Frank Bruni, a bad newspaper columnist who is nevertheless employed as a columnist by America's most prominent newspaper, is obligated to write two columns per week. He has approximately zero good ideas per week. This is what causes things like Sunday's column to happen.

You will not get a microchip implanted in your skin if you sign up for Obamacare. You will not get a microchip implanted in your skin if you sign up for Obamacare. You will not get a microchip implanted in your skin if you sign up for Obamacare.

The New York Times' new data-driven explainery site, The Upshot, currently estimates that Democrats have a 51 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate. Bold projection, or not-too-subtle "FU" to Nate Silver? Or both? It's definitely not neither.

New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson tells Employee of the Month host Catie Lazarus* that she has two back tattoos: Her newspaper’s “T” insignia and “a Crimson Harvard ‘H,’” both of which represent “the two institutions that I revere, that have shaped me.”

"They are not exactly starting from the gutter" is certainly one way of contextualizing Matthew and Nicole Mellon, fledgling husband-and-wife fashion designers whose last name comes from, yes, the bank. The duo appeared in yesterday's Times, saying the perfect things rich people say in the Times.

Emmis Publishing, the publisher of the Texas Monthly, initiated a lawsuit on Friday against the Monthly's current editor, Jake Silverstein, and the New York Times for breach of contract. Last month, Silverstein was hired as the editor of the New York Times Magazine. UPDATE: Emmis claims they're only suing the Times.

International editions of the New York Times appeared in Pakistan Saturday with a huge gaping white space where a story on Pakistan's alleged ties to Osama Bin Laden should have been, according to multiple reports from journalists and observers in the region.

The NSA, America's all seeing eye, doesn't want to know everything about everybody, Barton Gellman said today, his face hovering on a screen at the front of the New York Times' airy auditorium. "It wants to be able to know anything about anybody."

Is opinion writing dead? Is there even such a thing as "opinion writing," or is it just a concept that you impose on things? ("You.") ("Things.") Maybe you are reading these words but to your reality they are words about lawn care or asteroids. Maybe the words are reading you, did you ever think? (["Think."])

The New York Times had yet another of its delightful "Room for Debate" sessions, in which various experts throw quick-take opinions on a subject past one another. The subject: Was the College Board right to have decided to make the essay portion of future SAT tests optional? Or, more broadly, "Can Writing Be Assessed?" Although Gawker was not specifically invited to participate, below is our contribution to the conversation.

The New York Times Editorial Board says employers who require unpaid interns to earn academic credit “pretend that the credit somehow justifies not paying for a student’s work.” Does that include the New York Times?

The New York Times issued a correction today on its 161-year-old article about Solomon Northup, the real-life hero of 12 Years a Slave. The writer of the article had misspelled Northup's last name.

Solomon Northup was kidnapped and sold into slavery over 150 years ago, and the Times was on it. Northup, the subject of the Best Picture-crowned 12 Years a Slave, "excited so high a degree of interest" in his story that in 1853 the New York Times dedicated an entire page to his experiences

“Diversity was a leading motif for ceremony that was hosted by Ellen DeGeneres, a happy-go-lucky lesbian who spent most of the evening in a tuxedo.”

The Times tells the gripping and unreal tale of David Bar Katz, who found Philip Seymour Hoffman's body, was quoted in the National Enquirer as the actor's lover and drug buddy, and will now start a playwrights' foundation with quick settlement money after the tabloid realized its source was an impostor.

New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan weighed in today on DealBook editor Andrew Ross Sorkin’s unmasking of the titanically unfunny Twitter account @GSElevator, which purported to publish conversations overheard in the office elevators of investment bank Goldman Sachs. The bank was so concerned with account, Sullivan writes, that it banned talking in elevators:

The front page of today's New York Times has astonishing news for a nation accustomed to life on an eternal war footing: Defense secretary Chuck Hagel has proposed shrinking the United States military to a size, as the subheadline puts it, "Equal to That of 1940." Online, where the subheads are more expansive, the paper elaborates:

Longtime New York Times book critic Janet Maslin, in a panel discussion last night, told an audience that Dylan Farrow had published her child-abuse accusations against her father, Woody Allen, in the Times as a way of “calling attention to herself,” inspired by “sibling rivalry issues” with her brother Ronan Farrow.

Last week, DealBook editor Andrew Ross Sorkin launched a new running feature called #ApologyWatch, with which Sorkin and co-apology-watcher Dov Seidman plan to monitor and comment on the “apology theater” of corporate America. First up: Andrew Ross Sorkin and Dov Seidman!

"'The only thing better than the smell of a new car is the smell of a new house,' Ms. Desiderio said. 'Just the 1 percent of buyers seems to want old and antique.'" Every last person who is quoted in last Sunday's New York Times real estate section should be jailed.