December 9, 2022

Welcome to The Oracle, a newsletter from Montreal-based journalist and creative strategist Flavie Halais, currently published irregularly. Sign up here to receive future issues, and get in touch at hello@delfina.studio for questions, tips and comments.

Good morning,

Curating this newsletter takes a lot of reading, and while I usually find the process enjoyable, I've found the past two weeks filled with superficial, going-nowhere, should-have-been edited pieces. I've learned nothing from this long article on trans youth in the UK, which doesn't even answer its own question (to be fair, editors often write eye-catching headlines without consulting journalists, and I'm ready to bet this is what happened here. Still, the piece offers nothing more than testimonials, referring to interviewees as 'case studies' and focusing disproportionately on the emotional distress that transitioning can cause to families. It's dangerous, unhelpful and also just plain bad journalism.)

Then there's been the million half-baked thoughts on ChatGPT, the new AI-powered chatbot from OpenAI (if you've missed the news and want a reliable summary, this one does the job) and by extension the future of artificial intelligence. It's an important topic, to be sure, but taking way too much space in my newsletter inbox.

Fortunately, there were also some unexpected gems. Reading Robin Ghivan's delicate profile of British fashion designer Grace Wales Bonner was a true delight, not just because of Ghivan's writing and Bonner's work, but because for a few minutes I got to think and read about fashion without having to spend more time engaging with the discourse surrounding Balenciaga's latest campaign, none of which has been enjoyable yet was unavoidable for a few days.

And then, just last night, as I was stranded on the subway due to an undisclosed incident involving a 'passenger on the track,' I found myself with enough time to read a long-form article providing a rare insight into the lives of female spies working for MI6, the British intelligence service. As a journalist, I know the amount of time and effort it takes to build the trust needed to get close to a very sensitive topic; in this case, Helen Warrell met with the women featured in the piece over many months, and probably needed just as much time to get security clearance to enter the building and be entrusted with confidential information.

I hope you'll enjoy today's links—I think their authors, along with this newsletter's writer, took great pains to deliver quality content that stands out from the rest, this week more than usual.

Flavie

Some time ago, I started writing a blog post about how to communicate on social issues, read a ton of news and academic articles because I can't help it, looked up dozens of case studies, and ended up with a long, long essay that deserved way more of my attention that I had originally planned.

And so, I hired a professional editor and a graphic designer and created The Social Issue Positioning Handbook, a 56-page resource combining practical and leadership advice for organizations that are becoming very, very anxious about saying the right thing.

Some of you know me as a journalist, but this handbook is NOT for a general audience. I've written it from the vantage point of a consultant who's seen way too many brands obsess over how to survive this politically charged climate. It's a business resource for brands, founders, communications managers etc. who want to figure out how to define their public positioning on key social issues, and craft messages that resonate with audiences without coming across as performative—whether that’s CEO statements or social media posts. It doesn't offer definitive answers, but empowers brands to set up decision-making processes that lead to better communications.

The handbook launches next week (I hope?) Click here to learn more and sign up for the waitlist.

Reading about artificial intelligence and following developments in the field can feel overwhelming. Among the flood of quick takes surrounding the release of chatGPT this week, I found these two pieces that brilliantly shed light on the economic and social forces that shape the AI industry.

Timnit Gebru is a computer scientist working on algorithmic bias who's spent years warning about the risks of racing to build 'large language models' like chatGPT (and lost her job at Google for it.) For WIRED, she wrote about the outsized influence that Effective Altruism, a cult-like movement for good promoted by very rich and very naive tech bros (by my own assessment,) has had on the development of chatGPT. 

And for VICE's Motherboard, Chloe Xiang looked into the fordist-like labour processes through which AI companies employ large numbers of low-paid workers to perform low-skilled tasks, many of whom live in low- and middle-income countries.

T Magazine, like everyone else these days, goes to Marseille. The case for music taste in the age of algorithmic culture. How landlord automation makes the housing crisis way worse. Gen X buys itself out of aging. The DEI-Industrial Complex is failing and no one is surprised. The brilliant costume design behind The White Lotus' Portia. Mbappé scores, Messi walks. Let's start thinking of burnout as a moral injury. Shannon Abloh's plans to handle her late husband Virgil Abloh's legacy.