[SIC] 238: Intellectually Inconstant
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Corollary sources this week (all worth your review, and all easily discoverable:After School1440/ Music Redef / Public Announcement / Today in Tabs / Ben’s Bites / Politico/ Axios / Elevator / The future Party / Dealbook /The Daily Upside /Morning Consult / Morning Brew
Hi all.
The simplest ideas are the best. [SIC] Talks alum Cheryl Dunn’s timelapse of fave artist ESPO’s OG gate takeover is proof/ IG
Another favorite watch this week: ALD’s fixed gear ride thru NYC is Mesmerizing. And evokes [SIC] homie Peter Sutherland’s classic “Pedal” / Youtube
Thanks Josh, Celeste, Randy, Iolanda, Piers and Larry for contributions this week. And thanks to frequent contributor David Bloom for the title this week.
Now, the links.
======[SIC] 238: Intellectually Inconstant======
Zeitgest / Gestalt
From Josh Gardiner: Loved this piece by Clive Martin (who you will know penned some of VICE UK's finest ever work. May have felt a little shade from this sentence, admittedly. "There is no exact way of grouping these happenings together. Marketing and events types will likely term them as “experiential”, “immersive” and so on." / The FACE
Related: [SIC] Talks alum Matt Klein’s noteworthy new one on How To Approach Online Culture. Or how to inculcate yourself against trend mania by calculating for force / Zine
After The Last of Us everything will be transmedia. Game IP is increasingly valuable and you can expect to see a lot more crossovers baked into business strategies / Wired
Related? Age of the Femtroll, or the Based It Girl. The reactionary, provocative, post-ironic It girl has emerged as the most influential figure on the New York art scene. Is she the new face of the avantgarde?/ FlashArt
Related: Not MY mother, but My mother, the troll / The Guardian
Corollary: Is the “Free the Nipple” Movement Too White? / Hyperallergic
Will the Ozempic Era Change How We Think About Being Fat and Being Thin? / The New Yorker
Related:Welcome to the Era of the Fake Six-Pack / GQ
From Celeste Blewitt: “The trends of TikTok, can't say boiling wooden spoons was one I would be reading about, but then again, there's so many discussion points on everything currently. An insight into cooking and nostalgia, as well as boiling wooden spoons.” ['People Are Boiling Their Wooden Spoons On TikTok' / The Guardian
J. Crew and the Paradoxes of Prep By mass-marketing social aspiration, the brand toed the line between exclusivity and accessibility—and established prep as America’s visual vernacular / The New Yorker
Corollary: What makes skaters so swaggy? / Blackbird Spyplane
From Randy Irwin: Cool People Accidentally Saved America’s Feet . Millennials popularized bulky, super-cushioned shoes. Then Millennials got old / The Atlantic
World Order
From Ioloanda Carvalho: “Greetings from the Lisbon bureau 🙂 My favorite topic...Mapped: The World’s Happiest Countries in 2023” / Visual Capitalist
TikTok CEO appears on TikTok to warn users about the TikTok ban / The Verge
But Pulling the Plug on TikTok Will Be Harder Than It Looks / NYT
Because? Former Trump official says TikTok 'disguised as candy' but is 'cocaine' / The Hill
Car thefts are rising around the US—is TikTok to blame? / USA Facts
The Gray Lady’s take on How to Fix the TikTok Problem / NYT
Oh Also, Gen Z is trying to own homes by any means necessary / The Future Party
New York has a new logo. New Yorkers hate it / NYT
So [SIC] Talks Alum Ryan McGinness took it upon himself to rework it / NYT
Corollary: how the Graphic Designer Milton Glaser Made America Cool Again/ The New Yorker
Gangs are blowing up ATMs in Germany to get cash / Quartz
58% of institutional investors rely on Reddit / Markets Insider
Of all people, David Byrne asks ”Can We All Be Like Texas?”. How a conservative, oil-pumping state became one of the world’s biggest generators of wind power / Reasons to Be Cheerful
Meanwhile Meta Is Being Sued in Kenya, Again /Wired
The Speculative Future
The rushed launch of AI chatbots from Google and Microsoft will degrade the web’s info ecosystem / The Verge
And now The generative-AI revolution is coming for video / the Future Party
Thousands of workers are using ChatGPT on the job, according to a new survey — and the vast majority aren’t telling their bosses / Insider
Execs are ignoring the dangers of ‘confidently incorrect’ AI and why it’s a massive problem / Digiday
Yet ChatGPT was used to win a hacking competition / WSJ
As the father of a high school junior who took the test for real yesterday: What does GPT-4’s dominance mean for the SAT? / The Atlantic
Maybe Generative AI is just productivity software / Garbage Day
Hence: Startups are already using GPT-4 to spend less on human coders / Motherboard
But GPT-4 is more likely to spread misinformation — when prompted — than its predecessor GPT-3.5/ NewsGuard
Ergo? AI-generated pictures depicting Trump being dragged away by police in front of the cameras send the internet into a frenzy / Hyperallergic
AI image generator Midjourney's latest version can finally render realistic human hands / Hyperallergic
From Ioloanda Carvalho: “This is from December but one of the charts has been showing up a lot lately (dunno why 😉...), so here goes the whole thing, in case .[The brief history of artificial intelligence: The world has changed fast – what might be next?]” / Ourworldindata
Risk of ‘industrial capture’ looms over AI revolution. A handful of individuals and corporations now control much of the resources and knowledge in the sector / FT
Senators Had Questions for the Maker of a Rent-Setting Algorithm. The Answers Were "Alarming." / ProPublica
Meanwhile, “The Quest for Injectable Brain Implants Has Begun.” / Wired
Hence Our New Promethean Moment / NYT
What LLMs Can & Can't Do. On ChatGPT, the internet, and it's lack of connection to it / BRXND Dispatch
And what Google’s new chatbot can, and can’t, do / NYT
Speaking of what AI can’t do, from Piers Fawkes: “This Week’s AI project” - the Blackbird Spyplane sletter emulator / Linkedin
Also from Piers: “as per our conversation at your breakfast meet up this morning…” TREND GOD's First Report 'How Allbirds can beat Nike' Has Arrived! And it's #Free to download / LinkedIn
Not unrelated: Allbirds says its net-zero carbon shoe is here
Pop Cultures
[SIC] homie Larry Warsh on His Early Eye for Basquiat, and the Octogenarian Artist He’s Coveting Now / Artnet
While other homie Mick Batyske was on AdWeek’s The Speed of Culture podcast talking How Music, Culture, and Investing Work Together / AdWeek
Speaking of investments: The Cure Tried to Stop Scalpers. Brokers Are Selling Entire Ticketmaster Accounts Instead / Motherboard
The music industry’s enthusiasm for TikTok as a marketing platform is waning / Yahoo
A video game made entirely of paint: Step into Julius Hofmann’s glitchy universe / it’s Nice That
New York court dismisses case over ownership of ‘world’s first NFT’ / The Art Newspaper
The Button-Pushing Impresario of Balenciaga. How Demna engineered the rise—and near-fall—of the luxury fashion house / The New Yorker
Elsewhere, button pushing legend Courtney Love asks Why are women so marginalised by the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame? / The Guardian
'Swarm' is about how we're doing fandom wrong / NPR
Monocle takes a spin through the hits and misses of the Swedish music charts, from the sublime to the ridiculous and everything in between / Monocle Pod
Why Ted Lasso isn’t the massive hit in the U.K. that it is in the U.S. / Monocle
Related: 46% of US adults sometimes or always wait for the finale of a streaming show before starting it / YouGov
100 gecs, seriously / The Fader
And Gisele Bündchen, Self-Professed “Witch of Love,” / Vanity Fair
Media Happenings
Creator funds are even more bullshit than we realized / Simon Owens
Negative words in news headlines generate more clicks — but sad words are more effective than angry or scary ones / Nieman Lab
Hence? 'The Whale' Beats 'Cocaine Bear' on VOD / Indiewire
And? TikTok’s suggested search problem / Embedded
Brian Morrissey’s Media Schaudenfreude includes no small dose of VICE. Misplaced IMO, but not wrong / The Rebooting
Corollary: BuzzFeed Is Not About to Go Out of Business / A Media Operator
While elsewhere, Girl-focused media company Rebel Girls picked up an $8 million Series A round - now get into TV, theater… and even the metaverse / Fast Company
Even tho Meta is putting the metaverse on the back burner / Nieman Lab
And Pinterest’s quiet battle for ad dollars is getting louder / Digiday
Bytedance’s Capcut hits 200 Million Active Users /Tube Filter
Hundreds of Hearst Magazines Media staffers plan to walkout this week / Deadline
Market-ations
OG [SIC] homie Amy Madonia’s ecomm article on Generational Marketing / Future Commerce
Miami’s Run to the Men’s Sweet 16 Reflects College Basketball’s New Reality. While the N.C.A.A. dithers with how to regulate name, image and likeness deals, the Hurricanes have unapologetically jumped in with both feet / The Athletic
EBay is adding a sprinkle of AI to its digital ad tech to track where you almost bought something. The company seeks to patent tech that uses machine learning to generate “personalized banner ads.” / US Patent Office
Telfar's radical new pricing system is the ultimate anti-luxury move / Fast Company
How direct-to-consumer brands are racing towards profitability / Thingtesting
And how agencies are navigating economic recovery / Digiday
How marketers and creators are thinking about a potential TikTok ban / Marketing Brew
Corollary: ‘It’s very TikTok-led’: BuzzFeed’s Tasty is making its videos look less professional, driven by feedback from its viewers / The Drum
The magazine that impacted a generation. As sneaker culture exploded in the mid-1990s, Eastbay went from an "if you know, you know" niche following, to a pinnacle pillar of the industry / ESPN
‘Home of 7 MPH Fastball:’ Meet Topgolf for Baseball / Front Office Sports
Loro Piana Partners With Aura Blockchain Consortium To Present Its Origin Story In Web3 / Jing Daily
While Karlie Kloss unveils her own fashion destination on Roblox / Vogue Business
And Roblox launches its first generative AI game creation tools / Engadget
Web3 gaming will onboard up to 100M gamers in next 2 years, Polygon and Immutable presidents predict / TechCrunch
Subway and other fast food chains offer subscriptions to build loyalty / Axios
White Claw Upended the Beer Business—Now It Is Coming for Vodka / WSJ
Squarespace lets users sell ‘anything,’ including cryogenic chambers / The Drum
Google was beloved as an employer for years. Then it laid off thousands by email / CNN
The problem with “quiet quitting” and other buzzy management terms / Quartz
Amazon’s layoffs are the latest correction to years of over-hiring / Quartz
Hipstamatic makes its return as an anti-instagram social network / TechCrunch
Superficial Interest
An AI clock that “composes a new poem every minute using ChatGPT / Instagram
A driver’s guide to hydroplaning and how to handle it / PopSci
New Mexico is hiring professional bear huggers / CBSNews
You Too Can Have Your Art on Postage Stamp. The process isn’t complicated, and thousands of people submit themselves for the talent pool every year / Hyperallergic
An ‘Unsexy’ System for Greening Fashion That Actually Works. Forget pants made of car tires — to truly make fashion more sustainable, a collaboration between dozens of brands is slashing the industry’s carbon footprint / Reasons To Be Cheerful
Food / Drink
North Sea cod are getting smaller—can we reverse that? / Ars Technica
How Tokyo’s Farms Have Survived for Centuries. In the world’s biggest concrete jungle, over a thousand small farms continue to grow crops protected by a powerful ally: the city itself / Reasons to Be Cheerful
A second US lab-grown chicken producer cleared a regulatory hurdle. California-based GOOD Meat got a step closer to the supermarket shelves / Quartz
Starbucks olive oil-infused coffee will be available at some US cafes starting today after debuting in Italy last month / CNBC
Without comment: Little Caesars’ Corncob Crust Pizza / Dexerto
======[SIC] 238: Intellectually Inconstant======