The Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), which is just minutes from the iconic Giza Pyramids, is set to transform the way the world engages with ancient Egypt. It was built on a 50-hectare site with direct sightlines to Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, as if it were the fourth pyramid.
The Grand Egyptian Museum will be the largest museum in the world dedicated to a single civilization. It is more than a repository of artifacts, but more of a bridge between Egypt’s timeless past and its cultural future, positioning Cairo as one of the leading capitals of world heritage tourism.
How to Visit the GEM During the Trial Phase?
Although the official inauguration has been rescheduled to late 2025, on the first of November, GEM is already open to visitors through a limited-access “Trial Phase“. Guests can explore most of the museum’s core galleries, view special exhibitions, and experience the architectural highlights that define the site. The full opening will include the complete Tutankhamun galleries, where all 5,400 artifacts associated with the boy king will be displayed together for the first time.
Tickets are sold exclusively through the official website of the museum, but the majority visit the museum through booking with a trusted travel agency or as part of a Grand Egyptian Museum tour. The museum also offers extended visiting hours on Wednesdays and Saturdays, making it easier to integrate GEM into a Cairo itinerary.
Top Highlights of the GEM Every Visitor Must See
Here are some of the key highlights visitors can experience at the Grand Egyptian Museum:
The Grand Hall – Ramses II Colossus: A monumental 30-foot statue of Ramses II dominates the atrium, immediately setting the tone for the museum’s scale and ambition.
The Hanging Obelisk: A world-first engineering achievement allows visitors to walk beneath a suspended obelisk of Ramses II, revealing inscriptions at its base.
The Grand Staircase: A procession of statues arranged chronologically leads visitors upward through history, aligned with breathtaking views of the pyramids.
Tutankhamun in Full: Upon the official opening, GEM will house the entire Tutankhamun collection, offering an unprecedented opportunity to view his treasures in one place.
Khufu’s Solar Boat: The 4,600-year-old cedar vessel, relocated in 2021, will be displayed in a custom-built hall, illuminating the rituals and technology of the Old Kingdom.
Architecture and Conservation: Designed by Heneghan Peng with Arup and Buro Happold, GEM features an 800-meter translucent stone wall and advanced conservation facilities, making it a global hub for research as well as a visitor attraction.
Reshaping Cairo’s Role in Tourism
Historically, many visitors spent only one night in Cairo before traveling south to Luxor or Aswan. With the pyramids, the Sphinx, and GEM all concentrated within one cultural hub, Cairo now has the capacity to hold travelers for several days, strengthening its role as a destination in itself.
Egypt received 15.7–15.8 million visitors in 2024 and continued to see growth in 2025. GEM is expected to build on this momentum up to more than 25 million visitors in 2026, attracting first-time visitors and drawing repeat travelers eager to witness its official opening.
The Egyptian government’s vision of welcoming 30 million annual visitors by the early 2030s is supported by major infrastructure upgrades. These include transport improvements at Giza, electric shuttle buses, a redesigned visitor center, and expanded capacity at both Cairo International Airport and the new Sphinx International Airport.
Boosting Economy and Infrastructure
Tourism contributed approximately 8.5 percent of Egypt’s GDP in 2024, and GEM is expected to boost this further by extending the average length of stay and increasing per-visitor spending.
By clustering high-value attractions within a compact area, Cairo strengthens its position as a cultural capital comparable to Paris, Rome, and Athens.
Implications for Travelers and the Industry
For travelers, GEM provides an unparalleled opportunity to see the entire sweep of ancient Egyptian history in one visit, from prehistoric artifacts to the treasures of Tutankhamun, followed immediately by the experience of standing before the pyramids themselves.
For the travel industry, GEM creates new opportunities for premium experiences, including private tours, after-hours access, Egyptologist-led programs, and behind-the-scenes conservation visits. It also encourages longer Cairo stays and helps distribute demand more evenly throughout the year, supporting the development of sustainable tourism.
Visitor Tips and Practical Advice
Book tickets through an authorized and top-rated travel agency.
Plan time for the Grand Hall, Hanging Obelisk, Grand Staircase, and current thematic galleries.
Save the Tutankhamun galleries for the official inauguration in late 2025.
Pair a museum visit with the Giza Plateau, using the new visitor center and electric shuttles for convenience.
Personal photography is permitted, but flash, tripods, selfie sticks, drones, and livestreaming are prohibited.
Witness the sight of Divine Miracles at the Gem
As anticipation builds toward the official inauguration, GEM already stands as a must-visit destination, a place where ancient wonders meet modern innovation, and where history is reimagined for the future.
The Grand Egyptian Museum is not simply a new cultural landmark but a powerful statement of Egypt’s pride and vision for the future. For visitors, it offers the rare chance to experience humanity’s oldest continuous civilization in a single, immersive journey. For Egypt, it cements Cairo’s role as a global cultural capital, reshaping tourism flows, generating economic growth, and setting the stage for a new golden era in world heritage travel.
I have a certain fondness for the gym bro. There’s a puppy-like, amateurish idea that you can decimate your body and push it to failure with the obliteration of the mind. It makes intuitive sense that bodily manipulation will result in mental stability, as it sometimes but does not often do, and the 18-year-olds raised on muscular supremacy via Instagram Reels have internalized this to create a new lifting revolution based on the ideal of physical beauty. But with all of this emphasis on appearances, where does the mind come in?
Like Murakami was a runner, Jordan Castro is a lifter; his new book, Muscle Man, follows a day in the life of a college professor who can’t wait to get out of this meeting and into the gym. Not notably enormous, but so entrenched in the world of physical fitness such that every second thought revolves around it, Harold’s itch to lift goes hand in hand with his ire at the “mentally defective” oafs that are students, the pretentious teachers, and even Shepherd College itself, to the point of fanatical, paranoid thought — Harold would “always be in the clutches of some malevolent, tentacled beast; the sinewy halls.”
Harold’s distrust of academia and college-aged minds is not new, but is funny — the book dances around the word “woke.” The furniture in his department rejects a dead architect’s designs (he had some “eccentric” eugenicist ideas), but sources global furniture to “give the students a broader, more inclusive historical sense.” “Violence was bad, but the right kind of violence was not violence at all: it was justice, or love,” Harold thinks, and several Fox newscasters making fun of careful leftist thinkers come to mind.
The book’s best bit is the ALERT_TO_INSPIRE@shepherd.edu email, which sends out emergency broadcasts about events that are definitely not crimes. These were “opportunities to get inspired to consider new ways of thinking about how we might better relate to and understand one another,” Castro writes in placating, soft university-speak; “What might have been the systemic cause of the student’s getting stabbed twenty-three times in the back? And how might better scholarship, or better pedagogy, prevent it?”
His colleagues, too, are blundering idiots who only forbid Harold to hit gym — he holds contempt for basically everyone except Casey, his lifting buddy that’s suspiciously absent today. “Dolly’s lips were always flapping with an anecdote about back home and her kin,” and “If you took David and put him in a vat of hot liquid and boiled him down, [an] anecdote would be all that remained.” Part of this comes from Casey, who posits that words written by nonmuscular people aren’t only inferior, but worthless. He reckons “the academy is infested with vampires who have become so lopsided by their focus on words that their very existence has come to mirror that of words: constantly typing and deleting and editing. They are, in effect, writing and reading themselves. Academics have ceased to look or act like people, and they’ve begun to act and look like words.”
This line of anti-academic thinking is familiar — Muscle Man arrives at a time where lifting is politicized. The 2024 election saw energetic young men listen to manosphere podcasts and join the Republican Party in droves; Democrats, in return, have posted videos of themselves bench-pressing or criticizing Trump in their home gyms. Who cares if you pass legislation if you can bench 315 pounds? Nancy Mace comparing health secretaries under Biden and Trump showed that Rachel Levine’s doctoral degree can’t compare to RFK Jr’s muscles. Despite a brain worm, he is jacked, and thus he is better.
This sort of lopsided logic feels correct because it is so feeble-minded; on the surface, it makes sense that a bodybuilder is better than a normal human because he has put in so much work. Casey says this outright — “There are no major figures in the academy of the twenty-first century with muscles.” But bodies hold things that would never be possible without our minds. Is it worth investigating the body fat percentage of anonymous authors like Elena Ferrante to see if their writing is any good?
But Muscle Man isn’t so quick to resort to binaries of good and evil, jacked and frail. A good mind is just as important as a sound body, even as Harold flip-flops his thinking between periods of serious philosophy and the indecipherable grunts he produces in the gym. Frail professors can be mentally built, the same as a bodybuilder can be a mental twerp. “Each large muscle of a bodybuilder represents a language he didn’t learn, a poem he didn’t read, a fun fact he never memorised,” reads one of my favorite tweets.
In one of his rants, Casey says that there’s “no better defense against the parasitic nature of language than to have a strong body.” Like all extremist ideas, you can trace a small path from its reasonable start. It is a tremendous sensation to run as fast as you can on a treadmill or hit a perfect rally on the tennis court, your body acting without the burden of your mind, pulling from an innate knowledge that you didn’t need to read from a book. Often at these moments it can feel like your mind doesn’t matter, that you can operate based on instinct and anatomy alone. In his car, Harold watches videos online, one of which with a shirtless dude in a megaphone in Barnes & Noble yelling that “Books are for pussies.” It makes Harold laugh, and I did too — why does it sort of, for a brief moment, make sense?
But Harold realizes his neuroticism doesn’t waver even if his body is moving. Before the gym, he’s wondering if the vegetable oils in his protein bar will produce autistic children, and afterwards, he’s worried that the other guys in the sauna will judge him for the YouTube video essay he’s watching about a bodybuilding feud. This is familiar territory for Castro, whose first novel, The Novelist, traced a day in a distracted writer’s life (with a 20-page scene about shit). Familiar too for readers of Castro’s work is the internet fitness culture he documents in a Harper’s essay about lifting, down to the exact titles of YouTube videos and play-by-play scenes of Instagram Reels, which isn’t egregious, but maybe a little unimaginative. But he supplements this with diatribes about Southern posterity becoming a parody, the death of the self while reading someone else’s words, or Mel Keyes, a mix between Mike Mentzer and Arnold Schwarzenegger whose book on lifting and life Harold reads like the Bible: “Any life that involved the possibility of being crushed to death meant that one had to adopt a sort of spiritual disposition toward it,” he writes.
Mel actually illuminates the divide Harold tries not to think about during the whole book — that both body and mind is useless without the other, no matter how good it feels to get a PR. “Mel’s body, despite being one of the strongest on Earth, could not quell his encroaching doom. He had to put his faith in something else.” What about literature and thinking? It’s as good of a choice as any, even if there’s no such thing as a mind pump.
Borderlands 4 officially drops in a couple of days, bringing a fresh spin on the chaos fans love. The arrival of Gearbox Software’s popular looter shooter marks its return after six years of anticipation.
Gameplay Overview and Expectations
This upcoming game is both a fresh and familiar experience for players. In short, it builds on the series’ main formula. Fans still shoot, loot, and repeat. However, they can now experience a true open-world environment. For the very first time, players are allowed to explore Kairos freely. At the same time, the new version lets them encounter dynamic world events, faction wars, and hidden dungeons. Plus, fans can explore all areas while riding a hover bike.
Also, there will be new movement abilities in Borderlands 4. Among these additions are double jumping, dodging, and gliding. Likewise, co-op remains central. Online multiplayer supports up to four players. Level scaling ensures everyone is on the same page.
The game’s customization also goes deeper. There will be tons of weapons and gear combos, making the loot loop more addictive than ever.
Vault Hunters: Voice Cast and Special Abilities
According to 2k Games, four talented voice actors are giving life to the new badass Vault Hunters. The talents taking the role of the crew members are the following:
Alejandro Saab as Rafa the Exo-Soldier
Judy Alice Lee as Vex the Siren
Kimberly Brooks as Harlowe the Gravitar
Ray Chase as Amon the Forgeknight
Polygon reports that each Vault Hunter wields unique abilities that help in looting and shooting. Specifically, Rafa has action skills that unlock bonus weapons. Vex uses space magic for cloning and summoning. Harlowe can stop enemies with anti-gravity technology. Lastly, Amon possesses brute size and strength.
System Requirements
As per the official announcement, there are specific hardware requirements to ensure Borderlands 4 runs with solid and smooth performance.
The standard edition is expected to sell for $70 at launch.
Borderlands 4 rolls out on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on September 12. However, it drops earlier in some areas on September 11, while Switch 2 users can access it by October 3. For more specific release times, check out the game’s official website.
There’s so much music coming out all the time that it’s hard to keep track. On those days when the influx of new tracks is particularly overwhelming, we sift through the noise to bring you a curated list of the most interesting new releases (the best of which will be added to our Best New Songs playlist). Below, check out our track roundup for Tuesday, September 9 2025.
The Mountain Goats – ‘Armies of the Lord’
The Mountain Goats have announced a “full-on musical” called Through This Fire Across From Peter Balka. Lin-Manuel Miranda sings backing vocals on a few songs, including the sweeping lead single ‘Armies of the Lord’. Some context on the story from John Darnielle: “There were 16 men on a fishing boat, but only three survived the storm, and one of those went missing, and is presumed dead. That leaves me and Peter Balkan, whose health is failing as his apocalyptic visions dissipate in the spray at the shore.”
Tortoise – ‘Layered Presence’
Tortoise have announced their first album in nine years, Touch. In addition to the previously released single ‘Oganesson’, it includes the new song ‘Layered Presence’, which describes itself in the title. It’s accompanied by a music video directed by Mikel Patrick Avery.
Drake – ‘Dog House’ [feat. Yeat and Julia Wolf]
Drake has officially released ‘Dog House’, a collaboration with Yeat and singer-songwriter Julia Wolft. I’m not sure if it’ll go over too well given some of its lyrical jabs, but it also sounds pretty placid despite how hyperactive the beat tries to be. None of which, of course, will stop it from being huge.
Juliana Hatfield – ‘Scaratchers’
Juliana Hatfield has a new album on the way: Lightning Might Strike comes out December 12, and the nervy lead single ‘Scratchers’ is out now. “It was a difficult time for me when I started working on this album,” the singer-songwriter shared. “I had just uprooted myself from the city apartment building where I’d been living for twenty years to a house in a more rural town two hours away where I knew no one when one of my best friends died (‘Ashes’), and then my dog died (‘Constant Companion’), then my mother was diagnosed with esophagus cancer (‘Scratchers’). I was pretty depressed for a solid year (‘Long Slow Nervous Breakdown’) and was lost and very lonely (‘Harmonizing With Myself’). I was thinking about fate and circumstance and about how I’d ended up where I was (‘Where Are You Now’).”
Jay Som – ‘What You Need’
Jay Som has shared a wistful, propulsive new song from her forthcoming album Belong. ‘What You Need’ was inspired by a Peter Bjorn and John song that reminded Joao Gonzalez (Soft Glas) of Duterte’s music. “Joao created and sent me the basic skeleton for ‘What You Need’ a couple hours before the fires in LA started,” Duterte recalled. “I remember feeling immediately drawn to it, but the uncertainty and danger we were about to face crept up, pulling our focus elsewhere. We eventually revisited the demo a month later, after witnessing how the people of LA came together in its darkest moments – it felt necessary and only right to create this song with friends.”
Kalia Vandever – ‘Staring at the Cracked Window’
Brooklyn trombonist Kalia Vandever has announced a new album, Another View, arriving November 14 on Northern Spy. It’s led by the beautifully wonky and exploratory ‘Staring at the Cracked Window’, which Vandever says “was written with resilience in mind, specifically the will to break free from a harmful cycle. The character of this piece is hopeful, yet emerging from a darkness that evolves throughout the album. I was drawing from cyclical patterns while writing the music on Another View and imagining the gradual dissolution of these patterns. The album brings you into a fractured dream state and releases you into a renewed sense of reality.”
jasmine.4.t – ‘I Can’t Believe I Did This Without You’
jasmine.4.t has announced a deluxe version of her boygenius-produced debut album, You Are The Morning, featuring five new tracks. Dedicated to Jasmine’s friend Yulia, You Are The Morning (YBT Deluxe) is out this Friday, and ‘I Can’t Believe I Did This Without You’ is out today. It starts out heavily reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens’ ‘Should Have Known Better’ before blooming into its own heavily cathartic thing. “‘I Can’t Believe I Did This Without You’ and ‘I Don’t Think Anyone Else Could Hold The Same Place In My Heart’ are two new songs on this release that I wrote during the LA recording sessions for the album, up on the roof of Sound City Studio between takes,” she wrote as part of a lengthy statement. “I recorded five songs as demos and sent them as a thank you to my bandmates and producers after returning home to Manchester from LA. It’s nice to have more polished versions of these two.”
“Now when I sing these songs, I am singing them to my best friend, my mother, my sister, my daughter – the political prisoner Yulia Trot,” she concluded. “Of all the things that I have lived through, nothing has felt as big as losing her. I hope that one day she will be able to hear these recordings. I hope that one day she, all of her co-defendants, and all of Palestine, will be free.”
Jessy Lanza – ‘Slapped By My Life’
You ever feel slapped by my life? Does it sometimes feel completely unfunny, entirely sad, yet somehow too absurd to take seriously? Jessy Lanza seeks refuge from that feeling on her new single ‘Slapped By My Life’, the title track to her just-announced EP. “I wrote ‘Slapped By My Life’ while my husband Winston was going through chemotherapy,” Lanza shared. “The treatment cycle was relentless, and he spent most of the time bedridden, so while he slept I wrote this song for him. It’s been challenging to find the space to be creative since cancer came into our lives, but I knew this song would make Winston smile, and that was motivation enough. Collaborating with Pearson Sound made this track exciting too because listening to his music has always been a serotonin rush. When I wrote ‘Slapped By My Life’, I was desperate to feel something other than sadness, to escape my mind and live inside the music, even for a few minutes.”
Ribbon Skirt – ‘LUCKY8’
Ribbon Skirt have announced a new EP, PENSACOLA, which serves as an epilogue to their debut album Bite Down. It’s led by the driving and heavily distorted ‘LUCKY8’.
Hilary Woods – ‘Endgames’
Hilary Woods has announced a new album, Night CRIÚ, which will be out on October 31 via Sacred Bones. It’s led by the darkly enchanting ‘Night CRIÚ’, which arrives alongside a music video. “Each record is a life buoy, a raft, a snapshot, a marker in the sand, a date that requires me to meet it,” Woods remarked. “Making records is a way of being.”
AFI – ‘Holy Visions’
AFI have dropped a new track, ‘Holy Visions’, from their upcoming full-length Silver Bleeds The Black Sun… It’s flashy and gothic, and it comes paired with a music video directed by Gilbert Trejo, vocalist Davey’s son. “Getting to work with Gilbert on two videos was a joy,” Trejo commented. “‘Holy Visions’ is the perfect visual sublimation of the song.”
Home Front – ‘Light Sleeper’
Home Font have announced their sophomore LP, Watch It Die – out November 14 – with the soaring lead single ‘Light Sleeper’. “For all of us in Home Front, Watch It Die comes at a very transformative time,” the group explained. “Geopolitically, musically and in our personal lives. With friends and close family members dying, to massive uncertainty around the world, this album encapsulates what it’s like for us to step into a ‘new world’ where all the old adages of ‘everything is gonna work out fine’ feel like a joke. We watch rich people get richer while the rest of us struggle just to get by. We watch colonizers kill without consequence and in an age of information at our finger tips we watch people choosing to be ignorant to what’s going on around them. ‘Watch It Die’ speaks about our own humanity, a rebirth into a new world and how we can never go back to the way things were. We suffer for their dreams, but in saying that we must recognize the importance of our own community and look to energize them to build a better way of life. We have always been an anti-war, anti-genocide, pro-peace band. We are against crimes to human rights and all of those struggling through the horrors of imperialism. We stand with the people of Palestine and we stand with the Canadian Indigenous communities who struggle to uphold treaty rights as well as basic human rights like clean drinking water and generational trauma. One takeaway from our music is to make a safe space where our community can come together to air out grievances and find a better way to a new future.”
Hinds – ‘Girl, so confusing featuring lorde’ (Charli XCX Cover)
It’s been a while since ‘Girl, so confusing featuring lorde’ made a splash, but Hinds’ indie rock cover of it is different enough from the original to cut through. I especially like how they reimagine Lorde’s verse. In a statement, the Spanish band wrote: “everything about this song resonates with us. we have been a girl band for four albums now, more than a decade. a decade in a world that tries to put girls against each other, comparing everything, our bodies, our songs, our way of talking and existing. making it almost impossible to not feel threatened and constantly insecure. when this song and the feature with Lorde was released, it made history for music and for women. this is our take on it.”
Sessa – ‘Vale a Pena’
Sergio Sayeg, the São Paulo-based artist who records as Sessa, has announced a new album called Pequena Vertigem De Amor. It’s out November, and the lead single ‘Vale a Pena’ is out today. The songs “are a mix of personal chronicles and quiet meditations about life in the face of personal change,” according to the musician, “of experiencing something so big that you realize your insignificant size in space and time.” In that context, ‘Vale a Pena’ has a lovely, understated glow.
Saintseneca – ‘Battery Lifer’, ‘Burnt Hand Hymn’, ‘May Day’, and ‘Green Ink Pen’
Saintseneca have unveiled five tracks from their forthcoming album Highwalllow & Supermoon Songs, which is framed as a ten-song landscape (tracks 1-10) orbited by two sonic “moons.” Zac Little wanted to release the whole Viridian Moon set in full, explaining:
This song world slowly unfurled, spinning out from the dark.
The little orb of light a candle affords, revealing patterns, colors, shapes, rhythm. With voice, strings set under tension, tone, and time, I probe about. The place begins to take shape. It is bigger than I first imagined.
I struggled to orient myself in this strange landscape, awash in orange and green light – Liminal colors, narrow bands caught between the primaries. However surreal, I like it here.
I look up into the sky and see two moons, one a burning pumpkin, one ethereal emerald green. The Cinnamon Moon and The Viridian Moon.
I found a lot of songs, and it seemed they belonged together – a weird web held together by tension, expansion.
This is a song world, orbited by two moons, influencing the tides and gravity.
I wanted to reveal the place the same way I found it.
Here we have The Viridian Moon, so named for its green color — Shoegrass, Bluegaze, Un-Americana. For the green ink pen.
I found this green ink pen when I started writing songs again. It made its way through the universe and presented itself on the ground, an offering at my feet. I loved the way the ink looked, how it would glide and flow on the page. It felt good. I wrote every song with it.
I tried not to write this song, but it wouldn’t leave me alone. It kept popping into my head, showing up in dreams.
So I expand into this song, stop stopping myself.
The green ink pen, inert. Someone picks it up and suddenly, for however brief an instant, it is inhabited by the gestures, the shapes of a poem.
Elliott Skinner – ‘RECALLING’
Elliott Skinner has signed to Ninja Tune, sharing his first single for the label, ‘RECALLING’, which is hushed in its dedication. “‘RECALLING’ is about not holding yourself to a version of your life that isn’t meant for you,” Skinner explained. ““It’s about the pursuit of a better reality. So often we believe and live by the constructs in our societies that help us feel comfortable, but vulnerability isn’t comfortable. It takes work to dig into the realities that hide behind fantasy, to dig into ourselves.”
Skinner added, “Music has always been a force for all of us to connect to each other – to try and understand each other. It’s been a force for me to learn myself. I wrote the words to ‘RECALLING’ in 2018 and have performed it in many forms, always asking the audience to sing ‘I don’t want another fantasy’ with me. I ask for them to sing it like they mean it. This chant is an excavator. I hope wherever people sing this, they choose to dig.”
Lambrini Girls have joined forces with Peaches for a ravey remix of ‘Cuntology101’, a highlight from their debut album, Who Let the Dogs Out. Peaches had this to say about it: “The track is c*nt! It was a no brainer! Punk AF.”
Iron & Wine and Ben Bridwell – ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’ (Foreigner Cover)
Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) and Ben Bridwell (Band of Horses) recently shared their take on Kendrick Lamar & SZA’s ‘Luther’ as part of a new covers EP, Making Good Time. Today, they’ve offered their version of a very different song, Foreigner’s classic ‘I Want to Know What Love Is’. Sam Beam commented: “Brad Cook suggested this one and the little kid in me who remembers skating around the roller rink in the 80’s imagining he was Lou Graham sat up and said ‘Yes, let’s do it!’ Such an amazing chorus! Our version ended up sounding a bit desperate and dark, not sure why I was kinda surprised.”
Constant Smiles – ‘Allowed to Be’
Constant Smiles have previewed their forthcoming album, Moonflowers, with a gorgeous track called ‘Allowed To Be’. It arrives alongside a Sam Mason-directed video featuring Leya, Bobby Puleo, Long Beard, Shahzad Ismaily, Bambara, Mallory Hawk, Ann Messner, Slowspin, and Katie von Schleicher. “Internally, director Sam Mason and I were calling this video Day on Earth, inspired by Jim Jarmusch’s Night on Earth, a love letter to New York City and the people who inspire me,” Ben Jones explained. “At first, we even considered centering the entire piece on my neighbor Bobby Puleo, a true skateboard legend whose found art practice and larger-than-life presence capture so much of the city’s spirit. That ‘day in the life’ idea eventually evolved into what became this video.”
Big Thief find themselves at a creative crossroads. Or, as Adrianne Lenker more poetically puts it on the title track of their new album, Double Infinity: “At the bridge of two infinities/ What’s been lost and what lies waiting.” Recorded at New York’s Power Station Studios, the LP accordingly doesn’t sound like moving on so much as between those vast emotional points, with many of Lenker’s meditations on love reflecting the band’s own disorientation following the departure bassist Max Oleartchik (for “interpersonal reasons,” they insist, though some conversations were definitely had about his relationship to his hometown of Tel Aviv.) It is their first album as a trio, but Lenker, guitarist Buck Meek, drummer James Krivchenia’s attempts at recording as one were initially fruitless, so they enlisted a small circle of collaborators that translate the undercurrent of confusion into a sweet, gauzy veil of textures, marrying Lenker’s increasingly mantra-like lyrics with loops, samples, and wordless backing vocals, as well as zither contributions from ambient luminary Laraaji. It is ambient in spirit, if not necessarily in sound. Where words fail, it insists, music – for the most part – doesn’t.
1. Incomprehensible
Adrianne Lenker meditates on the inexplicably sweet nature of ageing, tuning into her body to challenge the ways we’re socialized into experiencing the changes. “The message spirals, don’t get saggy, don’t get gray/ But the soft and lovely silvers are now falling on my shoulder,” she sings, looking to the generations of women before her that “wrinkle like the river, sweeten like the dew.” Yet as she begins to dive into deep, ineffable emotions, her rhymes only become simpler and more playful, making the process sound almost easy as shimmery textures swirl around her; a lovely example of how the band, too, keeps expanding its palette even if some of the urgency has faded.
2. Words
What’s that about a lack of urgency? If the opener demonstrates a level of comfort with the ineffable, ‘Words’ is wiry and kinetic. “Words are feathered and light,” Lenker sings, realizing she can make a wonderful display of them yet they can also be rife with tension, correcting nothing. Even the guitar solo sounds frustrated, wrapped around winding percussion and shadowy, wordless vocalizations from Laraaji as well as Alena Spanger, Hannah Cohen, and June McDoom. The subconscious taking form, yet never quite breaking through the surface.
3. Los Angeles
The song begins as a snapshot of a moment – coming home from the bar, drunk on laughter – to a portrait of a timeless love, one Lenker revisits with tangled grace. She’s swept up in the revitalized feeling but remembers the years past as a kind of coastal erosion. In a particularly moving verse, Lenker is joined by Meek as they sing, “There is so much that I wish I could’ve been for you somehow/ But we don’t need to talk about that now/ We’re finally in a good place meeting face to face.” A sobering realization that cuts through the song’s intoxicated cheerfulness.
4. All Night All Day
‘All Night All Day’ reverberates pleasure from its very first moments, blurring the line between tireless lovemaking and the eternal. “Love is just a name,” Lenker still concedes, but it’s not a word that weighs heavy, instead leaning into her own, embodied definition: “It’s a thing we say for what pulls through.” The all-female harmonies make the desire seem like it’s flowing in more than one direction, truly shared.
5. Double Infinity
Laying back over a languid chord progression and melodic bass, Lenker unspools some of her more poetic lines, situating herself “at the bridge of two infinities/ What is forming, what is fading.” Locking into a more memorable melody, she moves into a more direct kind of pleading, longing for beauty to reveal itself in all its mystery. It’s neither nostalgic nor celebratory, but caught between moods, which is emblematic of Double Infinity as a whole.
6. No Fear
“There is no fear” is the first of just ten lines Lenker keeps turning over on the seven-minute track, which coils around a drifting, atmospheric groove. In my mind, her words echo those of bell hooks, who writes in All About Love, “When we choose to love, we choose to move against fear – against alienation and separation. The choice to love is the choice to connect – to find ourselves in the other.” Lenker sort of articulates her own vision, more utopian than practicable (a few words short of “Imagine there’s no country”) – but a dream worth indulging in. No wonder it’s the longest track on the album.
7. Grandmother [feat. Laraaji]
Laraaji, a musical and vocal presence throughout Double Infinity, is the highlight on ‘Grandmother’, imbuing its assertive rock and roll with wordless splendor. But really, it’s the whole band – this is the first song Lenker, Meek, and drummer James Krivchenia wrote together – that turn a potentially over-earnest attempt at seeing the love through the pain into something tangible and radiant, sounding as big as ever in this formation, even through all the backing vocals.
8. Happy With You
Repetition does not have the same effect on’ Happy With Me’ as it does on a track like ‘No Fear’. Lenker recites just three lines – “I’m happy with you / Why do I need to explain myself?/ Poison shame” – and while the final two words are an interesting throwback to ‘All Night All Day’, there’s barely an inkling of frustration to break the sweet monotony. Lenker, who’s perfectly capable of writing an infectious love song, of course does not need to explain herself, but the song’s emotional ambiguity remains untapped – which is, indeed, a shame.
9. How Could I Have Known
The two infinities that Lenker oscillates between on the album are, simply put, the before and after of a long-lasting love. On the closer, her introspective sincerity, stirred by a lone walk in Paris, feels earned and genuinely moving. “They say time’s the fourth dimension/ They say everything lives and dies,” she sings. “But our love will live forever/ Though today we said goodbye.” The celestial guitar solo preceding the final refrain sounds capable of breaking through that fourth dimension. It’s not difficult to see the song in the context of the losses Big Thief themselves have endured, especially since it’s the one song that sonically reverts to the most traditional version of the band. Once again, Lenker is clouding the frustration that comes with trying to imagine a new version of yourself. If Double Infinity is a bridge between endless iterations of the band, this is looking back at all the steps it took to get to the other side. The next bridge could sound totally different, but somehow, as Lenker puts it earlier , “taste the same.”
After winning a string of trophies – including Artist of the Year – at the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards, Lady Gaga was the musical guest the 10th anniversary episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. She delivered an astounding, stripped-down version of her Mayhem track ‘Vanish Into You’. Watch it happen below.
Lady Gaga is currently on tour in support of Mayhem, her first album in five years. At the VMAs, she also won Best Collaboration (for her Bruno Mars duet ‘Die With a Smile’) and Best Direction and Best Art Direction (for ‘Abracadabra’).
If you’ve spent time around online casinos lately, you’ve probably noticed a shift. The flashy banners and “win big now!” promises are still around, but they’re sharing screen space with things like clear odds, time reminders, deposit limits, and “need a break?” pop-ups. That’s not a coincidence. The industry is growing up — and fast. Transparency and responsible gaming aren’t just add-ons anymore; they’re becoming central to how the industry sustains long-term player trust and engagement.
Even something as simple as spinning a few free slots before you deposit shows how the culture is changing. Players try games to understand volatility, bonus mechanics, and Return-to-Player (RTP) without putting money on the line first. That little step nudges the whole industry toward transparency: learn the rules, then decide how (or whether) you want to play.
A quick rewind: What actually changed?
For years, operators competed on glitz and bonuses. That worked — until it didn’t. As markets matured and regulators tightened the screws, players started asking tougher questions: “What are my real chances?”, “Where are the terms?”, “How do I set limits?” Smart brands realized that churn, complaints, and chargebacks are not a growth strategy. Trust is.
Another shift came from player behavior itself. Instead of depositing first and reading terms later, people began testing games, watching streamers break down mechanics, and comparing odds across sites. That grassroots due diligence pushed casinos to surface the basics — RTP, volatility, rules — where players can actually see them.
And there’s a very practical angle: quick demos help you get a feel for pace and variance before you ever wager. A couple of experimental spins — say a short run in a demo Hot Hot fruit session — can reveal how often features trigger, how “swingy” the game feels, and whether it suits your budget and temperament. The more players explore like this, the more pressure there is on operators to present clean information up front.
Building Customer Confidence
When players know the odds, understand bonuses, and can access real support, they stay longer. Fewer disputes lead to faster approvals from regulators and payment providers. Affiliates drive more traffic to brands that treat customers well. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle of reliable service and satisfied players.
You can see this player-first mindset in products like SlotsUp, a user-centric casino operating since 2015 and fully re-imagined in 2025 as “SlotsUp 2.0.” It blends expert-verified content with accurate data, personalizes by country/language/currency, and adds smart tools — Casino Match, Safety Index, Game Radar, Multi Game Mode — under a simple value set: inform rather than promote, design for real user needs, and keep responsible gambling front and center.
Transparency & RG at a glance
Below is a compact, practical table you can use mid-scroll. It doesn’t try to be encyclopedic — just enough to help you spot the good stuff quickly.
Feature
What You’ll See
Why It Matters
Quick Self-Check
RTP & Volatility
RTP number and volatility badge on the game page
Sets expectations about swinginess and long-term returns
“Can I find RTP in 10 seconds?”
Bonus Terms Upfront
Wagering multiple, eligible games, time limit, max bet shown before accepting
Fewer surprises, fewer declined withdrawals
“Could I explain the rules to a friend?”
Limits & Cool-downs
Deposit/loss/time limits with delay to raise
Prevents heat-of-the-moment overspending
“Can I set a limit in two clicks?”
Play History & Reality Checks
Exportable ledger; timed reminders
Helps you track behavior and spot patterns
“Can I see last month’s results easily?”
Predictable Withdrawals
Clear processing windows, listed KYC docs
Cuts anxiety and support tickets
“Do I know exactly what happens after I cashout?”
Why the business case is overwhelming
Here’s the part you won’t always hear in marketing: transparency and RG are good for revenue. Not in a “squeeze today, ignore tomorrow” way — in a compounding, healthy-business way.
Trust reduces friction
When people can see odds, understand terms, and reach support, complaints and chargebacks go down. Withdrawals happen cleaner. KYC feels like a step, not a wall. The whole funnel gets smoother.
Lower churn, higher lifetime value
Players who feel respected come back. They recommend the brand. They set limits and stay within them — meaning they don’t burn out or rage-quit. That’s not just ethics; that’s retention math.
How operators can level up right now
You don’t need a moonshot project to start being more transparent and responsible. You need intent and a few smart moves.
Put the “unsexy” info where people actually see it
Odds, RTP, volatility, bonus rules — lift them above the fold. Use plain language. Include a “What this means” explainer next to every key term.
Make limits part of onboarding
When someone creates an account, offer them deposit and session limits before the first deposit. Treat it like picking notification settings — normal, not punitive.
What players can look for (a simple checklist)
If you’re choosing where to play, here’s a quick gut-check that doesn’t require reading every policy page.
Can you find the rules in 10 seconds?
Open a game. Is the RTP visible? Are the rules explained clearly, including how features affect payouts?
Are bonus terms readable on a phone?
Scan for wagering multiples, time limits, game restrictions, and max bet while wagering. If that info is missing or vague, walk away.
Do limits and timeouts feel normal?
From your account page, can you set limits without talking to support? Is there a clear cooling-off or self-exclusion flow? Good sites make it easy.
Are withdrawals predictable?
Look for exact timelines (“We process within X hours”) and required documents listed upfront. No one enjoys mysterious delays.
The road ahead: more daylight, less drama
The future of online casinos will look a lot like other mature digital industries: clear disclosures, clean data access, and strong user controls. AI will increasingly flag risky patterns (like chasing losses at 3 a.m.) and prompt kinder interventions. Regulators will push for more standardization. And the brands that treat players like adults — smart, curious, and in control — will win on loyalty.
Because here’s the thing: gambling, at its best, is entertainment. It’s the excitement of a great hand, the suspense of a spin, the social buzz of live tables. Transparency and responsible gaming don’t dim that thrill. They keep it in a place where it belongs — fun, informed, and sustainable.
After returning with their first new song in nine years, ‘Oganesson’, back in March, Toirtoise have today announced a new album. Touch will be released on October 24 via International Anthem/Nonesuch Records. The kaleidoscopic lead single, ‘Layered Presence’, is out now alongside a music video directed by Mikel Patrick Avery. Check it out below and scroll down for the album cover and tracklist.
With two members now based in Los Angeles, another in Portland, and just two remaining in the post-rock band’s Chicago hometown, Toirtoise – Dan Bitney, John Herndon, Douglas McCombs, John McEntire, and Jeff Parker – recorded the new album in all three cities. ‘Oganesson’ appears on the LP, which follows 2016’s The Catastrophist.
Touch Cover Artwork:
Touch Tracklist:
1. Vexations
2. Layered Presence
3. Works and Days
4. Elka
5. Promenade à deux
6. Axial Seamount
7. A Title Comes
8. Rated OG
9. Oganesson
10. Night Gang
The Mountain Goats have announced their 23rd album. Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan arrives on November 7. It features contributions from Lin-Manuel Miranda, The Replacements’ Tommy Stinson, harpist Mikaela Davis, and the band’s new bassist Cameron Ralston. Lin-Manuel Miranda, in fact, guests on the sweeping lead single ‘Armies of the Lord’. Check it out and find the album cover and tracklist below.
Billed as a “full-on musical,” Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan was produced by the band’s Matt Douglas. “There were sixteen men on a fishing boat but only three survived the storm, and one of those went missing, and is presumed dead,” John Darnielle explained in a press release. “That leaves me & Peter Balkan, whose health is failing as his apocalyptic visions dissipate in the spray at the shore.”
“The Mountain Goats are proud to announce Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan, a story of momentary visions away from the world, due 7 November 2025 on Cadmean Dawn Records: our own label!” he continued. “The first song we’re sharing from it is called ‘Armies of the Lord’; we recorded this in January at Dreamland Studios. Matt Douglas produced it; Ben Loughran who you know from tour did the synth with Matt as co-conspirator; that’s Mikaela Davis on the harp; the voice on the harmonies in the bridge that sounds like Lin-Manuel Miranda is Lin-Manuel Miranda, who followed Peter Balkan’s story from its early gleanings through its realization. Through This Fire Across from Peter Balkan. Only available on Cadmean Dawn Records and tapes.”
The new album follows 2023’s Jenny From Thebes. “I loved musicals when I was a kid,” Darnielle said, “but I hadn’t really indulged in them that much until the last 7 years or so. And then we did Jenny From Thebes, which I called a ‘fake musical’ a lot… But this one actually is going for it.”
Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan Cover Artwork:
Through This Fire Across From Peter Balkan Tracklist:
1. Overture
2. Fishing Boat
3. Cold at Night
4. Dawn of Revelation
5. Your Bandage
6. Peru
7. Through This Fire
8. Rocks in My Pockets
9. Armies of the Lord
10. Your Glow
11. The Lady from Shanghai 2
12. Broken To Begin With
Paying for sex is something that has been around for many thousands of years, and it will continue to be prevalent in the years ahead. Many people refer to prostitution as one of the oldest professions in the world, and the reason is due to the high demand for the services. Everyone seems to forget that it involves two adults giving their consent, and so it is difficult to see how it is harming anyone else. There are a number of reasons why someone might want to pay for sexual services, and many are not just because of desperation.
You might be thinking to yourself, Where can I find a brothel near me and you would probably be surprised to learn that there are a number of them in your local area. There has always been some kind of stigma attached to paying for sex, but the following are some of the top reasons why it is perfectly okay to want to pay for something that you enjoy.
It’s a lot safer – Many Australians, when offered the opportunity of sex with the person that they have only met hours before, will readily jump at the opportunity. Unfortunately, they may leave their common sense at the bedroom door and do not take any kind of protective measures to protect not only themselves but their partner as well. When you use the services of a brothel in your local area, there are many rules and regulations in place to protect everyone involved.
It’s legal & above board – These businesses are heavily regulated and once again, there are rules and regulations in place to protect everyone involved. It takes this industry off the streets, which can only be seen as a good thing, and it offers customers something that is completely natural, in relative comfort.
Some people are just too busy – We are human beings after all, and we have sexual urges, and these urges need to be met. Many people live such busy lives trying to run a business that they don’t set aside time for social occasions and for the time it takes to strike up a relationship with any other individual. Being able to visit a professional saves time, and everyone’s needs are met.
It’s easy & straightforward – Paying for sex doesn’t have to be complicated, and the ladies that you go to see are aware of what you are there for. There is no need for any small talk, dating or buying gifts, and it helps people who are somewhat socially awkward and find it difficult to engage with the opposite sex. These services give them the confidence that they need to get out there and to strike up their own relationships.
The stigma that comes with the word brothel should be a thing of the past, and nobody is forced into doing this as a career or paying for it as a need.
