[SIC] 102: Once I Had A Love

Welcome back, all. Week one on Substack went well, so we’re doing this again. Thanks to Ashley & Kassy for their contributions, I always appreciate them. Send ‘em if you got ‘em, all. Same with kudos or catcalls. 

As a companion to this week’s edition, I’m talking at 4pm ET with Laura Correnti, one-half of the Adlandia podcast. It’s on my IG Live @dietznutz if you can tune in, and will be posted in my feed afterwards, if you can’t. 

In the meantime, enjoy!

Ben 

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Before we get to the easy stuff, read these: 

Via GARAGE’s newsletter: a depressing reminder that Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankinson, and Myles Cosgrove, killers of Breonna Taylor, have yet to be arrested. Here's a page created by The Courier Journal, the local paper in Taylor's hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, where you can keep abreast of the latest developments in her case. 

Via Marginal Revolution: This is fucked: One in four young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 say they've considered suicide in the past month because of the pandemic, according to new CDC data that paints a bleak picture of the nation's mental health during the crisis. (Yahoo News) 

Also via GARAGE: Ashley Tyner directs us to  Meditating for Black Lives is a group of organizers who gather to guide intentional community sit-ins all over Brooklyn. (IG) 

VICE Alum Myron Batsa’s post on how he’s feeling as a Black man is from August 12th. Not June 15th. Heartfelt reminder of how much more work and exchange is left to be done. (Myronbatsa)

As a parent of two white kids delivered by a Black doctor, I found this story distressing. We got world-class care and attention. Insane and wrong that the reciprocal might not be true for everyone. (The Hill) 

Read Up: 

VIRTUE’s Digital Renaissance presentation looks at extremely online youth. The interactive site built for the piece has it. 

Culture, Jammed:

Via Recomendo: “The most recent “drop” of MSCHF (which deserves its own deep dive) is masterWiki. They claim to have stolen MasterClass’ content and paired it up with wikiHow’s iconic visuals.”

Related: What is Masterclass actually selling? (The Atlantic)

Editorial Direction: 

Via The Media Nut: In a report from Brand United, three in four publishers are creating new products—from newsletters to podcasts to virtual events—to try to make up for the hit they’ve taken in ad sales.

To that end: get ready for more living/newsrooms: media companies are abandoning their newsrooms as pandemic drags on. (Axios)

Also related: Quartz updated their “obsessions” - the framework around which they organize editorial - to suit the second half of 2020. 

And GQ’s 21 global editors co-signed a new Manifesto for the brand called “Change is Good,” espousing a redefinition of masculinity. 

Vogue Business is launching membership. 

While Group Nine launched NowThis Kids (Axios)

VICE is bringing on a big audio team to produce new kinds of podcasts, from daily news to seasonal series (Nieman Lab)

Related: Substack CEO Chris Best on the Digiday podcast on the growing appetite for paid newsletters.

Speaking of: with “The Mail” VICE wants to send you print mail to help you understand the plight of the United States Postal Service (Nieman Lab) 

Related: Hyperallergic’s list of stuff we can all do to help save the post office. 

Getting Out the Vote: 

Via The Media Nut: Dodgers, LeBron James team up to make Dodger Stadium a polling site (ESPN)

And cult fashion label Bode has made their store double as voting registration venue. (IG) 

Burning Fashion Questions: 

Via RLab: From Animal Crossing To Digital-Only Dresses, Is Fashion Becoming Our New Virtual Reality? (Grazia) 

Can Fashion Film Save Retail?Martin Margiela: In His Own Words Is Streaming Now at All Your Favorite Stores (Vogue Business) 

Are heels over? (Glossy)

Is Depop being gentrified? (Dazed) 

Can fashion in China get woke? (Jing Daily) 

Lil Baby and his “4PF” chain revealed a corporate scam-fire (High Snob) 

Date With Ikea (s/o Spiral Stairs)

Beyond the blue plastic bucket: Ikea  makes clothes now (Dezeen)

The always insightful Ana Andjelic on The DJ Model of IKEA (andjelicaaa)

Related to Ana’s thesis: Vistaprint is collaborating with artists like Futura and Parra on a series of COVID 19 masks. (Hypebeast)

Travis Scott x McDonalds: it’s lit 🔥(Hypebeast)

And via Public Announcement: Hiroshi Fujiwara Is Still a One-Man Hype Factory (GQ)

(Self) Publishing: 

From Kassy Smykowski: “Two friends of mine recently published a beautiful photo Book I think you'd like. They talk through it in an Interview mag article here! Check it on out, some really nice still and design work.” (Photobookcafe)

Via the FACE: The Black Curriculum, a non-profit who are seeking to diversify the British education system, have just announced the launch of their first ever zine. And it's on Notting Hill Carnival, even better.

Video Things:  

Quartz recaps Part two of its “How to Build an anti-racist Company” livestream.

Via Hyperallergic: curator Cydnii Wilde Harris picked some of her favorite recent video essays

The return of publisher test kitchens will serve up new lessons on the future of work (Digiday) 

Jing Daily studied the top-performing 100 e-commerce campaigns on Douyin. 

Marketing Through the Looking Glass:

Taking lessons on marketing from quantum physics (The Drum) 

What if Netflix created its own talent agency? (The Drum)

Via The Kicks You Wear: After Damian Lillard’s 61 point game against the Dallas Mavericks last week, Adidas cut the price on his signature Dame 6 shoe down to $61 matching his point total. Clever. (Twitter) 

Via Trapital: Warner Music acquired IMGN, a social media content company that runs the popular @daquan Instagram account and others, for $85 million

Animal Farm:

Our buddy Walter Schreifels (of Quicksand, Gorilla Biscuits, Rival Schools etc) is doing a concert to benefit farm animals and the poster is super cute. (Instagram)

Animal Crossing x Hellman’s Canada: donating virtual spoiled turnips for IRL food support. (AdAge)

And Animal Crossing x McDonalds has hot virtual drop hamburger shirts (Hypebeast)

Great Art for Bad Times And Bad News for Good Art:

Es Devlin and Machiko Weston created a digital artwork titled I Saw The World End to mark 75 years since the dropping of the atomic bomb over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Dezeen)

Volvo Files Legal Motion Claiming It Can Use Any Photo Publicly Shared on Instagram (Hypebeast) 

In Singapore, Street Art is Punishable by 8 Lashes with a Cane (VICE Youtube)

Computer Vision: 

AIoT: When Artificial Intelligence Meets the Internet of Things (Visual Capitalist)

Another Via RLab: Samsung says 6G will bring ‘digital twins’ – and it’s two years ahead of schedule (The Independent)

Thank You for Your Service:

Firm for the Culture is a new company getting Black entrepreneurs legal foundation of copyrights, IP ownership etc. 

And the collective Brown Girls Doc Mafia has created a searchable database of women and nonbinary filmmakers to “eradicate the excuse many gatekeepers use of ‘not knowing how to find’ quality filmmakers or executives of color.” (Hyperallergic) 

The National Parks Service’s “Recreate Responsibly” campaign draws inspiration from classic 1930s park promotions. (Hyperallergic)

Everybody Skates: 

Via Om Malik: Inside Skateboarding’s New Counterculture (The Walrus) 

Coda Skateboards founder Pat Smith on his DIY Curb project. (IG)

Attn A. Freston: 

Burning Man can’t happen IRL, so to keep the flame virtually they’ve enlisted a creative bunch of developers to digitize the burn by rethinking social apps, all of whom are doing this work for free. (TechCrunch)

The Youth, Older Now: 

Via Distracted: Chloë Sevigny and Leo Fitzpatrick on 25 years since Kids (i-D)

Post-Covid, It Sits Different:

Furniture / design icon Vitra drafted a set of hypotheses that can help companies, institutions and employees return to the office with ready-to-use spatial solutions and carefully conceived planning approaches. (Vitra)

Pay No Attention to the Person Behind the Curtain: 

From James Jebbia, founder of Supreme, to Cactus Plant Flea Market founder Cynthia Lu, the FACE takes a look at the power players utilizing anonymity in a world in which shouting the loudest is often the best way to get heard.

Arts and Artists: 

Painter and original Cheeseburger singer Joe Bradley on his residency at the Elaine DeKooning house (Hypebeast)

Classic Paintings Provide the Perfect Backdrop for Feminist Memes About Mansplaining (Hyperallergic) 

Tick, Tock: 

Via Trapital: TikTok and UnitedMasters announced a new deal to allow artists to distribute music directly from the video social network to all digital streaming providers (NYT)

Via Morning Consult: TikTok launched tiktokus.info, a website that organizes the company's statements, news coverage, "expert opinions," FAQs and other resources in a single destination.

Tiktok competitor Likee hit 150MM Monthly Users (TechCrunch) 

While elsewhere, Snapchat is testing a feature that would allow users to share "Snap Originals," "Shows" and "Publisher Stories"  off of the platform (Axios)

This IS Interesting: 

Why is This Interesting’s “Punk Edition” is a thoughtful piece by Michael Kaufmann on how the adaptability and fortitude of punk spirit translates to parenting a special needs kids. Lovely. 

Speaking of, the Punk Edition was the 100th edition by a WITI contributor - so the founders indexed all of them here (including mine, from last November). Lots of amazing reading, much of it cited here previously. 

Also Via WITI: Universe. is new a company that allows anyone to design a web page on their phone, with no code. People use it to start storefronts to begin selling merch, or to finally get their side hustle off the ground. 

And via Tech NY Daily: Radish provides readers with hyper-serialized fiction that updates multiple times a day, has produced more than 6,500 episodes across 30 original series.

Finally, Some Fun Ephemera: 

Poolside FM is the super-summer music player for Macintosh computer; transporting you to a virtual vacation where the sun never sets. (App Store)

The (very early morning) Rise of the farm-fluencer (NYT) 

Via Morning Brew: Microsoft released the latest edition of Flight Simulator, its videogame that allows players to take control of a virtual airplane cockpit and fly anywhere on Earth, and critics are losing their minds. 

Via Recomendo: Two Minute Papers is a YouTube channel featuring short videos (sometimes 5 minutes long) created by a professor who reviews new research papers in visual programming, artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer graphics, simulations, and other state-of-the-art computer science.

Via Lean Luxe: a nice little roundup of tech-enabled at-home weight lifting upstarts like Tonal (NYT) 

Early Christmas list: Helena Hauss’s  porcelain battle-ax, please. (Colossal)

Via Lean Luxe: Tyler Adam’s emergence at RB Leipzig (ESPN)

Via Quartz, this gif of the “Derecho” (storm) that swept across the midwest is wild. (NOAA)

The Night Climbers of Cambridge available as a web pdf. (Amazon)

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