Mockrates’ rePUBlic; or, Mockrates vs the Strawmen

As an amateur Hubert Watergipridget scholar, it brings me great joy to bring his renowned Mockratic dialogue to you today. For those who don’t know who Watergipridget is, I assume you’re some sort of illiterate scum of whom the world would be better off without!

Anyway, here it is.

It always astounds me that people refer to cold as bitter and yet the idea of warmth is one synonymous with all things good. Heat is stifling; cold inspiring.

A thin layer of ice had formed on the roads and paths, sending the aged sliding to their doom or keeping them safely locked away in solitude. Nothing is more disheartening to the soul than having to behold the elderly. A man does not wish to be reminded of his mortality but rather wishes for it to come as a surprise when he’s intoxicated and, the gods willing, naked.

Trashymachus and I entered The Chequers, it’s air smoke scented. I ordered a pint of ale called Lumpy Bogsprot and Trashymachus ordered one called Party Down at Hubert’s.

What ho, said Racisites, who happened to be sitting atop a tall stool at an unnecessarily high table along with Idiotus. Mockrates will surely join us in this discussion! Racisites bellowed.

A foreboding statement where Racisites is concerned, being the sort of person who spoke much but said little, and the little he said tended to be utter horseshit. Whilst I support the right to free speech, my support for shutting the hell up is often greater. By the gods I hate him. If I didn’t have to maintain the flimsy façade of civility, I’d happily beat him to death with a snooker ball in a sock.

Having said that, The Chequers was busy and Racisites and Idiotus had a table.

You will have noticed the flags festooning the lamps about town, said Racisites with a grin thick enough for a cart to get stuck in. What is your view on them, Mockrates?

My view is blocked by the walls of the pub at the moment, said I, for I am very witty.

What indeed is your opinion of them, then. Said Idiotus who never appreciates my wit, perhaps owing to his idiocy.

My opinion is that they are flags. Made from nylon or polyester, if I were to guess.

Is that an opinion or an observation? Asked Racisites

Perhaps, said Trashymachus, your question needs refining, Racisites.

Perhaps your mum needs refining, said Idiotus guffawing and glancing about to bask in the guffaws of others, of which there were none.

Very well. What is your opinion on what they represent?

Ah, my dear Racisites, I believe they are said to represent a nation. I declared in a manner that would perhaps be described as smug, were it not for my innate and obvious brilliance.

That’s a poor answer, claimed Racisites.

It is the very answer you asked for, said I. If you wish to go further, as to what a nation represents, then it would appear you are in need of a lesson in metaphysics.

Or maybe, Trashymachus chimed in, good Racisites means what do we make of the act of putting the flags upon the lamps?

Ah, but the two are intrinsically linked and would still require the lesson. For would the intent of those putting up the flags not be influenced by what the flags represent?

They represent patriotism. Pride in one’s nationality! Said Racisites, taking a gulp of his Spanish lager.

The flags represent patriotism? I asked. So, anyone can look upon them and feel patriotic and have pride in their nationality?

Yes. Said Idiotus slamming his hand upon the table.

Even a Frenchman? He could look upon these flags and feel proud of being French?

Absolutely not, said Idiotus.

No one can feel proud of being French, said Racitides.

Then the flags cannot represent patriotism or national pride as concepts in themselves. I took a sip of my beer. It tasted like someone had rubbed an orange on a handful of loose change. And so, I went on, I cannot answer your question unless you can define your terms.

The flags, they represent Britain, they represent Englishness! Said Idiotus as though it were obvious.

Ah, said Trashymachus, now we get somewhere.

If that somewhere happens to be the middle of nowhere at all! I plonked my glass down upon the table with enough force for some beer to slop upon it. A deliberate tactic to enjoy my beer with less beer in it. For are not Britain and England distinct entities? I asked.

No! said Idiotus.

Well… technically, yes. Said Racitides

They are?

Indeed.

So, which do the flags represent?

It would depend very much on the flag, said Trashymachus, there are Union Jacks and St George’s Crosses out there.

Union flags, Trashymachus. I corrected him.

Yes, I said as much.

No, you didn’t. You said Jack, when what you meant is flag.

What’s the difference?

Jack is for when flown at sea. Flag is for any and all other uses of the colours.

Seems a pedantic point to make considering the nature of the conversation, said Trashymachus with the air of a man who was already regretting leaving his house.

We are sophists, good Trashymachus. Teachers to one and all. What are teachers beyond professional pedants?

You make a good point, as always. Said Trashymachus, for I had made a good point as always.

Let us talk of the Union Flag, for the time being. I said. For St George’s Cross raises many questions, such as why the cross of a Cappadocian knight in the Roman army came to represent a tiny island he never came to.

You say the Union Flag represents Britain, though, though it cannot by definition. I said, coolly awaiting the rebuttal I was well equipped to counter-rebut! For, I am the great Mockrates, inventor of the Mockratic method and I had carefully made a clever trap.

It’s the flag of Britain for goodness sake! Blurted Idiotus. Who was an idiot.

A flag of the United Kingdom. I replied.

It’s the flag of the United Kingdom, for goodness’ sake. Said Idiotus.

With no reference to the flag of Wales. Is that not one of the entities which is supposedly united?

Ah yes, I always forget about Wales, said Racitides.

The people with the single greatest flag known to man, and the powers that be (or rather were) decided not to include it in the big one. If there’s one thing the Union Flag represents, it is oversight! I plonked my beer down again, this time with enough force to shatter the whole class and empty it completely.

The point is, said Racisites, I believe the flags were put up in defence of British culture.

And what –

And what, good Racisites, is British culture? Trashymachus interrupted me. I allowed it in this instance, as the man needs a win sometimes.

It’s under threat is what it is, said Idiotus.

His attempt at wit no doubt. He was not a witty man. To look at him was to be aware that somewhere a sack was down one potato.

You see, said Racisites, people effectively have to apologise for being British these days. Britain’s culture is being erased. Walk down a London street and you shall hear almost every language on the planet bar English!

Did not the English spend a great deal of time and resources in attempting to erase the Welsh language? A language that is, by definition, British? Said Trashymachus, which irritated me, because I hadn’t thought about that.

What? No… I mean. It’s a silly language. I had forgotten about the Welsh. We live in the here and now and cannot feel guilty or worry about things in the past that we weren’t around to have any responsibility for. Said Racisites.

Ah hah, so we cannot concern ourselves with the actions of those who inhabited the past? I asked.

No. Would you arrest a man because his great-grandfather committed murder? Said Idiotus.

So, when it comes to assessing British Culture, we cannot allude to the past. Therefore, we should feel no pride in Britain’s role in fighting the Nazis? We should not extol the virtues of any of the ‘British’ inventors and their works, as we ourselves had no direct role in producing them? I had them here. Or at least I would have if my audience had a single functioning brain between them. Alas, what they had was a lumpy sack of prejudice among which hid a single brain cell whose soul focus was keeping them alive, for all the good their living did for the world.

Of course we can be proud. Culture is history. Said Racisites.

Apart from the bad bits, of course. Said Trashymachus, breaking our unspoken agreement that it is I who make the sarcastic remarks. One day I really ought to strike him.

I suppose, said I, it is time for me to get another beverage. Of course. This was a clever ploy to form some witty retorts for future use. As I returned to the table Racisites was unleashing another turgid diatribe.

For example, simply look at the number of mosques that are popping up all over the place. He began. Britain is historically and culturally a Christian nation. Why should we let them start spreading all this Islam about the place?

Religious freedom, one would presume. Said Trashymachus, is freedom not a pillar of British culture?

Erm… said Racisites. Yes. But…

Trashymachus had foolishly disrupted the rhythm of the thing. I had quite the retort brewing. Not wanting it to go to waste, I ploughed on. Of course, said I, my good Racisites, with your great knowledge of history and British culture, you will be aware that Britain is only culturally and historically Christian after a certain point in history. Before the Romans came, our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, worshipped their own version of the Nordic pantheon and had their own cultural practises established. But our Great British ancestors gave up their established culture the moment some foreign invaders brought with them some stories of a magic Palestinian baby. They wholeheartedly embraced this Middle Eastern import. Surely this shows that culture is a rather fluid thing. Trying to preserve culture is like standing on a beach telling the tide to fuck off.

I’d stand on the beach telling the small boats to fuck off. Said Idiotus.

As would I. Said Racisites. I’d love to stand on the beach with a machine gun and shoot them all.

And this was supposedly a representative of Great British values. A man who would preserve Great British culture, revelling in the idea of shooting children for the crime of being born on a different landmass.

Would they not, Trashymachus began, be more deserving of a place in Britain, owing to the fact that they’ve put a lot of effort and taken great risks to be here? All we did was fall out our mother’s fannies.

Traitor! Yelled Idiotus. How dare you make me think about my mother’s fanny!

The fact is, said Racisites, who seemed unphased by the introduction of his mother’s vagina to the conversation – it’s a sad state of affairs that ‘the fact is’ is often followed by anything but a fact. Very rarely does someone say, ‘The fact is, the summit of Ben Nevis is 1,345 metres.’

The fact is, Racisites repeated as though reasserting himself after a brief narrative tangent. Foreigners coming here, are often criminals and will often commit terrible acts of sexual violence!

But my dear Racisites, are you suggesting that native Britains are incapable of committing such acts. Was Britain free of all crime and a bastion of women’s rights before the arrival of foreigners?

Well, no… not exactly, but… I think victims of crime would prefer to be victims of a proper English criminal! Idiotus replied on Racisites behalf.

No… not that. Said Racisites who realised he had got himself stuck in his own trap. The fact is, Britain is a very specific thing and just so happens to adhere to the world I have created in my own head, and anything that deviates even slightly from my comfortable image, is a threat and must be destroyed. And that is why I – I mean they – put up the flags. Look at my flag, it says, this is mine. Everyone must conform to how I want reality to be or suffer my wrath!

We all fell into a depressive silence. Ultimately, this is why we cannot have nice things. For all our talk of intelligence and rationality, unique to humanity, the fragile nature of society is subject to the whims of those possessed of a dangerous mix of ignorance and arrogance.

Given the option of a truth, backed up by the evidence of their eyes and ears or the option of a false reality that allows them to revel in their worst prejudices, humanity will, by and large choose the latter.

And there you have it. The Mockratic method had once again won out. I, the Great Mockrates, had once again proven his intellectual superiority and done a great service to mankind.

We finished our drinks and went back out into the cold.

For those who wish to read more of Watergipridget’s work. You can download a collection of his short stories here.

For those who don’t wish to read more, you can go back to rolling around in your own filth, I guess.

I Woz ‘Ere

I recently clapped eyes on a piece of graffiti that took me back. For starters, I’m not sure graffiti is the popular art form it once was. It’s like seeing a cassette tape. I’m not a nostalgic person by nature, primarily because I was a perpetually confused and nervous child, so I have no longing to return to a simpler time. Childhood is only considered simple because adults assume children haven’t worked out that adults are full of shit and have no idea what they are doing. We all knew.

Still, the graffiti I saw was once popular. It was almost a meme before memes. It was so common as to be considered cliché.

I refer to the hastily scrawled statement, ‘I Woz ‘Ere.’ It rarely actually has the apostrophe to represent the missing H, but leaving it out made me feel uncomfortable. Funnily enough, when presented with woz and ‘ere, I never read it in a youthful slang way but instead with a West Country accent. As if the town was regularly invaded by farmers who wanted their presence to be known.

‘I woz ‘ere’ is an interesting one. I’d go so far as to say it’s incorrectly worded too. It’s got the wrong tense. I don’t think anyone really cares about being remembered. Not after they’ve left the area or indeed shuffled off. We are all fully aware that our lack of presence is of no consequence, especially to us, as we are usually more preoccupied with where we are. Unless we’re dead. In which case we have either ceased to exist or have ventured into another state of existence, in which case we have other more pressing things to worry about, like ghost snakes.

This kind of graffiti doesn’t strike me as done for the sake of destruction either. There’s not any malice in it. There’s no artistic drive or political meaning. There’s no rebellion in it either.

Really, all a person is saying with that is, ‘I am here.’ I’m not certain they are necessarily saying it to anyone in particular. It’s just the act of doing solidifies the concept. It’s a reaffirming statement. I am here. I exist. I am a human, and I am here.

Maybe I just haven’t been looking for it and therefore am mistaken in the belief that ‘I Woz ‘Ere’ ever went away. It’s return, to me if no one else, indicates a turning point.

The need to reassure oneself that ‘I am here’ has never been more important. We live in a strange age where our humanity has been stripped away. It’s been a slow stripping, something that happens after every gym session when my body finally realises what the hell I’ve just done and can no longer move.

Arguably, it started with Facebook. Well, really it started with Myspace, but that at least taught people some basic HTML. Come to think of it, I think I’m eventually going to conclude it started with the advent of modern capitalism, as I am wont to do, but for the sake of not losing focus, let’s start with Facebook.

Facebook, ironically branded Social Media, allowed us to start living our lives a bit more digitally. It was a slow evolution, because it largely facilitated people meeting up in real life and then sharing the photographic evidence of the meet up, lest those who attended forgot they were there (which considering this was around the time I discovered I like drinking is entirely plausible). But then came camera phones, which ultimately led to more and more selfies, which led to a greater focus on the self. Which led to a gradual distortion as to what the self was. The selfie made it all external.

Anyway, I grew tired of Facebook quite quickly, and ditched the whole thing. I swiftly discovered I stopped being invited to things, with the excuse afterwards being ‘You aren’t on Facebook, so I couldn’t add you to the invite.’

I will accept that it’s entirely possible that I wasn’t invited because people didn’t want to invite me and, by not being on Facebook, I simply offered a handy excuse. I can picture people saying ‘Imagine if he was here, talking about the stripping away of humanity. It’s never that deep bro; you’re just autistic.’

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, being detached from Facebook meant I swiftly became detached from certain friends. Facebook boomed into the monster it is today. Instagram emerged. TikTok. All manner of attention hungry apps. People in their thousands, millions even, clutter the internet with content. With images of their apparent lives, with their thoughts, feelings and opinions. There’s so much of it all the time. People have rapidly become these nebulous entities on our screens. We have no real connection. They’ve become soundbites. They’ve become disposable.

Then there’s streaming. Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, they’re all working hard to pump content into our homes. All working hard with the food delivery apps of Just Eat and Uber Eats to ensure we stay in the confines of our homes.

Every so often, something decent slips through, but by and large it’s all slop. There are some ominous industry terms thrown about these days like content not being ‘Second Screen’ enough. Social media giants hired gambling experts to make their platforms as addictive as possible. Streaming giants on the other hand are hiring creatives who can produce shows that can be followed whilst ‘scrolling’.

So, we have social media sapping away at real relationships and streaming services commodifying art and entertainment in a bid to make it as uninspiring as possible.

Then there are dating apps. Romantic relationships commodified. Once upon a time, if someone said you could subscribe to a service that flashed some pictures in front of you and you chose the ones you liked in the hope of sleeping with them, you’d have thought they were part of a weird sex trafficking cult and erupted into violence.

Meeting people has become all the harder and all the more stripped from humanity. On the off chance that you ‘match’ you have the option to ‘unmatch’ at the touch of a button. I wonder how many times, before the advent of online dating, people just wordlessly abandoned an interaction because it wasn’t ticking all their boxes.

People are reduced to profiles. They’re to be judged on a handful of photos and half-a-dozen words.

Then couple the fact that the digital world of the internet is driven almost solely by division. So many sites just want clicks. They want eyeballs on page so they can sell that sweet sweet advertising space. The easiest way to get this is to generate conflict.

Everyone is reduced to labels in all their hollow glory. Millennials, Gen-Z, Boomers, Liberals, Conservatives, MAGA, Alt-right, clinical sounding words devoid of any real meaning.

We’re all told what our labels are and then we’re pitted against each other. We must fight to the last and give no quarter. Those with different labels to us are not human. None of us are. We’re consumers. And we consume slop.

To pay for all this slop and a place to live as we lap it up, we work at screens, tap-tapping away. We have to work endlessly to keep the economy afloat. We work at screens, tap-tapping away. The emptiest of all the words deified to point of being the be all and end all of all things.

Is the content nourishing? Does it make us feel? Is there anything left behind the profiles?

Every so often, it’s healthy to remind ourselves that we are here.

Well, that got out of hand.

On Jobs and Applying for Them

One of the many things I loathe about being a living and conscious being is applying and interviewing for jobs. I don’t understand why we have to go through with this charade. Very few people want jobs and the ones who do either want the really fancy jobs, like actor or chimp tickler. Or they’re just freaks so lacking in imagination that they need to be given dull and repetitive tasks all day every day lest their brain attempt to have a thought leading to a severe aneurism.

It’s a process I can’t ever take seriously, which has led to long periods of unemployment, searching around the flat looking for things I can sell to pay the rent of said flat which has less and less in it with each passing month. I don’t like to assume I’m better than most people, but when filling out an application form or jumping through the widely accepted hoops of this dehumanising process, it’s difficult not to come to that conclusion.

I once, in a moment of madness and desperation, applied to be a police officer. The application questions were so mind-numbingly idiotic that I can only assume the government wants to wheedle out anyone who might ask questions further down the line. One ‘question’ was ‘name a time you had to come up with multiple solutions to a problem.’ More a leading statement than a question, I know.

I answered as honestly as I could saying, ‘People should be doing this all the time. Within seconds the human brain can come up with multiple solutions to a problem. Who on Earth just comes up with one and charges in headfirst?’

The next question as, ‘Why did you choose the solution you chose?’ To which I answered, ‘Because it was the best one. Only the very foolish or the extremely arrogant would think, “You know what? I fancy a challenge today. I shall go with my third best solution and see what happens.”

Then there was, ‘Think of a time you had to deescalate a tense situation.’ To which I said, ‘Done.’

Though I sincerely hope that there is some form of training police have to go through, and the entirety of law enforcement doesn’t just operate on the basis that PC Plod once dealt with an angry drunk one Saturday afternoon.

I didn’t even get an interview, the bastards.

I once applied to be a falconer simply because the job description had the delightful line, ‘You don’t have to own your own falcon; one will be provided.’ I enjoyed the idea of getting signed onto payroll before being taken to the falcon desk. In my cover letter I said, ‘Whilst I have no direct experience with falcons, I did spend a lot of my childhood feeding the local ducks and I can’t imagine their too dissimilar.’

I didn’t even get an interview, the bastards.

One time I did get an interview for some dreary job in a grey building somewhere staffed by people with glazed expressions. At one point the interviewer asked, ‘What drives you?’

And I said, ‘What?’

And he said, ‘What are your ambitions in life.’

And I said, ‘Ambition is the worst vice of the egotist.’

And he said, ‘What?’

And I said, ‘Every violent dictator throughout history has had ambition. Every narcissist, sociopath and generally unpleasant individual is driven by ambition. There’s something terribly arrogant about the idea. This feeling that you need to make your mark on the world. We should leave the world well enough alone, it’s got enough problems as it is.’

And he said, ‘Well… it doesn’t have to be world changing. Just a personal goal.’

‘Oh,’ said I, ‘In that case, my ambition is to never sit through another interview again.’

I didn’t get the job, the bastards.

I understand you’re supposed to embellish your accomplishments, selling them in the most positive lights. Occasionally, you have to bend the truth a little. Though I often bend it to the point it’s folded in half. My CV for one job states that I set up and managed an online sales division for a company. Which is not necessarily untrue. But in reality, when temping in an office I was asked to get rid of some fans, so I set up an eBay account and sold them.

I was interviewed for a ‘Cash Planning’ job in which I was asked, ‘Are you good at maths?’

‘Yes,’ I said with conviction.

‘What’s 12-and-a-half percent of 250,000?’

‘I dunno.’

‘Ah, well you might need to do these quick sums in the job. But anyway, how are you with talking to people on the phone?’

’18 thousand!’

‘I beg your pardon.’

’12-and-a-half-percent of 250,000.’

‘No.’

‘Was I close?’

‘Not really.’

I didn’t get the job, the bastards.

I just hate the pretence of it all. I have an inability to ‘play the game’ as people say. I don’t like the game; I struggle to understand the rules. We all know learning the rules of a game is the most boring thing in life. I get the impression that it’s similar to snakes and ladders, except the ladders lead nowhere and the snakes kill you.

My birth was something I was never consulted on. If I had it explained that I’d be dragged kicking and screaming into this world, whereupon I’d have a few terrifying and confusing years to get as adjusted as I can, before being abandoned for hours a day five days a week and a temporary child prison for a number of years, before being told I’d then have to spend the remainder of my life doing tasks I have no interest in order to be able to afford food, I’d have advised against the whole thing.

Why do we have to pretend we want jobs? Particularly when most jobs can be done by a trained monkey. It doesn’t even need to be trained particularly well.

I lost my temper at a hiring manager once when I was told that I ‘clearly demonstrated a high level of knowledge and competence, but lacked enthusiasm.’ So, I could do the job that needed to be done but wouldn’t smile gleefully like a mad man. I responded that, ‘Your product is Data Visualisation Software. Who on Earth is going to be enthusiastic about that? More to the point, how do you gauge enthusiasm? I don’t outwardly display emotions because, if I did, I’d be forever screaming into the faces of one and all! Enthusiasm means nothing!’

We’re all forced to be alive. We’re all forced to get jobs. Why the hell should we appear grateful for this?

Anyway, buy this book.

It contains many short stories leaning heavily on absurdism and irony to cover up a lack of talent.

Whatever comes out the drawer

CEOs are weird. Weirder still is how they are often revered. There are two ways to become a CEO. Found the company or just be lucky and know people. Theoretically, I could found a company right now and put myself as founder/CEO and whack that on my CV. I could start appearing on terrible podcasts where I talk about how great I am and how it’s my innate greatness which got me to the position of CEO, and anyone who’s not at least a managing director is a victim of their own shortcomings.

I read recently that Mark Zuckerberg, famous thief, wears the same T-shirt everyday to save time and prioritise his decision making. Many business bros see this as an indication of his genius and a driver of his success. I personally question the decision-making skills of someone who may become paralysed by one of the first decisions of the day. Though perhaps I’m doing myself a disservice. Maybe deciding what shirt to pull out of the drawer/wardrobe/pull out of the hamper and give the sniff test is a tough decision for you mere mortals. The fact that I can do it in seconds is just indicative of my genius.

Then you have Steve Jobs who, apparently, thought showers were unnecessary and yet, apparently, washed his feet in toilets. Is my lack of business success down to my refusal to put my feet in the toilet?

It’s also interesting to note that worshippers of CEOs always brush over a business’s failings. They either choose not to mention them completely, put blame elsewhere or use the classic ‘failure is the greatest teacher’, though only if you have unlimited money. Failure was not a great teacher for my uncle Brian who, in an attempt to brew bathtub gin, was killed when the still exploded. The silliest thing was he was CEO of a major gin company at the time.

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of looking at LinkedIn – that vacuous hole of self-aggrandising nonsense and empty epithets – you will no doubt have seen posts which claim to have an exhaustive list of characteristics of ‘successful’ people. Sometimes, they’ll helpfully juxtapose them against unsuccessful people so you can really sort yourself out. Not only are these ‘traits’ often open to interpretation or almost impossible to quantify in any meaningful way, the people who post this lunacy have obviously never heard of the survivor fallacy/bias. Many people society might deem to have ‘failed’ will also have the very traits that apparently lead to success, such as my other Uncle Stevie, whose artisanal pottery company never took off. He was found cooked in his own kiln. This is because failed businesses rarely stick in the mind. The CEOs of failed businesses are rarely in demand for profiling. They have to fail pretty spectacularly in order to have any staying power, perhaps leading to the collapse of a government. It’s also, because the sort of people who post this shit want to pretend they are special.

CEOs tend to earn an obscene amount of money. This is fine as far as I’m concerned; take what you can get. What I dislike is this idea that they deserve such money or are in someway earning it.

There is a point where the amount of work one can do can’t possibly increase anymore, but salaries (and bonuses) can keep going up as much as people want. Though the busiest job I ever had was IT support where I was paid £19k annually. Since I was fired for instigating an office-wide rap battle, every job I’ve had has paid me more for considerably less work. However, I am not an indicator of the norm, seeing as I have somehow got by despite having an aversion to work of any kind. I can only assume businesses keep me around as an example of how not to be.

Let’s be honest, no office job is what you can call ‘hard’. Going down the mines is hard. Being a teacher who’s responsible for 30+ children, all of whom you are expected to keep alive whilst also educating is hard. Being a nurse is hard. Deep sea welding is probably difficult, I presume. I can’t weld on land and can only assume that being under 500 feet of water makes the whole thing more complicated. Responding to emails and attending meetings is not hard. There’s that theory that get enough monkeys in a room typing at random for an infinite amount of time and eventually they’ll produce Shakespeare. Give one monkey an hour and a half and they’ll have a pretty good marketing strategy typed up.

Here is often where business bros say things like ‘ah, but CEOs bear the weight of responsibility. The buck stops with them. If the company fails, it’s on them.’ Which sounds reasonable until you hear about CEOs earning millions, sometimes tens of millions and sometimes hundreds of millions to ‘step down’ after overseeing nothing but failure. I know words can be tricky and meanings can sometimes shift, but I would not define risk as ‘even in the worst-case scenario, you’ll get enough money to live off for multiple lifetimes.’ It’s so common for this sort of thing to be included in a CEOs contract that there’s a term for it. The Golden Parachute or The Golden Handshake.

We can talk about the morality of such things and the idea of peak capitalism until the cows come home (which may be a while as, judging by their holiday photos, they’re having a great time), but the point is, I read that Mark Zuckerberg wears the same type of shirt every day to save time and prioritise decision making, and that really annoyed me.

You can read a collection of short stories that has absolutely no relation to any of the above here: The Tiny Compendium of Ridiculousness