24jan26

Actually furious with myself at how much time I’ve burned this month. I keep reading about “friction-maxxing,” which mostly seems to be farting around because you’re comfortably well-off and don’t have to worry about work and money every minute of the day. I was faintly reminded of an appalling piece in, I think, i-D around 1990, when a rave face wrote about “home chill-out room sessions” which were absolutely middle-class dinner parties for the acid house generation. “Cream cheese on celery will totally do your head in” is the phrase that stuck in my head.

Friction-maxxxing, as a term, is making it everywhere, just as “Occupy” once did – I remember Marc Benioff co-opting Occupy as business aspiration, floating the buzzphrase “Occupy the enterprise.” It’s in Architectural Digest this week, and it reeks of privilege trying on “adversity.”

I have a feeling 2026 is going to be a deeply bullshit year.

OPERATIONS: script, foreword, prose series development, outline
STATUS: All of which will be curtailed by my going out to a gig tonight.
READING: SPIES: THE EPIC INTELLIGENCE WAR BETWEEN EAST AND WEST, Calder Walton (UK) (US+)

MISSION CONTROL: I can be contacted via the Cheng Caplan Company or Inkwell Management. Link in masthead to join my free newsletter.