Monthly Archives: April 2020

April 11, 2020 · 00:28

Creativity wins

It has been a hard 2 weeks, for most workaholics the entire shutdown issue is a little larger than normal, gaming or not. So to treat myself I decided to design a new TV series (we all have jobs), it did not turn out the way I expected it, yet it was still a win for me, as it enabled me to set a plan for 30,000 additional words to my novel which is at present (excluding the addition) at almost 57,000 words, so I feel that I am now beyond the 50% marker. To be honest it is an addition I actually did not see coming, and that’s the beauty of creativity, it takes you at times in unspoken directions.

It is almost like a dream I had, which I cannot recall at this time. I wanted to remember it, but some dreams take a weird flight, they tend to delete themselves from memory, in the end it is still a win for creativity.

There are more elements linking to all this, but for now, that is all I have to say about the elements involved. I had some notion to try and connect the initial idea on ‘How to kill a politician’, but that is a separate project, I saw that early on. Yet the lockdown is throwing my levels of creativity in overdrive and I am actually less happy about that. On one side I do not mind, but there I believe that there is a link between my creativity and the dreams/nightmares that follow the dose of creativity that I enjoy when I am awake. It seems to me that the brain can give in one direction, and after that gives in the other direction. It is a speculation, but it is based on a world, or a universe that seeks balance, a balance that is almost universal. Instead of the initial idea that I had that action in one direction,implies the need for inaction in another direction. Unlike a computer, the brain does not accept inactivity, it actively rejects it, which beckons me to consider whether I can direct activity in a direction. I know that I can to some degree, but I am not yet aware if this can be pushed to certain limits. There is plenty of materials on this, but there is less available and less reliable information available to push the dreamer from a dreamer into a lucid dreamer. The benefit is real and direct, if we get control of our dreams we get to utilise the strongest computer ever built (the human brain) in other ways. Whether it is to complete another branch of my IP, another story or another idea, we need to complete it and these weeks are showing us all that the workaholics get another part to play, to push new boundaries in the fields we work in. I do not know if it can be done, but the idea is a larger push towards new ideas and that is an addictive push to face.

The important part in all this is that this is not merely my journey, I believe that the entire Corona lockdown has a much larger impact. Others are facing a similar journey, the dreamers, the creators and the makers are facing a side they have not been pushed into to a much larger degree and this lockdown is pushing it to the surface. We have been running to keep up with the payments and bills we face and forgot to take time to ourselves. Inthe last two weeks we have had loads of time to ourselves and it seems to show to some people that there is a lot more in them. I would not be surprised that some bosses fave a new era, where their employees have surpassed them and are making the most of what they can o next. For me not much changes. I had set the stage where I can write, I can consider and I can design, That will continue, yet now there is an optional new field where the dreamers and designers at Microsoft, IBM, Apple, HP and a few other places will figure out that innovation is not what marketing says it is, but what the designer makes it. That might over time be good news and we might actually see more innovation, instead of iteration marketed as innovation, the difference is massive.

The entire Corona event might have losers, yet there is at present a chance that there are also a fair amount of winners and that is the silver lining that no one saw coming.

Secretary of the Nanny

Something happened last week, it was seen in the BBC news when we were given ‘Captain pleads for help over outbreak’, in this case it is Captain Crozier of the USS Theodore Rooseveld. I initially wondered how they dealt with other flu scenarios, taking into consideration that except from him and his CO, the people on that ship are pretty much all of them in the lower than 1% mortality rate group. Most people in Las Vegas would give their wife, oldest daughter and mistress for those odds, so why is there an overreaction?

I was uneasy with the entire ‘No one has to die’ approach. This is a warship and here my Merchant Navy knowledge, training and education is a little help. I understand and accept the hierarchy that is important on EVERY boat, Article 2 is about the responsibility of the ship’s captain (ZAR, when I was in School) and I remember that part (reference to the Ships Collision Regulation). Yet it is larger and harder on a war vessel. I do not envy the situation that Captain Crozier found himself in, but the entire stage is an altered one, and the alteration matters.

It requires me to repeat the part that I gave three days ago, the age based mortality curve.

80+ years old 14.8%

70-79 years old 8.0%

60-69 years old 3.6%

50-59 years old 1.3%

40-49 years old 0.4%

30-39 years old 0.2%

20-29 years old 0.2%

10-19 years old 0.2%

Consider that the bulk of a naval vessel will have people between 20 and 39 years of age. This Captain is setting the odds against a stage where he runs the risk of optionally losing 8 people, and that is in a stage where complications set in. Lets not forget that military staff tends to be in much better condition then the average person in that same age, so optionally the risk for these groups is 20%-30% lower than the numbers we see, and I admit that this is slightly speculative, yet I feel that this is correct. As such I stand behind the Secretary of the Navy, or as we could consider the nanny of Captain Crozier,who set himself up in all kinds of ways. Letters ‘leaked’ to the press, the view of the navy and a few other matters makes me a supporter of Thomas Modly and the actions he took in this (name calling disregarded).

Yes, we want all crews to be 100% safe, but it is and remains a war vessel, there are priorities that need to be met and on a crew of 4000, losing 8 people is not nice, but not unrealistic either. In all this, the entire ‘plead for help’ was massively stupid, and he knew this, mainly because he would have send any considerations on the pandemic to the Admiralty (its American equivalent) and that does not seem to have been the case.

Perhaps there is a side where I am wrong and I should not call his actions ‘massively stupid’ yet there are other actions he could have taken and if it is not written down it does not exist, it is that simple in political actions and this was in part a political move, lets make no illusions on that. In this, it is my opinion that the call by Joe Biden (stating that the firing of Captain Crozier was close to criminal) is wrong, or at least this is how I perceive it to be. The Captain called doubt on the functioning of an American Warship and that is never OK. I cannot tell you what is the right action, but the visibility was wrong, there are rules, regulations and visibility of those in charge and most civilians do not understand it. That is not their fault, but there is a given where the function of a warship even in peacetime is extensive and we forget or shut our eyes to this and in civilian life that is fine, in the eyes of defence it is not.

Showing your optional enemies that there is weakness and handing this out in a letter is folly, my mind remains focussed on who ‘leaked’ the letter, because that is the larger enemy in all this, not Captain Crozier (unless he leaked the letter).

5G? Gesundheit!

OK, to be fair, I never saw this coming. In all this, even in the rage of panic and stupidity, I saw a deprived population that had left leave of its senses, the fact that they would abandon common sense even more than usual was a little bit of a surprise to me, so when I saw the news ‘false coronavirus 5G theory‘, I was actually dumbstruck for about 5.7 seconds.

Not merely the idea that some conspiracy theorists are loons under the best condition, but the fake news that is spreading in a few ways giving rise to the consideration that ‘5G is spreading the Coronavirus‘ is so ridiculous that the personal view of shooting idiots of that calibre before they have kids and create a situation that 2 generations believed that nonsense seems like almost the only option. So as I read “But content that is simply conspiratorial about 5G mobile communications networks, without mentioning coronavirus, is still allowed on the site. YouTube said those videos may be considered “borderline content” and subjected to suppression, including loss of advertising revenue and being removed from search results on the platform.” (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/youtube-to-suppress-content-spreading-coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-theory), I wonder just how stupid people have become in the week I was down and out. I myself have been outspoken and adamant that there is another factor propagating the Coronavirus, yet technology is not that path, it is within us and at some point the clever health people will find it and include us in these findings.

There is another factor and the numbers (at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/) leave me with almost no doubt at all. almost 70,000 dead, and the age station gives us:

80+ years old 14.8%

70-79 years old 8.0%

60-69 years old 3.6%

50-59 years old 1.3%

40-49 years old 0.4%

30-39 years old 0.2%

20-29 years old 0.2%

10-19 years old 0.2%

Yet when we look at the numbers in Italy, Spain, Germany and France and set that against China (Wuhan) the calculation does not completely add up. In this situation I only took these nations as time is a known factor and these nations have enough cases to see a level of stability. Even as some hide behind “Experts say large elderly population, social behaviour and weak healthcare system have contributed to high fatalities“, I personally see it as some people hiding behind a shallow wall with almost zero protection, the numbers are not adding up!

For the math to work over 90% of all corona fatalities would have to be by the 80+ age group (in Italy and Spain) and we know that this is not the case. In other paths I see an option to giggle. In the Netherlands there is an old saying “1 gek kan meer vragen dan 20 wijzen kunnen beantwoorden” (1 fool can ask more than 20 wise men can answer), and YouTube is seemingly getting hit with this expression. There is almost no way to stop a crazy person with propogating stupidity.

And the problem is not going away I reckon, as stupidity reigns, we see all kinds of forgiveness (they know not what they do) and we ourselves propagate that stupidity. No matter what happens, at some point these people get found and then they end up in court, they get a slap on the wrist and are let go. I reckon that this is the most likely scenario. In all this, I wonder how long we need to consider that path of reinforcing stupidity.

Yet in my mind, no matter how we all push the paths, how anyone would give rise to any notion that the flu was propagated by your mobile is just too insane to waste a second of time on, but that might just be me.

Monthly Archives: April 2020

Creativity wins

Secretary of the Nanny

5G? Gesundheit!

Recent Posts

Archives