➺ February 3, 2026

Hey {{ first_name | Neighbor }}. I’m decorating my living room with blue-and-white porcelain plates. I know that hanging Canton ware is an affectation made popular by New England’s first plutocrats, a cabal of opium dealers running ships out of what is now Guangzhou. Still, I like the look.

Over time, the fabric of culture itself gets laundered. – AB

➺ Safe Sex: If you haven’t already, this is you last chance to take our “LUSTFUL YEARNING SURVEY.” Respondents – and members – get results.

What we’re drinking about while talking.

STATUS ➽ Tin Foiled
Why does it feel weird talking like this?
Anyone who has read The Power Broker (or Barbarians at the Gate or Empire of Pain or The Smartest Guys in the Room or Bad Blood...) believes in conspiracies. But most members of the reading class avoid conspiracy theorizing in public. The reason for this is simple: The conspiracy mentality, a generalized belief everything is manipulated by hidden forces, is statistically correlated with lower education, income, and perceived social control. Education correlates negatively with generalized conspiracism at about −0.10. In other words, conspiracism is a heuristic for recognizing "dumb."

But reluctance to use a certain kind of accusatory language in lieu of euphemisms like "perverse incentives" and "regulatory capture," doesn't indicate a lack of desire to use that language. When it becomes socially engage in conspiracy thinking we... have it. Remove the stigma and we've got a lot to say.

TASTE ➽ Mutted Response
Why doesn’t the Westminster Dog Show matter?
The Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, which airs tonight on NBC, always sniffs of aristocracy. There are two good reasons for that: dog breeds were formalized by eugenics-obsessed Victorian cousin-fuckers and Americans in the top income quartile are roughly 2.5× more likely to buy a dog from a breeder. Juxtaposed, those facts suggest something ugly. But the average Golden Retriever owner did not buy their precious idiot to signal “good breeding.” Oat-milk elites buy purebreds because breeds function as shorthand for temperament, size, shedding, and vibes. No other reason.

We know this because of Westminster itself. In 2004, researchers Harold Herzog and Steven Elias analyzed every American Kennel Club registration from 1946–2002 to see whether winning Best in Show made a breed more popular. It did not. Comparing five years before and after each win, they found no statistically significant change in registrations; winning explained less than 1% of post-win popularity variance. The average Westminster winner ranked 44th overall, and in only 7 of 56 years did the winning breed crack the top ten. So yes, Americans like purebred dogs. But mostly, we just like our purebred dogs¹.

MONEY ➽ Spork Futures
Why haven’t silverware prices changed?
Spot silver prices briefly cleared $120 last week before falling more than 30 percent in a matter of days. This sent metal traders into a speculative tizzy, but –more importantly – did it meaningfully alter the value of the spoon you just used to stir your rooibos? Depends on how you define meaningful.

Most household “silver” is silver-plated, meaning it has a thin layer of sterling over stainless steel. But a thin layer is still a layer. Consider, for instance, the Alton 42-piece silver-plated flatware set now on sale at Williams Sonoma for the weirdly specific price of $2,199.95. Generously estimated, the entire set likely contains about 10 ounces of actual silver. At the peak price, that implied a melt value of $1,200; after the drop, it was $800. The retail price, of course, didn’t change. This presents an arbitrage opportunity – if you’d like to lose $1,000 while injuring yourself. Before you say no, consider the upside: You’d also be left with a large, useless ball of steel..

The “LUSTFUL YEARNING SURVEY” is an attempt to understand what’s attractive to members of the Oat Milk Elite and what we’re willing to do about it. Full results will be shared with members and those that complete the survey.

What actually sets the Epstein class apart.

On July 7, 2017, famed German cognitive scientist and MIT media lab researcher Joscha Bach sent his new buddy Jeff Epstein a 1,000-word email attempting to explain why he creeped people out. A single word would have sufficed, but instead Bach danced an awkward schuhplattler across his keyboard.

“People reflect in the categories they know, so when they discuss you, they will end up putting you in categories that fit into their worldview,” wrote Bach. “The first sentence of your Wikipedia entry introduces you as a sex offender, which due to contemporary America’s fascinating difficulty of dealing with all things sex related establishes a strong prior on you being a pariah.”

Epstein was not a pariah². He was never short of unaccountable elites willing to accommodate him. The Bach email is a fascinating artifact because it shows a non-plutocrat struggling to do just that. It shows how unnatural the “yes, and…” game of elite improv is to those unused to its very specific rules.

In modern democracies, elites adopt egalitarian language and signal adherence to public norms. But this doesn’t make them normal. Their material and social conditions are specific—they act under conditions of abundance. They say yes to each other because there is no practical reason to say no. Vultures don't fight over their patch of a beached whale. Under conditions of plenty, status is maintained through agreeableness and accommodation. Elite improv means saying yes and expecting yes.

Most of the time, elite improv can be plausibly mischaracterized as collegiality, professionalism, or even enlightened tolerance. What makes the Epstein case singular is that there are no words – as Bach discovered – that can plausibly mischaracterize the accommodation of rape. The release of (some of) the Epstein files is a mask-off moment for what the journalist Anand Giridharadas has dubbed the “Epstein Class” because all that open-mindedness, discretion, and non-public information sharing is being exposed for what it actually is. Not understanding. Not ambiguity. Conspiracy.

Epstein was to elite improv what Jason Mantzoukas (not in the files!) is to actual improv. He was the master of the preemptive yes. He understood that many rich men have the same question about sex, that most knew better than to ask it, and that in a culture where everyone says yes, the most useful friend is the friend who says yes without being asked.

For most of history, elite status translated into sexual access. Kings had harems. Noblemen kept mistresses. Powerful men accumulated women (and men, tbh) along with land, titles, horses, and leather-bound books. Sex accrued to power. The question lodged in the back of many rich men’s throats – the question Bach tiptoes around in his email, which includes the memorable phrase "rich nerds continue to have concubines" – is simple: given the massive disparities in society, why shouldn’t that still be the case? Putting basic morality aside, there are practical reasons. .

As Roy Baumeister has argued, sex is a resource governed by laws of supply and demand. For most of history, men bartered access to resources and women abstained, ignoring their own horniness in service of driving up their bargaining power. Culture changed. Sex became cheaper in the sense that it was possible to get it without signing a lifelong contract. That sounds cynical, but the result, as historian Anthony Giddens put it, is that “Modern intimacy depends on the continual negotiation of consent, rather than its assumption.” Put differently, men and women now both trade principally in erotic capital.

Erotic capital is probably correlated with economic, social, and political capital – but not very. As sociologist Catherine Hakim describes it, it’s a bundle of traits that generate desire: charm, social ease, embodied confidence. Many of the men around Epstein – Prince Andrew being the most obvious example – had a lot going for them on paper but lacked erotic capital. Because sex is not had on paper, this left them pining for the coercive joys of yesteryear.

For them, Jeff Epstein basically became a time machine. He transported them back to a period (pre-industrial? pre-modern?) when teenage girls would have had little choice but to say yes.

The reason the Epstein scandal will never go away is that those outside the Epstein Class understand what it is to say “yes” or “no” to sex. We understand coercion. Unlike private-market investments, yacht contracts, or tax loopholes, rape cannot be mystified because anyone can do it. Simply put: No means no.

Unless.

Unless – and here’s the ugly thought – a person has become so habituated to elite improv that “no” stops registering at all. Epstein’s friends expected yes, so they heard yes. They offered yes. Everything became yes. Even no became yes. And that wasn’t just because Epstein was a monster. It’s because he was part of a monstrous culture.

On July 7, 2017, famed German cognitive scientist Joscha Bach wrote 1,000 words because he didn’t have the integrity to write two letters. He wasn’t confused. He wasn’t intrigued. He wasn’t okay with it. He was trying to fit in.

EVERYDAY DOGLEGS

In golf, a dogleg is a hole that requires golfers to aim away from the pin in order to avoid natural obstacles. Playing direct is not an option. For America's clubhouse people, most of life is like that. The game is simple, but the holes are not. The shortest distance between point A and point B is measured along a jagged route of detours, feints⁴, appointments, and networking.

The only par threes in the suburbs are... par threes. Examples of everyday doglegs are everywhere:

[2] He did, however, like to play one. Epstein seems to have used the embarrassment of his conviction as a sex offender to put elites at ease by creating an environment where they could whine about being misunderstood despite, you know, not being misunderstood.

[3] Let’s be clear. Bach is a more than capable writer when it suits him. Here’s a good sentence he wrote: “The opposite of freewill is not determinism, it's compulsion.”

[4] When you really step back and pay attention, it’s remarkable how much of your time you spend moving at an angle to your actual objective. That angle is an interesting way of understanding your status.