‘It Was One Problem After Another’: How Woodstock 50 Fell Apart
Woodstock 50 had nearly every resource a festival could ask for: a storied brand name, financial backing from a multinational communications company, and agents eager to sign up their artists for sizable paychecks. But it turned into a slow-moving train wreck. Where did it all go wrong?
How The Killing Of An Abusive Father By His Daughters Fuelled Russia’s Culture Wars
News of the killing of three teenage sisters quickly spread across Russia, and in the months that followed, the country was divided over what drove the sisters to kill their own father. It inspired a campaign for change – and a backlash from the patriarchy.
The State Of Qatar’s Hack Of Democracies: A Global Cyber-Crime Operation
In one of the largest state-sponsored computer hacks ever detected, Qatar’s proxies cyberattacked more than 1,400 high-status and ordinary citizens who were exercising their free-speech rights in democracies across North America, the Middle East, Asia and Europe, according to U.S. court filings.
The Secret Rules Of The Internet
Many US-based companies continue to consign their moderators to the margins, shipping their platforms’ digital waste to “special economic zones” in the Global South. The murky history of moderation, and how it’s shaping the future of free speech.
The Fukushima Surf Revival
“If Fukushima was a book, the cover would be about radiation. But the contents would be totally different. Of course, people never read the contents.” How surfing was revived alongside a community in the wake of a tsunami and nuclear disaster.
The Hollywood Con Queen
She tormented studio executives, actors, makeup artists, security guys, photographers, screenwriters, athletes, even bobsledders and scuba divers for years—until corporate investigator Nicoletta Kotsianas was put on the case.
How Instagram Killed The It Girl
In a world of constant self-surveillance and curation, we may never see the Parises, the Nicoles, the Taras in the way we once did. The It Girl exists within the moral grey areas of life, but with the existence of social media, such grey areas no longer exist for her to live in – everything is now black and white, good or bad.
What Will An Ice-Free Arctic Look Like?
Several years in the past decade have reached new lows for summer sea ice extent, raising questions about what will happen in this new Arctic as the ice declines and retreats. How will the ecosystem respond? Can treaties keep fishing in the central Arctic in check?
The Billion-Dollar Ponzi Scheme That Hooked Warren Buffett And The U.S. Treasury
Jeff Carpoff was a good mechanic but struggled as a businessman. His machine—a solar generator on wheels—was a sun-fueled alternative. He called it the Solar Eclipse. His invention, he thought, was “crazy, harebrained.” But investors saw the makings of a clean-energy revolution.
These Pics Are Composed Of As Many Pixels As There Are Animals Still Alive In These Species
A brilliant 2008 campaign by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has been resurfacing. The campaign, called WWF Japan – Population by pixel, was created by the agency Hakuhodo C&D / Tokyo. Inspired by their work, Imgurian JJSmooth44 made a follow-up to their project and it’s just as powerful as the original.
How Many Murders Can A Police Informer Get Away With?
Northern Irish paramilitary Gary Haggarty pleaded guilty to hundreds of violent crimes, including many killings – while working for the British state. They included five murders; five attempted murders; one count of aiding and abetting murder.
The Secret History Of Page Six
For more than four decades, Page Six has ruled the world of gossip about the famous and powerful. In an era when celebrities control the narrative and “power” is a dirty word, can it survive?
My Restaurant Was My Life For 20 Years. Does The World Need It Anymore?
Forced to shutter Prune, Gabrielle Hamilton has been revisiting her original dreams for it — and wondering if there will still be a place for it in the New York of the future.
Death On Demand: Has Euthanasia Gone Too Far?
Countries around the world are making it easier to choose the time and manner of your death. As the world’s pioneer, the Netherlands has also discovered that although legalizing euthanasia might resolve one ethical conundrum, it opens a can of others – most importantly, where the limits of the practice should be drawn.
We Asked An AI To Write A Column For Us. The Results Were Wild
We’ve been testing weekly short fiction pieces scribed by GPT-2, a text-generating artificial intelligence algorithm originally built by OpenAI. We give the algorithm a sentence from a real article, and the algorithm iteratively generates what it thinks the next word should be.
Coming Out Of The Shadows: What It Means To Be French And Chinese
France is home to large Vietnamese and Cambodian communities who arrived in the country in great numbers following the wars in the former French colonies in the 1970s. People of Chinese descent have long faced prejudice and violence in France. But today a new generation is staking out its rightful place in society.
The Confessions Of Marcus Hutchins, The Hacker Who Saved The Internet
At 22, he saved the internet from what was the worst cyberattack in history: a piece of malware called WannaCry. It was Hutchins who had found and triggered the secret kill switch contained in its code, neutering WannaCry’s global threat immediately. Then he was arrested by the FBI.
This Land Is No Longer Your Land
The fight over preserving public land during the Trump era is taking a strange, angry twist in Montana’s Crazy Mountains. Both sides are armed.
The End Of Babies
Fertility rates have been dropping precipitously around the world for decades — in middle-income countries, in some low-income countries, but perhaps most markedly, in rich ones. Something is stopping us from creating the families we claim to desire. But what?
The Day The Pirates Came
For Sudeep Choudhury, work on merchant ships promised adventure and a better life. But a voyage on an oil tanker in West Africa, in dangerous seas far from home, would turn the young graduate’s life upside down. His fate would come to depend on a band of drug-fuelled jungle pirates – and the whims of a mysterious figure called The King.
Children of Scientology: Life After Growing Up In An Alleged Cult
For many raised in the church, escape presents a singular problem. “They have an identity to go back to,” says one former Scientologist. “We’re trying to discover our identity in a vacuum.”