Today's links

• The whole economy pays the Amazon tax: You can't shop your way out of a monopoly.
• Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
• Object permanence: Math denial; Disney v young Tim Burton; Make v Sony; American oligarchs' wealth (2011); New Librarian of Congress; The Mauritanian; Bossware.
• Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.
• Recent appearances: Where I've been.
• Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
• Colophon: All the rest.

The whole economy pays the Amazon tax (permalink)

Selling on Amazon is a tough business. Sure, you can reach a lot of customers, but this comes at a very high price: the junk fees that Amazon extracts from its sellers amount to 50-60% of the price you pay.

That's a hell of a lot of money to hand over to a middleman, but it's not like vendors have much choice. The vast majority of America's affluent households are Prime subscribers (depending on how you define "affluent household" it's north of 90%). Prime households prepay for a year's worth of shipping, so it's only natural that they start their shopping on Amazon, where they've already paid the delivery costs. And because Amazon reliably meets or beats the prices you'd pay elsewhere, Prime subscribers who find a product on Amazon overwhelmingly stop their shopping at Amazon, too.

At this point you might be thinking a couple things:

I. Why not try to sell the non-affluent households, who are far less likely to subscribe to Prime? and

II. If Amazon has the lowest prices, what's the problem if everyone shops there?

The answers to these two questions are intimately related, as it happens.

Let's start with selling to non-affluent households – basically, the bottom 90% of American earners. The problem here is that everyone who isn't in that top 10% is pretty goddamned broke. It's not just decades of wage stagnation and hyperinflation in health, housing and education costs. It's also that every economic crisis of this century has resulted in a "K-shaped" recovery, in which "economic recovery" means that rich people are doing fine, while everyone else is worse off than they were before the crisis.

For decades, America papered over the K-shaped hole in its economy with debt. First it was credit cards. Then it was gimmicky mortgages – home equity lines of credit, second mortgages and reverse mortgages. Then it was payday lenders. Then it was "buy-now/pay-later" services that let you buy lunch at Chipotle on an installment plan that is nominally interest-free, but is designed to trap the unwary and unlucky with massive penalties if you miss a single payment.

This produced a median American who isn't just cash-poor – they are cash-negative, drowning in debt. And – with the exception of a brief Biden intercession – every presidential administration of the 21st century has enacted policies that favor creditors over debtors. Bankruptcy is harder to declare, and creditors can hit you with effectively unlimited penalties and confiscation of your property and wages once your cash is gone. Trump has erased all the small mercies of the Biden years – for example, he just forced 8,000,000 student borrowers back into repayment:

https://prospect.org/2025/12/16/gop-forcing-eight-million-student-loan-borrowers-into-repayment/

The average American worker has $955 saved for retirement:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/955-saved-for-retirement-millions-are-in-that-boat-150003868.html

There's plenty to worry about in a K-shaped economy – big things like "political instability" and "cultural chaos" (the fact that most people are broke has a lot to do with the surging fortunes of gambling platforms). But from a seller's perspective, the most important impact of the K-shaped economy is that only rich people buy stuff. Selling to the bottom 90% is a losing proposition because they're increasingly too broke to buy anything:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/12/16/k-shaped-recovery/#disenshittification-nations

Combine the fact that the richest 10% of Americans all start their shopping on Amazon with the fact that no one else can afford to buy anything, and it's easy to see why merchants would stay on Amazon, even when junk fees hit 60%.

Which brings us to the second question: if Amazon has the best prices, what's the problem with everyone shopping there?

The answer is to be found in the California Attorney General's price-fixing lawsuit against Amazon:

https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/attorney-general-bonta-exposes-amazon-price-fixing-scheme-driving-costs

The suit's been running for a long time, but the AG's office just celebrated a milestone – they've finished analyzing the internal memos they forced Amazon to disgorge through civil law's "discovery" process. These internal docs verify an open – and very dirty – secret about Amazon: the company uses its power to push up prices across the entire economy.

Here's how that works: sellers have to sell on Amazon, and that means they're losing $0.50-$0.60 on every dollar. The obvious way to handle this is by raising prices. But Amazon knows that its power comes from offering buyers prices that are as low or lower than the prices at all its competitors.

Amazon could ban its sellers from raising prices, but if they did that, they'd have to accept a smaller share of every sale (otherwise most of their sellers would go broke from selling at a loss on Amazon). So instead, Amazon imposes a business practice called "most favored nation" (MFN) pricing on its sellers.

Under an MFN arrangement, sellers are allowed to raise their prices on Amazon, but when they do, they must raise their prices everywhere else, too: at Walmart, at Target, at mom and pop indie stores, and at their own factory outlet store. Remember: Amazon doesn't have to have low prices to win, it just needs to have the same prices as everyone else. So long as prices rise throughout the economy, Amazon is fine, and it can continue to hike its junk fees on sellers, knowing that they will pay those fees by raising prices on Amazon and everywhere else their products are sold.

Like I say, this isn't really a secret. MFN terms were the basis of DC Attorney General Ken Racine's case against Amazon, five years ago:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/01/you-are-here/#prime-facie

Amazon's not the only company that does this. Under the Biden administration, the FTC brought a lawsuit against Pepsi because Pepsi and Walmart had rigged the market so that when Walmart raised its prices, Pepsi would force everyone else who carried Pepsi products to raise their prices even more. Walmart still had the lowest prices, but everything everywhere got more expensive, both at Walmart and everywhere else:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/secret-documents-show-pepsi-and-walmart

Trump's FTC dropped the Pepsi/Walmart case, and Amazon wriggled out of the DC case, but the California AG's office has a lot more resources than DC can muster. This is a timely reminder that America's antitrust laws can be enforced at the state level as well as by the federal authorities. Trump might be happy to let Amazon steal from Americans so long as Jeff Bezos neuters the Washington Post, writes a check for $1m to sit on the inaugural dais, and makes a garbage movie about Melania; but that doesn't stop California AG Rob Bonta from going after Amazon for ripping off Californians (and, in so doing, develop the evidentiary record and precedent that will allow every other state AG to go after Amazon).

The fact that Amazon's monopoly lets it control prices across the economy highlights the futility of trying to fix the Amazon problem by shopping elsewhere. A "boycott" isn't you shopping really hard, it's an organized movement with articulated demands, a theory of change, and a backbone of solidarity. "Conscious consumption" is a dead-end:

https://jacobin.com/2026/02/individual-boycotts-collective-action-ice/

Obviously, Californians have more to worry about than getting ripped off by Amazon (like getting murdered or kidnapped by ICE agents who want to send us all to a slave labor camp in El Salvador), but the billions that Amazon steals from American buyers and sellers are the source of the millions that Bezos uses to support Trump's fascist takeover of America. Without billionaires who would happily support concentration camps in their back yards if it means saving a dollar on their taxes, fascism would still be a fringe movement.

That's why, when we hold new Nuremberg trials for Trump and his collaborators, we should also unwind every merger that was approved under Trump:

https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/10/miller-in-the-dock/#denazification

The material support for Trump's ideology of hate, violence and terror comes from Trump's program of unregulated corporate banditry. A promise to claw back every stolen dime might cool the ardor of Trump's corporate supporters, and even if it doesn't, zeroing out their bank-balances after Trump is gone will be an important lesson for future would-be billionaire collaborators.

Hey look at this (permalink)

• One Year In: The Good and The (Mostly) Bad and Ugly of Trump Antitrust and Consumer Protection https://economicpopulist.substack.com/p/one-year-in-the-good-and-the-mostly

• 2025 State of Clutter Report https://yorba.co/state-of-clutter

• A.I. Isn't People https://www.todayintabs.com/p/a-i-isn-t-people

• Color Game https://dialed.gg/

• Paediatricians’ blood used to make new treatments for RSV and colds https://www.newscientist.com/article/2516079-paediatricians-blood-used-to-make-new-treatments-for-rsv-and-colds/

Object permanence (permalink)

#20yrsago Princeton prof explains watermarks’ failures https://blog.citp.princeton.edu/2006/02/24/how-watermarks-fail/

#20yrsago Palm Beach County voting machines generated 100K anomalies in 2004 https://web.archive.org/web/20060225172632/https://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/19421.html

#15yrsago Sharing the power in Tahrir Square https://www.flickr.com/photos/47421217@N08/5423296010/

#15yrsago 17-year-old Tim Burton’s rejection from Walt Disney Productions https://web.archive.org/web/20110226083118/http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/02/giant-zlig.html

#15yrsago Rare Alan Turing papers bought by Bletchley Park Trust https://web.archive.org/web/20110225145556/https://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/docview.rhtm/635610

#15yrsago Sony considered harmful to makers, innovators and hackers https://web.archive.org/web/20151013140820/http://makezine.com/2011/02/24/sonys-war-on-makers-hackers-and-innovators/

#15yrsago MPAA: record-breaking box-office year is proof that piracy is killing movies https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/02/piracy-once-again-fails-to-get-in-way-of-record-box-office/

#15yrsago Super-wealthy clothes horses and their sartorial habits https://web.archive.org/web/20110217045201/http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704409004576146420210142748.html

#15yrsago Visualizing the wealth of America’s super-rich ruling class https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph/

#10yrsago Obama’s new Librarian of Congress nominee is a rip-snortin’, copyfightin’, surveillance-hatin’ no-foolin’ LIBRARIAN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU8vXDoBB5s

#10yrsago Math denialism: crypto backdoors and DRM are the alternative medicine of computer science https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/24/the-fbi-wants-a-backdoor-only-it-can-use-but-wanting-it-doesnt-make-it-possible

#10yrsago Uganda’s corrupt president just stole another election, but he couldn’t steal the Internet https://web.archive.org/web/20160225095947/https://motherboard.vice.com/read/uganda-election-day-social-media-blackout-backlash-mobile-payments

#10yrsago Archbishop of St Louis says Girl Scout Cookies encourage sin https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/23/girl-scouts-cookies-missouri-catholics-st-louis-archbishop

#10yrsago After appointed city manager illegally jacked up prices, Flint paid the highest water rates in America https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/02/16/study-flint-paid-highest-rate-us-water/80461288/

#10yrsago Baidu browser isn’t just a surveillance tool, it’s a remarkably sloppy one https://citizenlab.ca/research/privacy-security-issues-baidu-browser/

#5yrsago Why Brits can no longer order signed copies of my books https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#brexit-books

#5yrsago Court rejects TSA qualified immunity https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#junk-touching

#5yrsago The Mauritanian https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#gwb-and-gitmo

#5yrsago EVs as distributed storage grid https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#mobile-batteries

#5yrsago Bossware and the shitty tech adoption curve https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

#1yrsago How an obscure advisory board lets utilities steal $50b/year from ratepayers https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/24/surfa/#mark-ellis

Upcoming appearances (permalink)

• Oslo (remote): Seminar og lansering av rapport om «enshittification», Feb 27
  https://www.forbrukerradet.no/siste-nytt/digital/seminar-og-lansering-av-rapport-om-enshittification/

• Victoria: 28th Annual Victoria International Privacy & Security Summit, Mar 3-5
  https://www.rebootcommunications.com/event/vipss2026/

• Victoria: Enshittification at Russell Books, Mar 4
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/cory-doctorow-is-coming-to-victoria-tickets-1982091125914

• Barcelona: Enshittification with Simona Levi/Xnet (Llibreria Finestres), Mar 20
  https://www.llibreriafinestres.com/evento/cory-doctorow/

• Berkeley: Bioneers keynote, Mar 27
  https://conference.bioneers.org/

• Montreal: Bronfman Lecture (McGill) Apr 10
  https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/artificial-intelligence-the-ultimate-disrupter-tickets-1982706623885

• Berlin: Re:publica, May 18-20
  https://re-publica.com/de/news/rp26-sprecher-cory-doctorow

• Berlin: Enshittification at Otherland Books, May 19
  https://www.otherland-berlin.de/de/event-details/cory-doctorow.html

• Hay-on-Wye: HowTheLightGetsIn, May 22-25
  https://howthelightgetsin.org/festivals/hay/big-ideas-2

Recent appearances (permalink)

• Making The Internet Suck Less (Thinking With Mitch Joel)
  https://www.sixpixels.com/podcast/archives/making-the-internet-suck-less-with-cory-doctorow-twmj-1024/

• Panopticon :3 (Trashfuture)
  https://www.patreon.com/posts/panopticon-3-150395435

• America's Enshittification is Canada's Opportunity (Do Not Pass Go)
  https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/americas-enshittification-is-canadas

• Everything Wrong With the Internet and How to Fix It, with Tim Wu (Ezra Klein)
  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-doctorow-wu.html

• How the Internet Got Worse (Masters in Business)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXlkuVhxMo

Latest books (permalink)

• "Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce

• "Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
  https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/

• "Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).

• "The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).

• "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).

• "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

• "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.

• "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

Upcoming books (permalink)

• "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026

• "Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026

• "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027

• "Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2027

• "The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027

Colophon (permalink)

Today's top sources:

Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America (1020 words today, 37190 total)

• "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.

• "The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.

• A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla

READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.

ISSN: 3066-764X

Bread crackling, trays clanking, and cutlery clinking as pieces of stainless steel silverware meet their ceramic counterparts. These are some of the sounds emanating from Baker Bleu, Cremorne. Designed by IF Architecture for Melbourne’s cult-favorite bakery, the flagship café transforms the daily ritual of buying a loaf into a spatial narrative about craft, process, and continual refinement. Here, dark-crusted sourdough and still-warm bagels are displayed like sculptural objects, set against an interior that is at once industrial and intimate—precise in its execution, deeply human in sensory experience.

The project marks an evolution for the Baker Bleu brand, shaped through an ongoing collaboration between architect and baker. That dialogue most directly influenced the spatial choreography. Bread moves from oven to trolley to customer with minimal interruption. If you arrive at the right moment, your loaf is handed over warm. Immediacy is preserved not just as a culinary value, it is also baked into the design as an architectural principle. The proximity between back-of-house production and front-of-house display was carefully compressed, ensuring that operational efficiency and experiential authenticity work in tandem.

From the outset, the bakery was conceived as a stage for bread-making. The contrast is deliberate: raw, gnarly loaves set against a monolithic, reductionist backdrop. A textured aluminium point-of-sale rises to meet a polished stainless-steel counter, punctuated by baked goods meticulously arranged. Even angled shelving and peg displays reinforce the ritual of handling––each loaf lifted, turned, and passed across the counter with care.

At the heart of the material narrative is recycled aluminium panelling, its surface subtly referencing the alveoli, which are the airy cavities formed during sourdough’s three-day fermentation process. The metaphor is both poetic and pragmatic. Composed of recycled content, the panelling reinforces Baker Bleu’s broader commitment to sustainability while embedding meaning directly into the walls and ceiling. The material wraps upward, lining the ceiling plane and softening acoustics, while exposed services retain an industrial frankness. In this way, the architecture quietly tells the story of how bread is made through texture, repetition, and atmosphere.

Against the restrained material palette, the graphic identity—developed by Studio Round—emerges with clarity and precision. The neutrality of terrazzo, aluminium, and galvanised steel creates a backdrop where branding can breathe. An integrated digital menu board is framed within the L-shaped joinery wall with a placement that is both functional and compositional.

Wayfinding is embedded rather than applied: a self-serve water station is highlighted by feature lighting and subtle graphic cues, reinforcing intuitive flow. The visual language feels neither ornamental nor overly branded. Instead, graphics operate as an extension of architecture—crisp, legible, and aligned with the bakery’s no-nonsense ethos.

The tenancy itself presented challenges due to an irregular footprint that required rationalisation. IF Architecture’s primary intervention, an L-shaped joinery wall, resolves the plan, clarifying circulation while preserving operational efficiency. Queues form naturally around a central American Oak display table, separating bread, coffee, and dine-in customers into subtly distinct paths. The result is circulation that feels intentional rather than transactional. Congestion is reduced and stress dissipates.

Where movement dominates the retail zone, stillness is carved into the seating alcove. Awning windows open onto the street activating the frontage and allowing the city to bleed into the café. Folded galvanised steel bench seating rests atop a structural I-beam base, while a curved banquette doubles as both espresso bar and café seating. Timber stools and American Oak tabletops soften the industrial palette at touch points to allow for warmth.

Discerning guests may draw the elusive parallel between architecture and bread-making that is embedded in the project’s philosophy. Both rely on repetition, refinement, and time to perfect. Here––where space, graphic detail, and baking converge––artisinal bread is refining the bakery typology while acting as both product and final flourish. It’s something warm to be touched, a texture translated into the walls, and a ritual embedded in the very structure of the space itself.

To learn more about all parties involved in the architecture and graphics, visit ifarchitecture.com.au and round.com.au, respectively.

Photography by Sharyn Cairns.

The grid: a never-ending expanse of geometric order and a concept our human brains love––born perhaps from a need to seek order, but we love a beautifully straight line. Dot Objects presents their newest shelving collection with evolution at its core, a clinical removal of all things unnecessary. With a focus on steel and wood, these materials can be appreciated even more through a purity of materiality and form finding harmony.

Helmed by designer Wiktoria Markiewicz, each piece of this collection is crafted with great care. Wooden elements are handmade in-house and steel components welded by skilled local craftsmen in Poland, keeping the production chain short, transparent, and as ethical as possible. The result is a collection that feels both personal and rigorous—industrial in clarity, intimate in execution––born from “a desire to create furniture that feels honest, minimal in form yet rich in material and detail.”

The Grid Shelving Unit anchors the steel series. Crafted from high-quality 2mm steel and available powder-coated in custom RAL colors—or in stainless steel—the piece is modest in size while maximizing useful surface area. Its rigid, minimal design is defined by clean lines and sharp angles, functioning simultaneously as storage and structure. Built to support up to nearly 200 pounds, it is as robust as it is restrained.

Throughout the day, its surface interacts subtly with light, shifting in tone and depth as shadows trace its planes. While the powder-coated finish offers durability and access to over 200 RAL colors, stainless steel variants introduce a more elemental expression—one that can quietly patinate over time, reinforcing the brand’s embrace of material honesty rather than resisting it.

Photo: Sanne Kaal

The Essential Wall Shelf continues this dialogue in a more vertical orientation, also crafted from 2mm steel and precision-cut for a clean, delicately proportioned, minimal profile. The two vertical elements conceal small i-hooks for hanging, and the horizontal ones are simply planes of metal, minimizing visual weight even while retaining its radiant hue.

Essentially, it is designed as a framework for personal belongings, shifting character depending on what it holds—mugs, books, small heirlooms—and allowing daily rituals to animate its structure. The shelf can be finished in any RAL tone, enabling it to either punctuate a wall as a bold accent or blend seamlessly into its surroundings. Its straightforward construction highlights the honesty of the material; nothing is ornamental, yet nothing feels lacking.

Photo: @well.homed

While steel articulates the grid in crisp planes, the wooden series softens it with grain and warmth. The Pine Grid Shelf celebrates the unique vertices of solid pine, crafted entirely in the Netherlands from high-quality 18mm polish pine multiplex plates. Each piece undergoes a meticulous, week-long hand-oiling process using pigmented linseed oil from Linolie, allowing the wood’s natural patterns to emerge while enhancing durability. Each made to order, they are finally finished in a lakpolish coating, ensuring long-lasting durability and easy maintenance. What’s more, it can be customized in More than 60 Linolie.dk satin oil colors as well as an alternative Mini version offering a more compact footprint.

Photo: @well.homed

The Mirror Shelf retains an ergonomic simplicity within relatively strict delineations of form while introducing reflection into the grid language. The compact composition comprises 2mm steel with glass for a subtle interplay of depth and light. Reflective surfaces catch and amplify their surroundings, quietly elevating whatever is placed upon them to turn keys, pens, and keepsakes into curated compositions. A solid palette of white, black, red, bare steel, and blue, does not detract from the form whatsoever. And a small lip at the front keeps things from falling off, creating an optical illusion in their stead.

Across both steel and wood, the philosophy remains consistent: clarity of form, integrity of material, and production rooted in craft. As Markiewicz notes, “Dot Objects grew from a personal search for furniture that truly resonated with my aesthetics and values. I believe artisan-quality design should be both accessible and customizable.”

Born from father-daughter collaboration and sustained by local partnerships, each object carries that sense of shared authorship—quiet, considered, and built to last.

To learn more about the new shelving available from Dot Objects, visit dotobjects.store or follow along for more updates on Instagram.

Photography courtesy of Dot Objects.

There are strong links between Japan and the Nordic region (a grouping of countries that includes much more than just Scandinavia). That’s especially true when it comes to sauna culture. Though the word is Finnish, translating as bathouse, the concept of pumping steam through enclosures firmly roots in Neolithic Greenland and Newfoundland. It’s been an integral part of daily life across these, especially frigid, Northern reaches for eons.

Akari Greenpoint

Akari Greenpoint

In Japan, sentō and onsen facilities have been around since the 1200s. While the former is generally defined as a communal bathhouse, the latter is specified as geothermal hot springs that are encircled by traditional inns.

Akari Greenpoint

Gaining popularity as an alternative, far less harmful, type of third place, saunas and other types of bathhouses have cropped up across bustling metropolises like London and New York. While many tout unique amenities—some more gimmicky than others—few of these highly publicized venues hold true to the Japanese traditions mentioned before.

Akari Greenpoint

Akari Greenpoint

Cue Akari, two immersive saunas in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Brooklyn that are as comprehensive as they are unassuming. There’s no need for flashy light shows or poolside DJ-sets at these quaint, smartly outfitted wellness spaces. Comprising dry saunas, cold plunges, and quiet relaxation areas, both membership—non reservation—based venues champion the idea that New Yorkers should slow down more often and go to the bathhouse in order to reset rather than party. While the entirely renovated Williamsburg location features an incredibly rare outdoor cold plunge pool, the Greenpoint one was imagined in partnership with celebrated thermal consultant Kiel Moe.

Akari Greenpoint

Akari Greenpoint

International architecture firm Stroop Design staged the latter with intentional detailing. The aim was not to overpower the restorative act of saunaing with bold finishes or sculptural elements but to succinctly facilitate the experience with a consistent design vocabulary. Many of these accents—2 by 2 inch light green tiles—harken back to traditional sentōs. Tabletops laminated in washi paper by master craftsperson Hanato Watar were repurposed as wall art throughout.

Akari Greenpoint

Akari Greenpoint

Sparingly placed furnishings and fixtures are modestly modern, solidly made but light, reflecting the brand’s name Akari, which translates as light in Japanese. The idea here is to make saunaing a daily ritual—one that has both physical and mental benefits—and remove any of the social expectation or architectural fanfare that might make it feel like a chore.

Akari Greenpoint

Akari Williamsburg

Akari Williamsburg

Akari Williamsburg

Akari Williamsburg

Akari Williamsburg

Akari Williamsburg

Akari Williamsburg

Akari Williamsburg

Akari Williamsburg

Akari Williamsburg

Akari Williamsburg

Akari Williamsburg

Akari Williamsburg

To learn more about the creative synergy between Akari Sauna and Stroop Design, visit akarisauna.com and stroop.design.

Photography by Crooked Letter, Yannis Malevitis, Slope Agency, Shayna Olsan, Jess Tran.

Tanzende Flämmchen, the symphony of physics.

What can soundwaves teach us about the universe? Join Helen Czerski as she sits down with an army of candles and a giant speaker to discover just how unique and intricate each sound we hear is.

(Direktlink)

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This is a top ten Calgacus joke.