds reportedly dislodged the piece of roofing material that struck Rogério Renato Mateucci, a Brazilian university rector.
The iconic Sydney beach hosts "the world’s largest free to the public sculpture exhibition." Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article Dozens of Sculptures
The Library Is Closed. Feel Free to Come In. “In communities where workspaces are scarce, libraries are welcoming visitors outside of staffed hours. All they need is a library card.”
"Palmeros are the gutsy, highly skilled farm workers who harvest your medjool dates. Now climate change, immigration raids, and a push for mechanization threaten their 6,000-year-old tradition."
This week, we honor a fixture of New York and New Delhi art, a painter who folded the world into abstraction, and a champion of Denver’s scene.
Tiny People in a Big World is like a birdwatching guide, but for people-watching. “I made this campaign to produce a book that will help you notice and appreciate the tiny people who pass through your big world.”
Link Loop is basically a 2D version of Portal. Looks fun!
An exhibition pairing paintings by the two artists guides us through the chambers of our own minds and bodies.
"We have. It’s ruled by Stafford County teens."
The exhibition shapes a fashion canon based less on historical relevance than on the interests of those in charge.
CDOT completed the wildlife-only bridge, the largest of its kind currently in North America, in December 2025. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article A
MassArt’s Graduate Assistantships support students’ interests and professional development beyond graduation.
Ambient Earth is a 7.5-hour, real-time, 4K, remastered video of the orbital view from the International Space Station. Seán Doran took almost 49,000 images from 27 time-lapse sequences captured from the ISS by astronaut Butch Wilmore, repaired, remastered, and interpolated them
“Japan launched a $578 million mission Monday on a five-year expedition to land on the largest moon of Mars and retrieve samples for return to Earth .”
Find the Place You Love. Then Move There. “The reward from moving just because you want to is hard to defend logically. Some people will think you are crazy…”
“Life will break you,” Louise Erdrich wrote in her passionate insistence that “you are here to risk your heart.” It can happen with a shattering, or with a thousand small fissures, but the great paradox — the great salvation — is that every time it happens, you live to see you
"Forrest Welborn spent decades as a suspect in the infamous Austin murders. It all but destroyed his life. This year, he was finally exonerated. So why doesn’t he feel free?"
Horrific violence, enduring terror and ceaseless solidarity: four years of war through the eyes of Ukrainian civilians - by Aeon Video Watch on Aeon
A diatribe against AI-generated art writing, MIT professors bedazzle security cameras, and Art Basel Paris goes into lockdown.
Juan Tamariz and Wendell Berry recently passed away. Between them, they had more than 170 years of generous contribution. Juan was a card magician. His students are generally considered the best working in the world today. Wendell was a farmer and a writer. His essays on
Any reader of Victorian literature will wonder how much a ha’penny was actually worth in those days. For a little more than a year at the very end of that period, it could buy you a cup of coffee, cocoa, milk, tea, or “fluid beef” — which would pour out of a lamppost on the […]
Two of the books that most shaped American culture both happened to bear the nickname “The Big Book.” While the second of these, the A.A. Manual, published in 1939, changed the country with 12-Step recovery groups, the first of these, the Sears Catalog, transformed America with
"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."
Álvaro Urbano presents an homage to the innovations of Casa Cueva, an icon of modernist Mexican architecture. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7 per month. The article
Dispatches from open studios events across town and the Tompkins Square Dog Halloween Parade.
I remember this 90s TV commercial for 93.7 The Edge , a Minnesota alternative radio station, very well. It features very non-alternative old people reciting lyrics like “bow down before the one you serve” and “Winona’s got herself a big brown beaver”.
Institutions, especially well-resourced museums, foundations, and cultural organizations, have no excuse for relying on generative tools instead of paying writers.
Gregory Wieber does these engaging, info-rich videos on tech history — I posted his HyperCard Changed Everything video back in the spring. For one of his latest videos, Wieber goes through a short history of Christopher Alexander’s landmark book, A Pattern Language ( Bookshop
Olivia Zubko combines our favored legends with humankind’s most sacred pillars: beauty and bathrooms.
