Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

Facebook has been advertising a calendar with pooping dogs to me all morning. I am amazed by people who can come up with such things

Some pictures from Georgia Aquarium. Some creatures sometimes look like something out of space 🙂

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Right now, the Miss Universe ceremony is taking place here in Atlanta, and Russia is not participating this year. “the girl simply won’t have time to get an American visa and prepare for Miss Universe”. It’s crazy, they actually prepare for it

Less than a month ago, I was in Warsaw at the royal museum exactly on the day they offered free admission. It seems like it was free for the entire month of November.

Then I went to Stuttgart, and there was free admission to the main art museum due to the Hermes at work exhibition, which was also free.

Today I am in Atlanta, and precisely on that one day of the month when the entrance to the main art museum is free. In all three cases, they sent me to the ticket desk to pick up a free ticket. Long-established processes are probably hard to change.

Working in Atlanta until Friday

Morning news, evening — a cartoon. A delightful one, by the way

https://www.znak.com/2019-12-08/v_ekaterinburge_na_vystavke_kartiny_s_obnazhennymi_zhenchinami_zakleili_stikerami

Can you enlighten me on this matter? I seem to be “out of my depth” with these issues.

If there is a country where 50% of the territory is occupied by 51% of the population, who would unanimously vote for the independence of their 50% if they were asked in a national referendum. The country is a corporation of the country’s citizens, and the land is the corporation’s property. Is it stipulated anywhere in the constitutions of any country that the people have such a right? Let’s assume the remaining 49% living on the other half are making their lives miserable and mismanaging their joint savings, and they want to live in a separate country, consisting only of them.

Now let’s complicate the issue. The 51% of the population actually live not on 50% of the territory, but on 10% of that 50%, yet they still want the whole 50%. Why not? They are the majority, aren’t they? Why should they consider the interests of the minority on the other half?

Why do patriots love the land they did not invest in, just as their fathers and grandfathers didn’t, when all they did was live there? I understand when someone invested in a bridge and then there is a possibility of losing it, then one can raise the issue of compensation; but when no one built the bridge, why is there an attachment to the land into which not a penny was invested by the people living on it?

I tricked out my bike, thanks to Denis Potapov for helping with the choice. 105 groupset, carbon fork, 8.5 kg. My bike lock alone weighs one and a half kilograms.

Attending meetings where you are silent for more than 30% of the time and which you did not organize yourself is a waste of time. It creates the impression that this is exactly what you’re being paid for, when in reality this is something for which you should retain your money, since it distracts without significant benefit. Ideally, a person should either organize the gathering of information themselves (then being silent is fine – you listen and comprehend) or pass on information to someone who organized its collection (then being silent is not fine). In all other instances, it’s almost always a waste of time. Online meetings are even stranger, but at least it’s easier to do some work simultaneously.

Unfortunately, not everyone shares my view.

Fortunately, I haven’t had internal face-to-face meetings in negotiation rooms for the past seven summers. Only when visiting a client.