ESG in the Consulting Industry

On being a horrible consultant. I think the best consultants, from a P&L point of view, are happy to sell ideas, regardless of consequences. I have the deficiency of having too few ideas ... or I fall into the category of people who doesn't want to sell an idea if it doesn't get implemented, since it costs too much to produce, and there's no long-term upside to the sunk cost of thinking about whatever got sold.

Sometimes people think, what's the matter with selling something that gets processed into shit? Well, generally I prefer not to verbalise an offensive idea, but if I had to think about it ... you see, the people who buy ideas, then create shitty products and companies are living in the same city, or general world, as me. I don't want to go about the world and encounter this shit where I got involved in the supply-chain.

A client that doesn't follow advice, makes the air smell bad, and that is worse for life.

Integration with the 3Fs

 I find people who value food, friends, and family, to be incredibly depressing. The ways I have found to make them interesting is to find a common business ... sell them something, or buy something from them. Otherwise stimulus must be sought from people with other interests.

Goals are Contingent on Cognitive Foundations

Many people ( not a pun ) aren't clear about what they want ; concepts such as "desire" and "power" are contingent on concepts such as "self" and "other", and in many people's minds, the concepts are unfirm ... so the verbalisation of what one wants in society is only vaguely correlated with specific ideas, as the foundational ideas are often unspecific ... 

Moats : or what makes some business worth doing?

 A lot of goods and services are fun to run, but there's no moat. So for this sort of business, you're looking at one of three options 

(a) find or build a moat, or some non-moat USP ( like a flamethrower that never runs out of fuel )

(b) commit to running without a moat ( reduced valuation / growth potential ... i.e. most unambitious businesses )

(c) do something else

Note, of course, being the number one for customer service is a distinct brand value proposition ( moat ). Maybe that's the answer for most boring situations.

infarction

When my heart stops, just report that it failed. No need to play the victim. No need to anthropomorphise every weakness, and every threat.

But, it is already ingrained in our culture. That is the official term. Attack.

Only time, hurts you.

Toddlers

These are the fools around us who cause administrative expense and investment loss, as a result of not malice, but clumsiness and ignorance. These are part of the social landscape, such that in ordinary society we are required to have mechanisms in place to manage such contingency. 

---

The management of a research portfolio requires attentiveness to mission-critical distractions. 

Weaknesses : Calculated research and development is a capital neutral situation. I suppose it is considered difficult to study something without positive feedback. To the operators, it can feel like a waste of time, of course. And time costs money. 

Threats : Negative feedback occurs when a business is harassed to incur expenses for secondary operations, while actively in pursuit of core development. A static balance sheet can be threatened with huge risks, attached to flimsy probabilities of good return, or strong probabilities of mediocre return.

The divestment of distracting priorities is a top priority for businesses under duress.

Learning to Manage Money

The supply chain for development of my capability to manage money is now roughly:

- limited vocabulary of metrics and relationships between metrics 

- overloaded onboarding mechanism

- recreation and rest for bottlenecked mechanism

- not resting, feeding, exercising, fast enough ( controllable but discipline hasn't been cranked to 90, let alone 99 ... probably hovering around 65-75 at this point )

Daily Inspiration : null

 If I had to name people I admired, I'd probably try to pick folks somewhat off-centre. (I didn't study for this.) First name that comes to mind is Soros. Second is Thiel. Third would probably be Shkreli, but after Googling the details of his situation ... I don't think he's a very careful operator, so I'll scratch that and. What, fourth ... Kant? I used to think Lattner's work was cool (I still do), and Bellard's work is much better known. What does it matter if one answers a soundbite question, and with soundbite answers? No one consistently inspires me on a daily basis.

Geography

 This sabbatical has opened up space for me to study geography. It extends my prior considerations of anthropology ( 1999-2005 ), and integrates with what I have learnt about technology and commerce ( 2005-2023 ). This is really low priority stuff ... I avoided it for the longest time, we had books of history at home which were borrowed by my peers around the ages of 10-14 ... now, I have nothing else to read to balance out my technical studies, as I seem to have sucked in a ton of contemporary culture about cars, fashion, and food ... and I probably know more than I want to about these things, so I am diversifying further back upstream through history, and to the geopolitics of regions farther from where I live.

Ultraviolet Light Pollution question

Question : - do any of you own a UV-A, UV-B electronic meter, and what are your readings inside the home, far and near your windows?

Premises :

- UV-A/B/C refers to long, medium, and short-wave

- C is mostly filtered out by the atmosphere

- B is 95% filtered out by the atmosphere

- A is most of what's left under the clouds

- A and B are reflected by clouds and other surfaces, so are in ambient sunlight, even indoor

Testing :

- there are testing cards for a few RM, for pets, this is less interesting

- there are testing meters for RM300-RM800

Theocracy x Technocracy

 As I read up on the recent history of politics in the Middle East, I'm reflecting on the dialectic between technocracy and theocracy in Islamic countries, whereby of course my own context is Malaysia where I live. Ultimately, we see that both technocracy and theocracy are tools manipulated by individuals to further individual interest. 

It is rare to see political actors moving in directions which improve the material circumstances of a people. In general, any decline in material circumstances is godwashed with copy about spiritual advancement. Spiritual qualities may take both theistic and atheistic forms of course, as spirituality is the bucket of things which elude quantification.

Personally I find that all conscious experiences can be quantified - but that is not the case for most people, which is why politics is always about manipulation of this deficiency in the general population of humans.

minimised thermoregulation costs

 Ambient climate too cold :

1. insulate & feed (fuel) & move (oxidise)

2. body temperature rises to optimal cognitive point & relevant signalling molecules increase executive function ( minimised thermoregulation overheads )

3. begin study

Ambient climate too hot :

1. feed & move

2. body temperature rises above optimal cognitive point

3. reduce body temperature to ( minimise thermoregulation overheads )

4. begin study

Neural Development : all systems go

 Increasing the complexity of both the central nervous system and the motor nervous system at the same time is hard. A lot of things move around. Moreover MNS rewiring consumes more CNS resources, beyond what the CNS needs to do for verbal development. Hm

I'm taking a breather to listen to the lion dance drums from the houses below my flat. I suppose the "relaxation" or "chill" sensation comes from pausing executive decision making, and instead observing the executive decisions of others. Perhaps I have been spending too much time in executive formation.

I will think about this for a bit.

Xref: https://sextechandmergers.blogspot.com/2024/07/lens-art-vs-engineering.html

Longitudinal study : months 17

 Month 17. What was I doing in m17 of previous campaigns?

College : 2001-09+17 : semester three, I think, electronic music ... 

Post-college : 2005-05+17 : second job, first job in commercial sector, data services at a management consulting firm

Graduate studies 1 : 2007-?+17 : first job in F&B, bartending on Changkat

Graduate studies 2 : 2010-12+17 :  stopping employments because they were too distracting

Commercial studies : 2013-02+17 : mad year of four jobs and 10x wage growth 

Own business : 2015-07+17 : stabilisation of operations

Middle-management : 2020-12+17 : developing people 

Graduate studies 3 : 2023-03+17 : swim-read rituals

feareview

Fears and how I manage them:

1. Fear of running out of money

I don't actually mind, but for the sake of gamification, I make myself anxious. I have had incredible runways, I have taken huge risks which bet the whole runway, multiple times. Won some, lost some. I do need to avoid making myself unproductively anxious, so I will need to further my tactical review here.

2. Fear of not finding love

This is more a burden of empathy with the people I fuck, than the sort of issue I bring to their tables. It is important to understand the demands of clients, in order for good business to proceed, and for some sorts of business, understanding the client requires becoming the client.

3. Fear of boredom / nothing learnt

Ah, that's more my flavour. My entire adult career has been planned around managing this risk. On we go.

4. Fear of annoying other people unintentionally

This is mostly mitigated via intentional acts of irritation. Better the devil you know. Also, no better way to learn than to practice.

5. Fear of tactical error

This is basic minute to minute situational awareness. See 1.