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0161 723 2000
8AM to 5PM
Are you bored?
Bored of TV, bored of NETFLIX, bored of Sky, bored of Marvel movies bored of the X men, bored bored bored…..
Do you spend a lot of time on your phone? Instagram, Facebook ? Are you glued to the screen every minute of the day..?
Maybe it’s just sensory overload?
We get way tooooo much stuff pushed at us all the time and our brains are just fried from coping with it all.
I’m not immune to this – I know I watch a lot TV. I always have.
Form an early age I watched movies on a Sunday afternoon – John Wayne, Fred Astaire, Jimmy Cagney, Steve McQueen – you had to clear your afternoon, they started at 3pm and if you missed it ….that was it till the film was shown again probably two or three years later.
Nowadays EVERYTHING is available instantly and I’m pretty sure its ruing some of the pleasure in anticipation and desire that used to fire me up and get me interested.
I feel like I’m watching so much crap at the moment I’m considering going through a detox.
Aquaman – crap
Captain Marvel – crap
Instant family – crap
Fighting with my family – crap
Green book – crap
If Beale Street could talk – crap
Ant man and the wasp – crap
Bohemian Rhapsody – crap
Cold pursuit – crap
Any Avengers movie – crap
Killing Eve – crap
Gentleman jack – crap
Pretty much all Netflix stuff apart from ‘Stranger Things’ – crap
Every new production seems designed to bring a new minority group to the fore.
I’m sorry though TV and film producers – just because you have an actor from a minority group as the lead, or a story about some sort of ‘ism’…. be it sexism or racism or whatever …..unless it’s well written and well-acted it won’t be watchable no matter how noble the cause.
It now appears that every film should also be a ‘12’ certificate ….and there shall be:
– No nudity
– No violence
– No racism
– No nothing of anything
– No plot
– No ending
….but always enough to ensure that a follow up is made which is even worse.
Can I suggest that we all go back to reading books and just turn everything off until somebody is writing some decent plot lines.
Mike C – bored.
Machines … July 24, 2019I have just finished reading ‘Machines Like Me’ by Ian McEwan – this is a scary vision of how artificial intelligence could present itself in lifelike robotic human replicants – I wont ruin it for you – it’s well worth reading.
Many of the issues raised in the book have been troubling me for some time and I think it’s worth flagging up a few points.
I’ve always been a fan of ‘science fiction’, but it would appear that we are rapidly heading towards the position where many of our future nightmares are becoming ‘science fact’. Many of the films that I have loved such as ‘Blade Runner’, ‘Minority Report” or ‘Terminator’ are nowhere near as fictional as they may first have seemed.
An article in the Times at the weekend slipped into the mid-section of the review was about artificial intelligence and how far advanced it had now become.
Why… could I ask… do we have f’ing Boris Johnson on the front page of the paper everyday …whilst quietly tucked away in the mid-section of the paper is an article that states humans will be …obsolete… in the foreseeable future.
Read that last section again – ‘humans will be obsolete…’ …. humans ….that’s you and me folks – and we will be OBSOLETE.
Maybe this is just a tad more important than some mop headed professional politician conning his way into the prime minister role.
The article in the Times advised that some time ago a computer controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) beat a chess master without any human help. This was slightly biased in favour of the computer and wasn’t seen as anything to worry too much about. Whilst very complex, chess has a limited number of moves (still huge I know) and wasn’t a huge challenge to AI.
However recently a computer, again controlled by AI beat an expert in ‘Go’ – (‘Go’ is a Chinese game of skill which has millions of alternate moves) – the artificial intelligence was making millions of alternate choices …per second – to choose the best strategy. The computer in this case was exhibiting self-learning which was infinitely faster than a human mind…. infinitely faster…
So fast was the computer thinking – that in real terms it would look on our thought process as we look on a tree growing.
Note that we are all being encouraged to have computers making decisions for us – in our houses and cars and offices. We all have computers in our hands most of the day (our phones) – these devices can manage our health and our wealth and pretty much every aspect of our lives.
We are gradually being made obsolete from every minor decision that we need to make.
We are being told that doctors will soon be replaced by computer and major operations would be better carried out by machine.
Cars will be driven by computer because they are safer than human drivers.
Our house temperature, our food in our fridges, what we watch on TV, how we relate to our friends on social media – all controlled by computer …and all able to be manipulated by computer …
I seem to remember in the ‘Terminator’ films the computers becoming self-governing – and within seconds the computers decided that the weakest link was the human element of the system.
They then cut the humans out of the equation and decided they were obsolete.
Could I suggest that maybe… making something with artificial intelligence… just because you can…is maybe NOT A GOOD IDEA.
Mike C
Bees… July 17, 2019So, bees then.
Amazing creatures – and they contribute so much to our environment. It has been said that if bees were ever to cease to exist, then the human race would also cease to exist shortly afterward.
So, I’m aware of bees and I’m aware of what they add to our environment.
I’m also aware of vegans.
Again vegans, amazing creatures – they also contribute so much to our environment. It has been said that if vegans were to cease to exist, then a party would be held shortly afterwards…
I joke, I joke.
I love a good vegan, between two slices of bread with some tomato sauce bit of salt and pepper.
Actually, the point I was trying to make before I started rambling. Have you ever been into a vegan store and asked if they sell honey….?
This is like going into Mothercare and asking if they sell children – you would get a similar reaction.
I was recently in my local vegan store and asked where they kept their honey – the entire store staff and customers stopped what they were doing and stared at me as if I were the devil himself.
The member of staff simply escorted me to the door by the scruff of my neck and threw me onto the pavement…. the words… ‘we…do NOT sell honey…we love bees’ …. echoed in my ears as i bounced off the tarmac.
So, I guess honey is bad.
Who knew??
Apparently, everyone but me….
Nutella then…?
Maybe I’m going to offend chipmunks by eating hazelnuts???
Mike C
Ambulance chasers…. July 10, 2019Warning – ambulance chasers ahead.
I’ve kinda seen this coming for ages so I can’t say I’m surprised.
Where there’s blame there’s a claim etc etc.
Solicitors who know nothing about Japanese knotweed or invasive species are now setting themselves up as authorities on the problem and offering to handle your claim. Knotweed Claims/knotweed legal/knotweed solicitor etc etc…
Really though?
Is this what you want? Don’t you just want your Japanese knotweed issues to be resolved without conflict and legal arguments…???
I’ve always said that with neighbour disputes – the best answer will always be to talk reasonably and politely with your adjacent property owners and resolve matters without the need for legal arguments.
It seems that this is not the world that we live in unfortunately and the rise of the ‘ambulance chasers’ will not help the situation.
The law is absolutely clear – if knotweed grows from an adjacent property into your land then you would win if a claim went to court. Simple as that. You don’t need a solicitor to advise you – you don’t need to issue a claim – you just need to tell your neighbour they will lose out big time if they don’t act.
Please don’t get involved with these scam artists – it’s just not necessary.
Mike C
Business Gurus… July 3, 2019Every fifth or sixth contact from ‘Linked-in’ is somebody who thinks they can ‘transform’ my business and motivate my team. Each one of these business ‘gurus’ is unshaven, with glasses, a balding head and they usually have a slightly ‘jaunty’ look on their face.
These pictures are meant to say ‘…look at me, I’m so chilled at being a business guru, I know everything about business and I’m here to help you… be as successful as me…’
Yet they also manage to come across as smug bastards.
Can I ask a question though please?
If you’re so fucking clever and so fucking successful ….why oh why would you still be working??
If you’re half as clever as you think you are… surely you would have retired somewhere hot and sunny with a huge pot of money that you made from being super successful…??
Or…is the truth somewhat different?
Are you actually a struggling divorcee who thought that having an affair with someone you’re ‘coaching’ was a good idea… then your partner found out and low and behold you’re living out of a suitcase trying to make ends meet by selling yourself as a business genius when in fact….you’re not.
Just saying.
Mike C
