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Publicis ceo Arthur Sadoun made big headlines last week with his announcement that he's taking the $20 million they piss away at Cannes every year and sinking it into an artificial intelligence gimmick called Marcel. The goal of this AI system is to connect all 80,000 of Publicis' employees for the purpose of universal access to information and collaboration. You can learn about it on this video cliché-fest . According to Chip Register, co-CEO of Publicis.Sapient... "In a group of 80,000 people ... how can we assemble that team and allow that team to work and collaborate virtually to bring the best ideas and values we can to a client at a moment's notice?... The use of technology enables great creative work. It enables the connectivity of people... It enables teams to work and it enables ideas to generate, be shared globally and virtually, through the use of better insight in culture and the journey of human beings." Let's forget the "human journey...

Apple and Google both know there's a big problem. The problem is that online advertising is a shit show of unprecedented proportions. In recent days, both Apple and Google have announced initiatives to deal with the problem. Google's solution is timid. Apple's solution is much better. First let's define the problem. Essentially everyone who uses the web is fully fed-up with the horrifying state of online advertising. It is beyond annoying, beyond stupid, and beyond insufferable. People have always viewed advertising as a minor annoyance. But online advertising and the imbeciles who create and propagate it are so far removed from reality that human beings are in revolt. Over 600 million web-enabled devices are currently running ad blockers. The hidden hand behind the horror of online advertising is tracking. Tracking, and the collection of personal information, is in large part responsible for many of the worst aspects of online ads. Let's put aside for a moment the ...

The Golden State Warriors have been the best team in basketball for the past 3 years. Two years ago they won the NBA championship. Last year they had the best win-loss record in the history of the league but lost the championship in the final game (their best player, Steph Curry, had 3 injuries; their center, Andrew Bogut, was hurt and not able to play; and their heartbeat, Draymond Green, was suspended for a critical game.) This year they had the best record in the league and last night they won the Championship again. As a result, there are people who are proclaiming them one of the best basketball teams of all time. But there are also a bunch of old players from years back -- some of them great, some of them mediocre -- who are mouthing-off saying their teams could have beaten the Warriors. They claim the Warriors are not really that good because the league is weaker, or the players aren't as talented, or the game isn't as competitive as it was in the old days. This is a fam...

The world does not move in straight lines. We expect things to go one way, but they unexpectedly go another. In 2000, when the Prius was introduced, most commentators saw a big future for hybrid vehicles. In 2009, a study by JPMorgan confidently asserted " 20% of all vehicles sold in U.S. to be hybrids by 2020. " In 2010, Consumer Reports said " 39 percent are considering buying a hybrid or plug-in for their next car. " And yet, as of April 2016, hybrid cars represented less than 2% of car sales in the US. Their share of market has dropped by 50% since 2013. A car dealer I know told me "we can't give 'em away." If you think the reason for this is the popularity of electric vehicles, think again. Electric vehicles represent less than 1% of car sales in the US. In the early 1990's the Soviet Union collapsed. We thought "liberal democracy" had become triumphant and would be the model for world governance. Today "liberal democracy...