Gabriel Snyder

@gabrielsnyder

Executive Editor, Enterprise at Newsweek Previously: Publisher & EIC of The Fine Print, EIC of The New Republic, Editor of The Atlantic Wire, EIC of Gawker, Reporter at Variety, Reporter at The New York Observer, etc.

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Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· 7d

"the problem with my political opponents who keep winning elections is that they are deeply unpopular" is pretty much the definition of copium thedispatch.com/article/demo...

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· 10d

... and fwiw, the AI Concierge on OpenTable can't answer that query either

screenshot of a chat with OpenTable's AI Concierge

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· 10d

And as it happens, ChatGPT's top recommendation for this query has not been nominated for a Beard Award — nor does it have any open tables available at 7pm this Friday, as per, well, OpenTable.

ChatGPT results for the prompt "I'm looking for a seafood restaurant that's celiac- friendly, but has been nominated for a James Beard, in Boston, this Friday at seven."

screenshot of OpenTable showing no tables at 7pm this Friday at Mooncusser

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· 10d

One of the things that perplexes me about the AI business discourse is that people regularly claim that AI can do things that anyone who uses AI know it cannot do — and the CEO of OpenTable should be the first to know that ChatGPT cannot tell you whether a restaurant has open reservations.

screenshot of a WSJ column opening:
By now most people have discovered the joy of asking Al highly specific logistical questions. What's the best route to drive from Detroit to New York this weekend dodging thunderstorms and without losing cell service? Or, as Debby Soo, CEO of OpenTable, recently suggested of a typical ChatGPT restaurant search: "I'm looking for a seafood restaurant that's celiac- friendly, but has been nominated for a James Beard, in Boston, this Friday at seven."

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· 11d

Here’s a new form of enshittification I’ve noticed: Amazon no longer tells me what I’ve ordered in its email receipts. I have to tap to the app for that info now.

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Jul 10

I saw Jeffrey Toobin quoted in a story as a “contributing New York Times opinion writer.” Having missed that announcement, I googled to learn more about his new role and these are the top two results I got.

Google search results screenshot showing:

LinkedIn • Jeffrey Toobin
11K+ followers
Jeffrey Toobin - Contributing Opinion
Writer, The New York Times
Contributing Opinion Writer, The New York Times; author,
"The Pardon: The Politics of Presidential Mercy." • Experience: The New York Times • Education: ...

The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com
DO I
The Undoing of Jeffrey Toobin
Jun 10, 2021 - Jeffrey Toobin's fateful appointment with Zoom. Mr. Toobin, 60, committed the act that would make him subject, not observer, of scandal, ...

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Jul 8

I've never seen Beltway pundit elite belief stated so nakedly, even if it's long been the operative view: as David Brooks wrote today, the primary purpose of the Democratic Party ought to be fighting the left and stymying its agenda. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

"To encourage my Democratic friends, I would remind them of this fact: The Democratic Party became great not while pushing against the right. It became great while pushing against the left. Democrats can argue against Republicans in their sleep. They have a comfortable set of moves they can go to: trickle-down economics, tax
cuts for the rich."

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Jul 8

It’s March 3, 2004. One will become one of the most polarizing figures on earth. The other’s acting career peaks as an Apple TV sci-fi show villain after a long line of Cadillac ads. Yes, Apple makes TV now. It’s sort of the new HBO. Oh, right… they go further than Oz and Sex and the City then die.

screenshot of Common and Kanye West performing “The Food” on the Chappelle Show on March 3, 2004

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Jun 22

I always like checking what questions media outlets put in their subscriber surveys. Today, the Washington Post is asking if I'm less likely to renew my subscription because "The writers/journalists I am most interested in have left The Washington Post"

Reader survey screenshot from the Washington Post

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· May 15

just noticed that "Epstein" is one of the Miami Herald's top-level section categories

the nav bar for the Miami Herald showing:
83°F
NEWS
SPORTS
EPSTEIN
POLITICS
OPINION
GAMES
OBITUARIES
CAREERS
BANKING
GUIDES

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Apr 3

seems kinda DEI www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Underlined portion of a screenshot: optics were a concern; officials worried that getting rid of Bondi would be viewed as jettisoning only the nost "attractive" women, while keeping the men.)

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Mar 17

Meta's hiring and layoff whiplash numbers are crazy: per Benedict Evans, Meta has laid off 49k people in the last six years which is more than the 45k employees it had in 2019

Meta cutting deep?
Reuters claims that Meta is looking at cutting 20% of headcount. This would be partly for cashflow to invest in AI infrastructure (it plans to spend over 50% of revenue on capex this year and has already been out raising capital), but probably also a reset versus previous hiring (and perhaps more pruning of the Reality Labs stuff). This has already been really messy, though: Meta ended 2019 with 45k employees, hired 27k across 2021 and 2022, did an 11k layoff in 2023 but still ended the year up by net 15k, cut another 20k in 2023, added 12k back by the end of 2025 bringing it to 79k, and if it now cuts 20% (~16k) that would bring it back to mid-2020 numbers. It would also mean that Meta had laid off more people since 2019 than the company actually employed then. Everyone over-hired in the pandemic, but this seems careless. LINK

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Mar 16

So this weekend’s AI vibecoding project was a Podcast Listener that will listen to podcasts and then write up reports I can read. (This was loosely inspired by the NYT rigging up an AI system to monitor right-wing podcasts.) Here is how it works.

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Mar 16

I added a widget with the price of oil to my home screen because I realized that is the best way to do a “has anything completely insane happened?” check when I pick up my phone.

An Apple Stock Home Screen widget showing:

BZ=F
Brent Crude O...
99.96
+1.05
DOW
Dow Jones I...
46,558
-119.43
NVDA
NVIDIA Corpor...
180.25
-2.91

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Mar 16

This bit in Semafro tonight reminded me that one of Peter Kaplan’s wisest decisions at The New York Observer was to ban Donald Trump quotes. A frequent job for a young writer there was to get as many famous(ish) names to engage on whatever that week’s m cover story social trend.

Few of the lightning-speed exclusive interviews reporters have scored with the president this way have generated significant news, but many tell me it's hard to resist calling. "I feel like Frodo with the ring," one Washington journalist who has spoken with Trump over the years said. "I know it's dangerous, but it keeps beckoning me."

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Mar 6

random search: the time Jeffrey Epstein told Peter Thiel, on an email thread setting up a lunch, that sifting through the Panama Papers leak was "keeping me busy" jmail.world/thread/vol00...

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Feb 21

Cybertruck vs Ford Edsel sales. (Note: the U.S. population in 1960 was half the size as it is now.)

EDSEL VS. CYBERTRUCK l
Annual US sales by year of market entry — three-year production runs compared
EDSEL (1958-1960)
70,000
63,110
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
CYBERTRUCK (2023-2025)
44,891
38,965
20,237
~2,000
~2,700
YEAR ONE
YEAR TWO
YEAR THREE

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Feb 20

Belarussia couldn’t get to the Board of Peace thing because their visas didn’t come through. 🤦🏻‍♂️ www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko accepted Trump's invitation but then said he would send his foreign minister, though neither showed up. A ministry statement issued Thursday on social media said that despite receiving all the right forms on time, the United States had not issued visas for the Belarusian delegation. "If even basic formalities aren't respected, what 'peace' are we talking about?" the statement said.

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Feb 19

Another style rule I wish I could permanently make: never ever state an increase of a percentage in percentage! www.nytimes.com/2026/02/18/n...

But for high earners, the increase could be substantial. The mayor has consistently framed his proposal as a two-percentage-point increase in income taxes on those wealthy New Yorkers, to 5.88 percent from 3.88 percent, but that percentage point increase translates to a tax rise of just over 51 percent.

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Feb 18

TIL: the first use case of the World Wide Web was hosting the CERN phone directory. And of course, there was lots of skepticism that it would ever amount to anything. Tech adoption curves are a flat circle.

NeXT), but the great thing about usenet is that there are so many bright and weird people out there, that if you put any idea the right way and in the right place, the chances are fairly high that somone to whom it makes sense will pick it up.

[[UNDERLINED:: The project started getting feedback from people who saw it as a rather simple version of Hypercard(TM), an over complex information system, a frustratingly inconsistent database, or an idea which appealed to some latent excitement about how things could be.]]

From then on, interested people on the Internet provided the feedback, the stimulation, the ideas, source code contributions, and the moral support which it would have been hard to find locally. The people of the internet built the web.

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Feb 18

If the sadly underrated "Westworld" had premiered in 2023 instead of 2016, it would have been a huge cultural phenomenon because it gets so much of the AI discourse right. Like, here, here's how a script writer works in the show... looks like vibe coding, no?

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Feb 12

For example, here's the ID verification part of the New York State voter registration. Asking for ID at the poll location is the last resort if they aren't able to verify your info electronically. Non-citizens can't vote. vote.nyc/sites/defaul...

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Feb 10

here’s the lock screen

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Feb 10

related: this was literally the last thing I expected to see when I turned on speed skating

A split screen of Jutta Leerdam and Jake Paul

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Feb 10

read this in @katz.theracket.news ‘s latest and though, oh, huh, I wonder what the 1982 Up With People Halftime Show was like and I was not prepared. at. all. you can watch it here if you dare: youtu.be/pxK3qTsj_eE?... theracket.news/p/the-most-a...

THE/
RACKET J
BY JONATHAN M. KATZ
For the Super Bowl X halftime show, back in 1976, members of a cult took the field in color-block turtlenecks and danced around a giant wheeled birthday cake. The group was Up With People; the theme of both the cake and the aggressively clean-cut rock medley was the bicentennial of American independence. Fewer know, but might not be surprised to learn, that UWP was a superficially multicultural offshoot of a right-wing Christian faction called Moral Re-Armament, founded in the 1930s by a Nazi sympathizer. It had been spun off in the Sixties by an MRA leader who thought pop music and some nonwhite faces might more effectively create "a positive alternative to the anti-war, anti-adult, anti-establishment mood."

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Feb 9

What you’re missing on the other show

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Feb 4

really really really interested in reading the backstory on this one files.constantcontact.com/6558f081801/...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
FEBRUARY 4, 2026

Contact: Jin Whang
jw@hanstrategies.com | 917.239.2499
BROOKLYN DEMS ISSUE STATEMENT RESCINDING COUNTY ENDORSEMENT OF GOVERNOR HOCHUL
Executive Committee responds to Governor’s announcement of former NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams as running mate

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK – The Executive Committee of the Kings County Democratic County Committee today issued a statement rescinding their endorsement of Governor Kathy Hochul following the news of her choosing former NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams as her running mate as Lieutenant Governor.

“The Executive Committee of the Kings County Democratic County Committee is officially withdrawing its endorsement of Kathy Hochul for Governor following the news of her selection of former NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams as her running mate as Lieutenant Governor.

“There is no longer a majority of votes from Brooklyn State Committee Members/District Leaders in the Executive Committee to support the Governor’s re-election. This is a response to the political miscalculation on the part of the Governor’s campaign and their failure to engage or consult Brooklyn Democratic leaders who represent New York’s largest Democratic delegation. Major statewide political decisions require meaningful collaboration with the party leaders and elected officials who organize, mobilize and deliver Democratic victories.

“It is safe to conclude that the Brooklyn delegation on Friday at the State Convention will be prone to voting against or abstaining support for this ticket. We believe Democrats must make strong and strategic political decisions particularly during challenging election cycles.”

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Jan 23

Hardly the most shocking thing about Trump, but the fact that the President of the United States chooses to communicate through a website layered with the worst ad slop this side of a pirate streaming site is utterly bizarre

One of the dozens of atrocious ads you have to click through to read the latest posts by Trump

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Jan 23

I generally love all of The New Yorker’s house style quïrks, but this one drives me nuts

talking and talking. The findings? One million nine hundred and seventy-seven thousand six hundred and nine words in the Presidential appearances, as of January 20th—an increase of two hundred and forty-five per cent compared with the first year of Trump's first term in office, back in 2017.

Gabriel Snyder@gabrielsnyder· Jan 14

These are very similar questions I found myself asking in the summer of 2016 which put me on a path to quitting Twitter. degenerateart.beehiiv.com/p/what-just-...