Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 277: NEOM Moon (w/ special guest Kate Wagner)

Episode Date: February 9, 2023

Our good friend Kate Wagner (@mcmansionhell) is back to tell us about the NEOM city-state in the Saudi Arabian desert, as well as all the soulless architects and designers working on it. You can read Kate's article here: https://thebaffler.com/latest/line-in-the-sand-wagner And support us on Patreon here: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

We were just talking about how Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's got a handful of Jacobin bylines. Is he just like us, just throwing it out there for a couple hundred bucks? Right. Is he getting paid like $300 to write an online? Yeah, I think it's the love of the game. I think you're right. I think you're right. At that level, it would be an insult to pay him $300.

So he probably just does it for free. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I think so. Well, guys like that, you either have to pony the fuck up or just hope they do it out of the goodness of their heart. Tom pointed out LeBron beat his all time record scorer. out, LeBron beat his all-time record scorer, Kramer Gilgibar.

On his 38th birthday, the score was, what, 38,000 points? Something like that? 38,000, 30, yeah, 38. Was it the 38th game of the year or something like that? The 38th day of

the year. The 38th day of the year. And LeBron himself is 38 years old. What is the significance of the number 38, Kate? I don't know. It's the LeBron number. He's got to change his jersey now. Yeah, he's got to be 38 from here on out. How much longer can LeBron play, do you think?

Like a few years, I think think three years is my my guess yeah i think like if he wanted to like vince carter and like absolutely like exhaust his usefulness like he might play to like 45 but he's like yeah well he's like michael jordan going to the wizards or whatever yeah the wizards are waiting yeah that's right go back to cleveland for your sundown years they would love that yeah um well just by way of introduction welcome to the show this week everybody we're joined by kate wagner um third time returning guest by my count, but I could have lost some episodes there. No, I think that's right.

Yeah, okay. Now, this week, we're here to talk about one of the greatest architectural feats of the modern day, and it's rise and subsequent fall. That's right, I'm talking about the nordstrom uh gulf pipeline that was apparently taken down by the united states um uh weirdly enough though so seymour seymour hirsch has a story that claims that the united states did in fact fact, detonate the Gulf, the Nord Stream pipeline. Tucker Carlson is like really on this tip.

Have you guys noticed this? Like, they're really like hammering home that the United States was fully responsible for this. Like, you know, like global power hard-on kind of way? Or like what? No, I think that I think that. That's a great question, Kate, because it's like it's hard to like fully pinpoint their motives, but I feel like they're kind of like anti materialist because or anti imperialist because they they hate America now, right? Like their whole thing is how much they hate america so it's like like they have stream two was woke that was what it is that's what ruined yeah

like many other things in their estimation. Yeah. Well, no, but seriously, now what we're really here to talk about is Neom. Neom Lights. It's a

it's a song by John Mayer. But didn't didn't Brooks and Dunn also have a song about Neom Moon? Neom Moon. Yeah, that would be the title have a song about Neon Moon? Neon Moon. That would be the title of this episode.

Neon Moon. Kate has an article in the Baffler about... It's about Neon, but this is the thing. I didn't realize until after I read your article, Kate. Neon is like... It's not just a city. It's like a fucking country.

I went to the website. Yeah. I went to the website. There's a big button at the top of the website that says, invest in Neom. It says, Neom is real on there. It says Neom is real on there. But this kind of like, it's a very interesting statement, right?

Neom is real because, first of all, it's an interesting epistemological thing or ontological thing. But then also, it sounds like Israel, like Neom Israel. It seems like slender, long Israel. Wasn't that Neom's thing? It was going to be like two feet wide. Leonardo DiCaprio found dating 19-year-old Neom supermodel. Yeah. Native Neomian. 19 year old neon supermodel yeah native neon neon Naomi Campbell

yeah Naomi Campbell they just started making these making his girlfriends in a lab in this weird new city state did he would are you kidding me yeah if you go to the website, there's a video. And I'm sure you watched the video, Kate.

But it's like about their progress. Like the first words, like right out the gate, the master plan is being realized more every day. That's what it says. It's like, well, you can't argue with that. If you have a master plan, it's one thing to have a plan, but a master plan. You can imagine a bunch of British guys saying the same thing when they were carving up the Middle East in the 50s. All these things sprang alive.

Shifting imperialisms. That's right. The video is very fascinating though because okay so i mean i didn't realize like there's all these like little cities within neon it's like tom texted me today when i told him what we would be talking about today and he said is the city state back like are we returning to the city state is that the new form of civilization it's just i mean what else is can you call washington dc i mean you're right it is all they're missing is a moat and some city walls i agree they need a moat agree they need a moat like yeah like neon like they have several cities honestly it kind of reminds me do you ever play battlefield you know that playstation game where you're in world war

one you can pick your battlefield i'm a girl so no i played risk is that the same thing i did play risk yeah it's pretty much like that. I like FIFA. Okay. You probably play FIFA. Okay, I know FIFA. Yeah, I love FIFA. Same thing. You can pick your battlefields.

It's true. There's like all these different cities. I don't even know what they are. Are they cities within the city? Like Oxagon, Trojana,ana which is okay you gotta try a little better than that because these are some reddit ass names they are yeah let's just slightly tweak a greek city state call it that i mean neo is like technically like the greek like a like a play on the greek word for like future or something so like they really have like a play on the Greek word for future or something. So they really have a return

tie kind of card on here. Yeah, it's trad. Yeah, but like with Louis Vuitton. Uh-huh. Yeah, just very tacky. Yeah, it's tacky. I mean, it's also like...

Yeah, anyways, Neon is just... it's goofy i mean but like i like you're still on the fence about whether or not it's plausible you know what i mean like not like that it can be built because i don't think that's true but like whether or not they're really gonna try uh i i still am not entirely sure because like right now as it exists, it's like kind of paper architecture, which is a term for architecture that is like speculative. But, you know, of course, more about like, they're more paper architecture is more about commentary than it is about,

you know, actually executing a plan, just like a utopia. Like utopian stories are actually stories about the way we live now it's kind of the same thing but what's interesting like about neom is that like it seems like they're already trying because they've already like arrested you know tribesmen for like resisting displacement so it looks like whether or not neom or like the line which is like their horizontal horizontal skyscraper that's like over 100 miles long is gonna come to yeah i know exactly it's gonna come to it's also weird by the way so like not only is it like a horizontal skyscraper but it also kills birds

um what do you mean by mirrored is it like like literally like the exterior is just mirrors of mirrored is it like like literally like the exterior is just mirrors like it's gonna kill saudi arabia and then also reflect all of the sun's light back into the sun which might have planetary consequences i have no idea i'm not an astrologist or astronomer when i lived in las vegas they built this like um i guess it was like an open air, like bougie mall that had like, there was like an Hermes store there and all this stuff. And they had the city center in the middle of it, which was like this mirrored, like sort of like apartment building with like all these like, you know, $6,000 a month apartments and condos and different things.

And there was an engineering error on it that at a certain time of day when the sun would shine on it it would get so hot and it would like it could like burn you or something like that and so like they had to like after they had like rolled all this out like there was all these sorts of like liability questions with just this one little thing and it's like you guys are setting themselves up for they didn't learn from vegas's mistakes yeah it's this is really common actually like there's a skyscraper called the wafi toffee that's not its actual name in london which was designed by this architect rafa vignoli and like it's like a mirrored skyscraper and it's like curved at such an angle that it just like melt cars that are parked and stuff it's like it's like an unintentional death rat yeah it's some real

genius shit they're gonna wind up like reflecting the sun onto the moon it's gonna bore a like a laser hole through them or something yeah who knows it'll like it's bad for a bunch of other reasons but like why do they have to make it mirrored i guess to reflect heat but the heat's got to go somewhere that's physics man well that's the thing this the whole thing seems to be premised on like we're terraforming saudi arabia it's like what what they've even got like they've even let like Trojana. That's like even saying the name makes me angry. But that's the name of the little town inside of the city state already has been awarded the 2029 like Asian Winter Games. It's like a hypothetical country or city like Asian Winter Games in Saudi Arabia,udi arabia which i i mean i've never been there but

do they have a lot of snow no it's really hot there it's the desert darris other places they held this include lillehammer sochi well on the video they've also they're touting their successes so like they like started a tech company classic yeah right in 2022 we we launched companies including tonamis our world-leading tech and digital enterprise world-leading i've never heard of it um they also said this progress oh wait uh let's see and inoa responsible for managing neom first class sustainable energy and water systems featuring the world's largest green hydrogen production plant it says this progressive stance is why we've invested 175 million dollars in volocopter the next generation of transport they have a video of it on there it's just a helicopter with like

20 tiny little rotating blades instead of one it's like did we need to innovate the helicopter it seemed like it was i didn't know i mean also just like all of these names sound like those like front chinese front companies that sell things on amazon you know it's like yeah i'm buying my socks from like woppy a real brand that exists yeah man i don't know yeah the thing is is like there's like a couple scenarios here one this actually goes through which is unlikely two it goes through partially and like just ends up committing like native genocide which is more likely three it ends up being some kind of like crypto adjacent ponzi scheme or like money laundering or like you know weird front for various geopolitical fuckery you know which i think is probably the most likely uh-huh like uh yeah it's also like very funny to me like all of

their claims about sustainability it's like bro you're building snow machines in the fucking desert like and all of this is paid for by oil money it's saudi arabia you know it's not like it's not like they're building this and i was gonna say norway but that would also be oil money uh it's not like they're building this in like croatia or something you know it's like yeah kentucky neon kentucky like okay now we're franchising yeah there we go yeah well that's what we'll rebrand neon kentucky as there's a town next to neon which is a very cool name yeah that's a great name well i mean as you pointed out in the article there's a specific architect involved here was it tom main um yeah yeah he said uh he said there needs to be the advancement of something much more complex as architects take responsibility for shaping the

world architects need to start thinking like tesla to do so architecture should stop focusing so much on look tesla the company or tesla the man i think they mean the company they need the company it'd be based if they meant the guy though it would be uh but no i think this is this really gets at basically what you're just saying. To do so, architecture should stop focusing so much on looks and instead prioritize things like the power of AI. I mean, that's kind of like the whole point of all this, right? Like AI automated cities, stuff like that. This is just like kind of like Playboy for tech fetishists you know it's just like what if like

with all of our like dystopian little desires and like all of our buzzwords and all of our like sort of profit generating bullshit that you know like trying to turn like computers into gold or whatever just kind of all accumulated in the most unethical way possible um that also involves like literal like native genocide um well and yeah well i was gonna say that the city itself seems specifically designed to kill you i mean like who yeah also like it's gonna be like completely governed by facial recognition software and like its own sort of de facto security state that only answers to mbs but famously benevolent ruler of saudi arabia who has only been ever only ever been nice to journalists and horse enthusiasts i see right yeah

kate you're missing the forest for the trees they're gonna have an artificial moon glow-in-the-dark beaches a floating semi-automated an automated port and innovation hub don't you want an innovation hub no i mean i'm i'm like trying to think how i innovate you know you need a hub to do it yeah i think i need a hub dude you're missing the hub part that's why you're not innovating start calling my home office the hub see if i can get like some government money for it or whatever a ppp loan or something yeah part well part of your article is kind of like looking at like the brightest minds of our generation that have been brought into this thing to design it and so just by way of mapping out just by way i like watching twin peaks and it's like part of the plot is like uh figuring out

that like the map of twin peaks is like corresponds with this ancient hot you know petroglyph where you can access the black lodge i kind of feel like this is sort of similar like what are they what are they trying to tell us here like this like there's three main cities i already named them like trojan horse or whatever the fuck but then there's the line which separates them and i guess will be viewable from outer space i mean it's just like no it's not it's mirrored dude how are you gonna view it from outer space well i guess you're right well i guess you couldn't see a mirror all the way. Oh. If you're making something that big and you can't even see it from space, total L. You're right.

That is right. Like, it's not like the Great Wall. Like, we're not going to be able to view it from the moon. It is an L. Yeah. The concept is hilarious. Like, we're going to take a building and lay it on its side. Okay.

Yeah. We're going to take a building and lay it on its side. Okay. Yeah, well, the thing is, back in the 1970s, when architecture was at its kookiest, and in my opinion, best, because that was the period I studied in graduate school, there was a lot of speculative architecture going around. Because, to be honest, it makes a lot of material sense. You were really starting to deal with for the first time like the environmental crisis of the 70s you were dealing with like kind of uh you know the end of high modernist thinking you were dealing with like a kind of the the emergence of neoliberalism you were dealing with like a lot of different things

stagflation i mean there's just like a bunch of simultaneous crises happening at the same time in the 70s people started throwing out the word overpopulation like and so like all of these things especially modernism reached a kind of ideological crisis where people were desperately trying to kind of keep the ethos of of modernist design alive by trying to come up with scenarios that like architectural scenarios for like envisioning a different world or a more organized world. And a lot of these like came in the form of sort of imaginary cities of some variety. And, you know, not all of them were sincere, of course. Not all of them were sincere, of course.

There were some that were very sincere. For example, the metabolists in Japan were very interested in these modular cities that would be composed of individual modules and stuff like that. Again, also the space race was very influential in all this. Is it any coincidence it's also the decade you get was it Italo Calvino Invisible Cities is that part of that yeah yeah it was all it was like there's the zeitgeist you know I think great book uh but also like during that time there were these there were also like critiques of all this kind of world building that were coming from sort of the radical like architectural tradition and one of those critiques came from this firm

called Super Studio, which I think are the best ever and very funny. And they were these radical leftist Italian guys who formed a design group. And they produced a lot of these speculative drawings that were really awesome. And they were essentially the line. Like the line is essentially like plagiarizing Super Studio

because they were making fun of this They're like, okay imagine like an endless expanse of like mirrored horizontal skyscraper Like in San Francisco or in Italy or something like that for the purpose of ultra mega hyper Consumption, but they did this as a critique of capitalism because they thought it was fucking stupid But they did this as a critique of capitalism because they thought it was fucking stupid. And, I mean, the drawings are sick as hell. Like, they are, like, cult classics in architecture, and they are still extremely imaginative

and still, you know, hold a certain kind of charm, even today, because they remain very, very relevant, as we can see. But, like, the line took what Superstudio was satirizing and was like, okay, but okay but like what if we did it like these guys were like making fun of people like this and they were just like no but that's a great idea it's like that tweet where it's like what was it like the you know you know the about tech companies where it's like you know about the what was it the misery nexus or something

like that and it's like we created the the doom nexus from do not create the doom nexus it's like it's like um what's his name snyder the zach snyder taking watchman and not like completely realized like completely all the wrong lessons, taking all of the wrong lessons from it. Thinking that like Rorschach is like, you know what I'm saying? It's kind of the same thing. I think it's, I think just, it's hilarious that this guy was like, they hired an architect. He was like, listen, we need to stop worrying about things being so beautiful.

It's just like ridiculous on its face. Have you guys looked up Tom Maines architecture? Like he's the guy who did like the San Francisco federal building, which is like the most hated building in San Francisco. Like just pull it up because it is on God, a dog. And like, I'm like,

you know, in favor of most, I actually think contrary to popular belief, I actually think that most architecture is pretty good. Like, I think most architects do try to create things that are good looking and benefit society. But I don't think that Tom Main is one of those architects.

Oh, damn. Interesting. Okay, and also, the thing about the San Francisco Federal Building had a bunch of movable parts and shit that just don't work. Isn't that part of what they're selling neon that it's almost that it could be a movable city or something like that yeah this is also from the 70s like there's this guy peter cook who's actually involved in this project because he has no shame and he designed he created with this firm archigram which like did a bunch of

these really yellow submarine looking kooky 70s drawings about like walking cities and stuff again but like he was they were like kind of very pro ease of consumption endless consumption pro growth kind of mindset but like again still kind of not satirically but like fancifully let's say and so like yeah all this is just the 70s being rehashed in the dumbest most unethical way possible but like yeah tom main is like he you have to understand like tom man is like a very like 90s y2k architect and in fact there's a lot of these working on this now like co-op himmobal is another one these guys have always been at the forefront of like stupid techno babble shit since the beginning of the time when architecture got into that which was in the early 90s they're in especially in the late 90s and so like it doesn't it makes a lot of sense that these

kinds of firms are the ones carrying the water for mbs but also like i want to address tom maines like complete like reddit brained idea i love using reddit as an insult now it's very funny um that like architecture needs to be more like tesla which is a company whose cars like simultaneous or like instantaneously combust for mysterious reasons all while their owner posts away his wealth on twitter uh-huh like you really want architecture to be like that he he wants buildings like the world trade center buildings that fall in on themselves like you know hostile architecture but like in the truest sense like buildings that could become a death ray and melt you inside your car like that's i think that's you know like we've destroyed the natural world right like we've destroyed predator like apex

predators and megafauna and you know everything but viruses so it's like we got to turn our built environment into because you know what i mean like weak men create bad times and bad times create strong men or you know what I'm saying strong men create weak times another one of these architects this I thought I personally found this one the most fascinating this one was my fave a guy named Bjork Bjork Ingles yeah I don't think Bjork is actually working on the line he's just like my go-to whipping post for the dumb shit architects believe in. Okay. Well,

this is honestly, if it is as you say it is, it's a perfect whipping post because he built a power plant that also doubles as a ski slope, which I think we need more of those

here in eastern kentucky right because like that's that's the perfect way to attract tourists we got plenty of power plants old power plants we turn them into ski slopes and you can ski while you got the you know plume hanging over you i think that's good bjork is like kind of like i would say he's like he's like an old millennial so like back in the day like when a lot of people who are currently in architecture school were were like in high school like he like made a bunch of videos saying that like architecture needs to be like minecraft so he's like personally personally like responsible for ensnaring a bunch of impressionable teenagers into this horrible profession um i didn't even think of that he was known as like the hot architect even though now

he kind of looks like old leo ignato dicaprio um and then also like he did a bunch of like dumb comic books that were like lessons yes is more which is like just like a marketing slogan that doesn't mean anything and he said that like climate change should be fun and also like yeah he's just again he's like my go-to guy to like point fingers at when i want to make a point that like architecture right now is is really stupid or like architects the stark attacks are back on their bullshit or whatever but you i mean tom main was that guy like 20 years ago or like 10 years ago yeah you know it's just like generations of like buzzword hipster bullshit uh yeah it's funny because like the other one that is like really like the one that surprised me to be working on the line was David Adjaye,

who is really famous for building the really critically renowned and very sensitively built Museum of African American History and Culture that the Smithsonian did in D.C., which is a great building. I think it's a really wonderful building. I've been, I mean, I think it's a really wonderful building. I think it really sensitively conveys like the progression of, you know, African-American history in the United States. Like you start your tour like in the bottom of the building and it's dark and you start like with slavery and then slowly you become like emancipated as you like head towards the light.

Like it's a great building. Yeah. And it's like this guy like really likes to communicate he's black and he likes to communicate this kind of like social justice worldview um and he you know he's also like one of the more talented architects working in like at the moment and so it's just really disappointing to see a guy like that like work on like blood money projects for saudi arabia uh but it all makes sense actually if you don't think of david adjay as like some kind of sensitive artist who like you know is somehow separated from like economic conditions and is just here

to make beautiful things like he david adjay runs a firm that is comprised of thousands of workers he's nothing more than like a petty capitalist and that's true about any of these architects they speak as though they're individuals but it takes an army of thousands to actually make a building some guy doesn't just draw it on a napkin and get good at yale yeah yeah yeah it's if only i know what a job so yeah i mean basically which is i think kind of a tension you highlight or obviously it's the main tension you highlight in this article it's that like a lot of these firms if not all of them they make gestures towards these social justice causes but they are basically i mean it's it's it's on one hand it's kind of like the age-old thing where you know artists have always had to do the bidding of the people with the money and

the you know the rulers of the world but there is this whole other element to it which is basically what you just said that their firms are kind of factories and they have their bosses. So it's kind of like Kanye, the Kanye thing when he was at Adidas or whatever. It's like you have this person who is ostensibly a quote unquote artist. But at the end of the day, they're cranking out commodities and they're doing it in a kind of, you know, proletarianized, industrialized way. that kind of, you know, proletarianized, industrialized way. They kind of just, I don't know, just bear, it just, you know, lays bare the lie at the heart of the process.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, architecture is like an art, right? I mean, it's a spatial art. But at the same time, like, unlike, you know, if you look at visual art, for example, like, architecture, the art market is very different than the architecture market and the architecture market is different than the music market right which is different from fashion or whatever um but i think that like actually architecture has probably the most in common with fashion and that like you have like these firms

that are represented by a historical idea or like a single kind of like creative magnet but their wares are are produced in a proletarianized way right the difference is is that architecture has also a spatial role so like architecture inevitably shapes the places in which it's built and you, you know, it's also tied to all different forms of labor, not just architectural labor, right, but like, you know, the building trades, for example, or and it's, and it's financialized through real estate. So like, it is so hyper connected in, in, you know, sort of the world of capitalism, that it's hard to it's funny to me that it's maintaining this kind of like very liberal very you know environmentally concerned kind of reputation

and artistic reputation for so long because i mean the way that most of us like experience architecture is not like that at all you know unless we go to like some museum or some civic building or something we're not like experiencing architecture or whatever it's like it's it's it's just you know these tensions are becoming more and more unsustainable i think it you know architecture is really having a kind of reckoning with labor in in this century that it hasn't had since the 19th century so i don't know we'll see but also like while at working on the line that's just while saying like you support environmentalism like okay buddy yeah it's as the video says it's very promising actually this is a very comforting thing i would like to hear we can elevate life because we have a blank canvas like oh um i mean

usually if someone's telling you they're going to elevate life i really get to these guys already ruin golf to the degree that you could ruin golf anymore but now life now now setting their sights on life dissatisfied after ruining golf they are now moving to ruining life um well uh you know i if there is there anything else y'all want to say about neom i had one other thing i wanted to kind of talk about today that we could maybe shoot the shit about. But any additional things we should know about it, Kate? If you want to try to tell us what a floatable port is,

what the fuck is any of this? Are these words? Dude, none of it is real. That's like the thing. I swear to christ this is all just some weird kind of oil money laundering that like architects are risking their reputation on because like making money is like more important than like being ethical and cool but yeah like i think the best part of like researching this article is finding out that

tom main compared architecture to tesla and says we need to use ai it's like get off of reddit bro so embarrassing understanding of technology well i mean if that's the case i mean i don't know this because the thing about elon is that obviously he has no idea what the fuck he's doing it kind of becomes more and more clear i mean we've all known this right for a long time he has no idea yeah but it's kind of becoming more clear to everybody that he's yeah i think he is yeah i mean it's and so it's like you you could just hire someone off the streets to do this like me. I mean, I, I don't know nothing about architecture, but my vision of taking the glaciers, the ice sheets that are melting in this Antarctica and flying them to Saudi Arabia. And we can make nice little igloos with the big icebergs.

I think that's got legs, and it fulfills all the things that they just said there. It's like Tesla in that it will eventually melt down and kill you. It won't look cool. It'll be entirely sleek. It'll reflect light back because that's what they want. Apparently, that's what they're doing with the mirrors, right? I guess they're trying to reflect light back into space.

So they can have snow inside. So they can have snow inside. Yeah. Little snow globe in the desert. Like I grew up in the desert. And that was one of the things that fascinated me all the time growing up that you could have. Like you could walk into someone's home, like, if you had, like, a really kind of, like, wealthier friend or something,

you walk in their home and their fucking AC is, like, 55, and they've got the whole thing cut, like, everything is fucking, like, on ice. Like, you could have your whole own own little like environmentally like uh sealed off like um biologically like isolated system that was completely sealed off from the outside world that always fascinated me growing up i guess that's what they're that's what they're looking for yeah but they're claiming it's like environmentally sustainable like no one fucking believes that phoenix ari it's environmentally sustainable. No one fucking believes that Phoenix, Arizona is environmentally sustainable as they entered their water war with California. Oh, I read an article in the New York Times a few weeks ago about that,

that the United States government has basically told all of these states, like Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, california like you have to draw up you have to start rationing water and if you don't draw up your own plans we're gonna have to step in and do it for you this might be this might be the flashpoint of the new like states rights you know sovereignty thing because none of these states are gonna draw up a ration rationing plan. None of them are going to work together to share this water. They all need golf courses. They all need golf courses.

Yeah. This might be the thing. Phil Mickelson going to earn his blood money in this later year. Doesn't he play for the Saudi tour or whatever? Yeah, the live tour. A lot of those guys went over there because they got beaucoup money.

Messi? Or no, Ronaldo. Yeah. Ronaldo playing soccer in the line in 2083. It's actually going to be like a hologram of Ronaldo playing soccer in the line in 2083. It's entirely possible, Kate, that they build this and no one lives in it like could you imagine this state-of-the-art city state that's a ghost town

that's it's yeah it's weird it's like it's like we you know we used to have ghost towns where they you know you go to in new mexico again there's a lot of ghost towns where they set up like iron ore or gold mining town yeah they ran out of resources and they ran out of resources but like now we're in an era where like we just make the ghost before anybody lives in it and no one lives in it yeah exactly it's amazing i mean the real ghost towns are going to be like all those phoenix mcmansion suburbs yeah when like karen finds out that she has to shower once a day yeah god or once a week or whatever you know it's like no way that's it living in vegas during that like the housing crisis it was crazy because like my girlfriend at the time and i lived in the

subdivision that probably had 60 70 homes in it there's only like two that were occupied it was like this weird gauche like patimkin village kind of thing going on it was so weird dude this we joke but i grew up in a small town called hobbs new me Mexico. This article is from 2012 in the San Diego Union Tribune. Hobbs, New Mexico picked a site of scientific ghost town. The scientific ghost town in the heart of southeastern New Mexico, oil and gas country,

will hum with the latest next generation technology, but with no people. A $1 billion city without residents will be developed in Lee County, will help researchers test everything from intelligent traffic systems and next generation wireless networks to automated washing machines and

self-flushing toilets they never built this but it is interesting kind of feels like i can't believe they're doing the line in your hometown they were trying to do the line in my hometown and usually like doing a line meant something really cool and now it's not cool anymore seriously like that song white lines that hip-hop song from the 80s like we need a new version of that but updated for this this line oh my god yeah for sure on that note like what was the other thing you want to talk about oh it was um it was the article in the new york magazine that was going around this week uh yeah speaking of white lines um it's the the only reason i wanted to talk about this i've not seen the tv show in question um but the only reason i wanted

to talk about it because it seems like a common hobby horse on this program is making fun of the anxieties and angsts of Oh no, not the Flashman article. The Flashman one. Yes. The Flashman effect. In the city of Rachel's and Libby's, the FX

show is some New York mom's worried they're the ones in trouble. I've baited you in and now you, now we have to talk about it. You can make $300,000 and be miserable. I would be getting courtside basketball ticket every fucking month. Like it's like, Oh,

I got to send my kid to do school to like some exclusive school and then give them a tutor that does soviet math and it's like bro they're they're gonna be learning soviet what was it was it new history what was that guy that like they're gonna be learning tanky history new chronology i think is what it was he like believed that the middle ages was a lot shorter than we thought it was dude these kids are like gonna come out of soviet math calling their parents imperialists um no okay so i've not watched this show fleishman whatever the fuck it is and i will also say that I feel like the article, it does highlight a real thing,

which is that women, even when they still achieve the highest degree of economic success, are still bound by some of these patriarchal structures and obligations and stuff that they yearn for an escape from. But it does still have some interesting anecdotes in it um so like the what the way the article is structured is it like sort of reflects off of the two main characters in this show it reflects off of that the lives of some people

in new york that this writer knows. One of them is named Kayla. She says she keeps thinking about a scene in this TV show when Toby, a 41-year-old hepatologist making almost $300,000 a year who finds himself justifying his job to a group of middle-aged hedge fund bros, asks, when is it ever good enough? When he said that, I was like, yes.

I can completely relate to that. Money is the fix for anything here, says page 40, who cringes as she tells me about the consultant she and her husband hired to help their five-year-old get into a private kindergarten next year. I'm like, are we crazy? Are we doing this? We are two decent human beings. We are on boards. We are community leaders. And we are hiring decent human beings. We are on boards. We are community leaders and we are hiring someone to draft and edit our thank you letters and to tell us to hold the door open on school tours. It's just like, in what world is this normal? In what world? They've also hired a tutor and enrolled their child in Russian math, a trend now among preschool parents who've heard

that the old Soviet method might give their children a leg who've heard that the old soviet method might give their children a leg up what is can we what is the old soviet method exactly what's the secret sauce there yeah i don't because i want to know i want a leg up yeah i know i feel like this is something that like some really enterprising guy made up like like some like somebody like fresh off the boat from russia's like yo i know exactly how to scam some rich people in which case like that's baller like it totally right now i found a website here last week npr ran a story detailing the russian math phenomenon following the growth of the russian school of mathematics what is russian math it is built on the foundational principle that the cognitive ability of a child the power to think

and reason is not predetermined at birth but can actually be developed over time and that mathematics is by far the best tool for this development huh okay i agree with that it's like no i yeah i agree with it and like maybe i'll believe in the method yeah i i do agree with it but um it is also at the same time kind of like when i was growing up my parents they were like we have to make him smart and they had read somewhere that like if you just make your kid listen to classical music it'll make them smart so my parents would like put on bach and shit my parents would like listen to country music and rush we literally had the same parents my dad was in his office listening to fucking buck owens and i was like listening to mozart and it totally backfired i ended up going to music school yeah yeah wrong outcome i should

have been like a high level financier but all i did was make me want to play the violin dude don't believe that shit like yeah rocking your child into classical music they will end up like lydia tar it will backfire really really hot yeah yeah she gets some fits off too um okay so yeah so i don't know i like yeah i was unaware that this was a thing um but yeah no i do i guess i do agree with the premise uh it is funny though that they like took an old soviet method which was basically like the premise was at essence kind of egalitarian like yeah there's no inherent like i'm sure that i really do there probably are some kids who are like very advanced in the sense that like they can think abstractly

better than others but i think the vast majority of people you can understand math like it's it's not a difficult thing like you just have to be able to instill confidence in them and help them train it as any skill. That is interesting because math seems to be the one thing that if you get the yips early on in life about it, you almost never recover. Yeah. Nothing else is like that.

History, you can more or less even... No, PE is totally like that, dude. What yeah physical stuff too yeah that's true like kickball or red rover fucking dog shit at kickball yeah yeah nah but you know you you are right there tom uh more than any other subject though if you from an early age you get it lodged in your head like i fucking suck at this shit like you're it's uh but i feel like yeah i mean go ahead i'm sorry no no go ahead i actually forgot what i was gonna say so go ahead i'm gonna crack a joke and i just realized it wasn't funny i don't have to to steal your thunder i was

just gonna say that it's just one of those things that like if you uh did y'all have to do the thing where you go up in class and like you do your multiplication races and like if you miss one and like you're like get some sort of light punishment it back in the day they would like smack you in the hand with like a ruler but now I think they just like make you go stand in a corner or something. But like you have one bad round of math races and then you just, and then you just internalize that I'm bad at math. And then you revisit later on in life after you, you know, you have to start learning how to balance a checkbook or whatever.

You're like, Hey, actually, no, I'm not really that bad at this. I can like multiply. Well, you're like me and had to hire an accountant. Yeah. I got like that with like bible drills like i got i like got it in my head that i like could never memorize i just i just suck at christianity man i just um but yeah no but yeah no the the broad contour there is very interesting it's like um like i know we we destroyed the soviet union for this like they're all like they're they made the soviet math capitalist so that rich people buy it for their kids dude exactly it is turning in his exposed grave yeah yeah he's turning in his glass container it is a slippery slope though because

if you could see that the soviets were right about one thing it's only a matter of time before little by little you're like well maybe they got this this this this and this right too and then well there went there is and i don't know the fine details on this but i'm pretty sure that the soviets disagreed with the like the western consensus on particle physics um and i think even einstein disagreed on that like the um where's the fucking name for it and i'm blanking on it now quantum mechanics yeah well yeah but yeah but like the soviets had their own kind of like system for this um i don't know if it was adopted as state policy or not but in the 20s it was a huge debate and weren't they on phage therapy a lot longer than after a lot of people had kind of abandoned it what i don't even know

what that is what is phage there is like a blood i guess it's like it's like another it's like an alternative to like you know got antibiotic therapy uh-huh it's kind of in the same vein like there are people in the uk who still think you can divine water i've seen those articles like that like like uh it's like a big debate right now That, like, like, it's, like, a big debate right now. I'm like, are you fucking serious? Are we going to start burning witches again? There are people here, like, who will bring one out to find, like, a water source.

Is that, like, the little washy, stinky cartoons? Yeah, yeah. My parents are from New York, and they were like, Child. in new york and they were like child um but yeah so but yeah no like again yeah this is what we destroyed the soviet union for this uh for us to learn their mathematics but also have deep ennui and angst about modern life and this article kind of like cuts to it um like let me give you some more examples um this one woman she recently found herself thinking about that question in target

um you know how carl lagerfeld was like you're in sweatpants you you failed that's how i feel about target to me it's this ever-present reminder that i'm in the suburbs i'm not going to leave i am not moving back to brook Brooklyn and my life there is over. Even with a combined household income of $500,000, the New York life she wants for her family fills out of reach. They have Target in New York, don't they?

I mean, yeah. We have a Target in Chicago. Where do you go to get shit? We have Walmart, but it's the same. Yeah, Walmart. I mean. Target is just Midwestern Walmart anyways.

It's just like elevated somehow because they do collabs or whatever. Yeah, and it's like, this is some really depressing shit. Since leaving New York, Beth has found herself in tears at least once a week. She makes $300,000 a year, more than she's ever earned in her life, but she's running out of minutes in the day to squeeze more squeeze out more dollars i mean yeah it's uh i think i was reading this article and like i was i just like couldn't stop thinking right about my parents like my parents didn't make a lot of money i think actually me and my husband make more money than they did because they were because my dad was a civil servant and my mom was a uh as a preschool teacher like my dad like his job was just doing spreadsheets for like the

government and like the thing is is that you know, like, were able to give me and my sister, like, a life full of enrichment and, you know, decent education because, you know, the public school system hadn't been completely demolished at that point. It was, like, the last generation of kids who got a good public school education. And, like, you know know i went to public schooling for college and it's just like i went to violin lessons right and i went to i did like intro you know community sports i got tennis lessons one year uh and i'm just thinking like well what more is there you know like why do you gotta this is all just like weird rich people status anxiety it's like the solution to your problems is to send your kids to fucking public school right like then you can have like

an extra hundred thousand dollars to go fuck off and like go to someplace that's not target and live back in brooklyn like if you didn't have that like completely classist status around schooling like you wouldn't be such a freak. Like it's just about like your kids, like getting, you just think your kids are inherently superior to other children. And my parents did not believe that about us. That is true. My, my parents were like, my child, like with me, cause I was like autistic and antisocial and they were like, my child is a freak. Like we need to send them to public school so they learn how to like socialize and not be just like a complete shut-in reading classical music blogs

all the time and like playing toontown online or whatever like you're right it's just it's you know my parents didn't have status anxiety because they didn't have status right and you can already see the next article being written in 20 years when these kids grow up and have their own status anxiety about having grown up in this like little secluded world where you know they were constantly you know just uh blasted by their parents neuroses and depressions and stuff i mean i'm insane but it's like uh but you know because my parents are also insane in their own individual way but you're right they didn't have there wasn't like a you're right there wasn't like a status anxiety there i grew up in carthage north carolina like the most like statusy thing you could do was to go to pinehurst and play golf

yeah oh yeah yeah that's that's where you're from i mean it's just like that's i think what it is i mean i feel sorry for people who are like trapped in in this world where they can't understand or like for example i feel sorry for for women who have to feel like you know they can never make enough money to to live the life that they want to or whatever. Like, I have some sympathy with that because I'll never buy a house. But at the same time, like, if you don't think that you're inherently better. People like these anxieties just go away. Right.

I swear to Christ. You're right. Like, that is the thing if they just stop assuming that they're better than everybody else yes that a lot of that will just melt away yeah and you and you share in this thing live in brooklyn like pretend to be cool and go to like craft beer bars or whatever like old millennials do like i mean i just like all these people's problems are fake to me uh-huh i mean like oh you have 300 grand you make 300 grand a year and you can't find a way to be happy

like like that's on you that's like you need to look at your own life and you're like it's like that is not my problem and i don't really feel sympathy for you are they not yeah it's like a hundred years ago i guess if you had this kind of like status anxiety like i don't know what what would you channel it into like some weird fraternity cult thing oh yeah definitely mason thing like did they not secret society secret societies in hunting fox hunting shit like that yeah equestrianism yes equestrianism yeah shit dude you could at least be like john dupont or something you know like start a wrestling team in the woods yeah yeah fox catcher yeah yeah like get addicted to laudanum or something like what what happened to a good

old laudanum addiction dude just become a poet yeah or like be a hippie or something dude like crying in target because like you can't afford to send your kids to like the wrigley brothers school of pompous assholes like i'm going to talk at yale i'm like a successful writer and my parents didn't need to do all that shit it's it's funny they're so upset like what they're ultimately upset about is they don't want to share spaces with other people yeah that's really what it is that's that's why they should move to neon honestly bringing it back that's right like they're complaining about living in the suburbs while having the most fucking suburban mentality possible which is like don't put my kids in the bad schools literally that's why the suburbs fucking exist yeah that's true well that's why the city state

might be coming back you know that tom's right the city state might be coming back and you can just attract all these disaffected suburbanites to the saudi arabian desert because it's a blank canvas and we can elevate life because the master plan is underway as i is it's there we just take i went to oman to do the tour of oman last year and like oman is kind of a cool place because like it's like always it's kind of like the middle ground of like all of like these you know kind of uh petro states or whatever and that like oman you know still has like the very conservative like uh you know islamic laws and stuff but they're like a different kind of islam than like sunni or shiite and so their laws are like actually a little bit more lenient and like i think that like they also just the development hasn't been as concentrated there

um and so like they have like they don't look like you buy for example or like so it's still kind of scrappy but like there's still also a shit ton of expat oil workers there and like they're mostly british and australian and stuff and when like the tour of oman comes to oman they all crawl out of the woodwork, like desperate to talk to other white people that like, they don't already know. And like, they're all wearing like,

like stuff that they buy in Dubai for like, like have them. And it is like just the weirdest thing. Cause you have just like normal Omani people who like are unconcerned with any of this, just like here to see the spectacle of a bunch of guys in like, riding bikes in their country for reasons unknown to them but have everything to do with soft power and like then you have like the british people who are like i remember bicycles and it's just like i can totally see neon like being like that it's just

full of like oil worker expats who like think that they can like you know buy spend away their their like you know expat on we through like louboutin shoes yeah yeah you did that is a great because i grew up in the oil fields and uh yeah i can kind of funny they're american analogs i want to cosplay as cowboys now especially in the other they all have like yeti coolers and lifted trucks just to go to food lion 1000 yeah but you go over to dubai and they're like you know no you're like yeah i need the new stuffy collabs yeah right yeah you're exactly right kate though it's like it will be just like, yeah, oil filled worker expats,

like managerial class guys, like guys who work like 10 days a year on an offshore drilling pad and like make $800,000 a year. They're like neon. That's where it's at. And they're like, yeah, they think they're working. And it's not going to be long before it comes to America, too. too they're like buddy you're tired of the boom and bus cycle in texas have i got the place for you uh-huh martha is totally gonna be like the side of the line too yeah like all the donald john stuff you can see it already starting to form a little bit

dude look what they did to austin man yeah another place i've lived um well i think that about covers it um go check out kate's article in the baffler uh a website and a magazine that is kind enough to also publish me and Tom from time to time. So they're the best. They're the best. That's how you know they're the best. I guess they're better judgment. Anything else you'd like to plug, Kate, before we let you go?

Check out my website, McMansionHell.com, where I take on the world's ugliest houses from people who are not afraid to live in the suburbs and don't cry in Target, but simply play pinball in their basements and have home bars. Speaking of, there was one going around recently where it looked like they put a prison turret in the middle of the mansion. Do you know which one I'm talking about? Yeah, I know about that one. That's classic. I mean, what is the home if not a prison? The prison of domesticity or something. I don't know.

Right. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, go check all that out. You can also go check us out on Patreon. Please do that. P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trailbilly Workers Party. Thank you for listening this week, everybody.

We will see you next time. Adios. Adios. Thank you.