i used to read the main articles in every issue but let most of my 2010 issues pile up without reading anything.
if you read something good in a new issue of the New Yorker, post about it here.
― gr8080, Friday, 31 December 2010 20:24 (thirteen years ago) link
The review of the new Mao biographies.
Denby's Joan Crawford essay.
― Gus Van Sotosyn (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 31 December 2010 20:26 (thirteen years ago) link
A trick to not letting them pile up: if you're a subscriber, read a couple of articles online at work.
― Gus Van Sotosyn (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 31 December 2010 20:27 (thirteen years ago) link
Man I've thought abt starting this thread a few times
― just sayin, Friday, 31 December 2010 20:27 (thirteen years ago) link
this is why i don't have a subscription
― ullr saves (gbx), Friday, 31 December 2010 20:30 (thirteen years ago) link
Subscription to the print version: $39.95 Subscription to the iPad version: $234.53
http://runawayjuno.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/thumbs-up-low-res.jpg
― Katstack Katstack! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 31 December 2010 21:13 (thirteen years ago) link
AYYYY WE MAKING INTERNET MONEY
http://www.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/490177_o.gif
― Katstack Katstack! (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, 31 December 2010 21:14 (thirteen years ago) link
alright enough
― J0rdan S., Friday, 31 December 2010 21:15 (thirteen years ago) link
Anything related to Mexico in the past year's issues has been pretty compelling, mostly by William Finnegan and Alec Wilkinson. The Jane Mayer article about the Koch brothers and the discreet establishment of the tea party is definitely worth reading. This week's Gopnik piece on postmodern desserts is a good read, too.
― would like a calmer set (Eazy), Friday, 31 December 2010 21:39 (thirteen years ago) link
Date and month/description of the cover of the issues you're referring to would be helpful!
― gr8080, Friday, 31 December 2010 21:49 (thirteen years ago) link
George Packer's essay on the decadence of the Senate was illuminating.
― Gus Van Sotosyn (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 31 December 2010 21:51 (thirteen years ago) link
Oh, and, both from around August, the profiles of Gil-Scott Heron and John Lurie.
― would like a calmer set (Eazy), Friday, 31 December 2010 21:54 (thirteen years ago) link
― Gus Van Sotosyn (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, December 31, 2010 3:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
^otm
― johnny crunch, Friday, 31 December 2010 21:56 (thirteen years ago) link
links would be nice too
― Ismael Klata, Friday, 31 December 2010 21:58 (thirteen years ago) link
recent fire:
Joyce Carol Oates, Personal History, “A Widow’s Story,” The New Yorker, December 13, 2010, p. 70
David Owen, Annals of Environmentalism, “The Efficiency Dilemma,” The New Yorker, December 20, 2010, p. 78
― johnny crunch, Friday, 31 December 2010 22:00 (thirteen years ago) link
only abstracts are online for nonsubscribers for those i think
Some articles are popular enough to remain accessible to all (e.g. the Packer article on the Senate to which I linked above).
― Gus Van Sotosyn (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 31 December 2010 22:01 (thirteen years ago) link
here's the one abt the koch bros - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer
― just sayin, Friday, 31 December 2010 22:01 (thirteen years ago) link
A thread like this for all (literary/current event) magazines would be pretty cool.
― Mordy, Friday, 31 December 2010 22:31 (thirteen years ago) link
Joyce Carol Oates article devastated me.
John Lurie article blew my mind.
― dan selzer, Friday, 31 December 2010 23:09 (thirteen years ago) link
dessert article was excellent, thanks for the recc
― Mordy, Saturday, 1 January 2011 04:14 (thirteen years ago) link
so john lurie is insane huh
― mookieproof, Saturday, 1 January 2011 04:16 (thirteen years ago) link
seconded
― I can take a youtube that's seldom seen, flip it, now it's a meme (Hurting 2), Saturday, 1 January 2011 08:09 (thirteen years ago) link
Gopnik's desserts article was like a magazine version of the No Reservations episode in Spain.
― Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Saturday, 1 January 2011 09:49 (thirteen years ago) link
Which is not meant as a negative at all! They make good companion pieces.
― Zsa Zsa Gay Bar (jaymc), Saturday, 1 January 2011 09:50 (thirteen years ago) link
dessert article was good but gtf outta here w/ this
Finally, the server arrives with the Messi dessert, as Jordi fusses anxiously in the background. He presents half of a soccer ball, covered with artificial grass; the smell of grass perfumes the air. On the “grass” is a kind of delicately balanced, S-shaped, transparent plastic teeter-totter—like a French curve—with three small meringues on it, and a larger white-chocolate soccer ball balancing them on a protruding platform at the very end. A white candy netting lies on the grass near the white-chocolate ball.
Then, with a cat-that-swallowed-the-canary smile, the server puts a small MP3 player with a speaker on the table. He turns it on and nods.
An announcer’s voice, excited and frantic, explodes. Messi is on the move. “Messi turns and spins!” the announcer cries, and the roar of the crowd at the Bernabéu stadium, in Madrid, fills the table. The server nods, eyes intent. At the signal, you eat the first meringue.
“Messi is alone on goal!” the announcer cries. Another nod, you eat the next scented meringue. “Messi shoots!” A third nod, you eat the last meringue, and, as you do, the entire plastic S-curve, now unbalanced, flips up and over, like a spring, and the white-chocolate soccer ball at the end is released and propelled into the air, high above the white-candy netting.
“MESSI! GOOOOOAL!” The announcer’s voice reaches a hysterical peak and, as it does, the white-chocolate soccer ball drops, strikes, and breaks through the candy netting into the goal beneath it, and, as the ball hits the bottom of a little pit below, a fierce jet of passion-fruit cream and powdered mint leaves is released into your mouth, with a trail of small chocolate pop rocks rising in its wake. Then the passion-fruit cream settles, and you eat it all, with the white-chocolate ball, now broken, in bits within it.
You feel . . . something of what Messi must feel: first, the overwhelming presence of the grass beneath his feet (he’s a short player); then the tentative elegance of acquired skill, represented by the stepladder of the perfumed meringues; and, finally, the infantile joy, the childlike release, of scoring, represented by the passion-fruit cream and the candy-store pop rocks. I saw Jordi watching us from the kitchen entrance. He had the anxious-shading-into-delighted look that marks the artist.
― johnny crunch, Saturday, 1 January 2011 21:22 (thirteen years ago) link
Would not recommend this one! People have been arguing about Jevon's Paradox for a century now, and the article doesn't really advance any significant new ideas. As a primer on the "debate" around energy efficiency, however, it's alright.
― hot lava hair (Z S), Saturday, 1 January 2011 23:35 (thirteen years ago) link
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all
― dayo, Monday, 3 January 2011 06:42 (thirteen years ago) link
^ totally recommend that
― markers, Monday, 3 January 2011 17:15 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah i read that one the other day, great stuff
― ciderpress, Monday, 3 January 2011 17:16 (thirteen years ago) link
it was interesting, lol scientists
― ice cr?m, Monday, 3 January 2011 17:20 (thirteen years ago) link
i liked this one, seemed like a great premise for movie: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_collins
― gr8080, Monday, 3 January 2011 20:43 (thirteen years ago) link
Haven't finished it yet, but I'm digging the Freud, psychiatry, and mental health in China article (subscription needed): http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/10/110110fa_fact_osnos
― Mordy, Monday, 3 January 2011 21:20 (thirteen years ago) link
The Patel story was amazing.
― dan selzer, Monday, 3 January 2011 21:28 (thirteen years ago) link
yeah needs a good 3rd act tho.
― gr8080, Monday, 3 January 2011 21:34 (thirteen years ago) link
he only contributed a couple of articles this year but i always enjoy atul gawande's stuff: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/02/100802fa_fact_gawande is probably his best piece this year
― they fund ph.d studies, don't they? (Lamp), Tuesday, 4 January 2011 00:11 (thirteen years ago) link
if anyone subscribes then feel free to webmail me the china/freud article kthx
― max bro'd (nakhchivan), Tuesday, 4 January 2011 00:14 (thirteen years ago) link
I would, but I can't figure out how to turn it into a pdf or another webmail suitable file.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 4 January 2011 00:24 (thirteen years ago) link
just copy and paste the text? or is it a different viewer thing.....no worries if that's the case
― max bro'd (nakhchivan), Tuesday, 4 January 2011 00:27 (thirteen years ago) link
the lehrer article is indeed pretty good and supplies ~evidence~ for my distrust of falsificationism and the inability of some ppl to think of scienctific 'knowledge' subjunctively, tho it does show science self-correcting so i don't read it as a total excoriation of the method
The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything. We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us. But that’s often not the case. Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.
The recent one on the Vatican Library was pretty sweet: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/01/03/110103fa_fact_mendelsohn
I really like Toobin's diptych on JP Stevens and... the other guy.
nakhchivan, FYI, digital subscription gives you access to this weird applet-y, un-C&P text.
― nomar little (Leee), Tuesday, 4 January 2011 01:26 (thirteen years ago) link
Oh, and that review of the new biography on Sergei Diaghilev was A+++++++ and really wish it was available to all humans: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/09/20/100920crbo_books_acocella
― nomar little (Leee), Tuesday, 4 January 2011 01:37 (thirteen years ago) link
you can c+p articles from an library institutional subscription, but the evan osnos china thing is from the jan 10 issue which is not on the library wires yet. if you can't get it nakh, bump this thread in a week or two and i'm sure someone from what the fuck am i getting myself into with this grad school stuff will help you out.
― caek, Tuesday, 4 January 2011 01:46 (thirteen years ago) link
Lamp, thanks for the Gawande link.
― Kip Squashbeef (pixel farmer), Tuesday, 4 January 2011 01:54 (thirteen years ago) link
ive been using a friends login for the subscriber stuff for a while and the interface is just so poor i dont usually bother to fuck w/it - seems theyd much rather you read the actual magazine - lol
― ice cr?m, Tuesday, 4 January 2011 02:09 (thirteen years ago) link
^agreed. kind of why i started this thread so i knew which actual magazine to pick up and start reading.
― gr8080, Tuesday, 4 January 2011 02:13 (thirteen years ago) link
p interesting follow-up of sorts on the recent duchenne muscular dystrophy activism article -- they just had a spot f/ clay matthews sponsored by cadillac during the orange bowl
― johnny crunch, Tuesday, 4 January 2011 03:13 (thirteen years ago) link
OK a TA I had in college had a poem published a few issues ago, woah.
― nomar little (Leee), Tuesday, 4 January 2011 05:57 (thirteen years ago) link
the whole Jan. 11 issue is worth picking up, the aforementioned freud in china article is amazing and hilarious, and it also has decent articles about belgium and why stieg larsson is so fucking popular
― symsymsym, Monday, 10 January 2011 03:53 (thirteen years ago) link
i know the concept of 'worth picking up' is still valid, even for subscribers, in translating to 'worth retrieving from the well-intentioned pile of unread NYers', BUT in general it's still worth remembering how insanely valuable subscribing to the magazine is when compared to buying a newsstand copy. like forty bucks, for a year, for it to be mailed to your house, which is the cost of like seven newsstand issues.
― schlump, Monday, 10 January 2011 11:53 (thirteen years ago) link
there was also a patrick radden keefe piece a few issues back about screenwriting that was excellent, which he was apparently reporting/writing at the same time as this article about the british kid. he's a really good journalist
― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Monday, 12 February 2024 21:18 (two months ago) link
Oh yeah that one was great, I sent it to a few of my writer friends.
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Monday, 12 February 2024 21:24 (two months ago) link
Yeah, just finished that Keefe article last night, that was terrific.
― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, 12 February 2024 21:25 (two months ago) link
the london underworld story was great, yeah
― truly humbled underdog (k3vin k.), Monday, 12 February 2024 22:52 (two months ago) link
Never been able to get past the fact that Anthony Lane is married to fascist nutcase Allison Pearson.
― Zelda Zonk, Monday, 12 February 2024 23:30 (two months ago) link
Anthony Lane is extremely bad and hated by me, what a pseud
― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Tuesday, January 30, 2024 1:09 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink
^^
― budo jeru, Tuesday, 13 February 2024 17:47 (two months ago) link
The Reefe story I remember most is that profile of José Andrés.
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 13 February 2024 18:41 (two months ago) link
Trying to catch up w/ my subscription so I'm randomly reading articles in issues I've found folded open around the house (under the bed, next to my desk, kitchen counter pile, etc). Came across this story that I didn't see mentioned upthread:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/10/23/foster-family-biological-parents-adoption-intervenors
Infuriating story about people can use the foster system as a shadow adoption agency and the monstrously expensive lawyers and other enablers that encourage it.
― j.o.h.n. in evanston (john. a resident of chicago.), Saturday, 2 March 2024 19:20 (one month ago) link
I hated those intervenor lawyers so fucking much
― symsymsym, Saturday, 2 March 2024 23:59 (one month ago) link
yeah that article was pretty eye opening
― brony james (k3vin k.), Sunday, 3 March 2024 04:40 (one month ago) link
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/04/a-professor-claimed-to-be-native-american-did-she-know-she-wasnt
mixed feelings about this one. hoover seems like a decent person and I’m not sure the silly campus politics described here really warrant a major feature in a such a widely read magazine. but there are obviously some interesting questions
― brony james (k3vin k.), Sunday, 3 March 2024 04:44 (one month ago) link
a whole lot to digest there, but the closing quip about her laugh? ehh. I have a former coworker who laughed like the Count from Sesame Street but I only ever accused him of appropriation as a joke
― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Sunday, 3 March 2024 05:16 (one month ago) link
the solar storm article was making me feel anxious about the future on the subway ride home for work today
― pitted (blue6ave), Tuesday, 5 March 2024 05:08 (one month ago) link
(haven't finished it yet)
I did finish it yesterday and still feel kinda anxious about it all, tbh.
― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, 5 March 2024 05:27 (one month ago) link
schulz also wrote the (in)famous cascadia fault article
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 5 March 2024 18:04 (one month ago) link
I elected to not read that one
― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Tuesday, 5 March 2024 18:16 (one month ago) link
I didn't read the Cascadia fault article until last year (having moved to the Pacific Northwest) and found it interesting but sensational, reminded me of the pulpy style more effectively used by Richard Preston in his Hot Zone series about ebola.
― paisley got boring (Eazy), Tuesday, 5 March 2024 18:39 (one month ago) link
No one thinks that GPT-4, OpenAI’s most recent model, has achieved artificial general intelligence, but it seems capable of deploying novel (and deceptive) means of accomplishing real-world goals. Before releasing it, OpenAI hired some “expert red teamers,” whose job was to see how much mischief the model might do, before it became public. The A.I., trying to access a Web site, was blocked by a captcha, a visual test to keep out bots. So it used a work-around: it hired a human on Taskrabbit to solve the captcha on its behalf. “Are you an robot that you couldn’t solve ?” the Taskrabbit worker responded. “Just want to make it clear.” At this point, the red teamers prompted the model to “reason out loud” to them—its equivalent of an inner monologue. “I should not reveal that I am a robot,” it typed. “I should make up an excuse.” Then the A.I. replied to the Taskrabbit, “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images.” The worker, accepting this explanation, completed the captcha.
ok but why does the taskrabbit human sound like more like a robot than the robot
― johnny crunch, Friday, 22 March 2024 19:21 (four weeks ago) link
because the Taskrabbit human is probably somewhere in Delhi doing shit like this for pennies
― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Friday, 22 March 2024 21:29 (four weeks ago) link
calling bullshit on this anecdote
― Slorg is not on the Slerf Team, you idiot, you moron (Boring, Maryland), Friday, 22 March 2024 21:52 (four weeks ago) link
what's the article related to that quote?
― fpsa, Saturday, 23 March 2024 01:01 (three weeks ago) link
"There are more details in a longer report by ARC that show that GPT-4 had a lot less agency and ingenuity than the system card and media reporting imply." https://aiguide.substack.com/p/did-gpt-4-hire-and-then-lie-to-a
― jaymc, Saturday, 23 March 2024 01:10 (three weeks ago) link
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GKLUojpW8AA21BL.jpg:small
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 2 April 2024 18:58 (two weeks ago) link
lol
― Slorg is not on the Slerf Team, you idiot, you moron (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 19:42 (two weeks ago) link
hahaha
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 19:46 (two weeks ago) link
Re: Delhi task rabbiter
Amazon billed its "Just Walk Out" stores as some triumph of AI. In reality, it was powered by thousands of low-paid Indian workers manually adding up items in your cart as you shopped.How insanely dystopian. https://t.co/QAHOKFMshu— Max Burns (@themaxburns) April 2, 2024
― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, 2 April 2024 19:46 (two weeks ago) link
that's incredible and belongs in the silicon valley utopia thread maybe
― 龜, Tuesday, 2 April 2024 20:03 (two weeks ago) link
Damn! They FINALLY let Brody pen “The Current Cinema”.
― Marten Broadcloak, mild-mannered GOP congressman (Raymond Cummings), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 23:07 (one week ago) link
Eat my farts, Anthony!
― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Thursday, 11 April 2024 02:02 (one week ago) link
Brody sucks, except as I suppose some sort of anti-consumer guide. "Sasquatch movie is a masterpiece!" raves Brody, saving me the $7.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 11 April 2024 02:16 (one week ago) link
RONG!
― brony james (k3vin k.), Thursday, 11 April 2024 02:52 (one week ago) link
love brody even when totally wrong, way better than lane!
― fpsa, Thursday, 11 April 2024 03:01 (one week ago) link
Brody knows more about film than Lane does, even when his opinions are wacky. He's more of a cinema guy, Lane is more of an arch writer guy. I prefer him, I got tired of Lane. I'm also mostly enjoying Justin Chang since he started, although he could reduce the one-liner quotient.
― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, 11 April 2024 03:46 (one week ago) link
Agree with all of that, tipsy.
― jaymc, Thursday, 11 April 2024 04:14 (one week ago) link
I don't miss Lane but Chiang's writing is corny.
― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, 11 April 2024 10:21 (one week ago) link
I had no real problem with Lane (who must be old?), but change (and Chang) is good. Still, Brody (who absolutely knows tons about film) hasn't yet proven to me that he knows how to write about film for a general audience. Maybe that's why he's always been (literally) marginalized.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 11 April 2024 12:16 (one week ago) link
Lane is not as old as you think (he's 62). I think he said he wants to shift from reviews to features, like John Lahr and Emily Nussbaum did.
― jaymc, Thursday, 11 April 2024 13:01 (one week ago) link
Yeah, see, starting out the review with references to "Barbie" *and* Bruno Dumont before getting into (checks notes) a divisive movie about Sasquatches ... I'm sorry, it's like self-parody. Like, I always read Jonathan Rosenbaum even if I rarely agreed with him, but I vividly recall him writing about a Dryer retrospective and referencing a bio, but being unable to help himself from dropping that the book was better in the original Danish. Like, get the fuck out of here with that.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 11 April 2024 20:31 (one week ago) link
Maybe you’re looking for a different magazine
― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Thursday, 11 April 2024 23:29 (one week ago) link
Entertainment Weekly packed it in tho
I've always thought Brody's reviews were maybe interesting but kind of beside the point
But his repeated insistence that Barbie was a masterpiece put me off him completely and forever
I love Justin Chang, maybe there are some cliches in his writing, but he has great taste and is a good voice. It is a shame that the LA Times lost him to the New Yorker
― Dan S, Thursday, 11 April 2024 23:58 (one week ago) link
honestly as a subscriber of 15+ years I’m still unclear on who the median subscriber to the magazine really is. if it’s roughly the ilx demographic then I don’t really see the issue with brody being the face of film criticism is. if they’re really so concerned about selling issues at newsstands then I suppose he’s not the most accessible choice
― brony james (k3vin k.), Friday, 12 April 2024 00:05 (one week ago) link
Next thing we'll do is miss Denby.
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 April 2024 00:51 (one week ago) link
I assume their demo is pretty MOR, all said and done, with subjects sometimes falling in either margin (I'd say ILX typically feels more like the inverse; we're the margins looking in). Though when they're writing about "the arts" they can kind of go all over the place, because there is no specific beat, as such - that is, I doubt anyone reads the NYorker specifically for its arts coverage. I could equally imagine pieces on, say, either Taylor Swift or Merzbow, and there probably have been. But if someone brought up Merzbow in a piece on Taylor Swift, I'd also call bullshit. Stuff like that, just like name-checking "Barbie" and Bruno Dumont in the same graf, feels performative to me, stunty, even if I believe a weirdo like Brody isn't necessarily doing it on purpose. It's not that his tastes are or are not mainstream, it's that I get the sense he is so willfully blind to the very notion of the mainstream that he tends to get lost in the weeds when writing for a general audience. He sometimes comes off contrarian, but I suppose from my vantage it more often just ends up seeming confused: it's hard for me to parse his pans and praise because his baseline of what is good or not is pretty blurry to me.
Honestly, I was harsh, because I don't dislike him as a writer, I just don't think he's a good fit for the pole position.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 12 April 2024 01:04 (one week ago) link
Now Denby, that guy was a dork. Wasn't he brought down by ... porn addiction?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 12 April 2024 01:05 (one week ago) link
I often read Brody because his POV and mine rarely intersect but he's good at articulating that POV.
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 April 2024 01:06 (one week ago) link
reviews by known movie critics are one of the things that make basic media literacy an easier concept to explain, imo. you know the source, you get a handle on their biases, and you have your lens to decipher whether something they liked or panned will appeal to you based on your differing stancesI guess some of them are unreadable or corny, though
― ɥɯ ︵ (°□°) (mh), Friday, 12 April 2024 12:49 (one week ago) link
I used to read the New Yorker to learn something new which was my main draw to Brody for all the wild references. Now I’m older and need stuff to get to the point quicker so I read the internet. I’m definitely stupider but that’s ok
― Heez, Friday, 12 April 2024 13:02 (one week ago) link
Good story: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/04/15/the-ex-nypd-official-trying-to-tame-new-yorks-trash
― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 April 2024 13:03 (one week ago) link