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.

passive tense: 'Mistakes were made'

“An underage girl was had sex with”

https://i.imgur.com/W2uI17h.jpeg

The cache of emails includes exchanges about going to dinner at Rao’s, the uptown Italian restaurant where it was famously hard to get a table, and an invitation for Mr. Epstein to the 25th anniversary party for The New York Observer (it was a weekly paper, printed on salmon-colored newsprint and read by the city’s elite) at the Four Seasons restaurant (where the elite once power-lunched; it’s now closed) co-hosted by Michael Bloomberg (he was the mayor) and Jared Kushner (who owned The Observer). The guest list included Matt Lauer and Harvey Weinstein. You’ve probably heard about what happened with them.

so sad that new york is (theoretically) less accepting of rape now, which the story won't mention because 'you've probably heard what happened with them'

also wtf with ppl like marchman and scocca defending this

there is no rope involved and no one is being hung; this is just a pissant being sad that, because of pedophilia, the levers of power he needs to manipulate to get access are now different

thank you for posting that in this thread mookie, i couldn't believe they published that shit. author may have thought it was coming across as an objective observation about changing times, but the nostalgic tone came through loud and clear. ugh

hahaha wtf

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:waplkqr2wuy2c4qbge6h6ed4/bafkreicn7r62s5wewep2oveprf2t3alkjlrdwij6l62vutmxvlbmvtv4m4@jpeg

Well, that tells a story

incredible

who the fuck cares really

https://bsky.app/profile/nytimes.com/post/3mac64dalhs2a

everyone had already forgotten by now, but maybe in 2025 there's a way to monetize infidelity (???)

key sentence in that article is this one:

"Cabot hired a communications consultant to help her tell her story while minimizing further damage to herself and the people she loves — a high-wire act that felt, in her presence, at times anguishing and at times too pat."

don't need to read an interview with marjorie taylor greene about how she feels betrayed by trump

fuck an mtg redemption tour

👍🏽

One person's accusation; nevertheless, it makes sense:

https://transnews.network/p/a-directive-from-above-former-nyt-editor-lays-out-how-the-paper-pushes-anti-trans-bigotry

yes, she was clearly well-positioned to know what was actually going on at the paper.

You know Sulzberger’s dad was the guy who “kept the paper straight“ (as inscribed on his headstone) with lots of anti-gay articles in the 70s

https://i.postimg.cc/KvTyTsBw/douth.png

https://i.postimg.cc/fbfG3RTY/nytfu.jpg

there are four separate videos showing a straight-up murder, but kristi noem denied it, so who can say what really happened

is kristi noem, as critics claim, 'at odds' with truth?

https://i.postimg.cc/Vkc7WGkr/this-rural.jpg

This essay is the fifth installment in a series on the thinkers, upstarts and ideologues battling for control of the Democratic Party.

In July, Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Washington proposed an amendment to a bill, calling for an inquiry into what she described as a “plague in this country of headlight brightness.”

. . .

Her worldview is widely held in rural America but almost completely unrepresented in national politics — neither reactionary nor exactly liberal; skeptical of big business and big government alike. She believes our society ought to be oriented toward working with your hands, living in nature and fostering deep and considered connection to a community. Her two biggest influences, her former senior adviser guessed, are the Bible and the ruralist Kentucky farmer-author Wendell Berry.

on the front page while ice terrorizes minnesota

Her worldview is widely held in rural America but almost completely unrepresented in national politics — neither reactionary nor exactly liberal; skeptical of big business and big government alike.

The logical endpoint of such a worldview is anarcho-syndicalism - break the country up into small, self-administrating communities and you've got both big business and big govt on the ropes.

I'm sure that's what the NYT essay is going to propose too...

No, I think the logical endpoint is legislation to make headlights dimmer.

my takeaway from that is we shouldn't let rural Americans have political power, since they are completely out of touch

Her worldview is widely held in rural America but almost completely unrepresented in national politics

Rural people are, like, 16% of the US population. Their views should go unrepresented. You want to matter? Move to a city.

Democrats have definitely lost their minds if they think the key to power is winning Nebraska or whatever.

y'all she's not totally rural a big chunk of her district is in Portland OR

https://www.congress.gov/member/district/marie-perez/G000600

They’re the authentic, true Americans, not us college-educated latte-sipping coastal elites.

they work with their hands, not their fingers going tap tap tappety tap on a keyboard

Framing the headlight issue as rural is bizarre. Everyone hates blinding headlights.

y'all she's not totally rural a big chunk of her district is in Portland OR

https://www.congress.gov/member/district/marie-perez/G000600

― a (waterface), Tuesday, January 13, 2026 11:20 AM (four hours ago)

fair point, though to be pedantic: as a WA rep obvs no part of her district can be in the state of Oregon. Vancouver, WA is reasonably large and certainly not rural though, true. OTOH, while I haven't lived in Oregon for over a decade, if what I knew back then is still accurate, Vancouver is much much more conservative than Portland (the story back then was that all the Republicans lived over there because WA has no state income tax)

eh i don't think that's as pedantic so much as accurate. the writer of the piece is a right wing weirdo and obv has an agenda

my point was she's not all rural

not familiar with Pogue but no surprise there really!

the nyt has profiled MGP every couple months for the past few years, at this point the yearning is deeply pathetic

xp for sure and thanks for posting the map link, i didn't know where her district is and knowing it includes Vancouver, WA is illuminating

NYT will never give up on the hope of a conservative Democrat who appeals to the Bloomberg class. This one just happens to be young and crunchy and just a tad off.

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