New Yorker magazine alert thread

ah. seems it's just the older articles, they don't seem to have been transferred to text and have to be read through the 'archive viewer' which doesn't work for me. no mind, i was only after them to send-to-kindle

Radical feminists vs. transgender women and Chicago false arrest articles both excellent this week.

I've linked to this in the transgender thread, but Julia Serano's comments on the article about trans-exclusionary radical feminists (for which she was interviewed) are worth reading as a supplement: http://juliaserano.blogspot.com/2014/07/two-articles-related-to-femininity-and.html.

deleted the disgraceful iphone app today, thank u god for comprehensive web content #blessed

not sure if there are legal issues or not, seems like prob not considering theyre already in the web, but putting all the back issues on the web and out of that horrible viewer shd be pretty doable, their formatting is very consistent over the years

Just read the Gladwell piece from the other week about organized crime. Amazing that he completely ignores race. Like, he's baffled that organized crime worked as a ladder to middle-class legitimacy for Irish, Italians, Jews, but hasn't done the same for black Americans. He attributes it to better policing, less corruption, pretty much everything but race. Seems clueless even by Gladwell standards.

there was so much abt that was that was just like what exactly are u saying here buddy

Gladwell is contractually obligated to stare in childlike bemusement at things that are painfully obvious to most everyone else.

yeah it was obviously all about race but he seemed kinda shy to say it, even tho... he was saying it

On the plus side, it made me interested in reading the book he was talking about.

new yorker articles that are basically long summaries of other people's books are weird imho

"hey did u read that article derived the book, it was pretty crazy *presents one factoid from article*, makes u think"

I love articles that are long summaries of books that I would otherwise never read at all. I mean isn't that pretty much the entire model of most "____ review of books" publications?

yes, my fave kind of article too.

i like the ones where elizabeth kolbert tears open buttholes
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/11/16/hosed

i don't mean that levitt and dubner are buttholes; i mean that their buttholes are wider now.

and torn

good issue so far, really looking forward to the specter piece on GMOs

The article about the drag queen luchador was good enough to make up for another stupid Lena Dunham piece.

"Adam Gopnik on the history of pedestrianism"
^^^ I see what u did there?

lol

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/law-3

this week is fulla good stuff

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/06/law-3

Jesus Fucking Christ this story

Just got around to the Alex Ross essay on the Frankfurt School from last month. Good read. And yeah that Rikers piece is so good -- not just the reporting, but her writing is very pared back, if anything she underdramatizes it, which makes it more powerful.

but her writing is very pared back, if anything she underdramatizes it, which makes it more powerful.

definitely. i was summarizing the rikers story for my gf last night, and as i was listing off all of the events it sounded so crazy and unconscionable.

yeah it made me sick to my stomach

Shortly after Mathew's eighteenth birthday, Bobby presented him with a plaque inscribed with the words "Son Who Shattered His Father's Dream."

yea that was ice cold

I mean I feel for the father, what with his son going to Duke and whatnot

^^^

lol

Patricia Marx's piece on emotional support animals this week is terrible.

An alpaca looks so much like a big stuffed animal that if you walked around F.A.O. Schwarz with one nobody would notice. What if you tried to buy a ticket for one on an Amtrak train? The alpaca in question was four and a half feet tall, weighed a hundred and five pounds, and had a Don King haircut. My mission: to take her on a train trip from Hudson, New York, to Niagara Falls.

WHAT IF INDEED?

I really want to buy the Lahr book on Tennessee Williams, it sounds amazing. It's 748 pages! I could definitely finish it. (NB I will never finish it)

Can I just say I don't live in New York but I love the new yorker's restaurant reviews

ha
i just read the dimes one
what do you like about them?

hilton als is one of my favourite writers but i generally/can't always love the theatre pieces for their specificity about the text, something i won't see; do the restaurant pieces transcend that?

The Billy Joel piece is great, but it often reads like a string of backhanded compliments. In fact, the article might as well be titled "Billy Joel is ... but."

I started to read it, but about a page in I suddenly realized that Billy Joel has wasted enough of my life. I feel bad, I'm sure it would have been the best Billy Joel-related material I've ever consumed

It would have been more fun as a give him enough rope sort of piece had Billy Joel not been in don't give a shit mode for decades.

Patricia Marx is a writer I really don't get

She is auto-skip for me, like Shouts & Murmurs when not by Jack Handey

Marx ($2092.99) is a writer ($45.00) I don't get, either. She ($543.22) is not terribly funny or perceptive ($670.00). I ($0.98) don't really get what she was trying to say with the service animal ($100.00) piece.

Great article about the whole gluten free trend

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/03/grain

i still cant tell if "on and off the avenue" is supposed to be satirical or not

gluten piece is fire

cannot wait to share it to facebook tomorrow

lol i LOVED the emotional support animal piece

thought it was meh written but as someone who dealt all summer with people trying to bring their dogs into a public space where no dogs are allowed with mega-entitled "i don't have the paperwork on me but just look at the sign on his jacket" arguments, i wanna frame it and hang it over my mantle

yeah agreed with that

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/percy-jackson-problem

Rebecca Mead sounds like a jerk. What kind of jerk parent withholds a book from their kid?