[SIC] #223: Ketamine Balloon Guy

Volume 5, Number 15

The [SIC] newsletter on Thursdays is free, and will be forever, unless I change my mind. Unlikely.

But you CAN pay, if you want. I’m into it. Monthly or yearly, or founding support. Paid subscribers get an additional [SIC] Sundays newsletter each week. And founding supporters get invited to a dinner at my home in NYC with special guests.

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Corollary sources this week (all worth your review): WSJ / Royal Braun / Elevator / Upstream / Lerer Hippeau / Music Redef / ArtStuff / After School / Marginal Revolution / Pool Suite Palm Report / Beats & Bytes / Roca News

Also, feel free to read this on the web instead.

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Hi all,

Short intro today, to get you to the links faster. News next week from my side.

My favorite thing this week was a submission from longtime buddy Kevin Johanessen, who wrote: “So Amazing” of this Palace x Calvin Klein part 2 video on YouTube. I was a fan of the first round of this tie-up back in May - but as ads go, this one’s hard to top IMO. Thanks, Kevin.

Thanks also to Isaac, Elliot, Johnny, James, Celeste, Matt and Iolanda for contributions this week too. Keep ‘em coming, please. Same goes for critiques, questions, concerns and replies. See comments section for more.

Ben

A whole other GPT

======[SIC] 229: Ketamine Balloon Guy======

Zeitgest / Gestalt

• How a hobbyist broke the FTX scandal … on his Substack / Airmail

• There is no alternative to alternative assets / FT

• And yet Gen Z traders are choosing alt assets over stocks in an ‘extremely risky’ trend. New data shows that young investors are willing to allocate a relatively large portion of their portfolio — up to 25% — to alternative investments, or “alts,” such as cryptocurrencies, artwork, and wine / Fortune

• Gen Z didn’t kill brand loyalty, but it looks different. The young age group is attracted to self-expression and individuality, but still cares about a purchase decision mainstay: price / Retail Dive

• Instead of earning cash for chores, kids are increasingly asking for Robux — the in-game currency in Roblox. For many kids, Roblox has replaced the mall as the place where they socialize, so it makes sense that’s where they spend their money too / Future Party

• French Pornhub case shows how hard it is to regulate the internet / FT

• Pantone’s color of the year for 2023 is a nod to the new technological era and the rise of digital. Named “Viva Magenta 18-1750,” the color was inspired partly by nature and partly by the digital advances that have taken place over the past 12 months / NPR

• Could these be the hottest design trends of 2023? / Creative Bloq

• Related, from Iolanda Carvalho: “This is cool and super zeitgeist-ish... 😉[The 12 Most Inspiring Graphic Design Trends for 2023] / 99Designs

• The most popular searches of 2022 / Google

• From James Friedman: “Not sure how to present this to [sic] but pretty interesting (mis)use of OpenAI chatbot technology to generate medical diagnosis… “/  Twitter

• The Brilliance and Weirdness of ChatGPT. A new chatbot from OpenAI is inspiring awe, fear, stunts and attempts to circumvent its guardrails, / NYTimes

• Does ChatGPT Mean Robots Are Coming For the Skilled Jobs? / NYT

• Hold on a sec, tho: From Matt @theTechnorati: ChatGPT Is Dumber Than You Think. Treat it like a toy, not a tool / The Atlantic

• Hence? How the new AI ChatGPT helped write this op-ed. Why marketers must master the tool to remain relevant in 2023 / AdAge

• Is there no shame anymore? Sam Bankman-Fried’s mere ‘embarrassment’ at the collapse of FTX is a symptom of our inability to find shared moral value /FT

• From Matt @theTechnorati: T. S. Eliot Saw All This Coming. One hundred years after the publication of The Waste Land, its vision has never been more terrifying / The Atlantic

World Order

• Research at the University of Oxford shows that avoiding meat and dairy products is the “single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on planet Earth” / The Guardian

• The Case for Buying Less - And How to Actually Do It / Vox

• What Social Media Is Doing to Our Concept of Being Pregnant / Vogue

• 4 US states have fully or partially banned TikTok on government-issued devices in the past 8 days / Axios

• Are conservative Democrats the least tolerant group? / Phys.org

• Related for sure: Pickleball is a now a crime / WNYC

The Speculative Future

• Blockchain Technology May Transform The Future Of Healthcare / Forbes

• While Unreal Engine Powered Fashion's Entrance Into the Digital Sphere. Epic Games’ 3D tool has become a vehicle for the next generation of designers / Hypebeast

• WPP Trends for 2023: Global Director Emma Chiu explains why brands should embrace a more human-centric metaverse / Wunderman Thompson

• GN3RA, the self-described “world-first fashion metaverse for creators” has unveiled that it will be teaming up with The Royal College of Art to allow GN3RA creators on the platform to co-design, wear, and share seven bespoke digital creations by seven leading fashion alumni from The Royal College of Art / Fashion Network

• NFT Now interviewed Andy Krainak, President of VeeFriends, along with Gary Vee. The two discussed their views on NFTs, the future of Web3, and lessons learned in 2022. NFT Now [Disclosure: I am an advisor to NFT Now]

• Yam Karkai’s Illustrations Made Her An N.F.T. Sensation. Now What? / The New Yorker

• Corollary: Airbnb patented a visual attractiveness scoring system / Patent Drop

• While Meta’s got one for generating digital floor plans / Patent Drop

• And Snap is working with creators to build AR lenses with monetizable features / The Future Party

• Elsewhere Tony Fadell Is Trying to Build the iPod of Crypto / Wired

Pop Cultures

• Diary of an art handler. 11 days at Art Basel Miami Beach / Dirt

• Kenny Schacter’s take on Miami & Basel / Artnet

• A brush with... Nick Cave. An in-depth conversation on the artist’s biggest cultural influences / The Art Newspaper Podcast

• Why Does Fashion Love This Radical Anticapitalist Concept? / NYT

• Kate Moss’s re-invention from bad-girl model to talent-agency head / Airmail

• Hollywood’s Latest Diet Craze? Ozempic, the Insulin Drug With Vanishing—Literally—Side Effects / Vanity Fair

• Nan Goldin’s Art, Addiction, and Activism in “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” / The New Yorker

• Vernon Subutex: Declining bohemia meets queer pulp in a French limited series / 4Columns

• It’s Time To Recognize Hot Chocolate As One the Great Rock Bands of the ’70s / Creem

• Gudetama: The famous sentient egg is getting a Netflix series / NYT

• Also shocking: How Bring It On Shocked Hollywood / Vanity Fair

• The Talks talks to rapper Denzel Curry / The Talks

• The Return of Metro Boomin, the Architect of Atlanta Rap / GQ

• What’s a TikTok Hit Worth? This Year’s Most Popular Track Grew Over 1,000% on Streaming / Billboard

• But The Music Industry Isn’t Ready For The Ai Revolution / Music Business Worldwide

• So for now it’s still people: What The Future Sounds Like, And Who Makes It Happen / Forbes

• The Despair of Generation “Notti Bop” How do we respond to a wave of viral dance videos that reënact the killing of a fourteen-year-old? / The New Yorker

Media Happenings

• What the next crop of media startups will look like / Simon Owens

• Hence: Puck is The E-Mail Newsletter for the Mogul Set / The New Yorker

• While Penske Media expands its art publishing empire with acquisition of Artforum / The Art Newspaper

• General Electric Co. made history as the first advertiser to occupy all available print real estate in The New York Times.  In total, Tuesday's paper features more than two dozen GE ads, marking the most significant move yet by The Times to shift its advertising model away from selling individual pages and toward hosting more large-scale, interactive campaigns / Axios

• Instagram is telling creators when and why their posts are ‘shadowbanned / Engadget

• (More Than) A Few Good Brands. Why Madison Avenue is balking at Elon Musk’s Twitter explained as an A Few Good Men parody - including a shout to [SIC] homie Lou Paskalis / YT

• But shhhhhh… some advertisers still like Elon Musk's Twitter. Twitter is an anathema to a lot of advertisers right now — but not all of them / Digiday

Market-ations

• The Breakfast app introduces you to someone new & awesome to meet and chat with over breakfast / Breakfast App

• This week BK-XL, a Brooklyn-based accelerator for companies started by minority entrepreneurs, began taking applications for investments up to $500,000 / NYT

• The new Netflix era requires both broad hits and niche experiments / The Future Party

• Superfans and microtribes—how brands can harness passionate consumers to drive growth / AdAge

• Co-creative commerce. How can brands and users collaborate in the digital retail industry? / Wunderman Thompson

• US college football: big money game is now beyond a jock. The savage Darwinism of this commercial juggernaut would shock even hard-bitten Wall Street bankers / FT

• How Resale saved New York Retail / The Cut

• Conversely, from Celeste Blewitt: 'Can Rolex's New Resale Program And Booming Secondhand Market Coexist?' “The market for Rolex's is hot, so reading through this highlights just how much consumers are willing to undertake to purchase a Rolex. Smart move by the brand to certify second-hand and move in that area now.” / Glossy

• Related: ‘Lose money, keep the customer’: Brands are strategizing to lower the impact of holiday returns / Glossy

• The Nice List: It’s Nice That’s guide to the best independent makers this Christmas / It’s Nice That

• Not nice: Yikes, Lamborghini just dropped the worst car ad ever / Creative Bloq

Superficial Interest

• [SIC] supporter Tata Harper’s gift guide is a good one/ FT

• And [SIC] homie Brendon Babenzien’s gift guide is too / FT

• Also good gifting:  Shoot Pictures is a two-title sale on photobooks I own and recommend. Both are edited by [SIC] Talks alum Ken Miller / Import Store

• Speaking of gifts (for me): Virgil Abloh Securities x Alessi flipped Michael Graves’s iconic teapot in an edition of 9999 would be nice/ Alessi

• While the contents of Barton Hall, design god Sir Terrence Conran’s sprawling country pile are going up for auction next week and has some bangers/ Bonhams

• Elsewhere in design OGs: ‘He distilled nature to its purest geometries’: the architecture and furniture of Frank Lloyd Wright / Christies

• What Does The Future of Unboxing Look Like For Tech Brands? It's time for unending layers of plastic to be designed out, says Here's Mark Paton, who believes tech and electronics brands are missing a huge opportunity on the packaging front / Creative Review

Food / Drink

• Lobby restaurants are back: As the city’s restaurant scene slowly comes back to life, hotel lobbies are once again a great place to get a bite / NYT

• Dua Lipa’s recipe for her “Famous Festive Potatoes” / Service95

• AI tries to invent new food dishes / Fast Company

Useful Diversions

Read:

• From Johnny Sosnowski: “Favorite soccer read this World Cup season [Life, Death, and Total Football]”GQ

Do:

• Get your Kanye West tattoos removed for free /Hypebae

• Dakota’s Coat drive this Saturday 12/10 to benefit the Bowery Mission / IG

• From Isaac Dietz: Fave artist Stephen ESPO Powers is giving a free seminar at SVA in NYC on 12/14 / Instagram

• Join Minor Genius. From Elliot Aranow: “A lot of dudes/dads have told me that this - a place where they can make cool shit and receive structure and support while having fun - is exactly what they needed.“/ IG

  

  Yesterdays price is … you know

======[SIC] 229: Ketamine Balloon Guy======