{D} the internet dressed me
Vol. 6, Issue 188 // pics + links // maybe try clicking the pics too
Hey there from the high valley of Mexico City,
We get a lot of people dressing stupidly in Mexico City.
Coastal Americans mostly.
Deliberately oversized, thrifted-looking, ironic-normcore swag. Slouchy silhouettes, "ugly-cool" accessories, tourist slash dad-wear threads. People you’d see in an Oren John tiktok.
My friend cass marketos calls this the I’m-a-creative-director uniform. Down here, where they’re visiting, I guess it’s more like CD Vacation Wear. I always see them walking through Rio de Janeiro plaza, then taking selfies in front of the same Porfirian mansions.
You know those workout circuits in public parks? Pull-up bars, then a sit-up bench, then parallel dip bars? I’ve been wanting to make one of those, but each stop on the circuit tells you how to pose for a different type of selfie.
I’d call it The Internet Dressed Me.
cussedly,
-s.
Last week’s most-clicked links:
People Doo Doo [Home (Joe Burns, Substack)]
PRESENTATION: The State of Video Gaming in 2026 [MatthewBall.co]
Do you recognize any of these “games” being played inside your org? [Bud Caddell]
Strategy + creativity
The New Brand Folklore
“Today, a brand is far less what it says about itself, and far more about what a wide ecosystem of third parties, both human and non-human, can find, trust, rank, recommend, and sell.” [BRXND]The Culture Recession with Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick
“It’s like every person has to be a creator slash actor, whatever, just to get a normal job. And so that means everything is overwhelming.” // I really enjoy Kyle’s work. But from inside the marketing world, I think we often forget that professionals are only about 1% of the U.S. workforce, and full-time creators another 1%. I think it’s that 2% of the working pop that feels the effects of what we’re responsible for creating, at ever-increasing pace, more (or at least differently) than the rest of bones-and-butts humanity writ large. // [Curious Attitude Podcast]How to remember everything you read (stop trying)
“Step 1) Become obsessed with a meaningful goal.” [Dan Koe] via read.readwise.io ↗How to stop procrastinating
“Picture the benefits of achieving a goal; contrast that image with the main obstacle; and devise a tactic to overcome it.” [The Economist]How to Write? Longhand on paper? Typewriter? Word Processor? Scrivener or Obsidian?
“Each tool creates a separate set of constraints on your creativity.” [Karl Schroeder]How to write an artist statement that doesn’t suck
“The point is not to sound smarter. The point is to say what you mean clearly enough that the work can arrive with its force intact.” // Please take this advice, artists and institutions everywhere. Also: bands who write their own bios. // [The Creative Independent]
Work + career
Curiosity + research
Don’t Quant the Qual
“The reason we have qual and quant separate is because qual is bad at counting things.” [Jesse Livinstone] via thatbusinessofmeaning.substack.com ↗
Decks + other artifacts
The Realities of AI Deck Creation
Automating cognitive grunt work without losing strategic rigor. Compiled (by AI, lol) from strategist conversations in the Salmon Labs WhatsApp group [Rob Salmon]LLM Counter-Defaults
Cool little doohickey that writes the custom LLM instructions to override your bot’s conversational style. [AIxDESIGN] via webcurios.co.uk ↗Social Connectedness Index
Shows how strongly any place is connected by Facebook friendships to everywhere else [social-connectedness.org]
LLMinality
Being a Luddite Is Fun Again
“Google knows next to nothing / My mom knows everything! the gnomes chant ...” [404 Media]i-have-adhd
“A skill to stop your coding agent from burying the answer. Action first. Steps numbered. No “Hope this helps!” [GitHub]Mediocrity at Scale
“She put in the kind of work no automation could produce.” [Justin Welsh] via salmonlabs.co ↗What will more intelligence actually do for us?
“We could simply be thinking about the benefits of intelligence wrong — arrogantly privileging the kind of mental tasks we humans happen to do especially well, while ignoring the value of the tasks we do poorly.” [Noahpinion] via marginalrevolution.com ↗
Culture + handwringing I guess
How Refillables Filled Up Our Feeds
“Perhaps the only way to get the kind of reach [celebrities] used to get appearing on a few late night talk shows” // Oh hey, I play poker with Gavin! // [Tim Shey]
Too much of our technology is phony
“The only way to achieve unending comfort is to wall ourselves in, close up the doors, lock them inside and out.” [A Working Library] via Nothing Here ↗Terminal Surrender
“Every social media user is a day trader looking for God in the Like economy.” // A great piece about the illusion of being in control. Everything online is kayfabe, until everything offline becomes that, too. // [ABS Digital Art] via Perfect Sentences ↗You Have to Believe in the Gods
“This Christopher Nolan guy—what does he actually like? What does he want to point his camera at? Most film directors are deeply horny and fucked up people, which is why they keep catching allegations. There is an erotics of the image. Not for this guy. His camera is never impolite enough to linger over anyone’s arse.” [Sam Kriss]We’re Being Forced Back Into Our Bodies
“The body ... is the last real thing we can trust.” [Concept Bureau] via salmonlabs.co ↗The Reasons We’re All Talking Less
“Conversation requires, at the very least, the presence of another person.” [The Atlantic] via sic.substack.com ↗
Love or the absence of it
Dating Apps Left Me Wondering: Do Men Not Want to Have Sex?
“Third base is the in-person meetup, which is the least frequent outcome on dating apps.” [The Walrus] via sic.substack.com ↗
Reading
The Trend Forecaster’s Handbook
Delightful is a 100% organic, free-range, desktop-to-inbox newsletter with links and things, usually. 1x weekly posts (free), occasional tools and research posts (paid). Your host is Steve Bryant, friendly neighborhood insights and content strategist. Let’s work together or go on a hike or something. steve@thisisdelightful.com
{ 🔒 archive }
Creativity, illustration, language, stuff like that
What did you learn about yourself today?
Notes on picking up drawing 30 years later26 things I’ve learned while learning a language
Notes from someone who’s working at itHow to write
Notes on moving and watching and paying attentionCuriosity and Research 101
Notes on how to find out about thingsA map of what you meant to say
Notes on the 3D space of languageThe A.I. isn’t a moron. She’s your wife.
Notes on making ads with AI
Brand strategy, content strategy, etc
Observational and Culture Study Cheat Sheet
A template and tools for researching people and communitiesMy content strategy toolkit
14 tools for organizing, measuring, and creating contentMy concept diagram template
A Figjam for diagramming the complex relationships between conceptsProduct Content Strategy 101
For anybody who’s creating a product that requires editorial contentThe Bento Box Method for developing topical content
A cute and useful way to structure your content topics
Thanks for reading. Be seeing you.
What’s meaningful is intimate and unpredictable; it eludes easy classification. If we let institutional metrics set our values and drive our lives, we end up chasing what’s easy to count, and not what’s really important.
—C. Thi Nguyen, The Score
heheh