[SIC] 315: Cognitohazards

Volume 7, No. 5: [SIC] Talks with "As Seen On's" Ochuko Akpovbovbo. 5 Questions for Recho Omondi. Generations X, Y and Z. And a whole lotta links, per custom.

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Hi all,

Back in the states from our big 20th anniversary trip with Marcella to the Alps, the Near Alps, the Alpine lakes and the Dolomites, which was lovely. I even squeezed in an appearance in Milan at Breakfast Club (whose namesake newsletter just hit 1000+ subs, incidentally). Big shout to everybody who turned up. Anyway - I appreciate you bearing with me on the slightly wonky deliveries of both [SIC] Day (for paid subs) and [SIC] 314: Pere Booboo.

Back on track now. Lots in this week’s digest, except for any demonstration of an ability to edit, which I’m going to have to talk to next week’s [SIC] Talks guest, Jesse Pearson about. Jesse and I worked together in the early aughts and I’ve always considered him the best interviewer and editor I know - as evidenced by the excellent (though hibernating) Apology Magazine and the Apology podcasts he puts out these days.

That pod is largely about books and reading, so it’ll be fun to dig into the latest book I’ve managed to finish, by Douglas Coupland’s Generation X. Fun too - since Jesse and I were born on the same day, same year - as late Xer ourselves, to revisit That Weird Moment in the Late ‘90s When Everyone Got into Swing Music. Or, probably not.

Look out for that. In the meantime, check out today’s [SIC] Talks with the ascendant Substacker Ochuko Akpovbovbo, whose As Seen On has been a new and regular source for me. Ochuko’s also a *prodigious* reader of books, though this time around we keep things to digital and social, basically. This was Ochuko’s first podcast; an honor.

Not, on the other hand, Recho Omondi’s first pod. Her The Cutting Room Floor is iconic in fashion and cultural spaces - and now Recho’s getting recognized as an icon herself as one of the BoF 500 People Shaping the Globe. I shot over 5 Questions For her yesterday and she hit me back with alacrity. Check out Recho’s own [SIC] Talks chat from 2022 here.

Which reminds me, I need a haircut and my dude left town. Any recos? LMK. Oh and do me a favor and share this with people. Or better yet, upgrade to a paid subscription. Yes, I’m asking.

Links, in the meantime.

Ben

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[SIC] 315: Cognitohazards

Fits and Starts

• The New Rules of Influence How new data on UGC shows the shifting tides in influencer dynamics / DCDX

• IE? Companies are using AI agents to conduct job interviews/ 404 Media

• And More people are speaking ebonics to AI bots / Tiktok

• Not lost in translation: Porto’s bid for Chinese tourism / Jing Daily

• Teenage boys’ lives are more complex than ever / The FACE

• Ergo? THE PERFECT GIRLFRIEND: Single young men are increasingly turning to AI girlfriends. A pretty dark picture of the gender divide / Esquire

• But actually? The Misogyny of Gen Z Men has Been Overstated / NYT

• Elsewhere: East Village Radio closed a decade ago. Now, it’s back / NYT

• Also back: CNN, under a new chief executive, is making documentaries after backing away from the genre two years ago / NYT

• NPR updates newsmag strategy to address audience declines / WaPo

• On the subject of audiences: The Quirky Towns That Will Decide Wisconsin / YouTube

• And MrBeast’s embattled Amazon reality show has a “Fyre Fest” vibe to it / Rolling Stone

• Also a disaster? Taylor Lorenz exits Washington Post after investigation into Instagram post /  AP News

• Or, as she puts it, “Introducing User Magazine:Why I'm leaving legacy media to pursue independent journalism”/ User Mag

• Apropos: Layoffs, mergers,and ego clashes, oh my! How NYT media reporter Benjamin Mullin covers it all.  / NYT Insider

• Not to be confused with Journalist-turned-CEO Ben Collins calls [The Onion] Gen Z’s “paper of record” / Depth Perception

• Corollary: What would Project 2025 do for (or to) journalism? / Nieman Lab

• Hot take! How tenure should be granted, circa 2024 / Marginal Revolution

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TLDR

• Malcolm Gladwell weighs in on his upcoming book, Revenge of The Tipping Point / NYT

• Which provokes [SIC] homie W. David Marx instructs us to Forget Gladwell, writing: “Society should withhold all esteem and attention to a nonfiction author whose entire oeuvre spitballs explanatory social theory under the bad faith idea that he holds his ideas “loosely” and readers should too” / Culture: An Owner’s Manual

• Related, from Isaac: “Item for SIC - NPR’s Steve Inskeep interview of Malcolm Gladwell has a combative tone that’s unusual and Gladwell discussing the flaws in his previous works. Gladwell reexamines 'The Tipping Point' — releasing 'Revenge of the Tipping Point' / NPR

• Apropos of that: Why Story Finding Is As Important As Storytelling / Attention Matters

• So that explains? Why is Everyone so into Fantasy Porn Right Now? / Cosmopolitan

• Or maybe it’s The Collapse of Self‐Worth in the Digital Age? Why are we letting algorithms rewrite the rules of art, work, and life? / The Walrus

• Especially since What if the Solution to Men’s Loneliness is … Freemasonry? / Slate

• Corollary to that: Millennials Are Worrying About Getting Old. Gen X Can Relate. atlantic

• Lighthouse Parents Have More Confident Kids. Sometimes, the best thing a parent can do is nothing at all / The Atlantic

• Other than show kids How to Opt Out of A.I. Online / The New Yorker

• As South Korea’s plan to introduce artificial intelligence-powered textbooks in its schools next year could serve as an example globally / Semafor

• Or at least before Liquid AI debuts "Liquid Foundation Models," a type of AI platform with a different computing architecture than existing industry leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic / Venture Beat

• Hurry! “Graphene,” which is the thinnest material known to humans, was successfully placed on a human brain for the first time — potentially unlocking a host of new therapies for neurological conditions / Wired

• Then again, now that Evidence of ‘Negative Time’ has been found, maybe we just set back the clock? Physicists showed that photons can seem to exit a material before entering it, revealing observational evidence of negative time / Scientific American

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[SIC] Talks #85: Ochuko Akpovbovbo

Ochuko’s excellent newsletter is As Seen On . I caught her at home in Nuremberg, where she’s located for her full-time gig at adidas. We talked about (among other things):

• Coutesy of Celeste: Chappell Roan’s war on fandom / The New Statesman

• Substack is design journalism’s irreverent new home / FT

• CNN.com, the most popular news site in the U.S., is putting up a paywall / Nieman Lab

• After is a new dating app that tries to tackle ghosting / TechCrunch

• Corollary to that: Hinge’s CMO on her unconventional KPI – dates so great people delete the app / The Drum

• Sorry, Harvard. Everyone Wants to Go to College in the South Now / WSJ

• Sophia Amoruso Moved to Substack / Substack

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Other Conversations

• Casual gurudom: Anu Atluru’s technology aphorisms / Dirt

• Dystopian documentarian Adam Curtis gave a fantastic interview where he opines on the various maladies of our planet, its broken political and journalistic systems… his usual lighthearted stuff / Crack Magazine

• Hence? Why Harvard Professor Annette Yoshiko Reed Started Fighting at 49 / Heavies

• Daniel Falb: Philosophy of Nature 4.0. Theorist of the post-Anthropocene talks Thinking Planets, a new book on the discourse of planetarity / Spike Art

• While Architect, poet, artist, Richard England gives “poetry to the pragmatic” / Monocle

• The Talks talks to James Cameron, who claims all of his movies are love stories / The Talks

• [SIC] Homie David Fischer on building tastemaker brand Highsnobiety / The Drum

• While Alexa Chung breaks down Shanghai, Britishness, and Barbour/ Jing Daily

• The Patrick Johnson Interview with Throwing Fits: Living slow and dying old with the Aussie tailor / Spotify

• My brilliant sister: an interview with Alice and Alba Rohrwacher / HTSI \

• One for the Rooney-heads: Kyle Chayka and Delia Cai discuss “Intermezzo” / Deez Links Pod

• Karl Ove Knausgaard on his latest novel – and finding new perspectives / Monocle Pod

• Stephen Malkmus and Emmett Kelly their new band The Hard Quartet / Monster Children

• Perfectly Imperfect: Nilüfer Yanya. 🪦 Walks In The Cemetery, 💤 Rest Is Resistance, 📖 I Who Have Never Known Men, and more / Perfectly Imperfect

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5 Questions For Recho Omondi:

1. What are your favorite sources of daily information? Do they overlap with sources of inspiration for your work?

YouTube! And Business of Fashion for industry stuff. Regrettably, TikTok but I learn a lot of things there.

2. What’s one place that you’ve been recently that’s worth mentioning

I went to Barcelona for the first time earlier this year. I fell in love. It's very close to both Europe and Africa -- my two favorite continents.

It’s an average Thursday afternoon. Where do we find you, and what’s keeping you busy

Working. Lol. Isn't everyone working? 

Who do you admire? And what for? 

Anthony Bourdain is one of my heroes. I still watch his interviews all the time. He was grounded, worldly, curious, gritty, intelligent and funny. 

What can [SIC] readers help you with?

If you love fashion, you can subscribe to my fashion podcast, The Cutting Room Floor...only on Patreon! 

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Style

• The Roving Eye. Lee Miller, the Vogue model and a war photographer / The New Yorker

• Corollary: Girl drummer. Laughing all the way to the Prada store / Dirt

• Elsewhere” How socks became the new status symbol / Glossy

• Hence?! Tom Brady is putting his watch collection up for auction at Sotheby’s / CNBC

• Including one that literally spells “Tom Brady” in place of numerals / IG

• Where time doesn’t matter: On the frontlines of New York’s renegade rave scene. There’s a new wave of anarchic raves in the unassuming outskirts of the city. The police don’t seem happy about it / The FACE

• But Concerts and collaborations make Dover Street Market Paris the city’s new fashion hot spot / Monocle

• Vintage Shopping Is Booming. Banana Republic and Others Get In on the Action / NYT

• Speaking of things starting with B: A-Z Brand Analysis: B is for Balenciaga / Nemesis

• A new brand creating great clothes from the UK Take a look at TDR, a brand focusing on upholding traditional British design and quality / Street Night Live

• And FIFA is kicking off its own fashion line next spring under the brand FIFA 1904 / BoF

• Profile on one of the last union-run American hat factories /  NYT

• A King of Cool Casual’s Next Act: With a new store, Steven Alan is trying to reconjure the magic of the boutique that put him on the fashion map. / NYT

• Designer and former Nike vet Frank Cooke announced his return to the brand on Friday / Twitter

• While IPath, the hippie San Francisco-based skateboarding footwear brand, is alive again after 11 years / Complex

• Related: Can fashion labels grow up and still stay niche? / Vogue Business

• How Ozempic is transforming your gym. Weight-loss drugs and a new focus on wellness are pushing many exercise machines towards obsolescence / FT

• So? There’s Never Been a Better Time to Wear Jeans / GQ

• Baggy jeans are back, and the barrel-leg is the grown-up way to do them (for women) / The Guardian

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Screen Time

• Nick Catchdubs gets Deep Fried in the thoroughly burnt visions of NoahSoCold. Read this / Catchdini

• Elsewhere in zeitgeist measurement: Pitchfork ranks best albums of the 2020s so far  and their conclusions are .. IDK, questionable? /PItchforlk

• Per a recent report, X has almost completely stopped moderating the site / Wired

• Ergo?: A mournful but also surprisingly upbeat take on why ‘Twitter Must Die’ / YT

• Instagram rolled out a new tool called “best practices” that coaches creators and businesses on how to optimize their content on the platform / The Verge

• Also optimized: Rapper Tee Grizzley Explains How He's 'Made Millions' By Repurposing Content For Profit On Twitch With Subscribers, Ads, And Donations / Afrotech

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The Marketplace

• Luxury watch crisis: Can Gen Z save Swiss brands?  Once buoyed by strong demand from China, Swiss luxury watch industry faces mounting challenges as exports decline / Jing Daily

• What the music industry can learn from Nike's disastrous 2024 / Network Notes

• The rise, stall and fall of Oracle’s advertising business / Digiday

• TikTok debuted a new search ad product that allows brands to keyword target ads / Axios

• A new lifestyle platform called On The House (OTH) launched a “credit card” that allows influencers to trade their social-media clout for products and services / Indy 100

• While Digital publishers are turning to WhatsApp’s Channels feature to share content directly with readers, test out new products, and create a relationship with readers / NYT

• Related: Axios increased its pre-booked ad revenue by pitching niche audiences / Digiday

• And Business Insider switched from a freemium model to a “smart paywall that uses machine learning” and says it worked  / Digiday

• The excellent online mag Flaming Hydra has just launched a Kickstarter, partly to fund an anthology (and restore the online archives) of seminal internet publication The Awl / Kickstarter

• The New York branch of Fotografiska closed its the doors ahead of what it says is an anticipated relocation / Hyperallergic

• Meanwhile, More people are learning how to play music, and Duolingo is taking advantage of that, releasing a piano-style keyboard for music lessons / Gizmodo

• Corollary: Birkenstock launches foot care range of lotions and scrubs / BoF

• Inside the anatomy of a successful brand comeback / Digiday

• Inside Zalando’s plans to be a go-to-destination for fashion, lifestyle and culture / The Drum

• How a supply chain merger with Walmart could change Sam’s Club’s unique company culture / Modern Retail

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Sustenance

• The mushrooms will save us all. A host of industries are focused on the fungi as a sustainable solution to a lot of industrial waste problems / WaPo

• Because? ‘The Logistics Are Insane’: Inside California’s Anti-Waste Produce Pipeline. A system that swiftly redistributes perishable fruits and vegetables to where they’re needed most is solving two big problems at once / Reasons to Be Cheerful

• Related, in fine dining: At a restaurant in London, a Michelin-star winning chef is employing people on the edge of homelessness to cook / NYT

• Also back in Blighty: All this rain is bad for English wine / The Times

• So: SLOP Meets: Frederick Grappe of Dynamic Vines / Slop Magazine

• Are wine clubs worth it? If don’t have the time to attend the best tasting events, a wine club may be for you. But what do you get for your money? / FT

• Cause, like, All that prebiotic soda is probably causing your smelly farts / Self

• Not in China, Where the Bubble-Tea Industry Has Gone Into Hyperdrive / The New Yorker

• But Is India the next great cheese frontier? / Marginal Revolution

• Back at home, a growing number of US cities are using sheep for land management (ie to trim vegetation) / Semafor

• But in Canada, Will Reviving the Cod Industry Doom It Yet Again? / The Walrus

• The truth about tuna: Should you be worried about mercury content? Experts weigh in / NYT

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Friends Section

• [SIC] Talks alum Gutes and homie Megan are back with Byline’s Beauty Issue/ Byline

• While another homie, Patrick O’Dell is doing a release for his Epicly Later’d monograph on 10/24 at the Noah store in NYC. Meet me there / IG

• Related: Daniel Arnold On Survival, Humour, And Cultural Acclaim. An interview with one of New York’s finest photographers / Monster Children

• [SIC] Talks alum Noah Brier is headed to LA this winter for BRXND LA 2025.. Save the Date: BRXND LA 2025 // BrXnd Dispatch vol. 056 / Brxnd

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Getting Rec’d

• Book Fairs are Fun. Recapping Hong Kong's Art Book Fair / Maekan

• Corollary: Kevin Lambert Proves That Literature Can Still Be an Invigorating Slap in the Face / The Walrus

• Speaking of a well-placed slap? How to have better sex. Sexologist and intimacy coach Michaela d’Artois wants to show you the way / HTSI

• Apropos? Five influential horror movies that changed cinema / Far Out

• The Cutting Satire of Hannah Höch’s Collages. One of the inventors of modern collage, Höch’s sociopolitical imagery skewered the politicians and culture of early and mid-20th-century Germany / Hyperallergic

• How David Hockney’s Holiday in the South of France Turned into a Masterpiece / Sotheby’s

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Playlist

• The Fox is Black’s downloadable “OIR” Mixtape for October goes digging in the crates for gems like UNKLE’s “Rabbit In Your Headlights” featuring Thom Yorke / Google Drive

• And he shouts out some pretty great other music too including this DJ Nobu Rainbow Disco Club Mix that’s propelled my digest compilation this week / Soundcloud

• Speaking of Thom Yorke he’s apparently  reworked the band’s critically acclaimed “Hail to the Thief” into a deconstructed score for Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” that illuminates the text and is performed by live musicians, and is produced by longtime [SIC] homie Vivek Tiwary/ Variety

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Wisdom of the Crowds

From Kate Lee: “I'm sharing this week's Every stories with you—grateful if you would include any in the newsletter:

• The latest installment of Rhea Purohit's column Learning Curve is about her quest to use AI to maximize meaning, not efficiency / Learning Curve

• Evan wrote about "dad mode" and how impending fatherhood rejiggered his priorities, both personal and professional / Napkin Math

• Dan Shipper reported on the ground from OpenAI's DevDay yesterday. His overall takeaway: The company has made important incremental progress on the path to GPT-5 / Chain of Thought

From Piers Fawkes:

• “No One Asked for Coca-Cola Oreos but they’re kinda fun” / Eater

• Apropos of the South Korean text books: “Super fascinating experiment of (dead) digital twin. will people care?” London Standard to Feature AI-Written Review ‘by’ Dead Art Critic Brian Sewell / AdWeek

• “To do - Detroit Museum Celebrates 100 Years of James Baldwin” / Hyperallergic

• “Or Cambridge UK” There’s a lot of James Baldwin in this show’: Glenn Ligon and identity politics / The Guardian

From Kevin Tachman:

• Why Breast-Shaped Cakes Are the Confection of the Moment / NYT

From Kevin Johannesen:

• “Clever” [Heinz challenges Shohei Ohtani to play 57-57] / Linkedin

From Geoff Renaud:

• “This is Fun” [Rliey Walz’s “Bop Spotter”]  Walzr

More on that note, from Syd Allen-Ash:

• From 404media founder, ex-motherboard fav Jason Koebler:'BopSpotter' is an Android phone hidden in San Francisco running Shazam 24/7 to surveil songs people are listening to in public: "This is culture surveillance. No one notices, no one consents. It's not about catching criminals. It's about catching vibes." / 404 Media

From Iolanda Carvalho:

• “TeamLH forever! 💜” / Hypebeast

• "Women’s basketball stars are the supermodels and style icons of the day, sporting their pre-game looks in tunnel fit checks and posing for magazine shoots. And now comes news—which, notably, broke in fashion bible Vogue—that Off-White has has signed on as the official style and culture curator of the New York Liberty" / Muse By Clios

• And speaking of fashion... ah ahahaha / Design Taxi

A finally from (birthday girl!!) Celeste Blewitt:

• “Melbourne + last weekend in September=  AFL Grand Final, Katy Perry pre game performance, think it was 6-8 songs for a rumored $3-$5 million(perhaps a min version of SuperBowl, but Australian Rules and 100,000 fans in the MCG Stadium). See screenshot for the advertising/ branding key moment - Toyota x Telstra x AFL and Katy Perry hitting her camera mark to a tee - can it revive her career?  The footy crowd apparently loved it (although there were some odd AI integrations)…

But now, loving all of these pieces, nostalgia and pop culture. 

• Maggie Smith Rejected Irrelevance. “Dame Maggie Smith was certainly one of a kind, irreverent, proper and iconic, she showed the world that career and ambition can continue long into the third act of life. What a woman, an example to future generations of how to be” / Vulture 

• Everything Is A Kids Menu Now - Haute Nostalgia Is Here “Love a kids menu, the simplicity of a menu, no foams, jellies, micro herbs and edible flowers, just true food with hopefully a touch of flavour. Appears that restaurants are realising this is what the diner may wish for!” / / Grub Street

• How The Super Rich Protect Their Million Pound Jewellery From Theft. 'Rolex Rippers', luxury jewellery and exclusivity, let alone elite insurance plans, safes, and being targeted. Intriguing to read of companies whose sole purpose is to protect these luxury pieces. I was only talking of The Bling Ring last week, this feels like the current day verison.” / Tatler

• The Barefoot Count Of The Grand Canal. “Murano and the family history, all the tres chic, quiet luxury interior decorators are adding Murano glass touches to a room, chandeliers, vases, and all that jazz, but make it glass. What a deep family history, society at its best.” / Town & Country

• Everyone's On Ozempic, So Why Will No One Talk About It? “Jo Ellison puts to paper what I've been wondering, wondering what fashion weeks will look like, what restaurant menus will look like and how we discuss Ozempic and its challenges/ benefits/ drastic changes. Long gone is Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers is on the out, now it's Ozempic” / FT 

[SIC] 315: Cognitohazards

Corollary Sources this week: Kottke / Garbage Day / The Trend Report/ Storythings / Music Ally /The Future Party / Nieman Lab / The Art of Noticing / The New Statesman / The Kicks You Wear /  The Material Review / After School/ Public Announcement/ Retail Dive / What I’m Hearing / Elevator / Catchdini / 1440 / Morning Brew/ Beats and Bytes/ As Seen On By Ochuko