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

My parents managed to not allow me to have any sweets at all between the ages of 4 and maybe 7. For the record, this was on some bizarre advice from a dentist after I had tooth decay problems (I don't think any modern dentist would give this advice), but regardless, my parents managed to have this rule for me without serious conflict.

Your need to earn an income is interfering with my need to have no conflict in my life!!!

^my favorite need

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/magazine/puberty-before-age-10-a-new-normal.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all

Interesting article about early onset of puberty for girls and also sorta about the extremes that some mom's are going to halt that.

Tracee — pretty and well-put-together, wearing a burnt orange blouse that matched her necklace and her bag

not a quiddity, but definitely an agony of anyone who has to figure out how to react to that

buzza otm, though -- the writing in this is weird

She had a thick, enviable blond-streaked ponytail and big feet, like a puppy’s.

Going with the idea that puppies grow into their foot size?

seriously was expecting an April 1 date on that article

I feel really awkward for these kids but cases like this make me feel queasy because either it's a one-off for each of these kids and the cause will never be known, or some day we'll be able to point to a specific thing and they'll have the "oh, I was one of those bpa kids" thing in their story and we'll sigh collective shame as a society because we set it up for it to happen.

destroy capitalism

(Kinesiologists believe that weak muscles indicate illness, and that a patient’s muscles will test as weaker when he or she is holding a substance that contributes to health problems.)

alternative medicine is a cancer. shout condemnation from the mountaintops.

I have never even heard of such a thing. Holding vials of a substance while testing..... wtf

Important to note: not a doctor.

"kinesiologists" are not only not doctors, they don't even need a masters' degree or a professional license, apparently

I think even the NYTimes reporting there is questionable and lends too much credence.

tbh I thought kinesiology was the degree you got to teach high school gym classes.

"kinesiologists" are not only not doctors, they don't even need a masters' degree or a professional license, apparently

lol i read "kinesiologist" and i thought that sounds like a swanky MD specialist or something. had no idea wth they are

It’s not like I haven’t struggled all my adult life with my body image. But there’s something affirming about how much my children have always loved and needed my body, from breast-feeding, to shared baths.

Tell me more about that.

― i don't believe in zimmerman (Hurting 2)

most joyous lol at this

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/dining/hatching-your-own-batch-of-eggs.html

Internet commerce has made it easy to order hatching eggs and day-old chicks; Web sites, like those of Greenfire Farms and Murray McMurray Hatchery in Iowa, have live video and gorgeous photos of birds, plumage and vividly colored eggs. “It’s my new J. Crew catalog,” said Jana Martin, a writer who lives outside Woodstock, N.Y., and started raising Buff Orpington hens last year.

Her roommates are all vegetarian or vegan, she said, but even the vegans eat the house-raised eggs because they know that the birds are healthy and well cared for.

also I have news for the vegan roomates

i just spent 20 minutes clicking around on those hatchery websites because weird-ass birds that feed you are pretty cool imho

"It’s my new J. Crew catalog."

http://www.mcmurrayhatchery.com/images/global/to/top_hat_special_thumb_large_popup.jpg

My aunt and uncle built a chicken coop and kept chickens for a while -- they had just moved to a farm and it was a novelty for them. Eventually, the upkeep became a PITA and they ended up giving the chickens to some neighbors.

A very good friend of mine started eating meat after many years as a borderline vegan when she moved out to western MA and started raising goats and chickens.

Good call. Goat is delicious.

I've had 3 different friends separately take in a bunch of chickens over the past year. One of them brings down baskets of brown, white, and blue eggs when she visits the city. I really wanted to do this for a while but didn't have the necessary space.

My grandfather raised chickens for show in his backyard. From what I recall, their eggs were delicious and they were mean little fuckers to a 7-year old.

We'd raise chickens if we could, but local zoning says no. In a town of 6000...in Mississippi. What the hell is this world coming to?

I'll leave raising chickens up to the factory farmers, since they do it the best.

We'd raise chickens if we could, but local zoning says no. In a town of 6000...in Mississippi. What the hell is this world coming to?

― improvised explosive advice (WmC), Wednesday, April 4, 2012 10:23 AM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thats nuts, chickens are a-ok p much anywhere in mpls city limits iirc

mf rooster next door woke my sorry jet lagged ass off too many times last summer & we didn't even get any free eggs out of it, ban the cock imo (actually cocks already banned but apparently they didn't know it was a cock because do rooster have penus)

maybe that zoning law was driven by a farming lobby in MS? I don't see how/why it would happen otherwise

chickens also no prob in london, problem is that london chicken coops are wildly popular with london foxes

i hear hunting those is nbd tho

get a horn, act rich

their only natural predator is extraordinary wealth

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/living-like-a-billionaire-if-only-for-a-day/?hp

hello

A raft of studies, including one in 2010 by Princeton researchers Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton, has underscored the fact that the rich are no happier than the merely comfortable, and are often burdened by the same problems: health and work issues, family concerns and worries about making ends meet.

¶I reached out to Dr. Jim Grubman, a clinical psychologist who specializes in wealth, to help me understand this idea that billionaires are, in essence, just like us.

¶“It goes against what we’ve been told our whole lives,” he tells me. “But it’s true.”

¶Still, two hours later, when the billionaire and I touch down in Sea Island, Ga., it’s hard to see the similarities. As we deplane, a classic Mercedes convertible is waiting. We jump in, and he ferries me around the resort, with its multimillion-dollar villas and perfectly manicured golf courses.

¶Everywhere he goes, he gets four-star service. Doors are opened, luggage is carried away wordlessly, and at one point, warm chocolate chip cookies magically appear. When his brakes sputter and his convertible starts spewing smoke, he picks up another Mercedes.

“Somebody’s got to live this life,” he says, gesturing to the pristine view from his penthouse villa. “God decided it should be me.”

*cries* BUT I DON'T WANNA READ THAT ARTICLE

ugh

Wow. Wow wow wow.

I dunno, I thought that article was effective in making the point that a billionaire's life is not very different from the life of an American of above-average income. The guy has a car, he has a job, he has a watch. What does it mean that the watch costs $400K? I know a few very rich people and their lives are in fact not as different as I would have thought -- I mean, the people I know don't live on giant estates, maybe that's one thing, they live in houses I consider "normal=sized" in places where "normal-sized" houses cost as much as giant estates.

And, like, they have a stove that's much much more expensive than my stove, but in the end, their experience of it is "this is my stove, I cook dinner on it" not "this stove is worth tens of thousands of dollars"

no way, the private-jet crowd do live differently from the upper middle class, and the (mostly pointless) article highlights a few ways. they just aren't necessarily happier for all that money, which is why we need the top tax bracket rate to be 80%.

<3

freedom from want is a luxury

the best things that come with money aren't really covered in the article -- it's not just like you get to wear a nice watch. you can buy all the nice dumb watches you want, whenever you want. and you can buy them as extravagant gifts if you want. he complains his day was stressful because he didn't have a personal assistant. but rich people have all the assistants they want. it's not just you get a nice meal. you can have insanely nice meals whenever you feel like it, and don't have to think twice about it. you can control every aspect of your life. you can control other people's lives.

a sparsely populated plane ride and some surf & turf followed by a fancy gym or whatever doesn't really capture it. that's more like a wheel of fortune prize than a plutocrat.

they just aren't necessarily happier for all that money, which is why we need the top tax bracket rate to be 80%.

― iatee, Wednesday, April 4, 2012 10:16 PM (32 minutes ago)

"Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about!"

eh most of those things don't bring sustained happiness either. managers at mcdonalds can 'control other people's lives'. 'nice meals' in the fancy restaurant sense is again mostly just a form of theater for the wealthy. once the 'worry about money' monkey is off your back the gains are all pretty marginal and it's just a stupid game.

worry about yr. money is a moving target tho, as this thread demonstrates on the regular. there are people that not only don't have to worry about their money, but don't have to worry about one day having to worry about their money. but what they do worry about is how to use that money to fund the cato institute or i dunno air america or whatevs if thats more their speed, or to endow chairs and fund libraries, or build big churches in africa or...

well 'people with too much money have a new thing to worry about' is just more evidence that being a billionaire doesn't mean your day to day life is gonna be nonstop joy.