[SIC] Weekly 284: Algorithm Food

Volume Six, Number Twenty Four

Ben Dietz

Feb 16, 2024

This time: [SIC] Talks with Jason Kreher (former North American Chief Creative at Accenture Song) and the [SIC] Weekly digest of pertinent developments, compiled by Ben Dietz and published free on Thursdays to 5277 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. Here’s a button:

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Paid subscriptions are also available. 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.

Corollary sources this week include: After School/ Public Announcement/ Nieman Lab / Politico / The New Statesman/ Dealbook /Ben-Evans / Jimmy / Beats and Bytes / 1440 / International Intrigue / Marginal Revolution / Retail Dive / Network Notes / Feed Me / Business of Fashion

Thanks to Elaine Santiago, Piers Fawkes, David Bloom, Ben Young, Hosi Simon, Celeste Blewitt, Molly Raskin and Iolanda Carvalho for contributions this week. Ideas and links are invited from everyone.

Hi all,

Excuse the late send. I’m writing this one on the Six train, nodding along to DJ Private Ryan’s “Soca Brainwash 2024” mix for Carnival season; as i’ve mentioned before, soca is favored work music for me; uptempo and kinda mindless in the best way. These carnival mixes are a barometer for how the year might unfold: last year’s was flat, comparatively; this one is back to buoyancy. And for at least one artist in the mix edibles have supplanted Run as party fuel; interesting shift. Matches my dry year so far.

No [SIC] Talks this week but I’m looking forward to next week’s chat with Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick from one of my favorite, IYKYK newsletters, The Trend Report. The Substack gods showed up in my inbox this week offering my some free gift subscriptions to give away to it - so if you want me, lmk in the comments. First come first served.

Meantime, embeds of a few of the recent talks with Jeff Carvalho, Daisy Alioto, Ed Cotton, Jason Kreher, Aaron Rose, Sami Reiss and Ryan Broderick embedded throughout - have a listen while you work or something. And if there’s anyone you want me to chat to in the series, would love suggestions.

To that end, I’m coming up on the halfway point in Volume Six - and traditionally that’s meant some midseason reworking of the weekly topic headings, editorial focus etc. Ideas on stuff I could be doing more with or more of, lmk please.

Last thing before the links; as veteran [SIC] Subscribers hopefully know, I chair an open-invite ‘Breakfast Club’ gathering every Wednesday in Williamsburg. Everyone is always welcome to that and so if you’re ever in the neighborhood, give me a shout in reply to this email or leave a comment and I’ll send you details. And if you’re NOT in Williamsburg, some friends are picking up the mantle and staging their own versions closer to home. Next Thursday 2/22, Lillian Brown, Helen Hollyman and Rob Henzi are kicking off Breakfast Club Austin - and the following Weds 2/28 Julie Gerstein is getting Breakfast Club Philly going. There’s even a monthly Downtown Brooklyn version starting tomorrow (2/16) at The Ace Hotel Brooklyn, courtesy of Kat Popiel and Jeff Weiner. Short notice, but as with all of them, you’re invited, it’s free to join, and it’ll be a great vibe. Hope to see you at one or t’other sometime soon.

[SIC] Weekly 284: Algorithm Food

The Macro Narrative

Consider the Toilet/ For-Scale
Tinyhatskatelife be damned, from Piers: Score is a new dating app for people with good to excellent credit /TechCrunch
The price of clothes is insane right now / Blackbird Spyplane
The Awfulness of Elite Hypocrisy on Marriage. The privileged classes would never dream of saying one form of family life is better than another. So why are they always married? /The Atlantic
Becase?! Married people are happier / Axios
So like, why You Should Get Married / AEI
Related: Could GenZ Change Sinking Marriage Rates/ CNBC
Long-ago college magazine colleague Suzy Hansen on why No One Is Prepared for a New Era of Global Migration / The Atlantic
It was Adland’s worst Super Bowl in years, but everyone is too afraid to tell you / The Drum ‘
From Piers: ‘There will be elections this year for half the worlds population - a reminder how skew whiff it could all go”: [AI Used To Resurrect Dead Dictator to Sway Election] Futurism
Jon Ronson’s Guide to the Culture Wars In his BBC show “Things Fell Apart,” the British-born journalist continues to examine our most heated public arguments with empathy / The New Yorker
Disrupting superyacht market with giant luxury submarine / Dezeen
Dictionary.com adds 327 new entries, including "girl dinner." / Dictionary
Is boutique a bad word? / One Thing
How a ragtag band of internet friends became the best at forecasting world events / Vox
Hundreds of adult dancers want Washington state lawmakers to adopt a "strippers' bill of rights" / Axios
How to Spend Your Time ‘Poorly’ / The Atlantic
American Counterculture, Glimpsed Through Zines. Zine-making is a tradition shared by the young and alienated, people enamored with the fringes of culture. Can a museum exhibit capture its essence? / The New Yorker
What was The Village Voice? / NYT
From Hosi: “When i saw this pic on your instagram or newsletter i thought to myself how epic of a photo you took, and was wondering how you did it. I guess this explains it!!” [And Action … Filming is Back in New York] / NYT

Generationations

CDC Report finds teens use drugs - often alone - to ease stress and anxiety. The majority — 84% — have used a form of marijuana, while less than half (49%) said they drank alcohol / CNBC
Meet Generation Stay at Homen ‘You don’t need to pay to go clubbing: You can sit at home and watch it on your phone’/ The Guardian
‘Reading is so sexy’: Gen Z turns to physical books and libraries / The Guardian
Gen Zers’ whole lives are their resumés / The Future Party
The Slack generation can’t communicate with the email generation. Why more platforms are dividing the workplace/ Fast Company
Related: Slackers - “A decade later, it’s clear that Slack changed work culture, even at companies that don’t use it.” /The Verge
The Future of Work Depending on Understanding Gen Alpha Now/ Fast Company

Platformations

YouTube is secretly Hollywood’s biggest threat / The Future Party
Why Snapchat is pitching its platform as an alternative to social media / Digiday
Naked Truth. How Our Biometric Data Could Transform Social Networks / In Bed With Social
Corollary: The Pink Stuff was an obscure cleaning paste — until TikTok effectively became its marketing department / NYT
From Ben: “GitLab posts their internal Zoom call recordings on YouTube, and some have HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of views...
because people use them to pretend like they're working” / X

Stylistics

“Metrosexual is back”: Behind the scenes of Luar’s big New York moment / Vogue Business
New York Fashion Week needs a mom / Vogue Business
How Depop became an incubator for new design talent/ Service95
The other other American style. “Urban sport” is expanding fashion's aesthetic vocabulary beyond prep and workwear / The Sociology of Business
How Alfargo's Marketplace is changing secondhand shopping / Sprezza
Also changing: [SIC] Homie Alastair McKimm Is Leaving i-D Magazine / Bo
The Sneaker Resale Market Is Broken / BoF
Yet: Kanye West: “I CLEANED UP AFTER CRAPPY SB AD” $19 Million in Yeezy $ales!!! /TMZ
Corollary? What happened to the codpiece? / BBC
How AI is disrupting the luxury experience / Jing Daily
Speaking of disruption: MSCHF launches leather handbag designed by factories of Hermès, dior, balenciaga & celine / Design Boom
Louis Vuitton turns to blockchain for new fine jewelry collection / Jing Daily
If Anyone Can Bring NFT Merch Back, It's Pharrell. But Can He? / Highsnobiety
Meantime, Miami Steps Up in the Watch World / NYT
Tiger Woods unveiled his new lifestyle brand Sun Day Red / NYT
Whose new logo has a hidden meaning/ Creative Bloq
And LeBron James is launching a men’s grooming line via his multimedia brand, The Shop / Business of Fashion

Culturations

Jon Stewart knows he can’t save democracy / The New Yorker
From Elaine: “After reading [SIC] Day Eighty Four’s, “The music business is going country”…Rewriting Country Music's Racist History / Rolling Stone
From David: Michael Jackson Catalog Stake Sold to Sony, Valued at $1.2 Billion / Rolling Stone
Saint Laurent’s latest retail venture, which sells rare books, magazines and out-of-print records, has opened in Paris / Monocle
Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz want you to see the 'Giants' of art in their collection (NPR)
Corollary: The I.P. ouroboros of “Argylle” / The New Yorker
I went to this and it was interesting: Bradley Cooper Takes Maestro “Full Circle” / Vanity Fair
Meanwhile, fave author Bret Easton Ellis is making a movie. Obviously it’s about the fucked up city of LA /
Related: Six Love Letters to Los Angeles / Frieze
Susie Essman is a comic genius / NYT
Corollary: The latest Dune: Part Two ad is making me uncomfortable/ Creative Bloq
Related to that, from David: Inside the Censorship Scandal That Rocked Sci-Fi and Fantasy's Biggest Awards / Esquire
And maybe also: Tortured Tales of Love from the Victorian Era / Sothebys

Technopolis

Apple fans are starting to return their Vision Pros / Vox
AI as Fuzzy Interface. On web scraping, net new ideas, and AI as glue / BRXND
The University of Pennsylvania became the first U.S. Ivy League school to offer an undergraduate degree in AI/ The Daily Pennsylvanian
WTF is AI!!? Can we please address the elephant in the room? / Decode
How news orgs are starting to use generative AI / CJR
people are using ChatGPT to write performance reviews / Business Insider
AI is driving a mania for cost-cutting in finance / Bloomberg
…And it’s starting to come for white-collar jobs, as well / WSJ
AI Could Actually Help Rebuild The Middle Class / Noema
So here’s your chance to generate your voice clone and get paid when people use ii/ Ben’s Bites
Cause, like, Some People Actually Kind of Love Deepfakes / Wired

Media-tions

The most civilized place to look at news online? It might be Reddit / CJR
So … is the media prepared for an extinction-level event? / The New Yorker
The future of news will require fundamentally rethinking the press’s relationship to its audience /The New Yorker
Dow Jones CEO: "Not going to be a lifestyle company" / Axios
Where are all these journalists going to get a sense of self from now? / Hazlitt
Six months in, journalist-owned tech publication 404 Media is profitable / Nieman Lab
The Cut is expanding at a time when many media companies are cutting costs / Digiday
Substack-based Ankler Media eyes $10m annual revenue next year/ Press Gazette
“Nobody solves media except temporarily”: Four indie media owners on money, sustainability, and “making cooler, weirder things” / Nieman Lab
From Piers: this is like a year old but sometimes it takes a while for the news to get thru. A shop front newsroom, that aims to bridge the gap between journalists, their audience and contributors / Greater Govanhill
Trevor Noah’s relationship with Spotify has already soured after only six months / Semafor
R.I.P. Bob Edwards, host of NPR’s Morning Edition for nearly a quarter-century

Market / Influence

From Piers: the return of projection mapping… midjourney style [AI Artwork Projected on Historic Gaudí House Draws Nearly 100K People] / Hyperallergic
With Disney’s Magic, Fortnite Is Poised To Win The Metaverse / TechCrunch
Esports veterans are split on the future of the industry / Digiday
From Elaine: “ Participating employees can earn $1,000 from Delta to fund a rainy day account, along with individualized coaching and a host of tools from Operation HOPE and Fidelity to enhance their financial literacy and well-being.”[Delta CEO on the importance of financial well-being] / Delta News Hub
BetMGM is officially X’s “exclusive Live Odds Sports Betting partner.” / TechCrunch
While From Piers: Versace and Roc Nation Announce Multi-Year Partnership / Numero
From Piers: Too Hot to Cuddle? Build-A-Bear’s Adult Line Leaves Some Blushing / WSJ
Five Transformational Marketing Trends Converging in 2024 / Advertising Week
adidas tells athletes of all types: ‘You got this’ / Retail Dive
Gatorade Fuels Digital Transformation With Free Membership Platform / Marketing Dive
The story of BYD / NYT

Eats, Drinks and Ephemera

What’s that fish - Click a picture, and cook a fish (or any other seafood) / What’s That Fish
From Piers: Your body as a processing plant, digesting a hot wing / Flowing Data
So.. Why Don’t Americans Eat Lamb / The Lindy Newsletter
From Elaine” U.S. Cattle Inventory Smallest in 73 years /American Farm Bureau Federation
We're Not Eating Enough Bacon, and That's a Problem for the US Economy / WSJ
From Piers: here you go… you can do this forever now, not just feb [Veganism Recognised as a Protected Belief by Danish Court] / Vegconomist
How Melrose Hill Became LA’s Hottest Culinary Boom Town / Eater
From Piers: "with climate change, i guess cali will need to choose 1 : wine or coffee” [Will Southern California be the 'Napa Valley of coffee?] / LAT
From Piers: Noodles of opportunity: how an Oregon law boosted a small food business and built community / The Guardian

The Natural (?!) World

His Best Friend Was a 250-Pound Warthog. One Day, It Decided to Kill Him / Texas Monthly
Wondering How to Kill a Trip? Some People Use Trip Killer Drugs / Doubleblind
The East Coast is sinking / NYT
Ski Resorts Are Turning Wastewater into Snow / Reasons To Be Cheerful
Photos revealed The Line megacity progressing in Saudi Arabia / Dezeen
Archaeologists Find Evidence of Hallucinogenic Drug in Ancient Rome / Hyperallergic
How the French lost their sex drive
Fighting the smartphone ‘invasion’: the French village that voted to ban scrolling in public / the Guardian
Hungry sea otters are helping save California’s marshlands from erosion by eating the crabs that threaten it /AP News