Tim McCarthy/Getty Images Y ou do not want to get on Taylor Swift’s bad side. Your tour may be canceled , or your romantic failures could be blasted on the radio , or you might have to work on a Sunday . So when the pop superstar decided to pull her entire catalog from Spotify in 2014, citing issues…

Overall, Stranger to Stranger is so concise and offers so damn much to hear in its brief course that Simon’s foibles don’t have a chance to overwhelm the enjoyment. Myrna Suarez / Concord Music Group I irritated some friends this week by opening a conversation, “Is Paul Simon the worst great…

Donald Trump, reading from a telepromper, delivers a speech following Tuesday’s primaries. Photograph by Kena Betancur/AFP/Getty If Donald Trump ever copped to having a speechwriter, he would surely have the best speechwriter, the very best. A quality speechwriter, the kind who writes speeches like…

Slug and Prof backstage / Photos by the author Sean “Slug” Daley might be the king of Minnesota hip-hop, but right now, his throne is a golf cart. It’s Sunday, May 29, and the 43-year-old rapper is driving around the sunny Minnesota State Fairgrounds, home of the ninth annual Soundset Festival.…

JUN, Spain — When José Antonio Rodríguez Salas’s daughter, Martina, was born in April, he — like many proud new parents — turned to social media to share the news. But Mr. Rodríguez Salas, the mayor of Jun, a small town nestled in the foothills outside Granada in southern Spain, did not post a…

Episode 215 H-Day Play Pause Category Infrastructure Date 06.07.16 Producer Add to Queue Remove from Queue Download The Swedish Tourist Association recently announced a new service called The Swedish Number . People who dial +46 771 793 336 will be connected with a random participating Swede. We…

A large road sign tells drivers where to change money on the border south of Newry.Photograph: Paul McErlane for the Guardian O n the pavement outside the Cahill Brothers shoe shop on Newry’s main shopping street, a young man is playing Irish folk songs on a tin whistle for spare change. Coins come…

A former Stanford swimmer who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman was sentenced to six months in jail because a longer sentence would have "a severe impact on him," according to a judge. At his sentencing Thursday, his victim read him a letter describing the "severe impact" the assault had on…

Last night , the Associated Press — on a day when nobody voted — surprised everyone by abruptly declaring the Democratic Party primary over and Hillary Clinton the victor. The decree, issued the night before the California primary in which polls show Clinton and Bernie Sanders in a very close race,…

Domino Park last week in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami. Florida may present the most punishing test of Donald J. Trump’s election strategy, as Hispanics there, including conservative-leaning Cuban-Americans, turn away from his candidacy. Scott McIntyre for The New York Times With Donald J.…

Voting in New Jersey and California Sam Hodgson for The New York Times Democrats will vote in six states on Tuesday, just hours after Hillary Clinton secured enough superdelegates, according to a survey by T he Associated Press , to make her the party’s presumptive presidential nominee. But the…

Image Comics In the wee hours of the morning after Halloween, 1988, a paper delivery girl named Erin sets out on her route in a sleepy Ohio town, autumn leaves crunching beneath the wheels of her bike as an odd red comet streaks through the sky. She soon encounters several older teenage boys dressed…

It may now be time to seriously consider what would happen if Britain left the European Union. For months, opinion polls indicated that Britons would vote on June 23 to remain within the 28-nation union. But recent polls have shown a lead for the “leave” camp, including one that puts it five…

Leif Parsons It can be hard to find a functioning seatbelt in an Istanbul taxicab, and when I do, I think twice about putting it on. Why? Because it always seems to outrage the driver — and sometimes leaves me having to defend my very identity as a Turk. Awkwardness with a cabby was the least of my…

Double Chocolate Cookies By Samantha Seneviratne 1 hour plus at least 24 hours' chilling easy A Perfect Hard-Boiled Egg By Julia Moskin 20 minutes easy Mustard-Shallot Vinaigrette By Julia Moskin 10 minutes Orange Butter Cookies By Julia Moskin 1 hour Caramel Pudding With Chex Streusel By Julia…

MOSCOW — A shipment of Kalashnikov rifles, popularly known as AK-47s, was destined for the United States when it was stopped and quickly rerouted to Venezuela. Washington had just slapped Moscow with sanctions over the Ukraine crisis, and the Russian gun maker Kalashnikov Kontsern suddenly found one…

Gavin Bond British GQ chats with Dwayne Johnson, aka the People's Champion, about depression, delinquency and a potential play for politics. He also shared these exclusive nuggets of life advice during the interview. The Rock’s Rules : 1) How to have fun “Oh man, this is when the reader goes:…

“Ultimately, there’s nothing you can make with chocolate that’s better than a brownie,” said Renato Poliafito, owner of two Baked bakeries in New York City with his partner and co-founder, Matt Lewis. “You can make things that are fancier, or lighter, or creamier, but they won’t be better.” If such…

Bjork in “Black Lake” via YouTube There’s a moment in Bjork’s video for “ Black Lake ” when it looks like she’s about to get swallowed up by the mouth of a cave. As she thrashes her limbs around the dark, cavernous space, it’s hard not to find yourself sharing her claustrophobia, a feeling that…

For 16 years, a record store called Fat Beats was New York City’s hip-hop Mecca. Opened by Joseph “DJ Jab” Abajian on July 14th in 1994, the spot was situated first in a basement on East 9th Street and then above a bagel cafe on 6th Avenue in the West Village. With records plastering the walls,…

Chris White shakes his head and laughs when I show him the first photo. At 73, the bassist and songwriter for the reunited British psych-rock band the Zombies looks like a cool grandpa in black pants, blue dress shirt, and polar fleece vest — a sharp contrast from his septuagenarian bandmates who…

CARACAS, Venezuela — The courts? Closed most days. The bureau to start a business? Same thing. The public defender’s office? That’s been converted into a food bank for government employees. Step by step, Venezuela has been shutting down. This country has long been accustomed to painful shortages ,…

Muhammad Ali was hip-hop before hip-hop existed. He is a father of hip-hop. He's one of the men who the young hip-hop generation watched as we shaped our idea of what it meant to be a man. (There are many fathers of hip-hop—I would include Malcolm X, Richard Pryor, James Brown, and Bruce Lee on this…

Hillary Clinton vs. Herself There’s nothing simple about this candidacy—or candidate. Photographs by Brigitte Lacombe In a locker room at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, people are waiting in line to get their pictures taken with Hillary Clinton before a rally in the school’s gym. It’s…

He told me to stop by after I got out of the movie. We met in the parking lot outside his dorm and kissed hello, quickly, like something you do out of habit. I didn’t know then that it would be our last. He was tense, his eyes focused everywhere but on me. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but…

20 By the most recent estimate of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), there are just under 300 non-governmental militias active in the United States. Though the specifics of their agendas vary, their shibboleth is what’s often labeled “insurrection theory,” the supposed right of the body politic…

While he takes a short break from his current touring schedule, Bob Dylan’s 75 th birthday has arrived less than a week after the release of his second album of pop standards, Fallen Angels . In the year to follow his entire archive will be transported across the Oklahoma state line to be…

Barbie’s first lift was a small , plastic stingray she stole from the dollar store. The toy was the last of its kind on the shelf, and she thought it looked lonely sitting there by itself. She picked it up and concealed it between her phone and her hand. A few minutes later, she walked out the door,…

Seven of TV’s top comedic forces — also including Jerrod Carmichael, Tony Hale, Anthony Anderson and Jeffrey Tambor — talk about being booed, hated on by hecklers, pooping their pants and how it feels when a famous director mouths "What the f—?" at your live performance in front of 43 million. Rob…

Summer in New York City means ice cream trucks: bell-jingling fleets of pleasure craft festooned with pictures of perfectly swirled desserts and beaming children, delivering frozen providence into grateful sweaty hands. But behind those cheery facades simmer turf wars — long-running, occasionally…

How far are we willing to stretch the limits to housing affordability in our region? The high cost of property in the south island and the provincial and federal governments’ long, slow march of deregulation, lax taxation, low interest rates for buyers, and privileging of external property investors…

Protesters in Zurich march for a basic income for all Swiss citizens, an issue that will come to a public vote on Saturday. PHOTOGRAPH BY ARND WIEGMANN / REUTERS On Saturday, voters in Switzerland will go to the polls to vote on whether to give a government-guaranteed minimum income to every…

Photos: Big Think, Amazon, Getty Images Peter Thiel, the libertarian Silicon Valley billionaire who has waged a secret, decade-long, multi-front legal battle against Gawker Media, has somewhat counterintuitively positioned himself as a guardian of free speech principles. But in response to Gawker’s…

Christoph Bangert's last book, War Porn , utilised horrific images (some so brutal that they were sealed within perforated sections a determined reader had to tear open) to highlight the sanitisation of much of the media coverage of conflict we see. Having taken on the darker issues surrounding war…

Soccer as we know it has undergone several modifications since its earliest stages. Back in 1529, a soccer-esque sport called ‘Calcio Fiorentino’ was being played between two teams with 27 players each in the Piazza Santa Croce, a famous plaza in front of a basilica in Florence, Italy. The players…

Authoritarians get into power by understanding the mass psychology of perceived authority/legitimacy. They know it’s a cultural coordination game and that all the other stuff—positions on issues, etc. —only matters insofar as it’s instrumental to getting people to reject rivals and rally to your…