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Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Karma of Savas: The Role of Luck in Life Success


I  know an awful lot of Hollywood people, who are so self-important, I can't understand it.
— Mickey Spillane, born in 1918 (Savas Means "war" in Turkish = 'Old Man' In Greek)

 WOMEN ARE HUMAN, NOT ANGELS:  ‘Believe All Women’ at Your Peril

This report argues that if the major parties and politicians want to rebuild trust with voters, they will need to change the way they do politics: stop misusing their entitlements, strengthen political donations laws, tighten regulation of lobbyists, and slow the revolving door between political offices and lobbying positions. A crisis of trust: The rise of protest politics in Australia

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is It Racist to Call Maxine Waters Stupid, Considering How Stupid She Is?


OUTLIVING YOUR ENEMIES IS HIGHLY GRATIFYING:  Israeli pilot on hit list was beloved high school teacher
“You must be doing something right if you’re pissing people off. I just wish it was easier to piss people off.”

 Like the character Mopsa in The Winter’s Tale, who crooned: “I love a ballad in print, alife, for then we are sure they are true.” Mopsa today would implicitly trust the big-ticket newspaper and TV networks. 

 The life-imitates-art-imitates-life aspect of chatbox latitude and Kafkaish games and the show really gets me


Telstra launched virtual assistant chatbot Codi on its 24x7 live chat in OctoberHundreds of customers have taken to social media to vent their frustrations Described as 'stupid, offensive and worst idea in the history of customer support' 'Virtual moron-idiot': Telstra's support chatbot backfires


 Teenagers film themselves riding bikes at cars and swerving at last minute for Instagram likes in dangerous new 'game'

Former ATO deputy commissioner Michael Cranston to face trial  ...

Exclusive: Inside the Australian Tax Office's crisis management team

Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse 

PHOENIXING STORIES

The Role of Luck in Life Success Is Far Greater Than We Realized Scientific American
The spread of true and false news online. Soroush Vosoughi, Deb Roy, Sinan Aral. Science 09 Mar 2018: Vol. 359, Issue 6380, pp. 1146-1151 DOI: 10.1126/science.aap9559

“Lies spread faster than the truth – “There is worldwide concern over false news and the possibility that it can influence political, economic, and social well-being. To understand how false news spreads, Vosoughi et al. used a data set of rumor cascades on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. About 126,000 rumors were spread by ∼3 million people. False news reached more people than the truth; the top 1% of false news cascades diffused to between 1000 and 100,000 people, whereas the truth rarely diffused to more than 1000 people. Falsehood also diffused faster than the truth. The degree of novelty and the emotional reactions of recipients may be responsible for the differences observed.Science, this issue p. 1146.”

“Abstract – We investigated the differential diffusion of all of the verified true and false news stories distributed on Twitter from 2006 to 2017. The data comprise ~126,000 stories tweeted by ~3 million people more than 4.5 million times. We classified news as true or false using information from six independent fact-checking organizations that exhibited 95 to 98% agreement on the classifications. Falsehood diffused significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth in all categories of information, and the effects were more pronounced for false political news than for false news about terrorism, natural disasters, science, urban legends, or financial information. We found that false news was more novel than true news, which suggests that people were more likely to share novel information. Whereas false stories inspired fear, disgust, and surprise in replies, true stories inspired anticipation, sadness, joy, and trust. Contrary to conventional wisdom, robots accelerated the spread of true and false news at the same rate, implying that false news spreads more than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it.”

Vietnamese Assasins ... 
Latitude of Affairs
Can we grade on a curve?

Story image for ato tax from InvestorDaily

Former KPMG exec heads to ATO

InvestorDaily-6 Mar. 2018
The Australian Taxation Office has appointed a former KPMG executive as the assistant commissioner for SMSFs. By Miranda ... InvestorDaily sister title SMSF Adviser has reported that Dana Fleming has been named in the role following the departure of Kasey Macfarlane to another senior role at the ATO. 

Rod Dreher calls it the left’s “Law of Merited Impossibility, which states: ‘It will never happen, and when it does, you bigots will deserve it.’”
Dr. Stacy Smith, one of the creators of the inclusion rider, spoke at TEDWomen in 2016 about the epidemic of invisibility in Hollywood. She uses hard data to break down how women and minorities are not just underrepresented in film, they’re erased, and just how pernicious this is for all of us.

Storytelling is so important. Stories tell us what societies value, they offer us lessons, they share and preserve our history. Stories are amazing. But stories don’t give everyone the same opportunity to appear within them, particularly not stories compartmentalized in the form of American movies.

Dr. Smith and her team have done more than 30 investigations over the past ten years on diversity in entertainment. Follow the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at@inclusionists.
Since 1997, essentials—healthcare, housing, food—have become more expensive; TVs and cars are getting cheaper
Scientific American – Scott Barry Kaufman – March 1, 2018: “What does it take to succeed? What are the secrets of the most successful people? Judging by the popularity of magazines such as Success, Forbes, Inc., and Entrepreneur, there is no shortage of interest in these questions. There is a deep underlying assumption, however, that we can learn from them because it’s their personal characteristics–such as talent, skill, mental toughness, hard work, tenacity, optimism, growth mindset, and emotional intelligence– that got them where they are today. This assumption doesn’t only underlie success magazines, but also how we distribute resources in society, from work opportunities to fame to government grants to public policy decisions. We tend to give out resources to those who have a past history of success, and tend to ignore those who have been unsuccessful, assuming that the most successful are also the most competent. But is this assumption correct? I have spent my entire career studying the psychological characteristics that predict achievement and creativity. While I have found that a certain number of traits— including passion, perseverance, imagination, intellectual curiosity, and openness to experience– do significantly explain differences in success, I am often intrigued by just how much of the variance is often left unexplained. In recent years, a number of studies and books–including those by risk analyst Nassim Taleb, investment strategist Michael Mauboussin, and economist Robert Frank— have suggested that luck and opportunity may play a far greater role than we ever realized, across a number of fields, including financial trading, business, sports, art, music, literature, and science. Their argument is not that luck is everything; of course talent matters. Instead, the data suggests that we miss out on a really importance piece of the success picture if we only focus on personal characteristics in attempting to understand the determinants of success…”

[Via Simon Kuestenmacher] – “What an amazing piece of work! This interactive globe shows the ancient earth throughout . Great way to better understand plate tectonics. A must for everyone interested in  and 

UK taxman's CDIO Jacky Wright currently on 'sabbatical'

Exclusive The UK's incoming Chief Digital Information Officer of HMRC is to recuse herself from making any decisions regarding Microsoft, as she is on sabbatical from the company under a two-year placement with the taxman



Mumbo Jumbo response to WestConnex tolling alchemy
'A mad pursuit and a 'non-denial denial' prove the government of NSW has artificially lengthened the tollroads on Australia’s largest infrastructure project by way of a sneaky mathematical formula designed to lift tolls." (Michael West)
 

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