0 Like In the old British working man’s club setting of Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club, three young Torontonian jazz musicians are tinkering around soundchecking for tonight’s show. Far from what would spring to mind when picturing a ‘Jazz Trio’ – the group sport Nike SBs, 5-Panels, Stussy T-shirts…

Not all PC games run at 60 frames per second, and for some people, that’s a big problem. The Framerate Police group is, with nearly 100,000 followers, the tenth most popular curator on all of Steam. Their aim? To list the top possible framerate of any game that’s locked at 30 FPS or less. As they…

The Slatest has moved! You can find new stories here . Slate The Slatest Your News Companion Judge Invalidates Happy Birthday Song Copyright, Freeing Applebee’s Servers to Serenade You Happy Birthday To You song enters the public domain. Photo by YVES HERMAN/AFP/GettyImages A federal judge on…

CBS Last night, Donald Trump appeared as a guest on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert . You could also say that Colbert had Trump as a guest, but that grammar wouldn’t be quite accurate to the spirit of the interview. Because, last night, Colbert was trumped. Ted Cruz Finds Few Late-Night Laughs…

Courtesy of Philippe Bossé/Roadside Attractions Since its first trailer debuted, and maybe even before that, Stonewall , Roland Emmerich’s dramatization of the 1969 riots at Stonewall Inn, a seismic event credited with kicking off the modern gay-rights movement, has been met with dread. Partly…

Matt Hall is, by almost every definition of the word, ‘successful’. 50 million downloads and $10 million later, Crossy Road is probably his most high profile success, but it’s one of many. Of the seven games Matt has released on iOS, a mind-boggling five have made it to the number one spot. How does…

Shutterstock Three years ago, a man asked Doug Williams for help. He was a Department of Homeland Security agent, he said, under investigation by his employer for letting a friend pass through customs with contraband. Would Williams help him pass a lie detector test? Williams, a former Oklahoma City…

“I wanted to go further than anyone had taken a film crew before. I wanted a movie that everybody watched and went, ‘The people that made this are absolutely insane.’ A film that looked and felt dangerous, the way I watched Fitzcarraldo or Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Like, ‘How in the hell did Werner…

Tom Pennington/Getty Images Most weeks in American politics bring few surprises. But recent weeks have brought four. First, Scott Walker, who looked to be the conservative establishment's pick for the GOP nomination, dropped out of the race. Then John Boehner unexpectedly resigned from Congress…

There’s a simple way to end poverty: the government just gives everyone enough money, so nobody is poor. No ifs, buts, conditions, or tests. Everyone gets the minimum they need to survive, even if they already have plenty. World Changing Ideas : This is part of Co.Exist’s annual collection of some…

LONDON — A loyal Volkswagen owner for years, Jane Kelley was “shocked,” she says, by recent revelations that the German company had cheated on emissions tests in the United States. Snug in Ms. Kelley’s garage in North London recently was a white 2013 Passat powered by a 2-liter diesel engine. The…

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NOMI MALONE! COMMEMORATING 20 SIN-EMATIC YEARS WITH THE GLORIOUS EXCESS OF SHOWGIRLS About five years ago I mademy way over to Montana Street in Santa Monica to attend a screening of PaulVerhoeven’s magnificently loopy adaptation of Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers at the Aero…

On paper, Review checks off nearly every box that makes a TV comedy take off in 2015 — or, at least, that makes one a full-fledged cult hit on the Internet. The show, which concludes its second season tomorrow night, is, like BoJack Horseman , Rick and Morty , Louie , and so on, what you might call…

Getty Images Google started work on Project Fi, its experimental cell phone service, about two and a half years ago. And according to Laura Holmes, who has worked on the project for most of that time, there were many inside the company who believed it would never work. “Everyone internally and…

On Tuesday 22 September, Middle East Eye broke the story of a senior member of the Saudi royal family calling for a “change” in leadership to fend off the kingdom’s collapse. In a letter circulated among Saudi princes, its author, a grandson of the late King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, blamed incumbent King…

Paint this scene in your mind. A quiet street in Mountain View, California. Bungalows, hybrid cars, sunshine. Now, add a wild turkey sprinting onto the road. Then a woman chasing it. In a wheelchair. Wielding a broom. And finally: because this town is the home of Google, a self-driving car pulls…

Ed Houben is Europe’s most virile man. And after years of donating sperm the “normal” way (sterile room, cup, cash), he and some women looking to get pregnant for free began cutting out the middlemen and getting it done as nature prefers it (sex!). Today, Houben has over a hundred children—and Ed…

The caramel-chocolate flavored candy bar looked so innocent, like the Sky Bars I used to love as a child. Sitting in my hotel room in Denver, I nibbled off the end and then, when nothing happened, nibbled some more. I figured if I was reporting on the social revolution rocking Colorado in January,…

JACKASS: THE MOVIE, 2002(c) Paramount/courtesy Everett Collection. Everett ‘Old Men Behaving Badly’ The Jackass crew's penchant for dressing up in geriatric prosthetics and wreaking havoc gave birth to a number of memorable pranks ("old-man balls," anyone?), as well as a spin-off movie/franchise:…

Michael Fassbender in Slow West , Brie Larson in Room , Selena Gomez and James Franco in Spring Breakers , Jason Segel in The End of the Tour , Emma Watson in The Bling Ring , Alicia Vikander in Ex Machina . Animated photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker. Logo by GrandArmy Photos via A24. When…

Share With a hit under their belts, the makers of Gone Home are setting up a different kind of studio. On the face of it, Karla Zimonja and Steve Gaynor are living the indie developer dream. Since the 2013 release of Gone Home — a commercial hit and a critical darling — the owners of Fullbright have…

Donald J. Trump Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times By ‘I don’t worry about anything,’’ Donald J. Trump told me aboard his 757 as we were flying to the recent Republican debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. He was dividing his attention between the brick-size…

WALBRZYCH, Poland — The gold diggers have arrived here in Lower Silesia. They have stormed the Ksiaz Castle. Upended earth and artifacts. Emptied store shelves of metal detectors. In normal times, Lower Silesia, a province in southwest Poland, has an unassuming charm and struggles financially. But…

Becoming Rihanna In a world of phonies, Rihanna is the realest. How she manages this, we may never know. Story byMary H.K. Choi Photography byRenata Raksha Self-portraits by Rihanna x Renata Raksha Styling by Shibon Kennedy Rihanna x Renata Raksha ADVERTISEMENT As I’m writing this, there are members…

MIXTAPE: Burn It All Down September 19, 2014 - Mixtapes rat chaos (2012) j chastain So here’s how I assemble these mixtapes. I play short games all the time. If I notice several games with a similar theme, I throw the titles into an Evernote page and record the number of games. As I play more games…

Capitol Records had a problem. The year was 2000, and one of the biggest bands on its roster was about to release the highly anticipated follow-up to its breakthrough album without a radio single or music video. The band members also declined most interview requests, and as far as the executives at…

MIXTAPE: No Interaction May 5, 2013 - Mixtapes Okay, let’s talk about non-interactive games. When people in a poorly written critical essay or internet comment get anxious about a Dear Esther or a dys4ia this is an accusation they often bring out, after all. It’s fine, you know, but it’s not really…

Each week in Bookends, two writers take on questions about the world of books. This week, James Parker and Liesl Schillinger discuss the pleasures of reading forbidden books. By James Parker After Henry Miller, it might be all right to lie on the floor of the universe in a dirty coat and wait for…

Issue 2 of 'Optic Nerve.' All images courtesy of Adrian Tomine In 1991, a teenage Adrian Tomine began self-publishing Optic Nerve , a semi-autobiographical comic series starring an affable cast of oddballs and misfits. The stories were short, steeped in realism, and drawn with elegance and…

Action Bronson and Mario Batali Illustration by Tom Bachtell If chefs are “the new rock stars” (the Times ) and rap is “the new rock and roll” (Kanye West), then the Roger Daltrey of the current moment is a cannonball-shaped thirty-one-year-old rapper from Flushing named Action Bronson. A…

No guts, no glory, the old saying goes. You gotta takes risks. Sit on a lead in the third period, watch the lead disappear. Same thing in politics, as Thomas Mulcair and the NDP are learning now. They've been serving up Pablum. Almost 70 per cent of voters say they want change. But on economic…

Sometimes the Internet completely lets you down. And then you have to do things to make the Internet aware of your disappointment with the hope that it never happens again. Last week, His Holiness Francis, Bishop of Rome, Vicar of Jesus Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme…

Pro-independence parties in Spain's Catalonia region have won an absolute majority in regional elections. The main separatist alliance and a smaller nationalist party won 72 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament. However, the pro-independence parties fell just short of getting 50% of the vote,…

@spanswminessota via Twitter The Spanish state of Catalonia, which counts Barcelona as its capital city, could secede from the rest of the country if the group that just won the state's elections has its way. On Sunday, a coalition of political parties which have promised to lead Catalonia to become…

Photo illustration by Lisa Larson-Walker, based on a George Wallace campaign poster . Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images. In Dallas , Donald Trump was a rock star. When he slammed “illegals,” his audience of 16,000 whooped. When he promised to build a wall on the Mexican border, they hollered. And…

Share In Phil Owen 's new book, he sets out to examine games from a critical standpoint. In his own words: "After decades fighting the perception that video games are little more than diverting toys, the games industry won its most important battle: in 2011, the United States Supreme Court…

Line on Sierra: King’s Quest IV, Part II April 6, 2015 - Features / Line On Sierra Last time in King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella , I made it through the long, inventory-stuffing introduction sequence and out of the dreaded whale’s mouth. Now I’m ready to defeat evil and bring hope to the…

Line on Sierra: King’s Quest IV, Part I March 23, 2015 - Features / Line On Sierra After another Space Quest and a highly unfortunate Police Quest , it’s finally time to return to the flagship series with King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella . It represents the biggest leap in graphical quality in…

Line on Sierra: King’s Quest III, Part 2 October 5, 2013 - Line On Sierra / Shenanigans As always, if you want to play along, the first three King’s Quest games are available in a package on GOG.com. When we last left Gwydion the Magical Orphan , he had turned his evil wizard captor / object of…