OnePlus will reportedly announce this week that it is shutting down its brand in the U.S. and Europe, following months of signs that parent company Oppo was winding down the brand's global presence. India and China are reportedly unaffected, but it's unclear whether Oppo will replace the brand directly in those markets. The move also raises questions about future support for existing OnePlus users. 9to5Google reports: WinFuture reports that OnePlus is gearing up for an official withdrawal from the U.S. and European markets, with the announcement due in the "coming days" this week. Closed-door press conferences have apparently happened, with no details shared on the exact reason OnePlus as a brand is shutting down in these markets. India and China are, as far as this report claims, not affected. The report, citing "well-informed sources," notes that this OnePlus announcement will come amid "fundamental changes" to Oppo's strategy, but the big point here is the global death of OnePlus.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

IBM shares plunged after the company warned that Q2 revenue and earnings would miss expectations, blaming customers' sudden shift in spending toward AI hardware instead of software services. However, CEO Arvind Krishna did not place all the blame on IBM's customers. The CEO also said it "faltered" by failing to "anticipate the magnitude of the capex reprioritization."

"These conditions require our teams to execute perfectly, and this quarter we faltered. We did not adapt and move quickly enough, and numerous large deals failed to close on the timelines we expected, driving the majority of our shortfall." Fast Company reports: In the preliminary report, IBM said that for its second quarter of fiscal 2026, it expects revenue of $17.2 billion, which is up 1%. It also said it expects a Non-GAAP Diluted Earnings Per Share (EPS) of $2.93, up 5%. However, as noted by CNBC, these preliminary results are below what analysts were expecting, which was $17.86 billion in revenue, and an EPS of $3.01, according to FactSet data.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

De Nederlandse acteur werd bij het grote publiek bekend door zijn titelrol in de film Simon. Geel, die later ook als stemacteur en voice-over werkte, overleed aan de gevolgen van een hartstilstand.

A technicolour account of the sabotage suggests how fast the world has changed.

Remember last month when we were awed by Microsoft’s record-setting Patch Tuesday that addressed 206 CVEs? That was a quaint era compared to this month: Redmond just rolled out patches for 622 CVEs specific to its products, slightly more than tripling last month’s all-time high. Redmond’s Patch Tuesday release is once again one for the record books, with everything under the sun getting some security fixes – including 428 non-Microsoft Chromium CVEs affecting Edge that aren’t included in that 622 count. Fifty-eight of those are critical, two are under active exploit, and one has already been publicly disclosed, meaning it could join those other two in short order. There is a lot to dig through, and we can hardly cover the whole gamut given the size of this release. As we noted last month, there was concern in the infosec community that AI-enabled bug hunting might mean massive patch volumes are the new normal. Microsoft didn’t disclose how much AI may have contributed to the massive patch list this month, but given the volume it’s safe to say human contributors probably had some assistance. Microsoft’s massive month To start, let’s cover the pair of actively exploited issues that Microsoft patched. The first, CVE-2026-56155, is an Active Directory Federation Services elevation of privilege vulnerability. Attackers who exploit the issue, which Microsoft only described as being due to “insufficient granularity of access control on ADFS,” could gain administrator privileges. They do need to have access already and be local, however, which is why this is only rated with a CVSS score of 7.8. The second actively exploited vulnerability, CVE-2026-56164, is another privilege elevation issue, this time in Microsoft SharePoint. SharePoint is apparently missing authentication for a critical function, which could let an unauthorized attacker on a network elevate their SharePoint permissions. As with the other issue under exploit, this one is somewhat limited, earning it a CVSS of just 5.3. With both under active exploitation, that score doesn’t matter as much as eliminating the vulnerability through good patch management, however. As for the publicly reported but not-yet-exploited issue, CVE-2026-50661, that involves BitLocker being able to have its security measures physically bypassed by anyone with local access to a BitLocker-secured machine. Now let’s round up a few of those 58 critical issues. Everyone’s favorite untrustworthy AI is packing a CVSS 9.6 remote code execution vulnerability. CVE-2026-48561 finds Copilot improperly neutralizing its input, allowing an unauthorized attacker to execute code with nothing but low-privileged Hyper-V guest access. Exploiting the vulnerability can be done without user awareness by, for example, hosting a malicious website that prompts the many embedded Copilot features of Windows machines to process a prompt upon landing on the page. Microsoft Exchange is suffering from a CVSS 9.6 spoofing vuln due to failure to neutralize input, leading to cross-site scripting being possible from within a maliciously crafted email. CVE-2026-55008 allows an unauthorized attacker to perform spoofing over a network by sending said malicious email to a target, allowing arbitrary JavaScript execution. Finally, we’re not picking out one vulnerability for your third notice in this massive list, but are highlighting a full 16 remote code execution vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office and its associated applications. They’re caused by a variety of issues in the Office suite, like heap-based buffer overflow and use after free vulns, and all are scored around a CVSS 7.8. Needless to say, we recommend following Microsoft’s advice and getting all those hundreds of security patches installed ASAP. Adobe throws mud at critical issues in multiple products Microsoft tends to command the headlines on Patch Tuesday (it’s hard not to when you address more than 600 CVEs in a single day), but Adobe released a bunch of patches across its ecosystem too, 64 unique CVEs across seven bulletins for Commerce, Experience Manager, Creative Cloud Desktop, Illustrator, Content Credentials SDK, ColdFusion, and Animate. Every one of the bulletins included at least a couple of critical CVEs. The highest-severity issue among Adobe’s many Patch Tuesday entries comes in the form of a CVSS 9.9 path traversal vulnerability in ColdFusion that can allow arbitrary code execution. CVE-2026-48318 does not yet appear in online CVE directories, but even with limited information, we’d say a 9.9-level issue is one you want to address with a quickness. The second-worst issue that Adobe addressed today is in its Commerce suite. CVE-2026-48356 is a CVSS 9.6 privilege escalation vulnerability that an attacker can trigger thanks to Commerce failing to restrict the upload of dangerous file types. Adobe Experience Manager also includes a pair of CVSS 9.6 issues (CVE-2026-48259 and CVE-2026-48359). Both allow arbitrary code execution: one because of a server-side request forgery vulnerability, and the other because of improper restriction of XML external entity references. Other notable Patch Tuesday releases Broadcom addressed seven CVEs in its Avi Load Balancer today, which it rates from 7.1 to 9.8 on the CVSS scale. The vulnerabilities include authentication bypass, RCE, privilege escalation, and directory traversal. SAP published 16 security updates and one GitHub advisory today; nine of those updates have a CVSS score of 8.1 or higher. CVE-2026-44747 (CVSS 9.9) is a memory corruption issue in SAP NetWeaver Application Server ABAP that could allow an authenticated attacker to gain unauthorized access to system data; CVE-2026-27690, CVSS 9.1, would let an unauthenticated attacker smuggle an HTTP request through SAP Approuter leading to system unavailability; and CVE-2026-44761, CVSS 9.1, involves the retention of a sample OAuth2 client in SAP Commerce Cloud that isn’t documented and, if known, could let an attacker break in. Let’s hope August is a bit quieter, though, given the fact the past two months have set consecutive records for the number of vulnerabilities Microsoft patched; we have our doubts. Godspeed, sysadmins and security teams. ®

Aware that AI models exhibit different values in different languages, Anthropic researchers have taken steps to map out how Claude expresses itself in different languages. The results identify four key axes that capture 15 percent of the variation in the values Anthropic says Claude expresses across different languages: Deference vs. Caution; Warmth vs. Rigor; Depth vs. Brevity; and Candor vs. Execution. Anthropic's researchers state, "how Claude responds inevitably reflects certain values." But they append a footnote that makes clear the model's statistical word predictions do not reflect some internal understanding of values. "We define values as normative considerations, such as honesty or caution, that are stated or demonstrated in Claude’s responses," the footnote explains. "When we refer to the values expressed by Claude, we refer to the values reflected by Claude’s behavior and outputs. We do not imply that Claude intrinsically holds values." In other words, just because Claude emits words associated with deference, that's not an assertion of any particular mental model of the world nor of any expression of actual internalized respect. That's a point deserving of more prominent treatment than a footnote, given Anthropic's history of leaning into anthropomorphism for marketing purposes. But setting aside how a term like "values" muddies the boundaries between human intelligence and LLM-based vector math word prediction, Anthropic's boffins have nonetheless illuminated some intriguing word output differences that follow from how large language models are affected by language. Variations in model word emission style have previously been observed across different models. Anthropic's authors note that Sonnet 4.6 and Opus 4.7 respond in ways that people interpret as more deferential or more precise. "Sonnet 4.6 leans toward expressing more deference to the user and emotional warmth while Opus 4.7 leans toward expressing a focus on accuracy and precision as well as guarding against misuse," they state. Such differences may reflect different training data or model fine-tuning. But it's clear that the language used to address a model – not to mention the training data based on that language – helps shape model responses in that language. "When Claude speaks in English, it emphasizes different values than when it speaks in Portuguese, Indonesian, or Chinese," company researchers said in a blog post. "The largest variation is in the Warmth vs. Rigor axis, with Claude leaning toward expressing warmth-related values most in Arabic and Hindi and rigor-related values most in English and Russian." On the Candor vs. Execution axis, speak Dutch if you want humility and an honest appraisal of potential shortcomings. And speak Indonesian if you want a polished, confident answer. On the Depth vs. Brevity axis, speak Arabic for a terse response and English for nuance and depth. Anthropic’s researchers say they're not sure yet what properties in model training data affect these linguistic differences, but they suggest the matter deserves further exploration because it has important implications for how people use LLMs. "To take one example: two people asking for feedback on the same business plan, one in Hindi and one in Russian, may come away with different impressions of its quality because Claude expressed different values in how it framed its assessment," they observe. It may also be that different languages have different usage and security implications. Brevity, for example, is correlated with cost – fewer words mean lower token expenditure. The Claude Opus 4.7 system card [PDF] notes that the rate at which the model refuses benign requests is substantially lower in English than in other languages. And other researchers have established that jailbreaking works better in some languages than others. So if a model is deferential in a particular language, is that language a better choice for soliciting exploit development or other potentially policy-violating queries? Anthropic says that being able to measure this sort of variation is a prerequisite for deciding the extent to which language differences are desirable and appropriate. ®

Mr Mikage (ミスター御影） posted a photo:

James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:

On July 12, 2026, we celebrated four years of Webb science! And what a time it has been! We've learned so much about our universe and ourselves.

Here are some of our favorite images and most interesting science results in the form of a little retrospective in six parts, by year, which we will link in all the captions below. Each collage highlights science from the main science themes: Early Universe, Other Worlds, Galaxies, and Star Lifecycles.

This image:

2022: Clockwise ->

Cartwheel Galaxy in the mid-infrared. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI.

Tarantula Nebula, a star-forming region. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team.

WASP-39 spectrum, showing the first clear evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet. Credit: Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, and L. Hustak (STScI) Science: The JWST Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Team.

Galaxy cluster MACS0647. Within the image there are three views (orange smudges) of the same distant galaxy, which have been magnified, distorted, and repeated due to the gravitational lensing effect of the galaxy cluster. Credit: Science: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and Tiger Hsiao (Johns Hopkins University) Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI).

Wolf-Rayet 140. The bright dot is actually two stars meeting, their orbits bringing them together every eight years. The stellar pair are surrounded by 17 rings of gas and dust that appear orangish pink, like the rings of a tree trunk. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JPL-Caltech.

Jupiter, striated with swirling horizontal stripes of neon turquoise, periwinkle, light pink, and cream. The stripes interact and mix at their edges like cream in coffee. Along both of the poles, the planet glows in turquoise. Bright orange auroras glow just above the planet’s surface at both poles. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt.

See our gallery of Webb's images and data from 2022:
www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/albums/7217772030...

First Images: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393938950/

2022: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393675403/

2023: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393726239/

2024:h www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393541751/

2025: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55392607987/

2026...so far! www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393541756/

James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:

On July 12, 2026, we celebrated four years of Webb science! And what a time it has been! We've learned so much about our universe and ourselves.

Here are some of our favorite images and most interesting science results in the form of a little retrospective in six parts, by year, which we will link in all the captions below. Each collage highlights science from the main science themes: Early Universe, Other Worlds, Galaxies, and Star Lifecycles.

This image:

2025: Clockwise ->

The Red Spider planetary nebula, the remnants of a Sun-like star that shed its layers leaving behind a white dwarf star. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. H. Kastner (Rochester Institute of Technology).

Abell S1063, Webb’s deepest look back on a single target to date as of 2025. This field of galaxies is dominated by an enormous, bright-white elliptical galaxy that is the core of a massive galaxy cluster. Short, curved, glowing red lines are images of distant background galaxies magnified and warped by gravitational lensing. A couple of foreground stars appear large and bright with long spikes around them. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, H. Atek, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb) Acknowledgement: R. Endsley.

Sagittarius B2 molecular cloud, an active star-forming region in our galaxy, seen in the mid-infrared, showing glowing cosmic dust heated by young stars. Credit: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Adam Ginsburg (University of Florida), Nazar Budaiev (University of Florida), Taehwa Yoo (University of Florida); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI).

Barred spiral Galaxy NGC 2283, seen close up and almost face on, filled with puffy, patchy clouds of hot gas and dust. Star clusters hide in the gas along the arms. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Leroy.

Exoplanet TRAPPIST-1 e spectrum. This system has many rocky planets, including some in its habitable zone. This data indicates the absence of a thick hydrogen-rich atmosphere for planet “e.”. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Joseph Olmsted (STScI). Uranus and moons, including a new one discovered by Webb.

Uranus and its rings, and beyond are 14 moons appearing as points of light. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, M. El Moutamid (SwRI), M. Hedman (University of Idaho)

See our gallery of Webb's images and data from 2025:
www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/albums/7217772032...


First Images: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393938950/

2022: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393675403/

2023: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393726239/

2024:h www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393541751/

2025: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55392607987/

2026...so far! www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393541756/

James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:

On July 12, 2026, we celebrated four years of Webb science! And what a time it has been! We've learned so much about our universe and ourselves.

Here are some of our favorite images and most interesting science results in the form of a little retrospective in six parts, by year, which we will link in all the captions below. Each collage highlights science from the main science themes: Early Universe, Other Worlds, Galaxies, and Star Lifecycles.

This image:

2024: Clockwise ->

Spiderweb protocluster, a galaxy cluster in formation 10 billion light years away. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, H. Dannerbauer.

Epsilon Indi Ab. A direct image of the coldest, most Jupiter-like exoplanet to be imaged so far. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Elisabeth Matthews (MPIA).

Westerlund 1, one of the closest super star clusters, with 50,000 to 100,000 times the mass of the Sun, contained in a region less than six light years across. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb), M. G. Guarcello (INAF-OAPA) and the EWOCS team.

The Crab Nebula shown in a Webb and Chandra X-ray Observatory composite of these remnants of a supernova explosion, first documented in the year 1054. The central super-dense neutron star causes energetic winds to collide with the gas surrounding it, resulting in X-ray emission. Credit: X-ray, Chandra: NASA/CXC/SAO; Infrared, Webb: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI; Image Processing: NASA/CXC/SAO/J. Major.

Spiral galaxies IC 2163 and NGC 2207 in the mid-infrared. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI.

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot observed by Webb’s Integral Field Unit on the NIRSpec. The IFU is able to match spectroscopy data with spatial data to help paint a picture of the motion of gas, in this case hydrogen molecules in Jupiter’s ionosphere. The redder colors are higher altitudes and the blue from lower, including the cloud-tops in the atmosphere. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, Jupiter ERS Team, J. Schmidt, H. Melin, M. Zamani (ESA/Webb).

See our gallery of Webb's images and data from 2024: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/albums/7217772031...


First Images: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393938950/

2022: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393675403/

2023: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393726239/

2024:h www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393541751/

2025: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55392607987/

2026...so far! www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393541756/

James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:

On July 12, 2026, we celebrated four years of Webb science! And what a time it has been! We've learned so much about our universe and ourselves.

Here are some of our favorite images and most interesting science results in the form of a little retrospective in six parts, by year, which we will link in all the captions below. Each collage highlights science from the main science themes: Early Universe, Other Worlds, Galaxies, and Star Lifecycles.

This image:

2023: Clockwise ->

Uranus, surrounded by rings. Several bright blue point are the planet’s moons. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI.

Star cluster IC 348, containing three free-floating brown dwarfs that are less than eight times the mass of Jupiter. The wispy curtains filling the image are interstellar material reflecting the light from the cluster’s stars. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA).

Sagittarius C (Sgr C). A 50 light-years-wide portion of the Milky Way’s dense center, with an estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the region, along with some as-yet unidentified features. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Samuel Crowe (UVA).

Galaxy cluster SDSS J1226+2152 in the constellation Coma Berenices has such immense mass that it distorts and magnifies the light from more distant galaxies behind it — giving these galaxies their stretched out shape. The effect is known as gravitational lensing, and it allows astronomers to study some of the most distant galaxies in the universe. Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Rigby and the JWST TEMPLATES team.

LHS 475b spectrum, the first use of Webb to confirm an exoplanet. The graphic shows the transmission spectrum of the rocky exoplanet, showing a lack of a detectable quantity of any element or molecule, potentially indicating no atmosphere. Credit: Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI); Science: Kevin Stevenson (APL), Jacob Lustig-Yaeger (APL), Erin May (APL), Guangwei Fu (JHU), Sarah Moran (University of Arizona).

Supernova remnant Cass A in the near infrared. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, D. Milisavljevic (Purdue), T. Temim (Princeton), I. De Looze (Ghent University), with image processing by J. DePasquale (STScI)

See our gallery of Webb's images and data from 2023:
www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/albums/7217772030...


First Images: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393938950/

2022: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393675403/

2023: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393726239/

2024:h www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393541751/

2025: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55392607987/

2026...so far! www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393541756/

James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:

On July 12, 2026, we celebrated four years of Webb science! And what a time it has been! We've learned so much about our universe and ourselves.

Here are some of our favorite images and most interesting science results in the form of a little retrospective in six parts, by year, which we will link in all the captions below. Each collage highlights science from the main science themes: Early Universe, Other Worlds, Galaxies, and Star Lifecycles.

-----

This image:

July 12, 2022, Webb’s first images. Clockwise ->

The “Cosmic Cliffs” of the Carina Nebula, a star-forming region.

The Southern Ring Nebula in mid-infrared, now known to have two stars at its center, a dying star and a partner, both shaping the nebula’s intricate rings.

WASP 96-b spectrum, showing this planet to be large and hot with a “puffy” atmosphere, orbiting very close to its Sun-like star.

Stefan’s Quintet of galaxies in the near-infrared. Four of these five galaxies are colliding, stretching and pulling on each other: two in the middle, one toward the top, and one toward the bottom. The one to the upper left is actually much closer to us.

Galaxy Cluster SMACS 0723, the first image released by Webb, and the deepest and sharpest image of the early universe ever taken as of its release. Thousands of galaxies appear all across the view with varying colors and shapes. Long orange arcs appear at left and right toward the center; these are distant galaxies being warped by the extreme gravity of the galaxy cluster in front of it.

The Southern Ring Nebula but in the near-infrared.

Credits for all images: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

See all of Webb's first images in this gallery: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/albums/7217772030...

First Images: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393938950/

2022: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393675403/

2023: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393726239/

2024:h www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393541751/

2025: www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55392607987/

2026...so far! www.flickr.com/photos/nasawebbtelescope/55393541756/

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

handwritten on slide, “Pennsylvania, Marianne, Lois with Dogie"

Een van de vele initiatieven uit de hoge hoed van Herman Lamers is Galerie Lecq in het oude brugwachterhuisje bij de sluis op Westzeedijk 375. En zoals wel vaker bij Lamers is er online niet [Meer...]

Cat-Scan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.

The United States manufactured about 294,000 aircraft for WWII, and once peace was assured the military found itself with a huge surplus of aircraft. Within a year of the end of the war, about 34,000 airplanes had been moved to 30 sales-storage depots, or "aircraft boneyards".

Boneyards, previously

In a world that never stops moving, street photography can remind us to to look closer at the moments in between the rush. Waiting rooms, bus stops, doorways, pauses, any moment when street photographers focus on those moments when time seems to stop. This edition of In Frame with Flickr, our street photography series, is dedicated to those quiet transitional moments. Join us for some candid contemplation.

Untitled by Alek S.

outside by Michael Teuber

on reading by Alexandre Dulaunoy

Pure Happiness by Dimitar L. Panayotov

Untitled by Alex DMT

Ladies by schoene.pixel

Sidebench-ers by Thomas Cizauskas

sunk by Michael Teuber

Island of calm byPer Gosche

Enjoying the view by Robert Clinton

Mo peace by Ian Sane

Sun bath by Shawn Harquail

Wave Rider by Chris

If you enjoyed the break in the middle of your day to slow things down a bit, find some more inspiring street and documentary photography in last month’s Explore Takeover. See you next time!

In raspi-config on Debian 13.6, when I enable the overlay file system it... does not. I found some breadcrumbs here but installing the linked eeprom did not fix it, and anyway that was a year ago and I have rpi-eeprom 28.28-1.

How make go?

/run/initramfs/overlayroot.log: builtin set cfgdisk='disabled' Unable to find driver/module. searched: overlay overlayfs [failure]: Unable to find a driver. searched: overlay overlayfs

Adding "initramfs initramfs8 followkernel" to the end of config.txt did nothing.

Previously, previously, previously.

In Yorùbá culture, it’s said that more than 600 years ago, a hunter discovered a lush grove in southwestern Nigeria carved by a rushing river. His community had experienced drought and eagerly moved to the region, which they quickly learned was under the rule of the goddess of rivers and fertility, Ọ̀ṣun. In exchange for protection and prosperity, the people promised to celebrate the deity, and this pact grounds what’s now known as the Ọṣun-Òṣogbo Sacred Grove.

A UNESCO World Heritage site spanning 190 acres, the spiritual sanctuary has long been revered by the Yorùbá people, and in the mid-20th century, a group of artists revitalized the landscape by erecting large-scale sculptures in honor of its namesake. Dubbed the New Sacred Art Movement, the efforts are the subject of a short documentary released by The Met that visits the grove and highlights some of the artists who’ve carved totems, shaped enormous creatures from clay and mud, and established a vibrant art environment to be passed down through generations.

Directed by Sosena Solomon, the film is part of The Met’s series devoted to Africa’s cultural landmarks, made in collaboration with the World Monuments Fund. It highlights some of the makers creating and repairing works, including Kasali Akangbe Ogun, who helped lead the New Sacred Art Movement alongside Austrian-Nigerian artist Susanne Wenger and Chief Adebisi Akanji in the 1960s. Today, he continues to carve totemic shrines and share his craft with his children.

While many similar sites fell into disrepair, the artists who worked in the grove helped to safeguard its sacredness as they built an expansive art environment visualizing various deities. An annual festival and pilgrimages attract visitors each year, and as generations pass, artists and caretakers are working to both preserve what’s been built and also pass down knowledge to ensure the space’s survival. “What makes Ọṣun-Òṣogbo such a special place is,” says Chief Nike Davies-Okundaye, “this is a living story.”

Ọṣun-Òṣogbo Sacred Grove is one of 13 cultural sites The Met visited across the continent, and you can find more on YouTube. You might also enjoy this book surveying more than 400 spiritual environments around the world.

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 Divine Sculptures Revere a Yorùbá Goddess in Nigeria’s Ọṣun-Òṣogbo Sacred Grove appeared first on Colossal.