For Your Ass, An Upsurge In Bulk

The news isn’t so good for your gut, either.

Now that the New York Times has turned into a 21st century Hints from Heloise for the international elite, the gap between what we know and what we don’t know on a wide variety of issues has never been more clear. (Unless those issues center around day-to-day life in the outer boroughs of the city of New York, in which case you’ll need to go somewhere else for guidance.)

While it would be easy to bemoan these changes and what they say about who is being served by the paper these days — or even what “the paper” means in our digital age, when the illusory promise of scale shows that the survival of institutional media is increasingly dependent on securing the patronage of the wealthy — it would be churlish not to acknowledge that the Times, although obviously tailoring its message for a more specific sort of consumer, is doing what it can to provide any number of new voices and perspectives on contemporary topics of importance. (For example: “It is not my place to say who should and shouldn’t be offended by [once innocuous internet meme Pepe the Frog]. If someone’s first encounter with Pepe is a depiction of him with a swastika armband, standing in front of a gas chamber, that’s going to color every future Pepe spotting.”)

In that spirit, we should also note that the Times remains true to its core value of delivering the news — all the news — that is fit to print, however we are defining “print” now. So I am sorry to share the day’s breaking bulletin, which is that you will not get any thinner than you are right now, at least not until May and probably not even then. There’s a chart and everything! Go look at the scale and then say a sad farewell to that number, you fat fuck, because it isn’t ever coming back. Happy holidays!