[SIC] 298: Jacuzzi Vacancy

Volume Six, Number Thirty Eighty, Round Two 🤦‍♂️

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This time: The [SIC] Weekly digest of pertinent developments, compiled and published free on Thursdays to 5944 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.

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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: The Trend Report / The Future Party / Blazer / After School / Who Do You Know / The New Statesman / Morning Brew / 1440 / Snaxshot / Feed Me / Palm Report / Beats and Bytes / Politico / Brendan’s Communication Miscellany

Contributors this week: Piers Fawkes, Celeste Blewitt, Iolanda Carvalho, Molly Raskin, Ian Michna, David Bloom, David Blue, and Andrea Hernandez.

Contributions are invited from everyone. Send ‘em.

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Hi from Montreal,

I’m at the C2 Montreal conference, which is a little like SXSW Interactive or the WSJ’s “Future of Everything” event, but for a (mostly) Canadian cohort. Smart people, interesting provocations, cool installations, that kind of thing. It’s my second time here and I have to say, might have to make it an annual pilgrimage. Montreal is a great vibe, and the strong American dollar is a boon.

No [SIC] Talks this week because i’m on the road, but i’ll be back next week with a conversation with Sara Fischer from Axios, and I’ll make an appearance on Day One FM sometime next week too - talking [SIC], superformats and NYC then vs. now, among many other things. Will put something out when it drops. Speaking of that Superformat Piece, My theory got cited in Internet 2025: The Future Isn’t Far Out , which was cool - with my name attached this time.

In lieu of me talking to you this week, a couple pods I dug: Krishnacore figurehead and all-around fascinating dude Ray of Today was on How Long Gone yesterday. Great ep. And [SIC] homie David Marx was on Throwing Fits during a brief NYC stopover. Also great.

Speaking of [SIC] homies: Sam Valenti’s lifelong endeavor got spotlighted in Ghostly at 25: Key moments from the label’s first quarter century over at The Fader. Recommended.

Also recommended, from Ian from Jenkem : “If you’re round this Sunday! 35mm disposable camera photo show / party. 21+. Free booze. Maybe some food. One potential stunt. Bring a friend. 5-8pm.” Sadly I am not round on Sunday, but you should go if you’re in NYC over the long weekend. Invite here.

And now, the links.

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[SIC] 298: Jacuzzi Vacancy

The Macro Narrative

• Group chats rule the world / Twitter

• Especially in?: America's freelance capitals: Metro areas with the highest estimated freelancer earnings/ Axios

• Apropos: How Florida and Texas became the Wall Street of the south / Quartz

• Corollary: Crypto Never Dies / Monologue

• Also not yet dead: Robert Kennedy Jr. said he had invested $24,000 in shares of GameStop to show support for meme-stock traders / CNBC

• Just in time for Harps to be headed to the emoji dictionary / Unicode

• Related: Eight in 10 Americans have been stumped by emoji use / Axios

• RFK Jr has also pointedly decided to associate himself with Russell Brand. That is a political mistake / The New Statesman

• Elsewhere in politics: Argentine cultural workers feel the pain of president Milei’s cuts / The Art Newspaper

• Hundreds gathered in the center of Montreal to push for increased government funding for arts and culture / Hyperallergic

• Unrelated: Ready to explore a new high? Kanna is a Legal Plant Medicine You Can Snort / Rave New World

• While a major study found that weed use among teenagers was lower in states where the drug was legal/ NYT

• Related: there is a Zyn shortage in several states / Bloomberg

• And Hims & Hers is offering injections that mimic Ozempic for 20% the cost / Semafor

• Andrea’s take on that one: Brozempic, just in time for summer, is only $199 / Snaxshot

• Speaking of Bro-manteaus, from Molly: ‘Bromakase’ Is the New Steakhouse / NYT

• So… Meet the HIFIs: Their Obsession With Luxury Will Tank Them / Business Insider

• Hence? The workday lunch is losing its appeal. Consumers are saving that cash for the weekend / Quartz

• Corollary: Hamptonites Are Losing It Over the Congestion Pricing Program / Vanity Fair

• Also just in time for summer: Tote Shorts are great/ Good Threads by Mandai

• Less great? The Black Lives Matter era is over. It taught us the limits of diversity for diversity’s sake. What survives is a movement that’s achieving real change / The Guardian

• Genre is Dying (and that's a good thing) / Youtube

• From Molly: Looking to the Past for Early Meanings of Nostalgia /NYT

• In defense of breasts: A review of Sarah Thornton’s “Tits Up,” a book about how boobs are put to work / The New Yorker

• From Molly: I Know Where You Were Last Night / Bustle

• Apropos of where I was last night, from Piers: “Altho i like panels for the snapshot of diverse thought….but conferences don’t invest enough time in excellent moderators - that’s a biggy” [The Panel Discussion Edition] / WITI

Generationations

• It’s been harder for people with fresh diplomas to get jobs this spring, as entry-level hiring is projected to fall by 5.8% in 2024 / Bloomberg

• And Zillennials are Quitting Jobs That Aren’t Eco-Friendly /Fortune

• Harbinger of the Rise of the English Major? Blackrock CEO wants Liberal Arts Analysts that Have Nothing to Do with Finance or Technoloy / Fortune

• So … From Molly: What Do Students at Elite Colleges Really Want? / NYT

• “‘I Don’t Want to Save Penn’: Alumni Break Over University’s Future” / Bloomberg

• Related: Stupidity: A Reading List You get smarter by studying foolishness—so here's how [Ted Gioia would] teach a 12-week course on stupidity / An Honest Broker

Platformations

• From Molly:  When TikTok therapy is more lucrative than seeing clients / Vox

• Also from Molly: Gen Z is Doing Therapy Differently. Is It Working? / Highsnobiety

• While from Iolanda: “Any revision of Google’s search engine is consequential. [Google is about to Changle the Whole Internet] / NYMag

• Related, also from Iolanda:  "But with Google making significant changes to its search experience… publishers are on edge over whether their search traffic (and thus the “main converter” of subscriptions) can no longer be relied on”/ The Media Leader

Stylistics

• The Secretive World of Auctioning the Clothes of Aristocrats and Stars / Back Row

• Related: ‘Rare, vintage, Y2K’: Online thrifters are flipping fast fashion. How long can it last? / Vogue Business

• How Scandi ‘twinfluencers’ launched a €2.5 million It-brand / Vogue Business

• Welcome to The Age of the Cult Designer / Show Notes

• But Have sample sales turned ‘vicious’? / Vogue Business

• Also animalistic: Diplo’s Jamaican jungle paradise is about as wild as you might imagine… / YT

• And Speaking of wild: Hodinkee Built a $100 Million Watch Empire. Then the Market Tanked. / WSJ

• While Coi Leray Partners With Foot Locker For “Start With Sneakers” Adidas Campaign / Vibe

• Rimowa celebrates sturdiness / The Drum

• And collabs with ALD / Aime Leon Dore

• Also travel centric? The EVA Sandal is the Shoe of the Summer / Fast Company

Culturations

• Minimalism may be out and surrealism is in / NYT

• While from Molly: Tennis Explains Everything / The Atlantic

• From David Blue: “Subject Matter Experts Mix. Music for lower tempo gatherings / activities / Soundcloud

• In contrast, from Molly: Charli XCX: The Anatomy Of A (3-D) Female Pop Star / Rolling Stone

• More ‘modernity’: The Night That Sotheby’s Was Crypto-Punked / NYT

• From Celeste: “A true tale of money and power.”.[Gina Rinehart Tried To Hide Her Portrait. It Went Global Instead] / The Guardian

• Speaking of “It Girls,” from Molly: Design Popularized by Internet ‘It’ Girls Gets a Pop-up / NYT

• But when it comes to sculpture, Brancusi Makes the Modern World Look Stale / The Art World

• Another blast from the past: The Engrossing Darkness of The Crow / The Atlantic

• Marvel announced that, moving forward, its movies and shows would no longer be connected in a way that required you to watch everything/ The Future Party

• HVW8 Gallery’s City of Quartz 2' Examines the Shifting Zeitgeist of Los Angeles/ Hypebeast

• Ramdane Touhami on Why He Will Never Slow Down / Time Sensitive

• From Molly: The Siblings Who Changed How We Party/NYT

• Elsewhere in reformed partiers: Perfectly Imperfect: DANNY BROWN / Perfectly Imperfect

• Unrelated but also cool: Primavera has named a stage after Steve Albini / Stereogum

• And there are Residencies, grants, open calls, and jobs for artists, writers, and art workers, from The Bennett Prize, Ucross, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, & more / Hyperallergic

Technopolis

• AI is eating the Web / Axios

• Or, said differently: It’s zombifying the internet / The Guardian

• Apropos: OpenAI Just Gave Away the Entire Game. The Scarlett Johansson debacle is a microcosm of AI’s raw deal/The Atlantic

• But AI Music Platforms Don’t Really Get What They Are Yet / Garbage Day

• Hence? Faux ScarJo and the Descent of the A.I. Vultures/ The New Yorker

• But The Future of AI Voice Assistants Will Be Weird. It’s far more interesting than a reference to Her / The Atlantic

• For Instance? The first Neuralink user says he’s “constantly multitasking.” / Wired

• And Gen AI outperformed humans on theory-of-mind tests / Semafor

• Yet, yet: Google’s AI search is telling car drivers to consider changing their blinker fluid / Quartz

• And the maker of the deeply unloved “AI Pin” is seeking a buyer / The Verge

• So… Does AI have a gross margin problem? / Mostly Metrics

• We’ll soon see: Microsoft announced new products and features, including laptops with built-in AI hardware / Quartz

• But, From Celeste: Can Artificial Intelligence make The PC Cool Again? / NYT

Media-tions

• From David Bloom: “It probably doesn’t need to be belabored, but the most-watched streaming video service in the United States, and many other places, is YouTube, not Netflix, or anyone else... It’s the search and discovery engine for music,  massively popular programming and much else. The Upfront advertising presentations last week seem almost beside the point from all the legacy networks, Netflix, Amazon and others” / WSJ

• Releated, from Celeste: “This is such a multi-layered conversation… wrestling and basketball being the leaders on social media [and] motor sports … with the help of Netflix” [What Will It Take To Get Gen Z Watching Sport?] / FT

• Hence: Cannes is very much paying attention to FAST services since data shows that movies and movie channels drive immense viewership/ Deadline

• While Microsoft plans to debut the next Call of Duty online / The Future Party

• Elsewhere: BuzzFeed has a new activist investor…Vivek Ramaswamy? / The Hollywood Reporter

• While to retain and grow subs, The New Yorker is sending newsletters less frequently and giving paid subscribers early access to content/ Digiday

• And Vox has some announcements for their 10-year anniversary / Vox

• Simultaneously Fashion Magazines Keep Launching Hong Kong Editions / BoF

• And Nylon and Complex are bringing back print, but see more opportunity than just pure ad revenue/ Digiday

• Ergo: Condé Nast, Forbes, The Atlantic, The Guardian and The Independent on key revenue trends / Digiday

• As clicks dry up for news sites, could Apple News be a lifeline? / Semafor

• The long, slow death of the newspaper editorial / Nieman Lab

• Corollary: Index Archive. the Harper’s Index over time / Harpers

Market / Influence

• From Molly: The booming business of eternal youth / Axios

• Tho.. from Celeste: The Bridgerton Effect May Be Wearing Off / BBC

• Two from Iolanda: The Brand... "Coca-Cola: The future is ‘AI meets human ingenuity’" / Marketing Week

• And “This also quite interesting: "Marketers are often taught there are two ways to orient your business: product and market. But creator-backed brands like Prime are finding a third way: audience-orientation" / Marketing Week

• Related: [SIC] homie Rei Inamoto on How to Revive a Brand. Every brand has an expiration date. How do they revive? [Part I of II]/ Sociology of Business

• Apropos of that: The Evolution of the Beloved Boutique Hotel / Fifty Grande

• More evolution: MSCHF just dropped a twisty, Samba-like soccer sneaker / GQ

• While Sonos Debuts Much-Anticipated Headphones with Sonos Ace / Digital Music News

• And A24 will partner with Mack to bring its iconic books to global retail stores / Variety

• Economist Tyler Cowen’s *GOAT* is now a free audiobook / Marginal Revolution

• Elsewhere: Jackson Wang, Jay Chou: Is the C-pop opportunity global? / Jing Daily

• Why many luxury brands are declining in China / Jing Daily

• Counterfeit Goes Cool: Brands Urged to Embrace #Dupe / BoF

• Is fashion finally ready to cut overproduction? / Vogue Business

• Jeremy Renner runs again in first global Brooks campaign in 25 years / The Drum

• Bark Air, a dog-focused airline, to take first flight today / CBS News

• This new gay bar in Hell’s Kitchen has the scariest website in the world / It’s Him

Eats, Drinks and Ephemera

• Two from Andrea: “It’s so fascinating to see how in food media, the new stuff is truly brand led. Ex.: Blackbird’s show [Take Me To Your Spot] that Gymnasium is producing” / The Supersonic

• …And This Brand makes so [much] great video content. Its [Monte’s Sauce] literally a pasta sauce / IG

• Here’s a content series idea: Is non-alcoholic beer a good sports drink? / GQ

• Nestle is launching a new frozen-food brand marketed toward Ozempic and Wegovy users / CNBC

• ‘Whole Paycheck’ no more? Whole Foods is ramping up value messaging / Retail Dive

• Now Wendy’s has a $3 meal deal / Quartz

The Natural (?!) World

• Banishing Rats Turned Tromelin Island Into a Seabird Paradise / Reasons to be Cheerful

• While Zoo and aquarium visits influence people to change behaviour and be more sustainable / Biaza

• Apropos of that: Thinking of going vegetarian? Read this guide / NYT

• Is biodegradable plastic really a thing? Yes, but it isn’t a perfect solution / NYT

• Also not perfect: The misleading, wasteful way we measure gas mileage / Vox

• Finally: What is pink noise, and can it improve sleep? / AP

[SIC] 298: Jacuzzi Vacancy

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