Good afternoon! Sorry for the late edition, The Sizzle's intern — my 2 year old — had a small run-in with a hot plate. She is fine after a trip to the doctor, but it was a bit disruptive. Have a GREAT weekend!

Mentioned in today’s edition: Jack Dorsey, Anthropic, Substack, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Adobe, ChatGPT, Bluesky and the Meta Oakley Vanguard. Plus, deals on LG robot vacuums, Motorola Moto Tags and Apple iPhones.

The News

Why do rich and powerful people email like this?

One of the less alarming but near-universal experiences of reading emails and texts sent by Jeffrey Epstein was being surprised by his poor spelling and grammar. The Wall Street Journal wrote about the shared style of misspellings and absent punctuation seen in the communications of the rich and powerful, from Epstein to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey to controversial tech billionaire Peter Thiel. One expert told the Journal that this style of emailing can signal status ("I'm too important and busy to spell well") or intimacy. My former colleague Katie Notopoulos added another reason: in the age of AI slop, spelling errors are a sign of human touch (Business Insider).

The Sizzle: I may not be a billionaire, but I'm a very casual communicator. I like to message people a lot, I leave in small typos except when I'm talking to complete strangers or when I'm working. I like doing away with stale formalities like long introductions and perfect punctuation in favour of trying to be expressive and direct. I'll go out on a limb and say I don't agree with the snobbery. Spelling and grammar are just arbitrary rules that change all the time.

But I know this annoys people! I understand why some people think sticking to the rules shows that you care. From my side, I think writing in emails, texts, speaking — it all needs to be customised for the recipient’s context and preferences. So, I generally like to be relaxed with rules and have fun, knowing that for most people, that's relaxing and fun for them. 

What do you think? Do you write every text like it's an official announcement to the ASX? Do you email your boss the poo emoji when you disagree with them? Let me know!

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

We still don't know how much damage DOGE has done

Have you forgotten about DOGE? It's been a while since the semi-illegitimate Elon Musk-led taskforce descended on Washington only to wash out not long afterwards. But we're still only finding out the full consequences of their actions. This week, one former DOGE worker told a court that he used ChatGPT to search government grants that mentioned "black" or "homosexual" to cancel (404 Media, $). And a whistleblower claims that another DOGE worker stole social security data belonging to millions of Americans (WIRED, $). It's almost as if you shouldn't just place a bunch of arrogant tech bros who think that the term "public service" is a Pornhub category in charge of government.

P.S. The only ever good use of a prediction market was the accountant who bet his life savings that DOGE wouldn't reduce government spending — and won! (TechCrunch)

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

The Sizzler Say: Phone cases, magic links, AI layoff announcements written by AI, maybe?

As always, if you wanna get involved (or even be able to read what's on Slack) you can join the Slack server and forum via these links.

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of World:

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Oh, Also

Turn the tables and take AI’s job!

They say you should walk in another man's shoes before judging him. But what about another man's tokens? A fun website that popped up this week is called Your AI Slop Bores Me which lets you either ask an "AI" questions, or lets you role play as AI and answer other people's questions. 

Discuss in Slack or Forum.

Bargains

Electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.

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