TechCrunch: Tumblr iOS revenue increased 125% since launching its parody of paid verification. “Tumblr’s parody of paid verification has already delivered the social network and blogging platform a 125% boost in iOS in-app purchase revenue since November, according to a new analysis of the app’s in-app consumer spending.”
Boing Boing: 2Dumb2Destroy is a new AI ChatBot trained on the dumbest dudebros imaginable. “Trained on countless hours of Pauly Shore movies, all seven Police Academies, Ralph Wiggum quotes and that one bodybuiling forum where a bunch of gym bros decided a week had eight days in it, etc. This is one A.I. you don’t have to worry about ever overthrowing humanity, or stealing your job.”
Yle: Finnish grammar foils pro-Russia trolls. “Attempts by trolls to write the sentence ‘Nato cannot save Finland’ in Finnish failed because the language has two different words for ‘save’, with two completely different meanings.”
CNET: Museum Asks Public to Reinvent a Classic Painting, With Incredible Results. “Girl With a Pearl Earring? More like Guy With an Apple AirPod. The Mauritshuis museum in The Hague put out a call for re-creations of Johannes Vermeer’s iconic 17th century painting — with bizarre and delightful results.”
This is Colossal: Hapless Hangups and Silly Spoofs Abound in the 2022 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. “In this year’s juried contest, 5,000 entries from 85 countries amounted to fierce competition, showcasing ‘seriously funny’ images in an effort to highlight the diversity of the world’s wildlife and raise awareness of the need for conservation. In partnership with the Whitley Fund for Nature, the contest contributes 10% of revenue toward conservation efforts in countries across the Global South.”
New-to-me: a database of apple reviews. The fruit, not the tech. They absolutely savaged my favorite (Granny Smith) but to their credit they also slagged the SugarBee, an apple purchase I bitterly regretted a few weeks ago. From the About page: “Brian Frange is a comedian and writer who has been yelling about apples for years. He started yelling about apples professionally in 2016 while working on Comedy Central’s Not Safe with Nikki Glaser while serving as co-host on the Not Safe Podcast. Shortly after that he started the Tumblr apple review blog The Appleist and it became popular, I guess.” This man has a burning hatred for Red Delicious apples and this Web site is a fun read.
Core 77: An Amusing Backup Camera Hack for Precision Parking. “Backup camera images typically feature red and green lines overlaid on the screen to give you a sense of the car’s boundaries: Green is a polite distance to leave between you and the car you’re parallel parking in front of, red is the closest you can get without trading paint. But this Reddit user, seeking to park right up to the wall of his garage, was unsatisfied with the lines. He worked up his own (impractical, but funny) hack for greater precision.” The thing is once he has the parking spot and background he doesn’t need the car. I think it’s great.
Liliputing: Google Japan designed a gigantic, single-row Gboard keyboard as a joke (but you can build one if you want) . “Google may have stopped putting out dozens of April Fools’ videos every year, but Googlers in Japan still love a good joke – and the latest is ridiculous keyboard that they’re called Gboard Bar Version. It’s a single-row keyboard with every key laid out end-to-end in a highly impractical way.”
India Today: A pothole gets listed as a ‘historical Landmark’ in Bengaluru on Google Maps. “A Bengaluru citizen named Nimo Tai brought netizens’ attraction to a new landmark of Bengaluru city aka a pothole. Tagged as the ‘historical landmark’, the pothole is named ‘Abizer’s Pothole’ and is situated in the Bellandur area of Bengaluru. The pothole even got 5-star ratings and reviews by residents on Google.”
RFI: RIP Internet Explorer: South Korean engineer’s browser ‘grave’ goes viral. “In honour of the browser’s ‘death’, a gravestone marked with its signature ‘e’ logo was set up on the rooftop of a cafe in South Korea’s southern city of Gyeongju by engineer Kiyoung Jung, 38. ‘He was a good tool to use to download other browsers,’ the gravestone’s inscription reads.”
East Coast Radio: Did this woman’s reliance on Google Translate ruin her daughter’s reputation at school?. “We are not saying that Google Translate isn’t reputable, but we do believe it to be an online resource that is meant to provide an overall understanding. Perhaps not the precise meaning of words… This mother bravely took to TikTok sharing her experience with the service when it came to helping her 11-year-old with her Afrikaans homework.” Laughed myself silly.
From MakeUseOf, for a given value of “Useful”: The 5 Best Free Random Decision Makers. “If you’re trying to make a light-hearted, a random decision maker can help you to more easily make an unbiased decision. It can save you time and prevent overthinking. Of course, they won’t be suitable for large, life-altering decisions–you’ll need to ponder over those, sorry!”
Boing Boing: AI tries to generate chain restaurant signs with hilarious results. “Janelle Shane is an AI researcher and the author of You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It’s Making the World a Weirder Place. In one of her more recent AI experiments, she tasked the Dall-e neural network with trying to generate corporate restaurant logos with some … interesting results.”
Vox: One Good Thing: An unsolicited dik-dik pic . “Few experiences are more jarring than opening your phone to find an image of genitalia that you didn’t request — an unsolicited dick pic. Such an occurrence is diametrically opposite, I’d argue, to getting an unsolicited dik-dik pic. Dik-diks are tiny antelopes that are no larger than an overfed house cat.”
Boing Boing: A child born in 2020 tries to get hand sanitizer out of a brick, and everything else, in adorable video. “A cute little girl born during the pandemic plays make-believe by walking around trying to squirt hand sanitizer from every square-shaped object in reach. A true sign of the times.”
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