History is a nightmare from which the queers have awoken. Or so it would seem in Elif Batuman’s Either/Or (2022). It’s sophomore year at Harvard, and protagonist Selin is debating the merits of living either aesthetically or ethically. As in The Idiot (2017), she takes classes and reads; unlike in…
Juan B. Ramírez
Is it good to go to war with contemporary literature? It’s at least a genre. A fun place to start is Elif Batuman’s eminently spicy “ Get a Real Degree ,” but there are many other places you could loo
Welcome to Blackbird Spyplane, a reader-supported masterpiece newsletter. The B.L.I.S.S. List — a comprehensive index of Beautiful Life-Improving Spyplane Staples — is here. Check our list of the world’s 35 slappiest shops, where Spyfriends have added a ton of favorites in the comments. Mach 3+ city…
“This is the Unix philosophy: write programs that do one thing and do it well. Write programs to work together. Write programs that handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.” Computer software came to maturity in the late 1960s. While most programs to date had been written…
I just read and really enjoyed “Among the Reality Entrepreneurs,” James Duesterberg’s piece in The Point on Dimes Square, web3, and the funny characters involved in both. Duesterberg’s account of the scene, its strivings and fallacies, is rich and flecked with nice detail—he also keeps the…
Career advice as a genre is almost fatally flawed. With 160 million American workers across thousands of occupations in hundreds of industries, saying anything that is of use to all of them is practically impossible. The most common counsel is almost always too personal to be broadly applicable. My…
Books His work transformed the nature of philosophy and pushed followers toward the edge of comprehension. But his own nature, too, has long challenged comprehension. May 9, 2022 Philosophy appeared on the right-hand pages of the wartime journals; more intimate confessions, coded, were on the…
Nonfiction In “Status and Culture,” W. David Marx sets out to unravel the grand mysteries of identity. Is the internet draining status value?Credit...Martin Parr/Magnum Photos Sept. 6, 2022 AmazonApple BooksBarnes and NobleBooks-A-MillionBookshop.org When you purchase an independently reviewed book…
Bouffées d’affadissement Not long ago, I was chatting with an older friend who is a retired engineer and also something of a writer, but not of fiction. When he heard that I had just finished a translation of Madame Bovary, he said something like, “But Madame Bovary has already been translated. Why…
Guest Essay Aug. 9, 2022 Ariel DavisCredit...By Ariel Davis See more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra más de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de búsqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google As senior churchmen seek to make Catholicism palatable to…
We have generational trauma . We are living through a global pandemic . We are literally neurodivergent and a minor . We are riddled with climate grief . We are, for one reason or another, unable to c
This past Friday I attended the filming of Peter Vack’s new movie, www.RachelOrmont.com, and I found myself in a literal theater of cruelty self-destruction psychosis. What I thought was going to be a “filmed party” where I would be interviewed for 60 seconds and then float around observing people…
Books A crop of new books reconsiders feminism’s stance toward men. August 1, 2022 Two recent books argue that feminism should pay attention to male suffering.Illustration by Alain Pilon Ten years ago, Hanna Rosin’s book, “The End of Men,” argued that feminism had largely achieved its aims, and that…
In 2011, Jennifer Coolidge’s agent came to her with an offer: A theater in London was putting on a production of the musical “Legally Blonde,” based on the 2001 film in which Coolidge played the lovably dizzy manicurist Paulette. (The seductive “bend-and-snap” move Paulette practices on film? In the…
Humans and jaguars can coexist, even in areas where livestock is a priority. As a biologist, I’ve spent the past 25 years working on issues related to jaguar conservation in South and Central America. I’ve seen how people and big cats can share the same land, to the benefit of both species. Now that…
Cultural Comment Increasingly, what we’re after on social media is not narrative or personality but moments of audiovisual eloquence. April 26, 2021 Vibes are a medium for feeling, the kind of abstract understanding that comes before words put a name to experience.Illustration by Seo young Kwon Deep…
Except for the pain in his eyes, he looked good: tan and wiry with wild blue eyes and an all-in smile. It was weird to see him not wearing his white shirt, tie and black name tag, but it was just as weird for me not to be wearing mine.
Right now, it is impossible to imagine capitalism functioning without the century-and-a-half-old industry of advertising. It is not just a part of the so-called superstructure but deeply nested, close to capitalism’s beating heart. Despite tech companies’ frequent claims to innovation and disruption…
Bronze Age Mindset by Bronze Age Pervert Independently Published, 198 pp, $16.48 Selfie, Suicide: or Cairey Turnbull’s Blue Skiddoo by Logo Daedalus Independently Published, 164pp, $14.99 The most gen
Press enter or click to view image in full size Photo by Jan Tinneberg on Unsplash Recommendation media is the new standard for content distribution. Here’s why friend graphs can‘t compete in an algorithmic world. Michael Mignano 9 min read· Jul 27, 2022 -- Last week, Meta announced that the…
Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth evolved. Take eyes, for instance. Where do they come from, exactly? The usual explanation of how we got these stupendously complex organs rests upon the theory of natural…
When was the first time you realized Catholicism was … different? For me it was during my friend’s confirmation at a Lutheran church, filled with tall, stoic Scandinavians in a handsome but mostly featureless room. Protestants, it seemed, were allergic to the type of excess and drama that defined…
View Full Images THAT’S WHAT YOU DO—YOU BECOME THE FLANEUR. I NEVER HAD SO MUCH FREE TIME IN MY LIFE AS I DID WHEN I LIVED IN PARIS. EDMUND WHITE Everyone says he or she wants to live in Paris, but the reality is somewhat daunting—a strange language spoken rapidly, a culture that rivals and a…
The author Patricia Highsmith at her home in Montcourt-Fromonville, France, 1978. T Book Club Patricia Highsmith published the first novel in her series of psychological thrillers in 1955, embedding her own repression, snobbery and sense of chaos into the text. The author Patricia Highsmith at her…
Photo: Walker Bunting This article was featured in One Great Story, New York’s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. The emperor of no fucks wore a maroon T-shirt over his mesomorphic frame. He had a light beard and a short ponytail, and he was wearing can headphones and…
Think Least of Death FT Feeling free: a new study explores Spinoza’s homo liber. Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die, by Steven Nadler, Princeton University Press, 234 pages, $17.95 • • • It’s not easy, living. Our human existence is an ongoing experience of what Baruch…
Though I will make the trip up the elevator to Janet Malcolm’s stately town-house apartment, overlooking Gramercy Park, three times in the course of this unusual interview, the substance of our exchange will take place by e-mail, over three and a half months. The reason for this is that Janet…
Breadcrumbs If you spend time perusing social media, most of the posts you see on your feed are self-contained bites of information. But every once in a while, you come across something that seems like the hook to a larger story, extending beyond the formal parameters of a single post. Imagine for a…
The internet is great, but the internet goes down. Disasters, government interference, and simple technical difficulties often fell the most powerful communication tool ever made. One man wants to change that and is building what he calls the “prepper version of the internet.” It’s called the…
Photos courtesy of Lykke Li. Lykke Li has spent the better part of her career exploring matters of the heart. Over five albums—her latest, EYEYE, is out as of last Friday (along with an arresting series of meta visuals)—the Swedish singer-songwriter embraces feelings of desire and rejection with…
critic’s notebook David Shiffman’s “Why Sharks Matter” helps our critic, a surfer, see the creatures in a new, more appreciative light. Swimmers unaware of a white shark trolling nearby, at Nauset Beach in Orleans, Mass., in 2021.Credit...TylerHicks/The New York Times Published May 24, 2022Updated…
A friend asked if my preteen stint as a competitive gamer was a substitute for masturbation, or masturbation sublimated. She’s studying to be a psychoanalyst; she asks these kinds of questions. The answer is obviously, sort of, yes, if you like. Both endeavors can instantiate an oily timelessness. I…
[Gmail is going to clip this email, so just click on the title and read the whole thing in a web browser. Or unclip it when you reach the bottom. Up to you!] One of the most boring, and oft-repeated, narratives of the last couple of years is that of the "pandemic breakout." You're probably familiar…
In the first episode of Season 2 of Hacks , HBO Max’s alternately tender and biting series about the relationship that forms between two comedians at polar opposite points in their careers, the protag
Books This Is Your Life February 17, 2013 Adam Phillips tells his many readers not to worry about what might have been.Photograph by Boo George Adam Phillips, Britain’s foremost psychoanalytic writer, dislikes the modern notion that we should all be out there fulfilling our potential, and this is…
Photograph by Caryl González. In our Spring issue, we published selections from Annie Ernaux’s 1988 diaries, which chronicle the affair that served as the basis for her memoir Simple Passion. To mark the occasion, the Review has begun asking writers and artists for pages from their diaries, along…
Your seasonal update on the latest cool-kid app is in: BeReal, a French photo-sharing app that’s captured the hearts and candids of teens across the globe, has been crowned the new It app by all your friendly neighborhood bloodhounds on the online culture beat as well as the always on-it venture…
Oh You're So Silent Jens and Night Falls Over Kortedala have been reborn as The Cherry Trees Are Still in Blossom and The Linden Trees Are Still in Blossom. A not-so-silent Lekman explains how and why it went down. Last month, Jens Lekman held a funeral for his most popular album. When 2007's Night…
Graphic design Nouveau Rebus is bringing back dingbats and glyphs one DTC branding project at a time Words by Elizabeth Goodspeed Published onApril 25th, 2022 Illustration by Tala Safié What are you seeing? In-line images and symbols, reminiscent of old chain ⛓ letter 💌 text messages or everybody’s…
WELCOME TO TALK HOLE , A MONTHLY TOPICAL CONVERSATION BETWEEN COMEDIANS ERIC SCHWARTAU AND STEVEN PHILLIPS-HORST. ERIC: I smell something. STEVEN: It’s eau de Musk, permeating the Twitterverse. ERIC:
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