Via ferrata of medium difficulty, in the east ascent one passage B/C, otherwise easier (B and A/B), the descent via the SW ridge is a touch easier (passages B, mostly around A/B). In the approach to the east face there are some unsecured scree passages (max. I) and in the descent an unsecured exposed ridge section to overcome. Due to the high frequency of use, the route is very prone to falling rocks. For the ascent, surefootedness and a head for heights are necessary.

This American Bittern had no difficulty seeing me. I, on the other hand, took quite a while honing in on her.

With VIA 186 tucked away in the siding at Pogamasing, CPKC 119 swiftly departs Sheahan crossing the Spanish River and a swift beneath the bridge. In whitewater terminology, a Class I rapid is the lowest level of difficulty and a Class VI rapid is the highest, where swifts are sections of moving water, but not quite big enough to be a classified as a rapid. Swifts tend to happen where the river narrows or the riverbed gets shallow. If you look closely, there is a "chute" with moderate whitewater beneath the bridge where both of these things happen. The whitewater in a swift is created by miniature waves from the fast moving water, unlike in a Class I or Class II rapid where the whitewater is generally from water recirculating over a rock.

 

The small hamlet of Sheahan can also be seen between the train and the river in the distance. A couple small camps (one cabin is visible) are all that are left from what was at one point a thriving logging community - MP 23.26 Nemegos Sub.

If we wait until our lives are free from sorrow or difficulty, then we wait forever. And miss the entire point.

~ Dirk Benedict

 

Anything Goes 2021: Forest

*Working Towards a Better World

 

If he who does not know kept silent, discord would cease. -

Socrates

 

Three Rules of work:

1. Out of clutter find simplicity.

2. From discord find harmony.

3. In the middle of difficulty lies

opportunity. -

Albert Einstein

 

Change is never easy, and it often creates discord, but when people come together for the good of humanity and the Earth, we can accomplish great things.

- David Suzuki

 

By union the smallest states thrive. By discord the greatest are destroyed. - Sallust

 

Please bear with me, I will not get to all of your works right away but I am making my way slowly am having some computer problems that are slowing me down even more, sorry.

 

Thank you for your kind visit. Have a wonderful and beautiful day! xo❤️

 

I had difficulty identifying this moth, as I used two books that I had on Butterflies and Moths, and finally I Googled it. I am not 100% sure if this is what it is, so if anyone thinks differently please let me know. I found it in a patch of scrub by the river at Waterperry Gardens this week. It was totally at rest for a long time so was easy to photograph.

While walking along the strolling deck above the stormwater management area, we saw a lot of branches in the water, which I have never seen before. Best seen large by clicking on the photo.

 

Stay safe and don't let your guard down in the holiday season. Do your part, stay apart and wear a mask. #BeKind

Having difficulty in identifying these. My current thought is that they are mergansers, a male in eclipse and a female, but would welcome comments. Seen on the Tyne today.

I am having difficulty with the identification of this stint. Maybe somebody can help ID this bird? I am inclined to believe it is a Little Stint judging by the bill shape and colouring of the upper parts. It was by itself among a large flock of similarly sized Wrybill out at Lake Ellesmere a couple of months ago. As the Little Stint is very rare, this bird is likely a Red-necked Stint.

From my window. The sun had the utmost difficulty to break through the early morning haze.

Weather is often the main difficulty in Scotland but there is a saying in Scotland that if you don't like the weather there wait for ten minutes. Yes the weather is so changeable that often if you wait you will be rewarded with some sunshine. I took this shot on one of my weekly visits to the Highlands and lo and behold the whole week was end to end sunshine. I had to delete the last two images as they were over processed. Thank-you for your comments and critiques. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

The construction of the church was accompanied by difficulties, including due to the Polish uprising of 1830-1831. Only in 1835, the Kiev landowner Anthony Savitsky contributed the final amount, but construction was completed only after 7 years. On August 30, 1842 of the same year, the temple was consecrated.

St. Alexander's Cathedral remained the only major Catholic religious building in Kyiv until the Church of St. Nicholas was built in 1909.

 

Будівництво церкви супроводжувалося труднощами, у тому числі через Польське повстання 1830—1831 років. Лише 1835 року київський поміщик Антоній Савицький вніс остаточну суму, але будівництво завершилося лише через 7 років. 30 серпня 1842 року того ж року храм було освячено.

Собор Святого Олександра залишався єдиною великою католицькою культовою спорудою Києва, доки 1909 року не було збудовано костел Святого Миколая.

 

Український дім – місце в центрі столиці, яке використовують для проведення різних заходів: конгресів, форумів, конференцій, виставок. У п’ятиповерховій будівлі близько десятка виставкових залів.

Будівлю споруджено в 1978–1982 роках для розміщення в ній експозиції музею Леніна, який до переїзду був розташований у приміщенні Будинку вчителя, знаного серед киян як «Центральна Рада». Ленінська експозиція працювала до 1993 року, після цього її демонтували і розмістили у фондах, а установу почали використовувати як поліфункціональний виставково-презентаційний комплекс.

Nicola 2019 35

In the early 1800's, many thoughtful Americans believed that isolation and the difficulties of communication would force the Mississippi Valley settlements to form a separate nation. Hoping to hold the frontier, Congress, in 1800, established a post route from Nashville (TN) to Natchez (MS). The Trace, then a series of Indian Trails, had drawn from the Secretary of State the bitter comment, "The passage of mail from Natchez is as tedious as from Europe when westerly winds prevail." To speed the mail, President Jefferson ordered the army to clear out the trail and make it a road. Postriders, carrying letters, dispatches, and newspaper helped bind the vast turbulent frontier to the republic. However, their day passed by the mid-1830's when steamboats, running from New Orleans to Pittsburg, robbed the Trace of its usefulness as a main post route.

 

The pathway shown above is a section of the original Old Natchez Trace near Eupora, Mississippi (before the road) that you can walk on as it winds back and forth across the newer Natchez Trace Road. Some sections are fairly flat adjacent to the nearby roadway and others are deeper, worn out paths that are usually referred to as the 'Sunken Trace'.

 

Three bracketed photos were taken with a handheld Nikon D7200 and combined with Photomatix Pro to create this HDR image. Additional adjustments were made in Photoshop CS6.

 

"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." ~Jeremiah 29:11

 

The best way to view my photostream is through Flickriver with the following link: www.flickriver.com/photos/photojourney57/

Great difficulty standing against the strength of the wind.

The Helm Wind is the only named wind in the UK. Blows along the length of the Cumbrian Pennines, East of the Eden Valley and is marked by a long rolling bank of cloud parallel to the Pennines.. The wind needs to blow from the East, as it was today.

This otherworldly scene was shot at sunrise on Serra da Estrela, Portugal’s mainland highest mountain.

 

It was a very cold winter morning, crisp air, wonderful light.

Looking at the image you would most certainly say that the golden rocks are a different kind from the dark grey ones. Well, in fact they are exactly the same, all of them being granite. The only difference here is, …. well, quite right, THE LIGHT! The ones under the direct sunrise light seem to be gold whereas the ones standing in the shadow show their true grey tone.

 

*****

Serra da Estrela (Star Mountain) is Portugal’s mainland highest mountain. At 1,993 metres at its highest point in Torre, Serra da Estrela is an area of rare landscape beauty. You can take advantage of the moments of communion with nature to discover the diversity of plants and birds and the flocks of sheep herded by Estrela dogs from the breed named after the mountain.

 

In cold weather, Serra da Estrela is the only place in Portugal where you can try ski, or go sledging, snowboarding or ride a snowmobile. Albeit small, there are several runs with support infrastructure, as well as artificial snow runs for skiing at any time of the year.

 

This natural park is excellent for trekking, horse-riding or mountain biking. It boasts some 375km of marked trails of varying degrees of difficulty.

 

*******

Covão do Boi, Serra da Estrela, Portugal

 

© All rights reserved Rui Baptista. Please do not use this image on websites, blogs or any other media without my explicit written permission.

© Leanne Boulton, All Rights Reserved

 

Street photography from Glasgow, Scotland.

 

Colour re-edit of a shot from July 2017.

 

The slogan on the bag reads "Every Little Helps" but a well placed crease is hiding the 'E' for a slogan that best matches the position I am in right now.

 

I'm struggling. Having to pack and downsize means losing things that are precious but not essential. It hurts. I know that I hold on to the memories but the objects related to those memories have been such an important part of my life. Having to do this on an ever decreasing time scale while getting breathless just walking up a flight of stairs still and suffering fatigue from lack of sleep. It's all a bit too much and there is not a lot that helps.

 

I just needed to share. It helps just a little to let it out. My head is spinning with so much to do.

 

I wish you all a very wonderful weekend of photography my dear Flickr friends.

 

Take care and take photos.

Having difficulty with the berries. She dropped this one, but was soon back for more at Martin Mere WWT.

Taken with some difficulty through our neighbour's tree at almost the same spot as the Possum/Galah confrontation the other day - we heard a Kookaburra laughing and I noticed one sitting on the far right end of the power pole cross arm (out of sight on the right) followed by a Magpie landing on the other end. Oh no, problems for sure. As I grabbed the camera and moved a bit to position myself, at the left hand end and middle were a further two Kookas with the Magpie keeping a watchful eye....surprisingly close. Magpies take exception to Kookaburras and usually take chase. In time, as I typed this the Noisy Miners joined in. The Kookas decided to retreat as usual. Game over.

 

Today 19 June.

After a hike with Swiss friends at the Mills Canyon Park in Burlingame, I scouted for a good place with a clear view of airplanes landing at SFO, the San Francisco International airport. I found some dandelion blowballs in a local park. A dandelion blowball apparently has a spiritual meaning of surviving through all challenges and difficulties.

 

I processed a balanced, a photographic and a paintery HDR photo from two RAW exposures, blended them, and carefully adjusted the color balance and curves. I welcome and appreciate constructive comments.

 

Thank you for visiting - ♡ with gratitude! Fave if you like it, add comments below, like the Facebook page, order beautiful HDR prints at qualityHDR.com.

 

-- ƒ/6.3, 50 mm, 1/80, 1/320 sec, ISO 400, Sony A6000, SEL-P1650, HDR, 2 RAW exposures, _DSC0784_5_hdr2bal1pho1pai5m.jpg

-- CC BY-NC-SA 4.0, © Peter Thoeny, Quality HDR Photography

I have difficulty identifying hawks in flight at a far distance, but there is little doubt about a powerful hawk flying low across a field, with a white patch on the rump...Northern Harrier.

 

This hawk was seen at a VERY far distance, so it was necessary to crop the picture. Not the sharpest of shots but still with some feather detail and motion blur. Happy to have gotten it for Life Bird Photograph #236.

Jungfrau Park is an amusement park located near Interlaken, Switzerland. It opened as the Mystery Park in 2003, and closed in November 2006 due to financial difficulties and low turnout. The park was designed by Erich von Däniken, and consisted of seven pavilions, each of which explored one of several great "mysteries" of the world. Von Däniken opened the theme park to present his interpretations of unsolved mysteries involving extraterrestrial life that he believes took place around the world.

[Explore] on 08/05/2016. Highest position: 4, but very very late publication at 2:15 am the day after.

 

An extraordinary light which the camera has a great deal of difficulty in capturing, a rainy curtain arrived in this ultimate evening luminosity.

-

Une lumière extraordinaire que l'appareil photo a bien du mal à capturer, un rideau de pluie arrivait dans cette ultime luminosité du soir.

-

Charente, France

 

Thank you to all for your kind words! I really appreciate each one of them !!!

See my shots with 1,000+ faves, in Explore or my 3 best.

Difficulty in reasoning and focusing

View of Dunstanburgh Castle, a tricky shot to capture due to the very slippery rocks and difficulty in finding a stable position to position my tripod.

Le quartier Art déco dunkerquois de Rosendael

Œuvre de François Reynaert né à Rosendael en 1887, le quartier excentric de Dunkerque, situé dans l’ancienne ville de Rosendael, est un quartier, vous l’aurez deviné, somme toute atypique.

Ce maçon et artiste décorateur sera sollicité en 1927 pour construire la première maison surnommée « l’escargot ». S’ensuivra une trentaine d’autres commandes face au succès de la première maison, dans le même quartier qu’il surnommera « l’excentric ». Ce quartier de Rosendael, situé près des fortifications de Dunkerque, sorti ainsi de terre durant les années folles de l’entre-deux guerres, mais non sans mal. François Reynaert peina en effet à obtenir les autorisations nécessaires.

Ce petit quartier s’étale sur deux rue formant un « U », la rue André Chénier et la rue Martin Luther King. D’autres villas éclectiques d’inspiration Art déco ont également été construites aux alentours.

François Reynaert est décédé a son domicile du Quartier Excentric le 12 août 1958.

 

The Dunkirk Art Deco district of Rosendael

Work of François Reynaert born in Rosendael in 1887, the eccentric district of Dunkirk, located in the former town of Rosendael, is a district, you guessed it, altogether atypical.

This mason and decorative artist was asked in 1927 to build the first house nicknamed “the snail”. Thirty other orders followed in the face of the success of the first house, in the same district that he nicknamed "the eccentric". This district of Rosendael, located near the fortifications of Dunkirk, thus emerged from the ground during the crazy years of the interwar period, but not without difficulty. François Reynaert indeed struggled to obtain the necessary authorizations.

This small neighborhood is spread over two streets forming a “U”, rue André Chénier and rue Martin Luther King. Other eclectic Art Deco-inspired villas were also built nearby.

François Reynaert died at his home in the Quartier Excentric on August 12, 1958.

60074 "Luke" & 60065 "Jaguar" on 13:40 6H09 Dowlow Briggs Sidings - Peak Forest Up Sidings at Buxton URS Sidings.

60065 came in to difficulties at Dowlow / will only drive one way so 60074 had to top her to Buxton then both ran round and Claggy 60065 lead to Peak Forest 27/11/2022

Still shot over Lake Okanagan. This is actually the opposite back view of the mountain I was taking photographs of my pet mountain goats. I see why they like it here with that mountain view they have. And all the time I thought they were looking at me.

BTW that motor boat in the middle of the lake destroying my perfect symmetry is someone I hope ran into motor difficulties before he got home.

"Out of difficulties grow miracles."

~ Jean De La Bruyere ~

 

"If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it."

~ Mary Engelbreit ~

 

"If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere."

~ Frank A. Clark ~

 

"It is always in the midst, in the epicenter, of your troubles that you find serenity."

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry ~

 

♫ God of boundless universe, Lord who shaped me from my birth

You are there, You are there, In the glory of the stars

Vast cathedral of my heart, You are there, You are there

 

I'm never left on my own

Carried in the arms of Your power

I go on, 'Til the night becomes the dawn

  

Your love is life to me, You are my destiny

Carry on, carry on, O God of awesome might

You draw me to Your light, Carry on, carry on, carry on

My life is in Your hands, Carry on ♫

 

My friends, I apologize for my lack of visits, but as I said at the end of the year, I changed my residence and I am still under the influence of all the difficulties of everyday life that this causes

 

Foto: Amanhecer na Praia de Botafogo - Rio de Janeiro

Video: ♪ Carry on ♪ - Sandi Patty

 

Conforme a Lei 9.610/98, é proibida a reprodução total ou parcial ou divulgação comercial ou não sem a autorização prévia e expressa do autor (artigo 29). ® Todos os direitos reservados.

 

According to Law 9.610/98, it is prohibited the partial or total commercial reproduction without the previous written authorization of the author (article 29). ® All rights are reserved.

Castle Stalker (Scottish Gaelic: Caisteal an Stalcaire) is a four story tower house or keep picturesquely set on a tidal islet on Loch Laich, an inlet off Loch Linnhe.

The islet is accessible (with difficulty) from the shore at low tide. The name 'Stalker' comes from the Gaelic Stalcaire, meaning 'hunter' or 'falconer', and should therefore be pronounced 'stal-ker', with the 'l' sounded, not as in the pronunciation of the English word 'stalker'. In recent times the castle was brought to fame by the Monty Python team, appearing in their film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It also appeared in the film Highlander: Endgame.

As usual, the real difficulty with Macro Mondays was thinking of something a little different and different from the last time that I tried to photograph a similar subject.

 

This is a wineglass full of marbles photographed in a dark room with just an LED penlight for illumination from above. I used the usual setup: tripod, trigger and black foamboard background.

 

The raw file was developed in Capture One for colour and lowering the Clarity to give a softer feel. In Affinity, there was a bit of sharpening and the usual tone and colour work. Cropping proved a bit of a challenge, and then I applied a bit of standard Orton effect using a couple of adjustment layers [a brightness/contrast layer with Screen blend and a Gaussian blur layer with Multiply blend mode and restricted to a tonal range using advanced blend options ], but lightly as MM is not meant to be heavily processed. Then to add a little more interest I flipped the image vertically to give a more surreal abstract feel. I’m not sure I got where I wanted but at least it’s something…

 

The glass is less than three inches at its widest and that is not visible here anyway, so we are within the guidelines.

 

I wonder how many people get to the stage of losing their marbles while still having their marbles from their teenage years… {sighs}

 

Thanks for taking the time to look. I hope you enjoy the image. Happy Macro Mondays! :)

Had some difficulty keeping GM in my frame.

I wonder how many speeding tickets he already collected ...

This photo was edited for the SL Picture•Pile•Ups group.

 

See something you'd change? join the group, download the pic, and edit it your way

 

Original capture by GM Nikolaidis, you can see it here .

“There is an island of opportunity in the middle of every difficulty.” Unknown.

 

Monemvasia, apart from being one of the most beautiful medieval towns in the Peloponnese, is a unique place in Greece. Its location on an island in the Mediterranean is truly spectacular. Today, the town can be reached by a causeway built over the sea in 1971, which connected the island with the mainland, but before that date, Monemvasia could only be reached by boat.

Due to its peculiar geography, Monemvasia became an ideal place to protect itself from invaders in the High Middle Ages, and that is how its first inhabitants built the first fortress in 583. Several centuries later, around the 10th AD, the town passed to be an important maritime and trade center. However, this fact led to continuous attacks to take over the island, and the city passed through Byzantine, Venetian and finally Ottoman hands, until its decline in the 18th century, and subsequent liberation in 1821 during the Greek War of Independence. Without a doubt, a fascinating story for such a peculiar and small territory.

 

Our YouTube Travel Video with Behind the Scenes of this picture:

youtu.be/FaaKeY7hXRU

 

-------------------------------------------------------

 

“Hay una isla de oportunidades en medio de cada dificultad”. Anónimo.

 

Monemvasia, además de ser uno de los pueblos medievales más hermosos del Peloponeso, es un lugar único en Grecia. Su emplazamiento en una isla sobre el Mediterráneo es realmente espectacular. Hoy en día, se puede llegar hasta el pueblo por una calzada construida sobre el mar en 1971, que conectó la isla con tierra firme, pero antes de esa fecha, a Monemvasia solo se podía llegar navegando.

Debido a su peculiar geografía, Monemvasia se convirtió en un lugar ideal para protegerse de invasores en la Alta Edad Media, y así fue cómo sus primeros habitantes construyeron la primera fortaleza en 583. Varios siglos más tarde, en torno al X d.C, la ciudad pasó a ser un importante centro marítimo y de comercio. Sin embargo, este hecho trajo consigo continuos ataques para apoderarse de la isla, y la ciudad pasó por manos Bizantinas, Venecianas y finalmente Otomanas, hasta su declive en el siglo XVIII, y posterior liberación en 1821 durante la Guerra de Independencia griega. Sin duda, una historia fascinante para un territorio tan pequeño y peculiar.

April 23, 2015 on our trip to the blipmeet at Wanaka, Central Otago in New Zealand. www.polaroidblipfoto.com/browse/me

 

Our first morning in Cromwell. We woke to heavy fog which took a while to lift. We have arrived at Mt Difficulty Estate Winery so John can do some tasting.

 

The unique microclimate of the Bannockburn area is partially created by the presence of Mount Difficulty which overlooks the southern Cromwell basin, and is the namesake of Mt Difficulty Wines. Mount Difficulty is integral in providing low rainfall and humidity for the region. Bannockburn enjoys hot summers, a large diurnal temperature variation and long cool autumns; conditions which bring the best out of the Pinot Noir grapes. These conditions, along with soils which are ideal for viticulture, provide an excellent basis not only for Pinot Noir, but also for Pinot Gris, Riesling, and Chardonnay. The soils are a mix of clay and gravels, but all feature a high pH level; grapes produce their best wines on sweet soils.

For More Info and photos: www.mtdifficulty.co.nz/aboutus/ourstory.htmlTalbe

Strobist: AB1600 with gridded 60X30 softbox camera left. Triggered by Cybersync

increase the closer we get the goal...

www.flickr.com/groups/huenersen/

long stories shortened... (discarded and abandoned and intertwined short stories) well..actually they are chunks and fragmets and notes of stories that never made it

 

____________________________________________

  

a young PhD math candidate writing his dissertation on an obscure arab mathematician from the middle ages who specialized in cycles and periods in infinite series and develops a process to determine prime number density in a large number space. (which is all and good) except this makes it an excellent tool to decrypting military grade encryption, which is based on the computational difficulty of factoring large numbers into their prime components

 

the arab mathematician was ultimately censured by the religious mullahs for developing tools to rationalize the infinite, which is of course the nature of Allah and for man to attempt to place Allah into a human scale is blasphemy

 

so the arab mathematician disappears and the young phd candidate finds that his dissertation has been suspended pending review but cant get any information on who is reviewing it

 

finally another young mathematician approaches him and starts a long discussion on math and the nature of numbers and the mathematicians love of the underlying structure of reality that math represents. the phd candidate is leary of this mathematician cause he wont answer what he does or where he went to school or how he knows so many cutting edge fields in math

 

eventually, the young mathematician offers the phd candidate a position with the NSA, National Security Agency, (where all the big crypto and high math goes on) but explains that if he accepts that he will essentially disappear from his current world. his work will be classified, he will not be able to publish in academic journals or speak in public, or talk about his work to his friends on the outside, but the compensation is that he

would be able to work unfettered with the greatest math minds in the country, totally funded, free to explore any field or fancy he thought. after a few moments of thought, the phd accepts.

 

then the story will go back to the arab mathematician who is also approached my a young beared mullah, who offers him a position within his group of thinkers who do ponder and explore the nature of nature reality and Allah through mathematics, but that by joining them he would need to disappear from the world, after a few minutes of thought, he too accepts...

 

--

  

Daniel sipped his 6th coffee (colloidal suspension for caffeine transport) while his batch jobs on ramanet, the Indian supergrid, finished their checksum verification. His chin, a bit stubbly, itched. His eyes, a bit red, were sore. The goa trance shoutcast feed had mushed into a fast cadence drone. The flat screen monitor warped and bulged with the oscillating fan blowing on Daniel's face

 

'O' glamorous larval life of a PhD student...' he jotted and doodle-circled on his notepad.

 

Daniel cracked his neck and jutted his jaw, stretching out the accumulation of kinks, as RamaNet finished the final integrity check on his dataset. this two hour round of processing on the Indian supergrid would cost about $130 out of his precious grant fund, but you couldnt beat the bargain. 120 minutes times 150,000 PCs in the RamaNet processing collective = 1,080,000,000 seconds or 18,000,000 minutes or 300,000 hours or 12500 days or 34.25 years of processing time for the price of a video game. Calculation was commoditized now. You uploaded your pre-fromatted dataset to RamaNet. the data was packeted and sent to out to 150,000 Indians who lent a few percents of never-to-be missed CPU cycles off their systems for background processing. when their alotted package was completed it was sent back to RamaNet for re-assembly into something coherent for the buyer. in return the Indians got a rebate on their net access charges or access to premier bollywood galleries or credit towards their own processing charges. a good deal all the way around. Daniel's dataset, an anthology of complex proofs from a long-dead arab mathematician, was queued with amateur weather forecast modeling, home-brewed digital CGI for indie movies, chaos theory-based currency trading algorithms, etc. the really high end, confidential jobs, like protein folding analysis or big pharm drug trials were more likely handled by the huge western collectives of several million collaborative systems, usually high-performance machines in dedicated corporate server farms. the cost there was out of Daniel's range, but you got a faster return and better promises of encryption for your buck.

 

Daniel scratched his scalp and flexed his fingers. 'two months from today i will be a doctor of mathematics...and no job. damnit. i need to find something fast.' Daniel calculated in his mind how quickly the student loans repayments would kick in and completely wipe him out. RamaNet would have done it in nanoseconds, ha! he laughed to himself. Daniel had avoided the rounds of job interviews and recommendations that passed his way. he was too absorbed in his research to look ahead, and perhaps a bit intimidated by the idea of the job hunt flea market. flexing his CV, getting a monkey suit, trying to explain his research to recruiters, who were often the same finger-counting business majors in college that made his skin crawl. Daniel always felt a bit embarrassed when he announced he was math PhD candidate. folks would immediately glaze over,

tsk tsk out a 'that's interesting', and swiftly change the subject. something will come up, he mantra'd to himself over and over, something will come up. stick with ali, there is something real in there, just a bit deeper. the real problem was his thesis advisor. dr. fuentes was not returning his calls, his secretary was not taking appointments from Daniel. he had submitted his finished draft of his thesis two weeks ago, but hadnt heard back since, except for a cryptic email saying that the review committee was having some issues with his paper and that Daniel would be hearing from him shortly. Daniel was rerunning his calculations on RamaNet to assuage the gnawing doubt that he completely botched some component of his argument and that the review committee was debating some manner of telling him to redo the entire effort. no PhD and no job. that would ice the cake. Daniel started calculating his body mass and general aerodynamic resistance relative to the height of the school cathedral to figure out if he had time to reach a terminal velocity before impact...only a failed math PhD would attempt to determine at what speed his body would smack concrete, he morbidly thought to himself.

 

ali ja'far muhammed ibn abdullah al-farisi slipped meditatively on his cup of water, thinking about his proof. he dipped a finger in the cup and held up a droplet of water under his fingertip, watching the sunlight prisimatically splay out on the mouth of the cup. 'praise be Allah and his wonderous bounty' he mumured to himself.

 

the elders had been in conference all day over his proof. though the heavy doors to their chamber were closed, he would occasionally hear muffled but distinctly angry shouts. ali sat on a divan in the anteroom, served numerous cups of tea by an obviously nervous secretary. ali knew there was deep resistance to his research, but for the life of him he couldnt figure out why. he was a simple mathematician. he came up with some unique observations. he wanted to share them with his peers...

_____________________________________________________

  

Overview: biotech researcher discovers a new life-extension technology and is murdered. He is cryogenically frozen for 150 years. When he is

revived he must stop a dark corporate conspiracy – and find his murderer.

  

Summer 2015 - Hot genius free-lance biotech researcher unravels the key component of a radical life-extension gene therapy that will ensure 300 years of robust life to its recipients. The researcher is murdered shortly after he hides the critical component. His distraught friend has him cryogenically frozen. 150 years later, the researcher is revived by the same major bio-med corporation for which he had originally been working.

Quickly he realizes that their motives are less than altruistic: his modification of the gene therapy is needed to resolve an unforeseen debilitation now creeping up in the recipients of the life-extension process. The recipients, now nearing 125 years off added life, are decompensating into psychotics. The researcher at first tries to remember and reconstruct what he did with the hidden critical component, but stops in disgust when he learns that in the past 150 years the life-extension therapy has been reserved solely for the ultra-affluent and has created an extreme and cruel global gerontocratic elite. He voices his disgust to his corporate minders, who cease being beneficent and show their true colors as trying to gain control of this critical technology in order to control the elites.

 

In the process of dealing with the corporation, he learns about his murder and begins investigating.As he comes closer to the identity of his murderer, he uncovers a wider conspiracy and is the target of more murder attempts.

 

He was killed by a friend in 2015. The friend was the CEO of a small bio-gen firm that the researcher was doing the LET work for. The CEO, a biz-head with a genetics academic background, took the researcher’s work and exploited it as his own, in the process growing his small firm into a bio-med powerhouse and him into one of the world’s wealthiest individuals.

 

The CEO also was the first recipient of the LET and is now 190 years old, but doesn’t look a day over 45. Smart, urbane, ruthless, the CEO used his wealth and position to start the cabal of Ultras. It is a faction of the top 50 smartest and wealthiest people in the world who have ‘ascended from the world’ (faked their demise) and control the global economy with their vast coordinated wealth. Perhaps they will call themselves ‘The Ascended’. We need to decide how the cabal lives. Are they sequestered on a luxurious island compound, or do they live in the open, surgically re-sculpted after each faked death, or do they live in the open.

 

Also we need to figure out what the world will look and feel like in 150 years.

 

As the ultras decompensate into psychosis, the CEO orders the researcher to be revived in order to find a cure. The CEO had the researcher’s lab notes decrypted and figured that the he was close if not successful in finding the missing component to stabilize the LET.

 

Tiberius Syndrome: the decline into cruel psychosis experienced by the ultras, named after the roman emperor Tiberius’ degenerate behavior after he sequestered himself on Capri.

 

The ironic twist might be that there is no cure, no stabilization. The psychosis is not the result of the LET alone, but also due in part to the unfettered ego/wills of the ultras. Absolute power corrupts…

  

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a brazilian hacking syndicate was subcontracted by a st petersberg crew to run interference on a hit on SWIFT, the global currency clearinghouse notification network. The UniFavela clan was going to run a multi-flank raid. They specialized in fast propagating virii and had created a custom mail-in virus that exploited a few microsoft vulnerabilities that they had discovered and kept mum. Their target was a Latin American PR spokesman listed on the corporate web site for press queries. The PR flak would be just the sleepy guard on the wall for their virus to slip past. 30 minutes after opening an inocuous spoofed email from a French e-trade publication requesting clarification on the SWIFT-Indentrus partnership. the virus would port scan and map its entire site LAN, salmoning its way up the router paths till it found the deep waters of the main corporate campus network in Brussels. Shortly, the internal LAN at Brussels would be suffering switch and router buffer overflows and traffic would gasp, ack, and sputter. UniFavela would then towel whip out a vanilla DDOS on the main company web site, any INTERNIC-registered addresses, and any other system in the IP block reserved for SWIFT that had previously port scanned as interesting, or ,even, as nothing. Mongols charging the village gates and tossing flaming torches on thatched roofs. IT Operations would be running to and fro, trying to figure out the internal bandwidth crunch and if there was a bleedout causing the external net problems.

 

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The Post-Human Story of Minos:

 

the CEO of a powerful commercial combine is bore an illegitimate son by his indiscreet wife in retaliation for his own dalliances. the son has a hideous deformity but is fantastically brilliant - brilliant enough for the father overcome his own repulsion of the child - as a bastard and a freak. the father sequesters the child in an elaborate virtual domain. the child, a hacker savant, is used to breach competitor nets. but as his power in the digital realm expands, the child transforms into the tyrant-monster. using the nets, he lashes out at people who have caused him pain, then evolves into enjoying the taste of terror and fear. He becomes the Minotaur.

 

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'there was a mad scramble amongst all the big spook governments, dark side corporations, and the privacy maccabees once it was determined that quantum computation had left the tidal pool of academia, grown legs and air-breathing lungs, and was headed for the nat sec intel highlands. all previous encryption models were rendered obsolete, and worse, exposed. QC became an undefiable xray spotlight, laying bare any encrypted secret with a ease of opening a mathematical candy wrapper. And for a while it swung the advantage back to the state in the digital Boer War against the freecon partisans.'

 

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The Oort, to the Intras, looked as one people. Extra-stellar hillbillies, ekeing out a subsistance existence on extracted organics from the frozen crud comets and other planetesimals of the Oort Cloud that slung around the solar system in a 1K AU circuit. To the Oort there was no Oort. Each station, each kampong was distinct and seperate. Seperate dialects, traditions, norms, goals. Some were scientific collectives, some were tired mining operations, some were intense sectarian cults - they shared little between themselves beyond necessary trade links for scarce commodities.

 

---

A young prince is disgraced in an internal court scandal and sent into a quasi-exile on a worthless mission. On his travels he builds the wisdom and learns the skills necessary to be a just and effective leader.

 

His exile was a gambit by his patriarch to remove Genji from the arena of pointless court intrigues and develop him as a real leader. The patriarch dispatched a team of loyal praetorians to discreetly follow and protect Genji on his odyssey.

 

Genji was sent as an emissary to the Oort system. He must pass through the Martian-Saturnine corridor, populated with industrial trading guilds and their private militias.

 

----

 

Genealogy becomes paramount in a closed culture; hierarchy by heredity. Reference the roman patrician class’ death-grip obsession with lineage, or the medieval Japanese imperial court’s strict intra-elite caste system.

 

But in an era of extreme genetic engineering, how can bloodlines retain their importance? Perhaps this is the wrong question. Perhaps in an era of extreme genetic engineering, authentic bloodlines can only retain their importance. The longevity of an unchanged gene line demonstrates success in evolutionary competition. Over time however, the fitness of a rigidly enforced and ‘sequestered’ gene line will degrade. Consider the hemophilia of the European royal strata.

 

I would not want the imperial court of the inner system to be pure blue bloods, eschewing genetic manipulation. Rather I would have them take the opposite tack – and embrace genetic engineering in the pursuit of perfecting particular socially valued or distinctive attributes; a roman nose, elongated refined fingers, even the possession of certain ‘noble’ afflictions (for ex., the aforementioned hemophilia as a sign of noble lineage).

The elites should pursue genealogy with the same passion and gusto as horse breeders; studs and mares and percentages of bloodlines, enforced and suppressed gene expressions, surrogates, and gene modes des saisons.

 

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a bum finds a the wallet and keys of a man who jumped from a bridge

he goes to his townhouse to find something to eat or steal

is impressed and overwhelmed with the man's townhouse

showers, eats, gets cleaned up, finds some clothes

is ready to leave when he helps a woman wrestling with groceries at her door

she thanks him, but looks stunned.

‘are you the man in #560? umm..i have lived here for 3 years and have never actually seen you. you seem to leave so early in the morning and get

home so late and keep to yourself.’

they spend 30 minutes talking, having a generally warm friendly encounter.

‘well, I am so glad to have finally met you. Hope to see you soon.’ As she closes her door, the bum turns to leave but pauses and thinks for a moment, then goes back into the man's townhouse

he pours through the man's papers and keepsakes and learns that the man has no family that he speaks with, no friends, lives off a well-endowed trust fund

 

and

 

the bum moves in and takes over the mans identity

he brings warmth and sincerity to the man's identity

 

what makes a hermit tick? what lengths do they go to to remove themselves from society? does it become a game to avoid contact, trying to become a shadow, a phantom? does society dissolve away as a mental force in their thoughts, atrophy away or does it become an amputated impression?

 

what divsion line stands between a hermit and convict in solitary? the hermit, by and large, chooses their isolation, the convict has it enforced upon them. at what point does the human need for society or socialization collapse? is there anything left that we can inspect and evaluate? a hermit, however, is able to maintain walls against the Great Other, which would imply that they are seeking refuge from the world. a schizo or an autistic will be physically surrounded by others but unable or incapable of making contact.

 

when does the will to contact die? what is left over? do humans require contact to retain our humanity? can you love and sacrifice in a vacuum?

what defines humanity? oooh, a big question...

  

___________________________________________________________________

 

genetic engineering will continue to deconstruct the human species

 

there will be catastrophic disasters: gene sequence specific viruses engineered to attack 'types' of people. Der Genkampf

petroleum will be replaced- hydrogen-powered locomotion and green power (in the wealthy states). the poor states will continue to be held hostage to oil politics

 

(cultures and civilizations do not move forward uneringly. they spasticly jerk forward and fro, in clumps andgrains, never ever as a lemming death drive.)

 

developed economies will be netized. a new state structure will be needed to manage and dsitribute resources. the corporate structure, the commercial backbone of the capitalist democracy, will replace the republic. it is flexible to markets and political forces, insistent on accountability, it provides a sufficient compromise between individual representation and republican government. they will begin their political evolution as projects in community development. assurances of an educated workforce by charter education. assurances of uninterrupted utilities by running their own power/water etc. net-based marketplaces create corporate agoras. employees are in fact de facto citizens of the corporation. citizenship, or regular employment, will be a reward for merit, stock shares will count towards suffrage.

 

great corporate collectives will arise. housing, education, security...all the needs of the middle class will be absorbed in the corporate state. the tradtional state will cede roles and responsibilities to the corporate state as their resources dwindle. a few isolated violent reactions (military or legal)by the republics against the corporate states, but they will fail over time. against, or more so, in conjunction with the homogenized corporatsists wil be the diasporae, non-corporates will glom to other modes of networked alignment, ethnic allegiance will become stronger over time - as the chinese, indian, and jewish disporaestrengthen as a formula for a successful competition against/with the corporates.

 

the american state, succored by its overwhelming techo-military supremancy, loses its mission, its vision - substitutes will to dominate for will to excel - and falls into the deep narcotic, insulated slumber of the unassailable. GE, nano, and the banknote net weaken the mythic cohesion of the american spirit. we are no longer united by common experience (mass-mediated or otherwise) the promise of science to make us stronger, smarter, near immortal is held like a manifest destiny or a divine IOU for services rendered to humanity.

 

Busta nut

Finger Calligraphy on Coffee

Oke im having this crisis for a couple hours now and i just need some people to help me out with it...

No doubt on getting the skin i love it im going to get it! but the skin tone.....

What one looks better on me? I dont want to look toooo pale i dont want to look toooo orange... HELP! ♥

 

More about the skins later because it will be blogged later today

21.07.2024. - Berzence

Two-three years ago all the 418 1xx and 2xx engines were relocated from Transdanubia to the other side of Danube.

As time goes on, maintance difficulties occur with the DMU's (Desiro, Bz) and 418 3xx engines, so three M41 classics are stationed in Pécs again.

 

418 131, 143 and 156 are helping out the local depot hauling the direct train from Pécs to Keszthely, the Pannonia InterRegio trains to Szombathely and sometimes also local services to Villány or Mohács.

 

On my pic the M41 2131 is passing by a flowery meadow in Berzence, with its five lights and beautiful sound! Brilliant engine!

I have great difficulty resisting mirrors......!

Here I'm at the restroom of a restaurant.

 

Lighting was scarce. I used 1/8 sec with aperture f/4 on Ilford XP2.

Lens is a Xenar 2.8/45mm.

Film developed with Cinestill C41 Color Simplified powder kit.

 

As you can see, I use a Leica SBOOI 50mm finder because of the excellent view that little thing presents me.

THIS ARTIST DRAW BY HIS FOOT AND SELL HIS PAINTING ON DONG- KHOI STREET PAVEMENT.

THIS PHOTO WAS TAKEN AT 1998 BY NIKON D70 FILM CAMERA.

I had difficulty with this theme. White on White isn't easy. I have so much more to learn about photography. This is what it's all about for me is to learn from participating and seeing all of the wonderful photos each week. It's inspirational.

 

This is a piece of Japanese pottery that I received as a gift from my Mother in 1976 after my parents were in Japan. It measures 5" long and 3" wide. Area shown is less than 3"

I have difficulties in establishing the title of this image.

 

What is your opinion using star 5??

 

Hibiscus is the national flower of Malaysia. I am so surprise the 1st time I found this plentiful in L.A.

 

The color here are all natural without using any enhancement by Corel Paintshop pro.

 

Thank you for your visits, comment & Fave.

 

I appreciate it.