Tag Archives: Marvel

November 18, 2025 · 11:34

A story to consider

That is the setting and it is all based on a story. As I see it, it could be a script. A script not written as a technicolor setting in the likes of The Bourne Identity with the one and only Jason Damon. No not like that, it is more like a documentary that his brother Matt Damon narrated in 2010. The movie Inside Job. You see, it is not about the story, it becomes about the narration and the storyline and people look at a documentary differently when it involves people like Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark. Yes, the story can be wielded in many ways. So as we recall the setting of September 14th 2019 where Houthi ‘forces’ attacked Aramco. It was immediately clear that Houthi forces could not have facilitated to that. They lacked infrastructure, trained personal and technical know how to do this. In the end there were three options and I came to the conclusion that Iran and their IRGC were the culprits. So my mind went considering the innovations available to me (my nog) and I came to a few innovations that at that time were merely on a drawing board. So here it is the story of Master Blaster DJ Intelligence and the scoundrel settings of tomorrow. Quite the narration isn’t it?

So as the DJ takes up the mic to blast a few settings. We see that innovation was not standing still. First there was the drone carrier and a reaper drone. The reapers could drop of each two careers at a safe distance. Then the carriers took over and they went on their merry way to deliver the drones. They were also the eyes for an overseer, all whilst the reapers went ack on their merry way. The carriers were strategically placed and from there the drones (six per carrier) were released. So as these drones are set to a target, and for the most it is set via satellite pictures and from there, the drones would be released. The automatic setting would do most of the job, but at times it needs a human eye as pictures can only see so much. And there we have it, The Abadus refinery

A setting we know that it is the largest refinery that Iran has. And now we see 9 targets, each get hit by two drones, explosive drones. And the mess that Iran is settled with is not to be seen as enviable. Basically 18 drones at $4K per drone, a little over $70K will cause billions of damage and the impact of that is seen all over Iran. As such the setting that the IRGC opened themselves up to is not the prettiest sight, it is a setting where a refinery pushing out 429,000 barrels per day and the oldest refinery, taking care of 25% of the fuel production will take millions, if not billions in damage and that is setting Iran back for decades. If there is a second refinery, like the Bandar Abbas Refinery you could cripple Iran for years (optionally) and also production comes at a stand still. So, do you still think attacking Aramco was a good idea? You see, two can play that game and I have plenty of innovative ideas in that regard. Take the reaper drones where two of them could release two careers each and they have up to 6 drones and not all are explosive drones. 1-2 could be spy drones who land at a seldom looked location and spy on the surroundings. And whilst the two reaper drones fly back to load up 4 more carrier drones you could hit both Abadus and Bandar Abbas in that same instance. Just the innovative me tinkering with ideas. 

I wonder how deep that setting exists? You see, they want to do it all, but if the distance is too great, the reaper drones are a safe way to get them to nearby whilst the carrier drones do the last 10% of the trip and release the drones of war. And that story would sound great as the voice of Master blaster DJ Intelligence (go practice you voice Matt). And that setting is an optional new way to bring a story and I reckon that the Saudi’s and in particular Al Saudiya TV would love to bring that story to the Saudi’s. Yes, there was a greed setting, but never in the way you think it was. Entertainment set in motion through the setting of a documentary. I don’t think I have seen that before (the Blair Witch project does not count). And it is all done in the setting of entertainment. The IRGC has been entertaining its population through Hezbollah and Hamas long enough. Time to give them a little entertainment themselves and it tends to come from a direction you never see coming. 

So, what do you say Mr Damon, you on board for this? Have a great day, I am off enjoying my own kind of oil, it is called coffee. 

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November 12, 2025 · 14:05

Lost thoughts

The is where I am, lost in thoughts. Drawn between my personal conviction that the AI bubble is real and the set fake thoughts on LinkedIn and Youtube making ‘their’ case on the AI bubble. One is set on thoughts of doubts considering the technology we are currently at, the other thoughts are all fake perceptions by influencers trying to gain a following. So how can any one get any thought straight? Yet in all these there are several people in doubt on their own set (justified) fringes. One of them is ABC who gives us ‘US risks AI debt bubble as China faces its ‘arithmetic problem’, leading analysts warn’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-11/marc-sumerlin-federal-reserve-michael-pettis-china/105992570) So in the first setting, what is the US doing with the AI debt? Didn’t they learn their lesson in 2008? In the first setting we get “Mr Sumerlin says he is increasingly worried about a slowing economy and a debt bubble in the artificial intelligence sector.” That is fair (to a certain degree) a US Federal Reserve chair contender has the economic settings, but as I look back to 2008, that game put hundreds of thousands on the brink of desperation and now it isn’t a boom of CDO’s and stocks. Now it is a dozen firms who will demand an umbrella from that same Federal Reserve to stay in business. And Mr. Sumerlin gives us “He is increasingly concerned about a slowdown in the US economy, which is why he thinks the Fed needs to cut interest rates again in December and perhaps a couple more times next year.” I cannot comment on that, but it sounds fair (I lack economic degrees) and outside of this AI bubble setting we are given “US President Donald Trump has recently posted on his social media account about giving all Americans not on high incomes, a $US2,000 tariff “dividend” — an idea which Mr Sumerlin, a one-time economic adviser to former US president George W Bush, said could stoke inflation.” I get it, but it sounds unfair, the idea that an AI bubble is forming is real, the setting that people get a dividend that could stoke inflation might be real (they didn’t get the money yet) but they are unrelated inflation settings and they could give a much larger rise to the dangers of the AI bubble but that doesn’t make it so. The bubble is already real because technology is warped and the class cases we will see coming in 2026 is base on ‘allegedly fraudulent’ sales towards the AI setting and if you wonder what happens, is that these firms buying into that AI solution will cry havoc (no return on AI investment) when that happens and it will happen, of that I have very little doubt. 

So then we get to the second setting and that is the clam that ‘China has an arithmetic problem’, I am at a loss as to what they mean and the ABC explanation is “But if you have a GDP growth target, and you can’t get consumption to grow more quickly, you can’t allow investment to grow more slowly because together they add up to growth. They’re over-invested almost across the board, so policy consists of trying to find out which sectors are least likely to be harmed by additional over-investment.”

Professor Pettis said that, to curry favour with the central government, local governments had skewed over-investment into areas such as solar panels, batteries, electric vehicles and other industries deemed a priority by Beijing.” This kinda makes sense to me, but as I see it, that is an economic setting, not an AI setting. What I think is happening that both USA and China have their own bubble settings and these bubbles will collide in the most unfortunate ways possible. 

But there is also a hindsight. As I see it Huawei is chasing their own AI dream in a novel way that relies on a mere fraction of what the west needs and as I see it, they will be coming up short soon, a setting that Huawei is not facing at present and as I see it, they will be rolling out their centers in multiple ways when the western settings will be running out of juice (as the expression goes). 

Is this going to happen? I think so, but it depends on a number of settings that have not played out yet, so the fear is partially too soon and based on too little information. But on the side I have been powering my brain to another setting. As time goes I have ben thinking through the third Dr. Strange movie and here I had the novel idea which could give us a nice setting where the strain is between too rigid and too flexible and it is a (sort of) stage between Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and Baron Mordo (Chiwetel Ejiofor) the idea was to set the given stage of being too rigid (Mordo) against overly flexible (Strange) and in-between are the settings of Mordo’s African village and as Mordo is protecting them we see the optional settings that Kraven (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) get involved and that gets Dr. Strange in the mix. The nice setting is that neither is evil, they tend to fight evil and it is the label that gets seen. Anyway that was a setting I went through this morning. 

You might wonder why I mentioned this. You see, Bubbles are just as much labels as anything and it becomes a bubble when asset prices surge rapidly, far exceeding their intrinsic value, often fueled by speculation and investor orgasms. This is followed by a sharp and sudden market crash, or “burst,” when prices collapse, leading to significant rather weighty losses for investors. And they will then cry like little girls over the losses in their wallets. But that too is a label. Just like an IT bubble, the players tend to be rigid and whole focussed on their profits and they tend to go with the ‘roll with it’ philosophy and that is where the AI is at present, they don’t care that the technology isn’t ready yet and they do not care about DML and LLM and they want to program around the AI negativity, but that negativity could be averted in larger streams when proper DML information if given to the customers and they dug their own graves here as the customer demands AI, they might not know what it is (but they want it) and they learned in Comic Books what AI was, and they embrace that. Not the reality given by Alan Turing, but what Marvel fed them through Brainiac. And there is a overlap of what is perceived and what is real and that is what will fuel the AI bubble towards implosion (a massive one) and I personally reckon that 2026 will fuel it through the class actions and the beginning is already here. As the Conversation hands us “Anthropic, an AI startup founded in 2021, has reached a groundbreaking US$1.5 billion settlement (AU$2.28 billion) in a class-action copyright lawsuit. The case was initiated in 2024 by novelist Andrea Bartz and non-fiction writers Charles Graeber and Kirk Wallace Johnson.” Which we get from ‘An AI startup has agreed to a $2.2 billion copyright settlement. But will Australian writers benefit?’ (At https://theconversation.com/an-ai-startup-has-agreed-to-a-2-2-billion-copyright-settlement-but-will-australian-writers-benefit-264771) less then 6 weeks ago. And the entire AI setting has a few more class actions coming their way. So before you judge me on being crazy (which might be fair too) the news is already out there, the question is what lobbyists are quieting down the noise because that is noise according to their elected voters. You might wonder how one affect the other. Well, that is a fair question, but it hold water, as these so called AI (I call them Near Intelligent Parses, or NIP) require training materials and when the materials are thrown out of the stage, there is no learning and no half baked AI will holds its own water and that is what is coming. 

A simple setting that could be seen by anyone who saw the technology to the degree it had to. Have a great day this mid week day.

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May 9, 2025 · 11:54

The end of defense

That is the setting that SBS (at https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/australias-big-question-in-donald-trumps-movie-tariff-threat/apjiwwsr0) invites us to consider. You see, in the eyes of the ‘true blue’ democrats, the message becomes You cannot set the stage to an orange overtly bully baboon and perhaps they actually had the right notion. At some point it is pointless to merely play the defensive stage. In Pencak Silat I learned decades ago that defense without offense if pointless and offense without defense is useless. So it is time to up the game. No matter how stupid the actions of President Trump are seen, the game needs a boost and he gave us the perfect reason. And as ‘their’ presentations give us, California is at present the richest area. As such the link gives us ‘Australia’s $767 million question in Donald Trump’s movie tariff threat’ there is an upside and a downside. You see, the Commonwealth might see this as an opportunity, consider the Australian acting community (Hugh Jackman, Chris Hemsworth, Cate Blanchett, Rose Byrne and many more), the Canadian (Ryan Reynolds, Nathan Fillion, Sandra Oh, Sarah Polley) and many more and last but not least the United Kingdom (Tom Hardy, Idris Elba, Tilda Swinton, Kate Winslet, Emma Thomson) and many many more, Agree that they will no longer work in American productions. They will seed the field for each others areas. So how long until the investors back away from America and Hollywood? How long until DC, Marvel and other franchises build their own studios (likely in Canada) outside of the US? 

It isn’t fair on these people, my view is that they made with one film more than most people will ever make in their life. (I should know as I hoped that Matt Damon would pay me $3,000,000 post taxation for one of my scripts and I have always prided myself of being a fair return on investment). Still it is not really fair on them, but it is an offensive move and it is one I just came up with. I reckon that Canada and Australia have the ability to mirror the English setting and create two distinct area of expertise. If America gets desperate they could always fund the Nigerian movie industry who is almost dying to expand. 

At this time (if enough people agree) America will get the White House under control with their desperate tariff settings. Consider that this President has shown to be a dictionary of two words (golf and tariff), as such I believe the time has come to start becoming proactive, this defensive actions to knee jerk reactions from Washington is upsetting the balance of established settings. The world is in too much trouble. At times this seems to be set to a old  premise that a comedian gave us (I forgot his name). “Lets put all the extremists in one room, the extreme right and the extreme left and let them expire each other”, it is slightly radical but in this day and age it might just work. 

So consider “This week, Trump announced he would be pursuing a 100 per cent tariff on all movies “produced in foreign lands”” next, consider that the bulk of the American movies get over 50%, sometimes as much as 70% from foreign lands. So should that be lessened by these tariffs? It is easy to think that it is all America, but that isn’t true. When all these non-American movie theaters pull their American settings, California becomes less in income than most other states and they still have the producing costs coming their way. In that time Canada and Australia grow their business and grow with aid from the UK. Then consider all the movies based on non-American scripts and novels. The setting enhances against America. A setting I saw within 600 seconds, so why aren’t the game play makers in politics? 

Is my plan flawless? Never a lessened truth was that obvious, there are flaws which starts with the national movie industry, but it might be a first step in getting President Trump of all our backs and that is never a bad thing.

So as we seemingly embrace ““The movie industry in America is dying a very fast death. Other countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform over the weekend.” Is that our fault, or is that the fault of free driven wannabe’s in Movieland? I seemingly might be one of them with my script (and 3 more on the road to completion, which is a story for another day). Consider that at present is set to “The number of movie scripts registered annually varies, but a rough estimate is around 50,000 screenplays registered with the Writer’s Guild of America each year.” All whilst a mere 350 make it to the screen. So is this a numbers game, or is it a quality game? 50,000 scripts implies 136 scripts a day are pushed to some producer pool and they are tired, going for amounts, not for quality. All hoping for a next dime, but there is always a snag hitting up and they wonder why America’s movie industry is dying? I reckon that Netflix, Disney plus, and others aided in that impeding death.

It is time to up the ante and nationalizing our acting guilds, movie producing guild and studio guild might be the way to go go about this (might is the operative word) but the tariff game is over, apart from the small fact that America might be already too broke to consider another matter. Oh, and I never took the Korean or Japanese market in consideration, so the problem is worse for America. As I see it, the offensive game might become the way to go, even if it is the only way to consider that whomever gets into the White House has a much larger vocabulary and ‘tariff’ is not one of them words. 

So feel free to disagree, but consider the setting the UK market has had for decades, Canada and Australia has shown to grow it in the last few decades and consider the stars you revere, are they all American? 

Have a nice day, a great one if possible and reconsider the setting you are confronted with, what is the actual solution? I am not sure what is.

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May 25, 2023 · 11:49

The balancing scales

This story comes from two different directions, not too different, but there is no real link between the two (it will make sense, I promise). I (and millions with me) saw the Sony Showcase 2023. To be honest, I was a little disappointed. I do not think that this is on Sony, it is on me and to illustrate that, I will have to make a few sidesteps. In the first, you all know how I loathe Microsoft, they did this themselves (and their customer care with them) but we need to acknowledge and accept that Sony is now better because of Microsoft not in spite off. Sony grew to new heights as they were at each others throats. As they were battling for supremacy the gamers in both camps got a much better console and we all rejoiced. The issue (as I personally see it) is that the same needs to happen to games, driving games and gaming to new heights.  This is one and for me the most important reason to hope that Starfield, a Microsoft exclusive will become a 90%+ game. It will up the ante for Sony (and optionally Amazon Luna too). The show started with Fairgame$ a multi gamer experience which (even if it was not) smelled a lot like Ubisoft, all smooth, all overwhelming, but the real deal? We will have to wait and see. Helldivers 2 was very Starship Troopers, Phantom Blade 0 looked like an upgraded Sekiro and Towers of Aghasba had a Zelda feel to it. The games were nice, they were very turbo. They had their good moments too, or at least moments I lived for and I am not stating that all games need to be set to me, but when you saw that Telescope looking like the telescope from Alien (more futuristic), what did you think? Then we get some foam game that was clearly based upon Nintendo Splatoon, a turbo edition. This happens and I am happy for the PS5 people who get to have a go at this game, but all this is iteration and gaming, real good gaming gets offered innovation, we need that to evolve gaming and that is one of the reasons why I hope that Starfield is the game every gamers waits for. I had my moments, I loved Spiderman 2, I saw the new parts and they looked good, they really do, but is it innovation? I feel uncertain, there were more games. I can’t wait to get my hands on Alan Wake 2, it seems to be a winner, but seems is the operative word, it is gameplay we need and we saw little of that (apart from Spiderman 2). Yet the story behind this is that we need actual innovation in gaming on every console and this time around Microsoft seemingly gets to have first dibs on that, but we will know for sure in September. 

This links to the second part of it. I am replaying AC Origins and now I got to the curse of the pharaoh which is graphically a new height. Yet here my mind wandered, I had played it before and I cherished it. I took a sidestep to Valerian and Laureline (in Dutch: Ravian), I grew up with that comic as well with the Trigan Empire and things started to blend, started to mingle. So what if this game is not an assassins game and you cannot climb, hide or anything. Almost like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, but now with a much larger stealth part, no killing. The idea floated in my mind when I saw the Star Trek Voyager episode Displaced in season 3. So what happens when we get to the two worlds Aaru and Aten. So when we get there we know nothing, we get to live lives, we get to walk around and we get to missions, but not in the usual ways. We need to be part of, or hear conversations to open this story and both worlds will have a dozen story lines. No Sekmet scorpions or Cobra’s. You think it is boring, but this is not a game for everyone, it is one where the story is everything and Ubisoft has shown that it can create good stories.  

This interacts when we doe in one world, we wake up in the other and vice vera, so you need to die at times (it is a hassle, but so is life). As such we get to learn that this is a prison and we need to learn why we are prisoners (a little The Status Civilization by Robert Sheckley where we get to see versions of stagnation and conformity) and for this the ancient civilisations were great. Life was simple and the mind is much easier observed and classified when it does the simple things. Yet how to set this in gaming? Ubisoft had its device, but what happens when the world is the device? What happens when the wold is not part of the mind, but the mind has to adhere to that world? No matter how complex we are, the mind controls is and as such we are shown new iterations and that could lead to innovations. But in this the story is everything.

We can speculate and ejaculate all over innovation, yet unless we are holding it in our hands (sorry, no pun intended) we have no idea what innovation looks like, the mind will not fill in the blanks, our wills do and that is why Google and Amazon missed out (at least twice already) So how do we get about to find the next innovator in gaming? Well we can dump all the BI people stating they have no clue and rely on the artsy people to dream the new game. Perhaps one with tech savvy skills, because art only gets us so far, tech does the rest, not Business Intelligence. 

This is my view and there will be people telling me I am wrong here. I will let you decide. For now, I want the new iteration of System Shock. Mainly because how the initial game made me feel, just like Mass Effect 1 ten years later. I miss that feeling to some degree, which I personally believe is the reason that some remaster are great reminders.

Enjoy the day.

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January 20, 2023 · 19:52

Betrayal by greed

That was what I was considering today (and part of yesterday). You see I watch a stream sometimes, but not all the time. I am old school (really old in one way). You see I like (actually love) my physical formats. Games and movies. I started my collection a long time ago with CD’s and VHS cassettes (ask your grandfather if you do not know what those are). Over time some VHS were updated to DVD and some to Blue-ray. That I where I am now, but over time the game changed and that was not what I was ready for. Studios to some extent betraying their fans, I saw some of it earlier on and I considered it a dick move. How could any studio betray their fans? Now there are two settings, the first is outright betrayal for whatever reason. Consider that in most places Stargate Universe was never available on Blue-Ray. Consider the Expanse an amazing series, but as the series is now in season 6, yet the fans can only get the first 3 seasons. Why is that? Then is a second setting. The TV series Lucifer. Now they have a rather nasty experience. They needed a new way to continue and they found one and it ended with season 6, only now can they get seasons 4, 5 and 6, however only on DVD. Only the first three seasons are on
Blue-Ray. There is some understand here because Netflix acquired the series. But why short change your fans? I understand that Netflix does get a time exclusive, they acquired that right and I do not begrudge them anything. Yet after this time, who not release them now? It has been long enough. For that Disney has another setting, I am not sure how to react there. They have their series, they have also acquired Marvel (to some degree) and even as the movies can be bought, the series on Disney plus (Mandolorian, Wandavision et al) cannot. I never saw any of them , so I feel uncertain how to respond. Those fans might have their own feelings on this. But when you make the inventory on what is there and more important what is missing, we get a very different picture, one where corporate stages are set on greed. Now this is not new or some kind of revelation, but in movies it is somewhat unusual, especially towards their fans. So what happened to American Horror Story 1984? I get that season 10 is not out yer, but the last episode was in October 2021, so that is well over a year ago. For me? Well, I do believe that within the next two years, when 5G is not yet out everywhere there will be congestion and it will hit much harder than you think, the streamers will be hit as well and as businesses are now set to exploiting the benefits of 5G, these limitations will grow larger and larger, as such congestion will have a much more relentless impact. Should it not be an idea to avoid pressures as much as possible? Now, that does not mean that the studios should bank on losses, but The expanse ended season 6 a year ago, is it not time to release those seasons? What does the maker want to avoid? I reckon that those who do not have Amazon Prime might not get it anyway, so why make revenue the obstacle? I cannot tell how many buy them, but I feel certain I am not the only one, as for some releasing them only on DVD, all whilst previous seasons were on Blue-Ray? Shame on you!

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June 17, 2022 · 21:07

Holes in the equation

That is what I have been confronted with. Looking or trying to see a solution, an IP, yet in the end I am merely looking towards a partial equation and I am trying to look towards the equation and the holes around it by covering it by part of another equation. So as I was looking at yesterday, at the setting of the SD cards (like the one below)

I was wondering how this could be utilised. Then my mind considered the GoogleChrome 2, but that is Google stuff. I was wondering if the ‘cast-bubble’ could support an SD card. Then my mind went on a sidetrack. You see, the makers of computers are less and less about optical drives. That gave me the idea, what if the Google Chrome 2 could be a transmitter connected to your 4K (or Bluray) player? What if that device could hand the images to the laptops in the house and considering I saw (a little while ago) a naked lady do Yoga in 4K (she looked really good doing that) I now know that a Mac laptop is able to show a lot more than an image of a Pokemon. But the setting holds, if the player (connected to a TV) can show the other devices too, the family will get a much larger audience from the one player in the house. We can watch the movie on our laptop, our console connected TV, our additional systems. As far as I can tell, the current Chrome-cast does not allow for that. So this setting is a freebee for Google, on the other hand if Amazon sees this and creates its own innovative patent, well that is up to the person who gets there the quickest. 

So as I went back to the beginning of what happened, the setting of M.A.A.S. Movie As A Service, a station that was once Netflix, the old Netflix and with the lines becoming ever more blurry. The idea that Marvel moves come with a voucher that allows you to see Disney+ for a few days could set the trend in other ways for Netflix, Paramount, Sony, Apple and Hulu too. I was so focussed on the application of SD/CF Cards in movies that I forgot that there are other applications too, not necessarily directly linked to these memory cards. You see, no matter how we are presented the stages, congestion is coming our way, those with a lot of money can avoid it, the rest need to find another way and that is where innovation comes in. How? Your guess is as good as mine at this time, but the larger setting is to surpass the points of congestion, so how to get around that? Gamers are (for now) too small a group. The movie, YouTube and TikTok group is the larger (if not largest) group. So if we can get them in other ways we could optionally delay or to a larger degree diminish the congestion that comes. And this is not a local problem, this is about to become a GLOBAL issue. And for now, I am in the dark on how this can be circumvented. Yet how to go about it? I learned at an early age that you start with the edges and as such set the dimensionality of the Jigsaw. From there you continue. Yet what if the Jigsaw is a kinetic one? A kinetic puzzle is a puzzle that does not show an mage, but a movie reel. When that is known the dimensions are still the first, but after that, how do you continue? That is the puzzle I am confronted with. We aren’t looking at a static event, but a dynamic one and there the brain (the useless one I have) shuts down for now.

I see part of the equation, but I see the holes too, so as I try to surround the holes I also learn that it is not the solution, because the holes are in motion. That is where I end, holes in the equation, yet the stage is one that I need to master, it will be a nice addition to the three IP bundles I have and at some stage either Amazon or Google will take a bite, because both want the billions and Microsoft is not invited. And as I consider the third player, I will set more time apart to take a look at him in my next article.

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October 6, 2021 · 23:03

What sells better?

That is the question that was racing through my mind today. We all know (or have heard of) the expression ‘Sex sells’. It is used to market, to advertise and to entice (usually the men). But what if that is merely the setting? What if in actuality fantasy is the part that sells better? I had a small daydream this afternoon. I was in Toronto and I was chosen to be the backup goalie for the Toronto Maple Leafs (yes, the dream is not very realistic). I was sitting in some cafe, the staff was nice and suddenly addressed by Sheldon Keefe (their coach) and he said to me “Lawrence, today your most desired dreams becomes a reality”, my dry response was “What? You arranged a weekend of wild and passionate sex with Laura Vandervoort?” The team was howling with laughter and the coach deadpan response was “Well almost most desired then” and I was given the 62 Jersey to be the backup goalie that week, and lets face it, not unlike my blog name, if we want to have a fantasy, lets go for the really satisfying ones. 

So there I was with my jersey there were a few other jokes and giggles after that I woke up from my daydream (without the LV special), such is life. But the dream stuck and when I was watching someones drawing of Alice in wonderland I started to put things together. What if we are not looking at a porn or some sex movie, but what we used to call in the old days a soft porn movie (all innuendo and little or no show, except for the boobies). What if the movie is a new take in Alice in Wonderland? We go through the motions (or Alice does) and the Cheshire Cat, the Caterpillar, the rabbit, they are all men with masks and onesies. A movie that is like not some cheap movie, but high end special effects (not unlike The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) and a storyline that does follow the book, but with a twist at the end. The end being that [CENSORED]

A stage that reminded me of a movie that impacted with me, Jacob’s Ladder. So what happens if Virtual Reality takes over our lives too much? There are settings (Elite Dangerous) where I would love to have the hardware to do just that, but the hardware for now is too expensive and (for now) not immersive enough. So when that changes (most likely in 2-3 years) what are the applications? What happens when we can dig into the fantasies of any person (like The Cell) 

So what can we learn? I am not merely thinking healing, but interrogations, information retrieval and a few other avenue’s. So when we take the stage and turn on the fantasy, what could be achieved? We have seen this in the past but always as the end goal, as far as I can tell it was never used as a mere waypoint. Why was that? It cannot be the limit of Hollywood, it could be the limit of any producer yet I believe that this path could lead to a load of green as the faith of Americans go. I believe that there is a host of options here, and as streaming channels are competing more and more, whatever we can do that is truly original is one that streamers will entice, I merely hope that they wake up before they cancel the series too soon (way too many examples) because it is the slow start and the deep story that entices a crowd and engages them. Not the Marvel versions. This is not me having a go at Marvel movies, because I love them, but there is more and that part is not explored, or perhaps explored too little. I personally would have loved where Dollhouse season 3 would have taken us. Eliza Dushku, Dichen Lachman, Enver Gjokaj, Tahmoh Penikett, Fran Kranz, Olivia Williams, Harry Lennix and Amy Acker were all beyond good, the story was engaging and enticing, yet we were sold short, a cancellation after season 2. So will a new approach to Virtual Reality as a weapon make it? I honestly do not know but as far as I can tell no one took that route and in a stage where games can almost take us there, the lack of such a direction seems like a loss.

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March 25, 2021 · 03:33

The brain race

I am not sure how familiar you are with the ‘race brain’, yet mine went nuts two hours ago. It was a set of circumstances, the first was Dragon Quest Builders 2, I restarted the game only to fall over on the second island (again). As I learned to ‘follow’ the orders nearly precisely I got a bit further, but I was thwarted by the game makers who got overconfident and that is where the wheels came off the car, or was it the train went of the rails? It is almost a crossing between a close question and an open question. If you confine yourself to closed questions, you tend to miss the desired direction, and when you confide in the response of open questions you go in EVERY direction, except the right one. It is a shame really, because the game (island 1) was heaps fun, you are in a stage where the second island seems fun but frustration sets in too quickly and you go nowhere, a game that relies on fun and delivers, at least the first 2 hours, after that it goes nowhere. But that set my brain in motion, or better stated it went into overdrive. As I was relaxing I looked at the new Hogwart Legacy trailer for PS5, within seconds my mind was devising all kinds of trails to make the game ‘better’, and I could not stop it. 

A game that I have not seen yet, I have not played yet and I am already trying to improve on it, 

In one part with an adaption (or DLC) that gives a setting that a group of four one in each house are linked, an idea that has links to an old WW2 movie, but the stage never left me and now it delivered something different. It seems a silly way to waste time, but my brain would not stop. My mind went on towards the stupidity of EA and their sport games. You see, I do not agree with some voices, Their packs are not gambling and I, for the life of me cannot understand why EA is not on the offensive. 

To understand this, you need to see the stage devised by Julius Caesar, I believe it was in De Bello Gallico, he stated that a soldier is in attack, in defence or awaiting response and each links to the other, as such the attack can move to defence or anticipation, defence can move to anticipation or take the offence and so on, as all three states are covered the soldier that can move between the three without pause and move from any stance to attack, that will be the winner. EA seems to be unaware of this option and seems to be between defence and anticipation only. It is a choice but it will be the stage that always and forever leads to losing. I came up with an idea to take the offence in this. Of course as all marketing costs, it might not be cheap but it beats getting slapped around by those giving voice to idiots spending $12K on packs for a $55 game, that is more than ludicrous and the media is eating it up, something they can flame and no one is asking the questions that matter, not even the legal department of EA, or at least they do it in a way no one can hear.

Even the Times gave us 3 days ago ‘YouTube stars ‘lure Fifa gamers into gambling’’ (at https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/youtube-stars-lure-fifa-gamers-into-gambling-dwk8tcx3g), a stage that beckons response but it seems that EA remains largely silent. So as we get “The company behind the Fifa football video game has been accused of using “exploitative” marketing techniques to lure children into gambling”, so where is the response and the campaign by EA? I wonder where they are? You see, loot boxes are not gambling.

Why?
To call it gambling you need to consider that you lose your money, this would only happen if you buy a loot pack and the only thing you get one card stating ‘Thank you!’, but that is not the case. In my case (NHL19), I get a free pack every 8 hours, then each pack has also coins and a token, there are each month 3 packs that can be gotten with these tokens and they are three good packs. Beyond that you get non trade-able cards and the coins can be used to buy or bid for items in the auction part. When you hit a milestone (some small achievement, you also get options for packs and in some cases a specific player.

Within a month I had all 30 arena’s, all NHL home and away jerseys and in three months I also had all the NHL goalie masks and a ton of other stuff, I never spend a dollar on this. One site tells me that FIFA21 does not offer this, I am not sure about NFL21, so why not? It would solve all issues for EA. You see, people are staring blindly on the alleged gambling, but the stage of gambling is never truly properly investigated. You see when we gamble we see two options. The first is ‘play games of chance for money’, but that stage has the unwritten law that you can lose and this never happens, you always get cards, common, uncommon and one rare card. The second version of gamble is ‘take risky action in the hope of a desired result’, that part too is not met, because the desired result is always the same, one rare card, several uncommon cards and the rest are all common cards. This stage is not the one we consider because the outcome is always the same. What most people forget is that in FIFA 21 (allegedly) we see “30 official leagues, over 700 clubs, and over 17,000 players”, if that is correct, there is every chance that there are 2,000 rare players, which means that any rare card has a 0.05% chance of coming out, so if you want Messi, Beckham or Ronaldo you need to get really really lucky and lets face it, every club in the world wants these three players. But that part is close to never considered, and when we go back to the adult idiot spending $12,000 on packs, that person need to get his credit score adjusted to -15000. Is there an issue? Perhaps there is and I think that EA made a few blunders on several levels, but that does not make it gambling, and as we never see anyone receiving a pack with only a thank you card, the stage of gambling is, as I personally see it never reached. 

So how did I get there? 
Well my brain will not stop thinking things through in creative ways and it is reason for another case of insomnia. I watched the trailer of the Unholy (which looks awesome) and immediately my brain went towards a remake of Stigmata (a Rupert Wainwright gem), why? I have no clue, when my brain is in this mode it needs to run its course, which is keeping me awake pondering N+1 issues all whilst N was the maximum I could contemplate. So at present I am typing this whilst I am trying to calm down my brain by listening to the Mikado (Gilbert and Sullivan). 

The creative brain can be a curse, not an unholy one, but a curse none the less. So whilst we see what is next my brain (overzealously) adapted Hogwarts legacy before seeing the final product, I considered a new version of Stigmata, I am still contemplating a backdrop for ‘How to assassinate a politician’, which at present is set in the Hague and Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Then there is the idea I had regarding ‘Keno Diastima’, here I believe they should nearly all be new actors, no famous people there, I will not say to much because the cliffhangers 2-3 and 3-4 will be brutal, which is how it should be. 

An idea came to mind on a prequel to ‘Soylent Green’ with Chris Hemsworth in the lead (almost 2 years ago), yet here I fear that the story is just not good enough, the setting is great but I feel that it would end up being some cult movie and not a real breaking movie, a stage that precedes near perfection is also a dangerous step to make and it could backfire in a horrible way, which is why my mind remains the great dangers. I considered the idea before (2019-2020), but I never figured out the part that matter, no matter how good the prequel is, the stage needs to go beyond something nice, and Richard Fleischer did set the stage in a phenomenal way. One can say it is like buying a raincoat to warn against the rain that has been going on for weeks, the flood will drown you long before the usage of a raincoat is validated. There are other idea’s and I wrote about them before, so I want to avoid repetition, but the stage will soon come that Hollywood will look in other directions for new idea’s. Outside of the Marvel and DC range and there have been so many really good idea’s, I merely wonder why that path was not traversed before by Hollywood, Bollywood or Nollywood. And as my brain is seemingly slowing down, I end today’s article and will try to get some sleep (one can dream, can one not?)

Consider the two sidelines that are hidden between the lines and contemplate why it was done, because there might be madness in my methods, but there is also methodology in my insanity, it is merely what we aim for and whether we realise what we were aiming for in the first place.

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February 8, 2021 · 12:26

Evolution

We all have a setting that we want to switch off, I do too. Yet at this moment it is weirdly in overdrive. It is almost like it knows that the end is nigh, and if so, I need to make my 5G IP public, so that the next innovation wave will be a public domain driven one, inventions openly to be used for all. Yet we are not there yet. As such, I was watching a gameplay on Vampire Bloodlines 2 and my mind suddenly shifted to an old X-Men comic, in that we are confronted with a person named Tarot. That person can spring forth the tarot card revealed to him and make it a living entity. The comic book is decades old, but it crossed my mind as I was watching the game demo. I suddenly remembered the Vampire Jihad CCG and that is where the ideas started to cross. What if we do not always have the choice? We are trying to set the stage to what is the best solution, yet what happens if the player is limited to a CCG deck that he or she holds? So what happens when we are on a level and we see all the opposition, and the card we are offered is the Fool? It can be an area effect, or a selected effect, as such the meaning “having beginner’s luck, improvisation and believing in the universe” can be in a few ways, beginners luck implies we get get by this area unseen, things go bump at their end (beginners luck) and whenever the trot deck is used it needs time to recharge, also when we reshuffle again and again, luck runs out and bad luck falls upon us. The 22 cards are The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, The World, and The Fool. Yet they have two meanings normal and upside down, so 44 options, and all that randomised. It makes for a very different game. 

In this we can be a gunslinger, a sneak or an illusionist, but the cards are wild. We cannot predict what we will set to next and when we consider that they are powerful, merely relying on our skills might not get the job done, so when do we go one way and when the other? 

A stage no one has ever faced before, we all remember Spiderman, yet who remembered Tarot or Tarantula (Marvel characters), yet the comic world is so much larger, beyond DC (Mad Hatter) and Dark Horse comics (Hellboy, Ghost). Instead of focussing on the character, consider the abilities that the characters had, most might remember Cloak and Dagger, yet who remembers Mayhem from the original comics? When we think back to Infamous: Second Son, it starts magnificent, the smoke ability really gave a good start, it was the linearity that drove it back to average, a real shame. Yet the setting is not merely on where, and who, but how we adapt to a new setting we never had before (hence the Tarot Mention). We set the skill list and power ability to what we think is the best solution for our gameplay, but what happens when we do not get a choice? What happens when interaction becomes the wheel of fate for us? As far as I can tell no game does that, not now and not in the past, but does that not create a much more satisfying feeling when we grow beyond that? We do get the option to tweak, yet we are not given a choice of what the powers are, I stated it in a much earlier story towards a version of Infamous 3, what happens when the parents push the solution from them into us? From father and mother and a stage where the gender decides how much of mum or dad resides within us, Gregor Mendel gave that premise in 1845. Is it so wrong to use the classical greats to set the story to some part we cannot influence? How can we grow our comfort zone in gaming when we tend to rely on where our strength is? Especially when we are entering a stage where the game replay becomes much more important, we need to set a new stage on how it is played. If we are set to a location (London, Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Gotham, Metropolis), the one element we can influence and set outside of our reach is us, the player we control. We can in addition change the stage of what we can do by selecting through parentage what we can do and leave us to tweak the ability to the best of gameplay. We forgot the one rule that is natural, that is the inability to select what we are, we can merely shape ourselves to the best of what we have.

Look at the long list of games that are out there and you will find no titles that match this. When you consider that gaming will be set to $138,000,000,000 in this year alone, it will not be about those who make the best replica, it will be about true original gaming, they will take the larger slices, whether it is PC, consoles or a future setting of cloud gaming. 

I hope you had figured out that part, if not consider that the most anticipated games are some remakes of true originals, the rest are true original games. Some franchises will forever run, but some are running out of luck and options. I wonder who will fall to their knees in 2021 and 2022, because we need to realise that 2022 is as important as 2021 is, it gives view to what the developers think we want, it is a fair setting and some will make the cut, some will not but they all want a slice of that 138 billion and the most original games and most perfect games will get the bigger piece that is how it always was, and now that this cake is so big, they all want the largest slice, but it will be art designer that defines originality, not the business analyst. It is the simplest application of evolution, if the games do not truly evolve, the gamer will lose interest a lot sooner than the developer is ready for.

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December 12, 2020 · 23:00

Lessons to be learned

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

MonthChannel
JanuaryNetflix
FebruaryApple TV
MarchDisney Plus
April
MayNetflix
JuneApple TV
JulyDisney Plus
August
September
OctoberNetflix
NovemberApple TV
DecemberDisney 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.

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