[SIC] 273: Agonizing Meterology

Volume Six, Number Thirteen

Hi all,

An update, since I got a bunch of helpful suggestions after last week’s confession that my subscriber purge hadn’t really changed open rates; numbers last week were up. [SIC] 272 was opened by 60% of recips - which is where I want to be at a minimum - and I added a decent number of new subs, included some who opted for the paid tier. Thanks, and welcome all - for the comments and the patronage. FWIW, [SIC] grows almost entirely based on word-of-mouth recos, so if there’s a friend or family member or colleague who might like it, please do share. Here’s a button:

As I say to paid supporters when they join, suggestions, objections, provocations and especially contributions are welcome any time. And since we’re doing Thanksgiving today (I’m in England bringing the custom to my wife’s family for the first time), let me start by thanking folks who took me up on the offer this week - Jon Hurwitz, Piers Fawkes, Celeste Blewitt and David Bloom - for their suggestions.

Speaking of suggestions, Aaron Radin suggested a quick digest of the most notable stories as a way to hook readers; ideally the first group of links below is supposed to do that, but I’ll take it on board and give it a try next week.

Meantime, here’s one for everyone who went out last night pre-Turkey Day: fave upstart publisher Dirt and fave nightlife brand Elsewhere launch “the nightlife review” - which they describe as “as a souvenir from the dancefloor––a combination of fact, fiction and ephemera meant to be consumed on the ride home at 4am.” I signed up immediately. Tho TBH I expect I’ll read it in the morning over coffee.

Ok - off to the pub. Links follow below. I didn’t bother bolding proper nouns below, feeling lazy. You’ll find them. And a reminder in the meantime for Americans reading that since There Are Only Thirteen Good Thanksgiving Movies and every deal worth a damn is on this Magasin list…. here’s how to have a great nap — you deserve it.

Ben

Scottish Pique

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The Macro Narrative

• Formats Unpacked: Boiler Room / Storythings

• What If Money Expired? / Noema

• Wall Street’s ESG craze is fading  / WSJ

• "How we respond to disasters tells us a lot about our future”. The world urgently needs architects and designers to start prioritising humanitarian projects / Dezeen

• So: A climate scientist is done warning people about the problems with our climate and has moved on to highlighting successes / Kottke

• For instance: The fastest-growing places along the Atlantic coast are also among the most hurricane-prone / NYT

• So: Tredje Natur proposes floating car parks on top of flood-preventing reservoir to prevent urban flooding /Dezeen

• Meantime, micromobility vehicles are displacing 1M barrels of oil a day, four times as much as all the electric cars in the world, , or roughly 1% of the world’s total oil demand / The Conversation

• And A Department of Energy report promotes a new system that could remake the energy grid. The Next Power Plant Is on the Roof and in the Basement.  / The New Yorker

• While In New York City’s financial district, families are filling empty offices / NYT

• Why Aren't More People Marrying? Ask Women What Dating Is Like / NYT

• Also IRL: The Future of Obesity Drugs Just Got Way More Real. Wegovy is about to go mainstream / The Atlantic

• Notwithstanding The Other Ozempic Revolution / The Atlantic

• In other revolutions: Major Brands Fret as ‘Dupes’ Lure Holiday Shoppers / BoF

• Hence?! California just became the latest state to require media literacy classes in school / ABC

• Corollary: Tiktok Shop’s Black Friday sale is full of very weird stuff/ Wired

• Ergo? On TikTok, a niche but growing group of former fast fashion enthusiasts are encouraging one another to shop less, but better / BoF

• Meantime, ‘Funflation” has sent ticket prices to sporting events up by a whopping 25 percent. (CNBC)

• IPSOS describes a world more fearful about the future. Economics figures heavily in this thinking, with people now more cautious with their money, especially in developed markets" / WARC

• So… Could Argentina Start a Global Monetary Revolution? / The New York Sun

• Either way, Wages are rising. Jobs are plentiful. Nobody’s happy / Vox

• Case in point?!  ;) : The internet is angry that GTA 6 might feature a child / Creative Bloq

• So...The hot new meme is screenshotting ads next to racist content on X and sending them to Elon Musk directly / Daily Dot

• From ‘involution’ to ‘Barbie Q’: 8 Chinese buzzwords that defined 2023 / Jing Daily

Generationations

• Gen-Z Is Already Worried About Looking Old / BoF

• And that they’re going to raise a generation of iPad kids / Insider

• And yet they’re paying top dollar for vintage refurbished iPods / BoingBoing

• But they are growing out of Emma Chamberlain / Embedded

• So What Is the Future of Creator Labor? / The Publish Press

• Here’s one possible indicator: At the Roblox Innovation Awards, a 19-year-old creator named Muneeb beat out Gucci, Karlie Kloss, and several other high-profile brands in the fashion category for his “Catalog Avatar Creator experience” / BBC

Platformations

• Crypto Exchange Bullish Buys Crypto News Site CoinDesk / Infinite Scroll

• Elon Musk’s Poisoned Platform. Users and advertisers are fleeing X after Musk’s message supporting an antisemitic conspiracy theory. But the platform seems destined to die a slow death/ The New Yorker

• As the advertiser exodus continues at X, marketing leaders are pleading with CEO Linda Yaccarino to resign / Axios

• “Twitter bets big on ... CEO’s son” / Semafor

• Tinder just got a 'rizz-first' redesign / Engadget

• Tumblr is betting big on going small / The Verge

Stylistics

• Should clothes never go on sale? / Blackbird Spyplane

• The latest TikTok makeup trend is transforming yourself into an android / Highsnobiety

• Can our decor change our behaviour? / FT

• From Celeste: “Hippies, Yuppies, Bobos, Hipsters, this article is fascianting, delving into the various cultural trends over time, and this new take on rural living” [On England's Pleasant Pastures Seen: Rural Rules The Roost In the New Class Of Bohemian Peasants Or Bopeas] / Tatler

• Dinner Is Served, Sort of: Meet Fashion Food / Show Notes

• From David: “Pharrell, being Pharrell, has now created his own auction house to sell the cool stuff he and his famous friends don’t want anymore” [Inside Pharrell’s Celebrity Auction House Gamble]  / WSJ

• At 40, J. Crew Shakes Off a Midlife Crisis / NYT

• Quiet fashion sweeps China as economy cools / Jing Daily

• The Droll Capitalist Parable of Cabbage Patch Kids A new documentary, “Billion Dollar Babies,” shows how a product of Appalachian folk art drew the blueprint for all holiday toy crazes to come / The New Yorker

• Balenciaga is equipping its new line of hoodies and sweatshirts with an NFC chip that plays an exclusive song in a step forward for connected clothing / Vogue Business

• Why Gucci is still experimenting with generative AI art / Vogue Business

• Cambodian brick kilns fueled by clothes from Adidas, Walmart and more are leaving workers sick / Reuters

• Which dovetails with the dark undertones of Avery Trufelman’s recent pod on colors and how they’re made/ Articles of Interest

• And correlates to her Bleak Friday post (when capitalism loses its charm) /Articles of Interest

Culturations

• From Jon: “My old friend Tim is putting out this book [DFA Records: The Early Years] - thought you might be interested 🪩” / IG

• From Celeste:  The battle of the booksellers on the Seine [Paris Quayside Booksellers Dig In for Olympics Battle] / FT

• Apropos: You could read The NYT’s list of 100 notable books / NYT

• Or just Questlove's review of André 3000's "departure album" of instrumental music / IG

• The RZA on Hot 97 talking 30 Years of Wu-Tang / YT

• Related: The Purity of Wu-Tang Clan’s ‘36 Chambers,’ 30 Years Later / Hypebeast

• Tyrrell Tapaha’s Fresh Approach to Pictorial Navajo Textiles / Hyperallergic

• And what fave artist Andrew Kuo can’t live without / IG

• Godzilla Reigns Eternal Thanks to Years of Tiny Design Changes / Polygon

• Climate activists stage protests at two famous New York museums / The Art Newspaper

• Did Banksy Reveal His Real Name in a BBC Interview? / Hyperallergic

• ‘It’s Robbie’ (apparently) / The Art Newspaper

• “Is This the World’s Highest Grossing Photograph?” / NYT

• Live Nation’s Michael Rapino Lays Out The Argument For Why Concerts – Not Streaming – Are The Future Of The Music Biz / Music Business Worldwide

• Olivia Rodrigo knows what makes her happy now / The FACE

• Is it booze? Cause Woody Harrelson, Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, and Emma Watson are all cashing in on the Gin Rush / Fast Company

• Or is ita doco? From Celeste:  “This is so succinct and true” [Every Star Wants A Documentary Now. But Is It Just PR? ] /NYT

Technopolis

• “A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft” / The New Yorker

• Because? We spent the last 30 years building structures on top or instead of the raw links of the web, from Google to TikTok… but now LLMs might read all the links for us / Another Podcast

• Also: the new version of Claude can read a document of up to 400 pages in about three minutes / Claude

• Ergo: If designers don't embrace AI the world "will be designed without them" says AirBnb founder / Dezeen

• “A Coder Considers the Waning Days of the Craft” / The New Yorker

• From Piers: I just made an AI podcast this week - and put that [OpenAI 'demands' that if you use their voice tech] at the end (spoken by my AI voice) / Spotify

• AI systems are being trained to decipher the language of life encoded in DNA / Axios

• AI is headed where the money is: asset management / Quartz

• Because? From Celeste: [The Money Always Wins] / The Atlantic

• Amazon Launches Free AI Classes in Bid to Win Talent Arms Race / WSJ

• “How a crypto super PAC is trying to swing 2024” / Politico

• Does Crypto Need a Rebrand – Or Is It Too Late? / The Drum

• Also due for a rebrand?! Another study pointing out that there is really no evidence that ‘screen time’ is unhealthy/ Oxford Internet Institute

• Speaking of screens: London Mayor Sadiq Khan rejects plans for MSG Sphere in east London / Dezeen

• From Piers: ‘Our goal is to keep Pokémon alive for hundreds of years’: Pokémon’s chief’s plans for Pikachu and pals / The Guardian

Media-tions

• BuzzFeed Shuts the Door on Scale / A Media Operator

• Bustle Owner BDG’s Plan to Survive the Online Ad Slump: Pivot to Luxury / BoF

• Nylon is bringing back print / Nylon

• Jezebel set to rise from the dead  / The Daily Beast

• [SIC] College buddy Moe Tkacik wrote about what it was like to work at Jezebel in the beginning / Slate

• Why worker-owned publications like Defector and 404 Media are winning / Fast Company

• The Case for Buying GCN From Warner Bros Discovery / A Media Operator

• Are public media podcasts facing a “Moneyball” moment? / Nieman Lab

• Why Omnicom Media Group is Investing In Chief Media Officers / AdAge

• Two gaming experts at Media.Monks explain why it's a lot more complicated than just buying a "spot" for advertisers to get into gaming / Digiday

Market / Influence

• This new form of creative advertising, called Aerial Advertising, is becoming an increasingly popular, with companies using motion-graphics and video game-style approaches to engage customers and promote their products and services / Adweek

• Ad agencies embrace AI hallucination with the ‘Insights Machine’ / The Drum

• ‘It’s like our Google’: How PepsiCo is using its AI tool Ada in ad campaigns / The Drum

• From Iolanda: This one is lovely, especially the soundtrack... 😉 [Can a Lonely Creative Soul Find Connection in Apple's Stop Motion-Infused Holiday Ad?] / IBB Online

• Less lovely, by design: Professional Fighters League, whose backers include Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, agreed to buy a rival, Bellator, to better challenge the Ultimate Fighting Championship / BBC

• Speaking of foreign commerce: Rest of World on the growth of Shein and Temu / Rest of World

• From Iolanda: “Companies that operate across multiple sectors continue to dominate the top of the table – making up 50% of the total value. Data shows a stronger focus on brand enables these companies to unlock rapid growth vs. the competition" [The Best Global Brands Report] / Interbrand

Eats, Drinks and Ephemera

• Why Italy’s parliament banned lab-grown meat / Quartz

• And.. South Korea’s government announced plans to ban dog meat by 2027 / Reuters

• That’s Hot … And Good? Trendy restaurants often exist in an echo chamber of celebrity and social clout, but a new crop of good-looking eateries around the globe are inviting us to enjoy our comfort food and look cool, too / Family Style

The Natural (?!) World

• How to keep your plants happy as it gets cold / FT

• Plastic Archeology: the stuff legos are made of / Scope Creep

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