Though it isn’t the kind of thing one hears discussed every day, serious Disney fans do tend to know that Goofy’s original name was Dippy Dawg. But how many of the non-obsessive know that Mickey’s faithful pet Pluto was first called Rover? (We pass over in dignified silence the
"The Little Engine That Could," a Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel collaboration, and many other works are now free to use and reuse.
The artist confronts us with a colonial shadow of real and manufactured images that reflect our current existence and its distortions.
Trailblazing Japanese artists innovated unique techniques, merged traditional mediums with new methods, and reveled in experimentation. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $7
Spotify really started something, didn’t they? Everyone has a “Wrapped” this year; I even got an email one from the cruise line on which I took a trip this summer. Like, “Congratulations! You went on {1} cruise for {7} days!” — and then nothing else. Two stats. So I thought for
Nancy Friedman: 52 Things I Learned in 2025 . Incl. “Seventy-one percent of people in Iceland are Costco members” and “In Sweden, the largest size of Hellmann’s mayonnaise — 600 grams — is called “American size”. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Kent Hendricks: 52 Things I Learned in 2025 . Incl. “Birders in the United States spend $107 billion per year, including $93B on binoculars, feeders, cameras, and other equipment; and $14B on travel. That’s more than the GDP of New Hampshire.” 💬 Join the discussion on
There are few career paths where a professional mishap leads to great success, but Cecilia Giménez found one. The Spanish artist, who died this week at the age of 94, rose to fame and notoriety in the 2010s for her delightful “restoration” of “Ecce Homo,
"The noise between the world in which we had known each other and the world I occupied now went silent, or maybe only hushed."