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_

Archive of Our Own, more commonly known as AO3, announced it was going down for maintenance for “around 2 weeks” but possibly ‘up to 4 weeks,’ leaving thousands of fan-fiction readers publicly grieving. thecut.com/article/archive-o…

Tefi Pessoa responds to a letter from a reader whose roommate is dating their ex in this month’s ‘Ask Tefi’ advice column. thecut.com/article/ask-tefi-…

Elizabeth Holmes and Billy Evans did have child care for their two kids during filming of ‘You Can See Everything.’ vulture.com/article/elizabet…

Our favorite late-night moment of the week? An award-deserving child actor on ‘Late Night With Seth Meyers.’ Here’s what else we liked. vulture.com/article/a-triump…

Three new Off Broadway musicals—The Heart, Midnight, and I Became We—all march to their own peculiar rhythms. vulture.com/article/new-musi…

Over the last half-dozen years, a number of scary movies have spotlighted facial and cranial destruction, from ‘Obsession’ to ‘Hereditary.’ Here’s how movies got so good at smashing heads. vulture.com/article/how-movi…

On a scale from a pocket park to ‘The Only Living Pickpocket in New York,’ where does ‘Severance’ actor John Turturro fit? curbed.com/article/john-turt…

Dr. Mark Fowler knew something was wrong after 45 minutes passed without word from the warden. In most cases, executions take no more than ten minutes. When he was summoned from his waiting room to the chamber next door, he saw Christa Pike, who’d received two lethal doses of pentobarbital that night, strapped to a gurney, gasping for air. “She’s not dead,” Fowler, who was there to pronounce Pike’s death, recalls the warden saying. Later, it would become clear that the IV hadn’t been properly inserted into her veins. It is extremely unusual that Fowler, a 69-year-old grandfather and Sunday-school teacher from Tennessee, is known to us at all. He was publicly outed, accidentally, by a warden last year. The identities of execution participants are meant to be kept secret to protect them from social stigma, legal liability, and professional consequences. The American Medical Association prohibits physicians from taking any part in executions on the grounds that it violates the oath to “do no harm.” Fowler, who receives $3,000 per execution, doesn’t see a contradiction between that pledge and the seven or so lethal injections he’s participated in over the past decade. For him, the work is about the fulfillment of a solemn obligation. “How can you morally say, ‘I’m for the death penalty so long as somebody else does the work?’” he says. “I do things that nobody wants to do.” It is even more unusual that he’s providing a glimpse into the extraordinarily secretive world of American executions and the bizarre logic that perpetuates their cruelty. Fowler agreed to speak to writer Rachel Corbett, because she was familiar with his writing — polemics in support of ICE, Israel, and traditional masculinity. “I’d like to be remembered as a Renaissance man,” he tells her. “Someone who has an advanced appreciation of life.” Read their full conversation: nymag.visitlink.me/MApQRO

Ian McKellen remembered his beloved friend Patrick Stewart as a man who ‘wore his heart on his sleeve.’ thecut.com/article/ian-mckel…

Season four finally arrives at the fullest expression of the series’ ideal form, where every catastrophe is a blip and every hiccup is a disaster. vulture.com/article/the-gild…

We looked at how 22 bloody horror scenes were described in their screenplays. Movies’ most macabre moments are often surprisingly flowery on the page. vulture.com/article/how-22-b…

The color-blocking trend is back with an emphasis on bold primary- and secondary-color combinations. See how five Cut editors with different body types and personal styles wore the trend. thecut.com/article/how-to-st…

How the housemates from hell justify their crimes against communal living and how they feel about it now. thecut.com/article/i-am-a-ba…

The best NYC apartment listings available for rent this week in neighborhoods including Clinton Hill, Ditmas Park, Fort Hamilton, Bay Ridge, Prospect Heights, and Crown Heights. curbed.com/article/best-nyc-…

Mayor Zohran Mamdani needs to make sure horse-carriage owners are provided a path forward following the city ban. nymag.com/intelligencer/arti…

Kay Chun, a recipe developer for New York Times Cooking and author of the new cookbook ‘Gather Around My Table,’ says she always eats salty snacks after dinner: ‘I didn’t know it was an odd thing until my husband pointed it out to me.” grubstreet.com/article/cookb…

‘I’m not incompetent,’ says Mark Fowler, a 69-year-old grandfather and Sunday-school teacher who has been involved in multiple botched lethal injections. He was publicly outed last year. nymag.com/intelligencer/arti…

Every weekday, The Cut’s astrology expert, Claire Comstock-Gay (a.k.a. Madame Clairevoyant), reads the horoscope for every zodiac sign. thecut.com/article/daily-hor…

Paxtonfreude is a bipartisan business in Texas these days. “This is one of the biggest dirtbags that has ever run for office,” one lawmaker tells Christopher Hooks. nymag.com/intelligencer/arti…