rina

@rinanicolae

103 Following

213 Followers

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I have a theory that America is diverging into two separate status hierarchies, one based on wealth and one based on cultural knowledge. In the past, the people who controlled economic capital also controlled cultural capital. Now that is less and less the case. What do you think? Is it still possible to be Cool and Rich at the same time?

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Another trend we’re seeing in the Regime of the Image is a return of luxury into craftsmanship. Except this time, craftsmanship is biological, and the tools are scientific. Think plastic surgery, longevity hacking, vampire facials, state-of-the-art spa treatments. Luxury becomes the craftsmanship of the body itself. https://open.substack.com/pub/terrraincognita/p/your-designer-bag-is-giving-you-away?r=2zm2aj&utm_medium=ios

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There’s a part of the fashion world that’s moving in an increasingly conceptual direction. Brands like Balenciaga take remixing to the extreme, appropriating symbols from across the landscape of visual culture, not just fashion (think leather tote bags that look like IKEA, collabs with Erewhon and eBay). This design logic is in direct response to the logic of the internet, which frees and fragments information. https://open.substack.com/pub/terrraincognita/p/your-designer-bag-is-giving-you-away?r=2zm2aj&utm_medium=ios

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We’re seeing fashion go increasingly conceptual (Balenciaga is the master of this), which means status hinges not only on $ but also on “getting the joke” My essay LUXURY ACCELERATIONISM talks about this more in depth: https://open.substack.com/pub/terrraincognita/p/your-designer-bag-is-giving-you-away?r=2zm2aj&utm_medium=ios

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Fashion in 2025 is still mostly downstream of mid-2010s normcore

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the thing about me and @cliffordusher.eth is that we have 12-16 feral cats living in our backyard at all times

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has there been any large-scale effort to map people in the web3 space according to culture/values/ideology? as a newcomer to the space, I’d be fascinated to see what that social landscape looks like.

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My ❤️ @cliffordusher.eth has a freakishly smart brain

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synchronicities feel like finding spare change from god

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is this normal?

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everyone on here is so nice 🤍

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Capital needs a spiritual mission. Seeking profit for profit’s sake begins to erode value rather than incentivize it.

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Everything I say is financial, legal, and medical advice

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What's amazing about Kim is that she seems acutely self-aware of her status as a human-image-corporation hybrid in a process of constant self-performance and self-surveillance. Last year's Skims commercial is just one example:

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What was truly genius about the Kardashians is that they were the first to truly, successfully, yoke their image-distribution machine to one of capital accumulation. They built an ecosystem that converts self-performance into content, uses content to attract attention, and transforms attention into capital through their various business ventures, targeting different demographics

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As pioneers of the "Influencer" mode of production, the Kardashians algorithmically distributed themselves across platforms, spawning infinite copies of their image. "Each of these image-copies becomes a node in the Kardashian Image Complex, an ever-expanding web of representation that constitutes the family’s cultural presence. They exist somewhere between flesh and digital image, spread across multiple platforms and realities, their physical forms merely nodes in an endless circuit of technological reproduction."

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From the archives: KIM KARDASHIAN WAS NEVER HUMAN Kim Kardashian is not only a genius performance artist, but has been a cyborg from the very start. "Her body is a site of technological sublime, an interface between organic matter and technological intervention that yields a new, uncanny aesthetic category. She appears perfect, poreless. Her body seems digitally rendered, even in person." https://terrraincognita.substack.com/p/kim-kardashian-was-never-human

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dystopia should not be more scalable than utopia

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the best time for world building is Right Now

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