[SIC] 323: Ayahuasca Matcha

Volume 7, Number 13. [SIC] Talks with Viktoriia Vasileva (live from Moscow). And all the post Thanksgiving dinner links. Open in a browser for optimal viewing.

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Hi everybody.

Happy T-day to all who celebrate. There’s the argument of course that Thanksgiving Should Be in October like it is in Canada, but I’ll take it on November like always. Given how much food, drink and stimuli you’re likely to be taking in today I’ll keep this preamble short, but I will say I’m thankful for all of you reading. If you think there’s somebody who’d get a smile, a laugh or a talking point out of one of the links herein, do me a favor and send [SIC] along to them.

Thanks also to my [SIC] Talks guest Viktoriia, and to Celeste, Iolanda, Mike, Ben, Geoff and Gordon for sending stories this week. I’m grateful. Ok, now to go saute Brussel sprouts….

Ben

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[SIC] 323: Ayahuasca Matcha

Fits and Starts

• Americans are obsessed with trans issues and panicking about being replaced, Kareem Carr, a statistician studying at Harvard posted. “They think there are 21x more trans people, 27x more Muslims, 15x more jews, 5x more Asians, 3x more Black people, and 2x more immigrants than there actually are.” / Twitter

• Is social media one of the worst things to happen to artists? Yes, says US artist Josh Kline / The Art Newspaper

• UK artists earning an average of just £12,500 per year / The Art Newspaper

• The number of 18-24 year olds who own a credit card is up 25% since 2017, another sign that Gen Z might be more comfortable with credit than the millennials who grew up in the shadow of the post-2008 financial crisis / Transunion

• Gen Z Embraces AI: The Next Frontier in the Workplace / Artificially Intimidating

• Younger professionals are redefining work by integrating AI tools for efficiency, creativity, and collaboration.

• Pretty much every Gen Z worker uses AI at their job. The technology is leveraged by 82% of the age cohort / Quartz

• Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work / American Enterprise Institute

• To that end: FCB NY chief growth officer Kat Grib explains how AI is supercharging the agency's business development efforts / The Drum

• Marc Benioff thinks agents will become more important to AI than chatbots / Quartz

• How close are current AI agents to automating AI R&D? Depends on what you’re measuring / Twitter

• JPMorgan Chase and Capital One are winning at AI banking — and their lead is getting bigger / Quartz

• Meantime Elon Musk serves up disconcerting AI art / The Art Newspaper

• Apropos of Musk: The Onion’s messy attempt to buy Alex Jones’s conspiracy site Infowars out of bankruptcy has gotten even messier / NYT

• So, A Banana Walks into an Art Fair. Why Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Comedian,’ which recently sold at auction, remains his best joke / Frieze

• This 74-year-old fruit vendor sold the banana that was eventually auctioned for $6.2 million. When he learned the price, he began to cry / NYT

• The Drug of Choice for the Age of Kale. How ayahuasca, an ancient Amazonian hallucinogenic brew, became the latest trend in Brooklyn and Silicon Valley / The New Yorker

• Joe Rogan, Kingmaker? / Pulling Weeds

• The inside scoop on Alex Cooper’s massive $125 million podcast deal with SiriusXM / Forbes

• What Young People Are Reading, Watching and Listening to Right Now / Day One Agency

Wisdom of the Crowds
From Mike : 

• Revolt and the Reversal of Trust / Infinite Scroll

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TLDR

• Walmart just joined Ford, Toyota, Lowe's and others in rolling back DEI initiatives / Quartz

• Transgender activists say it’s time to rethink their tactics because they are facing diminishing public support / NYT

• Bad influence. One Amazon influencer makes a living posting content from her beige home. But after she noticed another account hawking the same minimal aesthetic, a rivalry spiraled into a first-of-its-kind lawsuit. Can the legal system protect the vibe of a creator? And what if that vibe is basic?/ The Verge

• Corollary: Dictionary.com chose "demure" as their word of the year / Dictionary.com

• On the subject of basics: Natalie Harp, a 33-year-old former television anchor is poised to become the gatekeeper of information flowing to and from Trump. (NYT)

• Still, Power Is Shifting Rapidly to Indie Creators. The exodus from Twitter since the election is a sign of things to come / The Honest Broker

• But, like, Who Booked Coachella 2025? The Deep Dive / New Industry Friday

• Also mysterious: Less than half of Gen Z have had drunk sex, a study finds / The Standard

• Everyone Agrees Americans Aren’t Healthy / The Atlantic

• But… Study finds average American gains 6 lb over holidays / Study Finds

• Also not healthy: How the Indie Rock Boom Went Bust. Not so long ago, indie music was riding high, minting new stars and lasting careers with ease. But for a new generation of artists, financial stability is all but impossible / Hearing Things

• Corollary?! “I was covered in human poo": One family's shocking story of London's housing crisis Plus: Otters are getting closer to the centre of London / London Centric

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Wisdom of the Crowds
From Iolanda Carvalho:

• Really interesting [7 subcultures to target instead of demographics]: Horizon Media’s 3rd Subculture Field Guide / Marketing Brew

• In case you can handle some more trends... 😉 [Canva’s Design Trends] / Canva

• Two (absolutely crazy) years [Happy 2nd Birthday Chat GPT] / Tech Radar

• "We are now living in an era when content never dies and cultural memories never fade" [Welcome to ‘perma-nostalgia’: How the digital age keeps our past alive and profitable] / The Media Leader

• "Mature" is the new cool...? [Why Maturity is Becoming Cool for Youth Brands] Mediacat

• This says a lot about 2024... 😆 [The Word of the Year is ‘Enshittification’] / WARC

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[SIC] Talks #88: Viktoriia Vasileva [of Vik’s Busy Corner]

• How Cafe Gitane stayed cool for decades / Eater

• Indie film powerhouse Neon secured a $200 million line of credit from Comerica to expand its operations and distribution footprint / Deadline

• Filmmaker Kirby Ferguson argues that our culture often appears to be plagued by a dearth of creativity. But what if, beneath the surface of mainstream culture, there was a world of wild imagination waiting to be discovered — if only a powerful force would stop suppressing it? / NYT

• Drake accuses Universal Music Group and Spotify of conspiring to artificially inflate the streaming numbers for Kendrick Lamar's "Not Like Us" at his expense / Variety

• Kendrick Lamar’s turbo-powered victory lap / The Ringer

• From Gordon: Jaguar Rebrand Is Absolute Genius / Forbes

• Related: “The future Jaguar is offering feels baffling rather than visionary" / Dezeen

• And: People are starting to suspect the controversial Jaguar rebrand could be a hoax / Creative Bloq

• Either way: Jaguar probably doesn’t care about the branding backlash, it might even welcome it / The Drum

• Corollary: The seven reactions to every major rebrand - “A big rebrand invariably leads to a lot of noise. Here are the seven types of reaction you always get when a famous brand rolls out a new look.” (DesignWeek)

• New discovery: Painter Dongwhan Kim / DKartnyc

  

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Other Conversations

• A brush with… [photogrpher] Jeff Wall / The Art Newspaper Podcast

• The Painter Hank Willis Thomas on the Monocle pod / Monocle

• The Vintage Vanguard (w/ Kathleen Sorbara) / The New Garde

• FFNY Quicktakes with artist Erik Foss / Friends from New York

• People love to complain and I don't really get it. A conversation with Melanie Masarin of Drink Ghia / Sublime

• Meet the Talk Tuah super fans. Cam George and Peter Ditzler are Talking Talk Tuah / Embedded

• Perfectly Imperfect: AIR / PI

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Style

• Over 50 artists from Gaza announced their decision to kick off their own contemporary art biennial / Hyperallergic

• Rap Against The Machine. Tyler, The Creator and The Big 3 did major things in 2024 with less help than ever from the label system / Backseat Freestyle

• How Tyler, The Creator Rewrote The Rules Of Traditional Marketing / Forbes

• Corollary: While luxury brands struggle to make their ideas stick, indie fashion designers are leading the charge when it comes to tech innovation / Jing Daily

• Case in point? Rimowa introduces a ‘re-crafted’ program of pre-owned aluminum luggage at 50% off MSRP / Rimowa

• I Heart Matt Starr's New York. Coffee with the poet, publisher, promoter and Paddington Bear super fan / The Melt

• Are You Too Old for the Artworld? Complaining that most art sucks is like saying that all new music is bad because you don’t like Spotify’s Top 50 playlist / artforum

• Weaving Through the History of Diné Textiles / Hyperallergic

• Saint Laurent is releasing six short films based on Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, exploring themes of love, desire, time, and dreaming. The spots feature Addison Rae, Chloë Sevigny, Joey King, Cooper Koch, and others / Dazed

• Step inside 29 artist studios via this excellent YouTube series from gallery Hauser & Wirth / YouTube

• Hunting and Being Hunted A few days before the opening of Kiko Kostadinov’s new store in Los Angeles / 032C

• Hundreds of customizable Nike shoes are making their debut on Fortnite via the new Kicks feature / Hypebeast

• And Buy a sneaker that looks exactly like the sneaker emoji / The Verge

• Have cult footwear collabs fizzled out? Accessibility and overexposure are changing sneaker collaboration culture/ Jing Daily

• Bobby Hundred’s10 Favorite Shoes of 2024 / Monologue

• A trip thru the Unswaggy Valley. Can "wack people" ruin something you love? / Blackbird Spyplane

• Baby tees — ultra-fitted, sometimes cropped shirts — are back / NYT

• Taylor Swift merch is vintage now / The Cut

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Screen Time

• Inside Bluesky’s big growth surge. After adding millions of new users in weeks, the company tells Platformer that it will quadruple the size of its moderation team / Platformer

• How Twitter turning to X changed journalism / CJR

• AI-generated content is swamping LinkedIn / Wired

• “Do Coding Boot Camps Make Sense in an A.I. World?”/ NYT

• Mr. Beast appeared on Caleb “oompaville” Phelps’s podcast to address a handful of allegations leveled against him over the last few months—including knowingly hiring a sex offender, engaging in insider crypto trading, and indirectly utilizing child labor / YouTube

• Zoom ditches 'Video' in surprise AI-focused rebrand, rebranding as an 'AI-first' company that provides more than just video conferencing / Creative Bloq

• What’s the Greatest TV Show of All Time? The hosts of Still Watching hand out awards designating which programs deserve to be named the best drama, comedy, and reality series in television history / Vanity Fair

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The Marketplace

• Why Black Friday Could Bring Gen Z Out In Droves / Forbes

• Products on Amazon Haul are getting an additional 50% discount in an aggressive push to beat Temu and Shein / Information

• Haul culture is fuelling returns. What can brands do? / Vogue Business

• For the first time in Hearst's 137-year-history, more than 50% of its profits will come from professional products, not consumer-facing newspapers, magazines and TV stations / Axios

• How nano-creators became beauty’s best marketing tool. As engagement with beauty content plateaus, brands are leaning into creators with small and mid-sized followings / Vogue Business

• Structuring the marketing team around the customer and their journey / The Drum

• How co-branding became ‘a key piece’ of how marketers plan their year / Digiday

• Streaming was made to escape ads. Now they're back with a vengeance / Quartz

• A judge ruled that canceling your SiriusXM subscription is simply too annoying / The Verge

• The 2024 finalists for Apple’s app and game of the year / Apple

• Fashion retailers in Japan are taking a stand against tear-down culture by repurposing old buildings / Monocle

• Five housing markets to watch in 2025 / Quartz

Wisdom of the Crowds
From Ben Pruess: 

• That's one heck of an expense report [Macy’s delays earnings over missing $154 Million in expenses] Retail Dive

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Sustenance

• Competitive tablescapers can teach us something about setting the perfect table / NYT

• Is carrying a takeaway coffee the ultimate power move? / Grazia

• Coffee beans hit their highest price in 47 years, driven by bad weather in Vietnam and Brazil / Semafor

• The “TikTok girlies” are being blamed for a matcha shortage in Japan / Eater

• The rules Clare de Boer lives by. How a restaurant star manages three boys, a newsletter, and business / Feed Me

• White bread is having a comeback. / NYT

• A literal castle full of cheese? Only in Wisconsin. Mars Cheese Castle is a 46,000-square-foot everything store hawking cheese curds, craft beer and much, much more / WaPo

• An Unintellectual Theory of Tastiness in Art History. No Vanitas paintings, no parables, no metaphors — just pigging out / Hyperallergic

• The cube rule of food identification, a pedantic and fun way to ensure that nobody understands what you're talking about.

• Zeihan says British Agriculture Is About To Suck Even More / YouTube

• The Nature You See in Documentaries Is Beautiful and False / The Atlantic

• The "knotty problem" of polyurethane foam / Dezeen

Wisdom of the Crowds
From Geoff Renaud: 

• “This is Wild” [A Saber-Toothed Cub Frozen for 37,000 Years Has Been Discovered—Complete with Fur and Whiskers] / Artnet

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Getting Rec’d

• Performance, Transformation, and a New Narrative. How Common Space reimagines Art and the shape of the City for Frieze LA / Frieze

• If you’re in Antwerp, go see this Ed Templeton painting show / IG

• Or, if you’re in Miami next week: SCOPE Art Show 2024: Everything You Need to Know / Hypebeast

• Or, if you’re stuck at home: The 30 Best Art Books of 2024 / Hyperallergic

• Corollary to that: Printed Matter Gift Island, their annual holiday pop-up, is returning on Friday, December 6! / Printed Matter

• This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) (Official Video) / YouTube

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Wisdom of the Crowds
From Celeste:

• Are We On Air - Sir Paul Smith Creativity, exuberance and a sprinkle of fun, a great interview with music, culture and fashion business intertwined. Excellent listen to the stories of brand building, fashion and Sir Paul Smith creating the empire that is Paul Smith. He's such an excellent interview subject, full of vibrant stories. / Are We On Air Pod

• How Youtube Ate Podcasting. Data appears to show that Gen Z watches podcasts via Youtube and now with Spotify on the same bandwagon podcasts are thriving. Throw in TikTok and all the social media platforms and the growth of podcasts has gone from strength to strength. The numbers are fascinating to see how swiftly the platforms and audiences have evolved since the era of Serial as the article notes / NYMag

• How Lady Chatterley's Lover Was Banned And Became A Bestseller. Before there was Jilly Cooper, there was Lady Chatterley's Lover. The outrage of the era, the salaciousness and yet the book sold out 200,000 copies on day one of publication and has gone onto become an historical bestseller, pre Jilly Cooper era / BBC

• The Big-Money, Big-Macher Restaurant Is Back . The trend to go big is here to stay, certainly with the idea of eating out often a performative moment for a plethora of social media, it makes sense that restaurateurs are boldly opening restaurants that cater to a vast range of perhaps luxury style clientele, they want to be seen, they want the caviar and they want the imagery to prove it. / Grub Street

• This Was The Year Gen Z Stopped Slating Millennial Outfits And Started Copying Them.

  Such a great timeline within this article, a reminder of the cyclical nature of generational trends, how swiftly they rise upon us and the moments in time where trends become a mass moment. Low rise jeans, ugg boots, cropped tshirts, indie sleaze, as we know, it's all the rage again, second time round for many. If only I hadn't sent so many Y2K clothing items off to op shops/ thrift shops...../ Vogue UK

• From Strictly Ballroom To Sydney's Saviour: How Town Halls Are Staging A Comeback. A country town hall has a special energy and atmosphere, as does any town hall, but as times have changed, these are slowly disappearing. Love the idea of these town halls being brought back to life, the history, community and stories these buildings hold are important reminders to take forth into the future / The Guardian

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[SIC] 323: Ayahuasca Matcha

Corollary Sources this week: The Future Party/ Feed Me / The New Statesman / Marginal Revolution / Dealbook / FOUND NY / User Mag / After School / Public Announcement/ As Seen On By Ochuko/ Retail Dive / Poolsuite / Beats and Bytes /Politico / GWI