Are the president’s naps more important than yours?

Watching the State of the Union last night while playing your Poland Spring drinking game, you noticed the prez up the ante on minimum wage, proposing to hike it to $9 an hour, which is even more than New York’s Gov. Cuomo was seeking, which is kinda nice when you consider how many laid off professionals end up doing crap jobs for vomit pay these days. And there was talk about overall economic stability, and increasing American output by stealing Apple jobs from struggling Taiwanese workers. But where was the real talk of progressive reform that our nation’s overburdened and overloaded workers are demanding? We’re talking the third rail of office politics: Naps. Naps, not apps! What do we want? “A place to lie down for a few minutes!” When do we want it? ”Sometime around 2:30 would be great!”

We need them, now more than ever, as described in this New York Times story from last week about how relaxation increases productivity. And part of that relaxation is, of course, the simple nap, which does so very much for us, says Science: (more…)

You can work here without having to scale the entire building. via All Things D

It was just last week we were bitching about the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any space for start ups in the city. Lo and behold, here comes the extremely intriguing idea of building your start up in the New York Times building, with timeSpace, their new start up incubator. No more P.O. boxes for your corporate mailing address! (more…)

Occupy stadiums. Photo via Vibe.

Brooklyn’s own Jay-Z didn’t quite get down with the Occupy movement, which isn’t entirely surprising for a guy who’s worth about $475 million and boasts about having $200 million worth of extra identities.

“What’s the thing on the wall, what are you fighting for?” Jay-Z told Zadie Smith in an interview for The New York Times. “Yeah, the 1 percent that’s robbing people, and deceiving people, these fixed mortgages and all these things, and then taking their home away from them, that’s criminal, that’s bad. Not being an entrepreneur. This is free enterprise. This is what America is built on.”

Too long, didn’t read version: Jay: “We DID build that.” Hm, catchy! Of course, he wasn’t above profiting from Occupy. Because you can never have too many Maybachs.

But which one runs on fossil fuels and causes hit-and-run deaths?

Here is the new world order, as told by the most authoritatively ethical person in the country: If you are riding a bike, you don’t have to follow the same rules as cars. BOOM! That means you can do things like treat stop lights as yield signs and even occasionally ride on the sidewalk, all without fear that you are violating some damnable code of morality. This is according to this Sunday’s op-ed piece by Randy Cohen, the Times’ original Ethicist columnist (and, let’s face it, Chuck Klosterman, far and away the best, because what are you even doing with this job, Chuck??). Cohen is an avid cyclist, and says of his flaunting of traffic laws, “although it is illegal, I believe it is ethical. … I think all cyclists could — and should — ride like me.” (more…)

We know everyone loves to get their news from Gawker and suit-wearing jesters on cable news who have never picked up a reporters notebook in their lives, but do you know there are actual reporters in actual war zones getting actually shot at to keep you informed? The New York Times is Grouponing (yup, we just made it a verb) a digital subscription for $1 today. It’s an eight-week subscription usually worth $16, and maybe you’ll like it enough to keep it? Yes, we know you can easily get around the paywall, but Anthony Shadid didn’t die in a godforsaken desert so you could not pay a dollar for all the news of the world.

More like digital sucker.

You may think you’re saving money by ordering The New York Times online only. You would be wrong. An all-digital subscription actually costs quite a bit more than any of the print/digital combinations, even with all of those dead trees, delivery costs and so on. While trying to choose a subscription, we were surprised to find that would-be Times readers pay more NOT to have the paper delivered, but you might not realize this because the Home Delivery and All Digital Access rates are on two separate pages. Here’s how they break down:* (more…)

NYT illustration by Peter Oumansk.

Our tax system is so flawlessly constructed and fair that I’m cashing out my retirement package from my last job to pay for the obscene amount of freelance taxes I owe this year. That’s how it works, right? Well, either way, if you’ve got yourself a fancy tax person, they’ll tell you the ways to game the system, much like all those rich people who do financial Houdini to get out of paying anything. Last week, the New York Times and those public radio masterminds at Planet Money published a very Brokelyn sounding guide called “What’s the Easiest Way to Cheat on Your Taxes?” that highlights several loopholes you could exploit. Their No. 1 tip might not be exactly useful this year: run your own company so you can write everything off as a business expense. But the rest of the piece helps illuminate the kinds of loopholes people exploit (cosmetic surgery), what looks like a red flag to auditors and other ins and outs of tax frustration. Hint: writing off your travel and entertainment expenses is like putting a bright red AUDIT target on your forehead. Which means I need to go adjust my tax forms immediately.

Oh if only there were such a thing as “freelancer subsidies” and a “no car credit.”

Via The Strip in yesterday’s NYT by Brian McFadden. So have you done your taxes yet??

McKibbin lofts. Photo by Emily Paup.

I don’t want to come off like an egoist, but the place I live is kind of famous: the McKibbin Lofts. Located on the very western edge of Bushwick, these otherwise unimpressive buildings (one on each side of the street) have been the subject of their very own New York Times profile and have a hilariously unnecessary Wikipedia page. They’re known more for their parties and permissive attitudes of the residents than interesting architecture, and they’re wrongly maligned as a bedbug haven. But there’s a good trade-off for the grief. For a place with 12-foot ceilings, modern-ish kitchens and laundry rooms, a 10-minute walk to Williamsburg, a 10-minute bike ride to the waterfront and a two-minute walk to Roberta’s, the rent is stupid cheap. How cheap? I share a four-bedroom apartment for $2,500 a month. Want in? There are some things you should know first.  (more…)

See also: Tacos.

Open your pay stub, take a look at your hourly rate and then put yourself in some perspective: do you earn more than $9.50 an hour? If so, then you do better than the average retail worker in NYC, according to a new study reported in the New York Times today. The average for just Brooklyn is only $8.50, and the study is none too encouraging about the state and security of low-income jobs, with this cheery squib from reporter Steven Greenhouse: “Guaranteed work hours are no longer the normal and just ‘getting on the schedule’ has become the reward for job performance.” Yikes. So it’s MLK Day and maybe you’re a retail worker feeling particularly interesting in social justice issues, so, what the hell, if you’re game, tell us: what do you make? You can be anonymous in the comments if you want, but maybe we can rout out the better retail jobs? For anyone who’s never had a retail job in NYC, here’s a picture of a magic dog instead.