no, i'm not hungry ☺️
On the increasingly hypothetical state of what we eat and a look at key trends spotted in Los Angeles and New York City.
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🇫🇷 Hey, Paris!! 🇫🇷 I’ll be attending Matter & Shape and Premiere Classe in early March, for anyone who will be in town. I may organize a lil event too, pending on what I can figure out and who is there. Send me a note as I’d love to meet up! Or if you’d like to partner!
🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿 featured graphic designer and artist (and friend) Steven Erazo, who joined Ben Dietz and I to chat the Super Bowl, detangle art cultures in Los Angeles and New York City, and explore why getting weird in an increasingly stale world is key: tune in on Substack, Spotify, or YouTube.
Two major storylines of this decade (And beyond!) feel like they’re coming to a head, or at least a big wave is cresting. Is the new moon and fire horse lunar new year the reason why? Who knows, but these items include —
World of Epstein (WOE): We may finally be experiencing a marked shift in the Epstein files, as the information pushes out of background noise and into central storyline as we realize the World of Epstein — or The WOE State™. The examples are big and bad (the incoming unredacted names; Steven Bannon’s friendship and meddling in Europe; the fracturing of royal families) while some are curious and conspiratorial (Was school picture company Lifetouch working with him? How bread-and-circus-y is the Barclays/Jay Z thing? Did Epstein’s Victoria’s Secret, etc. connection guide the lives of Millennial girls?), which is all very unsettled — but is notching toward something. Then there was Attorney General Pam Bondi’s incendiary appearance before Congress, where she did her best Lady Macbeth to scrub blood off her hands in front of lawmakers. Thus, reckonings of all sorts are and aren’t happening, as top Goldman Sachs lawyers step down while Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick plays down associations. Will enough people hear about it to take action? Will it be normalized by the media? Will the victims finally be heard? Will the push of Epstein memes and fancams creating aspiration instead of condemnation? At least Ghislaine’s haircut is still popping.
AI Psychosis Goes Pro: A two-pronged shift is happening in the AI world, which I don’t care to follow but am being forced to so come along for the ride: on one side, a flurry of major exits and departures from big AI companies — an Anthropic researcher who quit in public letter, the OpenAI researcher who quit-and-told via New York Times op-ed and the anti-adult mode executive who was fired for “sexual discrimination” — that have served as kinda-sorta-but-not whistle blowing that needs to yield a juicy leak or stop altogether; the second was the maddening and massively viral Twitter (Ugh.) essay about how we’re in a pre-AI tipping point similar to the months before Covid that will reshape our economy and tech relations, a manifesto that ultimately is an AI sales pitch that spun the media machine into a tizzy as New York (Twice!), CNN, and Vox amplified this. All this, as the Super Bowl was a flurry of infuriating AI and tech ads, one of which was a Ring-is-watching-you ad that forced the brand to crash the featured feature. Meanwhile, a QuitGPT campaign is going due to ICE ties and general fascism as these companies are paying influencers for promo. Then there’s ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0, which looks very good and has already inspired a Hollywood-wide shiver thanks to a ridiculous “film” from the Deadpool dumbass. All this for what? To cure cancer? Think again! Also: stop cartoonifying yourself Millennials! Y’all look like Boomer sloppers!!!!
Discord will require a face scan or ID
“mandatory disclosure went into effect”
Bad news: Discord took a leap toward techno surveillance. But some good news? sheathed with bad news? New York is pushing back against dynamic pricing, or at least making you aware of it.
Takaichi to pursue conservative agenda
Kim Jong Un chooses heir
Portugal elects socialist, far-right takes record
Two bad, one kinda good. At least the memes from the first two are very good! Then there’s Cuba.
Israel Gives Itself More Control
Very evil, also enabled by Trump and Kushner’s West Bank riviera. Yes, these are “flagrant violation of international law” according to the UN — but who is doing anything to stop this? Stop yapping and start holding them accountable!!
‘Take vaccine, please,’ health official says
This is about measles and how there will be needless illnesses and deaths thanks to the pivot to idiot led by fuck ass Dr. Oz and fuck ass RFK Jr. and fuck ass Trump. (Loosely related: I’ve been getting a lot of content about shingles lately, largely that it can help with cognitive decline even if people aren’t taking it. Also? The vaccine is called Shingrix, which seems like a Dark Crystal villain. I love it.)
Progressive Star Shakes Race for LA Mayor
The record of Nithya Raman
“We might be getting our Mamdani”
News from LA, as Nithya Raman steps into the mayoral race. Will she be the West’s Zohran? Unsure. I love her and “lived under her” for a few years, but I’m not going full Ramanistan just yet as LA is another political creature entirely that I’m cautiously optimistic can be reshaped by “one person.” Stay tuned!
Why Crime Is Falling Across the U.S.
The Great Crime Decline
This is also happening in cities like London. This is good news we don’t hear enough about! Or that conservative governments don’t want us to hear about!!
In neither the preview commercial nor the “live commercial” did anyone actually eat the Skittles being advertised by a mythical Elijah Wood. Pringles had Sabrina Carpenter eating Pringles, but mostly she used the chips to construct a golem of a boyfriend. Hellman’s sang a song about sandwich time where people did eat but the song and story featured centered on a jingle singer struck by a curse. Lay’s connected potato chips with family, Dunkin’ had a 1990s Boston dating sketch, Ritz did a showcase of salty characters: food was present but the focus was never on the eating. Even the food apps — Instacart’s period music video, Uber Eat’s choose-your-own adventure spot — weren’t focused on food: they were all bits of bits. “All of the food advertising that did happen was about anthropomorphizing or emotionalizing the food: none of the food was presented as tasting good,” Ben Dietz observed earlier this week of this year’s Super Bowl commercials. “It’s an aesthetic. It’s a quality. It’s a means of appearance, even though really what we’re talking about is food that you ingest.” The suggestion? “We can’t sell ourselves as food anymore,” he said. “We have to sell ourselves as lifestyle.”
This may seem like a stacking of marketing messages that continues to exchange emotional memory with the food you put in your mouth, but something feels different about all this: food isn’t food anymore. It’s an idea. It’s an object. It’s a political ideology. It’s not real. Food is everything, food is nothing. “Food is life” and food is culture in a time when we don’t even really have culture anymore, when thinking critically is looked at critically which means literal taste and the food recommendation ecosystem represents what post-literate life looks like: culture as junk food.
Milk is a great example of this, a food item that has long been associated with endorsements that has shifted to celebrities being paid to say cow milk is milk and milk from oats or nuts is not milk. This is ridiculous but also serious enough to be an international issue that the UK Supreme Court has sought to answer by banning “milk” from the vocabulary of post-milk products, building on an EU effort to remove “meat” from plant-based alternatives. Whole milk in the US has been seized by right wing figures from Ben Carson to Riley Gaines, who push the drink less for sustenance and more to advance part of Trump’s health agenda. “It’s actually a legal definition,” he said of milk of this kind. “‘Whole’ milk — and it’s ‘whole’ with a W, for those of you who have a problem.” The crowd goes wild, as the laxxed and unvaxxed grab for raw milk to further push ideologies, even as their gods like the influencer Ballerina Farm pauses her raw milk production for safety, as RFK Jr. distances himself from this pure white wash, which is and isn’t related to the death of a New Mexico newborn whose mother was drinking raw milk during her pregnancy. Milk can heal you, milk can kill you. Milk is the past, milk is the future. Milk is everything, milk is nothing.
This is just the unbalanced tip of a food pyramid full of meat and dairy, in a world where protein powdering life is a form of divine dieting and fiber fitness seeks to correct trendy inattentiveness. No longer do we worry about GMOs and other “fake food” when we have “natural food” that is just GMO food. There’s a fun prebiotic or probiotic sparkling soda for everyone, which is great considering we aren’t drinking and — if we do — it’s glass over bottle. Little treats but also girl dinner and also boy kibble, all conceptual food on a plate shaped by TikTok. Burger King has downsized to baby burgers, perhaps because people now eat less fast food but order out more and mostly just slop: food as afterthought, food as work, food as joyless obligation to be eaten by yourself with a screen to scroll upon. Everyone thinks they’re eating healthy but most aren’t actually as portion sizes and eating habits are warped by GLP-1 daughters and intermittent fasting sons, all unlocking new food values that usher in new eating disorders. Real meat made in labs that we can carry in baguette bags. Lisa Says Wear Food! Gohar says burn food. No one is eating but an economy of singing jingles about food bursts. AI food eats itself as AI food fucks itself.
Isn’t this what we always wanted? The idea of food without the joy, as fashion continues to be obsessed with restaurants, as chefs continue to be the “bad boys” of entertainment, as no one wants to be seen eating just as no one wants to be seen fat: everywhere food, but you’re not supposed to eat it, as if life is a film set where no one can suck or fuck anything. Just sit there and try to vibe happily, starved, chaste, joyless, quiet. This is the future we’ve always planned for: we longed for food that was artificial (the designer mush of Brazil, the food replicator in Star Trek) and we longed for food in pill-form, reduced to pellets or even a liquid (the future of The Flintstones, the future of 2001). We envisioned future food so hard that we went from astronaut ice cream to a whole landscape of unfoods (2010s Soylent through the very recent — and Zara Larsson approved — Alpro Meal To Go), inspiring as many novelties (Juicero) as there are genuine innovations (Impossible Foods). We are breaking up with sustenance, turning food conceptual instead of the literal. Maybe we should blame the molecular gastronomists? Our ancestors cry and cry as they watch us, having hunted and gathered for our collective survival — just so we could sit here in the future and fast.
The death of partying also marked the death of indulgence, a time of temperance and invalidation, of policing the body and mind, the taste and tongues. Our music isn’t real anymore, our writing isn’t real anymore, our truth isn’t real anymore. Are you real? Am I real? In dehumanizing and monster fucking times, when young people worry about their humanity and enter psychosis, it makes sense that pleasure is being sucked out of us, liposuction to the soul, taking with it the things that make us us as technofascists lick our wounds. Hungry for nothing? Clearly.
Margaret Qualley’s Text-Message Manifesto
“celebrities used to tweet”
“#KevinJames doesn’t weigh in on politics”
Neil Patrick Harris: “Interested in Apolitical”
Michelle Yeoh: “Until the Right Changes Are Made”
These all are of-a-kind. I’m not really interested in celebrities speaking on everything in the world right now but the fact that we have Margaret Qualley “breaking through” via text and Addison Rae’s burner as her mouthpiece paired with instances of ignorance-is-celeb-bliss (James, Harris, Yeoh), it seems celebrities are just like us — and by “us” I mean “scared executives” who speak not from the heart but from the pocket book. It’s hard having being on the right side of history when you get paid to perform at the bread-and-circuses! Even if performative, maybe the Billies and the Sabrinas aren’t so bad when this is the company they keep.
Rachel Scott to Dress the New NY Woman
Rachel Scott’s Proenza Schouler Debut
Every Rachel Scott story I will read and every one I will love. Her debut collection was inspired! And so was the smudgy makeup!!
“How to dress for public transport”
“this is actually cool”
“dress for meeting aristocracy”
I was not familiar with the performance artist David Hoyle, but love that he’s modeling for Mugler. In another corner, love Peaches for Interview too!
Meet Clavicular
Clavicular Begs to Differ.
“dennis reynolds side plot”
This was the week everyone had to learn who Clavicular was. Clearly a signal of stagnation, no? Especially since all this is happening and he isn’t even that hot!!!! We Sucks so many men are just gay (Clav included) but don’t know what to do about it.
Americans ‘high quality lives’ drops to low
World’s Most Important Problem Report
Why are fertility rates collapsing? Gender roles
Following the gloomy European vibes from a few weeks back, now American feel similarly as “high quality lives” fade, revealing a bigger story of this decade (Century? Our lifetime so far?) in that the systems are all broken and not-great no matter where you are. Take the Gallup Problem Report, where the top three global issues facing people are the economy, work, and politics, all of which underscore the real reason for the global right wing tilt: everyone is broke and the right speaks best to putting money in your pocket. The flip of this is last year’s Gen Z revolts, which posit a power-to-the-people movement that puts action above comfort.
Inside the Risks of Investing in Art
“The Baby Boomer dilemma”
Fascinating piece on the art market and how Boomers have too much stuff and how said stuff is aging poorly given that their taste — and squatting on assets — is going to screw them in the end when the shit they hoarded doesn’t sell.
I am fully back in my real life in Barcelona, still settling into the new year as 2026 didn’t start until February 1 for me, which means Tuesday’s Lunar New Year is the new year I will be celebrating. I’m making my goals for the year and figuring out my (Our?) future — but I also have lots of thoughts from my more-than-a-month in Los Angeles and New York. That obviously means a lot of trends were spotted too. While I’ve compiled thoughts on these two places in a dedicated post, I wanted to highlight key trends shared between the cities, five items that say something about the past, present, and future. Or: they’re things I noticed that I found interesting, commonalities between coasts that may resonate wider. They include —
Chicory is the trending leaf, spotted on menus at NYC’s Cove and LA’s Manuela, Osteria La Buca, and Queen St., among many others. This reminds me of the obsession with ramps from a few years ago and is likely a product seasonality reflecting hearty winter produce. It’s curious that this word has broken out though over the more specific endive or frisée or radicchio: this is a culinary-lingual trick to upsell the otherwise normalized exotic. This also suggests that, in hard times, we need vegetables that fight back via salads whose bitter sharpness wrestles with flavor in the ways you wrestle life. Something for us to keep an eye out as these lettuces (And word.) take over menus worldwide.
Everyone is watching Industry. Yes, the new season is nearing its end — which is why everyone is definitely Pierpoint pilled — but it’s fascinating that a show about seeking riches (And not.) (I’m halfway through season two, so I am assuming that based on hear-say.) by a diverse group captures these poor times so well. From dinner parties to family meals, Los Angeles’ TRL to New York’s HIP REPLACEMENT, this show came up and suggested appointment viewing has made a comeback for a certain demographic. It feels like we haven’t had something like this since…Succession? Maybe Severance? Something’s different here though, as people light the fuck up when the show is mentioned, speaking to a glowing difference that didn’t really happen with the aforementioned shows. Is it that Industry feels smarter? Is it that the show’s Nathan Micay’s soundtrack and its Euro settings makes it feel more cosmopolitan than others? Or is it that young hot people are fucking and funding? It feels like a shared projection of our fantasies.
The “performative male” Trader Joe’s bag is everywhere — but that’s not the real story about the popular tote. Instead, I realized something while in Los Angeles that I hadn’t seen anyone talk about: the Trader Joe’s bag is the result of the West coast city’s trend production pipeline and general cultural influence. For example: in Los Angeles, the bag wasn’t just everywhere but ubiquitous, coming in big and small sizes, in regular and themed color ways, used as purses and as grocery haulers, carried by abuelitas on the bus and cool girls at spots like Quarter Sheets. This exposed a missing chapter to the story: the bag’s popularity is less about men “trying to fit” a certain female compatibility but more a utilitarian, homegrown LA item that broke containment, copied and copied throughout the city and then country and then exported worldwide and across genders as it took on the same role that the new London Review of Books tote had years ago when it became a common simp accessory.
Everyone is using red light masks. It is the product of the moment that is a flexing of small-and-big wealths, but also an example of how tweaking the body and beauty obsessions are no longer just siloed to creams or clinics: your home is a medspa too, where you can inject body slimming substances and laster your face young. This is part of the holiday halo, as friends and family boasted such new home tools. Are at-home nail studios next? Potentially. (Another thing: unlike Europe, masking is alive and well in both cities. But an irony: I spotted more people masking in Los Angeles — where the kind winter weather enables more outdoor activity, where there is more being-in-your-car — than I did in New York, where there is much more public transit and it was super fucking cold.)
Angelenos and New Yorkers are deeply obsessed with Paris in ways that are cute but also gets a bit pick-me, as if your own backyard isn’t a lush and living culture hub. The feeling was very pronounced in Los Angeles, thanks to spots like Juliet and Damn I Miss Paris, as NYC echoed this with a suite of spots parroting Parisian vibes. Betty Bulle popped up on both coasts as Parisian expressions like Buddy Buddy in NYC and Casablanca in LA emerged too. There were also some very Parisian gestures being flung around for clout — cozy apartment lounges in NYC, chic sidewalk drinking in LA at Capri Club and Seco — which shows just how much love these American cities have for the French capital. Trés chic! But maybe take a vacation…or celebrate what makes you you!
There’s plenty more where this came from, which you can find in a full breakdown on Los Angeles and New York trends spotted here. Where to next? Paris! I’ll be attending Matter & Shape and Premiere Classe in early March, in case you’re in town. I may organize a lil event too: stay tuned! And message me if you’ll be there and or are interesting in partnering for something.
“butt mogged”
“gazemogging”
“framemogged”
“goblinchad”
“don’t know what any of that means”
“the gay lexicon”
“kid named hitler”
“my brother is actually sleeping”
Given Clavicular, the idea of getting mogged crossed over and is pushing the English language toward silly fun (or collapse). The first give are about that, while the latter three point to larger (gay-and-not) language rots.
“Oh my god Laura”
“sending me”
“nice if Bad Bunny”
“Bad Bunny is a nepo baby”
“a hundred more of these”
“shoutout to Canada”
Who even played at the Super Bowl? We may never know, a fact that could make Tom Brady vomit.
“gassy bitch”
“Please unmute”
“Bondi testifying”
“How hawking was”
“only kidding”
“Emails Would Have Looked Like”
Best Epstein memes that were not propaganda. The last one renewed my love for Clickhole. (Their new merch is great too!)
“I decided to get”
“Guy who confused”
“me after my IUD”
Loving all the IUD jokes.
“Pet tortoise escapes”
“Me at the supermarket”
“in Tiki world”
“oh”
Big week for cool animals, including a rising trend of pet birds scrolling TikTok.
“when I got dreads”
Apparently the Counting Crows guy is trans, and by trans I mean “needed dreads.”
“such a song could be so emotional”
Yes, Cupcakke can make people cry. A songstress!
And, finally, a gay male obsessive idea that I have been thinking about all week.
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Your food essay made me very glad to live in Spain, where food still is, for the most part, pretty real, or at least, real food is easy to find if you want it.
And then I scrolled down and had to laugh at the fact that chicory is apparently trendy now, because we have a massive chicory plant in our garden and we've been eating a lot of it lately. Now I feel like an unwitting hypebeast!
Brilliant! As ALWAYS!🤩