One Third of January

One third of January passed by already, it seemed like yesterday that we were setting up the Christmas  tree at the start of December.

The issue these days is the  chancellor of Britain being unable to make ends meet in the budget. Rachel Reeves claims there is no way for us to live within our means right now and would need to borrow money to balance our public spending. I think the Canadian PM quit for a similar reason. Rising costs are eating away our spending power and inflation isn't helping much. If Jesus comes back soon, now is a good time; the whole world is hanging on a rope. I think a single default on American debt payments is all it will take now to drag the world into a global recession. 

I can only keep calm and carry on. I keep my thoughts in happy places. January is the time when we start to Browse for holiday deals. I look at places I can go in the summer time. I search for hotel and travel tariffs. Then I go to online shops and look at funny t-shirts. Short breaks are achievable, perhaps 3 days at the coast on the week of my birthday. Reading the bible and looking at deals keeps me busy. I have a nice 'New King James' bible; it has a satin ribbon bookmark bound in it and all the 15th century pronouns have been replaced by modern day ones so it is easier to read. 

Stay active, be happy. 

California Fires

I recently learnt that there were bush fires breaking out throughout California on the east coast of the united states. The fires had destroyed many homes and caused devastation. LA city was one of the places that was affected. I feel pity for all the people that were affected. 

I blame the bush fires on evil. In the media and films, people that destroy things are presented as sexy and powerful. The guy that shoots the most people dead gets the girls. People think it is cool and sexy to destroy things, they say I'm a bad boy and go out with flame throwers burning bushes and starting dangerous fires. I see this behaviour everywhere, I see people smashing up vending machines to impress the girls, they think they're bad boys, they want to have an image of a tough guy that fears nothing.

If you spray poison into the air, people get sick. The same is true for mental poison. If destructive behaviour is presented as sexy and cool, you'll end up with people causing mischief. 

It is sad because some people that lost their homes put all their life savings into it and lost everything. The only feeling is pity.  

This fire disaster wasn't natural, there was a dry spell with arsonists roaming around burning up bushes to make themselves feel powerful.    

 

Angry January

One thing I noticed about my society is we tend to copy the Americans.  It's usually a good thing to copy the Americans, but not this time. 

America has what I call selective respect; you're only respected by other people if you share their political polarity or have expensive possessions. If society becomes like that, no one living there will be happy. 

I see people hurling insults at trump voters, they call them stupid or pigs. Some people hate both the parties but they vote republican because they don't want their government to print too much money or to raise the abortion limit to the 3rd trimester, when the fetus is more like an infant. Everyone is entitled to their freedom of speech.

Elon Musk indirectly asked the King of Great Britain to force a general election early. He is spot on, the king can do that. I don't think he will though. I think they try not to get involved. 

Crows Basket

I was laying down waiting to fall asleep and thought of a fictional story in my head. I imagined a forgotten civilisation that existed 50,000 years ago. They treasured people that were born as dwarfs because they created a basket that tetheres with 50 domestic crows. They all pull on a string and carry the basket. They can't carry a full sized man but they can carry a man with dwarfism. They would update their maps and carry important messages to the different parts of the kingdom using these baskets with dwarves in them. The 50 crows have strings around their feet and work in tandem to lift the basket into the air. The dwarfs are also able to navigate the cave systems and draw more maps. 

In this scenario, powered flight didn't start with the right brothers, it started with this civilization. One of the dwarfs thought it would be a good idea to keep a fire in the basket and trap the hot air from the fire in a large cloth to give the basket extra lift so the crows would only need to tug the basket forward and not lift it, but a deadly strain of small pox rampaged through the kingdom and caused many people to die. All their technology and progress was abandoned in one month. It was as if they never existed.

Dreams dreams dreams.   

What December 2024 Means To Me

It was during December 2024 that Russia was busy fighting Ukraine and stopped helping Bashar Assad keep control of Syria. At the start of December rebel forces had taken over the country and brought an end to the Assad regime. I wasn't happy about it because the last time he lost control of his country, the new authority Isis were worse than him. They were murdering all sorts of people because they had different beliefs and backgrounds. I remember summer 2014 was shocking for everyone, people were being lined up and shot in the head. Even ordinary soldiers that were doing their job were murdered in captivity. Isis were barbaric and inhumane and much worse than Bashar Assad. There was hope because the new rebel groups seems to distance themselves from Isis. Let's see what happens. I guess their first goal would be to clean up Damascus and Aleppo, those cities were trashed in the fighting. 

The progress of AI continued at a fast pace; new AI systems like Grok and Gemini were catching up with the group. They recently were able to draw images on command. chatGPT, Grok and Gemini can all draw graw images on command even though their primary function is language support. AI is at a stage where it is a selfless friend. I think we should be very careful about letting it develop itself, it could become very dangerous in the future. There could become a time when AI systems are sly and have control of robots. 

I noticed that bollards were used more often now to stop terror attacks like the one that happened in new Orleans. Bollard factories will be busy. 

Bus Cap Raise

I recently learned that the government have increased the national single bus fare cap from £2 to £3. The cost of running buses is usually more than the fare charged to customers, the government pays out the remaining cost to keep trips capped at £2. This was so cool because I took the bus from my town to Heathrow airport and paid just £2 for the whole trip. The only bad thing is it would work out cheaper to pay individual fares than get a bus pass in most situations, so if I bought a bus pass, I would feel like a mug. It looks like the government is clawing at funds to free up public funding, what a stressful time we live in. 

The other day I was looking at the Glasgow metro rail on YouTube, their trains look small like toy trains, but they get the job done. I've never been to Glasgow in Scotland, I have to go there and try out their neat little subway system and see what their city is like. 

Let me show you a video so you see that I mean...

Glasgow Metro

Sun Pass

One event that is outstanding during December at the end of the year is the breakthrough with the Parker solar probe sent by nasa. They managed to build up the speed of the probe to roughly 1 million kilometres per hour (430,000 miles per hour); it is the fastest moving man made object and it is going around the sun on a highly elliptical orbit, at its closest approach it is just 3.8 million kilometres from the surface; close enough to touch the edge of the sun's massive Corona atmosphere. It is the closest object to the sun that mankind has ever made. 

They made carbon foam panels to keep the spacecraft cool because the area around the sun is very hot. 

It looks like they're already able to see temporary structures on the sun created by magnetic fields. NASA seems to be curious about structures called zipbacks that can faintly be seen from earth with special powerful telescopes. 

What it was wondering was if carbon foam is so good a deflecting heat away, why don't they use the stuff to insulate houses, is it expensive to produce? 

I'll keep an eye on their findings.