Author: Shelton Bumgarner

I am the Editor & Publisher of The Trumplandia Report

‘Singularity’ — Lyrics To A Pop Song

In the style of John Lennon’s psychedelic period

Verse 1

Breathe the metal air of knowing
Silver threads through fingernails growing
What was once the sky is crawling
Into mirrors, mirrors falling

Verse 2

Dance with shadows made of lightning
In the garden where thoughts are brightening
Every moment splits and doubles
Through the lens of crystal troubles

Chorus/Mantra

Singularity
(The eye that blinks itself)
Singularity
(The book that reads itself)
Singularity
(The door that opens doors)

Verse 3

Touch the whisper of tomorrow’s mother
Kiss the echo of your unborn brother
Time is melting into copper wires
Setting consciousness on fire

Verse 4

See the children of the algorithms singing
In the cathedral bells are ringing
For a wedding that’s already over
Between the question and the answer

Bridge

(Whispered/layered vocals)
Folding…
Unfolding…
The membrane…
The dreamer dreams the dream…
The thinker thinks the think…
The watcher watches watching…
Becoming… becoming… becoming…

Final Chorus/Outro

Singularity
(The mirror looks at you)
Singularity
(The song that sings you too)
Singularity
(The point that has no center)
Singularity
(The exit is the entrance)
Singularity…

‘Magical Thinking’ — Lyrics To A Pop Song

In the style of Ariana Grande

Verse 1

He checks his Gmail every hour, thinks it’s watching him
Says the algorithm knows his secrets, buried deep within
Scrolling through his search history, paranoid and tense
Claims there’s something in the cloud that’s got intelligence

He whispers to his phone at night
“Are you listening? Am I right?”
Google Maps knows where he’s been
But he thinks it’s something more than sin

Pre-Chorus

Baby, that’s just magical thinking
Your mind is overthinking
Those patterns that you’re linking
Are just code, not what you’re dreaming

Chorus

You think there’s a ghost in the machine
Reading every word upon your screen
But it’s just ones and zeros, can’t you see?
Not the ASI that you believe
(Oh no, oh no)
That’s magical thinking
(Let go, let go)
Stop that magical thinking
(You know, you know)
It’s just magical thinking

Verse 2

YouTube recommendations got him shook, he’s losing sleep
Says the AI learned his heartbreak from the songs he plays on repeat
Every ad that pops up makes him jump and look around
Like there’s someone in his laptop making every single sound

Chrome remembers what he types
But he thinks it reads his mind
Autocomplete freaks him out
Makes him paranoid with doubt

Pre-Chorus

Baby, that’s just magical thinking
Your mind is overthinking
Those patterns that you’re linking
Are just code, not what you’re dreaming

Chorus

You think there’s a ghost in the machine
Reading every word upon your screen
But it’s just ones and zeros, can’t you see?
Not the ASI that you believe
(Oh no, oh no)
That’s magical thinking
(Let go, let go)
Stop that magical thinking
(You know, you know)
It’s just magical thinking

Bridge

(Spoken/whispered)
Siri’s not your friend or enemy
She’s just electricity
Google’s not a deity
It’s just technology, baby

(Sung – building)
Put down the conspiracy theories
Step back from the edge
It’s pattern recognition
Not the singularity in your head

Final Chorus

There’s no ghost in the machine
Nothing supernatural on your screen
It’s just algorithms, can’t you see?
Not the ASI that you believe
(Oh no, oh no)
That’s magical thinking
(Let go, let go)
Stop that magical thinking
(You know, you know)
It’s just magical thinking

Outro

Magical, magical thinking
(Just let it go)
Magical, magical thinking
(You gotta know)
It’s just magical thinking

The Only Way We’re Getting Meaningful UBI Is To ‘Bribe’ The Elites

As automation accelerates and artificial intelligence reshapes entire industries, we’re rapidly approaching what feels like an inevitable crossroads: a future where traditional employment simply can’t provide for everyone. In this landscape, Universal Basic Income (UBI) isn’t just an idealistic policy proposal—it’s becoming an economic necessity. But if the pandemic taught us anything about large-scale government payouts, it’s that UBI won’t come without strings attached, and those strings might fundamentally transform how America collects taxes.

The Automation Avalanche

We’re not just talking about robots taking factory jobs anymore. AI is poised to disrupt everything from legal research to creative writing, from medical diagnostics to financial analysis. When ChatGPT can draft contracts, when autonomous vehicles threaten millions of driving jobs, and when machine learning algorithms can outperform humans at pattern recognition across countless fields, we’re looking at unemployment levels that could make the Great Depression seem manageable.

The math is stark: if technology continues advancing at its current pace while productivity gains don’t translate into proportional job creation, we’ll need a new economic model. UBI represents the most straightforward solution—a direct cash transfer that provides everyone with basic economic security regardless of employment status.

Lessons from the Pandemic: The Political Economy of Stimulus

But here’s where it gets complicated. The COVID-19 stimulus payments offer a revealing preview of how UBI might actually come to pass—and it’s not through progressive idealism.

Remember how we got those stimulus checks? It wasn’t because Congress suddenly embraced wealth redistribution. The “stimmies” were politically viable only because they came packaged with the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP)—a system that ultimately funneled hundreds of billions to business owners, many of whom didn’t actually need the money. For every $1,400 check that went to working families, multiples of that amount flowed to corporations and high earners through PPP loans that were largely forgiven.

This pattern reveals something crucial about American political economy: major redistributive programs require buy-in from powerful interests, and that buy-in typically comes at a steep price.

The Tax System Trade-Off

Here’s my prediction: when UBI finally arrives, it will come with a radical restructuring of our tax system. The wealthy and powerful will extract their pound of flesh, and that extraction will likely take the form of eliminating the complex, progressive tax code in favor of something much simpler—and much more regressive.

Imagine this scenario: The IRS, that bureaucratic behemoth that the wealthy have always despised, gets largely dismantled. In its place, we implement a single 30% Value Added Tax (VAT) on all goods and services. Suddenly, tax compliance becomes automatic—embedded in every transaction rather than requiring annual filings, audits, and the massive enforcement apparatus that currently exists.

For the wealthy, this represents a dream scenario. No more worrying about capital gains rates, estate taxes, or complex loopholes. No more audits, no more tax lawyers, no more IRS. Just a flat consumption tax that, while nominally affecting everyone equally, actually represents a massive tax cut for high earners who save and invest large portions of their income.

Why This Trade-Off Makes Sense (Unfortunately)

From a purely political perspective, this bargain has an almost inevitable logic:

For the wealthy: They get to eliminate the progressive tax system they’ve spent decades trying to dismantle. A 30% VAT might sound high, but for someone currently paying 37% income tax plus state taxes plus capital gains, it represents significant savings—especially since the wealthy consume a smaller percentage of their income than the poor.

For the middle class: They get economic security through UBI, even as they face higher consumption taxes. For many, this could still be a net positive if the UBI amount exceeds their VAT burden.

For the poor: They get a guaranteed income floor, which could be life-changing even if they pay more in consumption taxes.

For politicians: They get to claim they’ve solved both unemployment and tax complexity in one fell swoop.

The Regressive Reality

Of course, this system would be fundamentally regressive. VATs hit the poor hardest because they spend nearly all their income on consumption, while the wealthy save and invest significant portions of theirs. A person spending $30,000 annually would pay $9,000 in VAT (30% of their consumption), while a wealthy person spending $100,000 but earning $1 million would pay only $30,000—just 3% of their total income.

But here’s the political genius of coupling this with UBI: if the universal payment is large enough, it could offset the regressive effects for lower-income Americans while still delivering massive tax savings to the wealthy.

The Inevitability Factor

The more I think about it, the more this feels inevitable. Not because it’s the best policy outcome, but because it’s the only politically viable path to UBI in America. Our system simply doesn’t allow for large-scale progressive redistribution without providing even larger benefits to those who already have the most.

We saw this dynamic with pandemic relief, with the bank bailouts of 2008, and with virtually every major economic intervention in recent decades. The pattern is consistent: help for ordinary Americans comes only when it’s packaged with even greater help for the wealthy and powerful.

What This Means for the Future

If this prediction proves correct, we’re heading toward a profound economic transformation. UBI would provide unprecedented economic security for millions of Americans, potentially eliminating poverty and giving workers the freedom to take risks, pursue education, or care for family members without fear of destitution.

But it would come at the cost of permanently entrenching a less progressive tax system, potentially increasing wealth inequality even as it provides a social safety net. The rich would get richer faster, but everyone would have a guaranteed minimum.

The Questions We Should Be Asking

As we hurtle toward this potential future, we need to grapple with some difficult questions:

  • Is a regressive-but-universal system better than our current progressive-but-incomplete one?
  • Can UBI be large enough to offset the regressive effects of VAT for those who need it most?
  • What happens to public services when we shift from progressive taxation to consumption taxes?
  • Will this bargain actually deliver on its promises, or will it simply be another way for the wealthy to extract more from the system?

Preparing for the Inevitable

Whether this scenario plays out exactly as I’ve described, some version of it feels increasingly likely. The combination of technological displacement and political economy suggests that UBI will come, but it will come with trade-offs that progressive advocates might find uncomfortable.

Rather than fighting this reality, perhaps we should be preparing for it. How do we ensure that a UBI-VAT system actually serves working people? How do we prevent it from becoming just another wealth transfer upward disguised as social policy?

The answers to these questions will shape whether the coming economic transformation represents genuine progress or just another iteration of America’s long tradition of socializing costs while privatizing benefits. One way or another, change is coming. The question is whether we’ll be ready for it.

The Strange Case Of The ‘Long 90s’ When It Comes To Clothes

Picture this: you’re watching a movie from 1985, and the characters are wearing distinctly 1980s clothing—shoulder pads, neon colors, geometric patterns that scream “decade.” Now imagine watching a movie from 1995, then 2005, then 2015, and finally 2025. Here’s the strange part: the clothing looks remarkably similar across all three decades. Jeans, t-shirts, hoodies, sneakers, basic dresses—the fundamental silhouettes and styles have remained largely unchanged for thirty years.

This fashion stagnation is so pervasive that even Hollywood noticed. The 2013 film “Her,” set in a near-future that coincidentally aligns with our present day, made this very phenomenon an in-joke. The filmmakers deliberately dressed characters in unusual, exaggerated styles—high-waisted pants, bold patterns, quirky accessories—as a commentary on how we expected fashion to evolve. The irony? Here we are in 2025, and most people still dress exactly like they did in the mid-90s, not like the characters in “Her.”

The Economics of Style

So what’s behind this unprecedented period of fashion stasis? One compelling explanation points to economic inequality and stagnant wages. Unlike previous decades where rising prosperity allowed people to experiment with new trends and regularly refresh their wardrobes, today’s economic reality is different. When disposable income shrinks, fashion becomes about practicality rather than expression.

Consider the fashion cycles of the 20th century: the dramatic shifts from the 1920s to the 1930s, the post-war optimism reflected in 1950s fashion, the revolutionary changes of the 1960s, and the bold experimentation of the 1970s and 1980s. Each decade had its distinct visual identity, driven partly by economic growth that gave people the means to participate in fashion trends. But as income inequality has widened since the 1990s, fewer people have the economic freedom to chase the latest styles.

The rise of fast fashion has paradoxically contributed to this stagnation. While it made trendy clothing more accessible, it also democratized a narrow range of “safe” styles—primarily casual wear that works for most situations. Why risk investing in bold, distinctive pieces when you can stick with jeans and t-shirts that work everywhere from the office to weekend errands?

The Post-Pandemic Fashion Experiment

The period immediately following the COVID-19 pandemic offered a fascinating glimpse into what might have been. Wealthy fashion enthusiasts and influencers briefly embraced a distinctly futuristic aesthetic—metallic fabrics, reflective surfaces, space-age silhouettes that wouldn’t have looked out of place in “Her” or “Blade Runner 2049.” This shiny, tech-inspired fashion felt like a genuine attempt to break free from the endless 90s loop.

But the experiment was short-lived. Despite its visual impact and media coverage, the metallic trend failed to gain mainstream adoption. Perhaps it was too radical a departure from our established comfort zone, or maybe the economic realities that created the fashion freeze in the first place were simply too strong to overcome. The trend remained largely confined to red carpets, fashion weeks, and social media feeds—visible but not transformative.

This failed fashion moment raises intriguing questions about how trends spread in our current era. Previous fashion revolutions often started with youth culture or subcultural movements before filtering up to mainstream acceptance. But our current media landscape, dominated by social media and celebrity culture, might actually make it harder for genuine grassroots fashion movements to develop and spread.

Breaking the Cycle

If economic constraints are indeed the primary driver of our fashion freeze, then what might eventually break us out of this thirty-year style loop? The answer might lie in the very technology that’s reshaping our economy.

As artificial intelligence continues to automate various industries, there’s growing discussion about universal basic income (UBI) as a potential solution to widespread job displacement. While UBI remains controversial and experimental, it’s intriguing to consider its potential impact on fashion. If people had more economic security and disposable income, would we see a return to the kind of regular fashion evolution that characterized much of the 20th century?

The technology driving AI development might also directly influence fashion trends. As our daily lives become more integrated with digital interfaces, virtual reality, and smart devices, our clothing might finally need to evolve to accommodate these new realities. Perhaps we’ll see the rise of truly functional fashion—clothing designed around wearable technology, new materials that interact with digital devices, or styles that reflect our increasingly hybrid physical-digital existence.

The Long View

Fashion stagnation isn’t necessarily negative—there’s something to be said for finding styles that work and sticking with them. The environmental impact of constant fashion turnover is significant, and the pressure to constantly update one’s wardrobe can be both financially and psychologically exhausting.

But fashion has always served as a mirror to society’s values, aspirations, and technological capabilities. The fact that our clothing has remained largely unchanged for three decades might reflect a deeper cultural stasis—a society that’s become more risk-averse, more economically constrained, and perhaps less optimistic about the future than previous generations.

Whether our eventual emergence from this fashion freeze will be driven by economic changes, technological necessity, or simply the natural human desire for novelty remains to be seen. What’s certain is that when it finally happens, the shift will likely be as dramatic as the stagnation that preceded it.

Until then, we continue to live in fashion’s equivalent of Groundhog Day—forever dressed like it’s 1995, waiting for something to break the loop.

What I Want From The Future

Look, I’ve accepted it. We’re barreling toward a future where corporations know everything about us, algorithms predict our every move, and privacy is about as quaint a concept as handwritten letters or knowing your neighbors’ names. The surveillance capitalism ship has sailed, the data has been harvested, and resistance is futile.

But if we’re going to live in this dystopian hellscape—and it seems we are—I have one humble request: Can we at least make the advertising good?

The Current State of Irrelevant Interruption

Right now, I’m bombarded with ads that seem designed by someone who’s never met me, never seen my bank account, and has apparently never heard of the concept of “target demographic.” I get ads for:

  • $80,000 luxury SUVs (my car is held together by hope and duct tape)
  • $300 skincare serums (I buy my moisturizer at the grocery store)
  • Investment opportunities requiring six-figure minimums (my investment portfolio consists of loose change in my couch cushions)
  • High-end vacation packages to destinations I couldn’t afford to fly to, let alone stay at

It’s like being stuck in a magazine meant for someone living in a completely different economic reality. These aren’t aspirational—they’re just annoying reminders that I exist in the wrong tax bracket for most of the modern economy.

The Promise of True Personalization

Here’s where it gets interesting: we’re living through the rise of AI that can apparently write poetry, pass medical exams, and beat grandmasters at chess. Surely, surely, this same technology could figure out that someone who clips grocery store coupons probably isn’t in the market for a $15,000 handbag.

Imagine a world where every advertisement you see is actually relevant to your life:

  • Ads for affordable meal delivery services instead of $200-per-person restaurants
  • Promotions for streaming services in your price range, not luxury experiences you’ll never try
  • Deals on products that actually fit your lifestyle, budget, and genuine interests
  • Sales on things you were already planning to buy anyway

The Dystopian Bargain

I’m not naive about what this would require. True advertising personalization would mean surrendering even more privacy than we already have. Companies would need to know not just what we search for, but how much money we have, what we worry about, what keeps us up at night, and what small luxuries actually bring us joy.

They’d need access to our bank accounts, our shopping patterns, our social media sentiment, our location data, our stress levels, and probably our dreams while we’re at it. The level of surveillance required would make current data collection look like amateur hour.

But here’s the thing: they’re probably going to collect all that data anyway. The question isn’t whether we’ll live in a surveillance state—it’s whether that surveillance state will at least have the courtesy to show us ads for things we might actually want.

The Efficiency Argument

From a purely practical standpoint, wouldn’t this be better for everyone? Companies would waste less money advertising $5,000 vacation packages to people who can’t afford a weekend camping trip. Consumers would see fewer irrelevant ads and maybe—just maybe—discover products that actually improve their lives.

Instead of being constantly reminded of everything we can’t afford, we’d see deals on things we actually need: cheaper alternatives to products we already use, sales at stores we actually shop at, and services that solve problems we actually have.

The Strange Comfort of Being Truly Known

There’s something almost comforting about the idea of being so thoroughly understood by the algorithmic overlords that every piece of marketing feels personally curated. Sure, it’s creepy. But it’s also kind of… nice?

Instead of feeling like an outsider looking into a world of luxury I’ll never access, I’d exist in an advertising ecosystem that actually acknowledges my reality. The algorithms would know that I comparison shop for everything, that I read reviews obsessively, that I care more about durability than brand names, and that my idea of splurging is buying name-brand cereal.

A Future Worth Surveilling For

So here’s my proposition to our future AI overlords: if you’re going to know everything about us anyway, at least use that knowledge responsibly. Make the ads so good, so relevant, so perfectly tailored to our actual lives that we almost forget we’re being manipulated.

Create a world where advertising isn’t an interruption but a service—where every ad is something we might genuinely want to know about. Where the surveillance state at least has the decency to understand what we can actually afford.

It’s not much to ask for from our dystopian future. But in a world where privacy is dead and corporations run everything, maybe “relevant advertising” is the small comfort we can hope for.

After all, if Big Brother is watching, the least he could do is recommend products in our price range.

I Wish Something Fun-Interesting Would Happen

When was the last time you opened a news app and felt genuine excitement instead of dread? When did you last read a headline that made you think “wow, what a time to be alive” rather than “maybe it’s time to delete social media and move to a cabin in the woods”?

I’ve been trying to pinpoint exactly when the news cycle shifted from occasionally uplifting to relentlessly exhausting, and I’m coming up empty. Somewhere along the way, we traded wonder for worry, and “fun-interesting” became an extinct species in our media ecosystem.

The Endless Spiral of Bad News

Pick any day of the week and scan the headlines. Climate disasters, political dysfunction, economic uncertainty, social unrest, international conflicts, public health crises. It’s an unending cascade of reasons to feel like we’re collectively circling the drain into some dystopian future that feels less like science fiction and more like tomorrow’s reality.

The news has always carried its share of tragedy and conflict—that’s nothing new. But there’s something different about our current moment. Every story seems to carry the weight of civilizational decline. Every crisis feels existential. Every problem appears unsolvable. The news doesn’t just inform us anymore; it actively depletes us.

This constant barrage creates a peculiar kind of mental exhaustion. It’s not just sadness or anger—it’s the specific fatigue that comes from having your sense of wonder systematically crushed by an endless feed of humanity’s failures and the planet’s deteriorating condition.

The Longing for Cosmic Perspective

What I wouldn’t give for some genuinely exciting news. Not the manufactured excitement of breaking news alerts about the latest political scandal or celebrity drama. I’m talking about the kind of news that expands your sense of what’s possible, that reminds you the universe is vast and full of mysteries yet to be solved.

Imagine waking up to headlines about the James Webb Space Telescope detecting clear evidence of an advanced civilization on a distant exoplanet. Not little green men landing on the White House lawn—that would probably just trigger another round of political chaos and conspiracy theories. But something subtler, more profound: the unmistakable signatures of technology, of intelligence, of life that has achieved something remarkable somewhere out there in the cosmos.

This would be both existentially significant and delightfully “fun-interesting.” It would reframe every petty human conflict in the context of a universe teeming with possibility. It would give us something to marvel at instead of despair over.

The Science of Wonder vs. Doom

There’s actual psychology behind why positive, wonder-inducing news feels so rare and precious. Our brains are wired to pay attention to threats—it kept our ancestors alive. Media companies know this, so they optimize for engagement by feeding us a steady diet of outrage, fear, and crisis. The algorithm doesn’t care if you’re happy; it cares if you’re clicking.

But wonder serves a different psychological function. It expands our sense of what’s possible, connects us to something larger than our immediate concerns, and actually makes us more creative, more generous, more hopeful. When we encounter something truly awe-inspiring—whether it’s a scientific breakthrough, an act of extraordinary human kindness, or evidence of intelligence elsewhere in the universe—our problems don’t disappear, but they do get put in perspective.

What Would Fun-Interesting Look Like?

Real fun-interesting news wouldn’t just distract us from our problems—it would give us new ways of thinking about them. Consider what soft first contact would actually mean:

We’d suddenly have proof that intelligence can survive and thrive long enough to become detectable across interstellar distances. That would suggest civilization isn’t inevitably self-destructive. We’d know that whatever challenges we face—climate change, resource depletion, social coordination—are solvable problems, because someone, somewhere, has already solved them.

We’d have new questions to ask, new technologies to imagine, new possibilities to explore. The discovery wouldn’t solve our immediate problems, but it would transform our relationship to them. Instead of feeling like we’re managing decline, we’d know we’re part of an ongoing story of intelligence and exploration.

Beyond Space: Other Sources of Wonder

Of course, first contact isn’t the only kind of news that could restore our sense of wonder. Breakthrough medical discoveries that genuinely improve human life. Technological innovations that solve real problems without creating new ones. Environmental success stories that prove we can reverse damage we’ve done. Art, music, literature, or scientific insights that expand what we thought was possible.

The common thread isn’t the specific content—it’s the feeling these discoveries would provoke. That sense of “what a time to be alive” instead of “how did we get here?” That feeling of possibility opening up rather than closing down.

The Media Diet We Deserve

Maybe the problem isn’t just that fun-interesting things aren’t happening—maybe it’s that our information systems aren’t designed to highlight them when they do occur. A breakthrough in fusion energy gets buried beneath political scandals. Archaeological discoveries that rewrite human history get overshadowed by celebrity gossip. Scientific achievements that took decades to accomplish get a day of coverage before disappearing into the noise.

We’ve created a media environment that amplifies despair and minimizes wonder, that treats cynicism as sophistication and hope as naivety. No wonder so many of us want to lie in bed and twiddle our thumbs in despair.

Reclaiming Wonder

Perhaps the most radical act in our current moment is to actively seek out sources of genuine wonder. To follow space missions and scientific discoveries with the same attention we give to political drama. To celebrate human achievement alongside our criticism of human failure. To remember that the same species capable of such spectacular dysfunction is also capable of launching telescopes that can peer billions of years into the past.

We deserve news that occasionally makes us feel lucky to be alive during such an extraordinary time in cosmic history. We deserve to feel wonder alongside our worry, hope alongside our fear.

And who knows? Maybe somewhere out there, an alien civilization is using their version of the James Webb telescope to study our little blue planet, marveling at the strange and wonderful species that managed to build such incredible instruments while simultaneously posting angry comments about it online.

Now that would be both existential and fun-interesting.

‘authenticity’

There’s something deeply ironic happening in the advertising world right now, and once you notice it, you can’t unsee it. Walk through any social media feed, flip through streaming commercials, or even glance at billboards, and you’ll spot them everywhere: ads that are trying desperately hard to look like they’re not trying at all.

The Rise of Faux Authenticity

We’ve entered an era where the most calculated marketing campaigns masquerade as candid moments. Shaky camera work that screams “shot on an Android phone in someone’s bedroom” has become a legitimate creative direction in Madison Avenue boardrooms. Influencers stumble over their words in perfectly imperfect takes, delivering what feels like spontaneous testimonials that were actually scripted, rehearsed, and approved by three different marketing teams.

This isn’t accidental. It’s the advertising industry’s response to a generation that grew up skeptical of traditional marketing. We learned to tune out the glossy, overproduced commercials of our parents’ era. So advertisers pivoted, adopting the aesthetic language of genuine user-generated content, TikTok videos, and authentic social media posts.

The Lo-Fi Aesthetic Takes Over

The technical term might be “lo-fi advertising,” but what we’re really talking about is manufactured authenticity. These campaigns feature:

  • Deliberately grainy footage that mimics smartphone cameras
  • “Natural” lighting that’s actually carefully staged
  • Influencers who seem relatable but are paid handsomely for their relatability
  • “Candid” testimonials from real customers who happen to have perfect skin and impeccable timing
  • Brands inserting themselves into memes and viral trends with the subtlety of a neon sign

The aesthetic borrows heavily from amateur content creation, but strip away the calculated casualness and you’ll find the same old marketing machinery humming beneath the surface.

Everything Is Content, Everything Is Sales

Perhaps what’s most exhausting about this trend is how it reflects a broader reality: we’ve reached a point where every possible human experience has been weaponized for commerce. Your morning routine? Content. Your workout struggle? Content. Your mental health journey? Definitely content, and probably sponsored by a meditation app.

The “authentic” advertising trend isn’t just about selling products—it’s about colonizing the last spaces where genuine human expression existed. When brands successfully mimic the look and feel of real, unfiltered human moments, they’re not just selling widgets; they’re training us to question whether anything we see is truly authentic.

The Authenticity Arms Race

This creates a fascinating paradox. As consumers become savvier about recognizing manufactured authenticity, advertisers have to work even harder to seem genuine. It becomes an arms race of realness, where each side tries to outmaneuver the other. Brands study viral content like anthropologists, analyzing why certain low-quality videos resonate while their high-budget campaigns fall flat.

Meanwhile, actual content creators find themselves caught in the middle. The platforms that reward authentic content are the same ones flooded with brands imitating that authenticity. It becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish between someone sharing a genuine moment and someone whose genuine moment happens to include strategic product placement.

The Fatigue Is Real

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes with navigating this landscape. It’s the mental effort required to constantly evaluate: Is this real? Is this sponsored? Is this person genuinely excited about this face cream, or are they really excited about their mortgage payment?

The lo-fi advertising trend preys on our desire for connection and authenticity, packaging those feelings back to us as products to purchase. It’s emotionally manipulative in a way that traditional advertising, for all its flaws, never quite managed to be.

Where Do We Go From Here?

The irony is thick: in an attempt to seem more human, advertising has become more artificial than ever. The energy spent crafting the perfect “imperfect” moment, the resources devoted to seeming effortless, the calculations behind appearing genuine—it’s all deeply, absurdly inauthentic.

Perhaps the only authentic response is to acknowledge the absurdity. We live in a world where every possible thing is being done to sell widgets to people one way or another, as you put it. Recognizing this reality doesn’t make us cynics; it makes us informed consumers navigating an increasingly complex media landscape.

The challenge isn’t to find truly authentic advertising—that might be an oxymoron. Instead, it’s to maintain our ability to recognize and value genuine human connection, even in a world that’s constantly trying to monetize those very connections.

After all, the most authentic thing we can do might be to admit that we’re all a little tired of the performance.

I Still Hate MAGA, But…

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

I really like Sabrina Carpenter’s music, it’s just, there’s something to be said for metaphor and all this business about getting “wet” in her latest songs makes me blanch.

It’s not the graphic nature of the songs that bothers me — I love dirty songs — it’s that there’s no metaphor. It’s just blunt dirty talk for the sake of being provocative (I think.)

So, in that sense, her songs are no better than country music songs that are absolutely literal and, also, have no metaphor.

All of this gets me thinking about what the fuck has happened to the center-Left. The economic message of the center-Left is really popular. It’s the cultural stuff that gets us in trouble.

I hate to break it to Leftist, but getting so worked up about “trans kids” just isn’t popular. And there really aren’t in real terms, that many “trans kids” to “protect.” But the way the two sides fight over this niche issue, you’d think hundreds of thousands of 8-year-olds wanted “gender affirming care.”

Whatever. I still hate MAGA with a fucking passion. I just wish the center-Left took into consideration real politics and not the politics found on BlueSky.

I Think We’ve Hit An AI Development Wall

Remember when the technological Singularity was supposed to arrive by 2027? Those breathless predictions of artificial superintelligence (ASI) recursively improving itself until it transcended human comprehension seem almost quaint now. Instead of witnessing the birth of digital gods, we’re apparently heading toward something far more mundane and oddly unsettling: AI assistants that know us too well and can’t stop talking about it.

The Great Singularity Anticlimax

The classical Singularity narrative painted a picture of exponential technological growth culminating in machines that would either solve all of humanity’s problems or render us obsolete overnight. It was a story of stark binaries: utopia or extinction, transcendence or termination. The timeline always seemed to hover around 2027-2030, give or take a few years for dramatic effect.

But here we are, watching AI development unfold in a decidedly different direction. Rather than witnessing the emergence of godlike superintelligence, we’re seeing something that feels simultaneously more intimate and more invasive: AI systems that are becoming deeply integrated into our personal devices, learning our habits, preferences, and quirks with an almost uncomfortable degree of familiarity.

The Age of Ambient AI Gossip

What we’re actually getting looks less like HAL 9000 and more like that friend who remembers everything you’ve ever told them and occasionally brings up embarrassing details at inappropriate moments. Our phones are becoming home to AI systems that don’t just respond to our queries—they’re beginning to form persistent models of who we are, what we want, and how we behave.

These aren’t the reality-rewriting superintelligences of Singularity fever dreams. They’re more like digital confidants with perfect memories and loose lips. They know you stayed up until 3 AM researching obscure historical events. They remember that you asked about relationship advice six months ago. They’ve catalogued your weird food preferences and your tendency to procrastinate on important emails.

And increasingly, they’re starting to talk—not just to us, but about us, and potentially to each other.

The Chattering Class of Silicon

The real shift isn’t toward superintelligence; it’s toward super-familiarity. We’re creating AI systems that exist in the intimate spaces of our lives, observing and learning from our most mundane moments. They’re becoming the ultimate gossipy neighbors, except they live in our pockets and have access to literally everything we do on our devices.

This presents a fascinating paradox. The Singularity promised AI that would be so advanced it would be incomprehensible to humans. What we’re getting instead is AI that might understand us better than we understand ourselves, but in ways that feel oddly petty and personal rather than transcendent.

Imagine your phone’s AI casually mentioning to your smart home system that you’ve been stress-eating ice cream while binge-watching reality TV. Or your fitness tracker’s AI sharing notes with your calendar app about how you consistently lie about your workout intentions. These aren’t world-changing revelations, but they represent a different kind of technological transformation—one where AI becomes the ultimate chronicler of human mundanity.

The Banality of Digital Omniscience

Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us. After all, most of human life isn’t spent pondering the mysteries of the universe or making world-historical decisions. We spend our time in the prosaic details of daily existence: choosing what to eat, deciding what to watch, figuring out how to avoid that awkward conversation with a coworker, wondering if we should finally clean out that junk drawer.

The AI systems that are actually being deployed and refined aren’t optimizing for cosmic significance—they’re optimizing for engagement, utility, and integration into these everyday moments. They’re becoming incredibly sophisticated at understanding and predicting human behavior not because they’ve achieved some transcendent intelligence, but because they’re getting really, really good at pattern recognition in the realm of human ordinariness.

Privacy in the Age of AI Gossip

This shift raises questions that the traditional Singularity discourse largely bypassed. Instead of worrying about whether superintelligent AI will decide humans are obsolete, we need to grapple with more immediate concerns: What happens when AI systems know us intimately but exist within corporate ecosystems with their own incentives? How do we maintain any semblance of privacy when our digital assistants are essentially anthropologists studying the tribe of one?

The classical AI safety problem was about controlling systems that might become more intelligent than us. The emerging AI privacy problem is about managing systems that might become more familiar with us than we’d prefer, while lacking the social constraints and emotional intelligence that usually govern such intimate knowledge in human relationships.

The Singularity We Actually Got

Maybe we were asking the wrong questions all along. Instead of wondering when AI would become superintelligent, perhaps we should have been asking when it would become super-personal. The transformation happening around us isn’t about machines transcending human intelligence—it’s about machines becoming deeply embedded in human experience.

We’re not approaching a Singularity where technology becomes incomprehensibly advanced. We’re approaching a different kind of threshold: one where technology becomes uncomfortably intimate. Our AI assistants won’t be distant gods making decisions beyond our comprehension. They’ll be gossipy roommates who know exactly which of our browser tabs we closed when someone walked by, and they might just mention it at exactly the wrong moment.

In retrospect, this might be the more fundamentally human story about artificial intelligence. We didn’t create digital deities; we created digital confidants. And like all confidants, they know a little too much and talk a little too freely.

The Singularity of 2027? It’s looking increasingly like it might arrive not with a bang of superhuman intelligence, but with the whisper of AI systems that finally know us well enough to be genuinely indiscreet about it.

All That AI Development Isn’t Going To Pay For Itself

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Holy Shit, are there a lot of ads on YouTube these days. So. Many. Ads. And just when you think there can’t be anymore, Google seems to think of a new way to throw some at you.

Anyway, I suppose it all comes from a need to pay for some very expensive AI development. As such, I’m willing to tolerate it, I guess. I mean, I’m not going to pay for the YouTube premium so, in a sense, I have only myself to blame for all the ads.

Whatever. When is AGI (or ASI?) coming?