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.

god, to be a landowner in the west... these people aren't "working class" when their property is worth six figures. they are and represent split-minded people, who don't understand their own wealth. they've inherited everything they have and are too .. encumbered to put it kindly .. to build on it. some of these people of course have a taste for demagoguery. get enough of them together and you have a dangerous situation.

that being said, the headlights thing is legit. there's some discussion of it here: led lights suck

i've been paying more attention to led headlights. most are chill. i'm not sure how much of that is the led bulbs, or the coating of the headlight plastic, or both. every several cars though there is a particularly harsh light situation going on. on a road trip to moab recently i pulled off the highway to look at the stars. traffic was barely there with a car passing every minute or so. the very harsh headlights of one car from maybe a half a mile away cutting through the absolute dark left a strange pattern on my car, like the surface of a moonlit sea. i've noticed that those weird squiggly patterns around the light are faintly visible around the edges if you look directly at a harsh led headlight. my theory is that whatever it is that creates that effect is a big part of what makes bright led lights so viscerally unpleasant.

i will say that even though hardly anyone lives on like 80% of the united states of america, the land has historically been and is still, to this day, a major pillar of american imperial power. it is a very weird and fractured time to be living in that "land space" like it is everywhere else.

one trend i find really interesting lately is mountain bike trail systems. look at any town anywhere in the west and in the last five years they have developed or are starting to develop these large "open space" areas with mountain bike trails. a very interesting melding of some complicated and in some cases contradictory social forces and desires. overall a good thing i think - at least i benefit from it personally lol. a boon for tourism and property values. that funny thing of how land preservation and restoration feeds back into the market. what do all these mountain bikers do when they aren't mountain biking? pretty sure they're all white collar workers of one stripe or another. of course the white collar workers in rural towns trend hit the fan with covid. so once the towns are full of these kinds of people in their new developments and cheaply constructed (but high margin) condo developments, where do we get our lithium? the next valley over, just make sure to put up a solid fence between the highway and the mine. and don't pay attention to the dwindling rivers, they have no messages to bring that anyone in the new west wants to hear.

i think what i was trying to say at the end there and missed the mark with the lithium mine thing is that "back to the land" reflects an internal, spiritual crisis more than anything. americans never wanted to go back to the land, they wanted to possess it and squeeze it for resources because they've always been greedy more than anything. to go back to the land is to be subject to it, to live with it not just on top of it. that is the last thing anyone "settling" the west has ever wanted to do.

the mountain bike trail system thing is interesting to me because i think while most mountain bikers just want a rollercoaster thrill ride - which is relatable - there are seeds there for a more considerate and sympathetic view of the land that people are actually living on. simply through time spent on the land and observations made about it. and doing the kind of weird thing of trail maintenance and stewardship. i think it's a way to access a more rooted dimension while our essential resources are all distributed in a network. and if that network ever starts to fray and disconnect i think that's when "living on the land" starts to become more necessary. will knowledge of your local mountain bike trail system help in that scenario, when you can't order parts for your mountain bike anymore? will people recreate on the land when they actually have to start living on it? stay tuned, we may start to get more experience with these kinds of questions in our lifetimes!

well there is a thing about hunters, even racist asshole hunters, being big conservationists, stewards of the land etc because they actually are in touch with the natural world and depend on it for their recreation

I took an hour-long walk up and down the hills of Flathead Lake State Park this afternoon and now I am back home in a chair torn between "I need to do that more often" (because I am in poor physical condition) and "I am never doing that again as long as I live" (because I am in poor physical condition).

Vancouver, WA, is known as "Vantucky" to everyone in the area. I wrote a post immortalized in the "striking imagery" thread about sleeping in some bushes next to a highway onramp in Vancouver. it is, for lack of a more elegant term, a total shithole.

Our local mountain bikers are all big environmentalists. We have a big group here, a nonprofit that builds great trails on public or donated land. They're all very conservation-minded in addition to their cyclical insanity.

https://bsky.app/profile/grahamlampa.com/post/3mchlde6cjc27

just enraging. reads like a parody

Abolish ICE? It’s a Slogan Some Democratic Critics of ICE Would Abolish.

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck you

fuck this piece of shit paper forever and ever

you should see what the other shit New YOrk rag published today

jfc i foolishly actually clicked on the nyt article and it’s 100x worse than i imagined.

The regulars file into Ye Olde Pickle Factory in Nisswa, Minn., before 10 a.m. most days, taking their seats at the bar. Chili pepper lights hang from the ceiling, and neon beer signs glow against wood-paneled walls. A television flickers on. “The Price Is Right” is about to start.

They have been doing this since the mid-1980s, gathering in this small, dim room, waiting for someone on the game show to spin exactly $1 on the big wheel. When that happens, everyone receives a token for a free drink. Lately, they had been in a lull. No one had hit the dollar in weeks — until Wednesday.

Yes yes, let us take seriously the policy perspectives of people who have been getting wasted starting at 10am for the past 40 years.

It’s like even in the case that you’re an oblivious ghoul and this reporting supports your perspective, how can they have such little self-awareness to at least avoid self-parody

reading that excerpt in david attenborough's voice

xp there’s a lesson in that piece, just not the one the NYT thinks

_Why It’s Hard to Run Venezuela_

if it were easy it would be a while different story

Ross Douthat @DouthatNYT challenged me to a debate on foreign policy. We recorded a 90-minute segment for his show, Interesting Times, on 1/15/26. But I defeated him so decisively that he refuses to air the footage. What an absolute coward. pic.twitter.com/ak9LTq2nI8

— Seth Harp (@sethharpesq) February 5, 2026

unsurprising. Douthat is a total coward.

In MAGA America, NYT says no way to YOU

"we are going to pivot away from this story"

i cannot find the words for the way this sentence makes me feel

I will be using this phrasing with my boss from now on.

Yeah boss I am working through the edit and it looks like I'm not going to be able to make it work. Pivoting away now.

Listen Penelope I know it's been a great six years and it has no, it really has, but it looks like I'm not going to be able to make it work. I've been really pummeled by a lot of... stuff.. and I'm going to pivot away from this relationship now. Thanks for the time you put into it

this seems cool and obviously ross d. sucks but jfc can we get over 'debating' and 'destroyed!' as a method of commentary

https://i.postimg.cc/fTqQdSBH/n8adams.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/85S2GRP2/n82028.jpg

Slurs Filled a Chat Created by a Republican Party Official in Florida

god I love the radical post-humanists at the nyt

this is garbage

Mamdani Chooses His Words Carefully After Alleged Terror Attack

By Dana Rubinstein
March 9, 2026

In the days after a homemade bomb laced with metal was hurled into a highly charged protest near his official residence in Manhattan, Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not turn to his typical means of communication.

There were no short-form videos posted to social media about the attack in front of Gracie Mansion, where Mr. Mamdani lives with his wife, Rama Duwaji. There were no impassioned speeches.

yes
especially since he actually used the word terrorist

love to read the newspaper to find out what didn't happen

Netanyahu Hopes Strikes on Iran Will Lead to Uprising and Regime Change

Israel’s attacks are part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy to encourage Iranians to overthrow their rulers. Some see that as wishful thinking.

4 min read

this being adjacent to horrific video of an airstrike on central (not suburban) Beirut is really something

Netanyahu Hopes Strikes on Iran Will Lead to Uprising and Regime Change

i know bibi doesn't give a fuck (and the NYT is absurd for taking any of his statements at face value) but are there historical incidences of this ever happening? particularly in the several centuries since regimes acquired weapons far more lethal than lances and arrows

i guess there are the eastern european countries circa 1989, but they were not having their schoolchildren murdered en masse by a foreign country at the time

Hmm. The Khmer Rouge overthrew the government while the US was bombing Cambodia, but that’s not the kind of outcome the NYT likes.

Anytime a news story makes the subject of a sentence a politician's name and makes the verb of the sentence a word like "hopes" or "believes" or "fears" I'm like okay you read minds now? You don't? I see, so you're taking a politician's word for it, at face value? If I had any mental filing system left at this age I'd immediately file the reporter under "ignore indefinitely"

‘I’m Tainted. I’m in the Files.’ He mastered the world of the “Epstein Class” to build great museums. Now he’s confronting the cost.

Sympathetic portrayal of an Epstein bootlicker. Spoiler alert: "the cost" does not include losing any of his material resources or privilege.

“This mess is swallowing every little corner of our lives,” Peggy said. “What does the golf course have to do with anything?”

what indeed

https://i.postimg.cc/MZmLJ4dw/bretnyt.jpg

better than 'the battle of the somme' isn't the winning argument you think it is

people had 6+ years to be honest about their epstein connections. if they lied by omission, fuck em.

i'm told that the nyt is claiming it knows better about what the american medical association said about gender-affirming care for minors than . . . the chair of the american medical association

So the AMA statement said, “In the absence of clear evidence, the AMA agrees with ASPS that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood.” And they are now saying that is not a change in policy because surgical interventions in minors rarely take place. Got it.

Regardless of the ultimate meaning of the statement, it does look like they were throwing Oz a bit of a bone to get him off their backs.

One of the most tilting things I've started paying attention to when I visit the NYT website are the graphs/charts they publish - almost blatant attempts at subterfuge.

for example, there's a graph up today showing the US price of oil since 2016, which shocker, immediately cuts off the several years prior to when gas was at the levels we're currently seeing.

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.