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Perception

The Doors to Which, you understood.
hat were delivered by all the other posts of this here blog you’re on.
T hough here, I meant it to refer to the cliché that recently rose up again from the dullness of repeat, being stated as “If a door closes before you, there will be another door open to go through” or something similar.

Which of course is very wrong.

“When a door closes before you, you open it again. That’s how doors work.“

Somewhat different, eh? Even when you’d have to kick it in. Or, reality being too complex to capture is such a short bon mot, indeed you take another door; (but only) when you’re tired of kicking. Whatever your perception of reality, the choice is still yours. Either take any flimsy, tiny hair of a threshold as an excuse to run away (from difficulty that you’ll find eve-ry-where, in particular when you run away so easily – ever more easily, ever less easily overcome), or you stand for what you set out to achieve.

On that festive note, I’ll leave you with:

[Dropped the true idea of Christmas, being thankful for having survived another year and with a glimmer of hope that next year might be a sliver better, now just called Winter Wonderland and being the worst (or over-the-top) consumerist-commercialised dump of rubbish packaged as Christmas market. With stalls from everywhere, in particular Germany, Belgium, Hollund. With merchandise from eveywhere though mostly from China. Now in Hyde Park]

Debatable socmed flame tactics

For ten points (each), please comment on the following ideas re arguments in a proper (?) debate [after the pictural intermission]:

  • Is this picture correct, in your opinion?
  • At what layer does your comment on the previous question sit in the picture?
  • Does the picture portray the debasement of your arguments, when you have none (left) at some higher level, to a lower level to try (ex ante in vein due to the debasement) to still try to win an argument?
  • Would one’s inability to remain at the upper levels (allowing Quintilianus‘ essential remarks and tactics, i.e., allowing well-controlled level variation) or one’s inability to partake there in the first place, be an indication of allowance to (be!) shut up? As in this.
  • Given chatbots’ ability to process comments at much higher than human, sufficient, speeds, could they intervene to silence, as above?
  • How would AI tools have to develop to play a role in that, given the necessity to understand far- and wide-reaching contextual awareness, understanding of historical perspectives, puns of all sorts, etc.?
  • How would that AI have to be trained, and continuous-learning-maintained, to capture societal, history and slang development?
  • How would that AI have to be trained, and continuous-learning-maintained, to prevent it/them from slipping down the slope it/themselfves? [As here and here, to name just a few of the big ones’ misses, no to mention the great flood of chatbots that aren’t called out yet for the same and/or worse]
  • How would that AI have to be trained, and continuous-learning-maintained, to prevent it from becoming the Central Scrutiniser, or Skynet ..!?
    Take into account we all want a free society (plural or global), and censorship of any kind runs against that unless applied diligently against flames, threats etc. on social media where the purpose seems to be one-upmanship among … [friends ..!?] and absolute fear of death by utter remain of anonymity regardless of the damage inflicted, where only the most retarded (furthest away from actual contribution) ‘win’ the battle for worst comment, thus ensuring their incredible unremarkability on the world stage [they’re not even anything near the stage, on another planet rather… If only they were] to continue. But when comment(or)s are overly easily branded that way, stifling of sane political discussion is ’round the corner.

Asking this for a friend. All answers need to be supplied with ample valid argument. Cartoons may be used. Comments on the author will be treated as indicated above, or worse. Much worse. Do not I repeat do not bet on it / your cunning. A picture to relax:
[Sturdy XOR attention-seeking pink; your choice. London, a couple of years ago and not really downtown or is it ..?]

Quo or Misquo

tation, that is.
Either here.
      Or here.

From which I have learned, essentially this: Never trust. [Oh wait; here]
XOR never verify. Depends on which world you want to live.
So much for quotes. Let’s use our own insights. Preferably of the kind that is hard to relay, because that is (may be …!) an above-50% sign that it’s genuine and profound. Since putting things into words is hard, so when the process seems not so hard, the content probably is flimsy, to make it not so hard.

Circles… Now, on to the Weekend! And:
[Just your average Noto’an]

In Controllusion

After a good receipt of this, I kept on receiving nudge-pointers about a related issue. Being, that so many are, have become, control freaks. Micro-managers with such enormous blind spots, blinkers/blinders.
With a thesis developing that this is caused by sheer frustration of not being able to shake off the being controlled. Since individualism, the societal buddy of pure neo-capitalism the fascist kind intertwined with consumerism and the blow-out of traditional social group cohesion(s), demands we are Free. Or so. And find ourselves [well, not me] still tied up tight in (whether private or public) corporate dictats. Having to let off all the steam, it explodes (short of detonation) through the escape vent of downward bullying – in perception from all sides.

Hope I’m overstating this. But a fuzzy-logic sort of partial acceptance of the point only, will point the point towards resolution of at least one contributing part of the stifle that is so rife in modern (not) organisations. Capice? Capisco..?

And:
[Apparently not when this of course is Dyon.]

Lagging, nagging ‘Coin feeling

Somehow, the many (?) Cassandra’s messages of late about Bitcoin being a hyped-up bubble about to burst and how it’s the laggerds (only) that now want to jump in, drive up prices but will be the Greater Fools in the game, sounds a bit … false bottom.
[Unsure what the exchange rate is, today. Has the bubble burst already, or ..?]

I’d say, how many countries, and moreover how great a many financial organisations (private or public, or regulatory or inter/supranational) may have an interest to blow up Bitcoin, as a demonstrator that all that blockchain stuff isn’t any good after all ..? Because the promise of blockchain was, and is, that it will not need any, traditionally somehow still geography-bound, standing governing body avalanched-under by politics, gross misunderstanding of the core concepts ruled over, etc. In short, power struggles.
And that, of course, may be a future that some will not allow. And fight to their deaths – inevitably, not by nature but by cause and earlier. But still they simply won’t have it, that blockchain/Bitcoin/smart-contract/whatevva shazam. With the only way to get rid of it in an inconspicuous manner, is to … inflate it till it goes borsht. Risk, but possibly profit hugely during the trip ..? Case in point: this one [hope the link is still valid, and it’s in Dutch which may mix semantic levels to be tauto]

Plus:
[You get a golden bullet-like thing on your pillow. With compliments and filled with chocolate, that is… In Salzburg of course]

The Pursuit of Triviality

Today being the day of the real Sinterklaas (as here), we also learn (not!) to cherish the small gifts. As in this effect, but otherwise. [That sounds weird…]
But the effect is too, all the same. And so ubiquitous that we may even lose sensitivity towards, or against [here we go again] it. And that is a problem. Because darn, how can we even think to train AI in rational business decision making, when all learning examples, and/or actual practical deployment, will be tainted / rife with such irrational biases? We so commonly swipe, shuffle them softly, under the rug that here we have such an AI-applicability-wrecking issue that we hear so much about lately. [No you don’t, compared to what would be enough, hardly anything at all…]

Another example of knowing your classics, eh? Oh well. Plus:
[Noooo, not those classics again! Saltzb’]

The Boring Wine Inn (3 @MichelinGuides stars)

Maybe the relevance of Michelin stars, and accompanying guide, would increase if,
Apart from losing the numbing down, bland-isation of any food innovation by chefs to a style that is either Boring in itself already or a quick to wear off gimmick, that obtaining or even striving for a star(s) often turns into, just to please the judges and don’t forget a bucket of salt (yes, don’t lie to me)
The wine list were innovative, too. By which I don’t mean that the wine list couldn’t have some classics but where the all but most insanely priced items (all tend to sit at some 4-8 times cost anyway, extortionistly – bring that down to 2-3x and your profits go throught the roof all the same) have something new. Fresh, beyond the well-trodden paths. The latter, being the average+ quality (if one’s lucky) of the go-with-the-flow (of up to and including last year’s fashion) appelations – with too many New World ones that are so cheap to get. Or from secondary regions of the Old World where the top can still be had at below-top priced – but still with according interestingness of taste. All from the mid-size to big merchants that don’t care anymore about their products and just want to shove as many boxes as they can at incumbent-tied-in margins. Their tell: Aggression towards any that want to offer something off the wine menu for connaisseurs.
As if the chef’s innovation that once was, is enough to stay at the level that once was, qua quality and freshness one wants from top rated places. News flash: The wines can add to the experience. Big time. If one doesn’t see that, well, off you go.
And it also goes for the wine pairing / selection by the glass; how better to showcase one’s innovative wine choices in perfect matches per course ..?
Why not feel free to ask customers for their wine sophistication and preferences? Only a handful of sommeliers seem to understand. Almost all, at the true top places, without food stars.
[One notable exception encountered, in a long life of many attempts…]
[Edited to add, elsewhere: this place. A drain on your balance, but then …! What great (9) dishes, what excellent wine choices and pairing, even in the ‘simple’ recommended wine pairing.]

So that in the end we may see the return of the true relevance of stars, and see less overhyped craze over joints that suddenly get overbooked way too long in advance and start to double their prices – for nothing of the new but only the already mundane that satisfies only those running after Keeping Up With The Jones’ (“Do you know this-and-that [ill-pronounced] wine maker? Isn’t he great oh we once tasted his [name a random year], I’m on a personal basis with him because I was at the camping on the mudfield next to his’.” – no joke, heard too often in literal or similar ways…) places. Ruining it for true believers from the humble beginnings.

Oh well, and:
[If you know where, you know what I mean. Wink wink and all. Bourgogne yes but which Clos’ ?]

Now you read me, now you don’t

As a pointer to what this is about…
You know, like the oldest tricks in the book, still going strong when all the world’s (worlds’?) arms’ races are going nowhere. As predicted. Where the title of course doesn’t reference a major part of the sec controls, stego.

But that’s a finesse point. Let’s be happy that research into faster horses continues, with results.

CU!
[Stylish; what’s hiding here ..? Even when you know where]

Eternal Life

Remember Castranova’s Synthetic Worlds? You should. If only because this, is, still, in The Atlantic [edited to add: with an intelligent comment/reply here] – because that is still around, it allows for comparison of origins, and the utopical futures as described in the book, with-or-to the current state of the world. Where we have both the ‘hardly any change noticeable in current-state affairs when compared with the moonshot promises of yesterday’ and the ‘look what already has changed; the whole Mobile world change wasn’t even in those rosy pictures’ and ‘hey don’t critique yet we may only be halfway through any major tectonic humanity shifts’.
Where the latter of course ties in with the revitalised [well there‘s a question mark attached like, what do you mean by that; is it ‘life’ and would we even want that] version in ‘singularity’ the extreme nirvana of uploaded, eternal minds. As if the concept of ‘mind’ or ‘intelligence’ would make any sense, in that scenario. And also, since this (pronounced ‘Glick’ one guru told me lately; the importance of continued education), where the distinction between ‘eternal’ and ‘forever in time’ clearly plays up as in this (same), against …

In circles, or Minkovsky‘s / Penrose‘s doodles [wormholing their value], the issue comes back to flatlander (i.e., screen) reality, if there is such a thing…
Oh well; leaving you with:
[Warping perspectives, in ‘meaning’, too; Salzburg]

Noble Black edition

When first, Santa (the real one !!!) his (hey, not ‘her’ – isn’t that wrong by not being utterly iconoclast, or is gross distortion of History by such destruction of artefacts a crime against humanity?) helpers shouldn’t be blackened chimney sweepers (as they have been known to be, not people of African descent, since at least 50 years) because even in their fine dress and with important President&CEO-plus-1 level jobs and maintainers of the kindred-laws certainly over parents too, they were by definition slaves or so. Oh? Weren’t they the ones with rods to enforce the rule of naughty or nice laws? Didn’t they have the nice jobs, with obvious jealousy-inciting quality of work and management culture, being all gay (sic) and joyous whereas most of the children they would have met, and their parents, would be (sometimes literally starving) poor and probably without steady jobs ..?
And now they are changed to Spanish noblemen (qua clothes, zero ladies around because they would be unfit to work ..?) of the 16th century. Because now they’re
(claimed to be… yes really, to fit the crime-against-humanity PC only handful of, almost exclusively, one little (yes) city (literally)
whereas even those of colour (any) don’t see any problem with the original)
completely unrelated to slavery. Of course. Would one be allowed to influence public-anything let alone childrens’ festivities when being so utterly stupid? Where does open democracy break down for terrorists? Here.
Moreover, as noblemen, the new helpers are white. But of course. Otherwise, one would again distort History. And then, what jobs are there now for those of African descent, in the fun occasion? None.

Whatever. Don’t get mad, get even …? Plus:
[White factory – paint should be the only distinction and not implicate anything; Rotterdam of course]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord