SHAPE Missive, Post Spring Break Edition

I was too proud of the fact that I squeezed out an email the week of spring break—turns out it’s the week back that’s tougher. I’d prepped things for work well enough that I was able to disconnect, but catching up was rough. Do you have any hot-tips on how to take time off of work without losing your mind? Right now, mine include, “Don’t run a two-day workshop the week you get back.” Bad call, past-Dave.

The Washington Post published a fantastic story about vinyl record production. And if you just want to just see a bunch of stunning plastic colors get sandwiched together, Waxwork Records’ reels have you covered. Extruded, speckled, extruded and speckled and clear, Barbie…

Mono-Drift is a… piece of art? Interactive fiction? Digital narrative puzzle-box? I love this because, even if an individual or group used AI tools to help create it, it doesn’t FEEL like AI. And by that, I mean that it feels like it started with a concept, has distinct point of view, and has been meaningfully written (or heavily and intentionally edited after generation). Or, in other words, “The art of the novel doesn’t lie in the combine-harvesting of details and plotlines. It lies in how a writer selectively filters some of them through her own consciousness—her deliberations, the sum of her life, the din of her thoughts—to devise something altogether different and more profound.”

The next few years are going to be an absolutely AI hellscape—here’s a service that’ll generate ‘natural’ product placement for you across Reddit, where a certain segment of Extremely Online People had turned en mass once Google’s revenue-engine-fication of search was complete¹ . It seems like it’s going to be more and more important to pay A Real Person to actively create The Thing you want online, whether that’s a product recommendation or journalism or travel advice or even recipes. This could be good for individuals with a Patreon or Kickstarter (or an onlyfan but for linkedin influencers² ), but I think this is where a bunch of the big legacy media players that have been trying to pivot their revenue streams over the past ~12 years have a window to entrench paywalled digital authority. Shelling out for general information you can quasi-mindlessly trust is now worth more than the cost of navigating search results and online communities full of convincing, generative nonsense (or worse). But what does this mean for folks unable or unwilling to buy into these general knowledge spaces? And how does free content get weaponized by bad agents? All this and more, in our future.

Anyway.

Vintage bus passes from Milwaukee.

Vintage train tickets from Japan.

Very vintage firework catalogue from Japan.

Headspace brand refresh looks sharp.

Butt Studio and Alastair Strong Studio, cheeky variations on a theme.

I really, really like Kristi Cavataro’s art, and I love that she seemingly doesn’t have an online presence. A website with a single image? A PDF? No social media handles? Incredible.

I hope this email finds you,
Dave

1  If you like quotes like “a computer scientist class traitor that sided with the management consultancy sect” or “McKinsey is to the middle class what flesh-eating bacteria is to healthy tissue,” you’re going to love this article.

2  🤮