Under the bed

A woman, cranky because her husband was late coming home again, decided to leave a note saying, “I’ve had enough and left you so don’t bother coming after me.”, and hid under the bed to see his reaction.

After a short while the husband comes home and she could hear him in the kitchen before he comes into the bedroom. She could see him walking towards the dresser and pick up the note. After a few minutes he wrote something on it before picking up the phone and calling someone, “She’s finally gone … yeah I know, about bloody time. I’m coming to pick you up so put on the sexy French shit. I love you”.

He hung up, grabbed his keys and left.

She heard the car drive off as she came out from under the bed, seething with rage and with tears in her eyes she grabbed the note to see what he wrote;, “I can see your feet. Stop being ridiculous. We’re outta bread. Put the coffee on … back in 5”.

Are you paying attention ?

Imagine if you email out a document to your team and ask them to read it. How do you know if they have even looked at the file. One way to get an indication is by embedding a token in the document. When the file is opened, you get a notification. And what happens if someone not in your team opens this file. That could be a problem. Perhaps documents (data) are leaking out of your organization.

This is the idea behind Canary Tokens. Very smart micro level traps. Think of them as granular trip wires. There are so many creative uses for these simple and effective triggers. You tokenize a file and if someone opens it, you receive a notification, with perhaps the source IP address.

Have a look at this old article the brilliant Haroon Meer shared with me. This is an example of a token in the analogue world. Compelling story this … smart stuff.

There’s a brilliant reason why Van Halen asked for a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown candies removed before every show

https://www.thisisinsider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-contract-2016-9

Playing Cards

The Chinese invented playing cards in AD 1000.

Did you know that the traditional deck of playing cards is a strikingly coherent form of a calendar and as a religious form?

There are 52 weeks in the year and there are 52 playing cards in a deck.

There are 13 weeks in each season and there are 13 cards in each suit.

There are 4 seasons in a year and 4 suits in the deck.

There are 12 months in a year so there are 12 court cards (those with faces, namely jack, queen, king) in each suit.

The red cards represent day, while black cards represent night.

If you let jacks=11, queens=12, and kings=13, then add up all the sums of 1+2+3 + all the way to 13, you get 91.

Multiply this by 4, for the 4 suits, therefore 9×4 = 364, add 1 that is the joker and you will arrive at the number 365—being the number of days in a year.

Is that a mere coincidence or a greater intelligence?

Of interest is the sum of the letters in all the names of the cards, e.g., add up the letters in “one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, jack, queen, king”=52!

The spades indicate plowing or working.

The hearts indicate love and the seasonal crops.

The clubs indicate flourishing and growth.

The diamonds indicate reaping the wealth.

Also, in some card games, two jokers are used, indicating the leap year.

There is a deeper philosophy than merely playing cards.