WELCOME TO THE·BY·PRODUCT. A WEEKLY RECAP OF WHAT IS GOING DOWN & WHAT IS COMING UP ON THE INTERNET. THE SUPER BOWL HAS COME AND GONE. THE RED TEAM WON, THE GREEN TEAM LOST. RHANNA CRUSHED IT AND MOST BRANDS MADE THE SAME COMMERCIAL ONE WAY OR ANOTHER.
THE WORLD LOST A GROUNDBREAKING EMCEE THIS WEEKEND IN TRUGOY THE DOVE, AKA DAVE. IN 1998 DE LA SOUL CHANGED THE GAME MORE THAN MOST. THEY CREATED A BRAND NEW SOUND IN WHAT THEY CALLED THE D.A.I.S.Y. AGE. FOR ME, WHAT IS MOST HEARTBREAKING IS THE TIMING, NOW THAT THEIR MUSIC IS SET TO RETURN TO THE AIR AND DAVE IS NOT HEAR TO EXPERIENCE IT.
THIS WEEK WE DANCE AROUND THE SUPER BOWL AND HIT UP SOME LINKS INTO HOW TO KNIT YOUR WAY TO A GOLD MEDAL, HYSTERIC GLAMOUR COMING BACK INTO FOCUS, A NEW PLUMBING BRAND, AND HOW STRATEGY IS MADE UP OF WORDS! GO FIGURE.
ON TO THE LINKS, AND AS ALWAYS SHARING IS CARING. SO PLEASE DO.
THIS WEEK’S HOT TAKE
Art Official Intelligence
COMPRESSED INTELLIGENCE
OpenAI’s chatbot offers paraphrases, whereas Google offers quotes. Which do we prefer? ChatGPT excels at creating outputs that are usually acceptable, however you’re still looking at a blurry jpeg, but the blurriness occurs in a way that doesn’t make the picture as a whole look less sharp. Check out this super interesting read over a cuppa coffee or tea / Via New Yorker
TALK TALK
“Am I afraid of death? Not that I know of, but I’m aware of it.” - John Gavin Malkovich. One of the most dynamic and prolific actors of our times sat down to talk with the talks. / Via The Talks
NOT COOL IS COOL
Cool brands de-stigmatizing ‘uncool’ categories are the next hot thing. Think about all those embarrassing products of the past, now wrap a DTC lens around them. Viola they are now cool. This is not your grandparents Selsun Blue / Via TikTok
EYE KNOW
Questlove dropped a very interesting thought on Instagram following the passive of Trugouy The Dove aka “Dave” of De La Soul. If you have been following the story, De La recently earned back the rights to their catalog of music.
It is deeply saddening to fans of the group know that Dave will not be able to witness this golden age of their music climbing back into the now streaming world. As a huge fan of the group for the past few decades it is interesting to see if we all as a collective can drive all six of their albums back into the top ten. / Via Instagram
THE COMEBACK
In “OMG,” the latest music video from the überfamous five-member K-pop group NewJeans, we see the girls sitting inside an ambulance wearing the new Hysteric Glamour x Kiko Kostadinov collection. They’ve been institutionalized because of broken hearts, and Hysteric Glamour (HYS for short) is the perfect brand for the plot. Their chunky oversized knits in shades of kelly green, sickly pink, and dark black are giving deranged, but make it cute. / Via SSENSE
KNIT WIT
Olympic Diver Tom Daley Says He Owes His Gold Medal to Knitting. Daley's poolside knitting was more than just adorable. Science shows hobbies kill stress and perfectionism and build resilience. How do you parse out your workflow? / Via Inc
DEEP DIVE
Determined to be the person in control of her career, Sydney Sweeney was plotting the launch of her own production company, through which she’d option books, adapt them for the screen, and become a Reese Witherspoon–level Hollywood boss. She was, by the way, 22. / Via Cosmopolitan
NOTHING IS REAL
A note from a longtime homie. Tom and I did some remarkable work together at Poke many years back, including some never NBDs that are still rad. Last week, many of you engaged in a video post Tom shared where I tested just how quickly I could us AI to generate a video's script, art and animation using only AI tools. If you haven’t seen the original post, head here to see what I created, plus a few musings on the output. Side note: I see you Tom copping my TM approach on LinkedIn :) Thanks for taking the time to document your take. / Via Tom Ajello
DISSOCIATING
A lot of brilliant women giving up on shouting and complaining, and instead taking on a darkly comic, deadpan tone when writing about their feminism. This approach presents overtly horrifying facts about uniquely feminine struggles and delivers them flatly, dripping with sarcasm.
Maybe it’s a curdling of the hyperoptimistic, #girlboss, “Run the World (Girls)” feminism of the aughts, characterized by an uneasy combination of plaintive begging and swaggering confidence that gender equality was just past the horizon line. / Via Buzzfeed
WORD UP
At the end of the day, strategy is the art of getting other people to do something. In the pursuit of that, narrative (call it ‘storytelling’ if you really must) is the strategist’s tool. Strategy is narrative.
Strategy explains the world, projecting forwards and imagining an interconnected sequence of events. It imagines a world in which there is agency, causality, and consequence. And in doing so strategy imagines a different future.
Strategy then, is an imaginative act. And narrative is how it thinks, expresses itself, and brings others along. Which is where words come in. / Via Martin Weigel
BIG GAME, BIG WIN
I did not watch the Super Bowl, nor did I watch the amazing Rihanna halftime show live, but rather on Youtube over my morning coffee. Important reference here. After surfing all the waves of posts about spots, game adjacent plays, etc. I found this one that I kinda really liked.
Super Mario Bros. Plumbing! We are brothers and yes, we are super. My little (but taller) brother, Luigi, and I were tired of dealing with spiky bosses, so we jumped at the opportunity to take on Brooklyn’s plumbing problems all by ourselves. Family-owned and operated, we aim to one-up the competition with our expert white-glove service. / Via Mario Bros.