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
The review of the new Mao biographies.
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
David Owen, Annals of Environmentalism, “The Efficiency Dilemma,” The New Yorker, December 20, 2010, p. 78
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
what is the point of an article like this? - http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2011/01/17/110117ta_talk_surowiecki
surowiecki doesn't have a single interesting thing to say here
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Monday, 10 January 2011 12:03 (thirteen years ago) link
He's just summarizing the various memes on this now that are being mentioned in newspapers and blogs without asking anyone where things could go from here--what is the future for unionized government employees, will there ever be more unionized private sector employees, how would this help in regards to the inequality differences that have grown since union membership has declined...)
― curmudgeon, Monday, 10 January 2011 17:08 (thirteen years ago) link
His column is like a monthly crib-sheet of conventional wisdom so you can sound like you know what you're talking about when you get invited to a garden party in Stonington
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Monday, 10 January 2011 17:14 (thirteen years ago) link
what is the point of an article like this?
to summarize and provide some context to a current event or idea its not really about 'saying interesting things' its just a primer? like i know being 1000x smarter than anyone else ever is your thing but i mean the section is called 'talk of the town' so yeah, it exists so the mag's readers can get a vague grip on an issue - the column (which john cassidy also writes some weeks) is supposed to be a gloss? & thats not really all that terrible???
― ⊚ ⓪ ㉧ ☉ ๏ ʘ ◉ ◎ ⓞ Ⓞ (Lamp), Monday, 10 January 2011 17:19 (thirteen years ago) link
honestly tracer maybe u wld get more out of the articles u read if u didnt spend all ur energy snarkily coming up w/ reasons why u wld have done it better
― ⊚ ⓪ ㉧ ☉ ๏ ʘ ◉ ◎ ⓞ Ⓞ (Lamp), Monday, 10 January 2011 17:21 (thirteen years ago) link
dude there are a zillion interesting things happening with unions at the moment (the biggest of which imo is the belated but hugely important efforts to hook up with undocumented immigrants). i'm not sorry for wanting more out of a column called "the financial page"! this article could have been written at any time in the last 15 years - there is zero content to it!
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Monday, 10 January 2011 17:37 (thirteen years ago) link
i'll also admit that i am rankled by his terminology - "cadillac health plans" etc - and his conclusion that ultimately the reason that lots of people "resent" unions now is because unions have been successful at negotiating good contracts
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Monday, 10 January 2011 17:39 (thirteen years ago) link
like, if i want economist-lite i'll read newsweek
snark on that one for size
there is a cover story public sector unions in the economist this week. dunno why i'm bringing it up though because i haven't read it.
― caek, Monday, 10 January 2011 17:40 (thirteen years ago) link
i'll be interested in reading that, in an "oppo research" kind of way.
i should probably just recuse myself from talking about surowiecki - everything about his steez rankles me and i'm finding it hard to put into words - the "primer" aspect is part of it, but there are people who write primer-type stuff who i love. i dunno!
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Monday, 10 January 2011 17:44 (thirteen years ago) link
yah i can see finding the article glib and too-neat "The Great Depression invigorated the modern American labor movement. The Great Recession has crippled it" both oversimplifies and maybe misses the point - i was just sort of baffled that you didnt seem to understand why an article like this gets written
― ⊚ ⓪ ㉧ ☉ ๏ ʘ ◉ ◎ ⓞ Ⓞ (Lamp), Monday, 10 January 2011 18:02 (thirteen years ago) link
i guess i still don't! the avg new yorker reader could have dictated this article in their sleep 15 years ago
― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Monday, 10 January 2011 18:08 (thirteen years ago) link
so did anyone else read the all of the "20 under 40" pieces? thought it was pretty disappointing. vaguely remember liking one about a guy working on a boat in florida that catches on fire, but not much else.
― Moreno, Monday, 10 January 2011 19:04 (thirteen years ago) link
t-pain?
― gr8080, Monday, 10 January 2011 21:33 (thirteen years ago) link
The psychoanalysis in China article is kind of disappointing imo, mostly because it seems to say that it'll explain why a) psychoanalysis fell out of a favor in the US and most other Western nations, and b) why China then picked it up. The article gets at b) at a certain superficial level, but really doesn't go into a) (which I'm sure has been the subject of a lot of other articles, just would've liked discussion here). Anyway, one of my prof is mentioned in the article, easily the best part of it.
― nomar little (Leee), Tuesday, 11 January 2011 00:21 (thirteen years ago) link
really tapping into the slang here
The teens were from a variety of backgrounds—public and private schools, Manhattan and the outer boroughs—and they wore jeans, collared shirts, and leather jackets. They seemed like normal teen-agers, although they all had the faintly glamorous, knowing aura of city kids. They were discussing slang expressions. “ ‘Calm your tits,’ ” Yasha, an eighteen-year-old from Crown Heights, said, citing an expression that means “Calm down.”
“ ‘Good looks,’ ” said Kyjah, a sixteen-year-old fencer from the Upper West Side, who was wearing lime-green nail polish.
“It means ‘Thanks for looking out,’ ” Alexandria, from Yonkers, said. “Somebody’s like, ‘Oh, you dropped money.’ ‘Oh, good looks.’ ”
“ ‘Gucci’ is the same as ‘Good money,’ ” Yasha said.
“You can say, ‘What’s Gucci?’ ” Kyjah said. “ ‘What’s up?’ ”
Matteo, a sixteen-year-old from Park Slope, said, “ ‘What’s poppin’?’ ”
The teens hesitated. “That’s, like, a retro saying.”
Yasha added, “It’s gang-related.”
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/01/10/110110ta_talk_widdicombe#ixzz1AgfxnnHS
― johnny crunch, Tuesday, 11 January 2011 01:53 (thirteen years ago) link
Does a print subscription also give access to the full digital edition + archives? Their website is suspiciously vague about that.
― earnest goes to camp, ironic goes to ilm (pixel farmer), Tuesday, 11 January 2011 18:20 (thirteen years ago) link
Yes it does - my international one does anyway.
― The baby boomers have defined everything once and for all (Dorianlynskey), Tuesday, 11 January 2011 18:31 (thirteen years ago) link
yes, you can look at literally every single page of every single issue going back to 1921 or something.
the applet viewer thing is kinda stupid, but functional
― gr8080, Tuesday, 11 January 2011 18:40 (thirteen years ago) link
the david brooks article is so terrible i cant remember the last time i read something that managed to be so offensive w/o actually saying or meaning anything
― Lamp, Friday, 14 January 2011 17:09 (thirteen years ago) link
Favorite movie: Knight of CupsFavorite performance: Amsterdam https://t.co/rJi62t0SHv— Richard Brody (@tnyfrontrow) January 30, 2024
favorite christian bale movie: knight of cups. sure. I’m a late-malick stan and I mean come on
― truly humbled underdog (k3vin k.), Tuesday, 30 January 2024 23:03 (one month ago) link
this Brody review is quite something:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/amsterdam-is-an-exemplary-work-of-resistance-cinema
― symsymsym, Tuesday, 30 January 2024 23:44 (one month ago) link
k3vin otm
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 30 January 2024 23:49 (one month ago) link
my eyes rolled out of the back of my head at the tweet "Velvet Goldmine évidemment" but it's actually just a french guy lol
― budo jeru, Tuesday, 30 January 2024 23:52 (one month ago) link
I remember being so mad at his TÁR review lol like you fuckin dipshit did you even watch the movie, dad?
lol yeah that one was a true embarrassment. his furious takedown of Anatomy of a Fall hit many of the same notes, just putting a heroic amount of effort into completely missing some v basic points
― waste of compute (One Eye Open), Wednesday, 31 January 2024 15:16 (one month ago) link
The D.T. Max piece on the woman who lived in a cave for 500 days is exactly what I want out of the New Yorker.
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Saturday, January 27, 2024 5:38 PM (two weeks ago) bookmarkflaglink
The one about the London kid who pretended to be the son of a Russian oligarch and got mixed up with actual shady children of criminals and (and their dangerous underworld associates) is also exactly what I want out of the New Yorker.
― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Monday, 12 February 2024 20:05 (one month ago) link
yes that one was great. i referenced it offhandedly in therapy today (because i too am impersonating a russian oligarch) and my therapist had read the same article and knew what i was referencing
the two patrick radden reefe books i've read (empire of pain and say nothing) were both excellent
― na (NA), Monday, 12 February 2024 21:03 (one month 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 (one month 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 (one month 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 (one month ago) link
the london underworld story was great, yeah
― truly humbled underdog (k3vin k.), Monday, 12 February 2024 22:52 (one month 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 (one month 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 (one month 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 (one month 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 (three weeks ago) link
I hated those intervenor lawyers so fucking much
― symsymsym, Saturday, 2 March 2024 23:59 (three weeks ago) link
yeah that article was pretty eye opening
― brony james (k3vin k.), Sunday, 3 March 2024 04:40 (three weeks 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 (three weeks 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 (three weeks 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 (three weeks 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 (three weeks ago) link
schulz also wrote the (in)famous cascadia fault article
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 5 March 2024 18:04 (three weeks ago) link
I elected to not read that one
― G. D’Arcy Cheesewright (silby), Tuesday, 5 March 2024 18:16 (three weeks 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 (three weeks 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 (one week 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 (one week 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 (one week ago) link
what's the article related to that quote?
― fpsa, Saturday, 23 March 2024 01:01 (six days 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 (six days ago) link