Two.five tidbits about our crazy business ways
Featuring gratuitous vacation photos
I’m late with this edition of Two Thursday Tidbits. No apology. On Wednesday afternoon when I was going to write it, we had been swimming and snorkelling on a deserted tropical beach (gratuitous picture of it half way through this post) so I had no snark in me, not even a snivel. Yesterday, after a luxurious ferry ride we arrived at our next destination and it was 37 degrees Celsius and muggy (for my American readers who use the illogical Fahrenheit system that is too hot for citizens of the 51st state). All I could do was sit in the shaded porch of our rented bungalow, looking at a magnificent mountain scene while sipping some freshly squeezed limeade my wife had made. Bliss, which is antithetical to snide writing.
I casually used one thumb to languorously scroll feeds on my iPhone. After 30 minutes of this I suddenly realized that people have lost their minds and they might not ever get them back. I call this the Grott rule after a friend who said during Covid, “I knew I was sharing this planet with some weird (might also use stupid) people. I just didn’t know there were so many of them.”
That’s pretty harsh David, give me some examples says you. Here you go:
A famous business professor of Entrepreneurial Studies who was consumed by AI in the recent past, just posted about using the latest AI picture generator to conceive of famous paintings with ice cream on them. Is DOGE cutting his research budget?
A contest at Oxford (which used to be a credible educational institution in the distant past) seeing if knowledgeable people could discern human vs AI generated poetry. One question: Why?
Gavin Newsom (for my non-American readers he is the governor of the 1st state California) ideologically sprinting somewhere different by interviewing the opposing teams’s spokespeople on his podcast, claiming that no one in his office every said the word Latinx. It took thousands of people less than 30 seconds to search his old tweets (remember them) full of the said word. Does he not realize it is 2025 and all words, images, videos and actions are permanently recorded on something called “the cloud” and can easily be accessed by anyone?
That got my snide side back.
Here is a picture from my vacation that sums up my impressions: a crocodile with open jaws expelling gases. The tour guide told us there were dumb birds that would actually fly into the croc’s open mouth. We are the birds; the crocodile is technology and THIS is the all business edition of TTT.
QUICKBYTE: Remote Teams will now be better than ever
I came across a summary of an academic preprint where they built a new LLM system - which if I read it right - will be your delegate for burdensome meetings. It will actually have your voice and your knowledge. No word if it uses a great video image of you for Zoom meetings.
Now I hate videoconferencing, what with people turning their cameras on and off, clearly doing other things. Problem solved. You can actually be on the beach now without any worries, while having your AI avatar attend these meetings. You can even maliciously drag them out by invoking an “active engagement strategy.” The question is, will there actually be any real - by that I mean the lowered IQ humans - at these meetings. Who turns off the lights when it is over?
I got in early on a prototype of this system, and have trained up three trusty digital meeting agents. I call them Me, Myself, and I.
Now for the beach picture
WORD SALAD: Talent Acquisition
This is an expression that has irked me for many years. It is a disingenuous oxymoron, and shows just how far we have strayed from the path of comprehension and meaning. Talent I get. We are living in a time where everyone is beautiful and wonderful, with all sorts of different capabilities that fit together seamlessly in the great human mosaic. Blah and Blah. Personnel and Human Resources are out and archaic, even nasty and politically incorrect. We are now in the business of acquisition of these astonishing loving people.
Seriously. Did Herman from lithium ore and barbed wire supply department in the Purchasing division get to name this supposedly more humanistic term? Why not use Talent Procurers instead. Reminds me of…. (Won’t go there).
This feels straight from the Hollywood misuse of the word talent to me. Try it on other human relationships to see how well it works.
I have been lonely lately since I moved so I have been following the latest friend acquisition techniques I saw on Youtube.
Or I’m looking to settle down - maybe even get married - so I’m on the greatest spouse acquisition platform, you should try it. It’s called GrabbaSucka.
It you cannot see the problem with this phrase and you are in charge of human related business functions, it might be the reason for your high turnover or poor morale. Then again, our capacity for self parody seems limitless. I heard one podcast where they were celebrating getting their turnover down to 40% per year. (For those people who long to be budding acquirers that metric is very bad). These dudes’s solutions were laughable if you had any experience in the Personnel departments of yore. Cutting edge talent concepts like “we stopped ghosting recruits ( people actually want good and constant communication), and we started to set basic expectations during onboarding”.
EXTRA HELPINGS of WORD SALAD
Last week I suggested using pineapple in the place of low hanging fruit to show not only some originality, but more truthfulness. They grow on the ground so even the most humble analyst can stumble across these solutions.
Pictured above is a photo to use the next time some joker says ,“Here are the low hanging fruit solutions we recommend you implement”. You point to the picture and say, “like those in this photo?”. After they are either flummoxed or nod hesitantly in assent, you can then say so you are recommending a toxic banana.
That’s a late wrap and we continue to climb up into the mountains again. I will hopefully again on Monday. As always, feedback, comments, restacks, and even a little like are highly appreciated
Ha ha and tee-hee. Thanks, David.
OMG David I was laughing the whole way through this article! I think my favorite was about the 40% turnover rate! 😂