“Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies…”

Fleetwood Mac has been stuck in my head on repeat all week.
Why?
Because life is stuffed with untruths (and they’re rarely sweet).

Clients, colleagues, diabolical customer support… (yes, YOU, Amazon).

But nothing prepares you for the mobile deception factories that are… children.

My eldest got caught in a juice-related whopper last week and lied directly to my face.
Total conviction, with zero flinch.

Discovery was immediate (the youngest is a snitch).
Cue: Lecture on Trust (Part IV: Revenge of the Dad).

Trust.

Slow to build, seconds to torch.
And in real life, puppy-dog eyes aren't a magical reset button.
(Much to my daughter’s dismay).

So if it’s the cookie jar, botched job, dropped ball, or pants down — don’t spiral into an over-apologetic mess.
The Trust Equation (looks like maths,) says high self-orientation (making it all about you) smothers credibility with a pillow.

Here's how to clean up your mess before it gets trodden into the carpet:

Again. And again.

Trust returns through boring, consistent evidence, not one magnificent Hollywood apology.

Those puppy-dog eyes, though?

Still dangerously effective.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: “What’s the last song that got stuck in your head?”
(Hoping Baby Shark is long dead.)

⛔ DON’T SAY: “Why don’t you trust me?” (You probably know.)

If Shakespeare wrote TV, what would it be?

Breaking Bad? Macbeth-ish.
Succession? King Lear (with helicopters).
Game of Thrones? Basically all of them, but with naughty bits and dragons.

If you’re US Vice President JD Vance, the answer is... Emily in Paris.

Yep.

He called the frothy, fluffy Netflix ‘comedy’ a “masterwork of American television” and “the Shakespeare of our time.”
(Somewhere Hamlet is weeping into a baguette.)

Religion. NATO. Trade wars. Global security…this man has thoughts.

And suddenly, so do you.

Because one spectacularly baffling opinion can make your brain reassess everything.

A genius colleague swears by astrology.
Your sophisticated dinner host drowns A5 wagyu in ketchup.
A Yale Law graduate and VP compares Emily in Paris to the Bard.

Your internal trust spreadsheet suddenly blurts: ERROR.

If they believe that…what else are they wrong about?

Psychologists call it the "the horn effect".
When one jarring opinion bleeds into how we judge total competence.

Unfair?

Probably.
Shouldn’t anyone be allowed catastrophically questionable TV taste?

I hope so.

I still watch Selling Sunset.

“A man who trusts nobody… is the kind of man nobody trusts.”
(Harold Macmillan, UK politician, 1894-1986)

👇 Answer at the end.

Dictionaries are supposed to be the adults in the room.

Y’know, the place you go when language stops making sense.
Then Merriam-Webster dumps 1,400 new words into it, and suddenly it reads like an unhinged teen group chat.

Let’s test-drive a batch:

“My Sunday scaries caused a crashout, so I started looksmaxxing to glow up and found someone for cuffing season. Unfortunately, it was parasocial.”

Translation:

“Monday terrified me, I lost it, so I started improving my face for a better overall appearance and found someone for winter. Unfortunately, they didn’t know I existed.”

Mmmm…
Linguists claim dictionaries simply record how we actually speak.

Feels a bit more like documenting a crime scene.

💡 PRO TIP: Never force-feed slang into conversation. Knowing it helps. Using it is a risk (with very little reward).

💬 FOLLOW-UP: What’s a slang word you used as a kid that became mainstream?

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The internet has found this again.
Thank you, Reddit…

Trust your doctor, they said.

Nobody mentioned the doctor might point at this.

A Chinese hospital uses it to help patients provide samples for testing and donation.

It adjusts to the patient’s height, does exactly what it looks like, and, presumably, makes the phrase “please relax” even more stressful.

Medical technology is incredible.

The eye contact afterwards may be harder.

💬 FOLLOW-UP: What’s the worst medical experience you’ve ever had?
(And are happy to share).

For when your brain needs a biscuit.

Boston. Irish mob. Dirty cops. Two moles. Zero trust.

💬 YOUR TURN: What’s your favourite dirty cop film?

A) 🦠 A designer virus from a basement lab (37%)
B) 📎 AI decides we’re in the way (18%)
C) 🔌 It won't — someone will trip over the power cord (8%)
D) 🤔 Other — over to you, evil genius (37%)

💬 Your Two Cents

B: “Not evil, but slow and unstoppable, exacerbating current climate change with the inability to stop supersizing the infrastructure and the energy needed to maintain it. Expect a surge of eco-terrorism, and a growing number of martyrs as they try to slow the unstoppable.”

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Until next time, keep it smart.

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