Tag Archives: the Guardian

November 6, 2022 · 13:33

MHW anyone?

Yes, it seems puzzling, but it is not. I have seen in the last 48 hours more than anyones share of hatred, the Musk Hatred Wave and I absolutely have had enough of this collaborated pile of bullshit. It is time to set the record straight. The first guilty party is the Media, these cocksucking stakeholder appeasing bunch of wannabe journo’s. Almost no one is asking serious questions towards Jack Dorsey and the hidden accounts of fake followers. Can someone please nail this joker to a bloody cross please? It is getting close to Christmas, so that solves one part. The Guardian goes on (t https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/05/twitter-elon-musk-jack-dorsey-apology) by catering to all this with “I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation – I grew the company too quickly” as I personally see it when Elon Musk is forced to deal with “apologise for the state of the site, which has laid off thousands of workers” when the new person has to lay off thousands of people, you weren’t growing the company to quickly, you were orchestrating a stage and still the media is not asking the questions they should have asked for months. So when we get to see “At least one class-action lawsuit has been filed against Twitter on behalf of former employees who say they were not given adequate notice of their termination.” I need to wonder if this is actually the case, Elon Musk stated on Titter that these people were given TWICE the redundancy that a person is eligible for. I cannot state if that was indeed true, but the media gives us “Elon Musk has a history of violating California’s labor law” loading the stage against Elon Musk yet again. And true, a little later we see “Musk has defended the layoffs, tweeting that fired employees are receiving three months of severance as the company reportedly loses over $4m a day.” Another clear stage that gives us that someone needs to ask Jack Dorsey serious questions, but he is off with billions, so he will not care about any of this. It merely shows how useless the media has become. 

Then we see more and more hatred on Twitter with quotes like Justice giving us that Free Speech should not cost $8 month. 

My answer would be:

“No Moron he is not charging $8 for free speech, he is planning to charge the blue checkmark. The sign that you are a real account. A sort of elite status that too many people enjoyed for the longest of times. The new owner states that this elite status comes at a price and most of them will do the math $96 a year or lose the mark. Plenty of those can hand that invoice as an expense to their TAX LAWYER.” 

Then we get loads of people stating they lost hundreds or thousands of followers. I am merely adding one example but there are legions out there. 

The question becomes were they really followers or are certain bots vacating the space in fear of exposure? In one week Musk cannot push for such larger changes to a working system with all these people losing their jobs. We could argue that some Twitter employees had scripts that fattened the accounts of their idols. I am not stating this happened, I am wondering if this could have been the case. And yes there are plenty of people whose hatred made them leave Twitter, that is their choice, but those followers stopped being followers too. There are many options, but we need data to prove or disprove some of these assumptions (read: presumptions).

The largest issue is the mass firing. The issues is not whether this is happening, but if proper procession is used. That is a case for California labour laws, I know too little about these, but considering the Jack Dorsey ‘apology’, I am willing to speculate that everything was done to give Elon Musk a stacked hand against him and with the media being as biased as it seems to be, when it comes to discrimination and a few other elements the media is every bit as guilty here. That is how I see it. When you get over the feigned anger, what are your thoughts? 

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November 4, 2022 · 21:34

The design of a flaw

That was the very first thought I had when I saw the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62636746) the title doesn’t help ‘How solar farms in space might beam electricity to Earth’ there we are given “SEI is working on a project called Cassiopeia, which plans to place a constellation of very large satellites in a high Earth orbit.” So, my first question, did anyone see the movie Gravity? It’s the one where we see Sandra Bullock shone over George Clooney (who does an awesome job). With Star-link and a few other contenders and the weakest link is some Russian wannabe shooting a cluster rocket into space. Don’t ell me that this will not happen, these fuckers are doing a lot worse to the Ukraine, as such the Russian problem will be hanging over out shoulders. However, there is this disc in the sky, it seems round and they all it the moon. The same side is pointed at the sun 24:7, as such you can place a solar-farm the size of Texas there. There are a few other benefits, with THAT much power you could fuel a station there. There are a few other benefits, but that is the gist of it. A station that does the repairs and once every 6 months you can send a tank of water, with an added tank (see below) to keep the troops motivated. 

It is not the weirdest idea either. There has been a massive need of power for the longest time and the Sun can provide. The fact that until recently we did nothing is because some stakeholders needed to appease whomever pays them and now that shortage can no longer be hidden. Now, as we take notice of “The solar energy collected by the satellites would be converted into high frequency radio waves and beamed to a rectifying antenna on Earth, which would convert the radio waves into electricity.” Yet in space these waves do not deteriorate and the moon would allow a wave 20-50 times the size, implying that the earth could get 20-50 times the energy. With the moon as a structure much heavier solar panels would be possible as weight does not need to be kept in place and there you have a larger solution that might take another pie-gobbler  out of the equation. I have nothing against the SEI, but should this not be something NSA and the ESA need to work on? And when we have the energy sorted out, we can continue to ignore more environmental issues, or get some Guardian reporter to blame the uber-rich and their jets. Now, it would be nice to see another article with the SEI making claims that my idea is a bad idea (it could be), and how satellites are the best solution, and that might be true. But in space no one can hear you scream and radio-waves go on forever, a simple lesson I learned decades ago in high school. So where is that plan for a moon base and for everything holy, lets not forget about the can of Heineken, it is hard enough to keep scientists motivated without the clear possibility of sex. Beer might do the trick (no promises).

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October 29, 2022 · 20:37

Put the hammer down

It sounds overly dramatic, but I believe that enough is enough. The idea that a bully gets awarded is just too disgusting to me. I am of course speaking about the attack on Paul Pelosi in San Francisco. The idea that some nut job gets a glove treatment after a man, whose ‘crime’ is to be married to the speaker of the house is just too unsettling. I have never been much of an American democrat, that side ended after JFK. The democrats are pushing too much for a nanny state and I have an issue with that, but I accept that the Democrats were elected, they call the shots as is the consequence of an election. So as we learn “Bill Scott, chief of the San Francisco police department, said the suspect in the attack on Paul Pelosi will face charges of attempted homicide and assault with a deadly weapon, among others.”, as well as “The chief identified the suspect as 42-year-old David Depape. In addition to attempted homicide, he’ll also face charges of “elder abuse, burglary, and several other additional felonies”, Scott said.” All this and more is given to us by the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2022/oct/28/democrats-obama-midterms-republicans-us-politics-live-updates) some other sources described David Depape as another conspiracy theorist, not unlike the loads of people we see more and more in the Dutch political landscape. They are no longer an annoyance, they are now a danger and I personally believe that the Nanny state empowered them, the masses gave people like this a voice on digital media whilst those behind the screens are cashing in on the digital advertisement revenue. And people like Alex Jones are making this worse. A mere 5 days ago he files for a new trial. We get to hear (also from the Guardian) “Jones filed the requests Friday, saying Judge Barbara Bellis’s pretrial rulings resulted in an unfair trial and “a substantial miscarriage of justice”.” It is the ‘miscarriage of justice’ part that gets to me, we see “the shooting was a hoax staged by “crisis actors” to impose more gun control”, we see how this man exploits the damage to the families of 24 murdered children and he has the guts to rely on ‘miscarriage of justice’? This is too rich. I reckon that the Conversation had it right with ‘Hypocrisy is beneath them – political figures in the Trump era don’t bother concealing their misdeeds’ and the nanny state is merely growing their voice. It is there that we see Journalist Carlos Lozada give us “Their bad behaviour is now acceptable, so it needs no disguise” and that is is the setting behind this. This is what drives it and I gave a solution a long time ago, whilst the money hungry people went after tech firms, they forgot that the people no matter how entitled they are to their opinion, they should be held to account and if that was done people like Alex Jones have no recourse, people like David Depape would have been held to account long before he handed that hammer. And in the US with over 320,000,000 people this becomes more and more pressing. The land of opportunity has become overcrowded and the wannabe’s shout louder and louder at the expense of innocent children and a business man whose only ‘crime’ was to be married to a politician. 

It is time for the politicians to wake up and do something about this and hold the wielders of their voice accountable for their actions and for what they claim. People like Alex Jones saw the first trial as a way to get even more limelight, to get even more people relying on the Nanny state to listen to what he has to say. Yet no one is looking at the laws that allow these lie spouters to continue. This has been a setting for decades and now we see more and more impact and it does not end with the US. The Netherlands which is almost the size of Maryland (4,000 sqm larger) has a very different setting. Maryland with its 6.1 million people is nowhere near crowded as the Netherlands with 17.53 million people. A nation with the population pressures of Manhattan. There is a reason why I mentioned them, you see they are dealing more and more with pro-Russian trolls, conspiracy theorists and spouters of anti-Ukrainian stages and this will have a much more violent outcome. People like David Depape weren’t leading this, they were merely the first to go nuts and consider that this happens in a place like the Netherlands where in my youth an attack on politicians was almost unheard of, now people, via trolls propagate their home addresses. A man creating discord with intent to cause harm outside of Sigrid Kaag’s house. Merely because someone published the address. This will get a lot worse unless these laws are adjusted and until these conspiracy theorists are held accountable. I mean we all have the innocent conspiracy (funny example: Matt Damon is an alien, he’s Martian) but to exploit 24 murdered children takes a new (and lower) level of sick and the law is seemingly falling short here, that feeling comes with Alex Jones demanding a retrial, these families have to go through it all again. I personally hope that the financial damages are upheld and that he get an additional 15 years in federal prison, that might wake up the other theorists enough to reconsider the harm they are creating.

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October 28, 2022 · 23:21

Two things

They are not connected, not in any way, but the first part is too short to make a blog by itself as such I connected the two in separate parts.

Zeus Awakens

I have been brooding on the entry for Zeus, there is no way he can be omitted from the story, it is in one part as he is father to Ares, he is the other grandfather and he will emerge. In part that as our main character is gaining strength, the main character is now becoming a larger concern to the big three. As such I had to add Zeus to some degree and the second season was a decent moment to introduce him. 

It was a nice summer day in France, Nice to be more exact (as it is a nice town). I was sitting on a balcony on the esplanade of Nice, looking at the sea a mere 122 metres to the south. I heard a woman’s voice in the back asking me if I wanted any tea. ‘Yes please Lucia’ I responded and a few minutes later she came with a pot of tea. I saw her shiver and I took a gaze at the thermometer to my left. It was odd, it was slowly going down from the 28 degrees it was a minute ago. In one minute it had cooled down to 19 degrees. Grab the cat I said, I started to close the windows inside, she came in with Charcoal who was clearly feeling the lack of warmth and we closed all the windows. I moved towards the gas heater and turned it on. I didn’t need it, but she would definitely need heat soon enough. I looked at a contraction in the cupboard. It had thermometers, barometers and they were all going nuts. Air pressure was down to 950 and the temperature had gone down to 9 degrees. I looked out and I saw people run for entries wherever they saw one. It was definitely a larger problem, but I had never seen anything like this. The clouds in the air were dissolving, the sky was deep blue and the thermometer was now at 6 degrees. The sea looked calm, the air was quiet and the thermometer kept on declining. Within a minute it was down to 1 degree and it seemed to stop there, in the two minutes that I looked outside, I saw people grab coats. I saw a shopkeeper hand sweaters to some women in bikini as well as to men wearing shorts and t-shirts. The cold was felt everywhere. I noticed that the cat was keeping his body against the heater, it as not used to the cold. Then Lucia screamed, I looked at her and she pointed to the room. A man with long silver hairs was standing there. He was wearing a Victorian suit and he looked at me. I had never seen him before. He raised his hand and sparks flew out of his fingers towards the glass table, he then vanished and the heat came back, I looked at Lucia in puzzlement. I smelled a distinct Ozone air and I looked outside. The heat was coming back and I turned the heater off. I looked outside and the sun was there, the heat came gushing in everywhere and within a minute the temperature was back to 20 degrees. I looked at the table. The glass was there and so was a text, in the glass ‘Ελάτε στην Ακρόπολη, πρέπει να μιλήσουμε’. I got that message loud and clear. So this was my grandfather? Time to learn more about the other branch of the family. I send a mental note to grandpa Hades. “Zeus summoned me, will update you later” I looked at Lucia “It seems I have to make a business trip”, she nodded. She did not understand what was going on, but I got the impression that she was eager to go into denial. “Break the table into small parts, keep the cat away and be careful. Get a new table please.” I walked into the bedroom and got a small bag and from the living room fruit bowl I got my keys, wallet and some small stuff. Time to see Athens again.

Time squandered, time wasted

That was the first thought I had when I saw the Guardian article ‘Profits at world’s seven biggest oil firms soar to almost £150bn this year’. It is not their fault. The article is not what I am commenting on, not really. We get (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/27/profits-at-worlds-seven-biggest-oil-firms-soar-to-almost-150bn-this-year-windfall-tax) “Mathew Lawrence, the director of Common Wealth, a think-tank, said Shell’s zero windfall tax bill for 2022 showed the levy introduced by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor in May was “not fit for purpose” and needed significant change”, yes. That is how it starts and I am not saying that the comment is wrong, because that would require me to be an expert on taxation, and that is definitely not me. But consider that I wrote ‘Heating at what price?’ On December 3rd 2018, almost 4 years go (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/03/heating-at-what-price/).

I mentioned tax overhauls before that, years before than and now we see the impact of inaction and I get that Shell is not wavering, because tax laws were never properly overhauled and now there is a problem. So in 2018 I wrote “It is the first time in history that a Middle Eastern nation has the ability to put the US and EU to shame with their lack of technological progress. They claim to have it, yet Saudi Arabia is making a move towards ‘showing to have it‘, changing the game for both the US and Europe. This is where we see the difference. China and Russia see this as an opportunity, whilst Europe and the US are seeing it as an inconvenience” and now it is no longer an inconvenience, now it is an actual problem and the UK, EU and US are not ready. I warned of these dangers 4 years ago, but they all knew better. How do you feel? Did they know better? Did they know more are were they merely playing stationary, optionally licking stamps. And the opportunity that Russia sees and the opportunity that China sees are different. Russia is out of the equation, but China is now fulfilling what I saw 4 years ago and it will get worse. As China has more and stronger ties with Saudi Arabia they can get more oil and America? They can play indecisive politician, play the pariah game a little more. The UK has its tea grannies (CAAT) messing things up and Europe has little options from the start. All things I wrote about in 2018. And the UN is useless in this case (as I see it). Two things can be seen in very different things, in different ploys. In players and receivers. In actions and lack thereof. Two things almost half a dozen times over and I made clear mention of it in 2018. So as I prepare to sell my IP, I can now see that the timing is near perfect. The players will overreact and by the time they figure out what they could have done I will be retiring. In this it will be either Google versus Amazon, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia versus all others. If one acts the other loses and it will be billions that they lose, if one accepts they will have billions in a direction they never considered before and as I see inaction upon inaction I am wondering if their inactions is why they never saw what they could have gotten. I know it I speculation, but when was the last time anyone left well over 5 billion a year on the floor? And it plays out in the same way that Shell and others are coaching their fortunes. The inactions of others is making them rich, I deeply hope that I get that same bonus, my retirement kinda depends on it. 

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October 23, 2022 · 20:56

Silence is sewage

Yes, that is quite the difference from the original ‘silence is golden’ isn’t it? But that thought started recently when I was given ‘UN, international community condemn Houthi drone attack on Yemeni oil terminal’ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/2186011/middle-east). The idea started when I had a look and not entirely to my surprise I could not find anything from the BBC, the Guardian, the NOS, and that list goes on. Houthi terrorist actions continue, using Iranian materials and the west ignores it, how quaint. They did mention that Iran is delivering its drones to Russia, but the political parties are all about a hands off regarding Iran. I did make mention of an optional solution to take care of Iranian and Russian nuclear plants, perhaps I need to make that public domain. Perhaps they will wake up then. But back to the events at hand. The Arab News gives us “The UN on Saturday condemned an armed drone attack launched By Yemen’s Houthi militia on a southern oil terminal in Hadramout province a day earlier, saying it was a “deeply worrying” military escalation”, well it isn’t in most newspaper, so I reckon it is not that Important or that critical. And we also get a name with “I condemn the aerial attack claimed by Ansar Allah yesterday”, we also see very little regarding that terrorist and the BBC or the Guardian. One could speculate that the Iranian stakeholders in the UK have a lot more sway than anyone is willing to acknowledge, yet that is mere speculation from me. In addition we are given “Bin Mubarak said he also held a call with the US ambassador to Yemen, Steven Fagin, to discuss the consequences of the attacks on civilian facilities and commercial ports, and how it would worsen the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, adding he “demanded strong measures to put an end to Houthi terrorism.”” It sounds nice, but if the media shuns it to this degree, there is every chance that the Americans will not do too much in the end. They have so far not done anything successful in reigning in Iranian events, so I would not hold my breath on this either. 

The larger problem is not the these events are happening, it is that the powerful voices are lulling the people to sleep, ignoring what Houthi terrorists are up to in Yemen and in Saudi Arabia, all funded by Iran and we need to wake up, we need to see that Iran is becoming a much larger danger than we could ever be comfortable with. For China it is yet another option to spread its influence in the middle east. Consider cardinal Richelieu (Alexander Dumas, the 4 musketeers) stating “who will do something about these blasphemers?” The informative path is open, and those doing something will end with a lot more than the silent ones, but the US and UK could enjoy a further restriction of a million barrels a day. Do you think they will not buy them? The US has had an option to do something for well over 2 years and they did not. It was all about the pariah Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, but what happened when the US needed cheap oil (for whatever reason, they sell most of theirs). Yes, and now the ante is upped because no one is doing anything about Iran, no one is acting when inaction is no longer acceptable. 

When the Yemeni port is hit, when that port becomes inoperable, we will see some tea granny (CAAT) make claims that this was all the fault of Saudi Arabia, all whilst it is the western world that is in part to blame as they are hiding behind ‘Silence is sewage’ and they are fine with that, t least their stakeholders are, are you? This war has been going on for well over 8 years. Not in any point in time did terrorists have such a hold in disturbing a population and several nations. 

The fun part (for me) is that if China makes a stand, when it actually does something about the terrorists by supplying the Yemeni and Saudi governments what they need, what will the west do? For them it will then be too late. There is now a larger area that is in the mix and it could cost the EU and the US a lot more than they ever imagined and the papers will prove me right. Which paper had anything on the attack on  the harbour in Hadramout province? So far I found France24 with a decent piece, the rest? As far as I can tell, not a word. Why is that?

The age of Silence is golden is over, it was never a real golden era to begin with, it only supported greed driven entities and it supported them well. We need to change the book of tactics before it is too late for too many, but that is merely my view on the matter.

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October 19, 2022 · 17:29

She just doesn’t get it

OK, I have been sitting on this for a few hours. It started when I saw the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/global/2022/oct/17/senator-raises-alarm-saudis-could-share-us-defence-technology-with-russia) titled ‘Senator raises alarm Saudis could share US defense technology with Russia’, I wondered who wanted to play the daily mail card with a title like that and of course, everyone favourite political tool and least acceptable journalist Stephanie Kirchgaessner was there. The person who bashes Saudi Arabia whenever she can. So I decided to take a gander towards PROPERLY informing the people. Well, we all need a hobby, don’t we?

It starts from the very beginning. “A senior Democratic lawmaker has raised alarms about the possibility that sensitive US defense technology could be shared with Russia by Saudi Arabia in the wake of the kingdom’s recent decision to side with Moscow over the interests of the US” this is the first shovel of BS. The kingdom doesn’t side, it seeks a path that is the best for any nation, its own nation. And in continuation the US did this to themselves! So when we get in continuation “following Opec+’s decision to cut oil production, said he would “dig deeper into the risk” in discussions with the Pentagon.” OK, OPEC+ decided to cut oil production, this is the right of OPEC+. Now, we can argue if it was Russia pushing that button, which might make sense, but I did not see the papers on that meeting, so I actually do not know the exact setting there. But oil production was cut and here lies the rub. “If you want cheap oil, you do not bite the hand that feeds you that cheap oil. President Biden promised to make Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman al Saud a pariah and he did keep his word. But it was never based on any actual facts and any factual rulings. So when this happened the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was treated as a lessened ally. This has CONSEQUENCES! So I was pretty much howling with laughter when President Biden and Boris Johnson went like shivering little chihuahuas asking for cheap oil. OK, Boris Johnson probably took a page out of Oliver Twist and asked “please sir, can I have some more?” But both faltered and failed. 

As such we now get “The decision was seen in the US capital as a sign of Riyadh siding with Russia in its war with Ukraine, and as a possible attempt to hurt Joe Biden and Democrats ahead of next month’s critical midterm election by raising the price of petrol at the pump” Now, I personally disagree with the Russia setting, but I get that some might think that. Why? Because they are missing the obvious especially some journalist who is friends with an UN essay writer named Eggy Calamari (or something like that). To see this, you merely need the use of a calculator or an Abacus. We get part of this from Robert Kaufman in Newsweek “The U.S. imports oil because consumption of oil products—about 20 million barrels per day—is greater than the quantity of crude oil it produces, about 18 million barrels per day” this is supported by the EIA (Energy Information Administration) who gives us “the United States exported about 8.54 million b/d of petroleum to 176 countries and 4 U.S. territories.” So it sells its own oil for $100 per barrel (fictive example number) whilst expecting that it can buy crude oil from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for $60 per barrel (also fictive example number) hence pocketing $40 per barrel in its own pocket and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia basically says that this stopes now. The US can buy oil at the Brent Crude Oil price and the greedy people do not want that, so now they need to do with less, even though they know that they sell the bulk of their oil, leaving the US and its citizens without oil. And no one is looking at that part of the equation. 

So when I saw “Both Biden and his Democratic allies in Congress have expressed frustration with the move and called for a realignment in the Saudi relationship, with the US president warning that Saudi would face “consequences” for the move”, my living room just filled with laughter. What consequences? The KSA can watch the US implode upon itself and it better realises that there is also a consequence to it selling its oil. You stopped treating the KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) as an ally years ago, you wasted time by censoring too much of the actions by Iran on the KSA and Iran’s actions in Yemen. All this was enough to stop the pumps and Russia would not have been a factor. It is my personal speculation that the KSA is keeping a distance between them and Russia, too close ties might make them lose a lot more friends and the KSA would be left with Russia, Lithuania and North Korea, two nations it does not care about for one inch. And that was all visible, but the wannabe journo does not give you that, does she?

There is however one side that is valid. It comes from Senator Blumenthal. “Richard Blumenthal  seeks reassurances from Pentagon that ‘they are on top of’ risk of sharing information with Gulf state” I believe the question to be unfounded, but it is a fair question. There is an essential need for the US to seek the best path for America and keeping classified out of Russian hands is a fair call to make. Yet the added “siding with the Russians in this manner – is so dramatic. I think it calls for a response” is partly false. You see OPEC+ is a group of 23 members and Saudi Arabia is only one of them. That majority is a lot larger and I do not know (but expects) that Saudi Arabia was one of them. This is the consequence of dropping Saudi Arabia as an ally. The BS sanctions in the US and the UK with the tea granny organisation (CAAT) all whilst Iran is attacking without consequence and now that Iran is sending its drones to Russia, will these two players do anything at all? or will thy merely pretend to make calls to Tehran all whilst they know perfectly well that this will have no consequence? When you drop a friend from your party you should not cry over the fact that there are consequences of that act. Even on the premise of all this, I was happy to offer my IP to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. If this enables more power to them to include technology and social media, my choice will give me the same pebbles but now with a much larger stage where the other wannabe’s can cry over even more spilled milk.

So when we are given “Jeff Abramson, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association, said Saudi Arabia had been a major purchaser of US military equipment, including some of its most sophisticated weapons systems, for decades” true, but not lately isn’t it? That is why China is at the gates of Riyadh ready to sell THEIR equipment to Saudi Arabia, making the US lose even more billions in revenue, and in part this was paid for with millions of barrels of oil per day, as such the United States did this to themselves, but I do recognise that they want their secrets to remain THEIR secrets, especially as we see that Russian hardware is buckling all over Russia and the Ukraine. And it is then we see the larger screw up. It is given with “It is plausible that the Saudis have information about those weapons”, this implies that Jeff Abramson is not clear or is in cautious denial implying that there is no danger or he just doesn’t know what the commercial people informed Saudi Arabia about and it seems to me that Stephanie Kirchgaessner never picked up on that because there is no follow up on the foundation of ‘plausible’ and in addition we see “Prince Khalid bin Salman, said on Twitter that the decision by OPEC+ to cut oil output was made unanimously for “purely” economic reasons” which raises the question of what the US will do about the other 22 votes? This article raises one decent question and hides it in the BS of several other sides. Yes, the Guardian is really proud of the journo they have there, aren’t they?

I wonder what comes next, but if I have my way that would be a moot point because the impact would cost tech firms well over $500 million a month, they will not lose all that money, but they will lose a chunk of it and with that a lot more in the aftermath. Yes, these people really keep their eyes on the price. 

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October 17, 2022 · 19:55

The ranking of potatoes

There was an insight in July. In this I wrote “I sometimes get a month subscription to load up on missed things and I have to as we all have budgets. I reckon that the UK is facing a much harder time. When they get to decide on two of the items (Food, Rent and heating) Netflix will be the first to go, and after that cheaper internet deals” and guess what. The Guardian gave us 4 hours ago (at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/oct/17/uk-homes-cancel-streaming-services-to-reduce-spending) ‘UK homes cancel streaming services to reduce spending’, all whilst my quote comes from Realisation, which is three months older (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/07/14/realisation-2/), so the issues given three months ago were largely ignored (like wannabe analysts stating that the loss of subscriptions were a mystery to them, or something like that). I saw the writing on the wall and the Guardian caught up three months later. As such I look at “total number of homes with at least one subscription fell by 937,000 from January to September” I see no real mystery here. As such we also get “The premiere of two of the most-hyped and expensive shows of all time – the $650m (£580m) productions of Rings of Power and House of the Dragon – failed to prove a big enough draw to reverse a decline of another 234,000 homes with at least one paid streaming service in the third quarter” yes, because these people really want to put their housing or food on the template of chance when it comes to a TV series and the setting that they are the most expensive or most hyped shows do not matter. People need to pay for food, people ned to pay rent and these elements were out on the shelf for too long. There is no real cap on food and the rent cap is limited to say the least. So these series miss out and those who have a few quid left, they will buy it when it is released on bluray. Which is given to us as “as cost-conscious households choose paying for essentials – such as energy, food and mortgage repayments – over home entertainment”, a simple part of the equation I saw three months ago and that is to some extent the solution I saw in gathering 50 million subscriptions. Because that will become a much larger station and it will get the one doing it $500 million or more. But then these people were aware, were they not? Consider that I accused Amazon and Google of letting that lie on the floor and three months after I stated the writing was coming to a wall near them. They did wake up and investigate, did they not? For all I care Elon Musk can buy it now and make life for them and Microsoft a lot harder. But I cannot do that yet, I am still awaiting response from Riyadh. So when we are given “The world’s biggest streamer, which has cut staff and become more disciplined with its $17bn annual content budget after earlier this year reporting its first subscriber declines in a decade, is forecast to add just 1 million new signups globally when it reports third quarter figures on Tuesday” I wonder if they caught on at all. More disciplined is a joke expression, it is like Google with their wannabe cheerleading “I am a lion”, all nice, but we know that the hunt is done by the lionesses, the lions just get them pregnant twice a day if possible. You see the lions are their for the lionesses the real hunters and “lions mate roughly every 15 to 20 minutes for two or three days—200 to 300 times in succession”, as such when you realise that what were the salespeople hoping at Google? For me the laughing matter becomes when (or if) Riyadh buys my IP, when they trump Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook all in one swoop. I wonder who will be crying like a chihuahua then? Will it be Reed Hastings, Andy Jassy, Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg or all of them? And it was not a hard equation, the fact that I saw this coming 26 weeks ago makes it that easy and there is optionally more, but I want to have a little more fun with this, as I should be allowed to.

The ranking of potatoes is not who is the biggest, it becomes a ranking of whom was the most idle of the lot and that insight might give you a few handles on where you have to go with what you have. 

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September 16, 2022 · 19:15

The one exception

I am not one to speak out against Islam, I am not islamic and I do not know the Quran, as such I tend to avoid Islamic issues. I also never read Salman Rushdie’s Satanic verses for the same reason. If it was an attack on the Bible, I might have picked it up, but it was an attack on Islam and without knowledge of the Quran and Islam it is a waste of my time. So I never read the book, even though many (with the same lack of knowledge) picked up the book and use it as gospel. Well the devil can recite the bible too, so I will not play that game. Today I am not attacking Islam, I am not speaking out against Islam. The Guardian and a few other papers made me aware of an issue. The Guardian gave me ‘Saudi Arabia: man arrested after Mecca pilgrimage for Queen’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/13/saudia-arabia-yemeni-man-arrested-mecca-pilgrimage-the-queen). There we see “Saudi authorities have arrested a man who claimed to have travelled to the Muslim holy city of Mecca to perform an umrah pilgrimage on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II” here I was initially wondering what this was about, but then we learn “Saudi Arabia forbids pilgrims to Mecca from carrying banners or chanting slogans. While it is acceptable to perform umrah on behalf on deceased Muslims, this does not apply to non-Muslims like the Queen, who was supreme governor of the Church of England, the mother church of the worldwide Anglican communion.”

OK, I get that, and I will not oppose that rule of law, which is islamic in nature (all Saudi law is Islamic in nature as far as I can tell). But then I thought it through. You see, we all abide by law, whatever law it is and Islamic law is no less than any other law, but in this (towards any law) I believe that there will alway be an exception. In my lifetime I have known two exceptions. The first was Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965), the man was one truly amazing exception and probably the primary reason why the Germans never got to England. He was given a 19-gun salute, by The Honourable Artillery Company, a unique event to say the lease, he was voted the greatest Briton of all time in 2002. The man was that unique.

Now there is Elizabeth Alexandra Mary (21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) who was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, the second exception and in my lifetime I was aware of both. In every generation a truly exceptional person is born. OK, there was also the Mahatma Gandhi, so now we have three. But I challenge anyone who proclaims that these three were not unique and exceptional in almost every way.

Now we get back to the article. There we see that a Yemeni national transgressed those laws. I cannot vouch for the actions of this Yemeni national who is stated to have held a banner saying: “Umrah for the soul of Queen Elizabeth II, we ask God to accept her in heaven and among the righteous.” And now we have the issue, or perhaps the situation. What little I know I would state that God should accept her in heaven. I merely hope that the prosecution and the Islamic scholars see the event as a truly exceptional one. Queen Elisabeth II reigned for 70 years and 214 days. the longest of any British monarch, the longest recorded of any female head of state in history. And her reign was even as head of the church of England to be a reign of inclusion of any religion. Whomever this Yemeni national is, I hope that Islamic law recognises the exceptional person for whom the transgression was done and that leniency will be found. 

I also recognise that there is a need to avoid this situation and that in any generation an exception can be found, In my generation this is the one exception. Perhaps in the dusk of my life I see it differently and I might have reacted differently when I was young, but I lived through the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and the twenty two years after those and Queen Elisabeth II was a true exception and revered by a lot more than the British. So I personally hope that this Yemeni citizen, hopefully knowing Islamic law would have seen this as this one exception as well. There is a point when any law can be intentionally broken, not for ones self, but to remind us all that there is a greater good, a greater need to recognise that there is an exception to a law, any law and for many that will be the recognition of Queen Elisabeth II and the exceptional life driven to follow the duties that were bestowed on her, she kept that oath and followed her path of duties for over 70 years, a task that well over 99.999% of all people would be unable to keep, that is true exceptional and that makes her the one exception and I reckon that millions will hope that she will be welcomed into heaven, any heaven. Whether it is Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Judaism or any other religion. Less then 5 in anyones lifetime ever make it to such a list, I truly believe that Queen Elisabeth II is one of those people. I truly believe that if she enters Islamic heaven, she will be enjoying tea with Saqr bin Mohammed Al Qasimi – Ras Al Khaimah, Hussein bin Talal, Fahd bin Abdelaziz Al Saud, and Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud discussing whatever rulers talk about. I have no way of knowing that. I feel certain that they will welcome her in their midst as an equal in many ways. 

The one exception is not merely recognising that person, it will be the feeling of loss when that person is gone and it will be a rare moment when that feeling hits us when it is another nations ruler. It is a different person for most people, In case of Sir Winston Churchill, in 2002 456,498 voted him as the greatest Briton who ever lived, he won by getting 28.1% of the votes. If that same vote happens in 2030, there is no doubt that it will be Queen Elisabeth II who graces the number one spot and I predict that the vote count for her to win will be a lot higher, she might just get nearly all the votes there are and as the UK now has 67,508,936 people, I reckon she might end will well over 50 million votes. 

That is merely my point of view, and again I state that this is an Islamic stage on Islamic law and I accept that, but I also see that there will be that one exception and that is my point of view. So I can only hope that there will be leniency for this Yemeni man who intentional or not broke the law. 

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September 14, 2022 · 18:54

The weird dream

We all have them, the seem to make sense at the time, but then we wake up and the dream has absolutely stopped making sense at that point. I had one last night. In the dream I was somewhere in the Ukraine. The commander was upset because he had three Howitzers. Their undercarriage was damaged, so they could not be transported and they were too heavy to carry and the Russians were coming, a group of 9 tanks, they were less than an hour away. One of the men had an idea, he told the commander. The commander thought for a moment and they started to move the Howitzers to the other side of the field. And they were placed in a ditch so that the barrel was parallel with the ground, about a meter above the ground. Seven men moved to the other side of the field, about 150 meters down the road and the remaining man worked on camouflaging the artillery. One man went towards a tower, but not a church, carrying an SVD Dragunov. As the tanks were approaching everyone hunkered down, then as the first three tanks came into the firing line of the Howitzers a few things happened at the same time. First the sniper shot what I presumed was a tank commander peering through binoculars in the head and at that very same time three Howitzers were fired, it did more than damage the tanks, the under carriage and tracks were ripped from the tank, a 155 mm shell hitting that close to the mark, at less then 50 meters is a sight to behold, and at that same moment, the men wielding Dragon anti tank systems were slamming the tanks from the last tank onward. Panic was complete! The tanks in the middle could not move either way and they had no commander to shout them where to go. In less than a minute the Russians lost three tank platoons and given that these are $500K, that is a tidy sum that will not make it back to Russia ay day soon. To be honest, I have no idea what brought the dream to me. I have little to no interest in tanks and I have no idea where this played, so I have no idea what brought the dream towards me. Yet there was link to IBM that I could not see, not comprehend, and that is why I brought the ‘this page intentionally left blank’, I cannot tell you why these pages were there, or why the MSDOS manual had so many of them. Even in 1986 it never made sense and I never comprehended the wisdom of that move. Because they through of everything? Because they thought that there was something they did not count on? Or something that they could not see? Your guess is as good as mine. So why do we now see ‘IBM targets energy-saving mainframes at Linux users’? They could have done that 20 years ago, so why now? Hoping to get the ‘energy aware tag’ from people that have no clue or merely market environmental awareness? Like the Guardian reporter that writes about jet-setters and their planes, whilst the 147 facilities that cause 50% of all the pollution damage (as given by an EEA report) are left in the dark, even the report is ignored by a lot of environmental reporters. So why was that? 

I will leave you to consider that, but I gave it to the readers and I even included the report itself, something the Guardian seemingly never did. Why was that? Who do these Environmentalists serve and who is IBM serving now? How many  Linux mainframes does IBM have out there, and how many other servers are out there? No matter how weird the dream was, reality can be a lot stranger.

 

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August 14, 2022 · 16:08

The niche to the left

This is a nice change of steps. Someone decided to take matters into their on hands and create. It is always nice to see this. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/aug/13/tinder-for-booklovers-the-new-app-matching-like-minded-readers) gives us ‘Tinder for booklovers: the new app matching like-minded readers’, on one side I want to say this seems lat to the party, but better late than never. And to be honest, if someone comes up with any app that connects rural people together, than it is a good thing. In this case we see “Klerb is ideal for finding companions who share your taste in books, its developer says” and whether this becomes a best seller is beside the point. A good idea is a good idea. So even as we are given ““It was about 20 books on Nazi Germany and 10 Andy McNab novels,” says O’Donnell, an author. “I could feel my vulva constructing its own chastity belt.”” The idea that lass known writer fans can unite and share ideas and share thoughts is never a bad idea. I have a few reservations on “a new app in development is aiming to remove the uncertainty about literary tastes when meeting new people. Klerb has already been dubbed Tinder for bookworms because it matches you with people in your area according to your shared interests in books.” It is not a bad idea, but it seems a little too shallow. I love the books of James A. Carey, but I got to them AFTER I got introduced to The Expanse, I got into The Boys BEFORE I ever saw a comic it was based on, there is an interesting interaction between movies and books. There is every chance I get to see Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, before I have ever seen his comic books. But that is beside the point. There will be all kind of readers and fans to see more people and be connected to more Stephen King fans, and these are only the top of mind writers, there are thousands more and as such for them too a place like Klerb might be the voice box to grow their population of fans. No matter how I see it, no matter how it grows, there is an app that thought of a niche of people and it is a good idea. It will allow the The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society to connect to the Forbidden planet population of London and I cannot see that as a bad thing (beside the fact that the London people will enjoy better food). 

And we do get some more news. As we are given ““It’s not a hook-up app,” insists Abe Winter, the New Yorker who is developing Klerb, which is still being tested. “Or a dating app of any kind. But Tinder, which is not without its problems, delivers real value to communities by connecting strangers in geographical proximity. I’m trying to bring that model to reading.” We see that the maker (Abe Winter) is thinking things through, and there is the obvious fact that readers can be separated by tectonic plates (and in California several). But an app like this seems to open the doors to the bookworms in us, I personally believe that this is a good thing.

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