Category: Geopolitics

Who Do You Take Seriously?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I’ll start this off with two omissions.

Of late we have heard a lot of the orange-drone-voice-man and his quest for Swedish Krona. The body language of his interaction with Vlad the Impaler has been dissected, no doubt for a fee, in various outlets. Not one of them has thought to mention that Putin is a dan grade judoka. Probably none of these body-language experts have been on the mat. If like Putin you are a lifelong judoka you cannot but help assessing where the centre of gravity of people is. This includes during handshakes. Instinctively one adjusts position and weight to see how another responds. A player of with-caddy-cart 18 hole golf has a different mentality to a judoka. Always there is an inkling of what throw one might attempt. A golfer might not anticipate this. Putin might one day step in for an Ipponseionage and bam…Putin will always be a judoka to the core.

Unless I am mistaken the history of the tribes of Israel as per the old-testament speaks of the wrath and retribution of God. There is Divine intervention on a biblical scale. Right now Israel is going biblical on Gaza. Maybe they have checked this out with God and he is on board, maybe not. If he is unhappy with this bellicose vengeance he might have to intervene. I have not heard this aspect discussed. But large scale divine intervention is a part of their religious hagiography. Maybe God is no longer as important as Netanyahu.

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As an old fart in rural Brittany there is no reason why anyone might take me seriously, even were my observations apt and applicable. This is because I am not famous nor am I a big cheese. I do not have thousands of followers on this internet thingy. If you are a nobody, nobody takes you seriously. You have to have a gang, a club, a peer group or be properly institutionalised. It is possible that people who have been in the same institution for several decades might imagine me the lunatic!! Life has a few quirks.

I don’t think that golfer boy is noting a shift in the way the world is. He is a bit too stuck in the past. He does not have a wide encompassing view of humanity as a whole.

As a rule of thumb people give the most credence to people who are relatively close to them physically, their colleagues, who think in a similar manner. They like what they hear back so they take it seriously. Anyone outside can be seen as misguided, an enemy even. Their views and opinions are not taken seriously, they are discounted. Even people who know intellectually about this prejudice cannot resist it. It is a fundamental flaw of group-think and group-mind. Peer “pressure” is way more powerful than we care to acknowledge. The desire to not rock the boat and to comply is endemic.

“Which idiot would dare to put their head above the parapet?”

If anyone did, they would only be taken seriously posthumously and in retrospect. Genius is most often ascribed posthumously and with hindsight. Rarely is it proclaimed in vivo. Everyone knows this and yet repeats history by non-acceptance and in some cases derision.

Things must not be too different in order to be taken seriously!

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The obvious question here is why do unicorns always point to the right?

Some people do not like those who have a different perspective from them, they resist hearing it and in any way assimilating. They just can’t or won’t take divergent views seriously.

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Do people have to see the world in a similar way to you in order for you to take them seriously?

Must everyone think just like you?

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Quantum Computing – $1 Billion in Patent Applications

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

If you search Espacenet using the key words “Quantum Computing” it returns 155,000 results!!  Clearly, I have not read them all this afternoon. At a very low legal fee of ~ $6,500 per patent that is ~one billion dollars’ worth of fees for the patent attorney community.

Alice, Bob and the Cat have served them well. They have made a quantum leap in income. Would you like some dinner?

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Reason suggests that it is not possible to come up with 155,000 totally original ideas and concepts beyond the state of the art. There must be redundancy and perhaps overly zealous patent agents have awarded their national home grown talent with a facile grant. Some of these applications cannot be worth the paper they are written upon.

Never mind the quality measure the tonnage. No wonder there is a forestry problem…

I have long speculated that the whole intellectual property (IP) / patent arena is due for a big clean out / dose of salts. It is overblown and over stuffed. The inventive steps are often really trivial,  and not “quantum leaps” in understanding.

To generate new IP against the petabyte background already filed might be tricky. When I last looked, I thought many so called unique ideas were very derivative and the inventive step even obvious to me as a non-expert pikey in his shed.

Sooner or later there is going to be some big blow out tests in court. Or you can have a Samsung – Apple  –   “we’ll sell you ours if you sell us yours” swapsies.

Were I an investor looking at that very basic survey of landscape I would not be champing at the bit (excuse the pun).

Alice & Bob – Quantum Jobs

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Prompted by the answer to a question on University Challenge, I typed Alice and Bob into the font of paid for promotion previously known as a search engine. The Mecca of product placed wisdom came up with a French quantum start up called Alice and Bob. They have received 100 million series B funding. They also have a fairly extensive job vacancy list. It was a tad French and probably not overly attractive internationally except for those fond of Alice in Paris Francophiles. French job descriptions can be as rigid as a rigid thing. They do not travel well.

Maybe there is a general shortage of quantum savvy job applicants….

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It occurred to me that the Quantum hype has been drowned out by the deafening AI roar. Maybe it has gone submarine like AUKUS.

That Luddite Herr Trump has been threatening the Harvard intellectual property (IP) portfolio. What a great way to ensure the death of US inventiveness and technological superiority, discourage invention and application for patents unless they are handled by MAGA lawyers, toadies and sycophants!! Already the incentive to NOT have an idea whilst at a university is high, because contractually the university owns your IP. Best stifle ideas until you are a free thinker…

Sometimes holes can be difficult to get out of. That can include ways of thinking and playbooks.

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It looks like Herr Trump is going to try again to leverage Ukraine into accepting a fait accompli agreed with Vlad the Impaler in Alaska. This forceful manipulation is an old Trump play. If he keeps alienating people, he may find himself in a hole like increasingly Billy-no-mates Israel. Trump does not understand that “friend” has a different meaning in KGB speak.

Oh look another groundhog…where did that come from….

What is the first rule when you find yourself in a hole?

Human beings can be pig-headed and stubborn. Inventive people do not share the same deal or no deal mentality as realtors. They are easily discouraged and disincentivised. One day the straw goes on the camel’s back, one too many.

Sometimes that tired old play book simply does not work. Thinking the same way that gets you into a problem cannot help to get you out of it.

There is no point in trying to explain this to someone who is vehemently adamant that they know best. Advice is as unwelcome as a dose of antibiotic resistant syphilis.

Some people are obsessed at the notion of a “corporate” solution when none exists. They may get all their ducks in line to present someone with a fait accompli sure that such a thing is irresistible. Even so-called intelligent people like professors can think like this. They can seek within group consensus oblivious that people outside the Olympian Ivory Towers do not think like them. This may not occur.

It is quackers.

People often talk with the monkey and ignore the organ grinder completely…

Anyway…

Has AI killed off the notion of quantum computation?

Where will they put all the server farms?

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Is this what our future looks like?

The Appalling Silence – and you did nothing…

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few years humanity has faced a number of challenges and on the whole has been found badly wanting.

If anyone imagines that the American financed mass killing of people and near complete obliteration of Gaza is just and proportional they are deluded and their moral compass is well and truly fucked. What do you do when a so-called ally oversteps the mark? It is easy to collude and remain silent, to kowtow for scraps from the dinner table of the debt ridden US economy. The West’s inaction and response to the events in Gaza has not been its finest hour. The precedent has been set by the extensive US vengeance for having been caught napping at 9/11 just like the Japanese got nuked for Pearl Harbour.

The world we live in has changed for the worse in the last two decades. As climate change kicks in and disasters proliferate the me-first approach to global problems will not cut it. Maybe when Mar-a-Lago starts to swim people might listen.

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At the moment humanity is very short-term. The attention span of a fruit fly with ADHD prevails. There is reaction, knee-jerk and people are fearful of opinion. People are shit scared to say boo to a goose. They will do just about anything to get “likes”.

What results is a mind numbing mediocrity of compliance and conformity with “they” in which ever flavour. Humanity is very risk averse and lacks moral fibre. Its backbone is dissolved into jelly.

The damming verdict of the generations to come might be,

“You suspected all along, your predictions were valid AND you did nothing, fuck all, sweet fanny Adams. Really?”

This then will be known as the age of human chinless petty self-centred indifference.

Inaction today, avoidance, stores problems for tomorrow. The ruling “elites” have made it very clear to the millions of Muslims in their country where they, the entitled elite, stand. The evidence is incontrovertible and will be long remembered. They know upon which side the bread appears to be buttered on.

From time to time when we watch the news a sad tear comes to eye. Humanity, an oxymoron, is only very selectively humane.

Did not the apartheid and genocide of the last century teach us anything? Apparently not…

Ever since the British invented concentration camps they have been rolled out again and again. If we are very cynical, we might call them a “safe zone” rather than a “killing field”. It sounds more humane; cleaner, we could even use fabric softener to take away the stench.

There are none so blind as those who do not want to see, who refuse to see.

I am not sure what it might take for people to wake up and actually do something. After all we can Netflix and Uber Eats ourselves into type 2 diabetes, which is less risky than sticking our necks out.

I am genuinely sad at the pathetic Western response to events in Gaza. But it is a sign of the times, the prevailing me-first don’t rock the boat mentality.

Opression always has in its hateful enactment the seeds of its own ultimate downfall.

That is a fundamental law of the universe. The universe has a longer attention span.

Discuss or Claim – Shoot Down in Flames

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I’ll start into this with some statements, see if you agree with them.

  • It is easier to discount than to prove.
  • There is a section of humanity that has a very negative mindset and is personally insecure. It is sceptical and seeks approval by negating everything and disproving it, thereby showing just how very clever it is while claiming kudos from other negative peers for its I-told-you-so cleverness. There is an element of look-at-me to these behaviours. Strangely people seek to be both smug and clever, which at first pass seems contradictory.
  • It is easier to disprove than it is to prove.
  • People derive a great deal of seeming pleasure from shooting others down in flames and arguing the toss so as to apparently “win”.
  • They are stuck in their ways, primitive, possibly bigoted and old-fashioned.

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In writing this blog I have chosen a largely discursive approach and have been fairly careful to not make any claims, profess said claims or adamantly proclaim accuracy. I have been careful in my use of language to avoid dogmatic assertion.

This dogmatic assertion habit is perhaps a bane of our times.

Were I to make claims there is a danger that people would prime their Gatling guns and take aim. Many like an assertion to aim at, particularly ones with numbers in so that the petty can nit-pick.

“You said you would limit immigration to 200,000 in fact we had 215,000 last year, you did not do what you said you were going to do. You lying bastard!!”

This pseudo-journalistic mentality is pervasive and makes arguments out of petty trivial stuff. Comparison mind never strays too far from the adolescent urinal pissing contest.

In approaching this blog I had one question, “What is the best way to approach closed concretised mind insistent on proof where none may exist?”

The answer I came up with was to adopt a discursive approach in the vain hope that these might at least stimulate some thinking. I am aware that the human mind is bullet-point and sound-byte, click-bait oriented these days. It is easy to gain wide publicity by making outrageous claims.

“Tariffs are already bringing trillions of dollars into the US treasury!!”

{US GDP ~ 30 trillion dollars, Federal tax revenue ~ 5 trillion }

Tariffs then {according to Trump} must already account  for more than 20% of the annual Federal income by use of the plural “trillions”. This statement cannot yet be factual.

It is the easiest thing in the world to make wild assertions, to gob-off and to make outrageous claims. Even were these factual it would be straightforward to find some way of discounting, casting doubt upon and otherwise undermining any claim. People love to find fault and pick holes in things.

Most people are already finding fault before they have reached the end of a sentence or heard what someone is trying to communicate. They can place so much stock in arguing the toss and dissing others. It can make them feel big.

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Do you like to shoot people down in flames?

Does it give you a boner or make you go damp?

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Forbearance Builds Intent

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

There is a fair degree of historical precedent to suggest that brutal oppression is eventually causal of rebellion and revolution. The trick for the longevity of totalitarianism is therefore to control without being overly brutal in that oppression, to allow the populace sufficient comfort so that they do not feel the need to take up arms.

One could suggest that the inventiveness and resilience of the current Israeli population has arisen out of their long need to forbear in years gone by. It has created a strong Zionist intent out of the brooding powerlessness and persecution of the past. Forbearance was a seed that perhaps germinated into Israel.

Now the brutality in Gaza is very disproportionate offering the Palestinians the opportunity to practice forbearance under very harsh and dehumanising conditions. Those who manage to survive will be the fittest, the most resourceful and the strongest. They are having to forbear a great deal. Israel is not endearing them to itself. A total “victory” is an unattainable thing.

Karmically the Israeli actions in Gaza are very bad for Israel. In the short-term blood lust for vengeance there is no consideration of the longer term karma. From a karmic point of view Israel is perhaps sowing the seeds of its own downfall decades, even centuries, hence. History when examined contextually can be seen to be the manifestation of karma. Things are cyclical, pendulums swing back and forth.

Migration is a form of pecuniary osmosis. People migrate from low money places to higher money concentration places. Semi-permeable membranes like the Channel or the Rio Grande may impede the osmosis a bit, that is all. Nature is nature, humans can try to stymy it. Nature finds a way.

Sooner or later all oppression brings about its own demise. By training people to forbear, it builds intent for resistance against.

Is America Worth All That Hassle and Unpleasantness?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

In the series “Pine Gap” which we are currently watching the relationship between the USA and Australia is strained. In real life the AUKUS pact and the sale of US nuclear submarines by the arch deal breaker, in under review. {What is in it for us?} Time and again deals are broken and pulled out of. In the series Australia is considering a deal of neutrality with China.

In real life America continues to behave like a teenage bully in the locker-hallways of a high school, gesticulating, boasting and making threats. There are insults and defamations thrown at so-called allies.

America is very hard work as a so-called “friend”. There is so much hassle. It is such a drag and is not a mutually uplifting relationship. Do you really need friends like that, who are such a downer, a whinger, a pain in the ass? Who are so unpleasant?

USA continues to fund the obliteration of Gaza; the American ordnance has killed tens of thousands. It pretends to be a peace maker when it provides petrol for the fire which inflames, maims and destroys. It has thrown tens of billions of dollars at the defence of Ukraine.

If Ukraine has taught anything, it is that Russian conventional forces need not be feared. Yet the propaganda suggests that it is Putin who is the bogeyman, Vlad the Impaler. Iraq and Afghanistan are swept under the carpet. Butter from genetically modified cows fed on pesticide rich feed does not melt in our mouths. We are the land of the Free, the home of the Brave. Here we, armed to the teeth, kick the living shit out of anyone who dares to disagree. We are so brave with our reaper drones and F35s. A level playing field is not for us heroes.

I can understand why popularity need not concern the powerful but endless coercion does never strengthen alliances. Belittling allies does not make them strong or willing. I can understand why Western Europe is the past. I can see that technology rich South Korea and Japan are refusing to procreate enough. This is good news for China. I can see that a few bombs on TSMC in Taiwan could severely disrupt the semiconductor and AI band wagons. The new  FABS in the USA won’t come on line anytime soon. I can see Huawei competing effectively around the world. The embargo has stimulated home-grown creativity. I can see the Maoist cultural revolution against the Intellectuals and Free Press in the USA now in full swing.

If America loses its technological advantage post purge, what then? Will the hordes of the unvaccinated survive?

There are a few more years to go of the Trump presidency. What I have no sight of is what a post Trumpian USA might look like, this especially if he changes the constitution to allow himself  another term. It might be a USA unrecognisable.

Is it really worth all that hassle to deal with and partially rely on the USA. How reliable are the whim prone? Patience has to be wearing thin.

The New Age  – Early and Prepared

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

This morning’s Guardian has an interview with Jamie Lee Curtis. In that she is quoted thus:

“I’m always early,” says the actor, deadpan. “Or as my elder daughter refers to me, ‘aggressively early’.”

Jamie Lee Curtis

People who are poorly prepared and struggle to keep to a schedule can see others as being aggressively early. They may resent preparation hoping to wing it through the chaos and quagmire together, make shit up on the fly. They don’t like it if you are very well prepared. Curtis says she likes to get there early, get the job done and leave among the first. No need to dilly-dally for a chit-chat and mutual BS session afterwards.

The notion of THE New Age has been around for a while and there has been a lot of idealism about how that might be. In esoteric terms the Kurukshetra will be the fifth ray of concrete {reinforced with steel bars} mind. The outgoing sixth ray is idealism and devotion, where polarisation among and between ideologies is stark. The incoming ray is synthesis or ceremonial order. This is the ray par excellence of organisation whereby something perhaps a being , a society , a company is organised into life in an ordered way. It is not hippy-trippy peace and love pass the spliff man, nor is it slice off your cock and dress like a woman. The Ronseal word is new and not same old, same old.

If you look, we can see that the three world powers are all heading towards some version of state protected totalitarian capitalism. China and America are not as unlike as propaganda may have us believe. They are converging these days.

There are idealised versions of what a new teacher, a new spiritual leader might look like. They are often predicted beautiful and portrayed glowing. That aura stuff is old hat. Do you really need vegetarianism, the lotus position and flowing wavy hair. Must you do the single pointed cart-wheeling octopus yoga position on your mat in Phuket dressed in your fashionable pink yoga pants? Any ”saviour” might not be as expected.

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Before dawn there is always darkness and there is a saying that it is always darkest just before the dawn, this is not optically true. Metaphorically perhaps it is. There are people who are morning people who awake alert and ready, there are somnambulant hibernating bears who cannot move without a litre of IV expresso.  

Those of a morning disposition prepare the way, cut off the unnecessary burdens and pare to the bone, they pre-pare. There are those who are the prow of the ship who bear the brunt. A truly seventh ray individual would differ markedly, be all about entrepreneurship and organisation. Out of the cauldron of inspiration they would be forever trying to synthesise something new. By human nature and its conservatism, there would be abortion after abortion after abortion. Explorations would go nowhere. There would be dead end after dead end. Pearls would fall among swine. The new would be always and in all ways resisted by the old. Those forerunners would at least dent the concrete structures made hard and fast by reinforced concrete mind. On the Kurukshetra the new would face its enemy the status quo, again and again and again without even asking why.

The keepers of knowledge and education would be the most resistant to and against the ageless wisdom, lest it challenge their intellectual deity and threaten salary. The wagons would circle and the Winchester rifles be loaded.

My own feeling is that humanity is heading towards a dark patch, a deepening stain, a bloody smear. One in which the facts of climate change are negated for profit until the shit really hits the fan. A wake up call of truly massive proportions is incoming. What may rise from the ashes and flood waters is yet to be seen.

Already some of the factors are here. Artificial intelligence is not intelligence; AI driven weaponry may be lethal and preserve the lives of the aggressors using it. But death is death. Each day humanity stares into the pixel master in its hands and pockets, salivating Pavlovian for an incoming beep. Hype and propaganda power are once again more important than truth or fact. Goebbels would smile at the mutating hydra he unleashed.

Often those who see things early are derided and ostracised. 20:20 hindsight is not much use to them in the crematorium. It seems though that this is the way it is and perhaps always will be.

Some people will be early, perhaps too early and they will leave early too.

Going Through the Motions of Life

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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Must have opened my front door at eight o’clock or so
And stopped along the way to buy some Chinese food to go
I’m sure I had my dinner watching something on TV
There’s not, I think, a single episode of Dallas that I didn’t see
I must have gone to bed around a quarter after ten
I need a lot of sleep, and so I like to be in bed by then
I must have read a while
The latest one by Marilyn French or something in that style
It’s funny, but I had no sense of living without aim
The day before you came

And turning out the light
I must have yawned and cuddled up for yet another night
And rattling on the roof I must have heard the sound of rain
The day before you came

Benny Goran Bror Andersson / Bjoern K Ulvaeus

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Whether we know it and accept it or not in our coterie, in our slumber, a sudden change to life can exist just around the corner. Something can upend and change much of that which we hold true and perhaps long-lasting. It might be as simple as a cancer diagnosis, being caught on kiss-cam in flagrante delicto or the arrival on the doormat of an unexpected DNA test result. Suddenly the trajectory of life and our assimilation thereof changes. The universe throws us a curve ball, chucks a spanner in the works and Bam!! Life is no longer what we assumed it to be.

Many are pretty somnambulant and any kind of wake up call can be a shocker. Others are hypervigilant always scanning and perhaps anticipating, thereby manifesting. Most in the comfortable West are going through the motions of life, it is relatively benign, doing similar things, without fearing an IDF bullet or kamikaze drone. They may even be pursuing a successful career assuming that is important.

Yet there it is, just around the corner, something which might shatter their complacency. Someone might turn their lives upside down. It does not have to be a movie script or an ABBA song.

I have recently been going through the motions of all these medical exams. I have not really pressed for them. I have followed the suggestions of others. At anytime some whopper could be revealed to me / us. In our house we are used, accustomed to, medical surprises of an unpleasant nature, which give us something new to contend with and endure. If there is any kind of expectation on my part it is that things will not be “just dandy”. In a self-fulfilling way I do not expect to be listened to or taken seriously. Therefore I cut my communication back to the very basic level, quasi monosyllabic even. If somebody actually listened to me, I might fall off my chair. Yet they could find something else untoward in their testing on the guinea pig which is me.

I sense in me and what I know somethings that could completely re-order notions of reality for someone else should they be exposed fully thereto. I have been very careful not to start something where I cannot follow through.

Without being all Nietzschean and super-man, no red underpants outside the tights, I do not feel encompassed by herd or shoal. What I have done to myself has changed me in ways which are not obvious yet are profound. I am not held to societal concepts in the common way nor do I contravene the basic laws in the country where I live. I look the same and at first pass behave the same. Inside I am wired differently. I am less perturbed by the crises of life. And in no way do I subscribe to the notion that life needs to be fair. My lot is my lot. I do not have concepts of deserving better or worse. It is what it is. I expect virtually nothing, I have few if any, wants desires or demands. By and large I have no wish to inflict myself on others. I have no axe to grind or vengeance to sate. I am not overly sympathetic to the petty wants and moans and whinges of others. They are just overly dramatic and manipulative. Perhaps I am cold and heartless, a cold fish. I am not a bleeding heart or hand wringer.

Provided that I limit my interactions to the most basic, the most mundane, I cause no pain, no suffering, no discomfort. I am thus well within my boundaries. I have a kind of clarity which I suspect many might struggle to live with. They need some sense of hope, some narrative to life, too. They do not see that the universe is a bleak unforgiving and potent place. Our minuscule which we deem important is insignificant. This notion, if fully attained, can be hard to bear fully. We may note it, put it to one side and then carry on as if nothing has happened. Human mind struggles to reconcile the infinite with the mundane, which is itself all too finite in space and time.

I struggle these days with compassion, finding it and expressing, that is. I see humans justifying and arguing about their right to visit brutality and death upon others as a deterrence, their just and bloody revenge. When, ever, in human history has death and slaying ever deterred death and slaying? I see gluttonous people ignore the burning planet to acquire more profits and to consume like hormonal locusts. I see the historical lessons from totalitarianism tattooed deep into the blood vessels of humans ignored and repeated. I see jackboots and caps, propaganda and division.

I see a comfortable numb complacency on all sides. People going through the motions of life, not rocking the boat nor upsetting the applecart. I see humanity walking half asleep, earphones in, staring at their shiny narco-screens, veins itching for the next electronic ping of social interaction. I see people without much in the way of purpose heading slowly, lemming like, towards an unpleasantness the scale of which they have no concept of.

Looking at the news, I have become inured, accustomed to the ceaseless death toll ticker in Gaza, the nightly drone count in Kyiv and the predictable soap box rants from DC. I don’t care how much Starmer increase taxes or if the Bank of England changes the interest rate by 0.25%.

The world, humanity, has lost its way, big time. Humanity is going through the motions of living. It is not however going anywhere meaningful…stuck in a rut…like a stuck Status Quo long player vinyl record, again and again and again…