A list of intriguing things

One: ‘Succession’ gave us ‘stealth wealth’ fashion—very rich people dressed in very boring clothes—because they don’t need to try. Taking this silliness to its logical extreme: ‘Poverty aesthetic’—embraced by the likes of Johnny Depp and Taylor Swift. This is about spending obscene amounts of money to wear ‘poor people’ clothes—made by brands with silly names like Magnolia Pearl. Of course, New York Times (splainer gift link) has a profile (fawning defence) of the designer. Our view: if wealthy folks want to spend their money on very ugly clothes… well, god bless them. See: lead image and the one below:

PS: Everything in fashion is recycled—including terrible ideas. In 2000, John Galliano designed a collection based on homeless people—which was even worse:

But that didn’t stop the Japanese brand N.Hoolywood doing the exact same thing in 2017.

Two: Robots are already taking over the grunt work in fast food kitchens—at least in the US. Chipotle unveiled its prep robot—Autocado: “A robot that can halve, peel, and core a mountain of avocados with minimal human assistance.” It can help whip up a huge batch of guacamole in less than an hour. 

Autocado’s cousin Chippy already helps deep fry and season chips with salt and lime—but not perfectly. To avoid the ‘machine made’ taste, Chipotle execs “trained Chippy extensively to ensure… subtle variations in flavour that our guests expect.” Chippy, in turn, is an adaptation of the original hamburger-cooking robot arm Flippy—who is the coolest of them all, as you can see below.

Three: Why spend hours browsing aimlessly on Instagram, when you could be hanging out at The Public Domain Review. The website surfaces old stuff—artwork, archaic books, maps, hand-written journals, as well as early films and audio recordings and photographs—and places them in a modern context. It is brimming with things that are silly, delightful and just plain odd. It could be an essay tracing the wondrous history of board games—or the appearance of space aliens/UFOs in Japanese folklore and paintings (see below). There’s something for everyone here. The Outline has more on the site.