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| The Launch of the MAEKAN Shop
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Today Eugene discusses the upcoming launch of the MAEKAN Shop and what it means.
For the last few months, we've been working quietly behind the scenes to launch a shop. In a world surrounded by commerce, it doesn't seem like a huge achievement, but I couldn't be more proud of the team, namely Charis and Nate. The age of Shopify and dropshipping has made setting up a viable business a few simple clicks, and we finally had a vision to do things that reflected how we wanted products to be reflected in the world of MAKEAN.
For Alex and I, we're no strangers to consumerism and product but we're every wary; we built much of our career talking about sneakers and streetwear day-in, day-out. After enough days, we felt a pervading emptiness around the posts we churned out as most items failed to answer the fundamental question of why it needed to exist. For most products that did try to answer, a lot seemed to not really be that deep. It left us thinking: at what point does a product deserve your attention if the person conceiving it couldn't think of a sufficiently good reason for it to exist?
We think we've since found a couple good reasons. We're not setting out to massively disrupt the game with a series of ultra-innovative products you've never seen before, but we can sit back and reflect on its honesty in the message we wish to communicate, and the role it plays in supporting an independent publisher where maintaining editorial freedom would always be a challenge financially. To that end, you could say that the shop is another tool in continuing to achieve that goal while rendering tangible the support of our readers.
The MAEKAN Shop launches later this week with a collaboration involving DSPTCH, candles with WOODCO, a few T-shirts, and a disposable camera featuring unique exposed film from Psychedelic Blues. Patrons can be on the lookout for the Patreon post that will grant them a shop-opening discount as well as a permanent 10% discount on all future sales (and a special item only they have access to).
- Eugene
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The Bulletin
Hear and read the latest from MAEKAN and the community. |
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The Woke Shop — A Conversation with Josh Parker and Darrell Camara
Josh Parker and Darrell Camara talk about Josh's new initiative The Woke Shop, which aims to raise money for worthy causes through consumer products.
“Neither of us are here to see how much money we can make. There are bigger issues that we’re addressing and as long as we can help subside them in any kind of way, why wouldn’t we?”
- Darrell Camara
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Making It Up 176: 'It's O.K. not to be O.K.’ and the inner ring of the internet
Charis and Eugene talk about Naomi Osaka’s essay in TIME magazine that elaborates on her relationship to the press and the subject of the mental health of athletes. They also discuss an article about “the inner ring” of the internet and how that affects the creative work you do.
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| For Your A-10-tion |
The best links from across the Internet.
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1. 🎥 Cinematographer Christopher Doyle on his 40-years in cinema
The iconic Hong Kong cinematographer, best known for his longstanding partnership with Wong Kar Wai, talks his craft ahead that began with a childhood in Australia and the job as a sailor that brought him to Hong Kong in 1971. The interview comes ahead of "Like The Wind," a documentary about his life and career and translated from his Chinese name.
2. 🍲 How DTC brands specializing in the millennial aesthetic keep the dream and company alive
Despite losing all of its (only) six full-time employees, Great Jones continues to profit thanks to its effective continuation of the millennial aesthetic it first sold customers on when it started. Despite all of this, Great Jones is part of a broader moment in the DTC world where many brands are facing internal challenges surrounding the way they manage their businesses, as shown in a recent deep dive courtesy of Business Insider (paywall).
3. 🎶 Watch: An Ode to Parisian Afrodance Culture
Sy-fer by Killian Lassablière is an exploration of the Parisian afrodance movement and community told through a dynamic freeflow of energy between different groups of performers.
4. ☹️ Backlash for Anthony Bourdain's deepfaked voice in documentary
In “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain,” a documentary about the late food icon, director Morgan Neville used less than 60 seconds of AI-generated audio track using Bourdain's voice. That was 60 seconds too many for film critics and documentary filmmakers alike, among others, who believe an ethical line was crossed by both using his voice and not informing viewers of such. Despite his widow saying she never agreed to its use, Neville spoke to GQ on the process:
“We fed more than ten hours of Tony’s voice into an AI model. The bigger the quantity, the better the result. We worked with four companies before settling on the best. We also had to figure out the best tone of Tony’s voice: His speaking voice versus his “narrator” voice, which itself changed dramatically of over the years. The narrator voice got very performative and sing-songy in the “No Reservation” years. I checked, you know, with his widow and his literary executor, just to make sure people were cool with that. And they were like, Tony would have been cool with that. I wasn’t putting words into his mouth. I was just trying to make them come alive.”
5. 🎮 Riot games releases a streamer-friendly chill album that's immune to copyright strikes
Game developer Riot collaborated with 20 different artists for the 37-track album titled: "Sessions: Vi." Named after one of its League of Legends characters, Vi, the album recalls similar hour plus-long chill tracks on YouTube that are accompanied by simple, often looping animations. However, Toa Dunn, head of Riot Music explains that the entire Sessions project is streamer-friendly, meaning it will be immune to DMCA copyright strikes.
“We think this is another way to help build community. With how music and the complexities of the internet and all that stuff works. How can we make it easier to be a streamer, or how can we make it easier to be a lo-fi jazz producer, or listener. Like how can we make those easy and fun. And this is solving all those problems in a really fun and creative way.”
6. ⚽ England reckons with football racism after the team loses European Championship
The social media-dominant racism in question focuses on Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, three Black players who each missed penalty kicks, which ended in a victory for Italy. The backlash has dampened the otherwise uplifting and unifying fervor the country has experienced in its road towards Euro 2020 and a shot at victory for the first time since their 1966 World Cup win.
7. 👖 A look back on Superfuture, one of the early pioneers of the street fashion forum.
Founded in 1999 by Wayne Berkowitz as a source of hip travel guides, the popular destination subsequently added forums and became a means of crowdsourcing travel recommendations. One part that surfaced amongst all of this was a space to talk about street fashion anonymously before "fuck boys" were a thing. Geoffrey Mak writes of communities like Superfuture:
"Popular in the mid ’00s, these communities exhibited the beginnings of what we now consider hallmark features of online life: trolls, cults of personality, the redistribution of encyclopedic knowledge, and the collapse of traditional taste-making institutions. They certainly weren’t the origin of any of these phenomena, but they stood at the concentric center of the very currents of commerce, celebrity, and aesthetics that would come to define our present reality."
8. ©️ An Instagram account that calls out furniture design ripoffs.
The anonymous Instagram account @DesignWithinCopy regularly posts comparesfurniture designs and the originals they are accused of ripping off. Although accounts like insta_repeat that seek to point out the lack of originality in the photography realm, DesignWithinCopy seeks to do that for design but also calls out specific designer-to-designer or studio-to-studio incidents while exposing the complex relationship between inspiration, theft, and originality. As Fred Nicolaus writes:
"The point is not so much that @DesignWithinCopy is riddled with transparently false claims—it’s not. But the account flattens a variety of complicated situations into easily digestible nuggets of outrage. Some feel like slam dunks. Others are more nebulous, and raise questions about the difference between copying and inspiration, how much attribution should be required for historical references, and the ephemeral nature of creative inspiration. Despite the grab-bag nature of the accusations, ultimately, all are painted with the same uniquely online version of public shame."
9. 🧫 Sea Snot has enveloped the coast off Istanbul and oceanographers don't know why
Scientifically known as “marine mucilage,” sea snot is produced when microalgae called diatoms secrete polysaccharides (starches) that in turn make the water gummy. While typically present in water, albeit invisibly, the explosion in the number of these microalgae has meant enough of the substance to be visible and coat the coast off Istanbul in Turkey. Uta Passow, an oceanographer at Canada’s Memorial University, says a combination of warmer temperatures and an influx of nutrients could be contributors to the extreme event.
10. 🐻 A history of Chinese animal-based medicine
In a review of Liz P.Y. Chee's “Mao’s Bestiary,” Rachel Love Nuwer traces Chee's research into the long history of Chinese medicine's use of animals and their parts. Most poignantly, she uncovers why consumption of that medicine is far more rooted in profit, industry and politics as it is tradition and history.
The genius of industrial designer and artist Yi Chengtao
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