#book set on another continent can be less than zero

[irandrura]

The Elder Scrolls - a disclaimer and rant

I am going to make some posts about The Elder Scrolls, and in particular, its background, setting, and characters. That means that a disclaimer is probably necessary.

Here’s the tl;dr version: yes, I know about the lore. Please trust me when I say that I was really super into it about a decade and a half ago, and I’ve kept an eye on it since. I have read the Michael Kirkbride forum posts. I have read C0DA, The Seven Fights of the Aldudagga, Sermon Zero, the Loveletter from the Fifth Era, and so on. I know the forum roleplays like The Trial of Vivec. I know that Ayrenn is really a time-travelling mining robot from outer space. I think all the stuff I just referenced varies widely in quality, opinions quite reasonably differ on it, and it’s frequently at odds with what’s actually depicted in the games, but at any rate, I promise that I know it.

So when I go on and talk about Psijics – I know, all right? I know. I am choosing to engage with the setting on a level that focuses more on characters, human stories, and, well, the narratives of the games. The TES apocrypha is interesting, but of limited relevance to the things I’m interested in. There are many valid ways to enjoy TES. Okay?

Now, the longer part:

If you haven’t played TES, and… actually, scratch that, for like 90% of people who’ve played TES, none of the above needed to be said. The thing is, when you play a TES game, it is a fairly straightforward elves-and-wizards-and-dragons fantasy setting in the D&D mould. Indeed, the earliest versions of it, back in the 90s, were based on a D&D campaign. So there’s relatively little surprising about it, and “it’s like D&D” will carry you most of the way towards understanding it.

However, TES games are also renowned for containing lots of in-game books you can read, which are often some of the most striking and evocative parts of the games. These are supplemented by a large library of apocrypha: often unofficial material, posted by developers (and ex-developers) on the internet. The most infamous of these writers is Michael Kirkbride, who has some… very unusual tastes and interests, but there are a range of other names as well. In any case, the result is that TES has an ‘expanded universe’ composed of these non-canonical writings. Often canonical texts in-game hint at some of this vast, unofficial hinterland, and sometimes ideas invented in the apocrypha sneak back into the games themselves.

Further, the apocrypha often hints at what seems to be a very different setting to the one directly experienced in the games: one that’s less about warriors and wizards and adventure and more one about divine magic, transcendence, myth, and meaning. The descriptions often seem to be somewhat at odds. This can best be demonstrated with some examples.

For instance, here is Michael Kirkbride’s description of a High Elf warship, written before any game had depicted the High Elf homeland:

Made of crystal and solidified sunlight, with wings though they do not fly, and prows that elongate into swirling Sun-Birds, and gem-encrusted mini-trebuchets fit for sailing which fire pure aetheric fire, and banners, banners, banners, listing their ancestors all the way back to the Dawn.

This is Old Mary at Water.

 You will immediately notice two things. The first is that this sounds really cool. Some of it you need some context to parse (the old elven homeland is called ‘Aldmeris’, hence ‘Old Mary’ as a mocking nickname given by its foes; the High Elves believe that they are literally, genealogically descended from the spirits that created the world at the Dawn), but even so, man, that warship sounds awesome. This Kirkbride guy can write. The second thing, though, is that it is extremely unclear what any of this even means. Given that descriptions… what does this ship look like? Try to picture it! What the heck does ‘crystal and solidified sunlight’ look like? How exactly does a trebuchet throw fire? What?

You might then go on to play a video game where the High Elves are taking part in a war to conquer the continent. If you’re like me, you’re probably keen to see one of these fabled warships. But then it turns out that in-game, High Elf ships look… like this. Or like this.

(Indeed, the High Elves are often a good example of this. An earlier written text, in a pamphlet enclosed with the video game Redguard, described the elven capital of Alinor as “made from glass or insect wings” or “a hypnotic swirl of ramparts and impossibly high towers, designed to catch the light of the sun and break it into its component colours”. Needless to say, should you visit it in a game, it does not look like that.)

After a while, you start to notice that there is very little connection between the world implied by the apocrypha and the world experienced in the games. Kirkbride says that the “closest mythical model” for the ancient knight Pelinal “would be Gilgamesh, with a dash of T-800 thrown in, and a full-serving of brain-fracture slaughterhouse antinomial Kill(3) functions stuck in his hand or head”, and says “Pelinal was and is an insane collective swarmfoam war-fractal from the future”. Indeed in Kirkbride’s descriptions Pelinal seems to have been an ultraviolent schizophrenic who led a wild, genocidal band of anti-elven warriors, was very definitely gay, and who had only a red, gaping hole where his heart ought to be (which in turn is a reference to the missing heart of the creator-trickster deity Lorkhan, whom Pelinal was in part a mortal incarnation of). You might find that really cool or you might find it banal, but there’s no denying that it’s extremely different to the Pelinal whose ghost you can meet in-game. The apocryphal Pelinal is a mad butcher whose closest mythic model, contra Kirkbride, actually seems to be Achilles; the game Pelinal is a straightforwardly sympathetic chivalric knight. This is complicated somewhat by the in-game books being written by Kirkbride and therefore being gonzo bananas insane, so the ‘canon’, such as it is, is unclear – but at any rate it is impossible to deny that there’s an incongruity.

I could go on with examples for a long time. I haven’t even mentioned the most famous – the 1st edition PGE description of Cyrodiil compared to what it actually looks like in Oblivion – or more recent ones, like the gulf between Alduin the mythic dragon who will consume the world and indeed time itself in its terrible jaws and the frankly quite underwhelming beastie you fight in Skyrim. The point I’m making is that there are effectively two TES settings: one relatively down-to-earth, immersive, and depicted in great detail in the video games, and one that’s this absurd mash-up of magic and science fiction and whatever psychedelics Michael Kirkbride has been taking this week.

I write this long disclaimer because it has been my experience discussing TES in the past that people who are mostly interested in the former – in the relatively grounded setting experience in the games – sometimes run into an elitist attitude from people who are interested in the latter. Sometimes fans of the apocrypha can come on much too strong, or gatekeep the idea of being a fan of ‘TES lore’. Any sentence that starts with “actually, in the lore…” is practically guaranteed to go on to be awful.

My point is not that the apocryphal TES is bad. As I hinted above, in my opinion its quality varies extremely widely: there are things that Kirkbride has written that I think are pretty cool (I unironically love the Aldudagga) and there are things he’s written that I think are indulgent tripe (C0DA stands out). Ultimately it’s all about what you enjoy, and I would never try to tell anyone that they shouldn’t have fun reading or speculating about or debating the zaniness of some of these texts. Indeed, as far as online fandoms and video game fan fiction goes, TES probably has the most fruitful ‘expanded universe’ that I’ve ever seen, and I think that’s wonderful. Kirkbride himself has said that “it’s really all interactive fiction, and that should mean something to everyone” and “TES should be Open Source”, which is a position I wholeheartedly endorse – and does a lot to take the edges off some of the worse things he’s said.

Rather, my point is that everyone should enjoy what they feel most interested in, or most able to enjoy. Further, I argue that there is absolutely nothing wrong – and for that matter absolutely nothing less intelligent or less intellectual – about a person preferring to engage with the version of TES most clearly depicted in the video games. Part of this might be defensiveness on my part, because in my opinion what TES has always done best is a nuanced depiction of cultural conflict: this is particularly the case in Morrowind and Skyrim, and ESO’s better expansions tend to deal in this area as well. As such I take relatively little interest in the metaphysical content of much of the apocrypha. For me, Shor, say, is most interesting as the protagonist of several conflicting cultural narratives, rather than as a metaphysical essence.

I would also argue that the most recent game content has taken a good approach by going out of its way to legitimise a range of possible approaches to the setting. The latest chapter of ESO, Greymoor, includes a system where the player can dig up ancient artifacts, and a number of NPC scholars will comment on them for you. This allows the game to indicate in-character scholarly disagreement over issues fans have previously debated. One item shows disagreement over whether the mythical character Morihaus was literally a bull, or a minotaur, or whether he was a human allegorically referred to as a bull. Another one points to disagreement over the possibility of magical spaceships: apocryphal materials have referred to ‘Sunbirds of Alinor’, ‘Reman Mananauts’, etc., as sorts of magical astronauts, but that seems so ridiculous given what we’ve seen in the games as to be easily discounted. I like items like this in-game because they seem to say to players, “It’s okay to disagree over questions like this – no one is doing TES wrong.”

That said, I am reasonably positive that I’m in the minority here, because I am in the camp that usually says that legends exaggerate, and so Morihaus probably wasn’t a bull and magical spaceships don’t exist. This is not a popular position. My reason, of course, is that I think tales are more likely to grow in the telling rather than shrink, and I have a dozen of what I think are hard-to-deny examples of this happening in TES (e.g. heroic narratives of the War of Betony are very different to the grubby reality you uncover in Daggerfall, or Tiber Septim is almost certainly from Alcaire rather than Atmora). However, this means that I openly take an opposite methodology to Michael Kirkbride. Kirkbride was once asked by a forum poster whether some in-game writings are exaggerated. His reply was: “I prefer, "It is very possible, as is the case throughout this magical world, that some of the exaggerated claims made about some subjects pale in comparison to the Monkey Truth. ZOMGWTFGIANTFEATHEREDFLUTYRANTS."”

Needless to say, I find this implausible, and it means that, for example, I interpret the Remanada as an obvious piece of propaganda, inventing a story about Alessia’s ghost in order to retroactively explain why Reman, probably born the son of a hill chieftain with zero connection to the previous dynasty, really has imperial blood. This is a very different but in my opinion more historically plausible take than Kirkbride’s, who has a naked thirteen year old Reman standing atop his harem and slaughtering recalcitrant followers.

I’m not saying that my approach is objectively correct. It’s all fiction – and as Kirkbride said, TES is open source. The only thing that matters is what you the reader, player, or interpreter find the most interesting. For me, that means generally favouring what is seen in the games over the developer apocrypha, which I can take or leave.

At any rate.

I’m going to go on and make some more fannish posts about stuff in ESO that I liked.

Just… if it’s relevant, be aware that I am familiar with the zany stuff. Some of it I like, a lot of it I don’t like, and I feel no obligation to use it if I don’t like it.

There. Disclaimer over.

[nigeiadigitalmarketingcompany]

Brexit: Boris Johnson’s Impossibility Theorem

Digital Elixir Brexit: Boris Johnson’s Impossibility Theorem

Even though the press paid a lot of attention to Boris Johnson’s taking of office theatrics, and in particular his doubling down on his promise of an October 31 exit and stocking his Cabinet with radicals to help assure that, there were a couple of signals from the EU side that are worth noting, which we’ll cover after a short recap.

We said early on that the course of Brexit was showing troubling parallels to the Greece 2015 bailout negotiations. Specifically, from the outset, the UK overestimated its bargaining leverage. Too many well placed pols and pundits convincing themselves that the EU would be more damaged by a crashout than the UK and therefore would be desperate to avoid a no deal. A more reality-based way of coming to a similar conclusion is that EU pols will always favor kick the can down the road over making a difficult decision, particularly one that will result in real damage. Thus push come to shove, given a way to avoid a Brexit, the EU will take advantage of it.

We now appear to have hit the point we anticipated, that of a game of chicken. The pro-Brexit faction, despite having lost support in the UK population, has embraced a more and more hard-line position, and the peculiarities of the UK system has allowed one of their favorites, Boris Johnson, to become Prime Minister. Some hoped that the fabulously unprincipled Johnson might find a way to reverse himself and call for a face-saving extension down the road, but Johnson looks to be doing everything he can to commit himself to an October 31 departure. The press was agog at Johnson’s Cabinet purge, in which he ousted anyone who was soft on Brexit, and populated his team heavily with MPs from the Leave campaign, leading some to speculate that despite Johnson’s protestations otherwise, he was preparing for an early election. Another indicator: the Tories launched a “blitz” of election ads to test messages.

In a further gesture to show his commitment to leaving on October 31, Johnson said in his first speech to the House of Commons that he will not nominate an EU Commissioner. Express pointed out that that would make it difficult to obtain an extension. The term of the current Commission ends on October 31 and the UK would need to field a new EU Commissioner were it to remain in the EU beyond that date.

A defining characteristic of the Johnson Government is its mediocrity. From vlade:

What’s really staggering the the proportion of people who are totally incompetent and believe their own BS (Raab, Moggie, Patel, Leadsom..). I despair for the UK’s education system with Williamson being allowed anywhere near it.

Johnson, in his first speech as Prime Minister, promised the UK was leaving the EU, “no ifs or buts,” in 99 days with a new deal. He also promised economic unicorns that would make Labour blush for its grandiose patter about “safer streets and better education and fantastic new road and rail infrastructure…higher wages, and a higher living wage, and higher productivity we close the opportunity gap” without any specifics as to how to produce such miraculous improvements. Johnson did acknowledge that there was a “remote possibility” that there would be no deal, and so

…we will now accelerate the work of getting ready and the ports will be ready and the banks will be ready and the factories will be ready and business will be ready and the hospitals will be ready and our amazing food and farming sector will be ready and waiting to continue selling ever more not just here but around the world….

I imagine at least some of you in the UK saw Johnson speak, and I feel very sorry for you. I can’t recall ever reading a major address that had so much hot air and so little substance, and what substance there was was deeply wrongheaded. Let’s start with the fact that Sir Ivan Rogers said it would take the UK five to ten years to be ready to trade with the rest of the world on a free trade agreement basis, and pretty much everyone competent to opine has made a similar assessment, if anything tending to the ten year end of the spectrum. So where is this Johnsonian readiness to be found?

On the other side of the channel, EU officials who prefer to communicate in diplo-speak are resorting to sharper notes in their register to try to penetrate the fog around No. 10 and Parliament. You have to wonder if they are responding to the clangor out of a sense of duty, or to demonstrate to their colleagues and history that they did everything they could.

Entirely predictably, they swatted down Johnson’s happy talk. Michel Barnier’s remarks via a Times reporter:

Barnier rejects Johnson’s plan as basis for talks in note to EU27 pic.twitter.com/Bu5qO24O4a

— Bruno Waterfield (@BrunoBrussels) July 25, 2019

Waterfield focused on Barnier’s intimating that a general election might be in store (the “many strong reactions….in the House of Commons”) and that Johnson’s no deal bluster was a gambit to split the EU. But at least as significant was Barnier’s reference to the mandate and his offer to remain the point person during the summer (“don’t worry about your holiday, I’ll let you know if there is anything you really need to hear about”).

By invoking the mandate, Barnier was reminding the EU national diplomats that there isn’t even remotely enough time to negotiate a new Withdrawal Agreement even if the EU was to have a massive change of heart. Barnier is saying that his hands are tied, that he couldn’t discuss a new deal with the UK unless and until the EU went back to square zero and gave him new marching orders. He’s almost certainly reminding them of this section of Article 50:

In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union.

Various EU national leaders have backed Barnier’s and Juncker’s position, that the Withdrawal Agreement is the only deal possible given the givens. Barnier is alluding to the notion that in extremis, he could be told to try again, but that would mean having the European Council come up with new guidelines. Even with the addition of an early European Council meeting, no way can this get done by October 31.

Juncker also entirely predictably sent the same message. Notice how closely the language of Juncker’s nein parallels Barnier’s text. From the Guardian:

The European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, has told Boris Johnson that the EU27 will not give in to his demand to renegotiate the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

On Thursday in his first telephone call with Johnson as prime minister, Juncker called the existing deal “the best and only agreement possible”…

Juncker said the EU would analyse any ideas put forward by the UK provided they were compatible with the withdrawal agreement, his spokeswoman Mina Andreeva tweeted in a readout of the phone call.

Politico underscored the significance of the minimalism:

But a Commission spokeswoman, providing a brief summary of the Juncker-Johnson phone call, did not even try to put a positive spin on things. She made clear that Juncker expressed no willingness to budge a millimeter, let alone an imperial inch, on the Withdrawal Agreement, which Brussels has stated repeatedly is not open for renegotiation.

But most important is the one possible spot where the UK might be able to drive a chink that could influence the EU is holding firm. From the Irish Times:

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has told Boris Johnson, the new British prime minister, that an entirely new Brexit deal “is not going to happen”.

He also said negotiating a new deal “within weeks or months” – with Mr Johnson saying he can leave the EU with a new deal by the next Brexit deadline on October 31st – is “not in the real world”.

The press also made much of the fact that Juncker gave Johnson his cell phone number. But Barnier and Juncker appear to have nominated themselves, even more so than usual, to run interference for other EU figures. Juncker seems to like press attention, so putting himself on BoJo’s speed dial will make him less of a lame duck.

Macron has agreed to meet with Johnson in August, while Macron’s spokesperson insisted that the Withdrawal Agreement was not up for discussion. This again is no surprise, given that Macron has been taking a hard line on Brexit.

One wonders how Johnson will fight off a general election. LibDem leader Jo Swinson has written Corbyn to call him out for “aiding and abetting this Conservative Brexit” and insisting he Do Something. On the one hand, despite his bold talk, Corbyn must recognize that Labour is likely to lose seats in a general election, making the noble gesture of ousting Johnson costly. A no confidence motion may fail for that reason, as well as for the fact that previous whip counts found that Tory rebels were outnumbered by Labour MPs who would not vote to derail Brexit.

Will Johnson book so many meetings on the Continent that he can create the impression that motion equals progress? Will the press play along with Johnson, as it did with Theresa May, messaging that a deal is nigh when it was pretty clear no such thing was happening? And even with the Brexit train bearing down on the UK, will party interest manage to keep the opposition from mustering enough votes to turf out Johnson?

Even though politics in the UK still retains the appearance of normalcy, it’s hard to think this false calm will hold once the summer is over. As several astute readers have said, the UK political order is suffering a breakdown. And the early phases of revolutions typically make things worse for ordinary people.

Brexit: Boris Johnson’s Impossibility Theorem

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[shayanyaan]

OnAir

The year is 1999. I am at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and struggling to pick up my jaw that has dropped to the floor. Gate after gate of KLM 747s, all readying themselves to pick up passengers and whisk them off to some exotic corner of the globe. I can’t quite work out whether my jaw dropped at the sheer arresting beauty of the 747 or at the sheer sense of possibility that a large international airport brings. The possibility of new destinations, of new experiences, of new people, of new food. There is something special about walking into an airport, ticket in hand - ticket to another country. That day, I too boarded one of those 747s. To Mumbai.

Back then, the beautiful and majestic 747 could fly you halfway around the world, but even she was powerless to help you deal with the unparalleled boredom that plagued the long haul flight. Sure, you’d have a book to read. Maybe you talked with the person next to you. Perhaps a board game or two. Afterwards, you’d nod off - or at least try to. You’d wake up to find you still have 5 hours to go. 5 hours of staring into space, in a metal tube. The metal tube itself would be hurtling through the atmosphere at close to the speed of sound. Yet inside, you feel that time has stopped.

---

The year is 2002. I am at Paris Charles De Gaulle. Again I am flying to Mumbai. The aircraft itself escapes my memory, probably because it wasn’t as wondrous as a 747. But no matter. This time, it is what I found inside the aircraft that is crucial. The age of the inflight entertainment was all but upon us. A screen on the back of every seat - only a small one, but a screen nonetheless. Movies to watch, games to play, duty free to be bought - all at the touch of a button and without leaving your seat or craning your neck to catch a glimpse of those ghastly drop down screens from the roof. Happy days. Paris to Mumbai in 10 hours but it felt more like 5.

---

The year is 2017. I am at Dubai, settling into a 777ER to Hyderabad. This flight is a mere 3.5 hours long - even less than 3 if the winds are kind. Inflight entertainment has come a long way since 2002. Emirates claims to provide me with literally thousands of channels to watch. But I think we can do better than that, certainly in 2017.

The 777 I am on is a decade old, but it is equipped with WiFi that will be available from 10000 feet. It seems so trivial now but from being asked to religiously switch off all electronics not too long ago, to being provided with WiFi on board, I am amazed at how far air travel has come.

While we are still on the ground, I hit off a message to S, who is sitting 10000 miles away in downtown San Francisco. I decide to liven up his morning with a picture of the mighty GE90 engine that is right next to me. I struggle to get over how big this thing is.

We are just pushing back. “This aircraft still has CRT screens, I am guessing it is from 2006?” I try to recall how old Emirates’ oldest aircraft is. Happily, S is not having a busy morning and immediately fires up flightradar - another great wonder of the internet. “A6-EBH from 2006.” My suspicions are confirmed.

“Man, that engine,” he says out of the blue. “I can’t stop looking at it and marvelling at the size of it”

“It’s like flying with half a 737 fuselage next to us!”

Meanwhile, we gingerly make our way to the runway, and hold just short. I can imagine the ATC calls. “Emirates five two four heavy, hold short, runway three zero left”. The cabin lights have been dimmed. Only the odd reading lamp is visible. A hush descends upon the cabin. No babies on board tonight! I peer out of the window. The landing lights have been switched on. I can see the Emirates logo on the engine, the gold font, shining in the light. The engines are purring away impatiently. A hundred thousand pounds of thrust on each wing, waiting to be unleashed on the runway. This is my favorite part of the take off - the anticipation.

I turn my gaze skyward. The darkness is dotted with a line of approaching aircraft with their landing lights twinkling in the sky. I count 4 of them, then 3 more behind, all glistening like pearls on a necklace. The pinprick lights become bigger and bigger as one by one, Emirates 777s touch down, with an air of nonchalance about them. The landings are flawless. The passengers inside wouldn’t have felt a thing.

“Cabin crew, prepare for take off, ” the British accent from the flight deck is true and crisp. Less than a minute later we are aloft, the twin GE90s booming away. We continue our climbout over the Persian gulf, only impeded by a gentle buffet from a patch of rough air. The mighty 777 negotiates it with ease and then, the wing next to me drops, as we perform a swooping right hand turn to point towards the Arabian Sea. “Emirates five two four heavy, right turn heading one one zero,”  The little map on the screen in front of me indicates a flight time of less than 3 hours. I am glad to be heading homeward.

The glittering Dubai skyline now behind us and the landing lights switched off, the ten thousand feet chime sounds, allowing the cabin crew to move around. It is also a sign for me to connect to OnAir, the inflight wifi. On the other side of the world, S, has been monitoring the departure on flightradar24. I can imagine him pretending to be an air traffic controller, with his screen set to the dark radar mode.

He sends me a screenshot, showing the other India bound Emirates departures at this time of night. Mumbai, Delhi, Trivandrum. In another picture he shows me some of the A380s - Titanics in the sky, tracing imaginary highways to London, Singapore, Melbourne. Thousands of people from all parts, thousands of people who would otherwise have nothing to do with each other, converging that night, every night, ten kilometers above the Arabian Sea. I cannot help but feel a deep kinship to everyone. There is something utterly magical about this - we are merely green dots on a radar screen, yet up here close to the heavens, I know we are more than that. We are all brethren of the same aerial kingdom, distinguished only by a flight number.

Dinner is served but for once, I am not interested. S is at work, but in spirit he is right next to me in conversation. “Imagine surveying a starry night sky from over the dimmed lights of the 777 autopilot panel, ” he says. We spend the next few minutes thinking about how the flightdeck has got to be one of the world’s most beautiful workplaces. Together we piece together the the 777 cockpit - screens showing the aircraft’s attitude, heading, fuel and engine thrusts. The captain and first officer, studiously monitoring the instruments, as the plane approaches the Indian subcontinent, autopilot in command. Soon they will be talking to Mumbai air traffic control.

From the window, I can see the lights of Mumbai fade away into the darkness of the Bhor ghats. Minutes later we are over Pune. I take a moment to reflect on countless ghat crossings I’ve done on the train. “The bhor ghat crossing, a leisurely hour on the Deccan Queen, blink and you miss it on the 777, ” I tell S, who channels his inner railfan and asks if we would like bankers for the crossing. “Not with two massive GE90s powering us, we don’t” I hit back.

As we begin our descent, I bid goodbye to S, thanking him for accompanying me on this flight. I gaze out of the window, looking for the first signs of my hometown. The landing gear drops, instantly causing the wind to whoosh around it, slowing us down. Almost on cue, the wing flaps extend, providing us with more lift. Hyderabad tower would have cleared us to land by now. But I still have some more thoughts to process.

Over the years I have flown home dozens of times. But every single time, in the moments before touchdown, more than the home I am about to walk into, it is always the plane that brought me there, that is in my thoughts. I owe a lot of wonderful memories with my family, to the miracle of flight. And on this occasion, to the miracle of wifi. Not only am I able to experience the joy of flying across oceans and continents, I can now share that joy with another person while I’m at it.

The plane is now lined up exactly with the runway center line. 500 feet beyond the threshold, the wheels meet the surface. Less than 24 hours earlier, I was in Texas. Now I am 10 time zones away, in India. On the way home in the cab, it hits me, not for the first time. Air travel has shrunk the world. And so has the internet.

[davidsilvercloud]

Terry David “Butch/Butch Naked” Silvercloud

“Step aside!  I shall perform the necessary heroics”  Comic Book Guy/The Simpsons

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I’m not your average toad on the road.

“I’ve come to hate my own creation.  Now I know how God feels.”  Homer Simpson . Now keep reading. THE DAILY GRIND… ARE WE THERE YET? Friday, 15 Dec. 2017

I was tired and went to bed early last nite.  Wuz up at 6:30am when it was still dark out there.  No special plans for the day except to keep working on my art.

The day began dark and grey after overnight showers and stayed dark until about 2pm.  We had patches of blue by late day.  Sunset is about 4:15pm.  Cool but not cold.  Got lots of painting done, some exercises, and some selfies.

Christmas always creeps up, suddenly, on me.  I don't much have any interest in it, at all but one can't avoid the advertising and other events going on.  Less than two weeks away, now, then it will be over for another year.  Time goes by very quickly for me, in spite of my loneliness, and Christmas is one of those time markers in my life.  I have only one close friend and she lives more than 100 miles away.  I'm pretty reclusive by nature.

Most of you get up to go to work, or to school, each day.  I don't have to worry about that anymore.  I have a very small pension and the rent gets paid and I am able to eat and cloth myself.  Not much left over for anything else, but that's the way she goes.

My point is, I have time on my hands to think about things and one does as one gets older... things like what is important and what is not.  Food and shelter are always important but, once those are out of the way, one can have a look a life and what one is doing in it.

For me, I have only one close friend who has survived the rigours of friendship for over 40 years now.  We don't have a lot in common except a history and trust.  My friend is an older lady than me who has little education, compared to myself.  But she has the determination and a desire to be helpful to others without being condemning.  I like that in a person.  I don't expect anyone to know as much as I do, nor to have my intelligence... something I was gifted with at birth, not for any other reason.  It's a very difficult life being quite intelligent and having an education... you realize what a horrific mess this world is and how little you can do to change it.

Stupid people don't know they are stupid so reasoning with them is a waste of time and very frustrating.  I no longer have any desire to be alive and, simply, try to be useful and make some attempt to enjoy each day as best I can.

I live in Vancouver which is a nice city.  It's very conservative and not overly conducive to being an artist.  I attribute that to the fact that more than 55% of the population is non-white, new immigrants, and conservative by nature.  Vancouver is more than 50% Asian and New Canadians who are conservative by nature.  Because of the high Asian population, Western art and culture is not so popular as the rest of the continent.  Paintings don't sell well here and the market is so poor there are very few Art Galleries in Vancouver now.

We have a public transport system that, basically, shuts down at 1am.   There are some late, infrequently running, buses but, if you are caught downtown after 1am it will be a very, very, very expensive cab ride... if you can, actually FIND a cab, to get home.  Some cab drivers will refuse to drive to the suburbs.  UBER is illegal in Vancouver although there are some similar Asian services if you speak Chinese and have an app. for it.

Vancouver is, also, quite far north so the winter days are quite short and can be quite dreary... dark, wet and cold.  The sun comes up around 8am and sets just after 4pm.  A short day if there is no sun.  If you are feeling a bit down in the dumps, the weather is no help.  I live here for the mild climate and closeness to the outdoors and wilderness.  It is a very, very, expensive city in which to live, Vancouver is.  Most of my income goes to rent and the vacancy rate is close to zero, here.

"it's time to go home.  The insurance company said you're as well as they're going to pay for" Doctor Hibbert/The Simpsons

THIS IS THE END OF THE DAILY GRIND.

IF YOU HAVEN’T BEEN HERE, BEFORE, HERE IS MORE STUFF TO READ…

I’m a bit OCD and ADHD and go on, and on, like a dripping tap.  Think Sheldon Cooper, if that rings some kind of bell.  I gather it's some kind of need I have to be, constantly, in complete control of everything.  I quite simply assume everyone around me is a complete idiot.  The humans aren't doing a very good job of convincing me otherwise.  You must prove yourself to me.  Seriously, I mean it.  I expect to be disappointed.   Show me what you've got and back it up with proof.

http://DavidSilvercloud.com (Blog)    (http://David_Silvercloud.Tumblr.com)

http://ButchNews.com (Video)     (http://YouTube.com/ButchNews)

http://ButchNaked.com (Photo Stream)    (http://Flickr.com/David_Silvercloud)

http://SeriousThunder.com (Art)

http://ElectronSpeed.Tumblr.com     The Electron sets the speed of light... yup.  Physics… The Speed of Light, Grand Unified Theory, Gravity, Dark Matter, Dark Energy… how the physical size of the Electron is the clock that sets the speed of light.  Gravity is motion and a product of the fact that nothing ever sits still, combined with the magnetic properties of Dark Matter/Energy.  Nothing can ever move in an absolute circle and rest is a relativity illusion.

Absolute rest is not possible… ever.  The universe can not end.  Time is change and is an illusion.  It is always now, everywhere, all at once, all of the time. Proof of that is that ANY object MUST be HERE and THERE at the SAME time, no matter how large… even a Galaxy.  It is always NOW on both sides… here and there, in space,  of the Galaxy… all galaxies, everywhere.  Waves can be either physical or electronic.  The duality of the universe keeps it ongoing.  DNA is the battery of life.  When the chains can no longer co-operate, life ceases in the body.  Life, itself, is a duality.  Time measurement is a relativity convenience.)  Time travel is impossible because time is not a place and nothing stays where it was.  One year from now the Solar System will have moved about seven BILLION kilometres through space and will NEVER return to where it was… ever.

Earth travels through space like a long wave… it has NEVER, ever made an actual circle, nor ellipse, in space.  The circle/ellipse is an illusion of relativity.  Nothing can ever travel in an actual circle in space… NOTHING.  Nothing can ever go backward.  Backwards motion is an illusion of relativity.  Time is a repercussion of change and has no fixed rate… things explode or move like a glacier.  At best we can only compare rates of change.  Our rate of change is called the second/minute/hour/day/month/year system.

NOTHING CAN EVER MOVE IN A TRUE CIRCLE.  THE EARTH HAS NEVER MADE A LOOP IN SPACE… EVER.  YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW.

WATCH VIDEO FOR EXPLANATION OF THE PATH OF EARTH THROUGH SPACE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPjohZCMwmI

Earth moves about 7 billion kilometers through space, each year… in a long wave.  Earth NEVER returns to where it was before.  Earth is NOT an island in space… one of the reasons why time travel is impossible.  If you take a trip through space, outside the Solar System, Earth will NOT be there when you return… it will be far, far away.  You will have to return to where it will BE when you arrive… remember, it’s moving very, very, very fast through space in a long wave… never a circle, or ellipse.

http://The-Shape-Of-God.Tumbler.com   Manuscript of my book… The Shape of God.

Butch, himself.  Visual Artist, Photographer, Physicist (Particle, Sub/Atomic Physics/Relativity)

Inhibitions are just so inhibiting, I avoid them.

I’m a friendly, but pretty blunt, kind of guy.  No time for beating around the bush.  I like to say what I mean and mean what I say.  I’m 73 years old.  Time is not on my side.  You don’t have to like me.  I’m a social recluse, anyway.  I share my life, in photos, video, and words, to let you into my life and hope to inspire you to be a productive and useful human.  I have old age issues but will continue to post, here, while I’m well and able.  I talk a lot… I’m told it’s part of my OCD and ADHD.  Come direct at http://ButchNaked.com  Sign in if you wish to see me naked.

If you don’t know me, the following might help you get to know what kind of person I am.  I don’t expect you to understand me.  I can be a bit OCD and ADHD.

“They’ve already got more blowjobs than we’ll ever get”  Steve Smith (American Dad), talking about college jocks.

“Now let us touch testicles and mate for life”  Alien on The Simpsons

“It never hurts to have a second set of prints on a gun”  Nelson Muntz, The Simpsons.

I’m here to teach you things.  While I appreciate other people’s opinions, I really don’t much give a crap what anyone thinks.  Until you prove your worth, I will be nice but you have to earn my respect. The moment you say a word, I’ll be figuring you out really, really fast.  You should assume that I don’t trust anyone.  I’ve not met a single trustworthy person in my entire life.  I’ve met lots of nice people who aren’t too bright… well-intentioned folk who know little about anything, people who are nice, most of the time until you say something that offends them.  Honourable people agree to disagree.

Look up the phrase “CRITICAL THINKING” then learn to practice it.  Most people leap before they look and judge before they listen to the facts.  Most don’t have enough knowledge, nor experience, to be experts in much of anything.  You don’t know what you don’t know.  I like to remind you of that, often.

The only other REALLY IMPORTANT thing to know about me is that I, totally, despise all religions, the teaching of religion, and religious institutions… I despise them as the evilest things on the planet.  If you follow a religion, you CAN NOT BE MY FRIEND.   THAT’S THAT.  You are an ignorant idiot who is an ever-present danger to yourself and everyone and everything around you.  Nothing, absolutely NOTHING, is eviler than religion.  I don’t stand for, nor sing, our National Anthem because it praises a fictitious and superstitious being called 'God’.  Only a brain dead moron bonehead ignorant idiot would believe such a thing.

If you have a religion, I will not associate with you… period.  You are a danger to be around.  Yes, I insult religions… they are extraordinarily evil.  I said it, I mean it.  You have a right to be an idiot, but not around me.  I have a right to defend myself against the horrors of religion and I will.  Religion is evil.  People who are into religion are, either, brainwashed or extraordinarily ignorant, not very intelligent, a danger to themselves and everyone around them, and must be avoided.  I can’t say it enough times.  If you have a religion you are brainwashed or too fucking stupid to associate with.  Brainwashed, or stupid… either way you are too dangerous to be around.  Religion is the number one problem in the world.

http://The-Shape-Of-God.Tumblr.com

I keep a homepage at http://ButchBoard.com

My main video page is http://YouTube.com/ButchNews  

go direct at http://ButchNews.com

You may come directly to my photostream at http://ButchNaked.com You may download and share nude photos of me... go nuts.

I have zero inhibitions about nudity and sex.  You must sign in to see me naked.  I talk, openly, about sex.  You may download and share nude photos of me… go nuts.

GOOGLE my name (Terry David Silvercloud or David Silvercloud) for more information about me.

#Artist #Photographer #Physics #The Speed of Light #Light Speed #Relativity #David Silvercloud #Physicist #Butch Naked

[laurietom]

My Favorite Games of 2016

My gaming backlog is something impressive, as I typically buy a few more than I can play in any given year, and then those extras build up. The result is that I rarely play any game in its year of release unless it's a part of a favorite series, and even then, depending on how busy I am, a much anticipated game might get postponed. But I'm not adverse to playing older games. As long as the gameplay is still there I generally don't care. Maybe that's the same for you? These are the nine games I liked enough to finish for the first time in 2016, in the order I played them. Virtue's Last Reward * I enjoyed 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors for the Nintendo DS, so I intended to pick up the sequel, but took a while due to a bugged 3DS version (now patched) and not having a Vita at the time. Virtue's Last Reward is quite simply the strongest entry in the Zero Escape series. Science, pseudo-science, multiple universes, time travel, non-linear gameplay, and an incredible cast of characters made this a joy to play. I was up at 3am with tears in my eyes (on a work night!) because I had to see a particularly bittersweet sequence through. Fair warning there is a lot of reading, and the gameplay is all making choices and escape room mechanics, but if that's even remotely your bag it's worth playing. It'll mean more if you play 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors first, but the good news is that both games are coming to Steam in a remastered edition. Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest I was looking forward to Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest, and despite the child problems I blogged about, I enjoyed it. It was refreshing to have a game so focused on family and divided loyalties. I really liked the moral gray area that Corrin and her siblings occupied and as mentioned in my RPG Talk entry, I like that the final confrontation features Corrin standing together with her siblings rather than Corrin plus love interest and motley band of heroes. Familial relationships are usually set behind the romantic ones in games, so having family placed before everything else makes this unique. Zero Time Dilemma Zero Time Dilemma had a hell of a lot of hype to live up to, and at the end of the day I don't think it's going to be anyone's favorite out of the Zero Escape series, but it's still an enjoyable game. It keeps a lot of the same mechanics from Virtue's Last Reward, but suffers from a less satisfying mastermind than the other two. There's also a plot twist that people tend to either love or hate. But that said, it does a decent job of wrapping up the series, the escape rooms are still fun, and offers a lot of emotional rewards for fans of the previous two. Code Realize: Guardian of Rebirth This is the best otome game I've played to date. I would have liked to include it in my top three games of the year, and it was a narrow miss. Otome games are usually given lackluster, passive protagonists to serve as the female player insert, but not Cardia. That girl is amazing, whether she's piloting an airship, busting herself out of confinement, or being a supportive girlfriend, because why can't one person do all of that. The boyfriends are more interesting than average, with only one route that really bored me. If there's any fault to this game I'd say it's locking Lupin's route behind everyone else's and making it so clearly the "real" route. Danganronpa: Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls Ultra Despair Girls is a little strange in that I don't think it's a particular good game, though I still finished it. It's a third person shooter, which is a strange genre jump for what had been a visual novel series. I only played it when I did because the Danganronpa 3 anime had Monaca, who originated in this game. The story isn't bad, it asks good questions and even clears up some others (like where did Junko Enoshima get all those crazy robots), but I'm not a shooter fan and I can't imagine the overlap between visual novels, shooters, and Danganronpa is enough to justify this game's existence. If you suck at shooters though, there's no story penalty for playing on easy. You can still see the whole thing. Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice I still haven't posted my VN Talk for this, but the sixth entry in the Ace Attorney series was a bumpy ride. It was good, but it wasn't great, and I think this is mostly due to character bloat. Dual Destinies had three lawyer protagonists so by golly Spirit of Justice has to too, even when the game can't quite figure out what to do with them. Unlike Dual Destinies, where the story honestly belongs to all of them, when it comes down to it, Spirit of Justice is really about Apollo, but the writing tries to showcase everyone, including several supporting characters, which results in a lack of focus. But if you like Apollo, this is the game to play as he has his best moments. This War of Mine * I waffled a lot on whether to buy This War of Mine because the vertical cut-away view of the buildings made me think of old platformers I was terrible at, but This War of Mine needs very little in the way of reflexes. I bought it for the for miserable experience of surviving as a civilian in an urban warzone and I was not disappointed. There's no tutorial, but the basics can be picked up by point and click, which feels oddly immersive, as the characters you're tasked with caring for have no idea how they're going to make ends meet either. Chances are, a first playthrough is going to be unsuccessful. People will die along the way, and you'll feel awful, which is the point. You get to put down the game and go home whereas the people who really lived this life could not. It was a sobering realization. (This War of Mine was inspired by the real world Siege of Sarajevo.) The Room This was a purchase based on a friend's recommendation because we both like escape rooms. While you're not escaping anything in The Room, the type of puzzle solving is familiar to anyone who has done escape rooms, and it's a affordable fix that can be done in an afternoon or two. The story is minimal and the atmosphere creepy, though it's manageable for those who scare easily (with one possible exception during the ending, but you've solved everything by then). I'm skipping the sequel because I react poorly to jump scares, even the ones that are so mild that most people wouldn't even consider them jump scares. Civilization V * When Civilization VI came out, I realized I wanted to play a Civ game again, but rather than getting the latest and greatest at full price, I decided to pick up Civilization V during a Steam sale, which netted me the base game and all the expansions and DLC for under $14. This turned out to be $14 well spent as I've now logged an embarrassing amount of hours on it. It's a lot of strategy and management to bring my chosen civilization to victory, but fun since the AI leaders of other civilizations have their own personalities. I had a really good tussle with Caesar in my Carthage campaign, which felt appropriate. My only complaint is that Europe feels over-represented in the number of civilizations available. There are multiple options for a continent like Africa, with Carthage, Morocco, Ethiopia, Egypt, Songhai, and Zulu available, which show that the game designers did put effort into avoiding a Eurocentric world, but it feels like it's not enough when 15 of the 43 civilizations are European (17 if one counts Byzantium and Ottoman, which I'm not since they're partially in the mideast), making them slightly more than a third of what's available. As I did with my book roundup, the three games I tagged with an asterisk (*) were my favorites of the year and definitely worth playing. I'd also like to mention the four games I replayed this year since it's rare that I replay anything, and four is unprecedented. Fire Emblem: Awakening (second time) Dragon Age II (third time) Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (third time) Danganronpa 2: Good-bye Despair (second time) The Danganronpa games were mostly because of the anime and wanting to relive the experience, but Fire Emblem: Awakening and Dragon Age II were purely unprompted, with the former having happened before the release of Fire Emblem Fates.

Mirrored from: The Rat’s Den

#ace attorney #code realize #danganronpa #dragon age #entertainment roundup #fire emblem #fire emblem fates #video games #visual novel #zero escape #zero time dilemma

[endenogatai]

Three travel startups tell us how they’re responding to the coronavirus crisis

With the globalized world going into partial or complete lock down over the Covid-19 pandemic, startups in the travel sector are facing a huge stress test and immediate disruption to business as usual as public health concern spirals and entire populations are encouraged or even forced not to travel.

The traditional travel hub of Europe has emerged as a secondary hotspot for the virus, after SARS-CoV-2 first emerged in China late last year.

Italy, France and Spain have all reported thousands of cases apiece, with the latter declaring a state of high alert today. Earlier this week Italy — the hardest hit EU country so far — imposed nationwide travel restrictions, with confirmed cases passing 12,000 as of yesterday. Several other EU countries have also implemented varying quarantine measures. More lockdowns are expected in the coming weeks.

In a further development, US President Trump sent shockwaves through EU institutions earlier this week by unilaterally announcing a 30-day ban on travel from most countries in the bloc.

Today the European Commission came out with its own response — laying out a $37BN package of measures intended to mitigate the socio-economic impact of Covid-19, including bringing forward €1BN out of the EU budget to act as a guarantee to the European Investment Fund to encourage banks to lend to SMEs in affected sectors.

“This is expected to mobilise €8BN of working capital financing and support at least 100,000 small and medium-sized businesses and small mid-cap companies in the EU,” the Commission said, suggesting banks will be in a position to act on the liquidity injection from April 2020.

Of course travel startups with investor capital in the bank aren’t waiting around to react to the coronavirus crisis. They’re already ripping up 2020 roadmaps and thinking again — swapping out marketing plans and doubling down on product and engineering, according to three businesses we spoke to.

We asked three European travel startups how they’re being impacted by the coronavirus crisis and what steps they’re taking to manage a demand crunch combined with ongoing — and potentially long term — uncertainty in the sector.

Berlin-based GetYourGuide, which has built a marketplace selling sightseeing tours and other travel experiences, and last year bagged a $484M Series E round; Omio, another Berlin-based startup that’s built a multi-modal travel aggregator and booking platform, backed by nearly $300M to-date; and Barcelona-based TravelPerk, a fast-growing business travel booking platform that’s pulled in more than $130M in VC funding as it shakes up a legacy space.

“Demand is dropping off a cliff”

All three told us they’ve seen a major drop in bookings combined with a rise in customer service demand as people with existing travel plans seek to get in touch to cancel or reschedule trips.

As of this week GetYourGuide said bookings for new experiences are down nearly 50% globally vs its demand forecasts for the past two weeks. While customer service enquiries have tripled in the past two weeks, and its global cancellation rate has ticked up by 20%.

Those that are still planning trips are doing so closer to home or with less advanced notice than normal — with bookings made within three days of the start time up 15%. 

“It’s the biggest nuclear winter I’ve ever seen in online travel,” co-founder and CEO Johannes Reck told TechCrunch. “Everyone goes and prepares for Easter break and that is not at all happening. All of the European countries seem to be in lockdown.

“None of our Italian customers are booking, the German customers have degraded rapidly. France and Spain have recently followed. The UK has been more stable but seems to follow the same course now. And the US since [Trump announced the travel ban] as well… The US travel ban is now sealing it. So this will be a year of extreme turbulence of the travel market.”

For Omio it’s a similar story — with bookings over the last two weeks down between 30-40% overall across all markets, according to founder and CEO Naren Shaam, and a big spike in demand for customer service as worried customers look to cancel trips.

“The whole company is actually stepping in to help customer service because we’ve seen a spike in cancellations,” he said. “In general the impact is heavy. Demand is dropping off a cliff but it’s not as bad as we thought — but it is definitely heavy.”

It’s seeing similar changes in booking behavior. “Advanced booking has come down drastically,” he noted. “But we see a spike in short term last minute trips when people feel comfortable on the region — so that’s gone up a lot.”

TravelPerk told us it’s currently dealing with a drop in business globally of around 50%. Though co-founder and CEO Avi Meir is braced for further drops if more of the West goes into lockdown forcing more companies to scrap business trips.  

“You would expect that it dropped to zero but right now people are still travelling,” he told us. “Everybody who can avoid traveling right now probably should and does but you have many people who just critically have to keep travelling — so we see around 50% drop right now.”

“Regionally of course as expected APACS has been the most affected in terms of our volumes — Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and China down north of 95%. 100% depending on which day you’re looking and what country you’re looking at,” he added. “China is actually starting to open up a little bit but at the peak we looked at 100% — nothing was being booked in terms of destination.

“In terms of the more core markets for us, Italy is 84% down right now… You also see significant impact in Belgium, Netherlands, Holland, Sweden.

“France, Spain and UK are down year-on-year but not significantly yet. In the Western part of the continent and the UK people are still traveling relatively more than other countries.”

Demand for TravelPerk’s customer support has also never been so busy, he also said.

“We actually are switching some of our sales team to customer support in the coming weeks just to support the volume of tickets,” he noted. “We’re very proud that our metrics are not declining — meaning specifically service level; how fast we solve cases; our ‘C-sats’, customer satisfaction. The metrics we really care about.  Are people happy and are we solving their cases fast?

“We’re keeping them although, so far, the past weeks have been the busiest in customer support since we started the company via number of tickets.”

TravelPerk has also seen radical changes to the usual booking window. “Most of the trips we see right now is somebody booking for tomorrow or for two days from now because they for know they can travel or have certainty they can travel,” said Meir. “Which is unusual compared to normal times. In normal times people book  20-21 days ahead on average. So you have a huge decrease in the booking window.”

While of its flagship products is actually seeing high demand in the current crisis situation, per Meir — given it’s designed to offer resilience against unforeseen changes to plans.

“We have this product, FlexiPerk, which allows the users to cancel or change for any reason and if they do they get at least 90% of the money back. FlexiPerk has been really, really on fire over the past few weeks — both in terms of users, those who are already on FlexiPerk and also new sign-ups which is actually driving a lot of our growth in terms of signs ups.

“It gives people the certainty — or it reduces the uncertainty — about the mid- term or long term future. So if you are planning a trip in September or in October it’s reasonable to expect to be able to travel but you don’t really know. And FlexiPerk really plugs this gap because it allows you to book now for September knowing that if you have to change your plans you can do so without losing the money.”

“Right now most of the airlines have changed their cancelation policies so we are able to get full refunds in many cases,” he added. 

All three European businesses said the changes in demand had hit extremely rapidly.

“Up until maybe 2-3 weeks ago we were still growing,” Meir told us. “Because most of our travellers — or at least the headquarters of the travellers — are concentrated in Europe and North America so the impact was kind of delayed.”

“Since we’re more a global business we already started noticing Chinese outbound dropping — because we have an office in China — it hit us already around January, February. So we already saw that in our Chinese outbound dropping by 90+%,” added Omio’s Shaam. 

GetYourGuide’s Reck said it was also forewarned of the looming crunch via their Asian business.

“We had already seen a significant decline in our Asian business,” he told us. “That was still so small and the overall growth in Europe and the US was so strong that it was negligible at that point in time — but it gave us a glimpse.”

Two of its investors, Japan-based Softbank and Singapore-based Temasek, also put GetYourGuide on early “red alert” over the novel coronavirus because other portfolio companies were suffering heavy impacts.

“We had two weeks to prepare which I guess put us ahead of the curve for most other US and European companies,” said Reck. “Then when corona hit, at the end of February, we’ve seen a very rapid decline and now the current global travel demand is roughly 60% down from where it should be at this point in time so we are massively depressed.”

The change is more marked for being set against “a tremendous start to the year” before the virus hit Europe — Reck dubs it “the best time in history of the company” — with January and February seeing it close to doubling business. 

Rerouting resources in a travel crunch

So how are the three founders coping with a sudden revenue crunch combined with spiralling global uncertainty falling over their sector?

All three described being relatively well cushioned — on account of recent financing.

“We are in an incredible position because we’ve raised this massive round last year and we haven’t spent a lot of it,” said GetYourGuide’s Reck. “We’ve been very frugal with it. In the early months after the fund raise SoftBank was very angry with us that we were so disciplined and we weren’t investing more in growth. Now they’re, I think, very, very happy — the new role model for the portfolio.

“The good news is that as we come from a position of strength and we will survive and prevail for sure. That’s the positive news.”

With plenty of capital still in the bank the team has been able to quickly redirect resources on servicing near-term customer needs during the travel crunch.

“The way we’re seeing this internally is with every major crisis comes major opportunity. At this point in time we believe there’s incredible opportunity to make a real different for our customers, our suppliers and our ecosystem broadly,” Reck added. “For instance, for customers we have pushed immediately after we saw the news coming full flexibility on bookings and cancelations.

“Customers can now cancel all of the experiences 24 hours in advance, no questions asked, for a refund. If you go under 24 hours you actually get a gift coupon so you can rebook of the full value in the future. And if you’re affected by a lockdown you will get the full amount back no questions asked.”

“We’ve been doing mass cancellations for Italy. We’re just doing it for France. We’re doing it for the US because of the travel ban now. We refund our customers fully, no questions asked,” he added.

Reck also said it’s doing what it can to support suppliers who will also clearly be struggling from the same demand crunch.

“Wherever there’s an opening where we see demand popping up again we make sure it gets as quickly as possible to our suppliers,” he told us, saying its doubling down on its GetYourGuide Originals in-house short tours product. “We want to be a good partner. We don’t go in now and start to negotiate on commission rates or anything like that.”

Another area it’s spending on right now is localization — in order that it can support suppliers by being able to cater to demand cropping up off the beaten track.

“We’re translating our offering into more languages,” he noted. “We’re making sure the offering itself has better terms for the customers in terms of cancelation policies and we’re educating the suppliers around that — and that will ultimately drive their bookings. So we are doing quite a bit in order to make sure that they survive and that they get the revenue through our platform that they deserve.”

Zooming out, Reck told us he’s taking “a really long term view” on travel.

“The travel landscape through this crisis will inevitably change,” he predicted. “When the corona crisis is over online travel will look very different and just survival is going to be an incredible competitive advantage vs the rest. We believe that a lot of players will go bust. And we see that already as we speak so over the next couple of days you’ll see major layoffs, you’ll see restructurings, you’ll see people scramble.”

“That’s what we always said when we raised the SoftBank round. Ironically I never knew that long term view would actually mean that we freeze down for a year… but if you look at online travel over the course of history and you look at the big dips — like 9/11 was a massive dip and the following recession; the financial crisis was a massive dip — you see overall travel is a long term trend. And I think if you look at a ten year timespan even this corona crisis will just be a small dip in a growth curve.

“So I’m very long on travel over a longer period of time. And that’s where we’re doubling down. So we’re rather taking the opportunity now to really focus on product and engineering — and that’s something really liberating to me. Of not really having a 2020 budget anymore.

“The conversion gains on the margin won’t matter. So we can really double down on significantly improving the product for our customer and that means giving a better search and discovery experience, more personalized, curating more GetYourGuide Originals with our suppliers… So that when we come out of this crisis we come out with a better technology product and a much better supply base.”

“I think, as I said, just surviving will be a competitive advantage. Surviving with a better product and better supply will be magic — and that’s really what we’re betting on.”

Omio, meanwhile, is also in a position to look beyond the current crisis in demand.

“We are lucky to be well funded and have raised a lot of capital,” said Shaam. “We’re lucky to have very long term investors when you think of Kinnevik and Temasek — both of them…. almost like a mutual fund so basically long term capital.”

Nonetheless, the business has responded to plunging demand by trimming variable costs — while also viewing the demand crunch as an opportunity to rechannel investment into the core product.

“We’re cutting all variable costs, managing the costs better, taking precautions — using the crisis as an opportunity… fixing all the systems we could never invest in in scale because every month there’s a metric to meet. And really then rearchitecting for scalability,” he told us.

“Because the main thing is if you think of travel, human inherent desire to travel is never going to go down. Right now what we’re doing is bottling that in for 3-4 months but you’ve got to open the lid at some point — I hope — and when that comes out the demand will grow even faster. And we want to be ready for that. So we’re using this, call it, crisis as an opportunity to really build scalability. All the underlying architecture, campaign structures, whatever data flows were not perfect before, product messaging etc.

“The cash position of course is something we have an eye on, as stewards of capital, but it’s more so that we’re also using this as an opportunity to really think long term and how we actually benefit.”

Duty of care

As a crisis response, Shaam said Omio has put together three internal task forces to respond to immediate challenges — one focused on supporting its customers; another on its own employees; and a third concentrating on business stability and figuring out where to invest and where to pull back during unusual times.

On the customer support side Omio’s suppliers define cancellation policies so there’s only so much it can do but Shaam said it’s been putting out messaging to help users — creating a spreadsheet of cancellation policies listing companies that give refunds and those that don’t, and publishing updates on things like cancelled flights. 

On the employee support side there’s a mix of well-being and practical issues being tackled. 

“How can we protect safety regulations? Trigger points. We have clear guidelines… today we triggered that we work from home for 15 days,” he said. “How to protect mental health so nobody goes crazy sitting at home all day? Connectivity, all of that stuff. What if you have school shut down — how do you balance children at home alone with working at the same time? All of this stuff.

“There’s a lot of practical questions that come up — like the design team need to take their chunky monitors home so they can actually design. All of these things are being tackled by that task force.”

“As a startup you can actually bring these together very quickly,” Shaam added. “Today we had a small team — that team is now quite large, 10+ people going at all three workstreams. So let’s see how we survive.

“Again, there’s a lot of uncertainty but I feel that the best thing I can do is bring stability, bring confidence into the organization.”

TravelPerk’s Meir said the business is also most focused on responding to immediate challenges and needs — including keeping up with the demand it’s seeing.

Even though bookings are down new sign ups are up, he told us.

“The focus right now as an organization is really on the day by day — we need to make sure we keep providing the service,” he said. “We keep actually selling and a lot of companies are signing up. Sign ups are actually dramatically up. People are signing up they’re just obviously not travelling so we have a lot of short term priorities that are extremely important.

“Maybe if we hadn’t raised a C round last year — $100+ million — we would be in a different situation but right now we are fortunate to be in this position so we have to focus on short term priorities without knowing where it’s going to end.”

The company is also using a moment of plunging sales to direct attention on product. And is hiring more engineers to be able to accelerate product dev — including to build crisis response features.

“I’m sure we’re not unique in the tech world but we’re actually investing more in the product. So we keep hiring — we actually increased our hiring plan for product and engineering. And so far we’re not reducing our burn let’s say but we’re shifting that towards really what matters for our customers.

“We’re already ahead of the curve in product but this is a really good opportunity to keep pushing on our strengths and another one we’re doing is adjusting the business and the business model as well.”

Meir gave the example of a premium concierge service which it’s just decided to provide for free for all its users for the next three months. “Although it’s going to increase dramatically our costs in customer care it’s the right thing to do for our customers,” he said of that particular coronavirus triggered business adjustment.

“You’ll see some really cool stuff coming out,” he added. “The product team, together with the commercial team is changing roadmaps. In a way we threw the roadmap of 2020 to the bin and we started working on a weekly basis.”

Another example he gave is a new feature it’s launched in partnership with medical and travel security company, International SoS, to help companies not only track where in the world their employees are but ensure they have the medical or other crisis expertise support available should the worst happen off-site.

“It’s the best company in the world for duty of care,” said Meir. “It’s one of those topics that in normal times people don’t really like to think about it — but this is probably the highest request we were getting in the past 2-3 weeks from customers.” 

“We went from idea to releasing it in less than 5 days of work,” he added. “So again reducing the risk, reducing the uncertainty piece. This is a thing that we’re going to do more and more as this situation evolves. If we have a request for a feature like ‘duty of care’ — which makes tonnes of sense right now — we’re going to shift the roadmap and do more of these kind of things.”

“This is a moment to be decisive and adaptable but also courageous and to invest in what makes TravelPerk stronger this year, next year and ten years,” he added. “This doesn’t change — we have great investors. We have a good cash position, great team. So we should keep hiring, we should keep investing in the product, we should keep investing in our service — so my biggest worry is that we [don’t] act out of panic or out of confusion — and that’s something we should be aware of and not do. But I’m happy to say that that’s not the case.”

As part of its own pro-active crisis response, TravelPerk has this week switched to 100% remote working — a radical change for Meir, who has deliberately required presence from his staff up to now for workplace culture reasons.

“We don’t do remote work. It’s something that’s one of these trendy things that we decided not to do yet for various reasons. We just think our culture is much stronger when people are physically in the same space and we switched from nobody does remote work to 100% remote,” he told us. 

“We thought that the government — especially in Spain where most of our team is — is not reacting fast enough and aggressively enough [to Covid-19]. This is really unfair for the elderly and those who have previous health conditions…So we decided to take action… And I was just amazed how fast we transitioned from a company that doesn’t do remote to full on remote.”

GetYourGuide has also gone fully remote. “We did that on Monday,” said Reck. “Everyone called me crazy and now on Friday everyone wants to have our best practices playbook.”

“The health and safety of our employees and most importantly of the community around us [is our biggest concern],” he added. “We are in constant contact with everyone — to make sure people feel safe.

“They are now at home, they follow the news all the time. There’s huge psychological pressure — the travel market’s going down, the stock market’s going down — so for me by biggest role is to keep that strong engagement and morale and that people don’t feel threatened by the situation around them.”

As it happens, Reck is a biochemist by education — so likely one of relatively few founders in the travel space with hands-on lab experience of viruses. He’s also braced for the longest ‘nuclear winter’ of business disruption of the three startups we spoke to.

“What we know about this virus is there is no immunity in the population — meaning that this will continue to spread,” he said. “Every potential person is a host. And it’s very infectious and it seems to stick around quite a bit. And it puts a lot of stress on public health systems. So I personally anticipate there will be a very long lockdown in a lot of countries. And there will be only a very slow recovery. If you’d ask me we might see some reopening of the travel landscape in summer but I think that will be far diminished from a typical season. We’ll only see a full recovery towards May, June, July 2021. I don’t think it will be earlier than that.”

“It will get worse,” he added. “We know now it’s very likely there will be a lockdown [across the West]. My biggest wish for the next couple of weeks will be that employees continue to be healthy, safe and continue to be able to work and contribute like they’ve done.” 

Omio’s Shaam is expecting at least several months of disruption to business as usual — pointing to the lack of a swift and coordinated response from governments to implement quarantine measures.

“We need a system-wide [response] like China or Singapore has done beautifully to really prevent it and I don’t believe that’s going to happen so we’re bracing for 3-4 months impact,” he told us. 

“I just went out last night in Berlin with my wife for dinner and the restaurants are full, it’s crowded, the subways are full — full! Like not even 20% lower. Completely full. We had to make a reservation to get a table etc. So unless governments, in a very coordinated way, shut down borders for a period of 4-6 weeks so everybody goes into isolation in one go and everybody comes out — it’s going to drip feed for a long time because people are acting in different points of time on their own means.”

On the question of whether there will be a lasting impact on the travel market as the pandemic undoes global supply chains and routines, Shaam said again that’s likely to depend on how co-ordinated or otherwise the response is. 

“There’s a lot of fixed costs part of travel. So I think the answer to that largely depends on how co-ordinated and how quickly we can contain. If we all actually manage to come back in 3-4 months I think we’re in a good place because it’ll bounce back quite strongly. If it’s drip feeding, and it takes the wind out for a very long time, then there will be a different situation but I hope not.”

In the meanwhile, with so many businesses getting au fait with virtual meetings and videoconferencing tools, the coronavirus crisis could also have a long term impact on demand for business travel — if lots of companies realize quite how much can be done remotely.

On this element of the crisis, TravelPerk’s Meir isn’t concerned. 

“It’s an interesting theory,” he said, deferring from hazarding a guess on whether it will come to pass or not. “It doesn’t really matter for us as a company. Because companies spend $1.6TR a year on business travel. And it’s a market that is growing. Before this crisis predicted growth of 6 or 7% in 2020 — which is huge compared to the size of the market. So even if we’re talking about 10-20%, let’s say, at the edges this doesn’t change the picture. You still will have a tonne of business travel when we come back out of it.”

“If we zoom out a bit from this situation — there is a trend for more sustainable approach to travel,” Meir added. “So if so many things can turn into a Zoom call I don’t think it’s a bad idea for the planet. And we will do well. We’re not worried about a scenario like this.”

Here TravelPerk isn’t worried because the startup has another product for that: GreenPerk — a carbon offset offering it launched earlier this month. It’s been developed in partnership with non-profit Atmosfair, which works on decarbonization via UN-endorsed carbon mitigation projects.

“Many companies asked us to help them offset and reduce the impact that their travel generates and we thought that just reporting on what harm you do is not good enough. We wanted actually to make a difference,” said Meir. “One of the projects that we chose is efficient cooking stoves in Rwanda.”

GreenPerk uses an algorithm to calculate the carbon footprint of a given trip and then applies a per booking fee proportional to the pollution created — with the fee going to fund the carbon offset project.

GreenPerk is an opt in product — and Meir says it’s already had “amazing traction”, with more than 50 companies already signed up and using it.

“It’s unfair for us — people who live in very comfortable counties — to ask people in Rwanda to stop cooking their food but if we can help them transition to efficient and also faster ways of cooking then we should definitely do that… so the project funds efficient cooking stoves to replace the polluting ones.”

“If the world after this crisis looks like we are conscious about how we travel — when we do travel we try not to have an impact — and if, sometimes, making Zoom calls are better than face to face I think it’s not a bad scenario for the world. And we as a travel company will adapt like we always have,” he added. “It’s more interesting to look at the long term implication — rather than ‘is it good for our quarter or not’.”

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[letsgenerousluminarycollect-blog]

Kit Harington Says Goodbye To Video game Of Thrones Period 7

Game of Thrones lovers erupted in a chorus of Shame!” earlier this month when it was verified that the series' eighth and final season will certainly not weather until 2019 But HBO president Casey Bloys can be protecting his decision to delay the Emmy winning dragon drama's go back. Dexter earned the major area with above 3.6 million against the law downloads per single tv show, north of the 3 just.4 million mark for Game of Thrones. Warning: Large (incredibly huge) spoilers for "Match of Thrones" period seven, event two. If HBO situations the realization of "Game of Thrones" in the springtime time (which was generally the classic atmosphere day anyways), it would become a fine nod to enthusiasts of the original book series. As Video game of Thrones moved into uncharted territory for its sixth through eighth conditions, Martin presented showrunners Benioff and Weiss with a road map for where the account wants to move. But everything in between has been in the hands of the Game of Thrones writers with loose oversight from Martin-he's even considered the TV show and books two different stories. The hanging around is certainly the hardest component, "Game of Thrones" supporters might agree with the fact. Production can be well under approach for the last Game of Thrones period. http://gameofthroneswatchonline.com As A Game of Thrones: The Greeting card Game transitions from its primary iteration to the second copy, some factors have got been changed. Game of Thrones is definitely a 10-part series on HBO. Specifically as Video game of Thrones showrunners own previously mentioned that they'll be filming false endings to deceive the leakers and theorists. All of this is usually to say that the slightly underwhelming and anticlimactic function of the direwolves in the TV variation of Game of Thrones could change out to be quite different in the catalogs, which happen to be not really constrained by viewing your spending habits or special effects considerations. Game of Thrones provides reached a position where it can carry out pretty very much anything and its millions of fans will eliminate their group imagination. Thrones, a scrappy upstart launched by two Television set novices in 2011, will finish its go as the major and virtually all common present in the global community. Far thus, Video game of Thrones has been quite pleasurable this warmer summer months. Game of Thrones Time of year 5 Finale Recap: Was "Mother's Mercy" the Most Brutal Event But? Associated every instance of Game of Thrones, Thronecast features unique interviews with the company, ideas into the universe of Westeros and beyond, and previews of what's in retail outlet. When Arya and Sansa meet one another again in the crypt, the real way Ned and Robert met each other after so long, they see one another first of all as they were: as the kids who plonked food at each various other, who teased each other, who were playing a kind of game. Critics Consensus: Video game of Thrones remains to get among the finest displays on Tv set, merging meticulously-plotted figure arcs with the breathtaking style of the Seven Kingdoms. Examine out the Video game of Thrones time finale recap. Critics Consensus: After a year-long delay, Game of Thrones roars back again with powerful storytelling and a focused curiosity in its central heroes - particularly the feminine ones. Event one is definitely staying developed by Dave Hillside, who provides been an report and associate editor to Benioff and Weiss since season 2. Hill has penned three episodes of Game of Thrones previously, including season 7's fifth episode, "Eastwatch," as well as "Home" in 2016, and "Sons of the Harpy" in 2015. Nymeria was among the load up of direwolf cubs the Starks discovered and used as house animals again in Game of Thrones' very primary episode. Of program, we will be all attractive darn fired up for the Game of Thrones season seven premiere tomorrow (or the ungodly early hours of Wednesday day for us in the UK), as we barely what to expect especially. Nowadays, Game of Thrones is usually a pleasant shared hobby and a enormous cultural phenomenon that features excited many of us for years, and especially for that one year, 2012, when there had been zero intimate assaults and Robb Stark was still alive. Video game of Thrones admirers may have to hang on a full yr for the last time of year of the strike show but in the meantime they can receive their fix remaining at a exclusively created ice cubes motel in Finland. HBO Nordic (which, along with CNN, can be owned by Time Warner) offers teamed up with Lapland Hotels SnowVillage to construct a "Game of Thrones" themed inn built merely of snow and ice. Place on the fictional continents of Essos and Westeros , Video game of Thrones has many story lines and a large ensemble company but centers on three key tale arcs The initial tale arc centers on the Straightener Throne of the Seven Kingdoms and ensues a world wide web of alliances and clashes among the dynastic commendable people either competing to claim the throne or struggling for independence from the throne. The background of the Balkans is certainly extra dramatic and interesting than the screenplay of ‘Video game of Thrones', possibly if there are no dragons in it. We would all like it if the present and future of the Balkans were less like dramatic screenplays,” Tusk said in the speech, which combined poetry, humour and historical anecdotes. Each week your Westeros correspondents, Peter Marsh and Dan Miller, will be unravelling prophecies and divining an instance of Game of Thrones Season 7. The most up-to-date sending your line for season 8 of Video game Of Thrones could incredibly well indicate the come back of a certain house we'd rather believed we'd experienced the rear of. GAME OF THRONES' last go will not really strike television screens for another yr and it appears now there is a extremely good explanation for that - the players happen to be nowhere fast close to close to ending filming.

[ghostlybouquetballoonstuff-blog1]

Holidays In Australia

Luxurious Australia travel has received to be one of the best ways to see one of the vital fascinating travel locations on the planet. Some folks like the fact that when using bus services, and even Queensland rail journey, they are able to take within the sights during their journey. During this time, most of Western Australia isn't as welcoming when it comes to weather, though you'll always discover the Australian folks very welcoming. Mix that with the welcoming and friendly locals and you might be set for a as soon as in a life time trip. The conductor on board gives beneficial data about the tourist points of interest you would possibly want to see. You can apply for a variety of visas, together with tourist visas and working holiday visas, however you should accomplish that before leaving home. 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Earlier than getting a visa, make it possible for your current passport is valid for at the least 6 months from the date of your departure, to forestall you from being barred by Immigration officers, in addition to put together your passport necessities prematurely along with your local or international carrier when booking for a flight to the Land Down Below. Most of the time, travel insurance acts as a peace of thoughts...right up to the time you want it after which it may be the most important article in your suitcase. For a extra satisfying journey, one could journey by excessive pace rail or street. However how about if you happen to can enterprise into a spontaneous adventure like a campervan journey where you drive your own itinerary anywhere and anytime you want. 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Great Ocean Street which is about three hours driving from Melbourne follows the coast and mountains makes your drive worth. The amazing landscapes, dynamic townships, historic spots, tradition, pure resources and so on make Adelaide a scorching vacationer destination in Australia. Australia has a terrific selection of casinos every in a novel setting which can solely be experienced in Australia. Telephone: (+61) (zero) 2 6270 6666 This number is NOT for passport or visa enquiries. In case you are versatile with holiday dates, take into account travelling outdoors of peak. The budget and lodging, sadly, take up most of a traveler's price range that they don't get much out of their holidays like sampling native restaurants or going to the local tourist spots. Visas and passports needs to be applied for effectively in advance, so as to keep away from any last minute cancellations and delays. There a range of houseboats working out of Echuca, ranging from the small and simple camper type houseboats to the luxurious Echuca 5 star lodging options with characteristic resembling ensuites, trendy absolutely geared up kitchens, laundry facilities, air conditioned and spa baths. Australia is full of freedom camps, which are either free or low cost tenting and excellent for in travelling in a camper van. If you determine to go on a extra adventurous vacation similar to skiing, ensure you have winter sports cover. Catamaran tours take individuals out within the sea to look at Humpback whales. Nonetheless, just a few insurers present a wide selection of journey insurance coverage. The nature loving folks admire it the most and get their snaps clicked at this beautiful reef. Cheap flights are readily available, with Virgin Blue offering among the greatest domestic costs, plus international flights to New Zealand if that is a part of your trip. The main cities of attraction are Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane and so forth. An area insurer will guide you finest whether to opt for home travel insurance coverage or worldwide journey insurance coverage, in consideration along with your unique needs. Tasmania is likely one of the prettiest places in Australia, and in sure method it would remind a few of you of landscapes of New Zealand. Hole years, student electives overseas and cheap summer holidays in distant locations, have turn out to be part of the commonly life-enriching experience that's now thought of synonymous with the coed status. Excursions can be found for White Water Rafting on Franklin River in South West Tasmania, close to Sydney, Cairns and Western Australia. There are a whole lot of well-known locations to go to in Australia. Travelling in campervans Might to September in Australia, is usually the most effective time to travel the northern half of the country with cooler temperatures and less rain than the summer season. On this flattest continent, you'd find a variety of locations of vacationers' interest.

[criticalotterstudies]

To picture Shannon during this time is to see a thin man tapping a pencil against his knee at absurd hours. This isn’t a man on a deadline; it’s something more like a man obsessed with a private puzzle, one that is years in the cracking. “He would go quiet, very very quiet. But he didn’t stop working on his napkins,” said Maria. “Two or three days in a row. And then he would look up, and he’d say, ‘Why are you so quiet?’ ” Napkins decorate the table, strands of thought and stray sections of equations accumulate around him. He writes in neat script on lined paper, but the raw material is everywhere. Eight years like this— scribbling, refining, crossing out, staring into a thicket of equations, knowing that, at the end of all that effort, they may reveal nothing. There are breaks for music and cigarettes, and bleary-eyed walks to work in the morning, but mostly it’s this ceaseless drilling. Back to the desk, where he senses, perhaps, that he is on to something significant, something even more fundamental than the master’s thesis that made his name—but what? Information was something guessed at rather than spoken of, something implied in a dozen ways before it was finally tied down. Information was a presence offstage. It was there in the studies of the physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz, who, electrifying frog muscles, first timed the speed of messages in animal nerves just as Thomson was timing the speed of messages in wires. It was there in the work of physicists like Rudolf Clausius and Ludwig Boltzmann, who were pioneering ways to quantify disorder—entropy—little suspecting that information might one day be quantified in the same way. Above all, information was in the networks that descended in part from the first attempt to bridge the Atlantic with underwater cables. In the attack on the practical engineering problems of connecting Points A and B—what is the smallest number of wires we need to string up to handle a day’s load of messages? how do we encrypt a top-secret telephone call?—the properties of information itself, in general, were gradually uncovered. By the time of Claude Shannon’s childhood, the world’s communications networks were no longer passive wires acting as conduits for electricity, a kind of electron plumbing. They were continent-spanning machines, arguably the most complex machines in existence. Vacuum-tube amplifiers strung along the telephone lines added power to voice signals that would have otherwise attenuated and died out on their thousand-mile journeys. A year before Shannon was born, in fact, Bell and Watson inaugurated the transcontinental phone line by reenacting their first call, this time with Bell in New York and Watson in San Francisco. By the time Shannon was in elementary school, feedback systems managed the phone network’s amplifiers automatically, holding the voice signals stable and silencing the “howling” or “singing” noises that plagued early phone calls, even as the seasons turned and the weather changed around the sensitive wires that carried them. Each year that Shannon placed a call, he was less likely to speak to a human operator and more likely to have his call placed by machine, by one of the automated switchboards that Bell Labs grandly called a “mechanical brain.” In the process of assembling and refining these sprawling machines, Shannon’s generation of scientists came to understand information in much the same way that an earlier generation of scientists came to understand heat in the process of building steam engines. [...] For Hartley, these agreements on the meaning of symbol vocabularies all depend on “psychological factors”—and those were two dirty words. Some symbols were relatively fixed (Morse code, for instance), but the meaning of many others varied with language, personality, mood, tone of voice, time of day, and so much more. There was no precision there. If, following Nyquist, the quantity of information had something to do with choice from a number of symbols, then the first requirement was getting to clarity on the number of symbols, free from the whims of psychology. A science of information would have to make sense of the messages we call gibberish, as well as the messages we call meaningful. So in a crucial passage, Hartley explained how we might begin to think about information not psychologically, but physically: “In estimating the capacity of the physical system to transmit information we should ignore the question of interpretation, make each selection perfectly arbitrary, and base our results on the possibility of the receiver’s distinguishing the result of selecting any one symbol from that of selecting any other.” The real measure of information is not in the symbols we send— it’s in the symbols we could have sent, but did not. To send a message is to make a selection from a pool of possible symbols, and “at each selection there are eliminated all of the other symbols which might have been chosen.” To choose is to kill off alternatives. Symbols from large vocabularies bear more information than symbols from small ones. Information measures freedom of choice. In this way, Hartley’s thoughts on choice were a strong echo of Nyquist’s insight into current values. But what Nyquist demonstrated for telegraphy, Hartley proved true for any form of communication; Nyquist’s ideas turned out to be a subset of Hartley’s. In the bigger picture, for those discrete messages in which symbols are sent one at a time, only three variables controlled the quantity of information: the number k of symbols sent per second, the size s of the set of possible symbols, and the length n of the message. Given these quantities, and calling the amount of information transmitted H, we have: H=k log s^n [...] What does information really measure? It measures the uncertainty we overcome. It measures our chances of learning something we haven’t yet learned. Or, more specifically: when one thing carries information about another—just as a meter reading tells us about a physical quantity, or a book tells us about a life—the amount of information it carries reflects the reduction in uncertainty about the object. The messages that resolve the greatest amount of uncertainty—that are picked from the widest range of symbols with the fairest odds—are the richest in information. But where there is perfect certainty, there is no information: There is nothing to be said. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” How many times in the history of courtroom oaths has the answer been anything other than “Yes”? Because only one answer is really conceivable, the answer provides us with almost no new information—we could have guessed it beforehand. That’s true of most human rituals, of all the occasions when our speech is prescribed and securely expected (“Do you take this man ... ?”). And when we separate meaning from information, we find that some of our most meaningful utterances are also our least informative. [...] On Shannon’s understanding of information, the redundant symbols are all of the ones we can do without—every letter, word, or line that we can strike with no damage to the information. And if this redundancy grows out of the rules that check our freedom, it is also dictated by the practicalities of communicating with one another. Every human language is highly redundant. From the dispassionate perspective of the information theorist, the majority of what we say—whether out of convention, or grammar, or habit—could just as well go unsaid. In his theory of communication, Shannon guessed that the world’s wealth of English text could be cut in half with no loss of information: “When we write English, half of what we write is determined by the structure of the language and half is chosen freely.” Later on, his estimate of redundancy rose as high as 80 percent: Only one in five characters actually bear information. As it is, Shannon suggested, we’re lucky that our redundancy isn’t any higher. If it were, there wouldn’t be any crossword puzzles. At zero redundancy, “any sequence of letters is a reasonable text in the language and any two dimensional array of letters forms a crossword puzzle.” At higher redundancies, fewer sequences are possible, and the number of potential intersections shrinks: if English were much more redundant, it would be nearly impossible to make puzzles. On the other hand, if English were a bit less redundant, Shannon speculated, we’d be filling in crossword puzzles in three dimensions. [...] Understanding redundancy, we can manipulate it deliberately, just as an earlier era’s engineers learned to play tricks with steam and heat. Of course, humans had been experimenting with redundancy in their trial-and-error way for centuries. We cut redundancy when we write shorthand, when we assign nicknames, when we invent jargon to compress a mass of meaning (“the left-hand side of the boat when you’re facing the front”) into a single point (“port”). We add redundancy when we say “V as in Victor” to make ourselves more clearly heard, when we circumlocute around the obvious, even when we repeat ourselves. But it was Shannon who showed the conceptual unity behind all of these actions and more.
At the foundation of our Information Age—once wires and microchips have been stripped away, once the stream of 0’s and 1’s has been parted—we find Shannon’s two fundamental theorems of communication. Together they speak to the two ways in which we can manipulate redundancy: subtracting it, and adding it. To begin with, how fast can we send a message? It depends, Shannon showed, on how much redundancy we can wring out of it. The most efficient message would actually resemble a string of random text: Each new symbol would be as informative as possible, and thus as surprising as possible. Not a single symbol would be wasted. So the speed with which we can communicate over a given channel depends on how we encode our messages: how we package them, as compactly as possible, for shipment. Shannon’s first theorem proves that there is a point of maximum compactness for every message source. We have reached the limits of communication when every symbol tells us something new. [...] In a way, that was already evident enough: Saying the same thing twice in a noisy room is a way of adding redundancy, on the unstated assumption that the same error is unlikely to attach itself to the same place two times in a row. For Shannon, though, there was much more. Our linguistic predictability, our congenital failure to maximize information, is actually our best protection from error. For Shannon the key was in the code. We must be able to write codes, he showed, in which redundancy acts as a shield: codes in which no one bit is indispensable, and thus codes in which any bit can absorb the damage of noise.