Duck Dynasty at the Frick
The duckling family found waddling at the Manhattan museum, Art Basel impressions, and Kim Dacres’s rubber art.
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The People Who Know Too Much: A Reading List on Amateur Experts
The people whose private fixations become a way of seeing, remembering, and caring for the world.
Promotion, activation, conversation
[A long riff on book publishing with (perhaps) wide applicability to your work as well.] Publishing is different from writing—it’s the hard work of creating the conditions to help people get in sync, move forward, and get to where they’re headed. The best reason to publish a
Meet Héloïse, the Medieval Woman Philosopher Who Turned a Doomed Love Affair into a Meditation on Ethics
The ill-fated romance of Abelard and Héloïse may be a permanent cultural fixture, but it’s worth asking what any of us understand about Abelard or Héloïse themselves. Before the two ever crossed paths, Peter Abelard was already a celebrated philosopher in France whose classes
The Map of Physics: Animation Shows How All the Different Fields in Physics Fit Together
From Newton’s mechanical calculations to Einstein’s general and special relativity to the baffling indeterminacy of quantum mechanics, the discipline of physics has become increasingly arcane and complex, and less and less governed by orderly laws. This presents a problem for
Watch Baseball Games in Realtime in 8-Bit View
This is kind of fantastic: Ribbie lets you watch actual MLB baseball games “rendered pitch by pitch in a cozy 8-bit view while they happen”. Ribbie is a simple way to keep a live baseball game nearby. It shows the score, the bases, the count, and a tiny pixel field that moves
10 Art Shows to See in DC This Summer
As the nation marks 250 years, exhibitions explore artists’ interpretations of the American flag, Joan Miró’s printmaking, collage as critique, Black design, Pueblo pottery, and more.
Full set of Underworld playing live at EDC Las Vegas...
Full set of Underworld playing live at EDC Las Vegas back in May.
Kim Dacres Wants You to Be Like Rubber
The artists sculpts community tributes from found tires, inspired by its reslience and ability to absorb trauma.
Kim Dacres Sculpts Resilience in Rubber
The artist, who uses scavenged auto parts, is concerned not just with materials but with what they reveal about the worlds they inhabit.
In a Volatile Market, Art Basel Galleries Bet on Our Attention
For most exhibitors at the Swiss art fair this year, the answer is not spectacle, but rather laser focus.
Remembering David Hockney, Duane Michals, and Danny Simmons
This week, we honor a painter who made the everyday otherworldly, a poet-photographer, and a champion of Black artists.
A digital clock where the numbers are made from dozens...
A digital clock where the numbers are made from dozens of analog clock hands . Hard to describe…just go take a look.
Who Were the Couples That Posed for David Hockney's Famed Double Portraits?
One of his subjects was a cousin I never knew. I wanted to learn more about the large-scale portraits that helped define the English artist's legacy
Book 1 of the Iliad, Read in Ancient Greek
On his YouTube channel , Thomas Whichello reads interesting literature aloud, often in the original languages, dialects, or accents, with the goal of making “classic works intelligible and enjoyable to everybody”. One of his most popular videos is his recitation of book 1 of
Russian Dissident Artist Killed in Poland
Robert Kuzovkov, known by the pseudonym Semyon Skrepetsky, was reportedly shot after protesting near the Russian Embassy in Berlin.
The Black Jeopardy Misses YouTube channel catalogs just...
The Black Jeopardy Misses YouTube channel catalogs just how little Jeopardy contestants know about Black history, culture, and celebrities . (See also, of course, Black Jeopardy , which drives home a similar point in a different way.)
What Remains
"We may know that nothing lasts forever, but this knowledge doesn’t alleviate the loneliness of grief."
Two Huge Collections of Leonardo’s Codexes Digitally Reunited After 400 Years
For the first time in hundreds of years, two collections of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks have been brought together online at the Leonardotheka . In some cases, pages that were cut apart centuries ago have been digitally joined so we can see the full pages again, as Leonardo
The Meaning of Maturity: Ursula K. Le Guin on What It Really Takes to Grow Up
It is not merely a matter of growing bones and growing responsibilities, this business of growing up, this unfinishable project of becoming ourselves. It is less like the evolutionary diagram of the upright ape than like a Russian nesting doll, our prior selves not outgrown but
‘State Fairs: Growing American Craft’ Surveys Agriculture, Ingenuity, and Community
From cows sculpted out of butter to seed art and crazy foods, ingenuity is as much a part of the tradition as showcasing time-honored practices. Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little
How to Hack a Superyacht
"GPS is critical to everything from shipping to warfare. Tricking it is ridiculously easy."
A searchable archive of the almost 5000 TV episodes that...
A searchable archive of the almost 5000 TV episodes that naturalist David Attenborough has worked on in his career (1954-present) . “Search by animal, habitat, location, natural phenomenon, or theme to find exactly the episode you’re looking for.”
How Errol Morris’s The Thin Blue Line Solved the Crime
Before making his revolutionary documentary film The Thin Blue Line , filmmaker Errol Morris worked as a private detective. His detective skills came in handy not only in making the film but in actually solving the crime at the heart of the story and freeing an innocent man
Sam Bankman-Fried’s Prison Experiment
"His life behind bars and his desperate campaign to get free."
Andrea Pitzer writes about the forced labor happening in...
Andrea Pitzer writes about the forced labor happening in Trump’s immigrant concentration camps and its roots in chattel slavery in the US and in Nazi & Soviet work camps.
Proposed UI rule of thumb : “If I take a...
Proposed UI rule of thumb : “If I take a screenshot of your app at any moment, it must make sense.”
Diana Beltrán Herrera’s Embroidered Paper Sculptures Mimic Plants and Wildlife
"Thread becomes a way of drawing, connecting, and constructing forms," the artist says. 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 Diana Beltrán Herrera’s
Five Advances That Helped Turn a Night Out at the Movies Into the All-Enveloping Experience It Has Become
The power of film is often in its ability to feel larger than life. Movie makers have been developing ways to accentuate that aspect for more than a century
Prediction Markets Let You Bet on Anything. I Bet Against My Own Husband.
"You can wager on war, elections, awards shows, reality TV, scientific progress, and—in the case of writer Carrie Sun—your own spouse. If you want to play, you have to wonder: Are you smarter than an inside trader?"
Every Generation of Teenagers Redefines Pop Culture Through Its Favorite Music, Fads, Movies and Trends
When new government policies allowed kids more time to grown up, the teenager was born. And every decade or so, they’ve changed the ways they entertain themselves … and everyone else