There Is No 'Alt-Left,' No Matter What Trump Says
Hours after a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, organized by white nationalists, turned deadly, President Donald Trump blamed "many sides" for the violence that transpired. Three days later, at an impromptu press conference at Trump Tower, the president doubled down on this message, condemning groups "on both sides" of the fighting. “What about the alt-left that…
While You Were Offline: Fox News Is Officially No Longer ‘Fair and Balanced.’ Wait…
It was a long, intense week. America had two shootings, the UK had a terrible fire in an apartment building that (as of this writing) killed 30 people, and the world lost actor Adam West, prompting Los Angeles to fire up the Bat-signal in tribute. And that's just the beginning. Curious what you might have…
A ‘Cancer Cure’ Video Skewered Bad Science—and Went Viral Itself
You’ve seen this type of video in your News Feed countless times: generically peppy music, chunky-letter captions, and claims of a breakthrough medical discovery that, if you bother to watch closely, sound just a bit off. The latest entrant in the genre, though, comes with a twist. Rather than spread junk science, it uses those…
The Problem With the 'Rainbow-Washing' of LGBTQ+ Pride
Click:12 watt led street light price It happens every June like clockwork: the rainbows come out. (Pun intended.) Suddenly major metropolitan storefronts are filled with multi-colored displays and clothes emblazoned with "Love Is Love" and other slogans of the LGTBQ+ rights movement. It seems as though even your cable provider wants to know you should…
Using Phones as Phones in the Digital Age
I picked up Audrey, my 12-year-old daughter, from music camp last summer. Like every other kid in the known world, the first thing she did after saying “I missed you” was ask if I brought her phone. She’d had fun, but it had been a long two weeks. “It was a lot of music,” she…
During the Holiday Season, Home Is Where The Games Are
Tucked away in my mother's house, somewhere in the room that used to be mine, is a Nintendo GameCube that's not mine. My own GameCube is God-knows-where—languishing on some GameStop warehouse shelf, or in someone's garage, buried beneath an electric drill after an impulsive used-game purchase in the late 2000s. But this other GameCube, the…
A VR Movie Set in Space Just Landed a 7-Figure Deal at Sundance. Yes, You Read That Right
Every year the biggest news out of the Sundance Film Festival is always the hefty sums handed over to independent filmmakers for their passion projects. From Fox Searchlight dropping $1 million for future Oscar nominee Beasts of the Southern Wild in 2012 to Amazon Studios’ massive $12 million buy of The Big Sick at last…
Canceling Roseanne Wasn't About Conviction—It Was About Capital
It happened so fast you almost could have missed it. Over the course of two days earlier this week, Roseanne Barr fired off a series of racist (and anti-Semitic, and otherwise conspiracy-minded) tweets, prompting left-wing outrage and calls to #BoycottABC and extreme right-wing joy. Then, amidst high-profile collaborators like Wanda Sykes announcing they’d be leaving…
Behind the Mask With Yoko Taro, Videogames' Most Interesting Designer
Nier: Automata was always going to be an unusual game. For many fans, it was an alchemic combination made in heaven: visionary game director Yoko Taro, known for his enthralling but often technically broken games, and the production company of Platinum Games, known for slick, stylish action games, a partner capable of making Taro's vision…
The Inevitable Agony of Olympic Spoilers
Going into the snowboarding finals of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Red Gerard’s chances of nabbing a medal looked bleak. He’d bumbled his first two runs, placing him second-to-last amongst the 12 snowboarders competing in slopestyle. But Gerard’s final performance was breathtaking—a series of gravity-defying jumps that launched him to the top of the scoreboard,…