7.13.2025

A Touch of Rebellion

 

A Touch of Rebellion

Fight the Machine

When I was a girl, some grown-up asked me why I used big words. “Because they’re pretty,” I answered. He was shocked, but it made sense to him. Later, I was fired from a babysitting job for using “weird words” that her daughter had started to use, too. “You mean vocabulary?” I asked. That was the end of the conversation.

And so, my little Tellions, as we descend into the age of AI slop, let’s revive those little words and expressions that were such attractive curlicues in our language. In the decades since that question, I’ve expanded my expressions to include the archaic, which my husband and I traded back and forth daily. G-d, I miss that man. The words in old books are beautiful things, like discovering treasures in an old box of jewelry at a yard sale that has been overlooked for too long.

Who knew it could lead to revolution?

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Now that we are inundated with AI slop, what better way to evoke actual feelings than to communicate with words never used by AI? People are dying for real, authentic communication and connection. It gives a lift to the soul to know a person thought about you and wrote something meant for you. It didn’t used to. But here we are.

So here is a handy-dandy list of expressions to weave into your email discourse:

  • whither, thither

  • yon

  • lest

  • “draw a bath” means to fill the tub with water

  • nary

  • anon

  • betwixt

  • buss on the cheek

  • naught

  • wherewith

  • ribald

  • n’er do well

  • rapscallion

  • rapier wit

  • cut to the quick

  • to wit

Add to the list in the comments!

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Rewriting an AI Email

From ChatGPT:

Subject: Temporary Closure of 5th Floor Bathrooms Due to Construction

Dear [Team/All],

Please be advised that due to scheduled construction work, the bathrooms on the 5th floor will be temporarily closed starting [start date] through [anticipated end date].

During this time, we ask that you use the restrooms located on other floors. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience and understanding as we work to improve our facilities.

If you have any questions or need assistance, feel free to contact [Facilities/Building Management] at [contact info].

The Alternative:

Subject: Construction Inconveniences Impede Our Bathroom Use on the Fifth Floor

Dearest Co-workers and Uneasy Allies,

Alas, the fifth floor bathrooms are not available for use by any of us, no matter the need, for the next two weeks. Ongoing building improvements prevent any such measure of relief.

Until such time as these improvements are complete, please use the restrooms elsewhere in the building. Your inconveniences related to this situation are a cause of woe to us, the building management; and we are indebted to you for your graciousness and good manners.

Any inquiries will be embraced and promptly responded to. Our Facilities Manager always answers phone calls to this number xxx-xxx-xxxx and awaits your thoughts.

The Tell with Christine Axsmith is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 

2.20.2025

Note to Mary Harris at Slate

 

My Evil Plan to Save Democracy:  a New Approach to a General Strike

  1. Assassinations don’t work.  There’s always another jackass waiting in line.

  2. Corporate America is already prepared for a work stoppage.

  3. If you are willing to riot, you should be willing to go on a phone diet.

  4. Deleting shopping and social media apps from you phone will be a serious threat to the system (see below).  Burning buildings and cars wouldn’t be.  This time, they are ready for that.  Like the shit Obama pulled in shutting down the Occupy encampments.  No one can make you have an app on your phone.  It is something these masters of the universe can’t control, and no sheriff could force.  

  5. Protect the mission from the “I Like To Lose” Left.  You will know them because they will want to add issues that aren’t concrete and propose solutions that are vague.  There is no “and” here.  It is not “the Supreme Court cannot stop the counting of votes” AND “stop global warming.”  The target has to be specific, immediate and already on the table for a decision to be made.

  6. Don’t wait until AFTER a Supreme Court decision.  Timing is everything.  We have to show them before a final decision that we have the power to take it all down.

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Let Me Paint a Dream

President Trump takes a dump on our country's democracy.  Silicon Valley types are weighing in like the oligarchs they are, and the New York Times is still sane-washing Trump and his human chatbots.  

What none of them know is they don’t hold the power anymore.  They find out.  The entire Silicon Valley/banking system is dependent on one thing:  space on your phone. All this is possible because of vulnerabilities in our current financial system and how the hooker-loving cocaine addicts on Wall Street measure things.

A Killer Formula for a General Strike

I am a real estate vampire. It was through my general trolling for real estate insights that I stumbled on the secret that will take the whole system down.  YouTuber Reventure Consulting made an offhand comment:  all the reporters that write about real estate read the same basic report and write a story off of that.  None of them engage in independent analysis.

It got me to wondering.  How does that happen in the Silicon Valley space?

The Wall Street System

People sit around in expensive suits guessing the future earnings of a company.  They get paid to tell people about it.  If a company doesn’t meet those numbers, its stock price is hurt.  That makes them vulnerable because the guesses are based on certain metrics, and for some companies, it is how many phones have the company’s app installed.

Stock prices, and predictions about stock prices, react to risk and uncertainty.  Investopedia cites uncertainty in profit potential and revenue growth as important factors in determining a stock’s value.

Market price per share and revenue are proven to have a positive relationship, which means they rise and fall together according to research in Discussion of the Factors that Influence the Amazon’s Share Prices by Yi Feng and Xujie Li. The value of a social media or online shopping forum depends on the number of phones that have installed its app:

Customer base and customer database are measured by app installations.

Silicon Valley is desperate for space on our phones.  They track app downloads frantically, and any downturn spawns articles clucking about viability.

The expectations about future earnings will be hurt if lots of people start deleting these apps from their phones because it will create uncertainty about future revenue.  That’s our target: uncertainty about future impulse use of our phones.

“Revenue growth uncertainty”

It doesn’t even have to be actual revenue or profits.  Just increasing the uncertainty around those two numbers will impact the stock price. And that’s what deleting social media and shopping apps from your phone will do.

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We are targeting corporate fear of Wall Street uncertainty.  Increase that uncertainty, and those Wall Street guessers will tell everybody a stock value is lower.  Investors being malleable, it will lead to the stock price actually being lower.  It was that fear of uncertainty that led to Amazon firing 18,000 workers recently, according to an Amazon statement:

However, given the uncertain economy in which we reside, and the uncertainty that exists in the near future, we have chosen to be more streamlined in our costs and headcount.

The Pain Point

The singular fight for any online company is for space on your phone.  The number of phones that have a company’s app affects its stock price because of its impact on uncertainty.  

A 2021 study, Fooled in the Relationship: How Amazon Prime Members’ Sense of Self-control Counter-intuitively Reinforces Impulsive Buying Behavior,  shows that Amazon gets a lot of revenue from impulsive purchases, which is accelerated by Amazon Prime membership.  Amazon also depends on impulsive purchasing made possible by its app being installed on your phone.  That availability converts the Amazon app on your phone into revenue.  Taking away the chance to make an impulse purchase on your phone will reduce their revenue.

But that’s just Amazon.  Any social media company gets revenue from advertising dollars, and closing the viewing window by deleting their app from your phone will hurt expected revenues.

Market price per share and revenue are proven to have a positive relationship, which means they rise and fall together according to Discussion of the Factors that Influence the Amazon’s Share Prices by Yi Feng and Xujie Li.

Good news.  You control the apps installed on your phone.  

If users banded together for one issue, we would win.  It would only take deleting the shopping and social media apps for one day a week from your phone, times thousands, to cause Wall Street panic.  The downloading and retention statistics relied on for stock valuation would become meaningless.

The Tina Turner School of Negotiation

This tactic only works using the Tina Turner school of negotiation.  

Tina Turner was divorcing her violent, controlling husband, Ike Turner.  She only asked the court for one thing in the divorce settlement:  her stage name.  With all the money she earned, all the assets she contributed to the marriage, she only wanted one thing: the ability to continue her singing career.  She refused to compromise on it.  Her tactic made her chances of getting what she wanted much more likely because she wasn’t fighting any other item.

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Unity gives us power.  Violence and rioting does the opposite.  

That external pressure would put power back in our hands by threatening stock valuations.  It’s another way of majority rule.  You know, since we lost the other one.

Are you ready?  Let’s go.

I want to thank you for reading this far.  Recently my Wikipedia page was deleted because I was no longer “a person of continued interest.”  They’re probably right.  But I want to assure you that this page, and this blog, will not be deleted by me.  

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