Category: Aesthetics

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Aesthetics

Day 1894 and The Middle Market Sales Reinforcement Dilemma at Sephora

Psychologists can argue until they are blue in the face about the appeal of Veblen Goods or that value can be demonstrated by price point, but veteran retailers know that everyone likes a good deal.

Rich or poor, young or old, oligarch or peasant, the shopkeeper knows the mind of the buyer requires we feel like we are getting more than we paid. This has some downstream consequences.

Retailers try to avoid degrading their price points and brand reputation with tactics like percentage off sales. And they can be clever about it. There are seemingly innumerable shopping holidays now where you can play with merchandising, special collections, loot boxes and creative value presentation.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Single’s Day, Christmas in July, Prime Day, Fukubukuro (福袋) Lucky Bags, and Lunar New Years are just some of “tentpole” shopping holidays around the world that provide merchandising opportunities and encourage taking a look at what is on offer.

Yet somehow the middle market of mass retailing is still struggling with how to manage sales. If you train your customers to expect a deal, and worse if they expect it at a regular time and frequency, what will make them shop in between those opportunities? Mall brands regularly get trapped by sale training behaviors

I’ve been watching Sephora go from a twice a year sale brand to trying their hand at daily drops. It seems as if they are going the Ulta route in the hopes of driving more purchasing at lower price points. Drive repeat purchasing at higher frequency and it might work.

However the average order volume has to be going down. I wonder if they have no choice having re-oriented the brand down market to attract younger buyers during the Sephora Teen pandemic era. But we are no longer in stimulus spend era and I imagine this is alienating to their older upper market customers. I’ll be watching it.

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Aesthetics Travel

Day 1893 and Gusty Groaning Roaring Winds

Yesterday I went from the bright blustery Pacific surf beaches of San Diego to the fault block ridges of the Bridger Range in Montana’s Rocky Mountains. Going from one climate to another in the span of a few hours remains a wonder for me.

While I enjoyed the nervous system soothing peace that comes with watching the waves, I did feel a sense of relief coming over the snow capped peaks into the Gallatin Valley.

It’s been a dry winter with very little snow pack, ans the accumulation is much needed. It’s odd for Montana to have had so little snow this winter. I missed much of it but in truth I’ve seen more real winter in the mountains of Sarajevo and Greece than Montana.

I’ve been at sea level for long enough that I am nervous about my adjustment to altitude. After unpacking and restocking groceries, I went for a mile and a half loop that is my usual leg stretching route.

My V02 max remained identical to the scoring from the day before at sea level. My other biometrics are in a difficult place with my resting heart rate high and my heart volatility quite low

Twenty mile an hour gusts wiped across the valley which encouraged me to move a little faster than usual and breath deeply when I could. It was a stark contrast from the slow ambling cross sandy beaches that made up my recent exercise. The stress of altitude isn’t just the oxygen and exposure to the sun but the generally more challenging conditions.

While the mountains have enjoyed some fresh snow, the valley is brown and dry. It’s bizarrely warm at 58 degrees as we spring forward. The record high for March 8th is 62 in 2004 but we are meant to see an inch of snow and a drop back into the lower 30s.

We shall see how I adapt but I need some rest as the rate of change for everything is as jarring as waking up on the beach and falling asleep up in the mountains in the space of one day.

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Aesthetics Travel

Day 1892 and California Soul

As you may have guessed I wasn’t in Montana the last few weeks. I was in San Diego for a short stint. Some might call it working remotely. I’d also say I was testing a few health theories which remain inconclusive.

It’s always hard to determine health experiment when a random bit of personal maintenance details like needing dental work messes your data up. Biohacking works best in routine and I only keep them up seasonally.

I did get to spend quiet time on bluffs and beaches with my thoughts and a few friends. I’ve been listening to cocktail lounge classics intermixed with California Soul. Do you know the way to San Jose?

Connie Francis knows the way to San Jose

Going to California in the winter and it not being San Francisco is a bit of a new thing even though my husband went to college at UCSD. Any hints of early results in biotechnology used to come through their labs. And even some of their neurologists contributed important math to gradient descent

It’s a shame to have lost so much of the frontier to the petty encroachment of fiefdoms and institutional capture. California has a lovely soul. And imagining my parents finding a cheap way into housing in San Jose seems almost comical but maybe you could put $100 down and get a car. But now the place with a lot of space to get some peace of mind is the rocky mountainside. Maybe one day they will fix prop 13.

Coastal grandmother

Categories
Aesthetics Politics Travel

Day 1891 and So Much for Santorini or Status Hierarchies for Abundant Ages

If you watch me closely (which would be weird but I make it easy enough) you have surely noticed I spend much of my life traveling.

I’ve got no training in psychology but it sure seems like a certain personality type takes their childhood traumas and does exposure therapy till it becomes enjoyable.

I had intended for another trip to the general Mediterranean area in the spring to see family and work undisturbed by the American media timezone distractions. Now I am unsure if that will be feasible.

I am guessing that the sort of people who go to Sicily, Santorini and Cyprus to soak up the sun may find this Iranian conflict putting a wrench in their island hopping. Where will they go instead? Cartel wars bleed into the Caribbean and Bitcoin zillionaires setting up economic zones might make other things tricky. And oh the fuel costs will be ruinous.

War certainly makes me reconsider standard air bus style flying near any seas that connect to conflict areas but not too long ago I sat in a Turkish airport where “final boarding for Damascus” went over the loud speaker so maybe I’m making too much of it. Though I’m glad I enjoyed Istanbul over the winter as anything bordering Iran is now unnecessary risk.

For a world where speculative fiction bull case for artificial intelligence wiped off billions in market capitalization, we sure aren’t taking very seriously the kinetic effects of extreme uncertainty and change. Well, ironically maybe Pete Hegseth might be.

If we do make it through the Jackpot to the other side of the singularity, or just through this regional war situation, I would bet humans will find ourselves getting back to status hierarchies and power games.

If all our consumption needs are met, there will always be hierarchies. Wait your best friend summers in Block Island too? Or are those the Finnish slides from the Comme des Garçons show? Let me just call up “insert social scene’s patron billionaire” as everyone is headed to Big Sky for fresh powder this weekend.

It’s endlessly that sort of thing if you are inclined towards Bourdieu’s Distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste. If class predicts taste then we mimic the taste we think we ought to have to be a certain kind of person. I came across a sweet hand illustrated essay on the matter recently.

If we can have anything we like, then taste becomes finer and finer grained. The rich know this already and the rest of us just might find out if we survive to an abundance era. And as I’d like to do that maybe I be reconsidering heading out to sea. Caribbean, Ionian, Bosphorus or otherwise.

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Aesthetics Community Internet Culture

Day 1888 and Touch Sand

As the “monitoring of the situation” reached whole new levels, I took some time to touch grass today. I don’t think I opened more phone more than a dozen times before writing tonight.

So many mutuals are teaching themselves automation skills by building situation monitoring boards that maybe the Department of War doesn’t need Claude. It was charmingly easy to keep up. Which is a very distorted and dystopian way of living out the hard realism of kinetic power in real time.

If America is backstopping Loyld’s of London shipping insurance, then to repeat a Keanu Reeves meme style. Yeah I’m thinking that America is back. But I’m getting to old for this shit. It’s all TV tropes now as we unmoor in the propaganda. Which is run by an honest to goodness critical theorist who trained with Jurgen Habermas.

So instead I stared out over the horizon as the wind gently brought fresh air in from across a wide open vista. I enjoyed my friend’s company as we talked about jhanna meditation and compute pricing. We saw a seal winning along the shoreline. I put on sunscreen twice as we stayed out in the sun.

How luxurious is it I had long leisurely in-person time with a friend. Not all of my business is with friends but I cherish the ones with whom I do.

We walked and talked and broke for lunch and discussed problems from the most abstract to the most precise. Having given the world so much access to all of human creation and taste, did the market provide an original version of the driftwood horse decoration or has there only ever been the mass market design? Neal Stephenson fans get it. Baudrillard too.

Fashion people and technology people worry about these questions of taste because they are questions of control and tooling. The source culture of engineering culture shared context. How abstract is too abstract? What is enough to enable the builder to use your tool?

It was good to be outside in the sun with someone and talk. That activity needs no shared context beyond humanity. We have missed it in the hubbub.

Isn’t it funny how just as the internet is losing its humans, the humans who met only thanks to the marvels of the network are finding new offline systems? The network can reprogram itself.

I have dear friends and successful investments that I have spent hardly a single moment commingled in time and place with. I imagine that age is either just beginning or just ending and I am not sure which. So today I was outside in the sun talking. I don’t know if we made any progress but maybe I’ll only know in the far future.

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Aesthetics Medical

Day 1883 and Fill Me Up

I mentioned yesterday I needed to get my lower left molar 19 fix up. The filling placed there long ago by a dental student wasn’t holding up well and looked pretty nasty

A warning for the squeamish that I am going to post before, during and after photos. If things like gums, blood, funky messed up teeth close ups are upsetting to you this is where you should stop.

I was schedule for an hour as molar 19 needed a new filling while 20 was also looking a bit funny as well. First they carefully numbed the left side of my mouth which always feels weird. You feel no pain just pressure. Which is an experience I’ve had a few times this year.

A cleaning was required as well as a cool laser which smelled like popcorn as it zapped out the damage areas.

These hard‑tissue dental lasers (mainly erbium) ablate tooth structure by rapidly heating water and hydroxyapatite in the tooth, “micro‑exploding” tiny amounts of tissue rather than cutting mechanically like a bur.

Erbium laser preparing teeth decay for a small filling on 19 and 20

These systems are typically used for small‑to‑moderate decay especially when soft tissue injury is concern. These lasers can mean less pain and less anesthesia is needed.

A composite filling matched exactly left my teeth looking as good as new. My mouth is still a bit numb but I’m glad to have things fixed up with relative ease. Now I can only hope the healing goes easy as well.

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Aesthetics Medical

Day 1882 and Crowning Glory

I have always been fastidious when it comes to dental hygiene. I floss twice a day, I brush morning and night. I always carry dental picks for good measure.

I didn’t earn enough for steady dental care in my younger years so I knew my habits would have to carry me. But I did have a few tricks that helped me manage in my twenties. I would volunteer my time as a patient at the NYU Dental Clinic.

Not only were you not charged for procedures but you’d learn a lot as students went through clinical hours and professors lectured using your mouth as the live lessons.

I thought this was a pretty good trade for low stakes maintenance work like cleaning but I let them do more involved work including a filling on one of my molars which I’d cracked.

Fifteen years later that the crack which has been filled needed a little maintenance. A another crack had formed and it was looking a little unaesthetic. I was experiencing some dull pain so I decided to get it looked at. And it’s a good thing I did.

For a brief moment there was concern that the nerve in the tooth had died. I should have felt more pain than I did. But the cold test cleared it up. I don’t think I’m healthy enough to manage a tooth being pulled and replaced with my immune suppression medicine.

As I explained the filling’s provenience and just how old it was, it became clear that it needs to be redone. A bit of it had edge over to the back molar I’ll get two teeth filled.

A filling is a treatment where a dentist removes decayed or damaged tooth structure (sometimes it’s a cavity others a crack ) and replaces it with a material (like composite “white” resin, metal amalgam, or other restorations) to restore shape, strength, and function while preventing further decay.

It’s not a crown so the title is a misnomer but it is a bit glorious that one can get care from students and have it hold up for so many years. It’s always something in the maintenance and care of one’s body and I tend to prepare for the worst.

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Aesthetics Culture

Day 1881 and Attemplate

I’ve wandered far from the traditional life paths that might have recognizable to past generations of my kin.

It scares me. Any time I contemplate the change I have already experienced, I imagine how much more change I can expect to see.

How are we supposed to raise children, mentor young leaders or align artificial intelligence with the good, the true and the beautiful when we adult humans have experienced life so far from past ideals?

So I’ve been toying with a portmanteau blending attempt and template to express the idea of “an experimental framework” or “proto-template for living, learning, or skill-building.” I need templates to help me attempt to adapt while retaining my humanity.

We will all be re-skilling, re-learning, and re-engaging with our values and as I try to structure templates that help me walk a life and prototype styles that might work for myself and others.

I hoped to communicate both clarity and flexibility with the choice. We are building good ways of being in a world of rapid change. Templates must change and we must always be attempting to learn and adapt.

I liked that attemplate sounds like a natural word you felt like you may have already encountered. It does a nice job of mirroring the thoughtfulness of contemplate. A template for a new era which will be attempt to build, even if the foundations we thought were firm in the past give way to much broader ways of being.

I played with “attempate” which sounds procedural (almost bureaucratic) as if one would take a sheet of paper with an assigned attempate to fill out and live. Why yes, I took the project management attempate sheet to see if I had natural aptitude for detail work.

“Temptlate” sounded engineered. Maybe it would be suitable name for an internal tool or concept document. We will add that to the family Temptlate and see who bites on it for Saturday plans. It’s cute, playful and almost experimental, but not entirely as serious as the scaffolding one hopes to build upstairs n.

Maybe I’m the only one who feels like I lost decade between Trump Derangement Era through Pandemic Biden Gramsci End of March Institutional Capture.

What I thought was true slammed into things I wished were not. And then we fought years of anarcho-tyranny as the state refused to budge even if you attempted to follow its templates.

So here I am trying to find new ways of being for myself, for the future, and for my present. Maybe it’s entirely selfish. Templates for how to live are the anchors from which we used to build religion and power.

We’ve stripped much of the meat from life and turned past ideals into brands and merchandised them into outfits and starter packs. But it’s worth an attempt don’t you think?

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Aesthetics Finance Internet Culture

Day 1880 and the Global Intelligence Crisis Kerfuffle

“It’s not a prediction” he said. It’s just a hypothetical possible reality. I believe we used to call that fiction. A science fiction short story wrapped in a macroeconomic essay written by Citrini Research hit the algorithms like a bomb Markets lapped it up like beasts who’d been lost in a barren desert for weeks. Liquidity!

Remember in 2023 when when Sam Altman said that we’d have superhuman persuasion before we had artificial general intelligence?

Citrini is capable of super human persuasion before AI reached super human general intelligence and it has been strange.

As the market sell off was playing out, a flood of “Contra Citrini” essays emerged immediately from players as varied as Joe Wiesenthal John Loeber, Will Manidis, even proper economists like Alex Imas. The co-author Alap Shah went onto TBPN. Fun fact he was Sheel Mohnot’s roommate in college.

I am unclear if white collar workers are in a frenzy about are doing their existing jobs or if they have even noticed the danger. As a real time update from a fellow investor had us both laughing. An intern couldn’t manage a basic research task. The intern asked them how to get to the Founders Fund’s website.

We may need the bull case for AI, as the bear case for white collar workers acquiring any intelligence in their education process is rather unconvincing.

For some reason “how do I get to the founders fund website” started me singing an old tune sung by Dionne Warwick “Do you know the way to San Jose?”

Do you know the way to San Jose?
I’ve been away so long
I may go wrong and lose my way
Do you know the way to San Jose?
I’m going back to find some peace of mind in San Jose

LA is a great big freeway
Put a hundred down and buy a car
In a week, maybe two, they’ll make you a star


Weeks turn into years, how quick they pass
And all the stars that never were
Are parking cars and pumping gas

Do You Know The Way To San Jose?

The song was used in another completely different “science fiction story goes viral”context. Maybe it’s in my mind as automated virology lab unleashing apocalypse, is a AI doomer staple also recently in the discourse.

Do you know the way to San Jose? Or if Helix is available for download.

In an SyFy channel show from 2014 called Helix, which follows an Arctic research station where research on viruses goes horribly wrong. It used the Burt Bacharach & Hal David song “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” as an unsettling musical motif and clue to resolving the mystery. Unsettling California music has my ear this week.

In 1968 you could return to San Jose from Los Angeles and start a relatively normal life as one of the stars who never made it. Pumping gas and parking cars. If we get too close to the sun of artificial intelligence success we don’t have a San Jose to run to. You can’t get away there as it’s filled with just the part of technology folks peddling dreams as unrealistic as the ones down in Hollywood.

Categories
Aesthetics Travel

Day 1878 and Checking Into Hotel California

Yesterday I was on about the “ride share” and gig economy intermediaries, but today it’s the “home share” economy. The short term rental world of permanent vacation properties amid a housing crisis for the rest of us.

Having had a streak of bad luck at hotels in California I am back to my old faithful of Airbnb. Except I seem to have accidentally checked myself into Hotel California. It’s such a lovely place.

But everyone else here is a Boomer but me. I’ve not seen any children or grandchildren. Everyone is over sixty. It’s a heaven ban paradise for those who can afford to live a permanent coastal lifestyle. And for those of us who can rent it for a few days on business.

The Airbnb is in a large complex that is above a stretch of beach one can hike down to for walks. Nearby amenities are yuppie in nature with bistros, coffee shops and Pilates studies. While it is easy driving to its most proximate big city, it doesn’t feel like anyone is going to an office in this suburb.

The Airbnb is run by a management company seemingly owned by an enterprising woman who got prime real estate when rates were lower. I deduced this by scraping all her listings and when they first went online.

I doubt she is interested in letting her investment properties take any damage as no one under 25 is allowed to book and she explicitly states that “it is not child proofed” so you are liable for any issues. Which would explain the demographics.

This is a place for adults, and more specifically adults who have the freedom to work where and when they like.

Or perhaps more accurately are not obliged to work any longer. What a seductive life to live. No wonder there are so many slim, fit, smiling Patagonia swaddled mature people.

“Hotel California” is, according to the Eagles’ Don Henley, a metaphorical song about the dark side of the American dream, particularly the excess and decadence of 1970s Los Angeles. Via Wikipedia

It’s definitely not a Margaritaville sort of place. With koi ponds and soft beiges and tasteful landscaping, it’s too costal grandmother in its aesthetics. But it is certainly decadent. Maybe the American dream of thirty year retirement is the decadence they warned us about in Hotel California. It’s not that they can’t check out. It’s that they won’t.

If you walk among the promenade that overlooks the ocean, you will notice many of the townhomes have signs in their windows advertising their management company. It is all second homes and beach cottages and handled by professionals.

If it weren’t a gate community with guards and a lot of security cameras I’d honestly be terrified to advertise that folks might not be home. But then again, what is anyone going to steal that these denizens can’t easily replace?

They sold out the future already. The thieves are inside the complex. It’s the rest of us looking in who should wonder why it is that no one can check out. It’s just such a lovely place.