[SIC] 205: Area is Baron

Volume 4, number 49

You don’t have to support [SIC] with a paid subscription.  But you CAN pay, if you want to. Go right ahead. I’m into it. Monthly or yearly, or founding support.

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

Feel free to share, too.

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Hi all,

I was describing some plans for [SIC]’s volume 5 (coming Sept 8) to a friend this morning and he said that the newsletter reminds him of OG Tumblr, in that (for him at least), it’s a scan-and-click type experience, meaning there’s no expectation of deep engagement with every story.

That strikes me as about right, but it made me wonder if that’s the common use case; I’ve had a few people tell me they try and open everything, which is flattering but probably not sustainable. Would love to know how you go about it / make use of it; feel free to hit me back in the comments, or via direct reply.

The plan for V5 in short: tighter (at least slightly) curation, new section titles, adding [SIC] Talks audio, adding “5 Questions For” interviews to the Sunday/paid subscriber email, and maybe a design update. What am I missing?

Also, in advance of V5, this week I added a ‘paywall’ icon (🔏) to stories that you might not be able to click straight into, per a reader suggestion. It’s tricky to know everything that falls into this bucket for you, since I subscribe to a lot of things, so I’m guessing on your behalf, pretty much. Hopefully it’s useful. LMK if it’s not, tho - cause it’s a kind of a pain in the ass lol.

Lots of great help this week with contributions - thanks Jason, Iolanda, Piers, Celeste, and Isaac for links. Couldn’t do this without you.

Ok, on to the links…

I watched Blue Velvet with my son (he’s nearly 16, it’s ok) and took this photo of the TV with my phone. Reminds me of an Eric White painting. That in mind (and because Eric’s got better things to do), I feel like I should send it to one of those photorealist reproduction specialists and get it made into a painting. Anybody know one?

======[SIC] 205: Area is Baron======

The world

• Oh, excellent. 🤦‍♂️ Dangerous fatalism about a US-China war is taking hold in Beijing and Washington / FT 🔏

• Big Tech workers are leaving their jobs to work on fixing the climate / Protocol

• The reluctant prophet of effective altruism. William MacAskill’s movement set out to help the global poor. Now it frets about runaway A.I. / The New Yorker

• Meantime, in Silicon Valley: the boy bosses are on their way out / NYT

• And, corollary: A Glimpse of a Future Without White People. Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man talks race metamorphosis & the seduction of power/ Wired

• So, is Partisanship Driving Consumer Sentiment?  / The Big Picture via Ritzholtz

• Or is this the Michael Scott Economy? / AWealthofCommonSense via Ritzholtz

• The private sector has added back more than 100% of the jobs that were cut during the pandemic. But the government has had a tougher time hiring: the public sector had recovered just 54.6% of jobs lost / Youtube via Scott Galloway

• Another very Prof G story: research suggests that children from low-income families who are friends with wealthier peers will earn more later in life / FT

• Meantime, are you heading for a financial car crash?/ FT 🔏

• And how sustainable are the contents of your shopping cart? There’s a database for that! / Quartz

• The Tesla Model Y will likely be the best-selling vehicle by total volume next year. It is on track to be the best-selling vehicle by revenue this year / Electrek

• But if you're buying an electric car, you'd better place your order / Axios

• Corollary: who will pay for EV charging? Everyone, apparently / Axios

• Conversely, homeowners adding rooftop solar panels, installing heat pumps and otherwise green-ifying their houses have plenty to like in the big climate, health and tax package / Axios

• And this is cool: The hot new thing in agriculture is “agrivoltaics,” wherein the same land is used for both growing crops and collecting solar energy / Axios

• A skyscraper in Milwaukee becomes world's tallest timber building / Dezeen

• Also Swarms of Mini Robots Could Dig the Tunnels of the Future / Wired via Morning Consult

• And NYC has a new plan to get more people into recycling organic waste / NYT

Trends

• New York’s hottest club is the Catholic Church / NYT via After School

• And the #1 movie on Netflix right now is MAGA propaganda?! / Friday Things via After School

• From Piers Fawkes: What makes something a cult and something else a brand? / Eye on Design

• We live in notification hell / The Verge via Nieman Lab

• Nearly Half of American Teens Say They Are Never Not Online / Daily Upside

• And the report itself, courtesy of Iolanda Carvalho:  Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022 / Pew Research Center

• Are people who post on social media from a smartphone (rather than PC) more likely to seek "uniqueness"? / Sagepub via Marginal Revolution

• Welcome to the four day workweek?! / The Future Party

• Related, from also Iolanda: “This one is SO.GOOD! [ The Future of P-Leisure]” - or “Public Leisure” / Bompas & Parr

• Luxury retail departments are evolving into wellbeing destinations / Wunderman Thompson

• From David Bloom: “Sucks getting older sometimes, even if you’re only turning 35. Once again, we’re reminded of this eternal truism as Millennials, for the first time, find themselves at the butt of jokes from younger Gen Z kids over the ways they use social media, including what is being called the Millennial Pause. See the story from The Atlantic …” / The Atlantic

• IE: Gen Z can pick out millennials from this one hand gesture / The Independent

• Which is just one reason why the Tesla robot seems terrifying (it’s a millenial, apparently) / Creative Bloq

• Europe’s New Trams Are Reviving a Golden Age of Transit / Reasons to be Cheerful

• More automakers are seeing the opportunity in micromobility, with Porsche, Rivian, and Hyundai all investing in ebikes / The Investor via Micromobility

• Why shared scooters are like internet cafes / Micromobility

• How Henny lost out to George Clooney’s tequila in rap lyrics / The Atlantic via Unskippables

• Why China’s Love Of Hanfu Is Here To Stay. Its revival of subculture, community, and tradition signals a paradigm shift in taste / Jing Daily

• Maybe not sticking around: demand for grocery delivery cools as food costs rise / The Associated Press via Morning Consult

Style

• Euphoria costumer / downtown legend Heidi Bivens’s Top 10 Films / Criterion

• And Heidi takes us vintage shopping, via [SIC] homie Polina Aranova-Cahn / Departures

• Speaking of classics, the intro scene in Mommie Dearest is apparently the RAFTM’s answer to the American Psycho beauty routine / YT via Opulent Tips

• S/o Blackbird Spyplane: footballers who play with their jerseys tucked in / Top Soccer Blog

• A library for fashion mags in an article with confusing pronouns? / Discordia

• Running brands are finally making shoes for women. Brands are investing in running shoes that are actually manufactured for a woman’s foot / Retail Dive

• Virgil Abloh celebrated in Nordstrom’s Latest Pop-up / WWD via Retail Dive

• Influencers and antiques? How a new generation is transforming the market / The Art Newspaper

The Arts

• Airbrush nation:  s/o to [SIC] Talks alum Andrea Hernandez; the Snax Queen's deep dive into airbrush ads is truly 🤌*chef's kiss*🤌 /  Snapshot

• More image worship, from Piers Fawkes: Using Computer Vision to study the form of objects — their shape, colour and texture / Medium

• Related: experiments with DALL-E recreating the styles of famous photographers / Twitter via Context Collapse

• No One Cares About My Framed NFT Art / Wired via Lean Luxe

• From Celeste Blewitt: “A fascinating watch and intersection of worlds, the stately manors of the UK mixed with the raw energy of sculpture that would normally be seen at Burning Man. A great watch ['The Art Of Burning Man At Chatsworth’]” / YouTube

• Also fascinating: a short film about the Kool Herc exhibit at Christie’s /IG

• Corollary: The street photography of Jamel Shabazz / BK Mag

Entertainment + IP

• Is the new Maya Hawke flick Do Revenge Gen Z’s Heathers? / W Magazine via After School

• How Jacob Elordi Became Gen Z's Leading Man / GQ

• Related: Variety’s Power of Young Hollywood Impact List is a great who’s who of next-gen stars, per Casey Lewis/ Variety via After School

• Elsewhere, Dua Lipa was named an Honorary Ambassador of Kosovo / Pitchfork

• Mike Judge’s Secret Art of Satire / The New Yorker

• From Celeste Blewitt: “Algorithms, ease of access, funding structures, changes in the ways people find music. [‘Tuning Out Of Triple J: Why Australia's Youth Station Is Losing Its Young Listeners’]” / The Guardian

• Corollary: Every video that ever aired on 120 minutes /  Brooklyn Vegan via Context Collapse

• From Jason Leavy: “Bit UK-centric, but throw up some great questions for the worldwide music industry [The stats that explain why the UK music biz will see a major recovery]” / Music Business Worldwide

Platforms & Influencers

• Move over Ticketmaster and Eventbrite, Spotify has a new website that sells certain live music tickets directly to account holders / TechCrunch

• Spotify revolutionized podcasting. Can it do the same for Podcast Ads? / Adweek

• While, Audible is trying to build up its podcast slate faster than Spotify can build up its audiobook slate / Variety

• Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen’s podcast with Scott Galloway / Stitcher

• Ugh. We’ve come to the Twitterification of TikTok / Embedded

• Meanwhile, the TikTok influencers are coming for the midterms / The Verge via Morning Consult

• The Soothing Affirmation of Daily Routine TikTok. Creators celebrating the simple pleasures of daily life are upending the hyper-polished norms of social media / Rolling Stone via Morning Consult

• Also TikTok is now #obsessed with Sea Moss Gel, apparently / Soho House

• Tho the Goop-i-fication of wellness is out (thanks to Gen-Z) / LA Times

• TikTok teaches us: build brand loyalty by offering creators freedom / The Drum

• Ergo: why you should hire an influencer with a day job / BoF

Marketing & Advertising

• It’s a classic. “Anyone who thinks graphic design can sometimes be a touch pretentious is going to absolutely love (or is that loathe?) this utterly mind-boggling glimpse into Pepsi's million-dollar rebrand from 2008” / Creative Bloq

• Agencies: losing sight of purpose and devolving to one-stunt shops / The Drum

• Hence, a reminder: “When do we get to the marketing part?” / Seth Godin

• Meantime as burnout plagues creatives, here's how agencies are keeping them inspired / Adweek

• How brands and creators are using Roblox's new “Materials” tool to boost the realism of their virtual worlds / Digiday

• Because … the future of streaming is in Advertising / Variety Intelligence via Morning Consult

• Amazon buys a Roomba to scan every inch of your home / Forbes via Future Party

• While Lyft Inc. is launching Lyft Media, a new business unit that to offer more ads inside cars and on its app to better compete with Uber /WSJ via Morning Consult

• You guys, guess what?!! QR CODES work. Sky Media reports response rates to ads with QR Codes is much higher than those without / The Drum

• While elsewhere brands are using forums like Reddit for awareness and product development / Modern Retail via Morning Consult

• Speaking of Reddit, they partnered with FTX enable Reddit users to access FTX Pay via “community points” / FTX

Media Business

• [SIC] fave and ‘smart brevity’ titan Axios has been acquired by Cox Enterprises for $525M] / Axios

• 4 things Axios did right / Simon Owens

• And how Facebook helped Axios sell for $500 million / Vox via Nieman Lab

• Related, per Brian Morrissey: The Triumph of DC Media / The Rebooting

• Speaking of Axios: After a “reader used AI image generator DALL-E to create Axios-style illustrations, our visual journalists started wondering: Could [they] use this technology the same way?” / Axios

• Related: did a robot help create that ad? The Answer, Increasingly, Is Yes. More marketers are using artificial-intelligence tools to help develop creative ideas. WSJ via Morning Consult

• Mindshare's new AI tool measures how toxic news is to help brands decide where to advertise / Ad Age 🔏

• While Litquidity memed his way to a $2M media business / The Rebooting Show on Spotify

• Related: The Rise of the LinkedIn B2B Influencer / Bloomberg 🔏

• While Bullish Studio’s Ticker History gives you the full scope of what happened in the market on specific days in history / Twitter

• 'The Sky's the Limit, Literally': Why Drones Are the Future of Sports Broadcasts / Morning Consult

• Meanwhile outlets that cover esports are retreating into layoffs / Sports Business Journal via Nieman Lab

• While publishers invest in more crypto reporters. Publishers like Bloomberg, Forbes, Fortune, Gizmodo and Money are investing in reporters to cover crypto and the blockchain / Digiday

• The NYT is planning to aggressively expand its advertising business across its bundled products, including games and sports / Axios

• Same, same: Vox Media's Ryan Pauley explains how expanding the CRO role beyond ad sales improves ad sales / Digiday

• Contraceptive brands such as Plan B, Favor and Phexxi have doubled or even quadrupled their online advertising / Digiday

• Corollary: fan-made add-ons allowing The Sims characters to have abortions are increasingly popular / Axios

Metaverse & Web3

• While [SIC] homie Troy Young explores NFTs as Media / People vs Algorithms

• To wit: 18 & Over, a “cult sexual slasher” is an NFT gated film that also includes perks like attending the premier and after party in LA / 18&Over via The Drop

• Metawashing is the Latest Buzzword Taking Over Web3 / Jing Daily

• A different green: how web3 may revolutionize cannabis / The Drum

• Apropos: “The Marketer’s (Completely Hype-Free, We Promise) Guide To The Metaverse” / Two Five Six

• And from Iolanda Carvalho: The Gucci moves... [trailblazing a path for brands in Web3] / Muse by Clio

• Case in point: Gucci brings Miley Cyrus into Roblox / The Drum

• Not to be outdone, Tiffany & Co made $12.5m from their CryptoPunks pendant drop. It sold out in 22 minutes / Twitter via The Milk Road

• While on the flip side: NFT creators are going cc0. A “creative commons” license basically allows the creators to reserve no rights over the work. The benefit? “cc0 licensing lets creators more easily ‘seize the memes of production.’” / Future

• Related, from Jason Leavy: “Hype-cycle stuff: [The Gartner Hype Cycle for Blockchain and Web3]”/ Gartner

• And The Current Scene in DAO Compensation / via Forefront

• After the government banned encryption tool Tornado Cash, some started using Tornado to send cash to all kinds of famous people to implicate them and muddy the waters  / Twitter via The Milk Road

Food & Drink

• Eating Through the Internet, a piece on the web3 food scene / Forefront

• Animal-free meat brands are going gourmet / Thingtesting

• How Americans Became Obsessed With Drinking Apple Cider Vinegar / Epicurious

• Corollary: Methuselah, Salmanazar, Nebuchadnezzar / WITI

• How Singapore Airlines serves fresh fish on the world's longest flight / YT via Future of Transportation

• While back on the ground, how Chef Mario Carbone Built the Most Celebrity-Studded Restaurant on Earth / Vanity Fair

• Hulu's 'The Bear' and the Restaurant Industry's Long Overdue Reckoning / NYT

• A New York cooperative has created a distribution system for local food coming from farms owned by people of color / Civil Eats via Reasons to be Cheerful

• And North Carolina’s oyster farms are taking pressure off natural ecosystems and attracting tourists / Carolina Public Press via Reasons to be Cheerful

Miscellany

• Further South, Florida is holding a snake removal competition. Eight hundred contestants are hunting down invasive Burmese pythons to claim cash / AP

• Corollary: The Secret to Being Lucky / Wired via The By-Product

To Do

• Saturday: support fave gallery Public Access by picking up one of their new tee shirts, made in a limited run of 50 for only $20 cash / IG

======Book of the Week======

“The Steve Keene Art Book” - Steve Keene is an actual NYC legend and one of my favorite artists, both for the work itself and how he makes it (super fast, tirelessly, at scale) This is the first monograph of his work and includes a conversation between Steve and [SIC] Talks alum Ryan McGinness, who I think first turned me on to the book while it was still in progress. It’s really fun (cover pic below).

On the topic of books -a few more recos before we go:

• From Piers Fawkes: What We Gain from a Good Bookstore. It’s a place whose real boundaries and character are much more than its physical dimensions / The New Yorker

• The Book Club That’s Been Discussing the Same Proust Novel for 20 Years / Hyperallergic

• From Jason Leavy: “Recommended summer reading from the management consultancy kids [McKinsey’s Summer Reading List]” / McKinsey

• And finally from Isaac Dietz: Muddguts’ highly-recommended raw patch book is back and you should get a copy / IG

======[SIC] 205: Area is Baron======