we need a plur around
― max, Wednesday, 29 February 2012 21:23 (twelve years ago) link
okay, i found a recent restaurant review that belongs here:
All around, displayed like portraits against the wood paneling, were the residents of the East 80s, confident that for as long as their dinner at Crown lasted, the tiny flames and gentle wattage and dark lampshades would conspire to cast them and their jewelry in the kindest possible light.
Then a firefly would flash in a corner of the room and the portraits would be thrown into relief: a row of identical teeth, hair with an amethyst tint, an unyielding tightness in the flesh around the eyes.
Mr. DeLucie, the chef and proprietor, has cheerfully called his cooking here “comfort food for millionaires.” (And for their pets; the kitchen once prepared a côte de boeuf for a regular’s dog.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/dining/crown-nyc-restaurant-review.html?ref=dining
― scott seward, Thursday, 1 March 2012 15:21 (twelve years ago) link
You will not get your first taste of sea buckthorn airlifted from Denmark, nor a plate of prosciutto from a boar the chef tracked and killed with a homemade crossbow. Like the work of the best Upper East Side caterers, most of the cooking at Crown is agreeably dull, with occasional pockets of excellence amid some patches of unalloyed boredom.
― a serious minestrone rockist (remy bean), Thursday, 1 March 2012 15:26 (twelve years ago) link
I'm going to believe this article is deliberately tongue-in-cheek b/c otherwise I can't countenance it.
― a serious minestrone rockist (remy bean), Thursday, 1 March 2012 15:27 (twelve years ago) link
I'm going out on a limb here, but doesn't this describe like 50% of the restaurants on the UES?
― simulation and similac (Hurting 2), Thursday, 1 March 2012 15:31 (twelve years ago) link
yes i.e. http://www.davidburketownhouse.com/space.html
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 1 March 2012 16:03 (twelve years ago) link
Oh yeah, I've passed that place.
I mean my whole impression of the UES is don't-rock-the-boat luxury.
― simulation and similac (Hurting 2), Thursday, 1 March 2012 16:13 (twelve years ago) link
Not being from NYC: That food looks nice, but these places are such that everything is pretty much of good quality, delivered and presented in the most boring environment with the most obnoxious people, right?
― valleys of your mind (mh), Thursday, 1 March 2012 16:20 (twelve years ago) link
ues restaurants are kinda notorious for being expensive and otherwise unremarkable
― lag∞n, Friday, 2 March 2012 16:02 (twelve years ago) link
Noah Smith cares about rich people:
"I do care about the happiness of the rich. Why? Because most people I know are rich. Not in the vacation-in-Aspen sense, but compared to the vast majority of people on planet Earth."
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/i-care-about-rich-people-but-not-about.html
― o. nate, Friday, 2 March 2012 20:46 (twelve years ago) link
eh there is nothing wrong with that post
― iatee, Friday, 2 March 2012 20:48 (twelve years ago) link
When people say "Heck, I'm not rich, I'm just comfortable", they don't understand that being comfortable is being rich.
― Aimless, Friday, 2 March 2012 20:51 (twelve years ago) link
Hermès also started as a luggage company iirc
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 2 March 2012 20:52 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah Aimless I agree with that - it's corny but sometimes I sort of have to step back and be like, actually my middle-of-the-road salary gets me pretty much every material thing I want in life. That said if suddenly I started making hundreds of thousands of dollars I'd probably turn into one of these douches in a heartbeat.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 2 March 2012 20:55 (twelve years ago) link
I'm just saying, average Americans complaining about their money problems probably look just as venal and odious to most of the world as 1%-ers complaining about their problems look to average Americans.
― o. nate, Friday, 2 March 2012 20:56 (twelve years ago) link
Totally
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Friday, 2 March 2012 20:59 (twelve years ago) link
The same point in chart form:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/01/world-income-inequality.html
― o. nate, Friday, 2 March 2012 21:03 (twelve years ago) link
happiness inequality and income inequality are also different things, but not completely unrelated
I'm confused tho, did you think there was something bad about noah's post?
― iatee, Friday, 2 March 2012 21:05 (twelve years ago) link
I think this is a really interesting and paradoxical thing about the mechanisms of class in capitalism -- for most people a certain salary/profession means being a part of a certain class, and almost by definition most people in a certain class can "barely afford" the things that are perceived to be essentials of that class. For whatever reason it's really hard, psychologically, for most people to forgo the things that their colleagues/peers have. So the third-year investment banker wants to live in the kind of neighborhood the fifth-year investment banker lives in, go on the kinds of vacations he goes on, eat out at the same places, send his kids to comparable schools, etc. and then he says "why is it so hard for me to afford just the basics on my salary?"
― simulation and similac (Hurting 2), Friday, 2 March 2012 21:11 (twelve years ago) link
isn't that more just a thing about human nature? we're never satisfied with what we have, always feel like we could be doing better
― congratulations (n/a), Friday, 2 March 2012 21:12 (twelve years ago) link
right, which is why high taxes on rich people is a great idea, cause they're not losing much
― iatee, Friday, 2 March 2012 21:13 (twelve years ago) link
I mean this thread really should be titled 'why the highest tax bracket should be 70%'
― iatee, Friday, 2 March 2012 21:14 (twelve years ago) link
I don't really mean about always feeling you can "do better" though (and fwiw, I don't accept that it's part of "human nature" to feel that way, I think it's a very capitalist idea). I more mean that our conception of "enough" usually comes from our immediate surroundings.
― simulation and similac (Hurting 2), Friday, 2 March 2012 21:15 (twelve years ago) link
No, not at all. I just posted it because it was another perspective on the whole quiddities thing - how one person's idea of modest comfort could be another's image of self-indulgent luxury.
― o. nate, Friday, 2 March 2012 21:26 (twelve years ago) link
okay I thought you were posting it as an example of quiddities stuff
― iatee, Friday, 2 March 2012 21:27 (twelve years ago) link
It's a very NYC thing too - certain things are expensive here that a person could take for granted (at a middle-to-upper-middle-class salary) in other parts of the country, e.g. having a dishwasher and a washer and dryer.
― simulation and similac (Hurting 2), Friday, 2 March 2012 21:35 (twelve years ago) link
well status games aren't isolated to nyc at all, but it's a pretty good place to observe them because of the amount of wealth here + the density of opportunities to signal wealth
― iatee, Friday, 2 March 2012 21:38 (twelve years ago) link
Yeah for sure. But to be clear I'm kind of more talking about the "just keeping up" end of the status game rather than the flossy end. Like I'm more interested in the phenomenon of people making six figures feeling like they can't afford a decent standard of living than the phenomenon of flaunting wealth.
― simulation and similac (Hurting 2), Friday, 2 March 2012 21:40 (twelve years ago) link
Conservative pundits would like to say you're not poor if you have a dishwasher or washer and dryer. But really, if you sell any of them for $100-$500 then you're poor again the next month, and now you don't have a washer.
Compare that to most of the nytimes quiddities, where they could sell one of several vehicles or, god forbid, their summer home on the cape.
― valleys of your mind (mh), Friday, 2 March 2012 22:23 (twelve years ago) link
well they mostly just ignore the fact that dishwashers / tvs / washer+dryers are fairly cheap mass-produced things, like you can buy an enormous tv for not very much money these days. rent, transportation, health care otoh.
― iatee, Friday, 2 March 2012 22:25 (twelve years ago) link
Carefully phrased:
Shot in 24 days on a budget of about $6 million, “Casa de Mi Padre” tells the story of Armando Alvarez (played by Mr. Ferrell), the ne’er-do-well son of a Mexican rancher whose manhood is tested when he falls in love with the fiancée (Genesis Rodriguez) of his flashier brother, Raul (Diego Luna), and is drawn into a violent conflict with a drug baron (Gael García Bernal).If that sounds like the plot of a garden-variety telenovela you might see playing on a cheap TV in a corner of your Laundromat, that is exactly the point.
If that sounds like the plot of a garden-variety telenovela you might see playing on a cheap TV in a corner of your Laundromat, that is exactly the point.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 6 March 2012 19:24 (twelve years ago) link
it's YOUR laundromat, so it's okay
― Pup Shalom Dog Costume (forksclovetofu), Tuesday, 6 March 2012 20:06 (twelve years ago) link
Laundromat
― Laura Lucy Lynn (La Lechera), Tuesday, 6 March 2012 20:19 (twelve years ago) link
Ha, yeah. These newfangled futuristic inventions called "Laundromats."
― carl agatha, Tuesday, 6 March 2012 20:32 (twelve years ago) link
So this isn't a perfect fit, but indirectly belongs here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opinion/sunday/the-go-nowhere-generation.html?_r=1
also I don't think we have a boomers vs. millennials rolling FITE thread yet
― the prurient pinterest (Hurting 2), Sunday, 11 March 2012 23:50 (twelve years ago) link
that's because we so own them
― God: Huummm (forksclovetofu), Sunday, 11 March 2012 23:58 (twelve years ago) link
This reads like satire:
AMERICANS are supposed to be mobile and even pushy. Saul Bellow’s Augie March declares, “I am an American ... first to knock, first admitted.” In “The Grapes of Wrath,” young Tom Joad loads up his jalopy with pork snacks and relatives, and the family flees the Oklahoma dust bowl for sun-kissed California. Along the way, Granma dies, but the Joads keep going.
― the prurient pinterest (Hurting 2), Monday, 12 March 2012 00:04 (twelve years ago) link
Perhaps young people are too happy at home checking Facebook.
YES I'M SURE THAT IS IT.
― Mordy, Monday, 12 March 2012 00:07 (twelve years ago) link
srsly, it's on the level of the "Comedy = tragedy + time" bit in Crimes & Misdemeanors, self xpost
― the prurient pinterest (Hurting 2), Monday, 12 March 2012 00:11 (twelve years ago) link
love the awesome undercurrent of blame for not doing our part to grow the economy
― j., Monday, 12 March 2012 00:13 (twelve years ago) link
that thing was the dumbest fucking thing i've read in a long time. made the go nowhere kids seem like the smartest people on earth not to move anywhere near that guy.
― scott seward, Monday, 12 March 2012 00:39 (twelve years ago) link
i think rush limbaugh actually ghost-wrote that thing.
― scott seward, Monday, 12 March 2012 00:40 (twelve years ago) link
its the first time i ever wanted to find the comments thing just so i could write FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE but i wasn't logged in or something or they weren't taking comments.
― scott seward, Monday, 12 March 2012 00:41 (twelve years ago) link
I know this is done and done already, but this post is awesome: http://fuckyournoguchicoffeetable.tumblr.com/post/19119585575/ btw
― s.clover, Monday, 12 March 2012 00:44 (twelve years ago) link
also, no wonder this guy is a dipshit -- he's a pop-economist: http://www.toddbuchholz.com/about
― s.clover, Monday, 12 March 2012 00:47 (twelve years ago) link
this is all i really need to know:
"A former director of economic policy at the White House"
― scott seward, Monday, 12 March 2012 00:51 (twelve years ago) link
but he's really good at predicting when things will turn into shit! i guess that's nice. good job!
― scott seward, Monday, 12 March 2012 00:52 (twelve years ago) link
For about $200, young Nevadans who face a statewide 13 percent jobless rate can hop a Greyhound bus to North Dakota, where they’ll find a welcome sign and a 3.3 percent rate.
sounds like an euler argument
― flagp∞st (dayo), Monday, 12 March 2012 00:52 (twelve years ago) link
and is a co-producer of the Broadway smash “Jersey Boys.”
― scott seward, Monday, 12 March 2012 00:54 (twelve years ago) link
Victoria Buchholz, a student at Cambridge University, is at work on a book about the neuropsychology of the teenage brain.
will she finally crack the code???
― flagp∞st (dayo), Monday, 12 March 2012 00:55 (twelve years ago) link