When America met Leo Fitzpatrick in the 1995 cult classic Kids, he was playing the adolescent prince of downtown, swinging his shoulders across the Lower East Side in oversized clothes and yelling taunting curses through the streets. Today, at 36, the actor who was discovered when photographer and director Larry Clark saw him skateboarding in Washington Square Park — he was the loudest, angriest kid Clark had ever seen — still identifies as a sort of misfit. As a co-owner of the teeny Lower East Side gallery Home Alone 2 with the artist Nate Lowman, he is trying to create a DIY antidote to what he sees as the snooty attitude dominating the New York art scene.

On the opposite end of the subtlety spectrum, you've got tracking shots like the ones in the X-Files episode "Triangle," one of the most ambitiously directed (by creator Chris Carter) episodes of series TV I've ever watched. The plot unfolded, à la True Detective, in two different time frames: 1939 and 1998. Carter, who also wrote the episode, staged the past- and present-tense versions of his heroes Scully and Mulder so that they seemed to be eerily in sync, at times even passing each other like ghosts in the same haunted house. As I wrote at the time, "The greatest minute of TV this year is the scene where Mulder runs down a hallway of the ocean liner with the 1939 Scully in tow while in 1998, the real Scully walks down the same hallway looking for Mulder. Thanks to the wonders of split-screen — i.e., two square images placed side-by-side — Mulder and the 1939 Scully turn a corner at the same time that our Scully turns it. The two parties seem to pass each other...In a single stunning image, Carter collapses time, space and identity — and makes a funny joke, too. It's the shot of the year." There's nothing in the True Detective shot that's as conceptually rich as what Carter did in "Triangle," but the showiness of it is very effective in its own right, because it departs from the meticulous puzzle-piece construction of the rest of the initial four episodes.

"Also Security ham wer keine, brauch ma a net. Hier war no nie Stress. Außadem ham wa noch zwai Männer hia, die sin zwar grad Bier holn, aba die kommn glai wieda." Man kann sich gar nicht vorstellen, wie beruhigt wir waren. Mann waren wir beruhigt. Und als uns Mike kurz vor dem Auftritt auch noch erklärte, daß seine Kumpels angekündigt hätten, Savas zu verprügeln, falls er LMS spielen würde, da stieg der Chill-Faktor ins unermessliche. Auf der Bühne dann war hardcore. Durch das völlige Fehlen irgendeiner ordnenden Hand stand ungefähr ein Viertel des Publikums auf der Bühne. Nach 3 Tracks hatten Savas und Jack noch ungefähr einen Quadratmeter Platz, in dem sie sich bewegen konnten. Im Publikum drängten sich ebenfalls die Menschen. Die Veranstalter hatten wohl irgendwann beschlossen, die Kasse zuzumachen, dafür aber die Türen auf. Das heißt, wer später kam, war umsonst drin und da waren einige, die drin waren. Später dann mußte ich nochmal raus zum Auto. Die Stresser waren weg, dafür standen dort jetzt 2 Mädchen, die wohl irgendwie zum Jugendhaus gehörten. "Wir passen auf euer Auto auf. Die wollten das nämlich knacken und die Anlage rausholen. Wir haben das mitgekriegt und deshalb stehn wir jetzt hier." Ich mußte lachen. Was für eine verrückte Stadt. Unser 50 Mark Autoradio klauen. Schweinfurt ich liebe Dich.

Vielleicht ist der Fall von Mamoru Samuragochi so zu erklären, des angeblich gehörlosen Komponisten, der als "japanischer Beethoven" berühmt wurde und der am Mittwoch einräumen musste, dass er gar nicht selbst komponiert hat. Am Donnerstag hieß es dann, er sei wahrscheinlich nicht einmal taub. Bis dahin war der 50-jährige Samuragochi in Japan ein Star. Von seiner "Hiroshima-Sinfonie", mit der er die Opfer des Atombombenangriffs von 1945 ehren wollte, hat er mehr als 100 000 CDs verkauft; berühmt geworden war Samuragochi mit Filmmusik, auch Videospiele wie Resident Evil hat er mit klassischer Musik vertont. Das Wunder des tauben Komponisten brach mit einer dürren Pressemitteilung seines Anwalts zusammen. Samuragochi gebe bekannt, dass er seine Musik nicht selbst geschrieben habe. Seit fast 20 Jahren habe er einen namenlosen Ghost-Komponisten dafür bezahlt, "weil mein Gehör immer schlechter wurde". Dieser habe bei etwa der Hälfte seiner Werke mitkomponiert, ließ er erklären. Selber habe er jedoch "die Ideen" geliefert. Zunächst ließ Samuragochis Anwalt auch noch verlauten, der Ghost-Komponist wolle unerkannt bleiben. Seine "persönlichen Umstände" ließen es nicht zu, dass er sich äußere. Doch am Donnerstag zerstörte der Mann im Schatten in einer gut einstündigen Pressekonferenz dann endgültig den Mythos von "Japans Beethoven": Er habe entgegen Samuragochis Angaben in den vergangenen 18 Jahren alle Stücke allein geschrieben, erzählte der Teilzeit-Musiklehrer Takashi Niigaki, auch die hochgelobte Hiroshima-Sinfonie. Und mehr noch: "Vom ersten Tag an bis heute hatte ich nie das Gefühl, dass er taub ist."

BBSs existed in a world that had yet to be soiled by smartphones and Facebook and Instagram; there was no Google, and indeed no World Wide Web at all. Up until 1992, the Internet was a thing primarily of text, and BBSs in many ways mimicked that. To get "online" was to sit down at your computer, open up an application called a "terminal program", pull up your carefully hoarded list of BBS phone numbers, and start dialing. Inevitably, most would be busy and you'd have to wait, but eventually you'd be treated to the sweet sound of ringing through your modem's speaker, followed by the electronic beeping and scratching of a modem handshake.

Street Fighter 2 is one of the game industry's biggest success stories, but its history is often told secondhand, through official statements and loosely translated interviews. In an effort to remedy that, over the past year we tracked down more than 20 former Capcom employees and business partners and asked them to tell it in their own words. They tell a story of extreme personalities coming together to make a game, and the egos, cultural differences, glitches, rivalries, lawsuits and police raids that followed.

Grimm started working as an F.B.I. agent in 1995. His “most notable case,” as he described it to Van Susteren, was called Wooden Nickel, and it began in 2002. Working out of a corner office in the World Financial Center, Grimm adopted the persona of Michael Garibaldi—nicknamed Mikey Suits, for his impeccable dress—a Mob-connected stock and currency trader who ran a hedge fund called Centurion Consulting. The main investigation concerned a company that was suspected of illegally manipulating currency markets. Some months into the case, the F.B.I. added a further target: Albert Santoro, a thirty-one-year-old lawyer from Queens, who had recently come into contact with a man named Josef von Habsburg, one of the Bureau’s more colorful—and complicated—paid informants.

Schmitt beweist in seinem Antrag, dass Politik immer da ist, wo auch Noten sind. Oder, um es in Schmitt'schen Original-Worten wiederzugeben: "Heißt, bei Liedern, Text mit Musik beträgt der politische Anteil allein durch die Musik immer mindestens 50 Prozent." - "Immer" und "mindestens" - schon für diese Offenbarung sollte die Musikwelt Schmitt dankbar sein. Schmitt also will der Linken das Singen der Internationalen verbie... nein, das wäre zu profan. Lesen wir Schmitt besser wieder im Original: Aussetzung der akustischen oder gesanglich musikalischen Intonierung des Liedes 'Die Internationale' innerhalb der Partei DIE LINKE, bis ein Ergebnis über die zukünftige Anwendung und Verwendung vorliegt, da die gesangliche musikalische Intonierung des Liedes 'Die Internationale' zwar kämpferisch, aber auch militaristisch, gewalt- und kriegsverherrlichend ist, ein Symbol des Kapitalismus darstellt und Militarismus ein Element des rechten politischen Spektrums ist, genauso wie die deutsche Nationalhymne." Schmitt sieht auch die Musikrichtung Techno in gleicher Traditionslinie, "da dort die monotone technologische Zählweise 01 01 01 01 ... ist, woraus sich ein monotoner Musikrhythmus ergibt, der somit auch eine moderne Interpretationsform des Militarismus ist." Daraus erklärten sich, sagt Schmitt, "auch die Besucher von sogenannten Techno-Loveparades, die vorwiegend aus dem konservativen bis rechtspolitischen Spektrum kommen".

Als Rattenkönig werden mehrere an den Schwänzen verknotete oder verklebte Ratten bezeichnet. Dieses seltene Phänomen soll vor allem unter Hausratten auftreten. Als Ursache für die Entstehung geben manche Quellen an, dass sich die Schwänze einer ganzen Anzahl von Tieren verknoten und die Tiere anschließend durch Blut, Schmutz und Exkremente zusätzlich an Beinen und Flanken verkleben. In der Folge sollen die Tiere untrennbar an den Schwänzen verwachsen, die vielfach gebrochen sind.

Hard-hitting and darkly comic music documentary-turned-social commentary following Nicholas Kidd, a young, ordinary guy who shoots to fame overnight when his mock-rap YouTube video goes viral. As he is invited onto talk shows, to awards ceremonies, and even to partake in a charity poetry reading, Kidd illustrates the absurdity of his fame and how disturbingly surreal it is that the joke has got so out of hand. But slowly the tables turn and, lured by sex, drugs and wild partying, we watch Kidd get swept up in the world he started out mocking.

The month of April, 2013, marked the beginning of one of the biggest financial leaks in history. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists had just released the first stories from a global collaborative project into the world of offshore money. The Tax Justice Network, an advocacy group, claims that a large part of the world’s wealth is tied up in the secret area of offshore. For over two years, journalists from more than 50 countries have worked together to shed light on this issue.

Songwriting for "Every Breath You Take" is credited 100% to Sting (credit by his birth name, Gordon Sumner). Sting took all the credit despite the fact that both fellow Police members Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers contributed to the song (drums and guitar riff, respectively). Andy Summers came up with the song's guitar riff after a particularly bitter argument with Sting. Sting eventually conceded and told Andy "go and make it your own". When Andy came back with an early formation of the now-famous guitar lick, the band knew they had a hit on their hands. Unfortunately, Andy Summers never pushed for his share of the song's credit. As the song's sole composer, Sting earns the vast majority of royalties when the song is played on the radio, sampled or included in something like a commercial or a movie. This fact alone should have been enough to make Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland furious in the early to mid 80s. But at some point they probably stopped losing sleep over their loss. Then came Puff Daddy. Unfortunately for Diddy, no one from Bad Boy Records (Diddy's label) thought to secure Sting's permission to sample the 1983 pop song for the updated 1997 remix. Had Diddy asked permission first, he likely would have been required to hand over 25% of I'll Be Missing You's publishing royalties to Sting. By forgetting to ask permission before the song was released, Sting was able to demand and receive 100% of the remix's publishing royalties.

When the head of Fox News moved to Garrison, New York, he bougt a little newspaper and tried to instill his own brand of American values. Guess what happened next?

Ozzie und Daniel Silna waren Besitzer eines erfolglosen Teams einer längst untergegangenen Liga. Dann kamen sie auf den cleversten Vertrag der amerikanischen Sporthistorie. Nun will die NBA sie aus dem Deal herauskaufen.

But Moore’s Law is not dead; it is just evolving, according to more optimistic scientists and engineers. Their contention is that it will be possible to create circuits that are closer to the scale of individual molecules by using a new class of nanomaterials — metals, ceramics, polymeric or composite materials that can be organized from the “bottom up,” rather than the top down. For instance, semiconductor designers are developing chemical processes that can make it possible to “self assemble” circuits by causing the materials to form patterns of ultrathin wires on a semiconductor wafer. Combining these patterns of nanowires with conventional chip-making techniques, the scientists believe, will lead to a new class of computer chips, keeping Moore’s Law alive while reducing the cost of making chips in the future.

Die Ministerpräsidenten der CDU/CSU-regierten Länder drängten den damaligen sozialdemokratischen Bundeskanzler Helmut Schmidt, mehrere hundert Millionen für die Verkabelung von zwölf deutschen Städten auszugeben; was angesichts der damals beschränkten Frequenzen im Äther (es gab noch keine Satelliten und noch keine Digitalisierung) die technische Voraussetzung für die Programmvermehrung und damit für die Kommerzialisierung des Fernsehens war. (Jedoch keineswegs eine rechtliche Notwendigkeit, wie fälschlicherweise immer behauptet wurde.) Nach der „geistig moralischen“ Wende mit Helmut Kohl, ab September 1982, wurden dann Milliarden (von 10 Milliarden war die Rede) an öffentlichen Geldern für die Verkabelung und für die Propaganda zugunsten der Kommerzialisierung des Fernsehens freigegeben und zugleich – auch unter dem massiven Druck der privaten Printmedien – die politischen Entscheidungen getroffen, die wirkmächtige öffentliche Meinungsbildung über das Fernsehen dem (Werbe-)Markt zu überlassen. Woran schon Konrad Adenauer am Bundesverfassungsgericht scheiterte, nämlich ein „Adenauer-Fernsehen“ einzuführen, hat dann – mit der Vermehrung der Übertragungsmöglichkeiten über Kabel – Leo Kirch zusammen mit seinem Freund Helmut Kohl durchgesetzt: Die Hofberichterstattung für die CDU im Fernsehen. (Etwa mit den devoten Interviews „Zur Sache Kanzler“.)

In this talk, artist Trevor Paglen discusses his work attempting to “see” the various aspects of the secret state. In examples ranging from tracking spy satellites to foraging through the bureaucratic refuse of CIA front companies, Paglen will discuss methods used to identify and exploit structural contradictions in classified programs which render them visible, and comment on the aesthetics and politics of attempting to “see” secrecy.

A team of physicists has provided some of the clearest evidence yet that our Universe could be just one big projection. In 1997, theoretical physicist Juan Maldacena proposed¹ that an audacious model of the Universe in which gravity arises from infinitesimally thin, vibrating strings could be reinterpreted in terms of well-established physics. The mathematically intricate world of strings, which exist in nine dimensions of space plus one of time, would be merely a hologram: the real action would play out in a simpler, flatter cosmos where there is no gravity.

"The Anarchist Cookbook should go quietly and immediately out of print,” its author William Powell told NBC news this week. “It is no longer responsible or defensible to keep it in print.” The book, first published in 1971 contains, among other things, instructions for bombmaking, sabotaging communications devices and manufacturing illegal drugs – though it also includes urban myths and, according to many, it is full of errors. It’s one thing a cookbook getting the recipe for scones wrong; something else when the “recipe” is for TNT.

“We want to become pretty without spending all the money,” said Na. “We know that these methods aren’t approved of, but lots of our peers do it. Girls [in our all-girls school] like girls who look pretty.” At times, the “patients” are as young as 12 or 13. Sitting in their apartments, the pair explained that every day they spend some time wearing eccentric glasses that forced their eyes to stay open without blinking. The goal: a cheap version of double-eyelid surgery, which aims to give Asians a... “Hollywood look.” At least, that’s what sellers told them. A pair sells on the web for anywhere from $5 to $20. But fads come and go quickly in South Korea, and this duo opines that even the strange-looking specs are becoming old news. “Elementary school kids wear them,” one girl chimed in dismissively. They’ve become “lame,” she said — not because of their outcome, but because of this growing demand from ever-younger fashionistas.

Houser hasn't given a long interview to anyone but me, and that's baffling, because what he has to say is sincere, compelling and complex. He can be both insightful and rebellious, embracing different cultures and at the same time full of a healthy paranoia in a kind of punk-rock, hip-hop sort of way. He is an astute student of human nature and, as president of Rockstar Games, a tough negotiator when contracts come up for renewal with parent company Take-Two Interactive. Partly because of his reputation as a loner and recluse, everyone from journalists who can't get interviews to a handful of disgruntled former employees has labeled Houser crazy. He is not. He can be intensely private, even avoiding a GTA voice actor when he comes in to record his voice-over work. Houser is a workaholic and he's stubborn, clearly used to getting his way when he knows he's right, but he's definitely not crazy. In fact, there's something about Sam Houser that is close to genius. If Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto is the Steven Spielberg of video games, Houser is the Martin Scorsese.

In their zeal to tout their faith in the public square, conservatives in Oklahoma may have unwittingly opened the door to a wide range of religious groups, including Satanists who are seeking to put their own statue next to a Ten Commandments monument outside the statehouse. "We believe that all monuments should be in good taste and consistent with community standards," Greaves wrote in letter to state officials. "Our proposed monument, as an homage to the historic/literary Satan, will certainly abide by these guidelines." Greaves said one potential design involves a pentagram, a satanic symbol, while another is meant to be an interactive display for children. The Republican state representative Mike Ritze, who spearheaded the push for the Ten Commandments monument and whose family helped pay the $10,000 for its construction, declined to comment on the Satanic Temple's effort, but Greaves credited Ritze for opening the door to his group's proposal. "He's helping a satanic agenda grow more than any of us possibly could," Greaves said. "You don't walk around and see too many satanic temples around, but when you open the door to public spaces for us, that's when you're going to see us."

This film meets Ricky Powell, a native New Yorker whose photographs of iconic people such as the Beastie Boys, Keith Haring and Cindy Crawford made him a pivotal figure in the downtown party scene during the '80s and '90s. Now 50, Ricky’s lust for photography and music is still strong. Through his eccentricities such as his love for a transistor radio and feeding squirrels in the park, we gain an insight into his everyday life. Retrospective of New York City and how it has changed over his lifetime, he shows us around the city and contemplates what the future holds.

November 23rd marks the 20th Anniversary of Snoop Dogg’s highly-acclaimed Doggystyle, in which his lyrical realism and distinctive vocal flow forever changed hip-hop and helped define the genre into what it is today. In honor of this date, Snoop has created an enticing mixtape of the samples used on Doggystyle. Never done before, Snoop offers exclusive commentary about each song and the behind-the-scenes stories that went on during the making of the historic record. The mixtape offers fans a once-in-a-lifetime experience to hear first-hand, the creative process behind the record.