Read the news on any particular day and it’s hard not to come to the conclusion that the world is Bad. We can do our best to resist the Badness and maybe even contribute some Goodness, but while all of us (Peter Thiel excluded) will one day die, the Badness will surely live on forever. This, my friend, is where the…
Since the Middle Ages, human beings have purchased various goods—ranging from bare necessities to unimaginable luxuries—using money acquired from wage labor. We routinely report on how the past and present iterations of this system, commonly known as market capitalism, depend on the subjugation of the planet’s most…
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Do crime rates and rap lyrics about crime rates rise and fall in tandem?
Matter, an online magazine with convenient time-to-read counters for the fastidious consumer, published a captivating story this morning that details an incident in L'Aquila, Italy involving seven scientists, a major earthquake, and a subsequent manslaughter case. It is worth all 24 of your minutes.
Combination high-society newsletter and prestigious muckraker The New York Times turned 162 years old today, having published its first edition on September 18, 1851. A few highlights, via the endlessly addictive Times Machine:
I have no idea the provenance for this video, but it appears it took place a few decades ago, somewhere in Australia. Either way, it is by far the classiest arrest one will ever see.
Spoiler alert alert: A spoiler alert follows. It itself may be too revealing. My suggestion is to stop reading this post and start reading Karen Joy Fowler's novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves like now.
Last night, the U.K.'s Channel 4 aired a special called Scientologists at War, which profiled the Church of Scientology's former Inspector General of the Religious Technology Center, Marty Rathbun. Once a spiritual mentor to the likes of Tom Cruise, John Travolta, Kirstie Alley, and Greta Van Susteren, Rathbun left…
Liar and professional bisexual Tila Tequila isn't that much worse than her co-stars (including Hulk Hogan's ex-con son Nick, and The Wire's Tray Chaney) in the direct-to-video shitfest Masterminds, but that's like saying that a lobotomy isn't that much worse than losing an eyeball. It all sucks.
Via the Hairpin comes this inspiring Source story of how one 53-year-old woman's affinity for the Southern rapper Waka Flocka Flame gave her the epiphany and courage to end her marriage. Writes social media communications advisor Dianne D (aka WebDiva423):
I've never dispatched a wrathful bird to destroy a pig. Sometime around 2010, I blocked FarmVille et al. from my Facebook News Feed and never looked back. But last week I stayed up an hour past my bedtime because I thought I had the Dots "hot hand."
For days and days Tamerlan Tsarnaev's corpse sat in the Graham Putnam & Mahoney Funeral Home in Worcester, Massachusetts, not so far away from where police killed the Boston bombing suspect on April 19. Authorities were mostly done examining Tsarnaev's body, of course, but as of last Saturday, four cemeteries in three…
Olivier Assayas' dreamy French flick Something in the Air opens in a high school courtyard "not far from Paris," where dozens of teenagers are milling around, dressed in cropped or shaggily over-long 1970's fashions. The next scene shows them launching themselves in protest on the streets and subsequently fleeing some…
Neutral Milk Hotel, the fuzzy-noisy-sweet-sad troubadours who made all this music you kids listen to today possible, is reuniting for five shows this fall. The last time the core lineup of Jeff Mangum, Scott Spillane, Jeremy Barnes, and Julian Koster performed live together was in 1998.
In New York magazine's review of Admission, David Edelstein says of Paul Rudd, "Everybody doesn't like somebody, but nobody doesn't like Paul Rudd." In Prince Avalanche, Rudd attempts to cast off his universal affability. Rudd's Alvin is characterized by dismissive, elitist, self-conscious, and annoying tics. He says…
"Nora Ephron's Final Act," the New York Times Magazine story about the final days of writer/director Nora Ephron and the cancer that led to them, is as adoring and intimate as you'd expect coming from her accomplished writer son, Jacob Bernstein (he contributes regularly to the Times and his father is Carl Bernstein,…
Something very important is happening in Maryland right now, where many puppies are currently in various stages of being sleep.
From the documentary Alive Inside about "the power music has to 'awaken' minds considered closed," an Alzheimer's patient named Henry is brought to life by the sound of his favorite songs.
It may be before 10am, but it's never too early to have your day made: An ambitious and inventive 9-year-old boy named Caine Monroy, who designed and built his very own cardboard arcade inside his dad's East LA auto parts store, gets his dream of customers realized thanks to filmmaker Nirvan Mullick and a flashmob of…
