A surprising amount of our time is spent sorting things to create value. They sort the rotten cranberries from the good ones to ensure that the bag at the market is worth buying. And we sort the movies worth watching, the bargains worth pursuing and the news worth reading.
More than a few of us can claim, with some confidence, to know every Beatles song. And indeed it may be true, in that we’ve heard every track of all their studio albums. But as decade after decade of Beatles scholarship has demonstrated, there’s knowing their songs, and then
Image via Wikimedia Commons On the off chance Lin-Manuel Miranda is casting around for source material for his next American history-based blockbuster musical, may we suggest American Cookery by “poor solitary orphan” Amelia Simmons? First published in 1796, at 47 pages (nearly
This Github project from Ankur Gupta allows you to “generate beautiful, minimalist map posters for any city in the world”. There are a variety of different themes you can choose from and the resulting images are big enough to print out actual posters (20-inch height maximum).
In January 2015, years after Epstein’s conviction, the former museum leader told him that he was “still proud” to call him a friend.
An Old Master as a young man, Richard Wright’s influence on John Wilson, Tribeca galleries vs. street vendors, other things to know about NYC this week.
The full trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 . The pitch perfection of Miranda completely forgetting Andy gives me hope that this will be a worthy sequel. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
"Losing home and rebuilding, reluctantly, in the year after Los Angeles’s Eaton Fire."
The artist, educator, and co-founder of local arts publication Artblog is remembered as a warm and energetic force in the community.
The artist, educator, and co-founder of local arts publication Artblog is remembered as a warm and energetic force in the community
Been thinking a lot about this Ted Chiang quote recently: “I tend to think that most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism. And I think that this is actually true of most fears of technology, too.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Arshile Gorky’s road trip with Isamu Noguchi, Steve Arnold’s queer baroque aesthetics, Chicano photography, photography in the Black Arts Movement, and more.
A new anthology on plastics in art reveals the philosophical conundrums and contradictions at the heart of a material the world relies on.
Vibe-coding gone wild . “Stories of family groceries delivered to data centers, and “world burnt bacon day” became memes — and resulted in class-action lawsuits against kitchen appliance manufacturers like Breville, Viking, and Cusinart.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
"A wave of suicides and widespread AI-fueled layoffs reveal a workforce under extreme pressure."
A collection of thousands of photographs of NYC restaurants (2002-2008) taken by Noah Kalina. Quite an archive of interior design from that era. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
The scale of that whale! 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 Bruno Pontiroli Tests the Boundaries of Familiarity in His Uncanny Wildlife Paintings
The artist transforms the act of looking into an intricate modality that visualizes the interplay of geometry and architecture, prismatic light and musical notes.
A couple of weeks ago, AI company Anthropic published the constitution that they use to train their Claude LLM (“under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Deed , meaning it can be freely used by anyone for any purpose without asking for permission”). From the company’s news release :
The Case of the Green Covers is a risograph-printed zine that documents the history of the “Green Penguins”, “a series of hundreds of crime novels published with green covers by the UK publisher Penguin in the 1960s”. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Podcast interview with two photojournalists who have been covering ICE in Minnesota . “It’s a conversation about what they’ve seen, the vital role of photojournalism at this moment, and the personal toll of doing this work.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Haven’t watched this 90-minute video yet, but I’ve seen so many recommendations for it that I’m posting it as a to-do list item for myself: You are being misled about renewable energy technology . 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
The Vilcek Foundation awarded $250,000 to Peter Do, Jacques Agbobly, Marcelo Gutierrez, and Uyen Tran. 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 Vilcek
A group of 50 Chileans recently spent several hours powering a human-operated chatbot . Some questions were answered quickly but “when they didn’t know the answer, they walked around the room to see if someone else did”. 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
Tanya Meléndez-Escalante, Diego Bendezu, Jalan and Jibril Durimel, and Natalie Nudell received the 2026 Vilcek Prizes in Fashion & Culture for their contributions to fashion representation.
Late last week, Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello led a crowd gathered at the iconic First Avenue music venue in a spirited rendition of the band’s Killing In the Name. The band handled the music while the crowd, in the absence of Rage frontman Zack De La Rocha, sang the
The Border Patrol Is the Problem. It Always Has Been. “If you are uncomfortable with what the Border Patrol is doing in Minneapolis, you are uncomfortable with the Border Patrol, full stop.” 💬 Join the discussion on kottke.org →
"Crystal Garden: Seasons" blends natural growth with artificial coloring. 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 Wenting Zhu Cultivates a Kaleidoscopic
Shortly after I began the year with some blessings, a friend sent me Lucille Clifton’s spare, splendid poem “blessing the boats.” We had met at a poetry workshop and shared a resolution to write more poetry in the coming year, so we began taking turns each week choosing a line
New revelations from the Epstein files, a hilarious protest against Melania's doc, the problem with archival art, our monthly crossword, and more.
The metaphor of rewiring offers an ideal of engineered precision. But the brain is more like a forest than a circuit board - by Peter Lukacs Read on Aeon
"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself... You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, for their souls dwell in the house of