Hey ,

Happy Spring time! For many of us around the world, we've all celebrated one year of various preventive lockdown measures, and France just announced a new one for Paris and a few other areas judged at risk.The rules are increasingly confused, confusing, and plain silly so I'm not going to dwell on them. Suffice to say it changes little for most people aside from a number of what's considered "non-essential commerce" to be closed again. Otherwise Parisians are out and about living their lives, the public transports are packed, etc.I wandered around the 19th arrondissement to see my cousin and visit an apartment his family owns, and I might rent - or at least he offered it to me. I'm thinking about it. It was a little strange revisiting this neighbourhood, which is I happened to be living when I was a teenager. It gentrified quite a bit, but it's still q pretty diverse area - and not really touristy compared to where I am living now.The photo below is of the small farm at the Jardins d'Eole. It probably just looks like a couple of sheep and grass to you (behind a chainlink fence), but the weird thing is that this garden and little farm is built above train tracks. When I lived there over twenty years ago, and this area was fairly dodgy, all there was there was an imposing and ugly cement wall. They reclaimed space from above the train tracks to build the garden and have a little more greenery in an otherwise pretty dreary concrete jungle area of the city. Just in case you wonder about ever going there, and for less charitable perspectives about the park, these two Tripadvisor reviews are quite something - and telling in that the area still seems dodgy, even if gentrifying somewhat. The farm area in the photo started just over a year ago, January 2020.That's about it for the brief weekly update. Last week in Teaching Tangents with James D'Souza, the question was: "When do you do what you want to do and not have to abide by rules?"Our call for questions is still out here - it is a super simple one question survey, we'd love to have questions from you!Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and the Spring season!Best,Willem

 Weekly Combo Typically a mix of playful and strategy flavours. 

Google tells harassment victims to take “medical leave,” report finds 

(Ars Technica 3 min read)

Without giving anything away in case a student sees this, there have been a number of concerning news Google's company culture changing and apparently not for the best, at least seeing news reports of suspected or alleged gender or racial harassment and discrimination.That said, my sharing this link is more to pointing to the combination with the second link and large, extremely powerful, global corporations overall - not just Google.

(Edelman - however long you want to browse the report)

The couple of stats I found particularly fascinating:68% of respondents agree that “CEOs should step in when the government doesn’t fix societal problems.” And65% agree “CEOs should hold themselves accountable to the public and not just to the board of directors or stockholders.” (both stats on page 34 of the report)One to watch out for if you check the report, is a really bold figure of 86% on page 35: "86% expect CEOs to publicly speak out about one or more of these societal challenges."I say it's a "watch out" because if you check the question asked in the small print at the bottom of the page, it was a leading question. Respondents were asked: "Looking at the topics listed below, please select the ones you expect CEOs to currently be speaking out about publicly. Select all that apply." It comes across as a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy, the number would necessarily be high and the title is arguably misleading. Which leads back to the stated lack of trust in media... and research, perhaps (unless I misunderstand or misread the report, which is possible too).Still, fascinating to contemplate with the sort of news from the first link.