[SIC] 293: Accordion Poems

Volume Six, Number Thirty Three

This time: [SIC] Talks with Noah Brier of Brxnd.ai and Why is This Interesting, plus the [SIC] Weekly digest of pertinent developments, compiled and published free on Thursdays to 5708 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.

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: 1440/ After School / Weak Signals And Other Trends / Morning Brew/ The Future Party/ Lifehacker / Nieman Lab / Context Collapse/ Champion Weekly / Future Perfect / The Deep Dive / Garbage Day / Thingtesting / Howard Lindzon / Feed Me

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Contributions this week from Eric Korsh, Ebenezer Bond, Eugene Rabkin, Piers Fawkes, Mason Lopez, James Friedman, Ben Pruess, Zaira Vallejo, Adam Shore and Ken Miller

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Hi all.

Brxnd.ai Newsletter, the BrXnd Marketing x AI Conference and the mighty Why Is This Interesting, a granddaddy of the Substack letter game. Noah and I have known each other for years, but I am constantly impressed by the new vector that arise every time we talk. This is a good one.

[SIC] Talks 74: Noah Brier

A couple links that get referred to, to get you started this week: Strategy? Planning? “I Mostly Just See It As Creative Problem-Solving” in IBB Online. the seminal “The Big Flat Now” in 032C circa 2018. And A.I. Has a Measurement Problem in the NYT.

In contrast Worth Considering. 8 Small Brands That Are Worth a Look on ACL is [SIC] Talks Alum Michael Williams at his best.

Lastly before the links: this Saturday, April 20th at 3 pm, The Coltrane Home (where I’m an advisor) presents the Mala Waldron Quartet performing the music of Alice Coltrane at The Half Hollow Hills Community Library in Dix Hills. It’s free, but please RSVP to info@thecoltranehome.org as space is limited.

Then next Saturday, April 27 I’ll be at the second NYABF Block Party! From 12–6pm, the Fair is once again spilling out onto 22nd St between 10th and 11th Ave.

And then the following Thursday this will be interesting if you like hanging out with photographers in alleys: The Magnum Square Print Sale live signing at mMuseumm 2 in NYC. I’ll drop by for sure.

Ok, now the links.

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[SIC] 293: Accordion Poems

The Macro Narrative

• Welcome to Pricing Hell. Prices aren’t just changing more often—they’re getting more complex, too/ The Atlantic

• Millions of Americans could lose their subsidized internet this year / Tech Brew

• How to process the news when it all feels bad / FT

• From Eric: “Fraught Concept” [Should We Change Species to Save Them?]  / NYT

• Also fraught? How a 20-person “polycule” navigates jealousy and fosters community / NYT

• Corollary: Forget Dating Apps: NYC Pickleball Courts Are the Hot New Singles Scene / NYPost

• Pickleball who? Miami goes nuts for padel / Axios

• While The FDNY filed the first-ever criminal charges against a shop owner in Brooklyn for repeatedly selling illegal e-bike batteries / Bicycle Retailer

• On lawbreaking: Can More Art Equal Less Crime?: A UPenn grad student is studying the effect of Philadelphia murals on the city’s crime rate / Omnia

• While a British plan to make smoking illegal passed its first parliamentary hurdle / Semafor

• And Barcelona escalates its role in the war against tourism / Marginal Revolution

• Corollary, from Celeste: Confessions Of A Property Website Addict' /FT

• Corollary, from Eugene: Where Have All the Slackers Gone? What happens in a society that has gone from negative to positive reinforcement of power? / Arguably

• And from Piers: ‘Eat the future, pay with your face’: my dystopian trip to an AI burger joint / The Guardian

• Also dystopian: How Tesla lost its vibes. Elon Musk's empire reflects a farcical hype economy / Unherd

• From Zaira: How the girl boss era ended: The Wing’s Bookshelves for sale / Facebook

• Ergo?! LVMH says champagne sales are down because people aren’t partying like they used to / Quartz

• So, from Iolanda: Is boring the new cool?!?!? Just maybe 😉 "No apps, web browsers, or email, but you can play Snake on it." / The Verge

• You'll Live Longer With a Lunch Gang / The Melt

• Related: NY Mag restaurant critic Matthew Schneier talks local diners on the Throwing Fits pod / Spotify

Generationations

• Deep: how life experience determines teenage trajectories. / The Pudding

• Millennials turn their apartment rentals into forever homes / The Future Party

• While Gen Z is Unprecedentedly Rich. Despite concerns over anxiety and mental health issues, Gen Z is economically thriving, with higher household incomes and better financial stability compared to previous generations / The Economist

• Hence? The Rise of the DINK / The Lindy Newsletter

• The high cost of going green. It’s not financial—it’s emotional / The Purse

• Therefore: Coachella marketing is over – but only for millennials / Vogue Business

• So are the Glory Days of Coachella Behind Us? / Hypebeast

Platformations

• WhatsApp's latest update shows we hate change / Creative Bloq

• Soooo… Ready for a chatbot version of your favorite Instagram influencers? / NYT

• Related, from Iolanda: “No comments... "TikTok has reportedly been talking with advertisers about an artificial-intelligence-generated feature that creates a wave of virtual influencers to star in videos on the app" / Mediapost

• Meanwhile, The soft life is trending on TikTok / GQ UK

• TikTok is recruiting nuns, ranchers, and military veterans in election-battleground states to keep the app from getting banned / NYT

• Elsewhere: Beehiiv launched a No Code website builder / Beehiiv

• Substack‘s podcast library is coming to Spotify / Tubefilter

• And Meta's Threads expected to have ads this year / Digiday

Stylistics

• From Ken: “Should I buy a bunch of NSA gear and save it for a future flip?” [Amazon created a fake streetwear brand called “Not So Ape” to spy on rivals ] / IG

• In contrast, Palace x Evisu keeps it real in Detroit/ IG

• And The Streets x Reebok Classics changes Mike Skinner’s signature palate, sorta/ IG

• Apropos? Which colors look best on you? These tech tools claim to know. Thanks to TikTok, color analysis phenomenon is back — this time with help from AI / WaPo

• Related: The Function of Colour in Factories Schools & Hospitals Circa 1930  / Core77

• On the topic of of wild colors: Luka Doncic’s Next Signature Sneaker. It’s inspired by the Mavericks superstar’s love of fast cars / GQ

• More on that note: The A-Z's of Active NBA and WNBA Players' Signature Shoes: 2024 Edition / Hypebeast

• From James: [these] ‘Weird Tom Sachs Nike dupes… interesting to explore the propriety of rocking a knockoff because it isn’t tangled up with dude’s #metoo reckoning… I have the Nikes and pretty much won’t wear them anymore because of the ick factor / IG

• Meantime, Clarks Wallabees are the cool girl shoe of 2024 / Cosmopolitan

• Corollary: [SIC] homie Cory Kennedy: The Internet’s First It-Girl and Muse of Indie Sleaze / YouTube

• While SIC Talks Alum Chris Black contends The Indie Sleaze Revival Was a Mistake / GQ

• How British Workwear Took Over Men's Wardrobes / Esquire

• And How Gen Z’s shopping habits will shape the future of retail / Vogue Business

• From Molly: Inside the “Corporate Fetish” Aesthetic: How Outdated Office Spaces Became a Newfound Muse / Architectural Digest

• IE: everybody's obsessed with the retro corporate aesthetic / YouTube

• Hence: We need more spicy clothes! Eckhaus Latta on freaking these fabrics, staying true to beautiful idiosyncratic visions / Blackbird Spyplane

• While a vintage boutique in Los Angeles is a semi-secret spot for celebrities and costume designers / NYT

• Levi’s and makers of cowboy boots have gotten a sales boost from Beyoncé / CNN Business

• And Adidas Is Seeing Hot Demand for Sambas and Yeezys / Business of Fashion

• While Hermès could surpass Louis Vuitton as the biggest brand in luxury thanks to its Birkin bag / BoF

Culturations

• From Molly: The Life and Death of Hollywood / Harpers

• Corollary: The Internet’s New Favorite Philosopher. Byung-Chul Han diagnoses the frenetic aimlessness of the digital age / The New Yorker

• Elsewhere: Forget That Stuff about Mounties, Hockey, and Corny Beer Commercials. As Canada changes, the people writing its books—and the stories they tell—are changing too / The Walrus

• Meantime, Representing the U.S. and Critiquing It in a Psychedelic Rainbow. Jeffrey Gibson brings the gay and Native American artist center stage at the Venice Biennale / NYT

• While Artist refuses to open Israel pavilion show at Venice Biennale without a ceasefire / The Art Newspaper

• And Anish Kapoor slams Venice Biennale title ‘Foreigners Everywhere’ for evoking ‘neo-fascism’ / The Art Newspaper

• Look to the Past and Fear for the Future. Artist Cao Fei asks us to consider how long the benefits of new technologies may last, and what will remain after they’re gone / Hyperallergic

• Dissociative Identity Politics What 'American Fiction,' 'Victim,' and 'Erasure' have to say about the evolution of identity politics culture / Salieri Redemption

• Related, also from Molly: Coachella 2024: women save the day as festival suffers an identity crisis / The Guardian

• More identities, from Josh: “Seb [Emina] has partnered with WeTransfer on capturing personal recollections from people including Gilbert & George, Laurie Anderson, Rick Owens and Warren Ellis (Dirty Three/Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds)  —  where they each recall a specific place in the world where they had a formative experience” / WePresent

• IE: When Paris Was the Center of New York’s Art World / Hyperallergic

• Meantime, after a three-year hiatus, the “Vessel” in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards is reopening / Hyperallergic

• And speaking of big pieces: Erwin Wurm and Lanvin Lab Debut Monumental Bag Sculpture / WWD

• Corollary? Art as investment and investment as art. The stock market and the art market are, alas, not so different / FT

• Unrelated: Cats are increasingly being used in movies as improved training and cheaper graphical effects make them easier to direct / Semafor

• Elsewhere, Lil Nas X dropped his latest track on SoundCloud  / Hypebeast

• More music, from Molly: Olivia Rodrigo's Relatable Superstardom on the Guts Tour / The New Yorker

• The Unseen Sides of Francesca Woodman. A new show at Gagosian showcases the photographer’s tragically abbreviated career/ The New Yorker

• From Mason: “Just offering up a recent piece of writing I put out — just recently launched a substack focused on music and criticism. Still very much finding my voice on there, but I did think this track review might be a good fit for SIC. On Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day by the Sir Douglas Quintet”/ Just One Song

• This is Grupo Frontera. They rose from Rio Grande Valley quinceañeras to sold-out arenas worldwide in less than two years / The FADER

• While one of the most exciting new music releases this year is a double album called Diamond Jubilee by the artist Cindy Lee, which was released, not on a streamer like Spotify, but on a Geocities page / Geocities

• Also streaming: Maggie Rogers on Monocle Radio / Monocle Pod

• Does J. Cole Suck Ass? A Nersey Debate / Nersey

• Speaking of questions: The unwritten rules of the great London pub quiz / FT

• Damian of Fucked Up and Graham of High Vis discussing the VICE / Ben Rayner effect on hardcore and how it potentially led to Turnstile’s success today? / IG

• From Adam: “Another VICE influence on the current culture. Do a keyword search on this for Dave Hamelin from The Stills”: Beyonce Shares Full Credits for Cowboy Carter / Pitchfork

Technopolis

• Nike’s CEO is blames with remote work for the Swoosh’s lack of innovation lately / Quartz

• While Meta is searching for a killer app for its Quest headsets, Could it be education? / Axios

• Learning to code? Microsoft is ‘ground zero’ for foreign state-sponsored hackers / Quartz

• OpenAI is expanding into Asia. Its first office on the [region] will be in Tokyo / Quartz

• And Adobe plans to allow users to bring outside AI models into its professional image and video editing software/ Axios AI+

• Apropos: AI art is only a threat if we let "prompt-jockeys" take control / Creative Bloq

• But Is there enough text to feed the AI beast? / Semafor

• Apropos: Sourcing Truth: A Future of Synthetic Information / Zine

• Actually, Let’s address the AI elephant in the room. You’d never hire someone this mid / The Drum

• Case in point?: The dystopian future of TV is AI-generated “FAST” garbage / 404 Media

• Related an essay on the “The Fediverse Of Things”; by using ActivityPub, you could built a network of “social” accounts for things like municipal services or even all the lightbulbs in your house /shkspr.mobi

• But How Perfectly Can Reality Be Simulated? Video-game engines were designed to mimic the mechanics of the real world. They’re now used in movies, architecture, military simulations, and efforts to build the metaverse / The New Yorker

• More things talking: “Ask Dalí,” is a new experience that lets you communicate with an AI model of the Surrealist artist through a lobster telephone / Hyperallergic

• Also surreal: The invisible seafaring industry that keeps the internet afloat/  The Verge

Media-tions

• Hate Read's Delia Cai tells all / Embedded

• Shards of glass: Inside media's 12 splintering realities / Axios

• Apropos: Why Nylon is bringing back print / Digiday

• From Piers: “Super cool to read" [How Highsnobiety Is Shaping the Current Media Landscape] / NYT

• While Hypebeast is bringing luxury resale to Amazon /WWD

• And the Hypebeast Flea New York Is Coming to Greenpoint / Hypebeast

• Pop Up corollary from Ebenezer: “In case this hasn't crossed your desk.. the idea of pop-up content...limited time only:” Walking TOKIO TŌKYŌ TOKYO² — Winter Edition A new pop-up newsletter / Craig Mod

• NPR suspends editor who accused network of liberal bias / Axios

• but Berliner announced “you can’t suspend me because I quit” / NPR

• Quote taken, FWIW from a post by  Rusty Foster, who writes New York’s favorite media newsletter, Today in Tabs, from Maine /NYT

• CNN’s Mark Thompson: ‘There’s plenty of things we have to fix’ / FT

• Barry Diller bets on media veterans to turn around The Daily Beast / NYT

• Is the Texas Tribune an example or an exception? / Nieman Lab

• A reverse stock split is BuzzFeed’s last hope of staying listed on the Nasdaq / Quartz

• While Gary Vaynerchuck advocated for a reconciliation of media and creative agencies / Digidday

Market / Influence

• How Davis Clarke Became the Most Locked-In Man on the Internet / GQ

• Apropos of influencers, from Iolanda: Ooops... "You can’t cheat the fundamentals” [Why Prime has been reduced to the bargain bin] / Marketing Week

• From Molly; Revolve Invented Influencer Marketing as We Know It. Now It’s Pulling Back / BoF

• ‘There are no rules’: Adrian Joffe on Dover Street Market Paris and the future of retail / Vogue Business

• From ‘Celeste: “sleep has become an economy.” Zzzz' / London Review Of Books

• From Piers: The IKEA Effect / Giuseppe’s Glimpse

• While IKEA unveils inflatable chair that "challenges traditional gaming design" / Dezeen

• Indie agency Left Off Madison takes a right turn into live shopping / Digiday

• From Celeste: a great read on the growth of womens' basketball as both business and sports focused. ’The WNBA Draft Is A Big-Ticket Event Now' / GQ

• Why Tata Consultancy Services’ long-term sponsorship strategy is a marathon, not a sprint / The Drum

• Marmite becomes contraband in exposé documentary / The Drum

• And Swatch Launches The Simpsons-Themed Mother's and Father's Day Collection / Hypebeast

• From Piers: “Wow. brand’s are still doing this with BB” [Heinz Partners With Mattel to Launch a Pink “Barbiecue” Sauce, and it Happens to Be Vegan]  / Vegconomist

• From Ben: Also Vegan, also deeply questionable: Pringles x Crocs boots / Axios

• And John Deere is hiring a Chief Tractor Officer / Ad Age

• For fakes’ sake, let’s talk about ‘real ads’. Why are ‘fake ads’ outperforming the real ones on LinkedIn? / The Drum

Eats, Drinks and Ephemera

• McDonald’s plan to offset increased fast-food worker wages in California: Bring back bagels / Bloomberg

• While Bojangles is coming to California for the first time / Quartz

• From Celeste: “Three sporty Bondi locals, with a penchant for run clubs, have had a lunch spot, Fish Bowl, growing in Australia for the last few years. Now, they're bringing it to NYC… Can they make it in Bleecker St?!” 'Scaling Up: Fishbowl Is Opening Up In New York Under The Name ThisBowl' / Broadsheet

• Emma Chamberlain has turned her eponymous coffee brand into a bonafide retail hit / Forbes

• But there’s no such thing as a benign beef farm – so beware the "eco-friendly" new film straight out of a storybook / The Guardian

The Natural (?!) World

• The future of silk / Works In Progress

• Corollary: Japan can no longer source the traditional paper it needs to produce its bank notes at home. Nepalese farmers have stepped in / NYT

• Related: one acre of farm produces at least 3,000% more strawberries now than it did 60 years ago / Semafor

• How Do You Say ‘Danger’ in Sperm Whale Clicks? These massive sea creatures communicate in complex, techno-like patterns / Reasons to be Cheerful

• Also amazing in the water: Bumblebees able to survive underwater for up to a week / The Guardian

• Meantime, off-planet: An orbital garbage truck is trying to get rid of space debris from 2009 / Quartz

• Look up: A Beginner’s Guide to Backyard Astronomy / Lifehacker

[SIC] 293: Accordion Poems