Working on the Times media desk has for the last few years seemed like a rough and thankless job, and certainly the last few people there reporting on print media seemed like they were more than a bit unhappy. (Or were at least phoning it in.) Which is to say, we are not here to express rancor about today's media desk report: "In the six months ended Sept. 30, The Times had the second-largest paid subscription Web site among newspapers behind The Wall Street Journal’s 537,469 subscribers, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations." READ MORE

It's been a while since we've played "Explaining Metropolitan Diary" (previously; and also; to be sure) but... well, here we are, with today's fourth item: READ MORE

Everyone is pretty aghast and/or in stitches over today's weird and kinda embarrassing escapade by the New York Times public editor, Arthur Brisbane: "I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge 'facts' that are asserted by newsmakers they write about." Not just when; whether! A list of people currently making fun of this runs from editors of city papers to New Yorker correspondents to totally random unemployed people to... well, the Times staffers are all sitting on their hands right now. GOSH, HOW THAT MUST BURN. READ MORE

That New York Times Magazine's article on the dangers of yoga has made a lot of people mad. It didn’t really make me mad—I do too much yoga to get mad, though I do still sniff disdainfully—but I did want to address why many of the arguments in it are totally lame. READ MORE

David Roth: Let's talk about how Adam Gopnik feels about French food. READ MORE

Finally, someone tells gay men what to wear! Not just any someone, but my one true fashion love, Cathy Horyn. Yet the results... well, the results here, where the Times has helped three gay male couples dress for their weddings, or for their anticipated weddings (couldn't find three couples getting married SOON???), some things that concerned me. READ MORE

"So Ms. Abramson's 20-25 Hz phrase-final amplitude modulation of her 140-145 Hz fundamental frequency is heard as a sort of superimposed infrasound. (Technically "infrasound" should be below 20 Hz, but this is close.) 140 Hz is not unusually low for the bottom of an adult woman's pitch range — but 20-25 Hz is low for humans of any kind.... [T]his is first time that I've ever seen such a large-factor amplitude modulation so stably superimposed on a speaker's sequence of pitch pulses." READ MORE

Kay Merryweather, 34, an artist on the Lower East Side, volunteers at Trinity Church, giving out food. She said that during the financial crisis, when banks were receiving bailouts and financial executives were receiving multimillion-dollar bonuses, the church often ran out before the long lines of working poor were fed. “The bankers were getting all of these millions,” Ms. Merryweather said. “And we didn’t have enough food.” READ MORE

The New York Times thinks it maybe saw something... so it's saying something. In a Sunday afternoon post titled "Video Appears to Show Wall Street Protesters Being Pepper-Sprayed," the paper's City Room blog embedded a video—originally posted by YouTube user USLAWdotcom—and offered a delicate take on the proceedings. READ MORE