Coupling is declining around the world, as women’s expectations rise and lower-income men’s fortunes fall; this combination is subverting the traditional role of straight marriage, in which men are seen as necessary for the economic insurance of their family.
This correlates to an abundance of research we’ve been discoursing related to American social isolation, which oftentimes grows alongside romantic isolation, and in the end, this eventually becomes a conversation about a widening class fissure since so many of the extremities in value perception correlate to social and financial wealth.
If you know, you know. Minnesota’s legendary dive bar frozen pizza brand of choice › Racket has a piece on how Doug Flicker builds new installments for Heggies pizzas.
…the brand-new Italian Beef pizza that’s already hitting bars and grocery stores? Flicker says he perfected it over three months, toying with five or six different beef brands, several cheese blends, and a handful of giardiniera recipes. The standard-issue Heggies sauce got tweaked “a tiny bit, but not too much.”
Kottke has a rundown on the recently released 4K restoration of Seven Samurai. Funny he mentions getting a Blu-ray player and returning to physical media… I just bought a handful of favorites from Criterion a few weeks ago. Feels good to have a real backup in case, you know, the worst happens.
Bryan Hansel talking sea smoke off Lake Superior, including some new shots of that and pack ice. I was lucky enough to see this happening when driving north this past weekend, and it haunted the drive in a spectacular way.
As an idiotic champion of my favorite bag brands, I have to acknowledge the new 420D Spectron line from Tom Bihn, a modern take on their previously discontinued 400D Halcyon material. Spectacular.
As an “elder” millennial, Lindsey Adler’s piece is a refreshing reminder that the 2012-2017 era truly existed for us, but serves it through a lens akin to a eulogy on creative journalism:
The death of “websites” and outlets that value true creativity and diversity in coverage — largely at the whims of ghoulish executives and private equity vulturism — has created in me a stinging grief that I cannot seem to shake.
Derek Thompson’s interrogation into adult loneliness corresponds with a wavelength that connects to what’s going on politically, with capitalism/branding, and probably the future of the human race. It’s an astounding change in our species.
Rewatched Twin Peaks: The Return and can reaffirm, it still operates on its own masterful level of cinema.
It’s David Lynch’s magnum opus, and it will stand the test of time as one of the absolute best films/shows ever conceived.
A trend that’s been seemingly happening across culinary, beverage, and other cultural lines: a return to standards and simplicity. A hope I have for 2025 and beyond: fewer exuberant menu declarations, more refined classics. Welcome exceptions, obviously, but know your audience.
New Year’s Eve surf and turf, the only way to go (if you’re so inclined).
Buckling up for some relaxation and reading this holiday week. (Creation Lake / Julia) 📚
The implication is simple: Whether they know it or not, near everyone you know is craving a friend. The best visualization of this subconscious craving is the internet, which has been overrun by billions of people in search of other people.
Some used bags, sure. They probably called them satchels—a word my dad would say. But many still wandered the halls and the quads in ignorance. Like fish in water, they probably thought nothing of it, just as their forebears thought nothing of life without electricity.
Great to see the junk fees rule enacted (will officially go into effect in April 2025). Pricing transparency is an amazing quality of life change. And I’m curious to see how aggregator sites (e.g., for travel) will handle this in their templates and feeds.
My bet is that every browser, search engine, and app is going to get represented by some kind of conversational interface, some kind of generative interface. The UI that you experience is going to be automagically produced by an LLM in three or five years, and that is going to be the default. And they’ll be representing the brands, businesses, influencers, celebrities, academics, activists, and organizations, just as each one of those stakeholders in society ended up getting a podcast, getting a website, writing a blog, maybe building an app, or using the telephone back in the day.
While browsers are so ubiquitous that it may be hard to imagine life without them, the truth is that we humans have had to adapt to what has been a document-centric web experience. We have been forced to adapt to technological constraints, rather than technology truly adapting to human needs.
Cinema, theatre and great novel writing has always had the power to entrance, to get us to suspend our disbelief. But we knew where the border between fantasy and reality ran. Now with AI we are entering a world where those lines will be harder to discern – and many people just don’t care.
We once distinguished reality from fantasy and used this difference for high art: interpret authors’ perspectives to embrace emotion, challenge thought, and employ critical analysis. Perhaps I’m lamenting the loss of preference for older formats. Though long-form television remains popular, the proliferation of ultra-short-form video and the lack of authorship or authenticity are the new norm.
✱ Finding & Buying a Specific Glass Using Image Search
I was surprised at how quickly I was able to identify, and moments later, buy a specific glass that was used extensively in the film, The Taste of Things.
Figuring this was likely a glass design that has been around for a while in France (the film takes place in the the late 19th century), it should be fairly easy to find.
So:
My first instinct was to screenshot a frame from the film that featured the glass prominently, and I found this quite easily (conducted a search for the film and quickly sifted through stills until I found a suitable one)
I then tabbed to Google Images, and uploaded a cropped version of the still frame detailing the glass
After about 3-5 seconds of running an analysis on the image, Google presenting a grid of potential products that fairly accurately represented the glass
While I couldn’t find the exact one, I landed on what was surely a custom design based on a much earlier variant of La Rochère’s Perigord wine glass — the glassmaker has, after all, been around since 1475
This seems, without a doubt, the closest fit, and I landed on this within minutes of conducting my search. I know this commerce image search tech has been around for several years now, it’s still impressive, and until now, I’ve actually never had the need to use it. But it certainly won’t be the last. Amazon also has a similar image search tool called Amazon Lens, but it’s oddly only available in the Amazon app. Will be curious to see ChatGPT and Perplexity start incorporating this kind of thing into their chat interfaces (Perplexity launched its Shopping capability the other week, though I haven’t used it).
You love to see Best Made Co. come back to life this year. Limited run of items so far, but still exuding that long-term, hardcore philosophy.
✱ Bentleyville is Like Stepping Into a Holiday Movie
Last week was our third year straight year of a tradition in going up to Duluth for Thanksgiving, and equally, our third year visiting Bentleyville, the holiday lights extravaganza hosted right on a pier (Bayfront Festival Park) jutting towards Lake Superior off the downtown drag.
Admittedly, I’m not a huge holiday guy. Seasonal changes are great in the midwest, but the holidays’ commercialism can weigh heavily on the soul. Yet the lighting decor this time of year is pleasant escapism into winter, and I do enjoy it.
So... what better than to supercharge your senses with the Bentleyville experience. It’s free, has over 5 million lights, including tunnels and animated scenes, and offers plenty of free snacks along the trek — quite a remarkable event to kick in annually (21 years running).
We stayed at Pier B Resort this time, and if you are there (or park in the nearby lots), you can hop on this ATV-propelled winter ride, which cruises back and forth between Bentleyville entrance and fire pit all evening long. Also, free.
Once we got there, there was already underway a light, patchy snowflake fall in slow motion around the city, and it sparkled radiantly against the neon. When we approached one of the early outbuildings (the Cookie House), it was on full display, and when the attendant inside asked us kindly if we wanted a free hot chocolate and cookie, we couldn’t get it out of our minds that we had erroneously stepped into a holiday movie set.
There are several other pitstops along, including firing up s’mores atop firepits in the central hub, gift shops, etc. You know, plenty to do and see, at your own pace. But that Cookie House encounter hit just right. It's worth visiting!
Heading back to Pier B.
Part of me likes this book-reading weight, but it also seems fitting for hardcover books only — I would hesitate to use it against a paperback for fear of splitting the spine (ever since I was a kid, I try never to split a spine).
You have an entire article about the virality of splitting the “G” on an official Guinness pint glass, but not a single photo depicting the act.
On a separate note — Guinness has always been a really solid choice of beer.
