LOS ANGELES — “Crazy Rich Asians,” powered by jubilant reviews and pent-up demand for a major Hollywood film led by Asian stars, took in a strong $25.2 million at North American theaters over the weekend, easily enough for No. 1. It was the best result for a PG-13 romantic comedy in six years —…

Protesters toppled the Silent Sam Confederate statue on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill on Monday night. The monument came down after 9:15 p.m. Earlier in the evening, protesters covered the statue with gray banners, erecting “an alternative monument” that said, in part, “For a world without white…

Ann Hermes/AP It took a lot less than you'd think for myself and my fellow teens to steal the midterms. It took me around 10 minutes to crash the upcoming midterm elections. Once I accessed the shockingly simple and vulnerable set of tables that make up the state election board’s database, I was…

The product of Omarosa Manigault Newman’s memoir, “Unhinged,” is not simply insider information but the idea that she may have outmaneuvered Trump. Photograph by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP “Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House,” the new dish from Omarosa Manigault Newman, is,…

As a teenager in the early 2000s, I was a member of a large, passionate, and loosely affiliated community of Harry Potter lovers (known, like other, similar communities, as a fandom), mostly gathered on LiveJournal. We discussed the books and characters; we wrote fanfiction and long diatribes about…

For 70 days at the beginning of this year, Daniel Ek and a group of friends competed to see who could cut their body-fat percentage the most. Ek, the 35-year-old cofounder and CEO of the streaming service Spotify, went on a special regimen, which included twice-a-day workouts and a single…

I magine a city at 50C (122F). The pavements are empty, the parks quiet, entire neighbourhoods appear uninhabited. Nobody with a choice ventures outside during daylight hours. Only at night do the denizens emerge, HG Wells-style, into the streets – though, in temperatures that high, even darkness no…

About halfway through Jordan Peele’s Oscar-winning directorial debut Get Out , protagonist Chris Washington (played by Black Panther ’s underused Daniel Kaluuya) is pretty sure he’s in serious trouble. As a black man making his first trip to visit his girlfriend Rose’s rich, liberal, white parents,…

Throughout her three years at Riot Games, the company behind League of Legends , Lacy made it her mission to hire a woman into a leadership role. Lacy had heard plenty of excuses for why her female job candidates weren’t Riot material. Some were “ladder climbers.” Others had “too much ego.” Most…

“I didn’t feel like I had a prayer,” said Crystal Thompson of Eight Mile, Ala., whom Walmart accused — mistakenly, an employee later acknowledged — of shoplifting about $70 in groceries. A lawyer for Walmart threatened a lawsuit if she didn’t pay $200. Credit William Widmer for The New York Times By…

MEDELLÍN, Colombia — Faced with nearly incomprehensible inflation — 32,714 percent as of Wednesday — Venezuelan officials thought they had a solution: They changed the color of the bank notes and increased their denomination. Then they said they would lop off three zeros. And when that didn’t seem…

A cryptic missive went out last spring to all 3.6 million people who follow McDonald’s on Twitter. The tweet read, simply: “100% Fresh Beef + John Goodman = ASMR(ish)” and included a link to a video. In the split-screen clip , the Big Lebowski and Roseanne star stares into the camera and—somewhat…

Showing up when it matters is one of the easiest ways to make friends (and keep them). Getty Images/Lonely Planet Images Vox's home for compelling, provocative narrative essays. What a lot of people don’t appear to understand is that the single easiest way to make friends is to show up when it…

“Korn, Manson, Bizkit—that was the golden age of music, I believe. And after us, it died.” Jonathan Davis, who at 47 has been Korn’s lead singer for more than half of his life, does not sound wistful, or even boastful. He is matter of fact, as though he were describing how his tangled locks are now…

Aretha Franklin performing in 1970. Photograph by Michael Ochs / Getty Aretha Franklin’s voice was a pure, painful, and unforgettable expression of American history and American feeling, the collective experience of black Americans and her own life. The Queen of Soul was the daughter of the most…

Zak Kaczmarek/Getty Images 1. She is fighting the pernicious idea that older women don’t matter. “People say I’m controversial,” Madonna told an audience of music-industry peers in 2016. “But I think the most controversial thing I have ever done is to stick around.” Sexism was the demon that haunted…

Nicolas Cage in Con Air: is there another actor anywhere in the world as original and distinctive?Photograph: Allstar/TOUCHSTONE W hat kind of masochists would attend an all-night Nicolas Cage movie marathon? What kind of sadists would program seven of his films in a row? If one wants to observe the…

THE FIGHTERS Americans in Combat in Afghanistan and Iraq By C. J. Chivers 374 pp. Simon & Schuster. $28. C. J. Chivers , a senior writer for The New York Times and a former Marine infantry officer, begins his new book with a description of an American weapon, equipped with GPS sensors and a guidance…

Have you ever been the victim of a con? I have. It happened when I was in college, traveling around Turkey with a friend. We were approached one night in Istanbul by a chatty young man who spoke good English. He was headed to a nightclub to meet some people. Would we like to join him? When we…

Buhler’s mayor, Daniel Friesen, understands why dying towns welcomed Dollar General out of desperation.Photograph: Kacy Meinecke for the Guardian W hen Dollar General came to Haven, Kansas, it arrived making demands. The fastest growing retailer in America wanted the taxpayers of the small,…

As a science writer at The New Yorker , Maria Konnikova, 34, focuses on the brain, and the weird and interesting ways people use their brains. Dr. Konnikova is an experimental psychologist trained at Columbia University. But her latest experiment is on herself. For a book she’s researching on luck…

The second stage of the Nintendo Entertainment System's long lifespan started in earnest on April 3, 1997. By that time, Nintendo had already moved on to 3D gaming with Super Mario 64. But an army of game fans, largely teens and college students who had been young children when the NES first came…

Though we rarely give them much thought, batteries — specifically lithium-ion batteries — enable modern life. They run our smartphones, yes, but they also power our Bluetooth speakers, toothbrushes, satellites, and pacemakers. In Australia, a partnership with Tesla will equip 50,000 homes with solar…

Long before phone addiction panic gripped the masses and before screen time became a facet of our wellness and digital detoxes, there was one good and wise piece of technology that served our families. Maybe it was in the family room or in the kitchen. It could have been a Mac or PC. Chances are it…

Miodrag Kovačević, a 32-year-old game developer from Serbia who currently works on big budget video games, didn't grow up with a lot of money. Importing consoles to Serbia was expensive, so only people who were well off had them. He played many Super Nintendo games at friends' houses or at…

Illustration by Ben Wiseman. In the heart of San Francisco, the gig economy reigns supreme. Walk intoa grocery store, and a large number of shoppers you see are independentcontractors for grocery-delivery start-up Instacart. Step outside, andcars with black-and-white Uber stickers or flashing Lyft…

Investors are fretting about emerging markets again. Turkey is the front-burner concern at the moment, but what really is getting people’s attention is the prospect that the financial problems there could spread to other fast-growing but risky countries. If history is any indication, that has the…

By • August 6th, 2018 Sponsored Looped time has been present within video games since their inception, with game over screens and new game plus mechanics acting as disjunctive events that allow for the gamespace to be reset. Most recently this has been experimented with through the use of cyclical…

Turkey's central bank has said it is ready to take "all necessary measures" to ensure financial stability after the collapse of the lira. It has vowed to provide banks with "all the liquidity the banks need". The comments came after a widening diplomatic spat with the US prompted market turmoil in…

Lee’s point is clear: the radical racist right was, forty years ago, on the ropes, and it was allowed to come back stronger than ever. Photograph by David Lee / Focus Features / Everett Spike Lee’s new film, “ BlacKkKlansman ,” is, in its contours, a police procedural drama. It is set in the early…

For the last seven years, Tim Lee has been warning that a financial crisis in Turkey would set off a wider calamity in global markets. Just about nobody listened — until now. A plunge in the Turkish lira and the prospect that the country might soon need a bailout has spurred an investor exodus in…

Baron Cohen’s new characters are all straight white men—he knows that cross-identity disguises will no longer fly. Illustration by Bendik Kaltenborn Before screening Sacha Baron Cohen’s “ Who Is America? ,” Showtime flacks handed me a nondisclosure agreement. They locked up my phone. Guards roamed…

John David Washington and Adam Driver infiltrate the Klan in Spike Lee’s film. Illustration by Keith Negley At the end of “Malcolm X,” Spike Lee’s formidable bio-pic of 1992, we see a bunch of schoolkids, standing up in turn to announce, “I’m Malcolm X.” Thus is the hero of the film, played with…

A year and a half ago, Chloë Grace Moretz — a preternaturally confident child star who by 19 had more than 50 credits on her résumé, including “Kick-Ass,” “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and “Clouds of Sils Maria” — hit pause. “I had taken a little break to figure out exactly what project I wanted to do next…

Nicolas Ortega I found my way to the Download Your Information tool in late March, soon after a whistle-blower revealed that the political-consulting firm Cambridge Analytica had gathered information about tens of millions of Facebook users. The tool, which Mark Zuckerberg referenced several times…

Sean Spicer is currently cashing in on his role as the guy who once lied on Donald Trump’s behalf every day by publishing a book. The former White House press secretary is doing a big publicity tour to promote it, so the team over at Full Frontal decided to have a little fun with that. Last night’s…

Amazon says it has to crack down on people who abuse its services to protect its more than 300 million customers. Above, an Amazon warehouse in Germany. Photo: Uli Deck/DPA/Zuma Press Even Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.64% has its limits. The e-commerce giant bans shoppers from the site for infractions…