It took me thirty years to populate the bookshelf that’s behind me in most of my videos. Most of us don’t have the time or patience to do that. At the same time, the wonky computer-generated background many people use on Zoom calls undermines the impact and authority you might
How do dictionary makers keep track of similarly suffixed words, like those ending in -ism, -graphy, -ness, or -ology? With a computer, it’s simple, but how did they do it before the computing age? Starting in the 1950s, lexicographers at Merriam-Webster typed all of the words
On The Fuel Efficiency of Launching My Enemies Into The Sun . Incredibly nerdy and fun: does it require more power to eject a person from the solar system or launch them into the Sun?
"No texts, no Instagram, no subway Slack."
The Rise & Fall Of ‘Petty Tyrants’ . “The energy required to deceive is unsustainable. Reality is relentless. The tyrant who chooses to fight it is doomed.”
Down with -maxxing! Searching for the absolute best option isn’t always the wisest course of action . Better to make a good-enough choice so “a great deal of energy gets freed up for living, instead of being spent on wondering about how to live”.
"Each drawing took between 20 to 40 hours of focused work," the artist writes. 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 Christina Mrozik Illustrates an
There are no lightsabers in The Mandalorian and Grogu, a first for Star Wars films . There are also no Wilhelm screams in the movie, which is weird because I thought I heard snippets of it everywhere (even Mando’s blaster sounded a little Wilhelm-ish).
Since it was first built as a Mycenaean fortress in the thirteenth century BC, what we now know as the Acropolis has been used to worship not just Greek gods, but also, in later periods, the Virgin Mary and Allah. Now, of course, with its days of military and religious
Let’s the keep the David Attenborough love going: this is a six-hour video featuring 100 of the most iconic moments from the famed naturalist’s work. I got this via Enrique , who rightly asserts that “There’s no such thing as too much David Attenborough.” See also Three Hours
Consider the Sister : an interview with Amy Wallace. “It was hard work being David Foster Wallace’s little sister. It still is. The job of preserving the memory of her brother as a complex, vibrant, often joyful person has fallen to her.”
I, Sisyphus, Am Ninety-Five Percent of the Way There . “Honestly, folks, we are so, so close. The summit is largely visible. It is nearly visible. There is a concept of visibility at play here that is impossible to ignore.”
"Don't you think it's dangerous to blur the distinction between abstraction and reality?" 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 A Leonora Carrington
In the early 1970s, genetic engineers launched the most controversial revolution in science since the atomic bomb - by Aeon Video Watch on Aeon
Also, Aruna d’Souza interviews Australian Pavilion artist Khaled Sabsabi.
Attacked by the Left and Right, the Enlightenment can only be saved through use of its greatest legacy: permanent critique - by Eliane Glaser Read on Aeon
It’s possible you use social media to grow your business. Or to enhance your career. Or maybe it’s to find delight and joy. When you add up all the tikking, tokking, tweeting and clicking, what’s the return on that investment? Is your vacation more fun when you spend it taking
If you’ve taken a good art history course on the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, you’ve inevitably encountered Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 masterpiece “Starry Night,” which now hangs in the MoMA in New York City. The painting, the museum writes on its website, “is a
The main exhibition of the 2026 Venice Biennale sets rage and retribution aside, relaxing the oppressed’s clenched fist for a moment of calm, centeredness, and self-forgiveness.
A Tube station in West London used to have a flooding problem. Instead of opting for an expensive reworking of the landscape via reservoir & levee, local officials reintroduced a family of beavers into the area . The beavers are part of an unlikely effort to bring back a
“I believe in the fact that the people hold the power,” the Lebanese-born representing artist of the Australian pavilion told Hyperallergic.
This week, we also honor Tess Jaray, luminary of abstraction, and Ben Morea, counterculture icon.
A group of researchers at University College London identified a relationship between consuming and creating art and a lower biological age.
If “pothole politics” is about fixing what people experience in their daily lives, then cultural funding should follow the same logic: steady, predictable, and built to last.
The summer I turned forty, my maternal grandmother, then ninety, gave me an astonishing embroidery she had completed it when she was my age after, having worked on it for years. The cascading geometries of blue, black, and white, interlocking extraordinary precision and
The brazen theft at the Paris museum is set for a film adaptation amid an ongoing investigation and the stolen jewels still at large.
Using the Federal Reserve’s Distribution of Household Wealth in the U.S. since 1989 data, Ryan Thorpe imagines a pizza party with 100 guests and 100 slices of pizza as a stand-in for the United States: We’re having a pizza party with 100 guests! Let’s divvy up the slices the
As part of the Ocean Census project, “scientists have discovered 1,121 marine species in a single year” . Discoveries include “a new species of deep-sea ghost shark, a symbiotic bristle worm…as well as corals, crabs, shrimps, sea urchins, and anemones”.