The Best Worst Batman Fanfic Features Donald Trump and an ATV “Batmobile”

Ashley Feinberg · 06/01/16 12:20PM

When the faceless editors of Wikipedia decide an article is not fit for public consumption, it’s gone, only accessible to the site’s top editors—at least, it was. But now we’re keeping track of all the articles Wikipedia doesn’t see fit to print, to present you with very best of the site’s weirdest and worst. (Plus: The best amateur Batman YouTube series ever, this week only.) Please, “enjoy.”

Hamilton Nolan · 06/01/16 11:20AM

The world is projected to install 1.6 billion new air conditioners by 2050. That’s 1.6 billion more people too soft to function in our warming world. It’s gonna be hot, baby. Deal with it.

Ex-Army Sniper Turned Cartel Hit Man Sentenced to 20 Years in Assassination Plot

Brendan O'Connor · 06/01/16 09:15AM

On Tuesday, Joseph “Rambo” Hunter, international drug lord Paul Le Roux’s former enforcer, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiring to murder a federal drug agent and a government informer. Before becoming a mercenary, Hunter served in the U.S. Army for two decades.

Hamilton Nolan · 05/31/16 04:02PM

“The same brain circuits that are activated by eating chocolate and winning money are activated when teenagers see large numbers of ‘Likes’ on their own photos.” Why can’t these narcissistic teens just eat Snickers bars at slot machines, as we did in simpler times?

Two Problems With Universal Basic Income

Hamilton Nolan · 05/31/16 02:25PM

The idea of a universal basic income—money given to everyone each month to cover minimal living expenses—is having something of a utopian intellectual moment across the political spectrum. But the idea does have two obvious potential pitfalls.

What a Series of Cosmic Evangelical Thrillers Tells Us About Money in America

Chris Lehmann · 05/31/16 01:58PM

The sixteen-novel Left Behind series of evangelical thrillers is at least as influential a text in the annals of latter-day prophecy belief as the Book of Revelation. Which, of course, happens to furnish source material for the series’ intensively literalist accounting of the rapture, the tribulation, and the final judgment. The series, by Baptist preacher-turned-culture-warrior Tim LaHaye and evangelical sports and comics writer Jerry Jenkins, debuted in 1995 and concluded in 2007, and not counting the raft of prequels, children’s adaptations, study guides, and audiobooks that have come in its wake, it has sold more than 65 million copies.