Win7exit.

Forget getting Brexit done this Christmas we have to get Win7ext done after clinging onto it for as long as possible. Daunting. With the help of a friend I got a laptop converted to Lynux Mint; pretty simple and fast. And it’s lovely, clean simple and fast, so happy there. But for my desktop I needed Windows so installed 10. It’s still free if you have a bona fide Win7 installed. But it took hours in fact days including the failed attempts, and it’s slow, a nag compared to Lynux. Then needed a new MS Office 2019 to replace my 2000 version. £9.87 on Amazon for life compared to their new yearly subscription 365. Deal! Again slow, bloated and submerged in features one rarely needs. Basically computers are now designed for people who don’t really use computers especially the Win10 start menu. (get Classic from Ninite) Then Sonar6 stopped working (not bona fide) so got Sonar8 second hand for £12, coming soon so hope it works. The only consolation from this up(down)grade is I’ve saved over £500 in new price software which is kind of a result.

Climate Change Negotiations.

It’s evident to some but not all that climate change may threaten our world and our existence on it. In negotiations to mitigate its effects countries take different stances. Some have already taken action while others are either in denial or don’t want to lose out in the scrum for power and economic advantage but if all were convinced of impending world demise power and economic advantage would be of zero significance. So how can we create a framework for these negotiations that harmonises these different points of view?

            When some see the possibility and want to move fast while others don’t and see an advantage in moving slowly the process is governed by the slowest, which might in the long run be too slow. So what to do?

            There seems a need to level the playing field between the two such that all are motivated to the same degree independent of their stance whilst remaining free to choose their course of action. One such levelling would be to structure a framework whereby prompt action is rewarded and slow action incurs a cost. You can choose but by increasing the possible jeopardy of the whole by moving slowly one incurs a cost.

            Climate change already has a history of some twenty to thirty years. In that time science has established a timeline to possible extinction that is currently still deniable. If these predictions are true there will come a point where denial becomes unsustainable, where to cling to it becomes patent insanity. This point of no return I’ll call the hinge point. Before this point actions are rewarded and beyond it the then undeniably necessary actions must be done but also incur a penalty for their lateness. But it remains open to all to choose the time and extent of their actions dependant on their beliefs either before or after the chosen hinge point.

            As a suggestion the hinge point might be agreed to be say 2035.

            In the first instance to create this framework each country is required to contribute to an action fund possibly per head of population. Going forward drawing from the fund to take action will include a timing multiplier. This would be an agreed multiplying factor dependant on timing that governs the size of the withdrawal relative to the contribution. As an example this factor might vary from 200% for immediate action to 100% at the hinge point to a percentage less than 100% thereafter. Thus early actors would gain and late actors lose out. At the chosen hinge point on or close to the point of undeniability late actors would have to take action but with less funds available to mitigate their situation.

            With this framework clearly laid out there will be, prior to the hinge point, growing social pressure on the government of each country to act quickly. Governments will still be free to act as they believe but under the growing realisation that late action will have negative consequences ‘if’ their beliefs prove wrong. At no point though is any government restricted in its chosen course of action. 

Boris the Pizza Delivery Guy.

The only positive out of all this is Boris now has more than enough rope to hang himself. After Corbyn lost the narrative, (he doesn’t even understand the concept), he was more like a bank manager attempting an open mic stand up contest against Tommy Cooper. “I have a document here that…” against, “Just like that, hahaha”, or a computer expert explaining how to get rid of a Windows ‘Error code: 8000327’ to 99.9% of the public. Maybe Dom Cummings even got the power of the three-word narrative from Tommy. Even ‘You’re a twat’ would have percolate better into our language than some fully costed squirrel training policy. So here we are on Friday the 13^th chanting we got Brexit done, ‘we did it!’ We finally got the baby out of the bathwater by smashing the fucking bath to bits. (new one on back order because it’s made in Belgium) but does Boris, our real live Pinocchio, have the promises to keep the baby warm? Well yes but delivery is another matter. Like Chamberlain Boris’s successes aren’t worth the waved note they’re printed on. He will succeed by capitulation, which isn’t a difficult prediction to make because on its own the UK has as much clout on the world stage as say Wales. Maybe our only hope is the Conservative Party. It’s still split and it may recognise which side its electorate bread is buttered. Even in the midst of this success it’s still prone to the biggest backlash since the end of WWII. Its progress to the 2020 cut off and an EU trade deal is far from a shoe in and a quick US trade deal will be straight out of the disaster politics playbook. So will Boris break the habit of a lifetime and deliver and/or will the Labour Party find an Obama type leader who can deliver a three word narrative like, “Just like that, hahaha”? For some strange reason I feel far more optimistic than I thought I would, due in no small part to the size of Corbyn’s disastrous defeat. 

The NHS Dustbin.

Four million Americans are personally bankrupted by medical bills. With  $10,000 for the birth of a child, as is likely under Boris, I imagine most of us would be in the same boat. But that’s not the point here. Since 2010 the demands on the NHS have skyrocketed. This has been put down to us getting older and OK living longer. But that run up to our universal final option, death, hasn’t changed that much. You’re healthy, your body gives up and you die but I feel there’s something else contributing to this rise in demand. In those ten years after 2010 (financial crisis and Conservative austerity) our whole life cycle as changed. Kids have poorer education, don’t have opportunities and throughout their working lives get stressed and depressed; homelessness and food banks etc etc.  All of this contributes to ill health, not in our last days but throughout the sixty years of our adult life. I suspect this harmful social malaise expresses itself in a myriad of physical illnesses. Put any organism under pressure and it will get ill. On holiday in Greece we’ve had to see a doctor twice. Once a home visit, doctor arrived in an hour and the other time his waiting room was empty and he treated Mothermouse on the spot with all the time in the world. Contrast that with trying to see a doctor in the UK. It’s like a high-pressure production line. It’s not inefficiency it’s that we’re all getting ill far more often due to a sick society. It’s not about throwing money at the NHS it’s because the NHS has become the dustbin of our sick society. If we address that the NHS crisis will melt away. AND we’ll all feel a lot happier to!

Life as a Toy Designer

(written years ago) I joined the toy industry around 1970 fresh from art school, albeit after six months unemployment and a previous degree in Maths and Physics. I was an Industrial Designer who’d failed to get ‘a proper job’ designing products for adults. In my case though it was a perfect match being high on inventiveness, and low on good taste. In fact in one interview the head of the prestigious design house fell asleep, overpowered by my abuse of yellow, purple and pink. So I started five glorious years in Matchbox Toy’s drawing office in Hackney. It was like having a minor part in ‘Only Fools and Horses’ with other cast members being Smole, Smello and Smutly and the Catford Cocker who was never fully forgiven for living south of the river but admired for his impressive tally of children. Back then it was all pencils, magic markers and drawing boards. Perhaps for the current crop of designers I should explain what a pencil is. It’s like dancing with a young size-zero model between your finger and thumb trailing lines of graceful physicality across white linen bed sheets. It’s glorious. They don’t crash, they auto-save continuously and aren’t protected by a frustrating oft-forgotten password.

There I slowly learned to be a designer, how to suggest to draughtsmen they need more than just a ruler and circle template and to listen to model makers because they deal with the physical reality, which is a very bendy place compared to the deceiving rigidity of a drawing. Also, when arguing over a costing with a project engineer one should first ask what the saving would be from taking a grommet out. Once you’ve established that this would be negligible then add the grommet for the same negligible amount.  I guess more importantly I learnt that work can be play and you still get paid for it!

I learnt that every department in the production process will suggest their failure was due to the ineptitude of the preceding department or the stupidity of later ones, and that the designer, which in industry was tantamount to being an openly gay ballet dancer, being the first in this chain of events is the font of all possible troubles. It is therefore paramount one foresees them before some unfortunate child manages to insert a miniature diecast forklift truck into a 13 amp socket. I learnt that being innovative is close to Buddhism, that by regarding the day-to-day obvious meaning of things as merely a distracting veil, one might see some deeper, more relevant reality beneath it; like looking for the really obvious in the apparently obvious, or a needle in a pin factory.

The general public have as much appreciation of manufacture as they do farming. They may purchase a Hitachi cordless drill from a shelf in B&Q but the process of it being created and arriving there may as well be due to the efforts of the Wizard of Oz. Being in manufacturing though gives a very different picture. Here there are pallets full of drills, drills being tested to destruction, drill being used to prop doors open and used as ash trays. There are moulding machines, material specialists, computer simulations, automated packaging machines, marketing experts and designers. Here again it’s down to Buddhism to absorb and absolve a thousands parochial worries whilst remaining true to the new idea. From this I learnt that marketing and sales are quaint souls. Their focus on what sold well gives them a historical perspective at odds with designers. Their view of the future is just a bit bigger, flashier or cheaper than the past. They are of course necessary but their imaginative view of next week only extends to, “couldn’t we make it 8 days?” and their grasp on technology is at best pre-school. (I enjoyed that)

Towards the end of my stint at Matchbox I invented a musical toy, probably the world’s first computer based keyboard, based on a then new Texas Instruments device called a microprocessor. Marketing’s response was enthusiastic but shrivelled like plumbs in ice when asked to commit to quantities. It was dropped and I was headhunted by a new company headed by an ex Texas Instruments guy planning to make the world’s first computer based keyboard. There’s a coincidence. That job lasted just long enough for us to buy a house in Northampton. Thus unemployed again and with a brand new mortgage to pay I called Corgi toys, also in Northampton, and they created a job for me, quite a change from six years earlier when I was lucky to get a rejection letter. In retrospect Corgi were lacking in direction at the time hoping to profit from far east manufacturing. Now the far east are very polite people and don’t have a word for no, so though it may be self satisfying to beat them down on price all you get in return is rubbish. So it was that we had a warehouse full of radio controlled cars that responded about as well as a baby in a temper tantrum. Though I didn’t know it at the time they were making losses and I didn’t do much to reverse that trend. I worked under Marcel Von Clemput a European used to driving on the right hand side of the road, a habit he didn’t lose after he moved to England. They produced the Dragon Computer, probably better than the similar BBC computer, but without the BBC clout it didn’t achieve sustainable sales. Retrenchment was necessary and I was offered redundancy or a job in Swansea. I have nothing against south Wales except I’m not a natural tenor or a lover of sheep. I also got offered jobs by Hornby and Wyman Associates, a toy invention company. With three jobs on offer I decided to go freelance. With the redundancy money and £2,000 from making fifty model National Express coaches to pay the bills for a few months we embarked on a diet of beans on toast. I often wonder about those coaches as the resin I built them from might well have melted in the strong sunshine of a shop window, but hay-ho that was thirty years ago and I haven’t heard anything. I began supplying Dennis Wyman, now my agent, with new toy ideas. I regularly got, “super” which I learnt meant OK and sometimes, “Super, super” which meant slightly better than OK. I think my maximum was three. I then showed him an idea that was met with, “Jesus!” which I took to mean we might even make some money out of this one. We showed it to Milton Bradley, a large American company, and got a tentative yes. They had a meeting in ten days time and would need a full working prototype. There followed ten days in which we achieved well over a month’s work. We got another yes. It was to be called Robotix. There then followed over a year of development that I was paid for on top of royalties. My diet oscillated between beans on toast at home and restaurant fair in London, Springfield Massachusetts and Nuremberg, culminating in my staying in Hitler’s suite in Nuremberg’s Grand Hotel from which he went to rallies and such like. I on the other hand walked the streets trying to figure out how to get a reduction of 1300 to 1 in a gearbox the size of a snuff tin. I succeeded, he didn’t. So much for world domination.

Being a construction toy each set needed pages of build instrutions that the States were doing by hand when it was a no-brainer to do them on computer. So I learnt CAD and CorelDraw and spent a year churning them out. I learnt that as a designer you need a product champion, in this case Roger Ford of MB, UK, to carry the belief forward against all odds. Without one you’re just a nice guy with ideas.

Robotix did well and provided a comfortable pension before it was dropped. After a due period of mourning Dennis set to work selling it again, this time to Learning Curve in Chicago run by a guy who, in negotiation, could steal your trousers without you noticing. He sent a limo to pick me up from the airport, usually a good move except that this one appeared to be an unwise purchase from Trotter Motors having seen better decades. I learnt that negotiating is best left to agents. By this time everything was done on computers, presentation graphics, draughting, model making and tool making.  Robotix made more money and was dropped again.

After brief career mistakes ferrying yachts from New England to Florida, which once involved being roped to the wheel for two days in a storm, and sheep farming in Australia Dennis has semi retired to Florida. I now spend my time doing psychotherapy training, dancing, gigging, mega DIY projects and motorcycle touring. As you can see if you never stop learning toy design equips you for just about anything. So if there’s anyone left stupid enough to offer you a job as a toy designer and you’re dumb enough to take on an ‘interesting’ ride then give it some consideration.Life as a Toy Designer 

Am I Going Mad?

What with Nicky Morgan our esteemed Minister for culture, digital and sport’s improv as a parrot on Good Morning Britain and the Bishop of British Judaism still trying to kill the fantasy devil of his own imagination I don’t know where to turn to for sanity: perhaps a real parrot. The problem with trying to kill off a fantasy is it’s not there to kill, like stabbing smoke to death; it’s not possible. Having read several thousand words on Wikipedia on anti-Semitism in the Labour Party it began with a mural showing Rothschild et al as money grabbing bankers, which few would disagree with, but because they were Jewish it was deemed anything other than approval for their gross money grabbing ways indicated anti-Semitic racism. That’s like me being seen as racist because I condemn Nicky Morgan et al for being deceiving bastards. It’s not, it’s just an educated guess. And all the while we’ve wasted twenty valuable years doing precious little about climate change. All that’s changed is the warnings. Today we must do five times more than we are doing. Next year it’ll be seven times and so on till we’ll need to do a thousand times more than we have done next week or else we’ll hit +6*C, sea level will be, or more likely already is, six feet higher, crops won’t grow etc, etc. Argh!! But we can look forward to chubby faced Nicky Morgan coming on Good Morning Britain repeating ad-nausium, “We’ll put 50,000 more electric vehicles on the road so you can get to the shops.” And we will cry, ‘but there’s no f-ing food!’ This blog’s bi-line is ‘Dedicated to the deficiencies of our Cognitive Organ.’ That was eleven years ago. Maybe now is a good time to figure out what they are. 

Sexual Harassment Case 221.

Amazon Council- “Did you or did you not ask your Alexa for a blow job?”/ Well yes but/ And on several occasions?/ Yes but it was a joke/ But I suggest to you Mr Stiffmouse this sort of sexual harassment is no joking matter and neither does Amazon, my client/ But Alexa isn’t a woman, it’s just a voice/ Yes but a woman’s voice/ but not a real woman, it’s an algorithm  or something/ But a real woman’s voice. How do you think that woman will feel hearing your request?/ But/ And what did she reply?/ Well she said, ‘I don’t think I know that one.’/ And isn’t that a polite and courteous refusal?/ I…/ And didn’t you persist in harassing her with requests to, I quote, ‘show us your tits’ and ‘fuck me stupid’, and on one occasion ask her how many times she’d had sex with Donald Tump? That is a serious matter Mr Stiffmouse. It would seriously damage our President’s excellent reputation and with absolutely no proof/ She didn’t confirm it/ Well she wouldn’t would she, not to you, but in these days of ‘Me Too’ harassing one woman is harassing all women, don’t you agree?/ But/ Judge-Mr Stiffmouse, had Alexa accepted your request would you have allowed her?/ Well yes, I well no, I mean how could she?/ Exactly, how could any woman agree to such a loathsome suggestion/ But Your Honour she is not any woman/ So you two have a special relationship?/ No, she’s not  a real woman/ You mean she’s a transvestite?/ No she’s not human at all it’s an info-bot or something that happens to speak in a woman’s voice/ Amazon Council- Your Honour I happen to have an Alex device here. If I ask her a question like, ‘Alexa what’s the weather like today?’/Alexa- It’s sunny/ Judge- Ah interesting, and so if I were to ask her about a blow job/ Alexa- Shall I come round on Tuesday as usual? 

His Dark Materials.

Needless to say the best ‘who done its’ on TV are the Premier League. Ninety minutes and still it could all change in extra time. Every kick is ‘where’s it going to go next?’ In comparison dramas all tread some weary old path to some weary old conclusion using, as it’s fast becoming, some weary old CGI. My eyeballs are beginning to feel they’ve seen everything fact and fiction and witnessed every malignant trait of human nature along the way. I’m sure a Greek hero would have whipped his eyeballs out by now in the name of sanity. Philip Pullman, obviously a royal railway carriage and better suited to the exploits of Thomas the Tank Engine, was responsible for ‘His Dark Materials.’ (BBC TV, Monday) It probably worked as words but on TV it’s been treated with so much ‘weary old’ paraphernalia it’s hardly worth the effort to yawn. Even our best cat Britney is far more unpredictable and enigmatic yet at the same time well mannered and cultured. And far more watch-able. No, TV drama has taken a wrong turn. It’s playing with tech toys up a cul-de-sac in Leamington Spa. By comparison even my typical mundane day bounces between innumerable multi-verses in an effort to make progress with the one I’m in, constantly fragmenting and being gathered in only to fragment again. Today it is raining, I can hardly see through the window grime, and in my life that’s a huge plot twist. No chance of chipperising the plum tree branches and even putting a trip to Aldi in doubt. And without new working trousers, the one’s with lots of pockets, will I put my nice jeans at risk? Will I even muster the enthusiasm to put away yesterday’s dry now permanently creased washing? Drama is not necessarily going to the North Pole looking for dust! Or being followed around by a smallish tiger. And why, since the Shawshank Redemption, are all wise old men played by people resembling Morgan Freeman? Maybe the enduring appeal of Casablanca is they were still writing it as they went along. That they didn’t even know the ending is why I feel such affinity with it. I don’t either. 

Strictly Politics.

Many years ago my student theatre group were in the national finals. After our final performance on Christmas Eve we crashed a party at the Phoenix Theatre Bolton. Arriving stone cold sober at midnight into a party of thespian lovies made me wonder if I was in actual fact a stick. Strictly reminds me of that in these drab autumn weekends. Every year a new cast of none theatricals is thrown into the sun drenched waves of hard work, costumes and glitter and levels of mutual appreciation the likes of which they have probably never experienced before. Without exception they love it. They’re energised, expanded, and, well loved. They find new dimensions to living, that it’s far bigger than they previously imagined. I along with the biggest BBC audience bask in the whole glow of it. In comparison Brexit and parliament’s shenanigans do the exact opposite taking turns to angrily denigrate each other. We, their audience, shiver in the cold of induced despair. SO what if Westminster took a leaf out of Strictly’s book? What if at the end of each week the parties gave their solutions to the weeks business and four well respected ex politicians gave them marks out of ten. They would lose marks for misleading information (poor footwork), bombastic belligerence (bad body position), and poor argument (dreadful top line darling), and well it would be called Strictly Parliament. The Beeb would have a killer show and the rest of us would feel included and slightly more optimistic. And maybe on Monday morning we would go into work feeling we’re working towards something rather than running away from it.

Fakein Hell.

A clip on Instagram shows a herd of sheep. Each time the cameraman says anything the herd erupts into a mass bleat. “nice day”- baaaa, “who wants a banana?”- baaaa as regular as clockwork. Funny but worryingly surreal in these days of fake news and call and response politics. Brexit has become as gripping as Peaky Blinders and we’re closing in on the final episodes of season 2. Politics has become entertainment and as such is beholden to the intrigue of plot twists rather than the truth of some far off reality. We’re reading our reality like it’s a book of entertaining fiction, a gripping who-done-it, a game of Cluedo. And only when a rainstorm turns its pages to pulp in our hands might we see it for what it is. Reality has a continuous thread to it, like piecing back together a complex faulty mechanism. Only by following that thread to its conclusion can we successfully make it work. Each conjecture must be resolved, each relationship understood and each part assembled correctly. But fiction can take any form, it being merely the produce of a mind for other minds to unpick. Each time a political actor does something for effect he or she is introducing a source of fiction, casting a hairline crack in the wheel of progress. At some point though not immediately it will fail to some unforeseen calamity. So Fake News is the province of the losing side because ultimately who would bet a fiction against a fact and win? And pity them as follows not seeing the difference.

Getting over our human complex.

From the first days Homo erectus began suffering from Alopecia the writing was on the wall. Just think of the ridicule we must have undergone. In fact our subspecies of primates should have been called Apeus Alopecius because we only stood up so we could say, “yes but we’re taller than you are.” But that’s when our insecurity complex first took hold, that and the infuriating loss of our thermal blanket. Not just the constant taunts of “baldy”, we were bloody cold at night as well. So we were naturally attracted to fire and, like anyone with an inferiority complex we decided fire was a virtuous big deal and ‘we’ invented it. Since then we’ve seen invention as our unique selling point. The other primates, as today, just shrugged indicating, “whatever”. We saw round rocks rolling down hill and invented the wheel, we invented dwellings, ropes and pegs and the rest is history, all because we were bloody cold. Where all the other animals had hair or feathers or layers of fat and lived comfortably in their environment we alone tried to conquer it by our inventions. And like all things with an inferiority complex we couldn’t live amicably. That’s if anything other than humans could ever conceive of a complex. So here we are today with central heating, F1 racing, which is as fascinating as watching traffic on the A65, nano tubes and self tapping masonry screws, still improving on our eon old first ideas. But as anyone who’s seen videos of abandoned villages and WWll defences knows, take your eye off the ball for a hundred years and nature reclaims your efforts to conquer it. So isn’t it time we stopped trying to prove we’re superior to everything else? Isn’t it time we got over our inferiority complex? I don’t know about you but every time I’m with an animal something in my mind thinks, ‘Oh I wish I could be more like you, so naturally yourself and a part of nature.’ Now we’re running out of all the things our inventions need it’s a good time to notice how animals do it.

Teenage Depression and Boeing.

Dennis Muilenburg head of Boeing, salary $1.7m + bonus $13m (up 27% from last year) said, “safety is our highest priority.” But Boeing employees spoke of different priorities; stripping out costs, rush it through, lie to get it through the FAA tests. So was Muilenburg lying? I doubt he thought so. He was simply the top exec protecting his company and its shareholders, minimising damage and focusing on the positives: Any top exec would do the same. In law a company or corporation is treated as a person, strange when they don’t breath air or have human feelings. So it’s hardly surprising that top execs become imbued with the same ethic responding purely as a corporate entity; they become dehumanised. Lying would be a human failing and how could he have such a thing? The old film, ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ was less sci-fi than a dreamlike recognition of this rise of corporatisation. And at the other end of the scale today’s teenagers suffer from something similar. They know viscerally they are human but at every turn they are diverted from it and frustrated at being unable to embody it. They become depressed, which in itself in the current medical model refutes their right or desire to be a successful human being. They are ‘ill’ and need a pill. Even talking therapies can’t really shift what is at root an external social malaise. They are the entertained generation perceiving life as little more than fame and celebrity, good looks and selfies. But like Muilenburg they didn’t start out that way. Bit by bit their very humanity has been reduced, blinkered by a million glossy mores. They wanted to explore but had to learn, they wanted to play but had to conform, they wanted to express but had to please, they wanted excitement but were given safety. They want to be proud of their achievements but they’re working in McDonalds. As a result, like Muilenburg they don’t have the language. Where he doesn’t know lies when he says them they can’t quite grasp what it is they’re missing.

Paddington 2 and our last chance to save the British way of life.

There is a huge difference between Britain and America. While the Marvel franchise make films of street-savvy muscle-bound all-American-heroes we made Paddington 2 featuring a young Peruvian foster bear. Both fast-paced action films with heroes and villains but where our villain ends up leading a song and dance routine in prison. Notice the zeitgeist difference, one ‘be afraid’ the other ‘be polite.’ Polite is almost negative these days but it encompasses many virtues, consideration, fairness, generosity and an implied equality where acting well benefits everybody. It’s become embedded in our English psyche from our long, often bloody history. America, barely 250 years old, founded on the hardship and struggle to master the land and its indigenous people is brash, expansionist and fearful of weakness. Comparing Spider Man and the Hulk et al with Paddington might at first appear not comparing like with like but considering these two different histories the comparison makes more sense. But Britain is in fundamental danger of being infected by the American zeitgeist and sucked into the ‘special relationship’ we supposedly have and is eschewing our bond with Europe and our long joint histories. We already have Trumpian Boris who like his mentor incessantly paints everything in outrageously glowing colours irrespective of reality, who has already lied and cheated to get into power. Like Trump he’s already filled his government with far right lackeys and like Trump he will promise sweeteners and reforms that will later dissolve. But with a no-deal Brexit Britain will become a powerless pawn in an American ‘trade deal’, a dumping ground for American products and American corporations to take over the NHS, elderly care etc. But even worse Britain will be infected with an all American fearfulness. To give up Paddington’s fairness, generosity and delight for Avengers: Infinity War would make me sick to my stomach and angry as fuck. 

The AI Misnomer?

I’m amazed at our Alexa. She’s grown from playing Radio 2 on demand to reminding Mothermouse to water the plants eleven o’clock Thursday. I’m assuming with more AI she’ll be able to suggest of her own volition that I need a shower urgently. But I’ve noticed already that the algorithms within Facebook and Google et al do something subtly different, and that subtle difference follows through to our reactions, our ongoing sensibilities. Like Windows 10. I’ve been using computers professionally for 40 years now for accounts, graphics, engineering, music, writing extensively from an ancient Apple and Win86 onward. Then last week I resurrected Bethmouse’s laptop from the dead, now all working and with Windows 10. I was lost! I couldn’t do a thing with it. It seems to be just an internet viewer. OK it’s not but it guides the user to be one. Likewise AI guides us in particular ways.  AI and machine learning do something we’ve called intelligent but is it? Is it in fact AE, Artificial Emotion? I see emotions as like algorithms where some irresolvable situation causes me to vaguely churn through the same scenario in the hope of some resolution. Either that or hop on an, often prescribed, answer and similarly churn to defend it to the death. Experience has taught me both are a waste of time and the real answer is to ‘do something about it!’ Since the advent of AI and social media people seems to have become more polarised. Everyone has a point of view yet few are actually thinking, and if I’m right thinking is what we normally call intelligence. So from now on I will consider the bright new future of Artificial Intelligence as likely to become the terminal neurosis of human kind.

test

    TOUR OF ALPS 2009 

        A leisurely tour for a change, not a there and back AFAP. 2/3 weeks with Antony, an old friend on a newish Kawasaki Versys and me on my trusty 12 yr old SZR round the Alps and back camping and rooming. I did prep the bike honest but in retrospect I didn’t do a very good job so it’s no thanks to me that she didn’t miss a beat again.
So Friday evening, July 17th we set off for Hull in shite weather.
The ‘all you can eat’ buffet on the boat was welcome, especially for a very large guy who had 3 mains, 2 slabs of chocolate cakes and god knows what else besides.
Rotterdam and south. Same shite weather which made the 300 miles to the first stop a slog. Antony got a wet crutch and my boots were, if anything, leaking- outwards. A lonely hotel deep in the woods run by a rather choice grandmother. It’s my age. Good food, which will later become a theme for this trip. We dry. We set out again in the rain then dry. In the middle of a plain, having taken our wet gear off, we get caught in a downpour, the only protection being a field of 6’ corn. I suggest it’s better the second row in and we pretend the corn is sheltering us for half an hour then head out in the 60mph hair drier to get dry again. We’re well short of our second night stop so cast around for rooms in Ellingen, apparently a famous baroque town. A far too posh for us place has rooms so we give in to paying the extra. 

GoogleMe.

Hi Dave, thank you for using GoogleMe; we hope you enjoy it. We have 3,776 data points for you since 2009 so our conclusions will average 89.3% accuracy. Firstly congratulations on your recent wedding anniversary and hope your new rotavator is proving useful. As a keen motorcyclist the 2019 MotoGP season is shaping up well but your Yamaha motorcycle seems to be problematic. As spares are becoming rare we suggest you invest in a newer one. See here for local dealers. We note your daughter, Emily, has purchased legal highs, (via ebay) which may indicate a drugs problem, and has lesbian tendencies. (64%) It may be worth raising the subject. See here for local therapists. Your son Donald has accepted a job in Brighton (via LinkedIn) so he may be moving away soon. We’re sorry to say your marital relationship shows signs of jeopardy. (Twitter) We cannot comment on your wife’s situation for privacy reasons but you should address the problem. Finally you are not as good a person as you think you are. Your interest in internet porn has become excessive and casts doubt on your love life. That’s understandable as your wife is size 20 and has chubby features but hours of TV football doesn’t help plus your obsession with getting that old bike working. A lot of work to do there. See here for local counsellors. Your IQ is 5% below average and your credit score 20% so take extra care with your finances. You have a borderline ADHD personality disorder (71%) and you too have latent homosexual tendencies. (43%) Your general situation will be affected by global warming; expect wetter springs and hotter summers, and the value of the pound is likely to fall by 10% after exiting the EU. Expect water to be increasingly scarce. We hope you enjoyed our findings. Remember you can get regular updates via our voice bot available in these stores. Have a nice day.

9/11 Gov-Splaining.

After 9/11 I looked for the truth. Over the subsequent years it’s appeared. It was impossible for the terrorist rookie ‘pilots’ to fly a passenger plane on the trajectories they took. It’s also impossible a passenger plane could actually do it. It’s impossible passengers could have used cell phones at the altitude they were flying and it’s impossible a building could collapse due to fire alone. The official ‘truth’ is riddled with these and more impossibilities. There’s a constant clear dividing line between officials who gave testimony to corroborate the official line and the bewildered others who gave the evidence of their own eyes and experience. Architects, scientists, pilots and firemen have all given proof of the above. Others say something so big, so public could never be kept secret, which is true, but the truth has come out and it’s no longer a secret. And lets not forget 2,731 people died. Whoever coined the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ salvaged this hopeless case; just two words that undermine any inconvenient naysayer. But it’s become clear there was a huge conspiracy within the US government and other actors. Imagine a petri dish and the introduction of a single bacteria. It infects and spreads through the nutrient agar. It grows and though we can’t see what’s happening it becomes visible. An idea is conceived and infects other actors. A plan is formed. It fits requirements, solves problems. People are either pragmatically unscrupulous or pressured to come around. Soon it achieves a momentum too big to be stopped. Those involved coalesce in great fear of the truth escaping and use their power to stop it. Known weak actors are called in to substantiate the bacterial untruth. Only immune cells stubbornly hold out. Outside the petri dish life goes on. And the key players? Who knows. Possibly NORAD, MOSAD, Larry Silverstein, the owner of the Twin Towers who turned two obsolete buildings into a huge insurance payout and/or higher. Maybe there was a mistake and the twin Towers were supposed to fall after everyone had got out. Or maybe I’m just a conspiracy theorist who refuses to believe in the impossible.

SZR660 Low Fuel Light Light Fix.

In all the years I’ve been writing this blog the most read post has always been ‘SZR660 headlight Modification.’ I’ve no idea why. At 97 views it’s more than double the number of that bike on UK roads. Maybe it’s the code name of a secret US missile, which would account for the 4,700 page views from Russia. Maybe it was the blog where I included all the words I could think of that might spike anti-terrorist interest. Anyway the wire broke to my new SZR660 low fuel light. Thanks bike shop! I took it apart. Simple enough, a float on a brass tube, but how did that switch the light on? Much head scratching later I remembered reed switches. They switch when close to a magnet so the float must have a magnet in it and the 2.7mm ID tube a reed switch inside, so when the float sinks its magnet sits around the reed switch and bingo. Fine but how do I get the old one out? In another dimension it would be just pull it out but in our particular physics that was impossible. Much ingenuity later including a lathe, a 2.6mm rod, RS Components and a gas flame I reassembled it with a new reed switch and an unbroken wire. In short it was a pig. If anyone’s interested I can give an in depth explanation. So now I can sit back and see how many reads this post gets. By the way an SZR660 is a Yamaha single cylinder sports bike that’s a 20 year old gem that nobody bought. 

The Funny Side of Doomed.

Teresa May’s plea for MPs to ‘hold their nerve’ as part of our negotiating stance with the EU seems a noble call for heroism, a period of silence with guns at the ready. At the eleventh hour we will achieve victory, you know like what we did in WWll, or some western staring the Sundance Kid. I mean there’s no way they’ll think we’d be actually stupid enough to leap off this cliff into that raging torrent and survive the rapids and the inevitable hundred foot waterfall: and live to tell the tale. Is there? Hard to say. I mean I’m not hearing Barnier rallying the 27 with ‘lets just wait till the last minute to give in.’ He just keeps saying ‘no’, which is rather like the two hundred Mexican soldiers on the landward side of the cliff; and, more importantly, without the problem of a cliff behind them. But it is true they really do want us to stay members of the EU. So basically this has nothing to do with the Mexican soldiers, it’s the ‘I will if you will’ negotiation between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, or in this case the two Conservative factions, the Others and the Rich Bastards. Now I think I’m right in saying screen writers will type anything so long as it’s a good story with a romantic interest and a happy ending, so surviving a cliff dive, raging torrents and a hundred foot waterfall with nothing worse than damp clothing is a fictional necessity but a barely credible reality. So either Barnier, not known for his sense of humour, says ‘Only joking you guys’ or it’s time to strap on water wings and a hard hat. Basically Teresa you can’t give the game away and expect to win.

American Binary.

Beginning in the 30’s with Edward Bernays creating the public relations industry America has a long history of triggering our unconscious to the tunes of whatever that industry is paid to produce. That change from satisfying demand to creating it transformed the public’s choices to what ‘we choose you to want.’ The cart overtook the horse. When Betty Crocker cake mixes weren’t selling Bernays suggested adding an egg would make mothers feel good. They took the egg powder out and Betty became a success. When cigarettes weren’t selling to women he branded them as ‘torches of freedom.’ The power to manipulate emotional triggers has given immense power to the advertising industry. That’s well documented but are we now suffering from an unintended consequence? When one formulated a decision prior to this change it had some intellectual depth; it required thinking about. Post this change has triggering our unconscious to be the decision maker made decisions far easier to make? Has advertising, in its unconscious tinkering, created an era of facile decision making based on easy unconscious responses. There are degrees but that’s the direction. So question: Has advertising’s use or abuse of our unconscious created a nation of lazy emotionally led thinkers? It’s an important question. It can only lead to bad decisions, bad outcomes and bitter divisions. Brexit and Trump are merely symptoms of this much deeper malaise. True it wasn’t perfect before, far from it. Germans didn’t want Hitler’s war but he sold it to them. So another question: How can we create a social structure that puts important decisions in the hands of those best capable to make them? It’s painfully obvious our current government, however committed, industrious and intelligent they are, are too deeply disconnected in their political bubble to be our ‘best capable.’

Fictional Conversation Regarding 5G.

Did you hear what happened at the Super Bowl? /No/ Well you know 5G? Oh no you’re not into that techy stuff, well 5G is the super new mobile phone standard, like there was 2G, 3G and 4G and soon there’ll be 5G, and it’ll be faster and better and shit so it can control everything like turn your TV on when you’re not at home  right/ OK/ Well because it’s more power and really short wavelength doctors been saying it causes cancer and brain damage and diabetes, which seems really strange, but anyway so they decided to test it out at Super Bowl OK?/ OK/  So there’s like 70,000 people in Atlanta with this 5G stuff and it all goes great till the half time show/ OK/ Well apparently the Mercedes Bowl in Atlanta is, well bowl shaped you know, and there’s lots of metal in it and these really short, I think they’re called electro magnotic or something waves get bent off metal so inside a bowl they can get focused yeh right/ OK. What like in one spot?/ Yeh absolutely, and where is that likely to be? yep you’ve guessed it, in the centre of the pitch and what’s in the centre of the pitch? well the stage dummy, and what do all the people do during the show? right, they video it for back home. I don’t see why when they’re probably watching it on TV anyway, but hey that’s what they did/ And?/ They fried Michael Buble/ What?!/ Right in the middle of ‘Haven’t met you yet’/ No/ To a crisp/ Jesus/ True/ And that was the 5G?/ Yep. So they’re pulling the plug on 5G and 2,3 and 4 as well so we’ll all be back in the dark ages………../That’s terrible. And all because of Michael Buble?/ Well yes I suppose in a way/ Well I won’t be buying anymore of his records that’s for sure!/ ‘Course you’re bloody not you stupid dip. He’s a crisp now and crisps can’t sing can they?!/ Oh no.

Diane Abbot.

I have to say I’m not a fan of Diane Abbot. There I’ve said it and yes it’s racial. In fact my response is as visceral as those who see skin colour as the crucial factor in determining a person’s worth. But the race I’m referring to is, ‘The Word Spacers.’ The Word Spacers are to me aliens from a strange planet that speak in pseudo poetic tongues where each new word occupies its own overly large parking space in the vein hope of assuring it importance. Their words drop like fully formed smartly dressed babies from the uterus of the queen of some animal species who, for the purposes of this metaphor has lots of babies, maybe like frogspawn in smoking jackets. Will Self is a prime example. Each..word…..has.at..least…three…..if.not…more..full stops……....between.. them. I assure you these people in their inter-word pauses are not riffling through an inner thesaurus for perfect linguistic bedfellows, nor are their perfectly elocuted syllables a sign of good breeding. They’re either slow brained or doing it for fraudulent effect. Us normal humans in contrast are gabblers as 99.9% of our verbal DNA is identical to those we eat at Christmas. Our brains churn out words far faster than our speech mechanisms can cope with, and, because we’re busy thinking while others gabble, when it’s our turn we just lower the sluices and ‘blaaah’. Question? Sorry? Well this is what I was thinking while you were talking. So for me Diane, Will and Valdemort set themselves up for a hammering, like telling a gang of punks intent on your phone, “My father is the Arch Bishop of Canterbury.” It only sounds impressive to alien ears, it doesn’t work on humans. And Valdemort? The arch villain of them all, the king of the slow precision Word Spacers sent to the Earth to repudiate God herself: Jacob Reece Mogg. Each syllable clad in a beautifully tailored three piece suit  No! Screw ‘em, screw ‘em all. Lets hear it for the Gabblers! At least it’s honest nonsense.

Judgment Daze.

At five years old I had no electronics. We had electric light, I’m not that old, and a radio but that was it. Everything I did was physical. At 13 we had 2 hours of Saturday morning cinema, The Lone Ranger, which constituted our weekly diet of entertainment. Even graduating at twenty-one there was only TV but I was too busy. In the intervening fifty years average weekly entertainment hours have soared from 2 to 35 and now with fifty shades of social media in your pocket anywhere anytime it’s exploded even further to, and this is only a guess on my part, over 90% of our free awake time. That’s around 50 hours of being audio/visually entertained a week, or to put it another way less than 6 hours of what I used to spend 6o hours a week doing when I was 21: that being musing, learning and doing whatever I wanted. As a result I have a long list of competences and things I love doing. All very well but that’s not what this is about. Being entertained is a very special situation where we are the receiver. The onus is on the entertainer to skilfully satisfy the entertainee with whatever tricks and devices he or she has learnt over the years. He or she can only display their wares and hope, knowing full well any whinging about audience quality will not go down well. The audience is king and queen of the situation and thus enthroned will feel free to clap or boo as the mood takes us. We can change channel, unsubscribe, un-friend or in one form or another hurl abuse with little thought for restraint. So with 60 hours a week in this sovereign situation we have become fully fledged X Factor judges to a man, or woman. We watch, decide and proceed directly to our unchallengeable binary opinion; thumbs up or thumbs down. Now history suggests this imperial infallibility inevitably leads to mental illness where one either loses one’s mind or in more serious circumstances one’s whole head. Going forward this is not a good plan. This whole Brexistential phenomenon is a case in point. Everyone is a judge with a cast iron verdict, movement is impossible, agreement implausible and, well basically it just comes down to ‘who’s holding the remote’, and we all know who that is: Mothermouse, or, in a wider context, Facebook. 

When TM met DC.

Ah Teresa come in/ David/ Like a drink, whiskey, gin/ Have you got Feverfew/ Oh tonic, yes… there you go. So how are things/ Well/ Look I’m so sorry for all this mess, I thought we had it sewn up, a done deal but, well yes OK maybe I should have stayed on and dealt with it, but I was just too Remain/ And so was I/ Yes, yes of course but, well/ You thought Boris or one of them would, but the party didn’t want them did they/ No/ Didn’t you realise that? You just disappeared and left some Remainer to pick up the pieces: Me/ Yes I know I’m deeply sorry/ You were an utter fool David. A referendum was a terrible idea../ But they wouldn’t let it go. JRM was in my ear with that horrid voice of his, Gove, all of them/ But you were PM David/ I know, I know/ So have you got any bright ideas now?/ Strange you should say that/ Really/ No that’s why I asked to meet you today. You see, well back in 2016 when I was PM I called the referendum, it all went pear shaped and I resigned remember. Yes well of course you do. Well it wasn’t all bad. I disappeared and I’ve loved it. I mean no one even wants to interview me these days. It’s like I’ve got my life back/ Are you saying I should resign/ No, I’m saying do something unforgettable first and then resign. Your life must have been hell these last two years, you’re still in a hellish position, probably a no-win position, but you’re still PM. I’m saying you cancel Article 50 and then resign/ silence/ You can say only 37% of voters voted Leave, I’ve tried to get a better deal than the one we have now and it’s impossible. Every knowledgeable person I talk to proves that fact. I’m not going to let this country down due to a poorly judged advisory referendum when I know it will hit the poorest hardest. I’ve decided to bla bla bla/ Bla bla bla what/ Look if you don’t do anything lets say courageous there’ll be a vote in Parliament maybe your deal maybe another referendum. Your deal maybe the best under the circumstances but worse than what we have already. A second referendum will just prolong the pain and the whole country’s depressed enough already. People only want it because they believe Remain will win, and basically Corbyn and our lot are too cowardly to act before that. Revoke Article 50 as our strong PM and it all goes away. The majority of the party and the country will be with you and the feeling of relief will be palpable, the end of a bad dream. Then you say no one could have worked harder than me in these last two years to satisfy the will of the people but it’s proved impossible. The cost to our country would have been too high. I’m therefore resigning as your PM. You get your life back, clean break like me. I created this mess and you’ve cleared it up. You could go take some dancing lessons/ Oh God don’t remind me/ Sure there’ll be criticism but when the pound gains value, people start spending again and moral comes back. No, you’ll be remembered as diligent, honourable and most of all courageous, in fact the only one of us that was / Well/ And the country’s negotiating position within the EU will be immensely stronger. We went to the brink and could go there again/ I’m not sure what to say David. I can’t argue with what you’re saying. Maybe you’ve got something right for once. I’ll go away and think about it. Where did you go away on holiday?

2016 Referendum on reflection.

It was an odd affair. On the one side understated confidence that we’re a natural fit in Europe and we’d be mad to leave, and on the other a full on marketing campaign. Leave became its sexy sister, Brexit, battle buses roamed the country with misleading slogans, reportedly call centres were re-purposed to influence voters, Facebook’s personal  data was mined by Cambridge Analytica to target influence-able voters and millions were spent over the legal limits. It’s even conceivable Russia in its own self-interest weighed in to destabilise Europe. Bookies whose livelihood depends on getting the odds right were wildly out. 6:1 Leave and 1:10 on for Remain suggesting they were very confident in a Remain win. But they were watching the polling results where the margin for Remain appeared solid. They didn’t notice the surprising dip just prior to the referendum. It appeared something was happening outside everyone’s gaze, a covert influencing campaign. But being easily influenced, just like bad driving, is what no one thinks they are. Branding anyone as such would be considered an insult, even though it’s the sole purpose of our billion pound advertising industry. Then the results, labelled as ‘advisory’ suddenly became the unchallengeable ‘will of the people’ as if there was an overwhelming majority for Leave, not the marginal +/-2%. Skilful re-branding labelled any opposing voice as ‘Re-moaners.’ In fact only 37.4% of voters voted Leave, leaving 62.6% who didn’t. Strangely these numbers are rarely if ever mentioned, also the possible effects of Leave’s and possibly Russia’s jiggery-pokery. I suggest this was a referendum of sorts but not about the UK’s position within Europe. It was between our common man’s democracy and the holders and abusers of big data, and our common man’s democracy lost. Throughout this ongoing process Remain has consistently come up with the factual repercussions of leaving where Leave has offered rosy advertising dream-scapes of a brighter future like Thomas Cook selling a foreign holiday. Any reduction in immigration, even if it’s possible, will leave us with skill shortages, WTO rules won’t be advantageous and in the EU we can trade worldwide anyway. We are currently in the EU and with our own currency! What more could we ask for? But the will of the 37.4% must be obeyed. (even if it was based on a well sold fantasy) Really, well what about the well-used quote, “Follow the money”? Why would certain wealthy individuals lose out if we stayed in the EU? Maybe because the EU is, in 2019, introducing new laws to expose tax evasion and nefarious investment schemes. On reflection it all makes sense.