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[SIC] Day is a daily selection of 20x signals from my media landscape, grouped to illustrate potential patterns in the zeitgeist, and offered exclusively to paying subscribers of [SIC]. Thank you for your paid support!
[SIC] Day 461
Interpersonal Dynamics
Apropos: Love Can Look Like Anything, Even Marriage. Comedian and writer Josh Gondelman on choosing a “structurally vanilla” life / Playboy
At Ease, Gentlemen. Dressing Up Without Fear / The Contender
Style corollary: Vogue’s New Guard Is Fighting for Its Life / The New Garde
Apropos?! The Role of Storytelling / Unorthodox Blend
Mostly unrelated: When “Losing My Edge” Met “What’s He Building in There” / Provoke
Tho: And in the juxtapositions may lie the meaning / The Future Does Not Fit in the Containers of the Past
Strange combination
Emmanuelle Morelli explores the generated surreal to expose a latent reality / Linkedin
Also searching for and finding meaning: 75 Witty Custom License Plates currently available in New York State / Molly Young
But, like, I don’t know about these fancy bathhouses, man / Highsnobiety
Economy-ing
The World Should Closely Watch Japan’s Reflationary Push / News Items
Also watching: Public trust in advertising hits five-year high as ‘enjoyment of ads’ is key driver. Contributing to mistrust were bombardment and suspicious or misleading ads / Campaign
And yet… America’s Annoyance Economy is growing / The Atlantic
The Arts
Also fancy: Cooper Hewitt Turns It Up to Eleven/ Wall Power
Meta, man. Herb Sundays 176: Sam Valenti IV. Selections chosen for playback at Cooper-Hewitt museum, Feb 10 2026 / Herb Sundays
Apropos: Artists, to Better Inhabit the World? Moving beyond the logic of “always more,” to open up other ways of feeling / In Bed With Social
Also playing it back: J.Cole is selling CDs out his old Honda Civic / Tapped In
And they’re Reviving The Dream of Physical Media at Night Owl in Williamsburg / BK Mag
More artists, inhabiting: Actor-style headshots from the 80s of artists like Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer, and Robert Longo / Ironic Sans
[SIC] Day 461
In reading this newsletter over the past month, the only pattern I've noticed is that somehow, everyone you link to in media is bored and hates everything remotely cool and fun for the sake of adding another thinkpiece to the pyre. We have more access to a wider variety of culture and media than ever throughout history, and these assholes are bored and whining about what their boredom means. [SIC] reflects early Vice in that way: like alt weeklies but with all insults and none of the community and civic-mindedness.
Maybe that's what I dislike about this collection of links: it's by cynical haters who don't make anything new, for cynical haters who don't make anything new. There is a very different cultural internet out there once you navigate away from the complainers.
and as the former editor of the Seattle Stranger once sang: If you're bored, then you're boring.
Great image though. I bet that woman can hang.