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Opinion What Sourdough Taught Me, in the Pandemic and BeyondInside one tablespoon of active sourdough starter, the fermented culture made of flour and water used for thousands of years to leaven bread, there are billions of microorganisms. How to create a sourdough starter Repeat until bubbling with life. Add flour, water and salt. Add flour, water and salt. To avoid this exponential growth, a portion of sourdough starter is traditionally discarded at every feeding, which means there’s plenty to go around.

Persons: ”, —, Seamus Blackley, . Kan, they’ve, “, Caesar, cura, Jesus, John, we’ve, Thomas White, Gazans, Alice Spearman, Germany Chiara G, Netherlands Anna Celda Czechia Veronika Moravcikova, Allie Wist, we’re Organizations: U.S, International New York, Penn, Ala . Iowa Miss, Okla . Texas Colo, Okla . Texas Colo . Puerto Rico Wyo, Utah Idaho Mexico Ariz, Great, Netherlands France Belgium Denmark, Poland Latvia Slovenia, Poland Latvia Slovenia Italy Croatia, . Connecticut Massachusetts Rhode Island New Jersey New Hampshire Vermont Pennsylvania, . Connecticut Massachusetts Rhode Island New Jersey New Hampshire Vermont Pennsylvania Maryland Delaware D.C, Maine Virginia, Maine Virginia West Virginia Ohio, Maine Virginia West Virginia Ohio North Carolina Michigan Indiana South, Maine Virginia West Virginia Ohio North Carolina Michigan Indiana South Carolina Kentucky Tennessee Wisconsin Illinois, Alabama Iowa Mississippi Minnesota Florida Arkansas, Canada Louisiana Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma, Canada Louisiana Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma Texas Colorado, Canada Louisiana Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma Texas Colorado Puerto Rico Wyoming, Portugal Spain, Supermarkets, United Nations, BBC, Alice Spearman Canada Locations: Barthelme, Conn, R.I . N.J, N.H . Vt, Md, Del, D.C, Maine Va, W.Va . Ohio N.C, Mich, Ind, S.C . Ky, Tenn, Wis, Ill, Ala . Iowa, Minn, Fla, Canada, Okla . Texas, Okla . Texas Colo . Puerto Rico, Mont, N.M, Utah Idaho Mexico, Ore, Calif, Iceland, Portugal Spain, Netherlands France Belgium, Netherlands France Belgium Denmark Luxembourg Sweden Germany Brazil Switzerland, Poland Latvia, Poland Latvia Slovenia Italy, Poland Latvia Slovenia Italy Croatia Hungary Bulgaria Greece Hawaii, Argentina, China Bhutan India South Africa, Malaysia Singapore, Australia, . Connecticut Massachusetts Rhode Island New Jersey New Hampshire Vermont, . Connecticut Massachusetts Rhode Island New Jersey New Hampshire Vermont Pennsylvania Maryland Delaware, Maine, Maine Virginia West Virginia, Maine Virginia West Virginia Ohio North Carolina, Maine Virginia West Virginia Ohio North Carolina Michigan Indiana South Carolina Kentucky Tennessee Wisconsin, Maine Virginia West Virginia Ohio North Carolina Michigan Indiana South Carolina Kentucky Tennessee Wisconsin Illinois Georgia, Alabama Iowa Mississippi Minnesota, Canada Louisiana Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma Texas, Canada Louisiana Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma Texas Colorado Puerto Rico, Canada Louisiana Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma Texas Colorado Puerto Rico Wyoming Montana New Mexico, Utah Idaho Mexico Arizona Nevada Washington Oregon California Iceland, Portugal, Portugal Spain France The Netherlands Belgium Denmark Luxembourg Sweden Germany Brazil Switzerland, China Bhutan India, Africa, Uruk, France, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, Gaza, Germany, Netherlands

☆ Opinion | I Finally Learned How to Draw. Here’s How.
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-15 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to learn to draw. And for as long I can remember, I’ve been failing to learn to draw. A lot of drawing teachers say that everyone can learn to draw. A lot of drawing teachers haven’t met me, I thought. Then, in 2019, I started playing with Procreate, a digital drawing and painting app for the iPad (there’s an iPhone version, too).

Persons: I’ve, haven’t, you’re Organizations: Procreate

☆ Opinion | Vivek Ramaswamy Is a LinkedIn Post Come to Life
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-08 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

Last year, for a column I was writing about the power that large asset managers like BlackRock and Vanguard exert over the global economy, I called up Vivek Ramaswamy. Today, I mostly don’t even use that word anymore; it’s not part of my vernacular today. I just wanted you to know that, since I saw you mused about the etymology of the title in your piece. It certainly wasn’t cooked up in a Fox News lab, and in all honesty the goal wasn’t to trigger anyone. but that he represents a distinct, very familiar flavor of irritation: He’s the epitome of millennial hustle culture, less a Tracy Flick know-it-all than a viral LinkedIn post come to life.

Persons: Vivek Ramaswamy, Ramaswamy, I’m, ”, “, it’s, aren’t, Tracy Flick Organizations: BlackRock, Vanguard, Inc, Fox News, Republican, LinkedIn Locations: Silicon

☆ Tech Companies in Silicon Valley Can’t Keep Ignoring Seniors - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-06 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

The tech industry’s hostility to aging “continues to violate common sense,” Joseph Coughlin, the director of M.I.T.’s AgeLab, told me. Through advances focused on health care, home assistance, transportation, robotics and artificial intelligence, technology will be crucial to address the problems emerging from demographic imbalance. “And yet they continue to ignore them.”What can Silicon Valley do for older people? Many of these promise to allow older people a measure of independence from family caregivers or health care facilities. There are companies that use in-home cameras, audio devices and biometric sensors to let health care providers monitor homebound seniors from afar, something like Life Alert for the digital age.

Persons: “, ” Joseph Coughlin, —, ” Coughlin Organizations: Medicare Locations: Silicon, ”

☆ Opinion | Kia and Hyundai Helped Enable a Crime Wave. They Should Pay for It.
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-01 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The homicide rate has dropped significantly over the last year, based on data from 30 American cities. Police departments and city officials point to this: Millions of Kias and Hyundais are ridiculously easy to steal. But Hyundai and Kia, which come under the same South Korean conglomerate, did not install this basic device in somewhere around nine million cars sold between 2011 and 2022. A couple of years ago, videos showing how to hotwire the vulnerable cars began to pop up online. Without going into details, the hack involves jamming a small object into the car’s starter and turning it as if it were a key.

Persons: Jeff Asher Organizations: Criminal, D.C, Baltimore Sun, Police, Hyundai, Kia Locations: Atlanta, Philadelphia , Washington, Chicago , New Orleans, Buffalo, Durham, N.C, United States

☆ Opinion | Artists Have Little to Fear From A.I.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-25 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

I’ve got 99 problems with A.I., but intellectual property ain’t one. Media and entertainment industries have lately been consumed with questions about how content generated by artificial intelligence systems should be considered under intellectual property law. And major news companies — including The Times — are weighing steps to guard the intellectual property that flows from their journalism. tools, the more I suspect that many of the intellectual property questions they prompt will ultimately prove less significant than we sometimes assume. Indeed, I’d bet that artists and creative industries will ultimately find A.I.

Persons: I’ve, I’d, Jason Zinoman, ” Organizations: Media, Hollywood, Times, A.I

☆ My Regrets After Debating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-11 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | Sophia Alvarez Boyd | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The New York Times Audio app includes podcasts, narrated articles from the newsroom and other publishers, as well as exclusive new shows, which we’re making available to readers for a limited time. Download the audio app here. Opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo has a rule about debating conspiracy theorists: don’t. As he explains in this audio essay, it’s a rule born of his experience debating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. back in 2006 — and one he wishes other people would adopt. (A full transcript of this audio essay will be available midday on the Times website.)

Persons: Farhad Manjoo, it’s, Robert F, Kennedy Jr Organizations: New York Times, Times

☆ At Harvard, Affirmative Action Shouldn’t Be Just Black and White - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-07 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

The other officer cut to the important question — the student’s skin color: “Brown?”“Heck no. doesn’t know what race a person of Middle Eastern descent is, should it really be making decisions based on race? Asian Americans scored better than other groups on academic and extracurricular measures, but Harvard’s admissions officers consistently gave Asians lower “personal” ratings than members of other groups. Harvard’s use of such subjective criteria to curb the number of Asian students admitted smacked of its efforts a century ago to keep out Jewish applicants it deemed unworthy of its “character and fitness” standards. In dissent, the three liberal justices argued persuasively that the court’s ruling might significantly reduce enrollment of Black and Hispanic students at elite colleges.

Persons: Brown, ”, Heck, “, ’, David Bernstein, persuasively, Richard Arum, Mitchell Stevens Organizations: Harvard, Federal, Court, The Times Locations: Asian, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, America

☆ Opinion | Gas-Powered Cars Are an Environmental Catastrophe. I’ll Miss Them Anyway.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-30 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

I’ve been driving for nearly 30 years, but until recently, I hadn’t ever changed my car engine’s oil by myself. But a month ago, figuring I may not have many more chances, now that oil-free electric cars are becoming the norm, I decided to jack up my car and do it myself. Decked out with cameras, touch-screens and microprocessors, modern cars can feel like entirely digital devices, little more than iPhones on wheels. As I’ve written before, it’s long past time we replaced these inefficient, pollution-belching, climate-warming beasts with other ways of getting around. And even if electric cars are no panacea, they’re a huge improvement over their gassy predecessors.

Persons: I’ve, there’s, I’d Organizations: YouTube Locations: Southern California

Everyone in San Francisco got a Prius, and they were so smug about their Priuses that the air over San Francisco became covered in smug. Global laming.”FARHAD MANJOO: And it really sort of was the start of what I think of as the troll-y right. And that sentiment I think came from “South Park.” If you think about especially younger people on the right who kind of found fame online, people like Ben Shapiro or Steven Crowder, this YouTuber who takes the tone of “South Park,” I think, to a very extreme degree. One thing I see often from right-wing celebrities or influencers like Donald Trump Jr. for example, is constantly tweeting “South Park” memes. That was the joke that “South Park” was making in 2005, and now it’s the view of the right.

Persons: FARHAD MANJOO, ” FARHAD MANJOO, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, STEVEN CROWDER, Jackson, That’s, Brown, Donald Trump Jr, Garrison, ” Organizations: Global, Biden Locations: San Francisco

☆ Opinion | It’s Not Possible to ‘Win’ an Argument With Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-23 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

But pretty much every expert I talked to said that none of the issues were likely big enough to have undone Bush’s win. Then Kennedy wrote a rebuttal to my rebuttal, which I, again, rebutted. Salon, a generally liberal-leaning publication, was deluged by letters from readers angry that I was defending Bush’s win. The other day I went back and listened to a debate I had with Kennedy on public radio’s “The Brian Lehrer Show.” Lehrer opened the program by asking Kennedy for his big-picture case. Such was his effort when we met on Lehrer: Kennedy offered an assortment of claims about the election that, in big and small ways, were unsubstantiated.

Persons: Kennedy, Kenneth Blackwell, Bush, Kennedy’s breathless, Brian Lehrer, ” Lehrer, Rogan, —, Lehrer Organizations: Democratic National Committee, Bush’s Locations: Ohio, Kerry

☆ Farhad Manjoo on ‘South Park’ - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-20 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

But it isn’t the topicality of “South Park” that best explains America. In “South Park,” correctness of any sort — religious, scientific, pedagogical, geopolitical or whatever else — is sus. For Donald Trump Jr., “South Park” memes are the height of wit. In 2018 “South Park” even acknowledged that Al Gore was right: ManBearPig turned out to be real. But the damage was done; the monster had already begun to eat the people of South Park.

Persons: topick, ”, Trey Parker, Matt Stone’s, Parker, Stone, Donald Trump’s, Vladimir Putin’s thuggery, Ron DeSantis, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Stone’s, they’ve, Eric Cartman’s —, Andrew Sullivan, “, Donald Trump Jr, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Cartman, Bob White, Al Gore, ManBearPig Organizations: Trump Locations: America, Colorado, South Park

☆ Opinion | Gavin Newsom, Please Don’t Cut Public Transit Funds. That’s Short-Term Thinking.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-09 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

California’s government has run some remarkable budget surpluses over the last few years, but this year it’s projecting a jarring deficit: The state is about $32 billion in the red. Because California must pass a balanced budget every year, the governor and Legislature must cut spending, raise revenues or in some other way make the numbers work. As a Californian, I understand that some difficult choices will have to be made. Newsom’s proposal could lead to service cuts that will be punishing for millions of commuters who depend on transit. The cuts would also make it far more difficult for California to meet its ambitious goals to address climate change and the state’s housing woes — issues on which Newsom has tried to project national leadership.

Persons: Gavin Newsom’s, Newsom Organizations: Gov Locations: California

☆ Opinion | It’s the End of Computer Programming As We Know It. (And I Feel Fine.)
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-02 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +3 min

could transform computer programming from a rarefied, highly-compensated occupation into a widely accessible skill that people can easily pick up and use as part of their jobs across a wide variety of fields. In situations where one needs a “simple” program … those programs will, themselves, be generated by an A.I. Welsh’s argument, which ran earlier this year in the house organ of the Association for Computing Machinery, carried the headline, “The End of Programming,” but there’s also a way in which A.I. could mark the beginning of a new kind of programming — one that doesn’t require us to learn code but instead transforms human-language instructions into software. Everyone is a programmer now — you just have to say something to the computer.”

Persons: —, DeepMind, ” Matt Welsh, there’s, “, ” Jensen Huang Organizations: Google, Apple, Association for Computing Machinery, Nvidia Locations: Google’s, Taiwan

☆ Office Workers Hate the Commute, Not the Office - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Elon Musk says we should all get off our duffs and go back to the office. Factory workers, service workers and construction workers can’t work from home, so why do people in the “laptop classes” think they should be able to do so? Musk isn’t alone among corporate executives in seeing employees’ reluctance to return to the office as a genuine economic problem. Companies have tried carrots — redesigning offices — and they’ve tried sticks, like reversing remote work policies at the same time they announce huge layoffs. Remote work looks like it’s turning from a pandemic necessity into a permanent feature of the American workplace.

☆ We’re All Paying For Private Jet Travel - The New York Times
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

But Prince, who founded a business in the 1990s that has made a fortune printing gift cards, is a wealthy man. Prince says flying private is a magical experience: He can drive right up to the side of his plane and hop on board. If he’s flying in the afternoon, he’ll be greeted with a glass of scotch; in the morning, he’ll get coffee and a newspaper. A progressive activist — he’s the vice chair of Patriotic Millionaires, an organization of wealthy people who favor higher taxes on rich people like themselves — Prince argues that flying private is just too expensive and unfair. His group isn’t calling on other private fliers to ground their planes, but maintains that if rich people are going to continue to jet around in luxury, they should at least be taxed for the privilege.

☆ Opinion | ChatGPT Is Already Changing How I Do My Job
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Once you start using ChatGPT you pretty much can’t stop. But as the artificial intelligence chatbot easily dispatches your gimmes, you begin to take it more seriously. Soon, ChatGPT starts to etch a groove into your life. Only a few times in my life have I experienced this creeping sense of possibility with a new technology. It’s been less than five months since the artificial intelligence company OpenAI released its chatbot.

☆ Opinion | Twitter Is Broken. Thanks, Elon.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-14 | by ( Farhad Manjoo | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

He’s frequently struggled to serve his customers, yet he’s penalized them for mentioning the competition. Musk moved fast and broke nearly everything — the speed and totality with which he’s ruined the site has been almost impressive. More than that, Twitter under Musk appears to have lost the thing that made it impossible to quit: Its centrality. At its cultural peak, from about 2015 to perhaps 2020, what people talked about on Twitter seemed to set the agenda for discussions elsewhere. And now, when something’s going down, Twitter rarely feels like the place where everyone is gathering to watch.

☆ Elon Musk's Crackdown at Twitter Offers Hope to Fellow Tech Founders
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

But there's one group, almost unnoticed in the midst of the online firestorm, that has been cheering Musk on from the sidelines: other tech executives. To some founders, Musk is simply a monstrous version of the executive they wish they could be. Musk is getting rid of perks like free meals in the Twitter cafeteria — and other tech executives are taking note. Musk's slash-and-burn approach gives tech executives cover for making unpopular decisions. But now, as tech companies cut back to prepare for a recession, the "rough waters out there" have forced his staff to "reevaluate" their demands.

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