Toilet Blockers Anonymous
From Australia: a new spot for Sydney Water makes great use of humour to compel people to re-think what should and shouldn’t be flushed down the toilet.
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McVitie's Holds Biscuit Dunking Contest
McVitie’s UK is on a mission to promote the art of biscuit dunking. A few months back, it appointed a Chief Dunking Officer who then enlightened us with ideal dunk times for its range of biscuits. Its latest step towards its goal has been to hold a ‘National Dunking Championship’. To quote from one report:
Simon Girma, a 35-year-old tea and biscuit enthusiast, has been crowned the winner of the first-ever National Dunking Championship in central London.
The competition, hosted by McVitie's, saw contestants compete in a 'dunk off', where they had to dunk their biscuit in a hot drink for as long as possible without it breaking.
The retrieved biscuit must remain intact or the participant loses the round. The contestant with the most points after three rounds progresses, all under the scrutiny of biscuit experts.
Each round featured a different biscuit, testing the contestants' knowledge of each one's dunking properties. Simon emerged victorious after several intense rounds, including a sudden death tie-breaker. The biscuit that secured his win? The Chocolate Hobnob, a favourite among dunkers worldwide.
Fancy a Bee-r?
Lidl has been marking World Bee Day with a gift for bees. To quote from its website:
As a food retailer, we understand that biodiversity is what allows nature to thrive. Small-but-mighty wild bees play a huge part in this ecosystem – and now more than ever, they need our help! Wild bees are famed for keeping buzz-y pollinating our plants and flowers. This World Bee Day, we want to return the favour! We’re excited to give away six-packs of ‘Bee-rs’ (*cough* inverted sugar syrup), which keen nature-lovers can administer to local bees in need.
This is how they are to be administered:
If you see a bee in need, either not flying or looking tired and slow; on a windowsill or on the floor, please take a Lidl Bee-r to them – but only if there are no flowers around, as nectar is the best option. Our bee-rs provide a temporary energy boost, however, it’s important that bees find a longer-lasting, nutritious source of energy in the form of real flower nectar and pollen!
• Pour a small amount of syrup out of the bottle and onto the ground in front of the bee. This will help to revive them so they can travel to a flower and find a natural food source. The bottles shouldn’t be left unattended for other bees to find, as this causes robbing behaviour and can spread disease.
• You can refill our Bee-r bottles with your own homemade syrup. Simply mix equal parts of white granulated sugar and warm (not boiling) water.
Impressions vs. Reality
A terrific new spot for the Paralympic Games that one reviewer summed up thus:
It's ridiculously adorable. Until it's not, when the film jolts us into the gritty reality of Paralympian life with its live-action second half. It's certainly got us psyched up for the occasion.
Perfume That Smells of Cherry Blossom and Tyre Remnants
I’ll let this report explain:
With the inaugural Shanghai E-Prix this weekend, the Nissan Formula E Team is set to introduce a new gift to its rivals. This unique move sees the introduction of their exclusive fragrance “Smell My Dust”, blending the essence of cherry blossoms with the distinct scent of race-worn tires.
Drivers Oliver Rowland and Sacha Fenestraz are focused on securing maximum points in their final six races of the season. However, off the track, the team is launching a fragrance, “Smell My Dust”, for the race weekend in China. This fragrance combines the allure of Sakura cherry blossoms and the gritty aroma of tire remnants from their Nissan e-4ORCE 04 race cars.
According to a Top Gear report:
Apparently a Shanghai perfumer created the fragrance using real remnants of Formula E-spec tyres, and Nissan tells us the Chinese perfume market is currently booming thanks to “Gen Z’s obsession with niche fragrances”. There’s niche, and then there’s wanting-to-smell-like-a-floral-burnout niche.
Adding to the intrigue, the promotional videos range from straight to satirical.
The ‘glue’ that binds AI
A few months ago, we had the news that Google had struck a US$60 million deal with Reddit to access the latter’s user posts, to train its AI engine. Last week, we had the news that OpenAI had also struck a deal with Reddit, without any mention of the financial terms. Well, this week, social media users have been sharing an example of how Google AI may have found itself in a sticky situation, so to speak, by relying on the ‘wisdom’ of Reddit users. As NY Post reported:
One widely circulated screenshot showed Google’s AI-generated response to a search for the query “cheese not sticking to pizza.”
Google responded by listing “some things you can try” to prevent the issue.
“Mixing cheese into the sauce helps add moisture to the cheese and dry out the sauce,” Google’s AI Overview said. “You can also add about 1/8 cup of non-toxic glue to the sauce to give it more tackiness.”
Some users traced the bizarre response to an 11-year-old post on Reddit by a user named “F—ksmith,” who gave a nearly verbatim answer to the same question about cheese sliding off pizza.
Baguette-scented Stamp
From France: the French postal service La Poste has issued a stamp that gives off the scent of a baguette when rubbed. As reported on the Fast Company website:
Leave it to the French to find a way to pack the aroma of a freshly baked baguette into a postage stamp. La Poste, the French postal service, is out with scratch-and-sniff stamps of their best-known bread with art from Paris-based artist Stéphane Humbert-Basset. The stamps depict a baguette wrapped in a blue, white, and red ribbon and the text “La baguette, de pain française,” for “The baguette, the French bread.”
The “bakery” scent is made using microcapsules, according to the Le Carré d’encre, a Paris stationary shop. “The difficulty for us is to apply this ink without breaking the capsules, so that the smell can then be released by the customer rubbing on the stamp,” printer Damien Lavaud told the BBC.
Notably, the product description on the La Poste website (machine translated) reads like a paean to the baguette. To quote:
It is the promise of a delectable sensory experience. At sight, she seduces by her golden crust and her scoring, signatures of the baker. Exit from the oven, its grilled scents appreciably. To the touch, it is a transition from the resistance of its crust to the lightness of its cellular crumb. The act of breaking it offers a delicious symphony due to its so characteristic cracking. With every bite, its authentic taste is revealed. As a sharing food, the baguette accompanies us from breakfast to dinner, lying at the heart of meals and remaining a constant invitation to conviviality.
Drunk Monkey goes on Jealous Rampage
Excerpts from a news report:
A scorned, drunk money reportedly went on a wild revenge spree and bit five people after becoming jealous of his owner's partner.
Garik, a monkey from the village of Myliki, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Russia, escaped from his owner, Anna, on Friday after her husband let him out of his cage, Russian outlet Knife Media reported.
The monkey reportedly grabbed an open bottle of whiskey, which he sipped from, and then ran outside and started his wild rampage.
The escaped monkey sunk his teeth into five people, including a pregnant woman and a local journalist who was bit on the lip and had stitches, according to the local Telegram channel, Amur Mash.
Garik's bad behavior reportedly started two years ago when his owner, Anna, got married. He became jealous and exhibited aggressive behavior.
Something spreading in Scotland
A GP’s office is the unlikely setting in this new spot for Irn-Bru that celebrates Scotland’s qualifying for the Euros.
Sensory Entertainment
From Australia: streaming service Binge wants to enhance its customers’ viewing experience with box sets of scented candles that are matched to individual scenes from select shows.
To quote from the promotion video:
To elevate the experience of watching a Binge original, Scene:Scents have been carefully engineered, layer by layer, to complement the action on screen. For Colin From Accounts, The Twelve, and Strife, each box set features scented candles crafted to match the scenes of each show. The layered candles are delicately constructed with a range of scents, and timed to release as you watch.
To quote from the explanation to the concept demonstration video:
The limited edition Colin From Accounts candles for Season 1, have been designed to help embed viewers into Ashley and Gordon’s world (for better or worse), with scent notes of Aussie Suburbia, Eucalyptus, The Vet’s Office, A Bachelor’s Apartment, The Back Room Of A Brewery and even Dog Pee as you progress through the episodes.
Balls Upgrade
In its latest series of commercials, men’s underwear brand Saxx compares its balls-comforting design to enjoying the trappings of an upper-crust lifestyle.
Spot 1: First Class
Spot 2: Ballroom
Spot 3: Underclassmen
Rudy Coffee
Are you bold? Do you like bold coffee? This coffee is dedicated to the most respected lawyer and prosecutor of the twentieth and twenty-first century.
That rather unusual dedication is from the product description of one of three variants of coffee being peddled by Rudy Giuliani under his name, with his image adorning the label. Thus, it begs the question: Is Mr. Giuliani actually dedicating it to himself and, if so, why?
While the idea of dedicating a coffee to oneself does seem bizarre, I wouldn’t put it past Mr. Giuliani. But like so many things about him, I wouldn’t bother to look for an explanation. For reasons that are also not clear, the image of his on the label of this particular variant is from around forty years ago, and it is accompanied by smaller, much more older mugshots of three gentleman whom I cannot identify.
Banking on feelings
A new spot for online bank Monzo paints a vivid picture of how it sees itself transforming the money experiences of its customers.
So Many Dicks
A new campaign from cosmetics brand e.l.f. Beauty aims to encourage diversity in American boardrooms by highlighting the prevalence of ‘Dicks’. Some of the statistics that it uses to makes its case (drawn from 4000+ listed companies):
- There were 566 men named Richard, Rick, or Dick (Dicks) serving on these public company boards.
- Black women and Asian women barely outnumber men named Dick, with only 806 Black Women, 774 Asian Women.
- There were only 283 Hispanic Women on these same boards, only half the number of “Dicks.”
- There are 19x more men named Dick than the 29 women of Middle Eastern descent on these boards.
Sneakers to match your waffles
I’ll let this press release from waffles brand Eggo explain:
In a tribute to the historic waffle-sneaker connection and its influence on waffle-grid-patterned shoe soles, the brand is teaming up with sneakerhead legend and custom creator Dominic "The Surgeon" Ciambrone and SRGN to create the first-of-its-kind Eggo Fully Loaded Kicks. Just like a delicious breakfast, teens and sneakerheads alike are always hungry for the latest looks and now, fans can get their hands on both with this protein-packed collab sure to fill stomachs and turn heads.
Handcrafted in Los Angeles, these 100% custom waffle-grid-bottomed sneakers are infused with delicious details throughout. From a syrup drip to a syrup pouch, these Fully Loaded kicks were inspired by the two new flavors: bright pink Strawberry Delight and rich brown Chocolate Chip Brownie. The sneakers feature premium suede waffled leather in shades of chocolate brown or a tan caramel with pops of pink, and fillings inspired by each new flavor dripping down the midsole. For extra comfort, the collar includes added cushion to showcase the fluffiness of the waffles. These kicks even have a hidden zip stash pocket for a syrup packet on the go!
RIP Roger Corman
An incredible list of accomplishments — producing and/or directing an estimated 400+ movies, shaping the marketing and distribution of foreign-language arthouse films in the seventies, giving early career breaks to A-listers including Robert De Niro, Ellen Burstyn, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron, Jonathan Demme, Ron Howard, and Peter Bogdanovich, and much more.
My favourite bit of Corman trivia (per The New York Times):
Among the others Mr. Corman nurtured was Jack Nicholson, who was 21 when Mr. Corman gave him his first movie role, the lead in “The Cry Baby Killer” (1958), and 23 when he had a small part as a masochistic dental patient in “The Little Shop of Horrors.” Before he went on to stardom, Mr. Nicholson acted in eight Corman movies and wrote three of them, including “The Trip,” an uncautionary tale about LSD.
More beef than Kendrick and Drake
From Australia: food delivery platform Menulog has turned the feud between the hip-hop superstars to its advantage.
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VPN Marketing… with a Transparent Loo
Surfshark VPN has hit the streets of London with what it calls “a provocative guerrilla marketing experiment” — a transparent truck with a man sitting on a toilet inside. As explained on a blog post:
In today’s digital era, people tend to share every moment of their lives on social media despite the understanding that these seemingly trivial details can unveil the most sensitive information about them. Strangely, while society upholds certain aspects, such as using the toilet, as private, the same level of discretion isn’t extended to sharing personal data.
If you don’t get that sushi is woke…
From New Zealand: After associate education minister David Seymour announced changes to what is served in the school lunches programme, he was asked about food items like sushi for lunches, to which this is what he was quoted as saying:
If you don't get that sushi's woke, then I don’t know how to wake you up…
Bald-Thru
From Brazil: Burger King is offering a free Whopper to customers who have a specific pattern of hair loss that resembles the layout of its Drive-Thrus.
Dog Perspective
Excerpts from an opinion piece on the Kristi Noem ‘dog killing’ episode, by talk show host Mark Davis on the Newsweek website:
Say what you will about the Bidens, but when their dog Commander went on a White House biting spree, they didn't walk him out to the South Lawn for a summary execution.
There are differences one can find between Commander, a German Shepherd sent to live in a less stressful environment, and Cricket, a 14-month-old female wirehair pointer who took a bullet from South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem—a story the governor shares with baffling enthusiasm in an upcoming book.
Pause for a moment and consider not only that she did it, but that she is so proud of it that she touts it two decades later in a book clearly designed to boost her chances at the vice presidency, if not an even higher office. Then consider that a collection of editors and the governor's own advisers thought this would be a great thing to share in the thick of a fateful political year.
It takes a special blindness to miss the obvious revulsion this story would provoke across political and cultural lines.
Bank to the Future
From France: BoursoBank spins a time-travelling yarn to pitch itself as a bank to ‘recommend’ to yourself.
Candour about Commencement Speech
To quote from a news report:
The person selected to speak at Ohio State University’s commencement ceremony for its spring graduates hasn’t minced details on how he made the controversial script.
Days before the Sunday ceremony, OSU’s chosen speaker Chris Pan announced on LinkedIn that he had taken the psychedelic drug ayahuasca to write his first drafts.
“Got some help from AI (Ayahuasca Intelligence) this week to write my commencement speech for 60,000 grads and family members at Ohio State University next Sunday,” Pan wrote. “Tried ChatGPT but wasn’t that good.”
100 years of Meisterstück
A treat for Wes Anderson fans. The filmmaker brings his signature style and humour to a new spot for Montblanc which he co-directs and also stars in, along with Jason Schwartzman and Rupert Friend.
Prolific Complainant about Aircraft Noise
To quote from a news report out of Australia:
A single Perth resident is said to have complained more than 21,000 times about noise from overflying aircraft last year, accounting for nearly half of all complaints in Australia.
Thoughts on a $34 Billion Tax Bill
A Pennsylvania man is in the news after he received a $34 billion tax bill. This is what one news report quoted him as saying:
“The first thought was, ‘I wish I made enough money to even owe thirty billion in taxes,’ then I was thinking, ‘I’m going to need to drink a lot of coffee in order to work three full time jobs’ and then I’m thinking, ‘Wesley Snipes doesn't have anything on me,’ and finally I was thinking, ‘don't they have a computer algorithm to spot an error like this and if a human looked at this why do they still have a job.’”