Justin Bieber Offers a Reflective Ode to Bieber Fever Bieberchella, as it’s been called, touched on the different cycles of Justin Bieber’s life, leaving audiences with one glaring question: What’s next?

i wrote about Justin Bieber at Coachella

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

I wrote an essay for Criterion about "Corporate Thrillers," including Wall Street, The Devil's Advocate, Disclosure, Michael Clayton, and more

Justin Bieber Offers a Reflective Ode to Bieber Fever Bieberchella, as it’s been called, touched on the different cycles of Justin Bieber’s life, leaving audiences with one glaring question: What’s next?

i wrote about Justin Bieber at Coachella

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

this but for war crimes

he's doing reality tv promo. you should imagine this music on while you read this www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx9u...

Savannah Guthrie’s Excruciating Story, on “Today” The morning-show host recounted the disappearance of her mother, Nancy, and its aftermath in boldly religious terms, as millions of viewers watched.

for next week's @newyorker.com i wrote about Savannah Guthrie's excruciating, breathlessly televised stations of the cross.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Savannah Guthrie’s Excruciating Story, on “Today” The morning-show host recounted the disappearance of her mother, Nancy, and its aftermath in boldly religious terms, as millions of viewers watched.

for next week's @newyorker.com i wrote about Savannah Guthrie's excruciating, breathlessly televised stations of the cross.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

How Arsenio Hall Captured the Culture The actor, comedian, and former talk-show host Arsenio Hall discusses his path from doing magic tricks and telling jokes to creating a TV show for the culture.

“The Arsenio Hall Show” marked the emergence of a younger, less white crowd in the provinces of late night. In an interview with Vinson Cunningham, Hall reminisces about his comedic peers, and what it’s like to be a Black celebrity and “laugher addict.” newyorkermag.visitlink.me/5JmnKW

i said last year that these people were segregationists and that “merit” just meant “white and male” to these people

thank you ❤️‍🔥

‘Admire the images, swoon at the performances—still, there’s a constant, artifice-exploding whisper: this is real, this is real, this is real.’

An exceptional essay by @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social

i am enormously honored to have written an essay for the new @criterion.bsky.social edition of Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon." enjoy—and go get yourself a copy!

www.criterion.com/current/post...

“DTF St. Louis” Peers Into the Suburban Male Psyche Jason Bateman excels as the Everyman, reeking of ennui and buried impulses, in the new HBO comic whodunnit, also with David Harbour and Linda Cardellini.

Jason Bateman excels as the Everyman, reeking of ennui and buried impulses, in the new HBO comic whodunnit “DTF St. Louis,” Vinson Cunningham writes. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

The artists stand backstage in front of a pink background, smiling.

Earlier this week, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises. Thanks to @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social, @mirajacob.bsky.social, @minjinlee.bsky.social, Colm Tóibín, and Jay O. Sanders for an enlightening evening, and to everyone who joined us!
(Photo by Nile Scott)

It used to be somewhat more obvious that the ability to think was the mark of the human animal, not a tedious backstage task but the entire substance of our tragicomic show. The drama of reasoning—applying abstract principles to real dilemmas, starting in one mental region and ending up in another faraway place, changing one’s mind, undergoing a conversion of the heart—is the admittedly humble glory of our species. It’s not always fun. Filling up a blank page is a daunting symbol for the tough challenge posed by this sort of freedom, which might be why new “large language model” concerns seem so dead set on identifying writing as an adversary for the humans of the future to finally vanquish. (My colleague Hua Hsu recently reported on what this mind-set is already doing to the practice of writing at institutions of higher learning.)

When all the thinking is outsourced what's left, asks @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social. Others say that LLMs just help with the brainstorming or the drafting or the revising but when you strip all those things away, we also need to ask what's left. www.newyorker.com/culture/crit...

Bari Weiss is presenting her plans to the CBS staff today. Weiss quite famously live tweeted a contentious internal meeting at the Times in 2020. I wonder if she thinks her employees are entitled to do the same thing now?

Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis Videos of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, rapidly disseminated on social media, reveal a brazen display of brute power.

“The existence of so many real and unvarnished images of [Alex] Pretti’s killing posed a problem that Trump’s underlings have tried to patch up with words,” Vinson Cunningham writes. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...

Emily Nussbaum on Jane Kramer’s “Founding Cadre” Her startling 1970 article, based on months of reporting on radical feminist pioneers, was an outlier for the period—coolly observational but full of emotion.

I wrote a TNY Take about Jane Kramer’s The Founding Cadre, a reported piece from 1970 in which Kramer embedded with a radical feminist CR group for nearly a year— which ended up getting published using pseudonyms, bc the editors found the topic too alarming: www.newyorker.com/magazine/tak...

Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis Videos of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, rapidly disseminated on social media, reveal a brazen display of brute power.

Trump and his minions are fine with killing people in plain public view; how many will they kill or maim in secret? Our friend @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social asks the pertinent question. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...

Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis Videos of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, rapidly disseminated on social media, reveal a brazen display of brute power.

i wrote about watching it, about evidence, about witness.

www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...

The Cruelty and Theatre of the Trump Press Conference During the President’s second term, he and his staff have made the media briefing his signature rhetorical form.

Donald Trump and his spokespeople use press conferences “to set forth their distorted vision of the future—and, maybe more subtly, to let slip their estimation of the public,” Vinson Cunningham writes. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

„If this is what they do when we can see, what's going on in the places—-planes and cars, detention centers— where we can't?" Vinson Cunningham staff writer The New Yorker

by @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social

Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis Videos of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, rapidly disseminated on social media, reveal a brazen display of brute power.

Even before Alex Pretti's name was widely known, his public killing was made exponentially more public by its rapid dissemination over social media and the news. www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...

Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis Videos of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, rapidly disseminated on social media, reveal a brazen display of brute power.

Our ability to participate in witnessing, to corroborate each other’s commonsense, to assure one another that, no, you are not crazy, they did just “fucking kill that guy,” is a threat to the Administration’s assumption of total power… www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...

Witnessing Another Public Killing in Minneapolis Videos of Alex Pretti’s fatal shooting, rapidly disseminated on social media, reveal a brazen display of brute power.

i wrote about watching it, about evidence, about witness.

www.newyorker.com/culture/on-t...

The Cruelty and Theatre of the Trump Press Conference During the President’s second term, he and his staff have made the media briefing his signature rhetorical form.

for next week's @newyorker.com i wrote about the art of the Trump press conference

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

funniest running bit on twitter is "gentle r kikuo johnson new yorker cover drives idw and tpot types insane trying to interpret it"

Read Max x Unpopular Front with Vinson Cunningham A recording from John Ganz and Max Read's live video

www.unpopularfront.news/p/read-max-x...

TV finales can feel like saying goodbye to a close friend but, should they really mean so much to us? @vinsoncunningham.bsky.social, Naomi Fry, & Alexandra Schwartz discuss the concept in this fascinating moment from ‘Critics at Large’: harkaudio.com/art-great-tv...

Be Yourself Nas, Labi Siffre, Sevyn Streeter, Peter Gabriel, Geese, and much more.

this week's edition of Vinson Cunningham's Quiet Storm includes tunes by Nas, Labi Siffre, Sevyn Streeter, Peter Gabriel, Geese, and many others—plus a brief meditation on the increasingly endangered communal function of radio.

vcunningham.substack.com/p/be-yourself