Category: Social

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Magic Voyage

Somewhere within these communications is about how long it took me to watch the TV series Babylon 5, what I thought of Farscape, Tour of Duty and even Tales Of The Gold Monkey. There’s a part of me that isn’t sure about watching so much television, I wonder if there are other things more productive or helpful to the world or me that I could be doing. But then I think, fuck it I really enjoy watching these shows. I know I can be a snob about a lot of things and I probably like that with TV series but at the same time I don’t think anyone need watch the amount of science fiction that I do.

Yesterday, I somehow managed to time things so that I finished two TV series on the same day. I’d had a recommendation to watch Magicians on Amazon Prime and I also had worked through Star Trek Voyager. Both are now complete and I am trying to work out what to watch next.

I chose to watch Star Trek Voyager because although I was kinda aware of it when it came out I don’t think I had really watched any of them, unlike TNG and DS9. So, it seemed a good choice to work through. I mostly watched STV while eating dinner as it is very dialogue based and so looking at food means you don’t really miss much that’s happening on screen. I have enjoyed the series and I might watch another ST series next.

Jase recommended Magicians to me and I have likened it to Harry Potter but with sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a good TV show and quite enjoyable. I mean it helps that all the actors are very sexy and easy on the eye, but it’s worth a watched for the sheer fun. I cringed at the first musical episode but it was done well and they made a few more melody based storylines that just worked really well. The funny thing about the magic I guess is that whenever you are stuck in the story line you can just make-up-whatever-the-fuck-you-want. Programmes like Star Trek have too many rules built in to the universe and so you have to follow those or people get upset but the Magicians was all over the place and I enjoyed that.

I had thought I might watch The Next Generation over the next few months but after twenty minutes of the first episode I am less than impressed. I know that it’s a great show and I am aware of a lot of the important canon from it. But in all honesty the mid-80s show doesn’t look good in 2020s television. The sets are bare and the audio echoes. This could be a problem with my TV streaming device of choice but I don’t know. I will give Star Trek Enterprise a go later today and see if that feels better. Oh, and I need to finish Lucifer.

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Doubly Penetrated

Today I am officially vaccinated against Covid-19. Two weeks and one day ago I had my second injection. I can report that I had no side-effects and was able to carry on. I was happy to get vaccinated. I don’t really read a huge amount of social media and I certainly am not affected by all the claims of vaccine-conspiracy. If I was in charge then vaccinations would be mandatory. But I’m not in charge and the socialist authoritarian in me lies dormant.

We should be clear about what the vaccine does. It minimises the risk of you suffering greatly and being hospitalised if you catch Covid 19. It doesn’t stop you from getting the disease it just gives you that extra boost so you don’t get it too bad. Our current government policy is placing an awful amount of hope on the vaccine that hospitalisations remain low and deaths remain low while they can open the country economically bit by bit. It turns out that people “want” their summer. I have found this attitude incredibly amusing and I think the autistic spectrum part of me doesn’t get it.

Let’s be clear about what is happening right now. The daily cases are going through the roof and people are being told to isolate all over the place. Yes, this makes sense. If you get the disease you should minimise the risk of passing it on. It’s called being SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE AND A GOOD PERSON. I will accept that some people will be struggling financially and that isolation isn’t the best thing for them. But if we had a caring government you would hope they would help. Ultimately, everyone is going to get the disease and we have to manage the outcomes of that. If we can maintain the low death rate then we are doing well. The whole point of lockdown is to ensure that the health services can work. We’ve seen what happens when that is not a possibility.

What we should remember is that this government’s response to the pandemic has been an utter shambles and fucking terrible. They are a pathetic bunch of idiots. I’ve written about this before. Their choices have meant this country has had one of the highest deaths rates and one of the highest case rates in the world. Sydney, Australia recently went into lockdown because there were 40, yes 4-0, cases. There were 48,000 in the UK yesterday alone.

July 2021 Covid Cases
July 2021 Covid Cases

This graph shows quite clearly how terrible certain countries around the world have done. The worst ones are:

  • USA
  • Brazil
  • UK
  • India
  • Hungary

What do all those countries have in common during 2020? Shit-speaking arsehole leaders. Idiots who are in power for the power and unable to empathise or even consider anything other than themselves. There needs to be an extensive public inquiry into the responses of the UK government and there should be court cases after that. There needs to be legal ramifications about preparedness because the next pandemic, and it fucking will happen, could have a higher death rate and truly fuck everyone over.

July 2021 Deaths Covid
July 2021 Deaths Covid

Given how rich this country this the above graph is a fucking embarrassment. Fuck this government and their response to this pandemic. What a bunch of twats.

Covid App Isolation

This headline just shows how widespread the virus is. It shows that the cases are rocketing. It is very clear that the easing of restrictions over the last few months has caused widespread infections and it’s going to get worse. The government’s hope is that the death rates stay low. I hope that is the case too, but we don’t know. We need to remember that death rates run two weeks behind infection rates.

Given that many places are still going to insist on masks and the government is hoping that people are “sensible” we know it’s still bad. The issue with the the Tories hoping that people are sensible is that people AREN’T sensible. That’s why we have rules in place. If there were no speed limits and we let people decide for themselves then road deaths would increase massively. It would be terrible. This is the same as that. Many people aren’t going to be sensible and they might kill themselves and, more importantly, they might kill plenty of other people. We are led by fucking idiots.

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Keeping Traditions

I’ve been spending some time at Linton Park Cricket Club recently and although I regularly try and walk around the ground a few times each visit I went in the opposite direction on my last attempt. I am normally hanging around in the nets and when I go for a lap I start there and head away from the pavilion. The lap in question started north of the pavilion and so I walked in a clockwise direction [when viewed from above]. It’s always good to approach things from a new point of view and I thought this would just look a little different. I was not expecting the result of this walk to be such a surprise!

LPCC Tree
LPCC Tree

On the return leg towards the pavilion I saw this tree. A whole tree growing in within the boundary. In the year or so that I had been coming to this ground I hadn’t seen the tree. I just hadn’t noticed it at all when I was completing laps in a positive direction [when viewed from above]. Why had I not seen such an obvious thing? Why had this tree not been part of my viewing on the numerous times I would have walked past it in the past? What is going on? It’s clearly not a newly planted tree and given its size it’s been there for a while and anyway, why would you plane a new tree within the boundary? Although the club itself and ground is a lot older than the tree so there are questions I need answered.

There is something called the Mandela effect. It’s not a real thing. But everyone has things that make them question what they know or can remember. The Mandela effect is meant to explain a mis-remembering of an event or thing. When I saw this tree my first thought was – that’s a surprise, how come I didn’t notice it before? My first thought was not – wow, that must have popped into existence from nowhere I am clearly in a new timeline and therefore aliens or whatever bogeyman you want. People don’t understand just how terrible human memories are. The general impression is that memories are like perfect video cameras and we can fast rewind through any event to see the truth of what happened or at least the truth of the experience we had. The reality is that human memory is fucking terrible and can’t be relied on at all. I am dreading being called as a witness to something where my memory is required. It’s quite easy to change how you remember things. Just remember them. Every time you remember something you change your memory. Have fun with that knowledge.

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Slightly More Normal Thing

With the most recent SARS-Cov-2 regulations in the UK we’ve been able to operate some activities at work. So, a couple of weekends ago I spent some time with the officers, CIs and cadets and we ran a “summer camp”. It was only a weekend and there was only one overnight in the open on the school field. But we managed to fill the weekend with school based activities. We are lucky that we have plenty of equipment and also suitable venues within the school site.

Sunday Station
Sunday Station

My job on the Sunday of this camp was to run an orienteering activity. Nothing too hard in terms of map reading but something to give the cadets a feel for orientating the map and basic navigation around a wooded area. It was lovely to be doing something close to normal.

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Line Infacted

I think I’m managing quite well with the suitable distribution of my income. A while back I wrote that I had stopped spending money on music streaming services and if I want some songs then I will pay for them properly. We all know that Spotify pay very little out to the artist for each play and it’s only the mega-hits that actually make any money. I’d try and link that communication here but the way I write the names of these communications means I might have zero chance of finding it. Here goes! I found it! The point is for more of my money to go to the artist. The website Bandcamp seems the best way of doing that short of Patreon or Venmo [which I have never used!].

This morning I have updated the music list on the iPhone contents page. Not that it’s easy to find the new stuff, there’s an awful lot of stuff listed. But I’ve recently bought a few albums and so I thought it was time to update it. There’s a definite theme within that music list of heavy metal, thrash metal and then German rock along with EBM and aggrotech. If you search that list enough you might even find some songs that could be considered “embarrassing”. Have a look and let me know if you find one. Anything from Top Gun does not count, obvs.

I’ve been listening to the music projects of two main labels over the last few years. Those labels are Infacted Records and Out Of Line Music. My most recent purchases are:

  • Deathless – Amelia Arsenic
  • Requiem for the Hyperreal – Shiv-r
  • Kill God Ascend – Shiv-r
  • That Annihilated Place – Pete Crane
  • Traumatized – Lights Of Euphoria
  • Dark Passenger – Decoded Feedback
  • Domination – Agrezzior
  • Sittenverfall – Schallfaktor
  • Judas – Lord Of The Lost

There’s quite a bit of a mix there from electronic to bombastic over the top operatic rock but it’s all good. Well worth a listen. If you like that sort of thing. I will say that the bass line from “To Love Is To Destroy” by Amelia Arsenic is DIRTY.

When I eventually finish the album reviews the idea is to go back and review every album I’ve bought in the last eight years or so. I’ve tried to avoid writing about all the EBM and Aggrotech in the reviews and I will eventually get around to writing about them. Oh, I’ve had both vaccination injections and am looking forward to being considered fully vaccinated in two weeks.

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I’m Just Disappointed

I do know that it’s wrong to use your mobile phone while driving but I just had to in this case. Fortunately I was in a traffic queue and just after I spotted this advert there was serendipity. Given the hurry I was in and the distance of the bus from me I’m quite pleased with how the picture turned out.

Education Kind Of
Education, Kind Of

What surprised me about the advert was partly that Fashion History should have been something starting with a T to match the tarot part of that sentence and I think KAE missed the point of how those literary devices work. The main surprise in this advert was to see KAE advertising courses in Tarot. I don’t think they should.

Tarot is either the name for a pack of cards used in Europe for about 400 years or tarot refers to the practice of conning people with bullshit, from Wikipedia: “the late 18th century, some tarot decks began to be used for divination via tarot card reading and cartomancy leading to custom decks developed for such occult purposes.”. I’m guessing that this reference to Tarot on this advert isn’t just about the design of the cards but more likely to be about the spooky divination of said cards. Let’s see.

As I type this I’ve got another tab open [actually it’s a whole browser on my other screen] and I am going to look through the tarot information on the KAE website. The first thing I noticed in the search results is that there are two course and they don’t cost as much as I thought they would, but the socialist in me does think that if people want to further their education then it should be free of cost, however I do understand the modern world.

KAE Search Results

In a moment I am going to click on the more information hyperlinks and see where that takes me. Le Boutillier. Hmm. Le Boutillier. Very sensible choosing a name that sounds like it’s from New Orleans or of French descent. It gives you a certain credence in this realm of tarot. It could be that Le Boutillier is their birth name but I suspect not, I will try and find out.

Understanding the Tarot is an online course run out of the Tonbridge part of KAE. It’s a basic course for anyone “wishing to understand how Tarot reading can be commonly used to measure potential outcomes and evaluate influences surrounding a person, an event, or both.” So this is a course in nothing. There’s a little bit about understanding the 22 Major Arcana cards but the rest of it is absolute nothing. Oh well.

Creativity and Inspiration with Tarot is an online course [sensible in a pandemic] and it is basically learning how to make up shit in story form from the cards that you have. So I guess it’s about using your imagination. There isn’t anything about telling the future or past but just the story aspect of the cards. The tutor for this course is Martin Laya Rey. Almost definitely not their real name and made up to sound exotic. I’ll see what they say about themselves shortly.

Ally Le Boutillier. Her biography on KAE says “a Reiki Practitioner, Hypnotherapist, Bereavement Counsellor and Numerologist.” Of those things there only one is actually a real thing to do and even then, given her other practices I wonder if she can counsel people without resorting to after-life souls stuff. Now to google and see what happens. Oddly she does not have her own website, there’s some things on Linkedin and Facebook but I’m not trawling through those sites. It does appear that Le Boutillier is her last name, she mentions her late father and his name is the same. Perhaps I was harsh about that. She does have a YouTube channel and she has a playlist called Deepak Chopra. That is all you need to know. Deepak is a man who utters such vague rubbish that those who believe the supernatural love him.

Martin Laya Rey has two google results and that is the page at KAE and an advert tweet for a cook at a cafe in a cinema. This is super odd. Maybe I’m the odd older person as I have a number of google results for my name. It seems odd that no one else is called that also. So, I have no other information on this person. I could go to Facebook but I don’t like making myself busy on that site, they are immoral. In terms of names I have no idea from web results if it is their actual name so let’s go with a yes.

My conclusions. This stuff seems harmless enough. Tarot is a giggle if you take it as a bit of fun. I guess it’s like a Ouija game – which is a game and the science of it is well known – the problem is when people take these things seriously and start taking the advice of the cards. There is a false hope in the idea that there are super natural things and even more false hope that they are communicating to us through vague symbols and other people. The legitimacy provided to tarot by it being an official course on an adult education platform does not help and is one of the ways that practitioners are able to claim that they do a real thing. It’s a bit like the reiki poster up in the doctors surgery. Reiki is rubbish but gets condoned because it has a poster up in a place of goodness.

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Be Nice If He Stopped

I’ve just finished watching Raised By Wolves, an HBO television series which I bought on Amazon because I didn’t want to download a dodgy version and I’ve kinda been paying for things properly recently. Why did I watch this? Well, I saw a clip of people exploding on Reddit and wondered where it came from. Turns out someone had placed a comment explaining that it was from this series which, it was mentioned, was also from Ridley Scott. That man is responsible for Alien and also Blade Runner, he has excellent form. This ten part television series follows the growth of a small number of children on a planet after Earth is destroyed. Eventually the religious zealots turn up and it all gets interesting – or as I found it more boring.

This series started well but I was mostly bored by the end. I watched it all, I paid for it after all but I found it all rather “meh”. The look of the series was great and the struggles faced by the characters seemed real enough. What I found terrible was the biology and general thoughts about faith and belief. Oh, and androids misbehaving. Oh, and white “blood” for androids. Oh, and lack of guilt for androids. We get it Ridley – you are obsessed with androids going bad and like to question faith along with thinking about the origin of human life. Give it a rest. Please.

In this series the religious are the less moral and the atheist androids – where can their moral compass come from? – are the good ones until they go and kill a load of people, virtually the last of humanity. An atheist person hiding in the cult goes mad and starts to hear things and thinks he’s the anointed one meanwhile his adopted son is making model buildings out of stones and gets elevated to prophet. Seems to me these people need some decent medication and learn to work together.

Then there’s the creatures. These are apparently devolving humans. What the fuck does that mean? It means nothing. It’s not what happens or what can happen. I found some of the writing very lazy and I know that they did it to increase the crazy and “what’s going on aspect” because they are making a TV series so you need things to stay strange. I think the bigger problem is they are writing themselves into a corner and won’t be able to explain any of it. Given the premise I think I could create a better story line and investigate the issues they want without the laziness.

If this show is meant to be a moral discussion about the “humanity” of androids then that is possible and can be done. Perhaps this show wants the morality of eating meat or of eating conscious creatures to be discussed? Then there’s the elements of crazy forcing religion and that could have been handled really well. But ultimately I think this show has missed the opportunity for a decent exploration of any one thing by making too many moralistic aspects to introduce. Androids and their role along with their moral code could have been amazing but it wasn’t.

The final episode included the birth and I’m really not sure what to think. I currently consider it an easy trick to shock people and make future series work. I almost enjoyed the idea that the newborn is similar to extinct creatures on the planet but at the same time it just annoyed me. I won’t be watching the second series because all the characters are just annoying. They come across as very single-dimensional and I don’t think the show’s creators are using the medium to their fullest.

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Land

I went to the cinema. Again. Not really a surprise I guess but given the recent Covid-times I think that maybe sitting in a room with other people isn’t a good idea. But then, I think that the cinema needs money to survive and so far there haven’t been more than 20 people in the films I’ve seen and the distancing is quite good. It’s nice to be back [I’m not counting this film].

I went to see Land and it was in screen 8 of the Cineworld cinema in Rochester. I do like screen 8, it was meant to be the “posh” one many years ago but now it’s just slightly more comfortable than all the others with its better chairs and fewer seats. I’m reasonably sure I’ve seen films in there just because it was in screen 8 and not for any other reason.

As I drove along the riverside towards the cinema I noted the state of the tide and it was low. I could see all of the mudbanks and only the central channel was buoyancy-providable. The weather was actually quite nice given the previous day where it rained the whole day and I was silly enough to go for a walk to see the Medway Megaliths, my shoes were soaked but the sun dried them nicely. After I’ve seen a film I rate it on IMDB and there’s a guide to the rating system within this communication. Normally I would then tweet the result from my phone but I removed Twitter a long time ago so the tweets have to wait for the next opportunity when I’m on my home PC.

So, I had to reread my IMDB communication to remind myself of the scoring system. Then I rated this as a 6. It was a perfectly fine film but not one I’d watch again. I booked whatever film I thought looked most interesting. I had slight pangs of concern when I entered the theatre as all the people in there were women and I ended up being the only man in the room. All the trailers were for what I would call “emotional” films – as stereotypical it is I like space films and then thrillers and action films I guess although most action films are stupid. These are not my usual style of film to watch but I was here now and so it was time to soak up what was on offer.

For me the star of the film was the Wyoming countryside. It looks just absolutely gorgeous. It made me think of doing the same and abandoning all of the trappings of modern life and to head off and lead what would feel like a simpler life. When I say get rid of modern life this woman still have tinned food, knives and a rifle. I wonder if everyone feels that they would like to survive by their “wits” rather than our current world system?

The film was broadly speaking enjoyable and told a nice story, one of emotional recovery and trying to learn to live again after tragedy. I know it was for the purposes of the film for the main character to survive after the midpoint of the film but I’m not sure she would. You end up wondering “what are the odds” but it is dealt with very well although all films suffer survivor bias.

The only part of this film that irritated me slightly was that it made shooting things look really simple and easy. I’m not talking about the pulling of the trigger or the moral problems of killing life but I am talking about how hard it is to hit a target with a rifle. Films make this look much simpler and easier than it really is. The funny thing is I actually know what I’m talking about here – I’m a weapons instructor, coach and a range officer – hilarious I know but I do have those qualifications and use them regularly. Me, having official qualifications in something extreme, I find it a curiosity.

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I Felt Productive

I recently had a long session on Minecraft, I was stuck in the house and couldn’t get out as I was waiting for someone to come and fix my boiler. I didn’t really feel like getting into a TV show so I spent some time [too long really] putting an idea I had a while back into place. Here’s an overview of part of the latest world:

Latest World Overview
Latest World Overview

The mess top right next to the bay is the MAIN Base. I’m going to see if I can get some screen shots of it, or maybe give a walk around viewing video, I’ll see what I can manage. The big grey blob in the middle of the map is a gravel topped mountain and I’ve not been there to get the gravel yet but it will be useful at some point I hope. In the bottom left of the map you can see the nearest village to the base. I wanted to create a way of getting to and from the village without having to walk over land. I could have created a minecart track but in this world I chose to dig a canal.

Sea Level Details
Sea Level Details

This cross-sectional map shows everything at level 62 – sea level [currently]. If you look closely at the top you can see a thin blue line going horizontally. That is the canal I dug and added water to. You enter the canal from top right and move directly westwards and exit in the Great Lake. From there you follow the passages and mini-canal southwards to get to the village. There could be an issue that I can’t remember whether it was this village or not that had actual live villagers in it. I didn’t bother to check before I started this infrastructure project so it could have been for nothing!

Length Of Navigation Route
Length Of Navigation Route

My map making software also has a measuring tool. You can see that the total canal length is about 0.85km. So that’s 850 blocks long. I’ll probably create a video soon of the base and where the canal goes but until then, I leave you in peace.

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NFTR

It’s hard to keep this site up to date with interesting things when there are very few interesting things that are happening. Normally these communications would be full of film reviews and photographs of curious things I see whenever I go somewhere new. But I haven’t been somewhere new in a long time. The cinemas are still closed and possibly won’t open again. Who knows what’s going to happen over the next year or so as the world learns to manage with a pandemic which will always be circulating. I hope that the variations will die down as the cases are reduced, then eventually humanity will have a chance to control the spread of the virus. I am happy that I might never again have to be in the situation where people think I’m weird for not wanting to shake hands with others.

Now, I don’t mean to imply that things aren’t busy. Work is super crazy at the moment while at the same time we are trying to improve the cadet experience within guidelines. Everyone is struggling with balancing responsibilities because of the short sightedness of the government in coming up with a plan for how education should work in these covid times. I mean, they’ve only had a year to get things sorted. You would have thought someone would be able to make decisions and get systems in place but it turns out that when you are just a selfish power crazy person you don’t care about those important things. I’m not sure why people seem surprised to know that Johnson might have lied or said terrible shit. He’s been doing that all his life. This country voted him in and this country deserves what it gets. I just feel really bad for all those who want a caring government.

I’ve been trying to play more computer games or at least try some new ones. I’ve not been getting very far with that though. I’m still playing Gran Turismo a lot and given that I’ve been playing it since 1997 I don’t think that is going to change much. I started playing GT on a PlayStation when I lived in Gillingham and the house own borrowed a PS from his brother and GT came with it. We found we would play and race each other and congratulate when the other managed a lovely drift. The I bought my own PS, which my mother thought was a waste of time, and I played GT and F1 ’97 quite a bit along with a few other games. When the PS2 came out I bought one. Upgraded GT and played on that system. Eventually I bought a network card for the PS2 and played, very briefly, online. I was joining in with some Navy Seal game online where all the players knew the maps and my time alive was very small. I didn’t really enjoy the experience. When the PS3 was released I upgraded and got GT. Somewhere around this time I also started to get steering wheels – not sure if it was PS2 or 3. Clearly, once GT is released on the PS5 I will be upgrading but I’m not going to bother trying to get a PS5 until that point. I’m very happy with my PS4.

I’ve been playing a bit of The Last Campfire by Hello Games. It’s a delightful little puzzle game with some problems that have made me walk away in embarrassment that I didn’t figure them out quickly. I’m hoping to finish the game soon although I have no idea how long it is supposed to take. It’s a lovely little story and looks wonderful.

In other news I think I would like it to be a little warmer than it is currently. I’m fed up feeling cold a lot of the time. Some of this is to do with my office at work having zero heating outlets and also my home heating is shitty because I’ve been waiting FOUR SHITTY MONTHS for British Gas to get their act together and come and fix it. I’ve been mostly annoyed by this while equally feeling as though I’ve been unable to do anything about it. At least I have been able to use the heating, it’s just that the boiler requires some TLC every now and then. I know that British Gas are going to tell me that they were hit by the third wave of Covid and that also their technicians went on strike. This is what happens in business when you under value your staff and put your motivation to shareholder profits before other things.

I am beginning to think that I have too many screens in one room in my house. I know that seems like it shouldn’t be possible but currently the dining room – so called because it has a table – there are four screens. Two 27″ computer monitors attached to the home PC. A 27″ monitor when I have to do work at the table and a 45″ screen on the wall which gets used as a TV when I’m on the rowing machine. Considering this room is really quite small I think it might be overkill, but they all have their uses and I’m not that inclined to remove one. I’ll just have to avoid people seeing the room unless they think I’m too much of a gamer. Which, I’d like to point out, I don’t think I am.

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