education – Page 22 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

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:
20160408_133824
[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: R&R

Never let a good opportunity for R&R go to waste

Which goes on the back of ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ which s true, but negative as it relies on crises to turn up as the best (not the only …) opportunities to get change done. But now, tries to turn it to the positive, (truly hedonistic with an epicurean twist) enjoyable by way of the proper mix of carpe diem due to memento mori. As one doesn’t know when one will die; a great many being caught short of having lived as they postponed all purpose of life by ‘saving’ that for later, always for later. Hence the balance will need to be tried, not wasting, not spending it all but also not shirking from opportunities to enjoy.
Hence a side remark that the plusquote is quite absolute whereas its application needs some ‘risk management’ balancing (including personal quality perception/prediction) but hey, that takes the fun out of the shorthand.

Oh; some may not have gotten the memo that R&R (R ‘n R) isn’t about rock and roll or so, but about Rest and Recreation. Or Rest and Restoration, whatever floats your boat.

Talking about boats … (??):

[Ship not boat! Not too much for pleasure, originally …; Baltimore again]

Watson’s place to be

Two points re Watson here, one poignant, one solved:

Where is Watson? Because, it must run on some (i.e., enormous number of) core processors that physically are, somewheres (multiple). Would anyone actually know or otherwise, wouldn’t that be scary for all the idol-worshippers of individualised-robotlike AI ..?
The name, the motto. After Thomas J.’s … Think. Name, sole purpose. Nomen est omen. Capice ..?

So there you have it. The question remains Open. Until you provide me with some answer, possibly..?

Also:
000010
[Cogite, citius altius fortius! of the 1928 kind; Amsterdam of course]

Mayans leaving the US

Would anyone have a pointer to the research that compares the Mayans’ demise with latter-day developments in the first world ..?

As one hears not too much lately, about that grand theory about the sudden disappearance of the Maya culture that suggested that one-percenter total disconnect with the other 99%, lead to the latter leaving the, no more capable of sustaining themselves in the least, überbureaucrats to litterally starve in their palaces.

Which might very well happen if the Powers That Be, e.g., the 1% of business and congress and the sycophants/lobbyists around those, would continue their disconnect now so amply demonstrated in, e.g., primaries on both sides of some spectrum (both actually being far right, maybe?), to name just an acute symptom.

So, are there any anthropologists out there studying that odd primitive (here, without the ”…) tribe of white men (sometimes, very sometimes, caught in the body of technically a woman) and comparing the parallells with said sad Untergang des Maya-landes ..?

Even when I wouldn’t know what the results could be. Do count on the ‘Now is different’ error of which the size cannot be overestimated. But also, very maybe, detect the slightest of pointers towards betterment of current-day societies. And ways to make us see the latter their value, hopefully — hope being what’s left when arguments are lacking.

On the positive side:

[Similar not same: small-time onepercenterville now a tourist attraction (hotel); Gabbiano, Toscane]

Without voice (left); a lot

Sometimes, one sees a recurrence of the remark that those who complain (loud(est)), shouldn’t for they have a good time by apparently standing to lose something but having more than enough, though possibly threatened, to be able to shout around and one should listen to the silent that have no voice by being too weak to raise it and hence need our attention and support much more.
So… which groups in society, of whatever slice or dice, do we hear complain (loudest) nowadays and have no ‘right’ to? Right, compared to the really, seriousy needy. And which groups don’t we hear from though we the String should hear from and listen to?

One need not have studied the Classics — though that may help a lot (as here / search ‘Oh, yeah?’) but many compense by being wise despite lack of formal education and others mistake themselves in the opposite due to the opposite — to see that in any devolved state of affairs in societies, since the Greeks and their philosophers’ ill understanding of the Too Far of Utopian visions taken too far, extremes (sic) of total egalitarianism in ‘democracy’ (quod non!) or absolutism commonly by some boor(s), there comes some time that balance must be brought back, from the extremes, with apparently inappropriate circumvention of the absolutes’ symptoms and have ring leaders that understand and modulate their mob rule to levels where truly, ‘government’ (whether official or not, the latter by filling in the blanks that totalitarian bureaucracy leaves; look ‘Southern Italy’ as a general pointer, not too literally) will start to defend the weak from the strong. [Hey a sudden period. But … clarity and brevity of sentences are quite perpendicular qualitative vectors!] As the strong will be able to look after their own interests per se already, and the weak have none to fence for them — but now will. Noblesse oblige.

So take care ..!
But either you knew this all already, sigh; or it’s pearls before you.

Leaving you with:

[Belittle no one human, my friend; NY ..?]

Accountancy: agency or is it a Repeated Sequential Life Core War Game ..?

These thing just swirled into my mind:
The accountancy industry pictures itself as some instantiation of agency theory’s model(s). Which may be right, but then, the eager beaver ideal is achieved hardly anywhere anytime. The praxis is one of a model so deeply devolved that we have much more of a farce at hand.
Alternatively, the idea(l) of the repeated game, in sequential form with some Life notes on the palate and definite tones of Core War, turned up. Yes, it takes some crafting to plug all participants into it, and to my surprise not too much definitive info could be found on the ‘net (apart from, e.g., this sort of work) or am I missing something. Maybe it’s the difficulty of the crafting that I missed by which I might also overstate.
Oh and did I mention that usually, game theory is explained from the start of a two-player simultaneous game whereas in our application, we have three to numerous players (stakeholders/-groups) and sequentialism to at least some degree. Plus the Life aspects of travel through time and the environment, within the limits and counterforces set by the Core size/format. And yes, three-plus players … an obvious Three-Body Problem, right ..?

Why all this game-name dropping ..? Because reasons.
Reason being: There might be much better understanding of the role and value of ‘the’ accountant in daily practice (though the significance may very well be much less than presented today), and a number of methodological issues in the field would be settled much easier.

But then, if only someone would pay me to investigate… [And pay my time’s worth — now there’s many less that can even afford me ;-] but oh well, there’s still:
DSCN1270
[To impress. Girona yet again]

The lion’s share of SOx

Anyone dare to guess whether ‘SOx’ and all the totalitarian-bureaucratic tendencies that still dominate the organizational world of today, over the chaotic-environment-forcing-to-retreat-into-more-sober-flexibility upstarts, is the lion that roars just one last time before being overtaken by younger more vital rivals, or is it a resurgence in greater scope than ever before of some History’s greater trends ..?

This, with of course higher-frequency but (much) smaller-amplitude cycles being layered onto it, producing an apparently random but wavelet-transformation-traceable ordered (or at least, causally correct) pattern — which may or may not have a direction other than zero, through the aeons. Staying far from pretending that humanity by any worthwhile measure is better off than in all previous times, which is very highly doubtful …!

But the first dare is what it’s about, here.
Hope and joy, humanity saved by its own creativity and the inherent dice-throwing of Nature [contra Einstein but that’s not the point here — Wovon mann nicht sprechen kann OR is beyond human comprehension] — XOR — despair and demise. Beyond short-term trends, where are we going?

Your call. In particular in Comments. Plus:

[Suddenly, different. Even when not adapted i.e. ‘shopped. Girona again]