[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"cms-topics":3,"$fn2d6ym1g41xy":34},[4,13,20,27],{"slug":5,"name":6,"intro":7,"introText":8,"seoTitle":6,"seoDescription":9,"essayCount":10,"indexable":11,"path":12},"trust-as-infrastructure","Trust as Infrastructure",null,"Signals, systems, networks, time, and resilience - and how they build on each other. The conventional wisdom on trust is wrong. This is the correction. Each article breaks down one assumption about authenticity, credibility, or signals... and rebuilds it from the ground up. Strategy for leaders who need credibility to actually hold.","The conventional wisdom on trust is wrong. This is the correction. Strategy for leaders who need credibility to actually hold.",16,true,"\u002Fwriting\u002Ftrust-as-infrastructure",{"slug":14,"name":15,"intro":7,"introText":16,"seoTitle":15,"seoDescription":17,"essayCount":18,"indexable":11,"path":19},"human-in-the-loop","Human in the Loop","AI won't replace your expertise. It will expose whether you had any. Personal essays from the professional middle: the judgment calls, identity questions, and uncomfortable moments that don't show up in the frameworks. For practitioners navigating the AI transition without a script.","AI won't replace your expertise. It will expose whether you had any. For practitioners navigating the AI transition without a script.",7,"\u002Fwriting\u002Fhuman-in-the-loop",{"slug":21,"name":22,"intro":7,"introText":23,"seoTitle":22,"seoDescription":24,"essayCount":25,"indexable":11,"path":26},"craft","Craft","The gap between what you intend to signal and what your audience actually receives is where trust dies. Practical reads on the visible layer: what your clients, readers, and critics see when they look, and how the thing got made that way. Because the strategy is only as good as what shows up on the other side.","The gap between what you intend to signal and what your audience actually receives is where trust dies. Practical reads on the visible layer, and how the work gets made.",10,"\u002Fwriting\u002Fcraft",{"slug":28,"name":29,"intro":7,"introText":30,"seoTitle":29,"seoDescription":31,"essayCount":32,"indexable":11,"path":33},"creative-technology","Creative Technology","Most of the interesting work happens at the seams between industries. The real-time engines built for games turn out to be what the water sector needed. Generative AI makes more sense as an org chart than as math. Notes from thirty years of pointing new tools at old problems, and watching what happens when someone aims them wrong.","Where new tools meet old problems. Real-time engines for the water sector, generative AI as an org chart, and how to aim technology at the right target.",3,"\u002Fwriting\u002Fcreative-technology",{"essay":35,"related":228},{"slug":36,"title":37,"subtitle":38,"excerpt":39,"publishAt":40,"topic":41,"heroId":42,"path":43,"body":44,"bodyText":164,"seoTitle":165,"seoDescription":39,"canonicalUrl":7,"dateUpdated":166,"citations":167},"was-it-generative-ai-ohio-governor-spin","Was it generative AI? In Ohio's race for governor, the question itself is spin","A real video got waved off as AI and an altered photo got waved off as satire. Both were settled the same way: someone kept the original.","A real video got called AI and an altered photo got called satire. In Ohio's governor's race, both were settled by whoever kept the original.","2026-10-13T12:00:00.000Z",{"slug":14,"name":15},"426c0145-1136-4b55-a866-ea9ca86b4973","\u002Fwriting\u002Fhuman-in-the-loop\u002Fwas-it-generative-ai-ohio-governor-spin",{"type":45,"children":46},"root",[47,55,60,65,70,77,82,87,92,97,103,108,113,118,124,129,134,139,144,149,154,159],{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":50,"children":51},"element","p",{},[52],{"type":53,"value":54},"text","On November 24, 2025, Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign posted a video called \"How to ACTUALLY make life affordable.\" Partway through, the Republican candidate for Ohio governor offers an idea: \"Make parenting more affordable by making school year-round and going 'til 4 o'clock instead of 3 o'clock so you don't have to pay for childcare.\"",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":56,"children":57},{},[58],{"type":53,"value":59},"His Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, clipped that line and posted it the next day. The same day, the podcaster Tim Pool told his followers something else had happened: \"A Democrat candidate circulated a fake AI video of Vivek Ramaswamy promoting something he never said.\"",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":61,"children":62},{},[63],{"type":53,"value":64},"The video was real. The fact-checking site Lead Stories looked at it and found that \"the audio and lip movements sync,\" with none of the smearing around the mouth that altered video tends to leave. Pool, it noted, \"offers no evidence.\" The campaign's Threads post carried the line. A shorter cut without it had gone up the same day, and by the morning of November 26 the long version was gone. Asked by the Columbus Dispatch, a spokesperson \"did not dispute the authenticity of the video\" and called it a \"casual back-and-forth on TikTok.\" Four days in, Lead Stories noted, the campaign still hadn't called the clip fake, or taken responsibility for it.",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":66,"children":67},{},[68],{"type":53,"value":69},"It didn't need to. Someone else had already said it was AI.",{"type":48,"tag":71,"props":72,"children":74},"h2",{"id":73},"the-other-direction",[75],{"type":53,"value":76},"The other direction",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":78,"children":79},{},[80],{"type":53,"value":81},"Nine months later, on August 19, 2026, Acton posted a photo of her Jeep's new campaign tire cover. \"Vivek got a new plane,\" she wrote. \"We got a new tire cover for our Jeep.\"",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":83,"children":84},{},[85],{"type":53,"value":86},"The same day, the Ohio Republican Party posted what looked like a screenshot of that post, with two changes. The license plate now read \"Drunk Mom,\" in the yellow and red that Ohio requires for drivers convicted of drinking and driving, and the caption had become \"What a week...I didn't do anything...time for a drink!\" The party's own text above it: \"I can't believe Amy Acton posted this. Check out the license plate.\"",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":88,"children":89},{},[90],{"type":53,"value":91},"She didn't post it. The Statehouse News Bureau reported the image was AI-altered and that the party \"didn't disclose that AI was used to change the photo.\" X attached a community note: \"The image is manipulated.\" In an interview reported by the Statehouse News Bureau, the state party chair, Alex Triantafilou, had his answer ready. \"It's satire. We know that. We know obviously that's not what her license plate says.\"",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":93,"children":94},{},[95],{"type":53,"value":96},"So in one race, from one side, within a year: a real video dismissed as AI, and an altered photo, presented as the other candidate's own post, excused as a joke once someone pointed at the plate.",{"type":48,"tag":71,"props":98,"children":100},{"id":99},"the-wrong-question",[101],{"type":53,"value":102},"The wrong question",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":104,"children":105},{},[106],{"type":53,"value":107},"The coverage of AI in politics keeps asking whether a given thing was generated. I think that's the wrong question, and Ohio shows why: it settled nothing. The video wasn't AI at all. AFP's fact-check of the Jeep image never rules on whether AI made it; it calls the picture \"altered,\" which was all anyone needed to know. The image would've been as false if someone had made it in Photoshop in 2009.",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":109,"children":110},{},[111],{"type":53,"value":112},"It's the wrong question in the other direction too. Ohio has plenty of genuine AI in its campaigns this year: a super PAC with ties to Senator Jon Husted's fundraising spent $446,000 on a digital campaign whose ad put Sherrod Brown's face on an actor at a birthday party he won't leave, with no AI label, in one of three states with no deepfake law at all. Nationally, the Wesleyan Media Project had counted at least 164 AI-made or AI-enhanced political ads by September, 80 percent of them from Republicans or pro-Republican groups, and 69 percent without a disclaimer. But NYU's Scott Babwah Brennen says the feared flood of convincing deepfakes \"hasn't really materialized as a widescale problem.\" The examples NPR found are parody, made to score a point.",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":114,"children":115},{},[116],{"type":53,"value":117},"The damage runs the other way. Once anything could be AI, \"that's AI\" becomes a free way to wave off something real, and \"it's satire\" becomes a free way to walk back something fake. Stanford's Nathaniel Persily put the cost plainly to CNN: \"It is going to be increasingly difficult for voters to know whether something is true or not. That's the greater harm to democracy.\"",{"type":48,"tag":71,"props":119,"children":121},{"id":120},"what-settled-it",[122],{"type":53,"value":123},"What settled it",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":125,"children":126},{},[127],{"type":53,"value":128},"Look at how both Ohio cases got resolved. No detector did it, and nobody won by shouting louder.",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":130,"children":131},{},[132],{"type":53,"value":133},"The Ramaswamy video was settled by the original: the campaign's own upload, which had carried the line, and the copies Acton and others saved before it came down. The Jeep was settled by the original too. Acton's real post from that day showed the real plate, and the community note and AFP's fact-check simply pointed to it.",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":135,"children":136},{},[137],{"type":53,"value":138},"Both times, the thing that held was a receipt, an original kept somewhere anyone could go and look. I find that more reassuring than any detector.",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":140,"children":141},{},[142],{"type":53,"value":143},"Settling the record came too late for Acton, though. The Jeep image did what it was built to do. AFP's fact-check landed five days after the post, and a correction only reaches the people who go looking for it. \"Satire\" let the party keep the message while dropping the claim: Triantafilou conceded the plate was fake and, in the same report, stood by the post \"because it's based on facts.\" Seven weeks later, the New York Times described a race centered on the accusation that Acton is \"a violent drunk.\" The plate was false, the insinuation stayed, and nobody had to say anything that could be checked.",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":145,"children":146},{},[147],{"type":53,"value":148},"A receipt settles the record. It can't recall what already traveled. Which is why the original has to be public before the fake shows up, where the first person who doubts can find it in a minute.",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":150,"children":151},{},[152],{"type":53,"value":153},"Campaigns are starting to notice. This year Roy Cooper, running for the Senate in North Carolina, opened an attack ad with \"I'm going to show you something, no AI, no special effects, just Michael Whatley in his own words.\" That's a candidate vouching for his own footage. I'm glad he did it, and it still asks you to take the speaker's word. The stronger move is the one that won both Ohio arguments: keep the original, keep it public, and let people check.",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":155,"children":156},{},[157],{"type":53,"value":158},"It's the same advice I'd give anyone whose work carries their name, in politics or not. Your record will be the thing that vouches for you the day someone says your real work is fake, or passes off a fake as yours. Publish your originals. Keep them where they can be found.",{"type":48,"tag":49,"props":160,"children":161},{},[162],{"type":53,"value":163},"When anything can be called fake, the receipt is the only thing that holds.","On November 24, 2025, Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign posted a video called \"How to ACTUALLY make life affordable.\" Partway through, the Republican candidate for Ohio governor offers an idea: \"Make parenting more affordable by making school year-round and going 'til 4 o'clock instead of 3 o'clock so you don't have to pay for childcare.\" His Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, clipped that line and posted it the next day. The same day, the podcaster Tim Pool told his followers something else had happened: \"A Democrat candidate circulated a fake AI video of Vivek Ramaswamy promoting something he never said.\" The video was real. The fact-checking site Lead Stories looked at it and found that \"the audio and lip movements sync,\" with none of the smearing around the mouth that altered video tends to leave. Pool, it noted, \"offers no evidence.\" The campaign's Threads post carried the line. A shorter cut without it had gone up the same day, and by the morning of November 26 the long version was gone. Asked by the Columbus Dispatch, a spokesperson \"did not dispute the authenticity of the video\" and called it a \"casual back-and-forth on TikTok.\" Four days in, Lead Stories noted, the campaign still hadn't called the clip fake, or taken responsibility for it. It didn't need to. Someone else had already said it was AI. The other direction Nine months later, on August 19, 2026, Acton posted a photo of her Jeep's new campaign tire cover. \"Vivek got a new plane,\" she wrote. \"We got a new tire cover for our Jeep.\" The same day, the Ohio Republican Party posted what looked like a screenshot of that post, with two changes. The license plate now read \"Drunk Mom,\" in the yellow and red that Ohio requires for drivers convicted of drinking and driving, and the caption had become \"What a week...I didn't do anything...time for a drink!\" The party's own text above it: \"I can't believe Amy Acton posted this. Check out the license plate.\" She didn't post it. The Statehouse News Bureau reported the image was AI-altered and that the party \"didn't disclose that AI was used to change the photo.\" X attached a community note: \"The image is manipulated.\" In an interview reported by the Statehouse News Bureau, the state party chair, Alex Triantafilou, had his answer ready. \"It's satire. We know that. We know obviously that's not what her license plate says.\" So in one race, from one side, within a year: a real video dismissed as AI, and an altered photo, presented as the other candidate's own post, excused as a joke once someone pointed at the plate. The wrong question The coverage of AI in politics keeps asking whether a given thing was generated. I think that's the wrong question, and Ohio shows why: it settled nothing. The video wasn't AI at all. AFP's fact-check of the Jeep image never rules on whether AI made it; it calls the picture \"altered,\" which was all anyone needed to know. The image would've been as false if someone had made it in Photoshop in 2009. It's the wrong question in the other direction too. Ohio has plenty of genuine AI in its campaigns this year: a super PAC with ties to Senator Jon Husted's fundraising spent $446,000 on a digital campaign whose ad put Sherrod Brown's face on an actor at a birthday party he won't leave, with no AI label, in one of three states with no deepfake law at all. Nationally, the Wesleyan Media Project had counted at least 164 AI-made or AI-enhanced political ads by September, 80 percent of them from Republicans or pro-Republican groups, and 69 percent without a disclaimer. But NYU's Scott Babwah Brennen says the feared flood of convincing deepfakes \"hasn't really materialized as a widescale problem.\" The examples NPR found are parody, made to score a point. The damage runs the other way. Once anything could be AI, \"that's AI\" becomes a free way to wave off something real, and \"it's satire\" becomes a free way to walk back something fake. Stanford's Nathaniel Persily put the cost plainly to CNN: \"It is going to be increasingly difficult for voters to know whether something is true or not. That's the greater harm to democracy.\" What settled it Look at how both Ohio cases got resolved. No detector did it, and nobody won by shouting louder. The Ramaswamy video was settled by the original: the campaign's own upload, which had carried the line, and the copies Acton and others saved before it came down. The Jeep was settled by the original too. Acton's real post from that day showed the real plate, and the community note and AFP's fact-check simply pointed to it. Both times, the thing that held was a receipt, an original kept somewhere anyone could go and look. I find that more reassuring than any detector. Settling the record came too late for Acton, though. The Jeep image did what it was built to do. AFP's fact-check landed five days after the post, and a correction only reaches the people who go looking for it. \"Satire\" let the party keep the message while dropping the claim: Triantafilou conceded the plate was fake and, in the same report, stood by the post \"because it's based on facts.\" Seven weeks later, the New York Times described a race centered on the accusation that Acton is \"a violent drunk.\" The plate was false, the insinuation stayed, and nobody had to say anything that could be checked. A receipt settles the record. It can't recall what already traveled. Which is why the original has to be public before the fake shows up, where the first person who doubts can find it in a minute. Campaigns are starting to notice. This year Roy Cooper, running for the Senate in North Carolina, opened an attack ad with \"I'm going to show you something, no AI, no special effects, just Michael Whatley in his own words.\" That's a candidate vouching for his own footage. I'm glad he did it, and it still asks you to take the speaker's word. The stronger move is the one that won both Ohio arguments: keep the original, keep it public, and let people check. It's the same advice I'd give anyone whose work carries their name, in politics or not. Your record will be the thing that vouches for you the day someone says your real work is fake, or passes off a fake as yours. Publish your originals. Keep them where they can be found. When anything can be called fake, the receipt is the only thing that holds.","Was it AI? In Ohio's governor race, the question is spin","2026-10-09T04:24:49.401Z",[168,177,184,192,199,207,214,221],{"role":169,"relevance":170,"citation":171},"anchor","Lead Stories checked podcaster Tim Pool's claim that Ramaswamy's video was an AI fake and found no obvious sign of AI in it.",{"rId":172,"title":173,"byline":174,"year":175,"url":176},"R1573","Fact Check: Acton Did NOT Spread a Fake Ramaswamy Clip — He Really Did Say Year-Round School Was a Good Idea","Dean Miller",2025,"https:\u002F\u002Fleadstories.com\u002Fhoax-alert\u002F2025\u002F11\u002Ffact-check-acton-did-not-spread-a-fake-ramaswamy-clip-he-really-did-say-year-round-school-was-a-good-idea.html",{"role":169,"relevance":178,"citation":179},"The Columbus Dispatch on Ramaswamy's year-round-school video, pulled while a shorter cut stayed up, and his campaign not disputing that it was real.",{"rId":180,"title":181,"byline":182,"year":175,"url":183},"R1572","Year-Round School in Ohio? Vivek Ramaswamy Floats Idea in Video","Cole Behrens","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.dispatch.com\u002Fstory\u002Fnews\u002Feducation\u002F2025\u002F11\u002F25\u002Fvivek-ramaswamy-year-round-school-ohio\u002F87471475007\u002F",{"role":169,"relevance":185,"citation":186},"AFP's fact-check of the Ohio GOP passing off an altered photo of Acton's Jeep, with a 'Drunk Mom' plate, as her own post.",{"rId":187,"title":188,"byline":189,"year":190,"url":191},"R1578","Ohio Republicans Spread Altered Image of Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate's Car","Bill McCarthy",2026,"https:\u002F\u002Ffactcheck.afp.com\u002Fdoc.afp.com.C6E84WE",{"role":169,"relevance":193,"citation":194},"The Statehouse News Bureau reported the Jeep image was AI-altered without disclosure, and the state party chair called it satire.",{"rId":195,"title":196,"byline":197,"year":190,"url":198},"R1579","Candidates for Ohio Governor Work to Define Themselves and Their Opponents","Jo Ingles","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.statenews.org\u002Fgovernment-politics\u002F2026-08-29\u002Fcandidates-for-ohio-governor-work-to-define-themselves-and-their-opponents",{"role":200,"relevance":201,"citation":202},"context","cleveland.com on an unlabeled AI ad of Sherrod Brown, part of a $446,000 campaign, in one of three states with no deepfake law.",{"rId":203,"title":204,"byline":205,"year":190,"url":206},"R1571","AI Political Ads Pop Up in Ohio Races as State Lawmakers Stall on Regulating Them","Jeremy Pelzer","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.cleveland.com\u002Fnews\u002F2026\u002F04\u002Fai-political-ads-pop-up-in-ohio-races-as-state-lawmakers-stall-on-regulating-them.html",{"role":200,"relevance":208,"citation":209},"The Wesleyan Media Project's 2026 count of AI political ads: at least 164, mostly Republican-sponsored and mostly unlabeled.",{"rId":210,"title":211,"byline":212,"year":190,"url":213},"R1574","Majority of AI Ads and Spending Are Pro-Republican","Wesleyan Media Project","https:\u002F\u002Fmediaproject.wesleyan.edu\u002Freleases-090426\u002F",{"role":200,"relevance":215,"citation":216},"NPR on AI ads in the midterms, where an NYU researcher says convincing deceptive deepfakes have been rarer than feared.",{"rId":217,"title":218,"byline":219,"year":190,"url":220},"R1575","The Rise of AI in Political Ads During the 2026 Midterms","Geoff Brumfiel","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.npr.org\u002F2026\u002F09\u002F16\u002Fnx-s1-5953990\u002Fai-political-ads-2026-midterms",{"role":200,"relevance":222,"citation":223},"CNN on campaigns labeling real footage 'no AI,' and a Stanford researcher on voters coming to doubt even real videos.",{"rId":224,"title":225,"byline":226,"year":190,"url":227},"R1577","AI Blurs Lines in Campaign Ads","Casey Tolan, Fredreka Schouten, David Wright, Rhyannon Bartlett-Imadegawa, Sarah Hashemi","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.cnn.com\u002F2026\u002F10\u002F02\u002Fpolitics\u002Fai-campaign-ads-disclosure-invs-vis",[229,238,247],{"slug":230,"title":231,"subtitle":232,"excerpt":233,"publishAt":234,"topic":235,"heroId":236,"path":237},"byline-floating-free-of-a-history","A byline floating free of a history is just a font","Two mastheads let fabricated writers through this year, and the byline was never what caught it.","A byline used to be proof enough. After two newsrooms ran fabricated writers undetected, what actually holds is a checkable history, not a name.","2026-10-06T12:12:00.000Z",{"slug":14,"name":15},"45a87ea1-63e1-41bc-a74e-daab7c3bd5f3","\u002Fwriting\u002Fhuman-in-the-loop\u002Fbyline-floating-free-of-a-history",{"slug":239,"title":240,"subtitle":241,"excerpt":242,"publishAt":243,"topic":244,"heroId":245,"path":246},"the-messiness-premium","The Messiness Premium","Polish used to prove effort. Now it indicates a machine make it.","When AI makes flawless content free, polish stops proving effort and starts signaling a machine. Why strategic imperfection is becoming a measurable premium.","2026-06-25T16:37:43.041Z",{"slug":14,"name":15},"d32f6461-d710-415e-9992-91f58b2b5c8b","\u002Fwriting\u002Fhuman-in-the-loop\u002Fthe-messiness-premium",{"slug":248,"title":249,"subtitle":250,"excerpt":251,"publishAt":252,"topic":253,"heroId":254,"path":255},"theyre-not-asking-about-taste-anymore","They’re Not Asking About Taste Anymore","What to say when a younger colleague asks how you decide.","Juniors have taste-shaped AI output before they have taste. Four questions to tell whether you're still in the work, and how to mentor through it.","2026-06-09T11:56:53.129Z",{"slug":14,"name":15},"a5ef10ba-0b32-4d18-9005-b3f25b2ff777","\u002Fwriting\u002Fhuman-in-the-loop\u002Ftheyre-not-asking-about-taste-anymore"]