New Yorker magazine alert thread

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.

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

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...)

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

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???

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

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!

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

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.

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!

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

i guess i still don't! the avg new yorker reader could have dictated this article in their sleep 15 years ago

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.

t-pain?

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.

a bit sad that those who should know better would line up like this to demonize a working-class woman working extra hours in a broken, male-dominated system, but ingrained misogyny and class discrimination runs deep even in the U.K. I guess

the (male) doctors in charge said she must have done something bad and so it is

It doesn't negate the possibility of having ineffective assistance of counsel (a basis for overturning verdicts in the US system, if the ineffectiveness prejudices the outcome), or the wrong outcome in this case

could you summarize your posts in this thread then? other than dogged defending of a clearly underinformed person I’m confused

there was also something about a celebrity comic I’m still unclear about

did piers morgan have a special on this recently?

a bit sad that those who should know better would line up like this to demonize a working-class woman working extra hours in a broken, male-dominated system, but ingrained misogyny and class discrimination runs deep even in the U.K. I guess

― brony james (k3vin k.), Monday, 20 May 2024 bookmarkflaglink

That's not my read on boxedjoy's posting at all. I think almost everyone here (and certainly UK posters) can see that class and gender dynamic.

that was a teasing retort to the left field minhaj non-sequitur

Ok not read it.

I would hope Letby can get a better defence team for the upcoming trial and that some of the defects in the medical evidence as highlighted in the piece might come up.

Beyond that I am amazed at the certainty many of you have of her innocence. This is just one piece that has possibly left things out and highlighted others to fit another narrative.

look I’m a physician, not a lawyer, I’m no legal expert. I know bad medical reasoning when I see it and the medical/statistical evidence in this case is (tragically) laughable. I don’t expect anyone here to be able to grasp that.

I’m mostly poking fun at the (from an american POV) biographical evidence against her that some are defending. and wondering whether that speaks to a pathological addiction to tabloid news and fealty to institutions that is characteristically british

there's some later replies that I'm still working out my response to - ufo's "guilty til proven innocent" take on my perspective doesn't seem entirely unfair to me - but I'm going to immediately push back on the idea that misogyny is at the heart of this, when narrative reported here was of predominantly male senior managers protecting her from police investigations in the first instance, trying to deal with it internally instead

also, nearly all of my understanding of this has come from the BBC, the Guardian and the independent, and the newspapers in the local area. No news source is perfect but they're not exactly the same as The Sun and Daily Star. Their coverage has mostly* eschewed the Letby personal gossip, with the story being one of how an institution was so weak and underfunded and poorly managed that this happened - not, as is suggested, that the institution itself was infallible

i don't have an issue with raising the possibility that the article was cherry-picking things but k3vin is absolutely right about that quoted section of boxedboy's post being 'not serious' and felicity's post seemed pretty tangential to that.

i don't think there is much of an issue with the article leaving out things that it did though - it raises serious questions about the medical evidence that backs up the idea that crimes actually occurred, which is the core of the case and without that everything else isn't evidence of anything much at all. the only thing i can think of that may have been worth addressing is the claim she was seen attacking a baby - that was at least a claim of something more substantial than all the circumstantial evidence that doesn't actually do anything to demonstrate any crimes occurred and can be interpreted however one likes.

Beyond that I am amazed at the certainty many of you have of her innocence.

Can't speak for anyone else but I'm not certain about anything. Based on the New Yorker story it sounds like the actual evidence for a crime even having been committed seems a bit thin — and the evidence that this one particular nurse is a serial baby-killer seems even thinner. That doesn't mean she didn't do it, just that I have a hard time seeing a burden of proof having been met.

My gut feeling remains that she probably did it but that doesn't change the fact that all the evidence is circumstantial and now it seems also pretty problematic. I'm guessing the conviction will eventually be overturned, many years down the track.

The New Yorker piece, standing alone, appears to be an extremely damning expose for the prosecution and defense. I defer to k3vin k's impressions as a medical practitioner, a field in which I have no expertise.

From a US legal perspective, it's difficult to wrap my head around the idea that the defense did not call its medical expert, or that the defendant might not get even a first appeal as of right. But mine is a US perspective, and to me why the perspectives of those in the UK who have followed the case over a sustained period of time and are bringing up other facts that were not addressed in the New Yorker article are of interest as well.

I've read that it's very hard to get UK medical experts to testify in these kinds of cases, following a case where an expert witness got struck off for giving misleading evidence. So sometimes defence teams fly in an expert from the US, but obviously you need money to do that

USA: kinda weird you can’t read this article
U.K.: But she did it
USA: no I don’t care about this case I just mean it’s weird you can’t read this article, censorship etc
U.k.: amazed you consider her innocent!

In the US, some of the best experts do not want to offer their expertise at trial because the entire job of the opposing counsel is to tear down the basis of the expert's credibility and for some it is simply not worth the profession hit to their reputation. It's a massive flaw in the adversarial system.

xp why not conflate the posts of as many as ten different people into one, that’ll help

i haven't seen a satisfactory explanation from anyone as to why the defence didn't call the medical witness they did have ready, that's one of the most baffling aspects of the whole case.

USA: kinda weird you can’t read this article
U.K.: But she did it
USA: no I don’t care about this case I just mean it’s weird you can’t read this article, censorship etc
U.k.: amazed you consider her innocent!

― brimstead, Monday, 20 May 2024 9:24 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol otm

"i don't think there is much of an issue with the article leaving out things that it did though"

Americans are crying about a miscarriage of justice when they would've executed her by now.

But at least we would've been able to read a moving, highly literary account about this.

Tangentially related: Amanda Knox recently wrote this article about a convicted murderer she campaigned on behalf of, who she now believes is guilty

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/jens-soring-amanda-knox-case-wright-report/678255/

xpost RIP Casey Anthony

I just read that telegraph article from about 100 posts ago and it is a truly *fascinating* document lol

xp - always a lucky one

the new yorker is crazy obsessed with england lately … there was that article about the tories, then the baby article, now one about the british museum…

i just think it's nice the new yorker is bringing us and uk ilxors together in a good old fashioned clusterfuck, it's been too long!

We've had an American talking to Brits about class. That's got to be a first in these clusterfucks!

now one about the british museum…

Knew without looking that this had to be by Rebecca Mead. (She lives in London and frequently writes about British cultural stuff.)

We've had an American talking to Brits about class. That's got to be a first in these clusterfucks!

― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, May 21, 2024 12:37 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

if this is about me, I was “taking the piss” with that post

Thought that was the nurse's job.

"taking the piss" vs "calculating a p-value"

Rebecca Mead wrote that awful piece about how she hates it when her children read children's books, and that's always coloured my perception of her as a bit of a [raspberry noise] even though lots of her work is just fine