Tag Archives: Princeton

May 11, 2026 · 02:51

By the numbers

There is an old ‘saying’, it comes from the late 70’s and it goes a little like this:

There are three ways to lose your company:
Through women, which is the prettiest method.
Through gambling, which is the fastest method.
Through Statistics, which is the most certain method.

In the 50 years that followed we learned that the first option might be the prettiest, but you still end up with a working company. The second one is still an issue, but the third one is still under consideration, Especially with the presumed setting of AI (or as I call is NIP or Fake AI.

This all came to me when I was bombarded with charts and there are numerous ways that we are handed these charts, but it also gave me a consideration. You see, no matter how deep you believe the data to be true, it remains a consideration that any data is flawed and through that setting not entirely trustworthy.

You see, this is the country with the most migrants, but what I am missing is where they came from. I saw another article in the BBC, which gave us ‘La dolce vita: Is Italy the new tax haven for the global rich?’ (at https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20260421-is-italy-the-new-tax-haven-for-the-global-rich)here we see “In France you also have to pay a property tax (taxe foncière or land tax). “We don’t have that here for the prima casa (first home),” says Robert, although he notes “there is a high charge for refuse collection”. The best thing as far as he is concerned is that there is no inheritance tax on property you own in Italy up to €1 million ($1.1 million) and it’s only 4% beyond that threshold. In France the tax-free limit is much lower – €100,000 ($110,000) – and beyond that it’s a sliding scale up to a top rate of 45%.” The story is about the ‘global rich’? All this might be true, but I believe that there is a larger migration into Europe. The setting that Americans are leaving, a setting we got in the Wall Street Journal on February 25th 2026, where we saw “The U.S. experienced net negative migration in 2025, with an estimated loss of 150,000 people, a trend not seen since the Great Depression.” And if you are ‘really wealthy’, you skip Italy and go straight to Monaco, which is a zero tax nation. So that first chart is nice, but where they came from is more interesting, especially in the era 2026-2028.

We then get the second chart, which shows us where the youth is scientifically. Here we get the first issue. There is consideration that these numbers are flawed n some cases. As some give us: “There are approximately 1.2 billion young people aged 15 to 24 globally”, and I know enough of the failing of data, to give you the fact that there are no data sets giving us 1.2 billion records. As such plenty of nations have worked with mean values and that is the first failing on that chart. Second it is nice to see the USA in 17th position, but they have a population of 349 million and not all can afford to go to University, then we get foreign students in MIT, UCLA,
Princeton, Harvard and Yale. So how are they counted and what is disregarded? Several questions on a chart because the data is missing (and footnotes too). So whilst these numbers might be indicative that those scoring over 500 are in a ‘safe’ place, but that is if we accept this number. And the explanation of those scores, with added footnotes on what is regarded as ‘valid’ is up for grabs.

And then we get the main event, the one that baffled me for a moment, because is gave my thoughts optional validity, but then I need to be wary of a few settings, because without data, a chart is merely a weighted result and without N (total responses) there are reliability issues.

We now see the top countries by natural resource value. It gives me my validity as the United States is show to have $45T in value and that is the setting that makes them optionally almost insolvent. Their debt is growing faster and faster and as it is now said to be $38.9 trillion, which amounts to exceeding 100% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but as we see it, they have almost spend the total of their natural resources. I have an issue with that, because the rare metals are not in that list all whilst Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona have it, as such that number is off (by a lot) and other nations have more (or less) natural numbers as the chart sets out, all whilst these numbers are not given either as such it is a nice chart, but incomplete and as such redundant. If I was to hazard a guess, this was a chart to show how ‘good’ Russia is doing, but as I never saw data on it all as such I have my issues with it. All charts look pretty cool, but cool doesn’t pay the baker (or the butcher for that matter). As such we need to wonder what the chart was doing, not what they tell you, but what they aren’t telling you.

That was just my setting on this and there is a lot more to consider so whilst the first chart gave us “The U.S. hosts 17% of the world’s migrants”, my initial question was “Based on what data?” And as people m ight give us the setting that the AI gave them the numbers and we know that AI doesn’t yet exist. We are given the thought that it is merely DML and that is done by a programmer and that programmer might miss a few beats to be optimistic (many more beat are likely to have been missed) and all this on flawed data?

So what was the designer of that chart trying to persuade you to consider what was ‘their’ issue? Because when someone makes a chart, they want you to look into a specific area, or not look in an area that also mattered. Have a great day, another Monday parked on front of my door, Vancouver still has the bulk of Sunday to get through. Ah well.

The future doorstop

That is how we sometimes see a book, a doorstop, a missile towards our partners (and sometimes really annoying elderly teens), a weight for the papers we need, when a book is not really what we wanted, it gets a secondary function. So even as some saw this specific book as ‘A beautiful defense of the common man and woman against a technological elite’, I consider a book like ‘The Tyranny of Big Tech’ as one that is not stating the issues.

Did I read it?
Nope, and I do not have to, the article clearly shows a republican (who looks like he recently stopped being a teenager) who is aiming for money from both the left and the right. When we see “According to Hawley, it’s not our politicians, our lawyers, our Ivy League graduates, or our Hollywood celebrities. It’s Big Tech – those big names like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, and Google that have embedded themselves in our lives to an almost irreversible degree”, I see the beginning of a BS string of texts that will most certainly become debatable and utterly rejectable. You see Zuckerberg attended Harvard whilst designing Facebook, Dorsey came up with the idea for Twitter at NYU, Jeff Bezos was already done with Princeton when Amazon became the idea, Apple was the child of Steve Jobs who attended part of Reed and dropped out, Sergey Brin and Larry Page came from Stanford, so what is left of “not our Ivy League graduates”? Oh and I with my 5G IP am from UTS (Sydney), so there! And when we get to “have embedded themselves in our lives to an almost irreversible degree” we get a lot more. Apple (Macintosh) offered what consumers wanted, Google did the same, Facebook did it even more and created a new digital era and they all OFFERED it to consumers, they planned long term and they won, the small minded people lost. The exception is the Amazon guy who doesn’t need to spend on Shampoo, he offered something to rural people all over the world which they never had access too. In the US this is 60,000,000 people and in the EU it is 125,000,000. One firm aimed for a little over 180 million consumers. The people shops forgot and now Amazon is the bad guy? So this is the setting from the start and the man with the teenager look (Josh Hawley) is already off to a bad start. So when we see “the robber barons reshaped the economy into a corporate monopoly to serve their own ends, in which an aristocratic elite govern above the labouring masses”, all whilst the US government stole from the native Americans whatever they could (99.655% roughly) is like the pot calling the kettle black. In this one pushed what they wanted, the other (current big tech) let the people decide on WHAT they desired and the consumers liked the free 1GB email (Google) whilst the internet providers offered 20MB for a fee. What would you do? That same grocery store (still Google) came up with additional ways to service the consumers (cookies anyone?), the offered shopping, information and choice, whilst those dabbling on the internet wee all about grabbing whatever coins they could get. When the consumers were happy players like Amazon created the Amazon Web Services offering a pay as you go approach, a cloud approach to small businesses. First web services in 2002 and cloud services in 2008, it would take IBM and Microsoft years to offer anything near that, the big tech of then were made basically redundant. And with the pay as you go there was a larger SaaS (Software as a Service) setting. The big 5 became big not because “Big Tech is a direct descendent of the Gilded Age robber barons”, but because they offered choice when the others were unwilling to do so. In this Apple stands alone. They were always the elite DTP solution (a lot more expensive than others) and in 1998 they recognised the needs of the consumer and the iMac was born, all whilst the consumer got the amazing phrase “There’s no step 3!”, an affordable solution in an age where PC’s were still running behind the facts. If you were not up to speed you were either lost or you became an Apple user. All this whilst the writer wants to push “descendent of the Gilded Age robber barons”, a stage none of them pushed for, it merely is in the statements of those who were asleep at the wheel between 1996-2006, they lost it all by not pushing the envelope and 5 companies got ahead. The fifth (Netflix) was like Facebook, it offered something never offered before and whilst we had to seek TV provider after TV provider, they offered what we wanted, movies and specifically movies not hindered by advertisements. They went from sales to rental to streaming and as the firm started in 1998, Hulu, Stan, HBO Max and Disney Plus, some well over a decade AFTER Netflix, so the statement from Josh Hawley is not just bogus, it is utter nonsense. So when we see “Washington, D.C. politicians routinely protect the interests of Big Tech over and against the freedom and well-being of the American people” we see the joke that this book seemingly is. These systems were offered to consumers, you can walk away! I kept my Yahoo account for years later, until the information offered was too outdated or too much adjusted for localisation (against my will), so when we see ‘well-being of the American people’ I wonder what data he can actually produce (raw data, not aggregated and weighted data) and in the grand scheme of things, the US has 320 million people, Europe has 750 million and India has 1.3 billion. All enjoying what the five players are offering. In all that, the US is a mere 15% and on the global scale they do not add up to much, and the US is actually part of that failing. In the era of 1990-2010 American firms remained largely absent on the international scale, relying on someone to pick up the ball and none of them did and the American needs were swallowed by the voice of the consumers, no barons, no lawyers and no politicians. The people wanted what Google offered and Youtube now has over 2,000,000,000 viewers (I am one of them), so far none of the offerers were able to meet this and more important by 2005 both IBM and Microsoft were merely relying on Adobe Flash, these two players had nothing to offer. In 15 years they never really woke up and here I get to use Microsoft against itself with “Microsoft Stream is a corporate video-sharing service which was released on June 20, 2017 that will gradually replace the existing Office 365 Video”, so 12 years of inactivity, in comparison, the Chinese (the makers of Won Ton soup) gave us TikTok one year earlier and now has 100,000,000 active users. Players like IBM and Microsoft have been that much asleep at the wheel. As I personally see it, American BigTech is the only player (all 5 of them) that stops the USA from becoming utterly irrelevant, if they were not there China would be superpower number one and they are close of becoming that anyway, any issues with BigTech and every BS article in every newspaper with some ‘alleged’ and ‘watchdog’ is merely another delay and it will help China to become the greatest tech power, US politicians (EU politicians as well) are helping China meet that goal.

BigTech, the virgin
BigTech is not holy, it is not innocent and it is no virgin (they got screwed by global politicians again and again, so they are definitely not virgins), BigTech are merely the innovators we always needed and the rest is merely a wannabe player, even Microsoft and IBM have fallen that much from grace. Microsoft had the most powerful console in the world and within 2 years they were surpassed by the weakest console of all (Nintendo Switch), IBM has its own stream of non-successes, and they are all crying to their politicians as to the bad bad tech companies. Most of them had no idea what the digital era was until they were surpassed by a lot of other players (some of them Asian). So when we consider the stage, we need to see the whole stage, not some setting of “Ending Big Tech’s sovereignty is about taking back our own, and we can begin to do that in the lives we live together. Big Tech works relentlessly to force individuals into its ecosystem of addiction, exhibitionism, and fear of missing out. It seeks to create its own social universe and draw all of life into its orbit. But the real social world, the life of family and neighbourhood – the authentic communities that sustain authentic togetherness – can act as a counterweight to Big Tech’s ambitions”, in this phrases like ‘force individuals’ is massively wrong, people have choices. I do not have Facebook on my mobile, I have no need for it there, I do not order from Amazon (I am a support your local hooker kind of guy) and I have currently no Netflix or Disney Plus subscription. That is 3 out of 5, I have an Apple because Microsoft dropped the ball 4 times in the last 5 years and IBM is too expensive for what it offers. I chose! We can all choose and that is where we realise that ‘The Tyranny of Big Tech’ is like a Chicago politician, all hot air and not too much on substance (judging from the article (at https://mindmatters.ai/2021/06/a-book-review-the-tyranny-of-big-tech/). He might at some point present a few parts that are relevant, I am certain that he will, but as a former Missouri’s Attorney General he will tread on places where he knows the answers, so as I see “holding Big Tech accountable where others don’t dare tread. In investigations, in legislation”, I merely wonder how much legislation against BigTech made it through? It matters because it is what you can prove that matters, not what you claim. I made no claims, it is all timeline stuff, including the Chinese parts.

Consider the choices YOU have, and make choices, it is your right. You need not be on Google, you can select Microsoft Bing. You will lose out on a lot but that is the choice you make. For well over 20 years Google offered choices, YOU were the consumer that selected WHERE you wanted to go and you went there. All whilst Microsoft could not be bothered, it seems to me that the Netscape Victory made them lazy and now they are no longer the relevant company, they are merely the Column B (or C) company. And consider being in a place like Antigo Wisconsin. Now try to buy a game, a DVD, a bluray, a 4K movie, a CD and a book. How many of these items will require Amazon? It was the foundation of 4G (Wherever I am) and it will be the stage of 5G (wheneverI want it), so when will 5G be available in Antigo Wisconsin? Consider these points and consider whatever Josh Hawley is trying to imprint on you and consider what you can find out for yourself. BigTech is not evil, BigTech is because the others became lazy, BigTech merely is and governments do not like the self sufficient organisations, the ones that do not make large contributions to them. In the end if you look into the shareholders and stakeholders of some of these players you get a very different picture, one you need to be wary of.

When math is no solace

There are times when facts and logic prevails; in most cases math and logic tend to be the cornerstone of our decision making. Even if the calculation is horrible, even when sheer numbers dull us from the contemplation of what we see, the math and numbers becomes a shield, a level of protection against the sheer insult of the moment. We might realise that, we might not. Yet that is the setting we all face.

So when sources gave me ‘Hezbollah to Israel: ‘Precision’ missiles now obtained‘, I was merely curious. It was the quote “The Israeli military has said Hezbollah has between 100,000 and 120,000 short-range missiles and rockets, as well as several hundred longer-range missiles” that started it all. You see, when we consider that a short range missile costs somewhere between $25K and $40K, we see that the lowest ballpark in one setting is already $2.5B, and the value is up to an estimated maximum of $4.8B. In that sense, can anyone explain to me the sanctity of the UN when it receives $100m in new funds for Palestinian aid? This is not some charity thing. Even Iran is not merely giving away $2.5 billion like that, this comes at a price and why should any UN funds, given or not, be handed to Palestine in this setting? As we were given merely last December: ‘Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah vows to focus on Palestine‘, whilst we were treated to ‘Taunting Israel, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah boasts about armed group’s upgraded military capabilities‘? You do realise that short range missiles have no defence foundation, the use of short range missiles in for offensive actions only, and even when we accept that missiles can be used to destroy a tank, which is a valid defence. There is no need to have 75 missiles for every tank; 2-3 usually can do the trick. the matter complicates even further when we realise that clear evidence was shown (multiple sources) that Hezbollah is directly involved in Yemen, the place where 5 million children face starvation, we see prolongation of a proxy war and Hezbollah is very willing to be the tool in that case, so why are they given any consideration when they have a direct involvement in prolonging the biggest humanitarian disaster in history? A setting where 5 million children are now in a direct setting of death by famine and/or disease, even the Nazi Germans never went THAT far.

It is in this setting that I have to raise an article that is about 3 hours old. It was available at Arutz Sheva 7 (at https://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22760). I think this is the first time I go there and therefor I cannot comment on the channel, but the article came from Prof. Louis René Beres. He is Swiss, graduated at Princeton (which I will not hold against him), with an additional truckload of publications in some of the most prestigious places. He gives us: “While the jihadist terrorist courageously claims to “love death,” this necrophilious announcement is an evident lie. Paradoxically, the self-proclaimed “freedom fighter” actually kills himself (or herself), always together with certain innocent others, to ensure that he or she will not die, that there will take place a sacralized transcendence of personal death“, the additional part I needed here was “Whether we are willing to accept it or not, these corrosive wars are usually focused upon mere symptoms of enemy pathology and not at the underlying disease itself. Regrettably, these “wars of defense” are unlikely to make any substantial dent in jihadist thinking; hence, they can be expected to exert only minimal interference with any derivative jihadist harms“. You see, the statement in the article ‘For them, the obvious oxymoron is a simple example of deductive “logic.” Ultimately, this sort of “sacrifice” is their immutably overriding objective‘. This now relates directly to Yemen, with the food, water and medication shortage. Mothers can be offered a life time of all three for their children, if only they would….. (You can fill in the rest). This is exactly why a decisive victory in the Battle of Al Hudaydah is so essential. When these mothers realise that there is a place where there is medication, food and drink, the setting shifts away from terrorist consideration. And whilst humanitarian solutions are implemented, the so called big boys of Intelligence can start tweaking their Palantir Gotham and start figuring out, where 100,000 missiles are, because there is absolutely zero chance that a chunk of that is not on route to Yemen. Even 10,000 of them, that is still a truckload of containers and they need to be found and destroyed now, because once these missiles are placed in Yemen, the setting of a prolonged war is not merely a certainty, it will be a certainty for several years. The chance of these children surviving that timeframe is close to nil. And even as the Iranian PressTV is now flaunting ‘Yemeni ballistic missile hits military base in Saudi Arabia‘ (they were the only ones giving us that), we know that it will be a problem, one of many. So even if we consider that part, it is Asharq Al-Awsat who gives us (at https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1401871/150-turbaned-houthis-schools-recruit-students) the issue on recruiting children, the exact issue that I gave in ‘Lying through truth‘ a month ago (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/08/24/when-drought-sets-in/). Here I emphasized “The clothes are too clean, the weapons too shiny and there is a cameraman on the car. I have an issue with the picture. Yet the article is all about ‘Houthis Exploit Poverty-Struck Children as Cannon Fodder‘, an accusation that has been seen in more than one place“, it was the setting of a recruitment drive. The headline shown earlier, and even the Iranian news seems to be offended on this when we see: “Hezbollah was found to be recruiting children as young as 12 into their armed units in the Syrian Civil War just last year, according to Human Rights Watch“. The question is no longer merely on how fast we can act. There is now a growing concern that it might already too late for too many children.

Where is the math? You see, if we are confronted with 5 million children, the math tells us that that there are no less than one million mothers involved (if they are still alive), that means when we ‘aggregate’ the settings shown so far and if we are to accept the scenario presented by Prof. Louis René Beres with: “This still-expanding network of orchestrated homicides now generally represents an au courant form of religious sacrifice, a long-standing practice that stems from distinctly pre-modern customs (not necessarily Islamic) and that links each applicable suicide’s “martyrdom” with a “properly” designated victim“, then we need to consider that if the stage of Battle of Al Hudaydah needs to be completed fast, because the unthinkable setting of math the setting that is an insult on life where the Saudi coalition could be facing up to one million martyrs. This now takes me back to the initial part. When we consider the statement of 100,000 and 120,000 short-range missiles and rockets, we tend to think in one direction. Yet, when you remove the casing and the propellant, you end up with something mobile that can explode easily enough and cause a lot of damage. The issue is not that this is done, the case becomes that you suddenly have 10,000 (or more) suicide vests, a setting that is emotionally a nightmare, because the timeline between creating one and retrofitting the other is quite the leap.

It is my unfounded and speculative (extremely speculative) part where there is an optional setting that Hezbollah (optionally via Iran) is setting the stage that the Japanese Imperial army had in 1944 when it created the Kamikaze (Tokubetsu Kōgekitai), a stage that is optionally the stuff that nightmares are made of. So what if I am wrong? That is the whole part that matters to merely some degree. If the story that Hassan Nasrallah told us was a lie, we win. If the Battle of Al Hudaydah is settled, fired up because of the lie by Hassan Nasrallah, we win. If we strike a definite blow against Hezbollah, we really win and if we can set the stage for true humanitarian aid to start in Yemen, we also win. We only lose if Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthi’s are successful in prolonging the Yemen war. I see no downside in any of the scenario’s on our side in all this. I think that we need to realise that cutting all aid to some of the players hiding behind hardship and then casually informing us that they now have an additional $2.5 billion plus in missiles and rockets, they would not really have any need for aid in food, clothing and medicine, would you not agree?

When the people have to choose between firing offensive missiles against a non-enemy, or choose for food, water and medication (optional clothing too), what would you choose?

It seems easy enough to me and it was merely the use of common sense, without the required need of math (in the final decision).

The entire Yemen is about numbers, yet any math involving this is unlikely to bring solace to anyone hoping to find a shield in that math.

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By the numbers

The future doorstop

When math is no solace

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