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Liana Satenstein's avatar

Shove that Miami fruit box down my damn GULLET!!!!

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Ingrid's avatar

I like passerby & am a subscriber - but a gift guide without prices is not much of a guide? Or is the intention to write to/for/ the most monied and aloof readers? There's no shortage of lists online of pretty things online; it would be nice to have things grounded in (sorry to say) reality a little bit. Maybe this was done purposely - there's a thoughtful note about not buying from temu/shein (nice, duh), and a list of charities (great), and then a parade of items divorced from the context of money, where there's some kind of extractive shopify link for readers to click to get even this basic bit of info to see if it has any relevance in their real lives at all. Might as well write a gift guide of just ideas and types of things, no links to anything at all (would read!).

Maybe I'm just a bit burnt out on gift guides with absurdly high-ticket items or feeling hot under the collar of my own capitalist life in which The Row is simply a place in a spreadsheet. The funny thing about these expensive 'fair trade' items is that, if only the boss-class can afford to buy them, someone is getting squeezed somewhere - likely the creative officinas and wage slaves who read substack on their breaks. I'm not trying to fizz out in a 'no ethical consumption' type of place, I swear. My holiday will include cards, carts, and carbon footprints. But logging on to this website and seeing the let-them-eat-cake parade makes me feel sick sometimes, and I didn't come to PB for that.

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