Dreams With Venture Capitalists In

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here are collated my dreams in which Venture Capital and Venture Capitalists are mentioned. There are couple of other dreams with VCs in. In these VC refers to Vice Chancellor as in University VC or Rector ,  Provost etc in other words university big cheeses.

There are quite a lot of dreams ’25 -‘26.

I don’t meet many VCs at Point Vert, the farm supply shop or Intermarché.

Water Spirit – Misogi – Clean Water Venture Dream 22-02-2026

Here is last night dreaming which is in two related parts.

The first part opens on the shores of an alpine lake high up in the Japanese mountains. The lake is shaped like a glacial corrie or cwm and is of a pristine light turquoise blue colour. The water is hyper transparent and crystal cold. The air is crisp. To the rear of the lake is a snow covered peak. The scenery is magnificent with Japanese acers and maples. The water from the lake leaves by a small stream over a waterfall cascade which drops twenty-thirty metres over rock to a small plunge pool. The sound of the small waterfall is melody. The ambience of the environment is close to perfection. The view down from the mountains is far reaching out to the sea.

It is ago something like a thousand years ago. I am on the shore dressed as a Buddhist priest. It is definitely me and I am Japanese. In the dream I know this to be my prior life. The smell is also characteristic of Japan. With me on the shore is a spirit warlord and a small retinue of spirit warriors. There is a Japanese woman who is of high noble family and she has her retinue of ladies in waiting and an armed guard. They are dressed in great finery. The Japanese woman is part water spirit, the nature spirit of the high lake and part woman. Because of this and her relationship with the Imperial family in Shintō she is considered the goddess of the pure waters and an embodiment of misogi or purification. The water is already pure but must also always be blessed. The spirit warlord is angry and the woman must choose to either join him back in the spirit world entirely or relinquish her spirit part and remain human. In a sense I am adjudicating.

The woman does not take kindly to the angry demands of the spirit warlord. She walks over to me and places my hand firmly on her genitals on top of her clothes. She then slips it though her clothes and I can feel her flesh. Forcefully holding my hand there she rubs herself against it until she orgasms. At which point she shudders and relinquishes her water spirit aspect. She has become human.

The warlord watching says, “so you have chosen!!” He heads off into the pristine forest with his retinue of warriors. I reclaim my hand and the woman is surrounded by her ladies in waiting who comfort her. After she recovers she asks me to do a ritual of purification, of misogi, using the waters of the lake. Although it is Shintō I know the ritual well. I have a bamboo bucket and a small bamboo ladle. Which I prepare for the ritual with water from the stream.

I wake up for a visit and a 3 AM ibuprofen.

I am now in a busy city {London} office building. It is just East of The Strand and I am due to meet some financiers / venture capitalists. They have been funding a high end water business. The idea is to create ultra niche very expensive bottled water which is ritually purified and attracts a premium price. I have been asked to look into their investment. I am with a woman in a business suit who is in a rush. She is a bit “doff your cap” to the investors and anxious. She ushers me into a room in which there a number of “suits” sat around a boardroom style expensive table. They tell me that there is a prototype purification set up and pilot line that they want me to inspect. It takes impure near sewage water and makes it top end. They know I am a chemist-scientist-technologist with an entrepreneurial background.

The scene changes and I am in a laboratory. There is a huge blown glass apparatus with many coils of glass tubing. There are two sand-clay filtration stages and a long flow tube with an ultraviolet laser photolyzing chemicals and killing residual bacteria. The throughput is small and this is what is worrying the finance people. I look at the rig and it seems fine to me. It is obvious however that if they start with such impure water the throughput must be very slow. Purification is a process that takes time and effort. If they want top-end water they must start with a source which is already very good, premium and which only needs a bacteriological cleanse.

I am due to present my findings to the committee. As I walk through the building I am told that it is shutting up for the weekend. That I need to close off the lab and give my keys to the people on the third floor. The financiers have pretty much decided that they are going to pull the plug on the investment. I know that they have totally missed the point. All they can see is high throughput. They cannot see the value of purified water blessed by the likes of me. That brand which we might call misogi can attract premium price.

I go through the emptying building and I cannot find the office where I am supposed to deposit the keys. The occupants have rushed off for their hedonistic weekend jollies of excess. I walk past the front security desk and leave the keys with the uniformed man on the desk. I exit via the revolving door onto a busy central London street.

The dreaming ends.

Laser – TOF Mass Spectrometer – Humanoid Baby – VCs – Dream 08-09-2025

Here is this morning’s dream. It is has no commonality with what is going on for life on the compound nor my current thought streams.

The dream starts pulling up by car at an out of town high technology science park, there is a large brick built sign holder made of light sandy coloured bricks. On it there is a darkened bronze name plate announcing the name of the science park in a raised lettering which I cannot read. The country is unspecified and generic. There is sun shining on the grass next to the “welcome” sign. There are loads of high technology companies and start-ups.

The scene changes and I am in a very white ultra-high technology laboratory with instrumentation on benches. It is a biotechnology start-up. I am with two young Ph.D.  / Postdoc aged women. One is brown Asian in colouration and she has a brightly coloured Muslim headscarf on. Which contrasts her bright low fibre loss white lab coat. She is with a European woman of slight stature who has a clipboard. The Muslim is the boss. They are showing me around their facility.

My eye catches a ring dye laser encapsulated in a Perspex box. The dye being used is one of the orange Rhodamine dyes. There are multiple fine jets intercepted by pump laser beams. I know that this is an ultra-narrow-linewidth laser. It is part of a very sophisticated laser desorption laser ionisation time of flight (TOF) mass spectrometer. It has a mass resolution of better than 1 part in 10,000. I know that this is brought about by intracavity absorption of the ring dye laser ionisation beam.

The women are unsure as to how to explain things to me. I explain that I used to do mass resolved resonant multiphoton ionisation of mixed isotope deuterium hydrogen water clusters. I am familiar with isotopic ratios and high mass resolution. Relieved they explain that this is very important to them. They need the resolution to probe the nature of human tissue lab grown in other parts of the facility. They are using isotopic labelling to monitor the tissue growth parameters. The intracavity absorption has enabled an ultra-light gentle ionisation regime, no sledgehammer.

In walks two men in around their forties. One of them is a suit the other a scientist. Before we go to the next stage we must all don ultra-low fibre loss lab boiler suits with  pale blue elasticated cuffs at wrists and ankles. It is fibre loss from the clothes which is bad. Skin and hair do not matter.

Suitably attired the scientist man flicks a switch and I can hear air filling. He raises  a clear plastic dome to reveal a humanoid baby about the size of a two-year old. It is a male and completely naked. It has a large umbilicus containing many wires and tubes. The man holds the baby in blue lab gloved hands and turns it towards me. I understand it to be an artificial baby, an android. It is clothed in very human like flesh which has been grown in the facility. They currently have a license to do this. The flesh is very life like and convincing. The baby is moving slightly and I can see an artificial heart pumping inside. There are veins and arteries.

The suit distracts my attention and talks about their programme. Out of the corner of my eye I can see the smaller woman take an arterial blood sample. They put the baby back into its dome and seal it. I can hear gases being evacuated from the dome. We all disrobe out of the lab coats which we hang on hooks by the door.

The suit gestures to the women to take me to one side. A short while later the scientist returns and says to the suit that the dissolved carbon dioxide in the blood was too high. I can hear him say 3. It is not clear what units he is using. I go over to the suit-CEO and the scientist and ask them what this 3 means. They say that it is nothing to worry about though a little high. They are bullshitting. I know that I am a part of a venture capital (VC) inspection team sent into the facility. There have been concerns from the investors and the next funding round is due. I can tell that the men are worried. I press them about the programme and they say that some of the earlier prototypes showed similar and higher carbon dioxide levels. This needs to be reduced before the humanoid can be autonomous. They don’t know that I have a large personal investment in the VC fund and that I am highly sceptical.

The dream ends and I think “that was fucking weird”.

Investor Incognito – Quantum Modules – Sociopolitical Problems Dream 19-08-2025

Here is last night’s dreaming sequence.

“If you want my future, forget my past
If you wanna get with me, better make it fast”

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The dream opens in a splendid mansion and grounds of Italianate design situated somewhere like Lake Como or Lake Maggiore. It is upper class, rich and very swanky. It is an investor event for high net worth individuals and venture capital (VC) funds of diverse type and scale. It is late evening drawing into night. There is a string quartet and finger food. Presentations will be given in an outdoors setting once it has become fully dark. There is a stage and seating. Seating is round “ten” seater tables. In the meantime a pre-event wine tasting is going on. It feels European.

I am working incognito as one of the wine waiters. I am in black and whites with a white wine apron. I am opening a bottle of vintage red wine and offering to taste before decanting. I then fill a decanter with the rest of the wine. The idea being that they also taste after half an hour. I pour a taster around the table. Each in turns swirls the bright red wine and tastes. I move onto the next table who are trying an ice cold New Zealand white. In general the interaction is professional but I can tell that I am “staff” and not one of them. I am of no significance. I am not the main event.

Heading back to the kitchen an American woman who is a VC accidentally bangs in to me, she is partially drunk and is very rude to me. I apologise even though it is her fault. She is brash and convinced of her own importance. The event suggests to me that these are not the kind of people I seek.

The scene changes and I am at a booth in a trade show and technology event. On the table in front of me is a quantum module. It is a slot in for a 19 inch electronics frame wider unit. I have the side panel off the module. In it I can see a photonic circuit processor which is air-cooled by fan. Connected to it are several tight circle bundles of fibreoptic cable. These are cable tied and attached to the motherboard. A number of them lead to optical-optical low loss interconnects on the rear of the module. To the top of the board is a diode pumped fibre laser which I know to be single mode. The whole unit is a modular quantum logic gate, a plug and play module for an in-principle demonstrator. With me in the booth are Geri Horner and her husband. As a hobby he has led the engineering team and has managed to attract some not standard funding from Red Bull. I replace the side panel to the module and screw it in using a jeweller’s screw driver. I slot the module into the wider 19 inch parent rack. I then mount the whole unit into an electronics rack and attach the computer interface. Geri is excited and waiting for people to visit our booth. There is a Red Bull logo. The module is a large-scale building block prototype for a room temperature quantum computer. I have had to seek non-standard funding, hence Geri and Red Bull.

The scene changes and I am in my workshop / shed on top of a low rise several storey building. To my surprise a text message arrives on my ‘phone. The message asks “why, why am I packing it in?” I am very surprised that there is both a ‘phone and a text message in the dream. { A very rare thing} As I am dealing with this surprise a man appears at the door of my shed. He is older than me, very English and of the UK science hierarchy. I let him in. He wants to know why I am dropping this line of research / investigation. I explain to him that the establishment does not accept me and has difficulty interacting with me because I am not usual. I do not belong to any famous company / institution. He does not believe me. I explain to him in more depth and he starts to get offended imagining that I am attacking the entire science hierarchy. I ask him if he is personally offended. He says, yes.

“Now do you see the sort of thing I am up against. How resistant to me people are?”

“Yes, OK , I get the idea.”

He then asks me to hang fire for a while. He wants to know who I am working with. I explain that it is just me. On my bookshelf he see texts on superconducting and quantum circuits. He says that he might be able to get someone to work with me. I doubt it. There is no money.

I say to him that there is little which can be done. It is as it is. He does not like this.

The dream ends and I have the Spice Girls “Wannabe” to mind.

Venture Capital – UCL – Dream 20-07-2025.

Here is last night’s dream, unusually had early in the night ~1 AM. It seems contextually out of the blue.

The dream starts outside a swish urban building similar in style to The Ritz or Berner Kantonalbank, with a partially covered walk way. The feel is European, Germanic or British not French. There is a sense of commerce and business. The building is like a TARDIS much more spacious on the inside than the outsides suggest. It is high rent, posh and opulent.

In the atrium on a meeting area to one side I am sat in an alcove with Mark. There are antique like chairs with coffee tables  arranged facing each other in a semi-circle. Mark is there with his team from the Venture Fund. They are all suited and well dressed. Mark is a bit younger than he would be now. We are discussing the funding opportunities for my project. He is quite enthusiastic. The event we are at is some kind of inventor-investor meet-up.

He stands up and ushers me to follow him. I note that I do not have a suit on simply a white collarless granddad shirt which is immaculately pressed. I cannot see my lower half. I can see the fine grain of the cloth.

He leads me up a grand staircase to the event dining room. In a wall-mirrored room sat around large round “Louis XIV” gilded tables are diners in groups of around a dozen. Mark ushers me to a table where Debbie and Sue are sat. Sue is the far end of the table next to the wall and Debbie is nearer the walkway. She stands up to greet me  and we hug. Sue is more reticent as if she is embarrassed to see me for some reason. Debbie is at the event to promote technology transfer from her university. She is keen to hear what I have been up to. She says that I can stay in her room overnight if I would like. There is a very faint sexual overtone. She is roughly as she was thirty years ago when I last saw her. She addresses me using the nickname “George” which was in use then. She says that if I stay with her, I can get one of the most excellent breakfasts put on by the event. The wanting to feed motif is much stronger than any faint sexual overtone.

I ask her if she recognises the dress I am wearing. In the dream I show her the material of an exquisitely patterned grey floral female dress which I am wearing on my top half. It is very expensive and high quality with petite floral designs interspersed with doves. I say that it used to be her dress. She does not recognise it. She hands me her technology transfer / business development card. I make my excuses and leave the posh event.

As I am leaving the lobby of the building, I see a news broadcast about a man who is promoting cross channel intellectual and business collaborations between France and England. His ‘phone number and email flash up on screen, which I write down on the back of the business card.

I continue out of the building and into a suburban train station car park. It is very dark and raining slightly. I walk over a partially covered bridge over the rails to the station on the other side of the tracks.

The dream ends and seems incongruous.

  • Mark, Debbie and Sue were in my Chemistry degree class at UCL in the early eighties. I have spoken to Mark on Teams in the last year, before that not for forty years. I have not spoken in person to Debbie for thirty years and Sue for probably forty years.

Microsatellite Propulsion Entrepreneurship Dream 22-1-2023

Last night we watched “Don’t look Up” a film about an asteroid of significant size smashing into Earth and the unwillingness of a US president to take it seriously, she was more concerned with politics and power, a metaphor perhaps for climate change. Taking any real action is unprofitable and unpopular. This dream is out of the blue and not in line with other recent dreams.

The dream starts in a small office with a white board. I am there with two young men. We are going over the drawings of a microsatellite and a small launch system with a bespoke and novel propulsion unit. The fuel for the rocket is completely new and in no way resembles current thinking. It runs on a novel source of energy. The microsatellite is roughly a cubic foot and has onboard communications superior to its larger cousins and an ultra-high efficiency solar power collection unit.

I am checking with one of the young men that he has included all three polar co-ordinates and velocities for each of the planets and the sun in the solar system in his calculations for the satellite orbit, that way the need for positional adjustment post launch will be minimised. He is confident that the simulations are accurate. We know that the previous methods of launch have all taken the phallic “big is beautiful” approach. Our small bespoke rocket does not need a fancy launch pad and can be launched from the back of a large purpose built truck from anywhere in the world, including high altitude which lessens the fuel requirement. The first few kilometres of atmosphere are the most expensive in terms of fuel budget, because of friction and gravitational proximity.

We gather our documents and slide pack together and fly off to London.

We arrive in a large building reminiscent of those around Regent’s Park. We are met at the front desk and are ushered to the open plan meeting facility which we have hired. It is in one corner of the very large foyer of the building. The floor has a red patterned carpet and there are ornate chandeliers. We have a very large wooden table with numerous chairs. I leave one of the young men to set up and take the other one off to show him a room which he remembers from before. “This is where it all started”, he says. I take him around a corner to another room, which we both remember.

As we are walking through the corridor, we meet a woman who was previously our secretary and her entourage. I thank her for coming along. She is very pleased to see me and gives me a massive maternal hug. We escort her back to the table and she makes herself comfortable. Other people start arriving. Many of them are venture capital investors. Some are known to me and are a bit sheepish. I make everybody welcome. Across the foyer I see another businesswoman sat at a table with colleagues. She catches my eye and ushers me over. She makes way and I sit next to her. She too is pleased to see me. She asks, “Where have you been? What have you been doing? We have all wondered what happened to you?” I have no satisfactory answer but invite her and her team to come and listen to what we have to say. They join us at our table.

Slowly more and more people arrive. There is quite a buzz. The young man has set up a holographic projection unit on a dais near the table.  We are good to go. In three dimensions and in blue our logo for MicroSat can be seen.

Dream ends…

Patents-VCs-Dream-19-02-18

Here is this morning’s dream. Last night we watched Dragons’ Den on TV and I had another dream of its ilk earlier in the night which I cannot recall.

I arrive at some swanky offices in London and go into reception. It is plush and modern with a glass fronted airy atrium. The security guards at the desk take my name and give me a badge to wear. They direct me to a holding area / outer office. I am suited and booted but with no tie.

The PA greets me. In the holding area there is another man sat. He is clutching documentation and a tablet computer. I tell the lady, who is smartly dressed, that I am here for a 10 o’clock appointment. It is 9:24AM. The other guy is about to go “in”. Knowing that I am, as per usual, early I ask the PA how the timing and schedule is going. “Is it Swiss?”, I ask. She says, “not quite” with a wink. So, I say that I will pop out for a coffee and come back. She points me in the direction of the canteen. I say I would rather go to a coffee shop; she is unhappy about this as it threatens her scheduling. She doubts I will be back on time.

I head off into town and find a coffee shop. I sit at one table and am joined by three other people. They do not notice me and are deep in heated discussion. I can see that they have a design for a beam steering column to be used in conjunction with a microscope. They are discussing a possible patent application. The younger one is talking the others through the design drawings which are in clear view on the table.

Just as they are about to leave, I say that the design looks OK but that is doesn’t look all that novel to me. Anyone “skilled in the art” might have come up with it, they need to find a better angle or way of doing it. They are a bit shocked.

I look down at my watch it is 9:55AM. I had better leg it back. I get in my car and drive fast through the traffic back to the office.

As I arrive the other guy is coming “out”, clutching his documents. I wish him luck.

I sit in a chair close to the open door which leads to the inner office it is now 10:02AM.

Through the ajar door one of the posh geezers says that I had better come in. In the room there are a number of men (~4-5) dressed in expensive suits and “Rolex” type watches. They are having their coffee refreshed. The first man ushers me towards some chairs facing the men whom I know to be rich VC types. I say that I would prefer to stand. Which I do facing the semi-circle of investors. I have no documentation or IT. Just me. I am very relaxed.

The PA leaves the room and one of the men there says that I should tell them about myself.

I start off on the cancer and tutorial story. I can sense their eyes glazing over and the thought “time waster” starting to manifest. One says, “That explains why we haven’t heard anything from you or about you!”

I then say that I have also been looking at and delving into patents. I know a patentable idea when I see one and I have a couple sketched out. This sparks their interest a little more. The tone and the mood in the room suddenly changes. One of them who is the lead turns to another and mutters something under his breath. I have their attention now.     

At that point I start engaging them in a very relaxed manner. “What kinds of investment opportunities are you (plural) looking for? “

Because thy have been sat all morning listening, they welcome the chance to speak for a bit, so they begin.

The dream ends.

=

Unsatisfactory Endings

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Last night I watched a poor YouTube clip listing behaviours of intelligent people. It suggested that pattern recognition, global overview and an awareness of complexity were characteristics.

I have for now finished my physiotherapy. The experience has been good and the ending for now very satisfactory. I am not used to being physically close to other humans and the feeling is a little strange. Her timekeeping is excellent which for me is a big plus.

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There is a US comedienne who jokes that she was told that she was not sufficiently intelligent to have Asperger’s. Diagnosed autism under some circumstances has a “gifted” component.

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“Microsoft today introduced Majorana 1, the world’s first quantum chip powered by a new Topological Core architecture that it expects will realize quantum computers capable of solving meaningful, industrial-scale problems in years, not decades.

It leverages the world’s first topoconductor, a breakthrough type of material which can observe and control Majorana particles to produce more reliable and scalable qubits, which are the building blocks for quantum computers.”

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Nobody really knows what happened to Ettore Majorana who just “disappeared”. He may have done a “Reggie Perrin” to escape Sunshine Deserts. The plot is left hanging unsatisfied, which enables people to make all sorts of shit up.

I was having a look at Quantum Startups on YouTube yesterday and some are getting funded in aircraft carrier size quanta. With a possible Venture Capital overexposure to AI some diversification of longer term risk might be needed.

I have all the early Microsoft patents on this computer and I may dip into them if I have trouble sleeping. I remember them been longer than a long thing on a well stretched day.

Of late I have noted rushed and unsatisfactory endings to a number of TV series and movies we have been watching. The dramatization and death has been perfunctory and without much artistry. People have been introduced, sketched out a little and then killed off. This has left me with a feeling that the ending was unsatisfactory they could have done better. Body count does not always corelate with narrative excellence. I do wonder if my dissatisfaction with modern drama narrative is partly due to the “old git syndrome”.

“When I were a lad…”

The closing of the Godfather series of movies was very apt and the story telling circle was complete. It was well rounded off. Tidy.

Loose ends hanging are unsatisfactory, there is no closure .

In life there are elements of narrative left pendant and unsolved. They are untidy and messy. From time to time these messy threads reappear like the herpes virus.

Not everyone gets a Disney ending. Some want to make way for a second series or a franchise follow up. Almost without exclusion the follow up is never as good as the original.

This need for some kind of closure whether temporary or otherwise is, it seems, a part of the human psyche.

Leaving things open, untidied and untied can seem wise it can also seem highly unsatisfactory.  Fluidity and winging it can leave a right mess…which can have very wide implications and many ripples.

We are yet to find out what the longer term impacts of what Benjamin Nosferatu and Trump are doing in Iran.

I’ll speculate that it won’t be cut and dried, nor tidy and that the ending will not be satisfactory to anyone. It is a mess made out of a “cunning plan” that was not thoroughly thought through…

Which might be difficult to say for a Frenchman….

It is a moot point as to what makes an ending satisfactory.

But pendant situations do have a knack of hanging around and for a long time…

Five German Women – Secret Compartment – Dream 16-03-2026

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Here is this morning’s dream which is odd both for its subject content and the way the dream unfolded. It felt odd.

The dream opens on an inland beach. It is next to a large fresh water lake surrounded by woodland and verdant countryside. It is clearly summer. People are boating on and swimming in the lake. There is a smell of barbecues in the air. The wife and I are sat in deck chairs a little back from the beach in partial shade. Nearby is a group of five women. They are dressed in expensive bikini like swimwear, with expensive designer sunglasses and by the side of their chairs are expensive bags. They are five powerful women on a break together, a girls’ weekend. They are high maintenance and used to getting their way. They emanate a very European vibe. I can hear that they are speaking high German and comment upon this to the wife. The women are late thirties / early forties. One of them hears what I said and asks me in German if I understand what they have been saying. I respond that I can understand a very small amount of German and that this improves quickly with exposure. She says that she thinks I have a slight accent. I explain that I learned German in Bern many moons ago. She works out that we are British. The gang comes over and makes a big fuss, now in English, of the wife and I. They say that they don’t often get Brits at this lake. They are very sociable and welcoming. I can tell that they are highly skilled in people skills and are consummate professionals in some field or other. They are slick. It is a bit odd being professionally fussed over as if we were somehow “important”. It seems incongruent with my self-perception. “What is going on?”, I ask myself.

The dream changes and I am now in an isolated lodge or house also in the middle of a forest {wald}. In the grate there is a wood fire and the mantelpiece is large and carved out of wood. It is a bit Hansel and Gretel, a Germanic or Bavarian forest house. I am with a man and a woman, both seemingly Germanic. The man is forces or ex-forces. He has a very military bearing and is athletic and lithe. The woman is dark haired and clearly the boss. We are anticipating an important visit. I go over to check the fireplace. One can swing the fire forward on a hinged mechanism to reveal a secret compartment behind the fire place. I do this. I look at the framing of the compartment and decide that I am too large to get past the “portal” into the compartment as it stands. My shoulders are too broad. The man and I remove some of the frame and at a push I can now get into the compartment which forms a core to the house and has entrances into the lounge where we are, the kitchen and the cellar. It has viewers behind ventilation grills to see into the room. I can fit in and out. I leave the compartment and swing the fire back into place. We are a bit apprehensive as to who might come and if the meeting might go ahead. I have stashed the necessary documentation in the secret compartment.

We get into a car and look for an alternative. We go to the train station and the man and I go to the ticket barrier to get me a ticket to Cardiff. The next train is not for several hours. The ticket schemes are ludicrously complex. In order to buy a ticket I have to show my French driver’s licence. The man chats to me about being Welsh and that we all share an orientation and a mindset. We buy a ticket and I go down onto the platform.

Instead of catching the next train I can wait for another one. So I cross the train tracks illegally on foot and hurdle a fence onto the road to get to the car where the woman and now the man are waiting. I open the door to the back seat and get in. I say that we should go back to the lodge to see what if anything transpires. We will check the fire hiding the compartment and view the approach roads through the wood. The moment we see any approach I will go into the compartment. The woman in particular is pleased that we are going to try this. Implicit is one more time. Both the man and the woman feel somehow familiar.

The dream ends.

Differing Metrics – Human Love of League Tables

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Over the last few weeks we have been watching the six nations rugby competition. People want to know who won and who finished last, what was their position in the league table. Wales came last and got the wooden spoon. The world is obsessed with metrics

The QS word university rankings for 2025 are:

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I taught at one of these for over a decade {Imperial} and got a B.Sc. and a Ph.D. from another of these {UCL}. I had very brief spells teaching at two other top ten UK based universities. On paper then I was at pukka places for a while. I was not Mickey Mouse and I did not teach “Application of Media Studies To Pre-Carthaginian Naval Cultures”.

That track-record of mine is however ancient history.

I am not quite sure why people are so obsessed with league tables. Each football season hundreds of millions of people around the globe check the league position of their team and follow each football match with an avid interest.

People read polls to see how well Nigel Bellend Farage is doing. They make extensive soporific current affairs programmes to discuss poll positions.

They can base their interactions with others on their relative positions in various league tables. Trump has probably damaged the upcoming global league position of US universities.

Those at the top of the league can look down their noses at those at the bottom

For whatever reason people like lists. People measure different things. To your average Manchester City supporter the ranking of Oxford over Cambridge is of no interest.

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What happens when you speak different league table languages?

Is the share price of Nvidia more important than the degree of enlightenment?

Does it matter who has more cheap drones, who has more expensive Patriot missiles?

Must we discuss over beers down the pub from our soap boxes?

I think some people can get boners and/or go a bit damp about league table positions….

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Are you obsessed with league tables?

If so, why?

Will that help you achieve liberation and enlightenment?

Is Excel the secret key to escaping the wheel of rebirth?

It tabulation better than meditation?

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Kudos Clout and Fame

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

—

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

Tempest (IV.i.148–158)

Attr. William Shakespeare

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Many are enamoured by the notion of being important, having kudos and clout. They seek recognition and the power that might come with it. They want to have power by association to/with those deemed to have high kudos. To claim that one studied at Cambridge University or Harvard is to have a form of academic clout. Were one able to name drop Steven Hawkins as a mentor one gains brownie points while also ticking the disabled box. If one knows Taylor Swift or Barron Trump one has power by name dropping. Were one in the inner circles all sorts or doors would open for you. If you are famous you can get an audience with the Dalai Lama.

The other night we watched the Louis Theroux documentary on the  “manosphere”. He managed to get interviews with a right bunch of bellends. It was interesting to see how so many people put up with being humiliated in order to claim kudos by association with these intellectual giants. Fame whores and kudos junkies are easily found. There is often a price.

It demonstrated a truth that those “on the make” will associate with very unsavoury characters like Jimmy Savile, Bonny Blue and Epstein. The urge to self-promote can make for weird bed fellows which many claim later to regret. People will exercise poor judgment if they think they can get kudos or clout, thereby. The lust for attention, for recognition and “kudos” is addictive for some.

Discernment is rare.

I remember an interview with Edwina Currie in which she was absolutely mortified about her association with Savile and her prior trust in him. If she had not seen political worth in so associating it would never have happened. Many make a pact with Mephisto in order to self advance. Temptation is hard to resist.

We do not all know Savile but many do exercise poor judgment in hanging on to the coat tails of others many of whom are unsavoury. Corruption is the thin end of the wedge and many are way more susceptible than they might think. At best they will turn a blind eye rather than calling people out. Moral fibre is not a common breakfast cereal. Most have a price either explicit or implicit.

People will do a lot in order to associate with an impermanent illusion…

People try to measure the esteem in which others hold you…

People are given jobs on the basis of the kudos of institutions or corporations they worked for. Judgment is biased by this peculiar socio-political construct of kudos.

People can make TV shows and movies about this pursuit of kudos, clout and fame…

It takes all sorts…

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Fame
I’m gonna make it to heaven
Light up the sky like a flame
Fame
I’m gonna live forever
Baby, remember my name

Dean Pitchford, Michael Gore

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Missing Persons – Incommunicado

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Quite a while back I had a dream in which someone filed a missing person report about me. I don’t know if anyone actually did or not. As things stand there is probably only one person in the world who would notice my absence as being out of the norm. Of course if I am absent or not around people are free to make up whatever stories or narratives about me they wish. I am not around to challenge of contradict such narratives. It is most likely that people have plenty to do in their busy lives and I am unlikely to even crop up en passant.

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I am not active on any form of social media. Aside from this blog there is no other on-line presence. So by today’s metrics it is a moot point if I exist or not. I could be AI generated or a figment of my own imagination.

In the last year I have had “social” email contact with four people. None of those interactions have had many words. The exchange has been a few emails long.

It could be said that I am pretty incommunicado. There are no business email addresses or ‘phone numbers listed. To date only one person has ever called me on my personal mobile ‘phone – the wife. If anyone calls the land line it is 99.99% sure to be a hoax, spam or a scam attempt. I am not accustomed to feverishly answering telephones. I do not answer.

{These telephone numbers although not secret are not well known.}

I am not affiliated anywhere…

I had a question during the night.

“If somebody actually wanted to contact me, how would they do that?”

Anything official like the police, tax or immigration can easily find me. I am legit in terms of bank accounts revenue and social security. My documentation is all up to date. I am easily to be found in French official records. A UK missing person search would find an old trail, though I do have UK bank accounts. Officially it would be easy to find my two border crossings into the UK last year, to Jersey and Gatwick. The previous crossing was January 2019 Portsmouth to St Malo. We have left Brittany only once inside France since 2019.

Aside from that I have perhaps fallen off the edge of the world…metaphorically speaking.

So if anyone has actually filed a missing person report they never got round to making contact. In France a disappearance needs to be disturbing to be investigated. In the UK it seems easier to initiate a missing person report.

As an antisocial loner it is only a matter of time before I end up in some news report or other…

Chemistry Degree Course – Knowledge & Compliance Dream 14-03-2026

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is this morning’s dream

The dream opens in a Chemistry undergraduate teaching laboratory. Myself and a dozen or so others are getting back our Chemistry degree first year examination papers. The faculty, all younger than me by decades, are wearing white lab coats. The exam results are generally poor, the idea being to shock us into study. I get my paper back and look at the marking and comments. I can see a couple of proofs which I sketched out but did not finish because I knew the answer from that point. I get to the end and see that my mark is fifty one out of a hundred. Appended is the comment “one of the top marks for this exam”. Various of my peer group have done less well in the exam. I know that reason I have done better is because of my stint teaching “A” level Chemistry. I know that to get marks answers must correlate to the marks scheme provided only. There is no scope for even correct deviance. The people who have answered at “degree” level as it was two decades ago have been marked down and wrong. I understand that this is because the knowledge has changed a bit and that the acceptable answers have become more rigidly defined.

I go to the library and thumb through a modern edition of Atkins  “Physical Chemistry”. I note that it has changed with bizarre “knowledge” boxes and artificially highlighted “take homes”. I am then back in the teaching lab. I ask one of the faculty what text books we need. He hands me a PDF which is entitled “how to pass courses”. It is a guide on how best to give the expected answers to exam questions. He says that the details of how to get the text are on the course materials.

I ask him if the course might accept that it is not right in all cases, that it is a simplification. I explain that I once bought an achromatic lens which was marketed as truly achromatic. I explain that using Nd: YAG wavelengths of 1064 and 532 nm the focal points differed at even moderate laser intensity. The lens was achromatic only at very low laser fields. The manufacturer would not listen to my findings. The faculty member says that this is irrelevant. There are only the accepted answers to the course. He is mildly threatening. “If you don’t answer the questions as we set them and provide the accepted answers, you will not pass the course.” There is an element of coercion and exercise of power over. “If you do not comply you will not pass. You will fail. You will not get the accepted qualification”. He is unaware of my level of knowledge and adamant that he is right. I must comply with him (them) and what they deem right and complete.

In the dream I know that there is a problem. Because of course metrics courses and answers are designed in such a way that they can be measured. The guidebooks on how to pass are there to ensure that students get good grades and thence the course providers and examiners get good teaching feedback. I note that there is a circular delusion about improving standards and qualities. I note also that compliance is a problem when it comes to what knowledge is accepted and acceptable. In the dream I think they are kidding themselves about what they know and about knowledge. I suspect that they are wholly unwilling to accept this.

The dream ends…