Cool stuff from François Lavallé. I don’t think I can ever tire from hear Goodhart’s Law expressed in a multitude of different ways, and it’s especially nice hearing it from someone who has run his own business and fell into the trap of running it to achieve KPIs rather than use KPIs to evaluate, well, key performance indicators. Head over to his post to learn more with a bonus history about about Lord Kelvin.
Another great quote in François’ post comes from Mario Bagioli, if Wikipedia is correct, and it states: “when a feature of the economy is picked as an indicator of the economy, then it inexorably ceases to function as that indicator because people start to game it.” I was reminded of this when I read this piece by Simon Enoch in Policy Alternatives about why the Saskatchewan government won’t adopt rent controls despite rent affordability being a massive issue. The post debunks the typical talking points about rent control: that it doesn’t work, that it suppresses affordability and so on. Those talking points often hinge on this very point, that features of the economy are picked as indicators of activity, and worse, as evidence of policy failure. What it doesn’t do is answer its own question, but then expecting the Saskatchewan Party to have a sensible set of evidence-based social policies that benefit poor and marginalized folks is, let’s say, optimistic.
Data matters, both as a portal to the unknown and as a marker of what has been. So two links today to wrap up on, which activate my heart. Patti Digh gets some test results that put her in a liminal space, and Peter Rukavina muses on the scars he carries. Wishing the best for both and for all of us who are discovering that the gap between what we want our bodies to do and what they are actually doing grows a little more every year.
The view across to Ahgykson and looking over towards Comox which is completely shrouded by smoke.
It is smoky here as we enjoy our last day of holiday on the Tla’Amin lands north of Powell River. A big wildfire at Mount Underwood is burning along the Alberni Inlet on Vancouver Island. It is feeding smoke into the south-easterly breeze and funnelling it up Vancouver Island and across the Strait of Georgia, smack into the northern Sunshine Coast. This fire is dangerous and fast growing and I’m worried for my friends at Huu-ay-aht and Tseshaht and in Port Alberni and Bamfield. So far there are no dangers to structures, but power is out, the smoke is terrible and local governments and First Nations in the area have declared states of emergency. We’re expecting a few days of rain starting this afternoon which may help a little. We’ve been relatively free of smoke this summer, unlike a lot of Canada. But here we are.
My friend Tenneson Woolf shares some of his go-to questions for getting started today:
- what is the simple story here?
- What is the simple intent here?
- what is the outrageous intent here?
Simple and easy ways to begin an engagement with a new client and to find the top of mind necessity and purpose for the work. It’s hard for me to know how other consultants work, but he and I share a love of asking questions and letting the other speak. The stuff I hear in first few minutes with a new client is key to understanding how they see their situation coming into a new engagement.
A while ago I wrote about social media sites as enclosures, and that brought to mind the idea that it is a kind of feudal structure. Doc Searls names that today and proposes a way out with the release of a new kind of privacy contract for users and large entities called “MyTerms.” From his post this quote stood out for me:
“Freedom of contract enables enterprisers to legislate by contract and, what is even more important, to legislate in a substantially authoritarian manner without using the appearance of authoritarian forms. Standard contracts in particular could thus become effective instruments in the hands of powerful industrial and commercial overlords enabling them to impose a new feudal order of their own making upon a vast host of vassals.”
That quote is from Freidrich Kessler, a contract law scholar who wrote it in 1943.
Tottenham bottled a 2-0 lead against Paris St. Germain last night in the European Super Cup. We looked really good against the best team in the world for most of the match, but conceded two late goals and lost on penalties. Had we won I would have declared Spurs as champions of the world. Because we lost it’s just a pre-season friendly. I’m unabashedly partisan in these matters.
At any rate, it was good to see the new look that Tottenham will be employing this season under new manager Thomas Franck. A focus on set pieces, including long thrown from Kevin Danso (I love a long throw), a more balanced shape in defence, with a low block of five defenders which made it frustratingly hard for PSG to score. There was excellent communication on the backline, with the full backs not being afraid to mark their men out wide because there was always someone to slide into the inside channel behind them. This frustrated crosses, a number of which drifted into the centre of the box and were headed away by Christian Romero who had only one job. Palinha also looked good.
Going forward Kudus offers some lovely creative play, but we are going to need another decent attacking midfielder as James Maddison recovers from ACL surgery. I love watching this team, and hope they continue to look renewed and confident as they climb back into the upper echelons of the Premier League and make good account for themselves with the Champions League spot they won last year.
From my friend Kavana Tree Bressen comes this story of 120 Indigenous youth who kayaked down the Klamath River. It sounds impressive on its own merits, but it is amazing becasue these were the first people ever to do so. Until whitewater kayaks were invented, the river wasn’t suited to long journeys. And those boats weren’t invented until after that river had been blocked, initially in 1903, with four hydro-electric dams that destroyed salmon runs and radically disrupted the lives of the Nations who depended upon them. This is an amazing story.
Rick Scott has died. Scott was a legendary BC folk music and children’s music performer and provided the soundtrack to my kids lives when they were young. The Wild Bunnies of Kitsilano was on repeat in our house. His work with Pied Pumpkin was legendary.
A scathing critique of a neo-liberal criticism of a classically liberal university, the European University Institute at Crooked Timber. Far from just a spat between two political points of view in the stratosphere of reason, I think this particular conversation captures where we are right now in democratic states. These two paragraphs in particular stood out to me because in the absence of true conversations and commitments to social welfare and democracy, this is where the state of play is in the world in terms of the practice of state-level justice, equality and social services:
Liberalism involves a bundle of commitments: to individual freedom, minority rights, toleration, rule of law, private property, civil liberties, academic freedom, constitutionalism, human equality and the promotion of opportunity. Liberals tend to view these commitments as mutually reinforcing rather than dimensions on which tradeoffs are possible.
Neoliberals, like The Economist, tend to put the economic freedom bits first and assume that the other dimensions will take care of themselves. Populists are opposed to pretty much everything in that list other than those economic dimensions. As the latter rise in power, the former seem more and more willing to let their social and political commitments fade into the background.
If this is where the conversation is right now, I feel it’s important to join that movement on liberalism while it is still backed by institutions – troublesome as they may be – because they still have the ability to influence policy and keep space open for participation against the rise of populism, fascism and the rapacious demand of the market privatizing everything. Join it and push it to a place of leveraging state and institutional resources to alleviate poverty, and meet basic human needs in a spectacular and generational fashion. I’d be interested on your thoughts on this one.
I’ve always thought that my internal age was 23, which puts me younger in my own mind than both of my children are now. Which is a very odd sensation now. At any rate, I haven’t seen such a good set of thoughts on aging as these 27 Notes on Growing Older(er) from Ian Leslie. The sensation of time stopping inside while it continues on elsewhere is almost impossible to capture. Leslie does it.
Lately, becasue I notice these things, I’ve seen different articles about the inner core of the Earth and its interaction with the surface of our planet. This article in Quanta today summarizes the research and the findings from the smart people working on all of this.
Last night we watch Bob Trevino Likes It, a touching film (and a bit of a tear jerker, I’m not afraid to admit) about a woman who is becoming estranged from her father and finds another man with the same name and befriends him. It’s worth watching, and through the film I found myself going down the rabbit hole of facts about co-star John Leguizamo, who I know nothing about. He starred in the 1990s drag film To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar where he looked substantial young than 30 or 24 years old. He has a fascinating bio, as an actor, playwright and activist, and to my eye seems to be one of the really good ones in the world.
One advantage to being actually 57 is that I got to see The Shuffle Demons in their heyday in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Toronto. I’m glad to know that there are still folks out there having maximum fun with energetic jazz traditions in an ensemble context. Go into your weekend grooving along with Dirty Catfish Brass Band.
Sweet rain has fallen over the past day. An atmospheric river has developed over the coast and is dumping healthy amounts of rain on our parched gardens and nearby wildfires. The low is clinging to the mountains, and everything is a beautiful side of grey and dark green. For a pluviophile like me this is manna from heaven. I’m high on petrichor and delighted by the change in palette. Summer is lovely here on the coast and I love the sunshine and calm days, but rain makes me feel alive.
It’s always refreshing to read jazz metaphors for facilitation and leadership from actual jazz musicians. My friend Amy Mervak is both and today she posted a little book of her writings and reflections on learning jazz and developing as a musician and how that relates to leadership. Give it a read.
Have you met Carisa Hendrix yet? She is a Calgary-based magician, who also performs as Lucy Darling. For some reason her shorts creeped into my You Tube recommendations, especially clips of her character Lucy Darling who is the vehicle for her social commentary in what she calls the “slowest moving artistic genre to address the zeitgeist.” Lucy Darling’s crowd work is lovely. It always starts with “What is your name?” followed by “And whhhhhhhhat do you do?” and it goes from there. She is smart and focused and absolutely dedicated to her craft and so thoughtful about what she is doing and why. Check her out.
Another slinky Internet character is Keystone the cat. Keystone lives in Deep Bay, a neighbourhood on Bowen Island near the Cove and he is the most extroverted and beloved cat on the Island. Keystone stories are legion. He loves people intensely, and he cheers up everyone that he meets, so much so that a friend nicknames him “The Seratonin Cat”. He has his own Facebook page. He even has place of pride on the mural of Bowen Island that greets visitors to our island.