Finally?? The 1% attempts to lose touch with their past the moment they come into money.
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Well, in the past tiffany’s made lovely, pointless things that cost a lot of money, made with care and extreme expertise. Crazy-fine glass eggs and lamps, jewelry etc.
Now they’re selling mass produced crapware made out of silver.
Imagine a rich persons home filled with this junk, now imagine that same home with high priced gomi from the 20th century. A very different culture appears, one connected to the preceding victorian and georgian eras.
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It’s not real yarn, it’s a model of a yarn ball made from sterling silver (which is even more useless).
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looks closer
Indeed… entirely useless
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That ended well, didn’t it? Something about eating a cake?
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If you want to talk about losing touch, check out the $365 faux military surplus “anarchist” jacket at Barney’s:
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My guess is it isn’t knittable. Knitting fine wire is a thing; I’ve crocheted some tiny granny square earrings with it. Anything thicker would be more of an artist’s project.
The scraps? Melt them down? Make a cat toy?
I spend way too much time knitting and crocheting (man, I’d love a loom so I could weave . . .) and there is some way expensive yarn around, and yarn with metal in it if acrylic, cotton, linen, or wool doesn’t suit you. I’d skip that silver stuff. Who wants a tarnished sweater?
edited to actually address the question
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Oh Mindy… How absolutely common of you! So refreshing and delightful! You’re so good at this!
(we’re still on for golf tomorrow right? Make sure you bring that diamond encrusted platinum putter of yours.)
But yeah, “everyday” is kind of a weird categorization for things that clearly are meant as markers of extreme wealth.
My thoughts on that “yarn” are that it’s not worth it unless it weighs roughly 580ozt (assuming sterling silver).
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Sticking with the old ‘desireable, producible, useful’ venn diagram and the ‘Time has 9 eyes and 11 elbows’, thanks. I mean, there’s the mailing list card for when they show the ‘excruciatingly banal’ and ‘Unshippable TTY font cartridges’ collections that look just like wirewrap cards done over in rhodium and paste wax. If you turn it over, it’s a pretty underground vibe about the music of the flyback transformer and flatbed scanner.
You go to that, you’re going to be allergic to real yarn; but you get something to hum while pressure-washing.
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Loose touch with their past? Not at all. The rich have always had a thing for playing at being little people who enjoy the simple things in life, way back to Marie Antoinette and her hobby farms, and probably well before that. This is entirely business as usual.
That ball will only be remotely interesting after it’s tarnished for a good century.
Use it to enrich U-235?
https://hubpages.com/education/The-Manhattan-Project-and-The-Borrowed-Silver
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I have such an urge now to play Hit the Road again for the 100th time. Should be bumming around in my GOG library anyway. Ah what the hell, I’ll do it.
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when the yarn sells out the sliver pitchforks go on sale
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Or silver. It doesn’t say how heavy this ball is, but $9,000 worth of 92.5% sterling silver weighs 17.8 kilograms or 39.2 pounds. Even pure 100% silver is only at $544 per kg. Frankly, it better be solid, because even then, assuming it’s about a 10 to 15 pound ball, they’re charging well over a 100% markup over their materials costs. And the only way the buyer could ever manage to sell it without eating a colossal loss is to find some other rich sucker on eBay or the like. Because silver buyers will give you the current silver price at most. If it is hollow, then the ripoff becomes an expensive lesson in the square-cube law.
Sort of a grand-slam breakfast at Tiffany’s?
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I hear Paul Manafort bought five.
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Just the usual reminder that almost everyone here reading this is part of the global 1% ($34K household income).
Those that I consider rich may be first up against the wall when the revolution comes, but I certainly expect that I’ll be up there the second day, probably pleading “but I’m not rich! It’s just you people don’t count.”
I’d rather fight (= publish near useless commentary and vote every few years) for 60% marginal tax rate at a household income of 75K than complain about what I and the even richer are wasting their money on.
And yes, while I have the money to burn on non-essentials, I will occasionally splurge $90 on useless artwork that apparently also functions as a symbol of just how little I care about those less well off than myself.
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'Tis true; our middle class has riches beyond the dreams a huge percentage of the world’s population. And looking at what my peasant ancestors would have owned? Or not; being serfs, they likely owned very little. A warm shelter and clothes, and a full belly would have been luxurious to some.
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You know me… common people and all that.
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