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. 

2 Comments

Filed under movies

August 13, 2021 · 22:44

Death as a resource

It seems flaky (and that is how I roll most often), but there is a logic to it all. This all came to mind as I was trying to complete the achievements in AC Origins, it was already in the back of my head, but the crossover NCIS episode regarding some playbook (featuring an evil Abby Sciuto) made the larger stage and started to connect the dots. The foundation of a mini series (or movie) came to mind. Consider the stage and consider history. We have always been ‘smitten’ by divinity, we have always considered that there is a larger stage, but when you think of it, the closer we get to death, the more we wonder and consider the need for mercy, understanding and we need that for out own peace of mind, but in that moment we give power of existence to these gods, so at that point Hades, Anubis, Mictlantecuhtli, Meng Po, Baron Samedi and Chepi meet in New Orleans (location of story), they hatch a plan to get there powers back to a much greater degree and with a population of billions, it becomes an option. The plan as it evolves sees Baron Samedi setup the voodoo powers to entice the people, Meng Po hands out the potion in the soup she gives as a freebee to the tourists. And as more people get enticed they forfeit their souls to the old gods. 

Now consider that New Orleans has over 18 million tourists a year, if the game is to entice thousands a month, that would be a larger stage that feeds these gods and that is merely the start. And as the old deities return, so do the old hatreds. So as the gods of death (with a buffet of 7,800,000,000 people) set out to regain power, we see the option where the other gods are in doubt of these wisdoms, yet their powers are diminished, yet Hel (Nordic), Mot (Canaanite), Yama (India) and Ereshkigal (Mesopotamia) are not on board either for other reasons. Hel does not share power, Ereshigal shares her fate with Nergal and there is a larger stage here and when we get to Mot, I am a little in the dark, but as we see the interactions with Judean words as well as other interactions, we can attest to Mot in being another source of direction and optionally inserted himself to become a discord to the attempt of the gods of death.

The stage my mind is developing is set around the core four (Hades, Anubis, Baron Samedi and Meng Po) that have a clear directive, but it seems to simple. Even as it is on the up and up, Anubis and Hades will use their power to revitalise their brethren but now under them as the central god, deposing Zeus and Ra. A setting that all still needs work and it could even push towards a much larger video game, and as my mind is even pushing for new sides all whilst typing this, it might be more than a movie (a mini series might make much more sense), and in all this I feel that the stage needs to be about balance and the distortion of balance. Consider that 20 million people a year visit Disney-world (Chepi), The Taj Mahal (Yabu) gets 4 million, Acropolis (Hades) 4 million, as well as the Pyramids (Anubis) gives him 14 million options. It is all connected through Samedi and Meng Po (the soup) and that starts a new ball game. Once infected the targets can be drained whenever needed, not killed but drained (like a bad flu), feeding these gods of death and feeding their kin to a much smaller degree. 

Now I start thinking of the balance equation and how to insert Mot as one of the oldest gods in all this. And it cannot be some over drenched fantasy story. I want it to look like something that makes people be scared of the common things they see every day, it is easy to disregard the Bident of Hades, or the flail of Anubis, yet who feels comfortable with the soup of Meng Po? A soup like any soup kitchen would serve? And just for the spices, how about some Samedi paprika powder to spice the soup?

Well, enjoy your soup today, I will have a bowl of Chili (in roughly 47.2 minutes).

2 Comments

Filed under Gaming, movies

August 13, 2021 · 00:19

Who you gonna trust?

That is the issue I have and you should too. The news is no longer reliable, catering to people who they have no business of catering too. The numbers are questionable, many articles are all on a template that I personally call ‘How to create a click bitch’, but in this too I wonder who is right. This is given to us by the Daily Mail (at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-9885013/Pfizers-Covid-vaccine-42-effective-against-Indian-Delta-variant-Modernas-76.html). Here we see “Pfizer’s Covid vaccine is only 42% effective against Indian ‘Delta’ variant while Moderna’s jab is 76% effective, Mayo Clinic study suggests”, the problem is that I am not a health official and the Daily Mail is throwing plenty of graphs at us. There is a clear admission, we see this with “For the study, published on pre-printer server medRxiv.org – meaning it has not yet been peer review – the team gathered data on more than 25,000 Minnesotans from January to July”, yet I will also admit that Minnesota, a state with 5.75 million people, a group of 25,000 is decent.
It is the claim “The Delta variant being able to bypass the existing vaccines also confirms what many feared, that the virus could potentially mutate to a point where it can bypass vaccines.” That is the scary one. There is no clear setting to prove it yet, but the numbers give rise to this and in the past Dr. Fauci gave a similar worry. I am not sure who to trust, but the setting is starting to get louder, at least if 10% of the population dies, nature might in part restore itself, and the 10% might be low, you will have the anti-vaxxers to thank for that part. 

The issue is actually worse, from my point of view, when we see the numbers from India, I believe that they are low, beyond acceptable. Now, here I will not blame the Indian government. With a population of 1.3 billion, no system will hold up, not in this case, but the numbers are way low and all these people screaming to open airports and travel, they might be pointed at when we see a larger escalation in Delta and Echo variations (I am assuming that there will soon be an Echo variation).
Yet this is not about speculation, so when we look at the CDC, we get “In two different studies from Canada and Scotland, patients infected with the Delta variant were more likely to be hospitalised than patients infected with Alpha or the original virus strains”, as well as “CDC is continuing to assess data on whether fully vaccinated people with asymptomatic breakthrough infections can transmit. However, the greatest risk of transmission is among unvaccinated people who are much more likely to contract, and therefore transmit the virus.” These are merely two quotes, yet they counter certain people and even worse people almost openly opposing the vaccine. In this several newspapers now give us ‘Anti-vax Red Cross nurse ‘injected 8600 people with saline solution instead of vaccine’’, here I get the urge to ask ‘How can a red cross nurse be ‘Anti-vax’ and work at the red cross?’, There is a reason for vaccines. I grew up in the 60’s whilst Polio thanks to the humanitarian push by Jonas Salk who invented it, and unlike many, he no wealth, he made it an open solution, he did not patent it and as such 34 years later Polio became eradicated in the US in 1994. So when we see “In the late 1940s, polio outbreaks in the U.S. increased in frequency and size, disabling an average of more than 35,000 people each year”, now the number in the US is ZERO, it has been since before the 80’s, there are cases but these are all cases that come into the US. It took a decades to eradicate polio and there is every chance that COVID will take time too. The bigger issue is that polio did not mutate to the degree COVID does and yes at all times getting the vaccine is better than not getting it. So when we see the Guardian giving us last Sunday ‘Rightwing radio host and anti-vaxxer dies of Covid’, we need to consider that even as this is in the US, they are not alone, the anti-vaxxers are everywhere and when we see “Dick Farrel was a vociferous critic of Dr Anthony Fauci and urged people not to get vaccinated”, some might be happy that he is dead, but the problem is not that he is dead, thousands are voicing similar non scientific thoughts and it is becoming a problem.

And as Sydney had its lockdown protests two weeks ago, we now see 345 new cases of Covid in NSW, so with the protests, what are the chances that this number goes down over the next week?  Two months ago, we had a mere 3 cases added, over 8 weeks this escalated to 343 cases with a 7 day average of 312. When you consider this and you also consider that Australia has 25 million people, consider what the damage is expected to be in India with 1300 million and a population pressure that is a lot higher than Australia has, you still think I am talking out of my ass? India peak of May 9th has now decreased from 414,000 new cases to 42,000. I personally believe that there is no way that this is correct, implying that a lot more problems will emerge in
India quite soon. You see there are 200M cases and India has a mere 15% of the cases, you might think that this adds up, because the numbers match, but India with its population pressure and its lack of medical supplies as well as a lack in vaccine should be in a much larger setting, I would personally speculate that the numbers should be 30%-40% higher at the very least, and the media for the largest extent is not looking into it. In addition a few sources, give us that by end July half a billion doses will be done in India, yet what everyone ignores is that the population of India is 1.3B, implying that 2.6B doses are requires, so a mere 20% will have one shot, and whilst we now see that there is dealings over 50M more shots, it also shows that with that many not being inoculated the Delta variant can reap a lot of losses in India, but we do not get that stage illuminated, do we, or the larger impact of how these vaccines will not stop Delta, yet there is also the acknowledgement that for those who had the vaccine, they are most likely to recover from the delta versions. There are no real numbers out there, but several sources gave us that most recover. I am voicing news sources, but when we look at the greater setting there is a larger stage of who and what is to be trusted, I honestly do not know, but I do believe that places like the CDC are the most reliable ones. 

Am I right or am I wrong? I could be either, but I truly believe that the real scientific places (like www.CDC.gov) will be the most reliable source for covid information. I also believe that the people trying to silence Dr. Fauci are not opting for freedom of speech, they are betraying their constituency, leaving them to die of their own devices, but that part is something that the almighty USA and their first amendment are not willing to call out for, in history this is the first time where the first amendment is one of the handles in the USA that will get people killed and a lot of them too. I am certain that the American forefathers would never have dreamed that freedom of speech would throttle science and common sense, but here you have it, that is the setting and I have no idea how large the casualty list will be in a few months. With global protests on common sense solutions, the casualties will merely go up, but in London that also means that housing prices will drop, so there is that to look forward to. 

So who you gonna trust? You better think that through, because now you do it whilst gambling with your life. Will you trust some anti-vaxxer? Will you trust science and doctors? It is your right to chose, but remember, you life has no sequel, and this time it is your life you are taking a gamble with (as well as the people around you). So chose wisely and good luck!

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 10, 2021 · 02:08

The part we seem to forget

I was reading an article on the Guardian when something hit me. You see, we have been told parts of this again and again since the 90’s, for 30 years, more likely than not even longer, were we warned for the issues we now see unfold in Greece and all over the world. 

When we consider that and we consider ‘Major climate changes inevitable and irreversible – IPCC’s starkest warning yet’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/09/humans-have-caused-unprecedented-and-irreversible-change-to-climate-scientists-warn) we see “Human activity is changing the Earth’s climate in ways “unprecedented” in thousands or hundreds of thousands of years, with some of the changes now inevitable and “irreversible”, climate scientists have warned. Within the next two decades, temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, breaching the ambition of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and bringing widespread devastation and extreme weather.” Yet what we do not see, not by any media, is the job the media is supposed to do, the part we expect and the part we should DEMAND they will do, but they will not. The media is the bitch of shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers and their stakeholders will not hear of it, their friends will not like this. We should demand a list, a list of EVERY scientist who opposed the papers showing these dangers for decades. We should demand a list of these scientists and the corporate links they had, the corporate donations they received. The people are entitled to them, but the stakeholders who are behind the screens will not like this and I wonder why not. Actually, I am not that surprised that stakeholders tend to be bitches too, they will have friends they cater too and they do not like it that they are not the powers they pretend to be, but the game is now in a stage where we should look at that part, even as the media is willing to let that part go, just like they play footsie with people like Martin Bashir. So as the Daily Mail gives the people ‘Diana whistleblower who sounded the alarm over ‘dirty tricks’ used by Martin Bashir to secure interview ‘will be paid £750,000 by BBC after losing career’’ we see that the BBC catered to other needs for 25 years and they do not like the limelight of catering, just like others catered to Jimmy Saville and a few others, all (as I personally see it) due to connections to stakeholders, that needs to end. I believe that any media shown to cater to non-media needs, need to get its 0% VAT status revoked for no less than 10 years, see if that motivates them. 

The Guardian gave us (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crimes-oil-and-gas-environment) “Instead of heeding the evidence of the research they were funding, major oil firms worked together to bury the findings and manufacture a counter narrative to undermine the growing scientific consensus around climate science. The fossil fuel industry’s campaign to create uncertainty paid off for decades by muddying public understanding of the growing dangers from global heating and stalling political action.” This is fine, but this was not enough, the scientists who put their name under some of these marketing plays need to be out in the open, they made their choices, the now need to be banned for life. Catering to stakeholders need to come at a price. It is nice to blame the fossil fuel group, it might not be wrong, but it is shallow, there was an entire support engine of academics and politicians, they need to be pushed into the limelight. Politicians that set the agenda of inaction, supported by academic statements, we need those to be out in the open in all nations, so that we can flush out. The stakeholders, a side the media is for the most unable (read: unwilling) to do. So as the Guardian also gives us “Last month, a Dutch court ordered Shell to cut its global carbon emissions by 45% by the end of the decade. The same day, in Houston, an activist hedge fund forced three new directors on to the board of the US’s largest oil firm, ExxonMobil, to address climate issues. Investors at Chevron also voted to cut emissions from the petroleum products it sells.” So, where were they in the last 2-3 decades? As I personally see it, these people could react well over a decade ago when the water was up to our necks, they decided to fill their pockets a little longer until the water was up to our eyeballs, optionally making reference that clever people had a snorkel. Yet, snorkels have weaknesses, and the eyeballs might see the waves from one direction, not from all directions in that state, for that the water needed to be at no more than neck level, less would have ben better. 

So as we are in this setting, we are all driven to blame fossil fuel and as most oil comes from the middle east it will be appealing to most, yet the truth, the ugly truth is that they could only preserve their income with political and academic support form the west and we want those names, preferable with the names of the stakeholders. 

I wonder if any media will dig into that part, they might say that they do and they might make efforts, but after 2-3 weeks there will be another crises and some stakeholder will drown the effort, that is how the world runs, greed driven against the needs of everyone and at the cost of everything that is not theirs. It is merely my point of view, but I believe it to be a correct one.

1 Comment

Filed under Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

August 9, 2021 · 22:24

Operation Hazen Ames

It is night, Michael Weatherly is being casual, he is making small talk with another person. He explains that there is no need for the one exit to be watched. He closes the reinforced door that had the room with the information he needed. He then trips the alarm, turns around to the mirrored wall and pulls away the table, there is one screw. He unscrews it and pulls out the screw connected to an umbrella plug, the wall comes down. He clicks the other side open and points to the partner to get through. They go through and as he closes the initial mirror wall, the magnets in the table and wall push the table back in place. The umbrella plug is glued to the screw, it now operates as a screwdriver, Michael attaches something to the screw, he then click pushes the second wall back into place, the magnets hold it firm. They moved through an unmonitored small corridor and enter a supply room at the end is a rack with goods, he clicks on a button and the rack moves up a few millimetres, the wheels are now down, he moves the rack and signs the partner to quickly goes through. The moves through and there is a small food elevator there. He closes the wall and pulls two wires to set the rack back where it was, he had 10 seconds left, he can hear people running towards the place they had just left. They enter the food elevator and quietly opens the back panel, he goes through, the partner follows, he closes the elevator door and the back panel, then presses a button. The food elevator moves quietly down. 

For me it is easy to explain why the person is Michael Weatherly. I have been re-watching 12 seasons of NCIS during the lockdown the last two weeks. The issue is that this is part of a spy story, but not one you would expect. You see, this situation happened, it was a CIA operation, one of many and the story is not the common parts of the TV series, this series is not NCIS or Bull (I never saw Bull). The setting is that the TV series and episodes are a tell tale to the foreign governments to show them how they were transgressed upon and the TV episodes have fake names (as any series does) with a reference to an anagram to the operation. Someone decided to turncoat the CIA and uses the methods to make money on the side, from the studios as well as the extra checks from the governments he is supplying the evidence to, a nice little operation.

Yet the setting on TV series, as we see the use of ‘clever’ terrorists, there is a second fear, not that the opposition is more clever than the terrorists. It is that greed driven elements see their option clear AFTER the operation, not merely endangering what comes next, but giving away the past endangering more as well. It was the setting for an episode of any crime and spy driven series, yet I have no idea why the idea sparked into my mind. Whether it is about double agents, self turned greed driven agents or another kind, we are (through the Art of War) confronted with 5 types of spies. 

Local spies
Inward spies
Converted spies
Doomed spies
Surviving spies


The Art of war teaches us that if all five types are used it is impossible to discover the secret system, but as said the old days did not consider the greed driven logistics that we see today. You can read the Art of War to see and learn about the 5 types, yet the setting is altered in todays espionage. We have minders, archivists and now as one turns the colour of his shield, there is a larger danger that it turns Local spies into Doomed spies, a game changer many are not able to deal with. In any operation the local spy is the anchor, a barge without an anchor can move from the shadows into the floodlights of the other player. Am I right? Am I imagining (or fantasising) this? It is but a dream, yet in this we also find the larger stage of what matters. Even though von Clausewitz gives us that mot intelligence is false, there is a consideration that he considered himself a gentleman and as such espionage was beneath him and it was never considered a valid form of warfare. Sun Tsu is much more relevant, he saw espionage as a valid tool and his approach to any tool n hist setting to war is how to use tools the most efficiently. The concern he had for spies is like all other tools, if it protects the homeland, that is how we use it and in that era the general and his administrator were dedicated to the land they protect. In todays situation the logistics of war is on a sliding scope of what comes next and as such the undervalued and the discarded are drawn to whatever pays for a little better lifestyle than they are set to have, and they will use what is at their disposal, as such it is the archivist and the administrator that become the weakest link in a spy system. A situation that no movie or TV series has looked at. With all the thousands of episodes and hundreds of movies, I casually found a vulnerable unexplored link, yay me!

Leave a comment

Filed under Military, movies

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

August 9, 2021 · 11:31

To serve the gamer

Yup, that is a topic that is open for debate, but in my case it comes from a different angle. I need to explain how I got here. You have read my ‘displeasure’ with Ubisoft, they bungled (again and again), yet I also clearly stated that AC Origins is one game they got right. I actually disagree with the high 80’s scores the game had been receiving, I believe it to be low 90’s, but that is my view. The topic rose as I (due to lockdown time) decided to play it again and get some of the achievements I missed out on, I got half a dozen so far and I finally got to the Curse of the Pharaohs. I had the DLC, but my PS4 crashed to death somewhere in 2019 and as I had a little manoeuvring (covid retirement savings) I ended up with a PS4pro in 2020. And until a month ago I had no time for it, but in the last three weeks with being locked down I decided the play it again. So whilst gunning for ‘Old Habits’, I stumbled on ‘Where’s my Black Flag’ and a few others. But it was the Curse of the Pharaoh that made the difference. The first time I entered Aaru my jaw dropped. It was amazing, the field of reeds, the places, it was amazing and the boats made it all slightly surreal. The makers outdid themselves here. But this is also the place that gave me an idea. It was the side mission ‘Love or Duty’, the mission does not matter, the interaction does not either, but the mission clicked something in place. I had some similar ideas for Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration, but as it was not considered, it could be set to other RPG’s and even the one I designed. 

Your home is your castle
In nearly all RPG games, we are confronted with a house, unless you had Oblivion and you completed the Battlehorn Castle mission, in that case you have a castle. And there is the crux. In the light of Magic Carpet I want a castle with archers protecting what is mine. I had a few idea’s like the Magical armoury (a very different mission). And now the idea comes to add servants and more important make them a lot more useful. Consider that a person (a he or a she) is driven by needs, so if you can make one person happy (really happy), the others will pick up on it, and increase the power of your place.

Happy Happy, Joy Joy
To get to this stage consider that you have servants, some through concern and protection, some bought (yes in fantasy games slaves are real) and the proper treatment of them makes them more useful, yet if we can give one of them real happiness, an elated feeling of achievement or recognition they will become a sort of Uber-servant, a person that infects the people around them to be better and more productive. When we take the Battlehorn location, we see the Forge, the kitchens, the walls, the stables, we see a person in charge, but if we can fulfil the personal needs of one servant in that area, we get an area that is twice as productive. The house is cleaner, thee is more food, the weapons are better and the list goes on, it changes a 100% castle in a castle with 150% resources and optionally 150% defence (250% defence after the magical armoury mission). 

In RPG games it is all about us doing the missions, but a setting where we influence another to be the better person and set a non directive, a automated directive is almost never seen and that is a pity, because a game can become a lot more rewarding that way. Consider the old classic Dungeon Keeper, the monster we had fought for themselves, we could train them, we offer options, but we cannot set the marker on them, merely on the area. That element is often missing in RPG, it is not a fault, it is not a flaw, it is a choice and it is not used often enough, too many are about giving ALL the power to the player, but the world never goes that way, we forgot about the fact that we are not the deciding power, we tend to be merely influential. There is the thought that the reward is not 100% plus, but it is a random number between 150% and 200%, making it optionally a stage where we please a second person in that area, but the game also denies a red line approach, so the missions are not given directly, they need to be found and they depend on the persons we have, implying that we might never get more than one option, or even one setting. It is the second flaw on RPG. The ‘we always have an option’ clause. At times we should not have one, it is the hand dealt to us, and optionally it is a hand that sucks. That is the RPG we need to see but were never given. In an age where consoles will in be surpassed by streaming systems, the need to evolve gaming in general and RPG games specifically will become more and more pressing. To be another version of a game we have known for 20 years will soon come to an end and then? That will be the cruncher and streamers with one central game hub will have a lot more manoeuvrability than any of the consoles, the consoles will not phase out, not for the next decade, but when we do get to 2031, the field is highly debatable who will be in there. Because of stupid decisions in the 5G field, there will always be a need for consoles, as such there will be a Nintendo and there will be a Sony PS6/PS7, but streamers at that point will be a much larger field and optionally there will be a streamer next to a console in well over 50% of the cases. 

And in that light the need to evolve RPG’s (and a few other game forms) will become essential, it will show for the streamers, yet those who evolve gaming will survive (Nintendo and Sony for sure), the rest will be close to forgotten when we get to 2031.

Doubt me? Fair enough, just remember I said it first, I was the one stating it a decade earlier.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

August 9, 2021 · 00:26

Propagated negativity

OK, this is not a nice article. I admit that it makes me look despicable and a few other not so nice words. I can live with that, especially when it does what it needs to do, wake up whomever reads this.

You see 2022 will be my year, even though I should be preparing for retirement in some form. There is ever chance that job offers will come through soon. Jobs in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, France (even though I do not speak French), Sweden, Norway, Canada (I love hockey) and a few other places. You see, this is all due to anti vaxxers. Even when we see the image below, we seem to ignore the larger stage.

Michael Smith is right in every way, and this case is not unique, but still the anti-vaxxers continue, and they take others with them into death. From June when the fatality list was at 6,345 to a stage less than a week ago when we see a number of 10,237 daily deaths. This is a global number, but when we look locally, we see several nations with fatalities, but that number is increasing because of anti-vaxxers. It is sad, but my skills are clear and when someone with my skill list is lost, finding a replacement is hard, really hard. So thanks to all the anti-vaxxers in these places, you are opening up jobs for me and as three places need me, and there is only one of me, my value goes up.

If someone says I am sick, I disagree, so far still healthy, but the total list of 4,304,126 deceased does not lie. What was given to us as an annoyance in 2020, the media making clear that ‘it might become a pandemic’ when it was already a pandemic. The media never did what it was supposed to do. Over the months we saw more and more issues and even Sky News Australia saw suspensions on YouTube because of misinformation recently. The disease continues and in Australia, a place that had a decent grip on things we now see 242 new cases in New South Wales. It seems small, but when you compare it to less than a dozen in the two months before, it shows just how effective this delta variant is and if I avoid it before my second shot I should be fine for a whole range of job options, all over the world, perhaps even Denmark, Israel or Saudi Arabia. Yes, they have all had their lockdowns, but they forgot about the service minded people. The lack of support technicians and trainers works in my favour and as the people are fighting to get their revenue back up, I get to chose where to go. All thanks to anti-vaxxers who are helping my career by getting dozens and dozens of people killed on a nearly daily basis all over the world. That is the reality that the media and governments face. Those who give rise and support to unfounded and non-scientific methods that result in fatalities will face a larger audience soon enough. Because for now, it is all about themselves and their way of life, but soon thereafter it will be about pointing fingers, so the anti-vaxxers and places like Sky News Australia will get another wave of accusations to deal with, optionally a few will go to court and then these stories will get a whole new life. 2022 might end up being a very interesting year.

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Science

Tagged as , , , ,

August 8, 2021 · 19:50

Late to the party

It happens, we all are late to a party at times, I am no exception. I was busy looking at the stupidity of law, the stupidity of plaintiffs, waiting the courts, all whilst the approach to common sense was kept at bay. As such I did not read the BBC article ‘MP Maria Miller wants AI ‘nudifying’ tool banned’ until today. The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57996910) shows the stage of what is called ‘a nudifying tool’. We can argue that the tool does not exist, because AI does not exist. You see, what some call AI is nothing but deeper learning. Someone took a deeper learning approach and accepted and acknowledged the setting that ‘sex sells’ and used that to create a stage. It is a lot worse than it sounds. You see when we consider ‘Nudifier APK for Android Free Download’ and we consider the hundred of millions horny guys (of all ages) and we see a market, a market for organised crime to exploit as an injector of backdoors (no pun intended) and in this Maria Miller loses from stage one. You see the app gives us “allows you to pixelate parts of your photo so that the illusion that your body is naked is also there”, they know how it will be used, but this statement washes their hands. Nothing is ever for free and this free download comes at a price I reckon. And with “By the way, packed with decorative elements for the picture, for example, the magazine cover is also paid separately. And that’s $ 0.99, which is the same price as the app.” We see the setting where the maker is looking at the setting to become a multimillionaire by September 30th. 

So when we get to see some Getty image of a despairing woman with the text “Currently nudification tools only work for creating naked women”, we wonder what on earth is going on, even as we also get ‘one developer acknowledged was sexist’, just one? How many developers were asked? It becomes a larger stage with “similar services remain on the market, many using the DeepNude source code, which was made publicly available by the original developers.While many often produce clumsy, sometimes laughable results, the new website uses a proprietary algorithm which one analyst described as “putting it years ahead of the competition”.” Is no one standing still at the one small part ‘a proprietary algorithm’? Proprietary algorithms are never handed over, this has a larger stage coming and even as we see the actions of Maria Miller, I wonder how far it will go, the moment someone attaches the word ‘art’ whilst not taking responsibility of the images used (the user does that), where will it end? 

And I am right, the end of the article gives us “The goal is to find what kind of uses we can give to this technology within the legal and ethical [framework].” But in the meantime we will see hundreds or even thousands of senior high school girls see their images with a nudified version, all whilst the stage was known for the better part of 2 years. I reckon that within 5 years the glossy magazines will all have nudified versions of every celebrity, thats how the money flows and that is how the station will go. Is it right? Of course it is not, but the larger stage of ‘sex sells’ has been out there for decades and the law never did anything to stop it, yet some MP’s listened to silly old clerics and they merely attacked porn, now we see that the larger station is evolving and the involved parties are all wondering what to do next. And in this no one takes notice of ‘one developer acknowledged was sexist’, just the one? The UK has approximately 408.000 software development professionals. The US has almost 4 million developers. And we see that one developer who acknowledged it was sexist? I have not even included the EU and Asian developers. So in all this, I reckon we have a much larger problem, optionally the writer Jane Wakefield needs to take another look at the article. So whilst millions of 14-23 year old boys are looking to find DeepSukebe’s website, hoping to reveal a slightly more interesting view of Olivia Wilde, Laura Vandervoort, Leslie Bibb, Emma Watson, Paris Hilton and the cast of Baywatch? We need to consider  that this was always going to happen, there are shady sides to deeper learning and whilst the enterprising and greed driven people are pushing for others to take a look, so are the members of organised crime, so are the enterprising people who considered an IT solution to push millions of paparazzi’s out of work. You really thing that some glossy magazine will ignore images when the people cannot tell whether it is real or fake? Consider the image below, as the technology becomes so good that we can no longer tell the difference in a face we have seen in dozens of movies, do you think we would be able to tell whether the boobies and shrubberies we never saw were real or deepfake? And when the images achieve 2400dpi, do you think the glossy magazines  and gossip providers will ignore them when circulation and clicks grow? 

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

August 7, 2021 · 22:08

The simple view denied

It happens, and sometimes it is for a very decent reason, but in this case I have questions. It started months ago on March 7th, when I became aware of Ghada Oueiss via the Milli Chronicle, the article had issues, bu for now lets use another source, the source (at https://cpj.org/2021/02/ghada-oueiss-hacking-harassment-jamal-khashoggi/) gives us ‘Al-Jazeera’s Ghada Oueiss on hacking, harassment, and Jamal Khashoggi’, the first thing I notice is “Lebanese Al-Jazeera broadcast journalist Ghada Oueiss described hackers stealing private photos and videos from her phone and posting them online”, the word ‘described’ in red, linking to a Washington Post article. The article laden with emotion and set on emotional markers, yet forensic evidence is missing. So when we consider “stealing private photos and videos from her phone and posting them online”, so was the phone the only source with these pictures? From her phone means that they are selfies, the descriptions give me more than that, so was it the only place they were? I am not stating that this is a must, but it raises questions. You see, the original article (at https://millichronicle.com/2021/03/opinion-ghada-oueiss-lies-about-saudi-and-american-spies/) gives a lot more. There we see a ling to https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/1-20cv25022-002.pdf. It gives us a complaint of the Al Jazeera journalist versus Mohammed Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Mohammed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, DarkMatter, Faisal al Bannai, Saudi 24 TV, a broadcast television station owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Al Arabiya, a broadcast television station owned by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman Abdulaziz Foundation d/b/a MiSK Foundation, Saud Al Qahtani, Bader Al-Asaker, Saudi Arabian Cultural Mission, Tarek Abou Zeinab, Turki Al-Owerde, Faisal Al Menaia, Awwad Al Otaibi, Sharon Collins, Christanne Schey, Hussam Al-Jundi, Annette Smith, John Does 1-20. Yes a whole mouthful. And it continues as we see the start “This is a civil action arising out of the targeted unlawful hacking of Plaintiff, Ghada Oueiss, an international journalist who has a significant presence in the U.S. and abroad, both as a journalist for Al Jazeera Media Network (“Al Jazeera”) and as a frequent contributor to U.S. news agencies, such as The Washington Post. This unlawful hack and leak operation against Ms. Oueiss (the “Conspiracy”) was spearheaded by the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (“UAE”) and their co-conspirators in the U.S. and elsewhere”

This leads me to:
1. How was it proven who did the hack, or how it was done.
For me it is more than funny, you see the plaintiff uses an article by the Verge on footnote 9 is something I debated before, and a few other mentions. There is no debate that Jeff Bezos was hacked, but the evidence on who was laughable, there is too much settings that were never answered, but for the lawyers of Ghada Oueiss it was enough, a plaintiff weight to coin a phrase. There are all kinds of mentions, but there is no real evidence.

2. At [97] we see “Upon information and belief, Defendant Zeinab began his employment with Defendant Saudi 24 TV in 2018. He has since used his Twitter accounts to personally attack and defame Ms. Oueiss in response to Ms. Oueiss’ criticism of the Saudi regime:” We see a personal opposition via Twitter, not hidden, not threatening, merely a tweet, well over a year before what they consider being the ‘event’.

3. At [100] we get “This brazen admission is significant evidence”, a response to a google translated Tweet, I cannot tell it is correct, I cannot tell there is misinterpretation and I cannot tell whether this has anything to do with Ghada Oueiss.

The list goes on and on and at no point, do we see clear evidence of hacking and any evidence that this is linked in any way to any Saudi or UAE party. 

Then we see “At the beginning of 2020, I started reading private stories about me on Twitter – saying I had an apartment in Beirut, my brother’s name. I don’t post anything about my family.” I am not dismissing the fact that she was hacked, I am merely questioning the setting who did it. There is no evidence proving any of that. In the case of Bezos, his consultant did a piss poor job in documenting evidence, even worse than the CIA did (if that was even possible). 

The issue is not whether people are hacked, the issue is the evidence and the way places like the Washington Post go about it, does not help, they make matter worse whilst decreasing their own credibility. I got news yesterday that the USA Defendants allegedly have just filed a rousing motion to dismiss, it seems that this might have been a ploy to keep pressure on alleged matters (the journalists no one cares about that is missing). 

I remain in the fence. On one side the press should never become the story, yet I accept that Ghada Oueiss is entitled to defence, but I also see the need for evidence against the claim. I accept that she was optionally hacked, but like Jeff Bezos, there is no evidence linking either the Saudi Government, or the government of the UAE and its governing members to this. I accept that finding evidence is hard, really hard, but evidence still matters, not unfounded accusations lacking evidence. That is the actual ballgame and in all this we see a large lacking. 

The Washington Post is also the view of clarity, as we see “In this case, the trolls were attacking Ola and I not only as journalists but as women who dared to be critical”, you see trolls imply people with high level IT skills, I personally speculate that the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia is lacking these skills. It means someone else did this, and if that is so, there needs to be evidence that he ordered it, not some flimsy CIA report with ‘we think it is very likely’, thinking and very likely do not make the evidence grade. Consider this and well over a dozen other articles negatively speaking on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its members and wonder who would attack on a lack of evidence, governments or the greed driven stakeholders they cater to?

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Law, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 5, 2021 · 21:47

Anachronism

Yes, it sounds cool and for the most, if you are aware, it is cool. The ability to spot these elements are pretty out of this world. There was a group of people near Sardinia, it was 1212. If someone took a real good look, they might have noticed a boy, yet he was wearing a pair of jeans and a Timex. There was a witness, her name was Thea Beckman. Yet it does not end well, the bulk of these minors ended up with William of Posqueres and were shipped to Tunis to become slaves. They never ended anywhere near the Crusades. There is also the alleged setting of the Key of all intelligence. It is a British thing. The key is a tablet like device, it needs to be filled with encryption elements by GCHQ, MI5 and MI6. Only then will the wielder be able to unlock one special computer to add to it, it is its own system, never linking to anything, at the bottom of the sea, a system with more security than the crown jewels in the tower. But these elements are mere window dressing. Anachronism is a dangerous thing, it is an even weirder concept. 

To see this we need to consider Anachronism, it means “a thing belonging or appropriate to a period other than that in which it exists, especially a thing that is conspicuously old-fashioned”. Yet when you dig deeper there is positive anachronism and negative anachronism. An example of positive anachronism is not about time travel, it is when something resurfaces. Something like the Irish Crown Jewels, or the poems of the poet Sappho. They were lost in the past, yet there is no indication that they are permanently lost. Negative anachronism is different, it is the stage of elements found at crusades, the setting of Celestrium found in a lab, or perhaps the Hsin Yu, a Chinese steamer sunk in 1916 where 1,000 died. What is more interesting is that dives allegedly revealed that the steamer allegedly had a support system to fit a mortar, one that would not be seen until WW2, that would be (if enough evidence found) a case of Negative Anachronism. Yet in all these years there is only one game on the subject (to some sort of degree). It was Psygnosis who released Chronoquest in 1988. Yet in RPG’s it has never happened. I got this idea, where we need to see an RPG, just like any other. Yet in the game we find books, certain books that have a second side, like the the other side of a page, but it contains some form of a puzzle, not merely opening the ‘page’, it could involve breaking or ripping the page, it could be folding the page and removing a part and remove the item. The item could be anything, more likely an anachronism that alters all, almost like an SD card, but when this item is added in the right place, the anachronism adjusts time without paradox elements. Suddenly we see art is added, items are added and optionally devices are added. The NPC’s are unaware, but we see the difference and now we see the start of a much larger field of play. Consider that someone prevented Leila Denmark form living, removing her stops the bacterium Bordetella Pertussis from being invented from 1926 to 1953, the WW2 statistics take a drastic turn and it would hit US troops in Korea to an almost disastrous degree. Now a person like Leila Denmark is a massive impact, the inventor of the Asphalt cutter not as much, but the timelines still shift. Now consider an RPG where your game world is in danger, a lot more than you know and even as you are like the NPC’s unaware of some things, the stage you are in, you get to learn that things were removed and you get to repair some of it, or all of it. And this is where the game takes a turn. I wrote earlier “it contains some form of a puzzle, not merely opening the ‘page’, it could involve breaking or ripping the page, it could be folding the page and removing a part and remove the item”, so when you break the page open the wrong way, the information is warped. So instead of merely resetting the life of the maker of the Asphalt cutter, he remains alone, so what comes next is lessened and optionally someone else comes up with the goods and as such the economy of your land is changed. It is interesting that a concept as powerful as anachronism was never added to any RPG game. I wonder if someone will take up that slack in a decent way. 

#JustSaying

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,