April 12, 2022 · 23:42

Like a whisper

My mind took me back to the first dream (that I described in ‘Elements of whatever’ yesterday). It was the setting and the setting was incomplete. I saw the two lanes, like esplanades going over the length of the town, parallel, but the road furthest away from the gorge was higher. Both streets had an abundance of tavern like cafe’s. There were all kinds of small shops in between, some selling books, some sold knick knacks and they were always next to a tavern. Filled with people talking, chatting and various kinds of idle conversations. The tables had coffee, they had some kind of wine, but much sweeter like grape juice. Fruity. People were having snacks, mostly breadsticks, some peppered. And I saw a boy run calling for its mother. At first I thought it as me, but my mother died decades ago. The road went on and swivelled towards houses, dozens of houses. Some look like log cabins, most looked like old fashioned French stone houses. Like they were build in the 18th century. The view was magnificent, like an image of Chicken Itza, but no ruins in the background. No roads and no noise. That was the missing part, the part of the noise that is at present EVERYWHERE. It took me a long time to figure it out. The zeppelins are not merely methods of moving, they are the only ones who can move there. Like Asia and South America. The people (the wealthy ones) had enough of the pollution, the seas washing the land away and the people hindering them. I wonder if this is part of Keno Diastima? It is possible, but I cannot tell at present. The land in some places will truly gain value. Land that is now seen as worthless, but it has something high priced land does not. It has CLEAN AIR, and it lacks people. Gated communities that cannot be reached by anything else than a zeppelin. Planes cannot land there, ships cannot get close and car cannot reach these places. The ultimate gated community. Places where there is no fear of war as it I away from everything the greed driven desire, certain players have removed themselves from the game and they are living out there lives surrounded by the things they care for. A book, a drink and a conversation with like minded people.

So what is this a part of? 

I am not certain yet, but if I am correct, these places will come up like mushrooms. Gated places protected and absent of what some would call the Riff-raff. Crime is dealt with directly and with deadly force, these people paid for protection and anyone stupid enough to try their luck will find themselves dealt with like the pirates of old.

It is a larger setting and it is a setting that is highly speculative, not real, optionally the setting of a story, but consider the places. Warm places where heating is not needed. Enough light to fuel solar banks and the zeppelins bring provisions and people. A new iteration of cogs, isolated from all the other worries. Some villages in tropical places and some in places where people enjoy the snow, absent of a lot of people. Can you honestly say that in a place with 8,000,000,000 that they all enjoy each others company? 

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April 12, 2022 · 05:30

Elements of whatever

Another dream, but this time it I different. I had part of this dream before. It did not make sense then and it does not now. Now is even more confusing. The stage is two fold. First the now, because I fear it will leave my mind quickly. I am not sure if it is for. Story, a script, a game or just isolation. I am at the transfer of Dutch KLM. The KLM desk is for a different plane, much larger. There is a PX store. I show a regimental image. I want that shield. I mention that a friend was there. The PX store shows me some wannabe self centred piece of crap. He states to me that the commander of that battalion was a traitor and as such he refuses to give me the shield. OK, I respond, I will talk to the press and ask for clarifications. The man signals another. That man tells me to come with him, with his hand menacing in the jacket. I was holding orange peels from an Orange I just ate. I squeeze them and the peels spray. I merely say ‘Biological!’ And I am gunned down. 

The event is trivial. I suddenly remember the boarding area, almost like a rocket launch from another dream. I pretended to be diplomatic staff. The plane seemed weirdly large. I have been on 747-400, this seemed a lot larger. In the previous flight it was from somewhere in Asia to South America. This I do not know. But the plane stuck. The boarding area stuck. The story seems to matter, there seems to be levels of arrogance, levels of over the top elevation in the boarding areas and it was all linked to Dutch KLM planes. Even now I am starting to remember other elements of the previous dream. The walls were like glass when I looked at them with glasses. They were from some metal. The plane was almost like a Hindenburg on steroids. The plane was like a small town. Like the shop area on a passenger liner. Rooms with chairs, two wide, by the windows, overlooking where we flew. In the Asian part it was overlooking beautiful green forests, mountains and a lot of oceans. It all seemed so peaceful. There are remembrance moments of ‘Murder on the Zinderneuf’ a who dunnit game based on a zeppelin. I wrote about that in ‘Shadows are Us’ (and a few other places), in this setting I wrote about a change to gaming (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/05/31/shadows-are-us/) which I wrote about n May 2021. This is not entirely the same. My mind is wondering if a return to the days of the zeppelin is too wrong a concept. The idea was abandoned during the marshmallow clambake of May 6, 1937, when the Hindenburg burned down. But that was in the era of Hydrogen, later we got Helium, but the need for speed overshadowed everything. Now, in a stage when we can ALWAYS be connected, we can work everywhere. Is speed really essential? We can all understand that we need presence in places at times. But how we get there is another matter. With the era of 3d printing, light weight shops and a more essential setting of what matters during flights, Consider the image below and the way the materials were made. 

newspaper clipping (date unknown) Diagram of Hindenburg living quarters.

Now we can have twice the strength at only half the weight making a zeppelin much more effective. The top of the zeppelin could have large solar cell panels fuelling batteries and the propellors pushing the zeppelin forward. Did anyone reconsider what a Zeppelin could achieve, especially with todays abilities? Even now Titanium is heavier than aluminium, yet you need a lot less Titanium to get the same strength as Aluminium. The stage is all over and the need for a reduced carbon print (or was that a bacon foot print) is out there. So why do we not look at the old ides and how we can offer a renewed idea for getting to places. It is just an idea and it was in parts fuelled by a game as well as its optional newly launched version on Amazon Luna, but I am genuinely surprised that no one has taken up the baton, why is that? I am no airplane designer, so why is this path abandoned? 

There might be reasons that mediocre me had not considered, I am willing to accept that, but the dream was weird and it came twice around. Even now the first dream comes back in waves even as the second one faded away. 

So is Helium a solution, or merely an element of whatever and no one gives a fig? I honestly do not know, but I do really like the idea of a steampunk version of the Zinderneuf, I really do.

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April 11, 2022 · 20:27

It started with Z

Yes, it all started with ‘ZZZZZ’, it was weird in a few ways. I kept on dreaming the same dream, I kept on looking at the same stage, an empty stage. Then there were a few people, but that stage changed, it changed again and again and returned to the initial stage with the same people. It is all I can say on that. The dream faded within minutes andI can remember that it had something to do with a Zombie apocalypse, not really my favourite subject. I remember a few games in that series. All relying on advertisements and microtransactions. That is not stated in any negative way. I am not against microtransactions, especially in a free game. But the mind started to wander. I had this thought before. I made reference to this in ‘As fiction becomes real’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/10/18/as-fiction-becomes-real/) which I wrote last October 18th. It was a decent idea and it could have a future. Especially if the stream systems grow up and grow smart fast. You see, it is not an issue if we have microtransactions. But the replayability is low to non-existent. I addressed a few sides there and opted for a few possibilities that allows for a larger stage of replayability. Yet, I also remember the stage of ‘preparation’ that we see in Bethesda games by loading a person with specific S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skills or elder scrolls abilities. So what happens when that is not possible? What if we set the stage to a random person? Optionally a random gender as well? Would the game suddenly be ‘unplayable’ or will the gamer rise to the occasion? It cannot be the gender. Lara Croft, Aloy, and many others preceded this game. So gender is not the issue. What if we add to the challenge? What if there was some kind of zombie shelter? Some kind of bunker and we drench that stage in realism? Lets not forget that the challenge is to survive. How far would you get? The problem is that there needs to be mode’s, simple modes (where you can select all), hard mode where you can select little and insane mode where you have no choices, what the system gives you that is what you have to work with. There are some games like that, yet the larger games that ALL rely on microtransactions do not seem to have this, it is not their forte, and that is where the streamers (Google Stadia and Amazon Luna) could play a much bigger role. Yet there is an element missing, it is the educational side. Yes, going to was Playstation style is nice (not realistic but nice) and there we need to see what we can teach. You think that survival is fin, that is until you learn that food in finite, it needs time. And that is another setting. You might feel safe with an army around you, but they too need food and when food becomes scarce you will learn the hard way that you have yet to see a version of dog eats dog that you were not ready for. 

The problem, or the challenge becomes how to make it interesting without it being a steeple chase, or some floor is lava approach towards survival. Do not expect ll the answers here. I do not have all of them, but I can see the start of too many RPG games being too much alike and the play-through of most Bethesda games are too alike, we did that ourselves. It was not the fault of Bethesda. But what happens when you do not get that choice? What happens when the game is set to San Francisco, but that is all you know. You could start in Berkeley, Oakland, San Jose, Tenderloin, or Glen Park. There is no chance that the same solution applies to all, there is merely the simple approach of common sense and to set a stage of survival and when we have this in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York or Chicago the game changes by a lot and that is the intent. You see, we look wrongly to these games. What if the map is separate from the game? We could use most of these maps in a dozen games. We merely need to think to a much larger stage. We need to walk away from one game and walk towards several games that have a map added to the entire stage. Consider that dozens of games are places in Los Angeles. So what happens when they all use the same map? Not some small time map, but the ACTUAL map of Los Angeles. Lets face it, for the most that place remained the same. So what happens when we add to that stage by adding cities and a game could be played in ANY of the cities? Consider Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Chicago? Consider that we can select the city for the next Call of Duty, Splinter cell, Terminator or Predator? There is no problem, it requires different programming, different triggers and the hardware and abilities are already there. Many are staring at Ubisoft+, but that is 10 years old programming. We need to adjust our sights to the programming of 2024. This is not the fault of Ubisoft, but the fact that they are seemingly not on top of this is odd, almost weird. Consider the Division, Splinter Cell, and Watchdogs. Is it not strange that they are not ahead of the rest? So why invest in 10 years old programming? Do not get me wrong. They brought us the tales of Ezio, they brought great games, yet with the exception of Watchdogs: Legion, it ended in 2017 with AC Origin. And it is time to break the mould and come with something totally new. I set several games in my blog and made them freeware for anyone making games for Amazon Luna, Google Stadia and Sony Playstation. It is time to give the streamers the substance that will drive the people to these solutions. And it should have been done a year ago. And this was not rocket science and as I give the impulse here, and as I gave the setting in 2021, is it not weird that no one picked up on that? (Guerrilla and Avalanche have a decent excuse) We see repetition of the same, drenched in microtransactions. And do you think that streaming people will accept microtransactions? 

I will let you decide for yourself.

 

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April 11, 2022 · 01:04

Can a chihuahua win?

It is what I stated before, Iran will poison the well and that is exactly what I am seeing now (well 5 hours ago). Reuters gives us ‘Iran wants U.S. to show goodwill by lifting some sanctions prior to nuclear deal’ (at https://www.reuters.com/world/china/irans-foreign-minister-says-biden-should-lift-some-sanctions-prior-nuclear-deal-2022-04-10/), yes, Iran always wants something up front, even though they lack credibility. So when we are given “On multiple occasions, we have told Americans they should bring forward one or two practical points prior to any agreement, for example by releasing some of Iran’s assets withheld in foreign banks,” Amirabdollahian added.” We know that we are being played, so what happens after? Just one little added thing, just one more altered state? They didn’t state it as part of the deal, no, they want it upfront. There is logic to that, but when you have no credibility you really do not have a chance. The question now is this game going to be decided by chihuahua’s in Washington DC who will come with the ‘excuse’ that it was for the good of the deal? And when Iran adds an item, or just one small addition, and at that point we see that the US has become the loser Iran expects the US to be. 

So what will happen? To be honest, I am not in the know so I can only speculate. And all this whilst we got a day before ‘Iran sanctions 24 US officials over ‘terrorism’ and rights abuses’ (source: Reuters) and that is the setting. It is not a prelude to any nuclear deal. It is a pissing match and Iran is hungry for any win it can get, at the expense of anything and that is the same nation we all give time and time again for it to complete its nuclear challenges. So when that happens. What will the US do? Impose sanctions? And now, should you wonder what Saudi Arabia and the state of Israel will do. I reckon that Saudi Arabia will rely on what military hardware China can deliver. Israel will not have that advantage, but the larger station is that the world is about to learn the hard way what inaction does to both Israel and Saudi Arabia. And when we see that evolve the hard way, we get to see what is left of the US and it’s inactivity. So feel free to oppose and reject my notion. It is fair to do so, as a lot of this is linked to speculation, but as events unfold, as events go ‘my’ way. Remember that this was about time, about stalling and I personally feel that Iran has been given enough stall time. 

Just my $0.02 on the matter.

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April 10, 2022 · 18:05

The ruse is on

I got the news, just like all of you. The news (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/09/rise-of-tiktok-why-facebook-is-worried-booming-social-app) gives us ‘The rise of TikTok: why Facebook is worried about the booming social app’. As I wrote in a previous article. Yes, Facebook might SEEM worried, but only until Meta fully launches. When that happens Meta is off to a multi billion per week start. Yes, TikTok does have the approaching edge and yes, they have a jump on places like YouTube that is the true nature of Innovation and TikTok was a true innovator. Google and Meta are seeing it is not some iterator and they are heading for deeper and larger revenues. I have an issue with “The Chinese-owned video-sharing platform is forecast to catch up with YouTube by 2024 when both are predicted to take $23.6bn (£18.2bn) in ad revenue, despite TikTok being launched globally 12 years after its Google-owned rival.” There is a stage where this is true. I do not believe the Guardian is lying to you, it is setting. Stage of presumption and they are drawing out cause and effect. It is the “when both are predicted to take” that is interesting. You see this was ALWAYS going to happen. Google could never hold all the cards and take all the revenue, it is the nature of the beast. Then we are given “The company is winning the battle for the “sweet spot” of social media users, those in the 18- to 25-year-old demographic where Facebook is seeing its biggest declines, with parent company Meta trying to stem the exodus by attracting them to stablemate Instagram” a nice ploy, but the numbers are there, they are out in a much larger stage, yes Facebook is worried because the time line is shifting, they do not have the comfortable lead that they once had, but that does not matter. When Meta launches the advantage FOR Meta will be close to indescribable and until Hybrid launches (see another of my articles) they have the field, the whole field and nothing but the field. Absent of TikTok, absent of Google and absent of Microsoft. 

Meta has two other advantages, but I keep them for now, lets see how informative journo’s really are. I set the stage in one of my articles and I will pull them in when the news comes with some ‘exclusive’ months after my  article. The ruse is larger, the ruse is setting a stage of claiming worry, whilst there are a few really clever people out there (the US boy-scout department of digital information, aka NSA), they can clearly see what is out there and I reckon they merely see a temporary advantage for Chinese owned TikTok, it is what comes after that will change the board by a lot and there Meta will have years of advantage. YouTube will remain, they will lose some grounds, but when you have an app that was bought for in 2006 for $1.65 billion, and it will still be making $23.6bn in 2024, not a bad setting for Google. So the Ruse might be that TikTok is also making $23.6bn in 2024, but you would be wrong. When Meta does deploy the stage changes. From a Football field to an olympic aqua stadium and only Meta can swim, the rest will need time to learn to swim, to learn the streams of the aqua stadium and where the audience is at. All things Meta will know beforehand, all advantages that will keep them swimming for years, with well over $23.6bn uncontended until deep into 2027. That is the actual stage and even as the headline seems nice, yet it will be an inaccurate one. When Meta launches it will be the new thing, the new innovation and it will take a larger group of people years just to get their heads around what Meta deployed. That is the true setting and even as we expect a full deployment in 2023, we do not truly know until Meta sends out the invitations. So the ruse is nice, but that is all it was, merely ‘nice’

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April 9, 2022 · 22:22

Trust, who you gonna trust?

Trust is something that is always out there. Some give it, some give it a little too freely. This is not to be confused with loose women, they merely do not care who to trust, they want a good time and 99.9963% of the hetero sexual men out there agree with me (and loose women too). 

Yet, in gaming trust is a dangerous thing. To see this we need to take a gander. In the first to the setting of Microtransactions. I am not against Microtransactions, it is merely an addition to the game and it is not free. Some are $5, some are $50 (and some a hell of a lot more). I believe that a fool (or a dedicated fan) will spend what they can afford and sometimes a little more. It is hard to keep the dedicated fans and the fools apart, but that is a very subjective view. 

Some wanted to go out and get the $5 for swords in Assassins Creed on day one, because these people start the game with a 5/5/5 sword (if you played the game, it will make sense). To the credit of Ubisoft, they CLEARLY stated that this is an item that could be earned in the game, and it was. Just not in act1, scene 1 of the game. There are a few other settings too, but Ubisoft clearly stated that with any item bought, that if it was obtainable in the game, they would let us know. Well done Ubisoft (I kicked them often enough, the good sides should be shown too).

I never accepted the loot-box stage. You see, for it to be gambling you need to lose it all, without anything to show for it. And tell me have you ever opened a loot-box and got the following ultra rare card?

No, you did not. So loot-boxes are not gambling. Neither are microtransactions, and it needs saying. Stop complaining. Buy it, do not buy it, just stop bitching about it. Now, some games are clearly upfront about it. The Hogwarts Legacy makers have stated that the game will not have any microtransactions. A good choice! There are others who are not that ‘elevated’ I have heard and seen some news on Gran Turismo 7 and there is some mess out there on microtransactions. I am not judging at present as I know too little, today is not about it, but it is linked. 

You see, to consider that we need to take a look at Reuters. I wrote about this setting in a different way, but they cover what I wrote. So (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/crypto-gaming-collide-high-risk-play-to-earn-economies-2022-04-08/) we see ‘Crypto and gaming collide in high-risk ‘play-to-earn’ economies’ and there we see “The 28-year-old from Bangkok was playing Axie Infinity, one of a new breed of blockchain-based online games, dubbed “play-to-earn”, which blend entertainment with financial speculation. These games can make for lucrative businesses amid the hype around NFTs and virtual worlds, attracting millions of players plus billions of dollars from investors who see the games as a way to introduce more people to cryptocurrency.” This is nice, such a sweet way to set the stage to playing youngsters (age 28) and the lucrative stage of investors. But when you take a gander to what I wrote on March 15th in ‘When is a slot machine not one?’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/15/when-is-a-slot-machine-not-one/) where I set the premise “The bottom of the slot machine fitted a credit card, some kind of crypto card. The slot machine also fitted USB-C sticks. The slot machine was a laundromat for crypto currency. And let’s face it, in todays world, who raises an eye on seeing a slot machine? I think my ‘associates’ had stolen a decent amount of crypto currency, which they laundered through the slot machines.” A stage where the slot machine becomes a cryptocurrency laundromat and the nice part is that it is also a slot machine and when the padlock is removed, it is merely a slot machine. The padlock was the second key of the chain to launder. You did figure that out, do you not? And even as I created some optional billion dollar IP (for Amazon) there is a much larger stage, because the current stage requires the oligarchs to launder whatever they can and there are solutions, some are not out in the open, but give it time. That need will surely come and my option is one that comes with the gamble option, launder the money or take a chance in gaining up to 75% in cryptocurrency by gambling. It will get the eyes of too many soon enough. 

My idea is clean, but some will subvert it, like some subverted the clean Mass Effect loot-boxes whilst they tried to fill their pockets. How long until someone figures out the 5G part that is NOT out in the open, until someone figures out its secondary stage? And all this is before the Hybrid era, the era that Meta will open up for EVERYONE. I wonder who will try to fill their pockets and how many will try to figure out something I put here months ago. I have time, I can wait, two of the events are now on 4Chan, so whomever breaks the codes has a clear path to a lot of revenue. I’d rather leave it out in the open for free than give it to some idiot at Microsoft. And if Google and Amazon do not want it? Then freeware it becomes. The person who is willing to destroy a thing, controls that thing. Ron Hubbard wrote that in the 70’s, the greed driven never understood it, for them it was always a  stage for compromise and negotiation. Lets all have some of it. Not me, I would rather see them squirm as a vagrant in agony than give in to the weak minded iterative spreadsheet users of this century. Let them return to the dust they came from.

So who you gonna trust? Trust and believe in yourself and only that. It is the stage that leaves wannabe friends outside. True friends will accept that and that is the difference.

P.S. I just finished my 2301st article, cool!

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April 9, 2022 · 01:43

Struggle

We all struggle, I am no different, but my struggle is not with the having of stuff, not with the acquisition. It is with creation. I create I keep on creating, yet I see not the reason why I do things. It is not to show me how more advanced I am, how much more perfect or better I am. I create games, stories, movies, TV series and software. Yet, I cannot see why I am doing it. A lot is here in this blog, I have no need for some of it but in the back of my mind, it seems to be about more, and I have no idea what the links are. I am in the dark about WHY I am creating stuff. Is it about old tech? The printable display is there, but I have no idea why I came up with it. The Giggle water (two days ago) is mere fun, to see any liquid infused with nitrous oxide that releases the gas from the liquid on consuming it is fun, but I do not see why my mind is going that way. I see the stage why I went for the 5G, I am a technologist after-all, the new stage of marketing makes sense. Preparing myself for a wave that is inbound and that makes sense. Yet all around it are iterations of innovations and they are linked somehow, but I cannot yet see why they are there. And my mind is screaming to know the why, at times it is deafening.

Is it some delusional part to show Ubisoft I am better than any of them? It seems stupid, Guerrilla Software and Avalanche Software are doing that just fine and I am nowhere near that good. I am for the most a storyteller. Is it part of any story I was creating? Keno Diastima is doing fine for now. The large lines of three seasons are done, the smaller stories of season one are coming along and the large jumps that make for Season 2, and Season 3 are basically done. The end of season 3 remains and open end to the story. I feel it is a better end than milking the idea. The shock stage is what needs to be. That is how I feel it needs to be. Then there is the mini series Residuam Vitam, It is still developing. Some of the storylines are set, are shaped, the involvement of others are coming and so far I left Anubis out of the equation, I need his involvement to be near stellar, but there are gaps in what I know of Anubis from History and from theology. There is a stage from Hades that is now shaping, yet there is  form of duality that I want to explore, but it needs to be defined and I am wondering how to go about it. The part of Meng Po is almost done, but I feel that it needs her personal drive there. There needs to be something that pushes her. I want it to reflect on Lady Meng Jiang, there is the part we see with “Lady Meng Jiang heard nothing after his departure, so she set out to bring him winter clothes. Unfortunately, by the time she reached the Great Wall, her husband had already died. Hearing the bad news, she wept so bitterly that a part of the Great Wall collapsed, revealing his bones.” It is a nice fitting part, a nice piece of a puzzle making an image, but I feel that the image I see is a little different. You see she kept on pouring soup like it was a solution, it was the path to someplace. A set of the mind, a set of pieces of a puzzle, but not the ones any story give me (the parts out in the open), it is possible that Chinese writings give me more, but I do not know Chinese. There is a place that those who give service embrace, but I always felt that Meng Po was doing it to keep ahead of something, to go towards someone and I believe that her path was not set to one person, it was more but I cannot answer it by ‘weaving’ my own tale. Like the story of a game shapes the way we think, the way we perceive and the way we react. Like the technology that opens what we can see and what we could get. These parts seem to be connected somehow. This is not the problem. I feel that I am missing a larger piece of a puzzle, but it is not an image. It is like the puzzle is not an image but a film reel, or there is a 3rd dimension component I cannot see at present. Is it an innovation that is yet to come? Perhaps that is what the mind struggles with? Like a stonemason who has his block of marble. He knows that three more pieces need to be removed, but he cannot see the three pieces. That is how it feels, but there is still another part, it is not as simple as three pieces, and that is where I struggle. It is like there is something just out of view, I see shimmers of what I am supposed to see, but that is as good as it gets. And there I struggle still.

We all do at times, it is what we want to achieve, it is why we want to achieve and for the creators it is not bout the money, it is about the creation, it is ego. I fought ego my entire life, I never accepted it within myself, but I have ego, we all do, the delusional ones think that they are above it, but they are not. In this I personally believe that Vladimir Putin is the latest folly of ego, it slapped him down and he remains in ‘hiding’. In his mind a two bit place like the Ukraine cannot stop the Russian bear and the fact that they did is scaring him, his own ego defeated him and it is more about defeat than anything else. If my ego is to be about success and not failure I need to push myself past ego, my struggle for me is real, I get that and that struggle is more than a fight, overcoming it will open doors to ideas. And that is where I find myself. What idea did my brain work out that I as a person cannot see yet? That is the struggle for me and you face your own struggles, we all do. It is how we go about our struggles, that sets the definition of success or defeat. I do not mind losing, but to be defeated by my own brain is weird. It is not sabotaging me, it is teaching me to look in other directions. I just have no idea in what direction I am supposed to look, lets face it, do you?

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April 8, 2022 · 02:22

Dedicated discrimination

Yes, it is a weird term, but it happens. It is happening all around you and you might not be aware. It hit me in the last week. Two events took place and it shone a limelight on the event. Yesterday morning I got drenched. In 10 minutes I faced more rain (without an umbrella) than in the sum of rain events over the last 17 years. So you better believe that there was not a dry thread of clothing on me. This started the train, but the train was already on its tracks leaving the station. You see, the second train is not that obvious. I saw a copy of Dante Alighieri’s Inferno. I really liked the pressing, the cover, the way it was all depicted (with images). It was a fine piece of work. So I enquired about the other two parts. Purgatory and Paradise. But the other two parts were never released. I never got that part. It was not the first time, yes to part one and no to parts two and three? An incomplete work? It seems odd to do this. My mind stored the information, but I did not know what to do about it yet. It was yesterday when the trains collided. You see I needed a rain coat, a waterproof coat and I went to the best place for this. Kathmandu. The coats are not the cheapest, but they do tend to be the best. 

Here we have a larger issue. You see One report gives us “In 2017–18, an estimated 2 in 3 (67%) Australians aged 18 and over were overweight or obese (36% were overweight but not obese, and 31% were obese). That’s around 12.5 million adults” and this is the link. I am not a small person, I am well above 3XL. Shops like Kathmandu, David Jones, Country Road and a hell of a lot more they will not cater beyond 2XL. Now consider that they are all catering to one third of the population, how screwed up is that? It is like they merely cater to a margin and let the rest drown in rainwater. It is not the first time I witnessed this, but it is the first time I was in actual need of something waterproof and the shops told me in no uncertain way to stop being a fat fuck. It is not that three heart attacks are not motivational. It is not the fact that my medication has side effects. But it is the shops who knowingly and intentionally set the premise of discrimination. In 5 other shops visited I got the same news “We do not have anything beyond 2XL”, so when these places get some kind of bankruptcy deal, I will be happy to register a complaint that such places are not eligible for protection due to a matter of discrimination. And it is time for the governments to make sure that this rule is stamped on the premise of application for bankruptcy. It is time for those who walk on margins to lose their appeal. Yes, I do get it, it might merely be me (and 67% of the rest of Australians), but it is happening all over Europe, all over the US and in many other places. Those above 2XL are not allowed to be fashionable, why is that? 

Why is the stage that we merely learn about inferno, yet Purgatory and Paradise are stricken from the stage of learning? In a stage where a complete body of work is important a stage of partial filtering, a form of dedicated discrimination is merely allowed and merely overlooked by too many.

As such when you can no longer get a complete set of Harry Potters, a complete set of Dune books.  How long will it take for people to realise that filtering has been part of their lives for decades. They might not realise it, they might not care, but when the missing parts become adamant, how will people react? 

Go to a store and you will find 38 David Bowie albums ranging from $10 to $55. And yes limited editions are a bit more expensive, there is no objection to that. Yet now seek the Soundtrack to Dune, that has become import only for $55. When we seek a game like NHL22, we see none in Australia, and it makes sense. Yet you cannot order it either. Yet the game store in Canada does have NHL22, and they offer it $40 cheaper for PS5. We are already being filtered. We are becoming redacted as margins and in an age of online shops this does not make sense. Yes, we get it, no EBGames in Australia will have a stock of the stuff, but not to be able to order it? And it is not the first time this is happening. We see more and more filtering of goods, limiting what we are ‘allowed’ to buy as a consumer. Try getting a cricket game in Belgium or Sweden. Yes, they will have NHL, hockey is big in Sweden, but the filtering is on the road, it is growing and it is taking global proportions. We accept it to some degree, that is logic, but when the margins of logic are bordering our movements? When will we shout out? Dedicated discrimination is as dangerous as filtering the news, the problem is that not everyone sees it that way and when it is too late, it will merely be too late. A stage of choice is moving all over the place, but the question becomes, who is making the choice, and who is making choices FOR us? 

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April 7, 2022 · 16:16

Creating magic

There is an old saying, take a technologically advanced people, show their abilities to a non evolved people and they will consider this magic. This is not new, it was done in the 19th century, it was done in the 18th century and so forth. Yet, the people look at the Harry Potter series, going off like Vernon Dursley stating “There is no such thing as magic” but they would be wrong, magic is more than waving a wand, it is creating true innovation. There is a place in New York (The Cauldron NYC Magical Pub), and it is not alone. I saw a video on YouTube (not sure which place it was) and it inspired me to create a printable display. Yes, a display that is printed and can be of almost any dimension. So is it magic? Well, no, not in the sense that some believe it to be, and no wand waving was required. But today, as I was watching The Secrets of Dumbledore, I had an idea. In this third Fantastic beasts movie, there was another altercation with Giggle-water. The altercation was between the water and Dan Fogler (the water won). But it got me thinking. What if there I giggle-water?

Consider that in the old days dentists used laughing gas. It was Nitrous oxide. Now consider the Sodastream concept (it has been out long before Sodastream existed), but what if we can induce it like a soda charge, we mix it into a water-like substance. Perhaps a water with a grape-juice quality and add the Nitrous oxide into this. Would it work? I do not know, I never tried it, but consider the tens of millions of Harry Potter fans. How many of them would try giggle-water? 

I feel certain most of them would try it, so if there is a chest and soda maker who can get this to work, he could be multimillionaire overnight and corner another end of the food chain. I am not doing it as it does not play to my strengths, and I guarantee you that this would not be a strength. Does it exist at present? I do not think so, or it would be in every supermarket. But I wonder who has been digging into this direction? I do not know, it is just another crazy idea that is going through my mind. After todays debacle, almost drowning whilst walking the street, having to avoid bull sharks in North Sydney because it was so wet that the sharks can now swim all over Sydney, the idea popped into my head as I was avoiding the snapping jaws of a shark. Well, crazier things have happened, but not in Sydney, not today. I felt more rain drowning me between 07:30 and 09:00 than all the rains over the last 17 years, so my day was pretty screwed up.

At least I had another crazy idea you get to see here and I reckon that after a nap with a lemon grog, I might have something more up my sleeve. 

Smell you later!

 

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April 7, 2022 · 01:00

Home is where the dagger lands

Yes, a weird expression, it derives from ‘home is where the heart is’ (aka the office), and ‘drive the dagger home’ (aka to push the blade the deepest), and when you combine them you set the start of something rather dark. The idea (not the most tastiest of idea’s) hit me. Yes, we can make fun of the Russians a bit more and when we consider the things they are doing at present to Ukrainians, the idea has a weird sense of completion.

You see, we see all the teenagers live and relive the life of the call of duty. I think it is over the top, but then I am no longer a teenager, so I cannot identify. Now for the setting. When we consider the setting in Ukraine. We have so much material, through drones, through satellites and through many other means. So lets create a game that funds the teenager needs and the revenue will go towards rebuilding Ukraine (taxing oligarchs 100% will not be enough), but we have more, we can do it at the expense of the Russian Army. The powerful Russian bear who was made the bitch of Paddington bear (voice acted by Volodymyr Zelenskyy). As such, my mind started to wander and I suddenly realised that it was done before, but never before with live feeds that were translated to a game. So consider the image below

We get the street in a game now, the tank intact and you are a simple infantry rocket operator. As the tank goes to his demise (and you fire the rocket) reality takes over and the scene you see above becomes a reality. The points (be getting it as close to reality) will unlock new weapons, new places and new challenges. You can evolve into a group of soldiers, on route to stop Russians. Infantry, cavalry, and airforce. Not all will be set to an image, there will be other stages (you still playing the Ukrainian side) and when you resolve all the war scenes, you get to have a selfie with Putin.

It is a new setting towards war games. Yes the challenge towards the game remains, but it is time to show what the horror of war is and Ukraine has had its share of horror. Hospitals, civilian buildings and you are there as an angel of vengeance taking out the enemy forces. It is just an idea, but we never had this situation, so I do not merely want some game, I need there to be an educational side. People need to see, second hand what the horror of war is and this is as good an idea as anything else. As I said, it is just an idea, but so far no one else seems to be getting them, so I might as well put it here and see what the call of duty developers can make of it. It is not my cup of Ouzo. 

You see, the part that people do not realise is that the army that is rated 21st on the scale of power is defeating the nations number 2 largest army in the WORLD. I truly think that people have no idea what the Ukrainians are achieving here and with the inhumane slaughter of Ukrainian civilians by Russian forces, the stage is growing quite dark, so it is time for people to get a real sense of just how impossible that achievement is and my mind is set as a gamer, a game might wake up the people seeing that what Ukraine is achieving is close to impossible, and that matters. It matters a whole lot.

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