June 7, 2021 · 22:04

God, the sequel

Yup, it all started two days ago. I left you all with some impressions, yet the stage was larger. We cannot set omnipotence without foundation , well we can because I am here, but I am that one exception to the rule (nyuk, nyuk, nyuk). The others (Hades, Poseidon and Zeus) they grew their powers. We tend to make fun and call some settings ‘fabrications’, there we see “Zeus got the sky and air, Poseidon the waters, and Hades the world of the dead (the underworld)” The gods got a decent role in Homer’s illiad, and more wrote about them in all kinds of ways, yet when you dig down and dig to the past several people, people who had never had contact had similar writings. It is trivialised by people who have internet and mobile phones, yet in the old days they had no contact, in no way were groups of people with no levels of contact ever stating the same believes and adhering to the same rules. Perhaps there is something to be said in “he was appalled by human sacrifice and other signs of human decadence. He decided to wipe out mankind and flooded the world with the help of his brother Poseidon. After the flood, only Deucalion and Pyrrha remained” and it is not the only time, even the first time that floods were a larger stage of cleansing. So why? Consider that power grows and power is gotten from somewhere. If Aristaeus got his powers from bees, what happens if people abuse bees? A stage we might not consider, but in a stage where power was important, the abuse of sky (Zeus) and waters (Poseidon) would inflict the wrath of these two. That is the stage we seek!

If we can create a god (ourselves) it needs a power foundation, the smaller the creature, the more simplistic their needs, the easier their power is milked. Hence the 6 animals I gave two days ago. So when we get to “both nectar and ambrosia were kinds of honey, in which case their power of conferring immortality would be due to the supposed healing and cleansing powers of honey, and because fermented honey (mead) preceded wine as an entheogen in the Aegean world; on some Minoan seals, goddesses were represented with bee faces”, with this I personally reckon that the German Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (1845) was a lot closer to the truth with his view on it and it is important that any game has some handle on the past. Anchors in how power is distributed, how it is gained. If not, then Zeus, Poseidon and Hades could never have defeated Cronos, their father. 

Now consider the paths that Ezio Auditore and Bayek of Siwa undertook (two actual masterpieces), how they grew their powers and abilities. Would it be any different for deities? No matter how the had the ability to do so, they still needed to grow their powers, we all do and now we have a handle on us and on the character we play. Yet if we want something that is larger than life as such some sandbox trip is needed, choices are to be offered. Whether a person has the bee, the wasp or the termite. It starts with a foundation and that foundation grows towards a power base and a weakness, we all tend to look towards Athens for inspiration, but those who do tend to forget to look towards Poseidonia, a ‘village’ on Siros. When we see the elements shown we need to wonder how it was possible and there we have a setting towards the power base of a deity. If Ambrosia is food for the gods, or is it the food that creates gods? One might fuel the other. These thoughts are below the creation of a game, as we set the stage to a larger stage, we need to consider what gives foundation to that stage. A brilliant example is Horizon Zero Dawn, and soon its sequel. We chase in the first game what created the game, we see that there was a machine that creates larger than life events, but there is always a shoe in the cog (Hades). Any stage needs checks and balances or it becomes a fuelled stage of disbelief, even whilst you play it. That was the brilliance that led to Ezio Auditore, a stage we understood (historically speaking). As such, when you figure out that the events in Ancient Greece and ancient Iran (Mesopotamia) are not unrelated, how long until the cogs connect? 

As such we see can see out minds evolve the new god game, but is it a god game or forging a deity? There is a difference and even as the Atari ST, Playstation one, two and three needed us to make mental jumps, the Playstation 5 is now advanced enough to make us see the difference and play accordingly, the specifics are now in our grasp making for a much larger stage of handling evolution. And I reckon that over time cloud gaming will take it to the next level. And in all this Ubisoft was not alone, consider the path that the God of War took, and even he was not alone. It was a path and we forgot about that part in god gaming. We merely have the maker of the games (Peter Molyneux) and his examples Populous and Black and White as examples, but what if growth is a stage that encompasses both? Setting a different sandbox environment might be the way to go and we finally have hardware that can take us there. 

How it done? That is up to the game makers, you can’t expect me to do everything. You need to get creative and make the next stage of excellent gaming, because if we leave it up to Ubisoft it will be anyones guess what excellent gaming looks like and it will end up being below par and we have seen enough games like that. 

So get to work, get to the drawing board and consider the stage we play (entire Greece), what we can do short of everything and start considering what makes power grow. If you are done with that hold it against the deities of Egypt, Aztec and Inca deities and see how you hold up. You see checks and balances is where it is at. That is what makes people choose and it will make them come back for a second and third time. A game played three times over, that is the stage of a legendary game in the making.

Hesiod

As such in this story I left two clues. They were Deucalion and Pyrrha. Why were only those two spared? If you look at the historic writings (Homer, Hesiod, Ovid, Apollodorus) some things add up and some do not. Now, we can allow for creative views and that would be OK, yet Homer (Ionia, 900 BC), Hesiod (Cyme, 725 BC), Ovid (Sulmona, 43 BC) and Apollodorus (Athens, 180 BC). People that can never have been connected in time, also consider that with our options of preservation, we do not have books that last 300 years and that is whilst we have all kinds of machines that allow for mass replication, that did not exist before the 14th century. A whole range of places most of them more than a life time of travelling away, yet the similarities are almost astounding. When you consider those elements, consider what more there I and what is making these sotries survive, now consider what you need to make a game of THAT magnitude survive the onslaught of players and their increased need of perfection, have a great day.

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June 7, 2021 · 00:07

Faith by the hypocrite

I feel betrayed, I feel betrayed for the second time and in the second time the media seems to be aiding the hypocrites, so how does that feel? First we get the issue that the Catholic Church was directly in the know on sexual abuse of children, even as it was brought decades too late and we saw a whole range of versions of betrayal. At some point the Boston Globe brought the goods. In 2010 the Guardian gave us “Walter Robinson, then Spotlight editor, says the paper’s reporting “put the match to some very, very dry tinder”. That’s certainly true: within two years of the first of the Globe’s 800 articles on the scandal appearing in January 2002, Rezendes notes, Cardinal Law had resigned, 150 priests in Boston stood accused of sexual abuse, more than 500 victims had filed abuse claims, and church-goers’ donations to the archdiocese had slumped by 50%”, the movie Spotlight starring Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber, John Slattery, and Stanley Tucci, gave the issue out the the large audience and it mattered. It showed millions just how much of a failure the church actually is. Even now, we see that the media is keeping one journalist no one gives a fuck about alive (Jamal Khashoggi), we see the accusations against the Saudi Crown Prince, even though there is no evidence supporting it. No, even now that UN essay writer Agnes Callamard seemingly remains silent on the mass murder of 215 children. How useless can a person get? I wonder what that answer will yield.

In a stage of denial, of long term pondering by the Catholic Church, we now see the cadavers of 215 children and people are debating, they are not arresting, they are not debating with the people who were in charge of Kamloops Indian Residential School in the dock and/or in prison, we see voices on the news and it is smothered news, the Church apparently has power over the media as well, yet this is not some “The CIA thinks it is likely that this has happened”, we have corpses, we have clear evidence and this is not one, two or three. This is a collection of graves amounting to two hundred and fifteen DEAD children. So when we see “Thousands of children died in residential schools and their bodies rarely returned home. Many were buried in neglected graves” we need to get angry, the church is no longer a valid organisation, optionally it is one of selective discriminative terrorism.

And it should not be allowed any tax breaks from now on on a global setting. Consider the opposite, I come around wielding a Macuahuitl, I bash your son or daughter three times (really hard) and dump that cadaver in the sewer, if she is a true person of faith she will climb out unharmed and I will apologise, how about that?

If that is too direct, then you are the problem if the finding of 215 bodies is no reason to get really really angry. The people who brought you hits like “Put your weener in a teener”, “My Johnson is in John’s son”, or perhaps “The woody pecker for the young”, co-funded by the Catholic Church is at it again, now we merely find the bodies 215 and they are still searching, so that number is increasing, and this was not a state, not a country, not a continent. This was ONE school and there are no questions, or better stated there is a massive lack of questions on a global scale. How can we accept such hypocrisy? 

I find it easier and easier at present to renounce the church as it is a being of evil, a satan dressed like a sheep, whilst we know that it can never be a sheep, merely a demon in wolfs clothing. According to the Conversation, in the US, we have ‘Why it matters that 7 states still have bans on atheists holding office’, yes because atheists are a much larger risk than catholic sexual abusers or Catholic mass murderers, it makes total sense and this is not really on the US, it is a Canadian issue making it a much larger Commonwealth issue and as I have gone through 50+ headlines, not one of them gave me that someone was arrested for questioning, not one was arrested on suspicions, although the second one will take time, but in that time someone will make a new life in a place that does not have an extradition treaty with Canada, like for example Vatican City. No, we see all of them rehash the same story, but 215 children is a cause for 215 very different stories for EVERY newspaper in EVERY country, first of all in EVERY commonwealth nation, but that is seemingly not the case, why not? Whilst I found one article two days old with ‘UN human rights experts call on Canada to investigate residential school burial sites’, ONE article. Their Essay department made a lot more noise on the disappearance of a journalist no one cares about and there was NO evidence then, now we have at least 215 bodies, so why is the UN so quiet?  Did they get a call from a phone starting with +379? 

You tell me, but consider the fact that the internet had at some point well over 72,000,000 hits on Jamal Khashoggi, yet the word Kamloops gets you less than a third, 215 children found dead and that is the stage, it is staged as 215 children, in some B.C. School, the setting of changing the premise of the event is already underway, it will go slowly, but it is starting and we have well over 215 bodies, in Turkey we had nothing, mere speculation but for the UN and its essay writers that was enough, now it seemingly is not, because if it was the UN would be in every newspaper, just like with Jamal Khashoggi, but that is not the case is it? 

We are being told to have faith by the hypocrite, how does that work for you? The clergy called for the wealth of the Middle East in the treaty of Clermont (they called it something else) which was held from 18 to 28 November 1095. Now 926 year later we still haven’t learned that the clergy needs to be held to values in court or must be disbanded, openly by all christian nations. We owe that to ourselves and we we it to our own children and our neighbours children, for when it comes to children we are our neighbours keeper and shield. 

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June 5, 2021 · 14:38

The evolution of god

Yup that was more than a mouthful. Peter Molyneux was ahead of his time, and in all this he was not limited by imagination, he was limited by hardware, as was Sid Meier, as was Richard Garriott, as was David Braben. They made gaming great and their ideas live on, even though in at least one stage it was corrupted by a greed driven corporation hoping that micro transactions would safe them. But what if the next generation consoles and cloud generation gaming is the foundation of new games, what happens when we take the original concept and make it into something serious in a sandbox environment? If we think back to the ‘original’ gods, what happens when we can revisit the age of Hades, Poseidon and Zeus? What if we have the ability to become a god? What if it starts small? What if the game evolves through us, not that WE evolve in a set game?

Consider that energy grows, so consider that we start with accumulating via a bees, wasps, hornets, ants, or termite colony? We get one choice and we still have to find the right colony. Now we can spend time trying to find that colony or we can take a gamble, and as one colony grows the power within us and we row by directing the colony, we get a larger stage, because the colony is merely a first step. From the colony we can grow towards larger herds, towards singular animals and they too provide energy, they provide power and optionally evolve us in other ways too. You see in the old games it was about one person, one setting you and your antagonist, but in this day and age it is outdated, computers have grown more powerful, have grown towards multi creatures, and in all this we merely think of the old god the three, then we get Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Apollo, Artemis. But what if these templates are merely that, mere templates and you get to decide what kind of a god you become? We think back to (the good old days and) a game like Black and White, which was awesome but what happens when our power is depending on how we grow the initial power base? We can rely on the biggest termite foundation ever, but life is a setting of checks, balances and equilibrium, because without  stage of equilibrium you always end up with nothing. So far no game ever went there. We might consider that before the PS4 it as not possible and you might be right, but now in the PS5 era, we see that games like Elite Dangerous become larger than the original creator thought was possible on a BBC Micro B. That is no longer the case and even as I would love to play Populous 2 again, time moves on and we need to push games forward too. As far as I can tell, no one has made a clear push forward in setting a new stage of the god games and in light of the options within cloud gaming that is slightly weird. Cloud gaming is by default the stage where these games can evolve, so what I stopping game developers from going there? A lack of creativity maybe? It took me a moment to pause nd a little of pondering to set a new stage, and if I can do it, those wannabe great software houses should be ahead of me by a lot, so why aren’t they?

And all this is before you consider Neil Gaiman with American Gods, where the new gods get their energy and power from a very different stage, so what is keeping game makers from evolving as well? 

And all this is set to a stage of western gods, I haven’t even considered what a place like India could add to the mix. And I got this far on only one coffee.

Have a great weekend

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June 4, 2021 · 22:33

The left corner

Yup, we have all heard it on TV, in movies. In the left corner weighing ……. Yada, yada, yada. The beginning of a match. You heard it, but did you realise it? It hit me today, I was thinking back to the good old days (Google Plus), it had a side others ignored and they are still ignoring it. I joined Facebook in 2004, or was it 2003? The setting was that I was travelling the globe, most of the direct family (when they were still alive) had a travelling bug. As such Facebook was part of a solution, yet it turned out that Google Plus was a much better fit. Reality shows that I have 2 best friends, I have a number of ‘sort of friends’ and I have relatives. Apart from the relative members I would happily shoot with an M-24, I did try to stay in touch with those I had no need to shoot and then time caught up with them and they died. 

Family solution

Time is the eternal equaliser and it will claim me too at some point (once). Yet today I considered how the need for greed of Facebook is leaving an untapped side to social media. They were all about boasting that everyone wants to know everything (better for advertisement), yet the foundation of Google plus was that you decided to give to certain circles, and family is its own circle. Facebook forgot about that part and the others that followed Facebook is overlooking that too (as far as I can tell). You see, the world is not interested in the desk you bought (unless it comes with a naked lady) and then they are merely interested in how visible the nudity of the lady is. But family members are different, they are interested in your new desk, your new quilt cover, especially when there is more than an hour of travel time involved. Some are a lot further away and they want to see the birthday pics of your little one, the rest of the world has no business to see those. So why did social media evolve into an advertisement space where we see all no matter how trivial, or how convoluted the message? 

And as far as I could tell there was no one, at least that was the case, former Facebook employees caught on and created Cocoon. It is not free, it will cost you $39.99 USD per year, yet as they say (at cocoon.com) “Thirty days after you create a Cocoon, one person in the group will need to sponsor it on everyone’s behalf to keep it going. You don’t need to decide upfront whether to pay for Cocoon, only after you reach the end of your trial period. A Cocoon costs $5.99 USD per month or $39.99 USD per year for the entire group”, so one family member pays the amount of slightly less than $40 a year to keep it going and only ONE member needs to pay. That is a very different story and it is one that could take off. So as we get “The app itself does not cost money to download. Pricing is per Cocoon, not per person, and you can be in as many Cocoons as you would like”, it is actually brilliant, to get back to the true foundations of social media, of true socialising and I am amazed that others had not caught on here. Consider a family with nieces, nephews and other riffraff (read: family members) and one price per family. I am decently amazed that they have not cornered that industry yet, because as I see it that setup could grow far and fast over the next three years. As Google lost its Plus side, Cocoon might be all that remains for a lot of people who are sick of the 17 advertisements an hour and the nobodies who have something not so nice to say about your niece’s new dress or your nephew’s new bike. Yes we all make fun of family, yet that is the right of a family member, to say to auntie bertha that her hat went out of fashion when Black and White TV’s did. 

I am equally aware that Cocoon is not advertising, which is debatable as a choice, because there are globally millions who have had enough of Facebook in some regard. I am not totally against Facebook, it has its space and its function when it is about schools, friends that are not family members. And with Google Plus out of the equation Cocoon has a much larger stage to play on. And as they end their sales pitch with “You can be in as many Cocoons as you’d like, but they’ll remain separate from each other and you can navigate between them using the Cocoon switcher. Your nickname, picture, and colour are distinct in each, and contents from one Cocoon can’t be shared or forwarded into another.” We can clearly see that they are on the right track, they are heading into a direction where Social media should have headed in to a much larger degree than it has been doing. If there is one downside it will be the case that I can have it on my iPad, but not on a MacBook. At times I prefer to do my socialising on something with a decent keyboard, I am just wired that way, but that is me, some will find the iPad, android phone and/or iPhone sufficient. I also believe there are a few flaws in the initial stage, but that might be me (I don’t think so though), as such it is a great setting and it does have a real future on a stage where people are being drowned on advertisement and personalised information mining. Yet cocoon is new and fresh, just like the 1985 movie which was all about family as well. 

When you have a family that you do not want to shoot at a moment’s notice, Cocoon is a bright choice in a field where most choices are smitten with some level of darkness.

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June 4, 2021 · 03:32

Any more staff in the range of stupid?

It is a question that is seemingly asked in political circles, but these questions never get the limelight it deserves. There are numerous examples, but the clear ones are starting 11 years ago. ABC at that point gave us ‘The $77 Billion Fighter Jets That Have Never Gone to War’ with small raised issues like “the U.S. led an international effort to secure a no-fly zone over Libya last month, the F-22, the jet the Air Force said “cannot be matched,” was not involved. The Air Force said the $143 million-a-pop planes simply weren’t necessary to take out Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s air defences”, the US armed forces spend (read ‘optionally wasted’) $80,000,000,000 on a plane and over a period of 3 major combat operations it never saw the light of day in active combat testing. Yes, as I see it the most advanced plane is one that never tests its ability in combat, it makes perfect sense, like the cold war did. Then we go to 2016, a bombing target that I have written about a few times, the USS Zumwalt. A ship so ugly that it is optionally too ugly to be used as target practice and sunk in a place where we can regrow coral reefs. The Guardian gave us ‘US navy’s most expensive destroyer breaks down in Panama Canal’ with the added “The Zumwalt cost more than $4.4bn and was commissioned in October in Maryland. It also suffered a leak in its propulsion system before it was commissioned. The leak required the ship to remain at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia longer than expected for repairs”, with a few other sides of failure, even as the Guardian gives us “One of its signature features is a new gun system that fires rocket-powered shells up to 63 nautical miles”, a side that never ever worked. That is because and this is merely one of the sources ‘The USS Zumwalt Can’t Fire Its Guns Because the Ammo Is Too Expensive’, yes a side that was never charted properly, was it. It came down to the setting that “The two Advanced Gun System howitzers are fed by a magazine containing 600 rounds of ammunition, making it capable destroying hundreds of targets at a rate of up to ten per minute”, however, “now the U.S. Navy is admitting that the LRLAP round is too expensive to actually purchase, leaving the nearly $4 billion dollar destroyer’s guns high and dry”, now the class were adjusted for Raytheon solutions making the ship a joke on a few levels. So at this stage a group of people wasted $84,000,000,000 and it adds up that the tax payer has nothing to show for it. How is that for a sense of humour, but now, wait for it…..Now the BBC gives us ‘Major design flaws in Army’s new armoured vehicles, report shows’, a stage where we see “An internal leaked government report also raises serious doubts as to whether the £5.5bn Ajax Armoured Vehicle programme will be delivered on time and within budget. Problems include excessive vibration and noise”, yes that makes total sense. You see the two governments should be considered guilty of wasting $91,000,000,000 of the taxpayers funds, and that is the group that thinks my £50,000,000 post taxation fee on 5G technology is a waste of time and space? Hah! I found a way to sink the Iranian fleet in new novel and slightly overt ways (the sinking of the Kharg was not my doing and a complete coincidence). I also had a novel idea on melting down the Iranian nuclear reactors, but I hope to test that one in the near future, someone has to do something about that lot, don’t we? But this is not about me, this is about alleged stupid people, so when we get told that “the Ministry of Defence signed a contract for 589 of the Ajax armoured vehicles in 2014”, and we see the flaws, optionally massive ones with the added “successful delivery of the programme to time, cost and quality appears to be unachievable”, oh wait, didn’t the article start with “will be delivered on time and within budget”? Oh no, that too was wishful thinking, because if we see “An internal leaked government report also raises serious doubts”, it implies that some level of stupid thought that on time and within budget was achievable at some point, although there has been 7 years of budget (w)holing, or was that a political seven year itch?

And I need to restrain myself, because I came up with an idea that all the boffins at DARPA did not see coming and at present I am realising an additional stage that is a nervous one and letting my ego get the better of me is not a good thing as it opens up the theatre of war to a much larger stage. And even as I might not feel completely nervous, the fact that two governments failed the Army, the Navy AND the Airforce implies that there are a few issues all over the field and the media is not going after these political names who were buttering their sandwich on both sides of every slice, so there is a lot more to come in the near future.

So when you realise that “The MoD has already spent nearly £3.5bn on the flagship programme, which is meant to provide the British Army with a “family” of modern tracked armoured fighting vehicles. The Army describes it as a “core capability’ and key to its modernisation.” And that core capability does not work, float or fly. Did you honestly believe that the Chinese and Russian problems are real ones? If we cannot counter what they have to offer we are merely sitting by watching politicians draining funds and we see another iteration of ‘Tibetan exile leader warns of Chinese aggression: ‘China will transform you’’ by Fox News and others. Did you think that Chinese and Russian opponents have not figured out that large projects are now showing a fail rate of 80% or more, I will agree that a 100% fail rate is too exaggerating, yet consider that bucket of bolts (USS Zumwalt) that ended up with no shells to fire and now relies on conventional Raytheon technology on a ship that is $3,000,000,000 too expensive for its firing solution. Did you think that they had not noticed the issues, or the Issues with an untested Raptor even though it could have been taken through its paces three times over, you think the other players overlooked that?

As I see it There are a few sides of US and UK governments that require massive overhauls. And I am not trying to win them over for my £50,000,000 post taxation solution, for that I merely need Sundar Pichai, Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk to wake up and smell the coffee (and opportune stage for yours truly). When you consider the waste of $91,000,000,000 is am merely a wrinkle in the fabric of economy and a small one at that. So in all this as we are all trying to get by, fear not, there are players in this field wasting well over 100 times the funds that would keep you alive, so in this age and in the era of Covid, where almost 4 million are dead and 172 million got sick with 250K new cases a day added, we can relax knowing that funds for survival are wasted on all kinds of military problems and we need not worry about war, the wasted funds are for systems that seemingly will not ever work at present. So world peace is within our grasp, we merely had to spend it on systems that do not operate.

Can we hire any more in the range of stupid so that world peace becomes a reality? Although if Russia and China do not embrace that political arena we still have a problem but I might be the one negative thinker here. What do you think?

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June 2, 2021 · 21:36

A different setting to stage

This is a weird day, well for me it is. For over a week I have been having the weirdest nightmares and until last night I had no idea why. We all have stress, we all feel down, yet this was not it, or at least not as far as I know. I tried to target my dreams, but that did not help, not one bit. So, I decided to give in and in that process I got an idea. It is set to a number of stages and it is not something that can easily be made into a game, but a movie? Perhaps.

Introduction
The introduction is not into the story, it is into a few thoughts that are linked. In the first stage we have a pyramid, each tooth has a letter, there are the letters A, D and E. It is the foundation of war that goes back to Julius Caesar. A soldier has three options and each option can move into the other option. There is Attack, which can move into defence, or evade. Defence, which can evolve towards attack or change to Evade and there is Evade which can evolve into Attack or move to defend. This has been a given for 2,000 years, longer even. Yet there is another side to battle. Its premise can be Subterfuge, Tension and Suppression. The final triangle is the line of assassination, we can call what there is and how, but the proper assassination has three stages. The first is segregation, there is a boatload of options and the method can be direct or indirect. The second stage is separation, when segregated the person can more easily be separated, separated means no support anymore and that leads to assassination. Yes, we have all seen the clever movies, the larger stage of split second actions, but real life does not offer that, there is always a problem and the closer the calls the larger the problems become. There has not now, not ever been an exception to that.

Political
In the political field the first to are eagerly used, in one stage can can dance from one to the other, yet as the media became an option, most efforts were set to both stages, So there was an attack, a defence and an evade, each using an element of Subterfuge, Tension and Suppression. The benefit was that the target would need to rely on others, the second benefit was that if a person is a one man show the media would show that person like a raving loon, mission accomplished.

The OC
The OC is not a play on California, it is Organised Crime and that is where my nightmare took me. It links to the first direct questions ‘When is a sting not a sting?’, the answer is simple, when it is a stage towards something else (extermination). So what happens when we set an open target, someone who is able to take a massive amount of damage. As the OC head realises that they are looking at the wrong player and that the player is not a player at all, we see the stage follow, you cannot defend against an enemy that does not exist. If means that actions were in a stage of subterfuge and suppression at the same time. So as the players are trying to figure it out, the OC head is baited to send out teams, as they are not aware who they are looking for they become vulnerable. And that is when the game changes. These teams were segregated and separated, and the third stage you know.

So as 1-3 teams are dispensed, the focus goes back to the OC head, who feels safe in his or her house. And now the stage of tension is added. What we do not immediately see, the bodies were disassembled (with a blade), legs and arms in three pieces, the chest with a hole initially created with a large spike to suck out the blood, and the head. The pieces are placed in one of the rooms (the living room is best) especially a room with a marble floor. The pieces are placed all over the floor and then 4-12 times 4.5 litres is poured on the floor making a one inch bath of blood. The moment you see that in the house and as the blood sinks into the marble, it will not go out, the OC head will feel a massive amount of tension and the house will no longer offer safety and security. The stage of initial segregation is complete. 

And as we look into the mind of the nightmare, I got to see a stage I was not happy about. A stage of people pushing and what happens when that one person is pushed over the edge. An entirely new approach to the devil made me do it, the insane person who was able to hide their insanity and now we see that this person is in the passenger seat, someone else is driving. The OC group woke up the wrong person and this was only the beginning. 

We forget about that part, the part where everyone fit the same pattern, but with population pressures, unforeseen issues (COVID), job issues, age discrimination, and several other segregating factors, it is not that it will happen some day, I am decently amazed that it hasn’t happened already. And that is the stage I faced and wondered how it is moving, that is a stage that is never ever in a stable or in one location. And the players who bank on sheep forget that these demons look just like any other sheep and that is the risk they take, but what happens when the risk taker has no comprehension on what is released? What happens when the stage includes political friends and industrialists? 

It is merely the start of something new, optionally a movie or a mini series, but hopefully after writing this down I get some decent sleep. Being creative is tiring to say the least. 

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June 2, 2021 · 11:46

A stage of Ethicality

In this, we first need to set the proper stage, for example the notion that we are going into a boxing ring, and it is square no less. As such we are told to be ethical, which is a habit of conduct with regard to right and wrong or a body of such rules and habits. But in all this, for the last 400 years, it was the habit to make as much money as possible without breaking the law, and yes, the second part is actually important. 

This reflects (on me) that I would be happy to sell the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia either the BAE Tempest, or the Chinese Chengdu J-20. One gets me less than the other, but I will not care. On a personal note. I will prefer the BAE Tempest, because that might score me an OBE in the future besides my commission, but I can live happily without the OBE. My grandfather didn’t get one in WW1, so why would I need one, I feel certain he would have earned it more than me.

This now reflects on the article by the NOS (Dutch news, at https://nos.nl/artikel/2383223-van-ark-herhaalt-mondkapjesdeal-met-van-lienden-voldeed-aan-voorwaarden)  that is optionally flaming the people to have a go at Sywert van Lienden. The news reports {De medische mondkapjes die opiniemaker en ondernemer Sywert van Lienden verkocht aan het ministerie van VWS hadden een redelijke prijs, waren van voldoende kwaliteit en konden snel geleverd worden. Daarom werd de deal, ter waarde van ruim 100 miljoen euro, gesloten} “The medical masks that opinion maker and entrepreneur Sywert van Lienden sold to the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport had a reasonable price, were of sufficient quality and could be delivered quickly. That is why the deal, worth more than 100 million euros, was closed”, the Dutch government has embraced for well over 25 years their ‘subsidised dealings, the company I worked for in the 90’s had a deal (a very nice one), and others have too. The Dutch will embrace manufacturing, reporting, and enhancing whatever they can and they will pay, so stop crying.

It is when you realise {Van Lienden leverde twee soorten mondkapjes, voor 2,26 euro en 2,78 euro per stuk. De gemiddelde prijs die op dat moment werd gevraagd door aanbieders was tussen de 2,50 euro en 3 euro} “Van Lienden supplied two types of mouth caps, for 2.26 euros and 2.78 euros each. The average price asked by providers at that time was between 2.50 euros and 3 euros”, that in hindsight against what I can buy now per piece $2 (€1.26) or per 10 for $1 (€0.63) each, the writeup is seemingly quite remarkable when we compare it to the now, and that is what the consumer sees. I guarantee you that these pharmacies are not working for free. So what did Sywert van Lienden do wrong? I do not believe that he did anything wrong, he saw a market and he got right there on Day Zero (implying someone whispered that news to him). The news implies all kinds of political connections on both sides of the aisle. Does that matter? The EU floats (and thrives) on Nepotism, I have seen and felt that for well over 27 years and I got the short end of that equation many times, do I cry? No I don’t!

And perhaps my ship will come in, perhaps it will not. Over those 25 years, I have worked, wrote articles, created technology (mostly 5G), created data solutions, wrote files for dozens of corporations and I am dubbing over a TV series (two actually), I got the idea out there for at least two movies and I had an additional idea for a third movie (thanks to Dwayne Johnson and John Cena), not to mention several video games. So in the end I made a decent creative footprint, but will that digress me from making $65-$121 million if I get the chance? Hell no! Are my chances good, not really. This world was altered to adhere to the exploitative, the openly short sighted (age discrimination) to give the exploitative even more options. 

We all have that moment when the jewel in your crown is just there for the taking, in this we are handed two setbacks. The first is the direction to look in, so the wider the view, the better your chances. The second is to recognise the jewel from the truckloads of Coprolite floating around it, so you need to be fast, precise and accept the consideration that you will grasp the wrong thing. That is life gentlemen (ladies also)!

 

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June 2, 2021 · 03:39

Genuinely puzzled

Yup it happens, the news at time makes little sense, it makes little sense for several reasons and that is fair, even for me. Consider the BBC headline ‘Saudi Arabia: Authorities defend mosque speaker restriction’,  which in itself outside of any Islamic nation might be treated with a simple ‘Meh!’ This would not be a negative response, merely a response that approaches the sentiment of ‘Whatever!’, so as I read “The country’s Islamic Affairs Ministry announced last week that all loudspeakers should be set at only a third of their maximum volume. Islamic Affairs Minister Abdullatif al-Sheikh said the measure was in response to complaints from the public. But the move in the conservative Muslim nation sparked a backlash on social media”, I initially wondered why the BBC even took time to give notice to the event, for the most, what does it inform us about? Is it to give visibility to Abdullatif al-Sheikh? Perhaps it was to alarm us to “the move in the conservative Muslim nation sparked a backlash on social media”? I actually do not know, but this news also gives us that there was no space for ‘WHO to start COVID-19 vaccination in Houthi-run north Yemen’ with “Houthi authorities in control have played down the impact of the pandemic, largely denying any outbreak there”, or perhaps it is ‘UAE shows last minute unity to host Asian Qualifiers as China baulks at covid outbreaks’ with “The remaining seven matches in Group A – which will qualify teams for both the next round of the AFC’s World Cup 2022 qualifying and directly into the Asian Cup China 2023 – will be now held at the Sharjah Stadium”, neither news is seen at the BBC, so whilst we accept that speaker settings for announcements are important to the people in the KSA, the western population would all like to know the impact of Football decisions (people in the UK are weird that way), oh I reckon that the people in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain and Italy would react in a similar fashion.

So whilst it is nice to read “the measure was in response to complaints from the public”, I personally would reckon that the rules of Islam have been clear in many Arabic nations, and as these speakers tend to be set, why would there be complaints now? So whilst some might know that the 5 moments are “Fajr (sunrise prayer), Dhuhr (noon prayer), Asr (afternoon prayer), Maghrib (sunset prayer), and Isha (night prayer). Each prayer has a specific window of time in which it must be completed”, the internet also shows us “In a mosque, the muezzin broadcasts the call to prayer at the beginning of each interval. Because the start and end times for prayers are related to the solar diurnal motion, they vary throughout the year and depend on the local latitude and longitude when expressed in local time”, when we see that, some (including me) might wonder why the speaker settings are suddenly cause for concern. The sound of a person calling to prayer the islamic people is part of Islamic heritage, I wonder who the complaining people would be. I would go as far as stating that unless these calls are lately a lot louder, who would complain on speaker settings and the part we read “the move in the conservative Muslim nation sparked a backlash on social media” gives rise to my puzzlement. It is fair that this news would be (and is) seen in Al Jazeera, but I saw no mention in Arab News, so Islamic news made it to the BBC and not to Arab News? What is going on? 

And when we see “Mr Sheikh said that those who want to pray do not need to wait for the Imam’s call to prayer” the wondering does not top and here I found that the news also made it to Radio Athens, they give us on their website with the added “In a country where there are tens of thousands of mosques, the decision was generally welcomed. However, it also provoked reactions on social networking sites, with the appearance of a hashtag calling for a ban on loud music in restaurants and cafes”, I could not rely on the radio as I haven’t spoken proper Greek since 3575BC. And more important the information on Athens Radio is seemingly the same as the BBC, but the paragraph comes across different due to “with the appearance of a hashtag calling for a ban on loud music in restaurants and cafes”, all whilst both sides give us the one side that is seemingly strange “The restrictions come as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman continues attempts to make Saudi Arabia more liberal and lessen the role religion plays in public life”, I am not sure how to react, optionally, I see in part a reason to disagree. I get that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia wants to make liberal moves and as we can see on YouTube, several tourists are showing the world just how pretty and how amazing Saudi Arabia looks. I have seen a few of these video’s and the view we see from the Sky Bridge Kingdom Tower is amazing. It was the first time I saw this and I wonder why other media have never given a clear view of an architectural marvel like that and what it offers. Yet even if I were to go to Riyadh, I personally feel that I would miss out on the call of prayer, not that I am Islamic, but it is part of Islamic life. As a visitor we would not want to see changes that are part of the foundation of a nation. Yet, I admit that this might merely be me. And in all this I am personally more stricken by “those who want to pray do not need to wait for the Imam’s call to prayer” I have no idea what to make of that, but I understand that as I am not Muslim, I might not get that part. Another source gives us “The decision has angered ultra-conservatives in the country”, it is fair that there are those in favour and those opposing any decision, yet the BBC (Radio Athens neither) gives us anything on the ultra-conservatives and who they are. This sparked a revisit to the Washington Post who gave us in 2018 ‘Saudi Arabia’s once-powerful conservatives silenced by reforms and repression’ with the addition of “these conservatives now tiptoe on social media outlets like Twitter. In mosques and at community gatherings, they reluctantly criticise recent changes they stridently oppose, such as the easing of social boundaries between men and women”, with that in sight we see certain patterns emerge and the BBC was not informing us of that, or perhaps they assumed we knew that, which in light of the Martin Bashir caper is massively silly on several levels. In all this the one part some people overlooked. If the speakers are to be set to 33%, what stops them from upgrading the sound equipment in Mosques from 100 Watt to 300 Watt? It is merely a thought. All parts the BBC is overlooking and I know for a fact that they have faced the ‘hardware upgrade’ in the past. So the lack of information in their article is calling for a few questions. In the end, the only useful information I got from the article was the existence of Islamic Affairs Minister Abdullatif al-Sheikh. From my personal point of view the BBC article was a blunder, one that the BBC should not have made. 

As such my genuinely puzzled setting is quite complete.

A new starts and breakfast is approximately 3 hours and 32 minutes away. Have a great Wednesday!

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May 31, 2021 · 23:21

Something rotten in Denmark

I always liked that line from Hamlet. I have nothing against the Danes, but I have been several times and the people in Copenhagen look down on others and more so on foreigners. A sort of extrovert nationalism. They were never openly negative about me, but that vibe is undeniable. Should you doubt me, be there for half a day, then take the ferry to Malmo and compare the feel, the Swedes are much warmer. But that is as far as I can take it, my co-workers in Copenhagen were really warm and kind and even now, 10 years later they still are. So when I saw ‘NSA spying row: Denmark helped US gather data on European officials, says report’, I merely had to giggle. And when we are given “The Defence Intelligence Service (FE) collaborated with the US National Security Agency (NSA) to gather information, according to a report by Danish broadcaster Danmarks Radio” we need to wonder just how united that EU really is. There is the optional “Intelligence was collected on other officials from Germany, France, Sweden and Norway, according to the report”, which implies that any Dane hoping to have a jolly good time in another Scandinavian country is up for a nice surprise. So even as we take notice of “In a new report shared with several European news agencies, the NSA is said to have accessed text messages and the phone conversations of a number of prominent individuals by tapping in to Danish internet cables in co-operation with the FE.” we can boast and shout, yet if we consider that this was there in 2013, where exactly does ‘In a new report’ come from? In addition, we see the Netherlands and Belgium being not part of that equation, why is that? So as we are given “Mr Snowden accused US President Joe Biden of being “deeply involved in this scandal the first time around”. Mr Biden was US vice-president at the time when the surveillance took place” my question becomes, whose bread is he buttering and his look like a super sad puppy dog with the byline “US whistleblower Edward Snowden expresses wish to return home”, I merely wonder if traitors should be given any choice in the matter, although there is something satisfying on him coming from Russia to end up straight in front of a firing squadron. And when we look back to June 2015 where the BBC gave us ‘Snowden NSA: Germany drops Merkel phone-tapping probe’, I feel that someone kept it all alive to be used when appropriate, and now seems to be that time. And one little item comes to mind, We see Operation Dunhammer, yet the Dunhammer is “a species that are wild in Denmark or grown there”, it seems very specific doesn’t it. Did the NSA seek out that name, or is there a lot more to the story? Even as we see “Mrs Merkel, then-German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and opposition leader at the time Peer Steinbruck were also reportedly targeted”, it is something specific within a specific scope and that tends to be not of interest to the NSA unless there is a specific case, optionally with an operational push from the White House. That and the fact that between France and Sweden several other nations were not mentioned, we seem to see half a story, not the full ball of wax (as they say). 

If we want a simple comparison, someone is farting in the lunchroom and someone else is pointing at the air vents to focus attention to the wrong area. How typical is that?

And it is Channel 6 news that gave us “In August, Bramsen relieved the head of the country’s foreign intelligence service, among others, after an independent watchdog heavily criticised the spy agency for deliberately withholding information and violating Danish laws”, there are more sources, but this one also gives us “the Danish Defense Intelligence Service, known in Denmark by its acronym FE, in 2014 conducted an internal investigation into whether the U.S. National Security Agency had used its cooperation with the Danes to spy against Denmark and neighbouring countries.” Which is basically the left hand offering the right hand to do what needs to be done. Yet the stage is coming out now as it was then, in the stage of a Democratic president, I find it odd that the information remained contained under the previous REPUBLICAN president. It seems that some have no issues letting NSA secrets out of the bag when it suits someones political agenda, which as I personally see it constitutes treason of a very different kind. 

So elaborate in my own way, consider the Mexican mathematician, Dr Fibre Nachos, he gives us a number of food clients to grow his business, one gets us a second one, the two gives us three, three and the previous two give us five, five and the previous give us eight and so does one grow ones business. But alas, there is always a person hindering the growth (me in this case), I do not want to share my nachos, they are all mine (it is the one element that the hungry, the greedy and the selfish have in common). 

So we are at the beginning of one. One element threw this out in the open and they did it AFTER the republican was gone, and no one in the media is looking into it? We can all cry over “systematic wiretapping of close allies is unacceptable”, yet sometimes we have no choice, should you wonder that consider the events surrounding the Martel affair in 1962. Now we have a larger scaled problem, it is not merely governments, it is the stage of large industrials who also set a stage of political imbalance, and as the surrounding areas become less and less stable any nation needs to find issues to keep their nation safe. The EU is perhaps the best evidence in all this. The entire Vaccine rollout with Astra Zenica and the concealment of documents and pricing in a place where they claim to be transparent gives rise to a lot more subterfuge than can be found at Grizodubovoy str. 3, Moscow. And everyone is crying foul? Can anyone tell me the setting on why someone let the information out now? This was not Snowden, he had already done that, someone decided to play traitor all by themselves and it seems that it is OK with the powers in Washington DC. The fact that it is a specific list of nations and that the US seemingly trusted Denmark is also a point of discussion, one that seemingly hasn’t happened yet. Why is that? I might reflect on Hamlet and something rotten, but that is a reflection on Shakespeare and his view on ‘it shows that everything is not good at top of political hierarchy’, in my view one person got the green light to release information, the problem is that the hierarchy is not the problem, it is the treason of a chosen few who are in a stage to set a stage of imbalance and that tends to be the one not in charge, optionally a big tech push for whatever reason they have. I believe that the US needs to hunt down that source because it is limiting their options to grow their economy as well. Yet that is merely my speculated view on it all. 

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May 31, 2021 · 00:28

Shadows are Us

It is almost 20 years ago that me, myself, I, my playstation and controller took a gander into the world of Tenchu. Even as I now shiver on the graphics that were then amazing, the gameplay is something I missed. This came to light when I got a dose of Aragami 2 on YouTube. Proper sneak games are a rare commodity, and as we look for the next sneaker (Splinter cell, Metal gear solid, etc.) those who love stealth games, we all have a fondness for Tenchu, 

I personally do not think that there is an exception to that rule. And for some reason, even as we all love Thief and its versions, it feels a little more amazing in Japan around the 1600’s. Japan in that era was a fun place (a little superstitious), but fun none the less. So Tenchu was a lovely step into the past. 10 years after that, when Microsoft still knew what it was doing, Tenchu Z was launched and the thump in my heart was as happy as it could be. 

Even as we saw some repetition in the levels, the levels themselves were amazing. And there was the second setting where you wanted to live in the levels you were mastering, the house, the inn, they were all amazing. There were off course issues, there always are for those who do some of the levels again and again, some of the parts that Tenchu 1 offered did not happen in Tenchu Z, yet I was not upset, after 10 years I got to tenchu again. 

So what happened? Why did the PS4 not have its own Tenchu, or whatever it would be called. A Japanese set stealth game, I know there is a sizeable population that wants one. Even if we see an upgraded remastered Tenchu Z, it is a stage that could propel the cloud consoles (Google Stadia, Amazon Luna and whatever Microsoft has) forward and yes, Microsoft does have the advantage, but only if they act, if not it is up for grabs. Microsoft does not have IP on Japan or stealth gaming. I wonder why I had not missed it sooner. Perhaps I had hoped that Ubisoft got its act together. Perhaps I hoped that some would remember the great games. 

Yet if Aragami 2 (due out in September 2021) delivers, we will feel happy and after such a long silence it should optionally receive a large following. Yes, the first Aragami had flaws (a few) but it felt much closer to the original Tenchu than many other stealth games. Styx and Thief are good games, they have their own niche and they are quite good, yet it is not sneaking in 1600 Japan. The era speaks to our imagination, it has pretty much since a man named James Clavell wrote Shogun in 1975. The age of Blackthorn and Toranaga. It spoke to most people and the image continued in gaming. So now, when we see the Sony PS5 and Microsoft alternative, we see a system that can render an entire village, one would hope that Tenchu gets a new lease on life in gaming, optionally in a much larger setting. We learned so much over 20 years that this is all possible and cloud gaming might actually end up with a larger advantage.

Options
Cloud gaming has its own stage and its stage is a lot larger than any game. I staged that play in a previous blog when I coined the return of Murder on the Zinderneuf. The cloud consoles will have an option what I call ‘cross gaming tokens’ Something found in one game can be used in another game, or better stated becomes an unlocked item in another game. Consider that you find a house ceramic in Murder on the Zinderneuf, that could unlock the steampunk version of Monopoly, When you play Tenchu, you can unlock a weapon that is an additional weapon in Clue, and so on. It is a stage never contemplated before , or never acted on, but in cloud gaming it becomes real, as we embrace subscriptions and therefor we need long term gaming. As such long term gaming is found in adding to games, but what makes the addition? By adding games, other games will optionally be enhanced, or even added to, all because you played Murder on the Zinderneuf and you examined the chess set in a room, a new chess set is added to chess. And there is no end to the options you can unlock making a long term connection. Now consider that setting in a game like Tenchu. As the enemy is there, it is also possible that a game like Anno 1600 will unlock more powerful enemies in Tenchu. 

Remember that evil Dutch Merchant? Well, if you played Anno 1600, he will become a VOC representative, complete with two bodyguards yielding a ‘Donderbus’ (the Dutch invention that would later become the shotgun). When the stage is adjusted the game becomes again enticing and rewarding. A simple stage of adjusting, and players like Ubisoft never went there, why is that (equally other players did not go there either). 

So whilst we can argue that we must move forward, we have a ton of options that have not been acted on, as such there are years of exploration in sight and there Cloud gaming has the option to offer more, not merely another version of a game, but a much larger game, if only the developers had that in sight when they thought that one platform is merely a port of another platform. 

In all this we can lie in the shadows awaiting what comes next, or we can adjust the lights and create alternative paths. So whilst we all await a new game, what is wrong with replaying a game we forgot about, only to see that it has been enhanced by other games we have played in the meantime. I believe that there are a lot of developers and they do not realise the impact of long term gaming yet, they seemingly forget that soon we get to a point (in 6 months) when some people will have played the same game for 10 years. There are not many games that are worthy of that but Skyrim pulled it off, so what happens when on 11.11.21 the game offers the players something new in the same game they played? In opposition, what happens when the ‘patch’ will unlock a whalebone dagger in Dishonored 2? These are options that cloud gaming can offer, or perhaps a Skyrim board in Monopoly, an Axe in Clue or a Skyrim style chess set? It is not merely cosmetic, consider that over time you get additional rooms, people and items in Clue. The standard formula you had in your mind will no longer work, it needs adjusting for the different items optionally altered items. The game suddenly becomes more fun to play again. A stage many forgot about but Cloud gaming enables it and suddenly the stealth games all get an upgrade and that is what we like a challenging game that offers more over time. So whilst we see Aragami 2 coming in September, what happens when some of the guards have crossbows? Do not laugh, the Japanese had crossbows as early as 230 AD, they called them Shudo, they also had something not unlike a ballista, but that came 400 years later, still ahead of Europe though. History provides a whole range of options and opportunities. And the coming of Argami 2 made me consider that. I wonder what Google and Amazon are doing. Most likely relying on a deal with Ubisoft, I wonder how that goes over time. 

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