Tuesday, September 03, 2019

“Created for Greatness”: Long Tail. Fat Risk

There is only one way to avoid criticism. Do nothing. Be nothing. Say nothing. 

Aristotle


If you’re not scared a lot you’re not doing very much.”

And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more.


"What is the secret to a good life?"  "Devotion to a higher cause". via Yammerings


Student pilot forced to land plane after instructor collapsed mid-air says homework saved his life


A student pilot who made a dramatic emergency landing during one of his first lessons says study books saved his life in a situation you would normally "only see in the movies".



'This is our end game': How Hong Kong's frontliners are outfoxing the police


Like a flash mob, they appear and then dissolve back into the city once their task is complete. They carry cable ties, gas masks and spare clothes, and they need to be able to outrun the police. These are Hong Kong's frontliners.



Elementary school yanks Harry Potter over claims it contains ‘actual curses and spells.’



The ageless girl from Ipanema - where is she now?


Still tall and tanned and lovely, Helo Pinheiro, 74, now adds Instagram influencer to an agenda packed with work commitments.


 
Danny Wallace, via Medium
Inspired by the legendary ineptitude of Boris Johnson, you too can use your incompetence to succeed beyond your wildest imaginings.

Reviving the American Working Class Editorial Board, NYT. Shorter: Times brass decides the neoliberal policies they’ve sedulously promoted for forty years are bad, actually.
The Rich Can’t Get Richer Forever, Can They? The New Yorker. “
As the world economy opened up in the nineteen-eighties, newly mobile capital tended to flow to places that offered the highest return.” Note lack of agency.
Wisconsin workers embedded with microchips USA Today. “The company would like to see payments go cashless, as iPhone users do with Apple Pay. Except in this case, consumers use their hand instead of a smartphone to pay.”
Google researchers reveal data-stealing, web-based iPhone exploit that was active for years The Next Web

Tony Abbott the  quoted the Bible.
"As the scripture says 'He who puts his hand to the plough and then turns back is not worthy of the Kingdom'," he said

 

A Prayer for the Stressed

Grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage
to change the things I cannot accept,
And the wisdom
to hide the bodies of those I had to kill today because they got on my nerves.




And also, help me to be careful of the toes I step on today,
as they may be connected to the feet I may have to kiss tomorrow.
Help me always to give 100% at work...
12% on Monday,
23% on Tuesday,
40% on Wednesday,
20% on Thursday
and 5% on Friday




And help me to remember...
When I'm having a bad day
and it seems that people are trying to wind me up,
it takes 42 muscles to frown,
28 to smile
and only 4 to extend my arm and smack someone in the mouth! 



Survival of the Friendliest - Nautilus: “…Evolutionary progress can be propelled both by the competitive struggle to adapt to an environment, and by the relaxation of selective forces. When natural selection on an organism is relaxed, the creative powers of mutation can be unshackled and evolution accelerated. The relief of an easier life can inspire new biological forms just as powerfully as the threat of death. One of the best ways to relax selective forces is to work together, something that mathematical biologist Martin Nowak has called the “snuggle for survival.” New research has only deepened and broadened the importance of cooperation and lifting of selective pressures. It’s a big, snuggly world out there…Evolution is not a weapons race, but a peace treaty among interdependent nations…”


Prague Grapples With Over-Tourism


In the years since the 1989 Velvet Revolution, a rising tide of visitors has flooded in, up from 2.62 million in the year 2000, to just under 8 million last year, drawn byPrague’s reputation as home to stunning baroque and gothic architectural gems – and cheap beer. Numbers this year are forecast to reach just under 9 million. – The Observer (UK)




Featuring: Professor Atul Shah of City University in London (author of books on Jainism and Ethical Finance, about the largest corporate failure ever in British history the HBOS collapse and on ‘Reinventing Accounting and Finance Education’. Also John Christensen of the Tax Justice Network.
Produced and presented by the Tax Justice Network’s Naomi Fowler.
"Accounting was taught in a sort of a technical way, almost in an a-cultural way. Relationships, culture, and even ethics and values do not really matter. It’s all about being technically competent and being very good at tax avoidance and profit maximisation… However…we should not close our eyes to the huge transformation that is going on in society. There is a new dawn which is happening, you know, like the 13 year old marching against climate change…resistance is coming from the old guard, from the traditionals. And business schools, if they don’t change, if they don’t innovate, they will find their market drops like anything and then where will they go searching for students and professors? So there is a tremendous change going on and we need to tune in to that change and to the demands from young people for an ethical financing.”
~ Professor Atul Shah




















How Literature Was Deployed As Weapon In The Cold War



In the wake of the second world war, Russia and the West feared the domino effect of enfeebled countries like Albania falling into the clutches of imperialist capitalism or communism. Each side deployed literature as a frontline force in their struggle. – The Spectator


The Mindful Lawyer: Apps and Other ResourcesNicole Black discusses practical ways for lawyers to combat work related stress. One of the most effective ways she suggests that colleagues may can consider is to incorporate mindfulness into your daily life. Fortunately, there are lots of mindfulness apps and tools available for lawyers seeking to reduce heir stress levels through mindful thinking. Black shares some of her favorites, all of which are low-cost or free resources designed to get you on your way to a more stress-free existence.





Long Tail. Fat Risk. Why You May Want to Rethink Your “Platform” Strategy. Right Now – Tech savant, innovator and prognosticator – Jason Voiovich: “How many times in #marketing, #innovation, and #product strategy do we find ourselves looking only at the upside? In our TAM calculations, how often do we subtract out the “negative market”​ to account for risks? I’ve been doing this for nearly 25 years, and I never did. I suspect you haven’t either. I’m not sure I would have seen this as an obvious next step had I not spent the last year exploring the dark side of #platform strategies from Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter. It’s time to look at these business models holistically.”

Jackie Robinson on Respect






If Americans want the truth about a historical period, we turn to historians, not novelists, but in Russia it is novelists who are presumed to have a deeper understanding

We usually assume that literature exists to depict life, but Russians often speak as if life exists to provide material for literature



Green Files 2019 – 2020 – This guide by Marcus Zillman includes a range of links to green and eco sources that are sponsored by technical, government, small businesses, the products and services sectors, advocacy groups, and also includes topical journals, search engines and aggregated reference resources.

BOB McMULLAN & SEAN INNIS: History shows that without trust — between nations, in governments, in society’s institutions, and between each other — our common pursuit of prosperity and wellbeing becomes all that much harder.


Top judge worried forensic evidence putting innocent people behind bars

In an extraordinary intervention, a senior judge has issued a public call for urgent law change amid concerns over the accuracy of forensic science.



·    Mr Hirschhorn said gap measuring forced the ATO to ask itself: “How much are we not collecting and why?”
This was different to the traditional approach of asking how efficient the ATO was at collecting money — “how many audit results you got for per dollar you spent”.
“An analogy is if you had WADA (the World Anti-Doping Agency) at the Olympics being rewarded on how many drug cheats they catch, not how clean the Olympics are,” Mr Hirschhorn said. “They’re slightly but importantly different questions. In fact, what people, whether spectators or clean participants, are interested in is a clean Olympics, not how many drug cheats are caught.
“What tax gap forces you as a revenue authority to think about is not how many you’re catching but how many you’re not catching, and why, and then maximising your strategies, especially prevention strategies, to have a clean Olympics.”
The ATO’s confidence in a lower gap in future has been bolstered because as it resolves disputes with taxpayers it is “resolving not just the back years, we’re locking in the future price”, Mr Hirschhorn said.
“We’re solving the disputes before they even happen,” he said.