gespräch

Last academic year's language classes finished and I wondered how to prevent my new experiences fading away ahead of next term. To avoid a castle in the air, I'd already joined a conversation group, and even arranged a couple of meetings.

(see the lengths I'll use to get a picture of the lovely Burg Hohenzollern into the blogpost?)

The organiser arranged for me to be a co-organiser but then contacted me to say thanks for helping and to ask if I'd mind running the group. A classic pro-active dilemma. I've said yes, although it's a bit of a stretch of my language capabilities dealing with the inevitable emails which arrive and require me to reply in the language.

It's been an interesting test. I can bat away English emails in seconds, often with a short and informal reply. Another language requires more care. I might accidentally say something slightly unintended.

Separate from that group another one has organically formed. Some of the folk from the weekly language class decided to meet every couple of weeks at a local pub for some conversation.

I'm in with that too, so hopefully the added chatter will help. And on Sunday I'm co-ordinating my third meeting of the other group, this time at a wider Language Café session.

Next, maybe I'll need to plan a short trip.

points create surprises

I'm in some of those frequent traveller programmes for hotel chains and airlines. My Stocard App holds all the details. They used to be called loyalty schemes, but I can understand why that term is being phased out. Things they don't always tell you are the ways the points melt away if not used.

I recently lost 20,000 points on one system because I hadn't stayed somewhere in their last allocated time period.

Then, when we recently travelled to Canada, the lovely hotel chain we were using changed its system whilst we were there. They cancelled their own club and we became a new number in another multi-brand system. It turned out I was already a member, although I was given a new number. Whether I will ever reclaim/relink the points together is an ongoing question.

And then to a 2019 flight I've recently booked. I logged onto the airline loyalty system and sought the best value flight. Let's say it was priced at 1850. Before I booked it, it was suggested that I see what exactly the same flight would cost to a non-member of the points scheme.

A different computer, the same airline quote site and curiously enough, it was 1724. Around 125 less.

Hmm.

So then I logged back into my points, from within that second quote. Still at 1724. Now to add some points to the fare to bring it down further. Another 500 less. 1224. A better result.

Maybe this is what is known as dynamic pricing and flexible ticketing?

These convoluted processes are not really adding to loyalty, however.

not with a bark, but a dog-whistle

When a dog barks to get attention, it could be a lighthearted 'wuff' or altogether more noticeable full throated and sustained utterances.

Someone responsible for the dog has to determine whether the effect is endearing or sometimes requires discipline.

Just as important is the reason for the bark. An imminent danger maybe? or just making a noise? It doesn't matter how cute the dog looks, an owner still needs to be able to handle the situation.

So when an amoral politician uses dog technique to gain attention, there's a similar question.

A blatant use of viral populism to scrabble into the news needs a firm leader to say 'No'.

But this scruffy haired dog can't even be kept on a short leash. Its day has passed.

occasion at Lympstone

A visit to chef Michael Caines excellent Lympstone Manor, a short way along the River Exe.

A tasteful and modern restoration to the interior of this Georgian manor house, now with 21 rooms and a singularly excellent restaurant. A simple menu with highly tempting and original options.

We sat outside whilst choosing, enjoying the sunshine view of boats on the River Exe. A couple of trains meandered (our side) and snaked (the Dawlish side) along the river.

Time to eat and we were escorted inside and presented with canapés demonstrating the chef's taste blending skills. Now I don't usually take pictures of food, but I'd think it impossible to take a bad picture of anything served in this Michelin starred restaurant. These initial morsels served to show the treat ahead, so here's my iPhone snap.

That fancy looking spoon is about teaspoon-sized, to get an idea of this taste-packed initial item.

Some lovely wine and after a suitable pause the first course arrived. I won't go through a blow-by-blow account, instead I'll show a picture of another wonderful course delightfully presented. Proper 'Occasion dining'.

After lunch we explored some of the grounds. There's a fledgling vineyard, in an area close to the already established Pebblebed vineyards, so in a couple more years we should be able to get interesting choices from the sunny slopes around this part of Devon.

Now, when's the next special occasion?

when a kingdom stands on brittle glass

As Trump tries to shut down the Mueller investigation, my thoughts flittered briefly to Shakespeare.

Depending on how it's measured, Richard III, is broadly considered to be one of his top three villains. Shakespeare's Richard scores around 11 on something called the Dr Stone scale. It's a continuum describing psycho killers, from 1-lowest to 22-highest. His score could have been higher, but he usually enacted his power-mad bloody deeds through the actions of others.

Richard had deaths from warfare on his hands, but also an excess of murder and executions. First as the Duke of Gloucester before deviously grasping the throne, his deceits and cold-blooded elimination of those in his way gave Shakespeare plenty of material. Richard repeatedly schemes to capture the crown, and in the play we hear his inner thoughts expressed, often cruelly, in monologues.

Richard is portrayed as a supremely confident manipulator. Rick the Trick rather than Don the Con. A first example is his seduction of Lady Anne after being the instrument of her husband’s death. For Richard it is the first of many vile acts, including ordering the murders of his brother George, Duke of Clarence and his two young nephews who stand between him and the crown.

As well as his hunched back and withered arm, Richard had an unbalanced demeanour. He could act as a weasel when useful and unpredictably forceful when necessary. Shakespeare wrote him to reveal his chilling innermost thoughts directly to the audience.

Set in the late 1400s and written in 1590, there's ne'er a tweet in sight, although the type of actions and motivations still ring true today. My movie still above shows Ian McKellen as Richard III, but reimagined in a 1930s fascist Britain.

That's why I've used the Stone scale in a slightly different way. The Stone numbers around 10-12 are all about someone removing people who are 'in the way'.

10 is removal of witnesses, 11 is removal of family members, 12 is striking out when cornered, 13 invokes uncontrollable rage.

See where this is heading? But if we are to believe the Stone scale, we are still only half way along the continuum.

i finally finish watching 'The Americans'

I've just finished watching The Americans on Amazon. It's been a six series box set almost impossible to have watched in real time because of all its weird scheduling.

Slightly based on a real situation, Russia sends spies to the USA to become part of the American fabric. Known by the FBI as illegals, the series centres on a couple living in suburban Falls Church, just a few miles along the I-66 from Washington D.C. A KGB Fred and Wilma next door to an FBI Barney and Betty.

Add family members, Russian agent controllers, an FBI office and the Russian Residence in Washington, and there's a great recipe for a series.

The two Russians (Philip and Elizabeth) are mostly American in their behaviour, except when on their espionage missions. There's plenty of breakfast table scenes, working at the office and so on. Then, unlike this publicity shot, they don elaborate disguises and do everything from surveillance to assassination. No-one they interact with ever notices their sometimes dodgy looks and that thing about 'the wig enters the room three seconds before the person' doesn't seem to apply.

Their teenager-ish kids don't ever spot anything untoward, even with the late night working frequently required by one or both parents.

Set in the 1980s through to around the start of the 1990s, the period seemed almost older. No smartphones, clunky old cars, cassette and diskette operated computers, distressingly jagged nightmare-inducing geometric wallpaper. The era worked well to support old-school spy-craft, with buzzy walkie talkies and chalk marks on post boxes. Oh yes, and crazy walls full of paper.

There were some colour palates at play too. Moscow was often shot in a bluer hue, Washington got greys and some of the house interiors were almost 1970s browns. The soundscape buzzed and clicked. Air conditioners, car engines ticking as they cooled, city hubbub, tumble dryers, diskette head seeks, only the black screens were properly quiet.

The making of the series between 2013 and 2018 overlaps recent events in the USA, with the series featuring Cold War prevalence and various players with sharp personal memories of World War Two and the Vietnam war. The Russian central control frequently reference famines, sickness and the huge USSR death toll from World War Two. By the end of the series we're around the time of perestroika and arms limitations. As 21st Century USA gets ready to spend huge new money on military and borders, there's a worrying parallel with the earlier situations in the series.

I never really found the main protagonists likeable. They were watchable with their unplugged backstory. Understandable because they had been wrenched from Russia to suddenly become Americans. We could then see their acceptance of American lifestyle and its choices and surpluses. A contrast sharpened through another character, who was exfiltrated from the USA to go to live in an empty shelved Moscow. A distancing from what was becoming a changing Russia too. Philip and Elizabeth had memories of how it was, but not what it was becoming.

There's also a coiled spring ruthlessness in these two main characters. They both kill reflexively and in the case of Elizabeth, in later scenes we see her mantling over bodies like some bird of prey.

There's various ways that this kind of show can end. The last couple of series set up questions about life in Russia and USA, through character discussions. Then we have some all-important show-downs and some clever directing. The sort of scenes that could go in a number of directions.

I won't dwell on the actual ending. It's in an episode called START, which could itself signify an intriguing character's reboot, or maybe George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev signing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

my latest thriller reading is a government report

That Facebook. Up it pops again in that MP Damian Collins Commons Select Committee report. It could be a best-seller.

Yet, after all the news a few days ago about Facebook's share valuation dropping by around $120 billion, I can't help but notice their overall share price is still only back to May 2018 levels. A case of the eyeballs have it.

Facebook is certainly the 'Eff' in FAAANG, so that so-called US President should be aware of the difference just those few companies make to the US outlook.

That's in more ways than one.

I do still have a Facebook account, but very much as a placeholder. I won't be seduced by the recent electronic adverts on bus shelters saying how cuddly Facebook has become.

Damian Collins committee's "Disinformation and ‘fake news’: Interim Report" [click to download a PDF of the report], shows how interwoven the likes of Facebook and other social media are in the spreading of disinformation.

The interim report's conclusions include that:

• 9 Electoral law in this country is not fit for purpose for the digital age, and needs to be amended to reflect new technologies.
• 41. In November 2017, the Prime Minister accused Russia of meddling in elections and planting 'fake news' in an attempt to 'weaponise information' and sow discord in the West. It is clear from comments made by the then Secretary of State in evidence to us that he shares her concerns. However, there is a disconnect between the Government’s expressed concerns about foreign interference in elections, and tech companies intractability in recognising the issue.

Those two items alone illustrate how a perverse agency could tip scales in a democratic process. Throw in some blah-blah Black Cube/Crimson Hexagon hacking, citizen-by-investement schemes and a bunch of botnets and you've got the makings of a good thriller novel - or - somewhat improbably, a fascinating UK Government Report.

Weaponising information isn't exactly a new idea, but the scale and reach of its effects over the last few years create a significant inconvenience for the UK to ponder.

would that it were so simple

There's still a storm of Trumpian fragments scattered through the news. Trump uses new noise to divert attention from whatever issue is hardening into a viewpoint. I decided to take a look at a sequence of possible inferences, stripped of all the side debates.

1. Allegedly, Trump’s been cultivated for more than 20 years by the Russians.
2. The cultivation was part of the long-term Kryuchkov initiative to seed more helpful ‘plants' in developed economies.
3. Russian ambassador to US Yuri Dubinin appealed to Trump's ego so he didn’t realise he was becoming an 'object of deep study'.
4. Trump’s ideas like 'spend more on defence and spend less on defending others' date right back to 1987. He even published a newspaper advert about it.
5. Perhaps Russian work to gain kompromat about Trump started in 1987, when he was first involved with real-estate ideas about a Trump Tower opposite the Kremlin.
6. At this time Putin was a KGB officer in the first directorate, running recruitment and kompromat operations in Dresden.
7. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapses, post communist Russia begins.
8. Between 1991 and 2009, Trump plays with the U.S. Chapter 11 company bankruptcy laws, to trim his over-leveraged debt and avoid tax.
9. Trump needs more money so licensing deals and apartments for cash augment his casino businesses. It would be inappropriate to call any of these schemes laundering at this stage, although plenty of shell companies seem to have sprung up.
10. Paul Manafort's plan about the ways to advance Russia by breaking up other alliances is fed towards Putin via Oleg Deripaska.
11. Putin understands kompromat but also that as well as what you know, it’s what the other guy thinks you may know.
12. Trump and various family members and associates have stepped into a Russian lasso but don’t realise it.
13. Putin maintains his style of being completely 'hands off’ regarding kompromat, disinformation and hacker based influence strategies.
14. There’s still plenty of time to pull on the rope.

Back once again, with the ill behavior (fade and return)

To my surprise, my bike turbo setup and its related technology all still worked after its extended period without use. It restarted the exact session and recognised all the components.

Then, the next day, the bicycle monitoring computer requested a Windows 10 update. It wasn't a stroppy one where it just did it.

Instead it issued me with an ultimatum. Do it now or do it overnight. It even asked me what time, but then assiduously refused to provide any of the time prompts.

The next day I noticed a completely new wallpaper on the screen of that computer. Some sort of brownish building interior. I'll have to search around to reinstate my preferred one. Either that or something bicycle-related like a snapshot from my recent whizz around Montebello, Quebec.

Then I login to the machine and try the bicycle turbo wireless link. No longer working, of course. Unplug and replug things. Reboot everything. Still nothing.

I decide I'd rather take a bike out for a spin instead of faffing around with this time-sink activity.

Later that evening I investigate further. A quick email to someone in Nevada.

Yes, an undisclosed amendment to some of the software.

I've abandoned that way of linking things, adopted a plan B and am back in the game.

ship of dreams? ship of fools? Plato said it first.

I've mused on the ship of fools previously, but this time I'm right back to 380 BC with Plato and the conversation between Socrates and Adeimantus.

"Imagine then a fleet or a ship in which there is a captain who is taller and stronger than any of the crew, but he is a little deaf and has a similar infirmity in sight, and his knowledge of navigation is not much better.

The sailors quarrel with one another about the steering. Every one believes they have a right to steer, though each has never learned the art of navigation. Furthermore they assert that steering cannot be taught, and are ready to cut in pieces any one who says the contrary.

These crew throng about the captain, begging and praying him to commit the helm to them. If at any time they do not prevail, with others preferred to them, they kill the others or throw them overboard.

Then, having chained the captain's senses with drink or drug, they mutiny and take possession of the ship and make free with the stores.

Those who aid them in their plot for getting the ship out of the captain's hands into their own, they compliment with the name of sailor, pilot, able seaman.

They abuse the rest, who they call good-for-nothings.

A true pilot must pay attention to the year and seasons and sky and stars and winds, if he intends to be qualified for the command of a ship.

The true pilot must and will be the steerer, whether other people like it or not - However, the possibility of this union of authority with the steerer's art has never seriously entered into their thoughts or been made part of their calling.

Now in vessels which are in a state of mutiny and by sailors who are mutineers, how will the true pilot be regarded? Will he not be called by them a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing?

Hmm. It may have been written around 2,400 years ago, but it's still a surprisingly accurate representation of current UK events. A pseudo captain. A quarrelsome crew. Some already thrown overboard. A few ready to lead a mutiny. Now even the new negotiation leader has been relegated to role of assistant.

I'm also reminded of last week's sunny adventure on the St Lawrence River when our whale-spotting boat played Dido as it re-docked. What's the line? "I will go down with this ship."

how it ends

I received one of those emails from Netflix. "Watch this," it said, "because you liked that..."

I'd just finished a set of episodes of something and thought I'd give this new one a try. How it ends.

Fire it up. Hmm, 1h40. Must be a long opening show or the pilot. Some sort of dystopian futures thing.

Twenty minutes in. They are just finishing the set-up about a man whose partner is to have a baby. The man has gone to visit the woman's stern militaristic father across the country.

Something happens. We get the wobbly coffee rings effect. The wobbly television effect. V-shaped formations of birds. The father and boyfriend argue before getting in a fancy sedan to go find out if the daughter/girlfriend is okay on the other side of the country.

There's no radio, television or internet. No traffic, yet few deserted cars. They drive and meet a military roadblock, which Dad uses military dad speak to get through. They find hillbillies with guns that cause confrontations. They find a native American village and team up with one of the locals. She knows how to fix the broken car. There's a long military train full of tanks and supplies that mysteriously derails leaving no-one visible.

Yes, it's a sort of road movie. Everything that happens has happened already in other movies (except one good line about helicopters).

My slight jet lag facilitated me watching it to the end, with it only dawning on me in the last minutes that this was all they'd got. It wasn't a series, just a single movie.

It had that thing that some TV shows do. The double ending. In Sopranos there's a scene at Series S6E18 (three before the end) which could have been the end of the whole show. It's around this scene, before the show runner writing for the clever end of the end kicks in.

In Breaking Bad it's a little bit earlier. In this movie it's at Movie End minus 20 seconds. They even briefly slow the frame rate. I knew it was the real end and they'd tacked another little piece on just for Hollywood.

Stars? 1. for the sweeping roads cinematography of the second unit and some of the special effects.

channel hopping

Our cable telly is provided by Virgin nowadays, so we're among the 4 million to suddenly get 10 channels replaced with a different 10. Weirdly the full set of replaced channels are anyway available on Freeview, so the whole situation is slightly odd.

I understand that it's about commercial rights and licensing payments. We probably use the Virgin system more for its 200Mb broadband, with the television channels as a useful accessory - although only the first page of the 200 channels is used most of the time.

I'm more interested in the way that the channel substitution was made, one evening and without warning. There was no explanation on the Virgin system for the next couple of days - with just the news about the 'new' Paramount Movies(?) channel.

It's that aspect of customer management that I find the most strange. I'd seen the rumours of the failed negotiation on digital spy, so it wasn't exactly news to me when it happened. Just that Virgin didn't bother to tell us - instead trying to spin the positive of the 'new' channel(s).

Do I care that I can't watch old episodes of Top Gear? Not really - why would I want to? What about ancient repeats of Have I got News for You? I've survived thus far without them.

If anything, it's made me think about whether to downgrade the TV subscription and go back to free-to-air plus the Netflix, Amazon and other subscriptions.

But wait. I don't have a roof aerial.