Few games give you the option to skip over a mission before you play it, but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 ’s controversial “No Russian” mission is one of them. Even today, the stage that made players a terrorist remains shocking. Yes, that actually happened. Here’s the image greeting players…

When it comes to automotive technology, self-driving cars are all the rage. Standard features on many ordinary cars include intelligent cruise control, parallel parking programs, and even automatic overtaking—features that allow you to sit back, albeit a little uneasily, and let a computer do the…

What the future of low-wage work really looks like. By Dave Jamieson Art by Davide Bonazzi Dave Jamieson On Jan. 18, 2013, as the sun went down, Jeff Lockhart Jr. got ready for work. He slipped a T-shirt over his burly frame and hung his white work badge over his broad chest. His wife, Di-Key, was…

Justin Payne spends his days pouring concrete in the suburbs of Toronto. Almost every other waking hour, he's on his smartphone pretending to be a little boy or girl. Payne, 28, considers himself a vigilante pedophile hunter. At any given time, the construction worker is logged onto three different…

Some of the more successful shows on TV right now find an audience by burning through plots — some, like Empire , eventually enter hypersoap space and practically turn plaid . Most of these take the form of more , layering on subplots, like or throwing in increasing numbers of characters, like Game…

On Monday night, WWE had a Legends homecoming on Raw , trotting out “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels, and Ric Flair to spice up the proceedings and build hype for Sunday’s Hell in a Cell pay-per-view. The lineup was also something of a test run for next year’s WrestleMania , which will…

Spike Lee Sounds Off on Chi-Raq , Gun Violence, and Rahm In his first in-depth interview for his upcoming film, the outspoken director discusses Chicago and how the mayor tried—and failed—to “bully” him. Published Oct. 22, 2015, at 11:29 a.m. Spike Lee at Navy Pier on October 16 Photo: Saverio…

Here is an embarrassing story about a bad purchase. When I was 15 or 16, I spent a few summer weeks doing odd jobs in an extended family member’s auto body shop. It wasn’t especially hard or grueling work: paired with another surly teen, I disposed of a mound of twisted and crumpled body-shop scrap,…

Omar Bustamante/Fusion The systematic destruction of Paul and Amy Strater’s lives began with pizza. Several years ago, pizzas began showing up at the front door of their home in Oswego, Illinois, a middle-class suburb about 50 miles west of Chicago. It might have been a nice surprise, except the…

Tom Hanks is a lawyer who defends a Soviet agent in Steven Spielberg’s film, written by Matt Charman and the Coen Bros. Illustration by Olivier Balez The new Steven Spielberg film, “Bridge of Spies,” begins with a man in a mirror. The man is Colonel Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance), and we see three…

[Content warning: This post contains, among many other things discussion of anti-Native ethnic slurs.] So there’s thing that happens semi-regularly to me in my G+ circles; someone links to a game that is being crowdfunded (usually on KickStarter) that is cringe-inducingly racist, and there’s a…

Mythbusters is a long-running show, with 14 seasons and 267 episodes under its belt. It was recently announced that the show was coming to an end , and stars Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman seem equal parts saddened and relieved by the news. 12 years is a very long time to work on a single show, and…

OTTAWA — After his sweeping victory in Canada’s election on Monday, Justin Trudeau received the customary telephone calls from other world leaders. Yet along with their congratulations was the suggestion that he should enjoy the postelection glow because, he said he was told, it’s “all downhill”…

One question. Ten minutes. No excuses. Flickr / theloushe After reading yet another account of how so many entrepreneurs and business people find excuses to avoid research, I want to expose these objections as the fear-spawned, ego-propelled straw herrings they are. No time? No money? No stomach for…

After 28 years Metal Gear Solid is finished. Or at least that's what the internet would have you believe. After all, the mastermind behind the series, Hideo Kojima, has unceremoniously parted ways with Konami, the publisher who owns the IP. Konami has been wishy-washy in its future plans since then;…

I occasionally imagine a gaming server network remaining hidden away after the bombs fall, unpowered but unharmed. Intergalactic visitors making a pit stop centuries later would find these abandoned programs, and maybe fire them up to see what's inside. Entire worlds could reveal themselves in an…

On the day of the Boston Marathon bombing, the comedian Anthony Jeselnik posted this tweet: “Guys, today there are just some lines that should not be crossed. Especially the finish line.” It was not received well. After pressure from Comedy Central, which broadcast his short-lived show, “The…

Amber Rose wrote the book on it. No, seriously: Kanye’s infamous ex, Wiz Khalifa’s baby mama, America’s toughest bald babe since Sigourney Weaver in Alien 3 , is about to publish a book of life lessons called How to Be a Bad Bitch . Like Amber herself, it’s all heart. Unlike Amber, it’s not that…

I've never played as a black video game character who's made me feel like he was cool. Worse yet, I've never played a black video game character who made me feel like I was cool. Instead, I've groaned and rolled my eyes at a parade of experiences that continue to tell me video games just don't get…

Matt Green, center, an engineer, and Donald Badaczewski, right, a law student, said their goal is to traverse the subway system, passing through more than 400 stations. They planned to start Wednesday in Queens. Richard Perry/The New York Times Why? “We are gluttons for punishment,” said Matt Green,…

Every morning, I run a pick through my hair. It’s important that I do this when it’s still spongy and damp from the shower. Wait too long and my hair gets drier and less cooperative, making it harder to pull the comb through my natural. (Pro tip: A natural is something black folks sometimes call…

In 1982, Steven Spielberg sat for an interview with the Australian edition of 60 Minutes . 1 Skinny and nebbish, Spielberg looks like the world’s only bearded tween. (At one point, he even holds a puppy.) Of course, Spielberg was already well on his way to becoming the most successful director of…

A theatrical and sometimes solitary child who grew up in Georgia during the 1960s and ’70s, Decatur-born Jan Hooks spent summers and holidays at her maternal grandparents’ home in the small city of Cedartown, not far outside Atlanta. Throughout her adolescence, she often put on plays and skits…

Justin Sullivan/Getty When 23-year-old Brandon headed from Massachusetts to the Bay Area in mid-May to start work as a software engineer at Google, he opted out of settling into an overpriced San Francisco apartment. Instead, he moved into a 128-square-foot truck. The idea started to formulate while…

Consumer Reports dropped its recommendation of the Tesla Model S after owners of the electric luxury sedan complained of a series of problems including squeaking noises, motors that needed to be changed and issues with the car’s automatic door handles. The change came after the consumer group…

During this year’s tumultuous World Press photo competition, a large number of images were disqualified because of manipulation or excessive digital postprocessing. In addition, one major prize was revoked amid allegations of staging and misleading captioning. These events sparked months of spirited…

Steve Jobs , the much-discussed Sorkinization of the enigmatic tech hero, continues to build momentum ahead of its nationwide release next weekend. Taking place primarily behind the scenes before three separate product launches — the Macintosh in ’84, the NeXT in ’88, and the iMac in ’98 — the movie…

John Herrman Co-editor, The @Awl The Awl Be less stupid.

There’s this thing we do lately. Parents shame their kids on Facebook or Youtube when they step out of line, people shame moms for nursing their hungry babies in a restaurant, and on and on, and now THIS . Maybe you watched this video when it came across your feed. And maybe you rolled your eyes or…

All photos by Ian Frisch . The rain came early. A thin mist, hanging in the air like wet smoke. By mid-afternoon, the streets were wet and the cars drove slow. Men wore pants. Women wrapped themselves in coats. It was cold for late September in Atlanta. People on the street talked about it. "Can you…

When writing a song becomes a game everyone can play D epending on who you ask, Minecraft is either a wonderful tool for teaching tweens collaboration and coding skills, or a terrible game that’s making them all obese, cross-eyed antisocial weirdos who dwell in virtual worlds. For those of you who…

Philly rap legends Schoolly D, DJ Cash Money and others try to make sense of a tragic journey By Michael A. Gonzales “Philadelphia banks are not hit by takeover teams very often, and with good reason: there are few ways out.” ~Duane Swierczynski , The Wheelman It was nearly opening time at the PNC…

Nathan Fielder (Photo: Peter Yang/Comedy Central) The third season of Nathan For You premieres on Comedy Central tonight as star Nathan Fielder returns to “help” struggling businesses with elaborate money-making schemes that double as experiments in human nature. The comedian responsible for…

[Editor’s Note: This post is presented in partnership with in support of Indie Film Month. Today’s pick, “ The Captive ,” is available now On Demand. This interview originally ran during the 2014 Cannes Film Festival.] Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan has been a fixture on La Croisette since his 1994…

Nelson George Nelson George Nelson George is an author, filmmaker, TV producer and critic with a long career in analyzing and presenting the diverse elements of African-American culture. He made his directorial debut with the HBO movie Life Support , for which Queen Latifah won a Golden Globe. His…

In hip hop, so much can be explained by the rise and fall of record labels. Lil Wayne's ascent is the story of Cash Money . The Dirty South starts with LaFace Records . The east-coast/west-coast feud is Bad Boy vs. Death Row . In hip hop, the artist-label relationship isn’t just a business deal, but…

Examining Billboard Rap Chart data from 1989–2015 I wrote this in support of “The Most Successful Labels In Hip Hop” project that was done in collaboration with Matt Daniels with myself and Skye Rossi over at Rhymesayers. http://poly-graph.co/labels/ When Matt Daniels first shared this Billboard…

To begin with, I should tell you that I did not expect to like this book. I was a single twentysomething when The Game was published. For years, the only thing I knew about Neil Strauss was that he was responsible for ushering concepts like negging and peacocking into the cultural lexicon. So when I…