salon vs. slate vs. atlantic

lol carry on then

so many of the Slate writers/editors have between 3-5 kids. It's like they're breeding the next generation of link-bait generators.

I guess this a continuation of Slate's war on dogs:

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/a_fine_whine/2013/05/i_hate_dogs_they_re_lounging_in_our_offices_and_licking_us_at_our_cafes.html

manjoo is a sociopath for real

My first thought upon on reading that article was definitely not "this woman is right about dogs" and more "hahaha she has three kids, whatta dumbass, poor dog having to deal with this narcissistic asshole."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/08/15/canned_beer_is_better_than_bottled_beer.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2012/03/don_t_believe_coors_and_budweiser_colder_isn_t_better_.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2013/05/hoppy_beer_is_awful_or_at_least_its_bitterness_is_ruining_craft_beer_s_reputation.html

http://www.slate.com/blogs/scocca/2010/08/02/mosquitoes_prefer_people_with_beer_in_them.html

this is some jilted lover shit

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/08/27/new_york_times_noise_essay_man_needs_quiet_in_order_to_think_great_thoughts.html

in which slate presumably accidentally publishes onion parody of slate

That one almost had me applauding. There had to be a bet involved, like lunch for whoever could turn the most innocuous article into a think piece on male privilege and female oppression. Katy Waldman is a very versatile writer and she ate free that day.

this is a reprint from business insider but slate's editors obv realized its rightful place was with them:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/business_insider/2013/08/31/new_york_city_s_next_mayor_shouldn_t_be_afraid_to_say_no.html

slate's headlines have gotten SEO'd to death in the last year. e.g.

The Only Air Travel Tip That Matters
The Clearest Graphs You Will Ever See Refuting the Idea That Women Are Bad at Math
I’ve Read 500 Cover Letters for Entry-Level Media Jobs: Here are 12 tips your career counselor hasn’t told you.

If you've written 500 cover letters seeking entry-level media jobs, would that not mean you've read the same number? By the logic of that headline, wouldn't this experience then qualify one to give advice?

Oy, that cover letter article, totally screams "dysfunctional office DO NOT APPLY HERE"

i dunno that i'd call that SEO'd per se, seems more huffpostified with the ~information gap~ thing happening

its not SEO'd at all its social'd

http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2013/09/03/the_onion_not_funny_a_slatepitches_special_report.html

The Onion is no longer funny because not as afraid as Slate of charges of liberal bias says local Dave Weigel

i love that it ends with a "c'mon guys" about the SEO op-ed

"your coverage of syria is fucked up, oh and what was the joke in your description of our economic model"

tbf the onion on Syria has been p fucking dark

hes not wrong exactly, feels like theres been a preponderance of wish-fulfillment borowitz-style "Like If Your Liberal!" stuff. (all much higher quality than borowitz or the currant it goes w/o saying). my sense tho is that theyre as good and diverse as ever and i (& maybe wiegel) just *see* more of it b/c thats the stuff that blows up facebook/twitter

imagine how much of a jerk u had to be to arrange pro-war demonstrations in college in 2003

Last week, a group of students at Northwestern University in Illinois showed up at an anti-war protest to make a point that there is more than one viewpoint on this issue and that the media hasn't covered both sides.

Northwestern University junior David Weigel — also editor-in-chief of the campus' weekly Northwestern Chronicle — organized a group of about 25 people over e-mail to counter an anti-war protest on campus last week.

Weigel said students who want to oppose the anti-war — what he calls an "anti-American" movement — should invite speakers to campus and should take part in rallies to get the message out to the media that there is another corner of the debate.

"Being there at an anti-war protest, it may seem silly," he said, "but that has the effect of not letting the media treat it like a burgeoning anti-war movement …if there is no pro-America presence whatsoever, it's very easy for American reporters to just toe the anti-American line."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,79954,00.html

related: thread needs maureen tkacik's classic http://thebaffler.com/past/omniscient_gentlemen_of_the_atlantic

this slate redesign is terrible

Ha, I came here to post those words verbatim.

cover story in two days: "everyone hates the new slate redesign. here's why they're all wrong."

haha assumed the hate above was just standard complaints anything gets after a redesign but wow this really is a mess

Slate's mechanic "you're wrong/you're doing it wrong" contrarian tic of a stance as of late is so clearly a dictum from up high it's embarrassing.

The homepage is fucked, but it's always been bad. The one article page I read (on an iPad) seemed fine though.

I'm not sure why people keep wanting responsive design to happen! Don't think I've seen it done well for a magazine site yet.

it looks better on ipad than a computer screen

well i guess i can stop visiting slate. they've been pretty bad for a few years now, and this pretty much cements their worthlessness.

Has the writing for Salon.com always been this bad? Never been a heavy reader but I recall being impressed and feeling smart for reading their stuff 10-12 years ago and now I find most of it awful. Has it degraded or have I gained/lost taste?

balls otm. Buzzfeed meets tetris.

Why Low Winter Sun has already surpassed Breaking Bad

Yeah, I'm a Hipster. You Should Thank Me For It.

thanks chump

Breaking Bad: You're Watching It Wrong.

Calcium: Why You Don't Need It

Forget Mars: Why We Need a Base on the Sun

Killed By Chemical Weapons: Not as Bad as It Sounds

Does Thanksgiving Dinner Really Need Turkey?

Why Jimmy Falon is a Genius

The Eagles: America's Greatest Band

Slate has resisted any kind of sane layout for more than ten years now, why change.

But I don't think this Tetris.0 design is any worse than the others. Kinda wish all of these sites had a little Wayback Design button that would just turn everything into a reverse-chron text list of articles. Although now I guess you'd have to wade through way more bs to find what you're looking for.

Oh well, I don't really go to Slate anymore, so the fuck do I care. As long as Hang Up And Listen comes out on Monday afternoons and Political Gabfest on friday morning, Slate can continue not figuring out how to design theirs own website.

It's not Tetris, they've tumblr-ized their homepage.

the worst thing about the redesign is how prominently it sticks those "from around the web" links that fool you into clicking them... such a sleazy practice and every news site does it these days it seems

Dunno, just went over there on my laptop, got the urge to let the two middle boxes at the top fall down the whitespace underneath and watch the Hipster article, Yglesias piece, and sponsored content go *poof* at the bottom.

New Slate page should pivot and add Korobeiniki.mid as background browsing music.

content aside I would say the manner in which Salon runs their Twitter feed is by far the most irritating out of these three

Classic Salon-in-2013 pitch

http://www.salon.com/2013/10/27/the_dangerous_transphobia_of_roald_dahls_matilda/

actually laughed out loud at the last line of that.

well with this

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/the-mcrib-enjoy-your-symptom/281413/

starting here

“Pork” is a generous term, since the McRib has traditionally been fashioned from otherwise unmarketable pig parts like tripe, heart, and stomach, material that is not only cheap but also easier to mold and bind into a coherent, predetermined shape. McDonald’s accurately lists the patty’s primary ingredient as “boneless pork,” although even that’s a fairly strong euphemism. Presumably few of the restaurant’s patrons would line up for a Pressed McTripe.

Despite its abhorrence, the McRib bears remarkable similarity to another, more widely accepted McDonald’s product, the Chicken McNugget.

but end up here

Sometimes the things we believe aren’t out there in plain view, but hidden away inside. The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan gives the name objet a to the thing that elicits desire. In French the phrase means “object other” (the a stands for autre). For Lacan, our behaviors themselves may be knowable, but the causes of those behaviors aren’t always so. Objet a is not the object of desire (the thing we desire), but the thing that causes the desire to come into being (the cause of a desire for that thing). The philosopher Slavoj Žižek sometimes calls objet a the stain or defect in the world that motivates a belief or action.

… i didn't expect it to…

oh, that's why, it's ian bogost

lol i enjoyed it. good read.

what do you think of ib j.?

i think he hasn't had any very good molecular gastronomy or he wouldn't confuse it for a cheeto.

on the other hand the article has a great punchline.

i don't know, he seems like yet another huckster/hustler, but i do recall glancing through one of his things and not being turned off

i like him. he seems like he's into cool things.

That was good, the kind of thing I miss since I started wasting too much time on forums and not enough reading essays.

Paged through most of his author archive too. This hit home -- http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/hyperemployment-or-the-exhausting-work-of-the-technology-user/281149/