🌓 desaturated now 🌗

On a growing craft movement in art that centers the analogue and human, along with a meditation on gratitude.

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• 🦿HIP REPLACEMENT🦿features James Whatley, who chatted with Ben Dietz and I about Charli XCX’s Substack era, the importance of expertise (and appeal of someone like Kelly Cutrone), and why a movie like Minecraft may be more important than Wicked: listen now on Spotify and YouTube!

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Zelenskyy’s top aide resigns
Zelensky Must Restore Trust Amid Scandal
France Must ‘Accept Losing Our Children’

The Zelensky corruption saga is messy — and concerning given the questionable peace conversations! This is maybe why France’s constant freak out could be justified, that their “RUSSIA IS GONNA ATTACK EUROPE!!” screams might be more than conservo-nationalist talking points.

G20 declaration in defiance of US
Can the World Move On Without the US?

I have my doubts that a real, bonafide, economically robust about-face from the US economy and political apparatus can and will happen (despite having mused on this), but items like this suggest there is a willingness to unplug from the machine. This feels like a neighborhood quitting Amazon Prime but on a global level.

There Is Already a Deal to Beat Them
Another Way Antarctica Is Falling Apart

Now that COP30 is behind us and the “deal” has been made, I think we have to seriously reconsider the scheme: we aren’t meeting the Paris Agreement, as the entity — like many a global liberal entity — cares more about commercial and corporate interests than the planet. Shameful. Shameful! I hope Greta Thunberg gouges their eyes out as Antarctica becomes a fable.

Europe is scaling back privacy, AI laws

In which the EU “simplifies” laws but is bending the knee to tech corporations, just as they did to oil corporations. Same, same, but different. (A hidden gem: “a reduction in Europe’s ubiquitous cookie banners and pop-ups.” I’ll take that at least!)

Allegations Against Meta in Unsealed Filings

Where are all the “Save the children!” people now? I hope Mark Zuckerberg got really bad food poisoning this Thanksgiving! I hope he has hemeroids!! Be sure to catch @Cy Canterel’s fantastic take on the tiers of — and protection of — power.

Trump Faces Realities of Aging in Office

In which people start to take Trump being old seriously. I have a friend his same age (Hi, Marsha!) who keeps asking this: “Do you really want someone my age being president, no matter their politics? I don’t!” Good point.

The exit economy is here. Black Women pay highest price
“Layoffs are not about job functions”
Is the era of robot-driven unemployment upon us?
“when you treat people like quarterly expense items”

Critical conversations about layoffs keep circling, as this fact-of-jobs becomes a defining feature of adult working life in the 2020s. Something I think we’re going to do an autopsy of in a few years — which we’re getting very close to — is understanding how companies did mass layoffs to put money toward AI, which didn’t pan out as far as “doing the jobs” of those who were cut, all as they lowered their prices to stay competitive while being unable couldn’t recoup costs or find and keep talent, all as a business plummets. That is going to be how we remember a good portion of business during this decade.

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A few weeks ago I popped by the Loop festival, which was a cute showcasing of works somewhere between cinema and art. Some were documentation of performances, some were experiments in visual narrative, some were traditional film, some were of people making noise out in nature: it was an accurate reflection of the importance and unimportance of video as a medium, in a world where anyone can make a motion picture with the small computer in their hand. An interesting trend emerged though, of video pieces that sought the texture and history of the artform by evoking and playing with works on celluloid film, with the technology that the name is referencing: Saodat Ismailova’s Her Five Lives is a video essay on Uzbek women portrayed in film over the past century, cutting together images and visual technologies from decades and decades past that portray subjects at points as vibrant and full or with the noisy glow of “primitive” video. Other works incorporated film from other eras (Bruce Yonemoto’s Barravento NOVO) while some meditated upon sharing craft (Stelios Kallinikou’s two minutes twenty two seconds thirty two milliseconds) or even committing literal texts to film (Tatiana Macedo’s Film Book Film; Janet Biggs’ Eclipse), all making statements against the digital projectors that represented them — and perhaps even making critical commentary on the creators themselves. What does it mean to be a creation of a creation? Who are we as artists if our jobs become echoers of times and places and a way of seeing that no longer exists nor is cherished? They carry ancient texts within the scale of our lifetime, memories of a more pure time for us, anemoia as subtext.

These are greatly charmless times, where so much in the world around us is frictionless and “easy,” smoothed of intellectual challenges and the demands needed to create: as a culture, we’re unpacking what it means when almost all media, all entertainment, all of culture is soulless, anti-artisanal. Art is no more because, like life, everything is a product: so cheap and so pedestrian that it questions the entire apparatus with which an item evolved from. This conversation has been brewing all year, made clear by chatter about everything being desaturated and how our culture is losing color, an observation we discussed three years ago which I’d connect to the theory that we have become too self-serious and adult.

While we can say things like highlighters and kids toys are being suffocated by neutrality, film is where many of the spiritually gray exist: you need subtitles because everything is too loud and quiet and mumbling, turning on brightness to its highest levels as everything is way too dark to see. “Why does every movie now look like it was filmed inside a dirty sock?” a popular video essay on the subject asked, conjuring up the recent trend of low exposure chicken alfredo aesthetics and pointing a finger at the main offender, 2024 and 2025’s Wicked films. “Where did all the colour from movies go?” The Guardian asked this week, exploring how color grading is a lost art, a fact that went viral as the film hit theaters. This has conjured many similar offenders, all of which are cursed by their thematic ancestors outshining their descendants: see Freakier Friday and Devil Wears Prada 2 as flatteners of the fun, that movies now look like cheap streaming shows instead of something worthy of the box office. This has born the term “Netflix Lighting,” a huge pejorative that meditates on how the recent past of the late aughts was the end of a cinema era, marking the shift from all film becoming synonymous with viewing and visuals being shaped by the streamer, thus conjuring shows like Stranger Things as a show made with the lights off, as people complained for years about this only for an economy of stories blaming television settings to emerge from creators. “If you’re washing a set in ambient soft light, you don’t have to plan as carefully when setting up your next shot,” Robert Tolppi explained on his viral video about this trend, connecting advancing technologies, lighting techniques, and the sped up pace of streaming schedules with an overall cheapening of craft. H1 and H2 goals as the death of creativity.

It’s easy to assume this is “just” a lighting problem — but it’s spiraling into a tell of if an item desires to be seen as “art” versus a “product.” The premise of Pixar 2026’s Hoppers gets at this, as (Millennial) irony and boredom misshaped the idea. “I long for the honesty and courage of a Watership Down that dares us to imagine that rabbits have their own inner life, and challenges us to become rabbits,” a viral post reflecting on the film’s trailer concluded, “rather than remaking all the world in our own narrow postmodern image.” Like bad lighting, this sense of irony and boredom overshadows all the technical beauties of a work: Wicked: For Good is proof, as details of the Scarecrow and others got a lot of attention for craftsmanship that was lost to bad lighting.

It’s unsurprising that we’re stepping back into a wider discussion of taste and craft broken down by the use of new technologies versus old, a war of creative ideologies: see the modern predicament of film versus digital, which is being waged by top filmmakers — Ryan Coogler, Celine Song, Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Anderson, Brady Corbet, Yorgos Lanthimos, Luca Guadagnino, Guillermo Del Toro, Chloe Zhao — are turning to literal film and practical effects in setting and costuming to contextualize a work as art, critiquing the slick ickiness that has infected culture by everything being “digital.” The idea is going beyond film, as many wear such badges of honor to qualify themselves: Laika is framing 2026’s Wildwood as “a bespoke work of art” thanks to entirely practical effects and puppetry; 2026’s GOAT is presented as being made “from artists” versus studios; Rosalía’s statement that LUX is “a human album”; the “human written” stamp on books that is certifies if an artist has made “organic literature”; the reinforcing that Glenn Martens’s Maison Margiela is “hand-worked”; AppleTV’s use of real glass to make its intro as Finneas used a piano to make a mnemonic for. While all of these people are artists working within capitalism and commerce, they are drawing a line, standing with artists versus the machines that seek to destroy and take advantage of them. Cue Billie Eilish’s attacks on Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk! “Fuck AI,” the director Rian Johnson told the Hollywood Reporter. “It’s something that’s making everything worse in every single way.” “No more AI,” Quan Millz repeated on his TikTok, revealing a cover he made with a human artist. Your comment, Natasha Lyonne?

We all know how and why we got here, where fingerprints become a gesture of humanity and reality, of hard work in the face of soulless, flat tech eating the world: so much food is processed, so many of our clothes are plastic, so many products are poorly made, life is lived under white-blue LED streetlights and headlights, Netflix lighting as curse. Millennial gray is no longer an aesthetic but a mid mindset to remind you of what has been taken from us, which pairs poorly with the Kim Kardashian and Kanye West suburban brutalism that yielded nightmare home robots that echo robotics designed as weapons: these are the aesthetics of dehumanization. These all grow from the shifting too smooth and too soulless soil that is AI entertainment, of the Wizard of Oz at the Sphere, of shoddy superhero movies made by LLMs, of pictures parroting life without soul. “art is good because it takes time to make. time is all we are,” someone pushes back against the rise in AI in music. “giving your time to something makes it art.” Start a band in your garage, someone proclaims, highlighting how everyone being able to make something with their tiny computers doesn’t mean much of it — If any of it! — is good: everything is cheapened as a result, thus creating this economy of nostalgic craft to illustrate expertise and taste, the process now a “prove your work” narrative to elevate ideas. “Audiences can quickly tire of works that rely solely on technological novelty,” a Victoria and Albert Museum curator bemoaned.

We’re exiting the other end of a portal that was constructed almost twenty years ago, where we entered the computer and tried to live in it only to realize the space is too hot and too dangerous to survive in. While not logging off completely — despite this being passed around as a flex — cultural lines are being drawn now: are you of a smooth brain that cares not for human creation? Or are you someone who wants to support small batch and organic people power no matter if indie or commercial? A change in worldview is coming, where the vibrance of “vintage” outshines the new. “We’ve gone too far,” all of this says. “Perhaps we turn back the clock just a touch, to when we cared more than we consumed?”

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Olivia Nuzzi, RFK Jr. Affair Is Messy
Nuzzi Would Share “Opposition Research” With RFK

I — personally — have been keeping away from the Olivia Nuzzi/RFK Jr. drama for no other reason than I think all parties involved are boring. But, after I heard rumblings that the Trump assassination item was mentioned, I locked in. The first link is a great recap by The Ringer.

Hitler’s triumphs in Namibia local elections

For the fifth time in a row! Not an Onion story, by the way.

Sally Rooney may be withdrawn from UK
BBC Accused of Censoring by Dutch Historian
“disappointing news to share”

These aren’t literally related but spiritually related, where the UK courts move to censor Sally Rooney for her support of progressive ideas as the BBC censors guests to placate Trump. This reminds of why Ben & Jerry’s is fighting with Magnum!

Americans are holding onto devices longer
“You hear what they’re saying?”

To the above essay: a great shift is happening where people are realizing that the need for constant new shit is not real. Paired with the rise in resale and refurbished, you get the picture that fuses economic needs with third eyes twitching. I’m so proud of us!! (That is…until corporations cannibalize that market, which they will do.) Cue the viral Bobby Hill wabi sabi video!

‘Lost Films of COVID’ Series

What a great idea! I can see a lot more where this comes from, not only with movies but with all art forms from 2020 (and maybe even 2021).

Boiler Room to undergo substantial layoffs

The end of an era in many ways.

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“I think about the fifteen year old version of myself and I think she would be very happy,” Cris’ partner said as their Thanksgiving toast, sharing what they were grateful for this year. Cris had been part of the reason the group had gotten together: she was curious about Thanksgiving because, as a Spaniard, the holiday is very well known but obviously not practiced as it’s an American tradition. I had mentioned potentially doing something but wasn’t sure, for no other reason than I was feeling vaguely sorry for myself, beaten down by the year and by life. I love Thanksgiving though. It’s my favorite holiday as it’s a reason to bring people you love together to talk about the things you love about life. At its best, we honor our ancestors and give thanks to whatever higher powers are speaking to us. One year, my friend Lynn held a Korean Thanksgiving that fused the American holiday with Chuseok, where we honored loved ones who had died. I adapted the idea from them, performing the practice with my own family. Every year, no matter if it’s just Bobby Aaron Solomon and I or if it’s thirty people from across the whole of my life, it’s required that we go around the table and offer a bit of gratitude. It’s the hardest and easiest thing you can do, something so obvious and so pure, that you have to fight the inclination to be performative or to be ironic or to take your jade pills to project a sad nihilistic worldview. It’s cooler to be pessimistic than to be optimistic, isn’t it?

That’s something I admire about Ben Dietz and Bobby is an unwavering optimism and awe of the world, which is probably why these people are in my life to begin with, which may sound ironic to you because I hear again and again from so many people that these very dispatches are such a bummer. Then I meet them online or irl and the assessment shifts: “You’re so much nicer and happier and optimistic than I ever thought you would be: you’re so much better off paper.” It’s a high compliment, and a reminder that writing is read and not performed. Reading a joke is never as funny as getting to encounter someone embodying it before you. Context matters. Or maybe I’m prone to wander into the mirrored trap of the internet, too obsessed with only reflecting our broken realities versus our dreams? That might be true, but I don’t think optimism is very useful without a dose of reality, as if a punch of salt upon caramel: I like to look at the disaster as a remember to cherish and celebrate what I have, to love more fully and to appreciate the little things in my life. What would my fifteen year old self think about any of this? He would think life now is all so cool, that I live with a man (!) and have two dogs (!!) and am in Europe (!!!) and get to write about fashion and the arts (!!!!) and consider myself an artist (!!!!!). He wouldn’t be sad about the loneliness nor would the back pain or struggles with work get to him: he would think about how special it is that he had the chance to experience any of this at all.

Sometimes I think about this within the context of being born in any other time: if I wasn’t born in this time period, I would be dead. I don’t mean this as a joke but completely seriously: I was born with double club feet, had very poor hearing which resulted in badly impaired speech, all underscored by some severe food allergies. And? My loafers were some of the lightest imaginable. I would have been smothered or abandoned, placed back into the earth to grow into anything other than an adult. Perhaps that’s why I push myself so hard, why I give and hope for everyone around me: I am a product of centuries — If not millennia! — of people working together to solve medical and political and technological issues in life. The life you and I and so many in the world live is proof of progress. These are bad times, yes, but what if we consider how this may be the best time in humanity when we zoom out and consider all those who came before us. We have toilets, we have small dogs, we can talk to people on the other side of the world, we can make money by being gay online, we can cure diseases that have plagued our kind for thousands of years: over our collective past, people dreamt of times like these — and we’re living their dream. That fifteen year old 15,000 years ago dreamt of you and I doing what we do! My new novel is kinda sorta all about this, a mission to reframe the present as the best period imaginable, even if so much of it is deeply troubling and problematic and evil. What if this is the best life may ever get for any human? What if it never gets better than this? How poor of a job am I doing counting my many blessings today versus hoping something better will come tomorrow? Have I become an equine dentist obsessed with the teeth of all of my gift horses? How lucky am I, to be queer and in a stable relationship with someone I love for the better part of two decades, to be in decent health, to have gotten to celebrate a meal this week with new and old friends, from Cris and her partner to my dear friend Rax Ishida Will making the trip from hundreds and hundreds of miles away? How lucky am I? I am one of the richest people on earth, when we put it that way.

That you are reading this? A gift. That any of us know each other, that we can communicate and translate our experiences is so wonderful. I talk to people nearly every week from every continent on the planet. Is that not so special? When I was a kid, all I ever wanted to do was drive a car for no other reason than that — to me — was the height of adulthood. Even if it’s been several years since I’ve driven a car, that was always something I remembered any time I got behind a wheel: I’m doing it! I’m driving a car! I am the person my younger self always wanted to be. Life is hard but, like friends planting small statements of gratitude upon a shared picnic cake, you have to stop and smell those flowers because they won’t always grow. Like a hound nuzzling a bouquet of roses, there is such goodness all around us. It’s so easy to complain, it’s so easy to care less. Every day, every week, every month and year constructs a narrative. If we’re lucky, we’ll realize that sooner rather than later so we can savor today in the ways that we hope to savor tomorrow. “Many years from now, I’ll be without your father, and without you,” Ted Chiang writes in Story of Your Life. “I pay close attention, and note every detail…Am I working toward an extreme of joy, or of pain? Will I achieve a minimum, or a maximum? These questions are in my mind when your father asks me, ‘Do you want to make a baby?’ And I smile and answer, ‘Yes.’”

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“dinner with the family”
“the show must go on”
“icon”
“We’re kidding!”
“he/him lesbian”
“The thanksgiving table”
“Welcome back!”
“all reptilians”

My favorite Thanksgiving posts! And I loved this documentary on the Butterball hotline.

“craziest ads ever”
“stay convenienced”
“Want some cookies?”

Some other great food posts from the week. The last one, the Fashion Brand Company ad by Joe Cappa, has been on my mind all week. It should win an Emmy!

“MM flip it”
“she loves flipping”
“Mitch McConnell.”
“Flip it to the side”
“OMG”
“Nintendo”
“turn it around — ”
“Men loving men?”
“Explaining Madam Morrible”
“A hundred Madam”

The “Wicked Witch” meme is so dumb but, when I tell you I watch and read and like every piece of content about it, I really do mean it.

“Let him keep the money”

Son of the year! Mom, if you’re reading this, I would be happy to do this for you.

“press translate”

Yes, you must press translate — but maybe watch the video first because it’s so ridiculous on its own and the context makes it better. Reminds me of this dance video!

“do a vulgar roast”

Everyone dunking on Elon this week was good.

“saying your feet ai”

Surprise! Actor Sheryl Lee Ralph has long had only four toes.

“Recently downloaded Grindr”

Literally if someone told me this story, I really would think they were a genius.

“😴😴😴”

Best post about a drill you’ll see this week, maybe even this year.

And, finally, what it felt like trying to work during this holiday week that I had no days off from.

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TR.BIZ: 11.27.2025

TR.BIZ: 11.25.2025

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