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Watch this video and get back to me and let’s talk about the genius of the zag. Yes, there’ll be a test.

Tim Minchin is, of course, a brilliant man. I am not Australian and have never been to Australia and in all likelihood will never visit Australia but White Wine in the Sun is one of only two Christmas songs that makes me cry. ¹The other one is the Cat Carol by Meryn Cadell, which frankly qualifies as goddamn trauma.

I am coming this two years too late, having seen Minchin’s speech at the Art of Tax Reform summit, itself a work of art.

Play it Safe is epochal for me on a number of levels.

First, it’s the perfect response to a mundane marketing request. “Say the usual things about creativity and the arts and uniqueness and vision,” goes the ask.

“How about I do exactly the other thing: champion safety and mundanity verbally, juxapose it visually, and do this knowing that it will land, because I trust my audience.”

And by Jiminy, does it land.

Partly because Minchin is a once-in-a-lifetime songwriter: he knows music, he knows lyrics, he understands the interplay.

Partly because the cultural context of the project — which he also fully understands — can underpin the zag of the zig. You can talk about the iconic Opera House in a “play it safe” context because you know that everyone knows that it wasn’t a “safe” project.

What am I taking away from Play it Safe today, which I think everyone should take away from it?

• Trust your audience. This song only works if you have absolute confidence that the people you’re speaking to get it. That they can walk and chew gum at the same time.
• Know your context. You’re never delivering a message in a vaccum; you’re delivering it at a time, and a place, to people who have a history and a perspective.
• Have fun. “Act your age,” and Iggy Pop in his 60s being a maniac on stage. Hell yeah. Bring in some brass, why not? Throw in some dance numbers. If you are having fun, your audience will have fun.

This isn’t just a Minchin thing; it’s why Sinners why was a box-office shattering surprise in an era of cookie-cutter IP products, it’s why Peacemaker has resurrected the careers of Z-tier glam metal bands through artfully deployed opening-credit dance numbers.

Trust. Context. Fun.

Pure magic.

And — if you have 13-odd minutes to spare — the address to the Tax Reform Summit is also well worth your time. It starts as an articulate dissection of the creative process, and winds up of being a repudiation of AI slop, small-minded conservative budgets, and a whole-throated confirmation that big ideas, and big risks taken on culture can have incredible long-term rewards; much more than the “safe” bets ever do.

You’ll see Play It Safe again in that presentation, but it’s worth a second look. Trust me.

Australia, I’m jealous. Where’s Canada’s Tim Minchin? We need him, or her, or them.

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  The other one is the Cat Carol by Meryn Cadell, which frankly qualifies as goddamn trauma

Tip for AI adherents: if you want people to use it, make it less cancerous.

I was on a board call last week where one of the board members was using read.ai to transcribe minutes. To read the minutes, I had to make a read.ai account.

Sure, whatever. So I made an account with my Google account.

Today, I log into an entirely different meeting with an entirely different person. Not signing in with Google at all.

You’ll never guess what happens. Via cookies in my browser, read.ai determines that I’m a Google user, and auto-injects itself — without permission, and without asking — to “transcribe” the meeting.

After the meeting, I get a note asking why I’d added an AI bot to the call. I hadn’t. I’m baffled.

It takes me — a reasonably competent person, with fairly good technical skills — 45 minutes to figure out what’s going on. That this venomous little company is creeping around my browser to creep into my calls with no explicit prompts or permissions.

Another straw on the camel’s back of AI being — from an end-user perspective — an intrusive, unhelpful, rapacious way to kill the environment and add absolutely nothing of value to our lives.

I’ve gone from being AI-curious a few years ago to viewing it as an actively negative force in my life. Every interaction with technology now comes with effort and debt to turn off unwanted “features,” bloatware, waste.

Nobody wants this. Nobody needs it. I pray, daily, that Ed Zitron is right and this fever dream bubble is about to collapse.