After a series of blockbuster hearings held 25 years ago on abuses in the higher education industry, Congress created a system to protect undergraduates from risky student loans . But two weeks ago, the Education Department released a trove of new data suggesting that the system is failing and that,…

But can that success translate into the living room and hardware, two arenas Valve has yet to conquer? Valve's first round of officially branded Steam Machines will roll out from several manufacturers beginning on Nov. 10. Before that happens, Polygon was able to go hands-on with Alienware's version…

Low-budget mavericks Atom Egoyan and Guy Maddin have been through the wringer. When Woodstock Film Festival director Meira Blaustein invited the filmmakers to share their trials and tribulations at this year’s festival, there were stories abound — stories of failure, success, depression, revelations…

Since time began, people have used storytelling in order to achieve one of our primary goals, that of survival. It's funny, isn't it? We use stories to entertain, but we also use them to teach us how to live. Imagine the dawn of civilization: one person finds enough food to feed their tribe. They…

OSLO — Berit Nordgarden and her husband, Eivind Tellefsen, loved their nonpolluting Nissan Leaf electric car. But they found its 85-mile battery life too short for weekend trips to their cottage with their two young children. So the outdoorsy couple took a deep breath and bought a second car: a…

He wasn’t gentle. Let’s get that out of the way. It’s the easy thing to say about him, the thing movie costars from his Princess Bride days would trot out in interviews because it made an efficient sound bite — oh, Andre? He looks so scary, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly . People loved him, and when you…

Courtesy of Maggie Goldenberger. In March 2012, 23-year-old Maggie Goldenberger was in the middle of a six-month trip to India and the Philippines with her then-girlfriend. They were travelling from India’s southern tip and heading north for Rajasthan, stopping in at Internet cafes around once a…

People are interested in Introversion’s very good sim Prison Architect because it tries to model the complexities of life inside a penal institution. People also seem to be tougher on Prison Architect than they are on more frivolous games, for the very same reason: it attempts to simulate the…

Jen Day and her boyfriend of 11 years, Pepper Mint (yes, that’s his real name), live together with their cat in a whitewashed house on a narrow, leafy street in Berkeley, Calif. They kiss and nuzzle and have date nights, like any other couple. Just not always with each other. Day has another…

It's time that we accepted this reality: there is absolutely nothing wrong with being "politically correct." The phrase has been around for ages, its earliest uses were more literal -- in 1793 it was used in a U.S. Supreme Court judgement, as in "legally" correct. Later, in the mid-20th century, the…

(Illustration by Dan Evans ) How hard do you think The Rock could punch me? Obviously: to death. I feel The Rock could punch me on most of the parts of my body and I would immediately die. Would I die if The Rock punched me in the head? Yes, I would die. Would I die if The Rock punched me somewhere…

It all happened so quickly, about a year ago today. One minute, hardly anyone had heard of the ad-free social network Ello. The next, it was a viral sensation, spawning countless think pieces on its chances for survival. Then, as quickly as it appeared, Ello faded from the spotlight. Now, only a…

Valve’s new Steam controller is a bold experiment: an attempt at fusing a PC mouse with a traditional console-style controller. It still hasn’t entirely clicked with me. [This post originally ran on 10/15/15. It’s been updated with some more impressions, brought about by The Inexorable Passage Of…

Seth Rogen had some questions, and Woz had some answers. The actor and the engineer, Steve (Woz) Wozniak, got acquainted during the making of the new film “Steve Jobs,” in which Rogen plays Woz, who founded Apple Computer with Jobs. They recently met again for an advance look at “Silicon City,” an…

Brace yourself, baseball fans, and behold the inexorable rise of the bat flip. Self-expression has long been a fraught issue in Major League Baseball, where impassivity — the ability to “act like you have been there before” — often feels as highly regarded as power hitting and foot speed. Yet times…

You’re in a pickle, see. The Devil wants to take your soul, and he’s pretty intent on doing it, but he’ll leave you be on one condition: in the span of one hour, you are to teach him everything there is to understand about the game of baseball. Up to this point the game’s been over his head, and…

When I called my health clinic last month to refill the birth-control pill prescription I have had for 10 years, I was put on the line with a doctor — not my normal gynecologist — who began asking questions about my health. “It says on your form that you’re interested in both men and women but that…

On October 14, 2015, the Toronto Blue Jays beat the Texas Rangers 6-3 in the fifth and final game of their American League Division Series. But Toronto’s win came at a steep cost to the sport, as the game’s senseless seventh inning pulled back baseball’s logical outer layer to expose the fetus…

Playboy Playboy 's decision to cease and desist printing nudes signals something bigger: The toppling of the white female naked body from its pedestal as the epitome of sexual object in mainstream American media. Playboy Playmates have A Look, and it is young, white and thin, with long (usually…

Photos by Anthony Saint James Son Little is the one man band/alter ego of Aaron Earl Livingston. You know him (or not, what you know is your business) from collaborations with the Roots and as one half of the very fine “psychedelic soul” outfit Icebird with RJD2. With a sure-footed foundation made…

Photography by V.Raeter The Best Record Stores In Europe No matter how many “Vinyl Records Are Back” headlines you see in mainstream news publications, the reality is that thousands of record stores have shut down in the last 10 years all over the World, mainly because everybody started to buy…

SEOUL, South Korea — Long columns of goose-stepping soldiers, accompanied by what North Korea claimed were nuclear-tipped missiles, marched through central Pyongyang, the capital, on Saturday, as the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un , gave his first public speech in three years to emphasize his “love…

Exclusive Interview: DJ Shadow on New Album Plans, The Shifting Tides of EDM Culture and More by Jul 9th, 2015 You’ve had a unique viewing position for the rise of EDM culture in America. As far as the EDM thing, that’s been interesting as well because I threw myself into the fire doing this tour in…

2013 is going to be incredible, if for no other reason than because this will undoubtedly be the year the cultural discourse shifts from simple discussions of “race” or “racism” to the majestic land of “how we talk about and react to race in mixed settings.” While ideas of a “post-racial” society…

‘Of the surveyed generations, Millennials had by far the lowest regard for their own cohort.’Photograph: Jon Hicks/Corbis B ack in 1999 Chris Sidoti, then-head of the Australian Human Rights Commission, called the baby boomers “the most selfish generation in history”. “I don’t think there’s been a…

Danny Meyer 1 is eliminating all tipping 2 at his restaurants and significantly raising prices 3 to make up the difference, 4 a move that will raise wages, 5 save the hospitality industry, 6 and forever change how diners dine. 7 Here’s why it matters ⟶ by Ryan Sutton , October 14, 2015 @qualityrye…

The undisputedly deranged virtual fireplace simulator Little Inferno made its iPad debut a few weeks ago, and since then I’ve set to flame a corncob, letter blocks, a toy pirate with a hook for an arm, a photo of me taken from my iPad’s camera, an analog TV, a floppy disk, a Russian nesting doll, a…

Tonight, Tesla makes its cars autonomous. Well, semi-autonomous. And it did it with an over-the-air update, effectively making tens of thousands of cars already sold to customers way better. There are two things to talk about here. There’s the small story about the features and what the upgrade…

Originally appears in XXL 's April 2004 issue The Notorious B.I.G.’s 1994 debut Ready To Die is a double threat: a serious, artistic album equipped with catchy, radio-friendly singles. Rap Svengali Sean “Puffy” Combs encouraged his hardcore young MC to put his mack down on records like “Big Poppa”…

“I READ, IN A BOOK about Bette Davis, that anybody who does an interview while drinking alcohol is a damned fool. When I saw that, I thought, ‘Oh my god, she’s right! What have I been doing my whole career?’ ’’ Quentin Tarantino offers me a glass of red wine from a recently opened bottle that’s…

Most Canadians rarely give much thought to their Governor General. But with the polls forecasting a minority government, Democracy Watch founder Duff Conacher says it's time we start addressing the unwritten authority of the vice regal. Conacher warns that if no party wins a majority in Monday's…

Illustration by Robert Neubecker Video sites are by far the biggest consumers of bandwidth on the Web: Netflix, YouTube, Twitch … MindGeek. Or maybe that last one doesn’t ring a bell? MindGeek (formerly known as Manwin) has over 100 million daily visitors and is one of the top 10 consumers of…

Kent Hernández/Fusion There’s an economic paradox at the heart of the porn industry. Consider: The amount of porn that has already been produced is more than anyone could possibly watch. A single tube site, like Pornhub, can have well over 200 terabytes of porn on it–which works out to something…

I DRESSED VERY CAREFULLY for her, the way I would for a good friend, thinking hard about what she likes. What I think she likes. I ordered Uber Black — the highest level of Uber I’ve ridden. The driver said it would be about an hour and a half to Malibu, a long time to resist telling him where I was…

It began on the Thursday night that much of Reddit—the eleventh biggest site on the American Internet, the one that Steve Huffman helped found when he was barely more than a teenager—went dark. Huffman didn’t work for Reddit then, hadn’t worked there in five years. A towhead who, at 31, still looks…

IMAGE COURTESY INTROVERSION SOFTWARE The first prison that I designed was humane. I planned for a princely lounge area, a gourmet canteen, an Alexandrian library, and a Serengeti of a rec yard. Then the money ran out before I could complete the perimeter fence: the first busload of inmates made a…

Almost a decade ago, a majority of the Republicans in Congress voted to pass a prison reform bill called the Second Chance Act , and a Republican president signed it—during an election year, no less. As a policy matter, the bill was modest, less than $100 million a year for things like job training,…