We know your crime, Camera Mainichi

Voor het eerst in lange tijd is er weer regen gevallen in Nederland. Veel mensen zijn daar niet goed op voorbereid, maar sommigen wel. Zij haalden eerder al een noodpakket in huis en vragen zich nu af: mag dat eindelijk open?

“Ik had hier totaal geen rekening mee gehouden toen ik vanochtend in een korte broek en T-shirt op de fiets stapte”, zegt de 33-jarige Max uit Amsterdam. “Toen ik plotseling werd overvallen door de regen kwam ik in de problemen. Natte kleren, kou… wat nu? Tot ik ineens dacht: hé, ik heb een tijdje geleden een noodpakket aangelegd voor noodsituaties. Mag dat nu open?”

Max besloot uiteindelijk het risico te nemen. “Ik heb meteen een deken omgeslagen tegen de kou, een paar kaarsjes aangestoken om mijn natte kleren te drogen en de energierepen opgegeten. Die waren in mei al over de datum, dus het werd sowieso wel tijd.”

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Kids stand to gain from a few bumps, bruises and mud-splatters.

What do America’s earliest restaurant menus teach us about America? “A menu describes what a restaurant serves — but a menu also describes who is being served. They reflect the class, gender, political, technological, and environmental shifts of history.”

In a practice she describes as “ceramic collage,” Debra Broz delves into the world of secondhand decor and kitsch. The Seattle-based artist’s quirky sculptures are made from found figurines, which she cuts and reconfigures into playful hybrid forms. “A lot of times when I look at them, I think about if they were alive, how would they move and how would they operate?” Broz tells Seattle Channel.

In her ongoing series Superorganisms, the artist creates three-dimensional assemblages that toy with the boundary between familiarity and the uncanny. “It’s really important to me that you look at it and your first thought is, ‘That’s a figurine I’ve seen before,'” she says. “And then your second thought is, ‘Wait, that’s something I’ve never seen before.'”

Broz often finds thematic figurines to work into larger compositions, building a jumbled mound of cats, for example, or all-white horses or rabbits. Overall, the finishes and junctions between individual creatures appear natural enough that one might think they were created that way. In the same vein, that precision works wonders in her adjacent conservation practice called Science of Restoration, which specializes in ceramics repair.

Three numbered works all sharing the title “Biblical Angel” will be on view this weekend in Antler Gallery’s booth at the Seattle Art Fair, which runs from July 23 to 26. See more of the artist’s process below in the video produced for Seattle Channel.

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 Debra Broz’s Kitschy ‘Superorganisms’ Are Both Familiar and Strange appeared first on Colossal.

Je krijgt ze tegenwoordig niet zo vaak meer aan de deur, maar vroeger was het wel een dingetje: de Jehova Getuigen, met hun blaadje de Wachttoren. De Duitsers van Sodom waren er niet zo van gediend.

July was packed with big news, if you missed it, here’s your ICYMI roundup. We kicked off our grant program with Black Women Photographers, and it’s bigger than ever. We also celebrated the 4th of July (a special 250th one), plus rolled out some important policy updates to help keep Flickr safe. Lots to celebrate this month, let’s dive in!

BWP Photographers Grant

Our partnership with the Black Women Photographers community is back and bigger than ever! We’re offering a $10,000 grant along with a year of Flickr Pro AND SmugMug Pro to the lucky winner. This is not one to miss! Ten lucky runners up will also win a year of Flickr Pro and a year of SmugMug Pro. To learn about Black Women Photographers, join the community and find out all of the grant details for a chance to win a truly awesome opportunity to grow your photography practice. The grant recipient will be announced live at MODE by Flickr in September so don’t wait!

Analog Photography Spotlight with this month’s MODE Challenge

The Analog photo challenge is still open in our MODE by Flickr group and the lucky winner will be able to bring their love of film photography to MODE in September. The submissions are already showing how many ways one prompt can be seen and there is still plenty of time to add your own photos to the pool for a chance to win! Head over to the group, tag your photos with #MODEanalog and join the photo challenge fun! We can’t wait to see your your take on Analog.

Explore Takeover: Curated by the community, glowing in orange

For this month’s Explore Takeover we’re getting inspired by summer sunsets, zesty citrus, & refreshing tropical drinks by curating a takeover celebrating the color orange! Whether it’s a close-up shot of a marigold or a campfire gathering with friends – we want to see all things orange! Head over to Flickr Social and join the July Explore Takeover discussion to put your orange photos in the running for a summery feature on Explore this month!

The United States of America turns 250

This month, we celebrated the 250th Anniversary of the United States of America through photography. The archives on Flickr are rich with history and noting that history is the best way to pay homage to this great experiment. Visit the Flickr blog to take a stroll back in time through the photography that has captured so many important moments over the last 250 years. 

Inactive Account Policy

At Flickr, we’re committed to maintaining a platform that’s secure, trustworthy, and built for photographers who are passionate about sharing their work. As part of that ongoing commitment, we’re introducing a policy to remove inactive accounts that have never been used. These are free accounts that have been inactive for at least 90 days and contain no photos, no comments, no favorites, and no group activity – but they do represent real security risk, including potential for account takeover, spam, and abuse. Learn more about our Inactive Account Policy on the Flickr blog. 

That’s a wrap. See you next month!

OPINION Cory Doctorow, tech gadfly and coiner of the eminently relevant term "enshittification," posted a useful argument on Wednesday related to Trump's dismantling of the US-led world order and the need or lack thereof for other countries to control their own AI destinies. Doctorow has positioned himself as an AI skeptic in his writings, including his recent book, The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI – the name comes from the visualization of a human body (you and me, humble users) being led by a mindless horse's head (AI) – and this latest post fits into that vein well, calling the need for a sovereign AI "nonsense." The conversation began with a post from Australian writer John Quiggin, who explained how the US president is systematically dismantling all of the sources of the United States' strength over the last century – diplomatic, military, financial, and, most relevant to Reg readers, technological. Quiggin posited that the current American dominance of AI poses a particular risk to the rest of the world, which understandably doesn't want to rely on a chaotic and unpredictable American state, although even he was skeptical that the frontier labs' Vegas binge-spending approach would necessarily pay off: "My optimistic view is that this is a race that will be won by low-energy tortoises rather than hyper-active hares. Second movers like Deepseek and, more recently the French Mistral, running maybe a year behind the US leaders, can replicate their capabilities at a fraction of the cost, and without reliance on massive data centres." Not wrong, in our view, as our systems editor Tobias Mann recently opined. But as Doctorow points out, that is only relevant if you believe AI is relevant. And Doctorow clearly does not. He notes that if Trump were to suddenly turn off all the AI chatbots being used by other nations, it probably wouldn't damage their businesses in any significant way. But if he were to order Microsoft to disable Office 365 or John Deere to brick its tractors, that would have an immediate, measurable economic impact. As he put it: "In the face of these real, non-speculative, immediate, grave threats, focusing on AI – the money-losingest technology in human history, which has consistently underperformed relative to its boosters' promises – is just misguided … The real digital challenge is building apps and data centres to run everyday administrative, telecoms and e-commerce software on, and then moving your country's, ministries', companies' and households' data over to the new platforms." Amen to that. AI may or may not be the future – it's certainly a lively topic of debate at Vulture HQ – but there's a clear and present danger, and American tech companies have made it abundantly clear that they will not speak or act out against the president or US government until and unless the shifting political tides dictate it's advantageous for them to do so. Same as it ever was. Europe would be wise to invest in alternatives wherever it can. ®

Jamieson Greer denies tariffs have pushed up prices during grilling from lawmakers over cost-of-living concerns

Donald Trump’s chief trade official denied the president’s sweeping tariffs have increased prices for US families, as lawmakers challenged him over cost-of-living concerns across much of the country.

US inflation surged to a three-year high earlier this year. During a heated exchange before US senators on Wednesday, however, US trade representative Jamieson Greer appeared to claim Trump’s controversial economic agenda had not driven prices higher.

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