New Yorker magazine alert thread

the article on Svetlana fascinated me, especially since I've been reading about George Kennan lately.

Not sure why Brand Nubian guy being a homophobe is shocking. "Punk Jumps Up to Get Up Beat Down" came out 20 years ago.

the story on the West Virginia chemical spill is the first I've read in months that felt like a slow wrenching of every organ in my body.

great new yorker momentz, this afternoon. i'm not sure if they occasionally hold off on publishing an article until the moment is right or if it's just a happy coincidence, but the Evan Osnos article on the recent West Virginia chemical spill, Chemical Valley is simultaneously the best article I've read on the spill and a powerful rebuke to the recent Supreme Court decision that was based on the idea that "Ingratiation and access … are not corruption."

but they aren't! Roberts said so.

citing the infallible "earlier dumb opinion that we wrote"

man that pain dr one

yeah, I felt awful about his daughter getting blackballed as a result of everything

the detail about them picking out prison-friendly wedding rings at k-mart :/

the guy seemed like such a fascinating chump, too, like a coen bros character

blanking on what i've read & liked recently but it dawned on me to hit up this thread, are any of you listening to the longform podcast? it's really good. nerdy interviews with nerdy journalists. it's really good. cool eps with like sarah stillman, ariel levy, rachel aviv, &c&c.

Loved the Ariel Levy and Emily Nussbaum ones. As always I could do with less Gopnik.

the article on memory was cool, not sure i had ever known of that study where what was it 20%? of the subjects "remembered" details of being lost @ a mall as a child even though it never happened

That militia article is ultimately not that great but was super engrossing

oh yeah the memory article was good. also really liked the piece on parkinson's a couple weeks before.

What is your definition of a "great" article then? To me an article that had me "super engrossed" would be great, imho.

The writing wasn't interesting in itself, it wasn't emotionally doing much. The writer found a really horrific story about dumb army people and told it, seems like something that I may say that I read in the New Yorker if someone else talks about it idk

what was the memory article?

he can't remember

The woman w/ the holocaust survivor dad one

http://m.newyorker.com/the40s

saw this in a bookstore the other day and nearly bought it, but it's 40 bucks. it's on my birthday list

the '90s one is gonna be expensive

lol

That militia article is ultimately not that great but was super engrossing

I agree with this. It was kinda trashy I thought - I almost felt a little dirty for reading it when I finished. If you like true crime, it's competent enough, but ultimately just kind of gross and sad.

the rambly Gopnik thing about Whorfianism was kinda weak but I would read an entire book of him telling stories about his parents tbh

i skip everything by gopnik on principle

his article about college sports was riddled with inaccuracies

i skip everything by gopnik on principle

― johnny crunch

i'm going to use emily nussbaum's High Maintenance writeup as yet another excuse to further evangelize for it:

High Maintenance - Very good web-series. Discuss.

a. The Disruption Machine: What the gospel of innovation gets wrong, by Jill Lepore

b. Clayton Christensen Responds to New Yorker Takedown of 'Disruptive Innovation'

You keep referring to Lepore by her first name. Do you know her?

I've never met her in my life.

c. lol

yeah the article was a solid B+ the response bumps it up to A trolling

lepore piece reminded me of creationist 'takedowns', too lazy to have even a passing familiarity w/ what it's attacking, too smug to be bothered, eventual collapse into corny end of movie declaration of love for god/humanity/the easter bunny. she doesn't pretend to actually have any ideas though so she's better than yr gladwells i guess.

balls disruption

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/06/30/140630fa_fact_toobin?currentPage=all&mobify=0

the usual toobin caveats apply, but worth reading

I enjoyed the Rebecca Curtis story in the current issue.

The article about private probation companies is the best reporting I've read this year.

That's Sarah Stillman, who also reported last year's piece on civil forfeiture. Her book, whenever it comes, will be a doozy.

that's cool, the latter def reminded me of the former but had no idea they were connected or noticed they were by the same writer

oh looking forward to reading that then

yeah she is killing it. the pieces feel just so diligently & patiently reported, some of their weight elicited by just understanding how everyday this shit is. there are a couple of notes about the degree to which this kinda practice (ditto civil forfeiture; she wrote another before that kinda in the same vein, too, iirc) is a consequence of weird rightist anti-tax movements, but she doesn't even soapbox too hard, just lays it on you.

I liked the Chilean miner article.

jack handy piece is great

I'm starting to think that Peter Schjeldahl is the worst critic on the NYer staff, and there is some pretty stiff competition in that department.

I'd missed this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/business/media/the-new-yorker-alters-its-online-strategy.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

The New Yorker said that it was making the change from a position of strength, after having its most profitable year in decades in 2013.

this is pretty wild!

i wish their old articles were truly online... don't get me wrong, i dig the scanned ads and pics and everything, but they'd be so much more convenient if they were set in actual text you could instapaper/copy&paste etc. i say this as a paying subscriber

Agreed. Don't see any evidence they're about to do that (although presumably they could - I would imagine that when they scanned the old articles they OCRed them at the same time?).

who knows? They must have done the scans at least 9 years ago, since that's when they released the Complete New Yorker on CD-ROMs

True. Certainly some of the old articles have been OCRed, as they put them up sometimes (e.g. when people die). But I have no sense of how automated the process is - quite possibly they have to be edited by hand after processing, which would make doing all the old articles a bit of a nightmare.

i rarely read the fiction, but def recommend this week's -- greg Jackson - wagner in the desert

and found this Q&A w/ him, im not surprised he admits dfw's influence, and has even recently taught a course abt him

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2014/07/this-week-in-fiction-greg-jackson.html