[SIC] 133: Savannah Bananas

March 25th, 2021

Hi all,

Lots to read and watch, so let’s get to it. Thanks to Elva, Ben, Jeff, Ruba, Ken, Jon and Iolanda for contributions this week. Really appreciate.

Speaking of key contributors: [SIC] Talks returns today with longtime friend and inspirational OG, downtown superconnector, cool mom and all-around great, Camella Ehlke. Camella founded and ran Triple 5 Soul, creating an archetype for street style brands worldwide, and incubated a creative community that has literally shaped the way we dress / think / communicate today. Tune in @dietznutz at 4p ET today, or find it thereafter in my grid.

Another one to mark on your calendars: [SIC] friend Amani al-Khatathbeh’s got the 5th Muslim Women’s Day coming this Saturday, and it’s worth knowing up. Have a look. Amani’s impressive, and the mission is an important one, IMO.

And elsewhere, [SIC] buddy Cavel Khan pointed me to an event exploring the intersection of Art and Activism with Tumblr's Head of Social Impact Chinelo Nwosu, my former colleague Andrea Carrasquel and Tumblr Creatrs: Ellis van der Does, Persis Johnson, and Alethia Rodriguez (aka Lunares). It’s next Tuesday 3/30 and you can RSVP here.

Now… on to the digest:

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Put this on while you peruse the links: Pinchy & Friends’s “Deep Breakfast” 

Or this via the FACE: 10 hours of rain sounds (Youtube) 

Send Foods: 

• Wasbioli or Hanch? Tarchup?  (CreativeBloq)

• Personally, make mine Gritty. Or Swoop (Dietz & Watson) 

• Ketchup Is Not Just a Condiment: It Is Also a Non-Newtonian Fluid (Scientific American) 

• From Elva Ramirez: "A little bit of moondust on the bouquet, and a lingering minerality of Juno on the finish…" In short: What does a 2000 Petrus that was aged in space taste like? Only about six people know. (Forbes) 

• Via Future Perfect: Mark Bittman cooked everything. Now he wants to change everything. (NYT)

• Related, via Lean Luxe: IKEA’s making banana peel bacon (Fast Company) 

• Same but different: The secret of Taco Bell’s success? Vegans. (Marker) 

• Corollary: When will we hit peak red meat? (NYT) 

Thanks for All the Fish: 

• Via Quartz: People in Taiwan are changing their names to Salmon. They really want free sushi.

• From Iolanda Carvalho: "This week in funland... [my name is Salmon now] (Taiwan News) 

• [and] The Guardian also has a take on the salmon chaos affair…” 

• Via Today in Tabs: We’re facing Tuna’s Last Stand (Hakai) 

• Related: Fish farming is getting better: Fish raised in captivity are eating more veggies and less wild fish, a new study has found. That’s good news for nature. (NYT) 

Nature is Healing: 

• Dolphins in Venetian Canals?! No really, there were dolphins in the Venice canals. After several false claims, a Venetian captured an authentic sighting. (Quartz)

• And in the East River , too! (Greenpointers) 

• How Dirt Could Help Save the Planet (Scientific American) 

• A New Map Unearths New York’s Oldest and Rarest Trees (Hyperallergic) 

The Annals of Marketing:

• Via Lean Luxe: The Crazy Baseball Team That Lets Fans Catch Foul Balls for Outs (WSJ) 

• Noah x New Order is dropping today. Including “perfect kiss” gum. Here’s a bunch of content to go along with it. (NoahNY) 

• Via Maekan:  1-800-D2C is a new service to help you figure out the latest and greatest services used by various direct-to-consumer brands. https://www.producthunt.com/posts/1-800-d2c

• Less ads means more movies from brands (NYT)

• Power to the niches (GQ UK) 

• From Iolanda Carvalho: Cannes Lions has links for the big creative themes for this year and also the creators toolkit, really interesting resources.

• Speaking of resources, via Marcus Bösch:  The TikTok Cultures Research Network shared an updated bibliography of academic publications on TikTok and hosts its second virtual event next week: TikTok & Youth Cultures in the Age of COVID-19 – 29 March 2021. 

Welcome to the Watching Week: 

• High Tea goes deep on the Addison Rae-as-a-media-empire (Substack) 

• While Gen Yeet interviews Morning Brew’s TikTok dudeand if you work in content production you should read.

• More traditionally, via Morning Brew:  Top 10 documentaries of 2021, from Tiger Woods to Billie Eilish. (Esquire) 

• Cool Britannia from Jon Hurwitz: “Here’s that Alan McGee [Creation Records boss] flick" (YouTube) 

• Via The Dirt: "Talking Watches" is Hodinkee magazine's YouTube video series.

• Via Creative Bloq: Now you can watch Nolan's Tenet on the Game Boy Advance. 

• From Iolanda: "In the Room with Nile Rodgers" (It’s Nice That) 

Our Meta Moment: 

• Substack writers are mad at Substack. The problem is money and who’s making it. (Vox) 

• Via 1440: Remote work is a raw deal for Gen Z.

• From Iolanda: "IRL problems are also virtual issues (Atelier.net)" 

• Also from Iolanda: "Another xxxxverse - also from L'Atelier (it´s not new but it´s soooo cooool)”

• From Ken Miller: "Not a fun follow-up to a not fun week, but I’ve been revisiting Peter Turchin. (I read him last summer, decided he was probably a kook, recently revisted and kinda decided that even if the ‘math' is iffy, it’s useful for the material he gathers for his models.) Here’s a 2012 article on him from a plucky muckraking youth culture publication (VICE)  and his ‘famous' 2010 letter to Nature magazine”

• Via Today in Tabs: The Pentagon took 22 days and produced a 20 page report to create this tweet, reports Matthew Gault in Motherboard.

• Via Simon Owens:  The Preteen’s Guide to Getting Rich Off YouTube (Bloomberg)

• "Zack Snyder’s Justice League," an Invaluable Historical Document of the Age of the Fan (Hyperallergic) 

• Via Maekan: Clubmarket is a new (third-party) marketplace for Clubhouse sponsorship opportunities. (Venturebeat)

• Via Dealbook: The juice maker Bolthouse Farms is paying workers a $500 bonus for getting vaccinated, while Krispy Kreme is giving employees four hours paid time off to get a shot — and customers a free doughnut if they have proof of immunization. (WSJ, Insider)

• NeueHouse got Andrew Yang, Daniel Sundlin, and Majora Carter to share new visions for urban planning in a post-pandemic world in video. 

China Check

• Has China’s “Too Skinny” Trend Gone Too Far? (Jing Daily) 

• Via Jing Daily: How Hip Hop Became China’s Favorite Music Genre (Radii) 

Covering Our Bodies (in Fashion) 

• [Disclosure, I get a shout out in this one] from Jeff Carvalho: Fashion is flourishing on Clubhouse by putting the focus on people versus brands. (Glossy) 

• Via Reset: Baggy suits are the new sweats. Really. (WSJ) 

• Corollary: post-pandemic playbook: Fashion returns to glamour. Designers and buyers report a new wave of glamour for 2021 as consumers, riding a wave of emotion, prepare to dress up again. (Vogue Business)

• Also via Reset: More than half of American consumers are expected to buy new clothes in the next few months, after a dramatic drop in spending on apparel over the past year. (WaPo)

• Related: is Mixing and Matching the new code of Luxury? (Jing Daily)

• And should Luxury follow inBottega’s anti-social stance? (Jing Daily)  

• Speaking of anti: via Sociology of Business: Stella McCartney invested in making new clothes by liquifying old ones. (Evrnu)

• On the topic of Ana: she recently spoke with Tim Richardson (Commercial Director at Shopify Plus agency, We Make Websites) for his podcast, Your Basket Is Empty. 

• How Adidas plans to rival luxury outdoor clothing brands (FT) 

• How online shopping became unavoidable (Vox)

• The coolest opposite of that, from Ben Pruess: Bode is taking over Classic Coffee Shop in the LES from its retiring proprietor, and will keep it running in service to the neighborhood.” @bodetailorshop, complete with coffee service, opens this Friday from 2pm-7pm. 

Arts (Classic Mode) 

• Unfazed by the Pandemic, Frieze Aims to Carry On (Hyperallergic) 

• Via SFJ: The Kitchen has Carlota Schoolman’s 1976 video of Talking Heads playing as a trio (scroll down the page to see) 

• Via Franchise:  David Hammons: Body Prints, 1968–1979 at the Drawing Center in NYC brings together the monoprints and collages in which the renowned Black artist used the body as both a drawing tool and printing plate to explore performative, unconventional forms of image making. 

• Via Future Party: Shouldn’t there be a White House Advisor for the Arts? (Deadline) 

Arts (Meme Mode) 

• Via Jing Daily: A Ranking Of The World’s Most Instagrammed Museums (Hyperallergic)

• NFT X NYT. Kevin Roose makes a column a blockchain. 

• Fave artist Ryan Mcguinness’s snarky, apt take on NFTs (Instagram) 

• What Are You Paying for When You Buy a GIF for $25,000? NFTs are the future of the attention economy. Or a scam. Or both. (NYT)

• Via Music Redef:  “This laugh/cry-out-loud thread from electronic producer MINT ROYALE on his adventure in a currently trendy way of transacting digital music and art that's so perfectly pitched I can't tell if he's joking or not.”

• An aside, Mint Royale’s “Don’t Falter” with Lauren Laverne was one of my wedding songs. Big Saint Etienne energy.  (Youtube) 

• From Ruba Abu-Nimah: The guys who bought the Beeple say their purchase Was About Taking a Stand for People of Color (Artnet) 

• Corollary: Robinhood is expanding on its cryptocurrency services “as fast as possible (Robinhood) 

• Via Monocle: Marina Abramović Has Partnered With WeTransfer to Teach People Her Mindfulness Method While They Wait for Files to Upload (Artnet)

Randomizer

• [SIC] buddy Matt Schoen made a font (Instagram) 

• Corollary: It’s Nice That’s “Ones to Watch” highlights 11x young, promising creatives

• Via Monocle: Banana case, by Skater.  Banish blackened bananas with this tough, ventilated case.

• Via the FACE:  Set up by Isabella Burley six months ago, CLIMAX BOOKS is the go-to independent distributor for rare, erotic ephemera 

• Speaking of ephemera, via Lean Luxe:  Ephemeral is offering a new type of tattoo, which promises to fade away in 9-15 months, but costs 3x a normal tattoo.  (Fast Company)

• The homie Michael Williams has a new site, ACL Golf.  I am on record as not caring about golf, but if there was somebody to make me care, it’d be Michael. 

• Via Today in Tabs; "Here’s a video game written in a font. I’ve read the explanation of this so many times and I still have no idea how it works."   

• A new light on Los Angeles Architecture. I miss LA (Ssense)

• Via 1440: Norway to build the world's first ship tunnel

• Via BK Mag: Black-Owned Brooklyn is  curated guide to Brooklyn-based Black-owned brands, shops and businesses, telling the stories of the people behind those businesses.

Finally: 

• RIP Mel Magazine. Ugh, this sucks. (The Wrap) 

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