[SIC] 235: A Sense of Enormous Wellbeing

Volume 5, Number 27

Mar 03, 2023

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

Corollary sources this week (all worth your review): PSFK / 1440 / FastCo / Nieman Lab / Built with AI / Snaxshot / Ben’s Bites / Future of Transportation / Dealbook / the Unskippables/ Lean Luxe / 2pm / Blood & Champagne / Ben Evans / Morning Brew / Music Redef / Morning Consult / The Palm Report

Hi all,

Back in NYC, back in the groove. 31 college visits in nine days made this The End of the English Major piece in The New Yorker especially salient. And this piece about cheating being rampant in academia too.

Beyond that: my 16 year old and I listened to a lot of music this trip, same as my dad and I did when I visited schools in 1991. Which made the FT’s Life of a song: “In the pines” - also known to Nirvana fans as “Where Did You Sleep Last Night” resonate. Chune!, as the English would say. Speaking of songs: if this week’s newsletter had a backing track it’d be Amen Dunes’s “Miki Dora.”

Separately, thinking about the future made a note from [SIC] homie Marcella Zimmermann hit different, too. To wit, per MZ: “The Artlab Editorial Fellowship is now live! I'd love it if you'd share with any writers you know — anyone with a critical writing practice anywhere in the world at any stage of their career (!) is eligible to apply for the $10K fellowship program.” If you’re a writer, you know what to do.

Thanks for that, Marcella. And thanks Gordon, Dan, Celeste, Matt, Iolanda and David for contributions this week. Keep em coming. The links, meantime…

Stood graffiti, Purchase College.

======[SIC] 235: A Sense of Enormous Wellbeing======

Zeitgest / Gestalt

The Idea is the Design / Dirt
So.. Why Do A.I. Chatbots Tell Lies and Act Weird? Look in the Mirror. / NYT
Corollary, from Celeste Blewitt: Do You Know Your DFLs From Your MCMs?' / Tatler
The return of Flat Earth, the grandfather of conspiracy theories / Ars Technica
But what if Dunning Kruger Explains Everything? / Ritzholtz
And therefore, what really makes Gen Z different from older generations? We asked a 24-year-old brand consultant / FastCo
Maybe it’s that ‘Scanners are complicated: Why Gen Z faces workplace ‘tech shame’ . Gen Z workers can edit photos, produce videos, and build websites; but desktop computing — “things like files, folders, scanning, printing, and using external hardware” — has posed a bigger challenge for young people / The Guardian
As Americans Work From Home, Europeans and Asians Head Back to the Office / WSJ
How the pandemic damaged creativity—and why remote work is only part of the problem / AdAge
Corollary: “The Furniture Hustlers of Silicon Valley” / NYT
Millennials are just as wealthy as their parents. But their wealth might be more unevenly distributed / Quartz
Hence? I Spent Two Years Revenge Spending. It Was Hard to Stop / NYT
So… Why Is It So Hard to Talk About Money? / Vogue
Meantime, this boomer’s over here trying to make ‘The Dazed & Confused Generation’ a thing / The New Yorker
Younger Americans aren’t buying the idea that recent mass layoffs were inevitable / Morning Consult
Still, for them it’s McNuggets out, madeleines in / NYT
An example of promo creep?! / Seth Godin
Apropos: disclosure, I work for a livestream shopping platform. But OBVS…Livestream shopping: advertising’s new frontier / The Future Party
On the internet, nobody knows you’re a human. As bots, avatars, and AI get more and more human, how do creators prove they’re the real deal? / The Verge
More human than human, then.. ‘An extension of me’: The rise of the founder-influencer / Retail Dive
When it comes to the talent working on TikTok, more agencies are eying personal profiles / Digiday

World Order

Peter Zeihan asks Is India the new China? / YT
Digital payments have remade commerce in India at a scale unlike anything in the West / NYT
Ukraine Marks First Year of War With Banksy Stamp / Hyperallergic
Paved Paradises: How parking lots shaped our cities (for worse) / Scope of Work
While Tennessee is set to become the first US state to ban drag / Quartz
As punishment?! Whiskey Fungus Fed by Jack Daniel’s Encrusts a Tennessee Town” / NYT
The Mining Industry’s Next Frontier Is Deep, Deep Under the Sea / Wired
Manchester Unspun — the story of the city’s resurrection / FT
So…? 'Don't buy eggs. Buy TVs.' Electronics prices are defying inflation / WaPo

The Speculative Future

Tech Giants Are Barreling Headfirst Into an AI Arms Race / Vanity Fair
IE? The AI disaster scenario / Atlantic
On the other hand?! OpenAI’s plan for integrating AI developments into society safely / OpenAi
But what if? Generative AI founders aren't thinking big enough / JWang18
Ie from David Bloom: “This is basically more plumbing than anything, but it basically connects the chatGPT-style conversational power with the increasingly realistic animation of a synthetic person. [D-ID unveils new chat API to enable face-to-face conversations with an AI digital human] / TechCrunch
Bigger thinking, from Dan Bradley: “An app that I'm an advisor on is launching and it makes it much easier to track, create and "remix" NFTs while still tracking all of the creators along the way in order to give them a stake in whatever may come monetarily or otherwise. It's very interesting to me in light of recent developments in AI image generation and the sticky conversations around ownership, artist influence etc” / Titles
Related: The US Copyright Office has determined that images created by AI are not eligible for copyright protection because they weren’t made by a human and they are trained on the work of actually copyrightable material / Future Party
Corollary: What the ‘MetaBirkin’ NFT verdict means for art and commerce / Retail Dive
For instance? Warren Beatty made a fake TV show to keep the rights to Dick Tracy. (Apparently Warner Brothers did something similar with Blazing Saddles) / TV Insider
How to get an AI to lie to you in three simple steps / One Useful Thing
Corollary: from Matt @TheTechnorati: AI Can Now Generate DMT Visuals, Thanks To This Online Community / Double Blind
No wonder why Do AI-generated Portraits Fail at Realism? / Hyperallergic
Tech's hottest new job: AI whisperer. No coding required. 'Prompt engineers' are being hired for their skill in getting AI systems to produce exactly what they want. And they make pretty good money / WaPo
Meanwhile, Bored Ape creator Yuga Labs to launch Bitcoin NFTs / Fortune

Pop Cultures

TikTok said it will soon automatically apply a one-hour daily screen time limit to the accounts of all users under the age of 18 / CNN
But aaaactually: TikTok isn’t really limiting kids’ time on its app / The Verge
Meanwhile, All the It Girls Are Dressing Like Disney Villains / Glamour
Also witchy: Spiritual Art Is Back, Again / Hyperallergic
Movie theaters aren't dying — they're evolving / CNBC
More evolution: artist Joe Bradley Begins Again / NYT
On that note…his career as singer of Cheeseburger should begin again too. IYKYK /YouTube
More ‘next level’ art: The Transcendence of Laraaji / The New Yorker
Not transcendent: Viral Instagram “photographer” Jos Avery reveals that his images were actually generated by Midjourney / Hyperallergic
While Luke Nugent’s AI Fashion Editorials Fictionalize Subcultures / 032C
Related: In this fantastic (and highly detailed) tutorial, Ammaar talks about how he created the Batman animated short /Twitter
While AI Is Creeping Into the ‘Functional’ Music Market -rain and white noise is eating into market share / Billboard
De La Soul Picks Their Favorite (and/or Most Hated) Tracks / GQ
How do you clear the samples for De La Soul's '3 Feet High & Rising'? (and for Drake, Wu Tang Clan, etc.) / Music Ally
Sombre drama in Milan as designers focus on sellable clothes / Vogue Business
And What does shopping for luxury look like in Russia now/ Vogue Business
Separately, why Hasn't There Been a Gay Action Hero Yet? / Collider
A.O. Scott's exit interview after 2,200 movie reviews / WNYC
The Delicious Deal. Rare Painting Once Traded for a Grilled Cheese in the 1970s Sells for $272,548. / Nice News
How One Music Venue Uses Discord. Brooklyn’s Elsewhere started using the platform during the pandemic. Very smart move / Spin
New Talk Show alert: Stefan’s Nighttime At Rays / YouTube
Also new: Jerry Gogosian launched a job board for art-world aspirants (bonus points for Zoes and Chloes) / Jerry Gogosian
Why we rave. Raver-theorist McKenzie Wark captures our drive to dance at the end of the world / VICE
Photographing teen subcultures in New York's East Village /i-D
The Clipse are doing a full reunion at Hyde Park Summerfest / Stereogum
The Oscar universe belongs to 'Everything Everywhere’ / AP
How Richard Rushfield’s The Ankler Took on Hollywood / Vanity Fair
Beyond ‘Wednesday’ and ‘Outer Banks’: How Netflix is looking to be the new CW for Gen Z / LA Times
Meanwhile Hollywood Insiders Respond to Streamers Pulling Projects: "It's Horrifying" / Hollywood Reporter
Corollary: Honey, we blew up the Hollywood business model / LATimes
Elsewhere in exploding: While 100 Gecs Shook the Underground. Can the Duo Explode … With Rock Music? / NYT
Warner Bros. Discovery’s licensing chief on how movies and TV get on planes / Vulture

Media Happenings

“Shit You Should Care About” is a Gen Z-focused mini media empire / Embedded
How Vice, Vox and BuzzFeed Blew the Future of Media/ The Wrap
Vice Names Bruce Dixon & Hozefa Lokhandwala As Co-CEOs Following Nancy Dubuc Exit / Deadline
Also exiting: Vice France is shutting down / Deadline
And apropos of aging DJs: The Rise of the Over-25s Club Night/ VICE
The ways in which attention metrics are being put to use by media shops is heading in different directions, depending on the holding company. It boils down to whether they’re using it as a KPI or a currency. Holding companies and attention metrics, a KPI or a currency? / Digiday
From Iolanda Carvalho: Snapchat is releasing its own AI chatbot. It’s a bet that AI chatbots will increasingly become a part of everyday life for more people” / The Verge
Pivot to … Something? The Blurry Future of Podcasting / The Hollywood Reporter
Revenue grew at Condé Nast last year, but shy of target / NYT
And WPP"s Support of Twitter Opens Possibility for Advertisers to Return / Ad Age
While Hodinkee made a lifestyle capsule / Hodinkee
BeReal still has potential for advertisers, but its hype period is well and truly over / Digiday
Also over? Is there a future for video games journalism? / Nieman Lab

Market-ations

Many Strategies Fail Because They’re Not Actually Strategies / HBR
Like…Mercedes’ new E-Class will come with world class driving features fully integrated, including: TikTok, a selfie camera, and even Zoom / The Verge
One that IS working: Inside New Balance’s Plans to Topple the Global Sneaker Hierarchy / GQ
And another: State Farm went all in on TikTok for the Super Bowl. Was it worth it? Tl;dr, yes. The campaign “far exceeded expectations,” according to State Farm’s CMO / Marketing Brew
Not so sure about this, tho, from Iolanda Carvalho: Hennessy Announces Launch of Web3 Platform H3nsy. ”The new platform will serve as a membership hub for creators, cultures, and communities" / BlockNews
Or this one: Heinz thinks you want to buy Ed Sheeran hot sauce / Billboard
Elsewhere in CPG: Campbell's Soup Sales Were Declining. So It Redesigned Its Iconic Can for the first time in 50 years. / WSJ
Amex’s Centurion Clubhouse in NYC, reserved exclusively for Centurion black card cardholders / Wallpaper
Nokia wants you to know it’s not a phone maker anymore / Quartz
How ChatGPT can help brands find creators—and why it isn’t ready to replace them / AdAge
Also kind of counterintuitive: Barnes & Noble is stealing the indie shop playbook, and it's working / Fast Company

Superficial Interest

The skyscraper told through satire / Domus
Also high up: a Tokyo-based startup is hoping to kickstart the “lunar economy.” / TechCrunch
While the European Space Agency (ESA) this week called for establishing a new moon time zone / NBCNews
Back on Earth, Kung Fu nuns: They’re mixing meditation with martial arts / NYT
While Dencity Skate is Nigeria’s first and only women’s skate collective / Ssense
Also mixy: Bruce Pascal is a commercial real estate broker by day and millionaire Hot Wheels collector by night / The Hustle

Food / Drink

Pistachio is having a moment.
But never mind that! Paul McCartney’s usual is a WHAT? Foster Kamer talks to NYC’s most important maître d's / Interview
Lunchbox, a food tech startup, has released DALL-E 2, an AI that generates appealing food pics / Freethink
A Day in the KFC Test Kitchen / The Takeout
Proving QSR chains don’t have to be wrong all the time: Chick-fil-A is opening a 'brake room’ for NYC’s delivery drivers with bathrooms, phone charger stations, privacy alcoves, comfortable seating, free WiFi and complimentary beverages, as winter in New York City can be harsh for these employees, many of whom are delivering food via bike / NRN

Useful Diversions

Listen:

From Gordon Hull: “Made to Shake Your Bones” [Owl Rock: Firefly] / Spotify

Do:

Robert Rauschenberg's NY Home Opens to Visitors / Hyperallergic

This Sat, March 4th The Head Hi Lamp Show returns / Head Hi

While [SIC] homie Joe Raaen and gang are doing a “SXSW Pub Quiz Panels” on March 13th and you should go / Linkedin

And [SIC] homie Erik Foss has an opening on March 16th from 6-8p at Shin gallery (322 Grand St - entrance on Orchard street). I’ll be in LA but you should go!

Employment Opps, Purchase College.