New Yorker magazine alert thread

"condescending" might be putting it too strongly, it's an instance of the house style (and some pretty obvious editing iirc) not being equal to a condition that is some kind of deep legacy of underdevelopment, poverty & war.

I liked the Balkan kidney disease piece, but I'm generally a fan of Elif Batuman's work so maybe I'm biased. I didn't find it at all condescending. The personal connection through her father made it more emotionally resonant I thought. It was kind of inspiring to read about these researchers who keep plugging away for decades on some obscure disease, but also kind of melancholy in its acknowledgement of the lack of answers.

nyu prez sounds like a freak

hes super freaky

The hugging!

Truman Show article is interesting enough but it's obviously just there to convince me I'm not in a reality simulation so is a bit on the nose. Nice try though and the rest of the issue is impressively realistic.

otm

lol

is nobody mentioning the line in that piece where the guy's parents are like you have to PROMISE to go to rehab THE SECOND you get back from the three-day jam-band festival

haha yes

until then have a great time honey

lol s1ocki

lol yes and then just briefly mention dad is a music promoter at the same festival

bustle.com piece is hilarious

would read the shit outta this site if it was just verbatim transcriptions of the guy's blue-sky-thinking business platitudes

With his puffy face and untrimmed hair, he resembles a giant six-year-old.

i liked how repeatedly everyone talked about how bleacher report is the worst site

Nixon-Kissinger going ham on India reminds me what a gift to humanity those tapes are.

women in their twenties care abt things? news to me

Breaking bad dude piece is ok

'let's go drive by your childhood house' is so trite tho

Haha yeah

the cranston piece is good but it felt like kinda a missed opportunity to me, like there is this fascinating Generic Dad quality to him that they didn't quite get to the bottom of, he has a motto, he makes those weird score-charts, he is all charmingly doofy. I remember hearing him on Marc Maron, answering questions about Seinfeld w like "JERRY SEINFELD. FUNNY GUY." like I just wish it had exclusively zeroed in on this avuncular quirk & its perfect cohesion w Walter White but maybe that's just me

hey also I like the staff photographer guy now

it was odd to read the cranston piece one week after the claire danes piece. they were kind of the same article. great actors in great shows! took a long time to get where they are! crazy parents! commonly praised as the nicest person in show business! but i guess those are all standard celeb profile tropes.

this is the worst cover I can remember I think

it's pretty bad. jesse looks like peyton manning!

um, that's not jesse

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Bashar_al-Assad_(cropped).jpg

lmao @ myself (although tbf i'd been watching nothing but football and breaking bad for the previous 15 hours)

hah

its actually tom brady

At 4 A.M. Afrojack left the stage, dropped his shoes off in his room, and headed to an after-party in the suite of a friend, the French d.j. Cedric Gervais, who had performed at a different Wynn club that night. A few members of the Denver Broncos were there, and a young cosmetology student in black short shorts went around offering small white tablets of MDMA, or molly, the drug of choice for many clubgoers. (Gervais denies throwing a party.)

eileen fisher piece is bizarre

i loved it

Me too! And I've always thought of Eileen Fisher at the Brand for Women Who Have Just Given Up

the afrojack/vegas thing was a fun read but i wish it had been given to sanneh or even sfj

From the Bible onward, two men having intercourse has been viewed as more disturbing to the social order than two women doing whatever it is that lesbians do.

That sounds like Gopnik.

i thought this adelle waldman essay was really good, and reminded me that i have a copy of her new novel that i should probably read

i love that talk of the town piece revealing jimmy webb as a huge concorde nerd

warning: new one has a truly revolting piece about SF tech dudes

wow this tech dude piece is making me want to destroy everything

Who is Nathan Heller?

i'm guessing a journalist, given that he has written a longform article in the new yorker, but i could be wrong

He's film & TV critic for Vogue, writes for Slate, New York, the New Yorker and others. Frighteningly sharp imo.

Used to write for the Atlantic, and before that the AV Club, I think? I seem to remember him writing something okay but too long about John Kerry. Is it the writing that's gross, or the subject?

Kinda both.

Did anyone else like the Joshua Ferris fiction? I read it before I noticed the author (happens to me a lot on the Kindle, for some reason), and was like WHOA that was something.

Please let this SF article be a Stephen Glass/Jayson Blair thing, exposed when someone sends it to the Third Eye Blind guy...

I mean, the overall premise is interesting, and a look into the Summer of Love (or probably even the 1849 prospectors) would feature a lot of flakes...

this is unbearable

the logo should be a graffiti mural of the word CULTURE being pushed forward into a butt