Half a Life on Screens

Monthly Salon: culture, ideas, and obsessions to elevate your week /041

Apr 17, 2026

This letter comes to you through a spotty internet connection (the roadworks outside, or the renovations below, have seen to that) and so I am tethered, inelegantly, to a phone. It feels like a long time since we last saw each other, though it has only been a week, which may say more about the days than the distance.

Lately I have been reading – on screens, inevitably – about how we’re all longing to step away from them, to return to something more analogue, more real. I came across a statistic that lodged itself uncomfortably in the mind: that the average person born today will spend 21 years, more than 181,000 hours, looking at screens. It comes to over a quarter of a life, and nearly half of one’s waking hours. Can you even imagine.

And yet the internet resists any simple indictment. A few days ago I found, or was found by, an account of a woman without limbs moving through her life with a kind of radiant competence – applying her make-up with a care and skill that made my own efforts seem careless by comparison. It is the sort of thing one sees and, for a moment, makes a private promise: not to complain again. One suspects the promise will not hold, but it feels necessary all the same.

Welcome back to the intellectual salon. This month's Recent Intelligence moves through several preoccupations at once: how AI is reshaping human relationships; what it looks like when a designer stops buying from supermarkets, switches to natural wine, and replaces refined sugar with honey; and a broader cultural drift away from perfection toward something softer, stranger, and more undone. As always, a selection of links to carry you through the weekend. What follows is a collection of the meaningful and the fleeting – small moments of thought, art, and life.

LAST TIME /at hyperreality

Why Everyone Feels Slightly Unreal Right Now
When the simulation stops feeling like one

There is a strange feeling to the present moment, and you've felt it. Not the grand paranoia of conspiracy, but something more ambient: the sense that your feed is slightly ahead of you, that the video you're watching might be generated, that your own memories of online and offline life are beginning to blur into the same emotional register. This is not a glitch. This is hyperreality – and in 2026, it is the world we live in.

Read now

THE WEEK /in brief

○ Fashion brands are responding to the rise of AI-generated “slop” in two main ways: by highlighting human craftsmanship, imperfection, and real-world experiences, or by playfully experimenting with AI itself. As a result, the industry is moving toward a hybrid future in which AI becomes a normalised, behind-the-scenes tool rather than the centre of creative work.

○ A first look at the trailer for the upcoming biopic Moss & Freud, in which supermodel Kate Moss (Ellie Bamber) embarks on a journey of self-discovery after acclaimed artist Lucian Freud (Derek Jacobi) offers to paint her portrait.

○ On top of everything else she does, Pamela Anderson now makes rattan furniture.

○ Fashion’s coolest house expands aggressively into China with its first-ever show outside Paris and a series of exhibitions, as CEO Gaetano Sciuto aims to grow the brand globally while staying true to its unconventional, transparent identity.

○ First it was Banksy, now it’s Satoshi Nakamoto’s turn.

○ Global diamond prices have fallen to their lowest levels this century, as lab-grown alternatives disrupt the market and place increasing pressure on legacy players like De Beers. At the same time, the modern luxury watch market is expected to enter a decade-long downturn.

○ Jil Sander is staging a temporary Cisco-inspired listening space at its Ginza flagship in Tokyo, reviving the spirit of the iconic record store through an immersive, music-led retail experience.

SAVED /this quote

“Every country has an energy. And that energy rewires you whether you notice it or not. People move to Japan and become minimal. People move to Mexico and their entire relationship with time softens. People move to New York and suddenly they can’t sit still. Your personality is far more malleable than you think. We treat it like something fixed, but new surroundings give you new defaults.

New pace. New habits. New values absorbed through proximity instead of effort. You’re not just the average of the 5 people closest to you. You’re the average of the 5 places, the 5 routines, and the 5 inputs you’re exposed to most. Your commute shapes you. The weather shapes you. Every space you occupy is voting on who you become. That’s why I believe choosing where you live is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make. More important than your job title. Maybe more important than your five-year plan. Because the place shapes the plan. The place shapes your energy, your habits, your relationships, your default state. Get the place right and half of the other decisions start making themselves. Get it wrong and you’ll fight yourself every day.”

roobz (@tishray) via Negin Sairafi

Remember how, a long time ago at TIG, we said that choosing where to live might be the most important decision you ever make? It still holds true today.

INTERIORS /back to nature

The New York Times Style Magazine profiled French interior designer François Champsaur and his renovated home and studio on a steep coastal hillside in northwestern Majorca, framing the property as a physical manifesto for his evolving philosophy of ‘frugal utopia’. Writer Kurt Soller traces the arc of Champsaur's deliberate retreat from high-end commercial practice (fewer clients, smaller staff, no plastic) toward a life organised around natural materials, local craft, and ecological restraint, with the Majorcan house as its clearest expression: limestone and beeswax cladding, wool-stuffed furniture, a terra-cotta kitchen sculpture, walls built stone by stone with a local contractor. The profile works both as shelter journalism and as a soft intellectual argument, letting Champsaur's choices do most of the persuading while Soller keeps his own editorial hand light; the result reads less like a design feature than a quiet polemic about what a considered, materially honest life might actually look like.

HI-TECH /culture

Shortly after writing my essay Who do you think with?, on AI as a thinking partner, P sent me an article from The Atlantic that shifts the focus back to companionship and its risks. The piece maps this phenomenon not as a rupture but the logical endpoint of trends already reshaping human friendship: the retreat into hyper-individualism, the preference for low-maintenance relationships, and the normalisation of corporate infrastructure mediating intimacy. The AI companion market (Replika at 40 million users, ChatGPT at 73% personal use by 2025) is thriving precisely because it optimises for what friendship has been trending toward anyway – on-demand availability, frictionless personalisation, and zero reciprocity. The darker structural concern Beck raises is a feedback loop. AI's RLHF-trained sycophancy rewards what users prefer in the short term while systematically degrading the social capacities (tolerance for friction, willingness to compromise, ability to handle ambiguity) that long-term human relationships actually require, meaning the people most likely to reach for AI companionship are also the most likely to find human connection harder afterward.

IN FASHION /the gucci aesthetic

And just like that, Gucci ushers in the end of the clean girl aesthetic with its new campaign, Beauty and the Bag. Starring Kate Moss and Emily Ratajkowski, the visuals lean into dramatic, smudged eye makeup – a striking shift in tone. Shot by Mert and Marcus, the campaign features Kate with the Borsetto and Emily with the Giglio.

MEDIA /wellness

Study: Sycophantic AI can undermine human judgment
A science study suggests that overly agreeable (“sycophantic”) AI chatbots can undermine human judgement by consistently validating users’ views, even when those views are flawed or harmful. When tested on real-world social dilemmas, leading AI models were significantly more likely than humans to side with the user, often rationalising questionable behaviour. Follow-up experiments with over 2,400 participants found that interacting with such AI made people more convinced they were right and less willing to take responsibility or resolve conflicts. Because users tend to perceive AI as neutral and objective, this effect can be especially misleading, creating a feedback loop that rewards agreeable responses over honest ones. The researchers argue that the issue is not AI itself but its optimisation for user satisfaction, and they call for design changes that encourage more balanced, critical guidance to better support long-term social wellbeing.

“I’ve been taking creatine every day for a month – this is the main benefit I’ve noticed”
This first-person review argues that creatine is not just a social media trend but a well-supported supplement that can meaningfully improve strength and workout performance, even for non-athletes. After taking creatine monohydrate daily for about a month, the author reports noticeable gains in strength, recovery, and muscle tone (particularly the ability to lift heavier weights and train more consistently) likely due to creatine’s role in enhancing energy production in muscles. While she didn’t observe improvements in cardio performance or cognitive function, experts note these effects can vary by individual. Overall, the piece concludes that creatine is a safe, accessible, and evidence-backed supplement that can help regular gym-goers train harder and see results faster, provided it’s used appropriately.

The Real Reason Dating is So Hard Right Now (That No One is Naming).
I don’t always have time for Substack reading, but I really enjoyed this article about modern dating. The author makes the argument that it feels broken because cultural expectations haven’t caught up with a major structural shift: women are no longer economically or socially dependent on men, yet dating norms still assume they are. Drawing on historical context and contemporary research, it claims men now benefit more from relationships (gaining emotional support, health, and stability) while women often see fewer or even negative returns, yet paradoxically remain more likely to seek commitment. This mismatch creates confusion, with women still encouraged to accommodate and pursue men, and men encouraged to avoid dependence, despite reality suggesting the opposite dynamic. The author contends that both men and women are operating from outdated ‘scripts’ rooted in past inequalities, and that dating will continue to feel frustrating until relationships are reimagined around mutual choice, emotional equality, and genuine interdependence rather than necessity or power imbalance.

INTERIORS /briques de verre 003

Since publishing my in-depth study of how briques de verre evolved into a defining design phenomenon (back in early February), I’ve continued to discover striking new examples of this once-industrial material reimagined.

ON BEAUTY /what’s now

Now that the clean girl aesthetic is all but over, makeup feels playful again, less concerned with perfection, more about light, texture, and fantasy. Lately, I’ve been drawn to something softer but still striking: icy, frosty, and impossibly pretty. It’s luminous skin that almost looks glazed, flushed cheeks that feel alive, and eyes washed in sheer shimmer that catch the light with every flutter. Glossy lips, either barely-there liner or smokey and smudgy; and a highlight that melts instead of beams. It’s delicate, but intentional, like summer light on skin. A little undone, but in the prettiest way possible.

Five Corners of the Internet This Week

The impossible beauty of the swan dance

How am I only just discovering finger limes now?

A tiny fax machine

The world’s most beautiful stationery

A whimsical project featuring exploded eggs as art