no way NYT

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