a constellation of quantum paradox

 I might be in a minority, but I'm quite enjoying Constellation, a sci-fi psycho-drama box set. It's set in space and there is an opportunity for things to floatily slow down and then suddenly speed up. Like the way The Killing did at the end of its Episodes.

The main protagonist is Naomi Rapace, and we get some good Scandi Noir thrown into the mix. It is as if the writers tipped out their packet of parts to see which ones they could use.

I've noticed Kubrick and Silence of the Lambs moments as well as proper Scandi crashing through the softly falling now. I usually watch Alien in the dark, for maximum immersion and I found this one to be similarly so, to the extent that a couple of times I needlessly looked away whilst the tension was mounting.

In some ways I was doing a 'Copenhagen';  by not observing the states which became consequently  quantumly ambiguous. And I suppose the (later observed) dead cosmonaut could be a parallel for the a finally observed Schrödinger cat. 

In quantum physics there is a concept called entanglement. An entangled system is defined as an inseparable whole. In entanglement, one constituent cannot be fully described without considering the other(s). The superposition of states of local constituents is entangled if it cannot be written as a single product term.

I'm wondering how deftly the script for this can avoid entanglement as it waltzes through this science, with Breaking Bad's Mike Ehrmentraut (Jonathan Banks) playing the seasoned seventy year old astronaut 'Bud' who has been to the moon and knows about science things. For me, he doesn't quite pull it off and treats the 'canister thingy' as a McGuffin.  "But we must get it back".

Still, outside of these observations, I'm finding it better to watch than a few other things queued up on my various players.

 

Zone of Interest

I steeled myself to go to see the Jonathan Glazer production of 'Zone of Interest' which portrays the life of KL Camp Kommandant Rudolf Höss and his family in their apparently idyllic house set against the walls of Auschwitz. Martin Amis wrote a similar story and Glazer decided to tell it with the actual people instead of the anonymity of the fictional version. 

There's the bucolic and well-tended garden with trimmed grass, pretty flowers and a swimming pool slowly revealing that beyond the wall is the industrialised mass murder of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Höss is senior commander of the entire operation and even gets promoted back to Berlin to oversee a whole set of these camps. The family declines to follow, preferring their luxurious lifestyle outside of the Auschwitz camp.

The language is matter of fact as the family behaves typically with their assorted children, pet dog, numerous servants and workmen. They are largely insulated from the Konzentrationslager as their nearest neighbour, growing vines up the camp walls. The terrifying soundscape tells the story of what is within these walls. Although the movie is in German language, the stark sounds already tell too much.  Pistolshot, echoing rifle shots, screams, and the interminable grinding, smoke, cries and metallic groans from the heavy machinery of industrial slaughter. Black smoke rising and ash coating the flowers causing the visiting mother to quietly depart overnight. Mercifully Glazer doesn't show us inside the active camp.

We see Höss rising to power, first a promotion to Berlin, then to take proud control of the mass extermination of Hungarian prisoners - another excited promotion relayed by phone from Berlin to his wife still at the house in Auschwitz.

In his Nuremburg Trial affidavit made on 5 April 1946, Höss stated:

'I commanded Auschwitz until 1 December 1943, and estimate that at least 2,500,000 victims were executed and exterminated there by gassing and burning, and at least another half million succumbed to starvation and disease, making a total of about 3,000,000 dead. This figure represents about 70% or 80% of all persons sent to Auschwitz as prisoners, the remainder having been selected and used for slave labor in the concentration camp industries. Included among the executed and burnt were approximately 20,000 Russian prisoners of war (previously screened out of Prisoner of War cages by the Gestapo) who were delivered at Auschwitz in Wehrmacht transports operated by regular Wehrmacht officers and men. The remainder of the total number of victims included about 100,000 German Jews, and great numbers of citizens (mostly Jewish) from The Netherlands, France, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece, or other countries. We executed about 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944.

Not included in the movie...

Nazi evacuation and evidence destruction took place leaving approximately 7,000 prisoners in the camp. On January 27, 1945. Red Army soldiers entered Oświęcimand and soldiers of the 60th Army of the First Ukrainian Front appeared on the grounds of the Monowitz sub-camp, on the eastern side of the city. They liberated the Auschwitz Main Camp and Birkenau at about 3 p.m.

...And yes, sadly the wall can be a metaphor for now.

Homelessness

It's 136,000 homeless young people now.

UPDATE: 

Government "Levelling Up" responded:

Government is committed to tackling homelessness and ending rough sleeping for good. Our strategy is backed by over £2bn over 3 years. Tackling youth homelessness is critical to this strategy.

Every child and young person deserves a roof over their head and a safe place to call home. 

The Government is firmly committed to tackling all forms of homelessness including youth homelessness. The Government’s Ending Rough Sleeping for Good strategy, published in 2022 and backed by over £2 billion, recognises the particular challenges facing young people experiencing homelessness.

The strategy puts prevention at its heart. The Government has committed over £1 billion to councils in England through the Homelessness Prevention Grant to help them prevent homelessness over three years, including youth homelessness. Councils can use the funding flexibly – for example, to offer financial support for people to find a new home, to work with landlords to prevent evictions or to provide temporary accommodation. 

In addition, in his Autumn Statement the Chancellor announced Government is increasing the Local Housing Allowance to the 30th percentile of market rents from April. This will mean 1.6m low-income households will be around £800 a year better off on average in 2024-25, and will make it more affordable for young people on benefits to rent properties in the private rented sector.

Government support for housing-led solutions includes the Single Homelessness Accommodation Programme (SHAP), which aims to provide longer term supported housing, Housing First and other housing-led accommodation with accompanying support, including for young people at risk of or experiencing homelessness or rough sleeping.

So far, £150 million has been allocated to adult and young people’s projects through SHAP in 46 local authority areas to deliver 1,230 homes and accompanying support services.

The Rough Sleeping Initiative 2022-25 includes £2.5 million of funding at youth-specific services in 8 local authorities across England. This funding develops specialist youth support such as outreach workers, prevention officers and specialist housing for those under 25.

Up to £3 million funding is available in 2023/24 to provide targeted support to young people leaving care, those most at risk of homelessness and rough sleeping. This funding is targeted across 56 local authorities in England, those with the highest need and will provide financial support to children’s services and housing teams to encourage improved partnership working through the introduction of joint protocols. 

A proportion of the Local Authority Housing Fund worth over £1 billion also goes towards temporary accommodation, helping to alleviate homelessness.

We have also put in place bespoke support for local authorities through our Homelessness Advice and Support Team, which includes dedicated youth homelessness advisor roles that have a commitment to work with local authorities to proactively promote positive joint working across housing authorities and children’s services, offering training, advice and support to all local authorities.   

Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities

Don't turn off your computer, it says? How many days should I wait?

I know, it's a predictable post.

I had to use a Windows computer again. It said it wanted to check a few things first. I thought 'here we go again'. Yes it's been BSOD-ing ever since. 

What a waste of time. Still I can write this post on my trusty Mac.

entitled sheds

I've been driving up and down the country over the last few days. It's interesting to notice certain types of other driver and their attempted manoeuvres. 

One of the most commonplace is with someone in a brown, or grey SUV shed on the inside lane who wants to go as fast as possible and will find the smallest gap in front of me to pull across into lane 3. The time spent in front of me is minimal, but it is also at an unsafe braking distance and causes my car's auto sensing to dab the brakes. 

I'd predicted that drivers will 'game' the new convoy lorries, but it seems it is already happening with holistic cruise control.

vroom vroom

Outside the front of our house there's a protected wildlife corridor. The other side of it is a building site with a temporary through road whilst a new bridge is being finalised. The builders have added red and white chevrons to the edges of the temporary road, akin to the ones used in Scalextric car racing.

Sometimes these barriers blow across the road, but most of the time they invite speeding traffic.

What is striking is how similar all the cars look. No, it's not an eye test, but the shapes without the badges are remarkably similar amongst these speeding hatchback cars and grey, black or white mobile sheds.

termites holding hands

They say that Vǫluspá  follows Ragnarök. A kind of rebirth after the twilight of the Gods. List everything news-topping right now. 

The Edda poems reference it. Poems first passed by song and then written down in the 14th century.Wagner wrote a Cycle about it and Bowie made a searing song. And some movie studios still make franchises.

Where all were minds in uni-thought
Power weird by mystics taught
No pain, no joy, no power too great
Colossal strength to grasp a fate

Where sad-eyed mermen tossed in slumbers
Nightmare dreams no mortal mind could hold
A man would tear his brother's flesh
A chance to die
To turn to mould

Far out in the red-sky
Far out from the sad eyes
Strange, mad celebration
So softly a supergod cries

Its easier to remember Bowie than Edda, but the point is the same.

And the termites hold the wooden bridge together.

basic face kick elemental

I just got sent the BFI listing for 2024. Featured movie? 

The KLF: 23 Seconds to Eternity

Sample city through Trancentral
Basic face kick elemental
Swings brings new technology
The 'K' the 'L' the 'F' and the ology
Da Force coming down with mayhem
Looking at my watch time 3 A.M.
Got to see that everywhere I turn
Will point to the fact that time is eternal

It's 3 A.M., 3 A.M.
It's 3 A.M. Eternal (eternal)

A-ha, a-ha, a-ha, a-ha 
Eternal

I can't do a link because it's all restricted. 

I have that book 2023. I watched it being a future artefact to becoming part of history.

And there's still images from the original footage being re-invented on modern television.

Another dimension.

fast track it to the meatballs

 

I've just read an an interesting post from a friend, about the nature of existentialism and determinism. It cunningly packs the question into a discussion about turning corners, as if in a deterministic state. 

A contrasting divergent thought could have free-will based existential agency. 

It reminds me of queueing in Disney. Follow the beaten path, or walk through walls? Maybe a question for Nietsche.* 

In Disney terms, you get a Fast Pass on your digital watch, to make it about strategy. 

Travel at 100 times the speed of everyone else, but know when to pause. Some of the best queues make it a part of the ride "To travel hopefully etc." 

Like the sadly suspended Rock 'n Roller coaster, there's a pre-queue a trip to the studio, watch the band mix down, and get invited into a stretched limo. All before the ride itself, across SoCal at 0-60 in 3 seconds.

Three minutes at insane cross town traffic speed is an unforgettable experience. Or waiting for that that space flight where you go through space preparation before getting into the rocket and blast off on a mission to Mars. Worth the wait to have felt those G-forces at launch.

My point is we are making it up. This life. This story. It's unique. To each of us. 

 *And still knowing in IKEA to 'look behind you' to get out of the pantomime of queueing and fast track it to the meatballs.

Fogg : Another reason to leave Meta/Facebook

I notice Meta is becoming more desperate and now sending out historical posts from me. They are from about 15 years ago and personally I find it intrusive that they are pretending to be posts directly from me.

It's bound to be somewhere in the T&Cs that they can plunder my old thoughts, but I'm finding it disconcerting.

white goods

Our fridge freezer has so many new ways of giving.

It came with the house and was/is a high-end Siemens device. The original one lasted about 5 years and 2 days, so it was out of warranty when it failed. The refrigerator part stopped making things cold. It's my first ever fridge failure. We had a Zanussi for 25 years.

The expensive man who we'd called out explained that the cost of fitting a new compressor was almost the same as the cost of a replacement fridge unit. And if they replaced the compressor they could not warranty the resultant device. So much for making repairable white goods.

We looked at replacements and because our fitted kitchen uses 'hinges' instead of 'sliders' the choice was very limited, particularly as we needed the doors to align on the replacement. 

We found a choice of one device that could fit the bill and we had two very nice technicians from John Lewis come along to fit it. I'd wondered about doing it myself, but when I realised how long these two industrious guys took to puzzle it all out, I was relieved to have paid the extra to have the new machine installed.

The thing is, it's a stress purchase. If I'd somehow got a new device which had more functions / lights /shelves then I could have persuaded myself that it was an upgrade.

But no, it's a downgrade. The shelves look cheaper. We actually reused some inserts from the older fridge for purely cosmetic reasons. It's impossible to stand milk upright in the main section. The moulded-in shelf stays are not suitable for sensible shelf spacing.

At Christmas we had the drama of not being able to fit everything inside. It has a smaller capacity than the one we replaced. The Munich-based manufacturers advertise on telly with a bearded man fitting a large marrow into a fridge. 

It's all lies. I want to shout at the TV.

The fridge just doesn't have the capacity. I could understand if they'd built it to be more energy efficient (e.g. with thicker insulation) but no, it's still got a terrible energy efficiency rating.

So every few weeks we have a little therapeutic rant about it. And today, I couldn't even get a litre of gold top milk to stand up in the door. 

It was too tall.

Candles in the rain

I remember seeing Melanie Safka perform in London once. Lone guitar on the stage. She'd played Woodstock, the first female to open a new record label(Buddha) and had a string of hits. Songs about roller skates, animal crackers, things being a certain kind of symbol if they were longer than they were wide. That scratch and sniff cover on Garden in the City (my copy still works!). Well, she's got a brand new key now.