Culture

Attorneys for the state and defendants gave opening statements this morning in the first trial of the major college admissions scandal codenamed “Operation Varsity Blues,” which broke in 2019 and gained widespread attention for high profile defendants like actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. Dozens of parents were charged for …

Last month, a 25-year-old named Brie Lynn posted a TikTok about her alleged experiences with the Broadway performer Alice Ripley. “Growing up is realizing I was groomed by a Tony-Award winning Broadway actress,” Lynn said in the caption of the video, before recounting some of their experiences with Ripley: how …

A New Jersey woman who went by the handle @AntiVaxMomma on Instagram has been charged with helping to run a business to distribute fake COVID-19 vaccination cards. According to a press release from the New York state district attorney’s office, Jasmine Clifford, 31, a self-described entrepreneur from Lyndhurst, New Jersey, …

A non-fungible token based on the Banksy piece “Spike” has sold for over $150,000 via an auction on Valuart, a new platform that mints licensed NFTs derived from original artworks. Banksy, notably, was not involved in the sale. Instead, the “Spike” NFT was minted and sold by Vittorio Grigòlo, an …

This piece originally appeared as part of Rolling Stone’s 2021 Hot List, in the July/August issue of the magazine. When Torrey Peters, 39, was writing her debut novel, Detransition, Baby, she imagined how “trans girls talk to each other” — about sex with bad men, jobs, babies — and used …

The video starts with an enthusiastic preteen girl stampeding onstage in a jewel-toned V-neck to an infectious pop beat, inexplicably holding a jumbo-sized pencil. “Dear Elle, he’s a lucky guy/I’m like gonna cry/I’ve got tears coming out of my nose,” she belts off-key, before she’s immediately followed by a bevy …

John McAfee was a genius, a scoundrel-criminal, a gun fanatic, a possible murderer, and a man who liked to mix morning tequila sunrises with hands dirtied by throwing mattresses against his windows to ward off imaginary hit men. He also ran for president. Yesterday, he finally ran out of road. …

Riley Sager has been writing thrillers for over a decade now, but each time he starts penning another, he’s gripped by the same terrible thought. “There’s always this moment where I sit there and look at my blank page and think, ‘I don’t know how to do this,’” says Sager, …

& ldquo;Let’s take the fucking Capitol.” A burly, bearded man in a ballistic vest and a baseball cap that says “God, Guns, and Trump” is trying to rally members of the crowd. The man’s name is Daniel Lyons Scott, but he goes by Milkshake. It’s around noon on January 6th, …

After more than a year of scientific hypotheses, baseless conspiracy theories, and a lack of transparency from China, we still don’t know Covid-19’s origin story —the precise route SARS-CoV-2 took to end up as the cause of a global pandemic. And thanks to the country’s deep partisan divides, even the …