Given its scale and significance, I will present my analysis of this project in several installments. These are the ten design proposals shortlisted for the next series of euro banknotes. At this moment, they are under the gaze of millions. Citizens of the euro area have been invited to choose their favorites in a survey that will remain open until September 21...
Cedric Michael Cox unveils Love Lives Here, a public mural in Wyoming celebrating community, belonging, and local pride.
Elizabeth Hawes closes August 2 in Cincinnati, showing 50 garments and original sketches by a radical American designer.
Rites of Passage spotlights nine emerging artists at Manifest, opening July 10 with student work from eight U.S. states.
Manifest Gallery opens VELVET, an international exhibition exploring black through painting, sculpture, and mixed media.
At Studio Kroner, Cedric Michael Cox leads a hands-on art workshop linking creativity, memory, grief, and inner healing.
Designing the banknotes destined to circulate throughout a monetary area such as Europe is among the most prestigious and consequential commissions a professional or design studio can receive. Creating an image to be shared by millions of people, condensing an identity into visual form, and meeting complex demands of legibility, security, symbolism, and instant recognition constitute a task at which even a demigod like Hercules might have failed...
Ai Weiwei's art leaves me with certain reservations. The public figure strikes me as overly polished, burnished almost to excess.
Some years ago he dropped an authentic Han dynasty urn onto the floor. Made sometime between 206 BC and AD 220, its first and only purpose was to shatter. He had bought it in Beijing in the early 1990s, during China's rapid urban expansion...
Alice Frieder Weston is by no means an obscure figure now nor has she been over the many years she and husband, Harris Weston, encouraged and supported the arts and other causes in Cincinnati. Entering her living room, as she says “good morning”, one is greeted by an expanse of Carl Strauss-designed light and airy space and a broad view of the Ohio River. Everywhere is wonderful...
If compelled to list my favorite painters, I never say “Whistler,” but in thinking of pieces I ritually visit, Whistlers are everywhere: at the Tate, Harmony in Grey and Green: Miss Cicely Alexander; at the Frick, Symphony in Flesh Colour and Pink and Harmony in Pink and Grey; at the Met, The Arrangement in Flesh Colour and Black: the Portrait of Theodore Duret, and, and at the Taft, At the Piano. In contrast to those others, At the Piano has a horizontal format; by virtue of its expanded palette and the inclusion of two figures, it asserts a dialectic.
“I am at war with the obvious,” Photographer William Eggleston once said when asked about his work. I have a feeling Carl M. Jacobs III, the collector the exhibit “Not Just Pretty Pictures” beatifies at the Cincinnati Art Museum (through August 28, 2011), might have said the same thing if asked why he collected the art he did.
Call Me Ahmel
January arrived, and so did 2025. Halfway through the month it will pierce my head and my body in much the same way 2024 did—with hypersonic calm. Be careful. In Miami everything happens too fast, a good friend warned me, sounding more alarmed than concerned. Another good friend, one we have in common, calls him my fascist friend. Cuba, the way tango does to the men—and to the women—in Borges's magnificent story The Man on Pink Corner, has its own way with him.
Although I am an avowed admirer of her solo work and have known her for nearly twenty-five years, I do not remember ever having spoken in person with Liudmila Velasco. About her work, about the weather, about how unbearable this or that artist can become. When I left the island, Liudmila was already practically an institution within Cuban women’s photography...
When we first came across Tim Harrier’s Shaman Spirit Guides, we dismissed them without mercy as the product of artificial intelligence. The mud-covered faces, the animals emerging from the background, and an unbroken frontal force produced, almost at once, a malignant suspicion. Suspicion ran far ahead of the work. And we are right to suspect almost everything in life. This series, no...
In January, SoftBank contributed $50 million to the foundation for Donald Trump's future presidential library. The company said it would fund construction and operation. Presidential libraries preserve an administration's records and serve as monuments to its account of power. SoftBank's gifts to the Reagan and George W. Bush libraries came after those presidents left office. This payment arrived during Trump's term, before his library existed. In March, the Department of Energy leased federal land in Ohio to an affiliate of SoftBank's SB Energy. The former Portsmouth uranium-enrichment site is planned to hold a 10-gigawatt data center campus, supplied by at least 9.2 gigawatts of new gas generation.
Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal and Representative Melanie Stansbury asked whether the timing raised bribery concerns. No published evidence connects the contribution to the lease. The two events expose a direct route between political remembrance and AI infrastructure. A corporation can honor a sitting president through an institution shaping his historical image while seeking federal land for one of the world's largest computing projects. The material chain includes a Cold War site under cleanup, gas plants, transmission lines, private servers and a commemorative foundation. SoftBank confirmed the dates and described the gift as resembling its previous library donations. Those checks reached former presidents. This one was deposited two months before the federal agreement was announced.
After two years without work had lowered her confidence, Danielle found a facial analysis service promoted on TikTok as science-backed self-improvement and paid $330. She sent Qoves selfies and received a 30-page report scoring details from her ears to the femininity of her features. It proposed changes across her face and work on her brows and lashes. Qoves says attractive people receive better treatment at work and elsewhere. Danielle linked that promise to financial security. It belongs to looksmaxxing, which treats appearance as measurable and improvable. Facemaxify and Epica use AI to score faces against hidden standards. Qoves sells a $150 report and a $180 surgery upgrade, though its method and use of AI remain unclear.
Laura O'Connor exposed the mechanism. Epica gave the reporter's selfie a skin score of 61, marked uneven texture and displayed serum offers. She changed the lighting, took another selfie and scored 81. Epica kept its method secret. Researchers Justin Mogilski and Mitch Brown say limited studies cannot support universal beauty advice across cultures. Such uncertainty still supports a sales path. The service names a defect, assigns a number and offers a procedure, subscription or affiliate product. An unstable measure sounds like a diagnosis, making ordinary variation an expense. Danielle has consulted an injector and may travel for procedures after clearing her unemployment debt. O'Connor's higher score left her beside another set of serum links.
During ESPN's July broadcast of the 2026 WSOP Main Event, Luke Geel's system displayed movement metrics beside players. WIRED identifies Geel as an AI engineer for the US Air Force, with no report of institutional sponsorship or endorsement. Inputs covered eye movement, blinking, posture, chip handling and hand fidgeting, generating estimates of hand categories, including possible bluffs. Outputs remained estimates, never established detections of bluffing, lying, intention or hand strength. Footage came from three televised tables within a field over 9,000 entrants, leaving uneven records. Finalist Michael Gagliano doubted the streams held actionable information. Geel reported mixed blind-test results on other competitions. Omaha Productions withheld the system from the final table.
For each hand, software matched movement with outcomes, added associations to a database, then fed ESPN's overlay live readouts and a hand strength model chart estimating categories such as made hands and bluffs. This sequence presents provisional correlation with the graphic finish of a score. Shaun Deeb, twice WSOP Player of the Year, called the feature a swing and a miss, noting cameras omit physical tells involving breathing and pulse. Posture may register nerves or the stakes, allowing one motion to accompany different cards. Viewers receive the chart before inspecting its sample and may read graphic polish as knowledge. On screen, a player's fidget reaches a camera, returns as a chart, and enters the viewer's judgment as an estimate.
