Your Face or Mine?

Strikes are all the rage at the minute. And it is incredibly important that we support all our brave doctors, nurses, teachers, extras on The Big Bang Theory, and tube drivers earning an apparently insufficient £60,000 a year.

Turning our attention to one of the more contemptible components of that list: actors. The SAG are currently on the picket line in the US, showing solidarity and posing for photos – they are not mutually exclusive! – and one of the gripes of the group concerns the supposed existential threat posed by AI. We’re no strangers to prematurely lamenting the robot-fuelled extirpation of the species, so we should be all over this. But there isn’t complete unanimity amongst actors, with some celebrities now embracing AI-generated deepfakes.

Jamie Yeo, a Singaporean actress, has just agreed a historic deal with financial technology firm Hugosave which allows them to use a digitally manipulated likeness of her to sell their content. All she needs to do is spend a couple hours in front of a green screen, a couple more in a recording studio, and then the programme synchronises the images with the audio to create a digital alter-ego capable of saying and doing almost anything. Work smarter, not harder. And I for one don’t foresee any way this technology could be misused.

Amsterdamage Limitation.

Why be famous when you can be infamous? I had to really fight the urge to write binfamous then. You’ll find out why in few stories’ time.

If you’re unaware of the mythology surrounding Hans Brinker, it was once declared to be “the worst hotel in the world”. Understandably, it is currently undergoing a brand overhaul with a new corporate identity, website and accompanying campaign. But they aren’t trying to escape their pasts like the various Hans’ who emigrated to Argentina in the mid-20^th century. They’re leaning into it. Because if you can’t beat them, join them and their stolen llamas. The hostel dwellers that is, not the Argentinians.

So if you’re planning on visiting Amsterdam for the art, culture, and… dunno… tulips, maybe give the Hans Brinker a swerve. But if you’re going to partake in any of the other activities the city is known for, this may be just the Chthonian cathedral of Dionysian debauchery for you.

The Amsterdam Tourism Board – who have recently gone to great lengths to discourage people from visiting their city for a jolly – must be livid. Oh well, more llamas for the rest of us.  

Swift Solutions.

The Federal Reserve – that Wilsonian red rag to a bullshitter right-wing political commentator – have revealed that Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour is considerably boosting the US economy. And perhaps the oft-maligned theory of trickle-down economics has some truth to it, as it has been estimated that the tour could add $5billion to the global economy.

Speaking of trickling down, this follows the revelation a couple weeks ago that many Taylor Swift fans have been wearing adult diapers to her shows to avoid missing a single second. And not only is that apparently a perfectly acceptable thing to do in certain circles, but it is also perfectly acceptable to share with the internet. Maybe AI should kill us all. But if adults wilfully soiling themselves is the price we have to pay to lower interests rates, then so be it. Piss away, you revolting heroes.

Obviously we don’t have a Taylor Swift equivalent here in the UK, but fortunately Barry from Eastenders has agreed to do a limited run of Barryoke shows across the South East so we can chip in.

May Include Nuts.

If it’s alright with you, we’d like to take this opportunity to reflect on the plights of a group that have been persecuted for far too long. We are of course talking about nudists. You know, those people who feel that their privates ought to be publics. But for whatever reason some members of civil society take issue with such a notion. Bloody puritans.

At long last, someone has thrown the nudists a bone. We said bone. To celebrate National Nude Day, Bear Naked granola have partnered with Gaia GPS to launch the first nude friendly hiking trail system. Because when climbing a mountain, you want to feel the wind in your hair. All your hair.

Nude hikers can use the Gaia GPS app to review over 300 trails and determine whether they are friendly to the naked wanderer. I’d be interested in seeing some of the negative reviews. “The good news is that I’ve done 12,000 steps today. The bad news is that I’m going to prison. 2 stars.”

Cream of the Crop.

If you listened to the coolsh*t podcast a couple weeks ago, you will have heard an incredibly insightful discussion about a recent series of ads for the Google Pixel Pro 7, with each execution highlighting a different element of the Pixel’s supposed superiority to the iPhone. And the ads would have been incredibly compelling, if only if it were not for the minor issue that nobody with a jot of taste is even remotely willing to switch to a Pixel Pro.

This is really a demonstration of the importance of long-term brand-building, which for Apple has arguably always come lexically prior to concerns around optimal functionality. Apple products just have a certain je ne sais quoi that rival brands lack. Case in point: an advert showing a farmer transporting a giant pumpkin while listening to Ludacris’ ‘Two Miles an Hour’.

Shouldn’t work, but it does. And it doesn’t feel as try-hard as a minute and a half-long sales pitch spiel extolling a plethora of product benefits. Because you don’t have to try that hard when you’re the GOAT.

Bingenious.

I feel I ought to binform you that I bintend to do as many bin puns as possible in the next 150 words or so. That’s 2 already. I’m aiming for at least 10. Prepare to be binundated.

Hubbub, a binvironmental charity, binvented the Big Ballot Bins and recently bintroduced them to the streets of Manchester and Southampton as part of the #PickYourSide campaign with KFC.

The bintention behind the campaign was to bincourage people to vote with their rubbish on some famous rivalries – like Barbie Vs. Oppenheimer, Noel vs. Liam, and Chris Eubank Vs. the letter ‘S’ – thus offering a binnovative solution to the binsidious problem of litter in city centres. And they’ve gone down an absolute storm, having this week attracted an awful lot of binterest on the binternet, presumably due to their binteractive nature as well as how binherently binstagrammable they are.

Hubbub are still in their binfancy as an organisation, but apparently their bingenuity has binspired other binthusiats in Europe who are now looking to replicate this idea binternationally. That’s 20. Are you not bintertained? 21. Please someone make it stop. This is becoming binfantile. Shit. I’m bincapable of stopping. I’ve gone utterly binsane. I fear I may need to be binstitutionalised again.

To anyone who actually read all of that, I’d like to offer my bincerest apologies.