Author Archives: destroyerofharmony

My Stories

The Roma People

Roma Gypsies are all over Europe. They set up their shanty corrugated tent houses/cities along a water source and in most cases it’s right at the entry of a large city.

It’s sad in a way because it gives the city a garbage dump look.

They are not registered, so basically if no paper exists to say they where born then they do not exist.

They cannot gain proper employment, but a very small percentage do gain work however they are paid very low.

They cannot have access to medical services as they are not registered as citizens so their illnesses are treated by their own shed doctors and their children are born in those same sheds.

The Government has no idea how many they number, but what is known is that they are growing.

However the main rule of law for the Roma Gypsies is to beg for money and if that yields no money, they scavenge for throwaway materials or they end up stealing.

This is a general European problem. Every nation has them. For all the wealth the people of Europe flaunt there are millions of people who are not even recognized.

Standard
A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity

Missed Opportunities

The record labels and music news sites that benefit from reporting positive articles about the labels, talk about the billions of dollars the music industry made in the financial year just before Napster hit. So from a simple viewpoint, when Napster hit, sales of music started to decline. For the RIAA and the record labels, these two events correlate, so it implies that one is causing the other to move. But actually the sales of music have been falling for some time.

What happened during the 90’s just before Napster went worldwide was a lot of re-purchasing. This is people who had music on vinyl or cassette and they started to re-purchase the music they already owned on CD’s. These re-purchased items, in most cases re-mastered or super deluxe editions with bonus content at higher prices would skew the record label figures to make it look like new music was bringing in billions of dollars when in fact it was people purchasing old catalogue items of their favourites. And once you had those albums on CD, you didn’t really need to re-purchase them again.

Lars and Kirk from Metallica maintain that it was the right action to go after Napster. No it wasn’t. The right action was to build a business model to replace the gap in the market that Napster was servicing. That gap was basically to allow people to share their music collections (bootlegs and original recordings) in a very simple and convenient way. Napster got popular because of it, and the record labels should have created something to match it.

But the labels did nothing, and then a small company called YouTube did fill the gap that Napster was really servicing. And YouTube today, generates billions of dollars. These billions could have been in the profit and loss statements of the record labels but they messed up. Remember, we are 20 years post Napster, and Napster still gets talked about, while the record labels did absolutely nothing to counter it, except scream for legislation and gestapo like police powers.

So going back to Lars and Kirk, creating a service that allowed people to share their music was the best course of action and as YouTube proves a very profitable one at that.

The arrival of YouTube and eventually streaming services put a dent into the traditional sales model, however with the increase in people attending concerts and festivals, one needs to ask the question, did piracy assist in these increased crowds?

Iron Maiden came back with Bruce Dickinson, bigger than ever and played to sold out crowds in countries they’ve hardly sold any recorded product in. Twisted Sister and Motley Crue also came back bigger than ever post Napster and played to their biggest ever crowds until they retired. Did piracy assist in these concert attendances as well?

And what about Metallica?

Having their music illegally available on Napster basically made sure that their music was available in every place in the world that had an internet connection (it was the same deal for Iron Maiden, Twisted Sister and Motley Crue).

In other words, their music was worldwide, which of course led to more fans having access to their music and a correlation of super large concert attendances and highly ridiculous ticket prices to capitalise on their world-wide reach. Even Metallica sold out concerts in countries without really selling any recorded discs in those countries. In some countries their music wasn’t even available legally, only illegally.

And here we are in 2018, with the record labels still trying to kill the market gap that Napster serviced. In this case, YouTube is the one in the firing line. YouTube and Spotify should just become labels themselves and start financing the production of music themselves, the same way Netflix and Amazon create their own content and also license content from others. Then the argument will be different.

Standard
My Stories, Stupidity

More Macedonia

We stayed in Skopje for a night.

The City Centre is fantastic.

Back in the day, the previous VMRO Government borrowed heaps from the EU and started building monuments and statues on a project called Skopje 2014. The opposing SDS Government kept saying that the costs for the project are excessive and they wanted to see the accounting for it.

In the end, the Skopje 2014 project generated controversy because there was no clear transparent accounting with various estimates for the cost. In other words, people took a lot of monies for their themselves. For example, if the monument would have cost 500,000 Euros, the Government would have claimed it cost 1 million Euros. That’s half a million Euros for the pockets of Government ministers.

When the SDS Government came to power they announced a halt to the project and set up a Commission to investigate the possible removal of some of the monuments. The same deal applies here regardless of who is in power. The Commission might cost 20 million Euros and the Government will show that it cost 21 million Euros. That means another million lost which will somehow end up in the bank account of Government ministers.

Regardless of the Government corruption, Skopje for a tourist looks grand.

Macedonian Gypsy Roma people are everywhere in Skopje. The men are hassling you, trying to sell you anything from fake perfumes, watches, wallets and sunglasses. The women are there begging with little babies, while the children who are able are ready to pickpocket you. Let’s put it this way. They are well organized. But we ignored them and they went away.

And the Old Bazaar is brilliant. Cobblestone lanes weave their way through it. It’s on par to those bazaars you see on the Amalfi Coast in Italy which we got a chance to walk in 2016, or even Old Town in Estonia which we saw with this trip.

The drive from Skopje to Struga was interesting. Based on the kilometers to travel, the drive should be between 90 minutes to 120 minutes. But on the current roads it’s between 180 and 210 minutes.

We passed towns with Albanian flags flying high. I asked the driver why is that. He said it’s because the towns are predominantly Albanian Macedonians. And the pollution surrounding Tetovo, an Albanian town is toxic. The Copper Smelter Plant just spews gasses out into the air. The Government wants the Smelter Plant to put filters on. The Smelter Plant says the Government should pay for it. The Government says the Smelter Plant should pay for it. And no one is paying for it and the air quality is poor.

When you hear these kinds of stories, those green house emission targets and pollution agreements in place between large nothings mean nothing to these countries.

There is history there as well with Albanians in Macedonia wanting to merge with Albania. There is history even further back when Macedonian was part of Yugoslavia and the Serbs at the time came down with an iron fist to any Albanian resurgence. It’s just a melting pot and religion is the furnace.

We passed uncompleted roadworks that were meant to have been finished this year. But they are two to five years behind and the Chinese contractor is requesting an extra 150 million Euro to finish them.

The roads that got built when the country was in Yugoslavia are still in service today. Some are getting resurfaced by the current SDS Government and some are just that bad they have turned into rubble and are not getting resurfaced because the other new road is meant to be in service.

As our driver said, these road works are on an old contract that the previous VMRO Government started and it was well funded at the time but somehow the funds went missing. 150 million of them went missing. So when the new SDS Government came in, they put a halt to the project to investigate the missing funds and in the process broke the contract with the Chinese company which meant the Macedonian Government/People had to pay penalties to the Chinese company.

It’s obvious the country has a lot of other issues and the name dispute is just one of many.

Standard
My Stories, Stupidity

Three Identical Strangers

What kind of fucked up world do we live in where people are allowed to use humans as experiments and mess with their lives.

I understand the 60’s was a time of pushing boundaries but some of the experiments pushed the insanity button.

Like MK Ultra. Like the placing of Jewish multiple births into certain families and then lying to those families who adopted the kids and then turning up to observe how the kids are progressing and lying to the families again as to why they were observing the kids.

Lies and lies from Louise Wise. Yep, that was the adoption agency name that worked with the Doctors in this experiment.

And the experiment was to observe the parenting. They separated kids to see if nature wins or nurture wins. The doctors created the families for the triplets. They first placed girls into each of the families and then the separated triplets.

One of the separated triplets who grew up in a strict household took his own life. The other two didn’t. Would he have taken his life if the kids stayed together?

There is a research assistant who knew a lot when interviewed and she has photos with powerful people all over her place so how far did the research chain go.

And that fucker Doctor sealed the research in Yale until 2066. By then all the people involved who are interested in it would be long gone. And there are still twins out there who don’t know they’ve been separated.

Standard
My Stories

Macedonia

I saw on BBC News that they are having a referendum in the country to vote on the proposed name change to Northern Macedonia. And it’s happening on 30th September. We are booked to visit the country on October 3rd. When we booked our trip we really didn’t know this was happening.

And the country is divided. Talk about a volatile situation. This holiday is getting interesting every day. We have been warned of possible violent protests as the name change referendum didn’t get enough votes to pass the threshold.

I read a text on Tsar Nicholas II which mentioned how he and his first cousin, the King of England, didn’t want to have a Macedonia Nation in the neighborhood after the Ottoman Empire started to fade and they made sure that after the Balkan Wars in 1912/13, the nation would be ripped apart with a section given to Greece, a section to Bulgaria and a section to Serbia.

It’s that Serbian section, the one known as the Republic Of Macedonia or Former Yugoslav Republic Of Macedonia that is independent.

And the Greeks are denying that section from using the name Republic Of Macedonia.

If those people are not Macedonian’s than what are they.

I am a history buff and I really can’t see any difference between what the Nazis did to certain races before the War started and Greece’s Foreign Policy towards Macedonia.

Here you have a country denying people of another country the chance to compete economically and to better themselves.

What’s next?

Concentration camps.

Standard
My Stories

NCL Norwegian Breakaway

Being on a cruise ship is hard to explain.

If you want to stay connected and have internet access, you need to pay $280US for the 8 days, plus a one off connection fee of $3.75US. Seriously after ripping you off for 8 days, they also want a connection fee. Bullshit times three.

And if you want to use it briefly, they have a 99c for 1 minute option. Bullshit times 4. It’s the same rate my phone provider offers, but on the seas I have no service.

And you feel like a prisoner on it. A prisoner who paid for the experience.

It’s shit because NCL cancelled Helsinki and Stockholm stops. They used weather as the reason but it happened three days before we are meant to dock. The call was a bit premature.

There is a general feeling that NCL cancelled because most passengers had independent shore excursions organized for those places and since NCL had a small amount it wasn’t worth docking there.

But the big secret that NCL doesn’t tell you is that the ports at Helsinki, Nynashamn (Stockholm) and Warnemunde (Berlin) are piers which cannot accommodate big ships.

In order to try, the ports have extendable piers. So if the weather is perfect, in other words, no winds, the ships will dock, otherwise it will not dock. A lady on the cruise ship has had two Helsinki stops cancelled, while another has had two Stockholm stops cancelled. And the weather was windy.

But NCL promotes these trips. This trip was on my radar because of those stops. In the end all we saw was Tallinn for two days and St Petersburg for two days and three days of sailing.

Also when we docked in St Petersburg, 70% of the ship had independent shore excursions organized and guess what, they made us wait until the NCL organized shore excursions went first. We didn’t start our tour until after 11am.

The shit thing is how NCL did it. NCL said in a note to our room that all independent shore excursions need to get a time slot for a passport check in the Breakaway room on Level 7.

But it was just a stall to get us out later. The passport checks happened at the docking port with the Russian Authorities.

But there is food galore. Some good, some bad.

So what was the point of the trip.

For the $9K I paid to be on the cruise I didn’t get the value I expected. I would have been better off flying to these countries and staying a few nights there.

I did a Royal Caribbean cruise two years ago that totally blew this one away and Norwegian Breakaway did a great job making sure I never cruise with them again.

In the end, the Breakaway captain did what was necessary to keep the crew and passengers safe. It’s a shame his parent company NCL doesn’t have the same ethos and use manipulative marketing practices to trick people.

Standard
My Stories

More St Petersburg

It used to get flooded a lot and from 1980 after they built the dam wall, it hasn’t happened.

The dam wall was the reason why we couldn’t dock as scheduled. The city had rain for a few days, some high tides and if the dam wall wasn’t there, hello flood.

While rockstars rock the world, engineers change it. Sometimes Mother Nature wins.

St Petersburg while lovely is all about power and glory. Showing off is a phrase I would use. Seriously, what is the point of all those Palace’s and Castles and Gardens. And their are so many monuments celebrating war victories.

The Russians don’t speak about politics in the open for fear of being put in prison. And they are still cautious when it comes to outsiders.

The news channel is controlled by the Government and only approved content could be shown. They are also passing laws to control and restrict the internet. This is what a dictatorship government does. And these same laws that Putin is putting in, is what the Copyright Industry’s want in the UK, Euro, US and Australia. And we have stupid politicians on the take agreeing to introduce bad laws.

Piracy is rampant. The few “shops” I saw had pirated movies and music. But I haven’t heard of the Copyright Industry attacking Russia for it.

During the USSR, all houses and apartments were owned by the State. After the fall, private ownership was allowed. Imagine that. The people who owned houses in 1918, suddenly didn’t own them after the Bolshevik Revolution. It was all owned by the state.

Sort of like the music we purchased. We believed we owned it. But the labels lobbied hard to change the laws to state that our purchase was for a limited license to play the music in our own home only.

Standard
Music

St Petersburg

It’s all about Peter the Great. Basically most of the work that St Petersburg is known for happened during his reign.

He was 6ft 8.

Imagine that height 300 years ago. He was like a god. He took Estonia from Sweden because he visited Estonia as a child and loved it, so he went to war as leader to take it. He also took St. Petersburg from Sweden in a 21 year old war known as “The Great Northern War”.

The city is on 42 islands and it’s based on Peter’s favorite city, Amsterdam.

The name was changed to Leningrad after Lenin died in 1924. During the Gorbachev era, the Communist Government asked people if they want the name to revert back to St Petersburg, thinking the people would say NO, but the people said YES. But the Government did nothing until the USSR dissolved and it reverted back to its original name.

We stopped off at this little Art Gallery and Souvenir shop with free coffee, free vodka and free toilets. I was in heaven.

Peter and Paul Cathedral has the graves of the royal family. Czar Nicholas II family was taken out to some woods and shot during the Bolsheviks Revolution. About 20 years ago, the bodies were found and then transported back to this Cathedral.

Church of The Spilled Blood was built over a side walk where a Tsar was assassinated.

Hermitage Museum in the Winter Palace was just too much gold. Extravagant and impressive.

We did an underground Metro ride and those stations are wow. Everything is impressive and showcases the riches.

Peterhof means Peter’s Court, his summer residence by the water and it was based on Versailles, a place he visited as a child that he wanted to replicate in St Petersburg. It’s impressive as well, totally rebuilt after the Nazis destroyed it in WW2.

Catherine’s Palace was built for Peter The Great’s wife.

Everything revolves around Czar Peter The Great.

Standard
My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Growth Mindsets vs Fixed Mindsets

Take a look at every representative team selection process and there is literature in their guidelines about how the players/kids need to have a growth mindset or exhibit attributes of a growth mindset.

But for some reason, when it comes to picking kids, the selectors themselves have a fixed mindset. Selectors have a mindset that if the kids have been part of their program for a few years, they are better or “way ahead” than the kids that haven’t been in their program.

In Australia, parents pay $2500 for a kid to be in an elite junior team. The fact that a lot of kids don’t even try out for elite teams because of costs is never addressed. This leads to a user pay model, where the parents with money have their children in elite teams. This could be a problem or not a problem depending on the people who select the teams.

What seems to be happening is that the oldest and fastest kid for the age group is selected early on (at U9’s). By U12’s the kid hasn’t learnt how to play football properly, or learned when to use the correct ball mastery move based on what the opponent is doing. But the kid is still fast and is developing/maturing ahead of the other kids. If the selectors had to pick between this kid or the kid born in June, who is playing killer passes and is showing signs of game intelligence, they would still hold on to the kid that has been in the elite program.

Why you ask?

It’s because they have a fixed mindset. The way the selectors see it as like this;

  • Kid is in elite program, training 3 times a week with an accredited coach

versus

  • The kid playing club football, training 3 times a week (most grassroots club train 2 times a week but the high performing clubs train 3 times) with a parent as a coach. In some cases, a parent is accredited and in other cases they aren’t.

Now the accredited coach that the Elite team has can be a great coach or a poor coach. And the thing is, learning is difficult. If it was easy, all the kids would already know everything they need to know.

But unfortunately, there is a pre-judgement issue in the undertow. The kid that runs fastest to the ball is already on the radar because it’s that “easy to measure” skill. The fact that the kid has a poor touch into the opposition, turns into players and turns the ball over is forgotten. The fact the kid is not looking up to see what is happening in the game is also forgotten.

Who cares. He’s faster, he’s older and he’s winning the ball. But those easy to measure skills are not as important as the real skills that matter.

Look at the NFL and how they use data to decide how players coming into the draft should be ranked. The fact that Tom Brady recorded one of the worst scores and went on to become a superstar of the game, shows how people’s pre-judgement affects our choices.

Coaches and selectors need to also have a growth mindset and show some of the attributes the kids need to have. But we live in a society with a win at all cost mindset and a teams performance is viewed through the prism of the result.

Standard
My Stories

Estonia

We got up at 4.50am on Monday to catch a flight from Berlin to Copenhagen. I started to feel nervous as I never questioned the email of the cruise departure point change. I started thinking it was a hoax email.

It was an uneasy feeling. So in my mind I started formulating a plan B. Just in case the ship wasn’t there.

The cab ride cost 50 Euros from our hotel to Schönefeld Airport. I made sure I got a receipt. I’m surprised at how tiny the two Berlin Airports are.

An hour plane ride later and we are in Copenhagen and catching another cab to the cruise terminal. This one cost 550 Danish Kroner. Another receipt in the wallet for the claim back.

And thank god, the ship was there and all the people who went to Berlin to board the cruise where also there. Hell this guy from a Berlin Starbucks that I was talking too a few days before was also there.

Everyone responded to the change.

Once we checked in, we went straight to the food. We were starving. Then after the safety drills, I sat down and started enjoying my Heineken’s. The next part of the journey was beginning.

One of the things that shits me is gratuities. I paid em all for the cruise before hand and also organized the Ultimate Beverage Package (UBP) for my wife and I. So I order a Cappuccino and a bottle of water and I’m told I need to pay for it, because Cappuccinos and bottled waters are not included in the UBP. Sodas and alcohol are, but not water and coffee. What bullshit?

And I pay gratuities again for the coffee. Bullshit times two. We sailed all day Tuesday and on Wednesday we docked in Tallinn and man, it was cold and wet.

Our tour guide, Piret spoke about the history. There is a lot there. The Danes, the Germans, the Swedes and the Russians all ruled the Estonians.

It’s only a small country. 1.2 million people all up.

Estonia was independent from 1918 to the start of WW2. When the USSR annexed the country, the current government ministers were sent to Siberia and killed.

The Russian rule is unpopular. The Russians tell the world they liberated Estonia, while Estonians saw it as oppression. Woman were separated from their children and sent to Siberia. Men were separated from their wives and children and sent to Siberia.

Check out a YouTube movie called “The Singing Revolution” if you don’t believe me. But the shops sell Russian Dolls even though it’s got nothing to do with Estonia. And it’s got this massive Orthodox Church built by the Russians that doesn’t resonate with the Estonians.

The Old Town in Tallinn is UNESCO listed, and is presented as it was in Medieval times. And even back then there was the haves and have nots. The rich lived up on the hill and had walls and gates put in place to keep the poor from the lower side out at night.

The first flag ever created happened in Estonia and it was the Danish flag. The legend has it that it came down from the sky into the court yard.

The Estonian flag is blue, black and white. The blue represents the sea and sky, the black represents the hardship and the wars fought and the white represents hope.

And as the day went on, the weather got worse. For that there was no hope.

And the weather went really bad after we boarded the ship, so it was no surprise that we got a Captain Announcement that due to 4m wave forecasts and severe storms for the Gulf of Finland, St Petersburg was on the verge of flooding, so the authorities closed the dam door to keep it safe. This dam closure also meant that no ships could enter St Petersburg. So we remained in port at Tallinn.

Thursday morning we woke up in Tallinn and we got another Captain message that we are going to sail for St Petersburg this afternoon and from there we are going to sail back to Copenhagen.

What the fuck?

No Helsinki, No Stockholm.

I’ll rather be safe than not but this cruise trip has seen more changes than a Motley Crue concert.

So we did our own thing today in Tallinn. And the weather was blue skies with 60km winds. We’ll take it.

Standard