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

oh Aimless, you rational shoulder angel <3

personal quid/ag re NYTimes -- have they gotten really overzealous with paywalls lately? I feel like I get the "you've reached your limit of free articles" even when I haven't read a single article in weeks. FWIW I've noticed this on other sites too - I sometimes reach my "limit" of free articles on newspapers I basically never read, like I'll click some out of state daily and it says I'm already at my limit.

I think that’s a product of ad and cookie blockers.

Slate not NYTimes but: "I wish my family weren't giving me a gigantic house, it's really not to my taste"

https://slate.com/business/2021/12/in-laws-are-offering-their-ugly-house-what-to-do-if-you-dont-want-a-big-gift.html

lol, to be in the position when accepting a *house* is at the level of an etiquette dilemma, akin to accepting a hideous sweater or something. not something i will ever fully understand, but i can at least recognize the letter writer's feelings that they don't want to live in this dumb house in a dumb community with an awful commute. why not tell the inlaws to sell their mcmansion and just give you the cash? idk. two years is a long time to be miserable and resenting your husband's family every miserable day.

The lack of self-awareness in that letter is staggering

idk, I have some sympathy, even though I'll never be able to afford to buy a house. It sucks when you've saved up to buy the thing you want and then someone with more money helpfully swoops in gives you a thing you don't want instead, thus making it impossible for you to get the thing you do want. Doesn't suck as much as not having money or things in the first place, but it's an uncomfortable position to be in.

It sounds like they're in a slightly awkward in-between financial situation where they technically can afford to buy a house if one comes up in their price range and they get their application accepted, but they aren't financially secure enough to turn down a gift that's going to substantially change their day-to-day lives for the worse. Two years of 1-3 hour commutes each way sounds horrible, and there's no guarantee that the in-laws would be fine with them selling the house after two years - they might be stuck with it for a long time.

Right. Housing is not fungible. This is obviously a trivial example but you get the same idea, that a house is a house, and you get what you’re given, regardless of where you work and family and social life, from people who want to solve homelessness in LA by building houses three hours away from LA.

Also it kinda feels like an effort from the parents to compel the couple into a certain life that the parents want them to have but the couple doesn't and has already rejected.

And like the husband is maybe being a little bit blind to that because of the emotional baggage, which is exactly why manipulation is effective.

I suspect their wrong turn was writing in to a national media outlet and making themselves seem really tone-deaf to other people's challenges, but I don't think the dilemma is not valid.

I suspect I would loathe that letter writer for other bourgeois sins, but I’ve had a commute like that before and, honestly, I would give up at least $1m cash, and insult any family member necessary, to avoid going from walking to work to making that drive every work day for years of my finite life. Absolute hell.

I get the sympathy too, and this is not the house I would want to live in, but I also can't help noting that there are five sentences about how the house is tacky before the one sentence about how it would suck to have a long commute.

Absolutely. They seem to have a good situation and the parents want to completely ruin it in favor of a resource-hogging, unsustainable lifestyle that they used to value and now want to be rid of. Here, take this thing we don't want anymore and also we'll be super offended if you don't share our cultural values which you've already discarded? The in-laws sound like assholes.

Sorry that was an xp to nicole. Sure the OP is maybe a little tone-deaf altho imo the complaints about the nature of the house are more substantial than just tackiness (it's poorly designed for life, the yard would be a waste of time and resources, etc). Again I blame the in-laws for making poor life choices.

the response note about putting in time to avoid the capital gains tax seems pertinent

I mean it’s something they should think about but it’s not really relevant to the miss manners aspect of the problem. You still make a profit if you leave before two years and the house has gone up. You just make less.

well sure, probably never complain about this in earshot of media

You still make a profit if you leave before two years and the house has gone up.

You make a profit even if the house price goes down because you didn't pay for the house.

plus 2 years more savings for your own house because you aren't paying rent.

The tax consequences of being given a house seem pretty thorny. (Of course, GAH, yeah I know, like this is a problem that normal humans have)

Wouldn't renting it to someone else be an option? - that is, neither living in it nor selling it?

When I think about it a little more, I think I would have no qualms with the asker if the scenario were "my in-laws offered my husband and me $500K if I committed myself to attending their church and sending my kids to their Sunday school for religious instruction," so the question is, why do I perceive the actual scenario differently, and should I?

https://i.imgur.com/H3Qv5zq.png

OH EVERYONE WAS SURPRISED

this is an understated classic of the genre imo

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/17/realestate/right-at-home-kitchen-reno.html

I can see it

On a very different income level, I'm kind of feeling that? I don't want to tell the neighbors how much my bf's kitchen reno cost because they've never spent that much on anything in their lives (they are remarkably frugal by choice even now that they don't have to be). But then, they're not asking. Would totally tell anyone who wanted to know.

We think it was about $30k btw in case anyone was wondering. Most of which was something of a windfall, saved up for the purpose.

my rule of thumb is that if anyone complains to me about renovating their kitchen, i refuse to take any complaint they have seriously ever again

People should just be content with pots and fire

i mean i understand construction in your house is a bitch and dealing with contractors sucks and its expensive and you don't quite get what you want and etc
but you own a home and you have money to spend to fix your house up to your specifications
so you are allowed to be unhappy
but maybe don't complain about it as if it's the death of a pet

here's a winner
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/14/magazine/akita-dog-ethics.html

My granddaughter recently moved from her city apartment to our small town. She was having financial problems, and my husband and I decided to buy a small historic hotel in the hope that she could turn it into an artists’ retreat. She had always told us that it was one of her dreams.

In preparation for the move, my granddaughter brought her dog to stay for a week while she and her mother went back to finish packing. My granddaughter bought an Akita puppy during the Covid lockdown, and it became very attached to her. We learned that she had not tried to train or socialize it. We built a special kennel for it because it could not be put in the existing kennel with my daughter’s two dogs; they got into a fight on a previous visit. The first special kennel we built was only four feet tall, and the dog jumped out. So we built a new kennel with six-foot-tall panels. The dog chewed through the wire mesh and escaped. The next day, when my daughter, grandson and granddaughter decided to take all the dogs for a run, the dogs got in a fight. My grandson was bitten while trying to separate them and required medical attention. Because my granddaughter needed to leave the dog while she and her mother returned home to pack, she decided to board it. The first night, the dog escaped and caused some destruction. Then it escaped again and did more damage. The kennel owner told my granddaughter that someone would have to come and pick up the dog. My husband and I had to drive an hour to get the dog. We constructed a secure pen with a roof so it could not escape. But it did, and then it got trapped in a room in the hotel we bought. It destroyed the curtains, the blinds, the bedding and an air-conditioner, and clawed the door and door frame, before crawling out a second-story window onto a roof and sliding off. The dog wound up at our daughter’s house a block away. I was upset and confronted my granddaughter upon her return. I said I did not want the dog in the house anymore.

My husband has worked with dog breeders. He says it would not be safe to allow the dog to stay, because if it escaped and injured someone, we could be liable. The dog growled at a neighbor who tried to catch it during one of its escapes. There are several Akita rescue groups in the area, and my husband wants my granddaughter to give the dog up. But she won’t, fearful that it might be euthanized. My granddaughter says she can’t stay without her dog, and her mother says that we are responsible for all of this turmoil because we changed the rules and that we should compromise. My daughter insists that the dog is just very attached to my granddaughter and is not vicious, and says that I just don’t like the dog. It’s true that it has growled at me, and I am afraid of it. What do you think? Name Withheld

me reaping: this sucks wtf

That story is like the opposite of burying the lede

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/17/dining/mary-paul-mccartney-vegan-yorkshire-pudding.html

Oh fuck off

That daughter sounds like a nightmare being enabled by absolutely everyone around her.

Shocked "we bought a hotel for our granddaughter" didn't dominate Twitter for 72 hours.

She can have a little historic hotel, as a treat

On a very different income level, I'm kind of feeling that? I don't want to tell the neighbors how much my bf's kitchen reno cost because they've never spent that much on anything in their lives (they are remarkably frugal by choice even now that they don't have to be). But then, they're not asking. Would totally tell anyone who wanted to know.

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Saturday, December 18, 2021 9:38 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

yeah it has nothing to do with income level at all imo, contractors and other professionals hold all the cards in terms of pricing and expertise and challenge you to shop around and find "the best deal" which oh yeah may then inform the quality of the work you get. this is why trusted referrals rule the day and even then are you getting the best deal? more likely you're getting someone who's professional and doesn't suck to deal with (which is more or less how i've chosen everyone who's done work on our house).

my partial kitchen reno (counters, backsplash tile, two new custom cabinets and a few other small things) cost about $15k.

"Marriage requires amnesia, a mute button, a filter on the lens, a damper, some blinders, some bumpers, some ear plugs, a nap," writes Heather Havrilesky for @NYTStyles. https://t.co/PlNaqEycp9

— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 26, 2021

Jesus. That article is some Christmas present to her husband. Though it doesn’t exactly seem like self-respect is a particularly cherished value in the family

doesn't she run an advice column? yikes

I don't know if this is really a quiddities, there's an expensive vacation in it but it's very much not the point

Rich person airing her drama in the paper of record = agonies

i’m being told this is a ‘humor piece’ in ‘the vein of david sedaris’

it’s not very ‘funny’ tho, is it

Neither is David Sedaris.

in her 20s she wrote the daily suck.com columns iirc

David Sedaris ime is a skillful writer and usually pretty successful at couching any stinging or mocking criticism of his family and partner in well-articulated and convincing affection for them (or at least he used to be… he’s sort of drowned in his own quiddities in the past couple decades). This woman is just bitter, cruel and playing out her family dysfunction in the most public forum

That piece was so assholish it made me reconsider stuff she'd written in the past that I'd liked.

That husband is currently writing a responsive piece for submission to the Times with the working headline “I Hate My Wife, As Well”

— Patrick Monahan (@pattymo) December 28, 2021

tbf, i kind of hate her husband too