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.”
Headlines
- All
- Africa
- Asia
- Business
- Culture
- Environment
- Europe
- Gaming
- Markets
- Middle East
- Movies & TV
- Music
- Politics
- Science
- South America
- Tech
- World News
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.”
Two Japanese aquariums have released their 2026...
Two Japanese aquariums have released their 2026 flowcharts of their penguins’ relationships . “Penguin drama can include serious crushes and heartbreaks but also adultery and egg-stealing.”
Could the Girls of Camp Mystic Have Been Saved?
"Dozens died in a Texas flood, dividing families over whether it was an act of God or adult failure."
Vintage Pan-Am Luggage Tags
I love these oversized prints of vintage Pan-Am luggage tags from artist Ella Freire. The typography and colors are just perfect. (via daringfireball ) Tags: art · design · Ella Freire · travel
NEVERCREW Explores Our Tenuous Relationship with Nature in Huge Murals
Artists Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni have a knack for bringing the immensity of nature to developed urban spaces. 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
Don’t Just Replace Chavez — Rethink Monuments ....
Don’t Just Replace Chavez — Rethink Monuments . “A memorial based on the great-man theory of history is a tale only half told.” And: “There are elegant ways to pay tribute to groups of people.”
The Testaments TV Series
I’d vaguely remembered that Hulu was adapting The Testaments , Margaret Atwood’s follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale , as a sequel to the TV series of the same name, but I was surprised to find out that the show has premiered and is already three episodes in (a fourth will be
Curiosity Is No Solo Act
"It gains its real power when embedded in webs of relationship and shared meaning-making."
Listen to the NYC Subway play some Train Jazz ....
Listen to the NYC Subway play some Train Jazz . “Every dot is a real subway train. Eight hundred of them, give or take, form a small jazz combo (walking bass, piano, sax, vibes, brushes) that has been playing without pause for over a hundred years.”
10,000 Chicago Concert Recordings Are Being Uploaded to the Internet Archive: Nirvana, Phish, Sonic Youth, They Might Be Giants & More
Perhaps you’ve had the experience of moving to a new city and immediately being told that you’ve missed its golden age of live music. To an extent, this has happened in more or less every period of the past fifty or sixty years. But what if the person regaling you with those
The Engineer Guy Bill Hammack has written a book based on...
The Engineer Guy Bill Hammack has written a book based on his great YouTube channel: The Things We Make: The Unknown History of Invention from Cathedrals to Soda Cans .
In the Studio With Rama Duwaji
Surrounded by her drawings and ceramics, we discussed her evolving art practice and new life as NYC first lady.
Masha Foya’s Airy Illustrations Embrace the Universality of Emotions
The Kyiv-based artist's dreamlike illustrations portray spaces and individuals that embody feeling. 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 Masha Foya’s
The Bennett Prize Opens Fifth Call for Entries
Women figurative realist painters can enter to win $75,000 and a traveling solo exhibition. Applications are open through September 19.
It’s Happening: More Signs of Life From Boards of Canada
I reported last week that signs of activity have been detected from Boards of Canada in the form of mysterious VHS tapes sent out to fans. Yesterday, the group’s record label posted a bunch of photos of posters hung up in cities around the world (NYC, Tokyo, LA) that match
“Boycott the Bezos Met Gala” Posters Emerge Across NYC
The signs protest the sponsors of this year’s event, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchéz, and target Amazon's alleged worker exploitation and links to ICE.
Inside a Black Panther Family Album
Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver’s family album depicts aspirational homemaking in diaspora, capturing the tension between rest and motion as they navigated exile with their children.
‘They’re Gonna Make Me Cry’: I Competed at a Speed Puzzling Championship
"You might think of puzzling as leisurely, but it’s now a sport. I entered a national competition and discovered a passionate community."
Remembering Pearl Fryar, Siri Aurdal, and Frank Stack
This week, we honor a self-taught topiary artist, a mainstay of ’60s Scandinavian art, and author of what may be the first underground comic.
Michaelina Wautier’s Overdue Triumph
The Guggenheim Fellowship names 223 winners, CUNY’s Social Practice program plans to shutter, and do we really need to go to the art fairs this spring?
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Ibram X. Kendi
The Stamped and How to Be an Antiracist author on the superpower he'd like to have, the outlets he likes to read, and his latest work, Chain of Ideas .
What do you own?
What does it mean for us to own something? If we own a piece of land and the rain washes the topsoil downstream, do we go and get the topsoil back? Do we own our reputation? We have influence over it, but some of it was gifted to us without our knowledge, and other parts […]
Leo Tolstoy Calls Shakespeare an ‘Insignificant, Inartistic Writer.’ Then George Orwell Fires Back
After his radical conversion to Christian anarchism, Leo Tolstoy adopted a deeply contrarian attitude. The vehemence of his attacks on the class and traditions that produced him were so vigorous that certain critics, now mostly obsolete, might call his struggle Oedipal. Tolstoy
Enchantment and the Courage of Joy: René Magritte on the Antidote to the Banality of Pessimism
"Life is wasted when we make it more terrifying, precisely because it is so easy to do so."
Mexican Artist Alleges Plagiarism of Femicide Project
Elina Chauvet says her "Red Shoes" installation was staged in Bucharest without her knowledge or name.
If Every Congressman Facing Credible Rape Allegations...
If Every Congressman Facing Credible Rape Allegations Resigned, We’d Have No One Left to Govern the Country . “It’s naïve to imagine the government can continue to function without the tireless dedication of our best and brightest rapists.”
These Are the Winners of the 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship
Kenneth Tam, Alina Tenser, Sheida Soleimani, Leeza Meksin, and American Artist are among the 223 individuals receiving the annual award.
Authoritarian Megalomaniacs Love Gaudy Buildings
You know who else wanted to construct gaudy buildings in his own image? Here’s Timothy Ryback on Adolf Hitler’s obsession “with adding an expensive new wing to the Reich chancellery”. The new annex, connected to the chancellery by a marble corridor hung with crystal
Is This Blue: Chilean Philosophers Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela on Love and How We Know the World
Once, in an extreme of despair, I posed to my therapist a version of the haunting thought experiment Mary’s Room: How, I asked her, can a person who has never been modeled healthy, secure, steadfast love even recognize it when it comes along — to what extent is this knowing