@nathanheller.bsky.social
New Yorker staff writer, hapless itinerant, reader. My concise and infrequent newsletter announces significant new publications, public appearances, and nothing else: nathanheller.substack.com/about
It's not just the water; societies that value art create art.
Isn't this, notoriously, the old serial-killer trick?
This is your moment to shred, man. No excuses!
Seems clear that the forces of serendipity are conspiring to deliver you a future as a manliness influencer. The door has opened; just book an arena and walk through it!
This is the best reported account of exactly what led to the DCA mid-air collision I've seen. theaircurrent.com/aviation-saf...
Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin
There is nothing order-keeping, law-enforcing, or public-safety-protecting about this.
Much worse than stripping for a physician, definitely.
I say (as a fan of his best work) that the later writing about sex is reliably some of the most hilariously quotable and repulsive in the American canon.
My view here is: let's go. If someone's writing truly is indistinguishable from what an A.I. grinds out, by all means, step aside. It just demarcates more clearly the realm of writing that A.I. can't do—what's original, human, singular, and interesting—and makes its special value clearer.
Very good @newyorker.com piece on Gavin Newsom, by @nathanheller.bsky.social.
Gets way, way past the usual media shorthand about him.
(I respect what Newsom has done as mayor, lt gov, and now two-term gov of America's best state.)
www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
Yes. Every time you disrupt, revolve, start from scratch, etc., you give yourself a fresh slate of problems and knock-on effects to notice, track, guard against, and solve. Most institutions highly imperfect, but have that behind them. They let you pick up the thread of improvement at a later point.
It will never happen. It would have already if it could have. This has baffled me for years.
"The Governor, who has not changed his cellphone number since becoming mayor of San Francisco, in 2004, has nine thousand twenty-two personal contacts on his phone" www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
This is a great assessment, and seems nearly exact.
When Gavin Newsom first entered public office, at the age of 28, there was a feeling that he would flourish without ascending to the top—too slick, too swank, too smug. Three decades later, the criticisms are the same, but his prospects have transformed. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/KV6N0q
The US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government every year from 1994 to 2023.
The Cato study provides the first-ever 30-year analysis of the fiscal effects of immigration on government budgets.
https://ow.ly/jy8a50Y8kM3
Floored by this story. A man wrote a pollite email to a federal prosecutor objecting to the deportation of an Afghan seeking asylum. DHS responded with an administrative warrant to get the man's info from Google, then visited his home to intimidate him.
"Gavin Newsom Is Playing the Long Game" by Nathan Heller (@nathanheller.bsky.social) is our pick from the February 9, 2026 issue of The New Yorker. https://newyorkerest.com/issue/2026/02/09?utm_source=bluesky&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=weekly_pick
It is astonishing how uncool this "really cool" club sounds.
I profiled Gavin Newsom, on whom hopes are being pinned, at length in this week's @newyorker.com. I report closely on the way he thinks, operates, builds coalitions, and on. And, yes, the hair. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
"Thank you for your attention to this matter!" is such an oddly self-minimizing sign-off from a Commander in Chief. It is how you end your note to the shampoo company's corporate e-mail address that may never be checked, letting them know that their new bottle leaks in a suitcase.
Such bad news about the tariffs, but at least there are so many other enticements to keep people here in the United States, such as our affordable health care, stable economy, vibrant cultural institutions, and freedom to walk the streets without being asked for papers!
A thing like that could get you past the front gate.
Thinking today of a Christmas Eve, years ago, when I got to the register at City Lights Books just ahead of Tom Stoppard. He wore a tweed suit and a big silk scarf and carried an enormous stack of books with the merry air of someone who'd found just the thing, just in time. Sic perpetuum sit.
Regarding "60 Minutes," useful to remember that most people have no idea how the standards, norms, and protocols of journalism work (and why should they?), so when someone claims that a story didn't meet standards, she might be trying less to seek industry accord than to seed the idea with public.
I always say that the MOST special thing about The New Yorker is that you can read something from fifteen years ago, thirty years ago, seventy years ago, and find it to be as fresh and engrossing and worth your time as a piece published on Monday. This is the best periodical archive in the world.
As I think a few people have pointed out, it's a textbook example of the Kinsley gaffe.
Fascinating. Would the "merry" adverb-adjective ambiguity have existed even in period, or would it have been widely understood as intended?
At least eighty-five per cent of the work of writing onto a blank page is figuring out what not to write.