[SIC] 287: Blowed Up

Volume Six, Number Twenty-Seven

This time: [SIC] Talks with Emily Sundberg of Feed Me, some chunes, the [SIC] Weekly digest of pertinent developments, compiled by me (Ben Dietz) and published free on Thursdays to 5425 subscribers who’ve opted in. [SIC] is a one-person operation that grows exclusively by via word-of-mouth. Pass it along to people you like. Here’s a button:

Paid subscriptions are also available. Paying subscribers get an additional [SIC] Day microdigest of 10 links every Mon, Tues, Weds, Fri, and the [SIC] Sundays dispatch. And founding supporters get invited to dinner parties at my home in NYC, with special guests. Many paying supporters expense their subscriptions as research for their work in marketing, advertising, entertainment and tech.

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Corollary sources this week include:Elevator / 1440 / The Future Party / The Kicks You Wear / After School / Feed Me / Dirt / The Art Official / The Trend Report/ Champion Weekly / Dealbook / The Micromobility Report / Jimmy /  Nieman Lab / Politico / Network Notes / Beats and Bytes / Best Made

Contributions this week came from David Bloom, Iolanda Carvalho, Celeste Blewitt, Larry Warsh, Kate Lee, Joe Rosenber, Elaine Santiago and James Friedman. Send ‘em if you got em, all.

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Hi all.

Things I have found annoying this week (and generally):

• Opening any communication with “my name is”.

• Describing phenomena or moments as “at the intersection of”

• Pants with less than four pockets

• Superfluous apologies

Since i’m foregoing apologia, then - a heads up that I did this one editions of sections, more associative style. Thanks to everyone who sent thoughts, condolences and memories in reply to last week’s edition. Greatly appreciated. Hope you like this one, too.

Ben

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[SIC] Talks #68 with Emily Sundberg of the excellent Feed Me newsletter. 

Great chat. Big Emily fan. [SIC] Talks is supposed to be a companion to this letter (Emily’s term, which I will heretofore adopt), but often it’s quite tangential.  This ep actually hewed relatively close to topic.  A few of the things we talked about: Why Are Pants So Big, Michael Williams’s In My Backyard With Mark McNairy, how as influencers replace journalists, a ‘jinfluencer’ is born, why everyone you know is Suddenly a Letterboxd Head, plus how many sodas are too many sodas? and GenZ's Not Buying Kylie's RTD, and we touched on a trip  Inside a college “esports lounge’. Have a look / listen.

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More talking, more listening: The Album of the Edition: Built To Spill’s Keep It Like A Secret. Perfect album title, btw. Need to track down: The 2007 “Rumble In the Jungle” comp on the mighty Soul Jazz label , which per [SIC] Talks alum Darren Hemmings, “pulls together a ridiculously great array of ragga jungle tracks from the 90s”. Also on that tip: LDLDN’s Tom & Jerry label spotlight brings the basslines. Finally - no basslines, but if you’re in Austin, go see [SIC] Talks alums Gutes and Chris Black at the Byline x Jaboukie x Big CB x SXSW thing.

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[SIC] 287: Blowed Up

• 4 tech trends that are influencing digital art in 2024 / Creative Bloq

• Laurie Anderson made a generative AI chatbot of Lou Reed, her late partner / The Guardian

• Why podcast companies are investing in AI-generated podcast translations despite questionable quality / Digiday

• Silicon Valley is celebrating the (computer-less!) future of “Dune.” / NYT
  From Celeste:  It's all about Dune Two and the Mad Max style aesthetic, brand promo and the marketing. The style certainly harks to times and films past. [The Dune: Part Two Brutalist Sci-Fi Aesthetic is Sweeping Fashion] / Glossy

• A new slate of batteries will power the electric vehicles of the future /The Economist

• What’s After Post-Internet Art? Technoromanticism may find the sublime by devirtualizing online culture – or usher in an end-times of Gothic circuit board worship / Spike Art

• The Future Will Be Weird AF (Part 1) / YT

• And Part Two / YT

• How I Learned to Concentrate / The New Yorker

• The Magic of Bird Brains. Crows are smart enough to pick up trash. Why won’t they? / The New Yorker

• Inside the dirty business of “monkey laundering” for drug research / Bloomberg

• A New Era of Moon Exploration Is Upon Us / The New Yorker

• The Dark Universe: Why we’re about to solve the biggest mystery in science / BBC Science Focus Magazine

• Namely? ;) How the Heart-Shaped Hot Tub Put the Poconos on the Map for Romantic Getaways / Thrillist

• What's your type? Take this font quiz to find your soulmate / Creative Bloq

• From Elaine: “Companionate, not passionate.” [The Kind of Love That Makes People Happiest] / The Atlantic

• Why Americans Stopped Hanging Out, and Why It Matters / The Ringer

• How to Break Free from Dopamine Culture / Honest Broker

• Ibogaine: Research suggests a powerful psychedelic can ease the agony of opioid detox and prevent relapse / NYT

• The Science Behind Ozempic Was Wrong / The Atlantic

• Dad Culture Has Nothing to Do With Parenting / The Atlantic

• From Molly:  No one knows how old they’re supposed to be anymore / Dazed

• Hence, also from Molly: “peak Millennial visibility”: It’s Me, Hi, I’m the Problem. I’m 33 / NYT

• Engagement at Work is in Dramatic Decline for Gens X, Y and Z / Fortune

• Artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT are changing the hiring process, making it easier for job seekers to tailor their resumes to each position and harder for recruiters to understand who a candidate really is / Marketplace

• Steal This Corporate Travel & Expense Policy / CJ Gustafson

• Wonkiest Memes of the “Willy’s Chocolate Experience” Fiasco / Hyperallergic

• it’s now being turned into a horror movie by Kaledonia Pictures /

• From Iolanda: “The Meth Lab Oompa Loompa Is Selling Cameo Videos Now - At least now she's controlling her narrative" / Futurism

• What brands can learn about AI from the disastrous Willy Wonka event / Creative Bloq

• The days of spending hours using AI chatbots uninterrupted by ads could soon end / Axios

• AI, Outlets, Recycling: Can Luxury Solve Its Billion-Dollar Excess Inventory Problem? / BoF

• From Celeste: [A.I. Frenzy Complicates Efforts To Keep Power-Hungry Data Sites Green] / NYT

• Deepfakes Will Break DemocracyThe fragmenting of shared reality is fuelling political extremism and dysfunction / The Walrus

• From Kate: an analysis of the media's critique of AI / Napkin Math

• The AI boom is jeopardizing porn stars’ work / The Daily Beast

• Pamela Anderson tells High Snobiety about her “healing experience” from giving up makeup / Highsnobiety

• Speaking of giving up: It’s Time to Give Up on Email / The Atlantic

• Corollary: Wall Street’s D.E.I. Retreat Has Officially Begun / Bloomberg

• Also begun? Recession for (Almost) Everyone / Youtube

• Europe's Latest Shit Show: Farmers On Strike / YouTube

• France on Monday enshrined the right to abortion in its constitution / Kottke

• From Molly: The Golden Age of American Jews is Ending / The Atlantic

• U.S. braces for foreign interference in 2024 election / Semafor

• Narcotopias and what liberal societies can do about drugs / The New Statesman

• The Spy Travel Edition. On the CIA, Fodor’s, and Watergate revelations / WITI

• The British Museum Tries and Fails To Get Down With the Girlies/ Dazed

• Why do so many Black Brits want to leave the UK? / The FACE

• London is saying goodbye, for now, to a beloved, overstuffed walrus / NYT

• But hello to Haggis sandos? Inside London’s First Scottish Deli / Slop Magazine

• Veselka at 70 / BK Mag

• From Celeste: “A relic of times past, but what a great ideal to be continuing on in these times of QR codes and online order systems” [Please Listen Closely As Our Menu Options Have Changed] /Taste

• Apropos of changing options: Oscar Mayer is introducing its first plant-based products: hot dogs and sausages in bratwurst and Italian flavors, made from ingredients like bamboo fiber, mushroom and pea protein / Axios

• Manhattan is getting teeny, tiny Whole Foods locations / Bloomberg

• Here’s what will be required to take trash bags off the street in NYC / NYT

• Homeless Tour Guides Are Revealing “Invisible Cities”  / Reasons to Be Cheerful

• As Other Cities Scorch, Medellín Just Keeps Getting Cooler / Reasons to Be Cheerful

• In a warming world, Coolcations" are hot / Axios

• Will skinny pants ever have sauce again? / Blackbird Spyplane

• Speaking of no sauce: Donald Trump’s “Never Surrender” sneakers were just customizations of a shoe available online today for just $99 / Twitter

• How Wearable Should Clothes in a Fashion Show Be? / Back Row

• VETEMENTS FW24 Wants You to "Feel," "Gossip" and "Say WTF" / Hypebeast

• Why Salomon wants its advertising to be more than just ‘sports action porn’ / The Drum

• Demna on Radical Fashion, Luxury and Creativity / Show Notes

• Zegna taps the future of luxury clienteling to serve the 1% / Jing Daily

• How Vintage Clothing Became the Hottest Thing in Fashion / GQ

• The unusual story of how Gap revived its iconic dancing ads / The Drum

• Even if it did just rip off the original video / Youtube

• No, Dries Van Noten Isn’t Boring / Highsnobiety

• Annie Hamilton’s A Performance Diary: Winter/ Metrograph

• Something in the way she moves? How Pattie Boyd inspired some of rock music’s greatest love songs / Christie’s

• From Joe: SAP Magazine / Sap Mag

• Canaries in the coal mine: is the art world facing a rising tide of censorship? / Hyperallergic

• From James: Keith Haring, the Boy Who Cried Art . Was he a brilliant painter or a brilliant brand? / The New Yorker

• 'See Stop Run': Christopher Wool's flashback to DIY, gritty 1970s New York / The Art Newspaper

• Revisiting Jean-Michel Basquiat's Los Angeles breakthroughs / The Art Newspaper

• 6 names to have on your radar this spring / The FACE

• Sarah Andelman, founder of Colette and Just an Idea Books, about her new concept shop, Mise en Page, at Le Bon Marché Rive Gauche / Monocle Pod

• Corollary: Can collabs truly help Chinese designers go global? / Jing Daily

• What a no-phone fashion show means in the social media era / Vogue Business

• The art of selling luxury goes beyond transactions / Jing Daily

• Has Creativity Become a Luxury?/ BoF

• Well…. Apparently Creativity Is the New Luxury at Balenciaga. So… yeah? / BoF

• From Celeste: Big money, Balmain, blazers and watches, less Goop cashmere and more gold - more Polo, the label and the sport. [Forget Stealth Wealth. Big Money Style is Back] FT

• Speaking of luxury signals: The Saddle Stitch Edition. On craft, luxury, and history/ WITI

• Could these bags be the new Birkin?The battle to be the next status accessory is on / FT

• From Molly: Champagne. Caviar. Bora Bora. Are You Not Entertained? / NYT

• Via Ed Cotton: Annie Leibovitz for IKEA More photographs have surfaced from Annie Leibovitz's work as an artist in residence for Ikea / Linkedin

• While from Larry: Hirshhorn Acquires 141 Chinese Contemporary Photographs From Collector Larry Warsh/ Barrons

• Pharmakon is a surprising new work from the singular mind of Teju Cole / Mack Books

• In Conversation: Chuck Close with Cindy Sherman / Brooklyn Rail

• A Night For SOPHIE, and For All of Us. Hole Pics puts together an evening dedicated to a hyperpop legend and the artists that work in her legacy / Brooklyn Rail

• The hottest playlist to be on these days is from a hit video game / WSJ

• Hence Music labels seek 'Fortnite effect' to drive streams / WSJ

• You Can Now Buy Shares in Music by Beyoncé or Taylor Swift/ Startup JKBX is offering securities backed by the royalty streams from songs recorded by popular artists / WSJ

• Modified Audio Tracks Growing on TikTok After UMG/UMPG Row / Digital Music News

• From Celeste: The Bene Gesserit Can Kill With Their Voices. That's What I Try To Do: The Musicians Mining Dune For Tunes / The Guardian

• From David: “Time to reconsider what TikTok is. The Atlantic suggests, in the wake of Universal’s ban on using its music on the site, much more like a broadcasting giant or streaming service than a place where teens do lip-synch dances. That changes much.” You’re Looking at TikTok All Wrong. The app is basically just broadcast TV now / The Atlantic

• From Iolanda: China’s next cultural export could be TikTok-style short soap operas / Technology Review

• Meantime, back home: They are TV’s ghosts — basic cable networks that somehow survive with little reason to watch them anymore / AP

• The White House is Backing a Bill that Would Ban Tiktok / NPR

• Bipartisan Bill Would Force ByteDance to Divest TikTok / The Information

• Is Tiktok Done? 4 Crises Holding the App Back  / NYT

• The mysterious rise of the Chinese e-commerce giant behind Temu / FT

• Related: Inside the world of TikTok spammers and the AI tools that enable them / 404 Media

• And Why you’re seeing brands in the comment sections of viral TikTok videos / Link In Bio

• No surprise then that Gen Z wants to ‘turn off’ TikTok Shop, as beauty brands test the waters / Glossy

• Just in time for livestream shopping’s NTWRK to fold into Complex / Axios

• Apropos of ‘combinations’: Handshake combines TikTok with a job board / The Future Party

• I’m an Internet Bitch: How TikTok Created a New Kind of Comedy Career / Rolling Stone

• Music is TikTok’s Past. Sounds may be its Future / Wired

• Tiktok is so 2004 / Wired

• Netflix Can Chill: How the Streamer Stumbled—And Survived / Vanity Fair

• The great open secret of Hollywood media: it’s Penske Media’s one-company town / Globe and Mail

• What happened when the Chicago Sun-Times freed the news / Nieman Lab

• Francis Ford Coppola's Magazine Fail / The Melt

• The New York Times is expanding their merch / NYT

• The literary magazine The Drift is hiring a business manager / mcusercontent

• LinkedIn doubles down on news as rivals retreat / Axios

• Meanwhile: Wikipedia no longer considers CNET a “generally reliable” source after AI scandal / Futurism

• “Don’t expect help from the disruptors”: The FT’s chief executive on AI, “loyalist” readers, and its U.S. expansion / Nieman Lab

• (Media) Reality Checks / The Rebooting

• More checks: The minor genius Interview : The Culture Journalist / Minor Genius

• From Kate: a take on Reddit's IPO / Napkin Math

• Deckers CEO Dave Powers Reveals New ‘Super Sneaker Brand’ / Retail Dive

• But Is the Sneaker Industry Destined for Collapse? / Hypebeast

• Digging into the archives with Snow Peak Japan / Sprezza

• This Old Ledge: Brooklyn Banks / Thrasher

• What Was It Like Living At Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West? / Architectural Digest

• From Iolanda: This one is 'cos of the pictures... 😉[41% of architects now using artificial intelligence] / Design Boom

• The Atlantic published a nice profile on The Radio Squirrels, and the last Morse code station in the USA / The Atlantic

• The Talks Talks to Lily Gladstone/ The Talks

• And Dua Lipa interviews the writer Hernan Diaz / Service95

• HOMIE™ is a modern body-care brand designed to tackle the historically underserved holistic needs of men / Homie

• The Kelce brothers have made crying in sports cool / NYT

• Dartmouth Men’s Basketball Players Vote to Unionize / Front Office Sports

• Skating and sports are cozier than ever. How did that happen? / QuarterSnacks

• The Margiela Tabi is now available in the metaverse / Vogue Business

• Coachella gets some NFTs: OpenSea and the Coachella music festival are partnering to create three NFT collections that offer VIP experiences / TechCrunch

• And good news for the lazy: NYC is opening its first public e-bike charging station which will be available to 100 delivery workers / The Verge

[SIC] 287: Blowed Up