December 31, 2022 · 21:18

At the finish of the year

Until about 5 minutes ago I was unclear whether I would touch this. You see Football is not my game. It just isn’t hockey (the real version, on ice) . I am not a fan of the game, never was. I sometimes watch part of a game and there is no call to national teams either. But for me, like for a whole lot of people, our world was abruptly called to a halt. On the 22nd November 2022 the game changed. Saudi Arabia defeated Argentina, a result no one saw coming and I reckon that a lot of people lost a lot of money gambling on that game. On the 22nd of November Saudi Arabia became a contender in football.

So whilst I see all these news items and BS tweets on how Ronaldo ‘betrayed’ the game, how he became a mercenary and a lot more rubbish, the bulk of the people are missing the point. You see being a sportsman on THAT level has a limited timeline. You can only be the best in the world for a limited time. OK, lets just say he is one of the three in the top of that game (apparently for some unknown reason no one in Argentina thinks he is the best in the world). But even if he is one of three on that top level, it has an expiration date, and he is no longer a teenager, he needs to keep his future safe. So he can continue on that streak (being paid decently well), or he can take an insane amount of money, being set for life and shaping football for Saudi Arabia. What would you do? Continue on a timeline with half a dozen prima donna’s, or create a dozen Ronaldo’s? Getting over a quarter of a billion each year doing so?

This is not merely the money (but it is nice to have a safe retirement 20 years in advance), he can shape the game for Saudi Arabia. This year they amazed EVERYONE, so what do you think will happen when Cristiano Ronaldo, the Number 7 trains the Saudi’s and in 2024 THEY end in the quarter finals? What a legacy to create and for Saudi Arabia, what an achievement to get. But we do not see any of that in all the newscasts or tweets, merely some SBS news girl standing pretty (and not much more) stating how sad she is, so why is she sad? Do we care? 

We saw the beginning of the game changing to a degree we never saw coming and Ronaldo, the number 7 can add spice to that equation and get over a dozen players a lot closer to the upper level of football than ever before. FIFA is about to get a new contender in this game and it is not a European team, yet that too is left unmentioned. So as I saw the sad amount of innuendo and attacks on number 7, I decided to write this. Consider this point of view, reject it, or form your own opinion, but think back to November 22nd. Did you see that game coming? I sure as hell didn’t and it was the subsequent deal with Al Nassr of Saudi Arabia where a new age of football is heralded in, heralded in by a Portuguese, Vasco da Gama would be proud of this day. At this point I wonder what the Saudi team will achieve in 2024, in Mexico because that will be a world cup no one wants to miss at this point.

 

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December 31, 2022 · 12:02

One more nugget

It started this morning. My mind was all over the place, it is the last day of the year, so it is allowed to wander (I am such an enabling person) and whilst it was wandering, it started to shape an idea. It is about making merchandise more functional. Now the first idea was for Bethesda, but they are Microsoft now, so they lose out. 

It was their Bobblehead trophy display that got me thinking. You see, gamers love their merchandise and some is neat. Yet most of it, nearly all of it has no real function. Now, this is fine. Yet what happens when the bow of Aloy does get function. It has hidden spaces for memory cards, it optionally even has a USB dive. The outer part can be exchanged so that you could always get a bigger drive. It could also hold a power bank, and the same could be the case for the  spear. Now the fan has a functional device and there is no one who needs storage and a power bank more than a gamer?

The combinations are endless. And it does not matter where you play. The HALO helmet, the spear from Aloy, the axe from Kratos, all devices that are cherished and will be cherished a lot more when it comes with something functional. I was happy when I got my pip boy with Fallout 4 and it was a great start, but consider some of the other games. Minecraft, Pokemon, Mario Kart and the list goes on and it is not merely me. Talk to any given fam and he (or she) will come with the line “Do you know what would be cool?” And some of them will be truly cool. And it is not limited to simple devices. Some limited items no longer function, but that is not a given. The chainsaw I had with the gamecube edition of Resident Evil. What if there was a power bank with Bluetooth that could connect and make it work on a remaster or a new console? The device is generic, but could be more. To see this, in one time I had a N7 vault for my Xbox360. Now, this doesn’t hold up nowadays, the Xbox dimensions changed, but what if the vault was empty but connected? The same for the Master Sergeant helmet. What if they have additional options. The fans will go nuts and they will be happy for a very long time. Now I gave a few shallow examples and they are not the ‘real’ deal, but they could lead to the real deal. In a previous article I mentioned two items that when inserted into a ‘real’ wizarding wand could become a controller. The two elements are generic, so they can be moved from ‘toy’ to limited collectors item. Some stuff is playful, but from the playful to the shear appealing items for many gamers is sea of choices. And the merchandise makers have been about the short term appeal and left it there, but the stage could be a lot larger. The connected items could become a lot more. Who has not seen the Diamond Minecraft sword in toy and game stores? So what happens when we connect one element to it and suddenly your diamond sword becomes +2 stronger and lasts 20% longer? The location devices could be used. A larger stage for more use and making the game enticing, the gamer happy and all matters of options in-between. The bow of Aloy was merely the key to open a much larger door, the merchandise door has been largely ignored on many levels and why? Even now, today as I saw some of these items in shops. I see the larger stage ignored, the missed stage of interaction. Now, I will be the first one to admit that this is not always possible, but what about the Mario Kart that is also a night light? Basically a battery, lights and wires were missing, three parts and suddenly people pay $10-$20 more and some eagerly so.  The larger part is not that people pay that amount extra, it comes with the stage that thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of gamers will get it as well because it was cool and the last three games sold well over 120 million items, so how many would want a kart that is a USB charged night light, optionally more? A whole niche with gaming connections spanning EVERY console out there and nothing to connect it at present, or at least massively too little of it. I remember my first figurine. A ninja, it held a sword which doubled as a letter opener (and that thing was bloody sharp) now consider the Assassins Creed figurines, or the Witcher or bloodborne figurines?

The Ninja was 1980 something, now we get the person who wants bloodborne and if that knife is also a letter opener, so much the better. And the nice part is not that it is everywhere. It is the figurine and optionally the collector can buy the knife as well. We need not have it everywhere, but some will want it. The market is flexible and no one is looking into this direction, or perhaps they are rejecting it. So what about the Sonic batarang? I was playing Arkham again last night. Why not have that batarang. As an actual bluetooth device, or even have the bluetooth as an optional expansion, we can look in so many directions and too many aren’t doing that. Now, lets be clear, these are not all great ideas, but they open a train of thought and that thought is ‘What else could we have?’ I had return to Arkham on day one and it came with a batarang, it looked nice, but was a bit of a let down. But it could have been so much more. So why wasn’t it? Some f the game developers have created the coolest games and the coolest items in game and they racked hundreds of millions of fans. So these are already in your corner, why not see what more you can do to make their gaming experience so much cooler? It was not that big a leap and they aren’t making it, why not? What stopped them? And another matter, not all items can contribute in the game, but like the bow with the storage and power bank, its use goes a lot wider than the game and it could contribute for a long time, optionally for years to come. It is the kind of marketing a maker hopes for and almost never gets. I wonder why.

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December 30, 2022 · 18:41

Never forgotten

There is a stage I hd not forgotten about. I had no writers block, but a logic block. Stories fantasy or not have their own rules of logic. It might not make sense to the reader (at first) but it does to the writer and in my case, the logic did not add up. So instead of making ‘fictive’ logic, I took time to think through the events. And recently I did so. So whilst I kind of need to make a small recap to Residuam Vitam, the recap is mostly limited to the other articles, so that you can pick up the pieces. 

August 13th 2021 Death as a resource (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/08/13/death-as-a-resource/)
August 14th 2021 When death and chicken taste alike (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/08/14/when-death-and-chicken-taste-alike/)
August 16th 2021 When death is taxable (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/08/16/when-death-is-taxable/)
March 3rd 2022 From pot to bowl (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/03/from-pot-to-bowl/)
March 14th 2022 A view in the east (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/14/a-view-in-the-east/)
April 9th 2022 Struggle (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/04/09/struggle/)

There are a few more, but I am rewriting it all, optionally to insert it as a pdf. 

So, where was I? I had set the stage with Baron Samedi, the meeting with Hades and at that point we added Meng Po, they all have larger stages to contribute, and that is going smoothly. But the wind caught on, and as such, so did Ereshkigal and Mot. Their powers are similar, but not the same and as such they started to tread on the loom of life, the loom that these two wield like masters. The loom of life has sustained them throughout the ages as they became part of that machine, but now that the rules are adapting it changes what they are given in the end and their share has been so large for such a long time. They now create shadows the size of giants on their former selves and that changes the equation by a much larger degree. So as the gods create a new alliance, they also unknowingly create the anti-pod of their alliance and the people, the mortals are between the two parties. 

The detective (from the very beginning) becomes the axial of the middle, the becomes unknowing to her and to others the axial of a seesaw. Hades, Meng Po, Baron Samedi and Anubis are the main players of one side of the seesaw, the other end has Ereshkigal, Ta’xet, Tia and Mot occupy the other end of the seesaw. But these players are slowly introduced. As the new brew influences the people Tia becomes aware who informs Ta’xet. Ta’xet had a connection to Mot from the old days and now they start to learn on what is going on. Ereshkigal is the last to connect to this new eave, but only because Ereshkigal has had a deepened distrust of anything Anubis touches. It is at this point that Hel is awakened. She is awakened by Ta’xet who feels kinship to Hel, no like, but kinship is enough to take the stage in different ways. Ta’xet thinks (decently correctly) that any negative impact of dishonourable souls will anger Hel and it does, but she has no real friends as such she also investigates and she will get under the skin of the detective through all the people she lost in her career and as such she can stack against the other side. 

Now that I have a grasp of how the interactions are going, I can start looking at the dialogues of these characters. I need to push a few more items to the surface and I need to see what to do about Meng Po, her duty and her tsk never failed. As such I need to push a different border to clear her vested interest to the top of the pile. She is driven too, but how to ‘exploit’ it? That is still a stage I need to examine. The ‘mortal’ side is decently clear, the side of Hades (and the twist in all this) is also clear. I have some ideas on how to counter Baron Samedi. Here we can rely on Maman Brijit. She is also the Loa of justice and vengeance and the drink is a stage of injustice to those who will die and there is the rub, as Samedi will become a lot more powerful, the imbalance between Maman and the Baron becomes stronger. To some degree he becomes his own worst enemy and that was one element Hades was counting on. He played the game for so long, the sound of every string on the loom of life are distinct in sound and he knows all the sounds. So there we have the three parts and now I need to set a line to all the characters and reread everything to see if I left any obvious holes. 

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December 29, 2022 · 20:35

As stated yesterday

It is in part a reap from ‘Recap to the intro’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/25/recap-to-the-intro/), showing you the stories that make up a new RPG, the initial setting was given on September 25th 2021, well the recap was. The stories were earlier, but that article gives you a collection of links, 6 in total that gives you the backstory. Then when you seek “Lawlordtobe + RPG” you will get a lot more, including some stages of commerce. It was the stage that Bethesda set by becoming part of Microsoft, that allowed me to add a few other parts. You see, the stage of an RPG is too often set to one main line. Yet what happens when you open that stage? You see streamers allow for that and it allows for evolution whilst people are playing the game. So in this setting we have the island as is, but when we get past the first two games, the games evolves into a new setting, it is taking NewGame plus to an entirely new dimension. In this we have two settings, the old and the new. The old is the stage where Magic is part of life, in the new, the non-magics decided that magic gives some an advantage that is unfair on those that do not have control of magic. It creates levels of distrust. It is not a copy of Skyrim, there are no fighting parties. Levels of distrust can go a long way before there are actual hostilities. But distrust can give way to imbalances in trade, conversations and abilities. Trainers that will not train the other side, until you change the balance of that seesaw. And that is merely the beginning. 

The stage of that story can be aligned in several ways and that allows for more game play, more new games and more sides to a story that is shaped by gameplay. A stage we invite the players to shape and that opens a new form of play in RPG’s. A story with multiple sides and different triggers. It has never been done to this degree in gaming before. And now the streamer (Amazon Luna) could be the first. This is not going to be an easy task, but the right developer will get the chance to create a new kind of RPG, one that none have seen before and one that Microsoft could never have thought of. Thats another chunk of $100,000,000,000 going straight to the sewer of lost revenue. A stage Microsoft could not have considered because they lack imagination and I am making this freeware for Amazon Luna developers, so that they can take the wind out of Microsoft even further. That is the price of business. Those who cannot pull their weight, they get left behind and forgotten.

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December 28, 2022 · 23:11

Why be surprised?

I saw the news yesterday, I saw the news earlier. Yet yesterday we were given ‘Microsoft admits to making future Bethesda titles exclusive to Xbox’ It does not make me happy, but it is as I personally see it, their right. They paid over 7 billion for Bethesda, as such they get assign the dance card of Bethesda. I don’t think it is good business, but it is their choice. You see, in the lat two years I placed gaming IP, with storylines on this blog as freeware for anyone programming games for Sony and Amazon Luna. We can jump high and low, yet I decided to create IP for these two players to offset the Microsoft advantage. I believe that a new RPG IP will not solve it all, but it will take more wind out of the sails of Microsoft and Bethesda. When these RPG’s catch on, the damage for Microsoft increases and those who used my freeware will get a larger chunk of profit, all for free. A win, win, win (not for Microsoft though). 

So when we try to give rise to the titles and consider “The document blacks out the names of the upcoming titles, saying that these are games to be played “primarily alone or in small groups.” If this doesn’t say Starfield and/or The Elder Scrolls 6, we don’t know what does.” I reckon that Microsoft wants to hide the titles, they want to influence the impact of what system to buy. They want to sell more consoles, but Microsoft crashed its own windows all the way back when the Xbox one was here. It never broke the records of Nintendo consoles of the Gameboy Advance, the 3DS, The DS, the the Wii, the Switch and so on and the subsequent systems aren’t doing any better. The latest system has less than half the global sales numbers that the PS5 has. It gets to be worse, the PS4 has sold more than the sum of all Xbox One versions and Microsoft is getting desperate, another field where they no longer have any influence. Bethesda would optionally make a difference. I get that, people bought specific consoles to play a game. It is the reason I got the Xbox360, Oblivion was worth buying the 360 for and it gave me great gaming, a really good system and Microsoft bungled it with the Xbox One, just like they bungle all things else (as I personally see it) and they go on to the Blizzard merge. Another clever ploy, but I can counter it with more freeware for Sony and Amazon Luna. $100 billion in IP bought and the creative minds can counter that with additional settings that will lessen the value of these companies. I left over $6 billion annual on the blog and that is merely the first phase. I created IP for game developers who do not work for Microsoft. Slam after slam after slam. I will bring Microsoft down to their knees and teach them what happens when you mess with gamers. It might be the most expensive lesson they ever got and I am not even close to done yet. Now that I am fired up all the IP that was initially meant for TESVII: Restoration can be poured directly into a new RPG, one that is about creation, choice and restorations. Of course it will need new storylines but I can pull that off too. 

And the new makers never have to pay up to $100,000,000,000. A direct loss for Microsoft, as it should be.

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December 28, 2022 · 05:10

The wrong stuff

We used to get it, we used to see and then something went wrong. Don’t get me wrong covid changed the equation and at present the grey population is massively abundant. So at present when companies and corporations have a hard time finding people, why are they ghosting? Why do I see job openings that have been open for less than three weeks and well over 250 applications? It seems to me that HR departments and agencies are just unable to do their jobs. The problem is possibly two folded. Companies that do not know how to proceed, with one example showing me that they were looking for an 18 year old with 5 years of experience. Common sense lost much?

One source giving us “Australia’s labour shortage is expected to continue in 2023 with employers not expecting a great shift in available talent in the forthcoming year.” Yet the data I see gives another issue, especially with the ghosting going on. Employers have no handle and no clear vision as to what to do considering ‘talent’. They keep on playing the same game and merely fail more often. So why is that?

In the UK there is another factor. There we see “People opting to retire rather than return to work following the pandemic has led to a tightening of the labour market.” There are loads of people selecting early retirement over work and in some cases it was that the UK pushed for workaholics and now it is costing them. We see the news on how to (bla bla bla) and no one is looking at the number one issue, it is not the workers. There is a massive flaw on what HR departments (and agencies) do and not enough on what they SHOULD be doing and one side is clearly shown. When a company is ghosting with the shortages we see, they have lost the plot.

There is more but the fundamental need to change HR is key to this and they are not catching on. 

And whilst we hear noise like “But we need the best”, the fact that you put that demand with such shortages is nothing close to madness. What HR is setting (optionally by the bosses) of we need the best should have been ‘Whomever is good enough’ for well over 6 months.

Yes, we are in a downward spiral and it is hard to make choices, but that is why these people were given the big bucks. And that is before we get to the false jobs for some agencies ‘just’ to capture resume’s and no one is doing anything about this falsehood, people without jobs should be happy to find a job, but no one considered this day and age. People have had enough with the treatment they are getting and now companies cry. They cry to open immigration, they demand more workers so that they can get them cheap, but that day has passed and the workers are seeking another solution and is where corporations find themselves. Dousing job info with ‘most coveted employer’ or some other basic cry for ‘look, we are the place where you want to be’ and that is before you get to the interview and you are being told a different job than the one you applied for. The stage is that people have had enough for certain jobs, for certain tasks and whilst the company refuses to evolve, they merely set the stage to deceptive conduct. As if that was EVER a good way to get anyone.

So whilst you consider where you want to work consider what those agencies are claiming and those corporations are telling you. A stage that is now becoming increasingly important. That is how I see it, but then, some will claim I am wrong. I will let you decide to see who gets the staff members and who gets to live with shortages all over 2023.

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December 27, 2022 · 14:18

Waterfall

It started this morning, actually it started last night. I have been working on a new premise in gaming IP. It is the merging of old ideas into a new game. Whilst that Westworld game was pulled as it was a weak copy of Fallout Shelter. I had already maximised that premise, but now no longer on the Westworld theme (they bashed their own window of opportunity). It is the stage where we create a new game (for example) on the foundation of Fallout shelter and Dungeon Keeper to create a new game that is themed to Blade (mere example). You control Blade and if there is no support you will get overrun over time. Yet like in the Dungeon Keeper game when we create certain rooms and rooms of certain sizes we get new troops, troops that support Blade. For example when we get the medical room and it is larger than 3×3 we get a new medic every few minutes. The medic dispenses serum for Blade to keep his humanity, if the Kitchen is large enough, there is enough food for Blade to regenerate faster. Instead of the flat presentation of a flat stage, the presentation of the house is isometric. And as we safe more people, the population of the safe house improves and we have more tinkerers to upgrade the house and more rooms, optionally create basements with even more rooms. Considering that there will be a new Blade movie in 2024, the timing is god enough to start now (hint hint). And this is merely one of several thoughts. Some extend to older (CBM64) games. Some extent to the newer versions (Atari ST/CBM Amiga). We seem to squander in the same directions, but what of the side roads available to all? Many are taking the same road, optionally fuelled by “Most historians consider the sermon preached by Pope Urban II at Clermont-Ferrand in November 1095 to have been the spark that fuelled a wave of military campaigns to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim control”, yet many forget that greed took over, ego took over and short sightedness took over and as such we forget stages like Louis I of Anjou and his inherited claim to the Kingdom of Jerusalem. That part is not important right now, but it shows a larger stage of games that we forgot about and could be changed to fit the premise around 1387. So when we consider the new Blade game and we see what sort of support he ‘had’ we can set a new stage where the support is essential in making Blade successful. Like traits he gains, but these traits will need some sort of support and until we create that setting (like the forts in Magic Carpet, but place such a fortress in Oblivion), we get new games with new tasks and quests. A few years ago I used the premise of Battlehorn Castle and created the setting of a dozen of quests that gives the castle serious teeth. That setting can be applied nearly everywhere and we can use quests to merely give the person more to do, or we can create a pool of support. It was the foundation for Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration (seek the blog elsewhere, around 2018), all settings that can be applied to new games on streaming systems and Google never caught on and optionally Amazon did not take that path seriously as they rely on now mediocre Ubisoft to do the work for them, but as such they are losing out of billions because the market moved on and now it seems that Tencent is catching on and they are not wasting time. 

We can speculate and tinker all we can, but take 3 games Outrun, Pole position and Ultimate racing. Now combine them in an outrun look, with larger pole position blockades (tyres) and make it optional for design through an ultimate racing look. You now have a new piece of IP that combined is different enough to become new IP and many parts will not have IP protection. This took 10 minutes and You have another streaming game, like the dozen or so other titles I placed on my blog. Amazon had the making of 1-2 dozen additional new games and they just aren’t seeing the light. Add to this the new era of safe space and you see why Tencent becomes a danger to all streamers, they are catching on and they are catching on fast. The world does not wait for the big players (Google and Amazon) to catch on. You can trivialise what I wrote about all you want, but Tencent will not care, they are moving ahead and they are now primed to win. You think a wannabe like Microsoft can counter that? They want to leech from Tencent because it is easier and cheaper and just like that 3 out of 7 elements go to China. So when you see ‘Australia needs a long-term strategy to combat IP theft’ (source: ASPI) only part of it is true and it is true to some technologists in China. The larger stage is that the west became flaccid, lazy and content. The content Neanderthal got eaten by a dinosaur in the old days, I thought they had caught on by now, but they did not. 

I placed PD solutions on my blog. A 5G wearable solution is encrypted on 4Chan and becomes fetch able (by clever people only) on December 31st. There is a reason, attached to that are at least 3 solutions which I keep and it will drive IP value up. I am not completely mental (duh!!). Yet the larger stage is not that I am so clever (it could be), but the fact that I got there before Google, before Amazon, before IBM and before Apple (they have a decent excuse). They should have been where I was two years ago and they were not.

That is the setting no one is looking at, the side road ignored. Not what they could have had (well over $20 billion in revenue a year) no, they merely report on contracting economies and as I see it, it is because they hope for one more run with a horse that is regarded as too old and too tired. The new stage is ignored for too long and Tencent is (as I presume, based on certain parts) catching on. So there is another venue of revenue the west is losing to China. Why is that?

The waterfall is not merely lost because the location is not given, it is lost because the source of that water is not comprehended (or located), a loss ten times more dangerous. I always speculated that it was because too many relied on a population that lived by ‘fake it until you make it’. It might be a sales technique, but those fakers also will not know where to look at when it matters and they are all looking at each other whilst I saw the changing landscape and saw where the new business would be growing.

So look where no one else is looking and see what can be made of that terrain. You might find a nugget or two in the process as well.

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December 26, 2022 · 22:34

As conditions changed

There is a movie, it was a movie that had impact. I was never in a military academy, but I do have military training, so the movie affected me in different ways. It was a good movie (any movie with George C Scott will become one) and it had Timothy Hutton from ordinary people. Tom Cruise is in it, but he was relatively unknown at the time. It might have been one of his first movies, before Legend and Risky Business.

But the movie was good (I thought it was), and it comes to mind that in this day and age (invasion of the Karens), the shift of values as well as the squandering of morality in the US there is actually a need to make a new version of it. Especially as we see Russian values move into every basement there is, the clear stage that some man will hold onto values is not too far out of place. I reckon that a movie like this in 2023/2024 could be a new start for a new generation of actors and actresses. In addition the changes that the military have faced over the last 4 decades might be an additional reason. There is actually no need to shoot this or base this on American settings. NATO an the EU would introduce a whole range of issues. The political field has changed from the rejection of military value to the embrace of its stability. There are plenty of reasons to do this, but a few to not do this either. It is more than a remaster, it has new storylines and new challenges. In all this the additional setting of an academy in shutdown could be seen as one of the main stories, but 4 decades have shown us that there is more. The gender setting has changed over 4 decades, as such this is not merely a male and a male led environment. The one part that I missed originally was the stage of why (really why) the shutdown was ordered. It was a little in the middle and now we could rectify it, or better stated, the filmmaker that takes up the gauntlet will be able to rectify it. A stage that launched Tom Cruise and Sean Penn is not something one should overlook and they did a lot more to stand out, but it was the beginning and TAPS excelled in a few ways, too bad it was never seen that way but there is hope that the new movie might also inspire the original to get more visibility.

Just a thought, do with it what you will. In the mean time, it is back to the drawing board. I just had a new idea for a video game. Perhaps I will be able to tell a lot more about it in tomorrows episode. 

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December 26, 2022 · 03:22

Not the composer

It started yesterday, I saw the news, shrugged a little and moved on. It was not that the news wasn’t worthy. It could be, but I have priorities and as such it wasn’t one of mine. I had other things to look at and I do have limits, I cannot push 3700 seconds into an hour, only delusional people do that. Time is a barrier, one that I accept and I need to find ways within the time allotted. So this morning (02:20) I suddenly realised something that wasn’t clearly seen initially. But my mind caught on, lets see if you realise what I initially missed and a lot of people missed it as well. The article ‘North Korea sold arms to Russia’s Wagner group, US says’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64072570), it is there that we see “Fighters from the mercenary group have ballooned from 1,000 to nearly 20,000 in Ukraine, the UK government says. “Wagner is searching around the world for arms suppliers to support its military operations in Ukraine,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters.”

  1. In the first we see the growth to 20,000 men, it seems that the Russian army can no longer match the losses that they are facing. Not only are they relying on mercenaries, the stage is growing from there. 
  2. The fact that they are searching ‘around the world’ implies that military hardware is even less dependable, less in numbers and less operational than ever thought before. It shows that the military arm of Russia is failing on too many factors, but somehow 68 oligarchs are filling their pockets all over the place. Lets consider that greed is rampant in Russia and the military side is feeling that impact by being less than operational.
  3. North Korea is shipping hardware. A nation that has one language, Korean. There is either a translation service, or there are instructors involved. These two options are open. I reckon that the instructors are Russian instructors in Korea learning what they can, but that also implies that Russia either depleted its infantry rockets, or that they are even less operational in that count. I would speculate the second, but it is speculation. 

As such we also get “Mr Kirby said Wagner is spending more than $100 million (£82 million) each month in Ukraine.” And “The fact that President (Vladimir) Putin is turning to North Korea for help is a sign of Russia’s desperation and isolation”, the first is simple, the second is a lot less clear and I do not completely agree with it. It is not desperation, it seems it is merely the only avenue left to them at present. I reckon that any depletion there is a silent blessing for China and then there is the spending. If Wagner is spending $100 million a month, they are getting close to $2 billion a year. And the west better figure out where these people are sending the surplus, because that money might get earmarked for other needs soon enough. Russia is not stupid, if they lose to this degree, they will need some kind of victory, any victory and the media is aware of it, they merely haven’t connected the dots yet. And it is important to see all the dots that are connectable. 

In this we can speculate all we want, but we need to find the data and the fact that the Wagner group gets this amount to spend implies there is a lot more, greed is eternal, it always is and even if they aren’t driven by greed there will be an operational impact. Where? Your guess is as good as mine, but realise that a player like Russia will not easily accept defeat, they want to make sure the other player bleeds a lot more and the missile attacks aren’t getting it done. They will lash out in other directions too. Places like Finland, Estonia and Latvia make sense, but there is no way that this can be predicted. There is also the events in Africa and Russia might seek destabilisation there too. Yet in the end we will have to wait and see what will happen. We can give additional weight to ‘German intelligence service employee arrested on suspicion of spying for Russia’, it will not be helpful. Yes, there is every indication that this is right, but that falls into the folder that is labeled ‘Business as usual’ not more than that. Yet the idea that the Wagner group has well over $500 million to spend and it remains (for now) beneath the surface is a problem. The amount of money will enable too many to do too much damage, as such it needs to be investigated.

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December 25, 2022 · 11:41

Ring around the currency

There is a stage, a stage I walked and it does not concur the news. The news given to us (or me at least) through ‘Saudi Crown Prince launches program to enhance digital infrastructure, creative work’ (at https://ara.tv/gkurj) from Al Arabiya. You see, the Saudi Consulate (through, I imagine orders from the royal house) stated that only partnerships can be considered. Yet creative work does not reckon on partnerships. The fact that Google and Amazon were clueless on what they saw, or they rejected this implies the folly, or the reduced impact of such a stance. We are also given “the creation of an intellectual property ecosystem that supports innovation and a creativity-based economy, the Saudi Press Agency reported on Thursday.” It cannot work as I see it. You see, partnerships implies that the partner will hold part of the IP, or the IP will become a whole lot more expensive, so when I offered a safe space for (an expected) 900 million Muslims this so called National Intellectual Property Strategy (NIPST), will reportedly play a part in achieving the objectives of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 would have needed to wake up (as I personally see it) and they did not, or the people waking it up, showing what is out there should have been alerted and they were not. I reckon that a safe space for 900 million Muslims should have woken the NIPST right up, it did not. On their side we can argue that it did not wake up Google or Amazon either, so it is not entirely on them. The idea that a new power player arrives should have woken the two up, or lose it to that wannabe Microsoft, but none of them woke up. So why is that?

I personally see it as a failure to identify a new innovative solution that ignores established foundations, because those foundations are rotten. As such a intellectual property strategy, a national one would not hope to have a real chance into becoming the power player. It will get a foothold, it will get IP, but only at the setting of the limited sight, which is a strategy and could be a strategy but not a true innovative one. The true innovators laugh at limitations, they laugh at established orders (especially rotten ones) and they create new foundations, stronger foundations. It is my personal believe that the foundation set to almost 1 billion Muslims should be seen as a sturdy start to something none of them have played to for a very long time. Decades to say the least, but that is my personal view. Those who hold the rotten foundations will not agree and will even less approve of my thinking. The longevity of their rotten foundations requires as many people as possible, too little and the rotten structure reveals itself and that is their fear, they invested lots of money in that foundation and when it gets exposed their value goes straight from penthouse to basement. A setting I saw coming close to three ears ago, before the first Covid lockdown, I was already on these pages and when we add the news from the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-63906654) where we are given ‘Cost of living: Recruitment slows for game developers’. Here we see “There are 2,200 games firms in the UK, supporting 73,300 jobs The industry adds £5.26bn in GVA (gross value added) to the UK economy each year” now think for a second. How many AAA games were released in 2022, how many of them were British? 2200 gaming firms? How many rely on funny money (advertisement money) for them to get a few dollars, pounds or Euros? If only 10% of these UK firms relies on ‘real’ games it will be a lot. But that side is not one that the UK focuses on, are they? And it comes to blows when we get to “The value of the UK consumer games market reached a record £7.16bn in 2021” Yet my innovative solution, the one that the NIPST was never shown takes that one out of the equation, a billion (or more) Muslims that are not exposed to these advertisements, so how much is that costing these 2200 developers? Safe space is the next thing and when it comes it all ends for these £7.16bn funny money wielders and it will hit Google and optionally Amazon as well. That is the innovation that the NIPST was never shown, interesting evolution, is it not? And that is not merely on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is a global problem now, greed dictates innovation, an option it was never allowed or expected to do ever before. Why is that? Why is it now? It is because the fakers until they make it never ending up making anything, an economy founded and adhered to fakers with powerpoint presentations, seeking ‘yay’ sayers and not much more.

Well enjoy Christmas Day and realise that it never grew up through Toddler toys and it was never raised through baby food nourishment tables. That we did to ourselves, we created economies founded on funny money and certification enabling wannabe’s and in the digital age that foundation is about to collapse. If I am the first many more will question the values from fakers and wannabe’s soon enough. And after that? Well consider that the UK has 2200 game developers, there is Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Apple and mobile developers. So how many are where? How many are streamers and now consider what that 7 billion revenue is actually hoping for? Not a person enjoying games, because 20 advertisements an hour takes the fun out of gaming, but you figured that out, did you not? Now lets see where the NIPST will end with its current strategy. And consider how many of these developers are actually aiming for safe space?

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