ZD 24.19: Brat Vibes
Computers are crashing and politics are crazy but there is a look for that.
In the Issue: Brat culture is back, CrowdStrike was a warning, News Hustlers, the American Millennium, how vibes are shifting and a note on polls before conventions.
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The Distilled Spirit
👶 Brat Summer (Zoe Williams / The Guardian)
This is the summer of the Brat — a new lifestyle and subculture that is frankly a bit hard to define. It is a self-defining category of girl that is brash and real. There is a DIY vibe. There are looks featuring neon green. Zoe Williams does a good job making sense of it. For some more specific advice, see Rolling Stone. On the older side of fashion — Sun Valley is also going a bit retro. What a time to be alive.
💔 CrowdStrike Was a Warning (The Garden of Forking Paths)
Economies of scale and the nature of software have pushed us towards a world where we have a few precious points of failure. CrowdStrike, by extension Microsoft, and most folks working in IT had a very bad, not so good, horrible day on Friday. A deployment error triggered a cascading failure that ground roughly 1% of deployed Windows systems worldwide to a halt. These 8.5 million machines brought much of the American economy was brought to a standstill as systems crashed left and right. This disruption was caused by an honest mistake, but what if a bad actor uses this inherent flaw to inflict major damage?
📰 The News Hustlers (Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends)
We are catching a wave of much different news. It is fast and unvetted. Behind it are a wave of streamers, influencers and hustlers developing their own media engaged in a game of getting things out as fast and virally as possible. In many ways these hustlers feel more genuine to consumers thus making it harder to stop misinformation from spreading. Be careful out there, don’t trust anything and always verify before sharing. You too can prevent misinformation waves.
🦅 The American Millennium (Not Boring by Packy McCormick)
We are living through strange times. On many levels it seems like the country is collapsing around our ears. The noise of the news hustlers is overwhelming. But America has one huge advantage over the world that keeps on compounding: you can just build things. American Entrepreneurship powers an engine that is increasing GDP as our trust in government wanes. It hoovers up AI talent. America is strong enough to save America.
The Idea
📳 Why the New Vibe (Tyler Cowen)
Vibes have shifted in America as of late. Brats and news hustlers are symptoms of a much different America emerging post pandemic. Woke is out, hustle is in. Tyler Cowen lists 19 theses on why this came to be. It is not a particularly easy list to digest for those on the left, but it is worth understanding nonetheless.
The Look
Before panic sets in — listen to Peter Zeihan, he is wise.
Breathe! And maybe take a walk in the woods.
Thanks for sharing my piece on news hustlers!!