Before AI There Was the Octopus

Helsinki-based artist Tuomas Laitinen gives us an intelligence with no central brain, no fixed shape, and no interest in being legible to us.

Culture • 4m

The Remarkable Serbian Election

I’ve been reading a bit about the recent election in Serbia and some of the details are fascinating. A student-led coalition toppled the 12-year corrupt reign of “the increasingly authoritarian leader” Aleksandar Vučić in recent elections. But in order to ensure voters and

Culture • 1h

ARTPOWER’s New Platform Helps Artists Build Financial Confidence

Designed to answer one of creative work's toughest questions: "What should I charge?"

Culture • 1h

The NY Times recently asked readers “what they can no...

The NY Times recently asked readers “what they can no longer afford, or have given up on having” . Among the answers: medication, car repairs, new clothes, having more kids, eating out, and contact lenses.

Culture • 2h

‘The Encyclopedia of Movie Cats’ Is an Exhaustive Index of Every Feline to Prowl on Screen

700+ cats. 1900+ film stills. 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 ‘The Encyclopedia of Movie Cats’ Is an Exhaustive Index of Every Feline to Prowl on

Culture • 2h

Old Newspaper Headlines About the Name Doppelgängers of Current Celebrities

This is great: Annie Rauwerda (of Depths of Wikipedia fame) sifted through the archive at newspapers.com to find the goings on of long-ago celebrity name doppelgängers ( follow-up post ). A few of my favorites: Tags: Annie Rauwerda · celebrity · language

Culture • 3h

A Cult Grew Around the First Emperor of Rome in 27 B.C. A New Book Argues His Followers Might Have Created the Template for Christianity

Augustus was seen as a descendant of the gods who would go on to redefine authority. New research posits that his rule paved the way for Jesus

Culture • 4h

I made a small tweak to Prometheus (gift link discovery...

I made a small tweak to Prometheus (gift link discovery site) that kinda kicks ass: NYT Cooking is now a separate source (which you can filter by). The Rigatoni With White Bolognese recipe is a favorite of mine. 🤌

Culture • 4h

Traveling Route 66 in the Age of Data Centers

"Driving through America’s back roads, the emptiness of the information superhighways comes into sharp relief."

Culture • 5h

Hills and mountains

A girl’s story of forced marriage reveals how the Soviet invasion of 1979 transformed life in Afghanistan - by Aeon Video Watch on Aeon

Culture • 7h

The physics of getting fired

Physics offered me a sense of order and purpose. But when life got messy I realised it had a much deeper insight to give - by Zahaan Bharmal Read on Aeon

Culture • 7h

Road Trip at the Borderland

A trip along the North Korean border, with a Chinese father and his estranged daughter, plastic bags of food, and an 81-year-old grandmother who refuses to wear a seat belt.

Culture • 7h

An Epstein Survivor’s Message for MoMA

Dani Bensky explains why the museum must drop Leon Black from its board. Also: The Vatican is serious about protecting artists from AI.

Culture • 7h

Explaining funny

This is one of the most famous comedy bits of all time: But why is it funny? The disconnect between experiencing it and explaining it represents one of the challenges of teaching. It’s also at the heart of leadership, marketing and culture. Design, good taste, genre,

Culture • 8h

The Early Years of Electronic Pop: The Moog Craze, Psychedelic Experiments, and More

There’s a decent chance you’ve heard at least a couple of tracks from Wendy Carlos’ Switched-On Bach. But when was the last time you put on Switched-On Rock, Switched-On Country, Switched-On Santa, or Switched-On Bacharach? More likely than not, you’ve never even heard of those

Culture • 8h

Surreal Pinscreen Animations Bring Kafka, Gogol & Mussorgsky to Life (1933–1972)

What do Franz Kafka, Nikolai Gogol, and Modest Mussorgsky have in common? They stand alone among their peers for their darkly humorous sensibilities, fascination with the grotesque, imaginative takes on cultural traditions, and a predisposition for the proto-surreal. Like the

Culture • 9h

Errol Morris shot ads for Theranos and recently revealed...

Errol Morris shot ads for Theranos and recently revealed he has a two-hour interview with Elizabeth Holmes that he’s considering releasing . “Did I have any reason to believe that she was a fraud? I did not. Did that change as time went on? It did.”

Culture • 14h

Remember the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game? Turns out:...

Remember the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game? Turns out : “Kevin Bacon is not the center of Hollywood. In fact, he never has been, and almost certainly never will be.”

Culture • 14h

The Most Important Thing to Remember About Your Mother

"It is not easy to give closeness and freedom, safety plus danger."

Culture • 17h

Found Object Masks by Romuald Hazoumè Counter Sorrow with Sympathy

Romuald Hazoumé encircles plastic jugs with feathers, netting, paintbrushes, and other found materials. 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 Found

Culture • 21h

A bunch of items from Stanley Kubrick’s personal archive...

A bunch of items from Stanley Kubrick’s personal archive will be auctioned off early next year , including Jack Torrance’s axe & the sisters’ blue dresses from The Shining, Kubrick’s director’s chair, and a chess set owned by the director.

Culture • 22h

The Moving Image Archive

The Moving Image Archive is a collection of over 120,000 clips from almost 2300 archival films drawn from public domain collections. The internet is full of forgotten films, and this archive is a growing library of that collection. When synthetic footage can now fabricate the

Culture • 23h