New Yorker magazine alert thread

farewell, jonah lehrer. you've always been a bit slipshod in your attempt to out-gladwell gladwell but i didn't expect this.

http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/jonah-lehrer-resigns-from-new-yorker-after-making-up-dylan-quotes-for-his-book/

Such a waste. For one thing, there are existing quotes that would have done the job almost as well. For another, don't fuck with Dylanologists - they know everything. If you're going to lose one of the best jobs in journalism for making shit up go the full Blair/Glass. Use your - heh - imagination.

psyched for this

https://twitter.com/DavidGrann/status/229746942727557120

― congratulations (n/a), Monday, July 30, 2012 11:42 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so i read this story at lunch ... it's interesting but not completely satisfying? i would like to talk about it with you guys once you have a chance to read it.

btw this is an actual final line from one of the articles this week:

The call reverberated through the neighborhood: "Turd!"

screen name waiting to happen

sigh

"so i read this story at lunch ... it's interesting but not completely satisfying? i would like to talk about it with you guys once you have a chance to read it."

Is this the article about the cheating marathon dude?

yes

It seems kind of a low stakes bit of cheating to me. Looking at pics of the dude and imagining him running a 17 minute 5k is pretty funny though.

screen name waiting to happen

― I dont even know that I think this sucks per se (forksclovetofu), Monday, July 30, 2012 4:18 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^posts very much in character waiting to happen

^response very much in character to posts very much in character to screen name waiting to happen

wait let's pause this i have another good joke to make

whoa my name is mark

― funny-skrillex-bee_132455836669.gif (s1ocki), Monday, July 30, 2012 12:58 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

con vivant

ok

anyone read the Paul Ryan article yet?

lol kevs

(can i call u kevs?)

yes you may

anyone read the fitzgerald short story??

For another, don't fuck with Dylanologists - they know everything

Yeah, it's such a banal made-up Dylan quote. It should have been all 'creativity is what happens when you put down your fists and turn your back on inspiration" or some cryptic axiom.

so i went to buy kindle version of maurer on amazon, but it was $12.99 and then i noticed that used copy was only $1.99 + $3.99 shipping and handling and $5.98 < $12.99 - idk, weird world where actual physical thing costs less than digital version.

now i just have to hope i'm still interested in reading it in 2-3 weeks

Lehrer didn’t do this. He cheated his new publishers by breaking the implied (or written) contract that he was producing original copy. Today he’s apologizing for his recycling – “It was a stupid thing to do and incredibly lazy and absolutely wrong,” he tells the Times – but I’m not buying it. No journalistic neophyte (he’s 30 years old with four books to his credit), Lehrer knew that the New Yorker would have rejected the gently used copy from his old Wall Street Journal columns had he informed them of the lack of originality of his “new” work.

We mustn’t put too much effort into understanding Lehrer’s self-destructive behavior. When forced to play the armchair psychiatrist, I usually conclude by saying that onanists, plagiarists and fabulists break the rules of journalism because they either disdain the discipline or feel inadequate to its demands. But let me warn you: I’ve written something like that before.

from Shafer last month, dude is always OTM

so i went to buy kindle version of maurer on amazon, but it was $12.99 and then i noticed that used copy was only $1.99 + $3.99 shipping and handling and $5.98 < $12.99 - idk, weird world where actual physical thing costs less than digital version.

― Mordy, Monday, July 30, 2012 9:49 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this drives me

unsane

lol i meant to type insane

weird world where ignorant morons think paying customers are stupid, more like

even the simplest person understands the reduced overhead in emailing a file v dispatching a physical ream of paper

that used copy is from some third party vendor though.

i sometimes find free copies of the New Yorker at the train station, but that doesn't make me demand that my kindle subscription cost nothing.

^ ridiculous

not really

yah. comparing brand new books w/ kindle makes sense... 2nd hand, not so much.

my fault for missing the crucial second-hand fact of the book in that example

fwiw, a new physical copy costs $1.00 more than the kindle version

"fwiw", heh.

in aus the physical costs $13 and the download is $6.50

fwiw fwiw my digital subscription works out to ~$1.05 per issue fwiw

i mostly buy my books used through amazon, great deals

i often find kindle versions costing more than the paperback

(new)

Wow, that marathon dude.

I'm generally miffed that the library only had x copies of digital books, because it's digital and they should have, like, a million copies. It's weird to me that digital books are regulated the same way as physical books, with x number of copies beholden to the same rules (checked out for two weeks, wait lists, etc.)

library got to buy the book just like everybody else

Yeah, I get it. It's just weird to wait for something that is not physical to arrive.

have u never waited for... love

It's weird to me that digital books are regulated the same way as physical books, with x number of copies beholden to the same rules (checked out for two weeks, wait lists, etc.)

Welcome to the wacky world of copyright

looked for Maurer on Nook yesterday, and there was the 12.99 edition, but there was also a free out of copyright book by him entitled something like 'Language of the Criminal', which I 'bought'.

link?

OK just going to go ahead and comment on the marathon article so if you haven't read it yet you might want to skip this - i thought it was an interesting, entertaining read but was not very satisfying. i wish they had 100 percent nailed the guy on his cheating before writing an article about it. i'm sure he was cheating and it felt like there was a lot of evidence against him but not like one solid devastating beyond-a-doubt piece of proof. it was annoying at the end when he was like "and we never figured out exactly how he was cheating, oh well."

xpost i got it from the Nook store directly through my device so I'm not sure how to link it?

(aaaand nevermind-- though it declares itself to be Maurer's Languages of the Underworld, the guts are actually an Italian language book summarizing the plots of operas).