➺ February 17, 2026

Hey {{ first_name | Neighbor }}. Whenever I go to my parents’ house, there's a stack of catalogs: Frontgate, Garnet Hill, J. Jill, Orvis, Peruvian Connection. I’m struck by how little of it strikes me. Much has been written about algorithmic consumerism and always wanting; less about the pleasure of not wanting.

I don't want more stuff than I do want and, as it turns out, I want to look at all of it. – AB

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What we’re drinking about while talking.

STATUS ➽ Reception Areas
Why didn’t anyone tell you what Kristin did at the office party?
A new study of office gossip out of the U.U. (University of Utrecht) suggests workers achieve high status by receiving gossip, but high-status workers receive less gossip. The study, conducted within a childcare org, looked at “senders” who share information, “receivers” who gather information, and “objects” whose bizness constitutes the information. Status was measured over time by net ratings on a five-point scale from "very difficult" to "good friend.” Over time, receivers saw their status rise as senders’ and objects’ status remained +/- unchanged (there are limited social consequences to being a total roddelaartje). 

The wrinkle was that fewer senders were willing to share gossip with high-status receivers more likely to have ties to both objects and other high-status receivers. This suggests the existence of what we might call the Water Cooler Equilibrium¹, a point at which status stabilizes because receivers have access to just enough gossip to maintain their position – at least until they’re caught objectifying the new teaching assistant. 

TASTE ➽ Creekheads
Why can’t we stop watching our private TV show?
When James Van Der Beek died last week, I received text messages from a few of the old friends because, many years ago, I looked like the guy and acted like his most famous character. Getting called “Dawson” in 2003 wasn’t quite an insult, but it wasn’t a quite compliment either. Van Der Beek was good-looking, but not sexy in a Pacey kind of way. He was the sort of softboi beta normie cuck your mom would like if she happened to be one PBS’s “viewers like you.” What made Dawson culturally relevant (and, TBH, what first got me female attention) was asl what made him annoying: He was a reflexive adolescent long before that became the default. He wasn’t driven by his urges, but by his feelings about his urges.

Dawson's Creek was a TV show about watching TV centered on a character that experienced life as both circumstance and narrative subject to constant, unrelenting interpretation. Shrinks probably recognized in the monologues the project of the self, but I recognized something different. The guy was exhausting in the same way I was exhausting. I didn't like being called Dawson because it suggested more than a resemblance to Van Der Beek; it recognized something in me that couldn’t just be. That trait, now ubiquitous as the crying meme, shamed me.

MONEY ➽ Shawshanked
Why doesn’t being invaluable matter?
At an atomic level, all work is tasks. Over time, predictable, structured tasks are automated. According to a new analysis from Stanford profs Chad Jones and Chris Tonetti, this has lead to the bulk of productivity gains over the last half-century. However, unpredictable, unstructured work cannot be automated, leading to bottlenecks. Because most workflows, ordered series of tasks, contain at least one bottleneck, there’s a ceiling on automation-driven productivity gains – even in the age of A.I. The Stanford analysis puts that ceiling in a “robots everywhere” scenario at ~4% by 2040 and ~19% by 2060. That’s nothing to sneeze at, but the growth isn’t asymptotic until after 2100 (when the automatons become innovative). In the meantime, we get just capital productivity growth outpacing labor productivity growth because labor is being done predominantly at the bottlenecks.

That cloud comes with a silver lining: Workers with the workflow-specific knowledge to do unstructured, unpredictable tasks become “invaluable” to their employers. But there’s a cloud within the silver lining. Workflow-specific knowledge isn’t particularly transferable so workers can’t capture the value of their expertise. People hired for their problem-solving skills (most white-collar workers without a doctorate) eventually become Red from The Shawshank Redemption – fully institutionalized. The only way to get leverage? Be willing to move to Zihuatanejo.

How elites lose by winning.

After the Battle of Bunker Hill, the insurrectionist Boston Gazette crowed that the bloody battle proved the king’s troops were “not invincible" while, back in London, the printers sold breathless pamphlets authored by officer John Burgoyne declaring General Sir William Howe, Commander-in-Chief of British Forces in North America, "master of the field and victor in the hard-fought day." Both sides put a check in the W column – the colonists because they'd inflicted casualties on professional soldiers, the English because they’d taken the hill. 

Neither side was wrong, but the Massholes were definitely right.

Oddly enough, the post-June 17, 1775 PR skirmish set a  precedent for the how the we post-mortem the culture war battles now fought on the innumerable hills where innumerable posters insist on dying. On one side, red-coated cultural elites, enter debates (real and imagined) determined to win the day by being correct. On the other side, insurgent populists (and opportunistic financial elites), enter debates determined to win the day by being on message. Often the cultural elites mistake the discipline required to stay on message for stupidity because many of the messages are pretty dumb². But it’s canny strategy. The way you win a war is by not losing a war. And the way you avoid losing a war  is to allow your foe to win tactical victories while you win strategic ones. 

Smart insurgents understand that cohesion trumps coherence because conflict is rarely the product of misunderstanding. It’s the product of genuine antipathy. As such, to be right is often to be the master of a barren field.

Consider former Democratic congressional candidate Isaiah Martin, the Yale graduate appeared in late 2024 on the YouTube media company Jubilee's uber-popular "Surrounded" series, which stages pseudo-debates in a circular firing squad format – two dozen members of the political opposition clashing with one credentialed figure in the middle. At one point during a wide-ranging “discussion,” the distinguished Ivy League grad asked a flop-sweating interlocutor named Daniella how many people in ICE detention have been convicted of violent crimes. The real number is around 25-30%, but the brave, brownshirted amateur had her own statistic: "100%." When Martin moved to correct her, Daniella stated, as much to herself as to the room, "It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter."

Almost two million people have seen that clip and many of educated, policy-minded viewers have surely had the same thought: "Boy, that Daniella sure seems like a fucking moron³." That may or may not be true, but it misses the point. Daniella is a moron on message. That’s enough.

Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe has spent decades trying (and largely failing) to get waffling progressives to understand the distinction. In her work on "agonistic pluralism" – developed across academic books like The Democratic Paradox and Agonistics – she argues that liberal's obsession with rational deliberation and consensus building fundamentally misunderstands how both minds and societies change. Her big distinction is between politics (the operational work of governance) and the political (the strategic work of determining whose interests structure society). Her contention is that Oat Milk Elites conflate the two. Martin, master of the field, is doing politics. Daniella is doing the political. 

Who's the fucking moron now?

The funny or disappointing or ungodly frustrating thing is that centrist and leftist members of the professional-managerial elite are actually well practiced at winning strategic victories by being on message and loyal. They do it all the time at work.

In 1941, James Burnham published The Managerial Revolution, which described a rising class of experts and technocrats seizing control of public and private institutions. Burnham mischaracterized the leverage possessed by experts in organizations built on expertise as power, but he wasn't totally wrong. More and more decisions were being made by bourgeois middle managers and the first Human Resources departments were popping up like pimples on the ass of the Fortune 500. The titans of corporate America could no longer show up to meetings windmilling their freshly xeroxed dicks and making reckless pronouncements. In 1962, George Romney was forced out of his role at American Motors for alienating his lieutenants by, more or less, being an insufferable, self-aggrandizing prig.

Every discussion of toxic leadership, workplace culture, and psychological safety falls squarely within Mouffe's definition of the political. These conversations are generally rooted in questionable claims about productivity, the accuracy of which doesn’t matter. The point is to make, but a genuinely contested claim about society: The ownership class should treat the professional managerial class with deference.

Sure, there's a lot of reason to think that a society structured that way would work better. It kinda used to! But that's very inconvenient for monomaniacal, autocratic dickheads like Romney or Musk or Wonka for whom calls for basic decency are indiscernible from insurgency. The reason men like this move into populist politics is that it allows them to recast themselves as anti-institutional insurgents and to focus on tactic rather than strategic victories. In politics, they don’t have to be right – look at the abject failure of DOGE – they just have to be shamelessly on message.

That’s smart because, long-term, it does not pay to follow the example of General William Howe.

Here's what happened after Howe declared victory at Bunker Hill: He won at Long Island. He won at Brandywine. He won at Germantown. He proved his tactical prowess. He was master of many a field. In 1778, he was removed from his post for failing to force the surrender of the Continental Army. He must have returned home wondering how he lost to a bedraggled gang of morons. The answer was simple. They remained on message. The message was freedom. Things change.

The “EViL JOBS SURVEY” uses Albert O. Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, Loyalty framework to understand how Oat Milk Elites think about their jobs and about professional optionality.. Full results will be shared with members and those that complete the survey.

HAVE A SAFETY… EVERYTHING

Members of the Oat Milk Elite are taught early that if they shoot for the moon and miss they'll end up against the stars. Sometimes that means working at Deloitte. Sometimes that means getting a gig in PR. Sometimes that means going to Cornell. Sometimes that means driving a Kia Sportage. There's always a face-saving backup and a backup to the backup. Unless, of course, the house has aluminum siding. Some things are beyond the pale.

Here's how it works.

HOUSING: 4bd/3ba in walkable neighborhood → 2B/1.5ba floor through brownstone apt → 3bd/2.5ba with finished basement → 2bd/1.5ba open layout condo with deck → 2bd/1ba 3rd-floor rental walkup w/ park view → 3bd/2ba purchased by parents → a really good drug hookup

CHILDREN: Three kids → One Kid → Two kids (small age gap) → Two kids (large age gap) → Adoring Nephew/Niece (you're gay) → Adoring Nephew/Niece (you're straight) → Friend's kids that call you “Uncle”/”Aunt” → Much younger sibling from a parent's second marriage → Intern → Four Kids

PETS: AKC-registered English Cream Golden Retriever → AKC-registered Golden Retriever → Rescued Street Dog with Latin Name/Origin Story → English Springer Spaniel⁴ → Labrador Retriever (big head) → Two Zebra Finches → Rescue Pit Bull Mix → German Shepherd → French Bulldog → Leopard Gecko → Cat

SOUVENIRS: Matchbook from The Langham → Napkin from Minetta Tavern → Coaster from Harry’s Bar (Venice) → Golf Pencil from Torrey Pines → Socks from Qatar Airways Business Class → Anxiety Meds for Flying from Your Doctor Buddy → MetroCard from 2010 → Cocktail Napkins from Your Wedding → Conference Lanyard from The Wynn → A Tan

WINTER MUD ROOM OBSTACLES: Old E450 Rossignol Skis (Straight) → New Völkl Skis (Parabolic) → Snow Shoes → Fire Wood → Old Burton snowboard → New Rossignol Cross Country Skis → Plastic Sled From Walmart → New Burton Snowboard → Water Skis

OUTERWEAR: Waxed Barbour Beaufort Jacket → Barbour Bedale Jacket → Field coat purchased in United Kingdom, Normandy, or Stockholm → Patagonia Retro-X Jacket → LL Bean Quilted Barn Coat → Peter Millar Suffolk Coat → Vintage Flannel Shirt and Coffee in a Paper Cup → Carhartt Chore Coat (threadbare) → North Face Denali Jacket

[2] For those blissfully unaware, fascist/wellness media strategy generally involves making the message as stupid as possible so that it creates a stronger sense of cohesion by attracting ridicule from out-groups.

[3] There’s also something to the fact professional types tend to insult people by demeaning their intelligence. Yeah, Daniella might be dumb. But isn’t the worse thing that she’s callous and cruel? I know lots of really great, really admirable stupid people. I think I’ve loved a few. I’ve never loved someone cruel. (Well, just the one.)

[4] I was raised in large part by an English Springer Spaniel. It’s the only English heritage I have and the only English heritage I would want.