[SIC] 266: Sufficiently Inefficient

Volume Six, Number Six

The [SIC] newsletter on Thursdays is free, and will be forever. But you CAN pay, if you want. I’m into it. Monthly or yearly, or founding support. Lots of people expense their subscriptions as research.

Paid subscribers get an additional [SIC] Day microdigest Mon, Tues, Weds, Fri, and Sundays. And founding supporters get invited to a dinner at my home in NYC with special guests.

And do pass along to people you like (or people you need to be smarter). I’m @dietznutz everywhere (IG / X / In / Threads), as well.

Corollary sources this week:Motive Unknown / Weak Signals And Other Trends / Storythings / Public Announcement / 1440 /  The Micromobility Report / Morning Consult / The Daily Upside / Dealbook / After School / Semafor / Simon Owens / The Future Party / Quartz / Kottke / Beats & Bytes / Reasons to be Cheerful

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Hi all,
I’ve gotten into a good morning rhythm sending out [SIC] Day micro-digests of 10x daily links to paying supporters each day at 9am ET, so I’m experimenting with that timing for the weekly free digest today. I’ll (maybe) scrutinize the analytics and see how this performs relative to sending in the afternoon, but in the meantime if you’ve got thoughts, LMK in reply (or ideally in the comments below, which I think help juice the Substack algo or something).

Thanks to a murderers row of [SIC] readers who sent stories this week - see below for Celeste Blewitt, Iolanda Carvalho, Piers Fawkes, Molly Raskin, Eric Korsh, Jolyon Varley, Marie Dolle, Ken Miller, Zach Sokol, David Bloom, and Jeff Carvalho contributions this week. And everyone else, send ‘em if you got ‘em.

Speaking of Jeff, our pandemic-era project Culture Club Show returns October 11th as a weekly live conversation, podcast and video pod. @cultureclubfyi (twitter) and @cultureclubshow (IG) for info. We’ll announce guests shortly.

Beyond that, the links. Enjoy.

Ben

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The Macro Narrative

• Why the Hell We Are Obsessed with Hell / Hyperallergic

• From Jeff Carvalho: Perfect for SIC: Link between Yankee Candles and COVID spikes / Undark

• Peter Zeihan asks: The European Union: Will It Adapt or Die? / YouTube

• UK prime minister Rishi Sunak launches plan "to stop councils implementing" 15-minute cities / Dezeen

• And proposes to raise the legal smoking age one year, every year, would eventually apply to the whole population/ Quartz

• So then, Is ‘Street Medicine’ the Next Frontier for Cities Addressing Drug, Homelessness Crisis? / New York Sun

• Or maybe its just a portable charger that hacks London's Santander bikes so homeless people can charge their phones / Dezeen

• Conversely: Detroit is sprucing itself up. Ten years after declaring bankruptcy, Motor City is starting to bounce back / FT

• From Piers, "Visual/spiritual inspiration": One kissa is all it takes: Tokyo’s finest jazz haunts – in pictures / The Guardian

• Less inspiring: Why retail shopping is no fun anymore / Axios

• Also no fun: the CPSC announced a voluntary recall for 300,000 Onewheel electric skateboards across the U.S. in response to four known death cases between 2019 and 2022 / The Verge

• Corollary: The Best Thirst Traps Money Can Buy / The New Yorker

• Ergo, from Molly: Prozac Nation, Meet Lexapro Sweatshirts/ NYT

• Related: Why thousands of young Chinese people use a pink dinosaur as their alias on social media / Rest of World

• And also: young, affluent donors support issues over organizations/ Barrons

• Corollary, from Iolanda: “Paying for news: Price-conscious consumers look for value amid cost-of-living crisis" / Reuters Institute

• 'They can’t buy into that American Dream: How Younger Workers are Redefining Success / USA Today

• Hence?, from Molly: Bedroom culture is having a resurgence  / i-D

• Related, from Piers: “Considering how much nostalgia there is for pasts we didn’t live, this [Sabine Marcelis Lava Lamp] could be a hit for holidays 24…” / Wallpaper

• And from Marie: “Thought you might find this interesting:” Solarpunk is the next big literary-design movement / Ecotech

Generationations

• Also from Marie: You might enjoy: How Gen Z is building an aesthetics based on ‘inconvenience’ / D1A

• Gen Z Wants Feminine Care Brands to Just Say Vagina / NYT

• Corollary? Why Subtitle Use Is Deceptively High Among Young Viewers / Morning Consult

• Bosses are getting GenZ’s skills deficit all wrong: the generation says it’s hard, not soft, skills they need to learn / Fortune

• Meanwhile, Gen Xers are stuck in the middle of a retirement nightmare / CNN

• Hence: Artist Marc Hundley Recommends Finding Success After 40 / Pulling Weeds

• Also stuck in the middle: The scoop wars of the modern NBA “It’s the only real rivalry left in the NBA,” one reporter said of the battle between ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski and his former protégé, The Athletic’s Shams Charania. “Everyone else likes each other.” / WaPo

• ‘They don’t want to give power to girls’: the women shaking up Colombia’s graffiti scene / The Guardian

• Meanwhile all the coolest Gen Z power girls (and Paris and Nicky) were at the Miu Miu show / Fashionista

Platformations

• Did Substack bring back the blogosphere? Christina Loff, the partnerships lead at Substack, published a piece arguing that the platform spurred a resurgence in old-school blogging / Substack Reads

• Because? BookTok doesn't just sell books; it also is driving foot traffic into physical bookstores / Publishers Weekly

• From Jolyon Varley: “Another labour of lol from our camp. Hope you (and maybe your readers?) will enjoy the read”: “Chaos in The FYP”: OK COOL’s exclusive annual TikTok Trend Report has dropped / Google Drive

• How Taylor Lorenz went from Tumblr queen to internet historian / Embedded

• Related from Eric: “Not sure if you already saw this interview with Taylor Lorenz & Lucas Shaw…”[How Internet Influencer Became the Hottest Job in America] / Bloomberg

• Tiktok is reportedly testing a paid, ad-free version of its app / The Verge

• While Instagram and Facebook may start offering European users a paid, ad-free version. Meta is considering a $14-a-month charge for ad-free Instagram, or $17 for both apps on desktop / WSJ

• And Elon is trying to bring live shopping to Twitter with the help of Paris Hilton / MediaPost

• Spotify has patented a ‘digital mixtape’ generator that compiles users’ voice recordings with songs / Music Business Worldwide

• Meta recently admitted that it has used mountains of public social media posts to train its AI models / Axios

• And while Apple may be quiet on AI, it’s also the biggest buyer of AI companies / Quartz

• From Piers: Has Amazon Marketplace become a company town? / Retail Touchpoints

• Corollary: 12 of the best YouTube channels, chosen by YouTubers / Descript

Stylistics

• Mastering “Day-Core”: Sunlight as ephemeral decor / For Scale

• Is there room for world builders in fashion anymore? / GQ

• Corollary, from Ken: “Did a little write-up on photographer Slim Aaron and the aspirational appeal of travel.” [The Glamour of Summer, According to Slim Aarons / Conde Nast Traveler

• And Linda Evangelista and the Canny Eye of Steven Meisel / The New Yorker

• Another world: Inside Selena Gomez’s Beauty Juggernaut / Fast Company

• Related, from Iolanda: “Gender-fluid fashion is reaching a cultural apex so mainstream fashion brands looking to capitalise on its growing popularity need to be prepared to speak about it authentically" / Marketing Week

• Also growing in popularity, from Celeste: ’How Loro Piana Became Silicon Valley's Favourite Flex’ / NY Mag

• Ergo, from David: “rather astonishing set of factoids about the luxury goods business and its rapid growth the past few years, up roughly 40 percent.” Data shows that the value of the global personal luxury goods market jumped from $268B in 2017 to $372B in 2022. / Inside Marketing

• Meanwhile Prada is designing NASA spacesuits. Will luxury customers wear them next? / Vogue Business

• More flexing, from Celeste: “a great insight into what the next generation will covet in terms of classic cars. Although I quite enjoy the author's want to honour the Corolla, my Corolla was once involved in a police chase.....that story is for another day, haha!” [ 'Here's To A New Generation Of Classic Cars’ ]/ Atlantic

Culturations

• When art dealers go bust, what happens to the art they hold? / The Art Newspaper

• Are NFTs really dead and buried? All signs point to ‘yes’ / The Conversation

• IE: Despite partnering with popular brands, hedge fund billionaire and MoMA trustee Steve Cohen’s NFT startup has ceased operations / Hyperallergic

• But, but From Piers: in contrast there’s the DJ Carl Cox’s Virtual Odyssey: The Unveiling of Intermundium in Sensorium Galaxy / NFT Culture

• Nike’s dot.Swoosh initiative’s first shoe dropped  IRL with the heel tab “This is Not a Jpeg” / Hypebeast

• And Fortnite is launching age ratings for all of its experiences, which Epic Games says is “a critical step toward building a metaverse that’s safe and fun for everyone” / The Verge

• Speaking of fun for everyone (especially if you have a light appreciation for math): Matt Levine’s “Money Stuff” review of the first half of Michael Lewis’s SBF Book is the best thing of the week / Bloomberg

• On the topic of other halves: Hamburger Eyes’s Ray Potes on “Wrong Side of the Lens”/ YouTube

• Elsewhere from Piers: Begin Again: Oliver Jeffers on creating his new picture book for adults / Creative Boom

• Corollary, from Molly: The New Rules Of Friendship Online / Bustle

• Speaking of new rules: Songwriters, composers and AI: 'In summary: regulate, goddammit!' / Music Ally

• And apropos of that, from Celeste: "Such a reminder, of set lists, albums that bands have stopped playing and creating a show for an audience in a time when there is access immediately at every moment in time.” [Don't Play The Hits! Rarities Are One Of The Great Joys Of Live Music ] The Guardian UK

• Related: Paramount To Create ‘90s Boy Band Documentary Featuring *NSYNC, Backstreet Boys & More / Loop Mag

• The new music video from DJ Khaled, Lil Baby, Future, and Lil Uzi Vert premiered on…Nickelodeon / Rolling Stone

• Elsewhere, Paramount pulled out the think-outside-the-box playbook for marketing its remake of Mean Girls, putting the entirety of the 2004 hit Mean Girls on TikTok… in 23 parts in celebration of Mean Girls Day / Deadline

• Related: Writers are worried , arguing that Paramount’s ploy undermines the recent gains made by the Writers Guild of America in their new contract / Time

• Hence?! Tina Fey is celebrated October 3rd by auctioning a signed and annotated 70-page script of Mean Girls: The Musical / Hyperallergic

• Kinda sorta similar?! Bloody Bloody Boudoir Ladies: Turning Kitsch Ceramics Into Horror / Hyperallergic

• Melting drums: The 808 Edition. WITI’s Colin Nagy on hardware, culture, and expression / Why Is This Interesting

• Also on fire: Ed Ruscha’s Calmly Collapsing America. In “Now Then,” a sprawling retrospective at MOMA, the artist traces the rise and fall of a national language / The New Yorker

• Corollary Collapse: Be Proud of Your Overflowing Bookshelves / Departures

• And related, from Piers: 10 lessons I learned from being a nerd / Ted

Technopolis

• Workers could be the ones to regulate AI / As tech titans and lawmakers argue, the Hollywood writers’ strike has shown how employees can set the rules / FT

• But! The Virtual human market is predicted to reach $440.3 billion by 2031 / Jing Daily

• Hence! The synthetic social network is coming / Platformer

• Plus! ChatGPT’s latest update fuels publishers’ concerns about AI chatbots siphoning traffic / Digiday

• So! Publishers and advertisers are successfully implementing the next generation of AI / Digiday

• Though! ChatGPT may be making workers perform worse, according to a new report by the Boston Consulting Group / Insider

• And! Modern cars are a privacy nightmare / Mozilla

• Less emphasis! Even Microsoft Paint is getting an AI art generator / Creative Bloq

• Buy! Walmart experiments with generative AI to help people shop / Axios

• Ok, stopping that gag now. From Iolanda: Humane launches a wearable AI Pendant designed by Jonny Ive. It’s a "screenless, standalone device and software platform built from the ground up for AI." AND IT REMEMBERS EVERYTHING. / Engadget

• While! How AI and Brain Science Are Helping Perfumiers Create Fragrances / BoF

• And! Hannah Diamond Has Cracked the Code of Using AI for Music / Wired

• But! These Latest Celebrity Deepfakes Show How Advanced Scams Have Become / Lifehacker

• Plus! Meta’s new AI stickers are already causing a commotion with a Winnie-the-Pooh holding a rifle, just one of the designs it generated / Quartz

• Sorry about that, got hacked. The anatomy of a Facebook account heist / Vox

Media-tions

• Journalists can be TikTokers too. Three journalists explain how to use the platform for news / Nieman Lab

• The Media Convergence. The borders between channels are blurring as they steal each other’s features, adopt universal standards and simplify for consumer ease / The Drum

• Hence: The Wall Street Journal debuts a new podcast with investing news for “Joe Sixpack” / Nieman Lab

• And The New Yorker Launches “Critics at Large,” a New Culture Podcast / The New Yorker

• While  culture news site Dirt Media buys a design newsletter (and plans to acquire more) @Daisy: DM me! / Dirt

• Aesthetically related from Zach: “I spent the summer guest editing the new issue of Hypebeast Magazine "The Fever Issue" -- a 256-pager that features Jun Takahashi, Peter Sutherland, Jon Rafman, Mowalola, Small Talk Studio, Emma Stern, Shy's Burgers, and more” / Hypebeast

Market / Influence

• 10 rules of IP brands. What are IP brands and how they operate? / Sociology of Business

• Ergo: Why Netflix is Selling Pizza and Wedding Gowns Based on Your Favorite Shows / WSJ

• More IP-isms: Pixar’s “Elemental” was initially derided as a flop. But it has since proved a success, raising questions about the conventional animated film business model / NYT

• So then; What Does a ‘Video Day’ Look Like For Consumers? / Channel 4

• Needs variety! [SIC] Homie Bobby Hundreds  throws back to 2018 on The importance of diversity and representation in brand-building / Monologue

• Hence? Macy’s to Triple Small-Format Store Count in Move Away from Malls / Bloomberg

• And Hasbro taps college athletes, and Nerfball, to build clout with Gen Z / Digiday

• From Piers: “Talk about finding your niche”: Design co creates stuff for corners / Design Milk

Eats, Drinks and Ephemera

• Fast food drive-thru times shrink as fewer customers wait at the window / CNBC

• Related: Taco Bell’s drive-thru is the one to beat, says a wildly thorough report / QSR Mag

• Two-thirds of California’s largest school districts now serve non-meat, non-dairy meals at least once a week / Civil Eats

• From Piers: Kellogg's cereal business begins trading as stand-alone company WK Kellogg  /CNBC

The Natural (?!) World

• The Smartest Man Who Ever Lived / The Atlantic

• Well yeah but did he discover you can use a disco ball for safely observing the sun during an eclipse? / ARXIV

• Or, or, or: The Mathematical Theory That Connects Swimming Sperm, Zebra Stripes, and Sunflower Seeds? / Popsci

• Swimming adjacent: Scientists are releasing a horde of crabs to save Florida’s coral reef / Vox

• Ending on a high note:  A Family of Humming-Birds, a loving restoration of a 19th-century monograph showing hundreds of species of hummingbirds from around the world / Kottke

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