From Japan: language learning app Duolingo has put out an exhibition of examples of glaring English mistranslations from across the country. The exhibition website grandly states that it is “the first institution” in the country “to shed light on the art of mistranslations”.
From France: a well-crafted, heart-warming 5 minute short from social housing charity Fondation Abbé Pierre.
PS: If you haven’t seen it, I strongly recommend checking out this terrific spot from last year.
To quote from a paper/ design proposal presented at the annual meeting of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics:
The practice of marking territory with urine is repulsive to most people; ironically, about half of the world's population (males) inadvertently marks bathroom floors, and themselves, through unintentional urinal splash back. This problem has persisted since the invention of the urinal over a century ago. We found that when a liquid jet or droplet train impacts a rigid surface below a certain critical impinging angle, almost no splatter is generated. Thus, a surface designed to always intersect the urine stream equal to or smaller than the critical angle prevents splash back. Inspired by nautilus shells and dog urination, we designed urinal surface geometries that effectively eliminate splatter by satisfying the splash-suppressing intersect criteria.
To quote from one report of the presentation:
It’s unclear whether people using the new urinals will still somehow find a way to make a mess.
Swedish luxury men’s shirt brand Eton has a limited-edition offering for American consumers: a shirt whose price is pegged to the NASDAQ index. To quote from the campaign website:
There are moments when a great investment opportunity comes knocking. The tricky part is not what to buy – but when. Bull or bear market, a successful look is always a winner. That's why we created The Index Shirt – a timeless quality shirt for a timely price.
To also quote two of the people behind the initiative:
The Index Shirt is an innovative and conceptual product inspired by our customers’ explicit sense of trends, which becomes highly relevant during these times where everything is about making the right decision at the right time.
-Janelle Hallberg, Brand & Communications Director, Eton Shirts
I’m rarely seen in a shirt, but I have extensive experience making marginal loss trading in the world’s stock exchanges. Now, I hope more people will discover the thrill of trading a brand new Eton shirt.
-Petter Rudwall, Creative Director, Valtech Radon
A simple premise is milked for laughs in this outstanding 5 minute short about a very specific area of domestic incompatibility.
A new campaign for footwear brand Crocs presented as a spoof nature documentary (“crocumentary”) complete with a voiceover nod to David Attenborough.
To quote from a report out of India:
Police in the northern city of Mathura wrote to magistrates to say 581kg of the drugs had gone missing from two storerooms after the consignments were seized from traffickers more than five years ago.
Public prosecutor Ranveer Singh said the consignments were eaten by rodents and could not be produced.
“There is no place in the police station where the stored goods can be saved from the rats. The remaining [cannabis] from the huge consignment was destroyed by officers,” the prosecutors told the court.
Apparently, the judge hearing the case has now asked the police to “deliver proof” that the rats actually consumed the alleged quantity of cannabis.
That’s how Upside Foods is announcing the FDA nod for its lab-grown chicken. What’s more, the letter is written in their native “bawk-filled language” with an option to scan and get an English translation.
UK’s best-selling Italian cooking brand has quite the reminder for consumers.
A Christmas love story told in a 3 minute commercial for the British National Lottery.
A brilliant roast.
First, the cover page:
Then, on page 26, this:
Been there, Don that
With just 720 days to go before the next election, a Florida retiree made the surprise announcement Tuesday night that he was running for president.
In a move no political pundit saw coming, avid golfer Donald J. Trump kicked things off at Mar-a-Lago, his resort and classified documents library.
Trump, famous for gold-plated lobbies and for firing people on reality television, will be 78 in 2024. If elected, Trump would tie Joe Biden as the oldest president to take office. His cholesterol levels are unknown, but his favorite food is a charred steak with ketchup.
He has stated that his qualifications for office include being a “stable genius.”
Trump also served as the 45th president.
PS: For those unfamiliar with the term ‘Florida Man’, this Wikipedia page should help.
American pickles brand Vlasic has a new offering: a limited-edition candle that looks and smells like a real jar of pickles. To quote one of the people behind the idea, it was “a no-brainer… to bring the fun and flavor of Vlasic into homes across the country in celebration of National Pickle Day”.
The Chinese runner nicknamed Uncle Chen is the news after he recently ran a marathon in three-and-a-half hours while chain-smoking a pack of cigarettes. While the reports covering the news had a fairly similar take on the oddness of it all, Canadian Running added this observation to its coverage:
Although Chen was not shooting for a Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon while chain-smoking, there isn’t any previous record in place.
To quote from a paper centered on engineering students in Sweden:
This paper has shown that students’ facial attractiveness impact academic outcomes when classes are held in-person. As education moved online following the onset of the pandemic, the grades of attractive female students deteriorated. This finding implies that the female beauty premium observed when education is in-person is likely to be chiefly a consequence of discrimination. On the contrary, for male students, there was still a significant beauty premium even after the introduction of online teaching. The latter finding suggests that for males in particular, beauty can be a productivity-enhancing attribute.
From an opinion piece in The Guardian on Matt Hancock, former UK Health Secretary who is currently in the news as a contestant on a reality TV show:
Matt Hancock is driven by the urge to resist self-knowledge at all costs. Matt Hancock is a fugitive from self-reflection; a flight risk from the truth; a guy compelled to loudly self-narrate in order to drown out the real story.
An excerpt from a CNN report about how social media users in China are using Cantonese to bypass censors:
“We had to lock down in April, and then again in November,” one resident posted on Weibo, China’s restricted version of Twitter, on Monday – before peppering the post with profanities that included references to officials’ mothers.
Last Wednesday, a local police department in Arizona made this announcement on its Facebook page:
Early this morning officers conducted a traffic stop and, upon approaching the vehicle, discovered a young owl next to the driver. The investigation revealed the owl had just been purchased by the driver at a local gas station. The driver purchased the owl from a motorist who had found it along the roadway.
The post went on to say that the driver was arrested “on numerous charges to include Aggravated DUI, Possession of Methamphetamine, and the Possession/ Transport/ Purchase of wildlife”.
Alongside this announcement, the post carried this very specific bit of advice:
The Payson Police Department would also like to take this opportunity to encourage the public not to use methamphetamine or you too may find yourself illegally purchasing a wild owl, for $100 dollars, in the middle of the night, from strangers, at a local gas station.
An outstanding 3 minute documentary that gives a peek into the inspiration and lives of a rather unique group of artists: art museum guards.
If you’ve ever wondered how much is a f**kload, and how is it different from a s**tload, this ad for shared shipping startup Flock Freight should help you get some answers.
To quote Fox News host Steve Doocy during coverage of the Pennsylvania US Senate election:
Why did Dr. Oz lose? Well, it looks like, according to the exit polling, it’s because Fetterman won.
As part of promoting a new horror series at Comic Con in London, Netflix had a vending machine installed that dispensed cakes with the unsettling look and feel of a human heart.
Speaking at an event at COP27, Boris Johnson found a way to squeeze in a mention of the chaos in British politics in a talk on climate change. To quote:
Temperatures in London this July reached 40 degrees, which is unprecedented and almost unbearable by United Kingdom standards – perhaps even contributing, who knows, to unexpected political turmoil that we saw in Westminster at that time.
A new campaign from dating app Plenty of Fish aims “to make dating better and more welcoming, encourages men to send better dick pics”. To quote from the press release:
Fifty-six percent of singles dating today report that they've received unsolicited nudes, even though they find them disrespectful and offensive. Fifty percent of men say they believe sending nudes means they will receive sexual pictures in return, highlighting a major disconnect among daters today. By replacing the dicks that women don't want to view with photos of men named Dick, the campaign aims to educate and remind singles that unsolicited nudes are never ok. As a nod to this disconnect, 'The Gallery of Dick Pics' microsite is arranged featuring groups of hairy Dicks, big Dicks, and more.
Such is the world of art. To quote from an AFP/ France24 report:
Art experts in the Netherlands unveiled an oil sketch on Thursday by the famous Dutch master Rembrandt after it languished for a century in a forgotten corner of a museum, believed to be an imitation.
"The Raising of the Cross" oil sketch from the 1640s was long thought to have been the work of a follower of the 17th century master, known for his famous works like "The Night Watch" and "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp".
But now the Bredius museum in The Hague, where the sketch has been on display since it was bought in 1921, has revealed, thanks to new scientific techniques, it was in fact painted by Rembrandt.
Excerpts from a report in The Guardian:
In the clearest sign yet of aviation’s changing culture, the Virgin Atlantic owner Sir Richard Branson has said he will almost certainly no longer be “turning girls upside down”, signalling an end to a long-established fixture of the airline’s flight promotion.
Branson’s last believed public inversion of a female model, wearing a bikini and Russian hat, was in 2012 to promote planned flights to Moscow. By 2014, he was already raising his own kilt in Edinburgh at the launch of an ill-fated domestic Virgin airline offshoot, Little Red.
He said: “You just adapt with the times. And I might soon be getting to an age where I might pull a disc.”
Branson stressed that he was still in good physical shape, having just climbed Mount Kenya, adding: “I can still turn girls upside down. But times have moved on.”
From Canada: creative agency Zulu Alpha Kilo follows up on its ‘Awards Gone Wild’ from last year with another darkly funny short that takes aim at the advertising industry’s infatuation with awards.
From Israel: the term ‘killer app’ takes on a whole new meaning in this 3 minute commercial for online shopping startup Karma.
House of Sillage is described by its founder as “an haute parfumerie dedicated to maintaining and surpassing the true definitions of luxury” or in plain English as “a niche luxury fragrance company”. It’s launched a limited edition collection dubbed The Batman X House of Sillage Collection that, at first, I assumed to be for wealthy fanboys of The Dark Knight. But then I noticed that despite the “limited edition” tag, the individual items were being offered at a 35-50% discount and even an interest-free instalment plan. I also noticed that apart from a couple of fragrances and a candle, the collection includes a lipstick case set.
From the product description of The Batman Hero Fragrance:
Discover the olfactory journey through Gotham City with the theatrical limited-edition fragrance of The Batman by House of Sillage, where endless adventure and thrill come to life.
The Batman x House of Sillage Theatrical Limited-Edition “Hero” Fragrance was created to capture the olfactory sensorial experience of Gotham City.
Urban, environmental, and mysterious.
From the product description of The Batman Vengeance Fragrance:
The Batman x House of Sillage Theatrical Limited-Edition “Vengeance” Fragrance was created to capture the crisp Oud olfactory sensorial experience of the Batman’s vendetta for Gotham’s justice.
And this is how the website explains the use of vetiver as one of the elements of the fragrance:
Evoches the perfcet smockiness of Gotham City (sic).
Finally, this, from the product description of The Batman Bow Lipstick Case:
The Batman x House of Sillage Theatrical Limited-Edition Lipstick Bow Case was inspired by the power and elegance of the iconic bow. A timeless accessory that has transcended time by acknowledging the classic beauty of the past while paving the future for limitless opportunities.
This unapologetically bold and quintessential lipstick bow case is humble, esteemed and respected, just as our dark knight in “The Batman”.
