The Tories must change course, or be wiped out - "If we continue like this, we will hand over the keys of power to Labour without much of a fight, either because we have failed in the scramble for the centre ground or because we are destroyed from the Right by Reform. As I warned in November, the Prime Minister’s plan is not working and he needs to change course. Otherwise, we are heading for a Keir Starmer government with his band of hard-Left fanatics set to undo Brexit, open our borders and meddle pointlessly with everything from employment laws to the number of bins you put out each week. Any Tory who says otherwise is insulting your intelligence. But all is not lost. The public are not rushing to vote for Sir Keir, though they feel sorely let down by us. They want a reason to vote Conservative, but we are failing to provide them with one. We need to be frank about this if we are to have any chance of fixing the problem. On tax, migration, the small boats and law and order, we need to demonstrate strong leadership, not managerialism. Make a big and bold offer on tax cuts, rather than tweaking as we saw in the Budget. Place a cap on legal migration once and for all. Leave the ECHR to stop the boats. Tangible improvement to our NHS and tougher sentences for criminals. Start holding failing police chiefs to account so that antisocial behaviour, shoplifting and knife crime are actually sorted out. Take back control of our streets from the extremists. And instead of paying lip service in guidance on transgender ideology in schools, let’s actually change the law to ban the abuse of our children."
Suella Braverman says Tories will be lucky to have any MPs at next election - "Asked if she regretted supporting Mr Sunak’s bid for the Conservative leadership, Ms Braverman said: “Honestly, yes I do. “Because I had assurances from Rishi Sunak that he was going to put a cap on legal migration, that he was going to do something about the European Convention on Human Rights, that he was going to fix this transgender ideology in our schools. He hasn’t done that.”"
Cold-hearted teens steal 8-year-old NYC boy's lemonade stand earnings - "A pair of “shady” teenagers sank to a new low when they looted an 8-year-old Upper West Side boy’s sidewalk lemonade stand, police said. The cowardly crooks waited until little Julian Lin had his back turned on Sunday to snatch his money jar — containing as much as $150, his mom said — and made off on two scooters, according to police and a local report... “I will not have my money out there for anyone to grab. I will be more alert. I will trust my instincts because I could tell that those guys were shady since one of them was wearing a ski mask,” he said."
Ski Mask Bans in Cities like Philadelphia Will Criminalize Black and Brown Youth
The lesson AI must learn from nature | The Spectator - "What’s the difference between a café and a restaurant? It’s not as simple as it seems. Yes, the food at a restaurant will be fancier and more substantial. But there is a social distinction too: a restaurant places you under an obligation; a café does not. When you enter a café you order something out of courtesy – but it can be as insubstantial as a cup of tea. How long you stay, and what you choose to eat or drink, remains up to you. A café, as Nassim Taleb would say, is ‘high in optionality’. By contrast, entering a restaurant is like missing the Wrotham exit on the westbound M26 – you’re stuck there for ages with no chance of escape. Once you sit down in a restaurant, you’re in for at least two courses and a bottle of wine. Jeff Bezos was insistent that his Amazon colleagues understood the distinction between an option and an obligation. Within Amazon, they still use his phrase ‘a two-way door’, which defines any course of action which can be attempted easily, then quickly reversed in the event of failure. Unlike a ‘one-way door’ (a restaurant), which demands a great deal of research and deliberation beforehand, a ‘two-way door’ (or café) is something which may be cheaper to try than to argue about. There is no point preparing an intricate business plan for something which can be tested in the real world and corrected on the fly. But I think there is also a third kind of door which is emerging in technology adoption. This starts as a two-way door but then maddeningly slams shut, leaving everyone trapped on the wrong side. What began as an option becomes an imposition. Parking apps come into this category. Originally a welcome alternative to coins, they are now almost obligatory in many places. Likewise self-checkout tills at supermarkets. Originally a handy alternative for impatient people buying only a few items, they are often now imposed on everyone regardless. The gradual disappearance of cash worries me, too. In ten years we have gone from the ridiculous practice of taxis not accepting cards to the opposite: shops which won’t accept cash. My experience of technology reminds me a little of visiting France or Scotland, where in the space of a single day you might encounter the best and the worst customer service of your life. When you obediently follow the system, and the system works, it is a joy. Make the slightest mistake, however, or encounter the tiniest anomaly, and you enter a Kafka-esque nightmare from which there is no escape. When a credit card of mine expired, it took me 25 minutes to pay to park my car. As I write this, my wife is engaged in an hour-long online odyssey to recover £29 from a credit-card company. Why does this happen? Some customers are simply cheaper to serve than others – but the reasons for this are circumstantial, innate or fixed. Today’s typical MBA droid, however, hooked on the catnip of efficiency, believes it is a good idea to force every-one to interact in the lowest–cost channel – which typically involves outsourcing as much work as possible to the poor customer and forcing him or her to submit to your processes. What starts as an option to serve customers then metastasises to a point where the process dominates everything. Technology is a great café but a terrible restaurant. There is a fundamental question here. Do you design for optimality or optionality? Nature designs for resilience rather than perfection, and tends to provide many different solutions to the same question, not just one."
Rob Henderson on X - "Dating apps fall into this category. Began as an option to help busy people get a date and transformed into the default way young people try to find someone. The goal of making life easier for a select few people ultimately increased the sum total of misery in the realm of romance."
Risk-Aversion Is Killing Romance - "New research shows that Gen Z are more risk-averse than previous generations. Apparently we perceive more dangers in life, are more likely to see situations as “black and white”, and see spaces as either safe or dangerous. Of course this isn’t surprising. I get tired of the whole snowflake trope being tacked onto everyone in Gen Z, but it’s also difficult to deny that we’re generally much more fearful than previous generations. Much of the attention on this goes to those calling for trigger warnings and safe spaces—which I’d say are an important but very vocal minority—but what’s actually endemic, something I see constantly among my generation, is a subtler form of safetyism, a reluctance to take risks in our everyday lives. Being terrified to talk on the phone. Being scared to order in a restaurant. And somewhere I think it’s really starting to affect us is being risk-averse about relationships. Gen Z are dating less. Having less sex. Settling for situationships that are empty and meaningless. And I think a major part of this is that human connection comes with a high level of risk. Among young men, for example, I’d say this risk-aversion is most obvious in fear of rejection. A recent survey found that almost 45% of men aged 18 to 25 have never approached a woman in person. Another Pew Survey found that half of single men between 18 and 30 are voluntarily single, which some suggest is in part because of fear. But I think young women are also risk-averse about relationships. We are naturally more risk-averse, for a start, and an even higher number of women are voluntarily single. But our risk-aversion plays out differently. Most obvious to me is the way we talk about relationships, the advice young women give each other, the therapy-speak and feminist clichés that I think often cloak a deep fear of hurt and vulnerability... Social media is full of young women warning each other and listing out red flags and reasons why you should dump him or dodge commitment. He compliments you a lot? Love-bombing. Says I miss you too soon? Run. Approaches you in person? Predator. It’s all so cynical. It’s all about how not to catch feelings; ways not to get attached; how “you’re not gonna get hurt if you have another man waiting”! We blunt romance and passion with this constant calculation of risk, this paranoid scanning for threats, and by holding back to avoid being hurt. We encourage each other to be emotionally absent, unfazed, uncaring. We even call it empowerment! It’s not. It’s neuroticism. I think we are a generation absolutely terrified of getting hurt and doing all we can to avoid it... Our childhoods weren’t spent toying with risk and danger, teaching ourselves we could cope with it, learning that it’s baked into life... Then, of course, there’s social media, dating apps—these mechanical ways we meet and find love. Fake spaces where we can avoid any form of discomfort... My other suspicion is that this has to do with changing cultural and sexual mores. Family breakdown, for example... Also, too, the sexual revolution, where the liberalising of sexual norms have made dating extremely confusing... Sometimes it seems to me we’ve become so suspicious of each other’s intentions that we pathologise romance and commitment, and end up psychoanalysing to death behaviour that’s actually decent. Now we take everything that comes with real love—being affected by someone else’s emotions, putting your partner’s needs first, depending on them—and call it damage or anxious attachment or trauma. No! It’s called deep connection! And God, yes, wouldn’t it be much easier if it was a pathology, a disease, one we could diagnose and solve because it’s scary and it comes without guarantees. But it isn’t. It’s tragic, all of this. Tragic because it’s putting us on a trajectory to miss out on what’s actually meaningful. There’s no love without vulnerability. There’s no life without fear. And you will no doubt derail romance if you are too risk-averse. I’ve written elsewhere about how I think this fear of discomfort is in part why young people are putting off major life decisions like marriage and having children. What’s interesting to me about all these #childfree TikToks everyone likes to dunk on isn’t that people don’t want kids—I don’t think everyone should—it’s that they often don’t want them out of fear. Like that TikToker who created “The List”—a crowdsourced list of reasons not to have children that’s been seen by millions—which includes every possible risk from swollen ankles to rashes to bloating to muscle cramps. Really? We’re willing to miss out on the richest and most beautiful moments of being human—what actually makes life worth living—because it comes with risk?... If you connect with someone and it comes with the risk of losing something, good. You’re alive! Otherwise what’s the alternative? Some soulless life of safety and consumption? Purging your own life of meaning because things might possibly go wrong? Sitting safely inside staring at screens, watching simulations of strangers live their lives? And staying anxious and alone and never seeing that as the ultimate risk? Never seeing that maybe the most dangerous life is one that demands nothing of you?"
in the spirit of revolution ✊🏽🍉 on X - "Unpopular dating opinion: The intense chemistry you feel with someone you just met is a huge red flag. Most likely, they are similar to an early caregiver that neglected you & your subconscious mind is attracted to them to try to fix an old wound"
QC on X - "this kind of trauma narrativizing was a phase i went through but i found it ultimately unsatisfying and had to discard it to make further progress. it demeans and makes petty something sacred. the intensity means something beyond any particular narrative you have for it"
Meme - Bojan Tunguz @tunguz: "SCANDINAVIA. GERMANY. UNITED KINGDOM & IRELAND. RUSSIA. MONGOLIA. EASTERN EUROPE. FRANCE. SPAIN. SYRIA. PORTUGAL. IRAQ. INDIA. IRAN. AFGHANISTAN. UZBEKISTAN. CHINA. UKRAINE. JAPAN. TAIWAN. PHILIPPINES, THAILAND. INDONESIA MALAYSIA"
Ryan Bourne on X - "There's a European upper middle-class cope which basically says "yes, America might look richer, but there's no work-life balance, culture, or accessible healthcare." What I've learnt moving here is that, no, for genuinely comparable professionals, America is just much richer."
wanye on X - "Probably the funniest aspect of this is with respect to healthcare. I just don’t know what I need to say to Europeans to explain to them that when your salary is $30,000 a year higher, you can afford a $12,000 a year health insurance premium and still be way ahead."
Hussain on X - "“Unwalkable cities” line too. DC where you are, New York, Boston, Chicago there’s plenty which are fine for walking and public transport."
M.D.R. on X - "I never understood this line. If you live in the city, aka downtown, then everyone mostly walks around even in Midwest cities."
Rafael R. Guthmann on X- "Depends on the profession. Economists with same qualifications make much more money in Brazil than in Europe. Doesn't mean Brazil is much richer. Manufacturing compensation is typically higher in several European countries:"
Watchdog finds 'strong perception of favoritism' toward McKinsey in some government contracts - "A report released by Canada's procurement ombudsman Alexander Jeglic last month examined government contracts awarded to McKinsey between April 2011 and March 2023... the amount of public money Ottawa has awarded to McKinsey has skyrocketed since the Liberals formed government in 2015. Jeglic's report echoes CBC's findings... Jeglic also noted that most of the contracts awarded to McKinsey were sole-sourced and primarily came through a "standing offer" — an agreement between the government and a contractor to provide goods and services under pre-established terms and costs. The government can then issue a "call-up" contract to the contractor to provide the services established in the offer when the need arises... he found two incidents where the procurement process was altered to allow McKinsey to bid on a contract it wouldn't have qualified for otherwise. In another case, Jeglic found that after an initial evaluation of two bids, a second re-evaluation was done that deemed McKinsey the only compliant bidder and disqualified the original "1st ranked bidder." Jeglic said there's a lack of documentation to explain why the second evaluation was conducted. "Collectively, these observations create a strong perception of favouritism towards McKinsey," Jeglic wrote of some of the competitive contracting processes. Jeglic's report on McKinsey comes as the federal government faces heightened scrutiny over its contracting processes."
Frank Stronach: Solving the productivity emergency - "Even when compared to G7 members like France, Germany and the United Kingdom, Canada has one of the lowest levels of labour productivity, according to the OECD ... Investing more in modern machinery, equipment and new technology is one surefire way of spiking productivity, at least in the short-term. Training workers and upgrading job skills is another. Both are viable options singled out by Rogers as potential remedies. But for me, the best way is still one of the oldest and simplest: make employees partners in profitability and let them share in the success of the business. The profit-sharing culture that we established at Magna, which we called “Fair Enterprise,” gave everyone at the company a stake in how the business performed and a share of the profits. After we started sharing profits with all our employees, productivity went through the roof, and we began generating spectacular growth in sales and profits. Magna is just one of many companies that have shown that sharing profits with employees is a tried-and-true formula for increased productivity. A landmark 2010 study from the National Bureau of Economic Research in the U.S. concluded that profit sharing can in fact boost productivity. The researchers stated that not only does profit sharing “raise productivity and profits,” it also contributes to reduced employee turnover and a “greater willingness to work hard.” What’s more, the report showed that profit-sharing programs lead to better pay, enhanced job security and better relations between employees and management. Profit sharing carries a number of other benefits, as well. For example, some studies have shown that profit sharing not only puts more cash in the pockets of employees, it can also improve job satisfaction."
I'm done with Reddit, I'm just done. : r/KotakuInAction - "The thing is, all those same people who ruined reddit, will ruin the new place too. Theres an army of pricks out there desperate to become mods just so they can fuck other people over. I saw one mod talking about Star Wars and he said he saw a guy say "woke" but he couldn't do anything because it wasn't against the rules. So he followed the guy waiting for him to say anything that he could he twist in action. And he did, and he posted about it like he was cool as fuck for doing it. Absolute fucking clowns some of them. "
"There are levels of pathetic... then there is this.... "
"These are the kind of people that gravitate toward unpaid labor in positions of "power""
"They don't realize they're a bunch of fascists. They're always the loudest claiming everything they don't like is fascism"
Identify Songs Online - Music Recognition Online - "We use ACRCloud Music Recognition Services to help you identify songs in audio & video files, such as recordings of radio, TV, Ads...
Recognize Music by Recording Online
Identify songs by sound like Shazam, Genius and Musixmatch ( which integrates ACRCloud Music Recognition Services ). Play some music and click the button to recognize songs now."
Woman arrested for wheeling corpse into bank to co-sign a loan - "A Brazilian woman has been arrested after she strolled into a bank pushing a corpse she hoped would co-sign a loan for her. Disturbing video, captured by bank employees in the Bangu neighbourhood of Rio De Janeiro, shows Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes bringing the body of Paulo Roberto Braga into the bank branch, The Daily Beast reported. Braga had died at the age of 68 just a few hours earlier. In the video, Ms Nunes is reportedly heard calling Braga her uncle as she spoke to the body and propped up his head. She also asked him to co-sign on a loan for approximately $3,400, The New York Post reported. “Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign [the contract]. If you don’t sign, there’s no way, because I can’t sign for you,” Ms Nunes says in the footage. She then grabs a pen and forces it into the dead man’s hands, telling the corpse to hold the pen “hard”. “Sign so you don’t give me any more headaches, I can’t take it anymore,” she says. At one point in the video a worker points out that the man looks ill and that his colour is unusual, but Ms Nunes waves off his concerns. “He is like that. He doesn’t say anything,” Ms Nunes replies. “Uncle, do you want to go to the [hospital] again?”"
Why Coca-Cola's 'New Coke' Flopped - "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The time-tested adage appears to be the lesson from Coca-Cola’s disastrous introduction of “New Coke." Except in 1985, Coca-Cola indeed thought its signature brand was broken. Although Coca-Cola remained the world’s best-selling soft drink, rival Pepsi-Cola continued to gain market share in the 1970s and early 1980s, thanks in part to its aggressive “Pepsi Challenge” campaign in which consumers taking blind taste tests were surprised to learn they preferred the flavor of Pepsi. To the shock of Coca-Cola, internal taste tests yielded the same results. Company executives grew convinced that its soda’s taste—not its rival’s advertisements targeting the “Pepsi Generation”—was the reason for its declining market share. Since its introduction in 1886, Coca-Cola’s secret recipe had been tweaked several times—such as when changing sweeteners from cane sugar to beet sugar to corn syrup—but its taste had remained constant. While the company was developing the unique formula for Diet Coke, which was introduced in 1982, it found in top-secret taste tests that a sweeter version of the concoction beat not only Pepsi but the classic version of Coke. Executives decided to make a risky change... New Coke tasted sweeter and more like Pepsi... While Goizueta and Keough toasted each other with cans of New Coke, the news was already beginning to fall flat. On the New York Stock Exchange, shares of Coca-Cola dropped, while those of its rival rose. Pepsi gave its employees the day off and declared victory in full-page newspaper advertisements that boasted, ‘‘After 87 years of going at it eyeball to eyeball, the other guy just blinked.’’ New Coke left a bitter taste in the mouths of the company’s loyal customers. Within weeks of the announcement, the company was fielding 5,000 angry phone calls a day. By June, that number grew to 8,000 calls a day, a volume that forced the company to hire extra operators... At protests staged by grassroots groups such as “Old Cola Drinkers of America,” consumers poured the contents of New Coke bottles into sewer drains. One Seattle consumer even filed suit against the company to force it to provide the old drink. The outrage caught Coca-Cola executives by surprise. They had hardly made a rash decision unsupported by data. After all, they had performed 190,000 blind taste tests on U.S. and Canadian consumers. The problem, though, is that the company had underestimated loyal drinkers’ emotional attachments to the brand. Never did its market research testers ask subjects how they would feel if the new formula replaced the old one... In spite of the blowback, Coca-Cola emerged from the fiasco with its market position actually strengthened as consumers rediscovered their attachment to the iconic brand... “The simple fact is that all the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to original Coca-Cola felt by so many people,” Keough admitted. The blunder was so colossal that some thought it must have been an intentional marketing gimmick. “Some cynics say that we planned the whole thing,” Keough said. “The truth is we’re not that dumb and we’re not that smart.”"
Case studies of Coke and Kodak (digital cameras) yield opposite morals. Oops
‘Narcissistic billionaires’: Labor Senator slams Elon Musk after X refuses to remove Wakeley content : r/technology - "A priest got stabbed in Australia, the video was on X/Twitter. Australia demanded that X remove the video / related content. X removed the video / related content for all of Australia. Australia demanded that the video / related content be removed from the platform globally. Musk told Australia to fuck off. Australian senator is mad at Musk for not removing the content globally, saying that "...that the public has had a “gutful” of the “narcissistic billionaires” trying to be above the law." Thems the facts. My own editorialization: Speaking as a Canadian, I'm perfectly fine without the Australian government having the authority to tell me what I should or shouldn't see on the internet."
"Imagine if Iran or North Korea made the same demand. everything negative about them has to be removed......worldwide."
Australia gets to make the law for the whole world. Of course, if anyone tries to impose foreign law on Australia...
DogeDesigner on X - "The issue is that Australia appears to be demanding censorship of content on 𝕏 beyond its borders."
Elon Musk on X - "That is exactly the issue. Should the eSafety Commissar (an unelected official) in Australia have authority over all countries on Earth?"
Elon Musk brutally mocks Australian PM as bitter fight over content on X heats up | news.com.au : r/australian - "It says a lot about our inane Federal government that they seem more worried about people sharing video of a stabbing incident, than they are about the incident itself. We have a massive problem with social cohesion and cultural integration right now, and it feels like Albo is trying to sweep the problem under the carpet. Of course no one should be watching these sorts of videos. But we need to be aware what is going on in our country. Also, it’s a ludicrous suggestion that a US company needs to apply Aussie law globally. Geolocking is more than sufficient to achieve the stated goal here."
Suppressing discussion of your failures is a good way to minimise them
Corviale: One-Kilometer-Long Residential Complex - "The Corviale housing complex, located in the south-western periphery of Rome, Italy, was designed in the 1970s as a solution to the growing number of dormitory districts in the Roman suburbs, caused by the significant population increase between the 1950s and 1970s – when the population grew from approximately 1.6 million to 2.7 million inhabitants – followed by suburban sprawl. Corviale is one of the most extended single-residential buildings in the world"
Tara💄 on X - "“would your sixteen year old self be proud of you” im not trying to impress a mentally ill child"
Meme - "Liking tomboys is gay because you like girls that are masculine."
"Then- Does liking femboys make you straight?"
"Hm."
"..."
Meme - "When she cheated on you but you decide to give her another chance" *Man in Hazmat suit spraying woman's vagina*
The Business of Bugs: Eating Insects Isn't as Scary as it Sounds - Bloomberg ("You Will Eat Bugs — and Like It", March 2024) - "We need a sustainable option for feeding nearly 10 billion people. Creepy-crawlies could be the way."
Damn conspiracy theories and misinformation!
Adam Ma’anit on X - "Jacob Rothschild – a Jewish philanthropist who has spent much of his life funding arts, culture and heritage work has died Z''L, and is now trending on Twitter because antisemites are insane."
Rachel Moiselle on X - "Jacob Rothschild is the great-great grandchild of Lionel de Rothschild: a man who saved thousands of Irish people. There will be no mention of this in any Irish obituary."
Meme - "Bro finally got that human update
*Pasty clean shaven Mark Zuckerberg* *Mark Zuckerberg with darker skin and beard*
"The 600 series had rubber skin. We spotted them easy, but these are new. They look human... sweat, bad breath, everything.""
Meme - Kristina Cowell @kristina_cowell97: "Mark really went from AI to ayyyy"