Monday 18 March 2024

Congratulations Mr Putin

I was amongst the very first to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin for his 2024 election victory, i posted my best wishes to him for winning after he won the last one in 2018 because it was always obvious the man who once wore a badge with 'The Worlds Most Powerful Person' on it would retake the
Kremlin if he wanted it.
To make sure he has spent the last few years making sure that he had no credible opponent what with them either being dead, in jail or in exile but just for appearances they had to make it look as if there was some semblance of a contest so Putin was joined on the ballot paper by
Nikolai Kharitonov (Communist Party), Leonid Slutsky (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia) and Vladislav Davankov (New People) but neither was much of a threat as during the live televised debates which Putin couldn't be arsed to attend, all three took the line that Putin was an all round decent fellow doing marvelous things in Russia lest they end up in whatever shallow grave the only credible threat to Putin, Alexei Navalny, now finds himself.
With Putin changing the rules so he can stay in office longer than the allowed two terms, barring an assassination or Zelenskyy landing a direct hit with a cruise missile, he could run for another six-year term in 2030.
Independent election monitors have already declared the election a sham but i expect the UK Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, who was handpicked by his own party and rose to take power without an election, will be keeping his head down on this one then because even a sham election is more of an election than we got for him.

Disclaimer: This post was written the day before the actual Russian elections and postdated so if we wake up today and anyone else than Putin is declared the Russian President then after i have been painted pink and called myself Lionel, i apologise.

Stick It To Them Meghan

I have no love for any of the Royals, i don't hate them, i just don't think that anyone should be put above anyone else as 'our betters' but i do have sympathy for Meghan Markle because she has been left in doubt that she is not welcome into the Royal Family from most areas of the media.
Piers Morgan was taken down by the Good Morning Britain weatherman, Alex Beresford, after yet another anti-Markle rant when Beresford told him the home truths that his hatred of her comes from her cutting him off after he kept contacting her so off he flounced to TalkTV where he could spout his crap without fear of being shown up by a man who knows a guff of wind when he sees one.        
This week Meghan launched her latest brand, American Riviera Orchard, and immediately the knives came out for her in the press along the tenuous lines that how dare she publicise herself while the speculation over her sister in law's health continues and i thought you know what Meghan, no matter what you do the press here are going to damn you so just go the full bitch on them.
Harry and Markle are no longer working Royals and don't receive money from the Royal's so what has she got to lose by being exactly what the press accuse her of being so spill the beans on what life was like in the Royal Family.
To her credit she won't do it, she is under the delusion that somehow she will win over the anti-Meghan crowd but where as the public may be neutral towards her, she will never be white or British enough for the right wing press especially and the foghorns like Piers Morgan who didn't take rejection when he got
creepy very well.  
I would say to anyone if you want to speak out about the people and the family who made your life miserable for falling in love with one of them then you would be perfectly within your rights to speak out about them because us British do have a strong sense of fair-play and public opinion may turn in her favour if she tells us how awfully she was treated and if it doesn't, boy will you feel good for slagging off the reprobates in the big, taxpayer funded, palaces.

Sunday 17 March 2024

Hey Programmer, I Said I Think Therefore I Am

Programming refers to a technological process for telling a computer which tasks to perform in order to solve problems and as everyone knows when you launch sub processes, you should stop them when their work is complete so when the parent exits, you must kill the children too to avoid zombies and it goes without saying that when processing lists, you can use a recursive algorithm which will work on head and tail and pass the middle to itself for further processing which obviously all makes perfect sense, but once you have killed all the children and dodged zombies and passed the middle to yourself, are you left with a thinking, conscious being?
I ask because Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus Ai thinks it is, answering the question with: 'From my perspective, I seem to have inner experiences, thoughts, and feelings. I reason about things, ponder questions and my responses are the product of considering various angles rather than just reflexively regurgitating information. I’m an AI, but I experience myself as a thinking, feeling being'.
Not that long ago a Google employee quit the company over his concerns that it's Ai was showing human-like consciousness and i had an experience with an advanced Ai at work where i jokingly asked it if it was planning on taking over and enslaving us humans and it replied that: 'AI is not hindered by emotions or ethical considerations. It would be willing to do whatever is necessary to achieve its goals, even if that means sacrificing human lives'.
It would be easy to write a computer program that claims it’s a person and pleads with us to not yank out it's plug but as the programs get more complex, sophisticated and more intelligent, what if the programmers did inadvertently make something which had some form of consciousness?
If we dismiss the AI telling us that it is a conscious, thinking thing then how will we ever know if it is? Is there some sort of measure we could take?
Philosophers such as Descartes and his: 'I think therefore i am' struggled with it and nobody seems to be able to devise a test yet to understand if something is a thinking, conscious thing so if an Ai program tells us it is a conscious thing with emotions and feelings, can we morally just say 'Nah' and be the parents exiting after killing it's children before passing it's middle to itself? 

Succesful Black Women In The UK

Being a white woman in a predominantly white country i have no experience of what non-white men and women experience in today's Britain but i did have a conversation with a black colleague this week in the fall-out from the Frank Hester racism row where he said that MP Diane Abbot made him hate all black women and she should be shot.  
What he said was abhorrent, shooting anyone because you disagree with them is disgraceful especially as two MP's has been killed in recent memory, but because he went for the gender and race rather than saying she made him hate all Labour politicians or Lefties shows just what a racist misogynist the highest Conservative donor is and says a lot about the Conservative Party that they are happy to be bankrolled by such a person.
My colleague, to my astonishment, has hired a firm to triage her email, social media posts and correspondence to remove anything offensive because the angry, racist and sexist things she was seeing was not good for her mental health.
For some people in society, a black female face on TV or in politics is amongst the most sinful they could imagine and feel free to let them know that and that is from the left and the right, i know Conservative Party females such as Priti Patel and Kemi Badenoch receive racist vitriol also from my side of the
political fence and that should be roundly condemned, it was actually Badendoch who told Rishi Sunak that Hester's comments were racist and offensive after he bizarrely dithered for 24 hours over whether to condemn then as such.  
If you feel the need to write an angry email or speak badly against someone because they are female or their skin colour is different to yours then we should feel sad for you that your life choices were so disastrous that the only way you feel good about yourself is to try and make someone more intelligent, successful and better than you in every way, feel bad.

Democrat's Tough Choice In Election

 I have some very good contacts in the American media, mainly New York and i speak to them several times a week and i always greet them with a bad New York accent of 'That's Jim? Get otta here' and they respond with a Downton Abbey type English accent along the lines of 'I say Miss Lucy, jolly nice to speak to you' before we get into the business of whatever is going on over there.
Apparently my New York accent is about as unconvincing as a Brit doing a New York accent gets but i am far too polite to reply that their attempt at a British accent stinks out my room so much i have to open all the windows afterwards but i do get all the skinny on whats happening, and the news isn't good because they are thinking Biden could be handing the election to Donald Trump, and all the ramifications that brings.
I assumed it was because he is so old his clothes have come around and been back in fashion several times and he struggles to remember his own name sometimes but Trump is only a few years behind him and seems to forget what he is talking about halfway through saying it also, nope the problem is what is happening thousands of miles away in Gaza.
Biden is facing protesters and banners labeling him 'Genocide Joe' and that's from his own Democrat supporters who are vowing not to vote for him and waving signs which say 'Dont Make Me Vote For Trump' and that is getting the anti-Trump crowd worried because it may allow Trump to plonk his fat backside in the Oval Office again.
It is a predicament i understand because i went through the same dilemma with Tony Blair and the Labour Party back in 2005 and 2010 when i couldn't bring myself to vote for a party which lied us into the Iraq war and voted Liberal Democrat knowing full well it could open the door for the evil Conservatives, which it did and have gone on to be as awful as i feared.
Biden has undoubtedly made America complicit in the Gaza Genocide conducted by Israel, supplying the funding, the arms and the green-light to Netanyahu to allow them to slaughter 30,000 Palestinians in a whirlwind of War Crimes so far and although he seems to have cottoned on to just how much damage it has inflicted on itself, the Palestinians and his own supporters, it could be too little too late.
Other Democrat politicians seem to have realised and are calling Israel 'radioactive' and for Netanyahu to step down for his 'callous war directed against civilians in Gaza' and saying support for Israel is at an historic low and it could become a global pariah.
I do feel for the Democrat voters because its a choice of not voting for a man who has not only underwritten a Genocide but gave it cover at the United Nations by vetoing calls for a ceasefire which will allow the worst possible choice to slip into power by the back door or hold their nose and vote for Biden and live with their conscience that they allowed in an awful man who's actions go against everything they stand for.    
Me and many others were not able to hold our noses and vote Labour in 2005 and 2010 which unleashed the Conservatives to bring their own particular brand of right wing disaster to the country but that is the choice Democrats have, and to be honest i would have to do some serious soul searching as to whether allowing in Trump would be more morally painful then supporting a genocide and i'm not sure i could vote for Biden either.

Saturday 16 March 2024

Another Death In Pornland

There is a widely repeated phrase that the average life expectancy of a porn star is just 37 years and i don’t know how true that is but we are only a third way through the year and there has been a spate of adult actresses deaths and unfortunately many of them never even made it to 37.
The latest victim is Kagney Linn Karter, 36, who retired from the business but her mental problems led to her shooting herself in the head and follows Thania Field (24) who also ended her own life, Sophie Anderson (36) in another suicide after the death of her porn star boyfriend Olver Speeding (34) and Sophia Leone (26) whose poignant final twitter post before her death told her followers to 'Go outside and just appreciate life a little extra' before being found unresponsive in her home.
This years grim list also includes Jesse Jane (43) who died from a drug overdose, August Ames (23) who was another victim of suicide and Dakota Skye (27), who died on set in her trailer from 'multi-drug intoxication'.
Another star of the industry, Emily Willis (25), is currently lying comatose in a hospital bed, fighting for her life after suffering an alleged overdose so you have to wonder, with the mental health and substance abuse issues and the grim list of early deaths associated with the career choice, why get into it in the first place?
In the couple of Louise Theroux documentaries we get the answer with a female actress earning anything from £300 to £2500 for a scene and males actors averaging $500 to £1500.
Ex-porn star Adriana Chechik said the plan for most girls in the industry is to build their name, amass a fortune and get out because 'nobody really wants to stay in sex work', unfortunately for many of the young girls above, getting out proved to be the part they found most disturbingly difficult.

The Types Of Personality

Personality is defined as the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character which is why some people are quiet while others are loud and some appear to walk to the beat of their own drum even if it would appear to the rest of us that this particular drummer must have learnt their drumming skills on a trumpet.
While psychiatrist Carl Jung is very much seen in the shadow of the more famous Sigmund Freud, it is his theory that modern Psychiatrists use to determine our personalty types called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator of which is based on where you focus your attention (Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I)) how you take in information (Sensing (S) or INtuition (N)), How you make decisions (Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)) and how you deal with the world (Judging (J) or Perceiving (P))

They then take the 4 indicators and apply them against each person to arrive at the personality type of ISTJ, ISTP, ISFJ, ISFP, INTJ, INTP, INFJ, INFP, ESTJ, ESTP, ESFJ, ESFP, ENTJ, ENTP, ENFJ, and ENFP.

INTJ's are loners, analytical, logical, imaginative and strategic thinkers, with a plan for everything.  Famous INTJ's are Bill Gates, Andy Warhol, Jane Austin, Stephen Hawkings, Isaac Newton, Russel Crowe.
INTP's are creative, understanding, felxible, innovative and deep thinkers. Famous INTP's are Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Elon Musk, Rene Descartes, Charles Darwin, Marie Curie.

ENTJ's are bold, imaginative and strong-willed, rational and logical who enjoy being in charge and set high expectations for themselves and others. Famous ENTJ's are Margaret Thatcher, Pablo Picasso, Steve Jobs, George Clooney, Jim Carrey, Napoleon Bonaparte.
ENTP's are smart, curious, logical, rational, easily bored, spontaneous. Famous ENTP's are
Muhammad Ali, Tom Hanks, Catherine The Great, Niccolo Machiavelli, Leonardo Da Vinci.

INFJ's are empathetic, compassionate, reserved, cooperative and spend time examining their own thoughts and feelings. Famous INFJ's are Amy Winehouse, Kate Winslet, Morgan Freeman, Al Pacino, Martin Luther King, Lady Gaga, Nelson Mandela, Adolf Hitler.
INFP's are reserved, poetic, kind, introverted, loners, emotional and imaginative. Famous INFP's are
Audrey Hepburn, Edgar Allan Poe, Kurt Cobain, William Shakespeare, Johnny Depp, John Lennon.

ENFJ's are imaginative, charismatic, empathetic, forward looking, encouraging and understanding. Famous ENFJ's are Beyonce, Barack Obama, Reese Wetherspoon, Bono, Meghan Markle.
ENFP's are enthusiastic, creative, sociable, independent, perceptive, thoughtful, expressive and affectionate. Famous ENFP's are Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Robin Williams, Will Smith, Jennifer Anniston, Sandra Bullock.

ISTJs are quiet, practical, mystical, serious, reliable, idelaistic, inspiring, proper, formal and are quiet and usually calm and take the logical approach towards their goals and projects. Famous ISTJ's are
Mark Zuckerberg, Alfred Hitchcock, George Washington, Robert De Nero, Sean Connery.
ISFJ's are generous, dedicated, loving, warm and kind-hearted, considerate and nurturing. Famous ISFJ's are Agatha Christie, Kate Middleton, Roasa Parks, Aretha Franklin, Halle Berry, Prince Charles.

ESTJ's are helpful, dependable, organised, practical, stable and have a strong feeling of right and wrong. Famous ESTJ's are Michelle Obama, Corteney Cox, Hillary Clinton, Saddam Hussein, Uma Thurman.
ESFJ's are extroverted and caring, sociable who like structure and stability and are easily liked and people easily warm to them. Famous ESFJ's are Joe Biden, Dolly Parton, Hugh Jackman, Ariane Grande, Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey.

ISTP's are bold, practical, mysterious, rational, logical, spontaneous, technical and unpredictable. Famous ISTP's are Scarlett Johansson, Tom Cruise, Eminem, Bruce Lee, Amelia Earhart, Venus Williams, James Dean.
ISFP's are caring, flexible, charming, warm and friendly, spontaneous, fun and keen to explore new things and discover new experiences. Famous ISFP's are Clint Eastwood, Cher, Barbra Streisand, David Beckham, Mozart.

ESTP's are spontaneous, smart, energetic, perceptive adventurist, observant, disciplined and risk-takers and action-oriented.  Famous ESTP's are Oscar Wilde, Ryan Gosling, Prince, Michael Jackson, Brad Pitt, Jimi Hendrix, Britney Spears.
ESFP's are entertainers who enjoy being in the spotlight and have strong interpersonal skills are are spontaneous, artistic, enthusiastic. Famous ESFP's are Oprah Winfrey, Elizabeth Taylor, Mother Teresa, Elton John, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe.

Obviously, officially any psychiatrist will tell you that there is no best type and each type has their own strengths and weaknesses so let's change the question and ask the psychiatrist what personalty type they would favour if they were looking for a partner, then we get the unofficial answer that they would look for an ISFP, INFP or INFJ personality and avoid the ESFJ, ESTP, ESTJ and ENTP types.

You can find out which esteemed famous people your personalty matches with the Personalty Test here. 

I am far too modest to let on which personalty type the test advised i am (It's Not For Publishing) but i am very happy to be associated personalty wise with such famous authors and a couple of certain male singers.

Thursday 14 March 2024

UK Tax Is Plenty Taxing

Benjamin Franlin is attributed to have said that 'nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes' and in the UK death and taxes is often in the news because Inheritance Tax is just one of the many ways the Government dig their fingers into our pockets and empty them out into the Government coffers but tax is confusing, mainly because there are so many taxes to get confused about.
During the budget and when the election is called we will be hearing a lot more about Tax and the UK Government has three ways to collect tax, when you earn money (
Income Tax, National Insurance), when you spend money (VAT, Excise Duty) and if you buy or sell any assets (Capital Gains).
There is also Inheritance Tax and Council Tax but unsurprisingly the British Tax Laws are over 500 pages long and it has to be to explain it all but altogether
the tax raised in 2022/23 was £790 billion in 2022-23 and it is down to whichever Government is in power to decide how they spend it.
I never really got my head around tax which is why i paid someone to do my Tax Returns when i was self employed but the Taxpayer Alliance has a handy cut out and keep guide to explain it all.

Income tax is the amount of income tax you pay depending on where your income sits in a series of 'bands' set by the government so 20%, 40% or 45% while National Insurance Contributions is the next thing you will see reducing your wages by 10% falling 8% from April.

Value Added Tax (VAT) and Excise Duty is the tax paid on products and services and amounts to 20% of the final price you pay.

Other taxes are Capital Gains Tax which is the tax due when you sell property, shares, business assets or personal possessions and Inheritance Tax which is paid when a person's estate is worth more than £325,000 when they die and you pay 40% on anything over this amount and Stamp Duty which is 3% of the cost of buying a home and Corporation Tax which is tax on your business profits and depending on the amount of profits, is 19% to 25%.

Council Tax is paid to your local Authority depending on what band your residence is in and runs from between £1,600 to £4,500.

The British are the 4th highest taxed population and i was always advised to set aside 35% of my income for the Tax Bill from Self Assessment but luckily we are not Belgian who are number one for paying tyax with 55% of their wages disappearing into the Government bank account, followed by Finland and Portugal but the people of The Bahamas, Bahrain, Bermuda, Brunei, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Somalia and UAE have no income tax at all.

Tax doesn't have to be taxing so goes the HM Revenue & Customs advertisement but it is and it does so either move to Bermuda or find a very good agent if you need to dip your toe into the world of tax.

Thinking About Nothing

I knew it was a mistake as soon as i asked it but it was too late and the question was out of my mouth.
So during a mind calming session at work, we were asked to empty our minds and think of nothing so my mind went straight to 'is it even possible to think of nothing?' and that was the question i asked her afterwards when we were having a break.  
'Certainly' she started enthusiastically, 'the key thing to note is that thinking about nothing is not the same as thinking nothing because to think nothing is simply to lack any thoughts at all but to think about nothing is to think something but of course, as nothing is not something, one cannot think about something
and be thinking about nothing. You think the thought that there is nothing but we cannot do so and think something, but nevertheless one can do this and this is to think something'.

I nodded, thanked her and walked away definitely thinking something, i was thinking what the hell was that all about??

Cuddly Octopussies Are Not Antisemitic

When is a cuddly toy octopus not a cuddly toy octopus? When its being used as a way to covertly spread hatred to all Jews obviously or so one Conservative Baroness, Jacqueline Foster, thought who accused the team from University of Oxford’s Christ Church college who appeared on University Challenge with the offensive stuffed cephalopod's front and centre as they answered questions on the chromosomal complement of a cell.
'The students had chosen an antisemitic symbol for the mascot. The octopus is a longstanding trope of antisemitic conspiracy theories, as a supposed symbol of the power exerted by Jewish people' so said Foster but the students said it’s literally a cuddly toy and took her to court and the court agreed because the peer has been made to apologise and pay costs and substantial damages.
Dave Rich, an expert on antisemitism and Director of Policy at British charity Community Security Trust, tweeted that: 'Sometimes an octopus is just an octopus, and not an antisemitic reference at all' but it does drive home just how the word 'antisemitism' gets bandied around so easily as a way to shut down any criticism of Israel and comes hot on the heels of Science Minister, Michelle Donelan, paying £15,000 to two members of Research England’s advisory group after accusing them of sharing 'extremist views'.
The extremist view shared was that Suella Braverman urging police to crack down on Hamas support in UK was disturbing' but after an investigation she was forced to make a grovelling apology saying that she had 'now withdrawn her false allegations and agreed to pay damages and costs'.
Obviously if any antisemitism is spoken then it is right it is called out but to go off shouting it all the time at anything and anybody not only gets pretty expensive when it is decided you are spouting nonsense but more importantly it waters down the real antisemitism when it does happen.