It’s good politics to look this bad
All spelling errors in this email are intended to draw you closer to me.
The AI has come for me. It doesn’t matter that the chorus of people claiming AI loves em dashes has already been disproven. The idea is out there. A bit of punctuation I use to capture my real, human brain — distractable, prone to tangents — will bring AI to mind. It’s too polished, too formal, too precise. One punctuation pundit says that no real person would bother to memorize a keyboard shortcut. If you want to prove your humanity, you have to go with the hyphen.
Don’t be too right. That’s just fake.
I won’t pretend “-” or “–” can communicate the elegance, the drama, the tension of “—”. But I also know being a pedant has never brought me closer to anyone (at least not to anyone I like). See? A parenthetical. I can change.
Maybe stripping off some of the polish is the best way to relate to each other right now. I don’t think the tone of this newsletter is really coming off as sarcastic nonchalance anymore, so much as a cry for help.
And, frankly, if you are sitting on your heels right now, taking it all in at a jaded remove, you are just as much of a troll as Elon Musk. Because no, no one told us that Google would rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, that it would happen this week and feel like two months. It feels good to see it coming. It feels bad to be a loser. You can’t rewrite reality to make yourself look better. That only works on maps.
So let your finger drop into the picture frame. Stet that spelling error. Keep your undereye bags so visible people trail off before they can finish asking how you are. Let them know. Because either they’re doing just as bad, or they’re lying to themselves. Or they’re Elon Musk, because so far he’s the only one who seems to be benefiting. And if it is him, give me a call. I have some things to say. Won’t even need to put me on speakerphone.
Some Links
Yes, “I have been prepared for evil, for greed, for cruelty, for injustice — but I did not anticipate that the people in power would also be such huge losers” is a perfect quote for our times. But this is the one that has been ringing in my head since I read it:
“Silicon Valley believes they are big enough now to create the future, rather than scale up to meet it.”
No one actually wants AI? We just want accessible healthcare and enough money to keep our teeth when we get old. But here we are, sitting across from some tech oligarchs who’ve decided to order “for the table.” This date sucks.
At least AI is starting by taking all of the tech jobs? Eat your own I guess.
Open AI CEO Sam Altman expects “the whole structure of society itself will be up for some degree of debate and reconfiguration” when AI matures. I mean it won’t, but if it did, who’s going to tell Sam he’s already at the top of the power structure he so badly wants to destabilize?
Instead of asking the computers to make art, how about we just ask them to say no for us.
You can kick my girl Lina Khan out of the government, but don’t think for a second that’s going to get her foot off the tech bro’s necks. I know the cult of personality has ruined our democracy, but I just really think she could save us?
There are a lot of bad things happening right now, but nothing is more evil than making me think fondly about George W. Bush. My god.
Ask for a raise. If your boss asks why, tell them the Chief Global Strategist for JPMorgan Asset Management told you. If they say no, quit. This human tie clip is literally calling you a wimp if you don’t.
Eat the rich, but save J.B. Pritzker for last.