Author: -- ms

Mostly lived as an observer and this was not completely by choice. (past tense used on purpose)
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Shin Godzilla mini-review –

I liked this movie more than I thought I would. It is a Godzilla reboot from 2016. There is a little something for every adult in this movie but not that much for little kids. Even Japanese kids will probably get incredibly bored. There isn’t really that much action and the type of action that there is can be classified as a certain type, little humans taking on the big monster. The puny humans use some innovative methods to take him down but a child may not understand what works and why it works. Not appealing to children may have hit the production in the pocketbook but I still found the film very enjoyable.

Why?

The scientific explanations for how he came into existence and how he should be fought were pretty interesting. There were various references to mutation, power generation and animal biology.

All conversation on courses of action were couched in a complicated web of interactions that had elements of consensus management. There were many political groups identified and from the initial alarm of monster’s existence all the way through to the various courses of action you could transparently see the machinations. Power brokers rose and receded and it often seemed like the processes were taking far to long and everyone was doomed because no solution worked to stop Godzilla. Then a scientific focus team was put together led by Rando Yaguchi(Hiroki Hasegawa) that came up with a solution that “just might work”.

The Americans were on the scene fairly early and offered to Nuke it but with a slight delay this never occurred. The US representative was Kayoko Patterson(Satomi Ishihara) who had a rather unusual role. It seems she had political aspirations inside the US but was connected to Japan in some way, unclear on which parent or parents were Japanese but her Japanese language was native level. It is possible that in order to appeal to domestic audiences, the actress was not encouraged to make errors in Japanese. She showed up in Tokyo to basically say that if the Japanese government did not act on Godzilla, the US government would.

There were a lot of actors in this film, far more than an average film and many of them contributed to dialog in meaningful ways. You could see branches of government interacting with each other and they stepped out of the federal and into the regional or local at a later point in the movie. All the communication patterns of each government official was carefully thought out in the script and the actors did a great job at showing what the colloquial reaction would be with the aid of some very familiar props.

It ends with Gozilla being frozen and the US pulling back from dropping a bomb. All the characters sort of rally together and how it was great that they could work together to pull it off. There is no hint of a sequel but based on the story, it is pretty easy to imagine they could make one and also throw in a Shin-Rodan or Shin-Mothra.

Overall, I give this movie two underutilized, odd-looking, tyrannosaurusy thumbs up.

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robinhood account status

Just being truthful, it might have been a good idea to sell at $550 and walk with 10% in under a year. I could sell now and take my whopping $20 which is still 4% and absolutely destroys all banks but I am out to prove a point here and I don’t have any hardcore hatred for the 2 stocks that are experiencing downturns. So, I will let them drop below $500 if need be because I am more interested in holding them than selling them.

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買因

“I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much more than this
I did it 買因”

…derived from “My Way” but not sure if I am content with these two characters. It was my first grab but may not be my last. The embedded post below is a bonus of doing a lookup on the origin of the song. It was originally written in French and the man that popularized it was accidentally electrocuted.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Fran%C3%A7ois

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The Luv of Blade Runner 2049

I enjoy writing little reviews of movies that I have seen because I don’t want my consciousness to function like an old style overhead projector where you have plastic rolls on both sides and the spent content just ends up getting wound up and chucked. In other words, if I make an active attempt at digesting the material, I will commit it to memory in a way I find appropriate.

Why Luv? I think there are literally 1000 ways to write about “Blade Runner” and how it relates to its sequel. I chose to focus on her because I find her more interesting than other characters throughout both films. I won’t speculate as to why the casting brought Sylvia Hoeks to the fore because it is beyond the scope of this little post. Sometimes casting choices are made for very specific reasons like bridging cultures and languages with symbolic figures. Instead, I will cover why her character Luv is so ding danged interesting. She is actually fulfilling the role that Rachael filled for Tyrell. She is sort of a greeter, business manager and goon all rolled into one. Rachael was just allowed to hang out with Tyrell as a receptionist. One could say that this is a sign of the times and a woman in her role would have more responsibilities these days and that is fine. However, she seems to be an upgrade, an expendable upgrade.

OMG did she display emotion. When the newborn woman was being killed, she cried. When she was squeezing the highball glass in Madame’s hand, she cried. It reminds me of how Roy and Pris kissed or how Roy allowed himself to get sad about death but at the same time was unsure. Luv may be displaying emotion now because it is more focused, because she is actually better at it over years of replicant refinement. I like this idea. What is it that bothers her the most? Death of her own kind it seems. She wasn’t shy in saying to Madame that she wanted to make a future with a hybrid replicant-human bridge. She supported life and the preservation of it while K was being asked to destroy that very same bridge. She had little spells of arrogance and showmanship but they were great and still fit. When she killed Coco and Rachael2, she was cold and calculating. Her general demeanor range was apparent, which elevated her emotional moments.

She treated K like a brother otherwise she would have killed him when he was down just after Luv destroyed K’s AI Joi. Or, you could look at it like she wanted K to focus on where he should be placing his affections as she took out the competition. One way that Luv was able to track K was through the AI because she had a realization once Joi went “off the grid” and could not locate K as easily.

Luv was not really a villain in the classic sense because she was fighting for life although she has no idea what Wallace would do if he found the hybrid child. Her name actually was brought up as significant by K but he basically said “you were important enough to Wallace to be given a name”. Neither one of them explored the semantics of the name though which also could be seen as symbolic throughout the movie. Why name her “love”? Hard to say but it is not surprising to see the concept of Love as secondary to cold scientific experimentation and calculation. And, possibly because of that subordination, the life span of “Luv” was shortened. Culturally, the term “Love” as a term of endearment to refer to another person is used far more in Europe than in other English speaking regions and this could have been done to target European audiences as the director is French-Canadian.

Familial love seemed to triumph in the end but there is no real reason why. K grew to appreciate Deckard over time and maybe his memory implants had an impact on his actions. By visiting his daughter in the end, Deckard is bringing the very danger to her that he sought to avoid when she was a child. Obviously Wallace ends up escaping and he can make as many Luvs as he wants. Unless K somehow recovers from his injuries, there will be no one around to protect both the father and daughter from future attacks. If there is no 3rd movie, and I hope there won’t be in so many ways, we can just assume that Wallace is going to be a nice guy and let them live happily ever after.

It took 35 years to make #2 and I think it should take another 35 to make #3. Maybe in the mean time Hollywood will address some of its script writing issues like how to account for the inability to track people in the future. They seemed to have gotten away with diminishing the connection to Asia in this movie and many could see this as an easy way out. You could say the entire continent died out in the famine before Wallace rose to power but there are enough Asian writing characters visible in the film to indicate that at least 3 languages survived. The integration of a Somali speaker in the movie also indicates that Africa may have made it through time but that can’t be said with any accuracy. In my opinion, it says more about casting and that choice reached back to the US Midwest, all the way to the Somali community of Minnesota.

Maybe genetically designed people end up dreaming of wolves dressed as sheep. When K was looking for anomalies in the genetic sequences, the computer was speaking Japanese to him. Why would that particular technology be of Japanese origin and why did it speak Japanese to him but understand English as part of K’s usage of the voice interface? Why Johnnie Walker Black label? And why was he driving a Peugeot as a standard issue LAPD vehicle? Feel free to comment below or send me a message through social media.

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digital sorting in 2017

First off, why bother? Is it necessary to organize your files in hierarchies as has been done in the past 37 years(since 1980 or approximately the advent of the personal computer)? Some would say, “of course it is, how are you going to make sense of all the data strewn about randomly”. Up until the last couple of years I would have said that too. Nothing can replace a good ole hierarchy, and if it goes 20 levels deep, that doesn’t matter because you only need to view the top parts to have a starting point.

This is before SEO(search engine optimization). I am not so interested in SEO as it is used in ecommerce parlance where you do your durnedest to bring your site or a page to the top of a search engine. I am interested in PSEO or Personal Search Engine Optimization, borrowing the term from “Personal Computers”.

Many people already know that Google has advanced search algorithms for images. That goes for searches for images that contain text as well as using an image itself to search for other images or text that the initial search image may refer to. In order to see searches on images that contain text, it is easiest to find examples inside Google Drive with Google Photos connected to Google Drive.  Microsoft has its own system underway that accomplishes the same thing using the OneDrive.  Here are a couple of examples…

Example 1 (Google Drive)

 

Example 2 (Microsoft OneDrive)

Microsoft gives you the opportunity to edit the text that it extracted from the image in order to make the improvement of search incremental. Pretty handy. Google doesn’t give you this but they do allow for you to search based on object type and not text, as in the first example above.

Anyway, in future posts I intend to explore why it may not be so necessary to organize files hierarchically if Personal Search Engine Optimization parameters are considered. I can envision AI training as taking over in importance rather than clarity of organization. Not because clarity of organization is useless but because the amount of data that people will be wanting to store will preclude organization of it in a conventional sense. Continually developing personal AIs will need to be “unleashed” in order to help people deal with the volume.

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What’s the deal with Robin Hood #1

What am I doing bothering to write about Robin Hood, the app that allows for free stock trading? Because, as I have shown time and time again in my history, I can’t stop paying attention to what is coming down the pike. It is like I am strapped in or that part of my consciousness is hard coded. I will go into this elsewhere. On to the significance of Robin Hood…

So, why should the average person pay attention? I will be brutally honest. You can make money off of it. You could lose money too but the potential for you to make is higher than the potential to lose if you are not stupid. You have to be realistic about the amounts and that is difficult for a lot of people to get their heads around because they often can’t stop themselves from eating a whole candy bar when they are physically satisfied with half of it.

What do I get out of popularizing it? I don’t get anything yet. Not until my popularization reaches beyond my tight circle of family, friends, and acquaintances. Most of my circle of that type could care less what I think about this stuff. Ask them if you think they do care, you will see in their responses. So, I really do want to gain but I don’t want my whole life to revolve around using it and talking about it. I would rather talk about what could potentially be good investments. I don’t think that a good investment has to start on Wall Street or Silicon Valley. Stocks can go viral sustainably if they have a certain structure behind them. If the structure is not in place, then they are just pump and dumps. I don’t hate the OTC Pink penny stocks or other exchanges besides the mainstream exchanges but Robin Hood will be a place to start with mainstream stock buying and you can carry that learning experience to other methods of investing or other exchanges.

Why listen to me and not someone else on the net? No reason, really. I just haven’t found any straight shooters talking about Robin Hood yet. It is talked about in a lofty way, in comparison to TD Ameritrade, Etrade, Scotrade, Schwab, etc. Usually its competitors charge between $5 and $9 a trade. That would be double for a round trip trade which is a huge barrier for anyone to enter the market for any reason.

God do I hate real estate investing. I hate it so incredibly much you have no clue. If I never would have left the US when I was 23, I would have been just fine with it and thought it was just part of the “American Experience”. I wouldn’t have looked at it as a rite of passage and a measuring stick with which an average citizen should be judged like a majority of dumbass “Americans”. You honestly have to be braindead to not understand how you can gain from buying a house if you know a thing or two about restaurants and location, location, location.

I am still doing OK since February with my initial investment of $500. That is 10% before the end of the year now, as of 10/7/17. A lot of people may expect more than 10% from a $500 investment in this amount of time but I am content with it. I can totally understand how handing off $500 to a relative that is a junior in college may be a better investment but bear with me. I suppose you could put it in a bank…Millennial humor.

I am still not ready to say which stocks I have this spread into. In many ways it is irrelevant because the indices keep climbing unrealistically. One is sort if a US based bear market fund bet and the other is a fund that is pinned to US indices but it is managed by a foreign bank. I have been playing with ETFs since 2013 and they are in that ballpark.

This is all I will say for now. .38 Special is on in the bar I am in right now. Maybe that is a better investment? You tell me. I am looking for some discussion but I have heard that gunfolk do not like to write in blogs.

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robinhood account status

Why RobinHood? Why paste in this status?

> Well, I have been playing with the stock market since around 1994. It has not always treated me kindly. I honestly have not always made the best decisions. But, that is the deal with the market. You gain more, the more you are willing to risk. Among my peers, I was encouraged to think about monetary accumulation earlier than most. They always figured that because I was thinking about it so early, I would, of course, be fine with it over time. That thought of me depended on a lot of things.

> I suppose I cannot deny that I am an American and I have been up to this point. Most average Americans do not think in terms of monetary accumulation as it relates to the stock market unless there is career specialization. So, anyway, I began early to think that the stock market was interesting without having a career specialization with it.

> Good idea? Bad idea? Time doesn’t need to tell. In my case, it was a bad idea. It doesn’t need to be a bad idea for others but in my case it was because I do not have over a million socked away at this point. And, that is precisely how I measure whether or not it was a good idea to pay attention to the market(s) early. In my book, there is NO other way to look at it.

I have homed in on a couple of key trades that I made between 1994 and 2001 and my finances would be in much different shape now if I would have held instead of sold. But, I sold and that is all history.

> I got back into the market in 2013. Since that time, I have made both good and bad trades but overall, I would say I have made bad trades. I should have doubled my portfolio by now but I am not a strict index buyer like most people that come into contact with the market. Sometimes I try to find lumps of coal that will turn out to be diamonds and sometimes I pay attention to the foreign markets. This is partially because I got into the markets while living abroad.

> So, what is with today’s post? Why RobinHood and why is your portfolio doing OK in the past 6 months. My initial investment with RobinHood was $500. I figured, “hey, wtf”, I throw money at dumbass shit in 2 other accounts I might as well try a commission free account. I am used to this company by now since I opened my account 6 months ago. Most people are probably like “He’s making another dumbass move with money like the thousands of moves he’s done already otherwise he would be driving a Porche around town(non-rental).”.

> Well, 99 times out of 100, whoever would have said that kind of thing would be correct. But, because I never touch this account, they are wrong. I just let this account sit. And, it rakes. It won’t rake forever, of course, because I recommend selling if the Dow index goes South and you lose 20% of your gains.

> Butt, for the time being, you can’t go wrong based on the 2 stocks I have chosen because their prices don’t fluctuate drastically and that is the whole idea. I was sort of interested in beating the banks with this account and I didn’t just beat them, I have destroyed them. They will always say that my 2 stocks are too volatile or risky. Always. They have nothing to offer you but “security” or a mattress to stick your money in to. If they were to offer you risk and things went South, you would hate them. Real estate seems safe in the past 10 years. Go for it. Nothing can generate returns on your investments like real estate. Ever wonder why a real estate king was elected president? Nah, don’t bother. Seriously, don’t bother. It isn’t worth thinking about now. Especially now. This is not a joke. $500 in 2/17 to $540 in 8/17 is only taking place because the US real estate market is stable. OK. I can buy that.

> Almost anything you want to say about money is OK at this time. Almost anything you want to say about real estate is OK at this time. I can buy that. Maybe, for once, the market won’t slide. Maybe, for once, this is a time of unprecedented US wealth. I can buy that. Seriously,  I will not disagree at all. You will only catch me questioning people when the Dow index drops back to about 15000. For now, I will simply agree with anything anyone ever says about money. No joke. If you have 2 incomes of $14 an hour and you both work at Amazon, and you are buying your first home for $120k. What ever you imagine you could ever say about money I will agree with. If you are in your 20s and you are forking into your 401Ks, and all your holdings are with the index, I would be happy to say that when that index hits 30,000 you guys are going to be looking at more financial security. No problem at all. That is now, these are these times.

> Wouldn’t you like to know which stocks have generated $41 since 2/17? I think I will probably tell you for free but I am lazy tonight and it may be in the next screenshot. Don’t expect the next screenshot to be higher, either, it may drop back to $525 for all I know. Thing is, when you sell your house, you are selling it for the $25 as in the difference between $500 and the appreciation of capital of $525. Can you sell your house as fast as I can sell that $525? Maybe, maybe not. That is now. These are these times.

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Alien: Covenant review

I would like to come up with a better name than “review” for saying what I think about a movie. It isn’t accurate in the sense that it resembles other reviews because I will probably never explore acting ability or how the movie is good or bad in relation to other movies. I would prefer to go into its value as a tool for either entertainment or dissemination of information. Occasionally, I may cover a movie’s value as an educational or procedural tool but that may be rare. I do think that movies in general are becoming of larger significance globally and the main reason I think this is because the amount of money that they make internationally is unprecedented. I need to do a little research on this but I would imagine the stats over the past 40 years for amount of investment and subsequent return would show quite a steep spike when compared to say the 20s though the 60s.

Sometimes I may point out something that is incredibly commonsensical. It is not like I want to rain on anyone’s fun parade. I just expect more. If they are putting La-z-boys into theaters all over hell, I want my ticket price to reflect the content too. I once thought that Hollywood had the potential to eliminate some functions that Universities perform. If they don’t spend their money wisely, I will rip on them more.

As far as the movie in question, I didn’t really like it but it was entertaining at times. What was required to make it entertaining for me was too much effort though. I needed to bracket out too much basic science to go on autopilot for the eye candy. Some may take issue with me calling it basic science.  I’ll explore a couple of examples.

Scanning is only good for certain things and cameras are still alive and well a few hundred years from now
We are often encouraged to think in terms of vertical structures for a scientific concept or technological application. So, if scanning of the surface of a planet is used in order to detect atmosphere or plant life, then other types of scanning are not followed up with. I know you need to build tension and create a story but why would a team of scientists not engage in thorough scanning of the surface down to the microbial level. If the alien microbes could stay hidden after an attempt, then I am on board but that was never even tried. As a little bonus on this point, I was pleasantly surprised in Prometheus how they used mini drones to map the ship. Apparently after that old Shaw mission, they seemed to have forgotten about those pesky little drones. At least they had space on the ship for construction wood.

How do David and Walter relate to their Mother?

As I mentioned, the movie can have entertainment value if you just casually block out some generally accepted concepts. On to AI. It is pretty safe to say that quite a few people could accept the whole terminator movie premise with Skynet and all. Why would it be the case that in the future, a robot would not be networked? As a matter of fact, how is it possible to write a movie script in 2016 or so and not include the fact that the robots are not networked. Is it too scary to explore? Is it too difficult to write? Too oppressive for media creators? How would Mother not know that Walter went offline. Correct me if I’m wrong but the main ship was far enough down through the atmosphere where communication was possible. NASA always knows what is up with its rovers and if one little bit of the system is out of place, diagnostics are run immediately or continually.

It is cute that we had one Synth fight another one. It is the equivalent of dreaming for the day when Yoda finally takes on Vader with his, um, mini sabre. I think Fassbender does a great job with David and Walter but if he would have thrown the script on a bar and asked me if I thought there were any holes in it, I would have said have them send it back for another revision. He was probably under contract and couldn’t escape this puppy coming at him. Maybe, really, what sells is what he knows. The general public loves to watch him and they were happy to see him get violent with himself. That sells tickets too.

Why the term “Covenant”?
Ok before I go off on another rip, I will pull back and bring awareness to the title. Obviously, it is meant as a religious term. I won’t speculate on how it applies from the writer’s point of view. But, I think that a lot of things in this movie need to be taken on faith in comparison to Prometheus. I found it quite interesting that the main figure of faith was unsure of himself and felt it necessary to bring up the subject of faith a few times.

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