One often-repeated anecdote about Milton Friedman has the famous economist visiting a canal under construction in nineteen-sixties China. Noticing the sheer number of human laborers digging away with shovels, he asked the official in charge why they weren’t getting the work
On July 26, 2022, as I was living through a period of acute loneliness despite being a naturally solitary person, NASA reported that computer modeling of data from its Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) had revealed several cylindrical pits on the Moon with just the right shape
We spend our lives mastering the art of losing. Our necessary losses shape us; the unnecessary, senseless, devastating losses bend our shape to test our breaking point. We can lose people to life — to conflict, to confusion, to the consequences of their trauma — losses painful
“ Szilveszter Makó’s surreal portraits have become nearly as recognisable as the celebrities he photographs. ” But: “Artists who become successful for a signature style are then accused of monotony for being hired to reproduce it.”
Amy Sherald shines on the magazine’s uneven list, Artadia names a new director, Johnny Depp's awfulness, and more in Art Movements.
Dylan Martinez's glass-blown water balloons, Deanna Billy Projects' mini wiener paintings, and Abu Oluwaseyi's abstract portraits all caught my eye at this year’s NYC edition.
This is a video of Nirvana playing Smells Like Teen Spirit in a small club just two days after Nevermind came out in 1991. There’s a freight train bearing down on those boys and they don’t even know it. (via digg ) See also The Notorious B.I.G. freestyling on a Brooklyn corner
The organization will lose half of its studio spaces to a tenant who wants to expand their footprint in the Brooklyn Army Terminal building.
Blacksmiths in the South have long embedded West African symbolism into gates, rails, and window bars, proof that the craft evolved with every hand that held the hammer.
What does the British artist have to offer beyond monumental scale and costly optical illusions?
New book from Ed Yong! Life Beyond Measure: Nature’s Hidden Wonders at Every Scale . “A bristlecone pine rounds the corner of its fifth millennium; shorebirds fly without stopping across the world’s largest ocean…” Out in April, pre-order now .
Yes, this summer really was as hot as you think it was . This summer “was the hottest on record for the contiguous U.S., beating the previous champions of 1936 and 2021 by 0.4°F. Compared to the average over the 20th century, this summer was 3° hotter.”
Protest artworks and memes scrutinize Sheeran's inability to speak out against the genocide after he axed Macklemore from his Loop Tour over pro-Palestine comments.
The Chilean artist’s drawings on hand-dyed paper and homespun fabric are like natural pills against language.
By taking a camera, pointing it out the window of a train, and keeping track of how fast the train is moving, you can create very wide panoramic scans of the scenery. It’s a little more complicated than that — all the details are here — but you’re essentially using the train
Sitting atop a Spanish mesa one sweltering August night, watching the Perseid meteor showers streak the sky with the debris of a comet burning through the atmosphere against the backdrop of a billion dead stars whose signal light is only now reaching us, I found myself
Japanese architect Tadao Ando designed a floating children’s library and donated it to Kagawa prefecture. “We created reading spaces throughout the ship. A large circular bench was placed on the rear deck, and children can even lie under the sun.”
The Rumpus Book Club event for this month is a conversation between Debbie Millman, Roxane Gay, and Emily Wilson about Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey. Sept 25th at 7pm ET on Zoom, free for all.
Stamps School of Art & Design alumnus explores memory, migration, and who shapes history in an exhibition spanning drawing, sculpture, and installation. On view through December 12, 2026.
The British Museum has reversed its policy on allowing photography of the near-thousand-year-old work.
The photographer explores unexpected architecture in the Italian Alps. 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 South Tyrol’s Bunkers Shoulder WWII History
The Star Wars Archives. 1977-1983. From Taschen. Looks fantastic.
With Adapted Sailing, the Sea Is for Everyone . “The program and others like it across the world are opening up a new frontier for people with reduced mobility, out on the open sea, free from the limitations of buildings and streets.”
There is a silence at the center of each person — an untrammeled space where the inner voice grows free to speak. That space expands in solitude. To create anything — a poem, a painting, a theorem — is to find the voice in the silence that has something to say to the world. In
"If you can fall in love again and again ... if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you've got it half licked."
This is fun: Red Bull took over one of the karting tracks at Silverstone (home of the British Grand Prix), put 100 regular folks in karts, positioned four-time F1 champ Max Verstappen at the back of the pack, and gave him 75 minutes (or 30 laps) to pass everyone. Spoiler alert:
Probing the biology, beauty and mystery of animal eyes, this short poetic documentary explores an alien world - by Aeon Video Watch on Aeon
Guides to shows this fall from Chicago to NYC to Dakar.
The computist has one dream: to debug the subjectivity out of all of human knowledge, creating a pure, frictionless world - by Liam Spradlin Read on Aeon
The ESPN writer tells us what feels like home, the best gift he’s ever received, and the Esquire read he can’t stop thinking about.
If you can provide the cheapest, fastest and best option, there will be a line out the door for your service or product. Most providers know, though, that good, fast and inexpensive are trade-offs. You will have trouble offering all three. And in a competitive marketplace, as
Reading is unnatural. This will hardly come as a surprise to any child trying to put off his homework for just one more hour of watching other kids play Minecraft. Yet there really are implications worth considering if we accept that our cognitive systems didn’t evolve to