Category Archives: Finance

November 11, 2020 · 21:10

Brother, can you spare a clue?

Yup, we all need clues at time. In some cases it is a simple as a vowel or a consonant, a stage where the word is still hidden to us. At times it is a clue to a larger picture, like the Guardian giving us ‘Biden to Trump – you’re embarrassing US’, now I am no Trump fan, yet the elections are not called yet in two states (31 electoral votes), we are optionally facing a recount in Wisconsin and Arizona (21 electoral votes), and there we see the larger difference, it is up in the air who becomes president. The media is shouting and screaming that Biden has won, which would be nice, but I deal in certainties and this is not certain. Georgia is leaning towards Biden, North Carolina is not. Yet until these two are officially called this race is still on. We can scream ‘count every vote’ and I support that, but not all the votes have been counted yet and there we have the larger station.

Then we see China optionally requiring a legal clue, we see this in BBC article ‘Hong Kong disqualifies four pro-democracy lawmakers after China ruling’, a lot of us might go all huffy and puffy, yet does that remain when we see “The expulsion came moments after Beijing passed a resolution allowing the government to disqualify politicians deemed a threat to national security”, as well as “China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee says that lawmakers should be disqualified if they support Hong Kong independence, refuse to acknowledge China’s sovereignty, ask foreign forces to interfere in the city’s affairs or in other ways threaten national security”, a setting that is open to interpretation. Especially when I consider “Freedom is the non-negotiable demand of human dignity; the birthright of every person—in every civilisation. Throughout history, freedom has been threatened by war and terror; it has been challenged by the clashing wills of powerful states and the evil designs of tyrants; and it has been tested by widespread poverty and disease. Today, humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to further freedom’s triumph over all these foes”, which President George Bush gave us from the White House in 2002, it comes in context with The National Security Strategy (NSS) which is a document prepared periodically by the executive branch of the government of the United States for Congress. It sets a tone towards the outlines the major national security concerns of the United States and partial methods on how to to administer these plans for dealing with issues. The legal foundation for the document is spelled out in the Goldwater-Nichols Act. The document is purposely general in content (read: Ambiguous), and its implementation relies on elaborating guidance provided in supporting documents. Both are choices in execution the need for a national security. Did you actually believe that the stage where Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898 was the end of that? After WW2, 50% of that lease period was surpassed, what did you think was going to happen? China giving up on the most profitable region in history? It is emphasised when we consider the Conversation giving us a year ago “Since 9/11, American domestic and international security policy has been focused on individual terrorists, terrorist groups and rogue countries as the primary threats. The country’s defensive response has been focused on the military and law enforcement capabilities. That’s natural, because the military knows how to shoot, drop and launch things at threats like that. And those dangers still exist”, do you think that China was not doing that as well? Since 2000 almost 100 attacks (mostly lone wolves) have been nipping at the heels of the USA, do you think that China is waiting for an attack? It will be minimising risk and Hong Kong is seen as all risk. 

Yet these matters are out in the open, there is a whole range of issues the remain in the dark, in the US, in China, in the Middle East and in Russia, each having its own baton of transparency, each having a different working method and in position we see the media pushing buttons and giving a partial view whenever possible, they too have their share holders, their stake holders and their advertising needs, it does not help many of us getting a clear picture. Consider the AP 4 days ago when they gave us “On Saturday, Biden captured the presidency when The Associated Press declared him the victor in his native Pennsylvania at 11:25 a.m. EST. That got him the state’s 20 electoral votes, which pushed him over the 270 electoral-vote threshold needed to prevail”, which is by all accounts a fair call, but the votes are not counted yet, the 31 out in the open and the end result could become Biden 276-Trump 262. This is an awful close call to be celebrating when votes are still being counted, one contested state is all the is required to show is all overboard and Wisconsin with 10 electoral seats might get us Biden 266 – Trump 272, that is the ball game. This is where it is at and the previous stage will be abandoned by so many it will scare you. You see, I am no Trump fan, and the chaos will ensure that the US will see several attacks, it infrastructure is massively undercut, its resources strained in the wrong directions and we are all screaming: Biden save us, all whilst the stage is not yet set, a stage that the Lone Wolves are really liking at present. Consider Savannah Georgia, Long Beach California, Seattle, Houston and South Carolina, they all have something in common and they neglected a lot in the last decade, the finds were not there. So when problems come calling the American people better have a real focal point instead of the reds versus the blues, we saw how that happened in Gangs of New York, how did the city fair there? It was set to Herbert Asbury’s 1927 nonfiction book The Gangs of New York. Yet what set it all apart, how do you remember the New York City draft riots? You think it does not relate? Consider that it was the moment when the population of New York fell below 11,000 and the area’s demographics changed pretty much forever as a result of the riot. You think that the second time around it will be better? When the reds versus the blues come calling instead of uniting, the US stands to lose a massive amount more from the start and this time around nationwide. I agree, it does not help when one of the players isn’t the sharpest tool in the tool chest, but the stage needs to be secured, China did it from the start, here we see a stage that is open for all with a gun and a loud mouth. Still thinking I have gone coo-coo? Consider ‘Three-quarters of Americans fear post-election violence and riots, Independent reveals’ (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/election-results-2020-riots-trump-biden-b1700559.html), a stage given to us 2 days ago. That stage still exists, and it still holds water and there is the larger danger, not the rioters, but the opening the they give the lone wolves waiting for a signal. We are given “Such fears appeared directly linked to Americans’ concerns that it will not be clear by 4 November who won the presidential race”, now consider that one week later this issue is still in play. I watched two states remaining at 99% for 3-4 days, so what is hampering the final count? 

As you can see, in light of the unknown and there is quite a lot of it, brother, can you spare ME a clue?

Oh, and I was not done yet (well, not completely). You see, the Goldwater-Nichols Act is the foundation of a larger issue (at https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a525942.pdf), you see when we consider “Goldwater-Nichols may have made DOD more efficient but at the cost of civilian control. It has also politicised the Armed Forces. Like the law it replaced, it has created a national military command structure that ignores the separation of powers. The amended National Security Act has consolidated dispersed powers into one office, unintentionally establishing conditions under which an imperious Secretary might abuse them”, as such we can surmise that the US will be under a larger version of exposed danger until the 19th of January, 2021. You did not actually think that these lone wolves are sitting on their hands, did you? The danger is not red versus blue, it is those seeking an advantage during that time and as I personally see it, the US is not ready to deal with that danger.

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November 9, 2020 · 22:58

Your field of dreams

We are all in a field of dreams, a field where we see the initial turn of the cards in our favour, some of these dreams are a little selfish, it does not make us selfish, but we are at times in a setting where the game needs to go over way. In my case it is Google buying my IP with the start payment of $25,000,000 post taxation, in the second offering it is Huawei buying it (for the same setting). Amazon is allowed to buy it, but I reckon that 5G technology is something that Amazon is not yet ready for, in the 4th is Elon Musk and he is only there because he makes things happen, he pushes boundaries and that works in my favour in this case. Is it silly (read: stupid) to sell $2,000,000,000 (in its least positive setting) for a mere $25 million? No, because the second payment is that I still hold on to 40% of the registered IP, they get 60%, this is not throwing away money, the I setting a page where I get 40% of something instead of 100% of nothing. We need to realise what we can do and what is outside our reach. We need to push for the field of dreams to get towards reality, not to make the golden dream more and more golden and never a reality.

In gaming, I am not a coder, not a programmer, I never was. But I could think ion a whole range of games, of improvements almost at the drop of a hat (any hat). Yet the stage was never there and I was never a Peter Molyneux or a Richard Garriott (real visionaries). Yet that is the one part I shared with Steve Jobs, he was not really a visionary either, but he recognised the people with vision around him and he could relate to that. It sets a different stage. There was a reason I came up with Watchdogs IV, Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration and so on, I saw what was possible, I could think out the stories. In the same way that I am now working on my second short story (with a wink towards Rendezvous with Rama), and my minds keeps on creating, even when I need it to stop (sleep is a pesky thing we need). Two 5G devices, several adjusted solutions towards 5G and optionally a new setting towards 5G mobiles making them extremely private. All settings I came up with in less than a day each. Then there is the Gordian One weapon systems and a solution towards reactors the I (with my sense of humour) called S.N.O.W., it even comes with two new valves, a wasp valve and a piranha valve (different applications), the device needs testing, and it has a positive side and a negative side. The upside is that if I get it to work, Iran can take its reactor and sell it for scrap and concrete chunks, the downside is one I will not discuss here, because I will be honest, it is scary and I do not really combine scary and NBC solutions, it tends to be real crazy stuff. 

In all this, we still feed the field of dreams, I am no exception, in my mind I end up with a nice cushy job until I retire and a really really nice house to live in when I retire and before that. Some dreams are simple in nature, we tend to not need a lot in that setting. I like the quote in the dark Knight the best in that regard, because the application is larger “I’m like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught one, you know, I just do…things”, we all tend to chase cars, whether it is that large fee, that gorgeous partner (who we tend to hope is still a virgin), that super large slice of Tiramisu, in the end, things are like cars, when we have it we look for the next thing, the house, the cushy job, the dream partner, they are essential needs, they link to our souls, we all want a version of that. And there is the danger and the blessing of the field of dreams. Phil Alden Robinson was right, faith and family have a larger imprint, yet the issue is not merely to have faith, but to have faith in self, that is the trigger, we can all have faith in someone else, but when that person has a larger faith in what I regard to be delusional politics (Paula White), how does your field of dreams evolve into a nightmare? That is the setting the some face, not me, even though I am a Republican at heart, someone like Donald Trump should not be allowed to continue, he damaged the Republican Party more than anyone realises, John McCain or Mitt Romney, either are 50 times the man the Donald Trump could ever be and he is looking towards a $400,000,000 court case involving taxes if I am not mistaken. We can invite into our field whomever we want, but we must take care that this field is about valuing self, not others, that dream partner is about the extension of you, your dream, your field. 

The problem for a lot of us I what we take into the field, for me it is my workaholic self, I know this, it is how I have always been, and in the past there was trust to former bosses, but that is now gone, I accept the choices I made and I made a few by trusting those who shouldn’t have received trust, but it was me, I merely blame myself. I walked in there with my eyes open. 

I now am in the final stretch and it is not a final score, but it is close to one and if I pull it off the balance goes deep into the green, if not I stay in the red, I accept that, I made choices and I accept that. Yet when you set up your field of dreams to propel you to the next idea, the next option or the next choice, be aware of what you took into the field, as long it is just those things and thoughts that are yours, you are fine.

If that does not scare you, consider the political implications that the Galvin report brought “A report, named after Robert Galvin, head auditor, and whose name appears on its front cover, was initially written at the end of 2006 as an audit of the expenses and allowances claimed by a sample of more than 160 MEPs. The existence of the report was kept secret until an updated version in February saw the fact of its existence made public by Chris Davies MEP. Even then, its contents remained secret”, and it is not that this happened, it is the small little part the we see with ‘its contents remained secret’, so in what universe does any government keep the wheelings and dealing of MEP’s a secret, especially when there are a lot of questions that need answering? 

When we see “Two MEPs were found to be paying out full assistance allowance, but neither had any assistant actually accredited or registered with the Parliament”, which I tend to see as some form of fraud, are these two MEPs still in office? We might concern ourselves with our own field of Dreams, and when we see what happens in the real world, we see no other way to live, unless we set a stage where these tools make a lot of money (at your expense), and should you wonder why I have a trust issue, consider that you can only make money if 50% or better goes towards greasing the gears, the is what the politics of most nations tend to fall towards. These people will only act when there is something in it for them. Ae the thoughts I am having so outlandish? 

Part of it is seen with “Huge end of year bonuses are being paid, often simply to use up as much of the allowance as is left over, between 3 and 19.5 times the recipient’s monthly salary”, and we wonder why we cannot get the budgets to fit? I reckon that this is a form that would apply and the governments stay silent, our field is all that remains, it is close to pure and it is seemingly clean, as long as no-one enters we are unaware of.

Philosophy teaches us that trust is risky, the question of when it is warranted is of particular and increasing importance. In case of our own field of dreams, we warrant very little risk, because for some that field contains a life of ambitions, and who would you trust with your lifetime of ambitions? You partner perhaps, your parents perhaps, but it tends to end there, for most that is all there is and the dream is about to shatter, when your field of dreams shatters, will you be safe?

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November 9, 2020 · 17:46

A fair call

I have been outspoken in the past on the US Administration speaking out on things they hardly understand, more specifically the nuts and fruits division (aka US Senate and US Congress), yet this morning I got confronted with one of such calls and I find it hard to disagree. The article that I initially saw on ABC (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-09/google-facebook-banking-senate-inquiry-fintech/12856080) where we get told ‘Senate inquiry asks whether Facebook, Google should be regulated like banks’ is the foundation of a much larger stage, and in the I find it weird that Apple is not named either. You see the quote “The inquiry — which in September handed down an interim report into other issues including regulation of buy now, pay later platforms such as Afterpay and Zip — is now examining whether it is dangerous to have large tech giants offering banking or other financial services”, is more than simply on the money, there is a whole range of services pushed and prodded towards consumers, if anything, the fact that players are faced with games like Gardenscape who continue their deceptive advertising trough games is a mere indication of how bad it could get. There is a basic level of protection that consumers are entitled to and as I personally see it they will not be getting it. 

Now, if these tech providers want to facilitate financial services whilst their services are not linked and behind a Chinese wall, isolating data and speculative insight away from the financial services it is one thing, it would level the playing field with the other providers. Yet in it current stage that setting is indeed extremely unbalanced, unbalanced towards their competitors and more important it will be unbalanced for the consumers who need a honest chance. 

So whilst we are getting treated to “Senator Bragg says our personal data has become an asset and the tech giants could be regulated so they use it fairly”, my response towards Andrew Bragg is that he is wrong, or perhaps incorrect is a much better word here, it is not regulation, it is isolation from internal and external data sources. Which means that if Banco Googly wants to extent a loan to Jack the Keyboard Hammer for a $99 new keyboard, they will have to do their own due diligence and use the methods the other banks and financial services have. That is the only way to keep level playing field. 

Now, player like Google Facebook and Apple might claim that the data link will allow cheaper loans, the might optionally be true, but when you get to the other side of the seesaw, and the seesaw is down for you, the data links might give you less options or more expensive options for the longest of times and the would not be fair. In that regard, have you ever seen ANY financial institution who set your wellbeing over their need for profit, please give me their name, because the alleged law firm known as Mandacious, Dissembling and Sneaky, who will inform you that there are leagues of financial institutions the always have your wellbeing at heart, all whilst you know that there are none that actually do. 

So, yes, I do believe the these tech giant have a much larger drive to own more and more money and there is nothing wrong with the, but they are doing it with a massive unfair advantage leaving banks with the empty jar of watered down milk as tech giants get to skim the cream of every milk delivery, it would be an unfair advantage, with larger implications when they start connecting financial data to the data the they already have, it would be a stage where we get a larger segregation of those who have versus those who have not. A stage that Dutch Journalist and tech savvy person Luc Sala warned us all against in the late 80’s, so 30 years ago he saw this level of segregation through technology, and when did personal segregation EVER have positive consequences? Ask the African Americans, the US Latino’s, optionally Native American Indians. Ask them what positive result they saw from segregation. Oh, and by the way good luck getting out of the room alive when you ask. 

Yet there is a larger stage the Google, Apple and Facebook will face and they already have the larger pieces in place to avoid them, as such regulation does not solve anything, it merely gives rise to legal loopholes, as I personally see it, the segregation of those services is the only decently clean and complete stage the void a lot of traps (most of them, not all), there is a larger stage where Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon (yup they are in it too) can set the stage of offering testing data, but the should only be allowed if that data is open to all financial institutions and for the same price. You see, they are not alone, that field has has layers like Equifax, TransUnion, Dun & Bradstreet, LexisNexis and a few more, as such there is a stage where their data has more unequal benefits, which is interesting, the article never mentioned them, so whilst some are amazed by people like Andrew Bragg and their PowerPoint voice, yet the data keepers the re out in the field now are not on the ticket here, it seems weird as they have been around and their impact is not to be ignored, so why did Andrew Bragg miss that? 

And the final quote is “Senator Bragg calls it a “game changer”, although critics have pointed out that without careful consideration, it could have serious privacy implications, among other concerns”, so what is his game, when we see ‘serious privacy implications’, I merely wonder who is buttering his bread, because the few I mentioned have a much larger impact, one the is never to be ignored and they have been involved in the financial industry almost forever setting the bar of allowed data versus insincere, or unjust data, a term that should have been in the article as well. You see the unequal field is created by some having more data as well as second degree data. Second degree, or secondary data is where it is at. We can consider that Secondary data refers to data, collected by someone other than the user. Yet what is the case is that these sources of secondary data is often collected for other means and other settings, like social science which includes censuses, information collected by government ad commercial departments for other means; organisational records and data that was originally collected for other research purposes, research purposes that are now reused without the users knowledge. And that is beside the station that some of this data is cleaned badly, and often linked to settings the are no longer relevant, yet they are there connected to a user setting an unrealistic view and optionally ignoring the setting that the created debt is false. The person will soon learn the he/she cannot pay it back, or it is rated as just that little more expensive. 

All stations that players like Experian and Dunn & Bradstreet arm against, for their needs as well as the good of the people. These tech giants are nowhere near the level of clean (and optionally corrected) data. As such there is a fair call to disallow these tech giants their Fintech arm, unless it is completely isolated from their other business arms.

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November 4, 2020 · 21:03

Pointless versus useless

Yup, consider that part and consider just how useless government oversight really is. To show this we get to the articles about three weeks ago, I noticed them, because I had the aggravated issue with deceptive conduct in advertisement for a while. Several sources give us ‘Ban for annoying puzzle ads which don’t represent the actual game’ (or a version thereof), with the sub-line “The Advertising Standards Authority has banned ads for Homescapes and Gardenscapes”. I have nothing against the game, but any match three game is rigged from the start, it is a clever way to get you to try and perhaps you will make a small purchase, and then she are caught in the addictive need, some just quit. I am ahead of the curve and I steer clear of all these match three games. Yet, The people behind these games (not just these two, others too), made an actual brilliant advertisement jab at the games giving us a DIFFERENT game where you have to select a solution, as such we see “Paid-for Facebook posts advertising games with puzzles – but which did not represent the vast majority of actual gameplay – have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)”, this is what got to me too and when I saw the news, I was happy. So what happened today? Gardenscapes advertisement (the bad one) now shows up in Fallout Shelter in the iOS version, as such it seems to be bloody pointless. Perhaps it is the price for $8.5 billion, perhaps it is the price of joining Microsoft, yet these so called banned advertisements are back, or they never left. Sometimes vacation does not end, it merely changes location.

This gets me to the Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/8593c8b5-5a98-4002-ac5a-68b59fbb6463) which was given to us in May with the headline ‘Russian brothers behind ‘Gardenscapes’ emerge as lockdown winners’, and we also get “Two Russian brothers living in London have emerged among the big winners of the lockdown, with their mobile games Gardenscapes and Homescapes making $200m from in-app purchases in April alone”, which sets the station that when you are rich, the ASA might not do anything, OK that is just speculation, but the stage is clear, and nothing seems to be happening. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy for Igor and Dmitry Bukhman, 200 million in a lifetime is nothing to be sneered and they are making that each month, I merely wonder if the deceptive advertising was essential to make that much money. 

So here we see the stage of pointless (having little or no sense) versus useless (not fulfilling or not expected to achieve the desired outcome). You might think it is the same, but it is not. The difference was seen in my Pencak Silat classes when I was a young lad (when I was 63.8% smaller roughly). Defensive systems (like Judo) are pointless, you are under attack, only countering doesn’t get the job done, there are pure attack based styles which are useless, if you are under attack, one needs defence, so the best martial art is one that decently covers attack and defence. Yes, we have seen all those movies on how great defence is, yet those grandmaster have been at it a decade or two and that tends to be far away from those starting some form of martial art. It now gives rise to the same setting with the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority), they can go after Facebook all they like, yet when the advertiser moves to advertise via Bethesda games (Fallout Shelter) how useful was the jab at Facebook?

And when the advertising server moves to the USA, or perhaps Canada, or Saudi Arabia, how will that affect the verdict? It seems to me that the leading man, Guy Parker who has been chief executive of the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) since June 2009; living of £120,000 a year might be able to keep up his income and fruitless actions, yet I merely wonder at present what he achieves, do you not feel the same way? When I see advertisement (the deceptive kind) move from place to place, I wonder why we need a man making well over $250,000 a year, it seems a pointless action and a useless way to spend that much money. Feel free to disagree, but there is a massive digital failure in that regard and I reckon I am not the only one thinking that. 

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October 28, 2020 · 21:37

The failing of others

We see this, others fail, we all do at times. My management position is different. I do not care about mistakes made, we all make them and anyone who claims that they do not make mistakes is either a liar or one who is about to make the whopper of all mistakes, history has proven me right again and again. You see, for me it is not about making the mistake, it is how quickly can you fix the mistake that was made, and if it is too late to fix it, what processes do you have in place? It is as reasonable as anyone can get. It is the application of realism. In all this there is the stage where others leave the door open, the door which you can come through. There was a setting earlier, now the setting is more defined. It is seen in ‘Saudi Arabia condemns republication of blasphemous caricatures’ (source: Arab News), they are not alone, all Islamic nations are opposing the farce France allowed for. A stage of ‘secularism’ versus ‘Intentionally insulting religion’, I feel certain that the Islamic nations are feeling a little less academic about it than I am. But for me there is an upside, I wanted to retire in Monaco (when you dream, it better be a good one), and the stage that we see in the Human Rights Watch, one with the headline ‘France Should Halt Arms Exports to Saudi Arabia’ (at https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/10/france-should-halt-arms-exports-saudi-arabia-egypt) where we were treated to “After Qatar, the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt received the greatest amounts, accounting for €1.4 billion and €1.0 billion in arms, respectively”, so lets take away the €1.4 billion from France and give it to China with a small finders fee, lets make that 3.75% for two years, with 5.3% for any additional sales over the €1.4 billion. I reckon that the stage will give me a retirement fee of € 105,000,000 and that is if there is no additional sales, but I reckon that I can pul that off to, I still have Gordian One in my back pocket and the first bonus will allow me to test it before setting it to the market. Everyone is all s up in arms and all about the evil that Saudi Arabia does, yet the simplest respect or tolerance for Islam is not to be found. So, why buy from them? An in this France has a $4.3B, Italy a $3.8B and Germany a whopping $7.5B, so in all this I would be in a position of a really nice retirement, can anyone blame me? I am upfront on my reasons, most others are not, most others hide behind their secularism to allow for right winged hatred, they are too afraid to be replaced and the worst thing is that replacement will happen at some point, so doing it whilst hurting your coffers to support your nation makes no sense at all, and as I am proving, there is always someone else ready to deliver what the customer needs. If party to is hungry enough, he or she will find a way and there are several nations that need to be aware of what comes next. France is only one example, the US has through its own actions endangered close to $10 billion in sales and in that case Russia and China are fighting on what they might deliver, at that point we see the shifting of the Middle East options that the US (the EU too) has left. A stage that will happen, the stage is too loud for it not too happen and several actions are already in the past, with Saudi Arabia having by far the fastest 5G setting, we see that there are additional setting for the KSA to embrace and China is seemingly increasingly willing to pick up that baton, two batons dropped by the EU and the US through acts of increasing stupidity and that setting is not stopping anyway soon, as that continues more and more additional offers of goods will come from other directions, and in this we see a larger stage, if the sales fall away the drop in jobs come pressing, it will result in additional economic stagnation, all whilst their larger opponents will get economic boost after boost. How will that play out? Well, I am speculating, not too good for the US and the EU, but if it goes my way I will have a nice golden parachute, and as such I will not care.

The station of acceptance is not merely giving the consumer what they want, it is accepting that they work with other values, it is the simplest of rules in the setting of larger sales and that is a mistake at least 5 nations have made, thinking that their values would be blindly accepted on a global setting. In this one source gives us “The Trump Administration has degraded environmental enforcement, favouring polluters over citizens’ interests”, as such, if for these people the environment is so important, why do we see shallow levels of acceptance? Hypocrisy is a dangerous form of ammunition, it can openly be used by shooter and target and there is no guarantee that it goes the way they think, in the end the hooter could end up getting shot by their own bullets. This is not a new setting, there is an entire dimension of sales systems banking on the failing of others, they refer to it as their pipeline, the pipeline of opportunity. So in this, what is wrong by resetting that pipeline to me? It is the way they do business, as such I can too.

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October 20, 2020 · 23:06

Is the link real?

Apart from the continuation of the IP I promised as public domain for Sony exclusive products, I was in doubt of some information on ISIS I got my fingers on. This is besides the information that is out in Israel where we see: ‘ISIS urges attacks on westerners, oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia’, the danger of the nfrmaetion I saw is that they are merely parts of something. I need to painty a picture. In one courtyard there is a person selling sweet fruits, they are orange in colour and in the other courtyard there is a person selling sweet fruits but red in colour. Now, I cannot tell if the first one is selling oranges, tangerines or perhaps nectarines. The other person is selling cherries, strawberries, red currant or even tomatoes (are tomatoes fruit). Some will set the stage that fruit sellers are in these two courtyards. Yet I do not know are these sellers an outlier, is fruit all they sell, can I confirm what exactly they sell and what do they call themselves? Even the issue if the two sellers are related is in question. But some intelligence is set on too little data and too often dubious data. Then there is the stage what do they call themselves? Are they actual sellers, or merely two people in a closed setting where they have something for sale? All questions on the stage we see here, so when I see “An Islamic State spokesman called on the terrorist group’s supporters to target westerners, oil pipelines and economic infrastructure in Saudi Arabia”. This set a few issues. In the first the reliability of it all, the western media has actively avoided a few settings in these places, so there is little to go on and for the most they merely copy one another. In the second Saudi Intelligence is pretty efficient in Saudi Arabia, as such ISIS is calling for activity in a place where they do not have any, so is it a hollow threat, is it a call to arms or a red herring to mess with Saudi Intelligence. The additional problem is that any attack could only happen with a much larger support from Iran and ISIS and Iran do not really mix, which gets me to a slightly inappropriate joke. Two hooligans, one Swede one Dane have an argument over Football, they both grab their knives and stab each other in the chest, instantly killing one another. What is the Score? Answer: Norway leads by two points.

OK, not the nicest joke, but the issue gets across (I hope). ISIS is leaking and making claims, yet the stage is not set and there is debate on how effective ISIS is in Saudi Arabia, and that is the larger truth here. ISIS might have followers in Saudi Arabia, but that is hear say, there is speculation, but no active data supporting this. Iran has activity (to some degree) in Saudi Arabia, but there is still debate on how much and how effective it remains. 

In a stage where we see: “Saudi Arabia has stressed the need to step up efforts to reach a lasting and sustainable peace agreement among the Palestinians and the Israelis” we see one side, we see ISIS in opposition, yet no one is looking on where Israel Hayom got its data (at https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/10/20/isis-urges-attacks-on-westerners-oil-infrastructure-in-saudi-arabia/) from. This was not some leak, this was not intelligent by Mossad, the article given to us is from Reuters and ILH Staff, OK, we can accept that, so why doesn’t Reuters have this as front page news on their Middle East section page? And as such, who at ILH had this and more important when did they have it? An article by Reuters not on their website, especially one involving ISIS is a larger set of weird, and guess what, it was about Saudi Arabia, another reason to have it, and the only other source I saw pushing this was oilprice.com. That and the stage of ‘Offshore Oil & Gas Poised For A Major Rebound’, as such, in light of all this, I have questions, don’t you?

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October 19, 2020 · 14:17

Anticlimactic

Yup we all have these moments, it usually comes after a ‘watch this’, or ‘you’ll never believe what I just heard’. There is no escaping these moments and anyone reading this has a few instances where this happens, or as some married women say, welcome to my life, I get this at least once a day. Such things happen and for one station one could argue that they should not have married that person (40% divorce ratings proof me right).

Oh, and before I forget, the next instalment of the free RPG IP for Sony products comes next. So that is one part that will be coming, I was actually about to work on it when ‘Sheikh Khalifa’s £5bn London property empire’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2020/oct/18/revealed-sheikh-khalifas-5bn-london-property-empire) passed my eyes. I wanted to add a comic I remembered, but I cannot find it. It was the early 80’s and in that instance you see three Arabs talking, one saying ‘Shopping was nice, today I bought Bond street and Piccadilly’, which was a reality around 1985, the shops would worship you if you came with German Marks or American Dollars, it was that bad, so the idea that a lot of prime real estate is not British owned is not really a surprise. In 2014 the Daily Mail gives us ‘How wealthy Gulf Arabs are buying up huge swathes of the capital – and now make up a tenth of all buyers in exclusive Mayfair’, as such what the Guardian had in mind to make it some exclusive ‘revealed’ story seems to be a bit of a stretch. In addition to this we can argue (and no disrespect intended) that Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan with a £5,500,000,000 real estate empire is according to some sources not really super wealthy, but he is getting up there. Yes, how sad are we when we gawp at an amount that other refer to as ‘Meh!’. The article goes on with “Now, leaked documents, court filings and analysis of public records have enabled the Guardian to map Khalifa’s property holdings in the UK, revealing how the oil-rich nation’s president became a major landlord in London. Khalifa’s London property empire appears to surpass even that of the Duke of Westminster, the 29-year-old billionaire aristocrat who owns swathes of the city”, which makes me go ‘Really?’ Consider 1 Hyde Park, how many British owners are in that building? Can we get a rundown per nationality please? In 2019 we got (source: Elite Traveller) “London’s luxury real estate market has been given a well-timed boost with the news that a super-prime penthouse has sold for a reported $72million. The sale represents one of the biggest in the United Kingdom in the last year. The property is the largest in the new Clarges Mayfair development on Piccadilly, which has proved popular with the global elite since its completion last year. The purchase was completed by Quintessentially Estates working on behalf of an international client”, there are actual Arab run investment firms in the UK who specialise in real estate projects, and they are pretty much the only ones who can afford living in London, so why is anyone surprised? Why is the Guardian (in this instance) going all ‘revealed’ over one person who might not be the biggest investor in London, and in a stage where the London city administration is pushing these events, why is there a lack of that part of the equation? Even as Forbes gave us earlier this year ‘Is It Time To Move Out Of London?’, we see stage where the Coronavirus is hitting landlords with almost no manoeuvring space, they are all panicking. Even as they focus on “Similarly, rents in the capital are also extortionately high for many, with the latest Rightmove Rental Index putting average London rents at £2,119 per month in Q4 2019, compared with £817 in the same period for properties outside of London. And although the latest ONS Index of Private Housing Rental Prices showed that London prices increased 1.3% year on year in January, compared to 1.6% for the rentals outside of the capital, it’s of little meaning in the bigger picture where capital rentals are on average more than twice of their surrounding neighbours” the stage of landlords is less clearly stated, some when on a limb because it was a sure deal, as such no-one was ready for an even outlier like Covid-19, and no-one was expected to, so nw we see that others are taking over with discount a large setting of the housing available. London will grow back to strength and those with a few millions here and there and not needing them will make a rather nice profit over the next 3-4 years. That is how it works, so when I look at “Analysis of Land Registry data suggests Khalifa’s commercial and private property portfolio includes about 170 properties, ranging from a secluded mansion near Richmond Park to multiple high-end London office blocks occupied by hedge funds and investment banks” I merely shrug and say ‘Meh!’, and the stage of “hedge funds and investment banks” has been the stage of London properties for decades, so why is this big news? Was it so you could avoid reporting on ‘Islamic State calls to attack Saudi Arabia over Israel’s deals with UAE, Bahrain’, yes it makes perfect sense to attack nation A, because nation B and C had a deal with nation D. Yes, that might actually have revolutionary details (sorry, pun intended). And as I go over the Guardian article, I cannot say that it is a bad article, it is actually a good article, yet the entire ‘revealed’ part is a little anti-climatic and the idea that a decently wealthy person from the United Arab Emirates is investing in London might not even constitute news, or newsworthy. That  has been going on for well over a decade. So when we consider “housing a secretive Liechtensteinian company, Holbein Anstalt, which manages the royal family’s private affairs”, an optional actual fact (I did not check the fact), we might consider asking the editor of the Guardian (Katharine Viner) if she has been drinking the other cool-aid. 

The issue is not the current owners, it is the setting where the City of London is doing actual work to set a stage where affordable housing becomes more readily available. I wonder if the waiting list of that part has diminished below 10 years yet. London is one f the few plays in the world where a first house is only affordable for people at the END of their career, it is quite the achievement for the City of London.

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October 17, 2020 · 01:41

When a war is called

The thought started when I saw an article by Yahoo Finance pass by, it was named ‘Why Saudi Arabia May Be Forced To Start Another Oil Price War’, two thing came to mind, it is October, and the northern hemisphere is now going into Winter, it seems trivial, but 700 million Europeans and well over 50% of Americans (and also all Canadians) will need heating and oil is more often than not the essential fuel used. The second part is seen but perhaps missed, as we are given “The threat of European lockdowns is real, hitting global demand again while taking a heavy toll on the economy. Financial easing and subsidies worldwide have kept some demand in place, but the financials of major economies are bleak, which can be seen in the rising level of unemployment” what everyone forget is that in the past most of these people were in offices and shops, places of employment. During the lockdown all these people will stay at home and their houses, places that usually tends to be 5-8 degrees colder because they are at work, these houses will now need heating for all that time. In addition there are in the US over 1,050 power plants operated by oil, all these houses need power, all whilst many shopping centre needs less power, yet the need for power and heating will seem to rise, especially when the cold days come through. Even as some question “Global oil storage levels are still high, while the world is awash with oil and gas. International traders are openly questioning the current OPEC+ move to put extra oil on the market”, I am not convinced. Yes there is less fuel needed for jets, but jetful is only 2% of crude oil production, so I have been told in school (a long time ago), yet power and heating needs oil and there will be a shift, summer is gone, autumn is squarely here and we see a few hundred million places now needing power and heating most of the day, which stands against the needs of a working environment. As such the statement seen here “Saudi Arabia, supported by its main ally UAE, and Russia are both looking at a financial crash of unknown magnitude if oil markets don’t recover soon. Oil prices are currently too low to sustain the government strategy of both nations” becomes one of debate. I cannot counter it, but when we think things through, oil needs are essential during winter, and I see it, these people will not need gas for cars, so where is the tradeoff? Well, mot of these houses still need food, so the car remains used, to a lesser state. Yet heating and power will be needed to a much larger degree, so even as we can assume to some degree that there will be a lesser need, it will at best be a ‘somewhat lesser need’, in light of all this, why is there a call for a war (well, a pricing war)? The article still gives a truth, several in fact. We cannot disagree with “Without higher crude oil prices, not only is the Kingdom’s flagship Saudi Aramco suffering but most government projects too. The world’s largest oil company has already put several major new projects on hold, while at the same time reassessing investment levels of others. High-profile offshore projects” yes there will be an impact, and the impact will optionally continue into 2021, yet the larger stage is not how Saudi Arabia will do, the question becomes when the EU collapses after another lockdown, how will those government foot the bill for essential services (power and heating) when the trough (finance coffers) run dry?

So as we get to “If the threats made by Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman that the Kingdom has had enough of profit takers, short investors, or lack of support of members, are to be taken face value, the market should not be surprised if the OPEC leader decides again to go its own way. A more aggressive move by Riyadh towards market-share or oil prices is not at all unthinkable”, I start to wonder who the writer Cyril Widdershoven is and I see that he is linked to Verocy and that he oversees Mediterranean Energy Political Risk Consultancy. As such, I wonder if he hopes to create a pre-creationary wave, or that there is a stage which in the article is assigned to Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman. I do not know (I honestly do not know), yet any quick or knee-jerk action required by others, tends to set a different stage in all this and when someone gives me ‘Why Saudi Arabia May Be Forced To Start Another Oil Price War’, I tend to wonder why something like that I needed. Yes from our side a lockdown is not good news, but who considered that they would be warming the house an additional 12-15 hours each day? 

It is well over half a day more, as such heating is required, as well as additional power, because these people will need their TV, their computer, their radio, their console and in many houses they need need close to one of each and with an additional 12 hours a day that drives up the need for power too. So yet there is every indication that there is some level of downturn for Saudi Arabia, I am merely not convinced that it will be as bad as me predict, yet I am willing to admit that I might be wrong. So I will let you do the math on what you need in your house, and consider, will it be more or less than before and when you consider that part, consider the thousands, nay millions of additional homesteads in Europe, the US and Canada. That is what went through my mind, and overall there is an impact for Saudi Arabia, but I am not convinced that it will be as dire as some say. When someone calls for a pricing war, they tend to multiple motives, that I what history taught me, I am merely thinking things through, but as stated, I might be wrong.  

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October 11, 2020 · 22:45

Pleasing the minority

There is a stage we all face, at times we have to please the minority, I have nothing against that. There is a first need to do this at times, and it is also a stage where we see that ONLY pleasing the majority tends to set an empty example. Let’s set the stage by asking 5 questions, in 5 cases 80% says yes, 20% says no, now consider that the questions are related somehow and the ‘no’s’ never overlap. So there is optionally a state here an unanswered question exist where 100% would say yes, but now it is never asked. It is an extreme setting, but they do exist, and the stage is that if we please the minority at times, we have a stage where there is a diminished need to polarise. Now, this last part is speculative from my side, but it is one that exists to some degree.

Yet it is not about some theoretical side, it is a real side and we have been exposed to the largest stage of it. A global economy in shambles as we gave in to lockdown after lockdown, which is fine (to some degree), I understand and accept that actions were needed. 

Yet in all this, consider that we are in a stage where we are trying to please a group of people that amounts to 2.7% of the people who will not survive the Coronavirus. Now I am all about reducing risk and the setting is not the 2.7%, but the expected 4.3%, which we need to name the stage of expected and actual morality rate. No matter how we turn it, the 95% is trying to please the less than 5% of the population who will not survive the event. 

I understand the face masks, and certain preventive measures like social distancing, we want to do as much as we can, but that stage is not always possible, the lockdowns show that. And in all this we are trying to fictively please a minority to continue all this, consider that we told the news that we are locking down nations because of a flu, how would that have ended?

Now consider the headlines ‘Second national lockdown possible, says top UK scientist’, ‘India’s coronavirus outbreak in 200 seconds’, and ‘Israel’s second lockdown slowing outbreak, data suggest’. We can jump any way we want, but until there is an actual vaccine that works, slowing down is as good as it gets and the stage of lockdowns only results in a stage that destroys global economies and nothing more than that. Even as the BBC gives us ‘A visual guide to the economic impact’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51706225) we see the larger impact. Yes there was always going to be an unemployment issue, but the economy was already weak, this merely pushed it over the edge. Yes, we see ‘More people seeking work’, and a weak economy was in part to blame, the lockdowns merely intensified it. And as we seek other reasons, no one is looking at the part the we ignored, when the lockdown started, we were left at home with nothing to do and the shops were closed too, result, millions of people turned to Amazon, which gave Jeff Bezos a $12,000,000,000 sandwich, and I reckon that it tasted good. Now, none of this is the fault of Jeff Bezos, lets be clear about the, global economies overreacted and we got into a stage where Amazon is one of the few beneficiaries clearly having a profitable stage. I agree that governments had to do something, so there is nothin to state against a first lockdown, but as we now see in the UK, and France as the headlines of France24 give us ‘French coronavirus cases set new 24-hour record with nearly 27,000 infections’, lockdowns are not a solution, we merely need an actual working vaccine and until that happens, people will die, optionally me as well. Am I happy if I do not make it, of course not, but if I die I get to avoid my next tax-bill, is this the silver lining, or the dark close the follows the current silver lining? I actually do not know. 

But we are in a stage where we see politicians act the same solution again and again and expect a different outcome, and before you wonder, yet I am coming with an Einstein setting. He stated “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”, and when will we catch on that this is not working? Even as we see ‘Supermarkets, chemist and Bunnings among alert venues after NSW records five new COVID-19 cases’ (source: 9News), consider that New South Wales has 8.2 million people, most of them in Sydney (5.3M), on 801,150 km², outside of Sydney 3 million people are in a stage of being hindered life on all matters. Of course Australia is an example that is a bit of an outlier, yet I feel that France, Germany and the UK have similar stages outside of the big cities. Consider the overreaction of 5 new cases on a place that is larger than 35 nations in the world.

These places and others too have a stage where politicians and scientists are setting a stage that is not a wrong one, but it caters to the minority. I get it, they want to safe as many people as they can, but now the economy is setting a stage of a much larger time of hardship, I reckon that Amazon is pleased of whatever comes next, they are still roaring, and consider that a new lockdown gives us a stage of two new console and several new games and only Amazon will be able to hand over the goods to people in houses staying away from the debatable diseased areas. This is NOT about Amazon, they did nothing wrong, we need to find another solution, something that results in not getting the Einstein insanity definition thrown into our faces. I get the first lockdown action, it made sense, but now that we see that it is not working and when we see that the White House population was a massive spreader of the virus, we need to wake up and consider that for the coming year we will place ourselves in danger, we cannot solve the setting until there is a cure, until there is a vaccine. We can merely protect ourselves as best we can, we can all wear the facemark, we can prosecute the infected who did not for negligent endangerment, and get indicted for a lot more if it results in a fatality. We  might think that all lives are to be saved, but what happens when the economy dies? Was the economy not worth saving? I am not sure about that part of the equation, I do not know if it is worth saving, and perhaps neither are the people. I cannot profess to be wise enough to make that judgement, yet I believe the inaction is a mortal sin, and so is feigned inaction, by doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, different outcomes. 

Consider what you have done in the last 6 months and see what you gained and what you lost. Close to 99% of the people had a significant loss, so why do we cater to the minority in all this?

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October 7, 2020 · 19:06

The stage of Medici

Yup, we understand (or most at least) the stage that the Medici bring, it is a political stage, it does tend to get a bit confusing when those who who employ the tactics of the medici also study medicine, they are not the same. In this we call the stage (or boxing ring) between Dr. Fauci and Dr. Atlas. In one corner we have Dr. Fauci, an immunologist has had a career in infectious diseases since 1984. This man is extremely qualified on the stage of Covid-19. In the other corner we see Dr. Atlas, a neuroradiologist. It is a subspecialty of radiology focusing on the diagnosis and characterisation of the central and peripheral nervous system, spine, and head and neck using neuroimaging techniques. So oversimplified, one takes pictures and one looks at infectious diseases. I am arrogant enough to say that I could do (after learning it) what Dr. Atlas does, but I would never be willing to claim that I could ever do what Dr. Fauci does.

In all this it is nice to take a look (at https://www.businessinsider.com.au/scott-atlas-hits-back-critics-questioning-science-fauci-redfield-2020-10) the link to the article, there we see “a health-policy expert who spent months speaking out against lockdowns and advocating the full reopening of schools, to the White House coronavirus task force in August prompted outrage in the medical community”, in light of a massive part of the White House, now in a stage where no work can be done, all whilst the cases are till growing globally by well over 300,000 each day. There is not. Lot more we can do, because there is every indication that the numbers are tweaked, incomplete and misreported making the US look worse off, but that stage is (as I personally see it) largely incorrect. In the stage I am on the fence, because the stage is larger and there is a lot of fear mongering. No matter how important we see ourselves, the morality rate is still around 4%, optional a little lower when we consider that several nations have not reported or insufficiently tested for hundreds of thousands of people. All whilst 96% will endure. Yes we would like to see 0% death, but that is not realistically, the over reaction is too often ignored, and when we see “after months of Atlas appearing on Fox News and speaking out against lockdowns”, I am not sure if I can disagree with him, the larger stage is about protecting 96% of the people in amber, which is counter productive and almost pointless. I do not disagree with “members questioning his qualifications to advise the president since his background is in health policy and neuroradiology, not infectious diseases”, if we can accept some lists, we could reflect on Sweden, currently in 42nd place, with 96,145 cases and 5883 Covid casualties, giving them a mortality rate of 6.1%, yet the percentage seems 50% higher, but the economic impact was avoided to some degree. There is also the issue that Sweden is massively rural with the exception of the villages Stockholm, Malmo and Gothenburg. There would optionally be a reason to impact these villages. There is a decent setting that this approach could never work in London, Paris or the Netherlands, the population pressure is too high, it also gives a larger stage that the numbers from India do not add up, yet for the US there needed to be a more fluidic setting. Yes, lock down New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, yet doing that in Arkansas, Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma, Kansas and rural settings makes a lot less sense. Even now, I get it, Face masks is in too many places unavoidable, and I do not object, but the mass fears and the mass ashes were not the greatest ideas. So in this, the Medici move gives rise to “In recent years, however, Atlas has transitioned to a career in health policy. He works as a senior fellow at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution and has advised politicians including Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani on heath policy”, yet in this case, in the case of Covid, his knowledge is inferior to Dr. Fauci, as such, (again oversimplified) it is a speaker of Medici opposing a speaker of medicine and too many do not understand the difference. I see the wisdom in “his background is in health policy and neuroradiology, not infectious diseases” and I see that too, Dr Fauci is the better expert on the matter, but for any health care worker ever confronted with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, we need to understand that this is not a medical book, it is a book for legal settings. It is a rosetta stone so that health professionals can converse with legal professionals and that is the setting a lot of people seem to miss.

I am aware of the stage where psychiatrist Allen Frances has been critical of proposed revisions to the DSM-5, with the generalised quote “it will medicalise normality and result in a box full of unnecessary and harmful drug prescription”, all whilst I am in a stage where I state “if you had to grasp art the book you know there was an issue from moment one of going there”, and in the end it is not a medical book, it is a reference (of sorts). 

So whilst the Fauci and Atlas are brushing up on pugilism, we are standing on the sidelines, tightly packed to see as much of that fight as possible, forgetting that we can make changes to the choices and optionally keep ourselves and other safe. The first lesson that these fanatics seem to forget, because if their actions can be used as optional evidence that they infected others, those relatives of these people could push for arrests towards negligent homicide. At that point it is not about ‘personal rights’ it will not be about ‘freedom of expression’, they got (optionally) others killed and as thousands are getting arrested and jailed before the election, that stage will set a new record of accusations towards election tempering. It is more than merely a silly thought to have.

Yet on the other side I get it, there is a larger overreaction to the situation. It is the impact of fear (as I personally see it). There is no clean setting (other than the Dr. Fauci vs Dr. Atlas setting) and there this president has created a problem for himself. Especially as deaths are on the rise in the US, and it takes only one death in White House staff for the situation to explode (or implode) in a much larger form of consideration, why did President Trump ignore Dr. Fauci in the first place? So far he has not been wrong. I accept that the president has an issue with the ‘better be safe than sorry approach’, yet that is almost every doctor and in this stage Dr. Atlas has a larger disadvantage. 

No matter how this goes, Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli has been howling with laughter for days, the fact that the medico are now medico di Medici is something he never expected and he is clearly having fun.  I feel like celebrating (and giggling) too, let see if he has any of that Italian grape juice left.

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