Sweetwater and various Masques

I notice that this year at SWSX in Austin they are trialling a scaled back recreation of Westworld. Normal folk can take a bus to a small wild west town of Sweetwater populated by faux robots similar to the automation of the Westworld made famous first in the 70s movie and then later in the HBO TV series. Yep, Season 2 is on its way next month.

Sweetwater reminds me of that PunchDrunk show - The Drowned Man, which was set in Temple Studios Hollywood and featured a whole floor of Wild West theme. If you could get past the casting gate, of course.

I was one of the lucky ones to experience it more than once - each time very different. There were 'home, home on the range' style cowboy camp fires and a small town to walk around in, including secret routes to other 'worlds', sometimes though the back of a cupboard hung with clothes or through a fireplace.

The huge wild west area was only one of a selection, including a mad scientist laboratory, a dark band playing the walk of terror, a huge and rowdy bar, a theatre out of a David Lynch Blue Velvet experience and a deserted motel, where things were not quite what they seemed.

I loved the idea of the experience it provided and of a preceding vast PunchDrunk experience at the BAC, which was based upon Edgar Allan Poe, and called The Masque of the Red Death. There are echoes of that idea in the Raven hotel in Altered Carbon, although I'd say the first hand Masque variant was altogether more creepy and mysterious.

And yes, Punchdrunk know how to throw an afterparty.

when to hit the mute switch

I restarted watching Altered Carbon after a gap to watch a couple of other shows. My head was telling me that this high budget sci-fi should really be my thing. This time there was a pleasant surprise, when, during one of the new episodes it almost felt as if the series had properly taken off.

All too suddenly it came crashing down again, with some complicated exposition which just didn't seem to work. Almost an inadvertent laugh out loud moment. I reached for the little button to tell me how far I was through the series. Okay, I let the next episode start automatically and suddenly realised I was on what seemed to be the wrap up of the original storyline. I'd tough it out to the end.

My guess is that the show was running behind schedule or something, because quite a lot of 'show don't tell' has been replaced with 'explain to static camera'. Sure, we get some Wachowski-like sequences, and lots of brooding camera angles, but I still couldn't properly engage with the lead characters. And then, after the main point had resolved, instead if it being the end, it juddered into a new story arc. I decided I've done enough miles and have moved along.

Contrast that with my next watch, which was Mute. That's another dystopian future - see the picture at the top of the post.

This is a 'find a missing person' noir and in this one they have actually dispensed with dialogue completely for the lead protagonist. Yep, he loses his voice in EXT. LAKE. right at the start of the show.

Netflix bothered to make a quite special placard advertisement for the movie, which also, to me, illustrates that, with a few exceptions, this could have been shot in a different era seedy Berlin.

Movieland must have huge stocks of spare dystopia, to make all these shows. This one riffs off of Berlin 2052, and being made by Duncan Jones (David Bowie's son), we get an almost entirely night-time Berlin. There's a main story and a fairly tangential secondary one, with a couple of jeopardised kooks running an sideline business.

Considering that this show has a mute lead character, I still found the characterisations more interesting than many of those in Altered Carbon, with some truly unhinged moments.

This gave the story some existential moments where the absurd and authentic collided. Like some kind of difficult self-assembly project, which parts would be left over at the end?

I could envisage at least a couple of different conclusions for this Saturday Morning picture and I suppose that is good, because at least it shows this one engaged me. That's in a way that the Altered Carbon series didn't, despite a much longer viewing.

unsuitable for turbo viewing?

I've been watching Altered Carbon. It's another series dystopia, and perhaps revision for post-Brexit Britain and post-Trump world?

I've paused after about four episodes. I like the scene/staging, but I'm struggling with the generally bleak characterisations. Well, maybe not with Poe, who is the embodiment of an Artificial Intelligence hotel called the Raven. Bizarrely the AI persona seems to have more humour and character than many of the main players.

The main premise is of a disk thingy containing personality and memory, which can be inserted into an available body/clone to reboot a human. Science fiction has a few versions of this type of thing, including a couple in recent Black Mirror episodes.

The series based on a 2002 novel by Richard K. Morgan uses a Bladerunner/Philip K.Dick/Neuromancer/William Gibson cyberpunk-noir setting, with a rainy Bay City, comprising the remnants of San Francisco at its epicentre. It's a lavish Sprawl type visualisation which should bode well for the rest of the production.

Many style cues are from the original Bladerunner, yet I really wanted an even more challenging future view. The often understated Black Mirror and most Philip K.Dick does this quite well.

Our main Altered Carbon protagonist has a brutal past and has been offered the kind of deal that Vin Diesel or Bruce Willis get when they are asked to save something significant.

We've also got some stiction moments, with commercially engineered scenes designed to encourage onward viewing. It's like the next step along from those short segments in old sitcoms, designed to slot between ad-breaks and retain audiences.

But I did stop. I flipped to an old series of Homeland, which immediately felt more characterful.

Maybe with all the snow I shouldn't have used sci-fi for bike turbo viewing? As another dystopian character remarked, I'll be back.

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

postcard

After its light sprinkling, the snow increased in volume. A couple of hours later I was walking around in 20cm of snow. I'd moved the palm to the garage. The pond was frozen over and the stream had disappeared under snow.

a sprinkle of that snow has arrived. #uksnow #topsham

Despite yesterday's sun-soaked mini palm, today we can see the same one with traces of snow. Yes, the snow flakes here may be falling slow enough to count individually, but they have arrived. Red alert for Storm Emma, they are saying on the radio.

Meanwhile, the main road is still closed because of (a) the burst water main and (b) the subsequent fractured gas main.

Brexitopia, Brexitropolis and the Fury Road

After that David Davis speech, my own revision for dystopian futures has to include Bladerunner, RoboCop, Minority Report and so on. Which ever of these movies one views, the actual cityscapes are like an intrinsic character in the plot. Witty, well observed and really quite clever.

Unlike that David Davis, who is trying more snake oil in an attempt to be more interesting.

Meanwhile, the dystopias which he renounces all have a darkness and a separation between a Hunger Games style elite and a kind of Just About Managing underclass. Hmm.

A pre-Bladerunner depiction of this would be Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

Even in that 1927 movie, we get the towers to house the industrialist super-rich, the dangerous and deadly working conditions of the poor, a mad looking scientist and the deadly False (Maybot) Maria robot.

It makes me wonder about a recent addition to the dystopian canon in the form of Altered Carbon. A lavish Netflix derived from Richard Morgan's 21st century sci-fi novels. I was hoping, because it is more recent than many of the other adaptations, that it would offer some new thinking about futures. So far it seems to have forgotten that it could add some fresh social commentary. Even my crazy favourite The Fifth Element adds plenty of worldview.

Admittedly in Altered Carbon, the plot thematic elements like spun-up disk-based personalities, tycoons who can live forever and criminals given one last chance to get a pardon are all pretty much staples of the genre. Maybe that's for comment another day.

In Fifth Element, like Bladerunner, they built the worlds. Then think of the fun adding the detailing. Which they did, so the whole idea of the multi-level car lanes, sidewalk advertising and the Thai Food Flying Junk all had a chance to breathe.

The same with Bladerunner 2048. A chance for the envisioners to walk around in the city. To see the backs of things and how they interact. A chance to add ideas, even to the already formed Bladerunner universe.

That seems to be missing from Altered Carbon. But not as much as it's missing from the current government worldview.

Big Fat Lie - request stop

It's been well reported that any Brexit Stoppers have no chance. Request Stop is not a known term. People are saying that the referendum rules were agreed by 'everyone' in advance. Pah. Not even Mr Farage was able to agree the rules, preferring to hedge in case the ballot went slightly against his position.

Now, many people are saying to the politicians 'just get on with it' and popular search terms revert to football teams and gossip. Saturation Brexit coverage has become 'boring', whilst UK perfunctorily casts itself adrift.

Let's recap.

First we lethargically populated the EU with well-paid politicians whose self-appointed purpose was to undermine it. Then we set up a simplistic vote which was strewn with lies from both sides about the EU was and what would happen if we left. Then we voted to leave, without any plan. Then we dithered before appointing a group of titular heads to shuffle around ineffectively.

There's still no plan. We are being dished out reheated sound bites, not truths about what will happen. Many career politicians are distancing themselves whilst waiting for whatever fudge will solidify before making their next bids to take over.

Here's some outcomes:

1) Adrift. No Plan. More extensions
2) Parallel working for years
3) Keep paying the EU but no voice (Norway/Canada/Switzerland etc)
4) Hard Brexit. No extensions. We blame Brexit instead of Brussels for everything going wrong.

Gosh, which to choose?

Surely this is a moment for an opposition to rally? Not just a gesture, a radical plan.

5) Opposition led revolt. Why are we where we are when it seems so wrong?
6) Youth led revolt. Whose future is it?
6) Demographic suasion. After an age of non-resolution we must change the game.
7) Call out the big fat lies. Reset.
8) Admit it is a big failed project. Revoke Article 50.

Then scrap the well-paid EU faux-politicians and replace them with some people in that actually care.

Don't be tempted to let Brexit just drift into being in order to see what will happen next. Too much like a definition of madness.

No triptych in the three baskets case (ceteris paribus)?

A few days ago Barnier's EU27 paper said "No" to a continued customs union, no interventions by UK in EU decision making, along with no de-facto mirroring of EU conditions.

It puts the kibosh on a simple solution to customs management, messes up UK financial services passporting and potentially even puts a Cork cabáiste on the border question for Ireland.

There's no sign of a Garden of Earthly Delights and even the buzzword compliant 'Managed Divergence' has been blocked by the bloc.

Aside from the Guinness soaked beef and the lemon tart, it's all gone secret again at the self-named 'war Cabinet'. At least until Theresa May gives her Next Big Speech.

Meanwhile, Jeremy's lot have a short time to regroup, perhaps involving some of the Tory stragglers. No doubt there will be extreme Tory whippery over the next few days, to attempt to ensure that the government doesn't lose a House of Commons vote.

Failing that, we'd better start identifying the next group of stooges waiting to take over because we sure enough won't be getting a crystal sphere of clarity any time soon.

Weakness and instability? No, wait a minute, that wasn't the slogan? I'll have to see what it says on the side of the next red bus.

Dear Theresa, How come currently only 0.7% of the public tax bill goes to the EU?

As a UK taxpayer, I recently received one of those online summaries of where the tax goes.

I wanted to see how much the typical tax contribution to European Union budget was, per head of the population. My figures are different from many of the tabloids.

Admittedly, I used that fount of knowledge (GQ) to convert the figure into an average UK salary statistic. But that's okay. GQ got their average UK salary figure of £27,271 from the Office for National Statistics, where it is based upon 21,653,000 people's earnings. It creates a tax bill for this average salary of around 19%, which I've rounded approximated to £5,000 per annum.

This ONS averaging means that brokers, who earned £133,677 on average, chief executives and senior officials (£107,703), aircraft pilots and flight engineers (£90,146) and marketing and sales directors (£82,962) are well above the average and their tax bills should be significantly higher.

At the other end of the scale are retail assistants (£10,296), hairdressers and barbers (£10,019), cleaners (£7,919), waiters (£7,554) and bar staff (£7,404). Their tax bill should, with annual allowances (but notwithstanding NI contributions), be almost zero.
Here's a table of the contributions:

And here's one of the numbers of taxpayers by lower limit income distribution (derived from HMRC data 2017-2018)

Using my tax bill average, the calculation for the European Union component is still 0.7%. That works out to being around £35 per year of an average UK taxpayer's bill. Yes, brokers and pilots pay significantly more and the retail assistants, hairdressers and bar staff don't pay any direct contribution.

I realise that the tax contribution is only a part of the leveraged contribution that the European Union has made to the UK, but it is the piece that has been used to run many of the arguments. A direct cost argument, rather than an added value argument.

No, I am not in denial, but I don't like being massively misled.

Kusnetsky Most and all that

That Mueller indictment about the Russian influence on the U.S. Presidential election campaign makes interesting reading. The full thing is 37 pages in a legalese format, but there are some basic gems within.

6. Defendant ORGANIZATION (ie the Russian organisation, in its various guises) had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Defendants posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump (Trump Campaign) and disparaging Hillary Clinton.

Defendants made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the names of US. persons and entities.

Defendants also staged political rallies inside the United States, and while posing as US. grassroots entities and US. persons, and without revealing their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation, solicited and compensated real U.S. persons to promote or disparage candidates.

Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russia association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.

There's a whole almost Cold War style movie right there, with weaponised cyber-trolling sponsored by a mysterious Russian conglomerate. Creating fake identities, suckering the real Trump campaign into the organised marches. Paying people via a web of offshore accounts.

So what was it all for?

Object of the Conspiracy

28. The conspiracy had as its object impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful governmental functions of the United States by dishonest means in order to enable the Defendants to interfere with U.S. political and electoral processes, including the 2016 US. presidential election.

43. By 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used their fictitious online personas to interfere with the 2016 US. presidential election. They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.

Now, the question is, whether Trump knew anything about any of this? And also, whether any of his immediate team were aware of what was happening?

It is possible that this (so far alleged) Russian plan was orchestrated by, say, the Russian FSB. If that were the case, then it is inconceivable that Putin wouldn't know what was happening. After all, an attempt to destabilise the U.S. via cyber-influence is a pretty big deal, albeit inexpensive compared with the use of conventional military approaches.

And what started as online influencing could later morph into street rallies and similar. Let's have another peek at the indictment.

46. In or around the latter half of 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, through their (manufactured false) personas, began to encourage U.S. minority groups not to vote in the 2016 U.S. presidential election or to vote for a third-party US. presidential candidate.

48. From at least April 2016 through November 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, while concealing their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation through false personas, began to produce, purchase, and post advertisements on U.S. social media and other online sites expressly advocating for the election of then-candidate Trump or expressly opposing Clinton. Defendants and their co-conspirators did not report their expenditures to the Federal Election Commission, or register as foreign agents with the US. Department of Justice.

Having remotely created a groundswell of activism in the U.S. the next stage was to influence it to take to the streets. How does it go? Infiltrate, Educate, Manipulate? So they used the false personas to gain some supporters, told them what they wanted to hear and embellished it to make it agitative. Then, using the motivated U.S. citizens to start to run U.S. visible street events, whether through advertising or rallies.

52. In order to build attendance for the rallies, Defendants and their co-conspirators promoted the events through public posts on their false U.S. persona social media accounts. In addition, Defendants and their co-conspirators contacted administrators of large social media groups focused on US. politics and requested that they advertise the rallies.

56. After the rallies in Florida, Defendants and their co-conspirators used false U.S. personas to organize and coordinate U.S. political rallies supporting then-candidate Trump in New York and Defendants and their co-conspirators used the same techniques to build and promote these rallies as they had in Florida, including: buying Facebook advertisements; paying U.S. persons to participate in, or perform certain tasks at, the rallies; and communicating with real U.S. persons and grassroots organizations supporting then-candidate Trump.

That last series of events (which is dealt with at length in the indictment (sections 70 to 80ish) illustrates the direct contact between the Russian personas (such as a fake person called Matt Skiber) and the Trump Campaign (including the 18-20 August events around the Florida March for Trump).

What Mueller's work doesn't cover is any overt linkages leading back to the so-called president or his team. I guess we'll have to wait for another story to break before any links are uncovers. That is, unless Trump disbands the investigation by linking it to something else which he thinks is more important.

Metalhead's dogs are creeper than Boston Dynamics

Last week's The Last Leg tv show referenced a meme of a robot dog opening a door.

To me, the striking thing about the sequence wasn't its creepiness, but it was how similar the robot looked to the ones in the Metalhead episode of Black Mirror. maybe if I'd seen this first I would have thought it creepier, but somehow the Charlie Brooker ones win.

Ironically, the main robot in the Metalhead story was three-legged, something which The Last Leg didn't mention. I wonder if there's a whole licensing/copying thing lurking in the background?

The manufacturers of the real SpotMini robot are Boston Dynamics, and they have a whole slew of others, right the way up to a RoboCop sized device, although I don't think they have been fitted with guns (yet).

The original BigDog model was developed for the US Army/DARPA as a pack mule to traverse difficult terrain. Although it could carry 150lbs, it needed a 2 stroke petrol engine to operate and was deemed unsuitable for service.

Boston Dynamics has an interesting history, including spending part of its life owned by Alphabet/Google. It has made a whole array of robotic prototypes, including an earlier dog that famously was almost impossible to kick over.

The company was sold on in 2017, to the cuddly-named Japanese Softbank.

Some of the original robots have since been -er- canned, and the latest consumer variant to is nothing to be sneezed at.

Although, I can't help thinking its more like a mannequin holding an iPad. But maybe the friendly looking one is there as a placeholder whilst they get the 6 foot tall Atlas series ready. And yes, that's a real picture of the prototype. I have a feeling it will take more than the 80 Watts continuous that the average human requires to operate.

select gear and pedal

The Garmin is once more functional on my bike, and Fitbit is again logging step counts. Curiously, the Fitbit logs a considerably lower step count than an equivalent Vivofit, but I'll stick with what I know.

Maybe it is a case of 'this is my truth, give me yours' or something like that? Appropriate to health measurement as well as a chance to slip in a Nye Bevan quote as a nod to the health service.

However I look at it, both my step count and my cycling history show a lengthy period of underwhelming activity. The cycling has the long gap caused by the locked away bicycles.

It's along the lines of the last 90 days (and longer) with zero activity and then a recent faltering restart.

The late January interrupted restart included getting the bikes sorted out, then getting the little sensor things re-aligned as well as getting the bike(s) to once more automatically blog what they had been up to.

Next, I'll need to set some belated 2018 targets.