Politics isn’t everything. This is obvious enough, but our confusing, embattled moment is so consumed with talk of politics, that it’s tempting to believe that life is hardly more than right vs. left. However, to recognize that the world is more than the sum of our interests and fears is perhaps to…

photographed in london for AGEIST by Kalpesh Lathigra tricia cusden, 68, london The story of how a semi-retired 65-year-old became a celebrated digital entrepreneur begins not in a startup incubator, or even the light-bulb moment that turned frustration into a winning business idea, but in a…

In the wake of global events like Brexit and Donald Trump’s victory, it’s hard for a lot of people to feel happy right now. And according to psychology, we shouldn’t try to fight it. A growing body of research suggests that striving for happiness as an end in itself can be self-defeating . In fact,…

How you “think” it goes down…but it doesn’t | Photo Credit: Shutterstock “So this is just a formality for you guys, right?” The young couple stares slack-jawed at my friend sitting across the room. They adjust uneasily in their seats and look to one another trying to decipher what type of trick…

It was a surprisingly easy decision to make: No posting kid photos on social media. My wife and I made this decision not because, like everyone, we’ve been bored to death by endless baby photos from friends. Not because I’m worried about anyone’s safety (though as a writer I’ve had a few creepy…

It was nearly dark when our neighbor pulled into our driveway with a brace-yourself look in his eye. “He’s in rough shape,” he warned, as he got out of his pickup and walked back to open the trailer. “Rougher than I thought.” I took a look at the donkey huddled inside, then grabbed my phone to call…

To many, the 2016 campaign for the US presidency has been dispiriting and miserable, featuring the two most unpopular candidates in history. Thanks to the fascistic buffoonery of Donald Trump, it has been characterised by a tone that has swung wildly from facetious to obnoxious to disgraceful and…

Sean Rad knew Tinder had a problem when the bogus abuse reports started piling up. The wildly popular dating app has long allowed users to file reports against people who harass them or otherwise violate the app’s community guidelines. But as the company’s 30-year-old CEO would soon learn, some of…

Image via YouTube/Alliance for Climate Education One of the main fears an impending Trump presidency has spawned (alongside deportation threats and diminishing civil rights) is that the gradual environmental progress we’ve made as a country could be swept away practically overnight. Luckily, the…

The photo represents Hillary Clinton’s first appearance since her concession speech to Donald Trump.Photograph: Facebook An upstate New York woman, hoping to take her mind off of the US election results with a hike through the woods of Westchester County, bumped into another woman with a presumably…

The American vegan movement was always its own worst enemy. Members of the movement made their first impressions bellowing into bullhorns, desperate to make a difference by willing it with a loud enough voice. But actual engagement was a weakness as people tended to ignore the passionate subculture…

This post originally appeared on Wait But Why. Say hi to Lucy. WaitButWhy.com Lucy is part of Generation Y, the generation born between the late 1970s and the mid 1990s. She’s also part of a yuppie culture that makes up a large portion of Gen Y. I have a term for yuppies in the Gen Y age group—I…

Richard Burbridge Billy Bob Thornton is angry as hell. Here he is, a goddamn creative genius (have you seen season one of Fargo? And don't pretend you're not fired up for Bad Santa 2), but what he really wants to do is direct. He's fucking great at it (ever heard of a little thing called Sling…

Donald Trump’s head of strategy, Steve Bannon, backstage during a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, on 1 November.Photograph: Carlo Allegri/Reuters For several years now, I’ve had a dark and fairly unusual hobby. When I’m alone and bored and the mood strikes me, I’ll open up my laptop and…

Leonard Cohen at home in Los Angeles in September, 2016. Photograph by Graeme Mitchell for The New Yorker When Leonard Cohen was twenty-five, he was living in London, sitting in cold rooms writing sad poems. He got by on a three-thousand-dollar grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. This was…

The star of A United Kingdom talks frankly and openly about the importance of faith in life and work. A mma Asante’s A United Kingdom dramatises a historically significant love story between a white woman and a black man. She was Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), an English insurance clerk. He was…

Share this Share this... Facebook On the morning that news of Brexit broke, my husband woke me up at 6am saying: ‘They fucking did it.’ It seems somewhat melodramatic now, but I burst into tears and started anxiously scrolling through my phone, as if new information could prove him wrong. Across…

It is a Sunday afternoon in a provincial town in France. Two men meet at a cafe. One of them, Berenger, is half-drunk. He is being berated by his companion, Jean. All of the sudden, they hear a great noise. When they and other townspeople crane their necks to figure out what’s going on, they see a…

On this day four years ago, Barack Obama had just scored a comfortable electoral vote victory (332 to 206) over Mitt Romney. Reflecting on what felt like a slightly bonkers election cycle at the time, I put on my speculative hat as a futurist and penned a list of the 10 things that might get even…

By Vera Anderson/WireImage. Sorkin Girls, Well the world changed late last night in a way I couldn’t protect us from. That’s a terrible feeling for a father. I won’t sugarcoat it—this is truly horrible. It’s hardly the first time my candidate didn’t win (in fact it’s the sixth time) but it is the…

The electorate has, in its plurality, decided to live in Trump’s world. Source Photograph by Joe Raedle / Getty The election of Donald Trump to the Presidency is nothing less than a tragedy for the American republic, a tragedy for the Constitution, and a triumph for the forces, at home and abroad,…

Valerie Aurora runs a San Francisco-based firm that holds training sessions on how to end workplace sexism. ‘It is the exact opposite of Lean In.’Photograph: Barry J Holmes for the Observer I t’s a Friday afternoon at a tech startup in downtown San Francisco, and Valerie Aurora is arming men with…

Chelsea Beck “Apocalypse” seems like a bit much. I thought that last fall when Vanity Fair titled Nancy Jo Sales’s article on dating apps “ Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse ’” and I thought it again this month when Hinge, another dating app, advertised its relaunch with a site called…

Sherry Zheng was cleaning up from dinner, ready to toss out the remaining fried rice, when she grabbed her phone from the counter to text her husband, Chris. He was upstairs bathing their three children. “Should I save you the leftovers?” Her phone vibrated: “Sure.” Ms. Zheng, a 37-year-old…

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Michelle McNamara, a 46-year-old true-crime writer, died chasing a serial killer. The Golden State Killer , a name she coined while working on a book about him, raped and murdered dozens of victims in the 1970s and ’80s and remains at large. After years of investigative…

Credit Damon Winter/The New York Times By Why does David Letterman have a beard? To put it more precisely: Why did Mr. Letterman, after stepping down from CBS’s “Late Show” and a 33-year career in late-night television and all but disappearing from public life, spend the past year and a half…

Earlier this month, Patagonia announced the arrival of its new vice president of marketing Cory Bayers. A longtime Lululemon brand vet–most recently serving as its VP of global brand creative–and one-time global marketing manager at Helly Hansen, Bayers has worked with active and outdoor brands for…

BENTONVILLE, Ark. — A couple of years ago, Walmart, which once built its entire branding around a big yellow smiley face, was creating more than its share of frowns. Shoppers were fed up. They complained of dirty bathrooms, empty shelves, endless checkout lines and impossible-to-find employees. Only…

For record labels, technological change has created more questions than answers. Are they even relevant anymore? Which tech trends and tools matter for their bottom line, and which ones are just "hype"? Should labels' historical roles stay the same in the wake of disruption, or should these roles…

I n the age of online dating there are more romantic options than there are fish in the, well, you know. On the appropriately named site Plenty of Fish, for instance, you can pore over profiles of hundreds or thousands of potential mates before deciding which ones to contact. Such unfettered choice…

Adult life is full of commitments: bills to pay, family to see and a job you probably have to show up for. But in a world where many of us complain of being overscheduled, there’s something uniquely depressing about having no control over the time once quaintly called “personal” and “free.” A recent…

Chance the Rapper performing in New York. Photo by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images for vitaminwater Chance the Rapper is the most talented rapper of his generation and a pioneer in the music industry. His latest album, "Coloring Book," released in May, is one of the best-reviewed albums of the year and…

How We Need to Keep Growing Up The business of growing up is something we normally think comes to a close when we get to 16 or so – and finally turn into those fully finished products: adults. Up until then, our growth is the subject of quite a lot of collective fascination. Twentieth-century…

“There’s always someone worse off than yourself.” Whenever I hear that, I wonder who stands at the end of the chain of misfortune, the person whose life is worst of all. In a parish where I once worked, I met him. He was a young man whom I’ll call Dean, with schizophrenia, a condition so…

Animation by Slate . Photo by Thinkstock. On Slate ’s watch, professional writing has changed out of cocktail attire into sweatpants—or, more precisely, it’s embraced the freedom to wear evening gowns, clubwear, athleisure, business casual, or nothing at all. That doesn’t mean the subjects being…

Half an hour late, and just ahead of his minder—he was always a step ahead of his ponderous old minder—Abraham Chabon sauntered into the room where the designer Virgil Abloh was giving a private preview of Off-White's collection for spring-summer 2017 to a small group of reporters, editorial…

On Feeling Depressed We’re not talking about the extreme, most paralysing, regions of despair – where external medical help is vital. Our target is rather the times when we feel – as indicated by Henry David Thoreau’s phrase – mired in moods of ‘quiet desperation’: a large, grey hinterland in which…

Design + Mental Health And how the design industry can tackle mental health Words by Emily Gosling Published on September 12th, 2016 Creativity and Depression, illustration by George Douglas Notions of the “tortured artist” are well-worn: who can forget Van Gogh’s severed ear; poor Sylvia Plath’s…

The Age of the Instagram Eyebrow Image credit: Darren Garrett You can probably tell a woman’s generation by the thickness of her eyebrows. I was a teen in the 90s, when a uniformly tweezed, slender arch was the norm—and when you pluck that much you just aren’t going to get it back. Now my natural…

After years of posting indiscriminately to social media, I was suddenly faced with uncomfortable questions about what will happen to all of it when I die. BuzzFeed News A few weeks ago, I went to my own funeral. Or at least a simulation of my own funeral. I was sitting in an auditorium, alone except…