Walking in America is dangerous business. If you get around on your own two feet, odds are you routinely have to deal with high-speed streets designed with little if any accommodation for walking, dodging aggressive drivers any time you cross. It takes a toll. Almost 6,000 pedestrians were killed in…

Three questions that’ll shine a light on your startup idea’s potential I’m leaving Tacklebox to start a restaurant. It’s called “Baguette About It,” and I’m psyched. Stay with me… Everyone in the restaurant gets a baguette. Next, they order a few bowls of sauce — bolognese, vodka, cheese, etc. The…

Jessica Brand, Ethan Brown Apr 16, 2018 On Jan. 23, 2007, a pair of officers from the Philadelphia Police Department’s Narcotics Field Unit (NFU) received information from a “reliable source” that drug sales were being conducted in the vicinity of 22nd and Jackson Streets, on the city’s south side.…

Porn can be blamed for a lot of pathologies and false ideas about sex: That women love anal; that we like to have our pussies spat upon or smacked ; that men need to bone as if they’re literally filming a porn. But I think one of the biggest myths it’s responsible for is that women expect a…

I’ve been thinking about non-player characters for four months now. I’ve been thinking about them ever since I stood over the body of the eleventh man I killed in Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs . He had a sneering face and a stuffed bank account. The game told me that he was listed on FBI watch list. His name…

General Khalifa Haftar. The UN supports a rival government based in Tripoli.Photograph: Abdullah Doma/AFP/Getty Images The Libyan military strongman Khalifa Haftar has warned that the country may not be ready for democracy even though the UN is planning to hold elections this year. Haftar, a former…

This article is part of a special series on the intersection of guns and games. For more, click here . America is finally having an ongoing conversation about gun violence. In the wake of last month’s school shooting in Parkland, Florida, and driven by the energetic political action of countless…

In attempting to re-litigate settled science, the Trump Administration is hindering a more nuanced conversation. Photograph by Martin Ruetschi / Keystone / Redux On December 21, 2012, Wayne LaPierre, the executive vice-president ofthe National Rifle Association, which has lent its name to video…

Underwater survival game Subnautica has a lot of things that can kill you. As has long been a point of contention among players, you can’t do much to kill things back. This weekend, one of the game’s developers revealed the reasoning behind Subnautica ’s lack of lethal weapons. Charlie Cleveland,…

Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney and “fixer,” has also represented conservative talk show host Sean Hannity this year. A federal judge on Friday ordered Cohen to disclose his client list by 10 a.m. on Monday . Cohen put the scope of his legal practice at issue when he filed a temporary…

Sometimes I imagine my brain is a collection of baskets that contain everything I know. There’s a basket for the English language, and a basket for music stuff. There’s one for Lord of the Rings lore, and another for Bloodborne monsters. Right alongside those is a worn but sizable basket that…

W hat is happening to national politics? Every day in the US, events further exceed the imaginations of absurdist novelists and comedians; politics in the UK still shows few signs of recovery after the “ national nervous breakdown ” of Brexit. France “ narrowly escaped a heart attack ” in last…

Humble beginnings There’s plenty of buzz around the web 3.0 and the sweeping changes it will bring to the industry, but few people actually know why it spawned and what it will bring. To understand this, it’s necessary to travel back in time and examine it predecessors, Web 1.0 & 2.0. Just like the…

When it comes to architecture and design, the Dutch port city of Rotterdam isn’t exactly known for playing by the rules or abiding by conventions. A town of gritty docklands, shiny modern high-rises and one hell of a market hall , the Netherlands’ second most populous city boasts a singular energy —…

BEIRUT, Lebanon — As the dust settles from missile strikes launched by the United States and its allies against Syria over the weekend, very little has changed for most Syrians who have spent years suffering through their country’s civil war. In Damascus, hundreds demonstrated in support of…

Having a whole bunch of smart objects like lights, appliances, and thermometers can make life a little more convenient for businesses, but buying into the internet of things can also make those same businesses more vulnerable to hackers. Nicole Eagan, CEO of cybersecurity company Darktrace, revealed…

The raid on the offices of President Trump’s personal lawyer makes clear that Trump’s battle with the special counsel, Robert Mueller, is entering its final chapter. Photograph by Yana Paskova / Getty On May 1, 2003, the day President George W. Bush landed on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in front of…

There’s a premise built into the structure of the Olympics that pretty much every single Olympian, even those far down the standings, are elite athletes at the top of their game performing at a level most fans could only dream of. Freestyle skier Elizabeth Swaney is an affront to this notion, and…

In Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther,” the hero and his antagonist are essentially duelling responses to five centuries of African exploitation at the hands of the West. Photograph by Matt Kennedy / Marvel / Walt Disney Studios / Everett The Maison des Esclaves stands on the rocky shore of Gorée Island,…

Martin Schoeller GQ’s Zach Baron reports on the stupendous rise and surprising disappearance of the once ubiquitous movie star. Brendan Fraser wants me to meet his horse. “I got this horse because it's a big horse,” he says, standing in a barn in Bedford, New York. He removes a green bandanna from…

She believed her best chance to be heard was through sheer repetition, so Rachel Crooks took her seat at the dining table and prepared to tell the story again. She was used to difficult audiences, to skeptics and Internet trolls who flooded her Facebook page with threats, but this was a generous…

IMPEACHMENT A Citizen’s Guide By Cass R. Sunstein 199 pp. Harvard University. Paper, $7.95. CAN IT HAPPEN HERE? Authoritarianism in America Edited by Cass R. Sunstein 481 pp. Dey St./Morrow. Paper, $17.99. It’s really hard to impeach a president. The founders included the provision, from the very…

Alex Miller’s spare room had been on Craigslist for two weeks when, last March, she got the call she’d been waiting for. The man at the other end identified himself as Jed Creek. Creek was a lawyer from New York, but he had grown up just outside Philadelphia, only a few minutes’ drive from Miller’s…

Stephen Hawking in Errol Morris’ A Brief History of Time . Criterion Collection The late Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time is one of history’s least likely best-sellers. Yet the book was a pop-cultural phenomenon, selling more than 10 million copies and popularizing everything from advanced…

In response to the Senate passing H.R.1865, an anti-online sex trafficking bill that has the potential to seriously harm consenting, adult sex workers, Craigslist has shuttered its all of its personals sections. Even the platonic ones. Early Friday morning, Craigslist made a public pos t regarding…

March 18, 2018 Eric Dorsey, a 62-year-old engineer in Palo Alto, was watching TV Tuesday night when he started getting texts that Stephen Hawking had died. He turned on the news and saw clips of the famed physicist speaking in his iconic android voice — the voice that Dorsey had spent so much time…

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Kuvée, the startup that makes a Wi-Fi-connected wine bottle complete with touchscreen, has announced it is shutting down, as reported by Business Insider . The system, which The Verge tested (and called gloriously dumb ) in March 2016, is basically a…

There’s no denying that David Chang’s new Netflix docuseries, “Ugly Delicious”, is aesthetically gorgeous. The show’s underlying concept—”ugly” food like tacos, barbecue, and fried rice all have intrinsic values that surpass its creation born out of necessity and a lowly legacy—is a sui generis…

Share "...Yes. Father. I shall become a bat." Last week, Polygon's offices were sent a big pack of press materials about the 30th anniversary of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns . The accompanying information said that it looked forward the recipient's editorial coverage of the occasion, and…

Little did the skeptics know that, in blow-drying my chicken, I was standing on the shoulders of giants. Photograph by Helen Rosner Roast chicken is probably my favorite food, but here’s a confession:until a few years ago, I’d never made one myself. Every TV chef andentertaining expert, it seems,…

Joe Tombari: 'The best thing about the game is that it has kept us in touch over all these years.' Photograph: Patrick Kehoe for the Guardian A s teenagers, a group of friends and I spent every spare moment at school playing tag. The game developed into more than just chasing each other round the…

Peter Thiel It could be said that the first few years of this current tech boom were fueled by mostly harmless, relatively easy products — websites for sharing your photos, for looking up stuff, for connecting with old friends. And the people who made them were seen as mostly good people. Yet this…

How I approach work when my ideas constantly change Photos courtesy of author W orking on your own is weird. You need to figure out what to do with your body while you work, where to put it, how to keep it safe and working properly. While you’re working, you need to keep your body out of situations…

Harvard is also bad. Paul Marotta/Getty Images Part of The Cambridge Analytica Facebook scandal Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before congress this week thanks to the company’s latest series of controversies, this time driven by accusations that the firm Cambridge Analytica abused Facebook data to…

Two years after Affleck denied its existence, his phoenix back tattoo returned to haunt the headlines, itself rising from the ashes of gossip rags past. Photograph by TID / BACKGRID In March of 2016, Jennifer Garner had recently separated from herhusband of ten years, the actor and director Ben…

Elliot Richardson and Rod Rosenstein. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Marion S Trikosko/PhotoQuest/Getty Images, Zach Gibson/Getty Images. Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is following the facts and bearing fruit. Meanwhile, speculation…

YOUNG AND USELESS: 1982-’84 Adam Yauch (a. k.a. MCA, Beastie Boy): I met this guy John Berry at Tier 3, a little teeny hole-in-the-wall punk club in Manhattan. One day he brought Mike [Diamond] with him. They had this band called the Young Aborigines‚ Mike D played drums, John played guitar, Kate…

HBO There’s a moment during the second half of Judd Apatow’s documentary about Garry Shandling when the purpose of the movie becomes clear. Apatow has spent more than four hours chronicling the life and career of his mentor and friend, and after all this time piecing together home videos and…