Plusquotetime

Diversity is joy and riches.

Another one in the series inspired by this here Expert, this here post continues the somewhat hopefully new series — with my own personal ramblings which I would dare to call motivational soundbites but you would consider to be as typically as this sentence to be my interpretation of brief, not necessarily positively motivational but that’s (yes I do use abbreviations to shorten the sentence even further) because that remains your interpretation but that’s not necessarily the right one being the one I intended.

The above might even require some exepelenaisijuhn. Where some approach diversity, of any kind, with fear, I consider diversity to be an asset at the mundane level, e.g., through creation of (evolution-enabling) robustness by partial pre-readiness against the chaotic changes in the (any def. of) environment. That some of the group however defined, will survive and no mass extinction is the effect of the previous perfected adaption (by definition), in itself should create calmth. All-individuals’ survival was never on the program (on the contrary, everything so certainly human life(s) will come to an end — trace the stories describing the utter horror and boredom of living forever…), and now, continuity can be guaranteed when diversity is cherished. One can even see the value to society of having some with less perfected adaptation to modern life that should be cared for as our hope for the future when we (?) ‘normals’ will be the misfits and the tough get going.
Also, uniformity is boring. Utterly boring. Think sheeple following $AAPL. Diversity, especially in society and the superset, art, has riches and value in itself. In flip image, those that oppose diversity-through-immigration often do so for an unconscious subliminal fear of being found out to be overly shallow… [Yes one can learn of other cultures from afar, certainly latter days, but meeting F2F in the others’ environment is still much preferred for its full-all-senses experience. To keep the world a better place, one of course then needs not flatten all culture to some happenstantial low(er/est) common denominator. That one doesn’t take over another one’s culture doesn’t mean one disses or dismisses it let alone one would (feel the need to) rate it lower — on the contrary, one could enjoy the diversity. And/or learn where others are in fact esthetically and ethically superioir, within losing one’s own peculiarities — again the fear of being found out to in fact be the lower life and having to give up one’s (implicitly, now exposed) inferior and/or underserved position.

I rest my case. And:
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[‘My house in the ‘burbs must by law be exactly like yours’ — said no one ever. BarÇa again.]

New series: Plusquotes

The ballast of your past that you schlepp along, may be what keeps you upright through the turmoil that the future is.

So, inspired by this here Expert, this here post is the first of a somewhat hopefully new series — with my own personal ramblings which I would dare to call motivational soundbites but you would consider to be as typically as this sentence to be my interpretation of brief, not necessarily positively motivational but that’s (yes I do use abbreviations to shorten the sentence even further) because that remains your interpretation but that’s not necessarily the right one being the one I intended.

Capice? And:
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[For even plainer sailing: Use ballast not just keel(s), and ships are safe in (Catherine’s Docks) harbor but that not what ships are for.]

Information does(n’t) Matter

Another consequence of the analysis mentioned before about answers flowing upward through infosystems and command and inquiries/questions flowing down: When the latter get viewed as anti-data or even anti-information, we see Information Theory in action.

Where without the creation of potential (difference) by an inquiry standing ready at, say, a sensor [abstracting for a tiny moment away from the complexity that could be in any sensor, assuming it a math point] to capture some data it may produce, the potential may not pull away the data created by a Heisenbergian creation (-by-measurement ..!?) of the data/anti-data pair. Leaving the anti-data, the uncertainty behind. Is this the creation, the maintenance, or the destruction of a Schrödinger’s measurement ..?

More operationally: In what way does this interpretation induce metaphoric (?) insight into the connection between physical world, ‘signals’ (as in Shannon and other Info Theory), and continuous (!?)/discretised sensor-data streams..?
[For once skipping the bullying of those not understanding the fundamental nature of the continuous/(math-)discrete divide]

Well, there’s also this:
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[The gift of far-sightedness. SE Sicily you recognize of course]

SocMed usage trends

FYI, some overview of SocMed platform usage, for your study and divertissement — did you already know them all, and what would this all mean for your strategy and 2016 tactics ..?
Plain from Aurelie Valtat, a very good read in its own right:
social-media-users-nov2015

So, … No Medium in the list, also no WordPress et al ..?
One would expect that, according to this:
Social-media-landscape-2015

So, … again … There’s no overview available for all media combined. You’ll have to puzzle and guess forward into 2016 … Good luck.

Gelernter on Management

Turns out that the seminal Mintzberg’s Managing (as here), has an updated version in the almost off-hand remark by David Gelernter (in this) that we should have been dealing with an “‘organization engineer’ (otherwise known as a ‘manager’)” (p.75) all along, with a focus on the ‘uncoupling’ of the manifold different (sic) tasks to be completed to be doled out to the (relative) specialists in the department. Freeing the latter of switching (time) costs and effectiveness losses, along with freeing them of concurrency resolution.

Which indeed deserves a HT for putting it so clearly: The manager uncouples, doles out, and then awaits the results to be consolidated whilst catering to the external-defense and facilitation needs of the department staff.

Which is also key to understanding that yes managers need to have the best of insights into what the total-tasks and subtasks entail. Hence no more generic-managers over specialist knowledge workers, but task-dedicated super-insight managers. Remunerated for their superior results, not for their babble and chair-stickiness.

Let’s keep it cheerful, for once, for the coming two days and beyond. And:
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[Once, a world trade center: Edam]

One-sided mirror

Hopefully just in time for your last-minute (huh?) holiday season shopping: This masterpiece; excellent for edukaizjionel purposes and general divertissement, including Be-ing Warned…

Because, it spans so much of interest; from humble (?) ‘computer’ components all the way up till Topsight.
Read, learn and weep over humankind’s future.

Now then, for a short departure:
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[Unk Berlin]

Books, disrupted ..?

Remember when I posted about the Books business doing quite well, despite having been called to the grave ..? (As here)
Now, this arrived: Audiobooks have begun to outsell print.

Oh.

Which is a very disinterested Oh. Since, how would you envisage wandering through the pages, your eye being caught by some particular peculiar words ..? How about paging back to a clue you remember to be at about the fifth line top left towards the end of the first chapter?
Yes, reading may change.
Or not. People might still be buying books as they did before. And audio books may be a different thing. Like calling a car engine a liquid fossil fuel using explosion version of a steam engine. But why would you? Why not just think up a completely new category of … ‘narrative audio’ ..?

Then, loosening and losing the idea of a linear text, whole new ways of narrative narration might be possible. Like, this, in not Dutch but English or whatever language, to be ‘read’ in any way/order conceivable … ah, the need for guidance springing up. And the need, probably, for perfectly life-like auto-readers-out-loud not have to have actual humans doing that once and for all.

Well, that’s OK. Who’ll make this all happen? And:
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[Books *not* going this way… e‘Burg]

Grendel’s mother

This indeed a repost. As matters in global politics made this material utmost relevant again, a couple of weeks ago. Has the news since addressed the below already, or will we learn from history that we don’t learn from history ..?

When the short summary doesn’t do justice to the core of the problem… Where the core is both a misreading of the depth and a misreading of its intentions.
As this here few little paragraphs have.
There’s no light way of putting this: Go read the … thing in its entirety and then, do understand it in all of its cultural superiority to today’s news accounts.

Yes, for the simplest of minds it may read like just a story. Hero, this, that, done. But to the slightest of more careful reader, it is overwhelmingly clear: The book contains so much profundity on the core of politics, societies, and clashes of war. Then you see that it’s not about slaying Grendel and some afterthought. It is about slaying the symptom, the fed, and only then can you get to fighting the real cause that (literally) both birthed and feeds the symptoms, the Mother of Evil. Pointing, too, at the continuity through generations of that concept.

Oh and did it mention anything about brothers or (maybe even worse ..?) sisters ..? Opening up all sorts of options for prolongation through the ages of this tension between what one (sic) could regard as Good and another (sic) as Evil? Mother doesn’t see Evil, she sees her pride, her son displaying the most beautiful (s)he can imagine. Yo don’t even know which side you’re on! Etc.

Yes indeed. It is simply not simple. It is The World As We Know It, and Man cannot change much about it…

For the latter, see how Western ‘powers’ led by the one, try to meekly and halfheartedly subdue Grendel in the Middle East; just enough to safeguard their own interests. Where they don’t see the full depth of mother’s lair, nor her issues. For those less ‘sues’, read this and see the eternity of the problem.

For now, this:
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[A museum. Hence, still very relevant; Edinburg.[Earth isn’t flat, you know…]] ]]]] ]

As Einstein said. Did NOT…!

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”

Or
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results”

But then, the original goes something like:
“Insanity is making the same mistakes and expecting different results” … (emphasis mine)

Which is obviously what all the misquoters do: Making the same mistaken attribution and expecting anyone to still laugh and/or understand but to the formers’ dismay this doesn’t happen.
And for good reason. #2 above is maybe the most worthwhile; in an ever faster changing world one hardly can expect the same result when all context has changed so pervasively. Through which #1 would be outright false: It wouldn’t be insanity, but the opposite…!
Oh how people are like colanders: the coarse stays, the fine stuff falls through and is discarded. False shortcuts for simpletons remain, e.g., the whole TLD thing. From a (relatively…) philosophical angle that might even make some sense, but the small-minded little eager beavers make something completely missing the point of it by zealous but unfortunate misinterpretations due to lack of sophisticated understanding.

But then, what is aimed for, is the actual quote: Not seeing the above.
Just sayin’. Now get over it.
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[Reminds me of someone’s hair. Just can’t get my head (sic) ’round to recalling whose.]

Lanier will Boomerang on you

Those of you who are in the know, are in the know about my tendency to favor proof of Lanier’s thoughts, when not if dystopian…
And then, there’s Boomerang‘s org model.
14.000 creatives, all vying for a handful of odd jobs. Showing that this kind of dismal disruption can happen anywhere …

Oh well:
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[This not even referencing the hugeness of the failure, even; sculpture garden, DC]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord