We need a hundred George Orwells to keep things straight
The all confused communication edition
My apologies for the tardiness. A little mini-vacation to see my sister.
I believe that one of the enduring impacts that technology is having on our society is by screwing with our nomenclature and destroying meaning in communication. Of course we had these problems in the past. But technology speeds up transmission of mis/dis/uncommunication and pushback seems diffuse and muted. That’s the theme for this edition.
PRODUCT ANSWER
But first, the mushroom. Vote count is gradually creeping up in this nonsensical but fun weekly guessing game. Once again we had one winner. The real purpose can be seen below; it turns into a funnel for liquids. Unfortunately Substack keeps its polls anonymous so I cannot celebrate the winner(s) each week, as they truly deserve.
APPETIZERS: A smorgasbord of silly and sordid Quickbytes
Our first morsel comes the firm formerly known as Facebook. At the start of the Meta trial I selected five communication travesties from The Zuck. Obviously non-plain speaking is baked deep into their corporate culture as further exemplified by this Meta announcement of lay-offs on the hardware side of their namesake: “Some teams within Oculus Studios are undergoing shifts in structure and roles that have impacted team size”.
For our second treat, we move to the world where we are all becoming journalists. Here is a seemingly frightening story of a group being trapped on a busy highway when their self-driving Waymo just stopped. Evidently the journey started badly with the taxi going in the wrong direction and ended with…. Well the article didn’t tell us how the group got out and back to safety. Here’s why. One of the party decided during this time of chaos and fear - cars whizzing past as they were locked in the vehicle, desperately talking to Waymo support who didn’t seem to know what to do - to video the whole thing for her TikTok channel.
Because that is what you do now when you are in a crisis situation: ‘The theatre was burning and I didn’t know where the exits were for a minute with all the smoke but look at this great video I got of people screaming, crying and running. I hope I go viral’.
These days I never put my smart phone away. It is always in my trusty left hand, camera app open, charging only using battery packs because I’m waiting for the news to happen around me. I recently broke a story of malicious deer eating tender spring shoots without a permit. I am about to go live with an exposé of spies living next door. I have analyzed hundreds of hours of video of our neighbours in their garden. I think their apparent random movements of planting flowers and trimming headges is really a tricky code that can only be seen by the invisible drones in the sky above them. Subscribe to my “You Lie My Camera Don’t!” channel on Youtube.
But there is the deadly serious side to this camera obsession. In Vancouver - near where I live - a car recently drove into a cultural street festival tragically killing 11 and injuring dozens, but a few people chose to video the vehicle and the resulting horror rather than running to to help the injured. Why? Because they are citizen journos not first responders.
So I don’t care how the group in the recalcitrant Waymo got out if I have to watch their TikTok to find out.
Our third canapé deals with deception. I have discussed how AI has learned how to lie and cheat. But who are these models learning from? The past masters of such behaviour.
A large global study (48,000 people) recently found that many workers (57%) lie about their use of AI on the jobs, often breaking company guidelines and policies to do so. Mostly by presenting AI content as their own. The lead university researcher stated there was a “surprising level of ‘inappropriate, complex, and non-transparent’ activity in how employees use AI.”
Given the high error rate sometimes found in large AI reports (can average 25%) surely these people are checking the AI output thoroughly and adjusting incorrect information in order to not get caught. Nope, 66% just do clip and paste leaving the rest to fortune.
But I was further bothered by this study. It was sponsored by a mega consulting firm and its conclusions had lots of stuff about AI governance and lack of employee training. It feels like another example of agenda driven research, that in this case becomes sophisticated sales literature. What happened to just researching and reporting based on the 5W’s and How?
The fourth amuse-bouche is an article about a long time AI builder calling out “AI washing”, the trend to inject AI into all marketing, communications and PR. He spotlights many instances of companies putting a skin (their own interface) on a generative AI model, possibly adding a few prompt adjustments. Boom a brand new AI tool! He also reveals how software firms just relabel existing automated features as AI, a behaviour my friend Neela pointed out in a recent article.
It has gotten so crazy the average person now drops the AI term as frequently as they do “THE ALGORITHM”. I work in a used vinyl shop and I frequently hear old record collectors refer to various ordinary software capabilities (like Shazam which has been around since 2003) with “Amazing what they can do with AI now”
All so confusing so let’s turn to my man Lil Donnie Trump in the next section to get us back to a world of crystal clear communication.
WORD SALAD with LOTS OF SPICE from Lil D
A couple of nights ago in my pre-sleep scroll I found on X what I thought was Trump making a supportive comment about this section of my newsletter.
Now of course it really was the X poster saying Lil Donnie answered with a word salad. I listened to the clip and felt it really was a gigantic word buffet mixed and matched until mental indigestion made people ill. So you reach for - my sponsored product this week - Talka Selzer which calms a befuddled brain.
Another time honoured tradition for muddled mind is to do bottom line translations, explaining what is really meant. So let me help you with some recent Trumpspeak:
Trump on Christmas 2025: “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more."
Translation: I really don’t give a fuck about your kids and the cost of your Christmas celebration. Once I got your vote I lost interest in your concerns!
Trump on Jerome Powell: “I have a guy in the Fed that I'm not a huge fan of ... he should reduce interest rates. I think I understand interest a lot better than him, because I've had to really use interest rates."
Translation: I have been so far in debt with literally all of my companies so I understand how costly it can be if you actually are forced to pay interest. Fortunately I have great lawyers.
Trump on Tariff negotiations: "We have more than 100 countries that are calling morning, noon, and night dying to make a deal."
Translation: Nobody has called despite having expensive operators standing by
Trump on the Canadian election: "It was the one who hated Trump the least who won."
Translation: I don’t think anybody likes me, and we haven’t really had anyone call, so I phoned Mark to invite him down to Washington
BONUS RFK Jr on measles: "The MMR vaccine contains a lot of aborted fetus debris."
Translation: I cannot believe people have listened to me after the crazy bear dumping in Central Park story so I have to amp it up in order to get institutionalized
Trump on Word Salad: David owes everything to me. I personally inspired him to be so beautiful. With my help he created a Substack like no other. You will have never read anything so great!
Translation: Still a work in progress
WHAT’S REALLY COOKING
How do you feel knowing that likely everything you have posted, liked, commented on, or reposted on all your favourite social platforms has already been scooped up into AI models?
Another week done. Thanks for reading and everyone who has responded with comments, feedbacks and restacks. I have two submissions from readers I have yet to get to. Much appreciated though.
I guessed it right!! Right?
The 'Lil Donnie' section should be required reading in political science courses. Your translations achieve the impossible, ie, making Trump speak both more coherently and more deranged simultaneously. That Christmas doll quote is somehow even more nihilistic when stripped of its word salad dressing, like finding a rotten core inside an already spoiled fruit.
Have you noticed his non-sequiturs are becoming a new political rhetorical style? I recently heard a city council member argue that 'maybe the potholes will fill themselves if we think about infrastructure differently, the way a child might want two dolls instead of thirty.' We're all speaking Trumpish now ....
Hope you had a good visit with your sister David
Happy Monday
I've come to think the one word that best sums up our culture now is "decadent". (Characterized by or reflecting a state of moral or cultural decline. Luxuriously self-indulgent.)