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

“the world of NY private schools”

quiddities and agonies of the ruling class

There were a great many good quotes as I considered noting but decided was superfluous. My personal favorite was characteristically something I thought others would not note because of their relative unfamiliarity with the world of NY private schools (the real one, not the made for middle-americas tv version).

― Moo Vaughn, Monday, March 26, 2018 4:45 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe your moo-iest yet, firing on all cylinders

xoxo, moo vaughn

The era of aborted Dyson products

― louise ck (milo z), Monday, March 26, 2018 11:48 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Year of Moomba and Veruka

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2018/03/29/i-am-tired-of-being-a-jewish-mans-rebellion/

🙄

it's got that unmistakable tang

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2017/11/02/is-he-interested-in-me-or-does-he-just-want-hamilton-tickets

same author lol

"One of the musical’s most famous lyrics states: “I am not throwing away my shot.” I wish these men would realize that when they ask if I can get them tickets, they have already thrown away theirs."

So Carrie Bradshaw

What an exceedingly boring and generic person. And writer.

Wait, there’s someone even worse
https://amp.thecut.com/2018/04/what-its-like-to-be-a-really-beautiful-woman.html

how is that person worse

without the final paragraphs of anti-Semitism the first author should just feel embarrassed about printing that in public but the second author...

One of the worst things about being beautiful is that other women absolutely despise you. Women have made me cry my whole life. When I try to make friends with a woman, I feel like I’m a guy trying to woo her. Women don’t trust me. They don’t want me around their husbands. I’m often excluded from parties, with no explanation. I imagine their thought process goes something like this: “What does it matter if I hurt her feelings. She has her looks and that’s more than I have. Life has already played favorites …” It’s kind of like being born rich, people don’t believe that you feel the same pain. It’s a bias that people can’t shake.

Throughout my life, competitive, attractive, wealthy, entitled women really hated me. At my first job after college, my female colleagues conspired against me. They planted bottles of half-drunk booze on my desk so that it looked like I was drinking on the job. Two women were obsessed with me. They told my boss lies to get me fired. I talked to some of my superiors about it and they put it to me straight: Look, it’s pure unmitigated jealousy. They really do hate you because of the way you look.

People were conspiring against me - because of my beauty. No one really liked me, definitely not because of my personality but because I'm gorgeous.

without the final paragraphs of anti-Semitism

uh

in no way is a piece about the pitfalls of being very pretty worse than mainstreamed anti-semitism, but i guess if you say "without the anti-semitism" then who knows?????

the piece you posted is a little rote but i don't get horrible person vibes from it. the fact that you do, like worse than the racist guy, is um interesting i guess.

i think there's a plausible scenario in which the woman in the cut piece is not terrible and feels genuinely depressed about things (if we believe her account), whereas the WaPo piece is probably getting shared on whatever dark web forum ex-st0rmfr0nt users have crawled to.

One wonders about the basis of the woman's belief that she's 'beautiful' in a way that other people are not (or at all)

this made me genuinely sad. the final sentence in particular :( ageism is stupid and she seems like a decent person, more or less?

Here’s the really sad part. It doesn’t matter how beautiful you were in your youth; when you age you become invisible. You could still look fabulous but … who cares? Nobody is looking. Even my young-adult sons ignore me. The irony is that now that I am older I am a much better person. I went through some suffering in my 40s — raised two kids, dealt with an alcoholic husband, watched my parents get sick and pass away — and I really grew. But as far as the world is concerned? I’ve lost all my value.

otm

One wonders about the basis of the woman's belief that she's 'beautiful' in a way that other people are not (or at all)

― Moo Vaughn, Tuesday, April 3, 2018 6:38 AM (eight hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you know by the way you get treated. vanity is an internal estimation, beauty is determined socially. if a person isn't vain to begin with, it isn't that hard for them to take a measure. insecure, spiteful men like to blur vanity and beauty.

i get a lot of attention from gay men to the point where it surprises me. i've never thought i was particularly good-looking. i like to work out so that probably boosts my desirability. it's a flattering thing to be viewed like that and it's fun and you can get laid etc. but after a while it just gets to be a pain in the ass if you're looking for something more substantial.

The last paragraph is sad but there are some side-eye lines in that article. As Drag Race says, she rested on being pretty.

after a while it just gets to be a pain in the ass if you're looking for something more substantial.
you also know that it won't last and wish people would like/appreciate/venerate/validate the other, more interesting sides to you because you KNOW the physical part won't last and hope you don't reach invisibility in a few years.

insecure, spiteful men people like to blur vanity and beauty.
:( otm

one of the most physically beautiful women i know is my mom's friend polly and she always seemed to hate it. people assumed a full range of awful things about her before she even had a chance to talk, and it made her shut down to other people. it makes me sad. she is a really cool illustrator/cartoonist and that is clearly the most salient part of her individual self. it's disappointing to have to climb over hurdles of what people assume about her in order to be known. no wonder she likes to draw.

The idea that beauty is something of a curse for its possessor was already fully developed in Callirhoe, a Greek novel of circa 100 AD. But many people are still surprised when they hear it, because how can someone you envy be unhappy with the very thing you envy most about them?

Yeah if you haven't read Callirhoe by now, I don't know what to tell you

Just say the idea's been around a long time.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/a-woke-civil-war-is-simmering-at-the-new-york-times

I was hoping people would be done saying “woke” in 2018 but that’s an interesting read otherwise.

*white people

"Journalism is not about creating safe spaces" is the worst fucking take when the NYT's staff is upset that the paper seems intent on hiring a bunch of fucking Nazi sympathizers to write for their opinion page!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/style/keep-ice-weird-disco-cubes.html

She Makes Fancy Ice Cubes for a Living

a+++

NOW we’re talking

feel like that headline/url is the first time the nyt style editors have broken kayfabe

not the NYT, but i couldn't help but think of the thread when i read this bit:

"The price of ether had spiked during his meditation. “I got out,” he said, “and things had gone from two-fifty to three-fifty. I was, like, O.K., I just made a zillion dollars meditating. I should probably make two hundred million on this whole thing.” He cashed out some of his cryptocurrency to buy a G550 jet, a seaplane, and a Georg Baselitz sculpture. “For the first time, I kind of spoiled myself.”

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/16/a-sidelined-wall-street-legend-bets-on-bitcoin

Lmao https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/business/punishing-wells-fargo.html

“People did this, not the bank,” said Charles M. Elson, a professor and director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. “The behavior was reprehensible and they should have paid the price. But putting the onus on the corporation is a double whammy for shareholders. They were harmed by the actions of management and now they’re paying again.” (As a shareholder himself, Mr. Elson has felt the pain.)

It is true that actual people should have been punished for financial crimes. If the shareholders don't like the fines, though, then they shouldn't have bought shares in such a shitty company!

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/01/world/europe/germany-helmut-lethen-caroline-sommerfeld.html

Helmut Lethen, 79, and Caroline Sommerfeld, 42, are both writers. They represent two generations and two intellectual camps in an ever more divided Germany. They are political enemies.

And they are married.

i bet the sex is hot

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/opinion/sunday/how-to-survive-your-40s.html

I realize that something has permanently shifted when I walk past a woman begging for money.

“Bonjour, mademoiselle,” she calls out to the young woman in a miniskirt a few steps ahead of me.

“Bonjour, madame,” she says when I pass.

This has all happened too quickly for me to digest. I still have most of the clothes that I wore as a mademoiselle.

Shit. I only have a couple of more months to get this article into the NYT about maintaining a David Letterman-esque beard as I approach 40. It's tedious growing older as a woman.

Americans in Paris are the worst

that one really is amazing. the appearance of the beggar is genuinely unnecessary; it could have been anyone who made the author feel old; it could have been macron. but the beggar crept in anyway.

i did some hate-Googling and can report that before her current book (from which this is excerpted) she wrote an anecdotal account of differences in French and American child-rearing

i did not find out how many beggars assisted her self-reflection in that one; my hate-reading has limits

'intellectual dark web'

Harry Potter and the Intellectual Dark Web

the real dark web: a roiling vortex of child porn, cloned credit cards, and pharmaceutical-grade drugs which only those with technical prowess and underground contacts can access

the intellectual dark web: a pasty guy guesting on cable news to suggest uh hey maybe white supremacy isn't such a bad thing and btw all women are whores

☝️ if someone says "dark web" they either dont know what they're talking about or they are trying to sell things to people who dont know what they're talking about

— jon hendren (@fart) April 11, 2018

the actual dark web isn't even a real thing, never mind the intellectual dark web.

I don't get why NYT is pushing this subculture so hard! Seems like over the last year they've just been handing megaphone after megaphone to members of the same small group of assholes with tightly circumscribed obsessions.

and no constituency for their opinions! there are like 500 NR subscribers, which seems to be their definition of heterodoxy.