The performance of rigor
Dishing what you couldn’t possibly take
You lean forward, thumbs engaged, ready to fire off a series of texts to dissect his position with surgical precision. "Can you name one policy idea that can improve this?" you ask, anticipating the crumbling of his weak argument. You feel the rush of intellectual victory, the satisfaction of exposing the unsound basis of their argument.
You did it again. You buried him deep enough into the ground that surrender was the only way to make you stop. But in that, you unearth a similarly shaky foundation within yourself. You couldn’t possibly provide the types of explanations you demand of him.
You've found meaning being someone who asks hard questions. You are comfortable sitting in uncertainty, challenging assumptions, refusing to accept superficial beliefs. You are, by nature, a skeptic. But the world needs more skeptics, more critics, more crusaders in the fight of moral honesty.
The Abundance Boys have perfected this move — twice stumping their adversaries with the same devastating question about measuring success. You can't stop thinking about how perfectly it surfaces the intellectual inconsistency for which you’ve volunteered to defend with pride. The question works because it's upstream of debate itself. If you can't agree on what success looks like, how can you possibly discuss how to get there? It's brilliant. It's effective. And you've weaponized it.
But deep down, you know you couldn't survive the reverse treatment, were someone bold enough to turn those same questions on you. Or rather, were you bold enough to let someone ask you.
When pressed on your own beliefs, you retreat to the same hollow defenses you've spent years tearing apart: "Two things can be true." “We’ve completely forgotten nuance.” You deploy complexity as a shield while demanding crystal clarity from everyone else.
The personal stakes are higher than you want to admit. Your identity is wrapped up in being the rational one, the one who doesn’t get caught up in the bullshit. But there's something masturbatory about your perpetual questioning — a way of feeling intellectually superior without ever having to be wrong about anything specific. You've found a way to be right by never really taking a position.
Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
The subtitle of this book is “Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts” which is probably the most self-helpy part of the book. I don’t love the format, 28 lessons in 28 days, but I get it. That said, this book contains the best productivity advice I’ve read in years. Mostly, it’s advice on how to change your relationship with that word (productivity), but sprinkled in are seriously good nuggets that I’ve already implemented or plan to revisit. —Andrew
Vanity Fair’s Heyday, by Bryan Burrough
I moved to New York because I wanted to work in magazines. (I’m not sure anyone does this anymore, namely because there aren’t that many magazines left to work for.) While I was lucky enough to spend more than a decade writing and editing at Sports Illustrated, the one title that I really wanted to write for was Vanity Fair. I’m on the Libby waitlist for former Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter’s new memoir. While I wait, this story in the Yale Review from one of Carter’s star writers, Bryan Burrough, helped tide me over. It’s full of nostalgic anecdotes about the golden era of magazines. Most importantly, he brings receipts, revealing that he was making $498,141 to write THREE stories a year. Those were the days indeed. — Justin
“Gimme A Break” A Baker Vid by Fel
There’s just something about a Baker skate video. The rawness, the punk attitude. As the brand has evolved from Andrew Reynolds and Jim Greco, the purity of its spirit remains intact. Tristan Funkhouser might be one of my favorite skaters right now. —Justin
Song of the summer 2025
A roughly three-hour playlist I made of songs from 2025, but also 1966, 1976, 2006, and all the years between. Play it in order to get into the summer mood — or play it on shuffle, on a walk, in the car, or on a sexy summer trip. You’ll notice when your personal song of the summer comes on — it’s on there, just for you. —Andrew
The Abundance Boys spark fear into the eyes of their adversaries