quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

How does it feel to be getting old, oldie-mcOLDerson? Oh, let me guess, you already knew how it would feel because you think you know everything! Well, as a journalist I have to stress that you can't generalize the personalities and life experiences of all baby boomers, but "self-aware, or self-absorbed, feel less self-fulfilled, and thus are racked with self-pity."

To me it read like the snark at the front was exagerated in order to make the conclusion (you can't really define any person by their generation) more potent.

bizarre photo choice -- dude who spent his life in a box factory does not look like the archetypal "self-absorbed boomer" imo

you should see his twitter though, what a vain motherfucker

1000boxesyes

lol Z S u got punked

I'M NEVER READ THE NEW YORK TIMES AGAIN

that's right, I'll say it again, one word at a time, very clearly,

I'M NEVER READ THE NEW YORK TIMES AGAIN

now i'll go back to saying more than one word at a time

in next week's times:

"There appears to be a growing, although largely undocumented by this article, trend of young, hip urbanites speaking more than one word at a time. Perhaps feeling overwhelmed by the confluence of economic uncertainty, social media saturation & the lure of the new articulation, these wordy young people are speaking more words at once than ever before..."

me next week, in this thread:

NYT'S RONG IS OFF THE CHARTS THIS IS TIME TIME

I found that piece about spelunking in the New York sewer system initially interesting but ultimately obnoxious. Not only does it amount to folks just getting dirty and playing plumber for the day - look what's in the sewer! sewage! - but parceled out in the piece are some conspicuous signs of over-documentation: on the expedition with the author is a filmmaker documenting the adventure, a guy writing a book about the adventure, and, later, a NPR crew also doing a bit on the expedition. So, like, NPR covering this group being documented alongside a guy writing a book about people doing this sort of thing plus a guy penning a Times piece on the trip being documented. Someone needs to adapt this into a movie, stat.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/business/03wikileaks-boeing.html

Hurting 2, with that video, has won the thread.

With Kids and Coffee Tables, It’s Trip, Fall, Ouch

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/garden/30tables.html

As for glass — well, it’s hard to see, for one thing. Mr. Hannah points to the classic Mies van der Rohe Barcelona table, “the coffee table that everyone buys when they’re young and silly.”

Yes, that $1500 coffee table everyone buys when they're young and silly. Why are there three different glass coffee table owners in the story? This is a medical AND style disaster.

i am young and silly, where can i get my barcelona table

that story was terrible

also the illustration. like shouldn't the shark teeth be on the edge or something.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/12/30/garden/30table/TABLE-popup.jpg

kid looks pretty safe to me

My family bought a glass coffee table--a round one--because I had tripped and hurt myself on a corner of the old one.

If a dog injured a child this way, it might be put down. But by some measure, the coffee table has been bred to be vicious. The rectilinear shape may be one problem, said Bruce Hannah, a professor of industrial design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and a writer on accessible, or universal, design.

this comparison was really enlightening...thanks new york times

jesus h christ

I have only ever before heard the word "rectilinear" in a bad religion song.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/garden/06books.html

Book lovers, you can exhale. The printed, bound book has been given a stay of execution by an unlikely source: the design community. In this Kindle-and-iPad age, architects, builders and designers are still making spaces with shelves — lots and lots of shelves — and turning to companies like Mr. Wines’s Juniper Books for help filling them.

Good news bibliophiles! Books are here to stay! As unread, unloved design accessories that are treated as totally nonfunctional objects!

Even a modernist builder like Steve Hermann in Los Angeles, who makes sleek multimillion-dollar houses for buyers like Christina Aguilera, includes acres of shelves in his high-end spec houses. Mr. Hermann designed a glassy Neutra-like house with a 60-by-14-foot shelving system, which has room for 4,000 books, he said.

“But who has 4,000 books?” he said. “I always stage my houses, so it was up to me to fill the shelves.” He ordered 2,000 white-wrapped books from Mr. Wine and deployed them in tidy, horizontal stacks (watch for the white-wrapped book to become this year’s version of the deer head).

Why build such huge shelves?

“I could have hung art,” Mr. Hermann said. “But I like the textural feeling of shelves, and of books on display.”

I would like to apologize to the bibliophile community on behalf of all designers, except for those quoted in the story.

It doesn't even look nice

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/pixel.gif

meh, didn't work. Go to the slide show. The white-wrapped books look dumb.

If a dog injured a child this way, it might be put down. But by some measure, the coffee table has been bred to be vicious. The rectilinear shape may be one problem, said Bruce Hannah, a professor of industrial design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and a writer on accessible, or universal, design.

this comparison was really enlightening...thanks new york times

― dayo, Monday, January 3, 2011 8:40 PM Bookmark

I remember someone posting a blog that keeps track of NYTimes citing to "______ an expert in ____ at ______ university" for things that clearly do not require an expert. Sound familiar to anyone?

xpost christ, that american flag of books is the tackiest thing I've seen in a hot minute.

also, as a self-proclaimed student of philosophy, this sentence: Originally, the client asked for German philosophers, said Mr. Wine, but switched to the classics to fit her budget. makes me wanna puke

"Most people destroy trees to make books," Mr. Uribe said. "I destroy books to make trees."

mind = blown

Victoria Ridsdale Smith of Yoo Design, who worked on Philippe Starck's Icon Brickell condo in Miami, asked Mr. Wine for 2,000 books wrapped in plain white paper as a "textural accent" in the library of the spa area there. Reasoning that no one would think to crack one open and peer inside, Mr. Wine chose inexpensive mass-market fiction — publisher's excesses, like titles from Danielle Steel and John Grisham.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH

i love this thread.

I gotta lol at the font on the white books - it's like papyrus (maybe it is papyrus?)

no wait, it's "inscribed latin"

"Most people destroy trees to make books," Mr. Uribe said. "I destroy books to make trees."

mind = blown

― Egyptian Raps Crew (bernard snowy), Thursday, January 6, 2011 7:58 PM Bookmark

Think that's not how you spell "Zizek" though

this doesnt really bug me tbh

'we were going to line the client's walls with empty cans, but then he thought he might like the option of eating what was in them, so we bought five thousand cans of beans.'

the dude who runs one used book shop I go to sometimes has a specialty of selling books by the foot to interior designers

I mean decorators

usually for the houses of lawyers

and when the lawyers come in themselves they usually buy science fiction apparently I don't know why

the dude who runs the shop tries to describe the plot of the girl who played with fire to me every time I go in there holy shit

I don't read trees, I smoke 'em.

Those white jacket books look even lamer than I pictured. and those silver books with that fugly font....aaaaaaaaaggggghhh

I don't like these people.

THATCHER WINE!?

such a Boulder name.

the names you give your kids when you're young and silly

But his wife was moving at a different speed — the speed of a mother who sees blood pouring out of a facial laceration onto the carpet.

Yeah, I think my blender has this setting.

I enjoy this thread a lot more now that I don't work there.

To be fair, my 2-year-old has a coffee-table gash above his right eye that may well leave a permanent scar. But that came from actually leaping full force off the couch and miscalculating his landing.