THE STATIC - Issue 21

Hey You, Welcome! Here’s your weekly dose roasting tech spin, bluster and puffery. Laugh at the cringe, unjam your message.

This week in:

• Tech Waffle Torture - AWS minimises major outage - no big deal

• Shallow Values - Excellence: A word that disguises our inadequacies

• Savage Takedowns - SnapWireless: Cool gadget - might cause death

• Pop Culture Cringe - NBA gambling scandal taints myth of greatness

• LinkedIn Templates - How to position your AI as the moral high ground

• Dear Dr Comms - Monitoring employees turns into Big Brother scandal

• WTF is that mysterious dimension where your hidden potential resides?

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Tech Waffle Torture Explained - We tell you what corporate speak really means. You’re welcome.

💾 Major AWS PR Disaster Saved By Tech Speak

When AWS broke half the internet on October 20, its team performed a masterclass in linguistic damage control. No emotion. No panic. Just calm, clinical phrases that could describe either a mild network glitch or the start of the robot uprising. Translation: they said almost nothing - beautifully.

12:11 AM PDT – “AWS reports increased error rates for multiple services.” Translation: Everything’s on fire, but we’ve decided to call it elevated to sound like it’s thriving.

2:24 AM PDT – “The underlying DNS issue is fully mitigated, but residual impact continues.” Translation: We’ve duct-taped the problem, but the smoke alarm’s still going off.

Morning–afternoon (US) – “AWS communicates a ‘root cause’ in an internal subsystem monitoring NLB health, affecting connectivity.” Translation: Great news – we know exactly what caused it! Bad news – that knowledge changes absolutely nothing, and your apps are still sobbing in the corner.

Midday – “AWS throttles new EC2 launches to speed recovery and clear backlogs.” Translation: We hit pause on new stuff because the old stuff was already having a nervous breakdown.

Later in the day – “AWS states services are back to normal, while some backlogs continue processing.” Translation: Officially resolved. Unofficially, your smart home devices have formed a support group and refuse to reconnect.

Lesson learned: When you can’t stop the chaos, narrate it like a calm documentary about someone else’s disaster.

Meaningfully Shallow Values – You get them as short and sweet ugly truths

  Excellence

🏆Excellence in Delivery
“Otherwise known as delivering excuses faster than outcomes.”

🏆Excellence in Leadership
“Being in charge means taking credit when things go right – and discovering ‘shared accountability’ when they don’t.”

🏆Excellence in Culture
“Where we preach transparency, fairness, integrity, and diversity – then act out the opposite with remarkable consistency.”

Savage Takedowns – Spectator sport or heed the lesson

Gadget Gamble That Backfired: The SnapWireless PowerPack Recall
From influencer-favourite gadget to fire-hazard headline in one product cycle.

Spectator Sport
SnapWireless marketed the PowerPack Slim (Gen 1) as the sleek accessory every phone-junkie needed. Then users found out it could overheat and catch fire. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) flagged the recall, saying incidents had already occurred. The same gadget once spruiked for being smart and stylish now sits in recalls-land, with the tagline “Stop using immediately” front and centre. The visuals of influencers showing off the pack? Cue awkward rewind.

Heed the Lesson
In the rush to hype sleek form factors and influencer endorsements, the fundamentals got neglected: safety, testing, and quality of product. Focus on that more than getting hip/cool accolades.

Pop Culture Cringe – Out of touch comms worth your time

The Game’s Integrity, Drained: The NBA Gambling Scandal
The National Basketball Association (NBA) used to be about skill, teamwork and global love. Now it’s about indictments, insider tips and mob-linked poker rings.

Hall-of-Fame coach Chauncey Billups and player Terry Rozier are among 34 people charged in a major gambling ring tied to organised crime. Investigators say games were influenced for profit, with hidden devices used to cheat in high-stakes poker.
The fallout has shaken fans who once saw the sport as a symbol of discipline and fairness.

In tech, this is like a CEO who preaches about saving the planet with AI – while quietly funnelling investor money into Vegas casinos and ‘networking nights' that don’t make it onto the expense report.

LinkedIn Popularity Templates – Syrupy, self-congratulatory. Surprisingly effective.

Template 21: The ‘Ethical AI Saviour’ Post

AI may be destroying humanity, but not my AI. 🌱✨

Mine was built with empathy, purpose, and a brand-aligned commitment to “doing good at scale.” 🤖💚

While others chase profit, we’re chasing moral superiority, and posting about it daily.

Our model doesn’t just generate text; it generates trust.

We don’t use your data… we just “borrow it ethically.” 🤝🧘

If you, too, believe capitalism can be kind with the right PR strategy, copy-paste this as a response to the people who hate your AI tool. 💫 .

#EthicalAI #DoingGoodAtScale #PurposeDrivenAlgorithms

Got some naval gazing or philosophical musing you’d like to turn into a syrupy LinkedIn post? Reply to this email with your request and I’ll do my best.

Dear Dr Comms – When spin fails, we call in the real professionals to fix our stuff-ups

Dear Dr Comms,

Our company’s been outed for tracking staff during WFH. Not just keystrokes, private conversations, webcam ‘attendance checks,’ even Slack DMs. It’s apparently illegal, and now employees are talking to A Current Affair and posting proof online. Leadership’s in lockdown mode, PR’s in meltdown, and morale’s gone full Orwell. How do we claw back any trust when Big Brother just got caught? Yours, Watched & Worried

Dear Watched,

Sounds like someone confused ‘remote monitoring’ with ‘state surveillance.’ Let’s call in some professionals to fix this.

🦴 Chiropractor
You’ve thrown your organisational backbone out. Start with an adjustment – realign the ethics, loosen the NDAs, and stop compressing nerves (a.k.a. employees). Remember: if the spine’s crooked, no posture statement will straighten it.

🧠 Political Scientist
This isn’t governance; it’s authoritarianism with an IT budget. Dismantle the surveillance regime before the revolution starts in the group chat. Then hold open elections – or at least a staff forum where people can safely vote ‘no.’

☕ Flight Attendant
Time for a calm cabin announcement: “We apologise for the turbulence caused by invasive monitoring.” Offer privacy, not pretzels. And if anyone panics mid-flight, don’t blame them – just hand out oxygen (trust) masks first.

Got a problem you wouldn’t trust the Comms Dr to fix? Reply to this email, I’ll loop in real experts. 

What The Fluff (WTF)?! – Decoding tech, something that linguists, philosophers, and your boss refuse to do

Layer 8 Insights – Regular deep dives that explore the human error in tech.