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

"the narrow-band audience profile"

vs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/business/ben-smith-new-york-times.html

“There are 200 million people who are college educated, who read in English, but who no one is really treating like an audience, but who talk to each other and talk to us,” Ben Smith said. “That’s who we see as our audience.”

the observer really had some great, fun writing too it should be said. yeah maybe not a great comparison actually xpost

I still don't get that Ben Smith quote but if he's really saying "I have hired the best journalists in India and we're going to develop an amazing media property there with worldwide reach" more power to him I guess

‘Nothing Will Be the Same’: A Prison Town Weighs a Future Without a Prison
After a decade of efforts that reduced inmate populations, California is closing prisons. A town whose economy is built on incarceration wants to keep one open.

economy is built on incarceration

It's going to be the new "mines/factories/etc" closing for a lot of rural America, particularly as many places— even conservative areas— reevaluate mass incarceration, or at least strive to make it more streamlined.

For years, rural towns with little to no industrial base, aging populations, and a mostly aged agricultural and extractive economy in California have relied on prisons to survive, even when evidence shows that many of the jobs in new prisons go to people already working in prisons. That is, there is no meaningful employment gain when a new prison is built, though there is a net benefit to other area businesses. There is vast collusion between prison companies, guard unions, the state, and local civics orgs to bring prisons to small, struggling areas, fill those prisons with people from coastal cities, and talk about a revived economy, when really the logic is more akin to hedging one's bets on a monocrop, except the crop is human beings. Eventually, the system will collapse, and the whole reason for the town's existence will be shattered.

Just another reason to be against prisons.

There's a fair amount about the prisons in Susanville in Ruth Gilmore Wilson's 'The Golden Gulag,' which I highly, highly recommend to anyone who wants a radical and truly mind-bending look into the California incarceration complex and its culture.

I will say that I have driven through, and it is really a small, one-street town nestled in the foothills of the northern Sierra. Beautiful and old and sort of charming, despite the honky death cult vibes. There's a brewery that makes a great double IPA up there that hasn't found distribution outside of Northern California, I think about that beer all the time because I used to be able to buy a 24oz bottle of it for $3.50 and feel pretty loaded.

a friend of mine grew up in susanville, both his parents are COs

golden gulag is super wild and insightful, def worth reading

There was a time when small towns in the US competed for prisons, which were seen as non-polluting sources of reliable government-funded jobs. The kind of 'clean' new industry that would help keep shops open on main street.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/01/08/cats-took-vitamix-hostage/

The couple, who married in 2016, are accustomed to seeing their cats jump on boxes and sit on piles of things. The animals usually lose interest after a day or two at most. Not this time.

Treats, decoy boxes and toys have been used, all for naught. The Gerson-Neeveses moved the box to a less-central area of the kitchen, hoping the change in geography would end the stalemate. But a cat remained on the box, on guard at all times. Jessica got up in the middle of the night to try to claim the box. Occupied.

“There is just something about the Vitamix box that just has really held their attention,” Jessica said. “At this point, it’s turned into something so much bigger than us.”

People frequently ask why the couple doesn’t just take the cats off the box. These are clearly dog owners. This is not how cats work.

“We’re far enough into it, I can’t move them now,” said Nikii, 38, a utility billing clerk. “They’re committed, we’re committed. ”

They Had Reasons for Leaving the City. So Why Are Their Friends Mad?
When Covid hit, some New Yorkers abandoned the city for good. They left some angry friends.

these seem to just be stories of people with bad friends?

We lost a couple of friends when we moved. One I really got the sense felt abandoned by us. I don't really blame people for it or consider them bad friends, although it definitely shows they weren't our most loyal friends. I think the whole situation was kind of traumatic for people, suddenly having everything shut down, being cooped up, scared out of your mind, and then on top of that some of your friends just leave. I get why some people wouldn't respond well to that. FWIW both the families we lost as friends had this very hardcore city-for-life mentality. One was raised in Queens and lived across from the apartment they grew up in.

One of them also treated our daughter like shit after we moved though (too long to explain but involved a situation that came up with the kids on messenger), and that was not cool.

ffs

people are weird

Maybe I'm being too forgiving, idk, but it was a strange time. It wasn't like we could be like "Hey everyone, we're leaving next month, having a party to say goodbye."

The number of people I know who have effectively ended their friendships with many people because they had kids during the pandemic is larger than the people I know who moved.

wait who are the friendship enders? the kid-havers or the non-kid havers?

i wonder if we'll get that one sorted

ime new parents are desperate for social contact.. it’s only later that we become lame

it's not that my friends became "lame" it's more than they no longer had the energy to be a friend because they were tapped out from caring for their offspring

it's def not a judgement of coolness or not so much as a lack of resources; ime they only truly come back once the kids are late high school afaict (from experience)

When we first had kids it’s not like I didn’t want to see my old friends, but it just took way more energy and logistics and planning to do anything social other than just roll across the street to the playground (even that required packing a bag). So it was hard to link up with no kid friends who were still more in the zone or just texting me on a whim to come to a bar in an hour. Less that way now.

I'm simply pointing out that in many cases, I see friends who don't have kids but live on the other side of the country more often than I see friends with kids who live across town.

I'm not being judgmental, just merely stating a fact— and also registering how irrationally hurt and pissed off it makes me when my friends have kids, because it often seems like them saying, "yeah, all those relationships we built for years, bye bye now."

Just know that your newly parental friends would most likely love nothing more than to go out for a drink with you. (They could really, really use a drink.) Not trying to solicit sympathy for the breeders, but they miss you too.

I know. They shouldn't have had kids, then.

It seems like a fun idea at the time ...

i like hanging out with my kid more than i like hanging out with most of my friends fwiw

https://i.imgur.com/ynVQciR.jpg

CONSUME

here's the latest

Now here’s the plannn

tbf, that is my epitaph

Eat, Watch, Read & More
And Bingo was his name-O

I swear before when I opened that image it was an entirely different imgur, a screenshot of a post from somewhere by a guy saying he was affluent and had top tier health insurance and still had to deal with all kinds of fucked up shit, and that we should have universal healthcare, and it was a 100% OTM post and not quid-aggy at all so I was very confused. Still not sure what happened.

"On a chilly Tuesday afternoon this month, James Marsh stopped by a Chipotle near his suburban Chicago home to grab something to eat.

It had been a while since Mr. Marsh had been to Chipotle — he estimated he goes five times a year — and he stopped cold when he saw the prices.

“I had been getting my usual, a steak burrito, which had been maybe in the mid-$8 range,” said Mr. Marsh, who trades stock options at his home in Hinsdale, Ill. “Now it was more than $9.”"

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/business/fast-food-prices-inflation.html

Marsh lives in a $1.1m house and got $16,000 in forgivable PPP loans for his one-person business

Ahhhh
AaaahhhHHHHHHH
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH pic.twitter.com/WbbE57iRFY

— Holly Michels (@hollykmichels) February 15, 2022

via https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/realestate/home-buying-regret.html

a century from now, if humankind and schooling are still around, this will be reproduced in a sidebar of a high school history textbook chapter titled "Prelude to Revolution," like a Thomas Nast cartoon of Boss Tweed.

"house poor" = not being able to go to Rome for three days because "hungry fpr pasta" JFC they are trolling everyone.

Man, having trouble finding a house in my "budget," guess I'll just up my budget by 55%.

This can’t be real

Have Fun Being House Poor

Hungry for pasta was hungry 4 ass’ little brother

"Went to Rome cause I was hungry for pasta" is like a rejected lyric from Watch the Throne

Went to Rome cause I was hungry for pasta
Up against the wall when the workers said basta

Don’t let Kanye start rapping about pasta puttanesca.

Oh to be a childless Amazon executive

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmW_L2jKRTY

https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/02/17/restaurant-service-problems-pandemic/

excellent example of "I know it would sound like I was an asshole if I complained about this but..."

"No flutes for us" would be a good title for this thread

I definitely agree with one part of that: QR code menus are the work of Satan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/25/realestate/new-yorkers-return-nyc-pandemic.html

For Andrew Joseph, the unexpected challenge of rural living was summed up in a single word: beavers. Mr. Joseph was enchanted by baby beavers swimming in the brook on his four-acre property in the town of Saugerties, N.Y., where he and his partner, Paul Pearson, have been sheltering since March 2020.

“I quickly learned that they’re horrible, nasty creatures that wreak havoc and destruction,” said Mr. Joseph, the head of a Manhattan public relations firm who still maintains a home in Harlem.