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Optimization mindset is pernicious, you see it carrying over to things like "am I having the absolute peak experience (a la the Jake Lacy character in The White Lotus), or taking in as much money as I possibly can at this particular point in time (e.g. feeling the need to rent out your spare room on AirBnB to make that extra money, not because you actually need it)"? I also enjoy how you set up the Wirecutter as the enemy, fun stuff. I can't get quite as whimsical with the clothes as you, but I love that you're out there pushing that envelope, living your own ecstatic truth and bringing us back dispatches from the edge of culture.

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Great points re White Lotus Jake Lacy mindset and the slippery slope from an optimization fetish into mania and greed!

And there’s always gonna be someone more or less whimsical, the hope is to keep your own personal relationship to whimsy ALIVE ! 😃

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Spyplane, Spyplane but how do you square the quantifiable traits of many GORPY items and the functions they complete relative to the “magical mindset” of other clothes? Isn’t the certain Je ne sais quoi of say a Barbour rain coat that it actually is a rain coat compared to the many runners up that just look like they can handle some rain?

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It’s true, gorp has its own special relationship to performance and utility, and I love your Barbour example, well put — I guess at a certain point with a stylish rain shell, you know it’s (e.g.) gore tex and waterproof and so your mind can “wander” to more magical considerations — I also like how with gorp the *aesthetics* of utility can (in a special, magical, paradoxically non-utilitarian way) shine, i.e. the fact that it is ostensibly a utilitarian garment means you can get away with wearing something that looks beautifully crazy / weird … this connects why I personally tend to prefer “ungainly” arc to “sleek”veilance … 😃

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