[SIC] 297: Blur Obscure

Volume Six, Number Thirty Seven

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This time: [SIC] Talks with Adam Faze, plus the [SIC] Weekly digest of pertinent developments, compiled and published free on Thursdays to 5863 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.

Also if you’re in NYC (or a breakfast person), Breakfast Clubbing is a [SIC] sister newsletter tracking the free, open-to-everyone breakfast events I started, now happening around the world. Everyone’s invited, especially you.

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Corollary Sources this week: Future of Transportation /1440 / The Future Party / The New Consumer / Elevator/ Blazer/ Feed Me/ Champion Weekly/ Public Announcement/ Line Sheet / American Enterprise Institute / Marginal Revolution / Snaxshot / Dealbook / Beats and Bytes / Garbage Day / Ben’s Bites

Contributors this week :Aaron Stern, Luke Taylor, Piers Fawkes, Ben Pruess, Iolanda Carvalho, Celeste Blewitt and Ginger Dunlap-Dietz.

Contributions are invited from everyone. Send ‘em.

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Hi all,

Welcome new folks who landed here via the profile of my Tuesday routine in the (excellent btw) FOUND NY newsletter this week. Thanks to [SIC] homie Foster Kamer for facilitating, and to everyone who checked in as a result.

Foster also got a shout out in my conversation with Adam Faze for [SIC] Talks this week - he’s co-founder of Gymnasium, the “Television Channel” behind viral hits Keep the Meter Running and Boy Room, among others. Adam and co are true believers in the idea of what I’d describe as superformat-driven media, and is a very bright, focused dude, so this was a fun one. Check it out below or as a podcast here.

Speaking of [SIC] Talks - last week’s guest Aaron Stern sent this invite for a talk he’s leading at the Hard Copy photo show he curated in NYC - invite here. I will be in Montreal at C2 MTL next week and so will miss it, but you should go if you’re in NYC.

Streaming is remaking itself into the new cable, or isn’t, since. Julia Alexander wrote this week, “Please, stop calling it cable.” Apropos of that, Celeste sent along this Guardian piece on What It Means To Own Movies And TV In The Age Of Streaming Services titled, “My Whole Library Is Wiped Out.”

Big shout, then, to accounts like @CoverCDs that archive rips of the lost documents from our past; particularly the compilations like Jockey Slut’s Disco Pogo for Punks in Pumps series which aren’t clear-able in a streaming IP paradigm. Jeff and I talk a bit about it on the new Culture Club Show Half Hour this week, incidentally.

Compliation of the week (tho this one is fully cleared) is the excellent All Back To: Horse Meat Disco. Like my desk set up from the FOUND piece, the vibes are pristine.

Ok, now the links.

Ben

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[SIC] 297: Blur Obscure

The Macro Narrative

• “Slop”, the perfect new word for the AI-generated words that are starting to show up everywhere online/ Twitter

• Apropos, from Iolanda: Has the rise of texting made it harder for us to truly communicate? / Dazed

• Related: Everything is a ‘Journey’ now / NYT

• And, from Piers: “Amid an enormous societal push to destigmatize mental illness and encourage more conversation about emotions, young people have been flooded with mental health information on social media and elsewhere. But much of it is unreliable and counterproductive. “[‘High-Functioning Anxiety Isn’t a Medical Diagnosis. It’s a Hashtag.’] / NYT

• Corollary: Why Closing Your Eyes Makes You Trip Harder / Doubleblind

• So … What happens when you just don’t want to go to therapy anymore? / The Cut

• Cause, like, Americans who make $200,000 a year are still living paycheck to paycheck. Families and fun are expensive / Quartz

• Hence: For the love of CHAINs: fast food as the last homogenous experience in America / Snaxshot

• Related: the Co-CEO of Swingers, talks about the mini-golf brand’s humble beginnings and meteoric rise/ Monocle Pod

• The Death of the Corner Office. The old emblem of corporate success is on its way out. But workplace hierarchy isn’t going anywhere / The Atlantic

• Which brings us to: Wharton’s Peter Cappelli on Changing the Talent Equation /HBR Podcast

• Apropos: [SIC] homie PJ Jasienski’s GIGALERT 14MAY2024 (an excellent resource for jobseekers)/ GigAlert

• Related: Hybrid Workplaces Are Still a Headache. Why is it so hard to figure out an arrangement that’s good for everyone? / The Walrus

• Maybe this is Why members-only clubs are everywhere right now / GQ

• And New York is building a new neighborhood. / Bloomberg

• Speaking of neighborly: How to Know If Your Friends Are Real / The Atlantic

• The “Chaos Follow” Makes Staying on Social Media Worth It. An ode to the loose-cannon celebs, unhinged influencers, and filterless literary legends whose unpredictable social-media presences keep us from deleting our accounts / GQ

• And: The Internert is Good For You (Unless You’re a Young Woman)/ Dazed

• Who Wins and Who Loses When We Share a Meme. New books by art-world authors explore online shareability and come to different conclusions about what creators stand to gain / New Yorker

• Corollary: Why Creatives Will Win by Thinking Small / An Honest Broker

• Speaking of Small Winners: The Wacky and Wonderful World of the Westminster Dog Show / The New Yorker

• Related: What are You, a Wizard?! A Genius?! / Get Yarn

Generationations

• From Iolanda: Gen Alpha’s new codes of youth culture are having a ripple effect on Gen Z’s values / We Are Social

• Related: Is brand purpose the reason youths are shunning democracy? / The Drum

• Either way, Gen Z and Millennials are obsessed with Zyn’s Reward Program / Fortune

• Reddit is filled with threads around Zyn as a weight loss aid / Reddit

• And South Park’s Cartman goes on Ozempic/ Hollywood Reporter

• Gen Z’s Wobbly Path to the Career Ladder / Axios

• Related: Millennials Wanted a Dream Tech Job. Gen Z Wants Stability / Fortune

• Gen Z’s new TikTok obsession? Fashion factories. Videos showing the fashion manufacturing process are going viral. It speaks to the younger generation’s growing fascination with how and where things are made / Vogue Business

• Hence: Why Regenerative Garments Are the Ultimate Status Symbol / The Guardian

• Gen Z is revitalizing the dating coach. Young people who are sick of apps are turning toward in-person matchmaking / Popsugar

• Can We Stop Hating on Gen Alpha’s Interest in Skincare Already?/ Hypebae

Platformations

• From Piers: Why LinkedIn Now Wants You to Play Games / NYMag

• From Luke: “Morning ☀️- this pricked my ears and thought your readers may find implications interesting, worthy of breakfast club discussion. [A new report predicts that efforts by search engines like Google to generate AI answers to common questions could reduce search engine traffic for Web publishers by 25-40%] / WaPo

• Related, from Iolanda: Referral traffic from Facebook to publisher websites has declined 50% over the past 12 months / Mediapost

• Meanwhile Tech critic Frank McCourt mounts a bid to buy TikTok / Axios

• More buying: Reddit COO Jen Wong on the Platform’s Pitch to Advertisers / Marketing Brew

• Corollary: Apple, Netflix Amazon Want to Change How They Pay Hollywood Stars. Apple builds a bonus system around sign-ups, viewer loyalty and production costs / Bloomberg

• Roblox is actively pushing for platform status / Digiday

• Squarespace is going private / Quartz

• Also ‘private,’ From Iolanda: A look behind the scenes on X and other stories, the @jack version / Pirate Wires

Stylistics

• Is Substack the new specialty store? Designers think so. The platform is becoming a place for brand founders to recommend products and build followings / Vogue Business

• Corollary: You are not a commercial for yourself / Blackbird Spyplane

• Or maybe you are? Travis Scott Becomes First Non-Athlete to Release Jordan Brand Sneaker and Apparel Collection, enlisting Ye and both their kids to be in the promotional video for the collection launch/ Hypebeast

• Elsewhere in the business of hype: VF Corporation Could Be Selling Supreme / Hypebeast

• While, from Celeste: Gucci's New-Look Blondie Bag Is Bound For All The Coolest Summer Wardrobes / Vogue UK

• Can the Influencers Save Gucci? Honestly? Probably/ Back Row

• Another from Celeste: How To Dress Like You Have A Mind Of Your Own / Town & Country

• Luxury Brands Are Waging War on the Upcycled Clothing Market / CNN

• Hence? Why everything is called an atelier / Curbed

• Elsewhere, from Piers: adidas plans cheaper versions of popular shoes / Fashion Network

• While rubbery Garden Clogs are the shoe of the summer in certain quarters/ GQ

• Meanhile Ugly footwear collabs are taking over China: / Jing Collaborations

• Speaking of ugly collabs: the Eggo (Waffles) x (Sneaker) SRGN monstrosities are truly the ne plus ultra. Not that sneaker culture was in good health before but wow, this is a killshot to its zombie brain/ Food & Wine

• Not not culpable in all of this: Daniel Arsham, whose Dino Chair just came out at Basic Space for a breezy $10k / Basic Space

• Related: The provocative designers asking ‘Are you sitting uncomfortably?’ / FT

• An Interview with Jayson Green (Orchid) Some post-game analysis on the reunion tour that almost wasn't / Zero Cred

• Perfectly Imperfect: AG Cook / Perfectly Imperfect

• From Iolanda: To get a sense of where the [Graphic Design] is heading in the future, we spoke to a panel of creative professionals / Creative Boom

• From Celeste: The Magnificent Rebirth Of The American Motel' / FT

• From Celeste: “Another hospitality/ hotel minded piece, with an art twist, great piece on Michael McGregor, using hotel stationery as the base of his artworks.” Hotel Stationery Is His Canvas / FT

Culturations

• Slick Rick, Museum Consultant “Ice Cold,” curated by [SIC] homie Vikki Tobak, the author of a 2022 book of that title, surveys the evolution of jewelry in hip-hop/ The New Yorker

• New Balance's seven-minute short film focuses on the company’s popularity within specific subcultures / AdAge

• But Where does Culture Come From / London Review of Books

• Corollary: Fast Food Forever: How McHaters Lost the Culture War” / NYT

• Viet Thanh Nguyen on the Need to Recognize Coexisting Truths / Time Sensitive Pod

• Go inside the intense competition to represent New York City at the international soapbox derby championship / NYT

• The most important car person you've never heard of: Ferdinand Piëch / YouTube

• Waymo says its robotaxis are now making 50,000 paid trips every week /  Yahoo News

• Miami rolls out Rolls-Royce police car in recruitment tactic / WSVN

• And from Ben: “Did Not See This Coming”:  Haider Ackermann named Canada Goose Creative Director (and bring Jane Fonda along for the ride) / Forbes

• New Releases Make Old Jazz Young Again. Rediscovered archival concerts—and one recent one—offer important revelations / The New Yorker

• How sampling helped Amen Dunes sublimate social disorder into song / The Fader

• Metro Boomin’s ‘BBL Drizzy’ Is More Than a Joke – It Could Signal the Future of Sampling / Billboard

• The music industry is growing faster than expected, driven by growth in the developing world and live performances / Semafor

• Music in the Air: Focus on monetisation, emerging markets and AI; updating global music industry forecasts / Goldman Sachs

• How Bushwick Became a Nightclub Haven / Bloomberg

• Eric Adams in Da Club / spotify

• My First Book. The most earnest thing you can do is a book deal / Dirt

• A House for Artists: A Model for the Future / The Brooklyn Rail

• The Talks Talks to Refik Anadol / The Talks

• Is Maurizio Cattelan’s Latest Work a Copy? His gold panels punctured by bullets resemble works that artist Anthony James has been making since 2011 / Digiday

• Mystery of Mona Lisa’s background may have been solved / The Art Newspaper

• From Piers: “Maybe all news readers should go on train trip one day to see this ha”Steve McQueen: Bass review: [ ‘Like an underground shooting gallery of dub’]  / The Guardian

• From Shelly: Saturday night, we open Minaje Kim's exhibition "Arbiter's Corner" as part of NYCxDesign. Minjae is our current Artist in Residence at the hotel, and his exhibition is part of Boerum Hill Design Night — other participants include Porta, Assembly Line, Picture Room, Outline and The Primary Essentials, all of which are along Atlantic Ave. Dezeen just highlighted Minjae's show as a must-see during NYCxDesign / Dezeen

• 25 Books to Get Lost in This Summer / The Atlantic

• From Piers: “This- i can’t believe blockchained jpegs haven’t died. i understand digital twins of cars you own, and maybe cars you want to drive in a video game but collecting??” [ Mercedes-Benz NXT and Mojito Unveil ‘The Era of Technology’ NFT Collection] / NFT Evening

Technopolis

• OpenAI just made ChatGPT cheaper and twice as fast / QZ

• Advantages of the new GPT (partial list) / Twitter

• Chief scientist Ilya Sutskever resigned from OpenAI / WSJ

• While Co-founder and ex-CTO of Instagram Mike Krieger joins Anthropic as Chief Product Officer / Anthropic

• Also resigned? Philosophers are using AI to study r/AmItheAsshole / Vox

• Half of Google’s white-collar staff ‘does no real work,’ Silicon Valley VC says / QZ

• From Celeste: Ai overviews for Google searches, excellent quote from the article "the technology is great at synthesizing and recontextualising information. It's not the best at giving definitive answers". [The Horseshoe Theory Of Google Search] / The Atlantic

• Hence: We have to stop ignoring AI’s hallucination problem  / The Verge

• A solution? The AI Ratings Edition. On chess, chatbots, and stakes / WITI

• Cause, like: A flood of fake science has forced multiple journal closures / WSJ

• Speaking of ignominiuous ends: For self-driving cars, the free ride is over / The Verge

Media-tions

• Staffers at The Athletic are in active discussions about forming a union / Axios

• Which honestly could lead into or out of Brian Morrissey’s post on  Dignified decline: how publishing brands don't die but live out their golden years as different businesses. And why AI is a good for podcasts/audio / The Rebooting

• Apropos: Deez Links is coming BACK / Deez Links

• And Loaded Returns as Digital Platform,  The iconic lads mag, is launching a new online platform for the not-so-modern man — nine years after it went out of print / Mediastar

• Meanhwile, Vogue started a “Vogue Nostalgia” newsletter / Twitter

• And Condé Nast Chief Revenue Officer Steps Down / BoF

• Elsewhere in revenue people: FootballCo's Jason Wagenheim is appealing to 'soccer curious' advertisers in the U.S./ Digiday Pod

• While Refinery29’s new owner plans to cover sports and buy more media companies / WSJ

• Chef Gordon Ramsay and broadcast network Fox are prepping a new digital food and entertainment brand called Bite. [Read More]

Market / Influence

• Marketers focus on competitive analysis to grow their influencer marketing strategies / Digiday

• Speaking of growing: Amazon could soon overtake Walmart as the country’s largest company by revenue /Marketplace

• Elsewhere: “Insane but not surprising”: banned breastfeeding billboard sparks heated debate / Creative Bloq

Eats, Drinks and Ephemera

• Restaurants are increasingly saying no to large parties of diners and are closing during the “dead” midweek. / WaPo

• Small Plates, Big Checks. Why restaurant prices feel so high, and why they’re going to stay that way/ Grub Street

• From Piers: Where every cent of $1 goes at one L.A. restaurant, explained /LA Times

• Related: The economics of $15 salads / Sherwood

• Apropos of that: Reenacting Super Size Me but with Sweetgreen/ Eater

• We're In The No-Soul Food Era / The Melt

• Hence? The Cool Kids Are Drinking Merlot / Paste

• While Impossible Foods Solves America’s Meat Problems in a Delicious New Campaign / LBB Online

• But! Florida Banning Lab-Grown Meat is a Big Deal / The Lindy Newsletter

• Corollary: The difference between scallions and green onions / How Stuff Works

• From Ginger: “Check out #4 [Bet] you and the Breakfast club are adding to that venue!” [5 Hotels That Double As Dining Destinations]/ Food and Wine

The Natural (?!) World

• China is building the next big green industry / Semafor

• Beavers Are Back in London — and Gnawing the City into Shape / Reasons to Be Cheerful

• The universe might actually be shaped like a doughnut / Science News

• Explaining the Mystery of Sacred Geometry / Doubleblind

[SIC] 297: Blur Obscure