As if we didn’t need any more aging reminders…

Harry Potter turned 44 just this past Wednesday. 

The children’s book that you most likely grew up with, where you related to one of the main characters in it; all of those kids ain’t kids no more.  In fact they’re having kids, and potentially grandkids in the next 5-10 years.  It’s going to be a constant Bart Simpson moment for me now every time I see the cover of the book.  That child is in fact 44 years old.

July 31st is actually a pretty popular birthday for a bunch of names you probably recognize.

Mark Cuban turned 66, you know, the guy who was on Shark Tank, used to own the Dallas Mavericks, and picks a fight with Elon Musk weekly on Twitter.

Wesley Snipes turned 62.  You’re thinking of Demolition Man already, aren’t you!  You are fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute

Dean Cain turns 58 - yes, the OG 90’s/2000’s Superman himself.  Remember Lois and Clark?  Yeah, me neither - yawn.

Lil Uzi Vert turns 30 - the rapper who’s music I just can’t listen to hits a new decade where perhaps he calms down a bit...probably not. 

And now that we’re up to date on birthdays, let’s get into this week’s stories.

This week's issue is a 4 minute read:

🤖 Yet another AI thing

🚽 Skibidi what now?

🔫 Olympic athletes more popular than Lebron

Meet Your New Friend - A Pendant

One of the best movies ever made, especially because it was a thing before its time, was HER.  I’ll fight you over this film - it was too good.  The idea of bonding with a piece of technology and creating a human relationship that includes all the dramatic elements you would expect from two human beings closely interacting with each other on a daily basis blurred the lines of human and artificial intelligence relationships.  

Could humans actually form intimate relationships with technology?

Well, according to Avi Schiffmann, the answer is yes, for $99. “Friend” is an AI powered pendant that is basically the red-headed stepchild to those Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up necklaces old people in the 90’s were wearing.

As the name suggests, Friend is supposed to be something…someone…A THING you can talk to while you’re eating a pita wrap as per the cringe trailer thing the company put together, now that they raised $2.5M at a $250M valuation.

Step 1: Raise $2.5M
Step 2: Produce cringe video

Everyone keeps saying this is the next Tamagotchi but yo, those are still around to this day. We have one on my kitchen counter as we speak - currently in the dead mode before you revive it because my daughter has given up on it for the time being. It was supposed to be the preliminary thing she would take care of before we eventually got a dog. So yeah…I digress.

The idea with this wannabe Chinese jade necklace thing made by a white guy (I’m just being honest) is that it’s always listening to you and therefore it will send you text message responses to the Bluetooth enabled app so as you cuss out horrible drivers it can chime in with, “Yeah! Where’d you learn to drive, DUMMY!”

I wonder if you could get this thing to swear?

Long story less long, the Friend device is supposed to combat loneliness and be the AI companion that Schiffmann thinks is inevitable that everyone will have. Would you look to talk to an AI if you were feeling lonely?

SKIBIDI TOILET

Honestly, I will gladly admit that I’m too old to understand how this YouTube channel grew to the insane proportions that it did. All I know is when I told my 9 year old daughter that I watched Skibidi Toilet videos on YouTube, she said the boys in her class would all want to be friends with me.

But how can one ignore, what is at times, the fastest growing YouTube channel on the internet - yes, growth at a rate greater than MrBeast himself. None of this makes sense. I tried going back in time in my mind to my 10 year old self to make this make sense. The closest thing I could come to was, for my Canadian readers, those YTV 3D animation commercial things they used to play in replacement of commercials or in between shows.

These things:

So WTF is Skibidi Toilet?

Originally just a random 3D animation created by Alexey Gerasimov, it quickly morphed into a series about Skibidi Toilets, which are toilets with a deranged head coming out of it chasing people versus people who have cameras, speakers, and televisions for heads. Every episode is a continuation of the last one where the two sides are battling each other, in what is at times, VERY violent battles.

At its peak, the channel hosting the Skibidi Toilet series, Dafuq!?Boom! (what a name), was amassing a BILLION views a month. Bruh.

Last week it was announced that Michael Bay was in talks with Gerasimov in adapting Skibidi Toilet for both film and TV. If he could pull off what he did with the very first Transformers film, I think this might have a shot. Because, right now if you watch these videos you will absolutely wonder WTF is going on but at the same time, the action is really good! Either way, now you know where this Skibidi meme thing came from - it was this damn YouTube channel!

Olympic Gunslinging

Did you know there’s a John Wick event at the Olympics where they stand like they’re John Wick and shoot targets? Meanwhile some of the athletes dress like they’re in the movie?

Olympic pistol shooting has become the viral event this past week with Kim Ye-ji showing up to the event looking like an assassin claiming silver in the 10M air pistol event.

And then there’s this guy:

Yusuf Dikec of Turkey also won silver this week in the pistol event. But instead of looking like an assassin, he looked like he showed up off the street and wandered in to shoot a gun.