“We both ignored it until the smell went away.”

404 Media was created by editors and writers from Vice’s Motherboard tech brand.

For 11 months, I pretended to be a far-right extremist. I discovered a radical youth movement trying to infiltrate the Republican Party. Going to a Proud Boys riot with a neo-Nazi is not something I ever expected to do. But in August 2021, I found myself driving through downtown Portland, Ore., with an avowed white supremacist named Alex Nelson. We were on our way to the abandoned K-Mart parking lot that the Proud Boys had commandeered for their “Summer of Love” rally. The event marked the one-year anniversary of a “Back the Blue” demonstration that had become a brawl between the Proud Boys and militias on one side and anti-fascist counterprotesters on the other. Earlier that week, Nelson, a man in his late 20s who was fond of discussing his “Anglo heritage,” had invited me to join him to watch what he assumed would be violent clashes. “Portland has canceled all parades and markets for the past year and a half. This is the only culture in Portland now. There will probably be a thousand spectators or more lining the bridges and sidewalks,” he assured me. By then, I had been undercover with the far right for nine months, motivated by my belief that the fascist threat to the country was misunderstood by much of the press and far more dangerous than what was being reported. At first, I had planned only to sell the audio from “Stop the Steal” rallies to a podcast and write a couple of blog posts. But I found myself wanting to get a behind-the-scenes look at the far-right movement—to go to events from which the press was barred and observe extremists when they felt they were in their “safe space”—so the project grew into something far bigger: a long-term infiltration of the network of young white nationalists in America.

Over 85,000 workers hold pickets at 50 facilities across US as union contracts set to expire on 30 September

In an oral history, Griffin Dunne, Rosanna Arquette, Scorsese, and others discuss the making of the dark comedy that brought Scorsese back from the brink.

A young woman has gone missing in a small town. All that remains of her are an abandoned bike, a missing earring, and some surly classmates who don't want to talk. Then the mystery deepens.

Think getting served documents is unpleasant? Try being the guy who serves them.

In this week’s edition of Confider, we look at how G/O Media just lost its seventh EIC in eight months—a sign of absolute tumult at the private equity-owned media empire.

Oliver Anthony is really about to find out the meaning of “taxed to no end.”

Musk has long touted ketamine as an alternative to antidepressants. … “His life just sucks,” one colleague told The New Yorker.

Emergency meetings, surprise at the backlash and an eventual change in decision after a week of leaks As of Wednesday of last week, United’s plan was to bring Greenwood back. On Thursday and Friday mornings, club executives devoted time to justifying their chosen path to employees angry at the direction of travel, with some even contemplating resigning or strike action. The club’s sentiment trackers, which monitor supporter feeling online, began to plummet. On Friday, The Athletic reported that the club’s preparations for Greenwood’s return also included an assessment of the expected sentiment of external figures, listing individual football pundits, journalists and politicians and stating whether they would be for or against Greenwood’s reintegration. The planning divided these people into categories to the effect of “supportive”, “open-minded” or “hostile”, and the club’s document listed a series of domestic abuse charities assumed to be “hostile”.

Japan said on Tuesday it will start releasing more than 1 million metric tonnes of treated radioactive water from the wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant on Aug. 24, putting into motion a plan that has drawn strong criticism from China.

Amid an ongoing Department of Justice inquiry, the Texas-based real estate tech company RealPage is prized for its analysis in mainstream media. Debates over housing in the United States often play out as overheated ideological squabbles, with actual housing policy far in the background. One side professes genuine concern over displacement and gentrification, which some YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) groups cynically frame as misguided. On the other hand, the YIMBY instinct is correct: More housing must be built. Take a few steps back, and these debates eventually wade into questions about poverty, affordability, and tenant rights. The answers to these questions aren’t always clean. But what if there was one aspect that everyone could universally acknowledge as bad? Meet RealPage, a private equity–owned, Texas-based real estate tech company. Currently, the company is under investigation by the Department of Justice for potentially colluding among landlords to jack up rent prices, in violation of federal antitrust laws. The Texas company appeared on regulators’ radars late last year after ProPublica reported on how the company’s YieldStar rent-setting software program promised landlords they could maximize rental revenue. The program uses an algorithm to collect all rental prices among clients in a region and set a recommended rate, which critics describe as collusion that drives rents upward. Aside from federal investigations, the company is also facing more than 20 different lawsuits from renters in Seattle, Boston, Colorado, New York, and elsewhere, echoing the same concerns as the initial federal inquiries.

How the U.S. government came to rely on the tech billionaire—and is now struggling to rein him in. The meddling of oligarchs and other monied interests in the fate of nations is not new. During the First World War, J. P. Morgan lent vast sums to the Allied powers; afterward, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., poured money into the fledgling League of Nations. The investor George Soros’s Open Society Foundations underwrote civil-society reform in post-Soviet Europe, and the casino mogul Sheldon Adelson funded right-wing media in Israel, as part of his support of Benjamin Netanyahu. But Musk’s influence is more brazen and expansive. There is little precedent for a civilian’s becoming the arbiter of a war between nations in such a granular way, or for the degree of dependency that the U.S. now has on Musk in a variety of fields, from the future of energy and transportation to the exploration of space. SpaceX is currently the sole means by which NASA transports crew from U.S. soil into space, a situation that will persist for at least another year. The government’s plan to move the auto industry toward electric cars requires increasing access to charging stations along America’s highways. But this rests on the actions of another Musk enterprise, Tesla. The automaker has seeded so much of the country with its proprietary charging stations that the Biden Administration relaxed an early push for a universal charging standard disliked by Musk. His stations are eligible for billions of dollars in subsidies, so long as Tesla makes them compatible with the other charging standard. In the past twenty years, against a backdrop of crumbling infrastructure and declining trust in institutions, Musk has sought out business opportunities in crucial areas where, after decades of privatization, the state has receded. The government is now reliant on him, but struggles to respond to his risk-taking, brinkmanship, and caprice. Current and former officials from NASA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Transportation, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration told me that Musk’s influence had become inescapable in their work, and several of them said that they now treat him like a sort of unelected official. One Pentagon spokesman said that he was keeping Musk apprised of my inquiries about his role in Ukraine and would grant an interview with an official about the matter only with Musk’s permission. “We’ll talk to you if Elon wants us to,” he told me. In a podcast interview last year, Musk was asked whether he has more influence than the American government. He replied immediately, “In some ways.” Reid Hoffman told me that Musk’s attitude is “like Louis XIV: ‘L’état, c’est moi.’ ”

A Fayette County man is facing charges after state police say he attacked a teenager who did not make him a sandwich.

The number is significant in that "wages" increasingly have been recognized as a driving force in inflation. It's price increases by greedy companies not wages that increase inflation.

The leader of Spain’s soccer federation left a sour taste on the country’s Women’s World Cup victory after kissing a player on the lips during the medal ceremony, drawing criticism for inappropriate conduct in a sport that has struggled to overcome sexism. The Spanish government and the world players’ union condemned the behavior of Luis Rubiales on Monday, a day after Spain’s 1-0 win over England. The soccer federation led by Rubiales sought to downplay the incident through a statement it attributed to the player he kissed. Immediately after Spain’s victory, Rubiales grabbed his crotch in a victory gesture — seemingly oblivious to 16-year-old Princess Infanta Sofía standing nearby. He later kissed player Jenni Hermoso on the lips during the medal and trophy ceremony on the field, drawing unwanted attention away from the celebration and marring the country’s biggest day for women’s soccer. The kiss was shocking given the sport’s long-standing allegations of sexual misconduct by male soccer presidents and coaches against female players on national teams. Two of the 32 World Cup teams, Haiti and Zambia, had to deal with the issue while qualifying for the tournament co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand.

Platform’s users voice concern as it removes pictures and links on posts made before December 2014

The suspect made "disparaging remarks" about the rainbow flag before shooting the victim, police said. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Before I can reply, DeSantis sticks his hand in my face. I hadn’t seen him approaching and, caught off guard, I shake it. He turns on the heel of his signature black, heeled cowboy boots and steps on my toe. He doesn’t hear me yelp as he leans in for a selfie with a supporter. “I wonder how often he steps on people with those boots and doesn’t even notice,” says a man next to me.