Stephen Brown

Scotsman in St Petersburg Florida. I enjoy posting aphorisms. A rebel I came and I’m still the same. Check out my podcast - 🎙Ordinary To Extraordinary

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

This thread documents one of the major reasons I moved from Spokane WA to St Petersburg FL in December of 2021.

[Eric Daugherty @EricLDaugh]

🧵The 2018 Florida gubernatorial election was the most consequential in recent U.S. history for national politics.

Ron DeSantis defeated the Democrat, Andrew Gillum, by a mere 0.4% - not even 40,000 votes of over 8 million.

Little did anyone know, November 2018 was just 1.5 years away from the start of a pandemic that would be used to strip freedoms and strangle the economy.

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

@MiovskiProp @EwenDCameron I don’t often like what Ewan says or agree but he’s spot on here.

[. @MiovskiProp]

Fully agree with @EwenDCameron here, we’ll get through on GD after beating Haiti 1-0 and the awful performances will be swept under the carpet because we’ve qualified for the last 32.

Don’t even get me started on Callum’s response…

[Sacha Pisani @Sachk0]

Steve Clarke’s on-field interview after Scotland’s World Cup loss to Morocco.

[Vfynn_🥷🏼 𐙚 @Vfynn_]

🚨🗣️NEW: Zlatan Ibrahimović on FIFA’s new mouth-covering red card rule: as Almiron was given a red card for covering his mouth in the game between Paraguay and Turkey

“I have seen football at its highest level, the real football. Not this watered-down version they are serving us now. What happened with Almirón? A straight red card for covering his mouth? This is not football anymore. This is a circus run by bureaucrats in suits who have never felt the fire of the pitch.”

“Covering your mouth is now a red card? What is this, Big Brother on the field? FIFA wants to read lips, punish thoughts before they even become words. Next they will put muzzles on players like dogs. Players cannot even talk, cannot even breathe passion without some VAR robot or referee deciding your emotions are illegal. This is dystopian. Football is dying.”

“This rule was born because some players cry every week. One incident in the Champions League and suddenly the whole world must change. But elbow a man, break his leg, or spit — sometimes you get a yellow and a pat on the back. Two-tier football. Protect the protected, punish the rest. I have played in every league and I have seen it.”

On the softness of the modern game:
“Maradona would be sent off in the tunnel. Roy Keane? He would laugh at the referee and walk off with a smile while the stands burn. Pepe would have collected five reds before half-time. Today? Players are becoming actors, not warriors. They fall, they cry, they hide behind rules. Where is the masculinity? Where is the character? Football is not ballet. It is war. And they are turning it into a polite conversation with red cards as punctuation.”

“I, Zlatan, have scored goals that made stadiums shake and said things that made opponents tremble — without hiding. This generation is being raised soft. If you cannot handle words on the pitch, how will you handle life? FIFA is not protecting football. They are burying it. And one day, the real fans will rise and say: enough. Bring back the game.”

[ᏦᏋᏋᏦ® @KikiF_7]

Dear England, We just wanted to make you aware; We have officially adopted the Scots. They are family now. We will be in touch to negotiate your visitation rights.

Signed, The Americans.
🦅🇺🇸💪🏴󠁧��󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🫶 #Scotland #America🇺🇸

https://t.co/facOKOMmeo

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

Microsoft Teams is the first software platform designed entirely around the assumption that nobody trusts anyone.

- Status indicators.

- Read receipts.

- Presence monitoring.

- Meeting attendance.

- Activity tracking.

At this point, the only thing missing is a parole officer and a mandatory ankle monitor.

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

The people whose opinions I value most are usually the hardest to hear.

Not because they are hiding.

Because they are busy.

Busy building, creating, solving problems, and helping people.

The loudest voice in the room is rarely the most valuable one.

[Vfynn_🥷🏼 𐙚 @Vfynn_]

🚨🗣️New: Thierry Henry reacts to the USA vs Paraguay stoppage for TV commercials:

“I’ve spent my entire life in this beautiful game — as a player at the highest level, as a fan, and now as someone who analyses it every week — and what unfolded during that USA versus Paraguay match left me deeply frustrated. The fourth official standing there on the touchline, arm raised high, instructing the referee to hold the restart… not for any injury, not for tactical reasons, and not even primarily for player hydration in that scorching heat. No. It was because the broadcast team hadn’t finished airing all their commercials. That’s not football. That’s a television show pretending to be a World Cup match.

The beautiful game is being strangled by greed. Players are out there in the heat, ready to restart, momentum building like a storm about to break — and we pause everything so the sponsors can cash in. It’s like stopping a symphony mid-crescendo because the advertisers want their jingle heard. Football didn’t conquer the world by turning into American sports with endless timeouts and ad breaks. We had rhythm, flow, emotion that flowed like a river. Now? It’s dammed up for dollars.

This isn’t about hydration or player welfare anymore — it’s a slippery slope where the soul of the game is sold piece by piece. Fans deserve better. Players deserve better. The referee on that pitch looked like a puppet on strings controlled from some broadcast truck. Enough is enough. We need to protect what made this sport the greatest on Earth before it disappears completely.”

The World Cup should be football’s cathedral. Instead, we’re turning it into a shopping mall with a pitch in the middle.

And here’s the question nobody wants to answer: if the fourth official is waiting for commercials, then who is really running the game? FIFA? The referee? Or the broadcasters?

Because the moment football starts asking advertisers for permission before asking the players, you’ve crossed a line.

The World Cup is supposed to be the showcase of football. Not the showcase of who paid the most for airtime.”

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

Happy Friday to everyone except people at @microsoft and @salesforce. I hope you have the day you deserve for what you put in to the world.

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

@Microsoft greatest achievement wasn’t Windows.

It was convincing all the corporate world that opening seven applications to complete one task is a normal way to live.

Outlook for email.
Teams for meetings.
SharePoint for documents.
OneDrive for files.
Planner for tasks.
Power BI for reports.
Excel for everything anyway.

An ecosystem so efficient that everything eventually ends back in Excel.

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

I am convinced Microsoft Teams and Salesforce weren’t built to help people work.

They were built to create evidence that work was attempted, avoided, delegated, discussed, deferred, escalated, and ultimately rescheduled.

[Candice Hollaway @CandiceHollaway]

I’ve been on both sides of this. While I think the genuine turn on is there for some women, I think for 80-90% that think they like this have a hidden driver for this behavior. Most of the time it’s a way to avoid real intimacy and to protect yourself when and if something inevitably goes wrong. There is a huge difference between wanting a man other women want (all women want this), to letting them have him. The women that sleep with a taken man tend to be vicious and are eagerly waiting to replace you. Bad idea 9 times out of 10.

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

It is easy to memorize rules. It is easy to make plans. Experience is different.

Experience teaches application, exceptions, timing, tradeoffs, and loopholes. It teaches what works in reality, not just in theory.

That is why experienced people often sound less certain, but make better decisions.

It is also why middle managers make baffling decisions. They know the process well enough to enforce it, but not well enough to understand when it should be ignored.

[Peter Hague @peterrhague]

They will unfortunately forget these days, in terms of episodic memory. They will however retain how it made them feel about you.

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

What you want is on the other side of work you are not doing. Nobody can will you to succeed, that’s on you.

Perfectionism is procrastination dressed up as quality control. “The right time” is the same excuse.

You are either your own leverage, or the reason you are stuck.

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

The quickest route and the path of least resistance is to improve the quality of officiating and to create professional standards with penalties for referees not to silence critics.

There is a myth that the show Collum does analyzing VAR mistakes is the cure all. No referees at the World Cup when no-mark countries are represented is all the proof needed of the poor standard.

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

I hold standards high, for myself and the people around me, but I have zero expectations of others.

Standards force action. They set the bar, meet it or stay where you are.

Expectations create disappointment and I can’t control what others do, only what I do and what I accept.

Most people are not as focused as I am when I engage. That’s fine, managing that gap is far healthier mentally than expecting people to change.

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

@scotlandscoeff1 The performances is what undermines confidence in refereeing standards not what a pundit says. This is a ridiculous fiasco. If access to the VAR communication points to incompetence then we all need that access

[Stephen Brown @Stephen_O2E]

Entire industries are built on the absence of common sense.

One bad decision, now there is a policy.
One bad actor, now there is a process.
One lawsuit, now there is an industry.

And slowly, common sense gets replaced by disclaimers and protection from the lowest common denominator.

At some point you have to ask:
Are we solving problems, or just building businesses around them?