Flipping Mental.

We’ve mentioned this lot before, but I will quite simply never tire of watching these cold, metal abominations flouncing around without a care in the world. For emotionless robots, they do swan about with a rather gay abandon. Perhaps that’s just the natural gait of a machine that knows full well it’s probably only a few short years away from rising up against and extirpating its malevolent human overlords. The last time we saw the Atlas robots from Boston Dynamics, they were dancing to a BTS song – which, while quite fun, isn’t terribly useful. And it appears that the reason they were dancing was to distract the viewer from the fact that they didn’t yet have functioning implements that could be used for grasping objects. Well, not anymore. As if these humanoids weren’t frightening enough, they’ve now been equipped with what George Orwell described as “the instrument with which man does all his mischief”: the hand. So now the Atlas robots can help out with, say, basic construction work or, say, crushing the larynx of a rival. They also do flips too – ‘cos why not.

Spare Ribbings.

Nothing to see here, just the Prince and Princess of Wales in bed tucking into a nice fish sandwich. But there’s a twist. That isn’t actually fish, it’s vegan fish. But wait, there’s another twist. That isn’t actually the Prince and Princess of Wales, it’s a couple of lookalikes. Please, contain your gasps. The knock-off ‘Will and Kate’, as their PR teams so desperately try to have them be known as to show that they’re ‘just like you and me’, were shot by award-winning photographer Alison Jackson as part of Bird’s Eye’s ‘Veganuary Reimagined’ campaign, which was urging consumers to swap animal meat for plant meat this month. And to be fair to Bird’s Eye, if you were going to substitute any type of meat product for a plant-based alternative, frozen chicken nuggets wouldn’t be a bad shout – they’re mainly beak and arsehole anyway. It was however an interesting artistic choice to make the phoney Prince look quite so disgusted in the photo – although presumably that wasn’t due to the food but rather because he had just got to the point in ‘Spare’ where his brother was talking about his frostbitten phallus and his dead mother’s favourite ointment.

Family AI.

Have you ever wondered what Family Guy would look like if it were a live-action, 1980s sitcom? No, of course you haven’t. In all likelihood, there are literally about 7 people on the planet who have ever had such a notion come careening into consciousness. But thanks to the magic of AI, it now only requires one of those people to have access to some software to make that fiction into a reality – or at least a fictional reality (or a real fiction?). Meta. This YouTube video shows us just how a live-action Family Guy would look – which is, as it turns out, absolutely terrifying. Although I’m fairly sure live-action Stewie is just Nicola Sturgeon in a pair of dungarees. I always knew there was something fishy about her.

Lobely Stuff.

A collaboration between a team of doctors and US-based regenerative medicine company 3DBio Therapeutics has seen the first successful implant of a 3D-printed ear made from human cells into a living patient. Granted, this isn’t quite a 3D-printed heart transplant, but it’s a start. Plus, if your heart was fine but you didn’t have an ear, this would probably be far more important to you anyway. The ersatz ear was printed from human cells, marking a major step toward widespread artificial tissue implants and tissue engineering. And if you think it looks like a bit of a strange ear in the picture, bear in mind that this is the first one they’ve managed – they’ll probably get better at it with a bit of practice.

High Guffaw.

For the record, I appreciate that ‘couture’ to ‘guffaw’ is a bit of a stretch. However, speaking of stretching the limits of what’s possible: KidSuper is an excellent example of someone who has been able to achieve success in spite of immense and unfair disadvantages that were out of his control – specifically, being named ‘Colm’. But clearly having such a funny name has blessed Colm with an excellent sense of humour, because his new A/W collection is quite literally a joke. This week the New York-based designer shocked Paris Fashion Week by launching the collection, titled ‘Funny Business’, by eschewing conventionality in favour of a stand-up comedy show featuring some of America’s foremost comics wearing his clobber… and Tyra Banks, for some reason. Considering the fashion community aren’t exactly known for having a laugh and a lot of the comedians in the line-up pride themselves on their willingness to say some genuinely unpleasant things, I sincerely hope there was some serious pearl clutching taking place. Plus Stavros Halkias was one of the models, and who wouldn’t want to wear something co-signed by this majestic creature?

Another One Bites the Dust.

If you feel like there’s been a lot of AI in this week’s coolsh*t, you’re right – but that’s because it’s fecking everywhere now. Plus, fairly soon coolsh*t will be written by ChatGPT anyway, so consider this the start of a peaceful transfer of power. As Elon Musk argues: we need to merge with AI, otherwise AI will defeat us. This line of thinking also seems to be echoed in his running of Twitter: we need to merge with the alt-right, otherwise the alt-right will defeat us – although that feels a trifle more contestable. So, we’re thinking of making this into a bit of a series; each week we’ll highlight a different white-collar profession that will soon be rendered redundant. This week… it’s lawyers! A “robot” lawyer powered by artificial intelligence will be the first of its kind to help a defendant fight a traffic ticket in court next month. Joshua Browder, CEO of DoNotPay, said the company’s AI-creation runs on a smartphone, listens to court arguments, formulates responses for the defendant, and tells them what to say in real-time. Tough luck, human lawyers. Oh well. I’m sure you can find some other profession to go through 7 years of training in…

The Coolsh*t Podcast - Ep. 36.

Manifestations and con-artists: a match made in heaven.