Welcome to Notes from the Economy Class, the newsletter which will never seat you next to a disturbingly adult-like baby. We will, however, apologize for delays; I thought I set the newsletter to be deployed on Friday, then discovered that apparently I do not understand how scheduling in Beehiiv works. Anyway, please enjoy the view I chose to take in yesterday instead of trying to figure out why clicking on the button that said “schedule post” did not actually schedule the post.
This is Goat Rock Beach in Jenner, CA, and if you look very carefully, you can see where the mouth of the Russian River meets the Pacific Ocean. Highly recommend staring at the sea here.
Your Flight Today
"Taste" has become a buzzword in tech circles this year, mostly because it's being bandied about as the X-factor that will save humanity from permanent AI-induced unemployment, but also because we're in another moment where people are conflating specific artifacts of taste with broader cultural meaning.
The current discourse is swirling around "tasteslop," a great portmanteau describing an algorithmically-derived collage or compilation of cultural artifacts meant to denote taste but, when smushed together devoid of context or narrative, are the visual equivalent of what happens when someone can transcribe a musical score but cannot hear the song, explain why the particular piece affects individual users, or how the piece matters in a larger cultural continuum.
The Stagg kettle has been catching some strays in the tasteslop discourse … but haven’t we all seen this thing in a thousand online references at this point?
Tasteslop is 2026's "airspace," which Kyle Chaka coined in an essay explaining how the 2016-era Web had flattened out geographic and cultural idiosyncrasies and created a benumbing homogenization that de-centered the specifics of a place in favor of vibes.
Both airspace and tasteslop are adorably Silicon Valley artifacts, trying to do what a lot of companies have been trying to do since Peter Drucker coined the term "knowledge worker" back in 1959: Eliminate knowledge workers.
Knowledge workers: Shareholders :: Grunka-lunkas: Professor Farnsworth
So here's the thing about knowledge workers: They are people who produce valuable deliverables for their employers, but two things about the production process are problematic from a corporate point of view. First, the knowledge worker's production depends on them applying both their theoretical knowledge and practical experience to the problem, and that one-two combo is specific to each worker and therefore not easily standardized and commodified. Second, a lot of what makes a knowledge worker valuable rests not in their SharePoint folders but in between their ears. To some managerial types, it's an outrage that a worker should be allowed to keep the experience and expertise they've developed on company time.
If we can reduce knowledge work to information work, where metrics and algorithmic analysis substitute for human attention and expertise, then we can eliminate the people, right?
There is a reason why companies hire human stylists to train their styling bots. Algorithms are exuberantly taste-free. Data devoid of context cannot have taste, because taste is a gestalt comprised of social and cultural fluency, emotional responses to aesthetics, lived experience, an expertise born of a perpetual growth mindset, and an innate internal editor.
Even more maddeningly, taste is a talent like perfect pitch or athletic ability — the capacity is innate. Some people will be able to maximize it with discipline and practice, others are born savants, and the best some will do is an ability to embrace joy in the attempt to participate, since mastery will never come.
I have owned this book since college, and used the images to adorn the staff newsletter when some poor person was idealistic enough to give me the job of writing and editing such a thing.
We're seeing now what happens when we lean into the idea that data can substitute for taste: Pinterest has degenerated into tasteslop, shoppers are confused as to whether they have personal taste or just a brain susceptible to algorithmic manipulation, and AI music has replaced music nerd posturing on Spotify's most popular playlists.
Honestly, not sure if that last one is all ba— I kid! I kid! What we're seeing is the logical result of a context-free algorithmic data analysis. It's intrinsically tasteless and it echoes one of the chief critiques of airspace: it allows us to secede from the world.
You have to have some taste. I think Diana Vreeland said bad taste is better than no taste. Taste is how you describe yourself. It’s how you present yourself to the world. It’s about humor . . . Everyone is a curator of their own life: what they have around them, what they read, what they watch. So everybody, no matter what—even the most deranged homeless person—has taste. They know which bottle they want to collect more, which shopping cart they want to fill. Everyone has taste and it’s how you define yourself against the world.
Now let's embrace our inner John Waters and do the work of being as fabulously tasteful as we can.
Your In-Flight Snack
The summer solstice is nigh! If you're the type of person who suffers from summer seasonal affective disorder and wants only for the next three months to fly by, have I got a recommendation for you! Comic artist and writer Dan Brereton has been spinning out a gorgeous and engaging world in Nocturnals since 1994, and it is perfect for anyone who counts down the days to September 1.
I adore everything about this particular visual style.
Nocturnals' premise is this: a space-alien scientist who happens to look very Vulcan-y is a single father to a little girl who communes with the dead. They have adventures in their adopted home, the coastal California town of Pacific City, and their found family includes a wraith turned den mother, and a zombie scarecrow who's the fastest draw in the west. The narrative is a little bit noir, a little bit Addams Family, a little bit HP Lovecraft. And the art is simply luscious. It's pulpy and Halloween-chic and a little retro.
The trade paperbacks can be tough to track down and pricey once you do, but if you're willing to use a Kindle, you can pick up both Omnibus editions for less than the cost of one trade paperback. Then draw the shades, put on Camille Saint-Saëns' Danse Macabre followed by Angelo Badalamenti's work for Twin Peaks, and visit Pacific City. Happy Summerween.