This, from Megan Rapinoe, reads as a very decent summation of the correct answer to any “trans person in sports” debate, and also, a pristine example of what personal politics look like when you operate with the value of compassion first.
Futurism caught Sports Illustrated publishing AI stories — with fake author profile pages and all. We went to them with it, and they wiped...all of it.
If your daughter can't tell the difference between a head of garlic, a shallot, and an onion by the time they're of helicopter-chartering age, well, my god
The layoffs aren’t because media can’t make money. 16 years working in media, again and again, it’s the same thing: C-suite arrogance, naiveté, largesse, and heads in the sand (on both sides of the wall!). This business is only as screwed as the people running it are incompetent.
I’ll say this:
When we’re allowed to go back to being New Yorkers, we’re putting *on* for our restaurants/bars/cafes/venues/ museums/etc with a vengeance. They *are* this city. And I look forward to it quickly becoming the most joyous goddamn place on the planet in due time.
Editor-in-Chief of Futurism here. Arena repeatedly didn't respond to requests for comment. They have yet to demonstrate human work. The entire "investigation" is "we asked our third-party provider" and not "we got proof from our third-party provider." Okay!
Sports Illustrated parent company Arena response to Futurism exposé alleging use of AI-generated journalism: reporters hired by outside contractor used pseudonyms. Arena fired the outside firm.
Some of us have been around long enough remember when the word "blog" was spoken by people at established media outlets as though it were truly the kind of four-letter word you don't say in proper company, with the unsavory quality of "moist," or something. And now: "Newsletter."
new york city’s hottest new club is a series of tunnels built by chasids leading to the chabad headquarters in crown heights, and it’s called SHONDA, GIRL
Watching
@TaylorLorenz
have to work to mount a campaign and counter the tsunami of trolling bullshit about her reputation, started by some of the most powerful, moneyed people in tech, does quite well to prove the necessity and larger point of much of her reporting.
A24: “800 words, what’s up with this carpeting?”
ME: “Easy done no problem”
*six weeks later*
ME to A24: I found out what’s up with these carpets turns out they tell a brief history of the Hollywood blockbuster era as we know it ps I almost lost my mind doing this
A story of late-90s economics, showbiz, multiplexes, and a brief era that changed moviegoing as we know it.
@WEAREYOURFEK
explores the origins of the cosmic chaos theater aesthetic—and why it suddenly vanished ☄️
Just passed a late 20something girl on the corner of McCarren in leggings, sports bra, probably post-run, drinking a white claw, mask down, smoking a parliament. WILLIAMSBURG IS BACK, BABY!
I used to take VIP reservations at a popular NYC restaurant a bunch of you still go to. It was a weird time in my life. 13 years later, I figured out what it meant, and wrote about it—my status, your status, the PAB code—and Jenny Holzer, too:
to everyone who responded to this stray thought: thank you. it’s nice to know we’re of a tribe. and i’m pretty sure the bars, the other solo diners, the bartenders all miss us, too.
@annehelen
this is wild mormon propaganda! maybe this is my naïveté to the subject showing here but has anybody written about the massive LDS/youtube influencer pipeline and what the church makes of it? (impossible to believe they're neutral.)
Star Wars was fine. Certainly a cooler thing than anyone who has a strong opinion about it either way. It’s Star Wars, not, like, Schindler’s List. Calm down you dweebs.
Ezra Marcus absolutely got the first tip, got the assignment, and produced a story more than worth the wait. It’s written, edited, and reported to the hilt, as horrifying and weird as anything I’ve ever read about restaurants, and just great work:
WELP. Following Futurism's reporting on Sports Illustrated's use of AI — and the subsequent fallout — as of 4:30PM today, Ross Levinsohn is OUT as CEO of The Arena Group. He will be replaced by The Five-Hour Energy Guy.
A Proposal: So many journalists have had their jobs cut in the last two months. Their training involves talking to strangers in order to surface buried information the world needs. So: We should be making these people the absolute first recruits for contact tracing operations.
If you're lucky, a couple of times, you'll end up with a perfect match of writer, publication, and subject. In this case, it's
@interviewmag
letting me talk to the Keith McNally mafia (and the rest of New York's Power Matire D's) for a full feature spread.
So (a thread, I know, sorry, but):
You know those iconic marble lions at the front of the New York Public Library? ‘Thought of them today, on my daily walk, when I saw a grip of dumbass New Yorkers, hanging out in big groups, not social distancing.
my conde memoir:
when they tried relaunching Gourmet as an iPad-only pub (LOL) they paid me $2/word to write about how much i loved ripping cigs after dinner. i made $4K in three hours and blew it all on parliament lights. FIN.
Nobody comes to New York to live in their apartment. Our spots are extensions of our homes, run by our neighbors. They’re my New York and I’m heartbroken and I’m crushed for all of them. And I’m gonna figure out how to do something to help. We all should. This city, it is them.
To know what a big deal all the SLAVE PLAY noms are is to know how totally racist Broadway is, especially against plays by black playwrights. Context: The Tonys have been awarded for 72 years, and only two — TWO — of the Best Play playwrights were black (and yes, one is Wilson).
If there's a must-read writer on the COVID-19 coronavirus it's clearly
@jameshamblin
. He saw much of where we are now two weeks ago. We got on the phone for an hour. He brilliantly answered every (often dumb) question I (and you may) have on the subject:
SO: A reporter in NYC has the story, which really goes to show you how weak the media market in LA—where it takes place—truly is. If I were said reporter, I’d publish soon. This gossip has rocket fuel levels of propulsion. Everyone who knows just has one question: Eight? EIGHT?!?
FOSTERTALK FLASH EDITION: I just heard the absolute most crazy batshit restaurant world story I’ve quite literally EVER heard in my LIFE, and apparently it’s going to break in the next few days to weeks. Makes the Spotted Pig stuff look like child’s play. Dear GOD.
quarantine, day 302: me, naked but for a can of sourdough starter on a chain around my neck, singing 'faucci faucci tony tony rona rona prada' as i pray to my great jones dutch oven
this reminds me of an old story I heard about Peter Kaplan, when he took George Gurley's 2002 profile of Ann Coulter into his office the night of a close, locked the door, emerged two hours later, and screamed "COULTERGEIST!"
Oh, god, Melber, Maddow, etc on MSNBC are patting themselves on the back for turning off the Trump presser. Who, exactly, do they think they're shielding from his unfettered bullshit? You play to the still-buy-CDs-at-Starbucks big West Wing fan crowd! Get over yourselves, dorks!
For the last 15 years of living a ten minute walk from this thing, I have said, and still say: Whoever buys this and gets a Waffle House there will immediately become the richest Waffle House owner in all the land
BANG—After our reporting last week on the CNET AI's clandestine, error-rife writing, they paused it. Good thing they did. Besides being a shitty writer loose with facts, as Futurism managing editor
@Jon_Christian
reports: It's a serial plagiarist, too.
Also doing a New Girl rewatch, and lemme tell you: The scene where Ron Funches shows up signing “Father Figure” is still one of the all-time 15 second asides on any comedy, anywhere
So: Former Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia named them during the Great Depression, to inspire New Yorkers to two qualities: Patience (southern lion) and Fortitude (uptown lion). More here:
1. This video’s great.
2. Side-benefit of a “Great Depression” will be watching this asshole go broke because dried beans were still and remain infinitely better currency than shitty takes like this.
We were told we had to willingly plunge ourselves into a Great Depression because hospitals are being overwhelmed. Meanwhile, Tik Tok is full of videos of hospital staff performing choreographed dance routines. What a joke. This whole thing. Infuriating.
The true story of digital media from 2010-2023 is one of megalomaniacal publishers and EICs taking investment money hand over fist to grow operations with no real way to make that money back. Journalists trusting business minders with this is a satire-level industrywide failure.
A group of unmasked Republican staffers are playing beer pong (but with cups of water) in the halls of Rayburn House Office Building. Presumably their need to demonstrate the exercise of "freedoms" is stronger than their sense of responsibility to justify taxpayer-funded salaries
A reminder: In secret, Sheldon Adelson bought the Las Vegas Review-Journal — the paper I grew up reading, Vegas's only daily — then muzzled all the reporters who ever reported on him. And his casinos. And his politics.
Funny difference between NYers and Angelinos: Whenever anyone says a bad word about LA people out there lose their goddamn minds, but tell a New Yorker they live in a rat infested hellhole run by corrupt sketchballs where everything is too small and expensive we're like "lol yep"
FOSTERTALK FLASH EDITION: I just heard the absolute most crazy batshit restaurant world story I’ve quite literally EVER heard in my LIFE, and apparently it’s going to break in the next few days to weeks. Makes the Spotted Pig stuff look like child’s play. Dear GOD.
Don’t let anyone tell you any different. They’re gonna try to tell you the numbers don’t work. No, wrong: *Their* numbers don’t work. *They* were bad at their jobs. *They* couldn’t figure out how to make more money than they spend.
Toobin met Casey Greenfeld when she was a fact-checker paying her way through law school in, where else, the Conde cafeteria. He then accidentally impregnated her and tried pressuring her into getting an abortion (which didn't work).
The trend towards magazine profile writing through the lens of fandom and adoration is the most toxic, shitty, thirsty, boring, lame development in media over the last decade. How can you ever cultivate an understanding of a subject if you do not, on some level, skepticize them?
tfw ur entire personality was once an itty bitty coke bag left on the floor of Studio B in 2007 and now you have to pick up your toddler from after school astral projection class in Park La Brea before "hitting" Gelson's
Hi friends, some news: This little piece for
@GossamerHQ
on a weekend job I once had, taking reservations for a series of restaurants, was selected for The Best American Food Writing 2021. . I’m psyched, and profoundly honored.
Took an Uber to and subsequently spent seven hours at the Ronald O. Perelman Emergency Room at NYU [Ken] Langone, and I don’t give away free advice often, but let me remind you: Always go to the hospital named after the billionaires.
Today, on Futurism, a massive exposé everyone in media should be paying attention to: The story behind AdVon, the machine behind the fentanyl-like poisoning of AI-generated content in major publishers’ work.
It’s all well and good to tell people to scream at morons to stay inside, and we—New Yorkers—totally should. In the mean time, I’d like to think of all the people doing the right thing, and the values associated with and demonstrated by it: Patience and fortitude.
okay, so!
- heard several name-y staffers were on the call
- hearing the call was recorded
- hearing that everyone had taken a break during a long call, and that *gestures* THAT is what they came back to
and:
- hearing remnick had to be the one to alert him.
The thing is if shutdowns and social distancing work perfectly and are extremely effective it will seem in retrospect like they were totally unnecessary overreactions.
What the fuck are any of us who are paid to write doing if we can’t at least write as well as the guy running one of the major frontlines in a global pandemic (and most of us, let’s be real, can’t)
Most of the New Yorkers are doing the most. People I know who if you told me their privilege to go to bars and hang with friends would be revoked today a year ago I would’ve bet on going insane, or a bender, or, just, like, messing this up. But: They’re not. They’re doing great.
Basically, every white girl from South Florida I went to Jewish summer camp with who “dated” a “drug dealer” (a junior who sold weed) by freshman year was this person, and honestly? Still a kink.
UPDATE: the carlyle is taking reserverations starting nov. 2nd. which means, on nov. 3rd, i will be voting at 8AM, and then promptly making my way to the upper east side, and getting piss drunk inside Bemelmans before noon
Having once been under the employ of Jared at a newspaper—the broad workings of which, like journalism, he did not understand—let me go ahead and set some base-level expectations here: he definitely does not know how the fuck any of this works either.