no way NYT

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