Andrew @wizardlah

a decade later and still rings true

Alex Hirsch @_AlexHirsch

10 years ago

The inability of the left to distinguish between an imperfect ally and an enemy is the height of privilege and will be our downfall

184 13K 54K 0 5K

🧵 Matt Goodwin demanded to be fact-checked live on air when he claimed the UK spent "£100 million PER YEAR on family planning and condoms in Pakistan". He then 'corrected' himself to £74.3 million, saying it was based on a "major news story from October 2025" He was, of course, still wrong... 1/30

This person tweeted in response to the LBC clip that it "took him less than a minute" - to prove Goodwin correct. And I'm sure it did take Gemini less than a minute - but it got all the same things wrong as TPA and GF. Because, of course, it used GF as its source 🙄 28/

Schmitt: Do you believe that a 7 nation army couldn’t hold you back? Jack Smith : That is Jack White

"Quick. Where's the fire extinguisher?" "Disguised, behind that hot metal door over there."

:-)))) @chairaficionado

3 weeks ago

@Lstruere The Apple Store on 5th Ave is filled with incredible details. This perfect little door keeps the fire extinguisher hidden.

keyboard_arrow_left Previous keyboard_arrow_right Next

885 212 6K 8.9M 606

고양이들 자기만의 방식 있는거 완전 귀여움 이렇게 점프하는 고양이 ㅈㅉ 웃겨 소리까지 들어줘야해 ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ

keyboard_arrow_left Previous keyboard_arrow_right Next

I don't think I'm doing a good job communicating my view, so I will try to do better in this post. My view is shaped by over 15 years of writing about fashion (including the effects of fast fashion), reading @wdavidmarx's book "Status and Culture," and private conversations with technologist @quintendf. I will incorporate each of these influences as I make my argument. Let's put AI aside for now and talk about fashion, where I have better footing. We can start with a basic question: why were slim-fit pants considered good in the early 2000s, but bad today? The simple answer is because fashion moves through a lifecycle. In the early 2000s, wearing slim-fit pants signaled that you were on the edge of culture. Perhaps you bucked gender norms, read Details Magazine, and drew inspiration from youthful European fashions. After all, this was a time when designers like Hedi Slimane and Raf Simons sent ectomorphic models marching down the runway in skin-tight clothes. And nands like The Strokes and The Libertines gave the style cultural relevance. Over time, the meaning of that look changed as it spread through the market. In the early 2000s, skin-tight pants looked cool because they signaled gender rebellion and rock-and-roll. But as it got mainstreamed through Mad Men and J. Crew, it became increasingly normalized and sanitized. Today, it represents the opposite of what it did in the early 2000s — gender conformity, out of touch, corporate drone. Also whatever Andrew Tate represents. This is the basic dynamic that drives fashion forward: people with low cultural capital copy people with high cultural capital, and then people with high cultural capital move on to distinguish themselves. This dynamic has been observed and remarked upon for hundreds of years, including by Bernard Mandeville (1714), Georg Simmel (1902), and Pierre Bourdieu (1979). This is why we're seeing a swing back towards baggier pants. People who put a lot of effort into improving their cultural capital don't want to look like everyday office drones, political interns, or Andrew Tate. Although, many astute fashion writers have remarked on a backlash to the backlash. Prada recently sent models back on the runway in slim-fit pants, probably because every male fashion influencer on Instagram nowadays is wearing the same look (e.g., cropped top, big pants, 70s hairstyle). Now let's look at the fast fashion industry. Fast fashion isn't bad just because the clothing is low quality. It's bad because it speeds up the trend cycle. In the distant past (say, pre-20th century), styles used to last at least a generation, if not more, because production was slow and information moved slowly across geography. Over the 20th century, as fashion went from bespoke to ready-to-wear, the production cycle sped up. By the end of the century, a look would still last maybe a decade before it got old. Today, developments in information technology and supply chain management have made it possible for a company to rip a look off the runway and put it into their stores before the original designer even has a chance to monetize their creation. So the criticism of companies like Shein, Zara, and H&M isn't just that they make crappy clothes (which they do), but that the minute you buy something, you realize the trend is already over. The people you tried to copy have already moved on, so you have to copy the next thing. Plus, as this copying process accelerates, designs can get more jumbled and ugly. Oh, double riders and fleece are trending? Let's make fleece double riders. It doesn't matter if it looks like ass — the thing won't stick around in the market long anyway. In his book Status and Culture, @wdavidmarx talks about how people's pursuit of status moves culture forward. Much of the book draws from varoius fields, such as sociology, anthropology, media studies, and the like. But then the last part of the book deals with something curious: Why can various fashions define previous decades, but things have not changed much since the 1990s? Indeed, I would argue that the last big innovation in menswear happened in the 1980s/ 90s with Japanese designers like Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Mikaye. Menswear has been backwards looking every since — never forward. Every era in the past had a distinct fashion. The 1960s had Mods and the Peacock Revolution, the 1970s had hippies and bohemian dress, the 1980s had power suits and the return of prep. Yet, if you watch a 1990s episode of Friends ... we kind of still dress the same. Yes, the silhouettes have changed a little, but the styles are mostly identical. Marx suggests this is because status games mostly play out online, where cool things can become uncool in a matter of hours. As a result, nothing really takes hold, so we get fleeting fads instead of era-defining trends. Think of what happens with memes. Something starts funny, and then a corporation's social account uses it to seem relevant. Then the meme is decidedly uncool. I once had a conversation with @quintendf about this. He suggested that we might be approaching a period where creative people seek to do things off the internet. Maybe that means returning to zines and cassette tapes that are passed around through a dub of a dub. Or maybe it's sensory experiences you can only have in person. During our conversation, I said that for this to happen, we need affordable housing in densely populated areas so creative people can interact with each other offline. And not feel pressured to maximize their income by selling themselves online. Which brings us back to AI. That Yung Lean video originally went viral because people found it moving. I remember reposting it on Twitter, which led several people to question whether I was secretly paid behind the scenes to do so (I wasn't, as I don't do paid tweets). To me, their questioning only underscores how natural that viral moment was—the video moved lots of people, so they shared it on their socials. Now that it has been endlessly copied in such trite, meaningless ways, the visual effect feels ever hollower. It has become a meme. As one person put it, "I now cringe when I see it." If we look back on history, we can see distinct creative movements in art, music, furniture design, fashion, architecture, and more. Neoclassicism led to Romanticism; Art Deco eventually led to mid-century modernism; big-band swing music led to bebop. These movements all follow a familiar formula: a zeitgeist led to a backlash, which created yet another zeitgeist. How can we have a creative zeitgeist when nothing is allowed to take hold? When every visual language is so easily replicated through AI tools and turned into memes? When visual language speeds from cool to cliché and then gets used by people with low cultural capital? This is what I meant when I said that AI may contribute to our cultural stagnation. The issue isn't whether AI detracts from the original work. Indeed, it can elevate the original artist and bring them more attention. The question is whether this is good for people who care about creative integrity for its own sake — outside of notions of monetary rewards or fame. And whether this is good for culture.

Gorkem Yurtseven @gorkem

a month ago

@dieworkwear Why does this make the original work less valuable?

5 2 14 161K 2

For the record, all the original @TheSimpsons writers are still friends.

John Cleese @JohnCleese

a month ago

Eris Idle is complaining once again about the Pythons not being grateful for the royalties they received from Spamalot Bearing mind that Eric has made at least 16 million dollars from the show, while Michael,Terry, Graham and I made just over a million each for writing ALL the

736 389 10K 887K 368

The former British home secretary and buddhist daughter of a Kenyan descendant of Goan Catholics, and a Mauritian Hindu descendent of Tamil, born in Harrow, studied in New York, married to a Jewish South African who lived In Israel says multiculturalism has failed.

Suella Braverman @SuellaBraverman

8 months ago

Multiculturalism has utterly failed. Britain is sadly losing its grip of our cultural heritage, traditions, Christian values, sense of history and unity. Too many politicians have shied away from dealing with this crisis of confidence that many millions of British people feel.

1K 385 2K 2.1M 169

Most of my life I've been considered average looking at best, but highly intelligent/intellectual. I've just picked up enough of the language to discover that my Japanese wife and her friends think of me as basically a beautiful idiot, like Joey from Friends. I love it.

What is the charge? Having a lunch? A succulent oyster champagne lunch?

Times Radio @TimesRadio

2 months ago

Robert Jenrick says Nigel Farage’s “sole involvement” in the donation investigation was to “have lunch.” “You can't criticise a leader for saying thank you over lunch to someone … being polite is not a crime these days.” @rosiewright99

121 38 152 616K 42

Someone recently asked me how to deal with pet hair on clothes and I said I think pet hair adds to an outfit. Much like how authentic paint stains suggest you did something cool, pet hair and patched up stuff like this show you care about an animal, which is a virtue.

Michael Bradshaw @jmb0015

2 months ago

Someone on Reddit patched their couch after their cat tore up the corner. I really love it.

130 4K 57K 1.3M 4K

i need to say something and i don’t care if it gets me cancelled. i don’t like how mean they are to jerry in Parks and Rec

This amazing website, called "Worse on Purpose," is cataloguing all the ways companies are deliberately and secretively degrading their own products As usual, in most cases the culprit is private equity extracting enormous sums while everyone else is left worse off.

"you're absolutely right! I shouldn't have launched those nukes -- that's on me."

NewsWire @NewsWire_US

4 months ago

U.S., Russia and China Are Integrating AI into Nuclear Early Warning Systems

keyboard_arrow_left Previous keyboard_arrow_right Next

564 197 2K 9.4M 555

I could watch this wombat eat grass all day

A £300 tax on your UK summer holiday does sound like a lot... So let’s take a look at this tax, put it in a wider context, and find out where that £300 figure came from.👍🏻 1/26 🧵

Please retweet.

Katie Hopkins @KTHopkins

5 months ago

On behalf of their client, Zara Sultana, Bindmans Media and Information Law Practise Group requires that I publish the following statement on X, and that such statement must be clearly visible and pinned to my profile for a continuous period of no less than 24 hours: “On 30

4K 7K 14K 4.0M 910

On billionaires, please read this by Cory Doctorow, summarizing Thomas Piketty's 𝘊𝘢𝘱𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 21𝘴𝘵 𝘊𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘺.

keyboard_arrow_left Previous keyboard_arrow_right Next