New Yorker magazine alert thread

also all my books are in our attic in storage right now i so don't mind having physical issues pile up

i spend 8 hours a day looking at a computer screen, probably an additional hour looking at my phone, if i can avoid a screen for some of my leisure reading then i am better off

i wonder to what extent young talent will continue to draw from Gawker (Chen, Tolentino), pitchfork (Carrie Battan), n+1 (Blumenkranz, Batuman) in the next decade

never read Gopnik

otm

he wrote one of the worst new yorker articles i've ever seen, just a few days ago. not sure it counts as a true "article" or not because it was short and only posted online i guess, but it was about the idea that we're living in a simulation (which prompts seriously eye rolls from ILX i know but is actually fascinating) ...combined with the oscar best picture fuck-up, standing in for proof that the simulation had gone off the rails. i kept waiting for him to make a joke but it seems like he was half serious? but also that he just really wanted to write something about how surreal the shittiness of the last year has been in the context of the simulation argument, but wanted to wait for a new "crazy" event to occur in order to publish it, but then overreacted to the spectacle of the oscars thing and blew his wad too early? anyway it was the worst thing i've seen in the new yorker in a long time, other than borowitz

man people fuckin LOVE borowitz

borowitz is the worstowitz

patricia marx shopping articles are my personal bugbear, but i don't think they've published one in a while

ugh fuckin hate patricia marx

― congratulations (n/a), Wednesday, February 2, 2011 2:14 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I skipped a ton of stuff this week. Patricia Marx (ugh), Muslim brotherhood (feel guilty about this but I'm tired of these pieces), John McPhee (not in the mood for long personal reminisces). Pedophilia piece was good but I skimmed some because it was so hard to read.

― congratulations (n/a), Monday, January 7, 2013 8:42 PM (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ugh I hate Patricia Marx so much. Her shopping updates were dumb enough, but this week she writes about taking a trip on a freighter, which is potentially interesting, but her writing is so self-centered and cutesy and trite that the piece is totally worthless.

― Immediate Follower (NA), Wednesday, January 29, 2014 9:20 AM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha how many times has this thread had the shouts and murmurs/Patricia Marx/denby conversation

― max, Sunday, August 12, 2012 8:27 AM (four years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Karl otm, that simulation piece by Gopnik was abysmal. In more competent hands etc.. because it truly is an interesting topic. But you have got to do better than 'omg first trump won and now a wrong enveloppe at the oscars: the people running our simulation are losing it!1!'

what's weird is that they already published two pieces about it relatively recently!

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom
http://www.newyorker.com/books/joshua-rothman/what-are-the-odds-we-are-living-in-a-computer-simulation

haven't read the rothman one, but the bostrom profile was good, i thought. so it's weird that gopnik was itching to write about the same subject again, without adding anything of any value to it!

didn't read the gopnik (see my rule upthread re: gopnik of 'never read gopnik') but i, too, like to defend the groovy pleasure of contemplating the Simulation Hypothesis from its detractors (who afaict are mostly responding to Thiel & Musk's bizarre pronouncements on and interpretation of it)

Ohh monsieur Le Malone, you are spoiling me!

*beeps and bloops*

my eternal shame is that Gopnik is a Montréal native u_u

rothman is generally good, prob my fav of the web writers

though once he got a detail about ulysses slightly wrong and i turned on him forever

I liked Gopnik's piece a while back about baking bread with his mom

i liked gopnik's piece after trump officially locked up the GOP nomination -- it was about how countries don't really recover from having their institutions shown to be so fragile

but everything else sucks, including his occasional hockey forays on the website

anyway, New Yorker gigs are like tenured professorships, the quality of your work stops being a factor at some point

same with public radio contributors

xpost Yeah, iirc you get a nice salary and near total freedom and are just required to turn in x-thousand words a year.

remember when SFJ left his new yorker post to work for genius

"Genius."

Remember when, as a staff writer at the New Yorker, he solicited money online for a new laptop?

Those were the days ...

xp. seeing successful writers with patreons or whatever now seems commonplace. he was an innovator!

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, March 2, 2017 8:41 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yep, that is the system.

― softie (silby), Thursday, March 2, 2017 9:44 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

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, March 2, 2017 9:46 AM (seven hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The story of every New Yorker subscriber ever (including me)

yep

i'm actually okay with the new yorker -- i'm usually more or less caught up and either way i toss them

the new york review operates on a more idiosyncratic schedule which gives you the illusion that you have time, thus dooming me

New Yorker plus the monthly copy of Bon Appetit that has been showing up every month for three years even though I've never paid for it.

When I die it will be under a hoarders stack of those two plus damaged comics and GNs I take from work planning to read

have to say i wasn't really enthralled by the grann excerpt. will still buy the book tho obv

I liked the Paul LaFarge piece on the unusual and ultimately tragic life of H.P. Lovecraft's young protege Robert Barlow.

The simulation argument piece made me laugh at this casual aside "Many people have imagined this scenario over the years, of course, usually while high."

uh so apols for slight spam, but if any london ilxors are reading this, I have a ticket to see Grann introduce a screening of the film at the bfi tonight at 8.30 and have to stay in for the plumber. Ticket's at the box office. Reply to thread or paul dot clark at britisher yahoo

read the herbalife story

lol capitalism

we shd use this thread to just dispassionately audit the magazine contents in the hope of once in a while triggering discussion. this wk's ish is great i think; the marantz thing is just so devastating, kind of like the one-a-week talk spots chronicling descent into fascism in this somehow zippy & brutal register. the watch thing really endearing also.

also-also i think the last thing i would have mentioned if this thread was somewhere i habitually mentioned things was the zadie smith billie holiday thing, i never read the fiction but i thought it was like one of those kevin spacey mfa-southern aside to cameras in house of cards, like they could have had him read it for the fiction podcast.

i miss jack already. used to drink with him and my brother in new milford, ct during the grunge years and he was such a swell guy and so funny. and gary larson still owes him some money. rest in peace.

https://scontent.fbed1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/17629612_10158454090190298_4470249223408653381_n.jpg?oh=bf8902157c72b63fc861971ea5089fd8&oe=59534A4F

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/10/death-of-a-dystopian

v sad reading that and then going to watch the trailer and all the comments full of ppl caught in the same delusions

the trolls won when reagan did, in retrospect

That article was intense. Not one I'll forget anytime soon.

who is rod dreher and why is he trying to fill my neighborhood with catholics?!??!

he wishes they were eastern orthodox (for now, anyway)

I liked that profile b/c dude seems p obviously fucked up over his dad and his own lifestyle choices and w/e. Sounds like the religious community he's really looking for is charedi Jews.

sold for parts: exploitation and abuse at the chicken plant

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/exploitation-and-abuse-at-the-chicken-plant

I learned a few days ago that Dreher played a major hand in forming the Florida Film Critics Circle; he was apparently some ex officio member in the '90s.

this court case is really something else
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/22/what-makes-a-parent