How everyone from indie musicians to international superstars are cheating the system They say that money can’t buy happiness , but it can buy likes, views, shares, or followers. From the beginning of social media, users have sought to expand their networks for professional clout, financial gain, or…

There are times when Dan Price feels as if he stumbled into the middle of the street with a flag and found himself at the head of a parade. Three months ago, Mr. Price, 31, announced he was setting a new minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle credit card processing firm, Gravity Payments , and…

THIS should be the greatest time for music in history — more of it is being found, made, distributed and listened to than ever before. That people are willing to pay for digital streaming is good news. In Sweden, where it was founded, Spotify saved a record industry that piracy had gutted. Everyone…

Playmates Once Upon a Time in the West With Playmate Chelsie Aryn Drive off into the sunset with March 2015 Playmate Chelsie Aryn Once Upon a Time in the West With Playmate Chelsie Aryn FEATURED ARTICLES ICYMI: FEATURED ON PLAYBOY'S INSTAGRAM Previous Article Next Article PLAYMATE OF THE MONTH…

Netflix unloaded a bunch of news Tuesday at the TCA press tour about its massive slate of original programming, including release dates, show names and at least one season renewal . It also released some numbers: 34 Emmy nominations and plans to release 475 hours of original programming in the US…

Q. How does Puerto Rico compare to Greece? A. The two places may share pristine beaches and balmy weather. But they have less in common when it comes to how their fiscal problems are likely to play out. Greece’s financial crisis poses a serious threat to Europe. The European Union and the…

Jon Stewart ’s finest moment began with a question and closed with a promise, but it’s the space in between that contains the key to his influence. His opening monologue on September 20, 2001 (video below), the first taping of “ The Daily Show ” after the attacks of 9/11, was nearly nine minutes of…

Elena Scotti/FUSION The official statement could hardly be drier. But make no mistake, today’s announcement regarding some $58 million in bond payments is arguably the single most momentous decision in Puerto Rico’s legislative history. Puerto Rico has now officially defaulted on its debts, and no…

Andy Dubbin A few months back, I rented a car via Getaround, a company that's like Airbnb for vehicles. I booked a stranger's 2006 BMW for the weekend. After locating it in a nearby parking lot via GPS, I unlocked it with the Getaround app and found the key behind the sun visor. No human interaction…

The SL-1 burial ground in 2003, as taken from an EPA report published that year. Underneath the surface are what remains of the SL-1 nuclear reactor, the building that contained it, tons of contaminated soil and rock, and some of the remains of the only people killed by a reactor accident in the…

At 400 days spread across two years, Eyes Wide Shut clocks in as the longest continuous shoot in movie history. That’s remarkable given that nearly all of the film’s action — including its infamous illuminati sex party centerpiece — largely consists of people walking or sitting or talking. In the…

The streets of downtown Austin are stirring blearily to life as the turducken street taco that is SXSW—a weeklong tech expo wrapped inside a film festival and finished off with a music showcase—shakes off the previous night's revelry. But backstage at the Austin Convention Center, where he is due to…

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

Jump to navigationJump to search "Tulip fever" redirects here. For the film set during the period of tulip mania, see Tulip Fever. A tulip, known as "the Viceroy" ( viseroij ), displayed in the 1637 Dutch catalog Verzameling van een Meenigte Tulipaanen . Its bulb was offered for sale between 3,000…

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company. This is my first blog post on Gamasutra. Everything I post here will be on my own blog, too:…

John Gruber had strong words about Apple news site iMore : 1 I love iMore. I think they’re the best staff covering Apple today, and their content is great. But count me in with Nick Heer — their website is shit-ass. Rene Ritchie’s response acknowledges the problem, but a web page like that — Rene’s…

It brought him some extra spending money and a surprising amount of notoriety, but Hockey Night in Canada ‘s chief play-by-play man Jim Hughson doesn’t miss his side gig. Calling sports video games, like EA Sports’ fantastically successful and increasingly realistic NHL series, can make a man famous…

I'm going to make some predictions about the future of the media in this piece, and they come with the disclaimer that predictions always come with: They could be entirely wrong. The media is moving fast, and what looks like an unstoppable trend today might seem like a hilarious detour a year from…

ISTANBUL — Turkish fighter jets, which on Friday attacked Islamic State targets in Syria , have launched a wave of airstrikes in northern Iraq , targeting camps of the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party for the first time in four years, the prime minister’s office said Saturday. The Iraq raids, which…

The tech entrepreneur Allison McGuire’s app SketchFactor was criticized for stoking racial prejudice. She’s now launching a new project, Walc, and hoping to move on. Illustration by Jon Han. On August 7th of last year, Crain _’ s ran an article about SketchFactor, an app that was set to launch the…

I hate browsing the web on my phone. I do it all the time, of course — we all do. Just looking at the stats for The Verge , our mobile traffic is up 70 percent from last year, while desktop traffic is up only 11 percent. That trend isn't going back; phones are just too convenient, beckoning us to…

My first trip to Vernon, the city that inspired True Detective S eason 2’s fictionalized “Vinci,” was on a whim. At dinner, I told a friend about my intention to drive to the nearby city, which is just five miles south of downtown Los Angeles. “Why would you want to go there?” he said with genuine…

ARUNAS KLUPSAS/Getty Images For just a dollar, you can send your first message to Valerie, a 22-year-old college student living in southern Georgia. If she responds, you can spend more money to keep chatting. Maybe you'll discuss literature, her tattoos—or whatever is on your mind. Eventually, you…

You've heard of actors getting typecast. But there is no group more slighted, more narrowly cast, than the Muslim-American actors who earn virtually their entire livings pretending to hijack planes and slaughter infidels. Jon Ronson embarks on a soul-searching odyssey with the bad guys of Homeland ,…

Havana: On a small cut of land at the corner of 23rd Avenue and F Street in the Vedado section of this city stands a monument to two heroes of the Cuban people. But the faces carved into the imposing marble-and-granite structure are not those of Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, icons of the…

Wolf, sheep, or sheepdog? Photo by Keith Bernstein © 2014 Warner Bros. Entertainment This past weekend, American Sniper sold millions of tickets , and introduced millions of Americans to a novel turn of phrase. In an early scene set at the dinner table, Chris Kyle’s father tells him that there are…

Paolo Contri /IAEA/Flickr Barack Obama and John Kerry are playing with fire. They presumably want Congress and the American public to accept the nuclear agreement they and four other governments struck with Iran, but they work against their own objective by accepting the false premise of their…

ISTANBUL -- The current situation in Turkey is nothing short of apocalyptic. Radical Islamists who have turned the country into a "jihadi highway" to Syria -- while Ankara has looked the other way -- are now carrying out attacks within Turkey itself. Following last week's ISIS-linked bombing in the…

Mike Coppola/Getty Images Over the last five years, Kanye West has morphed into one of the greatest live performers of our generation. His concert tours are routinely critically acclaimed, and his headlining show at Coachella in 2011 is in the running for the greatest performance in the festival’s…

“These are not bangers, these are artists!” might as well be the official tagline of F. Gary Gray ’s N.W.A biopic, “ Straight Outta Compton ” (named after the rap super-group’s first album). Instead, the line is tossed off by Paul Giamatti (starring as the group’s manager, Jerry Heller) during an…

Getty Jon Stewart slipped unnoticed into the White House in themidst of the October 2011 budget fight, summoned to an Oval Office coffee with PresidentBarack Obama that he jokingly told his escort felt like being called into theprincipal’s office. In February 2014, Obama again requested Stewart make…

Marilyn Monroe sings “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy at Madison Square Garden in 1962. (Bettmann/UPI) It is arguably the world’s most popular song: a tune performed billions of times in dozens of countries over more than a century. It has featured in commercials for Frosted Flakes and…

Share Opinion The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, Polygon as an organization. Last week, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz caught some heat for saying that Captain Kirk would have been a…

Q: I had a professor in school who went on and on about how well the AK-47 was designed. He stressed that as designers we should be able to appreciate an object’s design on a purely aesthetic level. Do you agree? A: Fuck no. Fuck him. Fuck the AK-47. Fuck all guns and the people who design them, but…

I n 2008, Tom Cruise needed to find a way to make people laugh. Hard. Probably at him. After two decades as a bona fide Hollywood sensation, the actor found himself in the midst of a crisis that seemed unimaginable. Over the past four years, he’d fired his publicist, who had told him to curb the…

Spencer Platt Raising the minimum wage is supported by the majority of Americans , but it seems that $15 is just too much for some to handle. That’s the hourly rate fast food workers in New York secured last week for all jobs in their industry. The new minimum, which is set to go into effect…

More than 50,000 people have signed a petition to stop hip-hop superstar Kanye West from performing at the Pan Am Games closing ceremony in Toronto on Sunday. They say organizers should have chosen a Canadian act and shouldn't be supporting such an arrogant and talent-less performer. And this isn't…

Larry Busacca Taylor Swift looked down from her partially-elevated stage. Moments before, her planned stunt — to have a portion of the catwalk rise up into the air of Washington, D.C.'s Nationals Park in what she called her “helicopter thingy” — had fallen short. She was already shaken up. During a…