(Getty Images/Ringer illustration) “It’s my little nirvana,” says Josh Davis, better known as DJ Shadow, in a scene from the 2001 documentary Scratch . He’s in the basement of Records , the aptly named Sacramento store he made famous via the cover of his debut album, 1996’s Endtroducing … . It would…

As most of you know, I left Uber in December and joined Stripe in January. I've gotten a lot of questions over the past couple of months about why I left and what my time at Uber was like. It's a strange, fascinating, and slightly horrifying story that deserves to be told while it is still fresh in…

This is how the muzzling starts: not with a boot on your neck, but with the fear of one that runs so deep that you muzzle yourself. Maybe it’s the story you decide against doing because it’s liable to provoke a press-bullying president to put the power of his office behind his attempt to destroy…

With President Trump in his fourth full week in office, the upheaval inside the administration that West Wing officials had optimistically dismissed as growing pains is now embedding itself as standard operating procedure. Trump — distracted by political brushfires, often of his own making — has…

WASHINGTON — President Trump, smarting from a series of crises, moved his surrogates aside on Thursday and assigned the rescue of his month-old presidency to the only spokesman he’s ever really trusted — himself. For days, a frustrated and simmering president fumed inside the West Wing residence…

Donald Trump, then a presidential candidate, jokes with retired Gen. Michael Flynn as they speak at a rally on Oct. 18, 2016, in Grand Junction, Colo. Flynn resigned Monday as national security adviser. (George Frey/Getty Images) The timeline below has been updated with more details from White House…

It might seem strange, but UPS delivery vans don’t always take the shortest route between stops. The company gives each driver a specific route to follow and that includes a policy that drivers should never turn through oncoming traffic (that’s left in countries where they drive on the right and…

On a recent post I made about how President Trump marked Holocaust Remembrance Day, one of my readers asked a good, but hard, question: Why did this regime single out some particular groups (e.g., Muslims, Latinos, Black, and Trans people) as their main targets, and not others? The post which…

Why go now? Rotterdam has evolved from a down-at-heel port city into one of Europe’s most exciting urban getaways. The 2014 opening of the Markthal (1) ( markthalrotterdam.nl ) supplied the city with an iconic visitor attraction and a shot of self-confidence – the arched ceiling of this market hall…

Analyzing the news of the past 24 hours The theme of this morning’s news updates from Washington is additional clarity emerging, rather than meaningful changes in the field. But this clarity is enough to give us a sense of what we just saw happen, and why it happened the way it did. I’ll separate…

Donald Trump has called for changing laws that govern interrogation techniques to “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” | AP APPLETON, Wis. — Donald Trump believes American troops are afraid to fight for fear of violating the Geneva Conventions, he said Wednesday. “The problem is we…

The St. Louis Cardinals will lose two draft picks and $2 million for hacking the Houston Astros’ database. Jeff Roberson/Associated Press The St. Louis Cardinals will have to turn over their top two draft picks and $2 million to the Houston Astros as punishment for hacking into the Astros ’ computer…

This is from Walter Benjamin’s essay “On the Concept of History,” but I’m going to use the old translation back when it was called “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” and mess with the line breaks a little. If you’ve read this a million times, forgive me; it’s always worth reading again. A Klee…

So I thought my column this week would be a fun one, focused on the what-the-f&#k article last week in the New Yorker about some deeply narcissistic tech titans — are there any other kind? — who are “prepping” for the apocalypse by hoarding gold, stashing weapons and even buying spreads in remote…

When I read about the incredibly active first week of the Trump administration, I struggle with two competing narratives about what’s really going on. The first story is simple: the administration is just doing what it said it would do, literally keeping its campaign promises. Lots of people won’t…

Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images Donald Trump is just a puppet who doesn’t care about anything. If Donald Trump has shown anything during his first eleven days in office, it's that he's a coward with no ideas of his own, who is more than happy to be a puppet for the true president…

Professional poker player Jason Les plays against "Libratus," at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh, on January 11, 2017. Andrew Rush/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/AP Another game just fell to the machines. Yesterday, after 20 days of play at a casino in Pittsburgh , an AI built by two Carnegie Mellon…

In a message to staff today, Reuters Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler wrote about covering President Trump the Reuters way: The first 12 days of the Trump presidency (yes, that’s all it’s been!) have been memorable for all – and especially challenging for us in the news business. It’s not every day that…

Some fans of the Neo Geo, a vintage video-game console, are willing to spend huge sums indulging their nostalgia. Photograph by Frédéric Bisson / Flickr Seven years ago, Shawn McCleskey, a dealer of rare video games, trading cards, and vintage machine guns in Memphis, Tennessee, made one of the…

(Amazon/Getty Images/Ringer illustration) Amazon debuted 50 new Dash buttons on Wednesday. I do not recommend buying any of them, for one reason: Dash buttons are an absurd gimmick. If, up until now, you managed to remain unaware of what a Dash button is, first, congratulations. Second, to ruin…

On the great Song Exploder podcast, musicians spend a few minutes breaking down one of their tracks, telling the stories of all the tiny decisions that go into making a piece of music. Usually, the songs discussed are fairly recent, but on the newest episode, DJ Shadow gets into one of his classics.…

President Trump signed an executive order on Friday that purports to bar for at least 90 days almost all permanent immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries, including Syria and Iraq, and asserts the power to extend the ban indefinitely. But the order is illegal. More than 50 years ago,…

Updated at 8:55 a.m. DULLES, Va.—An enormous cheer erupted from the circle of lawyers when one of them read out the news from his Twitter feed: The American Civil Liberties Union had been granted a stay by a federal judge in New York that would temporarily halt parts of President Donald Trump’s…

War with the US under Donald Trump is “not just a slogan” and becoming a “practical reality”, a senior Chinese military official has said. The remarks were published on the People’s Liberation Army website, apparently in response to the aggressive rhetoric towards China from America's new…

On January 27, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order to make good on his promised Muslim Ban . One of the primary provisions of the order is a ban on visas to the US to nationals from seven countries: Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, which are all Muslim-majority…

Congressman John Lewis, a hero of the civil-rights movement whom Donald Trump attacked on Twitter over the weekend, remains nearly alone in his capacity to tell the story of race in America. PHOTOGRAPH BY TASOS KATOPODIS / AFP / GETTY John Lewis represents Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District, one…

Share › New Logo and Identity for VSCO done In-house Reviewed before after Reviewed Feb. 9, 2016 by Armin Industry / Web Service Established in 2011, VSCO (short for Visual Supply Company) is an “art and technology company empowering people everywhere to create, discover, and connect”. Headquartered…

Ever wondered where the wearable revolution will finally come to an end? Well in case you thought smartwatches would be the ultimate tip of the iceberg I have to disappoint you. All kind of crazy wearables have been presented lately – some of them werenice PR campaigns but some of them launched with…

Women’s March, 2017. Philadelphia, PA ( A post is making rounds on social media, in response to the Women’s March on Saturday, January 21, 2017. It starts with “I am not a “disgrace to women” because I don’t support the women’s march. I do not feel I am a “second class citizen” because I am a…

The overwhelming likelihood is that those Republican legislators with the power to rein in Donald Trump’s disrespect for truth and Constitutional rights will not do so. PHOTOGRAPH BY CHIP SOMODEVILLA / GETTY Appearing on Fox News on Wednesday morning, Karl Rove, the veteran Republican strategist,…

The race is on to be the new London. Unless Britain finds a way to undo its decision to leave the European Union, London’s days as the pre-eminent global financial capital, ranked even ahead of New York, may be numbered. I spoke this week to several high-ranking executives at major financial…

WASHINGTON — Just days after President Trump spoke of a “running war’’ with the media, his chief White House strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, ratcheted up the attacks, arguing that news organizations had been “humiliated” by the election outcome and repeatedly describing the media as “the opposition…

Yes, it’s Christmas Day. Bah Humbug. Also, the family won’t get here for a few hours, and I wanted to put something out as background for tomorrow’s column. So, I’m thinking about the Trump trade war, which is looking increasingly likely — especially because U.S. trade law gives the White House…

It's been nearly six years since designer Edmund McMillen released The Binding of Isaac , a simple roguelike directly inspired by the mystery and surprise of the original Legend of Zelda . To McMillen's surprise, The Binding of Isaac exploded in popularity, prompting an expansion pack, a remake, and…

PHILADELPHIA — President Trump’s decision to build a wall along the length of the United States’ southern border with Mexico erupted into a diplomatic standoff on Thursday, leading to the cancellation of a White House visit by Mexico’s president and sharply rising tensions over who would pay for the…

In Rockstar Games’ 2002 release, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, you can find an Easter egg of, well, an Easter egg. To find it, you have to fly a helicopter to land atop a building adjacent to the Vice City News building. From there, you're able to jump protagonist Tommy Vercetti into the 14th floor…

When Paste magazine first hit newsstands in 2002, each issue came with a CD sampler of songs from up-and-coming bands featured in the pub’s pages. The popular promotion helped Paste , which began as a quarterly then ramped up to bi-monthly, quickly climb the music-mag charts, peaking at more than…

The Netherlands is seeking to set up an overseas abortion fund to counteract Donald Trump’s recent ban against funding international groups which give women information about terminations. Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Lilianne Ploumen for the Dutch government has announced…

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto was slated head to Washington next week to meet with President Donald Trump to talk about trade, security, and the border. On Wednesday, Donald Trump signed an executive order to the build the wall along the border he promised throughout the campaign, just as…