I Miss The Mess

 

I miss when disagreeing didn’t feel like a freaking divorce.

You know, back when people could argue about anything -- God, ghosts, or whether Green Day sold out after Dookie -- and nobody needed a therapist afterward. When “you’re wrong” didn’t sound like “you’re dead to me.” You just disagreed, rolled your eyes, and moved on to splitting a pizza afterward. 

Back then, disagreement had texture. It was messy, human, and slightly exhilarating … sort of like a mosh pit for ideas. You’d go in swinging, come out sweaty, maybe missing a metaphorical shoe, but alive ... and maybe, just maybe, it would change something small in the way you saw the world.

Now every conversation feels like a hostage negotiation with emojis. Everyone’s treading on eggshells, smiling through their teeth, terrified that a single misplaced opinion might get them blocked, canceled, or excommunicated from the Church of Mutual Validation. The whole thing’s gotten sterile. Safe. Beige. Like everyone’s scared to leave fingerprints on anything.

I miss the mess.

We used to play with ideas. Now we handle them with tongs and rubber gloves.

I miss when words had weight but not explosives strapped to them.

I want the texture back. The push, the pull, the beautiful awkwardness of not seeing eye-to-eye. Conversations where everyone’s a little uncomfortable but walk away going, “Hmmm…”

I want the “hmmm.” Because that “hmmm” is the good stuff. That’s the sound of a brain stretching. That’s the soul of conversation.

I don’t want to live in a world where we all nod politely through life like bobbleheads at a stoplight. I want to argue with my friends about aliens, AI, and whether pineapple belongs on pizza (it does, fight me), and still share the pizza, pineapple or not..

Not everything needs to be resolved. Sometimes it’s enough to just wrestle with a thought together, scuff it up a little, and walk away still liking each other.

So yeah, I miss when disagreeing didn’t feel like a divorce. When conversation was a playground, not a courtroom. When being challenged didn’t feel like being erased.

We don’t need to win all the time. We just need to stay curious, stay kind, and feel safe to stay at the table when it gets uncomfortable.

So, let’s bring back the mess. Let’s argue, question, laugh, push, listen, and still split the pizza. Because maybe the best conversations aren’t the ones that make us right. They’re the ones that make us think.

Let's bring back the mess.

What Political Nicknames Teach Marketers About Brand Positioning

Master of political nicknames Donald J. Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States.
See below for nicknames for Trump and nicknames he uses on the opposition.

As professional marketers, we like to believe we’re above the fray. We talk about value propositions, differentiation, and brand purpose. Politicians talk about each other. Often in ways that would get a junior copywriter fired.

But if you strip away the volume and the venom, what’s happening in modern political name‑calling is a master class in positioning.

Uncomfortable? Yes. Useful? Also yes.

Because branding, at its core, is about two things:

How you define yourself  and how you define the alternative

Politics just does it with fewer filters.

Positioning Is Always Comparative

One of the most persistent myths in marketing is that you can position yourself without referencing competitors.

You can’t. Every brand lives in a competitive context, and even silence is a form of comparison. If you don’t frame the market, someone else will: your competitors, your customers, or the general public.

Political nicknames make this explicit. They aren’t arguments. They’re compressed positioning. Two or three words designed to answer a single question in the voter’s mind: Who is this person relative to the others?

That’s the same question buyers ask of brands.

Compression Beats Nuance

A nickname is an aggressively simplified brand narrative. Memorable. Emotional. Repeatable. That’s why it spreads.

Marketers often confuse simplicity with weakness. In reality, markets run on shortcuts. The simpler the idea, the faster it travels. This is why categories stick. Why cliches persist. Why unfair labels are so hard to shake.

Nuance doesn’t scale. Compression does.

When Positioning Turns Toxic

Politics also shows us the downside. There’s a line between positioning and dehumanization. Once crossed, attention may increase, but trust can decrease.

Brands do this too. Snarky comparison pages. Mean‑spirited ads. “Us vs. the idiots” tone. It can win the click. But it cheapens the category and teaches the audience not to take anyone seriously.

Strong brands don’t just win moments. They create gravity.

Three Takeaways for Marketers

1. Vacuums get filled 

If you don’t define your position clearly, others will do it for you. And they won’t be generous.

2. Test your positioning under compression

If a hostile audience reduced your brand to three words, what would they choose? You may not like the answer, but you need to know it.

3. Tone scales

How leaders talk about competitors becomes how teams sell, and how customers repeat the story. Model contempt and you’ll get noise. Model clarity and you’ll earn trust.

Branding is a long game.

Politics shows us what happens when positioning becomes pure performance: lots of attention, very little confidence. Smart marketers should study the mechanics, without copying the behavior.

_________________________

Political Name‑Calling as Market Response (How negative name‑calling escalated and how the market reacted)

Donald Trump normalized aggressive, negative nickname‑based attacks on opponents. The opposition, the public, and the media responded largely by directing the bulk of negative naming back at Trump himself. Notably, opposing elected officials tend to avoid participating directly in this behavior; most counter‑naming comes from commentators, citizens, and media culture.

Trump’s Nicknames for Others (Positioning Opponents)

Trump is a prolific nickname-giver, referring to others in ways that he feels makes them look weak and makes him look stronger in comparison

Target	Nicknames
Joe Biden	Sleepy Joe, Crooked Joe
Hillary Clinton	Crooked Hillary
Ron DeSantis	Meatball Ron, Ron DeSantis‑monious
Gavin Newsom	Governor Newscum
Ted Cruz	Lyin’ Ted
Marco Rubio	Little Marco
Jeb Bush	Low‑Energy Jeb
Nancy Pelosi	Nervous Nancy
Bernie Sanders	Crazy Bernie
Elizabeth Warren	Pocahontas
Adam Schiff	Pencil Neck, Shifty Schiff
Nikki Haley	Tricky Nikki
Kim Jong Un	Little Rocket Man

Nicknames Commonly Applied to Trump (Market Pushback)

Nicknames for Trump have become part of how we process one of the most unconventional political figures in American history.

Source

Nicknames

Public / Media Culture

Teflon Don, Don the Con, Mango Mussolini, Cheeto‑in‑Chief, Tangerine Palpatine, Orange Julius Caesar, Commander‑in‑Tweet, Teflon Don, TrumpleThinskin, Mango Mussolini, Narcissist in Chief, Don the Con, Tangerine Palpatine, Commander-in-Tweet, Hair Force One, Cheeto-in-Chief, Tiny Hands Trump, Orange Manbaby, Cadet BoneSpurs, Tangerine-Tinted Trash-Can Fire, TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out, The Apricot Antichrist, Lord of the Lie, The BOSS (Babbling Orange Shit Stain), The Orange Overlord, The Pumpkin Pinocchio, The Butternut Blowhard, The Bronze Bloviator, Velveeta Voldemort, Humpty Trumpty, Orange Julius Caesar

When one actor aggressively defines others, the market eventually responds by defining them. And the response is rarely controlled, kind, or reversible.

That’s not a political lesson ... that’s a branding one.

_________________________

A Final Observation: We're living in a time of great political division and name calling has accelerated to record levels. Donald Trump's personality and actions have been ground zero for this action, but it's also a symptom of how our media environment has changed. Social media rewards the most provocative, memorable content. A clever nickname goes viral; a nuanced policy discussion doesn't. We've gamified politics into entertainment, where dunking on the other side gets more engagement than actual dialogue.

Sip Hole

 

After several thousand cups of coffee in cardboard “to go” cups, I’ve learned one important thing: never let the sip opening in the plastic lid line up with the seam of the cup itself.

If they align, there’s a decent chance you’ll get the slowest leak imaginable. Not enough to notice immediately. Just a tiny stealth drip.

I learned this the hard way years ago and now check every lid automatically. Locate seam. Rotate lid. Sip. This is my process now.

Turns out I’m not alone. I recently noticed Panera is printing the words “sip hole” near the rim of their cups to help customers position the lid properly and avoid drips.

But “sip hole”? That’s the phrase a room full of adults approved?

It sounds less like coffee guidance and more like a minor plumbing issue. Or a medical condition. Or an argumentative outburst: “Shut your sip hole, pal.”

Still, I admire the effort. In a world where most corporate language exists to manipulate, distract, or sound “engaging,” here is a tiny piece of copy trying to solve an actual human problem: don’t wear the coffee. Saying, essentially: “Turn the lid slightly or you’ll baptize your sweater in Colombian roast.”

I wonder what other suggestions the creative team suggested before “sip hole” was chosen … maybe “Drink here -- opposite seam.” This might not have been as clever. But neither is arriving at work looking like your latte sneezed on you.

Anyway, once you’ve experience the drip of this coffee delivery system design flaw, you’ll never forget to check for proper alignment.

And maybe that’s adulthood in general: discovering that most systems work just well enough to keep moving, while ordinary people quietly invent survival techniques nobody officially teaches.

Mine just happens to involve rotating a coffee lid 180-degrees clockwise.

The Rules

 

People like rules because they promise clarity. Do this, avoid that, and everything works out. It’s the same logic behind every “best practice” list.

I prefer not to think of rules as narrow and rigid. I consider them flexible guidelines. Guidelines assume you can think. They bend. They expect context. They’re less law, more “this usually works—until it doesn’t.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-rule. Rules are useful and have been developed and tested over time, but they're built for conformity and comfort. They’re the box that gurus tell you to think outside of.

I like a good structure. And I like knowing where the edges are. But I don’t pretend those edges are fixed. Context shifts. People change. Technology rearranges the furniture while we’re still in the room.

So know the rules, but also know when to bend ‘em and when to break ‘em. Think of altering and ignoring rules as adjustment as opposed to a rebellion.

A hook isn’t a party trick

 

If you tease and bail, you’re not clever. You’re forgettable.

A hook isn’t a party trick. It’s a promise. And when you break it, you train your reader to stop trusting you.

Great copy does three things:

1. It earns attention
2. It rewards attention
3. It directs attention somewhere useful

Hook ‘em. Pay ‘em off. Then give them a clear next move.

Because the goal isn’t to leave people impressed by your setup.

It’s to leave them glad they stuck around and compelled to act.

AI Knows the Code. We Know the Story

 

A machine can parse “red” down to numerical terms: hex codes and RGB values. To AI, the word is nothing more than coordinates on a chart. Efficient. Accurate. Sterile.

But when we say “red,” we’re not speaking math.

We’re summoning brake lights glowing in the fog.

We’re tasting strawberries stolen from a neighbor’s garden.

We’re remembering that sweater someone wore the first night we fell in love.

In other words, we’re not just naming a color. We’re tapping into a web of memory, story, and sensation. Words carry with them the fingerprints of lived experience.

And this is where machines stumble. They’re excellent at patterns … finding them, repeating them, remixing them until the rhythm sounds right. But sounding right and feeling right are two different things.

Humans notice the gap. Not consciously, not always with language for it, but we sense it. We read a piece of text and something just isn’t there. The pulse is missing. The connective tissue of actual life hasn’t soaked through the words.

That’s why study after study shows humans outperform AI detectors when it comes to sniffing out machine-made text. We aren’t just scanning for form. We’re searching for connection. And when it’s absent, the silence is deafening.

Because words don’t live in a dataset. They live in us. They carry the weight of moments machines will never taste, touch, or remember.

And that weight makes all the difference.

The Cycle of Creation

THE CREATIVE PROCESS
(Dombrosky's Six Steps of Idea Realization)

Tom Dombrosky had a way of distilling truth into six-word mantras, the kind you’d find scrawled on a lipstick-stained napkin at a bar that serves whiskey neat and disappointment straight up. 

When we were working on client campaigns, he felt we typically pushed through 6 distinctive phases he called The Creative Process. But really, it was just life condensed into six predictable steps.

Step 1: This is awesome.

You’ve got an idea. A big one. The kind that makes you sit up straighter, crack your knuckles, and declare: This. This is the thing. You picture awards, applause, possibly a parade in your honor. You tell Tom, and he nods, unimpressed.

Step 2: This is tricky.

Turns out, your genius idea has some... logistical issues. Like how a trapeze act sounds great until you remember you’re afraid of heights. You’re making adjustments, problem-solving, doing the work. But the excitement is fading, and there’s an itch at the back of your skull whispering, Hey, this might suck.

Step 3: This is shit.

Yeah. It definitely sucks. What the hell were you thinking? Who let you do this? Where is the nearest exit?

Step 4: I am shit.

It’s not just the work that’s terrible ... you’re terrible. A fraud. A hack. A pretender who should’ve been stopped years ago, preferably by someone who loves you enough to tell you the truth. 

Step 5: This might be okay.

But then... maybe. Maybe there’s something salvageable. A spark. A sliver of light breaking through the wreckage. You breathe. You tweak. You fix. You remember why you started this in the first place.

Step 6: This is awesome.

Holy shit. You did it. And somehow, it works. Maybe even better than you imagined. 

Once through the process, and reviewing my output, I can visualize Tom raising a glass, and toasting me with a grin. “Told you,” he says. "And tomorrow, we get to do it all over again."

________________________

For a few years, Tom and I were partners in a small advertising agency in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He was the senior. I was the junior. I learned a lot, made a lot of money, and had one helluva good time. Here are a few Dombrosky stories you might appreciate:

Chutzpah

Research

It Wasn't Pretty

Kicking Butt in Restaurant Marketing

My customers love me but ...

 

After speaking engagements, I’m often approached by local/regional restaurants and retailers, who ask, “Customers love us, why are sales slipping?”

They’re confused and worried.  The reviews glow, the regulars gush, and yet the sales chart looks like it’s slowly melting.

I aways answer with the uncomfortable truth: “Love and growth are not the same thing.”

And then I tell them that before they need my services as a marketing writer, they have to take a hard look at their operation and I offer the following suggestions:

Maybe your customers are aging out. The 35-year-old customer who built your business is now 55 with different priorities. They still adore you, they just don’t buy like they used to. What are you doing to introduce yourself to the next generation?

Maybe you’ve stopped reaching out. Networking felt tedious. Social media felt like feeding a slot machine. So you coasted. Markets don’t reward coasting. They reward visibility. What are you doing to keep in front of prospective customers?

Maybe you’ve stopped asking for referrals. The people who love you know people just like them, but you’re not asking for the introduction. We’ll build a whole email funnel before we say, “Hey, send your friends.”

Maybe it’s time to look at your staff. Do they have the right training and energy? Customers can feel when they’re an interruption instead of a welcome guest and they quietly retreat, often to one of your competitors.

Maybe you’re not keeping your website fresh and up-to-date. If your website feels like a time capsule, you’re not charming. You’re invisible. People start online. Look at your other outreach too, from signage to advertising.

Maybe you’re not keeping up with subtle changes. Do your hours match modern life? Has your neighborhood changed.

Maybe you’ve changed. Is your heart still in it? Enthusiasm has a scent. So does burnout.

What’s happening in most of these cases isn’t failure. It’s drift.

It’s easy to confuse affection with momentum. Love is maintenance fuel. Growth requires motion. You can be deeply loved and slowly fading at the same time, like a band that still fills reunion tours but hasn’t written a new song in years.

You’re starting from a good place and the fix isn’t a shiny new tactic. It’s less glamorous than that:

Stay visible.

Invite new people in.

Train your staff.

Update the website.

Review the changes in your market.

Find your spark again.

Once you feel confident about your understanding of (and how you’re addressing) these key areas, then we can determine if I’m the best writer for your needs.

#451

 

This is my 451st blog post, which feels both satisfying and deflating at the same time.

On one hand, 450 posts is a real accomplishment for a writer. That’s years of thinking, drafting, rewriting, second-guessing, publishing, and occasionally discovering a typo five minutes after hitting “post.”

More importantly, it’s consistency. These posts became a kind of public workshop for me … not some frozen “best of” portfolio, but ongoing proof that I still write, still think, still care about the craft. And, If I do say so myself, a lot of them are pretty damn good.

But it’s impossible to ignore the weirdness of hitting a writing quantity milestone in the age of AI. Because 450 blog posts used to sound like an enormous amount of work. Now it sounds like a few decent prompts and an afternoon.

Does that diminish the accomplishment? Not really.

These weren’t generated. They were lived through. They’re 450 examples of me paying attention, wrestling with ideas, trying to offer something of value in a world increasingly optimized for speed over thought.

Still, AI changes the emotional math a little.

We live in a culture that worships output. Faster content. More posts. Infinite takes. Quantity has become a substitute for judgment because numbers are easier than taste.

Meanwhile, the real question: “Was it worth reading?” barely gets invited into the conversation.

So yeah, I’m proud of the 450. Not because it took a long time. Not because AI can’t do it faster. But because they represent me.

And I have a feeling (OK, maybe a hope) that that’s about to matter more than ever.

_________________________

Here are 1/2 dozen posts ... a representative sample of the 450:

https://contentandcopywriters.blogspot.com/2026/03/contractions.html

https://contentandcopywriters.blogspot.com/2026/02/blizzard.html

https://contentandcopywriters.blogspot.com/2026/04/efficiency-at-cost-of.html

https://contentandcopywriters.blogspot.com/2026/02/your-call-is-important-to-us-just-not.html

https://contentandcopywriters.blogspot.com/2021/08/oxford-comma-defenders-rejoice.html

https://contentandcopywriters.blogspot.com/2026/02/i-hope-this-message-finds-you-well.html

This is human. That is machine.

 

What irritates me isn’t that AI can write. It’s that people are suddenly acting like writing was sacred all along. Like we’ve been protecting some great artistic tradition that, in practice, we’ve spent the last decade flattening into listicles, summaries, and keyword-stuffed oatmeal.

Now the oatmeal writes itself.

And everyone’s shocked.

There’s also this quiet panic underneath the conversation: this need to draw a hard line and say, “This is human. That is machine.” As if the label alone guarantees meaning.

But readers don’t experience writing that way. They never have.

They read something and think:

• Did this hold my attention?
• Did it give me something?
• Was it worth the minutes it took from my life?

That’s it. No moral philosophy attached.

Which is why this whole debate feels slightly off. We’re arguing about authorship like it’s the main ingredient, when most readers are just deciding if the meal tasted good.

Still, I don’t think this means writing is dead or that human voice doesn’t matter. If anything, it matters more … but in a narrower, sharper way. Because now there’s no hiding in competence.

If all you’re doing is writing clearly structured, perfectly fine sentences, you’re competing with something that can do that instantly, endlessly, without getting bored or needing coffee.

So the question shifts. Not “Can you write?” But “Do you have anything to say that isn’t interchangeable?”

That’s a harder question. And a more interesting one.

I find myself less defensive about AI than I expected. Maybe because it’s exposing something we’ve been avoiding: a lot of writing wasn’t as uniquely human as we claimed. It was just… adequate. And adequacy has a new competitor.

So no, I don’t particularly care if something was written by a person or a machine ... at least not at first glance.

I care if it makes me pause. If it nudges my thinking a few degrees off center. If it feels like someone, somewhere, actually meant it.

And that’s the part I’m not convinced can be automated.

Verbs > Adjectives

When you’re writing marketing materials, you can almost hear the adjectives whispering: “Use me,” they say: “I’m bold. I’m innovative. I’m world-class.”

And sure, they sound nice. Cushy. Soft-focus lens nice.

But adjectives are freeloaders. They hang around the page, puffing up their chests, doing absolutely nothing. They don’t change the reader. They don’t change the story. They’re the linguistic equivalent of putting sequins on a potato.

Verbs, on the other hand, walk in like they own the place.

Verbs shove the story forward. Verbs make your reader picture something happening. Verbs leave fingerprints.

You can ignore an adjective. In fact, the human brain is so used to marketing adjectives that it skims right past them, the way you skim past those long store receipts that list coupons you’ll never use.

But a verb?

A verb grabs your attention by the shirt collar.

Think about the difference between:

“Our platform is innovative”

versus

“Our platform reshapes how work gets done.”

One is a pillow. The other is a punch.

Verbs force you to get specific. You can’t hide behind them. You can’t paint a foggy generality and call it strategy. You have to decide what’s actually happening. What the product does. What the customer feels. What the world looks like after the thing lands in it.

And that specificity makes your writing harder to ignore.

Readers don’t want adjectives. They want action. They want motion. They want to see something change. Verbs give them that. Verbs are tiny machines that pull the reader forward, sentence by sentence, until they’re somewhere new.

So the next time you’re staring down that blinking cursor and the adjectives start whispering sweet nothings, remember: they’re not here to help you.

Reach for the verbs. Reach for the words that crack, shift, lift, shake, pull, deliver.

Write like your copy means business. Write like you want the reader’s brain to sit up and pay attention.

Your audience will thank you by sticking around for the next sentence.

And the next one after that.

 

アメリカのファストフード店

 

The Wendy’s matcha latte is cold and refreshing.

You can’t get a matcha latte in a Wendy’s restaurant in the United States. But you can in Kyoto, Japan.

Which raises the question: Of all the places to stop for a drink in Kyoto, why pick a US-based fast food chain?

Fair question. When traveling outside the US, the majority of my meals are local specialties … here in Japan: sushi, yakitori, ramen, onigiri, tempura, gyoza, and, of course, egg salad sandwiches from 7-11 (that’s another story).

But I also like to stick my head into the franchises from home to see how the menus have been localized. Such as, here in Japan:

The shrimp nuggets or edamame & corn at McDonald’s … the Spam & Cheese Burger or Peanut Butter Royale Burger at Burger King … the Wa-fu Chicken Cutlet Sandwich or Pepper Mayo Twister at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Maybe it’s the marketer in me. Maybe it’s a way of saying, “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

_________________________

According to Google Translate, アメリカのファストフード店  is Japanese for "American fast food restaurant"

Why did the robot cross the road?

I stumbled across a video of a delivery robot stuck at a crosswalk. It wasn’t broken or confused. It was waiting for a human to press the WALK button.

It had already navigated sidewalks, avoided people, delivered a package like a polite little mule with Wi-Fi. But when it got to the road, it stopped and asked a human to press the button.

And the human got annoyed. Understandable. But was this the robot's fault? It didn’t fail, it just hit the edge of a system that was never built with it in mind. The short story: We keep building these eerily capable systems and then act surprised when they trip over something dumb we forgot to redesign.

So we keep getting frustrated because AI, or platforms, or whatever tool didn’t magically fix our workflow this week. “It doesn’t work.” “It feels off.” “It’s too robotic.”

Maybe.

Or maybe it’s our assumption that if you just add enough tools -- AI for writing, automation for outreach, analytics for everything -- you’ll eventually hit some kind of frictionless flow. But what you usually get is a faster version of a clunky system. We’re forcing new capabilities into old systems and acting surprised when it feels like wearing dress shoes to run a marathon

Consider this: If AI were actually native to how most people work, a lot of those workflows wouldn’t exist in their current form. Steps would disappear. Roles would shift. Some things we treat as essential would look unnecessary.

The robot getting stuck at the crosswalk isn’t the problem. It’s just pointing at one: We keep waiting for smarter technology, when what we actually need are systems that make sense for it.

_________________________

NOTE: The person's actual reaction/response to the robot will be the subject of another post.

Show, Don’t Tell

There’s a moment in every piece of marketing where the audience decides whether they believe you. And in that moment, nothing, and I mean nothing, beats demonstration.

Not flowery claims. Not “premium quality” fluff. Not enough adjectives to smother a thesaurus.

Demonstration is the creative equivalent of flipping on the lights and saying: “Watch this.”

The Heinz Lesson

Two bottles. Heinz vs. Generic. Two identical dollops on a plate. Fast-forward 3 minutes, 39 seconds.

The generic catsup sweats like it’s in a job interview. Heinz stays thick, proud, and fully composed.

The line: “Actual photograph of water running out of other catsup… One reason you may pay a little more for Heinz.”

No bragging. No begging. Just proof.

That’s demonstration: the kind of truth people can’t unsee.

Other Masters of the Reveal

Blendtec’s “Will It Blend?”

A guy in a lab coat obliterates iPhones, golf balls, and garden rakes. No features list needed, the blender turns absurdity into credibility.

Dyson vacuums

James Dyson didn’t say “better suction.” He dumped piles of debris on floors and showed every competitor leaving a mess. Demonstration in the universal language of dirt.

Apple product launches

Steve Jobs didn’t claim the iPod was small. He pulled it from his jeans pocket and nailed it with the line: “1,000 songs in your pocket." Boom. Demo. Story over.

Swiffer

Their infomercial-style wipe-on/wipe-off comparison made old mops look like medieval torture devices. One swipe = demonstration. Millions of sales.

 

Why Demonstration Works (and Why Writers Forget It)

Writers like telling. Telling is comfortable. But comfortable is not persuasive.

Demonstration forces the audience to participate in the discovery. They see it. They believe it. And belief they arrive at themselves is belief that sticks.

So instead of reaching for the adjective shelf, ask:

What can I show instead of say?

What moment proves the message?

What truth is compelling enough to leave unadorned?

Because the brands that win aren’t the loudest, they’re the clearest. They let the product do the talking, while the copy sets the stage for the sale of either the brand and/or the actual product.

Sometimes all you need is a plate, a dollop, and a little pool of water to say everything.

Music On or Music Off?

 

When people talk about productivity, someone eventually asks: "Do you listen to music while you work?"

The question tends to split the room into two tribes. The music people and the silence people.

The music people talk about it the way athletes talk about pre-game rituals. The perfect playlist. that supposedly turns your brain into a productivity engine.

I’ve tried it. I really have. But most of the time I prefer silence. Not the monastery kind of silence. Just ordinary quiet. The hum of the room. A keyboard clicking away. Maybe the faint sound of a truck going by outside. Just enough stillness for thoughts to stretch their legs without tripping over a drum solo.

Music, for me, tends to behave like a guest who doesn’t understand they’re supposed to be in the background. Especially if there are lyrics. The moment someone starts singing, my brain abandons the sentence I’m writing and runs after the words like a dog chasing a tennis ball. Now I’m halfway through a paragraph and mentally finishing someone else’s chorus.

This is why people who can write while blasting pop music strike me as mildly supernatural. I imagine their brains have some internal bouncer who politely escorts the lyrics away while they continue typing like nothing’s happening.

Mine doesn't have that feature.

Silence, on the other hand, is honest. It doesn’t try to hype you up or set a mood. It just sits there like an empty stage waiting for something to happen.

And when you’re writing, that’s usually what you need: space.

Occasionally, I’ll allow instrumental music … music that knows how to behave. No vocals. No dramatic attempts to steal the spotlight. Just a quiet layer of sound, like fog rolling through the background of a scene.

Even then, however, I keep it low. When I’m writing, music should feel like furniture, not a parade.

Recently, the  “music while working” conversation has been focused on optimization ... the magical combination of lo-fi beats and rain sounds engineered by algorithms that promise “maximum cognitive flow.” As if your brain were a coffee machine and all you needed was the right settings.

It’s a nice idea, but the reality is much less glamorous. A lot of writing involves sitting there, staring at a sentence that refuses to cooperate, and trying to nudge it into shape without making it worse. Silence helps with that. It keeps the room from getting crowded.

Music has its place … on walks, in the car, while cooking dinner. But when I’m trying to think, I’d rather not invite a band into the room. My brain already has enough noise in it.

The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy PART 2: CON

Communities around the country are rejecting data center projects.

In 2023, two data center projects were canceled because communities pushed back. In 2024, it was six. Last year it jumped to twenty-five. And right now, nearly a hundred projects are facing organized opposition.

Some people see those numbers and worry. I don't.

In fact, it may be one of the healthiest signs of local democracy we've seen in years.

Because for a long time, the assumption was that if a developer showed up with enough money and enough lawyers, communities were expected to say yes. The project was inevitable. The growth was inevitable. The future was inevitable. The public hearing was mostly theater.

But lately people have started asking a surprisingly reasonable question:

"What exactly are we getting in return?"

And that's where the conversation gets uncomfortable.

Because nobody wakes up hoping a giant warehouse full of blinking machines gets built behind the community center. Data centers aren't exactly charming. No windows. No personality. Just a huge concrete box sitting next to a substation.

The difference is that unlike a factory, they employ relatively few people once construction is complete.

Unlike housing, they don't solve a shortage. Unlike a shopping district, they don't create a place where people actually gather.

They consume land, power, water, and infrastructure while often delivering benefits that feel strangely abstract to the people living next door, but enrich tech companies and billionaires.

Cloud capacity. AI training. Reliability. Fast data transfer. Those things matter. But they don't always matter to the specific community being asked to host them. And that's the tension.

Supporters often argue that if a town rejects a project, the investment will simply move somewhere else. That's true. But that doesn't automatically mean the town made a mistake.

We've seen this movie before too.

For most of the twentieth century, communities were told they needed to accept whatever large infrastructure project arrived at their doorstep because progress demanded it. Highways. Industrial facilities. Power plants. Urban renewal projects. The logic was always similar: accept the disruption today because prosperity will arrive tomorrow. 

Sometimes it did. Sometimes it didn't. Sometimes the prosperity flowed elsewhere while the local community kept the noise, traffic, pollution, and land-use consequences. 

History is full of places that were told they were standing in the way of progress when they were actually asking entirely reasonable questions about costs.

Infrastructure has a quiet, ruthless logic to it. But so does self-preservation.

A community's job is not to maximize national computing capacity. A community's job is to look after the people who already live there. Those are not always the same thing.

Right now the new railroad analogy gets thrown around a lot. Data centers are supposedly the railroads of the AI era. Maybe. But railroads connected towns. They moved people, goods, and opportunity directly into local economies.

A data center is different. Most residents will never enter one. Many won't work in one. Some may barely notice what it does at all beyond the transmission lines and substations that accompany it.

That's not an argument that data centers have no value. Clearly they do.

The internet runs on physical infrastructure. AI runs on physical infrastructure. Modern life runs on physical infrastructure. The question isn't whether data centers are useful. The question is whether every community has an obligation to host them.

And the answer may be no.

Sometimes the right decision is to negotiate. Sometimes it's to demand stronger protections. Sometimes it's to ask for a better deal. And sometimes it's to look at a proposal and conclude that the costs outweigh the benefits.

Not every patch of land needs to become part of the next technology boom. Not every community needs to sacrifice its priorities because a developer says the future depends on it.

The train may indeed be coming. But communities aren't required to build a station every time someone lays track in their direction.

History suggests that saying no is sometimes just as important as saying yes.

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The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy PART 1: PRO

The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy INTRODUCTION

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Get the Details: 

• Data center impact on local communities: Balancing growth infrastructure and community outcomes. - Baker Tilly US, LLP/Baker Tilly Advisory Group. LP
  
  
• How data centers are transforming local communities - Fast Company
  
  
• Why are communities pushing back against data centers? - The Harvard Gazette
  
  
• The Debate on Data Center Development: Costs, Benefits, and Community Responses - The Alliance for Civic Engagement 

• From Energy Use to Air Quality, the Many Ways Data Centers Affect US Communities - World Resources Institute

The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy Part 1: PRO

 

Communities around the country are rejecting data center projects.

In 2023, two data center projects were canceled because communities pushed back. In 2024, it was six. Last year it jumped to twenty-five. And right now, nearly a hundred projects are facing organized opposition. Historically, about 40% of those end up getting canceled.

I get the instinct. Nobody wakes up hoping a giant warehouse full of blinking machines gets built behind the community center. Data centers aren’t exactly charming. No windows, no personality, just a huge concrete box sitting next to a substation.

So the local resistance makes sense on a human level. People worry about water, power, land use, taxes. Fair questions.

But a lot of the rhetoric sounds like people believe stopping a project will somehow stop the technology itself. As if AI will glance at the zoning board minutes and say, “Well, I guess we’ll just pack it up.”

That’s not how infrastructure works. Infrastructure is like water, it flows somewhere. Block it here and it doesn’t evaporate. It just runs downhill until it finds a place willing to dig a channel.

We’ve seen this movie before: When the railroads were built in the 1800s, some towns fought them. Noise, land disputes, disruption. Perfectly reasonable concerns. The rail companies responded in the most practical way possible: they went around those towns.

The tracks didn’t disappear. The trains didn’t stop. The map just changed.

A few decades later, the places connected to the rails were booming and the bypassed towns were historical markers and antique stores.

Infrastructure has a quiet, ruthless logic to it. It doesn’t argue with you. It just keeps moving.

And right now the new railroad is computing power.

Data centers are the physical skeleton of the internet era we’re walking into. AI models, cloud services, streaming, research, startups ... it all lives in racks of servers somewhere, humming away like a mechanical beehive.

Which means if a community blocks a project, the investment doesn’t disappear; it relocates.

The jobs go there. The tax base goes there. The engineers go there. The coffee shops that follow engineers go there.

And, that “there” might not even be the United States.

And that’s the part people seem oddly relaxed about.

We spend a lot of time arguing online about AI ethics, AI safety, AI alignment, AI consciousness … big philosophical stuff. Meanwhile the physical infrastructure that actually runs the whole show is quietly becoming a zoning dispute about ugly warehouses.

It’s like debating literature while refusing to build libraries.

To be clear, this isn’t an argument that every data center should go wherever a developer wants. Communities should absolutely push for good deals, environmental safeguards, smarter planning. Nobody wants to trade a forest for a parking lot full of diesel generators.

But there’s a difference between negotiating the terms and pretending the train isn’t coming.

Because the train is very much coming.

The only real question is whether it stops in your town or keeps rolling until it finds a place that will build a station. History suggests it won’t wait long.

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The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy PART 2: CON

The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy INTRODUCTION

_______________________

Get the Details: 

• Data center impact on local communities: Balancing growth infrastructure and community outcomes. - Baker Tilly US, LLP/Baker Tilly Advisory Group. LP
  
  
• How data centers are transforming local communities - Fast Company
  
  
• Why are communities pushing back against data centers? - The Harvard Gazette
  
  
• The Debate on Data Center Development: Costs, Benefits, and Community Responses - The Alliance for Civic Engagement 

• From Energy Use to Air Quality, the Many Ways Data Centers Affect US Communities - World Resources Institute

The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy

 

Few local issues generate as much heat right now as data centers.

Across the country, communities are debating proposals that promise investment, tax revenue, and a place in the AI economy. At the same time, residents are raising concerns about land use, power consumption, water resources, noise, and quality of life.

What's interesting is that both sides have compelling arguments.

The pro-data-center case argues that computing infrastructure is becoming as important to the 21st century as railroads, highways, and power grids were to previous generations. Rejecting projects may simply push investment, jobs, and innovation somewhere else.

The anti-data-center case argues that communities are not obligated to accept every project presented as "progress," especially when the local costs may outweigh the local benefits.

To me, the debate isn't really about buildings full of servers. It's about who gets to decide what progress looks like … and who benefits and who bears the cost of it. 

So, instead of writing an editorial taking one side over the other, I thought it would be more interesting and challenging (and perhaps informative) to write about 500 words -- opinion, not technical -- on each and then suggest you read both as first step in understanding the opposing viewpoints and making a decision about which side of the debate you find yourself on.

PART 1: PRO explores why communities may want to embrace data centers -- while demanding reasonable safeguards and accountability.

PART 2: CON explores why communities may be justified in saying no, even when developers argue the future depends on it.

Whether you're strongly for, strongly against, or still undecided, I encourage you to read both.

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The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy PART 1: PRO

The Fight Over Data Centers That Could Shape the AI Economy PART 2: CON

NOTE: Both posts include links to credible sources that offer
more specific information on both sides of the data center debate.