[SIC] 153: Rothko-Esque Tobacco Sunset

August 12th, 2020

Hi all, 

Lots to talk about this week, including some actual talking. I’d love you to check out today’s [SIC] Talks today with Andrea Hernández, the founder and self-appointed “Cult Leader” of Snaxshot, a (you guessed it) snack-based weekly newsletter that’s blown up over the last year, mostly because of its OTT tone and ‘90s kid’ vernacular.  This week’s Very Fine Day interview with Andrea really captures the energy, if you want a primer. Key quote: “The doctrines of Snaxshot are: Excess is death, Curation is validation, and Discovery is strength. “  Tune in live to see the fireworks at 4p ET today over at @dietznutz, or find it on my grid thereafter. 

Speaking of [SIC] Talks, thanks to my guest from Episode #34, Matt Klein for hosting me in Zine’s 3_Trends series - it was nice to expound at greater length on a couple things, and get his takes in reply. 

Oh and please, do watch [SIC] Talks on desktop, so that you can do other things while we talk, if you want, like open other tabs. It’s almost like a podcast.

Anyway - this week’s edition marks the one year anniversary of [SIC] on Substack; with your help I’ve managed to show up week in and week out. To that end, a HUGE thanks to all my friends and colleagues who’ve sent me stories to include (s/o Amina, Iolanda, Isaac, Ben, Josh and Heidi this week).  And thanks also to the other newsletters, Linkedin post-ers and internal email-ers who’ve turned their people on to [SIC] in the past year.  I’m stoked to say that there are nearly 7x as many people getting this newsletter today as there were a year ago. Though there’s always room for more.  Here’s a button: 

Art this week is by Carrie Mae Weems, currently on view at the Everson Museum. Note; the (giant) canvases are all the same size IRL. I’m just not a good designer, smh.

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Start With These Things:

• This is absolutely bonkers. The hackers who stole $600m in crypto are giving it back.  Matt Levine at Bloomberg is borderline infuriating to read because he goes on so long, but MAN there’s a ton of stuff in this. Highly recommend his newsletter, if you are an effective skim-reader. 

• Speaking of effective readers: [SIC] Homie Eugene Kan’s “Monday Media Diet” is on point (Why Is This Interesting)

• Elsewhere in recommendations, via Public Announcement: Meet the“genuinfluencers” who don’t want to sell you anything (Vogue Business)

• On the opposite end of the spectrum: Indian social media influencers are marketing cryptocurrencies like soap and shampoo (Quartz) 

Deep Things:

• Via Jann Schwarz:  Roger Martin’s “Integrative Thinking” and Alon Gratch’s “If Men Could Talk” are real deep thinks. 

• While Ana goes typically deep explaining social commerce. (Sociology of Business) 

• From Josh Gardiner: "Not sure if you ever came across one of her bylines, but Wendy Syfret was a brilliant part of VICE Australia in times past. She's just published a book which seems to be striking a post-COVID chord in some. How believing in nothing may be the key to a happy life." (Profile Books)  

• And From Isaac Dietz: “Cory Doctorow’s dissection of Uber is a great read.” 

Zeitgest Things: 

• From Iolanda: Six Shifts Changing the Future of Media. Key Quote: “Media is blurring its shape. Lines between media types are disappearing, consumers are creators, and entertainment is daubing tech and retail all over itself.  Content is ever present, consistent across platforms, and individually personalized. As our physical world blends with virtual worlds, entertainment realities are changing, too.” (Bain)

• Which Rusty explains as another new/current paradigm (“The Information Realm”) (and then fucks off for vacation) (Today In Tabs) 

• To that end, if everything is everything (and everything is IP value), this is a great point: Wherefore novellas?! (Dirt) 

• Directly related: According to Business Insider, Texas Monthly expects to earn $1 million in revenue this year from deals with Hollywood companies.

• Especially because AI is taking over everything... World's first patent awarded for an invention made by an AI could have seismic implications on IP law. (University of Surrey)

• Back in the here and now: Fight Club and the 21st Century. How Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and David Fincher foretold 9/11 and Trump. (Vanity Fair) 

• Hence, via After School: Chaos edits are the only thing that make sense any more. (Vox)

New Things To Ingest?!: 

• KFC’s got a Chicken Hotel (Input Mag) 

• Pepsi and Boston Beer will create a spiked seltzer version of Mountain Dew, called "Hard MTN Dew." (CNBC)

• In contrast, via Elevator: The Weird, Sustainable Booze of the Future Tastes... Good?

• Via Snaxshot: Basil Street Pizza 🍕 is an automated machine that makes pizza and looks like an ATM.

• NY Times has a new vegetarian cooking newsletter called The Veggie.

• While The Lindy Newsletter says the intolerant minority rule dictates that veganism will overwhelm vegetarianism. 

• Hence, OG quick-slice giant Pizza Hut is building an AI food recommender (Gizmodo)

• And offering Beyond Meat’s meat-free pepperoni (CNBC) 

• Elsewhere, Impossible Foods is bringing its meatless sausage to grocery stores (CNBC)

• Via Lean Luxe: 'What’s going on with ice cream right now?' (Grub Street)

Brands Making Things To Entertain Us: 

• Can a Brand Publish a Magazine People Actually Want to Read? (BoF)

• Yes, absolutely. Case in point: Colors, which Benetton started publishing in 1991 and which has shaped our media POV in countless ways. Brands, study up. (Colors Magazine) 

• Related, via Retail Innovation Week: Shopify opens NY collaboration space. (AM NY) 

• While Overtime is positioning itself as a content partner for college athletes' NIL deals. Overtime is finally able to work with college athletes and is creating a content studio specifically to make content for this cohort. (Digiday) 

• Not to be outdone, Salesforce is launching a streaming service (Axios) 

• Snapchat created a hit shoppable show with the Art of the Drop (Fast Company) 

• Via After School: Tinder’s “Swipe Night” is coming back as a “Gen Z Whodunit” (Variety)  

• Inside Grindr's First Original TV Series 'Bridesman' (The Daily Beast) 

Hybrid Things: 

• Via Morning Brew: WeWork is closing the loop on capitalism by building a string of coworking spaces within current Saks Fifth Avenue stores (WSJ)

• Brian Morrissey points to Smooth Ops is “a new kind of partnership between editorial and commercial operations, run by Morning Brew veterans” - aka a back of house commercial services team for single shingle digital creators. (The Rebooting)

• Logically, then, via Declarative Statements: The end of VC as we know it, per The Information

• Via Maekan:  The Innovative but Bittersweet Future in IKEA’s New STARKVIND Line (Moss and Fog) 

• From Ben Pruess:  Go ahead, turn that cabinet into a beehive. Ikea wants you to repurpose its products. (Fast Company) 

• Via Micromobility: Harley-Davidson is designing one-of-a-kind, custom-built e-bikes and auctioning them off to the highest bidder. (The Verge)

• I used to joke about “moonvertising.” I’m not laughing anymore. Via Axios: Geometric Energy Corporation (GEC), a Canadian tech startup, is working with Elon Musk's SpaceX to build satellites that display ads, Insider reports.

Anthropological Things: 

• 2020: A Year Like No Other, Captured in Photos. Magnum 2020 revisits the uncertainties and upheavals of last year through 60 photographers around the world. (Hyperallergic)

• Corollary: Steve Bryant’s Cross Country edition of WITI is a charming reminder that America is no monolith. Contrast it to your Twitter feed. 

• Competitive word association, via Declarative Statements: Take the divergent association task and see. Takes a couple minutes max. I did this and scored in the 97th percentile, which immediately made me want to do it again. LMK how you fare. Prizes for high score.  

Musical Things: 

• The New Statesman’s story on being a woman of color in the 2000s indie scene features [SIC] buddy Nancy Whang, among others.

• De La Soul’s albums are finally coming to streaming, per the group’s accidentally hilarious IG Live performance on Tuesday. This was a important bit, if you missed the chaos. (Instagram)

Sensory Things:

• Via Marginal Revolution: “In general, pornography use trended downward over the pandemic, for both men and women.” (Springer Link) 

• Maybe because of the rise of soft porn TV? (The New Statesman) 

• Related, via Quartz, the great European sex-toy merger is here. Germany’s WOW Tech Group is merging with the UK’s Lovehoney to create a $1.2 billion sexual wellness giant, spurred by rising demand for sex toys in pandemic lockdowns. (WSJ) 

• Switzerland’s ‘Silicon Valley of smell’ prospers in age of big data. The pandemic has changed how people want themselves, their clothes and their homes to smell(FT) 

Baby Brand Things: 

• How bootstrapped brands take off on their own. (Thingtesting)  

• Case in point: how outer grew its unique showroom model, by turning customers homes into retail environments (Retail Dive)

Conversational Things: 

• Everyone loves this Tyler the Creator interview on Hot 97 (and I do too)(YouTube) 

• Corollary, from Amina Gingold: ”Wanted to share with you this recent interview I did on Lenscratch with [legendary director] Cecelia Condit.

• Cat Marnell and Emily Segal interviewed each other for Document Journal. 

• While Ryan McGinness: interviews Steve Keene in Whitehot Magazine.

• And via Ben Evans: Damien Hirst and Mark Carney (former Governor of the Bank of England) discuss Hirst's NFT art project. (YouTube) 

Metaversal Things: 

• Via Robinhood Snacks: since MCU and Disney are family now, Ryan Reynolds pitched a movie where Deadpool confronts the hunter who killed Bambi's mom. (Insider)

• Because, after all, ‘Limits are Non-Existent in the Metaverse!’ [Video Game Concerts Become Big Business] (The Guardian)

• To that end, via Josh Neumann: Roblox’s next show is Youtuber / Rapper KSI, this Friday. (Venture Beat)

• But hold on a second. Sean Monahan doesn’t think the Metaverse will work, and he’s proven himself to be pretty astute. (8Ball)

• Still, Not Boring’s also-astute Packy McCormick says NFTs tick a lot of the boxes of a successful social network from Eugene Wei’s Status-as-a-Service. 

New Ways to Wear Things: 

• Telfar launched a genderless sportswear collection (Business of Fashion) 

• Via Lean Luxe: Why are surf brands so white? (Fast Company)

• Luxury’s Future Lies With the Chinese Cultural Consumer: Are Brands Prepared? (Jing Daily) 

• Apropos of that: The New Digital Paradigm for Luxury Brands in China (Jing Daily)

• Is the Sneaker Industry in Bed With Satan? RAFTM Rachel Tashjian probes for GQ

• On the subject of cursed behavior, via Lean Luxe: Your inbox is now a shopping mall. (The Atlantic)

• Brynn Trill picks Dimepieces for The Real Real (Instagram)

Things We Layaway: 

• Why millennials and gen-Zs are jumping on the buy now, pay later trend(CNBC)

• Hence via Declarative Statements: The deck that Square used to explain the Afterpay transaction strategy. 

Science Things: 

• A startup called 44.01 just raised $5 million to turn carbon dioxide into stones. The process, called mineralizing, is known but not on a commercial scale. If 44.01 has its way, that could change. (Tech Crunch)

• Space Travel might require mushrooms (Scientific American) 

• Elsewhere in plant-based interventions: how to plant a street tree (NYT) 

Things to Go and Do: 

• Director Simon Cahn’s got a project upcoming for aspiring / bubbling screenwriters, give him a shout (Instagram) 

• While The Drunken Canal is taking pitches for its September issue (which reference Ms. Wintour of course) (Instagram)

• Co-sign Frieze’s take on protest artist / graphic design all-time great, Sister Corita Kent, whose show “Heroes and Sheroes” closes tomorrow at Andrew Kreps Gallery, NYC.  

• Go then go see the Never Gonna Leave NYC show at McCaig Welles features work from [SIC] homie Dave Ortiz and a bunch of others. (Up Mag) 

• And then, from Heidi Hartwig: hop the tram over to the Friends From New York dance jam at the new Graduate hotel on Roosevelt Island (Eventbrite) 

• And finally, via Brklyner: Grand Street Restaurant Week (Williamsburg) goes from August 16th – August 29th and you can get three-course dinners for under $35 at 11 restaurants.

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