Nathan Heller

I still agree with the guy who wrote this.

Anyone who has spent time in archives knows that one of the things that really vanished with the end of the pen-and-typewriter age is colored paper. Letters, manuscripts, etc., used to be done on paper of all hues. For several decades everything written at the NYer was done on canary-yellow paper.

A well-put point.

The question is whether they can gift-wrap for some people I know.

Nathan Heller on E. B. White’s Paragraph About the Moon Landing What sort of response could measure up to the occasion? White’s idea was as simple as it was audacious.

From this week's @newyorker.com anniversary issue: me on the paragraph-level genius of E. B. White. www.newyorker.com/magazine/tak...

remember folks, we cant have gun restrictions because if we do the federal government will occupy our streets, imprison people without due process, ship dissidents to foreign gulags and things of that nature

Scott Bessent went from public school to Yale, where he subsequently did some teaching on economic history. He worked in his industry for forty years. These tributes, of which this one isn't the most comical, must surely mark the exact point where careerism meets self-loathing.

The Glib, Asinine Artlessness of Web Headlines has become too much. Can we go back already to when headlines were good? Who on Earth wants these?

The History of The New Yorker’s Vaunted Fact-Checking Department Reporters engage in charm and betrayal; checkers are in the harm-reduction business.

My colleague @zhelfand.bsky.social gets New Yorker fact checking right in this delightful history. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

It is comical and alarming how many financial potholes and structural flaws are now paved over with the idea of selling brand merchandise.

by E. B. White The moon, it turns out, is a great place for men. One-sixth gravity must be a lot of fun, and when Armstrong and Aldrin went into their bouncy little dance, like two happy children, it was a moment not only of triumph but of gaiety. The moon, on the other hand, is a poor place for flags. Ours looked stiff and awkward, trying to float on the breeze that does not blow. (There must be a lesson here somewhere.) It is traditional, of course, for explorers to plant the flag, but it struck us, as we watched with awe and admiration and pride, that our two fellows were universal men, not national men, and should have been equipped accordingly. Like every great river and every great sea, the moon belongs to none and belongs to all. It still holds the key to madness, still controls the tides that lap on shores everywhere, still guards the lovers who kiss in every land under no banner but the sky. What a pity that in our moment of triumph we did not forswear the familiar Iwo Jima scene and plant instead a device acceptable to all: a limp white handkerchief, perhaps, symbol of the common cold, which, like the moon, affects us all, unites us all.

I love reading how writers edit themselves, so to read how E.B. White revised and revised to write this, "a single perfect paragraph," is delightful. (Also? I had no idea that anyone had ever been labeled a "paragrapher.")
@nathanheller.bsky.social @newyorker.com
link.newyorker.com/view/5be9f03...

It Took Many Years And Billions Of Dollars, But Microsoft Finally Invented A Calculator That Is Wrong Sometimes | Defector It’s not AI winter just yet, though there is a distinct chill in the air. Meta is shaking up and downsizing its artificial intelligence division. A new report out of MIT finds that 95 percent of compa...

This is extremely funny. defector.com/it-took-many...

This question always has only one answer, which is yes.

What Happened to San Francisco, Really? It depends on which tech bro, city official, billionaire investor, grassroots activist, or Michelin-starred restaurateur you ask.

My theory that issues cropping up in San Francisco show up in other major cities two or three years later seems to be holding. Here's my @newyorker.com piece on the crime-and-collapse narrative that became a political tool there after the pandemic. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Galling to watch institutions of fact and culture—universities, publications, museums, etc.—gasp for survival, then read of capital rushing to startups seeking to implant computers in the brain. I wonder how many people feel that their main obstacle in life has been insufficient brain compute.

Some may find the argument of this wide-ranging essay—not least its sudden and surprising turn to the Time Warner/AOL demerger of 2009 as a model—incoherent, and, in that way, an indication of some value in humanistic training after all.

Very evocative of the French police, who are notorious for travelling in ambling, gossipy groups, like sorority members on a Friday.

Anyone who has ever tried to find a great movie based on platform user reviews (or searched quickly for place to eat abroad using Google Maps' user ratings, inexplicably a dowsing rod for joints geared toward American college students) will understand how dire this trend is.

Stupendo.

The student newspaper.
This fell. To the student. Newspaper.

"The Ambience Of Information" - A Very Compelling Conversation With Nathan Heller This is one of the more important conversations I've hosted this year

This was a fun discussion about the ambience of information with Simon Rosenberg of the @hopiumchronicles.bsky.social. www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/seeding-th...

I'll just observe that the now-aging insight that people can't deal with traditional textual journalism, want "other platforms," etc., has always been wisdom flowing from the top down, not the ground up. (Can also report that public transportation continues to be full of people reading.)

It's happening here.

This proposition popped out at me as odd, in that—believe what you will about the wisdom involved—there's little "classic" about these settlements with, and enriching, an antagonistic federal government, no sense in which it's business as usual. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/u...

What I find I want in this hard time is sumptuous works of art, patiently and beautifully made, filled with human contact and light—a reminder of what we had and could maybe have again.

One thing I've been around long enough to notice—a grounding, sane-making idea, somehow—is that ideas, strategies, successes that smell fishy generally are, although it might take a month or a decade for it to become obvious why and how.

Josh Rothman, I think.

Amazon’s New James Bond The secretary Miss Moneypenny will now be known as Miss Money One Hundred Billion Dollars Money Money Money. Or Alexa.

In this week's Shouts & Murmurs, an important report from me with details of the new James Bond. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

A happy #Bloomsday to all! Hear Joyce reading from Ulysses and Finnegans Wake in two rare recordings from the 1920s: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/james-joyce-reading-his-work-1924-1929 #Bloomsday2023