82,891
edits
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
Amwelladmin (talk | contribs) No edit summary |
||
Line 19: | Line 19: | ||
Any [[taxonomy]] is a [[narrative]]. Like any hierarchical organising system, a [[taxonomy]] commits you to ''one'' way of looking at the world, ''at the expense of all others''. Now this a necessary evil when it comes to concrete, physical things, like books: the [[Dewey decimal system]] is a single hierarchy — a ''[[narrative]]'' — by necessity: a physical thing cannot be in two places at once. So the curator of a library — libraries: remember them? — must settle on a single taxonomy (subject matter, not author, or title, or publisher) and, for better or worse, stick to it. Because one physical book can’t be in two places at once. | Any [[taxonomy]] is a [[narrative]]. Like any hierarchical organising system, a [[taxonomy]] commits you to ''one'' way of looking at the world, ''at the expense of all others''. Now this a necessary evil when it comes to concrete, physical things, like books: the [[Dewey decimal system]] is a single hierarchy — a ''[[narrative]]'' — by necessity: a physical thing cannot be in two places at once. So the curator of a library — libraries: remember them? — must settle on a single taxonomy (subject matter, not author, or title, or publisher) and, for better or worse, stick to it. Because one physical book can’t be in two places at once. | ||
But ''legal'' risks ''aren’t'' physical things. They aren’t concrete. They are the must ''un''concrete things imaginable. They’re amorphous, will-o’-the-wisp, [[black swan]]s: they [[emergent|emerge]], coagulating in mid air like suffocating ectoplasms, from ''nowhere''. These are obstreporous phantoms, silently incubating in harmless, dusty corners so [[dreary | But ''legal'' risks ''aren’t'' physical things. They aren’t concrete. They are the must ''un''concrete things imaginable. They’re amorphous, will-o’-the-wisp, [[black swan]]s: they [[emergent|emerge]], coagulating in mid air like suffocating ectoplasms, from ''nowhere''. These are obstreporous phantoms, silently incubating in harmless, dusty corners so [[tedious|dreary]] we can scarcely bring ourselves to even pay them attention.<ref>Like the BBA’s process for setting the sleepy old [[London Inter Bank Offered Rate]]. Anyone [https://www.google.com/search?&q=libor+%22mundane%22+%22boring%22 remember that old yawnfest]?</ref> | ||
In the last twenty years the global finance industry has faced up to some proper, existential threats. It has [[Jenseits von Gut und Böse|looked long into the abyss]]. [[LTCM]]. [[LIBOR]]. [[Madoff]]. [[Dotcom]]. [[Lehman]]. ''None of these epochal shit-shows registered more than a faint pulse in the frame of consciousness of the most paranoid [[risk controller]] '''until they happened'''''. | In the last twenty years the global finance industry has faced up to some proper, existential threats. It has [[Jenseits von Gut und Böse|looked long into the abyss]]. [[LTCM]]. [[LIBOR]]. [[Madoff]]. [[Dotcom]]. [[Lehman]]. ''None of these epochal shit-shows registered more than a faint pulse in the frame of consciousness of the most paranoid [[risk controller]] '''until they happened'''''. |