…. ah, no. Will just give you some ‘inspirational’ Golden Oldies…:
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Tag: Applicable to business
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.
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]
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”
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 … ;-| ]
Be-four you turn enthousiastic
[Warning: Long-read. Opiniated, and structurally your recommendations may be are needed, too]
About all of the banking industry, and other financials in their wake, have had to deal with loads of regulatory requirements. Justified, some say, for ‘they’ cause(d) so much misery beyond mere most temporary loss of bonuses that the ‘un’ should be (have been long before) detached from bridled. So, Basel II and -III regulations swooped in requiring much more explicit and detailed handling of financial business than ever before. The move from laissez-faire to regulation, to regulation with sanction schemes, to sanctions (possibly interpreted as ‘token’…), was extended with provability and then complete proof-demonstration as minimum requirement.
This all, however, has created a large, and in general even I would say quite overpaid [disclaimer: am profiting too] industry of consultants, quants, ‘risk managers’, reviewers, assessors, auditors, and scores of Toms, Dicks1 and Harries of the GRC kind. That are all very likeable nice lads and lassies, but maybe not quite worth their salt, certainly not their bonuses, or even be sure to be worth much lending one’s ear to.
Since March, suddenly, there’s news. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has released a consultative paper on ideas for (much-needed, many know) simplification of the operational risk management part of regulations. For Basel-IV forthcoming.
Continue reading “Be-four you turn enthousiastic”
Crash’in the wings
… Thinking back of the Taleb’ian remarks, and truths, on Extremistan, and how some more or less closely watched parameters may lose their variance but not their uncontrol since such petering out of shock’lets are just the precursors of an asteroid impact scale collapse, I wondered what is about to happen in infosecland. Since for weeks, nay months already, there has hardly been any news… Apart from the usual suspects (#ditchcyber ..!), there hasn’t been anything serious, has there, by means of yet another class break or more comprehensive controllability breakdown?
Which is why everyone should sit more uneasily, in stead of the opposite sleeping better than ever.
But then, this was the message from your Wolf-crying boy …?
To which:
[Since last Friday, you know this isn’t a reindeer but an elk that is no moose, at least not everywhere]
Watson’s ID
Does Watson have an identity? Because, when it (sic; why not ‘she’ ..?) is intelligent enough to make its own decisions, it may want to, or know ways to obtain, or be bestowed with, personhood of some sorts. To which it may need an identity, and according ID.
But that all hinges on the construct of a single, identifyable instance of <something>. And all sorts of fancy dancy press announcements — where one might ask ‘Where you’ve been to come to the show only now’ — regarding deploying ‘Watson’ in some confined business context seem to start to fly around; mostly with corporates having a dire need to blow over the news of their atrocious lack of morals — but what is it they use?
Most probably only a time share (think S/36 style) or copied-instance or copied-engine of the concept / most elaborately trained instance available.
Do we have a criminal / misdemeanour system in place already for such non-human persons? No, I don’t mean the sorely failed ‘corporate’ personhood approach as that’s a hoax. People still are in charge of corporates, and are punishable per (Board!) capita for anything that anyone does on behalf of their employer XOR they are fundamentally not allowed to act independently in any society.
Only now do we have new entities coming aboard that behave like individuals but have none behind them to cover for accountability … or they aren’t individual operators. So, no choice. But as yet, no legal system to operate in. Conundrum!
On a somewhat tangential (is it?) node: Yes, AlphaGo has beaten a human a couple of times, and the other way around now, too, but that doesn’t mean the game is lost (its interest); see Chess. And, ‘who’ has beaten the human player? Is it a ‘who’ or is it (not only) an ‘it’ or not even that, is it too abstract to say that a ‘robot’ that is in fact an ‘information system somewhere out there dispersed in place, maybe even in time’ has beaten a human..? AGI has no power plug, people!
Also,
[“The” Church, Ronchamps]
