The Facebook scandal is interesting in a number of ways, not the least of which is that we’re sharing our communal outrage on the very platforms that we accuse of breaching our our trust.

The expression of our anger at being turned into a set of psychographic profiles is, ultimately, adding to our psychographic profiles.

Dave Pell - Next Draft

The GDPR provides the following rights for individuals:

• The right to be informed
• The right of access
• The right to rectification
• The right to erasure
• The right to restrict processing
• The right to data portability
• The right to object
• Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling.

(ORDER LIST: 583 U.S.) MONDAY, MARCH 19, 2018 ORDER IN PENDING CASE 17A909 TURZAI, MICHAEL C., ET AL. V. LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS, ET AL. The application for stay presented to Justice Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.

The original is just as short

Cheesecake - is it a pie?

Hot Dog - is it a sandwich?

… and what exactly defines a bridge?

And all if that was just yesterday. Today there is a new one that has hit the national news.

Is meat defined by it coming from animals OR by what it is made of?

Those seem to be the two opposing arguments that are emerging today - and possibly coming to a Supreme Court near you soon.

Building on a recent debate as to whether a ‘hot dog’ is actually a ‘sandwich’, which at one point had me listening to a podcast asking that if a ‘cheese cake’ is not a ‘cake’ - is it a ‘pie’ ?

I believe that this too fits into a similar debate category.

This image of a bridge (?) was shared by my good friend and And Another Thing co-conspirator, good egg and ‘chap’ Dr. Watson (I kid you not) … asking if I was still interested in bridges.

I am. But my question is whether this is one?

What defines a bridge for you?

The Atlas Obscura Source

In a parallel space, on a different topic, someone directed me to 16 of Stephen Hawking’s Most Mind-Expanding Quotes.

Number 10 resonated for the micro.blog community, ending thus;

With the technology at our disposal, the possibilities are unbounded. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.

It’s Time to Leave San Francisco over on Medium, penned by Sunil Rajaraman

Two observations

1} He only considers moving to somewhere else in America

… the usual narrow mindedness that The Valley is famous for.

2} He concludes that he can’t do the move while his equity continues to vest.

.. because after-all - it is all about the money (my take, would welcome other conclusions).

But there is more … The tech world preaches that a lot of the #FOW is all about virtualization, working remotely, flexibly, not being geographically constrained, blah blah, blah …. but really - how many tech companies really practice what they preach … other than Manton and Micro.blog of course - but then he isn’t in Silicon Valley.

// @manton

This from Fast Company.

It makes for an interesting read that I haven’t picked up anywhere else. A search of the article reveals 106 mentions of ‘Casper’ (the mattress company).

About 90% of what I know about Casper comes from the podcasting adverts I hear as a result of listening to @gruber @jdalrymple and others podcasters. This piece reveals an interesting, dark and seedy underbelly to the mattress industry.

A ‘couple’ of eye catching quotes;

”Casper approached Hales and offered to resume the relationship, on terms considerably more favorable to Hales, if Hales would agree to state a more positive opinion of Casper’s mattress on Sleepopolis. Hales refused.”

”In July 2017, a subsidiary of JAKK Media LLC acquired Sleepopolis.com. Casper provided financial support to allow JAKK Media to acquire Sleepopolis.”

”From the first days of the site’s new management, that thorn in Casper’s side–Derek’s damning yellow box, pointing prospective buyers to competitors–disappeared from Sleepopolis’s Casper review. In its place there appeared a green box, with a coupon linking straight to Casper.”

”Casper had finally hammered out the last, most troublesome kink in the yawning purchase funnel that lured ever more traffic to its billion-dollar online storefront. The company could indeed claim, as it did on its site, to have “the internet’s favorite mattress.”

It got me to wondering how true it all is … and if so - how their position and what they are doing synch with our favorite podcasters own principles.

Would welcome thoughts - even better - knowledge.

This just in

… as an Englishman I obviously need to pay more attention. I did not know that I had a minister concerned about my loneliness. I will give her a call, it would be nice to talk to someone - and she does seem to be welcoming it …

… though I don’t quite qualify for her two categories ‘elderly’ and ‘younger’ …. yet again falling between the cracks!

As an Englishman, I definitely know this company, but never knew the backstory of the co-founder who now lives in The Bay Area. In a rented apartment. With no car, and a plastic watch.

The Irish Times has the whole story - it might not be what you are thinking!

Great to see my friend Mitchell Levy on The TedX Stage.

Just read Stowe Boyd on ‘Decisions’ (scroll down to the second article). An interesting read, to which I would add that one problem with assessing good-v-bad decisions, is that we justify retrospectively based on outcome.

We would never say that driving home drunk is a good decision, but the outcome of getting home with no incident reinforces the thought that one should do it again because there was no bad outcome. In fact if you consistently do it - the reinforcement just grows.

Strikes me that much management practice is based on this same kind of thinking.

This also relates in some ways to the work of Simon Wardley.

"I got through about three minutes of Phantom Thread. I put in a good solid three," Lawrence said after Maron asked if she had seen the film. "I couldn't. I'm sorry to anybody who loved that movie."

… yeah I think that is what I managed in total across all The Hunger Games movies … I know what you mean J!

The Full Story On Mashable

I only know Julian Summer Hayes through his writing here. This particular post came through the ether this morning … some quotes (my bold):

But **I can feel it: the slow creep of old age:** my neck hurts; my knees ache after a long walk; and my sleep is easily interrupted by at least one trip to the bathroom.

**I thought I’d be depressed with the onset of old age.** I’m not. If anything, it’s forcing me to live more thoughtfully, more connected to the true me and to appreciate what I’ve got — in all possible ways.

This year, I’ll be 51.