The wholehearted life
Roshi Joan Halifax is an original, generous, gritty and profound Buddhist teacher. How does she look back on her life? - by Ben Daitz Read on Aeon
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Mona Chalabi on Money and Art
An interview with the Pulitzer Prize winner, Lori Waxman on bringing sexy back in Chicago, stolen Picasso prints found, and the problem with clouds.
Bright Star
"A mixed-age permaculture school in Mexico is showing how an education based on autonomy and care prepares students better for life."
Bad employees/bad bosses
When an organization is struggling, it’s tempting for the boss to blame the team. I’m not sure the evidence supports this. After all, other similar organizations are thriving–drawing from precisely the same labor pool. Sure, it’s easier to be a coach if Michael Jordan is on
The Painting Nobody Wanted: How Matisse’s The Red Studio Went from a London Nightclub to a Masterpiece of Modern Art
A journalist paid Henri Matisse a visit not long after he’d painted The Red Studio in 1911. “I like it, but I don’t completely understand it,” the artist is quoted as admitting of that latest work. “I like it, but I don’t know why I precisely painted it this way.” The painting
The Downfall of a Top Cop
Willy Van Mechelen was one of the most celebrated police officers in Belgian history, responsible for solving infamous kidnappings, robberies, and murders. Then Antwerp’s lucrative drug trade came calling.
When Charles Dickens Met Edgar Allan Poe
“There comes Poe with his raven,” wrote the poet James Russell Lowell in 1848, “like Barnaby Rudge, / Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.” Barnaby Rudge, as you may know, is a novel by Charles Dickens, published serially in 1841. Set during the anti-Catholic
Mona Chalabi Paints a Picture of Class Inequality
“The crisis is the system that we’re in,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning data journalist and artist says in an interview with Hyperallegic about her first book, “Ten Lives.”
Son Lux’s Music Video for ‘Out Into Us’ Is an Atmospheric Foray Between Past and Present
In a joint commission by MASS MoCA and Pioneer Works in collaboration with producer Alex Cook, the recent music video is an atmospheric mini-epic. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as
Crimson Star
Watch the Sun’s atmosphere pulse and flow in extreme UV . Images are from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and “conformed, repaired, graded, blended, rescaled & retimed” by Seán Doran, whose video work is always incredible. It would be great to see this in IMAX or some other
Clouds Were Once Photography’s Greatest Challenge
The Met Museum’s “Chasing Clouds” is a pleasing romp through the technical problem of capturing clouds at photography’s beginning.
The most intense shoe salesman you’ll ever meet, a CBS...
The most intense shoe salesman you’ll ever meet , a CBS News report by Charles Kuralt from 1983 about a “champion” shoe salesman.
Is Sexy Art Back, or Is It Just Me?
From Willem de Kooning’s miserable nudes to Alexandra Barth’s hot and bothered architecture, sex is in the air in Chicago.
The Zen Mona Lisa
A review of an ancient Chinese ink painting takes an art critic on a journey through his own past.
Caribbean Surrealism and Ancestral Memory Merge in Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s Lush Portraits
Tattooed with verdant foliage, the central figure in Kelly Sinnapah Mary’s portraits emerges from the plant life that surrounds her. 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
Wexner Center for the Arts to Keep Name Despite Founder’s Epstein Ties
Hundreds had urged Ohio State University to remove Les Wexner's name from campus buildings over his connections to Jeffrey Epstein.
The Welcome Rain Falling From the Sky
I love Taiwanese artist Kuang-Yu Tsui ’s 1997 conceptual art piece The Welcome Rain Falling From the Sky but I couldn’t really tell you what it means. Something about the way people are bombarded with advertisements for consumer goods? I also couldn’t help but think of the iOS
Six Stolen Picassos Found Under Pile of Clothes in French Home
Seven suspects were arrested in connection with the theft of the prints from L’Amandier restaurant in the south of France.
Maintenance Futures
"Future visions tend to organize around narratives of gain or loss, dystopia or utopia. But what of the neutral position?"
Award-winning photographer Stephen Voss is making a book...
Award-winning photographer Stephen Voss is making a book about the world’s largest data-center hub in Northern Virginia . “Forests have disappeared. Empty fields have become enormous buildings.”
Only Known Manuscript of MLK's "I Have a Dream" Could Fetch $10M at Auction
The public will be able to view the handwritten final draft of the iconic speech at Christie's New York before it goes under the hammer in January.
Amy Liu Explores Light and Dark through Glitz, Mystique, and Opera
In her solo exhibition 'Pearled Chiaroscuro' at Harper's, Liu taps into the Renaissance in more ways than one. 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 Amy
Carl Sagan on How to Live with the Unknown
“We are bathing in mystery and confusion… That will always be our destiny. The universe will always be much richer than our ability to understand it.”
Computer Chips Are the Most Magnificent Things Humanity...
Computer Chips Are the Most Magnificent Things Humanity Has Ever Made . “The phone in your pocket is several orders of magnitude more sophisticated than the computers used for the Apollo mission. One AirPod could easily calculate a path to the moon.”
A YouTuber discovered that most videos contain inaudible...
A YouTuber discovered that most videos contain inaudible background audio that can be geolocated by using airplane flight data . Incredible. I wonder how long the NSA has known about this though…
Andy Warhol's Habibi Phase in Kuwait
Raed Yassin's exhibition “Warhol of Arabia” reimagines the pop artist's 1977 visit to the Gulf country and a bygone era in the Middle East.
Winners of the 2026 Photomicrography Competition
Ok, I’m gonna use the word gobsmacking here because I think it’s completely appropriate. This image of an inkjet printer laying down ink on a piece of paper is gobsmacking. Like what?! You can check out photographer Ole Bielfeldt’s behind-the-scenes process on Instagram ; he
Dark Forestry. “What defense against this onslaught of...
Dark Forestry . “What defense against this onslaught of talking machines? Craft, and ‘the nobility of a day’s work’, once-proud heraldry against inconsiderate design and careless release cycles, are threadbare banners in winter winds.”