Tag Archives: Alberta

The Rock of stars

That is the setting we see and it matters. The BBC gives us (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2ek2d9y61o) ‘Carney says trade talks with Trump to resume ‘when it matters’’ with the underlying “Asked when he last spoke to Trump, Carney responded: “Who cares? It’s a detail. I’ll speak to him again when it matters.” The prime minister’s remarks come after trade talks were derailed last month when Trump took offence at an anti-tariff advertisement featuring Ronald Reagan, which was aired by the province of Ontario.” It is the “Who cares?” That mattered. It had the Canadians in stitches, but the underlying truth is also there. America is done for under this administration. We all have heard how ‘Canada’ does not mean anything to President Trump except as a 51st state. And the Canadians are pissed and that is merely the beginning. But as the American administration thought that they had an upcoming minion and under Prime Minister Mark Carney Canada is showing itself to be the one nightmare you do not want to mess with and It is costing America nearly everything they have to stop this doom-setting from unfolding. 

In other news we are given (by CBC at https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ottawa-alberta-mou-energy-pipeline-9.6990768) ‘Ottawa, Alberta agree to broad outlines of energy deal, including support for pipeline’ where we see “Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith have agreed to the broad outlines of a memorandum of understanding that would give Alberta special exemptions from federal environmental laws and offer political support to a new oil pipeline to the B.C. coast, CBC News has learned. The deal is set to be formally announced at a joint Carney-Smith news conference in Calgary on Thursday.” In this setting there is no America and with this there is an additional setting that gives Vancouver additional revenue streams and none of it is going to America. And hours ago CBC gives us ‘Carney, Modi agree to launch negotiations on new Canada-India trade deal’ with the text “In a social media post published Sunday afternoon, Carney said a trade deal could double Canada-India trade to $70 billion.” This comes after the UAE deal made and that puts Canada as the front runner for a massive revenue gain in several ways and whilst the Canadian Conservative Party gives us (via CTV) “Conservative MPs slammed Prime Minister Mark Carney Monday over dismissive comments he made recently when asked about stalled trade talks with U.S. President Donald Trump. While taking questions from reporters in Johannesburg on Sunday, Carney was asked when he last spoke with Trump and replied, “Who cares?” “I look forward to speaking with the president soon, but I don’t have a burning issue to speak with the president about right now,” he said. “When America wants to come back and have conversations on the trade side, we will have those discussions.”” This comes even as the latest information is given that another impeachment trial is awaiting President Trump before Christmas. As such the ‘who Cares’ seems spot on, whatever deal can be made will not happen this year and in the meantime Prime Minister Carney has already two victories and whilst the Star (that one from Toronto) gives us (at https://www.thestar.com/business/opinion/while-an-erratic-trump-ignores-canada-carney-quietly-cements-international-investments-elbows-up-indeed/article_bdbeeb99-7691-4118-8c09-dff12fa0927e.html) ‘While an erratic Trump ignores Canada, Carney quietly cements international investments. Elbows up, indeed’ where we see “It’s been about 10 months since U.S. President Donald Trump declared economic war on Canada, and there has been no progress in ending the debacle. That failure is not Canada’s fault. Trump is playing another of his games with us, this time giving us the silent treatment.” In the meantime Canada and its Prime Minister got to work (elbows up they call it) and made deals with world leaders attending the G20, that is that trade show that President Trump ignored, or he misplaced his invitation. But he is not there, as such Canada is making deals. So whilst the haters and devoted ‘Conservative Party members’ call ‘Wasting money’ This PM is making deals that will push new boundaries in revenue for Canada, making it a profitable country for its citizens. So whilst the the Trump administration is currently keen to scrap the trilateral trade deal among the U.S., Canada and Mexico, Canada is making new deals with Mexico that makes America (kinda) irrelevant. Its all in a days work for the formerly known Marky Mark of the British bank. And as a former Governor of the British Bank he knows who is guarding the coffers of their respective nations and Canada is making headway to nearly all of them. Another loss for America.

And the Financial Post (at https://financialpost.com/news/carney-world-us-stresses-new-ties) gives us ‘Carney says world can move on without U.S., stresses new ties’ with the supporting text “Prime Minister Mark Carney said the world can make progress on a range of issues without the U.S., and that consensus reached at a Group of 20 leaders’ meeting in Johannesburg this weekend carries weight despite a boycott by United States President Donald Trump’s administration.” And as I personally see it, the G20 that could have ‘saved’ America in more than one way is now the stage where America is made irrelevant. OK, irrelevant is perhaps a bit strong, but the setting that these 18 world leaders are happy not having to dance with President Trump is almost the centre stage as the media gives this to us. As such we are given “After a Nov. 20 meeting in Abu Dhabi with United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, the Gulf country committed to investing $70 billion in Canada, Carney said, without providing specific details. That’s the biggest investment pledge Canada has ever received. “We’re signing new deals and finding new investors to fuel our plans for Canada’s economic ambition,” he said. “We’ll expand trade and catalyze investment in increased partnerships across a range of areas from AI to energy in the Indo-Pacific and Europe.”” As I see it, it is the better part of a $140 billion deal that America missed out on, and they could really afford losing this much (that part was sarcasm for those who fail to recognise it). As I personally see it, Mark Carney came at the right time and now Canada is the frontrunner as an investment partner. As investments I can see one other place. Oracle, as I see it Oracle has only 2 data centers and they will need a third one if I understand the settings from America correctly. Microsoft has to open its data-gates to Federal authority and when that really happens many will scream and seek other venues outside of the US and Oracle might be the better solution there too. So as I see it, there is plenty of investment to come and that would never have happened under Pierre Poilievre, so he can campaign all he wants, but the Canadian people are on to him and he doesn’t stand a chance against Mark Carney. So there is a larger setting where America is becoming irrelevant and mostly done by there own actions and Mark Carney saw the opportunity for Canadians and he is grabbing that with both hands. 

So the haters can throw whatever they want on social media, but we all know better (even the Commonwealthian people outside of Canada) Carney is gold, he is the Rockstar of Canada, even Stevie Nicks and Celine Dion agree (my presumption) and as we see this, he is also becoming the Rock of Stars in the global political community, they all want their selfie with him.

Have a great day, I am closing in on the midweek, a mere 11 hours to go.

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Realignment

Part one
Part one is seen in the CBC article (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/donald-trump-water-canada-peter-lougheed-1.7459583) where we see ‘Trump’s musings on ‘very large faucet’ in Canada part of looming water crisis, say researchers’ and we are given “In 2005, former Alberta premier Peter Lougheed warned against sharing Canada’s water supply with the United States, suggesting Alberta’s most important resource was water, not oil and gas. “We should communicate to the United States very quickly how firm we are about it,” Lougheed said.” This was a mere 11 years before Trumps first presidency. So when we see “U.S. President Donald Trump wants to tap into Canada’s water, saying there’s a “very large faucet” that can be turned on to drain water from north to south and help with American shortages. We look at the question of water sovereignty — and whether Canada is ready to protect its resources.” We need to realize that America made its bed with the tariffs and I say let them pay, $13.25 per 25M3 of water as added tariff over the $53 per 25m3. Sounds about right. So how long will it take until Trump (aka OBWH) realizes that he took the wrong fight to the wrong party? Oh and leaks south of the border are his problem and with the current infrastructure, I reckon we can wait for that to go wrong and that time can be set in hours (at the most). So whilst we were given “Massive amounts coming out from the mountains, from the melts,” Trump said in January. “And even without it, even during the summer, it’s a natural flow of water. They would have had so much water they wouldn’t have known what to do with it. You would have never had the fires.”” Ads I see it, the Canadians know exactly to do with this, charge the Americans. And as Trump reiterates on cheap oil, we can give him an education. When a commodity is in short supply prices go up, not down. It was a simple equation that was set half a century ago, as such Cheap oil from Saudi Arabia is a figment of his imagination. What would they do with it? Well, selling to China remains an option. And Canada has options too, the Commonwealth. As for the reasoning? I still believe that America is running out of funds and that their infrastructure is about to buckle (a personal speculation). 

But with the tariffs, he opened up a whole new stage of short selling his own options. 

Part Two
I was thinking of what we could do to bring the pain to America and in comes the Canadian ‘darling’ of out of the box thinking. The name is Ryan Reynolds. You see, as gaming is set to dwindle down to abysmal settings (mainly due to Microsoft) Canada has options. In the first there is Ubisoft Montreal (Canada), then there are options in Toronto, Montreal and Quebec. So I have been re-playing Ratchet and Clank (PS4 remake) and I had the idea to get the last 4 achievements. During the play through I was considering that the flaky nature of the game could well be done by others (not a copy, but true new IP). Considering that the game was made in 2016 and sold almost 4 million games, it is still popular now, 9 years later. That takes near perfection to do. And it can be done again. As such I thought that with the voice of Ryan Reynolds (optionally with a sidekick voiced by Blake Lively) there is space for new IP. I haven’t worked that out yeet, but with America falling out of grace with millions of people it is an option for Canada to shine and with Sony being a Japanese company, there will be space to grow in the Commonwealth, Europe and Japan. Three places Trump pissed off. As such I say we need to grow, help Canada grow and let the pieces fall where they may. The style of Ratchet and clank is flaky, funny and unique. As such we need to prevent a R&C clone. But that is decently easy. The trick will be to find the animation and design in a unique way. To set the stage we need to rely on Ryan Reynolds (Blake Lively too) to set the stage with the voices. The rest will follow (I’m making it overly easy which is not the case) but the stage would be that America will feel the second sting of lost revenue and it was all because short sighted advisors in the White House thought that tariffs were the solution and after that JD Vance was stupid enough to blame Europe for all kinds of matters and that gives Canada the opportunity to sell to Europe as well and as they already set the stage to the Commonwealth we see a optional stage of 900,000,000 consumers and they are happy to see a non-American vendor. 

I reckon that I can work on the gaming idea soon, Perhaps even sooner if I consider a few CBM64 games. You see, plenty of that is UK IP and optionally no longer protected.

As such we see that from Microsoft and their ‘lessened intelligence’ pissed off millions of gamers in 2013, and with the losses they have they aren’t happy. So whilst I have the setting to make them lose more money and that is a work in progress in the meantime we get President Trump adding spice to that to piss off 743 million Europeans and 2.5 billion Commonwealthian’s. Smart move Mr. President. And I reckon that Japan likes the setting they face and in the meantime Tencent (China) has its own gaming solution that can stream as well. So in three directions a lot of revenue goes elsewhere.

As I see it, America has one option and that is to bring a clear victory home from Riyadh. If the Russians get anywhere of some level of win, most of the planet will become anti-American. And soon thereafter America becomes the isolated pariah. 

In the meantime Canada can ‘profit’ from the hardship that California faces and as such Vancouver can create more movies and TV series. I reckon that together with the UK and others they can upsell their services which America can no longer provide for the time being. 

As we see these elements that are in play, consider that billions of interest are required every month to pay for the almost $37,000,000,000,000 debt, or did you forget that such a debt has interest? At 1% it ends up being over 35 billion and it is never merely 1%.

As such I say, America did this to themselves. They re-elected that guy (not sure if the Democrats really had a proper person to become president). 

So enjoy that lovely cup of tea (coffee is also good) and consider how Canada can give a little more pain to America. Tariffs? Let that be an American worry this day.

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Ways to skin a cat

Yes, it is an old expression, yet anytime I use it, the Cheshire Cat gets a little upset with me. Well thats all fine I say, he disagrees. To start this off, I need to take you back to the 21st of March when I wrote ‘The unplanned story’. The story (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/03/21/the-unplanned-story/) gives rise to new IP I had, but it is not about the IP. It is about the quote “The image is based on identity and interaction. You see, that need is not effort, it is engagement. Market Research (at least a few of them) have seen that engagement is the metric that really matters and Augmented reality is the core of that and that is what is missing in malls.” Yes, I saw that it was about Augmented Reality, or so I personally belief. Yet CBC (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-mall-cashes-in-on-alternative-tenants-to-fight-canada-wide-slump-1.6787534) gives us ‘Edmonton mall cashes in on alternative tenants to fight Canada-wide slump’ and that is what I love. Someone found another way and that is great. With their “The Bonnie Doon Shopping Centre is reinventing itself with unconventional vendors and local clubs” I love it, they are creating a new way of engagement. It does not matter, I am firm in my believe that my IP will be a solution. What I love is that someone found another way it is great (and it gives rise to my train of thought). Local communities are often forgotten and now we get “Radio Control Racers Edmonton took over a storefront in the building last month. President Randy Van said the first few weeks have been a massive success for both the club and the mall” this opens up so many options, it does not hurt my IP (which is a little bit on my mind), it merely gives the rise to engagement (not the ring). Engaging with your audience is the solution, it always way. As I have no idea how Eaton Mall will use the 220,000 square foot to create engagement, but it shows what was missing. Even now whilst Eaton Mall is getting back on its feet, it is still well over 20% short of what was (a seeming impression made by the videos I watched). 

In the end there are many ways to skin a cat (sorry Cheshire Cat). It merely requires us to look at that equation differently and the Bonnie Doon Shopping centre in Edmonton (where the oilers are from) has done a decently remarkable thing and that also requires recognition. They took the equation in a different direction and yay to them, they pulled it off. 

This is he kind of ingenuity I applaud, because we see too little of it anywhere. So enjoy the day and consider what the mall in your area is missing. Perhaps they need to change the greed driven formula of dollars per square foot into the future of calling in people per square foot, because people per mall is what decides the success of such one place, not the amount of empty walking space (sorry Nordstrom).

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It was one keyword

Yes, that is at times the short and sweet of anything, but let that not be some alert to the easiness of any endeavour. You see, my opposition to the CBC article (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/nordstrom-canada-1.6766073) is not that simple. The headline ‘Nordstrom closing down in Canada, shuttering all 13 stores’ sounds nice and it is a reality, but it is another line, one giving us “It was not Canadian enough”, that is the one that is plain wrong. You see, from all information we could go with the setting that the business mission was wrong all along, especially with any business painting the books in red since 2014 is another matter, one that matters, but the larger stage is not that (for Nordstrom it might be), malls are at present done for in its current setting. You see when Covid hit, it did a lot more. The timeline 2020-2023 changed people. People were forced to sit at home and mull things over. The short gratitude setting of going shopping in the weekend suddenly got hit by the cold light of day and it did not hold up. People started to think over what on earth they were doing and that becomes a whole lot more. 

You see, it started before June 6th 2022 when I wrote (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/06/06/presentation-and-awareness-creation/) ‘Presentation and Awareness creation’. This is based in simple settings. You see, all the marketeers are in some silly exercise of direct marketing. It is direct, simple and cheap and the ROI of it is seemingly immense. But any intelligent marketing boffin will tell you that the actual gems are found in engagement. Engagement is key to get traction with the people, especially the people who woke up after covid. I saw the setting in the Eaton Centre Mall (Toronto), yet I saw this application in places like Harrods too (Harrods has way to much traction at the moment, as such they need not worry), but there are well over 115,000 malls that need to wake up. They need to create traction and that was where my IP came in. It wasn’t hard, parts already existed, but for some reason Amazon and Google (the most likely winners in that race) decided not to wake up and that is where everyone decided to snooze a little longer. But there was a stage that was fast and vastly evolving and players like Omnichannel were already aware. They knew that the race was around the creation of engagement, they merely did not take it far enough. I did and suddenly had created a stage where bookshops and jewellers were a lot more important than ever before. OK, I am a guy so I created the stage for Victoria Secrets as well, they have well over 1,000 stores in the US alone and that is merely the beginning. There was a stage of intensified engagements from Alberta to Monaco and from Monaco to Zurich. An enlarging stage and the one keyword everyone forgot about was ‘Effort’, it is not part of direct marketing as such a lot of people forgot about it, but it matters and it matters a lot. Nordstrom is merely the beginning. Unless malls do not change their approach too many of them will become ghost buildings. The people are awake and these malls are largely done for. Seek any of my articles from June 6th 2022 involving ‘Eaton Centre Mall’ and you might catch on. It was all out in the open and marketing people forgot about the essential approach involving effort. 

What I never figured out is that I am not the super intelligent type, Google and Amazon should have been thee long before I did and they were not, now that they are all about chasing revenue, I wonder who gets there first, that player will have a much larger revenue stream for a long time to come and it is not an adjusted revenue stream, it is a new one with global implications. That is my view on the matter. How the keyword ‘effort’ changes everything.

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Ka-pow pow pow pow

This is a dark piece, it is not about an idea, it is not about IP and it is not about some lame excuse called justice. This all started when I saw a CBC article named ‘4 Alberta border protesters charged with conspiring to murder RCMP officers’ (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-protest-charges-laid-court-appearance-bail-1.6352482). There are a few parts here, but in the first, I need to say upfront that I have nothing against the RCMP, I think that the organisation is part of the best that Canada has to offer, and that I wish them no ill will.

That being said, at least 7 of these weapons enables me to decimate a group of RCMP, there disregard for regular safety and the fact that they had at least two weapons per person gives me the feeling that these people are wannabe’s, a group of nut-jobs relying on liquid courage. The article gives us a dozen men, a dozen pussies I reckon and the fact that they face charges of conspiracy to commit murder, mischief (of all things) and possession of a weapon and all that at a blockade gives pause to who is talking to these people, this is not a blockade, this is optionally an attempt at armed insurrection against the RCMP. My first thought was “Can’t we just feed them to the bears?” I know, not the thing a law abiding citizen does, but mischief? Really? 

Then we get to the ‘young roommates’ part. It does not make sense, roommate of what? University? Expel them! A dorm? Expel them! And the blockade/ Well, it seems to be dispersing, but it has me worried. You see, a blockade has two functions. In the first to be a blockade, but it is also a decent distraction of letting people nearby cross the borders whilst the eyes are on the blockade. A trialled and tested method for a long time. So for the dozen or so arrested, their plight is merely beginning, whilst their barrister, or appointed barrister is gunning for mischief, I seeing some of these weapons see an armed militia trying to get a foot in the door and I would take mischief of the table and set them up for attempted murder. The difference between murder and manslaughter is intent and in that setting the ammo box with ammo, the additional magazines and  the armour implies and would be evidence of intent. So I say give these people a pickaxe so that they can spend their lives chiselling the tunnel in Banff National Park for the road between Calgary and Kamloops (who claimed I had no sense of humour?) Between the insanity in the UK, Netherlands, France, US, Australia, New Zealand and a few other places it is time to change the tune too many have been playing and treat these symptoms like any other bully. Let that bully do hard labour, all whilst that bully knows it is a waste of time and it will last a lifetime. Let’s sober the population up a bit. And all that firepower for the RCMP? Screw that notion, we have all seen a year of that BS and I say enough is enough.

Whose with me?

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Blame Canada

Yup, the award nominated song from South Park, the title will forever reverberate in my mind, and in this case Canada was on my mind for a week. The reason? I will get to that, but first we will need to take you through some essential comparisons. In the first Canada is almost the size of the USA, it is a little smaller, but not much. The second part is that it has 10% of the population that the USA has. So nature rules in Canada on a few fronts, including the small fact that most Canadian women are a lot more beautiful than the American ones (A.J. Cook, Laura Vandevoort, Alison Pill, Ana Golja, Annie Clark, Nanci Chambers, Erica Cerra and hundreds more) have graced the screens large and small and they are a fine example of the Canadian women. Yet, this is not about the women it is about nature. You see, we see apps and games on hunting and survival, yet it is always set to a set of parameters, so what if we take that away? What if we create a map from satellites, real and decently accurate map sizing 1000 by 500 Km stretching from British Colombia to Saskatchewan? In this map you get dumped and from there on it will be about TRUE survival. There will be settings like starter, amateur and pro and those three rings will determine hunger, thirst, hypothermia and hostile nature. The program would set all the elements are faithful as possible, giving the people a real taste of survival without harming ones self. The amateur gets a few lives, but the rest is hardcore, one life and that is it. So how long could you survive in a game where everything matters. You see, it dawned on me that it started a little further back when I heard someone claim in a games shop that survival is simple, you merely have to understand what the game needs. That started the entire progress and as I learned more about Canada, I saw the options that they could give a gamer. More interestingly that same map could be used to spawn stories and cultural history on the First Nation, the stories of a collection of ghost towns, the call of the wild and hunting lessons, a game that gives people a decently real taste of that life without killing the animals, or (more importantly) getting killed by them. 

So why did I mention the women?
You can go into the wild just on your own, or for a reason, one reason is that your family (one of the actresses fictively being your wife) has gone down in Canada and a rough location is know. You are dropped off by chopper and with a radio and a backpack of goods, so can you find her? Can you safe them all (if the program allows for that)? A setting where survival is taken on a hype and to be honest there is no place like Canada to test it, it is one of the most rugged places on earth (if we ignore Russia). A stage that could be larger, because if you remember yesterday, the map is merely one side and we can fill it or better stated overlay it with other games. And if it takes a lifetime to explore a map that size, consider what gaming challenges could be added to that map, or perhaps better stated the challenges that a game has and it uses the same map. 

Does it matter?
Not really, but gaming can only evolve when you push the boundaries and we cannot rely on the consoles or streamers to push, they are for the most in a holding pattern until 5G grows up and that will take another 2 years, just as I foresaw and it gives another side. China can do pretty much exactly the same, they have similar settings and they have the space, but they also have 1.4 billion people and a lot more roads. In all this I have always believed that coming first gives you an edge and with IP on mobiles and other sources growing that space for options is diminishing, as such Canada only has a real advantage whilst China does not go that way, will they? I have no idea, yet so far none of the other players have taken their map to such a degree and that opens options as well as opportunities. 

As we see what we have, we need to look at where we could go, not where we should go. This is because nearly everyone does that and as such we get a dozen flavours of the same ice-cream. But at some point someone will figure out that borders need to be crossed and when they do it when 5G does become a solid reality they will be late for well over a year. So why Canada? There are two reasons, they have the space, they have a lot of the knowledge and they have a dozen local software developers, so they are almost ready to get started. They merely need the information from NRCAN to get the map data (and it helps to smile politely at the lost boys of the CSIS). When the map is done they have the largest component for several games, all set to multiple systems. 

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