Tag Archives: NEOM

August 26, 2023 · 16:11

You were saying?

After yesterday I had all these ‘complaints’ and how wrong I was, that this would never happen and I rejoiced, because the evidence was already there. I was actually dreading todays article (which will now happen tomorrow) and puts Apple and Google in a setting of funny money. But first this part. So, people were sure I was wrong? So let’s take a look at Al Jazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/8/25/saudi-arabia-considering-chinese-bid-to-build-nuclear-plant-report-says) gives us ‘Saudi Arabia considering Chinese bid to build nuclear plant, report says’ where we are given “Saudi Arabia is considering a Chinese bid to build a nuclear power plant in the kingdom amid frustration over the United States’ stipulations for supporting Riyadh’s quest for nuclear power, the Wall Street Journal has reported” which with the added “In 2019, a senior Chinese official said Beijing could build as many as 30 overseas nuclear reactors through its “Belt and Road” infrastructure drive over the following decade”. So to give you the bland numbers, a nuclear reactor will cost between 6 and 8 billion. So 30 of them amount to around $200,000,000,000 that is revenue the US is now losing directly, one deal cost that much. I have no doubt that China will get a mere 1-3 reactors to start with, yet this amounts to well over $20,000,000,000 from the start. Revenue the US (optionally partially EU too) will lose. One deal sets that strain on the US revenue needs and partially European too. Now we also get (from an unknown source at http://www.ecns.cn/m/news/culture/2023-08-25/detail-ihcskrzm0994854.shtml) there we are given ‘Saudi Arabia to teach two Chinese classes weekly in secondary schools’, if this is true then the KSA are tightening bonds with China and that spells a bad year for America. I might have foreseen a lot of this, but to see operational steps being done implies that the USA is done in the Middle East. In addition to this I wonder how far the steps are at present with the UAE. You see they are both joining BRICS, as such they both stand to gain by these steps at present. Even as the UAE might not be seeking nuclear power, they (especially Dubai) stands to gain a lot by having at least one. So whatever is under options with Saudi Arabia, I reckon that the UAE is not far behind on this. In a day we see the stage where the US, due to its own stupid actions is about to lose out on well over 200 billion, and it is seemingly all going towards China. So you were saying? And how much more losses will America cop before it starts to realise that the folly approach from 2019 onwards was stupid on a premium level? 

And this is merely the beginning. As NEOM grows, so will the opportunities that China will get, America, the UK and EU pretty much priced themselves out of those markets. And the news goes from bad to worse. None at the moment, but in Q4 2023 there will be a lot more news clippings on options that are now no longer going to the American Coffers, that part is pretty clear at this point. So I was right all along. It doesn’t make me happy or joyous, yet for the Americans who realise that they are out they might want to have a heart to heart with the politicians and analysts who should have seen this long before I did and if they did, why was nothing done?

Enjoy the weekend.

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June 21, 2023 · 22:18

The definition of diplomacy

Yup, we have all been there and me with my mouth at least twice a day. Diplomacy is at times where it is at and I scrapped that word from my dictionary. So as I stated over the last week that Blinky Tony (aka Anthony Blinken) had a hard time coming. First he had to visit Saudi Arabia, the place where its de-facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud was labelled by President Biden as A pariah (before he become president) then the trip went to China where we assume that things did not go well, as we now see (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-65969802) the BBC headline ‘Biden calls Xi a dictator a day after Beijing talks’. So what evidence is there that President Xi is a dictator? I am not opposing the view, I merely do not know. You see the dictionary gives us “a ruler with total power over a country, typically one who has obtained control by force.” Now, lets be clear. President Xi was elected. I do not know the election process in China, but there was an election and he was elected in November 2012. Wiki gives us “a Chinese politician who has served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), and thus as the paramount leader of China, since 2012. Xi has also served as the president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since 2013.” There is no mention that he took that nation by force. OK, I is havening to be jesting. The reality is much more serious. I thin this meaningless jab by President Biden implies that there are a few issues. Apart from the ties with Saudi Arabia, there is now a growing concern that Taiwan could be getting a new flag soon enough (see below).

And this was going to happen. For it not to happen, the US would have had to be able to be a real superpower. This is no longer the case. It is rushing from debt ceiling to debt ceiling and the people just know that this clambake will end sooner or later and sooner is now the premise of that game. You see America made gospel of the expression ‘Money talks, bullshit walks’ which has been around since 1968. Now that America has no money left, the ‘friends’ they had are walking away, the people who bled the system dry are vanishing to zero tax havens to live of their final years and the people caught in the middle will vanish without a penny in their name. 

The article gives us ““The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset, in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment in it, was he didn’t know it was there,” Mr Biden said at the event on Tuesday. “That’s a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn’t know what happened,” he added.” There is a lot about a balloon no one cares about and there is even less known who the actual owner was. I am not debating that it was Chinese, but was it governmental, military, a science experiment from a Chinese telecom firm. There are many options, but the press is no longer to be trusted, they have been silent on too many things and the US government is all about boasting, but not on revealing ACTUAL facts (for as far as they might be known). As is see the lack of diplomacy by President Biden, there is every chance that China talks are falling flat leaving Taiwan in the middle of nothing. The other side is that there is every chance that the continuation of BRICS will have larger impact on the west and it will diminish America to a much larger degree. The larger part that we do not know is how China and Saudi Arabia will forge their connections. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is now in a central setting to be the hub for connecting Asia, Africa and Europe, a strong setting and NEOM will be that hub implying that this half a trillion location will ensure trillions in business between 2030 and 2050, with news channels, sports inviting the Asian, African and European people to a much larger degree. I wonder if they have made their first designs on the F1 Neom track to start between 2030 and 2035. It will most likely be a magnificent track, add to that the most impressive golf course in history and we will see the first impressions that Saudi Arabia was not wasting money as some imply, they merely lacked vision for what was about to happen and more sport arena’s will follow. Now we see the part of China in a larger degree, the Silk Road and in all that Taiwan will play a more central role (an assumption by me). Two players who played the long game, not some spreadsheet game from quarter to quarter. By the way, what evidence that it was ‘two box cars full of spy equipment’? They blew up the evidence. I am not saying this wasn’t some agent 99 thing, I merely would like to see evidence, just like the evidence on Huawei that so far no one saw or presented. 

As such we get to the headline. The definition of diplomacy is “the profession, activity, or skill of managing international relations, typically by a country’s representatives abroad.”  In this I reckon that there is no managing international relations at present, whatever success Anthony Blinken might have had was undone by one sentence given by President Biden (according to the BBC). As such the situation for Taiwan is not on a good setting, but I might be wrong. And the other issues? Well, we have no idea, but I reckon that China told might have told America to put up or shut up, which is also a speculation by me. No matter how we slice it, there will be more coming soon enough, the question who will be making the initial revelations, China or America?

More soon enough and as we enter the second half of the week, this weekend might give us a little more than we expected.

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June 20, 2023 · 00:01

He said what?

The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-asia-65920024) gives us ‘Blinken and Xi had ‘robust conversation’ in Beijing’ and I had to take a look, if not only to see what they mean with ‘robust conversation’, that is an expression that could go in any direction and not all of them good. The BBC hands us:

“He says he has been seeking to “disabuse” China of the notion the US is “seeking to economically contain them””, sorry this started a 5 minute intermezzo to get a hold of all the laughter I have. The US has been seeking to contain China since Huawei left Nokia and all others behind them in the 5G field, it is still going on, all whilst we have never ever been given CLEAR evidence that Huawei was doing anything negative. In that same timeline we have an Airman handing out classified information, a former president has more classified materials in his toilet than the CIA has in its archive and we have several other issues. That is before we look at Cisco and its issues (which was not intentional, I know). 

And even as several statements came from Strasbourg, the manner of speaking implies a clear American hand on the shoulder of the speaker. 

Then we get “Blinken reiterates that the US does not support Taiwan’s independence – stating it does not wish to change the status quo”,which is a harder issue. You see ‘The first agreement under the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade was signed on June 1, 2023.’ Might be seen as a declaration towards support for its independence. And that is debatable, I get that. It seems to me that America hopes it will go good, but at the same time it is afraid to anger China too much, so I can see how this plays and this is NOT against America. It is to acknowledge that some diplomatic strains are strained as far as they can get. 

Then it is time for “Blinken says some parts of the talks were “constructive”, but adds there is “work to do” in other areas”, OK a diplomatic answer if ever there was one. But in there are missing parts and there is every chance that they are not for our eyes yet. The ties with Iran and Saudi Arabia are worrying America. The new petroleum refinery that they are building in China must be a cause for concern. You see, the refinery is large enough to hand a lot more oil to China and that is where it is most likely to go, a setting America does not find comforting. They are already losing out to a million barrels a day, but with that new refinery that reduction COULD (could being the operative word) be reduced three times over to minus 3 million barrels a day. This could collapse the American economy and create a third world nation called The United Stages of Anything. For Taiwan it is not such a good stage. I reckon that China has been dipping its toe in the water to see how America would react when Taiwan is added back to China and charges Taiwan for overdue book fees and that invoice is likely to be stellar. Now, this is not a given, but that is what I would have done (if I was Chinese). In all likelihood as the EU and the US are uniting with Ukraine against Russia, China sees an opportunity because America is too broke to stop anything and that leaves Taiwan separated, segregated and all alone. A setting China would like at present and with three optional supports for Taiwan too poor to do anything (US, EU and Japan) Taiwan might not have too many options left. I reckon that a similar conversation with Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud took place almost a week ago. I reckon that at present China has all the answers it needs, but that is pure conjecture from my side. 

So as I see it, I wonder just how robust that conversation was, rejections by China does not make the conversation less robust, but that is about the only classification that conversation might have had overall. Am I wrong? Optionally yes, but the larger stage is catering to China, and with the ties with Saudi Arabia now stronger then anything, all whilst the ties with America are more and more dissolving leaves China in a much stronger position and as Saudi Arabia grows, so will the options for Huawei. It will not take long for the larger contracts with Egypt and Syria to start and when that happens, we get a triangle that covers part of Africa, towards Turkey all the way to India. It will not be overnight, but with the power core in Riyadh that setting would become one hell of a central chain for Huawei. And it is not a new setting, I saw this evolution come a little over three years ago. And with that infrastructure NEOM is not merely a small city, it will be a center piece of Saudi Arabia, uniting Africa to Saudi interests and they will all have that new Saudi news channel. It was a game well played and China is adhering to this not merely because it takes the wind out of the sails of America, it will diminish Europe in similar ways. Asia Times gave us in April ‘Huawei eyes Saudi Arabia as its regional hub’, I think it is only the beginning and it is a much larger partnership with China, who will have access to this and the Silk Road, which was never a secret. As such I wonder what expression they would replace ‘robust conversation’ with and very time that expression gets handed to us by the media, ask yourself. What did they mean with that? 

Another day, another step closer to next Friday.

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October 13, 2022 · 19:41

Freezing Arabia

OK, this was new. I had the story for about a week. I got it from the Dutch news channel NOS, but they weren’t the only one to have it (at https://nos.nl/artikel/2447021-schaatsers-en-skiers-in-2029-naar-saudi-arabie-voor-aziatische-winterspelen). It looked ‘cool’ enough, but I had no idea what to do about it. Saudi Arabia has been appointed as the place where the Asian Winter-games will be held in 2029. The place will need to build its ski and skating resort. So in the place where (according to legend) demons go to cool off, it will become the future place to freeze solid. So the place where it was at one point (June 2012) 51.4 degrees Celsius it will need to become cold enough to hold snow for well over two weeks, and they also need to hold water in a solid form. The second is not too difficult, even though you see the man made pond in Neom on the image. 

Covered ice rinks are not new, I reckon that the technology now exists to make one stay solid in the centre of Riyadh. It is the ski challenge where snow is kept fresh for two weeks, that will be decently new. More interestingly it should become the jewel in many crowns to pull that off. So consider that you are looking at designed slopes, those slopes optionally need to be adjustable and then dozens of snow machines, will need to cover that area within a timing of 8 hours. The technical stage seem clear, but I reckon that this has never been done on that scale and it will be an enormous technical achievement if the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will be able to pull it off. I wonder if they will also create the worlds first artificial bob sled track, but that is all for another day. I reckon that we will see initial releases of images and plans around 2026. For now we can start to get used to the idea that there can be snow fields in Saudi Arabia, I wonder if any Saudi’s ever considered the expression ‘when hell freezes over’ because if they pull this off they will be the first nation in history to show that hell can freeze over and that gives me ideas on collecting outstanding debt markers with hundreds of ladies. I am devious, if not extremely creative at times. 

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October 12, 2022 · 19:52

No one wonders?

It all starts with a BBC article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63207771) where we are given ‘Chinese technology poses major risk – GCHQ Chief’, there are two settings here. The first one was the BS approach by the Yanks (that place between the Pacific and the Atlantic river, South of Canada) and the UK issues. The Americans basically called Huawei (China) evil and refused to hand over any evidence. The UK stated that no foreign nation should be in charge to a major infrastructure. The UK is setting the centre stage to policy and that is fair and decent. In the Netherlands that same policy was used by founders Rob Romein and Franz Hetzenauer to create Tulip computers and they got rich real quick. You say Potato, I say Tomato. But policy is a real issue and that is fair in any government. So today I get to see “China has deliberately and patiently set out to gain “strategic advantage by shaping the world’s technology ecosystem”, the head of the intelligence agency told an audience at the Royal United Service Institute for its annual security lecture. Sir Jeremy argued the Chinese Communist Party was aiming to manipulate the technology that underpins people’s lives to embed its influence at home and abroad and provide opportunities for surveillance”, OK that is a decent accusation and it will not be easy to prove that, or basically it will be a stretch to prove it. We then get “China’s development of the BeiDou satellite system – a rival to the established GPS network which he said had been built into exports to more than 120 countries. He claimed it could be used to track individuals or combined with plans to knock out other countries’ satellites in the event of a conflict”, which is one approach, but could the Chinese government not claim that GPS could do exactly the same thing? In addition we get “the intelligence chief said he would not stop children using TikTok – which is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance – although he said young people should be more aware of their personal data and how it could be shared”, OK fair point and awareness of personal data is a good thing, but doesn’t Facebook (and Meta) do he same things? I have seen advertisements on Facebook that should never have appeared, as such too many players are doing exactly the same thing, but for us China is red and evil, would they not claim the same thing regarding Facebook and YouTube? We are then given “He said the UK should continue to welcome students from China but “be really clear on the areas of technology where we will require additional safeguards”. Areas like artificial intelligence and quantum computing were particularly important, he told the audience”, which is a fair point. Although it is not out of the question that this should be a marker between commonwealth countries and any other country. In that regard places like Canada, Australia and New Zealand have to agree on similar settings. In this Sir Jeremy Fleming (a more dashing lookalike of Michael Andrew Gove) has a few issues on the table that make sense and although we wonder why the Americans are so easily accepted, they issues all make sense. It reflected for me how I am happy that I offered my IP to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and not to China, although the new partnership between China (Tencent Technologies) and Microsoft is not making any waves at all, funny ain’t it? I wonder if we are hitting a critical point of nationalism at this point, and where should the inventors sit? The fact that Google and Amazon are decently clueless on where I found the grounds of 50 million subscriptions will also hit Facebook at some point and I accidentally stumbled on this, the invention had a different foundation and direction, but as I aw where it could take me, I left it to these two titans to slug it out and Google dropping the Google Stadia implies that they are losing more than they reckoned on and that leaves Amazon (who is seemingly still in the dark), so now my hopes are that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia accepts my offer. But the underlying stage also exists. I still have my 5G hardware, a stage I saw two years ago and no one else is seeing this, they are all hoping that Facebook makes good on their Meta and they are all in some wait state that it comes for them, I designed my hardware with the view on Neom, as well as the changing stage of marketing, a stage that ill be very different from 2024 onwards (OK, it might be 2025). But those in a “wait-state” will lose out if they cannot adjust their course and I will (extremely hopefully) retire with a nicely filled bank account to sing out my retirement with good food and seeing nice places, I worked 40 years, so I feel entitled to my decently whistling wish. Yet between the lines there are battlefronts. The issue for the Commonwealth to find the right allies, to align with the proper parties and be decently neutral against the others. Yes, we all oppose Russia in the Ukraine stage and that is fine, but do not for one second believe that America is our ally, our friend. Their friendship changes election after election and in the end they are merely their own ally, so when America implodes, and it will, we should be aware and we should be willing to continue with true allies, one that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could be, if we could for one minute stop listening to stakeholders, whose alliance is their wallets and their wallets alone. I tried to warn people for 3-5 years that stakeholders are corporate tools that releases the media as their goals see fit, I showed years of data in that direction and soon there will be no choice, if they get their wish, they fill their wallets, they say ‘Oops!’ And they walk away, and where we will we all be at that point? The larger issue is not why we were unaware, but where the media was when the elements were in view. The missing Iran reports regarding Yemen, the list of Pi Phone articles that are only now showing up, the serious questions that the media should have lobbed at Jack Dorsey and Twitter over the last few months and the list goes on, filtered information is not news, it is news founded on discrimination and that is the stage we face, but what else are we not given? Who knew on the partnerships between Chinese Tencent and Microsoft? Who asked the serious questions? I will let you seek and search that part yourself. 

So many question and no one wonders how a simple guy like me has the inside track on 50 million optional customers, you think Google would have dropped their Stadia if they could gain 50,000,000 optional customers? Figure it out and yes, some will consider the main point that I might be spreading that stuff that grows the grass in Texas, but I asked myself questions and also doubted myself. Stakeholders will not do that, they will merely proclaim that the other side does not exist (or is irrelevant). 

It is time for you to wonder what else they are missing and that is aimed at my 5G IP. A side of 5G none of them have. 

Enjoy the day, you should, preferably before the Russian decide to make all the Ukrainians glow in the dark.

 

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September 30, 2022 · 02:09

The opportune moment of my IP

There was a side I never, or almost never talked about, merely because it was interacting with other options and therefor it had a slippery side of becoming unpredictable. The second wave of my first IP bundle had an evolutionary stage that went straight into the Metaverse. Now I see that Saudi Arabia (at https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/saudi-arabia-neom-invests-1bn-metaverse) as I see it the Middle East Eye reports ‘Saudi Arabia’s Neom invests $1bn in metaverse’, it could cover my IP as well, so as we see “The company has invested $1bn in 2022 in AI projects that include a metaverse platform, in the hope that it will advance Tonomus’ goal of positioning Neom as the world’s first “cognitive community”” add my monthly $500M solution to that and it becomes a much larger powerhouse and it goes a lot further than making the UAE jealous. The IP as offered to the Saudi Consulate (in Sydney) gives rise to much more than I expected, if these two are united (something I hoped to do in 2024)  this goes a lot further than even I expected in the term I expected things to go and it goes beyond AI or mere Saudi interests. This impacts several nations all with access, making Neom an instant power hub for technology and streaming.  Although originally not part of their design Tonomus would have the ability to be well over 100% more powerful within 2 years. So even as we see “Dubai announced a metaverse plan in July that aims to deliver 40,000 new jobs and $4bn to the city’s economy in five years.” I saw another path that they were not looking at and now Saudi Arabia has the setting for $6,000,000,000 annual within 5 years and a lot of jobs, not that many, but their setting it total, my setting is annual, as such I win, or actually the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia wins if my structure is accepted into the whole frame and that number is merely on my side of the equation, their side could spell it to be a lot more for a lot longer because my scope enhances their scope, something I never banked on because it was not part of my design, and there is a secondary part to that too, you see the Metaverse was an optional enhancement to my IP, so there are waves upon waves (as I see it) and that means that the old approach is next to the new approach and I have to giggle to myself, when I see the utter stupidity of Optus, whilst seeing my own innovation, a side that neither Amazon nor google saw, or saw coming enhances my IP even more and should the KSA buy it, the nextgen powerhouses of IT will no longer be in the US, or EU. They will be in the Middle East because it is not merely what Saudi Arabia, or the UAE does. It is what they can achieve together, a side I never considered and I feel decently certain that none of the other players had considered that either.

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September 26, 2022 · 19:27

You forgot something!

As was looking at a few matters, Reuters gives us an article (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-says-shared-network-costs-is-10-year-old-idea-bad-consumers-2022-09-26/). The article named ‘Google says shared network costs is 10-year-old idea, bad for consumers’, it seems fair from a distance, but it is not. You see the smaller detail is seen in “a push by European telecoms operators to get Big Tech to help fund network cost”, so first we get misinformation, mistreatment and mismanagement form players like Orange, Vodafone, KPN, BEN, Deutsche Telekom and several others. And not THEY want big tech to pay for their stupidity? You have got to be effing kidding me. And as stated, it is a 10 year old idea, as such we see another stage where the European Commission shows itself to be useless, lacking creativity and a mere populous that enjoys the gravy train and gives and produces nothing of value. It seems harsh, but this setting was clear from 2009 onwards when we saw the gaps all over Europe and now that 5G is becoming more and more important, the mobile players in Europe are onestep short of becoming useless and pointless and when Elon Musk’s Star-thingamajig becomes active, these players are done for. So when we see “Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and other big operators have long complained about tech rivals free-riding on their networks, saying that they use a huge part of internet traffic and should contribute financially.” And my issue here, is it really free-riding? I have a certain bandwidth, it is used for Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and a few other parts. I PAY FOR THIS AS DO OTHERS! So how is Google Free-riding? How are other big-tech free-riding? Will we get a clear explanation for that? The article also gives us “Google, owner of YouTube, has done its part to make it more efficient for telecoms providers by carrying traffic 99% of the way and investing millions of euros to do so” and there is also the part that I am willing to accept that they did these investments for selfish reasons, but that is not against the law, is it? I reckon the moment Google makes a deal with Elon Musk and we can all ‘freely’ use that network these telecom companies will cry like little chihuahua’s, the los of data they were capturing will end a few matters and that is not what we see here, are we?

Matt Brittin, president of EMEA business & operations at Google also gives us “In 2021, we invested over 23 billion euros in capital expenditure – much of which is infrastructure,” OK, fair, but I still believe that this was slightly selfish for Google business anchoring. I am not complaining and neither are many others, but that is part of the setting, the Telecom companies are realising that they are about to go the way of the Dodo (like newspapers last year) and now they cry and they require the European gravy train to fix their shortfall, their shortcomings and their lack of innovation. And they are losing more, if Saudi Arabia buys my IP, the evidence will put them in prime position to get my 5G as well and then the market changes even further. It makes sense, as Neom was the inspiration for it, should they not enjoy the benefit? 

It is at that point the clown comes to play. We see that with “EU digital chief Margrethe Vestager urging them to ensure that companies generating the largest traffic on network infrastructure should contribute in a fair and proportionate manner to the costs.” And exactly why to I make the clown reference? You see, most of the traffic is generated by USERS, by PEOPLE who want to know things and most of them seek it on Google, these PEOPLE PAY for that bandwidth, so let hope the clowns in Strasbourg wake up and smell the waterlilies. The generation is made by PEOPLE and they paid for that right, the rest is not on Google, but I reckon that Margrethe Vestager is part of the gravy train that needs to satisfy the needs of the exploitative telecom companies. And is it not strange that the people who paid for this service now see that Google must pay for this? I am certainly surprised, aren’t you?

But that is the shortsightedness of politicians for you.

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August 30, 2022 · 03:51

The opposite point of view?

That was the setting I looked t when I saw the article in the New Arab (at https://english.alaraby.co.uk/analysis/saudi-arabias-line-neom-project-too-ambitious) where we see ‘Is Saudi Arabia’s ‘The Line’ NEOM project too ambitious?’ The title gives us a handle and my first question is should that not be the case? Now we take the Empire State Building for granted, but in 1930, people thought the same regarding the Empire State Building. Things need to be too ambitious. The entire setting of Neom and the Line is too ambitious, because this has NEVER been done before. And even if people write it into the ground calling it a ‘gazillion dollar project’ the truth is that they are writing fear, because I personally guarantee you that they would not write that if it was a US project. Two architectural projects and both as in Saudi Arabia. But back to the article. We then get ““In the aftermath of the pandemic, economic rehabilitation is at the forefront of all countries’ political agendas. This is why Saudi Arabia will have no issues in filling any labour gaps with regards to construction and investments in the project itself,” Siddiqa explained.” This is a fair point and every nations has this hurdle, as such I do not see a real problem, a hurdle, not an obstacle. Again a fair point is seen with “NEOM is not without its challenges, some of which Riyadh has addressed and others which remain an obstacle. Financial challenges are the biggest obstacle for mega projects like NEOM and The Line. Research shows that Saudi Arabia has not been able to achieve much success in attracting financial resources and investment from foreign governments and companies.”, what I would like to add is that these companies were eager to invest when oil was their fortune, but investing in something that they at present do not understand is somewhat understandable, greed needs assurances and they have an image (of greed) to uphold. Then the article throws a reality our way. With “While the initial plan was to complete NEOM by 2030 with an allotted $500 billion, some reports claim that the city may not be completed until 2050, which will likely increase costs significantly. For this reason, it is predicted that the entire project, including The Line, will cost the Kingdom $1 trillion.” And here we see the first larger hurdle. With ‘the city may not be completed until 2050’ which is true, but now we also see the essential need to hold onto the larger need for perfection and precision. Any party that cuts corners will become the foundation of failure for the entire project and even if only one phase is ready in 2030, the KSA will show to be a global game changer. And lets fave it, on this day and age that delay is not the biggest one. The line is a city for 9 million people. Rome was not build in a day and that is a fair notion to take. If it helps, I reckon that my IP for Augmented Reality could optionally make an optional larger difference there. But the larger truth is that the Empire State Building took a year to make, the Line is over 200 times larger and as such getting it all ready by 2050 is still an amazing feat, more important it is a building no one else has been able to build as well as a first building to allow nature to restore. That setting is a larger achievement. More important I reckon that the side development in material waste and sewage will have larger repercussions for the internal development of any city and such part have never been this centralised before. A place where pollution stops. Consider London where we would suddenly halt ALL car traffic for a week. The impact of cleaner air would be seeable and sense by all, a city 50% smaller and it has that impact, so what spin will the KSA receive when others offer their version of complexities? Then we are given a part that I found debatable. It is “The financial viability of PIF is highly dependent on the Kingdom’s oil exports, a market that has proven volatile in recent years. In 2020, Riyadh faced a significant fiscal deficit of more than $79 billion. In a country where around 60% of its financial resources came from oil and just 9% from non-oil exports in 2021, the financing of the NEOM project is likely to face financial ups and downs.” So, yes we get ‘In 2020, Riyadh faced a significant fiscal deficit of more than $79 billion’ this is true, but what about 2022? The guardian gave us (months ago) ‘Largest oil and gas producers made close to $100bn in first quarter of 2022’ and two weeks ago we got “Aramco had a 90% year-on-year increase and marks the biggest earnings for the world’s largest energy exporter since its public listing three years ago.” As such the 2020 point of view for a 2022 article makes a lot less sense. And the reference of “around 60% of its financial resources came from oil” might sound fair (or at least correct) but both Neom and the Line show us that this could change, a city with no cars means 4,000,000 less cars creating pollution, needing no gasoline are clear markers in that change. And when the achievement is established other nations will want the same event (especially in Texas where they now start to have energy problems). A stage that could export Saudi skills in other ways too. One significant hurdle is shown with “the biggest technical problem that Saudi Arabia will face in NEOM is the reliance on foreign skilled workers, an issue that is unlikely to be resolved in the short term.” This was true and yes it was a problem, but I illuminated that with “there is now a decent chance that the small hidden engineering texts will be Arabic/Chinese and not Arabic/English. A station that was always likely to happen, but now it seems it is becoming the passing of a fact” a side I saw solved on August 11th 2022, a week before this article was written. I set that in ‘Stirring the soup’, a stage I saw coming a mile away and that too is the larger defeat for the west, especially as China has both the upper echelon and lower echelon of workers, workers Saudi Arabia will need and a job market that is now closing for Europe and America. A longer set of issues that hd been out and open for all to see, now the Silk Road gets the chance to build whilst fuelling itself with oil and revenue, both at the same time. I reckon that Strasbourg never considered that. How interesting that I had done that.

In the end my point of view is that there is no ‘too ambitious’, it comes with the terrain of creating something never done before, as long as the decision makers realise that 2030 is not a static point of completion, they will end up being in a good place. Even completing Phase one by 2030 is an achievement not found anywhere else in the world at present and that completion takes the project crown away from America, not a bad first result. And in all this the redesign of world powers might also be a first, with the chance that China becomes the worlds first power and America? Well they will have to content with the number 6 slot, that is also a consequence of catering to Wall Street, the larger view is lost when the spreadsheet users were all set on next quarter, not next decade. In this I will shown to have been correct yet again. I wonder what else I could see in the near future.

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August 23, 2022 · 21:41

For Saudi brethren

This morning when I created ‘Crossover salad dressing’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/08/23/crossover-salad-dressing/) I wrote “I came up with several ideas to propel Neom and the Line in such ways that is not seen at present, so why not? Are these marketeers (most likely in London) losing the plot of what might be?” And as such a few were eager to make me say how. It is fair enough, and in this case I do not mind. You see, others are seemingly incapable of figuring things out. So now I get to open that door and show what others were not able to figure out.

Awareness
Some people seem to believe that it is all about awareness. That used to be the case, but now it is different. There is so much noise in awareness, through click farms, through trolls and through fake message makers that the numbers in Twitter on awareness, on likes in Facebook, hearts on Twitter. The numbers are no longer as reliable as they once were. Engagement is the real metric. Engagement also creates awareness and that awareness is real. So how to coin in on this? Well we see the Neom and the Line options in Twitter. The problem is how can we propel those two projects? Even as the same option is for both, lets focus on the line. 

I see the creation of awareness through the people, to engage them and to offer them something new, something that all can use. In that setting we create (what we will see later) a stage. A stage with two images. That stage is placed in three locations in a large city. London, Toronto, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tokyo, Paris, Beijing, and that list goes on a little longer. In the first stage we have 5 sets of 3. 5 cities get a set. And we have three locations. Mostly malls, although in London we should avoid Harrods (too expensive). Now the three locations have a stage where people can make selfies and put them on social media, use them to create little quick-films and a few other things. They will propel awareness in many ways. They merely needed a stage. 

So each two weeks the stages rotate over the three places and after 6 weeks, that set moves on and the second set comes to this place and now we have three new sets. That is the setting 5 sets each having two images. Each image on a canvas 5 metres by 3 metres, with optional representation with leaflets and more. It would be best if these stages are in a city that has a Saudi consulate or embassy, for support reasons. As such we have 15 locations and for 30 weeks these 15 locations will propel the Line in social ways. People taking selfies, people sharing how they look in the Line, in Neom and that same set could then got to 5 new locations and over that time thousands will share their selfies on social media, share with friends and family and propel awareness all over the internet to thousands that might never have seen the tweet, the news or the stories. A propelling machines that is fuelled by looking cool, by looking different and by looking unique. A stage that these marketing people could have seen coming a mile away and could have been set months ago, if not almost a year ago. So why did they not see this? Perhaps the Saudi spokespeople decided against it, decided on other paths. That is possible, but is it not the duty of a marketeer to  hand all options? To give alternatives? So why am I the one giving them this? Because I believe in Neom and the Line. They will encourage the dreamers to dream what comes next and I am now too old to be that next cycle. I have what I created, I have what I possess and I have what I concocted and this is merely a slither of my concoctions. It should not be that difficult. Just a simple setting of what is visible and what could be made visible. As such I leave these thoughts and ideas to my Saudi brethren and may they push the ideas of Neom and the Line to places where they are not aware of these things and may they become more visible on a global scale.

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August 23, 2022 · 01:30

Crossover salad dressing

Yes, as confusing ideas go, it is a good one. I have been seeing some Harry Potter system at the supermarket. They call it Magical builders. The setting is cool, like the old children theatres. Any idea that encourages imagination is OK in my books. But the makers did not take it far enough. See the image below. 

This is one of the cards there are around 35 of them. And all the main characters are there, including a cat and owl. But you only have to look on Facebook and the crossover ideas flow from everywhere. What happens when the Enterprise meets Vaders dreadnaught? What happens when Klingons have to fight Legolas? Oh and these are the timid sides. There was one about Hermione Granger with Kylo Ren and one of Ron Weasley with Rey. I will spare you the details. 

Crossovers will happen. It is in our brains to set parameters outside of the series. So my mind was  contemplating other things when I remember the Disney Infinite stages. So what happens when we get these characters and we can upload the ones we have with a code (see below).

Now we have a much larger stage, we get to use these characters online and more importantly we can keep the same settings as the set we see now. But what happens when the new Rings of Power get a similar setting, what happens when the sequel (or is that prequel) to Game of Thrones is added? With stages, with all kinds of solutions. What happens when we allow the people to play such interactions and share that with friends. Consider an old program It was Adobe Director. It was ahead of its time (I think I still have the floppy version somewhere, yes it is that old). Now we get beyond the train-station, the train and the quidditch field more scenes that can be downloaded. In this the creator can move the characters like Flash objects and create dialogues. This is in programming simple and as these series grow and have more characters and scenes, we could see Ron Weasley in Rivendell asking Sauron for liquorice wand (as crazy ideas go).

This setting does need a program hat the makers could easily sell for $10-$25, and in that setting we would see the next generations create initial scenes, but it could start their imagination to create more, to create what comes next and I believe it is important to foster imagination in all ages. This idea came to me in the middle of nothing, so why did others not come up with this?

The idea is decently simple to program (a speculation from my side) and over time that can grow into something serious. All because someone considered adding a QR code to the back of a head, the back that we will not see when the figurine is completed. So what kept them from this next stage? Funds? I reckon that 100,000 times $10 makes a cool million (or $2.5M if you want to charge $25), making an app like that cost a lot less, so the funds could not have been the case. 

When will people (especially in marketing) learn to think out of the box? I came up with several ideas to propel Neom and the Line in such ways that is not seen at present, so why not? Are these marketeers (most likely in London) losing the plot of what might be? Is it like Google (optionally Amazon too) that they are asleep at the wheel? It is slightly speculative from my side, but I am not seeing any start to different places creating visibility, awareness and traction. Why not?

I leave it up to you to consider the rest of that equation.

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