October 18, 2022 · 18:59

The rut of the game

Yup, I am in a rut, it happens to us all. Anyone claiming that it will never happen to them is lying to you, there is no exception to that rule. We will all face it, whether we are in creative more, in production mode, in management mode or in operation mode. Rut is a dangerous thing, it tends to precede burnout for some. You see rut is not always dull, it is not always repetitive, but the brain sees a return to similar enough settings to treat it that way and it comes across as dull and/or repetitive. But there is a much larger issue in play and I cannot define it. 

For me it started with one of the series I was writing. I got to the stage that I wanted to up the ante and add to the flavour of Greek mythology. So my mind wandered all over the field and I suddenly remembered an old (very old) lesson. You see organised crime and corrupt officials have the same flaw, the same weakness. It is ‘unfathomable loss’. So even if they have no issues stealing from you. When you start killing their children they go all huffy and puffy on these innocent kids, however they never considered your innocence when they stole from you and there lies the rub. But that setting is also dangerous because the main player gets ‘changed’ in the process, no matter how close he is related to Hades. As such I started to recall one of the lost episodes (I truly forgot where I put them). You see, you can orchestrate a player, you can expose them to the social media (with images and YouTube footage) hoping that one of the caught players will lose their mind and kill for you. You can take strife and do the killing yourself and kills those corrupt protection people as well. But the rut starts when that becomes repetitive. You need to change the menu, even though the act remains the same the journey to these acts can alter, and for me there is the added setting of taking a Greek take on the events. The adulterous female party can be thrown in that Turkish cave (formerly Greek) and let the change to a Medusa be the act where her lover the corrupt politician ends up relying on mercy which will never come and as a statue he will be as dead as anything else and placing that statue in the garden of a certain enabler should create the right tone. Not only can he explain the statue, but when they examine the statue he would be in much warmer waters than he would be happy with. And that is merely the first three players. I need a few more, but then the rut set in. Avoiding the repetitive is essential, as such looking for Greek solutions might not make the right cocktail, even though it feels right. There were a few options, but I wanted to keep that player out of the equation until much later (like the season 2 cliffhanger). 

So the rut that I fight is against relying on the repetitive, the mundane and the creation based on existing paths. Now I could hand him an accuracy International AX338, but that is out of character. But it would be a tool that the protective details have access to and we only need to change the ammunition for one with more ‘bang’, an altered bullet and the bolt system would end up seeking refuge in the skull of the shooter. Yes, that might work, but I would need to check some elemental engineering principles (which will take some time). And that is one problem solved, but like the old Greek dramas, I need something with fireworks, like a gift, but not the gift, the wrapping becomes the killer, so it needs to be fun enough so that the reader sees the gift and sees the menace that the gift represents, even as the wrapping will be the killer in the room, yes that might work. 

Still two solutions to find and doing this whilst I fight the rut of the matter is not the greatest setting for any creative mind, but there I am ploughing ahead trying to change the stage, change the setting and change the speed of things in motion. It is what it is. That is the danger of rut too, relying on yourself is dangerous, because what the mind sees as different could merely be a change of perspective and that is an additional danger that every creative mind faces. And in that I am no different than any other creative mind. That too matters (for me at least).

So whilst I try to fight the rut of the game, I might do some gaming in the process of working things out. It always worked in the past.

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October 17, 2022 · 19:55

The ranking of potatoes

There was an insight in July. In this I wrote “I sometimes get a month subscription to load up on missed things and I have to as we all have budgets. I reckon that the UK is facing a much harder time. When they get to decide on two of the items (Food, Rent and heating) Netflix will be the first to go, and after that cheaper internet deals” and guess what. The Guardian gave us 4 hours ago (at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/oct/17/uk-homes-cancel-streaming-services-to-reduce-spending) ‘UK homes cancel streaming services to reduce spending’, all whilst my quote comes from Realisation, which is three months older (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/07/14/realisation-2/), so the issues given three months ago were largely ignored (like wannabe analysts stating that the loss of subscriptions were a mystery to them, or something like that). I saw the writing on the wall and the Guardian caught up three months later. As such I look at “total number of homes with at least one subscription fell by 937,000 from January to September” I see no real mystery here. As such we also get “The premiere of two of the most-hyped and expensive shows of all time – the $650m (£580m) productions of Rings of Power and House of the Dragon – failed to prove a big enough draw to reverse a decline of another 234,000 homes with at least one paid streaming service in the third quarter” yes, because these people really want to put their housing or food on the template of chance when it comes to a TV series and the setting that they are the most expensive or most hyped shows do not matter. People need to pay for food, people ned to pay rent and these elements were out on the shelf for too long. There is no real cap on food and the rent cap is limited to say the least. So these series miss out and those who have a few quid left, they will buy it when it is released on bluray. Which is given to us as “as cost-conscious households choose paying for essentials – such as energy, food and mortgage repayments – over home entertainment”, a simple part of the equation I saw three months ago and that is to some extent the solution I saw in gathering 50 million subscriptions. Because that will become a much larger station and it will get the one doing it $500 million or more. But then these people were aware, were they not? Consider that I accused Amazon and Google of letting that lie on the floor and three months after I stated the writing was coming to a wall near them. They did wake up and investigate, did they not? For all I care Elon Musk can buy it now and make life for them and Microsoft a lot harder. But I cannot do that yet, I am still awaiting response from Riyadh. So when we are given “The world’s biggest streamer, which has cut staff and become more disciplined with its $17bn annual content budget after earlier this year reporting its first subscriber declines in a decade, is forecast to add just 1 million new signups globally when it reports third quarter figures on Tuesday” I wonder if they caught on at all. More disciplined is a joke expression, it is like Google with their wannabe cheerleading “I am a lion”, all nice, but we know that the hunt is done by the lionesses, the lions just get them pregnant twice a day if possible. You see the lions are their for the lionesses the real hunters and “lions mate roughly every 15 to 20 minutes for two or three days—200 to 300 times in succession”, as such when you realise that what were the salespeople hoping at Google? For me the laughing matter becomes when (or if) Riyadh buys my IP, when they trump Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook all in one swoop. I wonder who will be crying like a chihuahua then? Will it be Reed Hastings, Andy Jassy, Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg or all of them? And it was not a hard equation, the fact that I saw this coming 26 weeks ago makes it that easy and there is optionally more, but I want to have a little more fun with this, as I should be allowed to.

The ranking of potatoes is not who is the biggest, it becomes a ranking of whom was the most idle of the lot and that insight might give you a few handles on where you have to go with what you have. 

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October 16, 2022 · 22:16

There are many roads leading to Rome

It is an old expression and when I was young I never understood it. It is simple, I grew up in the Netherlands. For us it was take the road that leads to the E35, which takes you to Rome. Those in Belgium and Germany had a similar direction. Of course that is not the explanation of the expression, but I was 7 at the time, there was time to learn. And for the most I learned how to learn, so I ended up with two benefits. One, the road to the best Pizza and two a manifest on how to learn. So when I saw the BBC article ‘Office time is not for video calls, says tech boss’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63217973) I was taken aback a little. You see, there are many roads on how to manage a workforce and some marketing firms learned through Covid, that a home founded workforce is efficient, terribly efficient. It also reduces the bottleneck of networks. It might not be enough, but in some cases it is enough to keep the workforce. Also the corporations with a high turnover saw a turnover reduction, not a big one, but large enough. I myself prefers to work in an office. I prefer my home and work to remain separate. That is easily explained. I am for the mot a workaholic. Work comes first and it has done so for decades. To go home is on one side to take the pressure off, on the other side to see if there I anything else that can relax me. So when I see “But being in the office should be an opportunity to do things that cannot be done at home, argues Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s chief executive. Sitting at a desk with headphones on is not one of them, he says.” But sitting in your office with a headset (or plugs) listening to music as you work is? I am not opposing his view, because there is merit in his view, but for a lot of companies so is the homework or hybrid setting. I am not one of those, but plenty are. He is a friend of “He champions Amazon’s idea, introduced by Jeff Bezos, where each attendee reads a six-page memo at the start of a meeting as a briefing note, rather than sitting through PowerPoint presentations.” OK, fair enough but not unlike Google, they too left $500 million a month on the floor, so there is improvement available all over the field. I do like the approach as I have an active dislike of meeting PowerPoints. There are plenty of times when this works, but the size of the group where it does not is steadily rising. 

There is a growing need to adjust the workforce. I see a weird traverse of approaches on an international level to find workers and I see the flood on LinkedIn on how great they are instead of properly informing who they are and what they do. A social approach on steroids and they fail to see the point, but it is equally possible that I fail to see their point. I get that, but it is the workaholic in me that take that point of view. And when you filter out the fortune cookie marketing in LinkedIn, how much value do you get? I see offices where video calls are not merely the workforce, it is also the office meetings. Instead of 8 people vacating to a big office, they sit in their offices, at their desks listening to meetings and that is the weird part. It seems that in these meetings people are more intent on listening, the responses are seemingly more clever, but I could be wrong. And this was part of the settings whilst I was contemplating a few new versions of older games, I contemplated what could be possible to take that into a game. Yet I was cautious. You see that as the narrated stage of a game called System Shock. A great game that is (as far as I know) still upgraded to todays gameplay. The game (through videos, messages and voice) give us the backstories on several floors between all kinds of people giving us a setting of what was going on when things were going wrong. I miss that game, it was so close to perfect and its successor (System Shock 2) was equally overwhelmingly as addictive. This too gave me pause to consider. You see when you think back on the original planet of the apes (with Charlton Heston), the idea of a survival game in that setting is interesting, but a game that follows the movie, without copying it is equally appealing. Having a new IP is intriguing, although a week before Gotham Knights not the most illuminating one. And these issues all strike back to the office. All these thoughts take a backseat to office work. In the office it is about work and at home (or anywhere else) the other thoughts come to the foreground, they always do and a hybrid setting is caging off those thoughts, or allowing them to be everywhere and that is how blunders are made. I get that and I was young once (nudge nudge wink wink). We all have things that occupy the brain and it happens. Consider working next to a bakery with fresh cheese rolls being baked every other hour. It doesn’t happen too often, but it happens and now you are working at home metres away from the warm stove making muffins, rolls and all other goods. How long until the homework is driven by rolls, hotdogs and icy cold beer? What we separated for decades (some merely years) does not stop the brain. We still have a load of lessons to learn and until we can shut off work or shut off the home in the brain, we will get issues, we all will. So I have issues with the BBC article, but nothing wrong is stated or presumed. We are all individuals and I believe that I where Stewart Butterfield failed. He had his point of view, which I consider valid, but there are many roads that lead to Rome and there are solutions there too we all need to realise that part of the equation.

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October 16, 2022 · 00:25

The hell one deserves

Yes, it seems a little negative, but that is the stage we face. Before I take you to the BBC article, consider this, as a father, if your little princess (or prince) gets hurt to the degree that they take their own life, how would you feel? What would you be willing to do? This is central in the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63218797) where we get ‘Amanda Todd: Dutchman sentenced for fatal cyber-stalking’. There we are given “A Dutchman convicted of sexually extorting a teenage Canadian girl who later took her own life has been sentenced to 13 years in prison. Aydin Coban, 44, will serve his sentence in the Netherlands, prosecutors in British Columbia said.” But that was not all, the gave was rigged from the start. The girl who was 13 at the time we are given “starting when she was 13. In some, he threatened to send explicit images of her to her friends, family and school staff if she didn’t agree to give him a webcam “show”.” My issue is not with the length, even though I believe that he should be in prison and be given mandatory psychological treatments as well as a minimum of 25 years. You see, why not place him in the Kent Institution where the winters get to minus 25, the summers (one month) to 3 degrees Celsius. Now he gets to spend his time in some Dutch social house watching TV. How is that fair? When we realise “Coban harassed the girl for nearly three years online using 22 separate fake social media accounts”, why would he be allowed the easy life? To be honest, when we see justice departments go soft on crime, I prefer the life of a contract killer, killing those who are set to the easy life, as well as their families as a deterrent for others. OK, I know it does not sound fair, but he had been cyberstalking her for years, clearly the law falls short, way too short. And I am not blaming the police, they are fighting this with their hands tied to their back, what angers me is “Coban’s defence lawyers had pushed for a two-year sentence” he cyber stalked a minor for years, it is one of the most prominent reasons why she took her life. That lawyer needs to be on medication as I personally see it. Then we are given “although Coban’s behaviour was not the “dominating factor” in the girl’s suicide, she did find that the “profound harm” he caused her aggravated mental health and substance abuse issues”, I am conflicted here. There is an expression ‘The straw that broke the camels back’ it applies here, there were more factors, yet the years of haunting had an impact, a large impact. I would personally state that it was large enough to be part of the straws that broke the camels back and Aydin Coban was 44, he had been haunting a minor. Screw his rights I say, but that I agree is not entirely fair. Yet was Amanda Todd treated fairly, was she given an honest chance? And when you consider “Coban was sentenced to 11 years in prison by a Dutch court in 2017 for blackmailing and harassing dozens of young women on the internet, some as far away as Britain, Canada and the United States” whilst we learn that he used 22 separate fake accounts for Amanda, how many accounts had he for the other girls? Why did no one notice this? I cannot blame the tech companies, but I believe that they could have done more, how much more? That is an answer I cannot give, that needs the investigation of a cyber expert and I am not one. 

It to some degree reflects on the stage I gave to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, there is a need for safe spaces and the big tech companies are faltering there. We see Google on LinkedIn some sales event where the salespeople are shouting that they are lions, like wannabe NFL players, but they casually left $500 million a month on the floor, so how is that working to their strength? Amazon made the same mistake, but I am not sure if their sales people and tech people got the lion NFL treatment. This matters, because as I see it, Google has not been playing to their strengths creating solutions against cyber bullying. I am not blaming Google (or Amazon), but cyber bullying is a much larger problems and if one person can endanger the lives of dozens, how large a problem is there? How can one person have 22 fake accounts? I know how, but why? I get that there are valid reasons why people have a second account, optionally a third one, but to have 22 accounts requires a larger setting a very shady setting. And in this I prefer that man freezing in BC, not in some softy social place but that is merely my point of view.

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October 15, 2022 · 07:30

OK, that was weird

I just woke up from the weirdest dream. I was with a woman, but I cannot see her face. I was there when she gave birth, I pulled an Alien (like the one from Ridley Scott) out of her hoot-hoot. But she was wearing pants. She never took them off. Then the weird stuff started. I was holding an Alien that fitted in the palm of my hand and it looked cute, really really cute. It started to make sense, suddenly there was a small boy and his Alien brother. Like twins, like soul brothers they walked in the world. 

Almost like a new age version of Calvin and Hobbs. All done by pencil and all with their own little world experiences. I wonder if it is the creation of life dreams I witnessed and the people will love this, her comics will sell in the millions. So whomever you are lady, better find a publisher soon, you are about to become famous. I saw some of the comics, how the boy (alien too) dealt with bullies, how they dealt with things we all deal with, the small irritations and how she draws them with a small wink. Things good be worse, do not sweat the small stuff. And the pages were filled with uplifting stuff, things that make you giggle and things you giggle at thinking ‘That would be nice’, I saw the pages and I saw the queues when her new book was released. Her drawing skills were really something. I walked out of the bookshop on George street and the dream faded, I was in a place and everything was white, then I woke up, and I felt happy holding that comic book. But when I looked at my hand, it was empty and I was back in my bedroom. It was certainly weird, mostly because I always loved comic books and I do not remember ever seeing that one, I have read one or two Calvin and Hobbs, but this was not like them, and now I feel suddenly sad because those comic books are not here. Well that is the start of on of the weirdest Saturdays. So I better start up my console and get the Maple leafs to their new virtual Stanley cup, it is off course NHL23 weekend, the game is installed, so let us see if I have what it takes to get that cup.

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October 14, 2022 · 17:42

The anger mob

The article that came today left me with questions, the questions are out in the open, but then they nearly always are. The BBC article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63237156) gives us ‘Parkland school shooting: Why the gunman was spared the death penalty’, yet for me the question evolves, or better stated formats in another direction. To give the initial lowdown, The parkland school shooting that happened in February 2018 gives us a few sides. There is “Nikolas Cruz, a 19 year old former student at the school, fled the scene on foot by blending in with other students, and was arrested without incident approximately one hour later in nearby Coral Springs. Police and prosecutors investigated “a pattern of disciplinary issues and unnerving behaviour”” and “At one point Cruz said “I think I am going to kill people” in the group chat, although he later claimed that he was joking”, we were also given in several sources “according to The Washington Post he was “entrenched in the process for getting students help rather than referring them to law enforcement.” He was transferred between schools six times in three years in an effort to deal with these problems. In 2014, he was transferred to a school for children with emotional or learning disabilities. There were reports that he made threats against other students.” Yet this person was given the permits to buy guns, he was given the stage to buy an AR-15 and several other guns. America blundered on several fronts already. Then there is the stage of ‘fled the scene on foot by blending in with other students’, which could be seen as premeditation, in do infer the stage of ‘could be’, it is entirely possible that the police faltered at least once here too. If there is one winner than it is defence lawyer Melisa McNeill, who got a mass murderer a free pass from the death sentence, she ends up being the only winner in this ‘game’. Yet the BBC also gives us “There was one [juror] with a hard no – she couldn’t do it,” he said. “And there was another two that ended up voting the same way.” One juror, a woman believed that a mentally ill person should not get the death penalty” I get it, it is hard to see this, but that is a fair conviction. Off course most will think that he could not do her job as a juror, but the article does not clearly bring out whether, or how well Melisa McNeill played the mentally ill card. We are given “the gunman’s mother’s heavy alcohol consumption and smoking during pregnancy had left him with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which they said drove his violent behaviour” yet I wonder if it was a child of Melisa McNeill, if she would have been able to do her job as well as she did. And I saw the footage of parents of 17 families demanding his head on a platter. A lot more questions come to mind, but they might all have answers in one form or another. The fact that he came to school as a former student implies premeditation. He had to buy ammo, he had to buy other matters, all leading to premeditation. And the stage of him being able to buy guns is a much larger failing than anyone realises. Even the NRA needs to acknowledge that this person should not have been allowed a gun permit. And soon the excuses will come from every direction, even those jurors that did not vote for the death penalty and are not happy with the outcome. But in this, what outcome did they expect? As a juror they had a duty and they decided to let the chips fall where they may and this time it fell on life without parole in prison, and for some the idea that he will become the resident prison bitch is perhaps slightly rewarding. But to 17 families it is not enough and these family members have more family and friends and any prosecutor who failed here might have some reelection issues for their cause. As I said, this event will show one winner, and that winner is Melisa McNeill.

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October 13, 2022 · 19:41

Freezing Arabia

OK, this was new. I had the story for about a week. I got it from the Dutch news channel NOS, but they weren’t the only one to have it (at https://nos.nl/artikel/2447021-schaatsers-en-skiers-in-2029-naar-saudi-arabie-voor-aziatische-winterspelen). It looked ‘cool’ enough, but I had no idea what to do about it. Saudi Arabia has been appointed as the place where the Asian Winter-games will be held in 2029. The place will need to build its ski and skating resort. So in the place where (according to legend) demons go to cool off, it will become the future place to freeze solid. So the place where it was at one point (June 2012) 51.4 degrees Celsius it will need to become cold enough to hold snow for well over two weeks, and they also need to hold water in a solid form. The second is not too difficult, even though you see the man made pond in Neom on the image. 

Covered ice rinks are not new, I reckon that the technology now exists to make one stay solid in the centre of Riyadh. It is the ski challenge where snow is kept fresh for two weeks, that will be decently new. More interestingly it should become the jewel in many crowns to pull that off. So consider that you are looking at designed slopes, those slopes optionally need to be adjustable and then dozens of snow machines, will need to cover that area within a timing of 8 hours. The technical stage seem clear, but I reckon that this has never been done on that scale and it will be an enormous technical achievement if the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will be able to pull it off. I wonder if they will also create the worlds first artificial bob sled track, but that is all for another day. I reckon that we will see initial releases of images and plans around 2026. For now we can start to get used to the idea that there can be snow fields in Saudi Arabia, I wonder if any Saudi’s ever considered the expression ‘when hell freezes over’ because if they pull this off they will be the first nation in history to show that hell can freeze over and that gives me ideas on collecting outstanding debt markers with hundreds of ladies. I am devious, if not extremely creative at times. 

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October 12, 2022 · 19:52

No one wonders?

It all starts with a BBC article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63207771) where we are given ‘Chinese technology poses major risk – GCHQ Chief’, there are two settings here. The first one was the BS approach by the Yanks (that place between the Pacific and the Atlantic river, South of Canada) and the UK issues. The Americans basically called Huawei (China) evil and refused to hand over any evidence. The UK stated that no foreign nation should be in charge to a major infrastructure. The UK is setting the centre stage to policy and that is fair and decent. In the Netherlands that same policy was used by founders Rob Romein and Franz Hetzenauer to create Tulip computers and they got rich real quick. You say Potato, I say Tomato. But policy is a real issue and that is fair in any government. So today I get to see “China has deliberately and patiently set out to gain “strategic advantage by shaping the world’s technology ecosystem”, the head of the intelligence agency told an audience at the Royal United Service Institute for its annual security lecture. Sir Jeremy argued the Chinese Communist Party was aiming to manipulate the technology that underpins people’s lives to embed its influence at home and abroad and provide opportunities for surveillance”, OK that is a decent accusation and it will not be easy to prove that, or basically it will be a stretch to prove it. We then get “China’s development of the BeiDou satellite system – a rival to the established GPS network which he said had been built into exports to more than 120 countries. He claimed it could be used to track individuals or combined with plans to knock out other countries’ satellites in the event of a conflict”, which is one approach, but could the Chinese government not claim that GPS could do exactly the same thing? In addition we get “the intelligence chief said he would not stop children using TikTok – which is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance – although he said young people should be more aware of their personal data and how it could be shared”, OK fair point and awareness of personal data is a good thing, but doesn’t Facebook (and Meta) do he same things? I have seen advertisements on Facebook that should never have appeared, as such too many players are doing exactly the same thing, but for us China is red and evil, would they not claim the same thing regarding Facebook and YouTube? We are then given “He said the UK should continue to welcome students from China but “be really clear on the areas of technology where we will require additional safeguards”. Areas like artificial intelligence and quantum computing were particularly important, he told the audience”, which is a fair point. Although it is not out of the question that this should be a marker between commonwealth countries and any other country. In that regard places like Canada, Australia and New Zealand have to agree on similar settings. In this Sir Jeremy Fleming (a more dashing lookalike of Michael Andrew Gove) has a few issues on the table that make sense and although we wonder why the Americans are so easily accepted, they issues all make sense. It reflected for me how I am happy that I offered my IP to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and not to China, although the new partnership between China (Tencent Technologies) and Microsoft is not making any waves at all, funny ain’t it? I wonder if we are hitting a critical point of nationalism at this point, and where should the inventors sit? The fact that Google and Amazon are decently clueless on where I found the grounds of 50 million subscriptions will also hit Facebook at some point and I accidentally stumbled on this, the invention had a different foundation and direction, but as I aw where it could take me, I left it to these two titans to slug it out and Google dropping the Google Stadia implies that they are losing more than they reckoned on and that leaves Amazon (who is seemingly still in the dark), so now my hopes are that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia accepts my offer. But the underlying stage also exists. I still have my 5G hardware, a stage I saw two years ago and no one else is seeing this, they are all hoping that Facebook makes good on their Meta and they are all in some wait state that it comes for them, I designed my hardware with the view on Neom, as well as the changing stage of marketing, a stage that ill be very different from 2024 onwards (OK, it might be 2025). But those in a “wait-state” will lose out if they cannot adjust their course and I will (extremely hopefully) retire with a nicely filled bank account to sing out my retirement with good food and seeing nice places, I worked 40 years, so I feel entitled to my decently whistling wish. Yet between the lines there are battlefronts. The issue for the Commonwealth to find the right allies, to align with the proper parties and be decently neutral against the others. Yes, we all oppose Russia in the Ukraine stage and that is fine, but do not for one second believe that America is our ally, our friend. Their friendship changes election after election and in the end they are merely their own ally, so when America implodes, and it will, we should be aware and we should be willing to continue with true allies, one that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could be, if we could for one minute stop listening to stakeholders, whose alliance is their wallets and their wallets alone. I tried to warn people for 3-5 years that stakeholders are corporate tools that releases the media as their goals see fit, I showed years of data in that direction and soon there will be no choice, if they get their wish, they fill their wallets, they say ‘Oops!’ And they walk away, and where we will we all be at that point? The larger issue is not why we were unaware, but where the media was when the elements were in view. The missing Iran reports regarding Yemen, the list of Pi Phone articles that are only now showing up, the serious questions that the media should have lobbed at Jack Dorsey and Twitter over the last few months and the list goes on, filtered information is not news, it is news founded on discrimination and that is the stage we face, but what else are we not given? Who knew on the partnerships between Chinese Tencent and Microsoft? Who asked the serious questions? I will let you seek and search that part yourself. 

So many question and no one wonders how a simple guy like me has the inside track on 50 million optional customers, you think Google would have dropped their Stadia if they could gain 50,000,000 optional customers? Figure it out and yes, some will consider the main point that I might be spreading that stuff that grows the grass in Texas, but I asked myself questions and also doubted myself. Stakeholders will not do that, they will merely proclaim that the other side does not exist (or is irrelevant). 

It is time for you to wonder what else they are missing and that is aimed at my 5G IP. A side of 5G none of them have. 

Enjoy the day, you should, preferably before the Russian decide to make all the Ukrainians glow in the dark.

 

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October 11, 2022 · 21:27

Advertisement led the way

I started the day fine, but then I started to play some game and the irritation began. ?Not the game mind you, but there is a game called last fortress and the advertisements do not reflect the game, not in the slightest. But there was an upside. You see, they dug themselves a treasure and they use it for ads. How silly is that. Consider a game like Dungeon keeper and combine that with Fallout Shelter and you have the beginning of a new stage of gaming. 

You start in a house. As you secure with traps the rooms become available, the better the defence of that room, the better your chances. In the first room (the bathroom) you gain the option of water. As you proceed (via ducts) to scout the rooms you will get the kitchen (food), and that is when you get your first addition, a cook. So there you are growing as a scout, a fighter or an engineer, you will gain skills. But one touch from a zombie and it is lights out, forever. 

So as you complete a house, the added people become in-crowd but only for a while. The more they grow, the more they are inclined to stay, so the cook needs to cook, As such you grow your crew with an electrician a trap maker, a plumber, a fighter and so on. And as you go to the second house you get an additional room to create, a little like Dungeon Keeper, but the setting is more like Fallout shelter, although isometric in view. And the ads show that there is interest, so the makers are looking at a whole lot of revenue coming their way. What surprises me is that no one figured that out, it wasn’t that much of a leap. The larger issue is to find an option for microtransactions without making it mandatory, that gives the greatest boost and the longest time of revenue.

So as the game progresses from houses to apartment buildings, warehouses, shopping centres and all with their own challenge. I reckon that the hardest level (location 25) leads to a stage where we get more of the same, but now the risk of breach becomes larger, so it will be about a tactical approach much more than before. That didn’t take long did it? So when the others catch up, you might optionally be making the next addiction on mobile, tablet, PC and console. 

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October 11, 2022 · 09:55

Ridley to the rescue

Yup, another weird night. It was the setting of a movie, but one that my mind created. The story starts in the Sahara, two opportunists are looking for whatever they are looking for. And even if they do not realise it, they find it and one of them gets stung. And it is then that the other person takes the high ground and they make it towards the city and medical attention. The first two symptoms happen within minutes and they know it is serious. As one gets difficulty breathing and 

muscle twitching they know that time is essential. It is on route to the city when they notice a dozen of abandoned portocabins, they decide to have a quick look, hoping for something to ease the pain. They find nothing bus skeletons, nothing was left except a microscope and some books. They also notice the cave behind the portocabins. It looks cool and they go in to cool off for an hour, which would help the sick man as well. It is then that the neck and eye movements, the drooling and sweating starts, they decide that the sick man stays there, to remain cool and calm, his friend will race towards to city to get help or medication. It is on the way out that the healthy man notices a box in a corner. It holds books, notebooks and some kind of drive. He takes it all and races to the town. When he gets into the town there is panic all over the place, people are panicked and he makes it to the hospital, which is nothing more than a small extended clinic. He seeks help and asks doctors for help. They are all too busy. An intern tries to help him but they are dealing with patients with nausea and vomiting, high blood pressure and tachycardia. All signs of scorpion stings. He tells the intern that his friends has the same and also tells him where he is, stating that he is willing to get the medicine there himself. The intern tells him that they ran out the day before, but if he is in a cool place than he has a decent chance, the poison needs to run its course. He accepts that and races back only to find his friend now dead. He leaves and grieves. He looks at the corpse and walks off. When he gets to the town he moves to the port and books a room towards Italy, he pays cash and the captain accepts it. When he is in his room he takes his notepad and is able to get data from the drive. It is some medical journal to create people with small parts of scorpions so that they can better deal with the heatwaves that are coming. They succeeded, but they also made the people a bit more aggressive and less rational. He reads this and realises that his friend died from an experiment. The journal states that they decided to burry the cave with explosives and those dozen experiments were buried alive. He then realises what happened. At that point they are stopped by the Italian coast guard. They are all questioned and he hands over what he found, but not all. He tells them that the drive was in a porto-cabin, and he was unable to connect to the drive as it is a simple notebook for making notes. The coast guard officer accepts this and takes the drive and the man asks “Is it worth anything?” As his American passport is in order the officer states that he will not go to prison for this and walks off

It is months later, the pandemonium has simmered down, the tropics are silent, the man is now in Northern Canada as scorpions do not relish the cold. He is sitting by the fire and ponders the loss of his friend, then the knock on the door and a man walks in, his friend, now with deep black eyes and a 5th arm coming from his lower spine. The stinger isn’t pronounced, but it also holds two hands. He looks at the friend “Caspar?” The man replies, that was once my name. I know what you did and thanks to you we won the war, the people are now diminished. We will let you be here, we do not like this cold, but I had to come see you. I owed you that much. Not much of a wealth is it? Without you it all seemed meaningless, the adventure was fun because we both did it, alone there is nothing. Caspar nodded. I will not offer you this life, there are harsh rules and I cannot make an exception for you. So you can stay here, safe. Know that you can travel through my lands without harm, but the lands are now a lot more dangerous and life remains unbalanced. In 5-10 years the temperatures will lower and we will pull back to the deserts. The rest is for what remains and that is not that many, so you have a pick of palaces, but in the end it will become your mausoleum. Life as it was was never going to be great, governments squandered so much, so little is left. 

Good luck to you and good luck to whatever you do next and with that Caspar left the cabin leaving a grieving friend to ponder at the fireplace. 

Well that was when I woke up, well I woke up when he went to Northern Canada. The rest I added whilst writing this part. I hope you enjoyed this short tory and if you want to make more of it, good luck.

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