New Yorker magazine alert thread

$2 an issue is very reasonable imo

p expensive per issue u actually read > 0 pages of tho

? I have a print subscription so I read online as much as I like

fwiw the best price I've seen lately was $132 for two years, which is $66 a year, or, what, about $1.50 an issue? It was via discount mags . com a month ago, but I don't think the deal is currently there.

Best article I've read recently (there have been a bunch!) was the one about the more or less homeless guys paid to housesit vacant homes in LA that are being flipped. Touched on lots of things - race/gentrification, pandemic, fallout from 2007 foreclosures, those big companies that buy up and sit on real estate in places with tight real estate markets, and so on.

I’ve half-heartedly defended Toobin before since I think it doesn’t seem like he deliberately masturbated on camera, but I don’t think “getting fired” for him is the equivalent of an ordinary person getting fired either and I’m not too worried about him.

I hate when I accidentally masturbate. Especially on camera.

You have to be so careful.

Oof, I missed this awkward story:

Toobin had a longtime off-and-on extramarital affair with attorney Casey Greenfield, who is the daughter of American television journalist and author Jeff Greenfield and the ex-wife of screenwriter Matt Manfredi. They had a child in 2009, which Toobin initially resisted acknowledging. Ultimately, Toobin's paternity was confirmed with a DNA test and a Manhattan Family Court judge ordered Toobin to pay child support.

But yeah, dude has written several best-selling books, and they didn't sell because he was a New Yorker staffer.

genuinely impossible to feel bad for this guy

yeah he seems like a shitty dude. I had forgotten that whole deadbeat dad subplot

also just a general stalker freak who doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt

https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/cnn-jeffrey-toobin-made-shockingly-sexual-proposition-well-known-media-figure-claims-article-1.198127

early in the pandemic, someone who works in the same organization as my wife stood up during a Zoom call and wasn't wearing pants. that's a super-embarrassing but reasonably understandable accident. she wasn't fired

p expensive per issue u actually read > 0 pages of tho

― flopson, Wednesday, December 16, 2020 2:37 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

? I have a print subscription so I read online as much as I like

― mother should I build the walmart (Ye Mad Puffin), Wednesday, December 16, 2020 5:33 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

was a joking ref to subscribers to the magazine being notorious for accumulating piles of unread issues (as the OP of this thread)

Even Mx. Gessen, who initially found the incident “traumatic,” said they now feel sympathy for Mr. Toobin. “I think it’s tragic that a guy would get fired for really just doing something really stupid,” they said. “It is the Zoom equivalent of taking an inappropriately long lunch break, having sex during it and getting stumbled upon.”

i have many questions about this

how is it "tragic" that "a guy would get fired for doing something really stupid"?
That's why people get fired!

surely the equivalent would be going for a break from a meeting and jacking off in your office and being seen through the door that you left ajar by the people sat in the meeting room

poor vanilla ice

remember when paul reubens jacked off in an adult theater and was basically kicked out of show business for 20 years

don't know how to post this without it immediately seeming like i'm a jeff toobin creep, but

there are ways that you can, pretty innocently, accidentally expose yourself. perhaps toobin, like me, has a big computer monitor that he uses for multiple machines. i have both my mac and work computer plugged into one large screen. it's really useful! sometimes i do picture-in-picture and have work and non-work stuff side-by-side, other times i switch one or the other to full screen.

i haven't read all the toobin details so maybe it's already been embarrassingly and painstakingly revealed (no pun intended) to everyone. but to me, it's plausible that on Work Computer, he's in the New Yorker zoom call and everyone takes a break. he mutes his line, and thinks he mutes his video as well. then he switches to the other screen and decides he's feeling really horny and goes for it. meanwhile, on the other screen, Andy Borowitz is watching in shocked horror and fascination. there are other scenarios, too, that aren't quite as evil and malign as lots of people (here and others) immediately seem to gravitate toward, and all of these scenarios also involve Andy Borowitz, and are thus not funny.

there was a side discussion somewhere about the inappropriateness of jerking off at work. Regardless of your take on that, I think it's fair to argue the lines between work/home are extremely blurred right now. it's not appropriate to watch fast and furious 4 at work, normally. but how many people working from home have movie/tv/music playing in the background? not saying it's the same deal, just saying i'm pretty sure there are a loooooot of people who are doing intimate things during work hours right now.

i'm sure someone will immediately point me to the vanity fair article where it is reported that toobin revealed himself in the most despicable, hurtful, unforgivable way. and based on other links upthread, yeah toobin seems like a likely candidate for getting caught masturbating on zoom. but people do all sorts of things in their homes, and pandemic work is the same location as the home, for many people. i haven't read anything about the toobin incident in weeks, but even the retelling of it by borowitz unnamed eyewitnesses made me think that toobin was doing his masturbation routine and made a tech mistake

if you decide that immediately after a work video call is the best time for your "masturbation routine" and you don't first leave the meeting, quit the app, turn your computer off, throw it out the window and buy a new one, then you deserve whatever comes your way.

again, i think it's fine toobin got fired - that's what happens when you get caught masturbating at work, in general. but i don't think he's a monster for it (unless, again, there are newer details i missed)

i don't know that anyone is calling him a monster for this particular dumbfuck activity on his part, just that his public shaming and firing are hardly unjustified!

firing = justified
public shaming = unjustified, imo

and i guess i do see "public shaming" and "being a monster" as highly related

like, we don't resort to public shaming for people who accidentally mess up, we reserve it for people like michael vick

I think it doesn’t seem like he deliberately masturbated on camera

wasn't the entire point that he was deliberately masturbating on camera, but forgot to log off from one meeting before jacking off on another

or "forgot"

wasn't the entire point that he was deliberately masturbating on camera, but forgot to log off from one meeting before jacking off on another

i believe that was the version of the story that everyone told themselves, but again, i think it's very possible that what he was doing was very much NOT deliberately masturbating on camera

like, i have a webcam hooked up to my computer. it's usually not on. i hate to scandalize people, but sometimes i masturbate near my computer. and the webcam is probably pointed in my direction!

maybe i'm misunderstanding something. but a lot of people have cameras on their computers that have absolute 0% to do with masturbation

honestly, i think people are just afraid to talk to each other about this stuff, even here? like, i think a lot of people jerk off to webcams these days? personally, i don't. but maybe some people (here and elsewhere) are just immediately gravitating to "and then toobin switched over to the cam model he was video chatting with" or something similar? and believe it or not, since a lot of people don't talk about it, i'm sure some other people gravitate toward something like "and then toobin reached into his drawer and pulled out his dirty magazines", or "and then toobin grabbed his fleshlight and proceeded to replace the AA batteries", or whatever our personal idea of forbidden masturbation is

whatever it is, i'm not sure anyone really knows toobin's work computer/display setup. there are many different arrangements that lead to something that is much more of a embarrassing human kind of error, as opposed to a willingly sleazy risk that deserves shame

my assumption would be he was beating it to porn and just had a spell of "being a boomer online" and did not mute his video from the meeting

Why not assume the people who saw and heard him during the call drew their conclusions from what they saw and heard him doing? idgi

Mr. Toobin switched to a second call that was the video-call equivalent of phone sex, according to the two people familiar with the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

People are focusing too much on whether Toobin "deserves" to be fired, as though it's a judgment of his character that necessarily must take into account his intentions and his past behavior. But it's not really about him at all. It's absolutely in Conde Nast's interest as an employer to draw clear lines when it comes to sexual misconduct. By enforcing a zero-tolerance policy, it sets an example across the organization and helps protect employees in circumstances that aren't as seemingly silly, or who may be less able or willing to shrug off seeing their coworkers' junk on camera.

I mean, I get that Karl is furiously jacking it rn, posting with one hand while a script autoscrolls through every wdyll thread on a third monitor, but it's okay to say so

it's how i've always done it, and i assume that all of you are doing it too

i dunno, maybe i'm not expressing myself well, or i'm just wrong. to me, confirming that he got caught via video sex (as opposed to the other dozens of ways you can be naked near your computer) is an embarrassing detail, but ultimately irrelevant. i don't think he did it on purpose, and i don't think anyone else does too. like jim said, i see him as a boomer who made a dumb tech error.

maybe that's all anyone else is saying, too, who knows

Has anyone even thought that maybe Toobin was in the middle of masturbating and *then* all those famous people from the New Yorker called? And he thought, gah, now!? Of all times? And sort of dutifully put a pause on his activities, took part in the call, and the second it was over thought, OK, where was I? Oh yeah, back to business!

In other words, it's all *their* fault.

he was seen lowering and raising his computer camera, exposing and touching his penis, and motioning an air kiss to someone other than his colleagues

fixed

i see him as a boner who made a dumb tech error.

ok, so it was cam sex

just innocently pounding away with the cam girl he speed dials the second a work meeting ends

everyone else on the call should be fired for watching pornography at work imo

Karl, you realize that what you have there is a neglected potential income stream, right?

i just like chatting with mr toobin, ok

Why not assume the people who saw and heard him during the call drew their conclusions from what they saw and heard him doing? idgi

Mr. Toobin switched to a second call that was the video-call equivalent of phone sex, according to the two people familiar with the call, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
― huge rant (sic), Wednesday, December 16, 2020 12:30 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've been sic'd

fair enough, I suppose I didn't care enough about the story to delve in, but then I shouldn't comment from a point of ignorance.

Toooooobin'
On a Sunday afternoon

everyone else on the call should be fired for watching pornography at work imo

https://newrepublic.com/article/160595/new-yorker-japan-rent-family-fabricated

I mean.... listen you get caught wacking off at work you're gonna get fired I have no idea what type of debate there's supposed to be

Debate was getting fired vs getting publicly shamed, I think, as well as what constitutes “at work” and how the pandemic has arguably changed things. But I think I was the only one who thought any of those things might be relevant, which would mean the debate was more of a dumb guy saying things