Category: Geen categorie

Just as a note.
The world of wine sees global consumption levels drop quite a bit from previous peaks – following patterns for other alcoholic beverages though not as much.
Various reasons have been investigated, and data on possible rebound( avenue)s published. Agressive disinformation by (quasi-religious) teetotaller revivalists on health (no, wine is medically proven to be health-enhancing when taken in moderation, even more when enjoyed around/during dinner time) is one of the most-cited reasons. Cost can’t be an issue since the cheapest wines are still … insultingly low rock-bottom prices even after all the inflation years/decades. Many markets seeing ‘youth’ staying with their parents that much longer, not living the independent wild life as many years as we used to, maybe, too.
To which I would like to note another possible reason: The explosion of locality. Which may be pitched as The solution against brand dilution, e.g., in France, but globally …

Once, there were only a handful of countries to know (and a great many of the few actually involved, knew what a Saint Bris would stand for, no need to know individual wine makers from there as real connoisseurs would, or know all vintages by heart as the wannabees would have crammed).
Then, there was the arrival of the New World. And then, one knew all the Aussies in one go. One sea of sameness.
Now, even moderate knowledge levels require to know a Torrontés from a Poulsard, to know a McMinnville from a Yamhill-Carlton, to be able to pronounce Larmandier-Bernier effortlessly & dash; just picking a simple one for demo; skipping the desire to flaunt (my) Montgueux interest. The average-‘rare’ are far from it, nowadays. The …forsaken have been taken, for an upswing.

OK, I made that one up. I hope but don’t know if thusmentioned grapes really are back sufficiently to spread their word/worth. But one can start digging in.

But which means that anyone who enters the world of wine beyond cheap plonk, now has such a vast world to learn and explore even for a holiday trip instead of threading in Here Be Dragons – ah, China, yet another huuuuge terrain to cover even if barely.
Discouragingly.
And with the nowadays much more many in-between connoisseurs (and wannabees; let’s not exclude myself) displaying ever more detailed, learned hardly to that extent experienced, knowledge of all sort of minutiae of whatever they can rattle off, we forget the more philosophical enjoyment wine can bring.
Discouragingly.

Can we do something about this? I’m unsure.
But as a start, pushing each and every winemaker to tout their individuality over locality-/regional recognisability may not be wise. Education-wise, we may need to consider whether purely tasting and appreciating may need a revival. Aroma interpretation (labeling) of any single compound already varies wildly; culturally (what in his name is a boysenberry? [But why don’t people know a thing about the wonderful merits of Mirabelle ..!?] What is kumquat? Please decipher this. Also, refrain from mastery. As in: If anyone tastes green paprika (‘bell pepper’ for simpletons), do not say that it can’t be because Cab Franc isn’t there. Better recognise their refinement i.e., such low threshold for any of the mass of different pyrazines that exist and which apparently elude you.

Is it not wise to tone this down a bit, to start off with learning about one’s individual palate and realise all one’s specific (partial) anosmia’s plus learn about the general appreciation of the cultural ‘place’ of wine? So, another combi of the basic, the core and the other-dimension/subfield directed learning as a program may help. Approachable, open and non-exclusivity-oozing, and friendly. Wine as a phenomenon deserves it.

To be developed: on the joys of agency theory, and how that works out on micro scales throughout organisations. Quite a bit of thinking, and even more of writing, will follow here. Will only ‘officially’ post this post after elucidation to satisfaction. Though your comments are welcomed, already. …

First there was the translation (‘folding into’) of it called Governance, and the mass of organisational psychology and Internal Organisation, with all the Me Versus the Organisation translation of societal isolation that turned inward; the organisation as alien society for many.
Now, there is the agentic movement; replace as many humans doing repetitive work (with creative / ad-hoc flexibility aspects ever more) with agents, either single big ones (qua eventual code base) of superagents (orchestrators) with many ad hoc spawned dummy agent’lets under control – bringing back all the issues with e.g., authorisations, defecting agents, etc. so we find ourselves back at ◻1. Having to find out how to do oversight, monitoring and control.

This’all, nicely starting off with a paragraph Agency Theory primer, then a couple of paragraphs on the joys of (proper!) audits, plus a bit on how Audit is changing due to the availability (!) of agents to do the grunt work, flipping to a bottom-up discussion on auditing agentified environments, the controls re that, and the internal and external governance that applies.
Noting all the way that ‘governance’ is about the sum total governance over an entire F1 crew, so to speak, not, as it is applied today too often, only about ‘monitoring of the coffee bean supply in the pits’. That’s hardly ‘management’ in the original sense.

Yet again, some ramblings from a night of less than perfect sleep a.k.a. weekend musings:

The real world, if such a thing exists (we’re not dogmatic Idealists nor attached Materialists), is halfway between fractalic chaotic/over-complex/beyond-complicated cybernetic models and fully unhinged statistical chaos on the other.
People think in linear relations; emergent properties are otherwise.

No single data point will tell you to which statistical distribution it belongs (or why it should).
Statistics ‘work’ on sets of otherwise unrelated (qua cause-effect / network connection) elements; the set definition is about sameness of the elements in respect to some quality under study, which is the opposite of difference – when difference isn’t ‘collected’ as quality, no causal relation can be established (because there’s no distinction in cause being present or not, i.e., the existence or not of an effect cannot be linked to a persistent cause or not, no (Boolean) If X Then Y (Y or not(X)) has value; by lack of X, Y is undetermined. Distributions are the opposite of particulars and point towards noise not characteristics. If you dive into (or upward toward) fractalic details (possibly, zooming in is the same as rising up into emergent-property space, similar to time reversibility in the math that underlies quantum theories), ‘distribution’ becomes meaningless.
In distributions, time doesn’t exist; ‘Everything happens at once’ [Einstein] is in there but leads to no further insights, since the distribution (spreading out) over time of things happening isn’t happening so there can be no causes.

*This to be checked in quantum physics, where Time has become a fundamentally unknowable (sic) dimension/variable but also it seems that time is, in the end, quantifiable – there appears to be some time quantum, very small but there. I’m unconvinced that this isn’t an anomaly or artefact created by making the mathematics consistent and ‘complete’ for / in quantum models; like Fourier frequency analysis allows negative frequencies, pointing at the existence of signal before a point-zero defining event has taken place / came into existence. Not zero latency like in lightspeed-beating entanglement, but real negativity – though a solution to that, is champagne since that’s always a solution, but maybe less useful here.
The mathematics of quantum theory may have created the quantification of Time to ‘solve’ some mathematical issue that might be similar to Gödelian incompleteness. Time as stitch-on solution to make some math model Complete but forgetting the universal validity of Big G will not work; the scar remains to inform us of the stich and through its existence, the inconsistency remains, too, tucked away in the total, similar to Loss of Parity which is unrepairable. Physics without Time might need a more fundamental reboot..?

… And this is why LLMs hallucinate, i.e., produce artifacts if not by (included in the mathematical foundation of statistics) spurious relations. They work with tokens, statistical ‘prediction’ of what should follow ‘next’. The Next part being not in time but in place. Statistically, hence without any ‘knowledge’/ info on cause-effect relations. Hence, LLMs cannot distinguish nonsense from actual (model’able) relations and must rely on the probabilities and the spurious probabilities that fundamentally must exist or the math is wrong that no cause-effect relations exist for. Tell me something.

And now for something completely the same…:
When Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Life, they gained knowledge but not insight / Understanding (in a Feymannian sense; “the map is not the territory”).
That came from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, their true undoing – being thrown out of Paradise / Eden into Samsara (which includes the realisation of a phenomenon called Time as part of the fall to Materialism where Enlightened Ones revert to absolutely-complete Idealism which cannot be expressed because that would take words, language, the existence of a sender and of a receiver which all are Materialism things thus destroying the effort). Good and Evil, in Hebrew, טוֹב וָרָע (tov wa-raʿ) literally translates as “good and evil” in one word, i.e., Everything. This includes time as a concept, still not understood by any living human, and “Robert Alter emphasizes the point that when God forbids the man to eat from that particular tree, he says that if he does so, he is “doomed to die.” The Hebrew behind this is in a form regularly used in the Hebrew Bible for issuing death sentences. [Wikipedia] — nice, nice, pointing to (my) ideas re Original Sin and Milton’s descriptions in Paradise Lost.

<End of the intermission>
Now, since humanity is somewhere in the Aristotelic-golden-mean-or-not middle void between a full-on, completely fractal world – that’s maybe veering more towards this end than previously thought – and a complex-bordering-on-chaotic non-linearly connected cybernetic world of statistical mathematics – where ‘control’ over the world is but a pipe dream but also still somewhat in the neighbourhood – the Good and the Evil may indeed be intertwined, quantum-entangled, one vast one-ness of Field where Time is an illusion, the first, the Original, Sin, existent only to be able to navigate in a Reality that is but a Hallucination.

I know, that’s not really a well-crafted connection of the bits and snippets above but give a guy a break.
Oh well, I’ll rest for now.

Yes it was Albert who said: I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and then five minutes solving it – not.

You’ll not need even five minutes of flat simple search to discover that most probably, this either was in ‘Source: Private conversation’ or ‘[debunked]’. The same with Abe Lincoln’s Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe. which is close but upon closer inspection, is just that slight little different – but also valid, in the same sphere.
But if we’d ask either or some LLM whether their statements hold true today, they’d all agree. Since that is what’s happening in the LLM space with search-character prompts: On-going refinement of your context definition(s) till finally, you get the answer you were looking for anyway and that could have been solved with a straightforward search. Though with a well thought-out one, as the sayings advise.

Which, in particular in the prompting/context case, aligns with the Deming ‘method’ of continuous quality improvement that has been debased to mere Plan-Do-Check-Act organizational slop. But still – at the level of LLM inquiry, this works as it ever would have: By having an idea (Plan), trying a prompt (Do), seeing that it didn’t deliver (Check) and tuning our context within the very question or in refinement of the ‘in-line’ context-setting statements (if these two aren’t equivalent, there’s something wrong with the model) as the Act part, we can gain in quality of the answer we get.

Where of course the scene-setting context statements are halfway railing-in of the context in quite the same way as a good ‘architectural’ design of the solution space will help your problem definition down the funnel of viable solutions; pre-empting trying just anything as solution. The better you are at this, the less you need prompt cycles down a rabbit hole. No use laying out half of all parts of a car, and then near-infinite-improvement-cycle assembling your way to a perfect car.

Somehow, this seems to align with simple text lay-outing as well. If you do an extensive CSS design, you’ll have less need for all too extensive ad hoc inline styling and coding. As with all coding: Start wide-net and get mostly-garbage; start boxed-in and you’re halfway there. Still needing PDCA rounds, though.

And as a side note: the Law of Requisite Complexity will in the case of software development require requirements setting to handle more bandwidth than the most lean and mean solution as generated, will deliver. To correct (loosen up!) through appropriate problem definition(s)… almost going the wrong way of tying down your LLM answers’ narrowing down.
But the reason all those big SAP projects got derailed: Started off with too narrow functionality definitions, plus all the Mandatory changes in the course of the years implementing, plus the static character of the v0.01 requirements (due to the volume, necessarily fixed at some point), plus the world that changed ever faster around the system… Onto Low Code / No Code we went. More flex, but still…
The same, now with the magic of quick results — sped-up v0.01’s.

Towards the quotes; the sharpening of the context as of the axe, the time spent contexting and re-prompting eerily similar. The results, often, still going into the camp fire (or burner; not all nerds are outdoorsy types) and the five minutes could be underestimated once the token processing starts in earnest.

There’s the analogies, or congruences you needed. And a debunk of the quick-result dream of prompting – Einstein still holds, Abe is cold on average.
Now what?

Well, now you’ll see why it’s not about letting end users just fiddle around with generic IP-/secrets-leaking LLMs but about hiring professionals to haul you through the nitty-gritty of building serious ‘AI-driven’ applications to transform your business processes and your business altogether. I know a couple…

Contemporary old and new, so close by. Park, no parking.

Oh. Zie ik zomaar dat in Europees verband ‘resilience’ kennelijk behoort te worden vertaald met het verzonnen woord ‘weer-baar-heid’.

Een woord dat uitgaat van (agressief-? nee juist niet)passiviteit;
‘weer’, als in: afweer, een beetje bang terugdeinzend in freeze [of zelfs flight is reeds omdraaiende om hard weg te rennen], niets van doen hebbende met fight;
‘baarheid’ — dubbelop. Zoiets als compliancy in plaats van -ce. Hypercorrectie.
-baar betekent dat een ander er iets mee kan, als in houdbaar, ‘kan worden ge-‘. Een auto is rembaar als er remmen op zitten. Weer-baar, als verdedig-baar?
-heid betekent dat het een zekere mate betreft; uiterst kwalitatief en subjectief. De mate van ‘rembaar’, de kwaliteit van de remmen (bij bedoelde en onbedoelde gebruikssnelheden van de auto), zwak- tot on-bepaald.
Weerbaarheid is dus equivalent met (af)weergeschiktheid, geschikt tot het door een ander laten afweren van iets. Rembaarheid van een auto – iemand kan (de auto) remmen, in onbepaalde mate; eigenschap van de auto, bij geen gebruik aanwezig doch ballast. Iets of iemand anders remt.

Dat lijkt me niet de bedoeling: Weerbaar is iedereen, als de Overheid het weren op het juiste moment maar oppakt, wij zijn daar klaar voor! Zelf hoeven we dus niks te kunnen.
Of wordt bedoeld: Geschikt om te worden (af)geweerd? Wie weert dan wat, en waarom? Is een aanvaller weerbaar omdat die zwakheden heeft die afweer mogelijk maken?
Weerbaarheid, laten we dat dus gewoon de zwaktes en OPSEC-foutjes van de aanvaller mee aanduiden.

Bovendien blijkt er uit de term niks van tolereerbare schade laat staan herstel tot de oude situatie of beter, integendeel; zwijgen over schadeherstel is tell-tale. Hooguit ‘remmende terugtrekking’ dus; we blijven in het lelijke, het negatieve hangen.

Wat waarschijnlijk was bedoeld, maar om onduidelijke reden bij de vertaler onbekend was, is de al eeuwen bekende term ‘veerkracht’; oorspronkelijk bedoeld voor veren — voor (in)drukkrachtdemping en -ongedaanmaking, niet voor overzetten hoewel etymologisch waarschijnlijk (dunnetjes) nog hangende aan een draadje ‘vogelpen’?

Waarom die ‘oude’ (quod non) term niet gebruikt, als gewoon Nederlands? Bang voor iets sterks, of gebrekkige taalbeheersing? Veer — als er iets indrukt, geven we stoïcijns-vrolijk mee, steeds steviger tegengas gevend tegen de ongewenste invloed;
kracht — met positieve connotaties, die uit onszelf komt. En zeker tot volledig herstel bedoeld is te komen, zelfs ‘antifragility‘ toelaat.

Dan hebben velen meer er ten minste zin in …
Edited to add; zoals deze:

Of hebben we dat in stilte overboord gegooid…? Of stiekum laten gooien ..? Of eigenlijk nooit volledig geïmplementeerd maar alleen voor een paar applicaties – in de tijd voor we over ‘apps’ spraken.
Met het fantastische MFA, meestal niet M maar hooguit 2, beginnen we weer opnieuw. Dat is op zichzelf ook alweer kwetsbaar gebleken, in wat meer bijzondere gevallen maar toch. Het wachten is nu op verplichte 3FA, tot ook dat weer zal sneuvelen.

Ja deze blogpost is een ‘run it up the flagpole and see who salutes’.

Of we gaan eerste eens serieus de nieuwste (allang niet meer) aanbevelingen van NIST opvolgen, en dan met name consequent (sic) het password-vervangregime aanzienlijk versimpelen.
Of we gaan massaal over op password managers. Oh nee; die zijn óók al kwetsbaar gebleken (unfortunate collateral damage gerepareerd met “Sorry”..? Jawel.) en als we er met z’n allen op gaan leunen, zal het allemaal nog meer in elkaar donderen. #wetopbehoudvanellende ..?
Of we gaan massaal over op Zeer-o Trust of zo? @Meneer, ditch je vraagteken in deze(n) en maak er een interrobang van. Jawel, een ‽ enne, we moesten nog steeds eens vaart zetten achter #ditchcyber!
En achter serieus RBAC laat staan ABAC ook. Of hoe verhoudt dat laatste zich tot SSO … #askingforafriend

Of we doen een serieuze reset, à la deze. Hoe? Tsja ik hoef niet alle oplossingen te hebben. Wie beweert dat men pas kritiek mag hebben als er een beter alternatief wordt gepresenteerd, kan niet denken. Een probleem signaleren is het startpunt van échte ontdekkingen; er direct een oplossing bij hebben bedacht, levert alleen maar uiterst poreuze tunnelvisie’tjes.
Wat ik wél weet:

1. We moeten wát. Wat moeten we?
2. Ingewikkelder maken voor Joe Enduser is een garantie op falen. Simpeler maken van de veiligste manier van werken, is het enige dat iets van een lange-termijnhoudbaarheid kan opleveren.
3. Terug naar SSO! Technisch op te lossen; hoeft de gebruiker niks aan te doen. Is er niet wat te bereiken met ‘personal’ AI, on the end node en met een single sign-on te gebruiken om persoonlijk doorlopend getrainde (sic) nul-vertrouwen te kunnen toepassen, aldus beschermende tegen verlies en diefstal (want patroonongepast gebruik blokkerende tenzij na additionele controle+logging+…). Dat is helemaal niet vergezocht, dat doen creditcardmaatschappijen al een aantal decennia (server-side). En in wezen doet jan en alleman er al aan, als we kijken naar OV-chip’kaart’ inclusief bankpassen op de mobiel. Ik (voel uw) wantrouw(en in) dat…!! Maar toch; we kunnen SSO bereiken mét 0T. De complexiteit in de technology is voor de back office. Alwaar Engineers dingen tenminste kunnen Oplossen (pleo), gaan we vanuit.

Nou ja, we moeten in ieder geval een andere compartimentalisering, verdeling. Niet, zoals nu, voor iedere scheet (sic) opnieuw driemaal pincodes en wachtwoorden opgeven, maar naar risico⁺-gewogen toepassing.

Zo, en voor de liefhebbers van Tetris:

Trouwe lezers herinneren zich wellicht nog het stukje over niet-zelf-rijdende autoauto’s. En de diverse posts over het toenemende gebrek aan ervaring-opdoenend vermogen en vooral -gelegenheid om telkens weer verdergaande extreme besturingssituaties van ‘AI’ over te kunnen nemen als dat moet.

Daar blijken dus allerhande wiki’s et al. al over te gaan. Als hier maar vooral ook hier en hier. Wat buitengewoon actueel is (wie denkt zometeen na jarenlang automaat-rijden nog ‘zonder nadenken’ én soepeltjes handmatig te kunnen schakelen? ‘overconfidence bias’ bij uitstek..!), bijvoorbeeld in:

• Vliegverkeer. Een duidelijke (casus)beschrijving is te vinden in Messy;
• Auto- e.a.-verkeer, als bovenstaande;
• Accountancy, als eerder beschreven (en daarna herhaaldelijk);
• Voorbeelden te over. Soms op het kantje de wereld reddend door niet te luisteren.

U kunt daar vast wel uw eigen ideeën aan toevoegen.
Even een plaatje tussendoor:

Get real; the datacentertankers with your LLM are fixed to their anchors; you just want to sail Free! (Off the port o’ Porto).

Dus… De logische-onmogelijkheidsaanhangers, of liever de nog-lang-niet-praktisch-toepasbaar-aanhangers van/tegen “AI” of zelfs maar het-betere-ML, formeren steeds meer anecdotische én system(at)ische voorbeelden, redeneringen en logica waarom we best vooruit zouden kunnen komen mét ML maar niet door ML alleen. Interessant. Maar jammer dat er zó veel energie aanmoet tegen het ontzenuwen van al te blije verhaaltjes, en er zó veel energie wordt verspild aan inherent (nog) onmogelijke mirages, luchtspiegelingen.
Dus … de vraag blijft: Hebben we van doen met de snelheid van (het) geluid, waarvan allang duidelijk was dat die wél kon worden doorbroken en alleen praktische tekorten dat lang onmogelijk hielden, of hebben we te maken met een lichtsnelheid die aantoonbaar onmogelijk kan worden doorbroken zonder in onoplosbare paradoxen te belanden; zoiets als tijdreizen met de grootvaderparadox? Of waar ertussenin (ook onmogelijk) zitten we qua ‘AI’-theoretische-mogelijkebestaanbaarheid..?

En dat nog afgezien van de wenselijkheid van al dat AI-gedoe.
Denk aan deze: De eeuwige wens van de mens, is dat ‘iemanden’ of machines of wat dan ook, gevaarlijk, vervelend of saai werk overnemen om ons de ruimte te laten om creatief te leisure‘n. Wat er gebeurt in Amazon-warehouses is dat er airco komt tegen 40°-hitte niet omdat de mensen al omvielen (letterlijk gebeurd; is pech) maar pas zodra de robots er last van hebben.
Maar/omdat er ‘helaas’ nog mensen nodig zijn voor de kennelijk toch wel complexe taken … Wat makkelijk is voor de mens, is moeilijk voor de automatisering en andersom.

Hier passen een hoop metaforen over terugtrekking (ik bedoel: ‘tactische hergroepering in achterwaartse richting’) door de mens langs de meest kwetsbare vluchtroutes – zonder een samenwerking op te zoeken op de meest waardevolle grond.

Die grond is overigens denk ik te vinden in een naadloze verbinding, dooradering, van geautomatiseerde systemen op basis van ‘gewone’ algoritmen – die blijken wel al héél veel te kunnen, mits slim doordacht –, ML, maar ook Expert Systems as of old – denk Lisp en Prolog! – en bijvoorbeeld genetische algoritmes (doorlopend zich ontwikkelend, wellicht zelfs, à la ML-doorlopend-trainend ..‽) — en dat al te mixen met gewone mensen die hun unieke kracht gebruiken naar eigen inzicht en luimen.
Zelfs als die luimen liggen in, om maar wat te noemen, de accountancy. Was niet ooit het idee van de auditor een Notabele te willen zijn; gezag op persoonlijke naam te hebben – als een auditor zijn werk had gedaan en voor zichzelf voldoende had gezien om het auditrestrisico te kunnen aanvaarden, dan was het Goed (genoeg). Getrouw Beeld, bovendien. Iets meer dan Bijstand verdienend vanwege het afbreukrisico, niet meer want dat betaamt een Notabele niet – stel je voor dat een auditor geassocieerd zou raken aan geldwolverij; de schande!

Contrasteer dat eens met de Standaard 4400(N) en zie de totale onderschikking van de Mens aan de kapitalistische Machine. Lees wat de Klassieken dachten over revoluties als volstrekt natuurlijke processen, nu weer hard nodig bij een bezitsongelijkheid die wereldwijd nog nooit is vertoond (really).
À la Bruce, samenvatting hier: De wereld is als een spinnenweb: de kleine vliegjes worden gevangen, de grote vliegen er dwars doorheen.
Waarbij de wereld bovendien dermate en-én is, dat de werkelijkheid niet in regeltjes te vangen is. Prescriptief noch descriptief. Vaste regels zijn derhalve een contradictio. Flex moet. Wie daardoor in paniek raakt – nee, we zijn wel degelijk ietsje verder ontwikkeld dan de holenmens (on the surface, en alleen daar), maar er is een fors contingent mensen (waaronder collega’s) dat nog steeds liever in de grot blijft want buiten is het koud en enge dieren en zo ook al verhongeren we – laten we dan ook degenen die wél naar buiten willen om te exploreren en voedsel (ook voor de geest) te vinden, vooral proberen tegen te houden zodat we allemaal ten onder gaan. Zie de hedendaagse maatschappij/economie.

Nou ja, zo ziet u maar: Zelfs een serieus verhaal over ‘AI’-onbestaanbaarheid weet ik wel om te turnen tot een bezwaar tegen microdenkende vinkauditortjes…

… Just wondered: Who’s still bullish about Teh Metaverse ..‽

And it was only a short while ago that e-ve-ry-one needed to move to the M, or would be derelict, out, over, forgotten. Whatever one’s personhood, according to the Usual Suspects in sich things, one Must (past tense – that is the same word yes why ..?) join in with the craze. Any company not moving to the ‘verse completely, would be derelict within five years, remember? But, since this bubble was from some good long time i.e., three years ago: what was it?

Just a ‘virtual world’ of sorts. Proclaimed to be the virtual world of the future, disconnected of the real one – apperently, in some weirdos’ minds – whereas those in the know both looked forward to profiting Big Time from it and knew this wasn’t the first or only of such systems by far. Castranova already discussed a lot of them, Second Life in particular. Mind you; 2006 and probably before, extensively, already – but too little purely-accidental ‘riches’ were thrown towards it, to have made it into the mainstream.
And aren’t all too many games (Minecraft, anyone ..?) not virtual worlds, including in-game purchasing et al. etc. et cetera? What more was the intention of the Metaverse? Nothing but an extension of such ideas, be it with unlimited (this is the Internet Age of mankind; ‘infinity is an abstract concept so don’t talk about natural limitations, very strict limitations, of ever coming near anything big let alone infinite’ of the stupid kind) ‘earnings’ potential. Which was, is, shorthand for fleecing you of everything you own and then, well, your avatar upgrade fits the squeezed-out lemon mould best #discard

For those that claim to be data driven (quod non; don’t get me started):

Demonstrating that some Mark Z affiliates and the ubiquitous McK are still pouring money into it. Which could also have been used to fight hunger, poverty and deprivation of tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of humans in a permanent and sustainable way.
Don’t they ever know when to stop? Isn’t it getting sad..? And where does the money go? W.C. Fields was always right. Still is.

OTOH, we(?)’re coaxed into developments that extend the idea(s). Think games, as said, that go further and further into the direction of virtual worlds.
[Intermission: Does anyone know how those actually operate? Do all taking part, know what a shard is? Do all know how the rules are insusceptibly changed to fit game (tactics) developments; who is in control over the rules? Is that humans or AI? What ‘purpose’ have the AI bots been instructed to pursue, in-game and over-game (overarching-control tightening)? If one doesn’t know the answers, or guesses them, correctly, one (the masses) is bound to be taken for a ride… end of intermission]
But what do players learn? They learn what ‘actions’ the games seem to award, mostly less-than-fully legal. Now that is quite some ethics reference for … life outside the games. The more game time, the less life time learning how to function in an actual society, get food (legally) through hard work and little pay – add food, shelter et al. that no game teaches how to ‘procure’ or manage, let alone supply to current game standards.
Though I suspect that in cross-over functionality one could easily order a pizza in-game, to be delivered physically. But is that Life?
Which brings us very close to the above forgotten world of Meta – but which will be extremely more binding down the ‘players’; with less and less options to escape, logically since more and more monay must be squeezed out of said sad subjects.

Oh well, me and my dystopian ethical angles again. Let’s discuss.
E.g., to what degree some European institutions try to pull all of real society into their system by abolishing cash so that only in-system ‘money’ remains. The very existence, let alone ownership, controlled by the system operators. Now that is something unseen in the history of mankind…

Both Liberté and Egalité are focused on individualisation, whereas Fraternité is focused on the opposite. Liberté leads to ourobouros capitalism, where markets are destroyed by the 0,1%ers that corner every market around the globe until there’s only a tiny elite and billions of slaves left. Egalité, in its pure form, is about the same – communisme where no-one has anything at all which is a state where free speech or free will is dangerous to the ultimate flatness of society.

Both are hierarchical systems to the extreme. Both require global coordination – hence introducing organisational choices that can only be effectuated, or lead, by, ultimately, indivi-duals. As Man is a biological being, it strives for its individual survival first, its own offspring second, and then … nothing as that has a potential, however remote, of hindering one’s own first and second. Leading to the extremes; balanced beings will be overtaken by non-balanced ones.

But as Man is a social animal, and will be, this will frustrate attempts at (further) extension of (some individual(s?)) liberty and/or equality by extremist hierarchy: LE are limited by Fraternity, or overthrown. Limited, timely or overdue, by masses that haven’t lost their individuality sufficiently yet to control them or come from the outside showing Another Way. Or destroyed, by revolution which throughout human history has been the corrective absolutely normal and expected means of restoring balance in whatever factor is overthrown.

LEF is a triangle, and humanity decides where the angles are. Humanity decides whether it, consciously but more probably unconsciously, ‘grows’ the surface area, and in which direction.

There’s so much more to it. E.g., the basics on wiki – note the Dutch page is much, much shorter as we know so much less of thinking in principles, but we do have the reference to Van Reybroek’s piece – when you follow the links there, you’ll find that the wiki page is ominously partial in its interpretation of Reybroeck’s piece… through the latter by the way points to the, more important, Matthieu Ricard.
And note the variants of the three-word combo through time, befitting something which may have rubbed the wrong shoulders throughout history.

Of course we’ll study the sources behind the wiki pages and much more, to arrive at something operational, possibly, against ‘either ourbouros capitalism or pure communism’ that is in the LE-polarisation discussion. For now, I let this one rest though, or fester? in the back of my mind. I’ll return on this one!

Bam. Ideas arrive faster than I can jot them down, even with my writing and typing skills [is that the same as being able to drive stick-shift and automatic just as easily and ‘professionally’..?]
E.g., tying in with the above, a discussion on privacy (quite and individualism thing, as per ability to live freely and have no limits put on choice) – where anonymity play a role in being able to escape control … re Signal, ‘social’ media, elite-capture of the Fourth Estate, and means to evade. If there is a way out of Total Control (if not when, excepting true destructive revolutions), how would they go about in this sphere?
Or basic Freedoms, like freedom of speech, and their limitations in not harming others with the same as that is a limitation of their freedom, to not be subjected to your (relative) abuse. Are the Freedoms individual ‘possessions’, or where are they property of the society in which you live, that developed them for you to use? What Contract Social? On which side would Fraternité sit?
And how do people still believe their vote counts..? Infinitsimal, at best. I vote for a party that never gets into any coalition. How does my vote count? How does ‘democracy’ work when a (li-te-ral) handful of people determine who’s eligible / can stand in the first place ..? And that my splinter party even has a program… that my preferences match with for at most 40% – other parties less to much less – but starting one’s own party has been made impossible, from scratch. Münchhausen was a fabulist; no-one can truly defy actual gravity but the ignorant (Dunning-Kruger). ‘Yes but if no-one would vote, democracy would be lost’– well if people do vote, there’s no difference is there? No surprise that the Dutch Regentenopstanden (where proles ramsacked gents’ houses and threw the inventory ito the canals) are so suppressed (even the English wiki page lists only ‘normal’, sanctioned revolts), instead of being cherished as signs of any will to freedom from defunct hierarchy.

I bought this one for the 1/3 Pinot Blanc (of course!). High expectations, exceeded.

First off, the yellow-golden almost amber colour would promise some sweet almost creamy elements. But with a delightfully tingle from a fresh mousse, and a light bitter-tartness in the nose, the picture turns around completely. There’s Mirabelle ..!

The palate is perfect; not too much mousse so the real ‘wine’ taste is clear, and the Mirabelle keeps on coming. The mouth feel overall is well-balanced, and includes a soft minty/dill side with the lemon (plus some bittersweet orange even), moving into the grapefruit area and then the mirabelle’s back again. The very long finish has the mint/dill combo again, and an inkling of sugar. But with zero dosage, that’ll be the Chard and almost certainly the Pinot Blanc waving goodbye. Throughout, there’s a slight undertow of pickled cornichon (Amsterdam style; what else?)

All in all, it’s a wonderful demo of what Pinot Blanc can bring; lifting the Chard from its average whilst pulling itself up into high performance. Merging the best of both into Something Else of a great wine. This being a zero dosage, zero sulphur added, zero intervention wine, it also proves that ‘natural’ wines need not be f(l)unky. But on the contrary, one would hardly be able to tell.

The Présence is course material in so many ways. Am I happy? Well, not with six other dwarfs but yes, very much so.

To be continued…