February 22, 2019

Sometimes I feel I must make a note of articles I saw and didn't read.

Just this morning, before 5 a.m., I saw, but did not read, in New York Magazine:
And this, in Slate:
There are plenty of things I see and don't read. But sometimes my non-reading feels like active resistance, and I need to tell you about it.

39 comments:

stevew said...

Your unconscious mind is successfully filtering out the click bait articles. That first one is yawn inducing, the second just seems really weird. I'm tempted to read them just to see if my first impression is correct.

BUMBLE BEE said...

Good call there Prof!

Equipment Maintenance said...

It would have been funny if Smollett's "attackers" had been wearing those masks instead of the ski masks.

Howard said...

Good for you Ann. This is 99% of my news consumption. I'm sure rhh can regale us with the finer points of filters.

Ralph L said...

So much for bears and otters.

tim in vermont said...

I tried to read the Trump one, I didn’t get far enough to read if Trump was Pinochet or Hitler, but you get the gist. Turns out that Obama can declare an emergency over a dozen times and it’s no threat to the Constitution because he only ever did good things.

rhhardin said...

Pussy play would have gotten clicks.

Jersey Fled said...

Does anyone read New York Magazine?

Back when my family owned a couple of hair salons, magazines like New York used to show up even though we never subscribed to them. They went straight to the trash.

Phil 314 said...

So much bullshit, so little time.

Better spent taking snaps during the Blue hour.

narciso said...

New York magazine allowed Wallace and schmidt's anonymous defamation of the huntress as well as the white washing of the ground zero mosque and covered Weinstein with a pillow so.

Charlie said...

From the Slate article:

"And for still others, the best way to spend free time is rolling around on floor mats with each other while wearing puppy masks, collars, and tail-shaped butt plugs, barking and sniffing like real pups."

Paco Wové said...

My eyes! My eyes! Jeezus....

For what it's worth, a very interesting read on Scott Alexander's Slate Star Codex blog today, about the Internet and the decline of reader comment sections. It falls into the "yet another reason why we can't have nice things" category. It's incredibly long, natch.

Paco Wové said...

...for some reason, the direct link to the SSC post doesn't work, but it's the thing on the main page right now (Feb 22, 2019).

tim in vermont said...

Yeah, one of the tags was “Things I will regret writing."

gilbar said...

why did it 'take so long' to see Trump's weakness?
That's EASY! it's on account of because of the fact that he was a Democrat for so long
No one saw his weakness until he came out as a non democrat

chuck said...

Thanks for not reading those articles for us, we appreciate it!

rcocean said...

Myself, I stopped reading anti-Trump articles like: "trump aides worry he'll be out-foxed by N.Korea" or "Why flattery works in Trump foreign policy" or "Jim Riesch tries to calm Republican furious at Trump".

And anything regarding the Mueller investigation including story no. 1,543 about how "Mueller's got him this time".

Any anti-trump MSM article or story that quotes anonymous sources is worthless.

Greg P said...

"Mentorship"?

So that's what the "gay community" calls child abuse?

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

I’m not an intellectual but I must say, the Internet has made me feel like one. Even something as simple as reading a P. G. Wodehouse short story seems rarified, discerning, and transgressively sophisticated, given what passes for thought on the Internet.

Bob Boyd said...

Slate missed an opportunity. The headline could have been:

'Trump's War On Mentorship Has These Pup Play Enthusiasts Howling Mad'

Do better, Slate.

narciso said...

It was a magazine that had Tom Wolfe on the letterhead:

https://www.nysun.com/national/real-scandal-of-trump-term-starts-to-unravel/90585/?fbclid=IwAR26EQGV-Mk9xhY5wKx3J3UdvsaWRFCwFbWFHWCicoZDu7dqV6PoqofZHFA#.XHAPWrrzVxk.facebook

walter said...

Does that go on in the bowels of Woofs?

MBunge said...

You know, liberals called Reagan dumb and they called George W. Bush dumb but there's something different with Trump. There's a palpable desperation in the attacks on Trump's smarts and even sanity.

Mike

narciso said...

It recalls when I read much of mccarrys work, soecially better Angel's, there you might call it Mallory derangement syndrome.

Gunner said...

The Left wanted to do pup play with Hillary as the Big Dog.

narciso said...

Mccarry was an Irish ex army officer in the 50s and 60s overwhelmingly wasp company, the hero of his early work is an decidedly urbane brahmin, but he suffers the fate of John Delaney the fellow imprisoned in China, only for a decade.

narciso said...

He even dwells into conspiracy theory coming up with another motive behind the Kennedy assassination, that's why he ends up in Vietnam

narciso said...

That's a broad hint, in his later work he elaborates on the anti intelligence sentiment in the media, like last supper.

narciso said...

A recent work like the voluminous big bang that I referred to before, has some of the neurotic sensibility of delillo and pynchon

narciso said...

But sans understanding Howard hunt was a character a little like Christopher, although he had less pedigree ironically he hired bill Buckley who in turn worked with the Latin version of Whitaker chambers eudocio ravines

narciso said...

Buckley was also a character a little like Sherman McCoy, an fellow with old manet elan but new money roots, his father was a Texas wildcatter, in the vein of the protagonist of American son.

narciso said...

Can you imagine anything for trite and barique:
http://coreyrobin.com/articles/

stevew said...

"why did it 'take so long' to see Trump's weakness?"

I think I got about as far into the Trump article as Tim did. Honest to god, here's what I've come away with:

Trump's main weakness is that he isn't the competent authoritarian that all the smart lefty political junkies said he was. And as Tim said, Trump is super evil and anti-Constitution because he declared an emergency.

Maybe toward the end, which I won't read, they make the point that the emergency declaration and its inherent violation of the Constitution subjects Trump to impeachment.

Henry said...

@paco -- That's a very interesting article.

Oddly enough, I had just read a couple of the AI articles on the same blog earlier this morning.

Matt said...

"short term-ism of the news cycle and the longue durée-ism of the academy."

Longue-dureeism? At least they didn't add an "e" at the end. What's the French phrase for pretentious fuck?

tcrosse said...

Longue-duréeism is de trop. But a lot of Canadian writers pepper their prose with French expressions. Even Mark Steyn does it.

narciso said...

Interesting bowman doesn't dwell much of David attlee Phillip's another character almost out of delillo, who I have a tangential connection but I didnt know it at the time.

PM said...

Mentorship? You mean like NAMBLA?

Steve in Toronto said...

Just when you thought that the once great Slate was perfectly content to be a bad imitation of Salon they decide they would rather be a bad imitation of Vice.