[SIC] 242: No Fronts

Volume 5, Number 34

Apr 20, 2023

Meantime, enjoy. And do please pass along to people you like (or people you need to be smarter).

Corollary sources this week (all worth your review, and all easily discoverable): Politico / Today in Tabs / Marketing Dive / Motive Unknown / Public Announcement / Roca News / Future Party / Music Redef / Ben-Evans / Elevator / Garbage Day / Fast Company / Metaproof / Built With AI / Semafor

Hi all,

I’m bouncing around this aft so will keep the intro brief. Thanks to Rob, Iolanda and Celeste for contributions this week, and to all of you for reading and passing [SIC] along to friends.

The links follow.

Ben

Canal Street, accidentally

======[SIC] 242: No Fronts======

Zeitgest / Gestalt

The global elite is excited and terrified by AI/ Axios
From Rob Hubbert: AI Drake... “Interesting if artists can start licensing AI rights to their voice though and make money off it as an income stream (Assuming some form of consistent AI ID can be also be developed in tandem etc…)”/ Music Business Worldwide
Unsurprisingly: AI copyright in spotlight after platforms pull "fake Drake" song / Axios
Tho persisting is AIsis, the band fronted by an AI Liam Gallagher / The Guardian
So obviously AI will transform music; the question is how? / Music Industry Blog
Don’t worry, its just Napster Redux / Lefsetz Letter
To that end, after Fake Drake Debacle, Expect More AI Songs. But Are They Legal? / Billboard
Elsewhere: I Let ChatGPT Plan My Vacation—Here’s What It Got Right and Oh-So Wrong / CN Travel
Inside the potentially lucrative world of the prompt engineers / Time
Meanwhile Reddit wants payback for all its scraped data, please / NYT
If We Ban TikTok, We’ll Lose Something We Can Never Get Back/GQ
The Myth of the Broke Millennial / The Atlantic
The fate of Black Twitter remains unclear after Elon Musk's platform takeover / Digiday
Even Influencers Are Scared of the Internet /The Atlantic
And Twitter is facing an exodus from its most devoted followers: Journalists / Press Gazette
The Future of Social Media Is a Lot Less Social / NYT
Gen Zs don’t have a lot of money, but they’re traveling anyway / cnbc
They can’t even: a generation avoids facing its finances / wsj
Speaking of faces: The Best Skin-Care Trick Is Being Rich / The Atlantic
Hence? How English football became hooked on gambling / FT

World Order

Lyft’s Vibe Shift Signals the End of the Gig Economy Dream / Wired
Manhattan Is Awash in Empty Therapist Offices / Curbed
So is 50% the new Metro RTO? / Ritzholtz
This despite The Recession That Wasn’t? / BoF
Apple is offering a new savings account with an annual interest yield ~10x the national average / Apple
Philadelphia thieves stole $200k worth of dimes from a truck that had just picked up the dimes from the US Mint in Philadelphia / The Guardian
Meanwhile an Oregon man threw an estimated $200k in cash out his window "gifting" it to people / CNN
It’s Oklahoma’s Time to Shine / YT
America’s dollar stores get a makeover for the age of inflation / FT
A fire killed 18,000 cows in Texas. In factory farms it’s a horrifyingly normal disaster / Vox
Corollary from Iolanda Carvalho: Also this, he's just the best... A.I. Reveals How Slaughtered Farm Animals Would Look if They Survived to Old Age. Fresh perspective from NotCo's Fernando Machado and AKQA Bloom / Muse by Clio
Coastal species are climbing aboard the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They’ve created entire communities that are thriving / Quartz

The Speculative Future

The Future of Fertility. A new crop of biotech startups want to revolutionize human reproduction / The New Yorker
AI Desperately Needs Global Oversight / Wired
Especially since Elon Musk is planning to launch an AI company / FT
Matter of fact, Is the AI ecosystem secretly crying out to be regulated? / NYT
Duolingo’s founder believes that artificial intelligence is going to make computers better teachers than humans / The New Yorker
Apropos: Learn how to use ChatGPT to create code for an art project in this tutorial /Twitter
While [SIC] homie Noah Brier makes A dive into the mind-blowing world of ChatGPT plugin development / BrXnd.ai
Though the hype has moved on, the reasons web3 and VR were interesting haven't really changed / Another Podcast
Like DALL-E and ChatGPT, voice AI tools promise to make audio ads quickly and affordably, but they're not yet widespread / Marketing Dive
a16z have produced a ‘State of Crypto in 2023’ report. Lots of charts. The tourists and con-artists have moved on, but there is still an interesting technology at the core.
Related: What Went Down At NFT.NYC 2023 / Jing Daily
Canva’s Visual Economy Report found that 61% of 1,600 business leaders now expect non-design employees to have some design experience since so much communication is now visual / Canva

Pop Cultures

The Origins of Creativity The concept was devised in postwar America, in response to the cultural and commercial demands of the era. Now we’re stuck with it / The New Yorker
Midtown forever with [SIC] Talks alum Brynn Wallner / Drakes
Life beyond the slogan: Can Aries redefine its image with a store? / Vogue Business
Luxury Adapts to the ‘New Ramadan Rush’ / BoF
Beyoncé is a fashion icon. So why can’t she sell leggings? / AndScape
Hank Green Is Trying To Go Viral On LinkedIn / LinkedIn
While Emma Chamberlain is in an Existential Crisis 24/7 / Rolling Stone
The Stories of Art History's Detectives / Hyperallergic
Sound engineer DAVE RAT on the sound system design that makes Coachella and other modern festivals possible / Youtube
How Did Hip-Hop Media Get So Bad? / Defector
Anime Confronts a New Apocalypse. The art form is turning inward, reflecting the diminished horizons of a younger generation / The New Yorker
The new Buffalo Zine PDF “Coffee and Cigarettes” just dropped in austere, surrealist black and white / Publitas
The new chroniclers of street style. Photographers and vloggers are pulling back the curtain on the pieces people actually buy and wear / FT
Did the arena tour kill festival fashion? / Vogue Business
From Celeste Blewitt: “Such an all enveloping process by the artist Scott Covert, but fascinating to read of the ideas around celebrity and death. [Why One Artist Has Made It His Life's Mission To Hunt Down Dead Celebrities] BBC
The Base Determines The Superstructure. A story about songs that predicted the future, and what we can learn from them/ The Seat of Loss
MTV’s The Exhibit Was a Ratings Flop. Compared to predecessors like Bravo’s 2012 Gallery Girls, the art world reality TV show tanked / Hyperallergic
[SIC] homie and Creem EIC Fred Pessaro talks to Daisy Alioto about resurrecting a legend / Dirt
The saga of Punkin’ Donuts / Chicago Reader

Media Happenings

Spotify will drop paywall for Gimlet podcasts / Semafor
Anyone who used Facebook in the last 16 years can now get settlement money / CBS News
Charter Work Tech is a new, free newsletter providing independent reviews of technology tools defining the future of work / Charter
Recent WPP acquisitions point to a new focus on influencers / The Drum
MSCHF covers issue 31 of Hypebeast Magazine /HBX
While BuzzFeed Shuts Down Its Namesake News Division / NYT
End of an era: the last two print computer magazines in the USA are gone / Technologizer
Bloomberg is contemplating life without its founder / FT
While CNN’s new, proprietary publishing platform helps 'reduce tech debt’. CNN has a new CMS, which it built to cut back on costs, improve reader engagement and draw in advertisers / Modern Newsroom
Instagram is allowing users to have up to 5 links in their bio / CNBC
Related: They Did It for the Clicks. How digital media pursued viral traffic at all costs and unleashed chaos / The New Republic
Americans mostly believe news they hear on podcasts / Axios
So What does broadcast-to-podcast tech mean for audio advertising? / The Drum

Market-nations

Comments are the new creative brief / Contagious
Hence? The rise of the micro-agency? / The Drum
Reaching Gen Z and Gen Alpha Is the Holy Grail for Entertainment Marketers/ Variety
Tho…. 'Progressive' companies: Get ready for your workers to make you prove it / Fast Company
Resale’s big secret? It may need stores / Marketing Dive
Ikea's MTV Cribs parody is a savvy hit for hard times / Creative Bloq
Roblox creators can now make and sell limited-run avatar gear / The Verge
The New Tiffany, Unboxed / NYT
Durex and Diesel have joined forces to create a unique unisex collection of apparel, including jeans, t-shirts, and a hoodie, with proceeds going towards sexual health and freedom / Hypebae
While The Barbie x Ruggable collaboration brings gradient rugs and doormats in signature pink / Brit.co
Lululemon Turns Up The Music For Tmall Super Brand Day, hosting a party in Chengdu featuring Gen Z stars / Jing Daily
Pepsi's New Logo Reignites Debate About Agencies Not Getting Credit for Creative Work / AdAge
Nike unveils new virtual Air Force 1 collection via .Swoosh web3 platform. The new virtual sneakers arrive at a time when many brands across industries are turning their backs on the blockchain / The Drum
And lo… These Nike Airs don't exist, but everyone wants them / Creative Bloq

Superficial Interest

In Praise of Weird, British Eccentric Style / The Melt
Corollary: The Forgotten Drug Trips of the Nineteenth Century. Long before the hippies, a group of thinkers used substances like cocaine, hashish, and nitrous oxide to uncover the secrets of the mind / The New Yorker
And apropos of old-school tripping, from Celeste Blewitt: “A business piece with a twist, night trains will be perhaps the new travel trend, night train nostalgia, a slower pace and the chance to take in the surroundings. A great read.” [The New Age Of The Night Train] /FT
Unrelated: NASA’s database of predictions / NASA
What happens when you cross a skateboard with a mountain bike. Hint: it’s really bad / YT

Food / Drink

The cannabis edible goes mainstream / The New Yorker
Tex-Mex is America’s go-to food choice / Axios
Taco Bell’s Innovation Kitchen, the Front Line in the Stunt-Food Wars How did the chain outdo Burger King’s Bacon Sundae, Pizza Hut’s hot-dog-stuffed crust, Cinnabon’s Pizzabon, and KFC’s fried-chicken-flavored nail polish? / The New Yorker
McDonald's is upgrading its burgers / CNN
The Underrated Pleasures of Eating Dinner, in which its claimed that early dinner is the most decadent meal there is / The New Yorker

Useful Diversions

Listen: the 100 gecs Boiler Room DJ set from a few weeks ago, which is like a triple ADHD on the rocks with a meth chaser (complimentary) / YT

Do: Online - The Annual Magnum Square Print Sale / Magnum Photos

NYC @5:30p Saturday - the launch of Primary Information’s newest publication, Newspaper, with editor Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez, Shelley Rice, and Phil Aarons at 38 St Marks Pl / Printed Matter

Magic Hour