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“Ari” here, welcoming you back to This Week Online.
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This week was purple. I can’t explain why, just take from that what you will.
The Lost Letters of an Imprisoned Queen Have Been Decrypted After 400 Years
Enough Cocaine To Supply Australia for a Whole Year Found Floating in the Pacific
Zoo Director Killed 4 Rare ‘Pygmy’ Goats and Served Them at a Party
Taliban Bureaucrats Hate Working Online All Day, ‘Miss the Days of Jihad’
WHAT HAPPENED
03/02 – 10/02
- Medicinal MDMA and mushies approved by TGA. Don’t U DARE get excited.
- Mouse study suggests vaping is bad for you
- U Won’t Believe This Headline Is Real: Endless Loop AI Seinfeld Show Milk Shake Ducked
- Bing is… Back?
- Eating Kitfo w Yibby in Sydney
- The VICE glossary of sex worker terminology
- jokes round
MEDICINAL MDMA AND MUSHIES APPROVED BY TGA. DON’T U DARE GET EXCITED.
The TGA has approved MDMA and psilocybin for medicinal use in Australia. Oh, you like that? Feels good? Feels progressive? Think you might be able to qualify?
WAKE UP!!! Of course… There is a catch. There always is.
In this particular case, the catch of which we speak is annoyingly obvious… ACCESSIBILITY. They’ve laden down the process with so many inane hurdles and obstacles it’s basically a dark circuit. Thank God that this is supposed to open up pathways to treatment for people with severe depression. Because if there’s one thing I know about depression it’s that it makes you very motivated, empowered and energised to hustle through loops and twists and roadblocks and get knocked back time and time again [to the point where it feels like even God themselves doesn’t want you to get better] in hopeful pursuit of treatment.
[ here ]
MOUSE STUDY SUGGESTS VAPING IS BAD FOR YOU
And you’re shocked? Shocked??? A recent study conducted on mice is just the latest to offer insight into the previously-little-studied effects of long-term vaping on our fragile little bods. The results suggested that vaping is bad for you. Hmmm.
The researchers basically hotboxed the poor fuckers: three times a day, for twenty minutes at a time, the mice were administered one puff of Juul smoke every minute. This mango-scented torture loop went on for four weeks. Four weeks??? you say…. How does that equate to studying the long term effects??? Even I have vaped for going on [shudder] two or four years…
Get a hold of yourself! The truth is far worse… four weeks in mouse time is equivalent to THREE HUMAN YEARS.
The researchers found that even such a “mild” exposure to Juul vapour managed to fuck up the little mice lungs, causing damage at a cellular and molecular level, and harming the immune system, likely increasing smokers’ vulnerability to scary stuff like lupus, pulmonary fibrosis, and certain lung cancers. Uh oh….
[ here ]
U WON’T BELIEVE THIS HEADLINE IS REAL: ENDLESS LOOP AI SEINFELD SHOW MILKSHAKE DUCKED
I wish there was another phrase that meant what milkshake ducked means that doesn’t give off the impression that I am internetpilled of the millennial variety. Sadly, that is what this is.
The endless AI-generated Seinfeld show, “everything, forever”, was milkshake ducked. That is what happened. It is sad what happened but rather what is more sad is that the words “milkshake ducked” mean anything at all to me. But that’s not the point. Tens of thousands of people tuned in to watch this strangely engrossing AI Seinfeld, until Larry Feinberg casually spewed out transphobic and homophobic statements during a comedy bit on Sunday. Oh goodness.
[ here ]
BING IS… BACK?
No… It can’t be.
But… It can. Microsoft’s ceaselessly mocked search engine, shrugged into irrelevance in times of yore and barely more than a relic of web 0 in the minds-eye of the general populace, is making a return. And, people, hear this: It is chic. That’s according to New York Times columnist Kevin Roose, who attended Bing’s relaunch, hailed as Microsoft’s “iPhone moment”. The new Bing is a fusion of a standard search engine and a ChatGPT-powered chatbot, meaning users can find answers to basically anything they need.
Listen to this: “Type in a prompt – say, ‘Write me a menu for a vegetarian dinner party’ – and the left side of your screen fills up with the standard ads and links to recipe websites. On the right side, Bing’s A.I. engine starts typing out a response in full sentences, often annotated with links to the websites it’s retrieving information from. To ask a follow-up question or make a more detailed request – for example, ‘Write a grocery list for that menu, sorted by aisle, with amounts needed to make enough food for eight people’– you can open up a chat window and type it.”
Now, we can’t exactly hype about throwing off Google’s shackles just yet, it is just Microsoft after all. But hey, any competition’s good competition… or whatever they say.
[ here ]
EATING KITFO W YIBBY IN SYDNEY
VICE AU’s Julie Fenwick sat down with emerging Sydney rapper Yibby, and ate a delectable Ethiopian meal at his favourite spot in Glebe. They talked about the Australian music hustle, having two jobs, and how, occasionally, TikTok is just shit.
[ here ]
THE VICE GLOSSARY OF SEX WORKER TERMINOLOGY
As Rachel Barker writes for VICE NZ, seeing “Greek” on the menu of your local brothel “may conjure” a jarring montage of “seafood and souvlaki”. But this is not the case, wide eyed future client. And the truth is far more spectacular. Herein, dear reader, lies all the office jargon you’ll need to get acquainted with if your aim is to understand the sex industry.
[ here ]
+ jokes round
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