newyorker--2020-11-25--HBO’s “How To with John Wilson” Captures the Weird, Wondrous New York City That’s Never on TV

These are but a few of the images in “ How To with John Wilson , ” an HBO documentary series that captures the pleasures and pains of being in public .
Wilson , a filmmaker , has long made a habit of recording as much of his life as possible ; a New York native , he started a cult-favorite Vimeo channel , in 2012 , that catalogued his curiosities in the form of oblique tutorials , such as “ How to Live with Regret ” or “ How to Keep Smoking.
” His new show maintains that formula @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ How to Make Small Talk , ” “ How to Split the Check , ” “ How to Cover Your Furniture ” —which becomes a mere container for New York ’ s anarchic energy , to say nothing of Wilson ’ s own penchant for digression .
“ How To ” is nominally a comedy , but the word doesn ’ t suffice to describe its artful scope and sensitivity .
Wilson , an all-in-one interviewer , narrator , and cameraman , has mastered a technique that might be called happenstance vérité @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , unbounded document of the city in the months before the pandemic .
Drawing so much from the streets , the show is almost like aleatory music in its dependence on chance ; nearly every shot has the feeling of a happy accident , of something that nearly went unseen .
Over six episodes , Wilson ’ s roving camera stumbles on moments of intimacy , reverie , bizarrerie , and savagery .
More than anything , “ How To ” is a tribute to New York ’ s double-edged ability to take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , among people you never asked to meet , for reasons you ’ ll never understand .
Wilson starts each episode with a broad , sociological focus .
In “ How to Split the Check , ” he proclaims , in a gentle , halting voice-over , “ Figuring out what we owe each other is one of the most challenging parts of living in a healthy society.
” The camera shows one driver haranguing another after a fender bender .
“ How to Put Up Scaffolding ” begins with footage of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like a turtle on its back .
A tow truck flips it over with a satisfying crunch , and Wilson says , “ Everyone in New York is going to die .
But , sometimes , the city tries to stop that from happening.
” Much of the show unfolds this way , in a wry flurry of montage that brings pathos , and bathos , to Wilson ’ s narration .
In most documentaries , the voice-over elaborates on the imagery ; in “ How To , ” the imagery elaborates on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ All you can do is quietly panic , ” he emphasizes it with a clip of a man delicately vomiting from the driver ’ s seat of a double-parked Toyota .
If this sounds grim , it is .
Wilson ’ s is a New York of trash-strewn streets , bloodstained subway stations , and slack-jawed crowds : the grimy , unglamorous town that seldom appears in movies .
He likes to film tacky storefront awnings , people with thousand-yard stares , and pooping dogs .
And , of course , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of which there are some two hundred and eighty miles in the five boroughs , he says .
Still , his warts-and-all love for the city emanates from the very first frame , which depicts the skyline peeking over a graffitied , overstuffed dumpster .
“ Hey , New York , ” he says .
It ’ s the closest thing he has to a catchphrase .
Wilson has a street photographer ’ s talent for elevating the banal , and he unearths deep patterns and substrata in his mountain of B-roll .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ How To ” ’ s litany of footage accumulates into something both repulsive and dear .
“ How to Improve Your Memory ” begins as a meditation on forgetfulness , but then , at a Stop & Shop , Wilson runs into the man who created the supermarket ’ s inventory software .
( As with almost everyone Wilson talks to , the man is never named ; the show has a great anonymizing effect , as if its characters vanish into the crowd once they ’ ve said their piece .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mandela Effect , a phenomenon in which large groups of people remember an event that doesn ’ t match the historical record .
“ Some people have a very distinct memory that Nelson Mandela was killed in prison in the late nineteen-eighties , and then I think around 2009 were kind of shocked to find out that Nelson Mandela was still alive , ” he says .
At the supermarket , examples of the Mandela Effect are in abundance .
Wasn ’ t Febreze once spelled with two “ e ” ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mascot , a cartoon sun , used to wear sunglasses ?
No and no .
Intrigued , Wilson begins to notice tears in the fabric of reality .
At the Macy ’ s Thanksgiving Day Parade , he spies a giant Ronald McDonald balloon crumpling in Times Square , surrounded by concerned onlookers .
Later , he discovers that the TV broadcast of the parade simply replaced “ Ronald ’ s deflating carcass ” with footage from the previous year ’ s parade , when the clown was buoyant and jaunty .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of people with completely different memories of the same event , ” he says .
“ And neither of them is wrong.
” More uncertain than ever , he attends the first official Mandela Effect conference , at a Best Western Plus in Ketchum , Idaho , where attendees argue that their faulty memories constitute evidence of alternate universes and “ parallel time lines.
” “ It seemed like I had found the one place where the worse your memory was the more people liked you , ” Wilson says .
As a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Blank , Frederick Wiseman , and Jeff Krulik , who share his receptive spirit and his fascination with arcane institutions and subcultures .
“ How To ” is also cut from the same cloth as “ Nathan for You , ” the comedian Nathan Fielder ’ s reality show , in which struggling small-business owners adopt Fielder ’ s delusional ideas for improving their companies .
Fielder is one of “ How To ” ’ s executive producers , and the shows share an editor , Adam Locke-Norton , who lets shots linger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of conversation .
( Alice Gregory , a New Yorker contributor , is one of “ How To ” ’ s three writers . )
When “ Nathan for You ” was on the air , some critics found its style cruel or graceless ; others wondered if Fielder ’ s TV persona had Asperger ’ s syndrome , a suggestion he has rejected .
But , as Fielder told Rolling Stone in 2017 , “ There ’ s a lot of social disconnects that people experience all the time that have nothing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Those disconnects are an increasing part of communication in the mediated , oversaturated present .
By adjusting their shows ’ signal-to-noise ratio—favoring the noise—Fielder and Wilson demonstrate what a miracle it is that there ’ s any signal at all .
“ If you added two seconds to every shot of every reality TV show , ” Wilson told Screen Slate last month , “ you would see how truly weird a lot of these people are.
” People open up to Wilson .
They tell him about their divorces , their foreskin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by aliens .
He has a reedy , lisping voice that stumbles over his words , and he ’ s always obscured by his camera—his “ protective mechanism , ” one interlocutor astutely calls it—all of which proves disarming .
He sometimes has his interviewees hold a vintage , beige Sony microphone that looks like something a newscaster might ’ ve used in the seventies , and he ’ ll tell them he ’ s working on a “ student film.
” This amateurishness is a ruse , and it brings to mind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim have cultivated .
But they use it to reach new levels of irony ; for Wilson , it yields a surprising sincerity .
“ How To ” may not teach you how to do much of anything , but it ’ s still educational .
It has plenty to say about neighborliness , mindfulness , and protecting some part of yourself from a city that demands everything .
The season ’ s final episode , “ How to Cook the Perfect Risotto , ” airs on Friday @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was filmed in mid-March , Wilson notices that all the TVs in New York are playing the same thing : news about the coronavirus , which has killed one person in the city .
Stores are running out of everything ; he can ’ t find the end of the line at the supermarket .
“ Take care of yourself , ” a man at a yard sale tells him .
“ Just wash your hands , stay away from crowds .
It ’ s gon na be O.K .
It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under lockdown , Wilson says , “ I may just have to relearn everything I thought I knew .
But that ’ s O.K.
, because we ’ re all gon na have to figure it out together , and , right now , we ’ ve got nothing but time.
” He films the view from his window : Queens in the gloaming , the sky a smear of pinks and purples .
It is , somehow , the most hopeful image I ’ ve seen all year .

A pair of aging men carry a nude plastic mannequin down the street, its splayed feet dragging on the sidewalk. A woman in Penn Station covers a vast coffee spill with two sheets of newspaper. The actor Kyle MacLachlan, calm and well coiffed, runs his MetroCard through a turnstile ten times before giving up. A construction worker dances on a pile of rubble. Two men bite into the same hot dog and hold the pose, a beat longer than they’d like, for a photograph. A middle-aged woman in a striped hat eases a live pigeon into a Duane Reade bag and walks off with it. A skunk waddles past the A.T.M. in a bank vestibule. Someone on the curb pours a box of Cocoa Krispies into his mouth with abandon.
These are but a few of the images in “How To with John Wilson,” an HBO documentary series that captures the pleasures and pains of being in public. Wilson, a filmmaker, has long made a habit of recording as much of his life as possible; a New York native, he started a cult-favorite Vimeo channel, in 2012, that catalogued his curiosities in the form of oblique tutorials, such as “How to Live with Regret” or “How to Keep Smoking.” His new show maintains that formula, building each episode around a lesson—“How to Make Small Talk,” “How to Split the Check,” “How to Cover Your Furniture”—which becomes a mere container for New York’s anarchic energy, to say nothing of Wilson’s own penchant for digression. “How To” is nominally a comedy, but the word doesn’t suffice to describe its artful scope and sensitivity. Wilson, an all-in-one interviewer, narrator, and cameraman, has mastered a technique that might be called happenstance vérité: he presents a spontaneous, authentic, unbounded document of the city in the months before the pandemic. Drawing so much from the streets, the show is almost like aleatory music in its dependence on chance; nearly every shot has the feeling of a happy accident, of something that nearly went unseen. Over six episodes, Wilson’s roving camera stumbles on moments of intimacy, reverie, bizarrerie, and savagery. More than anything, “How To” is a tribute to New York’s double-edged ability to take you places you never wanted to go, among people you never asked to meet, for reasons you’ll never understand.
Wilson starts each episode with a broad, sociological focus. In “How to Split the Check,” he proclaims, in a gentle, halting voice-over, “Figuring out what we owe each other is one of the most challenging parts of living in a healthy society.” The camera shows one driver haranguing another after a fender bender. “How to Put Up Scaffolding” begins with footage of a black Mercedes overturned at an intersection, like a turtle on its back. A tow truck flips it over with a satisfying crunch, and Wilson says, “Everyone in New York is going to die. But, sometimes, the city tries to stop that from happening.” Much of the show unfolds this way, in a wry flurry of montage that brings pathos, and bathos, to Wilson’s narration. In most documentaries, the voice-over elaborates on the imagery; in “How To,” the imagery elaborates on the voice-over. When Wilson says, “All you can do is quietly panic,” he emphasizes it with a clip of a man delicately vomiting from the driver’s seat of a double-parked Toyota.
If this sounds grim, it is. Wilson’s is a New York of trash-strewn streets, bloodstained subway stations, and slack-jawed crowds: the grimy, unglamorous town that seldom appears in movies. He likes to film tacky storefront awnings, people with thousand-yard stares, and pooping dogs. And, of course, he devotes an entire episode to scaffolding, of which there are some two hundred and eighty miles in the five boroughs, he says. Still, his warts-and-all love for the city emanates from the very first frame, which depicts the skyline peeking over a graffitied, overstuffed dumpster. “Hey, New York,” he says. It’s the closest thing he has to a catchphrase.
Wilson has a street photographer’s talent for elevating the banal, and he unearths deep patterns and substrata in his mountain of B-roll. It’s through his interviews that “How To” ’s litany of footage accumulates into something both repulsive and dear. “How to Improve Your Memory” begins as a meditation on forgetfulness, but then, at a Stop & Shop, Wilson runs into the man who created the supermarket’s inventory software. (As with almost everyone Wilson talks to, the man is never named; the show has a great anonymizing effect, as if its characters vanish into the crowd once they’ve said their piece.) The man tells Wilson about the Mandela Effect, a phenomenon in which large groups of people remember an event that doesn’t match the historical record. “Some people have a very distinct memory that Nelson Mandela was killed in prison in the late nineteen-eighties, and then I think around 2009 were kind of shocked to find out that Nelson Mandela was still alive,” he says. At the supermarket, examples of the Mandela Effect are in abundance. Wasn’t Febreze once spelled with two “e” ’s? Didn’t the Raisin Bran mascot, a cartoon sun, used to wear sunglasses? No and no. Intrigued, Wilson begins to notice tears in the fabric of reality. At the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, he spies a giant Ronald McDonald balloon crumpling in Times Square, surrounded by concerned onlookers. Later, he discovers that the TV broadcast of the parade simply replaced “Ronald’s deflating carcass” with footage from the previous year’s parade, when the clown was buoyant and jaunty. “This act of deception created two groups of people with completely different memories of the same event,” he says. “And neither of them is wrong.” More uncertain than ever, he attends the first official Mandela Effect conference, at a Best Western Plus in Ketchum, Idaho, where attendees argue that their faulty memories constitute evidence of alternate universes and “parallel time lines.” “It seemed like I had found the one place where the worse your memory was the more people liked you,” Wilson says.
As a documentarian, Wilson bears similarities to Les Blank, Frederick Wiseman, and Jeff Krulik, who share his receptive spirit and his fascination with arcane institutions and subcultures. “How To” is also cut from the same cloth as “Nathan for You,” the comedian Nathan Fielder’s reality show, in which struggling small-business owners adopt Fielder’s delusional ideas for improving their companies. Fielder is one of “How To” ’s executive producers, and the shows share an editor, Adam Locke-Norton, who lets shots linger into long silences, foregrounding the ungainliness of conversation. (Alice Gregory, a New Yorker contributor, is one of “How To” ’s three writers.) When “Nathan for You” was on the air, some critics found its style cruel or graceless; others wondered if Fielder’s TV persona had Asperger’s syndrome, a suggestion he has rejected. But, as Fielder told Rolling Stone in 2017, “There’s a lot of social disconnects that people experience all the time that have nothing to do with autism or anything.” Those disconnects are an increasing part of communication in the mediated, oversaturated present. By adjusting their shows’ signal-to-noise ratio—favoring the noise—Fielder and Wilson demonstrate what a miracle it is that there’s any signal at all. “If you added two seconds to every shot of every reality TV show,” Wilson told Screen Slate last month, “you would see how truly weird a lot of these people are.”
People open up to Wilson. They tell him about their divorces, their foreskin, their belief that humans were impregnated by aliens. He has a reedy, lisping voice that stumbles over his words, and he’s always obscured by his camera—his “protective mechanism,” one interlocutor astutely calls it—all of which proves disarming. He sometimes has his interviewees hold a vintage, beige Sony microphone that looks like something a newscaster might’ve used in the seventies, and he’ll tell them he’s working on a “student film.” This amateurishness is a ruse, and it brings to mind the late-night, public-access aesthetic that comedians like Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim have cultivated. But they use it to reach new levels of irony; for Wilson, it yields a surprising sincerity. “How To” may not teach you how to do much of anything, but it’s still educational. It has plenty to say about neighborliness, mindfulness, and protecting some part of yourself from a city that demands everything.
The season’s final episode, “How to Cook the Perfect Risotto,” airs on Friday. Halfway through the show, which was filmed in mid-March, Wilson notices that all the TVs in New York are playing the same thing: news about the coronavirus, which has killed one person in the city. Stores are running out of everything; he can’t find the end of the line at the supermarket. “Take care of yourself,” a man at a yard sale tells him. “Just wash your hands, stay away from crowds. It’s gonna be O.K. It’s gonna pass.” Adjusting to life under lockdown, Wilson says, “I may just have to relearn everything I thought I knew. But that’s O.K., because we’re all gonna have to figure it out together, and, right now, we’ve got nothing but time.” He films the view from his window: Queens in the gloaming, the sky a smear of pinks and purples. It is, somehow, the most hopeful image I’ve seen all year.


newyorker--2020-11-25--A Blue-State Thanksgiving Menu

A Blue-State Thanksgiving Menu

Times have been hard , but Thanksgiving is a holiday for hard times .
It asks us to remember our blessings .
This is something we often forget to do when the sun is shining and blessings seem plentiful , but that is all the more reason to give thanks when skies are dark .
The country has been damaged—we don ’ t even know how badly—but it still has a soul .
We should feel gratitude this week for some of those through whom it shone : Health-care workers .
The modern Hippocratic oath says , “ I will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ society , with special obligations to all my fellow human beings , those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
” In treating the infected , health-care workers were serving the healthy , as well .
By September 16th , more than seventeen hundred of them had died from Covid-19 , two hundred and thirteen of whom were registered nurses .
And yet , even as millions of Americans were being given license by the federal government to refuse to take precautions , and even when the President explained to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ die because they got more money , health-care professionals showed up .
They took responsibility even when political leaders did not .
That is the definition of care .
State election workers and officials .
On November 4th , a couple hundred Trump supporters , some carrying firearms ( whom did they expect they might be obliged to shoot ? )
, gathered outside a Maricopa County Recorder and Elections Department office , in Phoenix , chanting “ Stop the steal.
” Intimidation of this kind was carried out in other states , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government officials : from the President and his lawyers ; from the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee , who saw fit to place calls to three states to inquire about vote-counting procedures ; and from the Attorney General , who directed federal prosecutors to investigate allegations of voting “ irregularities ” before the results had been certified , an unprecedented order .
It was a campaign , still under way , to smear the integrity of people who were working long hours to tabulate votes during a pandemic .
When the federal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election security signed a statement saying that “ there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes , changed votes , or was in any way compromised , ” the head of that agency was immediately fired .
In spite of the intimidation and the smears , the count held , and democracy survived .
We owe that to men and women who did their jobs without fear or favor .
Anthony Fauci .
The President is a destroyer of careers and reputations .
That is how he wins policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Texas were already shouting for Anthony Fauci to be fired .
In November , the former chief executive of the 2016 Trump campaign posted a video on Twitter proposing that Fauci ’ s head should be stuck on a pike on the White House grounds .
As the Administration purged or publicly undercut public-health officials whose advice the President found insufficiently flattering to his own judgment , Fauci stayed out of the sandbox .
He did not change his tune under pressure , and , even after he had been scapegoated and sidelined @ @ @ @ @ @ @ points .
He became virtually the only person in the national government whose voice could be trusted .
Without his willingness to speak out and his commitment to public health , the past ten months would have been much harder to bear .
Philonise Floyd .
On June 10th , a little more than two weeks after George Floyd was murdered under color of law in the city of Minneapolis , his younger brother testified before the House Judiciary Committee .
In a few hundred heartfelt words , Philonise Floyd gave memorable expression @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and grief .
He made people feel both that a great wrong had been done and that an opportunity for redemption was at hand .
“ If his death ends up changing the world for the better , and I think it will , ” he said about his brother , “ then he died as he lived .
It is on you to make sure his death is not in vain.
” It was an authentic and eloquent speech by a man who would probably never in his life have imagined @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to lawmakers on Capitol Hill .
Nandi Bushell .
O.K.
, she ’ s British .
But the ten-year-old ball of fire ’ s online drum battle with the Foo Fighters ’ Dave Grohl was somehow the tonic that the world needed .
She laughed ; she made faces ; she stuck out her tongue ; she screamed—she embodied the spirit of the music she played .
“ The Rock Gods of old are happy !
” she tweeted , before Grohl conceded .
Let Bushell stand for all the artists , musicians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who made the most of the sad simulacrum for human contact that is Zoom ( though where would we have been without it ? )
and kept art and ideas in our lives .
For millions stuck at home alone , they brought a hint of the many things that went missing this year .
The pharmaceutical industry .
Long one of the world ’ s least-admired businesses , it nevertheless stepped up to accomplish something few people thought possible this past spring : vaccines that may bring much of the world out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Administration to co-opt the process , the companies that are developing the vaccines appear to have operated independently of politics .
Even the decision to announce the results of trials after the election seems not to have been a political one .
No doubt the companies ’ executives will reap the benefits , but , however much they make , the remedy is worth far more .
The New York Times .
After being played , four years ago , by the Russians , Julian Assange , and Trump goons like Roger @ @ @ @ @ @ @ John Podesta ’ s mundane e-mails as though they were the Pentagon Papers , the Times dedicated itself to justifying its self-appointed role as “ the paper of record.
” It patiently enumerated the Administration ’ s lies , and it tracked the pandemic day by day .
It traced the sources of the President ’ s wealth and obtained his tax returns .
It covered the plight of immigrants and the lives of the disadvantaged and , at the same time , ran recipes to try out and lists of movies to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in its arts coverage , it embraced the demand for greater diversity .
As its editors would be the first to insist , the Times was not the only organ of the press to rise to the occasion .
But , amid a deluge of hype and spin , it kept its head .
Joseph R. Biden .
He did it .
He slayed the dragon .
And it was not really a close fight .
He flipped five states from 2016 , won six million more votes than his opponent , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s previous entries in Presidential primaries ended in early defeats , and every time he opens his mouth , his supporters get a knot in their stomachs .
But he ran a disciplined and nearly flawless campaign .
He brought together the Clinton-Obama and Warren-Sanders wings of the Democratic Party , something that did not seem to be within the realm of the politically possible twelve months ago .
Biden has lost a wife , a daughter , and a son , and he had to hear his opponent carry on about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to listen to charges that he was senile , and that his running mate was a Communist and a monster .
He did not let these pass , but he declined to return the insults .
He let the President punch himself out .
There are probably few Biden lines destined for immortality , but , during the first Presidential debate , he spoke for millions when he uttered the words “ Will you shut up , man ?
” They say that there is a man or woman for every moment .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ man for this moment .
We should give him thanks , take a deep breath , and hope for the best .

If we were going to put a pumpkin face on 2020, it would be a frowny one with missing teeth. This has been a year from Hell. The nation was attacked by two plagues: an infectious disease that seemed for most of the year beyond the reach of medical science, and a government led by a delusional and incompetent head of state and his enablers. To have been cursed with one would have been punishment enough. We got two. The Norns really had it in for us this time.
Times have been hard, but Thanksgiving is a holiday for hard times. It asks us to remember our blessings. This is something we often forget to do when the sun is shining and blessings seem plentiful, but that is all the more reason to give thanks when skies are dark. The country has been damaged—we don’t even know how badly—but it still has a soul. We should feel gratitude this week for some of those through whom it shone:
Health-care workers. The modern Hippocratic oath says, “I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.” In treating the infected, health-care workers were serving the healthy, as well. By September 16th, more than seventeen hundred of them had died from Covid-19, two hundred and thirteen of whom were registered nurses. And yet, even as millions of Americans were being given license by the federal government to refuse to take precautions, and even when the President explained to his followers that hospitals were letting patients die because they got more money, health-care professionals showed up. They took responsibility even when political leaders did not. That is the definition of care.
State election workers and officials. On November 4th, a couple hundred Trump supporters, some carrying firearms (whom did they expect they might be obliged to shoot?), gathered outside a Maricopa County Recorder and Elections Department office, in Phoenix, chanting “Stop the steal.” Intimidation of this kind was carried out in other states, and received nothing but encouragement from top government officials: from the President and his lawyers; from the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who saw fit to place calls to three states to inquire about vote-counting procedures; and from the Attorney General, who directed federal prosecutors to investigate allegations of voting “irregularities” before the results had been certified, an unprecedented order. It was a campaign, still under way, to smear the integrity of people who were working long hours to tabulate votes during a pandemic. When the federal government’s agency in charge of election security signed a statement saying that “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised,” the head of that agency was immediately fired. In spite of the intimidation and the smears, the count held, and democracy survived. We owe that to men and women who did their jobs without fear or favor.
Anthony Fauci. The President is a destroyer of careers and reputations. That is how he wins policy disagreements. In April, crowds in Texas were already shouting for Anthony Fauci to be fired. In November, the former chief executive of the 2016 Trump campaign posted a video on Twitter proposing that Fauci’s head should be stuck on a pike on the White House grounds. As the Administration purged or publicly undercut public-health officials whose advice the President found insufficiently flattering to his own judgment, Fauci stayed out of the sandbox. He did not change his tune under pressure, and, even after he had been scapegoated and sidelined, he never tried to score political points. He became virtually the only person in the national government whose voice could be trusted. Without his willingness to speak out and his commitment to public health, the past ten months would have been much harder to bear.
Philonise Floyd. On June 10th, a little more than two weeks after George Floyd was murdered under color of law in the city of Minneapolis, his younger brother testified before the House Judiciary Committee. In a few hundred heartfelt words, Philonise Floyd gave memorable expression to the emotions of anger, compassion, and grief. He made people feel both that a great wrong had been done and that an opportunity for redemption was at hand. “If his death ends up changing the world for the better, and I think it will,” he said about his brother, “then he died as he lived. It is on you to make sure his death is not in vain.” It was an authentic and eloquent speech by a man who would probably never in his life have imagined himself speaking in front of television cameras to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Nandi Bushell. O.K., she’s British. But the ten-year-old ball of fire’s online drum battle with the Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl was somehow the tonic that the world needed. She laughed; she made faces; she stuck out her tongue; she screamed—she embodied the spirit of the music she played. “The Rock Gods of old are happy!” she tweeted, before Grohl conceded. Let Bushell stand for all the artists, musicians, entertainers, athletes, and teachers who made the most of the sad simulacrum for human contact that is Zoom (though where would we have been without it?) and kept art and ideas in our lives. For millions stuck at home alone, they brought a hint of the many things that went missing this year.
The pharmaceutical industry. Long one of the world’s least-admired businesses, it nevertheless stepped up to accomplish something few people thought possible this past spring: vaccines that may bring much of the world out of lockdown. Despite ham-handed attempts by the Administration to co-opt the process, the companies that are developing the vaccines appear to have operated independently of politics. Even the decision to announce the results of trials after the election seems not to have been a political one. No doubt the companies’ executives will reap the benefits, but, however much they make, the remedy is worth far more.
The New York Times. After being played, four years ago, by the Russians, Julian Assange, and Trump goons like Roger Stone, and covering Hillary Clinton and John Podesta’s mundane e-mails as though they were the Pentagon Papers, the Times dedicated itself to justifying its self-appointed role as “the paper of record.” It patiently enumerated the Administration’s lies, and it tracked the pandemic day by day. It traced the sources of the President’s wealth and obtained his tax returns. It covered the plight of immigrants and the lives of the disadvantaged and, at the same time, ran recipes to try out and lists of movies to stream for its upscale readers. Especially in its arts coverage, it embraced the demand for greater diversity. As its editors would be the first to insist, the Times was not the only organ of the press to rise to the occasion. But, amid a deluge of hype and spin, it kept its head.


newyorker--2020-11-25--How Banks Could Bail Us Out of the Climate Crisis

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On Friday , the Comptroller of the Currency , Brian Brooks , proposed a new rule that would prohibit banks from refusing to lend to “ entire categories ” of lawful businesses .
It is , Brooks explained , an attempt to stop the “ weaponization of banking , ” insuring fair access to loans for controversial businesses .
He cited private prisons and weapons manufacturers as possible beneficiaries , but there can be no doubt about another reason for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not have time to take effect before the Trump Administration departs ) : activists have begun persuading banks to stop some of their massive lending to the fossil-fuel industry .
In particular , five of the six largest American banks have said that they won ’ t fund oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge , a project that Trump is desperate to have under way before he leaves office .
( Bank of America is the last holdout , apparently uncertain whether wrecking America ’ s largest wildlife refuge in search @ @ @ @ @ @ @ climate is an idea sufficiently evil not to try to make some money off of it . )
The idea that the banks are discriminating against the fossil-fuel industry is , of course , absurd .
They ’ ve lent it trillions of dollars in the four years since the signing of the Paris climate accord ; JPMorgan Chase , alone , has sent more than a quarter-trillion its way .
But the pressure of campaigns like Stop the Money Pipeline ( my involvement included getting arrested at a Chase branch in January @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last month , Chase said that , henceforth , it will “ align ” its lending with the Paris targets .
That ’ s a breezy promise with as yet no real meaning—and activists know that distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine means , among many other things , a chance to resume civil-disobedience campaigns .
In the meantime , however , most people need a bank and a credit card .
As it happens , there are alternatives to the big players .
Local credit unions are , in most cases , unconnected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the East Coast , the Amalgamated Bank is fully disengaged from fossil fuels , as is the Beneficial State Bank , on the West Coast .
Aspiration , on the Web , is a bank in all but name ( deposits are F.D.I.C .
insured ) , and it ’ s made cleanness a chief selling point .
It commissioned a poll earlier this autumn that found that thirty-nine per cent of all voters said they ’ d be likely to move their “ money to an account that never uses customer deposits @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Aspiration has also set up a scheme for credit-card holders , which lets them automatically round up each purchase to the next dollar , and uses the cents generated with each transaction to plant trees—nearly three million so far , with a goal of a hundred million . )
Among the larger lenders , Bank of the West , headquartered in San Francisco , stands out : its French parent company , BNP Paribas , has gone more deeply green than most banking giants , and now the Conservation Alliance , a consortium @ @ @ @ @ @ @ businesses in the outdoors industry , has announced that it is ditching Bank of America for B.O.T.W.
, which doesn ’ t bankroll coal , tar sands , shale oil , and Arctic drilling .
A deeper solution may lie in a bill introduced by the congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , of New York , and Rashida Tlaib , of Michigan—which would , in the words of Vox ’ s Emily Stewart , “ foster the creation of public banks across the country by providing them a pathway to getting started , establishing an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them via the Federal Reserve , and setting up federal guidelines for them to be regulated.
” Under the law , these city and state banks would be prohibited from lending to the fossil-fuel industry—more to the point , they ’ d be responsive to local opportunities for development , including harnessing the wind and sun found in every part of the country .
( In Germany , four hundred municipal banks have provided seventy per cent of the funding for the country ’ s transition to renewable energy . )
There is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American history : the state bank chartered in North Dakota , in 1919 .
It ’ s hard to imagine that the frack zone currently being described as “ North Dacovid , ” for its elected leaders ’ unwillingness to take the pandemic seriously , was once a progressive hot spot , but prairie populism a century ago drove the creation of the Bank of North Dakota , which turns a profit even as its participation in loans from smaller , local banks lowers the cost of credit .
Given all the crises @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difficult to see public banking becoming a priority .
( Though it ’ s worth remembering that both Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez sit on the House financial services committee , chaired by California ’ s Maxine Waters . )
But the idea is growing : California passed legislation last year allowing public banks in that state , followed closely by New Jersey ; there are also initiatives moving in Pennsylvania , Oregon , and New Mexico .
Banks have helped cause much of the crisis we find ourselves in ; it would be fascinating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the solutions .
Ruth DeFries is a professor of ecology and sustainable development at Columbia University and a MacArthur Fellow .
Her new book , “ What Would Nature Do ?
A Guide for Our Uncertain Times , ” will be out in December .
Nature is obviously skilled at dealing with disease .
What advice from other species might come in handy dealing with COVID-19 ?
Or with the spread of false reality ?
Ants , termites , and other social insects live in crowded , densely packed colonies akin to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often succumb to epidemics from infections that could sweep through a colony .
Why not ?
When a pathogen comes into their colony , they instinctively sanitize their nests with plant resins , dying members leave the nest of their own volition , and healthy insects drag sick nest-mates and corpses away from the nest .
Human societies would obviously not promote such self-sacrificing measures .
But the insects also have a strategy that mirrors the way people are dealing with the pandemic .
These tiny creatures collectively manage their social networks to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ highly clustered and modular .
With the threat of a pathogen , the clusters can quickly close off contact with the others .
Our notion of “ pods ” to cluster with family and friends has roots in the natural world .
When it comes to the spread of false reality , the same principle applies .
False realities circulate in social clusters that don ’ t communicate with each other .
From nature ’ s example , the solution is to cut off the false information before it can spread in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is quite different .
What does this analysis tell you about how humans are different from the rest of creation ?
Are you hopeful that the big brain will turn out to be a useful adaptation or not ?
Over hundreds of years of our species ’ existence on this planet , our big brain has figured out ways to harness nature to provide copious amounts of food , energy , and other resources .
From the taming of fire to domesticating plants and animals to digging fossil energy from the ground , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up with new technologies .
We have been less successful at applying our big brain to collectively manage the repercussions of our technological success .
Climate change is a primary example , as is the inability of our human institutions to control the pandemic .
I don ’ t have much doubt that people will figure out more ingenious ways to produce food and invent new ways to get energy .
What gives me pause is not the technological know-how but whether our governments and other institutions are up to the task of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and nimbly enough to correct the problems that they create .
Nature is full of self-correcting features , like the incredible cycling of carbon from the atmosphere to the deep earth and back that keeps climate stable .
We need to build these types of self-corrections into our human institutions .
At the moment , we seem to be moving from highly concentrated systems of information and energy production into much more dispersed networks .
Is that a good trajectory ?
Going back to the social insects , the so-called queen actually has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the workers go or what they do .
Top-down control from a central authority has no analogies in nature .
The military-like march of ants in a straight line emerges as each individual follows cues from its local neighbors , not from a queen directing traffic .
The queen has no way of knowing the best route , even if she could tell each ant where to go .
This idea , applied to human societies who self-organize to manage their local forests , fisheries , and policing , won a Nobel Prize @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countered the commonly held notion of the tragedy of the commons with many examples where people do figure out ways to sustainably manage their resources .
The key is access to local information and the ability for local communities to make decisions .
If one adheres to the idea that evolution provides useful strategies worked out over millions of years , while humans have been on the scene for only a sliver of that time , a move to less centrally controlled information and production seems like a good trajectory .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I launched this newsletter , and I hope that you ’ re finding it worthwhile .
I ’ m glad it ’ s free and available to everyone .
But that ’ s only possible because enough people subscribe to The New Yorker to keep the magazine a going operation .
So I also hope that you ’ ll subscribe to The New Yorker , either in print or digitally—it ’ s the best periodical in the English language , and you ( and those on your Christmas list ) will be happier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
An almost literal climate school , Cool the Climate is worth checking out .
It ’ s a Web site full of activities for kids , and it features a new animated movie of the same name—which has been endorsed by UNICEF .
The site ’ s creator , Denis Thomopoulos , says , “ We ’ re offering it on an honor system where kids stream for free and adults pay with a tree planted for each dollar of purchase .
”

Subscribers to The Climate Crisis newsletter received this piece in their in-boxes. Sign up to receive future installments.
On Friday, the Comptroller of the Currency, Brian Brooks, proposed a new rule that would prohibit banks from refusing to lend to “entire categories” of lawful businesses. It is, Brooks explained, an attempt to stop the “weaponization of banking,” insuring fair access to loans for controversial businesses. He cited private prisons and weapons manufacturers as possible beneficiaries, but there can be no doubt about another reason for the rule (which may or may not have time to take effect before the Trump Administration departs): activists have begun persuading banks to stop some of their massive lending to the fossil-fuel industry. In particular, five of the six largest American banks have said that they won’t fund oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a project that Trump is desperate to have under way before he leaves office. (Bank of America is the last holdout, apparently uncertain whether wrecking America’s largest wildlife refuge in search of more oil to further warm the climate is an idea sufficiently evil not to try to make some money off of it.)
The idea that the banks are discriminating against the fossil-fuel industry is, of course, absurd. They’ve lent it trillions of dollars in the four years since the signing of the Paris climate accord; JPMorgan Chase, alone, has sent more than a quarter-trillion its way. But the pressure of campaigns like Stop the Money Pipeline (my involvement included getting arrested at a Chase branch in January) has clearly begun to tell: last month, Chase said that, henceforth, it will “align” its lending with the Paris targets. That’s a breezy promise with as yet no real meaning—and activists know that distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine means, among many other things, a chance to resume civil-disobedience campaigns.
In the meantime, however, most people need a bank and a credit card. As it happens, there are alternatives to the big players. Local credit unions are, in most cases, unconnected to the fossil-fuel industry. Headquartered on the East Coast, the Amalgamated Bank is fully disengaged from fossil fuels, as is the Beneficial State Bank, on the West Coast. Aspiration, on the Web, is a bank in all but name (deposits are F.D.I.C. insured), and it’s made cleanness a chief selling point. It commissioned a poll earlier this autumn that found that thirty-nine per cent of all voters said they’d be likely to move their “money to an account that never uses customer deposits to fund oil and gas.” (Aspiration has also set up a scheme for credit-card holders, which lets them automatically round up each purchase to the next dollar, and uses the cents generated with each transaction to plant trees—nearly three million so far, with a goal of a hundred million.) Among the larger lenders, Bank of the West, headquartered in San Francisco, stands out: its French parent company, BNP Paribas, has gone more deeply green than most banking giants, and now the Conservation Alliance, a consortium of more than two hundred and fifty businesses in the outdoors industry, has announced that it is ditching Bank of America for B.O.T.W., which doesn’t bankroll coal, tar sands, shale oil, and Arctic drilling.
A deeper solution may lie in a bill introduced by the congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, of New York, and Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan—which would, in the words of Vox’s Emily Stewart, “foster the creation of public banks across the country by providing them a pathway to getting started, establishing an infrastructure for liquidity and credit facilities for them via the Federal Reserve, and setting up federal guidelines for them to be regulated.” Under the law, these city and state banks would be prohibited from lending to the fossil-fuel industry—more to the point, they’d be responsive to local opportunities for development, including harnessing the wind and sun found in every part of the country. (In Germany, four hundred municipal banks have provided seventy per cent of the funding for the country’s transition to renewable energy.) There is a precedent for such a thing in American history: the state bank chartered in North Dakota, in 1919. It’s hard to imagine that the frack zone currently being described as “North Dacovid,” for its elected leaders’ unwillingness to take the pandemic seriously, was once a progressive hot spot, but prairie populism a century ago drove the creation of the Bank of North Dakota, which turns a profit even as its participation in loans from smaller, local banks lowers the cost of credit.
Given all the crises currently facing us, it may be difficult to see public banking becoming a priority. (Though it’s worth remembering that both Tlaib and Ocasio-Cortez sit on the House financial services committee, chaired by California’s Maxine Waters.) But the idea is growing: California passed legislation last year allowing public banks in that state, followed closely by New Jersey; there are also initiatives moving in Pennsylvania, Oregon, and New Mexico. Banks have helped cause much of the crisis we find ourselves in; it would be fascinating if they turned out to be one of the solutions.
Passing the Mic
Ruth DeFries is a professor of ecology and sustainable development at Columbia University and a MacArthur Fellow. Her new book, “What Would Nature Do? A Guide for Our Uncertain Times,” will be out in December.
Nature is obviously skilled at dealing with disease. What advice from other species might come in handy dealing with COVID-19? Or with the spread of false reality?
Ants, termites, and other social insects live in crowded, densely packed colonies akin to cities. Curiously, they do not often succumb to epidemics from infections that could sweep through a colony. Why not? When a pathogen comes into their colony, they instinctively sanitize their nests with plant resins, dying members leave the nest of their own volition, and healthy insects drag sick nest-mates and corpses away from the nest. Human societies would obviously not promote such self-sacrificing measures. But the insects also have a strategy that mirrors the way people are dealing with the pandemic. These tiny creatures collectively manage their social networks to curtail the spread. Their networks are highly clustered and modular. With the threat of a pathogen, the clusters can quickly close off contact with the others. Our notion of “pods” to cluster with family and friends has roots in the natural world.
When it comes to the spread of false reality, the same principle applies. False realities circulate in social clusters that don’t communicate with each other. From nature’s example, the solution is to cut off the false information before it can spread in the cluster. Of course, political reality is quite different.
What does this analysis tell you about how humans are different from the rest of creation? Are you hopeful that the big brain will turn out to be a useful adaptation or not?
Over hundreds of years of our species’ existence on this planet, our big brain has figured out ways to harness nature to provide copious amounts of food, energy, and other resources. From the taming of fire to domesticating plants and animals to digging fossil energy from the ground, humans have been very successful at coming up with new technologies. We have been less successful at applying our big brain to collectively manage the repercussions of our technological success. Climate change is a primary example, as is the inability of our human institutions to control the pandemic.
I don’t have much doubt that people will figure out more ingenious ways to produce food and invent new ways to get energy. What gives me pause is not the technological know-how but whether our governments and other institutions are up to the task of using the fruits of these technologies equitably and nimbly enough to correct the problems that they create. Nature is full of self-correcting features, like the incredible cycling of carbon from the atmosphere to the deep earth and back that keeps climate stable. We need to build these types of self-corrections into our human institutions.
At the moment, we seem to be moving from highly concentrated systems of information and energy production into much more dispersed networks. Is that a good trajectory?
Going back to the social insects, the so-called queen actually has no power or ability to control where the workers go or what they do. Top-down control from a central authority has no analogies in nature. The military-like march of ants in a straight line emerges as each individual follows cues from its local neighbors, not from a queen directing traffic. The queen has no way of knowing the best route, even if she could tell each ant where to go. This idea, applied to human societies who self-organize to manage their local forests, fisheries, and policing, won a Nobel Prize for the late Elinor Ostrom. She countered the commonly held notion of the tragedy of the commons with many examples where people do figure out ways to sustainably manage their resources. The key is access to local information and the ability for local communities to make decisions. If one adheres to the idea that evolution provides useful strategies worked out over millions of years, while humans have been on the scene for only a sliver of that time, a move to less centrally controlled information and production seems like a good trajectory.
Climate School
It’s coming up on a year since I launched this newsletter, and I hope that you’re finding it worthwhile. I’m glad it’s free and available to everyone. But that’s only possible because enough people subscribe to The New Yorker to keep the magazine a going operation. So I also hope that you’ll subscribe to The New Yorker, either in print or digitally—it’s the best periodical in the English language, and you (and those on your Christmas list) will be happier and smarter for having it to read.


newyorker--2020-11-25--Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Mines the Paranoia of the Nineteen-Eighties and Today

On November 13th , a day when President Donald Trump declared electoral victory in Pennsylvania and Georgia , almost accidentally conceded the election , and then threatened to withhold a coronavirus vaccine from residents of New York State , the marketplace welcomed Call of Duty : Black Ops Cold War , a video game that glorifies the schemes of an image-obsessed , cognitively dubious President with an ambivalent relationship to both work and the rule of law .
In Cold War , Ronald Reagan ’ s Central Intelligence Agency operatives are the under-heralded heroes of the early nineteen-eighties—by an accident @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enthusiasts in the C.I.A .
in the midst of an ongoing anti-democratic power grab .
A lesser franchise might see this as a P.R .
headache , but Cold War is the seventeenth entry in the main Call of Duty series , which maintains massive bipartisan appeal , despite—maybe even , in part , because of—its reactionary nature .
( According to its publisher , Activision Blizzard , Call of Duty has outearned the entire canon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe . )
Activision Blizzard has always insisted that the games are apolitical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its face ; with Cold War ’ s ode to the Reagan-era death squad , however , the franchise has now pushed so deeply into the territory of right-wing fantasy that it reaches a point of inadvertent parody , as if you could squint hard enough at a Steven Seagal movie that it could start looking like a Paul Verhoeven movie—a skewering of American empire rather than a paean .
It ’ s too generous to credit Cold War as a work of knowing interactive satire ; hiring former Navy SEALs and Oliver @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have required Andy Kaufman levels of commitment .
But , depending on who is playing it , the game exists in one of two distinct , ideologically opposite dimensions .
Those who think it ’ s a blast and those who think it ’ s an abomination will likely cite the same evidence for their beliefs .
The game ’ s jet-setting trail of blood starts with Iranian operatives who are believed to have participated in the Iran hostage crisis and leads to a Soviet agent , known as Perseus , who , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American security state decades ago and is now plundering its nuclear secrets , in a final plot to humiliate the decadent West .
It is Reagan himself , reanimated with an uncanny eeriness that evokes Resident Evil , who lays out your mission : protect the free world from Communist infiltration through , more or less , state-sanctioned extralegal murder .
The player is cast as an unaccountable gunslinger .
One minute , you ’ re tossing an unarmed Iranian man off a rooftop , in a revenge mission against the Shah ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a whole village en route to securing a nuke that the Pentagon had squirrelled away , just in case it wanted to flatten South Vietnam .
Cold War attempts to break up its rote shooter game play ( walk from room to room killing everyone , until you run out of rooms ) with the addition of some basic clue-hunting and puzzle-solving tasks .
Perhaps as an homage to Langley ’ s historical analytical competence , these puzzles make little sense , and whether you solve them or not creates almost no appreciable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ substance of the game is in killing hundreds of people without ever really knowing why .
You ’ re joined by a cast of rugged , gorgeous paramilitary hunks whose main purpose is sharing square-jawed quips about how much they enjoy kicking ass and breaking all the rules .
The former C.I.A .
director Robert Gates once described the agency under Reagan as a “ blindered fraternity living on the legends and achievements of their forebears.
” It ’ s a remark that Cold War appears to interpret as praise .
Despite four @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
and Trump are spiritual siblings , defined in large part by the extent of their impunity and their ability to foment fear and paranoia .
The announcement trailer for Cold War is built around footage from a television interview , in 1984 , between Yuri Bezmenov , the K.G.B .
defector , and G. Edward Griffin , the American conspiracy theorist and longtime member of the John Birch Society .
In the interview , Bezmenov claims that the Soviet Union was working to subvert the United States by brainwashing American students into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , recently hosted the fifth installment of the annual rally known as the Red Pill Expo , which , the New York Daily News reported , “ gathered hundreds of unmasked conspiracy believers , along with militia leaders , Trump backers , anti-vaxxers and religious crusaders.
” It is this apparently timeless strain of paranoia , founded on the assumption of leftist treachery , that guided the real C.I.A .
through a half century of coups and dirty wars , and which now serves as cable-news fodder : a Republican President whom millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intelligence asset is attempting to cling to power by mobilizing millions of other Americans who think that a leftist cabal of Antifa , Satanic child traffickers , and the corpse of Hugo Chavez has subverted their government .
The Trump years have scrambled the traditional party-line views on the C.I.A.
, with historically skeptical liberals hoping that the agency was part of the Resistance and historically sympathetic conservatives suspicious of deep-state meddling .
Conspiratorial paranoia is pervasive enough that it doesn ’ t really matter where Cold War lands between its quantum states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the intelligence community .
If the prevailing bipartisan anxiety is the idea of America laid low from within , Cold War delivers an MK-ULTRA-calibre dose .
It ’ s just too bad that we ’ ll likely have to wait decades for Call of Duty : Black Ops MAGA , with players sent on a laptop-hunting mission to Ukraine on orders from a computerized Rudy Giuliani .

On November 13th, a day when President Donald Trump declared electoral victory in Pennsylvania and Georgia, almost accidentally conceded the election, and then threatened to withhold a coronavirus vaccine from residents of New York State, the marketplace welcomed Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, a video game that glorifies the schemes of an image-obsessed, cognitively dubious President with an ambivalent relationship to both work and the rule of law. In Cold War, Ronald Reagan’s Central Intelligence Agency operatives are the under-heralded heroes of the early nineteen-eighties—by an accident of timing, the game celebrates coup enthusiasts in the C.I.A. in the midst of an ongoing anti-democratic power grab.
A lesser franchise might see this as a P.R. headache, but Cold War is the seventeenth entry in the main Call of Duty series, which maintains massive bipartisan appeal, despite—maybe even, in part, because of—its reactionary nature. (According to its publisher, Activision Blizzard, Call of Duty has outearned the entire canon of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.) Activision Blizzard has always insisted that the games are apolitical, a claim that is absurd on its face; with Cold War’s ode to the Reagan-era death squad, however, the franchise has now pushed so deeply into the territory of right-wing fantasy that it reaches a point of inadvertent parody, as if you could squint hard enough at a Steven Seagal movie that it could start looking like a Paul Verhoeven movie—a skewering of American empire rather than a paean. It’s too generous to credit Cold War as a work of knowing interactive satire; hiring former Navy SEALs and Oliver North as consultants over the years would have required Andy Kaufman levels of commitment. But, depending on who is playing it, the game exists in one of two distinct, ideologically opposite dimensions. Those who think it’s a blast and those who think it’s an abomination will likely cite the same evidence for their beliefs.
The game’s jet-setting trail of blood starts with Iranian operatives who are believed to have participated in the Iran hostage crisis and leads to a Soviet agent, known as Perseus, who, we’re told, infiltrated the American security state decades ago and is now plundering its nuclear secrets, in a final plot to humiliate the decadent West. It is Reagan himself, reanimated with an uncanny eeriness that evokes Resident Evil, who lays out your mission: protect the free world from Communist infiltration through, more or less, state-sanctioned extralegal murder. The player is cast as an unaccountable gunslinger. One minute, you’re tossing an unarmed Iranian man off a rooftop, in a revenge mission against the Shah; the next, you’re liquidating a whole village en route to securing a nuke that the Pentagon had squirrelled away, just in case it wanted to flatten South Vietnam.
Cold War attempts to break up its rote shooter game play (walk from room to room killing everyone, until you run out of rooms) with the addition of some basic clue-hunting and puzzle-solving tasks. Perhaps as an homage to Langley’s historical analytical competence, these puzzles make little sense, and whether you solve them or not creates almost no appreciable difference in your fate. The real substance of the game is in killing hundreds of people without ever really knowing why. You’re joined by a cast of rugged, gorgeous paramilitary hunks whose main purpose is sharing square-jawed quips about how much they enjoy kicking ass and breaking all the rules. The former C.I.A. director Robert Gates once described the agency under Reagan as a “blindered fraternity living on the legends and achievements of their forebears.” It’s a remark that Cold War appears to interpret as praise.
Despite four years of mutual antipathy, the C.I.A. and Trump are spiritual siblings, defined in large part by the extent of their impunity and their ability to foment fear and paranoia. The announcement trailer for Cold War is built around footage from a television interview, in 1984, between Yuri Bezmenov, the K.G.B. defector, and G. Edward Griffin, the American conspiracy theorist and longtime member of the John Birch Society. In the interview, Bezmenov claims that the Soviet Union was working to subvert the United States by brainwashing American students into becoming Marxist-Leninists. Griffin, now eighty-nine, recently hosted the fifth installment of the annual rally known as the Red Pill Expo, which, the New York Daily News reported, “gathered hundreds of unmasked conspiracy believers, along with militia leaders, Trump backers, anti-vaxxers and religious crusaders.” It is this apparently timeless strain of paranoia, founded on the assumption of leftist treachery, that guided the real C.I.A. through a half century of coups and dirty wars, and which now serves as cable-news fodder: a Republican President whom millions of Americans believe to be a Russian intelligence asset is attempting to cling to power by mobilizing millions of other Americans who think that a leftist cabal of Antifa, Satanic child traffickers, and the corpse of Hugo Chavez has subverted their government.
The Trump years have scrambled the traditional party-line views on the C.I.A., with historically skeptical liberals hoping that the agency was part of the Resistance and historically sympathetic conservatives suspicious of deep-state meddling. Conspiratorial paranoia is pervasive enough that it doesn’t really matter where Cold War lands between its quantum states of right-wing chest-thumping and semi-accidental sendup of the intelligence community. If the prevailing bipartisan anxiety is the idea of America laid low from within, Cold War delivers an MK-ULTRA-calibre dose. It’s just too bad that we’ll likely have to wait decades for Call of Duty: Black Ops MAGA, with players sent on a laptop-hunting mission to Ukraine on orders from a computerized Rudy Giuliani.


newyorker--2020-11-25--The Joylessness of Cooking

The Joylessness of Cooking

To cook , as a home cook , isn ’ t just to cook—it ’ s to plan , to shop , to store , to prep , to combine , to heat , to serve .
If I don ’ t love all those things , all the time , I can at least reliably expect a jolt of pleasure from one or two : the bland labor of chopping onion is paid for , more or less , by the rich smell of the stew as it simmers .
But what I love most about cooking ( in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a puzzle to be solved .
In its best form , cooking is a practice measured not in individual dishes but in days and even weeks—a strategic navigation of ingredients , expiration dates , uses and reuses , variety and sameness .
I ’ m no good at chess , but in my mind the rush of realizing that the jumble of aging ingredients piled up in your fridge composes exactly what ’ s needed to make a beautiful dinner has to be , on some level , how Kasparov felt when he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Topalov .
In March , when it began to seem likely that the coronavirus pandemic would lead to a serious bunker-style hiding out , I felt the expected fear and anger but also , I admit , a certain thrill at the idea of a major shift in the rules of the kitchen game .
How do you make it work when you don ’ t know how often you ’ ll be able to grocery shop ?
In early February , I had spoken , for a story , to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had somehow been composing culinary sestinas in the midst of a strict lockdown , with minimal access to fresh ingredients ; following their lead , in the weeks before New York City issued its own social-distancing mandates , I started growing my own herbs , bought jars in which to put up pickles , scoured cookbooks for recipes that used nothing but pantry ingredients and yet wouldn ’ t feel like military rations .
We would be eating paella , I informed my husband , and cassoulet , and miso soup with homemade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Niçoise salads without the lettuce .
We might be prisoners in our apartment , but at least we ’ d eat like kings .
Of course , that ’ s not how things went down .
It became clear , almost right away , that , besides a few precarious weeks of toilet-paper shortages , any worries of major supply-chain disruptions were unfounded .
If anything , by April , home cooks ( at least , those whose incomes hadn ’ t evaporated when the nation began its economic domino-fall ) had access @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve ever had before : as restaurants were forced into state- and city-imposed shutdowns , their suppliers started scrambling to sell their now-homeless inventory at retail , and often by mail .
Steaks once destined for steak houses , chickens of rare and beautiful breeds , exquisite olive oils and vinegars by the gallon , gorgeous cheeses , freshly milled flours , a dazzling cornucopia of specialty fruits and vegetables—the sorts of rare and sensitive specimens that risk-averse grocery stores would never consider making space for—were suddenly available , and at shockingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or eight months , my refrigerator has been stocked with the raw materials of fantasy ; you could dive into my spice drawer like Scrooge McDuck into his swimming pool of doubloons .
I ’ ve stir-fried Sichuan-style cumin lamb , made slow-roasted pernil asado , fired up pots of oil for a farmers ’ -market fritto misto ; I spent what felt like the summer juicing limes and slicing fish for an endless parade of tart , light-as-air ceviches ; I ’ ve made hundreds of dishes for hundreds of meals .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ am so tired .
In theory , I love to cook .
But I am so , so sick of cooking .
I take some comfort in knowing that I ’ m not at all alone in this feeling .
“ I hate cooking now , and I hate that I hate cooking , ” my friend Sarah confessed to me recently , after months of making and eating meals by herself while her partner works a schedule that , thanks to COVID-19 , means he ’ s never home for mealtimes .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ sales of prepared foods as evidence that COVID-related kitchen fatigue is a bona-fide trend .
The critic Tejal Rao wrote recently , in the Times , about culinary burnout : “ I don ’ t think I ’ m supposed to admit this here in the Food section , but when I think about cooking , I ’ m filled with dread.
” My social-media feeds are full of individuals regarding their own culinary ennui with something adjacent to awe .
“ I don ’ t know what to make for school lunch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ breakfast .
i no longer know what i like to eat , what i know how to cook , what is healthy , what the children enjoy , or even what is actually edible , ” the novelist Rumaan Alam tweeted recently .
Others yearn for a sci-fi future where dinner is distributed in pellet form , or own up to subsisting on candy bars , or grudgingly admit to , finally , understanding the allure of zero-effort meal replacements like Soylent and nutritional drinks such as Carnation Breakfast Essentials® products .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the fall ( now deleted , but seared forever in my screenshots folder , and on my heart ) , which made the rounds among my friends : “ gotten to the point with eating where i basically just want a nutrient slurry injected into me , ” the Twitter user wrote .
Feelings of emptiness are normal , even expected , in times of stress and uncertainty .
( “ Stress and uncertainty ” being at best a tiptoeingly diplomatic way to describe the experience of the past year in America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dysregulations , both ambient and immediate . )
But isn ’ t cooking supposed to be a balm for this sort of thing ?
Much of the happiness I used to find in cooking—even when cooking became , sort of , my job—was rooted in how tangible it was , in both labor and outcome .
Simple , repetitive , semi-creative tasks like kneading dough and chopping dill are supposed to thaw us when we ’ re frozen with existential dread , to ground us in the tactile world , to give us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the small universe of the cutting board and the stovetop .
This makes sense , I know it ’ s true , and I guess I remember living it , and believing it .
But lately it feels awfully far away .
I don ’ t want to re-center myself by being mindful while I peel a head of garlic for the hundred-and-thirtieth day in a row ; I want to lose track of myself entirely by playing seventeen straight hours of a battle-strategy video game in which I get to be a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hair .
Much has been made , in these months of the pandemic , of the wisdom to be found in “ How to Cook a Wolf , ” M. F. K. Fisher ’ s great guide , from 1942 , to cooking and provisioning during the extreme shortages of the Second World War .
I ’ ve always loved this sharp , snarky little book , particularly the way Fisher walks a tightrope between buck-up bonhomie and stark misanthropy .
She doesn ’ t pretend that circumstances aren ’ t dismal well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the title is fatigue and anxiety as much as it ’ s hunger .
But she makes a good case , in chapters like “ How to Be Cheerful Through Starving ” and “ How to Rise Up Like New Bread , ” for finding the fun in misery .
“ Here are some suggestions which sound touched with a kind of sordid whimsy until you to try them , ” she says , to introduce a list of alternative fuel sources culled from books dating back as far as the Victorian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and make you feel noble and brave at the same time.
” From the vantage point of abundance , this sentiment is inspiring ; in an era of need and shortage , it ’ s timeless and practical .
For me , right now , it makes me want to hurl a cabbage at the wall .
( I ’ ve had a cabbage taking up space in my fridge for over a month now ; this use for it seems as good as any . )
Behind Fisher ’ s exhortations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the rationing of that era was a cost of fuelling a war , the sacrifices on the home front motivated by a narrative of patriotism and righteousness .
The COVID-19 pandemic is sort of a war , but only in the most absurd and nihilistic way : the economy hasn ’ t been diverted to wartime production—it ’ s just in crisis .
The people trying to make do with limited resources are in that position because they don ’ t have jobs or adequate ( if any ) governmental relief , not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our boys overseas taking down the Nazis .
“ I believe that one of the most dignified ways we are capable of , to assert and then reassert our dignity in the face of poverty and war ’ s fears and pains , is to nourish ourselves with all possible skill , delicacy , and ever-increasing enjoyment , ” Fisher writes , beautifully , and to my great irritation .
My enjoyment is anything but “ ever-increasing .
”

In theory, I love to cook. I’ve been reminding myself of this lately, repeating it almost like a mantra, humming the percussive, iambic rhythm of the phrase while I clatter around in the cabinets in search of whatever skillet is inevitably at the very bottom of a teetering stack of pans, or ram the blade of a knife through the stalks of yet another head of celery, or fling a handful of salt resentfully at a wholly blameless chicken. In theory, I love to cook.
To cook, as a home cook, isn’t just to cook—it’s to plan, to shop, to store, to prep, to combine, to heat, to serve. If I don’t love all those things, all the time, I can at least reliably expect a jolt of pleasure from one or two: the bland labor of chopping onion is paid for, more or less, by the rich smell of the stew as it simmers. But what I love most about cooking (in theory) is that it’s a puzzle to be solved. In its best form, cooking is a practice measured not in individual dishes but in days and even weeks—a strategic navigation of ingredients, expiration dates, uses and reuses, variety and sameness. I’m no good at chess, but in my mind the rush of realizing that the jumble of aging ingredients piled up in your fridge composes exactly what’s needed to make a beautiful dinner has to be, on some level, how Kasparov felt when he realized he was about to sock it to Topalov.
In March, when it began to seem likely that the coronavirus pandemic would lead to a serious bunker-style hiding out, I felt the expected fear and anger but also, I admit, a certain thrill at the idea of a major shift in the rules of the kitchen game. How do you make it work when you don’t know how often you’ll be able to grocery-shop? In early February, I had spoken, for a story, to a couple in Shunde, China, who had somehow been composing culinary sestinas in the midst of a strict lockdown, with minimal access to fresh ingredients; following their lead, in the weeks before New York City issued its own social-distancing mandates, I started growing my own herbs, bought jars in which to put up pickles, scoured cookbooks for recipes that used nothing but pantry ingredients and yet wouldn’t feel like military rations. We would be eating paella, I informed my husband, and cassoulet, and miso soup with homemade tofu, and fresh pasta, and Niçoise salads without the lettuce. We might be prisoners in our apartment, but at least we’d eat like kings.
Of course, that’s not how things went down. It became clear, almost right away, that, besides a few precarious weeks of toilet-paper shortages, any worries of major supply-chain disruptions were unfounded. If anything, by April, home cooks (at least, those whose incomes hadn’t evaporated when the nation began its economic domino-fall) had access to more and better ingredients than we’ve ever had before: as restaurants were forced into state- and city-imposed shutdowns, their suppliers started scrambling to sell their now-homeless inventory at retail, and often by mail. Steaks once destined for steak houses, chickens of rare and beautiful breeds, exquisite olive oils and vinegars by the gallon, gorgeous cheeses, freshly milled flours, a dazzling cornucopia of specialty fruits and vegetables—the sorts of rare and sensitive specimens that risk-averse grocery stores would never consider making space for—were suddenly available, and at shockingly attainable prices. During the past seven or eight months, my refrigerator has been stocked with the raw materials of fantasy; you could dive into my spice drawer like Scrooge McDuck into his swimming pool of doubloons. I’ve stir-fried Sichuan-style cumin lamb, made slow-roasted pernil asado, fired up pots of oil for a farmers’-market fritto misto; I spent the summer juicing limes and slicing fish for a nonstop parade of tart, light-as-air ceviches; I’ve made hundreds of dishes for hundreds of meals. And I am so bored. I am so tired. In theory, I love to cook. But I am so, so sick of cooking.
I take some comfort in knowing that I’m not at all alone in this feeling. “I hate cooking now, and I hate that I hate cooking,” my friend Sarah confessed to me recently, after months of making and eating meals by herself while her partner works a schedule that, thanks to COVID-19, means he’s never home for mealtimes. A recent Quartz report points to increased sales of prepared foods as evidence that COVID-related kitchen fatigue is a bona-fide trend. The critic Tejal Rao wrote recently, in the Times, about culinary burnout: “I don’t think I’m supposed to admit this here in the Food section, but when I think about cooking, I’m filled with dread.” My social-media feeds are full of individuals regarding their own culinary ennui with something adjacent to awe. “I don’t know what to make for school lunch. or for dinner. or for breakfast. i no longer know what i like to eat, what i know how to cook, what is healthy, what the children enjoy, or even what is actually edible,” the novelist Rumaan Alam tweeted recently. Others yearn for a sci-fi future where dinner is distributed in pellet form, or own up to subsisting on candy bars, or grudgingly admit to, finally, understanding the allure of zero-effort meal replacements like Soylent and nutritional drinks such as Carnation Breakfast Essentials® products. I keep thinking about a post from earlier in the fall (now deleted, but seared forever in my screenshots folder, and on my heart), which made the rounds among my friends: “gotten to the point with eating where i basically just want a nutrient slurry injected into me,” the Twitter user wrote.
Feelings of emptiness are normal, even expected, in times of stress and uncertainty. (“Stress and uncertainty” being at best a tiptoeingly diplomatic way to describe the experience of the past year in America, with its million and a half dysregulations, both ambient and immediate.) But isn’t cooking supposed to be a balm for this sort of thing? Much of the happiness I used to find in cooking—even when cooking became, sort of, my job—was rooted in how tangible it was, in both labor and outcome. Simple, repetitive, semi-creative tasks like kneading dough and chopping dill are supposed to thaw us when we’re frozen with existential dread, to ground us in the tactile world, to give us a sense of power and control over the small universe of the cutting board and the stovetop. This makes sense, I know it’s true, and I guess I remember living it, and believing it. But lately it feels awfully far away. I don’t want to re-center myself by being mindful while I peel a head of garlic for the hundred-and-thirtieth day in a row; I want to lose track of myself entirely by playing seventeen straight hours of a battle-strategy video game in which I get to be a military-school professor with magical powers and green hair.


newyorker--2020-11-25--Deb Perelman Is Thankful for Tacos

Deb Perelman Is Thankful for Tacos

Her mission is straightforward : provide recipes you can rely on .
Deb , as her friends , family , and most loyal fans call her , deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Martha and Ina , but she is not selling a fantasy of domestic bliss .
She simply wants to eat well , and to show you how to do the same .
She is guided by her own impulses and never pretends otherwise ; she is incredibly honest and careful , both as writer and cook .
She tests and tweaks and tests and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all on her own .
( Last year , for the first time ever , she hired an assistant , but then COVID-19 struck . )
Once she ’ s perfected a recipe , she posts it onto the blog , where her tone has a gentle , inviting intimacy , and a notable lack of arrogance , which makes her all the more trustworthy .
Nine times out of ten , when a friend tells me about a go-to recipe , it ’ s one they ’ ve found on Smitten Kitchen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I asked on Twitter if anyone had ideas for what to do with leftover brewed coffee , someone suggested Perelman ’ s olive oil chocolate cake .
I ’ ve made it three times since .
When I tweeted more recently about craving cake at an hour too late to make any , someone else suggested I try the low-effort , high-yield peanut butter cookie recipe that Deb adapted from the Ovenly cookbook .
A veritable Greek chorus chimed in to agree .
Over the summer and again in the fall , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , cooking during the pandemic , using her voice both within and beyond the realm of food , and , of course , Thanksgiving .
Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity .
What ’ s your Thanksgiving philosophy this year , and how does it differ , if at all , from other years ?
Obviously , it ’ s going to be a lot smaller .
And it ’ s really sad , at the end of a tough year , to still not be able to see your @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot of questions , like , “ So , can I make your turkey as a chicken ?
Can I halve this stuffing recipe ?
” Sometimes I say , Don ’ t worry about halving it—just make it in two pans and freeze half of it , and come Christmas , you have this delicious potato gratin or whatever waiting for you .
Even more fun would be finding new ways to do stuff .
For all of the bad things about this year , we all have some new traditions .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ more , we do so much more outside .
Some of the creativity is really lovely .
And I imagine , for some people , since Thanksgiving is like our cooking Olympics , it ’ s a tiny bit of relief .
I ’ ve come to sort of loathe the word Friendsgiving , but I really like the idea behind it .
I think the holidays can feel prescriptive for people , and there ’ s something liberating about doing it your own way .
I think a lot more people ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Friendsgivings this year , which is to say , smaller , casual , only what you like .
This is the perfect excuse to get rid of the pie you hated making .
You can home in on the three dishes that , if they ’ re not on the table , it ’ s not Thanksgiving .
I actually asked people about that on Instagram—what ’ s the dish that you won ’ t negotiate on ?
People are really into stuffing .
You were one of the original food bloggers .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ it seemed like there was less trolling and a lot more good will .
Do you think you ’ ve held onto the good will ?
I don ’ t know if I ’ ve held on to the good will !
I hope I haven ’ t done anything to lose it .
I think once you reach any level of success or readership , there ’ s this idea that you did it with some sort of intentionality or authority , and I ’ ve never felt either of those things @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ m , like , a smarter , better cook than everybody else .
There ’ s always this tone in food writing : “ Let me tell you how it is.
” Ugh , gross .
Who wants to be bossed around when you ’ re making dinner ?
It ’ s just about inviting people to have a conversation .
Exactly .
In my first book I called it telephone-cord cooking .
This is definitely showing my age , but when I was a kid , my mom would be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , you know , back when telephones had cords .
She ’ d be talking and she ’ d be , like , “ O.K.
, so what do you do with chicken ?
O.K .
No , I ’ m not .
We ’ re not gon na do that .
That sounds ridiculous.
” I liked the way telephone-cord cooking sounded , and I didn ’ t hear a lot of it in food writing .
How did you get into food writing ?
I majored in psychology , and then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s program at George Washington , and then after that , I moved up to New York and I got a job as an art therapist at a nursing home .
I did that for about four years .
I liked working with old people , but I realized that I had absolutely chosen the wrong career path .
It did not make me happy .
I didn ’ t know what else I was going to do with my life .
Like , how do you get out of such a niche @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blog , before Smitten Kitchen , in 2003 , and I was doing that in the evenings .
It took off pretty quickly , even though it was just essays and stuff .
But I had no connections .
I didn ’ t know anyone in media .
I tried to apply for jobs at Gourmet and Bon Appétit and they were , like , Who are you ?
It was just a whatever blog .
There was dating in it , but you didn ’ t need to have a focus in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ How did you get readers ?
I remember , like , Gawker linked to stuff I wrote a few times , and not even in a mean way .
And Gothamist .
Around this time I also met my husband , who was an early reader .
He left a comment , we moved it over to e-mail , we met for a drink , we got married two years later .
I was , like , I like writing , I like you , I hate my job .
I was so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s husbands worked at a B2B publishing company , and he was , like , “ We ’ re hiring an editorial assistant.
” So I ended up doing that .
And then , after a couple of months , they realized I could write , and I became a staff writer .
Which is hilarious—at a tech magazine ?
I don ’ t know shit about tech .
And I was there for about three years , but at the same time , I started Smitten Kitchen , in 2006 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a year , I think it was pretty clear that I could do that full time , because I was pulling enough from ads .
So I quit in 2008 .
Did you feel like there was a lot of energy around cooking blogs then ?
And did that help you feel like you could start one ?
Or was it just purely your natural interest ?
I definitely knew about the existence of cooking blogs .
There are some that are still around from those days .
Heidi , from 101 Cookbooks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Chef , although I don ’ t think she blogs much .
Molly Wizenberg .
But a lot of the food blogs that were out there were professional—they were , like , somebody going to cooking school , and they were sort of technique heavy .
I didn ’ t know anything about cooking .
I was a total beginner , and I fully expected it to be over in six months and then I would just retire from blogging .
My cooking entries were , like , I don ’ t really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tried this and it was pretty good !
And I don ’ t think it ’ s changed .
The difference is I ’ m a much better cook now .
Before , I didn ’ t have go-to recipes for anything , and so the site was just a way of me collecting those recipes .
I made Marian Burros ’ s plum torte , or the famous Marcella Hazan three-ingredient tomato sauce .
There are a lot more original recipes now .
But adapting other people ’ s recipes is still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the conversation in cooking .
I like the messy way , where you ’ re , like , “ Well , Carol , when I met her in Rome , told me about this .
And then this lady… ” But then people are like , “ Oh , Deb doesn ’ t write her own recipes.
” I actually think the world of food is more interesting when you talk about the pieces that come together .
Nobody creates food in a vacuum .
Sometimes you ’ re sitting in a restaurant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dish , and you come home and make something completely different .
Is it the restaurant ’ s dish ?
A lot of people would say , “ Well , I ’ m not going to give them credit , because I came up with this.
” And I ’ m , like , “ I want to give you credit cause I think you ’ re cool.
” So I probably over-source , but I think it makes the conversation more interesting .

In 2006, when Deb Perelman started Smitten Kitchen, her now beloved food blog, she thought she was essentially shouting into a void. She had never cooked professionally and had no connections in the food world. Her background was in psychology. And yet, fourteen years later, she has outlasted most of her contemporaries (“Smitten Kitchen, these days, is not just a food blog: it is the food blog,” Emily Gould wrote in this magazine in 2017), married one of her readers, and nourished an audience that numbers in the millions. She has produced two best-selling cookbooks, with a third on the way.
Her mission is straightforward: provide recipes you can rely on. Deb, as her friends, family, and most loyal fans call her, deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Martha and Ina, but she is not selling a fantasy of domestic bliss. She simply wants to eat well, and to show you how to do the same. She is guided by her own impulses and never pretends otherwise; she is incredibly honest and careful, both as writer and cook. She tests and tweaks and tests and tweaks in her tiny Manhattan kitchen, all on her own. (Last year, for the first time ever, she hired an assistant, but then COVID-19 struck.)
Once she’s perfected a recipe, she posts it onto the blog, where her tone has a gentle, inviting intimacy, and a notable lack of arrogance, which makes her all the more trustworthy. Nine times out of ten, when a friend tells me about a go-to recipe, it’s one they’ve found on Smitten Kitchen. A few months ago, when I asked on Twitter if anyone had ideas for what to do with leftover brewed coffee, someone suggested Perelman’s olive oil chocolate cake. I’ve made it three times since. When I tweeted more recently about craving cake at an hour too late to make any, someone else suggested I try the low-effort, high-yield peanut butter cookie recipe that Deb adapted from the Ovenly cookbook. A veritable Greek chorus chimed in to agree.
Over the summer and again in the fall, we spoke about the evolution of her career, cooking during the pandemic, using her voice both within and beyond the realm of food, and, of course, Thanksgiving. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What’s your Thanksgiving philosophy this year, and how does it differ, if at all, from other years?
Obviously, it’s going to be a lot smaller. And it’s really sad, at the end of a tough year, to still not be able to see your family. I’m getting a lot of questions, like, “So, can I make your turkey as a chicken? Can I halve this stuffing recipe?” Sometimes I say, Don’t worry about halving it—just make it in two pans and freeze half of it, and come Christmas, you have this delicious potato gratin or whatever waiting for you.
Even more fun would be finding new ways to do stuff. For all of the bad things about this year, we all have some new traditions. We have certain meals that we make more, we do so much more outside. Some of the creativity is really lovely. And I imagine, for some people, since Thanksgiving is like our cooking Olympics, it’s a tiny bit of relief.
I’ve come to sort of loathe the word Friendsgiving, but I really like the idea behind it. I think the holidays can feel prescriptive for people, and there’s something liberating about doing it your own way.
I think a lot more people’s Thanksgivings are going to look like Friendsgivings this year, which is to say, smaller, casual, only what you like. This is the perfect excuse to get rid of the pie you hated making. You can home in on the three dishes that, if they’re not on the table, it’s not Thanksgiving. I actually asked people about that on Instagram—what’s the dish that you won’t negotiate on? People are really into stuffing.
You were one of the original food bloggers. In the early days of blogging, it seemed like there was less trolling and a lot more good will. Do you think you’ve held onto the good will?
I don’t know if I’ve held on to the good will! I hope I haven’t done anything to lose it. I think once you reach any level of success or readership, there’s this idea that you did it with some sort of intentionality or authority, and I’ve never felt either of those things. I don’t actually think I’m, like, a smarter, better cook than everybody else. There’s always this tone in food writing: “Let me tell you how it is.” Ugh, gross. Who wants to be bossed around when you’re making dinner?
It’s just about inviting people to have a conversation.
Exactly. In my first book I called it telephone-cord cooking. This is definitely showing my age, but when I was a kid, my mom would be on the phone talking to a friend, you know, back when telephones had cords. She’d be talking and she’d be, like, “O.K., so what do you do with chicken? O.K. No, I’m not. We’re not gonna do that. That sounds ridiculous.” I liked the way telephone-cord cooking sounded, and I didn’t hear a lot of it in food writing.
How did you get into food writing?
I majored in psychology, and then I did this art therapy master’s program at George Washington, and then after that, I moved up to New York and I got a job as an art therapist at a nursing home. I did that for about four years. I liked working with old people, but I realized that I had absolutely chosen the wrong career path. It did not make me happy.
I didn’t know what else I was going to do with my life. Like, how do you get out of such a niche profession? So I started my Smitten blog, before Smitten Kitchen, in 2003, and I was doing that in the evenings. It took off pretty quickly, even though it was just essays and stuff. But I had no connections. I didn’t know anyone in media. I tried to apply for jobs at Gourmet and Bon Appétit and they were, like, Who are you?
Smitten was a dating blog, right?
It was just a whatever blog. There was dating in it, but you didn’t need to have a focus in 2003. You could just blog.
How did you get readers?
I remember, like, Gawker linked to stuff I wrote a few times, and not even in a mean way. And Gothamist. Around this time I also met my husband, who was an early reader. He left a comment, we moved it over to e-mail, we met for a drink, we got married two years later. I was, like, I like writing, I like you, I hate my job. I was so miserable.
One of my former co-worker’s husbands worked at a B2B publishing company, and he was, like, “We’re hiring an editorial assistant.” So I ended up doing that. And then, after a couple of months, they realized I could write, and I became a staff writer. Which is hilarious—at a tech magazine? I don’t know shit about tech. And I was there for about three years, but at the same time, I started Smitten Kitchen, in 2006. And, honestly, after not even a year, I think it was pretty clear that I could do that full time, because I was pulling enough from ads. So I quit in 2008.


newyorker--2020-11-25--Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, November 25th

Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, November 25th

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“Took a look around and found the issue: you got Giuliani out behind your tool shed giving news conferences.”


newyorker--2020-11-25--Putin Warns That U.S. Will Be Controlled by Americans

MOSCOW ( The Borowitz Report ) —Asserting that his “ darkest fears have been confirmed , ” Vladimir Putin warned @ @ @ @ @ on the verge of being controlled by Americans .
Speaking to reporters at the Kremlin @ @ @ @ @ that President-elect Joe Biden was “ the handpicked instrument of those who would seek to @ @ @ @ @ Joe Biden is no more and no less than a puppet of the American people @ @ @ @ @ “ His Cabinet appointments have left little doubt that , after four years of progress @ @ @ @ @ fallen into American hands , ” he said .
“ Joe Biden is keenly aware @ @ @ @ @ power , and he will do their bidding.
” Russia experts said that Putin ’ @ @ @ @ @ to a concession speech as he is likely to make .

MOSCOW (The Borowitz Report)—Asserting that his “darkest fears have been confirmed,” Vladimir Putin warned that the United States is on the verge of being controlled by Americans.
Speaking to reporters at the Kremlin, the Russian President alleged that President-elect Joe Biden was “the handpicked instrument of those who would seek to advance American interests.”
“Joe Biden is no more and no less than a puppet of the American people,” he charged.
“His Cabinet appointments have left little doubt that, after four years of progress, the United States has fallen into American hands,” he said. “Joe Biden is keenly aware that Americans put him in power, and he will do their bidding.”
Russia experts said that Putin’s remarks were as close to a concession speech as he is likely to make.
Read More Satire from the Borowitz Report