Tag: people

Rules for Writers

By popular demand:

  1. Verbs has to agree with their subjects
  2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with
  3. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction
  4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive
  5. Avoid clichés like the plague (They’re old hat)
  6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration
  7. Be more or less specific
  8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary
  9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies
  10. No sentence fragments
  11. Contradictions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used
  12. Eschew obfuscation
  13. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos
  14. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous
  15. One should NEVER generalize
  16. Comparisons are as bad as clichés
  17. Don’t use no double negatives
  18. Avoid ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
  19. One-word sentences? Eliminate
  20. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake
  21. The passive voice is to be ignored
  22. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas
  23. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice
  24. DO NOT use exclamation points and all caps to emphasize!!
  25. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them
  26. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth shaking ideas
  27. Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed
  28. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, ‘I hate quotations, tell me what you know’
  29. Resist hyperboles; not one writer in a million can use it correctly
  30. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms
  31. Who needs rhetorical questions?
  32. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement
  33. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors
  34. Do not put statements in the negative form
  35. A writer must not shift your point of view
  36. Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences of ten or more words, to their antecedents
  37. Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided
  38. If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is
  39. Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing
  40. Always pick on the correct idiom
  41. The adverb always follows the verb
  42. Use the rite homonyms
  43. 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:
DSC_0516
[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:
ron-swanson-advice

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…

DSCN5189
[All play and sunny weather now that you have been returned to Consumer status (pejorative). Sure to (have) change(d) …; NY of course]

Obviously today: Elk, Moose, Reindeer

As an intermission: Would you know which is which, of the above/below …?
And then, there’s continental differences …
First up, the Elk:
elk-06
Servus Canadensis, the wapiti indeed. Next up, the Elk:
130673480_moose_463656c
know as such in Eurasia including those tinny pebbles off the coast called the British Isles. Looks suspiciously like the Alces Alces that is the Canadian (oh well, and US, yes, whiners) Moose, doesn’t it?
Because it is…! But you moose’ent confuse the two with each other nor with the reindeer a.k.a. caribou:
reindeeris5
Rangifer Tarandus, since this one’s for Saami and Santa.

Are you feeling elky now ..? Or move to the Caribouan; you’ll never have problems with the above there …

Another Art (Ac)claim

If only titled such for the alliteration allure.
But seriously, folks. This as an idea claim, more like a bucket list item “closer than you think”:
Wokking around the World.

Which is about building a collection of pictures of all the situations where The Wok applies;

  • Wokking in Memphis
  • Wokking in a Winter Wonderland
  • Wok the Tok (Dutchies will get the hint of chicken ;-[ )
  • Wokking on the Moon — OK, this may take some photoshopping…
  • Wokking on Sunshine — implementation to be decided
  • Wok like an Egyptian — either in front of some pyramids, on the borders of the Nile or Suez Canal, or with Egyptian ingredients
  • Wok this way, tok this way with a chicken running away from the frying pan
  • Wok on the wild side, at a zoo for ease of implementation
  • Wok (me out) in the morning dew
  • … Starting to sense the music theme here, right? Though seeded and mixed with general stuff…
  • Under the Board-wok — easy; by the sea
  • These boots are made for wokking — just hold them over a wok pan
  • Wokking in the rain — maybe not feasible to have Grace Jones do this for the picture, though
  • You’lle never wok alone — somewhere in the midst of. e.g., Liverpool supporters
  • Wokking a tightrope — obviously, just put the rope in a pan whilst holding a balancing bar over it…
  • Wok in someone else’s shoes — easily made visible when they’re three sizes too large
  • A wok in the park
  • Wokking on water — not too literally b/c that would be dangerous, just do it on top of some raft
  • Wokking the dog — maybe not literally
  • …
  • And throw in a lot of pics from around the world as well, just for the heck of it.

Well, you get my drift anyways. As said, it’s still an idea only but pleasurable to think about it, to think it through, already. Therefore, we are.
[Note: If you consider this to be in line with Extreme Ironing then yes, they’re similar in folly’ness and then what ..?]

Oh, and already:
DSC_1005
[May be required still, for the On the Moon part; DC obviously?]

Miss Quote: Your way. Or ..?

In the series of unfortunate misquotes, a famous one:

Anything that can go wrong, will (Murphy)

As a secondary quote from somewhere:
But Edward Murphy did not say this. What he most likely did say is something along the lines of:

‘If there’s more than one way to do a job, and one of those ways will result in disaster, then somebody will do it that way’.

Which only by you with the way you do things, does indeed result in disaster, without fail. So, if you use the misquote, you should add “when I do it”…?

That was a short and easy one … so, for you:
DSCN7697
[You picked its current spot; deep into the harbour…; Baltimore]

Art project for grabs

Putting it out there, for grabs. An art project.
Crowdfunding as the Purpose of it.
Imagine: 3D (sic) printing small parts of an existing Jackson Pollock, e.g., One: Number 31, 1950, and framing them in oversized rococo frames. Sizes of the cuts differ, depending on the amount of funding provided. Of course there should be some photo shoot (actual or virtual) of the pieces assembled, to the max of the original as possible (the frames will make completion of the puzzle impossible but that’s the point, too) and using some state-of-the-art knapsack algorithm.

No more. No fancy bits. Just this. Because you Can. Art = [I could do that] + [Oh yeah but you didn’t]

To which:
DSC_0043
[Pieces / assembled, for strength; Royal Waiting Room, Ams Central Station]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord