🗣️ Are Your Eyes for Sale?

 NEWS YOU CAN USE

Turn headlines into talking points.

Today – Tech Alert! 🚨

👁️ Eye Spy

How much time do you waste on social media?
(Be honest: mine’s 40% recipes I’ll never cook, 40% puppies & babies, 20% skateboard fails.)

Notice lately how more posts just feel… off?

Welcome to the AI slop buffet: bots pumping out outrage bait, fake comments, and miracle supplement ads your uncle will click on (not me, ever…)

With this flood of chatbots, deepfakes, and AI “influencers”, what’s a fleshy human to do?
Enter Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (makers of ChatGPT) with the solution.

Yes, the guy helping drown us in slop is now selling the mop!
Classic evil-genius move: engineer the virus, then flog the vaccine.

It’s called World Network, a blockchain ‘proof of humanity.’

Think of a digital passport that says, “I’m a real person” without ever spilling your secrets. Banking, travel, apps, dating — no more lonely “Korean models” with “sick grandmothers” begging for iTunes cards.

Sounds cool, right? This is how it works:

• Step 1: Find an official Orb station (there are 1,000+ worldwide).

• Step 2: Stare into the not-at-all-sinister glowing metal ball.

• Step 3: Let it scan your eyeball.

Yes. Your eyeball.

Congrats, you’re human! 

And 16 million people have already done it.

Why? Because they’re rewarded with $WLD.X ( ▲ 6.91% ), Worldcoin’s crypto token.
Imagine buying Bitcoin before it exploded over 10,000,000%.

Or imagine handing your retinal scan to the same guys who can’t stop ‘super-intelligent’ AI from making stuff up, confidently lying about it, and insisting “strawberry” has two r’s.

Still, it’s only your eye.

They’re not taking it… yet. 👁️

FAMOUS WORDS

“It’s easy to fool the eye, but it’s hard to fool the heart”
(Al Pacino, American actor, 1940 - )

🎬 Can you name the film?

🏙️ Neon, rain, and Harrison Ford.

Answer at the end 👇

TALK TOOLBOX

👀 Eye Contact: Handle With Care

I once shot a TV ad in Japan standing next to Beat Takeshi (he needed a box.)
The director kept yelling, “Softer eyes! Softer eyes!” I didn’t get it until I saw the ad — I looked like I wanted to eat souls.

The tricky part: Too much eye contact = creepy. Too little = shifty. And “normal” changes everywhere.

Quick fixes:

• 50/70 Rule — 50% while speaking, 70% while listening.

• Triangle Technique — shift between eyes and mouth to dodge the death stare.

• Thoughtful Look-Away — glance sideways, not down (reflection, not avoidance.)

• Match Energy — mirror their gaze habits to maintain rapport.

Cultural twist: direct eye contact = confidence in the West, but a bit aggressive in much of Asia.

💡 PRO TIP: Looking at the bridge of someone's nose works if eye contact feels overwhelming (unless they have a massive spot there.)

BECAUSE THE ROBOTS ARE COMING

🍿 Lights, Camera… Algorithm!

Back in issue #12 we asked: Will AI replace human filmmakers by 2035?

Turns out the answer is showing up early.
Meet Tilly Norwood — an AI “actress” who is close to signing with a real talent agency.

She’s got glossy headshots (no spots on her nose,) never throws water bottles at assistants, and never forgets her lines (although being AI, she might make them up.)

The pitch from her creator? “Audiences care about the story — not whether the star has a pulse.”

Hollywood just survived its biggest-ever strike fighting to keep AI from replacing actors. Now agencies are actively recruiting it.

The AI flood isn't theoretical any more — it's here, and it’s got an agent.

What do you think? Is a pulse necessary?

💬 FOLLOW-UP: “Would you watch a show if you knew the lead was 100% AI?”

ICONIC

🥜 Peanuts Turns 75!

Before memes, there was Charlie Brown.

Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts debuted October 2, 1950, and became the most influential comic strip ever — 50 years, 17,897 strips, read daily by 350 million people in 75 countries. Each one drawn by the man himself, without a single day off (Boomer work ethic!)

Snoopy became the breakout star: WWI flying ace, Joe Cool, NASA’s lunar safety mascot (the Apollo 10 module was nicknamed “Snoopy”). In Japan, he’s basically royalty — from Harajuku cafés to Uniqlo shirts. My 10-year-old rocks her Peanuts t-shirt like it’s Gucci.

Linus gave us the “security blanket.” Lucy invented the $0.05 therapy booth. Charlie Brown? Eternal failure — but loved for it.

💬 FOLLOW UP: Ask someone their favourite character. You’ll learn a lot about them. (Hint: “Pig-Pen” is the chaotic friend. Always.)

 THE CULTURE CODE

📚 Booktown, Tokyo

What’s “cool” in 2025?

Time Out says it’s places with soul + street life + “nowness” (sounds like something from a meditation app.)

Forget Brooklyn. Forget Shoreditch. The world's coolest neighbourhood is... Jimbōchō, Tokyo.

I’ve been.
It’s all cosy coffeehouses, curry joints, creaky jazz bars, and 130+ secondhand bookshops where people read (rather than pose for selfies.)
It has a shabby charm — like your granddad’s study exploded onto the street.

Next month it hosts its used book festival, turning streets into an open-air library.

So, if stumbling through stacks of vintage manga while clutching artisanal coffee brewed by an obsessive 90-year-old barista is your thing, Jimbōchō will rock (and beat the chaos of Shibuya crossing.)

💡 PRO TIP: Skip the “must-see” list. Hunt down the spots locals love (before Time Out ruins them) — it always makes for better conversation fuel.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: “What's the coolest neighbourhood you've visited?”

🚫 DON'T SAY: “I've been to the Tokyo in Vegas” (that’s just desert sushi and regret.)

WORD WISE

📖 Dictionary+

“She gave me side-eye for doomscrolling during our farm-to-table brunch, but adulting is a hard pass when you're running on cold brew and dad bod rizz.”

Confused?

Translation: She looked at me disapprovingly for reading bad news during a locally-sourced brunch, but I refused to act responsible while over-caffeinated and trying to pass off my out-of-shape body as charming.

Merriam-Webster added 5000 words this year. See the most common ones here.

💬 FOLLOW UP: What slang do you remember from your childhood?

ANSWER

🎬 ANSWER: Blade Runner (1982)

Ridley Scott's 1982 neo-noir follows a burnt-out cop hunting rogue replicants (bioengineered humans) in dystopian LA.

🌎 Cultural Impact: Blade Runner bombed on release (1982) but became one of the most influential sci-fi films ever — its rain-soaked dystopia set the template for cyberpunk, from The Matrix to Ghost in the Shell.

🧠 Deep Dive: The famous “tears in the rain” monologue at the end was improvised by actor Rutger Hauer.

It’s also my favourite film ever.

💬 FOLLOW UP: What’s your favourite sci-fi?

LAST WEEK

🗳 POLL: Would you trust an AI politician?

A) ⚖️ Yes — corruption.exe deleted! — 0%
B) 😬 Maybe — depends who's programming it — 33%
C) 🚫 No — same corruption, different hardware — 67%

💬 Your Two Cents

A.C: An AI politician would be like watching BBC News in 2025; presenting all sides of a discussion with equal merit, as if none of those sides might actually be absolutely ludicrous. It'd then fail to agree with itself and as a result, nothing would ever get done.

S.Y: Hard to imagine self interest/deception not creeping into programming decisions at some point, even if intentions are initially pure.

Some comedy classics in there! No Trump today – even I’ve had enough for now.

THIS IS THE END

That's it for #38.

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