I have been subscribing to the print Financial Times for over a year now and I'm loving it. In some sense it's "conservative," but on most issues it's "to the left" of most mainstream publications in the US or UK (e.g., climate change exists, maybe not everything going on in Gaza is on the up and up, etc.).

What the!

2 to the recommender, not the recommendation.

Kotsko!

For political news, I subscribe to Talking Points Memo. For general news? There's the Guardian, and I subscribe to a bunch of RSS feeds, and between them I get a pretty varied diet. It's been pretty rare that I've had to go to FTFNYT or FTFWaPo for anything in years.

I subscribe to TPM, too, but only to read Josh Marshall. I used to subscribe to the Guardian, but their weird Brit anti-trans bias was too much so I cancelled. I like general interest stories! The Post has good health section that I read pretty regularly, for example.

I agree on the value of FT though I haven't followed through to actually subscribe. I wrote elsewhere: "WSJ is for the landlords, franchise owners, car dealers, and heirs who just treat making money as their birthright. FT is for those who need to know what's really going on so they can profit from it."

I currently subscribe to my local paper, TPM, and the NYT. I've considered dropping the last one since I don't actually read it very much lately.

FT, and a clutch of Google alerts on particular topics (mostly limited to wire service results).

||
Teo, many ramblings on your latest.
|>

Thanks! I did see that there had been some comments but I didn't have the opportunity to read them at the time.

Having read them now, you hit on a lot of the related topics that I wasn't able to fit into the post.

This is specifically for their investigative journalism rather than regional news, which I wish there were a non-fucked way to fund, but I'm a ProPublica subscriber. (Thanks for the FT tip, Kotsko & Minivet -- I feel like I've seen other people recommend it, so maybe I'll give it a whirl!)

Having read them now, you hit on a lot of the related topics that I wasn't able to fit into the post.

Is the comment visible on the post? I don't see it.

Not on my post but in the Unfogged thread that he linked.

We did a thread in October fwiw.

I pay for my local paper (Philadelphia Inquirer), though due to idiotic tech glitches at their end I haven't been able to access paywalled articles for an annoying amount of time. I have sent them several complaints that their level of service for the THREE HUNDRED DOLLARS A YEAR I am paying them is substantially below that of many nonprofit service providers that I give $35 a year to. Also, they are weird about billing and I suspect they are trying to bill people on a 26- or 27-day cycle rather than 28 in order to squeeze out a little extra revenue.

I have an entirely unproven theory that the people running newspapers haven't actually made the switch to thinking of subscribers (rather than advertisers) as their customers, and thus they see subscription delivery/maintenance as irritating minutiae instead of the backbone of their revenue.

I donate $10-$50 periodically to places that do good investigative work -- in the past year or so, that was the Texas Tribune, Sahan Journal in Minnesota (they are kicking butt on the scamming-pandemic-dollars-by-pretending-to-feed-hungry-kids scandal), some outlet in Mississippi that I'm forgetting the name of, ProPublica.

I'm a monthly sustaining donor (at the $12 level) to Futuro Media Group, mostly because I think it's downright embarrassing how little Latine-produced news there is in a country with a population as large and diverse as ours.

I pay $39/year for the WashPost, because it's (sporadically) to useful professionally to let go of. Plus being a subscriber means I can upvote all of the stinging critiques in the comments sections and write the occasional zinger of my own.

*too useful. Sigh.

I donate to the Guardian, a small amount per month, because I haven't noticed the anti-trans bias Ogged mentioned. (But also it is free.)

However, I also subscribe to Experimental History which I find informative, delightful, and generally convincing, and one post in particular covered Following the News (and why one shouldn't) and at least partly because of that I read much less news than previously. Like, headlines daily, and current articles when I'm extra curious about developments as they develop, and then mostly longer form summaries of things a week or more after they happened, when everyone's sorted out the details. Wikipedia has updated articles VERY quickly, usually with more background than I knew about whatever it is.

It turns out nothing in the world is very different if I do or do not know about current events right at the moment they are occurring.

So in total honesty, I still read the NYT daily, but I don't pay; I have been 90% successful at hitting Safari reader view as the article is loading and getting the full text, and the other 10% doesn't really matter. Can I defend stealing the NYT? We tried the Post but it was so dull. I do occasionally just hit apnews.com or Reuters, I'm no longer on social media except a few days of binge-reading the WNBA subreddit this week (not recommended at the moment), and everything else I read or subscribe to is pretty niche.

In the time since the October thread, I've canceled my subscription to the Guardian. Weighing the good with the bad, I thought it was worth a subscription so that I could get more breadth of English-language world news. But then they told me they were going to charge me $250/year after I'd been a subscriber at something like $150/year, and that's a pretty big jump. When I go their site now, new digital subscriptions are $120, which could mean they were scamming me by hoping I wouldn't notice the $250 charge until the auto-renew kicked in, or maybe they made a huge mistake and they're now desperate to get subscribers back. I've actually considered resubscribing because all my other news sources are pretty regional or local, and I don't want another US-focused outlet.

I'd consider an NYT subscription that did not include any US poltics, book reviews, movie reviews, puzzles, or columnists.

El País English is pretty good whenever I'm linked to it, but I've never read it regularly.

20: Lurid, I'd think that, quite the opposite, the only morally correct position is to pirate FTFNYT and *never* pay for it. Run adblockers too, of course. If they're going to put their thumb on the scales of history, work to destroy our Republic, it's only fair that we respond by never giving them a red cent, and hey, if you read their articles for free, that's all well and good! Ditto WaPo of course.

I used to be a WaPo subscriber, but soon after Buzbee arrived, the amount of opinion articles showing up on the "news pages" just blew my gasket. I wrote an upbraiding letter to the editor and canceled my subscription.

FT. Guardian occasionally but so much of their news is weird non-news and/or weird axes being ground. Their fourth highest story this morning is "French PM interrupts someone" and the headline is taken from a statement by weird pro-russian extremist party LFI. The FT by contrast actually does its job.

I get free subscriptions to NYT, WP, and WSJ at work. I also read FP and some other things though FP is more analysis than news. My twitter feed is carefully curated enough that it's still a useful site for news, at least for those things that interest me; for breaking stuff on topics I'm not already following it's gone downhill.
I used to subscribe to TPM but let it expire on account of JM's horrendous genocide denial on his twitter account. It's not actually the fact of his genocide denial, we can disagree on that even if vehemently, but rather his unhinged accusations against those who see what's happening in Gaza (and the WB for that matter) for what it is - dripping with condescension, calling it malicious and even libel (big dog whistle there). Absolutely psychotic behavior.

Yes, Guardian too. And I regularly listen to BBC World Service while I cook and eat at home.

26 was me

For analysis and commentary Adam Tooze's Chartbook on Substack is excellent, as is John Ganz's substack Unpopular Front.

I get NYT/WaPo/WSJ via work but rarely remember that I do. Technically, I can get a lot more than that via newspaper/magazine databases, but those aren't subscriptions I can use directly on a news website. I only really use the WSJ subscription to read technology stories.

The FT is good - the opinion page is usually skippable but not deranged like the WSJ, Murdoch Times, NYT etc, and that's addressable by skipping it. Similarly you can either read the How to Spend It supplement and the Wealth magazine (really!) to keep your hate pure or else just sling them over a hedge or something.

The Guardian is ok but in hock to its crazed internal politics (e.g. getting Naomi Klein to broker peace or at least a tenuous ceasefire between the "gender does not exist!" and "all transmonsters must be exterminated!" factions) and increasingly warped by its new style business model that prizes fan-service above all things, as well as having a features writer for an editor. The BBC is ok as long as you completely ignore its Westminster politics coverage; only reading World Service coverage would probably be a good filter for that.

I subscribe to Mediapart, which is good especially on investigations and sometimes translates its stuff into English. That said it tends to think every demonstration is a) right and b) the revolution and its streaming show is maddening, five well-meaning French people so well brought up they have tape markers on the table so as not to encroach, who then fall to yelling at each other in trip hammer Parisian for two solid hours. Way to check your French listening comprehension.

DigiTimes Asia out of Taiwan is like the best tech industry news going, very much sub only but I have access at work.

just sling them over a hedge or something

Most disappointing hedge porn find ever.

I still read every Unfogged post on my RSS reader!

Never read the comments.

I freeload the NYT and WaPo via my wife's accounts; she will never give up the former. But I don't read them directly per se, and probably half my use is historical searches. I do use heavily-curated Twitter, Bluesky and Threads (where my entire stream is things like Reuters) for my entry points. Generally follow TPM, and have considered the Guardian.

I subscribe to the Chicago Sun-Times. I don't worry about not getting US news from anywhere else because just by being online I know I will be informed about New York City and DC, whether I want to or not.

I suppose somebody has to step up to defend the NYT. I find that publication pretty indispensable for knowing what's going on in the world -- and how people are talking about what is going on in the world -- but it's fine with me that other people are so incensed by its colossal lapses that they won't subscribe. Rightwingers have a lot of influence with the NYT precisely because they are a demographic the newspaper fears offending.

I used to say that I listened to Rush Limbaugh periodically because I knew it would be time to leave the country when he started advocating concentration camps. As it turns out, he did and I didn't, but I still get NewsMax alerts in my email, and on special days I will check in to see what Fox News is up to. (Trump conviction day most recently.)

I pay for the NYT, in the form of daily home delivery of a physical paper. Not having a daily paper is out of the question and my options are NYT, WSJ, or Boston Globe.
I pay for online WaPo access and would happily get that on paper instead if I could.

I have some regrets about the NYT but not enough to cancel.

I don't think I can get a daily paper delivered to my house.

If you have that many fish to wrap surely you could get something cheaper?

Because of a strike, I'm not subscribed to the Post Gazette, but they aren't even printing paper copies seven days a week.

I wasn't subscribed before the strike, but now I'm not subscribed because of the strike instead of being not subscribed because I don't want to be.

Glad to hear that I'm not the only one here that still subscribes to the NYT. I was going to claim that I had a special arrangement so that my subscription money went only to Jamelle Bouie and Michelle Goldberg.

Also surprised that some of you still have daily papers delivered. We get our local rag delivered just on Sunday. I'm not sure why -- there isn't even one decent comic anymore.

That hurts.

Wait. Are my balls out again?

My dad canceled his NYT subscription a few years ago on account of its purported liberal bias. He's been subscribing to the Epoch Times for a few years now and I never fail to mention that it's owned by a Chinese cult so I'm going to have extra fun discussing the latest money laundering revelations when I head back home in a few days.
I have been considering buying him a gift subscription to the print edition of the WSJ if for no other reason than to give me something decent to read over my breakfast.*

*Batshit editorial pages excepted.

NYT subscribers, remember voice vs. exit! Angry emails might not help, but who knows.

(I have had the games-only subscription for years.)

Well fuck me sideways.

At the time of writing this article, the results of the general elections suggest that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), far from crossing the 400-mark, was ahead in just 240 seats -- 40 short of the halfway mark of 273. With its National Democratic Alliance (NDA) allies, it was 295. This, when the Election Commission of India (ECI) was accused by the Opposition of playing an actively partisan role, in which the BJP had more resources than all other political parties combined, and in which it used several instruments of the State against the Opposition.

The Opposition's I.N.D.I.A. bloc stood at about 231 seats, with the Congress virtually doubling its strength. In short, the battle in the next Parliament will be a far more equal one than it has been in the previous two Lok Sabhas, where the NDA had had an overwhelming majority. The BJP will find it much harder to push through any legislation or amendments to the Constitution that it may have had in the pipeline.

Yeah, exciting news! BJP could go more authoritarian, but they're not assured.

47: Actual good news! Right?

45: If you haven't seen today's news on the Epoch Times, you'll want to have a look.

I did. It's epochal.

Interesting that it links BJP losses in UP with upper caste Hindus feeling disenfranchised. (OBC = "Other Backward Castes". Yes, that's an official term.)

BJP lost in Ayodhya, scene of Hindutva anti-Muslim pogroms and where Modi has really gone overboard in pandering to the fascist Hindutva extremists. Delicious.

52: Isn't OBC sort of midrange? Like the middle 10-60%ile status castes?

You down with OBC?
Yeah, you know me.

I get the Economist, a weekly makes sense for me. I basically don't read their US coverage. One of their Russia writers, Ostrovsky, is good. https://www.economist.com/1843/2024/02/22/life-and-death-in-putins-gulag
There's a Czech weekly I like also, Respekt, and sometimes I'll read Le Point. I support ProPublica and read their investigative pieces sometimes. They were disappointing about the lab leak clowns, though. I liked their recent piece about Trump paying for friendly testimony through his companies.

Or maybe 25-75% if 25% are SC or ST.

Not, of course, to say that they can be easily ranked along a continuum of status; rich tapestry. But in the the broadest of strokes.

Assume a Hindu moving in a 12-dimensional space.

With a spherical sacred cow.

That does simplify the calculations.

30: for pretty reliable fr listening that induces chill, i treasure the passion medieviste podcast. each guest is a current or recent masters or phd candidate. relaxing bc the vast majority of them, having grown up doing oral exams, deliver a series of content rich, organized *& concise* answers - pure heaven! & the topics are hilariously niche, which i love.

i would very much appreciate recs for a fr lrb or ny review of books. i used to pick up le monde des livres ( scratching a bit of this itch) in hard copy but can't find it locally anymore. can't subscribe to only this day, not interested in paying x niel any more than necessary.

Je ne parle.

For a while I was trying to parse 62.2 on the assumption that "fr" = "for real".

Joke's on the NYT, because I noticed that the price of my subscription had gone up, wondered what had happened to my discounted rate, and discovered that I can now get it for free through work. WaPo is still discounted. I mostly gave up on the local paper after the eleventy-third episode of laying off reporters and raising subscription prices.

Obviously Modi's too old, and BJP should have switched to a younger leader.

65: My local paper is almost out of reporters to lay off, but they're not not going to print the paper 3 days a week. (They dropped Saturday papers a couple of years ago.) It's still far more expensive than the national papers, but they're the best local source. (NPR does pretty well too; the rest seem to reprint press releases.)

Pretty bad that NYT gave Alina Chan space. The lab leak people are bad.

The NY Post (see link) seldom disappoints of you approach it with tabloid expectations. Bloomberg (magazine, not terminal). Otherwise google news keyword and topic alerts, and Substack. Otherwise, unsubscribing from anything @TaylorLorenz touches.

Link: Amazon people go online for first time.

68: Yeah, Jesus. I looked around to see if there was anything new there, and there wasn't. This is literally the same (already refuted) crap she was peddling with Matt Ridley three years ago. Choosing to publish that on the day that Fauci went to Congress was a spectacularly corrupt choice.

67: Yeah, my local paper is also pretty bad at the basic job of covering local news. If you have a bit of independent information about the players and issues, it can be entertaining to watch their sources' agendas play out on their pages, but Netflix is cheaper and less annoying.

Ugh that infuriated me when I browsed through it because my first instinct on seeing it in the NYT was "Surely there's something new if they're publishing it, I haven't kept up on the debate for a year or so, what did I miss?" And it's the same thoroughly debunked crap about the furin cleavage couldn't have possibly been natural when in fact the opposite has been demonstrated, the types of scars left by molecular biology tools are absent so it almost certainly wasn't artificially engineered. But because the NYT published it I had to waste my time looking up the previous arguments and wondering what it meant.

I forgot to mention that the Free Library of Philadelphia gives unlimited 72-hour free passes to the NYT for any cardholder. So every time I want to read a NYT article, I just go to that bookmarked page and get another 3-day pass. There are still some columnists there that I value. I just avoid reading the ones who I know will raise my blood pressure to no good end.

I would love to see a sociologist or a psychologist someday do an analysis of NYT reader comments by comparing the "reader picks" upvotes with the "NYT picks" upvotes. I am entirely certain it would show that the readers favor comments that are generally fairminded, compassionate, funny, and incisive, and the Times favors comments that are Conventional Wisdom, ignorant contrarianism, and otherwise working the refs.

I get the weekly newsletter from the Nieman Journalism Lab and sometimes they link to interesting stuff, like this stingray scandal (!) in North Carolina.

It turns out that the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh does the same thing. Thanks for the tip. I had no idea.

When in doubt, ask a librarian.

Kotsko!!

I subscribe to WaPo and the LA Times. I've been considering quitting LAT, because it's so shoddy in so many ways. Also they laid off my friend so I'm mad at them. I keep WaPo so I can theoretically read up on national news if I ever wanted to, and because I have a really good Keyword score.

I get free day passes to The NY Times through the LA library. I have to admit I really do enjoy it sometimes. Not enough to support it with my money though.

When in doubt, ask a librarian.

Wow, my library offers this too. (Also several other major dailies.) Thanks, Witt!

I'm glad to hear it.

This is probably a good time to mention that your friendly local library may also offer free online access to Consumer Reports. If you use this instead of or in addition to NYT's Wirecutter, you may find it handy to bookmark on your phone, so that you can pull it up next time you are at Home Depot or the equivalent.

I already have pliers.

unlimited 72-hour free passes to the NYT for any cardholder

Can you also purchase an add-on that's one of the sticks that used to hold newspapers in periodicals rooms?

AIMHMHB, I subscribe to online versions of NYT, WaPo, a mediocre paper from my home state that I'll eventually cancel, a mediocre paper from my current state, Consumer Reports, and a few Substacks. I get the New Yorker for free as an NPR subscriber gift. I subscribe to a hand-drawn paper zine, too.

Perhaps I've listened to too many godforsaken pledge drives, but every time I think about canceling a subscription I picture a journalist standing in front of me with big, mournful puppy dog eyes and I can't do it. I do share my logins with friends and family, however.

81: fortunately, given that so many US publications have recently gained British editors, you can picture one of our journalists searching the victim of a horrific accident's rubbish, paying a bent cop for blackmail on a politician, or just telling you a pack of patent lies.

https://x.com/hugolowell/status/1797435062537068970/

I blame Brexit.

free online access to Consumer Reports

Dude! Yes, they do! I've been paying for that. What other amazing life tips do you have?

Don't play pool with anyone who has "Fats" in their name or poker with anyone who has "Slim" in their name.

73, 74, 75, 77, 85: this whole sequence is great.

Or Yatze with anyone named Kyle.

Another one of my spectacularly cool uncles has passed away. Technically he's a first-cousin-once-removed, so I am not quite as gutted as I was by the loss of previous uncles, but he still had a super interesting life and was an incredibly charming, kind person.

Sorry for your loss. What a varied life to live.

I would offer condolences, but I just can't forgive you for 1968.

Apropos nothing in particular, is Mr. Smearcase ok?

Very sorry for your loss. He seems very cool indeed.

91: Excuse me, that was my husband. I was planting wildflowers.

I think we all know who really wore the pants.

92: I think he's doing pretty well!

94 is objectively pro hay fever.

Great!

98 to 96.

97 isn't great. I don't have hayfever and do like wildflowers.

100 isn't great either, because the stupid browser forgot my name again.

I haven't felt 100% since mid-April.

I assume this has been posted here before. LBJ orders pants from Haggar.

. And another thing - the crotch, down where your nuts hang - is always a little too tight, so when you make them up, give me an inch that I can let out there, uh because they cut me, it's just like riding a wire fence.
...
See if you can't leave me an inch from where the zipper (burps) ends, round, under my, back to my bunghole, so I can let it out there if I need it

Civil Rights, Great Society, buttplugs. America's greatest president.

92: Oh hi. I'm doing well. I don't read or comment a ton but did for a little while comment a few times under a modified pseud. Were you concerned for a reason or just "what's that guy up to?"

No reason! Very glad you're well!

Well thank you, then. My life is in fact substantially better in a number of ways than it was last time I commented much.

I mean except for the whole "The World" thing which seems pretty bad.

And yet, keeps surprising us.

107: Wheat... lots of wheat... fields of wheat... a tremendous amount of wheat...?

103 is classic and I'd bet he ordered them while he was on the can.

Speaking of crops, I'm now growing milo. I don't know why.

103 is really great.

Old-timers commenting made me think of people who vanished, and I was thinking I missed cerebrocrat, and looked at some old threads where he and jesus mcqueen were commenting and now I'm bummed. I blame Kotsko.

We're all old, except Teo.

I'll be 40 in September.

Then you'll be old. But not yet.

Thanks.

116 absurd. Impossible.

I just turned 40. Rented a big yacht for a party later this month.

Happy birthday. Watch out for orcas.

If you have lease paperwork to show you aren't the owner that is waterproof, that might help.

119: I'm grateful that I don't have a big birthday this year.

I guess I turned 46 recently.

Speaking of old timers, I've always wondered how SCMT is doing.

Just had my electoral registration confirmed. I am extremely impatient for election day - by coincidence we have some friends visiting, so will be staying up late to watch results come in as if it was 1997 again.

124: me too! twinsies.

This is all extremely on-topic by the OP title.

All you kids need to get off my lawn

I've always wondered how SCMT is doing

Me too, brother. I stayed in touch with him for years after I left here, and even met him in person, but then stopped hearing back, and it's been years now.

I think that he was largely before my time, so that's a while ago.

Just reached my Psalms 90:10 span of life* this year.

*Assuming no 10-year strength buff.

Teo's old where it counts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUHvMLNO6Fc

"It's a race! I'm winning!"

I knew exactly what clip that was going to be, and that is one of my all time favorite movies.

In fact, probably one of us says "Eeets a race! Eeets a race! I'm weeening!" maybe once a week in the house.

Less than a month away from "Will you still need me ..."

I recently read that the mean retirement age is 62. Fuckers. I've probably got at least three years of employment ahead of me.

I thought Teo was a lot younger than me, not ~7 years. I think met 16 years ago so I guess differences are bigger when you're younger, hence the n/2+7 rule.

Hochul is completely useless. I wouldn't be surprised if she did pardon Trump at this point.

Teo's practically a grown up at this point, guys.

139: I was thinking about posting about that tomorrow.

I have a guest post on procrastination I was going to send for tomorrow, but I didn't get to it yet.

139: I am so blindingly angry.

139: cancelled the congestion pricing, huh?

I had a brief visit with my daughter in NYC last weekend & she commented how intensely upset everyone was with the congestion pricing & how uninformed they were about how common this is becoming around the world.

Imposing it is clearly the right thing to do. But I'm always a bit mystified by people feeling so intensely betrayed by politicians doing the popular/pragmatic thing. It's not that surprising. And for a weak politician does it really make sense to die on that hill?

I may be too much of an Yglesias-style moderate/pragmatist for this discussion. I was surprised to see all the love for the Financial Times of London here. It's my go to, but I'm a business prof in Europe. It is quite smart, though I do miss the journalistic storytelling that the pre-Murdoch WSJ used to bring to business stories. Also, the lifestyle coverage is so pitched to plutocrats that I can't enjoy it, even as fantasy fodder.

I was surprised to see all the love for the Financial Times of London here.

Fascinated that the reflex to call "The Times" "The Times of London" is so ingrained that it extends to putting "of London" even in places where there isn't a New York version to confuse with it. I think I'll start talking about the Wall Street Journal of New York, the Newsweek of New York, and the CNN of Atlanta.

The Times of India is a bigger paper, so you need to clarify.

I think you meant to say "The Times of India of India" there, Moby.

The Times (of India)^2

144: It's only unpopular if you ignore the majority of New York City residents who don't own cars. It's a state law passed by the democratically elected assembly and senate; an insane amount of public money and effort (including a certain amount of mine personally) has been devoted to making it happen which is all wasted if it doesn't go through; federal funding for essential transit projects hinges on it; reducing vehicle miles traveled is a vital part of meeting New York State's democratically imposed climate change goals; it will literally save lives both of pedestrians and bicyclists slaughtered on a regular basis by drivers and of people who die of respiratory illnesses exacerbated by car pollution.

So yes, we're a little annoyed that Governor I-Got-Here-By-Accident is assuming dictatorial powers to override democratically enacted policy.

145: I still fondly remember being firmly informed here that it hadn't been the Manchester Guardian for a century or so. Who knew?

144: Whatever you think about Yglesias generally, here he is on congestion pricing: https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/1798531196693176372?s=46&t=YPDlhKIAkz6frSdUpGBO_g

Ever been stuck in traffic and think "man this is annoying and inconvenient, so annoying and so inconvenient that I would gladly spend a modest sum of money to avoid the annoyance and inconvenience?"

So no, not Yglesias-style.

OT but that looked like an all-but-flawless launch and booster return flight just now. Lost one booster engine on the way up and maybe another on the way down. Quite an improvement on last time!

The trick to visiting New York is to drive to Harrisburg and take Amtrak into the city. It's really cheap to park in Harrisburg and the slow park of the train is before you get to Harrisburg.

149: is there an option to override the veto with a sufficiently large vote? Or is that it?

The trick to visiting New York is to drive to Harrisburg

*muffled Atlantic drowning noises*

The ocean, not the periodical.

I laughed.

I have never been to New York by train since 1985 or so. And I started from Maryland then. But my theory is sound.

154: Hard to tell. It's unclear what legal authority she has to do this -- that is, she doesn't have legal authority to override the law mandating it. Her power is that she appoints the majority of the members of the MTA and the TBTA, which are the authorities responsible for carrying out the law, and so they will in practice obey her when she instructs them to just not carry it out. I usually think of litigation as the worst and most socially damaging way of making a government do something, but that might be what has to happen here. Sadly, though, I think it's unlikely to work -- under NYS law, it's very hard to make a government entity do something even if it's arguably required by law to do it.

159: wait what? So this isn't even an official veto of a law, this is just her saying "I'm not going to do this"?

Yep.

THEY LANDED IT
Good lord. They had video all the way down of the flaps tearing themselves to pieces but they brought it in zero-zero!

The trick to visiting New York is to drive to Harrisburg and take Amtrak into the city

And depending on how far in advance you book and what time of day you're willing to travel, you can do this for about $30 one-way, which is definitely cheaper than gas + tolls.

I love taking Amtrak's Keystone train from Phila to NYC, which I do about once a month. It doesn't have a cafe car, but I don't care since it's such a short trip (the Phila to NY leg is 90 min). I often get a $19 fare from Philadelphia, sometimes $10 if I'm doing my normal stay-until-my-niece-and-nephew-go-to-bed, then take a late train home to Philly.

Bonus that the new Moynihan Train Hall at New York's Penn Station is downright gorgeous and the Amtrak lounge is stupendous. Although if you don't have Amtrak status you have to pay a real amount of money to visit the lounge (maybe $50? I think it's aimed at business travelers with expense accounts).

You should drive from Philadelphia to Harrisburg, then take the train.

Driving to Harrisburg saves about three hours, so it's important.

And depending on how far in advance you book and what time of day you're willing to travel, you can do this for about $30 one-way, which is definitely cheaper than gas + tolls.

Wow, I wish I'd planned better. WHen I looked at Boston to NYC last weekend it was 170 each way on Amtrak and only 50 or 60 on Flixbus. So I took the bus, though I love the train.

I shouldn't be nosy when I'm mad, but what's your daughter's situation that everyone she knows is mad about congestión pricing? Outerborough-high-income "working class", or hangs around with people rich enough tbst they're getting around Manhattan by car?

166: Boston to Harrisburg is less than 7 hours by car.

If there's a wealthy-looking douchebag who is watching a talking heads show on his phone with the sound full blast at this gate at the Atlanta airport, is it polite to offer him the pair of cheap headphones that I got on my first flight? The stink-eye isn't working.

Don't you have a kid young enough to vomit on him?

But yes, you can.

Our youngest is 9. And also not with me. I could tell him to vomit at home?

And then FedEx to you.

Wow, I wish I'd planned better. WHen I looked at Boston to NYC last weekend it was 170 each way on Amtrak and only 50 or 60 on Flixbus.

The Boston-NYC run IS legitimately more expensive, although you can get a $90 roundtrip if you book far enough in advance and are a flexible on times.

Also, it's free to create an Amtrak Guest Rewards account and that gets you on their email list to find out about one-time promotions/sales. They sometimes have a "bring a friend" for half-price, and they always have Share Fares for larger groups.

173: First, the vomit should be driven to Harrisburg.

Obviously.

I think all the commenters that were in the business are gone, but I have an alumni fundraising question I'm going to ask anyway. My high school just sent me a fundraising letter, which was not unexpected as the campaign was announced months ago and I've given before. But they asked me for a comically large amount of money. Rich people money, well above 100 times what I plan to give. It's not a question of me not being that generous or me having other causes that I prioritize (thought both of those are true), but it's just flat out more than I have. It's 1/10th of the overall campaign goal. Did they send out hundreds of letters asking for big piles on money on the off chance someone bought Apple at the right time? Or did they do some research that told them I should be rich? Because the second option is making me feel like a failure.

To LB's 167: she's doing the slightly-lost post college thing, living in Bushwick & tending bar in green point or Williamsburg (honestly pretty fuzzy on Brooklyn geography & not sure which). So serving drinks to well paid outer boroughs people, I guess.

Sorry to have poked you when you're mad. My daughter thinks limited traffic zones are a normal thing & has tried to explain it to people. And I agree 100%. Not sure why I tried to make this about normal moderation, it was a mistake.

To LB's 167: she's doing the slightly-lost post college thing, living in Bushwick & tending bar in green point or Williamsburg (honestly pretty fuzzy on Brooklyn geography & not sure which). So serving drinks to well paid outer boroughs people, I guess.

Sorry to have poked you when you're mad. My daughter thinks limited traffic zones are a normal thing & has tried to explain it to people. And I agree 100%. Not sure why I tried to make this about normal moderation, it was a mistake.

Did they send out hundreds of letters asking for big piles on money on the off chance someone bought Apple at the right time? Or did they do some research that told them I should be rich?

Maybe they're trying rather clumsily to shift the window? Like, if you got a letter asking for $10, you might give $10. But if you got a letter asking for $5,000 you might be nudged into giving $50. I think there's actually evidence that "suggested donation" amounts have that effect even if no one actually gives the full suggested donation.

179: That does make sense, somehow. I can't quite put it together into a story, but tending bar someplace fun in Brooklyn (which is not quite what I'd call outerborough for this purpose), I am less surprised that everyone she talks to thinks it's unpopular. I'll try to figure out what I'm thinking well enough to explain it. It's not Brooklyn v Manhattan, exactly, but young person in fun bar.

And no need to apologize -- I said I was mad mostly to get across that I was actually curious about your daughter's social setting rather than just being irritable because I thought she was wrong.

Hey, Ajay -- is there a list of "best tourist things to do in Edinburgh" you can rattle off from memory? Wildly obvious is good, but so is obscure. Likewise for Inverness. I'll be wandering around Scotland with the LDR first week of July, and while we know where we're staying, plans are inchoate beyond that.

Same question for ttaM, if you're around, although you're originally from Glasgow, right? where we won't be. Or anyone else who knows Scotland.

In other news the US beat Pakistan at cricket. This is huge and also sucks because now we'll have to learn the rules.

This clearly is a week for me to get fucked sideways.

179: Spinning out a story about your daughter's interlocutors from a combination of post-college finding herself and "bar in a fun Brooklyn neighborhood". I'm going to guess that she knows a lot of people in her precise situation: young newcomers to the city who haven't really settled into a functional grownup life here. They're from places where cars are absolute necessities even for poor people; most of them don't have cars themselves, but think they're getting away with it because they're not living a normal adult life with responsibilities. The ones who do have cars are shocked by how miserably difficult and expensive it is. So they have a vague picture of struggling people with kids who absolutely need cars to get by (because you would anyplace else) who are now going to have even harder lives. But they don't have a good firsthand sense of how the lower half of the income distribution actually lives in NYC and what they need.

On top of that, she's serving drinks to young, fun, high-income people, who have cars as a luxury, but think of them as a reasonable utility rather than something frivolous.

These are both real groups of people: I shouldn't have implied that congestion pricing was universally popular. But she's going to be underexposed to lower-income (not grinding poverty necessarily, just non-rich) locals, where local doesn't mean you're necessarily from here, but it does mean you're not planning to move out when you have kids because obviously you couldn't raise kids here.

177: I had something like that from the local symphony many years ago. We had not long before started sharing a six-concert subscription with friends. I got a call asking about some special donation program; I forget the details but it was something that would get you in one of the relatively short lists in the program after the corporate and really big money donors. I was not even a donor at the time just a (half) subscriber who calculated carefully whether even that was worth the freight. In any event i could not see giving $50 when they asked for thousands. I thought either a mix-up or just random shots at new subscribers to see if they had chanced upon a big fish.

The castle was nice.

And well it should have been at that price.

I get irrationally annoyed that my employer hits us employees up for donations, even though I understand it's normal in academia. And they'll say something like "Even $5 helps, because donors care about the internal-giving rate" or whatever it's called, and that makes me even more annoyed that fancy donors play dumb games about the percentage of employees that donate back to their own employer.

Also, they tore down the math building in 2016 for being moldy, and put us in the main admin building. So I am familiar with the fundraising people. And then when Jammies attended for a year to get his post-bac teaching certificate, we started to get begging letters to Mr and Mrs Jammies Whammies, and that irritated me a lot as well. There was some indication of my name - like Heebie Whammies or something? Where they'd partially put together that this student was married to me, but hadn't then used my actual name.

Lots of professors marry their students. It didn't look that creepy back in the day.

And I knew a guy who married his high school teacher, but only after he graduated.

We're halfway through a month in Scotland, but will just miss you (leaving Edinburgh June 20-something).

If you want whisky or road trip pointers I can help. Will you have a car? What kind of things do you like to do when traveling? At Inverness one thing you can do is Dolphin watching trip.

If you like factory tours, Johnstons of Elgin in Elgin is maybe the best factory tour we've ever done. Close-ish to Inverness.

184: Looking at the Team USA site, the men's and women's rosters are both at least 80% of Indian/Pakistani descent.

Hey, Ajay -- is there a list of "best tourist things to do in Edinburgh" you can rattle off from memory?

Obvious touristy things in Edinburgh itself: The Castle is expensive but worth it. Mary King's Close. The National Portrait Gallery with its Victorian Frieze of Eminent Scots in strict evolutionary order from "Stone Age" to "Thomas Carlyle" (also good cafe here). The Gallery of Modern Art. The National Museum on Chambers Street. St Giles Cathedral. Excellent views from Edinburgh's Disgrace on top of Calton Hill, if the weather's good. Climb Arthur's Seat - which will be crowded, but you will probably see my dad who goes up there several times a week. All these things are within a mile or so of each other. A bit further off in Leith you can visit the old Royal Yacht.

Less obvious in and around Edinburgh: The Central Library on George IV Bridge, in particular the top floor reading room which is pretty amazing. The National Library just over the road. Greyfriars Kirk. (The nearby Elephant House cafe where the Harry Potter books were written is now closed due to a fire next door.) The Commissioners of the Northern Lights occasionally open their museum on George Street to visitors - drop in and tell them how much you enjoyed this year's display.
The Forth Bridge - walk over the old road bridge from South Queensferry to North Queensferry for the best view, then take the train back. I'm very fond of the Museum of Flight in East Fortune, though it's not as good as the USS Intrepid. While you're out in that direction, Tantallon and Dirleton Castles are both good, and there are plenty of nice beaches pretty much end to end along the coast. The Isle of May is a great trip at this time of year if you're up for a trip in a RIB.

Places to eat and drink: The Antiquary and the St Vincent in the New Town. The World's End and Deacon Brodie's on the High Street. Pickles in Broughton, the Old Chain Pier down in Newhaven. L'Alba D'Oro on Henderson Row. The cafe in the undercroft of St Andrew's & St George's Church on George Street in the New Town.

Inverness I am less familiar with, though it has an amazing second-hand bookshop in an old church (largest bookshop in Scotland, they claim). You could visit Fort George, or any of the nice fishing villages (Cullen, Portsoy) along the coast. Look out for seals, which will respond well to being sung to. Or inland there's Speyside, where the whisky comes from.

194: Yes a car; walking around, either on city streets or in nature but with a preference for walking over literal scrambly hiking; weird little museums or tourable factories are good; boats also good.

197, 198: Thanks!

And of course 4 July is election day. That should be interesting.

I'll highlight ajay's 'climb Arthur's seat' suggestion. I think it's one of the most spectacular short walks/hikes in the world.

Oh, alternative boat trip: the Bass Rock. (Pronounced as in sea bass, not as in bass guitar.)

I have finally googled Arthur's Seat to find out what it is: I knew it was a thing in Edinburgh, but not what type of thing, and assumed it was architecture. Nope, landscape: it's a hill. Definitely looks worth a walk.

Share of car-owning households in the 5 boroughs has actually been growing a lot in the last 10 years. In my area (South Brooklyn, Sunset Park), I would guess it's a majority of households. Seems to be around 45% in the city overall.

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2023/04/19/komanoff-dissects-new-york-citys-car-baby-boom

I wonder if that's a general prosperity effect: people just have more money than they did ten years ago.

That's because consulting pays better than university work.

I think it's one of the most spectacular short walks/hikes in the world.

Yes, now I think about it - matched only by the Peak in HK, which is far less pleasant to climb.

Mount Vaea, which overlooks Apia in Samoa (and in an Edinburgh connection is where Robert Louis Stevenson is buried), is a lovely little hike and a great view of the city and harbor, but it admittedly isn't a particularly scenic city to look at from above.

Ajay has covered everything in Edinburgh, I'll only add a few minor things. In addition to the climb up Arthur's seat, depending on where you're staying it's fun to do the walk down the Salisbury Crags as a way to get into town. Also as a New Yorker I think you'd enjoy just hanging out on the Meadows if it's a nice day, the vibes are very Central Park. If you're interested in cocktails I can forward you an email I have from a Leith resident who is into cocktails with what the best restaurants are to go to.

I'm assuming you're going up the A9 through Cairngorms? It's a beautiful drive. When you cross the Firth of Forth the last bridge to your right (the train bridge) is a UNESCO world heritage site, I can't remember whether you can see it well from the car bridge but it's very cool. House of Bruar is a good place for a bathroom break, it's kind of hilarious in that it's the closest thing to an American-style roadside Wall Drug type attraction while also being very much Scottish and not American at all. There's also some really nice roadside parking areas where you can just look at the mountains which are worth stopping at.

Weirdly Inverness is one of the few places in Scotland I haven't been to (drove through it once), but I've been all around it. Around Inverness of course you'll want to go to Loch Ness, there are boat cruises but just the view from any roadside stop is also great. I mentioned Johnstons of Elgin above. The whole coast in either direction is amazing, we saw Dolphins just from the main harbor in Nairn but Black Isle to the north is supposed to be a better place to see them (there are also cruises). I haven't been to either, but if I were in the area I'd be checking out at least one of the points at Chanonry or Fort George.

Are you coming back to Edinburgh to fly home? A completely insane thing we'd do as American road-trippers would be to take a longer route in one direction rather than repeating the same route. Namely (if from Inverness to Edinburgh) down the Great Glenn to Fort William, through Glen Coe (one of the most beautiful places on earth) and the A85 and A84 through the back side of the Trosachs. Absolutely stunning scenery the whole way but turns a 3:30 drive into a 5:00 drive. But one of the most beautiful 5 hours drives you can possibly do. If it were me I'd do it on the way back since the driving is a little more exciting (nothing too bad, just fewer divided highways) which is more pleasant after you've adjusted to driving on the left in narrow lanes.

If anyone has suggestions for the best beaches and/or ocean views in South Ayrshire that don't require a big detour from the A77...

210.last is not insane but a very good suggestion!

We are actually already planning to do that -- staying in Fort William on the way back to Edinburgh, so I'm glad to hear it's pretty. And please do forward the Leith cocktails email.

Ah great! Staying somewhere along the way is the saner version. I just love everything along that drive so much. It also means you won't need to make a trip from Inverness to Loch Ness since you'll see it on the drive. The visitor's center at Glen Coe has a great view if you do the little walk (though I've never been there in prime midge season like you'll be doing...) and there's several great viewpoints to stop at (or hike if you're harder core) though parking can be challenging in high season. We like to stop at any loch that has parking for a couple minutes, they're all great. We've had a great trip this past week and a half, mostly on Arran, but there's been a somewhat unfortunate lack of good lochs on this trip so I'm jealous that drive goes past a lot of very lovely lochs.

I've never tried, but I'm afraid to try to drive on the left side of the road. I'm especially concerned because my brother morphologically similar to Matthew Broderick so I'm worried that there is a broader family commonality of weaknesses.

We'll be near Loch Lochy at some point, which just sounds like a joke.

Locky McLockFace?

Driving on the left isn't difficult, you just need to remind yourself every time before you turn whether it's a "difficult turn" or an "easy turn."

What's more difficult is remembering that you're on the wrong side of the car and adjusting to exactly how much car you have sticking out on your left.

And what's most difficult of all is just that roads and lanes are way narrower in the UK. Plenty of roads with traffic in both direction are no wider than a single American lane. (Only slightly exaggerating. In the US you're used to 12-foot lanes usually with a 6 foot paved shoulder, and in the UK it's not unusual to have a road with traffic in both directions that's 6 meters wide total (or even narrower if it's not a bus route) and has like a rock wall 6 inches off one side of it and an unpaved two foot margin on the other side.)

Loch Lochy is where they might be building a big new pumped hydro station! (Coire Glas.)

My street does not have room for two cars to pass at most points. I'm already used to that.

It would have room, but parking is allowed on one side.

221 is literally every street in every small town in Scotland, but yeah it's not bad because cars are going slow. It's the timber trucks going 50 mph that stress me out.

Some people wanted to make the street one way and I pointed out that it would become a speed zone for one rush hour if that were the case. Waze and the desire to save 38 seconds would destroy us.

Google Maps has definitely tried to kill me twice this week. The AI alignment people should start on trying to stop Waze from trying to kill people before it worries about stopping fictional superinteligences from trying to kill you.

Agreed. Dying in a left turn that I initiated seems like a stupid way to go.

Loch Lochy, lochiest of the lochs.

and in the UK it's not unusual to have a road with traffic in both directions that's 6 meters wide total (or even narrower if it's not a bus route) and has like a rock wall 6 inches off one side of it and an unpaved two foot margin on the other side.)

If I'm expected to drive fast, this sounds very stressful. If I'm expected to dink along at a pleasant pace, it sounds okay. I find it stressful on the highway when there's a cement barrier along one or both sides of the lane with no shoulder.

i have sworn off driving in the uk - it's just too stressful for my brain & when there i am supposed to be on vacation. plus most often we have a car in the uk to visit family in cornwall or norfolk (in london & other cities we don't use a car) and the *speed* people drive at in cornwall is insane, on very narrow roads with very large and very stoney walls on both sides, no thanks! the better half makes the switch no problem, probably bc that is where he originally learned to drive.

lb i hope you have a gorgeous trip, swim in the lochs and at the beach! buy lots of gorgeous yarn! eat delicious food post long beautiful walks!

we will be visiting the kid in toronto with a joint trip to montreal, but not until the end of the summer bc i have some hot hot cases right now so no travel until then. i am looking forward to montreal.

I ate at a restaurant in Montreal with a moose outside it. Very highly recommended.

I had duck with carrots.

228: We should tell our Large Adult Sons to wave at each other across Toronto.

231: yes lol! "waive at the progeny of that lady from the imaginary playground, dear!" lol!

Until very recently, Google led people who put "Utah" into Maps (an unholy amount of tourists) up someone one way cliffed out route in the middle of nowhere, such that the little town nearby put up signs saying don't go up this road to no avail.

People who can't specify a proper destination deserve no better.

My strategy on small roads is to drive slow, make sure there's no one stuck behind me (pulling over to let them pass when the opportunity arises) and then since there's no one behind me I just slow way down or stop if a vehicle coming at me is large or going fast.

I almost prefer the one-track roads with lots of pullouts to the narrow two-track roads. It's super easy to pull out to let people pass you, it's pretty clear what the rules are, and all passing of oncoming traffic happens at very low speeds.

I really appreciate the UKs commitment to benches. Just lovely benches everywhere. The US has so few benches and keeps getting fewer to stop people from sleeping on them.

Churchill promised to fight on the benches.

re: 183

Sorry, missed this. I'm actually from in between Edinburgh and Glasgow, and I went to university in both cities although I lived in Glasgow for quite a long time, whereas I spent less time in Edinburgh.

There are already loads of great things to do suggested above. Depending on the route you take north, Stirling Castle is quite impressive, especially when viewing it from the west. The Trossachs are lovely.

I also have a soft spot for the various small Hillfoot towns and associated glens, as I grew up walking up those as a child/teenager, and which are good for a nice gentle walk, e.g. up Dollar Glen past Castle Campbell (aka Castle Gloom): https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/castle-campbell/overview/ but I wouldn't take a detour to those places and choose them over the Trossachs and the more highland locations already recommended.

Thanks! I am very excited, I haven't been out of the country except to Canada for over a decade.

I've driven in the UK once. Stonehenge to London, stopping off in Shalbourne (where my paternal ancestors lived in the early 17th century). I do NOT drive in St. Thomas USVI.

Dollar Glen is extraordinary. All around you've got entirely normal rolling green Scottish fields full of sheep and so on, and then there's this unexpected ravine that's like something out of the Amazon. It's got its own little warm humid microclimate (nanoclimate?), half-light coming through the tree canopy, immense ferns, waterfalls, huge fallen trees, precarious walkway along the side of a cliff (there's a sign saying 'closed due to risk of rockfalls', just ignore that), and the two small rivers that carved it out are called the Burn of Sorrow and the Burn of Care.

re: 242

Yeah, my Mum lives nearby, so we walked up there with my son last New Year. The weather was freakishly sunny and warm considering it was early January which relates to the micro-climate thing, too.

Also if you are planning to be outdoors at any point after 6pm in any location north of Perth, you will need DEET. This is not negotiable.

north of Perth
North, not south? What's the significant variable?

Bummer, I'm allergic. Or sensitive or something -- I don't know what you call it, but DEET makes my skin turn red like a sunburn. But I have long pants and long sleeves.

Ah. Well, some other repellent - citronella works, as does Avon Skin-So-Soft.

North, not south? What's the significant variable?

The significant variable is "number of midges".

It's true, there are midges south of Perth as well. We got them badly a couple of weeks ago. It's not so much about latitude as bogginess, as well as general weather conditions. Still cloudy evenings in the summer in sheltered valley-bottom areas in the Highlands, away from the coast, are the worst-case scenario.

Yeah, regarding that worst case scenario: I remember once getting off a train at Crianlarich to have a bit of fresh air on the platform and lasting about 5 minutes. Every other person who was there was running back to the train. The sky literally turned black. It was about 7pm on a summer evening, and it was warm and humid, with still air, and the station is near the river and not far from Loch Dochart.

Midges are more about east/west than north/south, no? The west is the rainy part. There's way more midges in Oban than Aberdeenshire, even though the latter is way further north. The good news is that midges can't handle rain, wind, or sun. The bad news is that weather without rain, wind, or sun is reasonably common in Scotland. There's a map where you can see the midge forecast:
https://www.smidgeup.com/midge-forecast/

I haven't been to Dollar Glen, but that description reminds me a lot of the UNESCO world heritage site at New Lanark, except there the sudden ravine is bizarrely full of 5 story buildings.

On the subject of what cities have the best hikes, Monserrate in Bogota is definitely a contender.

246: I really like Sawyer Picaridin which they sell at REI (pump spray or lotion). https://www.rei.com/c/insect-repellent

248: Mayflies very recently at amusement park ride at Cedar Point, Ohio.

Very fond of the teenager who is so hysterically frightened of the flies that she is trying to roundhouse-kick them out of the air.

Many are called, few chosen.

Mayflies, unless this is a sparrow situation where the word means a completely different organism in the US, not only don't bite people, they don't eat anything at all.

Fly, masturbatefuck, die.