Gangsta Rap Vs Cyberpunk

HipHop appears to have gone of the Charts being overtaken and redefined by Gangsta Rap. HipHop was the strongest urban youth movement and took on the Rockabilly movement that started on rural grounds after WW2 when ex-GIs continued to party despite colour together.

HipHop started in the melting-pot of New York where colour nor religion mattered to the kids and youngsters playing outside, especially at the junctions of invisible quarter borders that artificially segregated Americans from each other.

HipHop was all about unity and harmony using music, dance and graphical arts to have human come together and quickly facing the same enemy as their fathers of the Rock’n’roll generation.

Gangs based on skin colour took over first Graffiti tags abusing it as territorial signs providing their indirect and non-official support in suits and uniform to strike down and ban all of that new emerging fine art to keep it off museums and galleries. Than the music was captured by lyrics using words that had been just banned from society and way worse glorifying socially destructive and abusive professions and lifestyles. Finally coming to statements that HipHop was about Sneaker and clothing brands instead of a message of unity and empowerment.

Public dance performances were turned illegal quickly calling them gang battles instead of what they were: Competitions in peace based on ability to show off and have fun.

I grew up with Americans on the hill top that had become victim of that attack by practically the Klan and all that supported segregation in the USA forcing them to join the US military to get away from gang and police violence ripping apart all bits and social connections of their neighbourhoods.

Neither staying outside nor inside protected from trigger happy gangs and cops turning the streets into an urban modern battle ground outgunning the poor that could not afford guns despite their constitutional rights to even form militias.

Most of these mainly men later joined the police force and came back to their old neighbourhoods and today after the 80ies peaks of street violence they managed to get back their homes and drive out within the system what their Rockabilly fathers did off the record never reported.

For them, and me too, this town was Sparta. The Barracks had no luxury and life was dedicated to fighting. The Army could be easily convinced to allow the young even teenager recruits to learn skateboarding and BMX biking because these street sports teach falling and standing up again just as on a battle ground. One wrong step or move and you face the ground no matter of tarmac or concrete as Skateboarding or woodland soil in most battle grounds awaiting the GIs.

Playing Streetball, which is a Basketball rule based variant from one on one to five on five, but on one court helped predicting movements and formed platoons into blindly operating teams that could estimate their team mates movement making friendly fire accidents from within the squad a lot less likely, beside it makes you sweat like hell being way faster than laying on two baskets.

American football, which was only played on Barracks grounds, was fun and an ideal way for officers and Green Barrett to learn about tactical movement in an abstract manner being the learning by playing fun way of making special forces members move successfully on quick tight battle grounds like urban grounds.

Live in Sparta is all designed around war. Back in Greece as right here up that little hill in this tiny town in a valley the Americans called Hell’s Kitchen because of the very heat in summer peaks without any air flow except along the river and a spring and autumn being the rain time of the valley.

Gangsta Rap glorifies today a Dysantroph lifestyle based on drug use and abuse, bling bling luxus and quick money, insulting others and socialising racism and homophobia by declaring Rap as part of a culture defined by colour and Gey as an insult and a sign of weakness while the origins of HipHop knew neither colour nor hate.

Here in this little town I got stuck once more in my life, Sparta is gone and for me live turned Cyberpunk. So, no freestyling any more with GIs that are gone anyway, no Skateboarding even their is a dedicated ground now, no Streetball any more for sure, no hanging out outside because of Corona, but a live all around online ordering, lessons, work and social interactions in a way more “luxurious” flat, so.

While HipHop was a major youth movement Cyberpunk being around for almost as long as HipHop will most likely remain a tiny niche and with the US Army abandoning this town I turned into a niche, too.

Sparta is gone, it’s Cyberpunk now.

Robots

In dark future Sci-Fi humanoid robots are outperforming humans, exchanging humans or turned slaves that finally revolt to break free. The desire of a puppet that acts and is like a human being is quite old and dates back hundreds of years when puppet plays where a big art and an attraction also to grown ups.

Today development in robotics is quite advanced and Boston Dynamics even managed to create a human like moving two legged robot. Yet, every time I watch the YouTube vids I wonder if that thing is for real or a Hollywood like fake, especially next to that dog like robot which looks pretty natural, so. Doubting the level of truthfulness on BD info is fine, knowing that they are a major player in military research and robotic advancement are most certainly a great tool in psychological warfare against - everybody else and the enemies of the free world.

One thing is for sure so. It is quite a path ahead until the first reliably working humanoid robot will enter any battle field as an infanterist, the Terminator coming true or until human bodies get upgrades from the robotic research field as standard in pretty much all dark future utopias.

Sweet so, robotics is hitting the mens’ toys world and there are affordable kits available to get your home robot done based on consumer electronic levels. Everybody past his first single board computer project that got up and running successfully is ready to dive into new toy levels.

But be aware, there is always a hacker better than you and even the most secure industry standard smart home can and will go rogue if attacked by someone capable and with bad intentions.

In the end of the day, electronics are supposed to support us and everybody relying on electronics is a fool. If you cannot drive your car without all electronic assist services constantly on you have the wrong car. Most of those assist systems just managed to make more stupid men drive home actually too drunk given them a fake feeling of security and if the main power switch is accessible in the house cellar to pretty much everyone sneaking in with the post man the smart home will not ring any alarm, until the switch is put back on.

Personally, I think that humanoid robots are the wrong path of development and robots with legs make little sense for most applications. The wheel with an axe construction dominates human made mobility for a reason along with fixed wings.

I fear that robots with legs are developed for other reasons than fulfilling a certain task. Good development is based on solving a problem while in our modern world way too often a product is looking for a problem it can possibly fix.

This is due to a general inflexibility of our system in being incapable of changing. We can today produce goods in extremely huge quantities and this way quickly fill up market demand. If there is no buyer any more the factory either produces for warehouses or needs to stop production and the manufacturer will be out of business. Many products therefore became less reliable and are today constructed to break earlier, even making repairs impossible forcing the consumer to buy it over and over again.

Instead of adjusting to the market the market is adjusted, which is the biblical idea of “subdue the earth” gone mad; Which is a strange translation of the “dominium terrae” called principle of the bible anyway. Dominium is turned into a dominate equivalent and that fits that modern greed-is-good or dominate-to-succeed attitude quite well. Looking a bit deeper into that word you’ll have to understand that “dominium” is the same word root as “domus” the word which is base for the American sports arena “a dome” and basically a word for a house in the meaning of a building.

That statement “dominium tarrae” can well be interpreted as “turn this world into your house”, just it changes the meaning a lot, because a house is a place to live in, to prosper in, to fit in and not to enslave which is what too many of those religious humans translating to English a Latin statement ignoring the greater context and paragraph it is embedded in, which is itself a translation from old Hebrew into a doubtful interpretation opening way too much space for justifying abuse. That strategy of bad creative translations has a long history. Usually those have quite a laugh against my positive-translations especially on bible topics. It needed until the 60ies till Africo-American black skinned humans were at least on paper turned “equal men” in the meaning of humans and given most fundamental American constitutional rights. 

Religion was for centuries the dominating instrument for suppression and still is in many places of this world. If we don’t take care science will replace religion in this destructive form and we wake up one day in a dark future that became true, living a nightmare instead of an utopia like we would if his kingdom had come, the good pray and keep fighting for.

A centre in darkness

Europe's traffic is gone dark, all planes grounded and therefore this traffic map most impressively shows the importance and impact of mobility and the impact of the Corona epedemic on our society.

This picture from Eurocontrol shows how European air traffic changed from before to straight in the current Corona crisis. As expected mobility went down. That flights are down is not the interesting part. It will be interesting to figure out if air traffic gets up again or if it stays on rather low levels.

Most of these flights are business flights, most of these flights are not neccessary to have the job done.

Instead of having to be in the office of the client and stressing air routes creating imense pollution by burning fosil fuels the fleet of European business humans well could, after an introducing meet and greet, do the job from within home office or just their local branch. Unfortunately that will kill these bonus miles conversation at their most favorite bar that do become embarrissing when repeated during bar hopping over and over again at least to the low level local right along the tour but not to them...

Corporate world sucks, we know.

I ceratinly will have a blog post about a year after the Crisis on exactly this issue and bonus mile conversations, too.

The left part of the pic shows another interesting situation I wont to point out here.

Zoom into GB/BeNeLux/France/DACH

It shows by indicating most dense traffic the center of Europeans economy. 

The blue running character like polygone shows the brightest spots indicating most traffic. This is London in the north to the Alps in the south and does include a lot of vacation traffic, I guess.

The red circles are the very brightest spots and this is London, Paris, Holland (The Amsterdam to Rotterdam regions of the Netherlands) and Frankfurt. 

Frankfurt is an international continental european hub that takes, as the second largest human carrier airport of Europe, a lot of intercontinentinal traffic to further devide it into all European regions and the actual centre spots of the European economy.

Despite the believe that Germany and only Germany is the very economic centre of the EU traffic indicates that it is actually a triangle of London-Paris-Amsterdam and all inbetween.

Another map I found using google search from a Facebook group named "Other Europe" shows traffic, even so "traffic" is unspecified this might be most likely the road traffic on Europs' dense road networks and it supports my theory. 

Here the Europen Economicle Triangle has extensions along the M1 towards the north away from London to the UKs main industrial region of Manchester to Leeds and Glasgow, and down south to the German Rhein-Ruhr area which is Germanies densly populated main industrial region.

This is where beside business human travel also goods are transported ever day.

Mobility is the backbone of our society, but it became toxic to the overall planet by being based on toxic fuels, transporting goods not needed and done for prestigious reasons instead out of a requirement.

Corona changed that for now. Corona forced all into home office, but we still buy goods and stuff we don't really need and that need to travel for way to long distances. It actually became difficult to understand for oneself what is really needed and what makes sence to buy. Instead we buy based on the maximum we can afford financially.

Have a look at your watch. Is it a smart watch or even a luxurious one? Just for the reference. A watch is a clock that can be carried with you all the time. Initially they were supposed to show the current time. From there they developed into status symbols and little computers, but certainly toys and jewelery.

The worst of those acquisitions is usually the very tool needed for mobility. Our rides. The car. 

Everybody wants a car to impress which way ever. While we need a car to be able to move when we need to where we need to, actually. 

We need to drive to work, don't we?

We need to transport grocery shopping, don't we?

We need to drive into vacation with Snowboard and luggage, don't we?

We need to also have some fun with it, don't we?

We also need to actually be able to afford it.

Personally, I am actually a petrol head. Being a rather poor citizen of the free western world I only can afford a car to justify the work and transport parts of the list directly connected with my income and therefore base of my quality of life.

If I had home office, contiued online grocery shopping, would be able to use bio-fuels like ethanol or plant based oils I would have a very different ride that I would use for the fun, and vacation is supposed to be fun. I would not ride it every morning and onto tight parking lots and be scared every time the insurance and tax asks for its tribute and actualy worry about scratches. I'd actually would love my car as a petrol head does...

And the roads would have less traffic and provide instead more joy everytime a ride is actually needed.

This would apply for all others too. Especially for all those that buy the car to impress and for emotional reasons. 

Less is more. Everybody sais it, but no one gets it.

Instead of spending two days of the work week on a physicle move, or hours inbetween sales meetings and presentations adding up to full days, the business human could make more money by being productive, while enjoying his ride on more empty streets and still have the bonus mile conversation as they will drop the required amount of points for the bonus programm if everybody would travel smarter: Less is more.

Can't wait for the traffic pics after Corona...

New Album release

Cyberpunk Crusader Chants

The next album is about to hit the streaming services. Cyberpunk Crusader Chants is again made with the simple beauty of a simple loop software using predefined loops. This way I am quite productive and can push out a lot of tracks in a reather short time, beside I cannot afford any high quality equipment at all.

Just check the price tags of good synthesisers and loop stations or other DJ equipment.

I experimented with Audacity after recording a few melodies using a freeware software synth and the laptop keyboard, but decided to head another way here. In the future I will use also freeware synths and the laptop keyboard, but it will be more like simple melodies instead of bigger arangements.

I called this album crusader chants because I have this loop box with oriantal sounds I wanted to use since I got it, but until now haven't had the muse to do so. Now, it was time to base upon oriental tunes some Cyberpunk style dance sounds. Right then when the middle east is in flames again ... Make love not war and dancing helps to get to the love part a lot, if they just would listen to the peace lovers and dance.

I always liked special and well made intros on an album and so I this carries my first voice tracks in the beginning, mid-, and end of the album attempting to create the appropriate atmosphere of a crusader in a dark future cyberpunk world. Without question I am trying to be on the good side of the crusade protecting the faithful and believers that shell be nothing short of good times, and dancing is a good time, isn' it or how bad can company become?

So...enjoy and click here for teaser

Dark Future short stories - Third - A high tower perspective

A high tower perspective

Johann looked down into the streets below his top floor corner office in a new building erected after the downfall as the highest of the sprawl to rule from here world wide.

First time ever he felt vulnerable here and wondered if he cut be struck here, behind high protective glassing an anti rocket system and a hundred elite con soldiers.

Neither their AI nor the humans in the strategic military enforcement think tank considered possible what just happened. There was no explanation.

Humans had mutated and those mutants were excluded from the con world, at least in this part of the world they were practically running.

“This insect..”, he did not turn around, no music was playing and the sparkling wine remained untouched. There was no reason to celebrate. “This insect” he mumbled trying to hide his fear of what was to come there.

The board members stood in silence trying to predict Johann reactions.

Johann looked up and set his eyes onto the horizon watching the late afternoon sun.

Johann was from a very old blood line ruling even before the downfall and Black Striker was no unknown, but the biggest pain in their families ass. For generations them and these pig farmers and beer brewers had been in battle. Centuries ago they belonged to the same knight order and Strikers ancestors killed his ancestor in a clan war over tax.

From than on his ancestors were expelled from their soil and the bloodline of Striker kept changing names, possession but never ever attitude. They stuck to no law, were rebellious and never shy of a conflict against whom ever they considered “an asshole”.

Johann was a “vom Felsen” the Strikers were once “vom Felde” and even gave up their aristocratic title interbreeding with the lowest of the low women possible. 

During the downfall his father, in a genius coup, took their ancient town back, the last of the vom Felde gone away. Nobody really new what he was doing or were her was gone and all for a sudden a few years after the downfall someone broke into the prison and freed their slaves brute force. Not one of the guards stayed alive, the director was even crucified after having had his teeth beaten out in the prison court.

Now he sat down in the side valley on top of the old military tunnels build for a war that never happened way before the downfall and turned their mansions pool into a fish farm, because he also took the surrounding hill tops.

With the prisoners and military grade pioneer robots he turned that valley into a modern castle and the - the major continental hub for rejects, a hide out for mutants and centre of terror activity in the uncontrolled spawn quarters, so the official Gremium statement. 

They tried artillery attacks and rockets from interceptors and lost them all. 

It took Johann a little fortune and a deal he considered disgusting with the prostitutes of the sprawl to figure out that the Black Striker was the last of the vom Felde. Florian Charles de Terre and what happened. 

Johann turned around and took a seat behind his massive dark oak table staring at the board members in front of him.

 “This mercenary....”

While Johann family rose over the centuries to become way more powerful and a global player after being kicked out of their ancient castles the vom Felder turned looser, renegades, mafia and at some point even terrosists. They lost all their land and enterprises bit by bit, step by step, generation over generation. But instead of fading their faith gone stronger and their strikes more and more dangerous, brutal and devastating, their influence within the low lives and expelled from society at peaks reached god level having them rise against fearing the vom Felsen Clan. During the downfall he managed to escape his prison and took part in the most dangerous and fierceful conflicts of the world order collapse known as the downfall. He was a hunted war criminal that knew now mercy against hired guns or anyone that did not serve the people sticking to their moto “bon a protege, mal a mort” over generations. He did not go to war, but had been on a crusade against everyone that was using military strategies for profit, finally striking against those hunting him as a war criminal by blowing up the court and entire office complex an attack only a very few knew that he had exectured - and know he is back and up against their universal ruling live. 

“This insect of a mercenary just turned himself into top priority of all our efforts. He will go down. He will die.

I need a full status report of all our military capabilites and an estimation of the capabilities of our allies. We will prepare a devistating strike against his position, his facility, with all we have got, with all we can bring to the battle ground. This is a declartion of war of total war”, Johann stood up, took his sabre from the desk in front of the window, opened the bottle with a smooth well placed stroke and drank having the expensive limited edition sparkling wine from their wine yards run all over his face and down over his suit. 

The board cheered, shouted, screamed and in one voice broke out their uniting moto “Salve Dictus Emperator” 

While the board shot themselves off this world plundering the open bar equipped with the fines of spirits and psychoactive drugs, Johann stayed sober. His ancestors all were straight edge and never used any substances changing the persistence of mind. Tonight he would give the gods a sacrifice. A dozen of the secretaries would do. Their pain would wake the demons he will need in this war and tomorrow, based on the numbers coming in, he would develop a strategy. One he will execute in person. 

That very moment strikers dogs stood still and looked west, while he looked down feeling a glimps of hell crawling up onto him again. “Ayyyyyeee” he mumbled darkness awaiting.

A picture sais more than thousands words

Check out the full Picture Book from this trip and click here

 

Crypto - Credit - Real World - Shadowrun

In the Shadowrun pen and paper role playing game the currency was called credit, a name that quite hits also what our real world money is. Money lent out by the central banks to companies holding a banking licence that will pass on that cash into the financial markets from enterprise financing down to consumer credits and of course that sweet little house in the suburbs.

In the dark future games that money is of course all digital and given out by private companies instead of state legalized central banks.

Currently, we are in the gold rush times of Crypto currencies and BitCoin kicked it off. As dodgy as BitCoin most of those currencies are, but they all go through the roof now.

There is good use for secure digital easy to exchange and transfer money, especially for internationally operating enterprises operating with millions in different currencies constantly. Like the Euro within the EU it will end exchange rate insecurities and give the legal bookies a much better day and the finance department better nights, because the slide with the either Euro or Dollar main currency is gone and cant be outdated by any unforeseen market slide.

BitCoin is dodgy because nobody knows for sure who actually started it. Someone is claiming responsibility, but another someone analysing the forums post of that someone made clear that the someone has either weird work ours or is from a different time zone, all of which was doubted by other someones. So, nobody knows and they pretty much all stay in the shadows of the real world known as the internet forums and blog universe.

BitCoin claims to be based on a limited amount of entities called coin which is a concept of getting money to the market from the mid ages that worked and dates back to the Egyptians. The lord in the castle gave out coins to his people so they spare on his fortress protected market place to look for the guy that offers a chicken, but he wants some Tulips and them having only a sack of potatoes they try to swap for chicken in the first place or was it Tulips that get the chicken???

The Egyptian society created along the Nile and agriculture was depending on the flood periods of the Nile. In the flood period the Pharaoh let the his people build the Pyramids and for that work paid in gold coins, because the gold mines further up the Nile were all under his control. Slaves building the Pyramids is a wide spread misconception even so there is a strong possibility that the lower tasks had been executed by slaves and here I do not want to get into the differences of slavery from a Roman Empire first citizen mistress in Rome to dark future electronically surveyed slaves on drugs and artificial hydration and nutrition injections.

Looking at BitCoin it quickly turns out that the coins can be divided and technically that creates another entity of the coin and therfore another coin itself, even so called a fraction of a coin. That gold coin back than was not be divided and those that did were called forgers creating counterfeit money. In the German language there is even a special word for it “Falschmünzer” which I haven’t heard in a while but was used for a fraudster in the past.

And than, the only thing to be bought at this point with BitCoins is stuff from the DarkNet or a speculative plus in the wallet.

Like in most industries from Automobile to the Internet the current incredible amount of different Crypto currencies will go down in the future. Beside those controlled by classic central banks most likely those with most backing by its users will survive and considering the huge demand and turn overs in the dark net, BitCoin might have a good chance to keep floating in the crypto currency market water for some time to come, beside that bad boy image.

Other currencies backed by major companies will be the competition for average Joe crypto investor and quite possible many corporate credit slaves will find themselves on their business trips with an amount of coins to be spent in affiliated shops, restaurants and even bars called expenses, because it makes the booky happy and a happy booky makes the investors happy which will be a major bank and its investment department. That department somewhere in a posh top floor in south Manhattan will be also running the crypto currency throughout all its portfolio and everybody is happy. Happy shiny Crypto people.

Corona makes the short term difficult to estimate, but an economic crisis is overdue for years and the only option the central banks have to avoid a major crash creating even more unrest than Corona by creating heated minds sitting at home in house arrest like back in their childhood when they were caught using drugs back from the party they were not allowed to go to in the first place...and now again...no party...no drugs...the government is mummy!!!...and mummies mean brother the central bank will create more money to be spent for ... BitCoins.

As a matter of fact most classic investment channels are at their limits. Real Estate is high, Precious Metals are high, Stocks are Up, Bonds are not so, but they can't even there was a rush on them and now there is Crypto.

Crypto has it all. It is actually quite useless, because most people cannot buy anything with it, it is online and looks like a video game, no further explanation here, everybody receiving cash wants it, as for now promising high profits easily, and gets it, in opposite to that limited edition VIP customers only watch, and gold rush.

Crypto is also from all investment channels that one that has the highest acceptance within young people from Hipsters to Gangsters and pretty much all are in or at least pretend to. There is a chance that Crypto is the way that the cash wave intended to be spread across the people by the banks actually gets there taking a detour, but than straight into those market participants with a high tech affinity that are today, just a bit older, already the super rich and that wont change.

The more troubled waters are the more difficult the ground is to be estimated, but I think that’s also where the bear catches the biggest fish and I just love the sound and smell there.

Welcome ... Bongo Jumping Beats ... Crazy Dance Vibes

 ...click the pic for a selection of streaming services, please...