Category Archives: Media

The anger within

We all have it, something sets us off. It is not always fair and just, but to some extent, the buttons pushed are getting to us all, and I am no different. It all started (again) this morning with 

Here we see a retweeted Tweet. We get to see dozens a day and we cannot verify the truth on most of them, people with hatred of Elon Musk whilst no one is asking that procrastinating wanker (Jack Dorsey) to properly explain himself. If Musk has a case to fire thousands, then the previous custodians fucked up, they screwed it all up royally and it is all about floating the value of the company, but the media (with less credibility than a crack pusher) refused to set the stage of asking serious questions and it is the bulk of all media, the little who asked seemingly critical questions asked too little of them and they never followed up on them or reported on the simple fact that Jack Dorsey did not elaborate. His feigned apology was all we got and the media helped him massively. We still have no clear stage of the bots, a clear stage of fake accounts and hen this comes to light it will be too late, Dorsey took the billions and ran, with massive help from the media. Media is now slapping Elon Musk every chance he gets and he is waiting time on answering whilst setting the stage for a trimmed and optionally more profitable Twitter. This sinking ship came with a $45,000,000,000 cost. Did you think that it was a hand off to get Dorsey to buy a more luxurious coffin for himself? 

Then we get the Financial Times with the claim that Twitter use went up. OK, fair and also a lot seemingly (what I saw) based on people spouting negativity regarding Elon Musk and no one asking clear questions on the changes that came AFTER Dorsey left. Some things do not add up. Several accounts losing hundreds and some claim to have lost thousands. Why would changing the guards have such a setting? Yes, a few hundred might have bailed to an alternative, but when the alternative does not deliver, they will come back. Their ego’s will make them come back and then we will see the excuses of ‘Lets give him a chance’ all whilst that should have been the starting position. I get that some might create a Mastodon (or was that a Megaladon, sorry Jason Statham) account. Makes perfect sense, especially if that person is an influencer, they will go where the masses are, but the right influencer would have a Mastodon already. The stage of one person having a dozen accounts to butter the conversation are in a stage that they do not know where their ‘powers’ are going. That makes sense too, but I would need clear data to identify that part. I do know someone who has that but he is too busy looking after other things. 

I do not get the stupidity of the attacks on Elon Musk, even the clearly presented lies and misrepresentation. It goes nowhere, in the end we merely cut ourselves. It is clear that Twitter needs time to get itself on  a new path and the media seems very driven to not let this happen. Especially when you consider how much leeway they gave Jack Dorsey, months of reporting constitutes that evidence. You merely need to Google search ‘Twitter’ and see how much critical questions were asked of Jack Dorsey and how much non-accusation based questions were asked of Elon Musk, the numbers should scare you and most people  with their attack on Elon Musk are part of that trend. I? Well I do not know what will happen, so I will await until the dust settles and see what happens next. I will fall several steps as I see no need to buy a blue checkmark and more important will be reduced in the seek algorithm. I will not care, I will see the people I follow and I should see their tweets. Only if that fails will I consider moving. We need to take care who we follow with their loud mouths and their needs for attention with failing evidence. Yes there are parody accounts, but we either follow them or we might not care. The anger within is fuelled by the loud making statements that evidence does not support and why is that? It is their ego, or their need for attention as they try to become influencers. There is of course the singular person seeking the limelight for self, but they are seemingly a huge minority. Happy to see them go into the dusk of yesterday. Oh and that statement of government making statements regarding Twitter. I think we should seek these people and their links to Jack Dorsey. Because the loudness of that equation does not make sense, it only makes sense when we consider who they cater to, especially in the beginning of a new equation, they never did that in the age of smoking or anything else, only two hours past the 11th hour did we see the government react to smoking dangers. They had filled their pockets s much as they could and that is a dangerous stage, I get that. But to filter Elon Musk in hour 1 seems adversarial actions that seemingly have no foundation, especially as they never bothered asking Jack Dorsey several serious questions, but that is merely my speculative view on the matter. 

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The simple truth that matters

I saw an article at the CBC which was a month old. The article (at https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/aviation-emissions-flying-climate-change) gives us ‘Yearning to fly’, I get it, most love a plane ride, for most it is the official beginning of a vacation. For some it is the beginning of more and for yet more others it is merely a business trip. There we get “Airports around the world — including, infamously, Toronto’s Pearson — buckled under the strain.” Yes we get it, COVID-19 was an element no one has ever lived through, businesses were unable to fathom impact, retention the workforce and keep their KPI on some level of bonus giving. But the problem is a lot larger. Then we get “Many observers say the current growth trajectory is unrealistic — and that the aviation industry isn’t being frank about it.” This sounds nice but there is a part missing. There was more we were also given “To give a sense of just how much we fly, there were nearly 39 million flights worldwide in 2019; that was up from 25.9 million in 2009.” And that is merely the beginning. Now we need to take a step back. On November 13th 2021 I gave the world ‘A COP26 truth’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/11/13/a-cop26-truth/) with reference to an article two days earlier. I wrote at the time “the larger issue is that over the last 15 years 15,000,000 additional flights were added. That amounts to 41,000 flights a day, every single day. So how much CO2 do these flights create? More people and more flights, not the flights from the uber rich, no normal airline flights. I am willing to take a bet that at least 25% of those flights are useless and could be scrapped.” A statement that implies that we could remove 10,250 flights every day, so how much carbon does that take off the table? And the governments all over the world are unwilling to make that registration, consider one destination Amsterdam International (Schiphol), they get an average of 1166 flights a day, every day. There is not a bone in my body who tells me that this makes sense. London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Munich, Atlanta, San Francisco. I truly believe that it has come to the fact that the world has annual 38.9 million flights. If we merely scrap 2%, that amounts to 778,000 flights. So how much carbon emissions do we safe then? And we get some BS reporter at the Guardian give us the the pointing finger at the uber rich? Gimme a break!

They have ignored a EEA report (I think it was 2020) where the report states that 50% of all pollution came from 147 facilities. I initially mentioned it on December 10th 2020 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/10/uniform-nameless-entitlement-perforation/) I even included the report. The article titled ‘Uniform Nameless Entitlement Perforation’ gives a lot to think about and the Guardian did nothing (well neither did the BBC), so whilst we yearn vacations and in many cases preferably per plane, there is still the matter of Carbon emissions and the essential need to scrap at least 778,000 commercial flights FOREVER. The Dutch KLM flies 15 flights a day to Stockholm. Really? Do that many people travel? If we examine and dig into the manifests of EVERY plane we will see gaps, too many gaps. There is no way that we need 15 daily flights to Stockholm, we can do with 6 easily. That is one route and we scrap well over 50%, we need to dig into these realms and we need to start scrapping presentation flights. The simple truth is that we seemingly think that there are so many people flying, the fact is that the entire setting is loaded from the start and it is time to get rid of a lot of them, if we need to create time we need to cut where we can. 

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Start with the blabla

Yes, that is what it seems like. It feels like merely yesterday that we had COP26 and a young lady calling it a ‘bla bla’ moment. And with the actions of the exiting Brazilian president we might hope that the dangers to the Amazon are over, but I am not convinced. They were given until 2030 to fill there pockets and there is every chance that all but the final 1/3rd of the Amazon will be gone by November 2029. There is also other news COP27 will be held in Sharm-el-Sheikh. It is nice when these things are held in a place I know to some degree. I was there in 1982, there will be a lot of changes, but for some reason it clicks a lot more. The BBC gives us (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63517078) ‘COP27: ‘Climate chaos’ warning as UN summit begins’ where we are told:

At last year’s summit in Glasgow a number of pledges were agreed:

  • to “phase down” the use of coal – one of the most polluting fossil fuels
  • to stop deforestation by 2030
  • to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030
  • to submit new climate action plans to the UN

Developing nations – which are at the forefront of climate change – are demanding that previous commitments to finance are upheld.

It is nice to stop deforestation, but Brazil saw that as a moment to increase deforestation by well over 20% at present, so we have that to deal with. In other news the Guardian gave us a list on November 2nd. This list (at https://green-alliance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Global-methane-pledge.pdf) offers “a series of low-cost measures, which it says could reduce methane emissions from their 2020 levels by 43%.” I would state that we do not give livestock Mexican food, but the document is a lot more serious and they give us “The feed additive Bovaer/3-NOP, manufactured by DSM, could cut methane emissions from dairy cows by at least 40 per cent, if it was approved by the Food Standards Agency. It must be fed to cows regularly, making it immediately suitable for dairy cows but less so for outdoor reared beef cattle and sheep.” The two issues I currently have with it is the question whether ‘Bovaer/3-NOP’ has been properly tested for long term issues in beef and milk. We made similar mistakes before, lets not do that again. On the other hand it seems that the stock of DSM will go the roof if this happens. To be honest, with all the issues at hand, I cannot say how useful this meeting will be. Call me a pessimist, but the events following COP26 in Brazil made me weary of progress here and lets be clear Brazil will be the first screaming for money, yet where exactly are these deforestation profits going? 

In other news

I woke up from a weird dream this morning. I was in some kind of marketing trailer. They were running a large screen (85”) and the image war sublime, it allowed for 4K where on the image of a salesperson, and whilst we walked and moved in the trailer the image was captured and placed on the TV, we were midgets walking all over the person on the screen and it was uncanny. The feet the stance were all instantly adjusted to the new stage based on the images captured in the trailer. The angle of the feet, the angle of us as we ascended or declined the salesperson laying on a couch. They called it Oracle Eloquent, and it gets weirder. I looked it up a minute ago and it exists. Or at least Oracle Eloquent exists. I was unaware, I have not talked about Oracle for at least a decade. I learned two things in the dream. Oracle Eloquent was free with the video equipment, it was (I think) a stage of new marketing and direct editing to make video and events in Meta, in addition to this a person had a work login, a deployment login and a third login (not sure what it was). It allowed for some kind of AI based deployment (read: deeper machine learning), it seems that some players are ready for the big players in Meta, what I saw was overwhelming and I think that something like this will appeal for the entire top tier of the Fortune 500. I partially recall seeing some Apple advert and it was amazing, but even now the dream is falling into the realm of shades and beyond my grasp. The trailer was set up for a team of 6, they would be Abel to interact and combine options to create new miracles in a setting that is mobile. As such the trailer could be moved to different Coca Cola locations. But that trailer could be placed in a specific place, linked to power and AC units. A locked setting to get the next Meta trend event to take place. It was all I saw but the thing that threw me the most was “Oracle Eloquent Model. Updating Blob directly using OracleEloquent.” I found it half an hour after the dream, so I am in the dark. I searched my history but for the last two years I have not looked at anything Oracle related. I might have seen something in a place like Verge, but I am unaware of it. The brain makes the weirdest jumps at times. As such I am willing to accept that I could see the name subconsciously, but the rest, I am drawing a blank.

So, that is enough bla bla from me for at least 10 hours.

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MHW anyone?

Yes, it seems puzzling, but it is not. I have seen in the last 48 hours more than anyones share of hatred, the Musk Hatred Wave and I absolutely have had enough of this collaborated pile of bullshit. It is time to set the record straight. The first guilty party is the Media, these cocksucking stakeholder appeasing bunch of wannabe journo’s. Almost no one is asking serious questions towards Jack Dorsey and the hidden accounts of fake followers. Can someone please nail this joker to a bloody cross please? It is getting close to Christmas, so that solves one part. The Guardian goes on (t https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/05/twitter-elon-musk-jack-dorsey-apology) by catering to all this with “I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation – I grew the company too quickly” as I personally see it when Elon Musk is forced to deal with “apologise for the state of the site, which has laid off thousands of workers” when the new person has to lay off thousands of people, you weren’t growing the company to quickly, you were orchestrating a stage and still the media is not asking the questions they should have asked for months. So when we get to see “At least one class-action lawsuit has been filed against Twitter on behalf of former employees who say they were not given adequate notice of their termination.” I need to wonder if this is actually the case, Elon Musk stated on Titter that these people were given TWICE the redundancy that a person is eligible for. I cannot state if that was indeed true, but the media gives us “Elon Musk has a history of violating California’s labor law” loading the stage against Elon Musk yet again. And true, a little later we see “Musk has defended the layoffs, tweeting that fired employees are receiving three months of severance as the company reportedly loses over $4m a day.” Another clear stage that gives us that someone needs to ask Jack Dorsey serious questions, but he is off with billions, so he will not care about any of this. It merely shows how useless the media has become. 

Then we see more and more hatred on Twitter with quotes like Justice giving us that Free Speech should not cost $8 month. 

My answer would be:

No Moron he is not charging $8 for free speech, he is planning to charge the blue checkmark. The sign that you are a real account. A sort of elite status that too many people enjoyed for the longest of times. The new owner states that this elite status comes at a price and most of them will do the math $96 a year or lose the mark. Plenty of those can hand that invoice as an expense to their TAX LAWYER.” 

Then we get loads of people stating they lost hundreds or thousands of followers. I am merely adding one example but there are legions out there. 

The question becomes were they really followers or are certain bots vacating the space in fear of exposure? In one week Musk cannot push for such larger changes to a working system with all these people losing their jobs. We could argue that some Twitter employees had scripts that fattened the accounts of their idols. I am not stating this happened, I am wondering if this could have been the case. And yes there are plenty of people whose hatred made them leave Twitter, that is their choice, but those followers stopped being followers too. There are many options, but we need data to prove or disprove some of these assumptions (read: presumptions).

The largest issue is the mass firing. The issues is not whether this is happening, but if proper procession is used. That is a case for California labour laws, I know too little about these, but considering the Jack Dorsey ‘apology’, I am willing to speculate that everything was done to give Elon Musk a stacked hand against him and with the media being as biased as it seems to be, when it comes to discrimination and a few other elements the media is every bit as guilty here. That is how I see it. When you get over the feigned anger, what are your thoughts? 

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Growing pains

Sorry for the delay, lost my internet last night. So here we go: I saw the article last week yet I decided to put it beside me, it was yesterday when I revisited the stage. There were things missing and that was at the heart of it. Not merely the missing parts, the foundation that we would have to take a stance, that was missing and I cannot decide whether the writer was merely cowardly or unwilling to open that can of worms. There is no real issue, the fact that someone is not willing to open a certain an of worms is not to be underestimated. We will all most likely fail there.

The article (at https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20221028-will-we-ever-live-in-city-sized-buildings) gives a decent consideration. ‘Will we ever… live in city-sized buildings?’ For the sake of nature we absolutely have to. With “Cinematic examples include the massive high-rise buildings in Dredd (based on the comic book character Judge Dredd)  and Skyscraper, although little detail is given on how they operate” the tone is set, yet one of the most powerful settings is overlooked and I believe it was intentional. It is the movie ‘Logan’s Run’ apart from an extremely good looking Jenny Agutter the movie touches on forms of decadence, but more importantly limitations. The City based building has a limit. In the story all people will have the die at 30, to prevent overpopulation. The book calls it the renewal procedure. Each person can renew their life in Carousel. It is the foundation that hits the core of every citizen. Those unwilling to go through that process and prefers life becomes a runner. And it was a brilliant concept. It does not matter how large the Line will be, it has a 9 million limit, so when at 8.9 million, new families will have a problem. You either limit your space to include one more, or you will find that the surplus expansion must move to somewhere else. These growing pains will be felt anywhere and everywhere. A city based building has the same limitations an island has, it is merely more direct, more defining. The writer gives a few examples but is seemingly anxious to avoid the population cull. It is dangerous because it has to addressed. You see, the movie Logan’s Run is pretty amazing because of it. The TV series had a council of elders where we get to see the explanation “Live must end at 30” the infrastructure could not deal with more people. And Expansionism is at the heart of us. More kids (sometimes seen as lust), more things (sometimes seen as greed) and that list goes on, expansionism is at the heart of it and we are for the most its slaves. I would like to be in such a place(without the culling) but when limits come something will have to give and that is where these places become hazardous, all of them become hazardous because it is part of us, we carry the failing within.

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That second police force

Yes, it comes as a shock. I know it. Although, it does not affect me (I think). But there is also a weird balancing act that derives from there. It was given to me by the Dutch NOS. You see the stupidity of one opponent (Russia) should not decide the inactions towards another (China). So there I was reading (at https://nos.nl/l/2450783) giving us : ‘China denies existence of police bureaus in the Netherlands, calls them ‘service points’’ there we learn that China has at least two of them in the Netherlands. One in Amsterdam and one in Rotterdam. Stations that China erected without informing the Dutch authorities. Next to the usage for administrative duties like the Chinese authorities self indicates, there are strong suspicions that China uses these offices to keep track of the Chinese with critical views of China. 

China responded “They are meant to assist local Chinese citizens who apply for an expired driving license. The people are ‘enthusiastic oversea Chinese people’ not police officers. 

The Dutch ministry of foreign affairs have stated that these offices are unacceptable and must be shut immediately. In other news, Germany is now investigating whether such an office exists in Frankfurt. 

No matter how this plays, China seemingly has a much larger intelligence operation in Europe, or did you think that ‘offices’ would be erected for expired driving licenses? The problem that this creates is twofold. What is merely for China, and what is used to give Russia additional material? The fact that Pro Russian collaboration is going on in the Netherlands has been clear for well over a year and it goes way beyond the borders of one seemingly mentioned name like Thierry Baudet. It goes a lot further and the question is how far? The fact that Russia’s efforts are monitored is one, the fact that China has an intelligence structure beneath the waterline is quite another and that is a setting that neither the Dutch or European forces will find acceptable, and the very same could be said for their alleged German activities.

Is one true? It is hard to say but the Dutch tend to have a sober view on matters, and the fact that the NOS gives us this hours ago whilst Reuters made mention 5 days ago implies that certain evidence has been checked and categorised implies a foundation that some will see as evidence. Of course we wonder how Reuters had it 5 days before the Dutch NOS, but one might have been a rumour, whilst the other one is verified information. The one question the UK (and commonwealth) needs to question is how far does this go, especially with a larger Chinese contingent in Australia, especially Sydney and Melbourne where we find a huge chunk of the 1.3 million Chinese immigrants.

Yet, that is not my concern, but it should be someones concern, don’t you think so?

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Fear is the key

Yes, it is a setting, but also the title of a Alistair McLean novel. And fear came to mind when I saw ‘New EU law could open up messaging and app buying’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63458377), for the most I am all for open markets, the problem however is that these small players aren’t too concerned about safety. The fear becomes that these small players will be a platform for hackers and criminals to propagate THEIR agenda and I do very much have a problem with that. So as the article gives us “Under the DMA, smaller messaging apps will be able to ask the tech gatekeepers to allow their users to send and receive messages via the bigger firm’s platform. However, large firms will not be required to make more advanced features interoperable immediately. Under the plans, audio and video calls between two individual users or groups of end users on different platforms will not happen for four years.” This statement gives us two dangers. Danger number one is that the small player is propagating party X (aka hacking party), we cannot state that there was intent, or that there was malicious intent. There is every chance that these maker are unaware. The second danger is that the absence of ‘advanced features’ which would include certain security measures. Yes, that is a speculation, but these security measures tent to be more advanced, hence the danger of missing out. I wonder what excuse these ‘enablers’ have when things go wrong, because there is EVERY chance that this will happen. In certain cases, could the BEUC be held accountable for damages to mobiles and persons? It is a fair question, because the rules of torts tell is to go after the money and the EU has plenty, not?

So as we are given “Margrethe Vestager, the commissioner for competition, who originally proposed the legislation said: “We invite all potential gatekeepers, their competitors or consumer organisations, to come and talk to us about how to best implement the DMA.”” I personally wonder who will ask the EU to be held accountable for any hacks that get propagated this way and more important can these smaller players be held liable? That last part is dicey on a few levels. It sets the stage that the consumer has to agree to an ‘as is’ policy, which means that the consumer gets to be held accountable for any damages. This is not a good setting to be in. 

I am all for open markets, but until the EU (US too) has actual victories against hackers, I fear the worst will happen and it tends to happen too soon when no one is prepared or has a clue, a mindset the EU is well familiar with.

I have every intention to ban messages that are not from my provider, which is dangerous as Optus has been hacked into to the largest degree, so I am not holding my breath regarding any mobile safety at present.

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That screwed up media

Here I was, relaxing, looking at tweets when suddenly a tweet Elon Musk passes by (see below). 

Now I had a hard time here. You see I do not trust the media, but the top shelf media (LA Times, SF Chronicle, Boston Globe, and Washington Post) were always above board. Actually there was one more, but it seems that the NY Times now joins the third tier newspapers right next to the Daily Mail (UK). How could any newspaper be so stupid to give us the article (see below). 

The idea that a newspaper does not properly vet the information they have is not new, but in the past the NY Times was always above board. Whether they hate Elon Musk, whether they have other needs (like towards former Twitter owners) or whatever the reason, not vetting information is a problem, it is one I have been talking about for years. When the media cannot differentiate between real news and fake news the media has a problem, they merely hand over the news to TikTokkers like the one claiming that there are a large number of UFO’s over Australia (a TikTok ad), so now you know.

Now what was one the huge and mighty NY Times is now a bringer of debatable fake news, which will deteriorate any other news they bring. Although, I do realise that if Elon Musk was not honest my goose is cooked. Yet Elon Musk has a lot more credibility than most media ever could hope to have, so I am presently siding with the E Musk group. I could not read the whole article because the subscription nag overlapped my article again and again, so there might be an ulterior reason for the NY Times.

In this day and age when we trust the media less and less, they need to bend over backwards to vet the information again and again and hiding behind a mention of Reuters no longer does the trick.

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Put the hammer down

It sounds overly dramatic, but I believe that enough is enough. The idea that a bully gets awarded is just too disgusting to me. I am of course speaking about the attack on Paul Pelosi in San Francisco. The idea that some nut job gets a glove treatment after a man, whose ‘crime’ is to be married to the speaker of the house is just too unsettling. I have never been much of an American democrat, that side ended after JFK. The democrats are pushing too much for a nanny state and I have an issue with that, but I accept that the Democrats were elected, they call the shots as is the consequence of an election. So as we learn “Bill Scott, chief of the San Francisco police department, said the suspect in the attack on Paul Pelosi will face charges of attempted homicide and assault with a deadly weapon, among others.”, as well as “The chief identified the suspect as 42-year-old David Depape. In addition to attempted homicide, he’ll also face charges of “elder abuse, burglary, and several other additional felonies”, Scott said.” All this and more is given to us by the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2022/oct/28/democrats-obama-midterms-republicans-us-politics-live-updates) some other sources described David Depape as another conspiracy theorist, not unlike the loads of people we see more and more in the Dutch political landscape. They are no longer an annoyance, they are now a danger and I personally believe that the Nanny state empowered them, the masses gave people like this a voice on digital media whilst those behind the screens are cashing in on the digital advertisement revenue. And people like Alex Jones are making this worse. A mere 5 days ago he files for a new trial. We get to hear (also from the Guardian) “Jones filed the requests Friday, saying Judge Barbara Bellis’s pretrial rulings resulted in an unfair trial and “a substantial miscarriage of justice”.” It is the ‘miscarriage of justice’ part that gets to me, we see “the shooting was a hoax staged by “crisis actors” to impose more gun control”, we see how this man exploits the damage to the families of 24 murdered children and he has the guts to rely on ‘miscarriage of justice’? This is too rich. I reckon that the Conversation had it right with ‘Hypocrisy is beneath them – political figures in the Trump era don’t bother concealing their misdeeds’ and the nanny state is merely growing their voice. It is there that we see Journalist Carlos Lozada give us “Their bad behaviour is now acceptable, so it needs no disguise” and that is is the setting behind this. This is what drives it and I gave a solution a long time ago, whilst the money hungry people went after tech firms, they forgot that the people no matter how entitled they are to their opinion, they should be held to account and if that was done people like Alex Jones have no recourse, people like David Depape would have been held to account long before he handed that hammer. And in the US with over 320,000,000 people this becomes more and more pressing. The land of opportunity has become overcrowded and the wannabe’s shout louder and louder at the expense of innocent children and a business man whose only ‘crime’ was to be married to a politician. 

It is time for the politicians to wake up and do something about this and hold the wielders of their voice accountable for their actions and for what they claim. People like Alex Jones saw the first trial as a way to get even more limelight, to get even more people relying on the Nanny state to listen to what he has to say. Yet no one is looking at the laws that allow these lie spouters to continue. This has been a setting for decades and now we see more and more impact and it does not end with the US. The Netherlands which is almost the size of Maryland (4,000 sqm larger) has a very different setting. Maryland with its 6.1 million people is nowhere near crowded as the Netherlands with 17.53 million people. A nation with the population pressures of Manhattan. There is a reason why I mentioned them, you see they are dealing more and more with pro-Russian trolls, conspiracy theorists and spouters of anti-Ukrainian stages and this will have a much more violent outcome. People like David Depape weren’t leading this, they were merely the first to go nuts and consider that this happens in a place like the Netherlands where in my youth an attack on politicians was almost unheard of, now people, via trolls propagate their home addresses. A man creating discord with intent to cause harm outside of Sigrid Kaag’s house. Merely because someone published the address. This will get a lot worse unless these laws are adjusted and until these conspiracy theorists are held accountable. I mean we all have the innocent conspiracy (funny example: Matt Damon is an alien, he’s Martian) but to exploit 24 murdered children takes a new (and lower) level of sick and the law is seemingly falling short here, that feeling comes with Alex Jones demanding a retrial, these families have to go through it all again. I personally hope that the financial damages are upheld and that he get an additional 15 years in federal prison, that might wake up the other theorists enough to reconsider the harm they are creating.

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Two things

They are not connected, not in any way, but the first part is too short to make a blog by itself as such I connected the two in separate parts.

Zeus Awakens

I have been brooding on the entry for Zeus, there is no way he can be omitted from the story, it is in one part as he is father to Ares, he is the other grandfather and he will emerge. In part that as our main character is gaining strength, the main character is now becoming a larger concern to the big three. As such I had to add Zeus to some degree and the second season was a decent moment to introduce him. 

It was a nice summer day in France, Nice to be more exact (as it is a nice town). I was sitting on a balcony on the esplanade of Nice, looking at the sea a mere 122 metres to the south. I heard a woman’s voice in the back asking me if I wanted any tea. ‘Yes please Lucia’ I responded and a few minutes later she came with a pot of tea. I saw her shiver and I took a gaze at the thermometer to my left. It was odd, it was slowly going down from the 28 degrees it was a minute ago. In one minute it had cooled down to 19 degrees. Grab the cat I said, I started to close the windows inside, she came in with Charcoal who was clearly feeling the lack of warmth and we closed all the windows. I moved towards the gas heater and turned it on. I didn’t need it, but she would definitely need heat soon enough. I looked at a contraction in the cupboard. It had thermometers, barometers and they were all going nuts. Air pressure was down to 950 and the temperature had gone down to 9 degrees. I looked out and I saw people run for entries wherever they saw one. It was definitely a larger problem, but I had never seen anything like this. The clouds in the air were dissolving, the sky was deep blue and the thermometer was now at 6 degrees. The sea looked calm, the air was quiet and the thermometer kept on declining. Within a minute it was down to 1 degree and it seemed to stop there, in the two minutes that I looked outside, I saw people grab coats. I saw a shopkeeper hand sweaters to some women in bikini as well as to men wearing shorts and t-shirts. The cold was felt everywhere. I noticed that the cat was keeping his body against the heater, it as not used to the cold. Then Lucia screamed, I looked at her and she pointed to the room. A man with long silver hairs was standing there. He was wearing a Victorian suit and he looked at me. I had never seen him before. He raised his hand and sparks flew out of his fingers towards the glass table, he then vanished and the heat came back, I looked at Lucia in puzzlement. I smelled a distinct Ozone air and I looked outside. The heat was coming back and I turned the heater off. I looked outside and the sun was there, the heat came gushing in everywhere and within a minute the temperature was back to 20 degrees. I looked at the table. The glass was there and so was a text, in the glass ‘Ελάτε στην Ακρόπολη, πρέπει να μιλήσουμε’. I got that message loud and clear. So this was my grandfather? Time to learn more about the other branch of the family. I send a mental note to grandpa Hades. “Zeus summoned me, will update you later” I looked at Lucia “It seems I have to make a business trip”, she nodded. She did not understand what was going on, but I got the impression that she was eager to go into denial. “Break the table into small parts, keep the cat away and be careful. Get a new table please.” I walked into the bedroom and got a small bag and from the living room fruit bowl I got my keys, wallet and some small stuff. Time to see Athens again.

Time squandered, time wasted

That was the first thought I had when I saw the Guardian article ‘Profits at world’s seven biggest oil firms soar to almost £150bn this year’. It is not their fault. The article is not what I am commenting on, not really. We get (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/27/profits-at-worlds-seven-biggest-oil-firms-soar-to-almost-150bn-this-year-windfall-tax) “Mathew Lawrence, the director of Common Wealth, a think-tank, said Shell’s zero windfall tax bill for 2022 showed the levy introduced by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor in May was “not fit for purpose” and needed significant change”, yes. That is how it starts and I am not saying that the comment is wrong, because that would require me to be an expert on taxation, and that is definitely not me. But consider that I wrote ‘Heating at what price?’ On December 3rd 2018, almost 4 years go (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/03/heating-at-what-price/).

I mentioned tax overhauls before that, years before than and now we see the impact of inaction and I get that Shell is not wavering, because tax laws were never properly overhauled and now there is a problem. So in 2018 I wrote “It is the first time in history that a Middle Eastern nation has the ability to put the US and EU to shame with their lack of technological progress. They claim to have it, yet Saudi Arabia is making a move towards ‘showing to have it‘, changing the game for both the US and Europe. This is where we see the difference. China and Russia see this as an opportunity, whilst Europe and the US are seeing it as an inconvenience” and now it is no longer an inconvenience, now it is an actual problem and the UK, EU and US are not ready. I warned of these dangers 4 years ago, but they all knew better. How do you feel? Did they know better? Did they know more are were they merely playing stationary, optionally licking stamps. And the opportunity that Russia sees and the opportunity that China sees are different. Russia is out of the equation, but China is now fulfilling what I saw 4 years ago and it will get worse. As China has more and stronger ties with Saudi Arabia they can get more oil and America? They can play indecisive politician, play the pariah game a little more. The UK has its tea grannies (CAAT) messing things up and Europe has little options from the start. All things I wrote about in 2018. And the UN is useless in this case (as I see it). Two things can be seen in very different things, in different ploys. In players and receivers. In actions and lack thereof. Two things almost half a dozen times over and I made clear mention of it in 2018. So as I prepare to sell my IP, I can now see that the timing is near perfect. The players will overreact and by the time they figure out what they could have done I will be retiring. In this it will be either Google versus Amazon, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia versus all others. If one acts the other loses and it will be billions that they lose, if one accepts they will have billions in a direction they never considered before and as I see inaction upon inaction I am wondering if their inactions is why they never saw what they could have gotten. I know it I speculation, but when was the last time anyone left well over 5 billion a year on the floor? And it plays out in the same way that Shell and others are coaching their fortunes. The inactions of others is making them rich, I deeply hope that I get that same bonus, my retirement kinda depends on it. 

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