ACTIVEWEAR ISN'T A PERSONALITY!!!!! 🚫👟😡

Popping by the AI fantasy factory for a moment before tracing the relationship between fancy athleisure and a lack of a personality.

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Trump Videos at Arlington Stir Fallout
US Army rebukes Trump campaign
Another entry in the bizarre Trump/Vance “Fuck you, military!” campaign strategy. Too bad many of their voters aren’t bright enough to understand this!!

Vance bashes teachers union
Naturally, the person in question doesn’t have kids. This is such a strange, heterosexual path to take but, hey, who is surprised?

Fact-checking Kamala’s first campaign interview
I didn’t watch the full interview but it was largely unremarkable. I guess that’s good?

A Field Guide to the Flags of the Far Right
Including the Christian flag seems like a bit of a stretch but I can also see how that’s been weaponized.

Africa’s Debt Crisis Has ‘Catastrophic Implications’
Keeping an eye on this, as Africa is poised to be a world leader this century.

Musk's X banned in Brazil
The spells I’ve been casting are working (although I took down poor Brazil stan accounts on accident 😔).

Y Combinator backs its first weapons firm
“From the incubator behind Airbnb and Stripe, introducing Bomb*It, a new app that helps you pull off your genocide with less.”

Typhoon Shanshan causes widespread disruption
This seems quite serious! Stay strong, palm tree!!

Australians Can Legally Ignore Work Calls
This is definitely an ongoing 2010s into 2020s trend, given that similar laws exist in Portugal and France.

Companies Are Scaling Back Sustainability Pledges
We don’t talk enough about how brands have been like “Eh, whatever.” about their climate goals lately, particularly as many of these companies are going to be the death of us all. This story is a bit flawed (as it’s sympathetic to businesses, versus planet) but it reflects this trend.

Ikea launches secondhand marketplace
Bookshop.org launches buy-back scheme
Are these going to solve over consumerism? No. But they’re admirable efforts!

In seconds, a grandmother creeps out of her living room and into the arms of her grandaughter. A dad hugs his daughter in her cap and gown, even if she stands a bit too distant, which forces her arms to grow massive, like a boat’s sail as they too hug. “This is so precious,” another person writes of another grandmother and grandaughter. “When you find an app that lets you hug your Nonie on your wedding day,” a caption reads as the images of a bridal granddaughter and grandmother turn toward each other, grinning like extras from Smile. Country songs like Zach Bryan’s “Pink Skies” (“If you could see em now / You’d be proud”) and Cole Swindell’s “You Should Be Here” (“You should be here, standing with your arm around me here”) play in the background.

If you spent time on certain heartwarming and cringe corners of TikTok this week, you know what these are: creations by the “Luma Dream Machine” app, which allowed deceased relatives, their younger selves, or any variation of “impossible” persons to “hug it out” with those they love. While most of the entries were cute and benign, some were — Um. — monstrous. Regardless of how sappy or unhinged these are, they continue the the AI fantasy factory trend we discussed in April: AI at this point in time is about semi-materializing your imagination instead of giving you actual solutions. It’s about bringing you along for a hallucination, a well documented “error” where the machine gives you “fake data that is statistically indistinguishable from actual factually correct data.” Like being told that Nazis were Black and bisexual, these “hugs” aren’t real but manipulate human emotion to get the same results: another click, another share. Like seeds waiting to be carried along to bloom in more favorable environments, AI makers and their dream machines have figured out how to carry themselves on the winds of consumer emotion.

This is sweet and good and capitalism popping off — but there’s also numerous instances where these dreams go wrong, becoming a day’s nuisance (at best) and a month’s long literal nightmare (at worst). Ask the European influencers whose likenesses are being used to power fake AI MAGA twitterbots. “Every day, my face and my body, my pictures, my identity is stolen,” an influencer says of the situation. In another corner, putting a gun in the maker’s mouth, was an ongoing mini-scandal involving teases of “the next generation of AI” that repeatedly goaded AI fanpersons to gaslight themselves into thinking the future had arrived. Then there’s the Grok AI image nightmare which will at some point create a political scandal that the platform is doing nothing to prevent. We won’t even get into Klarna’s AI hail mary. (And, for that matter, the incoming likely scam of the “Neo,” a “humanoid for the home” robot that has $100M in funding with Open AI backing and is trying to make robo-humanoid slavery cool and cringe.)

Again: all benign enough. Looping back to the hugs, these very Facebook 2015 media gestures capture the banal mania of AI. Sure, it’s cute to see a dead relative act out a fantasy to appease one’s mourning — but what happens when the video ends? Is this where the various AI tools that promise to make your dead loved ones speak pick them up? At what point is this not “Be Right Back” unhealthy behavior? Again: benign self-inflicted mental stab wounds — but what about the service workers who have to talk in circles as they realize that, no, Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice and Shadow don’t actually want to order a pizza? As has been said again and again, this is all slop — and slop is the new spam. The difference is this form of spam is of the “choose your own adventure” variety instead of a one-sided call or email you can ignore. The slop is increasingly demanding participation, proving to be more of a symbiote than we may have thought. Doesn’t seem painful until data centers melt down our climate.

None of this is new (a la, voice clone ransoms, bank transfer ruses, fraudulent biographies, trending nonsense) but it is increasingly normalized, unscrutinized, clapped at for more. Listen to Tom Hanks, Facebook people! What may emerge — and what feels increasingly “real” — is a fire-with-fire attitude in handling AI: like the AI luminaries scamming each other, there’s a world where resetting bots with poems and having a machine spell “strawberry” is the simple kill switch to end the mania. Poetic indeed, that silly human questions could undo our techno woes. Maybe all the machines (and their makers) really want are hugs?

A Church Has Become the Place to Be
Obsessed with this story of turning grand churches into cultural centers. Talk about a trend of these times!

Doctors Saved Her Life. She Didn't Want Them To.
Another deeply fascinating story, about what happens when “do not resuscitate” orders aren’t heard. What a complicated situation! It also stresses the harm of CPR for elderly patients. Never realized that!

John Cena Reveals Why He Doesn't Have Children
This seemed to go under the radar but I feel like is major! Considering he makes so much kid-friendly content! His thoughts are candid and relatable, as I too battle with what he calls being at “many times stubborn, and selfish.” I want to see John Cena fight JD Vance! (Also, in case you caught the dog whistle: yes, he is a Taurus.)

Young Adults Are in Crisis
This is interesting and, while a lot of this is generally being young, I do think this is something to take seriously. These are uniquely challenging times!

Gen Z Wants Less Sex in Movies, TV
Gen Z not beating the loser allegations.

Hot passport photos could mean airport problems
Anyway, maybe the Gen Z “in crisis” thing is self-inflicted? Because y’all. Use your brains!!!

What The Engineer From Prometheus Looks Like
“Highest honor a dad can give”
“interesting facts about Prometheus”
"Me explaining why Prometheus is good"
Since Prometheus came out, I have long evangelized about this superior (And my favorite!) film in the Alien franchise. Sue me! It’s just so rich and well made and, because of Romulus, the movie is finally getting it’s due. And the memes are all great!

"Poster for the 25th anniversary of ‘THE MATRIX’"
"Poster for the 10th anniversary of ‘WHIPLASH’"
Is it worse that Hollywood isn’t even making new movies, instead chronically playing reruns? This is just wild to me, that all of “the movies” is just the Disney Vault. (Related in ways: the Barbie Nokia phones.)

Harmony Korine: Hollywood Is Starting to ‘Crumble Creatively’
Look: he’s right but things like Baby Invasion and other ephemera from a fiftysomething wannabe shitposter are barely the new flesh. Go to bed, unc.

Stacy London, Clinton Kelly to Reunite for Series
My lesbian mother and gay father. I am seated.

Fugitive in US court as rape case goes ahead
"lmao the defense admitted his identity"
I am not a true crime person but I have passively consumed all the Nicolas Rossi media and laughed my ass off this week when he finally dropped one of the many false identities he clung to so publicly for years.

Doss | Boiler Room x Champion
Enjoy the final weeks of summer with Doss, whose recent London Boiler Room set is a return to form. Come for bumping booty auto-remixes, stay for playful rethinkings of 2000s electronic classics (Soulwax! Daft Punk! Madonna! Alan Braxe! Fred Falke!) not to mention a potential preview of new Sophie (around 6:20). Her best mix work since her inaugural “Sipping On A Soda” Fader mix.

"The Silly Little Mini Martini"
Need a silly little mini.

I had a realization this week in crafting a (paid) post about trends in the French city of Marseille: the activewear obsession seems to be coming to a head, or at least folds are forming around what happens when “cool” clothes suggest activity without actual action.

Let me briefly trace for you what I traced in the story: there is a fabulous store in Marseille called Jogging, which — while not an athletics or running apparel store — is dominated by clothing marked by sport (Arc’Teryx tech pants, Roa climbing shorts, Ranra windbreakers) which feels like a coincidence of store name and this style moment; this dovetails into a rise in cool bag brands with ties to sports like climbing inspired Topologie, sailing inspired Freitag, and hiking inspired Klattermusen; which runs in parallel to how “cool” shoes are becoming carcinized versions of Crocs as Ugg, Oakley, Slam Jam, Merrell, Hoka, and even Tabi now have “activewear” clogs; which all ends with a Millennial child style I call “Theo Von wearing this shit” which fits into the above given “the surfer hair and cycling glasses” kids’thetic.

While many shoppers of Jogging and the aforementioned brands are active and fit, I’m not sure playing padel, climbing, running, or any of the similar “cool” sports mean one should be wearing these items off the court and into a dining room. Not that these clothes should be worn for activity but, as my mother would reply to my begging for a Starter™ jacket, “you don’t need that…you don’t play football.” This is to say: the over-abundance and over-influence of activewear on fashion — from yoga pants to joggers to athleisure generally all the way up to these generally outdoor wear — is just drag. Yes, Naomi Osaka can bring fashion to sports — but bringing sports to fashion is increasingly meaningless. Yes, do the run clubs. Yes, hit the climbing gym. But, like a military officer or person working at a Target, one does not wear their uniform when they aren’t in the act — and all of fashion is worse for this. I am tired of cute shorts having unnecessary elastic and drawstring waistbands! I would be willing to bet that such a shift from classic, regular waistbands to elastic is less about “activity” and more about consumer comfort and general consumer laziness (a laziness reflected in the clothing-trend-to-clothing-waste pipeline).

This may seem like a petty fashion issue it’s a symptom of cultural vacuousness where activity is confused for culture. Take this very viral post of an “entrepreneur” sharing his routine: doing his best Patrick Bateman — who himself was cherry picking performances of maleness — the man wakes up, takes off his eye and lip mask, has coffee, journals by candle, kinda sorta meditates, lifts weights, ice bathes, swims, then opens a computer, all whilst alone in a spare, square-edged “modern” house (which, like the athletic clothing trend and Millennial gray, is another — very literal — expression of the cultural vacuousness with which we speak). The post has rightfully been skewered as it speaks to how too dedicated pursuits of “fitness” and “success” is not only vain but also painfully boring. There is no point of view to this style of beauty, to this type of fit body, despite our longing to have a body that itself is an aesthetic product: to be overly fit — and or in monastic pursuit of such a state — is to have an empty palace, a desexualized unreachable destination that’s always on the other side of the mirror. Cue the six pack surgeries!

As we talk about week after week, all this gets at drug use of a different form: work. This is all work! This isn’t to say “Replace athleisure with binge drinking!” but it is to say that most work — like most screens — is just a form of void starring. The void then means adulthood becomes school, where your classes are your job and you are in constant pursuit of extracurriculars so that your parents can be proud of you. The void is young people cutting out learning and experience with aesthetic gestures, while missing basic culture cues: developing talent and taste has become confused with seeking attention. I keep getting the feeling that people want to be billboards, that they’d rather stick an idea on themselves instead of — I don’t know! — developing their own ideas, as wishes get confused for dreams. It’s not that your aesthetic doesn’t match your job: it’s that you’re wearing clothes and or lifting a weight isn’t “doing the work” of transforming your life.

It’s all busy signaling. Cher said it best: all of us invent ourselves — some of us just have more imagination than others. That’s really what this is about: failures of imagination. I know we’re empty, we’re longing, that young people (All people!) are in crisis. But are we actually working on ourselves? Or do we just love to flash the tools of betterment at each other in the hopes of becoming a sales associate? I’d argue the latter.

"Costco Guys BTS"
“a David Fincher set”
“The Rizzler has a RYZ zyn shirt”
“hardest merch”
As the first two items show, we are seconds away from the Costco Guys being milkshake duck’d, as they now have a Twitch podcast and this really gross stage dad video emerged. But, as the second two items show, I need this Rizzler shirt. Rizzler still untouchable until he says the R-word, which he will. (Speaking of: R-word continues to trend. That’s bad!) Or maybe he’ll collab with Barron Trump? Idk.

"Scheduling this tweet"
“Interest Over Time”
“Walk Tuah”
"I literally thought this was Hawk Tuah"
"I have no Hawk"
"Hawk Tuah Girl"
I feel like I keep accidentally posting but this week saw a sort of fever pitch of “hawk tuah” being appropriated as an ironic shitpost, that it is so right-wing stupid that non-right wing people find it hilarious. It’s going to become the new Minion.

"one minute you’re 16 "
“another week at”
"Just spit my coffee all over the train"
"Coworker on their 3rd full week of PTO"
All these posts are about work and they seem to be saying something about how work today is just saying exactly at each other.

“People saw this”
“humans saw THIS”
“humans saw this”
This also relates to the incredible and dark, related-to-the-above-essay trend of nature views that have people wondering why we invented shit like Salesforce and Excel. It’s not that people don’t want to work: it’s that we’re all being robbed of the beauties of this planet as we’re tasked with destroying it. Unhinged!

@linkedin.lyrics
“Ben Rommens carried”
This reminds me: my fixation of the week are these songs made from LinkedIn names.

"who is responsible for that lipstick mark? "
The new Sabrina Carpenter album? Very good, very bawdy when it should have been mid. Very pleased to share! Anyway, this Tweet really makes you think.

"At Spirit Halloween"
Who else wants to celebrate skibidiween?

“Who do you play as in Mario Party?”
Couldn’t have said it better myself.

"HEY RUPWOLLLL"
Every few weeks, I watch this video of Pearl as Big Ang. It heals me more and more every time.

“What’s your stud name?”
This had me crying. There’s a part two too.

And, finally, a look inside the wiring of my brain and how I make cultural connections.

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