Something For the Weekend #54
Better Off Dead, the Bilt card, and Imogene + Willie: selections from the weird and wonderful for the week ending July 3, 2026
Welcome, fellow DAUs!
This week I found myself in the middle of a massive draft, while also revisiting the inaugural Daily Active User article, Hi, My Name Is Benji, and I’m a Daily Active User, written February 7, 2025. The aforementioned draft is partly inspired by a book I’m reading called Against The Machine, which I’m liking, but also wincing through as there’s much with which I vehemently disagree. Yet I’m still getting value from it—isn’t that the sign of one’s reading going well?
Re-looking at that original post from the lens of a year-plus of Light Phone usage and increasingly diminished screen time, it’s been eye-opening to see what it got right—but also what it was missing. It’s not so much that I’m re-litigating any of the arguments, but that some of them are stronger now, while there are also bits that I missed and could not have predicted at the time. But then, as Niels Bohr said, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.”
I’m going to try to polish it off on Friday and get it to you for next week, but I can’t promise anything. I have a couple of other pieces in the works that I’m keen to share.
Have an amazing weekend.
Loving your work,
Benji.
“The modern world shall not be punished. It is the punishment.”
— Nicolás Gómez Dávila
Top 5 this week from the Daily Active User:
One of my all-time favorite movies from the 1980s—one that I have memorized, and was happy to see my kid show their friends on movie night, is Better Off Dead, directed by Savage Steve Holland and starring John Cusack. This film is utter madness, with an epic soundtrack. It totally holds up. There’s never a time that I don’t want to watch it, and when I do, I always laugh out loud. It was followed up by One Crazy Summer, which was fun (including some superb backing band work behind a young Demi Moore), but it doesn’t quite match the lunacy that goes on in Better Off Dead, which also features an incredible comic performance by David Ogden Stiers as Cusack’s father. It’s a wondrous coming-of-age movie with some fantastic one-liners. So if it’s been a while, strap in and get ready, because it’s better than you remember. And if it’s your first time, you’re in for a ride. Enjoy.
I’ve been using the Bilt card since it was first released, and whether you’re a renter or a homeowner, getting that payment in miles every month can be a game-changer for travel booking, since for most of us rent or a mortgage is the biggest recurring expense. This credit card means you can collect some of the benefits (helping your credit rating) and also get to travel on what, for many, will always be a fixed cost. The way they do it is quite ingenious as well: you’re not actually paying your rent on your credit card; they’re extracting the miles via banking transactions that flash into and out of your credit card balance.
Then, if you add other credit cards to the system and use them regularly, the miles really do add up. One of the greatest advantages is that an airline or hotel chain will occasionally double the conversion of your Bilt points into actual miles you can use, and this played a big part in our getting to Japan this year.
Some of what they do is a little confusing and not for me. For example, I have no idea how the cash rewards portion versus the miles actually works, but the raw benefit of just racking up travel points over the year seems to outweigh all others.
I don’t get sentimental about credit card companies or banks, but it was interesting that every time we used the card while traveling, I couldn’t help but note that daily essential purchases, alongside monthly utilities, rent, etc., all made on this one card, helped us to eat soba next to a beautiful canal in Kyoto. Whereas charges would’ve just processed regularly as a rent or mortgage payment, which, while just as important, wasn’t giving the extra value. So I’m a fan.
I discovered the divine Imogene + Willie through a search for USA-made clothing some years back, and have treated myself to a few of their beautifully made items since then. Even in the hardest times, I always wanted to pay more for things that lasted, rather than just buy more less-expensive things. Led by my love of older Taylor Stitch clothing, I went on the hunt for great home-made clothes. Taylor Stitch has, rather sadly, ceased offering much of its USA-made and crowd-funded clothing, which were my staples for a long time. Most of it is now imported—still nicely made, but lacking in definition. By contrast, Imogene + Willie seems to be having fun making great, long-lasting, high-quality clothes here in the U.S. I wear things for a long time and try and make them last as long as I can, no matter where they’re from. So it’s not often that I buy new things, but when I do it’s with that in mind—the long haul—and this Nashville-based team has made some additions that will be with me for a good while to come.
Mokkiri-zake:
Zeke Faux’s great book, Number Go Up, memorably describes Tether as having a business model that is “practically quilted out of red flags,” - The U.S. is still weaponizing dollars. Just not against Iran - programmablemutter.com - Henry Farrell
The biggest trend of 2026 isn’t AI chatbots, it’s IRL experiences. - World Cup Experience - profgmedia.com - Scott Galloway
America is a flexible society that is rigid when it comes to religion; Japan is the opposite, a rigid society with a surprising flexibility when it comes to faith. - What defines Japan’s national identity? - noahpinion.blog - Hiroko Yoda
like the original Luddites, the opposition is usually not a blanket rejection of the technology itself. It’s focused on the politics of that technology: How it’s made, who it benefits, and who it harms. - Understanding the Luddites in the age of AI - bloodinthemachine.com - Brian Merchant
His study is the first to look specifically at corporate twaddle, as opposed to the drivel spouted by, say, New Age gurus and the like. It confirms that being taken in by it is linked with lower levels of analytical thinking and poorer work-related decision making.This supports my long-held view that the fewer people on the payroll who admire and spread bullshit the better. But how to spot them? Littrell’s paper offers an answer. It discusses a tool he has built and tested called the Corporate Bullshit Receptivity Scale that measures how susceptible people are to corporate claptrap by getting them to do things like rate various levels of waffle. - Finally, a use for corporate bullshit - Financial Times - Pilita Clark
With this rise in temperature — and the aging of the European population — has come a rise in preventable death. Estimates of heat-related mortality vary, but the most commonly cited number is 175,000 annually across the entire region. Given that Europe has a population of about 745 million, this is a death rate of about 23.5 per 100,000 people per year. For comparison, the U.S. death rate from firearms is about 13.7 per 100,000.So the death rate from heat in Europe is almost twice the death rate from guns in America. If you think guns are an emergency in the U.S., you should think that heat in Europe is an even bigger emergency.
Most of this death is preventable. The technology that prevents it is air conditioning. Barreca et al. (2016) find that heat deaths in America declined by about 75% after 1960, and that “the diffusion of residential air conditioning explains essentially the entire decline in hot day–related fatalities”. Essentially, wherever AC gets rolled out, heat-related death plunges. Taking Barreca’s estimate and applying it to Europe suggests that as many as 100,000 European lives — 0.013% of the population — could be saved every year if the 80% of European households who don’t have AC were to get it - Europe’s resistance to AC is driving it insane - Noah Smith
Great plug for Imogene and Willie - feel the same!