no way NYT

There’s Nothing Woke About a Tofu Burger
—Pamela Paul

finally read this about her: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/the-rules-according-to-pamela-paul

brilliant example of just letting someone explain how much they suck in their own words

i used to listen to the book review podcast which i always thought she did a nice job hosting, i was disappointed to find out that she is completely insane

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KI-8hst0bho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxcI4iaWHGk

Max Read wrote a characteristically funny editor’s note about her column. https://maxread.substack.com/p/editing-the-new-york-times

Who Wins the Language Wars?

—Nicholas Kristoff

*sigh*

If only Cindy Williams had gotten that part in Language Wars.

Ever since reading this piece on copaganda in the Times, it always jumps out. The latest: yesterday's The Morning, while discussing Tyre Nichols, kept referring to paramilitary units as "well-intentioned".

christ

What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis

fucking hell. might as well make this a Pamela Paul thread

I hope it has something to do with manliness.

"prison is appropriate for some people"

A Yale economics professor has some ideas for how to deal with the burdens of Japan’s rapidly aging society. The “only solution,” he said, is mass suicide of the elderly, including ritual disembowelment. https://t.co/krlL3Ytd2e

— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 12, 2023

"what did he mean?"

It's just metaphorical ritual suicide

We’ll be using that solution in the USA in a decade don’t you worry

Apparently this professor has become a cult figure among disgruntled Japanese youth who believe their futures have been impacted by the society’s aging demographics. They put his face on t shirts and things.

kudos to threadstarter for this important public service

I preferred quiddities and agonies of the ruling class

different topics imho, that one is "oh noes how will rich people cope", this one is more abt documenting their truly disturbing rightward shift

"their" being the NYT ofc

soon Bret Stephens will be the liberal columnist of the bunch

We’ll be using that solution in the USA in a decade don’t you worry

Some would suggest that American Covid response policy looks an awful lot like this even without trying

I preferred quiddities and agonies of the ruling class

― treeship., Sunday, February 12, 2023 4:31 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

different topics imho, that one is "oh noes how will rich people cope", this one is more abt documenting their truly disturbing rightward shift

― sleeve, Sunday, February 12, 2023 4:39 PM (one hour ago)

I like the quid-ag thread a lot too and will continue to post things there, but for better or worse I actually read those articles! and sleeve otm about the political bent

my sole regret wrt this thread is that I capitalized NYT, breaking from the past no-way thread convention :(

torn between the point of reporting on people like that Japanese Yale loon; like, guy hangs around with the person who runs 4chan, is clearly some edgelord discourse idiot, and doesn't deserve to be given attention by anyone, particularly the NYT and Yale. Yet maybe ignoring him isn't a good idea? Dunno.

There are ways to pay attention to him that don't involve writing articles about him

I thought this was an interesting article tbh. The “4chan edgelord” audience he panders to is a real thing, in Japan as well as the West. It’s worth keeping tabs on them.

also worth keeping tabs on ivy league/chicago-accredited economists, all of whom are latent genocidaires

and people who *wish* they were accredited so, like mcardle, yglesias and brett stephens's ex-wife

Yes, exactly.

that one is "oh noes how will rich people cope", this one is more abt documenting their truly disturbing rightward shift

Okay I get why ilxors respond to the content in the Times in these ways, and I have no serious counterargument.

That said, both of these characterizations fill me with cognitive dissonance though, and for different reasons.

First, my experience of salaries in print journalism was decidedly grim. My first journalism job paid $6 an hour. My second journalism job paid $16,000 a year. My third journalism job paid... $8 an hour. My third journalism job paid $12 an hour. My fourth journalism job paid $20,000 a year, which felt like a fortune. In 1996.

Referring to NYT staffers - or even its editorial columnists - as "the ruling class" is comprehensible only due to a perverse quirk of the economics of cultural production.

Basically, for most of my life, the ONLY people who could survive in NYC-based print-media industries (newspaper journalism, magazine journalism, and of course book publishing) were subsidized by wealthy parents.

Journalism - on its own - is not now, nor has it ever been, a path to riches. No one is getting wealthy from print journalism any more (and almost no one did so in prior decades either).

Truthbomb: if you are someone with one or more degrees in English, yes, you can work as an editorial assistant at Alfred A. Knopf (or the New Yorker, or whatever). But only if you have no student debt and your parents pay your rent. This has been true for half a century; it should not be news.

Now about the "disturbing rightward shift," please remember that approximately half the nation believes anyone involved in mainstream media - including and especially print media like NYT/WaPo - is essentially communist. Conservative media is clear on this point: the NYT is basically communist.

This disconnect is vexing. Ilxorz and lefties in general believe the NYT is center-right at best, and not to be trusted. Most of the conservasphere believes the NYT is hard left, left of Che Guevara, left of Lenin, left of Bernie, and not to be trusted.

Can both of these descriptions be true? I dunno. In the meantime I still feel like the NYT has a pretty good crossword puzzle app so I feel like sticking with it.

the way I feel about the Times is this:

it’s the paper I’ve been yelling at since i was a teenager, i don’t want to find a new paper to yell at. it has decent reporting on occasion, and the best online recipe depository.

i still think it sucks.

The ruling class experiencing quiddities and agonies are not NY Times staffers - it's the rich people being profiled in the lifestyle/real estate/etc sections.

Now about the "disturbing rightward shift," please remember that approximately half the nation believes anyone involved in mainstream media - including and especially print media like NYT/WaPo - is essentially communist. Conservative media is clear on this point: the NYT is basically communist.

This disconnect is vexing. Ilxorz and lefties in general believe the NYT is center-right at best, and not to be trusted. Most of the conservasphere believes the NYT is hard left, left of Che Guevara, left of Lenin, left of Bernie, and not to be trusted.

Can both of these descriptions be true? I dunno.

Why would the right's attitude be taken into account at all? They also think Joe Biden is a Stalinist baby blood-drinking pedophile or at least a Stalinist doing the bidding of baby blood-drinking pedophiles.

All major news media is center-right (at best) - they're capitalist enterprises who in the end have to protect their bottom line. This means 'printing the controversy,' an overwhelming focus on crime at every level, following the lead of American imperialism in anything outside our borders, dehumanizing anyone or anything that makes the upper-middle class anxious (the homeless, BLM activists, etc.), protecting fellow capitalist enterprises (ie advertisers).

The shift in the Times has been embracing deep reactionary takes on social issues - which is not new ground but a shift from the last couple of decades.

Referring to NYT staffers - or even its editorial columnists - as "the ruling class" is comprehensible only due to a perverse quirk of the economics of cultural production.

oh, i think there's a vast difference between NYT staffers and editorial columnists. it's a perverse quirk that the latter are accorded such attention, but, nevertheless, they are. (i was going to say 'fading quirk' but iirc the WaPo just fired a bunch of journalists while hiring a bunch of NRO/AEI columnists)

might be fading away now, but it's long been common knowledge that WSJ reporters can be relied upon even while the WSJ editorial page is fucking bonkers

i would first suggest that literally no one deserves a regular NYT opinion column -- no one has anything interesting to say twice a week for decades on end. but apart from that, who's left? a guy who just recently grasped climate change after a visit to greenland. a woman who thinks liberals should learn things from ron desantis. a guy who quit, to run for political office in a jurisdiction he didn't live, then came back. maureen fucking dowd. these people are all terrible, and obviously so. but they are voices that matter in the 'discourse' and the 'sunday morning shows'. and if they didn't suck so badly, perhaps those things would be slightly better

that all sounds right to me

wait which one of those is jamelle bouie

(to be clear i fully agree with you that there should not be such a thing as a regular NYT opinion columnist, and that nobody's 20th best opinion of the year is worth a damn)

jamelle bouie is grebt, and i suspect that as black man extremely well-versed in the last 300+ years of american history, he has almost endless things to write about twice a week

i have no idea what pamela paul will offer us on a weekly basis? ideally it won't be about the tragedy of taking her stupid friends to a sandwich place that offers soppressata, but i guess we'll see

This disconnect is vexing. Ilxorz and lefties in general believe the NYT is center-right at best, and not to be trusted. Most of the conservasphere believes the NYT is hard left, left of Che Guevara, left of Lenin, left of Bernie, and not to be trusted.

Can both of these descriptions be true? I dunno. In the meantime I still feel like the NYT has a pretty good crossword puzzle app so I feel like sticking with it.

trust fund kids have their own class politics. they resent the bourgeoisie (their parents) and feel guilty that they are part of it. so there is an incentive to evade directly dealing with uncomfortable questions of class. this accounts for the dissonance i think.

Not sure I understand how that is supposed to square the circle but OK I guess.

My final question is the extent to which the New York Times is actually influencing anything or anyone. That is, how many minds are getting changed because people type things and the NYT prints them or "prints" them?

I am skeptical. I don't think there are very many people being swayed to or from their preexisting attitudes because of something appearing in legacy print media. Maybe I'm wrong about this. As noted, I have been in the bubble since birth (child of journalists, journalism major, former journalist, etc.). But I have cultivated a humility about the influence of the field because I have been awake for the last quarter-century and see that it's only a tiny minority of weirdos who read anything any more, let alone something so dinosaurian as a printed newspaper.

Me? I have been read the Washington Post and New York Times all my life, but (a) I know I am an outlier and (b) Doing so hasn't put very many ideas in my head that weren't already there.

People who read, like, and believe newspapers do so because newspapers reflect a worldview they already hold, and which they probably inherited from their parents.

People who ignore, hate, and disparage newspapers do so because that course of actions reflects a worldview they already hold, and which they probably inherited from their parents.

What are you going on about?

so has the NYT always been center right? or did it execute a turnabout a few years ago? surely it was seen as much worse than center-right by the counter culture left in the late 1960s…

one difference from 10 years ago is that is not teetering on the edge of financial collapse: it is now a totemic product that the members of bourgie center left (such as me) use to signal their allegiance, their class, etc etc…and is calling it "center right" as a pejorative an ILX thing or is it widespread throughout the left internet?

so has the NYT always been center right? or did it execute a turnabout a few years ago? surely it was seen as much worse than center-right by the counter culture left in the late 1960s…

I'm pretty sure the Times came in for a kicking in Chomsky and Herman's Manufacturing Consent, which I read 30 years ago. And it definitely features prominently in Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media?, which came out in 2003. Calling it a "liberal" paper basically amounts to the broader public adopting a Nixon-era attack line.

Oh, it's just a viral marketing campaign

https://twitter.com/KimStimFilms/status/1625183907833430033

Shocking but this Yale prof says the quite part out loud suggesting mass suicide for old folks in Japan! This is the premise of Chie Hayakawa's moving, & unforgettable PLAN 75- a Cannes winner is set in a chilling, sci-fi tinged near future. Opens Spring!https://t.co/022TIc8heF

— KimStim (@KimStimFilms) February 13, 2023

The glasses are bothering me tbh

Yeah sorry, you can’t Gramsci your way out of this one, treeship— by any objective measure, the Times has been a center-right paper for my entire life, at least, and I am nearing 40. unperson otm.

In Defense of J.K. Rowling

surprised it took her this long tbh

God, Pamela Paul really is the worst.

abysmal

Can't believe I bothered to read it but my summary is:

*Here's all the things trans people are angry at J.K. about, but see they're actually nbd because

*Here's three cherry picked quotes that make Rowling appear to be pro-trans, when considered out of topic

*Also here's one journalist who used to think she was transphobic and now doesn't

*Also she got death threats!!!

*Ergo she is not transphobic

yes, why would I not “take it” from this obviously very sane and trustworthy source pic.twitter.com/HbiDdrmC0S

— Jesse Fuchs (@jessefuchs) February 16, 2023

thanks Alfred.

I read more of EJ Rosetta's tweets and uhh anybody who thinks she went into her assignment ready to assassinate Rowling and was 'stunned by the lack of evidence' and changed her mind is a humongous dumb fuck.

lol Marc Joseph Stern called her out on it back then

This is not how either language or logic works

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) January 29, 2023

no one tell the Cistercian nuns about this

Also that writer considers “dyke” a slur, which is some…truly weird shit?!!

Like, the biggest lesbian event in the US is the SF Dyke March. Who does she think she’s fooling?

she called a guy who was 'mean' to her a pedophile because of his beard so

maybe she's Elon Musk's alt

love the fact that she took 12 weeks to do research for a listicle

An open letter from NYT contributors about the paper's embrace of transphobia: https://nytletter.com/. (As Slate pointed out this was published yesterday, and then the PP/JK thing came out today...)

Definitely worth reading the whole thing, but this stood out in light of the very confused posts about bias & influence upthread:

The natural destination of poor editorial judgment is the court of law. Last year, Arkansas’ attorney general filed an amicus brief in defense of Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, which would make it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment, for any medical provider to administer certain gender⁠-⁠affirming medical care to a minor (including puberty blockers) that diverges from their sex assigned at birth. The brief cited three different New York Times articles to justify its support of the law: Bazelon’s “The Battle Over Gender Therapy,” Azeen Ghorayshi’s “Doctors Debate Whether Trans Teens Need Therapy Before Hormones,” and Ross Douthat’s “How to Make Sense of the New L.G.B.T.Q. Culture War.” As recently as February 8th, 2023, attorney David Begley’s invited testimony to the Nebraska state legislature in support of a similar bill approvingly cited the Times’ reporting and relied on its reputation as the “paper of record” to justify criminalizing gender⁠-⁠affirming care.

I signed that— has thousands of signatures

ej rosetta is such a blatant grifter to the point that even some of the other transphobes have caught on (there's a lot of drama with her begging for paypal donations 'to protect lesbians' etc. and starting inscrutable beefs with other transphobes). it's almost certain there was no listicle assignment to begin with, let alone that she had three months to do it or that she was pro-trans before it

And then today, McWhorter’s newsletter defends Desantis. I often wonder whether the former is aware that all of the people whose boots he’s licking would like to see him dead, or whether he’s somehow convinced himself that he’s “one of the good ones.”

Having just read the column, he could've offered his non-controversial views without framing it around goddamn DeSantis, who will share the thing and go, "See?"

As someone who has read several of his essays and even one of his books, it pains me to conclude that John McWhorter may not be very bright.

For all I know, he is a brilliant linguist (I haven't seen any criticism of his work in that area), it's his forays into social/political punditry that don't reflect well on him.

His view on dying languages is appaling to me, especially in the Canadian context of FNIM trying to reclaim their cultural heritage, so even as a linguist he can be frustrating.

I think he’s smart enough to know how many sales you guarantee by titling your book Woke Racism.

He’s not a good linguist either.

He isn't that bad a linguist, really. Or at least he didn't use to be 20 years ago. His The Power of Babel is one of the books that first got me into the subject, and I think it's still a good introduction. Also his Great Courses on the history of the English language is solid. He has been such a massive disappointment over the last decade though.

American Teens Are Really Miserable. Why?

—Ross Douthat

Q: American Teens Are Really Miserable. Why?
A: Ross Douthat

I occasionally write comments on NYT op-eds because I can’t resist, this Douthat column made me write this:

“In a culture where most people have to work constantly (occasionally at multiple jobs) in order to afford basic necessities while one political ideology doubles down on fascism and the other doubles down on neoliberalism and hollow politics of representation, it’s no wonder that young people are depressed. There are no opportunities except meaningless drudgery available to many, and those jobs that might have some meaning are not well-remunerated. Add climate destabilization, attacks on women, racism, attacks on LGBTQ people, and a nihilistic political culture that operates at the whims of the wealthy and corporations? The question becomes: how are young people NOT depressed, living in this world that Reagan and each president following him have built.”

Ross Asshat.

You know who's more miserable than teens? Boomers. Whine, whine, whine on Facebook. whine, whine, whine with their Don't Tread On Me flags and their Republican voting patterns.

Unsubscribed today. For months I'd only been reading the Arts, Books, and Magazine sections (the latter every time David Marchese interviewed somebody, and that's about it) and I finally decided I don't even need that. With the Atlantic toughening its paywall significantly (opening articles in an incognito browser window doesn't work anymore), I'm gonna be fresh out of empty-headed bullshit soon!

Joyce Carol Oates coming out of the audience with a hatchet in each hand:

no one wants to acknowledge that perhaps teenagers spend so much time on their cell phones because the conversations of their elders, including mansplainers like Ross Douthat, are exhausting, boring, & unrewarding to them. https://t.co/3GAUeZUzwm

— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) February 19, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/19/realestate/metaverse-vr-housing-market.html

People who read, like, and believe newspapers do so because newspapers reflect a worldview they already hold, and which they probably inherited from their parents.

People who ignore, hate, and disparage newspapers do so because that course of actions reflects a worldview they already hold, and which they probably inherited from their parents.

― Auf Der Martini (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, February 13, 2023 5:52 AM (one week ago)

this is pretty otm ... I feel like the issue is less about actual influence and more about symbolic representation and whose already existing worldview it is representing ...

_People who read, like, and believe newspapers do so because newspapers reflect a worldview they already hold, and which they probably inherited from their parents.

People who ignore, hate, and disparage newspapers do so because that course of actions reflects a worldview they already hold, and which they probably inherited from their parents.

― Auf Der Martini (Ye Mad Puffin), Monday, February 13, 2023 5:52 AM (one week ago)_

this is pretty otm ... I feel like the issue is less about actual influence and more about symbolic representation and whose already existing worldview it is representing ...

unless there's some kind of empirical evidence that YMP's binary generalization is true, there's no reason to consider yourself an outlier. my parents don't read the NYT

Okay. I have no illusions that I know how the world works. Further, I've been pretty open about how much of my life I've spent ensconced in the operations of legacy print media (not at the NYT but close enough). It's probably more than most people.

At the same time, I have cultivated a carapace of jadedness about its influence (from one perspective). From another perspective I have cultivated a kind of zen humility about its influence, and from still a third perspective a deep skepticism about its influence. To my mind, people are going to do the stuff they are going to do. The arrival of a specific wafer of wood pulp on their doorstep is neither making nor breaking their received opinions. There are larger forces at work, I suspect, in e.g. the parents of table or of rob.

But yeah sure let's excoriate the newspaper, cool cool, a nearly moribund cultural artifact. If it vanished tomorrow (which it very well could), the political attitudes you hate would still exist and flourish.

T - you're an outlier and i <3 you for it

but I think the thing is in terms of political views, I think YMP is correct, the newspaper is going to reinforce the views you already have. There are people who will "engage with content" in an oppositional way ... like, just because you read something regularly doesn't mean you agree with it. ... especially if it's free.

YMP, I guess I'm not sure what your position is? The Times is a rah-rah trumpet for imperialist warfare and seems to think that it has a responsibility to drum up controversy targeting trans people. Does it have some redeeming values, too? Yes, of course, which is why I'm still a subscriber. But failing to hold the newspaper "of record" to a higher standard seems foolish and defeatist.

I had a housemate in college who would regularly get a copy of Parade magazine (from someone else's Sunday paper) just to hateread Marilyn vos Savant.

We were just talking about Marilyn vos Savant at dinner last night, lmfao. I played my parents and husband this excellent song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uDHgy7AI_8

^ ^ ^ the best Boston punk band of the 90s, anyone who argues otherwise is RONG

YMP, I don't get why you think this thread is a place to root for the complete destruction of the NYT or to lament its magical brainwashing powers, rather than taking notice of its more pernicious and aggravating tendencies or observing new political drifts that correspond to alarming trends beyond the paper. I don't hold those perspectives — mine is essentially that "media effects" are notoriously difficult to prove or disprove, so using that as a frame is pointless — and I'm getting tired of having them projected onto me.

Sorry if that was a bit pissy.

People who read, like, and believe newspapers do so because newspapers reflect a worldview they already hold, and which they probably inherited from their parents.

People who ignore, hate, and disparage newspapers do so because that course of actions reflects a worldview they already hold, and which they probably inherited from their parents.

...

To my mind, people are going to do the stuff they are going to do. The arrival of a specific wafer of wood pulp on their doorstep is neither making nor breaking their received opinions. There are larger forces at work, I suspect, in e.g. the parents of table or of rob.

I agree that the NYT doesn't decisively determine anyone's opinions, so what is your theory of social change? I can't tell where you're coming from between "inherited from parents" and "larger forces". How have views on, say same-sex or interracial marriage, changed so rapidly?

* Not sure if you saw it uphtread, but one aspect of "influence" that is easier to pinpoint is NYT articles being cited in legislation curtailing the rights of trans people. Of course, those legislators would have pursued that agenda regardless, we don't need to debate that, but denying the media play some kind of role in normalizing or legitimating certain views seems dangerous to me.

I guess I'm not sure what your position is?

Table, I don't get why you are having trouble understanding me when I type so very many words, many of which are nearly synonymous with one another:

1. carapace of jadedness

2. a kind of zen humility

3. a deep skepticism

I have been very transparent about my position: it is an amorphous and ambiguous position and I am sticking to it.

Rob I have no beef with you; I am neither rooting nor lamenting. Just saying, see above.

As a former NYT employee I'm in a Facebook group of Times alumni and the discussion there about the paper's many shortcomings is pretty interesting (even if a lot of it is obviously Monday morning quarterbacking, "things were better when I was there," etc etc). Suffice to say, there has never been a shortage of dissension and disagreement within and around the paper about any of its varied offense.

offenses

I'm not sure who's hating and disparaging newspapers as a concept here anyway. Pointing to flaws, errors and failures of American capitalist media isn't pining for a utopia of no media.

xp
Just to clarify YMP: I thought you were characterizing other posters itt as rooting/lamenting — i.e., credulously assuming the NYT exerts a commanding influence over public opinion and therefore hoping it dies — not that you were yourself doing that. Anyway, I think I do understand your perspective, I just don't find it relevant to this thread (milo otm)

there's a real serious target on many marginalized people's backs and one of the biggest publications in media is asking us to understand the feelings of their persecutors or worse, outright widening the target.

when it comes to criticism...unleash your arrows as often as you want.

Ross Douthat is exhausting, boring and unrewarding to people beyond their teen years, btw.

in Scotland it's pronounced Doothoot

ok

backtracking a bit, do I have to have a theory of social change? Is it okay if I don't?

I don't understand society and I don't think I can do very much to control and/or change it. Except in the very local and extremely specific ways that are under my control (e.g., donating, volunteering, voting, speaking, writing, advocating, loving people, helping people, feeding people, etc.). I am deeply humble about my ability to affect society... with good reason.

Just a brief side note: Thomas Friedman emerged from his burrow on Meet The Press this weekend, so that means we'll have six more months (at least) of bullshit.

Has anyone read Jeff Gerth's piece in the Columbia Journalism Review on the NYT's coverage of "Russiagate"? I heard an interview with the author, and have been meaning to read it, but tl;dr. To hear him tell it, Gerth (a former Times reporter himself) has some serious criticisms of the paper's reporting on the whole sordid mess.

xp
I feel like you keep misunderstanding me, which means I'm doing a bad job of communicating with you, YMP. I'll drop it after this, but ftr I didn't mean you were obliged to have a theory about how you yourself can individually change society. I meant: how do you account for broad changes in social attitudes if people inherit their views from their parents? What are (some of) the "larger forces at work" you alluded to?

I certainly don't expect you to have a fully developed sociological explanation of your own devising! But if you're skeptical of the media's role in changing people's minds on issues, what do you see as the forces behind changing viewpoints?

Anyway, we're not in class lol, you don't have to answer, it's obviously a massive question, but that is what I meant and what I was getting confounded by.

I'm *very* suspicious of the motives of anyone who wants to deny or downplay the influence of media, especially right now. furthermore the NYT must be destroyed, no more of this constructive criticism nonsense

as you wish Master Shredder

Rob, it's cool, sorry to present myself as a delicate wisp instead of someone who knows anything about anything. It's one of my flaws, which are numerous.

Anyway, as an actual attempted answerto the question upthread, I think people respond to real stuff that affects them, way more than words on a screen or a page.

My politics - from the cradle - is a politics of empathy. Standard cis het white liberal stuff. Dismiss me as an NPR/Whole Foods progressive if you like.

Tolerance *in theory* tends to evolve and enlarge when it is put into actual practice.

Purely theoretical LGBTQ+ acceptance (for example) expands when you actually have actual trans people right in front of you and actually living in your actual house. (Which I actually do, by the way.)

So yeah, that has been an education. And I am happy to report that engaging with IRL 3D real trans individuals has affected my thinking, shifting it from a vague acceptance to actual allyship.

So yeah that is my theory of social change. And it has almost nothing to do with what the New York Times does or doesn't publish.

At the same time (to Neanderthal's point) it is totally understandable to hold NYT to account and critique it for its lapses. No quarrel with that.

I just don't think it's _creating_ the toxic attitudes. To me, media is a mirror as much as it is a painting.

Has anyone read Jeff Gerth's piece in the Columbia Journalism Review on the NYT's coverage of "Russiagate"?

I'd been meaning to and this prompted me to go give it a scan. I'm not too impressed tbh. I think Gerth has his own axes to grind and he repeatedly seems to take Trump at his word on things and downplays things like the Helsinki press conference (pretending that people's reactions to it were all about one Trump answer that he thinks the media somewhat misinterpreted rather than his bizarrely deferential demeanor throughout, etc.). He also has a very credulous account of how Bill Barr came to write the summary letter of the Mueller report — to read Gerth's account, you'd think it was a fair-minded summary, which is hardly the case.

Sure, the NYT and WaPo and others overplayed some aspects of the Russia-Trump story because the connections were never as clear or as quid-quo as some of the reporting made them seem. On the other hand, it remains true that there was a huge amount of sketchy stuff going on between Trump people and Russians of various agency, as the Mueller report bears out. Gerth's takeaway ultimately is that the Times and WaPo were blinded by hating Trump and abandoned their holy journalistic objectivity, which is why people now don't trust the media. I don't buy it.

He also has a very credulous account of how Bill Barr came to write the summary letter of the Mueller report — to read Gerth's account, you'd think it was a fair-minded summary, which is hardly the case.

This part galled me.

Gerth like the dude who shows up at parties with a douchey smirk and constantly says things like "not to be that guy" when beginning every convo

I just don't think it's _creating_ the toxic attitudes

no but it legitimises them and weakens liberal opposition to the right's attacks.

Yep. For the sake of my blood pressure I should renounce my habit of visiting comment sites, but, boy, every time Ross Asshat and Pamela Priss publish more anti-modernist bilge another Karen gets her zings. The usual "I'm a Democrat, I voted for Joe Biden, BUT."

I think Gerth has his own axes to grind and he repeatedly seems to take Trump at his word on things

Yeah, this came through in the interview. He talked about interviewing Trump and seemed to find him believable, which . . . wow.

Barr's "summary" of the Mueller Report was a true hatchet job--which is exactly why he was appointed in the first place.

Wasn’t Gerth one of the most credulous Iraq War cheerleaders? Why the fuck should his musings on Trump and Russia carry any weight at all?

Ross Asshat and Pamela Priss

morbs would approve

Whatever y'all do, don't read Bret Stephens' anti-mask column today.

My blood pressure went up just reading that sentence.

Oh god ugggh thanks for the heads-up!

I finally had enough with the transphobia and other ridiculousness and canceled my subscription. Shoulda done it a while ago. I stopped listening to NPR news back in the trump years. Holding onto my Washington post subscription - plenty to disagree with but I have lower expectations. Getting less tolerant of bs in my old age.

I love how he gets sad-eyes when the government does public health measures and happy eyes when the government funds war and apartheid in Israel.

Bret Stephens should be forced to eat maggots for three years for just about everything he's ever wrote.

I love after the 2018 election when he was in such a hurry to shit on libs that he wrote how it was a disappointing performance and how they needed to reach across the aisle and then they wound up winning 40 seats and Nate Silver called him a moron basically

Elizabeth Koch is a part of the vilified Koch dynasty. Worrying about what people think pushed her to the brink of insanity.

Now, she wants to help people understand their debilitating "Perception Boxes." She spoke to me for her first big profile:https://t.co/DVKxmifHm8

— Brooks Barnes (@brooksbarnesNYT) February 23, 2023

I would not read that for less than $500 up front.

the end of that article's first arc is a new frontier in cringe -- it's two acts:

I.

Or you may have the opposite reaction: It must be really, really hard — eye roll — to be an heiress to one of the biggest fortunes ever accumulated, who graduated from an Ivy League university (Princeton) and is now married to a successful biotech entrepreneur. They recently vacationed in Bali.

When Ms. Koch first came on my radar, I was firmly in the second camp.

A publicist named Scott Rowe had called to propose an article on Ms. Koch and her nonprofit organization, Unlikely Collaborators, which is all about self-investigation. According to its website, the organization is dedicated to the creation of “provocative experiences that help you face who you think you are.” The site adds, “Our experiences use a process of self-investigation that encompasses principles and practices from eastern and western thought, meditation, psychology, and neuroscience — designed to expand your understanding of self, others, and the whole damned world.”

Oh, brother.

II.

“I know this is a lot to throw at people,” Ms. Koch said, apparently reading my mind. “Let’s go back to Perception Box. That’s where it begins and ends.”

She jumped to her feet and started writing on a white board, calling out each word with a flourish in a demonstration of one of her workshops.

“I don’t matter.”

“I’m not good enough.”

“I’m bad.”

She asked me to envision a person — a writer, perhaps. This person misses deadlines because they are “constantly worrying about making it perfect,” she said. “It has to be better. It has to be better. No, no, no. Not there yet.” That thinking can be painful and ultimately even professionally paralyzing.
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“That person is running a Perception Box story in their head,” she said, “and it’s an obvious one: I’m not good enough.”

I grimaced and told her that I could be that writer.

“Who are you still trying to please, and who are you still rebelling against?” she asked me, now firmly in teacher-student mode.

I squirmed and thought about how it was really stupid of me to say no to that blanket.

“Probably Daddy,” I said, almost in a whisper.

wow person who should be guillotined discovers CBT and mixes it with pop zen bs, so glad to be alive

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/26/opinion/san-francisco-democrats-board-of-supervisors.html

“Even Democrats Like Me (Billionaires) Are Fed Up With San Francisco”

Another variation of the old “I am repulsed by poor people and poor people drug use, save our city”

What It Means to Be Woke
—Ross Douthat

best Madonna single

Trump allies are pressuring Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to weigh in on the expected indictment.

Never Mind About Ron DeSantis

Ron DeSantis Has a Secret Theory of Trump

jesus christ

Are we all excited by the chance to once more be irritated by NYT Iraq war articles, now that they are running anniversary pieces? We’ve already had one today that had several paragraphs on the CIA without one mention of torture.

it's funny, I was paying for my subscription through Paypal and I removed authorization to charge it like, over a month ago, but never got around to formally cancelling the subscription.

every other day I get emails like "Second to final warning - your subscription will be cancelled", "final warning - we will cancel your subscription if we don't receive payment!", "final warning again, we mean it this time!"....been happening for like a month, daily threats, and still they haven't cancelled it.

It's like cable or the Mafia, you don't get out except feet first.

Check out the kicker in this despicable profile:

Ms. Statler agreed about Judge Kacsmaryk. “I just know he just has a real tender spot for caring for women,” she told The Times, “and particularly women who are pregnant.”

Any article about that judge that doesn't lead with "That piece of shit" is a bad article

What Happened to America? We Asked 12 People in Their 70s and 80s.

that “article” was so typical that it made me laugh— there might as well have been a quote about kicking a ball in the street.

all of them seem to believe that people should just take the jobs that are offered and work them until they die. idiots.

the headline alone feels like a lazy parody of what everyone already hates about their vox populi attempts

cheating b/c I did actually read this one, but was there really no one in editorial who saw this and had a dim recollection that the UK is—infamously I would have thought—not in the EU?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/opinion/microsoft-activision-ftc-antitrust-grail-eu.html

(and yeah their bios should have been enough of a red flag)

this person is utterly useless

https://i.imgur.com/f9FYV5j.jpg

lol I saw that and was so dispirited I couldn't even post it here

Chris Christie Is Doing Something Very, Very Important

Christopher F. Rufo
D.E.I. Programs are Getting in the Way of Liberal Education

good lord

I'm embarrassed to admit I am still capable of being mildly shocked at them platforming such an unambiguous and outspoken racist

I know everyone needs a rufover their heads but do we really have to let this guy write op-eds

at least put a pic of him under the byline with the caveat - "Warning, this piece was written by a likely Klansman" or something

WaPo not to be outdone:

What happened in the decade before crime rose? ‘Broken windows’ policing stopped.
Opinion by Charles Murray

Here are five key findings from a Times examination of Ron DeSantis’s educational backstory.

I loved this for the big town small town angle(?): https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/19/business/media/kansas-newspaper-marion-county-record.html

Ross Douthat

James Bond Is Now ‘Woke’

james bomb trans now

I did think of James when I read that thing on some other thread about cishet men only wanting to sip their little drinks from phallic glasses

anyway, fuck Douthat for stealing my screenplay idea

total clickbait headline on that Douthat piece, which mentions a new Bond novel in the lede but only as a launchpad for some meandering thoughts about UK and Canadian politics

how does one doubt a hat

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/8f/94/82/8f9482771a7a3b8bc13dbcb1551f7e4c.jpg

is this the new bond by charlie higson of revered "post-punk" clatterers the higsons?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bec8XIycg_w

pamela paul column about freddie de boer’s book

they had lunch together!

tmi

Two Families Got Fed Up With Their States’ Politics. So They Moved Out.

some incredible nyt pitchbot-ass false equivalencing in this one:

"After Iowa banned gender-affirming medical care for minors, criminalizing their son’s treatments, the Nobles — lifelong Iowans — concluded they had to get out."

"Jesse Jordan, of Tennessee, said he and his fiancée had considered moving to Oregon after Tennessee leaders adopted a near-total abortion ban, with no exception for a fatal fetal abnormality. “It has become kind of unthinkable for us to pursue a pregnancy in this state,” Mr. Jordan said."

vs.

“One thing I do like about Missouri, there’s lots of American flags,” Mr. Huckins said as he steered around a traffic circle where the Stars and Stripes flapped crisply on a pole. “In Portland, the American flag was offensive.”

"Matthew Krall, an accountant, has no regrets about moving his family in 2019 to Tennessee from California, where he was frustrated by that state’s Democratic governor and liberal policies. When Mr. Krall and his neighbors discuss politics now in his conservative suburb outside Nashville, “it’s more of an agreeable conversation,” he said."

god this thing just gets worse and worse. it turns out that the portlanders who left OR supposedly because of the city's politics--the entire thesis of this terrible article--have *grandchildren* in the area of MO they moved to lmao

lol okay

While there is no precise count of how many Americans have relocated because of politics and social issues, interviews with demographers and people who have moved or are considering moving, as well as a review of social-media postings and polling, show the phenomenon is real.

"some people are saying"

TEACH THE CONTROVERSY

https://i.imgur.com/mlaffBT.jpg

at the risk of defending david french, the column itself isn't horrible. but evidently the NYT's editors want people to think it is

Not All Karens

no the column is pretty horrible.

But just as older Americans can have an obligation to let go of professions and power, young Americans can have obligations to hold on to their elders, to treasure them rather than shove them aside. Ancient wisdom can speak to modern conflicts, and ever since the onset of the generational conflicts during the pandemic, I’ve pondered a key part of the Westminster Larger Catechism, an almost 400-year-old statement of Protestant theology. It takes an expansive view of the Fifth Commandment, “Honor thy father and thy mother.” The catechism asserts that father and mother don’t merely refer to your biological parents, but to “all superiors in age and gifts.”

this is just shit

yeah that column was execrable

yeah lol that's a pure no way nyt for me

Do people even say 'OK boomer' anymore?

well luckily for young Americans whenever older people lose their jobs they're willing to spend all day online imparting their Ancient Wisdom.

new borad description

Do people even say 'OK boomer' anymore?

I think many have moved onto "fuck you boomer"

listen, old people have a slower response time than younger people. apparently by 2-3 years

"Don't trust anyone over 30": the ageist slogan that must be stopped

don’t trust anyone under 30 or over 45

Do people even say 'OK boomer' anymore?

I don't know but I got harrumphed at by several elders on FB for calling Jann Wenner a "prototype of white Boomer male entitlement" — there was a lot of "not all Boomers!" stuff. Boomers are very easily butthurt by this stuff. One guy told me that even using the word "Boomer" was a slur. lol.

I mean, I don’t see any reason to deny using Boomer as a slur, if it matches your intention

the truth is the truth

OTOH, I have no problem calling it FaceBoomer

well luckily for young Americans whenever older people lose their jobs they're willing to spend all day online imparting their Ancient Wisdom.

is the nyt aware of the existence of colleges that aren't elite expensive private institutions?

you mean where the poors go to learn?

Barely, judging by the recent articles written by their higher ed reporters:

https://www.nytimes.com/by/anemona-hartocollis
https://www.nytimes.com/by/vimal-patel

you mean like Barnard and Sarah Lawrence and stuff?

lol

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:m34vt2ca7xdvivhgibpxc46r/bafkreiewgp5xh2tojvxb4m4avw5omjshnqripmv43hmzubk77i6lbzhos4@jpeg

The New York Times needs to expand its reach to include the more modest, mainstream institutions of higher education where most American students go, like Cornell

Was gonna say, "Whaddya expect them to write about, Brown?"

heckuva school

My first thought was "Stanford is going to be really pissed off about this" until I realized that it's just as plausible that Stanford paid the NYT to be left off.

Let’s Talk About Biden, Trump and … Taylor Swift

jfc: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/11/business/dealbook/universities-antisemitism-harvard-mit-penn.html

Who Should Run Universities?

In the wake of a controversy at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard over antisemitism, a debate has arisen over whether academics are best suited to lead big schools.

I probably don't need to remind anyone here that Dealbook just hosted Elon Musk immediately after his public embrace of antisemitism

schools should be run LIKE A BUSINESS

oh wait

Coming from business doesn’t guarantee success either: Simon Newman, a former financier, resigned as president of a Maryland college after reportedly comparing struggling freshmen to bunnies that should be drowned or shot.

Had to look into this more.

The Mount St. Mary’s campus has been in turmoil since word leaked in January through The Mountain Echo, the student newspaper, that Newman had compared struggling students to bunnies that need to be drowned or killed with a Glock. The metaphor grabbed attention, but educators said the underlying debate was what really mattered.

Newman had proposed to use a survey -- on which freshmen would be told there were no wrong answers -- to identify those at risk of dropping out and to encourage them to do so in the first weeks of the semester. The idea was to raise the university’s retention rate, since those who leave very early in the semester don’t count in the total enrollment figures. Many professors and some administrators protested the plan, saying that the university has an obligation to try to educate those it admits.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/03/01/president-quits-mount-st-marys

Like, even without the metaphor, this is deranged.

this is how colleges see their students

Taylor Swift should run universities, of course

The metaphor grabbed attention, but educators said the underlying debate was what really mattered.

Bret Stephens

Claudine Gay and the Limits of Social Engineering at Harvard

well yeah

jfc lol

Claudine Gay: What Just Happened at Harvard Is Bigger Than Me

Charles M. Blow
The Persecution of President Gay

Ross Douthat
Harvard Couldn’t Save Both Claudine Gay and Itself

Letters From Our Readers
The Fallout From a Resignation at Harvard

This story is so far along the discourse/outrage cycle that I really can’t figure out what exactly happened besides “Chris Rufo”

Lol congrats to the NYT, the Washington Post, and the Atlantic for getting played like a fucking fiddle by this leering dipshit, great job guys pic.twitter.com/3CCJViryiE

— Jay Willis (@jaywillis) January 4, 2024

for all its baseline biases and blind spots i think the nyt has a particular thing for harvard - they see themselves as the flagship paper of record of the country and the western world, and harvard as the analogous educational institution. so it's all but irresistible for them to slobber all over it when shit goes down there. doesn't make it any better

As O said in the other thread, Rufo is a self-promoter and fraud, Gay is out only because billionaire donors (people with actual money) didn’t like her.

they've lost their fucking minds:

Tressie McMillan Cottom
The Claudine Gay Debacle Was Never About Merit

Charles Seife
The Problems Only Start With Plagiarism

(the Cottom piece is probably fine, but it's for their own good that we don't click on these things)

Cottom's essay is good

i think the nyt has a particular thing for harvard

the more petty reason is many of the writers and editors either went to harvard/yale/princeton, wanted to go there and were turned down, and/or know a bunch of dicks that went there.

I thought you guys would be talking about this one

Every declining empire for some reason ends up being like just one more invasion of Afghanistan bro I promise bro just one more is all I need pic.twitter.com/nMftzLkXg0

— Liam Bright (@lastpositivist) January 4, 2024

I chuckled at the recent headline "Trump Cacophony Hits Differently This Time," imagining a copy editor fastidiously adding the "-ly."

Abolish Harvard, make everyone happy.

lol

https://www.nytimes.com/search?query=claudine+gay

16 entries in the last three days

a 2016 vox article just after jack chick's passing sez:

Chick’s obituary in the New York Times noted that “some people called Mr. Chick the Thomas Pynchon of evangelism"

please die Pamela Paul

I hate the conservatives in the Op-Ed section, but I reserve special ire for Bret Stephens and Pamela Paul. I hope they both get hit by cars.

surprised but not surprised to find out they were once married

Stephens is the literal worst. Still LOL at his post-2018 midterm article that he wrote prematurely the day after, saying the results proved Democrats needed to reach across the aisle to the disappointing results, then as the number of House flips started skyrocketing, he just changed the number in his article but left everything else intact, and continued to defend his take on Twitter

*due to

https://i.imgur.com/JrtcXTf.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/Y8vcfkJ.jpeg

(the report PP linked to was retracted)

and she referenced "multiple reports" and they're all referencing the same redacted study

I am guilty of occasionally hate-reading PP but I can't bring myself to click on this one

I got one paragraph in, saw there was no way to comment and absolutely slam the premise of the article, closed the tab.

yeah I refuse to read the Paul. Regrettably, I did read that disgustingly fawning Coleman Hughes profile though, and that was supposedly news!

she gets paid more than i will ever get paid to be a hateful piece of shit and stumble through life in public. really cool newspaper

Kellyanne Conway

Who Should Be Trump’s No. 2?

what can you say but lol

The award for Foreign Reporting goes to the staff of The New York Times for unsurpassed coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas

— George Polk Awards (@PolkAwards) February 19, 2024

https://i.imgur.com/cA15Lzb.jpeg

instant classic

astounding

journalism is when you refuse to talk to other people

Friedman would have just invented an intelligent taxi driver who disagreed and faked it from there.

that one broke me. I can't imagine actually turning something like that in

Friedman is just talking to self driving cars these days

https://i.imgur.com/DjY0mw1.jpeg

oh lord please spare us

that byline and bio pic next to that column title, perfect. nyt pitchbot done for the day.

Stephen Breyer: The Supreme Court I Served On Was Made Up of Friends

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/72/Da_Next_Level.jpg

Don't ever Douthat?

just seeing that douthat screengrab, excellent stuff

A.I. Is Spying on the Food We Throw Away

Artificial intelligence is trying to figure out how to send less uneaten food into dumpsters.

apparently the most popular article in today’s nyt is a… saturday night live…. recap??

wth she has like five posts and gets a glowing nyt article??? who dere daddy!!??? i should put up like two posts of old shoes on the side of the road and maybe they put me on coverrrr!!

#nottryingveryhard

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/17/style/boy-room-rachel-coster-nyc.html

https://www.instagram.com/boyroomshow/

out of curiosity, I did look up her parents, and they appear to be normal folks living in maine.

Nepo Normie

https://www.instagram.com/expiredmilkcomedy/reel/C3-n2dQAqvn/

I knew it! #calleditagain

there’s an nyt article out now about a 20-person polycule and it’s as exhausting as you’d expect

Wow you ain't kidding

are we gonna poll the polycule

I'm sorry, 20 people isn't a polycule or any sort of personal relationship network. That's a cult, a yoga studio, or a dorm room floor. They're not doing anything that someone needs to write an article about unless they all do something really kooky or violent to someone outside their circle

The editorial urge to table-set actual human behavior at this point is getting fascinating to behold

there’s an nyt article out now about a 20-person polycule and it’s as exhausting as you’d expect

I said elsewhere that "I'm happy for you, now shut up" should be a socially acceptable thing to say to people like this.

We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called “agile scrum,” which was adapted from business-meeting models. We utilized that format. We did that for a year and a half, at least once a month, sometimes six to 10 hours of hard poly-processing.

hardcore relating

Ann I have one partner now with three kids. He is transmasc, and he’s radical about the way he raises them. They’re radically home-schooled. They’re 17 and nonbinary, 6 and 5. They know everything in age-appropriate ways. They’ve seen their mommy undergo the transmasc experience, seen their mom become who they really are.

I was up late last night with him in a hotel room, and the 17-year-old was in the room snoozing, so we just sat on the bathroom floor chatting about our relationship all night, and while that was happening my husband was texting to say, Oh, I got a last-minute match, so I’m going to meet this girl for a date. And then I get a text while we were still on the bathroom floor vibing, it was 4 in the morning, and he said, We had a great date, a great connection, she’s looking for friends with benefits, we had sex.

This entire setting here just strikes me as deeply awkward, happy for anyone who goes on their journey of finding their true selves but you know, seems weird to be at a hotel with one of the kids, they're sleeping in one room while you're vibing on the bathroom floor etc? I guess at least they probably didn't have much trouble finding babysitters for the five and six year old.

This article is like a conversation you desperately want to get away from.

The worst part of course is if you escape from one person you have to get through 19 more

Polycule: Final Boss - the Eurogamer review

are you a bad enough dude to steer the conversation away from polyamory?

Wait who was he floor vibing with?

The floor itself. It’s part of the polycule. Foundational, even.

let the polys hit the floor

er,idunno,they*, fr. But an article like this should just refer to everyone by name for every mention.

The floor is xe/xem

jfc pamela paul

^evergreen

speaking of which, this is good:
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/columnists-and-their-lives-of-quiet

literally no one has anything interesting to say twice a week for years on end. all these positions should be limited

but she has really set the bar for having nothing to say from the very start

I feel like I should know what “transmasc” means but I don’t. Is that another way of saying a trans man?

jfc pamela paul

― mookieproof, Thursday, April 18, 2024 10:53 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

^evergreen

― jaymc, Thursday, April 18, 2024 11:32 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

very true, so much so that I thought mookie was reacting to the dumb-as-shit college roommates piece not the evil-as-shit I love free speech but it's good that cops arrested protesters I disagree with

xp trans men, masc leaning nonbinary/genderqueer/etc, some butches, a transness embodying or moving toward a masculinity of some kind

conversely transfeminine/transfem(me)

umbrella terms to include trans men and women and people who may be neither but whose relationship to gender generally leans masc or femme usually in spite of social expectations for their "assigned gender at birth" (an increasingly toxic concept but it will do for now)

David Brooks

The Courage to Follow the Evidence on Transgender Care

a real banner week

brooks is always tailing the most reactionary currents in american liberalism and is a great example of how upper crust liberals will repeatedly indulge the musings of most intellectually lazy and vacuous people in the world because they look the part and went to the same schools as them

it must get so hard to find any kind of right-wing voice to put on t.v. that isn't either completely nuts or completely stupid. or both. with david brooks i think its just "well, at least he's not drooling and he can do that kinder/gentler thing where he pretends to be a big-hearted softie so lets keep him on..." because what else do they have? just the people who escaped the asylum who work for msnbc now.

who are you going to trust, some hysterical blue haired kid who says you're being abusive or a sensible white man in a suit who sounds serious and thoughtful in a way that doesn't require any serious thought to follow and makes you feel like a hero for supporting child abuse?

I'm just assuming what the article is like I'm not reading that shit

did william f buckley have centrist liberal simps back in the 60s? he was harder edged and less cagey about his white supremacy but he must have seemed like such a nice boy next to all the scary radicals back then

people watched him all the time on PBS! his show was really popular. that show ran for fucking ever. ugh.

PBS has to live with giving him a platform for decades.

the McLaughlin Group ran for decades too. lots of choice Pat Buchanan for you on PBS. i watched it sometimes god help me. the libs always looked like weak sisters on that show. they set it up that way.

the McLaughlin group was basically in the horror genre

WRONG

This was great: https://prospect.org/politics/2024-04-17-an-implausible-mr-buckley/

I always assumed he was supposed to be kind of a heel but I guess that was wishful thinking. and wouldn't excuse it anyway. and I didn't know about buchanan who held the flame for nazism while it was temporarily uncool among mainsteam conservatives

the sort of automatic respect for and deference towards and constant platforming of any fool with right wing opinions who displays all the right class signifiers is something I associate much more with british media. but the NYT in particular has always had this slightly pompous transatlantic air to it anyway (presumably another class signifier) so it also makes sense that UK-flavoured secular liberal transphobia would be an attractive prospect esp for a paper that is clearly feeling its own senescence and needs to make waves again

I didn't know he was ex-CIA but it's setting off my conspiracy brain - so he purged john birchers and nazis many of whom were involved in some capacity in CIA backed right wing death squads - what does it all mean - probably nothing

except that the moderate right is one of the most enduring and dangerous liberal fantasies which demonstrates some unspoken sympathies and they seem to be becoming more and more spoken as the liberal wing of the establishment is feeling threatened from all sides

is ross douchehat supposed to be nu-david brooks or something. he's just as lousy. at the NYT.

Tbf Douthat is too much of a freak to be Brooks

He goes places Brooks would never go—like the Know Your Enemy podcast

I think Pamela Paul, David Brooks and Bret Stephens are the worst of the pack. Like truly evil

We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called “agile scrum,” which was adapted from business-meeting models. We utilized that format. We did that for a year and a half, at least once a month, sometimes six to 10 hours of hard poly-processing.
― jmm, Thursday, April 18, 2024 10:01 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Is this for real?

Ann -- I’m 34, and I feel like I’ve been on and off nonmonogamous much of my life, even though I didn’t have the word. When I was 17, 18, I said free love. Around 2018, 2019, I swore off monogamy forevermore. I use the word “polyamorous,” though relationship anarchist is probably a more accurate representation.

My husband and I are very, very different, which is our strength. He’s a frat bro who loves sports, and I’m a radical alien witch academic nerd. In the beginning, we did all the typical stuff. Read the books on nonmonogamy, did the relationship check-ins. We’d sit down, take notes. We did every exercise in the books, listened to every podcast. We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called “agile scrum,” which was adapted from business-meeting models. We utilized that format. We did that for a year and a half, at least once a month, sometimes six to 10 hours of hard poly-processing. That gave us great communication tactics.

Robert (Ann’s husband) -- We have this motto: Feelings are not facts. That gets us through the hard times.

At the start, I was going through some depression, and when we had sex I had so much stress. There were issues in the bedroom with her, and that happened many times, which caused more stress. She started seeing this dude who was an absolute stud, having sex with him and having a great-ass time, and I felt totally lame and inadequate.

That was really hard for me, for obvious reasons. I felt like, I’m a hundred percent replaceable. It took a lot of conversations. She was like, There’s nothing wrong with you, this is going to pass, therapy will help. Lots of tears were shed. But medication helped me, talk therapy helped me, changing the way we do things helped. That’s where feelings are not facts really mattered. Because I would ask her questions, and she would be like, No, I don’t feel that way; and I would be like, I know you like being with him more than me; and she would say, I’m not lying to you, it’s different, but it doesn’t make me love you less, you provide so much more to my life than just sex. I totally get it now. That was the first instance of feelings are not facts. They feel like it. But they ain’t facts.

He’s a frat bro who loves sports, and I’m a radical alien witch academic nerd.

i've seen this sitcom before

We learned a strategy from the Multiamory podcast called “agile scrum,” which was adapted from business-meeting models.

All of human culture was building toward this sentence.

Scrum is an agile team collaboration framework commonly used in software development and other industries.

Scrum prescribes for teams to break work into goals to be completed within time-boxed iterations, called sprints. Each sprint is no longer than one month and commonly lasts two weeks. The scrum team assesses progress in time-boxed, stand-up meetings of up to 15 minutes, called daily scrums. At the end of the sprint, the team holds two further meetings: one sprint review to demonstrate the work for stakeholders and solicit feedback, and one internal sprint retrospective. A person in charge of a scrum team is typically called a scrum master.

“They feel like it, but they ain’t facts”: Deep Polyamory In The Zoom Era

“there’s a guy coming over”

“a guy?”

“his name is todd. he’s a, what you might call, a pussy unlocker”

“a what now?”

“that’s apparently what they call it”

*doorbell rings*

W/r/t Buckley, I’m going to recommend that American Prospect piece from Rick Perlstein that Alfred linked above. Dude was personally worse in certain circumstances than even some of the more rightwing people he ostensibly sidelined, but his affect was such that he was welcomed on PBS as respectable conservative for class reasons for decades.

Oh yeah, also I scroll a bit and see that Left beat me to a lot of these points.

So, yeah, wot they said.

perlstein's WFB piece getting passed around on ilx threads more times than the new stud in the polycule

i blame the chubb group. they secretly own pbs and peter thiel and soros and the simpsons. wait i'm getting my threads mixed up. or am i....

man I hope I never learn what agile scrum is in any context

Is this for real?

― Marten Broadcloak, mild-mannered GOP congressman (Raymond Cummings)

yeah, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. the extraordinary claim to me is the idea that a 20 person polycule would last more than a week without imploding into insane drama.

i haven't read the article in question because paywall but this sounds a lot like a tumblr post from january about a supposed "portland polycule" where the blogger just threw in the most ridiculous shit he could think of. i mean having not seen the article in question i'm not gonna say it's _impossible_. there are polycule cults out here. it's one of the main reasons i don't get any action - i don't fuck with polycules, literally or figuratively.

honestly, as far as i can tell the only way a 20-person polycule works is _as_ a cult. otherwise someone brings a friend over to the house who someone else in the polycule hates and there are fights... polycule drama scales approximately logarithmically with the number of members...

i mean this _is_ in the PNW, right? is there anywhere else in america where shit this fucked up could happen?

man I hope I never learn what agile scrum is in any context

― JoeStork

fortunately it's not something i've had to worry about since i had my orchi

it keeps making me think of the human centipede when i see the word *polycule*. which gives me the shivers.

A 20-person Cambridge MA polycule composed of 25- to 45-year-olds sounds like the premise for our millennial Big Chill.

fpsa at 2:38 19 Apr 24

I think Pamela Paul, David Brooks and Bret Stephens are the worst of the pack. Like truly evil

I don't want to defend Brooks exactly, but he seems mostly like a squish who is uncomfortable with divisiveness and ideas outside his milquetoast moderate worldview. Whereas Paul and Stephens are just lazily contemptuous reactionaries. Neither type is great, but I find the latter more irksome.

Jmm, write the script

tbf, brooks is super lazy too

20-person polycules are an entirely different sort of fucked up from the human centipede, if that helps any, scott

I don't want to defend Brooks exactly, but he seems mostly like a squish who is uncomfortable with divisiveness and ideas outside his milquetoast moderate worldview. Whereas Paul and Stephens are just lazily contemptuous reactionaries. Neither type is great, but I find the latter more irksome.

― jaymc

both types want me to not exist, the latter are just more open about it

fair

the McLaughlin Group ran for decades too. lots of choice Pat Buchanan for you on PBS. i watched it sometimes god help me. the libs always looked like weak sisters on that show. they set it up that way.

― scott seward, Friday, April 19, 2024 8:46 AM (four days ago)

I vaguely remember that Buchanan was more "restrained" on PBS than off ... definitely a lot of "I wouldn't go that far, Pat!" wrist-slapping at least... but definitely the "liberal wuss" stereotype was very present on this show. There was a CBS show kinda like it at the time that had the same set up. There actually is a deleted scene featuring Howard Hunt on Buckley's show in White House Plumbers.

Agile scrum, when gymnasts and rugby players have an orgy

I remember Buchanan getting fired up and blaming "the reds, the greens, and the trots" one time on McLaughlin and I almost spit out my coffee. The same noxious views, but skirting self-parody

I haven't read it obvs, but I keep seeing excerpts of the McWhorter column and each one is even dumber than the last

lol These protesters are ruining my John Cage lecture.

that part is discrediting (as a prof) and lol, but he also spends a lot of time elaborating a fantasy about a fictional protest against DEI as if real students are comparable to the imagined protesters that live in his mind, and then there's this:

The other night I watched a dad coming from the protest with his little girl, giving a good hard few final snaps on the drum he was carrying, nodding at her in crisp salute, percussing his perspective into her little mind. This is not peaceful.

However, the relentless assault of this current protest — daily, loud, louder, into the night and using ever-angrier rhetoric — is beyond what anyone should be expected to bear up under regardless of their whiteness, privilege or power.

McWhorter's a fun case of radical centrism where what actually counts as centrist gets smaller and smaller

omg

But relatively constant are the drumbeats — people will differ on how peaceful that sound can ever be, just as they will differ on the nature of antisemitism.

why can't people protest at home, silently, like Dr. King

the whole article is like "What would you libs feel if this were a bunch of Klansmen instead of college kids doing drum circles and doing a chant that sounds like it comes from Moana?"

i had high hopes for that article about the vegan chef who owes everybody money but it was really kinda boring. so he got a ton of rich people to give him money? bully for him!

sucks bad that the chef was closing restaurants without paying employees but that seems like a standard dirtbag restaurant owner thing

at least a couple local guys did that and then it came out that the employees were also keeping the literal infrastructure together because the owners wouldn't fix things

I missed that one. Was it supposed to be notable because the chef was vegan?

I "borrow" my subscription but seeing stuff like this and I might have to finally give up on Wordle and Connections:

The Meta-Morphosis of Mark Zuckerberg

The robotic nerd depicted in “The Social Network” has turned into the kinder, more accessible face of Silicon Valley, our fashion critic writes.

McWhorter is possibly one of the dumbest people with tenure in the entire world. It baffles me that anyone can take the guy seriously

That he is teaching music courses at Columbia is enough to discredit the entire institution, nevermind the ridiculous anti-Palestinian cop-calling “crisis creation”

all the people responsible for employing him and continuing his writing are probably pensively nodding and agreeing with that article. that's how you keep your job

"I missed that one. Was it supposed to be notable because the chef was vegan?"

Indeed! Rich Hollywood types totally gave him money even though he was a bad businessperson/shady and they even knew he had lost tons of money but they thought he was going to save the world. he's very cult-y looking.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5a8b358f18b27d54781955a1/1526326734103-2BNL0QSX2Q49A5PIAQJO/matthewkenney.jpg

not just vegan, RAW food. my wife had some dealings w him, almost 20 years ago now, and after a few meetings he totally ghosted her.

And although Mr. Kenney became a prominent figure in veganism, championing its virtues to both investors and the public, he conceded to The Times that he had eaten seafood a “few times,” though he claimed to have done so “openly” and not to have eaten “land-based flesh” in more than 20 years.

he sounds lovely:

“We were all specifically told not to tell the women he brought that he had a girlfriend,” Ms. Duran said. “And we also knew when the girlfriend would come, not to mention the dates he would bring to the restaurant.”

you can tell that someone with influence pushed that story to the NYT in order to roast his ass

I doubt it was Michael Landon's widow, who is quoted as an investor that got burned, but probably in her charitable sphere

you could teach a pretty good media literacy class using NYT articles like this as an example

why are they writing about this, and who is the target audience?

in this case, it's undoubtedly to burn whatever cred he has hustling people for more money

you should see the article they just did about the publicist for influencers who looks like Barbie! it makes the vegan crook story look like bartlett and steele.

And although Mr. Kenney became a prominent figure in veganism, championing its virtues to both investors and the public, he conceded to The Times that he had eaten seafood a “few times,” though he claimed to have done so “openly” and not to have eaten “land-based flesh” in more than 20 years.

ethical non-veganomy

new Pamela Paul column has a graf that starts "But as Ricky Gervais says..."

she really is the Onion version of her colleagues

I can't tell if that vegan chef is going to ask me if I want to have a threesome with his wife or harvest my blood for dark rituals or both.

looks like the Pitchbot twitter account was hired for real headlines:

In Immunity Case, Trump Can Lose in Ways That Amount to a Win

sucks bad that the chef was closing restaurants without paying employees but that seems like a standard dirtbag restaurant owner thing

oh it very much is! i only skimmed the article but as scott said, it was kinda boring ... the "robbing peter to pay paul" thing ... another standard dirtbag restaurant owner thing. i worked as a bookkeeper/office manager for one ... at first they were arguing with me that the restaurant was losing so much money they were likely going to have paychecks bounce ... then it happened ... then it was worse because I was handing staff paychecks and telling them either to "cash it now" or "wait until Tuesday when the weekend sales hit the bank otherwise your check with bounce" ... the food was really good though!

* as in I told them the restaurant was losing money and they argued that I must be doing the accounting wrong

it really does amaze me sometimes what a crappy business the restaurant business is. sometimes i feel like the only justification for it is as a way to launder money. the mental and physical toll a place can have on someone and the amount of work involved and even wildly successful places can make NO money. its insane. it makes them feel archaic somehow. and that's just normal places. when you get to fine dining and the rich people ass-kissing...blah. it kinda sucks. i don't even want to go to places anymore where people are fake nice to me. i stick to the local diner, the chinese joint, and the mexican/salvadoran place. they're just nice enough but mostly they leave me alone because they're busy.
and don't get me wrong i work hard for no money and deal with creeps but i do it so that i never have to have a boss again and i'm mostly by myself. and i never smell like fish grease. and i did enjoy waiting tables when i was young because cash and also i was working with friends but i'd rather die than work in a restaurant now. i would be stabbing people nightly. or as many nights as they allowed me to stab people.

Yeah, I don't get restaurants at all. Every time I try to do the math in my head it makes me shudder. But hey, my record label is just an inefficient way of pouring money down the toilet, so what do I know?

From what I've seen of restaurant entrepreneurs, this is how you do it.

1. Have an idea for a restaurant
2. Get a group of partners to put up money
3. Use the money for drugs
4. Hire people you think you can sleep with/do drugs with
5. Open the restaurant
6. Close the restaurant a few weeks later

they generally take a lot of start up capital ... either you have to buy all the kitchen equipment, deal with permits & licenses, etc. or you are buying someone else's restaurant space ... you are generally highly unlikely to get any of that money back soon. Then there are the operating costs ... you have food/beverage (which should be less than 30% of the gross receipts), labor, and occupancy (the rent & utilities etc) ... those are the main three categories. Of course there are a bunch of other expenses as well (advertising, accounting, etc), but if you can actually have a profit after factoring in the main 3 categories, you are in way better shape than a lot of places ... and of course the other thing to remember is that sales tax you collect is not your money. ... Failure to pay sales tax because you spent that money like it was "yours" ... is a common way restaurant owners/managers fuck themselves.

not to mention that people who are good with noodles aren't always financial geniuses. and finding a genius to help you month by month is hard and also costs $$. or at least a decent accountant costs some dough.

From what I've seen of restaurant entrepreneurs, this is how you do it.

1. Have an idea for a restaurant
2. Get a group of partners to put up money
3. Use the money for drugs
4. Hire people you think you can sleep with/do drugs with
5. Open the restaurant
6. Close the restaurant a few weeks later

― Never fight uphill 'o me, boys! (President Keyes)

a lot of restaurants are indeed based on this model

i'd add:

5a: invite all of your family and friends to the restaurant and feed them for free

A.G. Sulzberger, world's whiniest bitch.

For anyone who understands the role of the free press in a democracy, it should be troubling that President Biden has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term. The president occupies the most important office in our nation, and the press plays a vital role in providing insights into his thinking and worldview, allowing the public to assess his record and hold him to account.

Mr. Biden has granted far fewer press conferences and sit-down interviews with independent journalists than virtually all of his predecessors. It is true that The Times has sought an on-the-record interview with Mr. Biden, as it has done with all presidents going back more than a century. If the president chooses not to sit down with The Times because he dislikes our independent coverage, that is his right, and we will continue to cover him fully and fairly either way.

However, in meetings with Vice President Harris and other administration officials, the publisher of The Times focused instead on a higher principle: That systematically avoiding interviews and questions from major news organizations doesn’t just undermine an important norm, it also establishes a dangerous precedent that future presidents can use to avoid scrutiny and accountability. That is why Mr. Sulzberger has repeatedly urged the White House to have the president sit down with The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNN and other major independent news organizations that millions of Americans rely on to understand their government.

For those mercifully unaware, this is a response to this Politico piece about how much the Times and the Biden White House hate each other — and, specifically, that because Biden hasn't given the Times an exclusive interview, Sulzberger has been pushing the Biden-is-old narrative.

why is the word "independent" in there a dozen times?

leaky brain thinking that news organizations should have complete access while not respecting the asks of the subjects being covered. it’s a negotiation: access journalism taken too far is utterly corrupt and in the pocket of the sources, but an org with no ability to finesse relationships has no journalistic juice

it’s all posturing. they just have sour grapes because giving the NYT info did nothing for Biden’s campaign and they got kicked to second tier after printing the name of an off-record source. might be a weakness of the Biden admin for having a sense of rules and procedure while Trump’s people were more than happy to blab all over while bitching about the crooked nytimes

if that nepo baby running the Times would just insist that everyone call him Punch people would respect him more.

or punch him. one or the other.

Biden is doing a live interview with Howard Stern this morning. I guess we should prepare for about 16 stories in the next 24 hours about how old and feeble he is.

Howard has seen better days

No matter how much wealth and status these people accumulate it still kills them to get roasted on Twitter by @bigtittyberniebro42069

This idea that I don't understand Cage's piece is willfully uncomprehending, well, nonsense. I know he wanted us to listen to surrounding sound. I made an exception for making Jewish people listen to calls for Israel to be destroyed.

— John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) April 26, 2024

Is there a competition within the freeze peach crowd to be the biggest hypocrite right now? He's really putting in the work. I was going to post some of his past writing about safe spaces and campus protests, but nearly *everything* he wrote before now contradicts his current position lmao

i can totally do it. i can totally not think of her when i see a cowboy hat. i think of lil nas x when i see a cowboy hat. and cowboys. i think of cowboys.

Beyoncé’s Last Fashion Frontier
It’s now impossible to see a cowboy hat or pair of cowboy boots and not think of her.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/01/style/beyonce-cowboy-fashion.html

Yeah there’s a lot about the Times that makes me go “whuh” or infuriates me but for some reason that Beyonce article made me want to write a letter— I have never thought of Beyonce when I see a cowboy hat, nor will I ever think of Beyonce when I see a cowboy hat. These people are nuts

Beyonce invented cowboy hats

I think of Raylan Givens or Sam Elliott in Tombstone.

I think of a million bands from Mexico

I think of a million bands from Mexico

Hell, in the picture at the top of the article she looks like Jenni Rivera.

Matthew Schmitz

Trump Is Lawless, Yes. But in the Name of a Higher Law.

Mr. Schmitz is a founder and an editor of Compact, an online magazine.

bring me a higher law
ohhh

Mr. Trump may pose a threat to our political system as it now exists, but it is a threat animated by a democratic spirit. It is the threat of the outlaw hero, a figure of defiance with deep roots in American culture who exposes the injustices and hypocrisies of a corrupt system.

this CANNOT be real

it's kind of funny watching these staid republican types tie themselves into pretzels

This has got to be written by one of those “debate me” guys. JFC

they claim otherwise, but Compact is extremist right-wing, not staid GOP

Missed the restaurant convo but Scott was v v otm. My parents had one place for 30 years and another for 14. They sold the second place in 2006 and it's been 5 places since. It is such a hard business. Please used to ask me all the time if I was going to takeover. Literally never crossed my mind.

how can we possibly know what the kids want if they refuse to debate a famously open-minded former ronald reagan speechwriter

When protests are not about actually explaining your cause or trying to engage journalists who are there to listen. ⁦@Peggynoonannyc⁩ describes her visit to Columbia before the raid. pic.twitter.com/S2fxZZVXwe

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) May 4, 2024

halp, I have suffered brain death from reading these words:

Maureen Dowd

The Truth Hurts — Especially When Bill Maher Dishes It Out

10 min read

i was just about to post that

and yes, it is a puff piece that could have been written 20 years ago.

Maher evokes the twin archetypes of the wisecracking kid who sat behind you in school and the grumpy uncle who sits next to you at Thanksgiving. He’s a rebel with a cause: He actually cares about the things he complains about, so there’s heart behind the cynicism.

Jerry Seinfeld called the consistently high level of Maher’s editorials “shocking.” “Your brain is worthy of all the attention it gets,” he teased Maher on “Club Random,” Maher’s podcast.

His range may be explained by something Maher, a Cornell history major, writes in his book: “I watch the History Channel like most guys watch Pornhub.”

lol jesus christ

The best part of that article is that neither Maureen Dowd nor her editors know what the phrase "a wide berth" means:

My idol is Jonathan Swift, so I think that satirists — the other “Swifties” — should be given a wide berth. Sometimes they’ll miss the mark, sometimes they’ll be offensive. But we need our jesters to hold up a mirror to our society, now more than ever.

lol that's so bad it almost seems subversive

(on the editor's part)

It's more that it's archaic, in the sense of "room to maneuver a ship around to avoid hitting rocks" but very No Way NYT nonetheless

No you see "a wide berth" is the population problem that Swift attempted to solve in A Modest Proposal

pun that I had missed

"a wide berth" means to avoid entirely iirc, I think she meant to say "give them some leeway"

we have not given this article a wide berth

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wide_berth

I recently had to explain this term to a non-English speaker, but really, NYT?

To be fair I agree most satirists should be given a wide berth.

Bill Maher in particular

not interested in any meaning of wide berth that isn't about that wagon

a wide berth isn't something you're given, it's something you earn

Mitch McConnell: We Cannot Repeat the Mistakes of the 1930s

(admittedly I am a tiny bit curious which mistakes exactly he's talking about)

the New Deal

I clicked and he thinks the US isn't spending enough on defense -_-

We really fucked up in the 1930s when we didn't spend enough on the military and ended up losing to Hitler

nyt opinion page has been worthless lately. david french ffs

lately?

letters section: 3 academics saying the lab leak article was bullshit, balanced with 1 guy in Arizona who agrees with it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/opinion/covid-origins-lab-market.html

Pamela Paul's latest, about why protests aren't for her, reads like Jean Teasdale.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/20/opinion/protests.html

I refuse to believe Pamela Paul is real.

It’s weird that people want to protest when they could just publish their random thoughts in the New York Times.

https://i.imgur.com/QoZViuo.jpeg

everyone points this out and the just keep doing it

Pamela Paul

Why Is the U.S. Still Pretending We Know Gender-Affirming Care Works?

no clicks for transphobes

A question a child might ask...

Why do transphobes think "I'm extremely concerned about the epistemological questions regarding this one single issue and this one single issue only. Btw no amount of social research or medical evidence will assuage me" is persuasive

(sincere apologies to Pam P if she also has deep concerns about the epistemology of vaccine science)

Pamela Paul can eat shit and did

and die

You may have been right the first time too

lol amazing typo thanking u tabes

Yea we can (and do)

Usha Vance and the Iconography of the Trump Women

The potential second lady models a new kind of Republican image-making, our fashion critic writes.

3 min read

barf

The Evolution of Usha Vance

An accomplished Yale-educated lawyer, she has left her job at a top firm as she adjusts to the life of a high-profile political spouse.

10 min read

jfc *another* front-page puff piece

JD Got Us Fallin' in Love

how many op-eds about how democrats are anti-Semitic for not picking josh shapiro do we need

https://i.imgur.com/heaFFuQ.png

she's running against famous policy wonk donald trump. but what are here policies???? hmm i'm stumped, i can't think of a single one

^ emma v taking this headline down on the majority report right now

I refuse to believe Pamela Paul is real.

Rich LOLwry has a column today.

Trump Can Win on Character

readying self to be intellectually challenged

i think they are taking pitchbot literally

tbf the article makes clear that it means "Trump Can Win on (attacking Harris's) Character"

it is still profoundly stupid and not worth reading

Today Pamela Paul wrote her column in the voice of RFK's brain worm.

accurate

they've achieved a new level of deranged here:

Harris and Trump Have Housing Plans. Economists Have Doubts.

The two presidential nominees are talking about their approaches for solving America’s affordability crisis. But would their plans work?

Harris: Expand Supply Using Tax Credits.

Harris: A $25,000 Boost for First-Time Buyers.

Trump: Deport Immigrants.

https://i.imgur.com/GoeAmSx.png
not clicking on those tbh

the Brooks is tepid slash fiction

Isn’t everything Brooks writes tepid slash fiction tho? </trench>

Biden Hopes for ‘Path to Peace,’ but Hamas Is Defiant

i’m sure the next assassination of a Hamas leader will be the foundation stone for peace, or if not, the one after that

Pamela Paul

Here Is the Missing Context in Ta-Nehisi Coates’s ‘The Message’

barely worth posting tbh

The insidious theory of settler colonialism

Thomas L. Friedman

Arab and Jewish Voters Both Need Kamala Harris

Arab and Muslim Americans with friends and family in Gaza or Lebanon or the West Bank worry every day about loved ones being killed or wounded with U.S.-made weapons that were transferred to Israel. Jewish Americans have had to worry every day about their kids being exposed to left-wing anti-Zionism on U.S. college campuses.

If I didn't know any better I'd ponder whether this column was artful satire

which is worse--the genocide or the person saying the genocide is bad?

wow

You might live in terror of a relative being murdered in the latest school bombing, but the rest of us have to hear about it which I think you’ll agree is equally burdensome. Anyway vote Harris

In Shift From 2020, Identity Politics Loses Its Grip on the Country

6 min read

interesting to learn the nyt doesn't know what "identity" or "politics" mean

The four experts cited in this piece are Yascha Mounk (fired from The Atlantic in the past year over rape allegations), Rahm Emanuel, Lis Smith, and the head of Democratic Majority for Israel pic.twitter.com/1XyE1yWrf5

— David Klion (@DavidKlion) November 2, 2024

Maggie Astor thread on the Tech Guild strike: https://bsky.app/profile/maggieastor.bsky.social/post/3la4qfb7vfr2q

Main takeaway wrt picket line:

NYT Games and Cooking are BEHIND THE PICKET LINE. Please don’t play or engage with Games or Cooking content while the strike lasts!

News coverage — including election coverage — is NOT behind the picket line. It’s okay to read and share that, though the site and app may very well have problems.

These Uncommitted Voters Finally Made Their Choice for President
Over the last four months, these voters have struggled with their decision. Now, with time short, they explain who’s getting, or not getting, their vote.

on the eve of the campaign we detail the inner workings of the dumbest people alive

don't worry, i took a glance at that article and you will all be relieved to know that at least one of them is STILL undecided, gonna wait to see what their gut tells them in the voting booth

making a decision any earlier than that seems irresponsible tbrr

on the night before the world series it’s important to hear from six people who have never seen a baseball game

well, if they're going to play left field maybe

Michelle Cottle

Gaetz’s Withdrawal Means the Senate Passed Its First Test

2 min read

jfc

"Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!”

wild that this paper is so transphobic they're dropping dopey op-eds in the Politics section

is it wild

which one?

this one: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/26/us/politics/transgender-activists-rights.html

I’m sure they did a lot of these type of stories about AIDS activists back in the 80s

Increasingly isolated!

Israel’s offensive against Hezbollah and the cease-fire to stop the fighting in Lebanon have left Hamas increasingly isolated

Not a terrible story as far as NYT stories go. xpost

Yeah, honestly I agree with Rob— it’s basically yielding the floor to transphobes and their “concerns” in the guise of speaking with trans people and allies who are more conservative and “normie” than the prevailing trans population.

I guess they were positively name-checking Andrew Sullivan in the comments. Adds up

I wrote a post earlier detailing my objections, but deleted it bc I don't want to argue with Alfred of all posters about this (and he's clearly aware of how low the bar is at the nyt on this issue).

Suffice to say I found the opening paragraphs to be strongly biased (Moulton's comments were a lot uglier than he makes them sound; I don't need to explain Rowling's deal), and afaict both activists cited in the headline and interviewed work for the same organization. A better piece would have properly surveyed the range of views on strategy that different trans activists surely hold and not framed it around how strident or inflexible they are according to transphobes.

The NYT's run some of the foulest anti-trans journalism of the last decade.

There is a story here: how do trans Americans counter the flood of GOP garbage and ignored by Dem satraps. I tend to trust Heng-Lehtinen because they've been honest for years (and considering their background, yikes).

(not sure if this was unclear, but just in case: my "objections" were to the article not your post!)

That would be a story I would love to read, Alfred, absolutely

This pamela paul piece

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/28/opinion/food-thanksgiving-digestion-aging.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb

Good example of the

Not sure what I was going to say there, but anyway, I am reminded, as ever, of this Hamilton Nolan column about her.

Not sure what I was going to say there, but anyway, I am reminded, as ever, of this Hamilton Nolan column about her🕸.

Dude does have a lot of good points, but it’s interesting that he doesn’t get to the conclusion where I think his argument leads … which is, the “full-time” columnist at the NYT job is essentially going to result in Pamela Pauls and Thomas Friedmans (just citing the ones he mentions). … because of the elite aspect of the job. Compare guest columns to their regular columns, and the guest columns are often way more interesting… because the people writing them mostly do other things than write columns for the NYT. It goes back to how Capitalism is structured and the function of specialization… which, this guy seems like he could expound about…

It would have been interesting to see him reflect on whether there is misogyny involved with singling out Pamela Paul.

It would have been interesting to see him reflect on whether there is value in thinking and writing about these “trivial things” … like I was with him at the beginning when he criticizes the dearth of ideas. But he doesn’t really make a case for his implicit hierarchy of ideas worth writing about.

I think that some of that implication is sort of embedded in other parts of the critique— Pamela Paul is an elitist demon who, when she isn’t decrying a completely fabricated “cancel” culture or trans youth, only writes about things that amount to the fiddling of the upper classes as the world burns. She is completely disconnected from normal people, so doesn’t have the concerns of normal people.

As far as misogyny goes, I understand that this might be part of it, but also she is a demon from hell.

It would have been interesting to see him reflect on whether there is misogyny involved with singling out Pamela Paul.

I think he was mostly going after her because she was the newest addition to the roster, having only been there two years, but was already demonstrating extraordinary vapidity. Her columns, frankly, are so dumb it makes you want to go back and look at all the editions of the Book Review she was in charge of, to see whether there was any evidence of idiocy then. Anyway, Pamela Paul has lifetime tenure if she wants it, guaranteed. Maureen Dowd, who is literally unreadably bad, grinds on week after week for, what, 40 years now?

The Book Review has been mostly trash for more than a decade.

I guess where I am coming from is, a “hot take” about the Barbie movie or old people’s food is better then yet another vapid “hot take” on Trump supporters or the election of which there are already too many.

Mostly written by white men.

I think that some of that implication is sort of embedded in other parts of the critique— Pamela Paul is an elitist demon who, when she isn’t decrying a completely fabricated “cancel” culture or trans youth, only writes about things that amount to the fiddling of the upper classes as the world burns. She is completely disconnected from normal people, so doesn’t have the concerns of normal people.

And it was a small school.

I mean, I get it, but I also went to a small and elite undergrad institution, and the number of people with infinitely more connections and family money than me have done much better in life. My point is that this isn’t that complicated an issue— she went to an elite school, but by dint of her family connections and the world she inhabited (married first to demon Bret Stephens and now to some financial analyst dude who is also undoubtedly a candidate for Mr Choppy), she was able to get onto the path that she is on.

Yes I agree with you, even though that wasn’t where I was going.

Honestly my problem with the old people food column was her wtf attitude towards British sweets

Paul Krugman is hanging it up. Says on Bluesky "I decided to leave in search of more freedom in terms of both style and content."

Substacking

Maybe he'll start a music blog. Remember when Arcade Fire winning the Grammy led him to get into indie rock?

We need more boomers talking rock

he's joining the Stones as their bassist.

Motley Krüg

Krugangbin

Keep on Krooglin'

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/03/nyregion/nyc-private-school-tuition.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Not sure whether this is more quid-ag … definitely involves quid

Bullet casings left at the scene, scrawled with words like “deny” and “delay,” left the authorities and the public wondering if the shooting was payback for health care insurers rejecting claims.

Where Beards Grow, Strong Feelings Follow

Whether on Prince William, JD Vance or Jacob Elordi, facial hair gets people talking.

And how!

Bret Stephens

Brian Thompson, Not Luigi Mangione, Is the Real Working-Class Hero

(already posted elsewhere, but for posterity)

Pamela Paul

Historians Condemn Israel’s ‘Scholasticide.’ The Question Is Why.

A question a child might ask...

I clicked through and one of her reasons for objecting to the AHA's resolution is:

First, the resolution runs counter to the historian’s defining commitment to ground arguments in evidence. It says Israel has “effectively obliterated Gaza’s education system” without noting that, according to Israel, Hamas — which goes unmentioned — shelters its fighters in schools.

Can't the nyt hire a more competent fascist propagandist? This is genuinely embarrassing to read.

Anyway the actual resolution is more worth your time: https://www.historiansforpeace.org/scholasticide-in-gaza/

what a joke

And....she's leaving the paper.
https://archive.ph/390sL

Gotta love this anonymous quote:

“It is a rarity inside the Times for someone to manage to make enemies on every desk they touch; Pamela is indeed a rarity,” one newsroom employee said. “She should have spent time making allies if she was going to be as divisive a figure as she was internally. But she didn’t put the time in there, or at least did not have the interest.”

'divisive'

well I guess we'll see if they can hire a more competent fascist lol

What about that Hillbilly Elegy guy? Is he available?

How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump’s Arms

Marc Andreessen explains the newest faction of conservatism.
Jan. 17, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET

Ross Douthat

Hosted by Ross Douthat

https://athenaeumcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Athenaeum-Center-for-Thought-and-Culture-presents-The-Film-and-Culture-Series-with-Ross-Douthat-Episode-01-The-Decline-of-Cinema-Catholic-Events-Chicago.jpg

this guy's only 45? looks like an ugly big bro for the hillbilly elegy guy

wait til you see a pic of Andreessen

Looks like a guy who gets murked after talking to the Detective in a bar

He was using this photo next to his byline from 2010 to 2022, long after it was no longer accurate:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210801030006im_/https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/04/03/opinion/ross-douthat/ross-douthat-thumbLarge.png

Then he switched to this:
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/04/03/opinion/ross-douthat/ross-douthat-thumbLarge-v2.png

Douthat to me more more time

I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Douthat)

Douthat thing you do

I always pronounce it as “doubt that” and I think wow what a perfect name for a trolling opinion columnist! … I never read him.

he was formerly in "doubt that". I think he's currently portrayed as a cgi ape in a biopic film

ha yeah, sarahell, I sometimes think "Ross 'I very much' Douthat."

https://i.imgur.com/7lnVziE.png

nope

Frank Bruni, Bethany McLean and Nate Silver

Can the Trump-Musk Marriage Be Saved? 3 Writers on an Inevitably Combustible Relationship.

13 min read

Trump Moves Toward Pushing Openly Transgender People Out of Military

‘Gulf of America’? Here’s What Mexicans and Cubans Think.

Trump Argues That His Immunity Extends to Carroll’s Lawsuits

Trump Administration Halts H.I.V. Drug Distribution in Poor Countries

Homeland Security Begins Immigration Enforcement Operation in New York

The Only Marinara Sauce Recipe You’ll Ever Need

Is There Still a Rule Against Wearing Brown Shoes With Blue Pants?

What Happens When Condo Owners Don’t Pay Their Dues to the Building?

Opinion
Thomas L. Friedman
Trump Is Going Woke

The Only Marinara Sauce Recipe You’ll Ever Need

The sequel to The Loneliest Boy in the World

on my FB they had a NYT post that was one of those ask an expert things and the question was if it was okay for a man to stare at women on the street. i figure they are getting their new Trump fanbase going.

I was cracking up at that one when people were guessing it was one of their columnists, especially the bit where it ended the questioner's last marriage. David Brooks, maybe?

Like everything Andrea Long Chu writes, this piece on Pamela Paul is about three times too long, but it's still worth reading.

Yeah could've been shorter and zing-ier, but thoroughly otm regardless.

"Her prose has the clean, placeless scent of laundry detergent" lol

The Editorial Board

Trump’s Shameful Campaign Against Transgender Americans

Feb. 9, 2025, 6:00 a.m. ET

ha, I was coming here to write, it's not bad?

haha yeah I mean obvs I agree with the basic premise, but it's a bit rich from the nyt. and just in general it frames attacks on trans people as a political issue, eliding the role of the media.

also this part:

There are some issues — such as participation in sports and appropriate medical care for minors — that remain fiercely debated, even by those who broadly support trans rights. There should be room for those conversations.

is p telling and doesn't really square with some of the reasonable points it makes elsewhere

As I realized yesterday after hanging out briefly with two former schoolmates, few things make reasonable people lose their fucking marbles like the thought of their girls playing with trans girls. Not like this guy would've read a NYT editorial, but they're the biggest paper in the world: they have the data to swat away his objections. But then the paper has spent the last six years smearing trans people with just-askin'-questions articles.

Exactly! Later in the piece they drop this stat: "And they are 0.002 percent of college athletes" — which I would think would put "those conversations" in a different light, as would data on the number of minors receiving gender-affirming medical care if they bothered to share it

this subhead stuck out to me this morning:

Why Federal Courts May Be the Last Bulwark Against Trump

With a compliant Congress and mostly quiet streets, the president’s opponents are turning to the judicial branch with a flurry of legal actions. But can the courts keep up?

there were protests in 50 states last week. they even covered it a little: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/us/politics/trump-protests-50501-project-2025.html

Adverbs have been doing a lot of unglamorous grunt work lately.

still think the latest Ethicist columns are catering to a trumpier crowd since he took office:

Does My Wife Need to Know About My Porn Habit?

I Have Erectile Dysfunction. Do I Have to Disclose This Before Sex?

Can Accepting Money for Volunteering Be the Right Thing to Do?

What’s the Rule About Looking at Women in Public?

Can I Go to Church When I Don’t Believe?

Can I Ban Books From My Front-Yard Little Free Library?

Should a 13-Year-Old Be Pressured Into Having an Abortion?

as far as I am concerned, that shitbag Appiah gave up any sort of ethical high ground with the appalling answer to this question last year: (free link) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/18/magazine/donate-aide-church-homophobia.html?unlocked_article_code=1.vk4.pA8A.Fpl8grTanIX0&smid=url-share

There are other considerations. A church with backward views about homosexuality could also be making many positive contributions. It may even insist, like the official Roman Catholic Church — which has more than 50 million members in this country — that its members should treat people who have what their catechism calls ‘‘deep-seated homosexual tendencies’’ with ‘‘respect, compassion and sensitivity.’’ Pope Francis, whatever his frailties, has backed civil unions and condemned laws criminalizing gay sex.

Andrea Long Chu vs Pamela Paul is trolling me … I think both are awful. PamPa is worse, but … no.

Rob et al.

the number of minors receiving gender-affirming medical care

I am posting this link knowing that it might not be up much longer.

As with any pseudo moral panic it helps to have some information about just how prevalent it is, and some researchers did a science.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11211955/#:~:text=Gender%2Daffirming%20health%20care%20aims,for%20cisgender%20males%20with%20gynecomastia.

97% of these surgeries were cis males with gynecomastia.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/core/lw/2.0/html/tileshop_pmc/tileshop_pmc_inline.html?title=Click%20on%20image%20to%20zoom&p=PMC3&id=11211955_jamanetwopen-e2418814-g002.jpg

thanks YMP, I'd read somewhere that cis minors receive more gender-affirming care than trans minors do, but I didn't know those surgery percentages, geez

and fwiw the second link routed through my Canadian university library account, so hopefully that means it's at least being stored on servers outside the US...?

Maybe, but it doesn't hurt to print to PDF and save somewhere

97% of these surgeries were cis males with gynecomastia.

never thought about the surgery I had when I was 13 as "gender-affirming care," but I suppose it was!

i expect transphobes will simply make sure that treatment of gynecomastia in cis males is legally defined as something other than "gender-affirming"

I got operated for cryptorchidism when I was 12. Count me in.

Sadly this isn't a legal loophole. Most of the laws I'm aware of plus trump's EO very very explicitly ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth only rather than banning categories of treatments.

It's just the NYT and other so-called liberals who have to thread the needle of showing fake concern over hormones, puberty-blockers, and surgical procedures while avoiding expressing reactionary hatred of trans kids

For These 20-Somethings, Trump ‘Is Making It Sexy’ to Be Republican

4 min read

death penalty for anyone at any outlet writing this stuff

the bullying bubble is about to break!

Opinion
Thomas L. Friedman
Why Trump’s Bullying Is Going to Backfire
6 min read

Thomas L. Friedman

This Has Never Happened With an American President Before

What happened in the Oval Office on Friday — the obviously planned ambush of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine by President Trump and Vice President JD Vance — was something that had never happened in the nearly 250-year history of this country: In a major war in Europe, our president clearly sided with the aggressor, the dictator and the invader against the democrat, the freedom fighter and the invaded.

You want an analogy? Imagine if, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel came to the White House this month, Trump and Vance told him that the war with Hamas had gone on too long, too many lives had been lost and it was costing America too much money, so it was time for Bibi and the Israeli people to do a deal with the Hamas aggressor.

“In Europe” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there

Ukraine is in Eastern Europe

there’s definitely some squirrely commentary lately dividing Europe vs. EU

ime americans generally have a bad idea of european geography past Germany/France/Italy. Ukraine’s just past the center mark (it’s Poland. Poland is Central Europe) and then you have the baltics, the division between southeastern/just eastern, and who gets to claim the mediterranean and black seas

I think sarahell’s point is that the US has repeatedly backed dictators outside of Europe

Thanks but I don't want that analogy

Young Democrats’ Anger Boils Over as Chuck Schumer Retreats on Shutdown:

A generational divide, seen in newer lawmakers’ impatience with bipartisanship and for colleagues who don’t understand new media, has emerged as one of the deepest rifts within the party.

my anger is boiling over at the idea that wanting the democrats to show even a modicum of backbone and prevent our country's rapid slide in to fascism is some inside baseball "impatience with bipartisanship"

Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr.

Forget the Signal Chat. The Strike on the Houthis Was a Necessary Blow.

5 min read

lol nice

Trying to decide between “Trump Has Everything Under Control” vs “Trump Is Selling Jews a Dangerous Lie” … though the latter is more like no way water is wet.

second one is sadly a useful op-ed imo, not that it will necessarily reach the audience that would benefit (liberal Jews who have bought the "antisemitism on college campuses is a horrifying epidemic" story - I know many such people who are being driven to the right by it, with a wide spectrum of opinions about Israel, ranging from reasonable to abhorrent)

This Instability May Be Worth It. Here's Why.
- Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

Gift link

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/opinion/ross-douthat-interesting-times.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-k4.YKSX.dqRXgSUCB8fT&smid=url-share

no, thanks, I just ate!

THE EZRA KLEIN SHOW

Ross Douthat on Trump, Mysticism and Psychedelics

https://lede-admin.defector.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2025/05/Screenshot-2025-05-12-at-11.15.09%E2%80%AFAM-e1747063393653.png?w=710&quality=75

https://i.imgur.com/v6Xok47.jpeg

young chinese women have small nimble fingers, supply chain experts tell unquestioning NYT reporter TRIPP MICKLE

https://i.imgur.com/RRwRMnD.jpeg

see also the NYT's response to queries

https://i.imgur.com/5rtwNzu.jpeg