Would you tattoo your hair? / Cosmos

October 27, 2026·Edition 53

Would you tattoo your hair?

Internet Microdoses

TikTok’s latest trend is stripping copper wire. Copper prices hit a record this year, so creators peel the plastic off old cables and sell the metal inside as scrap. One woman filmed herself doing it for six months to save for a house. She says the copper earned her $99, while a video about it earned her $1,446. Somewhere, a scrapyard owner is buying a ring light.

Strip for the algorithm →

You can now get an official Rembrandt tattoo. Amsterdam's Rembrandt House Museum has opened a pop-up tattoo studio. Walk-ins can get a small Rembrandt design for as little as $110. One volunteer is getting The Descent from the Cross across his whole back, which takes about 20 hours.

Exit through the tattoo shop →

Apple Music's new logo was made by sound. For its first rebrand since 2015, Apple and Fred again.. played sound frequencies into a shallow pool of oil. The ripples distorted the logo, creating its new visual identity. And to think they used to use computers, like cavemen.

Turn it up →

Mexico’s archaeology institute has identified a 2,500-year-old solar observatory. Archaeologists say the platforms at Tetelihtic, in central Mexico, were built to track where the sun rises. The alignments may have marked the start of the year in February and harvest time in October. But how did they turn it back for daylight saving time?

Watch the sun come up →

The first episode of an AI-generated Odyssey made with Elon Musk's Grok has been released, and everyone’s roasting it. After criticizing Christopher Nolan's casting, Musk promised his AI tool Grok would make a "historically accurate" version of Homer's epic. Seven minutes into Elon’s, Nolan's is starting to look like a documentary.

Set sail, if you dare →

Ibrahim Mahama moved part of a Ghanaian glass factory to Paris. The bottle factory opened in 1966, weeks before Ghana's first president was overthrown, and was about to be scrapped. Mahama bought it and rebuilt a section inside the Fondation Cartier, surrounded by more than 25,000 green glass bottles.

Talk about bottle service →

Does this make my brain look big?

Edition 51 · October 13, 2026

People are reading at raves now?

Aesthetic Study

Hair lines

April Harper Grey is best known as underscores, one of the biggest names in hyperpop, a genre of experimental electronic pop music. The 26-year-old singer and producer released her third album, U, in March, and this fall she's opening for Charli XCX in arenas. You can recognize her by her hair: dark, with the outline of a pair of headphones bleached into it. Her fans are recreating the design on their own heads.

People have worn symbols in their hair to show what they believe in or who they admire for centuries. In 1778, after a French frigate (a warship) fought a British ship, women at the French court in Versailles built model ships into hairstyles up to two feet high.

Since then, people have dyed, shaved, and bleached everything from AIDS ribbons to Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper into their hair.

The pouf, as the towering hairstyle was called, was built up with padding and wire, and it changed with the news. When Louis XVI was inoculated against smallpox, a pouf followed to mark the occasion, with a serpent wound around an olive tree.

The Gauls, ancient peoples who lived in what is now France and nearby regions, were at it long before Versailles. The Greek historian Diodorus Siculus wrote that they were "always washing their hair in lime-water" until it "differs in no respect from the mane of horses." Pliny credited them with a soap of animal fat and ash for dyeing hair red. In Kenya, young Maasai warriors braid their long hair with red ochre, a natural pigment, and animal fat. When they become junior elders, their mothers shave it off.

An image uploaded on Mar 08, 2025. — A 1921 portrait of artist Marcel Duchamp by photographer Man Ray

Marcel Duchamp, the artist who had sent a urinal to an art show in 1917, had a star with a comet's tail shaved into the back of his head. His friend, the photographer Man Ray, photographed it. Duchamp called the photo Tonsure, after the patch monks shave on their crowns, and signed it as his own work. Later, he signed a friend's painting as Rrose Sélavy, the female alter ego he'd invented.

Decorating your hair can also be a way to push back against dress codes. NBA player Dennis Rodman expressed himself through his hair. In 1991, with the Detroit Pistons, he had "Trilogy III" shaved into his hair for their run at a third straight championship. They failed to win it. Later came an AIDS awareness ribbon, and in 1998, leopard spots by Chicago nightlife artist JoJo Baby. Figure skating has stricter rules about appearance. One former skater was told her hair had to be cut into a short bob or tied up perfectly, or she'd lose points. When Adam Rippon dyed his hair lavender in 2015, an official asked him to dye it back. Olympian Alysa Liu adds a new ring to her hair every year, like a tree. She won gold in February with three rings. "I just want to be a tree," she said.

An image uploaded by haglorios on Feb 10, 2026. — Dennis Rodman on the court with his smiley face hairstyle, 1997.

In 2019, hairstylist Guido Palau spray-painted leopard spots onto a model's buzz cut for a Versace fashion show. In San Antonio, barber Rob Ferrel has cut The Last Supper into a client's hair. Another client flew in from Washington, D.C., for a Bob Marley portrait, paid $400, and flew home the same day. "I'll see you next month," she told him.

Like Duchamp, underscores goes by a lot of names. She's April in interviews, Milkfish when she DJs, and olivia offseason on her vlog, and she has an anonymous music project her fans still haven't found. "I always just admired people that have a lot of different aliases," she told The FADER, "to make it feel kind of like a secret thing that people are in on." Whichever name she's using, the headphone design stays in her hair. It's the one part of her a fan can copy.

October 27, 2026·Interview

Adriana Roslin

A Madrid-born photographer and creative director creating minimal, architectural images shaped by light.

A moment with

Adriana Roslin

A Madrid-born photographer and creative director creating minimal, architectural images shaped by light.

Adriana Roslin starts every shoot by finding the right light. The Madrid-born creative director and photographer chooses locations for how light falls across their surfaces. Her minimal, almost architectural images have appeared in Vogue Spain and GQ Spain. Her clients include Loewe, Adidas, and Spotify. Right now, she's juggling a shoe campaign, a project for the Spanish airline Iberia, and a documentary. Here, Adriana shares her case against Instagram, the best investments she's made, and the airport pat-down videos that give her ASMR.

What's your hot take?

Instagram has become this major dystopian TV screen that feeds our insecurities, our anger, and our despair. We are constantly forced to witness the misuse of power by influencers and celebrities who are, whether we like it or not, a big pillar of contemporary “culture.” They are there, and companies and fans continue to give them massive platforms. We are also forced to consume an overwhelming amount of completely different content within a matter of seconds, in a way that our brains simply cannot fully process. And especially now, it feels more intense than ever. Instagram has also pushed us to limit ourselves creatively, stopping artists from experimenting with their images because of censorship, changing the crops and formats of our work to fit a standard, and making us feel that we should be doing what everyone else is doing simply because it worked for them and the brands they might be working for. We need healthier options so we stop destroying our mental health.

Three places you’ve felt inspired by.

Anywhere with good natural light coming through, anywhere with a sunset, and anywhere with interesting interiors.

What do you listen to on repeat?

Right now, “Uno” by Ben Yart.

What are the most worthwhile investments you've made?

Good accountants, a cheaper but better living space even if it’s further away from the city centre, and an emotionally stable partner.

What is an unusual habit, or an absurd thing, that you love?

I watch a lot of YouTube videos of doctors giving medical exams, people inspecting rooms, and airport pat-downs. They give me ASMR.

Tell us more about your creative process.

For me, something that is very inspiring is always my surroundings, especially how the light might affect certain surfaces in them. That’s why, when I think about a shoot, I immediately think about the location and what it could give us that could benefit artistically. And then I go from there.

Who is your forever inspo?

Sonia Szostak. She is a great photographer. She really knows how to blend in any situation and always creates something interesting.

Write us a fortune cookie.

Try to live any experience as positively as possible because almost everything is surmountable. With the right support and vibes, you will do it. Also, life is too short.

Follow Adriana on Cosmos and Instagram →

Internet Microdoses

Does this make my brain look big?

People are reading at raves now?

Hair lines

Adriana Roslin

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