Shutterstock “Influencers” are people who have established credibility in a specific realm or industry, and who leverage a social-media following to exert influence and, usually, make money . Scroll through many of their Instagram feeds, and you’ll begin to notice something: The photos all look…

Fifty years later, the White Album, the Beatles’ masterpiece, is still good, still indelible, still as clean and pure as its sleeve, requiring no explanation or description beyond the band’s name. Photograph by David Redfern / Getty To mark this month’s fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles ’ ninth…

Terry Gross says that “Tell me about yourself” is the only ice-breaker you’ll ever need. Credit Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times Skip to contentSkip to site index The NPR host offers 8 spicy tips for having better conversations. Terry Gross says that “Tell me about yourself” is the only…

Image by mandiberg via Flickr Saddam Hussein may be long gone from Iraq, but speculation in his currency persists like a poltergeist. The Iraqi dinar has been the recent object of desire of foreign currency operators selling mostly on the Internet. The pitch goes something like this: "Buy dinars…

In the words of popular comedian Ron White , " You can't fix stupid. " That phrase, as elegant in its simplicity as it is frankly true, applies with special fervor to those who continue to believe that they are about to make millions, billions, or even trillions by investing in Iraqi dinars. Yes, I…

AMC/Ringer illustration In the parlance of spying, backstories are called legends, and The Little Drummer Girl is a spy story with a hell of a legend. It was 1979, and David Cornwell wanted to do something different. The world knew Cornwell by his pen name John le Carré, and John le Carré was known…

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast Trump supporter Hayes Kotseos runs a North Carolina pool maintenance company, but she’s got a side bet that she thinks might make her fabulously wealthy: the Iraqi dinar. The currency is nearly worthless outside of Iraq, but Kotseos bought millions of dinars in…

Dan Evans In this life of ours, you sometimes reach a point where you feel so estranged and exhausted by the drip-drip of everyday existence, the ding of your inbox, the noise of the news, that you need to close your eyes and imagine a person for whom life is not like this, a person for whom the…

Jonathan Ernst / Reuters The Halifax Security Forum is designed to be a gathering of the world’s democratic countries, which are allied to protect each other. Hosted by the Canadian defense minister, the Forum’s signature is the brief videos that introduce the annual gathering. This year’s intro…

The Weakest Link is Motherboard's third annual theme week dedicated to the future of hacking and cybersecurity. Follow along . Listen to Motherboard’s new hacking podcast, CYBER, here . Dr. Nathalie Mar é chal is a senior research fellow at Ranking Digital Rights , where she studies the impact of…

Photo: rawpixel ( Pexels ) Great news for people who hate doing dishes : if you have a dishwasher, washing your dishes by hand is a colossal waste of water, energy, time, and money, and you can prove it with math. Make Doing the Dishes Easier by Using a Tub Doing the dishes—or “washing up” as the…

Seven months ago, Mark Zuckerberg sat before Congress and said he was sorry about the fake news and the data breaches—and that it wasn’t really Facebook’s fault. The company’s founder and CEO had been hauled before Congress to answer for what became known as the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which…

Image: Element5 Digital on Unsplash With a few clicks of your keyboard, you can find hundreds of opinions hashing out the best ways to live and be and do. Travel, spend money, invest, be productive, structure your day, listen to music, brine a turkey—there’s a right and a wrong way for everything,…

There is an opportunity cost to luring Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, to Long Island City by letting him free-ride on the public services that other New Yorkers must pay for. Photograph by Hiroko Masuike / NYT /Redux The city of hustlers got hustled. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the…

Getty Donald Trump doesn’t become the proper focus of Enemies: The President, Justice & the FBI until its fourth and final episode. Yet in every respect, our current commander-in-chief is the sole reason for the existence of Alex Gibney’s Showtime documentary series, which details the often…

American Airlines started premium economy in 2016. Photographer: Colin Underfill/Alamy Photographer: Colin Underfill/Alamy Companies go to great lengths to get consumers to spend more on goods. Fashion Drops After growing into multibillion-dollar businesses by expanding their range of products and…

I suspect that the Coen brothers would not regard a ranking of their films with much respect. I can picture the blank and yet ambiently displeased expression on their faces upon being told that some schmuck has thought long and hard about slotting The Man Who Wasn’t There ahead of True Grit .…

Two pro dart players have accused each other of farting on stage during a match in England this week — casting a cloud of controversy over the heralded tournament. “It’ll take me two nights to lose this smell from my nose,” Dutch player Wesley Harms fumed after getting blown away 10-2 by Scotland’s…

Mark Zuckerberg in May 2018. Reuters/Stephen Lam Think back a few years, before the Amazon HQ2 sweepstakes, before Susan Fowler’s viral blog post , before the #MeToo movement, before the 2016 election. Across the nation, Silicon Valley was the crown jewel of the economy. The companies were youthful…

‘Possibly the calmest person in British politics?’ Theresa May gives a press conference on her Brexit plans.Photograph: Matt Dunham/PA The eye is supposed to be the calmest place in a storm. Weird as this may seem, the most tranquil person in British politics this weekend is probably Theresa May .…

Supported by The Men Who Want to Push Britain Off a Cliff Theresa May has a Brexit deal. Now a group of feckless Conservatives wants to torpedo everything. Contributing Opinion Writer The pro-Brexit, Conservative lawmaker Jacob Rees-Mogg speaking to the media outside the Houses of Parliament on…

The infinite retailer appears to be ushering untold numbers of stealth brands into your life, even as it plans to take over the East Coast. If you like Ween Charm, you’ll love Austin Mill! Credit Illustration by Tracy Ma/The New York Times In 1618, an aspiring alchemist in Constantinople named…

President Donald Trump has been sequestered with his lawyers to discuss how to respond in writing to a series of special counsel Robert Mueller’s questions, only adding to the intrigue that something big is about to happen. | Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images Half a dozen people in contact with the…

To reporters, the threatened new rules represent another obstacle to covering President Donald Trump, who views his battle with the media as an unambiguous positive. | Andrew Harnik/AP Photo The administration is drawing up rules for White House reporters' behavior, and the president said if…

Soraya Roberts | Longreads | November 2018 | 11 minutes (2,670 words) “I play with my breasts, not to show off but to demonstrate a kind of revulsion. I simply transform myself into a voice for all the tormented souls of this world.” That’s Courtney Love in 1996 in SZ , the magazine belonging to one…

Growing up, comics were my life. Once every couple of months we would take the bus for over an hour into the center of London where we'd enter the hallowed halls of the famous comic-book shop Forbidden Planet. I'd dig in the short boxes to find my favorite characters, which consisted most…

I n my office, I have a coffee mug from Stanich’s in Portland, Oregon. Under the restaurant name, it says “Great hamburgers since 1949.” The mug was given to me by Steve Stanich on the day I told him that, after eating 330 burgers during a 30-city search, I was naming Stanich’s cheeseburger the best…

Steve Stepp knew audiotapes were going to come back before you did, and not just because he’s a man whose family company put its faith behind the machinery 50 years ago. Also because Pearl Jam called. It was 2008 or 2009, and the 20 th anniversary of the album Ten was coming up. They wanted to…

P lastic is everywhere, and suddenly we have decided that is a very bad thing. Until recently, plastic enjoyed a sort of anonymity in ubiquity: we were so thoroughly surrounded that we hardly noticed it. You might be surprised to learn, for instance, that today’s cars and planes are, by volume,…

Europe | Live Briefing NOV. 14, 2018 Even if the British cabinet approves the Brexit draft, the deal needs the approval of the British Parliament, which is far from a certainty. Hannah Mckay/Reuters Prime Minister Theresa May will hold an emergency cabinet meeting at 2 p.m. Wednesday to discuss a…

An apartment building in Park Slope, Brooklyn in a residential area where many families live. A prostitution ring had taken over two apartments to use as brothels. The landlord was complicit, the police said. Credit Dave Sanders for The New York Times Most tenants of a drab, four-story building in…

‘When nothing is true then the dishonest person will thrive by saying what’s true is fake.’Photograph: Joan Wong I n May, a video appeared on the internet of Donald Trump offering advice to the people of Belgium on the issue of climate change. “As you know, I had the balls to withdraw from the Paris…

The best television episode of the 1990s starred a short, blond man and his band. On November 18, 1993, at Sony Music Studios in New York City, Nirvana took on MTV Unplugged . That night, the biggest group of the decade staged one of the most hypnotically intimate rock concerts ever captured on…

Illustration by Alicia Tatone Believe it or not, sometimes not doing anything at all is the most productive thing you can do. Remember when you were a kid and you used to say, “Mom, I’m booored ,” and she’d tell you to go entertain yourself? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you weren’t as whiny as me. Or…

Serena Williams at the French Open in June. Ms. Williams has often discussed struggles with sexism. Credit Clive Brunskill/Getty Images GQ did not name Serena Williams its 2018 Woman of the Year. It named her its 2018 “Woman” of the Year — and the quotation marks made a troubling difference to her…

I recently wrote an article about an Instagram account that documents disturbing messages women receive on dating apps from men they’ve rejected. After it was posted on Facebook, it didn’t take long for the messages to roll in: “I call bullshit on this story,” “Women are con artists — if you do…

Pascal Rossignol / Reuters The Amazon HQ2 saga had all the hallmarks of the gaudiest reality TV. It was an absurd spectacle, concluding with a plot twist, which revealed a deep and dark truth about the modern world. Fourteen months ago, Amazon announced a national beauty contest, in which North…

Images of #sponsored content from the Instagram accounts of Alexis Baker, top row, and Haley Stutzman. Ms. Baker has about 2,600 followers and Ms. Stutzman about 5,500. Credit Top row, Alexis Baker; bottom row, Haley Stutzman By now you have probably heard of influencers, that group of…

S&P 500 executives are dropping blockchain buzzwords less on earnings calls and during presentations to analysts and investors. Analysts are also asking about it less. Data: Analysis of FactSet corrected transcripts; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon/Axios Why it matters : The hype was just that. The odds…

Illustration: McDavid Henderson I n July, on Friday the 13th, Jay Smooth, a 45-year-old cultural critic, video blogger, and DJ was preparing to host another edition of Underground Railroad , his two-hour hip-hop and culture show on WBAI, the New York affiliate of Pacifica Radio. That evening, he…