no way NYT

"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

it's not a serious newspaper

I laughed at this combination earlier:

Michelle Goldberg

She Was a Famous Millennial Feminist. Her Polyamory Memoir Is Heartbreaking.

+

Elizabeth Spiers

Why Are So Many People So Obsessed With Lindy West's Marriage?

Last of the Famous International Millennial Feminists

lol today's Tom Edsall column:

What, then, should Democrats do to staunch the bleeding or, better yet, regain majority party status?

I posed these questions to leaders of three centrist Democratic advocacy groups whose mission is to address this problem: Jim Kessler of Third Way, Adam Jentleson of the Searchlight Institute and Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute.

You'll never guess what they say!

Did they have this conversation in a blue-collar diner in the upper midwest?

Because I heard that is the only valid indicator of realness.

You see there's people on the lunatic far right and there's people on the lunatic far left...

. . . and yet somehow they never reach a conclusion

https://i.postimg.cc/sxyFCRfG/tboi.jpg

omfg

not gonna link but this paper is basically The Onion but for real

"The Women Who Believe That Women Should Lose The Right To Vote"

(an actual article, with an even more horrifying/normalizing subheader)

btw have y'all cancelled your game subscriptions yet?

‪Bitter Literature‬
✧@bitterat✧✧✧.b✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧‬
· 31m
Replied to
Kevin Elliott
Sigh. There is no aspect of America's right wing so horrifying that NYT won't treat it with, at best, a chortling pseudo-anthropological detachment.

I mean on one hand I think the mainstream media should be talking/writing more about Christian Nationalism, but I don't think slightly soft-focus articles like that are the way. 10 years ago I might have forgiven it a bit more as them thinking "We'll just do a just-the-facts thing here and people will of course recoil in horror," but that is clearly not how it really goes. And the other thing is, the church that they focus on and make most of the feature about has had rapid growth — to "more than 100" people. 100 people in the middle of the desert. That's a tiny piece of what's going with Christian Nationalism, but they need to understand the actual scale of it.

A Harrowing Race Against Time to Find a Downed U.S. Airman in Iran

yeah no thanks

https://i.postimg.cc/YC7zcHkG/nyt.png

classy!

https://i.postimg.cc/QdmBgTHb/a-sdlfkja-sdlfkj.jpg

Anthropic Claims Its New A.I. Model, Mythos, Is a Cybersecurity ‘Reckoning’
Kevin Roose

The company said on Tuesday that it was holding back on releasing the new technology but was working with 40 companies to explore how it could prevent cyberattacks.

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company that recently fought the Pentagon over the use of its technology, has built a new A.I. model that it claims is too powerful to be released to the public.

dude have some self-respect my god

Just like the 77 board

https://i.postimg.cc/Qthp9KRT/ffsnyt.jpg

as best i can tell, this person still has a job

I'm very curious what exactly happened here. Feel like there's a distinct difference between a) doing a quick Google to retrieve the quote and not bothering to look past the A.I. Overview, and b) firing up ChatGPT to help you write your article. Both are bad, but the former seems more forgivable.

interesting times with Ross Douthat

Better Sex, Better Hair, Better Sleep: ‘Humanmaxxing’ Is Here

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:tufhwskzvgoz7gih4ufahp3n/bafkreid422tstlrprgyv5t27cc3mtvjd6cyqjpp5tynkg6k5cvdhrfcpwe

^god is dead

I haven't visited the homepage in a while, what a litany:

Anna Louie Sussman
Is Kidmaxxing the Ultimate Status Symbol for Ultimate Wealth?

Ari D. Berman
What Zionism Has Always Meant

Matthew Vines
I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters.

Bret Stephens
Rays of Hope in Dark Times

Trump’s Historical Yarns Often Stretch the Truth. Here’s a Fact-Check.

We checked the president’s colorful, and inaccurate, accounts of American history, including the Battle of Gettysburg and the Unabomber.

That Matthew Vines column is every bit as bad as the headline suggests, probably worse.

yeah I didn't read any of these, but that one in partic I knew I didn't need to

I forgot to include the worst of the day though:

Trump Pulled In at Least $2 Billion After Returning to the White House

A financial disclosure for 2025 shows that the Trump family’s holdings, particularly President Trump’s crypto businesses, were stunningly lucrative.

5 min read

Trump’s Moneymaking Run Is Unrivaled in Presidential History

The president’s move to open new business ventures, rather than eliminate potential conflicts, defies a long-held tradition.

6 min read

That Matthew Vines column is every bit as bad as the headline suggests, probably worse.

nearly threw my phone across the room— hope he realizes that no matter what he wants to believe, his wretched religion still condemns him to hell! assimilationist piece of shit motherfucker

You're not mad, you're infuriated. It matters.

All six of the Bible’s references to same-sex relations are negative, but the lustful and exploitative same-sex practices those passages describe differ fundamentally from same-sex marriages today that are based on lifelong love and commitment.

holy shit

yeah i also read that and was actually like, “this person is a dangerous moron”

Paul hated the gays more than the Old Testament writers. I find the Romans excerpt grosser than anything in Leviticus.

fucking hell

https://bsky.app/profile/resnikoff.bsky.social/post/3mq3fmi7ltc2m

JFC

https://i.postimg.cc/pV8wjTSw-/nyt.jpg

The tack of thinking sexual assault is nbd.

Op-ed published today by a guy who posted a few months ago "The Somali community is a scourge on the republic."

A real Swiss coach should have several winning looks

Women Are Too Controlling, She Wrote. Her Message Still Resonates.

The message in “The Surrendered Wife,” the best-selling book by Laura Doyle, was provocative. Many women credit it with saving their marriages.

nyt getting into the tradwife business/ moving our society ever closer to the handmaid’s tale, i see

https://i.postimg.cc/QNp1cpby/brettttt.jpg

― lag∞n, Thursday, September 17, 2026 11:25 AM (eleven hours ago)

incredible

wtf is "civic entrepreneurship"?

i'm guessing 'rich people leaning on institutions to support right-wing causes'

selling off the parking meters like in Chicago