August 22, 2021 · 19:14

Time slice or lemon tart

That is indeed the question, but the question is not that important at present. It all started with a weird dream. In this dream I was in Montreal (Canada), now let’s be clear. I have no connection to the city, and apart from the fact that they have a good hockey team, I know next to nothing on the place, I know it is in French speaking Canada, but that is all. So in this dream I saw someone, it might be a reflective me, it could be anyone. They saved a hawk, or falcon from their balcony. The animal was shivering and clearly afraid, the person put on an oven mitt and offered his hand. The bird jumped on the hand with the mitt and carefully the bird was taken in the house. He placed the bird on top of a chair and got the bird rare roast beef (it seemingly really liked the rare roast beef) and gave it a bowl of water mixed with a lot of sugar. The bird was no longer seemingly afraid, but it was nervous. The person was looking at the clouds and wondered. He then moved what was drinkable and eatable into the bathroom, the bathroom and this is important was one of the innermost rooms in the house, no windows and no direct outer wall. He also placed a chair and a small table (it was a large bathroom), moved the goods into the bathroom and walked around the house pushing the heaters up everywhere, yet not to the highest setting, setting 4 was used on knobs with a 6 setting, I think that mattered somehow. Then he carefully moved the bird, now aptly named Horus with the mitt again and took the chair as well. He then got into the kitchen, took several items and moved to the bathroom where he set the radiator to high. 

Then it started to happen, Montreal was hit with a cold snap, it was only October, or November, but the cold-snap happened and well over 50% of the people in Montreal froze to death. 

Now, none of this is a mystery. I saw the Day after tomorrow, I played AC Origins, so all the elements (all except Montreal) fell into place, no real mystery or divine intervention.

Then I remembered every time I played a new game of Minecraft. Did you play it? The first day is important, because you need to create a safe location before the sun goes down. That part is important because too many RPG games are a service where it is at your convenience. Whenever you get around to it, and Bethesda has used that setting since I started playing it in Oblivion, in that same setting Fallout 3 onwards has the same stage. Yet what happens when that is not an option? When a house is on fire, it does not help to hand the bucket to the owner of the burning house when you get to level 13. He (of she) needs it now, or really soon. This is a stage we forgot about, the time slice. There are two issues.

  1. Do you have the minimum skills to cater to a time driven need?
  2. Should such a stage be set and always be achievable?

These two setting are important, there are gain two stages we must contemplate. In the first we cannot always be there, that is a mere fact of life and programming around that element is often folly. The second is that if we have a proper RPG, we have houses (guilds), but what if your first guild is not a mage or a tinkerer? So early in the game you see a setting where you can only watch, be that famous Monday morning quarterback and watch others do the job. Then we get to the important part, we need to set these parts to some level of randomisation that instigated when you START the new game. Not when you get there. So we see the need to have 20-40 missions with a decent rewards, but we need to be partially lucky, so that the internet cheater miss out as well. That is setting a larger story, especially when success unlocks a larger side quest. And the second part in all this, it enables and fortifies the replay of a game. So in the dream we can see that Horus was the trigger, but what happens when you never noticed that bird? Would you be ready? Would you make it to any shelter? And most important, without resources you will go hungry, thirsty and optionally will continue with decreased stamina and health (a day without food makes a person weak, try it for yourself if you doubt me).

So is the approach of having time sliced missions a hit or a lemon? I cannot answer that, I think it could be great if you program this properly and it will take proper programming to get it done. Programmers could ask Anunnaki (god of fate), but there is a chance that you will not receive any help from that direction. It will be a challenge on several levels, but should you pull it off you will be the one adding a new dimension to RPG gaming, a dimension that has been lacking for close to a decade, before that systems were just not strong enough.

In this I merely remembered the settings I came up with in Mass Effect Andromeda 2, Base of the pillar. And yes, I will admit that I had some overlapping ideas that I had for Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration, but I think that a good foundation (as long a the story is completely different) is not a bad thing. I saw the massive mass driven mistake that Andromeda was and there was a setting to fix it and regain credibility, but in that setting ME Andromeda would pack the second game with the first game, and even as a lot was the same, it was added with an enormous amount of changes and different storytelling. One needs to be faithful to the original trilogy. 

Yet all these settings cannot be more of the same, there needs to be a level of evolution. Yes there are plenty of gamers that do not mind more of the same, but they will soon realise that they are stuck in the past and that is as I personally see it never a good thing. And is success a guarantee? No, it is not. I do not offer guarantees, I merely dabble in ideas that can make the next generation of gaming special and enticing.We all might come up with a Nintendo WiiU, and that is fine, but it is not that system, it resulted in the Nintendo Switch and the few who are able to make THAT leap will make it big and that ups the level of gaming for everyone, that I the setting that players like Amazon Luna and Google Stadia (they a little less) get to look t and there is the larger station of play, a setting we have not seen before, not a game that exists everywhere. This is not about exclusivity, but about a totally new level and dimension of play, I think too many are forgetting that we need to push that part and not enough of us are making that leap. 

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August 21, 2021 · 17:08

Agrestally Ignorant

It took a day, I had to ponder several things here. I was drawn to an article by the associated press. The article (at https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-algorithm-technology-police-crime-7e3345485aa668c97606d4b54f9b6220) gives us ‘How AI-powered tech landed man in jail with scant evidence’. Here we have two issues, the first is that AI does not (yet) exist, the second is that AI evidence should not be valid, the rules of evidence are quite clear, so when I see “it came from a clip of noiseless security video showing a car driving through an intersection, and a loud bang picked up by a network of surveillance microphones. Prosecutors said technology powered by a secret algorithm that analysed noises detected by the sensors indicated Williams shot and killed the man.” So for all intent, we might think that the prosecutor was really clever, but as I personally see it, the man needs to be taken behind a bicycle shed and shot in the head, but that is merely my personal view. We might give value to “a secret algorithm”, yet that is merely an approach to not scrutinise the evidence. I have no idea how his defence faltered, but it did. 

In Intelligence analyses there are two parts. The first is that every source is unique and as long as they are NOT connected, they can NEVER support one another. Why is that? It comes from a much older setting which is found in “Trust, but verify!” We can accept all kinds of facts handed to us, but verification is where it is at. Verification gives us the larger setting that this source makes a claim and we verified that claim via other sources and we get the same results and conclusions. This is also why actual news needs collaboration from multiple sources, and it is why credibility of these sources matter. It is why witnesses are tested, cleared and processed to give the other party no option to diminish their testimony. It is so for a person and it needs to be more for any device. And whomever relies on “a secret algorithm”, is soon regarded as non-essential weight to any office. You see, the algorithm was programmed. I am not stating that the person was wrong, or did a bad job, but who knows what the brief for the algorithm was? That brief also gives the programmer more (or less) freedom of programming. Then we get the installation and testing of the microphones, it they are out by half an inch, there is every chance that they picked up another shot, perhaps even a muffler bang, who tested that part? Who looked at the map (a GIS speciality) and considered the noise and the event? Now consider for a moment the byline “ShotSpotter equipment overlooks the intersection of South Stony Island Avenue and East 63rd Street in Chicago on Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2021.”, this is all installed on a light-pole, so if any car ever hit it, the pole will be off by several degrees, did the software see that, was that ever considered? 

There is a lot more, it is seen in the part “The company’s methods for identifying gunshots aren’t always guided solely by the technology. ShotSpotter employees can, and often do, change the source of sounds picked up by its sensors after listening to audio recordings, introducing the possibility of human bias into the gunshot detection algorithm. Employees can and do modify the location or number of shots fired at the request of police, according to court records. And in the past, city dispatchers or police themselves could also make some of these changes”, so what were the raw collections, what was the distance to the event and what are the specifics of the so called “noiseless security video”, there are a truckload of issues and that is why verification is essential. This is all before we get to “an Associated Press investigation, based on a review of thousands of internal documents, emails, presentations and confidential contracts, along with interviews with dozens of public defenders in communities where ShotSpotter has been deployed, has identified a number of serious flaws in using ShotSpotter as evidentiary support for prosecutors”, it is merely the top of the iceberg, when we consider “classify 14 million sounds in its proprietary database as gunshots or something else”, you think this is trivial, but it is not. You see, this is in part the evidence, 14,000,000 sounds seems impressive, but it is not. You see there are an estimated 72 million handguns in existence, I have no included rifles and other two handed weapons, and if the database of sounds includes mufflers and tire blowouts, that lit is rather slim compared to what is out there. I can see close to half a dozen issues straight of the hockey-stick and whilst people are considering where the puck is (in Pittsburg they call it a biscuit). 

So why the hockey reference? The puck moves fast, really fast and plenty of people watching the game lose sight of it in a match, this is no different. Two sources, not connected and well over 50% unverified, how could this man be found guilty? I also have some serious questions for the judge there, but I wonder if it was on his plate, it was on the plate of the prosecutor and as I personally see it, that evidence had no case in court, except perhaps a court officiated by the Marx brothers. 

SZo when we get to the end and we see “ShotSpotter CEO Ralph Clark declined to discuss specifics about their use of artificial intelligence, saying it’s “not really relevant.”” Someone needs to take that horse and coach it to the side of the road, what some call AI, is merely machine learning, optionally deeper learning and it makes all the difference. With the amount of human interference (interaction) on the track from the microphone to the court room, those relying on AI are hoping to avoid the setting of bias and programming error, even source comparison errors. I reckon this Ralph Clark is on a slippery slope and with Michael Williams now on the stage where he can claim damages, a decent 8 or 9 figure damage, the 200 cases might represent a massive payout from the Government making the rules of evidence a clear debating point for whomever takes this to the next level and when the government loses a second or third trial it will be up to the Ralph Clark’s of the world to set up a defence perimeter, but I reckon it needs to be a lot more than “a secret algorithm” because at that stage such a defence will not hold water, not by a long shot. It would also help by not hiding behind AI when it cannot be AI, but that is merely a personal observation.

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August 19, 2021 · 20:19

Ignored by media

Yes, that happens, we all see it, we all (to some extend) understand it. Yet what needs to happen for an article like ‘Will I ever be able to fly without feeling guilty again?’ (At https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57917193) to even have value? You see, this has happened before and this time its Lucy Hooker who does the damage. You see, I have no intention of taking the filtered information given to us for granted. You see, the slightly edited quote “Previously a regular flyer, visiting friends in Scotland and holidaying abroad, she says the penny dropped during that trip. And in the end, the decision was easy. She is one of a small band of people who have found flying just too uncomfortable to contemplate any more.” So, how can she afford it? I haven’t flown in 17 years, but that is because I am on a budget. So when we see “One flight from London to New York emits around 1.3 tonnes of carbon according to the offsetting organisation Atmosfair. Other organisations offer lower estimates, but even if you eat vegan and cycle everywhere, you’d struggle to make up for the emissions from a return trip”, I see this as a stupid BS article, a story by Miss Hooker to please others and none of them are particularly interested in the real deal, just like the Guardian and their Jetset BS. 

The largest extend was ignored again and again, as we take notice of the actual issue. The report which I discussed in ‘Uniform Nameless Entitlement Perforation’ on December 10th 2020 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/10/uniform-nameless-entitlement-perforation/), which has the ACTUAL report given to us by the UN Environment program, is merely a part of it, when we combine the European Environment Agency report, we see that 1% of plants do 50% of the pollution damage, but are they looking there? And there is more, 147 plants cause over 165 billion euro’s damage, so why are they not looking there? Why do we get BS article after BS article on some oversensitive person who saw a flood once? And to emphasise, the 147 plants do an equal amount of damage as the remaining 14178 facilities under scrutiny. So how often did the BBC (the Guardian too) do their homework and look into those accusation by the EEA? I bet that will be more crunchy than some sob-story over a person who will not be flying to Scotland to see relatives (or friends). 

Yes, we can all agree that we need to be carbon aware, but this is done whilst the media ignores the larger problem creators. 

And personally I do not care about Maggie Robertson, if she feels she sleeps better by signing up to Flight Free UK, that is fine by me, I avoided travel for 17 years by getting a budget shoved down my throat. And I am NOT ignoring the EEA report, even as the media is. You see, they avoided it, they did not oppose the report, they did not nitpick the report, they merely ignored it, and why was that? 

So if you want the real lowdown on pollution, find the EEA report and learn, also consider that everyone seems to ignore the 147 facilities and they have done so for well over a year, because the report might have been out for 8 months, but these 147 facilities have been around a hell of a lot longer, so why are we kept in the dark whilst attacking rich people with fuel efficient jets and people going on a holiday perhaps once a year, all whilst 50% of ALL pollution is caused according to the EEA by 147 facilities, so which facilities are they?

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August 18, 2021 · 23:02

As the pie shrinks

Yes, we all see it, we all notice it to some extent, but that is not a given that what we see is complete. As I personally see it, the stage is one one hand seen in ‘UK defence giant Ultra agrees to £2.6bn Cobham takeover’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-58228657)

where we see it is not the first caper, Both Ultra Electronics and Meggitt are now US owned. So whilst we are sussed to sleep with ““safeguarding and supporting the UK’s national security” including national security clearance arrangements”, supported by “It has also pledged to protect existing and create new UK manufacturing and engineering jobs, and to increase investment in research and development (R&D) in the UK” some people will hope you ignore the larger picture, and a lot of you will. You see there is more to this and if someone did not notice the total invoice of £8.9B the American were happy to pay, consider that they need to get that money back and then some. They will keep to the letter of the agreement, which is anyones guess as it involves National security and no one (except for a really small few) will get to see it. 

What we see ignored is not what is done, but what it enables the US firms to do. You see products are phased out all the time, but now the Americans can phase out the low margin articles at their own speed, in more than a few cases 3-5 years sooner, giving the UK all kinds of headaches and the logistics of it as well as existing inventory will not be the shortest list there. There is an upside to the American setting, they get to call the needs and the make of a lot of articles to the largest degree. 

So, let’s create a fictive example. Consider that the UK Navy has all its operational and tactical stations record on a betamax tape, it gives the admiralty a good show of who and what is performing and what is not, it is standard operational practice. The Americans have a VHS alternative, but in the end it does the same thing. The UK took Betamax as it has the highest quality and they had no local alternative, the US took VHS because it is American. This is not new or unique, most nations have this. To give an example, the Dutch maker Tulip computers would not exist in the 90’s if that rule was not in place. So now consider that 3M buys the UK firm and now it can over 2-3 years phase out Betamax. Now we see a new stage, the UK admiralty will have to upgrade ALL the recorders and players in the ENTIRE Navy. 

The UK will over time face this. I personally see it as a given setting. Now consider these are not recorders and players, but Goalkeepers, Gatlings, and other parts. 

Now also (from the Ultra Group website) the optional stage of “Many nuclear facilities across the world are facing the rising challenge of replacing or refurbishing outdated and obsolete sensors and transmitters. Ultra’s advanced ageing and obsolescence technology transforms nuclear power plants and ensures economical long-term operation.” And consider the outdated (or soon to be) sensors in Nuclear submarines and other vessels, that is just the start, so over the next 10-15 years the UK will get an overhauled Navy, but on the time schedule and overspending of the USA. So in what universe was this allowed? I get it, there is a larger playing field, but now that field is decided on US needs and as their logistical stage changes, so much the UK or find another solution. Now, the UK budget cannot simply cut defence, it is adjusted for the American format and it will see large amounts of funds go to America. Or in another setting, we will see that a bullet normally costs 0.10, the making is 0.07, so the stage is 0.03 per bullets taxed. In the new setting we see 0.01 per bullet on paper, 70% of 0.09 goes to the USA as contribution (0.063) and the income per bullet is taxed at 0.027, which is now at a loss, so no taxation there. Moreover there would be a massive tax deduction, so that is one place to go I reckon and this is not a fictive setting, this has happened before and it gets to be better when the list is not ‘bullet’, but an amalgamation of all kinds of ‘perishable hardware’ a totalised invoice, which is much harder to tinker with. Yes as I see it for the Americans it is a very nice investment that will pay back well over 200% before year three is out. And as they are interacting with other players, the massive profits that usually serves the internal good of the UK will now go to America, so who approved all this?

Time for you to find out, have a great day!

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August 18, 2021 · 02:05

Sliding media values

I got a little angry as I took notice of ‘Lily Cole: Model apologises for posing in a burka on Instagram’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-58245304). Here we see the BBC in an alleged new attempt to create click bitches. You see, why would the legally allowed acts of a writer (Lilly Cole) require her to publicly apologise for something that is in the first not illegal and not even immoral. In the second, I hereby request a list of ALL the critics that we see in “Critics said posing in the garment, worn by some Muslim women, did not help diversity and was ill-advised given the current unrest in Afghanistan”, so I want that list of critics (and stakeholders too). Diversity is not seen through fashion, to be clear it is my view and when I see “Cole said she understood why the image upset people and wanted to “sincerely apologise for any offence caused”. She agreed it was “ill-timed” and said she “hadn’t read the news at the time”.” I personally wonder who is pushing this anti islamic bullshit. Now, I am not muslim, I do not are whether a person (disregarding religion) decides to wear a Burka, a Niqab, a Hijab, or a Chador. Is that not the freedom we signed up for? 

That same BBC is very motivated to push any link to Martin Bashir out of the news (or as far to the back as possible). So I am understandably angry. I do not know what the motivation, or the choice was of Lily Cole to give rise to diversity. And when I see the utterly slim connection of “Cole, 33, posted the pictures as Afghanistan was being taken over by the Taliban, who forced women to wear the burka when they were last in control there in the 1990s” is beyond belief. First these idiots (oops, sorry critics) will optionally be found to have been super silent in cases of Syria and Yemen as well as the inactions by America in Afghanistan, the latter part is getting all kinds of exposure. In the second, the global Islamic population is almost 2 billion, making it 25% of the world population, the Taliban is an estimated mere 230,000 making it a 0.015% of the Islamic population and a 0.00294% of the global population, so why the overreaction? I am speculating and willing to bet that this is due to anti-islamic sentiments and the BBC is reporting this, whilst allegedly ignoring all kinds of issues for their stakeholders? 

Does anyone get the drift that the BBC needs to overhaul their editorial staff? I need to be honest, the BBC has done its share in exposing anti-Islamophobia, that should not be ignored, but this piece could have been done a hell of a lot better. So when we look at some of the quotes and we see “The Times columnist Janice Turner accused Cole of “putting Instagram posturing before universal human rights”.” In this I am willing to call Janice Turner a bit of a raving loon. Why? This is about a book, Lily Cole’s book and if she thinks that she is doing the best to produce and promote her product then it is her choice. I have nothing against JT messaging Lily Cole stating that she is not taking the right route, no, the BBC made it all public and no matter how you slice it, she did it on HER instagram account. When I search for Instagram+Scandal I get 85,000,000 hits on Google. In this day and age when ACTUAL journalism is sliding, was there any value in giving Lily Cole visibility in this way? Then we see “Anjum Peerbacos, co-founder of the Hijabi Half-Hour podcast, said the pictures were “disrespectful””, which is a separate and different issue. I cannot comment on that (not Islam and lacking knowledge) and what the BBC did not give us is that she is also a member of AVOW- Advancing Voices of Women against Islamaphobia. OK, this view has merit, but the BBC did not take that path, the path was all accusing on Lily Cole and with the exception of Anjum Peerbacos it was the wrong route to take. 

We all make mistakes, there is no denying that. Yet to hammer an activist who just wrote a book it is unacceptable to take such an approach. I believe that islamic people have a decent stance to talk about dress-up, yet her answer “If you are serious about it and you’re passionate about it and you want to see diversity normalised, you bring women forward that are from that diverse background and you platform them”, is a decent intelligent one. A view that almost falls into the background, too far into the background. 

So why is it making me angry?
The BBC was ignoring several cases of houthi missile attacks on Saudi civilian targets, the BBC has been adamant on giving the highlights on many causes and that should not be forgotten. Yet in this case it could have taken a very different route, whether this is good or bad for Lily Cole is something that I cannot predict, but I wish her the best. Advocating diversity is a good cause and perhaps Anjum Peerbaco could set up a special in the Middle East Eye (a paper she writes for), or perhaps via AVOW. Let’s not forget that we all make mistakes and teaching us the why can almost never be a bad thing. It might help Lily Cole, I do not know, I am merely fishing here.

Yet I believe that the BBC with that article made a larger mistake and they should repair the damage they do, I truly believe that. And in the end, is fighting against islamophobia and for diversity to some extent not an overlapping interest area?

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August 17, 2021 · 02:31

The stupidity of catering

Catering is a double sided coin, there is a plus side and there is a negative side. In this there are to problems with that equation, in the first these are not sides of the same coin, they are two coins, one is larger than the other and as such we see the reflective setting change. Consider two coins, like a dime and a dollar, or a pence and a pound. Now consider that they both have heads and tails, you can choice one or the other and you think that the biggest one is your gain, but that would be wrong, it is the smaller one and the other side of the larger coin is the headway and losses you make and they tend to be larger. It is the price of catering. Like the stupid manager with dollar shaped pupils, they see revenue, but they do not recognise cost, it is part of another branch of their company, so they sell and dump all the support to the services side, in some cases (what I personally witnessed) selling things that will not work. It was their revenue and their bonus. After which they will suddenly become helpful and let their services department solve it all, making sure that delays are set in motion so that the 90 day threshold is passed and then whatever is paid back will not affect their bonus. The stupidity of catering is always one sided. Even me, I cater to me, I admit that and I have no issues with catering to me, but I will remain fair. I will not sell what will not work, I will not cater to the impossible. And that is the setting we see today, catering to the impossible.

The news (at https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/8/16/the-us-the-taliban-and-the-stunning-defeat-in) gives us “The Taliban victory is a major humiliation for the US”, it is not a weird consideration and there have been like mind voices in the past. I myself voiced issues with inactivity as early as 2013 and 2014, yet the Americans made noise that they knew better and now we see another stage. A stage that the media is ignoring. Yes they give their ‘click bitch’ emotional setting, but the larger stage that Al Jazeera hints at with “It was expected, yes, but not so rapidly, so victoriously, so humiliatingly”. The issues is troops and material, as I voiced the Comanche approach (an American approach no less) well over half a decade ago, the Americans catered to stakeholders and set on a perch. They should have taken a page out of the book of Quanah Parker who gave them hell in the late 1800’s (around 1870), that would have been a way to deal with the Taliban, but they decided to sit on a perch and halt any action and now we see the other side of that coin, the Taliban overran nearly all of Afghanistan in less than a week, they had the troops, they had the hardware and no one had a clue.

Now as we see Kabul being overrun, we suddenly get ‘Afghan President Ashraf Ghani flees Kabul to ‘prevent bloodshed’’ (I personally think he ran for his life caring only for self, but that might be merely my thought). There is also ‘Afghans Need a Humanitarian Intervention Right Now’, yet if you believe that this will happen you are quite crazy. I find the call by Micheál Martin calling ‘calls on Taliban to respect humanitarian law’ and this is politics? The loser in a war does not get to make demands, that has been a set result long before the Americans held that clambake from 19 Apr 1775 to 3 Sept 1783. The Dutch had a picnic opposing the Spanish in the years from 1566 to 1609, as such, I have no idea what will happen in Afghanistan, but it will not be pretty, that much I feel certain about. You see ABC news gave the people 8 hours ago ‘Who are the Taliban and what do they want?’, the did not go into any part of the folly that allowed Afghanistan to be overrun so fast. And the people in the media are not asking that question, not the Democrats, not the Republicans, and as I personally see it both sides catered to stakeholders and the maximisation of war revenue which to the largest degree gave the victory to the Taliban. When you consider the projects that USAID finished in Afghanistan, when you consider the costs and who got paid? How were they paid? A group that can overthrow a nation in a week and we need to consider “USAID completed the construction of three generation plants in 2009, 2016, and 2019 and is constructing three solar power plants and a wind farm that will add 110 megawatts of power to the national power grid” and those are merely the highlights. 

So what will happen next?
That is actually the question that is harder to answer, because it depends on the Taliban and not on the politicians that make claims that there are options and that they are working on this. Because that will be something that is so far from the truth it will become laughable. And it gets to be worse than this, you see the ‘allied’ forces abandoned their translators, the world is seeing that so any encounter where translators are needed it will be on the US forces to find them and secure them beforehand, a much larger tactical advantage then they are considering. 

A stage that might seem to be evolving, but that would be wrong, the larger stage is not that they merely lost, it is that the intelligence services in that region had seemingly no clear insight into their opponents and their resolve, their size and the materials available to them. Afghanistan is 270% of the UK and it got overrun in a week, is anyone waking up to these numbers? The afghan military was useless and their weapons pointless, the same might be said for the departing allies the Afghan army had, as such we see defeat in three ways and the media is not picking up on that, how weird?

The Guardian gives us “The Taliban have 80,000 troops in comparison with a nominal 300,699 serving the Afghan government”, this now implies that the Taliban went up against an army almost 400% their size and still overtook Afghanistan in a week, a cause for alarm and a cause for concern, so when we see ‘The world must not look away as the Taliban sexually enslaves women and girls’ we see that they too forget that to the victor go the spoils, all the spoils. England learned that lesson the hard way, The Dutch taught the Spanish and the Indonesians taught the Dutch, it was an easy lesson and history is filled with examples and the biggest lesson? These winners did not sit on a perch, it never ever works. 

As such the largest station of lessons is about to unleash and it will be worse, because now the Taliban will cry for their right to vaccines, so which nation will ingratiate themselves by providing vaccines? I reckon we will know a lot more when we get to the next weekend when we can sit on our own perches again, preparing for that Monday morning game as a quarterback.

And the Afghan people? It seems to me that the stakeholders will not care, it is not part of their spreadsheet.

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August 16, 2021 · 16:17

When one is no longer valid

Yes, it is part 4 and it is not a wordplay of death, even though for some it is. As I went over the stories, as I contemplate the settings that are out there. I suddenly got a thought and looked a few things up. You see the previous article had an image of three and four circles and the fourth circle is the larger stage of sublime writing. Now, I was clear, that is not me, I am still in a developing stage on a few levels, yet circle number four kept on beckoning. So I mulled a few things over and even though it remains a play on mainly three circles, I started to insert another matter towards both the opposition and the divine play. You see, this world is by its own hands now in a stage of post-secularism. Even as we ignore this, the stage was created by the Catholics who gave us hits like ‘The best place to hide a salami is in a minor’, ‘As we kill the children of First Nations who disagree’. It is in that field we now see “growth of religion is the spread of religions and the increase of religious adherents around the world”, it goes far beyond Islam, even though it is seemingly growing the fastest. The spreading of the false god by the Vatican has a larger stage. As it is about ‘forgiveness’ the people who adhered to Ygdrassil, to the Nordic gods and others, we now see a stage we where the story I concocted will have a massive discussion stage. A stage that will call to attention a lot more than just a fantasy story, what my story basically is (Hades and Anubis agree on this). 

There have been well over two dozen academic writings on the topic in the last decade alone, and that is a stage I can adhere to and shape in something that could be added to the story. Consider the stage when we see the real problem, or perhaps it is not a problem, perhaps it is a much wider awakening. A stage where the people are waking up to two millennium, of using an alleged false god that have been catering to the wealthy, to keep people without account and now as the dam breaks, the Vatican will seek the stands of forgiveness and entrench the wrong people, a stage that Islam predicted, and we ignored it, but the truth will come out and even as it is not the stage, there is a larger stage that gives rise that one god cannot be real in the world we live in. But a group of many could be an option and as we realise that a god could also mean any person so far advanced in science than we are, we see a larger stage that might be true. And in such a stage we see that there is an optional issue with monotheism. In this the doubts we all have, the questions we all have, that is fodder for any TV series. So in my stage it is not merely about the sliding scale of between secularism and post secularism. It becomes a scale of a range of gods and how they converge their powers. A stage where we see the larger stage, how is the relationship of deities and their powers, as their powers are optionally linked to us, we need to see what drives them, is it immortality? Is it power that we are not yet aware of? 

Any guess is good, but that can also drive a story, because I am about the story, not about theology and in this theology is an optional weapon, an optional choice for us to make. What if our self is driven by who or what we align to? Is it Zeus/Juno, Poseidon, Neptune, Horus, Osiris? Your clue is as good as mine, I do not claim to know, I do not even speculate that I am right and in all this we still get to wonder how it is in China, India and on Haiti (and many other places). 

A stage added that I had not considered as the story was evolving, we now see a story that is  getting a lot more enticing and optionally complex too. You see, if the population of 150,000,000 in 500BC supported them, how much more powerful will they be when we are now 7,800,000,000? You see, no matter how you set it, secularism only works in a place where there is true accountability, now we see how the media scorned it, how the Vatican made it a joke and as we now move faster into a stage of post secularism, the story gets adapted in a few directions, and that is good for me, I can drive the story in any direction, that is great because in the end, the story is everything.

 

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August 16, 2021 · 04:23

When death is taxable

Yup, we get to part three, it is not merely about the tory, which in personal view is pretty nice. It important to set a dynamic into place. We looked at the mortal one, we saw a little from the divine point of view, yet there is a third view, The opponents view. There is one side that is the strongest and it is ready to oppose both sides, but to do it well we need three parties.

To show this lets take a look at two images. In the first image we see three circles. The interactions are the points where the circles connect, the environments are the thee areas where the interactions take place.  Now this is not always a given, but for the breakthrough moments, when you do this, you are in an easy state to set the stage to seven locations and six points where the main characters interact. This setting is not a given, but it is a start, the better situation is with 4 circles, where we see 4 main parties, we get 10 interactions and 14 locations, yet that is for the masters, not for mere wannabe’s like you and me. So when we have set the stage of interactions we get set an initial stage towards a script. When this is done we can start considering the creation of a playbook. 

So what gives?
Well, when we create a setting where we need to chose whether to take the side of the divine or the mortals, the seek into self is powerful, the desire to be divine equally so, as such we need a third party, the opposing gods are one way to go, it also leaves us being the toil to the gods, just like any good greek tragedy is, and as Herodotus teaches us, Egyptian plays are no less. It gives us the power of the power players Hades and Anubis, yet in that light we get the questions that surrounds Baron Samedi and to a small degree his consort Maman Brigitte as well. This gets us to the opposition.

If we consider that Hel, Ereshkigal and Mot. We need to consider the history we do know, the history we suspect (through known literature) and there is a decent part of speculation, which is left to us because thousands of scrolls in the Library of Alexandria never made it past the fire. Yes, that does not prove anything, but the words of the old writers goes further than what we know and even now their insight astounds us, so we have a place to start. Nordic myths and stories gives us a lot about Hel, but it does not give us all and there is a second consideration. This comes to the surface when we consider Codex Wormianu (1400, Denmark) and Codex Trajectinus (1600, Netherlands). There is every. Chance that these papers had been overly Christianised, and that is a problem, but it is also a handle of resetting what is Hel and where it is, she becomes a much larger side to the story, the same could be said for Mot, yet there is a lot less on that front, giving us points to work with, but also a lot of freedom, so we need to see where the interactions in the old writings of these gods were. You see, no matter how we slice it, in the old writings we learn of written yet unspoken desires. When we consider that, the writings of some, that the gods were petty and power driven does not add up, but it becomes a different matter when the souls of the people become the currency, when devotion is the foundation of their power, it makes sense and then we see that the deities of death have an advantage, because when we die, secular or not, most suddenly become faithful, but faith through fear does not work, it never does. As such the consolidation of souls become a different view and that puts Baron Samedi in the middle of a lot and from his point of view, from a Haitian power base to global foundation is one hell of a leap and that shows us the three and the need for Hel and Mot to oppose it. In this Ereshkigal is a mere vessel, but a powerful one, almost forgotten, the perfect messenger between several parties and one with the overall strategic view, all players in a game where 7.8 billion souls is a powerful battery to bring back the gods, but not all will make it back, that is where the battle of opposing forces lay for the longer station. 

So whilst we consider the parts of these three groups, we need to consider what we would do if we introduce a fourth group, or more precisely, how we can shift balance over the three parties when a fourth party (optionally part of one of the two) pushes the balance in all kinds of directions. The viewer needs to be mesmerised, yes it is appealing to be the person on the axe of the seesaw, but that is too controlled, so like the image, the purple circle, a combination of red and blue now gives us two points to push the mortal coil and also push the other two parties, yet what is the real push and what is the feigned push, that becomes the question if the viewer has that approach, if not (which would be fair), is a much larger stage in creating a rollercoaster ride and that is where the story goes off (optionally the deep end). So when we look at these elements we see the third party deflating one and inflating the other to create a stage the viewer is wondering about and that entices them to watch more. So whilst we consider where the opposing group goes next, it will enable us to see the ‘altered’ view of both, so when the two players are exposed we wonder do we see what we want to see, or what we are allowed to see? And that is quite the ballgame. And this approach is not merely for specified projects, this setting works well on storylines for RPG games as well. Consider some of the RPG games you played, do you recognise the approach to some degree? It does not matter if you do not, but it still gives rise to the one part I always proclaimed ‘The story is everything’.

Have a great Monday!

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August 15, 2021 · 02:26

Mix and match

I was having a few thoughts on the matters that I have been writing on these last two days when a thought reappeared in me, I thought of it before, but now the idea was forming in a few ways. As my thoughts go it is best released in streaming games first. Others can and will have it too, but this is something that will take a few attempts to get right. You see, I love RPG games. Yet in all the years none of them EVER mixed the setting of Simulators with RPG’s, not that the RPG needs to become a simulator, but a setting where we train people around us. So in case you own a castle, you get to improve the ‘programming’ of the NPC. So as I see it, the approach is towards the use of deeper learning to ‘educate’ the guards. So you can imbue your bow and arrow skills on the guards on the high walls, you can imbue your weapon skills on the patrolling guards and so on. It has never been done and it could open up a lager playing field. Consider that we can train our troops, but the skills are also transferred to 75% of your skills, or the maximum they already have to all other NPC’s? So it is no longer merely about the level of the opponent, their skill level will up the game for all gameplay in an RPG, so why did no-one think of this? Perhaps they did, I do not know. Yet with the evolution of deeper learning (what some erroneously call AI) this is no longer a thought, there are several ways that NPC’s can evolve in any RPG and it gives us a much better game to look at, so why was this not yet done? I am not accusing anyone, merely asking. If I can come up with a TV series, a mini series, a movie and several games, I remain amazed how the others are empty of new ideas and they are merely hiding behind sequels. OK, not all, Guerrilla games is one of the few exceptions. We see remastered games (I am happy about some of them), we see sequels adapted for the next generation consoles, which is nice too. Yet real new IP remains largely absent, a circular movement surrounding 2 decades of gaming. I do not think it is all wrong, I myself opted to a few parties to remaster their old games, actually it was remaster and upgrade severely towards the new systems and there is a lot that is available out there. Yet how many real upgrades have some RPG’s received? Again, not an accusation, yet when you consider that we know Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76. Now consider that I got the idea of empty holo-tapes that could be used to add to the story and the functionality of the character before Fallout 76 was released, which was almost 4 years ago. So am I the only one thinking out of the box to increase the level of games and gameplay? One would think that if you pay a group of people well over 7 billion, one would imagine that they would be far ahead of me, but that does not seem to be the case. 

Yet this is not about pointing fingers, or blaming people. It is merely an idea I was having to increase the value and power of a game. We are all gamers and some of our ideas are whacky, some are brilliant, some can bridge a massive gap between the game maker and the game player, we cannot blame the maker for not thinking of EVERY corridor, that’s where we come in. And this stage is more easily adapted in streaming, because streamers are in a stage where they have one environment to consider, the one that goes to ALL players, so they do have a few advantages and I reckon they need to home in on those advantages. There is no real benefit to have the same Ubisoft game on all four consoles, yet a streamer and a console? That could pan out the be a very different cattle of fish. 

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August 14, 2021 · 08:46

When death and Chicken taste alike

Yesterday I wrote ‘Death as a resource’, my mind kept on racing and now it is time for part two, you see when the story is everything, you need to set a stage for the eyes to watch and to watch from the eyes of a god is not possible, not for many at least, so we need to paint the stage. No matter how we get leaked the information because the media wants its click stream, we need to entice the audience in other ways. In this I always grasp back to the slogan of FX, ‘the story is everything’. It is the most true and the most basic slogan that any writer can ever embrace. So here goes.

In the human corner we get two sisters, the younger one is a special agent of the ATF, the older one is an independent food critic, working and writing freelance. The stage starts with the older one seeing weird numbers. The stage of food poisoning up by 10%, yet the inspections by the department of health Louisiana had increased and showing clear lower transgressions all over the board, as such the numbers do not make sense. Even as the cases of food poisoning are not clearly shown or proven, the number of people showing symptoms are increasing. It was a small article and it was rejected by most, her sister took notice and found out that a similar trend was going on around Disney World Florida and Boston, even as it was rejected by almost all, the 10% raises calls towards visibility and this happens in more than one way. The ATF is not the real player, but the sister knows people and becomes the glue that links Boston (Faneuil Hall with its 15 million a year tourists), Disney World Florida and New Orleans. Her sister the food critic sees the overall quality of the food and attacks the 10% numbers, but also sees that the numbers are panning out. During the investigation she walks home one evening and sees the shadow of a large walking doglike creature as well as Baron Samedi, and then she faints. She sees one as a tourist trick, the other one she cannot explain and even as she is told that she was delirious from some kind of food poisoning, and that a rougarou is often part of Voodoo practice, so it is most likely a large man wearing a costume. (All this in episode one)

The vision makes the Tanya look deeper and as she investigates the restaurant she visited, with help from the Health inspection, she signs off on the quality and cleanliness of the kitchen, the proprietor knows that she has power and cooperates, she promises him a glowing recommendation and no mention of her food poisoning, yet she knows that there is something. She has a cup of soup during the day (the Meng Po element is now visible) and reinvigorated she continues the investigation. In the mean time she gets the location of three suspected food poisoning and as she visits them all, she sees that they look drained, like they had something bad to eat, but also talks to the doctor that there are no lasting complications expected. They merely need to keep to bed for a full day and let it all flush out of their systems. 

As she returns in the early evening she talks to two of the people in the lodgings and hands them some magazines to read, as she walks to her car, she sees a man in the distance, robed, holding a bident (Hades), she ignores the view and drives off. The next morning the three people are a lot worse and they show signs of Severe electrolyte imbalances and are treated accordingly, they recuperate as we hear at the end of the episode. Yet Tanya seeks out the man looking like Baron Samedi, she finds a few in New Orleans, but none look like the one she saw and she draws a picture of him and mails it to her sister. (Episode two starts here). In that episode it will be much more about the gods and part of the explanation of the why they are doing it. Consider that the initial locations shows us 35 million visitors a year, giving them the energy of up to 3.5 million people and it is only the beginning. We see how Christianity overtook the gods of Egypt and Greece, giving us their decay, but the gods were more than people and they survived in silence and in hiding. As time passed we see that Hades and Anubis lived off the land, but in their travels they landed in France where Baron Samedi was visiting (around 1800) and this starts their idea and the path we now see evolve. It is before 1900 when we see Meng Po in France too, they all meet and the plans are drawn and to give them a larger stake in all this, they decide to start the trip in the US so that they will have a much larger increase in power than Zeus and Ra, who have no connection to the American people, giving Hades and Anubis a much larger headway and more energy, but they agree that o ver time their brethren will be fed too, as this will reset the universe to their advantage.

In this in this episode I think that it is also important to introduce Ereshkigal and Mot into the story,  they are in a similar position, but they are much stronger and their universe still feeds them to a small degree. They get wind of the plans and start making their own (we get no idea on how they will go about them until the end), but the introduction is important. When we see a story we need to see levels of balance, the good, the bad and the indecisive. Yet in all this we also get to play with who is good, who is evil and who is indecisive. Good and bad are merely points of view, it is important not merely to use that but to explain to the audience what is what. It is like the customer and the bank, we tend to see the bank as evil, they are not, we see the customer as mere victims, they are not and to shift these vies towards some balance makes the larger whole grow in several ways. So as I am making an inventory, I reckon that the mini series should be done in 5-6 episodes, each around an hour. 

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