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.

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