also what is a "trap house"
― slathered in cream and covered with stickers (silby), Monday, 21 November 2016 17:21 (seven years ago) link
A better written intro: here.
Or this unofficial pilot, an excoriation of and discussion of the bizarro psychopathologies in the Michael Bay Benghazi movie.
Your mileage may vary, like with every other single thing on the internet.
― (rocketcat) đđ± đđ (kingfish), Monday, 21 November 2016 17:32 (seven years ago) link
Curious what a fan makes of that profile, because they come across as deeply unfunny to me.
yeah, I've been listening to this for awhile and the hosts are not funny at all. Some of the writing they find on the web is pretty hilarious though.
― duped and used by my worst Miss U (President Keyes), Monday, 21 November 2016 18:37 (seven years ago) link
They're definitely at their best in interviews and when doing "reading series" stuff. It's fun to hear them shoot the shit for a while but it gets a little repetitive, especially Felix ("cucks" "he taught me it was ok to be weird" etc.). I don't really listen to it as a comedy podcast, more as a political podcast that is sometimes funny.
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Monday, 21 November 2016 18:59 (seven years ago) link
I thought I said this on this thread earlier, but the profile to me did not at all convey the appeal of the show
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Monday, 21 November 2016 19:26 (seven years ago) link
Also, I've been a fan for a while and have listened to nearly every ep, but I'm wondering how it will sustain my interest in a Trump presidency. I think even Will expressed that concern about the show. It's almost like they were right about the center-left and center-right punditocracy they targeted and it indeed proved to be irrelevant and now they're stuck trying to figure out a more original take on cheeto mussolini jokes.
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Monday, 21 November 2016 19:29 (seven years ago) link
Anyway, if you want a good intro to the show, I'd listen to one of the Freeway Ross Douthat episodes and stick through the banter to the part where they actually read from Douthat's book.
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Monday, 21 November 2016 19:30 (seven years ago) link
ya they're fucked now that Trump won
― flopson, Monday, 21 November 2016 19:31 (seven years ago) link
More podcasts should be short-lived imo
― rob, Monday, 21 November 2016 19:32 (seven years ago) link
I expect the flourishing of intra-left bickering we saw under Obama to subside now that we have zero power anywhere
― flopson, Monday, 21 November 2016 19:32 (seven years ago) link
The two episodes per week model is kind of crazy (one free and one premium) -- hard to fill that much time with good content. Also not so sure about the new five-person model with Amber and Virgil Texas, always liked them as guests but it feels a bit crowded now.
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Monday, 21 November 2016 19:36 (seven years ago) link
Anyway sry to turn this into Chapo Trap Thread instead of NYer thread.
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Monday, 21 November 2016 19:37 (seven years ago) link
rob otm
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Monday, 21 November 2016 21:45 (seven years ago) link
just have to say the illustration of the chapos was extremely hilarious and weird, no idea what it was going for
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 04:37 (seven years ago) link
all the articles in that section have the same style - http://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest
― just sayin, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 04:58 (seven years ago) link
â flopson, Monday, November 21, 2016
bush years suggest this will not be the case
― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 06:33 (seven years ago) link
Batuman-signal: A fictional story about freshman year at Harvard.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/constructed-worlds
― o. nate, Thursday, 19 January 2017 03:08 (seven years ago) link
It's an extract from her forthcoming novel, The Idiot
― I hear from this arsehole again, he's going in the river (James Morrison), Thursday, 19 January 2017 04:23 (seven years ago) link
so it's basically a fictionalised retelling of her previous book? She seems really invested in her college years
― Number None, Thursday, 19 January 2017 22:31 (seven years ago) link
Well, she has written a lot of other pieces for the magazine in the meantime, most of which didn't have anything to do with college. Also the last one was about grad school, this one is about undergrad.
― o. nate, Friday, 20 January 2017 02:32 (seven years ago) link
Evan Osnos on Peter Thiele, other Silicon Valley tech titans buying up chunks of New Zealand in advance of global "trouble" / apocalypse.
Survivalism, the practice of preparing for a crackup of civilization, tends to evoke a certain picture: the woodsman in the tinfoil hat, the hysteric with the hoard of beans, the religious doomsayer. But in recent years survivalism has expanded to more affluent quarters, taking root in Silicon Valley and New York City, among technology executives, hedge-fund managers, and others in their economic cohort.
Last spring, as the Presidential campaign exposed increasingly toxic divisions in America, Antonio GarcĂa MartĂnez, a forty-year-old former Facebook product manager living in San Francisco, bought five wooded acres on an island in the Pacific Northwest and brought in generators, solar panels, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. âWhen society loses a healthy founding myth, it descends into chaos,â he told me. The author of âChaos Monkeys,â an acerbic Silicon Valley memoir, GarcĂa MartĂnez wanted a refuge that would be far from cities but not entirely isolated. âAll these dudes think that one guy alone could somehow withstand the roving mob,â he said. âNo, youâre going to need to form a local militia. You just need so many things to actually ride out the apocalypse.â Once he started telling peers in the Bay Area about his âlittle island project,â they came âout of the woodworkâ to describe their own preparations, he said. âI think people who are particularly attuned to the levers by which society actually works understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now.â
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich
― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 24 January 2017 19:28 (seven years ago) link
yea it was good. some discussion of it in this thread: rate the chances that you will experience a cataclysmic, world-threatening event before you're 70
― marcos, Tuesday, 24 January 2017 19:29 (seven years ago) link
clearest red flag of them all in second para
he was a competitive ballroom dancer
― johnny crunch, Thursday, 26 January 2017 13:29 (seven years ago) link
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds?mbid=social_twitter
great article!
― k3vin k., Tuesday, 28 February 2017 20:51 (seven years ago) link
if you're into evolutionary psychology, yes - if not, you might find this description of rationality... funny:
It emerged on the savannas of Africa, and has to be understood in that context.
for me the premise of the article is backwards, and I'd be more curious to trace and understand the notion of contemporary society and citizens as rational, than to understand why natural science hasn't by now turned us all into rational robots
― niels, Wednesday, 1 March 2017 07:42 (seven years ago) link
yeah i often find the hunter-gatherer evolutionary psych conclusions a bit specious but the research is interesting
― k3vin k., Wednesday, 1 March 2017 16:03 (seven years ago) link
I mean why is it still so important to preface discussions of our limited cognitive capabilities with "1. assume animal origins" IT'S TWENTY SEVENTEEN
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 1 March 2017 16:14 (seven years ago) link
I'd be more curious to trace and understand the notion of contemporary society and citizens as rational
I agree, but isn't that really "why we still cling to weird theistic concepts that we were designed and why we find it so infuriatingly necessary to explain that they aren't true" but I guess that's kind of what the article is about, in a way, so there's that snake eating itself again
― El Tomboto, Wednesday, 1 March 2017 16:44 (seven years ago) link
i thought the research that elucidated how little we really understand things, how we outsource knowledge to others and form (flimsy) opinions based on that trust, was really spot on. it's a ubiquitous phenomenon and i don't think many people are really aware of it. i tried to make a similar point at various points last year in the politics thread in particular and no one seemed to care for it
― k3vin k., Wednesday, 1 March 2017 19:00 (seven years ago) link
the description of the research, rather
we outsource knowledge to others and form (flimsy) opinions based on that trust, was really spot on
I agree that this is a deep question, but there is one satisfying, rational answer to it that applies in many but not all cases.
Why do we 'believe' scientists to tell us the truth about results if we can't parse the evidence ourselves? Because we have created institutions within academia such that the incentives of individual scientists are to over-turn false results. So collectively, if a false result becomes public or widespread believed, there is immediately an incentive for another scientist to replicate that study, to critique it, to hopefully over-turn it. So in the medium- to long-term (sometimes long-term is too long, see Andrew Gelman & co. debunking decades of psychology research), there is a strong tendency to self-correct to the truth. So we don't have to independently verify results that have been upheld in a scientific community for a long time.
― flopson, Wednesday, 1 March 2017 19:49 (seven years ago) link
also, idk if they talk about this in the nyorker piece (haven't read but will assap) but there is a pretty large theoretical literature (spans fields of Decision Theory, economics, statistics, math) on what it means to convince someone, to what extent it is possible, whether beliefs will converge, and whether they will converge to the truth, that was started by this paper by Robert Aumann called "Agreeing to Disagree" http://www.ma.huji.ac.il/~raumann/pdf/Agreeing%20to%20Disagree.pdf
― flopson, Wednesday, 1 March 2017 19:55 (seven years ago) link
xp to myself- another version of that is, we can rationally believe in the science behind the technologies we use every day. if I drive over a bridge every day in my car, and every day the car starts and every day the bridge does not collapse, I can justify my faith (via Law of Large Numbers arguments) that the science used by mechanical engineers and civil engineers is correct
― flopson, Wednesday, 1 March 2017 20:07 (seven years ago) link
xp Kevin yup agree the experiments described are interesting
― niels, Wednesday, 1 March 2017 21:36 (seven years ago) link
how little we really understand things, how we outsource knowledge to others and form (flimsy) opinions
I think that men are particularly prone to this but have a lesser sense of flimsiness than women, and that this is a significant driver of mansplaining.
― mom tossed in kimchee (quincie), Wednesday, 1 March 2017 23:51 (seven years ago) link
My problem with "evolutionary psychology" is not that we don't have evolutionary origins, it's just that in practice these little bits of speculative narrative about how various mental behaviors might or might not have been adaptive under certain situations don't really add anything to the experimental results. Having a plausible-sounding evolution story doesn't make a result any stronger, and not being able to think of a plausible-sounding story doesn't make it any weaker. In terms of empirical method, they seem irrelevant, though perhaps fun to think about.
― o. nate, Thursday, 2 March 2017 02:19 (seven years ago) link
otm
― niels, Thursday, 2 March 2017 06:39 (seven years ago) link
Did I see correctly that Grann is back?
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 2 March 2017 13:06 (seven years ago) link
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-marked-woman
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 2 March 2017 13:07 (seven years ago) link
awwww Shit
― flopson, Thursday, 2 March 2017 13:24 (seven years ago) link
my in-laws got me a print subscription for christmas. the amount of good writing is overwhelming tbh, the issues arrive faster than i can read them. it's only march and already there are a bunch of issues on my shelf that i don't even remember opening
― marcos, Thursday, 2 March 2017 14:41 (seven years ago) link
Yep, that is the system.
― softie (silby), Thursday, 2 March 2017 15:44 (seven years ago) link
Yeah, soon you'll have piles all over, each with one article you've been meaning to get around to for years.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 2 March 2017 15:46 (seven years ago) link
The article about the utility of contacting congressmen frustrated me (Don't email, call; but when you call, don't follow a script).
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 2 March 2017 15:47 (seven years ago) link
marcos' description makes me get nostalgic - i kind of want to re-up my subscription.
― Karl Malone, Thursday, 2 March 2017 15:50 (seven years ago) link
it's weird though because i still feel impatience for the next one to come! "why isn't it here yet, it's been a few days!"
― marcos, Thursday, 2 March 2017 15:52 (seven years ago) link
I catch up by reading a couple articles a week at work (I rarely read the fiction).
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 2 March 2017 15:52 (seven years ago) link
i think if i read 1) a little bit of the talk of the town; 2) maybe one feature, and; 3) a piece of criticism then that would be pretty good. even that's hard though
― marcos, Thursday, 2 March 2017 15:54 (seven years ago) link
I look forward to the fiction issue every year, because it means two weeks off.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 2 March 2017 15:56 (seven years ago) link
I gasped with relief three weeks ago when I saw the last issue was a double.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 2 March 2017 16:02 (seven years ago) link