Niall MacDougall

Always be yourself, unless you can be a unicorn, then always be a unicorn.

[Liam Dutton @liamdutton]

There’s an isolated thunderstorm that’s formed north of Milton Keynes.

As there’s clear blue sky around it in all directions, it should be visible from 50-100 miles away.

Share a pic if you can see it!

Image: @Windycom

[Marina Purkiss @MarinaPurkiss]

That’s how you do it!

👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽 @MayorofLondon

[Ryan Cohen @ryancohen]

The Hollow Men

American capitalism is rotting from the head down. We have replaced the "Owner-Operator"—the risk-taker-with a new, parasitic class of corporate bureaucrat: The Risk-Free Insider.

By "Insider," I am not referring to a specific title. I am referring to the entire administrative state that has captured the modern corporation. This includes the Directors who exist solely to collect fees, the Executives who exist solely to collect bonuses, and the Managers who exist solely to hire consultants.

These are the hollow men of the boardroom. They are masters of PowerPoint. They wear the right suits. They say the right buzzwords about "governance" and "ESG." But they are mercenaries fighting a war with someone else’s ammunition.

In a functioning economy, authority is tied to liability. If you make a bad decision, you lose your own money. That fear of loss is the only thing that keeps a business honest. It forces you to cut waste, obsess over the customer, and stay late to fix what is broken.

Today, we have severed that link.

We have rigged the game so that heads, the Insider wins; tails, the shareholder loses.

If the stock goes up, the Insider collects a massive performance bonus. If the stock crashes due to their own incompetence, they are fired with a "Golden Parachute" worth tens of millions. They are gambling with the house’s money, and they never leave the table poorer than they arrived.

This looting starts in the boardroom.

We have normalized a "Country Club" culture where directors are selected based on social profiling rather than their ability to build a business. The modern board member is often a professional tourist—paid an average of $350,000 a year.

Let’s be brutally honest about what that number represents. The average director is paid nearly five times the GDP per capita of the United States. They earn more for attending four quarterly lunches than the vast majority of Americans earn in five years of hard labor.

And for what?

Most of these directors are "over-boarded," sitting on three or four boards simultaneously. They treat directorships as a gig economy for the elite. They fly in, rubber-stamp a compensation package they didn't read, and fly out. They collect checks from companies they do not understand, do not use, and certainly do not love.

They are not there to ask hard questions. They are there to be collegial. They are there to protect the other Insiders.

And what happens when these boards hire executives who also have no personal capital at risk?

We get the Delegation Economy.

When a Risk-Free Insider faces a crisis—bloated expenses, a broken supply chain, or a stale product—they do not roll up their sleeves. They hire a consultant. They pay a strategy firm millions of shareholder dollars to produce a 100-page deck telling them what they already know.

This is not management. It is intellectual money laundering.

They use shareholder capital to buy an insurance policy for their own careers. If the plan fails, they can blame the consultants. They delegate the work because they are terrified of the responsibility. They would rather preside over a slow, comfortable decline than risk a bold mistake.

While American Insiders are busy optimizing their severance packages, our global competitors are optimizing their products. They are not slowed down by bureaucracy. They are not waiting for a slide deck. They are outworking us.

If we continue to fill our C-suites with administrators instead of operators, we will lose our edge. We will see iconic American franchises hollowed out by fees, managed for the benefit of the Insiders, while the true owners—the shareholders—are left holding the bag.

The time for polite governance is over.

If we want to save the American economy from mediocrity, we must demand a return to the "Owner’s Mentality." We need leaders who treat shareholder capital with the same reverence they treat their own savings. The era of the Risk-Free Insider must end.

[Philosophy Of Physics @PhilosophyOfPhy]

Visualization of Magnetic Field.

[Hiroshi Suzuki @AmbJapanUK]

A wee swally!!🍺👍

[Tolkien World @TolkienWorldG]

Sir Ian McKellen at 86 expertly reciting Shakespeare last night!

[Saganism @Saganismm]

Bertrand Russell’s timeless message to future generations

[Ben Mwine 🇺🇬 π @benmwine]

If you drive at all on the highways, you need to watch this.....

[Marina Purkiss @MarinaPurkiss]

This makes no sense…

An MP can wake up one morning, ditch the party you elected them for, & sign up to a completely different manifesto…

And we’re supposed to be ok with that?

Nah

If they defect to a different party, we should get a vote

Sign the petition & help make that law.

https://t.co/XGPCALPvgn

[Science girl @sciencegirl]

Each sphere is moving in a straight line

But watch

[Dudes Posting Their W’s @DudespostingWs]

Alan Watts gives some of the most insightful thoughts on life and its worth watching 1000%

[Peter Stefanovic @PeterStefanovi2]

'You're paying £100s a month, and your student loan is still going up?' - @SophyRidgeSky

‘Yes... as it stands, I will still be paying back this loan when I'm in my 50s' -Graduate Eloise Burns

This has got to be fixed

[Nigel J Walley @WalleyVision]

@curiosityonx It was all true!! #TheKlangers

[Arnold Schwarzenegger @Schwarzenegger]

As you start today with all the motivation in the world, remember this: it won’t last.

Build a routine. Do it no matter what. When you really can’t, don’t quit or beat yourself up, just do it the next day. Show up, over and over.

It is the only thing that works.

[Hugh Grant @HackedOffHugh]

If GCSE’s move online it will be a catastrophe. Citing “preparing for exams” schools will dump what little remains of books and pens and stuff our poor addicted children even further down the internet at great cost to their education, mental health and safety. @ofqual

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Arthur C. Clarke on BBC's Horizon in 1964, when he gave some astonishing predictions about the future.

[Sesame Street @sesamestreet]

There is only one person who has known the power of 6-7 since the beginning.... Ah ah ah! ⚡️🔢💜

[Niall MacDougall @Mac_Nilo]

Lovely response

[Jimmy Carr @jimmycarr]

"Any advice for newlyweds?!"

Tour tickets: https://t.co/DsW6XSUFVj

[Niall MacDougall @Mac_Nilo]

They gave me something called buckfast....

[Toni @toniwriter]

This is absolutely wonderful! @BKA_5_SCOTS spotted @jimmyfallon (who’s in Scotland on a solo trip) & invited him to dinner. His hotel manager lent him his kilt & full regalia & one of the battalion made him his own kilt that night, as well as gift him a regimental cap 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿