October 10, 2023

what we've been watching...

empowering you with insights and information from the edge of today’s headlines

life is a little heavy this week, so we’ll be even lighter than usual in our stories

Technology

This is not a photo: Google’s new Pixel 8 contains new photo editing features plus AI tools that blur the lines between photography and generative imagery. There is the Magic Eraser - that not only allows you to remove an unwanted object from your image (like a photo bomb), but now you can paint in an object that wasn’t there before. A new feature called Best Take allows you to fix your face in a photo by replacing it with another from your camera roll — don’t like your smile, use one from last week. Finally, the Magic Editor which lets you transform the reality of an image by moving people around, changing the color of the sky, etc. The adjusted Pixel images don’t have watermarks, just changes in the metadata, but who goes that deep to look? We’ve truly entered the realm of “you can’t believe your eyes.”

Quibi for the Win: October 3rd was Mean Girls Day, and Paramount Pictures released the entire movie on TikTok in series of 23 clips. Peacock has also released season premieres on the service ahead of streaming. GenZ is just comfortable watching entertainment in short bites and from their mobile devices: one study found that 23% of “TikTok users are more likely to discover entertainment content on social and video platforms versus other platforms.” As more and more consumers cut the cable cords and opt for streaming, will we switch to short form video instead?

Phone Home: Ring Cameras have been used for many things — catching porch pirates, alerting homeowners to disasters, and even showing off dance moves. But now Ring wants you to use your camera to catch an Extraterrestrial. The company is giving a $1M reward if you happen to capture an alien (real or imaginary) ahead of Halloween, so get your porches ready.

Next-Gen Space Suits: The first woman to land on the moon will not only make history but she’ll be outfitted to perfection in Prada. Prada has partnered with Axiom Space to design NASA’s lunar spacesuits for the Artemis mission. While there aren’t any prototypes available yet, if they take any inspiration from the SS24 collection, we can’t wait.

Anti-Matter Go Down: If gravity pulls matter down, you’d think that anti-matter would do the opposite. But scientists at CERN have finally observed that anti-matter behaves the same as matter, at least when it comes to gravity: it falls down. Scientist created anti-hydrogen through high speed collisions and were able to measure the small, yet present gravitational pull, or at least rule out that anti-matter drops upward. While this result confirms the physics that we are used to, it still hasn’t solved other questions: why hasn’t the anti-matter in the universe destroyed all the matter? Where is all the anti-matter in the universe that should have been created from the Big Bang? Are we on anti-Earth and can we switch?

Supersonic without a Boom: In 1971 the US Congress banned supersonic flight over land, mostly due to the powerful sonic boom that was created as the plane breaks the sound barrier. (The sound can be describe as sounding and feeling like a bomb dropping nearby.) In 2003, the Concorde was decommissioned, and commercial supersonic flight was no longer available or commercially justifiable if it was only over water. Now NASA is working with Lockheed Martin to design a silent supersonic jet, the X-59. The jet reduces the sound of the sonic boom due to its strange shape (extremely pointed nose, no cockpit and small wings), and was developed with the aid of computer technology. The plane is still in the testing phase, and is expected to travel at a maximum speed of 925mph (compared to the Concorde’s 1350mph). But if you are planning your 2030 travel cross country, you might have a quicker alternative.

More Space Junk: Amazon launched its competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink this week, Project Kuiper, although it didn’t use its Blue Origin rocket to launch the satellites. The first mission was a test mission, and launched 2 satellites, so it may take some time for this to be a true, viable alternative.

Culture

Banksy Unmasked: The artist known as Banksy is in the middle of a trademark dispute in the UK, and in order to defend his trademark, he might have to reveal his identity. Banksy has long fought the European Intellectual Property Office, as his anonymity is a key component of his work. The EU has stripped him of some copyrights because he hasn’t identified himself in the past. Now, the company suing Banksy names Robin Gunningham and “the Artist known as Banksy.” Gunningham is named from a photo of graffiti artist taken in 2008 surrounded by paint cans and stencils, although the artist has denied that that is his identity. In the past, Banksy has declared that “copyright is for losers,” so we’ll see how far the EU is willing to let Banksy push his independent streak.

Preppy has Mutated: When we hear the term preppy, we think polo shirts with the collar turned up, pink and green, chinos, Ralph Lauren, JCrew or even the Gap. But ask a GenZ what preppy means to them, and you might hear “Nirvana.” How did the grunge establishment become the new preppy? Well, you might have seen the youngens wearing what look like old concert tees (Nirvana, Grateful Dead, Kiss), and while they don’t know the music, the tees are popular at the mall. And what is popular at the mall equals preppy. OK?? We really needed to blast some 90s through our walkman after this. But next time we need a vocabulary refresh, we’ll watch Martin Scorsese and his daughter discuss slang.

Content Consumer: We’ve heard of content creators, but now get ready to add a new job description to your Gen Z resume: content consumer. Yes, you can hire someone to watch all of your friends Stories, Reels, etc and give you a rundown of their goings on, while they “like” an appropriate amount of content. You might even reconnect with some old friends who notice that you started re-watching their content. Apparently, “when a good friend doesn’t consume what [you’ve] posted…it can feel like a slight” to some. Guess we’ll have to train our AI assistant for that, and the vicious cycle of having assistants post for us, write our profiles, and then watch for us will go even deeper.

Voice Overs: Weird Al Yankovic is famous for making parodies, but now with AI, an artist has imagined a parallel universe where the original artist sings the parody of the original song: Michael Jackson’s voice singing Weird Al’s Eat It.

— Lauren Eve Cantor

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