BS of the Month (Feb 2025): How-to-Tell-It’s-Bullshit… Special Edition
(Strap in, get a hot chocolate, snuggle with your pets. There's a lot of BS to wade through)
Calling bullshit on someone is easy. But if we in the bleacher seats want to be taken seriously, and not be seen as just clucking pigeons in the rafters, then we need to be clear about why we call bullshit on someone. There have to be reasons and facts and proof statements.
That’s a much harder task. So, in this episode of the bullshit files, we dissect a few examples, and give a few guiding principles for calibrating what Hemmingway said every writer needs, and in our truth-challenged world something we all need: a “built-in, shockproof shit detector.”
Honorable Mention: Mark Cuban for a giant AI hype drop
Just under the wire, Mark Cuban dropped this ridiculous claim about the capabilities of AI—a great example of ridiculous AI FOMO hype.
How you know it’s bullshit = hyperbole + FOMO
First, the hyperbole of “zero education” is transparently dumb. If he’s wanting us to imagine this is literally true, then someone with “zero education” can’t read or write; and thus cannot write a prompt, or read the output. If he’s meaning this figuratively, the person still has no idea what the right questions will be; one has to earn some level expertise based on tutoring from the AI, and only then will the zero-educated user know what questions to pose back to the AI. The equivalent of the AI eating its own vomit.
The imprecision of “many jobs” asks us to imagine… what? A baker at the local supermarket bakery counter? A physicist designing one of Elon Musk’s penis rockets? The term “advanced degree” presumably points to the latter. But have you ever tried to master the chemistry involved in baking a decent cake? (see, a little reverse counter-hyperbole there).
The strawman is the supposedly brilliant advanced-degreed expert who stubbornly refuses to adapt with the times—not mentioning any of the numerous ethical concerns with AI, or its proven unreliability. And then there is the oversimplification of what it “just takes” to get your AI diploma: a list of human capabilities so basic that even Joe Rogan can muster them. (That’s not a strawman argument against Joe Rogan, just a factual observation.)
If you’re already on the AI hype train, Cuban’s hype might sound reasonable, and maybe even earn him an “atta boy,” or a “you go girl!” But the idea that a complete ignoramus can learn enough from an AI bot to outperform an actual expert (taking his argument literally) is patently absurd—factually speaking.
If you want to know why, go dig into the archives of Where’s Your Ed At? (Ed Zitron’s newsletter), or Charting GenAI from Graham Lovelace, or The CEO Retort, from Tim El-Sheik, or Marcus on IA, from Gary Marcus, or any other expert AI publication.
Here’s an example from Ed Zitron’s recent piece “The Generative AI Con,” in which he quotes a Platformer review of ChatGPT’s Deep Research bot:
Generally speaking, the more you already know about something, the more useful I think deep research is. This may be somewhat counterintuitive; perhaps you expected that an AI agent would be well suited to getting you up to speed on an important topic that just landed on your lap at work, for example. In my early tests, the reverse felt true.
To which Zitron appended his own thoughts:
Personally, when I ask someone to do research on something, I don't know what the answers will be and rely on the researcher to explain stuff through a process called "research." The idea of going into something knowing about it well enough to make sure the researcher didn't fuck something up is kind of counter to the point of research itself.
GenAI appears to be most useful (redundant?) for those working in an area they already know, because AIs make shit up. They don’t know what’s TRUE. They only know what SOUNDS TRUE. And even when prompted, AIs can have a very tough time trying to correct their own mistakes. (See any of Gary Marcus’s in-depth GenAI product reviews, especially this one).
So, if you the zero-educated user can’t tell when an AI is making shit up, then you will NEVER EVER outperform an expert who does.
Like many AI boosters, the only way that Mark Cuban (who ought to know better) can make his case that AI is a must-have for everyone, is to make an emotional appeal to fear by using FOMO hyperbole, rather than facts.
That’s how we know it’s bullshit.
2nd Runner Up: Trump, Musk, and Right-Wing Trolls for Racist Lying
There is so much bullshitty bullshit coming out of the White House these days it’s hard to pick just one item. But this one rose above the general level of bullshittery they do every day, which is a high bar.
There was a short-lived, right-wing hissy fit over South Africa’s new Expropriation Act, which they claimed was legalizing racist theft of white people’s property—in response Trump issued an executive order cutting off foreign aid to South Africa (“to the extent permissible by law”) and starting a refugee program specifically for white Afrikaners.
How you know it’s bullshit = Facts
The Guardian delivered a great summary of why this is racist bullshit. The EO is also anti-DEI hype bullshit, accusing South Africa of “policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business,” once again trotting out the DEI-is-reverse-discrimination ploy. Sound familiar?
But have a look at what the law actually says:
The amount of compensation [for expropriated property] must be just and equitable reflecting an equitable balance between the public interest, the interests of those affected, including an owner and holder of a right a morgagee, having regard to all relevant circumstances…
Even the second largest party in South Africa, the white-led Democratic Alliance, which opposes the new law, confirmed that:
It is not true that the act allows land to be seized by the state arbitrarily and it does require fair compensation for legitimate expropriations.
Moreover, Elon Musk’s jaw-dropping, tone-deaf taunt of the South African president (“Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?”) is pretty audacious, given South Africa’s colonial history, 1913 legal prohibition against black people owning land, resettlement laws of the 1950s, among other “racist” laws privileging white folks—a good write up from Wonkette here.
But the most glaring thing missing from the Expropriation Act is any mention of Afrikaners, or whiteness, or any racial test, or anything remotely targeting any specific group. So Trump’s invoking “race-based discrimination” is a lie. It’s an outgrowth of the “white genocide” lie that’s been percolating in the fever swamps of the right for years, which a South African court ruled was “not real” just last week.
The facts are out there; we’re positively swimming in facts; it really would take Mark Cuban’s “zero educated” hypothetical user about five seconds with a halfway decent search engine to figure out that this is inane, nauseating, and unequivocal bullshit. Because facts. Remember those?
1st Runner Up – Context Free Media Coverage
This one is a little harder because calling bullshit requires nuance and a background understanding of the issues at play.
If you’re a tad behind the news or just skimming the headlines, it’s easy to miss or be taken in by this kind of BS. But given the stakes are so high in the two most important narrative battles of our time (autocratic power politics in the U.S.; and the corporate/money politics of AI hype), there couldn’t be two stories more deserving of vigilance by journalists, especially the headline writers who are a gateway to the coverage itself.
How you know it’s bullshit = No Context & Misleading Impressions
The first example is a headline from The Washington Post: “US and Russian officials to discuss how to end Ukraine war.” What’s missing? The fact that Ukraine was deliberately disinvited. Also missing: the fact that the talks are being held in Saudi Arabia, hosted by an autocratic regime looking to powerwash their reputation by acting as an important geopolitical player.
Alternate headlines?
US, Russia, Saudi officials convene talks on Ukraine’s fate
US and Russia hold peace talks on Ukraine—without Ukraine
Ukraine excluded from US-Russia peace talks
US engages Russia on ending Ukraine war; Says Ukraine has “no cards to play”
There’s a million headlines you could write that provide valuable context about what is actually happening. It doesn’t take that many words, only a smidgen of consideration, to add additional facts that give dimension and nuance, to accurately frames this news.
And then what picture did the Post’s editors put next to the misleading headline? It’s a photo of Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy at a table with VP Vance and Sec. of State Rubio. Just utter bullshit: the picture makes it look like Zelenskyy is at some generic “talks,” when the article is about US-Russia talks from which Zelenskyy was excluded! That’s extremely misleading, and irresponsible because it leaves the impression that Zelenskyy was part of the process.
These second examples are from CNN, which is super bad at headline writing. In the left example, we’re to believe that Trump wants to “shake up” the Postal Service. In reality, Trump’s backers have been gunning to privatize the post office for decades, and Trump himself nearly tried it during his last term.
But the missing nuance here is what precipitated CNN’s coverage in the first place: news (from WaPost) that Trump was about to fire the entire USPS Board of Governors and take control of the USPS under the Commerce Dept., and that the move looked like the first step toward privatization. The real news here is not a “shake up”: dismantling the USPS via privatization is not a “shake up” because after it’s done the thing no longer exists.
Next, the headline on the right is just too irresponsible to believe. Even though the headline puts the video title in quotes, a quick scan leads one to believe that CNN itself is exclaiming that “Trump Gaza is finally here!” Also, the idea that the president “promotes Gaza plan” is equally irresponsible, making the thing sound like a new Trump resort property. (Well, actually…)
The point is that the “Gaza plan” is a geopolitical gambit with potentially world-destabilizing consequences. It’s a very fucking serious matter. The idea of that some AI-slop, resort-promo video is the actual news and deserves the headline—rather than the fact that the president is barfing out some dangerous, horrific, color-saturated, autocratic wet dream—should get that headline writer fired, as well as the editor who greenlit putting this on the CNN website.
This third example is from The Verge, which is generally reliable and thorough at reporting tech news. But like every tech outlet, they can have a tendency to bang on the AI drum and serve up kool-aid without context.
In the article “A new AI enters the chat,” they took a horse-race approach to reporting the launch of Grok-3 as a “leading AI model,” which they said has “again shaken up the fast-moving AI race.” They highlighted that the “xAI team has managed to deploy a leading foundational model in record time,” quoting a reviewer who said the new system’s “thinking capabilities” were “unprecedented.” Hmmm… Did they actually use it?
Gary Marcus test drove it, and Grok-3 hit a concrete pylon faster than a self-driving Tesla. It drew a bicycle that looked like a monkey’s face, couldn’t tell consonants from vowels, didn’t know the date, and made up a future earthquake in Billings, Montana. (Marcus offers advice for journalists covering AI in the book Rebooting AI.)
All of these examples highlight the idea that journalism is much more than just writing up an event that took place somewhere, at some point, and included some people.
There’s a growing tendency toward a superficial, sanitized approach to reporting the “news,” without sufficient additional nuance to establish context, and without burning any shoe leather to investigate whether a story is supported by facts. Partly this is laziness, partly it’s a cynical attempt to hew to some claimed middle ground and not “take sides.”
But given how the world is creaking on its axis, in many ways realigning the global order in real time, it’s more important now (compared to ever) that journalists avoid vapid, empty bullshit and frame the news accurately, so that it informs us not just about the events themselves, but about the larger context in which they are happening. Because without context there’s no meaning—it’s just slapping raw food down on a plate and calling it dinner.
BS of the Month Award: Jeff Bezos for Democracy-Killing Cynicism
Jeff Bezos isn’t just misrepresenting the purpose of radically altering the Washington Post’s Op-ed page. He’s also deliberately ignoring both the context in which he’s doing it (America’s tire-screeching rightward lurch toward autocracy), as well as the fact that his decision moves the paper toward normalizing America’s autocratic upshift, when his paper should be grabbing the gearshift to slow it down.
How you know it’s bullshit = No process + Flimsy rationale
One of the ways corporations thrive is by process, especially when it comes to change, such that there is an entire corporate discipline called “change management.” And when change is driven by a credible organizational shift, it’s executed with a credible, coordinated organizational roll-out.
When there’s no process attached, that means it was a shoot-from-the-hip moment by a powerful individual at the controls. Or it was a corporate move that leadership knows won’t be received well; so out of fear, doubt, and a wish to bury the news, they just spring it on people and hope it goes away really fast (e.g., Alphabet dropping its prohibition on military work).
The Bezos announcement featured:
No process, Exhibit A: If launching this new editorial product was an important strategic moment for the paper, it should have been announced in the actual paper, in an op-ed by Bezos himself. And yet, after sending an internal memo, Bezos made his formal public announcement on X? Why? The only reasonable answer is that he values that audience more than the audience for his own newspaper: i.e., it was a dog whistle to the right.
A real product launch would likely have included a corresponding op-ed page with a full slate of articles from writers who reflect the new approach, to give readers a taste of what the actual new product would look like. Only, if they’d done it that way, the exemplar of a “liberty/free markets” op-ed page would been the kind of dishonest hype narrative and unhinged BS where Marc Thiessen ranted about the heroic Zelenskyy needing to apologize to Trump. The Post’s audience would have been treated to a very clear vision of what the future holds, which is probably why the Post skipped doing it that way.
No process, Exhibit B: One of the keys to successful strategic roll out is having a team ready to go, or at least someone designated to lead. Yet, the announcement said the current op-ed page editor was leaving without a named replacement. If this was a planned event, they would know well in advance who would be running it, and be prepared with a succession announcement if the person in charge was stepping aside—i.e., to communicate operational stability and continuity. There was none.
Flimsy rationale, Exhibit A: The idea that the “liberty/free markets” lane is open territory for The Washington Post is just false. There’s already a big national newspaper that occupies that lane and it’s The Wall Street Journal. So, good luck with that. And the idea that these two ideas “are underserved in the current market” is just plain laughable; if there’s one political opinion lane that the internet covers exhaustively, with a multitude of competitors, it’s the “liberty and free markets” lane. The right-wing/libertarian presence online is enormous.
Flimsy rationale, Exhibit B: Bezos contends that a hometown newspaper with a “local monopoly” no longer needs to “cover all views” in the op-ed pages because that’s done by the internet. That may be fine if you’re the local hometown paper in Wichita, KS, or Bangor, ME, or Scottsdale, AZ, or some other mid-sized city in America. But the Post’s “local monopoly” is and always has been our national government. No paper is closer to the seat of power, and thus it should consider itself to have 300 million+ constituents. Rather than shrinking and evading this mandate, and crying that they’re just a “local” paper, the Post should be reaffirming its mandate to cover the most pressing and consequential developments in national government. Especially when those developments are so contentious, also possibly unconstitutional and illegal. (Who is going to publish the next Pentagon Papers if not The Washington Post?)
We call bullshit on Bezos because all evidence points to this being a personal decision by a billionaire owner to knee-cap his own storied news publication. He did it because he just couldn’t stand the heat: e.g., when Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit after her cartoon of Bezos was pulled; and when he got absolutely roasted after his impulsive process-free cancellation of the paper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. (No preparation or pre-planning. No coordinated roll-out. Nothing that could resemble thoughtful institutional decision making.)
The paper’s op-ed page (and perhaps its newsroom too?) is clearly no longer driven by a considered editorial outlook, but by the whims of its owner and his views on political convenience. So, when it comes to deciding what constitutes “viewpoints opposing those [new op-ed] pillars” (viewpoints that will not be allowed), you can bet that the editorial staff will be using Bezos’s personal interests and sensitivities as their guide.
What will that look like? Will any and all regulatory action by the government be considered anti-free market? Will the paper be brave enough to print editorials with a viewpoint of antitrust advocacy? Will pro-union articles be verboten? Are unions an expression of workers’ liberty and freedom of choice? Or are unions coercive, ideologically driven, anti-capitalist bureaucracies out for power for themselves?
Who gets to decide? Bezos, that’s who. And whomever Bezos puts in charge of the editorial page will be as beholden to him as Trump’s minions are to the president. It’s an oligarch’s world now, maybe even a gangster’s paradise, as Noah Smith argues.
And that is the biggest reason we call bullshit on Bezos: this newfound embrace of “liberty/free markets” (the biggest right-wing dog whistle you can wrap your lips around) intentionally deprives pluralist, small-d democratic narratives of yet another place to breathe.
For that reason, for his democracy-destroying, spineless, craven foray into cosmic-scale bullshittery, we award the Golden Dookie and the BS of the Month Award to Jeff Bezos. Congratulations Jeff! Well done!
