Russian Invasion

During the winter months there was a build-up of Russian troops and military vehicles at the border with Ukraine. During this last third of February we learned that they weren't playing a game, they invaded the country. I believe the goal of invasion is to topple the current Ukrainian government and prop up a new government that isn't aligned to the west and NATO; a government that is more like Belarus I think. I think it will lead to civil war in the area in the future because the world view of all the people are different. 

I condemn all conflicts and military incursions in this world. I hope they can resolve their issues quickly and with very few deaths.

I saw a video of a tank running over a moving car on the road in the Ukraine, was that an accident? Was the tank deliberately trying to kill the civilian? I don't know, maybe the tank was trying to get a different target and hit the car by mistake. It was very painful to watch. 

Four Eight Twelve

Russia has invaded Ukraine, they have recognised rebel held territory as independent states and sent their troops and military hardware into the area. I am trying not to think about it because it is sad and I have no control. I imagine the people living there have a lot of anxiety. I feel pity for them. 

I am trying to not think about it because I am just a servant, I can't do anything to bring peace to them. 

I think there is some truth to what Vladimir Putin is saying, Russia did form in what is now Ukraine and they were once one people. Some of the people in Ukraine still speak Russian. 

I was reading a Wikipedia article about it. But Ukraine is a sovereign nation and have been so since 1918 and then again after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 90's. Perhaps I am wrong. I will think of something else. 

Anyway. 

I am thinking about the way I look at time. I try to divide time up into units of 3 when possible. 20 minutes is one third of an hour, on a clock it is when the minute hand points to 4. When the minute hand points to 8, that is 40 minutes and then 12 is one hour. There are twelve months so it works out the same. The 4th Month, April is one third of a year. The 8th month August is two thirds, the months preceding August are the last third of the year and December is the end of the year.

If I need to do 3 things then I will spend 20 minutes on each task at a time. 

Russian Ukrainian Operation

In recent days, the Russian government has recognised rebel held territory in East Ukraine as independent states and has sent their military in as peace keeping forces they claim. Many NATO nations have reacted by imposing economic sanctions on Russia. The problem with sanctions is you hurt yourself as well. The Russians are supplying us with a lot of oil and natural gas. We are already facing price inflation. Everything costs more at the moment. 

The only thing that is going down in price that I know of is High Capacity Batteries. The High Capacity Batteries we use today are made with Lithium and Cobolt. Lithium is a semi rare metal that floats on water and burns when it touches water. Most of the Lithium in the world is dissolved in the Ocean water. I think that Lithium isn't synthesized by the fusion in stars, instead it is created by powerful radiation hitting other elements when stars explode, I think that is why it is so rare. I think they use electrolysis on sea brime to extract it. 

When we recycle old batteries, we are increasing the Lithium supplies and bringing down the cost of producing it. The faster we make high capacity batteries the cheaper they become and eventually electric Cars will be cheaper than fuel Cars. At the moment they are a lot more expensive. 

Two Thirds of February

We are now in the last third of February. I will record this last 10 days as Valentine's Day followed by two storms. We had Valentine's Day as usual, then storm Dudley hit the North of Britain and Eunice hit the south. The two storms were full of energy. 

Every part of the United Kingdom that I know of were hit by a powerful storm, there was no kushy place to avoid the strong winds. Trees were pushed over, buildings were damaged and some people lost their lives. 

Throughout the whole time, there seemed to be tension between Russia and the Ukraine. I'm just a servant, I don't have anything personal against Russia or Ukraine, I hope they can put their differences behind them in the near future and beyond. 

Eunice Strikes

Storm Eunice just passed over England and my home. I saw that some trees were pushed over. Trees are amazing to me, every tree I have ever seen toppled by the wind were fully intact. The point of failure is mostly the ground itself. Sometimes the stump of the tree is surrounded by concrete and the concrete breaks but the tree itself doesn't.  Trees balance themselves very well, they are not too brittle and they are not too soft, they can sway in the wind and not break. 

There are some trees that do break in the wind but they are usually rotten or infested with a disease and hollowed out.

Britain's Worst Job

I don't know what the worst job is in Britain is but I think a Post Master at the turn of the millennium would be near the top of the list. 

What happened was they were supplied with an accounting software with a glitch that caused a discrepancy between the transactions and the turnover, it would make the post master appear as if they were embezzling some of the income from the post office. 

To cut a long story short, hundreds of Post masters were taken to court and wrongfully sent to prison for fraud. As far as I know, it was one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in British History. Some of the post masters were fired, others were Jailed, many of them committed suicide. Some of them had their personal property taken away from them. Many of the post masters went through a divorce and a living hell. 

I recently learned that many of the post Masters still haven't got their compensation for the Post office software glitch. When they were pardoned, they sued the Post office for damages but are still waiting. 

There is nothing to be proud of in this world when you think about it, we are only one cancer cell away from a slow painful death. We are only a glitch away from a living hell. When we die we have no possessions, we don't even know if we can keep our minds and memories when our bodies are gone. We know very little. 

Storm Dudley

In the north of England and Scotland, there is a storm. Here in England there are strong winds. As far as I know, it has brought down power lines and done a lot of damage. If there was millions of small wind mills, they would erode some of the wind. 

I wouldn't make large windmills, I would make many small ones that could handle high winds. They could be installed very quickly and easily; they would also be hidden behind grills. 

To me this was a missed opportunity, all that wind could have added 3 or 4 months of Electricity to the Grid. If someone invented the low cost high capacity battery, it would change everything. There could be tower blocks filled with batteries that stores surplus power then sends it back to the grid slowly when the power levels are low. Even if one kilowatt-hour of power costs 10p, a 50 kilowatt-hour battery would store £5 worth of power. It could discharge millions of times if it is made of a more robust material that doesn't wear down. Even if it discharged 1000 times, that would be £5,000. 

I am an ordinary man but I know the impact of a 'Low Cost High Capacity' battery would have on the whole world. Everything would change. 

Hybrid Super Deal

I patiently wait for a person to invent the low cost high capacity battery so Electric cars would be very cheap. High Capacity batteries in cars usually store about 50 kilowatt-hours of charge, enough to run a 850 watt microwave oven for 2 & half days I think. They cost around £10,000 to make, if they weren't so expensive, perhaps just £500, electric cars would be very cheap. They would be cheap because they wouldn't have many parts, there would be no exhaust pipe, no fuel pump, no oil pump, no air pump, no clutch, no coolant radiator, no cylinder head, no spark plugs, just an electric motor, battery and a small computer chip. There would be very few parts to make compared to fuel cars. 

While I wait, I could look at the other option, Hybrid cars. I would like a cheap hybrid car where the fuel engine isn't involved in the kinetic transmission of the wheels. The fuel engine would just charge the smaller battery. I'm not sure if there is a word for it, or even if such a car exists.  Diesel electric trains work like that, a diesel engine generates electricity for an electric motor that powers the wheels. The engine doesn't transmit motion to the wheels, it transmits motion to a electric generator that powers the wheels. 

The deals I saw for hybrid cars are closer to my goal of having a new car with insurance for £150 per month or less. The trouble is they seem to have a mixed transmission, they have electric motor for slow speeds and fuel transmission for higher speeds and they power different wheels. 

There is still a ravine between my goal and reality, I wait patiently for a clever guy to find a way. To find a way to bring down the cost. 

EV super deal thought

As far as I know, we are going through the highest cost inflation in my lifetime. This means the price of everything is increasing and the cost of living is more. The Pandemic affected the speed of supplies and that brought up the cost. Speed is everything in capitalism, the faster you can supply a product the lower the cost and everything is connected. If a microchip factory can't produce micro processors very quickly then the cost will go up for all the things that use the chip, that is just one example. 

My small car has a 30 liter tank so it costs me £45 to fill my car with fuel. I fill my tank every week so this means I am paying £180 every month to fuel my car. My breakdown cover is £40 and crash insurance is £40.

 I am paying £260 per month for my car! 

Electric cars have 50 kilowatt-hour batteries on average so I could charge it up and have change left over from £10. I look for an EV deal where you get insurance and the car together for £150 per month. There are no such deals at the moment but I wait patiently. People will say why are you paying £150 for a car, I would say it is less than the price of fuel. The fuel cost of my car was £180 per month.  £150 per month for 5 years. No such deal exists because 50 kilowatt-hour batteries cost nearly £10,000. I wait for someone to invent a low cost high capacity battery, that will change the world. Electric cars wouldn't cost more than £25,000 if the battery only costs £500.

Joe Rogan N Word

At the start of the year, there was a Spotify dispute with Joe Rogan because he invited vaccine skeptic doctors onto his podcast talk show. I think the dispute goes deeper than the Joe Rogan show, I think musicians are unhappy with being ripped off by digital streaming services, people listen to their music and they get a very tiny commission for it, less than 1p. You could say the Joe Rogan incident is the straw that broke the camel's back. The Camel was already carrying too much on their backs. I'm sure most musicians miss the 90s; I was a kid in the 90s. 

I crossed paths with the Joe Rogan experience on you tube a few times. I was curious about Bob Lazar's story and made a playlist where journalists were interviewing him. Bob Lazar is a scientist that claimed he worked on recovered alien space ships. I have a link here with the interview if you are interested : Bob Lazar with Joe Rogan. I also watched episodes where he invited Jordan Peterson and Professor Brian Cox. 

I recently learned that Joe Rogan used the 'N' word a few times on his show. He wasn't calling anyone that word though. He apologized and to me that is good enough. A lot of people don't understand why the 'N' word is so offensive. The reason is because it was used to replace a slaves identity, they would be called the N word instead of their name to remind them that they are property, it was very nasty to treat people like that. Even if I was a black man I wouldn't want to use the 'N' word because I would think there is a much better way of identifying people. 

One third of February

One third of February has passed by; I always try to divide time up into units of 3. One third of a month is 10 days. One third of an hour is 20 minutes. 

During the last 10 days my interest was with otherworldly objects. I would read about the Trappist 1 solar system, a small red dwarf star with 7 rocky Earth like planets in very near orbit. I was also thinking about the Alpha Centauri Star system, a family of 3 stars that are the nearest to earth. I would often watch videos about the star systems on YouTube, and read about them on Wikipedia. 

I also regained interest in a computer game that was left on my phone for months called 'Crossy Road' it is a game that is like frogger from the 80s.  You have to get a small creature to cross an area without being hit by vehicles or falling in water. I like the fact you can unlock creatures and they all change the layout of the game slightly. I also like the way the game has tournaments so you get a rank on a scoreboard for the person with the most hops. 

I hope to get the latest Chromecast stick in the near future so I can play my favourite apps on my TV and hopefully play a remake of one of my favourite computer games, 'Roller Coaster Tycoon (Classic Edition). 

Playing Crossy Road

A game called 'Crossy road' was sitting on my phone for 9 months. Today I started playing it again. It is a modern equivalent to frogger, you got to get an avatar to cross an area without getting hit. It is very fun. You also unlock Crossers, the default is a Chicken but there are many others to unlock. 

It is quite a fun game and you only need to use one thumb to control the game. When you tap the screen, the player hops along. 

The game animation is blocky and cartoonish and it also lets you share your progress on social media. 

Good Day

Jacob, my son. 

What does the 20s and 30s mean to you? Do you remember everyone wearing masks on their mouth and nose to go into shops? Do you remember the hand sanitizer dispensers at the entrance to the shops? I will never forget it. 

 I think most of my grey hair sprouted in the last two years, stress really does make your hair turn grey. About one third of my hair is grey now. It has been a very hard 2 years. So far the 20s have been very tough for me. There was a lot of inflation in the last 5 months, everything seems to cost more than it did before. It costs £45 to fill my car with petrol because fuel costs £1.50 per liter. Sometimes all I want to do is watch a TV documentary and think nothing at all. Sometimes I just want to sit there and have no thoughts at all. Sometimes I just play Tetris or Columns. 

What is the 20s like? Is it a happy time? 

Proxima thoughts

The most common thought I had the last three weeks that I am willing to share on this blog is about the Alpha Centauri star system and Red Dwarf Stars. 

The nearest star to our sun that we know of is Proxima Centauri, a Red Dwarf star that is 4.2 light years away. Our sun is a Yellow Dwarf, it will die in 5 billion years time and it will become too hot and unstable to for earth in half that time; 2.5 billion years is still a very long time though. Red Dwarf stars are much smaller than our Yellow Dwarf Sun, they last more than 100 billion years; our universe is 13 billion years old, this means every single Red Dwarf star that has ever formed in the universe is still very young, they burn their hydrogen so slowly that they are all still in the main sequence. No one knows what they will do when they leave the main sequence stage. Maybe they will shine brightly like our Sun for 5 billion years perhaps they will explode, we don't know. No one knows what Red Dwarf stars do when they get old and die because they are all young. 

The problem with red dwarf stars is a planet needs to be very close to the star for liquid water to exist on the surface, when a planet is just a few million kilometres from their star, they get tidally locked so one side always faces the star and one always faces away, like our moon. I thought to myself, what if you had a Jupiter sized planet just 5 million kilometres from a red dwarf with a Earth sized moon, the Earth sized moon would be tidally locked to the Jupiter sized planet instead of the star and the magnetic field of the gas giant would protect the moon planet from super flares. The Earth like moon wouldn't be tidally locked to the nearby star so it wouldn't have one side of the planet like an oven and the other like a freezer. Just a thought. 

Then I had many other thoughts in my head, Alpha Centauri A will die long before Proxima, how will that affect the nearby star? When Yellow Dwarf Stars die they spurt out a lot of Hydrogen into space, perhaps some of the Hydrogen will fall into Proxima and increase it's mass. Could a Red Dwarf Star grow into an Orange Dwarf Star if material falls into it? I don't know. 

Joe Rogan Spin

This week was dominated by Joe Rogan and Spotify being rocked by boycotts from musicians. I was angered by the musicians Boycotting the platform because Rogan was only talking about vaccines with vaccine skeptic doctors and doesn't always cover that topic, I thought it was a bit harsh. They are boycotting a platform because of a few  conversations or debates. 

I don't listen to Joe Rogan's talkshow podcasts but I saw it a few times in youtube debates because he invited Jordan Peterson on his show and I find Jordan Peterson's views interesting. Perhaps I will listen to Joe Rogan on my Smart speaker in the future. 

Most of my thoughts don't come from other people, they are a mixture of Practical thoughts and unnecessary thoughts. The practical thoughts are just me trying to make my life more simple and bringing down living costs. These self problem solving thoughts cause irritation in my mind after a while so then I have unnecessary thoughts that don't bring me benefits but they smooth over the practical thoughts. I will think about stars and all the mysteries of our world. I have Practical thoughts about my life and then less important thoughts. A very common thought I was thinking this week was  about was the Alpha Centauri Star system. 

Proxima Centauri Thoughts

When I was younger, I bought myself a telescope. The first thing I looked at when I bought my Telescope was the moon because it is the closest natural object to Earth. When they launched the James Webb telescope, I thought they would do the same and Look at the nearest stars to us. I was wrong. They seem more interested in distant nebulas and early galaxies; fair enough, I'm not an astrophysicist anyway, let them get on with it. 

The closest star to our Sun is Proxima Centauri, it is one of three stars that are all orbiting a common center of gravity. Proxima Centauri is a Red dwarf star and is very small and dim compared to the sun. We know it has some rocky Earth like planets going around it but we don't know very much else.  The two other stars are Alpha Centauri A, a sun like Yellow dwarf star and Alpa Centauri B, a smaller Orange dwarf star that is half as bright as the Sun. If you look the Alpha Centauri stars without a telescope, they look like one star. 

Even though they are the closest stars to us, the distance between them and us is immense. It takes light 4.2 years to go from the sun to Proxima Centauri.  It takes less than a day for light to go from the sun to the voyager 1 probe, the most distant man made object in space (16 hours). The nearest stars to our sun are more than 5,000 times further away than our most distant probe that has been speeding away from the Earth for decades. It is hard to even imagine that distance, and they are just the nearest stars. 

Start of February

I didn't mention this in my last blog post but my sister in law's Mum passed away during the previous week, it came out of the blue without warning, I feel pity for my sister in law and her family. This is what life is, waiting to die and trying to find meaning in the chaos. How sad it is. 

I was also thinking about the Spotify Boycott. What had happened is a talkshow podcaster called Joe Rogan had invited vaccine skeptic doctors onto his show and they presented information that is considered to be incorrect about the vaccines. Some musicians reacted by removing their music from the streaming service. I'm in two minds about their reaction, I don't like the idea of trying to topple people's talkshows because they put a lot of work into it and he doesn't talk about vaccines all the time. On the other hand, I wouldn't want a group of people to abstain from vaccines because of a lie then die from an infection that could have been prevented by the vaccine. It's better not to talk about it I say. I wouldn't want to be responsible for some people's deaths, even a joke can be dangerous. This is an example of causing death with your mouth. You can literally cause a person's death just by saying something so I would say be careful what you talk about. Don't just say what comes into your head. 

What January 2022 means to me

In January 2022 the UK government was exposed as allegedly throwing parties during the lockdown when gatherings were legally banned. Shortly after that there was a giant under water volcanic erruption on the Tonga shelf in the middle of the month, the eruption was very brief but very powerful and caused a Tsunami to hit the Island nation of Tonga, no one seemed to notice because they were distracted by the sleaze in government. Then the Tennis player Novak Djocovik was blocked from entering Australia because they thought he was being careless with Pandemic safety, I was amazed that more people knew about the blocked tennis player than the Tsunami. It was like the peril of a whole nation was blotted out of people's minds. 

Russia was angered by Ukraine aligning itself to the west, they are preparing to join the EU and NATO. Russia sent thousands of troops and tanks close to the Ukraine Border, the Eastern border of Ukraine is lined with weapons and trained soldiers and they have enough for an invasion. There was an exchange of threats but right now there is a standoff. There is a lot of tension and no one knows what will happen. 

Throughout January, the James Webb Telescope was unfolding itself as it was heading to a place called L2, where Earth's gravity balances out with other forces, it is very far from Earth and takes a rocket one month to get there. When the James Webb telescope arrived, it was fully unfolded, now all that is left is the mirrors and lenses to be adjusted, that will take about 3 months. 

Joe Rogan invited vaccine skeptic doctors onto his podcast talkshow to discuss vaccines, the musician Neil Young boycotted the platform, he removed his music from Spotify. He said he won't share a platform with Joe Rogan, In my view he was trying to topple his podcast talkshow and I didn't like that. I understand why he did it though, if you convince a group of people not to get vaccinated and some of them die from the disease, you are partly responsible for their death. I have nothing against Joe or Neil myself. 

Happy February ?