New York Magazine January 2-15, 2023

In “The Year of the Nepo Baby” (December 19, 2022–January 1, 2023), Nate Jones wrote about the internet’s fascination with the children of famous people—accompanied by an exhaustive taxonomy of the Hollywood nepo-verse. The issue reignited the conversation about nepotism in the entertainment industry, and readers, celebrities, and some nepo babies themselves weighed in. The reaction was covered in the New York Post, BuzzFeed, and Variety, among other outlets. Here’s a sampling of the many responses. CORRECTION: Photographs in the December 19, 2022–January 1, 2023, issue (pp. 5 and 41) misidentified Malcolm Washington as his brother, John David Washington. We regret the error. Send correspondence to comments@nymag.com. Or go to nymag.com to respond to individual stories.…

INSIDE: The last day of Bookforum / Real estate’s TikTok lifeline / AI comes to Hollywood THE 2008 FINANCIAL CRASH ripped a giant hole in the incomes and wealth of Americans, limiting their ability to afford everything from big-ticket purchases like cars to their rent. The government declined to fill that hole in deference to a superstitious fear of deficits. This kept many millions of U.S. workers on the economy’s sidelines and myriad industrial facilities underutilized. For years, America’s capacity to produce goods and services exceeded consumers’ ability to pay for them. This was a tragic state of affairs for the U.S. economy but, in some respects, a convenient one for American liberalism. Since the days of LBJ’s Great Society, liberals’ reform ambitions have largely focused on demand-side policy. The…

THE bookforum OFFICE in Chelsea is almost stripped bare. Only odds and ends are left on this Monday in late December, the staff ’s last in the space. A yoga mat sits rolled on a cardboard box of stray titles. “Most of the good stuff is gone,” observes managing editor David O’Neill, studying the bookshelves mounted above the desks. “I’m going to take my big boy,” says associate editor Lizzy Harding, running her finger along a Berenice Abbott boxed set. Launched in 1994 as a companion to Artforum, Bookforum abruptly announced its closure on December 12. The magazine published essays, interviews, and reviews, known for being one of the best venues for rigorous yet accessible criticism, the cool-kid sibling of older publications like The New York Review of Books. If…

JASON LAU, a luxury-real-estate agent, is pretending to bathe. Enclosed in the spalike white marble shower of a $2.6 million condo’s en suite bathroom, fully clothed, he holds the stainless-steel faucet head and mimes rinsing himself from his paisley scarf down to his Chanel loafers. Lizza Prigozhina, standing near the toilet in a crop top and blazer, choreographs while filming with her iPhone. “Now block out the camera with your hand,” she says. “Like, You can’t see this.” Lau complies. His business partner at the Corcoran Group, Marko Arsic (loafers: Prada), nods approvingly from the adjoining bedroom: “We do whatever Lizza says.” Prigozhina is the 23-year-old queen of New York Real-estate TikTok. Under her guidance, the star agents of Corcoran, Douglas Elliman, and Nest Seekers are flocking to the platform,…

THERE’S A NEW Knives Out movie on Netflix, and I still haven’t seen a few of this season’s awards contenders. But the film I most wish I could watch right now is Squid Invasion From the Deep. It’s a sci-fi thriller directed by John Carpenter about a team of scientists led by Sigourney Weaver who discover an extraterrestrial cephalopod and then die one by one at its tentacles. The production design was inspired by Alien and The Thing; there are handmade creature FX and lots of gore; Wilford Brimley has a cameo. Unfortunately, though, I can’t see this movie, and neither can you, because it doesn’t exist. For now, Squid Invasion is just a portfolio of concept art conjured by a redditor using Midjourney, an artificial-intelligence tool that creates images…

I. DONALD TRUMP WAS CALLING from Mar-a-Lago. It was a Monday afternoon in the middle of December. He was at his desk in what is known as 45 Office, a room on the second floor, above what is known as the Donald J. Trump Grand Ballroom, 20,000 square feet festooned with 16 sedan-size crystal chandeliers and what he claims to be $7 million of gold leaf. Members of the Mar-a-Lago Club, who pay $200,000 initiation fees and annual fees of $14,000, may use the space, at an additional cost, for “important occasions that inspire, enchant, and exceed every expectation.” At the galas and bat mitzvahs and weekend weddings, Trump often wanders in. How could he resist a room like this? He smiles and waves. He joins groomsmen for photos. He…