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

^yea srsly i didnt even notice that at first

guys do you realize what this means? the economic crisis is even affecting rich people! this means it is really newsworthy!! it's like when straight people started getting hiv!!!

what's a quiddity?

think of the barefoot girls laying on dogs on the porches of brick homes in silver spring, md. x-post

“I feel as if I am finally at home,” she exclaimed as soon as we moved into the house. She could settle down and do the things she had always been best at: making a new home, nurturing her children and loving me.

But eventually:

The frosted-crystal shade on a beloved Italian floor lamp was cracked. The dog had gnawed the leg on her Biedermeier chair.

The Khaki Class

Thread of ;_;

I can't really join in on any rich-people schadenfreude here, because it sounds to me like this guy is not of some far-distant social class, and the $4k alimony/child-support + take-home of $2.75k equation actually does sound pretty rough to me -- what's weird about it is to read the contention that this felt like a natural situation to wind up falling into; I suppose at that age and social situation it might, but of the many people I know who take home around that much money a month, I can surely tell you that not that many of them expect homes on it, and I'm not even just talking about the ones in New York.

I mean, judging by that equation we might estimate an income in the general neighborhood of $100k a year, which is certainly pleasant but not some sort of distant class of wealth and privilege whose travails I might comfortably laugh at.

On one hand -- ugh, fuck this guy.

On the other hand, I have to give him credit for a little reality check. I just paid off the last of my credit card debt and I have a fixed rate mortgage, so I need to quit waking up at 4 a.m. and worrying about money.

On the 3rd hand, nice work of him to pull his story together and sell it to W.W. Norton.

you've got three hands? surely you can swing a book deal out of that.

it's true, nabisco - he never really was that rich, especially by the standards of the new york times - but he sure lives and writes like he is. which is of course where the trouble started. getting a monthly keelhaul from the ex didn't help, either - i wonder if he writes about that in his book? - but i think this man's most basic problem was imagining that a take-home of $2500 monthly was enough to buy a half-mil pile. it's enough to make a casual reader think that the financial crisis really is a result of damn fools like him. in any case, this thread isn't for schadenfreude per se - but don't let that stop you - it's a record of what kinds of voices the new york times tends to lean on.

i'm struck by his weaselly evasion of responsibility - despite the mea culpa undertones, he makes his wonderful new lady friend sound like a spendthrift bitch and says that his total lack of financial awareness was a symptom of the "same infection" that brought low the titans of industry. fat chance, ed.

i think this man's most basic problem was imagining that a take-home of $2500 monthly was enough to buy a half-mil pile

not enough OTM in the world for this

loooool @ tracer hand: voice of the underclass

I had assumed we would start by renting a house or an apartment, but it quickly became clear that it was almost easier to borrow a half-million dollars and buy something.

n.e.way: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/garden/14aaron.html

ny times does seem to have a thing for pictures of the sprawled daughters of the leisure class in front of their itlianate mansions

sorry Lamp i missed the part where you had a point

my takeaway from this article is that our "elite" journos are often just as ignorant and greedy as the rest of us humps -- not to mention that i feel a bit smug seeing how shitty the media's coverage of the whole real estate/subprime mess was.

The Khaki Class

lol South

i don't know crap about this guy, nor do i care, BUT

when i was 22 i dated this very cute but not-very-smart guy. it was long distance, so we wrote a lot of letters (this was in the lol 90s). in one letter he told me that being with me made him feel "quidity". i smugly laughed a little because i figured that he meant "tranquility" and wow was this guy adorable for not being able to use a dictionary. then i looked up the word "quidity" and realized that it was real (although not what he meant, i am 100% sure)

this thread is the first time i have ever actually seen anyone use this word. the end.

maybe he was like "wow she thinks my made-up word means something.. what a dim-bulb"

what do you think he actually meant?

pretty sure he meant tranquility, like comfort (i remember this from context, but really this was a long time ago and i can't remember much about the situation aside from this strange misused word)

Megan McArdle on the piece. Judge for yourself.

Actually I kind of like her points?

ya i mean... not really sure why this piece is as contempt-worthy as some are making it out to be. it's kind of brutally depressing.

It is in a 'there-but-for' sense for sure. Not that I was ever going to try and be an economics reporter for the NY Times, but as time has passed I'm beginning to think the soundest piece of advice I've ever received in regard to writing was something J. D. Considine told me years ago -- 1993 or so -- in response to a random e-mail or two I sent him. He pretty much said, "Freelancing and journalism is very hard work and you should only pursue it on a full-time basis if you are willing to stick to that level." I'm honestly glad I heeded that and I think what you see in both pieces, regardless of whatever else feeds into their respective situations, reflects that.

At the same time, I'm trying to put my finger on what still jars about McArdle's response and it seems to be this sense of keeping up with the Joneses as paramount driving factor/potential excuse. At what point is leisure travelling to Europe, for instance, a 'minimum necessity' -- and I speak as one who's been there a number of times now. Still, I realize it's a sliding scale, says the person who has participated in a CSA thing with a local farmer for some years now.

Literal translation: quiddity = whatness

Ned, I read her response as being more about the foolhardiness of ever thinking ANY of those things are necessities. She seems to be (gently) chiding that whole tendency?

Yah... she's just sayin' that you hang with people for whom this is true, you wake up with fleas

I think maybe something to add to McArdle's response is that we have this general cultural tendency to view attention as somehow related to money, a connection that really falls apart when it comes to writers of all sorts -- it's very easy to withhold sympathy from people writing about their woes in public, as if they're coming from a position of privilege or just courting attention, but in plenty of cases they don't have much concrete privilege and writing about their experiences is just, you know, work.

he never really was that rich, especially by the standards of the new york times - but he sure lives and writes like he is. which is of course where the trouble started. getting a monthly keelhaul from the ex didn't help, either - i wonder if he writes about that in his book? - but i think this man's most basic problem was imagining that a take-home of $2500 monthly was enough to buy a half-mil pile.

Yeah, exactly -- although if I had to summarize a problem here it would basically be that a middle-aged family-man homeowner with a decent salary expected to continue living like a middle-aged family-man homeowner with a decent salary, even after a divorce that meant the bulk of his income was going to support a family home occupied by other people. This is an unrealistic and dumb expectation to seriously act on -- you'd think that $4k would be a good monthly reminder that situations done changed -- but I can totally have sympathy for the situation itself; that would suck. It would be painful to have to support the family home you used to live in and have to support yourself and your new family on a fraction of what you're earning.

The other thing is that -- while he can't and doesn't come out and say this directly -- his one list of charges makes me suspect a bunch of money was getting borrowed to maintain a certain lifestyle for the kids

I thought he said that very directly just by listing all those expenses! (I note though that he does seem to say even more directly that his wife did that too.)

Haha yeah, I guess the unsayable "direct" thing I had in mind was like "these KIDS were bankrupting us (that's right, Alex, I'm talking about you)"

I was going to jump past boggling at the beach house rental and wonder about the $700 at J. Crew, but I guess if you needed, like, one good suit and some decent sweaters for Christmas presents ... the world really does hold you to your socio-economic status, doesn't it -- even beyond nobody wanting to be the guy who gets divorced and suddenly has to start showing up to work in cheap suits, it'd be tough to be the guy making $100k who's like "I got you a candy bar for Christmas!"

yeah the erm narrative here is anyways at least partly "but banking professionals who should be my Friends and Advisors assured us it would be alright!"?

However fishy such blanket blame is in general, I'm not sure it's entirely misplaced re how things rolled out this cycle. At one point around 2006, I momentarily had a crazy amount of money in my account due to family property reorg stuff, and was by phone promptly invited to an "advisement meeting" with a dude at my bank, who tried to convince me he had the correct %ages I should place my assets in (all mediated by said bank, obv). (I still was in net debt though!) I was all very cynical and noncommittal, which is not due to my deep insight or anything, just because my current boss worked in a bank in the early 00s and has spilled much shit on how those outfits operate(d?). (My fave morsel: the guys who construct the deals don't actually inform the salespeople abt all potential downsides and builtin fees, as this may hurt their sales!)

I don't think this guy deserves much point-and-laugh, btw, though it is obv somewhat funny he writes on economics.

I don't know that that's a big surface narrative, given the "I wasn't duped" and the bit about how a banking professional's refinancing maneuvers actually worked to carve down some debt

it's about even someone who should have known better made some really dumb mistakes, which is always a story worth telling imo

Literal translation: quiddity = whatness

A weird thing about "quiddity" is that the first definition, "essence", seems to be the opposite of the second definition, "a trifling point". So it can either refer to the essence of something or a minor, trifling detail? Confusing. I have a feeling that it's a word that's rarely used correctly.

my point is that there are hundreds of thousands of people with stories just like this who don't write for the new york times and have six-figure salaries who are perhaps just a leeetle more representative of the mortgage fallout going on right now - my pointing and laughing is at the editors, not this poor schmuck

well, they wanted a personal, first-perosn story, so going with a new york times writer... kinda makes sense, no?

he will die at some point

can't write about that tho

That's a fair point, Tracer, but the fact that the Times can be willfully class-blind is hardly news to anyone who's ever read the Style section, for instance.

what is sadder loss or death

conceptually, I mean

loss is a kind of death, when u think about it??

imagine in that picture that the dog is dead but the money is lost

you can use death as a pillow but you can you the money you lost to get a bunch of people to type in the middle of the day

Oh you should check out Grocery Outlet. When they have what you need it's <3 <3 <3

I have to admit I don't quite see how you spend $400 a week at Trader Joe's (I do weekly TJ's shop for $250 tops with two adults two adolescent kids) but if I were to rigorously add up the dollar cost of all the food from all sources I cook for my family in a week it probably does come close to that figure

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Wednesday, 24 May 2023 20:03 (three hours ago) link

I calculated our total weekly spend to average out to about $400/wk for a family of four (kids both old enough to eat full meals and a good amount of snacks), including non-food groceries (paper products, cleaning products, various costco non-food items). We do buy some organic items and could certainly spend less if necessary. Eating more at home since COVID definitely adds to the budget, but also cuts the eating out budget.

Back in NJ my wife and I were spending close to $1200 a month, between the grocery store and Target. Cleaning products are expensive, and we needed a lot — more than we do in Montana — because, no joke, our hateful downstairs neighbors would cook greasy food all night just to spite us.

I still say $400 of Trader Joe's groceries is a lot to buy in a week. Maybe they're eating a lot of the prepackaged meals?

Both quid-ag and really depressing, made me cry story— tony artsy private school tells queer student with learning disabilities that he can’t return in the fall, and the worst happens . I was upset but doin fine and then the picture just fucked me up.

yeah wow, that story is brutal :(

this thread really brought the heat. very illuminating. and i think some of you did some fine work over time. for real! there is real thought on this thread. wait, there is a part two, right? i'm remembering the picture of the people holding rats, i think. too much quid-ag out there.

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

love to get an exclusive interview (and push notification!) that Bill de Blasio and Chirlane McCray Are Separating despite the fact that

They are not planning to divorce, they said, but will date other people. They will continue to share the Park Slope townhouse . . .

NYT wants the clicks but apparently not enough to say Bill de Blasio and Chirlane McCray Are Opening Up Their Marriage And Want You to Know They're DTF

Completely chicken to not swing while they were in office.

Why is this news

a very good question!

Had a good time backreading this and the other thread, made the past couple of days more bearable

Separating without intending to divorce has been a growing trend, particularly among people who were married for decades.

Divorce is fucking expensive. Why go through that when you can move out and start a new family across the street from your old one, like John Banville did?

I’m chuckling a bit over the griping over Trader Joe’s prices. Wait till you try Erewohn

gen z reinvents tapas

Is It a Meal? A Snack? No, It’s ‘Girl Dinner.’

Typical girl dinners may include some kind of fruit, a block of cheddar, sliced salami, a sleeve of fancy crackers and a dish of olives. Girl dinner is “both chaotic and filling,” as one TikTok commenter put it, requiring none of the forethought, cooking or plating demanded by an actual meal. As another commenter observed: It’s “no preparation just vibes.”

The trend started when Olivia Maher, a showrunner’s assistant currently out of work because of the writers’ strike, posted a video on TikTok this spring extolling the virtues of a humble, medieval-peasant-inspired assemblage that she called “girl dinner.”

“I think the concept of girl dinner came to me while I was on a hot girl walk with another female friend of mine,” Ms. Maher, 28, said from her apartment in Los Angeles.

. . .

Alana Laverty, a 28-year-old food content creator in London who immediately embraced the phrase, said she started making what she called “snack plates” for dinner during summers when it was too hot to even consider turning on a stove.

“I feel like cooking full meals just gets so repetitive and exhausting, especially in the summer,” Ms. Laverty said. “When dinner came around, we would just pick up one main cheese or one main protein and get a fresh loaf of bread and throw it all on the plate. It’s a really normal way of eating for me now.”

Ms. Laverty started posting her beautifully arranged snack plates on TikTok last year. When the girl dinner trend began to take off, she recalled, “I was like, ‘I have never resonated with something more.’”

or meze. or smorgasbord. or zakuski.

Yeah, I saw that yesterday... the ploughman's lunch gets a gender revamp

food content creator

barf

wait wait did i miss the article explaining wtf a "hot girl walk" is?

ah okay then:

What is a "hot girl walk," exactly? Lind told CBS News it's a four-mile outdoor mindfulness walk during which you're supposed to think of three things:

What you're grateful for
Your goals
And how you're going to achieve them
"And lastly, how hot you are, of course," Lind laughs.

NYT trolling Tik Tok for content oy vey

august came early this year

xp This particular idea of putting together a bunch of grazing food on a plate and eating it for dinner has been taken from ADHD support Internet places, btw.

I mean it is also just called a charcuterie board.

I invited eating hunched over a sink grunting

Half of my meals are this. I am a fridge forager since my wife buys twice as much food as we need.

get your nunchucks and your dad's keys -- i know where we can find protein

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/31/nyregion/geraldo-rivera-fox-erie-canal.html

The 36-foot luxury motorboat, with its polished mahogany hull and American flag waving from the stern, set off from East Hampton on a recent Sunday morning, heading toward the tip of downtown Manhattan and passing beneath airplanes, bridges, thunderstorms and, eventually, a glorious blue sky. The trip would take the boat, named Belle, within view of the Statue of Liberty en route to the Hudson River and, finally, Lake Erie.

But first, she needed to navigate a narrow stretch of water that has haunted sailors for centuries: Hell Gate, a tidal strait named by Dutch explorers in the 1600s, where the currents of the East River, Harlem River and the Long Island Sound converge.

In just a few harrowing moments, Belle churned through the rough waters, and her crew exhaled.
“That was definitely hair-raising,” said the captain, Geraldo Rivera, his own tresses (and mustache) looking wind-tousled.

not the nyt but we still get the new yorker delivered and i have a weird post-pandemic aversion to it but whenever i pick it up - and yes i realize its the new yorker and its mascot wears a big top hat and a monocle - but i feel like they have just gone full speed ahead into some rarified peak capitalism world of ugh. these profiles that are just wide-eyed recitations of some rich guy's WILD exploits and all these weird justifications for excessive wealth. so, unfortunately, i can't unsee it and every page of the thing just seems like a capitalist apologia. maybe i'm just sensitive. taken for granted privilege is alive and well there. the times is so frequently ugh that i could probably post links here daily. there is a frantic nero-fiddling quality to conspicuous consumption now. this could be it. spend it while ya got it. or start a kicky little non-profit on the side. or buy a yacht. whatevs.

The rich have always been the legendary heroes of NY (in their own minds).

Did not even know this was a thing. You too can clone your dog for the simple cost of 50K!

Who gets the cloned dog in the divorce?

Some winners in this article:

They Fled City Jobs. Now, It’s Time for Farm Prom. A group of young urbanites gave up desk jobs to become farmers. They have earned the harvest party.

There was an oyster farmer with his date, a sometime organic-farm-stand cashier in a vintage fur, and a sungold-tomato grower in a plastic prom-king crown. At D.J. decks set atop a bale of hay was a flower farmer in a silver gown, bopping her head, which was topped with the Carhartt beanie she wears to work the fields.

But these farmers were not tilling the fields of America’s heartland.

Outside the barn doors were beach houses and wineries and the seaside resorts of Eastern Long Island. Few of the farmers stomping work boots on the dance floor came from agrarian roots. Most were corporate or academic refugees, who in recent years said they found new meaning in growing things.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/nyregion/farmer-prom-long-island.html

hrrruuuughggggghhhhhhnnnnnngggghhhh

Peter Treiber Jr., 35, an artist and vegetable grower on whose farm the dance took place

Google sez it's actually his father's farm, purchased after retiring from the family insurance brokerage.

insufferable savages

F you and your beanie

Ain’t gonna work on daddy’s farm no more

reminds me of the new yorker article on the fabulous new trend of FORAGING. the irony of rich people digging for edible plants when most of the world has been doing it forever lost on the people involved. omg, can you believe it, there's actual FOOD in the woods. and then the flood of wild mushroom photos on social media was unleashed.

don't get me wrong, i hate them too, but i'm honestly glad for rich people that they're discovering "growing stuff". presumably they are actually doing some growing themselves. not going to click thru and read about it though lol.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/20/style/class-of-palm-beach-tiktok-instagram-wealth.html

What the ultra rich wear to the grocery store