Tag Archives: UK

June 20, 2020 · 21:38

Multiple rulers

We have a ruler at times. A ruler so we can see whether the size measures up to the setting we held ourselves to, and a size to what we hold others. We are all like that, and sometimes we use more than one, it is almost like we set a standard metrical and then another one to get the inch setting. There is one stage we avoid; not on purpose, but the stage we set because we did not think of it. That is the stage that I found myself in this weekend. Anyone who has a Playstation 4 (or better) has either been playing the Last of us part 2, or has been contemplating playing it. There might be the smallest group that did not (and that is fair) but that group is really really small. It started in 2013, a (small) player named naughty dog, famous for Crash Bandicoot and a few other titles, had an idea and made that game, that game was titled The last of us, we might not have realised it at the time but gaming history was written that very moment. They made the game that heralded the end of the Playstation 3 on a high. The game was graphically, musically and technically at the very top of gaming, do not take my word for it, the game got over 200 game of the year awards, which is a record by itself, so when it was remastered for the Playstation 4, I did not hesitate to get it, now there is the second part and what I have seen so far is blowing my mind (again). It als gave me the idea to come up with the two ruler rule. So far the only three passing that standard are Naughty Dog, CD Project Red and Bethesda. This does not mean that others are not good, some are great. Yet to fit this measurement you need to be better than the best. I believe that those makers could have turned their game into a movie and it would be as groundbreaking and as appreciated as the game. As I see it CD Project Red did that by getting the Netflix the Witcher made. OK, they cheated by getting Superman to play the lead, but still they got it done and it is every bit as amazing as the game was. Excellence is transcendental (or so I believe) and I feel certain that the Last of US (both 1 and 2) would make amazing movies/mini series. I played part 2 to some extent and then I remembered (I thought back to the first one) and I decided to play it again. Even now, 7 years later, the first game is as overwhelming as any new game is, yes, the second one surpasseds the first one by a fair bit, but both of them leave most others in their wake, the games are that good. This is not bad for the others, there will always be rocksteady, there will always be rockstar and they will endear the gamers in their own way, there is no doubt about it, yet when we see the bullet point memo people at EA and Ubisoft, they are done for. The few franchises they hide behind will not help them, even now, their games at 70%-80% reduced rate are a debatable buy and that is not a good place to be in. When a two billion company like Ubisoft gets passed over by what some regards as small studios, we need to realise that gaming has been on the fringe of technology since the 80’s. Some people decided to give the thought that gaming too is iteration (like every year an Assassins Creed game), some exploited other means, some good and some bad, and before some think that Ubisoft is all bad, they did bring us Assassins Creed 2 (and brotherhood), Far Cry 3, AC Origins, Watchdog 2, The Division and a few others, when we look past the iteration, we see that they make good games, if only they were properly tested and vetted before release, it is the largest flaw that Ubisoft brings us today. And it is getting noticed more and more as we take notice of games like The Witcher and The Last of Us. Wecan add games like Elite Dangerous and Subnautica and the remastered edition of System Shock (hopefully 2020), we see that the original ideas are still there and they are wiping the floor with the iterative wannabe’s. You see the stage is changing and gamers are not completely aware.

We see the created hypes and we see how Microsoft is hiding behind the marketing cry ‘the most powerful system in the world’, yet they got defeated by the weakest system of them all (Nintendo Switch) and as Microsoft hides behind the hype screen we are all missing the larger point. As 4K gaming hits the front yard of many gamers this holiday season, they tend to forget that the games will be twice the size and so will the patches. In this situation consider that in places like Greece and Turkey a Ubisoft patch will take up to a day (estimated), a day per game downloading a patch. The UK, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Italy and a few others have better connections, yet in these places in Rural areas their internet is not great, so the long term view of the approach that they are currently holding is that they will not be in a great place. Yes, France, Spain and Scandinavia the connection is well above decent, yet is that the same in rural areas? In France it is not and I just set the pulse point on millions of gamers who will be in an extremely agitated state soon enough, yet not if Ubisoft continues as it currently is. And we need to review that too. A game might seem amazing, yet in the 4K life, patches will be increasingly larger and larger. So what do you think will happen when a patch is not 38 GB, but 70 GB? How long until gamers lose their shit over this, because the second time it happens might already be enough for the gamer to demand a refund, and with some places having the 7 day purchase option in place, that cooldown will be enough to end the lifespan of places like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts and Activision. Yes, I get it, others will be in a similar place, but consider keeping a list of all your games and all the patches that come through, who will win the patch race agitation list? 

Yes, we get it Bethesda will also be in a bad place, yet RPG games like Skyrim are too great and will always have patches coming their way, yet overall when I look back at the games like Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4 the amount of patches have not been overwhelming. As I see it one breakpoint patch has had more to download then the sum of nearly all Bethesda games, that is the station we see, yet we forget that the station we face is nothing more than a small way station, the stations we are about to hit are proper terminals with larger needs. We need to measure what was and what will be to a much larger extent and use two rulers, the size of the game and the size of the patches, whilst we tally the number of patches. Breakpoint was regarded by gamers as the most disappointing game of 2019, 38GB of patches later and it is still up for debate, as I see it, they no longer have any freedom of movement, gaming will change but not in their direction, the games will need to be better and their infrastructure is not ready, the patch notes give a clear indication of that. So yes, we will see a console war, but we will see a lot more than that. Santa Monica Studios, Naughty Dog and a few others are ready and they make Playstation games. The people at Microsoft are not ready for the issues that sme games bring and their Azure cloud is useless at this stage, it is about innovative gaming, the iterative clowns have no place being here. We are about to see a console war and Microsoft could soon end up in 4th position, so when we consider the big three, who else will surpass them? Their marketing hype of the most powerful console for sale, and they forgot that they still needed good games to stay in that place, with less than half a dozen exclusive games, the pickings are slim for Microsoft, to see that you needed an additional ruler, a different stage of measuring. Just like the measurement of power, there are two ways of measuring it, all whilst the elements for both formulas were readily available, too many players were looking at one formula and forgot about the other one, and that is what the limelight will show at the end of the year and when that limelight shows bright, we will see that some players are done for, one ruler would not have shown it, they all focussed on the revenue and they forgot that revenue is hindered by the resistance that patches bring, these players forgot or basically ignored the danger of large patches and now that they are 26 weeks away from a new standard these players will panic, they will panic more and more and let marketing do the fight of the public arena all whilst it will merely stop activities for a few days and some patches required months. Now, we accept that both Sony and Microsoft have that house of Pox looming, but as I see it, Sony has more alternatives and in this fight, the one with alternatives is the most likely to win. In all this there is strength to any marketing endeavour, but its flaws are there too and once your board of directors start to earnestly believe the stories they tell, they have already painted themselves into a corner. 

 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Gaming, IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 19, 2020 · 01:39

Contemplations

We all contemplate, we consider, we weigh and we make decisions after the contemplation. Yet it is not always that simple, at times the contemplation comes after what preceded. I cannot continue my novel until the laptop arrives, and even as it is completely unrelated to the idea I had for an optional TV series, the idea is still sound, as such I am considering whether the elements in it can be added to my novel, I am only at 60,000 words, it is something that I have to contemplate. We all have similar issues, it is notalways about writing, or playing a game, some contemplations are serious, some are not, yet they too tend to refract into serious parts of our lives, even if we are not initially aware of it. 

It is not the only thing that I am contemplating. I have seen over the last few days all kinds of messages, ‘tweaked’ advertisements and messages of a sort on how we can change business decisions after the Coronavirus. I am baffled on the premise of ‘new approaches to business’, I am willing to accept that new business is where you find it, yet the oversized issue is misreporting, mismanagement of government funds and mismanaging of attempts to look cool, all whilst we know that actual scientists need actual time to investigate. The greed driven elements before the Corona situation had created empty shells with the idea that some time in the future it would fix itself, all whilst those elements knew perfectly well that these things never fix themselves, they are merely pushed onto the next administration. An abuse on a global scale and the people see the impact now, they now get to live in a new situation and they elected the people that put them in that position. These governments never went out to muzzle the EU to the degree needed, as such well over € 3,000,000,000,000 in debt, as such the EU had no reserves left for what is coming now. And it did this after it was clear that the first trillion did not do what they hoped, yet they wanted it, because money has to roll and as such another stint of spending became the concept of normal. All this, whilst the proper stage of properly setting up tax laws for corporations have never been done, delayed decade after decade. All this whilst the EU had no issues to reject (in November 2019) any move to show names of those using tax avoidance a stage where the people would see the proposed situation where firms had to reveal profits made and taxes paid in EVERY EU nation they operated in, I reckon that the FAANG group has powerful friends all over the EU, and these 12 members should be looked at with a lot more scrutiny. The FAANG group is avoiding an estimated $500,000,000,000 a year, as such the irony is laughable, it would have paid for the issue they face now and in that same setting education and housing in Europe would be close to fixed, a stage history never had before. Yet, those with a low tax shelter option were happy to reject, they included Ireland, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Austria, Croatia and the Czech Republic. We all see the damage, but we are all so relieved that Apple is now a $1,500,000,000,000 company, Yes, at what expense? It is food for contemplation.

So as we see not on how we can work from home and what we need to do it properly, I wonder what happened to all those tax reductions in the 90’s so that we could work from home, there is an apparent lag in what was regarded as enough and is now showing to be inadequate. So whilst some applaud ‘EU did not witness any major internet congestion’, it comes without the mention that Netflix and YouTube slowed down services to avoid congestion, apparently full services are not possible, but that is a story for another time (in the very far future if it was up to them). So whilst BEREC (an EU regulator) was all about the reporting mechanism to monitor internet traffic, we see that I gave you the links yesterday to other people who see that most of them cannot even report the amount of people getting the Coronavirus and optional those dying from it. As such we see another optional example that human lives matter less than any danger to what is laughingly called ‘the economy’, weird is it not? 

OK, I agree that one is not the other, but it seems that when the economy is in danger a whole additional range of support services come into play, when the lives of people are on the line, this support is seemingly missing. The EU shows even more signs of lag on different levels. In other news (as stated in my previous blog) we see Humanitarian actions that are empty and other pacifist actions that are useless, yet their actions pushed close to $13,000,000,000 out of UK and US hands and handed it to both Russia and China, in addition there are several damaged deal thatSaudi Arabia had with Germany, but I have no numbers on that. So whilst I am not anti-Humanitarian, I am a pragmatist and it seems that hollow actions are just that hollow in a time and age that none can afford, even now, we seem to be utterly anti-Saudi Arabia, yet there is no factual reason to do this. In opposition we see that the actions against Iran are close to non-existent, all whilst Forbes reported yesterday that there are 100 new naval vessels in Iran, it seems that there is a lot to contemplate, especially as some EU players are hiding behind the Nuclear deal like it is a Santa wish list, all whilst we see from several directions, some less than a day old ‘New tensions dim hopes for salvaging Iran Nuclear deal’ and ‘New IAEA report is reminder of old problems with the Iran Nuclear Deal’ a stage that shows that Iran does what it pleases and takes no time to be civil about it, when it is conventional it is one thing, the nuclear side is a direct threat to Israel and Saudi Arabia and the EU players are willing to burn those two elements if they look better, because Iran will make some bullshit excuse on how it was not their fault, that it was a fanatic and they possibly misjudged the situation and those European players will all nod in agreement, their pockets optionally lined with income never earned. And we are all letting it happen.

It is perhaps our greatest flaw, we do not act when we should, we let greed driven motivations overwhelm our needs and we seek to blame someone when we all let this happen, as contemplations go, we have to think through a lot at present and we need to do it faster.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Military, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 26, 2020 · 22:47

Merging greed with stupidity

At times it happens smooth and almost undetectable slow, like watching paint dry. Yet it happens, the greed driven merge with the stupid stricken and the compact new package tends to foil their pound (or dollar) shaped pupils, that part can be seen in the BBC article ‘Huawei: What would happen if the UK ditched the firm?’. It is important to note that this is not about the article, or the writer of the article. So when we see “Huawei’s major 5G rivals are Nokia and Ericsson – two European firms. The networks claim that having three providers to choose from helps them negotiate lower prices” In all this, one could state that this is the first openly stupid statement. Not the fact of it, the fact is seemingly clear. Yet consider that in the time of the Ford Model T, Jaguar released the X series (as is) something that is a lot ahead of the other, why would it be cheaper? Why would it care that the Ford Model T is there? It does not give us more consideration or make prices cheaper, it merely shows that those choosing the Ford Model T as their mode of transportation, is out of business soon thereafter and that is what we face. Ericsson and Nokia are 2-5 years behind Huawei and in that time the 5G fight is fought and those relying on the Ford Model T is out of the race, like that optionally severely stupid MP stating “there were more important considerations”, so what is that? Being the bitch of American greed driven needs? We see the influence of ‘the influence of the Chinese communist party’ yet so far never one clear piece of evidence has been provided by anyone, and it is not just me, people with much higher skills in IT and cyber security are making the same noise. We are flocking to a nation that has been about exploitation and driving iteration. And now that innovation is at their front door, they scream interference whilst not providing evidence. The BBC article is important as we see “Removing Huawei would seriously delay 5G, costing the British economy up to £7bn”, I believe that the costs will be much higher. The losses will exceed £15bn as well as set the economy back 5-8 years and when that happens, others will surpass and others will get juicy service contracts, a stage the UK cannot afford to lose at present. I believe it is time to DEMAND actual answers, to DEMAND actual evidence of communist interference, I feel driven to this because there is no evidence, people a lot more clever than I had already assessed that part. And we need to realise that this is the time when the greed drive should not be allowed to get the stupid to speak up and take the stage. 

 

So when we see ABC giving us ‘British review of Huawei’s inclusion in 5G rollout welcomed by Australian security officials’, I personally merely wonder how many are sucking up to places like Telstra. In addition, unless they give clear evidence on HOW the Chinese government is taking ‘control’ I wonder how many of them will make statements that include ‘optionally could’ and a few other statements that are speculative. In all this, we show that we are all the bitches of American fear of economic collapse and some of them are likely to get nice presents around christmas, perhaps a bottle of wine. The point is not whether they do or don’t, the issue becomes that these steps will hinder our own progress, because that is what iterative technology does and if it was SO important, UK and Australian technology would drive the future needs, not follow others. In the end I do not care who we are following, this government and the one in London decided to be lazy and let others rule the technology, I can live with that, but to exclude technology on unfounded accusations is just plain stupid. Especially when others (who are slightly less stupid) get to take the reigns in mobile communication, when Asia and the Middle East take charge in forward momentum, do you think even for one second that anyone cares what we needed? That is the hidden part of American push, they do not care what we end up with, they merely need their fears of collapse to go away and when that is done they will worry about the next part. Yet at that point it is already too late for us. Is it not interesting that the 5G sales that Huawei offered received little to no investigation? It did not suit the American solution, their economy still loses and we should not care, we need to care what is best for US!

It seems that in that regime those who need to decide for us, seem to rely on ‘the world is too complex for that’ and they go about their personal needs whatever they might be. So all these people who talk on anonymity, when we put them out in the clear we will probably see a very different stage, I wonder who will wonder about that stage and exactly where WE fit in, because I am reasonably certain that in these dark days we have no consideration coming our way. 

The greed and stupid driven people are in a stage where we should demand that they are in the out and open. And I reckon that we are 2 years away from that loud demand from the people, in 2023 as others are taking the 5G lead will push more and more economy their way, that is the moment that we get wave after wave of ‘carefully phrased denials’ and ’miscommunication between officials and consultants’, at that point our goose is cooked in no uncertain ways. 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 24, 2020 · 02:15

In anger

Some say that you should never write when you are angry, I do not know if it holds water, or if it is linked to levels of anger, but for now I am livid. It started with the BBC ‘Leading economist warns of 10 years of depression and debt’ the headline is incomplete, but that is on purpose, I will amend that soon. Nouriel Roubini is warning us of a prolonged downturn. Part of that is true, the fact that the debt in European countries is so high that most require 1-2 generations to fix it if they start now is just the start of it. For Japan and America the news is worse, they have surpassed the point of no return to avoid collapse, Greece is in that stage too, but their economy is not that big. So how that suddenly comes down to 10 years is a joke. Now the BBC started the article with ‘Coronavirus:’ that is the part I left off, but the story remains the same, the virus is merely making it worse. In all this I cannot comment on the Russian and Chinese economie, I do not have enough data on either to make any kind of speculation in that area, but there is enough chatter to see that they are not in a good spot either. And then we see the second jab, it was partially hidden, but it was there “Either you use my 5G, or you are using one of my rivals. Therefore there is going tobe a more divided world” he added things like robotics and AI, but the message is clear, to save our economy, we need to lie down with one 5G solution that fits us the best. There is clear American influence there. The problem is that this stage was to be expected, in the light of the downturn, the US is dead scared that Huawei gets any more positive boosts. We see the first in the Guardian ‘Boris Johnson forced to reduce Huawei’s role in UK’s 5G networks’ The fact that the second line indicates that Huawe’s involvement is set to zero by 2023. So Boris is turning out to be merely the bitch of the White House, the same White House that has NEVER given us any evidence regarding Huawei. In all this there is an upside, when (not if) the American solutions collapses and we see the American whining for delays and we get to tally the hundred excuses that they give, we will see that the EU nations ignoring the US stance, the Middle East and Asia will surpass the other nations to a much larger extent. It will end the EU and as theUS collapses due to technology that does not work, the blamers will demand to see the Evidence on Huawei and as there is none, that stage will end Republican domination in the US for decades to come. Yet that is not the upside, the upside is that technology will be in the hands of Asian players, the EU and the US will have to break up all these bullet point companies and atthatstage the actual nerds in the know will suddenly brain drain towards Asia, we will see a new channel of technology fields rise, merely because the stage will have changed in a much larger field. Even as we see the lies on LinkedIn (for example “In this small world where Human intelligence uses Artificial Intelligence to build our earth a better place to live”)  The problem here is that AI does not exist, you can hype it all you can, but deeper learning is merely a small part of AI if it ever becomes reality, So basically, the person stated “In this small world where Human Intelligence is waiting for AI to build our earth a better place to live when AI becomes a reality”, there is no doubt that AI will become a reality at some point and the IBM Quantum computer (which is in its final stages) is essential for making AI a reality, as such the entire headline by Forbes ‘Can the AI Economy really be worth $150 trillion by 2025?’ is a serious one, but I just can’t stop giggling. Even as we see “Research firm Gartner expects the global AI economy to increase from about $1.2 trillion last year to $3.9 trillion by 2022”, now we need to understand that research on all this is not cheap and never free, but the amount of money being pumped into all this all whilst we are in a collapsing economy and it will hit us long before true AI is ready. So who inherits it all? The Forbes article is good and they give good information, but I see it as a delay point in something the economy can no longer afford. 5G changes that and that is one of the reasons why the US is playing the game they are and as I see it, they are losing it faster and faster. 

There is yet another side in all this, Google is still the one that can mostly keep up with Huawei and it is not getting the resources they need to get ahead of the game, even as Google was on par from the beginning, the entire stage is limited as Huawei has the advantage, that is their benefit as an innovative source. The rest is trailing by 3-4 years, that is the impact that innovation brings and the big wigs in London and Washington are clearly oblivious to that part. The entire delay game will backfire and when it does, those who have fully implemented 5G will get ahead of the rest more and more. In this we see that there is every chance that Asia and some nations in the Middle East will be ahead of the EU and the US, collapsing both groups even further. Consider that side in the simplest equation, if you are a developer, will you set up an office in an ADSL2 building, or in one that has a 64Kb modem? The difference between 4G and 5G is that big and it is only worse for those no longer enjoying a head start. So when we see “My AI is making me build better worlds”, we need to realise that it is a virtual fictive stage in something that does not exist. The media will not properly inform us and we see things getting labelled a something that is not that, we need to see that we are losing a battle as we are driven in directions that do not exist, why is that?

Perhaps if the involved Yanks were not as complacent and lazy as they were, they still had the home field advantage, and we allowed for the drive away from true innovation? Why is that? 

In anger we need to accept that we are getting played by people who want to hold onto their cushy lifestyles, and we are letting it happen. We are allowing a stage of misdirected economy leaving us with less than nothing when it explodes in our faces, and it will explode in our faces.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 21, 2020 · 22:08

FaceFlu

Yes, we have had Covid-19 v1, we are about to experience version two of that flu and neither of them speak Spanish, so now we see that the BBC is giving us ‘Facebook defends itself over virus misinformation’ less than an hour ago. Why do they have to? Who arrested David Icke over the spreading of the rumour, the false rumour that the Coronavirus was spread by 5G? Who has arrested him, who has prosecuted him? You see in all this, Facebook is fighting this fight with both hands behind their backs and every ankle has a ball and chain bound to it, not really a fair fight is it?

Another article by the BBC gives us that Malaria medication is used as a trial against the Coronavirus, why? Professor Nicholas White from Oxford University is not even sure if it is  beneficial or harmful, so as such does it even make sense to test this on 40,000 health workers? That is quite the trial, I see it as a massive overreaction, now let’s be clear, I did not study medicine, so I do not know, but I am aware that finding a vaccine is 12-18 months away and we are not even 6 months into that timeline. We see all kinds of media talk about frontrunners, with subtle undertones like “very early findings indicate the vaccine is safe and doing what it needs to do” in that path (source: ABC) can we not consider that this is corporate misinformation? Some company no one has heard of sets a record time, a record time that is close to one third? Whilst another source gives us ‘Vaccine experts say Moderna didn’t produce data critical to assessing Covid-19 vaccine’, something that ABC did not give us, or perhaps I missed it. Is misdirected hope not harmful too?

When we see “The Companies stock valuation also surged, hitting $29 billion, an astonishing feat for a company that currently sells zero products” I see that the economy is impacted several times over and all in the light of recession with a flavour of Corona (not the beer). We are so driven to slap Facebook, yet we refuse to slap the media on several fronts. 

We look at the good, we shiver at the bad, but we refuse to valuate and investigate the media bringing the news. How is that fair on Facebook? The media at large also uses Facebook to get the clicks and the views, yet they are not investigated, the balance of events is spinning out of control and we are not looking at what may be, it works for me, I am seeing an optional surge in my IP and I merely have to wait until the new Corona strikes, my IP will flourish because of it. It was never designed to do that, it was merely a happy side effect and my peers are still not looking in the directions I am and it is brilliant (for me), as there is every chance that there is another path that is opening up for me, I rejoice, yet I might have to rely on my nil existing knowledge of the Chinese language, such is life. So as the US senate is delisting China firms with a reference to the Luckin Coffee accounting scandal, I am not aware of it, but I do remember a grocery store named Tesco, how much action did the US senate take there? In 2017 the probe into PwC was called off, so as far as I can tell, we in the west have a lot more skeletons in our closets than China has. As I see it, we have plenty of problems, we do not need to inherit the short sighted, greed driven American ones. 

These are all elements that hit us and they impact our corona lockdown lives as well, because the news that we see, and the media does not care about us, it cares about its shareholders, its stakeholders and its advertisers, and they all need some bogeyman to exist, so that they can move unnoticed, and as flames are created and evidence is absent is several cases, we get handed a bag of goods, one that pleases the media and its three masters. To those four Facebook is a problem and they are making it a much larger and overly visible one, why do we not notice that? So whilst the media struggle for flames goes on, we might notice some news, but we ignore a whole lot more, because we are not informed. 

And there lies the problem, how can we know what we are not told? In some cases Al Jazeera, the BBC, the Guardian, the Washington Post and the NY Times give a decent completeview, but they are all for the most so deep into Corona issues that news slips them all. And that is the stage smeplayers need to have, yet Facebook can change that and they really do not like Facebook. Facebook can adjust instantly and that is what some do not like at present. Will we see another chapter in that? It is too soon to tell, but overall there is a stage where Facebook cold end up playing a much larger role, and if the timing is good the media will cry like a little bitch stating that they lacked resources, the only question that remains for you is how I could see this coming a mile away, the answer is simple, ithas been going on for a while now, yet the Corona virus was not anticipated, it changed a lot too fast for some and Facebook was there, like a tower, merely facilitating for the message and those messagemakers are often not in the pocket of the three controlling the media. It has been this way for years, the Coronavirus escalations are merely bringing it to the surface.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

April 23, 2020 · 01:31

Opposing the light

There are several things happening in this world, yes there is a Coronavirus happening and last monday I lost a friend to that. I had not seen him for months and he had his own life (a good life mind you), he was a friend, a friend I could not see too often for all kinds of reasons (not all mine). Such is life and we need to realise that at times, we reach a point where all that changes overnight. 4,950 died in Australia, one of them was my friend, in a population of 25 million, it is a mere 1% of 1% that I am personally connected to. I should have bought a lottery ticket last week with these numbers!

The BBC gave me an interesting update as numbers go. A lot of it was not interesting, it was a been there done that. The entire situation takes a turn when we are given the realisation that France included the deaths at  care homes, England does not, as such the numbers we are introduced to are flawed and incomplete. In all this we have a group of EU nations who decide on what is reported and what is not. Apparently a corona death in a care home is not a corona death at all, how is that for today’s tuna bake?

Yet the realisation that his is happening, how about Germany and France? France had 158,000 and 20,796 non living whilst Germany had 149 thousand and only 5,117 deceased, as I state in previous blogs, the numbers just do not add up, and it gets to be worse when we compare the deceased in France and Germany 20,786 versus 5,117. That is not merely care deaths, that (in my personal opinion) constitute another factor, the difference is too big. If this is not the case, if this is truly about reporting, then we see that the case for ending theEU has been made, after all this time, billions squandered, there is no correct protocol for reporting? And the entire pandemic, or uniqueness does not count. The numbers are squandered all over the place and the people are kept in the dark, in all this the EU has become somewhat of a joke. 

And when it comes to ‘rescue packages’ the sun really lashes out. Now, I get it, there is a good case to push for some relief and I would not disagree, yet there is a strong sense that this is just a jacked up dal that was denied when there was no coronavirus. As such we see Austria, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands are opposing any deal for the mere reason that they are held liable for repaying the debts of the irresponsible politicians in the south and that case had been made a few times over. A stronger case for ending the EU is right there.

As long as nations are not held responsible for their acts, their ability to push their gravy train on the other members has now reached the size where several nations are strongly pushed towards ending the EU and there is the larger problem for the EU, they should have stepped in when Greece went over the side and they did not, they let it fester for over a decade and now we see that the pull to remove the EU is now a much clearer path, the UK got out in time, but only just. Due to the Coronavirus we now see a possible escalation that would give a much stronger rise to Frexit and Nexit due to the political strife they face. To be honest, I never saw Nexit happen as Geert Wilders (a Dutch politician) fell short by a larger amount, yet that time is gone and renewed options are in play. Is their path the best for them? I actually do not know, I feel that it was the best course for the UK, but that does not mean it was the best for all. I think the Netherlands has strong enough ties to survive that move, France as well, yet in that light Italy and Spain face much larger hurdles. Even as the French economy is in the drain, they do have options, Spain and Italy much less so.

Will it happen? I do not know, but the Corona setting is allowing for a much larger setting of anger in the populations then we ever thought possible, as such the stage changes by a lot. The entire lockdown will only fester it worse, that is how I see it. Even as Geert Wilders sees the Corona escalations to push Nexit, his strength is waning and he cannot bring it about, yet in all this the EU and their approach to their gravy trains are another matter, millions of Europeans have had enough as inequality is rising, Spain and Italy will set another stage, one that the EU cannot face, and whilst the EU will not show responsibility and forces politicians to be accountable, the entire matter merely escalates. A lot of Europeans no longer see the EU as the light and some are actually opposing that light. The Corona mess in Europe is bringing a festering wound to the open limelight that was previously only slowly festering before. In all this the EU breakup was always going to happen, the Coronavirus is merely escalating matters. 

Can it be worse? Yes! Will it be worse? That depends on the EU and its greedy politicians, even as we saw the media report on all these people their is still the flaming income and gravy train matter that is out in the open and the people who are scraping by are getting more and more angry, now that we see that even a simple cadaver tally cannot be relied on, the dam is breaching and that festering issue is merely blanketed and optionally misrepresented by the connected stakeholders. 

People are opposing what was once seen as a solving light, it took a mere case of the flu to bring it to the surface.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

April 21, 2020 · 01:27

Vote Ogre

Even I, on my best day can get duped, we all have it in ourselves to fall like a little guppie taking in hook line and sinker and then wiggle like today is the last day you ever do the macarena. I will not go to deep into details, for several reasons that have nothing to do with my ego, but I fell like a crackwhore falls for a brick of pure H. There is no denying it and there was no gold at the end of the rainbow. Even I, Mr Doubting Anyone can be gotten to. As such the fake coronavirus details out there, are the worst kind of details to follow and to belief (not that I do). In this there are always exceptions. In the first rely only on a real newspaper for the actual and factual events (like the Times, the Guardian, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe) the list is not super long but it is renowned. In all this the source matters. Yes, even in these forms some will ‘misrepresent’ the cases and elaborate on a percentage whilst the cases are abysmally small, but they will not lie, as such reading the entire article is important. In that same trend The presentation on the Covid virus by Governor Cuomo was exceptionally good. He was clear on issues and explaining the numbers. It is a 50 minute presentation, so it is long, but you see the goods. As such it is a little upsetting to see that it had 950 thumbs up and 1400 thumps down ratings. As such there is a chance that more and more people ignore the well brought news. The press conference was covered by several sources as such searching ‘Cuomo’ on YouTube will get you there. His view is important because New York represents 1/3rd of ALL US corona cases. New York has a massive population packed together and it is only a first indication of the issues that Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston could face and if the mobs are pushing to end lockdown, the worst is yet to come for the US. 

There is no guarantee where it hits, how it hits and how many it hits, but there is every chance that the greater cities will need the NY numbers when their deuce is up. 

We tend to go by the deceitful part of the numbers, on how the US is the largest place to get hit (and that is still true), yet the truth is that the US is half the size of the EU and they are at present in an abysmal place. Like the nations of Europe, the US states will have to stop everything for a much longer time and that realisation needs to set in,and it needs to set in fast. 

I could go into reverse psychology and tell them to continue the current path, because 2 dead full time workers in the US means that optionally one in the EU or Commonwealth is regained. I wonder if they ever saw it that way. They are all booing the 22 million jobs missing, but a lot of them are tems and hospitality. Consider what happens when the dead jobs of IT are replaced by EU jobs. The IT field is much more global, and these bosses mostly consider their bonus check, at present I have received 4 international offers, the move towards Europe is already starting by some. In a more greedy setting, as Google runs dry in the US, Huawei can buy my 5G IP, it is that simple. Big business pushed for mercenary tactics when it suited them, now they are not the choosing side and I go where the money is, they taught me that, and they had no problem with short changing loyalty when it suited them. 

There is a larger issue in play, even for the ‘pros’ like me, it becomes ever easier to mistake news and fake news, the difference is often no longer visible and the media when they hunted clicks and views are in part to blame, so when they cry ‘foul’ over fake news, whilst they opened that stream themselves is a little hypocrite, don’t you think?

And it gets to be a lot worse, the speeches from the White House are giving the indication that one elected official is more interesting in setting his ego to a good place, than consider the health and safety of his fellow Americans, I myself have a Republican side and I have never been so ashamed of anyone doing the acts we see, merely to look good whilst over 40,000 Americans are dead and a lot of them have not been buried yet, in addition, there is every indication that the total of non surviving American will double, optionally even triple. In addition to all this there are all the voices shouting on how we were not ready. It is true to some degree and to some degree governments all over the world will hide from the responsibility that these administrations and the ones before them had, yet what we all forget is that this situation has not happened since WW1. The Spanish flu would kill as some numbers give between 40 and 100 million people and in those days only the rich could afford to travel, nowadays we have been spreading the virus all over the planet, in that regard, the damage could end up being worse. Yes, medicines available are better now, but there is no vaccine, there is no real treatment, the strong will live, others will not, that is the short and sweet of it.

In all this, we need to realise that we either stand together or accept the loss of a neighbour, as such the protests in the US are completely out of whack. Will I be wrong? I truly hope so, but most of the factual information I rely on gives a much darker future. We need to change the mindset we have and tht is shown as we face the setting in India which is currently unknown, the numbers are incorrect and there is a much larger stagewhere we see that the Indian government has no idea what to do. They are smaller than the US having to deal with a population close to 600% of what the US has, consider the entire US packed like Manhattan and you get the idea just how uncontrollable that setting is. The Mumbai region alone is 55 million people and there is no way that this can be contained as soon as cases become visible. One will infect 25-50, as such the 12,000 cases stated cannot be correct, yet the setting is that there is no way to find all the infected, there are not enough resources in the EU to identify the cases that require treatment in India and as such the curve goes from bad to worse. In my mind there is also no way that the US is so far ahead of India in cases. It takes one person to travel from region to region (on a train) to end up infecting most of the train and we are shutting our eyes to that danger.

As such, when you see the optional troll stepping in and telling you that everything is safe, step back and vote Ogre! Do not believe him/her, and in that mindset, do not believe me either, find out what is true from factual sources like renowned newspapers (preferable not one owned by Rupert Murdoch).

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

April 20, 2020 · 00:30

When walls close in

I had an interesting day, my mind designed another game, I dreamt of a new movie and I considered what comes next in the entire Covid mess. I will say upfront that it is all speculation, the issues skating close to the truth usually are. It all started with the news. The BBC gives us ‘Trump: A safe gradual and phased opening’, which might be nice and OK, yet the people who actually know about sickness and disease think it is a bad idea. With 2,347,887 sick and 161,138 dead people some will get to say ‘I see dead people’, and they might be telling the truth. I will not waste your time to consider the 739K sick people in the US and the connected 39K dead people, the math there does not hold up completely because of the timeline and the speed at which it pushes through due to large cities like New York. And what do hundreds of Americans do, people without any level of medical education mind you? They protest against the Covid rules, they are the source of propagating the disease and that is good. You see Wall Street and its vassals need to learn the one lesson they forgot about, if you bank on a consumer based wealth cuve, you need actual consumers and the US lost over 39K consumers. Their debts cannot be collected and the curve changes. Even as some Texans push to reopen to open their business, we will see that the rents are due but a lot of customers will stay away. Open business without mindful consumers spending money. Yes it is the time for Amazon to really reel in the cash, but in the end, the shops still lose. And remember resident Trump making some waves in proclaiming against all evidence that the mortality rate of Covid would be no more than 1.8%? It is over 5% in the US at present. No one seems to be asking the right questions. The economic model must be adhered to and the EU is starting to realise that it is a mere tool in the needs of the US, AUS has not figured that out yet, but they will, or perhaps AUS will become the 53rd state of the US. All speculative options at present,something that will be merketter as the A state of the US.

In my view there is a lot of overreaction regarding the flu, yet I am willing to accept that it is done to lower the curve and to keep casualties down, OK, I get it. I might not like it, but I get it and that feeling remains absent for a lot in the US.

Andin all this as we see the reactions to investigations on the World Health Organisation, I am content to write those names down, the pretentious Marise Payne who is all about bi-partisanship. The interesting thing is that this all happened right after the accusations by President D. Trump, yet not unlike the Huawei situation no evidence of any kind was ever produced, and again the A state of the US is following. It is one of those times when ‘bipartisan’ seems to meen, ‘a tool for the US’. 

Why am I here?

You see a flu this amazing where mortality rate is in the sewers and all over the place, jumping from 2% to 10% whilst there are over 100K patients in that country is not natural. There can always be some fluctuation, but if you merely look at Germany and France, where the amount of dead people are apart by almost 500%, there is a larger issue, that issue is that there is more to the disease and nations are in denial of that part, yet blaming China makes it all OK, or so they think.

Let’s make sure that I am not stating that they are innocent, I am stating that so far we see no evidence of any kind and the open hostilities of the US towards China are not set in any light in the media. That too is a piece of evidence that needs to be illuminated.

The stage where Marise Payne is stating that the WHO should not run the investigation and that she is stating that China should allow for transparency whilst she herself is in a doubtful stage is unmentioned. I agree that the coronavirus needs to be investigated, yet it needs to be done by the right people, the fact that she wants to invalidate the WHO from the get go is weird to say the least. In all this the first station of the flu is healthcare and they have been underfunded for over a decade, the health of consumers was overplayed and the effects underestimated. This is visible in AUS, the UK, many nations in the EU and the US. I know too little of Japan to add them to the list. 

THese consumers are adamant and directly involved, because without them the Wall Street formula fails and someone is finally realising it. Forbes stated on April 13th (a Monday) ‘Wall street Wobbles as investors ignore the science of Covid-19’ and there we see “its transmissibility and mortality rate are known to health officials. All of this information has been communicated publicly” yet there are clear open souces out there as well as the numbers in Germany,Spain, Italy and China that makes for a shoddy case in both matters and the people are just ignoring it. The article shows a few other parts and also the fact that when it comes to Wall Street, it is erratic, especially when the numbers go down and that is what will happen, as the US surpasses a mortality numbers of 50K, we will see panic by investors, especially as the disease does not differentiate between the rich and the poor, the worker and the abuser, a flu that merely kills. And when they realise that the death rate in the US is five times that of Germany, we will see initial inklings that there is a larger play and it is not seen in the death numbers, it will be seen in the stage where economies cannot get started because it requires consumers and they are dead. Yet the total deaths is lower than those in Syria and Yemen, so why bother now?

Because now they are consumers that these companies vie for and they no longer answer their phones, and for the most the health officials are ignored to avoid the danger that the message is too negative. As we see in the UK that the NHS people are wearing aprons instead of gowns. As they are on life support, we see a much larger danger. A nation where health care falls away, it took 114K patients and 15K deaths to pull that off, so when will Americans realise that their numbers are a lot worse and their levels of inequality. The Guardian gave us ‘Profit over people, cost over care: America’s broken healthcare’, and no one in the US is actively investigating that part? Australia is almost in a similar place. 

It is not the beginning or the middle, this is the beginning of the beginning and things will get worse. I wonder how many people realise that, even as we see all kinds of numbers, when we do get sick and healthcare falls away, the world has a problem and the US will be one of the first ones to learn what happens when the Wall Street formula cannot be matched. For them profit is everything, lives are not.

So whilst you are in lockdown, consider the fact that when the walls fall in, it is not a case of the walls falling in, but you have been placed in a coffin and you are a number on the covid stats, no matter where you live. And optionally, you will be one of the forgotten, especially as the BBC and others are stating that these numbers are so much higher than expected. In the UK has 2,000 home care locations with the Coronavirus, yet ABC claims that their numbers are not to be found, so how high is the problem and what else is unknown at present. So whilst we are not in possession of the numbers, some are still willing to blame China, all whilst for too long too many places left the border open until specifics were known, that failing in foresight is also unmentioned in many places, I wonder what that investigation will bring to the table of Marie Payne, if she looks at it at all.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 20, 2020 · 15:02

Insensitive Me

Yes, at times I tend to be truly absent of empathy, especially when I see small items like ‘as companies struggle with debt‘, so as I am given ‘Experts warn companies that have gorged on cheap money for the past decade face going out of business‘, some of them relied on the famous sales quote ‘Fake it till you make it’, and now we see the ‘warning’ sign “A worldwide credit crunch triggered by the coronavirus will set in motion a wave of corporate bankruptcies that will make the global financial crisis look like “child’s play”, investors have warned.” In this my sober response would be ‘And? Why (the eff) would I care?‘, these people relied on the debt, money they never had to get beyond the point of faking it till they made it and one small flu event is now driving them out of business. So as the world is throwing trillions against it all, I wonder just how short sighted they are. The EU spent 3 trillion on an economy to start it and it never did. As such there will be a much larger toll to everyone involved. There is no upside in “The sudden loss of revenue faced by airlines, tourism-related businesses and carmakers make them extremely vulnerable” OK, we get it, it is not their fault, but we have seen an economy giving out ebts, loans and cheap travels all over the world. Now that there will be an actual cost, there is always an impact we did not see coming. And as we are treated to: “many companies will struggle to refinance debt due to a repeat of the sudden change in credit conditions that sparked the 2007 credit crunch, banking collapses and then the GFC. The prospect of no revenue for months meant creditworthiness had plummeted in exposed sectors and cut off access to funding” we see the shortsigted issues that not having reserves bring. There is now a larger cost to rolling over debts and the stage that zero revenue brings will kill off the smaller players, those players thinking that they were in the same league of the big boys and the big boys are indeed wondering if they survive this age, as such the small fishes have almost no chance. 

As such as we consider the impact of “$2 trillion worth of corporate debt is due to be rolled over this year” all whilst we see no validation of debt rolling over, and the absence of paid off debts, we see a much larger field and everyone is in a stage ‘but why me?‘, as I personally see it, it will affect everyone who did not take the option to reduce their debts. I get it, some will be in a shabby situation and none of this is on them, but to give a rise to 5 out of 500 is a little shallow, is it not? It is the station that we see with “Lindsay David, of independent consultancy LF Economics, said the coronavirus shutdown had exposed longstanding imbalances in the financial system that had been disguised by more than a decade of ultra-low interest rates and trillions of dollars from quantitative easing schemes in the major economies“, we see the stupidity of ‘longstanding imbalances in the financial system‘ and the question attached to that ‘Why was it unattended for so long?‘ is a station that no one wants to be at, no one wants to answer that part of the equation. 

As such, the quote “We know everyone is overleveraged, full-bore, full-risk,” he said. “All we were waiting for was a trigger and unfortunately that has come in the form of a health crisis.” As such it is not the fault of the Coronavirus, any trigger would have sufficed, as such being the one adhering to some Wall Street need, is set to zero and the house will take it all, it is in that light that some see players like Virgin Australia who needs to roll over $5 billion whilst it is in a stage where it cannot bring more than $500 million to the table, a mere 10%, even in the better stage where it would have been double that, rolling over is a doubtful stage for a few lenders, yet this health trigger is not the one anyone hoped or even wished for, it is a stage that was well over 10 years in the making and greed driven people filled their pockets and walked away with a multi million bonus, enough to live in luxury for the next 10 years. After which the market will resettle and their stage of profit comes again, that is what we have catered to.

So as we are introduced to “A full repeat of the post-Lehman Brothers crisis was on the cards, he said, as banks scrambled to hold on to liquidity” a lot of people have not considered the stage we see where the panic driven people first bought out all the pasta they could and after that take out their ATM and saving balance before the bank runs out, at that stage the initial point leading to the worst of the worst will be a much larger stage for everyone.

And the larger issue is seen at the end of the article with: “Let’s say you are a pension fund in Canada and six years ago you gave a bank $1bn. Every year you roll over that bond and the deal remains in place. But now you’re saying, ‘you know what, can I have that money back now?’. So the problem for the company is, where will I find $1bn? Not from its deposits or its liquidity because it’s now got more money going out than coming in.” and that is not where it ends, in October 2019 we saw “regulators should be ensuring the strength of the financial sector to withstand future risks, not weaken it, but that is not what is happening in the U.S.  Recent moves to ease regulations suggest financial stability risks are at an inflection point. Incentives to leverage will continue to rise as interest rates remain low amid a global search for yield.  Vulnerabilities that have been “moderate” could escalate quickly to “elevated”, as they did in the lead up to the 2007 – 2008 crisis“, as such some tried to ‘ease’ the Basel 3 regulations as fast as their greedy needs required, as such, we see “Phase-in arrangements for the leverage ratio were announced in the 26 July 2010 press release of the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision. That is, the supervisory monitoring period will commence 1 January 2011; the parallel run period will commence 1 January 2013 and run until 1 January 2017; and disclosure of the leverage ratio and its components will start 1 January 2015. Based on the results of the parallel run period, any final adjustments will be carried out in the first half of 2017 with a view to migrating to a Pillar 1 treatment on 1 January 2018 based on appropriate review and calibration” (at https://www.bis.org/press/p100912.pdf), now that was then and it got a little more time “The leverage ratio1 and the Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR), which took effect in January 2018, and the supervisory framework for measuring and controlling large exposures, which took effect in January 2019, have yet to be adopted by all jurisdictions (Graph 1). The leverage ratio is now in force in 16 jurisdictions (one more since 2018), while 11 jurisdictions have final rules in force for the NSFR (unchanged since 2018). Only 10 jurisdictions have final rules in force for the large exposures framework.” (at https://www.fsb.org/work-of-the-fsb/implementation-monitoring/monitoring-of-priority-areas/basel-iii/) as such it is not required until 1 January 2022 (as some stated), and now that it is too late, we will get the larger impact. So how happy are you with those people making 6 figure numbers and delaying it all again and again? You will feel that part soon enough when internal systems start to buckle. We might think that President Trump $1 trillion dollar bailout is a good thing, but when that money dries up (and it will dry up a lot faster than you think) he will a scared little mouse, as he will see firsthand what 300 million angry Americans look like and corporations will see the impact of their delay and rollover tactics. Even now as we are told ‘Trump administration is asking states to hold off on releasing unemployment figures as economy plummets‘, we might start to see a much larger failing. We are in a stage where we set ourselves up for a much larger stage, one that outstages the great depression of the 30’s, it merely took a case of the flu to get us there.

Should you think I am exaggerating, consider the Bloomberg headline (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-19/goldman-sees-deepest-australian-downturn-since-great-depression) a mere 2 hours ago. It might have the sobering ‘Goldman Sees Deepest Australian Downturn Since Great Depression‘ headline, but in part the overp[aid delaying factors are to some degree cause of it all and they are hiding behind “Most of the contraction is expected to be driven by a collapse in ‘social’ consumption“, the essential part of ‘the stage of reserves is not what it needed to be‘ is not mentioned anywhere, you have to distill that from other parts and read through the emptiness of what they claim, they might claim facts, yet they do not give any part of the whole story and it will hit the US, Australia, the UK, France, Spain, Italy and to some degree even Germany. That is what we have to look forward to, at least as the Covid panic continues. It seems to me that the makers of pasta and pantry items are in a much better position. Until a month ago, the idea that San Remo ends up being one of the richest companies in Australia would have been laughed at, when you look at the empty shelves almost everywhere last week, that stage is a lot less laughable at present, I wonder in all this whether the new economic superpower will include San Remo and/or Barilla, as there is a chance that the seat of Virgin Australia on that board will be up for grabs soon enough.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 18, 2020 · 15:14

Pray for the incantation

As we prayed in the circle of light, we were given the clue we needed to proceed. Yet, for a lot of people that does not make sense and it does not need to be the case. Those who ever played the RPG Ultima 3 will know what I mean. It was an ‘other’ action that was required. It was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw ‘Saudi Arabia suspends prayer in mosques, exempts holy Makkah and Madinah sites‘ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1642761/saudi-arabia),in this I wonder what the churches are contemplating. We see ‘Most Vatican offices open, but adapting schedules in wake of pandemic‘, it is there where we see the first iteration of who prays towards the need for greed and who does not. Even as we are informed in the very first paragraph to “Vatican offices will remain open to ensure “essential services for the universal church,” but each office is being asked to evaluate the best ways to provide those services while observing health precautions and guidelines on safe distancing to prevent the spread of the coronavirus“, it is nice that the clergy is adapting towards ‘evaluate’ even as we all realise on how they are absent of medical knowledge, they are also a little unaware of the cases in their surrounding Italy with 31,506 cases and 2,503 non-living people, increasing their nonliving population by 345 in the last 24 hours. All this whilst the Vatican has a reported 1 case of the disease and as far as we can tell that person is still alive, yet in that given environment “Pope Francis ignored the lockdown of Italy amid the country’s severe coronavirus outbreak, and shocked two churches with a special visit to soothe fears and pray for the end of the disease spreading across the planet“, what can I say? The man is a proven ideologist.

Yet we see the sober act in Saudi Arabia “Saudi Arabia has decided to suspend congregational prayers across all mosques in the Kingdom, except for the Two Holy Mosques in Makkah and Madinah“, it is an act that makes sense. In addition we see a second part that makes sense “Mosque doors will be closed temporarily but they will be allowed to recite the call to prayer“, OK, I understand that, if there is one part that the Vatican and Saudi Arabia have in common it is their approach to faith, and as such we see “an amendment has been made to the call in which the usual phrase “come to prayer” in the Arabic call has been replaced with “pray at home”. The new phrase can also be translated as “pray where you are”.” It makes sense and the fact that I got this almost only from the Arab News gives rise to how large the cliff between christian media and other media is. This is all being written by me as I am listening to ‘Wish You Were Here‘ by Pink Floyd, mind and ears are in sync and we are all giving welcome to the machine that is within us. Even as we see that, we see the beginning of a new problem, one that I saw coming (ha ha ha) ‘UK mobile phone networks report problems as Brits start work from home‘, they might be the first, but they are not the only ones. I reckon that some of the networks all over Europe,all now pushed to the brink of maximum, they are all in a stage where they are close to the point of buckling. And in that light where we see governments shouting to firms that they should embrace ‘working from home’, we will see a much larger collapse. And as we are being told “Customers of all the major networks including EE, O2, Vodafone, Three and GiffGaff, reported problems. Downdetector, which monitors network problems, said outages were in cities across the UK“,
I see a much larger collapse. Even as Reuters gives us ‘Can networks cope with millions working from home? So far, yes‘. I am doubtful, when the work from home takes on larger proportions, the German and French networks will buckle like a 90 year old with a bad back. In the middle of the 5G push no one has a seemingly sober head in making sure that one does not replace the other at this stage. The timing for them is too much out of balance and it is more likely then not that we will see larger interruptions in the big 4 economic nations of the EU. 

And this is merely the beginning. Stephanie Kirchgaessner (the one that made Saudi accusations on Jeff Bezos) gives us “Google has been accused by two US senators of seeking to exploit consumers fear over Covid-19 for profit following allegations that the company is targeting “predatory” and “price-gouging” ads for scarce goods, including protective masks and hand sanitiser, to vulnerable users“, one of them Mark Warner gives us screenshots and even whilst I am not saying that he is intentionally misinforming us, my search gives us [see image], and even as I am not saying that he is misinforming us, the images are part of a much larger issue, it is the issue that some people do not understand the mechanics of a larger system, the abusers do and it seems that certain politicians (some journalists too) will always be outfoxed by abusers of any system. 

It is in that ‘christian’ view that we do not understand the setting we see in Saudi Arabia and even as I access the ‘Work-from-home policy set to help contain virus in Saudi Arabia‘ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/1642931/saudi-arabia), that part and the ‘Saudi health minister outlines Kingdom’s preventive measures against coronavirus‘, I personally belief that we all have a lot more to learn, and even as some are in prayer (both Christian and Muslim) for optional wisdom, we ened to wonder how many politicians are in it for the common good and not for personal gain, as I personally see it, there is a larger drive towards factual information, in this I am not stating that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia give out more information, but they do seemingly give out less misinformation, which is a win for all who read it, no matter what your religion is. The lack of greed is seen in “Pregnant women and new mothers, people suffering from respiratory diseases, those with immune-system problems or chronic conditions, cancer patients and employees above the age of 55 are to be given 14 days compulsory paid leave, which will not be deducted from their annual entitlement“, which companies in the EU, US or Commonwealth give that as an option? A few do, but that list is really limiting to see. 

In all this Saudi Arabia is still important, when we realise that they have 171 cases (38 more than yesterday) and no reported deaths, it seems that whatever track they have in place is seemingly delaying the larger impact on the people, even as Iceland has no fatalities, that isolated island already has 247 cases (48 more than yesterday). So something is working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and perhaps it is merely the dry heat, we just do not know at present. 

There is a larger story and it comes from a few, not just me. The conversation (at http://theconversation.com/what-islamic-hygienic-practices-can-teach-when-coronavirus-is-spreading-133221) gave us 2 days ago “The recent Netflix docuseries “Pandemic: How to Prevent an Outbreak” illustrates how the Islamic ritual washing, known as “wudu,” may help spread a good hygiene message“, and I am reminded on how my ‘accusation’ on how pragmatic Islamic law is, I actually did not see this coming. the fact that the pragmatic approach to Wudu is still in a stage of superiority over the Coronavirus. Is that the wrong thought to have? Perhaps, but the health experts (I am not one) are agreeing on the factual benefit that Wudu has. It is almost the stage where the Wilder humor takes over the stage (as seen in Blazing Saddles): “Now go do that Wudu that you do so well” and it becomes a much larger stage to behold. If the cleaning of one has a much larger benefit, what else did Christians optionally get wrong?

So as we are told “Wudu is to be performed, as was done by the Prophet Muhammad, in a specific order before praying, which takes place five times a day. Before each prayer, Muslims are expected to wash themselves in a certain order – first hands, then mouth, nose, face, hair and ears, and finally their ankles and feet“, we (most christians) are in the belief that we are right and others are wrong (even the ones they removed from existance), in all this we see the effect that the Coronavirus has and fear takes over, as such, is this the time to see if we can cross the gap between Christianity and Islam? Even Muslim institutions are open to adjustment. That part is seen in “Muslim institutions have begun to recommend that people make sure to wash their hands for 20 seconds with soap before doing wudu. Emphasizing that wudu alone cannot prevent the virus from spreading, other Islamic institutions recommend that mosques supply extra soap and hand sanitizer near the washing area“, they never claimed to be the wisest, merely that they were as wise as anyone can be, and in that light the Christians sneering at this part should consider ‘KENTUCKY MAN WHO TESTED POSITIVE FOR CORONAVIRUS GUARDED AT HOME BY POLICE AFTER HE REFUSED TO QUARANTINE‘, as such we see that there is a larger stage of stupidity and it is not limited to politicians, anyone can get on that stage. it seems interesting that the law allows for this and then sets the stage where a police force is required to stop this person from infecting others, was the bible his inspiration? 

No matter what faith we have, we can only hope to hear an inner voice when we pray for wisdom, whether you have a faith or you are an agnostic, we all have a need for wisdom. And in that light, when we see the clear benefits of Wudu, how much time the western media took to give the light to this practice? 

There is a much larger disruption and I believe not illuminating the things we can properly do is at the heart of this disruption. We see governments dousing panic driven flames, yet the larger fire is unattended, please feel free not to believe me, but this article is riddled with optional evidence. I say optional, because a lot of it is fueled through a lack of clarity, as I personally see this Mark Warner being one of them. When 144 characters is the maximum for an accusation, and what he sees as a ‘Google Search’ all whilst we see “These ads, from a range of different advertisers, were served by Google on websites for outlets such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, CNBC, The Irish Times, and myriad local broadcasting affiliates,” in this we see the accusation, yet not the critical look that the mentioned “a range of different advertisers” are set to, the lack of Google Ads knowledge is at the heart of that foundation. 

The image I am showing is in none of the Wark Warner images, is that not weird too?

 

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Media, Politics, Religion, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,