I have a lot of thoughts these days but the company I work for has the excellent policy of prohibiting smartphones at the desk and blocking most websites on our computers! It's an excellent policy for increasing productivity of the workers and eliminating distractions, so it's excellent for the company, but it makes the employees like me sacrifice! But in this day and age, I think it's really necessary for some sort of incentive to get people off their text messages and social media, as people are never really "zoned in" and focused on their own work if they're always thinking about something else.
Follow up addendum on my last post: I found the keys that I was looking for! Turns out it was the lack of care from the previous possession of the keys that's the main problem, with my forgetfulness more of a secondary accomplice. I often am so eager to get on to the next activity (especially after work, zooming out of the office, or rushing out of the car to make it to an appointment, for example) that I often misplace things during that transition period and drop things into spots I don't normally put them, like dropping my keys off after running on a sofa that no one ever sits on in my parents' home so I could rush to take a shower. I call it "Overeagerness syndrome." Chinese people call it "有前手没有后手," or having the initial hand (initiative) but no follow-through hand. I'm all for grabbing something and getting started on a task right away, but don't have the presence of mind to follow through and finish the task by putting the item back where it belongs.
Recently the big fad is facial recognition technology through Facebook and Google and many big technology companies which are developing the technology, and China actually already uses it. It reminds me of the movie "Minority Report," a movie starring Tom Cruise which was released 15 years ago but is still relevant today, a fictional sci fi world where people were identified by having their eyes scanned wherever they go. It's a big issue of privacy whether our faces should be used to identify us wherever we go, where I guess if we are walking through public places we have an expectation to give up some privacy if someone takes our picture or looks at us, but to have someone know every detail about you, have your profile just because you're walking by? Seems like a slippery slope. It's kind of like the FaceApp that became popular this summer, where people took pictures of their face, uploaded onto FaceApp, then made the picture look younger, older, the opposite gender, etc. (the most popular one that lasted for a couple weeks was the older app, gained a lot of traction much like the petition to Storm Area 51, they can't stop all of us). People are willingly uploading pictures of themselves onto an app and identifying themselves already, so should the next step be to just use facial recognition technology to identify criminals, etc.?
MJ finally got into investing when we set up a IRA account for her this year and she had to invest the money we put in! It's interesting how people can react to money and monetary incentives, as my Economics 101 professor told us the first day. Probably also why most finance classes at some point have a stock market game, to get students interested in the market. And to start young, when you can make the most profit over time. Next stop is to listen to financial podcasts, which I find that they're wrong a lot of the time (maybe not 50%, but certainly a significant amount of the time), but it's helpful to learn about trends in the market, what's considered an "expensive" stock (relative to their earnings, PE ratio, etc.) and financial news, which is connected to political news and other news such as the trade war with China but can have a totally different spin. (For example, financial markets actually like President Trump as president, much to the dismay of many of my colleagues/friends). Tesla earnings on tap this afternoon! What a company, what a move to the downside, what a whole lot of short sellers of the stock! Should be interesting!)
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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