The Gentle Giant: Oliver Sacks and the Art of Choosing Empathy Over Vengeance
An existential lesson gleaned from a brush with death and foolishness.
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Kudzu Vines and Synthetic Leaves Entwine in Joyce Lin’s Irrepressible Sculptures
How has kudzu influenced the South? Joyce Lin unpacks its knotted legacy. 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 Kudzu Vines and Synthetic Leaves Entwine
Music and the Body: Richard Powers on the Power of Song
"The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body."
Louvre Director Resigns Amid Heist Fallout
Laurence des Cars's resignation comes months after the infamous jewel heist drew international ire.
Manhattan DA Drops Charges Against Photographer Alexa Wilkinson
Wilkinson was arrested after photographing a protest at the New York Times's headquarters.
Cover of Such Great Heights by Chvrches
For a show on Hulu called Tell Me Lies, synth-pop band Chvrches covered Such Great Heights by The Postal Service. Lovely. Tags: Chvrches · music · remix · The Postal Service · video
Your Guide to Fairs and Shows This LA Frieze Week
In true Angeleno fashion, a slew of local exhibitions and art events act as a counterbalance to this year’s eight fairs — or more, depending on how you define them.
Why My Public Art Drives the Right Nuts
"Phoenix Ladder" is an homage to the people of the Bronx, a lighthouse for our collective futures, and our witness.
“I remember walking by a former drug dealer, a...
“I remember walking by a former drug dealer, a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent, a former mobster and a former preacher all sitting around a table together in the prison yard. Surely this was not happening anywhere else in America .”
Ireland Makes Basic Income Program for Artists Permanent
After a successful pilot, artists will be paid hundreds of euros weekly over three years.
A Tour Inside the NY Botanical Garden’s Trippy Orchid Show
Classic city scenes become floral fantasies in this year’s pop-timistic iteration of the park’s iconic annual show.
I Am a 15-year-old Girl. Let Me Show You the Vile...
I Am a 15-year-old Girl. Let Me Show You the Vile Misogyny That Confronts Me on Social Media Every Day. “I frequently feel objectified, dehumanised and disgusted by the hate towards women I see online.”
How to Stop a Dictator . “Democracy is in fact a...
How to Stop a Dictator . “Democracy is in fact a powerful motivating factor: When people are convinced that there’s a threat to their political freedoms, they can be motivated to go to extraordinary lengths to defend them.”
Snow Day in the Art World
From Helene Schjerfbeck to Glenn Ligon, here’s what to read — and where to go when the snow clears.
The Trailer for Season Five of For All Mankind
Just dropped this morning: the trailer for the final season of For All Mankind . When season four’s teaser trailer came out, I caught some flack for suggesting that “if you tilt your head and squint…you see For All Mankind as a prequel/origin story for The Expanse”. It looks
The Disappearing Art of Iberian Democracy
The varied, confrontational works on view at Madrid's La Casa Encendida are reminders of the intense labor required to protect liberty.
Top tier nerd shit. “ WalkmanLand is a tribute to...
Top tier nerd shit. “ WalkmanLand is a tribute to the long forgotten portable music players from the 80-90s. The Walkmans.”
Undulating Coasters and Slide Complexes Loom in Alex Hutton’s Paintings
"So much material, time, engineering, and maintenance goes into a short ride designed to fling people through space and create a sense of thrill and danger in a controlled environment." Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support
Between the Sheets at the College Excel Championships
"One of the most unusual — and fun — events in college sports is a high-stakes spreadsheeting competition in Las Vegas."
Well, this is one of those things I wish I’d known...
Well, this is one of those things I wish I’d known about earlier — sessions with Isabel Wilkerson, James McBride, Ocean Vuong, Rebecca Solnit, Lauren Groff, Judy Blume…all sold out. 😭
Andor Creator Tony Gilroy Is Free to Speak About Fascism Now
Early on in the promotional period for season two of Andor, a series explicitly about fascism that depicted a genocide, Disney asked creator Tony Gilroy not to use the words “fascism” and “genocide”. Now that promotional period has passed and he can speak freely. Here’s
He Was a Legendary Newsroom Colleague. Turned Out He Had a Secret Past
"How an unexpected email led me to crack the mystery of Charles Saunders."
A Cosmic Pastoral: Diane Ackerman on the Intimate in the Infinite and the Responsibility of Rapture
It could have been otherwise. That one defiant particle of matter could have never broken free from the equipoise of antimatter to sound the first note of something out of the mute nothingness, singing a universe into being. The universe could have withheld gravity, could have
The Parts We Live With: D.H. Lawrence and the Yearning for Living Unison
"We ought to dance with rapture that we should be alive and in the flesh, and part of the living, incarnate cosmos."
A Meta employee who works on AI safety let an AI agent...
A Meta employee who works on AI safety let an AI agent named OpenClaw loose on her inbox and it deleted all her email . (This tracks; companies like Meta actually don’t care about AI safety and hire accordingly.)
Wildly Expressive Paper Masks by Marianne Eriksen Scott-Hansen Radiate Emotion
"A face tells a story of life," says Marianne Eriksen Scott-Hansen. 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 Wildly Expressive Paper Masks by Marianne
I Hate Trump’s Awful Policies, but I Love That...
I Hate Trump’s Awful Policies, but I Love That He’s a Huge Asshole . “I don’t like Trump’s immigration laws; they’re racist and economically disastrous. But I do love how evil he is.”
Writer Lauren Groff on how she works . “After she...
Writer Lauren Groff on how she works . “After she completes a first draft, she puts it in a bankers box — and never reads it again.” And: “We all need to fill ourselves with the ghosts of other writers.” Her new book is out now.
Moonlight and the Magic of the Unnecessary
Every night, for every human being that ever was and ever will be, the Moon rises to remind us how improbably lucky we are, each of its craters a monument of the odds we prevailed against to exist, a reliquary of the violent collisions that forged our rocky planet lush with
How to Grow Old: Bertrand Russell on What Makes a Fulfilling Life
"Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life."
The Mount Rushmore of Racism
Blizzard shuts down museums in New York, Prince Andrew's arrest photo is hung at the Louvre, a beloved hand-drawn calendar in Los Angeles, and a biography of a mountain.
The six-second hug
From art to religion to sex, instrumentalisation has drained away intrinsic value. But life is about more than material benefits - by Julian Baggini Read on Aeon
Time is the wildcard
There are two feet of snow blocking your car from the road. This is a problem. Except it’s not a problem if you don’t need to leave the house for a few days—the snow will melt on its own. And it’s not a problem if you had decided to move to the island of Saba […]
How to Carve Hieroglyphs Just Like the Ancient Egyptians Did
In ancient Egypt, writing hieroglyphs was a highly specialized skill, one commanded by only a small fraction of the population. The fact that there were more than 1,000 characters to memorize probably had something to do with that, but the variety of surfaces on which
How to Make Coffee in the Bialetti Moka Pot: The “Ultimate Techique”
In Italy, roughly 70% of households have a Bialetti Moka Pot. And chances are you have one too. But are you using it the right way? Probably not, says James Hoffmann, the author of The World Atlas of Coffee. Above, he sets the record straight, demonstrating the best technique