I’m gonna tell you guys a secret about chasing your dreams. It’s not the cliche crap, about never giving up, or overcoming adversity. You know all that. If you relate following a goal to The Odyssey, everybody knows about all the monsters you have to slay, battles you have to win, cyclopses you have…

Less than a decade ago, almost six in ten Americans said gay marriage should be illegal. Today that same six in ten believe it should be legal . Support for gay marriage has risen rapidly since 2004. That rapid change -- particularly on what had long been a divisive social issue -- is remarkable in…

„Wenn dich nicht interessiert, was jemand im Netz von sich gibt, dann bist du nicht gemeint.“ schrieb Clay Shirky in seinem Standardwerk des Internetverstehens „Here comes everbody“. Der Satz kann jemanden, der in der Medienwelt vor dem Netz sozialisiert ist, helfen, sein Unbehagen mit einem Kanal…

When I was 10 years old, some moms in my fifth grade class organized an end of the year pool party for our entire grade. It was one of the first times I can recall being sent into a tailspin of anxiety for weeks, because it meant I had to wear a bathing suit in front of my classmates. After many…

Internet lifecycles are weird. Kelly Sue DeConnick, who writes comic titles including Captain Marvel and Avengers Assemble , did an AMA on Reddit three months ago . Somehow one of her comments on that thread made it to Reddit's front page, and what she was saying three months ago remains utterly…

Mit „Hilda“ von Luke Pearson hat sich der Reprodukt Verlag die charmanteste Comicserie der letzten Jahre gesichert. Er steckt sie in sein neues Kinderprogramm, aber da wird sie auch viele erwachsenen Leser finden. Hilfe, dieser Mann existiert nicht in Wikipedia! Ist das Genie oder Wahnsinn? Beides.…

BERLIN — A comment by a male politician about how well a female journalist could “fill out a dirndl” has prompted an outcry from women across Germany and a furious debate over the prevalence of casual sexism in Europe’s largest economy. The unwelcome aside about the woman and the dirndl, the…

Emily Heist Moss is sick and tired of the men who harass her and make her feel unsafe in public spaces. It’s a drizzly Friday in Chicago and I’m leaving a bar with my roommate sometime after midnight. We’re on a quest for tacos and we’re discussing the finer points—Should we get pork or beef? From…

Most of us are familiar with this picture. Captured in Times Square on V-J Day, 1945, it has become one of the most iconic photographs of American history, symbolizing the jubilation and exuberance felt throughout the country at the end of World War II. For a long time, the identity of the pair…

James Deen

Illustration by Tom Gauld Here’s a partial, redacted-for-the-sake-of-my-dignity list of stuff I once aspired to write but never did: a “Mamma Mia!”-esque rock opera called “Bastards of Young,” based on the songs of the Replacements. A sitcom set in Brooklyn that inverts “I Love Lucy,” so that the…

In the West, plot is commonly thought to revolve around conflict : a confrontation between two or more elements, in which one ultimately dominates the other. The standard three- and five-act plot structures–which permeate Western media–have conflict written into their very foundations. A “problem”…

Alex Hern is a technology reporter for the Guardian. He was formerly staff writer at the New Statesman . You should follow Alex on Twitter .

9:06PM BST 01 Jun 2012 Political punditry may not be the hardest game in the journalistic world (that honour falls to restaurant reviewing) – but it is the one that most heavily taxes one’s reserves of judiciousness. We unsung heroes of what I call the Poncetariat strive mightily for nuance and…

Web startups are made out of two things: people and code. The people make the code, and the code makes the people rich. Code is like a poem; it has to follow certain structural requirements, and yet out of that structure can come art. But code is art that does something. It is the assembly of…

«Eine europäische Version von South by Southwest» – Mit diesem Zitat des US-Journalismusprofessors Jeff Jarvis schmückt sich die re:publica in ihrem Pressematerial. Und täuscht sich: In Austin schafften es die Organisatoren der South by Southwest Interactive , mit Gästen wie Al Gore, Napster-Gründer…

I'm a single 32-year-old woman with no kids. I'm going to pause for a second to let that sink in, and to let you think about the images and feelings that spring to mind when you hear that phrase. Pop culture would tell us that I am either: Standing in a leopard print dress at a bar saying extremely…

Steve Jobs didn’t invent Twitter. In a week of relentless tributes, somehow that gives me some relief. Not that I buy the anti-Steve story, that we are imprisoned as artists in the closed architecture of the Apple walled garden. How soul-crushing it is to enjoy things for their beingness. Bah. I…

Amid all the noise and fury over Google’s (s goog) policy of requiring real names (or at least real-sounding names) on its new Google+ network — a policy that Facebook also has, and one we have been critical of in the past — it’s easy to forget that there’s a pretty large web service that doesn’t…

LONDON — For nearly four years they lay piled in a Scotland Yard evidence room, six overstuffed plastic bags gathering dust and little else. Inside was a treasure-trove of evidence: 11,000 pages of handwritten notes listing nearly 4,000 celebrities, politicians, sports stars, police officials and…

Until Thursday, I was CTV’s Quebec City Bureau Chief, based at the National Assembly, mostly covering politics. It’s a fascinating beat – the most interesting provincial legislature in Canada, and the stories coming out of there lately have been huge. The near-implosion of the Parti Quebecois has…

No, this isn’t a post about how women are lying hussies out to ruin the lives of good men with wrongful rape accusations. If that’s what you were expecting, you’re definitely reading the wrong blog (actually, come to think of, stick around; you may learn something). What I’m talking about is this:…

The Flatiron Building (centre), New York, home to Tor Books and Macmillan. Photograph: Allan Baxter/Getty Images O nce in a while, someone will say something that's so self-evidently true, and so unexpected, that you'll spend the rest of your life working through its implications. For me, one such…

Die deutsche Internetszene überschüttet die "ahnungslosen Offliner" regelmäßig mit Spott, Häme und Verachtung. Das darf nicht sein, findet Sascha Lobo - und beginnt mit der Kritik bei sich selbst. Drucken Nutzungsrechte Feedback Kommentieren Genau in diesem Moment läuft etwas auf sehr ungünstige…