Death potato story

1. There were some potatoes.

2. The stove was cooking.

3. The pot was stewing.

4. A cook, picked up a small potato and put it into the stew.

5. Stop, said the stove, what about the mash?

6. We don't need a mash, we're making stew, said the cook.

7. Will it taste ok, asked the pot.

8. Doesn't matter, said the cook, we're serving stew.

9. Why this potato, asked the pot?

10. Because, said the cook, the customer asked for a potato, in their stew.

Ergo, death potato.

The end.

Lucid Daydreams : Structure and Function

I used to set aside hours or days for thinking. Colleagues said it was intense, and I didn't bother explaining. The reason is roughly like this : when a brain is focused on one task, or process, it is less actively thinking about other tasks. Since storage durability in brains depends on recomputation, certain memories fade as their media atrophies. Day-dreaming is pretty much this. One has to actively assign resources to the conscious reprocessing of ignored memories, in order to ensure their durability. That is why we must assign time for reflection upon the subconscious.

Personally, one thing did make daydreaming easier over the past few years ... aural noise isolation and cancelling tools. My main problem isn't aural amplitude per se, rather it is that being able to discern the semantics of others' speech distracts me.

Beware of Lags Introduced "for compliance"

A pretty good indication of the wrong way to do regulatory compliance in businesses is, that when you introduce a process which increases compliance, you then hear people complaining that there is a time trade-off. This only happens if you try to jam in more work, with insufficient resources to do the work - either insufficient labour or automation was acquired. But that is the case with all sorts of little projects isn't it? Everyone has an idea, and they just straight into execution without consideration of history, and the historical reasons for the existence of professionals.