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…]] ]]]] ]

Hard coating emaille

If you’re well-seasoned, you may have turned a bit sour by all the silver bullet news even when that was targeted at point problems/solutions. And, you may even be old enough to recall Why Johnny Can’t.
Seems there’s a new version of the latter, with a similar conclusion. Too bad for all of us.

Oh well…:
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[Also ‘old’, also of a ‘no photo allowed inside’ site. Guess which]

Repeat mode: The definitive Top 2000 of 2015

Just to be sure you’re not led off the Right(eous) path by all those DJs out there playing songs from or candidate for some “Top 2000”, herewith a repost of the real deal.

Which of course isn’t; it’s the Top 2266 for one thing and Definitive is slightly understating it.
And yes, it is downloadable in plain Excel, for your own tinker and play, in this file; checked and clean (no subversive content).
Next, a few little notes (repeated from last year):

  • “That’s odd! The usual numbers 1 to 50 aren’t where they’re ‘supposed’ to be by common standards!” Correct. Because I‘m ‘Rekt. The list is mine; why put the Mehhh songs high up there? They’re in there somewhere, but its my list, my preferences..! yes I do like some almost-forgotten songs better, sometimes much, much better, than the expired old hands.
  • Especially.. see the notes, when the clip (much) enhances the song(s). Wouldn’t that mean the song in itself isn’t fully complete ..? No, it means in (since) the age of video, songs with clips (‘integrated’) can much surpass mere songs by themselves, for a cubed sensory experience.
  • There’s more than 2000 yes. Because, already after the first 500 or so, determining the relative rankings becomes awkward. Hence, the cut-off would be random …! (why not 2048, that would make more sense in this digital (i.e., binary) age).
  • If you would still have some (preferably wacky) songs you miss, please do comment them to me. I’ll see whether I’d want to include them still, or not. Hey, it’s my list so I decide, geddid?
  • The actual end result order is far from definitive (sic). It depends heavily on one’s momentary temper and the memories that spring to mind like Proustian madeleines. And on one’s ability to hear quality. Such is life.
  • When dabbling with the Excel file yourself, feel free to play around with the ranking mechanism. What worked for me, was to first split the songs into bins of about 250 size (designate some song to be in the first bin that will end up being ranks 1-250, another song to bin 5, which is around the 1000-1250 mark, etc.), then sizing down bin 1 etc. to 8 smaller bins. Then, numbers 1-50 get a personal treatment one by one to their end rank, the rest gets (got) a random allocation within their bracket. After this, sort and re-apply number 1-whatever. Through this, actual intermediate bin sizes aren’t too important.

Then, as a long, very long list. With a Moar tag otherwise it would be ridiculous… [i.e., for the complete list in the post, follow the link:]

Continue reading “Repeat mode: The definitive Top 2000 of 2015”

The Good Bad and Bureaucrats

Musing with the distinction between Bad and Evil (as here), and how Anger of the right kind (good to be bad b/c without/opposing evil intent) would be neither but the diametrical opposite of the former two’s effects in bureaucracy.

Noting that praxis makes the things get mixed up, as in:
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[Supreme distort; DC]

The Internot Diploma

In an attempt to pre-empt all 2016 April fool’s jokes by a mile (in time and ridicule value) some Dutch Board on Cyber Security (notice the joke starts there, with ‘cyber’ since #ditchcyber) proposed to ensure all kids would get some ‘Safe Internet use diploma’.
When you know the kids regularly fail for (very, very!) basic math skill tests, can hardly write comprehensible sentences over … [fill in some number comfortably below ten] words let alone know anything about bits and bytes (but do know about birds and bees far ahead of practicing any of that — we hope) or even the most basic things about what programming is, hence are at levels of education about four or five years below their age, you can see the enormity of what’s proposed.

So, to be on such a Board, one shouldn’t know the very first thing about the subject one babbles about or one would be overqualified ..!? What an insult to all the professionals out there that try hardest.

This all stupidity tires me enormously. I’ll stop now. And:
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[Continuous renewal — at least that’s something ..!]

Schrödinger’s accountant

After all the news about accountancy being a sector where all sorts of changes would have to be imminent or happening in order to save anything of the trade (sic, more than it would be a profession that it isn’t!) as in the main news if you noticed and also in yesterday’s post and before on this here blog, this sentence is generally considered to be too long.
So, whether change would Happen or not, I’d wanted to add just a little thingy:

Which triggered me to think how this relates to an (‘any unparticular’) accountant. Would the CPA be a cat, hypothetically capable to change (be alive) but when asked, immediately not ..? Would asking over and over again, just be kicking against …

Similar to, as posted before, a long long time ago in a faraway land:
Dakota-Wisdom-Dead-Horse-Strategy-2

Oh, of course: DACcountantcy

Was reminded by this seer peer (no typos) in a casual remark that DAOs (DACs) may change quite a bit about the world as we know it. “DAOs are a game changing invention enabling a new model for human collaboration. #blockchain #C4ACC” (© him) — but apart from human collaboration (note the pejorative weight of the early ’40s this stil carries with it even today, in continental Europe), also the value of Trust in singular persons may shift.
DAOs then being of course, of course, the element I forgot to mention in my roboccountant post.

So, with this one linked in, now all the elements of that post make sense. In which the ensemble may have surpassed me. Or:
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[Materially a circle, to any human accountant and dress codes displayed, are of the apparent relaxed Big4 dc’s of today; DC]

Na de accountant, de kolenboer

[In Dutch] Nou ja, over de volgorde valt te twisten. Over de beider in één mandje niet. Zoals uiteengezet in dit werk, is beroepsmatig alles eindig. Al zullen rechters (en helaas ook advocaten en vergelijkbare beroepen, en nog veel helazer politici) nog wel een tijdje meegaan, alles kent z’n tijd. Ook de tovenaarsleerlingen-die-eigenlijk-nooit-echt-van-de-grond-zijn-gekomen, de IT-auditors, zien hun einde al naderen — vooral vanwege dat niet van de grond (modder) losgekomen zijn. Ingehaald, voorbijgevlogen door ballast-lichteren (onder henzelf) die de fundamenten van het zwaarder-dan-lucht-vliegen begrijpen, doorvoelen en ernaar handelen zonder zich in bigger (heavier) is better te verliezen dus hard on principles, soft on rules spelen. Spelen, ja, op de Huizinga’se manier. Grappig, achter die linkref stond (31-10) nog: “Nog niet verschenen” — onze Westerse lineaire-tijdbijziendheid speelt op.

“De directeur leidde me destijds [2011] trots rond en zei: ‘Die mensen zijn mijn belangrijkste kapitaal.’ In 2015 zijn ze allemaal vervangen door robots.” … ” We houden het niet meer tegen en de wereld draait door.”

Nog afgezien van het afschuwelijke misbruik dat van die leugen over FTE’s werd en nog heel veel wordt gemaakt… Robots zullen we allen zijn … of niet zijn.

Nou ja, you’ve been warned … En:
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[Make no little plans, my friend make no little men …]

Privvezy Protrection

An off the cuff — where’s gentlemens’ style, these days? — remark hit a nerve. When an interesting company had some very interesting speakers and me. On IAM, data leakage and … well, what was it, data protection XOR privacy …?

Because the little collateral remarks was about Privacy being the ethical imperative, but being implementable straight away, would need translation to operational Data Protection.

Yes, where the core of legislation is about the latter, in an attempt to achieve the former… to the degree feasible, achievable, and wanted.
Demonstrating that all legalese, even of the EU kind, is just about white washing whatever you’d want to get away with.

A sore reminder that when one would want (hypothetically, for the sake of the argument that such would be theoretically possible) Privacy, one’s still on one’s own. Against all that is formally formed or not as Institutions, against the windmills that all want you to believe don’t exist or have power over you…

But hey, I’m a happy bunny so I’ll leave you with:
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[When Penzance would be at Bergen On The Beach]

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.]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord