[SIC] 192: Severance MDE

Volume 4, Number 36

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. You don’t have to support [SIC] with a paid subscription. Everybody gets the same content. 

But you CAN pay, if you want to. Go right ahead. I’m into it. Monthly or yearly, or founding support (which includes a dinner at my house in May, if you’re in / can get to NYC). Other benefits that’d persuade you? Suggest ‘em. I’m open.

Feel free to share, too

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Hi all,

Mystery is one of the big elements of doing this brain dump each week. How everything puzzles together, what it all implies, where they all come from, to paraphrase Eleanor Rigby.

For instance: 2% of my traffic in April came from this site: http://lamutante.substack.com/ which is entirely in French. Any of my Francophone people know why? Would love to know.

Even if I don’t ever find out, I welcome the mystery. For me it’s a corollary to Tyler Cowen’s assertion that "The telltale sign of a successful intellectual life is weirdness – weird in the best possible way," in his Mystical Silicon interview this week. I very much agree. Indicatively, Tyler and his Marginal Revolution site (which I encounter as a daily newsletter) shows up a bunch this week. All links worth clicking on.

Also worth investigating if you can track an elusive copy down: [SIC] favorite The Drunken Canal, the DIY newsprint art project of downtown Z-lennials Claire & Gutes. I’ve linked to TDC a bunch in the past, but I’ve only just gotten to know the two of them recently - so I asked Gutes to be my guest on the new episode of [SIC] Talks, to accompany this edition. Given that their newest issue welcomes readers to the year 1433, one definite topic of discussion will be why internet has become strangely nostalgic for life in the Middle Ages (according to The Atlantic)

It’s today at 4pm ET / 1p PT on my IG Live @dietznutz (and in my grid thereafter, along with another 40+ conversations). Come hang.

Gutes is also going to be a special guest (along with Casey Lewis of favorite source After School), at a dinner I’m doing in at my home in Brooklyn later this month for “founding” tier subscribers to [SIC]. There’s still time to join, if you’re in a place to join the founding tier (hit the subscribe button above, and please expense it).

Thanks as always to contributors this week: David, Rob, Gordon, Iolanda, Celeste and Hugh, I see you.

One last thing before the links: this edition is dedicated to [SIC] homie and regular reader Matt Schoen, who I worked with for years. He’s the low-key design god whose work and philosophies I QC everything visual against. Matt’s promised to pop in to one of my Wednesday “Breakfast Club” meetings in NY soon, so I’m putting him on notice here, and counting on it. Hope we’ll see each other again soon, bud.

That goes for all of you, too. Ok, now the links.

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Coupla Creep Kids created by Matt Schoen and friends, in a marked departure from his typical painting style ;)

The World:

• What just happened? There is precious little logic left in the market / FT

• Crypto’s evolution adds new risks to potential rewards Regulators warn retail investors as they enter specialist fields like borrowing, lending and staking / FT

• As if on cue, Coinbase just happened to reveal in its first-ever Q1 report that if it were to ever go bankrupt, users’ crypto holdings could become their property / Insider via Future Party

• Unrelated, but also insidious? According to a new paper, mindfulness may be especially harmful when we have wronged other people. By quelling our feelings of guilt, it seems, the common meditation technique discourages us from making amends for our mistakes. / BBC via Marginal Revolution

• Besides, How Many Friends Do You Really Need? NYT via Public Announcement

• Corollary: do we overestimate how extreme our opponents are? / Psarxiv via Marginal Revolution

• Tyler Cowen plays devils advocate in defense of extremism / Marginal Revolution

• Because young Americans Aren't as Woke as You Think. Beneath a left-leaning veneer, they continue to believe in the capitalist verities of competition, individual responsibility and earned success / Bloomberg

• Corollary: how the term 'work-life balance' is changing for the youngest group of workers. After starting their careers and job searches remotely, young workers have a different perspective on the term. / Fast Company

• Hence the post-industrial collision brewing in the knowledge economy, along generational lines. Read this, it’s short / Seth Godin

• B/c “For Tens of Millions of Americans, the Good Times are Right Now” / NYT

Trends

• Trends are dead /  Vox

• Layoffs.fyi is the new FuckedCompany / Layoffs.FYI

• Huge marketing campaigns are rolling out to bring people back to movie theaters / The Future Party

• Including “The Daddiest Daddy” / Yahoo

• Meanwhile the coastal grandmother aesthetic is also taking over TikTok / Fashionista via PSFK

• And Fishing is cool now. / Esquire

• Following DALLE’s image generation model yet, Deepmind has a natural language image understanding model / Deepmind via Ben-Evans

• From David Bloom: "Yet another use of AI in an unexpected way. Not sure what it means to delegate your auditions to a tool, but Fiverr must feel pretty confident it works to even throw it out there” / NextWeb

• Maybe AI wrote it?! From Gordon Hull: “The title alone is an awesome exercise in extreme alliteration.... the article isn't bad either / The Information

Style

• Why Snapchat Might Be Close to Cracking Virtual Shopping / BoF

• Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control: Inside Shein’s Sudden Rise via Retail Innovation Week

• Why Brands Are Racing Into Resale — in Five Charts / BoF

• But repairs, an essential part of getting that right, is still lacking. Can repairs ever be as cool as resale? / Vogue Business

• From Hugh Dietz: “I think you would enjoy this. It explains just how a self winding watch works and the way it is adjusted.” / ciechanow.ski

The Arts

• The Guggenheim Museum Finally Drops the Sackler Name / Hyperallergic

• While The MTA reports a steady rise in subway graffiti / Hyperallergic

• Marilyn Minter and Michele Lamy on Sex, Aging, and Beauty / Harpersbazaar via Public Announcement

• Soccer plotters: the graphic world of Football fandom / It’s Nice That

• Author Lucy Sante on the Apology Podcast / Spotify

• From Artist Takeovers To Curation — How The Gagosian Built Its Retail Arm / Jing Culture & Commerce

• Madonna’s NFT Collab With Beeple Is a Matryoshka of Vagina Horrors / Hyperallergic

Entertainment + IP

• How the creators of South Park turned Kendrick Lamar into a deepfake Ye, O.J. and Will Smith / It’s Nice That

• While EEAAO’s shape-shifting Michelle Yeoh talks to Desus & Mero / YouTube

• Dr. Seuss Enterprises may be preparing to put itself up for auction / Future Party

• [SIC] homie Drew Millard on The Righteous Gemstones as anthropology / Dirt

• Elsewhere in small creative squads: how a tiny team of gamers became the force behind video game movies Protocol via PSFK

• Related: Game developers are angling to become the next big media owners — and brands are taking notice / Digiday

• From Rob Hubbert: NTS bringing the 🔥 with this introduction to Bill Evans / NTS

• Wet Leg, Dry Cleaning, Black Country, New Road and other groups are carrying a rich post-punk tradition forward — while providing a sardonic voice for these dystopian times. Speak-Sing Me a Song. Tidal via Music Redef

• The Unraveling of SST Records /Jim Ruland’s book on the legendary punk label helps explain why we lack a meaningful counterculture today. / New Republic via Motive Unknown

• Ergo: Pop Culture Has Become an Oligopoly / Experimental History

Platforms & Influencers

• The YouTubers are not OK /  Vox via After School

• And Web3 won’t save Twitter from Elon Musk / FWB

• TikTok is good at being the cool new thing and not good at proving its ads work / Ad Exchanger

• But Netflix and other streamers have surrendered to ads—and consumers really don't mind. Why advertising won the streaming wars / Fast Company

• But for its ad-based model to succeed, Netflix needs to buy Roku / The Drum

• Grindrplans to go public by merging with a SPAC / Fast Company

Marketing & Advertising

• Surprise! All Brands Are Now Health And Wellness Brands / Mediapost

• Why 'Onchain' Is The Next New Ad Industry Jargon / Mediapost

• Washington Nationals' Oblivious Crypto Tweet Is A Warning for Brands in Web3 / Ad Age

• Conversely, What Wendy's Foray Into Meta's VR Means For Brands / Ad Age 

• What should brands sound like in the metaverse? / The Drum

• IDEO Tips on Conducting Ethnographies / Are.na via Strat Scraps

• Why Everyone Thinks They Can Be A CMO -- And Why They're Wrong / Mediapost

• Corollary: Female CMOs overtake male ones for the first time, though tenure remained low in 2021 thanks, in part, to issues related to the pandemic combined with diversity efforts / Marketing Dive

• Fortnite Creative is becoming a hub for metaversal brand activations, and the demand has pushed companies to look beyond Epic Games, the developer of the title, to reach audiences. / Digiday

• David Droga Aims To Reform Agency Model / Fast Company via Mediapost

Media Business

• WTF is dunning? / Digiday

• Kyle Chayka and Daisy Alioto’s Dirt newsletter is expanding into its own media company and brand / Mirror

• Highsnobiety is launching a new sports vertical alongside a Los Angeles pop-up store / BoF

Metaverse & Web3

• From Celeste Blewitt: “Great 15 minute snippet on how fashion in the metaverse is being developed and created. “ Who Is Designing The Metaverse?" / BoF

• From Iolanda Carvalho: “Ahaha web3 worlds collide... This AI generates Bored Apes that are unique, free — and fungible. The NextWeb

• Also: “No comments 😉Kraft wants to solve its supply chain problems — in the metaverse. Kraft Heinz is using the metaverse to help get Lunchables, Velveeta and ketchup onto shelves faster / CNN

• Inside the surprisingly lucrative business of a metaverse landlord / Fast Company via Motive Unknown

Food & Drink

• Cause we all gotta eat? Food stocks defy the downtrend / FT

• While “Dirty” Shirley Temples are alledgedly “the drink of the summer” / NY Times via PSFK

Miscellany

• Sin City just outlawed grass. Las Vegas is mandating the removal of lawns / NYT via Robinhood Snacks

• So then can we build cities out of lava? Dezeen via Marginal Revolution

Things to Do

• Thursday and auction onward Hvw8’s show to benefit Ukraine including work by a ton of fave artists including fave photographer Jim Mangan and a bunch of other great artists / Instagram

• Speaking of benefitting Ukraine: The AFYA list at Amazon is a simple way to support Ukrainians; buy any of the goods in the list and they’ll be sent directly to AFYA for front-line distribution in Ukraine / Amazon via Peter Zeihan

• The first ever Brooklyn Magazine Festival is June 17-18

• As is the Printed Matter x 8Ball East Village Zine Fair.

• Nearer term, Sade night NYC is May 19th and I’ll be there / Instagram

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