Foxconn

The top sign you’re not running a healthy workplace: Your employees are committing suicide.
Top sign you’re an idiot CEO: You forbid your employees from committing suicide if they want to keep their jobs.
Hey, isn’t this an indication you’re running your company the wrong way?
Idiots.

BP – Beyond Puke

The ad the Financial Times refused to print

I read the Financial Times and normally love it, but this ticks me off. Apparently they refused to print this ad, so I guess I have to.
Spread it around.

Comedy Central at the UN

Emotionally I love the UN, so it’s a shame that it sometimes is such a democratic tragedy.

Like last week when five new members were voted into the United Nations Human Rights Council. Which paragons of human rights were they? Angola, Libya, Malaysia, Thailand and Uganda.
I can’t stop laughing/crying.

To estrenate

Borrowed word of the week: estrenate (v.) to wear or use for the first time. Such as the rubber skirt, or whatever it is, above to the office Christmas party.
It’s a great Spanish verb (estrenar) that deserves to spread.

They grow up so fast

The new prime minister of the United Kingdom, David Cameron, is younger than I am. That’s the first time that has happened with a world leader, but I’m happy to announce that it doesn’t bother me.

When I was around 16 and complaining that something I daydreamed would happen to me hadn’t taken place yet, a wise friend of my Mom said: “But that’s not the way you live your life.”

Exactly, why would something magically happen to me if I haven’t taken the smallest step towards making it so? David Cameron has lived his life in a completely different way than I have lived mine, so why shouldn’t he be prime minister?

Twinnings

Out of 297 Swedish friendship cities around the world, only eight are from China:

• Linyi (Eskilstuna)
• Shanghai (Gothenburg)
• Tianjin (Jönköping)
• Guangzhou and Macau (Linköping)
• Tangshan (Malmö)
• Yantai (Örebro)
• Tong Ling (Skellefteå)

This deserves to change. For instance, where is Stockholm?

Esse, non videri

Marcus Wallenberg, the patriarch of the mighty Swedish Wallenberg family, had a motto that is now commonly used for the whole clan. It reads “Esse, non videri” and I have never heard it translated as anything other than “Acting without being noticed”, meaning sneaking under the radar. Moving without shaking. I have even seen a member of the Wallenberg family being interviewed and not correcting the reporter’s misinterpretation.

In fact, it means nothing of the sort. “Esse, non videri” means ”To be, not to seem to be”. It means to actually be what you claim to be, not merely brand yourself as being it. With the focus on appearance over substance in corporate pronouncements these days (“We strive to be seen as ...” rather than ”We strive to be ...”), you can see where they might have problems understanding its meaning.

Apparently even the Wallenbergs themselves.