If you missed Jon Stewart’s recent Daily Show about AI. He posed the simple question to AI leaders: “Exactly what are we getting in return for the 10-25% chance of human extinction at the nine-fingered “hand” of AI?”
The answers were big ones. Access to high-quality health care, addressing climate change, eliminating poverty and curing diseases like cancer and Alzheimer's.
When? One day. Someday soon. In the future.
And what are we getting now? Swarms of AI-powered drones, helping ICE find immigrants, spreading disinformation that affects our democracy, develop weapons and help terrorists, cyber attacks, wide-spread surveillance.
We seem to be starring in our very own, self-created sci-fi thriller called If It Sounds Too Good to Be True, It Probably Is.
A few weeks back, in a late-night effort to reunite myself with my 2000s photo files trapped inside old hard drives, I had to climb through a time portal, attaching chains of old Firewire cords attached to adaptors, attached to other adaptors, stuck in a stalemate of new tech trying to connect to old.
The first two didn’t connect, but finally, I was in. On the hunt for childhood photos of my youngest daughter, born in 2009.
What did I actually end up finding? A folder simply labeled “Sprint phone”, full of pixelated, downright shitty pictures. Pics of NYC, where I lived at the time. Pics with 2007 then-high tech filters on them.
It felt quite good to be back in 2007 for a brief 30 minutes. A simpler time. A time when I lived in NYC, talked with people more than looked at my phone, and when AI wasn’t coming for all of our jobs.
Did I find the pics I was looking for on those old hard drives, hell no. Too many to look through. I bringing a bunch of prints I found in a box into CVS to have scanned back into digital files, and uploaded them up to the Yearbook Mafia website of Jostens.
Probably going to print up a t-shirt that says my grandma found a way to plug in all these old hard drives and all I got were those shitty Sprint flip-phone photos.
Just in case you weren’t aware, there’s currently a national shortage of Estradiol patches, the preferred hormone replacement therapy choice for getting some Estrogen into a perimenopausal or menopausal body (those bodies make up 43% of women in the U.S.).
Last week, while calling around to various pharmacies trying to find my Estradiol patches in stock, I started wondering to myself is there any correlation between this national Estradiol Patch shortage and this, ahem, administration?
Don’t get me wrong, my inner-voice question was not : Did this administration do something to cause the shortage like interfering with pharmaceutical companies?
My inner voice question was: Have women felt so damn barraged by trickle-down misogynistic practices of this administration led by King Misogyny himself, that we just need more hormones to deal with it all. Is our inability to cope with any more of this tradwife-marketing, abortion-rights-attacking, female-journalists-belittling, voting rights and DEI-dismantling garbage causing more women to decide they need an “I’m-going-to-scream patch” slapped on their upper buttocks every week?
I searched the web to see if I could find proof of my hypothisis, but AI Summary, “Sums” as I like to call him, says the cause of the national shortage is because the black box warning of HRT drugs was removed in 2025, causing greater demand.
But I think ‘ol Sums is wrong here, so I made up my own chart. One that reflects my personal conspiracy theory that with every day Trump has been in office, women have needed more hormones to deal with this insanity.
I modeled my chart on some other fabricated (and funny) Spurious Correlations charts of events which also do not correlate, but very well could.
I was lucky enough to work for Cliff Freeman in the early/mid 2000s (hear that in Conan Obrien’s voice). My partner and I helped collect some of the agency’s most memorable TV work, so thought I’d share it here, since these ideas are often in my thoughts. They have inspired lots of creatives. Cliff was inducted into the One Club Hall of Fame in 2005 and passed away in 2021. I’m sure his last words were funny.
I recently found myself doing something that you will, literally, never, ever, find me doing. I was looking at charts and graphs. I know, WTC? (what the chart?) A creative brain looking at charts and graphs? Why? Well, when I opened Mary Meeker Internet Trends Report, (see last week’s Peckachucka post) something struck me, and got me looking for even more charts and graphs. Crazy thing is some of those graphs are actually quite beautiful and inspiring. Once you crop out all the data, stats and number stuff that is.
Lydia Ricci is a second-generation hoarder, who uses tiny bits of scraps and garbage that her mother (first-generation hoarder) had collected. She’s spent the past 30 years building miniature art pieces with them. Anyone who knows me, knows I have a soft spot for miniature furniture, but miniature furniture and objects made out of recycled materials? And mid-century? Those are all my boxes, checked. fromscraps.com. Follow her on IG
While working on a pitch for a financial client recently, I started researching Bitcoin and other alternative currencies that are floating around out there. And while Cameroon’s adoption of bottle caps as currency, and Zimbabwe’s hyper inflated ‘One Hundred Trillion Dollar” bills, were interesting. The country of Somali was the winner for me, with coins issued as guitars and motorcycles. This all made me consider what kind of currencies I might accept as payment. The net: Make me an offer in tiny erasers or Mr. T puffy stickers, and we might just have a deal.
Last week’s topic of alternative currencies led me to another relevant topic: Social currency. Check out The Social Currency Show podcast where they discuss Mary Meeker Internet Trends Report. Almost more interesting than her findings, is her use of Pechakucha, a Japanese form of storytelling, one where you speak minimally, relying on heavy use of visuals. Here’s her talk at the Code Conference.
I love a good t-shirt, but I think I’m as over snarky, apathetic T-shirts as Haute Couture design duo, Victor & Rolf. When I reflect deeply, I conclude that I have no value-added to my day by knowing that you can’t do anything until you’ve had coffee, are bored, don’t care, didn’t want to come, or don’t give a fuck. Last pic is of me voting at the midterms, giving a fuck. Whatever.
Mexican designer, Norberto Miranda has designed inflatable structures that look like beans for a gastronomy/music/culture exhibition in Papalotla, Mexico. A perfect example of how smart design can be anywhere, turning something functional into something conceptual and beautiful. In a parallel bean-path, when participating in her first Young Entrepreneur Showcase by Produced with Purpose last year, my daughter designed these bean-themed up-cycled greeting cards. Beans, and design, for all.
After seeing one of Ester Aarts’s illustrated gifs for the New York Times, a quick google search for more of her work landed me on a site called Lettercult where I found her hand-lettered “excited” along with piles of other great typography. The kind I used to see in Tibor Kalman’s Colors Magazine. Speaking of, this Colors IG page uses the Colors name/logo. Not sure if it’s official or just a contemporary designer using the name.
