December 8, 2022 · 11:31

Once upon a silencer

Before I begin, lets be clear the story part is all unadulterated fiction, with a capital ‘U’ no less. So do not see this as anything else than fiction. The story might not make it clear but this should and you should take care on what you trust as fact. 

There is a town, the name Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. In that overgrown village is a house, the house is filled with all manner of people, all very adapt in English. They are awaiting a signal. Until that moment comes they sit, they sit whilst the ventilators are blowing cooled air towards them. Then a mobile sounds and one of them answers. The only response is ‘Yes, sir’ and he disconnects. He stands up and holds his assault rifle in the ready position. It is the signal the other dozen people were waiting for, they all instantly stand up they set their weapons to ready and walk towards the door. No word is exchanged, they are all aware of what must be done. They silently leave the house and they are like a silenced unit in the early morning. These soldiers have a few parts in common. They have no insignia, for all intent and purposes they could be walking shadows. They are all equipped with the SR-3 Vikhr. Made to keep noise down to a minimum, all experts in targeting, silent walks and shadow dancing. They approach the house where soft voices sound. They had prepared for this and they were ready. The locks on the front door were surpassed in less than 10 seconds. They walk in each in their intended direction and everyone was dispensed with in mere seconds, the entire operation took less than 20 seconds and there were no survivors. Then three other soldiers walked in, each holding 2 jerrycans, they stand in the room awaiting a signal. The corpses were relieved of papers, quick snaps were made of the face and hands and left where they were. The man in charge point his finger to the 3 soldiers. They move to their locations and thrust a hole in each of their jerry cans when they put them in place, safety pin is removed and they move to the exit following the other soldiers. In less than 10 seconds it is done and they walk back to their location, only to exit it on the rear and move towards 4 SUV’s that had arrived without making noise. They get in precisely as practised and they slowly drive away making a left turn, they are not in a hurry. People in a rush get noticed and these people are experts in not getting notices. Before they get to the end of the street they notice smoke in their rear view mirrors, only now would people notice that something was wrong, but they were already out of the notice zone.

Meanwhile in Germany
In Germany that day the officials started to arrest members of the Reich Citizens. Yet there was more in play, members of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and the Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK) have their own charter to follow. Seven people who are part of no one, their only adherence is money and they have been funding issues that caught attention of the people who kept Germany safe and these seven people were adeptly removed from life. Each of the seven units were a mix of BND and KSK. The BND followed the KSK after people were relabelled corpses and started to gather whatever could hold intelligence that could be gathered. They were gathering intelligence but the orders were clear, passive collection only. Now the active collections started and the entire operations were completed in under 6 minutes and each team vacated the premises setting the location on fire through a short and patches of pure alcohol, nothing was left to chance.

The ugly intent
North of London is a small town named Hertford. In there is a house, a house with a young lady repeating the slogans she had taken to heart. Her dedication to JustStopOil might seem nice and even as she has no ulterior motives. She is a believer, but her ‘funding manager’ is not. It was orchestration of a new kind. And someone caught on, the man shuck in with an overgrown ratchet and crushed he skull with one precise hit, the girl falls down to the ground, dead before her head hit the floor. She was one of half a dozen targets, all done away in the same manner. The special operations branch took a different view from the others. They wanted the message to be clear to all supporters of anarchy. Your days are done!

It was then that the view looked to the west, but the members of QAnon were the responsibility of the FBI and CIA. 

Yes, this is pure fiction, but the underlying story is not. This all took month of preparations, of coaching and we see groups like Reichsbürger with sudden means for action. We see people like Prince Heinrich XIII, we see JustStopOil and we see other places. Someone is orchestrating, I have no idea who, but this isn’t some stage of lets follow someone else. This took money, it took a serious amount of coin, all anarchy requires funds to remain undetected for so long and now the governments have had enough. It is costing them too much. Now I have no idea what governments thinks (many are unable to do so). But the need to protect coffers and freedom require actions and even as I am fictionally am setting these actions in motion, I have no illusions on these governments having their needs and their solutions. That is something that is a clear stage and we need to recognise it. I once (about half a decade ago) accused a judge of cowardice. You see, I believe in laws, it sets us apart, but it is not the golden calf. There needs to be flexibility. The law keeps 95% in check, this includes criminals. The law takes care of it. 4.9% is dealt with in other ways, 0.1% cannot be dealt with, so the law wins. However 0.1% of the 0.1% is the problem. It amounts to 80,000 people who will do whatever they can to harm and hurt the 8,000,000,000 around. Which implies that on average around 400 people in a nation are extremely dangerous. Some are psychotic, some sociopaths and nature tends to deal with them, but a few of these are clever, they are hidden and they thrash out damage after damage and they need to be stopped through targeted killings. There is no other way and relying on the golden calf names ‘laws’ is a cowardly short sighted action. Actual actions are required and now we et to the stage where too many connect to social media giving these anarchy driven people a larger platform to connect to, inspiring too many people and action is required. What the best action is? I cannot tell, but with the media relying on digital dollars implies that these dangers are getting worse, as such my storytelling side is using fiction to ward of that feeling of inactions. Actual actions are the prospect of governments and it is up to them to actually act, but that might be me oversimplifying the issue.

Have a great day!

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December 7, 2022 · 15:03

Poking the monstrous

Yup, my life (as it is) revolved around Pokemon Violet and Scarlet (Scarlet first). I am having a ball, the game is open, looks awesome, even on a Switch lite and there are all kinds of new Pokemon’s. Yet it is more than that. The graphics, the storyline and the open approach is just fun. I is havening a blast and it is a nice way to pass the time. I am definitely short a few Pokemon’s as the journey is more than just get the mile markers. And this game delivers in a few ways. It is one of these games that as made for the young and the mature are getting more than their fair share.

I saw the messages of bugs, but I never experienced them. I have seen a few glitches yet more than one is only debatable a glitch. I am willing to accept that the game has bugs, because it is bog, really big. As such bugs will appear, I just did not encounter one at present. 

Am I missing things? Well personally yes and I will follow on that shortly. The game is just so much fun, there are a few sides that have yet to be explored and I am not yet sure how to explore them. Perhaps it depends on getting to certain places, it is exciting to see these moments where you see a shield of poisonous purple in a wall and you have no idea how to open it yet. And with the three lines to follow (gym badges, star bases and herbs) you get to choose where to go next and that makes it a lot more fun. In addition there is a special Pokemon that sets the stage of where you can go next and that I equally fun, and therefor the old way of the Water Pokemon with Surf and Waterfall is a think of the past. Yay! New challenges. 

I like the new Pokedex, but I seem to be unable to filter by kind, as such finding how much of a kind I have (Steel, Ground, Dark) is a little harder. The map is cool and as it can zoom you can now see a lot more than ever before. So what am I missing? Well, I like my Evee collection and I have them all, but it would have been nice to get an additional flying, ground and poison Evee. Perhaps next time. There is also the call to have the Pokemon additions. For example if you have a Sableeye (a personal favourite) AND you have another like a Dark/Fire Pokemon, the Pokemon gets additional options. The first is 5% more happy, the second Dark/Water, or Dark/Grass would make Sableeye 10% stronger. Now this is one hell of a challenge, but the Switch is powerful enough to make it work. As such it isn’t merely about having 6 strong Pokemon’s, but the idea that the right team could make the overall team 10% stronger. It was just a thought to play with.

This game is a lot more open than the previous games and I believe that there is more to see (I only have 7 badges, 2 bases and 2 herbs) so I have plenty to explore and plenty to see. But the larger story is clear, this game is another champion game and a reason to get a Nintendo Switch. 

Still the game brings the punch, it brings the challenge and that funny feeling when you have 100+  of these little critters wondering where some of the others are. What is clear is that in the week I have played it, I did not once feel bored or unchallenged. Yes, some were a little expected, but the new parts overshadowed that rather quickly. So far I am still trying to find a Ditto (people who played the game know why) and there is a lot more to the game that I have not tested to my knowledge previous to Scarlet and Violet. When you considered that this game started in 1996 and merely grew over time through technology and gaming evolution, we see a game that has been round for 16 years, perhaps one of the most important games in the Nintendo arsenal. And the fact that it still calls the gamers to play is quite the achievement. Oh and there is every chance that there are parts of the game I haven’t even seen yet, quite the achievement indeed. 

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December 6, 2022 · 16:06

The other white paper

Yes, there are always white papers, but which one is true? You see, they are all true, they are all a point of view. Yet the truth from a point of view is relative, that has always been the case. This is why we have peer criticism for academic papers. Yet that is not the case for the media, they are all fighting to remain around with some feigned form of value. This has been the case for over a decade and now the BBC gives us (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63869013) ‘Meta threatens to remove US news content if new law passes’, you see the truth of the matter is that the people no longer need the news, the news is no longer if value. It started when the media starting soliciting (aka whoring) for digital dollars. Flamed bring revenue, actual news not so much. The events surrounding Elon Musk, the abstinence around Jack Dorsey and a dozen other cases made it so. The newspapers are irrelevant and they know it, so in a last gesture to remain not completely irrelevant they rely on laws to force funds from social media. Even as the shared instances from places like the Australian link to paywalls, they are all about ‘lost revenue’ And the Australian is not alone, loads of American newspapers and media (like Forbes) do EXACTLY the same thing. They will tell you the scoop AFTER you pay, so how is that lost revenue? Not all papers are like that, but many are and now we get “It would give publishers and broadcasters greater powers to collectively bargain with social media companies for a larger share of ad revenue”, I believe this is to be a false setting and Meta gives it to you in the form of “Meta claims their platform, in fact, provides increased traffic to struggling news outlets.” They are correct. Consider the truth, it I simple, how many times did you go to the news site? How many times was this because THEY shared news on social media? This has been the case for a decade and now that Meta is taking off the gloves, we see how irrelevant the media has become. In the last year alone I highlighted close to a dozen cases of incompetency and a lack of information vetting by the media, so why should they get paid for shortcomings? It is almost like the decapitated chicken.  It’s running around, but it is already dead, the rest of its body did not figure it out yet. Is it fair? Does it matter? No, the media had the option to evolve, it merely decided that is was cheaper and more profitable to hang onto someone else’s coattails. It did not work out well for them and now they cry foul, almost like the yellow pages. Their era died and they just never adjusted in time and I am adding to the pain as my 5G seemingly goes to China. Setting a new stage in several ways and taking advertisement power away from all and leave it where it should have been all along, with the advertising people. With the locations of advertising and that is the lesson that they never picked up on, and it is not their fault. A place like Google missed it too and I mentioned it at least twice this year. 

A stage that is moving away from them faster and faster and if Meta makes the move it is threatening to a lot of players in the media world will be done for. Such is life, Media Erectus is getting eaten before passing on its whinges. So do not focus on the whinge, consider the place technology had for almost 2 decades and see where the media is not, and they have not been where they needed to be for almost a decade and now that they are about to become irrelevant they cry laws. Bu the way these same people never championed law changes to the environment, law changes to taxation and they simply went for the emotional targets, it had more expected digital dollars, so where are these dollars now? 

And when we see “Media companies argue that Meta generates huge sums of money from news articles shared on the platform.” So where is THAT evidence? Meta generates advertisement towards people through free accounts, and this gets me to (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2H8wx1aBiQ) the congress statement April 2018 where the answer is ‘We run ads’ a setting that was in place for well over a decade. The news was never an element and as such the media better be quick with presenting ACTUAL evidence in that case.

When I see how irrelevant the media and Microsoft have become and I see them cry like little chihuahua’s all whilst they screw up options left right and centre, what the actual F*** (censored word) the world around them is doing protecting something this irrelevant is beyond me, it actually is.

We can debate things but look at the numbers. the Paris based World Association of Newspapers, which represents 18,000 newspapers gives us that there are a lot more. The world has 8,000,000,000 people, which implies that there is an average of 445,000 people per newspaper. When you start doing the math, you will see that the numbers o not add up. The newspapers that are still relevant are so as they have well over 2 million subscriptions. The Washington Post has 3 million, and The Wall Street Journal 2.4 million subscriptions. The Dutch Telegraaf had in 2001 807,000 subscriptions, in 2017 it was only 393,000. The larger national newspapers are losing ground and now we see the larger play. There are 195 countries in the world. So why are there 18,000 newspapers? They nearly all rely on Reuters, making at least 17,000 irrelevant already. But these are the numbers no one looks at, and they are all vying for advertisements. Look at ANY newspaper and look how many advertisements they have and how much they charge and you will see their actual loss. They are no longer a relevant advertisement group, digital media replaced them, they lost relevancy by allowing to become a family of 18,000 brothers and sisters and that is before you see the rest of the media relying on advertisement sales to qualify their existence. But no one looks at that side are they?

The other white paper that no one gets to see is the one no one in media wants to look at, it merely shows how irrelevant they have become.  

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December 5, 2022 · 17:55

Remastering Classics

This all started this morning. I am not entirely sure how I got there, but it started with recalling an old St. Nicholas present. It was a book by Hector Malot called ‘Sans Famille’ (the original Dutch version) I think I was 12 or 13 when I got it (see cover below).

It suddenly dawned on me that the stage of reading books is falling away, we need to temper it, we need to alter the perception of people, but how to do this? Then I suddenly realised that Ubisoft has an inside track here. You see, we can do more with streaming systems, especially Amazon. Consider the game AC Origin, the first DLC adds a travel option, to go to certain parts of the game and do a walking tour. Embalming, beer brewing and several other parts were added. Now you might think it was trivial, but it was not. I had partially missed it, but these parts were all added to the game, the game was almost flawless and had several additional parts to the game we never realised before, Ubisoft with this game hd outdone themselves. Yet when you combine the ideas you get something more. First we take the environment of AC Unity (buggiest game ever) and we use the environment to set the story of Hector Malot in motion. It will be a little more than a walking tour, but as you complete the chapters, you get a whole book and optionally, you could unlock the book in your Kindle, Amazon would have a massive advantage here, and it would not be bad for Ubisoft either. AC Syndicate would allow for Oliver Twist (and a few other books), AC2 or Brotherhood could add several Italian works including those of Master Machiavelli. And it would not be part of the game, and the full game would not be included, merely the environment. Games and challenges to unlock books you can then read on your Kindle. These are mere top notions. The settings allow for so much more and it could gently push the gamers (especially the younger ones) to start reading more. We see environments as a set stage, but they do not need to be and in the streaming environment all elements are non connected and are merely that, elements to use in other ways. I wonder if Ubisoft and Amazon have considered that option at all. It is a side towards a direction I do not think anyone ever considered taking at present and the stage could grow from there.

What if books are for a system like this achievements? Consider Watchdogs: Legion. Consider that they add 3-4 relics which are in facts unlocked books when you complete the relics, in that case books on London, on London history, or some setting thereof. Interesting that thee two didn’t consider projects on the side to fatten the chest of users and their love for free stuff. Just a thought.

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December 4, 2022 · 21:21

Driven to atheism

You might think that is false, you might think that there is Christianity, but it is all fake. It is a drive to extinction, some might have gotten the inkling when the movie Spotlight was released. Some might have thought it that it was when the hatred of the Middle East and the aggression towards places like Saudi Arabia were released through the media. Those evil Arabs! But you would have been wrong. Some of the data was available since 19 October 1099, about two months after the first crusade. You might want to see the data, but the Catholic Church stopped that, it stopped everything and it is still doing so in the western world, it is still doing so wherever they have a foot hold. The larger setting is that the Catholic church plays a long game, it has for the most always done this. You see rulers change and the moment of change is the moment the church makes moves, they have done this for the longest time. Yet the media lost control of matters and the people started to hand out information. Not all media lost control, some are very much about informing the people. Not the way ‘christian churches’ would want that, but they believe that the long game remains to keep them towards a winning streak. But now the game is starting to change. To see this, we need to see three numbers for the first part.

Christians—2.2 billion followers (31.5%)
Muslims—1.8 billion (23.4%)
Non-religious people—1.1 billion (16.3%)

And these are merely the big three, more important, in the last decade of lies and BS christians are giving us are making us more and more angry. Now a new situation exists, the christians are a minority to the Muslims and Atheists. Christians are no longer a majority, not even in the western world and now we get to thee stuff that matters. Two articles, one in the ABC, the other is the Dutch NOS, interestingly enough, we do not see that article all over the place and I leave you to wonder why that is. 

ABC
The article (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-03/catholic-hospitals-denying-womens-healthcare-australia-hospitals/101712558) gives us ‘In good faith’, it is followed by “It began with a simple request from a patient: an intra-uterine device (IUD). “I wrote up the report for her GP,” recounts that patient’s doctor, who worked at one of Australia’s public Catholic hospitals. “But then I was called over by my supervisor.” The doctor does not wish to be identified out of fear of speaking out against a major hospital. “[My supervisor] asked me to change the wording to say that we had supplied [the IUD] for acne, rather than birth control.”” We are then given “But like 20 other public hospitals around the country, it runs by a Catholic code of ethics.” A code of ethics? I think there is more credibility in the honesty of crack pushers. And if you wonder why I go there. The movie Spotlight shows us just how rotten the Catholic church has become. A code of ethics, whilst they nearly openly protect pedophelia. And there is a second side and that is where the Dutch NOS comes in. 

NOS
The article (at https://nos.nl/l/2454934) gives us ‘Pope John Paul II covered up abuse by priests’, as such we now see “As a bishop in Krakow, Pope John Paul II, who died in 2005, knew very early on that priests in his diocese were abusing minors. Even when paedosexual priests were sentenced to prison, he allowed them to continue working in another diocese. This is evident from Polish documents that a Dutch investigative journalist has tracked down. Vatican specialists call discovery “explosive”” This now implies that the transgressions were known at the very highest level of the Vatican and nothing was done. So why do we allow them to continue like this? Where did YOU sign up to knowingly endanger your children? How many children will you endanger to let this fly by? So when we realise the dangers that come with “Eventually, she says they convinced The Mercy to let a surgeon from another hospital tie her tubes during the operation. Two surgeons, one surgery.” In an age where there is a critical shortage of doctors and surgeons, when we see what the unacceptable code of ethics are doing endangering women who need surgery (read the article to see that) we start to see that the christian faith is sanctimonious, hypocrite and dangerous. It took over 900 years, but we are finally catching on that we were the evil party all along. And it now relies on the people to consider what to do. Yet with the implications of a pope and what I see as a sanctimonious setting of a code of ethics, the christians will start losing ground more and more. The long game has played most of its hands and now that they are a minority things will change faster and faster and with the events as they play in the US and some of the less intelligent members of the Republican Party, decrease of the christian faith is close to a given. The NOS and the ABC are showing you the things that should anger you. The Boston Globe showed us in 2001 just how angry we should all become and the Vatican better realises that there is only so much ethical BS we will take, by the code of ethics all those priests 6% of 141,382 almost 8,500 priests are to be fired and excommunicated and prosecuted by law. So what will the church do? I honestly do not care. What will YOU do, that is the question. 

I was born a catholic, but I questioned my faith in 2015, after that the travels of my soul took all kinds of twists and turns as anyone will find themselves in when it is their faith who betrayed them, the custodians of faith betrayed us all and as a lot of information is obscured by the media THEY control. What is our next step? Well, my vote is to make sure the churches start losing political and media positions. I cannot do this myself, but exposing those who keep us in the dark could force larger changes. Just a thought to consider.

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December 3, 2022 · 22:23

A shortcut to viewing

Yes, I was here sitting on the sofa, considering what to write about, when suddenly my mind had an idea. It has them all the time, but this one seems like a moneymaker for the right programmer.

You see most of us have particular interests to see on Youtube. And we can go there again and again, or set up something to do that for us. As I is havening to be really lazy, option two works well for me.

So here is the idea in a simple graph (see below)

The mobile app for phone or tablet has the app. There we select the interest, optionally a location and a timeframe. We then select spawn and an icon is created. Clicking on that icon takes us to YouTube and filters exactly what we want to see. In example one I select cats or kittens, with a timeframe of last week, the second is Skiing, with the location of Whistler, BC and a timeframe of last month. You can make your own selection and each one comes with an icon of choice (some preselection is optional). And when you get on the train, bus or whatever. You merely select the icon and away you go. I also added a QR code that allows the person to hand the selection to be used in YouTube, or use it to spread the app. It seems so simple, but there is nothing out there that does this and I think that something like this might work on TikTok as well.

Just a small idea, use it if you can and feel free to cash in on it, a small donation to yours truly will always be appreciated. Well this is my Saturday evening suddenly a little more productive than I realised. So have a nice weekend and do not forget to smile at times.

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December 3, 2022 · 11:07

How to destroy an economy

Yes, we wonder at times how this is done. You can influence the game from far, or simply put a hatchet to the bottom of your boat and sink it yourself. It is the second version we will take a look at. To see this, we need to look at facts around the setting. We get “Tourism contributed around US$19.7 billion to GDP in 2019. In 2018, Indonesia received 15.8 million visitors, a growth of 12.5% from last year, and received an average receipt of US$967.” Now Indonesia has a problem, because in 2023 onwards they are about to lose 65% of that. You see Indonesia is wildly popular with Australian students, backpackers and all manner of tourists. With that in mind consider the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-63838213) ‘Indonesia set to punish sex before marriage with jail time’ with the added text “Bambang Wuryanto, a politician involved in the draft, said the code could be passed as early as next week. The law, if passed, would apply to Indonesian citizens and foreigners alike.” And do not trust your travel agent, this will be law in a week, so any hormonal driven teenager with a desire for babes, beaches and (the other B word) will be in serious waters. Prison time will be your share and her too. If you are not married, and in some places living together does not count, they will all be in danger of prison time. Anyone stating that this will not happen is lying to themselves. Rolling the dice on a chance in an Indonesian prison is folly to say the least and as such these people need to find a new destination now. Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Thailand. These come to mind initially, but there are other destinations. I do not know what drove Indonesia to set this in law and I am not the party with knowledge to criticise that part, but the impact is clear. Millions need to seek another place to stay now and it will cost Indonesia, it is about to cost them a lot. And 50%-65% of $20 billion is at least $10-$13 billion. Indonesia never had that level of leeway to begin with, as such there will be a much larger impact. 

And the game gets a lot more dicey after that considering “The law also allows the parents of unmarried people to report them for having sex”, there have been (allegedly) events where Americans reported the ‘dangers’ to their daughter, but in Indonesia it will have far stretching consequences. I cannot say why it was such a deal to make this law, and I cannot see why it was such an event, but the impact is clear for the foreseeable future that reaches past 2025, Indonesia as a tourist destination will end and that ends their economy to a much larger degree. And the larger stage is set to three words ‘and foreigners alike’ it only took three words to end two decades of tourist growth to waste it all away. What a loss.

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December 2, 2022 · 19:04

Would you like some sugar with that?

I got a message yesterday which I initially ignored. Nothing wrong with the message, but I can only go to so many places in an hour and this message stretched me too thin, as such I let it be. Yet this morning I had a few moments so I checked out the message from Defense One. It gave me ‘US Trying to Persuade More Allies to Send NASAMS Missiles to Ukraine, Raytheon CEO Says’ (at https://www.defenseone.com/business/2022/12/exclusive-us-trying-persuade-more-allies-send-nasams-missiles-ukraine-raytheon-ceo-says/380382/) the thing triggered something, but I did not exactly know what was triggered. I thought I knew, but it was too far into the past for that to make sense. Yet the article set me straight. Initially we might see “U.S. officials are working to broker a deal with NATO and Middle Eastern nations to send some of their NASAMS interceptors to Ukraine, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes said Thursday”, it did not help me much and “the Pentagon awarded Raytheon a contract for the first two NASAMS batteries. The company delivered the interceptors within six weeks, Hayes said, because it had many parts on hand and because Doug Bush, the Army’s top weapons buyer, helped speed things along.” So I had to seek out more information and there the other cog fell to the floor. NASAMS or Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System is the child of the Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA) and there the cog felt. It is a system from 1980. Kongsberg is led by Eirik Lie (weird name for an honest person). And there my defence knowledge partially kicked in. I knew of it, but that is about all I had. The Norwegians had designed the system to replace two Nike Hercules facilities in defending Norway’s southern air bases, where it would act in conjunction with F-16s in providing a layered defence, and that it did very well. I reckon that the engineers are proud as peacocks that this system can go to town on Russian missile systems 42 years later, there is no replacement for true innovation. I always said it and here you see it. OK, it was upgraded to a third version in 2019, but still it was tailored to a good design. And now we see Raytheon seeking assistance (of a sort). Here is also the problem I see. If manufacturing is a hard part, there are two sides to helping out now. What if this was Russias plan all along? What happens when Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, Oman, and Chile ship what they can ‘spare’ and a week later Spain and the Netherlands feel the brunt of running low on stock? I am not saying that this will happen, but the steps of Russia have to a larger extent not made sense and the pro-Russian coalition of the Dutch FvD will use that setting to every extent and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 

An alternative could be to assist Saudi Arabia with their 2030 goals and create a NASAM production facility there. If distributed manufacturing is a solution, creating an additional pool of manufacturers would become essential. In addition, the US and EU need every positive vibe they can muster as such the option has two benefits. Adding these solutions to Germany, Sweden, Denmark and France make perfect sense as well. When that happens we see five additional manufacturers, but that is not a short term solution, Ukraine needs missiles now and 2 years is too long. Yet with 5 additions, 2 years would be shrunk to 13-15 months, already a large saving. Now sending part of the needed missiles makes sense as there would be 5 additional creators. I see the simple setting that resources are required, then we see the manufacturing and after that shipping. The last part has plenty of options, the first two less so, although we can see that manufacturing is the bottleneck, Russia will soon see that if these 5 nations unite, Russia will end up having less and less options. And that is before we consider alternatives, You see Iceland has only 4% unemployment, but it might be reason to create another plant on the US base there (or next to it) which could create up to 2500 jobs. As such we see six options, is it a solution? I honestly do not know, but when the waiting list is two years something needs to give and it would be nice to see this before Russia gets to be creative with their missiles, ask Poland how that worked for them. The EU (US too) needs to act now, but merely getting others to send what they have might not be the safest path, not with current timelines. That is how I see it and if someone says I am wrong, I will not deny that my idea was completely ‘ad hoc’ and it would require scrutiny, but what would you do when you get told that anti-missile solutions are two years away? Especially when you consider what Russia is doing to the civilian population of Ukraine?

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December 1, 2022 · 22:10

The games we desire

We desire games, we all do. In Star Trek we were once told “the more complex the mind, the more essential the need to play” (Star Trek, season 1, episode 15). I always embraced that. Gaming was my large escape and I have enjoyed it for decades. Yet the foundation of gaming changed after the Playstation 2 came (and all other systems). Gaming became big business, people with business degrees got involved and soon it went from art to business needs. Gaming suffered and it has suffered for quite some years now. Micro transactions is merely part of it. The larger stage was that art was taken out of the equation. This is why games like Elden Ring, God of War, Horizon Forbidden West are such successes. They embraced art and artsy sides to a much larger degree. This is the reason why places like Ubisoft went from great to below mediocre. There are the games that will always have appeal because of secondary reasons. Sport games being a clear first example.

When we look back to the days of Bullfrog, there was almost no game we did not desire, art was the driving force and it drove our needs deliciously and amazingly. Consider Populous, Flood, Populous 2, Magic Carpet (1 + 2), Dungeon Keeper and some (including me) still worship those times, those games. EA went and created some exploitation version of Dungeon Keeper. Yet they could repair the damage, and they are running out of time. They will need those who played the original to give rise to the next generation. They now require credibility. And it is not the weirdest idea. Six games that represents millions in revenue. Some can be re engineered, yet the larger setting will come from re engineering driving evolution of the game. This reminds me of another good Ubisoft game (they had a few). It was Conquest: Frontier Wars, the review gave it (for the most) 78%-88%. I would set it to around 85%, a game that makes the gamer want more. And there was another side, you could set up a battle game with two other Computer players and you had some options. What was important, you could spend hours in a new galaxy again and again, with two other races, each with intelligence settings. Now what if that concept is remade and also remade in games like a remastered Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper and Populous. Three games that were initially less than 1MB and could optionally keep gamers busy for years. That could spark a new wave of gamers and that is what the streaming services need, fresh blood and returning blood. And the need to play will draw them in. You still need decent games, and I just handed them 6 of them. Well, handing is a stretch, EA has the rights as far as I can tell, but consider that Yesterday I handed the option for 50 million gamers and consider that many games never get anything near that amount. I reckon that my solution with the additional games is a step into the direction of the number I predicted. That solution still needs the first phase, but without the second and third phase it will never grow to the degree required or is that desired? And there we have it, a stage we grow and a stage we create by looking backwards. The six games I mention are most likely IP protected, yet The Commodore Amiga had 2198 games, The Atari ST had a little over 1000 games, close to 10,000 games, If we rate from the highest and look at 10% we get to 219+100+1000 we end with 1319 games and that is if we merely look at the highest 10%. Now some will have protection, but not all will and there is the solution for streaming systems. Upgrade what was and get more people feeling the joy of gaming, not the challenge of some flawed Assassin’s Creed Valhalla game. Even now we get ‘The final Assassin’s Creed Valhalla update has launched a week early’, the fact that it is for some systems 13GB does not lead to questions, the fact that the game was released on November 10th 2020 is a much larger issue. It is over 2 years old and still requiring patches. It is one of the reasons that streaming systems will win over time. But a system that has good games will endure a lot longer and the games from the old systems remain superior to many of the games released today, not all, but a lot of them. It sets the need for more play, and Streaming systems will deliver there. 

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November 30, 2022 · 23:07

Girdle your loins

Yes, it is time to commit to a promise, yet to do this you need to understand a few things. This all started two years ago when I had an idea, we all have ideas. Yet in my case, the idea was nice, but not ready to be acted on. The basic stage was to lower islamophobia and I believe that educating people does that. In this case it was staged as a game. The idea was sound, but I am not a programmer and places like Google and Amazon tend to be away from their desk when the return on investment is not clear. 

In the mean time the idea grew and grew. In march of this year a few demo’s were released containing the Unreal engine 5 and that was a game changer, the aspect and the population for my solution changed, moreover the application evolved massively.

Datapoints

Data is important and at that point the equation changed and I had to elaborate on data. As the application of a solution changed, so does the data requested for the new approach. 

As such I had the following data points

Turkey 84 million
Egypt 102 million
Pakistan 220 million
Bangla Dash 64 million
Indonesia 273 million
Iraq 40 million
Saudi Arabia 35

Which represent 914 million of the 1.9 billion Muslims. The Muslim population represents between 20 and 25 percent of the global population. In addition Islamophobia is more outspoken now than it was during the Crusades and at that point we were trying to kill each other. 

It was becoming clear that Muslims need a safe space and both Google and Amazon were seemingly not interested. Even the Kingdom Holding Company was not responding to the offer. The offer was a solution that will get 50,000,000 subscriptions, which is actually the easy part. But I will get to that soon. You see close to 50% of these Muslims will never go on the Hajj or a pilgrimage, most cannot afford it, some will never get the lottery. That is not anyones fault, the numbers of Muslims living outside of Saudi Arabia are just too big. So they will never see the splendour of the Grand Mosque in Riyadh, they will never see the Mosque in Medina where the Prophet himself taught. And this is where the Unreal engine version 5 becomes a game changer. 

Part one

Part one is the Islamic part. The two mosques in detail via the Unreal engine 5. You see, this becomes now no longer some video game, but a setting where you walk through a video of these places, true to perfection and when the times are there, you can hear the sermons. These sermons are already digital, they merely require plugging in. Now well over a billion will be able to see the majestic and greatness of these places and over time more Mosques could be added. The people who could never visit these places will be able to see them in more detail than ever before. Yes, you can see them on Youtube, but they are video’s of a person seeing what that person wanted to see. This is a place equally true to life, but now at any given moment you can look around 360 degrees, see the ceilings and see the place you could not visit, optionally not ever. 

Part two

Part two is the gaming side. People love games, all people do. And now a site would exist where Muslims could play, optionally play together and not be harassed all the time. The games are actually the easy part. Everyone is looking forward and create something they hope everyone will like. But when you look behind you, you will see hundreds of games created between 1985 and 1998 on Atari 800, Commodore 64, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. Hundreds of games, many without any IP protection and yes, the graphics need upgrading, but in case of many games that is as much as is required, the rest tends to be simple as these games worked on 64Kb (512KB in the latter two cases). And that is before you start looking at adding Chess and Checkers games, board games and a whole lot more. It should be relatively easy to create 12-24 games a year. One alteration is an old game called Defender of the crown. In those days it was huge and awesome, but if you make it defender of the faith where the setting is not England, but Jerusalem, where the attacks are not a simple mouse click, but close to specific attack machines like they had in those days. Let the gamers see how hard it was in those days (see the movie Kingdom of Heaven for details). There are a few more of these alterations and you get a whole trove of games that will entice gamers from 12 to 81. And it might be possible to get twice as many games a year if you create 2-3 software houses. So many games forgotten could receive a second lease on life. After these exercises these software houses will be ready to create new and specific games for a Muslim population. 

Part three

Part three is the social media side. Not based on Facebook, but based on Google Plus or Cocoon. A closed system and it makes sense. Muslims have family, they have friends, friends from the mosque and they are not connected, some of these will be in all three. By setting these groups apart and taking out marketing we return to true social media and here others cannot harass you, if so those people get removed as this service comes at a price. There will be an option for Marketing, but. It can only offer it in certain places. It cannot splash everyones profile like Facebook does, it is the price of a free system. 

Part four

The last part is pricing. I envisioned a stage of $10 a month and $99 a year (two months free). That stage can easily get the controllers of this system 50 million subscriptions, I believe that 400 million subscriptions is possible, but initially not much higher and it would take two years to get there. I also believe that when the system has over 100 million people the price could be lowered from $10 a month to $7.50 a month or $75 a year. 

So that is why I was laughing out loud when we saw in ‘Repetition or Confirmation’ on November 13th 2022 “its Xbox Cloud Gaming program had attracted over 10 million players spread over 26 countries since opening its beta up a year prior.” My plan get me 50 million over 6 countries. My laughing out loud now makes sense, does it not? 

The plan takes on new life as a player like the Kingdom Holding Company could buy the Google Stadia from Google as they are dropping it, as long as it supports Unreal Engine 5. What starts at a nominal 5-6 billion could grow into a $40 billion system. Muslims are fed up with the harassment and American big-tech is not doing anything successful. As such I created a path towards safety. I offered it to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but they were not interested. So you tell me, am I delusional or did I see what no one else is seeing? 

And there is more, Amazon has distribution centres in three of these clusters, so adding a server park there would be relatively easy and with the 5G systems faltering having satellite locations is important, it sets the bottleneck to the local cluster. All simple constructions that Google and Amazon should have been ready for and they are not. 

As such I am making this now Public Domain and you can see how the big boys (Amazon and Google) were blind for the longest time, they are all contracting their workforce and when someone laces this system the others will ALL lose market share and this player will grow into a power player. So there!

What am I losing? Well, I was hoping for a Canadian Passport, a loaded debit card (or an envelope with cash for initial expenses) and $50 million post taxation in a Canadian bank and I would be able to retire. I had hoped for a second pay cycle of 5% of the revenue for 15 years, but that is no longer realistic. And I feel happier making it public domain than giving it to an idiot like Microsoft.

Good luck and good hunting!

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