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

lmao

My favorite Liars album.

The Case for Marrying an Older Man

When I was 20 and a junior at Harvard College, a series of great ironies began to mock me. I could study all I wanted, prove myself as exceptional as I liked, and still my fiercest advantage remained so universal it deflated my other plans. My youth. The newness of my face and body. Compellingly effortless; cruelly fleeting. I shared it with the average, idle young woman shrugging down the street. The thought, when it descended on me, jolted my perspective, the way a falling leaf can make you look up: I could diligently craft an ideal existence, over years and years of sleepless nights and industry. Or I could just marry it early.

So naturally I began to lug a heavy suitcase of books each Saturday to the Harvard Business School to work on my Nabokov paper. In one cavernous, well-appointed room sat approximately 50 of the planet’s most suitable bachelors. I had high breasts, most of my eggs, plausible deniability when it came to purity, a flush ponytail, a pep in my step that had yet to run out. Apologies to Progress, but older men still desired those things.

just expert level hate-read trolling

I tapped out of that one after about a paragraph because of how bad the prose is. I'm sure the ideas are vile, but it's unreadable so I'll never know.

Grazie Sophia Christie

of course that's her name

Grazie for the amazing editorial

well done once again to the essays team at The Cut

tbf, I think she's just saying the quiet part loud for a certain niche of people, and her real crime is shamelessness + terrible writing

best beloved max on grazie:

I’m personally trying not to have a strong opinion about the essay because it mostly seems like “none of my business,” but I am always interested people who can successfully make themselves Main Characters. Where did they come from? What is their personal and professional network like? Do they have What It Takes to become long-lasting provocateurs and icons of discourse? Christie is “a writer living in Miami and London,” with recent bylines in the intermittently tendentious literary magazine The Point and the magnificently deranged right-wing website Tablet; she recently started her own literary magazine, The Miami Native, with another writer named Ginevra Lily Davis. Davis got her start at the infamous conservative campus publication Stanford Review, which was founded in the 1990s by the venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois, who both own property and live in Miami part-time; now she writes for the Thiel-associated “post-liberal” policy magazine Palladium; the Thiel-funded, winkingly Trumpist journal American Affairs; and, of course, Tablet. (Both Christie and Davis have been approvingly cited by Times op-ed columnists: Christie’s Point essay on female friendship was linked to by Ross Douthat, while Davis’ essay “Stanford’s War on Social Life” “won” one of David Brooks’ patented “Sidney Awards.”)

This is a heady intellectual brew, and gives me great hope that we will be hearing from Christie (and, though the age-gap essay has nothing to do with her, Davis) for a long time. It also speaks quite well for the continuing prominence of Miami, a beautiful, thriving, culturally rich global city, that is also the epicenter of almost everything bad3: Climate change! Crypto speculation! Tech reactionaries! OnlyFans scammers! Art dealers! The Miami Native certainly looks good--it’s designed by the Brooklyn-based “Asimov Studios,” who specialize in clients who are “building American dynamism”--and it devotes a page to reader-submitted gossip, which is the kind of Gawker-like feature that endears a publication to me. I wonder who funds it!

Breasts: mad perky
Writing: poor
Capable of feeling shame: not even a little

Still having a hard time with “shrugging down the street” and I’m imagining a woman walking while jerking her shoulders with every step.

this reminds me of the emergence of Caitlin Flanagan, which was absolutely infuriating because everything she wrote was inflammatory and she had the platform of the Atlantic because...someone found her charming at a dinner party iirc? I remember screaming to myself HOW DID YOU GET HERE?!?!

also backwards ideas about women and their role in society? check

Mookie owes me a fabulous life in London and Miami (or at least a drink) for bringing this crap to my attention.

She also reminds me of Megan McArdle inasmuch as she doesn’t even try to pretend to be aware of class or how it plays into the whole thing. The audience is just assumed to be women who could just waltz into the Harvard business school library (or Wharton or the local country club) and sit around looking hot or whatever. Which is actually a pretty tiny audience.

Still having a hard time with “shrugging down the street” and I’m imagining a woman walking while jerking her shoulders with every step.

The trick is to store up enough elastic energy in your shoulders to propel you down the street on release.

this reminds me of the emergence of Caitlin Flanagan

lol I was wondering if this was a new CF-adjacent thing somehow but I refused to look into it any further.

this piece was previously discussed on the NY Mag thread f y’all i

sorry i do not read that thread bc i do not read NY mag :)

also xp lol @ io <3

I don’t read The NY Times tbf

> I remember screaming to myself HOW DID YOU GET HERE?!?!

I guess you could say that this is not your... beautiful writer, or something.

There is water at the bottom of the ocean.

“They Built Three Houses Together. Now She Must Do It Alone.”

‘A husband’s sudden death gave a widow time to reflect on the designs of their second homes and how to make one on her own.’

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/realestate/sarah-mai-miller-widow-chalk-242.html?unlocked_article_code=1.jU0.CBAP.FBaBelGhWTrU&smid=url-share

i would rob those houses but there is nothing in them that i want. those bags with the house names on them. i would steal just those. and then throw them away. i hate to speak ill of the rich dead but you know that guy was drunk on rare tequila when he crashed his car and killed three other people.

I'm always simultaneously slightly impressed and baffled by people who seem to make it their entire life project to have everything in their lives become instagrammable. Like I'm just sitting here in my home office looking at my desk that I bought from my neighbor, which doesn't match the wayfair shelf next to it, which doesn't match the Ikea cabinet we bought 15 years ago, the ugly offbrand chinese spin cycle, the random dumbells we've accumulted, piles of paper and binders, a string winder and some guitar picks, hilarious drawings my kids have made me, a couple of small artworks my wife or friends made, four guitar cases, oversized headphones, my keys, a metronome, a printed power point labeled "share buyback analysis," some random federal court opinions, used toner cartridges we never recycled, binder clips, a florida souvenir pen with a googly-eyed dolphin topper, a scented candle that I have no idea how it got on my window sill because I never light scented candles... How do people's homes not look like this?

. Like I'm just sitting here in my home office looking at my desk that I bought from my neighbor, which doesn't match the wayfair shelf next to it, which doesn't match the Ikea cabinet we bought 15 years ago, the ugly offbrand chinese spin cycle, the random dumbells we've accumulted, piles of paper and binders, a string winder and some guitar picks, hilarious drawings my kids have made me, a couple of small artworks my wife or friends made, four guitar cases, oversized headphones, my keys, a metronome, a printed power point labeled "share buyback analysis," some random federal court opinions, used toner cartridges we never recycled, binder clips, a florida souvenir pen with a googly-eyed dolphin topper, a scented candle that I have no idea how it got on my window sill because I never light scented candles.

man alive, what are you doing in my house?

I'm always simultaneously slightly impressed and baffled by people who seem to make it their entire life project to have everything in their lives become instagrammable. Like I'm just sitting here in my home office looking at my desk that I bought from my neighbor, which doesn't match the wayfair shelf next to it, which doesn't match the Ikea cabinet we bought 15 years ago, the ugly offbrand chinese spin cycle, the random dumbells we've accumulted, piles of paper and binders, a string winder and some guitar picks, hilarious drawings my kids have made me, a couple of small artworks my wife or friends made, four guitar cases, oversized headphones, my keys, a metronome, a printed power point labeled "share buyback analysis," some random federal court opinions, used toner cartridges we never recycled, binder clips, a florida souvenir pen with a googly-eyed dolphin topper, a scented candle that I have no idea how it got on my window sill because I never light scented candles... How do people's homes not look like this?

How do you not think that's instagrammable?

We're missing the important fact that the husband was driving a Tesla that caught on fire, possibly before the accident.

!!!!

they look like people who are afraid to shit. That's kind of the whole aesthetic, isn't it?

those first two houses are terrible

yeah they look like the typical 5-star-reviewed airbnb

i am STILL thinking about the 3-house guy's Tesla blowing up and then he kills 3 guys!! is that for real? holy crap. those three guys are totally going to haunt those three houses! where is my script-writing pencil? Netflix, have I got a story for you...

It must be nice for your career to really just be a hobby for stuff to do with your trust fund.

Let us not forget the son named “McKenzie”. (How did that become one of the most popular child names?)

Too many children already named Attila.

Is the lap pool just for the dog? It looks like it's three feet wide and fifteen feet long.

Look, it's not called a laps pool

i am STILL thinking about the 3-house guy's Tesla blowing up and then he kills 3 guys!! is that for real?

Just looking at some articles, it seems like all we know is that the Tesla was on fire after the crash. It sounds like the police just didn't rule out the possibility that it could have been on fire before the crash (there aren't any witnesses I guess.) Also no indication as to who was at fault, that I can tell.

I'm happy to be corrected if there's another article out there.

https://www.thehour.com/news/article/wilton-william-price-killed-long-island-car-crash-17817777.php

This article makes it sound like the driver of the other car was at fault.

Price was in a Tesla heading west on Route 25 in East Marion in the town of Southold when the car was struck head-on by a Ford Explorer.

Which, more to the point, that makes it seem likely that the Tesla was not on fire prior to the collision. Unless the 80-year-old pulmonologist behind the wheel of the Explorer was like, "Buckle up, honey. 1000 points for hitting a burning Tesla!"

reporting isn't clear on who was at fault, but the fire seems to have been caused by the crash:

"In an interview Saturday afternoon, Police Chief Martin Flatley said the Tesla caught fire in the collision and burned for two hours."

https://shelterislandreporter.timesreview.com/2023/02/20/four-killed-in-two-car-crash-in-east-marion/

other articles seem to suggest Heath's car was responsible:

"The accident occurred in the eastbound lane of Route 25 near Truman’s Beach in East Marion. Investigators said the driver of a 2023 Tesla was going west on the roadway and crashed into an eastbound 2020 Ford Explorer, causing the Explorer to flip and the Tesla to catch fire."

https://finzfirm.com/blog/new-york-accidents/head-on-collision-on-route-25-on-long-island-leaves-4-people-dead/

(language there ambiguous)

Yeah, I don't know how much to read into the choice of passive or active voice.

I knew (or heard of) a neighbor around here with a little lap pool. It generates a current to swim against, so it's basically just the tiny pool equivalent of a treadmill. It's in a heated garage. The picture in that (ridiculous) article implies this is more of a long skinny outdoor pool, which is extra stupid, because that means they can't use it 3/4 of the year.

Who names their fucking house(s)?

x-post - I have driven that road many times and it's terrifying at night out where they were. Completely pitch black and nothing but farms on either side for lots of it and people speed like crazy. I hated driving it at night.

I like when people name their houses. Where I grew up in the summer it was really common. One of the people on my street had one named Witt's End because their last name was Witt. I always thought that was cute. Their son was Paul-Junger Witt who produced the Golden Girls!

people likes their houses to look nice before instagram, fyi

I knew (or heard of) a neighbor around here with a little lap pool. It generates a current to swim against, so it's basically just the tiny pool equivalent of a treadmill. It's in a heated garage.

sounds like a swim spa.

https://www.sfspas.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/HP18-Swim-Spa-Jodie-Swim-Front-Stroke-Image21-FNL-3-1024x576.jpg

My in-laws have one, although they just use it like a hot tub. But it's WIDE enough to swim, if you wanted to. The pool in the picture looks like you'd be banging elbows on concrete.

"people liked their houses to look nice before instagram"

"people named their houses where i summered"

such comments imply that such people as featured in the article are innocuous. they are not, and they deserve scorn.

Naming your house is like getting vanity plates on your car, except that no one is naming their house SMITHFAM or HESRISEN or EATSPPL or whatever. But maybe they should.