[SIC] 291: Purity Party

Volume Six, Number Thirty One

This time: [SIC] Talks with Casey Lewis of After School, plus the [SIC] Weekly digest of pertinent developments, compiled by me (Ben Dietz) and published free on Thursdays to 5598 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:

You can pay, too. 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 for this week: American Enterprise Institute / The Daily Upside / Champion Weekly / Roca News / Kottke / The Trend Report / Jing Daily / Semafor / The Daily Upside / Ben’s Bites / Public Announcement/ NIeman Lab / Best Made / After School / Brendan’s Communications Miscellany

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Contributors this week: Eric Korsh, James Friedman, Iolanda Carvalho, Celeste Blewitt, and Jesse Kirshbaum. Contributions are welcome from everyone, and are greatly appreciated. I’m dietznutz@icloud if you’ve got ideas.

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Hi all,.

Friend of the letter and Gen-Z anthropologist (my term, not hers, to be clear) Casey Lewis of the amazing After School newsletter joined me this week. Casey’s a gem - not only very bright and very enthusiastic about her chosen subject(s), but very generous with both time and energy. I note something from After School without fail every week in [SIC] Weekly, and very often in [SIC] Day, too. This episode is a little shorter than normal, so if you need an excuse, there you go. Have a listen.

SIC Talks #72: Casey Lewis

Corollary to my talk with Casey, Jesse from the oft-cited Beats & Bytes letter emailed me this am asking “Would you be open to including this weeks q1 trend report in your newsletter this week?” As with most contributions, I’m happy to. One obsersation that jumped out at me:

“Build a newsletter, create a fund: Everywhere I turn, people are dropping newsletters and building businesses around their thought leadership. It’s all about trusted voices. The Substack revolution has given way to an email newsletter frenzy. Where people go from here will be interesting.”

That resonated. It’s what Casey’s doing, it’s what Daisy at Dirt (also mentioned in the convo,) is doing - it’s what I’m trying to so. My ‘thesis’ if you will, got adapted and interpreted from a conversation I had with the folks at ONDiscourse in their post Superformats Will Save Media in theNew Internet - which was not my title, to be clear - but which I think could be true, and which I’m using as a central practice. Happy to explain further if you’re interested.

Speaking of superformats, a couple pertinent links I like: Charli XCX’s Party Girl for Boiler Room DJ set propelled the compilation of this week’s letter. Byline’s free library at the Ace Hotel in Downtown Brooklyn is a wonderful moment that could also be the start OR the culmination of a content series or some other original IP asset. And apropos of that, my own Wednesday Breakfast Club continues to take on new forms - moving in fact to the Ace’s restaurant As You Are every other Friday, starting tomorrow. I’ll be there.

Meantime, the links.

The Macro Narrative

• How We Ruined Childhood / National Review

• Why Are So Many Young People Taking Hallucinogens / Dazed

• ​Why School Absences Have "Exploded" Almost Everywhere / NYT

• From Iolanda: they are taking away nostalgia too ahahahha. “It seems as if nostalgia is undergoing a rebrand" [Why Nostalgia Is Taking a Haunting Turn] / Canvas8

• ‘Too few college-educated men’: A look at why many women undergo egg freezing / CNBC

• The Coming Birth-Control Revolution / The Atlantic

• Immigrants started new businesses last year at about double the rate of U.S.-born citizens / Axios

• What Would Society Look Like if Extreme Wealth Were Impossible? Limitarianism questions the idea that individual wealth is ever individual / The Atlantic

• Speaking of limits: US fire departments are the enemies of walkable cities? / Thesis Driven

• People Hate the Idea of Car-Free Cities — Until They Live in One / Wired

• What the Suburb Haters Don’t Understand / The Atlantic

• Are Workplaces Inherently Toxic? / The Walrus

• Why You Should Stop Worrying About Your Parenting / The Atlantic

• We must burn bridges with big social or meet our end. We must block off destructive behaviors caused by social media if we want to protect young people from getting hurt / The Drum

• The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness? / Nature

• Read Haidt’s response here / Twitter

• And Tyler Cowen’s contentious Conversation with Jonathan Haidt / Marginal Revolution

• As educators crack down on texting and social media use during class, a company called Yondr that sells lockable cellphone pouches is rapidly cornering the market in K-12 schools / Axios

• Meantime: Elite College Admissions Have Turned Students Into Brands / NYT

• The New Education Politics. While today’s polarized politics are troubling on many counts, they offer a chance to start getting education right / National Review

• Ergo: The Meltdown at a Middle School in a Liberal Town / The New Yorker

• And From Celeste: With Aristocrats Floundering To Keep Their Estates Afloat, Guy Ritchie's New Series The Gentlemen unravels A Very Real Upper Class Dilemma' / Tatler

• Corporate America is dropping mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) / Axios

• California kicks off $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers / Fox Business

• Washington State enacted a “Strippers’ Bill of Rights” to protect dancers from harassment and violence / NYT

• And Oregon just officially changed its mind on decriminalizing drugs / Fortune

• How Tariffs and Drones Saved Ukrainian Agriculture / YT

• Highway safety regulators are kicking off a new campaign to reduce distracted driving / Axios

• Scientists at Western Kentucky University are inviting the public to use an iPhone App to snap photos of the solar eclipse to gather data about the sun’s shape and internal structure / Hyperallergic

Generationations

• Gen Z is losing interest in email jobs / Morning Brew

• six out of every 10 jobs people do today didn’t exist in 1940 / MIT News

• How Gen Z Got Hooked on Nirvana / The Guardian

• Asking a Gen Z About Sex and the City / NY Mag

• For many active boomers, retirement is now “rewirement,” Forbes

• Use of Capitalization has a big generational gap / The Future Party

Platformations

• Social shopping platform Flip has raised new capital to expand its goal of taking on Amazon and TikTok Shop/ Future Party

• LinkedIn adds short-form videos / Axios

• Apple muscles in on subscription podcasts / Semafor

• Microsoft is separating Teams, its popular video and chat app, from its Office software suite / NYT

• From Iolanda: It is/was a very cool app... "Artifact will no longer operate as a standalone app" after acquisition by Yahoo / Yahoo

• Actually, the internet's always been this bad - “A new study considers 30 years of comments, with surprising conclusions.” / Links I Would Gchat You If We Were Friends

Stylistics

• How to sell to the Creative Class / The Sociology of Business

• Paris Hilton: Grace through Monetization / Culture: An Owner’s Manual

• Todd Snyder Is Decoding Luxury Menswear for a New Generation / Robb Report

• Martin Margiela sits down for a Q&A / HTSI

• Cool people think your flaws are swaggy / Blackbird Spyplane

• From Celeste: Why Is Fashion So Into Books Right Now?' / FT

• What’s Behind DTC’s Sudden Obsession With Indie Fashion / BoF

• The Power of Paraboot. It’s bad luck to put shoes on furniture, tho / Drakes

• Boat Shoes are Back / NYT

• And Yes, rugby shirts are in fashion – just make it clear you’re wearing it that way / The Guardian

• Finding Fame, Burning Out, and Leaving It All Behind. Words of wisdom from Lyn Slater, who became a fashion influencer and model in her sixties / Back Row

• Gothic Origins. How a Byzantine tribe became an aesthetic / Articles of Interest

• Inside the Oakland Museum of California White Elephant Sale warehouse / Scope of Work

• Brandy Melville sells many clothes in only one size (for skinny girls). And isn’t sorry / WSJ

Culturations

• 10 IDEAS FOR THE FUTURE Let's walk through some kinda-sorta wild ideas of what would be nice to have in the future. Don't call this a forecast!! / The Trend Report

• Gambling is Going to Dominate American Sports Culture / The Lindy Newsletter

• The New Music Business. You’re not a star and you’re never going to be one. Now that felt good, didn’t it? / Lefsetz

• Scooter Braun and the Twilight of the Music Manager / The New Yorker

• A meaty text on how live nation and Ticketmaster really are the worst: [Explosive New Documents Unearthed On Live Nation/Ticketmaster] / BIG

• ‘We want the artist to be paid’: Lunch with Sony Music boss Rob Stringer / FT

• Vampire Weekend rages against defeatism / The New Yorker

• ‘Cowboy Carter’ is a statement against AI music / TechCrunch

• While Nicki Minaj, Billie Eilish and Katy Perry, join 200 musicians who signed an open letter calling on tech companies and developers to not undermine human creativity with AI music generation tools / TechCrunch

• Charli XCX chose an “offensive” colour for her album cover to make us “question our expectations of pop culture” / The FACE

• From Celeste:  'Cynicism Doesn't Get You Anywhere: Warren Ellis On The Dirty Three's Return, Nick Cave - And Opening A Primate Sanctuary' /The Guardian

• Mannequin Pussy, Set Loose from Big Tech Jail / The New Yorker

• And MGMT are all grown up / The Independent

• Pharrell and Chad Hugo in Legal Battle Over Neptunes Trademark / Hypebeast

• While Blackbird Spyplane got an exclusive on Vampire Weekend’s “Mary Boone” video collage: Official Underground Alternate Edition / Vimeo

• Myha'la Herrold Reveals Her Digital Vices / Byline

• How Banksy became the art world’s greatest trickster / The New Yorker

• Keeping the Magic Alive On David Blaine and Relevance / Monologue

• NYC’s Department of Cultural Affairs is looking for artists to design four monuments honoring influential women / Hyperallergic

• The Icon of the Seas Will Not Countenance a Shrug / The Atlantic

• As Space Becomes Scarce, Artists Take Over an Abandoned LA Structure / Hyperallergic

• Something You Need: Magdalena Wosinska On Her New Skateboarding Photography Book, ‘Fulfill The Dream’ / Monster Children
  Does the Peace Sign Stand a Chance?/ NYT

• From Celeste: Given Australian film and television is funded in the majority by state and federal funding and grants, this is an in depth read into the processes in the US. [A Georgia Town Basks In Bountiful Filming. The State Pays] / NYT

• Quantum leap: how a decade of NFTs has changed digital art/ The Art Newspaper

• From Eric: “I found the launch pad subject of this Wednesday’s breakfast club” [Why Did This Guy Put a Song About Me on Spotify?] / NYT

• Richard Hell on Christopher Wool / Brooklyn Rail

• Peter Blake: ‘I have mixed feelings about Sgt Pepper’The legendary pop artist opens his black book of style / HTSI

• The Criterion Collection let Paul Giamatti loose in their DVD closet /

• Jim Dine Gets to Work. For Dine, physical labor and art-making are interchangeable / Hyperallergic

Technopolis

• Why AI-Driven Economic Growth Could Be the Key to Shorter Workweeks and Bigger Families / American Enterprise Institute

• Freelance platforms see even more of an increase in supply and demand for AI skills / Digiday

• You can now use ChatGPT without signing up / Open AI

• AI companies are struggling to find quality training data as publishers block access to their content / WSJ

• The ad model is coming to AI  / Platformer

• So.. Can Demis Hassabis Save Google? / Big Technology

• “The Silverback Gorilla of Nerds.” Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack? / NYT

Media-tions

• [SIC] homie and Axios senior media reporter Sara Fischer discusses the state of the media business on People vs Algorithms / Spotify

• Silver Lake is taking Endeavor private  / Axios

• The New York Times plans to make the vast majority of its articles available to users as narrations read via an automated voice / Axios

• While Axios Entertainment is looking to expand its original programming business / Digiday

• Elsewhere, Forbes accused of selling MFA media to brands under guise of legitimate Forbes ad space / The Drum

Market / Influence

• What it's like to ‘fail’ at being an influencer / Embedded

• Facing liquidity issues, Tupperware could go out of business / Reuters

• China’s $66B gaming goldmine: Are brands missing out? / Jing Daily

• Chinese billionaires are requesting cars that don’t exist yet / Jing Daily

• Adidas has released a skateboarding video on WeChat / ifeng

• Lamborghini redesigns bull and shield logo as part of a broader "transformation process" aimed at sustainability and decarbonization(?!) / Dezeen

• From Iolanda: Some Marketing/Ad history here, remembering Daniel Kahneman / The Media Leader

• From Iolanda: “Brands act to accelerate the value of a business model rather than being assets in themselves. Framing brands as standalone assets will simply serve to alienate finance" [Brands are multipliers, not assets in themselves] / Marketing Week

• From Iolanda:I love this one!!!! [ WcDonald’s] / Contagious

Eats, Drinks and Ephemera

• Potential bidders could scoop up some the world’s top ice cream brands, with Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s and the company behind Haagen-Dazs for sale / Bloomberg

• Taste Test: Fish-Free Seafood / Axios

• And Is Costco’s store brand vodka actually Grey Goose? / Slate

• I Just Want a Normal Drink. Who asked for seltzer with ashwagandha? / The Atlantic

• How ‘Unfamiliar Fish’ Feed Mainers in Need Reasons To Be Cheerful

• Ergo: To save the oceans, start eating ‘naked clams’ / FT

• Crying cause: KFC Has Onion Rings / Muse by Clio

• An expose on how Trader Joe’s copies ethnic food brands / Taste

• The 100 best restaurants in NYC / NYT

• The New York Sit List. Lately, the city has been raptured by novelty eateries that use exclusivity as a commodity. These tried and true staples—which you can actually get a table at—serve good food without the artifice / Familystyle

• Speaking of staples: Fake eggs are making real progress / TechCrunch

• Why Are Restaurants Filling Up With Fake Flowers? / NYT

• Also fake: The air fryer is a hoax / Quartz

The Natural (?!) World

• A Japanese professor predicted that “Sato” will become everyone’s surname in Japan by 2531 / Japan Times

• The Business Of Monkeys Picking Coconuts / NPR

• About 100,000 live salmon spilled off a truck in Oregon, but most survived by flopping into a nearby creek / NYT

• America’s Billion-Dollar Plan to Clear the Way for Migrating Fish / Reasons To Be Cheerful

• The Clock Is Running Out on Migratory Birds / The Atlantic

• Why Is My Apartment So Dusty? / Curbed

• From Celeste: “A moment in time where you can read with a coffee and a croissant and be whisked away to the idyllic french countryside, with a dash of writers magic.” Fantasy Home: Casual Chaos In A Writer's Rural Retreat' / FT

• Six ways to improve your posture. How to protect your back, your mental health – and your job / HTSI

[SIC] 291: PURITY PARTY