Heavy? Nah, Pretty Light.

I spend so much time with my head buried in a laptop looking for coolsh*t worthy art, and it turns out all I really needed to do was look up. Or, more accurately, I needed to bury my head in a laptop to see what other people saw when they looked up. Not much of an improvement actually, is it? However, it is a reminder that ol’ Mother Nature is a pretty decent artist herself, and she doesn’t even need to smoke roll-ups all day and bang on about her creative process in the way that most artists do, so that’s a bonus. This week, the aurora borealis – or Northern Lights, to the simpleton – was on full display over parts of Scotland, and the views were spectacular. Plus, imagining a Glaswegian saying ‘aurora borealis’ is a little funny, so that’s good too.

Edit: The day of writing this, the sky in London is thick with orange Saharan dust, reminding us that Mother Nature giveth but she also taketh away. She’s certainly temperamental enough to be an artist.

'Murica.

I’ve got a limousine joke, but never mind, it’s too long. Name something more American than a 100ft, white, Cadillac limousine covered in stars and stripes and complete with a helipad, golf course, and swimming pool – we’ll wait. In the States, bigger really is better – anyone who’s attempted to buy a regular bag of crisps and a medium soda can attest to that. The car was originally built in 1986 by Jay Ohrbeg, measuring up at a now measly 60-feet. However, for some reason, the car was abandoned in New Jersey and left to decay. It’s not exactly the best thing to pop to the shops in, to be fair. Now, it’s been restored to its former garish glory and then some, thanks to Michael Manning, the owner of the automotive teaching museum ‘Autoseum’. The new and improved ‘American Dream’ has reclaimed its place in the Guinness Book of World Records and will now be left to roam the streets of Orlando. In fairness, if there’s one place where this monstrosity won’t look out of place, it’s Florida. Doubt anyone will even notice it.

Lobe Story.

Remember that time Mike Tyson felt a bit peckish mid-fight and decided to nibble a bit of Evander Holyfield’s ear off? Or, if you’re under 30: remember hearing about that time Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield’s ear off? Granted, it was a quite some time ago when it happened, way back in the positively medieval 1990s, but I’m fairly certain biting people’s body parts off was frowned upon back then, too. Now, 25 years on, Iron Mike has decided to use his chequered, ear-biting past as a marketing opportunity, releasing ‘Mike Bites’, gummy marijuana sweets shaped like ears with a bite taken out of them. Damn. Wish I could monetize my crimes. Crimes? What crimes? I didn’t say crimes. Nothing to see here, officer. Besides, that cow wanted to be tipped. The real question, though, is whether Holyfield is getting a cut of this. If not, he might need a cannabis-infused gummy to help him chill out…

Nissin Nissan.

In case you didn’t know, Nissin is a noodle company – that’s why that title is hysterical. Laugh, damn you! Laugh! Whatever, suit yourself. Full disclosure: this story didn’t originally make the coolsh*t cut, but my podcast co-hosts insisted that a mini self-driving car that can deliver ramen without spilling them would have far greater utility than a rideable robot goat. And, in fairness, novelty aside, the goat was just a little meh (or should I say ‘meeeehhhhh’), and it wasn’t entirely clear what its uses would be beyond very slowly riding into battle with some dubstep playing (watch the video for that to make sense). You may be thinking that a noodle-delivering robot would be equally pointless, but, in reality, the ‘e-4ORCE Ramen Counter’ is a sneaky way for Nissan to demonstrate the e-4ORCE technology that will be used in their new cars, which will allow acceleration and deceleration with exceptional precision. No more spilled soup, no more craniums bashed into steering wheels. Neat way of highlighting what would probably sound like quite a dull, technical selling point of a product. Plus I think we’re all sick of car adverts that show some shirtless bloke riding a horse in the desert (or something equally nebulous and irrelevant) – at least this one actually has something to do with the car. Revolutionary.

Like a Really Old Virgin.

Once again, I feel compelled to mention that this story was not first choice for this week’s coolsh*t. But I’m nothing if not accommodating, and after some soul searching (plus a 2-to-1 vote on the podcast), I relented. So, here it is. Madonna in coolsh*t – because there’s nothing Gen Z love more than Madonna. You may have sensed just the faintest whiff of sarcasm in that previous statement, but it turns out it may actually be true – although Gen Z may not be aware of it. Madonna released a remix of her 1998 hit ‘Frozen’ with Canadian producer Sickick and Nigerian singer Fireboy DML, and it has gone dummy viral on TikTok. This is interesting because it’s demonstrative of the new ways in which a song blows up. TikTok users don’t care that it’s a Madonna song; to a lot of them, it’s just the noise of choice to play over the top of a video. And thanks to the mysterious workings of TikTok’s algorithm, that’s enough to make a song become enormous even when nobody knows the name of the song or who it’s by. Also, 13-year-olds on TikTok probably don’t have the same pre-existing opinions or prejudices about Madonna that, say, a 30-year-old hearing her new track on the radio might. So, Madonna lives on – still. At the end of days, all that will be left will be Madonna and the cockroaches. She will survive. Have that, Gloria Gaynor.

SELFHOOD Ukraine Appeal.

“I would never imagine that something like this could really happen in my life.” Pavlina from the SELFHOOD Collective, 26, Kyiv.

There have been some misjudged attempts to show support for Ukraine, but often even those sub-par acts of support come from a positively motivated place, as people generally want to help but the proper means of doing so aren’t entirely apparent, yielding some dodgy results. That’s exactly what we want to avoid. Naturally, there’s only so much we can do, and we won’t have the gall or naivety to overstate our contribution. However, it would have felt frankly wrong to not at least do something, so our sister company, SELFHOOD, has created some limited-edition t-shirts with all the profits going to The Red Cross DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. The t-shirts are available now in the link below, so if you do feel like buying one, by all means, and thank you – but if you’d rather donate directly to Red Cross, you can do so here.

The Coolsh*t Podcast - Ep. 3.

Well, there’s your lot – but it ain’t over yet. Check out this week’s coolsh*t podcast to hear how we separated the cool from the shit. Was Kawasaki’s rideable robot goat a tragic omission? You decide…