LET’S BE FWENDS ISSUE #41:
THIS AIN’T THE WORST YEAR EVAR .
“Die Lage ist hoffnungslos, aber nicht ernst”
~ Karl Kraus__
The situation is hopeless, but not serious.
Doomba
Source:richwhitehouse.com
So. I don’t even know how to start this. Let’s try the facts first:
When a Roomba robotic vacuum cleans your house, it creates a map of the rooms it enters to track its location and which parts of the room it has already visited. This in itself is a pretty difficult problem to solveand Roombas appear to do a very good job.
Roombas store these maps for later reference to optimize their cleaning patterns.
Then there’s Doom, a genre-defining first-person shooter in which you walk through a dungeon, trying to kill all sorts of monsters before they kill you.
Do you have an idea where this is going?
Exactly. To Doomba, a tool that converts your Roomba’s maps of your house into playable Doom Maps. You can finally kill Imps in your living room. Figuratively.
The worst year. Evar.
No, not 2018. I know it felt like it for some of you, but trust me, it absolutely pales compared to a number of years in recorded history. Historians tend to agree that the worst year to be alive as a human was probably 536 A.D:
“The sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year,” wrote Procopius, a Byzantine historian, about 536. For 18 months, the sun would be covered in a thick fog over most of europe and northern asia.
A team of scientists studying ice cores from a swiss glacier now found the reason: A vulcanic eruption in Iceland propelled ashes and dust in the atmosphere, darkening the sun.No crops, no bread but famine and disease for almost 18 months, followed by two more eruptions that brought down the European economy for decades.
What to look for in managers
So, this one starts out as “duh, really rolleyes youdontsay?” revelation, but bear with me, it’s actually pretty interesting:
How managers respond to stress has a measurable impact on team performance.
If you’re leading a team, and get some pressure from outside (being it someone up the org chart or your customers/clients/users), don’t pass that pressure on to your team. It’s pretty hard to do, because there is a problem you - as a manager - have, but there’s nothing you can do directly to solve it. It is your team’s job. That’s frustrating. And what do most people do when they’re under pressure and frustrated: The good old “flight or fight” kicks in. Either withdraw (and try to solve the problem yourself), or pass the pressure on to your team. Both strategies are performance-disasters.
“When managers can stay open, curious, calm, and honest during trying situations, they have a positive impact on their teams.”
The future of work - envisioned by eight writers
Yeah, yeah, I know. The robots are stealing our jobs. Ain’t much left for us to do except robot maintenance, and that will probably be gone, too, once the robots are cheaper doing that.
But maybe not. Maybe it’s not all a dystopian robotic wasteland. Maybe the future has new, and very human, jobs for us in store. Wired has published eight thought-provoking and entertaining short stories about the future of work.
This issue is two days late because of New Year. And travelling. And family, and probably teeth (but we’re not sure on the last one. The others seem solid). Sorry ‘bout that. If you’re such a nice person that you’re conflicted between not minding because I usually try really hard to be on time, and also yes minding because you couldn’t wait for this instalment of Let’s Be Fwends, please high-five yourself, I love you. ❤️
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