Category Archives: Media

August 31, 2024 · 13:24

Congestification

OK, I admit that the word seemingly does not exist (at present), but it could be. It reflects on our needs to get things done in a rush, a setting that invites a congestive setting, usually in traffic. A bottleneck setting if you like. That is what the Khaleej Times (at https://www.khaleejtimes.com/uae/transport/uae-traffic-would-an-odd-even-scheme-help-ease-peak-hour-jams) sets with ‘UAE traffic: Would an ‘odd-even scheme’ help ease peak-hour jams?’ Invites to. There is an even less nice issue that those who can afford 2 cars can take turns with car they would use. 

In the dozen of so images I saw, there was one stage that did not show its nice little snout. It is the setting that one lane is reserved for busses (and emergency vehicles). Not in all the images I saw is there a bus lane showing. I know too little about Dubai to know how (or if) bus lanes are used. But that is a first that came to mind. That setting might nudge more and more car drivers to public transport. And as far as I know Dubai public transportation is really good and a lot more affordable than either Sydney or London (the one in the UK). They already have a great subway system (I saw it on YouTube), but bus lanes might be a nice stage as well. And the second part is that if you are in that traffic jam for a few hour and you see bus after bus passing you by, the inner drive to get the bus might increase. I know it is not a complete solution, but if congestion decreases by a mere 10%, it could be seen as an ad-hoc solution for Dubai and Abu Dhabi (not sure if they have a congestion problem at present). Dubai has at present a little over 3.6 million people, as such it is not the most dense city (not by a long shot) but it has a decent population. And in the United Arab Emirates with 10 million people. 40% is in Dubai and 40% is in Abu Dhabi, as such a solution for both seems essential. My personal favourite would be the bus lanes to show the car users that public transportation in some cases would be preferred (by the people) and it would grant emergency services a lane in case of congestion. That two birds and one stone symbolism. The fact that public transport is already a good option in the UAE might drive the bus lane option faster. I get that some would like to relax in the traffic jam sitting cozy in a Rolls Royce Spectre, Bugatti whatever, or a Ferrari thingamajig. But there are only so many people who could even afford one of these three bad boys. And with (additional) busses in the mix, congestion might soon be a thing of the past. And when people arrive at work refreshed from the bus ride. 

The equation seemingly solves additional problems as well. A simple setting to an overly complex problem as I see it. Will it solve all? I doubt it, but if it lowers congestion, the real question becomes, is the problem solved to an adequate level? That is the question that lingers. And the solution lies in creating two additional lanes (one for each direction) on one road where there is enough congestion. I think that it is a solution worth exploring. If it isn’t a solution, that part of the road ends up with two additional lanes. Optional an additional path to lowering congestion. 

Well, that is my Saturday with an optional solution set on paper. Now just one more thing to work on today. Have a great weekend.

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August 31, 2024 · 10:20

If you Musk, you Musk

That setting is a much larger setting then we realise. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y3rnl5qv3o) gives us ‘Musk’s X banned in Brazil after disinformation row’ and I honestly don’t get it. He has the premise of gaining billions closing in on a trillion in business. We get to see “X, formerly Twitter, has been banned in Brazil after failing to meet a deadline set by a Supreme Court judge to name a new legal representative in the country” and that is merely the beginning. Judge Alexandre de Moraes has suspended X (aka Twitter) until that is done and in addition Musk sets all fines that are outstanding. I have no idea how much that amounts to. The larger premise is that Musk is sitting on IP that could gain him close to a trillion, if only these people had woken up. The current setting is that this case could invigorate a much larger anti-Musk stage and Twitter (aka X) could be banned from a whole range of nations with anti-Musk feelings. That is not a given, but Brazil just opened that door. Basically any nation with a right wing nuisance could entertain that premise diminishing Twitter and as such Jack Dorsey could buy back X/Twitter for 125 million after selling it for $44,000,000,000 not a bad deal for a 3 year gap. I surmised that it was only worth a maximum of 24 billion at that time. As such Jack Dorsey could be making a killing on the deal whilst the value of that company doubles in the first month he regains control. They say that a foolish billionaire and his money are soon parted, but here that expression takes on a whole new meaning.

And it got so far because Twitter/X, Meta and Telegram because they would not set the larger premise. There needs to be accountability and they all were eager to avoid those. Now we see that social media is being thumped on by a whole range of governments. There is such a think as accountability. I already said so in 2013, now we see that governments have had enough and this first case is likely to open the floodgates. 

If is an attack on free speech? No, I do not believe it is so. People should have free speech, but not under the guise of anonymity. If you disagree, say so, but the digital world sees a lot more flames and digital waves when they can say things without revealing themselves. It is the stopgap for chaos to spread their wings. The media has everything to do with this and they are equally guilty (like ‘unnamed sources told us’). So when was that at any time a long standing solution?

Now Elon Musk is cutting his own fingers and soon the solution he had for the world will be largely ignored, and if accepted there will be massive constraints, which would cost him up to 20% from what he could have had. In my book 20% is a lot and when you get close to a trillion it is a lot more than I have ever seen (many like me have that setting).

There is another side to this. At this point Mastodon, Reddit, Threads, Bluesky, Discord, Tumblr, and Truth Social will get to have a place to gain market share against the accounts of Twitter/X. It might not be much, but it is a start. As more nations follow suit there places will gain momentum whilst Twitter/X could she well over 10% of the accounts and even when reinstated, the time gives the others time to get the advertisement revenue that Musk losses. So how will he bring that news to the people who invested in that 44 billion dollar caper? They want to see cash and when that doesn’t come Elon Musk must put up his own cash or lose a lot more. That wasn’t hard was it?

And with the early threat that Musk is pulling out of Europe (October 2023). It becomes an early grave for Twitter. China has its own settings and that will become an increasing pressure whilst one person (aka Elon Musk) gets to live with the invoked byline ‘2022-2025 where has my $44,000,000,000 gone’. A weird setting for a person who at one time had the products that everyone on the planet wanted. 

The higher the climb the harder they fall. Enjoy your day

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August 29, 2024 · 23:34

Awareness is fuel to any cause

That is the skeptical look I have. You see social media is a flammable stage of all kinds of woke and non woke commitments. Some are real and most aren’t very real in the mindset of anyone else. I am not belittling any ‘cause’ but that is how I feel. We get exposure to a million and one causes and they are the settings for a mere speculated 100,000 people. Everyone has a cause and most of them have a dozen causes. I will not bother you with the amount of influencers touching on any cause that helps THEM get more visibility. It is a crackpot mix of people at times. So when I saw the Middle East Eye give us ‘How the UAE crushes dissent by arbitrarily revoking citizenship’, I became a little more aware. The opinion story (at https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/how-uae-crushes-dissent-arbitrarily-revoking-citizenship) gives us the link to UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan with the stage that he is pictured in Abu Dhabi on 6 December 2023 is a nice touch, but he is not mentioned in the opinion piece, not even once. So why is his picture there? Then we get to the MENA group, which is mentioned once “A report by the Mena Rights Group, published last month, exposed the extensive and troubling nature of this trend”, as such I have questions. With the “the extensive and troubling nature” it is the first mention I see of this. We see the mention “3 March 2011, when 133 Emirati academics, judges, lawyers, students and human rights defenders signed a petition addressed to the president of the UAE and the Federal Supreme Council, calling for democratic reforms”. As such there are seemingly mentions of this since 2011 and this I the first time I hear of it? There is no visible mention of the MENA rights group in Al Jazeera or Arab News, as such I have questions on the validity of this. We see the mention of “Many affected by this practice are either defendants in the “UAE84” trial or their family members.” With a reference that it was “politically motivated and marred by fair trial violations.” As such I raise questions. You see, if that was the case, would it not be in nearly every Muslim writing from Al Jazeera to Arab News, not to mention the Guardian, BBC and a whole range of American woke news casts? Then we get to one of the writers of the opinion piece Jenan al-Marzooqi. Is that a relative of the accused Ibrahim al-Marzooqi? It might be, but I do not know this. The opinion piece is largely a one sided mention relying on the MENA Rights group who was founded in 2018 in Geneva. I would think that if it was an actual counted group a whole range of newspapers (western and Arabic) would have made mention of it, perhaps they did, but this is the first I see of this.

We then see the mention of “citizenship revocation be applied under the principle of proportionality – a principle that was clearly disregarded in this case.” With the word proportionality referring to the link (at https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/newyork/Documents/Human-Rights-Responses-to-Foreign-Fighters-web_final.pdf) a United Nations document. This is funny, but when you read the document the reference is toward “American Convention on Human Rights, art. 20.” A serious notion, if it was not for the setting that this is playing not in America. With the stage of “deprivation of nationality must be in conformity with domestic law” we get an issue, but I am not sure it is an important one. I am not the expert on Emirati law, a setting not raised in this case. That document also gives us “Some States also allow the deprivation of nationality for naturalised mono-nationals, thereby leaving them stateless.” Is that the case in UAE law? If it is the opinion piece becomes largely pointless, if they only had thought of including that point in the opinion piece. Add to this “In July 2016, five of his six children travelled to the US for medical treatment.” Really? 5 of his 6 children? All for medical treatment? It could be, but this one liner gives a serious boost to disregarding this piece (in my humble opinion). And when we get “concluded last month with at least 43 defendants sentenced to life in prison on bogus terrorism charges” where the word ‘bogus’ is a personal view by the opinion writer and could be ignored. You see if it was serious, that line was accompanied with at least one paragraph addressing that setting, giving optional weight to the word ‘bogus’.

The more I read of this article, the more I wonder what Middle East Eye had in mind with this opinion piece. I am not saying it is invalid, it is an opinion piece after all. Validity is given through evidence, or at least that is what I have always believed. Validity and verification go hand in hand. At the end we see one answer and two more linked names. 

  • Jenan al-Marzooqi is a human rights activist and the daughter of Emirati prisoner of conscience Abdulsalam Mohammed Darwish al-Marzooqi
  • Estelle Allemann is a legal fellow at MENA Rights Group
  • Alexandra Tarzikhan is the legal adviser for Southwest Asia and North Africa with the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights.

All very neat, so we have one MENA Rights Group waving their hand for visibility, one activist and a legal adviser linked to the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights.

I would have thought that 2 of them would have created a much better piece. This gets me to the issue of what were they after? You see, I do have legal training, but I am not a lawyer, I have been a Trade Mark Attorney. And as I see it, there are all kinds of verifications missing. Basically, there is no indiction that anything illegal (according to UAE law) was done, or at least the article does not clearly shows this. I did not completely ready the links to the other articles. When a case is made in THIS opinion piece, you have to present the evidence in THIS opinion piece, not link to it. Even if you merely quote it. I feel that more and more media (news and other media) are making a mess of things. They all have to get to the news and opinion pieces faster and as such they create short cuts and deprive the readers of a complete view of the matter, whether it is an opinion piece of now and a legal adviser, as well as a Human Rights person would (or at least should) know this.

We all create awareness, mostly to fuel the fire that lights us. This is not wrong, especially in this social networking world. We have always done this to some degree, but now we have merely increased the visibility of us. Whether that is a good thing remains to be seen. If there is one winner it is the MENA rights group, they got the most visibility here.

Have a lovely day. My Friday starts in 26 minutes.

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August 26, 2024 · 22:59

That earlier thought

This is a thought I wrote about some time ago (in my blog), it was an intersection of God of War 3 and something I had been working on. As such it was a thought but recently the thought had reemerged as I decided to replay Shadow of Mordor on my PS5. Something stirred and the ideas I had that should be in every game. You see God of War 3 created my thought and it was all based on the very first introduction when you see the armies of Gaia (optionally a chaos based intrusion) gave us a view of Olympus. Now God of war 3 doesn’t use it, as such I feel no guilt. 

To see the impact there needs to be a unique option that you find. As such it ‘triggers’ the introduction. The introduction is a simple path where the game is shown to you with the basic abilities that you gain. This is also the setting where you start.

Heaphestus
Heaphestus is the tinkerer of the lot. He made the olympian weapons, but he had done a lot more, as such this is where all the players begin. It is up to you to get the machines working again. Sustenance is first, food and water needs to be recharged. For this the machines work on ore to get some parts working. And that gets the whole thing up and running. Still, you need to do more. Olympus had elevated knowledge of solar energy and those need to get started. It is a mere 2 hours of the game, but that set the larger game. I decided on the thought that Olympus and others were transcribed in classical works. These works are added to the game, and as the gamer progresses in the game, he gains an above working knowledge of the gods, the earlier stage of Greek civilisation and some of the philosophers. When the machines are back online, the other rooms become accessible. 

Automatons set the stage for Olympus. They do the mundane tasks. The food machine sets the first automatons in motion. We see the stage where the machines are fed and it beacons the cloning machines to start creating the life stock that are processed for the foods that you receive. You get to create the fields for weeds, corn and grapes. As this is done (seems simplistic), you are guided to a room where several pendants are and you are only allowed to take one. 

Aphrodite, Hermes, Poseidon, Athena, Ares, Apollo and Hebe are the only pendants to chose from. When one is picked the others are closed off. This is essential to create a level of replayability. At this point I am still brooding on one point. Should this be set to the creation of your character. As such if you are a man you get Hermes, Poseidon, Ares and Apollo. The female character gets Aphrodite, Athena, Hebe and one (for now) hidden character, you know spoiler alert. Each has their own part in the palace and with Heaphestus making it all available the palace opens up. Some will take a few more ‘hours’ but that is linked to the machines taking hold of Olympus. As I see it, the automatons are linked to your personal choice. A sort of greek filter of your character. The man get female automatons, the woman get male automatons. 

As you go through this place, you only get one track in the beginning. With the bracelet (or tiara) you have one path, as you play the game you unlock gems of succursus. (Read: support gems). Each support gem opens up the track for that god. It is in that ay that you get more and more access.  

Hermes
He is the messenger of the Olympus. It also means that he will open up two major parts. The owl system when the system becomes available. Lore of Olympus is opened up and the messages return to where they are. It is shown in the office of Athena where now a Athene Noctua arrives. This metal tawny rascal will be your mental guide to a lot. It will also tell you where important owls are. You still need to interact a first time though. The second setting is a mobile hub (based on a few thousand old design. To get both active, you need to repair them. This will set the stage where instruct an automaton to direct to repairing a machine. It is now that you learn that Automatons come in a variety of settings. This allows you to tinker with the machines in the space of Heaphestus and you will see that these automatons require more ore to make and as such you need to ‘dig’ in his basement and find more ores (and open) a cavernous level where low level automatons start grinding for ores. Back to Hermes, Once these machines are back online, the screens in this rooms will give information on Greece (Athens, Sparta, Heraklion, Rhodes) and you will see all kinds of news pass by, including a repetitive loop of each of these places.

The mobile stage gets you access to the rooms directly as they are opened up

Ares
He is known as the god of war, but in Olympus he is the foremost authority on security and defence, with him the defending Automatons are aligned and activated. You have no chance to beating any one of them, but in that setting, they are keeping Olympus safe and with the gems you have you will be safe in these areas. So there is a stage to keep them an authority and you need to up your stealth skills (not sure how yet).

With defence up and running, you will gain the option to create the Butcher automaton. It will prepare the life stock for consumption, it also unlocks the cooking automaton. It will also be the time to gain access to the vaults of 

Dionysus. They are open to all, so you are safe, but in that space is the wine automaton and the fruit automaton. 

Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the goddess of love, beauty, fertility, physical pleasure (sexual), eternal youth, grace, and beauty. These elements get us a few parts. In the first we learn that she was the orchestrator of Aesculapius the famous healer. He was killed by Zeus, but this also set the gods against one another. Aesculapius and Prometheus were hunted by the gods and they are still part of this world. The second part is the physical pleasure, with Aphrodite in play you can have sex with the automatons, but her powers are eternal youth and beauty (via Aesculapius) and it will open up another stage. The Automatons are yearning and with Aphrodite you get to see their ‘thought’ and the unmentioned sides of the automatons. Her healing niches are all over Olympus, once staged for the human servants and now you get to use them to revitalise your health from hunger, thirst and exhaustion. 

Thats the lines for now, there is more of course. But it still need to be syphoned out (it makes sense later on). You see, this would be a streaming game. Amazon Luna makes the most sense. You see as the lores unfold the optionally connected Kindle would get the classical works. It is at heart an educational game. The lore are classical works (they shouldn’t have any ‘protection’) the player gets more on the age of polytheism. I saw that need during the TV show I was designing namely Keno Diastima. And the age of that is largely lost to the Christian waves that is now losing its grip on what they enforced. The polytheism from Greece and the Nordic is getting a fresh wave of people who have had it with the deceitful clergy from Italy. This is also a setting where we can elevate knowledge of the gamer. It is not a wave of conversion, merely a side to show that we come from a larger stage. And that large stage was forgotten. It is merely a way to show the people that we come from a huge stage of excellent work. Homer, Herodotus, Aurelius (not a Greek), Plato, and so many more. For the larger extension mostly forgotten. And this game can reeducate people to see that larger stage. There is an opening market to that (or better said, I believe it is).

There are more sides, but not in this game. This game is about educating the people on the Polytheism that brought the Greek civilisation to bare. And as we learn about the Greek gods, we also learn that they had a lot more to offer than we realise. 

Games have gone into a slump of forced advertisement and targeted turbo moments, but not much more. Certain games are pushing us into microtransactions and they will make their fortune their way and by the time people figured it out too much is lost for to people who merely wanted to have a good time, paid double plus bonus. That was never what gaming was all about. Intelligent gaming can be used in other ways, to educate. Something too many game designers have forgotten about. It is the age of advertising money and too many greed driven people are pushing that wave. I believe it is time for some to push back. I think that Amazon has options here (the kindle does help), the other track doesn’t need a kindle, but Amazon is the first choice, Tencent Technology the second option. As such Microsoft loses a lot more than they bargained for. Will it work? I hope so (partially for my own reasons).

If we push the agenda of joy and education, not of advertisement, we have a chance. Some food for thought. When do you ever get something for free? Never ever, there is always another side to that coin. And that is where the greed driven are. To see that side polytheism optionally brings that first wave. And when you get to the sides of Poseidon, Apollo and Hebe we get more to see that the Greeks knew things thousands of years ago, isn’t it weird that we never evolved from there? The Vatican never aided in that struggle, did they? That’s all for now.

Have a great day.

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August 25, 2024 · 22:28

When one bank wins

This is the setting I am facing. It is set to the speculative setting of we all have a certain amount of money (me not that much), still the Arab News (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/2568749/business-economy) gave me something to ponder. 

So it all starts with a certain amount of speculation. In any given en time there is an amount named X. X is a little fluidic, but X represents a real number, what that number is, will be known to just a few people, it tends to shift a lot on a day by day basis. So when we are told ‘UAE banks see 8.9% rise in short-term deposits to $14.7bn by May’ it infers that someone else lost this, optionally several players a part. Natixis made a profit and several other banks do. As of July 2024, the United States government has a monthly interest rate of 3.33 percent on its debt of over $34,000,000,000,000 dollars, which amounts to 11.2 billion. If you say that fast it doesn’t seem so much. As I personally see it, the chains around the debt driven economies are about to choke the living daylights out of its population. Yet, as some are trying to avoid to become another Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and two months after that the First Republic Bank. That was in 2023. So what (or who) handed the UAE-based banks such as neat little profitable setting? Wouldn’t you like to know? I would and there is every indication that it was all on the up and up. And the article ends with “Profitability surged to 21.5 billion dirhams, driven by higher net interest income and a significant drop in impairment charges, according to New York-based global professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal” it is interesting that we do not get where these funds originated. I can understand that banks do not wash their laundry out in the open, yet after the SVB debacle, the media should hand us the goods, or at least partial goods. It is nice to see all the banks do well, yet the setting is that it comes from somewhere and the people have a right which banks are not performing as well as they should.

I reckon that this is a dangerous stance and it could fuel several other bank runs, but the reality is that the western media is not to be trusted, so where can we get the goods?

We get that debts seen all over the planet also inclines that someone is making a bundle out of that. Merely the US needs to make good on $96.8B EVERY MONTH to keep their image of ‘we are doing so well’ up, but who pays for that? Especially now that business is going to China and some to Europe. Soon, I believe that this point was already passed, to US cannot even keep up the interest payments, then what? As I see it, the big players and billionaires will place their trust funds in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Monaco and Nassau. So what happens then?

I have no idea, but it will not be pretty, not for Europe, not for Japan and not for the USA. Japan has $9.2T debt, Europe has accumulated an impressive €12,732,445,200,000 debt, if the percentages are the same, we see Europe needing to find €35.3B each month and Japan a mere $25.4B a month. That money come from somewhere, does it not? Last year the US collected $4.44 trillion, this sets a dangerous premise. The interest in the US over a year is $1.16T, a simple 26% of the tax budget, lost to nothing (read: banks) and this implies that to break even the budget needs to set to 70% of the money and as we were told “The U.S. government has spent $5.60 trillion in fiscal year 2024 to ensure the well-being of the people of the United States”, which implies that not only are they not keeping a budget, they haven’t been able to keep it for years and now we see other nations getting a larger slice of the revenue pie. So, how much longer can this game be played? You think Russia is bad? I wonder how bad the USA can become when this setting implodes on America. Are the two connected? Not directly and it floats on my assumption that if one bank wins, another bank loses, which bank loses is unknown to me, I don’t have a clue, but as I see it, the media faltered in their jobs to inform the public. 

And should I be wrong, I apologise. Yet I believe to inform the readers when I can. Have a lovely Sunday, which is now starting in Vancouver, they are ready for breakfast (it’s 5AM there). 

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August 24, 2024 · 21:06

The price of fake stability

It is the question that flew my mind as I read a BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy3lxqlwl1o) here we are given the ‘plight’ (for the lack of a better word) of Boeing. The once heralded brand of a saviour of technology. Most will wonder about “A US campaign group has accused Boeing of concealing information about electrical problems on a plane that later crashed” , as well as “The organisation said more than 1,000 planes currently flying could potentially be at risk of electrical failures as a result of production problems. The foundation’s claims relate to an aircraft which hit the ground minutes after take-off from Addis Ababa in March 2019” yet whether the truth is a given here, remains the question. We are given a host of other settings in this partial boxing ring, which leads to “among the apparent issues indicated by the documents are a lack of electrical parts, missing and improperly installed wiring, and employees being placed under extreme pressure to rework defective parts” It is anyones guess how accurate these settings are, and my thoughts are that the once great airplane brand has fallen so far. Yet at this point my speculating self started to fill doubt with conjecture, a partial presumption on my side with a larger dose of speculation. And let there be no doubt, I am about to speculate, which is what one does when the facts are not completely to be trusted and when you fail to optionally see the good in people. Yet the BBC does not entirely fail to give the goods. And it does so in the last paragraph of the matter. We are given “Mr Pierson said reports from people within the factory alleged that efforts to improve conditions on the production line had so far been “woefully inadequate” – largely because FAA inspections were known about well in advance and could be prepared for”

So why does the FAA give Boeing the goods? I believe it to be the faltering lines of the American economy. Another failing setting to NASDAQ would throw the American economy in a sliding scale towards an abyss. Whilst we are given that there is a positive year to year change, the reality is that Boeing hasn’t been positive since 2019, thats a 5 year thumper of debt when we see that Boeing had a revenue of 76.5 billion dollars and a net income of minus 600 million, we see that the numbers grow to a 77.8 billion with a net income of minus 2.2 billion. As such the Boeing numbers are not a good message and now we see that the FAA allegedly tells Boeing when they are coming for a ‘visit’? I believe that these firms are against the wall. And the previous CEO Dave Calhoun, who wielded the sceptre from January 2020 to August 7, 2024 has a lot to explain. He took over from Dennis Muilenburg who was fired amid safety concerns with the Boeing 737 MAX following two fatal crashes that claimed the lives of 346 passengers and crew on board. It is here that I personally believe that Dave Calhoun allegedly played a very dangerous game, the unsubstantiated believe that he played with lives using a set of dice. And as I see it, the FAA was willing to play with the lives of people. With the safety setting of Boeing at play, the FAA had no business to give advance warning. A setting we need to give rise to, so far 346 lives are lost and the economy is seemingly more important that hundreds of lives lost. America has an apparent 334,914,895 (2023) lives. Who cares how the Americans keep their population high, a few hundred is all that is needed, so fuck around and find out. And with another (speculated) 800 lost, due to the next 2-3 planes. the media will use all the soundbites to create flammable stories. In the mean time we see a system that is all about keeping the appearance of an economy high, does it matter how many lives are lost? In the end, when Boeing goes down, Airbus and Lockheed Martin. In retrospect United Airlines is waiting on 497 planes from Boeing, I reckon that they might want to change their order to Airbus (no idea if that is a valid option). The larger setting is that Boeing makes military aircrafts making it a touchy subject. I wonder if any media will truly take a look at how (as well as why) the FAA played chicken with American lives and the American economy. Is any of it a given? No, as I said there is a lot of presumption (read: in part speculation) on the subject. But anyone in Business Intelligence would have had similar thoughts. The problem is that this article by Theo Leggett is 15 hours old. I wonder what more information will be divulged to the people in the next 5 days. In addition there is a lot we do not know about Ed Pierson, a former manager at Boeing’s 737 factory in Renton, Washington State. I speculate that the FAA will face a serious shake up, the card will most likely fall against Michael Whitaker, but that is not a given. Someone will be buried alive for playing footsie with Boeing, of that I have no doubt, who? It will be anyones guess but it will be someone high up. And the stage between Boeing and its stock for the sake of stability. A faltering fake setting of a nation that couldn’t bring its debts about and merely try to play a longer game. If they did this to Boeing, who else what given some level of protection? I don’t know, but the American media is not keen on truly digging into that hornets nest.

As I said, plenty of speculation/presumption, the facts? Well, as I see it the media is no longer to be trusted, so who is? It is anyones guess I think.

Have a great day and try to enjoy tomorrow, that is, if you are not being a passenger on a Boeing.

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August 20, 2024 · 03:58

What makes it a story?

That is the question that floats to the top. You see, the bulk of the media, including the BBC nowadays have lost too much credibility. The issue becomes verification, and in too many places there isn’t to much of that. So in this mindset I stumbled upon an article. This was in part funny, as I mentioned the ‘disgraced’ Al Jabri only two days ago and 11 hours ago this article was published by the BBC. I do not think the two are connected and it is clear that no such connection should be made other than the mention of these timelines (to keep my blog to some degree a valid source). But 11 hours ago (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gz8934wrro) we see the appearance of ‘Power, oil and a $450m painting – insiders on the rise of Saudi’s Crown Prince’ by Jonathan Rugman. The article was glared over by me, until I noticed a name. This set me in a different mindset and it is time to report on this.

It all starts with “he summoned a senior security official to the palace, determined to win his loyalty” and the name Saad al-Jabri is mentioned. The man who seems to manage a multi billion portfolio for the CIA (allegedly) and was in a court case in America, whilst he is in Canada and setting the space not to allow certain evidence to be mentioned. We then get mentions like “According to Jabri” and (did I mention) that he is a disgraced official, but that part is not mentioned in the article? The mentioned stage “he was friends with the heads of the CIA and MI6” makes for ‘exciting’ reading, but in my mindset it is a dangerous connection because there is a lot of non-verification. So we get the first reference ‘Family of exiled top Saudi officer Saad al-Jabri ‘targeted’’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-52790864). There we get “Dr Saad al-Jabri, who helped foil an al-Qaeda bomb plot against the West”. My issue was that there is little verification. Now, this makes sense because it is intelligence related and they do not spout these issues in open places. But with the accusation of treason and ‘funds removal operations’ according to other Saudi sources it sets the possibility that Al Jabri made a sting using optional Al Qaeda plants and now we get the setting that the CIA gave him safe passage whilst Al Qaeda gets the optional blame for it all. I am not saying that this is what happened, but the timing of the intertwined facts are a little too convenient (for Al Jabri). This could have been all set aside with proper verification, but the term ‘according to sources’ allows for my speculation, and lets be clear, I was and still am speculating on this.

And the stage of “He was also the linchpin in all Saudi Arabia’s relations with the “Five Eyes” (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) intelligence agencies.” This is important because linchpin means “a person or thing vital to an enterprise or organisation”, as such Saad Al Jabri was important to the stage of some (most likely the CIA) and Al Jabri in a self professed difficult situation was eager to carry that mantle (my speculation), especially as he was accused to have taken the quick way out with billions. People have done a lot more for a mere 0.1% of such an amount. 

Then we get to “we shed new light on the events that have made MBS notorious – including the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi” and this had issues with me. On February 27th 2021 I wrote ‘That was easy!’, (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/02/27/that-was-easy/) in this blog article I shot holes in an United Nations document, with a lot more issues that I was happy with. The fact that I had even one issue with a document from the United Nations should have been close to impossible. The fact that I did implies that this was a hatchet job and I added the UN document so that people could see it for themselves. In addition at a later stage I added the mention that Khashoggi was alive with a mistress spending their days on Bora Bora (I also mentioned that this came from a non-reliable source). The setting we have now is that there is a debatable story (in depth) due to at least one main source that is debatable and the mentions of Al Jabri needs to be seen as at the very least debatable. This is what you get when the lack of verification is there, there is simply no other outcome as I see it.

We then see “accusing MBS of forging his father the king’s signature on a royal decree committing ground troops”, as well as “The prince was apparently so impatient for his father to become king that in 2014, he reportedly suggested killing the then-monarch – Abdullah, his uncle – with a poisoned ring, obtained from Russia. “I don’t know for sure if he was just bragging, but we took it seriously,”” my issue here is two fold, the one mention of “I don’t know for sure if he was just bragging” sounds nice, but in both cases the source is Al Jabri and in my view he is a debatable source on more than one issue and verification is missing here and that is all on Jonathan Rugman as I see it. This all takes me back to the 70’s. A writer named James Grady wrote a book that was made into a movie with Robert Redford, the movie was called Three days of the Condor. After I saw the movie I also read his sequel ‘Shadow of the Condor’ (I believe that was the book). There we come across the term ‘Gamaljoen’ (I read the book in Dutch). The term makes reference to a person that is raised to a much larger status than he (or she) should be. Because of the status those who are wielding that person are raised as well. That is the feeling that I have on Al Jabri. Now lets accept that I could be (totally) wrong, but that requires verification to see and we see no verification with the debatable doubts I throw on to the Khashoggi issue we get an unbalanced stage. And I am trying to avoid the “he said, she said” debate. This is why there are issues with an in depth story. There are other sources mentioned, but these are all to ‘trivial’ matters. 

We then get a part that reflects on my story yesterday ““He planned for my assassination,” Jabri says. “He will not rest until he sees me dead, I have no doubt about that.”” Whether he did or did not is also debatable. The ‘simple’ fact is that I created an optional plan to do just that, in under an hour no less. And I am not a professional on the matter. The fact that Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud has actual specialists on the matter and we see some ‘tiger team’ bungling it puts question marks on it all. Is there an actual execution order out on Al Jabri? It is a valid question. I have no doubt that Al Jabri is likely to face jail time at the very least is he ever goes back to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, there is a wallet with billions (allegedly) missing to support my view. 

With “The killing of Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 implicates MBS in ways that are very hard to refute. The 15-strong hit squad was travelling on diplomatic passports and included several of MBS’s own bodyguards” the writer of the BBC story is missing the beat. You see, the setting of “implicates MBS in ways that are very hard to refute” is what I did (in part) in the UN document in the article I mentioned earlier (That was Easy!) I cast a really large doubt in the issues, in the second setting ‘15-strong hit squad’ is also extremely debatable. If it was a hit a mere 1 person would have sufficed. That there was an optional team to ‘retrieve’ is possible, but the media used the setting to explode their paper revenue, so too much of it is too ludicrous for words. The media is nowadays too much about creating emotional flames for the supportive need of clickbait, at the expense of their own credibility. 

Then we get “A declassified US intelligence report released in February 2021 asserted that he was complicit in the killing of Khashoggi” yet the linked article states “The report released by the Biden administration says the prince approved a plan to either “capture or kill” Khashoggi”, whilst we see “We assess”, which in CIA terms would be seen as fairy tale material. It lacks evidence, merely conjecture. All whilst the linked report (by the office of the US director of national intelligence) can no longer be retrieved. That’s your evidence? 

There is a lot to make up for and the BBC better do that soon, as the article ends with “Jonathan Rugman is consultant producer on The Kingdom: The world’s most powerful prince” the writer being a producer of materials as well? Whatever could be wrong next.

The amazing amounts of fairy tale materials that goes back as far as the United Nations gives pause for a larger setting, whatever you call ‘inDepth’ is almost a new kind of story with the APNews happily posting it with the mention of ‘Former Saudi official alleges Prince Mohammed forged king’s signature on Yemen war decree’ a mere 4 hours ago. Is that how the news goes around nowadays?

And to all I say have a great Tuesday, a mere 4 hours until breakfast for me, time that I snore like a lumberjack. 

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August 18, 2024 · 14:32

Cold War 2.00.05/LW

The BBC alerted us to an optional issue, the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyn8vk4g42o) is a tap on the door. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the article. It alerts us and it tells us stuff, but there is an underlying setting. You see there is an absolute chance that Russia is active in Germany, but there are doubts within me. Russia has a lot more problems than many of us realise. And there we, optionally, now have a new player in the German field. The radical sited lone wolf getting their message from Tehran. I will come right out with ‘it is speculative’, it is my speculation. You see with “Holes mysteriously found cut in army base fences” we see part of the deception. If it was me, I would hide 2-3 drones, out of sight with a good view of several buildings, not flying in a landed state. Army camps have many roofs and not of them are watched all the time. And a landed drone leaves no signature. So there the culprit, optional plural have drilled a hole in a fence, nicely hidden, but not strong enough that it will avoid detection. So the guard patrols call it in and suddenly the base is rushing to the sensitive places and checking them out. And now with the drone cameras they will know WHERE to hit that place, optionally not hitting that place at all (that week). The army signature move is to check all the sensitive areas as well as the munition storage and armouries. Their alert giving the lone wolves where to come soon enough and that time there are no holes at entry. 

Not a case they expected, but this is not an intentional Cold War or Cold War 2.0, it is a Cold War 2/LW (Lone Wolf). A new setting and most standard procedures will not suffice, well they might but you are up against a different enemy, the Lone Wolf is desperate for success and more important, he/she will be more desperate for success, as such they will resort to killing a lot sooner, as such the plan changes somewhat. Whether they are out for secrets to dispense to a player like Iran (optionally one of their agents via Hamas, Hezbollah, or Houthi). I see this as a realistic setting. 

We cannot merely rely on:

  • An alleged plot to assassinate Germany’s top weapons manufacturer.
  • Phone taps on a high-level Luftwaffe call.

These are still settings that are happening and it is even possible that these are separate issues. In any espionage setting the Luftwaffe taps could most definitely be Russia as for the alleged assassination. It is anyones guess who it is and how real it is. The danger of an assassination cannot be ignored, but these people are aware of those dangers and the replacement is likely to be a lot more dangerous than the one they replaced. When the danger becomes realistic, the claws come out and they will suddenly be a lot more dangerous, as well as the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst), they will at that point be out for blood, all of the blood they can lay their hands on. 

So am I right?
Not sure, but I just gave you a scenario that I came up with in 5 minutes. These Lone Wolves have been brooding over a plan for months. It is there that we see the folly that I saw in the case involving Saad bin Khalid Al Jabri in Canada. In 2021 we get from 60 minutes that Mohammed bin Salman wanted him dead. This might be true, but then we get in August 2020 that ‘Saudi hit squad was sent to Toronto to try to kill former intel official, lawsuit alleges’ (source: Toronto Star) with a 100 page lawsuit and in the end none of the allegations have been proven in court. What a jolly shit show. There was another article (I forgot where it was) stating that the Tiger Team of 30 man were employed. To give you a little rundown, after 42 years leaving the army (draft) I came up with a simple idea of using 3 teams of 2 man and at the end of that exercise that would have taken a mere 20 minutes with one team active for an additional 12 hours, there was no living Al Jabri, he would be as dead as the concrete building he was living in. OK, I do not know the setup of that building, but it would be a simple exercise for 3 teams of 2 (one team observing and directing. An optional use for the M202A1 66mm FLASH with adjusted missiles would be used (in a certain debilitating case) but that is merely on a ‘what if’ whim. The rest is a simple exercise using two boom boom items. Hard case, a mere exercise and I am certain that certain parties (who are in this field) could have thought of this long before I did. I have had my issues with the assumptions that Saad bin Khalid Al Jabri have tried to sway us with. The other fact was that the US, where a lot was set in their courts (even though he was in Canada) with all kinds of objections against the Saudi representative there. I had my doubts on a lot of it. This is a mere setting and this now goes back to Germany. Is there an optional Cold War brewing? That is very much possible, but in all this the Lone Wolf is optionally overlooked. So are these the actions of a Lone Wolf, or a Lone Woof. Anyone can make a hole in a fence, having the Army run around would be fun the the lone woof looking from a distance, it does not make for a base invasion. So at the near end of the article we get “Not all of these events can definitively be blamed on Moscow, but Germany is on heightened alert for possible acts of Russian sabotage, because of Berlin’s continued military support for Kyiv” this is a better be safe then sorry and I cannot disagree, but the media had a decent responsibility to state more than this and the mere ‘Not all of these events can definitively be blamed on Moscow’ was not enough. With Russian sympathisers all over Europe a lot more was required, because belief it or not Lone Wolves are a clear and present danger to many European nations. Troll farms are ‘their’ essential misinformation, but merely misinforming people and watch it unfold tends to be only entertaining in the first few hours. When we get to tipping scales, actions tend to be needed to make the scales tip over a lot more, but that is merely my point of view.

As “last month when CNN reported that US officials had told Berlin of an alleged Russian plot to kill the chief executive of Germany’s biggest arms company Rheinmetall” doubts come into play again. You see a player like Rheinmetall has procedures in place for this level of events, of that I have no doubt. So what is to be gained from a simple and single execution? Is it the target, or is it a ploy to keep the BND active in the wrong places? Lets not forget that Sun Tzu taught us that all war is based on deception. So how did CNN get the news? Any alleged plot (especially from Russia) would be based on the expertise by people like the GRU and they do not talk (if they do President Putin has a lot more problems that he realises). So how did CNN get it, what were the sources? As such I have to some degree my doubts on this.

Have a fun day and that red dot you see on your chest? It’s merely your imagination.

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August 16, 2024 · 19:36

G-monopoly to the rescue?

Yup, that as the setting that imploded in my mind. It came at the doorstep of my sneaky sneaky creativity. You see when we consider the article at Reuters (with https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-judge-says-monopolist-google-cant-avoid-app-store-reforms-2024-08-14/) we might handle the stage of ‘US judge says ‘monopolist’ Google can’t avoid app store reforms’, we can agree, we can disagree (I disagree) but the setting is a stage that is not merely a mere ‘monopoliser’ it is quite a blanket cover of social inheritance. It comes at the dawn of a legion of Microsoft sycophants (agents of mediocrity) and that is a more dangerous stage then you realise. And always there is Microsoft trying to cut a nice corner for themselves. They failed five times over and they just can’t quit falling short of the rest of the pack where they want to ‘capture’ market share. For the non-regular readers of my blog the list is Adobe, Apple, Amazon, Google and Sony. And the loudest failures are Solarwinds and CrowdStrike. Even within the last week we saw several sources stage the boxing square using the Microsoft version of AI setting the dangerous premise of MAI (Microsoft AI) collecting the optional access of cloud systems. Now this is a premise that it is possible, not the setting that it has or currently is happening. But for reference when L’Oreal sees their revenue dwindle as one of the possible culprits namely Yatsen Holding, Estee Lauder, Avon Worldwide, Revlon, Coty, or CHANEL decides to take that short cut, L’Oreal will have a clear path what to do next. For their reference AWS can be found at Tour Carpe Diem, 31 Pl. des Corolles, 92400 Courbevoie, France. With the optional phone number is 3 315 660 2600.

Am I overreaching? 
It is a fair question, you see, I never much trusted cloud computing under Microsoft, not whilst there are valid options like Amazon (AWS), Apple, Google, and IBM available. I personally feel that Amazon is the superior provider, but I am NOT the best source of this information. I know too little about the G-Cloud, or the IBM version of that. Still the articles I read a few days ago scare my literally out of my skin. So there you have it.

So back to that, mainly judge James Donato in San Francisco. He heard Google and that greed driven Epic. You see Epic is in denial of an important factor. They accused Google of monopolising how consumers access apps on Android devices and how they pay for in-app transactions. The part that everyone seems to overlook is that Apple and Google had a similar plan in motion. This setting allowed Google and Apple to let everyone on-board. The small designers did not have to pay for massive amounts of money to get secure systems on-line. It is all done by these two providers. So they pay a little contribution and Epic immensely enjoyed that part of the equation and as they became more successful there need for more money (for stake holders and share holders) they decided to bite the had that fed them from poverty into wealth. Now that this part is over the hundreds of thousands developers can release an unbridled hatred towards Epic. But that is not merely the end of it. In this day and age of scammers and organised crime Epic is opening the floodgates towards these two players and I reckon that the first case (with evidence) that this is happening, both companies will both set a class action against Epic. So at that point where will the profits of Epic go? I reckon not too much towards their share holders, on the upside for them, litigation and trials are tax deductible. 

And whilst the media is all about the small player (multi billion Epic) against the titans of Industry (Apple and Google) I saw a new light. What if there was a new kind of monopoly game, with 4 players Amazon, Apple, Google and IBM and the board doesn’t represent streets, they represent cloud domains. There are still the utilities Electricity and Water (optionally called cooling) and the parks when all are obtained will give you a server-park item (hotel in the original game) and under that we get servers (up to 4) and the locations united will give you the upper hand in a server domain. The stations become continental backbones and they will have a secondary part. Should you get a station in a location, the servers get a +10% if you have all 4 you get a +20%. Now this is plenty of ‘over shadowing’ this game should have an educational side. So we have locations that invoke cyber security, social networking, AI and Data Warehousing. All have a -1% cost to your locations, if you have all 4 in one side of the board you get -10% costings (or 10% more efficiency). You see this might be a game, but the bulk or current users do not seem to comprehend the dangers that this case invoked. When the masses get to comprehend what is at stake and the fact that this is not completely set to a monopoly driven Google (or Apple for that matter), people might wake up to the danger they are exposing themselves to. And that part has been missing the to flame hungry (for the sake of money) media outlets. 

I always believed that games are a great way to teach people (when it is not Elden ring or Assassins creed) how to look at the image a little more clearly. So in that trend after the new movie yesterday, I decided to create a game for the occasion. It is the best move? OK, I am willing to concede that it might not be, but a free game that millions embrace tends to have a decent impact, more than we get now. And I am alway happy to engage with my sneaky sneaky creativity.

Well, the day is almost over, as such I will snore a forest into firewood and relax for my tomorrow hustle towards a morning with chicken and optionally some chili con carne. Enjoy your day.

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August 15, 2024 · 17:40

Streamers wake up

Yup that is pretty much the setting. They are all trying to reinvent the wheel and there is nothing wrong with that, in some cases the new wheel is more up to date and a good show, or movie. As I saw the second iteration of The Andromeda Strain, this time produced by Ridley the alien Scott we see a new version that is ‘up to date’ with the technology settings, the story makes sense and it is a great story to watch in two parts. So as I was brooding on different matters, I was reminded to a good movie from 1987 with the one and only Jon Cryer. The movie was called 

Hiding Out. Now this is no Oscar winning material, still the movie was thoroughly entertaining and I think it deserves a remake. 

The main reason for the remake is that with all the digital currency scams, a remake is nearly essential and Netflix better wake up, or someone else will get to it. So in comes the actress of choice (Anna Taylor Joy). 

She has something in common with an actor like Tom Cruise. You see she could appear like a teenager until she turns 50 and in light of the setting of Hiding out, especially in a high school, this matters. 

The story (roughly) goes that she fell in love with a bitcoin broker and the setting is that he is the guilty foe and a lot of bitcoins go missing, more than enough that he gets himself killed. The last thing he does to ‘save’ his hide he lays blame on the actress of choice and as such she suddenly gets chased and she does not know why. Het only escape is to hide in a place where no one would seem to know her. As she loved her summers with her aunt in Nova Scotia. Her aunt is now dead, but she remembers the place and she is off to Nova Scotia and as such she hides as an international Uruguayan student in the St. Francis Xavier University. She enters as student in journalism and communication. 

In the meantime they are still hunting her but no one knows where to look for her. We get an appearance make over in the beginning when she gets to Nova Scotia (also the one link how they find her). So as the new student she lies low and tries to figure things out. In the meantime her office becomes aware of the $2,000,000,000 loss through theft (TV item) and the death of her lover. Now we get the FBI involved. The story goes that the FBI through digital CCTV traces get a possible handle on her (the train station where she vanished) and someone at the FBI blabs that to the criminals. Her tracks are lost in Saint-Lambert. She took the bus to Antigonish. The bus ride gets us some moments of her past life. 

She is relatively safe for now. And as she ‘embraces’ her anonymity and the new life she is making for herself she (of course) falls in love with one of the teachers and as she focusses on journalism she gains new skills in finding things out, more importantly she finds evidence that the bitcoin company seemingly have been white washing currency. In the meantime, she interns at a newspaper and one of the photographers takes a liking to her. When he takes a snapshot for a column where she is placed in the paper as the new intern, the links are found and the FBI goes after her, as well as the criminals. We now get that the FBI is after her, with criminals close on her too. I still need to think of a few sidelines where she has had positive influence through journalism, like a blue tuna fishing boat (water scenes) or something like that. 

In the end we see that her locket (an heirloom from her mother) contained an SD card with the currency encryption which is still in an account that no one could find or reach because it was encrypted. The SD card was the key to unlocking it. At the end the FBI catches the mole, retrieves the mob money and find the evidence that clearly identifies her previous boyfriend as the guilty party, the movie ends with her changing her life to Antigonish with her teacher. Now, wouldn’t it be nice to give Doug Al-Maini (professor of philosophy at said university) that role? I am a corruptor of the young and innocent (so sue me). And it might make a nice setting for Antigonish. 

It’s all I thought of in less than 2 hours. Netflix eat your heart out. Anyway use this idea as you see fit, I think it would also be nice to give Jon Cryer a nice small role here, to link the old to the new.

Have a great day and try the Nova Scoria Tuna today.

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