Innholdsfortegnelse for November 22-December 5, 2021 i New York Magazine

Lots of people will point you toward the white paper that Satoshi Nakamoto published in 2008 introducing bitcoin, or the one Vitalik Buterin wrote in 2013 laying out his vision for the ethereum blockchain. But as we’ve mentioned, the foundational texts of crypto are probably not the best place to start. “The barrier to understanding is too high,” says Chris Cantino, a partner at Color Capital. “They should be read after someone’s already been fully cryptopilled.” Instead, try these resources, ordered from least to most time-consuming. Seven minutes In 2016, Joel Monegro, then an investor at Union Square Ventures, wrote “Fat Protocols,” a 1,200-word blog post on USV’s website that talks about crypto’s place in the history of the internet and basically tries to answer the question “Why are things…

The instant-messaging app popular among gamers hosts the more intimate watering holes of Web3. Most are focused on a specific crypto community; some Discord servers function as pop-up study groups (if your study group had 3,000 members across multiple time zones); others exist for people to work on projects together as a DAO, complete with town halls and public forums; while others are exclusive to members who hold a certain NFT. Here’s how to survive your first Discord: Make sure it’s not just you and a bunch of bots. ➽ When you join, Evan Shirreffs, director of business development at NFTy Labs, recommends scanning the chat to make sure you’re talking to real people. “If it’s a lot of people saying, ‘Hi, hi, hi, good project, good project, good project,’…

ACTING IS ABOUT transformation both psychological and physical. When it comes to the showiest efforts, it’s mostly the latter that comes to mind. Gaining weight, losing weight, packing on muscle, shaving off hair—in the most extreme examples, the oblations that actors undertake for their craft can serve as press-baiting stunts. You might think of these rituals as just another aspect of preparation along the lines of shadowing someone in the field or learning fight choreography. The actor’s body is, after all, a tool of performance, one that can be trained and molded for a part. And then there’s the kind of transformation that requires latex. It’s considered a compliment to any prestige film or series if an actor is called “unrecognizable”—an effect achieved through makeup, costume, and, most drastically, prosthetics.…

1962 With Cary Grant at the Hollywood premiere of The Miracle Worker. 1964 Newly married and standing in front of their first home together in Greenwich Village. 1970s With Carl and Estelle Reiner in “our beloved Venice.” 1984 Exploring the gardens of the Château de Versailles. 1986 At the Oscars, where Anne was nominated for Best Actress for her performance in Agnes of God. 1990s With the “Yenemvelt group,” a “daffy club” of friends formed by Norman Lear (bottom left). 2001 At the 2001 Tony Awards, where Mel’s first musical, The Producers, won a record 12. 2004 At the filming of the British talk show Parkinson the year before Anne died of uterine cancer.…

LIKE MANY FRAUGHT STORIES, S***hole Country turns on a question of real estate. Afia Kaakyire, the 30-ish Ghanaian American from the Bay Area who narrates the series, finds herself in Accra with a grand offer from her parents: an apartment of her own, free of charge, in a residential complex that her parents—themselves returned to Ghana after a hardscrabble life in the United States—have developed. It’s a tempting proposition. Back in California, Kaakyire lives the precarious (though relatively privileged) existence of a creative worker constantly on the verge of being laid off. In the new home being offered to her, she sees a possibility for greater stability and, perhaps, a pathway toward self-realization. Ghana is growing. The country’s economy is on the upswing. Maybe she could be part of that.…

IN AUGUST 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse brought an AR-15-style rifle to downtown Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the name of law and order. As protests and riots raged in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake, the 17-year-old Blue Lives Matter enthusiast felt called to serve as an amateur armed guard for a Kenosha car dealership. He ended up shooting two unarmed protesters dead and blowing off another’s right biceps—without committing a crime. Or so a Wisconsin jury decreed on Friday. After three and half days of deliberation, the jurors found that Rittenhouse was not guilty of reckless homicide, intentional homicide, or recklessly endangering public safety. This verdict was legally defensible. Yet it exposed the anarchy latent in America’s peculiar combination of lax gun regulations, expansive self-defense rights, and mass gun…

THE METAVERSE IS BEST described as a consensual hallucination between Mark Zuckerberg and the media—a fantasy that we’ll trade pleasurable activities in the physical world, like cooking and dating, for nausea-inducing hours in a virtual realm full of legless avatars. To most ordinary people, the Facebook CEO’s aspiration to be the god of a universe we can enter only by affixing a prophylactic to our heads seems megalomaniacal. They’re correct. However, every time you hear Zuckerberg say metaverse, swap in super-app and the plan sounds less stupid. A super-app is a single mobile app that offers basic services including chat and payments, along with a suite of “mini-apps” from third parties, ranging from stores and restaurants to government agencies. Westerners aren’t familiar with them, but across much of Asia, super-apps…

The world of crypto began as a small island of misfits, but in the past 13 years, it has evolved into an enormous ecosystem of different subcultures and (sometimes warring) factions. Below, see where you might fit in. Bitcoiners The earliest bitcoiners weren’t in it for the money—instead, they were drawn to the cypherpunk vision of a currency free from government oversight. Because it was the first blockchain and cryptocurrency, bitcoin is the most popular crypto in use today. It’s also one of the last holdouts using the energy-intensive proof-of-work algorithm (other blockchains are shifting to more ecofriendly methods). Often regarded as the boomers of Crypto Land. You voted for Ron Paul … You could be a bitcoin libertarian, especially if you love talking about monetary policy, inflation, and self-sovereignty…

You don’t need to be a technical genius to work in the field. In fact, it’s probably better if you’re not: More and more crypto companies—from giant exchanges like Coinbase to smaller start-ups—are trying to hire people from traditional industries who know how to whisper to normies. We talked to three people who, in the past year, transitioned to the blockchain. The marketer who tweeted his way into a new role: “In February, I started using the Rainbow wallet. I followed one of the co-founders, Mike, on Twitter, and he followed me back for some reason. I would tweet memes about ethereum or Rainbow, or I’d tweet about my experiences learning this stuff. Rainbow was definitely not hiring at the time, but I messaged them. It was very brief, just…

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IT HAS LONG BEEN theorized that it takes two guitarists to equal one Lindsey Buckingham, which was proved back in 2018 when the finger-picking deity was unceremoniously fired from Fleetwood Mac and had to be replaced with a duo of rock elders for the band’s following tour. (You thought playing “Never Going Back Again” night after night would be easy?) Unsurprisingly, there was the requisite domino effect of gossipy headlines for the next few years. But after bringing a lawsuit against the rest of the band, then settling it; undergoing emergency triple-bypass surgery; experiencing various reconciliations; surviving a maybe–maybe-not divorce from his wife; and, most recently, putting out a new solo album, Lindsey Buckingham, in September— phew!—he now finds himself in a fulfilled state of mind. During a break in…

NO ONE COULD STOP HUGGING in the greenroom before Vulture Festival’s 3rd Rock From the Sun reunion panel. The show’s leads—John Lithgow, Kristen Johnston, French Stewart, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt—had been close during its six-season run, but the four had not been in a room together since the day they wrapped 20 years ago. Lithgow in particular was in a state of effusive delight. “I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” he exclaimed as the members of the quartet cried and embraced one another. “This is so surreal!” said Gordon-Levitt. A weird, surprisingly subversive sitcom about a group of aliens sent to Earth to study humanity, 3rd Rock won eight Emmys for performance, choreography, and design. Yet perhaps because of its odd, mannered bluntness, the series has not attained the…

If his approval rating sinks too far below 50 percent, it becomes more likely than not that the next election will reinstall into power his exiled predecessor, who has never relinquished his claim and by all appearances is intent on running for a second term in 2024. The Democrats had a plan to rescue their party and the country: Biden would steer clear of the faddish slogans and radical demands that had seized his party’s base and focus relentlessly on practical benefits desired by the working-class voters who had deserted Democrats for Donald Trump. The elegance of this plan was that polls showed support not only for the new social provisions that would form the heart of his legislative agenda in his first year—child care, community college, expansions of Medicare…

ADAPTATIONS ARE A TRICKY BUSINESS. Strictly imitate the source material and be accused of lacking creativity; veer too far from the original and be accused of missing the point. That’s a line that showrunner André Nemec tries to straddle with the live-action Cowboy Bebop, and he has got a long legacy to honor: The Cowboy Bebop anime is a cult classic. The show, which follows a group of interplanetary bounty hunters, was a hit animated series in Japan in 1998 that also expanded into manga form. When it started airing on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim in 2001, it became an anime gateway for American viewers—and by now the show’s 26 episodes, and the 2001 movie Cowboy Bebop: Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, have all been dissected, screenshotted, and GIF-ed in a…

IT HAS BEEN FIVE YEARS since Michael Che released a Netflix special. Last time, the vibe was ecstatic: In Michael Che Matters, he bounced excitedly around a thrust stage, dipping his microphone stand like a dancer; a band kept his entrance and exit loud. “I think Hillary Clinton’s gonna win,” he told that amped-up August 2016 crowd. “She’s a white lady. White women take whatever the fuck they want. They took Brooklyn!” The show felt loose and bright. The mood was running hot. By comparison, his latest, Michael Che: Shame the Devil, is his roll-out-of-bed special. It’s a chat on the stoop, a late-night musing, a hangout with a buddy to shoot the shit. Without moving from his stool or shifting his slouch, Che runs sleepily through his act in…

MOVIES 1. See House of Gucci Big airs. In theaters November 24. Ridley Scott’s fashion saga offers a tremendously good time, with many interpretations of what an Italian accent sounds like as well as an enormous amount of acting, some of it (Adam Driver) very good and some of it (Jared Leto) just very big. At its heart is Lady Gaga, who gives us the perfect amount of camp as Patrizia Reggiani, an outsider who married into the Gucci family and somehow manages to both help destroy it and push its brand toward the future. ALISON WILLMORE POP MUSIC 2. Listen to Toy Part of the David Bowie series. Parlophone Records/ISO Records, November 26. Toy, a 2001 recording finally released in the Brilliant Adventure (1992–2001) boxed set, gives a jangle-pop…