New Yorker magazine alert thread

Gopnik wrote the article as if trying to impress disillusioned McSweeney's readers.

is it played to complain about how shitty borowitz is

i mean, fuck

I've got a teaching colleague who posts Borowitz garbage on Facebook every day

are you implying there are people somewhere on facebook who don't post borowitz garbage every day?

I deny the existence of people who write "Essential reading!!" on a Borowitz garbage post.

how about peolpe who write "haha" or "totally true" on a garbage borowitz post?

The top two slots on the "most popular" list are Borowitz yet again. Do you think the Gopniks and the Hertzbergs really hate him for that? I would.

i am at peace with max's justification of borowitz's existence, which is essentially that he brings the NYer a lot of clicks so they can keep paying people to write cool stuff

it is the search for the justification of those clicks that keeps us awake though

what is up with the pluralization of 'SATs'

it's not even consistent

the borowitz report is a million times better than letting gopnik right about books

what is up with the pluralization of 'SATs'

it's not even consistent

― mookieproof, Thursday, February 27, 2014 7:22 PM (Yesterday)

huh?

Taking the SATs is not something to do lightly.

The last time I took the SATs, there was no essay.

she determined to take the SAT each of the seven times it was offered in the course of the calendar year

Stier’s only experience with the SAT was the sort that most students have, or at least had

The SATs were administered for the first time on June 23, 1926.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/03/140303fa_fact_kolbert?currentPage=all

oh i thought you were referring to there not being an apostrophe. yeah unless there's some sort of difference in i'm not aware of that's poor editing

yeah i don't understand why it would ever be plural, but at least pick one way

poor t-pain :(

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2014/03/the-sadness-of-t-pain.html

I just finished the epic Amazon article. Scared for the future.

xpost I could have sworn from that article that SAT doesn't even stand for/mean anything anymore.

this is massive and fascinating
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/03/140303fa_fact_khatchadourian
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/02/video-how-to-put-a-star-into-a-bottle.html

^^^

Yes.

"Spitzer was given time off from his bomb work to set up a secret thermonuclear-energy project in an old rabbit hutch at Princeton. He designed a tabletop device, which he called a stellarator, that looked like a pipe twisted into a figure eight. When the device was first turned on in the darkened hutch, an instantaneous purple glow appeared ..."

that article about clubbing in berlin is something all right

KEYWORDS
BERLIN, GERMANY; MUSIC; BERGHAIN; NIGHT CLUBS; BOAR HUNTERS; TECHNO CLUBS; E.D.M. (ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC)

The personal history essay about the author's deaf mother was one of the most moving things I've read in a while.

wasnt there somewhat recently another piece on under armour? or maybe it was somewhere else

the anthony lane article on ScarJo is some goddess worship, vanity fair ish imo

under armour and scarjo were both this week, yeah

i confused the under armour piece with the one on spanxx which was last years 'style issue' i think, maybe

under armour is by kelefa, yes?

Recently I've loved Packer's Amazon epic, Tad Friend's Aronofsky profile and Roger Angell on old age.

thought menand's article on paul de man was pretty good, mostly lacking in condescension for literary theorists and some decent context setting for a subject that rarely gets presented in a non-ludicrous way for a general audience.

The ScarJo profile should have been bylined Anthony Lane's Dick

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/03/18/scarlett_johansson_profile_in_the_new_yorker_anthony_lane_reveals_nothing.html

Johansson’s backside, barely veiled in peach-colored underwear

Lane has always had a pervy streak, which I think he means to be cheeky but which often comes off, well, gross. Which is ironic, because Denby is the one who had an actual addiction to internet porn, which makes his eliding the issue (in, say, his epic, rambling "Nymphomaniac" review) that much more conspicuous.

how is that ironic

The guy with the porn addiction reviews the porn-ish movie about the sex addict without mentioning his porn addiction? Isn't that ironic?

no

Also I read it as you think it's ironic Lane wrote the pervy article when it's Denby who had the addiction. still, not ironic.

How about rain on your wedding day?

is the de man profile called Who's De Man

De Man Who Couldn't Afford To Orgy

De Man Who Would Be King (Of Literary Theory). Elegant headline. They missed a trick.

she seemed to be made from champagne.

The Derrida piece in Critical Inquiry that tried to exculpate de Man is actually really sad to read. He is just reaching so desperately to not face the truth and it's unusual to read something by Derrida where his vilnerability is apparent.

Menand did a great job of articulating why deconstructionism was incredibly exciting to some people and why, after a brief acquaintance with it at university, it has almost zero appeal to me.

He also did a good job of clearing up misunderstandings, especially this idea that there is something "nihilistic" in teasing out paradoxes in apparently stable texts.

For me when I was studying literature, the thumbnail sketch of the idea was bracing and energising - it's always good to be told to question everything - but when I tried to go deeper I lost interest. It's just not how I like to read. But it was nice to see Menand push back eloquently against the current consensus that it was a pointless, arid detour.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/03/franco-moretti-and-the-science-of-literary-criticism.html

this is pretty fascinating

I thought this piece was really, REALLY bad, like maybe the worst thing I've ever read in the NYer (granted it's on the "blog" so I guess that's their excuse):
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2014/03/the-pointlessness-of-unplugging.html

Yeah that's a pretty dumb piece.