The Word of the Turd.

We're into the second week of our ninety-eighth straight Annus Horribilis, still close enough to the flipping of the calendar leaf to talk about the year that was and the ongoing effects of last year on this year.

In my mind the word of the year wasn't Slop, or Hawk Tuah, or Cognitive Test or any tump horror put into broken spindled and mutilated hanglish. 

The word of the year was: Artificial.

I just now asked Amazon's ersatz AI-powered spying device, when the rain would stop in the dopey little Gingham Coast-town currently closing in on me. The device answered with absolute conviction: "The rain will stop at 9AM. You can expect about 0.28 inches."

The zero point two eight calculus is human-made.

It's hubris--assuming a god-like power--to predict things down to the tenth of an inch. 

The machine has been taught (by humans) if it answers you with a figure of decimal point detail, it therefore will sound more accurate and smart.

This is utter bullshit, of course. 

And there's no accounting for how many times the predictions from this particular "prediction engine," and the millions like it are right or wrong. (As we're in the time of the year where people on LinkedIn make all kinds of stabs about what will happen in 2026, I keep waiting for someone to add to their predictions, "I will literally eat my hat if I am wrong." People used to back up bravado with statements like that. No more.

Since the (Fools') Gold Rush of AI started about ten years ago, we've been hearing the word "artifical" maybe more than any other time in human-history, with the possible exception of when Tang© was introduced. 

I think very few people have stopped to think about the word--or its too-frequent companion-word, intelligence. The "cognate" Artificial Intelligence, in fact reminds me of another one: "Western Civilization." And that reminds me of a story, probably apocryphal, of a short exchange between a smug journalist and Gandhi, in London, a little more than a century ago.

I think this plays out with some acuity. It's my contemporary rejoinder.

What I'm seeing about one-hundred times a day from dozens of sources, is a ginning up of the speculative value of companies that provide dubious real utility to anyone outside of first-mover speculators who will bail (thanks to inside information) before the crash that's coming, leaving almost everyone holding the empty and non-recyclable toxic-bag.

All the headlines below were from the Times and the Journal on Tuesday, December 23, 2025. 

I'm no economist, but this sort of frenzy--whether it's people grasping for a flatscreen TV at Walmart, trying to get the last marble rye at Zabar's or getting in on the latest market killing can't be good. 

It's not the growth or the money that's giving me pause. 

It's the disconnect between the hype and the boots on the ground. Since the advent of AI, since all this dough was raised, has anything gotten better for you on the ground? 

This is artificial hype.
Artificial theft.
Artificial over-selling.
Artificial alchemy.
Artificial wallet-lifting.

Can you book a flight any easier? Change a hotel room? Get your dryer repaired? Can you get an answer? An accurate weather report? Can you get help from customer-service where you say to yourself, "That was great! They solved it and treated me well."

As for the purported "productivity gains" derived from the use of AI, have you seen any? Have prices come down? Has quality gone up? Has anything happened other than the artificial hype that surrounds every inhalation and exhalation you take?

Artificial is the word of the year--despite what whatever organ proclaims the word of the year says it is. Artificial is the house of cards we've built. Artificial is the inequality we've heightened. Artificial is our inability to tell real from fake.

Artificial.
And they're raising trillions based on artificial promises. And we think that's sustainable. We think that's the same as making something useful that people needs.

Below are bank notes from Germany, the world's second largest economy, one-hundred years ago. They're 50-trillion mark notes. 500-billion mark notes. And so on.

They're so inflated they have no value.

No value. All hype.

That's what's happening.

First we inflate promises. 
Then accomplishment.
Then money.
Soon it's all artificial.

There's no link between what someone says and what someone does.

Then