🔗 WWW
Nuance? We Don’t Need No Stinking’ Nuance ….
I published 🔗 this post back in July last year … after months of delay and noodling and questioning, I finally released it - and as with so many of my posts that I often wonder why I bother .. crickets.
From that piece - if you’ll forgive me for quoting myself …
Sadly the Internet has been weaponized and far from creating a place to be educated about the differences of people and countries and life - we are being forced into submission. It’s a place where ignorance is not so much celebrated as ignored - and ignored because on the whole it isn’t recognized, and if you do anything counter to the noise - expect to be piled on because 🔗 you are either with us, or against us.
It has only got worse.
Since the 6th, I have been thinking a lot about ‘whither next’ … and then, a couple of days ago I became aware of a debacle in this little corner of the internet we call Micro.Blog. Not going to get into it here - if you are reading this - you almost certainly know what it’s about., but were I to reduce the whole thing to a single word it’s called BULLYING.
… and as far as I am concerned … bullies can fuck off.
Here’s the problem - any semblance of being able to have your opinion is rapidly disappearing - if not gone already. That used to be ‘across the aisle’, now it’s wormed its way into every corner of every room. And this is an ‘all sides’ problem - witness the Micro.Blog ‘contretemps’ referred to earlier. Again - you are either with us, or against us - and that means - all of these concepts are being expunged form our discourse;
Ambiguity
Ambivalence
Balance
Complexity
Context
Depth
Duality
Finesse
Gray area
Harmony
Nuance
Paradox
Perspective
Reflection
Relativity
Sensitivity
Spectrum
Subtlety
Tone
🔗 A simple, non viral case in point. - the link jumps to a short thread on Substack where I dropped a throw away comment to a comment from Ken Klippenstein and within minutes I got a reply clarifying my tongue in cheek question and what was meant by the executive order. I have learnt my lesson - I need to punctate any and all comments with a smiley emoji … ‘all’ because I am well aware that I am overly glib and sarcastic in most of my online comments.
To save the click through, I also quote this - from ChatGPT ….
facetiousness seems to be waning touches on broader shifts in communication patterns. The rise of digital communication has led to a decline in face-to-face interactions, which traditionally allowed for the nuanced delivery and reception of facetious remarks. Without the benefit of vocal tone, facial expressions, and body language, the subtleties of facetiousness can be lost or misinterpreted in text-based mediums. Moreover, the immediacy and brevity of digital exchanges often prioritize efficiency over the layered wit that facetiousness entails. As a result, such forms of humor may not translate well in online environments, leading to their diminished use. This shift underscores the complex relationship between evolving communication technologies and the ways we express and perceive humor.
And then just this morning, this popped up in my feeds from Om - posted 18 months or so ago ….
You can read the whole post ‘What’s The Truth?’ here.
Not holding back this time. Serendipity has spoken.
What Do You Think?
🔗 Google Maps to show Gulf of America after government updates
Not satisfied with destroying tech - they’re now destroying the real world. I can’t delete them from my phone because they aren’t there.
The Cost of Living In Places I Have Lived ...
Specifically, New Zealand, Australia, United Kingdom and The United States
🔗 Kevin Drum linking to the cheapest and most expensive places to live.
In New Zealand there is a lot of handwringing that translates to countless LinkedIN posts talking about ‘jump starting’ the economy and what do they have to do to grow their GDP which inevitably leads to attracting the ‘brightest and the best’. I’ve even weighed into a few of the debates myself …
Of course it doesn’t help when one of the leading Kiwi journalists writes NZ now frozen, listless, mean & hopeless
Here is one slice of that data from the Worlddata link above.
United States 14
Australia 17
New Zealand 18
United Kingdom 19
.. but check out the average monthly income which in turn drives the purchasing power index.
United States 100
Australia 81.4
United Kingdom 63.8
New Zealand 63.5
I’ll let the UK number sit for you to absorb. I am more interested in the two antipodean counties … turns out Australia has a little more than 30% MORE purchasing power than New Zealand.
No more handwringing needed. I don’t know the exact ins and outs of the rules of NZ and OZ - BUT to all intents and purposes, citizens of each country can jump to the other almost on a whim much as someone in the US can move to a different state. It’s not exactly the same - but for a while now there has been a steady exodus of NZ nationals to OZ for a long time - but its getting a lot more problematic - through to September(ish) of 2024 - an average of 200 Kiwi nationals per day left New Zealand to settle in Australia. When you look at that discrepancy - is there any wonder?
(Side Note - 200 per day for 365 days is 7,300 people - that is 0.14% of the country!)
Of course - there’s more to life than the cost of living - there is also the 🔗Quality of Life - and delighted to report that New Zealand - despite its poor showing on the cost of living scale delivers a satisfying 9th in the world for Quality of Life - nestling right between Japan and Spain. So at least they have that. BUT … to borrow a phrase from Aoteraoa …
“Yeah … No”.
Turns out OZ is the number one destination in the world for Quality of Life.
Me? For all of that handwringing that goes on … I think the powers are solving the wrong problem really well.
Just In Today
Science overhaul lays out a fundamental challenge for New Zealand
The Intersection of Politics, Business, Culture and YOU.
🔗 From DEI to dei - Gapingvoid
Real change requires a change in mindsets and deep seated beliefs. And you only change that through culture.
🔗 The Curse of Easy Money - Gapingvoid
Soon you have a two-speed society: those riding the wave, and everyone else paying inflated prices with deflated opportunities.
The Business Equation
I have on occasions referenced ‘The Business Equation’ within this ‘Personal Journal’. I shared it last week in a pack of mental models I use as part of my processes that businesses find helpful when building their company. In the sharing, it occurred to me that while pictures are worth 1,000 words - sometimes you might need 10,000.
For example, The Business Equation includes my take on concepts like;
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The Virtual Corporation
-
The Future of Work
-
Outsourcing and Offshoring
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The Company of One
-
Supply Chain Transparency
… and even my extension to Geoff Moore’s Core/Context model - applied to people and the roles they might be looking to take.
I use these models and more during my engagements and advisory services that are designed to grow businesses.
I might write more about this. Should I?
A Reminder About ‘Content’
… because it’s getting worse.
A strategic thinker wouldn’t call it content.
Sorry - no idea who wrote that - not me - but definitely on pace with my thinking - which you will know that 🖇️🔍 I have written about this many times over the years.
To save the click through - in a nutshell …
As long as ‘we the creators’ fall into the trap of using low cost, homogenous, non-descript words like ‘content’ to describe our work, our soul, our passion, our beliefs then our work will continue to be viewed as ‘free - to - cheap - to - low - cost’, as ‘homogenized, non differentiated, interchangeable fodder’. Moreover, we then only have ourselves to blame and the resultant payment for your art, your thinking, your ideas, will continue to race to the bottom.
💬 John Philpin
And
It is not in the interests of any creator to allow that, so why allow their interests to define how we think?
💬 John Philpin
And
Content is a horrible, generic, cheap, ‘anything will do’ kind of word. Which is why ‘content’ has no value. It is also important to know that it is in the best interests of the buyers of our sweat, labour, thought and time to keep their price down. But our costs are not kept down. So our net earnings suffer. And they are suffering badly. And it has to start with you - the creator, because it isn’t in the interests of buyers to change their behaviour and vocabulary - ‘they’ want great work at no cost.
💬 John Philpin
So. What you going to do about it?
Thank you Roger
The words throughout the 4 part ‘series’ courtesy of Roger Waters - so fitting to end this post with one of his.
Picture a courthouse with no fucking laws
Picture a cathouse with no fucking whores
Picture a shithouse with no fucking drains
Picture a leader with no fucking brains
If you are reading this post on my site, the inline video gives an error. Click on the link above. The 'error' is only because the creator wants you to got to YouTube to watch it.
Cloud Station ⚭ KN#33 travel center
🔗 📼 This one is AI - but MESMERIZING (Sorry - Facebook)
🔗 The Case for the Executive Chair
I annotated this in the middle of 2024 with the intention to share, it’s pretty damming.
Only one or two directors on the typical 11-member board say they understand industry economics and how the company makes money. Two or three say they have little or no understanding.
Exactly in line with my observations - failure to understand leads to a focus on history, compliance and not losing - because they don’t even understand how to grow and win.
🖇️ You might not be surprised to learn that I have a fix. It’s called The Business Equation
🔗 Scorsese Takes Aim at Streaming’s Lack of Curation … and more … including ‘content’
the art of cinema is being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator” by conceptualization of films as “content.
🖇️ 🔍 You might recall - the ‘content thing’ has been a drum beat of mine for a while now.
As always delighted to find more people jumping on the bus … or is it a train now?
Which reminds me.
When you engage with your LLM of choice, do you say ‘good morning’, ‘thankyou’, ‘please’ … all that nicety stuff?
Bonus question .. regardless of your answer have you tried doing it the other way?
Do the results seem better or worse?
Been reading headlines like this
🔗 Trump coverage needs to change and here’s how - Press Watch
since at least 2020 - like this one from … checking … 2020.
🔗 Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America
More maybe should be written like this one …
Nine years ago - remembering eleven years before that - and I still miss him.
Slowed me down for a second. Great - but how the hell do you find a record shop?
Ahmet moved on from planet earth nearly 20 years ago, so the quote pre dates that by a few more — so makes more sense, but still I think Bob’s quote machine needs more relevance.