Easy Way Out?

I was talking to someone today (not in a validation-seeking way) and they mentioned something that’s been on my mind for a while.

Went into Hard Rock and took out my card to pay for a bunch of things when the girl serving me noticed my student ID and said she had been to Man Met as well. We exchanged a few words and she told me it was politics and English that she had studied. Concluded with ‘Here I am’ and motioned in a way that included the entire bar. I never went into detail as to why she graduated and was still in Hard Rock but then I look around at depressing data that shows a lot of graduates are jobless deluxe types. Mum and dad are still funding their sitting on the sofa and not doing much all day in hopes that the economy will get better or that they’ll find a temporary job and so on and so forth.

A lady in The Times also criticised the fact that a lot of students don’t do any kind of work, not even bar staff positions because their parents think it shouldn’t interfere with their studies. And I’m probably one of them but mostly because my parents would rather know I’m studying and motivated to do so, rather than drinking my student loans. For what it’s worth, they’re in marketing and market research and most of the things I know I learned from them since before I went into university. I think and look at Rory Sutherland and he reminds me of my dad. Except Mr. Sutherland is in the UK. And my dad isn’t Welsh. I never worked in a ‘bar staff’ type of job or on the tills anywhere but having said that, I worked in an advertising agency prior to university and had other jobs whilst studying. Just not the serving hamburgers in McDonalds type jobs. Not because I couldn’t bear myself to do it but every interviewer took me aside and said “look, what makes you think that we’d want to hire someone who will just leave in 2 years when they graduate and get a 20k job a year?” This was Debenhams, by the way.

I was slightly dumbfounded, what, is 2 years not good enough if I stay as say, a barista? Christ, some people work for 6 months and leave and 2 years sounds like too little to these people? That and Starbucks said that they have people regularly coming in and stealing food but we should just close an eye to that as it’s ‘the way things are’ and ‘food gets thrown out anyway’. They would want me to go through with a crap job and then tell everyone what a great workplace it was? So what did you like about your time there? Oh, the tramp that came in at 9 am every morning and stole blueberry muffins. He was quite funny and cunning, you should have seen him!

I volunteered, I made things while in university and helped people but never had a slave labour type of job. Sometimes I wish I do but then I realise that if I had, my university work would have ended up suffering. Seeing as I pay for it, and not the Student Loan Co, my responsibility lies 1st with the work I do for uni and secondly with what a potential employer might think they want. And don’t get me wrong, I like the 9 to 5. I love it even, it gives me a sense of purpose and the feeling of doing something constructive with the right people.

My friend was telling me that he’s not applied for an advertising ‘graduate scheme’. I haven’t either. Maybe it sounds horrible of me but my arguments are that

• a) some take 2.5 years and then you’re stuck working for the same company for about as much – my degree was 3 painful years for things that will change the next. More of the same education after education?
• b) some are just crash courses in what I spent 3 years learning, for people who haven’t spent 3 years learning but decided they want to get into advertising. And you still have to work for the company that takes you onboard!

Nothing wrong with the companies, if you apply it means that you like them to some extent or that you’re desperate. But can’t I like them and want to work for them without having to be taught the things I’ve spent 3 years and £15,000 learning already?

On Uniforms and Rebellion

What a lovely quote that I have forgotten about:

“It’s everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don’t know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much only in a different way.”

—	J.D. Salinger (Franny and Zooey)

You don’t like the mainstream or conforming to it, you join your own secluded minority but again, you conform. There will never be comfort in knowing that you’ll never be different. Unique maybe in your memories, recollections, reactions and small things but not clothing for certain.

“As if they knew we were coming”

Here’s a rather nice idea but with the wrong, subservient sort of copy to it:

Switzerland Tourism Board, “We do everything for the perfect holiday“

The mountain cleaners are probably the best execution in the group; the flag ironing and cowbell enhancements are also nice and bring out the same idea, which I think was that everything in Switzerland always seems perfect when you visit, you begin to wonder whether it’s like that all year round or “just for tourists”. I tend to agree that it is just how things roll in Switzerland but of course I reserve the right to be subjective.

Critics say that a) it makes you think that everything in Switzerland is man-made and not natural or that b) it’s unrealistic. I also reserve the right to not care about the critics because the two cancel each other. If you want to bring criticism to Switzerland, you can do so about their views on minarets. In the mind of someone visiting Switzerland, yes the landscape looks good. Do they wash it? Do they iron the flags? Do they put up the big and loud cowbells? Of course no one washes a mountain. That’s ridiculous Switzerland is nice.

But ‘we do everything for the perfect holiday’? It ruins everything for me.

Otherwise, what a nice little insight that we tend to overlook because not even Germany could keep up their ‘German precision’ or ‘German engineering’ country cliche. But we all know that swiss-anything is perfect.

It Comes in Numbers

“Facebook’s current privacy model revolves around “networks” — communities for your school, your company or your region. This worked well when Facebook was mostly used by students, since it made sense that a student might want to share content with their fellow students. Over time people also asked us to add networks for companies and regions as well. Today we even have networks for some entire countries, like India and China.

However, as Facebook has grown, some of these regional networks now have millions of members and we’ve concluded that this is no longer the best way for you to control your privacy. Almost 50 percent of all Facebook users are members of regional networks, so this is an important issue for us.”

Mark Zuckerberg in an official announcement – we’ve all seen it

HOWEVER, the Chief Privacy Officer says something slightly different. He points out:

“One of the things we’ve tried to watch is if people under-utilize the controls because they find them too confusing. We also launched friend lists, and we mapped those friend lists to individual privacy settings. We don’t have any raw numbers to share, but we’re not as satisfied as we’d like to be with how people are using those friend lists to make individual choices about what they share with whom. We’d like to see that be done more effectively, and we’re doing some work on that right now.”

Bit like saying that once you have too many people on it or too many strangers potentially seeing your info, you’re not sure what to do with it. At the same time Zuckerberg’s announcement sounds like it’s only getting rid of its college networking tool properties by removing networks.

The Horrid DVD Boxset

I have to warn people that I’m not much of a CD or DVD collector myself but I do buy those things that I know I’ll dip into from time to time (A Space Odyssey), watch entirely all over again (I do with Donnie Darko, my boyfriend does with Withnail & I) or would put on if someone comes round unexpectedly (or not). Other than that I tend to think that plastic boxes are not of much use to me so long as they accumulate dust.

So it would be worth talking about a habit people have: gifting DVDs and box sets in particular.

You think you know someone or you don’t and you get them a DVD that they may have seen, will put on once if you’re lucky and then it will sit in a lonely corner till it gets picked up again, if ever. For instance I know that if I buy my friend an Audrey Hepburn DVD she’ll not only watch it, but perhaps frame it. If I buy my brother a DVD he’ll pile it up in a corner without even watching it because he’s seen it already some time ago and he has so many other films to see with his friends, 6 months ago is old.

But there are people who will bring DVD box sets – and with series, despite loving many, unless I bought it myself it probably means I’m not that keen on watching it. Getting DVD box sets of Lost (all seasons), Mad Men, Californication (?!), Prison Break, True Blood and so on would be a pain in the ass, not a very nice Christmas gift. They’re bound to become the new socks and ties or bad perfume.

It gets worse when you get them from friends who are convinced that you will love them – although I’m not sure how forcing a gift onto someone has ever been fun. Who want you to watch them, or else you hurt their feelings. Every now and then I get harassed by friends telling me to watch things like ‘How I Met Your Mother’ or ‘Nip/Tuck’ or ‘The Big Bang Theory’ and it’s very nice of them to suggest things to enrich my life but I already gave them a shot and they’re just…not for me. Not my type anyway.

It’s another example of overload, the kind I hate and have mentioned in my previous post. Too many people want me to watch or read too many things that, should I have the time, I would gladly read. But time is just a luxury with projects looming, dissertation and everything on the way. If you agree to watch it, they’ll spoil it for you although some spoilers barely make any sense at the first few episodes.

So seriously, in a world where we record our shows and barely have time to watch them, why would you give anyone a DVD box set unless they really want to collect it and didn’t get round to buying it yet?

The Manchester Christmas Market

If you follow me around places on the interwebs you’ll know I have posted quite a few images of the market itself but really, I am so, so happy this place exists and that it’s really well organised (at least to me so don’t ruin my momentum if it was crap for you and you happen to be reading) I have no problem with oversharing the wonderful things and people I have met.

You may or may not like Starbucks. In fact if you buy too much into either one of the sides (fanboys vs. those who believes it’s a big, nasty corporation that makes really expensive crap coffee) I won’t think of you as a very nice person. To me the red cup rubbish looks like nice rubbish & that’s all I have to say. Aesthetically pleasing rubbish is acceptable just for a little bit.

There is fudge, and fudge is always nice.

There were a lot of Dutch people

Chutneys, jams, marmalades

Pure decadence

Even more decadence

Ecstasy

Now if we can all just enjoy the fact that there’s good food, nice drinks that we wouldn’t have tasted of had it not been for the festival, we’ll be much happier for that. If you still don’t think Manchester is a nice place to be at times, read what someone from Yorkshire has to say.

A continuat cu Starbucks Red Cups care sunt gunoaie, dar gunoaie colorate frumos de Craciun

Multi Olandezi

Chutneys, jams, marmalades

Decadenta

Si mai multa decadenta

Extaz!

Climate May be Shabby, But…

It seems common sense to talk about a burning issue in how climate is dealt with, what with the Copenhagen happening on the 7th of December. Yet there’s something about data (don’t get me started on data) that gets me:

“Climate change sceptics who have studied the emails allege they provide “smoking gun” evidence that some of the climatologists colluded in manipulating data to support the widely held view that climate change is real, and is being largely caused by the actions of mankind.”

Climate sceptics claim hacked emails are proof of collusion between scientists

The problem here is saying “manipulating data”. Data itself wasn’t manipulated or fudged to be precise-  and I’m not saying what they did is ethical, and I won’t say it’s hiding ‘an inconvenient truth’ either – it is correct, it’s only the time series display that has been altered in order to do what everyone does nowadays: make data visually attractive and at the same time persuasive.

In case it’s hard to recognise, the ‘trick’ which can count as manipulation (although it hardly seems like you can hide this nowadays) was to extend the plot of a time series in order to show a long-term trend, rather than the seasonal/short-term fluctuations. We do it with soft drinks, ice cream, Cadbury eggs and whatnot probably. The figures are there, just not extended in a chart to do them justice.

That is all!

McLuhan, meet today. Today…

“There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening”

Marshal McLuhan (in “The Medium is the Massage”)

Oh my:

“Nassim Taleb has decided to go into exile courtesy of the imminent reappointment of the man who not only caused the near destruction of the financial system, but with his actions has sealed the fate of America’s middle class. In a post titled “Good Bye! The reappointment of Bernanke is too much to bear” Taleb bids farewell and shares his disgust with the bullshit that the Wall Street – D.C. cabal has become, and the certain destruction that it is leading this once great country to.”

Zero Hedge (via adamcrowe.com)

“The world has never, never been as fragile. Economics make homeopath and alternative healers look empirical and scientific.”

Nassim Taleb

Two Awaited Books

• Grant McCracken – Chief Culture Officer (Jan 2010)
• David Kelly – What Technology Wants (Oct 2010)

Our Subtle

1. If Slumdog Millionaire was the ‘Feel-good film of the decade’, surely someone had to use ‘Feel shit-scared film of the decade:’

2. Dear IKEA, what is this rabbit you suggest of that I could use batteries for?