Amanda Hess
@amandahess
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preorder SECOND LIFE: HAVING A CHILD IN THE DIGITAL AGE https://t.co/1EXtMhdbzk
Joined September 2008
We’re asking readers to not engage in any @nytimes platforms tomorrow and stand with us on the digital picket line! Read local news. Listen to public radio. Make something from a cookbook. Break your Wordle streak.
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This is a sad day for @nytimes. This company pledged $150 million in stock buybacks this year, but it’s offering staff what amounts to a pay cut, during record inflation in the most expensive city in the world. I love the Times and wish it loved me back.
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The story is that Sinead O'Connor ripped up a photo of the pope on SNL and killed her career. But she doesn't see it that way. In fact, the opposite feels true. I profiled Sinead:
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Three months ago, I testified at the bargaining table in front of New York Times management, asking them to make our parental leave policy equitable for all parents. Today the Times announced that it has done just that — but only for a class of non-union employees.
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I wrote about Yoko Ono's unnerving, fascinating and ultimately dazzling performance in "The Beatles: Get Back" — and how she subverted the role of rock wife into a kind of marathon performance art piece.
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I've been advocating for this issue within the Times for years. I wish I could be celebrating today: 20 weeks paid leave for all new parents! (. unless you're in a union). Instead I'm just really sad. The Times has not even responded to the guild's leave proposal. Not a word.
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I'm happy for the families that will benefit from this today. But to fight so hard for something and then be told that your family doesn't count . that we're just some bargaining chip . it feels like guild members are being punished for raising and advocating on this issue.
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Finally! After weeks of pressure from our union, employees across the company and viewers like you, the New York Times has agreed to extend its new equitable parental leave policy to unionized employees!
Three months ago, I testified at the bargaining table in front of New York Times management, asking them to make our parental leave policy equitable for all parents. Today the Times announced that it has done just that — but only for a class of non-union employees.
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I wrote about the doorbell that is actually a surveillance system that is actually an entertainment platform built around glorifying Amazon packages
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I’m thrilled to be voting YES this morning to increase my union dues with the @nyguild !!! #guildstrong
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recently I've started collecting Mini Brands, the most mundane miniatures on the market: there are tiny McCormick Red Pepper flake shakers, tiny TRESemmé bottles, tiny Wet Ones. there's something oddly relaxing about a banal item inexplicably shrunken into a fetish object .
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I wrote about the antiheroine of the moment: the mother who leaves her kids. As she rides out a dark maternal fantasy, she reveals the limits of women's choices — seemingly boundless, rarely supported, always judged.
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I profiled @brandicarlile, a "mean, scrappy little trailer girl" who became a master in the art of self-awareness
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I wrote about the ubiquitous "In This House" lawn sign. Inspired by mom décor, it became a liberal mantra, a font of memes, a symbol of the lasting psychic imprint of 2016 and an emblem of a culture war between white women.
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I profiled the transcendent @KaceyMusgraves as pop stardom quite literally came calling for her:
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The @nytimes's decision to replace our Sports desk is clear union-busting. I stand with more than 1,000 @NYTimesGuild, @WirecutterUnion + @NYTGuildTech members in demanding that Times management stop violating our contract and respect union work.
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can a trailblazing, perversely violent monkey queen ever truly “have it all”.
Yakei, a female Japanese macaque in a nature reserve in southern Japan, violently overthrew the alpha male of her troop to become its first female leader in the reserve’s 70-year history. A messy love triangle could endanger her grip on power.
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it’s time for another movie where James Spader plays a weird sex guy.
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I wrote about plugging my brain into Peloton, which is engineering a new kind of content: the total curation of the mind.
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an 8-mo-pregnant woman got ice cream at the mall and, when all seats were taken, sat at an auto massage chair. a couple that wanted instant side-by-side chair vibrations *called security* and now 100s of ppl are condemning her for “depriving” “the mall” of passive chair income ??
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in awe of all of my colleagues today, especially our security staff, who are paid as little as $52k a year. that is unacceptable! fair contract now! read all about it:
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I wrote about Mark Zuckerberg's shifting public persona as he steps into his most preposterous role yet: cultural impresario of the metaverse. Discussed: knotty driftwood, weird bangs, boar hunting, two blurry Instagram selfies taken in front of the Louvre
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but there's something more to them: they access the lost pleasure of the supermarket experience. I'd never thought to appreciate the sensation of coasting down the aisles, luxuriating in an array of food brands, but now that it's gone, I'm hyper aware of what I've been missing.
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In Vice, @xoxogossipgita first reported on the trend of Amazon customers demanding that delivery drivers dance for them, and spoke to drivers who have been asked to "do the chicken dance" or "do a twirl" and risk demerits if they don't comply:
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you can still go to the grocery store, but you can no longer lose yourself there. instead you can amass Mini Brands, binge reruns of "Supermarket Sweep" or perhaps relax into our brain-soothing image collection of a beautiful snail navigating tiny grocery-themed dioramas .
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I wrote about experiencing the vaccine as the finale of a year-long onslaught of Covid content, and the very American impulse to turn our brush with socialized medicine into a branding spectacle rooted in the worship of pharmaceutical companies
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. and somehow, the artists and snail handlers Aleia Murawski and Sam Copeland managed to capture all that. special thanks to our snail model Velveeta, who was endlessly patient with us .
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I wrote about how Botulinum toxin, a poison that causes facial muscle paralysis, insinuated itself into our emotional and creative lives, from "The Real Housewives" to prestige TV to the Errol Morris-directed Botox commercial:
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When I interviewed Tina Turner in 2019, she took my arm outside of her Swiss mansion. She congratulated me; I was getting married soon. "And what is your sign?" she asked. Gemini, I said. "And his?" I told her I didn't know. She stared urgently into my eyes and whispered: "NO.".
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If the Oscars opening monologue doesn’t end with Jimmy Kimmel getting tackled by Billy Crystal dressed as Lydia Tár, I swear to fucking god …. .
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good to collectively determine that a massage chair has greater moral status than a pregnant woman.
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who is playing Lydia Tár in Bradley Cooper’s Leonard Bernstein biopic.
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I wrote about the slippery cultural meanings of lip-syncing — from "Singin' in the Rain" to Milli Vanilli, RuPaul to "Lip Sync Battle," Ashlee Simpson to Addison Rae — and how an emblem of artifice came to represent scrappy, amateur realness.
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As global warming cooks the earth, it melts our brains, exploding the stories we like to tell ourselves—even the apocalyptic ones. I wrote about end-times parable, doomscrolling and the kind of climate denial practiced even by those who accept the science
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I wrote about a new way of being famous: dramatizing the mental-health effects of fame.
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I wrote about the two movies I can't stop thinking about! "Women Talking" and "Tár" are two very different films, riffing on the same provocation: God is a woman.
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Lady Gaga’s highly personal song she wrote for Top Gun: Maverick sounds like a fake song you sing to a toddler while crossing the street.
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I wrote about Marilyn Monroe's fantasy fetus in "Blonde," and how the image of a beatific, sun-dappled C.G.I. orb baby came to dominate the cultural imagination of what a fetus "looks like"
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I was once on an international flight where a baby was crying and a German woman yelled SCHUT UP ZAT BABY and the mom marched the baby over to her and started screaming at her in French lol.
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ty @zeveisenberg!
[ID: An NYT crossword puzzle filled out so it reads: “I am calling on management to recognize the New York Times Tech Workers who make this crossword puzzle and all the other tech workers that fuels our journalism. Do the right thing.” A single square at the end says “thanks”].
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I wrote about the internet's exotic pets, and the people who love them. The stars of this internet niche model the radical caretaking of strange animals. But they are only human.
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careful though . the deeper I fell into the vicarious grocery store, the more the images of sparkling aisles and unseasonally ripe produce turned unsettling. the supermarket has always also been a symbol of delusion, papering over signs of social and ecological collapse .
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@taffyakner love to have my baby (and presumably also me) pass extremely peacefully in childbirth.
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I wrote about how the celebrity endorsement triumphed over the idea of "selling out" — and also my personal favorite celebrity brand, Casa Zeta-Jones by Catherine Zeta Jones:
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I wrote about the many mothers of recent horror films, their relationship to the permanently bedraggled mom influencer persona, and the limits of framing motherhood as torture
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I wrote about the small collection of things that are making my brain feel better right now, including the podcast @PotPsychology, the newsletter @thesmallbow and a live cam of some majestic creatures shuffling about a California beach:
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The @nytimes is pressuring us to return to the office in June. But RTO must be agreed on with @NYTimesGuild as part of our contract. I hope management comes to the table today ready to fairly negotiate on all the issues that matter to us, including wages, benefits and RTO!!!.
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Thank you @talasafie @aliciadesantis @jmsedgNYT @jolieruben @lmanly12 for making the "In This House" sign generator of my dreams possible
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the baby rabbit.
The Chocolate Rabbit family have been busy! 🧁. Which one looks the most delicious?
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Thank you, thank you to everyone who stood in solidarity on this issue. I’m particularly grateful to my fellow union members who don’t have kids, or whose kids are grown, who nevertheless stood up for all new and future parents!.
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@blanketboat ironically, my generally toasty feline nuts have been chilled to their core by this take.
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show me an actor who can also just behave like a normal person. that would impress me.
“I got scared for Jared,” #Morbius director Daniel Espinosa says of Leto. “He really commits. You have to watch out for it.” In a scene involving Morbius shattering glass, “I could sense the crew backed off,” Espinosa recalls. “It was a bit spooky.”
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best adapted screenplay: Tár (based on the book “Tár on Tár” by Lydia Tár).
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I want what they have.
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I wrote about the tape Mia Farrow shot of 7-year-old Dylan describing abuse by Woody Allen, and also our slippery cultural ideals around women photographing kids: a mother with a camera is seen as selfless and doting, or else manipulative and exploitative
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This policy came a little too late for me and my husband, and I’m not gonna lie, it is demoralizing to have a kid and immediately run into your company’s double standard. But I’m so thrilled for everyone who will benefit from this going forward.
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I wrote about depictions of violent births, the stigma against the C-section, the trouble with constructing pregnancy as the ultimate metaphor, and the alienation of the birds-eye-view childbirth scene:
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Being a union member has been one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. I’m in awe of what members are doing, every day, to fight for one another and the future of journalism. From the stands of Hudson News to the halls of the New York Times, we are stronger together.
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(anticipating the question . can a pregnant non-hottie write about a beautiful fetus . ).
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proud of @marcatracy for writing this elegant, deeply reported story on the future rabbis rethinking their relationship to Israel. even prouder that, in the course of his reporting, he worked the land!!! (weeded some potato plants)
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I’ve been so humbled to see my fellow members show up to fight for me on issues, like equitable parental leave, that affect me most. I hope every worker can experience the solidarity of a union and I am proud to contribute a small amount to build that future within my industry!.
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@ClareMalone my feral cats (1F, 1F, 1F, 1F, 1M, 1M, 1M, 1M, 1M, 2F, 2F, 2M, 3F, 3M) have organized.
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proving the haters wrong by downloading, printing, completing and mailing the rebate form.
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Multiple people reported hearing someone 'orgasm' during the L.A. Philharmonic's performance of Tchaikovsky's fifth symphony on Friday. It's not clear what happened.
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If you too feel depressed and overwhelmed by global warming I highly recommend Being Ecological by @the_eco_thought for moving past sad fact mode
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honored to be interviewed (in an interview about interviewing) for my favorite newsletter, @thesmallbow:.
"I think often when you read about a person who has been through some difficult things you can start to see them as a sad person or a difficult person because they have endured some sad, difficult things. But often the opposite is true." – @amandahess.
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Todd Field playing a gig at a very exclusive costume party after this
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it rules that the one thing i can do with a one-year-old in the rain in my neighborhood (library) is closed now 🙃.
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I wrote about the heyday of erotic thrillers, and what's become of the masculine anxieties that fueled them. For if Michael Douglas represented the imperiled family man of the 1980s, Ben Affleck has emerged as the shell of that man: .
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I need more people to see Women Talking so we can women talk about it!.
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