...are starting to ponder the unthinkable: a move to the suburbs.

But only if they can bring a piece of the borough with them.

Copper wiring?

More on Ari Wallach: http://www.fastcompany.com/1830306/ari-wallachs-career-solution-become-real-life-problem-solver

2: "Permalancers"? "Externship"? "Chief Innovation Officer"? Who are these people?

2: Punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch punch kick punch kick kick kick punch.

Leveragers.

"I hope the doctor permalanced that boil, I don't wanna go back".

When people have kids, they move to the suburbs?!?!?

You should mix up your combinations more, Flip. Maybe throw in some knees, too.

How many houses or streets it takes before a town begins to be a town: however many Hastings-on-Hudson has.

Kieran is shockingly funny. Fact.

2: OMG:

I grew up in a home steeped in conflict, watching black-and-white World War II movies on TV.

All the rock stars I know now are freelancers and perma-lancers, but there's no mechanism for them to work together as teams

This is totally the problem with permalance work. Totally.

8: I know of martial arts.

8: Up-down-up-left-select-A adds the permalance to your weapons inventory and lets you skip right to the boss, which is Ari Wallach's disembodied, gibbering head floating inside the Salesforce cloud.

Rule 0: somewhere you might want to live is about to be declared unhip.

Rule 1: move to that place anyway, because that is probably a great place to live.

Rule 2: Move to San Francisco, trust me, cooler than Brooklyn.

Rule 3: profit!

After reading the article linked in 2 more carefully than it deserved, I am very dismayed to share a name with this person.

I'm in favor of people making more nice places to live, instead of desperately piling into the one anointed place, but that was still a very annoying article.

Also, now I'm embarassed to have one of the named articles.

Kid's found a niche, more power to him.

And it's a fine thing for those suburbs to get some new energy, and some new tastes, from the city. It's not like yoga and artisinal soap were invented in Brooklyn, or that the supply of soap or yoga in Brooklyn is diminished by these people starting up little businesses elsewhere.

I guess I'm just in a positive mood. Who cares what stupid shit realtors say to journalists?

Saw the Occupy documentary tonight. Like the movement, it ended up being better (but more diffuse) than I thought it would be.

(Of the films about NYC, I plan to see Central Park Five. Has anyone seen any of the others?)

I'm sort of with CC in 19. Sounds like he has a wonderful life.

... Though I've now read the original NYT article, and it's made me very sad in a way I find hard to articulate.

When people have kids, they move to the suburbs?!?!?

Of course, Haven't you seen The Stepford Wives?

Healy is a naturalised American, therefore not qualified to be President; can he be Secretary for the Interior?

When people have kids, they move to the suburbs?!?!?

Since about 1993, when white people who went to decent schools have had kids in New York, they have moved to Brooklyn.

A few of them.

23.2: See Kissinger.

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Speaking of items in the NYT, this one might resonate here but with less uniform reactions.

And ancillary to the debate, the one of the folks who "remain in secure, tenured positions" is 85-years old and at university of interest here. I sure hope he is not taking up a slot that someone younger could have (or maybe I'm just an ageist).
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26: At the height of Watergate there was briefly a period after Agnew resigned before Ford was confirmed (Wikipedia says about 2 weeks) that with Kissinger (and I think either one other vacancy near the top or another naturalized citizen) everyone lower on the ladder was 3 steps closer to the presidency than "normal. National Lampoon used it to spin a story where it was all the machinations of Claude S. Brinegar to seize the presidency.

maybe I'm just an ageist

Loads of law enforcement jobs and the military have mandatory retirement ages, I don't see why academics couldn't have it as well at say, age 70.

We did historically, but now it's illegal. There are exceptions in the law for physically demanding jobs like yours.

I didn't know that. God what nonsense. At 85 he's lucky to wake up each day. Academia, your appeal burns ever brighter.

Mandatory retirement went from 65 to 70 in the 80s, and was eliminated entirely in 1994 when an exception to the 1986 law was allowed to expire.

There ought to be a way to prevent the humorless from invoking 'parody' as a first amendment defense.

27: Like with Swartz, my main reaction is "wait, that's a felony?" I mean sock puppetry, trolling, and sending fake emails are wrong, but jail time? Isn't this more a few misdemeanors, a fine, and a restraining order territory?

There's trolling, and then there's this.

This time, in addition to using sock puppets, Raphael Golb said, he created an e-mail account with the address of Larry.Schiffman@gmail.com, and wrote to Dr. Schiffman's employers, colleagues and students at N.Y.U., "confessing" to having plagiarized Norman Golb in developing his own ideas about the scrolls.

And, no jail time was apparently an option.

Mr. Golb later rejected a plea deal that would have kept him out of jail.

34 -- As with Schwartz, he'd have had to plead guilty to get a 'common sense' sentence, rather than the one society has actually imposed for the conduct engaged in. You want common sense, you gotta offer common sense: admit to the facts of what you've done. (As advised by legal counsel, obviously . . .)

I'm sort of with CC in 19. Sounds like he has a wonderful life.

... Though I've now read the original NYT article, and it's made me very sad in a way I find hard to articulate.

Both of these were my reaction. I skimmed the article, thought that he came across as annoying but also that there was nothing wrong the fact that he's done well for himself.

But I also found it depressing, I think for what it says about class. That is partially what Blume is getting at in 12 -- that he's contributing to a culture that is bad for the majority of people.

But I also think there is something offensive about people who enjoy enormous class benefits also wanting to claim to be hip and insurgent -- even if they are, ultimately their class privilege is more important.

(and I think either one other vacancy near the top or another naturalized citizen)

It looks like it was the vacancy of the Attorney General position, after Elliot Richardson resigned. Nixon's cabinet in 1973 were all US-born except George Romney, who resigned January 20th, and probably counted as natural-born anyway.

All Synthesis is, is myself and my partner running the back end. It's like cloud innovation; we're really trying to build a next-generation consultancy . . .

Also, this makes me think of the ad agency parody from Slings And Arrows.

something offensive about people who enjoy enormous class benefits also wanting to claim to be hip and insurgent

Have lower-class insurgencies really been more common than lower-upper-class insurgencies? I'd say the latter are as common and more likely to be successful. Likewise, really, with the cultural re-ordering that I take as `hip'.

contributing to a culture that is bad for the majority of people.

But I agree with this totally (and would apply the test to hip insurgencies, too).

Have lower-class insurgencies really been more common than lower-upper-class insurgencies?

I don't understand what this means: what's meant by "insurgency" here? What would a lower-class insurgency be? (I'm thinking, erm, the labor movement, civil rights movement.)

Ari Wallach doesn't appear to me to be an insurgent in any way.

Have lower-class insurgencies really been more common than lower-upper-class insurgencies?

Thinking about this, perhaps I can re-phrase my objection more clearly. Part of what's grating about the interview is the, "I am such a unique snowflake" aspect to it. You may be a unique snowlflake but if your job specifically requires being able to cultivate connection with and sell to people controlling large amounts of money you are deeply involved with power structures in this country.

Putting it that way, the interview may not be entirely his fault. That just may be outside of the scope of what fast company is interested in publishing. Consider this Q & A.

Is it possible for everyone to have the kind career you have, though?

In 2012, no. The model of an evolving career is not possible for everyone. . . .

Imagine if he'd added, "I've been very lucky. Honestly the economy is terrible for a lot of people right now and is particularly bad for most creative people. I happen to be doing things that people with money were interested in, and that's gotten me to a point where I have the freedom to be more experimental, but most people don't get that." Do you have any doubt that fast company would have edited that part of the answer out?

The dude clearly lacks an autocockblocking bullshit detector. I feel like mine has definitely impeded my progress. I won't say I'm okay with that, but I'm thankful for the relative absence of bullshit in my professional life.

As for the original article, however, I would love to live in a small-to-medium-size town with good restaurants, non-chain coffee shops, and a train to New York. I suspect that I am not the only unfoggedtariatorian who would.

You may be a unique snowlflake but if your job specifically requires being able to cultivate constitutes actively courting connection with and sell to people controlling large amounts of money you are deeply involved with power structures in this country.

Fixed that.

Also the dude counts The Great Schlep among his credits so kudos to that.

As for the original article, however, I would love to live in a small-to-medium-size town with good restaurants, non-chain coffee shops

Oakland?

Northampton? Cambridge? (I actually don't know what Cambridge is like these days.)

Oakland has a train to Chicago, where you transfer to a train to New York.

Is there any reliable analysis of the actual impact of that 'great schlep' campaign?

I love it when I read articles that say "they were able to find something so cheap at only $860,000!"

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Interesting Supreme Court case coming up, on Monsanto's control over its genetically modified seeds. Bonus issues to do with intellectual property law and something called the "exhaustion" exception in patent law.

Huh. This stuff has been a thorn in the side of farmers for some time; glad to see it's going all the way to SCOTUS.

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Is there any reliable analysis of the actual impact of that 'great schlep' campaign?

TALK TO THE CLOUD, MOTHERFUCKER PROSPECTIVE CLIENT.

parsimon, I was thinking of (say) the labor movement or Haitian independence instead of American independence or the Fronde. (No parallels intended.)

NickS, to be fair, this does point at systemic problems and alludes to his luck:

"In 2012, no. The model of an evolving career is not possible for everyone. I went to state school and had no student debt. I did well at a couple of dot-coms. [...] we've done away with the kinds of mentorships and rotations that would let people get the flux-iness out of our system without so much risk."

I have a couple friends with careers like this, and we've never gotten very far debating whether *everyone* worked like this (e.g., fifteen hours a week after a stint at a big firm), *most* of us would be worse off. One of them seems to have no alternate-reality thoughts, he's just perfectly plugged in to what people will actually pay for now; and the other is an idealist who thinks we're going to transform to a Internet-mediated Jeffersonian idyll of skilled independence.

I think.

I think most people would be fantastically happy to be working 15 hrs/week at the compensation the former McKinsey woman is making--it would certainly beat the 20 hrs/week of $15/hr proofreading I'm doing, for example--but, among other things, not many people have the qualification of having worked at McKinsey, etc.

Point to you, trapnel. Even so, do you suppose her household would want to run on two jobs like that, or do they already have one job with predictability or benefits or both?

I wouldn't be surprised if the rich world was already automated to the point that we could keep everyone clothed, fed and tolerably amused on an average of 15 hours of work a week each, but we insist on pretending we have to work more -- including irrelevant but required degrees, face-time (and Internet time) in the office, etc etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if the rich world was already automated to the point that we could keep everyone clothed, fed and tolerably amused on an average of 15 hours of work a week each

At the average US wage, that's $18,000 a year. 15% of US households - not individuals, households - are already on that or less.

Hastings-on-Hudson is a village, in a Wittgensteinian sort of way

North Hackney is a village, in a Hobbesian sort of way.

I was thinking about whether we'd actually have enough stuff and services, ajay, not money-distributed-by-our-current-system. Catchy calculation, though.

I'm going to start an unfogged cloud consultancy. I'll sell services to rich people and pose their questions as ATMs. I'll kick back everyone else's share of the profits as subsidies to foggedycons.

unfogged cloud consultancy

So transgressively paradoxical.

Is there any reliable analysis of the actual impact of that 'great schlep' campaign?

I have reliably analyzed that it resulted in 1-2 funny Sarah Silverman videos.

Speaking of consulting, I shaved my beard but left a mustache. Now I'm trying to find a mustache that doesn't say "failed hipster" or "porn actor" or "police." How do I do that? If that isn't possible, how do I get one that says "detective lieutenant" or "porn actor who isn't completely sleazy."

63: I am of absolutely no help to you here. My current 'stache is solid on the first two and hints at the third. (It's a medium-weight Hulk Hogan/biker.)

Now I'm trying to find a mustache that doesn't say "failed hipster" in a Wittgensteinian sort of way.

63: you could always ask these guys

63.last: wear an ill-fitting suit or be twenty years younger, respectively.

66: Kaspersky says that's a malicious site.

67: None of my suits fit very well because I haven't bought one in a dozen years.

Now I'm picturing Moby as DeNiro in Copland.

Yep. That's pretty much my mustache, but I have lighter hair.

It's probably actually closer to that guy in Parks and Recreation.

63 via 66: I think the Mike Schmidt might be the way to go.

Moby is Duke Silver!

Re 63, this ought to keep you out of either category.

63: long curls to either side.

I was sort of thinking maybe harvey keitel in bad lieutenant had a mustache and that you should go for that, but I see he was clean shaven. so just modify the deniro-in-copland mustache a tiny bit so it looks like harvey kietel's in bad lieutenant would have if he had had a mustache, and I think you're ok. so, mmm. can you do bushier and going down sliiightly further? fuck, that's not helping with a or b no, deniro's kind of great, just stick with it. and get a new suit. or more expensive jeans. some of those expensive jeans are the real deal, yo, they will make your ass look amazing.

I don't really have anywhere to wear a suit.

No body?

You could go for the Rooster Hannigan.

I put my current mustache in the Flickr pool. It's not quite note-perfect enough for hipster, but maybe in the orbit of failed hipster.

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In light of the thread (that's now dead/moved on) about that photography project the other day, this post by Bridget Callahan about photographing herself. Also this older post. And the gay magic of the South.

Mostly I just really like Bridget Callahan and wish she would hang out on Unfogged so I could read her in comments.
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JL!

nosflow!

I'm here a lot, just not commenting. Too tired.

82: after a while of seeing them side by side, you realize that every single image up there is of an entirely different girl. And not a single one of them is really me. That's something you can't capture. Silly aborigines, you had nothing to worry about, and now we're going to forget what you looked like eventually

I like.

nosflow, if you are reading, last November I was in Hyde Park for the first time in 17 years. It was very strange. I don't know anyone there anymore. I went to the places I used to live and looked at them. A couple of times I sat on the steps and called people who didn't care but couldn't refuse my call (to my assistant: "Hey, guess where I am? Right outside where I used to live!"). I thought about stopping into Powell's but didn't; I regret that. I did go to the Renaissance Society, the Oriental Institute, and the Smart Museum. At the last, I totally did the old man thing: I saw a young undergraduate working as a guard who reminded me of the ones I knew when I was there. I walked up to her and asked, "Do you work here?" and when I said yes, I repled, "I had your job 17 years ago!" I've never felt so old and been so ok with it.

Didn't do much else. Seminary Co-op was closed! Renovations or something, and I was there at the bookstore I dream about the one week it's shut down. I caught my train, ignored.

I s/b she. Gender confusion, obviously.

Speaking of the flickr pool, there seems to have been an early/pre- babysplosion entry.

Seminary Co-op was closed! Renovations or something

They moved to a new building. Gone is the cramped labyrinth of yesteryear. It made me unreasonably sad when I found out they were moving.

Yeah, but did it have to be that week that they were closed? I felt so cheated. Oh well. I didn't make it to the Chicken Shack, either.

88: M/tch and Kraab had a child... and it was Smearcase!

there seems to have been an early/pre- babysplosion
Condoms can help solve that problem.

Also baseball statistics, I'm told.

And I endorse 83.

89 is fucked up. Good things should stay the same and not change.

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Bikesnob is on this article like [ attribute ] on [ common object ]:

Wait, does she mean the kids had tattoos? Either way, it's entirely possible that the families she's mistaking for fellow hipsters are actually what some people refer to as "white trash." See, the trendy people of Brooklyn have been copying that look for years, so they're understandably confused when confronted with the real thing. Anyway, Mr. McNeil and Ms. Miziolek and Denim and Bowie have now moved to a great big house, and presumably the stork will bring a Corduroy and a Mott The Hoople to fill those extra bedrooms

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Is there anything I should know about Wittgenstein that would make any of this more comprehensible to me?

Three of his four brothers committed suicide.

He was in the same class at school with Hitler. (pic.)

Speaking of the flickr pool, there seems to have been an early/pre- babysplosion entry.

If it's what I am thinking of, that one isn't in the pool per se.

Now the Party Rats pic, which is in the pool, is blowing my mind.

I liked this essay on a videogames' balance between Romantic irony and authenticity. I have no idea if it's plausible, since it compares three or more things I don't get to start with, but it seems formally similar to the hipsturbia article. (Sadly, it doesn't mention Wittgenstein. Levi-Strauss and Camus, though.)

I believe that any Wittgenstein at this poit would be redundant.

I had a conversation with someone I dated in high school recently. She is happy, doing a career I never imagined for her, and married. Living in the same place. The married part is interesting because I went though a period where everyone I dated broke up with me because she was in to women. I've gotten over that, and seem to have a steady, if long-distance, partner. Although that might change in May (X. Trapnel, fair warning.)

The interesting part is that I only have one failure, in that someone I used to date that not only do I have no desire to talk to her, it is reciprocal. That one was when I was trying to do the settle-down, maybe get married thing, which obviously didn't work. I still have no interest in marriage or kids, and this relationship has lasted almost as long as one where I was building a business with my lover. I still talk to them fairly regularly, with one exception, and one is a neighbor, sort-of, and I help with her son, when it works out.

I'm not sure I'm adding anything to this thread at this point other than confessional. I think there are relationships that don't involve the atomic family model, or the fuck-friends model, that work. And you don't need to be fucking someone to care about their life and family.

Alternately, maybe you just build up connections that you service until you die.

Mostly I just really like Bridget Callahan and wish she would hang out on Unfogged so I could read her in comments.

She followed my twitter off of my pseud, so we're doing something right. Keep up the good work, JL. Come say hi, Bridget!

Although that might change in May (X. Trapnel, fair warning.)

It's good to know about another Unfogged pairing, but that' a weird way to hint that you're going to break up with someone.

No, not at all - it was notification that we are probably adding someone to the household. Trapnel and I are not dating, we are housemates, and all is well.

Although perhaps it is a bit strange to do that here. It seemed reasonable, because we first met here, and somehow the household doesn't manage to meet much in person.

I kinda hope this means x. trapnel moves in with Halford.

I'm glad this thread has been revivified, howsoever briefly that may last.

Partly that's because I also wanted to ask 104, but mostly it's because Grumbles had me smiling last night with 103. 103.3.1 also fits me to a T, and that was pleasant to think on; 103.4 made me wistful for that in-between, though I haven't done much of it, and that was also pleasant.

I actually thought it was advance notice to prepare for the coming duel with our other roommate for the right to remain. THERE CAN BE ONLY THREE!

* N.B. I did not actually think that.

I kinda hope this means x. trapnel moves in with Halford.

TRUE FACT: although SF and LA are both in California, they're actually rather far apart!

109: If it's meant to be, I'm sure you guys can find a way.

Shack up in the middle. Cayucos, ho!

Embrace the SLO-town movement.

I don't just want to live with Trapnel. I want to steal his soul.

Which isn't possible in Cayucos.