Australian Penthouse July/August 2018

from the editor-in-chief

I’m often asked where this magazine sits on the political spectrum. I don’t know if it’s just me, but when I was growing up, this wasn’t a question that cropped up nearly as much as it does today. At the very least, it wasn’t as divisive a question as it is now. There’s this irritating demand these days that we politicise every little detail of our lives. It’s a phenomenon that’s been on the rise for the past 10 years, associated with a constant need for people to pidgeon-hole others based on their beliefs. If you express ideas that diverge from mainstream opinion, you will be shouted down, ‘called out’ and publicly shamed. This is poison to creativity and spontaneity, and it’s become a drain on public discourse in general.…

beam me to the boardroom, scotty

TURNS out Star Trek was right about something. No, not that sometimes, alien chicks can be weirdly attractive, but about hologram chat. A Queens University team headed up by Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, Roel Vertegaal, has created a first of its kind holographic communication device, called the Telehuman 2. You guys are probably thinking, “Don’t holograms already exist? I saw Michael Jackson play years ago at the Billboard Music Awards. You’d be wrong. What you saw may have looked like the deceased singer, but it wasn’t a real hologram. Here’s Vertegaal’s explanation: “People often think of holograms as the posthumous Tupac Shakur performance at Coachella 2012. Tupac’s image, however, was not a hologram but a Pepper Ghost: A two-dimensional video projected on a flat piece of glass. With TeleHuman 2, we’re bringing actual holograms…

leonardo dicap-beetle.

IT’S not uncommon for scientists to name newly discovered animals after celebrities. Sometimes an animal so strikingly resembles its human counterpart that it simply makes sense. Take the blonde-haired Trump moth, or the bulky-armed Schwarzenegger fly, for example. But as the researchers who discovered the George Bush beetle will tell you, it’s not always about looks. “One has to be creative with names,” he told the BBC. “We are two of the only politically conservative scientists around, and we decided to stick our necks out.” Such is the case with the newly christened Grouvellinus leonardodicaprioi, named after the A-list Hollywood star of Wolf of Wall Street and The Revenant, Leonardo DiCaprio. The decision was made to name the beetle after the Oscar-winning actor and environmentalist to honour DiCaprio’s commitment to fight climate…

no throne like your own

KIM Jong-un, baby-faced leader of the Hermit Kingdom, basketball fan and nuclear weapons aficionado brought his own personal toilet with him to the historic Koreas summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. There really is no throne like your own. But the reason for Kim’s potty preferences goes beyond comfort. According to reports from the Washington Post, citing Lee Yun-keol, a defector from the oppressive North Korean regime and former guard of Kim Jong-un, there is a national security rationale behind this peculiar requirement. “The leader’s excretions contain information about his health status, so they can’t be left behind,” Lee told the Post. “In the North, the leader’s restroom needs are managed by the Escort Command, which oversees the personal safety of the leader and the Kim family,” a source told South…

hitting like a girl

ASa tourist in Ireland, Leanna Carr was minding her own business, waiting to catch a ride from Dublin to Galway, when she was groped by an unknown assailant. As she turned to face her attacker, she was met with giggles from a man who was laughing “hysterically” as he whispered to her, “You’re an American, you probably liked it.” The only funny thing about the situation was that Leanna Carr, a 26-year-old amateur bodybuilder, decked the Irishman with the force of a woman who looks like she could deadlift the average dude for reps. “I wasn’t really thinking,” Carr told Fox News via email on Tuesday. “I was angry and in the moment. He wasn’t taking me seriously.” Judging by her bruised knuckles, which she photographed and uploaded to Twitter, the guy took a…

hey siri, wash your mouth out!

THE Apple iPhone and home assistant that we’ve all come to know and love has a peculiar definition of the word “mother”. We’ll give you a clue: the word is a favourite of Samuel L. Jackson’s and rhymes with “another trucker”. This foul-mouthed Easter egg was discovered by a member of Reddit’s Apple board. To activate Siri’s foul mouth, first ask the program to define “mother” and when the assistant asks if an additional definition is required, say “Yes”. “As a noun,” Siri says, “it means short for mother*cker”. The Oxford Dictionary is behind the expletive-ridden entry. It has the alternative entry for the verb, albeit labelled as “vulgar slang.” For whatever reason, Siri didn’t pick up on this. WTF SIRI! For some great responses, try asking these questions. - What is the meaning of life? - What is…