[SIC] 107: Bittersweet Sixteen

September 24, 2020

Hi everybody, 

Tough week. No substantive charges against the men responsible for Breonna Taylor’s death is shocking and unacceptable. The passing of skate icon, entrepreneur and style king Keith Hufnagel out of nowhere is hard to grasp. And the President’s stated disregard for democracy gets deeper. Not good, really not good.  Puts our own personal challenges into context. Mine at least. All of which is to say I’m grateful for the opportunity to share the stuff that’s caught my eye as relevant and/ or inspiring this week.  And especially for the guidance and suggestions from friends and colleagues on stuff they’re excited about, too.  Thanks to Laura, Sam, Jaime, Thalia, Ugi and Kevin for contributions this week. Sincerely appreciated.  

Ben 

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Start here: 

• Via The Media Nut:  The Markup, a new(ish) media site, introduced its Blacklight tool that emulates how a user might be surveilled while browsing the web. Users type a URL into Blacklight, and it visits the requested website, scans for known types of privacy violations, and returns an instant privacy analysis of the inspected site. Give it a spin. 

Then, test it on all these publishing / media / platforms: 

• Tomorrow (September 25) all platforms across VICE, including VICE Digital, VICE News, VICE TV, Refinery29, i-D, and Garage, will focus their efforts on the climate emergency in a single day take-over called Climate Uprise.

• Tiktok’s saga isn’t stopping brands (for now at least) (Glossy)

• Via 1440: Fortune releases its 2020 Change the World list

• And TIME releases its list of the year's 100 most influential people

• We’ve reached the end of the Great Big Story (Variety)

• Mel Magazine on Porn’s big mental health pivot. 

• Casey Newton on Leaving ‘The Verge’ for Substack and the Future of Tech Journalism (One Zero) 

• The editor-in-chief at Digiday Media, Brian Morrissey, will step down to start a newsletter on building sustainable media businesses (Substack) 

• The more culture you own': Condé Nast pursues more revenue growth with new brand-strength metric (Digiday)

• How The Tiktok Community Is Transforming Brand Marketing And Modern-Day Storytelling (Ad Age)

• Via The Media Nut: Here's why Walmart wants a stake in the TikTok deal (WaPo)

• Inside Twitch’s play for fashion (Vogue Business)

The future of the future: 

• From Laura Correnti: “For consideration for your newsletter this week. [Rishad Tobaccawala on the next 6 months].  TL/DR: The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past. (Substack)

• On Oct 1st our buddy Nick Parish is gonna be sharing some new thinking on how strategy work is changing in an era of abundance and connection and what we're learning about what's next. It’s free here. (Splashthat)

• And other buddies Raina Kumra and Ken Miller in discussion the future of restaurants, food and food tech in this new landscape with Ellen Chan, Alex Kanter and Kazusa Jibiki. (Linkedin)

• Oh, joy. The Rise of the Wokefluencer (GQ)

Eye Jammies: 

• Via RLab: MARS Studio’s virtual recreation of Edward Hopper’s 1942 painting Nighthawks, transforming BBC art historian Dr. James Fox's analysis of the piece into an immersive, almost investigative, experience.

• Via Sam Baker’s partner update: Axios on NYT, Facebook launching a multi-year augmented reality reporting project. 

Music Contingent: 

• From Jaime Silano: “CREATORS WE LOVE: Fall 2020 Edition I threw my favs into this playlist, so you all can passively listen and fall in love w these artists like I am!! On SPOTIFY too.” 

• Via Thalia Mavros: “Random interesting thread I just stumbled on” [charting the interconnection of 80s punk, hardcore, hip hop and youth culture]. A true nugget. (Twitter) 

• S/o Ben Pier: Fishbone’s got a new album coming, which reminds me that “Party at Ground Zero” is one of the all time best songs and MTV-era videos ever. (Alternative Press / Spotify / YouTube) 

• The Surrealist Roots of the "Vaporwave" Genre. The aesthetic niche combining electronic music and digital art finds an ancestor in Surrealism, particularly in the self-taught French painter Yves Tanguy. (Hyperallergic) 

• Speaking of: A Slew of [Art] Shows Celebrate Surrealist Women (Frieze)

• Hardly Strictly Bluegrass––the annual free and non-commercial music festival is streaming  streaming live on hardlystrictlybluegrass.com and on-air via Circle TV starting at 2pm PDT / 5pm EDT. from San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, with proceeds going directly to support musicians in need.

• On the subject of supporting artists: via Public Announcement: What Does Kanye Actually Gain(or Lose) From Sharing His Record Contracts? Lawyers offer insight into the ramifications of the star’s latest radical act of transparency. (Pitchfork)

• Related: Some Artists Get Screwed by Their Labels, But Kanye Isn't One of Them (Noisey) 

• Corollary: Onetime Kanye protege and current burger-meister Travis Scott interviewed by THE FACE. 

• More rap cross platforming: Via Trapital: T.I.’s Trap Music Museum

• Adult Swim and Run the Jewels getting the vote out (Instagram) 

• Another via Trapital: Rihanna announced that the second annual Savage x Fenty fashion show will hit Amazon Prime Video on October 2. (Vulture)

• November 12-14th, Housing Works will host the 17th annual Fashion for Action benefit at our Chelsea Thrift Shop and online via their eShop

Brand Action: 

• Via Maekan: Converse puts USD $1 million towards a youth accelerator program called "All Star Captains  (WWD)

• Amazon’s $2 billion initiative the Climate Pledge Fund announced its first five investments (CNBC)

• From Kevin Johanessen: “You can get behind this as a pescatarian…” Scaling up, French firm fashions fish skins for luxury market (Reuters) 

• While Kenzo Debuts a New Tiger Logo-And a Partnership With the World Wildlife Fund to Double the Wild Tiger Population (Vogue)

• Is Walmart finally in fashion? (Retail Dive) 

• Prada Wants Your Questions for Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons (Hypebeast)

Art & Fashion:

• The maximalist revolt against minimalism at ICA Boston (Frieze)

• Corollary: Turns out algos can’t do beauty very well. Kyle Chayka reviews “surveillance artist” Trevor Paglen’s new show.  (Art News)

• You probably don’t know this about me but I love quilts. Rosie Lee Tompkins’s Textiles Offer Windows Into Other Worlds (Hyperallergic)

• From Ugi Uguomo: The once ubiquitous VOTE OR DIE shirt is back, via Pyer Moss and Sean John collaboration (Instagram) 

• Jeremy Lin and Coach are getting dragged in China for the styling of their latest campaign images. (Content Consumer Insider)

• While inveterate Lin portraitist Andrew Kuo gets the portrait treatment over at SSense about his super graphic chart paintings. 

• Studio Ghibli is making hundreds of high-resolution frames from its films available for download for free. (Hyperallergic)

• Clever drip: Cult bootmaker Yuketen made a ‘Land Jordan’ (Instagram)

Final Five: 

• The GOAT: Duchamp’s “The Creative Act” (ubu.com) 

• Highly recommended: sign up for Piers Fawkes’s excellent Distracted newsletter here. 

• Skateparks are "one of the world's great kinds of public space" (Dezeen)

• Via Maekan: how LSD works on a molecular level (Inverse) 

  Via Ian Schafer: Foot Locker with a masterclass in Google Slides (and Air Max).

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