Darren Schiller has added a photo to the pool:

Young Street, Parkside, South Australia

The rebound marks a reversal from 2025, when bilateral trade fell for the first time in five years.

Heavy rainfall and thunderstorms struck the Ural Mountains region last Friday, knocking out electricity across 25 towns and villages.

If you listen to the 404 Media podcast by now you probably realized that Joe and I are a little obsessed with a game called Marathon. I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve played it for almost 300 hours since it was released in March.

But as much as we’re enjoying it, and there are thousands of players who feel the same, Marathon so far has failed to find the audience we’d expect from the developer that made Halo, Destiny, and which a few years ago acquired by PlayStation for more than $3 billion. It’s bad news for Marathon fans and a good sign for how much the video game business has changed over the years.  

I wanted to have Remap Radio host Robert Zacny on the podcast because much like me and Joe, he’s been obsessed with Marathon as well. One of Rob’s greatest skills is dissecting how and why games get their hooks into us, and what a game’s popularity, or lack thereof in Marathon’s case, might reveal about the state of the industry and culture more broadly. 

404 Media is a journalist-founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Subscribers also get early access to our interview series. Gain access to that content at 404media.co.

Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. 

Become a paid subscriber for early access to these interview episodes and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Thomas Hawk posted a photo:

Het terrein voor het aanmeldcentrum in Ter Apel is onveilig voor wachtende asielzoekers. Jongemannen met weinig te verliezen zorgen voor voor onrust en zelfs geweld. „Je zou ervoor moeten zorgen dat zij als een speer door de procedure gaan.”

De Engelse vlag riep het afgelopen jaar vooral associaties op met racisme en gewelddadige protesten. Tijdens het WK voetbal is een beweging ontstaan om de vlag terug te claimen. Maar in een straat in Bristol blijkt dat de vlaggen soms een dubbele boodschap hebben.

Homerus leverde een puntgaaf filmscenario af, zo lijkt het. Toch is zijn Odyssee voor Christoper Nolan eraan begon maar zelden verfilmd. Waar ligt dat aan?

Na Batman en Oppenheimer voegt de Britse regisseur nu Odysseus aan zijn rijtje helden met smetjes toe. Een langgekoesterde droom, een langverwachte release. In de opmaat naar de première floreerde het geruchtencircus.

Odysseus’ geduldige eega Penelope speelt een listige rol in Homerus’ Odyssee, heldendicht waarin vrouwen een prominente rol spelen. Toch is ze wat te lijdzaam in sommige moderne ogen.

Another month, another ambitious idea from Yuri Zaporozhets: a proposal for a standard PC-style BIOS for RISC-V computers. The Harmonic Firmware Initiative, or HFI for short, is simple and appealing in principle, but will be considerably harder to implement. From the project's own description, it aims to provide a BIOS-like experience, familiar from x86 PCs, for RISC-V hardware. When the machine starts, the firmware would identify the system and its hardware, list what peripherals are connected, offer the option to enter a setup program – and then hand over to U-Boot to load an OS. If the name seems familiar, this may be because last month we looked at several of Zaporozhets's previous projects, including his GateMate PC, the System/359 micro-mainframe, his 64-bit RISC-V version of QNX 6 QRV, and most recently, his QSOE RISC-V RTOS, which offers a choice of seL4 or its own in-house kernels. One part of the GateMate RISC-V PC project is a PC-style modular BIOS. This includes a video BIOS for the GateMate PC's bespoke video adapter. The HFI proposal is somewhat different. It's intended to work with an existing, standard RISC-V bootloader, the RISC-V version of the FOSS cross-platform bootloader Das U-Boot. It does include a video BIOS, though, one designed to initialize arbitrary video hardware in a standard way and bring it up to a VGA-like text mode. For now, Zaporozhets is developing HFI on his SiFive HiFive Unmatched. In that motherboard's PCIe slot, he has an old Nvidia GK208 graphics card, and his firmware can initialize that and show a text-based boot-up display, without using any old x86 BIOS code. As well as the homepage, there's also a six-page white paper [PDF] laying out the idea in detail. In this, he does mention what could be seen as a rival – another RISC-V firmware offering, the EDK2 implementation of UEFI. UEFI is large and complex, and the white paper says that most current boards use U-Boot instead. As the last section of the page says, this is an just an invitation with aspirations: "HFI is offered as an initiative, not a product to license. Its reference software is open by construction – HFI BIOS links U-Boot and carries U-Boot's license – and QSOE Systems stewards the whole: the interface specification, a high-quality reference implementation, and the porting to new controllers." It seems like an excellent idea to us. The absence of standard firmware has been a handicap for all Arm-based computers ever since the chips caught on outside Acorn Computers. This is why Arm OSes are hard to transfer from one hardware platform to another, why every phone needs its own ROM images, and it's why the move to Apple Silicon meant the end of the Hackintosh world. It would be very good news for RISC-V if it avoided the same fate. ®

Government says possum bridges successful, but sceptics question data. The Western Australian government has released night-vision images showing scores of native wildlife are using rope bridges and underpasses along a highway in the South West region, but not everyone is convinced. WA's Main Roads has told the ABC that night-vision cameras have recorded thousands of critters using the mix of 19 rope bridges, 24 underpasses and two land bridges built along the Wilman Wadandi Highway, about 170 kilometres south of Perth. (Australia)

The Strange Worlds Among Us—of Turing, Trans People, and the Road to Laniakea by Ryka Aoki, author of the IMO excellent Light From Uncommon Stars.

The LGBTQ+ Legislation Tracking Project, tracing & visualizing 10,350 LGBTQ+ bills introduced in the US since 2003. Anti-trans bills have dominated since ~2014.

@SonjaS meer moet dat niet zijn, he?
(edit: typo)

TheGufotography has added a photo to the pool:

IMG_20260331_083709_DSC_1673-18

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifu_Castle

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifu

You can buy some of my photos here:
www.artheroes.de/de/shop-bilder/The-Gufotography

In Explore, July 15, 2026.

De gesproken tekst van de reclame op Instagram (onderstaand) luidt: "Omdat je vindt dat discriminatie op welke grond dan ook onacceptabel is, en je er alles aan wilt doen om onrecht tegen te gaan." En die (fictieve) leus op de ramen is volkomen verwerpelijk natuurlijk. Maar wat nou als je eigenlijk vindt dat Nederlands onvermogen 'op welke grond dan ook' te discrimineren het eigenlijke probleem is. Kom je dan nog een beetje in aanmerking of?

Social

During the medieval and Renaissance periods, baskets were everyday essentials—no plastic bags at the supermarket or even reusable totes. They were also used for all sorts of activities, from handled varieties for produce at the market to decorative vessels holding sewing materials to large versions that could be worn like rucksacks. For Cardiff-based artist Lewis Prosser, a self-described “absurdist basketmaker,” folklore, regional identity, and cultural heritage center a multidisciplinary practice.

Through sculptural baskets that can be worn as costumes or displayed like venerable sculptures, Prosser taps into storytelling, masking traditions, and public ceremony and celebration. Welsh communities still celebrate Mari Lwyd during the Christmas period, a festivity that may have emerged with the Celts. A small group of men bedecked in ribbons and rosettes parade around town, leading a figure wearing an eerie horse skull. Another ceremonial festival, The Hunting of the Earl of Rone, takes place annually in the village of Combe Martin, North Devon, and although updated over the centuries, is also thought to have originated in pre-Christian times.

In projects like Making Merrie, Prosser combines music and dance in an ode to English folk performances called mummers’ plays, which were often staged during holidays and typically feature combat between two opposing forces, such as good and evil or winter and spring.

Prosser created the wicker costumes using basketry techniques found in the region of Wales and southwestern England, invoking the craft as “an essential human skill we’re at risk of forgetting—a skill that, if lost, means losing part of what it is to be human,” he says in a statement. The costumes are now in the collection of the Folk Preservation Society in Teignmouth, Devon, which continues to activate them in performances from time to time.

Currently, Prosser is facilitating a collaborative project called The Baskets Between Carnival and Lent. Inspired by Pieter Breughel the Elder’s seminal painting “The Fight Between Carnival and Lent” (1559), Prosser takes the composition’s 24 woven objects as a starting point, including willow shutters on buildings, a birdcage, and a woven beehive, otherwise known as a skep. Prosser is joining 10 basketmakers from across Europe to recreate all two dozen in the painting, and the finished pieces are slated for a show at Oriel Myrddin Gallery in Carmarthen, Wales, in spring 2027.

Prosser is also working toward a new performance for Burgos Biennial 2026 in Burgos, Spain, which kicks off in late September. “For this project, I will be devising an elaborate new basket-based sport called ‘hornball’ (cuerno pelota): a combination of ritual harvest celebration, competitive ball games, and wearable sculptures,” Prosser tells Colossal. See more on his 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 ‘Absurdist Basketmaker’ Lewis Prosser Weaves Contemporary Visions of Regional Heritage appeared first on Colossal.