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In one of last month’s New Yorkers, Annie Ernaux did the thing most writers desperately wish they could do properly, which is to describe photographs in a way that’s actually compelling. (And it’s mostly about clothes thrown in disarray—happy Fashion Week!) I almost wish they didn’t print some of the actual photos: “On Cancer and Desire”

Sam Kriss writes a kind of unhinged newsletter that mostly makes me feel like I should not be reading it (From May: “What is the world’s oldest hatred” is pretty insane / one of those links you share with very carefully selected group chats), but every now and then he sends out something plainly fantastic. “Eternity” is one of those sends: it’s about rewatching Girls and nostalgia cycles and theology and time; you can just 2000% read that instead of Sean Monahan’s thing from last week on bidirectional nostalgia unless you REALLY need to.

Speaking of nostalgia, I was researching an assignment and stumbled across this excerpt of What Was the Hipster?, written by editors of n+1 back in 2010. A total gem of a piece (I already ordered the book to read in full), especially this paragraph, which still perfectly describes our current culture of fetishizing / cosplaying creative class identity via consumer choices…

It has long been noticed that the majority of people who frequent any traditional bohemia are hangers-on. Somewhere, at the center, will be a very small number of hardworking writers, artists, or politicos, from whom the hangers-on draw their feelings of authenticity. Hipsterdom at its darkest, however, is something like bohemia without the revolutionary core. Among hipsters, the skills of hanging-on—trend-spotting, cool-hunting, plus handicraft skills—become the heroic practice. The most active participants sell something—customized brand-name jeans, airbrushed skateboards, the most special whiskey, the most retro sunglasses—and the more passive just buy it.

This LA Times feature on age-gap friendships was so sweet; it made me think about how remote work + the societal tilt toward contract/gig/freelance work have almost totally dissolved the workplace as a source of intergenerational bonding. Where to find our elders now?? Out on TikTok, as they attempt the “Apple” dance???? Depressing.

And finally, read this dispatch on folk search algorithms from Elan Ullendorff every time you Google something and feel badly about how easily you’re starting to rely on those AI up-top summaries…

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