Things of the week

• The British painter David Hockney has died. He was a brilliant colorist and draftsman who reinvigorated portraiture and landscape painting during a twentieth century when the genres were quite out of fashion. My favorite of his paintings are the portraits of couples, figures standing stock-still, like ancient statues, in perfectly modern interiors. There’s his artist-on-artists portrait of Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy or artist-on-patron depiction of collectors Fred and Marcia Weisman. For a great look into Hockney’s mind and career, read Lawrence Weschler’s True to Life: Twenty-Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney or stream A Bigger Splash, a fly on the wall documentary of Hockney in the 70s.

• Related: Dazed asks, Do you need to be hot to make it as an artist now? It’s a pointed question. In the insta era, it really helps if you present well on camera. More selfies = more followers = more sales. You can “sell work on the more accessible side of the industry through posting thirst traps.” Of course, it has always helped to be hot as an artist, but the hotness barrier seems more acute these days:

  Last year, Yoona posted bikini mirror selfies on Instagram with the hashtag #AlgorithmPrincessSummer. Suddenly, more people were interested in her art, especially male artists and curators.

• An extremely tasteful penthouse in the ur-UWS building The Dakota is on sale for just $8 million.

• Why all the kids are using “chat” as a collective pronoun, in NYT Mag’s revived vocabulary column.

• Everything on the internet is a “show” now. Kyle reviews Keep the Meter Running, the Subway Takes Guy aka Kareem Rahma’s new, kind of lackluster YouTube production.

My World Cup listening & reading recs

by Nate Gallant

Your favorite chewing gum is now back in style! No, it’s not more Twin Peaks–it’s the world’s most prominent gum-chewing athletes, more globally famous than most of your overexposed American celebrities, arriving at US, Mexican, and Canadian stadiums for the 2026 World Cup (you know, the international soccer competition). Perhaps you’ve already noticed from the electronic billboards on the New Jersey Turnpike, the cheap plastic cups with Messi’s face in your local Walgreens, or the David Beckham appearing on every commercial since the start of last week.

Besides terrible advertisements from the Beckham extended universe, and, hopefully some good soccer matches, a quick glance over the headlines about the ongoing political strife around the tournament would still make you think we’re about subject to the same confusing and violent cosmic chess game as Kyle McLaughlin and his evil avatar. For those looking to make sense of the chaos, both sporting and political, allow me to recommend a few pieces of media which I find less condescending than those Athletic headlines, ripped straight from the first five seconds of a TikTok explainer video. (How is it possible to commit so many crimes against journalistic style simply with the word “this”?)

Men in Blazers

Heritage American soccer media. The podcast does not shy away from sporting’s political entanglements, but host Roger Bennett treats the game on the pitch analytically, and as a source of collective joy, intergenerational connection, and its quasi-religious social function. For the soccer-curious NBA fans, watch or listen to his interview with Joel Embiid. For the erstwhile Liverpool fan, his annual catch-up with notable red, John Oliver. For the soccer die-hards, any of his interviews with the players on this year’s US squad, or any of the big-name European stars (I recommend the Mo Salah one, in particular). They even just had Zohran Mamdani on!

Bennett is one of the best live interviewers in the business, and you can always tell he asks a question the players have not heard during their several hour virtual presser. He has also, due to the departure of his original co-host to the Jeopardy revamp a few years back, been joined of late by Rory Smith, longtime sports journalist and award-winning author of several books about the global game, and one of my absolute favorite soccer writers.

Their conversations recapping and previewing games for the tournament would be, I think, the most approachable of those listed here for those without longstanding knowledge of the game. You won’t hear as many in-jokes and references to canonical moments of World Cups past as you might hear on, say, The Guardian Football Weekly (which I also love), say. Still, you’ll be comprehensively introduced to their perspective on the difficult business of loving sport while also having empathy for other humans, most of whom in the world are being crushed by many of the same media ecosystems, political structures, and economic inequities that hold up global sport.

The End of Sport

Relatedly, this podcast is perhaps the deepest dive you can expect on the politics of sport. Their episodes usually feature an academic expert on topics which shape the structural inequities and historical conditions by which sport has been shaped, and vice versa.

Thus far, besides the embarrassment of the FIFA Peace Prize, and the fact that the US should have been stripped of its rights to host according to FIFA rules for being at war with at least one other member nations, the World Cup is inadvertently (although not by any stretch an accident, if you think historically) bringing labor issues to the fore around North America. Stadium workers in several host cities have threatened to strike, and on June 9th, two days before the opening game, teachers in Mexico City shut down a major roadway leading to the national stadium, the Azteca, which hosts the opening game of the tournament, as part of negotiations over pensions and other key labor issues. Check out their launch previewing and starting their coverage of what they term the MAGA World Cup, or their episode on the “Politics of Megaevents,” for an overview of some of the other key issues around the gameday events themselves, especially if you live in or near one of the host cities.

Libero

The meta-football podcast—comfortably so. Fellow journalists, writers, and media professionals will get a lot of very interesting insider chat about what it’s like to cover football from the inside, and thus, the active evolution of soccer media, in addition to reactions to and analysis on what happens on/off the pitch.

Hosting this podcast are seven of the best journalists covering world soccer in English, and contrary to my earlier snark, following their work in “print” at their respective outlets will be well worth your time. Tariq Panja and Miguel Delaney do some of the most unflinching and engaging long-form journalism on sportswashing and other political complicities of the global football industry. Nearly every episode, Jack Pitt-Brook and James Horncastle casually throw out an opinion that makes me second guess something I would consider part of the common sense of football and its odd business. Jonathan Wilson is the public historian of football in the Anglophone world, for those unfamiliar with his many books, columns, podcasts, and newsletters, and, for those interested, he is also of the closest observers of African football in the Anglophone media (follow Osasu Obayiuwana, on this, as well). John Brewin’s knowledge of the football history and culture is also deeply illuminating and often more personal, and he ranks as one of my favorite and most erudite grumpy cynics of popular culture in the podcast-sphere. And I’ve already gushed plenty above Rory Smith, above.

Bonus Picks:

I would recommend reading everything Barney Ronay and Jonathan Liew write about this World Cup, especially since The Guardian has no paywall. Ken Early, as well, if you have an Irish Times subscription. You will laugh, and probably also be deeply upset by how clearly they refract the horrifying undercurrents of this World Cup, sporting and otherwise. If you’d also like a side of schadenfreude for the English fan psyche of following a world cup (they have not won a major international tournament since 1966, despite inventing the sport), though a very data-driven, analytic approach, listen to some episodes of The England Pod.

Most-clicked links from the last edition

• The upstate NY town of Kingston gets a generic rebrand

• A lovely Belle Epoque mansion in Provence for €1.2m

• The New Yorker launches a new word game about lists

• A poem about Steely Dan in Harper’s

• The austere lives of loneliness influencers

Things of the week

• “Steely Dan Poem (AKA Twists)”, a nice poem by Callie Garnett re-published in Harper’s, is what I wish Instagram poetry actually was. It begins:

• Kingston’s new town logo looks like a Kind Bar, or a sign on one of those random factories you pass on the Jersey turnpike. Can it still be the new Brooklyn??

• A vintage Provence home for €1,275,000 that sprawls around a perfect inner courtyard: “this elegant early 20th-century mansion embodies the authentic charm of former bourgeois residences.” Indeed.

• Aesthecizing loneliness on TikTok: Do you ever see those vlogs of placid people recording their eerily silent nighttime routines? Turns out it’s harder to be lonely when you have hundreds of thousands of followers.

• The New Yorker just launched a new online game called Catalogues that consists of re-organizing lists based on particular punny themes like names and dates. Think of Connections but for trivia.

• The legendary art critic John Yau reviewed the painter Celia Paul’s new exhibition at Gladstone Gallery (open through June 13); the text is great but even better are the plentiful photos of the paintings. Paul was the onetime partner of Lucien Freud and has since built her own legacy on mythological portraiture of her self and family. These are timeless contemporary paintings. It’s worth going down the rabbit hole of Paul’s life and work.

London-Milano-Brooklyn Chic

by Kyle Chayka

You can tell Lonnies, a new restaurant in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, is going to be good by looking in the storefront windows. Deep awnings reveal walls hung with legit paintings and posters, of Nan Goldin and Le Corbusier exhibitions, of a Smog concert. Some are mounted on a varnished wall of wood paneling in the rear of the space, an austere-yet-warm gesture that put me in mind of Milan — the design capital of clashing textures and shiny surfaces. But upon entering for an early dinner with Friend of One Thing Foster Kamer, the casual coziness and camaraderie induced by the open room made me feel more like I was in a modernized London pub. This is a place of mingled formality and informality, with two(!) separate bar areas to eat or drink at. Lucky for me, it’s exactly what you want moving into your neighborhood.

Lonnies is currently in the ideal pre-hype phase in which the people watching is perfect; everyone there knows they want to be there and has the expectant aura of discovering a new thing. There’s unplanned chatting between white-tableclothed two-tops and plenty of solo bar diners. But it’s still easy enough to walk in at opening time or book a table with the right alert. Foster and I sat at the rear bar, which is topped by gleaming reddish granite, for a few glasses of wine and a trial run of the menu, which is a kind of bistro-British-Mediterranean-American melange. There’s country ham on eggs mayonnaise available but also octopus skewers, smoked mackerel, and brick chicken. Tagliatelle with fava beans and a parmesan sauce was fantastic, with both beans and pasta very much al dente, as was a creamy morel toast — pointedly brown and mushy. Charred cabbage with romesco was less inspiring, it didn’t taste much like spring.

There’s a Lonnies burger for $26. As chef Bart Hutchins of Butterworth’s noted, the problem with putting a burger on the menu is that everyone orders it. (We didn’t.) But that seems to be the charm of Lonnies: the restaurant isn’t trying to force diners into a particular Experience, just trying to create that kind of classic, Euro-style establishment that inspires infinite return visits simply to soak in the vibe and have a nice meal in a beautiful room — sometimes, you will want the burger. The place makes you want to be a more urbane urbanite. It just might inspire you to put better art on your walls.

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Best of One Thing

• This is not a small plates restaurant Diners are getting tired of tiny sharing plates and the cliche natty wine bar.

• List culture In cultural recommendations and generative AI, lists still dominate the internet and dictate our culture.

• An Asian grocery store for anywhere Get your boutique soy sauces and frozen dumplings through ecommerce.

• Summer linen report A brand-by-brand review of airy summer shirts, IRL vetted only.

• The Starbucks reboot The company’s new CEO is trying to turn it back into a “third space” with friendlier baristas.

High joke density

By Noah Davis

The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (streaming on Peacock) is a simple, silly show. Its recently completed first season follows the titular Reggie Dinkins (played by Tracy Morgan), a disgraced former NFL star a few decades removed from his expulsion from the league and polite society due to a betting scandal. Arthur Tobin (Daniel Radcliffe), an Oscar-winning documentarian who has been expelled from film circles for reasons I’m not going to spoil, is embedded in Reggie’s New Jersey house. He’s shooting a film they both hope will return them to respective glory. Other players include Monica Reese-Dinkins as Reggie’s ex-wife and manager, Precious Way as his long-suffering fiancé, Jayln Hall as his son, and Bobby Moynihan as his live-in best friend and ex-teammate. Hijinks ensue, mostly in Reggie’s stately McMansion.

Robert Carlock and Sam Means, Dinkins’ co-creators and showrunners, previously worked on 30 Rock and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. All three shows share a similar DNA, a madcap romp of joke after joke. The critics Glen Weldon and Roxana Hadadi both highlighted this “joke machine” as a reason for the show’s success. It’s true: There’s a refreshing, endearing quality to this rapid-fire sprint of an art project hidden inside a traditional episodic television show. Everyone is enjoying just being funny.

But I would take this idea one step deeper. In an era of Ambient TV, Dinkins is something more powerful. It’s a comedy, yes, but it’s television that forces you to pay attention. Dinkins is not subtle; It is, after all, a Tracy Morgan experience. But the jokes unspool in surprising and varied ways, delivered across multiple senses. Take this perfect Epstein joke that bounced around Twitter:

For the joke to land, you need to both hear it and see it. If you’re staring at your phone, it doesn’t work nearly as well. Another example: in an early episode, it’s possible to piece together the fact that Reggie’s son’s name is Carmelo Anthony Mason Dinkins — Carmelo Anthony and Anthony Mason are both former NBA All-Stars — well before his full name is revealed. A goofy, glorious Easter Egg, paid off near the end of the episode. Each episode has multiple scenes like this, with ideas crammed into ideas molded into jokes by the very capable cast.

Dinkins works because it cares enough to respect its audience, demanding a higher quality of attention. That’s no joke.

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More streaming recs from Noah:

• Real football: Yes, the upcoming Men’s World Cup (June 11-July 19) is an unholy alliance-collision-clusterf between the United States’ and FIFA’s varying strains of crony- and criminal-adjacent capitalism. But the games, man, the games are a joy. Go find the biggest outdoor screen you can and watch with as many people as you can, preferably those with a rooting interest. (Although not the Brits. The Brits are a tough hang.) For 90 minutes, forget the cynicism.

• New horror: I’m on the record as an Apple TV stan so grain of salt but a strong yes to Widow’s Bay. Matthew Rhys stars as a mayor trying to turn his possibly haunted Maine island town into the next “Martha’s Vineyard.” Hiro Murai EPs and directs the first three episodes. Ti West helms the exceptional episode 6. Guillermo del Toro is a fan. Dark, atmospheric, weird but not too weird, a strong Stephen Root vehicle. What more could you want? (If you’re really inspired, perhaps your next move is to become the new owner of this pub on a small Irish island.)

• TV treats: Most Whole Foods brand products are performative nonsense masquerading as health food. Sour Gummy Watermelon Rings are, uh, not that. They are the freshest, tangiest, sweetest Sour Patch Watermelons you’ve ever eaten, in a fun circular shape to boot. The perfect snack to smuggle into a movie theater.

Recent One Thing bangers

• Can tech money create aesthetic innovation?: Silicon Valley tries investing in the arts to make culture less boring.

• The banality of the video podcast: Suddenly every writer is talking into a microphone on camera ensconced in a plush library.

• Is “character” the new taste?: Clara Malley argues that taste mania is a dead end.

• Palantir made a chore coat: The tech surveillance state is coming for your faux-workwear aesthetics.

• Todd Snyder x Sperry x Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: Collabs must be stopped.

• Arches are coming back into fashion as architectural decoration.

• Over in the UK, Pret is suffering a cornichon shortage, causing a catastrophic lack of jambon beurre sandwiches.

• Australia’s prettiest street (it is an amazing view) is getting mobbed with Instagram tourists wanting to get the shot.

• Hotel room homogeneity: Bloomberg investigated the financial and industrial factors behind hotels all looking the same, around the world and up and down the cost spectrum. In short, the real differentiators are amenities, not room decor. Fun game of trying to guess which plush beige room rendering costs more than the others.

• “Blue-chip slop”: Is the art world leaning in to the most obviously appealing kinds of work in order to sell to collectors? Prob! But then many galleries always have, think of all those Julian Opies.

  “A lot of galleries are just like, Oh, let’s attach ourselves to this life raft of things that present as painterly and not just decorative but are still quite safe and sellable,” says Jed Moch of Amity, an itinerant gallery that itself opened a show on Canal Street consisting mostly of works in pleasing washes of color. Even if he’s wary of an aesthetic consensus set by interior decorators, Moch has to be cognizant of the current market, which is dominated by paintings that are “a blending of figuration and abstraction that is delicate and very palatable.” The smaller scale of his gallery offers some freedom from the market mandate.

• The Martha’s Vineyard Gazette is looking to hire a reporter! Get the job and you can probably get a memoir deal out of it, too. “This position is based full-time on Martha’s Vineyard and comes with fully funded housing in a furnished, well-appointed 2-bedroom guest house.”

• Hyperlocal newsletters: My New Yorker column covered the rise of neighborhood-specific newsletters on Substack and elsewhere. Solo writers are having fun and getting paid subscriptions to write about pot holes and dive bars! It’s editorial that really matters to people. My favorite new newsletter is the Hamptons Chronicle, which is obviously juicy.

• Vacation-rental ennui: Dyspeptic Italian novelist Francesco Pacifico bemoans the need to put his Roman apartment on a house-swap platform in order to maintain the middle-class travel lifestyle.

• In praise of patina: An essay on the aesthetics of heavily worn and used objects, rebelling against the smoothness of quiet luxury, seeking a style that can’t be automated: “AI can generate a perfect image. It cannot generate a history.”

Investing in artistic innovation

Patrick Collison, billionaire founder of Stripe, and Tyler Cowen, famed economist and podcaster, believe that art is dead, or at least dead-ended. Why, they wonder, don’t we have our own version of the Bauhaus, that legendary German art school that essentially created the modernist aesthetic? In December, they launched a grant program called “New Aesthetics” to fund artists, designers, and makers working on new paradigms for culture in the 21st century, giving creators anywhere from $5,000 to $250,000. “Today, futuristic aesthetics often mean retrofuturistic aesthetics. So, what should the future actually look like?” they wrote.

Last week, they announced the grant recipients, a list that also amounts to a fascinating look at where Collison and Cowen see art going. The winning visual artists, architects, and designers often use tech, particularly AI, to facilitate artistic production. They make AI-generated Delft tiles, 3D-printed ceilings, and digital participatory experiences. The group displays a tendency to revive or reboot old aesthetics into a new mode — Megan Gafford will use hand-drawing to develop a new style of architectural ornament, for example, moving toward a kind of neo-Art Deco. (Her attitude seems kind of anti-Bauhaus!) Another recipient will build a silent meditation timer. Friend of the newsletter Robin Sloan got a grant to continue his printing projects “at the physical-digital boundary” (real heads know that Robin has been investigating post-digital tech-aesthetics for many many years).

I love the enthusiasm and the immediacy of the grant projects, and I’m happy to see non-art world organizations attempting to make waves in visual art, which is often woefully ignored by the rest of culture. (To be clear, this is still a very non-art world list of grantees.) But I wonder if Collison and Cowen have considered the full model of the Bauhaus, which was an entire school that taught formalist aesthetic training from the ground up. To get to Bauhaus modernism, you have to start at learning color theory and making additive sculpture from trash. Generative AI, as deployed by grantee Estudio AD (above) among others, seems more often to shortcut this aesthetic training. The grant program follows Silicon Valley’s venture-investing thesis, which is if you sprinkle enough money around you’re bound to hit a few individual winners. Probably true, but it doesn’t amount to a mass movement.

Today’s writers of text are are besieged by videos and screencaps thereof. Videos of themselves, talking about the texts they have written, speaking into microphones with thick pop shields positioned unavoidably close to their mouths. Ears occluded by cushioned headphones so as not to double up the sound of speaking. They sit around broad wooden tables, or on plush couches, or in Eames armchairs, slightly too far apart in a way that eliminates actual coziness. They are immersed in insulated, dim recording studios or comfortable libraries replete with probably fake books. There are wooden slats on every wall. Or else they are situated in unknowable voids, seamless white backdrops in warehouse studios somewhere, lit carefully and evenly as if by daylight.

These writers are recording podcasts, audio records of the discourse of the day, a way to propel their work to audiences who are no longer happy to read. But in the era of algorithmically recommended shortform video the writers are also captured and broadcast in moving images, with all of their pained facial expressions and undisciplined hand gestures, their middlingly fashionable outfits, their millennially fried vocals. The stage sets of these video podcasts are carefully designed and curated, each lamp and accessory considered, whether a grand piano or a fiddle-leaf fig. The atmosphere is “impeccable without having reference to any authority that could be perceived as inhibiting,” as George W.S. Trow described a fashionable restaurant in his 1978 New Yorker profile of Ahmet Ertegun, the chairman of Atlantic Records, a phrase that Trow repeats as a refrain. The sets, installed with plentiful mics awaiting speech, are authoritative and yet unintimidating, like a friend’s renovated suburban basement. They frame the speech of the interview subjects or conversers, legitimizing it in this time of slop, imbuing it with an authenticity reinforced by the presence of their actual bodies, faces, voices. The upholstered chairs and bokeh-fuzzed interiors extending in the background imply a sense of trust. We are really here with you.

Regardless of what is being discussed, the podcast videos that we now broadcast and that millions watch are the content, as Marshall McLuhan would argue, they are the texts. Thus we must examine them closely. What do they say?

One Thing is a weekly email of high-quality culture and commentary on design, aesthetics, media, and taste.

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Things of the week

• Global steakhouse: Bettina Makalintal writes about the restaurant genre that has conquered the world and become internationalized in turn. Now you can choose a steakhouse sub-genre: Korean, Filipino, Caribbean, Mexican…

• Cyberdecks are the new Pokédexes: The “cyberdeck” is a new DIY movement for hacked-together, portable computer devices that look like something out of Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokémon. They’re a rebellion against the tech broligarchy.

• Rome’s first photography museum is opening in a former slaughterhouse in Testaccio.

• Coachella just happened; you might have seen it streaming on YouTube instead of dancing on a muddy field. Dazed has a good essay about how “soulless” the Coachella aesthetic has become, which might apply equally to the general glossiness of the indie music scene at the moment.

Coachella fashion has aged like a landfill indie band. What was once fun now feels stale and cringe. Each April, celebrities and influencers are helicoptered into the desert with full glam squads – not a splash of mud in sight. The process is smooth and frictionless, with every moment optimised to look good on screen. Each outfit is meticulously curated to appear free-spirited, which obviously misses the point, and the result is a largely soulless facsimile of festival fashion.

The problem of Palantir’s chore coat

by Kyle Chayka

Palantir, a global digital surveillance / AI company that assists things like ICE raids and military targeting, broke a very niche corner of the internet with this tweet of its forthcoming chore coats. For a straightforwardly evil, para-governmental, secretive tech company, Palantir sure has been doing a lot of merch drops. You can show off your allegiance / fandom with baseball caps, hoodies, or American flag patches. But something about the chore coat was particularly triggering, probably because it so closely adopts the 2020s hipster / Brooklyn dad / indie graphic designer aesthetic and inverts or weaponizes its values. Though One Thing has been pro-chore coat for a long, long time, this is one chore coat I would not wear.

Email and Photoshop / Figma workers have been appropriating workwear style for quite a while now. Carhartt canvas jackets and pants with hammer loops were the prime examples of the digital creative class’s attempt to look more “artisanal” in the wake of late-2000s / early 2010s lumberjack vibes. After mechanic and barn coats came the vogue for slimmer, cleaner French work coats — the Bleu de Travail — worn by waiters and chefs and shopkeepers. So every chore coat might be stolen valor, sure, but clicking away at a creative agency while looking like a Parisian waiter is very different than working for a major military contractor and sporting its logo on your breast pocket. The Palantir drop denatures the chore coat, turns it toxic and unappealing. You are not doing chores when refining a model to determine who gets deported.

AI companies are desperately in search of new branding for themselves, as marketing becomes a major differentiator between purveyors of AI models that are very similar to each other in the eyes of any normal human consumer. Branding will make the difference between which company is Microsoft and which is Apple. The designers at AI-forward companies are grabbing on to high-touch, faux-analog, high-texture aesthetics in order to seem like they’re doing something other than hoovering up, digesting, and spitting back out the entire history of human art and culture without compensating artists or writers. Notion also produced a chore coat; General Intelligence just released an embroidered, flower-bedecked baseball cap; and Anthropic already did Claude pop-ups at coffee shops with branded hats and notebooks. (Anthropic is also hosting a party at Cannes film festival with Graydon Carter.)

This all falls under my phrase “tastewashing,” which I brought up in a recent New Yorker column. Tasteful styles and symbols are being deployed to give an aura of quality to products whose mechanisms and values are extremely abstract and incomprehensible. We can’t understand a data center or the eighth release of a “new model” this month, but we can understand a chore coat or a baseball cap. I think AI companies are going to sponsor a boom in pro-AI cultural production, and this kind of fashion is just the beginning. I’m not going to let them take chore coats away from me.

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Most clicked links from last issue

• Mackenzie Thomas is the top E-girl

• Lena Dunham recalls growing up with Soho retail

• Big Alessi design sale!!!

• Home interior trends on Zillow

• AI food slop

Things of the week

• The Tokyo hotel from Lost in Translation, the Park Hyatt Tokyo, just reopened after a top-to-bottom overhaul. The Washington Post reported out its new vision of luxury.

• Mackenzie Thomas is the epitome of the e-girl archetype, according to Nylon — a true protagonist of 21st-century culture.

• The best cultural criticism of the week might be Lena Dunham recounting her personal history of Soho retail, through her Manhattan bohemian childhood.

• NYT argues that anime breaks the always-on model of streaming production and still delivers must-watch finite, episodic seasons. Mike Hale picks Ghibli-adjacent Witch Hat Atelier and neo-feudal satire Nippon Sangoku as the standout shows right now.

• AI-generated anthropomorphized ingredients telling you how to cook them: welcome to food slop.

• Movies are brands now, writes Chris Erik Thomas in High Snobiety. A24 is turning its films into streetwear lines that sell out, with sweatpants, windbreakers, and recycled vintage t-shirts: “every movie needs its own merch cycle.”

• Read last week’s One Thing, an essay on the dead end of “good taste” online and the newfound importance of character: “the specificity of one’s interests over generalized cultural fluency.”

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Equip your kitchen: The Italian design purveyor Alessi is having a huge sale with many products 40%+ off, including their iconic tea kettles and a nice personal blender for your breakfast smoothies. We have the plissé juicer and it both works perfectly and looks very elegant on the countertop.

Zillow generic: Domino gets data from Zillow on what kinds of home interiors are trending right now and causing users to hit that cruel Zillow heart button. The trends are an interesting mix of contemporary cliches and traditional signifiers: they identified arched doorways (classic TikTok style) and exposed beams as popular (modern farmhouse vibes) but also Tudor and Victorian architectural features. Open shelving stays winning. Ultimately we want some character — not just an empty box condo — but not too much character.

Rosie Wylie documentary: Readers will recall OT’s coverage of the painter Rose Wylie’s exhibition at the Royal Academy in London — she’s a sui generis genius of the postmodern image and her huge paintings are as fun as they are radical. It came to our attention via Friend of One Thing Sarah Belfort that there is a documentary about Rose and her husband, painter Roy Oxlade, on Apple TV called Rose & Roy. It’s a delightful, quite slow look at two now-elderly artists whose work hasn’t always been recognized by the public, but they have always recognized each other and built a shared life around pursuing their artistic practices over all else. Worth watching, especially for the moments of Rose painting.

Party reporting is back in style: Delia Cai’s Deez Links newsletter covered a recent booze-soaked Air Mail party celebrating the launch of old-school author Jay McInerney’s latest novel at The Odeon. It’s an extremely fun bit of NYC scene coverage and included this iconic bit, which is Delia’s equivalent Joan Didion’s iconic packing list (also very correct):

We’re seeing a boom in party reporting these days as IRL events get more popular as signs of clout and cultural influence. You can’t just click something online; you have to be there in person. Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me has been covering parties for a while, and we can’t help but recall Artforum’s legendary Scene & Herd party column. A party report is the original version of transforming IRL experience into shareable content, but it’s words on a page instead of Instagram posts. Scarcity is valuable in this virtual era, so long as you can advertise it after the fact.

Most clicked links from last issue

• Tokyo subway advertising

• Adventures in creative nonfiction: “Finding the Cattle Queen”

• “Influencer novels”

• Ultra-high end airline experiences

• Minimalist I Ching paintings

Things of the week

• Keith McNally’s gadabout son is opening his own NYC French restaurant.

• Beautiful abstract paintings and installations drawn from the I Ching.

• Flying ultra first class means you never have to interact with another human being. Total privacy (aka isolation) is the new luxury!

• Great literary nonfiction essay from n+1: Finding the Cattle Queen. Stick with it all the way through.

• Tokyo’s duct-tape typographer subway employee helped to design an extremely stylish ad in Shinjuku Station for a new Nike store.

• What is the “influencer novel”? (Acute criticism, but a genre we do not want to read.)

Acquired Taste

by Clara Malley

Brands are chasing a sense of good taste online, but that leads to a dead end if there’s nothing else behind it. Is “character” the new taste? (Excerpted from Side Projects.)

If for every year in Brand World you received a new buzzword badge for your Brownie sash — a “community” badge in 2023-2024, a “worldbuilding” badge in 2023-2022, a “purpose” badge for 2021-2020 — the 2025-2026 badge is “taste.” Some of the same brands once clamoring to prove their digital literacy via TikTok and brainrot are now eager to communicate their taste via Jacquemus- style “filmic” video.

Perhaps this desire for prestige social was brought about by the realization that social-native (memes, lo-fi everything) is ugly, or by the rise of slop and the diminishing returns of competing with bots to be the most unhinged, or because it’s counterproductive for brands to latch their kisser onto the human centipede of brand accounts commenting under a viral video (it is).

I’m pro-“brands looking to have a creative opinion again,” especially compared to the alternative in which even organic advertising — as opposed to only the paid, hyper-targeted, terrifying stuff — mirrors slop. I also agree with the popular thinkpiece thesis that pursuing taste and elevating expertise is an important bulwark against AI and human-engineered content that’s generated to engage eyeballs and not enrich life. But when the pursuit of taste is diminished to the pursuit of “better” content, it stops being a defense against the worst effects of algorithmic recommendations and can instead be another kind of entrapment.

It’s easy to harp on social media for propagating “bad” taste; that could, to you, mean basic West Village girlie-pop; bland and beige interiors; meathead grindset DIL videos, etc. But algorithms throw seeds of good taste into the wind as well. These Jacquemus-type videos are the social marketing equivalent of Scandinavian furniture; of a big and healthy monstera plant; of the tasteful yet pervasive; and hollow, sophistication that Vincenzo Latronico describes in his novel Perfection. The repetitiveness of this “good taste” content on social is striking. All roads lead to a carousel post of the Fallen Angels tunnel scene. To Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. To Madonna leaving a gym in London (#mood). To 90s Playstation ads. To the Oasis vs. Blur charity match.

These kernels of good taste get melted down to scrap in the algorithm and turned into a mimetic version of “good” taste which has come to shape the slop-free corners of social media. It’s given rise to quote-unquote creative entrepreneur professions like tablescaping. It feeds the churn of viral aesthetics. It’s responsible in part for the proliferation of mood accounts and curator accounts that repost each other and themselves. It’s also a factor in the feeling of hollowness via deja vu that being on social media increasingly inspires. The rise of filmic brand vignettes is a kind of culmination, the entrance of mass consumer brands to the fray signaling here, as always, that the sharp edges of culture — and of tastemaking brands — need to get sharper.

We’re seeing the salient dividing line shift from being about demonstrating good taste via content to proving that you’ve earned your stripes; recent writing about the “death of cool” by Anu Lingala and Charli XCX has a version of this problem at its center. I expect we’ll see a shift in emphasis from taste to character, in which the premium is placed on contradiction over cohesion and the specificity of one’s interests over generalized cultural fluency. I’m thinking: incongruous hobbies (ex. Rosey Grier’s Needlepoint for Men), niche and unprestigious collections (stamps? pennies?), and prickliness toward commercial fluency and palatability. Not driven by a desire to be cool or interesting per se but by a desire to be free of the pasteurized good taste, the style without substance, that the algorithm often encourages.

Brands and creatives must prioritize the idea over the image. The shift toward Substack is an early indication. It’s harder to fake your “taste credentials” in a 1000+ word article than in an IG Carousel. A migration away from short-form platforms toward digital and physical surfaces allows for higher concept, more time-consuming work that extends beyond a single TikTok or a single retail season. And while I don’t believe a mass exodus is in the cards, I do think more rising creatives and brands will decide that the effort to cultivate a social media presence is simply not worth the reward. And rather than waiting to hit 200k followers — or be ripped off by the masses — they will take their creative output far beyond the reaches of Mark Zuckerberg’s limp rhymes-with-stick.

Clara Malley is a senior director at the studio and podcast Side Projects. Order a copy of Side Projects Issue 01 here.

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Best of One Thing

Look back through the archives for OT’s greatest hits. We send out weekly bulletins of culture news and original commentary.

• An Asian grocery store for anywhere Get your boutique soy sauces and frozen dumplings through ecommerce.

• This is not a small plates restaurant Diners are getting tired of tiny sharing plates and the cliche natty wine bar.

• Our camera rolls, our selves Phone camera rolls store every moment of our lives. What does this infinity of photography mean?

• Aggregation theory Big media companies and tiny Substacks alike are competing to offer authoritative viewpoints.

• The disappearing Insta grid Why we don’t like posting to Instagram’s main feed anymore.

Things of the week

• Sparkling Haribo for sale: One Thing contributor Emily Chang has launched Worlds, which is both a beautiful web design & branding project and an ecommerce operation for niche international candy, including blueberry cheesecake-flavored KitKats. “In most stores, foreign candy is displayed like a cheap grocery commodity rather than a special object of taste,” Emily said. The site’s elegant, animated photo shoots show off the products like an art gallery. Part of the inspiration came from Emily’s work trips for Uniqlo: “At the end of the day, we would go down to the 7-11 inside Uniqlo’s headquarters and spend the rest of our per diem. Needless to say, I spent it all on candy.” Check out the site, and maybe buy some grape-flavored Vineyard Jellybeans.

• NYC is poised for a pub boom: Jess Shadbolt, of hip NYC restaurant King, opens Dean’s, a nostalgic riff on a British pub, serving Cornwall’s most photogenic dish: a seafood pie with fish heads poking through the crust. Recession indicator??

• New dream chore coat: In a Paris suburb, New Zealand designer Oliver Church aka Singular Garments makes shirts and jackets one at a time from vintage French textiles sourced at flea markets — say, kelsch linen from Alsace trousseaus. One shirt takes up to 35 hours. “The best way to make money is not the best way to make clothes,” he says. Be warned: they cost €700, but you’ll want one. Follow on Insta.

• Don’t overexpose your swag: Buenos Aires musician Estratosfera on how the stock-like imagery she made for her debut single went so viral it lost its origin, which made her turn against it. Good interview on the latest internet aesthetics.

• Pierre Hardy has designed shoes for Hermès for 35 years straight.

• Artists are creating handmade, animated No AI Used disclaimers.

• If you collect enough Vivienne Westwood they might ask you to curate an exhibition of it.

• Are we still trying to look “old money”?: Guy Trebay takes on the rich fashion aesthetic — no logos, monochrome, nice textures — and the coaches who try to teach it online. Trebay is too much of a legend to be accused of being late, but I feel like there’s a new, more maximalist style looming.

• In a piece for Monocle, the estimable Colin Nagy argues that media should focus on building understanding instead of providing iterative news updates.

• The swankiest property in Brooklyn is a Crown Heights carriage house renovated by an architect couple who carefully assembled vintage materials. The cedar soaking tub is the star of the show. Only $5.895 million.

What was the publication?

by Kyle Chayka

As media consumption pivots toward singular personalities and multimedia platforms, the stars take power while institutional voices fade.

Two big things are happening right now in the relatively dry world of media business mergers and acquisitions. The first is that Vox Media, the parent company of Vox, The Verge, SBNation, and other publications you might know, is working to sell off its Vox Media podcast network, which produces shows for its own brands as well as with many celebrity-y partners, ranging from Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway to Megan Rapinoe and Esther Perel. Semafor covered the potential sale first, then NYT reported that Versant, a huge media conglomerate that owns CNBC and MS Now, is the likely buyer. Then, OpenAI bought TBPN (Technology Business Programming Network), a livestreaming, internet-TV tech talk show starring two bro-y entrepreneurs that gained traction on X. The price is reported to be in the low hundreds of millions of dollars — nearly the price Jeff Bezos paid for the entire Washington Post.

On the surface these are very different deals. OpenAI is buying the livestreamed-video-podcast because it wants to improve its corporate communication strategies, developing what sounds like AI-friendly media messaging, though they have pledged not to interfere with TBPN’s editorial process. TBPN’s advertising, which netted some $30 million in annual sales, immediately disappeared on the announcement of the acquisition, meaning that its primary business model (and the theoretical basis of its price) is totally undermined by its new owner. Vox Media sees its podcast division as a valuable asset that it would make money from by divesting it at a moment in which its price is at a peak (though it’s probably cheaper than TBPN’s hyped value), and it will likely sell to another corporate media production house. Both entities are selling on the way up, taking the money while it’s there, and both are valued based on their charismatic personalities who broadcast themselves on microphone and camera. “Vox Media is a creator collective,” the media reporter Mark Stenberg wrote after SXSW. That’s certainly not how we would have described it six years ago.

Faces and voices are how digital content is consumed now, and it’s where the highest ad rates are. I think consumers are gravitating toward markers of authenticity in the age of AI (livestreaming can’t be generated, for now), and multimedia is also simply an easier, more passive format to consume than text. It’s more believable and it’s less work — which doesn’t mean it’s better journalism; usually, it’s the opposite. This all makes me wonder about the fate of the “publication” or “magazine,” the media institutions that actually generate the journalism that podcasters reference and commodify. Publications are collective brands that provide an umbrella identity for many different people: journalists, editors, designers, fact checkers, social media producers. They are not just one or two celebrity voices. We love publications in theory, but we actually don’t have that many surviving with coherent identities and editorial outlooks. The Verge has that, as does my employer The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and New York Magazine, among others. Then there are much smaller indie publications like Defector or Aftermath, which have strong voices and devoted fanbases. Many other titles are defunct or lost in some vague middle ground, unable to compete in a Joe Rogan universe.

Institutional brands are less appealing and seemingly less valuable at the moment. Vox Media apparently tried to sell its publications as well as its podcasts, but did not get a good enough offer. Many of the most successful journalists are now building out independent companies under their own names (Joanna Stern, the former WSJ tech columnist, is one of the latest). Emerging freelance writers are focusing as much on their Substacks than their magazine commissions (Jasmine Sun, who recently became a contributor at The Atlantic, is a great example of the new model). Kylie Robison went from Wired to working for Ashlee Vance’s YouTube channel / newsletter. Institutions are hustling to find multimedia stars in their own newsrooms. The NYT hired a “video training” editor to develop talent. Is every magazine destined to become a daily livestreamed video show starring its editor-in-chief ensconced in some cozy library-esque study, like a fireside chat? I could see it. The “show” is the new magazine.

It makes me nostalgic for the early days of n+1 or The Awl, when you read an article (text!) as much for where it came from as who wrote it. The new, hot media brands lack the infrastructure as well as the identity of an umbrella publication — which also means they’re much more vulnerable when the individual voices burn out or leave. An institution can scale; an individual cannot. If you don’t have charisma in-house, you can try to buy it, a la OpenAI and TBPN, or maybe try to grow it, as this job listing for The Strategist seems to do (a criminally low salary for “hosting” shortform video). But there’s always the risk the talent will just run away from your publication and start their own.

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🟧 Most popular links from the previous edition

• Buy LL Bean’s Japan-only designs

• Why you hate your weather app

• Play Wind Waker in your browser

• Hosting a midnight omelette party

• NYC “microscenes”

🟧 More Media Thoughtz from One Thing:

• Should you write a Substack instead of a book?: On the new ways knowledge is monetized online.

• Gathering attention: How to re-organize audiences and focus their attention on the fragmented internet.

• Conversations are the new unit of culture: Why people talking to each other and the performance of expertise have become so important.

• The new rules of media: 20 guidelines for digital media during the video-podcast age, aka, why you need a personality cult.

• What makes a good newsletter?: An expert roundtable about newsletter strategy. Are there too many!? Does good writing matter!?

Things of the week

• Morandi’s force field: The photographer Joel Meyerowitz spent time in the legendary 20th-century Italian still-life painter Giorgio Morandi’s preserved Bologna studio documenting its contents: cracked ceramic vases, dusty glass bottles, anonymous model cylinders. Meyerowitz’s newly reissued book collects the images. Morandi was “assembling a force field of geometric objects,” the photographer told Hyperallergic. If you don’t know Morandi, you should, and you’ll like him.

• Reality TV is kind of dying: The annual number of unscripted series being produced has dropped a third since 2022. "There are fewer channels greenlighting fewer shows, and it all seems to be moving unstoppably to the bottom," says Mark Cronin, a producer on the Below Deck franchise. Maybe reality is just user-generated on TikTok now.

• There’s a new weather app in town, from the founder of Dark Sky.

• “Microscenes”: T Magazine maps New York’s creative subcultures and their niche gathering spots, including such highlights as the Midtown subway and a Chinese restaurant. Prompts the question: Is doing absolutely anything in NYC a “scene”? Is my bathroom a microscene??

• An heirloom calculator: Casio’s new S100X calculator costs $624 and has glossy black finish from a month of hand-applied lacquer by a Japanese lacquerware house founded in 1930. Only 650 will be made.

• Parisian slop bowls: A Sweetgreen-style restaurant called Elle & Dee’s is getting buzz in Paris, where shrinking lunch breaks and creeping wellness culture have made giant “influencer lunch” salads suddenly aspirational.

• Do some Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker sailing in your browser. IYKYK.

• There’s going to be a Labubu movie, duh.

• If you were on Tumblr in 2014 you might recognize the “art hoe” discourse. Here’s another specimen.

• Silicon Valley AI companies are showing off by hosting private dinners in clubby rooms, forgoing big parties and flashy seafood towers.

• LL Bean is allowing U.S. shoppers to buy its Japanese designs for a limited time, including an amazing field coat.

• Best thing we read this week: The FT throws a midnight omelette party as described (theorized?) by Martha Stewart and documents it in exhausting detail, including super fun party photos in an actually normal-sized apartment. Why don’t more publications do lifestyle projects like this??

The best anchovies on the internet

by Kyle Chayka

It’s kind of a commitment to spend $30 on anchovies. They don’t have the reputation of a luxury fish, at least to Americans. They tend to be packed into pungent tins, little bricks of flavor to be wholly dissolved into something else. Still, I find myself using them more and more often in home cooking, blended into a caesar dressing or chopped up with garlic to toss with radicchio. That mounting enthusiasm is why I took a chance on Nettuno’s alici salate, a large jar of salt-cured anchovies in water from Cetara in southwestern Italy, right near Amalfi. These are ANCHOVIES, unignorable. They are finger-sized, full-bodied, with a skeleton you must extract before cooking. The salt is rock sugar-sized and must be rinsed off. They are also the most delicious little fishies I have ever eaten, with an almost fruity oceanic flavor and bouncy texture, slightly closer to Spanish-style boquerones, albeit much funkier.

I first bought a Nettuno jar from a provisions store in Kent, Connecticut, at the urging of the proprietor, who assured me it would be worth it — she imported them herself. The jar lasted for many months, deployed a few anchovies at a time. But when it was empty I mourned its absence. So I hunted down a way to buy them online, which was offered by the Italian importer Gustiamo. We are living through a renaissance of specialty groceries delivered via ecommerce. The anchovies shipped wrapped in bubble wrap and brown paper, heavily insulated. I cracked them open and the scent of the Tyrrhenian Sea filled the kitchen. (Thankfully the seal contains the smell in your fridge, where you’ll store these fishies.) My most frequent use of the ingredient is to chop up the meaty filets and add them to vegetable-heavy pasta so that the briny fish oil helps coat the pasta and thickens any sauce. Below, a quick recipe.

Anchovy midnight pasta (thx to Rachel Roddy)

• ~5+ cloves garlic

• ~3+ anchovies

• 1 dry Italian chili pepper or pinch of flakes

• 1 lb spaghetti, ideally thick and bronze-die

• 1 bunch of parsley

• parmesan cheese

Filet the anchovies and chop them up into small, but not tiny, chunks — as large as you might want to get in a bite of pasta. Slice the garlic cloves. Chop the parsley stems into bits and separate the leaves. Boil salted water and add the pasta. Meanwhile, saute the garlic and chili in a generous amount of olive oil (our recommendation is Mr. Papou’s) on very low for 5 minutes until soft. Then, add the parsley stem bits and anchovy chunks and keep sauteing. Some will dissolve. Throw in a 1/4 cup of the boiling pasta water into the saute pan, keep on a low simmer. Then transfer the (very) al dente pasta into the garlic / anchovy / oil / water mixture. Keep cooking while stirring & flipping (use tongs) until the pasta is a desired texture and the sauce coheres and thickens, adding more oil or pasta water to complete. Toss in grated parmesan cheese and parsley leaves at the end while still hot before serving, so that the cheese melts and the parsley wilts a little.

Buy Nettuno alici salate

🟧 One Thing on groceries

• An Asian grocery store for anywhere,

• Good bulk olive oil is a life hack

• RIP millennial groceries

• Hype olive-oil chips

• Light roast vs. dark roast coffee

🟧 Most popular links from the previous edition

• Death of a creative agency

• Japanese weekly planners

• Why tech bros are obsessed with “taste”

• Jony Ive’s post-Apple designs

• A new glossy international magazine

Things of the week

• TikTok amateur architecture: DIY cabin-builders are amassing followers posting daily construction updates for their ramshackle structures. Social media might dictate the future of architecture, as with every other industry: “Whoever’s the most visible gets to get the most work.”

• Matthieu Blazy’s debut Chanel collection saw buyers richer and poorer lining up for hours for $1,500 shoes. It might be the highlight of the recent carousel of designers switching brands.

• New New Museum: After a two-year closure, the New Museum reopened with a new OMA-designed building expansion. In this fun conversation Hyperallergic editors complain that the stairs are too slippery. Jason Farago covered it in NYT: It’s a “not-quite-finished new building.” (Unsurprising since it was supposed to open last December.)

• NA apocalypse: Only 54% of Americans drink now, which is bad for restaurants’ bottom lines.

• Kyle’s latest New Yorker column is on the wanton abuse of the word “taste” by tech bros, who want to claim human creativity and decision-making in an era of AI.

• Since 2019, ex-Apple designer Jony Ive’s new firm LoveFrom has designed a Christie’s rostrum, Moncler outerwear, a Balmuda lantern, and Ferrari’s first EV interior. All of it is pretty cool tbh.

• Glossy international magazine: Now Voyager is a new print magazine that promises six issues a year, big-name contributors, and the kind of global, culture-forward coverage that has been the province of Monocle. Are we due for a renaissance in foreign bureaux?? Browse the debut stories on its site.

• The 2026 World Happiness Report ranks Finland happiest for the ninth year running. No English-speaking country made the top ten.

• Creative agency death spiral: Madison Utendahl shut down her award-winning Brooklyn branding studio. Here she reflects on the vicious cycle of low-margin work, over-hiring, and hustling for new clients. Rare honest writing on the business of commercial culture.

Japanese calendar drop

by Nate Gallant

For those who missed the rush to buy Japanese-branded calendars/planners from the few shops that ship to the US these days, the “April-start” line recently dropped on Jetpens, the most reliable and well-stocked online shop for Japanese pens and stationary. They have an amazingly detailed guide for which version might best fit wherever you fall on the planning spectrum: from hour-by-hour grids or an entirely blank day/week format. I recommend the Hobonichi Techo Weeks, personally, for the weekly-panorama view with plenty of room for notes on the side, and a high-enough grade paper to withstand most fountain pen ink.

Diner goth mania

by Kyle Chayka

Ohhh boy!! Online controversy. The most discourse-generating piece of the week by far was “American Diner Gothic,” an essay in the conservative journal The New Atlantis, by Robert Mariani, a conservative-ish writer who also happens to be the founder of an AI dating coach startup. As an amateur anthropologist Mariani observes the way previously niche digital cultures — anime, Discord, Tumblr, extremely online identities — have taken root in the American hinterland of non-coastal suburbs. Mariani ties it to economic exhaustion and the flattening force of corporate aesthetics. If you over look certain problematic elements (never put a breakup in your Americana travelogue essay), the writing is fun, lively, and stakes claims in a way that feels rare these days:

The story goes like this. The great stagnation desacralizes local America through the homogeneous efficiency-machine of national private equity, and everything flattens. Gen Z is disinherited by Boomer policy that culminates but never crests, rationing the good life in generational warfare. Regional accents and identities and cultures are vanishing. Liquid Internet flows into this void as a mass-vision event, the mythic power of fandom and content overflowing from and washing over millions of minds in placeless America, the new soul of a soulless world. Subcultures and nerd cultures disappear into simply culture, self-oblivious and technicolor and sincere in a way that postmodernism could never permit. Instead: a riot of myth and meaning in the fandom-noosphere that bootstraps itself from and then forgets the North American provinces.

It’s a provocation rather than an authoritative statement. The furor with which the essay has been met on social media is proof of its incendiary quality. The critic must also be a troll these days. I read it like I read Rem Koolhaas’s architectural criticism — The Generic City, say. It’s cartoonish polemic, and that’s the point. To address Mariani’s argument: There have been nerds in suburbia forever, and young people hide in whatever subculture they can find and meaningfully participate in (I should know!). That might be ‘80s goth or it might be Tumblr vaporwave Serial Experiments Lain-core. What’s new here, as always, are the scale and speed at which niche subculture becomes universal reference point. And, I think, the sensory weirdness of the overall lifestyle, which I might compare to my description of “IRL brain rot.”

Streaming anime - vape shop - Vtuber - Discord - hair dye - American suburbia is, if nothing else, an extremely powerful aesthetic, and one that will probably become even more dominant, in a quiet, pervasive way. After all, when economic mobility seems impossible and the hyper-wealthy ascend into a realm of Ozempic and Aman Resorts, delving deep into your own abject aesthetic is one of the few escape routes available to your psyche. Become as alienating to the “normal” as possible.

ARC Raiders: Hyper-aesthetic gaming

by Emily Chang

As the world outside feels increasingly volatile, everyone seems to be opting in to a different one: ARC Raiders. Everything I have learned about this PS5 game is against my will — and tempting me to join. Several friends — VPs of Creative at large fashion houses, creative directors, and fashion photographers — have all been getting happily lost in this charismatic and cinematic extraction shooter game set in a future lethal Earth. The game is as much a social experiment as it is a survival trial. It’s gorgeous. It’s social. It’s inventive. And apparently, it’s notorious for taking over your life. Because it’s heavily mic/sound-based, online interactions feel startingly IRL. You can even blast music through your “speaker” in the game. The aesthetic pull is so strong that there’s even a Reddit dedicated to in-game photography, while a videographer has already made three short films within the game by recruiting and live-directing players as his cast. Even the downtime is curated: If you find instruments and play them with other people, the game syncs you all up together to create a musical ensemble.

(European) football menswear update

by Nate Gallant

Football’s most famous current coach, Manchester City’s Pep Guardiola, has been long admired/teased by the British media’s quasi-lad-o-sphere (and well beyond) for “avant-garde” knitwear and designer cargo pants. Tuesday night, he showed up to a UEFA champion’s league second leg, in which Manchester City were staring down a 3-0 deficit from the first leg, in this green-gray, plaid-ish overshirt. His look was read on social media from irreverent to “geography teacher,” which I found interesting given that the apparently confusing novelty of his outerwear—slightly updated, slightly gorpier/knitty 90’s nostalgia-fits—are fairly old now in runway terms. They do generate a lot of conversation, and not just from GB News, but he’s inarguably late to the game in terms of wearing an over-shirt to tell people you could care less about what they think of you.

The winners of critical theory

by Nate Gallant

For the hardcore dialectical materialists out there, who have potentially heard quite a bit now about the new biography of Walter Benjamin, The Pearl Diver, here’s another recommendation: Gabriel Rockill’s Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism, out as of December 2025 from Monthly Review Press. The book has been received controversially by intellectual historians of the 20th-century, as it challenges fundamental beats in the narrative of the “new left” in Europe. Rockhill, a philosopher, academic, and contributor to several notable critical outlets in French and English, examines who stood to and did benefit, institutionally and financially, from the enthronement of a certain reading of Frankfurt School as “theory” and the subsequent, interrelated emergence of “French theory” in the 1960s (this latter point is more explicitly elaborated elsewhere, too). If anything, I can very well imagine the polemic category he marshals in this book, “the compatible left,” getting swallowed and repurposed by social media moralizing voices sooner rather than later.

Things of the week

• A great, throwback magazine-style piece on writing about drinking cocktails right before the financial crisis, with an update on the grand hotel bars of Paris. Voicey af!!

• The creator of Wordle launched his new word game, Parseword, which teaches us the niche activity of cryptic crosswords.

• Nigo, the major international tastemaker and founder of the pivotal Japanese streetwear brand Bape and the newer brand Humanmade, is now obsessed with making ceramics.

• Another Gaze is a feminist online film journal that just relaunched with a stack of great essays. Talk about building better cultural discourse.

• We enjoyed Elvia Wilk’s interview of Andrew Martin, the millennial novelist who has a new novel out, Down Time, about millennial writers. Wilk, a great critic and novelist herself, inquires into the underbelly of making fiction.

• Pitchfork goes very long on a single synth-heavy track from the soundtrack of Donkey Kong Country 2, in case you thought music criticism was dead.

The difference between Substacks and books

by Kyle Chayka

If you want to sustain a career as a creator of culture, you have to make money. Different kinds of artists do this in different ways. Painters sell a bunch paintings once every few years and split the prices with their dealers. Musicians get minuscule streaming checks and sell concert tickets and t-shirts. Comedians go on tour and sell rights to their streaming specials. Writers sell books — kind of. Only one out of five books, and probably far fewer than that, earn more money in sales than the author was paid as an advance, so real income from royalties is quite rare. Enough books hit it big that the longterm economics still work out for publishers, at least. Meanwhile, less-than-bestselling authors have to survive any way they can: teaching classes, hosting writing retreats, selling their clothes on Depop — or charging subscriptions for a newsletter.

Substack newsletters have been an economic lifeline for any number of writers who don’t quite fit in to a slot with an institutional salary. I see art journalists and radical novelists and longform magazine writers (among other semi-extinct breeds) paywalling their latest dashed-off dispatches. That’s because in business terms — and we are all businesses in the end — the subscription newsletter works extremely well. There’s a business concept called “lifetime value”, LTV, that refers to the amount of money a business can expect to make from a new customer on average over the duration of the relationship. For a writer, the LTV of a Substack subscriber is many times higher than the LTV of a book buyer. A Substack subscriber pays monthly at a rate of $5-$10ish, the price that seems to have been found acceptable for some emails by the internet marketplace. That amounts to perhaps $100 a year, and many subscribers, like many gym members, hang on to subscriptions for far longer than they use them, out of loyalty or laziness. An author could make $300 in LTV from a single new subscriber, while a single book sale could net $5, or maybe $20 if you write enough books in a career.1 It’s a quirk of digital consumer habits that right now knowledge (or storytelling) is better monetized in an email than a book. Maybe we can say that newsletters better monetize an individual’s fandom, while a book better monetizes fandom at scale, hundreds of thousands of people at once, for the already famous.

I will get to the differences between the two formats and the many caveats to this thesis later on. But as they presumably teach you in MBA school, it makes sense for a business to try harder to market and sell the product that makes more money. For many authors, particularly those with a pre-existing platform to work from, hustling to convert a new newsletter subscriber is likely much more profitable (again, on a single-customer basis) than working on a new book. That could be viewed as a good thing, because the labor that goes into writing a book should be valued much higher than it is. A reader doesn’t pay a higher price for a physical book just because she wants it more, or because the book was harder to create; prices are relatively flat, whether it’s by a niche poet, an abstruse historian, or a big-idea blogger. A print book is also not necessarily the ideal container for the kinds of knowledge- or culture-production that happen in our video / audio / image-dominated digital environment. Email newsletters with multimedia embeds might make more sense for contemporary consumers, who in turn pay more money for them. Radically more money.

I think this underrecognized phenomenon was behind the shock at a “Fashion Substacker” highlighted in New York Magazine who made an annual $127,000 from Substack subscriptions and $148,300 from brand partnerships (that is, sponsored content presumably in their newsletter and social accounts). “I am making more than I ever could as a journalist,” the person said. That’s because their individual writing, and the scope of their influence, is valued much more highly by subscribers and brands than, say, the salary for a full-time job at NYmag’s The Strategist. In a way, larger media companies have lost track of the true value of unique content and aren’t particularly good at capturing the value of unique voices. Add to that the decline of institutional credibility — audiences may rather follow a single influencer / creator than subscribe to a magazine’s curated collection of voices — and there’s a real quandary.

So should a writer just embark on a Substack rather than a book and scramble to accumulate any paid subscribers she can? The whole idea is kind of facetious — you don’t have to choose, because newsletters and books are mutually reinforcing. A Substack audience is more likely to buy your eventual book and satisfied book readers are more likely to pay for a newsletter. (The writer Casey Johnston very successfully transformed her fitness column Ask a Swole Woman into paid newsletters, courses, digital community, and a book all at once.) A newsletter can be a kind of iterative book manuscript, a way to broadcast and test material and find out what resonates with audiences, the way a business might carry out focus groups or market testing. A book can also transform the inherent value of a trove of newsletters into a new form and reach new audiences out in the real world, on bookstore shelves. Books are meant to be evergreen and portable, while newsletter archives don’t get much attention. (There’s a ton of value to be extracted from evergreen newsletter archives. The click-through rates to old One Thing editions are huge.)

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The downside of the new, paywalled Substack Ecosystem of Knowledge Monetization is that no one is going to help you succeed. No publisher is going to pay you an advance, though I dream of Simon & Schuster subsidizing a new writer’s Substack in exchange for royalties forever. No one is going to edit your newsletter unless you pay them to do it, no one is going to design you a beautiful cover, no one is going to line up bookstore launches for you. There’s no clout to starting a newsletter, unlike publishing a book, precisely because there’s no gatekeepers. Like all forms of social media, newsletters are also quicksand. You start out with high aims, promising literary reviews; deep-reading or watching projects; feature reporting dug from the far reaches of the internet or the real world. But soon you’re paywalling your breakfast habits, capsule winter wardrobe, and Mallorcan hotel recommendations (nothing wrong with that). Everything devolves into recslop. As Emily Sundberg wrote in a major critique of the Substack platform in 2024, it’s a great place for people to “monetize their diary entries — lists, random thoughts, and (easy to write) roundups of ‘what I’ve been doing’ do really well on this site.” When your diary entries are so profitable, why write anything else?

The iterative, ongoing, and intimate nature of a newsletter feeds the online demand for parasocial content, content that encourages audiences to imagine they know its creator personally in a kind of one-sided digital friendship. A book commodifies one carefully composed edifice of knowledge, while a newsletter commodifies the patter of someone’s internal monologue. A book might be read in a century or two’s time; a newsletter will not be. (The only blogs / newsletters that should be remembered by posterity are Patrick Tsai and Madi Ju’s My Dead Little Dick and Tsai’s Talking Barnacles.) Books are not the most parasocial medium, but they are the best form we’ve invented for a reader drawing close in a sustained way to the consciousness of another human being. So if you’re trying to construct a monument to your own genius, a book is probably your best bet. Just ask Proust.

That said, as this essay began, creating culture takes resources, and when everyone is an influencer, you might as well commodify yourself as an influencer does. They make way more money.

More Media Thoughtz from One Thing:

• Gathering attention: How to re-organize audiences and focus their attention on the fragmented internet.

• Conversations are the new unit of culture: Why people talking to each other and the performance of expertise have become so important.

• The new rules of media: 20 guidelines for digital media during the video-podcast age, aka, why you need a personality cult.

• What makes a good newsletter?: An expert roundtable about newsletter strategy. Are there too many!? Does good writing matter!?

• Aggregation theory: More writers and publications are focusing on creating valuable aggregation because social media sucks so much.

• Voice, taste, trust, scarcity: The values that publications need to keep in mind while competing for readers in the new, messy ecosystem.

Everyone is an (unintentional) influencer: Instagram is using AI to attach ecommerce links to your content, whether you want it or not. That’s bad if you’re an influencer, because Meta is stealing your business, and it’s unutterably cringe for a normal person who may not want to digitally commodify every aspect of their lives.

A new way to do performative reading: Coach is producing bag charms that are miniature versions of recent popular novels, including Welcome To The Hyunam-Dong Bookshop and Little Fires Everywhere. You can signal having read something without even needing a full book — though these charms do indeed contain the full text of the novels, the literal book as fashion accessory.

Apartment porn: Back in the 70s you could buy a full Soho loft on the salary of a newspaper music critic, eventually fill it with your CD collection, and then sell it for $4.5 million. No generation will ever be so lucky again.

Fall of the fourth wave

The booming Chinese coffee brand Luckin (rapidly expanding in NYC and around the world) just bought Blue Bottle, the flagship brand of bougie fourth-wave coffee roasters. The once-indie brand was acquired by Nestle in 2017, so it hasn’t been “authentic” for a long time. But real heads remember the steampunk location in Williamsburg and the novelty of watching a mustachioed barista make three pourovers at once. Blue Bottle pioneered the 21^st-century high-end aestheticizing of coffee, going beyond Starbucks or Stumptown to a kind of Japanese-Scandinavian utopian minimalism that has flourished in international cities. Who else installed flower arrangements next to their cold brew tanks? However, its artisanship looks less relevant in an era of matcha, customizable boba, and flavored protein cold foam. Plus, if we’re honest, Blue Bottle’s cafes were looking a little threadbare and haphazardly managed already. The brand lost its grip on integrity while spinning out into a slew of CPG products. Time for a new wave?

• Robinhood now makes swag, including bomber jackets and watches, if you want to dress like an anonymous X account.

• A digital museum of Chinese cigarette brands.

The Rose Wylie Renaissance

The 91-year-old British painter Rose Wylie is one of my favorite contemporary artists, and she’s having a moment around her current solo exhibition at the Royal Academy in London, the first solo show of a woman artist at that institution. Her style is somewhat indescribable, but imagine Basquiat if he grew up in post-war England, or Jean Dubuffet riffing with more elegance and prettiness on outsider art. Her artworks can be childlike and visually grating, trailing off into blank canvas or scrawled words. Yet they are instantly unforgettable and inimitable. Sure, you probably think you could paint like this — but you didn’t for the last century. Wylie brings a deep art-historical vocabulary and a mania for any kind of imagery, including a red-carpet photo of Nicole Kidman, which she turned into a kind of 21^st century history painting. Join in the Rose-aissance by exploring the show or read fascinating profiles of her — she gives great quotes — in BBC or The Guardian. David Zwirner has a show of her new paintings opening in Paris next month.

I asked my painter friend Tatiana Berg, who probably introduced me to her, what makes Wylie’s work so good. Here’s what she texted:

Artist shoes: I love these slip-on leather shoes from the highly philosophical Belgian brand An Irrational Element. I can just picture padding around my paint-spattered loft studio in them. Too bad they’re $520.

Best of One Thing

If you’re a new subscriber, look back through the archives for our greatest hits.

• The Starbucks reboot: The company’s new CEO is trying to turn it back into a “third space” with friendlier baristas.

• “Cutre”: On the special Spanish word for tacky roughness that can also be desirable, like a dive bar or a grumpy waiter.

• Chore coat shopping in Paris: Kyle buys a Vetra double-breasted chore coat at an historic workwear store.

• The new Storm King: The sprawling sculpture park is played out; go to Magazzino for some Italian postmodernism.

• Our camera rolls, our selves: Phone camera rolls store every moment of our lives. What does this infinity of photography mean?

Department store androgyny and Seongsu leather

by Nate Gallant

When I last traveled to Tokyo this past spring, the vintage stores were stuffed with cowboy boots in window displays, plentiful tassels, and clusters of rhinestones, unmissable across Shimokitazawa. I’ve been noticing an overall shift toward Western-wear: fashion that references cowpoke Americana, all-denim-everything. This Western moment, which seemed to hit saturation with Cowboy Carter, is dovetailing with peak designer-workwear of the Carhartt WIP mode, at least in menswear. We seem to have hit maximum chorecoat; the only place left to go is the open prairie. It veers into class-touristy fetishism if not outright Americana cringe.

Yet on a recent stop through Seoul this winter, I saw nothing of this neo-Westernism. As someone new to the Korean menswear scene, I came away with a sense of an alternative menswear proposition.The prep was slouchy, the clean lines of most outerwear cut through fluffy wools and visibly-textured merinos. The reference points I was used to seeing were jumbled, up and down the market. More than anything, I was intrigued by what seemed like very different but equally interesting approaches to menswear “basics” across the standard array of price points, rather than varying levels of quality for the same runway ripoffs, which then turn classic staples into runway-priced items: see Doc Martins or any denim jacket. What’s more, Korean fashion is more accessible in the United States than ever before, so it’s worth investigating even from abroad.

Un-basic basics

Musinsa is the mid-range aggregator supreme for trendy Korean brands. The website is a bit overwhelming–teeming with potential social media integration and personalization, overlapping categories, influencer recommendations, and lots of seasonal curation. The price points are, I think, fairly competitive for what they’re offering, especially in the cuts and the quality I’ve found thus far. The downside is international shipping and tariffs, though if you find yourself in East Asia, the actual stores are very fun. The chaotic curation is reproduced in-store, which had a way of encouraging androgynous fashion forward. You had to look at everything to look at anything, and there was little to tell you where to look based on fashion’s ideas about sex and gender – possibly apart from the somewhat ungenerous sizing. Musinsa stores dot Seoul and many other big cities, and are now moving into the domestic Chinese and Japanese markets.

The retailer’s offerings overall are a bit more creative than the instant runway ripoffs of, say, Zara or the glut of fast-fashion retail to be found in the US, and there is much more range for the level of quality and trendiness in the basics to be found compared to those slightly nicer but still mass produced and imported brands like Muji or Massimo Dutti. As a late winter, early spring cut, and a demonstration of the variety, check out their nice slouchy zip-ups and cardigans, as well as the super clean lines of their in-house brand Musinsa suede coat. There are relaxed preppy styles and also a good amount of lowish-priced vegan leather. As an American, I might stay away from the pants unless your desired pant cut veers very trendy, but you can also fit into a fairly skinny waist size (a quick look even at the larger sizes shows a very un-generous “seat” in the pants if you have wider hips). There is a general lack of sizing diversity on the website (I would in general size up unless you know how Korean menswear fits you), but this is especially true for the available inseam-to-waist ratios.

Cinematic fashion

At a similar price point is perhaps my favorite of the brands I encountered on a recent visit, if only for the conceptual gambit and variety. Kijun varies the styles of its clothing “seasons” into film concepts, for which all their clothing and accessories are the wardrobe. The sheer novelty of the idea is interesting, and the designs ask some playful questions about film as an enduring site for fashion and design influence. There’s nothing effortless about the bodies and their adornments in cinema, but their apparent effortlessness often speaks to the class and fitness aspiration of culture’s attitude towards any historical moment’s aesthetics of self-presentation. In that sense, making costuming the actual gambit of a fashion label, inviting the act of consumption into the site of this usually hidden labor and tastemaking, is a fun twist, and maybe even a twist away from the infinite reproduction of sameness and slop that comes with the expression of identity in clothing becoming an echo of social media dynamics.What kind of character might wear this faux-seersucker, button-up hoodie? What story are you a part of if you put on their Portofino hat? Something feels different about that narrative scaffolding, something a little more than a brand story, though less than “art,” as such. (Kijun’s flannels are very good and Western-revival adjacent, though.)

While Musinsa has sheer volume, if not overwhelming options, and Kijun a very functional English language website, at the higher end, it’s a bit more difficult to get a lay of the land or to access a curated selection of items outside of the bottleneck of traditional designer fashion aggregators (although Ssense has a very good roundup of Korean brands). There are certainly staples like Andersson Bell and Solid Homme, both of which have the requisite museum-wall white website and international ordering options, and whose outerwear I find to be second to none. Beyond this, the US, at least, I’m not sure where to find K-fashion boutiques in the way that there are for, say, Japanese, French, or Italian designers of various levels that department stores might not stock. Ssense and Mr. Porter will carry some higher end Korean designers, but brick-and-mortar specialty shops that have developed particularly around Japanese denim like Blue Owl Workshop or Blue in Green don’t, to my knowledge, exist (tell us if you know of a specialty Korean fashion store!).

Curated retail

The best boutique I visited while in Seoul was in Seongsu, a decent walk from the main shopping streets, a store called Central Post. It was a fascinating curated collection unto itself, carrying some British and Scandinavian outerwear (I was there in December), a sparse but impressive collection of blazers, along with a few of their own, very well tailored pants and shirts, and some eye-catching, locally handmade accessories. The highlight was their “Postman” branded shoes, on display at their website (unfortunately, only in Korean as far as I can tell). Without a doubt, the softest leather on which I have ever stood in an out-of-the-box shoe, but with incredible structure. In classic, trendy, and admittedly avant-garde styles. Seongsu, now casually described on fashion blogs as the “Brooklyn of Seoul,” still retains some remnants of its history as a leatherworking and shoemaking district – and this store was clearly keeping some part of this heritage alive.

Nate Gallant is a writer and translator based in DC.

One Thing is a weekly newsletter on high quality in culture: design, art, fashion, travel, and digital media. Subscribe here.

Tech design is too boring

by Emily Chang

I miss when tech was fun. When our devices felt like proper accessories in and of themselves — not just wacky cases, loud charms, and fat rings on our fingers that measure our heart rates in 14K gold. Listen, I just want to feel like the gadget I’m holding makes life a little dreamier or a little more exciting. Like the Holo from Manual Photo, a mini neo-digital camera with fun, transparent cases. Or the Polaroid iZone, the old-school pocket Polaroid.

Even the word “gadget” was more fun than what we have today, because it alluded to a world of possibilities, mischief, decadent design, and secret little everyday pleasures. Clear materials, a real variety of colors (why does the MacBook Air come in “navy” that’s basically black, but not completely black? and two different silvers don’t count), and buttons in non-functional shapes, just because. Teenage Engineering, the Swedish music equipment brand, is cool but is it really fun if you’re not a producer or don’t use the word audiophile? Not everyone needs a medieval sound sampler, no matter how much you might want one.

I don’t want the new iPhone. Thankfully, the dominant aesthetic might be shifting. I want Nothing, the transparency-forward indie smartphone maker that embraces a vintage tech aesthetic, a little more Gundam than Jony Ive minimalism. Nothing is launching a new midrange phone that will help you stand out in a sea sameness. What I’m really looking for is something that looks like the jewel-tone clear plastic of the 90s and feels like a club lounge — in fact, the emulator manufacturer Analogue is releasing new, transparent N64 machines. Or how about the ‘70s office designed by Gérard Grandval’s for Cacharel, with bare metal textures and curvilinear cubes? Let’s embrace weirdness.

Emily Chang is a creative director, writer, and photographer in Manhattan. You can read her Substack here.

Trust & Gardening in Kirishima

by Emily Chang

Last week, I was in Kirishima, a city in Kagoshima prefecture in Japan. Kagoshima is lovingly called “land of the gods” for its shrines and mythological history rooted in the Sakurajima volcano that lies just across the bay, which erupts multiple times a day. To me, it sounded like something out of a Zelda game, and their small-scale farming and famous black pigs (kurobuta, the “wagyu” of pork) only heightened this feeling for me. Of course, I was not there because of any of this; in fact, I didn’t even really know about it until I did a bit more research just before visiting my friend, the director Emily Okuda-Overhoff, who is typically based in London but had rented out an Airbnb for a month in Kirishima.

While there, I surprised myself by becoming particularly intrigued by Kirishima’s roadside farms. They are many different sizes — some feel like actual working farms, just on a smaller scale, but the ones I loved were the ones that were literally on the edge of sidewalks and no larger than a square yard. They presented neat little rows of turnips, cabbage, and other vegetables, terraced above sidewalks and local roads. Often, these small plots were in front of houses that were just along the road — any spare yard these families had, they turned into mini farms. I hesitate to use the word “garden” when describing them, because they felt too obsessive and precise to be gardens — they clearly did not exist for any decorative reasons — they were there to grow food and to nourish us.

Nothing gave me more peace than taking the electric bike down the mountain to find these small plots of land abutting sidewalks. There was never a fence around them. If someone wanted to, they could steal a few heads of lettuce, ignore the trusting wooden boxes that were labeled “One turnip 200 yen,” or destroy the perfect plotting. But of course, they wouldn’t. “It’s not the Japanese mind,” Emily told me. I imagined what an American suburb might look like if it had these on every block instead of perfectly manicured lawns (for what purpose?), or if New York City’s neighborhood gardens took this approach instead of the chaotic, hodge-podged shrubbery and poorly-maintained beds that so often populate its fenced-off gardens.

The roadside farms in Kirishima are made and maintained by people who care. A lot. Riding down these country roads, surrounded by small reminders of things people care so much about, surprised me because of how deeply happy it made me. It wasn’t the kind of joy I was expecting or usually looking for. It didn’t feel aspirational or glamorous, exactly. Instead, it felt sufficient. Maybe what we need isn’t so much constant progress and newness, but proximity and care to the things that sustain us. In Kirishima, care is measured in turnips, time, and trust, even in just a few feet of leftover space.

Emily Chang is a creative director, writer, and photographer in Manhattan. You can read her Substack here.

Substack or Be Substacked

by Kyle Chayka

As probably every reader of this newsletter already knows, the Washington Post just laid off more than three hundred journalists, gutting or eliminating many departments including sports, metro, international bureaus, and the book review. It’s a tragedy for its employees and its readers as well as a gut punch to the city where I live, which merits much more local coverage than it gets. The problem is, the Post under owner Jeff Bezos and executive editor Matt Murray doesn’t really see covering DC as its job. Beyond that, the publication’s leadership doesn’t know what its job is: there’s no clear brand, goal, or purpose. Without that, it’s impossible to have a business plan or even a message to sell to paying subscribers, who are leaving the paper in droves.

A handful of publications are doing general-interest journalism, covering the news at large, and surviving. The Guardian is doing it; the New York Times is thriving, and increasingly consolidating its authority. But what readers and media consumers (not to mention investors or prospective acquirers) are looking for now are tight focus areas and personal connections among anchor voices (“creators”) and readers / consumers. It’s easier to pay $10 a month for the Substack of one person you’re obsessed with than $10 a month for an anonymous newsroom that’s hard to connect with. Personality cults work. Small newsrooms work, too. Semafor has eaten part of WaPo’s lunch in DC, hosting high-power political and business events and offering a digestible, global news perspective, with a tiny fraction of the staff, and is thus already profitable. Other operations are YouTube channels, solo or duo podcasts, and low-weight Substacks (see the highly efficient Feed Me).

The journalists laid off from WaPo face a difficult, bifurcated choice between attempting to cling to the ever-smaller number of surviving journalism institutions or striking out on there own, alone or in small groups, to try to build more efficient and specific publications that don’t look like the newspapers of yore. Broadly, that’s a good and exciting thing, even though a thousand separate Substacks won’t replace an enormous newspaper. Another dilemma is that the longer you wait to go indie, the harder it is, because there’s more competition. There are already a bunch of different Defectors, group food blogs, and digital alt weekly-style city newsletters. I hope to see more and more indie launches, but I also think we’ll see more consolidation as cast-away journalists gravitate toward these small collectives. Eventually, new, larger publications will emerge. Only the coherent will survive.

More media commentary from One Thing:

• Gathering attention: Publications must now reorganize audiences and intentionally focus their attention.

• Conversations are the new unit of culture: Why people talking to each other and the performance of expertise have become so important.

• The new rules of media: 20 guidelines for digital media during the video-podcast age, aka, why you need a personality cult.

• What makes a good newsletter?: An expert roundtable about newsletter strategy. Are there too many!? Does good writing matter!?

• Aggregation theory: More writers and publications are focusing on creating valuable aggregation because social media sucks so much.

• Voice, taste, trust, scarcity: The values that publications need to keep in mind while competing for readers in the new, messy ecosystem.

When I try to write about what’s happening in Minneapolis, I feel an emergency brake turning on in my mind. The words come out slow. My brain operates at half speed, maybe slower. Why? Maybe because I haven’t lived there in nearly ten years, that it feels like I don’t have the right to publicly “comment” on anything, even though my family still lives there, and my brother has witnessed unfathomable grief on our familiar streets. I grew up in Woodbury, Minnesota, twenty minutes away from Minneapolis’ rumbling soul, for twenty years and studied neuroscience and communications at the University of Minnesota, in the heart of where the major protests are happening. This is the state my parents immigrated to from Taiwan. It’s the state that raised me, and a state that I know well to stand up for strangers and fight for warmth when it’s dead cold. Especially on days like today.

But this isn’t a public “comment,” this is a report of numerous stories I have heard from close family and friends — a few out of thousands of stories, which now need to be told.

Beyond even the protests, shootings, vigils, and government messaging, this moment in the city is a living nightmare. Hundreds of legal minority immigrants are disappearing, and our local communities are bending over backwards to support each other. ICE is operating in what seems like a completely rogue manner, going after anyone who looks “foreign” and putting trackers under their cars, detaining legal citizens without waiting to see their IDs, taking families away in school parking lots, and shooting people in cold blood, including but by no means limited to Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

What this means is that you get a new generation of kids who aren’t white that are staying home from school because they’re afraid to go to school. It doesn’t matter if they’re citizens or not, because immigration is evidently not the primary concern of ICE. Legal citizens who have been detained are being dropped off miles away from home in below freezing weather, often without personal belongings, a phone, or an ID. Many have not returned home. It reminds me of the recent horror film Weapons, in which an entire class of elementary school children disappear one day, as the film follows the grief and aftermath of the events. It may be a horror movie about a witch, but it’s far tamer than the real-life horror experienced today.

My brother in Minneapolis sees immigrant businesses brandishing their legal paperwork on their storefront windows, begging ICE to stay away. He witnesses teachers rising up to take care of parentless children. Farmers, city people, parents, grandparents, children arriving at protests with all of their hearts. Minnesota is famously blue amidst a very red Midwest, largely due to Twin Cities voters. Rural and suburban areas are generally very conservative, and when ICE entered the town of Willmar, Minnesota, their people stood up, too. This is beyond liberalism and conservatism; ICE is a moral failure.

The world has seen how Minnesotans show up for each other in that stunning image of the protest by the US Bank Stadium. In -8 degree weather, we Minnesotans fought for ourselves with non-violent force, drowning the street with our voices and no-nonsense spirit. Minnesotans see evil and they act accordingly. It’s really that simple. The protest photo made me cry. I haven’t lived in the city in nearly ten years, but when I saw the sheer size of the crowd, I just thought to myself: Of course. That’s us. Why should I have feared anything different, that the entire country was hopeless? The Trumpian ideology wants to tell us that, that society is a struggle to dominate and the only strength is oppression. But we know otherwise.

The crowd was so large that, as Adam Serwer writes in The Atlantic, it “proves MAGA wrong… the federal surge into Minneapolis reflects a series of mistaken MAGA assumptions. The first is the belief that diverse communities aren’t possible…” Serwer writes that the Twin Cities’ residents “do not share the narcissism of being capable of loving only those who are exactly like them.” What I find so ironic about ICE is just how un-American they are, when they are meant to be defending some mistaken idea of American identity.

I love the American spirit. It is optimism, forwardness, bravery, confidence, and spunk. Americans are loud. Minnesotans have an ineffable sense of integrity. It is baked into the culture. Combine those two things and you get a concoction ICE cannot defeat. Watching this from afar has clarified something that will stay with me long after the news cycle moves on. It won’t be the statements or articles or more chatter about protests. It will be the people who kept showing up for each other, without needing to be seen.

Emily Chang is a creative director, writer, and photographer in Manhattan. You can read her Substack here.

More One Thing by Emily Chang

• AI is Deadening Our Imaginations

• Extreme Trends and Private Channels: An interview with Tony Wang

• Our Camera Rolls, Our Selves

Explore the One Thing archive and subscribe!

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✏️ Brandi Veloria, Clothing Curator

My husband and I work together pretty non stop for our business, so we often gift each other something that will force us to relax. Since being in LA more, we’ve been loving doing day trips to places like Joshua Tree or Ojai. Our current favorite retreat is going to Two Bunch Palms in Desert Hot Springs. The property is very peaceful, with natural hot springs, yoga classes, and treatments like facials and massages. It’s the perfect treat to walk around in robes all day sipping fresh juices, and even through we’re probably sending work emails; we’re doing it from a mineral bath. Brandi Veloria is the co-founder of James Veloria.

✏️ Shawn Seymour, Musician

Pilot Dr. Grip pen: The “Champagne Gold” version is especially nice. With 4 pen colors, a mechanical pencil and a built-in eraser, no other pen is as versatile at color-coding your to-do list or underlining notes in whatever you have to edit. And, at right around $10 it is nice enough to feel special when you use it, but not so much that you’d ever regret lending it to a friend who never gives stuff back. 10/10. I use mine every day! Shawn James Seymour is one half of Lullatone, a band in Japan who made music for many things you might have heard, including Uniqlo commercials. Lullatone’s new, lovely ambient album “Music for My Friend’s Flower Shop” is out now.

✏️ Andrew Helms, Documentarian

Give the gift of travel: The best trip I’ve been on lately was hiking the Camino dos Faros, a 120-mile trail along the Galician coastline. It’s similar to the Camino de Santiago in that you hike from town to town, but instead of walking crowded roads with pseudo-spiritual pilgrims, you hike up and down rocky cliffs and beaches populated only by the rare vanlife surf couple. It’s not easy — expect 15+ mile days — but abandoned beach swims and grilled sardines make the trek worth it. Bonus points if you can befriend three recently retired Spanish men who share their jamon with you. Andrew Helms is a documentary producer in Brooklyn. He recently worked on The Alabama Solution currently streaming on HBOMax (though maybe soon Netflix/Paramount. Who knows).

✏️ Tara Downs, Gallerist

I’m a big believer in including at least one gag gift in your Christmas offering for a significant other. The holidays can get so serious, and it feels necessary to undercut all that earnestness with a little twisted humor. I’m currently obsessed with Rachel Simon’s exhibition “You & Me” at Market Gallery in Two Bridges, which dives into Spiderman erotic fan fiction with total deadpan brilliance. You can even pick up a zine of these hilariously deranged fantasies for $20—truly the perfect stocking stuffer. Tara Downs is the owner of Tara Downs Gallery.

✏️ Alexa Van Abbema, Style Eye

Gohar Lemon Squeezer Swan: The kind of object you spot once and immediately think, okay, I need this on my counter for absolutely no practical reason. It’s a tiny stainless-steel swan that squeezes lemons, yes, but mostly it just sits there looking smug and elegant, like it’s judging your produce. It adds this strange, charming drama to anything citrus-related — oysters, cocktails, late-night salads, etc. Alexa Van Abbema is a womenswear buyer at SSENSE.

✏️ Marisa Jamerson, Internet Researcher

This is the “if you know, you know” altar starter pack. The Cierge Bordeaux taper is not just a candle, it’s a personality transplant: A tall, bordeaux taper straight out of an old-money chapel, for people who host dinner for two (you and your intrusive thoughts). Light it with intent. The Camee Madurai cameo: Give them a scented cameo like a secret handshake. Madurai smells like jasmine at midnight: rich, floral, a little dangerous if you stay too long. Hides in drawers and suitcases, perfuming clothes and your secrets. Marisa Jamerson is an excellent home host as well as audience insights manager at Amazon.

✏️ Robert Khederian, Realtor & Creator

• Havana Martini Glasses: If you were to get one martini in NYC, make it the martini “our way” at Le Veau d’Or on East 60th Street. It’s made with Old Raj gin (laced with saffron and 110 proof) and served in the most elegant low-slung glass by UK-based glassware brand John Jenkins. I have searched, and it seems these glasses are only available to people in the trade, which means they’re an even better gift considering how unexpected they’d be to unwrap on the 25th! It’s time to tap those friends in the restaurant industry. They’re worth it. Robert Khederian is a NYC broker with Compass who is obsessed with prewar apartments. Robert shares his love of old houses on Substack’s Second Story and on his Instagram and Tiktok accounts @notenoughangers.

• The perfect lampshade: The only thing worse than an LED lightbulb with a cool-white glare is a bad lampshade. The orange card lampshade from King Charles’s darling architect Ben Pentreath is the exact opposite of that. Casting the most nostalgic, warm glow, these shades are worth whatever tariffs are in effect the day your order is placed.

✏️ Sarah Belfort, London Resident

The first thing that comes to mind is a subscription from John Sandoe, a quaint and exceedingly well-stocked bookshop in Chelsea. The service is bespoke (they promise ‘no one receives the same books as another’) and about as far away from an algorithm as you can get. It starts with a conversation with one of their booksellers – you could describe your recipient’s predilections, or they can call the shop themselves. Speedy readers might warrant a monthly subscription, or you can go for a quarterly delivery. Then throughout the year mystery books arrive wrapped in brown paper and tied with a ribbon. The subscription page has these marvellous illustrations for different book categories, the mark of a trustworthy sensibility. (Another good sign: one category is just WODEHOUSE.) I should mention they ship all over the world! A more off-the-shelf recommendation is this exceptional teapot (described as a ‘Japanese brown Betty’) with a box of oolong from a 100-year-old tree. Sarah Belfort is a very tasteful person, excellent on Instagram, and brand manager at the boutique printer Newspaper Club.

✏️ Andy Adams, Photography Curator

If you’re like me, you love gifting books. Here’s a little twist for the art folks in your life: a Hotshoe Magazine subscription! This UK-based photography journal arrives twice a year, brimming with interviews and essays from established and emerging imagemakers. Every edition is themed, which makes for fun reading — recent publications include “A West African Portrait,” “To Be Young,” and “At Home.” Each issue is collectible, cute, and beautifully printed — an annual subscription is just $28. I’ll leave you with this link: Hotshoe editor-in-chief Melissa DeWitt on why print matters. Happy Christmas! Andy Adams is the Curator + Director at FlakPhoto Projects, a community hub for photography people.

✏️ Mark Costello, Video Designer

• For the music lover in your life: Temporary Residence is reissuing William Basinski’s 2002/3 album series The Disintegration Loops in a newly remastered limited edition box set of 8 platinum colored LPs. It comes with a 4 CD set if you don’t want to flip your record 15 times, a booklet with a forward written by Laurie Anderson, and is signed by Billy himself. $200 kinda seems like a steal? Unfortunately, the ship date was moved from November to January, but it comes with mp3s they can get lost in til then. If you don’t know the Disintegration Loops, it’ll change your life, I swear.

• For the hostess in your life: I recently visited the Hillwood Estate in DC, the form home-turned-museum of Marjorie Merriweather Post, of General Foods/Mar-a-Lago/Animal Collective fame. All the bedrooms in her home had a custom “Do Not Disturb” placard for her guests. Flaps open and close to display the message. They struck me as whimsical and funny and considered and just the right amount of delusional. Mark Costello is a DC-based video designer and theater maker.

✏️ Eli Williams, Podcast Host

MHZ Choice subscription: Yes, “MHZ Choice” sounds like a seating tier for a budget airline, but au contraire. This streaming service houses a real treasure trove of foreign language crime/police dramas, specifically in the dark, brooding “Nordic Noir” canon. Perfect for the cold winter months. I’m a fan because your arm is twisted into paying attention by virtue of having to read the subtitles. More importantly, it’s also quality stuff! If you’re looking for a place to start, I’d recommend The Bridge (Bron || Broen). Eli Williams is the co-host of the Day One FM podcast.

✏️ Nate Gallant, Scholar

I am always on the hunt for better “basics” that retain some sense of personality when it’s time to replace an over-shirt or well-loved pair of pants. We’ve recommended a few outlets over the years at various price points, but I’ll highlight a new one I particularly enjoy these days: Indi + Ash. Very lush feeling fabric, nicely structured fits, and interestingly textured patterns for basic outerwear, in particular, distinguish the stuff for me. I in particular love this “study coat,” whose shape sits well on the torso in between the ersatz “hakata” or “kimono” tailoring of many casual blazers and the very standard take on the “chore-coat”. Nate Gallant is a scholar, of Japanese literature, translator, and co-founder of One Thing.

✏️ Will Mayer, High Priest

AIAIAI x Blood Orange Headphones: My daily control panel. Studio-grade but minimal. Modular. Precise. They make everything sound like it has direction. *** Stay at Deplar Farm in Iceland: A turf-roof lodge in the middle of Northern Iceland. Heli-skiing, geothermal pools, and those landscapes that make your phone feel pointless. *** Matt McCormick “Moonlit Confidence”: Matt’s a close friend and one of my favorite artists. We have a few of his pieces in the office. This one keeps pulling my attention for reasons I can’t explain. *** A Vintage Scientology E-Meter: What cult is complete without your very own e-meter? Will Mayer is the High Priest at Cult Holdings, a studio that turns ideas and enterprises into cults by engineering the rituals, language, and symbols that create conviction.

✏️ Bastien Grisolet, Creative Director

A subscription to AWOL, an independent NYC newspaper: If your life is 87% Substack and 13% screenshots, gift yourself a subscription to AWOL so at least one thing you read this year won’t involve a scroll bar. AWOL is a small indie newspaper, edited by my dear friends Victoire Coyon and Adrien Menard of Edition Studio, made with a loose collective of writers and artists. It’s published four times a year, on real newsprint – no digital version. It feels like a Parisian quartier paper that somehow woke up in New York. It is art, information, observation, and small-scale civic romance, it’s a portrait of the city at sidewalk height and a gentle reminder that the most interesting things are still happening outside feeds and timelines. Bastien Grisolet is a creative director, current working at Tiffany&Co, and a compulsive collector of images, references, and half-ideas.

So really this quirkily curated list is a look at the world of Friends of One Thing, as badgered for blurbs by me and Emily Chang. Respondents include Ben Smith, Julio Morales, Becca Rothfeld, and Richard Kern. There are no influencers here, no one who would publish their own gift guide. It’s IRL pals and lower-key tastemakers, a map of personal relationships and appreciations. The headings and bios include some editorializing from yours truly. — Kyle Chayka

This is volume one of the One Thing Gift Guide; stay tuned Monday for the equally deep volume two, including Tara Downs, Lullatone, Nate Gallant, Brandi Veloria, Sarah Belfort, and many others. Subscribe here for that and more emails about quality in culture.

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✏️ Emily Chang, Visual Writer

I’ve had this wallet from Thin King for over a decade, which in New York years is basically heirloom status. It was first gifted to me by Rose Apodaca, the co-founder of A+R, a design store I interned at in LA. It has a bizarre suction technology inside that unbelievably grips 6 cards like a vise—place even one inside and it won’t fall out. It’s the easiest, sleekest wallet in the world, and it’s indestructible. I’m surprised it’s not a cultural phenomenon. Sadly, they don’t seem to make the gold version anymore, but a quick Google might turn up other colors if you’re lucky. Emily Chang is a creative director, writer, and photographer in Manhattan and has a Substack. She is the contributing writer of One Thing.

✏️ Ben Smith, Editor

The UK edition of The Spectator remains the best magazine in print and a wonderful gift for Anglophiles (and who isn’t?). That’s despite rightish but eclectic politics that will occasionally infuriate everyone, and onionskin paper that doesn’t make as good a coaster as those lovely matte quarterlies. Ben Smith is the editor and founder of Semafor, co-hosting the Mixed Signals podcast.

✏️ Elizabeth Dias, Sweden Devotee

I am obsessed with vintage Swedish tableware, in honor of my late grandmother Maj-Britt from Stockholm. She was a watercolor artist who loved painting birds and flowers, and every Christmas our Julbord table was laid out with the beautiful golds and pinks and creams of her mother’s porcelain. Finding the old Rörstrand or Gustavsberg patterns usually requires a trip to thrift stores in Sweden. But Svenskt Tenn, the storied interior design store on Strandvägen 5, has a new “Oiseaux de Paradis” collection, and I am utterly charmed, even though it is French! A plate with a whimsical bird of paradise design, delivered to a friend piled high with homemade pepparkakor? What a delight. Elizabeth Dias, a talented baker & host, writes about religion for The New York Times and is the co-author of The Fall of Roe.

✏️ Athena Wilson, Model

A drill: this is my most recent gift to myself, and I delayed for years. If it were a gift I would probably bedazzle it for a personal touch. *** Mike Gigliotti pottery: hand painted ceramics from LA based artist Mike Gigliotti. My favorite pieces are the crow motif dishes. You could get something small like a match striking dish or something huge like a bowl for gorgeous salads. @mike_lottie on Instagram *** Blackbark Mushi charm: little articulated 18k gold gem-set beetles, roly polys, and ladybugs (are those all technically beetles?). Their wings open and close revealing their gemstones. Magical! *** Silver tama: Say a little prayer - this is if someone’s kind of had a hard year. tamata are votives that correspond images to prayers. You can get a small silver tama of a heart for someone’s love life; specific body parts for physical maladies; or a little shop for a business to thrive. You can find them vintage on Etsy or Hydra-based artist Elena Votsi has some beautiful silver ones as well — she designed the Olympic medal. Athena Wilson is on Instagram.

✏️ Sadie Gurman, Reporter & Civil War Buff

A couple of guys in Maryland made these portable bonfires during the pandemic, which is when I stumbled on them. Around that time, we were desperately looking for things we could do with friends, which meant being outside in the cold. With these, we could get together to roast marshmallows on the patio or meet up in a park and still stay warm. On New Year’s Eve a few years ago, my very good friend had covid, but we still wanted to be together, so we lit a little bonfire in my parking lot and had champagne. It was magical! These are still a great gift for us city dwellers who want the warmth and fellowship that a fire pit brings but don’t have a backyard or much outdoor space. Sadie Gurman is a reporter on the Justice Department for the Wall Street Journal and the mother of Charley the shih-tzu.

✏️ Oliver Munday, Designer & Author

The only thing that can make the morning ritual of drinking a hot mug of coffee or tea more rewarding, is doing so from a vessel you’ve painted yourself. With this lovely little kit, you’ll be surprised by what you can bring to life: a pattern or color scheme or phrase as absurd or soothing as you see fit. Personally, I’ve found this craft (which I’ve done repeatedly) satisfying enough to have undertaken light research into building a home kiln, but even if it’s one-and-done situation, it’s a joy to cup something you’ve created in two hands. And just think: if it ends up sucking, it will still ably hold your caffeine. Oliver Munday is a designer and writer in Brooklyn. His debut collection of stories, Head of Household, comes out in February 2026. (Oliver designed the cover of Filterworld and is amazing.)

✏️ Julio Morales, Pizza Slinger

In SF, I happened to catch Alejandro Cartagena’s Ground Rules exhibit and I think it changed my life. I’ve rarely seen an artist see what I see so differently. If you’re around, GO! *** I’ve gotten into photography recently and I picked up a Canon Sure Shot Owl film camera on eBay for $40 and the colors are so beautiful and it’s fool-proof to use. *** Lastly, I bought a charge cord from Magic John shop on Tiktok. I swear it charges my phone 80% faster- it’s a game changer. Julio Morales is Director of Operations at Scarr’s Pizza on the Lower East Side.

✏️ Mia Radic, Intermittent Camper

If you love a person who camps (and has ample storage space for their gear), get them the Kelty Love Seat or, even better, the three-seater Lowdown Couch. My partner and I get to camp with my brother’s family every summer, so we recently gifted my brother the couch and he was delighted. Selfishly, I look forward to using this gift for years to come (and then not having to store it). If you love a person who camps (and has minimal storage space for their gear), consider getting them a hammock that weighs about a pound and takes up barely any space when packed up. My brother got me two (!) of these, and they work in a city park just as well as in the woods. Mia Radic is a friend of One Thing, cool person, and supply chain manager.

✏️ Katy Waldman, Critic

BEAGLE OR BAGEL? I know what you’re thinking: this is a “narcissism of small differences” situation. And, to be perfectly honest, I haven’t ever actually played the game -- I just keep the unopened box on my desk like a good luck charm. Still, you never know when you might be called upon to discern between a rolled up dog and a rolled up ball of dough! Help your loved ones develop an important skill this holiday season. Katy Waldman is a staff writer at The New Yorker.

✏️ Richard Kern, Photographer

That cup or mug that you grab first thing in the morning is akin to a religious relic. You fill it with your choice of meditative liquid then move to what is essentially an alter like space to begin your day. For months I’d been looking for new cups to replace the chipped 20 year old mugs I’d brought in the Polish mountains. Everything I saw seemed clunky, mass produced or too cute for my taste. An artist friend suggested I look at RCeramics, where I found unique one of a kind mugs hand painted by Ryan Chang. He takes commissions so I was able to get him to make me a few safety pin themed cups. He does small runs and they sell out fast. Richard Kern is a photographer.

✏️ Becca Rothfeld, Critic

I’m not a big collector of beautiful objects. I wish I were, but I’m not. Despite my best attempts to aestheticize my life, my apartment is full of cheap furniture I bought on a graduate student budget and have yet to update. Accordingly, I am an uninspired and predictable giver of gifts. I always get everyone books or subscriptions to magazines. I continue to believe that these are in fact the best gifts, for me and for everyone else. But in the interest of saying something surprising, I will recommend the one object in my home that I cherish (besides artworks friends have made for me and copies of books rendered irreplaceable by my copious annotations): the Williams Sonoma Popcorn Maker, which doubles as a pleasingly anachronistic curiosity and a convenience for someone who is terrible at cooking. Airpopped Amish popcorn drenched in butter is an unsurpassable delicacy. Becca Rothfeld is an author and the nonfiction book critic at the Washington Post.

✏️ Diana Perez, Creative Director

The tradwife community would have my head on a spike for this, but, this egg-cooking device is a godsend for people who don’t have time for breakfast in the mornings. It makes perfectly soft boiled eggs in under 4 minutes by hitting one button. Or poached, if that’s your thing. And much like those Samsung washing machines, it sings a chirpy tune to let you know your eggs are ready. Bon appetit. Diana Perez is a writer and associate creative director at Apple.

✏️ Andrew McGill, Creative Technologist

I’m an extremely recent convertee to Analog, a productivity system by designer Jeff Sheldon. Task apps don’t work for me, and I wanted to stop cluttering my Leuchtturm journal with to-do lists. Analog is simple: three stacks of silky notecards (for lists of things to do now, soon, or someday) and a beautifully machined wooden case to hold them. You prop up today’s to-do list in a little notch so it stares at you while you work. So far, it’s working. Andrew McGill invents things, often for media companies but sometimes not, and co-hosts Product Fridays.

✏️ Emir Eralp, Film Director

I would recommend Mother Tongue magazine. Edited by Natalia Rachlin and Melissa Goldstein, it is an interesting, cool, well designed, well curated bi-annual magazine. It talks about motherhood / parenting without falling into cliches or sentimentality. It features great art and great photography. It makes you look cool. Emir Eralp is a London and Stockholm-based photographer and film director.

✏️ Foster Kamer, Editor & Fostertalker

At the end of this year, in the fittingly immortal words of Billy Corgan: Emptiness is loneliness, and loneliness is cleanliness, and cleanliness is godliness! And yes, sure — God is empty, just like me — but if you want your friends to feel godly, and clean, enter: The Kamenoko Tawashi Scrubber. This absolute freak of a brush was invented a century ago, shaped like a baby turtle inspired by the inventor’s son’s pet, is made with palm fibers that get soft under water and scrub everything beautifully. It also comes in a lovely package. I’ve been gifting it for years, and people love it. Even more, this year, I discovered their sponges, which also clean like nothing else I’ve ever owned, and also come in wonderful packages, and incredible colors, like this beautiful orange. Or the Sakura season sponges. If there’s one of these ridiculous collector-types in your life, here, here’s the collaboration sponge with Beams Japan. Most importantly, they meet my standard for a truly great present: something that’ll demonstrably improve someone’s life, and also, make them think of you at least once a day. Foster Kamer runs Futurism and publishes the best media gossip newsletter of whenever it deigns to publish, Fostertalk.

✏️ Kyle Chayka, Proprietor

If you’re in the market for a last-minute Christmas or otherwise gift, allow me to recommend dried pasta. It ships fast, for one thing, and it feels special. Artisanal Italian pasta boxes have become incredibly elaborate in recent years, so the packaging feels like a fancy gift in itself, and each unusual pasta shape offers an opportunity to have a different kind of meal. I almost think of them as different kinds of foods?? Tirrena is a really lovely pasta brand from the Tuscan estate of the Frescobaldi family. You can order it shipped from various sites. The funky shapes are inspiring to any level of home chef and for a bigger gift you could pair a few boxes with Rachel Roddy’s absolutely must-have cookbook An A-Z of Pasta. Kyle Chayka still has a lot of Christmas shopping to do.

Very brief links

• Chris Black of How Long Gone is launching a refined-normcore made in America menswear brand called Hanover.

• Industry season 4 trailer dropped!!! Melodramatic as always and we can’t wait.

• The British publisher Fitzcarraldo is selling individual copies of its hardback First Decade Collection, beautifully bound editions of some of the best books of the 21st century.

• Poketto is a new web app replacement for Pocket, a place to build your own digital archive of articles and PDFs.

• The former Vanity Fair film critic Richard Lawson is striking out on his own with a movie-focused newsletter called Premiere Party and a logo that looks a lot like old Gawker.

• Kyle wrote a New Yorker column on Landman, a tastemaker guilty pleasure that is the best new show on TV with its voyeuristic view of conservatives and Texas oil fields.

Extreme trends with Tony Wang

by Emily Chang

Last week, I met up with Tony Wang, the founder of The Office of Applied Strategy, to talk about their second cultural dossier, titled “The New Pantheon.” The dossier dissects the emergence of a social phenomenon they call “horseshoe maximalism”, which is about the collapse of progress narratives and how both sides of cultural and political polarization essentially loop back to the same belief systems.

*To read the dossier in full, use the code “ONETHINGOAS” here and OAS will ship you a copy. Only 25 available to our readers!*

The Office of Applied Strategy as a business has three independent arms: a consulting firm, a think tank, and a venture fund. About a third of the team at OAS comes from business consulting backgrounds. They also work with creative directors; design thinkers from places like Bjarke Ingels Group and IDEO; and artists who are actual creatives working in cultural industries. Tony himself started out at McKinsey and then worked at Google, IDEO, and most notably, SSENSE, where he oversaw branded content.

I met Tony several years ago through mutual friends and collaborators. Tony’s an incredibly smart guy and such a joy to be around. We always have really interesting conversations, everything from inspired travel recs, video games, and food research to his work on corporate merch as a market indicator, which OAS wrote about for Real Review earlier this year.

EMILY CHANG: Tell me a bit about the dossier and how this came about.

TONY WANG: The dossier is an outlet for us to be able to better explore things that we all collectively at OAS have been observing or working on throughout the past year. Over the past 12 months, we’ve worked with some really interesting clients and we touched on some really interesting topics. But in the parameters of a commercial engagement, you’re pretty limited in how abstract or theoretical or academic you can be about that because you need to be really commercially minded. We want to use the research as a way to process and unpack that. One of the key ideas in that research is horseshoe maximalism.

EMILY CHANG: So tell me about horseshoe maximalism. What is it?

TONY WANG: Horseshoe maximalism is this term that we coined to explain a lot of the different cultural phenomena and trends that we were seeing in the world at large. It reflects a cultural logic that pervades consumer culture and explains why so much of culture today feels so extreme and embodies seemingly contradictory values that actually still stack and make sense, and how it brings people together from different values and ideologies. The theory of horseshoe maximalism started emerging as we increasingly realized that the common thread through a lot of these cultural phenomena is that they rejected establishment knowledge or institutional wisdom, or that they were almost like ways of breaking down establishment structures.

When The New Yorker featured us earlier in the year, André Wheeler, the writer, joined for our first brainstorm session. What emerged from that initial meeting was this recognition that the impact that politics was having on culture was higher than ever, but we noticed that a lot of these cultural trends were A, very extreme, and B, they brought in people from the far left and the far right together to a degree.

EMILY CHANG: So how does that actually play out in daily life?

TONY WANG: If the establishment systems that we reject are trying their best to maintain control, and we can’t use traditional mechanisms for reform, like civil advocacy, activism, voting, or economic mobility, then we turn to these extremes in consumer culture as a way to sublimate those frustrations and anxieties. And so consumer culture becomes the battleground.

EMILY CHANG: What was one of the most unexpected connections that you made through this process?

TONY WANG: We were looking at doomsday prepping and noticed something. In the Industrial Revolution, you had the industrialists who were obviously the capitalists who control the means of production, were all in on industrialization and were very pro innovation. And then you had the Luddites, who were the craftspeople who—it’s too reductive to say they were anti-technology, but rather, they were very pro human labor.

For every major wave of innovation, there’s always been people who are really optimistic and people who are really cynical or cautious about it. But they’ve always been separate camps. But now, what’s really unique about AI is that the biggest proponents of AI who are the biggest techno optimists are also the biggest doomers. They’re also the ones who are building the doomsday bunkers and preparing for the end times. And so it’s very horseshoe maxi. We talk about the doomer techno optimist and how, for them, they win either way, because either the AI bubble pans out and they win big, or it doesn’t pan out, society collapses, but then they can prepare for that accordingly. They can rebuild society from the ground up through their network states.

EMILY CHANG: You also start to see this logic outside of tech.

TONY WANG: Health and wellness is a great example of that, where you have a whole MAHA movement. You have a lot of people on the far right who are really into alternative wellness, and people on the left were really into it as well.

I think the Polymarket example, or the prediction markets, is another great example of that, where a lot of investment banks predicted that the feds would not cut rates during the summer, but Polymarket users overwhelmingly believed that it would. Polymarket was correct in the end. Like, the feds did slash the rates, and they had this whole thing about how prediction markets are actually the new form of truth consensus.

Horseshoe maximalism for us is this, like, social temperament and cultural logic that we think will dominate consumer industries for the next five to ten years. It’s what the 2000s or the mid-2020s feel like—this collective realization that we no longer trust our institutions, and the death of establishment narratives, especially of progress, which is what we really anchored the dossier around. It gives way to this sense of both exhilaration and dread. It’s very Kierkegaard, in which freedom is both terrifying but also incredibly exciting.

EMILY CHANG: How do you see horseshoe maximalism’s role in history?

TONY WANG: Only about 36% of people globally believe that the world will be better for the next generation. That’s astoundingly low. So if the narrative of progress is that societies will always get better over time and that there’s never been a better time than now to be alive… only 36% of people believe that. It’s almost like we, as a society, feel like we peaked in the early 2000s or 2010s, and now we’re in this steady decline.

Society has always gone through peaks and lulls. And I certainly think we’re entering a bit of a lull period. So for me, it’s not to say that horseshoe maximalism will be the flavor of society or culture forever, but rather, as we enter this lull period, it is the cultural logic that will dominate. We are collectively trying to figure out where the fuck we want to go, but we have no real centralized means of doing that anymore. And entrenched, establishment interests really resist change and reform.

Kyla Scanlon wrote this phenomenal article on the three economies of America. If you look at wage appreciation, it’s only been 10%, whereas the stock market grew over 150%, also adjusted for inflation. The point being, that for the average person, there’s no economic mobility anymore. The only way you can basically gain wealth or grow wealth is by investing and through speculation. I think that’s why we’ve oriented so much of our economy around speculation, the AI bubble notwithstanding.

So if we’re all trying to reimagine what progress is in a post-2025 world, but we feel like we’re really constrained, economic mobility is difficult, and voting feels less effective than ever, because we’re stuck with a two-party system that we don’t really believe in.

Then the only way to mediate these collective frustrations is through the one thing we can control, which is what we consume. It also reflects in this decentralized collective process of using consumer culture as a way to surface new narratives, new social configurations, or even new communities of people who would typically not interact together.

EMILY CHANG: We see this playing out a lot on social media, in which the variety of platforms we can engage on now — and all the different levels of engagement within those platforms — allow us a larger amount of opportunities to form new structures. There are simply more layers to work with, it’s like going from 8-bit to 4K or from a low to a much higher frame rate.

TONY WANG: With the rise of TikTok and other platforms like Discord and Telegram, the algorithm has shifted more towards interests and micro communities. It doesn’t matter if you’re popular or not. It’s like, if the content’s interesting, the algorithm will surface it. So it’s actually bringing people together in new configurations, because the algorithm no longer works based on the social graph, or at least it doesn’t prioritize it as much.

So it’s interesting, because the thing that created the polarization of society, the algorithm that created a sense of disconnection in the first place, is potentially also the thing that might bring us back together in new configurations and micro communities of people who wouldn’t otherwise interact, based on shared interests. If those interests represent a convergence of contradictions and extremities, then might polarization also be the thing that brings us back together in a new middle?

EMILY CHANG: It’s ironic, because those systems that end up bringing us back together are also the ones that we have tried to reject any reliance on. But ultimately, those are the establishments that are still there, and those are the systems to live within. How much of this do you think is actually recognized by people and is there rejection happening yet?

TONY WANG: I don’t think our reliance on the algorithm or social media or these dominant structures will go away. But I think people are finding much more clever ways of hacking the system or getting around it, or like playing with it.

In the real world, we have our public Instagram and LinkedIn presences, but then we also have our private identities on Discord or Telegram. Some of my commercial clients have asked, what’s our channel strategy? Should we be on this platform or this one? It’s not that people are choosing one side or the other. It’s more of a spectrum where people’s identities fragment and they have reasons for being on one tool versus another.

EMILY CHANG: Once companies start infiltrating those spaces, people aren’t necessarily going to want to interact with them in the same way because it does break some spell, you know. When you’re in it, it feels private and intimate, because it does feel like you’re escaping the quote unquote establishment. As soon as a brand tries to enter that space and become a native speaker, it’s not the same anymore.

TONY WANG: Cultural marketing has been this really big trend in consumer culture over the past three, four years. In our entertainment chapter, we talk a bit about how everyone out of entertainment is trying to become an entertainment company. Like Chik Fil A launched an entertainment studio. Dick’s Sporting Goods also launched an entertainment studio. LVMH launched 22 Montaigne. Saint Laurent produced films for the Cannes Film Festival. Everyone is trying to enter this game.

What’s interesting is that as more and more companies try to become, like, cultural benefactors or be active in culture, I think it creates this Schroedinger’s Cat situation where they really want to break into these private spaces. But the second they do, to your point, then it shifts. So it’s like, is this space A or B? It embodies these cultural extremities. Is it plus or minus? Is it far left or far right? And it’s both. But it reflects very real social anxieties around where we’re headed and what progress really means as a society.

EMILY CHANG: These brands are going to have to rely on what are basically spies to go into these private or intimate spaces and influence. And the more obvious an influencer is, the less appealing it is.

TONY WANG: We are all forced to be spies, but there are different degrees of spies or different degrees of espionage. I always say that, like, when you work in the cultural industries, whether as a creative or like as a strategist, you know, you’re in this position where your role is to help companies make money by understanding culture and by participating in it. We are, I guess, spies in that sense?

EMILY CHANG: OAS has a venture fund focused on consumer tech and goods that works with young founders and entrepreneurs. I’d love to know whether you’ve noticed horseshoe maximalism and this general rejection of the establishment manifesting itself in the way that founders act?

TONY WANG: I would say that the willingness to do kind of extreme things has always been endemic to founder culture. Growth hacking is what it’s typically called in Silicon Valley. But growth hacking means that you’re willing to do anything, like whether it’s clickbaity or even a little exploitative.

One thing that I have seen emerge, which we talk about in the research, is the rise of nonsecularism within very rational fields. Some of the most seemingly objective and rational fields are actually the most fertile territory for spirituality to really gain a foothold. Which is very horseshoe maxi. In the research, we chart the rise of AI religions, many of which are founded by prominent tech people.

But also the rise of spirituality amongst the tech class. There’s a new incubator called HF0, a monastery where founders meditate on code and profit. There’s also the Monastic Academy, which is basically trying to build a religion for cyborgs. Which sounds really woowoo and like, what the fuck? But they actually do workshops and programming for tech founders and leaders, and they try to instill them with a sense of spirituality. Increasingly, people are treating code as a very sacred calling. Which is fascinating.

I think the reality of it is just, to be a successful founder, you need insane support structures. Whether that’s kind of being a psychopath or being self-delusional, or just having a great social network around you. And I think faith acts as an amazing support structure.

EMILY CHANG: I just want to end with a few rapid fire questions for you for One Thing. What is one item in your home that makes you happy right now?

TONY WANG: I was in Japan earlier this year and I went to an antique shop in Kyoto. I got this insane shirt [ed: a sculpture of a folded oxford shirt] that is made from stone and it’s all one piece. It’s insane and so beautiful. I love it.

EMILY CHANG: What is one picture in your phone that makes you happy right now?

TONY WANG: Ooh, that’s probably me playing with Hana, my roommate’s shiba inu. My parents came to surprise me for my birthday, and they came to my apartment, ambushed me, and then they wanted to take a photo. So it’s a photo of me holding flowers they got me and then Hana on the other arm. I’m like squeezing them both. So that one’s really cute, because it was nice that they flew all the way to surprise me.

EMILY CHANG: And lastly, what is one place that makes you happy right now?

TONY WANG: Let me give a shout out to a new tea place I went to recently. It’s called Tera at 41 Essex in the Lower East Side. They have rare teas from Korea that I’ve never seen in any other tea shop in the city. They also do co-fermented coffee, which I’ve never had in my life. But it’s really cool. It’s almost like coffee that’s been brewed with herbal tea. Co-fermentation is basically fermenting the coffee with cherry and some fruits. So it’s infused with this great fruit flavor. It’s crazy. They had one that was like watermelon and it basically tasted like watermelon tea with coffee. It’s hard to explain. You just have to try it.

The Office of Applied Strategy, Dossier 2: The New Pantheon contributors are Tony Wang, Helen Yin Chen, Chloé Desaulles, Chris Gayomali, Victoria Massey, Serena Wang. Copy Editor: Ross Scarano, Design: Matt Tsang, Studio Director: Dianne Kim.

Today in One Thing, a bunch of culture links (don’t miss the twisty moka pot) and film criticism on Die My Love and Frankenstein from Emily Chang — Kyle Chayka

• In Los Angeles, everyone loves enormous front doors. (Worth it for the photos alone.)

• In the AI industry, everyone loves serif typefaces for branding, presumably because they imply the literariness and high, human quality that AI entirely lacks. That’s why you’re seeing Baskerville everywhere from Perplexity to David bars and Anthropic baseball caps.

• ART INVESTORS BEWARE: Did you ever wonder what the deal was with Masterworks, that company that let you buy shares in blue-chip art? The one that was advertising everywhere a few years ago? NYT finally has the investigation. There’s no big crime or scandal, but buyers have to cherry pick which works they invest in — bet on the Basquiat — and they have no control over when the work is actually sold by Masterworks, so there’s no guarantee your Basquiat shares will be liquidated when the market is hot. Art is a notoriously illiquid commodity and its valuations are notoriously fictional until someone pays the sticker price. So I’d treat this more like sports gambling than investing, but the matches take a decade.

• Charli xcx has her own Substack, which is yet another high-water mark in newsletter culture. A newsletter is just table stakes for online audience-gathering now, like having a Twitter account used to be. Charli’s ratio of 10k likes on her debut post (which happens to be a heartfelt and worthwhile meditation on the creative process) to 22k subscribers might be a record.

• TURBO MOKA: Returning to a classic One Thing theme, check out this bizarro stovetop espresso pot designed by Matteo Frontini that looks like a Salvador Dali painting. Its swirling, melting design, modeled after plane turbines, is meant to bring more water in contact with heat faster.

• UPSTATE FANTASIA: Audrey Gelman, of The Wing fame, opened an upstate New York hotel spinoff of her kitschy, bucolic ecommerce brand Six Bells, which sells knick knacks (quilts, candles, napkins, like a highway-side shed in New England) under the guise of a fictional village. J Lee, the perhaps familiar food critic of Feed Me, reviewed the Six Bells Inn for Interview magazine with hilarious harshness.

  “It’s rare to get to spend the night in someone else’s personality disorder, but it’s not as scary as it sounds. It’s mostly boring. There’s nothing to do in the hotel, no pool, no spa, no massage, the rooms don’t even have televisions (they’d ruin the aesthetic), and the restaurant stays closed till five. There’s a children’s playroom with the most beautiful mural, and no games in sight.”

Life, death, and mental health on film

by Emily Chang

Director Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein are really running the PR circuit right now, and after seeing them I can’t stop thinking about both of them, for reasons that surprise me. I became a big fan of Lynne Ramsay’s work after We Need To Talk About Kevin, and the starring actors Robert Pattinson and Jennifer Lawrence are both masterful performers who are always a joy to watch. And yet I found Die My Love insufferable to sit through.

Most of the PR around the film has been around the fact that it’s about postpartum depression, but it’s much bigger than that. It’s more of a visceral, violent turning of the inside outwards and seems to be almost made for no audience at all. You feel as if you are a voyeur in the young couple’s life, the days blurring together into one, like a slow Sunday that aches with anxiety. It’s no spoiler to say that their personal disasters deepen.

But what I find interesting is that, despite feeling disappointed and antsy as I sat in the theater, I am actually considering seeing it again. My expectations of what the film would be are not as important as the real estate it’s been occupying in my head and the nagging feeling that Grace, Jennifer Lawrence’s character, is all of us, in a way. That is, if we acted out exactly what we felt internally when we’re at our worst, in moments when nobody around you can really quite see you. Her freak out is relatable.

Guillermo del Toro’s epic Frankenstein, starring Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac, and Mia Goth, is arguably a better film on the surface. It has much better reviews, is freakishly, gorgeously composed, and has a storyline that takes you through the emotional journey of watching creation bend into death and re-emerge into the harshness of life. Yet it hasn’t stuck in my head the same way that Die My Love has (though its screencaps have stuck around in my feeds for sure). Perhaps that’s because it’s simply a more literal movie, complex in story but less so in the psychology of the self.

Most clicked links from last issue

• Ella Emhoff’s romantic travails

• The New Yorker’s new word game, Shuffalo

• AI company hiring human writers

• New trend-forecasting dossier just dropped

• What was the niche media blog Young Manhattanite?