You really have to work hard to get hooked on smoking opium. The Victorian-era form of the drug, known as chandu, is rare, and the people who know how to use it aren’t exactly forthcoming. But leave it to an obsessive antiques collector to figure out how to get to addicted to a 19th-century drug.…

By the time Kai Nagata got out of the pool, the iPhone on his towel was vibrating out of control. A half hour earlier, before taking a night swim in July, 2011, at a public park in Kitchener, he had tweeted the following : After careful reflection, I've decided to leave my job at CTV. You can read…

You’ve heard it before, and no doubt you’ll hear it again: Cosby sweaters just won’t go away. The ubiquitous gaudy knits, named after those worn by comedian Bill Cosby on “The Cosby Show,” are coveted by everyone from irony-laden thrifters to fashion’s top designers. Not unlike the ugly Christmas…

I fought the law Enlarge / On finding a photo called "me.jpg," one ratter discovers that he has infected a cop's computer. RATs can be entirely legitimate. Security companies have used them to help find and retrieve stolen laptops, for instance, and no one objects to similar remote login software…

3,000 Hits. Three Bats. One Enduring Mystery Roberto Clemente got his 3,000th hit, sent his bat to Cooperstown, and three months later, he was dead. He left behind a puzzle that has taken 40 years to piece together. By Kevin Guilfoile This is the extended version of a story in ESPN The Magazine's…

In November 2011, Paul Frampton, a theoretical particle physicist, met Denise Milani, a Czech bikini model, on the online dating site Mate1.com . She was gorgeous — dark-haired and dark-eyed, with a supposedly natural DDD breast size. In some photos, she looked tauntingly steamy; in others, she…

A supporter of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez holds up a picture of him during the inauguration of the National Assembly in Caracas January 5, 2013. Reuters/Carlos Garcia Rawlins I first met Hugo Chávez in New York City in September 2006, just after his infamous appearance on the floor of the UN…

One year ago, after his breathtakingly beautiful Iranian drama, "A Separation," won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, writer/director Asghar Farhadi delivered the best acceptance speech of the night. "[A]t the time when talk of war, intimidation, and aggression is exchanged between…

Passes in hand, Rothstein and Vroom flew for business. They flew for pleasure. They flew just because they liked being on planes. They bypassed long lines, booked backup itineraries in case the weather turned, and never worried about cancellation fees. Flight crews memorized their names and favorite…

Arcangel finds abject beauty in obsolete machines. Photograph by Robbie Fimmano Cory Arcangel was making a drawing, but he wasn’t holding a pen. In a small, high-ceilinged studio in Industry City, a warehouse-lined wedge of Brooklyn between New York Harbor and the Gowanus Expressway, he was sitting…

Six million people are under correctional supervision in the U.S.—more than were in Stalin’s gulags. Photograph by Steve Liss / American Poverty A prison is a trap for catching time. Good reporting appears often about the inner life of the American prison, but the catch is that American prison life…

Amy Boesky There was nothing surprising about my professor’s lecture on Shakespeare until, out of the blue, she started talking about ghostwriting. I was in the back of the packed auditorium with the other teaching assistants. Taking notes, working fast to revise my plans for discussion section the…

In 1990, Peter Richmond spent three days with Bill Murray in Chicago, eating and drinking and watching ballgames at Wrigley Field. He wrote about the experience for The National Sports Daily . His story was recently republished on Bronx Banter and appears here with permission. The first time I…

Grant Cornett for The New York Times On the evening of April 8, 1999, a long line of Town Cars and taxis pulled up to the Minneapolis headquarters of Pillsbury and discharged 11 men who controlled America’s largest food companies. Nestlé was in attendance, as were Kraft and Nabisco, General Mills…

In late February I am in my basement, which is really a very nice part of my house that is not done justice by the word basement. For the purposes of this story, let’s call it the Parnassus Fulfillment Center. I have hauled 533 boxed-up hardback copies of my latest novel, State of Wonder , from…

Finding Glass The Glass project was started "about three years ago" by an engineer named Babak Parviz as part of Google’s X Lab initiative, the lab also responsible for — amongst other things — self-driving cars and neural networks. Unlike those epic, sci-fi R&D projects at Google, Glass is getting…

filmmakers

The Awl Be less stupid. The Awl Be less stupid.

TOKYO/DETROIT (Reuters) - Are electric cars running out of juice again? Recent moves by Japan’s two largest automakers suggest that the electric car, after more than 100 years of development and several brief revivals, still is not ready for prime time - and may never be. In the meantime, the…

via puu.sh In early February, a suicide bomber attacked the American Embassy in Turkey. The moments and hours afterwards were captured on video by Turkish TV reporters and CNN — and by a contributor for news site Al Monitor , who captured some of the first Vine-based breaking news. In a series of…

ALMOST FROM THE BEGINNING he was doing it. At 10 months old, the story goes, Eldrick Woods climbed down from his high chair in the garage of his family's house in Cypress, Calif., grabbed hold of a child's plastic toy club and began precisely mimicking his father's golf swing, lefthanded -- a piece…

tracking nemo Look out, Northeasterners: two massive low pressure systems are merging, creating the potential for wind gusts up to 60 miles an hour and heavy precipitation. We're experiencing what will probably be record-breaking weather — but even as the western frontal system approaches the…

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Lockdown The coming war on general-purpose computing By Cory Doctorow - This article is based on a keynote speech to the Chaos Computer Congress in Berlin, Dec. 2011. General-purpose computers are astounding. They're so astounding that our society still struggles to come to grips with them, what…

There's never been anything like Beats By Dre. The bulky rainbow headphones are a gaudy staple of malls, planes, clubs, and sidewalks everywhere: as mammoth, beloved, and expensive as their namesake. But Dr. Dre didn't just hatch the flashy lineup from his freight train chest: The venture began as…