
The Internet Can't Believe What The Word "Snafu" Actually Stands For
Every now and then, Merriam-Webster, the dictionary, drops a little piece of wisdom.
They taught me that a group of crows is called a "murder."
They made me go "oh, really" when they revealed the origin of the word "ballot."
And they were the first to stop the disinformation campaign against the word "news."
And now we're learning something about the word "snafu."
The dictionary revealed in a viral tweet, "A 'snafu' is a situation marked by errors or confusion. 'Snafu' comes from WW2 and is an acronym for "Situation Normal, All F*cked Up."
As this person said, it's an "undercover swear."
Those *not in the know* were surprised by this revelation.
"That's quite the acronym," one person said.
Another person joked, "My life is a 'snafu.'"
And then a bunch of people compared it to the current state of American politics: "Good term for US governance under Donno."

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Chicago Tribune
5 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
‘Downton Abbey' star will bring her play about Ava Gardner to Chicago
Elizabeth McGovern, the American actress best known for playing Lady Cora in the British TV and movie franchise 'Downton Abbey,' will star in a show headed to Chicago that is based series of real-life interviews given by the Hollywood actress Ava Gardner. Titled 'Ava: The Secret Conversations,' the show was written by McGovern and is directed by Moritz Von Stuelpnagel. Aaron Costa Ganis also appears in the piece, which will run Sept. 24 to Oct. 12 at the Studebaker Theater in Chicago's Fine Arts Building. Karl Sydow is the producer of this commercial production, managed by Pemberley Productions, which has brought several shows to Chicago. McGovern becomes the third 'Downton Abbey' star to work in Chicago theater, following Brendan Coyle, who appeared at the Goodman Theatre, and Lesley Nicol, whose solo show was performed at the Greenhouse Theatre Center. 'Ava: The Secret Conversations' has previously been seen at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles and NY City Center in New York. It is drawn from the series of interviews Gardner gave to the British writer Peter Evans (played by Ganis) between 1988 and 1990, wherein the Golden Age star spoke of her various marriages to Mickey Rooney, Artie Shaw and Frank Sinatra, as well as her famously turbulent relationship with Howard Hughes. Evans had been hired to write Gardner's autobiography, but she ended up firing him. His book detailing the interview was not published until 2013, and has been re-imagined by McGovern for the stage. McGovern will also be seen this fall on screen in 'Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.'


Fast Company
11 minutes ago
- Fast Company
This corny ‘conservative credit card' ad signals a very scary future for AI
A fresh glimpse at our AI-filled future arrived this week, in the form of an unmemorable ad by a company most people have never heard of. The ad is kind of flat and will probably scan as goofy to everyone outside its target demo, but don't write it off just yet: It could signal the beginning of some very big (and scary) changes. The upstart fintech company Coign claims to be a 'conservative credit card company,' a distinction that boils down to the founders' pledge to never donate to liberal causes and candidates. And while that self-definition raises some questions, it pales in comparison to the actual ad. The 30-second clip is a patriotic parade of red-blooded, red-voting Americans boasting about recent Coign-fueled purchases such as deer-hunting gear, a stack of cartoonish gold bars, and the 'biggest American flag' available. But here's the most striking thing about the ad: All of those situations, and all of the actors, were created by AI. There's something a little off about Coign's ad, to be clear. The pacing of the phony satisfied customers' movements feels too jittery at times, and there's an eagle at the end that is not exactly natural looking. While the ad is spiritually the same AI slop as Shrimp Jesus, it doesn't carry the same overtly synthetic visuals. In that regard, it's a lot more casually AI-generated than many of its predecessor ads. When Coca-Cola released an AI-generated holiday spot last fall, it sparked an uproar. Creatives were livid about such a monumentally successful company neglecting to splash out on an all-human production, and even casual observers noticed the glaring flaws in the video: The truck's tires glided over the ground without spinning, Santa's hand was bizarrely out of proportion with the Coke bottle it gripped, and the entire ad sat squarely in the 'uncanny valley.' The same goes for the ad Toys R Us released last year using OpenAI's text-to-video tool Sora: The kindest thing one could say is that its human characters looked marginally more lifelike than the unsettling, motion-captured Tom Hanks from The Polar Express two decades earlier. So far, AI-generated ads have been rare enough and mostly the domain of heavy-hitter companies, making them lightning rods for attention and backlash just about every time a new one is released. The simple fact that they were AI-made has been enough to generate headlines, even before factoring in the slop. But maybe not for much longer. If the Coign ad is any indication, there may be an entire class of AI ads coming that will be subject to far less attention—and far less scrutiny. We're at a precarious moment with AI, collectively feeling out its least objectionable uses through trial and error. So far, uncanny ads from massive companies have triggered backlash, but when lesser-known brands dabble—especially without obvious visual glitches—they often escape notice. Advertising legend David Droga once noted the existence of a ' mediocre middle ' in marketing and entertainment, and that may be exactly where AI quietly thrives: in ads from companies too small to spark outrage. Advertising, after all, is already the most disposable and least emotionally protected form of media—expensive to make, widely avoided, and largely unloved. That makes it the perfect Trojan horse for AI—slipping past scrutiny not because it's good, but because few people care enough to notice. On a moral and economic level, the advertising industry should not be diving headlong into a technology that makes large swaths of professional workers expendable. And on an aesthetic level, just because AI technically can create an ad doesn't mean it can create a good one. Once a seemingly harmless use case eases people's minds about a given technological breakthrough, it's only a matter of time before the more flagrantly objectionable use cases take hold. The facial recognition tech that first allowed Facebook users to tag their friends in photos was eventually used to strengthen the surveillance state and threaten privacy everywhere. Today's drones that make aerial photography easier become tomorrow's drones that mistakenly blow up weddings in other countries and threaten to displace delivery workers. Obviously, AI is going to play some role in humanity's future. The size of that role, however, is not yet set in stone. As machine learning creeps into all creative fields, workers need regulations to ensure the technology doesn't spread too far too fast. The good news is that a majority of Americans seem to want AI regulation. Although the House of Representatives recently passed a major tax and spending bill with a provision forbidding state governments to regulate AI over the next 10 years, that clause is getting bipartisan blowback. According to a recent poll, 81% of voters agree that 'advances in AI are exciting but also bring risks, and in such fast-moving times, we shouldn't force states to sit on the sidelines for a full decade.' Even the CEO of generative AI company Anthropic is a full-throated advocate for stricter AI regulation. The people have spoken. Whether they are listened to is another matter altogether. A single, silly credit card ad may seem an unlikely step toward a dystopian future of unfettered AI and full unemployment, but if we laugh it off now, the bill may still come due later.


Chicago Tribune
18 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Letters: Ukraine is using the weapons of the future
Most wars are started on the basis of the previous war and then upgraded during the next war. Today we are spending hundreds of billions on weapons that are ready to fight the last war against countries that were using weapons from their previous war. Fancy jets and ships are going to be worthless. The war in the Ukraine is a great example of today's technology. The Ukrainians have damaged or destroyed most of the Russian Black Sea Fleet while they were at sea or tied to a dock. They hit air bases, warehouses, troop concentrations and refineries with their drones. Smaller drones have destroyed armored personnel carriers, trucks and tanks. Even smaller ones are being used to kill soldiers at the front. All of that was done without putting a soldier in danger. Most of the drones are GPS controlled. Some are by controllers using drone videos with some now using AI. Russia is a second rate military and was caught cold on their invasion of Kyiv by drones, which have advanced faster than their defenses have been able to counter. A recent '60 Minutes' episode had an item about drones from an American company designing AI drones for our military. They range from small to the size of jet aircraft. Imagine an aircraft carrier group besieged by a thousand drones in the Persian Gulf or Arabian Sea. The entire fleet could be damaged or sunk. Imagine a cargo ship sailing into the Chesapeake Bay and launching hundred of drones at Washington D.C. and the Norfolk naval base. Imagine a dozen more ships scattered around the country using longer range drones. Most of our non-nuclear forces would be decimated. That could be tomorrow!While it is highly debatable that Larry Hoover should have his sentences commuted one thing that we need to focus on is why. While Mr. Hoover may not have been directly linked to anyone's murder, it is safe to assume that due to the nature of being a gang leader he may have ordered murders and probably influenced a lot of his members to commit heinous crimes as well. But as some are celebrating the move by President Donald Trump (hopefully not many), I am of the opinion that Trump is trying to sneak one past us. He has ordered the closing of the Job Corps: a program designed to tackle youth unemployment that has been in existence since 1964. Countless youth were able to take advantage of this program which probably kept them from the tentacles of street gang life. While Trump may seek the approval of some in the African- American community, hopefully they don't ignore the disastrous effects closing a program like Job Corps can readers must be familiar with the Broken Windows Theory of policing, introduced by James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling in 1982, that suggested that unchecked small offenses like broken windows, graffiti, and litter lead to greater crimes and societal breakdown. Donald Trump and his posse are throwing as many rocks as they can as fast as they can at the windows of our republic, collaterally damaging the rule of law, trust, civility and other civilizational essentials in the process. They cannot operate to their own best advantage in a healthy democracy and legal system, so they are trying to undermine it by accustoming citizens to broken political and legal windows. Trump's ideal environment is one in which there is so much corruption and illegality that he can ask, 'Whaddya looking at me for?' It is working. Several prominent people (Anne Applebaum, Maria Ressa and Gary Kasparov) who are either scholars of authoritarianism or have been dissidents in nations ruled by authoritarians have expressed surprise, not at what Trump is doing, but at the speed with which his project to dismantle our republic is progressing. He has not matched Adolf Hitler's legal neutering of Germany's republic in only 53 days after taking power, but this is hardly a reassuring thought. I continue to be puzzled by the disinterest with which many people respond to what is happening. The scholars and dissidents whom I cited agree that we do not have as much time to turn back the threat to our nation as many people seem to think that we have. The hope that things will simply self-correct is a fading one. Our leverage diminishes daily. Those who are working at changing our system to one that they can control and profit from and use to inflict damage on the officially unfavored are counting on our apathy. We should, at least, be openly discussing what is happening. The usual rule about about avoiding the subject of politics should be suspended for as long as the threat lasts.I find it interesting that when the Democrats, under Joe Biden and his minions, literally threw money at anything that moved, very few Democrat voiced any criticism. I mean, what is a few trillion dollars here and there? Now that Republicans try to find a way to undo the massive deficits, Democrats are screaming about Republicans trying to cut the deficit, and complain bitterly about the GOP adding to it. Such short to Ashley Nunes' June 2 article 'Outrage over Trump's EV policies misplaced,' Mr. Nunes' essay clumsily dances around the paramount need for electric vehicles — the Earth is too hot and getting hotter. The devastation caused by climate change — wildfires, floods, excessive heat, more numerous and catastrophic storms — is wreaking havoc on the planet. According to the EPA, 29% of greenhouse gas emissions are from cars, trucks, buses, etc. Transportation electrification would contribute mightily to the abeyance and cessation of these current and future disasters, saving untold property and lives. Mr. Nunes' dubious arguments belie the cataclysm facing the world.