[SIC] Day 463

Vol 4, No. 43 🔓

[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.

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[SIC] Day 463

Modern Politicking

• Burnt Hair and Soft Power: A Night Out With Evie Magazine / Wired

• Corollary: What Bari Weiss Can Learn from PBS. Really. / AEI

• Further corollary? Inside the Gay Tech Mafia / Wired

• Well at least You don’t need to panic about Moltbook. Here’s why / Quartz

• But, like, What do A.I. chatbots say to one another? / NYT

Mogul Moves

• Maybe… Wanna buy a Superbowl champion? / CNBC

• Buy-out corollary: Why are so many top designers taking mass market jobs? / Fashion Matter

• Because the market speaks truth?: ‘Comment sections are not customers’: American Eagle brings back Sydney Sweeney amid celebrity push / Digiday

Movie Markets

• Apropos: Fashion is in it’s try-hard era / Highsnobiety

• Hence, a pair from Piers: Wuthering Heights explosion [From Bloomingdale’s to H&M, Retailers Hop on ‘Wuthering Heights’ Movie Merch]/ THR

• And a reaction - “It’s difficult to reconcile a novel that explores the nuances of class, race and generational trauma with branded hand creams.” [the wild and worrying world of official Wuthering Heights merchandise]/ THR

• Nonetheless Charli XCX dropped her Wuthering Heights OST / Spotify

IPs FTW

• Apple goes all-in on Severance, turning its priciest, most Emmy‑nominated show into in‑house IP via Apple Studios / Deadline

• Apropos, from Piers: Filmmakers Need a Merch Table. As filmmakers revive physical media and direct sales, Video Store.Age helps them turn overlooked rights into cash / Indiewire

• Corollary: The Man Who Remixed Japan / Monocle

• While: Billy Idol Had It All, and Then He ‘Lit It With Butane’ / NYT

Misckies

• Speaking of flammable liquids: What’s the Shelf Life of Liquor? / Liquor.com

• More intoxicants: Inside the world’s largest psychedelic mushroom church / NPR

• Speaking of visuals: Vogue digs into painted pants / Vogue

• While, totally unrelated: The sharks have reached Antartica / Oceanographic Magazine

[SIC] Day 463