Go Flip Yourself.

🪡 We threw our first ‘denim soirée’ in San Francisco last Friday and we can’t be happier. Stella was one of the local tailor. Learn more about her and how she’s doing some magic with fabrics since age 8.

🎨 Many things Matt wrote resonated. Culture being the cornerstone of our lives, this is an important thing to grasp, and here’s a very interesting read: Making Sense of Culture Amidst Contradiction.

Culture is the foundational DNA of society: the rules, conventions, beliefs and norms we operate within. But it’s more complicated. There is no singular “culture.” My culture is not yours and vice-versa. And further, these cultures are ever-evolving.

🖼 And when we’re talking culture, taste is never too far. Jackson did a good job with this one + you can find some great ressources in there. Taste, Time, and Attention: On Making Contact with the World.

I like the idea that taste is mostly a product of appetite. […] Put another way, those with great taste usually get disproportionate energy from curiosity toward a domain. That appetite is the beginning of a journey of prolonged attention down an infinite rabbit hole. The breadth of the world folds in on itself in favor of discovering a universe of detail. Perhaps the complexity that another finds tiresome or boring may be a treasure trove for you.

🚗 Looking at China’s evolution through its car landscape. There’s something fascinating here. Shanghai’a automotive metamorphosis.

Cars are more than transport — they embody technology, signal identity, and reflect wealth.

This is something I re-discovered recently with both my kids while walking around SF. Their level of joy and awe when they saw their first Waymo self-driving car. I can’t even grasp the broader impact it might have on them since their imagination have ran so wild since then. It unlocked something in their mind for sure.

✨ I found Patricia's view on why we need to evolve past individualism very compelling: why everything feels off.

In other words, we are more materially prosperous and free to self-actualize than we’ve ever been, yet feel unhappy and lonely in that plight, grasping eagerly at proxies for meaning - those of which satiate us temporarily, yet leave an aftertaste of emptiness. I believe that what we’re experiencing is actually a crisis of individualism, in which meaninglessness and loneliness are mere byproducts.

🌱 I truly loved these notes on the neglected spaces in our cities. Neighborhood Watch. And I love even more this idea of “anonymous contributions to the street life”.