01.17 | it snowed in new york

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions — the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling.
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge

✉️ letter #51

When I first came to New York in the middle of a snowstorm during February of 2022, I had no idea that it would be the only snow I'd experience for the next two years. That drought finally ended this week!

After a record 701 days, Central Park received a cover of over an inch of snow, which in weather parlance means that we can officially call it a snow day. I was in Brooklyn when the first flakes fell, and thus got a bit more bluster than Manhattan. And god, how excited I was for it, and how wondrous I found it.

We're now headed into a whole week of negative temperatures (Celsius) and I'm sure that joy will wear off as I slip and slide on all the ice our sidewalks will accumulate. Yet... isn't that kind of the beauty of it as well? A momentary burst of gorgeousness followed by the giant pain-in-the-assedness of the next week or so just makes reminders of that gorgeousness even more precious.

No real deep thoughts here. I just love it when weather matches the season, and there's nothing more magical than watching cold fluff fall from the sky. I will miss it very much as the climate changes.

Central Park in January 2024

🎼 the soundtrack | Hush - The Marías

Nothing to say, just a jam.

🌱 the green light | an eco-focused newsreel

A new study has found that the North Greenland ice shelves have lost 35% of their volume in the last half-century because of rising temperatures — with "dramatic consequences" for glaciers, and the planet. [CBS]
A 12-week study is currently underway to see if biodegradable plastics are actually doing anything to help stop all the damage plastics in general are doing to marine coastal ecosystems. [Envirotec]
Youtube is evolving - instead of climate deniers dominating the platform, there has been a sharp rise in talking heads arguing that clean energy and climate policies don't work. So even if science has finally "won this debate on anthropogenic climate change," there's a new battle to be fought. [Grist]
Could this possibly be the work of a PR company? The world's largest public relations firm is apparently using insights from its global survey of consumer trust to "help fossil fuel and petrostate clients promote climate obstruction." [Jacobin]

🪢assorted | food for thought from around the internet

This whole read from Kyle Chayka at The Guardian is something I've just been calling the "WeWork aesthetic" since coming back to America and spending very very many hours at WeWorks:

When my AirSpace essay was published in 2016, readers started emailing me examples of cafes that were “AirSpacey” and marvelled at how ubiquitous the style was. Though it was particularly identifiable in cafes, the same sensibility could be found in co-working spaces, startup offices, hotels and restaurants – all spaces where time was temporarily spent and cultural taste was flaunted, where physical space was turned into a product.

As years passed, however, I came to realise that AirSpace was less of a specific style than a condition that we existed in, something beyond a single aesthetic trend...

The elements of style turned out to be less important than the fundamental homogeneity, which became more and more entrenched. The signs changed, evolving one step at a time over the years, but the sameness stayed the same. It was this sameness that was off-putting, rather than this or that element of the style itself.

Chayka insists that this is only going to "intensify," though I don't know how much more intense the homogeneity can get. In fact, this is basically the same if much less academic take on this trend-that-has-turned-into-the-norm by hipster bloghead Carles in 2016. That one has been living rent free in my brain ever since I read it back then because it still is completely totally 100% true. Back then, he called it "Contemporary Conformism."

The Contemporary Conformist believes that they are ‘progressive’, while they are actually only ‘of the times’ [via contemporary]. Our times are currently a retro-vintage-urban-modern-artisanal lusting time. The Contemporary Conformist uses his/her consumer identity to rationalize post-youth-culture existence, transitioning to quirky take a ‘well-adjusted, healthy, and decently earning’ couple...

The contemporary conformist ‘pays’ to look like they are not trying. Their look attempts to cloak dependence on technology, low-paid service industries, and sweatshoppes to make things affordable 4 every1.

Oof. That was already too real back then, and the fact that it's only gotten realer in the ensuing eight years is... well, basically enough food for thought from me at this moment.

✨enjoying: one final piece of pop culture fun

Nothing new has come by me in the past week that I've felt like I can recommend. So in the vein of rehashing hipster things from yesteryear, I want to point you to something I watched a long time ago that still feels nauseatingly relatable nearly 20 years on: Nathan Barley.

If you never heard of it, it's a satirical comedy set in a fictional version of Shoreditch following the adventures of a "digital art terrorist (self-designated)" called Nathan Barley and a writer who wrote an op-ed condemning the scene he's in that just ended up getting co-opted by the scene.

Some wonderful person has remastered it and put all of it on Youtube and it is so worth re-watching, re-cringing and resigning yourself to the fact that our modern world seems hellbent on making all our worst versions of ourselves real. Everything old is... never leaving.

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