Random Thoughts

How do birthplace, education and social capital affect your chances of succeeding in the 21st century? It's a eleventy krillion dollar question. The reality is it is becoming harder to get rich if you are born poor.

Random Thoughts

Have you ever encountered a persistent boss who won't stop messaging you once you have left work or logged off? In Portugal, that behavior is now illegal. The country has recently introduced a law that bans employers from contacting workers outside their regular hours by phone, message or email. Any violation constitutes a serious offense and could result in a fine. Why it took so long?

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What's the same about watch and car collecting? It's about the people. Collectors often say that it is the human aspect that they treasure the most. Who designed the item, who built it, who owned it previously? Who owns a similar item? Where can I meet them and share interest and passion? Such questions explain the enduring popularity of car shows, car rallies, watch shows, and even online watch forums.

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The ability to attract and motivate great people is critical to the success of a company, because a company is just a group of people that are assembled to create a product or service. I think people sometimes forget this elementary truth of business.

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Want to help the climate crisis? Don't toss your old smartphone, fix it. The greenest smartphone is the one you already own. Smartphones seem so small and inconsequential, so unless you have studied the supply chains and realized everything that goes into creating them, you really just have no sense of how environmentally devastating these things are. The right-to-repair movement could help. Let the federal and state laws require device makers to release the tools, parts and repair manuals necessary to allow consumers to have their products fixed by independent shops or to do it themselves.

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Ask, don't tell. Questions also increase buy-in. Because the answer they give is theirs, it's more likely to drive them to action.

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Nature is much more sophisticated than we are. If we were wise, we would have worked in tandem with our natural environment rather than working to destroy it for imaginary gain. 

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Language is a multifunctional device. We use it to make things happen: to ask questions, to give orders, to beg forgiveness. Whatever it can achieve out there in the social world, it can do just as well when it is only ourselves who are listening. I love self-talk. It's silent form, inner speech, inspires me. 

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What if an A.I (Artificial Intelligence) won the Nobel prize for medicine? An imagined scenario in 2050.

Random Thoughts

The U.S has been the largest diamond jewelry consumer market for the last 150 plus years. The next big diamond mine is in the drawers of American consumers. Recycled diamonds are graded and priced on the same scale as newly mined diamonds. These diamonds can be cycled through the market for hundreds, maybe thousands of years without showing any signs of wear, if the diamonds are properly stored and worn. The diamonds can be reset over and over forever. I think diamonds will always remain special forever.

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If you could moderate a conversation between a scientist, an artist, and a philosopher, who would you choose? Why?

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NFT (Non-fungible tokens) is an impossible-to-predict asset. There is no internal logic behind why some viral NFTs do well and others fail. It's pure speculation. The NFT has no inherent value beyond the whim of what a millionaire or billionaire will pay for it on any given day. Whoever loses the game of musical chairs is left holding something worthless. 

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There's this myth that we only use 10% of our brain that, of course, is not true. We're using 100% of our brain all the time. But the way information can be digested and fed to the brain can be very different. I think the next generation is going to be much smarter than we are.

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The story is simple. Climate change is happening faster than anticipated. One consequence---the loss of ice in the polar regions---is also a driver for more rapid global heating and disastrously rapid global sea level rise.

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There's a Hawaiian phrase, nana i ke kumu, which means look to the source, or look to the teacher. The idea is that your ancestors are your guides. When you know where you come from, you're better able to know yourself. And knowing yourself, knowing your story, is one of the best ways to be well.

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It's crucial to get vaccinated, please. There's still a chance you'll get sick, but it's less likely, and it's much less likely that you'll end up severely ill or dead. I think that for people who have not yet been vaccinated, there's no better time. The further we go on in this pandemic, the more we learn that these vaccines are very safe. And the more everyone's risk goes up, the greater the benefit of getting the vaccine. I think that it's also just important for people to realize that cases are going up, it is time to be a bit more cautious, to really think about the level of exposure that we are all undertaking. If we make some small changes and reduce those personal levels of exposure, we can go a long way to making the peak of this current wave much less severe than it otherwise would be. 

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Love or hate boxing, there are surely lessons in life here for all of us: by whatever means you choose, expend every ounce of aggression you have in you and do so in a controlled and mindful way. Keep calm and collected, no matter what blows life lands on you. And when your particular fights have been fought, embrace your foes to forgive and forget, and move on. 

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I don't believe necessarily that there's any kind of a life after death that we can understand or shape in a meaningful way. Yet the spirit of the people who we have known and loved and are no longer with us lives deeply within us. If we embrace it, that offers a kind of immortality for those people. To me, that's as close to immortality that any of us can hope for.

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Want to start chatting to strangers? Pocket your headphones and go for a walk. Just notice people. See what they're wearing, how they're moving. Root yourself in the world. Try to make eye contact and, if they return your gaze, smile, but don't stare. I think strangers can make our lives happier, knottier and more colorful. But most of all, they force us to open our eyes and ears. Try. 

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eBay Founder Pierre Omidyar started the site as a hobby. And as legend has it, when eBay was founded in 1995, the first item sold on the site was a broken laser pointer. When an astonished Omidyar asked the auction winner why he would pay US$14.38 for it, he replied, 'I'm a collector of broken laser pointers.' Perhaps that story is apocryphal, but now nearly three decades since its founding, eBay has gone on to sell everything from laser pointers to luxury megayachts.