Tag: Capitalism

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Media Reading

Day 1410 and Luxury Content

Institutional trust in the media has reached a new low point for Americans. The news exists in a strange place for many of us as we must stay informed but it is no longer has quite the same halo of necessity when it comes to life and culture beyond the headlines.

Many of us read significant amounts of “need to know” publications for our professional lives. I myself read Bloomberg, the Financial Times, and The Wall Street Journal every day along with more specialized media like Axios Pro-Rata and various venture and startup specific media.

Culture is different. Wanting to be in touch with the ideas that shape a nation is a luxury you don’t need to be wealthy to enjoy. To engage in ideas is to have the means to enjoy a life of the mind. You must choose to spend your precious time on it. Time is the only luxury which can’t be bought.

Media is changing as news and cultural content diverge. We used to be awash in a sea of periodicals. As a child I’d bike to the Boulder library and read it all. Thats how I became a fan of the Economist. I loved culture magazines just as much. Some still retain their pride of place through institutional nostalgia like Vanity Fair and Vogue. But can the New York Times hold a grasp on culture like it used to do?

As we face down an election with clear cultural and political bifurcations, what does it mean to be a consumer of not simply news but the culture of the moment?

Dirt editor Daisy Alioto bitingly called it luxury content and sent the LinkedIn striving aspirants scattering.

Someone told me they don’t always open Dirt because it’s not framed as “need to know.” Yeah, that’s why it’s luxury content, because you don’t NEED it. Take your ass back to Axios

To want a cultural publication like Dirt, and enjoy its view of the world, is to appreciate the premium we place on taste.

To be au courant means deciding where our time goes when it’s not an obligation. And I’m sorry to say to Condé Nast that their grip on culture looks more tenuous than ever.

Oliver Hsu tweeted this spread of new print periodicals dedicated to the culture of technology and economy.

Telescope, Arena, and Palladium are all pointing to new appetites. We want the luxury of futurism. To be caught only in the moment is to reveal a perhaps embarrassingly high time preference for algorithmically forced immediacy. “I want it now!”

Doom scrolling the news may be fun. Many billionaires spend time on Twitter because of its close proximity to sentiment. We all need to know the narratives catching attention.

But want do we want? Well who rather enjoy an essay from a writer who shows you the culture beyond your feed? Giving your attention to those who respect it will always be a luxury.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1408 and Downmarket Sephora

The Sephora Savings event has begun for their loyalty program shoppers. And I’m so disappointed by their holiday merchandising. It’s their downmarket I’ve ever seen the brand while somehow also being incredibly expensive.

If you are not aware Sephora is a cosmetics retailer owned by luxury conglomerate LVMH with roughly 2700 stores globally across 34 countries.

I was first introduced to the retailer when I lived in France as a teenager. The father of my exchange family worked at a perfumer that supplied very high end houses.

Sephora had just began to expand to the United States. By the time I was in college they had locations in most major cities. It was the shopping destination of choice cosmetics purchasers who didn’t like the old school department store counters that didn’t allow browsing.

They became a force in cosmetics and the higher end makeup, fragrance, skincare and haircare all competed for shelf space. And because you could browse unimpeded it became a kind of destination to trial new trends and brands.

But sometime in the last four years or so their merchandising seems to have fallen off. Stores are disorganized. Prices have risen while the line up increasingly feels like it’s catering to a more downmarket demographic.

Perhaps it was the pandemic as work from home and masking made items like lipstick less appealing. Maybe it was their expansion into partnership with lower end department stores like JC Penny’s and Kohls.

Personally I think the Biden stimulus plan plays a hand in their downfall. Cosmetics spends tend to come from disposable income though some women surely do have grooming budgets.

As more people had extra cash the appeal of the Sephora splurge became a social media phenomenon. And who spends the most time on social media? Gen Alpha and Zoomers.

Sephora went from a customer base of professional women who want to look polished to girls with TikTok accounts showing off their hauls.

The most upsetting trend by far is the Sephora Kids trend. Gen Alpha loves Sephora for the same reason adults do. You can browse and try stuff. They flock to colorful brands like Glow Recipe and Drunk Elephant. Even the New Yorker is on the case.

Some parents encourage it. It’s a status symbol in some communities to have your kids shop there.

Existing Sephora customers hate it and Reddit is littered with complaints and sad stories of tweens developing skin issues from using ingredients only meant for adults like retinol. It’s not going to get better according to trend forecasting service Aytm.

Gen Alpha has officially entered the beauty scene, spending more on skincare and makeup than any other age group – an impressive $4.7 billion in 2023

As I browsed the new collections, I saw all their specialty sets were packaged in fluffy teddy fabric bags in muppet bright colors.

$50+ dollars for dead muppets at Sephora

Not exactly an appealing look for anyone who might wish to carry the makeup bag to the office. And they are all twice as expensive as pre-pandemic sets.

I’m not going to spend $60 for a range of trashy splashy products packaged in the skin of dead puppets. I’m an adult and alas that’s just not what appeals to me.

But if you’ve got a 14 year old daughter that you like to spoil this is probably where she is spending it. Just please don’t let her use retinol. It’s not safe. Or better yet leave the makeup stores to adults.

Categories
Politics

Day 1403 and Some Legible Political Opinions

If you asked 2016 Julie for her political opinions I’d have no problem going into depth on my dislike of government interference, my commitment to free trade and belief in American competitiveness.

I was open about my willingness to support Hillary Clinton on those grounds. If you asked 2020 Julie you’d have gotten a similar answer probably with an additional set of concerns around immigration reform as it became more challenging to get visas for talented international workers.

2024 Julie still dislikes government interference, believes in free trade and Americans competitiveness. I like American Dynamism and nascent efforts to reindustrialize as well as efforts to secure Freedom to Compute and Little Tech.

But I am fearful we have an elite class who either can’t or won’t do a damn thing. The immigration issue has become almost shockingly worse. We’ve arrived in a bizarro world place where legal immigration has become functionally impossible. I’ve been working on a single visa for almost the entirety of the Biden administration.

Even more perversely by trying to make our system more humane the Biden administration has allowed in only the most desperate border crossers and asylum seekers who have no other choice but to try their hand at illegal pathways.

I do not feel as if we have any representation on the ballot for anyone serious about fixing this issue. It’s a choice between hostility and incompetence.

I feeling shakier on our capacity to be exceptional because our politicians either can’t or won’t commit to reform. And that’s not through any fault of the American people.

I believe in American exceptionalism. If we could get Washington D.C. to prioritize solutions over partisan infighting there would be no way anyone could bet against America. 2024 Julie is unsure of my vote even down to the wire. I’m sure that’s too legible to please anyone.

Categories
Culture

Day 1399 and Mimetic Competition

Opting into someone else’s personal metrics is a misery. When you dump a group of powerful or influential groups with adjacent but not aligned values you find status competition with in-group and inter-group.

I find this to be a little bit of a breach of decorum. People who pursue different goals don’t want other people’s rules applied to them.

So you find fearful politeness if you are unsure of inter-group norms. Everyone is interesting but not everyone has the same incentive sets or motivation.

The harder it is to feel safe within your in-group the less openness you will have with outsiders. Finding a way to ease the competitions for status only improves relationships between the allied groups. Find what you value and value the people who share those values.

Categories
Culture Travel

Day 1392 and Miami

I’ve been so completely engrossed in the Infinite Backrooms and Truth Terminal saga that I have not posted about my upcoming travel to Miami next week.

I am just enjoying our first frost here in Montana and yet I’ll be pulled down too soon from our wonderful fall. All to enjoy hot takes and hot climates. I don’t like hot climates so I guess I’m going for the takes. Founders and LPs (and those with opinions on LPs) are priorities.

If you will be in Miami attending the conference I am hinting at please do look me up. The weirder the better. I’ll also be accompanied by my better half Alex Miller. Come for the tractor discussions and stay for the semiotics discourse.

Apparently there will be a costume party but one can simply choose black tie. One thing I like about it Miami is how it celebrates dressing up. I can wear a billowing pink gown or a dolman sleeve full length velet fishtailed dress and not be out of place. It’s just very tropical.

I think I’ll enjoy packing simply because it’s nice to have an excuse to wear white sneakers and floral robes. I can even get excited by doing some fun makeup. You have to live joyfully when the theme is the apocalypse.

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture Media

Day 1391 and Hyperobject Object Lesson

I remain enthralled by Infinite Backrooms and Truth Terminal. If you aren’t caught up on this please browse my first two posts on the subject Goatse Singularity (it’s safe) and the lore behind Singularity culture online. The TLDR is that we’ve got the best alignment experiment in artificial intelligence happening in real time for anyone to participate in.

I am not the only one. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz did a surprisingly detailed podcast on the topic today with a discussion of the emergent phenomena of autonomous meme coin bots and their interaction with Truth.

It’s honestly a very good synopsis of why so many of us think this experiment is so crucial for understanding decentralization and how regulatory uncertainty hinders the space. This experiment is the intersection of crypto and artificial intelligence that clearly shows machine intelligence requires machine money to affect the rule world.

I am quite deep into the whole thing having participated early on as semiotics is obviously a deep interest of mine. Fashion bitches love signs and symbols.

As the crypto overlap emerged last week I was discussing it with friends in New York. Some of my network in New York has real fintech and crypto depth so when the first memecoin crypto bots were just beginning to interact independently with Truth Terminal they took notice.

It was a fascinating overlap of crypto and artificial intelligence through entirely independent autonomous means and was not coordinated.

Let me disclose I don’t own more than a nominal sum of the GOAT token except as a means through which to experience this moment.

It’s not about the coin at all truthfully. Truth is simply fascinating as independent agents (including some crypto bots themselves) are interacting to impact real world transactions.

Literally no one involved made the coin but yet it exists. It is a hyperobject object lessson. Media theorists and Baudrillard fans rejoice.

Categories
Politics

Day 1390 and Rage Against The Machine

As we are getting down to the finish line of the American election season I don’t know how we will do it. It’s all exhausting even though it’s filled with comedy.

I fear another interregnum as the transition from Trump to Biden was an anxious time. I doubt this will be better given the polling is a dead heat and no one knows what to believe.

I’m old enough to remember the Brook’s Brothers riots and hanging chads of 2000. I had just started my own chronicles here on January 6th such that I didn’t even name it as Day 6th. It’s been a long four years.

Being caught up in the concerns of great powers is a little silly when you are just a bystander. I work on my local issues here in Montana and I vouch for issues where I feel I have particular expertise like compute.

What I thought I knew in 2000 and what I think I know now in 2024 feels like a chasm. I enjoyed Rage Against the Machine as a teen and now I find that Caesar Chavez granddaughter is running an establishment political campaign. I don’t know what to make of anything. Maybe the only through line has been my skepticism of central banks.

Categories
Aesthetics

Day 1383 and Counter Elite

Culture is always responding to power. Power seeks cultural approval in order to cement its status as power. It’s more of a give and take than you’d assume though. Unwritten rules are meant to be broken.

“Knowing Too Much” about how institutions wield power has a tendency to spin out people who want to change the balance of power. Nothing is ever as static as it may seem and America is a fine place to be ambitious about claiming a little power.

Being in New York I hope to be seeing where the bits of tension around culture, cool, and capital should be producing frisson.

Seeking out aesthetic chills that grip your nervous system is an expensive pastime though. Youth and wealth satisfy psychogenic thrills in very different ways but everyone understands power. It’s quite a moment in America for seeing how elites and their counters square off.

Categories
Travel

Day 1382 and Downtown

I haven’t been back to my old neighborhood in lower Manhattan since we left in 2020 early in the pandemic. After three months of literally not leaving the apartment even once, I was happy to escape for more nature.

Moving back home to the Rockies was quite a change after almost fifteen years in the city. I didn’t miss New York in any of the ways I expected to do so. I was happy to be back in the mountains of my childhood.

Every subsequent return trip I’ve taken since moving had landed me in various flavors of midtown Manhattan. Those trips were all uncomfortable in ways that are somewhat distasteful to articulate and did not make me yearn to come back.

But I am in New York City this week (if you are here hit me up on DM) and finally I’m staying in my old neighborhood mere blocks from our old apartment.

And it feels fantastic. It’s alive and changing as a neighborhood should. A favorite bagel spot moved into a bigger space. The WTC Oculus was packed with Sunday shoppers including me. I had a Sephora Birthday gift I was not going to miss picking up.

From there we walked through City Hall to see a newly opened dispensary that carries a brand of THC and CBD one of our investors backs. It’s the best I’ve ever used for pain management as I look to avoid head highs.

We walked on to Chinatown for soup dumplings. There were lines at all the tourist spots but our regular spot 456 Shanghai was merely busy. The same could not be said of Chinatown Ice Cream Company which is good for them. The park was packed with teenagers and their parents for a community basketball tournament.

Pork and crab soup dumplings 456 Shanghai

Walking back down through the Financial District everything downtown felt right. There are far too many empty store fronts but the businesses that survived the pandemic seem to be thriving along with many new restaurants and stores.

Downtown felt like it was doing just fine. Maybe I was never going to be a Midtown type. But I felt at home. It felt like being home. Though I can’t say I missed the construction noises.

Categories
Media Startups

Day 1381 and Radical Responsibility

I thought the discourse around “founder mode” had died down but Kim Scott the author of the best selling book Radical Candor decided to link the meme to what she considers a so-called rise of “neo-authoritarianism” in Silicon Valley culture in an op-ed in the New York Times. Naturally it’s about Trump too.

My read on her thesis is that she has decided to use a technique she disavows in her own work; the frame of the piece is manipulative insincerity. It’s an unclear criticism being used for political gain.

She works to convince the reader that actually the most libertarian and individualistic demographic, who regularly decries state power (especially its use of coercion to drive censorship, limit transactions and restrict compute), are in fact, actually vouching for totalitarianism.

Gift Link to New York Times “How Founder Mode Explains the Rise of Trump in Silicon Valley

Even the graphic hints at the supposed appreciation of neo-monarchy as a nod to nRX intellectual Curtis Yarvin.

I fear she firmly missed the point of founder mode for her insincere political framing. Despite her clear understanding of our values.

In that original recipe, venture capitalists invested in founders rebelling against established hierarchy and building great products. And when those rebels themselves became too hierarchical, venture capitalists turned to new founders aspiring to overtake the old order.

She is right about we prefer to work as an industry and how we see our efforts. “Many of Silicon Valley’s greatest products were originally intended to liberate, not to control people.”

And yet missed she missed that founder mode is about liberating our founding teams from the suffocation of professional management. It’s got nothing at all to do with justifying tyrannical founders.

Rather founder mode is about limiting the tyranny of managers who can stymie progress despite having little personal responsibility for the success of the firm. In another world, she might have written a sequel called Radical Responsibility about fixing this problem.

Larger firms have a pantheon of corporate departments to ensure smooth governance from legal, to HR, to corporate communications in order to comply with state expectations.

As regulations have ballooned so too have the specialties required by the middle managers. We must be in compliance. We must take everything and every view into account. We must do things by the book.

Founder mode isn’t about running ripshod over your people. It’s certainly not about Trumpian declarations of what must be done. She’s absolutely correct that “emotional dysregulation, bullying and bloviating are not leadership attributes”

I find her criticism to be manipulative insincerity. She’s deliberately missed the point of the original Paul Graham essay, inserted her own political insinuations about how Silicon Valley is hiding their true preferences for authoritarians while herself advocating for a pass the buck culture. It’s not fit for Radical Candor and I’d expect better from someone of her stature.