The Cut - The ‘Fleishman’ Effect

There’s a game a friend of mine likes to play in her affluent Brooklyn neighborhood: When she’s walking down Henry Street, she looks up at the multimillion-dollar brownstones and imagines the lives of the people inside. In her version, most of them went to Harvard and made life choices better than hers, which have rewarded them with original pocket doors and Gaggenau appliances. But then she remembers, They still have to lug a stroller up the front stairs every time they come home. They still have to bring their laundry to the basement where there are probably mice. “It’s so crazy how rich you have to be in New York to live comfortably, just comfortably,” she tells me, slightly out of breath, while she runs to a meeting. “There’s this very subtle heartbreak that perhaps people made better life choices than you and their houses are bigger and they are happier.”

The crazy thing is that this friend, at 45, has not only an apartment in the city but a weekend house outside it, one that she bought with earnings from her successful career and that she enjoys with her partner and kids. She is happy, yet she is undeniably worn out from trying to stay that way in a city where exorbitant wealth — two-nannies-and-a-chauffeur wealth, spring-break-in-St.-Barts wealth — is everywhere. “If you find yourself in your 40s still living in New York, still hustling, still striving, there’s a part of you that is completely beat down and a little bit unwell,” she says. There’s no appropriate audience for this privileged angst beyond a therapist’s office, which is why she has never talked about it before.

Movie tickets are about to get more expensive. Balm Dotcom is getting an upgrade, including a much-needed applicator and a petrolatum replacement. The Biden administration announced that COVID-19’s public-health emergency status will end on May 11 — here’s what that means for you. People are asking ChatGPT to write cover letters for them, and the results are pretty impressive. Designer pe​t breeds ​that suffer health problems​,​ like ​so many French bulldogs, may soon be banned in the Netherlands.​ What an abortion hotline reveals about reproductive care after Roe. And it has been five days since New Jersey councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour was shot and killed, and still the police remain mum.

Sign up to get Making It, a weekly newsletter featuring conversations about craft, cash, and compromise, with Emily Gould.