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Decay had begun to show in some HP offices. Mice skittered in the corridors. Spiders fell from cracked ceilings. As the company cut back on trash pickups, detritus piled up, and in one location workers took garbage home in their cars. Upon arrival, Apotheker was informed that HP was missing 85,000 chairs. The figure was so farcical that he had to check to make sure it was right. It was.
How Hewlett-Packard lost its way - Fortune Tech
This article on HP’s recent troubles reads more like European history of constant warfare and shifting alliances.
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He bought his AAirpass in 1987 for his work in investment banking. After he added a companion pass two years later, it “kind of took hold of me,” said Rothstein, a heavyset man with a kind smile.
He was airborne almost every other day. If a friend mentioned a new exhibit at the Louvre, Rothstein thought nothing of jetting from his Chicago home to San Francisco to pick her up and then fly to Paris together.
The frequent fliers who flew too much - latimes.com
American Airlines used to sell unlimited first class fight passes anywhere from $250k to millions of dollars. The pass holders’ flights cost the airline too much. So, of course, loopholes were exploited, people were blackmailed, etc. by the airline to get out of honoring these passes.
Posted on May 14, 2012 with 1 note
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This means operating in countries where many multinationals fear to tread; building walls made of shell corporations, complex partnerships, and offshore accounts to obscure transactions; and working with shady intermediaries who help the company gain access to resources and curry favor with the corrupt, resource-rich regimes that have made Glencore so fabulously wealthy. “We conduct whatever due diligence is appropriate in each situation to ensure we operate in line with Glencore Corporate Practice,” said spokesman Simon Buerk, when asked how the firm chooses business partners and local representatives.
A Giant Among Giants - By Ken Silverstein | Foreign Policy
At some point in modern times, being outraged became the preferred pastime for the intelligentsia. If you want to feel like you got punched in the gut, read this piece on Glencore and how crazy rich they are and just how plain crazy they are.
Posted on May 8, 2012 with 2 notes
Source: foreignpolicy.com
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You’d see this brand-spanking-new KFC in the middle of this sea of brown shacks, and people were in there, loving the product,” he says. While there’s little doubt that the continent will be more challenging than China, he thinks it’s ripe for explosive growth: “Nothing shows that we’re more global than if we can build a business in Africa that no one else has.
KFC’s Big Game of Chicken - Businessweek
Fastfood colonialism. KFC sales are sagging in the US but booming overseas in countries such as China.
Posted on April 17, 2012 with 1 note
Source: businessweek.com
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Only one problem: Nobody could find any certified organic and fair-trade farms that produced some of those ingredients.
The solution: Get into the farming business. By 2008, Dr. Bronner’s owned a 200-employee fair-trade coconut-oil operation in Sri Lanka and a 150-employee palm-oil plant in Ghana, and had partnered on a peppermint-oil operation in India. Maybe the most audacious fair-trade project so far has been a partnership that combines olive oils from farmers in the West Bank and Israel, and has become a symbol of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence.
The Undiluted Genius of Dr. Bronner’s
You should dilute Dr. Bronner’s soap, but take in their amazing ethos full-strength. A feel good story that will leave you tingling like their peppermint soap.
Posted on April 13, 2012 with 1 note
Source: inc.com
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Money can be like an energy, fueled by the desire to make a mark in the world, to create products and experiences that are loved and shared. In a discussion of his experiment in an online forum, CK describes what he’d do with outsized profits: (a) buy a home and (b) reinvest in future creative projects. This is a more common sentiment among the Wilt Chamberlains of the world than is widely understood. If CK’s Beacon Theater performance continues to sell, he might enter the ranks of the top 1% by AGI on the strength of digital downloads alone. He wouldn’t necessarily be there permanently — a notion he alludes to in his set when he jokes about living differently from his audience members for the next 18 months or so — but of course that is true of many top earners, who enter the top 1% when they experience a particularly flush year and then drop out (though I suspect they generally don’t fall very far).
Oh, intentionality! National Review tries to cast Louis CK as a conservative because he said money can be like an “energy” fueled by creativity and will. They see that statement as akin to fictional Gordon Gecko’s “greed is good” speech.
Louis CK’s original statement embraces something far wider than capitalism’s notion of money. Furthermore, in a follow-up statement (at the same page as one linked above), Louis CK states:
I never viewed money as being “my money” I always saw it as “The money” It’s a resource. if it pools up around me then it needs to be flushed back out into the system.
While he’s investing some money into future projects and for himself and his kids, he picked five charities to split $280,000. Though you can interpret that as a form of tax sheltering, it sounds very far from what Gordon Gecko would do with his million.
I just find it funny that when someone makes a name for himself with his tight craft and a creative way to market it, everyone wants to claim the person and his achievements as their own. Either that or conservatism has run out of its heroes, judging from the candidates fielded by the GOP.
Intentionality be damned. When you find success, get ready to be everyone’s figurehead, your words twisted and forged into their credo.
Posted on February 4, 2012 with 5 notes
Source: nationalreview.com
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Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.
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I learned that money can be a lot of things. It can be something that is hoarded, fought over, protected, stolen and withheld. Or it can be like an energy, fueled by the desire, will, creative interest, need to laugh, of large groups of people. And it can be shuffled and pushed around and pooled together to fuel a common interest, jokes about garbage, penises and parenthood.Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater
Go go go pay your $5 for the Louis standup special. It’s so worth it. This human being, Louis C.K., is so magical he freaks me the fuck out.
Posted on December 13, 2011 with 8 notes
Source: buy.louisck.net
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Fashion is very tough and we shouldn’t forget that before designers were money-makers they were artists. Galliano was an artist, McQueen was an artist. These people are very fragile and can’t support this pressure.” She thinks that globalisation has contributed, because, “It’s difficult to please a woman in Shanghai, Rio and Paris, and to design a jacket that will suit all three of them. It’s difficult for a brand to talk to a lot of people, to seduce all these new customers, and sometimes designers don’t have the shoulders for it.” She adds, “It’s good for business that you can buy Dior in Shanghai or Brazil. I would prefer to find something different from what’s in Paris, but it’s over – a dream – and you can’t go back now.
FT.com / Life & Arts - Lunch with the FT: Carine Roitfeld
Carine Roitfeld profile in Financial Times. She still won’t discuss what happened between her and Emmanuelle Alt, or exactly why she left Vogue Paris.
What she says about globalization is true in art, music, movies. The surface tension of the common denominator isn’t enough to support true artists. Much of fashion is driven by consumerism, materialism and vanity. But who will truly adore and appreciate the dead bird McQueen headpiece?
Source: ft.com
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Since January, ALP been producing and delivering combinations of live bacteria to some 170 officially recognized Emmentaler producers to use in their cheese. The bacteria has specific DNA sequences that can prove whether the cheese is authentic Swiss Emmentaler.
The new, traceable cheese will start arriving in stores in May, said Mr. Kriech, as production rules dictate Emmentaler must mature for at least four months before it can be sold. Employees of Switzerland Cheese Marketing will then be on the lookout for counterfeit cheese, including shredded versions used in warm dishes that are easier to fake because there is no rind with the dairy’s number.
Once a suspicious cheese is sent back to the lab, scientists will extract the entire DNA from about one gram of cheese and then search it for the specific DNA sequences to see if the bacteria added by the dairies are present, according to Mr. Wechsler.
Love your Swiss cheese? Careful, it could be a knock-off - The Globe and Mail
Emmentaler cheese with engineered bacteria whose DNA will be used to authenticate cheeses. Protecting tradition and rights is important, but high capitalism applies science in the weirdest, most useless ways.
Posted on May 13, 2011 with 5 notes
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Or, in the Situationist’s case, reach out and get into potentially awkward encounters with them. The app, just released for the iPhone today, lets members upload a photo and pick from a short list of situations they’d be open to finding themselves in — from “Hug me for five seconds” to “Help me rouse everyone around us into revolutionary fervor and storm the nearest TV station.” Whenever a member is nearby, users get an alert about their desired situation. What’s with the radical politics? The app’s creators say it’s a reference to the Situationists, the same political and artistic movement that inspired the May 1968 riots in Paris.
Situationist App Helps You Talk to Strangers — Daily Intel
Guy Debord, why did you leave us? We need you now more than ever because there isn’t an app for that, the true revolutionary spirit and sense of play you had.
There’s no escape from the tidal wave of bullshit that swallows everything. There’s no outside and no outsiders. I knew this for a long time, but I feel it knowing Situationism is an idevice app.
Posted on March 19, 2011 with 22 notes
Source: New York Magazine
I was laid off 2 days before my birthday in 2009, a dismal blessing. I miss health insurance and payroll, but I haven't bought bread since the pink slip because I have time to bake.
Sometimes I'm a serious job hunter, sometimes a serious slacker, but mostly, I'm an underemployed, freelance Jaqueline of many trades including writing and dogsitting. Either way, I scrapbook my finds and activities here for your benefit and amusement.
Follow me on Twitter if tv/movie/pro-cycling spoilers and unplanned live tweets won't hail on your parade. And yes, I do work blue so don't be huffy with me if you don't like cursing or merciless roasting of public figures.
You can look at my other blog Fashion Corpuscle if you like fashion. The ruins of my crumbling Tumblr blog empire awaits internet archaeologists.
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