[SIC] 233: Very Small Chainsaw

Volume 5, Number 25

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.

Meantime, enjoy. Feel free to share, too. Here’s a button:

Corollary sources this week (all worth your review): Herb Sundays / Elevator / Public Announcement / The Art of Noticing / Politico / Nieman Lab / Morning Consult / Ben’s Bites / Scope of Work / Milk Road / Forefront / Garbage Day / Context Collapse / Kottke /  / Benedict’s Newsletter/ Simon Owens / Beats & Bytes / Blood & Champagne / Politico

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Hi all.

I appeared on The Culture Journalist podcast this week alongside hosts Emilie Friedlander and Andrea Domenick, and sometime [SIC] contributor Drew Millard, and they asked lots of questions I managed to answer reasonably well. Maybe. Lmk what you think. And follow that pod.

Speaking of questions, I dug these 100 Questions, courtesy of Alex Morris at Strat Scraps. They’re very specific to marketing strategy if you look at them through that angle - but I think they’re widely useful, too. And as a rejoinder: Sister Corita Kent’s art department rules are also worth pinning to your wall IMO.

Another reco: Digital Counsel’s “Live Links” newsletter is another great one even if you’re not an art person  - this week’s edition has interviews with  Los Angeles’ @West_LA_Memes, and New York’s @NolitaDirtbag, meme stars du jour.

Thanks to Celeste, Jeremy, David, Kevin, Iolanda for contributions this week, and of course to [SIC] Talks alum Darren Hemming of the Motive Unknown Digest  (sign up here) for the shout out to [SIC] in his digest this week.

Darren and I were emailing about the untimely death of Trugoy aka Dave, from De La Soul. Trugoy the Dove Was a Subtle Genius Who Helped Make De La Soul Relatable, as Rolling Stone wrote. And not to pile on all the posthumous praise he and De La have gotten this week, but no artist was more important to me as a kid. He’ll be sorely missed.

Last thing before the links: DJ Private Ryan’s annual “Soca Brainwash” megamix for carnival season in Trinidad & Tobago is a year in, year out treat. Guaranteed three hours of productivity. And dancing. It gets wild and I really, really love it every time. Have a dance.

All the other links below.

Ben

Last Friday at Friends From New York.

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Zeitgest / Gestalt

• Dark Philanthropy, Frail Brands + Choice Abandonment / Zine

• How much do we shape-shift across social media? / Mashable

• Related: TikTok loves true confessions. Colleges, not so much. Generation Z grew up online. Their 'digital footprints' may haunt them / WaPo

• Tho if you’re already admitted, the hot new internship for college students is creating TikTok content for brands / NYT

• Elsewhere: how teens recovered from the ‘TikTok Tics’ / NYT

• Notable because girls, as well as lesbian, gay or bisexual adolescents, reported high levels of sadness and suicidal thoughts in 2021 / NYT

• So is More sex is the solution to America’s loneliness epidemic? / NYT

• Maybe. And while dating apps are definitely ‘dead’ but Gen Z will never delete them/ NY Mag

• So…Remember Speed Dating? It’s Back / WSJ

• Also ending early: A Night in the Club, Then Early to Bed. Before Midnight parties promise all the thrills of a hedonistic night out, but with a respectable finish time for older dance music fans / NYT

• Or is going home early just how fashion’s creatives are weathering the cost of living crisis? / Vogue Business

• From Celeste Blewitt: “Why Is Marie-Antoinette Everywhere Again?' The Marie-Antoinette movement is here again.“ / Town & Country

• And speaking of letting them eat cake: when Did Hospitality Get So Hostile? tmagazine

• God Did the World a Favor Destroying Twitter / Wired

• While Elon Musk created a special system for showing you all his tweets first / Platformer

• So while Twitter is stumbling some ex-employees are launching rivals / CNN

• Turning offices into condos: New York after the pandemic / FT

• So maybe it’s Time to Embrace the 40% Office / FastCo

• But that ignores the potential psychological benefits of … commuting / The Conversation

• Elsewhere in contemplations: Swimming is anti-thought / Lithub

World Order

• It’s not aliens. It’ll probably never be aliens. So stop. Please just stop / Ars Technica

• But what a Chinese balloon can teach us about our media consumption /WNYC

• Chinese tech companies are pumping the brakes on ChatGPT hype /

• While 97% of Russia’s army is currently fighting in Ukraine / BBC

• Like it or Not, There’s a Lot of Money in Coal / Motley Fool

• Africa – a Designer’s Utopia is a research project that celebrates the ingenuity of anonymously designed products used in West African cities /NMBello Studio

• The complete list of African unicorns today / Afridigest

The Speculative Future

• ChatGPT AI starts sending 'unhinged' messages to people /The Independent

• Plus the new Bing demo made more mistakes than Google’s Bard / DKB

• There was also some freaky, scary, emotional behaviour from Bing Chat. / Digital Trends

• But Wacky, Unhinged Bing Chatbot Is Still Good For Microsoft’s Business / Big Technology

• Tho Google cautions against 'hallucinating' chatbots / Reuters

• Microsoft to integrate ChatGPT into Word, Powerpoint, and Outlook /

• What Chatbot Bloopers Reveal About the Future of AI / Wired

• ChatGPT's edge: We want to believe / Axios

• More belief: Web3 Has Purpose Built in, per Global VP of adidas Studio and [SIC] homie Erika Wykes-Sneyd / Spotify

• Whatever happened to the metaverse? / FT

• It became Collecting Culture? The “new meta” is owning everything. Why not collect everything you enjoy? How do you get 100,000 people to collect a song? How do you get 1,000 people to collect a blog post? In his opinion, the goal is to focus on NFTs being minted for $10 or less / CoopaTroopah

• Bitcoin might be reviving the moribund NFT business / TechCrunch

• Hence GQ's First NFT Collection Offers Buyers Exclusive Products And Access / Mediapost

• Tho, as before: Crypto Buyers Beware: 1 in 4 New Tokens of Any Value Is a Scam / Wired

• What the Metabirkins verdict means for the future of Web3 fashion / Vogue Business

• From Iolanda Carvalho: An interesting report on futures [Dubai Future 50] / Dubai

• A quick and sobering guide to cloning yourself / One Useful Thing

• Also sobering: AI porn is easy to make now. For women, that's a nightmare / WaPo

• So we asked OnlyFans creators what they’re thinking about AI-generated porn / Pirate Wires

• ”Architects may become a thing of the past" says ChatGPT. ChatGPT has delivered a stark warning to architects / Dezeen

• A programmer writes: how ChatGPT saves time - if you’re the expert and can check it / Twitter

Pop Cultures

• Pharrell at Vuitton: Has fashion gone full hype? / Vogue Business

• Corollary from Iolanda Carvalho: “In most photos of the announcement to his new position in the world's most famous luxury legacy brand Pharrell is wearing a very recent portuguese brand 😉” /Vogue Business

• Related: [SIC] Talks alum Ana Andjelic with a sharp take on the Pivot to quality / Sociology of Business

• Ergo: forget Clickbait Clothing. The Wardrobe Is Back. “Just clothes,” as the Proenza Schouler designers put it, are looking better than ever /  Harpers Bazaar

• And allow [SIC] homie Heron Preston to Reintroduce Himself / GQ

• Meanwhile in China: From ‘Bella Hadid Style’ To (my favorite) Clogcore: A Guide To 2023’s Chinese Social Media Fashion Trends / Jing Daily

• How to Write a Love Song /Frieze

• Corollary: “Why Aren’t There More Negative Album Reviews?” / Uproxx

• And also Why Straight Guys Love 'Magic Mike' / Daily Beast

• Elsewhere, Rebel Wilson launching 'Fluid' dating app / CNN

• 'Cocaine Bear' is now a video game. And people are eating it up / LA Times

• What is the most important tweet of all time? / Max Read

• The other tweets in contention / NYT

• Invader: An artist has altered the aesthetic of Paris / NYT

• Meanwhile across town: Centre Pompidou breaks new ground by acquiring 18 NFTs / The Art Newspaper

• Netflix Forgot to Include Puerto Ricans in Production of Reggaeton Show / Hyperallergic

• Why 2023 is shaping up as the year of the rom-com / AV Club

• Cap_able blocks facial recognition software with knitted clothing / Dezeen

• The Artists Resisting the Gentrification of New York’s Chinatown / Hyperallergic

• Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes, is making a graphic novel. The Mysteries, a “fable for grownups,”  /Simon and Schuster

Media Happenings

• Is BeReal in its flop era? / Glossy

• If you’re trying to survive a bout of very bad press, you’re calling Risa Heller / intelligencer

• The PR Power of Fessing Up / MIT Sloan

• Related: how VICE became the poster child for the Facebook media bubble 🤦‍♂️/ Simon Owens

• It’s cause: Media’s money problem Transparency is a tricky thing in an industry that runs on a scarcity mindset/ Nieman Lab

• Ergo: Why are you seeing so many bad digital ads now? / NYT

• And also why The Financial Times launched an inexpensive mobile app / FT

• The New (Old) Rules of Hollywood. Media companies that spent the last five years trying to copy Netflix are now trying to reverse themselves — only they can't do a full 180 / Bloomberg

• Related: YouTube launches its new commercial music licensing resource, Creator Music / TechCrunch

• FWB Social Software. Friends With Benefits launched their own native app, giving members the opportunity to share, talk, and interact in more meaningful ways / FWB

Market-ations

• From Kevin Johanessen: This [buying content exclusivity on daily news]  for you and the Chris Blacks of the world… / Twitter

• More exclusives: Chinese Gen Z Want Exclusivity And Local Retailers Are Listening / Jing Daily

• Livestream shopping took China by storm. Now Amazon, TikTok and YouTube are betting the QVC-Style pitches will take off in the US / CNBC

• Meanwhile Shopify, Farfetch and Salesforce are among the tech giants competing to build the platforms that make online shopping possible /BoF

• But Instagram is killing live shopping, will focus on ads instead/ TechCrunch

• Ikea has been quietly testing out new, smaller store formats / Modern Retail

• While McD's converted billboards into street food carts / The Drum

• Also repurposing: Kate Spade New York launches resale program with ThredUp / Retail Dive

• But for the resale market to grow brands need to overhaul their business practices to entice customers to sell their used goods and buy secondhand instead of new / Future Party

• Also overhauling: Nestlé is using AI to set creative rules for its 15,000 marketers / The Drum

• Big brands pass price hikes off to consumers / Future Party

• Carmelo Anthony Sets $750 Million Private Equity Fund with Isos Capital to Invest in Sports / Variety

• Shopify dropped some new blockchain tools / Shopify

• How Duolingo Created Its In-House Animation 'Engine' / Creative Review

• From David Bloom: For those who paid attention to the ads during the Super Bowl, China-based shopping app Temu spent a LOT to get noticed. Here’s a useful Washington Post primer on the site, and how it fits into some broader issues / WaPo

• Electrification and Brexit are killing the British car industry / Quartz

Superficial Interest

• From Jeremy Toeman: “This was a fun one” [Mathematician Explains Infinity in 5 Levels of Difficulty ]/ YT

• Jay-Z's 99 Problems, Verse 2: A Close Reading with Fourth Amendment Guidance for Cops and Perps. "This is a line-by-line analysis of the second verse of 99 Problems by Jay-Z, from the perspective of a criminal procedure professor."  /SLU.edu

• Too much analysis tho: A ballet director has been suspended after he smeared dog feces on a German newspaper critic’s face over a review he didn’t like / AP News

• This site of vintage radio “Airchecks.” / Mostlyuppermidwestairchecks

• Researchers invent cladding material that changes color to help with heating and cooling / Dezeen

• The most futuristic cities being built around the world / Architectural Digest

Food / Drink

• The ice luge appears to be enjoying a late-pandemic revival / NYT

• Corollary: How Gen Z Is Proving It's the Foodie Generation / Morning Consult

• Turn cauliflower into popcorn / NYT

• Experts succeed in cultivating truffles in Japan for first time / Asahi

• Related: There’s Never Been a Better Time to Eat Hokkaido Food in the US / Bon Appetit

• Permaculture Garden Produces 7000 Pounds of Organic Food Per Year on a Tenth of an Acre / Return to Now

• From Celeste Blewitt: “Although from last month, topical conversation on loyalty, reward points and how brands are diving in, trying to understand what customers want!” [Welcome To The Rewards Wars, Where Food Chains Go Desperate For Your Loyalty] / Bon Appetit

Useful Diversions

• Watch: a full-length video recording of the legendary concert by Prince and the Revolution at First Avenue in 1983 / Kottk

  

  Inspired by True Events

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