Individuum’s closure follows that of its former young-adult imprint Popcorn Books, which was shut down by Russia’s largest book publisher Eksmo in January.

Bij de ingang van het ministerie van Algemene Zaken, vrijdagochtend net voor de vergadering van de ministerraad, staat VVD’er Eelco Heinen, minister van Financiën.

Uit straatboekenkastjes in heel Nederland haalt Arjen Fortuin steeds een boek, bespreekt het en geeft het door. Deze week 'Letter en Geest' van Frans Kellendonk, waarin een spook voorkomt dat tussen de boeken huist.

Nederland kan leren van de Caribische delen van het Koninkrijk, ziet de Arubaanse antropoloog Francio Guadeloupe. Laat politieke voorkeur geen deel worden van je identiteit, is een van zijn boodschappen. „Nederland worstelt met diversiteit en nieuwkomers. Op de eilanden hebben ze daar veel ervaring mee.”

Na het ingaan van de boycot van goederen uit de bezette Westelijke Jordaanoever, trekt Israël de diplomatieke status van Nederlandse diplomaten in. Waarom doet het dat? En nog vijf vragen over de stap van Israël en de Nederlandse reactie.

In Soekarno treffen we de omstreden Indonesische staatsman in twee gedaantes: als 28-jarige voor en als 66-jarige ná zijn presidentschap. Wat dreef deze man, zonder wie Indonesië, for all we know, nog altijd een Nederlandse kolonie was geweest?

In the Buddhist tradition, mandalas are devotional images that represent the universe, their precise geometry and motifs depicting holy realms and a sense of order through symbolic references to the elements and astrology. Tibetan Buddhist monks painstakingly create colorful sand renditions as part of their mindfulness practice. Once complete, the pieces are ritualistically destroyed—the sand is customarily returned to moving water—to illustrate the impermanence and transience of life and the cosmos.

For artist Mu Pan, the mandala inspires the foundation of a series of vivid works on paper. In his current solo exhibition, Micro MUniverse at Hashimoto Contemporary, the Brooklyn-based artist composes explosive, eccentric, narrative scenes rendered at what the gallery describes as “a molecular level.”

The collection draws on a Chinese Buddhist adage that a single cup of water contains countless lifeforms, and for that reason, care must be taken in consuming it. Mu delves into a world of fantasy and symmetry, where animals, humans, and plants converge and hybridize in surreal configurations. Some become nearly abstract; others are uncanny, even slightly grotesque. The figures are at turns ecstatic, devious, and serene: black-winged skeletons meet sublime beings in “18 Angels,” and a dramatic scene of woodland creatures divinely erupts in “Burning Rabbit.”

Many of the works are less than a foot wide, with the exception of one painting on panel called “4 Brutes” that’s two feet across. Line, form, and expressions are therefore composed in incredible detail. The artist says, “I want to focus on the concept of being small, because whatever is small actually contains way more than it appears. Therefore, each small image is like a drop of blood, and each drop of blood contains multiple universes.”

Micro MUniverse continues through October 10 in New York City. See more on the artist’s Instagram.

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 At a ‘Molecular Level,’ Mu Pan Composes Meticulous Mandalas in Acrylic appeared first on Colossal.

Mission goes ahead despite some fears an initial engine failure after the Texas launch would scupper the attempt

SpaceX has sent its enormous Starship rocket into Earth’s orbit for the first time on a milestone flight intended to pave the way for future missions to the moon and Mars.

The rocket, the largest and most powerful ever built, blasted off from SpaceX’s Starbase launch facility in Texas at 7.48am local time (1.48pm BST), marking its 14th test flight and first attempt to circle the planet before falling back to Earth.

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When the Mr England contest put out a call for entrants, only seven people signed up. Now, with 13 days to go until the final, the organisers are getting desperate

Age: At least two years old.

Appearance: A hunkless vista, as far as the eye can see.

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Woman who spotted suspicious vans and masked men says authorities did not contact her after five men were arrested

A farmer who claims to have alerted the police to a suspected terrorist bomb plot at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire has said she has had “no follow-up at all” from the authorities.

The woman told reporters on Monday that she did not see herself as a hero for having reported vans blocking a road near the base while on her way back from a party.

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Misschien dat alle 'M-m-maar Rusland is niet onze vijand'-roepers van de neo-Stalinistische Megafestatie op de Dam weer even kunnen meekoekeloeren naar de verspreiding van DE DOOD door Russische terreuraanvallen op de Oekraïense hoofdstad Kiev. Vandaag werd tijdens de aanhoudende dronocide de Nationale Academie van Wetenschappen van Oekraïne (vergelijkbaar met onze KNAW) getroffen, waarbij meerdere doden en tientallen gewonden zijn gevallen. Ook getroffen: ziekenhuis Dobrobut, en dan hebben we het dus niet over een ziekenhuis dat je met mitrailleurvuur begroet als je aan komt kakken. Op beelden is te zien hoe mensen uit ramen klimmen om de rook te ontvluchten. Het is pure terreur. O wijze uil Hanneke van der Werf, verlos ons, wat is de oplossing?

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Lando Norris has apologised to Franco Colapinto for comments he made immediately after the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, admitting “it was wrong of me” to do so.

Europe is one of the world's largest markets for AI datacenter infrastructure, but its own local companies capture only a fraction of the value, because overseas suppliers dominate chips, servers, and cloud infrastructure. According to the Global Electronics Association (GEA), EU-headquartered companies account for only six percent of the bloc's datacenter semiconductor market, seven percent of server manufacturing and assembly, and eight percent of cloud infrastructure. Its report, "From Chips to Systems: Building an End-to-End EU Strategy for Data Centre, Cloud Infrastructure and AI," says that Europe's Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) aims to at least triple the bloc's datacenter capacity within five to seven years. The association argues that Europe needs policies to develop its own industrial ecosystem and capture more of the "unprecedented demand for servers, electronic systems and semiconductor components" CADA is expected to stimulate. Europe has fallen behind other regions in much of the electronics supply chain. Taiwan dominates contract chip manufacturing and produces most of the world's leading-edge processors, many of them designed by American companies, while South Korean and US suppliers dominate the memory market. Most major server makers are American, with China's Lenovo a notable exception. US companies also dominate networking and storage, leaving Europe with few large suppliers of its own. The report recommends that the EU pursue an end-to-end strategy for the datacenter supply chain, using European demand to encourage private investment while enticing global technology and manufacturing companies to expand production within the bloc. Its case rests partly on the claim that servers, driven by AI processing requirements, have become the primary growth driver of the entire electronics industry since 2024, overtaking other segments. It points to forecasts that expect servers to become the largest electronics segment by 2030, ahead of smartphones or automotive electronics. The report also identifies datacenter, cloud, and AI infrastructure as the most strategically important market for EU technological sovereignty. Server farms constitute the critical infrastructure on which a large number of essential services now depend, and the cloud services that run on them are now integral to the design, manufacture, and operation of many physical goods. GEA argues that supporting individual parts of the supply chain in isolation will not create a competitive European industry. It points to the Chips Act 2.0 and CADA as steps in the right direction, but says that other industrial policy instruments will need to match them. "For the first time, printed circuit boards, electronic manufacturing services, advanced packaging, and substrates sit alongside semiconductor fabrication as explicit targets of European industrial strategy," it says. The report acknowledges that Europe cannot realistically build this supply chain using EU-headquartered companies alone. It says policymakers should use the "attractiveness and growth of the EU market to encourage global leaders to expand their manufacturing footprint in Europe." That could involve partnerships with European technology companies and research organizations, spreading manufacturing expertise through the region's electronics industry. The proposal echoes the Trump administration's push to rebuild American manufacturing, although it relies more on incentives than on tariffs or threats to exclude foreign products unless their manufacturers establish US production. Nevertheless, the GEA says that the European objective should be to progressively anchor a greater share of the end-to-end value chain within Europe. Whether EU members have the collective will to do this is another question, as is whether it is possible to reverse the continent's deep dependence on overseas technology. ®

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