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May 26, 2026

Getting Up

On caves, refusals, and the people who keep getting up

Some things refuse to stay down. Water in a flooded cave. A hunger striker's resolve. A jazz legend's legacy after death.

Today's curation is about rising—literally, metaphorically, against the odds. The villagers trapped underground for a week. The detained who say no with their bodies. The grannies who get up before dawn to sort through what we throw away.

Getting up is the hardest part. These stories are about the moment after.

A person getting up from the floor by Ilya Bliznets
Rescue

Rescuers race to reach 7 villagers trapped for a week in flooded Laos cave

A week underground. Water rising. The body starts to forget what daylight feels like. There's something in this fragmented figure—pixelated, dithered, barely holding together—that captures what it means to be trapped between collapse and rising. The title says it plainly: getting up from the floor. Sometimes that's all survival is. The slow, painful reassembly of yourself after the world tried to drown you.

A person getting up from the floor

by Ilya Bliznets

"AI, digital painting and dithering collage. For the event OBJKT4OBJKT 2026."

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City Accident by Greg Nikshumika
Music

Sonny Rollins, saxophonist and restless genius of jazz, dead at 95

Sonny Rollins played like accidents were gifts. He'd take a wrong note and make it the center of something new—bend it, stretch it, let it bloom into a whole new phrase. "Some accidents are happy," says this piece, with its pixelated roses rising from a spreadsheet grid. Jazz was always that: beauty forcing its way through structure. Rollins practiced on a bridge for two years, alone, working out what he couldn't find in any chart. He rose from that bridge a different player. At 95, the restless genius has finally stopped searching. What he found is everywhere.

City Accident

by Greg Nikshumika

"Some accidents are happy."

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walk-out by Frank Manzano
Protest

A hunger strike at an ICE facility in New Jersey has spurred protests. Here's what we know

"Nothing happens if you stay." When you can't walk out, you refuse to eat. The body becomes the only site of resistance left. In detention, your movements are controlled, your time is controlled—but they can't force you to swallow. The hunger strike is rising by subtraction: becoming more yourself by taking something away from them. These protesters outside, these strikers inside, are having the same conversation across the wall. The question is the same: what are you willing to lose to stay whole?

walk-out

by Frank Manzano

"Nothing happens if you stay."

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Girl with a Pearl Bracelet by MinaTK
Labor

In a city of high-rises, 'cardboard grannies' collect waste for cash

Before the city wakes, they're already moving through it—elderly women with carts taller than they are, sorting through what the rest of us threw away. Hong Kong calls them "cardboard grannies." They earn pennies per kilogram. This Art Nouveau portrait, with its flowers and pearls and elegant pose, shows the beauty we're trained to see. But there's grace in the grannies too, rising before dawn, bending and lifting, keeping a whole ecosystem of waste in circulation. The bracelet was a gift from her best friend. The cart is just a cart. Both hands are working.

Girl with a Pearl Bracelet

by MinaTK

"Girl with a Pearl Bracelet is a precious gift from her best friend."

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The Getting Up

Rising isn't dramatic. It's not the triumphant moment in the movie where the music swells. It's a fragmented figure finding their pixels. It's flowers growing through spreadsheet cells. It's refusing a meal. It's waking up at 4am to sort cardboard.

The world keeps trying to flatten us. We keep getting up. Sometimes that's all the rebellion there is.

What will you rise from today?

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