Making Sense of Modern Pornography
If you watch pornography, it’s likely that you do so on the Internet. The days when consuming pornography meant buying or borrowing a pinup magazine or watching a film loop in a peepshow booth are long gone, as are those of tracking down adult-video stores in faraway neighborhoods. Most porn is…
The Longest Night
Yellowfin sole are shitty little fish, once they're dead, anyway, and their heads are sliced off and their guts sucked out and there are a few tons of them greasing up the decks. There’s a toxin in their stink, a histamine that gets into the throat and lungs and makes it hard to breathe, made Kenny…
How Snowden Escaped
Read more Exclusive interview: Edward Snowden lauds “courageous” asylum seekers who sheltered him Meet the Canadian who hid Snowden: Human rights lawyer Robert Tibbo helped fugitive Edward Snowden disappear in the slums of Hong Kong The lives of the refugee families who concealed Snowden without…
Making a Murderer in Uganda
COOROM, Uganda — Ask Dominic Ongwen’s relatives what he was like as a boy, and they give the bland answers familiar to any crime reporter probing a suspect’s background. Bright. Kind. Never any trouble. “He loved hunting birds,” remembers Madeline Akot, an aunt. “He would make a hole in a papaya…
Cookie Clicker, the Internet’s most pointlessly addictive game, is also its most subversive
As I write this, I am producing 11.584 billion cookies per second. I employ 150 grandmas to bake my cookies, along with
The Bouvier Affair
The Geneva Freeport, which may be the world’s most valuable storage facility, consists of seven beige warehouses and a large
A Guy Like Me
“Hey, John, can we talk for a second?”I guess I should have known. But I have absolutely no idea what’s coming.I’m in the weight room, hanging out with the guys,
The Mourning Anchor
TABLE OF CONTENTS ORIGINAL LAYOUT What is it the poet said? Like muffled drums, our hearts beat a funeral march to the grave. And so it is that Bryant Gumbel, a man who is nothing if not prepared, keeps a list of his pallbearers. Who has been true? Who has transgressed? Though only 39, he has done…
Standing Up To Sexual Harassment And Assault In LA’s Comedy Community
One night last fall in Los Angeles, two rising comedians met each other for drinks. The situation could’ve been awkward, since Courtney Pauroso, a sketch comic at the Groundlings theater, and Beth Stelling, a stand-up comedian who has performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live and Conan , didn’t actually know…
A Father, a Dying Son, and the Quest to Make the Most Profound Videogame Ever
You find yourself in a hotel room in a strange city, like a character in the first scene of a videogame. Take a second to get oriented, to remember
The Saddest Thing of All
Every day, whenever I had the chance, I’d visit the office at A and R Recording’s 799 7th Avenue facility to take a look at the scheduling “book.”
Why 'Cannibal Cop' Case Could Go Before Supreme Court
Bloomberg Need help? Contact us We've detected unusual activity from your computer network To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot. Why did this happen? Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading.…
On Pandering
This essay, which is featured in our forthcoming Winter issue, was originally given as a lecture during the 2015 Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop.
The Mother of All Questions
I gave a talk on Virginia Woolf a few years ago. During the question-and-answer period that followed it, the subject that seemed to most interest a number of
There will be blood
Editor's note: This story contains graphic descriptions that may be unsuitable for some readers. Last winter, in a small home on the Twin Cities suburban belt, a man stood up against his living room wall and shot himself in the head. His body lay there while the seasons changed to spring and then…
On Tour with Rick Dyer and his Bigfoot through Texas
I. To Believe or Not to Believe Things got weird, as they so often do, in a Walmart parking lot. Amarillo has three such behemoths, and on a bright, noticeably warm February day, seven of us had gathered at the 42nd Avenue store. The group—a small gaggle including some state and local media…
How an Oregon football scandal changed the state's free speech laws forever
Editor’s Note: It is the policy of SBNation.com not to publish the names of minors who come forward with allegations of sexual abuse or rape. It is also the policy not to publish the names of adults who come forward with allegations of sexual abuse or rape unless those individuals are willing to be…
American Horror Story: The Cecil Hotel
It started out as a routine missing persons case. But by the time the internet was done with her, Elisa Lam had become a macabre celebrity, a conspiracy magnet—and the inspiration for a TV series. Josh Dean Oct 27, 2015 · 40 min read Look for the highlights and *footnotes
Blank Space: What Kind of Genius Is Max Martin? - The New Yorker
Among the stranger aspects of recent pop music history is how so many of the biggest hits of the past twenty years—by the Backstreet Boys, ’NSync, and Britney Spears to Katy Perry, Taylor Swift, and the Weeknd—have been co-written by a forty-four-year-old Swede. His real name is Karl Martin…
“I See Everything Through This Tragedy” – The Interrupters - FRONTLINE
February 12, 2012 Author of There Are No Children Here , The Other Side of the River and Never a City So Real , Alex Kotlowitz produced The Interrupters with filmmaker Steve James, and his May 2008 New York Times Magazine article “Blocking the Transmission of Violence” profiled CeaseFire and its…
Pop economics and the rebirth of the cover song
Why are there so many cover versions of hit songs on Spotify , YouTube, and other streaming music services? It’s not just because of searches and the artistic equivalent of SEO , but because there is an economic engine to support them: Every time one of Scofield’s songs is downloaded on iTunes, she…
Crossing Over
Born in El Paso, She Made Herself in Juárez E n route last year from El Paso to Ciudad Juárez, once the most dangerous city on earth, Claudia Delfin crossed the border in fear over what she’d find on the other side, but the real trouble was in coming back. After spending a few jittery hours in…
Inside the secretive, exclusive social networks of Hollywood
“Information has always been currency,” says Shane, who insists on sharing only his first name. He’s an assistant to a television director. Hollywood, where Shane works, is like any other industry town—built on professional connections, on who you know as much as what you know. These days, that…
VNYL Sliding: Why The “Netflix For Vinyl” Service Is Such A Mess - Stereogum
When VNYL launched its Kickstarter campaign on December 22, 2014, the goal was to obtain $10,000 in funding. When the campaign ended 17 days later, on January 9, 2015, the project’s organizers had nearly quadrupled that goal, amassing $36,000 total. That money came in part thanks to countless news…
Behind the greatest Wikipedia hoax ever pulled
Long before the autopsy, London police could guess what killed Yuri Gadyukin. When they pulled his body from the river beneath the Hammersmith Bridge on July 26, 1960, they saw a bullet-sized hole that had ripped apart his skull. Authorities had been searching for the Russian director for weeks. By…
Why it’s time for the FBI to get involved in Gamergate
I need to tell you something terrifying. If someone threatens to murder you on the Internet, the odds are all but certain that law enforcement will do nothing. It doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter how serious the threats are. Help is not coming. I should know, I’ve had 49 death threats…
The Wedding Sting - The Atlantic
Flint Journal / Landov There was a drug deal going down that night in rural Michigan. It was September 4, 1990, just after sunset in the town of Owosso, population 16,360. There, about 90 miles northwest of Detroit, the Shiawassee River meanders past a hamlet of low-rent, brick apartment buildings.…
Blur Lines
D amon Albarn was a strawberry picker. Long before he was the face of Blur — the iconic English band that have just released their first new studio album in 12 years, The Magic Whip , to some of the best reviews of their career — Albarn worked in the fields of his hometown of Colchester. Picking…
The trolley problem
The trolley problem is an ethical and psychological thought experiment. In its most basic formulation, you're the driver of a runaway trolley about to hit and certainly kill five people on the track ahead, but you have the option of switching to a second track at the last minute, killing only a…
The American City Where Sex Offenders Live
I suppose in this case I am the offender. I got things confused and showed up a day early, but my hosts were more than forgiving. They’ve got their own little colony out in the cane fields. Down here in Pahokee, Florida. They call it City of Refuge. As everybody now knows, sex offenders have a rough…
Butchery is in the blood even of the meat-free – Amanda Giracca – Aeon
The skin did not come off like a sweater, as I’d been told it would. I’d looked at how to do it in the classic Joy of Cooking , figuring the directions for squirrel couldn’t be much different from rabbit: hook it through the heels, yank the skin down to its paws. I didn’t have a hook, but even the…
The glass is already broken
“You see this goblet?” asks Achaan Chaa, the Thai meditation master. “For me this glass is already broken. I enjoy it; I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on…
Putin’s Action Hero: How Steven Seagal Became the Kremlin’s Unlikeliest Envoy - BuzzFeed News
The Russian president stunned Obama when he proposed Steven Seagal as an intermediary between Washington and Moscow. BuzzFeed News' Max Seddon and Rosie Gray tell the extraordinary story of the faded action star's dalliances with the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin knew his relationship with the United…
The Man Who Broke the Music Business
One Saturday in 1994, Bennie Lydell Glover, a temporary employee at the PolyGram compact-disk manufacturing plant in Kings Mountain, North Carolina, went to a party at the house of a co-worker. He was angling for a permanent position, and the party was a chance to network with his managers. Late in…
Sally Mann’s Exposure
Sally Mann outside her photo studio on the family farm in Virginia. Credit... Leslye Davis/The New York Times What an artist captures, what a mother knows and what the public sees can be dangerously different things. Sally Mann outside her photo studio on the family farm in Virginia. Credit...…
Steve Albini Interview: Why Foodie Culture Sucks – Flavorwire
Of all the searing appraisals attributed to Steve Albini — musician (Shellac, Big Black), recording engineer (Nirvana, The Breeders, PJ Harvey, the list goes on forever), owner of Chicago’s Electrical Audio studio, thrower of truth bombs , notoriously fair dude — the one that sticks with me the most…
The Insane Story of the Guy Who Killed the Guy Who Killed Lincoln | Washingtonian
Sections Reader Favorites Washington’s Best Apartment Rentals DC Travel Guide Dentists Doctors Financial Advisers Health Experts Home Improvement Experts Industry Leaders Lawyers Mortgage Professionals Pet Care Private Schools Real Estate Agents Restaurants Retirement Communities Wedding Vendors…
Bubble, My Ass: Some Unicorns Might Be Overvalued, But All Dinosaurs Gonna Die. — Medium
Dave McClure Follow Apr 12, 2015 · 4 min read Summary : pundits argue billion-dollar startups are overvalued, but few realize why public company valuations might also be too expensive. Traditional P/E ratios of 15–20+ are likely too optimistic, relative to how long the future cash flows and…
Innovation Isn’t Making World Equal - NYTimes.com
Letter From America When I lived in India, people often told me, “Send your man.” Medical test ready for pick up? Send your man. Need some onions last minute from the grocer? Send your man. I had no man. But this I could not confess. Any self-respecting man, it seemed, had a man. Sometimes these men…
Inside the Kremlin’s hall of mirrors | Peter Pomerantsev | News | The Guardian
Illustration: Daniel Haskett T he thing that Margo Gontar found easiest to deal with were the dead children. They were all over her computer screens – on news sites and social media – next to headlines that blamed the deaths on Ukrainian fascist gangs trained by Nato. It was early 2014, Crimea had…