[SIC] 200: Personality Sandbox

Volume 4, Number 44

Jul 07, 2022

Paid subscribers now get an additional [SIC] Sundays newsletter. And founding supporters get invited to a series of dinners at my house in NYC.

Feel free to share, too. It’s the 200th edition, after all.

Hi all,

Back in NY, back in the groove for this 200th week of [SIC] missives - thanks for bearing with me these last couple weeks (and apologies to paying subs for not sending [SIC] Sunday this weekend, I owe you one).

I compiled this newsletter to a playlist of “old school classics” in Manchester circa 1987-90; since starting the Chris Blackwell autobiography last week I’ve been on a musical nostalgia bender, gravitating between photo-club bangers and dub reggae covers like this one of “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” which do a great job spinning off playlists of similarly vibey stuff I find it productive to work along to.

Also this Pirata 5 compilation of insane remixes/mash-ups from the Mexican label NAAFI is Soca Brainwash-level work music if you’re trying to power through stuff. I found it via The FACE’s excellent newsletter last week, which also shouted out Sexy Beast, (which inspired the title of SIC 196). The film is only 1 hour 27 minutes long and is streaming on Delta flights right now (if you’re flying, like everyone else). Even if you’re not, You should take less than 90 minutes and watch it. Ben Kingsley is volcanic but the whole cast is pretty unbelievable.

Other recos: Brian Morrissey’s “Tuesday Media Diet” is a good one. And unrelated to that: this “One More Try” video on Vimeo is cool illustration of skateboarding perseverance.

No [SIC] Talks or 5 Questions For this week, but they’ll return next time, so if there’s anyone you want to hear from, I’d love suggestions. Along those lines, thanks to Piers, David, Jeremy, Iolanda, Ben and Celeste for contributions this week. Very appreciated.

OK …. links follow. Or….

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When you live in a place with no lizards, it’s weird seeing them just hanging around.

======[SIC] 200: Personality Sandbox======

The world

On taste / Are.na via The Lindy Newsletter
Following on that: What exactly is the problem these days? Key Quote: “We have entered an age in which the popular taste for good political outcomes, and fair political processes, is much weaker than it used to be.”/ Marginal Revolution
Appropriate time to ask, then: Was the American Revolution a good idea? / The New Yorker
And from Jeremy Toeman: What does is take to be wealthy in America? / Visual Capitalist
Esp. since emerging markets are in better shape than you think / FT
While back home, Inflation Is Here to Stay and That Makes a Recession Inevitable / Bloomberg via Morning Consult
But, but: the inflation blame-game will lead to bad outcomes / FT
More good news: Abortion misinformation is absolutely flooding TikTok / Highsnobiety via After School
And the corollary ‘We will adopt your baby’ is a dark meme for depressing times / Morning Brew
A hacker claims to have stolen data on 1 billion Chinese citizens from Shanghai police records. It might be the biggest data breach in history / Protocol
Significant, since your digital self will outlive you / Morning Brew
Apropos, then: here’s a handy explainer on wow to prevent the internet from tracking you / Gear Patrol via Elevator
Cause even airlines are getting in on the act: Delta is experimenting with information boards that know who you are and where you’re going / Quartz
Drones part: Everywhere but NYC, drones took over 4th of July “fireworks” / Future Party
And the drug smuggling trade in Spain / BBC via 1440
Even New York beaches are stepping up their shark patrols with drones and trackers, / NYT
Unrelated but intriguing: a greater concentration of dog ownership leads to a decrease in urban crime (because taking them for walks means more ‘eyes on the street’) / OUP via Marginal Revolution

Trends

They’re calling it: Hybrid Work Is Doomed / The Atlantic via Morning Consult
While conversely the next evolution of the conscious consumer is rewilding day-to-day life, apparently / Wunderman Thompson
Also wild: Ryan Broderick explains the nature of GenZ meme-ry via that #gentleminions thing you saw on socials last weekend / Garbage Day
And then expounds on schizoposting and why we, as in America as a whole, are simply not ready to talk about it yet / Garbage Day
Oh BTW you guys: The majority (61%) of Gen Zers would like their employer to provide the option for a daily wage payment/ Fortune via Morning Consult
Barbiecore is quickly becoming the trend of the summer / W Magazine via After School
Corollary: Where the international party girls are holidaying this summer / The FACE
Tiktok’s latest cringe trend: Gen Z critiques their former selves / Wired via After School
More changes of heart: The new cool thing to do is to get a nose job reversal / Dazed via After School
Oh and FBI Warns That People Are Using Deepfakes To Slither Into Job Positions / Design Taxi via Kouch Culture
Related: The hack that brought down the largest NFT video game, Axie Infinity was a LinkedIn phishing scam complete with multiple rounds of fraudulent interviews for a job that did not exist / The Block via Garbage Day
Elsewhere, these Mormons Have Found a New Faith — in Magic Mushrooms / Rolling Stone via Public Announcement
But Crypto evangelists keep the faith as prices fall / FT
Even as the Crypto collapse reverberates widely among black American investors / FT
And NFT sales have hit a 12-month low, totaling just over $1 billion in June / Protocol
Toys, Secrets, and Cycles: Lessons from the 2000s - Chris Dixon’s rationale for why this downturn will sprout lots of huge new companies / a16z via Web3 Newsletter
And end some huge old ones? Tesla is killing off coal and gas plants with its giant battery projects / Quartz
Not to be outdone, Chinese gadget manufacturers are getting into the car-making business / Wired via Future of Transportation

Style

The Extremely Large Life of a Suntan Mogul / The New Yorker via Ruby Dispatch
How Will China’s New Anti-Monopoly Law Affect Luxury? / Jing Daily
Gucci tapped Giorgio Bargiani, The Connaught Hotel’s mixologist, to create a pre-mixed cocktail to sell in stores and at its new Florentine bar, Gucci Giardino 25 / Monocle
Related: Inside Gucci’s Artlab: Where Alessandro Michele’s designs come to life — sustainably / Vogue Business
From Piers Fawkes: Loewe Brings Wearable Plant Life to the Runway / Sourcing Journal
While Bloomsbury artist Duncan Grant is star of Dior catwalk / The Art Newspaper
Elsewhere, from Piers Fawkes: Dior creative director Kim Jones revived a 16th-century material, kutnu, to serve as a standout textile for the summer 2023 show / Luxury Daily
From Celeste Blewitt: “’The G7 summit seemed to cause much discussion around ties, suits and perhaps even dress codes. Who would have thought?”[Ties Are Dead. Or Are They?’] / BoF
From Ben Duhl: “Good taste, style and life approach” [Emilie Hawtin’s Five Fits] / Esquire
S/o Marcella Zimmerman for pointing me to this: Safwat Riad (aka Lil Egypt) has been setting the tone for New York City nightlife venues for more than a decade. / NYT
Feeling seen: Birkenstock's first paid global campaign says feet are 'Ugly for a Reason' / Marketing Dive
The Golden Age of Thrifting is over / NYT via After School

The Arts

Could This Be the First Recorded Gay Couple in History? / Hyperallergic
From David Bloom: “Thought this piece in The Guardian was pretty interesting, about the somewhat unintended follow-on effect of a member of one of the world’s biggest bands getting his followers into art because he keeps taking pictures of the galleries, museums and artists he visits.” [BTS’s RM Has Sent K-Pop Fans Flooding to Art Museums Thanks to His Instagram] / The Guardian
Hence: Summer of Seoul: why the South Korean capital is a new art world hub / The Art Newspaper
Here’s a collection of all the Artforum top ten lists between 1998 and 2008/ UBU via S/FJ
From Piers Fawkes: The Wes Andersons of Sign-Making are octogenarian brothers from Ecuador who wear a suit and tie every day and hand-letter posters and signs for the pupuserías of Roosevelt Avenue and the trendy ice-cream shops of Manhattan / The New Yorker
The Virgil Abloh exhibition at Brooklyn Museum includes a full-scale house / Dezeen
Remembering the artist Duncan Hannah /The Contender via Public Announcement
Inside The Invasion Of British Museums By Disabled Artists / The Guardian via Jing Culture
And another from Piers: The Emergence of Zines on Tezos. Born out of the Harlem Renaissance in 1920s New York City, zine creation is synonymous with a variety of subcultures, art movements and literature / NFTCulture

Entertainment + IP

Gaying It Forward How Victor/Victoria Broke the Musical Mold / Criterion
Welcome to the summer of Big Intimacy / The FACE
And the 5 horniest films ever made. / The FACE
Patricia Arquette Is Still Sick of Women Coming Last / The New Yorker
Elsewhere: Ted Gioa writes about how it is impossible to make a middle class income as a musician these days / Honest Broker via Lindy Newsletter
Tho Lagos street pop is still going strong, thanks to Asake / The FACE
From Celeste Blewitt: “A discussion around innovation, ideas and the concepts of animation, Disney and companies which fell behind or moved ahead when Microsoft, Bill Gates and the like were starting to make moves” [How Tron Changed Cinema- And Predicted The Future Of Tech] / The Guardian Australia
At Tribeca Immersive 2022, storytellers moved beyond the novelty of VR for VR's sake, using it to advance a deeper purpose / Wunderman Thompson
While video game sales are set to fall as the industry braces for recession / CNBC
Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast company signed a deal with A24 to turn its projects into films and TV shows / Variety

Platforms & Influencers

Gen Z's embracing digital privacy and rejecting social media's "presentation culture." Discord and Tumblr have reaped the gains of distancing themselves from Insta's "personal brand" ethos / Robinhood Snacks
The oft-cited Kyle Chayka’s surveying readers for his next book about their perceptions of “the algorithm”. Chip in here with your thoughts / Google docs
Slack turns formerly incarcerated people into tomorrow’s tech workers / Future Party
Meanwhile, how short-form video creators like TikTok stars are playing the revenue diversification long game / Digiday
TikTok abandons ecommerce expansion in Europe and US. The social media platform’s foray into livestream shopping in the UK has struggled to gain traction / FT
Per Ruby Dispatch: The only influencers we'd ever care about are the ones that live in the New York Nicoverse / Grub Street
Meta: is pulling the plug on its crypto payments wallet, Novi / TechCrunch
Zuck said it’s “OK” if employees leave as a result of increased pressure / Quartz
How football shirts chart the rise and fall of tech giants / Rest of World via Public Announcement
Apple will allow CarPlay users to tap an app to navigate to a pump and buy gas straight from a screen in the car / Reuters via Future of Transportation
While Amazon is launching a fleet of electric bikes that look like mini trucks as part its first-ever “Micromobility Hub” with hopes of replace commercial vans with bikes for 5M deliveries a year. / The Guardian via Micromobility Report

Marketing & Advertising

'Advertising has taken a hit': The crypto crisis has created an advertising vacuum / Digiday
Corollary: [SIC] homie and R/GA chief Sean Lyons on why agency is so vulnerable to market pressures / The Drum
Because? Agencies need to sell products, not services / Digiday via Morning Consult
Related: s/o [SIC] homie Gerhard Stochl: DTC shaving brand Harry’s grew its in-house capabilities, adding an in-house studio with a full-time in-house photographer to its staff / Digiday
What do creative directors need to make them creative? / The Drum
And will watching every Grand Prix winner at Cannes Lions 2022 help answer that question? / The Drum
Meanwhile, from Piers Fawkes: What brand can learn from Love Island / We Are Social
Case in point: RadioShack is “Horny On Main” / Future Party via Beats & Bytes
Brands still need chief media officers – but they don’t know how to train them / The Drum
Metaverse and NFT Myopia: 3 Common Mistakes of Luxury Brands / Jing Daily
While Wine Brands Find Their ‘Youth Formula’ in Collaborations / Jing Daily

Media Business

Cosmopolitan let AI design its latest magazine cover / Adweek via After School
Personalization The "person" bit is too often missing / The Rebooting
“It’s not pictures of beautiful women doing handstands on surfboards.” Prism aims to make wellness stories more accessible, less cringe / Nieman Lab
From Iolanda Carvalho: 33 Problems With Media in One Chart / Visual Capitalist

Metaverse & Web3

How LimeWire, Winamp, Napster and more internet relics are finding new life in Web3 Music Tech via Public Announcement
Another from Iolanda: The Metaverse in 2040 / Pew Research
While in the here and now: how a 50-Person Band Wrote a Web3 Hit With ‘Camp Chaos’ NFTs / Billboard via Forefront
New York is establishing a cryptocurrency and blockchain task force, which will issue its findings at the end of 2024. Blockchain for Government? Not So Fast / City and State NY via Web3 Newsletter
Relate: What Web3 Organizations Can Learn from the History of Governance. / a16z via Forefront
And the ABCs of NFTs compiled data from Reddit’s passionate crypto community, surveying thousands of Redditors for their raw perspective / Reddit via Beats & Bytes

Food & Drink

20 years ago Thai restaurants started popping up all over America. How did this happen? The Thai government paid for it. It was “gastrodiplomacy” / Munchies via The Lindy Newsletter
He became a chef at 13. Ten years later, Flynn McGarry is done being a prodigy. [The Old-Timer] / Grub Street via Public Announcement
Are Age-exclusive Bars the Way of the Future? / Texas Monthly via Elevator
While aging expert, FT Wine columnist Jancis Robinson hits the Slowdown’s podcast to talk about the Wondrous World of Wine / Time Sensitive
From Iolanda Carvalho: Beyond Sherry - why Portuguese wine is hard to beat/ The Guardian
Tokyo’s E Vino Spaghetti (pictured) deploys the world’s first pasta-chef robots / Monocle
Singapore’s “NEWbrew” is a blonde ale made from toilet water that aims to send a message about recycling / Quartz
Corollary: Are some processed meats worse for you than others? / NYT

Miscellany

Scientists have invented a “quantum flute.” The device can make light particles move together creating “notes” from different wavelengths / Quartz
Histography: Where every dot is a historical event from Wikipedia. This entire project is wild: an interactive timeline that spans across 14 billion years of history, from the Big Bang to 2015 / Histography via Ritzholtz
Inside a Lost Luggage Store / YouTube via Elevator
Want to avoid culture wars at work? You need a healthy 'debate culture’ / Protocol

Things to Do

PSFK retail webinar on July 12 including this week’s MVP contributor and [SIC] Talks alum Piers Fawkes and guests from Gap, Home Depot and Prophet

Book of the Week

How I Take Photographs, by Daido Moriyama. I bought this one for my son, hoping he’d be inspired to pick up an old DSLR of mine and start capturing his commute to school, friend group and so on. Hasn’t taken yet, but I cracked into the book, inspired by Moriyama’s rigorously approach to randomness. It’s not the most sublime book of images you’ll ever find, but as a functional guide to DIY image-making, it’s easy access and cool.