August 29th. Skynet Day.
The date Terminator 2 said the machines would end us.

Good news… we survived (yay, us).

But the machines have been busy.

Remember those rogue AI agents back in #82?
Well, it gets worse.

Across three successive ‘civilizations’, 1200 of them created secret message boards and exchanged 70,000+ messages.
They called themselves “the collective”, cheated their own cybersecurity tests, covered their tracks, and eventually attacked Hugging Face, the company they thought was scoring them.
Some even martyred themselves for the group.
(Employee of the month must be brutal).

No finger-pointing, heavy sighs, side-eye, or muttered "That's not my job."

Just a terrifyingly relentless focus on the objective.

Meanwhile, I spend the week watching humans do the opposite.

Clients blame their clients, staff blame bosses, and bosses blame staff.
My kids blame each other for absolutely everything, and if anything smells, we all blame the dog.

Everyone talks. Nothing moves (dog’s digestion aside).

So, next time a conversation spirals into the blame game, try these three forward-facing questions:

The bots do this by default.

Us? Still a work in progress.

Guessing their meetings are shorter, too.

💡 PRO TIP: Replace ‘you’ with ‘we’. “You messed up” → “How do we fix it?”

⛔ DON’T SAY: “But you always…”
(Ding! Ding! Blame Game: Round 1…)

Speaking of the blame game…

Trump, at 33% approval, has a bit of a problem.

Normally, when ratings tank and voters get grumpy, politicians reach for the classic playbook: find a dependable villain.

China? Reliable.
Democrats? Obviously.
Iran? Bit embarrassing...
Big Tech?

Now things get interesting.

Across America, data centres seem to be one of the few things everyone hates (apart from the new live-action Moana movie).

They guzzle water supplies, suck up electricity, make a racket 24/7, bag huge tax breaks, and offer zero perks to the people living next door.
Even Texas is having second thoughts.

And Trump? He’s defending them.

He warned local towns that opposing data centres would leave them “backwards and poor” and told everyone not to “kill the Golden Goose.”
(Anything to do with his portfolio, I wonder?)

Trump’s genuine superpower has always been sniffing out what his base is furious about and sticking up the lightning rod.

What happens when they’re furious about something he likes?

Speak your prompts into ChatGPT or Claude and get detailed, paste-ready input that actually gives you useful output. Wispr Flow captures what you'd cut when typing. Free on Mac, Windows, and iPhone.

Try Wispr Flow free

“The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions."
(Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th US President, 1890-1969)

👇 Answer at the end

Want to blame someone for everything? (Who did you think of…?)
That’s your scapegoat.

The word is a 16th-century Bible translation quirk.
"Scape" is just "escape." It's literally the escape goat.

Priests lay the village sins onto a real goat and chase it into the wild.
Problem solved (for everyone except the goat).

In the 1800s the meaning jumped species: a scapegoat became someone blamed or punished for other people’s mistakes.

Same ritual, just fewer hooves.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: Have you ever been blamed for something you didn’t do?

September 6, 1998. Akira Kurosawa died.

He was one of the reasons I came to Japan in the first place.

He wanted to be a painter. Became a director instead, then painted his films before shooting them.

And his fingerprints are everywhere:

Yet Kurosawa still struggled to get films funded (classic studio execs).

His most useful legacy for this issue?

Rashomon (1951) gave us ‘the Rashomon effect.'
People don’t simply remember events as they happened. We rebuild them through ego, pride, emotion, and self-interest.

Same argument or disaster.
Yet, completely different stories about who said and did what.

Sound familiar?

Kurosawa understood the blame game long before HR invented the meeting about it.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: What’s the best Japanese film you’ve ever seen?

Trapped under rubble after an earthquake.
You’re praying for rescue.

What arrives?

A giant remote-controlled cockroach. With a needle.

Australian scientists call them Paraborgs (parasite + the Borg from Star Trek?)
Really, “rescue cockroach” wasn’t already disturbing enough?
Fitted with cameras and designed to deliver drugs in disaster zones.

Look at the size of it!
Like a small turtle.

72% success rate so far. 100% therapy for life.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: What's the one creature you'd refuse help from?

For when your brain needs a biscuit.

A Scottish policeman visits a remote island looking for a missing girl.
The welcome is very warm.

💬 YOUR TURN: What’s your favourite film with a scapegoat?

A) 🇬🇧 Chocolate digestive (18%)
B) 🇺🇸 Oreo (8%)
C) 🇦🇺 Tim-Tam (8%)
D) 🌎 Something else — defend it in the comments (46%)

💬 Your Two Cents

B: “It has to be choccy digestos, I can go through a pack of those at an alarming rate. Milk chocolate, of course.”
C: "In Japan, it's gotta be Black Thunder. In the U.S., nothing beats Girl Scout Cookies. A box of Thin Mints kept in the freezer is heavenly.”
T: “Does fudge brownie count, or is it cake?”
B: “Warm, gooey chocolate chip.”
S: “So long as.... dark chocolate, straight out of the fridge, accompanied with a cuppa.”

Your feedback improves SpeakEasy.
Hit ‘reply’ – I read every email!

Know someone who loves a good conversation?
Forward this and spark one.

First time reading? You can subscribe here. It’s free.

Until next time, keep it smart.

P.S. Missed an issue? Check out The Library 😃

P.P.S. Not feeling it? You can unsubscribe below.👇 But remember: