➺ October 9, 2025

WORK SMARTER, NOT HARDER

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New research out of Holland suggests good vibes may not exist – or, put differently, that what we call good vibes is just a reflex to the dual absence of power and awkwardness in a social situation. The finding comes from the University of Amsterdam’s accidental vibe-ologist Timo Koren, who set out to understand what happens when researchers interview people who share their own social position. Studying literary editors and nightclub promoters—two groups with cultural capital similar to academics – Koren found that his subjects, trained to recognize biases toward people unlike them¹, had massive blind spots toward people like them, especially those with whom they vibed.

The problem: Ease does not produce insight. Instead, it produces what Koren calls “presumed sameness”– false intimacy between people who use similar scripts and pick up on the cues, effectively obscuring whatever differences they may have. The resulting bonhomie was not really a product of personal understanding but of a lack of social disparity and awkwardness, which occurs when social norms are exposed as arbitrary. When vibes are good it's often because everything but shared attitudes and tastes can be ignored. It’s what’s not there.

Of course, ignoring everything but shared attitudes and tastes is a lousy way to make friends. So when you’re vibing – really vibing – Koren argues it’s worth asking specific kinds of questions: relational (“Do you actually like your job?”), contextual (“Where do you go when you’re sick of the city?”), or historicizing (“Was this always the plan?”). Will the questions ruin the vibe? Maybe. But they might also lead to something real.

➺ “Feeling authentic does not equate to being perceived as talented or competent by others.” ➺ Docusign no longer requires cursive signatures, but… you know what… cursive signatures forever. The messier the better. ➺ The more people the less ingredients. A decent rule for dinner parties. ➺ Costco is selling discount Ozempic. So much for bulk.

The “FINANCIAL WHOOPSIES SURVEY” is an attempt to understand how members of the Oat Milk Elite manage (and mismanage) their money. Full results will be shared with Upper Middle Research members and those that complete the survey.

The late Iris Apfel didn’t just own things; she was famous for owning things. A historic-textile maker by trade, she spent half a century as a design insider before the Met turned her closet into spectacle with 2005’s Rara Avis (“rare bird”) exhibition. After that she became the rhinestone dowager of Instagram—the patron saint of “Advanced Style” – who mixed Hermès scarves with flea-market bangles, Dior jackets with Zulu beadwork, and Chippendale chairs with Moroccan lamps. Since her death in March 2024, her best clothes and furniture have been auctioned off by Christie’s and Doyle respectively. Now the rest is coming to market courtesy of Millea Brothers, a New Jersey auction house of little to no repute.

What makes going through Apfel’s stuff interesting is not that it’s nice, but that it makes sense together only in the context of Apfel, who was omnivorous and selective – a raccoon in Lanvin. She was, in effect, the greatest living practitioner of Rubbish Theory, a strange 1970s academic idea that divides the world into three piles: rubbish (valueless), transient (losing value), and durable (gaining value). Apfel’s gift was knowing which transient objects would endure. Leaf through the coming sale – a Venetian harpsichord², Kachina dolls, Chinese rank badges, a suede coat trimmed in Mongolian lamb – and it’s obvious why. Nothing here is “timeless.” Like Apfel herself, the objects are gloriously dated. They’re durable precisely because they weren’t made to be.

This final Apfel auction is, in effect, a last judgment on her taste. But the outcome has never been in doubt. She’ll be ushered into designer heaven so fast she won’t have time to note that the pearly gates could be, you know, just a bit more pearly.

➺ How the MoMA Store became more MoMA than MoMA. ➺ College radio is staging a comeback. Somewhere, tk is smiling. ➺ Nike’s flagship in Manhattan is becoming IKEA’s flagship in Manhattan. Not sure what it means, but feels significant³.

Chase just raised the annual fee on its Sapphire Reserve Visa from $550 to $795, justifying the hike with “over $2,700 in annual value.” That value isn’t cash – it’s a scavenger hunt of rebates: $300 in DoorDash credits, $100 back from Peloton, $15 monthly with Lyft Pink, 10x points on hotel bookings through Chase Travel, and scattered perks from StubHub, Instacart, GoPuff, and Relais & Châteaux⁴ (natch). There’s also Priority Pass lounge access and “limited offers” that expire faster than a decent camembert. At this point, Sapphire isn’t a credit card so much as what Dan Frommer at The New Consumer calls a “lifestyle subscription.”

Amex Platinum (now $895) pioneered this model, bundling Equinox, Resy, and Fine Hotels & Resorts into a package aimed squarely at airport-Wi-Fi consultants and loyalty-program philosophers. It worked not just because there was value, but because the perks cohered into a lifestyle – a kind of financial phenotype. That logic now defines the category. Roughly speaking:

By orienting around perks, card issuers are diagramming the top 15% of American spenders—not maliciously, just effectively. They’ve realized that everything in your wallet is, in fact, a form of ID.

➺ When charity worked. Enshittification is what happens when companies orient around liquidity events (or panic). ➺ The sexualization of marketing is just starting. ➺ A lot of the coverage of women dropping out of the workforce at increasing rates fails to mention women are starting their own companies at massively increased rates. 

“The greatest mystery about a human being,” Sinclair Lewis wrote in Main Street, “is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day.”

The fight over free speech matters, but the fight over paid speech will ultimately determine the direction of American culture (whether the New York cocktail party crowd likes it or not).

Survey results suggest that though most members of the professional managerial class benefit from some form of familial advantage, many are reluctant to admit it or to fully acknowledge the degree to which they are (probably) responsible for their own success.

[2] Dibs harpsichord.

[3] I mean… it means more meatballs for me. God I love IKEA’s cafeteria. It might be the only place where the promise of modernism truly bore fruit.

[4] Hear me out: Relais & Châteaux Sportswear. Who’s with me on this one?