My Christmas Gift to you all- a low effort AI offering that is actually pretty catchy :)
Author: bonwag
It’s Not Human, It’s AI
AI newsletter ‘Bay Area Letters’ has auto-penned a case study in AI journalism that I will be using in all future presentations on this topic. In a tight 200 word post it showcases all 4 major giveaways that expose a robot hand trained on clickbait – that what you are reading has had no human fingerprints on it, whatsoever.
Here is the article in full showing the four regular giveaways:
- Emoji bullets – ain’t no human got time to hunt for these,
- The classic ‘it’s not X but Y’ structure – that says nothing,
- Leading question and answer structure, and
- the emphasis on ‘building one Y at a time’
⛵Honestly? I’m sure these ‘tells’ will get weeded out eventually, one digital ding at a time. It’s not a question of if, but when.
High-Performing Teams Have Fur: The Cat-Dog Dynamic at Work
The difference between good teams and great teams? In my experience, it’s a little bit of dog, a little bit of cat.
Given some time and space, it’s tempting to dig deep into psychology and group dynamics to describe high-performing teams and build that perfect mix of introverts, influencers and implementers.
Given a napkin, may I present my simple fur-based diagnostic:
- Troubled Team A? All dogs. Energetic, always chasing after goals, but not always sure what to do once they catch them.
- Troubled Team B? All cats. Quietly perched on the window sill, evaluating those opportunities that often fly by unnoticed – from a distance.
If you’re finding your team’s goal-orientation out of whack, maybe it skews canine, or feline.
My favourite teams – and internet videos – have always been those where I can observe Cats and Dogs getting along.
In the workplace, it works best when there’s a healthy tension between action and analysis anchored on mutual Trust. (That’s a topic for another day.)
How do you know if you’re teamed with Dogs or Cats?
It comes down to that initial gut reaction – and later evaluation process – when a new project or opportunity presents itself:
- 🐕 Dog reaction: Yes! When? Who else will be there? How are we getting there? … What’s the Opportunity?
- 🐈 Cat reaction: What’s the Opportunity? How are we getting there? Who else will be there? When? … Yes!
To get technical for a moment: these behaviours mirror underlying cultural preferences – in the Competing Values Framework, Dogs thrive in clan or hierarchical cultures – the command and control situation, where collaboration, loyalty and structure are prized. Cats might lean into adhocracy or market cultures – where innovation, autonomy and results matter more than team process.
(And, yes, people can shift their orientation, often in times of crisis, based on Prospect Theory – risk averse and cat-like when gaining, risk-seeking and dog-like when facing loss.)
Every good, effective team needs both. The key is knowing whether you’re working with a good distribution of Dogs and Cats.
Build a culture to let both thrive.
| DOG | CAT |
|---|---|
| Yes! | What’s the Opportunity? |
| When? | How are we getting there? |
| Who else is involved? | Who else is involved? |
| How are we getting there? | When? |
| … What’s the Opportunity? | … Yes! |
HOMEWORK:
We could have a lot of fun stretching this metaphor – what do you think; does it ring true in your team? Have you worked with any Dogs or Cats lately?
When A Good Idea Goes Nowhere
When a good idea goes nowhere, it might not be the budget or the business case. It might be the culture.
You’ve done the work. You’ve spotted a real risk or opportunity. You’ve crunched the numbers, written the brief, maybe even floated it in a few meetings.
And the response? Polite nods. A couple of questions. Then… crickets.
It’s tempting to think the idea didn’t land because the story wasn’t sharp enough. Or because times are tight.
But sometimes, the problem isn’t the pitch. It’s that the people you’re pitching to live in a completely different mental model.
Take cyber security. Practitioners often see it ecologically, like tending a garden. It’s never finished. You need diversity, resilience, an understanding of the ecosystem.
Meanwhile, some execs see it as engineering, like plumbing. Install the right pipes and the water keeps flowing. Job done.
Same problem, different worlds. And if your organisation’s culture leans heavily toward engineered, hierarchical, linear thinking (the pipes), your carefully cultivated patch of strategic insight (your garden) might just wash away in the next budget cycle.
In my experience, organisations don’t fail to act because they disagree.
They often fail to act because they don’t even see the same problem.
And that’s where a lot of good ideas go to die: in the gaps between mental models, team cultures, and unspoken assumptions about what really matters.
So, if you’re hitting that weird resistance – not a no, just a slow, silent fade-out – consider :
– Who is meant to own this?
– How do they see the world?
– What language do they use when they talk about risk or investment?
It’s about meeting people where they are – understanding the frameworks they use to make sense of complexity, and translating your idea into that logic. If they think in terms of control and containment, show them how your proposal improves both. If they’re wired for risk reduction, speak to that. This isn’t manipulation, it’s navigation.
Because if your big idea lives in a different universe to the decision-makers, no amount of PowerPoint is going to get it through the wormhole.
No, You’re Not Voting for Albanese or Dutton*. That’s Not How This Works.
With an Australian Election called today, I’m already weary of the election commentary that Albanese and Dutton are “locked in a battle to be Australia’s next Prime Minister”.
Thats… not how it works. That’s not how any of this works.
In Australia, we don’t vote for a Prime Minister. That’s not the point of the exercise.
They, and others, lead parties that have policies. We vote for a local representative – a person and a party that may carry certain policies into government.
Unlike the US and the UK, if they don’t get 50% of the vote we look at second choices, or third, or more, until we find someone who most people can trust to reflect their voice in Canberra, even if they’re not their first choice.
When we count up these folks, it’s the party with the greatest numbers, or the best negotiating skills to join forces with another mob, which forms government. The leader of the majority party is the prime minister.
It’s a sensible, solid, Responsible system.
(To see this spelled out with colour and movement – see the excellent You Can’t ‘Waste’ Your Vote! – Patrick Alexander’s Personal Internet)
For some unfiltered perspective on what your local member has been telling Canberra on your behalf, visit theyvoteforyou.org.au at least once this election cycle. See if your previous decision was a good one, and help it inform your next one.
Also See: OpenAustralia.org: Are your Representatives and Senators working for you in Australia’s Parliament?
And if you absolutely HAVE to treat this as a presidential election, here you can compare the voting records of, say, these two guys.
Curious to note the 19 times they were in agreement.
* OK, technically, you would be able to vote for them in two edge-cases:
1. if you’re a voter in the Grayndler or Dickson electorates. Even then, you’re just voting for them to represent you and your neighbours, not the whole country.
2. if you’re a party member you get to say who leads your party. Even then, they need to win their seat, and your party needs to be in the majority for them to become PM.
30 Years ‘Waggin
Yep; BONWAG will always be older than Facebook.
The System Is Down
This is the first time in years I’ve experienced a ‘BSOD’ (Blue Screen of Death). I usually dismiss it as Something I Did, but I quickly realised how non-alone I was today. Much wailing, much gnashing of teeth. Dude. What.
Yep – this is one of the big ones.
So what does it all mean?
Today’s outage appears to have been caused by software from the company CrowdStrike, which many major organisations use to secure their fleets of Windows 10 (i.e. Microsoft) computers.
Security software usually needs incredibly special ‘low-level’ access to computer systems to properly protect them, so when the company issued a faulty update to the software, over the internet, automatically, it didn’t just break an application or two, it caused whole systems to crash and reboot. In some cases, the computers restarted, loaded the faulty update, and crashed again, which is why some systems are still down – it requires a human to intervene and stop the reboot loop.
It’s not an easy fix; when the humans are very distant from the physical boxes that need a swift kick. Big problems.
Is it a hack, cyber-attack or a global conspiracy?
Nah, it’s a glitch that happens all the time; but usually the effect is just an ‘unexpected error in line 10‘. Human error, without a nefarious purpose. (If it were a deliberate act, it would have been much more silent and deadly.)
Unfortunately, this is a software glitch that props up a lot of critical computers, so the real issue is the pervasive and critical nature of the software component which has broken – something called ‘csagent.sys’ is the culprit.
Substitute ‘Random Person’ with ‘Leading Security Company’
The chain of events makes it unclear whether Microsoft or CrowdStrike messed up. Microsoft was reporting issues in the morning (9:30am Aus Eastern) well before the CrowdStrike component started triggering system crashes in the afternoon (around 3pm Aus Eastern).
Observe the market’s response: the market will know – well before we will – where the blame lies.
Not Apple?
Nope. Not Apple.
Not Optus?
Nope, not Optus. Not Telstra either.
What can I do about it?
If your machine is still working, don’t worry, it’ll get sorted automatically, using the same automatic patching process that caused the problem in the first place.
If it’s not – don’t be tempted to try any of the fixes you see online or uninstalling the software; that might open you up to further problems down the track – opening windows that hackers can crawl into once the dust has settled. And don’t trust anyone jumping out of the shadows to offer you help; scammers LOVE the uncertainty created by upheavals like this and will try to confuse people into their traps.
Get in touch with your IT department or local expert, and expect a little wait.
"Metaverse"
(cough)
On Grammar
“My 3 favourite things are the Oxford comma, irony, and missed opportunities”
The Canary Is Dead, and X Keeps Digging
The bird site has decided that its ‘free speech’ is absolute and isn’t subject to any laws or limits. Quite a claim.
At this point, if you’re still supporting the internet outrage industrial complex that is Xitter, you’re part of the problem.
There are plenty of stable microblogging alternatives available, with functional moderation policies, and no one is locked in.
If you’re an organisation using X for advertising or engagement, yes, you’re being judged.
www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-21/opposition-backs-social-media-crackdown-after-sydney-stabbings/103750548
Update 23 April
“The idea that someone would go to court for the right to put up violent content on a platform shows how out-of-touch Mr Musk is,” Albanese said. “Social media needs to have social responsibility with it. Mr Musk is not showing any.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/22/elon-musk-hits-back-at-australian-court-order-against-x-images-of-stabbing
Update 26 January
Sadly, it appears the video in question was used as inspiration for a triple-murder in the UK. Added to the antics of Elon Musk in the last few days in the U.S., it appears there’s little room for doubt that his influence is anything but a net negative for humanity at large.
BONWAG 