[SIC] 101: Chaos Theory

A New Look for [SIC]

Ok, everybody. Welcome to the first edition of the [SIC] newsletter to be send via Substack, with the hope that it’s easier to read, return to and share (and eventually that I can make it look nicer, too). I’ll spare you any further preamble, except to say I’d especially love your feedback on this new approach to sending, and that of course I’m grateful to everyone who contributed this week. Thanks Ricky, Carmela, Adam and Jaime. And a special shout out to Straith and Ko, whom I accidentally neglected to credit in my intro last week.

I’m talking this week on IG Live with Ana Andjelic, whose newsletter The Sociology of Business has become an indispensable resource of late. It’s live at 4p ET on 13th August (today), and will be in the feed on my IG @dietznutz thereafter.

Start here (this week’s AI x VR rabbit hole):

VoicesinAI.com and Voicesofvr.com are full of interviews about the present and future states of computer immersion. Go deep. 

Vaccine-nation:

I found Peter Zeihan’s clear-eyed explanation of the challenges with getting a Covid vaccine to market really interesting. (Zeihan.com) 

Teach thyself:

RISD CE Online is 110+ online courses for adults and teens, which can be taken from anywhere in the world at any time.

Invent a holiday: 

Publishers are testing their own versions of prime day (Digiday)

Fashion These Days: 

From Ricky Engelberg: “Great Read” [The NY Times Magazine cover story on sweatpants forever] 

Gentle Monster’s eyewear experiments are wild (Hypebeast)

“Worn by Many but Owned by None”: Ganni and Levi’s Launch a Rental Denim Collaboration (Vogue Business) 

Noah’s released a commonsense guide on doing laundry more sustainably and smarter (IG) 

Via Content Commerce Insider: Louis Vuitton artistic director Virgil Abloh explaining the brand’s latest show to WWD.  Key Quote: “The collection is now designed with the idea of it being broadcast on hundreds of thousands of screens, so that’s having an effect on the clothes. I look at my studio as a mix between Disney and an art-making studio.”

Putting a futuristic spin on traditional, tribal references was one of stylist Zerina Akers' approaches when creating the looks for Beyoncé's visual album Black Is King, which celebrates black ancestry and the African diaspora. (Dezeen)

Marketing Corner: 

Via Beats & Bytes:Megan Thee Stallion on Being the New Face of Revlon (Allure) s/o to Ruba! 

From Carmela Luzzi: “I especially like Credit Card Wars & The Battle For Long-Term Loyalty as this goes into how banks/credit cards are shifting to different messaging and how they are working with brands to do it (I.e. Amex & NBA)” (DMA Insight) 

Why every brand now needs to behave like a health and wellness brand (Fast Company)

From Adam Romero: Not mind bending, but dope to see and have a smile at: You can stay at a big ole (former) Blockbuster store by Airbnb’ing it…   (CNN) 

And from Jaime Silano: “thought this was cool - I love Genius, I love how small and lean of a company they are (100 ish employees) and how hyper-aware they are of their super nerd audiences/how they do brand partnerships. More on this one here” (Instagram) 

Related: ‘Dying to work': With A-list talent sitting at home, publishers eye video collaboration opportunities with them. Key Quote: “The talent is dying to work, they’ll work below their normal rates and they need ways to express themselves” (Digiday)

For instance: The RZA made a new jingle for Good Humor ice cream trucks b/c the old one was racist. (Complex)

Broadcasting:

Shark Week Attracts a Younger, Diverse Audience. Now, Discovery Is Aggressively Trying to Keep Them (Variety) 

Hence, they made Shark Week collaboration tees with BAIT (Hypebeast)

Read These: 

Phoebe Bridger’s top ten desert island books, courtesy of one of my fave bookstores, One Grand.

Ana Andeljic’s first reading list had everything, and now her second one has even more (including a very flattering [SIC] shout out) (anjelicaaa) 

The Oral History of the Weekly World News (Mental Floss) 

Listen to this: 

Via Public Announcement: What Was College Rock? 1986-1990. A deep playlist exploring the foundational "alternative" music of the mid to late '80s, when it was more likely to be called "college rock" or "postmodern." (Spotify)

The Future Is In New England: 

New Hampshire’s got flying cars now. (Axios)

Corollary: One Zero’s hundred-year history of the self-driving car (Medium) 

And also in the Metaverse:

Via RLab: Looooong interview with Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney about the future of the metaverse. Key Quote: "A lot of the big game companies and even many of the ecosystem companies have come to the realization that they’re never going to be the one monopoly that dominates the whole thing. And so it’s in everybody’s interest to really interconnect and standardize over time." (Medium) 

Watch The Weeknd’s Tiktok concert (on Youtube, ironically)

More AR: 

Netflix’s Emmy campaign is live in AR (Deadline) 

Artist Olafur Eliasson has developed an augmented reality app that allows children to digitally transplant their faces onto their environment to help give them a voice in discussions about the climate crisis. (Dezeen)

Related, via AiA: Andrew Fabricant, chief operating officer at Gagosian Gallery: “Virtual exhibitions are a joke . . . like a really early version of Grand Theft Auto without the thrills.” (Barrons)

Journalistic Gymnastics: 

Via Protocol: Can killing cookies save journalism? (Wired) 

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark on the Digiday pod, explaining why he’s donating millions to journalism

“Collaboration is the future of journalism” (Nieman Lab)

Stuff to look at: 

I’m pretty resolutely non-metaphysical in general, but this book of Tarot illustrations over time looks really interesting, visually. (Colossal) 

VICE Alum Daniel Arnold’s photos in A Season of Grief and Release: 5 Months of the Virus in New York City, a photo essay (NYT) 

Simpsons level:  via Maekan: Wow, Nike basically predicted the future with their Y2K Jogger spot. (Including living in sweats) (YouTube) 

Beck teamed up  with NASA for his new visual album Hyperspace. (Pitchfork)

Geo-Fertility Politics

Via Public Announcement: There’s a 'Jaw-dropping' global crash in children being born. Key quote: “We will go from the period where it's a choice to open borders, or not, to frank competition for migrants, as there won't be enough.” (BBC) 

Another Brick in the Wall: 

Via 1440: New process converts red pigment in bricks into plastic that conducts electricity, allowing common bricks to be used as energy storage devices (The Conversation)

Binge and Purge:

According to OneZero, Disney+ and HBO Max Want to Kill Binge Watching Both have decided bingeing isn’t good for business (Medium)

NYT on IG Reels: No Like. 

The Information’s got a great analysis of why Reels is gonna have a hard time. 

Apropos, via Protocol: Tiktok and the sorting hat (Eugene Wei). The Algo is everything. 

Trump Tiktok takedown artist Sarah Cooper  just landed a Netflix deal, directed by Natasha Lyonne and executive produced by the Maya Rudolph (TechCrunch) 

Art with a capital A:

Fully Automated Luxury Dystopia Sidsel Meineche Hansen’s work troubles the pervasive, rose-tinted vision of the future in which labor is outsourced to machines. (Art in America)

Also via AiA: While most online databases used in the art market track the prices for artists’ work, Articker, an in-house tool developed by Phillips auction house, measures reputation and buzz by analyzing media presence. (Art Market Monitor)

And Interference Archive’s got a really cool visual history of student uprisings, primarily drawn from the volunteer-run Brooklyn organization’s collection

The Founders of the Neon (sign) Art Collective ‘She Bends’ Discuss the Womxn at the Forefront of the Trade (Colossal) 

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art announced its second Triennial, “A Beautiful Night for All People” to represent ”an ambitious, irreverent experiment in unveiling the ecosystem of Russian contemporary art and offers a chance to see a side of Russia that’s not often presented.”

The “CC” Word: 

Also via AiA: Internet theorist Geert Lovink weighs in on cancel culture, seeing it as an ungovernable mutation of platform capitalism. The management class that runs Silicon Valley hates negativity: “We still do not have ‘dislike’ buttons,” Lovink writes. Key Quote: “Today’s ‘cancel culture’ is a pretty wild beast that seems to come from nowhere, provoking a lot of moral panic inside the ruling media elites, whose interest it is to keep the ‘bad characters’ on-stage. This is not supposed to happen.” (Eurozine)

Pop Cultural Musings: 

The 100 best TV characters of the century so far. (Thrillist). Tellingly, I’ve only ever seen 40 of these on screen. 

Via Public Announcement: Few people can make, or take, a hit like Liz Phair. Confident and true to herself, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who changed the stage for a generation of women like Liz. 6’1” was just the beginning. (The Jump) 

Via Lean Luxe: First there was cottagecore, now there’s cluttercore. (Buzzfeed) 

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