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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 12m

Oh I quite agree - if I look at my own failure modes and those of most people around me, it's far more likely to be inaction, procrastination, feigned helplessness and so on rather than actively fucking up. In this context, "Just bloody do something" is generally good advice.

Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 1h

But to give the last word to @jjvincent.bsky.social:

‘Everywhere the world is ceding control to automatic systems,’ hence why ‘so many people are keen to [say] that “you can just do things.”

It’s a reaction to a world in which, instead, things are just done to us.’

thebaffler.com/latest/high-...

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 1h

MacKenzie Scott (reputedly): “I’d rather have a kid with nine fingers than a resourceless one.”

nymag.com/intelligence...

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 1h

Anyway - @jjvincent.bsky.social’s piece partners well this from Benjamin Wells on how Silicon Valley parents are seeking to raise the ‘high agency individual’ with a chance of surviving the future.

Again, both not stupid and also pretty wild.

nymag.com/intelligence...

The Techno Optimist’s Guide to Futureproofing Your Child

AI doomers and bloomers are girding themselves for what’s coming — starting with their kids.

nymag.com

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 1h

Bluesky culture feels kind of the same, tbh.

The internet culture and futures people didn't seem to come across (they just went IG-first, or stayed on Twitter).

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 1h

Are you lot online enough to know what EAs and 9-9-6 mean without me spelling them out, btw?

As @samcircle.bsky.social wrote last week, the 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘠𝘰𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘳
‘can really frustrate with its insistence that its supposed “general audience” has obviously heard of Ligeti but needs an explanation of Linux.’

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 2h

As a principle, ‘You can just do things’ is both ‘broadly true, admirable, and helpful’ - and neoliberal, anti-social bullshit.

@jjvincent.bsky.social good on a phrase that's particularly buzzy in 9-9-6 grind Silicon Valley and EA communities.

thebaffler.com/latest/high-...

High-Agency Individuals | James Vincent

The exhortation to “just do things” is in part a response to the specter of automation.

thebaffler.com

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 22h

Notes from my my phone from the one I went to:

class is legible through material possessions? wow

it wouldn't be cashmere, it'd be wool

"If any of you are bohemian bourgeois, which I assume all of you are", says the man in chinos

oh the rich are careless, you say?

I like her skirt though

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 22h

‘The writing had sucked, I thought, and yet this terrible muddy prose was being elevated into a spectacle for dishonest reasons - mostly so rich young people could get together and play-act as literati.’

www.reddit.com/r/RSbookclub...

From the RSbookclub community on Reddit: TRIP REPORT - I went to a Soho Reading Series event, the self-described literary 'scene' of London

Explore this post and more from the RSbookclub community

www.reddit.com

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 1d

‘If you spend that much time thinking about the worst, most transgressive thing you could do in any given moment, that feeling eventually hardens into desire.’

Max Pearl on Samanta Schweblin's ‘Good and Evil and Other Stories’

substack.com/inbox/post/1...

A danger to myself and others

In Samanta Schweblin's Good and Evil and Other Stories, the horror comes from realizing maybe you're the monster.

substack.com

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 3d

An essay in praise, ultimately, of black eyeliner worn as lipliner and ‘the crappy hill in Talma, Finland that churned out hundreds of legendary snowboarders in the 90s because they could do dozens of laps in the same time you could ride a normal mountain once’ — that is, of limits.

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 3d

Is everything about culture ‘actually just downstream from cheap rent (and its disappearance)’, and is it ‘even possible to have a meaningful conversation about cultural criticism that’s not just about that?’

Emily Segal went back to Berlin and it had changed:

open.substack.com/pub/nemesisg...

EMILY IN BERLIN

A zeitgeist update

open.substack.com

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 4d

‘We produce more than ever before … but the things exist mostly in order to be captured in images again.’

www.ft.com/content/e637...

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 4d

‘All the algae and fungi, the recycled water bottles and seaborne-plastics have made not a blind bit of difference to the planetary crisis, and design as a profession and an industry knows it.’

@edwinheathcote.bsky.social on design’s existential crisis:

www.ft.com/content/e637...

Why designers abandoned their dreams of changing the world

Design was once seen as a tool to improve lives — but as modernism has become marketing, that sense of social purpose has drifted away

www.ft.com

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Reposted by Jay Owens

Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 5d

The list of books included in the Anthropic copyright settlement is now up.

If you published a book before July 2021 and it ended up on Libgen file sharing, there's a good chance you'll be eligible to claim c.$3K before fees

Search for yours and file a claim:

www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

ANT Homepage | ANT

www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 5d

Participants in China’s intense fan culture ‘know that real-life idols can disappoint’, Yun Sheng writes.

‘It’s safer to worship the dead or invented than the living. One tribute to circulate online lately was a Labubu doll placed in front of Marx’s tomb in London.’

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 5d

The list of books included in the Anthropic copyright settlement is now up.

If you published a book before July 2021 and it ended up on Libgen file sharing, there's a good chance you'll be eligible to claim c.$3K before fees

Search for yours and file a claim:

www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

ANT Homepage | ANT

www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 5d

Human beings have never seen the Sierra Nevada ice-free: its glaciers formed before our species reached the Americas.

But by the end of this century they will.

Many glaciers have lost 70-90% of their ice since the late 1800s, and are projected to melt completely.

www.latimes.com/environment/...

As California glaciers disappear, people will see ice-free peaks exposed for the first time in millennia

The glaciers of California's Sierra Nevada are disappearing as temperatures rise. Scientists recently found that the glaciers probably have never before melted in human history.

www.latimes.com

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 5d

Though we are all VERY UPSET that he is taking the seasonal label off his clothes 😭

Sound biz and sustainability reasons, but still: Dustulator (FW06), Dirt (SS18), Tecuatl (SS20), Phlegethon (SS21), Gethsemane (FW21) - it's what you collect. They conjure worlds.

www.reddit.com/r/Rickowens/...

From the Rickowens community on Reddit: no more seasonal tags confirmed

Explore this post and more from the Rickowens community

www.reddit.com

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 5d

And today SS26 ‘Temple’ in shades of fawn, dust, milk, dinge - and of course black.

Stairs, shoulders, sculptural forms, and sclera-obscuring contacts. An iterative approach to fashion, each season building on the last, no ‘in’ or ‘out’ of style.

www.vogue.com/fashion-show...

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 5d

Also Haider Ackermann’s Tom Ford, oh my god.

I am so glad he’s back, and properly funded. Is he the only man left in fashion who can cut a jacket? Probably.

10magazine.com/tom-ford-rea...

Tom Ford: Ready-To-Wear SS26

The house of Tom Ford has always had a libido and in Haider Ackermann’s hands, seduction reigns supreme.

10magazine.com

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 5d

‘What I’m proposing is not a fantasy, it is a valid and viable way of living.’

Rick Owens on cake, Luxor, gay literature, exquisite little tea vessels, a 1920s monkey fur coat, his bald cat and the extravagance of building your life around a daily nap.

www.ft.com/content/c959...

Rick Owens: ‘The best way to spend €20 is on M&S Victoria sponge cake’

The fashion designer loves his platform boots, the Palais de Tokyo and naps

www.ft.com

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 6d

‘For Greeks of a certain vintage, to be a seer was, specifically, to see (and think) ahead in time. Blindness – either of the occipital lobe, or in the dark of the adyton/cave – may not have been a prerequisite for oracular vision, but it didn't hurt.’

wchambliss.wordpress.com/2025/10/01/n...

Notes on Tiresias

1. Consider Tiresias: the blind seer (see-er). What can he see? The future. For Greeks of a certain vintage, to be a seer was, specifically, to see (and think, therefore) ahead in time. Blindness –…

wchambliss.wordpress.com

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 9d

Do you bootstrap that first year from your redundancy payments, savings, and/or your partner paying for things for a time? (The most unspoken financial privilege!)

Yes of course.

But that’s not the headline. The story is ‘Now we’re independent and doing journalism better’.

Why’s that not leading?

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Jay Owens @jayowens.bsky.social · 9d

Idk if I’m objecting to Press Gazette’s headline here or their own positioning here, possibly both?

But you wouldn’t expect a new publication launched by men to be described in this way, know what I mean?

404 Media came out of the gate saying ‘We’re independent!’ and were profitable in 6 months.

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