Twitter and Tear Gas: How Social Media Changed Protest Forever
On February 2, 2011, a horde of men, armed with long sticks and whips and riding camels and horses, attacked the hundreds of thousands of protesters who packed Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt, parting the crowd as if it were the Red Sea and scattering protesters as they went. The horses’ saddles were a brilliant…
The Final, Terrible Voyage of the Nautilus
On May 3, 2008, a sunny Saturday in Copenhagen, a crowd gathered along a dock to watch a 58-foot submarine be lowered into the water. Part art project, part engineering feat, the submarine weighed 40 tons and had been built by volunteers at minimal cost from donated iron and other parts. The onlookers cheered as…
9 Emmy-Nominated Shows You Can Binge to Escape Reality
Reality is stressful—and despite our best efforts, almost impossible to avoid. Technology, with its whiz-bang push alerts demanding our constant attention, is making us crazy. The news cycle isn't just ceaseless, it's straight-up depressing for people of every imaginable ideology. We’re all exhausted, nervous, and in need of a break. Thankfully, there's television. (Not news.…
After Harvey Weinstein, It's Time to Ask: Can the System Change?
The most telling piece of symbolism from Harvey Weinstein’s appearance at a Phoenix restaurant late last week, where he disguised himself in a blond wig and orange makeup, can be found in the inscription of the black baseball cap he wore, which reportedly read “2:24.” It was a subtle, if self-absorbed, reference to biblical verse…
Red Pilled: My Bizarre Week Using the Alt-Right's Vision of the Internet
Scroll with me here. Somebody named BeatlesBaby makes “a very badass chicken curry.” Look, there’s a nice sepia-tinted pencil drawing of Ned Stark from Game of Thrones. Apparently, “Walking is the new smoking #Health #Fitness,” and some guy’s wife loves her treadmill desk. Read this: A Marine gives his beloved bomb-sniffing dog a hero’s farewell.…
These People Love Brendan Fraser More Than You Love Anything
What if there were a place on the internet where civility reigned? Where anime nazi avatars didn’t descend like locusts on any attempt at rational thought? A place where time stopped in 1999, and the only thing worth living and dying for is Airheads star Brendan Fraser? Friends, such a place exists. In most circles,…
Mr. Know-It-All: Is it OK For Me to Ask Customer Service Reps if They're Robots?
In, say, a customer service chat window, what’s the polite way to ask whether I’m talking to a human or a robot? Back in June 2006, before any of us needed to worry about whether we were talking to a robot in our daily interactions, it was up to contemporary artists to make people feel…
While You Were Offline: Wait, What Is Verrit and Why Are People Mad at It?
Hey, everyone. First off, please click this link in order to see a real seal cuddling with a cute plushy seal. Adorable, right? Yes, it is. Enjoy that, because everything else that happened online last week is pretty grim. Don't blame us. We just work here. Friends, hold your collective breath and jump in: This…
Now 25, DC Vertigo Relaunches With a New—and Old—Mission
For comic book fans, Vertigo Comics (now DC Vertigo) will forever be the line that gave them Sandman, Fables, Y The Last Man, Preacher, and dozens more. When the "for mature readers" imprint launched in 1993, writers like Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison found not just a foothold, but a place to explore their creativity…
Sam Esmail's Homecoming Is Nothing Like Mr. Robot
Homecoming, the latest series with prestige TV bona fides to come to Amazon, is about as subtle and mysterious as a thriller can get. Based on the podcast of same name, it is, on the surface, about a group of soldiers returned from combat and the facility—called Homecoming—that seeks to treat their PTSD. However, as…