[SIC] 251: Juicee Miyake

Volume 5, Number 43

Jun 22, 2023

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. 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): Marginal Revolution / After School / Public Announcement / 1440 / Motive Unknown / Elevator / Simon Owens / Politico / Nieman Lab / Retail Dive / Metaproof / Roca News / Future Party / The Information / Morning Brew / Motive Unknown

Hi all.

Greetings from the Riviera, where I’m planted for Cannes Lions this week. The prevailing wisdom here is that it’s obnoxious to complain about being busy when you’re in the midst of this kind of ad world boondoggle. Which is correct. So I’ll just say I gotta rush out right now, hence the extra typos and incautious link etiquette in this edition.

Speaking of ads: I appreciate all the kind words about last week’s inaugural brand integration (and return of the [SIC] interview). More of those to come, hopefully. But not this week. For now it’s just sincere thanks to Air for the check, to Piers and Celeste for contributions, to Heather for week’s title, to everyone who came to Breakfast Club Cannes this week, and to all of you for reading. Youse rules.

Links follow.

Ben

The untucked shirt with the blazer is the worst. Slopporific. A true microagression.

======[SIC] 251: Juicee Miyake======

Zeitgest / Gestalt

Romanian authorities charged Andrew Tate , his brother, and 2 others with multiple crimes related to an alleged human trafficking ring they ran since 2021 / Diicot.ro
YouTube took down an interview of Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) on the Jordan Peterson Podcast / NBC News
Mark Zuckerberg is ready to fight Elon Musk in a cage match / The Verge
Meanwhile, Meta to lower metaverse user age to 10 / Entrepreneur
But does Zuck own too much Meta? / Bloomberg
Self-described “Baggu girlies” are filling farmers’ markets and public parks with the brand’s vibrant prints — recognizable without a logo / NYT
From Piers Fawkes: The minimony craze (or how to throw a wedding for less than the cost of an iPhone) / LATimes
‘Vegan Landlord’ Seeks Tenant for Sunny Apartment. There’s a Catch / NYT
Related: Lab-grown chicken greenlit for US sales / Morning Brew
Meanwhile debate is brewing over the use of natural and synthetic fragrances in perfumes / High Snobiety
Is Ssense hurting the cool-clothes ecosystem? The e-commerce giant is valued in the billions. People compare it to Amazon. What does its rise mean for small designers & shops? / Blackbird Spyplane
And is the Army’s New Tactical Bra Ready for Deployment? / The New Yorker
More tactical style: Five Fits With Big Spyplane Pilot himself, Jonah Weiner / Esquire
The ChatGPT hustle is real in China / Wired
Tradfi is taking over crypto / Milk Road
The Next Big Thing in Men’s Watches Is… Women’s Watches / WSJ
Cool, sexy and stinking of smoke: why are TV dramas giving cigarettes a comeback? / The Guardian
Does It Really Matter That Rap Artists Haven’t Topped The Charts This Year? / Rolling Stone
Have we entered the age of “productivity theater” in the modern workplace? / Vox
What can AI tell you about your dreams? / Slumbr.io

World Order

Math and reading test scores among US 13-year-olds declined significantly since 2019 / Axios
What Can We Do About Pandemic-Related Learning Loss? /The New Yorker
American universities have passed “peak woke” / Liberal Patriot
The Reuters Institute’s 2023 Digital News Report : video-based content, distributed via networks ie TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are becoming more important for news, especially in parts of the Global South, while legacy platforms such as Facebook are losing influence / Reuters Institute
The World’s 20 Most Expensive Cities / Quartz
“World's largest wooden city" set to be built in Stockholm / Dezeen
‘Microcars’ Are Taking Over Amsterdam / Bloomberg
While $5,000 Japanese Mini Pickup Trucks Are Taking America by Storm / My Modern Met
BBC journalists claim to have uncovered a global network of monkey torture / BBC
And Millions of crickets have descended on parts of Nevada, covering the area with a pungent smell / Elko Daily

The Speculative Future

Future Space Food Could Be Made from Astronaut Breath / MIT Technology Review
Vacation in Space? New Plans for Space Hotels are Heating Up / Moss and Fog
Slack wants to rehire former staff to fuel its generative A.I. ambitions to get ready for an imminent A.I. “supercycle” / Fortune
Microsoft says it expects to build a quantum supercomputer within a decade /
While Apple is an AI company / The Atlantic
Why the future of work is not AI tech: It’s human identity / Digiday
The fashion exec’s guide to generative artificial intelligence / Vogue Business
Not the future, but speculative: Fashion is the worst industry / Variety
Meet the AI underclass / NYMag
Our collective obsession with cyberpunk narratives risks turning dystopian visions of AI into a self-fulfilling prophecy / Dezeen
Apropos: Softbank’s latest bonkers shareholder deck. Pure entertainment, pure terror / Softbank
Corollary: Softbank’s Fortress Investment Group will buy VICE out of Bankruptcy / NYT
Before selling itself to Mubadala / Reuters
Related: Where will SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son take his chip business? / Quartz

Pop Cultures

The Black Fashion Museum / Articles of Interest
How Logo-Free Luxury Is Reshaping the Fashion Market / BoF
Menswear’s New Groove: Casual Suiting Meets Gorpcore? / BoF
Everybody visual is playing with pixels / The Index
Including Pharrell’s ‘Damo-flage’ heavy Louis Vuitton debut / Rain Mag
Which Sam Hine covered by the numbers / GQ
Related: In the Louis Vuitton Studio With Pharrell Williams Ahead of His Debut / Vogue Business
Also: Pharrell Williams: ‘This is not a job. This is not a gig. This is a dream’ / FT
Speaking of dreams: Can preppy fashion ever be radically inclusive? / Fast Company
Elsewhere: Paul Smith is selling his Banksy at Bonhams / The Art Newspaper
Wes Anderson narrates a sequence from his film “Asteroid City.” Watch the scene / NYT
The Films That Presaged Our AI Future / Hyperallergic
Is there anything good about The Idol? / The FACE Podcast
Ryan Murphy, producer of hit television series such as “American Horror Story” and “Glee”, plans to switch from Netflix to Disney / Bloomberg
Corollary: Is Taylor Swift underpaid? / NYT
On the subject of staying paid: Normani Talks ‘Candy Paint’ Preview & Partnering With Bose for Her ‘Next Chapter’ / Billboard
Simultaneously: Brands Like Wendy’s Are Remixing Old Songs Into New Jingles / Marketing Dive
Tiktok has identified “Millennial Humor” and is mocking it mercilessly / Insider
Young People Have No Idea What We Used to Do After Work. Let Me Regale You. / Slate
Another tale: How ‘Walk Hard’ Almost Destroyed the Musical Biopic / Get Pocket

Media Happenings

Reddit’s CEO is fighting a losing battle against the site’s moderators / Quartz
By killing third-party apps, Reddit is learning all the wrong lessons from Twitter / The Drum
Podcast the Newsletter talks to Dane Cardiel, founder of Good Tape, a print magazine that captures the conversations happening in the audio industry/ Podcast the Newsletter
While Garbage Day’s Ryan Broderick got interviewed by NBC about fake podcasts / NBC
The best podcasts have only one host and are shorter than an hour. If you add an element of true crime, you’ve pretty much got the golden ticket / Pew
From James Friedman: “Gaming Just Isn't About You: Consoles Are Thrashed By Casual Games. Those who look down at 'casual' games players are in the tiny minority” / Kotaku
Wordpress is launching a paid newsletter product / TechCrunch
And TikTok Begins Selling Its Own Products in the U.K. / FT
Instagram is making it possible to download public Reels / TechCrunch
While Candle Media and TikTok entered a “broad strategic partnership” that will see them co-develop both premium and branded content / Hollywood Reporter
And Bookforum Is Returning, Months After Its Closure Was Mourned in the Literary World / NYT
AI is a lot of (human) work / Intelligencer
People don’t want robots picking their headlines (but they don’t really want editors doing it either) / Nieman Lab
Text a fruit or vegetable emoji to New York Times Cooking and get a recipe back / NYT

Market-ations

Cannes 2023: AI and influencers take center stage / Marketing Brew
How Creators Influence Brands — and Why They Listen / PYMNTS
A talent agency’s advertising tie-up is paying off at Cannes Eighteen months ago, UTA acquired the ad industry consulting firm MediaLink. And MediaLink, famous for having the ad industry wired, really has Cannes wired / Semafor
Hence: Issa Rae's Inclusive Ad Agency Fête Opens for Business / AdWeek
See all the Cannes Grand Prix winners thus far / The Drum
Marketers on why brands are pulling back from LGBTQ+ advocacy / The Drum
After anti-‘woke’ marketing backlash, purpose-driven messaging reconsidered / Digiday
Disney’s diversity chief reportedly exits after ‘woke’ policies controversies / NYPost
Related: Are retailers afraid of being ‘woke’? / Retail Dive
Unafraid: Liquid Death is a mindset, and also just canned water / WaPo
From Celeste Blewitt: “Given Aesop's recent sale, plus others, it's worth reading on all things a brand can shape itself as, even with varying values and ideals” Is Dr Bronners The Last Corporation With A Soul? / GQ
And, related: another from Celeste: Is Mecca The Next Big Global Retailer? / Vogue Business
Hunter Boots has filed for the British version of bankruptcy, but its sturdy wellies will likely live on thanks to an IP sale / Bloomberg
Meta plans to commercialize the next version of LLaMA / Twitter
Boomers may not be the saviours of music subscriptions / Music Ally

Superficial Interest

Archaeologists found a 3,000-year-old sword so well preserved it’s still gleaming / CNN
F51 Folkestone Skatepark is a multi-story skateboard park and community center / Holloway Studio
From Celeste Blewitt: ‘The Humble Awning Is Ready For Its Time In The Sun / FT

Food / Drink

The best Japanese restaurants in New York: an expat’s guide / FT
Meanwhile The best restaurant in the world is in Peru / Bloomberg
The rest of the world’s 50 best restaurants revealed / Eater
Scrounging: A Cookbook is A collection of late-night, last-ditch recipes and ingenious back-of-the-pantry meals straight from movies / A24
How Alcohol Really Affects Your Body / The Guardian
The evolution of McDonald's uniforms through the years / Mashed

Useful Diversions

Listen:

The brand new Aphex Twin track "Blackbox Life Recorder 21f" / Spotify
As well as a brand new mix from Autechre / SoundCloud

Do:

Get your tickets to CREEM’s all-day rock party at Roberta’s in Brooklyn CREEM’s Summer Sunburn / Creem
🤦‍♂️

======[SIC] 251: Juicee Miyake======