Within the mind there is a setting we forget, it is pondering, we ponder thins, we always do, at times not ever conscious or frontally aware, but we do. It is a part of us and my part would not let the previous story ‘Intent or Not?’ started something that would not let go, most likely to the stage of my youth, in this, my idea of DECCA gave me another optional idea. Consider any map, as such the map I drew has no features, it has however has three DECCA options and the clever station uses one signal of each to create a 4th option. So the three stations 1, 2, 3 create a new option, there would be the optional advantage of internal checks, as such it is harder to decipher how the data is concluded, there is also the need to find a larger amount of numbers to optionally hack, but how?
The idea is to create an offset, of all the 9 stations, each in different ways to create a new set of locations, optionally an offset the size of the circle, giving is A2, B2 and C2. It is hard to see the precise location, and if the offset is done, it needs to be the offset of the circle, and all three need to receive the same offset, the station is to create a second location that fits within the application of error towards the home and new DECCA configuration. My mind sees part of the solution, but I do not completely get what I see. If we change the signal according to one, we should change them equally to all, it gives (for now) the setting that the target could not be hit but in this configuration, the best we can hope for I that the missile hits somewhere in the circle, the close to the rim, the more accurate the missile was, but can we direct it exactly in the way we want it? If so, the three coloured circles would set the optional new location, if so, it will be in the area of the intersections where blue and red, or green and red connect, optionally in the space between the two, as such there is some way to guide the missile away from harm if a GOLIS approach is used in these missiles. If the missiles is using GOLIS DECCA, there remains two problems, how to find what and which one they use and second how to offset the received signal. Yet as I see it these are seperate matters, what matters is that I am (again) awake and my mind will not stop pondering. Perhaps this idea is merely between my ears and it would never work in real life, but one can only wonder where innovation drives us towards, it is not always a reachable destination, we can only hope it is.
This is a question that has been forming in my mind for some time now, and today the question rose again. The article that started it all is “Oil tanker off Saudi Arabian port hit by explosion caused by ‘external source‘’’ (source: the Guardian). The setting is not new, we have seen it a few times in the last year. We all want to point fingers and blame people left right and center, but the truth of it is that the problem goes deeper and the west is largely in denial or refuses to acknowledge the events. Less than a decade ago, an attack on Saudi Arabia was for the most unthinkable. Even as we see the crying blame game, this is not a Houthi issue. You see, the Houthi’s are firing drones and missiles on Saudi Arabia, but everyone is in denial and refusing to look at Iran. There is no Yemeni infrastructure to create and optionally test drones and missiles, there is no quality control, there is no technology available in Yemen for any of this and that has been shown by different sources over the last 2 years. Even as the New York Times gives us an opinion piece that gives us “Saudi Arabia is not entitled to U.S. military or diplomatic support. It’s not a treaty ally like Japan. Its importance to U.S. security has dwindled as the United States seeks to reorient its foreign policy away from the Middle East. And if Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s tutelage is any indication, the kingdom is proving to be a wildly destabilising force in the region”, Saudi Arabia, for the most has been the stability the Middle East (outside of Israel) needs, feel free to give it to Iran, but in this, the next time they elect another Ahmadinejad, all the linked nations will target Israel AND the United States AND Europe, is that what you want?
So whilst the New York Times is slamming Saudi Arabia, or seemingly so, it is actually proving the opposite. Saudi Arabia is entitled and worthy of support. It’s events into Yemen was done by the elected government of Yemen, and that is also ignored most of the time, just like the setting that Houthi forces are getting direct support from Iran, the Houthis are getting Iranian hardware, missiles and drones. They seemingly smuggle it by all naval intelligence operations. It is almost like the EU and the US are keeping the Middle East destabilised. That is at least what it looks like, you see, for the last two years someone is feeding the Houthi forces drones and missiles and that needs to stop. I would venture that the involved parties like the price of oil to go up, up by a lot.
In this I will tell you right now that this is my speculative view, I cannot prove the latter part (other than the Iranian support which has been proven by several parties), yet the media is silent on that part, why is that?
My mind has been busy considering an anti drone option, but as I see it, the larger part of Saudi Arabia is an empty sandbox, so how to go about it (without creating ecological and environmental devastation), a setting that needs thought, because the cure cannot be worst than the disease. The Brookings institute (at https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2016/03/16/six-ways-to-disable-a-drone/) give us 6 methods, but to deploy them in any rural situation (which is the bulk of Saudi Arabia) is not a good thing, yet it did give me an optional idea, not a great one mind you, but one that might work.
They had Radio waves (3) and Hacking (4), This gave me an optional idea. What if we create a wifi network, one that actively pushes. Consider 4 jeeps, each jeep is a network node, and as you can see, moving the second jeep to another location sets a larger and a different curtain. Now, consider that the latest Iranian drones can fly up to 250KM/H, now the Houthis will not get those (and they lack monumental amounts of skill to operate them), but the older ones are slower, as the jeeps get a lock on a danger, the remote operator uses the created network to disrupt drone operations. I reckon that a setting of 8 jeeps might be a good start, but how to deploy them? I see the need to create 3-5 clusters of up to 4-8 jeeps, it gives the remote operator a decent amount of time to crash the drones far away and safely, optionally (and harder) is to land them so that the evidence can be collected. A secondary option is to fry the electronics, so that the drones would return to the point of liftoff, giving Saudi Intelligence a place to work from. This is the drones, not sure yet how to stop (in a cheap way) Iranian missiles, but I reckon Raytheon has something they eagerly want to sell. I merely want it to cost Iran the farm, not Saudi Arabia, like in Charlie Wilson’s War, there Charlie Wilson provided the Afghans with stringers to stop the Russians, Stinger $38,000, Russian Hind (Mil Mi-24) $36,000,000, so almost 1000:1, those are numbers to work with and that stage needs to be found to top Iran as well. So as I was looking into the Shahab-1, Shahab-2, Shahab-3, can the same network be used to create a false image, or a setting to fool the missile?
GOT systems It is one of two systems, and any Go-Onto-Target missile has three subsystems (or so I am told), they are :
Target tracker We are told that the target tracker is also placed on the launching platform, yet is that so with the Iranian version? If that is true, then we need to find a way to infect both, or find a way to disrupt the link.
Missile tracker This is where it is, I asked the missile, but it had no sound system installed, hence, I watched a USAF training tape and I learned “The missile guidance computer scenario works as follows. Because a variation has modified some of the information the missile has obtained, it is not sure just where it is. However, it is sure where it isn’t, within reason, and it knows where it was. It now subtracts where it should be from where it wasn’t, or vice-versa, and by differentiating this from the algebraic sum of where it shouldn’t be, and where it was, it is able to obtain the deviation and its variation, which is called error”, this seems effective and simple, I merely wonder what if we could find an automated way to mess with the error so it will assume wrongly where it was, and if this accumulative, it will crash ahead of schedule, optionally in a place where there is only sand.
Guidance computer Guidance computers are in the missile and in the target tracker, it has the same setting as the Target Tracker, we cannot intervene in time, but what happens if we flood the missile with both disrupting and false information? (At the same time mind you)
This is where I found myself, my only reference to missile technology is pointing my own missile at a biological silo (me, as a once proud teenager), I just had to go there to make this story not too serious. Yet there was corroborating materials (not on the Silo though), it is seen in Northrop Grumman’s Patent US4589610A, the Guided missile subsystem. Here I see a little more, but it also gave me a thought. The patent gives us “The IMU driven Kalmanised radar track loop accommodates the use of a high performance radar, like a synthetic aperture radar, for example, which operates to measure radar data at a low rate on the order of 1 Hz, to generate estimates of relative target and missile kinematics to drive the control loop at rates compatible with high performance missile kinematics”, I believe that Iranian missiles are not that advanced, but the groundwork matters. The idea that we have “operates to measure radar data at a low rate”, so it reads signals to differentiate, what is we mess with that instance to create a different error in the Shabab missile? Radar is basically a radio signal, a specific one and specific signals are more easily messed with, yet can it be done efficiently and not expensive, or can we create a setting where on system can impact the next 200 missiles fired?
The second system is a GOLIS systems (go-onto-location-in-space), it is autonomous and created for targets that do not move (for example the IRS building at 300 N. Los Angeles St.), I would presume a building almost everyone hates, especially in Hollywood. I will not go into all the details, but it had one option I recognised, it was the Hyperbolic navigation, DECCA. Maritime uses (or used) it. It requires 3 stations to operate and if that is so, that is something we can use. We can actually guid a missile when we alter the signal of any two out of three elements. The nice part, as it is obsolete, there is a decent chance the Iranians are till using it, the DECCA system was pretty decent as a concept and for maritime navigation (before we had satellite navigation) was the most precise way to find ourselves in the ocean, it was precise up to 7M2, when you are 2432 KM from shore, that is pretty awesome. So as we see “Hyperbolic navigation is a class of obsolete radio navigation systems in which a navigation receiver instrument on a ship or aircraft is used to determine location based on the difference in timing of radio waves received from fixed land-based radio navigation beacon transmitters”, that is one principle, there is every chance that if we can intercept and relay 2 of the signals, we can create a different error and as such the missile becomes a lot less reliable.
These are merely a few thoughts and they should be seriously considered (except targeting the IRS building, these people have lives too), if we can change the game for Iran we can support Saudi Arabia in creating more stability, less stability is to adhere to Iran, I wonder if the New York Times considered that part that they are voicing, whether it is opinion or not.
OK, I knew about DECCA from my days at the. Merchant Naval Academy, so that might not be completely fair, but this is me thinking out of the box (and out of bed), which implies that this was another day, another dollar, and all done in less than 2 hours. I wonder what more Iranian stuff I can screw up this week, we all need a hobby at times.
The first sentence that waved like a hammer and sickle flag was “according to people familiar with the matter”, this was not some official brief by the FBI or the DHS, it was some anonymous setting and as that nations current president is mad as a hatter (or in possession of less common sense then the Court Jester entertaining Reniero Zeno) gives rise to worry. Now, let be clear, I am not stating that this isn’t happening. Consider “but three of the people familiar with the investigation said Russia is currently believed to be responsible for the attack. Two of the people said that the breaches are connected to a broad campaign that also involved the recently disclosed hack on FireEye, a major U.S. cybersecurity company with government and commercial contracts”, so now it is not from one source, but one journo has access to ALL THREE? Then there is (the secnd one) “cyber spies are believed to have gotten in by surreptitiously tampering with updates released by IT company SolarWinds”, which also affects the military, and in this, we grb back to the earlier statement “they asked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to investigate”, really? Military integrity is in play and you think that none of the Defence intelligence groups, or cyber command is invited? Then we get the end which gives us “The hackers are “highly sophisticated” and have been able to trick the Microsoft platform’s authentication controls, according to a person familiar with the incident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the press”, that and the consideration (not fact) that “Hackers broke into the NTIA’s office software, Microsoft’s Office 365. Staff emails at the agency were monitored by the hackers for months”, consider that and set the light towards a transgression on the Microsoft Azure cloud that makes their cloud useless, or turns it into a public domain Bulletin board, something EVERY industrial wants to hear. You think that this was not out in force and Microsoft was on every channel on the PLANET explaining to the people that there was no cause for alarm? All this and some Christopher Bing has three sources? Anyone else concerned with the quality of news? And the last line giving us ‘because they were not allowed to speak to the press’ did it for me.
Is this a ploy to avoid the limelight, or make sure that the stage lights are pointing somewhere else? Now, I reckon that the Russian government is forever trying to get its fingers on all kinds of hush hush details, the CIA does pretty much the same thing, yet in this we see “highly-sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by a nation state”, what evidence is there? This is important, because it could well be organised crime or a super rich singular player who wants the low-down on deals that syphon his or her money more efficiently and that has been done before as well. In this the entire approach is one of chaos, even if the chaos seems organised. The fact that it was allegedly possible to “Staff emails at the agency were monitored by the hackers for months” with the mention of Microsoft 365 and the news was limited to one person at Reuters? That and the fact that it as seemingly ‘months’ is a larger cause for concern, the fact that this was going on for well over a week and not every Christmas light would shine brightly red at 2624 NE University Village St, Seattle, WA 98105, United States is a first, the fact that not every siren is blasting on EVERY Microsoft 365 and Azure data centre is a second. But no, we get “there was a breach at one of its agencies and that they asked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to investigate”, yes because dimensionality in alarms and corporate dangers are passed on forever to the FBI in such a blasé way.
So I have several issues on the matter and in all this I can in all honesty not determine whether the light shining is a limelight to give visibility to someone else, or a stage light to make the people look to the left all whilst the people on the right are running off the stage, hoping no one will notice. It can be either or both, but the picture they are painting for us does not make sense and lust like that Italian dude (read: doge), the 45th no less, had his own battles to fight (mostly with Genoa), it was set in one quarter, but had underlying conditions (like Michael VIII Palaiologos) and in this certain nobility members profited greatly, I wonder why that never got properly investigated. And as such I do not oppose the pointing fingers at the Kremlin, but doing so before we see “the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to investigate” deliver a finished report is a little fast, so fast even McDonalds cannot compete. All whilst cybercrime has a much larger reach to a great deal many more people and still Microsoft remains silent.
There is a bright light over yonder, yet what it is used for, I cannot tell.
I have a simple setting, I keep what I kill (actually, I got that from Vin Diesel), I keep what I get, I just had the weirdest mindset, a sort of day dream at 01:15, something I do not understand and as such I cast it aside, so I make the IP public domain, yes, I have idea’s, for the most they are fantasy and Sci-Fi, which I like, but this, what I saw in my mind was horror, and I don’t do horror. Or to state it differently, I am not much for horror, as such this brain drain was not in the mind of me. In the setting I am an older man, 70’s, optionally early 80’s. The town of the event is Orleans, it is a new building on St. Joseph Blvd, there the man finds a girl near the entrance, the girl is around 25 and badly beaten up. He cals for an ambulance and notifies the police, she lives nearby, she lives there alone. Later he visits her in hospital. He makes a quick phone call. The wounds are fresh and ghastly. He offers to look out for her and takes her to his apartment, and she happily agrees. In the apartment is a middle age lady, the cook, she had made a fresh bouillon with lots of beef and rice. They both eat it whilst enjoying fresh warm croissants. She begs him to stay there the night, she will sleep with him if she can stay, he turns down the invitation, but tells her that she can sleep in the bed, he will take the sofa. The next morning she is awake and looking refreshed, the cook was already there, with hot sandwiches with pastrami and cheese for both, the woman is clearly scared, really scared, but she is happy to see the food. The man looks, but does not ask. She tells him that she never saw who did it, merely that she was beaten again and again in her apartment. He asks her is she can inspect the apartment, she agrees, clearly she is too scared to go back to her place alone. Out of the drawer he takes out two unusual gloves, if you can call them that. They are a wristband, with wires to every finger, two rings for the thumb and three for every other finger, the rings are connected to each other by metal wires and the end of the gloves are thimbles. She puts them in the pocket of his coat, one for the left pocket, one for the right. He grabs a small torch and they walk to her house, it was a mere 10 minutes. As they are about to go into the house, they see a young couple checking the both out. The door opens and the darkness in the house on clear daylight is almost frightening. The man quickly puts on the gloves and shines the torch into the house, before he knows it a man, or what seems to be a man comes for him, but this time the attacker is in for a surprise, the elderly man, our hero grabs the man and pulls him into the sunlight, this is something the attacker was unaware of and it was even harder to resist, the screams from the attacker were deafening and in all this, the attacker starts to fade, until the darkness is replaced by a strange light and the attacker dissolves. At that point the house starts to become less dark, not light but the darkness is no longer swallowing the apartment.
The woman starts crying, the fear is clear on every part of her body. He takes another look and then he walks into the apartment, there is a larger setting of darkness in the apartment that was not normal, not part of any shadows, and as he looks he sees it all fade away, this was the effect of something else. He had seen the original writings from ancient Greece on Tartarus, but to see what might be a Ghastly, or a Shade in Tartarus. Yet these were writings, this was something he saw, he witnessed and that was a first for him, but this was France, so what was going on?
This is as far as I got in less than an hour, the images were so vivid I wrote them down as quickly as I could before the images faded, they are already starting to fade, it is rereading the writings I just put down to make the images reappear. It has happened before but before today I never wrote them down, most of those events are lost to me forever, but this one I have, yet my IP is based on science, my other creations are Sci-Fi (some are historical fantasy), to get a horror image is quite disturbing, and I can say that my night rest is now over and it is getting towards 02:30, another night without sleep, oh joy!
Not sure what is going on, but it is a bit over my head (for now). And I just realised, today is exactly 16 years ago when I left Europe, perhaps it is related.
It is a harsh stage, at times we tend to, according to our own nature, be cold, ice cold. In some cases (like mine) inhumane cold. I am not doing it intentionally, but I do get that some see me as cold insensitive bastard, and I like ice cream too. So here I am in a setting that does not appeal to many, but outspoken so that you know what is in play. You see, we see and some feel the hrh reality of the Coronavirus, and the BBC gives us ‘Coronavirus: Germany to go into lockdown over Christmas’, I get it, we need to be careful, but the cold numbers (as reliable as they can be) give us 72,221,006 corona cases, 50,607,364 recovered and 1,613,868 cases ended with a heart rate of ZERO. So basically we see 69% made a recovery, 3.18% did not make it, the rest is still in a stage of healing. Consider all the actions, all the ruckus and all the settings for these numbers. Now, I am all for stopping the disease. 1.6 million is not nothing, and as we see all the presented decks on more people dies in the US than in WW2, we are all overreacting. Whilst we see that WW2 ended the lives of 405K Americans, another source gives us 291K deaths, so who can we trust? The numbers are less than a month old, all whilst WW2 ended in 1945. As such when we consider that several of the sources tend to be seen as reliable, who fed them these numbers?
You see, the reactions we are seeing is on a stage of 3.18%, all whilst we also see “11% of all deaths and 42% of CVD deaths” (CVD=Cardio Vascular Deaths), this was in 2018, so how much fuss was made over heart issues? When we see the numbers next to others, Corona does not amount to too much. I am not stating that we ignore the event, I am showing you that the over reaction is a little much. Especially as we entered a recession in the end of 2018, an economic setting that nearly all governments are trying to avoid, especially in light of the debts that all these governments have. Another ploy that Wall Street is happy about, they got to blame a disease and optionally the CDC as well.
Am I overreacting? That remains to be seen and it is a fair question to ask, yet I am showing you the numbers, the charts and the percentages, those you can calculate yourself (you might find a rounding adjustment at best).
The sight that we see is a scary one, governments have ordered billions in vaccines, a vaccine that we do need to have, but the bombastic fanfare is one we could have done without and no one is looking hard at the recession, are they? ABC gave us last week “The recession is technically over but for wages and jobs, the recovery is a long way away”, is the recession really over? Is the overreaction and shifting of the blame towards Corona justified? Ask yourself that question when you see the extended amount of unemployed people, when you see the lack of controls on corporations when we consider the impact of what should have happened. I said it from the very beginning, the numbers never added up. I was merely unsure what they were supposed to be and when you see numbers not matching on a whole level of fronts, perhaps you will wonder where the numbers came from as well, there is a level of facilitation in play that is happening on a number of levels and it seems that the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing, in all honesty I wonder if you can figure out what the right hand and what the other one was all along.
We all have our flings, a lot of ladies still have an ongoing fling with ‘Sex and the City’, Whilst the man cannot help themselves but to run to the nearest cinema when they see the calling card ‘007’ (also known as 003.5 when he was young). Loads of people (myself included) were nuts about Star Trek, many were Babylon 5 fans (me too) and a lot of us could not wait for what would come after Star Wars. Some franchises get to us and they capture us. The same for the Marvel characters. But over the years I learned that a binge fetish comes with an attached version of digital tummy bounce. Too much, even of a good thing is not always good. I know, I had my events, there was the evening with two T-bone steaks (1.2 Kg beef in total), there was the 6 mango pancakes occasion when having Yum Cha in Chinatown, there was the case of me and the 11 turkey tandoori drumsticks in Stockholm and the less said about me and a two litre jar of custard the better. This happens with movies and TV series too. During the lockdown I had a binge with 19 seasons of Midsomer Murders, Star Wars 1-9 (plus Rogue One), NCIS season 1 through 15, as well as a revisit on Blu ray of ALL Marvel movies.
They tend to weigh on us, it is like we accept the universe we watch, but we also understand that what we see is not real, for some reason the borders face during a binge, have you never noticed that? So when I saw ‘Disney ramps up Star Wars and Marvel franchises’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55269531), I had my concerns. Now, for those who love the binge, who love their passion of Star Wars, Marvel or Disney, I am fine with that, I wish you all the best (and loads of happy fun), yet the article gives us two parts.
The first is “it also announced price increases from February next year”, OK, £7.99 per month might not seem a big deal, but with unemployment the way it is, it will make a lot of people unhappy. Australia gives us $8.99AUD per month (or $89.99 per year) which is interesting as it implies that for a year, you get 2 months for free, it would make the stage more interesting, but overall, it implies that Australia is getting Disney Plus almost 50% cheaper than the UK (which translates to $14.04 per month), as such in this global age, a lot of people will not be happy. This was merely an observation, not a stage of discussion.
The second part is seen with “Disney said that it planned to offer 10 new TV series in its Marvel and Star Wars franchises over the next few years”, and yes, we have an issue with ‘over the next few years’, which is blatantly inaccurate. The hype creators gave us WandaVision, Loki, Hawkeye, WhatIf, Moon Knight, She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel 2, Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, as well as several movies (at least one title confirmed for 2022) as well as “roughly 10 Star Wars series are coming to Disney Plus, but it also gave some early details about a few of those series and other Star Wars projects”, which the Verge (at https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/10/22167976/disney-investor-day-2020-biggest-announcements-plus-marvel-star-wars-pixar-animation) gives us.
We want to make it bout the money, but we need to look at the fact that a lot of people get to enjoy well over a dozen series in a setting that they LIKE, all whilst the US produced over 500 series last year that most of us (non-Americans) will not get to see. So is the stage of £2 (per month) really a lot? No, but it is the £7.99 (£80, or £96) a year that matters. You see, we all see the full time incomes, but there are plenty on £13,803 for part-time roles, which is not a lot, especially when the bills are paid.
Yet this is NOT about the money, consider the annual cost and consider the focal point of Disney Plus. There is off-course more to Disney Plus, but to have such a driven focal point can slap back to the owners. Yes, they are and should be proud of what they offer, but like gaming, we might have a favourite game, but at times we want something else and there are alternatives, but there is the snag for Disney, if the people turn away from Disney too often, someone will figure out to be a paying member two months a year and catch up on those months. What will Disney do, turn these paying customers away?
The stage of annual fees versus returning fees will soon become a much more focussed debate and a focal point for revenue investigators all over, because it is not merely Disney that faces this consideration. In this, I have nothing against Stan, HBO, Netflix, Disney Plus, or Apple TV, but the people in a much larger setting have limited funds, they could consider one, some might consider a second one, but that is pretty much it, the quality of life in most of the Commonwealth and the EU is not in a good place. So whilst some are fighting over the pie, the consumer is considering another buffet
Month
Channel
January
Netflix
February
Apple TV
March
Disney Plus
April
May
Netflix
June
Apple TV
July
Disney Plus
August
September
October
Netflix
November
Apple TV
December
Disney Plus
In this setting we see three months a year, some might go for to month a year and optionally safe a little money, in that setting both Disney and Netflix will enter a tunnel of massive problems, their stage is not fitting the cost endured, you cannot make a case of $15,000,000,000 of costs a year and people merely coming for two months a year, the system will collapse and that is what Disney faces too. The people are lacking cash and optionally bandwidth too.
Do you think they will waste time on too much monthly fees, or will they wisen up and binge when they can, let’s not forget these executives promoted bingeing when it suited their needs, now it will not, and the spreadsheet deck that they hold does not permit the thought I am voicing here.
Yup, that has to go down like a kick in the head, does it not? But that was the thought I had when I was confronted with the BBC article ‘Mastercard severs links with pornography site’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55267311), now personally I do not care about Pornhub. I don’t think I have ever been there, honestly. I am not anti or against porn, in Europe it was available on nearly every corner and a lot of it for free, as such I got over that need decades ago. So, whatever, I (for the most) do not care, but I hate hypocrisy, I hate it with a passion. So when I see “Mastercard says it is ending the use of its cards on the pornography platform Pornhub after a review confirmed the presence of unlawful content”, yup, it is an option they can take, but at the same time they are setting themselves up for a court case regarding discrimination by Pornhub. You see, when we consider “Members of China’s Uyghur ethnic minority are being used as forced labor in factories far from the so-called reeducation camps that have held them for years in Xinjiang, according to an extensive new report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), a think-tank founded by Australia’s government” (source: Quartz), if I remember my law lessons, slave labour is illegal, is it not?
As such, how many Nike shops were banned by Mastercard as well? How many Apple Stores are not able to process Mastercard? The New York Post (25th July) gave us ‘Nike should quit lecturing on social justice — and atone for using slave labor in China’, where was Mastercard at that point? Oh and according to ABC VISA is doing the same thing and for both I see no actions on Nike, Apple and a few others, like fashion stores that have been involved in ‘Aussie fashion retailers accused of driving poverty in Bangladesh with cut-throat pricing in new Oxfam report’, this came from Nine News 3 weeks ago regarding an Oxfam report, so where were VISA and Mastercard barring “Some of the biggest Australian fast fashion brands” in this? Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander, I say. But it seems that hypocrisy is high with the financial institutions. Now, I am not stating that Pornhub is innocent, even as we are told “A New York Times investigation accused the site of being “infested” with child-abuse and rape-related videos”, it calls for investigation and pressure, but the voice of Mastercard and VISA stating some holier than though barring, all whilst they have no issue processing slave labour goods is a bit much, even for me.
So when we get “Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof named it in his New York Times article, saying he “didn’t see why search engines, banks or credit-card companies” should “bolster” Pornhub”, I am willing to initially side against Pornhub on matters and when we see a name like Nicholas Kristof, we all want to see where and how he got the data he used, fair is fair, yet in this, I see the actions by VISA and Mastercard as a BS approach towards the limelight. Especially when we see reports of Oxfam and several others on the other issues. But I reckon that these two card companies will hide behind the ‘too complicated an issue’ and will continue as usual, but as I see it, they are discriminating foundations and if Pornhub wants to extract a billion in losses from these two, I would be able to live with it, but it does not take them off the hook. Even if we are told “Pornhub, which has denied the claims”, I would want to look into the evidence of Nicholas Kristof, I have had my doubts on journalists several times, but this is a Pulitzer Prize winner, they tend to remain well above board, in this Pornhub is the lesser trustworthy of the two on a mere glance, and I state that speculatively, I have not seen the evidence and I hope that Nicholas Kristof will hand over that evidence to the press on a much larger stage. Yet, we need to see Pornhub like a much less puritan version of YouTube, or Facebook (me thinks), as such they facilitate automated distribution, just like social media, but they too need to look into matters to a much deeper degree, if I believe that social media must do this, then players like Pornhub must too, and if there are criminal issues, they need to be dealt with and fast. We cannot say for sure what is criminal and what is fake criminal and the track is not an easy one, a source (Tweaktown) gave us in December 2018 “Pornhub saw 4.79 million videos uploaded in 2018, with 147GB per second”, this might not be as much as YouTube, but it cannot be too far off and a place like Pornhub does not have the infrastructure that Google has (my speculated view), as such there is every chance that criminal activities will pass the filters and not be seen until it is much too late, and yes, something needs to be done, but we can do without the hypocritical BS that VISA and Mastercard are giving us, if anything Pornhub needs the funds to upgrade their hardware on detection, investigation and reporting, that’s how I see it.
You know, this article might have the most use of the letters pee, ohh, arr, enn ever. Oh Joy! Well, time to enjoy Saturday with a strong cup of coffee and a sandwich.
Hah! I did not give up, I persisted and it came to me. I was looking at a way to set levelling in the RPG game that I discussed in previous blogs and I have a handle on it now. You see, Bethesda was not wrong, they were merely incomplete (as I personally see it). They almost got it right in the past but they set a different premise (something they are allowed to do), as such, in the RPG I devised there is a different jump. The artisans, the members of arcane houses, they all have settings of levels, but they are all DIFFERENT. It took me a while to set that premise. So as I started to discuss them in ‘Playing the stage’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/10/18/playing-the-stage/), there I started with the House of Forests, and introduced the Floating house. It was in ‘Invoke the liquid mountain’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/10/20/invoke-the-liquid-mountain/) where I mentioned House of Chimes and I almost forgot about the Monks of the Sulphur Cave and the House of Bones. There is some (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/10/22/chimes-are-wind-translators/), and it did not dawn on me to make the levelling different for each class. As forests can only exist by preserving it, as such the power and levelling of druids come from seeing the sick trees and save them or kill them and replaced the killed tree by a new sapling. As his staff is instrumental it will be the focal point of experience and levelling. A similar (but not the same) approach can be used on the Monks of the Sulphur Caves. It is different for the members of the Floating House, the water specialists. It would make them swimmers and water breathes, but that would be too shallow, they are rain invokers and their experience is set to the amount of spells they cast. As I am showing now, I am not completely there yet, but as we are confronted with a player that has an arcane and an artisan cast, we see different levelling systems, you have to become more aligned with the person you create. Gender might no longer be a real concern, but the choice of arcane and artisan house more so. If we see this we are looking at one of five and one of four levelling systems, we will not now, not ever become all round specialists of everything, but that is the price we get for something new. It also sets a different focal point in taking out enemies and overcoming barricades in the game. It is perhaps not completely original, but in this shape it is completely new. We can be an expert, the expert, we merely cannot be the expert in everything, it seems lacking Zen, but I believe that this approach will make the game a more Zen experience. I reckon that this will also create an optional very new ‘New Game+’ version. Where we optionally reincarnate with part of the abilities of the previous life, but not the powers derived from them, an option to have additional stamina and a larger setting of magical hubris (read: mana), it is merely a stage and this gives me the setting where I designed the larger stage for a few options in less than 4 weeks all by myself (yay me). Or as I would optionally say “Ubisoft eat your heart out”, but that is just me. So I got some of the arcane done, a larger stage of levelling, now I need to concentrate on the larger main stories and some of the side stories. Perhaps I will put them here too soon enough.
All this and it is not even midnight yet. Whatever will I do next?
Yup, we all face vindication at some point, it can be ‘I told you so’, it can be ‘Yup, I watched it and it went exactly as I expected’, and it can be ‘You should have listened to me’, To be honest, I hope at times it is almost never the third one, there will ALWAYS be an exception, but the third one is laced in arrogance and I personally think that it is laced to deeply in arrogance, as such I tend to side with the first two sentiments.
Now, this day started weird. I woke up from a slumber. We all have those moments at times, in this instance I had sort of waking dream, so I cannot say what kind of dream it was, it might be a movie script, yet the setting was a little too surreal. It was in the Netherlands, apparently the Dutch Military Police (they also guard the royal family) had set a parameter where the non used royal houses were used as stash locations. They were instructed to investigate a reporter who had found a snippet of that setting and they decided to smear his career in several ways as to take focus away from those locations. They involved the foreign office to muddy the waters. It was a small group of less than a dozen agents, but the stage was sullied by VEVAK as one of its agents performed a ‘service’ once and they had an inside scoop on technology that was stored in one of the locations. As the foreign office operative was smearing the reporter, VEVAK had altered the information to the smallest degree, but it woke up Mossad and as they started to look into the matters the reporter as well as well as the crooked military police agent were all in their alleged private hell and as Mossad as played in a few ways the criminal police officers had no place to go but towards handing over the technology to Iran. Anyway that is when I woke up, and I saw that I missed out on the first hour of the Game Awards 2020.
So why is this vindication? The Last of Us part 2 (7 wins), Ghosts of Tsushima (1 win), Final Fantasy 7 remake (1 win), 9 wins, all Sony exclusives, that is what I mean with Microsoft being off their game by a massive amount, there were more non-Microsoft wins (Animal Crossings) as such the weakest console got the award when the most powerful console did not. Microsoft did win the Sim/Strategy Game Award and the Flight Simulator that they have left no surprise, it is BEYOND amazing, fair is fair. But that is one title, in this game award show Microsoft was a larger absent force, to get to the top layer you have to up the game to a much larger degree, Sony did, Microsoft to a larger degree did not, the absence of Ubisoft needs to be noticed too, there is a larger stage and both Ubisoft and Microsoft are no longer in the centre of it, the fact that Microsoft got mentioned (in light of Sims) is fair but it is one in a stage where they used to be a contender to a much larger field, fo me this is an ‘I told you so’ event.
The exclusives matter, if they rock the field they rock gaming, and this year is a sore point for both Ubisoft and Microsoft. I wonder what will happen next year. CD Projekt Red has fixing to do, yet they could end up taking some of the awards, There are a few more players, but the stage is shifting and in this there is a larger push for Sony to rule the complete center stage. The 9 awards are a clear indication of that. It was always hard for any fight between two Sony titles, as such there is a little surprise that Ghosts of Tsushima only got one, but the competition was fierce and The Last of Us part 2 was a price fighter here. No matter who of the two won, the players and the gamers in the end they won, especially if they had both games. So as we are about to enter Saturday I will continue on the RPG I was working on, still haven’t worked out the new levelling system, well actually perhaps in part I have, but I need to think through whether it will not become too chaotic. In gaming chaos is fine, in programming a little less so, it allows for too many bugs and glitches to creep in. Innovation is cool, but the path towards it, often enough, less so.
Yup, this happens. We watch things, we read things and it mixes into an idea. The first element in this was the movie Kingdom of Heaven (by Ridley Scott). I love this movie, for some reason it feels more real than any of the other movies that are founded on the crusades are. There are a few other reasons, there is always a good reason to watch any movie with Orlando Bloom and Alexander Siddig and the fact that it also had Liam Neeson, Eva Green, Jeremy Irons and several others did not hurt that cause either. I was struck by the charisma that Ghassan Massoud brought to the screen in Kingdom of Heaven. That movie is pretty much forever in the back of my mind. The second element was something I read. The quote “An ifrit can further be bound to a sorcerer, if summoned”, as well as “In the latter account, the “ifrit among the jinn” threatens Muhammad with a fiery presence, whereupon the archangel Gabriel taught Muhammad a Du’a (Islamic prayer) to defeat it”, this struck a chord as it is the only reference I have seen at present where Christian faith and Islamic faith crosses (perhaps there are more). But it got me thinking. What happens if an Afreet, a dweller of the sands is confronted by the invasion armies of the west? The Crusaders, the Templars, the Teutons, and some of these organisations still exist today. So what happens when an Afreet goes on a quest to understand the enemy of its sands? The idea is not entirely new, the Afreet made an appearance in True Blood and in American gods, but in both cases it is less seen from the view of the Afreet, and as a demon they are part immortal, or at least can exist for thousands of years, anyone with that level of timespan has a different view on matters. As such the Afreet can be in the past and the present giving us a very different stage.
We have been so obsessed with the western folklore, that we forget that there is a large area of folklore that has almost never been tapped into and when we consider that Netflix is present in Qatar and Saudi Arabia, I wonder why we get this oversight. Of course they can also go for the other movie I came up with ‘How to kill a politician’ which optionally might be a big hit in the Islamic world, it might not be something that a person like Geert Wilders likes, but it is a door he opened himself and France added spice to that soup.
All options I did in mere hours, as such I wonder what is keeping some so called creators in creating actual new stuff (instead of a new version of old stuff). It is as I personally see it the difference between iterative and innovative. A stage that America is shifting in, they are moving more and more towards iterative because they can no longer find the innovative people. A sad state of affairs as I personally see it.
Is it me? Am I tripped by a thought, or am I seeing it correctly that we are missing out on true innovation in both movies and TV series? I am not ignoring the stage where we are told that there are “In 2019, the number of original scripted television series in the United States hit 532”, I am not doubting that, I am merely noticing that other places in the world, these series are missing, or not shown. And to be honest, I have my doubt on all 532 series being actual innovative series. There is nothing wrong with iterative series, but they are a prolongation of something else. Another CSI, another NCIS, another Star Trek, another Superman. I will agree that there are plenty of fans for them, but at times we need to offer something so new people gasp at the notion of difference. I get the setting that this does not always ends up being positive (Firefly, Dollhouse) but they were true innovations, they were different and they have scores of fans, but it was not meant to be. I get it and perhaps my ideas will never become reality either, but I remain innovative in my thinking, it did lead to several 5G IP parts and I expect a few more in the coming year.
Yet in this I do not pursue a path, I let it was over me just like the Afreet did, just like the soon to be dead politician (in the Movie) and the stage of being between two universes (Keno Diastima), a stage I found in mere hours, yes I agree they are not finished, yet I did most of the work by myself in mere hours. So I wonder what others are capable of making, even if we do not see these results on Netflix, Stan, Youtube or TV. I wonder what became of the 532 series, because so far what we get to see is “Find Out Which Series Will Return for Another Season”, a stage that we accept, but there is more then returning series, they are an accepted and essential part of TV (and streaming), but where is all the new stuff?
It is a thought that is tripping me and making me trip (to coin a phrase).
And all this is happening whilst I am trying to find a new and original way of levelling up a character in the RPG I have been writing about. We tend to see RPG’s in missions, kills and achievements. I want the levelling to be different, but I am still seeking a way, perhaps I will return to the mission stage of levelling up, but I am trying to avoid it, an RPG can only stand on its feet when it offers more and different stages, not merely more of the same, we have all seen that and as such I am considering other methods, yet the thought of how is not clicking into the frame of mind and the frame of gaming, yet I hope that to be a temporary thing for now.
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 