[SIC] DAY TWO HUNDRED SIXTY SIX

Vol. 2, No. 116

Friday grab bag. Twelve is my lucky number, so couple bonus links, too. [Unlocked]

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[SIC] DAY TWO HUNDRED SIXTY SIX

1. Are the Foods in Your Cart Ultraprocessed? This virtual shopping trip is a) annoyingly efficient at demonstrating how difficult it is to pick food that is *not* ultraprocessed by brand or item name and b) resembles they direction ‘news’ is heading, in brief. Edutainment uber alles.

2. But at least … Morning coffee’s actually good. New research has found a link between drinking a pre-lunch coffee and a significantly reduced risk of heart disease. According to a decade-long study of 40,000 US adults by Tulane University in Louisiana, people who were specifically morning coffee drinkers were 31 per cent less likely to die of cardiovascular disease – and 16 per cent less likely to die earlier of any cause at all – than those who drank no coffee.

3. Apropos of at-home consumption. China added all sorts of small electronic appliances to a list of consumer products eligible for a subsidised trade-in microwaves, rice cookers, water purifiers to jump-start the domestic consumer economy.

4. While back stateside, a corollary trend? Tipping at restaurants hit a six-year low last year, according to The Wall Street Journal, with rising menu prices and increasing demands for gratuities being blamed. The average tip at full-service restaurants dropped to 19.3% for the three months ending September 30th.

5. More trends: AI in 2025: Five trends for marketing, media, enterprise and e-commerce. After another year of rapid AI development and experimentation, tech and marketing experts think 2025 could help move adoption beyond the testing phase.

6. Related to that: AI Hotel Planned for Las Vegas. The 300-room hotel is a mix of apartments and hotel rooms, with 60% dedicated to hotel guests and 40% to apartments. The entire focus at the hotel is capturing and leveraging data. Each guest would have a virtual assistant.“We create a virtual copy of the guest,” said Ziade. “There is an onboarding before coming to the hotel. We capture information and use AI to scrape the internet and then we track behavior while on property.”

7. More in-room entertainment: En suite art? London exhibition opens in an Airbnb. ‘New cosy 1 bed home | Shoreditch | Long Stays’ is named after the apartment’s online listing, and ‘aims to explore the commodification of the domestic and its impact on social and economic networks.’ The group show – which includes artists Jonathan Monk, Arthur Marie and Gretchen Lawrence – is full of work about alienation, the uncanny and the emotional, societal impact of living in temporary housing.

8. On a related note: There Are No Art Hierarchies in the KAWS Collection. With over 300 works on paper, plus paintings, sculptures, and furniture, The Way I See It: Selections from the KAWS Collection includes work by artists of every stripe

9. Via Web Curios: The Public Domain Image Archive : Another tool in the slow, unwinnable fight against every online image one day becoming the product of AI, this is a great resource – PDIA — brought to you by The Public Domain Review (PDR) — is a curated collection of more than 10,000 out-of-copyright historical images, free for all to explore and reuse.

10. Another curio: What We Did To Our Penises : Not you and I, to be clear – or certainly not ‘I’, I can’t speak for what you may or may not have been doing with yours – but the wider world – this is Defector’s annual list of the terrible things that have been reported to medical departments in the US as having been done to the penises of various Americans

11. “Micro” heh heh… The Decline and Fall of the Viral Microtrend. Fast spreading — and disappearing — online “microtrends” or “cores” have driven fashion conversation for young shoppers over the past few years. Now, the churn has started to slow.

12. And lastly, on a related note: How menswear learnt to embrace the internet’s thirst. Celebrities are doing away with the boring black suit in favour of more playful styles, as the red carpet steps up to fill the men’s runway void.

    

[SIC] DAY TWO HUNDRED SIXTY SIX