Brazil is the demented, surreal flip-side of George Orwell’s dystopian warning— 1984 1/2 was director Terry Gilliam’s originally mooted title. Yet it is Gilliam’s comic vision that depressingly reflects and permeates our everyday culture. One of the bureaucratic balls-ups, government catch-all…

In 2017, Dungeons & Dragons, a game played outside the realm of the Internet, can feel slightly rebellious, or at least pleasantly out of place. Illustration by Edward Steed The clinical psychologist Jon Freeman was feeling burnt out. He spenthis days at a corporate office in Manhattan, managing…

Jacob Silverman | Longreads | May 2018 | 9 minutes (2,206 words) For the better part of two decades, an important set of assumptions has underwritten our use of the internet. In exchange for being monitored — to what degree, many people still have no idea — we would receive free digital services. We…

Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP Mark Zuckerberg wants you to know that he cares, really cares, about journalism. “I view our responsibility in news as two things,” he said in a wide-ranging conversation with a small group of news editors and executives assembled in Palo Alto for a journalism gathering…

DENVER , Colorado — Last winter, on the outskirts of a large U.S. city, an FBI hostage rescue team set up an elevated observation post to assess an unfolding situation. Soon they heard the buzz of small drones — and then the tiny aircraft were all around them, swooping past in a series of…

Alphabet board member Eric Schmidt: "Any military that fails to pursue enterprise‑wide cloud computing isn’t serious about winning future conflicts" Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call The companies that provide our email, online shopping and family photo-sharing accounts are also in the business of training,…

Cambridge Analytica, the embattled data firm that worked on President Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, has told employees it is shutting down, along with its UK counterpart SCL Elections. The move, which impacts all offices of both companies worldwide, comes amid recent revelations that the…

If I’d been able , in the nineties, to see into the future, it’s hard to know what about the late 2010s would have surprised me more: that millions would have voted Donald Trump into the White House, or that millions would line up to see films about Captain America. In the nineties, while Trump’s…

Rudy Giuliani’s legal skills appear to be rusty, but he is eager to play the role of President Trump’s attack dog, just as he did during the campaign. Photograph by Eric Thayer / NYT / Redux With his impulsive behavior and chronic aversion to the truth, Donald Trump has created endless challenges…

Side Note Drew Millard Now is not a great time to be Elon Musk. His electric vehicle company Tesla is facing a $2 billion lawsuit for allegedly ripping off an electric truck design from one of its competitors — a company that, in an odd stroke of symbolism, is called Nikola. His long-threatened…

Patrick and SpongeBob in “SpongeBob SquarePants.” Nickelodeon When a yellow sponge in rectangular pants came to children’s TV in 1999, who could have guessed that it would lead to “SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical,” which was nominated this week for 12 Tony Awards ? With the musical on a…

Slack's Vancouver office Slack Last week, Slack, the company whose popular, plaid-themed messaging app has simplified office communications and introduced the custom-fox emoji into our daily routines, quietly released its 2017 diversity report . Such reports, which list statistics such as the…

"He dictated that whole letter. I didn't write that letter," Bornstein told CNN on Tuesday. "I just made it up as I went along." In an interview with CNN today, Dr. Harold Bornstein said that the strange letter he signed in 2015 [ document link ] about then candidate Donald Trump's health was…

R. Kelly has been accused of being violent and sexually coercive with women as young as 13. While he denies the accusations and isn’t facing any criminal charges, the grass-roots #MuteRKelly campaign has gained the backing of Time’s Up. Prince Williams/WireImage, via Getty Images For more than two…

A synthetic burger restaurant.Illustration: Joe Magee “I f you make food that tastes really good, you win,” says Josh Tetrick, with a smile. And winning is crucial, he says, with his company Just in the vanguard of a new sector with an ambitious mission: to use cutting-edge technologies to create…

Can more cities be like Copenhagen? Bob Strong/Reuters Annette Becker Lessano Negussie Apr 30, 2018 Architect and planner Jan Gehl looks back on how he helped transform Copenhagen into one of the world’s most livable cities and talks about how people can reclaim the streets. Advocates of bike lanes,…

In 1998, the US Congress retroactively extended the copyright on US works, placing public domain works back into copyright and forestalling the entry into the public domain of a great mass of works that were soon to become public domain; now, 20 years later with no copyright term extension in sight…

In the second half of 2017, the phrase “bisexual lighting” slipped into the queer Twitter lexicon. The phenomenon it described — film characters illuminated with deep blue lights on one side and saturated magenta lights on the opposite, which also happens to be the colors of the bisexual pride flag…

Michelle Wolf delivered the best White House Press Corps monologue since Colbert's amazing 2006 performance , and it has made the right (as well as establishment handwringers) really angry! The routine (wildly NSFW, but you can fire up a VPN and read the transcript if you're worried about your boss)…

Five years ago, on April 30, 2013, Chance The Rapper released his sophomore mixtape, Acid Rap . It's the project that changed everything for then-20-year-old Chancelor Bennett: Before Chance was the first artist to be nominated for, and win, a Grammy for a streaming-only release—before he became the…

SEOUL, South Korea — Keeping diplomatic developments coming at a head-snapping pace, the South Korean government said on Sunday that North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, had told President Moon Jae-in that he would abandon his nuclear weapons if the United States agreed to formally end the Korean War…

The world's magicians are at war with each other over the "Art of Misdirection" — an ultra-secret website dedicated to magical piracy. It has pitted professionals desperate to protect their secrets against thieving renegades, naming-and-shaming them and even reporting them to the FBI. The mysterious…

Comedy has no rules, per se. But in my 15 years of writing and performing, I’ve come up with a few guidelines that I find helpful: 1. Be funny. 2. Tell the truth. 3. Make people in power uncomfortable. By that math, in her performance at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday…

Charlie Chaplin on the set of "The Pilgrim," which was released in 1923 Associated First National Pictures / Sunset Boulevard / Corbis / Getty The Great American Novel enters the public domain on January 1, 2019—quite literally. Not the concept, but the book by William Carlos Williams. It will be…

Comedian Michelle Wolf following the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 28, 2018 in Washington, DC. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images After her performance at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner caused a journalistic existential meltdown and tweet after tweet of liberal hand-wringing and…

Michelle Wolf headlined the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2018. Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images Comedian Michelle Wolf headlined the White House Correspondents’ Dinner Saturday night, shocking the crowd and spinning up indignation among Republicans and even some journalists for accusing press…

As tech giants and high-end audio firms like Amazon and Sonos introduce sophisticated AI-powered sound systems to the audio world, Ikea is going a decidedly more analog route. Its new, multicomponent audio system, called Frekvens, aims to turn homes into party central with a range of decidedly…

Michelle Wolf’s routine was only as obscene as the Presidency itself. Photograph by Cheriss May / NurPhoto via Getty On Saturday, the comedian Michelle Wolf, performing at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, delivered the most consequential monologue so far of the Donald Trump…

The members of this Scottish group are rappers, but just barely. They squirm around categorization so nimbly that pretty much any comparison—to Joy Division, Saul Williams, the Raincoats, the Ronettes—fits if you squint just so. It’s best to take them as they are: Graham (G) Hastings, Alloysious…

Photo Credit: Dan Farber Deliberate experimentation is more important than deliberate practice in a rapidly changing world. Most people think that Edison invented the first light bulb. They’re wrong. In fact, Edison was spectacularly late to the game. In 1878, when the 36-year-old inventor decided…

Applying Silicon Valley culture to carmaking didn't work Enlarge / Tesla CEO Elon Musk in 2015. ODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images Building cars at scale is one of the most complex and capital-intensive manufacturing tasks in the world. To cope with these challenges, carmakers tend to have a highly…

Kanye West has repeatedly said that if you’re a fan of Kanye West, then you’re a fan of yourself. You’re a champion in his eyes. Do it for the glory. “Go listen to all my music,” he once told Zane Lowe . “It’s the codes of self-esteem.” So what does it mean to be a fan of Kanye West now, as he…

WASHINGTON — The panna cotta had been served and the First Amendment duly celebrated by the time the comedian Michelle Wolf took the stage on Saturday at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. What followed was a roast that took unflinching aim at some of the notables in the room — and…

Enlarge / Is this essentially the same as a kid buying a box of car skins in Rocket League ? Getty Video game loot boxes Trade group prez: Loot box regulation “challenges our freedom to innovate” Despite backlash, loot boxes could be essential to gaming’s future Video game loot boxes are now…

After six months behind bars, Meek Mill was released on bail Tuesday evening. According to multiple reports , the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania overruled a lower court in Philadelphia Tuesday afternoon. Their order overturns Judge Genece Brinkley's highly controversial decision to send the the…

Ronny Jackson, who withdrew, on Thursday morning, as Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. Photograph by Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call via Getty Donald Trump’s failed nomination of the White House physician, Ronny Jackson , to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs might be the…