CATEGORIES

VAGES RISING

No place in America is more prone to reinvention-and Las Vegas is new all over again. New food, new art, new sports, new heat, and, yes, new Sphere. We sent BRETT MARTIN to take stock of the great American city of the future-and find out whether this Vegas is the best version yet.

can THESE GUYS MAKE ROCK Bands COOL AGAIN ???

When FONTAINES D.C. were living in Dublin and making their first album, Dogrel, the five band members would pile into drummer Tom Coll's car and blast their freshly recorded songs through the speakers.

MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE

Enter the multiverse of modness.

FINDING IMMORTALITY

Twenty-five years on, PLANESCAPE: TORMENT is still one of the most talked-about RPGs of all time. This is the story of how it was created as a 'stay-busy' project by a small team at Black Isle Studios

TRACK GPT

Al's teaching sim racers to improve-what about other games?

Tested: Intel's Lunar Lake chip wants you to forget Qualcomm laptops exist

Great battery life, mediocre performance, surprisingly decent gaming: That is how Intel's Lunar Lake chip stacks up.

20 insanely useful Windows 11 keyboard shortcuts I use every day

After so many years, I'm still discovering new keyboard shortcuts.

WHAT THE HECK IS AN NPU, ANYWAY? HERE'S AN EXPLAINER ON AI CHIPS

ALL PCS WILL SOON HAVE NEURAL PROCESSING UNITS. HERE'S WHAT THAT MEANS FOR YOU IN SIMPLE TERMS.

Microsoft reveals Windows 11's AI roadmap: smart search, upscaling, and more

Super Resolution in Photos and Paint's Generative Fill look like early wins for Windows. Click to Do? Bah, humbug.

Windows 11's big 2024 Update: How and when you'll get it

Beginning right now...but also rolling out over the coming weeks.

How Google Chrome is declaring war against ad blockers

Ghostery's CEO and director of engineering break down the new Manifest V3 changes, and why they're bad news for anyone who wants to block ads.

The World Wide Web Foundation is closing its doors

The WWWF tirelessly worked toward a safer, more open, and more trustworthy web.

Hands-on: Kensington's first Thunderbolt 5 dock is built for the future

Thunderbolt 5 is here...but you'll need more than just this well-built Kensington dock to take advantage of it.

"Kay Vess, galactic tomb raider"

Feeling like Lara Croft in STAR WARS OUTLAWS

DINER HARD

Rewriting the rules of horror in ALAN WAKE

Hackers know your social security number. Here's how to stay safe

Thanks to a multitude of data leaks, your most sensitive information is now easily accessible to the world.

7 laptop habits that coax the most out of your battery

Don't send your laptop into an early grave.

Private Internet Access: A low-price, high-value VPN for everyone

This veteran VPN shows it can still hang with the best.

SPACED OUT

After a strong first impression, WARHAMMER 40K: SPACE MARINE 2 runs out of steam

The Puppet Masters - Compulsion, complicity, and the art of Bunraku.

The National Bunraku Theatre, in New York recently for the first time in more than thirty years, presented an evening of suicides. The performance, at the Japan Society, consisted of excerpts from two of the company’s most celebrated productions. In the Fire Watchtower scene from “The Greengrocer’s Daughter,” by Suga Sensuke and Matsuda Wakichi, from 1773, the titular character sacrifices herself to save a temple page boy she loves. In a scene from “The Love Suicides at Sonezaki,” by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, from 1703, two lovers are driven to take their own lives. Both plays were inspired by real events, and Chikamatsu’s was followed by a wave of double suicides that led to a ban on further performances. This mirroring of life and art is all the more astonishing given the fact that the actors are not people but puppets.

The Convert - The sudden rise of J. D. Vance has transfixed conservative élites. Is he the future of Trumpism?

Vance’s selection as Trump’s running mate had punctuated an astounding rise. Born in the small manufacturing city of Middletown, Ohio, he was raised by a drug-addicted mother and his beloved Appalachian-born grandmother, Mamaw. He worked his way up through storied American institutions: the Marine Corps, Yale Law School, Silicon Valley. “Hillbilly Elegy,” the best-selling memoir Vance published in 2016, made him famous, and his denunciations of Trump as “cultural heroin” for the white working class even more so. A few years later, he was a senator from Ohio, the Republican Party’s most effective spokesman for Trumpism as an ideology, and—both improbably and inevitably—the VicePresidential nominee. “If you think about where he came from and where he is, at forty years old,” the conservative analyst Yuval Levin, a Vance ally, said, “J.D. is the single most successful member of his generation in American politics.”

TAKE ME HOME

The filmmaker Mati Diop turns her gaze on plundered art.

THE BIG DEAL

Joe Biden's economic policies are starting to transform America. Will anyone notice?

EACH MORTAL THING

What other creatures understand about death.

THE LAST MILE

The aid workers who risk their lives to bring relief to Gaza.

A PIECE OF HER MIND

Does the Enlightenment’s great female intellect need rescuing?

SONGS OF WAR

Early on in “Blitz,” Rita Hanway (Saoirse Ronan), a London factory worker, puts her nine-year-old son, George (Elliott Heffernan), aboard a train. Rather, George puts himself aboard; he twists angrily free of his mother’s grasp—“I hate you!” he cries—and tears off down the platform.

From the Wilderness

One morning in the rainy season, I went to bed at 6 a.m. after working all night and was on the verge of falling asleep when I was startled by the sound of my father’s voice coming through the air-conditioner next to my bed.

STAR-CROSSED

“Sunset Blud.” and Romeo Juliet,” on Broadway.

You Are Going to Die - Oliver Burkeman has become an unlikely self-help guru by reminding everyone of their mortality.

"The average human lifespan," Oliver Burkeman begins his 2021 megabest seller, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, "is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short." In that relatively brief period, he does not want you to maximize your output at work or optimize your leisure activities for supreme enjoyment. He does not want you to wake up at 5 a.m. or block out your schedule in a strictly labeled timeline.