[SIC] 224: Deranged Lasagna

Volume 5, Number 16

Dec 16, 2022

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Hi all,

Writing from a plane again - this is getting to be a pattern. I’ve got a new job that I’m psyched about, and that’s gonna see me traveling more often again, so maybe I’ve got to get used to this. We’ll see. Anyway - I’ve been in transit, so forgive the late-in-the-day send.

Lots of great stuff this week as the year winds up and the pundits analyze what it’s all meant. Some interesting implications for the future, too.

Big shouts to Syd, Celeste, Matt, Iolanda, David, Sami and Blue for contributions this week. More, please.

Ben

Uffie popping the Glock live at Dimmak Tuesdays in LA. And they say Indie Sleaze Was An Inside Job

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Zeitgest / Gestalt

Casey Newton’s 13 predictions for platforms in 2023 / Platformer
Beats & Bytes’s 2022 trends in music / Beats & Bytes
The 100 Greatest Innovations of 2022 / PopSci
Not great; Gen Z came to “Slay.” Their bosses don’t know what that means / WaPo
Nearly half of young adults in the US are living at home with their parents, and all that saved rent is fueling a luxury boom. A record level of young adults in the US is currently living at home, and all that saved rent is sparking a luxury boom / Insider
Why all the “Eat the Rich” satire looks the same. From Glass Onion and The Menu to Triangle of Sadness, right now, there's only one message (ironically) coming out of Hollywood: rich people are bad / The Face
The Crunchy-to-Alt-Right Pipeline / The Atlantic
Corollary: Gen Z’s voting habits are all the proof companies need to act on societal issues / Fortune
From Syd Allen-Ash: “Merch line where people print the amount of student debt they have Results of a pro bono campaign apparently. Gotta say, they better be able to print 6 digits on those sweaters” / Student Debt Crisis
Hey Silicon Valley, Maybe It’s Time to Dress Up, Not Down. Sam Bankman-Fried’s choices may signal an end to the schlubby mystique / NYT
‘Tramp stamps’ are in again and no longer ‘trashy,’ influencers say /NYPost
Related: Why Gen Z Loves Ugly Selfies / Mashable
Elsewhere, what if work is making us sick? While employment has become less physically dangerous, it seems to have become more psychologically harmful / FT
From Matt @theTechnorati: Toward a unified theory of “millennial cringe” / The Atlantic
Corollary: Twitter is Done. Tumblr is Next / Tipping Point Labs
Related: How to quit social media for good / The Face
We don’t need another Twitter / Vox
Year on TikTok: 2022, truly #ForYou - a comprehensive round-up of everything that was interesting and entertaining (thus, viral) on the only platform that really seems to matter these days / TikTok
Hence? Playlists Don’t Hit Like They Used To. The rise of personalization and short-form video platforms means that the streaming services' marquee editorial collections don't drive as much listening / Billboard
Making TikToks for no one. Embracing the era of performance media / Embedded
Social Media Is for Strangers Now / The Atlantic
Meet the stay-at-home girlfriends of TikTok / iNews
From Celeste Blewitt: “Hilarious, although intriguing TikTok trend of the 'frazzled Englishwoman' and how TikTok users are drawn into these moments in time.” [An Actual Frazzled Englishwoman Dissects The Trend] / Vogue UK
On a more serious note, The Week collected a whole bunch of background on the growing anti-TikTok stance from Washington / The Week
From Syd Allen-Ash: “Got a link for you. I got an ad for this on LinkedIn, for some reason. The NFL is running a competition for data scientists / coders (I guess?) to figure out more accurate ways to identify when players get hit. Top prize is $50,000” / Kaggle
Is There Anything Left to Say About the Male Gaze? Nina Menkes’s Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power wants to join the ongoing conversation about gender and film. The trouble is that it has nothing new to say / Hyperallergic

World Order

The World-Changing Race to Develop the Quantum Computer. Such a device could help address climate change and food scarcity, or break the Internet. Will the U.S. or China get there first? / The New Yorker
The core of the core of the core of US inflation is RENT / Chartbook
Peter Zeihan on CovId: China’s Problem Child / YouTube
From Matt @theTechnorati: The Obvious Answer to Homelessness. And why everyone’s ignoring it / The Atlantic
New Zealand became the first country to introduce an annually rising minimum age for tobacco, meaning that people born after 2008 will never be legally allowed to buy cigarettes / RNZ
"The world needs cement" says concrete industry decarbonisation chief / Dezeen
In the US, pedestrian fatalities involving larger vehicles like SUVs jumped from 22% to 44% between 1977 and 2016 / Vox
'Stroads,' or multilane arterials, are the most dangerous types of roads on America's streets / Bloomberg

The Speculative Future

People Vs Algorithms goes down the People vs. AI rabbit hole through the lens of content creation and media companies. Fascinating listen / Spotify
Is ChatGPT a 'virus that has been released into the wild'? / TechCrunch
Related: from Celeste Blewitt: “Academia, AI and where this is leading for the humanities … great read on where the future is leading for essays and writing.” [ The College Essay Is Dead ]/ The Atlantic
From David Bloom: AI art and photo editing apps are dominating Apple's App Store charts / TechCrunch
How Web3 is ushering in a new artist-centric era / Music Business Worldwide
Why Madonna, Bieber & Snoop will likely be spared by the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT lawsuit / The Drum

Pop Cultures

Does physical attractiveness correlate with experiencing meaning in life? / Landonline
Why the Vibe Shift Might Finally Leave the Kardashians Behind / Back Row
How "The Daily Show" Squandered the Opportunity That Was Trevor Noah / The New Yorker
The most stylish people of 2022 / NYT
From Matt @theTechnorati: Drake Makes Diamond Necklace Out Of 42 Engagement Rings. The custom piece is called “Previous Engagements” and was created by Alex Moss / Vibe
TikTok is testing a full-screen horizontal view with some users as it pushes into music and increasing video runtimes to ten minutes to make it a destination for short films and other narrative content / The Verge
TikTok can’t afford the music industry
TikTok Is Launching Careers for Tomorrow's Music Executives / Billboard
‘It was a gateway for people to get into electronic music’: 30 years of Warp Records’ Artificial Intelligence / The Guardian
The Changing World Of Record Labels: Physical Retail. A look at how the role of physical retail and merchandising in the modern music business is evolving, from five of the top executives in the middle of that evolution / Billbard
2022's Top 20. [SIC] Talks alum Chris Black and his GenZ colleague Amardeep share their favorite songs from the past year / Done To Death Projects
And The Cadence does one better and releases its 2022 List of 2022 Lists / The Cadence
Taylor Swift Making Feature Directing Debut for Searchlight Pictures / Variety
While The Talks talks to Avatar producer Jon Landau / The Talks
How the CIA stole $5 million from Creedence Clearwater Revival to bust commies / Creem
And there’s a Julia Fox Impersonator terrorizing New York City / IG
Ye suspended From Clubhouse After Spewing Antisemitic Remarks During Live Q&A / The Wrap
From Sami Promisloff: Elon Musk is selling Twitter’s furniture / Curbed
The innermost winter layer is ego death - ie long underwear / Magasin

Media Happenings

Oft-cited web3/Crypto media company The Milk Road has been acquired by a crypto site aggregator / The Milk Road
While SBF secretly funded crypto news site The Block / Axios
Bankman-Fried hopes to start a new venture, he told the BBC on Saturday, explaining that the goal would be to repay FTX investors / BBC
NPR cancels its summer internship program, citing budget cuts “About one-sixth of current staffers at the network started as interns, according to NPR’s internship page (which is still up).” / The Verge
Why media companies struggle to act like tech companies / Simon Owens
Vox Media Will No Longer License Chorus, Its CMS Software. Publishers using the platform will have 18 months to migrate their content / Adweek
Spotify pulls the plug on live audio shows in programming cutback “Streaming companies and social-media outlets once viewed live audio streaming as a potential growth area.” / Bloomberg
The golden age of the streaming wars has ended / The Verge
But Chessboxing Could Be the Next Big Hit for Streamers / Rolling Stone
Netflix lets advertisers take their money back after missing viewership targets / Digiday
While Retail looks beyond its old love — the movies. Toys and feature films go together like butter and popcorn. But with lower ticket sales and fewer blockbusters, “it's not just about movies anymore.” / Retail Dive

Market-ations

If 2022 is the year of commerce media, then 2023 might be the year commerce media ups its game to break down internal silos and improve its measurement / Digiday
Gen Z Has Very Mixed Feelings on Targeted Ads, Branding Changes / Morning Consult
How Budweiser salvaged its World Cup after Qatar banned alcohol at most venues / NYT
Alberto Candiani has developed the first fully biodegradable denim / Reasons to Be Cheerful
Your merchandise was made in a sweatshop. Now what? / Retail Dive

Superficial Interest

On Chindogu. The near-universal comedy of technological failure / The Prepared
This whole edition of The Prepared about heat sources and regulation (examples: heat pumps, smocking) is pretty fascinating / The Prepared
A delightfully venomous screed from n+1 editors on living “in undeniably ugly times.” Aesthetic crises abound! / N+1
Aesthetically related: Dezeen's top 10 home interiors of 2022 / Dezeen
How one 2023 calendar is reclaiming erotic poster traditions to support sex workers / It’s Nice That
The Magasin gift guide has demands / Magasin
While the Big Spyplane Home Goods list is rich in spirit / Blackbird Spyplane

Food / Drink

From Iolanda Carvalho: “As beautiful as can be!!! The Imminent Future of Food Report / Bompas & Parr
Your next Taco Bell orders could be taken with artificial intelligence / Insider
Taco Bell is exploring permanently adding fries to its menu/ CNN
How the branded Erewhon smoothie became the unexpected gold standard in beauty marketing / Fashionista
Corollary: The origins of space food / Snaxshot

Friends Section

Cash Only talked to [SIC] homie Trey Smith, Music and Marijuana Journalist. Trey is the MacGyver of Marijuana — who else can turn a crab leg into a DIY pipe? / Cash Only
This week [SIC] Talks Alum Michael Williams is pleased to share the ACL GOLF shop / A Continuous Lean

Useful Diversions

Read: A Minute With Arcana Books (Holiday Gift Ideas) / Art Stuff

Listen: David Blue’s new mix is Music for self reflection / Soundcloud

Do: Friends From New York’s holiday party in NYC on Saturday at the newly opened Deluxe Fluxx /IG

Put yr hands up for Detroit