Las Vegas’ giant $2.3B sphere is officially open
Las Vegas’ giant, expensive Sphere is now open, offering a high-tech immersive venue that sounds, well, pretty intense.
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Holy smokes, there may actually be a limit to Texans’ love of barbecue
The world as we know it isn’t ending, but if anything tells us times are strange, it’s Texas BBQ joints struggling to drum up business.
The Storm Pilot
Santiago Borja is an airline pilot who takes stunning photos of storms and clouds from the flight deck of his 767. Definitely offers up a different perspective than the typical storm chaser photography. You can find his work on his website , on Instagram , and in book form .
Inside the Taliban’s Luxury Hotel
"The Intercontinental in Kabul was Afghanistan's first luxury hotel. Once the site of legendary parties, the hotel is now in the hands of the Taliban, and their fighters are supposed to work with outsiders."
Required Reading
This week, satellite images capture lines of cars carrying Armenians fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh, an Ethiopian painting looted by the British Museum, digitizing Urdu script, and much more.
Arrowhead Made From 3,500-Year-Old Meteorite Found in Switzerland
The Bronze Age artifact is of an “extremely rare” kind, researchers say.
San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum Sues Architect and Contractor of Its New Pavilion
The museum says the $38 million pavilion required costly repairs that delayed its opening.
An Italian Artist Who Took On American Capitalism
Mario Schifano moved nimbly among different modes and never settled into a style, which sets him apart from many of his contemporaries.
Remembering a Pioneer of Louisville’s Black Avant-Garde
When White-dominated arts institutions would not offer them opportunities, Robert L. Douglas and other Louisville Black artists organized together to create their own art communities.
Sarah K. Khan’s Feminist Take on a 16th-Century Cookbook
Her work brilliantly reframes age-old storylines from a Persian cookbook as modern allegories for female liberation.
Christian Rogers’s Cruising Paradise
The artist’s solo exhibition Heaven on Earth is a fluorescent floral feast for the eyes.
Divya Mehra Releases Canada’s Colonial Genies
Two colossal inflatable sculptures by the Winnipeg-based artist prod the colonial roots of economic and racial inequality in the country.
A small shopping list (floss and more)
Here are some books and household items that I wanted to share. I’m mostly into audiobooks these days–a good narrator combined with a good author is pretty rare and wonderful… It turns out that a breakthrough rice cooker is a bargain, even if it seems expensive at first. The
Winners of the 2023 Bird Photographer of the Year Competition
From over 23,000 entered images, the judges in the Bird Photographer of the Year competition for 2023 have selected their winners and runners-up . I selected a few of my favorite images above; the photographers from top to bottom: Nicolas Reusens, Henley Spiers, and Gianni
A Colossal Interview: Zoë Buckman On Tenderness, Her Evolution as a Woman and Mother, and Embroidering Her Largest Works To Date
What responsibility does an artist have to care for her viewers? Zoë Buckman thinks deeply about this question and discusses it in a recent conversation with Colossal. One thing that’s important to me has to do with beauty and softness. Those are definitely tools that I
University of the Arts Celebrates Philadelphia Open Studio Tours
View work by UArts students and iLAB artists-in-residence at POST, the largest, self-guided, free tour of artist studios and creative workspaces in the region.
The Man Who Thinks He Can Live Forever
"The goal is to get his 46-year-old organs to look and act like 18-year-old organs."
An Update on the Squiggle Shirts
Hey folks. Just wanted to check in with how The Process Tee is going. We've sold quite of a few of them so far, and I've just sent off the first of hopefully many donations to the National Network of Abortion Funds to the tune of $1288 to support their mission of working
I Touched the Sun: A Tender Illustrated Parable About How to Find and Bear Your Inner Light
“One discovers the light in darkness, that is what darkness is for; but everything in our lives depends on how we bear the light,” James Baldwin wrote in one of his finest, least known essays. In his exquisite memoir of the search for inner light, the blind resistance hero
What If the Robots Were Very Nice While They Took Over the World?
"First it was chess and Go. Now AI can beat us at Diplomacy, the most human of board games. The way it wins offers hope that maybe AI will be a delight."
In ‘The Lost Mystics,’ Kumkum Fernando’s Enigmatic Wanderers Chase Illusions Through Time and Space
In vibrant color, Kumkum Fernando ’s hulking, hybrid figures ( previously ) wander through an enigmatic and quickly evolving world. “The melancholy characters of The Lost Mystics are searching for meaning, crisscrossing time and space, unmoored and chasing illusions,” says a
The Last Descent
"Though the world wouldn't catch on until disaster struck, a tight-knit community of seafarers, explorers, and bold submariners worried for years that Stockton Rush's OceanGate implosion was all but guaranteed."
The Origins of the Socialist Slur
The Atlantic has an adapted excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson's new book, Democracy Awakening : The Origins of the Socialist Slur . It begins: For years after World War II, the "liberal consensus" — the New Deal idea that the federal government had a role to play in
Ramshackle Dwellings by Simon Laveuve Reach Skyward in an Imagined Post-Apocalyptic Future
Paris-based artist Simon Laveuve imagines a world filled with anarchic architecture in his ongoing series of detailed, miniature shelters ( previously ). At 1/35 scale, his recent works continue to explore the possibilities of dwelling in remote or inhospitable places,
The Race to Catch the Last Nazis
"A lifetime after the Holocaust, a few of its perpetrators somehow remain at large."
What science tells us about the afterlife
From Valhalla to mind uploads, why does the notion that death is not the end of consciousness refuse to kick the bucket? - by Aeon Video Watch at Aeon
Flat places
Whenever I stand in a flat landscape, I feel myself becoming weightless, taken out of my childhood full of painful nothing - by Noreen Masud Read at Aeon
A Determined Art Conservator Restores a Painting of the Doomed Party Girl Isabella de’ Medici: See the Before and After
Some people talk to plants. The Carnegie Museum of Art‘s chief conservator Ellen Baxter talks to the paintings she’s restoring. “You have to …tell her she’s going to look lovely,” she says, above, spreading varnish over a 16th-century portrait of Isabella de’ Medici prior to
Thoughts on the manual
We have more ways to offer instructions than ever before, but it’s not obvious that we’re getting better at it. Not just the operator’s manual, but every way we have to teach and offer instructions… Some (uncategorized) things to consider: The first manual I created, in 1983,
Noam Chomsky Explains Why Nobody Is Really a Moral Relativist, Even Michel Foucault
Noam Chomsky made his name as a linguist, which is easy to forget amid the wide range of subjects he has addressed, and continues to address, in his long career as a public intellectual. But on a deeper level, his commentary on politics, society, media, and a host of other