Things I learned today: the new language of the Internet, the tariff "deal" with the US/UK, and Prof Galloway on Trump's corruption.

Meet Tralalero Tralala, the Italian Brain Rot AI meme.

Did you know there is a whole new language around Artificial Intelligence and Internet memes now?
One of the internet columns I follow is Casey Newton's Platformer, and today he introduced me to the term Italian Brain-rot, which led me to other new terms: Uncanny Valley, AI slop (which is sort of a 21st Century version of the old Telephone Game - remember that?), Shitposting, Rage-baiting. The only one I had already heard about was enshitification - Cory Doctorow's great term for how social media invariably gets worse as it gets more successful.
Speaking of betting worse -- Parker Molloy reports this week on a creepy recent court case where the victim's sister produced a AI video "victim statement" showing the victim himself "speaking" to the person convicted of killing him, and the judge loved it!

Next, some comments about that so-called US/UK trade deal Trump announced today:
Paul Krugman

Will Trump Pretend to Fix What He Broke?
Why you shouldn’t get excited about his “deals”
The Trump administration is planning to announce its first trade deal today, with Britain. Except it won’t be a deal; more of a “deal.” Reportedly it will mainly be a “framework” for an actual deal that may or may not happen sometime in the future....
...The most important thing to understand about Trump’s trade war is that it’s an attempt to solve a problem that only exists in his imagination. He keeps insisting that other countries are engaged in unfair trade, but the reality is that most of our important trading partners impose very low tariffs on U.S. products.
...for Britain, Canada and the European Union Trump’s tariffs are a huge, destructive attempt to fix something that wasn’t broken. These nations can’t stop doing bad stuff on trade because they weren’t doing bad stuff before Trump came along.
What about America’s trade deficit? As economists have repeated ad nauseam, this deficit doesn’t reflect unfair foreign trade policies. It is, instead, the flip side of large flows of capital into the United States, which historically reflected the fact that the U.S. was perceived as an attractive place to invest. Even if Trump manages to score some actual deals, as opposed to concepts of deals, they won’t change that logic. If his strategy does manage to reduce the trade deficit, it will do so only by destroying America’s attractiveness to foreign investors, which may be an achievable goal.
... when Trump took over the U.S. economy was in very good shape. Unemployment was around 4 percent, while inflation was at most a fraction of a percentage point above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent. Our productivity growth was the envy of the world. We had a trade deficit, but as I said, this mainly reflected America’s attractiveness as a place to invest.
It's true that Goldilocks now seems to be leaving the building, but that’s entirely — entirely — due to Trump himself. In discussing the Fed’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged, Jerome Powell repeatedly talked about “uncertainty,” but the only reason things seem much more uncertain now than they did a few months ago is the chaos Trump has created.
...So what will Trump do if, as seems likely, Monday’s report on consumer prices shows the first signs of accelerating inflation? Even more important, what will he do when the cutoff of imports from China really hits consumers? There’s no chance that he will admit that he was wrong. There’s a very good chance that he and his minions will soon begin trying to corrupt the economic data....

Come to think of it, some of this stuff I did already know, but it's worthwhile to hear Krugman confirm it. Also, his warning about the corruption of economic data is likely prescient.

More comment:
Dean Blundell

"Comprehensive" in Name Only: The U.S.–U.K. Trade Deal Is a BS Photo Op at Best
Tariffs, Tech Promises, and a Whole Lot of Spin - This Isn't a Trade Deal, It's an Attempt to Move The Market's/Make People Think the US is Winning....
...It’s not comprehensive. It’s barely historic. And it might not even qualify as a trade deal—at least not in the way economists, diplomats, or WTO lawyers would recognize one.
Still, if you squint, there’s something in there. Just not what they’re selling.
...calling it “comprehensive” is like calling ketchup a vegetable.
Trump himself said it was a concept of a plan today, not a deal. Despite what he wants his Truth Social/Twitter followers to believe, this is nothing more than a photo op and an attempt to move markets while pretending his bullshit Trade War is working....The only thing this deal transforms is the definition of the word “deal.”

Personally, I also thought Trump's rush to announce his UK "deal" today might also be intended as a bitch-slap to Carney, because Carney has been getting a lot of positive press this week about his Tuesday meeting with Trump

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"You should be grateful I punched you in the face! I kicked that other guy in the crotch!" Art of the deal, amirite?

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— Redshift (@redshift42.bsky.social) May 8, 2025 at 3:33 PM

Next, here's a fascinating interview from MSNBC today. 

I first saw Economics professor Scott Galloway when he did a great interview with Mark Carney three weeks ago on his podcast, The Prof G Pod. 

Today Galloway was on MSNBC's Deadline White House and it was a great discussion in two areas.  Professor Galloway talked about the profound corruption of the Trump White House - he called it "outstanding grift with incompetent government" - and he also talked about how society needs to take seriously the problem of young men who are unable to launch careers and independent lives (and I think that may also explain why young men can fall prey to grievance wingnuts like Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan). 

All in all, it's worth watching:
 

Galloway was also on Anderson Cooper:

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