Substack Runs Because of One Man: Colin

Also: my brother makes his Times Magazine debut!

There is much that is wonderful about writing for mainstream outlets like The New York Times—and in one moment, I will get to that outlet, which features a new piece by my brother—but one frustrating thing about it is the disconnection from readers. Sure, you can read the comments … except that for most pieces the Times does not open up comments (they have to be moderated, you see), and even when they do, most comments are anonymized (and many of them are, to put a fine point on it, crazy). You can ask about web traffic … but it’s really better not to, as you don’t want numbers to skew your coverage (and in all my years writing biweekly for the Times, I never knew who kept track of my traffic, if anyone—which as I say was a good thing). Bottom line: except for that random junior-high friend who emails you when he sees your byline, you don’t really know who is reading you.

But with Substack, you know something about who your subscribers are; you have their emails; you can see when they subscribe and when they unsubscribe. There is a connection there. Yes, there is the same set of dangers: skewing your coverage or your opinions to please them (and the more you know about them, the more the danger). But knowing your audience—that is something special.

And then there are the readers who become paid subscribers. Like Colin, yesterday. I don’t know anything about Colin, except that he is part of that meaningful, growing subset of my readers who have chosen to pay a few bucks a month. It’s not a lot of money, relative to what many of us (like me) spend on coffee every month, but it counts, and it adds up, and it keeps the project moving.

Also, the pay-as-you-go or à-la-carte payment system was always going to be the future of journalism on the web—if we ever figure out how to get people to pay a few pennies for every article they read, to make “micropayments,” it will be a huge boon to local and nonprofit journalism—and Substack is showing the way. So by joining me as a paid subscriber, you really are helping us figure out how to preserve an ecosystem of smart journalism and other writing.

So, to Colin and all my readers like him: thank you.

In his honor, and despite my huge misgivings about AI, I asked ChatGPT, “Can you show me a kind, generous, handsome man in his forties with great hair and a beautiful argyll sweater reading journalism on his laptop, while sitting in a warm den in front of the fire surrounded by built-in bookshelves?” And here is what I got—I give you Colin (and evidence that AI doesn’t know from “argyll”):

Okay, so here is the deal—everyone who becomes a paid subscriber this week will become the subject of an Oppenheimer/ChatGPT collaboration, for which I will ask the AI to do a portrait of you, based on what I think you might look like. Like, if your name is Kathy, which sounds to me like somebody who is 29, wears blue, and enjoys smoothies, I may publish this portrait of you:

Look, Kathy even got a basil sprig atop her smoothie!

If you tell me stuff about you we can work in appropriate features, like a college sweatshirt from your alma mater. Join me—for the future of journalism and a fun, silly use of AI!

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Outsourcing to my brother

Back before the movie Oppenheimer, it seemed nobody could pronounce my name. Sure, there were the physics nerds who knew about J. Robert Oppenheimer, and sure, there were the lucky souls who had money with Oppenheimer Mutual Funds, but let’s just say the name got mispronounced a lot. Now, it seldom gets mispronounced, and also Oppenheimers are EVERYWHERE. Like in The New York Times Magazine, where my brother (real image of him below, not aspirational image like Colin above) has a terrific piece about masculinity, couples counseling, and marriage.

Brother (courtesy New York Times)

You may ask yourself, “Is he better looking than his older brother, Mark?” and “Why does the photo show him eating toast?” and “Ohhh, cloth napkins!” Read it to find out. “How I Learned That the Problem in My Marriage Was Me” begins:

One thing I’ve learned from being married to my wife, Jess, who is a couples therapist, is how vast the distance is between the masks people show to the world and the messy realities that live behind them. Every couple knows its own drama, but we still fall prey to the illusion that all other couples have seamlessly satisfying relationships. The truth about marriage — including my own — is that even the most functional couples are merely doing the best they can with the lives that have been bestowed on them.

This past spring, Jess and I had the first of eight sessions of couples therapy with Terry Real, a best-selling author and by far the most famous of the therapists we’ve seen during our marriage. In November, I watched the recording of that session for the first time since treatment. In the footage, I see Jess and me as Real might see us. I look worn down, a little pained. Jess looks to me like the same beachy blonde who divebombed into my life 20 years ago, crashing at a few thousand miles per hour into the defenses against intimacy and vulnerability that I had dedicated so much energy to erecting. She is lithe and elfin where I am dense and rough-planed. She looks tired, too, though.

Real glows in the aura of his webcam light, at 74 still elfin in his own right. He’s pushing me harder than I’m used to being pushed by a therapist, expressing skepticism of what strikes him as an overly sanitized version of my internal monologue when I feel criticized by Jess.

“If your hurt feelings could speak, what would they be saying?” he asks.

“I tell myself: ‘I try really hard. I try to be a good person. I try to be thoughtful about Jess and what she needs. Maybe I don’t get to everything, but it’s not because I’m not a good person.’”

“Really?” Real asks. “That’s what it sounds like?”

I laugh self-consciously.

“Can I tell you what I think it sounds like?” he asks.

Real pauses, intensifies his tone and confronts me with the kind of coarse language he is known to use with his male clients — the language he believes they understand and respond to. “ ‘No matter what I do,’ ” he says, “ ‘No matter what I fucking do—no matter how hard I try—you’re going to find the one damned thing I didn’t do. I can’t believe I have to put up with this bullshit again.’ ”

I concede the point. Jess, I can see on the video, is enjoying the scene.

Read the rest here. (And BTW Daniel has a terrifically nerdy podcast, found here.)

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“Aesthetic” does not mean what you think it does

An eagle-eyed reader who knows my pet peeves sent along this screenshot from The Wall Street Journal:

About 37.4 percent of you know exactly where I am going with this, which is that I am tearing my hair out (or Colin’s hair, since he has gorgeous hair to spare) and screaming, That is not what that word means! There are a. few battles I know that I am losing to the young’uns. One is that they pronounce “vs.” as in “Yankees vs. Red Sox,” as “verse” instead of “versus.” (If you are a millennial or Gen Z person who does this, can you write to me and tell me why? How do you not know the word “versus”? How has my generation failed you?) And another losing battle is preserving the old meaning of “aesthetic,” something like “relating to the beautiful” but not “beautiful” itself. Yes, I know that some people have always used it to mean “aesthetically pleasing.” Here is Merriam-Webster.

But in my experience, definition (a) was where it was at for a long, long time; now (c) has jumped far into the leave. And I don’t like it. Maybe

Nancy Friedman

, language Substacker extraordinaire, can get on the case.

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Not good for natalism

To send you off harumphing, I give you this piece from The Washington Post, about a natalist couple with many children and some rather interesting ideas. I won’t say much more except that their children (the ones they have so far) are named Titan Invictus, Simone, Industry Americus, Malcolm, Torsten Savage and Octavian George. They call Industry Americus “Indy” for short.

As a father of more than a couple children, I take a special interest in articles about natalism. My wife and I did not have our many children as some sort of political project or gesture, but I happen to agree with the subjects of this article that crashing birthrates are a problem for society. And I don’t think that the issue should be left to JD Vance, anti-immigration nativists, and the very religious (no shade against the very religious). We need more normies (for lack of a better term) in the discourse. I have tried to contribute in my own small ways, like this essay, “Yes, We Really Do Want to Have a Fifth Child,'“ for The Wall Street Journal, in which I wrote:

…So, speaking for myself (my wife would put things differently, I’m sure), here are some reasons why I wanted a fifth child:

Because every one of our four children has improved my life. Each brought a special joy, an irreducible quirk, a unique, surprising eccentricity. I know that our fifth child (our first boy, as it happens) will do the same.

Because I’m not overwhelmed yet. I am tired, to be sure, but not as tired as most of the doctors or corporate lawyers I know.

Because somebody should have lots of children. There should be families of all sizes. I value diversity. I like living among people of varied races, family structures, gender identities, abilities and religions. (And I wish my New Haven community had more diverse politics.) It seems to me that a neighborhood should have some ridiculously big families.

Because five isn’t that ridiculous, actually. My grandfather was one of eight, my grandmother one of 10.

By the way, here was the nice illustration the Journal ran, and no, it looks nothing like me or my wife:

I have long planned to try to edit a collection of essays by writers with four or more children (Dara Horn, Jordana Horn, Melissa Faye Green, Michael Chabon, Ross Douthat), and seeing that very interesting family in the Post makes me think I should get on that project again.

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Best Aussie music you don’t know

I leave you with this, a very beautiful cover, by Neil Finn and Eddie Vedder, maestros of two of the great bands of all time (Crowded House, Pearl Jam), of the Australian band Hunters & Collectors’ song “Throw Your Arms Around Me.” Trust me—you want to watch this.