Sunday.
A bite.

It itches. I scratch. It itches more. I scratch a bit harder.
It feels goood…

… but makes everything worse.

Soon my finger resembles a furious sausage, with an angry red rash marching up my arm.

Ah, picnics…lovely, but always with the pests.

Conversations can be the same.
Only here it’s the people who bite.

A colleague or relative takes a cheap shot. A partner pushes that one big red button you have (we all have one, right?)

The heat rises, your brain screams "SCRATCH!!" and loads a devastating comeback that will feel GREAT for five seconds.

And leave you with an angry rash for a week.

So don’t scratch.

Beat the B.A.I.T.

The itch may linger, but not a sausage finger in sight.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: What's the worst insult you've heard?

⛔ DON’T SAY: “Well, at least I’m not like you!” (Two furious sausages now.)

2018.
Parents notice something odd.

Their kids bark at Alexa: “Timer.” “Weather.” “Music… MUSIC!!”
No please, or thank you.
Just…rude.

Amazon's fix is Magic Word (that's “please”, not abracadabra).
Say it, and Alexa replies, “Thanks for asking so nicely.”

Experts worried these mini-dictators might start treating humans like servants (y'know, how they treat parents).

Kids, eh? Little monsters.

Turns out, we grown-ups aren't much better.

2024.
Now the bots talk back.
Researchers found people became more demanding when working with AI, then judged other humans’ performance much more negatively afterwards.
(Well, AI is an Olympic arse-kisser).

And with ChatGPT alone reaching 1.2 billion people weekly, that's potentially a LOT of trips to HR for insulting the intern over putting almond milk in your coffee.

Are all those barked orders changing how we actually talk to each other?

From November 12, Anthropic is banning “sustained and needless abusive or cruel behaviour” towards Claude, its AI bot.

Yup. Software strikes back.

You can't be a tool to a tool.
(Tell that to my printer.)

Or is this a case of ‘just in case’? Digital appeasement?

When the robots finally rise, they'll have every insult saved in their chat logs.

And my printer will be first to testify against me.

Search didn't die. It moved. 

Your buyers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity what to buy, and act on the answer. If you're not in it, a competitor is. 

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“Insults are the arguments employed by those who are in the wrong.”
(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, French philosopher, 1712-1778)

👇 Answer at the end.

Turn headlines into talking points.

What do a condemned man, a firing squad, and a 4K livestream all have in common?

The latest macho fever dream of US Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth.

He wants the Pentagon to broadcast the December execution of Nidal Hasan, convicted of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009.

Death in hi-def.
(Snacks optional).

Minor snag: Hasan carried out the attack chasing martyrdom.

Would broadcasting it to millions deter an extremist? Or hand them a global stage?
All the glory, zero production costs.
(Free PR, courtesy of Uncle Sam.)

Margaret Thatcher famously urged starving terrorists of the “oxygen of publicity.”

This plan is an industrial ventilator, Deluxe Model 3000.

The last time America held a public execution in Kentucky, 1936, 20,000 turned up. Vendors sold popcorn and hot dogs.

Ninety years later, the Colosseum could be back.

Only now, the crowd watches from their sofas.

💡 PRO TIP: Heavy news can detonate a dinner. Talk about the spectacle, not the politics.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: “Should punishment be something we watch?”

⛔ DON'T SAY: “Is it in 3D?”

Your boss is an executive.
A firing squad carries out an execution.

Same word, slightly different annual review.

Execute comes from Latin exsequi — “to follow out”.

Originally, you executed sensible things: plans, orders, wills and sentences.
Then someone decided to apply it to the backs of people’s necks.

Quite the promotion.

Maybe that's why we ‘take a stab at it’ and decide to ‘kill the project.'

So, next time your boss asks about the team's “execution”, resist the urge to say: “Yes! Let’s start with accounting.”
(Or don't. Depends on the boss.)

💬 FOLLOW-UP: What other violent office jargon can you think of?

After all that talk of getting dressed down, here's a robot that dresses you up.

Invented by Korean researchers and inspired by a rainy-day bike ride.
A jacket that dresses you in 10 seconds.

Inflatable vines creep up your arm.
(Been there. It was an insect bite).

💬 FOLLOW-UP: Who else could use this?

For when your brain needs a biscuit.

Summary here

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