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

dunno if this fits exactly but i couldn't find the MN thread. this is pretty absurd:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/fashion/the-dating-scene-hip-with-a-bit-of-minnesota-nice.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Minnesota/Minnesotans C or D

it's in site new answers!

thank god

this isn't quiddities but i need to complain about this ridiculous mistake in the story about tim burke of deadspin http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/22/sports/deadspins-tim-burke-waits-to-turn-offbeat-moments-into-gifs.html

the story starts off with this scene

At 2:44 p.m. on a recent Sunday, Tim Burke took a moment from monitoring numerous N.F.L. games for the sports Web site Deadspin to post something that had nothing to do with football: a smidgen of a clip from an English rugby match he also happened to be following.

He stitched together still-frame images captured from the broadcast into a short, continuous loop that showed a player built like a cement mixer strong-arming an opponent to the ground by the unfortunate man’s throat.

it then links to the post of the gif -- supposedly written on a sunday while tim burke watches the NFL -- which says the following in its very first sentence!

You're likely doing your patriotic duty and watching college football today

college football of course is played on saturday, and the post was written on 10/12 -- also a saturday!

this took me less than 20 seconds to "fact check" and i wasn't even really trying

any time this thread is bumped i end up staring @ the womans khakis in the orig post for like 20 mins

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/08/giving/her-name-is-famous-but-shes-not-about-nothing.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&

I do genuinely think her charity sounds good, but just lol @ the Times -- "This wealthy celebrity's wife is DIFFERENT. She runs a CHARITY."

p much the complete definition of a quid and an ag

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/11/18/131118fa_fact_levy

ya miscarriages are TOTALLY rich people problems!!!

fp

what the fuck

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/switzerlands-proposal-to-pay-people-for-being-alive.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all

smh universal guaranteed income is about as un ruling class as you can get

haha, universal welfare? maybe for RICH people

oh i thought this was the main nytimes thread

haha

meow

basic income is a v interesting idea tho, be curious to read something on what economists thinkvthe inflationary etc impact would be of everyone getting a same sized check every month

'pay people to be alive' a v. ruling class (and reactionary american) way of phrasing it tho

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/14/fashion/chef-run-service-teaches-nannies-recipes-that-skip-the-microwave.html?_r=1&

Like other 5-year-olds, Erela Yashiv likes pizza and cupcakes and detests food that contains “green specks” of vegetables.

But her mother, Stephanie Johnson, 46, who lives in TriBeCa and runs a cosmetics-case and travel-accessories line, wanted her daughter to adopt a more refined and global palate, whether it’s a gluten-free kale salad or falafel made from organic chickpeas.

As working parents, she and her husband, Dan Yashiv, 42, a music producer, do not have time to prepare such fare. And their nanny, from Wisconsin, does not always know the difference between quinoa and couscous.

she sometimes does

stupid fucking nanny

How long does it take to make a kale salad? Even if you have to pick all the bits of gluten out by hand?

Wisconsin, whaddaya gonna do? (xp)

all the things labeled gluten free these days, its good to know these eggs abide by my diet

blind nanny, real sad, can't see the pictures on the box at the store that show all the sighted nannies what couscous and quinoa look like

That article is hilarious.

were they actually saying 'marc&mark' out loud or do you suppose marc&mark paid the times extra to get their trade name in there

lol

“We were too basic with her food in the beginning, so we want marc&mark to help us explore more sophisticated food that has some diversity and flavor,” she said. “I don’t want her growing up not liking curry because she never had it.”

'we fucked up so bad, thank god this service is available to help us reverse our monstrous parenting decisions'

Holy shit, grocery store chain from Texas does well in Idaho, too!

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/17/business/whole-foods-finds-success-in-smaller-cities.html?hp&_r=0

And it hasn't even opened up in Brooklyn yet!!!!!

not sure that's quid/ag so much as classic NYTimes condescension to non-coastal American cities.

Yeah wasn't sure where to put it. The irony of course is that Whole Foods is based in one of the most non-coastal American cities. So, like, why wouldn't it work in Idaho? One of the nicest Whole Foods I've been to was in Omaha.

Because Times editors still live under the delusion that "organic" is some kind of fancy citified thing that only elites know about?

tbf, the whole foods exec quoted seems to fuel that idea

I dunno, the piece seemed to be coming, like, a decade late? It'd be like a Times piece on IKEA opening up in St. Louis.

Boise is still a city and not rural iirc, so it would in fact be "citified"

I mean, unless you're talking top ten US cities or smith

i want a whl fds

iirc your part of the country is like doubly-hippie compared to who fds ppl

I may be misjudging based on the Vermont wedding I went to that had blueberries from next door and pulled pork grilled by a guy who raised the pigs. He also played guitar at the wedding.

yeah i can goto any number of farms and buy grass w/e but who wants to do that

Key question is did he also raise his own guitars. Because if so

hard to tell, didn't ask

I found out pulling pork is really good for your skin, it's an epiphany that could lead to a nyt quiddities article if monetized properly

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/16/realestate/for-starters-the-upper-east-side.html

When Arielle Grabel, 27, who works in public relations, was looking for an apartment three years ago, she firmly stated her terms: nothing above 20th Street. After she saw what was available, she adjusted her demands to “O.K., nothing above 40th Street.”

“And then I was saying: ‘O.K., if the best I can do is the 50s, that’s not so high,’ and then eventually, ‘O.K., 74th Street it is,’ ” said Ms. Grabel, who, for a monthly figure she characterizes as between $2,100 and $2,300 month, has a large studio with glossy floors and marble countertops in an elevator building.

She has two good friends in the neighborhood, but has been unsuccessful in recruiting others, even if it’s just to come uptown for drinks and dinner.

“They say there’s nothing to do up here,” said Ms. Grabel, who herself prefers the night life downtown. But perhaps her sales pitch needs a bit of work. She tells her friends the Upper East Side isn’t that bad, not that far from the action, and the people aren’t that old.

rent window characterisation is beautiful

Didn't click through but...

@nytimes: "Are you coming to bed?"
"I can't. This is important."
"What?"
"There's an article about xkcd." http://t.co/EXLyI2mPqE

Though the book won’t appear for six months, “What If?” quickly reached No. 2 on Amazon’s best-seller list on the strength of pre-orders, trailing only a history book from Rush Limbaugh.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/26/business/media/bookstores-forsake-manhattan-as-rents-surge.html?action=click&contentCollection=Europe&module=MostEmailed&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

on the subject of fewer and fewer bookstore in manhattan.

idk if it really qulifies for this thread but a few parts made me roll my eyes --

“How can Manhattan be a cultural or literary center of the world when the number of bookstores has become so insignificant?” he asked. “You really say, has nobody in city government ever considered this and what can be done about it?”

because lol
and

She said she was concerned that bookstores in high-rent areas like Manhattan would shift their merchandise away from more accessibly priced paperbacks toward more expensive items with wider profit margins.

“My worry is that to make these rents, people are going to have to make the bookstore a place where only wealthy people can be,” she said. “The higher and higher these rents go, do you have to bring in these expensive leather journals and art books that only rich people can buy?”

Main points I think: This article seems to focus on purveyors of new merchandise, and in addition to the rising rents I think it's impt to address things like amazon.com, kindle/ebooks, and the larger profit margins of selling used merchandise.

Sad to see no shout outs to sellers of used books like Strand, Housing Works, Mercer St Books, East Village Books etc not to mention the healthy crop of used bookstores in Brooklyn (Book Thug Nation [lol worse name), Human Relations, Molasses Books, Here's A Bookstore in Coney Island etc. Interesting that there's gonna be a McNally Jackson in wburg, cuz i hadn't heard about that. Cool I guess?

It's funny how we're supposed to nostalgically agree that an undefined period when bookstores were more popular/profitable is the ultimate good. People used to only get their newspapers from newsstands, too, and all their clothes were handmade. And stuff. I love books and I made them for a living for 15 years but nothing is out of reach of change, whether you think of it as "progress" or blame it on amazon.com--and I'm happy to blame a lot of things on amazon.com, but I keep coming back to the idea that various phenomenon of history are...trajectories, not...closed circles.

phenomena, I mean. Typing while netflix loaded and started playing and I got rushed. Just for one example of storytelling and how books aren't the only vehicle besides in-person verbal performance.

After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.
After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.
After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.
After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.
After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.
After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.
After scouring Manhattan for a second location for her bookstore, Sarah McNally finally decided to open one in Brooklyn instead.

brooklyn, who woulda thought???? thanks nytimes, good to know!

"guess I'll take a chance on Brooklyn, nowhere else to go"