ON DECEMBER 31st the world’s oldest coffeeshop, Mellow Yellow, in Amsterdam, was forced to roll down its bright yellow shutters one last time. Over the past half-century, many a foreigner has smoked their first spliff at this cosy cafe, which sat perfectly on the route between two tourist…

(Ringer illustration) The CES booth for e-commerce giant Alibaba is shockingly small. The exhibition space for Victrola record players (yes, Victrolas are back) one booth over is nearly as big, and virtually everything in this vicinity of the Las Vegas Convention Center is being drowned out by a…

Hillary Clinton as New York City mayor? Imagine the fun: City building inspectors start to show up daily at Trump Tower, where they find a wobbly beam here, a missing smoke detector there, outdated wiring all over the place. City health inspectors fan out through Trump’s hotels, writing citations…

MIEKO TERADA moved to Tama in 1976, at about the same time as everyone else there. Back then, the fast-growing city in Tokyo’s suburban fringe was busy with young married couples and children. These days, however, the strip of shops where Ms Terada runs a café is deathly quiet, her clientele…

Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid. A code associated with the Russian…

The New Year’s Eve shooting at a dance club in Istanbul, which killed thirty-nine people and injured dozens, was the latest in a series of violent attacks against the Turkish state. Photograph by REX via AP Following the New Year’s Eve attack in Istanbul, democracy in Turkey is likely to enter a…

WITHIN hours of the Brexit referendum last summer David Cameron had resigned, and within three weeks Theresa May had succeeded him as prime minister. The speed of her ascent to power, on July 13th 2016, without a general election or a full-blown Tory leadership contest, meant that Mayism was never…

Hip-hop producers have long had to conjure up a voice to build recognition: Dr. Dre and Kanye West learned to rap; Mike Will Made-It and Metro Boomin added sonic name tags to their beats. But in recent years amateurs have emerged at the fore via new channels. SoundCloud, the audio-hosting service,…

Box Brown In the world of professional wrestling, no single person is as influential — or as reclusive — as WWE chairman Vince McMahon. When he gives candid interviews, they’re mostly topical or overly invested in story lines, pushes, and backstage politics. But perhaps the most interesting things…

- Nov. 8th 2016 5:19 am ET @FredericLambert Hyperloop One, the main company developing the hyperloop system envisioned by Elon Musk, had two big announcements today. While they are still working on their full-scale prototype track in North Las Vegas , the company unveiled the concept for their…

(Getty Images/Ringer illustration) 2017 could very well be the year of the robot — not the T-1000 or even the real-life anthropomorphic monstrosities that garner viral headlines every few months, but rather stand-alone living-room devices imbued with AI smarts. Google Home and Amazon’s Echo are the…

“Jane Pauley! You’re all in leather,” said Samantha Bee, as Ms. Pauley walked into the private dining room at Asiate restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental hotel in New York. And she was: in a sleek, black leather suit. “My husband calls it my biker-chick outfit,” Ms. Pauley said, surveying a sleeve…

Jewel identity: Killer Mike and El-P.Photograph: Steve Schofield for the Guardian “ Is there a tax write-off thing for cults or is that just religions?” asks Jaime Meline AKA El-P, as he sits in a practise room on LA’s Sunset Boulevard, where Run The Jewels are preparing for their forthcoming world…

In modern 21st-century warfare, non-military approaches — propaganda, and economic, cultural and humanitarian sabotage — will play a greater role than purely military methods, Russian Armed Forces chief Valery Gerasimov argued, a year before the Russian occupation of Crimea. “In a couple of months,…

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A cease-fire between Syria’s government and the weakened rebel forces arrayed against it took effect early Friday, but within hours, violations were reported. Still, the agreement — announced on Thursday by the Syrian government’s strongest backer, President Vladimir V. Putin of…

Photo illustration of David Fahrenthold by Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post “Arnold and Tim, if you’d come up, we’re going to give you a nice, beautiful check,” Donald Trump said. He held up an oversize check, the kind they give to people who win golf tournaments. It was for $100,000. In the…

Getty The world order we know is already over, and Russia is moving fast to grab the advantage. Can Trump figure out the new war in time to win it? A little over a year ago, on a pleasant late fall evening, I was sitting on my front porch with a friend best described as a Ukrainian freedom fighter.…

The country has entered a dangerous period. The president-elect is the least qualified man to ever hold high office. He also operated the least transparent campaign of the modern era. He gave succor and voice to bigoted elements on a scale not seen in two generations. He openly praised dictators —…

EXCERPT The Soviet leader is remembered as the man who killed a superpower. But Gorbachev’s gambit on reforms could have worked -- if only he wasn't betrayed by the Communist Party. By December 21, 2016 Amid the thousands of protesters who assembled on China’s Tiananmen Square in May 1989, just…

I think I’m not the only one who hasn’t been getting much done lately in the realm of “normal work”. I may pretend like I’m working on documentation for a new CMS, but — I’m sorry, who was just appointed to the cabinet? He said what? Oh, for fuck’s sake. When a solid 67% of your soul is engaged with…

Anti-American murals at the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran, where the Iranian government held dozens of American diplomats hostage. PHOTOGRAPH BY SCOTT PETERSON / GETTY Short of last-minute diplomacy, Donald Trump will inherit another hostage crisis with Iran on Inauguration Day—thirty-five years…

“Welcome to fuckyoupalooze,” El-P offers on Run the Jewels 3 , and it might as well be the album’s alternate title. Since the initial 2013 team-up of the rappers Killer Mike and El-P, Run the Jewels have built a rep as fierce protest musicians, but their work is best understood as an omnidirectional…

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon does not want Scotland to leave the European Union. She also does not want Scotland to remain in the United Kingdom. She reiterated both points on Friday. But, she added, she would be willing to forego a second referendum on Scottish independence, provided…

‘The breaking point for me wasn’t the trolls themselves – it was the global repercussions of Twitter’s refusal to stop them.’Photograph: Paul Sancya/AP I deactivated my Twitter account today. It was more of a spontaneous impulse than a New Year resolution, although it does feel like a juice cleanse,…

It was only eight years ago that the United States had just one president at a time. Yet those days have felt much more distant over the past two months as the president-elect, Donald Trump, has set about merrily reshaping U.S. policy 140 characters at a time. Tuesday evening saw what might turn out…

Wells Fargo. JPMorgan Chase. Fidelity Investments. Prudential PLC. Vanguard Group. These are among the major financial institutions that own business debt held by Donald Trump, according to an investigation just published by the Wall Street Journal. While the president-elect’s finances remain murky,…

T wenty-five years ago this week, the Soviet Union ceased to exist and the Cold War ended. Moscow lost, Washington won. I’m not one for historical anniversary stories, but this one seems to me to be truly significant, though mostly in its breach. Twenty-five years ago, the Western conception of…

It’s not the sort of accomplishment that ESPN is likely to crow about, but Philadelphia Phillies center-fielder Ben Revere is on track to set an astonishing baseball record—a mark that says as much about the game today as Barry Bonds’s 73 home runs said about the swollen biceps that defined the…

Philip Anschutz. Image via AP. This week, the 2017 Coachella line-up was released to a typical flurry of excitement. Along with headliners Kendrick Lamar and Radiohead, the big news was that the popular Indio, California festival was finally able to nab Beyoncé for an official spot—as the first…

It’s not that unusual for a public figure to go from hero to villain. But going from villainy to heroism? That’s a tougher road to traverse. Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder and central figure, has managed to do both over the last few months, culminating in a remarkable embrace by the…

MOST economists might hazard a guess that voiding the bulk of a country’s currency overnight would dent its immediate growth prospects. On November 8th India took this abstruse thought experiment into the real world, scrapping two banknotes which made up 86% of all rupees in circulation.…

image courtesy of Nelson Minar I am a millionaire. The first in my family. A self-made success. It’s the story we love to tell ourselves in America about how anyone can make it. Except it’s not true. The reality is that most entrepreneurs—myself included—are the product of generations of privilege…

WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials have concluded that the president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, personally “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election,” and turned from seeking to “denigrate” Hillary Clinton to developing “a clear preference for…

Story highlights WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has denied that Russia was the source of leaked Democratic emails The emails roiled the 2016 campaign to the detriment of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton Washington (CNN) US intelligence has identified the go-betweens the Russians used to provide…

Score Another bar-raising collaboration from the most buzzed-over act in rap Hip-hop is a genre that thrives on freshness and the shock of the new: hot rappers rarely get more than three years in the spotlight, and late-career renaissances are unheard-of – which makes the ongoing, mainstream-nudging…

(Getty Images/Ringer illustration) I was told there would be Plinko. Showstoppers is an event at the Consumer Electronics Show that is a kind of mini CES. Except instead of big brands like Microsoft, Sony, and Samsung showing off, it’s for nascent startups. It is not unlike the early rounds of…

Comic Books’ Scary Sexism Isn’t Going Anywhere – Dose