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Talk your shit here
+ This 50s machine controlled us
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OVERWORLD:
-A new, exclusive social media where you talk shit-
ONE BETWEEN:
-Ikea just made non-cringe gaming furniture-
THE DEPTHS:
-Laff Box: It controlled our minds for 70 years-
 | O |  |
✦TREND PICKS✦
▶️ YouTube:
Kodak Black - Stressed Out
👽 Reddit:
Magazine ad from 1996 predicts 2024
🔎 Google:
Smoking ban UK
Tech
A new, exclusive social media where you talk shit
Talking shit on X/Twitter is just a classic feeling. But imagine if you were actually talking, like with your mouth.
That’s the premise of Airchat, which is founded by Naval Ravikant (legendary knowledge spitter and prophetic entrepreneur) and Brian Norgard (ex-Tinder executive).
Naval Ravikant, in the flesh.
One could guess that Naval’s desire for a deeper way to spit motherfucking facts comes from his god-status for doing exactly that.
According to Naval, the use of voice can enhance social dynamics often flattened by text-based platforms. Hearing a voice’s tone is kinda unbeatable when it comes to fully understanding what somebody has to say.
About humanity’s tradition of oral information:
Humans have spoken to each other for 200,000 years. Writing has only been around for 5,300 years. Meaning, we’ve written for 2,65% of the time we’ve spoken.
If you ask Darwin, humans are probably far more calibrated to intuitively understand spoken information.
At least that’s Airchat’s bet.
It’s lit: AirChat recently found itself overwhelmed after a new invite feature backfired, leading to an unmanageable influx of new users.
So, they temporarily stopped new sign-ups. Still, it’s popping off. AirChat is sitting at #27 in the App Store’s social networking category.
Having a charting app that nobody can get is great marketing. Like a line outside Louis Vuitton, it’s abrasively exclusive.
✦How the heck it works✦
Basically, you’ve got a transcripted text feed + audio recordings which play one after another automatically.
You can pause and respond, or keep listening. You can also attach pictures and videos to your recording.
The app allows users to record messages by holding down an Audio/Video button, with recordings posted instantly— this kinda encourages errors, which is cool.
Allowing for errors invites a sense of humanity to it, at least more so than the vagueness of interpreting the intended tone of some text.
Peeking inside the place we can’t get in.
“But I’m shy”: Shut up. As opposed to the stage fright one might have when talking to hundreds of people on Clubhouse and Twitter spaces, with Airchat you’re not actually speaking live.
This allows shy cuties to gather courage and think about what to say before sending it out to the world of cutthroat internet marauders.
Even though it’s primarily a Silicon Valley crowd in there, the content is surprisingly diverse. People are telling anecdotes, stories, and vocally laughing out loud instead of loling.
Just a bunch of humans thinking about what they’re going to say, and saying it. It’s so simple it’s weird it hasn’t come earlier.
✦QUICK HITS✦
Dr. Martens' shares dropped 30% and trading was briefly halted after it predicted lower 2025 revenues and significant U.S. wholesale challenges, alongside announcing CEO Kenny Wilson’s upcoming departure. Skinheads weep.
Elon Musk announced that over 10% of Tesla’s workforce will be laid off. Why? To cut costs and boost productivity (heard that one before), amidst increasing competition and a challenging market. Tesla shares fell 5%. Sadness.
Keanu Reeves will voice gun-toting, fly motherfucker Shadow the Hedgehog in the upcoming "Sonic the Hedgehog 3" which premieres December 20th.
Apple is no longer the #1 smartphone seller. Global smartphone shipments dropped 9.6% to 50.1 million units in Q1, causing it to lose its top spot to Samsung, which shipped 60.1 million units.
James Dean, the NASA art program pioneer who invited artists like Norman Rockwell to depict space missions, has passed away at 92. His program, from 1963 to 1974, gave artists unprecedented access to astronauts and launches, enriching public perception of space exploration through art.
Microsoft inked a strategic $1.5 billion deal with UAE’s AI giant G42. It’s kinda intense because it’s orchestrated by the Biden administration to counter China’s tech influence in the Gulf. Basically, it’s a tech proxy war.
Palace and Evisu’s upcoming collab is very boring and ugly. Look at it, laugh at it.
OpenAI is launching a Tokyo office and developing a Japanese-optimized GPT-4 model, marking significant localization and expansion efforts to meet growing global AI demand and competition. Sugoi.
You should buy this: The very handsome and sexy Lexus LY680 Yacht, for $5.1m.
Watch: Guy makes 56 grilled cheese sandwiches with 56 cheeses and reviews them.
Read: Why Do So Many Beetle Species Exist?
ONE
BETWEEN
🎮 Ikea just made non-cringe gaming furniture
Yes, Ikea is flipping the idea of “gaming” furniture on its head with its new Brännboll collection.
The 20 pieces in the collection ditch the cringe “dark gamer" aesthetic for a pleasant, minimal style that feels way more realistic. Let’s look at some of them, friend.
There’s this desk that you can close away into a cupboard:
This chair on bungies that move your seat with you as your ass shifts:
And this cute cart, aww lol:
The collection is set to launch in September. If you’re interested, you can see all of the pieces here.
THE DEPTHS
Entertainment
Laff Box: the device that controlled minds for 70 years.
Humans are stupid monkeys. If our whole flock jumps off a cliff, we will too. If our whole flock laughs at something, even if it isn’t funny, we will too - which is why sitcoms have laugh tracks.
For the past 70 years, most TV sitcoms have had them. It started with American TV fossils like the 50s “The Hank McCune Show,” and stayed present with pop-cult sensations like “Friends,” “Seinfeld,” and “Big Bang Theory.”
It’s actually not til the past 20 years that sitcoms started breaking form with naturally paced humor without laugh tracks. Think “Community,” “The Office” and “Arrested Development.”
In retrospect, it feels weird. Who came up with this shit? It’s such an odd pop-cultural wrinkle.
✦The birth of canned hahahas✦
First off, the first laugh tracks were on radio, not TV.
According to legend, a kinda lame joke had ignited a booming audience laugh on the 40s radio show “The Bing Crosby Show” (these names are crazy).
Some sound engineers thought “That joke sucks, but those laughs are amazing, we should box them up and use them on other jokes.”
So, Charles Douglass, sound engineer and inventor of the laugh track, created the Laff Box.
It’s quite literally a box on wheels that played recorded laughs out of a speaker.
✦Here’s how the Laff Box works✦
- It’s operated by pressing keys; pressing one key would release a single type of laugh, pressing multiple keys at once would create a combination or "symphony" of laughter.
- Each key represented a different demographic factor, such as age, sex, and style of laugh. It was capable of holding a total of 320 laughs.
- Douglass charged $100 per session to roll the Laugh Box to studios and help integrate the laugh tracks into television productions.
- As demand grew, Douglas hired assistants to manage the workload, which involved sweetening around 100 hours of television weekly.
By salvaging recordings of authentic laughs, he could insert them after unfunny jokes, making your monkey flock-oriented brain cave to peer pressure and laugh. This technique became known as “sweetening” recorded radio content.
Transitioning to TV, producers tried creating that theater feel with an audience watching and reacting. But live audiences were sporadic, they didn’t laugh at the correct moment (should’ve worked on the jokes then). Luckily, they had Douglass’ Laff Box.
Now, a producer could control the timing and intensity of audience reactions, ensuring that every joke landed perfectly.
And that’s why, 60 years later, people are laughing at “Big Bang Theory.”
Fuck you, Charles Douglass.
