Architecture – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Trust ⊻ Verify

You get that. Since Verify → ¬Trust. When you verify, you engender the loss of trust. And since Trust is a two-way street (either both sides trust each other, or one will loose initial trust and both will end up in distrust), verification leads to distrust all around – linked to individualism and experience [we’re on the slope to less-than-formal-logic semantics here] this will result in fear all around. And Michael Porter’s two books, not to mention Ulrich Beck in his important one. So, if you’d still come across any type that hoots ‘Trust, but verify’, you know you’ve met him.

Since the above is so dense I’ll lighten up a bit with:
Part of the $10 million I spent on gambling, part on booze and part on women. The rest I spent foolishly. (George Raft)

Which is exactly the sort of response we need against the totalitarian bureaucracy (i.e., complete dehumanisation of totalitarian control – which approaches a pleonasm) that the world is sliding into. Where previously, humanity had escapes, like emigrating to lands far far away, but that option is no more. Hopefully, ASI will come in time to not be coopted by the One Superpower but then, two avenues remain: a. ASI itself is worse, and undoes humanity for its stubborn stupidity and malevolence (the latter two being a fact); b. ASI will bring the eternal Elyseum.
Why would it b. ..?
And if it doesn’t arrive in time, a. will prevail since the inner circle will shrink asymptotically which is unsustainable biologically.

Anyway, on this bleak note I’ll leave you with:

[Escape from the bureacrats; you-know-where]

AI learning to explain itself

Recently, there was news again that indeed, ABC (or The ‘Alphabet’ Company Formerly Know As Google) was developing AI that could improve itself.
O-kay… No sweat, or sweat, qua bleak future for humankind, but …
Can the ‘AI’ thus developing itself, maybe be turned first to learn how to explain itself ..? Then, this [incl link therein!] will revert to the auditors’ original of second opinions … Since the self-explanatory part may very well be the most difficult part of ‘intelligence’, benefitting the most from the ( AI improving itself )² part or what?

And:

[Improving yourself as the imperative; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Beth Sholom at Elkins Park, PA]

The ransom monster

Now that the ‘No way josé’ solutions against ransomware [regular back-ups, virtualisation of servers, and tight intrusion controls et al.] have become so widely known, and ransomware having evolved to be more of the APT kind (incubating for up to six months before striking — undoing your back-up strategy), a new look at the root cause of the harrassment:

Ransomware is a Monster. Being a thing that refuses to fit a single category for neat classification (sociology/science definition/term).

Which may seem odd, but consider:

It (?) uses Confidentiality-sloppyness to enter;
It undoes Integrity;
Its payload aims at destruction of Availability, both in the Immediate and the Reasonably-timely kinds.
[Bonus: It doesn’t care about (your) morality but strikes even (?) at hospitals et al.]

Capice? … Oh, you wanted a Solution, or a Morale. Maybe something with Blended Defense / Step Up Your Game or so. Well, be my guest …, and:

[The ultimate Up Yours [ , Planning Commission of Racine!], by of course the venerable Frank Lloyd Wright]

Help determine this rock

I have an inkling of what this piece of art means, but would there be anyone out there that, under strict confidentiality of course, could provide a full explanation ..?
In particular — but including full context — what the link is between a book, possibly obscure but a tip as pleasurable read and this in Joinville:

It’s just all too odd to not have a connection … Including this, perhaps ..?

Tugging on with Thoreau

It’s not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

As a warning to the many that just continue to be ‘compliant’, letting their best, and next in line their mehhh, drain and be crowded out by meek submission. Which is what some Others live off, totally.

Hey, don’t just point out this all sounds rather negative: It’s Monday, right ..?
Switch to the Useful, creative, productive life! Yes, sirmadam, so can you! And you and you! And:

[If only life were always like this Valencia …]

Oh, about yesterday's culture

… to return to yesterday’s topic; an afterthought.
That, most, al-most always, thinking about culture from the bottom up is. Leading to the babble that is.
Where of course this bottom-up thinking should be the very first thing to do. Otherwise, incompleteness in ‘control’ will result, to the amount that it isn’t taken this way.

So, … approaching Culture from the top down, is the surefire way to guarantee all the LIBORgates that linger in your organisation, will surface. Like an avalanche, they will. The tones at the top will not be nice but nobody will listen, eh?

So, …:

[At the top, for whom the bell tolls..? Barça]

Culture for breakfast, since it's so light and airheaded

Yet again some oversight body / de facto regulator gave wind that they already had changed to auditing Culture and the Tone At The Top including Behaviour and Awareness, apart from mere ([ed.]) process and technology.
To get the latter off the table: Good. ‘Technology’ wasn’t understood the least bit anyway; really (sic).
And Process, ah finally they found that about all they had done in the past, was windbaggery of the worst kind. Yes, process has its place, but a so much more minor, subaltern one than the past Tragedy (sic, again) that ‘governance’/GRC/compliance/SOx was …! Yes again, it really was the little chicken pretending to be a full-grown eagle.

So now, they ‘have’ turned to Culture and related blah. About which they have no clue or would had to have fired a majority of own staff and hire complete+ replacement with psychologically skilled (i.e., fully a square angle to -educated) staff. Which they haven’t, or would have found out that the new skill set would have burned down the house that was.

Of which no (smoke) sign is in sight.

So, … words; the Tom Tom Club was right.

And:

[Blockhead and Culture with a capital C here …; Casa de, Porto of course]

The Body of the Mind

Quick note: Still wondering whether the brain may function as smoothly when not connected in the most natural of ways with the body that feeds (…) it and vice versa.
Yes — decoupling of functions and/or replication of interfaces may solve some problems. But remain not ex ante sure whether in a logical sense, we miss something. The ultimate mimic game may still not be the real thing.

Sorry — some points cannot be dissed quite so easily, with stop gap arguments. And:

[“It’s just a house, like a stone skin”…? Girona]

Bunch of quote’lets

Just a short list of quotes (#2…), from someone after a life-long study:

“Institutions are the enemy of creativity.”

“So Codes are the mental limitations of short men, short of experience, short of imagination, short of courage, short of common sense. … Inevitably a bureaucrat is a short man, however long his legs may be. His is a mind only fit for a bureau. He is undersized in most respects. … Here is the fatal weakness of Democracy: the bureaucrat. The fatal weakness of Democracy does not lie in gangsterism or political chicanery [both more intertwined than visible on the surface in NL these days; ed.] or civil disobedience or anything like them. It lies in this dumb sheep-like submission to Authority, “the drinking of the vanity of office.”

One need not subscribe to all of the man’s ethics or morality, but have anything of non-temerity to see the truth.

Fittingly:

[Again a tossing out of Codes…; Racine WI]

Mobile vision

Twas bryllyg, and ye slythy toves / Did gyre and gymble in ye wabe
The brilly side has deteriorated, unfortunately, due to the great many that don’t avail themselves of the proper tools for the proper usage. [A CEO with you, is still a CEO]

No, really: when the ultrahyperventilating crowd decided to warp-speed run after the ‘any platform’ and subsequently ‘mobile first’ crazes (duly so identified), they forgot that when something’s meant to be visually interpreted, all the visual clues need to be clearly enough visible in the first place. Which goes better on a large screen than on a little one, unescapably. In the same way that the humongously dumbed-down ‘models’ that bankers and like w…kers use, are over by a stretch in their simplification of reality (and, stupidly, then taken as normative, prescriptive rather than descriptive in intent), visual interfacing for the mob-ile users are oversimplified to the uselessness side. Why??

Because [ I say so ] and [ hypes go that way ]. Lazy evaluation.
Which leads to: Not one size is too small to fit any, but all sizes are made fit for the content purpose. Maybe not even display when the deep message can’t be captured in too small a message display ..?

A bit deep, or dense, maybe. Hence:

[Circus, b/c you need bread; Oak Park old analog pic]