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

I eagerly await artisanal oil hand-extracted from local oil shale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4Lk4JhidxY

the weirdest thing is the springsteen bits tho - born to run was responsible for the amazing prosperity of the 70s...but then people heard tom joad in the 90s and boy was that a bleak decade.

Hoopleheads

this one reminds me of sctv in a way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDnb-BVb8V8&feature=related

the NYT also publishes tom friedman, david brooks, Goldman Sachs apologist Andrew Ross Sorkin = there ARE people there who are clueless enough to take this Todd Buchholz fellow seriously. (paul krugman and nick kristoff are aberrations.)

yeah I don't think you need a theory for why they printed this guy, the nyt prints stupid shit each and every day

they really do.

there are people who actually take david brooks seriously. real people who are alive right now on earth.

Notice how popular the prefix "i" has become among young people. A Nickelodeon TV show called "iCarly" has ranked first in the ratings among tweens. The term has morphed from a precise descriptor of self to an all purpose modifier that stresses the new digital frontier. Fortunately, societies that emphasize technology and creativity are likely to thrive.
The American company Apple was instrumental in this craze with their iPod, iPhone, and iPad products. Apple's late founder was Steve Jobs, whose very name shows us that today's younger generation is obsessed with jobs.

unassailable rebuttal

also, dude missed another point of grapes of wrath -- the Joads et al moved out to California only b/c they literally had NOTHING in Oklahoma any more, INCLUDING any sort of community or social network (all of those other Okies moving to California who used to be their neighbors, fellow congregants, etc.) which others upthread already mentioned ... did this guy even bother to take Sociology 101 whilst at Harvard?!?

omg I DIED

The whole ending of Grapes of Wrath is a kind of ironic commentary on the false hope of the mentality this guy is espousing.

i died otm as ever

https://twimg0-a.akamaihd.net/profile_images/1325464255/tgb.headshotnew.reduced_reasonably_small.jpg

im trying to formulate a thought abt this but i cant get past the fact that someone thinks moving to north dakota is a solution to anything

even if somebody really wanted to move to north dakota I'm not sure I'd recommend moving to north dakota as being the right solution

real talk

someone get xhuxk klosterman on the phone

I didn't know where else to put this, story is from readwriteweb via NYT but um....whaaaaat the fuck:

http://m.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_in_a_nutshell_homeless_people_as_hotspots.php

ha i almost posted that here too

seriously I am just O_o

haha ok to make it legal heres the sort of actual nyt on the topic http://nytsxsw.tumblr.com/post/19145988299/getting-a-decent-data-connection-at-sxsw-can-be-a

its too ridiculous i cant even be mad

Mr Veg thinks it's funny and I am still kinda speechless

if someone dropped a bomb on sxsw the world would just carry on

yeah I wd be okay with that

currently: seeking employment as a human hotspot

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/nyregion/feral-pigs-plaguing-upstate-new-york.html
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/03/12/nyregion/PIGS1/PIGS1-articleLarge.jpg

not at all quiddy but a great image+url combo

that pic is great

zombie pigs coming for u nyc

we all get what we deserve *oink oink*

what this guy says about fb & Springsteen is obv dumb & I don't want to speculate on generation limbo's gestalt but the idea of moving to follow the work seems right to me. I get Mordy's point about the value of community & roots, but I don't have those things in the USA (immigrant family) so it's hard for me to relate to. & I guess I have ideas about the value of labor for a good life, & so uprooting for that, if needs be, is worthwhile. clown me all you want for my North Dakota comments, but if there are jobs in California, or Arizona, or overseas, then fine: it seems to me compelling that you would at least take seriously the idea of going there.

short answer: I undervalue place & (over?)value work in terms of the good life; but I want to resist overvaluing the former & undervaluing the latter.

Generation Y has become Generation Why Bother

BOOM

A Disney TV show called “So Random!” has ranked first in the ratings among tweens. The word has morphed from a precise statistical term to an all-purpose phrase that stresses the illogic and coincidence of life. Unfortunately, societies that emphasize luck over logic are not likely to thrive.

i just

fuck

sorry, what i meant to say was

http://gifsoup.com/view/171204/danny-glover-s-thoughtful-nod-o.gif

that use of 'random' has been in popular middle school argot at least, since 1990 / gates not crumbling yet

not sure you are grasping the predictive power of word-cloud as cultural astrology, remy - buchholz gets it

i understand better when there's an interactive piece of scalable text art attached; i'll wait for the meme version.

i'm pretty sure people still move for jobs. even young people. despite what crazy bad writer says.

but but FACEBOOK

the mystifying lack of interest in paying monthly car insurance

i do miss not having a car. i hate cars. i lived in philly for 12 years and never drove once. didn't have a license. i walked everywhere. didn't even take buses or trains. i rarely ever left the city. one of the big draws about where we are now is that i can walk to my store. we can walk to stores if we need to. we have a car but we could live without one if we absolutely had to.

Not much time to comment right now, but Laurel was severely otm about support systems. I'd add that the other main issue with claiming there are jobs elsewhere and hey why don't you leave your community and family is that people have no idea how to do that even if they wanted to! There aren't exactly a lot of role models in poor/small communities who came back there after doing some sort of bootstraps move who is available for advice and questions.

I think the biggest reason north dakota has a 3% unemployment rate is that 95% of people could not tell you that north dakota has a 3% unemployment rate, and the chance of a non-north dakotan knowing about a ()(fairly small) resource boom in a remote part of the country is highly correlated w/ 'I don't want to live in north dakota or work in an oil field, also I don't really need to'

like if a super bowl announcer was like 'wow that was a nice tackle, also did you hear about how many jobs there are in north dakota', north dakota would not have a 3% unemployment rate, because a few thousand people would go there, and then that would be that.

I think I figured out a business model here guys:

- Use riskier drilling/hydraulic fracturing methods in North Dakota near population centers
- Set up a call center to take complaint calls about said methods and locate it somewhere with high unemployment that people actually want to live
- Employment!

Nitpicking individual idiocies out of that piece seems almost pointless, but one other thing it glides over: Nevada's massive unemployment rate now is partly a result of so many people moving there for jobs back when times were (or seemed) good. Chasing hiring booms is risky business.