[SIC] 124: Ouroborousian Instances

January 21st, 2021

Hi all,

First day of rest of our lives, I suppose. That in mind, lots of fuel for thought and bits of inspired thinking below. And not a few cautionary developments, too. I give high marks for the High Tea and Understanding TikTok posts, if you’re only peckish. Give them a look and listen, and let me know what you think in the comments – your feedback on what you like and what you don’t is highly instructive. Speaking of: thanks as always to Charla, Courtien and Iolanda for contributions this week. Keep ‘em coming.

Meantime, my guest on [SIC] Talks today is the inimitable Josh Peskowitz, the style guy’s style guy and a longtime friend. Josh has been a key voice in men’s fashion for two decades but still manages not to take himself too seriously; my kind of dude. Join us for a perusal of the newsletter at 4p ET / 1p PT on my IG @dietznutz and in my grid thereafter. Checkidout. Now, on to the rest of our lives…

Ben

=====[SIC] 124: Ouroborousian Instances=====

Listen In: 

• "DTC to D2Me" is the fun to say title of a Retail Innovation week discussion I did with Shopify’s Jon Wexler, Birchbox’s Ali Edgerton and my Mad at Marketing compadre Ben Pruess.  Was a good one. Like and share 😇. (YouTube) 

• 'Artists, Weirdos, Hellriders And Homies:' Thrasher Magazine Turns 40 (NPR)

• Meet Kidd G, Country Music’s Next Emo-Rap Star (NYT) 

• While Ghana’s drill scene is going off. (The FACE)

• Also via The FACE, there’s a Stretch and Bobbito documentary too.(Stretchandbobbito)

• The very excellent music newsletter (if not overly exhaustive) Dada Strain has also launched an Instagram

• From Charla Caponi: '[A Mix] to get you through the back end of this Blue Monday’ (Mixcloud) 

• Via Lean Luxe: James Baldwin's record collection Is now streaming as an (outstanding) Spotify playlist. 

• Via Morning Brew: Very cool: A Spotify user with synesthesia groups songs by color. (Spotify)

• S/o to the homie Cosmo Baker- here’s his playlist of rare Sade tracks  made to mark her bday (Twitter) 

• Listen with your eyes. Via Protocol: the Oral history of Wikipedia (OneZero) 

• And The Ringer’s fave Wiki pages. 

• Elsewhere in orality, via Elevator: The Oral history of Donnie Darko. (The Ringer)

TikTokLand: 

• How the right hat opens doors: TikTok’s Nick Tran on the Adweek “CMO Moves” pod (Spotify)

• If elected, Yang Gang plans bring the Hype House to NY (Twitter)

• Also, your 2021 reminder to stay up on TikTok: excellent newsletterHigh Tea unpacks the explosion of Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license”. 

• And in contrast: Billboard’s take on the same. 

• Meanwhile via the Understanding TikTok newsletter- the list with nearly 200 publishers and journalists on TikTok. (Google docs) 

• And also via Understanding TikTok - The world’s first nuclear energy influencer is 30-year-old Brazilian model Isabelle Boemeke: A fashion model since the age of 17 with no formal scientific training (Mel Magazine)

• Corollary: what a TikTok-propelled anti-drug anthem sounds like in 2020-21: Weed, Pot, Cannabis, Maryjane (Spotify) 

• What’s an ENTJ like you doing in a place like this? Via Future Party: Birdy is a “no-photo dating app. Instead, users fill out a personality questionnaire that’s based on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Forbes). 

Fashioning: 

• Via Public Announcement: if these four words don’t mean anything to you, neither will the link. When Raf Met Miuccia.  (NYT)

• Footwear Curator Elizabeth Semmelhack on What’s Luxe and Trending in Shoes (Jingculturecommerce)

• How Lingerie Became China’s Favorite Fashion Investment (Jing Daily)

• Via CCI: A look at young Chinese tastes and trends for 2021, from entertainment to fashion to food and beverage. (Radii)

• Via Retail Dive: Barneys at Saks: Resurrecting a Luxury Legend (WWD) 

• Chanel Launched a new podcast series (Business of Fashion)

• And Louis Vuitton’s got an upcycled sneaker program (Hypebeast) 

• Via Vogue Business: What might 2021 hold for circular fashion? (Fast Company)

• To that end, could your next job be in Circularity? (Jing Daily) 

The Absurdity of the Modern Condition: 

• Via Public Announcement:  The internet didn’t kill counterculture—you just won’t find it on Instagram (Document Journal)

• Kyle Chayka’s The Dirt on why Bridgerton is “Infinite Content” and how it’s eating the longtail. (Substack)

• Millennials care a lot about Gen Z recycling trenzz. But why? (Instagram)

• Speaking of, via 1440: Nine trends that will shape work after the pandemic.  (Harvard Business Review) 

• More Trends via The Drum: Carat Trends 2021 - the year of emotionally intelligent marketing. 

• Via Jing Daily: Ruby Gloom and the Rise of the Virtual Influencer (The Popular Times) 

• A Disquieting Look at How AIs Foment Political Extremism (Hyperallergic) 

• Related: 'Post-truth' climate impacts Gen Z's conflicting brand perceptions, apparently. (Marketing Dive) 

• From Andrew Courtien: "This is an article [about our broken brains] I would have loved Recess to be mentioned in" (The Atlantic)

• The Science of Spiritual Narcissism. Self-enhancement through spiritual practices can fool some of us into thinking we’re evolving and growing when all we’re growing is our ego (Scientific American) 

• Via Money Stuff: A computer engineer who claims he accidentally threw away a hard drive containing a virtual currency worth tens of millions of poundshas promised to give a local council a quarter of the fortune if they help him dig it out of a rubbish tip. (Guardian)

• But, but… via Protocol:  Go tell it on top of my Robinhood account: The Bitcoin dream is Dead, apparently. (Medium) 

  

About the Things We Might Eat:

• Go Vege! Everyone saw the Taco Bell potato CEO video (Marketwatch)

• But who’s checking for genetically modified salmon? (Spectrum.ieee)

• Apropos, though not edible: via Elevator: Harvard scientists have created robot fish. (The Next Web)

• Via Simon Owens: The New York Times Cooking app has more subscribers than most of the largest newspapers in the country (Medialyte) 

• Monocle visits with Caraway founder Jordan Nathan to talk DTC Cookware

• Corollary, via Public Announcement: Why are food and furniture brands selling merch?  (Thingtesting) 

Medierrs: 

• My thought exactly: “It’s hard to not see ad-tech as a solution to a problem that didn’t exist.” More on brands not knowing *at all* where their ads run. (The Media Nut)

• Which is fine in a way because consumers consumers don’t care if ad runs next to “unsafe” content (The Drum)

• Related: No Pay Zone; consumers Prefer Free Email Newsletters Supported By Ads, apparently. (Mediapost) 

• Via Casey Newton, Substack is distributing more $ to writers after three years than Medium after 9. (NYT) 

• But The Moderation War Is Coming to Spotify, Substack, and Clubhouse (OneZero)

• And Forbes is coming for Substack: with a major paid newsletter platform. (Axios) 

• MSP, DEN, TPA, CLT, DSM:Axios local newsletters are out next week. 

• Via Future Party: Twitter is working on an initiative called Blue Sky — an open, decentralized social network (Twitter) 

• Also via Future Party: Freshly sold to Korean social media giant Naver, Wattpad wants to become the “Blumhouse of teen dramas.” (The Verge) 

• The rise of “carbon-conscious” media (The Drum)

Animal Things: 

• Turns out Dire Wolves Were Not Really Wolves (Scientific American) 

• Via Quartz: Errr, Boris? Fewer than six ravens in the tower means the kingdom will fall. (The Guardian)

 Brands and Collabs 

• S/o Flo Reicheldorfer, via Future Party - Adidas and G2 announced a two-year partnership that makes Adidas the official sports apparel providers of the esports team. (G2 Esports)

• Fortnite Kicks Off Its Largest Sports Partnership With 23 Global Soccer Clubs (Ad Age)

• The Travis Scott McNugget body pillow is a let down, apparently (Highsnobiety)

• Mattel and Stussy made a magic 8 Ball. 

• Super Bowl LIV will be Coke and Pepsi free. (Hypebeast) 

• Via Future Party: S/o Jamaal: K.Dot’s pgLand outfitted Calvin Klein with some new short films

• Oatly’s going after Dads (Adweek)

• Sorry, guys. CES was largely irrelevant this year (Axios)

• A closer look at Restoration Hardware’s Aspen 'ecosystem'(Retail Dive) 

Art and Artists,

• Six seminal projects from Bauhaus designers Josef and Anni Albers (Dezeen)

• The new Hamburger Eyesis coming. 

• HUGA interviewed the NYT covers team and made a piece about it. (Instagram) 

• Art world firebrand Stefan Simchowitz interviewed in White Hot (Instagram) 

Bits and Bobs: 

• Original Ed Banger Pedro Winter talks NYC classics with Nouveau New York

• From Iolanda Carvalho: Can also be used for regular skating... 😉 (CBC) 

• How the Pink Triangle moved from persecution to power (It’s Nice That) 

• Also from Iolanda: “And if you ever have a AI meets Furniture Design section…” behold The Avocado Chair….

• Is this the most chilling typeface ever? (Creativebloq)

• Hello Raye is an online directory of furniture with BIM and CAD files for architects and interior designers (and design nerds). (Dezeen) 

• Bill Gates, Megafarmer (Hypebeast)

• Also mega, via Axios: The "megascale" structures that humans could one day build (BBC Future)

• Via Reset Work: The term “work” was first introduced by Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis, a 19th century French mathematician and scientist obsessed with billiards, to describe the force needed to move an object such as a billiard ball (and other interesting tidbits from Work: A Deep History from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots (Bookshop)

• Via 2pm: On Generalists vs. Specialists (BuiltIn)

Finally, I didn’t know Mark Waters but the outpouring of grief and frustration at his passing from Covid brought this interview with NY Skateboarding front and center. Rest In Peace, and sincere condolences to all who lost a friend and inspiration. (Instagram) 

[SIC] 124: Ouroborousian Instances