A Rock and a Hard Man.

Unless you happen to live under a Rock (ha), you will probably be aware of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars the other night. That in itself is obviously not coolsh*t worthy. As most 4-year-olds know, going around smacking people for saying things you don’t like isn’t a great thing to do. If anything, it’s an expression of fragility to the extreme. And, to continue the playground analogy, it certainly isn’t cool when a Year 11 does it to a Year 4, which is roughly what the difference in stature between Will Smith and Chris Rock equates to. However, the memes have been nothing short of magnificent. As soon as Will Smith’s palm struck Chris Rock’s cheek, meme pages across the globe dropped what they were doing and immediately undertook a type of arms race, competing over who could produce the best meme. Memes are a uniquely internet-culture brand of humour of the like that the world has never really seen before, and this little episode shone a light on some of the comedic genius behind the top meme pages. Plus, it’s a democratised type of comedy, as any child in their bedroom can make a meme. And, this week, many did.

Drum n Bikes.

As you can probably tell by the weather in the video, we’re a little late to this – it actually happened the weekend before last. Typically, we’re fairly militant about only including stories from the last 7 days, but rules are made to be broken – especially when they’re your own rules. Plus, this was too good to not share just due to my own ineptitude and sieve-like memory forgetting to include it last week. Dom Whiting is a drum and bass DJ who likes to bring the vibes to locations around the UK by mixing whilst riding around on his bike. That’s not easy, by the way – this man must have sailed through his cycling proficiency. This week (well, last week – soz) he outdid himself by near enough shutting down Bristol, with thousands of peddling ravers turning out to follow him around for a few laps of the city. Skip to 36:00 in the video to see what that looks like. Things are just different in Bristol.

No Strings Attached.

With the direction in which the world is currently headed, if models were ever going to be replaced, you would expect it to be by some sort of futuristic fashion cyborg. And, if you were one of those unfortunate erstwhile models booted out the industry by an android, you’d probably have to say fair play. However, you’d have a right to feel slightly aggrieved if you lost your job to a puppet. Well, that dystopian nightmare became a reality last week, as Vestiaire Collective utilised a bunch of puppets in their latest campaign. Mind you, these weren’t just any old puppets, they were made entirely from pre-loved clothes to push the brand’s new sustainability-focused mantra: ‘Long Live Fashion’. And, as you can see, all 5 puppets – each representing a different reason why people shop at Vestiaire – nailed the catwalk. I always suspected that being a model was easy. If only I wasn’t so frightfully ugly.

RoboBurger.

How would you feel about plucking a burger out of the cold, metal hands of a robot? Doesn’t sound terribly hygienic, but I know someone who worked at Burger King for 2 years and made a rule of not washing his hands, so it can’t be any worse than that. Roboburger is the world’s first burger vending machine, claiming to be the “biggest innovation in hot food vending since the microwave”. Bold claim indeed. I’m particularly sceptical of such a claim since I’ve just learned this week that you can cook perfectly-steamed broccoli in the microwave. Impressive as this may seem, it takes around 6-minutes for the machine to produce your burger. Perhaps my mind has been warped by social media and fast-food culture, but 6 minutes sounds like a horribly long time to wait. On a slow day, you can get a Maccies in about half of that. And even on a busy day you can at least snatch someone else’s order. As such, the jury’s still out on Roboburger. They best be bloody delicious.

Chips and Beer.

Modern science is remarkable. This week, a microchip brain implant has helped a paralysed man communicate for the first time in years. And people are remarkable, because that absolute Barry-level bloke used his shiny new microchip to ask for a beer – and chants of “Lad! Lad! Lad!” echoed around the ward. Alright, that last part didn’t happen (as far as we know), but the rest did. The unidentified German patient was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2015 when he was 30 years old. He had previously been able to communicate with his eyes, but as the disease worsened, the man had two microchips implanted into his motor cortex – the area of the brain that controls movement. When the microchips inside the man’s brain recorded an increase of activity, a computer would play a rising sound, when the man’s brain recorded a decrease, the computer would play a descending tone. And apparently it took just two days for this chap to learn how to control this tone to communicate. Get that man his beer.

The Bigger Issue.

The Big Issue has been a fixture of London pavements for over 30 years, but Covid, combined with the declining collective inclination to read physical newspapers, has drastically reduced readership over the last few years. Now, in order to fix that, a new billboard campaign is using geolocation technology by placing a GPS beacon in the vendor’s jacket to show on a billboard where they can be found. The campaign was created by London-based agency Forever Beta – which would be a decent tattoo – and aims to support Big Issue vendors and reconnect them with their local community by using technology to give them “the biggest voice possible”. Plus, for the sake of germophobes, the magazine can be purchased from them using a QR code shown on the screen. So, no excuses. Watch out for these around Westfield. Plus, if you don’t want to buy one, now you know where to avoid. Win/win.

The Coolsh*t Podcast

As per usual, the coolsh*t doesn’t stop there. Listen to this week’s podcast for an in-depth discussion about the things that really matter (like the Roboburger…).