Does anyone actually refer to Twitter as X? I never hear it, even in meetings about social media campaigns. It feels like the one of the biggest rebranding failures in history. Even Prince, when he rebranded, had greater success at being called an unpronounceable symbol.

The Best Thing on Netflix right now is 3 Body Problem. It combines real history (the horror of Mao's Cultural Revolution) with apocalyptic sci-fi; quantum physics with metaphysics; moments of wonder with moments of sheer terror. It's mind-blowingly good. youtube.com/watch?v=mogSbM…

Brilliant illustration by Anuj Shrestha in The Economist, for a story headlined “To see India’s future, go south”. This is why artists still have a place in the age of AI.

If you're looking for a new favourite band, here they are: The Last Dinner Party. Their lushly orchestrated sound is rooted in the heyday of 70s rock and pop, with trace elements of Roxy Music, Cockney Rebel, Kate Bush, Bowie, even a little Abba. youtube.com/watch?v=wqcYU_…

The front page of my local newspaper today. On the one hand, it's good to see a punchy, newsy story with a striking graphic. On the other hand, alas, Johannesburg, what a mess we're in.

I find it oddly comforting to know that even royals, cocooned in their privilege, with access to all the expertise in the world, can be shamelessly useless at Photoshop. This is a small victory for human ineptitude in the age of artificial intelligence. theverge.com/2024/3/10/2409…

A stylish woman strolls down a rain-drenched street in Tokyo, in a Blade Runneresque glimpse of the future of movie-making. This is an entirely AI-generated video, from the preview of OpenAI's new Sora technology. How will we ever be able to tell who the replicants are?

For any iPhone users who would like to keep spam calls at bay: Go to Settings, then Phone, then scroll down and turn on Silence Unknown Callers. An easy and elegant solution, sending all unknown callers straight to voicemail. I'm pretty sure Android has something similar.

I asked Google's Gemini to give me a summary of Tucker Carlson's interview with Putin. It didn't happen, the AI insisted, warning me to beware of deepfakes. So I asked Perplexity & got a detailed breakdown, with links to sources & video. Perplexity is by far the best Gen AI app.

A pretty, pretty lekker surprise in episode 1 of the 12th season of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Sharlto Copley, best known as Wikus van der Merwe in District 9, plays a heavily accented ex-SA business tycoon named Michael Fouchay. (Ha). He even mentions Elon Musk at one point.

ChatPDF is one of the most useful AI tools I've discovered. It allows you to upload and chat with PDFs of up to 120 pages. Extremely handy for journalists, researchers & anyone else who needs to get to grips with complex docs in a hurry. Try it out here: chatpdf.com

My favourite phrase of 2024 so far, via The Guardian, is 'Fomo Sapiens'. Someone who is forever looking at their phone, out of fear of missing something. shrtm.nu/pGg

I see that more and more brands are using “festive” as a noun. As in, “Happy Festive!” This seems to be a uniquely South African usage. I like it, since it gets its meaning across with economy, & it reminds us that we live in a noun-binary world where language is ever-evolving.

It's Best Of season, and one of the best ofs is music industry lawyer Mark Rosin's excellent & eclectic playlist. Here's the 2023 version, 4 hours and 41 minutes of lovingly-curated listening across multiple genres. Enjoy! shrtm.nu/oGC

I love this initiative, as seen at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in Joburg today. Giving employees an opportunity to build a playlist of their favourite music, for background listening in the building.

Dear MiWay Insurance, how do I make your persistent spam calls stop coming MiWay? I get at least a dozen calls from different MiWay numbers every day. I swat them away with TrueCaller, but it's intrusive and it makes me loathe your company for this reason alone. Pse advise.

Very little happens in the news in South Africa without Rasta turning it into a painting. Today, surrounded by admirers at the Springbok victory parade in Joburg, he unveiled his latest Rastapiece. As you can see, it's unfinished, but then again, so is the Mona Lisa.

Fan-made Nando's ads, or 'Fando's', as I like to call them, are a unique feature of brand communication in SA. Easily distinguished by their non-standard font, these unofficial ads are a tribute to Nando's long-held reputation for on-the-ball social commentary.

I love Fran Liebowitz's curmudgeonly take on modern-day social media discourse: 'I don't care what people think about what I think about things. I don't care if you agree with me. I don't care if anyone agrees with me. You don't agree with me, so what?' salon.com/2023/10/17/fra…

I'm trying out the new DALL-E 3 AI image generator on ChatGPT Plus. The latest version also includes voice chat, which is very handy for conversational questioning.