No more NYT cooperation: my dog-rape red line

Over the years, I’ve written two op-eds for The New York Times about quantum computing, at the NYT editors’ invitation: Quantum Computing Promises New Insights, Not Supermachines (2011) Why Google’s Quantum Supremacy Milestone Matters (2019) I’ve also visited the NYT office and helped NYT reporters with numerous stories about quantum computing and beyond. In the wake of Cade Metz’s hatchet job against the rationalist community, I resolved no longer to talk to Metz, but it never even occurred to me to extend that to a broader ban against the NYT itself. After all, it’s the friggin’ NYT! This week, however, Nicholas Kristof—a man who I praised fulsomely in a blog post 20 years ago, for his coverage of the genocide in Darfur—has used the NYT to broadcast the oldest, crudest form of antisemitic libel, accusing the Jews of garishly preposterous crimes (poisoning wells, baking blood into matzo, or in this case, training dogs to rape prisoners). As countless others have since pointed out,…