Reading · thinking out loud

Hi everyone! I hope you are staying safe with the endless array of ways to get sick now, from the produce to the horrible air in New York.

As someone who aspired to be a Glossier girl (effortlessly cool, very downtown) it’s been interesting to see the brand’s stumbles the past few years. There is no doubt they have a slew of sons out there—Merit and Rhode to name just a few.

I mean bringing back Coco Baudelle, what’s more OG Glossier than that.

I wonder if they’ll ever get their juice back…

Cara Delevingne is Playboy’s Summer 2026 cover star.
Is brainrot finally over?
MERIT x The Ritz-Carlton. Chic! Fun! Smart!
OpenAI is creating the next home assistant.
Calm expanded their House of the Dragon partnership with a new visualization exercise featuring Phia Saban.
Everyone has annoying takes on the Hailey Bieber x GAP collab. Honestly? She’s hot, the jeans look good, and I need them. Next!
NYC is trying to end subscription traps.
Enjoying the Vogue Business TikTok Trend Tracker.
My entrepreneur tarot reading kinda ate…

Big story here from a friend of the ‘letter, Amanda Mull—all about how the latest resentment against brands and retailers and generally capitalism is…’friendly fraud.'
I have a personal economic index called the $40 index. It’s how long it takes me to spend $40 on any basic necessities, from groceries to a trip to the pharmacy. And it’s indexing, hard.
More and more Americans are relying on their credit cards to cover groceries, because food costs are up 32% in the past five years. Is this the world we want to build?
Wishbone Kitchen is headed to Netflix. In light of the earnings call this week, this doesn’t surprise me.
If you cannot pump out the IP needed to beat the Disneys of the world, you can buy audiences, and behave as a patron, offering resources only you can to make a creator’s dreams come true.
I mean, there are only so many Druskis and Mr. Beasts out there. But going back to what I have said earlier, I hope the lesson from the success of Backrooms and Obsession isn’t that we should only platform ideas that already have social clout. It should be that we need to give more air cover to ideas that are different, especially before everyone else has decided they’re good. Spiel over, bye!
I was riveted by this story about a chatbot ‘joining’ a family.
U. Chicago is banning all electronics for 1Ls because of AI. First of many policies we’ll see like this, I think. I say bring it on, bring back thought!
This is cheating because I have not in fact read this yet, but I will get there.
The EU has found Meta in breach of their Digital Services act, for building many-a-metric juicing feature like the inifinite scroll, autoplay, and recommendation algorithms.
No but like why is his Instagram so bad…
Everyone’s favorite auction site to score a major deal on some vintage Yohji on…might actually be evil.
I went to a very competitive high school in the Bay Area so this is merely giving me nauseating flashbacks.
Honestly, I was impressed by how Jony Ive seemingly got off scot-free in this WILD Apple x OpenAI lawsuit this week. I mean, misnaming Asian employees, IT espionage…the case REALLY has it all. I cannot wait for the HBO or AppleTV limited series with a random ass casting like Jude Law as Jony Ive. Call me! I have ideas.
On a separate front, all I have to say about this is…is there really that much you could have done instead? And secondly, I don’t think tech people have ever been marketed to (with a ‘taste’ approach) which is why you see this hand-wringing over this and the Anthropic Monocle store.

Karine Hsu@karine_hsu
whoa new OpenAi merch store dropped with an actual lifestyle photoshoot
5:18 PM · Jul 15, 2026 · 2.22M Views
271 Replies · 14 Reposts · 669 Likes
The latest of big famous last-named people in the press, Reed Jobs wants to talk about curing cancer, not his last name.

Glossier Goes Back to New York

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