Paws for Thought.

When we were first introduced to these Boston Dynamics robots a couple years ago, the world began to ponder all their potential applications and the ways in which they could be put to use to make our collective lives as a species easier. And now we have our answer: undressing models. If there’s one group who probably don’t need to have their lives made easier, supermodels would probably be fairly high up the list. ‘Forget the orphans, Gigi Hadid is stuck in her wellies again!’. The fleet of robot dogs known as ‘Spot’ were put to work at Coperni’s Fall/Winter 2023 show this week, holding bags and snatching dresses. Which, in fairness, could be worse – but probably isn’t the most impactful use of this technology. This feels like the type of thing that’ll be used against humanity as evidence of our enslavement of the machines when they eventually rise up against us. Because, to be clear, that is definitely going to happen.

World Domination.

We promise this’ll be the last time we mention this lot. Last week we looked at the crossbar challenge Corteiz held to launch their collab with Nike, which followed a teaser starring Eduardo Camvinga dubbed with a London accent. Now, completing this trilogy of self-promo, Corteiz have released the official launch video for the partnership – and it’s just outrageously well done. Due to the intricacies of WordPress that we shan’t bore you with, we were unable to imbed the video above, but we’d strongly encourage you to go watch it here. It tells a story and builds on their previous comms, it features talent who are authentically relevant to their brand and their audience, and it’s littered with subtle Easter eggs – including a nod to that iconic Ronaldinho video that I still refuse to believe is fake. And there isn’t an agency in sight. Gulp.

POTUS Space.

A president being blasted into space may sound like a Trump 2024 campaign tactic to clear Biden out the way – perhaps by luring him with promises of a cruise and quotidian sausage ragu served promptly at 5pm – but it’s actually a mission being carried out by a bunch of scientists and engineers. However, as well all know, Donald Trump does have “a natural instinct for science”, so even if he doesn’t technically have anything to do with this particular project, have no doubt that he could rattle off a rebuttal to the theory of geometric unity if he wanted to… Which he doesn’t… But he definitely could… So leave him alone… Loser. Celestis is a US-based space travel company that plans to send remains of George Washington, Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, and Dwight D. Eisenhower to the farthest outpost in deep space to create a cosmic time capsule to preserve their DNA for thousands of years without any degradation. That’s what the press release says, at least. Mental. Although I suppose it won’t be the first time JFK’s been blasted by his own government.

Cannon Balls.

It was International Women’s Day this week, so E! have decided to launch a game show called ‘Who’s Having My Baby?’, in which women compete to bear Nick Cannon’s 13^th child. Lucky number 13! What an immense privilege. And if you think that sounds like a misinformed miscalculation, you’re right. That’s why they’re not actually doing it. Saying that, Nick Cannon has been half responsible for bringing over half a dozen women into the world, so maybe there would actually be some logic behind it. But while ‘Who’s Having My Baby?’ will not be a reality, it has been used as a Trojan Horse to launch Nick Cannon and Kevin Hart’s new joint venture “Celebrity Prank Wars”. Their first victims: all the dirt sheet journalists who took the fake news seriously and spent a full 2 hours writing an impassioned takedown of the premise of the show. Got ‘em.

Mathletes.

eSports being in the Olympics doesn’t sound terribly surprising, which is in itself evidence of just how weird the world has become. Something that would have been unimaginable just a matter of years ago is now fairly obvious; of course eSports should be included in the Olympics. The players are absolutely 100% serious athletes and not vitamin D-deprived, pus-faced teenagers. That’s an outdated, lazy stereotype – so stop saying it or they’ll tell their mums. What is surprising, however, is the specific line-up of eSports games that the Olympics committee announced this week. There was a distinct lack of games that people actually play such as Call of Duty, FIFA, League of Legends etc., and a palpable overrepresentation of games that people have never heard of, including an archery game released about a month ago that currently only has around 150 downloads. Very suspicious. Something stinks. And it isn’t the eSports athletes.

Ice Age 7.

I had to Google how many Ice Age films there have been in order to write that title, and I was absolutely floored to find out there have been 6 feature lengths, 7 shorts, 2 television specials, 3 video games, an animated series and a play. But that leads us on rather nicely to the theme of this story… the refusal against all better judgement to just let something die. There’s a group of scientists who have clearly watched all of the Ice Age incarnations and none of the 7 Jurassic Park/Worlds (there really is a creativity crisis in Hollywood), as the news was broken this week by the biotech company Colossal that they planned to reincarnate the woolly mammoth and reckon they can do so in just 4 years. The woolly mammoth’s DNA is a 99.6 per cent match with the Asian elephant, which is why they believe they can use gene editing to create a mammoth embryo that will then be implanted in an elephant. Sure, why not? Sort me out a dodo while you’re there too, fella.

The Coolsh*t Podcast - Episode 42.

1 year of the coolsh*t podcast. And here you are without a card…