New York Magazine

This past Valentine’s Day, 71-year-old Brad Reese, proud grandson of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups inventor H. B. Reese, posted a scathing open letter to the manager of corporate brand and editorial at Hershey, accusing the company of unforgivably altering many Reese’s products by replacing real chocolate with compound chocolate — basically using vegetable oils instead of cocoa butter to lower costs and replacing real peanut butter with “peanut-butter-style crèmes.” “And Reese wasn’t alone in feeling like everything was getting worse,” writes Rachel Handler. “Everyone in my life I spoke to agreed that something was amiss, that Reese’s — and commercial chocolate in general — didn’t taste the way it used to.” Handler would spend the next several months tumbling down a chocolate vortex, encountering dozens of eccentric characters, all disagreeing about the fundamental question of what chocolate even is and who it should be for. “I learned that — not to sound like a LinkedIn guy — what’s going on with chocolate is a parable for the modern world. That at this particularly bleak end stage of capitalism, everything we once treasured has or will lose its essential essence and MrBeast will always be involved somehow.” For our cover story, Handler takes a deep dive into the molten belly of the chocolate world. Read it in full: nymag.visitlink.me/vKKky_

Thankfully, the series’ newcomers own the episode, because Lee’s antics are even more repulsive than usual. vulture.com/article/the-lowd…

The strategy has been put in a weird spot ever since the tribe swap. It feels like the game won’t open back up until the merge. vulture.com/article/survivor…

The broad empirical facts are not disputed. Four friends: Hannah Pittard, Andrew Ewell, Anna Shearer, Ryan Fox. Two marriages. Years ago, they fell in together in and around the world of postgrad creative writing at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. They all were friends until Andrew, who was married to Hannah, slept with Anna, who was married to Ryan. A couple of weeks later, Hannah found out. Soon, both marriages were over. It’s the kind of story — one of turmoil, epiphany, evolution, damage, hope, betrayal, rancor, joy — that, as specific and tumultuous as it may be to each person living it, plays out thousands of times every day. And in its wake, each of those involved finds their own way to deal with it. Then there are writers. Somewhere in the void between “Write what you know” and “Do no harm” sits a whole world of possibility. Andrew and Hannah, both writers, published works that both employ the same “inciting incident,” and the similarities don’t stop there. “Everything’s fair game,” Andrew says. Revisit writer Chris Heath’s 2024 account of the affair, and the shelf of books that came from it: nymag.visitlink.me/VxKefj

While there is plenty of opportunity to snipe at one another, Britani’s multiple missteps make her an easy target for everyone at the party. vulture.com/article/real-hou…

Victor Garber recently wrote about how getting cast in the 1972 Toronto production of 'Godspell' completely changed his life. You can read his first-person essay for Vulture here: vulture.com/article/victor-g…

Ernie Johnson announced Wednesday that this season would be his last on ‘Inside the NBA.’ Johnson has been with the show since its TNT days, winning Emmys and meeting Taylor Swift along the way. vulture.com/article/ernie-jo…

If there’s one thing that unifies American parents as one giant demographic, it is a shared state of beleaguerment. You can reliably break the ice with any parent by talking about being overwhelmed by something kid-related. Acting beleaguered is another way of performing conscientiousness. It says, “Wow, being a parent sure is demanding — because I work hard at it!” To waltz into a parents’ social situation in America and act like parenting isn’t hard is to immediately make yourself the asshole. It can’t possibly be an exaggeration to say that American parents are the most demonstratively conscientious parents in the world. “This is the kind of conscientiousness that has made parents hesitant about letting their kids walk or bike around their neighborhoods alone — not necessarily because of traffic, but for fear of the intervention of other hypervigilant parents,” writes Kathryn Jezer-Morton. In private, however, many parents don’t actually identify with hypervigilance. “We roll our eyes at it — it’s the stuff of other parents, not us,” writes Jezer-Morton. “But in public, we play by the rules of hypervigilance because we don’t want to risk being perceived as careless. There is nothing more shameful than a careless mother — we all know this down to our toenails.” But the safe space of hypervigilance turns out to be very consequential for our kids. Revisit Jezer-Morton’s 2023 essay what compels parents to inhibit their children’s independence and how we can address it: nymag.visitlink.me/KHwFS4

Greensville, SC police officially closed the investigation into ‘Heroes’ actor Hayden Panettiere’s death Wednesday. They found the toxic drug combination that killed her accidental. vulture.com/article/hayden-p…

Barbara Barrie — who earned a Tony nomination for ‘Company,’ and both an Oscar and Emmy nom for playing the mom in the film and TV versions of ‘Breaking Away’ — has died at 95. vulture.com/article/barbara-…

Celebrities aren’t shying from controversy this Halloween. North West and Natalie Nunn went as each other, while Tana Mongeau did the triple crown of Erika Kirk, Elizabeth Homes, and Hila Klein. vulture.com/article/best-cel…

Fried chicken is not hard to come by at the many nouveau-country cafeterias around town — or anywhere else, writes chief restaurant critic Matthew Schneier. *Unlimited* fried chicken is a rarer bird. For that, you can head on down to Good Time Country Buffet, which looks airlifted not only from somewhere south of Marietta but also somewhen circa 1998. There, amid the steam trays of Salisbury steak, collard greens, baked beans, and candied yams, the partners behind the Korean restaurants C As in Charlie and Kisa have recreated the Atlanta-area southern buffets of their expatriate American youth, an exercise in memory that is an invitation to abundance. For $26.99 a head, the price of an appetizer at many fine restaurants around town, the only limit is your enthusiasm. Good Time’s owners — David Yun, Steve Choi, and Yong Min Kim — mastered this kind of immersive scenography at Kisa, which is kitted out as a Seoul taxi drivers’ diner, accurate down to the boxy antique TV mounted on the wall. Here, Yun said, they wanted to incarnate the buffets, some of them Korean owned, that had set the scene for him when he immigrated to the U.S. in 2000. The décor is essential to the disorienting experience: the dowdy plush of green carpet, the grannyish wallpaper, faux Tiffany lamps. The music is an early-aughts Atlanta Honda Civic soundtrack: Akon, Usher, Lil Jon. The appeal, writes Schneier, cuts across communities. Read his full review: nymag.visitlink.me/-ku6MB

Netflix’s upcoming ‘Pride and Prejudice’ adaptation is arriving just in time for the coziest of months. Here’s the first trailer. vulture.com/article/netflixs…

Models Candice Swanepoel and Joan Smalls have allegedly had a falling-out, and pointed Instagram comments suggest it has something to do with Tom Brady. thecut.com/article/whats-goi…

Alaska’s unusual Top Four voting system, and a late-breaking scandal over Democratic sponsorship of a fake candidate to divide the GOP vote, could haunt the midterm results and even cause a challenge to the results in January. nymag.com/intelligencer/arti…

According to Kristen Bell, her husband, Dax Shepard, flirts with her by complimenting other women. If you ever meet Shepard and he says something nice about your eyelashes, just know he’s flirting with his wife, okay? thecut.com/article/dax-shepa…

The Union Farm Workers co-founder, who spent decades fighting for the rights of workers, died on Wednesday at 96 years old. thecut.com/article/labor-pio…

This August, marathon hopefuls across the city found an unpleasant surprise in their email inboxes. Race fees were going up, and a popular selection process known as 9+1, which guaranteed marathon entry to anyone who ran nine races and volunteered at another, was being overhauled; there would now be a lottery just for the chance to participate in next year’s program. Also, thousands of available slots were being cut. The resulting wrath, rippling through run clubs and forums, had a clear and familiar target: New York Road Runners. The marathon itself is one of the city’s most democratic mass parties, and this year brings the 50th anniversary of its populist five-borough course. Yet NYRR is increasingly perceived as the race’s authoritarian overlord. This year, a record number of people applied to run the marathon and a record number of them were rejected, fueling frustration not simply about the process but about who actually has the resources to run NYRR’s races. “Between watching your computer all day to try to get into races before they sell out and all the fees, it feels like these races are becoming more elite all the time,” says Stephanie Fidis, a 33-year-old who has run NYRR races since 2018. Rob Simmelkjaer is well aware of the griping. The NYRR CEO says he’s irritated by the suggestion that he leads a cold-blooded money machine. “If we were a for-profit organization that was focused on maximizing our revenue, we could charge twice or more for races,” Simmelkjaer says. He insists the recent changes are necessary to address the unprecedented and escalating demand for entry. “If it was allowed to grow in an unlimited way, it really starts to threaten other important groups in the marathon, most notably the charity program.” Chris Smith reports on how New York Road Runners wants to make the marathon more inclusive, but hopeful participants say that it keeps getting harder and harder and more expensive to enter: nymag.visitlink.me/9hM-Xe

If you come for Lake Ontario, you best not miss. Bryan Adams has released a surprisingly barbed diss track against President Trump: ‘But it feels like another distraction / While the Epstein files were getting traction.’ vulture.com/article/bryan-ad…

Demi Lovato was briefly hospitalized after a mysterious allergic reaction to either sushi or passion fruit. Rest easy, Lovatics — she’s fine now. thecut.com/article/demi-lova…