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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April 6, 2022 · 19:57

The three day delay

Yes, it is not new, I had my go on this a few times, yet due to what we see now, after three days, it is time to renew this event. It started basically in 2014, the Yemen war became something serious and the west had no idea how to react. They reacted poorly and to make matters worse, events driven by Iran was kept out of the news. The people got a one sided story. Over time weapons sales went stale, were blocked and the defence of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was a setting of debate by people who had no clue what was going on, because the ego trippers needed their Iran peace accord through a nuclear deal, something that even now is still not done. Matters became worse when the west decided to spin the events around Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. So even as the press al invoked “By 16 November 2018, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had concluded that Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi’s assassination.” In this that the CIA stated that is was highly likely that this had happened, but no evidence was EVER brought to light. No evidence that could survive the rigours of academic investigations. The essay by the United Nations did not help any, that is for certain. Then we get the hack of Jeff Bezos, a disgracefully inadequate report by FTI Consulting. It is important to take notice of the Verge (at https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/23/21078828/report-saudi-arabia-hack-jeff-bezos-phone-fti-consulting) that also gives us “Facebook’s former chief security officer Alex Stamos, for example, said that there was “no smoking gun” in the report. Some researchers said that FTI should have been able to analyze the encrypted file that the crown prince sent Bezos which reportedly hacked his phone. And one said he didn’t see evidence in the report to suggest that Bezos’ phone was hacked.” I believe that Jeff got hacked, but there is no clear evidence WHO did the job, but there were some wannabe reporters that were really happy to blame the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Even though several newspapers earlier that week showed that certain hacks allowed people to pretend they were someone else, and that too is missing from the FTI report. 

So we have all these negativity, projected on the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and now the US wants a favour? You have got to be shitting me!

So we get back to the article where we see “Why should America’s regional allies help Washington contain Russia in Europe when Washington is strengthening Russia and Iran in the Middle East?” And this is the larger folly, a stage where the wrong people cater to Iran, all whilst they require other stuff too, but you cannot get it both ways and now that China is stepping in gobbling up billions upon billions in sales and services, we see the US in a stage of denial. They now need cheap oil, all whilst the two largest suppliers are set to the mind that premium prices will do just as well. And I warned for these situations for years, but everyone was in denial. It would never come to that and now that it is coming to that, the US, the EU and others are in denial on what is required. So at present the oil prices are on the rise, just for how long is impossible to say, yet we also acknowledge that reserves are being used to stop the rise. Just how long until that stops? What do you think will happen when the reserves are gone, because most nations do not have that much in reserve. They can avoid the winter this year, but that will drain the reserves and even as they can build up some of those reserves during summer, winter 2022 will show to be the year that people will need to choose, be warm, avoid hunger and pay rent/mortgage and there is every consideration that many households will only be able to do one of the three, two if they are lucky. 

That is the direct impact of catering to the populist view, the price of adjusting one view for another, one deciding on what was likely, not what could be proven, ignoring what was proven (Iran attacks) and catering to something that is still not a reality (Iranian nuclear agreement) and Iran has clearly been catered to and now the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE are telling you all that enough is enough. You want oil at a premium, you got it and at a premium means that within the next 12-15 weeks oil prices might get back to the $130 marker, at that point, how much will it cost you to get groceries, to get to work, to get home and to refuel? All that whilst these two nations are now looking at China to deliver defence systems. Slap upon slap upon slap and now 19 hours ago we were given ‘Iran Says U.S. Is Responsible for Stalled Talks on Reviving Nuclear Deal’, another fiasco and the involved political players are all in hiding as not to get painted with that fiasco. So when you wonder what happened to the oil prices, it is simple. Your government royally screwed up and gave you the bill for their failure. 

So good luck with that.

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April 5, 2022 · 23:37

In preparation

We all prepare, but how do we do that? There are games, there are tests, there are challenges and we seem to accept some, we reject others. I see how many reject the setting of what the Russians are up to, I even see how Americans would prefer Putin over Biden, with settings that is in denial of truth, in denial of facts. A way of thinking totally impossible 40 years ago is now the foundation of failing in America. Yet, I wonder not about that. To be true, I wonder what parts are real and what are not. Not in the case of the Russian slaughter in Ukraine. Bellingcat put online the Russian actions of shooting a person on a bicycle, on a bicycle no less. But what tests do you rely on? I for one took the Pottermore test whilst waiting for Hogwarts Legacy.

In this I will be wielding a Hawthorn wood with a Unicorn core 14 ½” and a Hard flexibility wand. I have a hedgehog patronus and I am in house Ravenclaw. So for the game I am ready. Yet what happens when the next game comes along? What happens when someone takes the Divergent series and creates a new world looking like something you see in the Last of us (without the altered enemies). To create that world the 5 factions become reality, yet here you are a different person, here you can take over (possess) any Candor, Abegnation, Dauntless, Erudite or Amity. Yet the choice allows for progress like a dungeon keeper, to let the dungeon take care of itself. The people unaware of you, you are merely a hand in growing a community. Finding places in a discovered city. Showing knowledge, exploring weapons, so the city cannot be safe in the beginning. Animals that are hungry and even as slaughter seems the only option in the beginning, later on it seems like one of many solutions. The guardians, the intelligent and the honest setting a stage for the peaceful and the selfless to grow to unparalleled greatness. 

It seems we have a likeness of tests, especially from movies or books we enjoy to set a larger station for ourselves. Something we can brag about to our friends. Like the master of their Minecraft, ready to show others what you have done and the group never stops growing. As you find people with likeminded goals you share and that pushes for other sides too. Sides I am not entirely ready to reveal here, because I want Amazon (Luna) and Google (Stadia) to have the advantage (and to show Microsoft their inability) to show what others cannot see. And it is here that we see the larger station of streaming growing, not merely by playing, but by embracing that what the gamer loves. What the gamer drives and even as that is not the setting that grows the amount of people to any console, it does give the world the image that the gamer wants to show the world. All this is set through streamers and their station towards perfecting their profile, the gamers presentation to the internet. I do not think that Sony ever realised how close to perfection they were and then with the PS4 and later they dropped it completely. Unaware what they lost and now in the next phase it seems that several players have all the options at their corner. 

We want to look prepared, we want to be the one in the middle and we forgot that there are several ways to get there. Not all of them requiring the slaughter of civilians, not all of them require to be a fan of everything, yet in case of some games, the option to be more than a player of the game is expected. But who will accomodate? Who will do that to a larger station than it is now? Sony bungled it from PS4 onwards, but it is not too late, it is not completely lost, and in the stage we see online with splinter groups, for the consoles to keep THEIR splinter group safe is becoming increasingly important.

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April 5, 2022 · 19:13

The joke that was once CCCP

I grew up in the aftermath of the cold war. My friends and myself, my street friends as well as myself, we feared Russia, we worried about what they were able to do. Russia was regarded as very dangerous. Then the 90’s came. The stories of collaboration came, the stories of acceptance came and we rejoiced in part. There was an option of co-existence. We rejoices and we saw and hoped for the best. And for 30 years that continued. At some point there were sides in me that had a pro-Russian side. I abhorred the Chechen attack on Moscow civilian buildings. There was a side we all saw that Russia was not as bad as the Americans made them out to be. An afterthought of McCarthyism and I was wondering if America would ever learn their one sided hatred.

March 2022
The Ukrainian invasion is going on for about a week, for about a week we have questions, we wonder what set this in motion. What did the EU do, what did NATO do? But there is no clear answer and within a week we get to see the other side, the side that sanctifies the position of America. At present a dozen sources show me the Putin monster. The Russian acts of crime, transgressions of the articles of war, transgressions of humanitarian war and we see this all happen and we see governments do too little, or nothing at all. They send equipment, they send hardware, they send software but the Ukrainians fight by themselves (largely) and the 21st largest army on the planet is pushing back the second largest army in the world. The Russia we feared is losing hardware, people and morality. They lose on much larger scales than ever expected and Russia merely changes what the truth is on their TV stations and via trolls all over the world. There are some who fights these parties, but too little of them are there to make sure the people get to see the truth. The Guardian gave us in one instance “He said in one interview: “You see these atrocities and you are still not ready to do anything to make Putin lose his appetite for these atrocities. How can you sleep if you find strong words after these pictures, but do nothing? What else should happen so that the toughest sanctions are put on the table? Chemical attacks, or what is it you are waiting for?”” What is it you are waiting for is a generic question, it applies to governments as well as others and it applies to a lot of governments. Russia is done for. It could start a nuclear war, but all nations will turn on Russia that much they do know. China will not act until provoked but when they do it will be the end of Russia and it is not even close to the near end. 

The BBC gives us ‘Ukraine war: The Syrians signing up to fight for Russia’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-60931180) there we are given “Social media in Syria has been flooded with requests for people to join Russian troops in return for up to $7,000 for deployment” how long do you think Russia can set this game? If these troops get paid after 6 months, they are stupid and they will die stupid, their families will get nothing. If they get paid ahead and they hand it to their families, the Ukrainians will end their lives and we will see two parts, A Syria without men, women with money and nowhere to go and Russia with even more debt. And that is not the end. Nations like the Netherlands are showing themselves to have too many pro-Putin people in too powerful places and that should worry NATO, when FVD party leader Thierry Baudet states that there is no Russian aggression. When we see the dozens of photographs, the cadavers burned, shot in the streets, the setting of a government too dangerous to be part of any decision maker stream involving NATO. There is a clear stage that this merely involved 2-3 people, but they have too much power and any intelligence going to Russia is not acceptable. We need to set a much stronger example and we need to make sure that politicians, just like the WW2 NSB politicians are set to example. If they want to run to Russia fine, but they better leave fast and no argument on ‘the stage of nuance’ will be accepted, not when one states “there is no Russian aggression” and we see dozens of photographs, videos of civilian bombings, shooting of civilians in the streets will be accepted as some form of nuance. I will personally hang that traitor in a tree and if I have to spend the rest of my life in jail for that, then so be it. 

And we are nowhere near the end yet. You see the Russian army is about to become a joke, a bad one at that and the deployment of Syrian troops in Ukraine merely because the Russians do not have the ability makes me wonder why we were ever nervous about Russia. It makes me wonder what the Russians are about, when they have such a political and military engine, when they openly and knowingly support inhumane actions against civilians, what is left of a once proud nation is not worthy of writing down. I believe that Piers Morgan stated it best “How much of a cowardly society have we become?” As I see it, the Russian bear was defeated buy Paddington bear and the other nations were for the most on the sidelines watching. And lets not forget, their inactions is what Russia is using to gain Syrian fighters and that is the next round of slaughter we get to see and it is clear that Putin is not about diplomacy, it is to satisfy the need for blood, to make sure that if Ukraine wins, it will be on the premise of scorched earth. 

And we all have front row tickets to watch these events unfold. 

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April 4, 2022 · 21:56

And a little more

Part 2
Back in London was weird, it all felt the same, but it was not, he could not put his finger on it, but there was something different about London. The city seemed a little more bleak than usual, colours seemed a little faded and he could not understand why. But he had the scroll, and it gave him the elements he needed, and there was a truth there too. He had heard of the Amanita Caesarea, but he had never seen one, they were told to be very rare indeed and essential to the potion. It would take some time to find these. It was then that the mirror seemed to shine different. He walked to the mirror and saw a face that was unknown to him. “I am Hypnos, Hades asks that you find the chest that held the gem you found. It will be under water. It is an important chest. In addition, a deal made with a afreet cannot be broken, you must comply with the request given to you” the image faded as the mirror turned back to normal. As such he would be on route to Crete soon enough. But first he needed to find the materials and set the stage to create the potion he needed. Then he saw the stage that was unfolding. The book was related to it all, but how was unclear to him. 

Part 3
Elounda was nice, pleasant and sunny. He looked over the waters and saw an island. It was Spinalonga, a plague island. He was watching the water and using his Olympian gaze to inspect the waters. He was sitting there for minutes and then he saw the sparkle. A sparkle of darkness and he knew he had found what he was looking for. He saw no one around there and he contemplated to go into the water, but refrained. The sun would go under in less than an hour. He went to a taverna near the water, ordered moussaka, Greek wine and an Ouzo. He ate, he drank and he relaxed. It was 2 hours later when he silently went into the water, he looked around him and no one was looking, he swam to the point and took a dive, he sank to the bottom like a rock. He saw the dark sparkle and saw that it emanated from a box, he took the box and went back to the shore. He looked around and he was still not noticed. He walked back to the hotel and put on some dry clothes. He looked at the box and saw inscriptions that were unfamiliar to him and when he was done looking at it, he put it in the safe spot, where all the other things were. He went to bed and fell asleep quite quickly. Tomorrow he would return to London, but something stopped him from contemplating events. Things did not add up and he needed time to assess all the things he had done. The cogs were not aligned and he saw the first stage of a clock so large that it kept records on a lot more than the hours, the days, the moon and the planets. For a second he saw a clock massive in size, a clock with a dozen arms but he could not tell what some of the arms represented. He had to think it over and consider what he was becoming part of.

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April 4, 2022 · 01:24

The continuation

Yes, I stopped hours ago as I needed to mull things over. So lets continue the previous story.

Part 1
It was late in the afternoon when he arrived in Sadr al Yusufiyah, he moved towards the river, the Euphrates as his eyes were set on the river, he noticed two things, the first was a hotel, a place to stay, it was quite near there that he saw a cemetery, there was a strange vibe coming from that place. He would need to check it out. First he went to the hotel to check in. He was quite surprised on the treatment he got, he was approached like royalty, but he knew not why. It was not the money, he could not figure it out. He went to his room and sat down on a small balcony. The chair was comfortable enough and whilst he took a drink from his canteen, he looked at the surroundings. It all seemed normal, but there was something there, he noticed some of the people who treated him weird, they seem normal now, and they were not looking towards him, but their actions were unnatural, so he opened his view on the world, a more olympian view and he noticed that they were all displaying the smallest shimmer of green, then his gaze went towards the cemetery and the green gaze was definitely stronger. He waited until the sun was nearly down and he quietly snuck out towards the cemetery. 

It was there that he saw that it was not a large cemetery, and there was nothing to set it apart, but he did notice a small well nearby, as he approached the green gaze became quite strong and before he knew what happened, a man appeared right by the well, his eyes clearly red. “I am Zuhal, I am afreet. What do you want Olympian?” He was taken aback from that, it was the first time he was addressed by his connection, by anyone else but an Olympian. He looked at the man, I came here as I saw a wall, it held the names Eleusís and Nabu. They led me here. I seek the potion that was used in the Eleusinian Mysteries. This is why I am here. The afreet nodded. Openness is not what Olympians are famous for. I will hand you the list of ingredients, yet one element is not to be found here, not in the land of sands, I cannot say where it can be found. And the Afreet gave him a list. He continued “You now owe me a favour” I need to contemplate how you can aid me, but I will send message to you. He nodded to the afreet, I accept the terms he stated. He then asked “What is the green glare on people?” They are my minions, they keep me informed and they go about their business. One more thing, Eleusís is a lot older than anyone thinks, there is reason for that and perhaps you learn it, perhaps not. And as easy as the afreet came, the afreet vanished. 

He looked at the scroll, it looked majestic, the scroll opened for him and he saw the Arabic names, he would have time to examine them. He quietly opened his personal vault and put the scroll in there. He walked back to the hotel to get some sleep and he would return to London tomorrow.

Part 2
To be continued

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April 3, 2022 · 14:09

And then there were three

This story starts a bit flaky. It started a little while ago, but today I saw Morbius and that clicked with a few other thoughts. The movie was OK, it was not great but I never read those comics, so I went in blind. The acting was good, the special effects were nice and there are two disadvantages, the first that it come across as an origin story and the second is that I never read those comic books. As such, I believe that those who read those comics are a much better source of criticism. Yet still it gave me food for thought, food from sources decades ago. You see it takes me back to the comic Dracula.

I was not the biggest fan, I read a few, not all and one thing stood by me. At the end of one of these stories Dracula says “You forgot, even demon’s have nightmares, in those nightmares it is me they see”, it is not a literal translation, but it comes close. You see, we think that the darkness is scared of the light, it is not, it fears a deeper darkness. You see if it was the light they feared there would have been an outright war between forces of light and forces of dark. But the dark fears a deeper darkness, it is where they cannot see, that is where their fears lie. This fear goes back to the age that preceded ancient Greece. And that is where I am now (to some degree). 

Part 0
It was a sunny Sunday and I have been living is relative quiet for some time. He had been living in London for a few months now and most of the day, hours in the morning, the afternoon and the evening he was bend over a book he had received. In-between these moments he went to the foodcourt in Harrods, walked on Regent street and let the noises of London infest him. It brought a lull to his mind that he rather enjoyed. Day after day reading Ἐλευσίνια Μυστήρια’ (see Another episode) was taking its toll. He had read as much as he could on Eleusis, he had studied maps, he had even been digging into the stories of Demeter and the search for her daughter. A much larger setting that had connections all over, but he was not able to see them yet. There were links to longevity of the Eleusinian Mysteries, with connections to a consistent set of rites, ceremonies and experiences that spanned millennia, and it all seemingly came from psychedelic drugs. The problem here was that the drugs were unknown, or at least they were not in the book, making matters a little bit of a problem. There was in addition the small sentiment that Eleusís, seemed to be Pre-Greek, and that name was inclined to be linked to the goddess Eileithyia. A daughter of Zeus and Hera, but if the town was pre-Greek, there was more to all this and that was a rather large damper to the party, because what was still in existence that was pre-Greek? He was about to give up when he walked into the British Museum. He was walking and taking in the art it displayed when he noticed something, he was about to walk away when something within him told him to look deeper. He was staring at the the roaring lion from King Nebuchadnezzar and he suddenly noticed two words in there. It was faint, it as in the mortar and it was behind the stones. He had to stare longer to make the words out, The words were Eleusís and Nabu. Nabu was known to him, he was Mesopotamian, not Greek, what was the daughter of Zeus and Hera doing there? 

As clues go, it was slither thin, but between thin and nothing he would take thin any day and now he had a new path to walk on. Where would it lead?

Part 1
To be continued…

Yes, it needs continuation and this is not a cliffhanger. It was as far as I got. You see, if despair opposes hope, what drives either? Consider a simple clock, the cogs that make the seconds move and form a circle in EXACTLY 60 seconds, now consider the minutes that are pushed one part forward every t60 seconds and 60 minutes later an hour will have passed. The setting of a clock. Now set that machine up to reflect hours, days, months moon setting (28 days) and years. A clock that does not ever stop and has been precise for millennia. That is the clock we need to find, because the Olympians have no concept of mortality. They are here forever, and that drives both despair and hope. You see a person that never fears anything has nothing to look forward to, that person is merely passing time. Eternity is the harshest taskmaster we could ever fear to face. And we must fear eternity, the Olympians certainly did. And there is the rub, there is the setting. If Eleusís is the goddess of childbirth, who is one the other end? Not the fates, not Hades and no one knows who is there and that is the setting towards a path we find ourselves on. 

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April 3, 2022 · 00:01

The package and….

That was the setting I faced when watching GameRant giving us ‘Amazon Luna: How Many Games Are Included?’ (At https://gamerant.com/amazon-luna-games-how-many/), basically for $10 a month you get access to 134 games. Consider that I buy less than a dozen games a year, that is a decent deal and lets not forget that the Amazon Luna just started. I had to giggle intensely when I saw the Ubisoft+ option for $17.99. There we see three titles I can get for $10 (all three), Odyssey can be bought for about $15, Valhalla is $39, and that list goes on (like the Division 2 for $15), so as such, not that great a deal. Games priced down as they were old news and glitchy to boot. But the start (for non Ubisoft games) is there. I set out in previous articles at least half a dozen additional titles and Amazon has optional additional paths to walk with the Luna. It might seem like a small stage, but it is the beginning to surpass the Google Stadia, it also sets the stage to close the gap to whatever Microsoft has and surpass that. 

Forbes adds to that the free games you can claim (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2022/03/30/here-are-the-amazon-prime-gaming-free-games-for-april-2022/) and there are a few beauties there. Of course, we all remember Oblivion, but there are plenty of people who never played it. This is important. We look at the games out there and think it is ‘old’ news, but I have been in gaming since 1984, so I have pretty much seen it all. Those who are just starting do not need to get bogged down by the faltering Ubisoft philosophy. There is a whole range of games out there that are forgotten, its IP abandoned, yet it does not need to be and there is a nice side to it, they are able to bring a whole range of joy to players, mainly ingle player ones, but that does not need to be the case. There is one problem, where does Amazon want to be? It matters, because there is a setting in the subscription where we see “Retro, Family and Luna+”, there is wisdom in focussing on one element at a time. You see Nintendo is an established family brand, so there is a danger there. I am not stating that they should abandon it, I am stating that Amazon needs to play to its strengths. Luna+ with 134 games is a strength and adding a dozen of so titles in 2022 will add to strength. Yes, there is Microsoft boasting its game pass (for $15.95/month) making it 50% more expensive and as you see in many places, it is trying to fight Sony with its $119.99 annually (or $12 a month), and if that is not enough we also are given ‘Microsoft is moving ahead with an Xbox Game Pass Family Plan’, yes the king of spin is all about the message, but the rumblings are all over the place and it does not bring peace of mind. Microsoft is already moving to a new stack of attacks (Nintendo) all whilst Nintendo is feeling comfortable and perky. They have proven themselves a dozen times over, so Microsoft is not an issue for them. Sony is doing great, even as Microsoft is not releasing sales numbers, and they make claims that they are focussing on the Game pass, I wonder where they are playing that on, especially as they are ‘losing’ to Sony in a near 2.5:1 setting. Then we see that the younger players are smashing it on the Nintendo Switch At present they are at 91,000,000 Switch consoles sold. This implies that there is a chance that they are close to neck on neck with Sony and the Nintendo-Microsoft sales are (by some) estimated to be 10:1, a horrifying defeat for Microsoft. And that is the player you trust for a game pass? Lets be clear, the game pass is a really good deal, but it needs to be said that it cannot be the deciding factor for buying that console. Not when Sony and Nintendo are that far ahead of Microsoft. Yes, we saw the great news on how Microsoft is pouring billions into gaming, but the numbers do not add up, this is about data collection and a game pass and always online offer a great data collector stage. 

As such Microsoft is already clearly in a mere 3rd position, and now we see Amazon Luna slowly growing. I reckon that by December 2024 Microsoft is a mere 4th position player and that is before any deal between Amazon and Google is considered, at that point Microsoft will be a distant 5th, hoping to be counted among the gamers, but that group has had enough of the spin they were presented. 

Luna is about to become a contender and they have a setting and option to become a top three console and that opens up doors, doors for games and doors for a larger Luna station usage as long a they play to their strengths. As I see it, as long as they play an open game with their consumers they have the option to go a very long way, showing Microsoft yet again that spin is nice for internal messaging, but the gamers are catching on and Ubisoft was never part of any of these solutions. 

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April 2, 2022 · 13:16

Giggle, giggle, laugh, laugh

We all have moments of comedy. We all have that moment that touches us, some in good ways, some not so. For the most I avoided a lot of the Will Smith issues. It was for the most a very personal one. I saw 1-2 clips in the beginning, because I never watched it live, and it was extremely unlike Will Smith to do what he did (as far as he has been illuminated), so that was my first moment that I got introduced to alopecia, until the slap I had never heard of it and there we see the part that bites a lot of us. We like comedy, we enjoy it, but to make fun of someones disease is a very dangerous act and a professional like Chris Rock should have seen that coming. I am a mere amateur in the giggle department. I have made fun of people at times. There was the Mattel case, they launched the Gamer of Throne characters. Jon Snow with sword and cape (Kit Harrington), Daenerys Targaryen with cleavage and a dragon on her shoulder (Emilia Clarke) and not to forget Tyrion Lannister played by Peter Dinklage, the only life sized figurine Mattel ever released. Talking about Peter Dinklage, in one movie he plays an attorney, complete with pew. Awesome, brilliant defence (aka excellent written script), but then the nightmare begins, in comes Vin Diesel, hair on his head. It took took two bottles of Buspirone, just to get me back to hysterics.  Humour is seen in many forms, in many shapes and many directions. I have no issues with this level of humour. I see no issue coming in a car with the license plate made by Hillary Duff (a Ricky Gervais smirk). 

Yet, when I think of Kenny Baker I feel sadness, we lost him too early (he was 81). You see, we missed out on a legendary moment that did not come. In 1970 the UK launched Catweazle (and his frog Touchwood), I still think of that character 50 years later every now and then. I believe that Kenny Baker could have surpassed that achievement for another 50 years and lets be clear, Geoffrey Bayldon did an amazing job. There are moments that touch our hearts, Catweazle touched us in many ways, but comedy has an equal option to hurt us by touching all. And Chris Rock went there. Even a person like Will Smith, with heart armour that the claws of Wolverine cannot scratch, the arrow of Chris Rock did the job and there lies the rub, when someone loves his partner and family to such a degree there will be fallout. Not all of it good, but Hollywood wants its shock moment so that they can sell the event on to next year and now that I see the news that Will Smith has resigned the Academy, accepting whatever the disciplinary hearing will bring. It is time for the other side to come as well. You see the Academy forgot about the other side. They could have blown it off with a stage of steam and high emotions, they could have simmered it down as a comedian made one wrong joke, a joke on the disease of someone’s partner. They want the full furlong, so let me give them something to think about.

I hereby plead to all who see this, to all who forward this. If any consequence sticks to Will Smith that we all avoid the 2023 Oscars. We can watch the BAFTA’s, we can see the Tony’s, Grammy’s and others, but the Oscars next year we give a miss. That is my request and do not worry of forgetting, the media will milk the slap every year for years to come and when the viewers stay away the Academy will have some thinking to do. We all saw #OscarsTooWhite, we see message after message but we do not act, it is time to act. So give the Oscars a miss in 2023 when the Academy chastises, or give career consequence to Will Smith. Lets see how that goes over with the money hungry tycoons in Hollywood. There is only so much one person can take and Will met that point, it is time for the exploiters and milkers to feel a bit of that too, when the money moves away, watch them smile it away, laugh it away, giggle it away like a bad joke, but then it will be about the complexities. So lets do that, it is merely a request, you can do what you want, that has always been your right. But ask yourself, if you have a family member who dies of the big ‘C’ and it was because a neon sign stating ‘Curry’ fell on that members head, will you laugh it off?

Consider that part of the equation. 

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April 1, 2022 · 19:10

The path overlooked

It is not some highway, it is. path, optionally regarded as a dirt road and we all overlook it. I did too, it was when I was dabbling with some arcane glyphs that the path opened to me, it was not some simple path, it has curves, it has a few potholes but it leads to billions (intentional plural). A stage I never considered and many with me represents billions and it is there for the taking. Amazon is the clearest path, but Google could wander onto that path too. Either stands to take home billions, but the one who wanders there first will have a clear advantage. Because it is all linked to resources and resources when gone are just gone. So there will be one clear winner and if I had to put money on either, I reckon it would most likely be Amazon. In the era of a new Xena we see the stage go from Hippolyta to whomever becomes the new militant wench. As stated, Amazon has a clear advantage here and I am refraining to write it all down here.  Simple, if it is a really good idea, you do not give it away for free. But I am not greed driven. So whomever buys the first IP bundle (which is priced at $50,000,000, including the Canada clause) gets this idea separately for 5% of the IP and trade value, no fee required for this IP but it is linked to the first bundle which allows the owner to sell 50,000,000 consoles with one software idea. That makes it $1 per console, there is of course a 10% IP and sales value linked to the first and second bundle, but that is fair dinkum. And because I believe in fairness, Microsoft cannot apply, they miss out. They are now in a position to prove that I was wrong, that they know what they are doing. Of course they do not and I will prove I am right, but the taste is so much sweeter when Microsoft ends up in 5th position with their console, behind Sony, Nintendo, Amazon and Google. The smell of my victory is nearly there and that is merely the beginning. I need to do nothing about their Surface thingamajig, Apple took care of that giggle. I need not act on their cloud solution, Amazon with AWS is already way past them there. I merely need to hand Adobe their incentive plan and Microsoft will lose a chunk of their 365 cloud office and they will lose more soon thereafter. It is not that they missed a path, they missed highway after highway and their marketing spin will not safe them now. Just the idea of setting the boulder dash in motion and that is not all, the new idea will add a whole lot more losses to some, particularly those who are not part of that solution. Billions upon billions and merely lost because no one was actually looking. And make no mistake, I missed that path just as much as all the others, but I am there now and the others are not. So am I merely late to the party, or am I about to become a trendsetter? I honestly do not know, but it is not out in the open, so I might be a trendsetter. I will let the buyer decide.

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