New Yorker magazine alert thread

i used to read the main articles in every issue but let most of my 2010 issues pile up without reading anything.

if you read something good in a new issue of the New Yorker, post about it here.

The review of the new Mao biographies.

Denby's Joan Crawford essay.

A trick to not letting them pile up: if you're a subscriber, read a couple of articles online at work.

Man I've thought abt starting this thread a few times

this is why i don't have a subscription

Subscription to the print version: $39.95
Subscription to the iPad version: $234.53

http://runawayjuno.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/thumbs-up-low-res.jpg

AYYYY WE MAKING INTERNET MONEY

http://www.gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/490177_o.gif

alright enough

Anything related to Mexico in the past year's issues has been pretty compelling, mostly by William Finnegan and Alec Wilkinson. The Jane Mayer article about the Koch brothers and the discreet establishment of the tea party is definitely worth reading. This week's Gopnik piece on postmodern desserts is a good read, too.

Date and month/description of the cover of the issues you're referring to would be helpful!

George Packer's essay on the decadence of the Senate was illuminating.

Oh, and, both from around August, the profiles of Gil-Scott Heron and John Lurie.

A trick to not letting them pile up: if you're a subscriber, read a couple of articles online at work.

― Gus Van Sotosyn (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, December 31, 2010 3:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

^otm

links would be nice too

recent fire:

Joyce Carol Oates, Personal History, “A Widow’s Story,” The New Yorker, December 13, 2010, p. 70

David Owen, Annals of Environmentalism, “The Efficiency Dilemma,” The New Yorker, December 20, 2010, p. 78

only abstracts are online for nonsubscribers for those i think

Some articles are popular enough to remain accessible to all (e.g. the Packer article on the Senate to which I linked above).

here's the one abt the koch bros - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/08/30/100830fa_fact_mayer

A thread like this for all (literary/current event) magazines would be pretty cool.

Joyce Carol Oates article devastated me.

John Lurie article blew my mind.

dessert article was excellent, thanks for the recc

so john lurie is insane huh

The review of the new Mao biographies.

seconded

Gopnik's desserts article was like a magazine version of the No Reservations episode in Spain.

Which is not meant as a negative at all! They make good companion pieces.

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.

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.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/12/13/101213fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=all

^ totally recommend that

yeah i read that one the other day, great stuff

it was interesting, lol scientists

i liked this one, seemed like a great premise for movie: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/11/29/101129fa_fact_collins

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

The Patel story was amazing.

yeah needs a good 3rd act tho.

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

if anyone subscribes then feel free to webmail me the china/freud article kthx

I would, but I can't figure out how to turn it into a pdf or another webmail suitable file.

just copy and paste the text? or is it a different viewer thing.....no worries if that's the case

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.

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

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.

Lamp, thanks for the Gawande 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

^agreed. kind of why i started this thread so i knew which actual magazine to pick up and start reading.

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

OK a TA I had in college had a poem published a few issues ago, woah.

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

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.

first thing I read in the new yorker:

long depressing articles about politics or global affairs

Ha I religiously read the restaurant reviews too.

first thing I read in the new yorker:

long depressing articles about politics or global affairs

― A So-Called Pulitzer price winner (President Keyes)

ha, same.

Followed by Justin Chang's reviews.

as for the archives on jazz, I've really been digging this three issue-spanning profile on Ellington from 1944. So cool to get a sense how he was seen at his peak. Starts here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1944/06/24/duke-ellington-profile-the-hot-bach-i

The only thing I almost never read is fiction. I also don't make a point of reading the poetry, although it occasionally catches my eye in the middle of the page. I usually at least skim the rest, although I sometimes skip long features about international subjects (sorry, Jon Lee Anderson!) or medium-sized articles in the back of the book about long-dead writers I have scant interest in.

Agreed that Tables for Two is reliably worth reading, especially since Hannah Goldfield became the regular columnist a few years ago. And now it's Helen Rosner, who's pretty good, too. I sometimes miss Goldfield in that space, but glad that she's still on staff, writing longer articles about food and dining.

Everyone seems very proud of themselves for not reading the fiction. I admit it's usually not to my taste, but I will give stories a try now and then.

The Tessa Hadley story in this week's issue was at least as interesting as that article about the Surgeon to the Stars.

i'm not proud of most of this, but it's how i manage getting through each week's issue and keep myself sane. also i'm not that interested in short fiction in general, though they often have authors i like in the NYer.

i am proud of never reading david sedaris pieces, that guy sucks

i'm not proud of most of this, but it's how i manage getting through each week's issue

Same

If you cancel and wait them out, they'll eventually send a better deal. I cancelled in spring 2023 and after about 10 months, I got mailed an offer to get 12 months for $50. I'm a pretty casual New Yorker reader so the gap in my subscription doesn't bother me

ditto and we didn’t even wait 10 months it was more like 1 or 2 if even. my bf was the one who did all the negotiating over the phone but we got a drastically reduced subscription
― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Tuesday, June 25, 2024 6:31 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

if you have a .edu address you get a nice discount too — I think my rate is 69.99/yr

I jump to the restaurant review and any long-form pieces about scammers or people putting themselves in uncomfortable & inadvisable situations (y'know, trekking across Antarctica or spending millions of dollars getting to the bottom of the ocean, etc).

I go right to pieces about like Ja Rule opening a nail salon or Slick Rick's line of magnet poetry.

And he might be reelected for decades.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, June 24, 2024 5:02 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I wouldn’t worry about this too much. he’s in his mid-50s, is 6 foot 8 and overweight, has heart failure, and already had a stroke

also, a terrible driver

I sometimes skip long features about international subjects (sorry, Jon Lee Anderson!)

Anderson is my current favorite of the staff writers. Always amazed how he gets through the most dangerous parts of the world, reports on whatever complicated conflict is going on there, and gets out. I mean, he got to Haiti and met with Barbecue last year!

I did like his Personal History about hitchhiking around the world as a teenager in the '70s.

people putting themselves in uncomfortable & inadvisable situations

this one was really good:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/01/29/the-woman-who-spent-five-hundred-days-in-a-cave

Yes exactly right, a perfect example of the form.

I wouldn’t worry about this too much. he’s in his mid-50s, is 6 foot 8 and overweight, has heart failure, and already had a stroke

― brony james (k3vin k.), Tuesday, June 25, 2024 2:42 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

also, a terrible driver

― A So-Called Pulitzer price winner (President Keyes),

otm

Back when I subscribed - I dropped off last fall because it got too expensive and I wasn’t reading enough for it to be worth it - was largely about the movie reviews, the music blurbs, the book reviews, the occasional big feature. The poetry sometimes, the fiction less often, when it was a fiction writer I was into.

What I pretty much always read and was always reliably delighted by: Peter Schjeldahl, the GOAT.

Same.

I sometimes skip long features about international subjects (sorry, Jon Lee Anderson!)

this is crazy! who else is doing what he’s doing? I’d pay for a quarterly with a single 30 page JLA feature per issue

he really is one of the best

I'm more likely to read him if I'm keeping up with the magazine week to week, as opposed to trying to get through a stack of back issues.

I try to read as much as I can online.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/02/lucy-letby-found-guilty-of-trying-to-kill-two-hour-old-baby

I read it through my local library via Libby app.

Shocking case, defence were negligible in not challenging more robustly the statistics used to convict her.

― Dan Worsley, Wednesday, May 15, 2024 4:17 AM bookmarkflaglink

Same. It's free with a lot of local library cards. https://libbyapp.com/

Now Letby is proper locked up for lifetimes we have opening of restrictions:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/jul/09/lucy-letby-evidence-experts-question

if we're going to discuss her it should be in a new thread.

I posted as an aftermath of the discussion here. Fell there is not much left to say but sure if anyone wants to.

How about that Last Rave book excerpt though, yeesh, sure makes you feel great about your own life choices and judgements of character huh.

It got Bruce a NYer shoutout though -
Thread of Bruce

was in london last week & none of my friends there think she's innocent, all mostly think that americans getting their info from the new yorker article don't really understand the situation etc. was interesting to hear, as well as somewhat surprising

I don’t have any british friends apart from the lovely posters on this board but it does seem like a peculiar situation, like a culture of normal people you might go to the pub with or catch a soccer match, but also they consume news like north koreans

Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (10185 of them)

Why I hate the Daily Mail, as distilled into one edition
Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (2871 of them)

like a culture of normal people you might go to the pub with or catch a soccer match, but also they consume news like north koreans

― brony james (k3vin k.), Tuesday, 9 July 2024 bookmarkflaglink

That's right

had any of them actually read the new yorker article (getting around the geoblocking) or were they just dismissing it out of hand?

There's a long piece today in the Daily Telegraph, of all places, so the doubting experts are finally getting a hearing. Regardless of her guilt or innocence the conviction is clearly unsafe, although the molasses-like pace of British justice means it'll probably be overturned sometime in the 2040s.

the telegraph article: https://archive.fo/Sooys

seems really conclusive

excellent timing

it’s a bit mind bending where you this high minded idea of not wanting to bias the jury but then when you think about it it the jury is british people reading british journalists, it’s hard to predict how things might hypothetically shake out if there was a more normal situation going on with regard to basic press freedoms and things of that nature

it would for sure be a bit of a blind leading the blind type of deal but I’m not convinced it would be worse, we should run an experiment on them though for sure

you can tell I’m very for sure about my last post for sure

Really enjoying these "If I was a member of Britisher jury at the Lucy Letby trial" stand up comedy routine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/magazine/russell-lee-maze-murder-conviction-dna.html

this story felt like an American counterpart to Lucy Letby, with innocent people sentenced to life in prison because of a sick infant.

There's a thread about it by the writer here:

I want to tell you a story about what happened when an assistant DA, Sunny Eaton, tried to undo a decades-old conviction—one that her own office had prosecuted.

The conviction rested on a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.

An appeals court recently called SBS “junk science.”🧵 pic.twitter.com/tMIVsUHUqd

— Pamela Colloff (@pamelacolloff) July 20, 2024

pirate article in the new issue was a fun and interesting read

arrr

That Russell Maze article is sickening and infuriating. Nothing like a miscarriage of justice to make a horrible situation even worse.

yeah I can't even imagine how the Mazes could feel