your hate reads

somehow i ended up getting the nytimes cooking newsletter, and even more inexplicably i didn't immediately unsubscribe. it's now become something i look forward to, so that i can HATE READ sam sifton with extreme prejudice. he just knows how to get me, every time!

what are you hate reading?

current affairs man

current affairs

Scott Adams!

It used to be Questionable Content

Now I love it!

I used to hate read the sf chronicle's music critic. And a couple of their sports guys.

It's interesting that hate reading is MORE of a thing in this internet age, more choices, not stuck with finite amount of print media

ILM

twitter tbh

reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/ is making this way too easy

yeah twitter is basically one big hate-read

ah some more so than others now

matt forney/red pill/MGTOW loons

Fuckin' David Fuckin' Brooks

I read We Hunted the Mammoth, which is not a hate read in itself, but does often send me down rabbit holes of MRA/MGTOW/Red Pill insanity.

Remake/Remodel: DC Rebirth so you don't have to

http://time.com/4777118/avant-garde-koons-trump/

^ possibly the most intellectually illiterate piece i've ever read on art or trump, combined into one story

HATE READ sam sifton with extreme prejudice. he just knows how to get me, every time!

co-sign. between the mannered prose and condescending know-it-all perspective, he's insufferable and also fascinating. does anyone take him seriously?

Or maybe you're snuggled in bed in an empty apartment, staring at the way the light dapples through the trees to illuminate the far wall of your bedroom in a way that you so rarely see, during the week, on the hamster wheel of professional advancement. Either way: Time for granola!

peter daou's twitter is probably my favorite hate read

NYT op-ed page

the guardian

a couple years ago when Jonathan Franzen said he considered adopting an Iraqi war orphan but was dissuaded by his editor "because it would negatively impact his work," i bought his newly released book PURITY because i fell into the habit of clowning on Franzen without ever having read any of his books. i ended up really liking it, and then loved FREEDOM. at the same time, it's impossible to ignore his squareness and prickishness, so i think he qualifies?

amanda marcotte
peter daou
jason whitlock
oliver willis
jonathan chait

Ooooo Amanda Marcotte is a good one

That Sgt Pepper piece... 😳

peter daou's twitter is probably my favorite hate read

― k3vin k., Monday, 29 May 2017 17:51 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wow this is actually the same peter daou who made 'surrender yourself' and 'give myself to you'.

I think the fact that Franzen is actually good at writing novels is exactly what gives Franzen hate its meaning and force! If he were just some dude who's bad at things there would somehow be no point.

But the hate read of all hate reads, for me, is Metropolitan fucking Diary.

amanda marcotte
peter daou
jason whitlock
oliver willis
jonathan chait

aside from Chait, do you actually Read these ppl, or just know them for bad tweet infamy? im more angry about knowing about them in the first place. like you could call "the game theory guy" a hate read, but he's a random dude with no platform recursively famous for, making a bad tweet

peter daou's twitter is probably my favorite hate read

― k3vin k., Monday, 29 May 2017 17:51 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wow this is actually the same peter daou who made 'surrender yourself' and 'give myself to you'.

― i know kore-eda (or something), Tuesday, May 30, 2017 1:04 PM (thirty-three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

love that daou's house music was actually good

i used to hate-read an arthur chu piece whenever i saw it but i haven't seen his name outside of twitter for a very long time

too busy fighting off ants

xp- ur probably blocked

i stopped over the past few years but i've been hate-reading amanda marcotte for like a decade now? maybe more. she's such a horrible writer. bad person worse writer. that's what makes her so hate-readable, i guess.

The company I freelance for is on The Spectator mailing list, so I get to hate read that every week. They have to be commended for getting the three of the biggest cunts in Britain - James Delingpole, Toby Young, Rob Liddle - together in the pages of one magazine.

the dream team

At this point, prob BIll Simmons. I should stop hate-reading him cause each of his columns is like 30,000 wods long

Any dumb article about people using their cell phones too much or how we no longer connect with people.

any dumb article deploring participation trophies

frederik b

Good morning. I think you're going to want to build dinner tonight around Samin Nosrat's new recipe for herb-stuffed garlic bread (above), which I think might end up as the "Bodak Yellow" of the Cooking world this month – maybe this year. It's really, really good.

any otm & futile takedown of tory bullshit, such as this:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/brexit/2017/09/i-ve-annotated-government-s-response-petition-calling-another-brexit

For all the terrible news of this morning, for all the heartbreak and terror, this is still, as Robert McCloskey put it, a time of wonder, a time of change. The temperature may be summery where you hang your hat, but the birds know the score. It is fall now, time to gather your provisions even as your heart swells with fear, time to shift gears.

So it won't be caprese for dinner tonight, as it has been these last three Mondays. (It could be eggplant, but we're done with the grilled corn.) Instead, maybe something hearty: chicken wings with gochujang, ginger and garlic, for instance, and a viewing of "The Bletchly Circle" on Netflix. (Or, you know, the Redskins-Chiefs game.)

Comments sections.

Thank you for these excerpts TH

you're welcome. just panning for gold. like this excerpt, which would make a fine hate-read for anybody. you could read it tonight.

Don't let the pork be all you cook today, though. It is for some the start of Advent today - the first day of the liturgical year in many Christian churches and the beginning of the season that culminates in celebration of the birth of Jesus, at Christmas.

there's a natural wine restaurant/bar whose mailing list i'm on, for some reason, and i'm fairly sure the eponymous proprietor writes their weekly email, mainly because nobody paid to do it would manage such a blend of pomposity and passive aggression. i look forward to reading it each week to find a new instance of this man's awfulness.

this was one recent highlight:

Come work with me! But why would you?

Eric Schmidt talking Sheryl Sandberg into joining Google:

“Don’t be an idiot. Get on a rocket ship. When companies are growing quickly and they are having a lot of impact, careers take care of themselves. And when companies aren’t growing quickly or their missions don’t matter as much, that’s when stagnation and politics come in. If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.”

Whilst we aren’t exactly Google, we are definitely getting busier and trying our very best to have a memorable impact on the way people go out to eat and drink.

It has always been hard to find the right people to join me on this journey. But every single person who has taken the risk of working with me, has grown into someone magnificent and has managed to exceed their own expectations of what can be achieved in with a career in hospitality.

Sure, the path has been rocky and I would like to admit that I have not always been the best employer or spotted where things were going wrong in my own business. I have however learnt to not do the same mistakes again and slowly moulded my business into a place where creativity, freedom, financial reward and training are all corner stones of Sager + Wilde.

Now, in our fifth year, I feel ready to take on anyone wanting to be on our journey and to grow with us.

Reach out to me if you want to join us, be it on the floor, behind the bar or in the kitchen. And please do tell as many people as possible about this. You don’t need loads and loads of experience, I prefer to work with people full of character and develop the skills.

I cannot wait to hear from you and see where this will take us!

how many warning signs can we spot?

What are you wine-ing for?

We have bought a shitload of amazing wines and listed them at ridiculously low prices, many of them way below retail.

From old Barolo, via badass natural wine, to the cheapest Selosse on the market, there is not a single wine on here I wouldn't smash right now.

Oh christ

hahaha that is hilarious

BUT

said restaurant is actually great

whilst we aren’t exactly Google, ILX has always felt like a rocket ship to me, specifically the kind where it takes decades to reach the destination, which may or may not be suitable for colonization, and suspended animation hasn’t been invented yet.

We are definitely getting older and trying to have a barely noticeable impact on the way people talk about race, politics and the arts.

Reach out to me if you want to join us, be it on ILM, behind the 77 or in the server farm. And please do tell as many people as possible about this. You don’t need loads and loads of experience, I prefer to work with people full of character and develop the trolls.

I'm in

ignoble rot

Bad news and scary facts swirl around us even as we grow hungry, and even as we choose to make an Ethiopian-style spicy chicken (above) for dinner instead of simply eating takeout protein while scrolling through our news feed, worrying about the future. That is more than right. That is as it should be. We feed ourselves well because good food makes things better, makes possible the belief that despite all, everything will be all right.

Bear that in mind this weekend, as Hanukkah continues and the Christmas holiday looms. The weather outside is frightful (here, anyway, dour and chill), and the news may be as bad, but there's still the possibility of happiness around your dinner table, at least if you cook low and slow with one of our five-star recipes for chilly days, or see your way to baking a batch or two of thin-and-crisp chocolate chip cookies.

Good morning. The streets are still a little quiet in the wake of Christmas, people staying on with family in Waukesha, padding down the beach at North Cap, walking to yoga class with Michelle Obama. Manhattan offices are running at 60 percent, good people crunching end-of-year numbers and eating Popeyes for lunch, then hitting the H Mart en route to the subway and home: mapo ragù (above) for supper, and six new episodes of "Peaky Blinders" to follow. Stay up late, and trickle into work in the morning tomorrow at 10. No one's stressing anything this week. The nation's at idle.

Still, we'll cook a lot. I'd like a Gruyère and chive soufflé this week, really I would. And a spinach, tofu and sesame stir-fry as well. This would be a great week to make garlicky chicken with a lemon-anchovy sauce, or to simmer lamb meatballs in a pomegranate glaze.

that tone really is quite special

i don't know if it's author photo that's suggesting it but i picture sam sifton as fred macmurray, tucked-in polo shirt, clean apron over the slacks, setting down a gin-and-tonic and sticking out an honest hand to shake yours, somehow remembering the name of your aunt. he's johnny carson, nebraska values in a faithless world, a rock in the storm. i mean just look at that name! it's the name of a sheriff's deputy who has three lines near the beginning of the film. he has such longevity as a hate-read for me i think because he is, apart from the absolutely back-breaking bathos of his format, a pretty good writer, and also because the small-town guy in the big city trick is straight out of my own bag. he got out of winesburg, ohio while the getting was good (look, i'm starting to sound like him) but he carries this core of common american white male plain-spoken decency around with him that lets him get away with all kinds of fruity pronouncements on exotic tapenades etc. i absolutely hate him and cannot stop reading his newsletter.

The only hate read I can think of is Bob Lefsetz's blog, but that's mainly through the ilm thread on him.

ILE

even seemingly innocuous grafs like this push all my buttons

You could make velvety chicken breasts with mustard sauce for dinner. Or you could spend the afternoon making shrimp and scallop DUMPLINGS! instead.

look i do this "false choice" trick with my kids all the time, stop pressuring me into shit, sam

i have no idea why "DUMPLINGS!" capitalised and got an exclamation point on post, sorry

i read this yesterday. after the familiar claims made on my afternoon he said:

Do this at the very least: Take a few navel oranges, and put them in the fridge overnight, then slice them into eighths in the morning and eat them standing over the sink, before you've even made coffee or tea. Then tell me if there's a better fruit available, save a perfect watermelon or, like, three mangoes a year. I dream about those oranges this time of year, and they surprise me in the morning every time. Plain yogurt is a good chaser, and then I see about the coffee and head off to work.

now, this actually sounds pretty good. but it brings me uncomfortably close to sam sifton the man. i feel like i'm in his underwear, there with him as he scratches his nuts. DO NOT WANT. (see you tomorrow!)

vox.com

and also the former colleague who is loading up her Instagram feed with her new business of being a "thought leader" and doing the requisite online webinars.

oh man, colleagues doin thought-leader life-coach stuff on their instas is like a whole nother grisly category

ILX

I'm starting to take this personally now

i really hate 'the outline'

Scott Adams!

I don't knowingly read anything Scott Adams writes, but I will read Dilbert out of habit. I'm not sure how much Adams actively participates in the strip these days. I think he gets most of his ideas from fan mail and delegates the inking to interns or something.

I resubscribed to the NY Times Cooking newsletter just to hate-read Sifton. This isn’t as bathetic as usual but it’s just as grasping. Imagine this being said by Dick Cavett:


Good day. How’s it going for you right now, where you stay? It’s unsettling, what’s happening in our nation and across the world, and it’s maybe super-unsettling what’s happening in your neighborhood, your village, your building, your apartment, your head. Loads of people are sitting scared, some frozen, unsure what to do besides look at screens. Will it be worse tomorrow, or just the same?
The answer’s in the kitchen, I’m certain. Many have stockpiled for weeks of social distancing, if the shelves at the market are any indication. They’ve hunkered down. And perhaps you have, too. I hope so. The time to make the most of it is now.

so i'm not alone in that!

there was one when he was in the hamptons, i died

his rhythm and tone are so chirpy and unrelenting, if he was a budgie you’d throw a tea towel over his cage

shame to burn a good tea towel like that tbh

what if it’s an old waltzing matilda tea towel with a big scorch mark on the jolly swagman’s boot

cavett emptor so

Good morning. I hope you got some time to rest and reflect this weekend, to sit with where we’re at in the world, and where we might go. I hope the conversations you were able to have at the kitchen table were good, even if they were just with yourself, and I hope that this week brings you grace and hope in equal measure, even against a backdrop of anger and anxiety.

I believe cooking can help. Both the activity of it and the fellowship it provides — again, even if you’re just cooking for yourself. It is difficult not to become a little cheerful, for instance, making Ali Slagle’s puckish new recipe for crispy sour cream and onion chicken (above)

NO

haha what a sanctimonious twat

the fellowship it provides — again, even if you’re just cooking for yourself.

yeah like the yale club for losers

Tracer, is that Sam Sifton? Please link to your hate reads so we can all hate read them.

Lol yes it is and yes I will - however I like to think my judicious hate-filled editing really conveys him at his least attractive

here's the column in question
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/dining/what-to-cook-right-now.html

‘Puckish new recipe’

so glad i found the sifton hate club, dude writes like a youtube yoga influencer

sam sifton you never disappoint when i am looking for innocuous things to hate

So, maybe: a kind of Eastertime stir-fry of onion, shredded cabbage, apples and ham? It’s pretty simple, a hack of an old Nigel Slater recipe someone once sent me: Melt some butter in a large pan, and sweat the onions in it, with a clove or two of garlic, if you have any./

please sir, can you spare some garlic?

can't stand the "clove or two of garlic" approach to cooking, imagine making a dish with 0.25 cloves of garlic per person, why bother putting any in at all? also feel annoyed every time I read/hear the phrase "a stir-fry" - you know it's going to have undercooked carrots, overcooked beansprouts, tinned water chestnuts, limp red pepper and taste of absolutely nothing.

but yeah it's also bad writing

when I make some garlic infused oil for pasta I use 2-3 bulbs, cannot take people seriously who talk in units of cloves

a whole bulb in curries at least, sometimes three depending on my supplies

I don't know if my taste buds are knackered from smoking, but I cannot sense the taste of garlic on the 1-2 cloves in a recipe range.

idk i could never be accused of under-seasoning my food but i could see using two cloves to make cabbage because i like the taste of cabbage, and i use 5 or so cloves in curry. but this it not about the garlic quantity it's about sam's ability to stuff every sentence he writes with these annoying and meaningless flourishes.

I always imagine it's these so relaxed, we're-only-throwing-together-a-simple-supper dudes who would be simmering with barely contained fury if you were cooking in their kitchen and chose the wrong salad bowl.

i have fantasized so many times about doing a podcast of his columns where i just read them in the most earnest midwest accent possible.

But if you’ve got a little bit of gas left in your tank? How about putting together the very best charcuterie board (above) for dinner tonight?

emails from certain co-workers

harbl i just shuddered visibly

surely homeopathic use of cloves has some benefit. Keeps fractions of vampires away at least?

BUt I do tend to use one whole bulb in a meal preparation.

I don't think UI have had the chance to work out what a hate read would be, spending too much time reading through part of what I want to read for itself and surrounded by loads of other possible great reads. Do you use a hate read as a palate cleanser or at least resetter?
So you have a baseline to compare good writing to?
I do remember reading a music journalist I cant read and Hilary Mantel in quick juxtaposition and thinking the quality difference was mammoth. But find it odd that anybody would have the time to actively hate read. Would be good to have the time to read everything one would actually want to. is there a level of masochism involved?

I tend to use a whole bulb of garlic at a time as well stevo, it's the key to immortality imo.

That’s not what John Retoul says

I've got the power to weaken the undead knave, just by breathing on him!

apparently when you crush garlic there is a chemical reaction that alters its cellular makeup and makes it very good for your health.