January 6, 2022 · 17:48

The Community Nexus

This is not the first time I get here, but it is not a repetition either. Some things struck me and I reckon it is time for Sony, Google (Stadia) and Amazon (Luna) to wake up. To be honest, when I saw the earliest presentations by Sony I reckoned that they would be the first to take social networking to a new level, but no. I do not know whether they wanted Facebook to chip in, but after all the settings we saw pass by our screens, the setting is changing that either they start thinking things through, or they will be surpassed by others and it will cost them. Not unlike the Cocoon Network, it needs to have limitations, it needs to be advertisement free and it needs to service the gamers. Anything different might be seen as treason by these gamers and that would be disastrous. In this the idea that mimics Google Plus the most is the most appealing, yet it is not set in stone.

They need to consider a few things. Copy/Paste should be disabled, so that something stated on that cluster stays on that cluster (there will always be workarounds), but that is not the goal. You see the A-social network (Facebook) is full of flamers, trolls and shit stirrers and these networks can do without those. It needs to be clusters where gamers INVITE other gamers, and until the invitation is accepted no one has access. A person can only see other conversations in that cluster, they can copy what THEY added to other clusters, but it is cluster based. Then there are ‘commercial’ clusters. People who keep track of the game-makers like Microsoft, Ubisoft (if it still exists by them), Bethesda and so on. People want to keep track of their favourite games and game makers. People can add achievements and so on, but there needs to be a filter where we only see the achievements by a person that we also have. There should be more, but it needs to be a push station, if we include other means of social networking. It is the one flaw that is still not dealt with and no one has decent option. I reckon that Amazon has the greatest need, so that they can grow faster, but Google should not be sitting on their hands, not on this one. The visibility and growth of a console is versatility and Google dropped the ball twice already. In the first they decided not to produce games, it is not a real failing, but it is a weakness and therefor a threat. Then they let Amazon get close, in a field where they should have had a superior setting they ended up merely on par with Amazon, it still strikes me as odd. And in all this I do not care what Microsoft does, I simply do not trust them. 

And when we think about it, a console with community clusters leading to a nexus or a collection of nexuses was simply the next step and when Facebook screwed themselves over with Cambridge Analytica the others should have made a larger effort, as such Sony dropped the ball with the PS4Pro and the others are till not there, they need to because then Facebook launches Meta all over the place it will be too late for the other players to start and sitting on ones hands in a $200,000,000,000 market is folly even in the most conservative setting. In this Amazon clearly has advantages, but we should not rule out Sony. They need to do something and so far there is no indication that they are getting ready, making their advantage shrink, not by too much, yet any lagging lead is a win for the number 2 through number 5 consoles. That has always been the case and now will be no different.

That station is on the roll, and I reckon that the lack of that choice will hurt the players not ready in 2024. And when we see the carefully phrased denials, as well as the cautiously stated ‘We are working on it’ will be seen by gamers as a negative side in all this, do not take my word, merely watch how the gamers will ask in flammable ways why they were ignored (yet again). I cannot stress this enough. It is time for the consoles and streaming systems to consider what gamers need and where gamers would like to be. In this Twitter and Facebook might be nice, but the people are more and more weary of both of them and that is not a good place to set your console.

We all want to talk about our games and our achievements, but so far the people trying to flame what we do is running into the thousands, and that is causing a larger stage of doubt with gamers. Giving them a safe space is becoming increasingly essential. I see all over Facebook pages where a 17 year old proudly brags what he got done in FIFA and I see dozen hammer that person seconds later. Wouldn’t it be great if that person had a cluster with school and gaming friends and that person could share it just to them? That is the station for an invitation clusters only, and that need is fast and vastly growing, so why Sony never picked up that ball is a little beyond me. The streamers will not have that luxury, that much is clear to me.

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January 5, 2022 · 22:00

When war is the perfect outcome

Yes, it happens. It happens when some consultancy firm sets out the spreadsheet, they crunch the numbers and in all this it would be the perfect solution if war is the outcome. Of course that outcome must not be own its own plate, so these ego trippers need a stage where two others take the short sighted blame for the hindrance and certain people thought it was the best of all outcomes. War comes but it will be on the plates of the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It was for them too good to be true. 

So that is the stage when it illuminates completely, but how did it get started? That is where the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/03/talks-with-iran-on-restoring-2015-nuclear-deal-suspended) comes in. ‘Talks with Iran on restoring 2015 nuclear deal suspended’ a month ago now sounds a lot less nice does it? So from here we go to yesterday where Politico gives us “Diplomats from the U.K., France and Germany noted last week that while they didn’t want to set “an artificial deadline for talks,” there remained “weeks, not months” to restore the accord. A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department said Iran needed to “add real urgency in Vienna.”” A small setting where the ego driven are looking at a stage where they can no longer win, so they cautiously set the stage where they can walk off stating it was all the fault of Iran. Then we get the Times of Israel giving us a mere 11 hours ago (at https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-intel-chief-reportedly-says-restored-iran-nuke-deal-better-than-talks-failing/) “Citing two unnamed ministers who took part in the meeting this week, the Walla news site reported Tuesday that Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva said restoring the 2015 nuclear agreement would provide greater certainty about the limitations on Iran’s atomic activities than if talks between Iran and world powers fall apart.

He also reportedly said a revival of the accord would give Israel more time to prepare for various scenarios of escalating tensions with Iran, and that the Jewish state would be in a better position to gear up for such possibilities.” A mere setting where a General has a delusional state where some level of agreement with Iran is possible. 

So as you wonder where this is going, let me add my own quotes from ‘Iranium, the product’ from November 2020, where I stated “a peaceful solution? They have enough nuclear material to fuel EVERY NUCLEAR REACTOR on the planet. They have one and they are building two, so how peaceful are their intentions? Anyway, I will set the correct stage of my snow globe idea to the internet if they make the wrong move, and they will make the wrong move. And in all this, the larger stage is still ignored, so whilst we are lulled to sleep by people like Rafael Grossi, who are “determined to continue working with the international community to preserve the JCPoA”, all whilst the 1200% of materials held by Iran is not dealt with. All this in a stage where Iran is merely playing for time, and let’s be clear, when Iran ‘accidentally’ misplaces a dirty bomb and it goes off in Tell Aviv, or Riyadh. It will be my option to say Oops, when Evia Miden is shown to have an application that no one considered, it will be my time to say ‘Oops!’, Yet at that point the politicians will make certain that they are absolved from accountability, all whilst they are setting the stage of ‘But Iran is now committed!’, a stage that needs to fall on deaf ears.” So when it is time to look at certain irresponsible and (to what I personally believe to be) incompetent reasonings from Elana DeLozier and Rafael Grossi, all whilst people gave credibility to the statement by Hassan Rouhani, on Al Jazeera 22-Jan-2020 who gave us “I’m telling European countries: we are in the JCPOA. We haven’t withdrawn from the JCPOA. We don’t want to destroy the JCPOA. We are committed to the JCPOA. The reduction in our commitments is according to the JCPOA. If you violate, if you renege on an agreement, you are responsible for all consequences. We are not responsible for the consequences” we now see the clown he is, dragging us through delay after delay. Walking back on agreements and increasing efforts to get as much materials as needed. Well, as I personally see it. I was not willing to wait any longer. Iran is too dangerous, so on December 14th 2021 I gave you all ‘Keeping my promise, part 1’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/12/14/keeping-my-promise-part-1/) where I gave the world the larger stage of how to meltdown an Iranian nuclear reactor, no bombs required. Something needed to be done whilst ego-trippers remained in denial, so that the world would know that someone had enough and when that was loud enough out in the open, both the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would know that they were not alone, others stood with them even as the media would silence as much as possible. 

So whilst the media is all about trivialising things on orders of stakeholders, thee is an increasing amount of people who will no longer accept that. So whilst I understand the need for Mossad’s chief David Barnea to give us “It’s not lost and it’s worth investing time and effort in a dialogue with the Americans about the contents of the agreement,” I personally belief that it is way to late for this and I think that David Barnea understands this. Yet I personally belief that relying on a bankrupt nation (USA) to get anything done was folly from the start, but that might be just me. Iran needed to be stopped, so I made the idea of melting down their reactors public domain. There will always be an overzealous person there trying it out, and it gives state actors a nice excuse. 

When will people learn that Iran will never ever play nice? The fact that I saw this coming a mile away in November 2020, 13 months ago should be an indication that these so called clever people were playing a folly game and everyone was handing the Jack of Spades to the player not in the room whilst all where looking at the ceiling claiming ‘This is not on me’, but we all should know better, it was on them and at som point these names will be prominently staged in an American article asking why they could not succeed, and the deeper the issue now goes the larger that danger for them starts. It now becomes a game of carefully phrased denials, all pointing towards Hassan Rouhani, whilst they already know they are equally guilty, they enabled this situation and they all know it.

So now we await for some think-tank giving the world that war was the only perfect outcome, as long as the poor poor Americans are not part of this, they want to be the diplomats steering in the aftermath towards a solution, a solution they helped bring about. If you doubt that, consider what I could have known 13 months ago, things the media steered clear from for the longest of times. They are happy to use flames on all kinds of manners, but not this one, someone told them and told too many members of the media. It will be fair to doubt my words, but consider that I gave you all the down-low on goods that were in the media for close to 2 years, but no one saw this coming? How come?

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January 5, 2022 · 00:21

Cyber Security Impressions

Here I am, a little after 23:00. I am in a decent level of agony as I hurt my back and the painkillers do not work, at least it is having no effect. In this I also have been forgoing sleep since Saturday (pain levels tend to do just that). Yet I just had an idea. I just figured out another usage for my 5G devices. A setting to limit and downsize credit card fraud and identity theft. I saw some of the damage a few days ago and it kept it in the back of my head. 

Now, let’s take a little detour to anti viral solutions about two decades ago. In those days one solution was to create thumbprints of every file, the checkmarks would give an indication that a file was optionally infected. 

Now let’s take a step to tomorrow. Most people are wage slaves. Often working from 8am to 8pm, and their routine changes to the smallest degree. Now consider that you could create a thumbprint of your day, not in detail but to some degree. Now consider that the credit card thief would try to make a purchase somewhere in town, but the thumbprint of you will not match up. More important when you set up your daily station and upload that (encrypted) to your bank server your bank can check whether you were anywhere near the purchase. Consider that credit card fraud surpassed $24,000,000,000 in 2018 and it is only getting worse. Yes, you can wait for the bank to return your cash or you can be proactive and that is the station where the daily file is encrypted and it does not have specifics, merely connect points, yet those points will not fit the credit card thief and that is where we can stop him proactively. More important, it could also give banks clues on HOW and more important WHERE the credit card theft was done. Why did no one think of this earlier? Perhaps before 5G the system would be overly taxed. I do not know, I am merely  trying to see if this could be the optional solution and my hardware is already on station to make a mark, yet I am not the only one. Mobile phones could easily have a similar function, so there are alternatives and that is good. This is an issue we should all try to solve, not to simply see if it is a moneymaker. On the other hand preventing loss is also a moneymaking solution, it makes money for banks and it stops YOU from losing money you might optionally not get back, or get back after a long delay. And as this solution gets better it would be near direct resolutions making the thief the loser as we all want it to be.

Now at first it will not be the perfect solution, yet as the people submit more and more thumbprints, deeper learning systems will be able to tell more rapidly and more quickly if the purchase was for real and done by the actual purchase. It could even set the stage where kids cannot go on a spending spree with mommy’s or daddy’s credit card. So far I can only see upsides and that is always nice. I am still trying to see if there are downsides, and perhaps I will find 1-2, but at present there are seemingly none. 

A simple (and painful) day and I found another way to stop credit card theft, what a lovely way to start Wednesday, which started 18 minutes ago.

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January 4, 2022 · 03:28

When it rains it pours

It is a weird expression. You see I grew up in the Netherlands, there we have over 50 words for rain, there are all kinds of rain, so when it rains it doesn’t always pour. But I understand the expression and that is the stage that Ubisoft is in at this point. The amount of negative video’s on YouTube is staggering. I watched one but ignored the rest. The one I watched had a few good points. Nothing I hadn’t mentioned before, yet the larger stage is not merely the mediocre games and the below mediocre approach to fixing stuff. It is the cold hard fact that the last two good games (for me) were AC Origins and Watchdogs Legion. I am not a Rainbow six fan, I (for the most) am not into multiplayer games and there are a few more that do not tickle me, so these games have never been part of any assessment. Yet the bugs in Far Cry 6, Breakpoint, Valhalla and the Division are just too pathetic for words. And that is not the end of it, several sources report on the great exodus. People leaving Ubisoft in droves. A few sources tell us that 5 out of the top 25 from the Far Cry franchise have left, 12 out of the top 50 from the AC Valhalla franchise are gone. In the Ubisoft Toronto and Montreal offices (according to LinkedIn) are now 60 people lighter. So it is not merely the setting at Ubisoft, it is also the larger stage of creativity has left. And recruiters are plucking Ubisoft as an easy target. This is what I call the final nails in a coffin that was once a software great. And I created the concept of new versions of some of the games in a day, and the current franchises are bleeding them dry. Yet I warned of this danger 3 years ago. A year before Valhalla launched, I saw this coming a mile away. OK, the large exodus was a little unseen, but the recruiters picking them clean fits the process, the gaming industry are all vying for a slice of the $200,000,000,000 revenue pile and the best programmers will empower software houses to get a larger share. And all the game makers are greedy, in this Ubisoft fumbled the ball thrice over. With mediocre games, with a toxic work environment and the lack of support and overworking staff. There is no doubt that the end of Ubisoft is coming and when it does Google (relying solely on Ubisoft titles) will be in the wrong place, so There is a larger stage where Amazon will take the race to the checkered flag. 

And all this is before someone realises that I still have a setting where Amazon could sell 50,000,000 Luna’s. Ubisoft was not needed to get that done, so the pile of revenue might actually increase a little more than I expected, but it is speculative, so let’s not blow my own trumpet. This is about Ubisoft. And when you search “Ubisoft + bugs” you get a list that goes on and on, when you filter to only in the last month we still end up with a list that is way to large, especially for a game that has been out for well over a year, those are the nails that seal the coffin of Ubisoft. A stage that was once grande, millions went nuts over AC2 and devoted following was created, but the bugs from AC3 onwards took a little away with every game and a lot with AC Unity. They regained a little trust with AC Origins but wasted that away with AC Odyssey. So even as we now see stories about the next AC not being out until 2023, we need to consider that it is already too late for that. You see people will look at the financials, the stock but that is only the smallest part of the story. The value of Ubisoft is creativity and a boatload of that walked out. Some even mentioned the low pay, so when was that ever a good idea? In one quote we see the mention that Ubisoft has hired 2600 employees since April. That sounds nice in theory, but you need unity (like the title they bungled), that means that each franchise needs its supportive and inspiring heads and 17 out of the 75 top of two franchise walked out, there is every chance that they will also entice the quality programers to follow them, at which point they have two close to empty franchises. So how will they fix that? They can’t, they will be in denial, they will oppose any negativity but this cannot get the marketing spin and in a stage with that much people walking out the slices that would have sealed their share of $200,000,000,000 this year alone will fall away for too large an amount, that implies that Ubisoft stock will take massive hits this year. And when that happens the larger stage becomes a small platform and Ubisoft will need to secure what it can, but in a firm with 18045 employees (2020) will take a few hard hits and with the cream of the crop leaving the larger stage of people, or good people vanishing will go faster and faster. As such Ubisoft has massive problems. Unrelated we see covid, something no one could see coming and even as some thrived under these conditions, it seems that Ubisoft is not doing that well. If it did the exodus would not be there. 

And as I see it Ubisoft does not get to blame covid for these hardships. There was a larger failing visible from AC3 onwards and Far Cry had a few issues from version 4 onwards, with too many in the latest version. Too many issues in only two of the franchises and too little was done. In all this Ubisoft kept on buying software houses and people and left that structure like an empty egg shell and now the softest taps is collapsing that once great software house. And all that is before you add to the hardship with Breakpoint released in July 2019 and still getting massive updates to deal with bugs were announced less than 3 months ago and there are still issues. A repetitive cycle in a stage of games that no one is willing to pay to play. And when the hilarious bugs are seen in AC Valhalla, we see a larger stage of failure. So how will Ubisoft deal with it? Most no longer care and neither do I, Ubisoft was great once, but the errors, the bad judgement and the failures makes me happy that there are good software houses that deliver real treasures. Sony being one, then there is Insomniac Games, we have Guerrilla games and a few more. So why mention these three? These three wanted to be as good as Ubisoft, now or better stated from 2019 onwards these three all surpassed Ubisoft in quality gaming and quality games. The stage at Ubisoft is that bad at present. 

It merely makes me think of that old movie (1969) ‘They shoot horses don’t they?’, I wonder why? (LOL)

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January 3, 2022 · 19:51

The virtual quarterback

We can consider me being the Monday morning quarterback, it would be fair to call me this. I have been for the longest time a champion of science, I believe that not unlike evidence in law, science is the cornerstone of all daily life decisions. So I tend to take sides with science for nearly all cases. Yet today, in opposition of a piece in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/02/britain-got-it-wrong-on-covid-long-lockdown-did-more-harm-than-good-says-scientist) I take another side, the non-scientist setting. I oppose the views of Professor Mark Woolhouse. So feel free to oppose my views, which would be fair enough. But in all matters take a long hard look at some of the things we are handed here today. I believe that not unlike some wannabe journalists who wanted to cash in on Jamal Khashoggi with their fiction view of ‘Blood and Oil’ this professor might be trying to find the same rabbit in a different hat with ‘The Year the World Went Mad: A Scientific Memoir’.

So where do I oppose?
It starts with “I am afraid Gove’s statement was simply not true,” he says. “In fact, this is a very discriminatory virus. Some people are much more at risk from it than others. People over 75 are an astonishing 10,000 times more at risk than those who are under 15.” In March 2020 there was a lot we never knew. Do not forget that the disease was out for only 2-3 months, and it had not spread to the degree it has now. China had no answers, and the people who were responsible for calling this a pandemic did not do so. In addition, the media gave us “This might become a pandemic” all whilst the points of calling it a pandemic had already passed. I wrote about it on February 3rd 2020 in ‘Corona?  I Never touch the stuff!’ (At https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/02/03/corona-i-never-touch-the-stuff/), a month before we see given here. I already saw the pandemic threshold passed, yet most media were in denial with “This might become a pandemic” as such, it seems to me that Professor Mark Woolhouse will have to explain a few things. Then we get to “We did serious harm to our children and young adults who were robbed of their education, jobs and normal existence, as well as suffering damage to their future prospects, while they were left to inherit a record-breaking mountain of public debt” in this is resort to the blunt ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ In the first there was a lot we did not know, and for the longest time there are still questions, so the response I see with “We did serious harm to our children and young adults who were robbed of their education, jobs and normal existence” is something I would like to refer to as bullshit marketing. You see the first peak of daily deaths did not start until April 13th 2020, with 6916 dead people (aka the non-living). 

I found a table from April 2020 from New York. In this table we see 6839 died, but the interesting part is that 5151 cases had an underlying condition and in that case the older you get the higher the chance of an underlying condition, and in that up to 44 years old 312 died. Most with an underlying condition, but there was a lot not known in that setting. More important, there was no vaccine, there was no protection. The Pfizer solution was still in clinical trials in November 2020. And when you start looking at the facts as they were known, I believe that Mark Woolhouse is trimming his own trumpet for the sake of book-sales (a speculative view, but it is my view). 

Were mistakes made?
Yes, of course mistakes were made, they were made all over the world and with the US having an idiot as president in those days did not help much. There was a large void of knowledge and there was a large void of experience, so looking at the facts after the fact does not help much (apparently it might help a certain professor with a book to sell). And in all this the professor does not take into account the anti-lockdown idiots spreading the disease, the ignorant anti-vaxxers adding fuel to the fire and then the people who were ignorant of the way the disease spread going to relative, friends and so forth needing their social moment. 

And in London that is a large powder-keg waiting to explode and now that it is doing just that we see the blame game in effect. So consider the anti-lockdown protest, it only 10 people had it at that point, at least 1000 could have it 3 days later. And everyone remains in denial, oh boo hoo hoo!

So when we get to “the country should have put far more effort into protecting the vulnerable. Well over 30,000 people died of Covid-19 in Britain’s care homes. On average, each home got an extra £250,000 from the government to protect against the virus, he calculates. “Much more should have been spent on providing protection for care homes,” says Woolhouse, who also castigates the government for offering nothing more than a letter telling those shielding elderly parents and other vulnerable individuals in their own homes to take precautions.” Where is the time line? When did we know what we know now and that is before we add the complications of Alpha, Delta and Omicron. And with the last quote “By contrast, we spent almost nothing on protecting the vulnerable in the community. We should and could have invested in both suppression and protection. We effectively chose just one.”

In the first, the government could not afford both paths (slight speculation), there were too many unknown factors and with Omicron raging now, anti-vaxxer idiots and anti-lockdown dumbo’s, how can you protect a community? You can claim you can but stupid people will do whatever they feel like, the vulnerable be damned. That is how people tend to be. 

So this is my view on the matter and it is a rare event when I oppose a scientist, especially a professor, but here I feel it was needed. And I had a few more views concerning covid over that year and last year too. I kept it low, because I am not a medici (ha ha ha), yet the larger stage is also ignored in the story. The media was fear mongering all over the place and that too resulted in negative actions. There were several factors and I believe that too many factors were unknown, or untested for the longest of times. 

So, if you decide I am the Monday morning quarterback it is fine, I gave my reasoning and my views that go back to February 2020 when it was in the earliest stage. So I am not exactly the Monday morning quarterback, but I am definitely a virtual one. Consider the facts and consider the blah blah from Professor Mark Woolhouse and draw your own conclusions.

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January 3, 2022 · 02:45

Can I have some more harshness?

It is 02:00 and I find myself at odds with a CBC article. Now, let’s be clear and upfront. CBC did nothing wrong, this is all me. The article ‘Canada’s English dictionary hasn’t been updated in almost 2 decades. What does that say about us?’  (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/canadian-english-dictionary-two-decades-1.6291089) set something off in me. In  world where for the most people cannot tell you clearly what is going on, the media is in a stage of deniability by using ‘could’ and ‘might’ and we see politicians spinning 7 colours from Sunday and all these elements had nothing to do with a dictionary. Even a dictionary from 1855 might have been a better setting than the one we face nowadays. So I was feeling oddly agitated by the headline. So when the article gives us “Hailed as the “maven of Canadian English” by the Washington Post and known widely as Canada’s “word lady,” Katherine Barber was renowned for researching and documenting how language works in this country. In 1991, she became the founding editor of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary — the country’s first authoritative and comprehensive reference work for Canadian English — with the first edition publishing in 1998.” I had to take a step back. As a residing non-Canadian (I reside in Australia) I get the need for identity, I get the need for what can be seen in Canada as a personalised dictionary for all Canadians. Yet why am I so agitated? A Canadian dictionary does not affect me, so why does it bother me? It was then that the words “hasn’t been updated in almost 2 decades” seem to sound like the drumming distance of change. You see, there was a work that did sound like the stuff of nightmares. It is called ‘the use of euphemisms in mass-media discourse’ and there is the rub, the last two decades has been more and more about political correctness, now I am not against political correctness, the problem is that for the most we end up saying forms of insincerities and only in part saying what is the matter. Euphemisms are to some degree part of the problem. When we look at that meaning we get “a mild or indirect word or expression substituted for one considered to be too harsh or blunt when referring to something unpleasant or embarrassing.” There are two issues here, the first is the mild substitution, the second part is the event of ‘too harsh or too blunt’, we end up saying something that is seemingly a form of dancing around the subject. And this has become worse and worse over the last two decades. Which is where I have a problem with the event, not with the sentiment of the article or some idea of it. The problem as I see it is that too often euphemisms are used to downplay events and that tends to have other reasons none of them about being politically correct, or less harsh. Merely more facilitating for the people telling the story and that inaccuracy is a much larger danger. I tend to grasp back at the most ridiculous of phrases “I lost my Husband”, I wonder if she checked the second drawer of her desk. Nope! He was not lost, he merely drove his car into another, the man is dead! There is no non-blunt way to say dead, we can go by non-living as: at present 5,458,856 people have joined the non-living via means of Covid. 

OK, that was not too subtle but at times that is the only way to get things across. The problem is that the act of downplaying is massive in social media, as such the mis use of euphemisms are abundant and they are continuing to muddy the waters of clarity. As I personally see it, there is no need to update the dictionary over two decades, there is however a much larger need to properly use the dictionary that we do have and that is not happening either, the new words will nit change that, we need to be clear, we need to be precise and at times that is blunt and it is not extremely PC. Sometimes the truth and the precise truth is not nice and it is harsh, it happens. Downplaying events and hiding behind euphemisms helps no one, that much has been crystal clear for many years. Yet this is merely my view, you have every right to oppose my view. 

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January 2, 2022 · 18:49

The company we keep

There is a setting that we tend to ignore, we are by the grace of our own undoing limited by the company we keep. And here is the problem, when that person is Saad bin Khalid Al Jabri it tends to be a problem (for the US). The man is allegedly a traitor (decently proven) and a thief (a little less proven). Although, when a person comes into a country with $387,000,000 questions tend to rise, especially when that person was an intelligence officer. I will be honest, to the best of my knowledge no government pays its intelligence officers THAT well. Doubt me? Ask MI5 (+4420 7930 9000) or MI6 (same number), I could give you a whole range of numbers, but after these two and the laughter you’ll experience, you will have had enough of it. Oh, I just discovered that the money Al Jabri had amounts to 50% of the entire DGSE budget, so there.

So why does this matter?
Well normally I do not give a hoot, no matter how it plays, but when the Middle East Eye gives us ‘US court dismisses Saudi case against former intelligence officer Saad al-Jabri’ (at https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-saad-aljabri-us-court-dismisses-case) it does matter. For one, the man is and lives in Canada, so why is the US involved? The quote “US government intervened to stop classified documents being used in the case as it would ‘harm national security’” if there was a real national security issue it might sway people and it does make sense to protect national security. And when we are given “As a top spy, Jabri worked with the CIA on counter-terrorism projects. He was a close aide to Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, the former Saudi interior minister ousted by Mohammed bin Salman as heir to the throne in a 2017 palace coup, which prompted Jabri to flee to Canada.” In this is no one wondering why he did not move to the US? So when we are given “Sakab accused Jabri of embezzling state funds while working under Mohammed bin Nayef, which Jabri denies” question need to be asked and they are not being asked. Why is that? Then we get another setting that was reported on earlier and we see with the quote “Jabri filed a lawsuit in the US saying that Canadian authorities foiled a plot by a 50-strong “hit squad” sent by Mohammed bin Salman to kill him in Canada. The alleged incident is said to have occurred less than two weeks after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.” So pardon my directness. If someone needs Al Jabri dead, one person might fit the bill, 50 do not. This was about something else and in this there is a case that the US is looking away. So whilst there is no claim on the Canadian side, all this goes to court in the US (yet again) and no one is asking questions. 

As for the imagination, depending on the security he has, a mere one person job with a drone carrying a claymore will most likely do the trick, the other 49 were overkill and useless. If the hit is done properly, the pilot is 4-6 blocks away, has a near direct line of sight, flies in boom! Problem solved. Yet in all this I am not afraid to ask questions from the other side either. When we see the quote “a lawsuit filed by a Saudi state-owned firm, Sakab Saudi Holding, which accused Jabri of embezzling state funds.” What evidence does Sakab Saudi Holding have and if it is enough, why not hand it to the press? At this point no one is getting anywhere and as far as Bazooka Joe knows, Al Jabri is a mere CIA operative working on counter-terrorism projects. So why does he have to do that from Canada? It is a simple enough question. 

The Americans made. Choice, which is fair enough, but why is Al Jabri hiding in Canada? And in all this we see case after case and no one is looking into the matter how Al Jabri got his fortune, or why exactly he has access to billions? Then we see Al Jabri pleading to the US to get his kids out of Saudi Arabia, so why not ask Canada? He is hiding there, is he not? There is however an upside to all this, at some point if the US would like to hold onto the weapons sales with Saudi Arabia, they might have to retracts all protection from Al Jabri, should be fun seeing exactly what protection Canada will offer, and particularly where the alleged stolen fortune from Saudi Arabia becomes a national security issue for the US, perhaps the CIA was involved in that heist. I actually  do not know, I am merely speculating but the more I read on these events the less any of it makes sense, from any side. 

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January 1, 2022 · 10:16

That lucky blow

Yes, these things happen, the point where luck is a factor and in some games they do happen, but the factor is not as profound as a Ravenclaw boy hoping he gets noticed by Emma Granger, or was that Hermione Watson? No here we apply the Skyrim principle. Instead of grinding, later in the game, I enter the embershard mine wearing dragon plate and before the bridge there are two miners, I walk up to them and let them have a go at me, with Dragon plate my armour rating is well above 550, so they can pound on me whilst I have dinner, read a magazine and at the end I am up 1-3 levels and my heavy armour is now legendary 100. A simple solution.

Yet what happens when we change the premise? What happens when the bad guys get a lucky blow as well? Consider:

  • Bandit
  • Bandit Marauder / Plunderer
  • Bandit Chief

There lucky blow rating starts at 1%-3%-5%, yet as levels go they can go up to 5% – 15% and 25%. Now that game changes a lot, but we can introduce negative influx. A 25%-50% and 75% protection through blocking and defence parameters. A stage that alters the game somewhat. So my approach of walking into their midst would no longer work (well likely a very limited version). It is the old battle setting that all attack without defence is pointless and all defence without attack is useless. A setting we all forgot about, or at least too many of us forgot about it. Oh, and their lucky blow is a blow that does 300% of the normal damage.

That same principle applies to sneak as well, we tend to see ‘a failed sneak’ as a side effect, whilst a failed sneak giving the opponent a free first hit is much more intense and optionally realistic? Many RPG games see a failed attempt at the stage of a loss of positive elements, whilst introducing no negative ones. That failing stopped the gamer from becoming clever at what they to, a setting that is a failing in the game because the game needs to contribute, always contribute. 

I believe that having a lucky blow element is nice for us, but it needs to contribute by being nice for them too (to coin a phrase).

We can never rely on more of the same, we can never rely on the easy path because it will undo gaming in the long run. And in this Skyrim is a perfect example as it has shown itself to be close to perfect for over a decade now. And the only way we get better games it to push that envelope. Did you think I was kidding when I stated that Amazon with its Luna has an option to sell 50,000,000 consoles? It isn’t that Google is not worthy, they decided not to develop games. And any clear and massive bodyblow to Microsoft is a winning punch for gamers everywhere. We gamers must stick together because Microsoft only stands for itself, it has shown that for well over a decade as well.

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December 31, 2021 · 23:42

When figments take over

Yes, that is a question, I am not sure if I have an answer because my mind is all over the place. It is like the scent I am picking up is taking charge on whatever comes next. It is a little weird, a little unsettling and even weirdly more, a path into the unknown.

First all, I have no idea where I am. My mind had taken me to some gritty (but clean) food place. It looks nothing like a restaurant, from the inside it seems like I am in a wooden shack that is set on top of concrete slabs. Not a place I have ever been, as far as I can tell. The prices are in Euro’s so I reckon I am somewhere in Europe. The staff looks at me awaiting my order. I order the triple carapace for €20. I get a large pewter plate, the plate is set in three areas almost like the old US eating trays. I get three parts of lobster, one is deed fried, covered with cheese it was a few small potatoes on the side. One is (I think) broiled and comes with steamed carrots and cauliflower, the last part is fried with butter, it has fried capsicum, mushrooms and a thick gravy with small pieces of lobster. It smells terrific and the weird thing is that I never had this before in my life, not even any of the individual parts as it is shown to me. I sit down and every bite is heavenly, I buy a bottle of water and drink it the part with the mushrooms is a little salty but still awesome. I get up and walk out of the shack, I am back in my living room. I have no idea where I was, I have (to the best of my knowledge) never been to this place and even now the scent of fried lobster, capsicum and mushrooms are filling my nose. I cannot explain it. The slightly delusional side of me is thinking back, over two years my mind created a little over $10,000,000,000 of IP, the delusional side is as I haven’t sold any of it, it might amount to a mere $10. The mind takes over at times. I cannot explain it and for now my brain is getting drunk on the smell of prepared lobster, which is weird as my last lobster is about 9 years ago and it was served Japanese style with fresh Wasabi, so I have no idea where the smells are coming from and I do not smell that good, not ever (thank god), I would take up cannibalism in a heartbeat, even my own heartbeat.  

Yet the situation remains, what was the vision, a mere scene for one of the scripts? Nothing happened, there was no hint, no clue no nothing, merely me eating and enjoying lobsters in three ways. So why write it down? Well for me writing down is keeping me busy, it brings clarity and in the back of my mind at times other things happen, it is not the first wave, it is the second wave that gives additional insights and I have had it on a few parts, for now I merely wonder if I can fit additional parts of the stage of ‘Residuam Vitam’, it also might b the third time I altered that title. I have parts in place, but I need a deeper need towards the parts that Meng Po plays in the story, her side it too one-sided, to facilitating and that does not work for me. You see some stories are ‘decently’ articulate in giving us “Lady Meng took the initiative to create a bowl of soup that would allow spirits to forget the suffering of their material life.” I believe that is merely half a story, you see facilitation only gets you so far, no matter how selfless a person is, when you are on a bridge handing out soup for 1000 generations, 10,000 moons there is a nourishing factor, I just haven’t figured out what it is, and the soup is important, smell is important. What if she hopes to meet the lost love in his next reincarnation? It matters as the soup is important for the story, it also matters as Hades and Anubis have alternate needs and a larger hunger, so what gives? 

It is hard for the figments to take control, but it helps setting a stage to the story and I for one still haven’t figured out all the cogs. The main lines are there and the players are known, but it needs to fit, not like a glove but like the cogs of a Swiss timepiece. The players have been around for millennia, so their stage of timing perfection matters. We go into any story, any interaction of divinity with small tokens, but the divine are timeless, so they think in centuries, not years and to make that story work requires a different brush. This is not a Winslow Homer aquarel, it is the Nightwatch by Rembrandt van Rijn, two different styles, two different approaches. In the first the player was The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch. A little element too often overlooked, there was a 9 year gap between to commissioning and the delivery. There are all kinds of reasons and we can guess, let the critics set the tone, but time is the element that plays here. A photo in that identical stage would be taken in 1/125 seconds, the painting took months if not years. To set that time in different parallels we need to see that that any of the divine players can see any scene, any second like a Hasselblad H6D-400C, even whilst we are mere Kodak instamatics, scent is part of that Kodak but the camera does not record scent. So the stage needs to be altered and it is now I see the alternate scene, the part the lobsters never told me (they were getting eaten). So what if the soup does more than the players realised? What if the scent of the soup also captures the scents once forgotten? The spirit bathes in forgetfulness on the road to reincarnation, but what if Meng Po captures every scent experienced? What if she needs one specific memory and consider that in ancient China a little over 10% was blind, the beggars in the streets, ignored by all as they went on their business, but the blind still register scents, what if Meng Po was seeking a specific scent? It might work. All due to a lobster dish I never ate (poor poor me).

So at times let the figments take over, you never know where they are headed and in my case, I was clueless until the story was completed.

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December 30, 2021 · 22:34

Lest we forget

This is not some Marilyn Mason album (which was really good), this is not some WW1 reference. This is in part an accusation of the media, in this specific case the Canadian media. I stumbled upon this by mere coincidence. In the age of lockdowns I tend to watch a lot more walk video’s, the more extreme (location) the more I want to see it. I have seen a fair bit of them and there are several really good ones, so in the age of lockdown I have seen the streets of San Francisco (I had to go there), Monaco, London, Los Angeles, Montreal, Toronto and several others. So this evening I saw (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRuRPszR0-8) a Canadian style Christmas market in Monaco and it looked awesome. So why did the Canadian media not put this out as a human interest story? There was an ice rink, a sled hill (no real snow), stalls on Quebec, Ontario, generic Canadian and it was awesome to see in quality. I reckon that when your nation gets a cultural boost in a place like Monaco a single page on CBC or even Global One is not overly weird, but I did not see any of that. 

I reckon that if the subject was Australia, the UK or the Netherlands their media would go all out on it (an assumption on my side). So why are the human stories neglected when it is not the brassiere of some celebrity the story goes to the ‘horse no show’ category? You think I am kidding, but seek events that are international that impact your nation, who gives it any kind of visibility? And lets face it, Monaco is not any place, it is the place where the richest of the rich live (help me out here Jeff ;-)) it is subtropical and the temperature is around 23.4 degrees Celsius warmer than it is in Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, Quebec or Ottawa, so the idea of watching people in a winter stall in summer outfit will work well on anyone. So why are these events missed? This might be the one I noticed, but I feel certain that it is nowhere near the only one.

So you take a look at that video (especially if your Canadian) and consider why it was missed, a Christmas stall is a Christmas stall and it will always pique the interest of someone, especially if it involves a group of people eating Poutine right next to a Louis Vuitton shop, don’t you agree?

And let’s face it, seeing the locals there having a go at Canadian Bacon will be worth the watch too, but that is merely my sense of giggles turning a frown upside down.

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