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

st. bernard tschumi

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2011/05/22/sm_doghouse_0522_480x360.jpg

Frank FURness

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m28upohaeI1rsiucno1_1280.jpg

Arcatecture, . . . GO!

on the bubble here: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/

arfs & crafts movement

The Busytown Trap

If your job wasn’t performed by a cat or a boa constrictor in a Richard Scarry book I’m not sure I believe it’s necessary.

imho it goes a level deeper than this piece even dares to admit, people are not actually busy

“The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system.” This may sound like the pronouncement of some bong-smoking anarchist, but it was actually Arthur C. Clarke, who found time between scuba diving and pinball games to write “Childhood’s End” and think up communications satellites. My old colleague Ted Rall recently wrote a column proposing that we divorce income from work and give each citizen a guaranteed paycheck, which sounds like the kind of lunatic notion that’ll be considered a basic human right in about a century, like abolition, universal suffrage and eight-hour workdays. The Puritans turned work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment.

none of this is particularly radical or crazy

I like the piece mostly

Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence. - opposite of my experience, maybe hang out w/ someone who's not rich and/or ted rall

the guy is a marginally successful cartoonist so I would bet he has friends whose marriages are not covered by the nyt

i was just reading a guardian article about people working too much. it was pretty good. someone posted it on my facebook. dunno if i can find it now.

a better read of the article would be 'professional cartoonist proposes gov't guaranteed income'

xp

ie what i literally hear from ppl who work crazy icu shifts or what i literally tell ppl when i've worked 14 hour (minimum) days for 7 days a week for a few weeks is that i am 'busy' (easy to picture turning his head quizzically at the word like a dog, or data from star trek: tng for an example more in his wheelhouse maybe). this busyness is tbf due to ambition and drive and maybe even anxiety over the potential that you might be unemployed or working a useless job you hate (esp if before the 'busy' job you actually did work a few of the busy jobs you hated, some of which actually did require taking the bus and did actually pay minimum wage). dread? if what you have to face in the absence is being a grown man that gleans insight from sci-fi and alt weekly cartoonists and then thinks this insight is worth an op-ed than yes, dread has now entered the equation.

that busytown thing is okay. he kinda has the disclaimer at the beginning about how he's not talking about miserable poor people who work too much. so he's covered and can rhapsodize about being lazy. i love being lazy too. i hate doing almost everything. so, i'm with him. does anyone know his cartoon stuff? never heard of him.

a better better read would be 'professional cartoonist made poor job choice, still can't figure out why, scoffs at ppl who have to put on pants to go to work, actually contribute to society, etc'

if you only have to work 4 or 5 hours a day and you work for yourself and you can make a living...you are doing things right.

arfs and crafts is hella good, btw.

there are plenty of highly paid professional jobs where your hourly productivity is not measurable by your boss/clients but your hours are. I've worked places where everyone was staying til 8 because they wanted to be the people staying til 8, not because it was particularly necessary - the office was awfully inefficient w/ its time during the day. when value becomes fuzzy - which can be the case for a lot of white collar labor - appearance is everything.

xp

Chana
Amsterdam, Netherlands

I have lived and worked in Europe for almost 12 years and will be returning to the U.S. soon. I have learned a great deal about how to live a life here. There is a palpable stress and tension in the air when you step off of a plane into the U.S. People are usually glum, usually overweight and cranky - and often worse. I contrast that with the calm and happy customer service I get here...even from people making a modest income by any standard and have to conclude that Americans have made a terrible mistake. They believe their own P.R. to their own detriment. We have *not* got it all right in America.

In Europe, a vacation is considered a health/work balance *necessity* - not a work *benefit* that you may (or may not) have a chance to use. People who do not take vacations are not looked up to here - they are actually viewed negatively - as people who do not have their life priorities in order.

As I leave here soon, I am moving to a small, organic farm in northern New York. I will work hard, I'm sure - but I have realized...I could never go back to a typical American life working for a company that offers me two weeks of vacation a year (ludicrous) - and who considers health care a "benefit" to be crowed about in their recruitment ads.

Thanks, Europe - for the invaluable experiences and life lessons. You may have your issues - so does the whole world - but you are still balancing them with grace for the most part.

i think the quiddity article today was more

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/nyregion/its-a-goldman-world-in-battery-park-city.html?hpw

i mean, 'acquire spicy onion rings at 1 am'.

here's the guardian thing on working too much. instead of alt cartoonists you get oscar wilde.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/01/why-are-we-working-so-hard

some people are busy, most people who say they are busy are not actually busy, theyre just unhappy

i tell people im really busy a lot just because i dont want to see them

too busy to reply sry max

some other time?

lets shoot for next week?

noodles?

I just had a week of 10 hour days where I averaged 5 productive hours each day. OTOH I do sometimes have a 15 hour day where I'm productive most of the time I'm not in the bathroom or eating lunch.

eat lunch in the bathroom. saves time.

go to the bathroom in the lunchroom

This one's pretty much fish in a barrel, but hard to resist:

Meredith Yayanos, a musician and a founder of the alternative culture magazine Coilhouse, adapts her diet to influence her mood. "I love the idea that there's a mix and match going on," she said.

Ms. Yayanos first dropped gluten, sugar and carbs on a friend's advice after being mugged at gunpoint, a trauma that left her fending off panic attacks and depression. "Within 48 hours, it felt like a thick layer of gauze had been pulled off my brain," she recalled. Now Ms. Yayanos revisits that diet whenever her mood drops. She's noticed her friends experimenting with food, too, essentially "hacking" their bodies, tinkering with different fuels to reap feelings of clarity and energy.

But Fabio Parasecoli, a native of Rome and the coordinator of food studies at the New School, worries that diverse diets can kill the pleasure of shared meals. "For me, food is very social, and I would never show up at someone's place with Tupperware," he said. "It's difficult when dietary choices prevent people from fully participating in social life."

Meg Geldart, a circus acrobat in Portland, Ore., is determined not to let that happen. She frequently cooks meals with as many as 20 friends who are, variously, omnivorous, gluten free, dairy free, soy free, vegetarian, vegan, diabetic or allergic (to garlic, onions, nuts or legumes).

Ms. Yayanos first dropped gluten, sugar and carbs on a friend's advice after being mugged at gunpoint

worst friend ever

right? i am pretty sure the right answer to "I got mugged" is a shot of bourbon and a doughnut, not "good luck eating out for the rest of your life"

no icecream wd be a bummer

maybe they stole her gluten, sugar and carbs tho

right? i am pretty sure the right answer to "I got mugged" is a shot of bourbon and a doughnut, not "good luck eating out for the rest of your life"

Exactly!

shame, she has some interesting links on twitter occasionally, none that I've seen about gluten-free

Meg Geldart, a circus acrobat in Portland, Ore.
Meg Geldart, a circus acrobat in Portland, Ore.
Meg Geldart, a circus acrobat in Portland, Ore.
Meg Geldart, a circus acrobat in Portland, Ore.
Meg Geldart, a circus acrobat in Portland, Ore.
Meg Geldart, a circus acrobat in Portland, Ore.
Meg Geldart, a circus acrobat in Portland, Ore.

^^^

Ms. Yayanos first dropped gluten, sugar and carbs on a friend's advice after being mugged at gunpoint, a trauma that left her fending off panic attacks and depression.

The best part of this is the unintentional time compression; the way it's worded, it makes it seem like Yayanos staggered to her friend's house sobbing "I've been mugged!" and her friend was all "STOP EATING CARBS IMMEDIATELY oh and maybe we should call the cops"

I'm reading it that dropping gluten, sugar, and carbs was the trauma that led to panic attacks and depression. I know it would for me.

haha that too

Re the busy-ness article, I don't disagree with anything in it really but I get IA at

"Every morning my in-box was full of e-mails asking me to do things I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I now had to solve. It got more and more intolerable until finally I fled town to the Undisclosed Location from which I’m writing this."

OH YOU POOR BABY. PEOPLE WANTED YOU TO PARTICIPATE IN TEH WORLD, HOWEVER WILL YOU SURVIVE THIS HORROR. As opposed to all those days when you blew off work to do something nicer than work and no one penalized you for it, I guess?

i think not opening your email would be a more realistic response then fleeing town. but what do i know.

tbf a lot of people have a set workload they have to get done and the email problems are on top of that! I think it's more an issue of jobs assuming you get done with a set of tasks and never have to return to them, whereas a lot of jobs involve maintenance and support.

maybe don't work in publishing if you don't like answering emails?

"asking me to do things I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I now had to solve"--I might be kind of a Puritan about industriousness but like is this guy somehow incapable of...life?

Things I do not want to do = almost everything I have to do to live that doesn't involve reading, drinking, or making out. Problems I have to solve = everything in life, including how to maximize opportunities to read, drink, and make out.