Feature News | February 13, 2025 Share this Article: A White House set made for just $90,000 ultimately became one of the most ubiquitous backdrops of the 1990s… Clint Eastwood prowled his cameras around it for the tepid 1997 thriller Absolute Power. Lloyd Bridges stood in the middle of it as ‘Tug’…

It was one of O’Rourke’s first times doing drugs, but he didn’t hold back. Armed with cannabis edibles, cocaine, ketamine, and booze he partied for nearly 12 nights consecutively last August, during which time he claims to have raved for 60 hours straight—all without ever leaving his apartment. (He…

iStock / credit: Jorm Sangsorn On some days, the Trumpist regime’s assault on democratic self-government crystallizes in events that have such a visceral effect on anyone who dares to pay attention that it can feel overwhelming. Monday, April 14 – Day 85 since Trump took power – was such a day for…

Shipping containers from China at the China Shipping (North America) Holding Company Ltd. facility at the Port of Los Angeles in Wilmington, California, Feb. 4, 2025. Mike Blake | Reuters The pullback in trade between the U.S. and China as a result of President Trump's steep tariffs on Chinese goods…

News Central Banker Washington and Beijing are trading tariff blows. The EU could come out on top ― if it can rise to the challenge. Share options Copy Link EMail Twitter WhatsApp Linkedin Free article usually reserved for subscribers Washington and Beijing moving to tariff each other at rates…

Guest Essay April 21, 2025 Credit...Lia Darjes, "Plate VII" Listen to this article · 4:06 min Learn more By Mr. David is a comedian and writer who created “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and was a co-creator of “Seinfeld.” Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting…

Ask just about anybody, and they’ll tell you that new cars are too expensive. In the wake of tariffs shaking the auto industry and with the Trump administration pledging to kill the federal EV incentive, that situation isn’t looking to get better soon, especially for anyone wanting something…

I remember the little stickers on restaurant menus. In the 1970s, it cost much more to print a menu than it does today. Restaurants did not change them often. When prices rose, they’d retain their old menu—but affix little stickers with the new, handwritten prices atop the previous ones. When prices…

Last month, Nicholas Gilbert received a delivery of grain for the 1,400 cows he tends at his dairy farm in Potsdam, New York, 20 miles from the Ontario border. The feed came with a surprise tariff of $2,200 tacked on. “We have small margins,” he told me. “I had a contracted price on that grain…

In his quest to make America great, President Donald Trump is withdrawing the United States from global trade. American families, companies, and investors will pay a price for this, as many commentators have noted. But the repercussions don’t end there. The tariff regime is also destroying a pillar…

Deep down, Sam Altman and François Chollet share the same dream. They want to build AI models that achieve “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI—matching or exceeding the capabilities of the human mind. The difference between these two men is that Altman has suggested that his company, OpenAI,…

President Donald Trump’s tariff roller coaster has had many unexpected impacts—including threatening the sex-toy industry and possibly making smartphones dumber. But the most recent odd aftershock from his yo-yoing decisions on whether to instigate tariff hikes against China has been good news for a…

Look around you and before too long you are likely to spot a chore jacket. I saw a particularly fine example on a dad last weekend at a heritage railway. As warm days stretch into still-cold evenings, beer gardens are full of them. They are worn down allotments and in towns, and I have a few in my…

This is an edition of The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. I was recently surprised to learn that my wife is still on Facebook. “I’m not,” she replied. “I’m on…

Sign up for Trump’s Return, a newsletter featuring coverage of the second Trump presidency. After spending most of the 2024 campaign blaming Democrats for inflation and insisting that tariffs don’t increase prices, Donald Trump and his allies have a new economic message: High prices are good.…

(Photo: Getty) Do not join the United States military. Don’t join the Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Marines, or National Guard. If you are in contact with young people who are considering joining the military, counsel them not to do it. If you are in a position to steer people away from…

Donald Webber Jr. and Bob Odenkirk in Glengarry Glen Ross. Photo: Emilio Madrid Watching David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross, you could be forgiven for missing the three-word motto that’s become synonymous with the play. Though “Always be closing” is emblazoned across the new Broadway production’s…

According to President Donald Trump, April 2, 2025—the day he unveiled his executive order implementing global tariffs—will be remembered as a turning point in American history. He might be right. Unfortunately, April 2 is more likely to be remembered as a fiasco—alongside October 24, 1929 (the…

After Thursday’s stock-market sell-off provoked by Donald Trump’s announcement that the United States would be imposing new tariffs on almost every country in the world, the one thing we can say for sure is that Wall Street blew it. In the three trading days leading up to Trump’s much-anticipated…

President Donald Trump’s high-tariff regime will impose higher prices and lower growth on Americans. It will have another effect that nobody in the administration seems to have considered at all: a tsunami of smuggling. In a few days’ time, every desirable consumer good will be dramatically more…

Ninety-two years ago this month, on Monday morning, January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed the 15th chancellor of the Weimar Republic. In one of the most astonishing political transformations in the history of democracy, Hitler set about destroying a constitutional republic through…

As America’s most decorated civil servants sipped cocktails in the presidential ballroom of the Capital Hilton, worrying about their table assignments and wondering where they fell in the pecking order between US senator and UAE ambassador, Elon Musk sat staring at his phone, laughing. Few of the…

Well, that's not good. Power Bot 'Em Researchers have found that ChatGPT "power users," or those who use it the most and at the longest durations, are becoming dependent upon — or even addicted to — the chatbot. In a new joint study, researchers with OpenAI and the MIT Media Lab found that this…

404 Media is an independent website whose work is written, reported, and owned by human journalists and whose intended audience is real people, not AI scrapers, bots, or a search algorithm. Become a paid subscriber here for access to all of our articles ad-free and bonus content. On the Discord…

On September 20, 1938, a man who had witnessed the rise of fascism packed his suitcases and fled his home in Berlin. He arranged to have smuggled separately a manuscript that he had drafted in secret over the previous two years. This book was a remarkable one. It clarified what was unfolding in…

Related Articles Nintendo Life: Can you talk about how I, Robot came to be? Jeff Minter, Llamasoft founder: Well, I'd look through Atari's back catalogue for games to update and I like going for the more obscure things. The big titles are often spoken for anyway, and if you go for something like…

Image: Zion Grassl / Time Extension Those of you with a love of physical media and retro games will no doubt have heard of the name Limited Run. Founded in 2015 by Josh Fairhurst and Douglas Bogart, the company started out publishing games created by Fairhurt's Mighty Rabbit studio before…

Suikoden is a game that I’ve been meaning to play for years. A highly regarded roleplaying game from the original PlayStation era, it’s renowned for its sprawling storyline and huge cast of playable characters. That also makes it pretty intimidating, and I’ve had a copy sitting on my PS Vita just…

The most grotesque videos on YouTube fit into a specific category. It consists of old footage run through an AI upscaler. Sometimes the videos are colorized, sometimes they’re interpolated to 60 frames per second. Uniformly they look atrocious, smeary, and garish, unless you don’t know what a film…

Balatro has been a mega hit, having recently reached the 5 million copies sold mark, and for now its lead developer isn't rushing to move on. We all know that Balatro is one of the best games of 2024, and at the end of last month it had managed to reach 5 million copies sold, a pretty ridiculous…

I love Chris Elliott. He’s a brilliant comedian whose legacy is often reduced to Cabin Boy, a good movie whose flaws are entirely the fault of Tim Burton for being a dipshit and screwing the production over. Elliot had two Cinemax-produced specials in the 80s, Action Family and FDR: A One Man Show,…

Photo: Saturday Night Live/YouTube Lorne Michaels has a rule, whenever he finishes another long season of Saturday Night Live, to take off the month of June. He might go to his home in Amagansett, or the blueberry farm he owns in Maine, and usually to Europe, where last summer he had a few work…

HBO had a series of legendary stand-up specials in the 1990s, and one of the best of those came from a performer who was not a comedian. Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants was incredibly funny, but Jay was a magician, although that seems not quite right. The press material for the special, which first…

In Blaine, Washington, there is a very special Starbucks. Like every Starbucks, this one has tables and chairs and coffee and pastries and a pacifying sort of vibe. Also like (most) Starbucks, it has a bathroom, open to anyone who walks in. The bathroom is important because this Starbucks is located…

Updated at 12:40 p.m. ET on January 22, 2025 In the pre-internet era, turning 18 in America conferred a very specific, if furtive, privilege: the right to walk into a store and buy an adult magazine. Technically, it still does, for those hypothetical teenagers who prefer to get their smut in print.…

The video that ushered Saturday Night Live into the digital era barely made it to television, and when it did, it was largely ignored. It’s a heartfelt conversation between two friends (played by Andy Samberg and Will Forte) about a recent tragic loss; after every emotional beat, each of them takes…

Back in nasty, metallic, cocaine-powered ’90s London, where everyone was standing around talking loudly and competitively in overlit rooms, I would find myself from time to time in the company of comedians. Stand-ups, mainly. They were brilliant of course, and miserable of course (because stand-ups…

Guest Essay Feb. 10, 2025 Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times Listen to this article · 6:16 min Learn more By Robert E. RubinLawrence H. SummersTimothy F. GeithnerJacob J. Lew and The writers are former Treasury secretaries. When we had the honor of being sworn in as the 70th, 71st, 75th, 76th…

M. Gessen Feb. 8, 2025 Credit...Will Matsuda for The New York Times Listen to this article · 9:30 min Learn more By Opinion Columnist Want to stay updated on what’s happening in Russia? , and we’ll send our latest coverage to your inbox. In 1978, my parents went to Poland, the first foreign trip in…

My FP: Follow topics and authors to get straight to what you like. Exclusively for FP subscribers. | Science and Technology United States February 11, 2025, 6:49 PM In the span of just weeks, the U.S. government has experienced what may be the most consequential security breach in its history—not…