“AI skeptics need to update their priors: Plenty of cause for concern, plenty of room to hit these companies for unethical behavior, resource demands, etc, but we are so, so far past the era of ‘stochastic parrots’ ”.
Vimeo was recently acquired by a private equity firm and you know what comes next: Vimeo Lays Off ‘Most’ of Its Staff, Allegedly Includes ‘the Entire Video Team’ .
Your Friends Are Still Acting Like Everything is Normal in America. What Do You Do? “The first obligation we all have is an epistemic one: It’s to know what kind of reality we are actually inhabiting.” (gift link)
Defund Science, Distort Culture, Mock Education. “We have a very focused and intense effort across the board to set America back a generation, at least, for education, health, research, climate policy.”
Thing I did not know I was looking for (but totally was): a deep dive into ASCII rendering . Super interesting!
Where does the mind go in solitary confinement? An evocative animation exploring three individual experiences - by Aeon Video Watch on Aeon
The Smithsonian repatriates Indian bronzes, another NFT platform bites the dust, and was Michelangelo and Titian's rivalry real?
Despite associations with the idle rich, the fact that inheritances are rising is a sign of a healthy, growing economy - by Daniel Waldenström Read on Aeon
"In just a few years, a publisher based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, has become the country’s fourth-largest newspaper operator. Some reporters wonder if it isn’t the cruelest."
You know that the price of life is death, that the price of love is loss, and still you watch the golden afternoon light fall on a face you love, knowing that the light will soon fade, knowing that the loving face too will one day fade to indifference or bone, and you love
Every important medical innovation of the last five hundred years has been ridiculed, undermined and ignored by doctors and the medical establishment. Every single one. Hand-washing, antibiotics, and the dangers of smoking, just to pick a few. This happens in any system where
If there’s a silver lining to our tumultuous times, it’s that musicians are reviving the protest song, a tradition that has withered since the end of the Vietnam War. Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Fortunate Son,” Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine
With "The Silence of the Lambs" hitting theaters, Orion wanted a hit. They didn't anticipate an antihero.
Dissecting the philosophical conundrum of our "integrity of identity that persists over time, undergoing changes and yet still continuing to be."
Having previously considered whether comedians are the philosophers of our time, we must now ask whether they, too, build upon the work of other philosophers. Few of today’s most prominent funny men and women live a philosophical life — or have cultivated the temperament
From the artist's kitchen table to international travels, animated digital collages celebrate a sense of place. 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
If entering the country suddenly requires surrendering your digital life and private information, how long before artists and collectors simply choose not to come?
The sculptures of Hindu gods and their followers were stolen from Tamil temples and smuggled out of India in the mid-20th century.
Nifty Gateway, which was plagued with reports of user issues, is the latest marketplace to call it quits amid a protracted NFT slump.
William E. Wallace openly uses what he calls “informed imagination” to explore the relationship between the two masters in his new study.
"Between the opening credits and the 3 a.m. feedings, as I watched films in 20-minute increments, something profound happened."
This week, we honor an architect who mended our urban social fabric, a giant of the gallery world, and a groundbreaking Modernist.
The gang at Present & Correct found a cache of pre-war tourist maps of Japan while rummaging around in Tokyo’s Jinbōchō used book district. They photographed them for a new self-published book called Paper Trails . Tags: books · design · Japan · maps · Paper Trails
Often seen as too American to be Mexican, too Mexican to be American, the city is presented by the artist as it is, not as anyone assumes it might be.
"There are more things ... likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality."
Traversal (FSG) broadens and deepens the questions raised in Figuring, the questions we live with: the relationship between chance and choice in becoming who we are, between chemistry and consciousness in being what we are, the tension between our love of truth and our lust for
The Copyrightability of Fonts Revisited by Matthew Butterick, a type designer & copyright litigator. “If a court were asked to directly consider the copyrightability of an ordinary digital font, it would likely rule in the negative.”
Art has a singular ability to bind us to one another, no matter how different we might feel. 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 Art is Better
Clint Smith visits the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. “The goal of the sites is to force visitors to confront the violence of the past without the counterweight of a more uplifting narrative to assuage their distress.”
"A source trapped inside an industrial-scale scamming operation contacted me, determined to expose his captors’ crimes—and then escape. This is his story."
Among the Mogao Caves' nearly 500 chambers and temples in China, a space known as Cave 17 revealed thousands of extraordinary objects in the early 20th century. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts
Bruce Springstein wrote & recorded a song about Minnesota’s battle against tyranny: Streets Of Minneapolis . “Our city’s heart and soul persists / Through broken glass and bloody tears / On the streets of Minneapolis.”
In one of his final on-camera interviews, David Lynch recounts going to the very first Beatles concert in the US in 1964. I ended up going to this concert. I didn’t really have any idea that it was the first concert. I didn’t have any idea how big this event was. And it was in
Why do RSS readers look like email clients? “When we applied that same visual language to RSS (the unread counts, the bold text for new items, the sense of a backlog accumulating) we imported the anxiety without the cause.”