Hello internet friends,

turns out, it is Monday Tuesday again and here we are. An email!
If you want to see ~the future~ let me introduce you to Replika, your new robot friend. Or how Wired would say it: What My Personal Chat Bot Is Teaching Me About AI’s Future
I tried it and it is creepy. (Can’t wait, to be honest.)

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Rent-A-Friend

If chat bots aren’t doing it for you and you’re still unable to attract people into interacting with you, here is something for you: How to Hire Fake Friends and Family
You’ll have to move to Japan first, though.

Apps!

Imagine for just a moment that the problem you have with apps on your phone is not that there are too many of them or that they spy on your every move or open up the door to random strangers to yell at you. Image instead that you might have not enough apps. Huh. For this situation there is an “App of the Day” thing going on at the iPhone app store and boy, is it wild: (for a very loose definition of “wild”) What I learned after downloading every iPhone App of the Day for a month

Happy Death

Important New Zealand news! A Country Created A Viral Vacationing “Swim Reaper” And People Love It
(In other New Zealand news: as far as I followed the news they’ve elected a pretty great new Prime Minister. But what’s that next to a grim reaper who enjoys the beach?)

Ads Ads Ads

I openly admit: I fell for this crap, too: A psychologist explains why those Facebook product ads are so darn compelling. Twice!
And let me tell you: the fancy scandinavian slippers are rather nice, but the shoes (from another company, but same contemporary conformist marketing) are… complicated.

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Toodles.
Sorry. Weird week. (And uhm, yeah… I told you about my newly acquired Terrace House addiction, right? Well… I’m now at this (rather low) point in my life where I download fan-subs of the first Japan-only iteration which I find in the weirder corner of the internet. This eats mightly into my “reading the internet” time. Again: sorry.)