nON-REQUIRED FOR A REASON

If any of you out there have ever started to surf, you learn a few things. First thing you learn is that you spend about 98% of your time paddling, and 2% of your time surfing. The second thing you learn is what sounds like an alien language. Lionized in this Huntington beach youtube classic from 2009. You would hear strange sentences like: Brother, peeped lowers this AM, was slab city out there. The grom got absolutely shacked!

Diagrammed:

Brother (brother) peeped (looked at) lowers (lower trestles, San Onofre Beach, San Clemente, CA) this AM (morning), was slab city (good waves) out there (in the water). The grom (my kid [shortened form of "grommet," ref: Wallace and Gromit]), got absolutely shacked (see also: tubbed, barreled, pitted, green roomed: all terms for riding the inside of the wave)

The funny thing is, after years of being immersed in a sub-culture like surfing, you naturally start to understand the language. You become a naturalized citizen of the culture, so to speak.

Full disclosure, this newsletter is a sub-culture immersion project. We at DW need to be culturally literate in order to be effective in it. We will dive deep into things so incredibly niche you will wonder what world you actually live in. The goal being all of us become naturalized citizens of culture, to become fluent in many languages. Topics and areas of study (in no particular order): Music, Memes, Web Design, Appointment TV, The New Left, The New Right, Future Culture, Algorithms, Fashion, Art Literacy, AI Slop, and anything else we want.

So jump right in, I peeped the sets this AM and it is slab city out there, let’s get absolutely shacked.

MOODBOARD OF THE WEEK

“Moodboards” for the uninitiated are just reference images that the creator of the page likes. There is no secret code, no degree required. Understanding comes with time and exposure to art. For now, view moodboards and note things you like and dislike, and ask yourself, why do you like this? Why do you dislike that? I’ll go first: I love the funny contrast between the fully wardrobed Gandalf and Frodo, mixed with the dj booth, the cigarette and the normal random people in the background. Bonus* Gandalf looks somewhat dead inside, like he has been doing this (djing) for too long and just needs a break. -Enjoy!

The new left

In a post-Nov 24 world, the democratic party is looking feverishly for anyone who has any sort of world view they can rally behind. From the ashes of the dumpster fire, the new left is about to emerge. There are two main building blocks of the new left that are being widely discussed in the marxist reading rooms of Brooklyn and the coolboy art podcasts: the assassination of Brian Thompson by Luigi Mangione, and Israel vs. Gaza/Hamas. The third block that has been widely debated is the “abundance” discourse, popularized by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s “Abundance”.

The premise is an acknowledgement of the failure of liberal governance in places like California, Oregon, and Washington. It is a rhetorical pivot from the scarcity mindset that’s gripped the Bernie left for years. Where the Bernie-bros think fairness means everyone queues up for their turn, Ezra and Derek say: What if we just built more?

This is the new supply-side gospel, which flies in the face of the elon-hating-AI dooming-Engles reading-Cigarette smoking-dirtbag addict boyfriend aesthetic that has gripped the zeitgeist for what feels like a millennia. It is a quiet rebellion against 30 years of Democratic governance and the cynicism that goes hand in hand. The left is quietly trying to learn to build, rather than ration.

Current world: sacrifice, use less, fly less, build less—because climate, inequality, etc.

Abundance world: solve problems by scaling, not scolding.

The discourse? It’s of course a shit show. Half the left does not want to acknowledge the reality of their failure, the other half disagrees with virtually all of the “abundance” prescriptions.

the new right

Honestly who the heck knows at this point, probably still Trump

LUDDITE MODE

Luddite Mode: A mood to reject current digital existence to favor of the real world

Enter: *It is the year 2046 and my first born Lily Woodman is the 23 year old woman in a therapists office. *

A.I. Dr. Jordan Peterson Robot Therapist: "when do you think you started to drift away from your parents?"

Lily: "It didn't happen all at once, honestly I just remember growing up and wondering why my dad was so distracted all the time. I always felt like he didn't want to be there with me, and something or someone on his phone was always more important than me."

-end scene

Welcome to my recurring nightmare.

It is clear to me that the huxleyan view of dystopia has won the day in the ever increasing overlap between our digital "world" and our physical world. When someone tells you that we are in an Orwellian nightmare, you can gently remind them that we all willingly and eagerly choosing to melt our brains daily with a steady diet of algorithmic slop. More and more the physical human is being replaced by the digital nomad, untethered to place, community or family, and can barely tell if someone is a human or not anymore.

With that backdrop do not lose heart, for the backlash has begun. In a digital sea, the physical, and the chemical are hot fire for the human soul. From “go touch grass” to vinyl, to A.I. art: Humanity itself (and evidence of human involvement will be a luxury commodity. Soon, (and now for many of us) there will be a large cultural demand for things that don't demand our attention. There is a small but increasingly loud group of people obsessed with this topic. I would wager it will be extremely culturally relevant as the digital (ipad) generation inevitably has kids and swings the pendulum from their childhoods. “Luddite Mode” will be a recurring section, focused on these ideas and highlighting tech (ironic I know) that doesn’t demand your attention.

Introducing:

The Nothing Phone: Created by Carl Pei (co-founder of OnePlus), it strips the smartphone down to its essentials.

What makes it stand out is its restraint. No bloat, no algo noise—just a clean interface and a focus on interaction that’s deliberate, not compulsive. The glyph interface turns notifications into signals instead of distractions, giving you information without dragging you into a doomscroll.

This taps into a growing appetite for Luddite tech—not in the anti-progress sense, but in the desire for tools that respect your time. People are burned out on infinity feeds and push notifications dressed up as urgency. Luddite tech helps reclaim control. It’s minimalism, not as an milli-coded aesthetic, but as a refusal.

MUSIC

It is rare that an musician can function at a high level in other disciplines, especially dev. This, I would wager, stems from musics’ potent ability to capture artists at a very early age, and demand all of them. That is likely why a lot of great multidisciplinary artist are former musicians that weren’t good enough early on, and the inverse is also true, that great musicians can barely function in other mediums. Enter the contrarian: Jon Bellion, and has now dipped his toe the deep waters of “good dev” (see dot com below) with beautifulmind.club. Beautiful Mind Club is an online forum of sorts where fans can chat with Jon, and discuss his music, easter eggs, even download his stems so anyone can sample or remix (stems are individual tracks or components of a song, isolated from others, used in mixing and mastering) (sampling is using parts of pre-existing recordings in new music).

LINKS: JON BELLION WASH (FILM HERE {shot in iceland sheesh}) and Acoustic version: WASH2

OBSCURE GOOD ALBUMS OF THE WEEK: LA LOM- SELF TITLED

HIGHLY RECOMMENDEd:

meredith bussen

Highly recommended people, recommending things. This section is dedicated to an overly simplistic principle I apply often: look for the “who” and that will point to the“what”. So I asked my Meredith to share with us a few of her favorite things at the moment.

from the desk of meredith bussen

Acting Class. I've been taking a scene study class for the last four years at a studio in Nashville called The 4th Wall. A sign hangs on the wall that reads "Your Comfort Zone Will Kill You". The group has evolved over the years but the same core members show up week after week and bring characters and stories to life. We are such champions of each other's work and talent. In my otherwise very organized and streamlined life - it is a shot of crazy creativity that just makes sense.

Terry Cloth Wristbands. You know that gross sensation and nuisance of water dripping down your arms when you wash your face? This feeling can be eradicated for less than $10 when a four pack of these bands reach your home via Amazon. With these powerfully absorbent wristbands, I feel like the Lynda Carter version of Wonder Woman as I fight grime.

Symphony No. 9, New World Symphony by Antonín Dvořák. Studied this piece in music appreciation class in college and fell in love with it. I won't say anything remarkable that a scholar hasn't already said. It pumps me up and it is beautiful. Certified Banger.

DOT COM

A place for inspiring web design. The digital world is full of squarespaces, wix, shopify, etc. When you come across a site that is unique and well designed, it makes you stop and appreciate it. This section is a web appreciation section.

First up:

Poolsuite is the perfect website. It has the perfect amount of artistry/application. What are they selling? Who cares (whipped sunscreen is the real answer). Poolsuite blends UI/UX and nostalgia in a way that hits you like a ton of bricks. notice the icons on the right, and the mini music player. Enjoy your mini vacation!

art literacy

strap on your boots,

Spotlight: Wassily Kandinsky: the prophet of Bauhaus. Born in 1866, Moscow he left a law career for art after a come to Jesus moment with a bottle of port and a Monet haystack. That pivot changed modern art forever. Kandinsky didn’t just paint what he saw—he painted what he heard. Known now as synesthesia, meaning sounds translated into colors and shapes in his mind. This neurological glitch became his superpower.

He rolled into Bauhaus in 1922, already a heavyweight in the abstract art scene. There, he fused his spiritual theories of art with the school’s mission of radical functionalism. While others designed chairs and buildings, Kandinsky taught form and color like they were music theory. To him, a shapes and colors weren’t just shapes and colors—they were frequencies with rules.

His most famous works—Composition VII (1913), Yellow-Red-Blue (1925), and Several Circles (1926) (seen below)—are wild, orchestrated explosions. Composition VII, his masterpiece: a swirling, chaotic mess with locked up, right to left flow. Yellow-Red-Blue is more structured, almost like a diagram in primary colors. And Several Circles is pure jazz—just floating spheres in tension, like notes mid-conversation.

Kandinsky’s genius was in treating the canvas like an orchestra. He believed art could bypass logic and speak directly to the soul, like music. At Bauhaus, that belief became design doctrine. While the school was about utility, Kandinsky made the case that feeling is function. He built visual systems, like grammar for the modern abstract world.

When the Nazis shut down the Bauhaus in 1933, Kandinsky fled to Paris, where he kept working until his death in 1944. But his legacy stuck. You see rumblings and murmers of Kanidinsky in many modern design pieces, most notably apple wallpapers, and “Unknown Pleasures”-1979 by Joy Division.