Category Archives: Media

January 2, 2021 · 07:51

Fortune cookie?

And the woman looked at me and said: “There are two kind of unemployed people, those who cannot deal with the situation and those who are unwilling to consider alternatives”, I have no idea who she was and she basically threw the ‘accusation’ in my direction. Yet it is not a truth, it is what some call ‘the fortune cookie truth’, it is almost like reading a horoscope, you want it to be true, and you will read it accordingly with a weighted view on what you read. Yet that is not the only time you read it this way. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/may/28/how-the-free-press-worldwide-is-under-threat) gives us ‘How the free press worldwide is under threat’, well it is debatable whether it is, and to some extent you did this to yourself. So when I read “In recent years, another way of silencing journalists has proliferated: the use of what are known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or Slapps, where defamation or criminal lawsuits are brought with the intention of shutting down forms of expression such as peaceful protest or writing blogs”, I wonder where this is going, you see we are given all kinds of examples, and the loud Mexican example is pushing the matter, but when we see “In France, media organisations and NGOs have been hit with what they view as Slapp suits for publishing accusations of land-grabbing from villagers and farmers in Cameroon by companies associated with the Bolloré Group. In the UK, fracking companies including Ineos, UK Oil & Gas, Cuadrilla, IGas and Angus Energy have since 2017 sought and been granted wide-ranging court injunctions, often directed against persons unknown, to prevent protests and campaigning activities at drilling sites” we do see something that should not get ignored, yet the setting is actually larger than that. All kinds of publications have pushed this and the demand for proper policing has not ben met seriously. So as we are given “a framework for co-operation between UN bodies, national authorities, media actors and NGOs. Spearheaded through Unesco, the plan was incorporated into the Declaration of the Council of Europe in April 2014, and in guidelines published by the EU soon after. In April 2016, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe adopted a recommendation on the protection of journalism and safety of journalists and other media actors” we are given the first part, not the journalist, but the phrase media actors, they are part of the problem and as the media refuses to acknowledge the stage, they themselves are endangering the journalists. And it took a while, but they come out with the old and misrepresented cow, we get “Other infamous cases of state-sponsored crimes against journalists include the brutal murder, on 2 October 2018, of Saudi dissident and Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. The CIA have concluded that the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, ordered the journalist’s assassination. On 19 July 2019, the office of the UNHCR released a report describing Khashoggi’s death as “premeditated extra judicial execution”.” Let’s not forget that this is the same CIA that gave us the presence of WMD’s in Iraq, so where were they? The emotional ‘brutal murder’ is given, absent of actual and factual evidence and this is where we see that the journalists became the media actors. The people can no longer tell the difference, a journalist gives us the FACTS, a media actor does not, mostly they rely on emotional storytelling to flame events, a ‘Whornalist’ if you wish, and the matter is getting worse, the people are rejecting journalist sources, complicating matter further. It is becoming a setting where the ‘fortune cookie telling’ is regarded to a much larger extent as some unwritten truth and the media pushed for this, emotional people will click sooner, will click more often and every click matters in the digital world. It also enables corporations and players to use Slapps to a much larger degree. So these ‘Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation’ are now proving to be a much larger weapon of choice by too many players and the media seemingly and speculatively allows for them according to the needs of shareholders and stake holders. And as I personally see it, UN Essay writers are making things less and less palatable, not because of what they claim, but they are using more and more dodgy settings to create an air of ‘humane lawgiving’ a statement that is it own antonym a it is not humane and in no way is it lawgiving, and speculatively speaking it might not be lawful either. 

So as the article ends with “Today, citizens are on lockdown, eager for news like never before. And more than ever, the news must be fact-checked, verified. Because disinformation spreads as fast as the virus itself, and journalists are on the frontline in the fight against the distortion of truth. More than ever we need facts. Facts to avoid spreading fear, fake news and panic. More than ever we need a free press” they need to realise and accept that as long as journalism dos not take a hard look at itself and distances itself from media actors, their plight will merely become harder, people can no longer see the difference, and the options they had from day one, the fact that a journalist has (or should have) a degree in journalism, as such the articles they write can be made to look significantly different from opinion makers and non-journalistic flamers, they are all set to the same category (read: garbage). 

Entertainment stations,  claiming to give us the News, all whilst that news is tainted and filtered to keep out what we should know, but someone insisted that it is not worth knowing, it does not matter whether the decision maker is aiming for Digital currency, a stake holder, a share holder or someone else, the news is filtered and therefor might not be news anymore, merely filtered information and there are examples going all the way back to 2012, optionally a larger time before that. The people can no longer tell the difference, what was hard about that? As such the given part “when powerful political and business actors can attack journalists with impunity” is merely half a truth as I personally see it. They are part of the shareholders and take holders that limit the view of the people through media actors and that part is the unwritten part that has gone way out of control. That needs to be addressed before you claim that you want a free press, you merely boxed yourself in and you are in denial, merely coining the idea that the quarters you are in now are a bit cramped, which implies that you merely had to stop them from becoming cubicle neighbours in that building you call journalism.

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January 1, 2021 · 23:07

Greed v Agony: 1-6

We see the set, we see the result, yet we do not understand the equation. The media is mulling it over, it is in despair on what to do. They have so many voices to listen too, producers, executives, stake holders and share holders, none can agree on the story and more precise, most of them are clueless on what the story is. Reuters gives us ‘SolarWinds hackers accessed Microsoft source code, the company says’, the story (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-cyber-microsoft/solarwinds-hackers-accessed-microsoft-source-code-the-company-says-idUSKBN2951M9), gives us plenty, but are they giving us what we need to know? Even as we are told “It is not clear how much or what parts of Microsoft’s source code repositories the hackers were able to access, but the disclosure suggests that the hackers who used software company SolarWinds as a springboard to break into sensitive U.S. government networks also had an interest in discovering the inner workings of Microsoft products as well”, a stage that is a lot bigger than anyone knows, some cyber experts have an inkling of thought on just how bad things got, but they do not know just how bad, because we do not know what was accessed.

Back in Time
So as we consider that on December 13, 2020, The Washington Post reported that multiple government agencies were breached through SolarWinds’s Orion software. So this is when the worm got out, yet I believe that the first instances were early August, I cannot prove this, but that is when the first event took place, they were merely not seen or identified as such. As far as I can tell (through unconfirmed and slightly dubious sources), there was a mapping phase in play and it was in play for weeks. This mapping phase was not contained or limited to the US, or to governmental players. It was also not the first time it happened, but it seems it was the most complete and most successful attempt, and it is about to get a lot worse. You see, people didn’t learn from 9/11, from all these people who went to flight school just to take off and learn how to fly into buildings, they didn’t learn the first time, and they are not learning now (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZAoFs75_cs), it gets to be funnier, the ethical hacker is topped by another advertisers, offering the same with 75% discount, and would you know it, all these ‘new’ ethical hackers, what are the chances that a few have their own agenda? Now these people are not ready to take over Solarwinds yet, but they are en-route.

A lot of hackers started as ethical hackers and then didn’t end up with a decent job, they had to make ends meet, and would you know it, they had just the education to make that happen. So as they didn’t get high paying positions at Google, Apple or Sun systems, they decided to take the reins themselves. They do have their competitors, people who graduated from London Poly, or Moskovski politekhnicheski universitet an a few others, all having graduates and the world had no positions for them, so they became the new managers of another version of Ransomware, or some other solution. It was only 5 years ago that we saw “Trend Micro released a research paper about sextortion: the means through which cybercriminals obtain compromising personal images or videos of Internet users – which they then hold hostage until their demands have been met” and that was if you were lucky, the idiots that most governments have include idiots that put the national security and defence issues on a USB stick. 

Time flies when greed is in charge
Over the last 5 years we saw an abundance of issues, yet the greed driven idiots all had a bottom line and cost is not part of that bottom line, it is actually against it, that was what some of these executives were screaming. And as things were pushed back quarter after quarter, the setting became that nothing was done, so when SolarWinds was transgressed upon the bulk of all corporations had no issue to see just how screwed they were, the sales people needed their bonus structure and so do the board members, as such there was for the most no defence. And it gets to be worse, even as we all want to blame SolarWinds, we need to realise that anyone with a lack of defence only has itself to blame. This is why I took certain defence matters into my own hands and even as they are not perfect, it beats no defence at all. When the Telecom Companies start to scream murder because usage is out of control and the numbers start showing that 100,000 people used 200 GB, all whilst the numbers showed that for the most the average of 50 GB, we will see another issue, the loss of telecom data and more important, our financial records will not match up, and at that point you will see a stage where our data is up for sale and there are plenty of interested parties who want that data. A setting of 5 servers that can be used multiple times and 25 customers all willing to pay $10,000 for the usage records of 100,000-350,000 people, and after the financial data is aggregated, they can collect a lot more from another 40 customers. It boils down to $250,000 for a month of work, and that is merely one segment, once these people hit companies (especially those with underfunded IT departments), The numbers will add up larger and faster, especially when IP data is made available, by the time the companies learn just how intense the pull of data was it will be too late and for the most the global police settings will not be able to cover it, the US has an FBI who can get to the matter to some degree, but they still think that North Korea did the Sony gig, so I am not holding my breath on that one. And that is before they realise that I devised another setting that explains the inside job part and I found a new way of exporting that data, which took less than an hour, the shareholders who needed a patsy in North Korea are that much in the dark at present and for the last 7-9 years actually.

So whilst the sales people are in the push for revenue, I reckon that only the companies that have a CTO on their board of directors will have a decent chance, the rest is cannon fodder, it is basically that simple.

The greed drive looks that good, but in reality they are losing 6:1 at present, SolarWinds is merely showing the agony that is out there, it is ABC News that gives a much larger timeline, with ‘Malware may have been installed in June’, which does give voice to my timeline, but it is not enough, we see the larger stage with “the hackers piggy-backed on the company that made software running on hundreds of thousands of corporate and government networks” and in all this, where was the security of SolarWinds? I believe that the damage is much larger and the players just do not know what to trust and who to trust, and that will stay with them for the larger extent of 2021, implying that their systems will not be properly cleaned for a much larger time, because they look at the larger setting, but this pass over will hit EVERY system, and it will hit a few systems in different ways, because they will get found out in a few ways, but not in all ways and that is why the agony score is so high and all this before someone realises that their cloud system could be just as infected and that is another piece of cake entirely, one that does not clean up so easily. 

So whilst we see the trivialisation of “it says patient information was not stolen” or “there was nothing to suggest customer data had been accessed”, it is the basic defence of any company or government organisation, but in reality they are decently clueless on what data was accessed and how it was copied or positioned in a place they can get to. For example it might not show, but when you realise that a person was using 12-17 GB of data during the day, so why is that person’s account using this data on his sick day? Odd is it not? There are a few more examples, but I let you simmer on this, because 2021 has a few more surprises for all of you, perhaps for me too.

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December 30, 2020 · 23:12

At the end

Yup one full day left in the year, and my mind gets hit with all kinds of thoughts, towards the Sony directed RPG I came up with a different setting of weapons expertise.

You need to have minimum levels, yet the use of it, also over time strengthens the player. Bash weapons are all about strength (Mace, Club), darts and blowpipes are a pure dexterity event, whilst blades require strength and dexterity and also power both, and Bolas are for strength and intelligence, knifes require dexterity and intelligence and the staff is a pure intelligence weapon. This has two events, you can strengthen a property you do not need, but can power up, all whilst the pure of heart will have play-throughs with different weapons, depending on the person they selected to be, so whilst I was thinking that through, we see new articles on the UK and their dire Covid situation, this is actually more important than you think. Even as we have covid more and more here, the setting of the indication is not merely that what we see (at https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-cases/uk-coronavirus-cases-set-new-daily-record-prompting-extreme-concern-idUKKBN2931P5), a setting that gives us ‘UK coronavirus cases set new daily record, prompting ‘extreme concern’’, all whilst the information I gave in ‘The lull of writing’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/28/the-lull-of-writing/), a setting where we see presented evidence that the quick test gives a false negative in up to 40% of the time, that is quite the issue and as we see “Britain’s government reported 53,135 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, the highest number since mass testing started in mid-2020 and up sharply from the previous record of 41,385 set on Monday” I am massively surprised that the NOS data as well as the data given by the LUMC, a academic place that equals John Hopkins, and no one is picking it up? How much ignorance is required in these positions? 

I am not asking them to merely accept the outcome, but as far as I can tell there is no debate on the findings at all, which is positively weird, especially as the Covid issue in the UK has filled 414 caskets in the last 28 days alone (some went into a vase), the silence on this is positively deafening.

So we see additional issues at the end of the year and I haven’t even started on the weird Brexit issues I am finding. All stations of discussions, but the news is all about different things and a largely less reliable covid test is not coming up, why not?

So whilst we applaud the setting of “Andrew Hayward, warned that Britain was heading for “catastrophe” over the coming weeks if it did not take tougher action against the more infectious variant of the disease”, the issue might be too late at present, the more transferable version is out and about and even if it is not more deadly does not matter, when the UK has 35,000 additional patients instead of the 15,000 they might have had, the hospitals would not be able to deal with the additional 20,000 so more people will unnecessarily die, it is basic numbers. And that setting is there out in the open, as such I got real angry over the Swiss setting and the spoiled touristic baboons there. 

A station of hurt is coming our way and there is almost no way to avoid that and as the media is not giving the people essential information, the people will continue to be a lot less careful than they should be. A setting that I optionally face in the next week, which has one upside, if it hits me in the most negative way, I can laugh because I decided to ignore a tax bill until next June, one payment I will optionally not live long enough to pay for, joy joy joy!

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December 29, 2020 · 15:33

Hold back the anger

We all have the urge to be really really angry, especially when people are as stupid as they are, and then in a herd mentality of the ‘I merely follow the other idiot’, and as such they claim not to be accountable. I am one, who states that just like the Nuremberg trial, we hang those separate and clearly identifiable. In this, when we see ‘Coronavirus: Hundreds of British skiers flee Swiss Verbier quarantine’, how can we not be massively enraged? As such, it is my call (well, in reality it is not) to convict these people in absentia for reckless endangerment and if any people link to their cluster die we will ALL convict them in absentia for involuntary manslaughter. Which means that if they EVER leave the UK, they will be arrested and imprisoned for 10-15 years. No parole, no options and no relief. When you are so fucking stupid to go on winter-sport in Switzerland in the middle of a bloody viral quarantine. You are not allowed excuses or other options, so when I see “A spokesman in Valais canton said 420 British guests had booked into Verbier accommodation before Christmas and now only about a dozen were left. Switzerland imposed a 10-day quarantine backdated to 14 December because of the new virus strain spreading in the UK”, we basically see the setting of 400 murderers who are optionally only found guilty of manslaughter, so we can keep them separately imprisoned, in solitary confinement for the better part of a decade. So when I see “Others were called by British tourists demanding their money back once they had safely crossed into France, the BBC’s Imogen Foulkes reports from Geneva”, I merely see the urge to say “Go fuck yourself you fucking murderers to be”. In this, when I see “Others are angry, as for decades the British have been enthusiastic winter visitors to Switzerland, but now feel the tourists have abused the hospitality offered to them”, I basically am with the angry people. And in all this, we see a massive absence of politicians, especially British MP’s giving their voice to this. So whilst some are ‘for the Brits’, the setting of ““We understand their anger,” Jean-Marc Sandoz told the SonntagsZeitung. “Suddenly families with small children were locked into 20 sq m (215 sq ft), and that’s intolerable.””, well that is one way to look at it, but we could also see the stage of these people giving their winter-sport a miss for one year in light of all the corona-viral issues that has hit almost 82 million people and has killed almost 2 million, at that point, do you think going to another country for your vacation is a sound idea, you stupid fuck?

Yes, perhaps I am a tad angry and so far we see a large contingency of idiots ignoring quarantine settings and the inactions of governments is nothing less than an absolute bloody joke. Just like the unreported findings from academics that the quick tests were giving false negatives in 40% of the cases, it seems that governments are allowing for stupidity to continue, I wonder why? Even as I (based on NOS news) reported on the setting of one yesterday in ‘The lull of writing’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/28/the-lull-of-writing/), we now see a larger setting of stupidity, I would call it criminal stupidity and the allowance for it is just another level of stupidity. In a stage where people are trying to get by, some are allowed, what I would see as criminal acts of stupidity and in this time and place a level of stupidity that should not now, not ever be allowed.

And as everyone is hoping that enough bad news is coming through so that they can remain silent on this part, we need to wonder how much more stupidity we can take before someone states that enough is enough?

 This is a stage that needs addressing and it needs addressing now, all before a million more die and all the stupid people hide behind ‘I never realised’ or ‘I could not have been me, I was careful’, we will hang them separately, just like the Germans in Nuremberg hiding behind ‘Befehl ist befehl’, it only seems fair.

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December 28, 2020 · 04:23

The lull of writing

We all have it, a small gap, a gap, which is not the same as a writing block, something I have been smitten with in the past as well. This lull was intentional, you see, I found information tht changes the game, it explains a few matters and sets a different premise. I found it two days ago and I waited to see who would pick it up, and would you believe NO ONE HAS. The apparent setting is one that requires scrutiny, the two sources are high end sources, one is a (what some would call) an Ivy League university that is as renowned as John Hopkins medical school is, the Dutch NOS has had a long term high level journalistic side that equals the New York Times and the Washington Post. They give us ‘Leids onderzoek: veel gebruikte sneltest minder betrouwbaar dan gedacht’ (at https://nos.nl/artikel/2362024-leids-onderzoek-veel-gebruikte-sneltest-minder-betrouwbaar-dan-gedacht.html), the title translates to ‘Leiden research: frequently used rapid test less reliable than expected’, it gives us “Een sneltest die in Nederland dagelijks duizenden keren wordt gebruikt mist 40 procent van de coronagevallen, komt naar voren uit onderzoek van het Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum (LUMC)”, which translated gives us “a quicktest that is used thousands of times in the Netherlands misses 40% of the corona cases, this is found by the Leiden University Medical Cantre”, this is a dire setting indeed, and one that is kept from the people and the media, I wonder why. The micro biologist Maurine Leversteijn-Van Hall gives us “people are going home thinking that a negative result implies that they are free of COVID-19 this is incorrect”, I was shocked to learn this and the fact that these two renowned sources give us this, is a worry, the fact that others are not asking questions and have not given its people any information is a larger worry still, the fact that they blatantly copy one another on the setting of the tits of a Kardashian or how its hanging with Ryan Reynolds, it it sinking in that the media setting is largely facilitating to shareholder, stake holder and advertiser?

So when we are given the carefully phrased denial ““Abbott’s Panbio antigen rapid test is a proven and accurate test,” the manufacturer argues. “We are not aware of this investigation and the researchers have not contacted us.”” The additional ““But we do not find that 90 percent sensitivity”, says lead researcher Frits Rosendaal, professor of epidemiology at the LUMC. “We conduct independent research and never contact producers about it.”” Is added worry still.

The fact that this is not out in the English speaking open after 2 days is food for thought, and even as many do not have the multi linguistic skills I have is not their fault, the fact that the media is not all over this is a clear failing of the larger media. So whilst the larger media is all over ‘Japan’s Shinzo Abe apologises over ‘cherry blossom’ scandal’, the fact that they are not all over the Dutch findings of. Failing quick test in light of the 4,045 new dearly departed of the Coronavirus in the last 24 hours is a large worry, a worry we might happily ignore, if it was not for the fact that 81 million people either have, or had the virus. A stage we are so willing to ignore, so when the numbers go out there and the vaccine, is equally failing, will you start to take things seriously? Will the media wake up, or will they flame it in need for digital click coins?

I will leave it up to you to make up your mind, yet consider that the NOS article, after you pass it through the Google Translate will leave you with a lot of questions, I wonder who will give you the answers, when you realise that the media is not the party earning your trust (well most of them anyway), where will you find the stage where you can make up your mind?

I apologise or leaving you with many questions and no real answers, I am not a medic, I will not give advice where you need answers to clear and concise questions, this is up to people who are educated in the knowledge of Medicine, yet consider that two sources, one in journalism (NOS) and one in medicine (Leiden Medical University) give us a serious failing of 40% and no one is picking that up, why is that? Not merely not picking it up, but also not openly opposing the findings, it is a worry and a clear question mark. 

I wish I could tell you more, but I could not wait any longer to inform you, and hopefully we see more in the coming days, even though I remain doubtful of it and it is another clear example on how shareholders, stake holders and advertisers seem to have a pressure point on the media.

I will leave you to make up your own mind. 

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December 26, 2020 · 01:18

Historic view versus reality

We all seem to have views, it is not wrong, it is not bad it is not evil, it merely is. I saw in 1998-2002 how governments sat on their hands, how lawmakers sat on their hands (and optionally on their mistresses) and they all vocally agreed that hackers were nothing more than a nuisance, and as I see it the traitor Bradley Edward Manning (aka Chelsea Elizabeth Manning) gave up secrets that it was not allowed to reveal and gave it to the world. There is no doubt on guilt, there was no doubt on treason, there merely was the act and that was that, it was the first moment where governments got the first clear hint that hackers were a much larger danger. After that came Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. Julian might be many things, but technically he was not a traitor. Edward Snowden was one, and the law again disregarded the steps that were taken, he went intentionally to a place where he might get the most value out of his deeds, Russia picked him up, just to piss of the US, which they were speculatively allowed to do, yet the stage is rather large, more hackers, all under the guise that the law saw them as a mere nuisance, we all got introduced to ransomware, now we see governments hacked through a sunny breeze (Solarwinds), and the voyage does not end. Now we see less than a day ago ‘Hackers threaten to leak plastic surgery pictures’, as well as ‘National Security Agency warns hackers are forging cloud authentication information’, now I do not care for the plastic surgery part, but it is another case where personal and person inclined data is no longer free, the two elements also give a rather large stage for us to place a new premise. One could now argue that hackers are the clear and present danger to personal and corporate needs and as such they can be hunted down and put t death. So from nuisance to global danger, as such when all these mommies cry that their little boys did not know what they were doing, I have no issues putting a HK model 23 to their foreheads and executing them (optionally with silencer as to not scare the neighbours). 

I think it is time for lawmakers and government administrative types to wake up and smell the situation, and in this, perhaps some remember the words of Martin C. Libicki in Newsweek (2015) where he pushed the view ‘Cyberattacks Are a Nuisance, Not Terrorism’, well that is not really true, is it? When we see the definition of terrorism we see “The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims”, there we see two parts up for debate, the fist is that ‘mental violence’ is still violence and the setting of intimidation is already achieved, the stage we still need to address ‘the pursuit of political aims’, not all terrorism is set to political aims, unless if you call self-enrichment the pursuit of political aims. 

And with ‘National Security Agency warns hackers are forging cloud authentication information’ we see an initial stage where commerce will come to a screeching halt. My IP does not cover for that, darn. But there is the old way (1981-1991), just kill them, be done with it. 

Now some (especially in law) will state that I am overreacting, yet am I? It is the lawmakers that could optionally be seen as cowards, hiding behind their golden calf called jurpisprudence. The law, for the most does a good job, it is not perfect, so be it, but for the most, it is OK. This covers the never trespassers and the limited trespassers, they make up for 75% of all people, then there are the criminals, 24.99%, the law takes care of them, they are repeat offenders, career criminals and as such the law was designed to deal with them, then there is the remaining 0.01%, these criminals are in it for the kill, to create a maximum amount of cadavers physically, mentally and financially, to make life for nearly all impossible, and that golden calf, the law cannot deal with them and we accept that, so we remove them in other ways. We hunt them down and put them to death, and when it is some 16 year old claiming he didn’t know what he was doing, we know, he did it to seem cool, he was willing to make all others suffer, just to look cool, to get the tits, to rub the vagina, his friends never could, as such there is a 9mm solution that solves it, if only his parents had raised him right. 

You think I am kidding?
You forget the poverty line is shifting massively because of COVID-19 and soon the insurances will not cover the impact, the media will merely snigger and cash in on all those clicks they got from the $x donation to an unnamed source, and it is now time to make the long overdue change, before governments are pushed to take away more and more of our freedoms, which will push us into the dark-web, a situation these criminals would love. And it is close to 15 years too late, but in this case it is better to be late to the party than not get there at all. 

Am I overreacting?
That would remain a fair question, I do not believe so as this step is well over a decade overdue, it is not something that was pushed to the top in the last few days, and it is partially due to governments and lawmakers not acting when they could have and especially when they should have, now the dike is levied and people are soon to be drowning and something must be done. From my point of view, to hit terrorists, you hit them harder, so the more extreme you hit these hackers, the clearer the message becomes. And a clear message is years overdue.

In this there is a two step setting, there are the “cool wannabe’s” who are mot likely teenagers, some of them are easy to find and after the first examples a lot of them will hide like cockroaches, but the second tier, the one the media and governments intentionally ignore are those in organised crime, they will be the real challenge and as most governments have nothing on stopping them, at best they can limit the damage, which is basically no solution, that gap will take time, but with ‘hackers are forging cloud authentication information’ less than a week old, there is now a chance that the NSA and other intelligence networks will realise that compromised clouds will have global commercial implications, as such governments must now act, the moment any cloud is openly seen compromised, it will be too late for well over a decade. It becomes a clearer situation  when you consider that global e-commerce was set to ‘Global e-Commerce hits $25.6 trillion’, by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), s how much losses must global commerce endure before we act? Oh and if you think that this is the end? How much more powerful will organised crime become if they only get their fingers on 0.1% ($25,600,000,000)? It will become a sliding scale that goes from bad to worse, and governments knew that, they knew for well over a decade, but their delusions saw other non-solution, like perhaps, it will go away on its own, so tell me when was that ever a solution?

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December 25, 2020 · 10:42

Memories

We all have them, and we all fall back on them from time to time. Today is for some weird reason a great day to fall back on memories, shops closed, cinema’s closed, and here in Sydney it was raining for a little while. So as I fell back to memories (also known as events from the past), I remembered a situation where none other than Bruce Boxleitner got me in some problems with my boss. It wasn’t really his fault, but I would never openly do anything wrong, so blaming Bruce seems like a good idea. 

The setting was that I had to travel to Sydney from Amsterdam in 1998, it had a stopover and one night in Singapore, now I had never been to Singapore, so my boss told me to select a hotel for the night. I remembered that series Bring em back alive with Bruce Boxleitner and it involved the Raffles hotel, so colour me happy, that hotel actually exists. I thought all things on TV were imaginative, so I told my boss to get me into the Raffles for one night. He came back 2 hours later that that was never ever going to happen, from my puzzled look he knew I had no idea, apparently the Raffles charged $5000 per night and that was in 1998. I did not know that and he asked me how I got the name, Well: “I got the hotel advice from Bruce Boxleitner”, so my boss told me to tell him that he is bonkers (I still have to tell Bruce that one day), anyway, for some reason I thought back to that memory and I suddenly considered something else, the character he plays Frank Buck actually existed. I have a decent excuse being Euro-Australian, but when you consider what Frank Buck had achieved between 1884 and 1950, I am amazed that no one in the streaming industry had considered turning that live into a mini-series or a movie. Consider that he had caught over 100,000 live specimens back to the United States for Zoo’s and circuses. 

Amongst other achievements, he was a director of the San Diego Zoo. He displayed wild animals at the 1933–34 Century of Progress exhibition as well as the 1939 New York World’s Fair.

He toured with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, made several books and had a zoo in Texas named after him. We now might look skeptical on some of those actions, yet pre WW2, he basically brought Asian wildlife to America. Some of the parts that might have been unknown to many was that he had invented a method of force-feeding snakes, the means “by which captive pythons are mainly fed today”, the man (with co-authors) created eight books between 1930 and 1945, he also starred in documentaries as himself or as the narrator in eight movies, most might remember the part he had as himself in Africa Screams with Abbott and Costello (not the Australian politicians). There was a lot that I was not aware of and even as some skated around the court case that involved Frank Buck and Harry M. Wegeforth, there is a lot that seem counter to the character of Frank Buck, it seems that two titans butted heads on issues that should not exist to the level it did, but that is my personal take on the matter. 

Yet what is decently clear is that Frank Buck was larger than life, as far as I can tell he was a force of good and even as some might remember Bruce Boxleitner in this role, there is also place for a serious piece of work, and a person like that could inspire the next generation, not a bad idea for a movie, or a mini series. We have made them for people a lot less inspiring than Frank buck ever was.

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December 23, 2020 · 11:24

The cool aide look

Most of us react to it, we sometimes invoke reactions, and at times we set the reaction to what WE think is the cool reaction, there is not one exception, not you, not me and not those around us. So to set that premise we need to look at some ‘definitions’ as they are told to us, but also set markers on what we expect to see, they are not the same.

Branding
““Broadly, a product is anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy a want or need, including physical goods, services, experiences, events, persons, places, properties, organisations, information, and ideas” (Kotler & Keller, 2015)”, yet that is not enough, there is also ““A brand is a name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s good or service as distinct from those of other sellers” (American Marketing Association)”, this is all the foundation, but consider the following

Emotional marketing tells invokes a feeling that connects audiences with brands with an optional  personal/human way. As any media channels, devices, objects and platforms emerge, they ensure that people have plenty of access to brand events. What’s more, there are now a host of ways for companies to convey their identity and vision, making emotional marketing much simpler, yet how does any consumer see that?

That is the stage I found myself in, I was in a store and the staff member was standing next to a tote-bag roughly 60 by 40 stating ‘Victoria Secrets’, now I in my giddy nature asked, What did you buy at Victoria Secrets? The lady got quite upset, there was inference, no innuendo, merely what I stated. Now, I am not holding her reaction against her, some might state that I had no business stating what I stated, and if that is so, why on earth did she have a tote-bag like that? To minimise her profile during headwinds? Branding is more than the definitions, we made it as such. The T-shirt stating Nasa, ‘Just do it’, enjoy Cocaine, the examples are there by the thousands and it has no intention, or attempt in stopping or slowing down. 

For me the reaction was a bit strong, but I had never stated anything like that, as such I wondered why people overreact. This was not about emotion, this is about something else and we need to take consideration of the reaction, both the person making it and those hearing it. We seem to fall in the gap of branding and as such the use and abuse of branding is about to turn a corner. 

Japanese
As I see it, we are becoming a ;little too Japanese in this. There some girls wear shirts with slogans and they do not know what it means. Now, we might have that with Kanji, Hiragana or Katakana, so it works both ways. But consider, how many women do you know wearing a shirt stating ‘I am a Whore’? It seems that people all over the world have become blind to what they are wearing and then overreact to the reaction, is it about manners (never say anything), yet is that not the opposite of what branding is trying to achieve? Branding is more than noticing, it is about conversing and about the creation of awareness, people talking about the brand creates awareness.

The problem
There is a problem, for any version of a view towards awareness, we see (a+1)(b+1), when there is linearity, we see 1, 4, 9, 16, 25 and so on, yet if any view invokes 10 opinions we get 1, 121, 441 and so on, and that is when the views and opinions are in a set stage, now try (a+1)(b+1)(c+1), a setting for views, opinions and reactions. So 1 view gives us 10 opinions and 20 reactions. Now we get 1, 462, 6237 and that is before we get to social media where the numbers really stack up. At what point will this come to blows, because that will happen, if one persons indication matters, so what happens when a person asks that question who has no idea what Victoria secret is? OK, that is really thin ice, but there is every chance that they haven’t heard of that brand in Loshchinka (Siberia).

No matter how we slice this, the reaction brought me out to consider branding, we take it for granted, but who is aware of what they are branding, or even that they are branding and if branding is a way to invoke a reaction, is there any consideration on the reactions we give, all whilst we are branding? 

Just some food for thought

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December 21, 2020 · 21:21

When fear becomes key

This is me, sitting on my sofa, laptop in my lap (that is why they call it a laptop) and reading the BBC News, giving us ‘Covid: Australian states enforce travel bans amid Sydney outbreak’, I am at home, which is fine, no Wife, Girlfriend or hookers here, so the chance of me getting infected is close to zero. When this is in effect, the friends coming to visit you might not be friends, it is that time of year and the situation is not a great one. So when I see “The events of the past few days… are incredibly frustrating and disappointing for people all around the country who had plans in place to get together and move in between states”, I personally go ‘Yea, whatever’, we might not like it, yet most understand the essential part of nipping this in the backside, especially 4 days before we remember a person being born who got nailed to the cross by the Italian government and eating way too much, and all kinds of exotic items (Christmas plum pudding with custard) doing so. Some might end up watching a classical work by Charles Dickens or Frank Capra on the small screen. That is what we have to endure when we optionally eat too much. 

So why do I giggle when I see: “Sydneysiders scrambled to leave the city for other states on Sunday”? You see the Coronavirus was shown to be an issue because people were travelling although they were unknown to already be infected, they felt fine until at least two days later, so this thing will end up all over the place. It is good to see that people tend not to learn. In addition, I learn “Scrutiny has again fallen on the hotel quarantine system – which is believed to be the source of Sydney’s new outbreak, as it was with previous outbreaks in Melbourne and Adelaide”, a sidestep that is optionally a larger issue, as these people came by Bus, train and taxi, how many did they infect? I am merely asking. Yet, it is not all bad news, especially when we consider “Australia so far has recorded 908 deaths and 28,200 cases in the pandemic – a level far lower than seen in many other nation”, although, 3.2% mortality, all whilst France is showing 2.4% mortality, and Germany reportedly has as low as 1.7% mortality (if all the numbers are to be believed), the setting of “a level far lower than seen in many other nation” is still up for debate. But I get it, in a place with 20,000,000 people, less than a thousand jobs and houses became available and that should be seen as a positive thing. And indeed, we are doing marginally better than the United Kingdom who has (apparently) a 3.3% rate of non living, we are alike both island, yet they have 68 million, but we are roughly 3,078% larger, so yes, we are doing better, even if only to hide the bodies in all those stretches of untouched wilderness (See movie Wolf Creek for explanation). It is also nice to learn at the very end “Testing has shown the latest outbreak is likely to have come from the US. However, it remains unknown how the virus was taken into the community”, which is OK, it is optionally not their fault, but in that light and in the light of what is happening, I still have a giggle at “Sydneysiders scrambled to leave the city for other states on Sunday”, I wonder where the next hot points are. That issue was seen 12 hours ago when 9News gave us “‘Complacency is not our friend’: Warning as interstate arrivals found breaching quarantine rules in Queensland”, yes, fear (and optionally stupidity) is the key when we are confronted with ‘breaching quarantine rules’ and I basically wonder if that person gets to court and that his or her defence would become a crying ‘But I was so afraid’ is seen, optionally with a fear of life without his or her teddybear. 

And in all this the added news “Two travellers from New South Wales have breached their home quarantine orders after travelling to Queensland amid tightening border restrictions” I basically am wondering how many people will it take for the next 15 hotspots to become explained by quarantine breaches. This is not merely the end of it, that is seen when we turn to the New York Times (at https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/12/03/world/covid-19-coronavirus) where we see ‘After a Skirmish Over U.K. Vaccine Approval, Fauci Offers an Olive Branch’, so why id Dr. Fauci having to offer an olive branch? Even when we take notice of “As the U.K. claims bragging rights for the best vaccine regulators (yes, really), U.S. officials beg to differ”, I for one tend to think that Dr Fauci has had to deal with too many idiots in government positions, but that might be just me. It is shown with “British and American officials sparred Thursday over how Britain had beaten the United States to authorising a coronavirus vaccine, a debate touching upon both regulatory standards and politics that has heated up as wealthy countries vie to receive the first shipments of vaccines”, I wonder why properly testing a vaccine has become a pissing contest, my inner self tends to doubt the fast one on being thorough and that is purely from within me. And when we compare all this to new strains, hotspot issues and stupid travellers, in the end, the disease will get to where it needs to go and it wants to go EVERYWHERE.

Did I oversimplify the problem here? 

I did like the response by Dr. Fauci ““We have the gold standard of a regulatory approach with the F.D.A.,” Dr. Fauci said. “The U.K. did not do it as carefully and they got a couple of days ahead.”” This gives light to my pondering, at what moment in time was a race the best way to go about all this? We are globally at 77,236,327, a million more than yesterday, in what setting is a race the solution? I will offer that only in the needy eyes of short sighted politicians is a race a solution. It is not in the eyes of scientists and vaccine creators, there it is finding the best solution and that takes time, especially as we are now seeing version 2.0 of the Covid-19 virus, as such I am willing to bet that this all is far from over, giving in to a key element like fear will not help anyone in anyway anytime soon.

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December 20, 2020 · 22:07

How do I ask for tea?

It might seem shallow, yet it isn’t, languages, especially other non-earth based civilisations is going to be some challenge, whether it is purely for science, whether it is to make a TV-series look more realistic and acceptable (my reason) or for any other reason, there is a larger setting to find common ground. More importantly, how to go about it, in Keno Diastima, I am setting the premise by placing a modern form of the rosetta stone in the place that they are in. I considered how to go about it and weirdly enough, the Japanese solved the problem for me on our side. A setting that is a lot larger than any other country has at present, in this I grabbed a consideration from the movie Contact, there we hear (optionally pushed by Carl Sagan) “Mathematics is the only true universal language”, well, it fits because it is science, science can be replicated every single time under identical settings. So when we consider how a more advanced civilisation communicates with one less evolved, icons seem to bring the bacon to the party (even one with vegetarians). 

That was the premise of the solution for the space station, one that had its controls reconfigured, every button has a transparent top with reflects the alien language, but the image is one of our own icons, so when we get the larger panels, we can introduce more elements, coffee, milk, sugar, cream, and in these combinations, we need to add numbers, as such, we need a larger setting and a rosette stone is the first hurdle aliens would give us,  to consider and scan for comprehension, to scan for resolve and to see how the language was understood. That is seen in the basic rule of communication. “A says something to B, B gives a response, A communicates that there is comprehension”, we see to forget the basic rules and needs in the digital age, but that merely increases the level of confusion, and we really do not need more confusion. 

As such, the stage we design is one that we need to be able to rely on, whether it is at the bottom of the ocean or in outer space, confusion starts with a lack of communication and if confusion creates chaos, what does the empty space in our mind create? That and more was considered, yet in this, the entire setting of a few hundred icons gave me some dread. In this we are consistent in what WE need, there are icons for bathrooms, buying tickets, hotels, restaurants, yet when we look at the icon for library and bookstore, how can we see one and the other? There is the idea to add colour to give meaning, or implied use of an icon, yet we see danger as red, what if black or green is their setting of danger? These are all matters that come to the forefront of the mind and in this My mind wandered towards a interactive rosette stone, one that changes as a linguistic side was chosen, as such the stone (touch sensitive perspex) gets a larger station in this story, we need to adapt the stone to the minimum level of any person, as such they are all fitted with bracelets, 8 couples, or 8 implied couples with 16 bracelets, each with multiple icons, a larger station where we see adaptation to a new environment and it has physical and psychological sides, so what happens to the fear levels when we realise that we might be scrutinised by aliens? More important, what if they get it wrong?

It is one of close to a dozen element I am playing with and even as I finished the (extremely) broad strokes, it is a familiar path, I reckon that every RPG went through similar strokes, a stage we do not always see that way. Well, only 2 hours until Monday morning, Yay!

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