[SIC] 259: Weird Wins

Volume Five, Number 51

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. 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): Public Announcement/ Nieman Lab / Lean Luxe / Context Collapse / Semafor / Quartz / Dealbook / Forefront / The Future Party / After School / Micromobility Report / Opulent Tips / In Bed With Social / Strat Scraps / CNBC / Why Is This Interesting/ Morning Consult / A Letter from Om / Beats & Bytes / 032c / Dirt / Low Pass

Oh also when I’m not newslettering I’m @dietznutz everywhere (IG / X / In / Threads). Follow away.

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Hi all,

Truly the dog days, this week. Felix Salmon wrote yesterday in WITI that we’re In the The Summer of Cringe, which prompted a spirited debate at Breakfast Club. I don’t buy the definition of cringe that Felix lays out; cringe to me is never good, but I agree his implication (seconded by Garbage Day’s take on Barbenheimer, The Eras Tour, And The Rise Of The Normie Fandom): Nobody is embarrassed at all anymore. Which is weird. But weird is winning. And that, generally is something I can get behind.

To that end, as we approached the final edition of [SIC] Volume Five (next week), I’ve decided on some updates to the sletter that’ll start on with Volume Six on August 31st. The idea is to make this whole enterprise both more distinctive and more valuable, now that it’s been around for five full years. Here’s the plan:

• Per annual tradition, Section headers are being renamed. Suggestions, send em.

• As subs have grown (doubling since the start of Vol. 5), I’ve been feeling like maybe I’m giving you too much in the weekly dispatch. Open rates and engagement are still super high, but have come down a smidge. I think focus will help. So I’m gonna try having fewer links. Still a lot. But less than this week’s 126x, for instance.

• To that end, I’m ditching the “New World Order” section. It started with the war in Ukraine, and though obviously that regrettable moment is still ongoing, I don’t think you still really need hard news from me.

• That said, I’m not going to be reading any less - so the plan is to stand up some new outlets for material that doesn’t make the Thursday edition. Starting Friday, September 1st, I’m going to launch [SIC] Day - a brief “morning five” digest of notable links. It’ll only be available to paid subscribers, who’ll receive a dispatch every day but Saturday.

So if that sounds interesting, now’s a good time to upgrade your sub, assuming you can expense it or spare $5 a month - because starting Sept 1, I'm upping the sub fees (but subs before then will be grandfathered in). Here’s a button:

More on that next week, but might as well get while the getting’s cheap. And if you can’t swing the fee, give me a yell and we’ll figure something.

Last thing: my most generous supporters (the founding tier) get invited to a party at my home in Brooklyn. It’s been a while since I hosted, so mark your calendars: the next one will be August 31st. Everybody in the founding tier by that date will be invited, along with some special guests whose work you know from [SIC].

Ok - thanks for taking that all in. Suggestions, critiques, questions and especially contributions are welcome. Thanks to Molly, Liz, Ben, Celeste, Iolanda, Piers and Josh for ideas this week. Now, onto the links.

Ben

======[SIC] 259: Weird Wins======

Zeitgest / Gestalt

• Subtitles on Everything / The Lindy Newsletter

• Tuesdays are the new Fridays / Bloomberg

• The Hottest New Office Is the Gym / WSJ

• Related: The rise of the group fitness as church / NYT

• Meantime, female athletes are fighting a battle over what they put on their bodies and how much of those bodies they display / NYT

• From Molly Raskin: “Girl” trends and the repackaging of womanhood / Vox

• I Keep Writing the Same Poptimism Piece Because Nothing Ever Changes/ Freddie Deboer

• Hyper femininity. A colorful new wave of femininity captures empowerment for modern times / Wunderman Thompson

• Tomato girl summer? How brands can keep up with TikTok’s micro-trends / Vogue Business

• Corollary: the Bella Swan hair tuck is a coded language / Embedded

• Why Gen Z can’t stop talking about money on TikTok / Fast Company

• Tiktok is letting people shut off its infamous algorithm. TikTok is making its algorithm optional for users in the European Union, so users will be able to opt out of seeing their For You pages and instead view trending videos in their region / Wired

• Another from Molly: They Review Movies on TikTok, but Don’t Call Them Critics

• Marvel VFX workers are pushing to unionize, saying they’re fed up with unsustainable working conditions / The Future Party

• The Gen Z version of Polaroids: People are using consoles such as the Nintendo DSi and Nintendo 3DS for a nostalgic lens on the world / Polygon

• Corollary: This camera turns photos straight into AI art / Creative Bloq

• While from Ben Pruess: Virtual human livestreams are taking over China while NPC-style creators thrive globally / Jing Daily

• Roblox is planning to let some job applicants attend interviews virtually, as their avatars / Axios Gaming

• Friend.tech bills itself as “the marketplace for your friends,” allowing you to buy and sell shares of other users with the price set by a bonding curve / Friend.Tech

• Inside Irregular Hours, Where Finding a Job Doesn’t have to Suck / Nylon

• Speaking of sucking: Burning Man 2023 temple designed to show "deepest potential of architecture" / Dezeen

• Coincidentally?! There’s a glut of Burning Man tickets on the market / SFist

• So there’s No Shame in Flaking. Embrace chaos. Don’t show up / The Atlantic

World Order

• The Saturday Read Conversation: Matthew Yglesias / The New Statesman

• “Ron DeSantis Says He Has ‘Moved On’ and Disney Should Drop Its Lawsuit Against Him / Deadline

• The new “science of reading” movement, explained / Vox

• Why Can’t We Trust the Media / Zeihan on Geopolitics

• Apropos, it’s worth (re)watching Adam Curtis’s “The Century of the Self”, about the birth of the PR industry and state-supported propaganda/ YT

• To wit: Beijing said it would stop publishing figures for youth unemployment, weeks after it hit a record high of 21.3 percent in June / NYT

• In contrast, there’s Japan, where over 40% of the workforce is aged 55 and older / CNBC

• Hence: population shrinking and workforce transforming, Japan is counting on AI to help its society remain dynamic and innovative / AEI

• Elsewhere in aging populations: Pickleball is redefining retirement in the US / FT

• Corollary: Electric golf carts are being used as “second cars” by a growing number of American families / Electrek

• Unrelated? The Pessimists Archive is a catalog of mass hysteria that is somehow assuring / Pessimists Archive

• Not reassuring, tho: Alcohol deaths among women are soaring / Morning Brew

• Also an open secret: The Life of the 500+ Cables that Run the Internet / CNET

• And another: American sunblock is worse than foreign formulas. Can Congress fix that? / NYT

The Speculative Future

• The companies behind some of the biggest AI chatbots are putting their models to the test — by turning them over to thousands of hackers / Semafor

• Digital personality rights: AI ushers in a new era of identity and ownership / Wunderman Thompson

• So then What exactly are the economics of AI? / Marcus on AI

• Definitely part of it: Hypertargeting at Scale: Thanks to AI, the future of mass-media communications is 1:1 / The By Product

• The Design Trends Forged by AI / Decoded

• From Piers Fawkes: Researchers use AI to predict hit songs from listeners’ heart rates / Big Think

• Related, also from Piers: Scientists Extracted a Pink Floyd Song From Someone's Brain Waves/ Futurism

• Hence: Sonos, in a recent patent application for the “playback of generative media content” paints a picture of a future in which each speaker in your home becomes part of a generative orchestra, with dynamically generated audio soundscapes paired with AI visuals / USPTO

• Corollary: 2023 'Til Infinity Realizing the dream of hip-hop's next 50 years / NPR

• Continuing that theme: Hip Hop 2073: A Vision of the Future, 50 Years From Now. C. Brandon Ogbunu and Lupe Fiasco paint two scenes of how the duality of AI will shape the art form in five decades / Wired

Pop Cultures

• “What happens when a pop star isn’t that popular?” / NYT

• Corollary from James Friedman: Four Tet on being the world’s unlikeliest superstar DJ / The Guardian

• And From Liz Mantel: “Have u listened?” London DJ, Benji B for ALD’s latest installment of 'SOUND', a monthly content series featuring hour-long DJ sets / YT

• More musics: John Carroll Kirby and Sylvan Esso on the Monocle Pod / Monocle

• While actors Steven Yeun & Michael Imperioli talk peninsula mentality, emotional pasta sauce and the realities of road rageon the A24 pod / Spotify

• An Art Thief’s Tale of Love and Seduction / Hyperallergic

• Speaking of: Want to Buy This Painting? First, You’ll Have to Audition” / T Magazine

• More gatekeeping: the city of Mesa canceled a series of shows of political street art just weeks after the museum refused to withdraw Fairey’s work depicting a police officer in riot gear / Hyperallergic

• Daisy Alioto’s 2023 rumination on  What Is Lifestyle?  / Dirt

• Which dovetails conveniently into another plug for “The Century of the Self” / YouTube

• Which in turn lends context to W. David Marx’s delving into (among other things) why more lucrative to burn unsold clothing rather than sell it at a discount / Culture an Owner’s Manual

• Which prompt the question How Retailers Convince Coveted Brands to Go on Sale / BoF

• Boomeranging back to “Century of the Self” a second, RAFTM Rachel Tashjian predicts a Freudcore Fall / Twitter

• And recommends Tim Blanks & Cathy Horyn chat for System / System

• Apropos of that chat: Ganni is collaborating with Paloma Elsesser / Fashionista

• Related: Kim Kardashian breathes new life into Marc Jacobs for Fall 2023 /

• Tho Cat Marnell disagreeing / The US Sun

• Is giving The Rise of Individualism and Self Branding in the Digital Age / Decode

• Corollary: the design visionary Salehe Bembury on dressing like yourself, cult-fave '96 Nikes, sexy monstrousness, Super Shredder mindset & more / Blackbird Spyplane

• And also: Artists Get Inside the “Glitch” / Hyperallergic

• Speaking of getting inside: Building a Doll's House for the Present. Laurie Simmons uses Kaleidoscope House to rethink the environment of her practice / Frieze

• Back to Cat: Marnell talks additiction in alphabetical order on the WoW pod / IG

• Corollary, from Molly Raskin: Madonna, Mother of Self-Mythology / The Cut

• And also, American Apparel from the Inside / WaPo

• Speaking of Amercia: Hip-hop’s future will be less American. It’s going global / The Economist

• Also not American: Avery and Heems talk Paisley on Articles of Interest / Spotify

• On the subject of appropriation: Kith Copied a Felix Gonzalez-Torres Artwork for its new ad /  Hyperallergic

• Also controversial: The "Sexy" Seagull Sculpture That Scandalized a Coastal City / Hyperallergic

Media Happenings

• X, formerly known as Twitter, is no longer allowing advertisers to promote their accounts on users’ timelines / Axios

• And X appears to be throttling links to rival sites such as Facebook, Instagram, and Substack as well as news outlets that owner Elon Musk has publicly criticized / WaPo

• Meanwhile, YouTube Music adds a TikTok-like video feed to attract the Zs / Wired

• Then there’s TikTok’snew Spotify Rival / Insider

• Instagram is rolling out a new feature that allows users to add songs to their carousel posts, and it has tapped Olivia Rodrigo to debut it with her new single, “bad idea right?”/ The Verge

• While Netflix launches game streaming trial / The Media Leader

• From Celeste Blewitt: 'Could A True Streaming Bundle Be Upon Us?' / Vulture

• Related: Streamflation Is Here and Media Companies Are Betting You’ll Pay Up / WSJ

• Elsewhere: Is The Rise Of Indie Newsletter Writers And Podcasters Just Another Bubble? / Ad Exchanger

• Related: what’s The next wave of B2B media / The Rebooting

• And does it mean Embracing Tangible Media? / In Bed With Social

• Hence: brands like Nordstrom and Zappos are revisiting print marketing / Digiday

• While TikTok expects to sell $20 billion in merch on the platform this year / Bloomberg

• Elsewhere, total traditional TV usage — which is comprised of broadcast and pay-TV — dropped below 50% for the first time ever/ CNBC

• Related: Are libraries the future of news? / Nieman Lab

• More unlikely futures: X wants to get into the video-calling business now / Engadget

• Just in time! The video call revolution is dead / The Verge

• Also dead: NYT dropped out of a media coalition negotiating with the tech giants / Semafor

• From Iolanda Carvalho: Instead of taking the usual route of pushing a trial period onto readers, the newspaper is inviting them to experience the full breadth of a Times subscription firsthand by reimagining its services for transit." New York Times Takes Over The Subway For Commuters To Live Out Its Sections / Design Taxi

• Elsewhere, BuzzFeed says its AI strategy is working, gets more engagement than pieces created solely by human beings / Press Gazette

• While agencies weigh the pros and cons of generative AI as political advertising grows / Digiday

• The case for and against made-for-advertising sites / Digiday

• The founder of the 5-Hour Energy beverage brand has agreed to buy a majority stake in Sports Illustrated / WSJ

• Sports Corollary: Bagel, a magazine focusing on tennis, diversity and its cultural influence / Monocle Pod

• While Vogue’s latest cover, with ’90s supermodels, started a conversation about beauty standards online / NYT

• And Brands like Patagonia and Nikon are using ad budgets to fund climate docs / The Drum

Market-ations

• [SIC] Talks alum Ana Andjelic examines What are pop-ups good for? / The Sociology of Business

• McDonald's is launching its 'As Featured In Meal,' a collection of food items that have been shown in films, TV series and music videos / Inside

• Palace Skateboards is bringing its streetwear to none other than McDonald’s to launch the “McDonald’s Cinematic Universe” — a clothing line / Highsnob

• Which inspired the return of Billy Rohan’s favorite order / IG

• Molson Tracked Down It’s Own Vintage Jerseys after Drake wore one - now, they’re being packaged in cases of beer around Toronto / AdAge

• Heydude teams up with Dude Perfect / Retail Dive

• While Fashion is popping up at hotels as summer travel surges / Vogue Business

• How they did it: Vacation's whipped sunscreen • Fast Company

• Speaking of WFA: Why WeWork didn’t, and couldn’t, ever work / The Drum

• Related from Josh Gardiner: apropos of “reframing ‘work-life’ balance as ‘life-work’ balance, we installed a giant Esc key in Manhattan and invited people to push it. They received real-time, personalised Wellington job vacancies as well as the benefits that come with living and working in New Zealand's capital” / Wellington.nz

Superficial Interest

• From Piers Fawkes: Vintage New York: adventures on the Lower East Side – in pictures / The Guardian

• More blast from the past: The BEST Store / Monologue

• Unrelated (to anything?!) Werner Herzog is now the voice of AI poetry / NYT

• But related to that, from Piers Fawkes: The Monstrous Crochet Creations of Chat GPT / Wired

• To say nothing of Crochet Mapping / Twitter

• Also, this Keyboard Jacket  / IG

Food / Drink

• From Johnny Sosnowski: “Highly recommended nonfiction piece here.” How I Became a Modern Bootlegger / Lithub

• On the topic: Are non-alcoholic drinks (too) expensive right now?  / Salon

• Back on the vine side: Meet Albariño: The next great vino / NYT

• Also, you can pair red wine with fish / WSJ

• Or even Pair Wine With ‘Fish Friendly Farming’ / Reasons To Be Cheerful

• While from Celeste Blewitt: “Loved reading this. The times past, the debauchery, the unequivocal moments of freedom before social media … what a story. 'It Was A Wild Time, And We Were Selling A Certain Story' / Grub Street

• Speaking of selling a certain story, there’s always The Devil’s Playground: A Satanic Skate Spot Jenkem

Useful Diversions

Read:

• Geoff Rickly’s “Someone Who Isn’t Me”. I finished it over the weekend, it’s worth ordering if you like, music, drugs, psychedelia, quitting drugs, alternative medicine, stream-of-consciousness narrative, Emo, the band Thursday, Greenpoint Brooklyn or independent publishing / Rose Books

Listen:

• Speaking of early 2000s music: The Avalanches After the Gold Rush Mix from 2002 is more fun than we deserve / Soundcloud

Do:

• 10 Art Shows to See in New York Right Now / Hyperallergic

======[SIC] 259: Weird Wind Weird Wins======