Longing for an Internet Cleanse A small rebellion against the quickening of time. Opinion Columnist “Golden Sea — a New Song,” a recent painting by Makoto Fujimura. Credit Waterfall Mansion & Gallery, New York The two most recent times I saw my friend Makoto Fujimura, he put a Kintsugi bowl in my…

Positive reactions work better than negative ones.Illustration: Michele Marconi/The Guardian I n their forthcoming book, Nine Lies About Work , Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall make a startling claim, with implications far beyond the workplace: they argue that giving people feedback – in the…

Once, not so long ago, I spent an afternoon emailing a few dozen evolutionary biologists. This was for my job, or one of my jobs—you know how millennials are (they’re broke, just like everyone else). My editor had assigned me to ask these people, who almost certainly had better things to do with…

It’s strange to think about now, but until the 1920s, you didn’t generally need a passport to travel. A smart CEO I know recently mentioned this to me in the context of what’s happening to the internet. The idea of making citizens carry documents to promote border security, he said, dates only to…

“Dirty” Harry Callahan fought many bad guys across five films between the years 1971 and 1988, from a serial killer named Scorpio to violent revolutionaries to a gang of seaside rapists. But one of his most persistent foes lived off screen, which didn’t keep her from becoming a kind of obsession for…

C ruise passengers are often singled out when discussing overtourism. Thousands pour off the largest ships and most stay in each port for less than a day. They can be seen as contributing little to the local economy, perhaps buying only a coffee or snack while ashore. Now the city of Amsterdam has…

Countries and cities have generally tried to encourage tourism—based on the premise that holidaying visitors and the money they spend fosters economic development. But in the age of overtourism, some popular destinations have reached their limit. City centers are clogged with avocado-toast -seeking…

Up until a few years ago, the phrase “getting an Airbnb” meant one thing: staying in the apartment, house, or spare room of a stranger, likely at a bargain price compared with nearby hotels. But in 2019, things aren’t so simple. Eleven years after the company’s founding in 2008—and amid endless…

In “Us,” a work of directorial virtuosity from Jordan Peele, Lupita Nyong’o plays a middle-class mother and her doppelgänger in a plot with graphic, psychological resonance. Photograph by Claudette Barius / Universal Pictures The success of Jordan Peele’s 2017 film, “ Get Out ,” bought him time, he…

Check, please Enlarge / Wheeler reiterates his proposal to bill for 140 hours of consulting time in a follow-up email, while Gill focuses on getting Twitter posts down. "When you're performing Coordinating Disclosure—calling the vendor for the first time—for me it's super important to really stress,…

T im Foley turned 20 on 27 June 2010. To celebrate, his parents took him and his younger brother Alex out for lunch at an Indian restaurant not far from their home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both brothers were born in Canada, but for the past decade the family had lived in the US. The boys’…

Grigory Dukor / Reuters So much about the rise of Donald Trump defied reason. But in the spring of 2016, he displayed one habit that I found beyond perplexing: He couldn’t stop praising Vladimir Putin. What made his obsequiousness so galling was that it often came in response to questions that…

Michael Kooren/Reuters Feargus O'Sullivan Mar 20, 2019 In an effort to make housing more affordable, the Dutch capital is crafting a law that says anyone who buys a newly built home must live in it themselves. If you want to buy a new house in Amsterdam, you’ll have to actually live in it. That’s…

Anti-Brexit protestors in London. Photo: Om1/Zuma Press/PA Images On Thursday night in a Brussels conference chamber, something happened that was so breathtaking it will define the history of post-war Britain. It was such an indictment of the state of our nation that it almost literally cannot be…

If they’ve been paying attention, Americans have received some rude wake-up calls in recent years. What unpleasant news do these messages convey? The country is a lot more corrupt than Americans realized. Since 2016, of course, concern for corruption has been riveted on the sleaze show that is the…

Let’s talk about ride-sharing. At an abstract level, ride-sharing is the idea that people who have cars and a little extra time can provide a service to people who need rides and are willing to pay for them. At an abstract level, it takes an underused resource and puts it to use. It benefits both…

Karen O, singer of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the producer Danger Mouse teamed up for an album, “Lux Prima.” Credit Natalia Mantini for The New York Times Every great partnership has to begin somewhere. For Karen O and Danger Mouse, it was a drunk dial in 2008. At least, that’s how half of this duo…

Tim Cook onstage at an Apple event in 2016 Beck Diefenbach / Reuters Two years ago, Desmond Hughes heard so many of his favorite podcasters extolling AirPods, Apple’s tiny, futuristic $170 wireless headphones, that he decided they were worth the splurge. He quickly became a convert. Hughes is still…

Construction workers remove debris from destroyed shops in Mosul in November 2017. Felipe Dana / AP BEIRUT—If you’re looking to transfer money here, there’s a chance you will be directed to Abu Shawkat. He works out of a small office in a working-class suburb of the Lebanese capital, but won’t give…

Lucy Nicholson / Reuters On the most recent episode of Last Week Tonight , an HBO show that often sounds as if The Daily Show and The Rachel Maddow Show had combined their writers’ rooms, John Oliver dedicated his monologue to public shaming. After a brief survey of excesses culled from local…

The Vessel is really a perfect name for the sixteen-story monument nestled in the midst of the now complete “neighborhood” (read: real estate scheme) of Hudson Yards, New York City. Designed by Thomas Heatherwick, one of architecture’s premier grifters, a man who should be banned internationally…

Shelley Chang was working as a business analyst for a computer company in 2010 when she met Jason Ho through some mutual friends. Ho was tall and slender with a sly smile, and they hit it off right away. A computer programmer, Ho ran his own company from San Francisco. He also loved to travel. Less…

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters Donald Trump is not well. Over the weekend, he continued his weird obsession with a dead war hero. This time, his attacks on John McCain came two days after the anniversary of McCain’s release from a North Vietnamese prison camp. He tweeted this: And this: And retweeted…

Chris Buetti Feb 24 Unlisted Living and working in the big apple comes with big rent. I, along with most other city-dwellers who live inside a crammed closet we call an apartment, look to cut costs anywhere we can. It’s no secret one way to curtail expenses, at least we’re told, is to cook at home…

“We’d love to host you. Would you be able to guarantee a post on your feed as well as Stories?” Instagram: @wanderingggirl “Bali has been such an unforgettable experience, this is a destination you MUST have on your bucket list!” read a caption by Amanda Smith, @ wanderingggirl , in a May Instagram…

In 2012, Oliver Scott Curry was an anthropology lecturer at the University of Oxford. One day, he organized a debate among his students about whether morality was innate or acquired. One side argued passionately that morality was the same everywhere; the other, that morals were different everywhere.…

If you happened to tune in to the Winter Games last year during the women’s halfpipe skiing competition, you might have caught one of the Olympics’ most perplexing moments. Halfpipe, which was introduced to the games in 2014, features an adrenaline-soaked spectacle: Skiers plummet down a steep track…

The cancellation of One Day at a Time , the arrival of the Disney Vault on Disney’s upcoming streaming service, and Netflix’s battle to keep the streaming rights to Friends are all part of the same larger story. Netflix/Disney/Warner Bros. The cancellation of Netflix’s critically beloved cult…

The store has more than 132,000 titles, many of them not available on the internet, or anywhere else. “We will fight to the death to keep this open.” Scarecrow Video offers 132,000 titles: Italian horror. French films. And lots of Japanese animation. There is a story Russell Williams likes to tell…

Senator Elizabeth Warren spoke to several hundred voters in Memphis on Sunday. Credit Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal, via Associated Press JACKSON, Miss. — Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts Democrat who has based her presidential bid on trying to outpace rivals with robust policy…

(This article is adapted from a forthcoming book, “Cult of the Dead Cow: How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World”) > Some things you might know about Beto O’Rourke, the former Texas congressman who just entered the race for president: • The Democratic contender raised a record…

When the kids in Skyler’s school want to tell a friend something in class, they don’t scrawl a note down on a tiny piece of paper and toss it across the room. They use Google Docs. “We don’t really pass physical notes anymore,” said Skyler, 15, who, like all the other students in this story, is…