Overheard at Glasto.

Another year, another Glastonbury is in the books. If you didn’t catch any of it over the weekend, you may have at least observed the sudden increase in serotonin-sapped somnambulists struggling to keep their tear-filled eyes open during their morning commutes this week. The rail workers could have at least done festival goers a solid and decided to strike this week rather than last. VICE decided to take a break from solving the world’s problems and go back to their roots, as they have just released a list of all the best statements their reporters overheard at Glastonbury. A couple standouts include: “Put some fucking sunnies on lad, your eyeballs are facing different directions.” [At 11:30AM] and “Last time I was here I accidentally smoked spice and tried to peel my skin off.” We all make mistakes. Considering this was the first time the festival has been able to go ahead in 3 years, take these quotes as a sign that nature has indeed fully healed.

"Nan, Play Lil Nas X."

Just as we had become used to the idea of being able to chat to a disembodied robot voice from some lady called Alexa, Amazon have decided to step things up. Now, you can replace that voice with the voice of deceased loved ones. During their annual re:Mars event, Amazon announced a new feature that can synthesize short audio clips into longer clips – and they decided to demonstrate the utility of that feature by creating a scenario in which a late grandmother reads a bedtime story to her grandson. Obviously, that’s a bit strange, but it was really a vehicle for Amazon to show off their new tech, as they claim they can now just turn one minute of speech into endless possibilities. What that means is that eventually you may be able to choose almost any person from the last 100 years (ish) to voice your Alexa. So, if the whole dead nan doing an Audible ad isn’t your cup of tea, you could at least listen to Arnold Schwarzenegger doing the weather forecast.

Reality Czech.

As a bit of a soi-disant provocateur, the art of shithousery is something that I feel a great deal of affection and admirations towards. As such, it’s always nice to see some brands trying to get in on the fun. Well, I say always, but that isn’t true – sometimes a brand trying to show what a ‘laugh’ they are can come across as incredibly forced and cringeworthy; ‘fun teacher who says the occasional naughty word to show he’s not like the others’ energy. That’s in part because humour can often come from a level of self-awareness, which is a quality that many of the more ‘heritage’ brands lack. Skoda can’t be accused of such a shortcoming, as their latest campaign centres around the idea that nobody gives a sh*t about their cars. With that in mind, they partnered with a number of car YouTubers to place ads in the backgrounds of videos for more popular models made by other companies. Merking Mercs, mate. Hopefully this allows the Skoda Fabia to usurp the Vauxhall Corsa’s position as the apex Cheeky Nando’s Ultimate Ladmobile.

Real Fake Faces.

If you’re a coolsh*t regular, you’re probably sick of reading about this DALL-E bloke. I’m fairly certain of that, because I’m starting to get a little sick of writing about it. But on a nigh-on weekly basis it seems to come up with some clever new feature that is equal parts mesmerising and terrifying. You may remember the news a couple weeks ago that DALL-E had started to invent its own gibberish language to categorise imagery, which lead to one of the developers describing it as being more like a petri dish than a computer program. Now, it’s started generating incredibly photorealistic images of faces of people who do not exist. Although I don’t have a clue what that poor woman’s got on her head. We were on the DALL-E train before most, and even from when we first mentioned it about 6 weeks ago, the speed and scale of progress is pretty staggering. So now we think it’s only fair to leave DALL-E to grow up for a while and check back in on it in a few months. Unless it does something else weird sooner. In which case it’ll probably be back in next week.

Free Dem.

You’d be pretty pissed if you were the very last person to get shot in a war. Similarly, you would probably be feeling rather aggrieved sitting in jail right now having been charged with marijuana offences shortly before it was legalised in many parts of the US. With its roots going back further but really dialling up in the 1970s, the United States has taken a disproportionately (and inconsistently) draconian stance on drugs – unless of course you’re referring to the CIA trafficking drugs through countries such as Nicaragua via the Contras, in which case they bloody can’t get enough of the stuff. Perhaps the greatest injustice, though, is the amount of people incarcerated for marijuana charges – the majority of which are for mere possession. Freedom Grams are an open-source cannabis brand bringing attention to cases like these by using their packaging to show the exact amounts people were incarcerated for and how much time they’re serving. For example, Audreanna J. was sentenced to three years imprisonment for 0.3 grams of cannabis in 2020. Whatever your view on drugs, surely that seems ludicrous. The idea behind the brand is that the very thing that put these people in jail could be the thing to get them out, with all profits being donated to the Last Prisoner Projects’s criminal justice reform efforts.

More Guns, Less Abortions.

We’ve often toyed with the possibility of time travel in coolsh*t, and this week the Supreme Court have decided to send the United States back in time to the middle of the 20^th Century. Having been called a contrarian in the past – a label that I would disagree with – I often find myself trying to make the case for all sort of heterodox positions, but this simply defies any reasonable explanation. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court officially overturned Roe v. Wade, leaving decisions on the legality of abortion down to the individual states, many of whom aren’t mad on it. Jenny Holzer created this NFT depicting a real scene from Tucker Carlson Tonight in which Tucker and his no-doubt charming guest are discussing the Covid vaccine, claiming that ‘MAKING AN INFORMED CHOICE REGARDING YOUR OWN BODY SHOULDN’T BE CONTROVERSIAL.’ The hypocrisy of holding such a view regarding vaccination and not applying it also to abortion needn’t be pointed out. Considering the uniquely American obsession with freedom and property, it’s particularly baffling that those principles don’t extend to a woman’s body. This has all become quite serious, so allow me to leave you on a pertinent quote from George Carlin: “Why is it that most of the people against abortion are the people who nobody would want to fuck in the first place?”.

Welcome to the Next Gen Economy.

Here it is: our latest White Paper has just dropped.

We’ve discovered that we are on the precipice of a paradigm shift in the way young people interact with brands and organisations.

We call this The Next Gen Economy.

The Coolsh*t Podcast - Ep. 16.

This episode of the coolsh*t is brought to you by Imodium.