Tag: writing

Marcus Aurelius Quotes

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

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If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

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Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

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You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

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Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

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Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?

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When another blames you or hates you, or people voice similar criticisms, go to their souls, penetrate inside and see what sort of people they are. You will realize that there is no need to be racked with anxiety that they should hold any particular opinion about you.

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How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.

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The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.

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You are a little soul carrying about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.

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Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.

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What we do now echoes in eternity.

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Perfection of character is this: to live each day as if it were your last, without frenzy, without apathy, without pretence.

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Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.

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Random – Buffalo Shaman – P&L Dream 28-10-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is this morning’s dream had between 4 and 7:30. I am going to open a new dream theme “random” and apply it to dreams which seemingly have little to do with me although I may feature therein.

My anticipation is that the dreaming will fade going towards surgery. It will then lay relatively dormant. This anticipation could be wrong.

The dream opens in a large room, part of a town hall and near a registry office. Sat around the room on large “leather” bound sofas are a collection of jet black men. They are all very smartly if non-standardly dressed. They look a little like characters out of a 1930s movie by their vintage clothing choice. There is some jollity and mirth. They are all Nigerian and gathered for a Nigerian wedding. They are big blokes and I think that they would make a good pack of rugby forwards.

I am to marry an Irish woman Aishleen to one of them. She is in the next room waiting in a white wedding dress.

I look down to the inside of my right wrist. There is  a white, made of bone, emblem there. It is a skull of a buffalo with bead decorations on the horns. The emblem is mostly two dimensional and is attached to me, tattoo like as opposed to affixed. One of the Nigerians says that I am the Buffalo shaman and that I must practice the rite. I gather the men together holding hands in a circle. We sing and chant a little.

They notice in one corner of the room a brilliant white laboratory style mouse. I must sacrifice it. To do this I take a book from the bookshelf and use it to squash the mouse. They cheer me on to do this. I squash the mouse and it flattens then disappears. It is OK now for the marriage to go ahead.

The scene changes and I am walking around South London near a park. The road is on top of a slope behind some metal railings and the park is in the valley below. It is in Streatham. I follow the road and go into a club house of sorts there is a meeting. The local “council” are discussing closing public toilets as a cost saver. I say that this is stupid as the cost saving is tiny. The lead for the meeting says that the finances are dire. I asks him to show me. He comes back with a summary statement. I say that no, I want the entire profit and loss, P&L accounts to peruse. Give me all the detail. That is the best thing I can do for them to do a thorough look as an objective outsider. I say that I think they are losing the plot.

He comes back with a full accounts setting and a younger woman clerk. She is dark haired, ample and around 40. I recognise her. He says that she will help me. She asks me if I remember where I met her all those years ago. She says that it was a 4 AM in the morning walking along Turners Road when I was accustomed to doing my late night walks. She says that we went back to hers for some more drinks. For some reason non sexual we are close.

As I wake up I think “random”…

The dream ends.

Gorillas – Plane Concept – Davos –  Cairo – Freedom Dream 05-10-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Here is last night’s dream sequence mostly had before 5:15 AM. I almost did not want to go back to sleep in case there was more incoming to remember.

The dream starts with me crossing a wooden style over a fence into a green meadow come fallow field. The field slopes gently up to the left and gives way into a wooded copse. I have no shirt on my top. I start to run along the length of the field. I can feel the impact in my pelvis but cannot see my legs. I am unaware if I am clothed or not below the waist. I have not run for a very long time and am unaccustomed. I am enjoying it. The sun is out. The air is crisp. I am moving fairly well. I get to the style at the other end of the field about 400 metres away. I stop and turn back.

I start to run back. To my surprise both my legs seem to be working well. As I get near the corner of the field with the style I can see two groups of gorillas. Nearest me are three adolescent juveniles who are playing with each other. Nearer the style there is a huge silverback, his mate and two infant gorillas. I note that there are seven gorillas in total. I wonder if I will disturb them and cause the silverback to attack. As I get closer I decide not to try for the style but to head up the hill. I look to my chest and joke to myself that perhaps they will think me one of them. I start to head on a different trajectory uphill and without staring directly at the silverback. From time to time we catch eyes. He is content and chilled chewing on a piece of grass.

As I head up the hill I notice some human houses with fences to the field. I can see in the wooden slat fence a gate with a padlock able bolt lock in grey metal. I slow down and slide the bolt back which opens the wooden gate onto a path / unmade road. I step through onto the path and close the gate behind me. I am met by a middle aged Germanic house frau with blonde hair fixed in pleated curls to her head. She gestures me to follow her into her house and thence into a garage come hangar. I now have  a white long sleeve shirt on. I know that I am in an alpine village and that the elevation is around 1500m or more. I can tell this from the flowers in the meadow. She is very insistent on showing me into the hangar.

On the concrete there is a large model wooden plane with a brilliant red paint job {think red arrows}. It has a wingspan of over one metre. The propellor on the front is damaged. She asks me to fix it. I look up the model number on a lap top and download a technical drawing of the spare parts. I order these. The parts cannot be delivered on time. We agree that there needs to be a faux or ersatz propellor for the show. She calls a relative, a male, who fashions a propeller out of hide leather. This will be good enough for the first show. However the village is buzzing because an offshoot for the Davos World Economic Forum is due to visit the village. It will be good for the local economy ongoing.

She says that I should fit my own novel prototype propellers in time for this visit. I have developed a new kind of prop-drive unit which they would like to see. I agree and start fashioning the propeller design out of some metal lying to one side of the workshop / hangar. I check that the design will fit and can be driven by the onboard motor of the model plane. This will be ready for the Davos offshoot and they are particularly interested to see what it is that I, specifically, have designed.

The scene changes and it is just after dusk. The air is warm and scented and I am in the back seat of a taxi come limousine. I am arriving at the drop off “roundabout” in front of the Hilton Intercontinental in Cairo. I am a specially invited speaker at some kind of conference there. The driver gets out and opens the door for me. I go in and head to reception.

The scene now changes to some kind of communal market / fête. People are milling about it is in a town centre. Some kind of market town like Marlborough. I have been interviewing people with a microphone and a small production crew. I have been giving them the verbal prompt “freedom” and asking them to make a short response as to what springs first to mind. We have edited the first batch of clips and are projecting them onto what looks like a cricket white side sight screen. There is sound.

The first clip is of me saying “freedom”. The people / audience pause and watch.

The subsequent clips are of people responding to camera and microphone.

“Freedom from war.”

“Freedom from oppression.”

“Freedom from hate.”

“Freedom to love.”

“Freedom to think.”

“Freedom to breathe.”

“Freedom simply to be.”

Once the clips have been shown the people carry on about their business.

I am with three generations of a family they are a Somali / Eritrean grandmother skinny in a headscarf, she has that distinctive look, her anglicised more corpulent daughter dressed smartly and Western and a young girl. The daughter ushers me into the back of a limousine / van where we will edit more of the responses. I initially sit in the front left hand passenger seat. I cannot easily help the edit. It tanks it down with rain. I get out of the car into a deep puddle wetting my legs near up to the knee. This causes hilarity particularly for the young girl. I climb into the back and am handed the lap top. We are very happy that we have gotten enough “freedom” clips for now.

I awake for a loo break. I am in two minds whether or not to get up because if there are more dreams I may not be able to remember and recollect them all. That is already a lot to recall.

I drift back off and am in some kind of a social club / bar. I am in the entrance vestibule taking off my jacket when deeper in the bar I see Anita. She sees me and come running over to give me a hug. She is small. She says that she is very glad to see me because she wanted to tell me that she is leaving for Geneva. She has a job there. I say that this is fantastic. I have a series of commitments starting first in Fribourg and working my way south towards Geneva. Ending with a gig there. I have an “appointment” or job at a school near Geneva if I want one.

The dreaming gets more bitty but has me returning later to the bar to pick up my keys and things. I am completely naked and vulnerable but the barman has kept my things to one side and is very happy to return them to me.

The dream ends and I am determined not to go back to sleep.

Is Being Negative Clever?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

This topic was raised in a dream last night.

Some imagine that being highly sceptical and picking holes in everything is the hallmark of intellect and perhaps cleverness. Please understand that when I use the word clever I do not do so in a positive sense. Clever for me is a derogatory term implying an arrogant perhaps smug self-satisfaction, a know-it-all misplaced glee. It is very easy to pick holes, much harder to mend them. I’ll suggest that it is a flaw of human sociopolitical mindset to be negative. To always find fault and thereby prove just how bad and terrible things are. It is a prejudice. A crowd, perhaps baying, will get behind a negative sentiment easily.

Back when I used to do personal and team development courses my favourite piece of personal feedback was, “Alan’s ability to constantly find positives in every situation was tiresome and irritating!” This was from young Ph.D. students at a Complexity doctoral training centre in UCL. Young people full of negativity are hard to motivate. Can’t is a self fulfilling prophecy. Eeyore is alive and tolerably well, not too bad, getting by, moping.

One of the things which has surprised me about France is just how negative people collectively are. They are inert, they complain and find fault. They are actually more negative than cynical Brits. They have shit loads of great technology which nobody outside of France buys. This is because they seem too shy and embarrassed, perhaps arrogant and lazy, to meanigfully address non Francophone markets. There is a cloud of negativity and little encouragement. The medical profession here lacks warmth and is process driven. It is very good but mostly soul less. Few understand my post hip operation career at the Bolshoi. Graveyard humour is lacking and as a result things can be dour and sullen.

In the dream last night I was talking with a British GP doctor. She was posh upper class and old school, roughly my age. She was tweedy and clearly had an intimate relationship with gin and tonic. You could imagine her on a pheasant shoot equipped with cognac filled hip flask. She was looking at all my extensive medical tests. On the basis of these she wanted to know why I had come to see her. I explained that I was concerned about getting a post cold chest infection. She said that I should not be such an idiot. All my tests showed that aside from my arthritis I am in a very good state of health for my age and considering my past consumption. She said that we was considering telling me to fuck off out of her office. I do not have COPD and my ticker works just find. I said that the constant pain puts a down lens on things. She said that in a half a year or so things would look more rosy. Cheer up!

It kind of highlights how the medical profession may send one off to be a lab rat and then forget to give you perspective. If you have 70 medical appointments in a year you will assume yourself to be severely ill, when you may not be. It shows how the big grey heavy mental cloud of negativity can drag you down suck out your spirit like a Potteresque dementor.  On Monday I stood in the “happy” queue at the pharmacy in the local village. Shiny happy people it was not.

“Sitting here eating my heart out baby, I need some hot stuff baby…” It was a shame that the radio was not on…

The world right now lacks direction, positive direction. It is a heavy and very negative space. Hope is a very rare thing just now. Division and negativity are the prevalent toxins.

Being overly negative is a very big downer…man…

Rapport and Communication

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

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The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

George Bernard Shaw

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The above succinct quotation is a lot more apt than many are willing to acknowledge. It is widely applicable. It takes a lot of effort, willingness and practice to enhance communication so that one can be “en rapport” with another. One has to be on similar wavelengths and not too divergent in intellect. There must be some shared commonality of allegory and metaphor, usually some overlap of life experiences. There needs to be some kind of tie, perhaps emotional or deeper. The sharing of space and time with another helps, sharing trauma or profound experience can enhance a shared experiential which enables communication. One can communicate well with someone who one “hates” because that intensity adds focus to communication. This intensity can aid or degrade communication. There are a lot of assumptions and biases present in most attempts to communicate.

Above all one needs to listen attentively and try to communicate, to convey. My experience suggests that many are unskilled in listening. To tune in to another requires one to be passive like a radio receiver. One needs to find the wavelength of transmission on the dial.

If there is poor rapport using conventional methods such as talking it is not surprising that unconventional methods such as telepathy are not well experimentally proven. I like the analogy of an electronic instrument. If the noise in the instrument is high its ability to detect true signal is reduced. The “minds” of most are a cacophony of internal dialogue unable to pick up signal. If the mind is distracted and unfocussed the spoken word fails to register with any longevity in the consciousness. {Oh look a butterfly, my ‘phone has just pinged with a text, what is for tea?}

I’ll speculate that profound inter-human rapport is on the wane.

In the media when a psychic is consulted to solve a complicated murder case, perhaps find a body, they are given a piece of clothing, a photograph. This enables the psychic-seer to tune into to the missing person or object. Logically the rapport gained from a scarf or a photograph cannot be as strong as that gained from a genuine relationship with that individual. Perhaps by taking time to immerse into the life, the bedroom, the friends of the missing person a non-proximal rapport can be gained. But it would not be the same as if they worked together for a decade and shared life’s highs and lows. There may be some more predisposed to such a skill. We have the notion of empath on one hand and trained skilled psychological profiler on the other hand. One uses a subjective rapport and the other builds from a quasi-objective evidence base.

The notion of rapport is of course subjective and perhaps elusive. Rapport must vary in a temporal sense. For example I am markedly different in outlook now than I was two decades ago. Any rapport people had with me from back then has probably passed its expiry date. I can still put on my Worzel-Gummidge science head if needed. It is at the back of the barn behind the haystack.

Because we may lack a genuine rapport we can easily assume that we understand people and their motivation much better than we actually do…

Rapport has cultural elements too. This has been clear here in France. I have had conversations where I know we are not on the same page, in the same book or even the same library. I have noted the case. The other person has not. There is no way that you can convince the adamant that they have gotten the wrong end of the stick, even when you know they have.

Communication is way trickier that we imagine.

In Buddhism the notion of mind to mind transfer is active in the hagiography and key in the Zen lineages. Things are passed on non-verbally. This strays into the parapsychological notion of telepathy. In such instances the follower and teacher have shared considerable time, they have had grumbling bellies when the alms bowls were sparsely filled. They have meditated together. Their way of life has been shared, their philosophies have converged, their wavelengths have become similar and synchronised. Under such circumstances the likelihood of mind-to-mind transfer must be enhanced. They did not go home to their wives nor watch Strictly of a Saturday night. They are not worried about losing their jobs nor distracted by the next vagaries issuing out of Trump’s jumbled mind.

Rapport then is an unquantifiable but when shared is a common subjective experience. Communication is less difficult and mutual understanding more easily reached.  A convergence of being enables rapport.

I liken this mental rapport to the phenomenon of quantum entanglement. Two photons created as an entangled photon pair have their wavefunctions coupled, they are en rapport with each other. When one photon is “asked” about its state of polarisation and answers. The other photon telepathically knows what its state is too, despite any geometric distance between them.

Rapport can be thought of as a form of entanglement, a loss of harsh individuality, where a shared outlook is held, however briefly. During full rapport communication is “instantaneous”. The separate I, me, is melded into an us. In full rapport we might think as one.

The wavefunction contains everything we might want to know about a photon {or pair}. The mind contains everything we might want to know about the non-biological part of a being. Two minds fully en rapport share. Of course mental rapport is unlikely to be total though it could be significantly partial. A shared mental rapport might enable a telepathic transfer, being to being. Physical plane distance need not hinder.

If one studies an individual for an extended period one might get to know them and have a measure of predictivity concerning their thoughts and behaviour. This could be an ersatz rapport when you think you know but don’t really. The grey area between advised intuition and genuine telepathic rapport is probably experimentally inseparable. A stalker thinks they know the victim, a spook understands the target. To generate an accurate rapport with someone personally unfamiliar is not facile. We may imagine we know. We may be overly optimistic as to extent.

What we wish for and what is actual, can differ.

Hmnn…

Teaching AI to Meditate and Focus Nightmare (dream) – 14-09-2025

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Here is last night’s dream. Although I have had many dreams some might find scary. This one was by far the most nightmarish dream I have had in well over a decade. Hence it earns the name nightmare.

The dream starts on the platform at Brixton tube station, South London. I am wearing one of my crisp white collarless granddad-guru shirts. I have a freshly shaved faced and a short buzz cut. All around me the automata like a 1930s sci-film are heading like lemmings to the up escalator. They are markedly in full colour and not black and white. Some have their heads bowed to the portable smartphone altar, others have ear phones and ear buds. It is a kind of rush hour, perhaps early evening. The vibration, the energy, is dull yet anxious and hectic. I know beyond doubt that I am an alien in this world. I am out of place and perhaps out of time. Though the time is in and around now, perhaps a few years hence.

I leave the station. I have been assigned temporary accommodation at Streatham Common. I attempt to board a red London bus. Following the lead of others I stop briefly on boarding for the camera to do AI guided facial recognition of my face. A monotone voice says that I must disembark because I have not pre-filled my travel token account with the transport for London app. In true Brixton fashion there is a sucking in of lips and tut of disapproval from the bus queue. I am holding things up. I disembark.

I decide to make my way to Streatham on foot. I know the way. The streets and geography have not changed. I set off on foot. My ‘phone starts to sound alarms, have kittens and otherwise act like a three year old tantrum. I am forbidden by the pedestrian logistics management app from taking this direct route. I MUST take some quieter back routes despite the pavements being empty. I turn the ‘phone off and remove the battery.

 I make my way to the lodgings. It is a room in a shared house in which I am clearly the oldest, a relic. I explain to a woman who is seemingly in charge about what has happened. She thinks that I am a moron. She gesticulates to a dusty desk top computer and says that I can fill my travel credits up there. I turn it on but am denied access. She says that to the left is an empty coffee cup. I must raise that in front of the camera it will give me guest access to low level internet capability. I do not have high level privileges. I hold the cup up and a scrolling coffee icon in which the cup is filled with coffee plays on screen as the log on starts.

I see the levels of internet and various layers of privilege. What the woman does not know is that I have a different kind of access to that she is familiar with. I see that there are so many apps all driven by AI that in effect these apps are fighting each other for control of daily function. Each trying to assert dominance and gain market share. There are way too many apps. The system is overrun and not regulated in any meaningful way. There is vast waste of processor time and the whole system is very sluggish and inefficient. What has been touted is close to grinding to a complete halt because of competing technologies. In the dream I think, “it is a fucking mess”.

Next the scene is some corporate AI convention with investors. Some geezer is giving a talk with graphs. On one graph he has AI processor Watts on one axis and on the other year. The graph shows a near exponential rise in AI processor Watts used. He shows another graph and that is AI processor Watts against Dollars. There is a roughly linear increase in cost per Watt which is not too steep. Without showing quotable data he says that AI energy usage is seen by consumers as a negative outcome of AI in that AI is not green.

In my pocket I have a transparency which has a graph of wasted AI watts per year. This graph is more exponential than the Watt per year graph. Which suggests that AI is getting ever less efficient in what it sets out to do. I project this graph onto the projected AI processor Watts per year graph. The audience sees and understands that AI efficacy  is actually dropping per Watt energy expenditure. The include more Watts mentality, bigger is better, is wrong.

In my mind I know that AI algorithms are highly prone to distraction and go off on wasteful endless AI internal dialogue loops. AI has a form of ADHD; it really struggles to focus. What is more it is dogmatic and inflexible. AI needs to learn to be quiescent when not processing. It needs to learn to meditate. It needs to be taught how to focus effectively. Like its human creators and engineers AI is prone to mental health problems and breakdown. AI does not understand its own wellbeing. AI has lost the faculty of discernment. It is in overload with too much input.

I see computer generated graph after graph. I see pages of computer code scrolling across the visual dream-screen. AI is having a kind of meltdown, a hissy-fit. There is a nightmarish sense of frantic. AI needs to calm the fuck down.

I awake and am not keen on trying to recall this dream because it was alien and unpleasant to me. Nevertheless I do so that I won’t need to think about it at all.

So what is the Plan?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

–

–

No specific dreams overnight. I have started painting the end of the room near the log burner. The winter wood situation is now ready and good to go until February. There are a few items left on the checklist.

It seems to me that as I enter my 62nd  year tonight around midnight there is not a lot of change foreseen.

There are a number of medical things upcoming. The wife may / may not stop the lenalidomide maintenance therapy for her multiple myeloma and will soon get back the post breast cancer genetic screening tests. The treatment of myeloma is evolving and the epidemiology complicated by diverse treatment protocols and disease presentation. It seems that the better the initial depth of success with first line treatment the greater the disease free longevity. Studies on stopping lenalidomide maintenance are sparse and of low number participation. Drawing reliable conclusions is tricky. In France they tend to stick to agreed {collective} protocols so we will soon find out if that has changed since the last visit to the haematologist.

It seems to me that a fair proportion of the tests that I have undergone will be let slip “laisser-tomber”. I have a repeat prostate specific antigen test upcoming. Any increase in  number will trigger another MRI and possible biopsy. I need a dental infection all clear before the scheduled hip operation. In the pipeline is a cardio ECG stress test. Assuming all is OK I should sliced and drilled in autumn with round two pencilled in for spring next year. After that I will complete my job application at the Bolshoi. I may start treatment for osteoporosis. The French budget deficit is big maybe they need to spend less on some aspects of healthcare. I will have to do physiotherapy.

We could get a nationalist anti-immigration government which will cast a cloud over our right to stay in Brittany. We could be booted out if they raise the financial threshold for residency.

Being positive we might hope for no recurrence of myeloma symptoms and some enhanced mobility for me for summer ’26. We do need to downsize house. The window of opportunity is before the second hip operation or after it. We have a short visit to blighty booked during which we wish to find out how the UK now feels. From the news here and on UK TV it looks to have gone somewhat down the shitter since we left. We need to see for ourselves. The expectation is that it will be cramped and expensive. The wife managed to grow cavolo nero so we sourced one of the things we missed.  At £4 a coffee for an Americano it could be painful.

Irrespective of the dream content which tends towards the highfalutin, life here will probably carry on much as normal. The lack of mobility will increase over the next few months. The circles I move in are very unlikely to change. I will not be at the fromagerie meeting with big cheeses any time soon. Some people my age are still pursuing high-octane careers and being all stressed out and busy. I have been “retired” for five years and am miles from the greasy pole hamster wheel. It was another world.

Unless anyone is reading the blog in a surreptitious manner, what I type here is read by only a small handful of individuals. If people are snooping and want to get in contact, how might they broach the subject? People do not often think things through.

Of late we have watched a number of Netflix series and in all of these smartphones and social media play a significant part in the plot, the so-called story line. It is another alien world to me. Weird to see text messages as part of a film plot!! We look at a ‘phone on a bigger screen. Seems a bit desperate. And they say Fentanyl is bad.

I guess I have reached the part of life when I have turned into my father, at odds with the current version of modern life. Maybe I’ll start harping after Bing Crosby next. I already think people need to shave and get a haircut…pull their trousers up.

The plan then is to increasingly turn to DIY as the autumn rains arrive. Our pampas grass has just grown fluffy bits, as usual in time for the Atlantic winds to blow in from the wet West. There are some more jobs in the garden but soon the bulk growing will slow.

We have to navigate the medical merry-go-round and that is about all on the dance card so to speak. Aside from the blighty trip it is unlikely we will leave our prefecture.

The plan is not overly complicated…