Notes Appétit

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the Test Kitchen.

Yesterday started with one implosion and ended with another one. At 9am, Atlantic City imploded the shell of Trump Plaza, which Olivia Nuzzi wrote up in a report that is mainly remarkable for its early entry in the race for correction of the year:

Whatever day yesterday was, by the end of it Spotify subsidiary Gimlet Media’s most successful podcast Reply All had also imploded. Hot Pod’s Nick Quah wrote up the whole story for Vulture, which very briefly goes like this:

ahmed ali akbar @radbrowndads

The whole internet loves Bon Appetit, a cute test kitchen that makes food! *3 years later* We regret to inform you the test kitchen is racist. *1 year* The whole internet loves Test Kitchen, the exposè exploring racism at BA! *2 days* We regret to inform you the exposè is racist

Reply All was two episodes deep in a planned four episode report by producer Sruthi Pinnamaneni about the toxic workplace culture and 2020 collapse of Bon Appétit Magazine’s Test Kitchen video series. The episodes were already not necessarily landing that well with the show’s listeners, judging by this kind of scoldy Reddit post from Reply All co-host PJ Vogt, last Sunday.

Then former Gimlet employee and co-host of The Nod Eric Eddings tweeted a thread describing his time at Gimlet and specifically some very negative experiences with Sruthi and PJ, along the same lines that Sruthi was reporting at Bon Appétit in the Test Kitchen series. She refers to the Gimlet union drive herself, near the end of the second episode, with regret over her own behavior:

Hannah Mullen @hannnahmmarie

Sruthi's bizarre aside in the most recent Bon App Reply All episode makes more sense now

Eric Eddings @eeddings

So RA found out about the effort last. They were pissed. The team led by PJ, Sruthi, and Alex G used their weight as a cudgel against our efforts at voluntary recognition. Sruthi personally held an Anti-union meeting, trying to rally people against it.

Despite Eddings saying that “There are some producers at RA whose work I cherish. I’m not asking you to stop listening to their show,” as podcaster Tracie Hunte put it: “Now it seems we're going to need a whole ass Truth and Reconciliation Committee.” And by yesterday evening, it was finally stepping time.

The stepping began with Gimlet managing director Lydia Polgreen’s email to staff which said that Sruthi and PJ were stepping back and down, respectively. PJ tweeted a statement which I have confirmed is Notes app (dark mode) apologizing and “stepping away” from the show. He has since clarified that the stepping is meant to be permanent. Sruthi didn’t say any more about what direction she’s stepping but she did tweet an apology in what I suspect but have not confirmed is Notes app (light mode). The Gimlet Union is still in active contract negotiations. All the subtweets will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Joe Rogan remains unchallenged as the most popular podcast on Spotify.

Scott Tobias @scott_tobias

@nwquah The Bon Appetit story going a little like this:

Also Today in Notes App: Flesh-colored Grimace and puzzle aficionado Ted Cruz took off for Cancún yesterday, finding Texas a bit of a downer, what with no power, food, or water, and frozen bodies in the streets. He’s now on his way back home, and seems like he’s going to try to Notes app his way out of it by saying he was just dropping the kids off in Mexico for the week, like any good Dad would do. Visit a hotel saloon in the Permian Basin and the oilmen will tell you: no matter how deep they drill, they always find Ted Cruz waiting at the bottom.

Gabriella Paiella @GMPaiella

To everyone mad at Ted Cruz: would you extend the same criticism to a MAN??? I didn't think so.

Here’s a long email from Slate Star Codex author and Objectivist Billy Corgan Scott Siskind detailing all the things he admires about the Neoreactionary movement, and the ways he would like to use them to extend his own reach and ”network with important people,” in case you were still on the fence about why such a nice guy keeps attracting all those Nazis.

Alex 🪱 @TiktaalexRoseae

You can tell exactly when Rush Limbaugh died using this graph of people searching crab rave on google

I don’t even have the space or the energy left today to talk about Facebook and Murdoch and Australia, but Casey Newton’s Platformer post is all you really need (also Tuesday’s post). Ryan Broderick has a good roundup of what other people are saying in Garbage Day. Documents released from a long-running court case yesterday also proved Facebook knew for years that its “potential reach” ad numbers were inflated, and chose not to fix them. Gizmodo’s Cam Wilson reports that even shutting off all news on the whole platform hasn’t stopped the disinformation. Facebook: Not even Once.

Becca Laurie @imbeccable

has science gone too far

Bijan saw a farting cat robot. Bijan also wrote about a meme that came out when he was 4. Nathan Grayson ate the giant game controller gummy. Every Superhero Movie Is A Policy Failure. The top Dogecoin wallet is worth $2.1 billion United States monies. Toph Tucker: How D3 Moved Us.

That’s it! I know it was too much, please accept this heartfelt apology and I hope you’ll give me another chance next week.

Today’s Song: Noisestorm, “Crab Rave”

~ Hell is empty. And all the tabs are here. ~

Thanks to Jessie Guy-Ryan for “flesh-colored grimace.” If this email saved you the effort of trying to trace a blizzard of conflicting subtweets back to the actual news, please subscribe. If you do, you can also join the Subscriber Open Thread tomorrow and help me try to process this week. I’m gonna go have a nap.