October 20, 2021 · 21:51

The abacus paradox

The stage of what might never be is out there. There is a larger stage of what is about to happen and what might never happen. And I for one have no idea where to stand. You see, it is about what we read and what we do not know, or do we? To get there I need to do an old setting, a simple calculation, like you had in primary school (year 1) the stage is 34-15. Now you do it like there is no tomorrow, but then it was different. In that setting we had four minus five is not possible, so we borrow 10 then it becomes fourteen minus five making nine. Three minus one is two, that minus one is one, one and nine make nineteen, that is how we learned the simplest calculation (in 1969). It is not the math, it is the setting of borrowing one from the left making fourteen instead of four minus five. It is the borrowing part. You see, a setting hit me when I was confronted with ‘Micron to build $7 bln plant in Japan to expand DRAM production – report’ (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/micron-build-7-bln-plant-japans-hiroshima-report-2021-10-20/). In the article we see “U.S. memory chip maker Micron Technology Inc (MU.O) will build a new factory at its Japanese production site in Hiroshima at a cost of 800 billion yen ($7.0 billion), the Nikkan Kogyo newspaper reported on Wednesday.” Under most situations I merely shrug my shoulders. What do I care? Yet when my mind saw this, it raced back to several of these announcements. I believe it was 2018, it could have been 2017. Yet the stage then was that the resources needed for DRAM were limited. A finite equation on resources and the pressure was on. I personally believe that shortage was never dealt with, so it is nice to see a plant being built ‘too address shortage of DRAM’, but if there is still a shortage for manufacturing the problem merely shifts, it does not go away. TechRadar gave us in April “the company wants to optimise the use of its limited supply of silicon”, as one source gives us in May “Demand is much higher for all types of silicone products than one year ago. Demand started to increase in 4Q 2020 as global economies opened. Even when parts of the world were hit with second and third waves of Covid, economies did not shut down as they did in 1Q and 2Q 2020. As of today, demand is the same or slightly higher than prior to the pandemic”, this is not enough. You see it is one of the most common elements in the world, so we should not run out, but the mining and acquiring of it comes with health risks and there lies the rub. Forbes also gives us “China has called chip independence a top national priority in its latest five-year plan, while U.S. President Joe Biden has vowed to build a secure American supply chain by reviving domestic manufacturing. Even the European Union is mulling measures to make its own chips. But success is anything but assured.” There we also see more. The article (at https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-chip-production-why-hard-to-make-semiconductors/) gives us a lot to think about and if it isn’t the $7,000,000,000 they expect to spend, it is nothing against getting the right people, as such it could be seen as a severn billion dollar long-shot. Yet the stage of getting the Silica Dioxide has not been reached yet. The article also shows us “Building an entry-level factory that produces 50,000 wafers per month costs about $15 billion. Most of this is spent on specialised equipment—a market that exceeded $60 billion in sales for the first time in 2020.” So exactly how does one save on a plant that is already 8 billion short in month one? The numbers make no sense. Now, it is perfectly possible that they are two different plants, but the stage of 7 billion is weird all whilst several plants are being build and there is still a need for Silica Dioxide for the wafers. 

Now, I could be very wrong here, and that might be the case, but consider that 2020 gave us ‘TSMC to build advanced chip plant in southern Taiwan’ (May 2021), ‘Bosch opens Dresden chip plant as Europe aims for independence from Asia’ (Jun 2021), and let that not misdirect you, there are hundreds of plants, a massive amount of them in China, the stage becomes not merely who creates the chip, but who will have the plant to mine and create the required Silica Dioxide. It could be another stage for Saudi Arabia as sand is something they have in abundance, but to get one into the other takes time and takes the right secure machines as well as a few other skills. When this implodes (a not unlikely setting) the one who HAS the Silica Dioxide has an advantage. China claimed to be independent at present, most others cannot make that claim. China produces 64% of all silicon on the planet and the US pissed them off. Almost 10% is in Russia that leaves a lot less for the rest of the planet, so when I see the stage of two plants being build, I merely wonder where they get their source materials. The US at present creates less than 5% of all Silicon and the UK even less (number unknown to me). So when we see the larger stage and we look for Mineral Commodity Summaries we might learn that there are a few more kinks in those cables. Yes, I am willing to accept that they MIGHT solve those. Yet when was the last time you made a long-shot using billions on the word ‘MIGHT’? 

In all this I might be the one wrong here, but when you see three of these plants being made within a year and you realise the cost involved and there is a stage where the required resources for manufacturing are in many places, yet the bulk is in two places that certain politicians cannot reach. How does that investment sound to you?

I wouldn’t bet my stove on that risk, let alone a house (or apartment) but they are willing to bet the bank, I wonder what optional short term benefits they get before these tactical deciders seemingly run off with a large bonus to a beach far, far away. 

P.S. WordPress is still not fixing the colour issue.

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October 19, 2021 · 21:58

Searching for a reason

We all do that at times, we all search for a reason. Whether it is for a solution, to blame or to incite. These are the most likely reasons, but they are not the only ones. The thought came to mind when the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58961836) gave me ‘Amazon’s Jeff Bezos ‘may have lied to Congress’’ a stage where ‘may’ is operative. So there is not even any level of assurance that he ‘had most likely’ lied, that on the premise it was highly likely that he was not truthful, or any other stage of ‘creating doubt towards sincerity’. We are also given the claims that “Amazon copied products and rigged its search results in India to boost sales of its own brands”, as well as “sought to correct the record on the inaccurate media articles in question” and in finality we get “they were considering referring the firm “for criminal investigation””, so in the third, what ‘criminal investigation’? For allegedly rigging results in India? For inaccurate media articles? It is an open field and in all this, we need to consider that US congress is merely trying to get fines from rich companies any way they can get, it is what incompetent people tend to do, play the blame game. 

Yet to understand it we need to take a look at the Reuters article (at https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-india-rigging) where we get ‘Amazon copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands, documents show’. Here we are given “The internal documents also show that Amazon employees studied proprietary data about other brands on Amazon.in, including detailed information about customer returns” this is indeed a solid accusation. In addition we get “It is difficult to develop this expertise across products and hence, to ensure that we are able to fully match quality with our reference product, we decided to only partner with the manufacturers of our reference product”, it is quite the accusation, yet this happened in 2016. So in the first, why is this not in Indian courts? In the second, why do we see a bland US Congress setting when it is not an activity on American soil? It was Amazon.in, it was in India and referred to Indian products. In addition we get the small part at the very end of “In sworn testimony before the U.S. Congress in 2020, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos explained that the e-commerce giant prohibits its employees from using the data on individual sellers to help its private-label business. And, in 2019, another Amazon executive testified that the company does not use such data to create its own private-label products or alter its search results to favour them” I see it as two parts, in 2019 there is a stage of “Amazon executive testified that the company does not use such data to create its own private-label products or alter its search results to favour them” which would support the stage of wrongful action mentioned earlier, and in 2020 we get “prohibits its employees from using the data on individual sellers to help its private-label business”, as such a stage optionally exists that a flaw was found and dealt with. Optionally there remains a stage that in 2016 “Amazon employees working on the company’s own products, known as private brands or private labels, planned to partner with the manufacturers of the products targeted for copying”, so a stage remains that Indian employees became creative to create their own private fortune in debatable ways, a stage that was close over time and there Reuters has a larger issue. The documents, what EXACTLY do they prove? I am not against Reuters here, they have proven themselves a few times over, so I am asking exactly what internal documents were in play? If they were emails and there the language and the path is also important. Reuters might be on the money, but they start with “A trove of internal Amazon documents reveals how the e-commerce giant ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoff goods” and there we see the assumption it is linking ‘internal Amazon documents’ towards ‘the e-commerce giant’, yet these employees, how high up the ladder were they, were they all Indian? In that case can a quality case based on quantifiable data be made against the e-commerce giant, or is this the event involving a few rotten apples (sorry, rotten pieces of fruit). So when we see the questions that rise from the Reuters article, the US Congress made leaps without investigating the evidence before referring it for Criminal investigation. You see, there needs to be a viable case before referring it, so there needs to be decent questionable evidence and so far, no one has seen it and I reckon it might not be there in the way the BBC article gives us the goods. I think there is a lot more and in all this, when we see “sought to correct the record on the inaccurate media articles in question”, we could have seen evidence and more importantly the media can show the evidence that it was wrongful data handed to them, but we do not see that either (at present), the media is very protective of one another at the alleged expense of anyone else. 

Can Amazon have done something wrong? Yes, absolutely, the firm is too big, things fall through the cracks. Yet the chance of Jeff with the Telly Savalas hairdo Bezos, or Nate Sutton, Amazon’s associate general counsel to openly lie to Judiciary Committee is too ludicrous to consider. That is the stage and when I see “We strongly encourage you to make use of this opportunity to correct the record… as we consider whether a referral of this matter to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation is appropriate,” I feel that this is an attempt to get another fine out of Amazon. Yes, I agree that the letter is merely good form, but I reckon that the players would have done a decent level of homework before that letter went out, and with another shutdown 9 weeks away, America needs all the cash they can lay their fingers on, I am merely wondering if their path is all on the up and up. But that is merely me, questioning whatever I see. I merely wonder if anyone else noticed the questions that the article brings up, it might be my not so trusting nature.

If Amazon did something wrong, OK. It happens and a fine will be the result, but this happened in India, so why is there no reference to a request from India, a request from Indian vendors and a more thorough investigation into the evidence. All that seems to be missing, weird, is it not?

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October 19, 2021 · 05:41

Adaption 103

I just had an idea, it got to me when I was tweeting with a person I know. A few minutes later my mind grabbed back to the age when I had a Dell laptop. Then an idea grabbed me. I wonder why Apple never considered this. When you have more than one device, when you need your MacBook Pro or air too regularly. Did no one consider the power of the docking station, or the port replicator? Instead of connecting device after device, having a station on your desk where you can connect your iPod touch, your iPad, your MacBook, iMac or Mac Pro to all with one replicator in the centre of it all. A setting where they are all connected, with the station also connecting to an external keyboard, external drive and optionally a larger screen. The power of direct connectivity when you get home. The songs, the tablet and all of it to a  larger screen, more storage and not to forget interacting all with one another. No worry whether you had the document on your tablet, your laptop or even your iMac or Mac Pro. Connecting them all through one station. You see, when you have one Apple product, you might have more, I do and many other do too. Even for non Apple products the setting of connecting laptops, desktops, music solutions, and tablets, all whilst giving any the power to connect to Bluetooth speakers is becoming increasingly important, especially as streaming will go from device to device. A multi system station, no matter if it is a docking station or more aptly seeing it as a connecting port replicator will take the foreground in the near future. I synch my iPad, and soon my iPod touch (my iPod Classic will not connect), a larger setting of interactivity is required and consider that when you get home, via the replicator. Connecting to data on tablet, laptop and desktop they can all grasp the data of one another and they can all be used in conjunction. A setting that none have offered, always in the second degree, so why not in the first degree? That would be real innovation and so far none have opted for it, They all want to do each other work, they all want to do the same, but the laptop makes you less mobile, the tablet has its own restrictions, but on the road it is OK. And so on, yet at home we need access to all, we need it all without a larger setting and the cloud is too often a limitation, especially when it is confidential data. The people need their secure environment and anyone stating that the cloud is a safe space is lying to you. Some give you “Cloud security is tight, but it’s not infallible. … But the bigger risk with cloud storage is privacy. Even if data isn’t stolen or published, it can still be viewed. Governments can legally request information stored in the cloud, and it’s up to the cloud services provider to deny access.” 

So why not set the stage where it is with you and with you alone? And when we look at the data breaches with. Microsoft, Estee Lauder, MGM Resorts, Facebook, Zoom, Magellan Health, Cognizant, Nintendo, Twitter, and Whisper. These are places with large infrastructures and cyber sections and they could not keep THEIR data safe, how much of a chance do you have? I am not anti-cloud. It has its uses, but it has a bad safety reputation, as such the replicator gives more and offer more too. It is just a thought, but it Tok me less than 30 minutes to seek out part of all this and write it down and when we add the streaming gaming platform the need increases rapidly.

All devices that need connection, whilst the connection does not always exist. 

So consider what you have and how easy it would be to connect it. Now, if you only have 2 devices the value is not really there, but consider a desktop and a laptop connected giving the user access to both, would that make it? I thought initially to connect the Apple devices, but the setting is much larger and will grow over time. Consider that the MacBook Air has a max of 2TB and so does the new iMac, so why have 2 backups when both can be connected and be connected to a much larger drive, seagate offers 4TB for $99, WD has 6TB for $200, and that offers perspectives to keep your music in one location, not on all locations. Option after option are added as we see more devices connected and I am surprised that no one took it into that direction, especially Apple. 

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October 19, 2021 · 02:47

Direction and Course

We are all driven by doubts. We are all driven by needs and we are all enticed by desires. There is no exception, none at all. Not if you are a cleric, Christian or Muslim. Not if you are a farmer or a politician (although too often I think that the first party is more intelligent than the second one). We are all driven by surges, by vectors and by elements outside ourselves. They are the particles that fuel the internal engine in us and the mindset that accompanies it. I remain on the fence regarding the building scandal in Rotterdam, the political power-drive for a place called Vestia. The simplest side is a mere tally, 524 homes are removed to be replaced by 137 locations to inhabit, with an added 101 apartments for higher incomes and 143 apartments for sale, the tally does not add up. A new station is created with -143 locations. This was about money, plain and simple. So whilst Vestia hides behind “We achieve this by taking an effective and innovative approach to rentals, sales, liveability, maintenance, investments and operating costs. We are committed to providing good service to our customers: the people who rent and buy our homes”, so whilst we see one, we also see that they enabled the removal of 387 social housing locations, it was the simplest math problem. Someone got rich here. Yet in the setting of greed, there is so much out there, Rotterdam is not even the smallest blip on any, not even a Dutch radar. 

There is more out there, the stage of the media is getting out of control, stake holders, the setting of lobbyists that are gracing the foundation of media is getting larger, os getting stronger and the media itself does not care, it is like watching a crack whore reach for the goods. Their grasp towards digital dollars without contemplating the larger stage is ludicrous. As an example look at the home page of the Independent (independent.co.uk), the Los Angeles Times (latimes.com), The Washington Post (washingtonpost.com), and Dagens Nyheter (www.dn.se). Notice the advertisements? Let’s be clear, the papers are allowed to do that, yet consider who can afford that. Consider the cost of a front page advertisement in the paper versus the front page of a website. Consider the stage of who gets the visibility and how they got there. Now there is an opposing side to this some are merely advertising, there is no ‘stake holder’, there is no political need, but that stage is fluidic and siding with the stake holders. Consider the past, how many advertisements for some Microsoft device passed you by? How many claims of mobile data for less, how many ads are localised? Consider seeing the LA Times, seeing “Coliving Homes in Sydney. Coliving homes for rent in Sydney from A$1,300/month, inclusive of weekly housekeeping”, now there is nothing wrong with the ad. And it is powered by Google Ads and there is nothing wrong with that. Yet consider that an apartment costing A$1300 a week has an ad on the front page of the LA Times. The setting is so much larger than even I can understand. This is global and this is not some anti-Google setting, I am making the claim that there is a layer between the media and advertisers. Electronic lobbyists, I call them Stake Holders, and they are raking in millions. The view is not easy, and I am not making a claim that I have it, it is so convoluted on the global scale that no one really has an idea, it would require the Google source data and a very powerful computer to suss it out to the smallest degree. I saw glimmers as Microsoft was advertising its Surface pro, but that could just as easily be seen as a glimmer of delusion. The problem is not me, it is not anyone who might not be able to see it, it will be the media, they are part of it. They are setting a new course, they are setting a course towards their digital dollars at the expense of the people, what I often refer to the ‘click bitches’ they create though emotional articles. A newspaper will give you ‘Pandora papers: biggest ever leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich and powerful’, whilst they also give you “the move was not illegal, and there is no evidence the Blairs proactively sought to avoid property taxes” Consider that journalists waste time on non-illegal actions whilst we see some papers give us ‘Houthi blockade restricts aid’, is that not interesting? The UN was all about attacking Saudi Arabia recently whilst keeping (according to media) Houthi and Iranian elements out of that think-tank presentation. So why are we not given the full view whilst some are wasting our time on “the move was not illegal”. I believe that political lobbyists and digital lobbyists are uniting to some extent, optionally the political lobbyists are also on the digital platform calling themselves ‘stake holders’. This is speculation, this is not proven (yet) and there could be all kinds of ‘evidence’ proving me wrong. I do not know yet, but the views I have seen over the last 15 months proving me to be correct more and more. And now, I am taking the light to my work and looking deeper into it all, because anyone not criticising and digging into his own data will fail from the start, and I do not like failure. But that is just me, to seek a direction and course requires energy and it needs a drive, but what that drive is remains open to debate, even for me.

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October 18, 2021 · 03:47

As fiction becomes real

Who remembers George A Romero’s Dawn of the dead (1978)? I remember seeing it in the cinema. And the idea stuck with me. Dreams of having an entire shopping mall to myself. The idea stuck for a long time and even as games entered our lives, the setting was never close enough. The idea that we had an entire City centre to ourselves, preferably without the zombies. Not some game where the enemies spawn again, but a stage where there is a city centre, complete with 35000 zombies, a finite number and as we secure our place, grow our place, we renew the settings of security, safety and goods. And I voiced it before and now we seemingly have the game ‘The day before’ a game that seemingly is close enough to my dreams to make it a reality. The game can be played single player (a must for me). And the idea that the game will grow appeals to me. Consider that the mechanics, once they are ready allows for the game to seek us in other ways too. An alien invasion (Skyline, 2010), a pandemic (Contagion, 2011) and the list goes on. Now, I have no idea on how The Day before is set or how it works, but I saw a small play video and my old thoughts of Day of the Dead returned. The idea that you need to stamp out your safe space. Get goods, get sustenance, get ammo, find weapons and so on is very appealing. You wonder how far you get, how long you will last and none of that respawn shit. One life, and between 35,000 and 350,000 opponents. How will you fare? I wonder how far I will get. And for the makers of that game it offers a new kind of DLC/Expansion. We might have 3-5 locations to start, but the appeal to see how far you get in London, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Miami, Munich, Paris, Moscow and so on, the chance for the makers of The Day before (Fntastic) are close to endless and it does not stop there. The setting of a real final number is appealing on several levels. The idea to redo Day of the dead in Harrods London will be appealing to thousands if not millions of gamers. Setting up the New York City Police Department – 5th Precinct as your own fortress (Assault On Precinct 13 anyone?) is close to intoxicating. And from there the world of us getting close to the movies we watched will be enticing and I reckon for a large audience. In previous years it was merely a ruse, now with the PS5, it becomes an achievable reality. And as I see it 2022-2025 could optionally become great gaming years. 

And when the survival part in us is quenched we can return to our normal daily routine of being a sniper (Ghost warrior), or perhaps a racer (Gran Turismo) some will prefer their daily life as pilots (MS Flight simulator), no matter to what life we return, we do so knowing that more and better games are coming our way, preferably less glitchy then Ubisoft is making out to be. 

P.S. WordPress still has not fixed colours.

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October 17, 2021 · 20:19

It was the smell of coffee

We all have this and we all try to ignores it when it is not Sunday. Yet that was for me the setting this morning. I was going through the Guardian with the smell of coffee in my nose. Still half asleep I noticed the words ‘shun workers’ and I saw the picture of a lovely young lady (Genevieve LeJeune) and my mind went ‘whats this about?’ And I started to read the article. As such the title became ‘Sex discrimination: why banks shun workers in adult entertainment’, I saw the word ‘sex; and I am a simple guy, so I was very much in the ‘lets read this’ mood. So the article gives us that the HSBC bank was part of “I didn’t think for one minute they would have an issue with what the business was about. And why would they be concerned, as long as I’m cashflow positive and I do all the right things, and it’s completely legal?” It was basically as was stated “She said she told the bank that she ran a community for the “B” in LGBTQ+ and was not chased for any further information”, by her own account a community with 16000 members. They were suddenly cut off and we get “She has spent more than four years battling HSBC for access to more than £20,000 trapped in those accounts” with in the finale “only regained control of the cash this spring after complaining to the Financial Ombudsman Service”. There are two parts that catch me in the article. The first was the setting given “she ran a community for the “B” in LGBTQ+”, and the subsequent part of the article that paints them all as “sex workers”. One is not the other and even as we accept that Bi curious women might see of there is a penny, it is not a given, it requires evidence and that is even a larger problem because are stated they are not breaking the law. So let’s take a look at the other side. 

In 2018 we get ‘HSBC ‘divests’ from Israeli arms company Elbit Systems’, HSBC only acted when pro-Palestinian voices became too loud and personally I do not think they had to give in. 

. Oh and Elbit Systems is an electronics company (mostly drones), the ICIJ reported only last year ‘HSBC moved vast sums of dirty money after paying record laundering fine’, so a laundering company makes waves over skirts? How is that for irony? So when we are given (at https://www.icij.org/investigations/fincen-files/hsbc-moved-vast-sums-of-dirty-money-after-paying-record-laundering-fine/) “HSBC was profiting from an international criminal scheme even while on probation for having served murderous drug cartels and other criminals. HSBC had admitted to U.S. prosecutors in 2012 that it had helped dirty money flow through its branches around the world, including at least $881 million controlled by the notorious Sinaloa cartel and other Mexican drug gangs”, we see a setting where Bi-curious women have less rights than drug gangs in the eyes of the bank? I reckon that the drug gangs didn’t have to go to the Ombudsman (why is that?)

And only last July the Guardian reported (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jul/28/hsbc-faces-questions-over-disclosure-of-alleged-money-laundering-to-monitors) ‘HSBC faces questions over disclosure of alleged money laundering to monitors’ with the byline “Bank was under supervision by US Department of Justice-appointed team because of previous violations”. I think we need to do something else. Something I have never ever done on this site before. I am calling ALL readers to see if they or their friends use the HSBC as a bank, and ask them all to switch banks, to whatever bank they prefer. It is time to give HSBC an education on hypocrisy. I have no connections to that bank, and I hope the large numbers of readers (especially in the UK) will move to another bank. 

I feel this is the only path open to us. Now if you feel that curious women are to be discriminated against, I leave it up to you, but a bank with these standards acting against people who broke no law whilst they are on the US laundering top 10 with ties to drug gangs should not be allowed to function, should they?

P.S. WordPress still has not fixed colour issue

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October 17, 2021 · 06:43

New lodgings in New York

OK, I will admit that is not entirely the case, but the question becomes. How much would a 4 bedroom condo at 405 East 42nd Street, New York, NY, 10017, USA cost? It is a building with 39 floors. The top 2 floors would have 2-3 apartments, the rest 6-8. I reckon we can around 250 apartments out of it. We large meeting room could be a restaurant and the lowest floors would have space for shops and so on. Not bad eh?

You see, the Guardian gives us ‘Saudi Arabia accused of forcing Yemenis in the kingdom out of their jobs’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/14/saudi-arabia-accused-of-forcing-yemenis-in-the-kingdom-out-of-their-jobs), and we do see ‘accused’ meaning it can go anywhere. Yet when we see “Calling on all sides, including the Houthis, to remove the impediments to distributing aid, Deen also pointed out that only 55% of the pledges made at the Yemen humanitarian summit had been fulfilled”, yes it sounds so nice and consider that with 55% of the pledges the population of Yemen would only be half as hungry now. The involvement of Iran in Yemen is completely overlooked (read: ignored) and the think-tank that was invited seems to do exactly what it was arranged to do, to slap Saudi Arabia around. And when we consider that the Sana’a Centre think-tank was invited to give an update on “the six-year civil war in Yemen”, can we consider that Maysaa Shuja al-Deen is optionally incompetent? The six year war should include a direct tally of Houthi actions against the Yemeni people (the article dos not give that to us), the military aid that Iran is giving the Houthi’s, which also seems to be missing. And when I see “She appealed to the Gulf states to keep their doors open to Yemen, adding that the security council should put pressure on the Saudis immediately to stop expanding and tightening the grip on Yemeni workers in the Saudi labour market” my initial emotional response would be “Who the fuck does she think she is”, whilst the non-emotional side wonders if she ever considered that there is a security risk with Any Yemeni working in Saudi Arabia, because those people have family in Yemen and the Houthi’s have too much control in Yemen. So when I say ‘these fucks in the security council’ I do know what I am talking about because I once worked for them (a very long time ago). It is all about image and protocol. So whilst once source only 13 hours ago gave us ‘Houthis claim seizing district in central Yemen’ and of course it is the one with loads of oil. 

As far as I can tell (the article is not a great resource) it seems that the Sana’a Centre think-tank is not about informing people, it is about scoring brownie points and filling a political agenda. Whose agenda remains to be seen, as Saudi Arabia has a few people in that building that seemingly have anti Saudi emotions. So shall we have a vote to turn 405 East 42nd Street into an apartment building? I will leave that up to you to contemplate this Sunday. I have to go and kill a few people (PS5 joke). 

Have a great day.

p.s. WordPress still cannot fix what they break, so I am sorry that I could not add the colours at present

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October 16, 2021 · 16:02

Ubituary

With not too much sadness and some feeling of achievement it is my joy to announce that Yves Guillemot, former CEO of Ubisoft was murdered on the night of Friday 15th of October, he was allegedly murdered by Antón Castillo dictator of Yara. Insiders claimed that the bug of his wealth vaporising on a daily basis enraged him beyond believe. Insiders investigating this (and the pandora papers) stated that Yves went missing in cloud environments linked to server with processor id CFC1E8CA-1DBB-1DCA5E8-60F8E99BD225, the people at the data centre deny that Yves Guillemot ever visited their firm and they also made claim that this processor number in unknown to them, investigative journalists were unable to track 37 of the 153 data servers, the investigation is seemingly ongoing.

So some will clam that I have no sense of humour, or at least a very sick one. You see, at least I am creative, we want to think that Ubisoft is creative, but from my point of view it is the ability to stack a game with bugs and glitches. When we look around we see SVG giving us ‘THIS FAR CRY 6 BUG HAS PLAYERS LOSING THEIR MINDS’, Sportskeeda comes with ‘How to fix the Maine 15f/158 error code in Far Cry 6’ and they also give us “While many bugs are found in Far Cry 6 itself, Maine 15f/158 seems to be linked to external account sources. So far, there has been no word from Ubisoft about what exactly the Maine 15f/158 error code is or what may be causing it” and the list goes on, yet I would like to add the Washington Post who gives us ‘A glitchfest that’s too big to wrangle’ with mention of “Yara, as a simulation of an island, falls squarely in the uncanny valley. Your enjoyment of the gameplay is likely to hinge on how much this bothers you. My first few hours with the game, as I acquainted myself with the brain-dead virtual denizens of Yara, felt awful. I watched AI drivers, honking, run over their fellow Yarans in the streets. In one mission, all of my opponents marched, single file, past me out of the military base I was sent to infiltrate, leaving it ripe for (an anticlimactic) plundering” the people report glitch after glitch, bug after bug and when a game is somewhere between $79 and $149 (there are a few versions) we need to consider why a company is allowed to release a game that is so broken? The problem is that there are more and more. All whilst some game makers set the stage of a non-disclosure agreement for too close to release. All whilst we see that some games are too big to review and so far the amount of bugs set the stage that consumers should be allowed to get full refunds up to 10 days after purchase. Whilst one sources gives us in May ‘‘Far Cry 6’ dev confirms game will not have “Cyberpunk-style issues”’, most can now confirm that the matter is a lot worse, plenty of gamers would love mere Cyberpunk style issues and it is all over the net and also a larger stage on YouTube. Seeking ‘Far Cry 6 bugs’ and ‘Far Cry 6 glitches’ shows how far Ubisoft has fallen of the beaten track. As far as I can tell, since 29 October 2020 when Watchdogs: Legion was released, we see that it was the only real decent release. I played it, and yes it had a few bugs and glitches, but nothing damaging, the fun for that game did not diminish. 

But Ubisoft did not learn its lesson. AC Valhalla, Ghost Recon Breakpoint, the Division 2, all flaws games, too flawed as I personally see it and now Far Cry 6 adds to that list of bungles. So is the state of a Ubituary (pun intended) so far out of bounds?

I know that when I buy an open world game that there will be issues, the bigger the game, the larger the chance of that happening. Yet in all this Ubisoft is seemingly releasing games that should not even be regarded as Beta versions, they are that flawed and as I see it, they are getting away with it and that is even worse. So whilst we get the crying Chihuahua gang (ACCC) with claims like ‘Current powers no match for Google’ (you can see that in two directions) we see Ubisoft clearing the masts of BS as the ACCC is overlooking the larger stage and Ubisoft should be held to a larger mirror, they claim to be an AAA+ developer, then they better prove it, because at present there are plenty of indie developers who show better quality products.

P.S. I apologise for not being able to add colours, I will do that later when WordPress stops fucking up!

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October 16, 2021 · 10:15

Funky mushroom pizza

Did you ever wake up from a dream that was so surreal that it was stamped with ‘weird dream’ by your brain? I do not mean ‘after contemplation’, but a stage where the forefront of every part of the brain is rejecting it upfront and in capital letters. It has happened to me before, but this was surreal. This was not some wild and passionate night with a Canadian goddess, or a threesome with two ladies from Hooters. Those are dreams you know are not real, but the mind keeps a sign in the back of your mind stating ‘perhaps…..if…..’, no this was outright weird.

It all starts on the moon, Procellarum to be more precise. Service agents have taken to the moon, there is a reason for this, the moon has no timeline, the sun is always there, yet the close to the sun’s rim the better. Even as there are settings that work, the edge is colder and the quantum computers with all their locking and cooling stages work better where there is a lot of cold (a lack of heat) and the cost of having larger systems on earth was pushing the cost stages. Also, hackers were more easily controlled. These systems are on-site only. No hacker can get to it and any hacking person on the moon gets thrown into space, no trial. 

In this there was a weird setting (yes, this was not weird enough). Taking a 5 year job in the moon is well rewarded, like really well rewarded. So I was there doing technical support. One day all the systems go nuts, reason unknown and whilst I was checking system after system, node after node we see a change in one of the ‘overseers’, he is suddenly a lot stronger than usual, I mean weirdly strong. He is complaining about headaches and starts referencing systems on a quantum level (no person can do that), but the headaches are massive. We get him to the infirmary, we continue work. We hear alarms and things are going wrong over there, but we do not know the extent. In the mean time we are trying to keep our heads cool and some posh bastard (A UK boss) is throwing his weight around. The UK has set up lines of nobility on the moon, they are larger players and have all kinds of legal based rights, so whenever one shows up we keep as clear as possible. When they leave we see that 2 boxes are gone, but they were never ours, so we do not care. As we go on, the alarms are of a larger concern. But we are all compartmentalised in our tasks and duties. 

In the mean time we notice a UK buggy outside near an old abandoned storage, which is odd to say the least. As out work is done for this region we check it out (from a distance) and there we see the two boxes. The rest is foggy, it was an hour ago when I woke up and the dream is already facing. But the short and sweet I that we had alien visitors, the overseer had something we do not, there is a segmentation in his brain that allows for a different kind of storage and segmentation of knowledge, I do not know how to better put it (a lack of neural education I reckon), one box has an arm, a left arm of a space suit, it looks like ours, but this is different, it is not from any design we ever saw and the elements are like an advanced form of quantum selection. The arm is unusually cool and the inscriptions on the arm are like nothing I had ever seen. The second box had a visor, almost like ours but this too is way more advanced than anything I had ever seen on the moon. Er notice another buggy in the distance. I grab several rocks and place them in the box, so for the other one, we make clear before the buggy returns. There is another foggy patch. The overseer gets to our place, he looks out of his mind, his head hurts and he seems to be grasping at his left arm and his actions do not seem to make sense. Then we get the idea to give him the other parts. We are cautious, he knows that we are good people, but his headache seems to be overwhelming him, we give him the arm which is more solid than the fabric suits we wear, but it is weirdly flexible, almost like a solid resin arm that is pliable like water. I never saw anything like it. Then we give him the visor and suddenly things change, he calms down, he is looking at his visor like the inside has some form of HUD, he starts speaking. “The headaches are fading, data conductors 17-34 are not transmitting data, magnetic instability is crashing the conducting drives”, we report the message exactly, but we are not aware of what it means, the magnetic coil rooms are off-limits. Way above our pay-grade. 

The central office gives us the option to look and fix, we will get a promotion as well as a massive bonus, so we agree and we set foot towards a corridor we have never entered before. 

Thats when I woke up. 

It was so surreal, corridors, the moonscape, I have no idea how my mind got there. I think it is in part the old series like Space 1999, in part levels from Wolfenstein, the new order. It has a moon segment. Whatever it was, I need to get another slice of that pizza, even as I had no pizza in weeks. I think I blew a gasket in my mind, So I need to get some groceries now. No matter what, it was one of the weirdest dreams I ever had.

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October 15, 2021 · 01:49

The rule of guns

This is not new, this is not even novel. It is the continuation of something that has been going on for decades, I saw it with my own eyes in 1982, others saw it too. Some objected, others did not. And when Beirut had its fireworks party on August 5th 2020, so many voices were eager to give rise to a setting that could never be, and all rejoiced when the media forwarded those messages. They must have thought it was in the bag. But I knew a think or two and I gave the readers ‘Boom goes the dynamite’ that very same day (about 6 hours later, might have been 12). And I gave the readers “It is speculation, but consider the blast, according to some the blast was noticed well over 100Km away. I do have a point of reference, the Fireworks blast in the Netherlands (Enschede) had a similar effect, but nowhere near the size, the video’s I saw told a different story, one car on the highway with a distance of around 2000 meters away got its windows blown out and the rear view mirrors got blown off the car, and that is one of a few video’s that show me that this was no ordinary blast”, so there was a lager stage and the people who were behind it went under the rocks like cockroaches. I calculated that it took a massive amount of 40’ containers and the cargo, 125 40’ containers worth cannot go up like the way it did, not in one go. And I rote more than one article about that. So when we now see in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/14/gunfire-beirut-protest-judge-leading-port-blast-inquiry), the setting of ‘Five dead as shooting breaks out at Beirut protests over port blast inquiry’, we now see “demanding end to judge’s investigation of huge blast last year”, all whilst we see Hezbollah types being brave behind their balaclava’s. So whilst we get the terrorist spokespeople Nabih Berri and Hassan Nasrallah make noise, we see the attacks on judge Tarek Bitar continue. I see no surprises, once a terrorist, always a terrorist. And when we see “However, demands that all aspects of the explosion be investigated seem almost impossible to deliver, with ministers summoned for investigation refusing to turn up”, something that I saw and I feel certain plenty of others saw that too, we wonder when Hezbollah will be held to account. So whilst these political chihuahua’s refuse to appear we see the stage changing, a stage where a lot of people are demanding that ALL HELP towards Lebanon will stop until someone correctly muzzles Hezbollah. And I see a reason to divert those aid funds to Israel (if needed). A larger stage erupts as the smaller (2020/8/5) subsides. This is not about local rights, this is about Hezbollah is showing itself as the bully it always was, it was that in 1982, it still is that now. In this I am not making judgement on judge Tarek Bitar, I know too little about him, but the stage that Hezbollah wants it stopped and they are happy to show themselves (often with balaclava’s) exercise that right wielding an RPG-7, or other hardware of the ‘firearms’ variety shows them to be the aggressor, to be the bad apples and now as the energy crises is pushing into winter, the stage of anger changes even more. Now there is a larger explosion and it could go on into its neighbouring places and one of them is Israel the other one is Syria and neither accepts the Hezbollah approach. I nice stage to set and the people of Lebanon do not get a choice in the matter, they let things slide with Hezbollah for too long and this will implode in all kinds of wrong settings. Even now we see all minds of media including Iran in this mess. I cannot follow that as I remain a follower of evidence, but it does make sense. And even in light of the humanitarian side of ‘Hezbollah-run oil shipments from Iran’, enough players were willing to let that slide, but it would not take long until Hezbollah thought it was in control (because to some degree they are) and now the world has had enough, some will stop funds, more will stop goods and Hezbollah will learn what war against hungry and cold fellow citizens look like, they will not give Hezbollah any consideration in all this and neither should we. There comes a time when enough is enough and too many have hit that point now, so as Hezbollah and Amar will seek ‘compensation’ (optionally for their lost explosives), the larger station is no what they want, it is what they were part of and that is what fears them. The Times of Israel gives us “Local commentators said Washington, worried about chaos in Lebanon amid raging, multiple crises, may have decided to look the other way”, but that is not the real deal. The slightly more real deal is “humanitarian assistance in Lebanon to more than $372 million in Fiscal Year 2021” and it has become time to stop that. Let the cancer die, let those people die. This in not inhumane, it is an essential part of stopping terrorism by Hezbollah. If there are no people to care, there are no recruits, there is no Hezbollah and the times and the economic pressure are growing in this direction. It would have been less of an issue if someone muzzled them, but no one did so we have a new stage to look forward to. In the first the UN trying to smooth things over, the other all the heart bleeding people who ache for the people of Lebanon, yet none of them are willing to hold Hezbollah to account, why is that?

To keep instability around? It is too late for that, Wall Street solved that problem for you all. 

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