A.C. Flory's Blog, page 29

The myth of the self-made billionaire

In a previous post I talked about how rich 38 of Australia’s billionaires really are. Today, I read a brilliant post by Robert Reich about US myths [thanks Jill!]. What really grabbed my attention was this video which debunks the myth of the self-made billionaire:

Isn’t it time we stopped idolizing these poor little rich boys?

Isn’t it time we stopped rewarding them for being more ruthless than just about everybody else on the planet?

Isn’t it time we stopped wanting to be like them… and castigating ourselves when our scruples make us ‘fail’?

I know who I admire, and it ain’t any of these guys.

Meeks

The MONIAC – water driven economic modelling

My thanks to Matthew Wright for the link to this incredible video. Coincidentally, Matthew appears in the video too, helping to explain how something as simple, as real world as water can be used to create a mechanical model of what makes our world go round…money.

cheers,
Meeks

Australia – the wonky distribution of wealth

Inflation is rising all over the world, and Australia is not immune, so the RBA [Reserve Bank of Australia] is aggressively raising interest rates. The explanation given is that there is something like a 300 billion dollar slush fund, squirrelled away by Australians, that’s driving spending, and therefore inflation. To reduce inflation, this slush fund must be reduced.

The RBA’s weapon of choice is interest rates. By raising interest rates, it forces the commercial banks to raise their own interest rates, especially on mortgages.

Makes sense, right?

Well no, actually it doesn’t, because the people who have access to that slush fund are at the wealthy end of the spectrum, and for them, higher interest rates won’t mean a damn thing. Their ‘consumerism’ won’t be affected because they’re simply too rich.

But how rich is too rich?

Everyone knows that Gina Rinehart is the wealthiest woman in Australia, but most of us don’t know how wealthy. I was interested enough to find out.

The data in the spreadsheet below comes from a Forbes article from 2019 listing the 50 richest people in Australia:

38 Richest people in Australia

I recommend reading the entire article because it’s quite eye opening.

But getting back to wealth, someone’s worth is not the same as money in the bank. Worth is what they would have if they sold all their holdings and assets and converted them into cash. Clearly, Gina Rinehard does not have 14-plus billion dollars languishing in a bank somewhere. That would be ridiculous, but the grand total of 114.68 billion dollars in just 38 hands is even more ridiculous. And that’s just the people who are worth at least 1 billion dollars. There are 12 more people on the Forbes list whose worth is close to 1 billion. I didn’t bother counting them.

Nor did I count the baby millionaires, the ones who only have a few tens of millions…

-rolls eyes-

At the other end of the scale, are the millions of ordinary Australians who barely make ends meet. At the bottom of that list are JobSeeker recipients who are expected to subsist on $40 a day. A little further up the food chain are those on fixed incomes [pensions] who do NOT own their own homes. Someone I went to school with falls into that category. She’s in her sixties and lives in a boarding house.

Then there are people like me. Thanks to my parents, I have a house, but I have no superannuation, and the only income I have is the age pension. That just went up by, wait for it, $10 per week to account for the cost of living rises. As of yesterday, I now get $2014 per month.

I know we are amongst the lucky ones because we do have a roof over our heads, but keeping that roof is getting harder by the week. I won’t bore you with a list of all the things we can no longer afford, I’ll just say that every appliance in the house has gone past its use-by-date and is breaking down. That includes the plumbing…

I accept that inflation has to be curbed. That’s a given. But we are part of the huge underclass of Australians most vulnerable to increases in the cost of living because our safety margins are so low to begin with. Essentially, we are the ones being punished for the inflationary spending of those higher up the food chain.

Is it fair?

-makes rude noise-

It’s time governments and institutions like the RBA stopped plucking the low hanging fruit just because it’s ‘easy’. The further ALL Australians get from financial and political equality, the more shaky democracy becomes.

Marie Antoinette did not say ‘Let them eat cake’, but she lost her head anyway. Literally.

Australia is a long, long way from that kind of mass hysteria, but democracy is a lot more fragile than we think. To be quite blunt about it, the current version of capitalism is strangling democracy because money equals power, and the middle classes no longer have either.

Sadly, we are living in interesting times, and they’re becoming more interesting by the day.

Meeks

Cat Training

If you’ve ever been owned by a cat, this post will make you laugh until you cry! Thanks, Cage.

Cage Dunn - Fibber, Fabricator, Teller-of-Tall-Tales

“And how is the new cat going?”

It’s a question with an answer that involves a lot of eye-movement, a mouth like a gulping goldfish, and weird noises.

Can a cat be trained? In all my experiences with cats, whether mine or within the household I lived in, or fosters, I’ve had only one cat (before now) that was a bit difficult – and that was in one area only (he shredded our lounge chairs, but only the backs and only at night so we didn’t see him do it, so of course he could look innocent when confronted).

This new cat isn’t a mature 5.5 yo. He’s a kitten. With sharp teeth, sharp claws, and a daredevil attitude that’s managed to get him into trouble at least three times – that we know of.

The first one was trying to bust through the front door. A security door with…

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A sweet start to the day

No, not a biscuit or a cake. This…

Morning all!

-Meeka saluting with a coffee-

PC deep clean and a new video

I didn’t intend to deep clean the inside of my pc today, but it was starting to overheat a bit, and the fans were becoming a little too loud, so I dragged out the paint brushes and the vacuum cleaner and got stuck into it. Now I’m knackered. If anyone wants to know how to clean their own desktop pc [can’t do it to a laptop] you can find the post here.

One reason I had to reduce the noise of the fans [in the pc] was because the microphone was starting to pick them up when I recorded my latest how-to video. That’s the one down below:

The how-to is for gaming, but I’m slowly honing my skills for the creation of self-publishing videos. The one above may look simple but the editing was brutal. I stopped counting the snippets of video at 50 and didn’t count the voice-over and overlay snippets at all. I did, however, learn how to make my own circles and arrows and overlay them on segments of the video I wanted to highlight:

Unless anyone particularly wants to hear the -cough- dulcet tones of my Aussie accent, leave this one for the gamers.

Time for a long delayed breakfast,

cheers,
Meeks

Is ‘art’ still art if an AI makes it?

The picture above was generated by an AI [Futurism].

“The artwork, titled “Théâtre D’opéra Spatial,” depicts a scifi-inspired scene of an opera performance. But Jason Allen, who submitted the artwork, used AI image generator Midjourney to create it.”

https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-generated-painting-wins-state-fair-fine-arts-competition?utm_souce=mailchimp&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=09012022&utm_source=The+Future+Is&utm_campaign=81882d0b81-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_09_01_09_33&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_03cd0a26cd-81882d0b81-247165549&mc_cid=81882d0b81&mc_eid=bbf5c06f50

Further along in the article, Jason Allen talks about how he set up the parameters for Midjourney [the software/AI] to use. Then he chose what he considered to be the best from three outcomes. And it won first prize at the Colorado State Fair.

When I first read this article, my initial reaction was horror. How could a piece of software, no matter how sophisticated, produce something this…beautiful? But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that it was the parameters set by Jason Allen that had created an image of great beauty, so in that sense, Midjourney was simply another tool.

I admit an AI is a bit more high tech than a paintbrush, but the creativity still came from Allen.

What do you think? The beginning of the end for artists? Or just one more tool?

cheers,
Meeks

Queen Elizabeth II

I just woke up and learned that the Queen had died. As an Australian, there could be only one person who fit that description – Elizabeth II.

I’m not a monarchist, but I remember singing ‘God Save the Queen’ at school in the ’60s, so she has been a part of my life for…most of my life. It seems to me that she was a good person, and that is how I will remember her.

Vale.

Meeks

Wikipedia

I know Wikipedia has its detractors, but in my not-so-humble opinion, it’s one of the few, truly good things in our digital world. It’s an attempt to promote the caring, unselfish, generous parts of human nature, by ensuring that information is available to everyone, everywhere.

That’s why I just donated $10 AUD out of my fortnightly pension:

I use Wikipedia a lot in my research, not as my sole source of information, but often as the jumping off point when investigating a new area of knowledge. Why? Because any new area of knowledge is bound to have its own terminology, it’s own ‘language’, and until I get a feel for how that language works, it’s hard to dig down to the bits I’m really interested in. Wiki gives me a way to untangle the thread, to make a start.

If you use Wikipedia in your research, or if you ever look things up just for fun, think about how much harder things would be if Wiki no longer existed. It does not pester us with ads. It does not sell space to special interests. It just asks for donations.

In a way, Wikipedia is the single, biggest crowd funding experiment in the whole wide world. It’s us, taking control away from the vested interests that seek to manipulate us at every turn. It’s freedom…for us.

If you have some loose change, please donate to keep Wiki free:

https://donate.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ways_to_Give

cheers,
Meeks

How I create my videos

I’ll start with a caveat: I’m still learning the ropes when it comes to creating and editing videos, so please take the info. in this post as a starting point only.

Onward! Okay these the tools I use:

KLM microphoneAction! video captureCorel Draw X8 for any precise graphicsGood old Paint for quick and dirty graphicsCorel VideoStudio Pro 2021 for video editingThe microphone: Before I started doing voice overs, I did some research online and found all sorts of stuff about how to set up an area for audio recording. I also read up on the kind of equipment you would need. In the end, I bought the cheapest microphone Amazon had to offer – it was on sale – and I try to record when there’s no background noise [Offspring puttering around in the kitchen, dog barking, cat wanting to be fed etc]. That’s it. Not professional quality but…good enough.Video capture software: I love Action! because I own it outright – no recurring subscription fees – and it’s sophisticated enough to allow me to take good quality footage. Plus it was relatively cheap.I’ve owned and used Corel Draw X8 for a very long time. It’s a great program and I love it.Windows Paint has been around for a very long time too, and it’s perfect for quickly resizing a screenshot, or adding some arrows and labels, or cropping out the bits I don’t want. And it’s free. Can’t argue with that.And now to Corel VideoStudio Pro 2021…. I don’t love it. Keep reading and I’ll tell you why.

Before buying the VideoStudio editor, I tried out a number of editors, but not the Corel one. So it was an impulse buy based on Corel being a trusted brand… and it was on sale. I had trouble from the start. Installing the software and getting it to run ate up days of frustration and online searching. Once I had it running, I had trouble learning it because, although it looks pretty, the interface is weirdly unintuitive. It’s also inconsistent. It’s supposed to be great for beginners but I had trouble learning it. I’ll leave it at that.

One thing I do like is the ability to edit multiple tracks, which look something like this:

Once I have captured the actual video with Action!, I import it into VideoStudio and drag it to what’s called the ‘timeline’. The timeline can include all the tracks shown in the screenshot.

The first track to go on the timeline has to be the video track [for me]. This is my raw material. Once it’s on the timeline, I can snip out the bits I don’t like to get an overall feel for the length of the finished video and what I want/must present in that time.

The overlay track is where I place still images, or even snippets of video, that will create a ‘picture-in-a-picture’ effect. In the example above, my self portrait and the pic of Warrandyte both overlaid the video going on in the background.

Narration was always going to be important in my videos so it really helps that I can create short bits of voice-over [usually about one sentence worth] which can then be positioned at the precise locations that fit the visual narrative.

And finally there’s the music. I included music in the how-to video to provide continuity, but also to get rid of the ‘dead air’ you get in-between bits of voice-over. Essentially this dead air is the non-sound you get when the microphone is not recording. It’s quite disturbing when you first hear it. A very, very soft music track in the background just smooths the transitions from one audio clip to the next. If I could record everything in one hit, I wouldn’t need that smoothing, but I simply couldn’t do it, no matter how hard I tried. Ums, ahs, oops, coughs, and other gremlins would always creep in, even when I scripted what I wanted to say. It’s actually a lot easier deleting a blooper and re-recording a single sentence than trying to do Hamlet without a break.

So that’s what I’ve learned to-date. I would recommend the KLM microphone and Action!. I would not recommend VideoStudio Pro 2021. That said, I would advise you to buy a video editor that is sophisticated enough to offer multiple tracks, including voice over, and does it without any fuss or bother. Do I know of one? No, but perhaps people will chime in, in comments.

cheers,
Meeks