Required Reading
This week: Tania Bruguera’s museum manifesto in stained glass, Molly Crabapple on AI’s art heist, Rachel Corrie’s mother speaks out, remembering Ashaji, right-wing knitters, and more.
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Marvel at Manabu Kosaka’s Hyperrealistic Paper Sculptures of Retro Objects
Kosaka painstakingly replicates vintage radios, game consoles, cameras, and more using just one material. 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 Marvel at
Researchers have found that some aspects of sperm...
Researchers have found that some aspects of sperm whales’ communication are “remarkably similar” to human languages .
What Was the Very First Plant in the World?...
What Was the Very First Plant in the World? “Scientists believe the first true plants evolved from green algae around 470 million years ago.”
The Hardest Part Of History To Tell Is How It Felt
"Historians and nonfiction authors often glide over lived experience. They prefer actions, citations, details, dates. But I had just gone through something primal—something beyond my control and beyond the boundaries of modern life."
The Brennan Self-Balancing Monorail
This is so cool: in the early 1900s, a mechanical engineer named Louis Brennan invented a self-balancing train that ran on a single track . This video demonstrates how the train worked using a clever system of gyroscopes. This is the Brennan Monorail, a train from the early
The Marsden Hartley Legacy Project Launches Online
The first comprehensive catalogue of artworks by acclaimed modernist painter Marsden Hartley is now freely available on the internet.
What It’s Like to Go Through Perimenopause and Menopause in Prison
"Limited information and a lack of informed health care providers make this life transition even more difficult for incarcerated people."
15 Artists Explore the Potentiality of Fabric and Fiber in ‘Textile Art Redefined’
Curated by Helen Adams, the group exhibition at Saatchi Gallery celebrates a wide range of contemporary practices. 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
I mentioned this book in a previous post but it deserves...
I mentioned this book in a previous post but it deserves its own thing: Timothy Ryback’s 53 Days: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy will hit shelves in September. A must-read for me.
Fortress Yellowstone
"The ultra-rich are fortifying themselves inside one of America’s last intact ecosystems—with money plundered from ecological sacrifice zones around the world."
The People’s Clock: a Timepiece Made of People
As part of his Real Time series, artist Maarten Baas has created The People’s Clock , a timepiece that lives in Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport. To create the clock’s “workings”, Baas recorded more than 1000 volunteers moving as the clock’s hands over a 12-hour period. If you
The Great American GLP-1 Experiment . In the last few...
The Great American GLP-1 Experiment . In the last few years, people have come up with all sorts of off-label uses for GLP-1s, including treating concussions, menopause, long Covid, IBS, drug addiction, anxiety, hair loss, and arthritis.
The California Town With Less Than 30 Residents Begging for Young People to Move In
"The gold that once drew opportunists to this slice of California now attracts a new generation."
Evolution of Paris
The evolution of Paris across millennia – from Celtic fishing village to world capital – in three animated minutes - by Aeon Video Watch on Aeon
Talking Art With Rama Duwaji
The artist and NYC first lady sits for an exclusive interview with our editor-in-chief. Plus: Who’s behind the posters calling to boycott the Met Gala?
Join the dots
Peering into the origins of our Universe, astronomers found something that shouldn’t be there: what are those little red dots? - by Jenny Greene Read on Aeon
The definitive study of seed oil and health
That’s the appeal of it, of course. There isn’t a definitive study. There can’t be. Even if we created a forty-year-long, double-blind twin study, there’d be room for someone to ask “what about?…” It doesn’t matter that the peer-reviewed and consistent results we have are clear
How George Orwell Predicted the Rise of “AI Slop” in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
We’ve lived but a few years so far into the age when artificial intelligence can produce convincing stories, songs, essays, poems, novels, and even films. For many of us, these recently implemented functions have already come to feel necessary in our daily life, but it may
Watch La Linea, the Popular 1970s Italian Animations Drawn with a Single Line
Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations. Thus spake designer Paul Rand, a man who knew something about making an impression, having created iconic logos for such immediately recognizable brands as ABC, IBM, and UPS. An example of
The Kiln and the Quantum of Relationships
Anything you give your time to and polish with attention will become a lens on your search for meaning, will lavish you with metaphors that become backdoors into the locked room of your most urgent reckonings. In my nascent adventures in pottery, I have observed with great
A rare event to capture on video: an underwater volcanic...
A rare event to capture on video: an underwater volcanic eruption in the Solomon Islands .
From a few weeks ago: Bush’s Tiny Desk Concert ....
From a few weeks ago: Bush’s Tiny Desk Concert . Machinehead and Glycerine still hit.
How to Live Fully: Ursula K. Le Guin’s Remedy for Our Resistance to Change
The most assuring thing about life is that we can change, that things can change, that they are always changing. The most maddening is that despite living in a universe that is one constant transmutation of energy and matter, despite living in bodies and minds whose cells and
Who Is Black Comedy For?
“A new book is nostalgic for the ’90s. But the era of crossover success was not necessarily the pinnacle of Black comedic achievement.”
Your Backpack Got Worse On Purpose . “From a...
Your Backpack Got Worse On Purpose . “From a shareholder’s perspective, the bag that falls apart is the better product. That’s the business model. Repeat failure, repeat purchase, repeat revenue. The quality decline isn’t a side effect. It’s the strategy.”