never truly pursued money (I still don’t). I didn’t see the point. Tennis, for instance, was more fun. Computer games were fun too.

In my entire lifetime, or in my adult life as a student, I didn’t think I’d pursue a “career path” (ludicrous term, conflating life path with “career”) that nets me the most money I can possibly amass. It would be foolish to do so and it would not bring happiness, it might even accompany evil eyes, stress, and too high an expectation.

Yesterday in Geminispace I saw “Work for the sake of work” and today a friend sent me the HTML/HTTP version of the same. It makes some good points. When people do art they typically do it out of passion. As for money? Think about it. As 10cc put it, “for God’s sake…”^*

Money can sometimes come if you do what you like. Sometimes it won’t come. And that’s OK. At least you do what you like and what might serve society best, with or without reward/compensation for it.

Sometimes the best paying jobs are jobs that actively harm society. True story!

The reason everyone is forced/pressured/shamed into work (as in salaried activity) is the assumption is that without this “social norm” people would be lazy and society would not improve. It would become “unproductive”.

Work that you go to (e.g. office, workplace) out of fear or pressure is a thing that leads to misery. But capitalism does not think in terms like Maslow’s.

_____

^* Lyrics:

Gimme your body
Gimme your mind
Open your heart
Pull down your blind
Gimme your love, gimme it all
Gimme in the kitchen, gimme in the hall
Art for art's sake
Money for God's sake
Art for art's sake
Money for God's sake
Gimme the ready's
Gimme the cash
Gimme a bullet
Gimme a smash
Gimme a silver, gimme a gold
Make it a million for when I get old
Art for art's sake
Money for God's sake
Art for art's sake
Money for God's sake
Money talks so listen to it
Money talks to me
Anyone can understand it
Money can't be beat, oh no
When you get down, down to the root
Don't give a damn don't give a hoot
Still gotta keep makin the loot
Chauffeur driven
Gotta make her quick as you can
Give her lovin' make you a man
Get her in the palm of your hand
Bread from Heaven
Gimme a country
Where I can be free
Don't need the unions
Burying me
Keep me in exile the rest of my days
Burn me in hell but as long as it pays
Art for art's sake
Money for God's sake
Art for art's sake
Money for God's sake
Art for art's sake
Money for God's sake
Art for art's sake
Money for God's sake

Source

‘ve noticed something quaint about Whiskey Pete and the circus that mans the Pentagon and uses 9/11 (after 25 years) to double down on self harm and global disdain/hatred for the US.

When or if Iran does real damage to US army assets, the US first tries to hide (cover up) or deny anything happened. Failing that, it belittles the impact, e.g. saying no casualties. Israel does the same thing.

If media with credibility and data shows decent evidence, US media will try to say it’s made in North Korea or imported from elsewhere (or attack the media for “helping Iran”).

If disproven, it’ll blame “Russia” for giving help (like location/information from satellites). Now it blames “China”.

Never blame the man who stated this war? Never blame a dumb war that clogged up oil and gas traffic, resulting in direct financial hurt to everyone on this planet?

If a president needs to commit some more crimes (like bribing voters) to distract from military and financial shambles, maybe it’s time to impeach him already.

n capitalism, people are meant to conflate accumulation of capital (or material assets) with “success” and that sort of success is interchangeable with happiness. But this is a gross oversimplification as pursuit of capital is not in its own right joyful or pleasant. Many people derive pleasure from social things because they are, after all, “social animals”.

Those who seek improvement in their lives by working hard to gain more money may find that it’s easier for them to purchase more things or better things. But at what cost?

Also, more personal belongings can one day became liabilities or burdens. This is why many people, especially late in their lives, give things away and move into smaller, simpler places/spaces.

oday we had a lot of spare time, so we watched some movies, including White Apache (1987), which relates to others (Bianco Apache). It’s actually a gory (but censored, a lot of stuff blurred out of view) movie with a sad ending. Lola Forner (from Spain) and Sebastian Harrison (from Italy) star in it and it seems like their career went downhill years if not decades later.

They didn’t make it into famous lists and the movie is relatively obscure by now.

rowing up with many dogs, I loved dogs. Don’t get more wrong, I’m a “dog(s) person”. Years ago we thought about getting a dog ourselves. We ended up delaying and we only bought things for a dog, except the dog. Delays delays…

We have one neighbour with a Bully XL. I don’t like those dogs (the breed) because I don’t trust them. I’ll probably never trust any Bully XL, not just because of what I read in papers (they even murder their own elderly owners sometimes) but the actual ban on such dogs (and sometimes “culls” too). The UK identified them as unworthy of the risk.

I’ve had to mentally prepare for a scenario where this one Bully XL goes berserk and decides to attack me. I’ve decided that because this dog is short-legged and clearly overweight sprinting away from it would be effective enough; he cannot catch me and I can run for a lot longer before stamina becomes an issue. This Bully XL is around 60-70KG, it’s very short, and it’s just a “fat boy” basically. Second option is, hop on the roof of a nearby car. This “fat boy” cannot even jump over his home’s fence, surely a car would be “too tall” for him. Failing that, in case I need to wrestle such a dog, avoid neck bites or falling to the ground. Fatalities won’t be possible due to a bleeding leg or hand.

Of course they could just put a muzzle on this Bully XL. But guess what… of course they don’t and lecturing an old lady about it ain’t “my cuppa tea”.

There’s an anecdote here. Someone cited my article (also from yesterday) that said “life expectancy of a new car is now 7 years”.

He said that “about 20 years ago, a dealer tried to cheat my dad out of a particular lifetime guarantee. He, fortunately, had all the receipts even through they tried to prevent him from that by attempting to “forget” to give him the receipts several times, forcing him to stay and press the issue. However, having all the receipts, there was no way out for the dealer which even tried to buy the car from him, with increasing offers. The dealer eventually took the matter to court. Technically they lost, and had to honor the lifetime guarantee. But in reality it became a major victory for them because the court decided that the lifetime of a car is 7 years from then on. Setting the definition of lifetime of a car at 7 years, established a throwaway culture for the vehicles and rewarded negligence by the dealers…”

So what sort of outcome is this? As an aside, regarding “modern” cars (that physically cannot long): “Proprietary firmware and other forms of technological obsolescence will only worsen that. Proprietary diagnostic APIs being among the worst. Once the last of the independent mechanics are gone, watch out!”

The planet has processes, but not all human processes lead to all parties – if any – being happy. Sometimes only the lawyers win (fees, bills).

can recall the hearing we had last month very well. How can I forget? Unlike the applicant, we attended it. He did not! He was in London at the time, but he chose to not even show up.

My barrister told me that his barrister was intentionally “time-wasting”. It was not hard to see this, he was very repetitive and clearly he tried to deny our side (two barristers) enough time to get across points. It was an exceptionally hot week, so those in the Court were already tired by the time our barristers had a say.

If “time-wasting” is a legal tactic (like stalling), then the Court needs to curtail it, even penalise for it.

Our barristers aren’t cheap and my barrister is vastly more experienced that the time waster’s.

Tomorrow I’ll write about these tactics in Techrights. The headline will be: “Decades of Debt, Weaponing Borrowed Money to Try to Put Critics in Debt”.

Prior parts below:

Crossposted from Tux Machines

arlier this month we went on holiday/vacation, which we are very much enjoying. Weeks earlier we published press releases [1, 2] about a hearing that ended 4 weeks ago. We were clear about what happened.

Garrett told a bunch of nonsense in public. Maybe was was made to believe this nonsense, as he had not attended his own hearing. Why? Go figure…

Garrett’s lawyer and barrister only spent a few years in this occupation. It’s the same lawyer and barrister who work for his friend, Graveley. They work on this together.

My lawyer and barrister have both spent decades in this occupation and are vastly more experienced, they know the two men above are “bullies” and have “basically lost”… it’s “embarrassing to them”.

Some dumb words in social control media won’t change this.

E are exactly two weeks away from Rianne’s birthday and gift ideas need to be based around sentimental value this year, not monetary value. Jewellery and other ‘vanity items’ have always been a waste of money (hard work and sometimes child labour for a bunch of pebbles or metals or whatever). Over the course of three weeks a lot can be done to convert time into joy and joy lasts much longer in the mind than in the shop.

It takes courage and work to make gifts that aren’t just something one scans at the checkout (till) but instead produces one way or another.

The older I get, the more obvious it seems gifting in the “Traditional” (with capital T) sense became merely consumerism and we’re far detached from real scarcities, which aren’t something one can purchase. I was never fond of consumerism and birthdays; over time it becomes easier to explain the “whys”.

T is the 10^th of August today (day 3 of vacation) and we have 3 weeks left in this vacation, which is warming up. I am more relaxed than I’ve been in decades and so far I only do with I enjoy. We fed the birds at Mayfield today and tomorrow we plan to mostly relax. This afternoon/evening I pulled out one of the 1997 hits CDs; I still use optical drives a lot, the music from that era is on average a lot better than the contemporary stuff and there are no ads. With the drive working concurrently with the PC there is also less CPU toil (no signal decryption or decompression necessary).

Looking back at my 20s, I was “racing” a lot of the time and it seems rather common among people that age. What are they really racing towards? What is this “Rat Race”? Sooner or later they will realise that life is not a contest, social control media isn’t popularity (just shallow voyeurism/vanity), and health matters more than speed. About 2 years ago I began sleeping a lot more after 2 decades of trying to limit myself to 6 hours per night. Why? It was not healthy, that’s for sure. That had no point to it…

All around me I see anxious, nervous people – some to the point of being dependent on medication. Many of them have debt, obligations, and a lifestyle they cannot afford, which is connected to why they took loans in the first place.