Man, I do not envy the actual journalists who remain at CBS news:

Bari Weiss introduced herself to CBS News staff today on the network's 9AM call, saying she wants to "win," which requires restoring trust to CBS. She also said she was excited for staff to get to know the Free Press, and ended her remarks by saying: "Let's do the fucking news."

— max tani (@maxtani.bsky.social) Oct 7, 2025 at 6:14 AM

Elizabeth Lopatto has a memo for the new propaganda minister:

Managing sucks! It sucks even when you like the people you’re managing and it’s a low-stress position! And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you: running CBS News is not a low-stress position. You are going to get blamed by everyone above you for decisions that are made by people below you, and you are going to get blamed by people below you for the decisions that are made by people above you. You’re also going to get blamed for your own decisions, just for kicks. You have elected to take a job where the primary purpose is for you to eat shit and own the death of broadcast TV news, a thing that is going to die no matter what you do. Nice work!

This is the glass cliff to end all glass cliffs. You’re Marissa Mayer at Yahoo without the Googler street cred. You’re Nancy Dubuc at Vice without the string of hit TV shows. You’re Linda Yaccarino at Twitter without the advertiser relationships. You have been hired as a sop to a Trump administration that is actively hostile to the actual free press, and you will be made to oversee wave after wave of layoffs until you quit or get fired and the entire news division is shut down in a final spasm of cost-cutting after the next inescapable media merger.

[…]

It’s actually even worse than that. You also have to manage Talent. Famous TV Talent, the people your audience actually knows and likes, and who will eat you alive if they think you’ve screwed them over. In order for that to work, you actually need to completely disappear and let the Talent be the face of the network, and quite frankly nothing about your history suggests you’re capable of that. And one of the main problems with Talent, especially Famous TV Talent, is that they are egomaniacal monsters who love getting paid and throwing hissy fits, and hate being told what to do. You think you had a bad time at The New York Times? Baby, you have no idea what a bad time is. You’ll find out when you try to tell Norah O’Donnell anything at all about her reporting. If you’re lucky, she’ll just shake her Emmys at you when she tells you to fuck off. You think Gayle King or David Martin are going to sit through a lecture from you? Like for real? Come on. Jane Pauley has already caused one media firestorm by changing jobs. Are you ready for this?

Managing requires certain kinds of soft skills, ones I am not confident you possess. They weren’t necessary in your cushy Wall Street Journal op-ed job, or your cushier New York Times op-ed job. They were barely required at the publication you invented, The Free Press. So now you’re the head honcho at CBS News. Let’s say you decide to skip levels to directly edit a 60 Minutes story. It doesn’t even have to be a controversial story to make all hell break loose — because you have neither the credibility nor the relationships required to take this kind of work on. And what’s more, you’ve got a news division composed exclusively of ambitious piranhas below you — not your handpicked cronies, like Tyler “I wish to see Hollywood virgins” Cowen. These people have decades in television, and you have a newsletter and a history of throwing your colleagues under the bus. 

There’a a fundamental assumption that being able to run a mediocre group blog makes you qualified to run a major news organization, and while I would like this to be true, I do not think it is very plausible.

As a coda, here’s the actual story of her accidentally-like-a-martyr routine at the Times:

Nice. If I may add 2 cents: The real reason BW quit the Times was that as soon as Katie Kingsbury took over from James Bennet, she told her she could no longer commission and edit articles. She could only write. But commissioning articles was key to her grift. I mean literally …

— Clay Risen (@risenc.bsky.social) Oct 7, 2025 at 11:55 AM

She promoted herself among certain circles as the key to getting into the Times. Which is one reason why I and others blocked so many of her commissioned pieces (one reason: they were also terrible). She said it was our deep ideological bias against conservatives…

— Clay Risen (@risenc.bsky.social) Oct 7, 2025 at 11:55 AM

However this ends, it’s still one of the most profitable grifts of all time. Being able to kiss ass is often more important than having any skill with respect to your nominal profession.

The post From Cronkite to Cringe appeared first on Lawyers, Guns & Money.

Leftovers just taste better with the orbital laser.

Baking soda and distilled white vinegar are two of the most used cleaners in my home. I often say that there’s not much you can’t clean if you have baking soda, vinegar, and dish soap on hand.

I reach for baking soda to scour baked-on grease from my stainless steel skillet and aluminum baking sheets. I mix a bit of distilled white vinegar and water in a spray bottle to make an effective glass cleaner, and with a drop of dish soap, it’s my go-to solution for deodorizing dog accidents on carpet.

But it drives me absolutely mad when I see people on social media combining baking soda and vinegar to make a cleaning solution.

Angelico Schwartzkopf
and Jean-Paul Pudzianowski
Fine Art Authenticators

I. Introduction

As requested, herein is our authentication report on the artwork with catalogue number 45/47.

II. Alleged Artist’s Statement

Nearly all authentication disputes involve works allegedly created by long-dead artistic masters. In this case, however, the alleged artist is still alive and denounces the work in question as a forgery. However, many mature artists (and the alleged artist is very old, regardless of maturity level) renounce or even destroy artworks from their younger days to protect their reputations from association with earlier, less polished work. Thus, it is possible that the alleged artist is trying to disassociate himself from this work out of concern for his reputation.

What can be safely said is that whether the work is the creation of the alleged artist or a forgery, the creator wishes to remain anonymous. Thus, this report will scrupulously guard against revealing the identity of the alleged artist.

III. Occasion for the Artwork

Although the alleged artist disputes this, the artwork appears to have been created in 2003 to commemorate the fiftieth birthday of a close (and extremely wealthy) friend of the alleged artist. Works commissioned by (or for) the extremely wealthy have, of course, a long and (generally) honorable tradition in art history.

IV. Description of the Artwork

The artwork in question portrays a female nude, with dialogue superimposed onto her body. Only the upper torso is portrayed, with no head, arms, legs, hands, or feet. The canvas is an 8-by-11-inch piece of paper. The medium for the written dialogue is typewriter; the medium for the torso appears to be Sharpie.

V. Analysis of the Artwork

To the plebeian, the artwork might seem like a rudimentary, even crude, drawing. But more discerning critics will appreciate the efficacious application of minimalism. And of course, the portrayal of the subject as mere torso, sans arms, legs, and even face, allows the artwork to make a powerful statement about the objectification of women. Some have argued that the aforementioned statement is “The objectification of women is fantastic, and when you’re a star they let you do it.” Thematic interpretation, however, is not within the purview of this document.

The words on the torso also testify to the artwork’s sophistication. They are a modern-day Platonic dialogue: a conversation between two specific characters about the meaning of life. The two characters appear to find that meaning in activities that might not be entirely Platonic, but again, such interpretations are beyond this document’s scope. The dialogue also hints of Gnosticism in its celebration of an in-group (“we have certain things in common”) that hoards insider knowledge (“I won’t tell you what it is… may every day be another wonderful secret”).

VI. Analysis of the Signature

Among those claiming that the artwork is a forgery, a central argument has been that the signature does not resemble the alleged artist’s actual signature. To buttress this argument, its proponents have produced recent signatures by the alleged artist, signatures that indeed do not resemble the one on the painting. However, the signature on the artwork does, in fact, closely resemble multiple signatures by the alleged artist on documents from around the time of the artwork’s creation. Thus, the signature is not indicative of forgery, any more than Les Demoiselles d’Avignon is a forgery because it does not resemble paintings from Picasso’s Blue Period.

One might argue that matters involving a signature should be the province of experts in handwriting, not those in fine art authentication. We beg to differ. While the signature is always at least a tangential part of an artwork’s mise-en-scène, in this case, it is crucial. The signature’s placement and shaping are such that the signature functions as the nude female’s pubic hair. Thus, this signature is the method by which the artist (rather like Velázquez in Las Meninas) has slyly inserted himself into the artwork—in this case, slyly inserting himself into a nude female.

This playful insertion is further evidence that while the artwork may lack detail, it does not lack artistic sophistication. What seems to be pubic hair is, on closer inspection, a signature, and vice versa. The duality evokes that great artistic tradition of visual puns, trompe l’oeil.

VII. Purpose of the Artwork

Just as Jan van Eyck’s great painting The Arnolfini Portrait is widely believed to have served as a marriage contract, so the artwork examined here may well have served to seal a union. The dialogue typed onto the female torso, discussed already, emphasizes the mutually beneficial bond between the creator and the recipient of the artwork. The artwork’s creator and recipient seem to share some sort of agreement, some sort of deal. Viewed in that light, the artwork becomes the art of the deal.

VIII. Conclusion

We unequivocally conclude that this work is not a forgery. The focus on an objectified female torso, the tone of the conversation inscribed on that torso, and the style of the signature are all emblematic of the alleged artist and the nature of his friendship with the artwork’s recipient. Especially characteristic of the alleged artist, as he himself has stated while being unwittingly recorded, is his use of his identity, in this case via his signature, to penetrate the female form without asking permission. So while we have respected the alleged artist’s concerns by being careful not to reveal his identity, we conclude that he is the actual artist, regardless of whatever denials he might trump up.