The future

 Everything's good.

I'm walking down the street in my neighbourhood, but there's a problem.

Who do I report it to?

Well the city councel is a good place to start.

But what if nothing happens then?

How do I escalate the problem?

Local politicians?

What if they can't help either?

Well, then you're stuffed.

The chain of accountability is only so long.

In fact, this chain was only so long to begin with.

As a result, we end up with a system that dodges responsibility, without accountability.

This is the definition of a broken system.

Let's look at right to repair.

Manufacturers know that if they don't sell the new shiny thing, they will go out of business.

This is counter to the wishes of their consumers, who just want the thing to work.

So the seller puts their loyal consumers on a fashion treadmill.

What, you're still using that "so last year" product?

Embrace the change or forever be the jettison of "progress".

The truth is, we're all participants in a dog and pony show.

A folly.

We play along so as not to seem out of place, but seeming out of place is not our decision to make.

The system can be harsh, if not by accident but perhaps by design. Or lack of design.

See how powerful dodging responsibility is?

"See what happened to them" is a pretty convincing stick compared to the carrot of conformity.

Even if confromity means being the stick for the system.

Otherwise, how will you ever afford that niche city centre apartment?

I learned this from my encounters with the dental profession.

They aren't interested in cures, you're a revenue stream, in case that wasn't obvious.

I wonder if I had used baking soda to brush my teeth, would I still have all of them?

If/when universal social income becomes a thing, we'd realize that we're all in this together.

We'd know that it's not about milking your customers for all they're worth.

We'd know that it's not about selling the new shiny thing so they will toss their old thing into landfill.

We and the manufacturers would consider reuse as a top priority.

Which is a subset of making the most efficient use of the resources we have to hand.

Where we're going, we won't have the resources we currently squander on dog and pony shows.

That will shine a light on how far out of whack our system currently is.

Let's try to get out in front of this so we don't end up looking like complete idiots.

Ripleys ass

 It was a normal situation.

There were people snacking, getting dressed, telling stories, yanking each others tails, you know the drill.

Next thing, Ripley walks in.

Wearing her tank top and knickers.

She looks at me. We know each other.

She walks up to a mirror on the wall and starts checking out her hair.

She's facing the mirror and from my location she's three quarters the way there to having her back to me.

I of course check out her ass and instantly realise that she can see me through the mirror.

I look through the mirror at her face and for a split second I thought she was looking back at me.

Maybe I imagined it but she spent the remaining time adusting her hair with a half-wry maybe-a-smile on her face.

It's nice to have dreams like this.

Magic

 While watching the Witcher on Netflix, the phrase "it's magic, it isn't real" troubled me.

Then I realised that it was the literal truth of magic.

When Yennifer created quills from nothing, they were visible to all. They would be added to arrows, the archers would weild them. All that mattered was the target, the arrow and the archers belief that the quill would guide the arrow to the target. If you believe that things will work out as you expect them to, you have a confidence that guides your aim.

When the guys slung the bottles of explosive toward the enemy for the female archers to hit, you might not believe that an arrow could hit a bottle from so great a distance. They did.

So much of our interaction with reality and each other is based on magic. Our expectations of each other is the basis of commerce, self worth and relationships. They aren't real and weigh nothing, but our lives revolve about them.

Gravity mirror

 I haven't heard much about what it's like at the boundary of the universe.

Could it be like a mirror, but a mirror that reflects the gravity of its contents back onto them?

That way, as far as the contents are concerned, there is no boundary and gravity is pulling in all directions.

Because of lensing the imaginary "outside" is bigger than the inside, hence expansion.

Argos

If you find the following hard to believe, try to imagine yourself in my position.

I was shopping for a pair of noise cancelling headphones, maybe something I could use for gaming, I thought.

I've got neighbours who like to karaoke themselves to their neighbours, no actual singing, just repeating what they hear, kinda annoying.

I thought noise cancellation would work for that too.

Well it says noise cancelling in the description, so I proceeded with the purchase.

I left it a few days before trying them out.

Some noise cancelling headsets have it enabled by default, some have a button to turn it on and off, some require you download an app.

I thought it curious that it didn't state "noise cancelling" on the box, but then there are probably lots of things the headset does that aren't described on the box.

Like that you need to download an app, available in Windows and Apple versions, to configure the headset.

And a link to the documentation where the headset is described as having "passive noise cancellation".

In case you haven't heard that term before (I didn't), it means that the headset operates like a pair of ear-muffs, or a pillow, or a wall. They make ambient noise less loud by being a barrier to outside sounds.

I wanted something that actually cancelled the noise, not just make it weaker, you know, like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noise-cancelling_headphones

So I phone up Argos customer support where I talk to a Stephen Miller.

He asked me for the Reservation number: 200760.

We talk and while doing so I get an email from Argos, listing the noise cancelling headsets they have available, the Logitech ones I bought were not in the list.

If you go to argos.ie and search for "SHOP NOISE CANCELLING HEADPHONES" you will see for yourself.

I asked Stephen to send me an email, which he did.

Thu, 16 Jul 2020 14:46:36 +0000

 Hi there,

So just as mentioned on the phone if you take your headset back to a store with you receipt we can exchange for you for a different make or model due to the issue with them, you are also more than welcome to reserve one just in case there is one that you are happy with that we could give you on the same day.

Whatever it is you would like to get or do we should be able to meet your demands within that particular visit.

Take care 

Stephen Miller

Customer Service Advisor

Email: stephen.miller@argos.co.uk

I asked him if there was a reference number for our conversation which I had been told may be recorded for training purposes, he said they didn't have one.

I asked how they referred to recorded conversations internally, he didn't seem to know.

I half-joked that I didn't want to end up leaving the shop with two sets of headphones, which he assured me wouldn't happen.

It happened.

I got there and provided the receipt. Told the Argos sales representative about my phone conversation and the email.

"Do you have a reference number for the conversation?" she asked.

I was dumb-founded. Stepthen Miller specifically stated that they don't provide reference numbers for phone conversations.

Thinking like any reasonable person, I saw a diagram in my head of any reasonable issue-tracking database.

reservation-number -> customer-id

reservation-number -> list-of-phone-call-ids

reservation-number -> list-of-email-ids

I asked if she could get the phone reference number, she said she could not.

I mentioned the email Stephen Miller sent me, she asked to see it.

I said I don't send emails from my phone.

I asked if she could look up the email from their end, she said she could not.

I stated that these were not noise cancelling headphones as stated in their product description, and backed up by the email I got from argos.ie listing noise cancelling headsets and that the Logitech ones I had purchased weren't on the list.

She said she couldn't look that up.

She retreated to consult with two other representatives when I noticed one of them take the headphones out of the box to try them on!

With glee and an actual kind of half-jig she triumphantly announced that they were indeed noise cancelling.

Talk about being on the wrong side of a victory dance. I searched around a bit, found and picked up my jaw and tried to explain what noise cancelling meant.

My efforts fell on deaf ears.

I asked if getting customer support on my phone would help.

I was told that it could.

It took a while but I got to talk to another customer service representative.

I asked about Stephen Miller, the person I was talking to (Becky? - not sure, I'm sure there's a log somewhere, right, RIGHT?) said she didn't recognize the name! WTF!?!

I got the manager in the store to talk to the customer representative and they ended up disagreeing.

The manager, sure that these were noise cancelling, and that I had put them on my head, meant that they couldn't be re-sold, meaning that I was not entitled to a refund or exchange, something Becky (I'm so sorry if I got your name wrong) disagreed with.

I took this encounter as round one and left.

I came back 10 seconds later to buy the headphones I wanted as I had already reserved them.

JBL E65BTNC On-Ear Wireless Headphones - Black

As I write this they are no longer listed on argos.ie but are on amazon.co.uk, with a downloadable manual to boot.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/JBL-Bluetooth-Headphones-Cancelling-Microphone-Black-Matte/dp/B0765Z1NWV

They have a noise cancelling button, and a light to let you know when it's on!

I wrote to Stephen Miller <Stephen.Miller@argos.co.uk> but as of the time of writing this I haven't received a response.

Either the customer service representative (Becky?) I talked to was new, Argos have more than one customer service department, or Stephen Miller is a one-time-use name Argos uses to send customers down the rabbit hole so they hang up thinking they've made progress on getting a refund/exchange.

Update 2020-07-27

About those JBL headphones, I may have discovered why they were taken off the argos.ie website.

I didn't want wireless headphones because no matter how good the battery, it won't last.

At least, I thought, if I keep them plugged into a charger I won't drain the battery.

It says in the manual that to turn on noise cancelling while plugged into the charger, hold down the anc (Active Noise Cancelling button) down for two seconds.

I tried it. Nothing happened.

The one reason I bought them is at fault.

Update 2020-07-30

I intend to take Argos to the small claims court and to that end I handed a letter giving them 10 business days notice, giving them a chance to change their mind. So Firday 14th of August, see you in court.

So before the court date, I got an email letting me know Argos weren't going to show up, so claim paid in full.

Reality

When I did the math on approaching black holes I had an epiphany - the very big and the very small are somehow related.

Electrons absorb photons and jump to some higher energy orbit.
Sometimes they shed energy as a photon and fall to some lower energy level.

In ruby, ultra-violet light is absorbed and red light is emitted - this is how ruby lasers work.

Quantum theory doesn't explain how the electron absorbs or emit photons.

Quantum theory doesn't explain how this energy conversion is lossless.

We don't experience 100% efficient energy conversion on our scale other than witnessing what the quantum scale does.

For us, one thing going in and two things coming out doesn't happen.

Oh, wait, isn't that the reproductive process?

But life forms consume energy in order to live, so they can't be the same.

That is unless electrons are consuming energy in the conversion, just from somewhere we can't observe.

In my condensing universe blog I explained that the universe doesn't have to expand in order for us to observe it expanding - it could be condensing and we would have no way to tell the difference.

But a condensing universe would have a surplus of energy stored in the fabric of space itself - maybe that's where electrons get that extra energy.

It gets me that two point-like objects can collide at all - Heisenbergs uncertainty principle would mandate infinite uncertainty as to their momentum.

The only conclusion I can think of is non-locality of influence - if they get close enough then that will do.

But at our scale non-locality doesn't happen, right?

Have you ever had some food cooking while you were on the phone and drinking coffee?

I've got news for you - you're non-local too.

We are entangled with this universe and with each other and our influence extends through time and space.

Life is an emergent property of the physics of this universe.

Speaking of time and space, at the very smallest of scales time loses its meaning, and I've got a feeling that at the very largest of scales, space loses its meaning, and our reality is some where in between.

I watched 3blue1brown's video on quaternions and wondered if the very big and the very small were the result of four dimensional spheres passing through our three-dimensional universe.

If so, electrons, photons, etc could be the same size as our universe but trapped on the surface of some higher-dimensional plane.

I think string theorists call this a brane.

Once you concede this, it follows that the Casimir effect could be other universes glancing off ours like electrons on a sheet of graphene.

Given that electrons are negative and protons are positive, why don't they collide and cancel their charge out?

I'm guessing that electrical charge and electricity itself is/are emergent properties as well, and something else is going on.

The vibe

Vibe

We vibe off everything, may it be positive, neutral or negative.

That which we vibe off can be animate or inanimate.

When we have an idea, it's the idea we vibe off.

We usually describe this as "like", "dislike", "ignore", "useless", "love",
"hate", "interesting", "curious", "uninteresting", "bizarre", "attractive",
"uninteresting", "unattractive" or other adjectives.

These are all reflections of our human condition - not everyone feels the same,
so, to an extent, how we feel about things is a reflection of us.

When you vibe off something or someone, you know it, balls to bones.
If it's a person and they feel the same, you've found a soul mate.

You don't finish each others sentences, it's like surfing the net but you're
surfing their personality and they are doing the same thing, at the same time!

Notice that I've said nothing about gender.
Gender is a genetic coin flip, and sometimes that coin lands on its edge, so
it's not about that.

I've also not mentioned sex.
How important are having mind blowing orgasims to your life?

It's great when they happen, but it's usually not like calling an elevator,
which is actually part of their charm.

The best adrenaline rush is in the vibe, not the schedule.

What I mean by this is the vibe exists outside of time, but the schedule, when
and where you're going to do something, has a future, present, and a past.

You can sprinkle a relationship with events but the vibe was always there and
the events came from that.

That's why relationships never truly end - t had no beginning.
You were always gonna vibe off them.

And if you think that's not strange enough, cast your mind back to the last time you were lost in the rhythm!