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The UK is seeing a veritable boom in ‘coastal’ styles of gin, which evoke the landscape with herbaceous and floral notes of coastal plants, along with a hint of salinity to mimic the sea breeze. Although not technically a category, it is becoming more widely recognised as a style. Alongside this, we are seeing a similar evolution in ‘island gins’: these work in a similar way to coastal gins, but evoke the spirit and sense of place of their island home. Gin’s capacity to capture terroir and evoke place is something I consider fundamental to its popularity. By creating a sense of place, gin suddenly becomes a unique and collectable item; not only that, but it also opens the door for every village, town and city to have its own style.…

It can be hell finding one’s way across an extensive boggy moor—the partially dry, rough ground and the absence of any landmarks let the eye rove helplessly into the monotype distance. Everything undulates, the rise and fall share the same muted palette, and the senses dull. But a swamp is different: in it, in addition to water, there are trees and shrubs, just as reeds and rushes are the hallmarks of a marsh. Although water and squelch are everywhere in a swamp, there are landmarks—downed trees or jagged stumps, a tenanted heron nest, occasional islands of high-ground hardwood stands, called “hammocks” in the South. Yet the swamp traveller goes not in a straight line but slouches from quaking island to thick tussock to slippery, half-submerged log. Even with G.P.S. technology,…

BEFORE SUBMARINES can carry out their stealthy jobs beneath the waves, they begin their lives in pieces on land. The newest group of American nuclear-powered attack submarines is the Virginia class, also known as SSN-774, a collection of underwater ships that stretch 377 feet long. Their mission? To conduct surveillance, fight other vessels, and rarely, if needed, launch conventional cruise missiles at terrestrial targets. Their maximum diving depth? That’s a secret. Their top speed? Ditto. What we do know is that each of these submersibles will protect a complement of sailors from the ocean’s incredible pressure—and from the nuclear reactor contained within, which powers everything from the propulsion system to the lights by heating water into steam. For workers at Electric Boat, an arm of General Dynamics responsible for many of…

Spain’s hilltop Moorish marvel A graceful clash of cultures awaits in Granada. World renowned for the Alhambra palace and gardens, the city is also the resting place of the most famous Catholic monarchs, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, who united the Spanish kingdoms. Most visitors come to lap up the sensational Moorish architecture and history, but Granada’s delectable food scene, and its access to superb hiking in the summer and skiing in winter, make it worth more than a day trip. It’s also close enough to the south Andalusian coast to be an unmissable excursion from beach resorts. A visit to the Alhambra calls for some planning. Tickets must be bought in advance, and timeslots are allocated for the breathtaking 14th-century Palacios Nazaríes, its soaring arches and wall and…

WRESTLEMANIA HAS LONG been known as a place where history is made: Brock Lesnar ending The Undertaker’s undefeated streak in 2014; Ronda Rousey, Becky Lynch, and Charlotte Flair becoming the first women to main-event in 2019; Ultimate Warrior becoming the first to cleanly pin Hulk Hogan for the World title in 1990. And, this year—though perhaps not enough fanfare was made of it—there was another important history-making moment at WrestleMania 38 from AT&T Stadium. By emerging victorious in their fatal four-way match on night two, Sasha Banks and Naomi became the first Black tag team to win the Women’s World tag team title in the history of WWE … and only the third Black team to win a Women’s world tag team title anywhere, in the history of pro wrestling. Of course,…

DEAR VEGANISM, We’ve been together for 18 years, you and I. And boy, have we seen it all. We’ve weathered the hard times (remember the dark days when vegan cheese tasted like old cardboard? Those days are at last behind us—thanks, Miyoko!). We’ve lived through shocking times (like when we took a chance and bought some Beyond Meat stock when it went public, then went on a European vacation with the earnings?). And of course, there were the gratifying times (does it get any more mainstream than Burger King and McDonald’s both hopping on the plant-based bandwagon?). And here we are, together for nearly two decades—after a toxic fling with vegetarianism (but we don’t have to talk about that deeply confusing phase). I’m writing this letter to you today because we have…

IN THE SOUTHEASTERN corner of Georgia lies the Okefenokee Swamp, a 438,000-acre wetland. The cypress-filled wilderness—with its labyrinth of black canals inhabited by some 12,000 gators—is a long drive from anywhere. Visitors have three main entry points to choose from, each about two hours from the next. The section I knew the least about before my visit this spring was Stephen C. Foster State Park. It’s nestled within the much larger Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, but it offers much that the bigger reserve does not, including campsites with electrical hookups, running water, and access until 10 p.m.—a plus for the stargazers attracted by its International Dark Sky designation. These days, the Okefenokee’s 120 acres of state park have more fans than ever. “Since the pandemic started, we’ve seen an uptick in visitation,…

“Terrorist fighters in the liberated territories must hand in their weapons,” Ukrainian digital broadcaster Hromadske reported Thursday. Citing a Ministry of Defense post on the Telegram messaging app, the order comes from Troop Forces commander, General Yuri Galushkin. “Some of our regions have been liberated from the occupiers and there is no fighting. In these areas, we need to perform tasks related to the reconstruction of our cities and villages, restore the economy, return to work,” Galushkin claimed (converted to English via Google Translate). “That is why in these regions it is time to concentrate weapons in certain storage areas. You will take care of her [weapon], take her for training and, if necessary, get her to complete tasks. We will keep the gunpowder dry. Proper storage of weapons is very…

HOUSE EDGE: 1.41% (PASS LINE), 0.0% (FULL ODDS) IGNORE MOST OF THE REAL ESTATE Craps looks complicated, but in the end you can ignore most of the felt and pay attention to just a small portion, for there are really only four bets you should make: pass line and full odds, and come line bets and full odds. Do not wager on any other proposition bets, which includes the field, hard way rolls (betting that the next eight, say, will come up as two fours, rather than a six and a two or a five and a three), or any craps, as they are major sucker bets. HOW TO PLAY Your first bet should be the pass line, which pays even money. On the first roll for a new shooter, known as the come-out…

When campaigning for president, Joe Biden vowed to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” over the brutal killing of a newspaper columnist. Once in the White House, he temporarily froze weapons sales to the kingdom over its war in Yemen. He also outlined a vision to make the US a renewable energy powerhouse, less reliant on an oil market where the Saudis hold so much sway. But with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine posing the biggest disruption to energy supplies in decades, the president is having to take a different tack, recalibrating an alliance that is increasingly critical to the global economy and that is at its most strained in years. With the oil market in turmoil, the world’s biggest exporter of crude once again has the leverage to make demands. It’s raking…

SINCE BECOMING RING of Honor’s savior, AEW President Tony Khan has delivered four winning moments for the brand: kicking off the March 2 edition of Dynamite with the acquisition announcement itself and a match featuring two of ROH’s founding fathers, Bryan Danielson and Christopher Daniels; moving forward with Supercard of Honor on April 1, despite the fact it ran directly against Rampage; finalizing a deal with ROH champion Jonathan Gresham … And the fourth? The dramatic AEW debut of Samoa Joe on the April 6 Dynamite. Joe finished off a very game Max Caster with a big elbow and a muscle buster in only four minutes to advance to the inaugural Owen Hart Foundation Cup tourney. Joe capitalized on that momentum on the April 13 edition, defeating Minoru Suzuki in a…

What happened Ukraine struggled to hold on to its remaining eastern territory this week, as President Volodymyr Zelensky conceded that Russian forces had captured one-fifth of his country. The Kremlin said Russia had “liberated” 97 percent of Luhansk province in the eastern Donbas region and had restored roads and rail so that “full-fledged traffic” could flow between Russia and the territories it has occupied. Ukrainian forces did take back half of the Luhansk city of Sievierodonetsk, which had mostly fallen to Russia a week ago, but their control was tenuous. To boost morale, Zelensky visited the front lines and met with relocated refugees from the destroyed port of Mariupol. Russian forces, meanwhile, put those Ukrainians who were still living in Mariupol’s ruins under quarantine because of a suspected cholera outbreak. They…

About a year after its release, Microsoft has decided Windows 11 is in a good enough state for everyone to install and use. That is, assuming your PC meets the requirements for running the OS. As Neowin reports, the Windows Health Dashboard changed the status of Windows 11 in May to be “designated for broad deployment.” This basically means that Microsoft believes the operating system is now robust enough that all new PCs should be shipping with it, and anyone holding off on upgrading from Windows 10 should pull the trigger. Whether your PC is capable of running Windows 11 can be determined by using Microsoft’s PC Health Check app (https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/windows-11?r=1#pchealthcheck). Even some Microsoft employees can’t upgrade to Windows 11, so it’s definitely worth checking before you attempt the upgrade. If you can,…

MAYBE WE ALL HAVE A ‘DREAM’ SEASON – the time of year we prize the most, the one we yearn to come around again when it’s gone, the one we fervently hope will bring good weather when it arrives so it will deliver on our expectations. For some outdoor devotees, winter is the best season, where humble hills are transformed by snow into alpine giants. The vibrant glory of spring and the visual spectacle of autumn have much to recommend them, too. But judging by sheer numbers alone, summer is the time when people at their most outdoor-minded. Big dreams, big ideas, big adventures. At its best, this is what summer represents: the time when the climate is (theoretically) at its most forgiving, the weather is at its mildest, the days…

Whether you’re making the jump into the Apple ecosystem or updating from an older machine, picking up a new Mac can be a great way to supercharge your productivity. How do you decide which type of Mac is right for you? With so many options to choose from, as well as different types of Macs, finding one that fits your setup and delivers everything you need can be tricky. If you’re going to pick up a new Mac, then going with a desktop Mac can have some distinct advantages over Apple’s portable MacBook options. Don’t get us wrong, all of these machines are perfectly capable of doing what you need them to do, but there are some places where the desktop Macs shine brighter than the MacBooks. As such, here are…

A FEW weeks ago, we got our first look at a portrait of the mysterious behemoth at the centre of the Milky Way, the supermassive black hole known as Sagittarius A*. The image is an amazing feat of astronomical endeavour, made possible thanks to a planet-sized array of telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). It was even harder to capture than the previous black hole picture taken by the EHT, which was the first ever. But it is also special because this black hole is at the heart of our home galaxy. Feryal Özel at the University of Arizona was one of the first people to come up with a way of photographing black holes and she is now a key member of the EHT collaboration. New Scientist caught up…

AT THE SOUTHERN TIP of South America, between the Strait of Magellan to the north and west and Beagle Channel to the south, the Tierra del Fuego archipelago may hold one of the keys to global carbon sequestration: nearly pristine peatlands. And while rising temperatures and human interventions threaten these boggy climatechange buffers, it is still possible to preserve their wilderness and their ecological performance. Approximately one-third of the total area of the archipelago is taken up by the southernmost province of Argentina, where the city of Ushuaia, sometimes referred to as the “End of the World,” is located. What may be the true end of the world, however, is even more remote than this city, at the easternmost tip of land in the archipelago: Península Mitre. Here, the South Atlantic…

Twilight Imperium is 25 years old this year. The first edition of the game landed in 1997 with the iconic ‘wonky cat-lion-man’ on the cover, and subsequent editions make improvements on the game itself (and the lion-man, who becomes less wonky, and wiser looking) to the point where Twilight Imperium Fourth Edition happily sits at number six in the Board Game Geek top 100. Famous for its lengthy play times, faction powers, and full on space 4X experience. The word is, if you want to get exploring, expanding, exploiting and exterminating this is the real deal (if you can get everyone to commit for a whole day). How then, could we possibly see this turned into a quite accessible roll and write game? Surely it can’t all fit on one…

You might be familiar with those short, stout posts used around buildings, as roadway dividers, or in harbors to moor large vessels. They’re called bollard posts because, as the story goes, they resemble tree trunks, which are also known as “boles.” You might need that knowledge for a trivia contest someday. For me, the bollard idea presented design possibilities for both woodworking and lighting, which are combined in these plans for decorative path lights. MEET THE BUILDER GLENN HANSEN, DEPUTY EDITOR, DOESN’T LIKE TRIPPING ON DARK PATHWAYS. UMBRELLA LIGHT I worked on a few versions of this umbrella light (long curved legs, stout 2x4 uprights, etc.), but I ended up making relatively short 1x2 cedar arms and capping them with a simple cedar square with a light in the middle. These lights are quick to…

GeForce Now is Nvidia’s cloud-based game-streaming service. For those who aren’t familiar with this concept, it means that Nvidia provides the hardware firepower via its own media servers. Instead of you installing a game to your PC and needing an expensive GPU to get the most out of it, you just need a strong, stable internet connection and a subscription to Nvidia’s service, which can range from free to $20 per month. Note: The games themselves are not provided at any subscription level—more on that point when we talk about games below. THE PLANS GeForce Now currently offers three tiers: Free, Priority, and RTX 3080. GeForce Now is currently the only major cloud gaming service offering a Free access plan. While many services offer a temporary free trial, the GeForce Now Free plan…

In a 1997 paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research titled Why Do People Dislike Inflation?, Nobel laureate Robert Shiller and a team of graduate assistants interviewed hundreds of people in the US, Germany, and Brazil. While few of those ordinary Joes knew much about the economic term in question, they were all uniformly against it. Even when one researcher told a survey respondent that inflation might help raise his wages, he remained steadfastly opposed. “I suspect that an important difference between economists and laymen is that, to some extent, we speak different languages,” wrote Harvard’s N. Gregory Mankiw in his review of Shiller’s project. That’s the problem with inflation, which Shiller’s research found to be the most-used economic term in all published news stories in the Nexis database (even…

The sleek four-wheeled carts look familiar enough, but not even UPS knows precisely how to describe what could be the delivery giant’s latest way to get packages to your door. UPS unveiled a battery-powered, four-wheeled cycle to more efficiently haul cargo in some of the world’s most congested streets and to reduce its carbon footprint. The company is trying to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. The slimmed-down vehicles don the company’s gold-colored logo and accompanying stripe on a dark brown background. But the “eQuad” — as the company calls it — garnered amusement from passersby. Ian Lagowitz had never seen one and walked over to give it a look. “It’s funny looking,” he said, “but it’s probably good for the city, right?” Mohammad Islam called the vehicle “cool stuff,” and wished the program well. “Big…

TO look north-eastwards from Wall-town Crags in Northumberland is to gaze upon an English wilderness. The ashen cliffs of the Whin Sill drop 75ft to a brindle-coloured plain that stretches far into the distance, its surface broken by patches of dark heather and the occasional glistening black splash of groundwater. What few trees survive are small and stunted, hunchbacked against a prevailing westerly wind that rattles the bent grass and sends crows somersaulting across the vast grey sky. The cawing corvine protests are the only sound of life. To stand here on a swirling day in winter (and winter goes on for a long time here) is to feel as our ancestors must have done: tiny in a big world. The Romans who arrived here in the first century looked…

“Most three-legged dogs end up missing a limb due to an accident or illness…” Recently, I travelled to Brighton to watch Jeff Wayne’s musical version of ‘War of the Worlds’ on stage. I’ve seen every tour since 2007, and I don’t mind ‘showing my geek’. I bring this up because the Martians get around in huge, three-legged fighting machines. The original album artwork brought these mighty metal warlords to life in a way that gave me nightmares for most of my childhood, but when it came to animating them, the designers had something of a challenge because there are no naturally three-legged animals to base the movement on, which brings me to this month’s topic… three-legged dogs. It is rare for a dog to be born with a limb deficiency,…

The sky is fascinating. Just above our heads is a dynamic river of everchanging complexity, and somehow nature can take this chaos and create beautiful clouds and weather phenomena—some peaceful and calm, others terrifyingly destructive. For the last 22 years, I’ve traveled hundreds of thousands of miles throughout the central United States in search of some of the most violent storms on Earth. This region, known as Tornado Alley, comes to life each spring as warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico interacts with cold dry air from Canada to produce “supercell” thunderstorms and tornadoes. Documenting these storms, I find it incredible to witness firsthand just how powerful nature can be. As you can imagine, this type of photography is full of endless challenges, from both a photographic standpoint and,…

California regulators gave a robotic taxi service the green light to begin charging passengers for driverless rides in San Francisco, a first in a state where dozens of companies have been trying to train vehicles to steer themselves on increasingly congested roads. The California Public Utilities Commission unanimously granted Cruise, a company controlled by automaker General Motors, approval to launch its driverless ride-hailing service. The regulators issued the permit despite safety concerns arising from Cruise’s inability to pick up and drop off passengers at the curb in its autonomous taxis, requiring the vehicles to double park in traffic lanes. The ride-hailing service initially will consist of just 30 electric vehicles confined to transporting passengers in less congested parts of San Francisco from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Those restrictions are designed to…

Last summer, shortly after a date to Six Flags Over Texas, a thirteen-year-old girl in Dallas was falling in love for the first time. Her father could see it in the pencil drawings she made before bed. Instead of the usual, precise studies of koi fish and wildflowers, she’d sketched herself holding the hand of a boy in a Yankees cap, and enclosed the image in a pink-and-red heart. In the fall, the girl’s father permitted her to meet the boy, a tenth grader, after school one day a week. This spring, when he learned that his daughter was pregnant, he concluded that one day a week had been too many. Within a day, his daughter, whom I’ll call Laura, came around to the idea that getting an abortion, soon, might…

FOR almost a year, climate scientists have sounded one clear message. The world’s totemic goal of holding average global temperature rises to 1.5°C is still technically within our grasp, but will slip without a dramatic course correction by humanity. “Unless there are immediate, strong, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting global warming to 1.5°C will be beyond reach,” said climate scientist Valérie Masson-Delmotte last August, launching the first of three landmark reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Yet, three months later at COP26 in Glasgow, UK, at the climax of a pivotal UN summit designed to alter the trajectory of our emissions, COP26 president Alok Sharma admitted that even with new commitments, 1.5°C was on “life support”. Fast forward to this April and Jim Skea at Imperial…

What happened State election officials this week described how Donald Trump and his allies relentlessly pressured them to help overturn President Biden’s election win—and the life-altering threats and harassment they suffered when they refused to break the law. In the fourth hearing held by the panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Rusty Bowers, Republican speaker of Arizona’s House of Representatives, outlined how Trump attorney John Eastman pressed him to replace the state’s electors with a pro-Trump slate; when he said that would be illegal, Eastman told him, “Just do it and let the courts sort it out.” The cost of refusal was steep, said Bowers, who described Trump supporters repeatedly swarming his house, calling him a pedophile, and upsetting his terminally ill daughter. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who…

In addition to putting out some very excellent products, like the Honey Badger, Kevin Brittingham of Q (LiveQOrDie.com) is one of the best marketers on the planet. Take the name of his company’s newest product—Literally The Best Trigger Ever Made. No, that’s actually—literally—its name, Literally The Best Trigger Ever Made (which I will shorten to LTBTEM as I’m not typing that out every time). That title alone is sure to get it all sorts of free publicity, but I wanted to see if it at least attempted to live up to the name, and secured a sample. Technical information about the trigger, even on the Q website, is a bit sparse. It is a drop-in cassette trigger, with an advertised two-stage pull and very short reset. They also advertise that it…

What happened Former President Donald Trump ignored the urgent advice of aides and clear evidence he lost the 2020 election as he tried to engineer a coup that shook the foundations of American democracy, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol uprising said this week. In the opening of its televised hearings, committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said that Trump “lit the fuse that ultimately resulted in the violence of Jan. 6.” Using videotaped testimony of former Trump associates, Thompson and vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) methodically laid out their case that Trump incited the Capitol attack with false claims of fraud and refused to intervene for 187 minutes as his supporters assaulted police officers, smashed through doors and windows, and sent lawmakers scurrying for safety while advisers…

THE FIVE STUDEBAKER brothers were blacksmiths and wagon builders when they founded the company in 1852, and many a 19th Century pioneer crossed the Great Plains in a Studebaker-manufactured horse-drawn wagon known as a ‘prairie schooner’. It wasn’t until 1902 that the company leapt into the newfangled automotive world, initially building electric cars and lorries. Within a decade, however, they were focusing on the petrol-powered cars that became Studebaker’s staple. The Studebaker National Museum honours the company’s heritage in its former main manufacturing hub of South Bend, Indiana. It sprawls over three storeys, displaying a rotating assortment of about 70 vehicles drawn from the 120-strong collection. Permanent exhibits include the Presidential Carriage Collection – including the one that took Abraham Lincoln on his fateful final journey to Ford’s Theatre in Washington,…

RIGHT WHEN YOU’RE getting used to a “no-carb” world, along comes a weight-loss trend even more difficult than forgoing bread: Forgoing food. Intermittent fasting (cycling between periods of fasting and eating) is the latest dieting craze to devour pop culture. The most buzzed about version is the “5:2” fast: Five days a week you eat like a normal human being, and the other two you, well, basically starve yourself. American talk show host Jimmy Kimmel used the 5:2 to shed kilos, and a small army has joined him. To visit 5:2’s website is to visit some sort of online tent revival: “It’s very easy to do and to maintain!” gushes one dieter. Another enthuses, “It makes me feel healthy and energetic!” According to science, it’s not bogus. In fact, fasting…

“You can turn your life and yourself into a piece of art,” says Giordano Gattolin. “I think this is the key to being happy and joyful in all things.” The Italian artist has recently moved back to the rural property where he grew up and where he developed and ran an organic farm for 17 years with his partner, Tamara Duncker. The farm also functioned as a retreat center, and for years they hosted groups for seminars and courses about art, dancing and meditation. The couple also maintained an olive grove, vegetable garden and truffl e grove. Five years ago, when Gattolin and Duncker felt the need to recharge, they set out on a prolonged trip around Southern Europe in a camper van. This year, they’ve returned to their property in…

1 HOUR In this project we’re going to combine the out-of-focus fairy lights with glowing city lights in the background to accentuate the dreamlike effect. To capture the city lights we had to wait until after sunset and shoot in the ‘blue hour.’ This is the period before it gets truly dark, when the landscape is bathed in a cool, blue light. The combination of the blue light of the sky, the background street lights and the orange glow of the fairy lights will complement each other wonderfully in the final shot. You’ll need a lens with a wide maximum aperture – we used a 50mm f/1.4 – but any lens with an aperture of f/4 or wider will work fine; you can use a narrower aperture, but the bokeh won’t appear…

For years now, maxi-trimarans, both solo-sailed and fully crewed, have been racing the clock on their own around the world in an eff ort to set ever faster records for the world’s fastest circumnavigation under sail. Back in 2000-01 there was also a no-holds-barred round-the-word event dubbed simply “The Race,” in which the maxi-catamaran Club Med beat out five other fully-crewed catamarans to the finish. Never before, though, has there been a head-to-head round-the-word race between the 105ft boats making up the spectacular maxi-trimaran Ultim 32/23 class—until now. This past spring, Arkéa, a major player in sports sponsorship that has been active in ocean racing for several years, announced it would be sponsoring the first two editions of brand-new solo-sailing event, à la the quadrennial Vendée, featuring up to seven Ultims. In…

YOU HAVE A DAD IN ME After walking his own daughter down the aisle, Dan Levins, a 45-year-old hairstylist from East Tennessee, couldn’t imagine anyone missing out on that special moment so he took to TikTok, offering to stand in as a dad to any LGBTQIA+ couples who were missing their parents on their special day. The video, which has now amassed over 60,000 views, has created a supportive network with a Facebook group of 35,000 members. “I thought I was creating a group for people to physically connect but there are many more virtual connections happening now than walking someone down the aisle. We’ve had a few weddings, but the majority of what’s happening in the group has been people building friendships and family,” Levins told Mindful. STITCHING TOGETHER From tomato jam to…

DESTINATION Located just south of Mexico, Belize is home to the first civilization, the Maya. Visitors can learn about the Indigenous culture by visiting archaeological sites but also experience it firsthand—approximately 11% of Belize’s population is Maya. The wildlife is diverse and maybe a little nerve-wracking: You can swim with sharks and you just might see a jaguar or two. ACCOMMODATION There are plenty of places to stay in Belize that allow you to commune with nature while exploring the country’s varied topography. Naia Resort and Spa, nestled in a 200-acre reserve on the Placencia Peninsula, offers beachfront tranquility. If you travel inland to the foothills of the Maya Mountains, you’ll find The Rainforest Lodge at Sleeping Giant, which is surrounded by the 10,000-acre Sibun Nature Reserve. The heart of the lodge is the…

Sometimes I like to spend the morning working at my local coffee shop. The atmosphere is nice, the owner always greets me with a sincere “Hello, my friend, it’s good to see you!”—and it’s a lot warmer than my garage office at home. The problem is, the internet connection isn’t great. The streaming background music in the shop acts as an audible network connection monitor—every so often you’ll hear it stutter and pause as a sign that the connection has gone wonky. When that happens, the Wi-Fi in the shop stops working—most of the time, it’s just for a moment, but it’s a flag that gets raised, and it means I need to be aware of something I really shouldn’t have to pay attention to at all. Free Wi-Fi isn’t too difficult…

I MET RANDY BARBATO AND FENTON Bailey in 1992 or 1993 when I was an executive at MTV. They came in to pitch, and I fell in love with them immediately, and we became friends. I remember thinking at the time that these guys were so far left of center that I could actually be friends with them, but I didn’t know if I could ever buy a show from them to put on the air even though I was at MTV. It was the mid-’90s. At the time, they were managing RuPaul, who I already loved. The first time I saw RuPaul, I was on the couch with my mother in New Hampshire, and we were watching the music video for “Supermodel,” which was just mesmerizing. And my mother said,…