Aphantasia (the inability to visualize) is one of those things that I find endlessly fascinating; I’ve written about it a few times since 2016 , most recently in response to Larissa MacFarquhar’s 2025 piece for the New Yorker: Some People Can’t See Mental Images. The
The show opening at the Brooklyn Museum this week reaffirms Iris van Herpen’s one-of-a-kind approach to sustainable, sculptural fashion. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7
We’re Diversifying the University by Hiring More Crackpots . “For too long, the university has ignored the wisdom of the donor class and hired based on academic excellence. Regrettably, this has led to the underrepresentation of discredited viewpoints…”
"For screenwriters like me—and job seekers all over—AI gig work is the new waiting tables."
Digg has (sorta) relaunched (again) and instead of an underwhelming Reddit clone, it’s now just scraping noted fascist cesspool “X” for AI news and telling us that Sam Altman is influential in AI? This is embarrassing. It’ll probably be a huge success.
How NASA Built Artemis II’s Fault-Tolerant Computer . “Every subsystem must be designed to survive cosmic-ray bit flips, radiation-induced latch-ups, and hardware faults without a single second of downtime.” (A: An extreme level of redundancy.)
"'Clippers' cut up podcasts, videos, and events into infinite shorter versions. How long can they ride the algorithms?"
Hyperallergic wins a journalism award, hilarious new protest art against Trump, and should you start an Artist Corporation?
Five stories on the overwhelming, profound art of caring for other people.
We need a new imagination for the whole Earth, linking the power of the deep planet with the vitality of the surface - by James Dinneen Read on Aeon
Long after the fact, these are the best kind. They remind us of how far we’ve come. They’re proof that not giving up was a good idea. They are fuel for the next thing. But, at the time, they’re pretty hard to live with. All we can do is remind ourselves that it’s an unskippable
When J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books appeared in the mid-1950s, they were met with very mixed reviews, an unsurprising reception given that nothing like them had been written for adult readers since Edmund Spenser’s epic 16th century English poem The Faerie Queene,
John Coltrane released “more significant works” than his 1960 “My Favorite Things,” says Robin Washington in a PRX documentary on the classic reworking of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Broadway hit. “A Love Supreme” is often cited as the zenith of the saxophonist’s career. “But if
Ridgewood Open Studios drew hundreds to explore hidden alcoves in converted factories, basement spaces teeming with sculptures, and printmaking workshops in playgrounds.
Remember Desktop Tower Defense ? I played it for a bit this weekend and it’s still great fun. One of the very best games from the Flash era .
Cultural groups based in Somalia say they were not “meaningfully consulted” or “included” in the selection process for the exhibition.
The fully functioning arcade game mirrors the White House’s trivialization of death and suffering amid the US and Israel’s prolonged war on Iran.
The fully functioning arcade game mirrors the White House’s trivialization of death and suffering amid the US and Israel’s prolonged war on Iran.
Taken : this is a web page that shows how much data your browser can collect that websites can use to “fingerprint” your device, even without cookies. “It identified your device with enough specificity to distinguish it from most others on the internet.”
Her photos are unresolvable, driving the viewer through wonder, horror, and laughter without necessarily leading one to acceptance.
What exactly is an Artist Corporation, and should you start one? Paddy Johnson has your back.
Seán Doran, who I’ve featured here many times before for his remastered astronomy photos & videos, has taken photographs captured by a Japanese weather satellite of Typhoon Sinlaku in April 2026 and “repaired, remastered and transformed” the images into this breathtaking 4K
An exhibition about the Spanish painter in London made me ponder whether belief actually makes a difference in how well you paint.
"Every winter, tens of thousands of Americans migrate to public lands in the Arizona desert. For a growing number, it's not a vacation—it’s the only housing they can afford."
Along with collaborator Betty Schöner, Brunetti travels around the continent in a firetruck that has been converted to a photo lab. 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
An exhibition at the Morgan Library guides visitors through the life and career of the virtuoso via art and well-preserved ephemera.
Interesting thread about why rural towns don’t vote blue : they don’t have to because small towns “actually operate very similarly to the ‘socialist agenda’ they pretend to be so afraid of” and “they’ve already been having to take of their own…”
"The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering... The miracle is that we create ourselves anew."
Aardman’s official Wallace & Gromit YouTube channel is livestreaming what appears to be the four shorts featuring the duo: A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, A Close Shave, and A Matter of Loaf or Death. I can’t find any further information about the stream — if those are
People Who Don’t Like People Are Making All of Our Decisions . “We are living in the ultimate revenge of the nerds, driven by a crew of socially awkward tech bros who won’t stop until the society that they never quite fit into is obliterated.”
Anyone of any age can stop by the Grandma Stand in New York’s Central Park to shoot the breeze with a grandmother . The concept has spread around the US and is now the subject of an hour-long documentary on PBS . At a time when the lack of connection is epidemic, wise witty
Where are the public benches on the internet? “Like cities that have prioritized cars, visiting the Internet now entails controlled apps and search engines, designed for extraction. There’s nowhere to rest because the benches are covered in spikes.”
Now open in NYC: a pop-up called The Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room , which consists of “all 3.5 million pages, 3,437 volumes, and 17,000 pounds of the released and partially redacted Epstein files”.