Some things I saw recently that I think are cool: — The perfect fall outfit at Wooden Sleepers in Tuckahoe, NY — Wynona Studio Marcel overcoat (raglan sleeve is good for layering) — Sofie D'Hoore triangle knit scarf at Rendez-Vous Store in Paris — Popeye Guide to Tokyo, now translated in English

Japanese men's fashion and culture magazine POPEYE began publishing in 1976, and now 49 years later, I helped the editors put together the first-ever all-English issue. This Tokyo guide is pure POPEYE: extremely deep recommendations and arguably the highest info-density of any magazine on the planet

Always honored to hear from Substack that someone has subscribed to me on Substack. (I don't have a Substack.)

We've reached the "my mom keeps sending me Reels" stage of Instagram mass adoption

I apologize to the editors of Jacobin for having an extremely inconvenient last name to be mentioned in their publication. This is why Richard went into mid-tempo AOR ballads. jacobin.com/2025/09/mens... Thank you @dieworkwear.bsky.social

Thank you NPR for shouting out my new book BLANK SPACE: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE 21st CENTURY www.nhpr.org/2025-09-18/1... ("W. David Marx's 2015 book Ametora enchanted menswear dorks all over the world" --> I believe the appropriate term is "menswear nerds")

This is Big. Two of my favorite lifestyle magazines in Japan got an English translation. H/T to @wdavidmarx.bsky.social for his work on Popeye’s issue.

One in four Japanese people is said to own a Uniqlo puffer jacket. “People think of Uniqlo like Toyota or Sony,” Kaoru Imajo, the director of the Japan Fashion Week Organization, said. “Yes, they make clothes, but it’s bigger than that.”

Some thoughts on yesterday www.garbageday.email/p/the-logica...

BLANK SPACE Release Events SAVE THE DATE NYC: Nov 18 (Tue) at Greenlight Boston: Nov 19 (Wed) at Harvard Book Store More details soon

Happy Pub Day to @jasondiamond.bsky.social !

I just had a meeting about graphic design and got this trenchant summary from Google: W. David Marx highlighted an "underestimated genius" from Minnesota, a young lyricist described as artistic, drawing comparisons to NBA Young Boy and Kodak. He noted that despite some perceptions...

i recognize that this is not actually how anything works in the real world but more than anything i'm shocked at the total lack of *embarrassment* from the people who own, run, and even work at these platforms. setting aside the "politics"—these platforms are just awash in depressing low-rent slop

Any experts on mid 20th century French Marxist philosophy out there? Could you help me try to understand which bookshelf I left my copy of Althusser's "For Marx" on?

More and more people are saying...

Addison Rae's facsimile of teen pop is as effortful as her early TikTok dances—which is to say just enough to give a whiff of an essence of trying, her slouchy pose obscuring that there’s not a ton of there there

This is excellent piece from @jaimebrooks.bsky.social on rockism vs. poptimism from a deeper historical angle: jaimebrooks.substack.com/p/the-story-...

The Nineties were incredible. We had a DJ Dmitry *and* a DJ Dimitri from Paris

🎵 You don't need a hygrometerologist to know which way the humidity goes 🎵

Poptimism

I hope this isn't my essay 🤞

In Japanese the book is called 仕事！

My new book Blank Space is among the Washington Post's 62 most anticipated fall books www.washingtonpost.com/books/2025/0...

On the Tasteland podcast, I speculated that Republicans would build a postmortem Trump AI-bot in the future to consult like an oracle and use for hyper-real endorsements. But his handlers could use AI *right now* to provide real-seeming audio soundbites, videos, and photos. What would stop them?

The young woman next to me at Kokuhō broke into tears during 2/3 of the scenes

Tokyo: only six more weeks of summer

always read max: maxread.substack.com/p/is-the-ai-...

Great little video with Adrian talking about being a working illustrator in Japan. www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPLL...

The perils of Shibuya 2025 by @craigmod.com craigmod.com/ridgeline/213/

I considered writing a long carefully constructed argument laying out the harms and limitations of AI, but instead I wrote about being a hater. Only humans can be haters.

"The Moneygoround" is the best and only song about royalty rates

In my newsletter, many thoughts on three recent New Yorker articles about culture: the "Labubu we," the function of criticism in the cultural ecosystem, and optimism about the inevitable flight from AI culture into a new taste world culture.ghost.io/the-new-york...

Passive verb construction working overtime here, so here's an edit www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

"Unsurprisingly, the 'allow unmoderated sociopaths to do what they want on camera provided they also sometimes gamble' strategy has proven to be extremely popular among young men around the world." maxread.substack.com/p/who-killed...

Yakitori Ramone for @jasondiamond.bsky.social 's next nonfiction book:

This book is incredible takemura-design.com/works/match/

I provided many a quote for this article on Preppy style: www.esquire.com/style/mens-f...

A great article in the Nikkei about Kazuo Hozumi's influence on Japanese menswear illustration www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZ...

First a tiny sip of apple cider containing sulfites triggered in Peterson “an overwhelming sense of impending doom" and now this time, a tiny bit of mold. It's a brutal world.

"It is the sinking feeling of a societal race toward a future that feels bloodless, hastily conceived, and shruggingly accepted. _Are we really doing this? Who thought this was a good idea?_"

Musing on Labubu as a defining moment of 2020s cultural production and cultural flow in my newsletter culture.ghost.io/only-fads-a-...

The Birdies

This is excellent. The only thing I'd add is that internet media helps these fads become broadly "consumed" as *narratives* beyond the purchase of the product itself. I feel like I'm nudged to be invested in the "Labubu is a fad" meta-narrative without owning one and without the desire to own one

Vertical video explainers holding the lapel mic is a clear example of a convention

Perhaps the most enigmatic usage of English in all of Japan?

When the Clock Broke by @lioneltrolling.bsky.social deserves all its immense praise: a great read that does the critical archeology of tracing Trumpism back to its incarnation on the fringes. Ganz finds so many incredible older quotes perfectly foreshadowing MAGA us.macmillan.com/books/978037...

"Poptimism" has become almost impossible to discuss in a calm objective way, because well-intended pop-minded critics consider the label to be an epithet and often wholesale dismiss any critique as know-nothing outsiders pining for the bad-ole'-biased days.

I love this miniseries (I think I've watched it three times) and would absolutely listen to all of this podcast, but I still feel like there was a sin in using Édgar Ramírez to portray Carlos, because the casting (+Wire soundtrack) made an absolutely homicidal loser seem incredibly cool

Underrated big shift in the influencer era in terms of who has cultural capital: away from performers, writers, artists, musicians etc and to people who are really good at running a small business and doing SEO/social media. Pretty polar opposite political valences in those skillsets.