In this week’s our take, Mattel’s new doll casts a very wicked spell, rice comes clean about its dirty secret, robots are cooking and killing it, and a Twitter rival emerges. Check it all out below.
The tale of Mattel and the very bad witches
Once upon a time, in a land of wizards, witches, and PR executives, a toy maker called Mattel made a very ‘wicked’ mistake.
Mattel was happy, having just released a new collection of dolls for the movie Wicked. But an evil and terrifying monster called Human Error cast a spell on the dolls’ packaging.
The packages were supposed to show a link to the movie’s website: wickedmovie.com. But Human Error changed it, so when little boys and girls followed the link, it went to wicked.com instead. Wicked.com is not a site for nice boys and girls. It is a site for very bad mammies and (especially) daddies.
Chaos erupted all over the land! There was laughing and gasping. Children cried. Adults cringed. And somebody was very definitely getting fired.
The toymaker begged forgiveness, and urged customers to throw out the evil packages.
But then, something curious happened.
The dolls began to fly off the shelves, quicker than a witch on a broomstick. Re-sellers sold the ‘wicked’ dolls at inflated prices of up to $2100! And everyone – the children with their dolls, the mammies and daddies with their deleted browser histories, and the wicked and warped doll collectors of the world, all lived happily ever after.
So, dear readers, let this story remind you all to double check your spells, and your spelling, to keep Human Error at bay.
Cleaning rice’s dirty secret
Rice is the staple food for about 3 billion people, and reigns supreme as a pantry favourite. But the little grain carries a big cost. Rice production uses vast quantities of water, and generates enormous amounts of methane.
Enter Nice Rice, the startup that’s making waves with its new, cheeky campaign spilling the grains (get it?) on the environmental impact of rice farming on the environment.
Nice Rice is on a mission to serve up sustainability by the spoonful. With campaigns showing fluffy rice bellowing from chimneys and trailing out of airplanes, their ads are raising awareness faster than it takes to say boil-in-a-bag-rice. However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Nice Rice claims to cut conventional rice farming emissions by 49%, through a combination of 41 practices that cut emissions, improve soil health, restore biodiversity, and boost rural livelihoods.
Now that’s rice we can get down with.
Compliments to the Robot
Ever thought a robot might one day cook your dinner? Well, NEO Beta from 1X just did exactly that! In a fun (and surprisingly mouth-watering) cook-off, NEO Beta joined forces with celebrity chef Nick DiGiovanni to whip up the ultimate steak—perfectly medium-rare, no less. Spoiler alert: the robot nailed it on the first try.
Picture this: NEO Beta in a custom chef’s coat, standing next to a stocked fridge full of Wagyu beef, ready for a robo-culinary showdown. And this wasn’t some hands-off demonstration; NEO Beta seasoned, butter-basted, and plated that steak with almost no human help. Yes, he had a little VR-assisted guidance, but the taste-test-worthy results speak for themselves!
This cook-off wasn’t just about the food, though. It’s a big hint that NEO might be flipping burgers in our kitchens soon. 1X is aiming for a public release next year, and if this robo-chef-in-training has anything to say about it, the future of food prep could soon include a lot more metal (and precision seasoning).
Grab some popcorn (or maybe a steak) and check out the video. You just might start daydreaming about a kitchen assistant who never burns dinner!
The X-ODUS
The recent re-election of He Who Shall Not Be Named in the States seemed to have sparked a decisive moment in the Twitterverse, with millions of users abandoning the site in reaction to its descent from a lightly moderated forum to a partisan, right-wing swamp.
The X-odus started when Musk took over the site, and began implementing his inconsistent and partisan interpretation of ‘free speech’. But none of the contending websites were big enough or popular enough to provide the scale and breadth of community that Twitter had. Until now.
Meta’s Threads seems to have picked up millions of new users recently and is earning a reputation as a home to vibrant and active creative communities. But for the political and current affairs nerds of the world, it’s BlueSky that has emerged as the new app of choice, with user numbers swelling from 6 to 15 million 16.7 million since the end of August. While these numbers pale in comparison to those of X or Meta’s Threads, users are claiming that the site feels like Twitter used to in the good (or the less-obviously-bad) old days.
The site has powerful moderation and blocking tools, doesn’t try to game your feed with an algorithm, and doesn’t suppress links. It is currently the #1 downloaded free app, with X not even in the top 25.
And now the Guardian has announced it will no longer post on Twitter and has guided its users to BlueSky. Silicon Republic was the first Irish publisher to follow suit.
It feels like a real shift.
UPDATE: TG4 have made the move too.
