Shop Class and Joker Mode

"Birkin of hair tools"

Tribeca Girl Scout Avianna Spatz hopes to be the city's top seller for the fourth year in a row; Harry Styles ran the Tokyo Marathon (at 7:47 per mile, no less!); and Lane Florshiem’s interview with Lisa, the Blackpink superstar and White Lotus breakout, is excellent.

WHY YOUR GRANDMA’S HAIRBRUSH KEEPS POPPING UP ON YOUR TIKTOK FEED, wapo
The Mason Pearson hairbrush, long revered by hairstylists as the “gold standard,” has become a status symbol among Gen Z, with some calling it the “Birkin of hair tools.” Financial struggles aside, young people are splurging on the $375 brush to elevate their daily routines because, as I told Ashley Fetters Maloy, “The world is bad and we can’t afford houses, but by God, we can afford a fancy hairbrush.” (With the help of Afterpay, anyway.) The company has seen a 25 to 30 percent bump in sales over the past year, largely due to TikTok virality.

HOW BALDING TREATMENTS BECAME THE NEW BOTOX, thecut
Venture-backed startups are rebranding balding by making hair transplants and PRP treatments more appealing to Gen Z and millennial men. (Notably, they don’t use the word “balding” — deemed too mean by one founder in the space — and prefer to use “hair growth” instead.) The med spa spaces have a millennial aesthetic falling “somewhere between a boutique hotel and a Sweetgreen”; two patients interviewed for this story used the word “cool” to describe their experiences.

FIVE-TO-NINE: WHY GEN ZS LIKE ME ARE STEALING BACK TIME FOR SIDE HUSTLES, WELLNESS AND EXERCISE, independent.co.uk
Productivity-maxxing has come for Gen Z professionals, who are attempting to squeeze self-improvement and side hustles into the hours before or after their corporate jobs in an effort to reclaim control over their time. This trend has been around for a while — the hashtag #5to9routine has 35 million views on TikTok — but RTO (and the subsequent loss of autonomy over one’s schedule) has kickstarted it again.

THE SCHOOLS REVIVING SHOP CLASS OFFER A HEDGE AGAINST THE AI FUTURE, wsj
High schools nationwide are spending tens of millions of dollars to expand and revamp high-school shop classes for the 21st century. Demand is high; in Wisconsin, 36,000 enrolled in manufacturing courses, a 13% increase year over year, and wood shop is so popular that students had to be turned away. “Kids can see these aren’t knuckle-dragging jobs,” said Quincy Millerjohn, a former English teacher who is a welding instructor at the school.

IS ‘DARK WOKE’ THE ANSWER TO TRUMPISM—OR JUST LIBERAL CRINGE?, gq
“Dark woke” is the newest evolution of the dirtbag left. The idea, Kieran Press-Reynolds writes, is to subvert the qualities that people think made wokeness cringe — the virtue policing, the polite “when they go low, we go high” posturing — and go “Joker Mode to Make Democrats Cool Again.”

One last thought:

@bexyb0ooiipad dad has arrived on scene

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