Editors have a really hard job, and the good ones can make something unreadable readable, and the great ones can make something unreadable into something good. But they're basically invisible, until someone tries to write without one.

Also thinking of this great article on the neuroscience and psychology of limerence for some… desire today. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

In honor of the latest weeklong blowjob cycle, I present to you my 2011 attempt at satirizing Washington as one big bisexual orgy. It seemed so over the top at the time but this timeline has, again, surpassed the limits of even my sick imagination. www.huffpost.com/entry/the-so...

Me to my partner: My cousin’s coming! Him: K Me: She’s my dad’s sister’s son’s kid, so my first cousin once removed because her dad is my cousin but I call him my uncle because he’s older than my dad but her uncle from her mom’s side is also my aunt’s ex but she’s also my cousin not my aunt Him: 🤯

100% not violating any NDAs but one time I worked for a start up that was enamored with a substacker and they had a meeting and she openly asked for a branded hoodie.

In 2021, I traced the rise of anti vaccine advocacy in conservative circles back to the aughts, and the development of a vaccine originally only available to women to prevent cancer. www.damemagazine.com/2021/07/14/t...

I realize it is part of being young to crave something beyond the grudging respect of your peers but I truly believe that a huge percentage of Americans of all ages need to internalize the idea that you are not entitled to have other people like you, even if you like them or crave their regard.

Real talk, Cracker Barrel could keep the new logo if it brought back the Sunrise Sampler but you can’t force people to chose either grits or baked apples, that’s not right.

$2300 is not a rent stabilized apartment in Astoria. (Please don’t move here and raise non-stabilized prices, though.) Also many landlords here are long time owners and don’t gouge us on rent increases year over year, preferring stable income to high turnover rates that ultimately cost more.

I’m old enough to remember why. 20+ years ago, the Post set up its digital news operations in Arlington, Virginia (a “right-to-work” aka non-union state) to avoid the unionization of its digital reporters and editors. It included an online opinion section. (They joined the Guild in 2010.)

The table next to us in this higher end steakhouse was farting SO BAD the waiter brought us a second dessert. (At first I thought it was just bad Brussel sprouts but SADLY I was so wrong. That man has stains.)

The Q hasn’t gone to Mamdani’s Astoria district since the 2nd Ave extension opened and this guy can’t even pop out of the N at Ditmars station to go to the Sweet Spot. He gonna drive by here via the Kosciusko in a ‘32 Packard and wave at us again? nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/04/28/c...

“I don’t know how long it took—ten seconds, maybe fifteen—for the house to come apart." During the early-morning hours of July 4, the Guadalupe River pulled senior editor Aaron Parsley and six members of his family into its waters. Read his firsthand account:

Still remember the time Dennis had me on his radio show and then cut my mic because he said that all men, without (his) God, would be like rape-y chickens in the barnyard and i guffawed because it turned out I had a more optimistic view of masculinity and men than him.

I get a LOT of dumb shit via Act Blue because my phone number pre 2001 was a landline owned by a now-elderly Black man in DC named Frederick but this shit takes the fucking cake SIR

Including East Elmhurst and Maspeth?! Jesus Christ, the East River is not the Pacific fucking Ocean, and there’s 700,000 more people here than in Manhattan.

LMFAO “looks terrible” I live in Astoria and despite the fact that Mamdani is both significantly younger than many of my friends and married, he’s gotten hit on a LOT by women my age and younger in the last 18 months, including one of my long time acquaintances. (He is always politely uninterested.)

This is not, in fact, how LLMs are trained which is probably one of the issues with their performance on questions like “how many r’s are in strawberry”.

The thing about this story is that, when I was a high schooler in the 90s, I volunteered for and eventually ran (and won a statewide award for) this exact program that served elderly people who mostly lived alone in their homes. It’s gone now. www.wsj.com/health/welln...

Apropos of nothing, I’m running underground with the moles, digging them holes.

If there is one major thing I have learned in life, is is that there are Lyrics People and there are Musical Vibes People who not only do not know why in the world Lyrics People are upset at how they assign absolutely incorrect meanings to pop music songs, but will never agree when you tell them.

Mark Harmon once glared at me from the opposite side of a revolving door.

I’m a bitch A bad writer I’m a loser Not a fighter Got an egg shape o’er my brain The Dems should never change I’m in Hell You’re so cruel I’m so mad that I’m not cool You know that everything was better in my day!

Some quotes are too good to cut on.ft.com/4jkssZ0

It’s not the em-dash, it’s the em-dash without spaces (not WaPo style) and the fact that it’s not an en-dash (British variant). www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

The closest thing “the left” has to a Joe Rogan (if you define this as “influential talker” in general and aren’t reducing this to “man who other men will listen to”) is Rachel Maddow, who (like Rogan) got her start in entertainment (morning zoo radio) and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.

I had a client once who, every night, would follow porn stars and an implicit part of my job was to log in every morning and unfollow all the X-rated accounts. If I failed to do this, questions would be raised by him in meetings about why he was following these accounts and if he had been hacked.

After talking to a lot of Trump voters at the 2017 inauguration and hearing them all repeat a few stock quotes from what I eventually realized was The Apprentice, I pitched my editor on a total rewatch but you couldn’t stream it, torrent it or even buy old DVDs of it on eBay until last month.

The big thing you need to take from Biden’s diagnosis is that you need to encourage the (older) men in your life to get regular PSA tests and that prostate cancer is not an inevitability, it is not inherently slow-growing, and that there are MANY treatment options.

Nailed it. No notes.

Not only was this widely known among opinion editors, but it was seen as a perk by many writers (and was framed as such when they were being recruited) and it is a standard that some columnists (and some opinion editors’ bosses) expected at other publications.

Editor: You get the pictures for the air traffic controller story? Photographer: Sure did boss. Real fucking sexy just like you asked. Editor: What

I come from a long line of people, on both sides of my family, with incredibly fucked-up teeth that are clearly some function of genetics and I am middle aged and have neither a cavity nor a lowered IQ (or whatever BS they are saying) because of fluoridated water and childhood fluoride treatments.

This is a fantastic idea for an oral history, but it's also a lovely celebration by/of a bunch of practical FX and stunt dudes nerding out on what sounds like a magical opportunity to destroy a ton of shit.

Just saw a man returning 2 Mother’s Day flower bouquets at the (low price) grocery store. He bought them at noon.

Breaking: The FDA has approved a vaginal swab that will allow people to screen for HPV — which causes almost all cases of cervical cancer — at home instead of getting a Pap smear, which can be painful and/or traumatic for many

In 1870, the Catholic Church declared that, on matters of faith and morals, official declarations of the Pope are infallible. The belief in papal infallibility is a pretty major tenet of the faith and it’s not one the Vatican, uh, leaves up for debate.

My old friend and former TPM colleague Eric Lach!!

young men, playing video games all day will not make you happy. only getting married and having a family will make you truly and permanently content, as illustrated by the collective output of 20th century male novelists

In a strip mall in Tampa after the 2012 RNC, I had seared scallops over linguine in a saffron lavender pan sauce because I randomly googled anywhere with a decent wine list. A one-night-only special in a place I never intended to remember the name of and still don’t.

Just watched a man get his whole ass suitcase searched at the airport over a full size can of Gillette shaving foam ($2.50 retail). Why would you let someone root through your dirty underwear for $2.50?! (He 100% knew it was there, too. His mom tried it for a can of ginger ale.)

If you have to aver that a piece which satirizes one person’s real dinner with Trump with the tale of the writer’s own fictionalized dinner with Hitler is not comparing Trump to Hitler, I guess I am not really sure who you you think is going to believe you. (The writer assuredly does not.)

Between this and the pig face-fucking thing, I feel like some people should maybe stop shit talking state schools. www.theguardian.com/politics/201...

I worked on the margins of US trade policy from 2000 (as an intern) until 2006 and goddamn does this administration’s ideas feel like every crank who all but got eye-rolled out of the coalitions back then. Like, we’re talking about recycled anti talking points from the Australian FTA debate bad.

People in other countries pay less for meds because they have price controls, which the industry has successfully lobbied against here.

As someone who grew up in a blue collar town, and who temped in factories my HS classmates went to work in instead of going to college, I find the romanticization of factory work by the wealthy, powerful college-educated scions of privilege (+ JD Vance who ran away from all that) absolutely wild.

You can, in fact, move to a small town and take a factory job at any time. Just might recommend first going to a small town like the one I grew up and worked at a factory in and asking the workers what their dreams for their own kids are. That said, driving those little forklifts is pretty fun.

SCOTUS ruled 25 years ago in Crosby v National Foreign Trade Council that this was roundly unconstitutional so he may be seeking these but our trading partners aren’t going to spend years negotiating deals that can never take effect. Souter wrote the unanimous opinion. www.oyez.org/cases/1999/9...