Every Friday
is it holiday season yet
You can almost… feel the world slowing down in the air. There is less hubbub going on. Less screaming and shouting coming from the feeds. An overall, “chill everyone, it’s holiday season” vibe in the zeitgeist.
Or maybe it’s because I (Jack) haven’t checked X in a week and a half and I vowed to try to stay off Youtube for the next seven days (which made me realize I have a potentially worrying attachment to it). It’s probably that. Again, we arrive back at the fact that it probably, really, is the damn phone.
Don’t fret, there will be no screaming and shouting in the following post.
Cheers, and we welcome you into the beginning (are we early?) of the holiday season.
The means by which we achieve victory are as important as the victory itself.
– Brandon Sanderson
There can be no progress without head-on confrontation.
– Christopher Hitchens
Top of Mind
The Vulgar Image, (Spike Art Magazine)
There is too much beauty in the world. There is too much beauty and there are more beautiful people than there have ever been, and they are generally beautiful in the same way.
This was one of the most compelling things I’ve read all month (ignore the pretentious subtitle if you click on the link) — it put words to something I’ve had a vague sense of for a while but could never quite pin down. The author (Dean Kissick) builds on the idea that because everything is beautiful, we’ve grown bored with beauty itself. We’ve overdosed on aesthetic perfection, and in response, leaned hard into the grotesque. His focus is primarily visual (literal beauty and literal vulgarity on social media) but the argument hits on something broader to me.
Over the past decade, everyone with an iPhone has slowly developed the same taste. We all learned how to spot a “good” image — even if we didn’t have the vocabulary to explain exactly why. But we’ve been fed too much of a good thing. We’re drowning in frictionless beauty.
In response, we all reached for something else: shock, abjection, anything with enough edge to break through the monotony. And for a while, the grotesque delivered. But even that feels tired now. We’ve seen every strange, violent, unsettling thing our feeds can throw at us. Nothing surprises us, and nothing really sticks.
I read somewhere that after people got desensitized to beauty, social platforms figured out that the only thing more addictive than sex was rage (that’s a rabbit hole for another day), but it feels relevant here. We’re bored of beauty. We’re bored of the grotesque. And now we’re running on rage content. What happens when we’re bored of that too?
30 Days, 9 Cities, 1 Question: Where Did American Prosperity Go?, (Kyla Scanlon)
“When people can’t move, neither can labor, families, or fertility. There’s a new study showing that housing costs account for about half the US fertility decline between 2000 and 2020. It’s childcare too - a new paper from Abigail Dow reports that a 10% increase in the price of childcare leads to a 5.7% decrease in the birth rate.”
The Relay gang are big kyla scanlon fans, we’ve featured her work in the newsletter several times, but this may be one of our favorite pieces we’ve read on Substack to date. Boots on the ground, talking to real people from a wide range of places, teasing out the themes that people are feeling everywhere. An article so, so well written on many of the biggest woes facing America today.
ICYMI: Happy Hour Edition
For you bookworms out there, talk about a #lifehack. I (Jack) discovered this site on some weird NYT promotion I would normally never click on and have found several books that were on my list for next to nothing.
While great artworks can be produced in isolation, art movements—which organize disparate works into coherent scenes and sensibilities—are what contribute to a feeling of progress. If we assume that innovation can be measured by new artistic movements, and those movements are facilitated by a critical culture, then a weakened critical ecosystem will lead to the “blank space” that W. David Marx describes, where art and culture feel stagnant.
This ancient caution against looking back aligns with what modern psychology now recognizes: excessive rumination can increase stress and anxiety, trapping individuals in cycles of regret that inhibit progress.
“Our rights are not given to us by intellectual superiority, they’re not given to us by consensuses built in Germany or the United Kingdom, they are not dedicated to world peace (although that would be nice)… they are given to us by our right that we were born here as Americans and those rights are indelible.”
Best of Substack this Week
Malbon (Malbon is cool)
– Luke ManganAre we living in a stupidogenic society?
– Daisy ChristodoulouThe Winter Running Gear Guide by a Guy From Buffalo (as another treadmill hater this one is spot on)
This Week in Relay’s Shopping Cart
Women’s American Flag Crewneck (Cream), (Zach)
Cherry is one of the premier LA brands I’ve followed for some time but not had access to. Luckily they’re in the process of opening a flagship in NYC and have a spun a popup store to capitalize on the holidays. It’s not my style, however I was able to purchase this sweater as a gift for my lovely girlfriend.
Wythe Coats & Jackets, (Zach)
The next brand up is Wythe, a company famous for beautifully tailored well constructed western-wear. I’ll admit upfront that I’ve not purchased one of these and an overcoat from Wythe is more aspirational than anything. However expect to see me in their Lower East Side store checking out the Raglan Wool Overcoat - Malted Barley Slub Donegal or the Raglan Wool Overcoat - Black/Cream Herringbone Tweed this weekend.
Mountain Hardwear Ghost Whisperer, (Jack)
Admittedly, I already have this item from back when I spent many more days of the year sleeping in a tent than I do now. However, lately it’s been repurposed in my rotation as my go to travel puffy. Packing in the late fall for trips is weird. It could be 30 degrees or it could be 70. This thing packs down to nothing. Put it at the bottom of your bag and if you get hit with a cold snap somewhere, it’s right there.
It’s Not That Deep, Randy
The king has returned. 🤝🏻
Thanks for reading—or for mega scrolling all the way down here.
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Wythe heads rise