Metropolitan Diary: Turn It DownDear Diary:In fall 1999, I was single and I decided to have a party where single men and women could meet. The caveat was that everyone I invited had to bring an equally unattached friend, presumably someone they were not romantically interested in.The party was a great success, and at around 10 p.m. the doorbell rang. I opened the door to two men dressed in dark clothes. I introduced myself as the hostess.“Come on in, gentlemen,” I said. “The party is just getting started.”The older of the two stepped forward.“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “We’re from the 20th Precinct, and we had a noise complaint from one of your neighbors.”I started to offer to turn the music down while apologizing for any inconvenience when the younger of the two officers stepped into the apartment. To my surprise, he took my hand and started dancing with me.We danced until the song ended. The officer leaned toward me.“I’m getting off at 11,” he said, before asking whether he could come back after his shift ended.“Of course,” I said. The officers left.Around 11:30, the younger officer returned. He ended up being one of the last guests to leave.— Melaney Mashburn
Dear Diary:In fall 1999, I was single and I decided to have a party where single men and women could meet. The caveat was that everyone I invited had to bring an equally unattached friend, presumably someone they were not romantically interested in.The party was a great success, and at around 10 p.m. the doorbell rang. I opened the door to two men dressed in dark clothes. I introduced myself as the hostess.“Come on in, gentlemen,” I said. “The party is just getting started.”The older of the two stepped forward.“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “We’re from the 20th Precinct, and we had a noise complaint from one of your neighbors.”I started to offer to turn the music down while apologizing for any inconvenience when the younger of the two officers stepped into the apartment. To my surprise, he took my hand and started dancing with me.We danced until the song ended. The officer leaned toward me.“I’m getting off at 11,” he said, before asking whether he could come back after his shift ended.“Of course,” I said. The officers left.Around 11:30, the younger officer returned. He ended up being one of the last guests to leave.— Melaney Mashburn
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Thursday, 30 May 2019 18:02 (four years ago) link
wake up, melaney!!!
― difficult listening hour, Thursday, 30 May 2019 18:29 (four years ago) link
Another real estate one, starring two Vice staffershttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/30/realestate/30hunt-conti.htmlGuess which one they chose.
― Bnad, Tuesday, 4 June 2019 19:34 (four years ago) link
most expensive of course. Damn, $3800 a month, and vice pay is notoriously low (although maybe exec editor is an exception). DINKs.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 19:51 (four years ago) link
wau i would live in Clinton Hill over Bed-Stuy in a heartbeat
― Lil' Brexit (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 19:55 (four years ago) link
i assume these are 1BRs? lmaaaaaao
― Lil' Brexit (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 19:57 (four years ago) link
it's all broken
rare that I have a chance to feel better about my rent tbf
― don't mock my smock or i'll clean your clock (silby), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:04 (four years ago) link
xxxp they had a wedding announcement in the times, one of them has a trust at least?
― gyac, Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:05 (four years ago) link
It says they were looking for a 2BR. The Clinton Hill one had an extremely fucked up layout so I don't blame them for not taking it -- the one bathroom was literally outside the unit and you had to walk through someone else's place to get to your own due to some kind of shared staircase. Can't really blame them for not wanting that. As much an indictment of how insane NYC real estate is as Q&A of the ruling class. But at the same time, (1) fuck your need to live in a "classic brownstone" and (2) just fucking move to queens.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:06 (four years ago) link
ah i see now. 2BR is much more realistic for that money.
― Lil' Brexit (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:08 (four years ago) link
I don't care how small the apartment was, giving up getting to walk to work is weird but they are young I guess.
― Yerac, Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:10 (four years ago) link
At least they have that really nice mirror.
― Yerac, Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:11 (four years ago) link
btw
https://i.imgur.com/9tBqqoh.jpg
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:13 (four years ago) link
hahahahahaha oh. my god
― Lil' Brexit (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:15 (four years ago) link
Headline writer misspelled "lágrimas"
― don't mock my smock or i'll clean your clock (silby), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:17 (four years ago) link
we thought being complete idiots was a good idea but we were wrong
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:19 (four years ago) link
I could barely plan things to do in Argentina with my parents when I was like 20
― don't mock my smock or i'll clean your clock (silby), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:23 (four years ago) link
That writer is also the editor in chief at Goop.
― Yerac, Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:27 (four years ago) link
is that shocking?!?!
― Yerac, Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:28 (four years ago) link
My life perspective changed a lot when it hit me that jobs like "editor in chief of goop," which ordinary folks sadly strive for and usually don't get, are actually just created for the dumber kids of rich people.*
*nb I don't actually know what goop is.
― longtime caller, first time listener (man alive), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:31 (four years ago) link
presumably the smart kids of smart rich people are allowed to join in doing whatever the parents did
― don't mock my smock or i'll clean your clock (silby), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:32 (four years ago) link
i am sure you have looked it up by now, but goop is G Paltrow's mockable but profitable lifestyle brand.
― Yerac, Tuesday, 4 June 2019 20:55 (four years ago) link
I think Pergament is where you go in Catholic theology to live in eternal agonies if your sins are all quiddities
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 21:24 (four years ago) link
Blake Lively's store-brand Goop was betterhttps://jezebel.com/what-real-dudes-think-of-the-mens-section-on-blake-live-1616380572
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Tuesday, 4 June 2019 21:28 (four years ago) link
Blake's barely lasted a year i think.
― Yerac, Tuesday, 4 June 2019 21:35 (four years ago) link
What Middle-Class Families Want Politicians to Know
nothing that egregious in here except that all these families make at least $100,000 a year
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 9 July 2019 16:21 (four years ago) link
deeply sadly 100k for a family _is_ middle class for nyc i imagine
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Tuesday, 9 July 2019 19:46 (four years ago) link
this one tho
The Battle of Grace Church: What happened when Brooklyn’s oldest nursery school decided to become less old-fashioned? A riot among the one percent.
The world was a simmering, seething cauldron, one that was only going to get hotter and harder to survive in. If this felt true in general, it felt especially true to the residents of Brooklyn Heights, whose small universe had recently gotten a lot more crowded. The glass towers that sprung up along the waterfront had filled up with families, yet the number of schools remained the same. In the past, parents could pay their way into Grace Church, which traditionally served as a feed to St. Ann’s and Packer Collegiate, one of the two private schools traditionally favored by Brooklynites with $40,000-plus a year to spend on setting their children on The Correct Path. Now this privilege, like all others, seemed in jeopardy.
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 9 July 2019 19:50 (four years ago) link
yeah, that one was a laff riot it's true
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Tuesday, 9 July 2019 19:51 (four years ago) link
Yeah but one of those familes is +200K in Wyomissing PA.
― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, 9 July 2019 19:52 (four years ago) link
you need that 200k to get by in (checks notes) Laveen Arizona i guessi gotta move
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Tuesday, 9 July 2019 19:54 (four years ago) link
I usually feel like 'families' make 50k or 110k and there is barely an in between. It's messed up.
― Yerac, Tuesday, 9 July 2019 20:06 (four years ago) link
1. exhibit one: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/technology/brex-start-up.html 2. exhibit two:
https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fdoughroller-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F10%2FBrex-logo-e1540841268699.jpg&f=1https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.wallpapersafari.com%2F34%2F11%2FQG6FKy.gif&f=1
3. exhibit three: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-X
― remy bean, Sunday, 4 August 2019 11:17 (four years ago) link
Kara Swisher's tech columns have moved beyond ridiculous into some sublime pure land of drivel. pic.twitter.com/5Q5hGOim0U— Pinboard (@Pinboard) August 6, 2019
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 6 August 2019 17:02 (four years ago) link
(screenshots from the same column)
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Tuesday, 6 August 2019 17:03 (four years ago) link
hadn't really noticed her before so i clicked on another random article and got this word salad:
[Don’t get me wrong, I love to scoot, and I do it often, including a whole bunch of times here in Paris. Zoom, I went to meet someone for lunch in a bistro near the Bastille. Zip, that was me going under the Arc de Triomphe. Zut alors, me again sailing along the Seine on a Bird.
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Tuesday, 6 August 2019 17:18 (four years ago) link
wasn't there some recipe column that did the exact same thing in the NYT a while back?
― Number None, Tuesday, 6 August 2019 17:19 (four years ago) link
The pileup of adjectives in the first sentence of that tweet remind me of trying to pad out a book report in the 5th grade
― “Hakuna Matata,” a nihilist philosophy (One Eye Open), Tuesday, 6 August 2019 19:11 (four years ago) link
pareene on the aristocracy's paper
Take a surgeon, making $400,000. That is, more or less, the intended reader of the Times, which consigns a mere family practitioner making $200,000 to the “middle class.” Indeed, the Times itself helpfully clarified its own upward-skewing vision of social class in a delightfully unselfaware Opinion section piece about “the middle class in America” made up almost entirely of subjects with six-figure household incomes. When readers criticized the paper’s apparent redefinition of “middle” and “class,” the Times braintrust explained the editorial process that led to the creation of that piece: They simply tasked reporters to ask Times readers who self-identified as middle class; not surprisingly, these open-ended inquiries yielded a handful of objectively wealthy people who simply don’t feel that rich.
https://newrepublic.com/article/154726/heres-better-reason-unsubscribe-new-york-times
― a Mets fan who gave up on everything in the mid '80s (Dr Morbius), Friday, 9 August 2019 19:58 (four years ago) link
the jonathan weisman stuff is really quite something
― mookieproof, Friday, 9 August 2019 20:15 (four years ago) link
Yeah, he's an idiot who tweets racist shit again and again and when a black woman pointed it out he mailed her, her assistant, and her publisher to demand an apology. How the fuck is that not a firing reason?
― Frederik B, Saturday, 10 August 2019 10:58 (four years ago) link
lol
NYT says it is demoting Jonathan Weisman -- he will be an editor in DC, but no longer overseeing Congressional correspondents, and no longer active on social media. Weisman has been contrite. Story to follow.— marc tracy (@marcatracy) August 13, 2019
― mookieproof, Tuesday, 13 August 2019 20:39 (four years ago) link
This article was interesting and made a decent argument.
Here's a Better Reason to Unsubscribe From The New York TimesIt's not the "newspaper of record." It's a rag for the East Coast rich.You shouldn’t unsubscribe from The New York Times over a bad headline. Or even over a bad pattern of editorial decisions dating back years demonstrating an institutional worldview poisoned by false equivalence, blinkered elitism, and fealty to power. Don’t unsubscribe to punish them, or as economic leverage to force them to Do Better. You should instead unsubscribe from the Times because the Paper of Record doesn’t need your money. Or, at least, the Times needs it much less than someone else probably does.The Times itself reported on Wednesday that The New York Times Company earned an operating profit of $37.9 million in the second quarter of this year—down from last year but still pretty healthy—thanks in large part to the paper’s combined print and digital subscriber base of 4.7 million readers.If you are among that 4.7 million, you have been won over with some canny marketing. The Times’ decision to heavily invest in attracting subscriptions from a national (even international) audience has been a savvy and largely successful one, but almost by definition these world-conquering ambitions can only succeed at the expense of other, smaller outlets. There is not an unlimited international appetite for newspaper subscriptions. And that expansion has required the paper to market itself as various things it is not: chiefly as a true national newspaper, meant to be read by every literate American, or as a voice of the Resistance. But it has never been either of those things, nor has it ever sought to be. The Times has a specific niche in the media environment, and it is quite good at being the thing it actually wants to be.The Times is a paper for the East Coast rich. If that doesn’t describe you, the paper is not making editorial decisions with you in mind.“Times readers in the New York metropolitan area are upscale, affluent, Jewish, liberal and identify with New York’s culture, its museums and its art,” a former Times circulation editor said in a 2013 interview. The company’s media kit—the PR materials designed to convince brands to purchase ads in the paper or on their website—tells a similar story: “The NYT Weekday ranks #1 with Opinion Leaders, reaching 57% of this elite group.” It reports a median household income of $191,000 for readers of the paper and $96,000 for the website.I am an urban professional, living in New York, making a good living, and The New York Times is barely even for me. Take a surgeon, making $400,000. That is, more or less, the intended reader of the Times, which consigns a mere family practitioner making $200,000 to the “middle class.” Indeed, the Times itself helpfully clarified its own upward-skewing vision of social class in a delightfully unselfaware Opinion section piece about “the middle class in America” made up almost entirely of subjects with six-figure household incomes. When readers criticized the paper’s apparent redefinition of “middle” and “class,” the Times braintrust explained the editorial process that led to the creation of that piece: They simply tasked reporters to ask Times readers who self-identified as middle class; not surprisingly, these open-ended inquiries yielded a handful of objectively wealthy people who simply don’t feel that rich.
You shouldn’t unsubscribe from The New York Times over a bad headline. Or even over a bad pattern of editorial decisions dating back years demonstrating an institutional worldview poisoned by false equivalence, blinkered elitism, and fealty to power. Don’t unsubscribe to punish them, or as economic leverage to force them to Do Better. You should instead unsubscribe from the Times because the Paper of Record doesn’t need your money. Or, at least, the Times needs it much less than someone else probably does.
The Times itself reported on Wednesday that The New York Times Company earned an operating profit of $37.9 million in the second quarter of this year—down from last year but still pretty healthy—thanks in large part to the paper’s combined print and digital subscriber base of 4.7 million readers.
If you are among that 4.7 million, you have been won over with some canny marketing. The Times’ decision to heavily invest in attracting subscriptions from a national (even international) audience has been a savvy and largely successful one, but almost by definition these world-conquering ambitions can only succeed at the expense of other, smaller outlets. There is not an unlimited international appetite for newspaper subscriptions. And that expansion has required the paper to market itself as various things it is not: chiefly as a true national newspaper, meant to be read by every literate American, or as a voice of the Resistance. But it has never been either of those things, nor has it ever sought to be. The Times has a specific niche in the media environment, and it is quite good at being the thing it actually wants to be.
The Times is a paper for the East Coast rich. If that doesn’t describe you, the paper is not making editorial decisions with you in mind.
“Times readers in the New York metropolitan area are upscale, affluent, Jewish, liberal and identify with New York’s culture, its museums and its art,” a former Times circulation editor said in a 2013 interview. The company’s media kit—the PR materials designed to convince brands to purchase ads in the paper or on their website—tells a similar story: “The NYT Weekday ranks #1 with Opinion Leaders, reaching 57% of this elite group.” It reports a median household income of $191,000 for readers of the paper and $96,000 for the website.
I am an urban professional, living in New York, making a good living, and The New York Times is barely even for me. Take a surgeon, making $400,000. That is, more or less, the intended reader of the Times, which consigns a mere family practitioner making $200,000 to the “middle class.” Indeed, the Times itself helpfully clarified its own upward-skewing vision of social class in a delightfully unselfaware Opinion section piece about “the middle class in America” made up almost entirely of subjects with six-figure household incomes. When readers criticized the paper’s apparent redefinition of “middle” and “class,” the Times braintrust explained the editorial process that led to the creation of that piece: They simply tasked reporters to ask Times readers who self-identified as middle class; not surprisingly, these open-ended inquiries yielded a handful of objectively wealthy people who simply don’t feel that rich.
― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Tuesday, 13 August 2019 20:51 (four years ago) link
They simply tasked reporters to ask Times readers who self-identified as middle class
haha
― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 13 August 2019 20:57 (four years ago) link
upscale, affluent, Jewish, liberal
Did they really have to go there?
― pomenitul, Tuesday, 13 August 2019 21:01 (four years ago) link
occurred to me too
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 13 August 2019 21:03 (four years ago) link
it's a quote by a times employee: https://newsandtech.com/columnists/nyt-and-wsj-the-industry-s-last-newspaper-war/article_4cbfda2c-8051-11e2-adb0-001a4bcf887a.html
― Jeff Bathos (symsymsym), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 02:12 (four years ago) link
Ew
― Οὖτις, Wednesday, 14 August 2019 02:45 (four years ago) link
Fun Par33n3 take but as a New Republic piece it's fkn rich.
What, pray tell, ought we to read instead? Perhaps TNR speaks for the people? Oh look, while bashing NYT's bid for national online subs TNR flashes me an interstitial to subscribe online. Sounds like a plan. That'll really stick it to those rich twits at the Grey Lady.
And how does TNR define middle class? Horse has been beaten to death but in Manhattan (or SF, or LA...) an HHI of 200K isn't a sob story but isn't not middle class. I'm not gonna fight anyone over this but it's a shallow take.
I'm not even defending the Times but TNR was the wrong place to publish this one.
― Larry Elleison (rogermexico.), Wednesday, 14 August 2019 22:22 (four years ago) link