…. ah, no. Will just give you some ‘inspirational’ Golden Oldies…:
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Category: ERM, GRC
Misquote: The End(s)
The ends justify the means.
Attributed to Machiavelli (of course), who said:
One must consider the final result.
Going from the latter to the former, quite exposes your morality, no? But then, you’re not alone. Yet you’re so very, very alone. And make it more so by taking heed to the former not the latter.
The attributee even had morals (a lot!) but if you didn’t see that (before), you’ve been taken for a ride by … whatever I don’t even care. Just keep up the good misquoting …! And:
[Symbol of the brevity of purity, beauty and life; Amstelveen — the symbol of your intelligence would be a blank or this ..?]
Rules for Writers
By popular demand:
- Verbs has to agree with their subjects
- Prepositions are not words to end sentences with
- And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction
- It is wrong to ever split an infinitive
- Avoid clichés like the plague (They’re old hat)
- Also, always avoid annoying alliteration
- Be more or less specific
- Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary
- Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies
- No sentence fragments
- Contradictions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used
- Eschew obfuscation
- Foreign words and phrases are not apropos
- Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous
- One should NEVER generalize
- Comparisons are as bad as clichés
- Don’t use no double negatives
- Avoid ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
- One-word sentences? Eliminate
- Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake
- The passive voice is to be ignored
- Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas
- Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice
- DO NOT use exclamation points and all caps to emphasize!!
- Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them
- Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas
- Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed
- Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘I hate quotations, tell me what you know’
- Resist hyperboles; not one writer in a million can use it correctly
- Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms
- Who needs rhetorical questions?
- Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement
- Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors
- Do not put statements in the negative form
- A writer must not shift your point of view
- Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences of ten or more words, to their antecedents
- Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided
- If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is
- Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing
- Always pick on the correct idiom
- The adverb always follows the verb
- Use the rite homonyms
- Proofread carefully to see if you any words out
Personally, I agree that to go from obedience to the rules resulting in mere mediocrity of the most boring kind, to greatness, one only has to break the rules.
Repeat: Trawling for noise
So… Legal developments go at glacial ‘speed’, thus mumbling critical oversight to sleep. Happened, once again, in NL. Mass collection (sic) of and trawling through all sorts of data ‘out there’ is free game for gov’t agencies.
NO the oversight committee will not do anything. Anyone saying so, plainly and simply lies under oath to overthrow the constitution (isn’t that high treason?)
But what will happen of course, is that those that in the past weren’t able to connect the dots (proven fact), will now be swamped in enormously bigger piles of noise data. At the very very best (??) they’ll find bucketloads of false positives — ruining perfectly normal, perfectly legally operating citizens’ lives, of course without any serious recourse or restitution of lost life’s pleasure and happiness…
And the false negatives will also explode, induced by the very ‘countermeasures’.
So, also those that propose and implement and work with such ‘solutions’ quod non, will be culpable to.
Oh well Or well was right. Plus:
[I don’t want or like, but do expect, a similar thing again; for different reasons but with no really different methods — Prinsenhof Delft ya’know]
At leisure
Musing with the ideas of yersteryear, where the working class had been replaced, gradually, by the ‘managing’ class in its various forms and sizes. But everywhere, productivity being misattributed. Though appearances would have it still among ‘managers’ too, their combined overwhelming bureaucratic bloat pressing on the carbon yet not achieving diamond productivity but gravel at most. While ‘managers’ (line just behind one’s heels!) get so much credit, unearned, and earn so much income and bonuses that it deserves the gallows; the workers ‘hence’ being mis- and disregarded.
When suddenly, the already next trend shone through: The move from the Leisure Class to the Leisure Cohorts.
Yup, you are now reminded of the massive shortfall in education that so many already have … that have flown into the workforce for years already — producing ..? Not the nice workspaces that they have to hang out in. Do they..? For how long still ..? And then ..? The generations that could actually be productive of any sorts, have seen their work shipped off to places of want, of want of actual productivity opportunities but will be depleted of markets sometime soon — and then they’ll retire like in the West with not much going for them by way of either pensions or opportunities go stagger on in business life, nor of anything after them by way of experience-transfer-loaded young crews that would seriously do anything different, better. No, don’t fall for that trap of thought that this all has been said before throughout the generations… It hasn’t, not in this way, not in any comparable situation.
So, the return of the leisure class, as ‘proven’ by Graeber and others, and reality, is there. But also, the Other 99,x% might (not) shift to the Leisure Cohorts. Not good for anything (as recently in all sorts of press, if (big if) you read it well) by lack of education, formal and certainly also practical, with the few smart ones in between skating towards a bright future but the others … at best, at very best, dunce consumers; passive, living on the edge. Yes, helped a lot by AI, progressively more, but leaving … dunce consumers. Don’t kid yourselves. Leisure cohorts without anything to leisure from nor anything to leisure with — as money and (through that or directly) other necessary goods come from productive work .. that has vanished into the ASI-out-there.
I could ramble on, like I so often do. But this time, I’ll leave it to you to do the hard work, I’m off leisuring. With:
[Artsy Berlage, at his Beurs; inspirational not just to consume]
Golden oldie pic of the day
Book by Quote: Chesterfield’s
Ah, there we are again, for once, after a long while of want: A Book By Quote. Again, not in the plain vanilla version of just jotting down some bon mots but again, wherever appropriate ..! annotated with some of my interpretations. Which may be biased, as they are of human thought made. You know who I compare myself with, here.
Without further ado then, from Lord Chesterfield’s Letters:
(On people’s thoughts) … if we take them upon trust, without examining and comparing them with our own, it is really living upon other people’s scraps, or retailing other people’s goods.
To add, the quote by Ford: “It is a poor business that only makes money” as this so neatly maps to banking business. But do keep on reading this post 😉
To know the thoughts of others is of use, because it suggest thoughts to one’s self, and helps one to form a judgement; but to repeat other people’s thoughts, without considering whether they are right or wrong, is the talent only of a parrot, or at most a player.
Hence the annotations… And the parrot/player part is where so many (most?) ‘consultants’ and ‘business advisors’ (have) end(ed) up.
Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well; and nothing can be well done without attention. It is the sure answer of a fool, when you ask him about any thing that was said or done where he was present, that ‘truly he did not mind it’.
Yes that’s the Original. And the surety of any answer of remark that you don’t particularly like (to receive), about the speaker. I feel a need to insert a just-found pic here:
If a man uses strong protestations or oaths, to make you believe a thing, which is of itself so likely and probable that the bare saying of it would be sufficient, depend upon it he lies, and is highly interested in making you believe it; or else he would not take such pains.
Ah, there we have all the bankers’ oaths, the quality (quod non) assurance (quod non) frameworks (quod non) of auditors, etc … In the style of Qui s’excuse, s’accuse — There should be a law against such things. Continue reading “Book by Quote: Chesterfield’s”
Old innovation
Sometimes, the ‘small’ innovations, by ideas that may not even be new but turn up at last in an implementable, implemented fashion, may deserve more spotlight. An Oscar of sorts maybe even, some time after many years’ wait.
This being one of those. Now implemented to protect a museum; many more applications thinkable. Don’t lower the river (only); raise the bridge dam …
That’s all. Just sayin’. And:
[Just as (?) pretty, less of a dam though; Curaçao]
Paradise Lost
.. of not the Milton kind, unfortunately.
But of the kind of Age of Innocense. In crowdsourcing. You remember, from before the days of Mechanical Turk and similar no cure, no pay but the pay’s a rip-off scams. Close to (?) post-slavery slavery by Hobson’s Choice.
But as said; before that, there were the dreams of free agents delivering their best efforts to common problems and getting handsomely rewarded for their solutions (if the best). The Age of Aquarius dawned. No more masters, no servants, all equal.
Or so.
The brevity of hapiness…
[All play and sunny weather now that you have been returned to Consumer status (pejorative). Sure to (have) change(d) …; NY of course]
Plusquote: Be not a hampered herring but a free speedboat
Yes, again one in this series of quotes of my own making (predominantly), intended to be motivational. Just like www.despair.com… This time:
Be a free speedboat, no hampered herring
Which, for an explanation, starts at the back. Being about the choice between being a (hopefully growing into too) big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond. And, since the former is limiting by its ‘boundary’ condition already and the latter has grown to be to be a tiny fish in the world’s oceans all together, none are more than a suckers result in a Prisoners’ Dilemma match.
But then, the choice is a false one — no-one asked you to remain a fish, of set growth or flexibility. Turn into a speedboat! Do not want to be, to become, an oil tanker but keep agile, manoeuvrable, successful rather than doomed by size.
And yes, speedboats can go anywhere. May not be a survivable as a tanker in some storm, but being flexible enough in movement and destination hence travel routes, you’ll be able to not get caught in one in the first place; no fun so avoided almost naturally. Storms are for others to wither, you keep in nice weather.
Oh yes, there’s risk and danger, also caused by you e.g. running over some silly swimmers on onto rocks, by careless steering. But think of the upside …
Also:
[Remember the moose though I have no clue why you should … ;-| ]
