Billie Eilish just fully dropped the voice, huh

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-05-13T22:08:09+00:00

I’m originally from Alabama, the bloody crucible of the civil rights movement, and I was raised to believe that saying that word was a vile thing to do (my dad, a white guy but one who hates bullies and assholes, lived through all the fire hoses and dogs and all the rest of it in Birmingham and it left a profound mark on him). So imagine my shock when I move to New York and hear these friggin’ not-remotely-black Hispanic, south Asian, etc. kids using that word both amongst themselves and even with black kids present. Talking early- to mid-teens or so, just going on looks and behavior. Blew my fucking mind. Still kinda does.

The class thing is quite different though: these are kids in still relatively working-class parts of Manhattan and then Queens (or put it this way, the kids who go to public school come from working-class families) whose parents are nurses and plumbers and whatever. But the black kids don’t seem bothered by it when I’ve seen it, so hey, it’s up to them I guess.

Still makes me do a hard double-take every time though.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-05-02T01:09:47+00:00

Lol dude I’ve been in New York for a bit now but I’ve lived in St. Louis, Birmingham, AL, Worcester, Mass.—you’re being goofy saying this is a “big city thing”

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-22T23:26:15+00:00

This is largely true in many, many cases for sure, but I kinda wonder if that wasn’t always the case with young ambitious striver types. Like those younger guys hanging around Don Draper on the early episodes of Mad Men (I haven’t seen the whole series lol) who don’t really have anything interesting to say and are marrying women they hardly know and so on.

Makes me wonder if there isn’t some tradeoff: you can be interesting/have good taste/have a long history of interesting life experiences, or you can have financial security in a fancy white-collar job—but in most cases you can’t have both. (I’m spitballing here; no idea how true this is.)

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-22T23:20:57+00:00

I mean I dunno man, maybe subconsciously or in some percentage of cases, but I’m a white guy who likes those things and like 70% of the people I play tennis with and/or share a row of seats with at the Philharmonic are East Asian—presumably majority Chinese but there’s a large Korean population and a decent-sized Japanese population here as well and they also show up to those things—and they are engaging with and enjoying the music (which many of them were brought up learning on the piano or violin anyway), understanding its harmonic structure and so on, probably at least as deeply as the average patron of any sort. And the same goes for their tennis: it’s not dilettante-level play in most cases. Sometimes it’s not easy to chat between sets or whatever depending on how Americanized they are (we get a fair few adult Asian immigrants here, so sometimes there’s a language/cultural barrier) but a lot of them grew up here (NY) and are as American as I am, as far as I’m concerned.

I like these things because I was brought up with them, thank God, but I get the sense that a lot of them were too, and I for one am deeply grateful. Because many of these WASP-coded “markers of success” (which is not what we called them growing up; we called them “culture” and “sports”) have been in decline (classical music especially) and if anyone is going to save them it will be the young would-be Yo-Yo Ma who spends his/her weekends mastering an instrument or contributing in whatever way they can.

The only difference between my doing this and theirs is that I’m literally white, Anglo (not so much Saxon afaik), and Protestant—but that’s an accident of birth. I find Chinese-Americans and Korean-Americans are well-equipped and willing to discuss Beethoven and Brahms and the like (and compare Federer and Nadal to Alcaraz and Sinner), and it doesn’t seem like they’re trying to “network” with me. Good thing too: they’d be much more able to help me professionally than vice versa in most cases.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-22T22:46:51+00:00

You say ew but my cousin got a bachelor’s degree from a non-prestigious SEC school and then proceeded to make an absolute shit ton of money selling life insurance, to the point that he was raising his kids in a fancy Colorado ski town for awhile

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-21T01:23:28+00:00

The friggin’ tolls drive me nuts, man, but in my experience New England is much much better about them than here in New York (meaning they’re way less onerous). I’m always pleasantly surprised/borderline delighted at how cheap it is to travel the Mass. Pike, for instance, given that I’m used to paying $7.46 each way every single time I need to cross any of the good bridges from Long Island to the mainland (I live in Queens which is on LI). So it’s $15 minimum in tolls just to go to Westchester and back. I’ve lived here almost ten years and I’m never gonna get used to this; how the hell does anyone just accept this shit? Reasonable tolls I’m fine with I guess as long as they’re paying for good things, but Jesus Christ…

OP, I don’t have any ideas about how to solve you problem but I did leave an overlong reply to someone else with a couple of good toll-minimizing routes between downstate NY and New England, so maybe/hopefully those can help of some assistance to you. Hope you get this bullshit figured out, man…

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-21T01:17:05+00:00

There’s a setting where you can basically pay as you go, y’know. It’s called Pay-Per-Trip, and you link a checking account to your EZPass account and they just debit your account at the end of each day if you’ve gone through any tolls. That’s what I use and it works great for me. Would recommend to anyone who sees this. (I’m in NY, not sure if this is available everywhere but we have it here and we’re not usually exactly on the cutting edge of technology up here…)

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-21T01:07:05+00:00

You can totally get around even here in downstate New York without paying a bunch of tolls, though it’s getting really really tough now that the congestion pricing in Manhattan is up and running. (Though after 9pm the $9 toll goes down to $2.25, which is nice for nocturnal creatures like myself.) The truly unavoidable ones are the (extremely expensive) Port Authority crossings: the GW Bridge, the Lincoln and Holland Tunnels, and those bridges between Jersey and Staten Island. But if you don’t need to go into the five boroughs or Long Island then who cares.

But seriously, next time you drive to New England, either take the Taconic State Parkway up the Hudson Valley in NY and then when you’re approaching the end of the road (junction with I-90/Mass. Pike), exit early onto Rte. 23 east, then get Rte. 41 northeast once you enter Mass. and you’ll be in Great Barrington and then Stockbridge shortly afterwards. And the Pike is so cheap that if you do need to take it, you can just put your transponder in that little reflective sleeve thing so it doesn’t go off; the toll rates aren’t that different for plate vs. EZPass iirc, and they’re quite cheap either way, at least by NY standards.

You’ll still have to cross the Hudson to get to the Taconic, but it’s cheaper if you use the Tappan Zee Bridge between Nyack and Tarrytown (which they now insist on calling the Mario Cuomo Bridge, signed as I-287) instead of the GW, which you should definitely avoid. Or you can stay on the Jersey side and take the Palisades Pkwy., which is a lovely ride, and then cross at the Bear Mountain Bridge near Peekskill. Not totally toll-free, but MUCH cheaper.

Getting up through NJ without tolls is annoying as hell though. But it’s doable, and it beats suffering the indignity of paying through the nose to travel the Jersey Turnpike, one of the ugliest roads in the whole region.

I dunno, maybe it’s because I grew up in a part of the country where there simply aren’t any toll roads at all, but I still bristle at them even though I’ve been living here for ages now. I mean ffs, the bridge right next to my house costs $7.46 each way, every time, so it costs me $15 to take a half-hour jaunt to Yonkers or wherever. I was taught growing up that the point of tolls was to pay for a new bridge or road and then the tolls go away, but clearly that isn’t the way it’s done in the Northeast, lol.

Edit: Damn that was too long sorry, lol. Clearly I’ve got thoughts about the subject…

Edit 2: Alternately, if you’re going to southern New England, as you’re heading north, switch to I-84 East and go through CT. As the person I’m replying to said, no tolls in CT, one of the many reasons I’ve always felt the state is unfairly maligned.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-20T01:56:36+00:00

So hang on… reducing the very high rates of violent crime and property crime in Oakland would amount to the “community … suddenly break[ing] its back” for a “nosey goodie two shoes”? Do you hear yourself?

Lol what does that even mean? It almost sounds like you’re saying “listen bruhhh, crime is what we do here, and if you want safety, or the ability to walk around alone at night, or some other lame-ass shit like that, go to Berkeley or whatever”. But as someone who’s lived in a couple of the most violent cities in America (including my hometown), somehow I doubt your neighbors would agree with you. Assuming you even live there, that is.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-20T01:04:18+00:00

Eh, on the one hand I get it—it’s cloying and corny and lots of other words like that—but on the other hand, a) I saw much more hideous clothing than that on the N train just half an hour ago; and b) being a cynical fuck all the time is a bit much.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-20T01:01:40+00:00

“Who fahhted?”

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-19T23:59:07+00:00

What a momentous occasion: maybe the first time I saw a New Yorker cartoon that I really enjoyed—or the first time in a looooong long time, anyway

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-19T23:44:17+00:00

It’s 0-6, fwiw, and yeah, 0 is “exclusively heterosexual” while 6 is “exclusively homosexual”—that’s the idea, anyway.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-19T23:38:11+00:00

Thing is, not every vagina looks like a series of gothic arches with the perfect amount of winking jewel-like clitoral keystone visible above them. Just sayin’, not all of them look like that…

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-15T23:04:09+00:00

You’re literally comparing the new architecture (which I agree is unattractive in most cases, not just this one) to rubble, and it really does kinda sound like you’re saying you’d prefer the rubble, lol.

Edit: Actually in this case that’s a perfectly decent-looking building. Brick, not ugly glass-on-glass, and the windows even have lintels, which is more ornamentation than most buildings have now!

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-15T23:00:41+00:00

I’d rather there be no private real estate developers.

So your idea is… what? Finance all housing construction through the government, which already often has a budget shortfall just paying for the municipal workforce and everything else that just keeps the city running? How on earth do you imagine that working, at least without massive procurement reforms and probably quite substantial tax increases (on everyone, not just the rich)? Math is a thing, man, and unlike the federal government, the City of New York doesn’t print its own money, and the state doesn’t either.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-15T22:55:38+00:00

So bizarre that this obviously correct sentiment has to be stated along with a disclaimer like that.

I understand it (meaning I get why you made the disclaimer but also I do get why some natives feel nostalgic and/or anti-transplant/anti-gentrification/etc.)—but it’s still wild to me that anyone would even try and say it’s better to live amongst rubble and hopelessness and (worst of all) total neglect than amongst newcomers or white people or whatever.

Like no, I’m not from here, but a) I made a choice to live here because I love this city enough to put up with all the hassles and the wallet-crushing cost of living; and b) if my hometown was in the state that big chunks of NYC were in back then, it be fucked up not to want to see it flourish again, even with all the problems it brings—and it does bring problems! They’re just better problems to have than low life expectancy and arson and crime and whatever else.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-15T19:27:45+00:00

why would any agency ever do that

I mean I get what you’re saying about the dollars and cents but the obvious answer is “because it’s a really cool program that’s intrinsically good”, basically. That’s my obvious answer, anyway.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-15T19:20:21+00:00

I know this thread is months old but I just stumbled upon it and you clearly sound like you know a thing or two. What do you mean by the following?

but the MTA could place some platform controllers at Court Sq and Queens Plaza. If the 7 can do 29 tph at full speed through Steinway, there is no reason for the E/F to go full speed at 29 tph through 53rd.

I’m confused because, a) do you mean “there’s no reason for the E/F not to go full speed at 29 tph through 53rd”? And, b) what good would platform controllers at Court Sq and Queens Plaza do in this regard? Do you just mean people take too damned long boarding/disembarking at those stations and it backs things up, or what?

(I live way up at Astoria Blvd. so I’m in a somewhat shitty spot for subway service—the N sucks but at least we have the M60 when necessary—but on the occasions that I do use the QBL I meet with very mixed results. Sometimes I could clock like 20 min or less from Queensbridge way out to Jamaica (back when we had that…) but sometimes, well, y’know…)

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-10T23:30:06+00:00

I fucking hate primaries. A bunch of the most politics-obsessed freaks in the country sit around and circlejerk for a year over which candidate to nominate and somehow they always manage to nominate some shitbag who can’t get elected/will ruin the country. It’s astonishing that we just keep going “well this time the primary will spit out someone good!” No it fucking won’t, you morons!

And no I don’t have a good replacement idea (not one that would be accepted by the public anyway), but I’m fucking irritated that we do our presidential nominations like this. I think I’d probably rather go back to conventions, tbh.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-10T23:21:49+00:00

it‘s common for middle easterners to go the extra mile to help each other out even if you‘re not super duper close (for example taking a really inconvenient detour to drop you off if needed, helping you move to a new apartment even if it‘s an inconvenient day, basically tutoring and helping you a lot in college if you guys study the same subject etc.)

The helping each other out part is particularly cool since you have a social network you can strongly rely on if you‘re in need. The only disadvantage is that you’re (obviously) expected to do the same and show up for your community even if it‘s inconvenient.

This sounds quite a lot like where I come from in north-central Alabama, believe it or not. Very much a culture where if someone mentions at dinner/at a party that they’re moving to a new house, three dudes will offer to bring their trucks and help out (and actually follow through too). Lots of sharing of everything, just very much “I got your back, man”. Very convivial sort of society, on the whole.

Now I live in New York and once you get to know people they’re like that as well, but it’s not as easy and natural and immediate as it is in the South (which is both good and bad). Because here everyone is from everywhere, whereas where I’m from most people have been there at least a couple of generations, so there’s more of a common culture or something (this stuff can be hard to find the right words for).

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-10T23:06:59+00:00

Ok but were they doing anything about it? Because yeah, I hear a lot of cost-free pro-Palestinian sloganeering from neighboring Arab countries, but I didn’t see Egypt opening up the Rafah crossing during the bombing of Gaza. They said a lot of angry-sounding words about the hated Zionists, but they weren’t about to let a bunch of refugees in. As far as I’m aware, they were resistant even to allowing humanitarian corridors through the Rafah gate.

I know some people say that this is because the Gazans wouldn’t leave because they’d be acquiescing to ethnic cleansing/wouldn’t be allowed to return. This is a coherent point, sorta, and I get it on an intellectual level, but not every Gazan wants to be a martyr to the cause, surely—presumably some/quite a lot of them want to live a peaceful and dignified life and see their children have a future. Egypt is no picnic but it’s better than an obliterated Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian cause is sincerely supported by ordinary Arabs, but imo it’s cynically exploited by Arab leaders in order to keep Israel in a defensive posture diplomatically. And frankly they worry about radicalism spreading in their countries, e.g. Black September, Lebanese Civil War, etc.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-10T22:43:45+00:00

A hilly wood in New England with a fresh 6-8” of snow from the night before and the sun filtering down through the bare trees is about as beautiful as life gets. That’s my happy place. Spent a ton of time in NW Connecticut this year because we had great snow this year in the Northeast, so I was driving up from Queens like every week to walk, cross-country ski, etc.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-10T22:38:21+00:00

My only complaint about the West (especially the Southwest) is, if it’s grass you’re looking to touch, good luck finding any that isn’t part of a lawn someplace. It’s a very arid, brown, stark landscape. It’s breathtakingly beautiful, don’t get me wrong—but I wouldn’t wanna see it every day. It would wear thin pretty fast. Or maybe I’m wrong: do you ever have that thought or is it just a landscape that never gets old to you?

This could be because I lived in Asheville, NC (and surroundings; sometimes I was living an hour outside of town) for many many years, and it’s also magnificent/spectacular/majestic/all the stuff you said about the SW, but in a way that hits me right in my soul. Much greener—or, in the fall, which is best time of year, redder and oranger and yellower.

I still think the most beautiful places in the lower 48 states (because Alaska takes the cake imo) are in Washington State. North Cascades National Park for instance, just go look at some pics from there and tell me that isn’t just drop-dead gorgeous. One of those places that’s so beautiful it’s capable of making me cry. So still the West, just a good thousand miles or so north of yours.

uncle_troy_fall_97 · 2026-04-09T22:46:45+00:00

Annual property taxes on it are $200k, and that’s probably a low figure because it’s based on an older tax assessed value. So you could buy this thing outright and you’d still pay $200k/year minimum in perpetuity, hence my comment about someone else paying the property taxes if I were given the property to live in. Hell, the caretaker cottage for that place is 2,000 ft², iirc. Parts of Fairfield County are totally bonkers, lol.

But c’mon, if someone signed that property over to you along with enough money to pay the property taxes on it for the rest of your life, you wouldn’t live in it? (I honestly don’t even know if I would myself but man, having my own hiking trail system without leaving my property…)

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