Vardø, Norway, makes Salem look like a walk in the park.

Rewatching “The Social Network,” eight years later: What seemed like an underdog story at the time is now more of a warning.

There are no collectibles in Half-Life. It’s incredible. That’s not how I would have praised the groundbreaking first-person shooter, which turns 20 years old today, when I first played it. At that point, I might have described how Half-Life infused sci-fi shooters with a sense of realism. It set an alien invasion in an Earthbound scientific research facility called Black Mesa, where an ordinary man (or at least, an ordinary MIT-trained theoretical physicist) named Gordon Freeman is forced to fight for his life...

Launching a People’s Manifesto for Wildlife, broadcaster Chris Packham said the UK is witnessing a “mass extinction in our own backyards” due to a lack of regard for the environment – such as building roads and houses through natural habitats and using pesticides in farming. A staggering 38,000 mountain hares have been killed on hunting estates across Scotland, and the manifesto warns the animals could become extinct in our lifetime.

When my friend Kenny's nana died of dementia, he'd already mourned her twice. The first time, he was shopping for her birthday present. He'd settled on a watch, but didn't know what kind, what brand or how much he should spend. He considered the expensive option, the watch he thought she deserved, but then he remembered: His nana had dementia. Usually she'd try and return presents, convinced others had left them behind.

Japan is full of bizarre tales about crypto zoological creatures and things that go bump in the night. Here are five of them.

Mark Twain continues to bedevil the academy, if not the reading public. Like Kipling, he has been by turns reviled and revered, often for the wrong reasons. Daniel Karlin considers the difficulties in dealing with an American classic.

Sea burial is a way to save space in a dense city, but runs counter to funeral traditions.

Their desire for avoidance is a predisposition so common that it’s become hard-baked into Finnish culture.

Dziady, Halloween’s Polish counterpart, has a rich tradition dating back to old Slavic times. Rather than Jack-O’-Lanterns, it’s linked to Karaboshka masks, the great literature of the Romantic era and, by some, to the Greek god Dionysus. Read on to find out what this grave custom is about and what place it holds in the universe of Poles.

Well blow me down! These fantastical, bizarre, hilarious scrolls date from the Edo period in Japan, which spanned the years 1603–1868 for those too lazy to Wikipedia it (I know because I Wikipedia’d it). Authorship for them is unknown, which leads me to believe that they were a very refined form of bathroom graffiti, like those beautiful Japanese ceramic figurines that used to appear in Playboy under the heading “Ribald Art” or something that would reveal the figure’s naughty lady parts if you turned it upside down.

Many of us are familiar with the idea of stripping to our pants, opening a beer and watching TV. But in Finland ‘Pantsdrunk’ has been elevated to an official activity

Twenty six-year old Miyu Kojima works for a company that cleans up after kodokushi (孤独死) or lonely deaths: a Japanese phenomenon of people dying alone and remaining undiscovered for a long period of time.

The Sims has long allowed its fans to indulge in the most mundane of fantasies. From virtual morning sickness to doing laundry, developer Maxis has continued to refine how its players can experience their quotidian virtual life. Soon, The Sims 4’s next expansion, Get Famous, will add a timely new vocation to the long-running life simulation game: the influencer.

Disgusting Food Museum invites visitors to explore the world of food and challenge their notions of what is and what isn’t edible. Could changing our ideas of disgust help us embrace the environmentally sustainable foods of the future? The exhibit has 80 of the world’s most disgusting foods. Adventurous visitors will appreciate the opportunity to smell and taste some of these notorious foods. Do you dare smell the world’s stinkiest cheese? Or taste sweets made with metal cleansing chemicals?

How instant noodles, now 60 years old, went from a shed in Japan to global success.

Sleeping where I worked blurred my work-life boundaries

Millions of weapons aficionados reload their own ammunition and cast their own bullets, acts of individualism that are hallmarks of the broader American gun ethos.

Readers around the world cooed last month when a Welsh bookseller announced he was giving away his shop to a regular customer. It was a lovely story, but as an ex-bookseller of five years, I could only dwell on the harsh realities this unsuspecting man would inherit: slow days, stocktaking and, unavoidably, a few regular oddballs.

Istanbul’s Haci Bekir sweet shop has been selling Turkish delight for two centuries, largely thanks to the business savvy of generations of women.

As modern life lures a generation to cities, some left behind struggle with drought and dust storms and wonder: What kind of life is this?

When Michael Brodie first saw a man with a shaggy head of hair and beard giving away free organic vegetables down by Montreal's Lachine Canal last summer, he decided to pass. "He seemed very suspect to me, so I avoided it." But that bearded man — 35-year-old Ben Williams — kept coming back, using a bike trailer to haul in hundreds of dollars worth of vegetables every week, laying out blankets covered in a colourful array of squashes, herbs, turnips, leeks, beets, leafy greens, bulbs of garlic, onions and potatoes.

Tilli Tansey navigates the extraordinary story of the life-giving liquid.

The complexity is more than cultural. It’s biological, too.

W. Scott Poole on the abyss opened up by the Great War.

The brutal unsolved murder of Pamela Werner, a young British woman in Beijing (then known as Beiping 北平) in the winter of 1937, is the subject of Graeme Sheppard's new book, "A Death in Peking." Drawing on years of police experience, Sheppard reveals the facts behind the 1937 crime, while also illustrating the extraordinary lives of the people involved, both foreigner and Chinese.

Starting in the 1940s, Indian immigrants built a hospitality industry that their children and grandchildren have turned into an empire.

Protected forests in Brazil and Peru hold some of the world’s last remote indigenous groups, increasingly threatened by resource-hungry outsiders.

How cauliflower took over your pizza, your kitchen, and the world

In 'Barracoon,' Zora Neale Hurston challenges the American public’s narrow view of the African continent, the transatlantic slave trade, and the diasporic cultures that came as a result of it.

We asked a group of writers to consider the forces that have shaped our lives in 2017. Here, science fiction writer Ted Chiang looks at capitalism, Silicon Valley, and its fear of superintelligent AI.

Pop culture today is obsessed with the battle between good and evil. Traditional folktales never were. What changed? By Catherine Nichols.

The Berlin Wall has been down as long as it stood. One generation lived with the wall, one without it. But in many ways it is still a tale of two countries.

China has launched a fresh crackdown on funeral strippers. The Ministry of Culture said it would target "obscene, pornographic and vulgar performances" at funerals and weddings.