Naive? Or Ahead Of His Time?

We live in a world where knowledge, experience, thoughtfulness, kindness are really not valued. Just look around if you need proof.

There is also far too much emphasis on short term thinking, instant gratification, cheap at any cost …. both at an individual and corporate level.

So Chip Conley writing How We Combat Ageism Is By Valuing Wisdom as Much as Youth. makes me wonder … which is he?

For Posterity

Steadily working through the snippet collection backlog … and decide to drop these in here.

Will England ever get its own Parliament? - BBC News

… they should.

15 Signs That The Middle Class In The United States Is Being Systematically Destroyed

… only 15?

Retailers can’t out-Amazon Amazon, but they can change the rules

… but few will.

The Web We Want

… we do.

People: Rebecca

“I live about 30 minutes North of here. There really isn’t any work up there. My husband is a mechanic from Mexico. He has his own auto repair business and helps me look after the children. I drive down here to work. I like it, the hours are flexible so it makes the family side easier.”

“I have 5 children. My firstborn is 15, the youngest is 2. It’s good because my mom helps, particularly with my eldest. He likes her and she likes him. It’s a good relationship and they bonded at birth”.

She will miss him when he moves away.

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People: Leroy

“I am 76 years old and have been married for 58 of them. She had just turned 17 when we started our lives together.”

“I buy jewelry from the Zuni Indians and sell it to people that appreciate the intricacy and beauty. Their art is so fine it is almost like needlepoint.”

How do your customers find you?

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🎵 Fred Frith - Founder of Henry Cow - A Little Joint History

I came across an old Fred Frith album in my collection today and recalled that when at school I ‘knew’ that he was the son of the headmaster of my school.

I forget how I ‘knew it’ and over time even started to question the truth of my own memory (just because they have the same last name, blah blah blah .. )

So, with the internet on hand, I just finished some ‘research’ - ok I went to Wikipedia to see if I could find out if there was any truth …

Turns out he was. Still is I assume!

”In the early 1970s Fred’s grey Morris Minor sported the band’s heraldic logo, much to the amusement of boys at his dad’s grammar school in York where he was the headmaster.”

I even remember the car. The memory was real.

Lest We Forget ... If Indeed You Remembered It First ... Because Only Then Can You Forget ....

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate – we can not consecrate – we can not hallow – this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.

It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

”… government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

🎥 The Adventures of Tintin, 2011 - ★★★★

Marvelous - hadn't even heard of it till I watched it - highly recommended. Just do not understand why the stories have never been turned into a film series. Hopefully '2' will be forthcoming in that not too distant future.

🎥 Acts of Violence, 2018 - ★★

a total car wreck - if I am being generous

Just An Experiment

… move along now.

People: 'JK'

‘JK’ was born in Eastern Texas - ‘where there are trees and orchards’. From there she moved down to Corpus Christie … showed me photographs of the Ocean and Beaches that she could step out to from the restaurant she worked in.

Gorgeous, what took you there from East Texas?

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Adding 'Value' In The 21st Century

“A man makes a $250 million fortune loading up companies with debt and then extracting million-dollar fees from those same companies, in exchange for the generous service of telling them who needs to be fired in order to finance the debt payments he saddled them with in the first place.”

Matt Taibbi

Careful now ... in case you were thinking about renewing that Green Card.

A quiet change in US policy threatens immigrants who apply for a change in status

”non-citizens who apply for a “benefit”–such as an extension or change of status, a green card, or citizenship—would be placed in deportation proceedings if that benefit is denied.”

”merely losing your petition for visa extension … or doing something DHS considers to be criminal (even if never arrested or charged) places you on the same fast-track.

People: Alan and Margaret

Alan from the mid west, Margaret from the East Coast, met, married and started a family in Ohio.

Alan was someone who lived by the rules, so it took ‘Madge’ to show Alan an advert for a job opportunity in California.

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People: Brad

Brad studied and graduated in Aerodynamics and then went on to work in Florida, before moving to Virginia as an Aeronautical Engineer.

And then he ‘had the rug pulled out from under him’.

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Titanic Titans

”Krauthammer was - like George Will - the sort of conservative pundit who largely does not, and perhaps cannot, emerge in today’s media landscape. That is to say, he took positions that were carefully thought out.”

”21st century conservative commentary either hew to the party line or else choose whatever positions will stoke the most outrage and thus sell the most books and/or attract the largest audience”

Read All About It

Ian Bogost has a mixed vision of the future ....

Ian Bogost asks Are Apple AirPods Any Good? This caught my eye:

”The earbuds won’t disappear, just like the smartphones haven’t. But they will become invisible as they become ubiquitous.

For all his skill in envisioning a future AirPod world and the social ramifications does he really think that Airpods won’t get smaller, maybe even just embedded?

People: Pete

Pete … loud … but nice. Turkish is his ’baby’ has ‘been with him for 15 years’. Turkish looked up at me from Pete’s lap. Cute.

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People: Riley

Riley was angry. Not visibly. But it wasn’t hard to ‘see’.

He had been fighting the fires as they encroached on his house with his father. He could see the fire down the street, but right then he felt it was all manageable. He was about to cut down the fences while keeping the house wet with the water hoses.

That’s when the Fire Department arrived.

“We’ve got it”. They said. “But you and the family need get out to safe ground.”

Riley looked around, the fire was a quarter of a mile away, the Fire Department had arrived, there was a water hydrant right there in the road.

“We’ve got it.” They reiterated - you need to leave.

Riley and the family left. They only took what they needed.

They returned the next morning, their house was gone. All the houses from where the fire was through to his were gone. The house next door was still standing.

Apparently The fire had ‘jumped’, quickly with speed - there weren’t sufficient resources, once a fire took hold the strategy was to not to ‘protect’, but to ‘contain’.

It would have taken them maybe 10 minutes more to load up their cars with the boxes of pictures, the memorabilia, the family history … packed for an entirely different reason, but left behind because they ‘trusted’ the authorities, the professionals, the people who ‘knew what they were doing’. All that was now gone, along with their house.

Yes - Riley was angry. ‘If only’ - he had stayed, it would have been different. ‘If only’ - they had loaded the cars, mom would not be crying every day … 6 months later. ‘If only’ - the fire service had done their job. He had a lot of ‘if only’ in him…

But he knew in his heart that they had done their job. He was really just angry at himself. He seemed to feel that he had failed.

What he didn’t know was if he had stayed whether the outcome would be different. And if it was different, would the outcome be better or worse.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal held in your hand, with the intent of throwing it at someone else. You are the only one that gets burned.

Buddha

People: Evelyn

“We quit taking credit cards because of the fees.”

“Couldn’t you have passed the fees back to customers that wanted to use credit?”

“That would have been too complicated.”

“And now you are closing down because there aren’t enough customers?”

“Yes.”

Make your product easier to buy than your competition, or you will find your customers buying from them, not you.

Mark Cuban

Thinking Allowed

This is a People First post that was originally on the People First domain. It has been moved here as part of my domain consolidation program. It’s a steady and slow WIP as I check each entry, so do please bear with me.

People: Enrique

“I was born in Tijuana. I grew up In San Diego. I moved to San Jose and then San Francisco. Now I’m in Oregon. I guess I’ll get to Canada eventually.”

“Always a barman?” I asked.

“Always a barman.”

“Never thought about doing more? Management? Your own place?”

“Nah." He said. “Increase my hours, increase my responsibilities, increase my workload, reduce my interaction with my customers and slash my earnings? I might be a barman, but I’m not stupid!”

“I recently asked a room full of 100 managers, ‘If you could keep your current pay but go back to your old role as an individual contributor, would you do it?’” Wellins says. “About 90 people raised their hands. It startled me. I see it as an indication that lots of managers accepted promotions for the wrong reasons.”

Richard Wellins

Thinking Allowed

This is a People First post that was originally on the People First domain. It has been moved here as part of my domain consolidation program. It’s a steady and slow WIP as I check each entry, so do please bear with me.