It has been about 15 years since Robert Sutton, currently at Stanford, published his seminal work on workplace behavior, The No Asshole Rule, detailing how assholes cost companies huge sums of money and make detrimental contributions to the bottom line. He has since followed it up with The Asshole Survival Guide and Good Boss, Bad Boss because, apparently, assholes are exceptionally tenacious at keeping their positions.
This Reddit survey, by way of Gizmodo, reminds us that the no asshole rule must be extended to all personal relationships because being a rude asshole has gained substantial cachet and purchase globally and in American society, in particular, since 2015 for reasons that are obvious to you if you’re not a member of the offending crew.
Please, distribute this widely so that–perhaps, just perhaps–rude people may find the awareness, mindfulness and motivation to exercise tact.
We can dream, no?
Whatever your age, gender, or background, you’ve probably talked like a jerk at least once in your life.
The greatest vehicle for wreaking havoc is money without provenance. Therefore, terrorists rob banks, drug cartels go to exceptional ends to launder their moniesand billionaires use offshore accounts and onshore vehicles to hide the money trail in order to avoid taxes. Cryptocurrencies are clearly the new vehicle of choice for criminals to obscure their financial. The Associated Press story linked below reveals the horrifying means by which white supremacists are using cryptocurrencies to raise funds and to evade the law. Clearly, the criminal web site the Silk Road, which used cryptocurrencies to mask the identities of the criminals it supported, was not an anomaly but a harbinger of the criminality that is supported by cryptocurrencies.
Cryptocurrencies are legal tender only to criminals. They are exotic commodities to the rest of us. By investing in them, we are supporting an exorbitantly energetically wasteful commodity that supports the vilest criminals. This is almost as bad as investing in Facebook.
BRUSSELS (AP) — The Daily Stormer website advocates for the purity of the white race, posts hate-filled, conspiratorial screeds against Blacks, Jews and women and has helped inspire at least three racially motivated murders.
Not too long ago, I wrote about how Facebook’s flagship products, Facebook and WhatsApp, have been usurped by malicious actors to decimate the truth and to instigate mass action bordering on genocide. Now, as the article linked below demonstrates, we may have the first quantitative measure of how successful such disinformation campaigns are on US soil. If it is correct that 40% of Republicans are as gullible as Burmese, then it is a sad day for the USA: we were done in by our own technologies.
A survey finds a false conspiracy theory about vaccines implanting tracking microchips is popular among Fox News viewers, Republicans and Trump voters.
Like it or not, the evolution of humans seems to be marked by the migration of a substantial portion of human existence into cyberspace. The Darwin awards, consequently, need to evolve–or perhaps they have–to account for the new follies therein. The two officers in this story are certainly not the first nominees or laureates of the cyber edition of Darwin awards, but perhaps this blog post can serve as the nomination that elevates them to the models to avoid during this brief period when the dire consequences of digital public stupidity persists in the public’s vanishingly brief short term memory.
Perhaps more puzzling than the fact that two police officers can’t grasp the impropriety of publicly joking about killing a politician is the fact that they target a politician who champions the cause of public servants, which is what police officers are. It is a remarkable feat of marketing that has convinced the great masses that they are better off with busted unions and underfunded pensions than they are with them. So far, only teachers have spoken up against this status quo. These cops don’t seem to have learned much from teachers.
Facebook plans to use artificial intelligence and update its tools and services to help prevent suicides among its users.
Artificial intelligence is touted as the solution to everything these days, but with respect to suicides committed on or because of Facebook, AI feels like a band-aid. The only way Facebook can really help prevent suicides is by making its service less addictive so that users can spend more time in real social circumstances with real people instead of being trapped inside a cold illusion of a social experience spawned from their smart phone. Making FB less addictive, however, will make FB lose revenue because its revenues are tied intimately to the number of eyeballs that are glued to the FB web site. Hence, progress is not profitable. The only benefit to society may be the development of an AI baby sitter. As FB and the rest of “social” media infantilize us all, the market will be briskfor such a product.
About 17 years ago, I ate at two Wolfgang Puck restaurants: Chinois on Main and Granita in Malibu. Both were culinary delights, but not worth the hassle. (Lucques was the only restaurant that was worth the hassle.) It is a mystery as to why he lent his name to so many mediocre enterprises like TV dinners and fast food stands at malls and airports. After all, he was already damn wealthy by virtue of his books, restaurants and TV appearances. Alice Waters, his mentor, never felt any such compulsion, and her brand remained undiluted. Based on the picture below, Puck’s brand is now so diluted and debased that he has his picture next to greasy eggs. It is a denouement that can only elicit schadenfreude, not any sympathy. Here is a man who abandoned a promising career in the culinary arts for a couple bucks shilling greasy eggs.
What a slut.
I had a bagel and cream cheese at Starbucks. That is a far better choice for the captive passenger.
David Letterman’s Top Ten Lists were masterpieces of comedy. If he had a top ten list titled “Top Ten Signs Your Political Party is a Joke”, then the number one reason would almost certainly be “Your most popular candidate is Write-In”. Â The results are still fresh, but that outcome is not likely to change for the American Independent “Party” in Ventura County. The screen grabs below show that candidate Write-In is the top vote getter for this political “party”.
As of this writing, the total votes cast in Ventura County were 81,991. This means the American Independent Party received 1.3% of the total votes cast, The Green Party 0.2%, and the Libertarian Party 0.5%. These statistics and the popularity of the respective write-in candidates overwhelmingly support the notion that the majority of the people in the AIP are the ones who erroneously confused its name with the unaffiliated voter designation. They likely wrote in Hilary Clinton or Bernie Sanders as a result. The math then means that the AIP chosen candidates garnered a mere 0.4% of the vote.
Does this make the Green Party a joke? After all, a hoax played on the public is attracting more votes than a party that has been active for over 20 years.
The strangest thing is that the Libertarians–people who are so obsessed with their own point of view–miraculously found enough consensus to support one candidate.
Of course, since none of these parties seems to have attracted more than 1% of the vote even statewide (results are all the way on the bottom, with 22% of precincts reporting), every single one is, frankly, a joke. We Americans like power and powerful parties. We seem to like it that way because we enjoy complaining about them. The fact that we distance ourselves from idealists who will undoubtedly irreparably disrupt the scantly orderly society we have  speaks volumes the wisdom of the American masses.
Unless there is a President Trump.
On second thought, maybe the greatest joke is a party that traces its roots to the abolition of slavery has managed to select a bigot as its leader.
Write-In is the most popular American Independent Party Candidate. The members are so independent that they can’t reach consensus.
The Green Party is faring slightly better than AIP. Write-In candidate still registers, but it’s the runner up.
Libertarians are almost looking like a bona fide party. The Write-In candidate is also the runner up but by a much larger margin than the Green Write-In candidate.
Marin Shkreli is proud of–even smug about–every single act that distinguishes him as a singularly depraved, morally bankrupt and rude human being. The fact that the governing boards of several large corporations have appointed this idiot to run their companies is probably even more shocking. When will the focus of the investigations shift to the incompetent or corrupt corporate boards that betray their shareholders’ interests by giving this imbecile employment?
$2 million for a Wu-Tang Clan album? Are you kidding me? Maybe corporate America should focus on eradicating such stupidity from its ranks before it starts complaining about federal government waste.
Or, maybe the SEC’s sluggish expurgation of such morons from corporate ranks should be the only Federal inefficiency that the corporate world should bemoan.
Martin Shkreli faces a new legal headache, a lawsuit claiming that his $2 million Wu-Tang Clan album contains illustrations ripped off from a New York artist, who now wants the former drug executive to pay for them.
 Freedom of the press is taken for granted in the West, but one struggles to remember the last time the American press took a principled stand against the government. A striking example of this is cited in the above story.
Publishing tycoon Jimmy Lai, a key backer of the democracy movement, joined the protesters.
The New York Times famously buried a story about the NSA’s illegal exploits under pressure from the Federal government. The Times had every right to publish the story, and it had all the resources it needs to defend itself against any accusations the government might bring, but it caved to the government bullying. In Hong Kong, in contrast, in defiance of an autocratic government, the publishing magnate is willing to risk his own life, not just his fortunes. The New York Times and The Washington Post haven’t shown this kind of moxie since the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate scandal. The hippies were right, it seems. We should look east for leadership and inspiration.
Jimmy Lai’s participation in the Hong Kong protests should remind us that freedom of the press is worthless if the press has no balls.
It’s difficult to pinpoint Rick Perry’s most revolting attribute, but the ersatz modesty he projects in defense the asinine notions he espouses may be the one. As the Reuters article cites, this comparison of homosexuality with alcoholism is his second assertion in nearly a decade. He really seems to believe it.
The “it” into which he seems to have stepped seems to be the hostility of the masses who lack the good sense to understand his apt analogy: how can anyone not understand that homosexuality is like addiction to a drug? It would be interesting to know what the gateway drug for this addiction is. The glory hole? Teletubbies? Organic tomatoes? The feather boa? If he could argue for such a gateway, then there would be nothing to step into.
Election results show that the man has received more than 50% of the vote on three elections. Why, oh, why do Texans insist on forcing the rest of the country step into this over, and over, and over?
I need to clean my browser while Perry cleans his boots.
