This & That: “Everyone needs to take a giant deep breath and understand what these (AI) tools actually do and what they’d don’t do.  What they actually do is match patterns and they are skills amplifiers not skills democratizers. And they are not magic, in any way.  You only get value out of these tools if you are a subject matter expert and looking to amplify your subject matter expertise to get higher levels of productivity — that’s the highest, best use.” – technology expert Shelly Palmer on The AI Download with Shira Lazar (www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhJuCNbbVbU)

Ran into Uncertainty in the elevator last night. Again.

Lean, angular, all sharp elbows and rough edges in the cold light; dripping, as ever, doubt, unease, second thoughts, remorse, ambiguity, and regret.

Sometimes, I find myself staring at the mural in the dark mahogany clubbiness of the King Cole Bar on East 55th, imagining a conversation with the eponymous English nursery rhyme character who’s commanded the room since 1932.  

 If familiar, you know the painting was commissioned by John Jacob Astor IV, paying the then-princely sum of $5000 to Maxfield Parrish, stylistic master and ardent teetotaler.

Along with myriad gut-wrenching twists and turns, 2025 is also the poster year for the predictably predictable. On that score, we’ve reached “peak 65" — the year the largest tranche of Boomers, the generation that first arrived circa 1946, hits their commonly-assigned and socially-stamped "seniority."

So, there we were in our last episode, musing about the Wall Street Journal’s heartwarming tale of caring and compassion in modern medicine: “Obamacare Insurers Seek Double-Digit Premium Hikes Next Year.”

What do you do when:
The public narrative is toxic.
The policy climate is harsh and polarized.
The marketplace economics are bleak and trending bleaker.
The political calculus sucks.
And consumer backlash seems inevitable.

Most of us think confusion is the enemy of clarity.
As an erosive antagonist, undermining confidence and intention.
But what if it was the opposite?

Stereotyping, polarizing, swastika-waving, hate-frothing; real fist-in-the-gut-from-your-black-shirted-former-friend kind of stuff. Talking, of course, about Grok, the Elon Musk-invented “chatbot uber alles,” launching a virulent antisemitic spew.

1. What if AI was less of an answer and more of a question?

So, yeah, we’re all dialed into the fact that it’s always darkest just before the gloom; conditions where it’s well-nigh impossible to discern the nose on your face, much less the next step in the road.

This being the third week in June and, same as ever was, the Cannes advertising festival is sending too many of the wrong signals, in too many of the wrong ways, and to far too many.

Prompt: what are the loudest sounds in the world?

AI answer: Tunguska Meteor (310 dB), Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai Eruption (150 dB), sperm whales (230 dB), rocket launch (180 dB), rock concert (up to 150 dB).

Lately, I’ve been watching the news about LA with a sick sense of dread.  

Talk about a year that no city, particularly not one eponymous with angels, deserves.

Twist plots, shift narratives.

Withstand ambushes and assaults.

Dismiss distractions, cut through complexity.

It might be laughably naïve, but waking up to a sparkling Memorial Day morning the thought bloomed that maybe, just maybe, this is the metaphor writ large.

Sometimes I wonder if some flavors of advertising generally wind up as complete crap mostly because that’s what we expect.

Mark Carney, last week’s “who’da thunk” winner in the post-Trudeau Canadian face-off for prime minister, had exactly 5 more ticks on the campaign calendar than Harris had in her post-Biden presidential campaign.

In Walter Mosely's noirish Leonid McGill detective series, a 50-something ex-boxer-turned-gumshoe-cum-philosopher muses over what he calls an ancient Samurai expression about resilience:

Nana korobi ya oki. “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”

But what say we talk a little about creativity, instead of the screwdrivers, pliers, wrenches, and AI paraphernalia that, in reality, are just means to the ends.

That is to say, tools.

The hell with economic ditches dug out by erratic policy. 

So, okay, there’s a temptation to talk about zigs, zags, and remote Pacific Islands with zero US trade facing a 10% tariff hit.