Category Archives: Finance

November 30, 2021 · 18:59

The Trap

There is a trap out there, we all fall for it, it is in part our own ego, it is in part the way we believe, or we think we believe and it is in part the elements steering us. I fell for it yesterday and there is no shame, it happens to us all. I was merely happy I figured out what I was doing. I will not give the exact trap I fell for, but it comes down to a weird thought. An example is “People are old when they turn hundred, because that is the boiling point of water”. The link between the two is 100. There is no other link, but the mind at times uses the link to get more out of it and as it finds these supposed links we fall into the trap. As stated it happens to us all at times. So as I was relaxing I noticed two articles by the CBC. 

The first is (at https://www.cbc.ca/radiointeractives/docproject/warhammer-40k). We get ‘Warhammer 40,000 was a sanctuary during my high school years’. This is true, but then we also get “The irony that some Trump fans equated the 45th U.S. president with 40K’s desiccated Emperor isn’t lost on Gillen, author of Marvel Comics’ first Warhammer 40,000 mini-series, Marneus Calgar”. The issues is that behind the larger story (which is actually quite good) is “it has been embraced by Trump supporters and white supremacists”, you see there is another expression we need to see: ‘The sun shines on the just and unjust alike’. This matters, because if you do not you will fall in the trap I almost fell for. The just and unjust all need a game to play, they all need to relax and some play Warhammer, some play Skyrim and some play ‘Bo Red takes a gander’, it does not matter what they play. The game does not make them extremists, they were that and they decided to play a game. Yet there is a larger stage, the unjust will find a game where they can talk and where they can communicate and the more that is done outside of the monitoring elements the safer they feel. I saw this in 2011 in a game (I think), it think it was called ‘Lords of Ultima’, this has nothing to do with the game makers, they had a game and people in a guild could communicate privately, there were 99 private channels. And over time more games offered the option to communicate and the makers got cash for everything. 

The game and its makers are not to blame, the events are merely there. There is no deeper connection (at present). The second story is (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/holiday-movies-christmas-inclusive-1.6261313) the article is called ‘Diversity in holiday movies improves, but gaps still need to be filled’, so why is that? I am not opposing, I am asking. You see movies and TV shows are a business, they cater to the largest section they can because it gives them the best revenue. Do you think that Hollywood is anything but a siphon for revenue? And in that setting the bulk of all there watchers are white. It has a market. Bollywood (India) and Nollywood (Nigeria) figured out that there was a gap and they  figured out how they could fill their pockets with the gaps. So will there be a Gollywood, a Lollywood, or a Tollywood? I cannot tell, but those in that direction are seeing whether they can make a profit in this market. Collywood (China/Hong Kong) is steadily growing and as its watching population grows, so will they. So when I see “the film industry is making moves to change what some have previously called a “whitewashed” movie genre, some critics say more work remains to be done”, I am not sure I can agree. You see the business model is there but it is not inclusive. And in that setting when we consider Gollywood, Lollywood and Tollywood. We see people in that market like David Geffen, and they weren’t making large moves to set up that premise, why is that? I reckon that at present the business model is not affordable enough. Even break even might do the trick, but that doesn’t seem to the case. So when we see ‘Geffen has an estimated net worth of $10.8 billion, making him one of the richest people in the entertainment industry’, as well as ‘David Geffen has been ranked the most polluting individual American and second most polluting individual in the world, largely due to his yachts’ we need to wonder how much of it is true. You see, there are 17 yachts bigger than him, and yes none of the owners are American, yet who bought the yacht that was owned by Paul Allen? What happened to the yacht of Bill Gates? So when I see ‘the most polluting individual American’ all whilst we can find the larger setting of “nonprofit Environmental Working Group tested tap water at 19 sites in Northern Virginia and found levels as high as 62 parts per trillion”, a pollution setting three times higher than was noted in 2019, in two years it got to be this bad, but that doesn’t make for good gay-bashing, does it? There was the EPA giving the US citizens “In 2020, about 68 million tons of pollution were emitted into the atmosphere in the United States. These emissions mostly contribute to the formation of ozone and particles, the deposition of acids, and visibility impairment”, as such, does anyone want to make a serious bet that the most polluting individual American was not behind that, or even any serious part of that? So who were and why are their names omitted from any report?

The trap is that we make claims that ‘gaps need to be filled’ all whilst the people with the ability to fill them do not want to fill them and as long as the media is willing to emphasise on partial claims like ‘the most polluting individual American’ whilst avoiding all other kinds of information, we see a larger station, a station of obfuscation and denial. The trap the media sets out for us, just like the Guardian with their ‘carbon print’ all whilst they do a lot to avoid the 15 million flights increase over the last 15 years. 47,000 (or there about) a day more and that situation has no carbon footprint? 

So did we put our foot in the trap, or are we avoiding to look into the direction where the trap is? It works for the stakeholders of the media either way. And that is the larger trap we are faced with. 

Enjoy the week.

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November 26, 2021 · 22:14

Stupid people never learn

This is not an accusation, it is merely a setting we need to accept. This all started half an hour Aho when the BBC gave us ‘Protesters hit Amazon buildings on Black Friday’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59419572), with the setting “An international coalition of unions, equality and environmental groups called “Make Amazon Pay” is staging a day of action, demanding concessions”, it is like the approach of a hurricane, and making the one person who left a window open giving him (or her) a bill for the draft damage. People just do not get it, and I am at a loss why that is. It is not hidden information, it is not secret information, it merely is information out in the open for anyone to read.

The setting is not “Amazon takes too much and gives back too little”, the setting is that governments would not overhaul tax laws for the longest of times. I first make a case for overhauling tax laws in 1998, now 24 year later none of it EVER happened. Amazon did not take too much, it took what Amazon was entitled to take. Amazon (only) gives what it is mandated to give. There are las out there and Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Facebook and Google adhere to these laws. All the rest is merely discriminatory bullshit. So when I see “Worldwide, nearly 50 organisations have signed up to a list of “common demands”, published by the Make Amazon Pay coalition”, so I wonder who they are. And it does not really matter as they cross over from one into the other. Consider “A global union federation representing 50 million workers in 140 countries in a range of sectors”, this implies less then 350.000 per nation, which includes the US, which imply that they basically amount to nothing. Then we get “A global union federation of journalists’ trade unions, representing more than 600.000 media workers from 187 organisations in 146 countries” I merely wonder whether they include the same essay writers that grace the ICIJ, a fair question, because journalists are supposed to be smarter than this. All the flames, the bullshit and the need for click bitches that spike digital revenue, all to have a go at a company that struck it big by being actually innovative. 2 years ago Amazon would not be on the mind of console gaming. Now the Amazon Luna overtakes what Google and Microsoft have and that is just for starters. They equal Apple in a few ways and there is no end to Amazon at present. All that and they adhere to laws, or lets just states that they adhere to what their legal department states that they need to adhere to. And no one is putting actual and factual pressure on the politicians that need to get shit done (like overhauling tax laws) but then people get quotes like “It is a really complex situation”, so complex that in 24 years nothing was done, so the utter nonsense of 50 organisations that have call signs making them close to ludicrously useless. If they were not useless, they would put pressure on politicians overhauling tax laws. 

The lesson has been out there for almost 25 years, the facts were out there for almost 25 years and still the people will not learn, the politicians do not want them to learn, because they will have to do something and over time it might amount to something pissing of the rich friends they have. In all this, the setting is much larger then the FAANG group. It includes people like the Walton Family, the Green family, the Koch family, the Yuan family and as such several dozens more. All billionaires, all doing what the law allowed them to do. The feigned anger against Amazon is just pointless bullshit and we need to wake up. Flames and emotions will not get us anywhere and that is the problem with Grassroots people, all about anger and emotion and when the anger subsides, when they realise (if ever) that the law was adhered to we see the pointlessness of the situation and stupid people never do so, in this, how come the journalists are part of this? Who do they serve? Because in the end they serve the shareholders and advertisers. But what of their stakeholders? Who are they and why are they embracing pointless actions? Did you ever consider that part of the equation? 

As such will you learn, or will you just pointlessly embrace a coalition that wastes another two decades going nowhere? It is up to you, you can chose and making the choice that goes somewhere is always better, even if the destination is not better, sometimes things get worse before they get better, that is the outcome of change, the changing process is never better, the outcome can be, it is up to us to make that so, and it is not an easy fight, that much is an absolute given.

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November 22, 2021 · 13:20

The road to hell

It comes from the expression ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’ and it is a lot more apt then you would think. To see that we have to go back to 1989. Governments need to up their game and to ensure that a database is made. This database is not a database of criminals, these people did nothing wrong, they have other convictions, convictions that are not greed based, they align to other parties, or they merely have other views on life. And it was then that the database of ‘undesirables’ was created. And this is not a database of all, this is a database of key people. People that could hinder the drive of progress, progress of greed, progress of opportunity. Yet over time it became something more. I reckon that around 1996-1999 the list got around to corporations and now we have a new setting. It becomes the list of people that could hinder corporate progress. People who were unwilling to play to political game, people that were not going to commit fraud, not fraud on financial sides, they are easily dealt with, but a version of fraud, tainted with deceit that would harm the progress of reports that could gain them millions, of not more. Now consider that this database of undesirables got a larger stage and now that corporates are involved it stops people having a decent career, and the top tier they all have access to read this database. So what happens when the 11,306 people in Australia are brought to the surface, all published on 4Chan with the corporation names that put them on the list, the original poster and the people underwriting the status of the person. Now consider those 11,000 plus people who now know why their careers blew and the greed driven players that were responsible for getting them on the list. It does not hold names, but the names of the corporations and their clear codes. How much change would that push that to industrial nations? The US, UK, Australia, France and the Netherlands. All players all with their own databases. 

You see, in the end it does not matter who did this, in the end it is the stupidity of the greed driven and the knowledge where they hid the data they do not want anyone to see and it take one error to make it all come out of the shadows and one step to see who plays the ‘undesirable’ game, so did that create a dystopian setting, or was the dystopian start the setting that got the ball rolling? 

So is this the setting of a writer who was eager to take a step towards the Frans Kafka that is in all of us, or was it more? I will let you decide and consider how our views are tainted by age discrimination as well as the need for senior managers to hire eager young turks so that they can misrepresent what is out there hiding behind behind the new young executive. He played the corporate political game, it was not his or her fault. A young eagerness issue. And as such the senior manager got away without ever rising to the surface of attention. 

So who is going to hell and who was paving the road?

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November 15, 2021 · 19:03

Pricing of choice

There is always a counter side. It does not mater how good anything is, it does not matter how large the win is, there is an opposite it is the price we pay, the price we accept, because on the whole the deal is actually rather good. There is no opposition, this has been a given truth for decades. At time you need to be ruthless, at times you can be compassionate, at times you have to cut the deadlines, at times you can extent deliveries. They are choices, there are always choices. Some good, some less so. It is the way it has always been

The price of lame
It is a side we see and often ignore. In many situations it means crappy, I would say it merely means crappy but that would be wrong. In this example we look at Bethesda and their latest iteration of Skyrim. Some will say ‘Lame’, ‘more exploitation’, and ‘more of the same’. I say when a game is this perfect you would want to have it as you move on. I have played the game on Xbox360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4, and PS5. The game is so large and so near perfect I would want to keep it and there is an upside. The PS5 is free as download if you have the PS4 version. There was alas no physical version. We can state it is lame, it is less, but this is a game that millions have enjoyed for 10 years. So yes, parts are a set A$80, yet the game gives you a lot more, the free edition gives you less new stuff, but I have seen my share of free parts already, after 4 days I see that the game is renewed, it has more and it feels great getting these achievements again. In 10 years the game never disappointed. The price of lame is perhaps a lack of innovation, the opposite is that the players want this game, not another game, it is a tough balancing line and so far Bethesda has done OK, apart from selling their soul to Microsoft (for $8,500,000,000).

The price of tame
Weirdly enough it is Google who gets that part. On the one side they have shown great innovation, they have shown massive strides in many areas, from searching to advertisements, they were there, they were first and they keep on rocking, on the other side their console (Google Stadia) is tame, they are not developing software, they are relying on Ubisoft to push that crate (and it will cost them). The other side is that two innovations will pass them by, the innovation I worked out (and are now meant for Amazon Luna) could bring Amazon an additional 50,000,000 consoles to the market. I know, even with shortages it will be a stretch, but that is the setting of tame, you can be non-aspiring, to be non-exciting yet that too comes at a price and in this setting Amazon would be in second place (temporarily overtaking Nintendo). On the upside, it makes Microsoft the wooden spoon contender, with the most powerful console in the world they end up in 4th position and I like that. Microsoft needed to be taught a lesson and I intend to bring it (If Amazon accepts). And that is not a high number, it is massively conservative, because this has never been done before so I have no data to rely on, the numbers could end up being decently higher. And that is merely the first wave, the second wave relies on another player, so I cannot say at present, but that could end up pushing the Luna even more, but I have no idea how much more. What is a certainty that gaming will alter and in the first stage many players ant a piece of that, not all, but plenty.

The price of game
It is not easy to look at people as game, but these anti-vaxxers are taking their toll. We can be as social as we like to be, we are unable to properly set up taxation, but we will tax the health system to the max. We see people dying of heart conditions in ambulances, because the ICU’s are filled with anti-vaxxers who now have covid and they are crying like little children. I say that unvaccinated people are not eligible for ICU unless they pay upfront, the reckless endangerment of life is not a cause for healthcare, it needs to become private care. The umbers are staggering. Of all the hospital admissions 80%-90% is unvaccinated. This evidence is ignored too much by too many. There is a slight difference per nation, yet that is understandable. We can treat these people like kids, but then they claim they have rights. OK, you do and with that you get the right to pay for it yourself. 

We see three examples where we price choice, price is not always monetary, but often it is, yet the opposite of that coin is often not monetary. It tends to be quality, quantity or quest like. There is no clear formula either, it is not a neat package, yet there tends to be some red line forming in the sand. The underlying part is that some accept the cost of doing business, others are in denial and they want it all, and guess what. You cannot have it all, there is no way. It is like the old equation of a house. Price, Quality and speed. You can only select two of the three, the third will go in another direction. A sales division will state that you can have all three and then they task their marketing department to set the premise of the third to expectations. Yet that is a figment in their imaginations, and when the data comes forward we get some ‘miss communication’ excuse. 

All neatly wrapped up, yet when we dig we get to see the price more clearly and we often see a party in denial, but what happens when it is YOU who pays that price? What happens when YOU need to make a choice, can you? Choosing is often hard, especially when the price is clear. But what do you do when it is not? It happens and not always intentionally, how can you decide the price then? 

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November 13, 2021 · 11:06

A COP26 truth

Yes, it is time to slam down, slam dunk and slam punk some people. The Evening Standard gives us ‘New draft deal appears to water down curb on fossil fuels’. The article (at https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/cop26-latest-news-glasgow-last-day-climate-change-talks-outcomes-so-far-alok-sharma-boris-johnson-b965809.html) is not even a surprise to me. So in the end, the only true thing of the COP26 was an 18 year old girl named Greta Thunberg. The rest was full of shit. And do not take my word for it. Mark Rober (former NASA) started in 2019 #TeamTrees with MrBeast (his name apparently) and so far they planted 23 million trees. How many did the UK plant? How many did the US plant? How many did the EU plant? Do the math and you will see how right I am. Two people (with drones and donations) did more in a year than the better part of 30 governments with billions. So you tell me.

In other news, there was a decent form of objections to my article ‘1095 minus one’ two days ago (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/11/11/1095-minus-one/). The opposition was that my example was nice, but that the balloon would have been massively larger. That is fair enough. And that person would be right. But the setting is not merely that there are 8 billion in need of oxygen (without the CO2), the larger issue is that over the last 15 years 15,000,000 additional flights were added. That amounts to 41,000 flights a day, every single day. So how much CO2 do these flights create? More people and more flights, not the flights from the uber rich, no normal airline flights. I am willing to take a bet that at least 25% of those flights are useless and could be scrapped. 

So whilst we look at media outlets like Al Jazeera giving us “Analysts question the text of COP26’s final agreement citing ‘watered down’ language on hydrocarbon eradication and missing commitments on emission cuts” (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/12/watered-down-new-cop26-draft-deal-moves-away-from-hard-targets) we see the truth. Greta Thunberg was right, the COP26 was all blah-blah-blah. No real deal is in the works and as Indonesia and there are questions on the real deal with Brazil. Even now as we are shown “Data from the national space research agency shows deforestation increased by 5 percent from October 2020”, yes Brazil could end deforestation by 2030 because there will be no forest left. So my prediction that we have wiped out 50% of all forests by 2030 is getting awfully close. Now reconsider the Montgolfier principle I gave two days ago and consider the balloon going up with only 50% burner power (the trees), we will be adding CO2 quicker than oxygen and that means the end of the balloon (we all get to die). I get it, it is not fair on Brazil or Indonesia. There are also Papua New Guinea. They have a grievous matter to settle, which is the claim Gordon Brown (former UK PM) made in 2009 on funds for the stricken nations, that money never came, and this government does not have the funds. So the setting of blah-blah-blah goes from bad to worse. 

And that does not beat all yesterday I saw some news pass buy that they have a replacement for plastic bags, this is good! Thy have a new wood based bag, which is debatable… at this point at least. So you still doubt my estimate of 50-80 million trees in three years? I might be wrong, it will need to be higher if Brazil and Indonesia are any indication and so far the governments are all talk and no result. 

There is a larger issue, there actually are two, one on each side of the equation. Brown gold on one side is essential for the economy of several economies, not merely Indonesia and Brazil, but Canada, India ad the US as well. The US being the largest timber producing nation on the planet. As we see, the solution from #TeamTrees seems to work, so why are they not reforesting what is lost? I know it is not always possible, yet we are now in a stage where we either get more trees or teach our grandkids to live by breathing carbonised oxygen (CO2). We are that close to suffocating. On the other side, we have seen clear reports that 50% of the damage comes from 147 plants, the media ignored it, I wrote about it and placed the documents of UNEP and the EEA for you to read, they had graphics too. Yet the media is largely ignoring those 147 plants, where they are and why they are allowed to continue (there might be a real reason, I do not know) yet the media remains silent, they are all about the flames of COP26, but in three weeks time the will move on, why is that?

We allow the wrong players to continue their destructive plans and it costs us dearly, if we are lucky enough to avoid that, our kids will not, they will live through it and curse us for not actively solving the problems they inherited. I leave you to figure it out. 

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November 11, 2021 · 04:41

1095 minus one

I’ve had some questions. Some are about my state of delusion, some are on my mental state and some are actually interesting. How I got there, what my evidence is. As I stated, it is highly speculative, but I got there, so how did I get there?

The Montgolfier principle
Think of the world as a balloon. There is the balloon with oxygen, it keeps us up, there are the burners and there is the basket. The burners are the Forrests, they provide oxygen for the balloon that keeps us up, as oxygen is added, CO2 is removed, the buoyancy of the balloon goes up. The basket holds all the people, as there are more people, more oxygen in the balloon is required. This is the most rudimentary of settings. To see the impact we need to consider the two stages that we have been exposed to. The burners are 33% smaller, as one third of all forests are gone. So the burners heed to be cranked up, but that is not possible, the trees work at a set speed, there is little we can do to change that. In the last 25 years, as the forests got cut down, the population grew by 38%, the basket got up to 38% more heavy. So as the balloon has less oxygen and more people, it will sink, we will die. You want an upside? There isn’t one at present, not until the politicians actually achieve something. Agreements, talks and compliments do not do anything and the members of COP26 are all about that, until they achieve and actually do something they deserve nothing. 

I might have oversimplified things, but the Montgolfier principle holds up. It is not accurate, it is not defining, but it gives you the story you need to hear. Even as I made comments on the research by McGill University, it is an event that matters. It will be harder to regrow the trees we chopped down. 

At present we see the news giving us Boris Johnson on the need for an ambitious agreement, it sounds nice but talking in the next 2 years whilst the nations halt and await actions is a much larger problem. Somewhere between 50,000,000 and 80,000,000 are needed to be planted in the next 2 years to give us some level of oxygen level change in the next 10 years. Did people forget that growing a tree will take that long? It takes decades to grow what is cut down in days. We might see the setting of Indonesia, but they are not alone. Brazil is in an equal place and as deforestation continues for another 8 years, there is every chance that the forests will have diminished to a total of 50%, so what do you think will happen to the balloon? I might actually live long enough having to pay for oxygen, not something I expected when I went to primary school. There we were told that the sun and the air was free, we were being lied to (it was a truth at the time). We screwed up our planet to that extent and we are all equally guilty, we remained inactive. Some sources give us that global warming are about to set at 2.4 degrees, I believe it will be much more towards 4 degrees, time will tell who is right, the setting of 1.5 degrees is no longer achievable, not as deforestation continues optionally at increased speed for another 8 years. Then we will get excuses from Indonesia and Brazil who need to protest the rights of the people and there we have it. We have the setting of non-action for a few more years and we have so much time left.

They all have something to say, none of them are acting. Consider over the next 6 months, how many nations will have planted trees, not in space, not in expected numbers, but in ACTUAL NUMBERS. What are the chances that the total will not even amount to 5,000,000 trees when 500% of that should be required? 

And as the media is silencing a few more items we will soon forget about all of this, that is the reality of it all and when pneumonia becomes the number one killer again, what will you say? It is due to hearts diseases are better managed? Cancer has a less deadly curve or will you realise that we have more problems, not less. I leave it up to you to make up your own mind.

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November 10, 2021 · 11:15

1095 days

OK, first off, this is HIGHLY speculative, optionally presumptive. So if any environmentalist shoots this view to bits, that might just be correct. As I was relaxing and contemplating things. I suddenly had a moment where my mind went racing in all the wrong places. My thoughts are giving us that we are being lied to. We are talking global warming and some notion of 1.5C towards global warming. But I believe that the setting is wrong. I reckon that we will have 4 degrees towards global warming by 2028. You see, some players are looking at the trends, but they forgot that logging continued unabated, the population grows and we are now in a 1095 day setting where either we plant millions of trees (closer to 50M) in 1095 days, or we will face a harsher setting. You see, growing trees will become increasingly more difficult and places that are too warm, the sprouts will die to a much larger degree and in 2028 too many places of this planet will turn arid. The Wall Street groups of brown gold will deny and oppose this, but am I wrong? I hope, I truly hope that I am wrong, but I feel uncertain. You see, as I wrote earlier. In the last 25 years one third of our forests have been cut, this started a global warming trend, yet to counter it we would have to replant that in half the time and that is not going to happen, and it would be rather delusional to expect that. Yet, as I see it we need to make a much larger effort the next 1095 days to stop the advancement of global warming. And there are other factors as well, water will be an issue to grow the trees and too much of that is polluted, rain is in less places and where it does rain it rains a little too much, so to sprout a forest will be increasingly depending on where it is possible and the places where it is possible are diminishing.

I thought it was me, but I found a piece by the McGill University that gives us ‘Over half of the world’s rivers cease to flow for at least one day a year on average’. The paper (at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210616113838.htm) also gives us “Given continued global climate and land use change, an increasingly large proportion of the global river network is expected to cease to flow seasonally over the coming decades” and there is the issue. As rivers run dry, the trees who rely on rivers will not grow, will have diminished growth and optionally die. When we see this added element, the stage of 1095 starts making sense. This is not one river, one place. No this is projected to 51%-60% of ALL the rivers on the planet. And that is ignoring places like the Nile where growth is pretty much a faded option. And as Indonesia states that stopping deforestation by 2030 is not possible, the issue increases. There are people who can get 50,000,000 trees planted (ask Mark Rober formerly with NASA), but that means starting now, that means creating the surge now, not when it pleases Wall Street, it will be too late at that point. A stage where we saw it all coming and we all ignored it for too long. 

Am I right, am I wrong? 

I honestly do not know, I will be clear about that part, but perhaps the media will take a larger look at that (if Wall Street allows them to). Enjoy the day, optionally.

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November 9, 2021 · 21:58

The enemy within

It was an expression that alerts us to the fat that not all the enemies are the ones attacking us. And as we might have seen. All those generals giving Americans the threat from Russia and China, they have nothing to fear, Americans will destroy America long before that becomes a fact. This is the setting that the BBC gives us. So the title is not merely ‘Metallurgist admits faking steel test results for US Navy subs’, it becomes how weak is the current American navy and were try trying to sell that weakness to Australia? You see, the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59186655) gives us “Prosecutors say Elaine Marie Thomas, 67, gave false positive readings for strength and toughness tests in at least 240 cases between 1985 and 2017” This would put a large stage of the Los Angeles class attack submarines in a weakened stage. One could argue that a nearby explosion towards arctic ice might create enough pressure for that steel to fail. And when they give you “Ms Thomas suggested that in some cases she gave metal positive results because she thought it was “stupid” that the Navy required the tests to be conducted at -100F (-70C)” you know that you are being lied to. The fact that the steel can not pass the test sets a dangerous premise and US law is weak, very weak. Elaine Marie Thomas is not seen as a traitor, a person who put American armed forces in a dangerous place, no she gets faces up to 10 years in prison and a $1m fine. She will be sentenced in February, guilty of fraud. A very clear case that crime pays in America. The stage that we are given “This offense is unique in that it was neither motivated by greed nor any desire for personal enrichment. She regrets that she failed to follow her moral compass – admitting to false statements is hardly how she envisioned living out her retirement years” that is nothing more than a false representation. It was about money, it was about a part unmentioned ‘living out her retirement years in luxury’, because if the tests failed, the bills would follow and she had nothing to fall back on. And the falsehood does not end there, there is a consideration. We see this with “the government’s testing does not suggest that the structural integrity of any submarine was in fact compromised”, it does, if the -70 tests failed, the submarines are useless in arctic and Siberian conditions. The submarines might only function towards optimum stages in warmer waters. A setting the Russians would be eager to exploit. I think that any criminal would want to hire John Carpenter. A setting of treason has been washed by “took shortcuts and made material misrepresentations” At that point we need to concede that I could end nuclear dangers (by making the Iranian reactors meltdown) which might be a misrepresentation and is not in any way treason (I am not Iranian). I could do more, but I think I have proven a point. To convict a traitor of fraud is like selling water as undistilled Gin at $11 per 500ml. And this is all the BBC gives us at present, what I do not understand is the lack of anger towards Elaine Marie Thomas. There are 28 Los Angeles in use, each with a complement of 125 and that just one class. And there is no clear image of how many are compromised. Optionally Elaine Marie Thomas has been endangering hundreds, optionally killing in them in the  future, not as many as the attack on Pearl Harbour took, not as many as the amounts of victims on 9/11 in New York, yet equally as devastating and it was done by an American. 

I can only guess how these generals feel now that they have been caught with their pants down trying to run like penguins. Fraud? Screw that!

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November 8, 2021 · 18:01

The call of a budgie

Yes, that is almost the foundation of a new cartoon, the story of Sylvester the cat and his sunny side show, Tweety. A show that was funny when we were younger than 13, but now? That is the stage we face (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59182278) with ‘Twitter poll calls on Elon Musk to sell 10% stake in Tesla’. What is this? It is like the BBC has lost its senses. Just like the Dutch government who claimed that they gave in to Twitter pressure when they made a deal with Sywert van Lieden, and no one is asking questions that matters. 

In the first Twitter is no valid source of information, none of the vote can be verified. It could will be three politicians each wielding a troll army of 235,000, we cannot tell. Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter, it updates me from sources that give me information. Newspapers that have a good reputation, movie productions that give me time lines and optionally a trailer or two, new games. And sometimes a link to something that matters, but polls? A shouting app that allows the rude and the loud to set policy? Never! Its like giving the power of policy on meat to the vegetable store down the road. Or perhaps it lets the NBA make NHL rulings. The proverbial ‘fuck that!’ comes to mind. 

So in this case it is about a poll that allegedly (because a Twitter account can always be hacked) Elon Musk put in the field and the BBC turn it into a lie. They give you “Voters in a Twitter poll have urged Elon Musk to sell 10% of his stake in Tesla in order to pay tax.” That is not what happened. Elon Musk (allegedly) put a question to an audience where he stated “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?” The response was that 57.9% said yes. We see no numbers, but it could be that 579 out of 1000 said yes. And it is a mere question he aired. And the setting is more. Tax avoidance, or black letter law is legally allowed, it merely means that he would pay what he is due, not what we THINK he is due and the larger stage is that it is again about tax laws, a setting both democrats and republicans have never ever adjusted, not in 2 decades. 

Then we see a part that matters, the BBC gives us “In an earlier tweet on Saturday, Mr Musk said he took no salary or bonuses from any of his companies – meaning he has no earnings on which to pay income tax. But he has made billions of dollars through a compensation package, which gives him power to exercise large amounts of stock options when the company meets performance targets and its shares hit certain prices.” He is legally allowed to do this and certain stupid players need to stop baiting the hook, the law is there, he can do this and he does. It is not good, it is not bad, it is allowed. To be honest, it a certain Randy Lennox takes the steps I could (hopefully) end up with 10% of $400M-$600M. Do you think I will not take these steps? You have got to be joking. The tax laws allow me to do this and I will, it is the law. 

And I am not alone, more and more take this step, because the law allows me to do this. The tax overhaul,. The one step that stops this is avoided by politicians, why is that? Why are these (stupid) people relying on Twitter to try to pressure people? We know it is not a valid source, it can be an informative source, but cannot be verified (so you need to take care on what to believe) and the list goes on (and on and on and on). So there we have a setting and the BBC justly adds to this with “Mr Musk has an option, which expires in August next year, to buy 22.86 million Tesla shares at $6.24 each – a fraction of Tesla’s closing share price on Friday of $1,222.

Under plans proposed by the Democratic Party in the Senate, billionaires could be taxed on “unrealised gains” when the price of their shares goes up – even if they do not sell any of their stock.” This would add another $23,000,000,000 non taxable funds (at the moment). The law allows him to do this, I saw some of my bosses (in the past) do this with much smaller numbers and it has been legal for at least 30 years. If it was such a taboo why didn’t they stop it them. In that time the US had Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and now President Biden, and so far none have done anything. Well the proposition is from the current president, but I reckon that the votes will fail. And even if it holds up, I feel 99.335% certain that there will be a hiatus and there will be ways around it. Thousands of tax lawyers ill be ready to take that proposition apart and drive wedges through its X, Y and Z axis. 

And as some players claim, the value does not always go up. Elon Musk is one man but hundreds of others do the same, if one gets taxed up to these hundreds can use that setting to make it all tax deductible a side the people are eager to avoid staring at, because they see this one Elongatedly uberly rich Musk and they forget that the one winner comes with 999 losers. Do you really wanna give a tax cut to the 999 that follow?

And credit to the BBC to add the comment by Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman who gives us “Looking forward to the day when the richest person in the world paying some tax does not depend on a Twitter poll” the one sane view in the article. Especially as one of the other Musk polls or statements got ‘altered’ to attain the flaming audience. I too would have questions for Elon Musk, but it would be on his new mobile and other settings that accompany this. I wonder if there is a side that is the danger of a much larger dangerous issue in the works. I am not claiming it is, I am merely wondering on the chances of this, and not from him or his endeavour, but on the dangers of third parties doing something stupid (as they tend to do when their pupils turn to dollar signs). For now I merely wonder, perhaps I will see an opposing view when the clear facts are presented to the world. 

I know, it is merely the view of little (and seemingly old) me, and that does not constitute evidence, but it calls for all kinds of questions, does it not? The call of a budgie is nice when you are drinking tea (or coffee) yet the stage of Twitter remains that we can switch it off when we do something that is important to us, did you consider that? And I get that the BBC saw this as an opening, but I reckon they could have written it differently, but that is my personal view on the matter. Have a fun day!

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November 7, 2021 · 22:09

Business models

Yes, it is on the forefront of most people’s minds. What is the best business model I could use? What is the business model that has the best ROI? And so on. This reminds me of a small joke from the 80’s (yes, I do not care whether it is not PC). There are three ways to lose money.

  1. Women (prettiest method)
  2. Gambling (fastest method)
  3. Statistics (assured method)

It is an old saying that has been toppled a few times over, or has it? I was drawn to that equation in recent days, because the real deal behind that is not the method, it is the stage of the decision makers, most people miss that tiny part of the equation. And it matter, because it led me to another path. A path that I initially missed. You see a player like Steinway has options for an additional path to income, much income and it would be a service, more important there is no one else in play anywhere near ready to had that service.

Now, this is not some sales pitch. I will have over the idea without any expectations and Steinway should feel ready to use the idea at THEIR convenience. Yet before that we need to look at a business model.

So below you see two images, and would you believe it both are business models and both can be applied to a whole range of services, but what makes any of them a business model?

It is on you, the decision maker. When we see the lady, many will think fashion, the photographer might thing composition, colour, tone and so on, the non-lady on the right is a business setting of a business model. But for who? IT? Finance? Service?

We are told a story and we fill the image to fill the picture WE have, but is that correct? That was the mindset I had when I was admiring a documentary on Steinway piano’s and when I saw the Steinway Spirio, I thought it was a great idea to have in the living room, for whenever you are bored of your iPod. Now I get it, how is replacing a $299 solution with a $249,000 solution a solution? Well, for the most it is set to your limitations and your inability to think out of the box. And yes, you could have a case when the ROI becomes a player. Yet still there is a limit on someone else’s thinking path. Now consider the great change that the GoPro Hero made, the Hero 10 is still on route to many people and the idea of having a VLOG is on the mind of many. And there are a whole range of musical solutions as well, but what happens when you get. Service that offers 12 pieces of up to 15 minutes a year for $99? Music that is enabled TO YOU as YOU see fit. 12 MP3 files that you can tinker and tailor with. Not the music EVERYONE uses, but a piece you chose just for you and it was a music piece by Steinway. Thousands of classical works, thousands of Jazz, Ragtime, popular, Blues, Soul and so much more and as Steinway adds to its own collection (not the artiste sections) they end up with a business model they are already in possession of, now they merely put it in the Steinway store. And there is a need, I see more and more YouTube creators that use the same music again and again. So what happens when a cat video maker orders the Fugue in G minor by Domenico Scarlatti? Yes it will happen more than once, but someone will be first, and as more music is generically Steinway the rush for more music will come. It is a business model close to ready, Steinway has the hardware, the software and now it merely needs the store to offer it. 

And consider if Steinway does not offer it (for valid reasons), consider how many Steinways Spirio R’s are out there. How long it will take for any piano player to offer just that through other means? A business model that is ready to go and which of the two images did I use? Yes, the lady, but in my case I was staring at a piano and the mind put 2+2+2 and the mind created one change and came up with 8 (I will let you work that one out yourselves). 

We are so set to the settings other people are telling me to take an so far I have found way more than I bargained for by ignoring them. I learned the hard way that those telling me to take their advice, they for the most only considered their own advice and more importantly they were all about self, a lesson I learned slightly too late. We all face that over time. Yet I will let you consider where you go for YOUR idea and make sure that you realise that you and you alone (optionally your mother too) will have YOUR best path in mind for you. The rest caters to self.

Enjoy Sunday.

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