As you know, there are only so many hours in a day. There's also a finite number of days in this life. Please excuse me for sounding maudlin, but 21 isn't that far off for me. I've always been haunted by that line from "Time" by Pink Floyd.
And then one day you find
Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun
Now You Need to Learn How to Prevent Falls in your Recycled Teenage Age
The Man Who had a grandfather like my grandma Katarina in Pilhov “I wanted a woman who could get me out of a third-world prison” Jeff said.
How he knew to leave his job and start Latitudial Amazon: Jeff had a been working in finance software engineering on Wall Street. But in 1994, he told his boss he wanted to start an Internet book store. His boss told him it was a pretty good idea but that it was “a better idea for someone who didn’t have a good job.” Jeff took a few days, and decided “the best way to think about it was to project my life forward to age 80” and make the decision that “minimized my regrets. You don’t want to be cataloguing your regrets.” And while you might feel remorse for things you did wrong, he said more often regrets stem from the “path not taken” like loving someone but never telling them. “Then it was immediately obvious” that he should leave to start Amazon. “If it failed, I would be very proud when I was 80 that I tried.”
Sydney to Follow steps of Amsterdam as it bans souvenir shops, live streams crowds to fight tourist invasion
TEACH LATITUDE WOMEN HOW NOT TO… BE SOMETHING OTHER THAN HUMAN: Social worker accused of keeping mental patient as sex slaveIF YOU’RE DRUNK AT LEAST YOU HAD SOME FUN: Sleep deprivation impairs you as much as being drunk: study
Stephen H:
SHOCK has engulfed Welsh politics after a Labour AM and former Assembly minister was found dead just days after he was sacked from the cabinet.
Why World-In-Decline Thinking Is Not Helpful
"Our declinist age is noteworthy in one important way. It’s not just the Westerns who are in trouble; thanks to globalisation, it’s the Resterners too. In fact, we are all, as a species, in this mess; our world supply chains and climate change have ensured that we are poised before a sixth mass extinction together. We should worry less about our lifestyle and more about life itself." … [Read More]
And Thus Was The Angriest Librarian Born…
"While I never intended to become The Angriest Librarian, a lifelong inability to hold my tongue—and my frustration with the permeating stereotypes of 1950s-era public libraries—seems to have made it inevitable. So, when I was confronted with yet another blowhard who couldn’t see the value his tax dollars were placing right in front of his face, I had no choice. Over the next few days, I picked up 15,000 followers and found myself in a position to become a public face for my besieged profession." … [Read More]
We have been carried along by a flood of songs and poems: Feel Good, Work Better
What do cinemas, nail bars, giant bunnies, gyms, Segways, castles, wellness centres, fireman poles, yoga studios, pizza bars, swings, pool tables, secret doors and running tracks all have in common? Somewhere in Britain, and probably somewhere elsewhere, they are part of someone’s office.
Is this a good thing? Should work have physical boosters? Clearly, there is a cost / benefit factor in buying a big ticket item versus say a ping-pong table to pump work feel-good factor.
Making the physical space fun, personal and connecting is worth every penny. The winning organisations ahead will set up in every way possible to support collaboration, engagement and inspiration. Not just because flexible, musical, healthy and happy spaces are table stakes for talent, but because it’s pretty-well proven that these are critical to increase creativity, innovation, and the future will be built on this. Design guru John Maeda: “Without inspiration, open plan runs counter to creativity.”
Go back to a legend of innovation, Building 20 at M.I.T, which forced solitary scientists to mix and mingle. Building 20 was referred to, among M.I.T. people, as “the magical incubator.” It was an unwanted and under-designed structure where scientists felt free to remake their rooms, customizing the structure to fit their needs.
No need to spend a fortune for work spaces to become more inspiring, more personal and more reflective of a particular culture. Provide some boundaries, bundle some imagination and ideas, and hand office design over to the crew.
Is this a good thing? Should work have physical boosters? Clearly, there is a cost / benefit factor in buying a big ticket item versus say a ping-pong table to pump work feel-good factor.
Making the physical space fun, personal and connecting is worth every penny. The winning organisations ahead will set up in every way possible to support collaboration, engagement and inspiration. Not just because flexible, musical, healthy and happy spaces are table stakes for talent, but because it’s pretty-well proven that these are critical to increase creativity, innovation, and the future will be built on this. Design guru John Maeda: “Without inspiration, open plan runs counter to creativity.”
Go back to a legend of innovation, Building 20 at M.I.T, which forced solitary scientists to mix and mingle. Building 20 was referred to, among M.I.T. people, as “the magical incubator.” It was an unwanted and under-designed structure where scientists felt free to remake their rooms, customizing the structure to fit their needs.
No need to spend a fortune for work spaces to become more inspiring, more personal and more reflective of a particular culture. Provide some boundaries, bundle some imagination and ideas, and hand office design over to the crew.
Pic is from a legendary farewell for Net-a-Porter's 2014 London farewell to their CEO Mark Sebba. See HuffPo article.
“River—hourglass of water metaphor of eternity
I enter you more and more changed
so I could be a cloud a fish or rock
while you are the same like a clock that measures
the metamorphoses of the body and descents of the spirit
slow disintegration of tissues and love
“I who am born of clay
want to be your pupil
and learn the spring of the Olympian heart
o cool torch rustling column
bedrock of my faith and my despair
“river teach me stubbornness and endurance
so in the last hour I become worthy
of rest in the shade of the great delta
in the holy triangle of the beginning and of the end”
Herbert neatly reverses Heraclitus. Humans are fluid. A river is unchanging, as are certain works of art – ridiculous thoughts to the corrosive, postmodern mind. In his essay “To Describe Reality,” Herbert writes:
“. . . irony is not cynicism but a bashfulness of feeling. What on the surface seems pessimistic is in fact a stifled call for the good, for the increase of the good, for the opening of the conscience.”
Kevin Roberts great mind think alike tribute to Phil P
8. THE WALLFLOWER: “The single most significant strategic strength that an organization can have is not a good strategic plan, but a commitment to strategic listening on the part of every member of the organization: strategic listening to frontline employees, strategic listening to vendors, to customers.” Tom Peters, but did they really listen?
People Pointers like PP
My approach has been to stay in the super positive, inspire people to better their best, and cut negativity and cynicism off at the knees (venomous snakes need to be relocated, fast).
For aspiring leaders, here is a positive inflection on each personality in this mighty list of 10:
1. THE GRAFTER: Leonardo da Vinci talked about the urgency of doing.
2. THE CHATTERBOX: President John F. Kennedy on Winston Churchill: “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”
3. THE WORKAHOLIC: “Nothing succeeds like excess." Thank you, Oscar Wilde.
4. THE COMEDIAN: “I always realized I wanted to be somebody, bit now I realize I should have been more specific.” Lily Tomlin
5. THE BIG TALKER: Sales is about relationships, conversations, persistence. Pver-promise and over-deliver! “Meet, Beat, Repeat” – Roberto Goizueta
6. THE DELEGATOR: Delegation is a central life skill. RASCI, a superb project management tool, runs on it.
7. THE JUGGLER: Leadership is a synonym for multi-tasking. Think Elon Musk. Electric cars. Self-landing rockets. Tunnels. Mars. And that's just what we know about.
8. THE WALLFLOWER: “The single most significant strategic strength that an organization can have is not a good strategic plan, but a commitment to strategic listening on the part of every member of the organization: strategic listening to frontline employees, strategic listening to vendors, to customers.” Tom Peters
9. THE MICROMANAGER: The last detail matters as much as the big transformational idea, leading you to the next big question. The leadership part comes in knowing when to delegate, when to dive.
10. THE CHARMER: “Don’t let adverse facts stand in the way of a good decision.” Colin Powell
The Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism hearing entitled: “Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online: Working with Tech to Find Solutions” October 31, 2017. This link includes video of the testimony as well as transcripts of prepared testimony by Facebook, Twitter, Google as well as two subject matter experts.
View the video of more than 3 hours of testimony, via C-SPAN
- The Washington Post: “Tuesday’s hearing by a Senate judiciary subcommittee comes a day after the prepared testimonies of Facebook and Twitter revealed that the reach of the Russian-connected disinformation campaign on their platforms was much larger than initially reported. As many as 126 million Facebook users may have seen content produced and circulated by Russian operatives. Twitter said it had discovered that 2,752 accounts controlled by Russians, and more than 36,000 Russian bots tweeted 1.4 million times during the election. And Google disclosed for the first time that it had found 1,108 videos with 43 hours of content related to the Russian effort on YouTube. It also found $4,700 worth of Russian search and display ads…”
- TechCrunch: Russian-backed content may have reached 126 million on Facebook
- Google Blog Post – Security and disinformation in the U.S. 2016 election: “We have been conducting a thorough investigation related to the U.S. election across our products drawing on the work of our information security team, research into misinformation campaigns from our teams, and leads provided by other companies. Today, we are sharing results from that investigation. While we have found only limited activity on our services, we will continue to work to prevent all of it, because there is no amount of interference that is acceptable…”
- Facebook’s 2016 Election Team Gave Advertisers A Blueprint To A Divided US
If You Can Make Get Free Lunch for Doing Your Work You Can Get a Free Lunch and Dinner Anywhere ...
