Sophisticated Nonsense

Thoughts on Hydro Power

So, I was doing some research into hydro-electricity… for reasons related to surviving WW3.

Well, well, well… did I learn a few things I had no idea about.

Did you know that every large power grid needs to have some hydro added to it?

This is because coal and nuclear power plants can’t be switched on and off easily. It typically takes two days to switch a coal or nuclear turbine on and off. So the purpose of coal and nuclear plants is to supply the base load of power to the grid: A fixed amount of electricity that’s always in use.

But what happens on a hot summer’s day if everyone goes home and turns on their air conditioning at once? It is impossible for a coal or nuclear plant to increase electrical production on such short notice.

Singing Through the Bombing

I am incredibly grateful that I seem to have a little more than enough employment at the moment to keep myself from sliding into debt. However, the crisis government has created through their exploitation of the pandemic to further their “woke” agenda has left me wondering if the despair, horror, and anxiety I experience daily is akin to how civilians felt day to day during the bulk of the second world war. After the British secretly started bombing civilian targets in Germany, the not so secret bombings of London and other British cities communicated to the civilian populations of the world that governments cared so much about their soldiers they were willing to allow the families of the soldiers to die so long as it took some of the heat of them. Right now, civilians are dying for the cause. The cause being lining the pockets of Big Pharma executives and the pockets of politicians who never let a good crisis go to waste to expand their bank balance. Like civilians in German and British cities I don’t know if today is going to be the day that some thought policeman is going to decide I’ve had a little too much to think and puts me down to sleep in order to preserve the social harmony that is totalitarian governance.

And yet, while boldly driving my van outside the zone I’m supposed to be limited to, I found myself singing. Now, it’s entirely possible with my double exemptions I am allowed to travel a little further for the nice cheap petrol that saves me $20 a week, but like so many things these days, I have no clue what is allowed and not allowed. Hell, I don’t even know if it’s a crime to drive without a mask on. I don’t think the police know either. I can imagine them getting into the patrol car each morning and turning to their partner and asking, “Just making sure… are simple cloth masks still ok today?” but there’s an awkward silence as neither cop really knows what their job really is anymore. “Just play it by ear, and if we’re wrong, just act confidently wrong.” So as I sailed past two cops, who were obviously relieved it was a non fatal car accident they had been called out to, and not a dreaded “mysterious medical exemption” violation, I found myself just singing. Continue reading “Singing Through the Bombing”

The Home Learning Front

During lockdowns many families are struggling with having their children at home all day every day. I’ve found that I can earn a pretty penny or two helping out with their home learning. It’s often awkward for me to watch children learn maths methods that seem insanely convoluted. When I can solve problems like 19 x 40 in my head faster than a child can type it into a calculator I am reminded that the purpose of school these days isn’t to educate the youth but to sabotage them. Many don’t know their times tables much less the techniques used in speed mathematics to quickly solve large number equations in their head. If I were to teach children these techniques their teachers would have to fail them for insubordination. It’s all about obedience to authority, not learning. O dear… that’s depressing… *sigh* Truth be told… I was feeling down today and I did not sleep well last night

I was up late angry about something, something that seems small now, and I knew last night that after a sleep and the distraction of work, my problem would be quite small by evening today and completely not worth me being angry about. Yet my best efforts at mindfulness and meditation were insufficient and it wasn’t until around 3am that I finally fell asleep. These angry moods bother me purely from the perspective of neuroscience. Long periods of anger cause damage to the cells linking the two hemispheres of the brain – the corpus collosum. Damage to these cells causes permanent changes in personality; the dreaded “grumpy old man” syndrome. Last week, before lockdown 6 started, I was feeling deeply relaxed and at peace. I could meditate to myself, and sometimes I would have this feeling of deep connectedness with the universe as though I was part of something and problems of mortality seemed somehow distant and unimportant. However, since the lockdown my anxiety levels have been elevated and it feels like a lifetime ago that I could relax that much. I don’t even fear the virus anymore, part of me wishes I would just get SARS-CoV-2 so I could either deal with it or die. But this endless delaying of the inevitable is more exhausting. A life lived in fear is a life never lived. Continue reading “The Home Learning Front”

The Daily Grind

Sorry, to myself, not to you the reader. I’m sorry that I don’t make enough time to journal about my daily experiences when I know it’s relaxing and therapeutic for me in particular to reflect on my experiences. Today wasn’t a particularly special day, except I didn’t have a lot on today. Life in the era of lockdowns is quite unpredictable. Some days I’m frantically going from appointment to appointment and others like today I have a couple of errands to run and the rest of the time to contemplate social media for far too long to be healthy. So I am going to write about a few musings from my day.

Firstly, today really wasn’t busy, I rode my bike for a bit since I don’t have to wear a mask if I am on a bike. The virus knows to leave fit people alone. I had a look around one of the housing commission areas. The attraction was the dystopian communist landscape that is public housing. I try to imagine it looking attractive in an alternative universe but I suspect there is something the size and uniformity of the structures that makes it almost impossible to imagine them as beautiful. My notable observations were an novel design of sewerage vent, evidence of a recent apartment fire, a drunk half naked man having a fight with an invisible assailant, a young woman drinking out of a 4L orange juice bottle that gave me a look as though she would knife me if I stared at her for a moment longer, and a skinny dirty old man reading a rotting paperback on his balcony seemingly enjoying the serenity. Mentally, I tried to figure out what was going through some of these people’s minds, and trying to imagine what public housing would look like if the people living in them owned the apartments instead.

Gallandric Tales: The Knight Errant

Sparks few, and the brutal clash of steel echoed through the forest. The heavily armoured knight pulled himself to his feet with movements made awkward by his insistence that he maintain a grip on a strangely shaped mace. Once upon his feet he listened carefully for the sounds of combat. He set out in the direction he thought they were in, then stopped thinking he must be heading in the wrong direction, but another direction proved just as fruitless. His steel helmet was making it difficult to locate the origin of the sounds.

After his third failed attempt at finding the right direction to move in he looked at his mace, which differed from most in that instead of a large metal weight at the end it had a dark coloured glass sphere. This was no ordinary glass sphere though, it was enchanted to detect magical energy and guide the beholder of the mace to the source. The knight examined the mace and realised it was indicating through blue sparks emitting from the sphere that someone or something magical was nearby.

The knight instantly surmised that the magic was most likely in the same direction as the sounds of combat and hurried off in the direction indicated. Despite being so heavily armoured in steel plate the knight was able to move at a remarkable pace on foot. This was because he was no ordinary knight, nor was he an ordinary man. Barry Smith had been born with a remarkable atunement to an elemental power known in Gallandria as Ether. Where the ether came from and how it worked was beyond the comprehension of any sages Barry had spoken too. It was just one of four known elements and it was often considered the least impressive.

Journal: Having a Cold in the age of Corona

I went back to work last week and straight into full time. It was quite a shock to my system as I had gotten used to sleeping in and staying up late. I had also gotten used to exercising limited to my apartment. By the weekend I felt run down enough appreciate that full time work does require a degree of physical conditioning before it’s routine. Unfortunately, I am now back home lying on my couch grumpy with what is most likely just an ordinary cold: aches, sore throat, lethargy, and slight fever.

I hope.

Pages: 12

Journal: Life in the Age of Pestilence

I can’t believe it is May already, and I am only now sitting down to write about what has turned into one of the most historic years in global history. Considering how significant these events are, I should write something down for posterity’s sake so that those who live in another part of the great cycle of civilisation and get some insight into the fall that happens when a civilisation becomes too prideful. Like most people on the planet, I have spent the last 6 weeks indoors hiding from the visible death machine known as the CCP coronavirus by those who believe in freedom, as Covid-19 by those who believe in statism and communism, and simply as “the coronavirus” by those who don’t think deeply about politics. However, I live in Australia, and Australia is coming out of lockdown sooner that 98% of countries in the world, and with a lot more optimism that we can go back to living our lives as “normal” again. However, I don’t share this optimism. We got into this situation by being too optimistic, I don’t think more optimism is the solution. But I will no doubt get to that topic later on. For now I need to lay some of the groundwork for the story so far. Continue reading “Journal: Life in the Age of Pestilence”

The Enchanted Singing Stone

Once upon a time in a land far away there lived a little girl called Rachel. Rachel was out walking by herself in the woods when she heard someone singing. The songs were so joyful and beautiful her ears drank them down and begged her to seek out this delicious singer in the wood. She crept up to a small clearing and peeked through the undergrowth expecting to see a woman singing. However, the clearing was empty, empty but for the biggest fairy toadstool she had ever seen. At first she thought the toadstool was singing, but as she looked more carefully she noticed a stone perched right at the apex of the toadstool.

Rachel watched and listened to the song until at last she could not contain her curiosity anymore, she stepped out from the undergrowth and asked politely who was the one singing such beautiful songs?

But at once there was silence in the grove. Rachel was undeterred and walked up to the stone perched on top of the toadstool. She gazed down upon the stone, which looked so common to her eye, and considered if indeed the wonderful singing came from such a humble stone? Continue reading “The Enchanted Singing Stone”

Writer’s Diary: Anxiety Based Decisions

Anxiety and I are on first name basis. See, I have trouble sleeping, or I used to until I discovered that working lots of hours helps me sleep. So last year I started working 50+ hours a week every week, often working on Sundays too. The result was that I was earning a lot more money, falling to sleep far easier than I had ever been before, and just being productive. However, the anxiety hasn’t gone away as much as I hoped it would. Instead, I’ve been anxious in new ways. Ways I’m only just wrapping me head around now that I can understand how they’ve been altering my thought process. Another problem with working so many hours is that I often feel run down, and writing is an intense intellectual task. It might not put much pressure on the limbs, but the brain consumes a lot of energy writing and the level and quality of prose I’ve been producing has suffered with my increased working hours. So something in my life needs to change. Continue reading “Writer’s Diary: Anxiety Based Decisions”

Bella and the Tower of Bones

In a far off land there stood a great tower constructed of mostly animal bones. Certainly not the bones of the animals commonly found in our world, the bones used to build this tower were the size of dinosaur bones. The tower had five pentagonal platforms each on top of the other, and each supported by five pillars. The first four platforms were essentially the same as each other, each had a broad ladder running up to the next platform; with the exception of the fourth platform. The ladder for this platform was lying flat across the decking, both its ends protruding over the edges. Without the ladder in place it was a four metre drop from the fifth platform to the fourth platform below. Thus no one could get up to the fifth platform, and more importantly, no one inside the fifth and final level of the tower could get out without risking a deadly injury.

The fifth platform wasn’t a simple flat deck of ribbed bones like the others, but a room with five walls insulated with mud tightly packed between the ribbing. The room protruded out from the central axis giving the tower the shape of a lollipop. Indeed during the daytime the tower might have looked a little like a lollipop perched atop a crag in the middle of the stony desert, but only to a keen observer because thanks to the yellowing of the old bones the tower merged almost completely into the surrounding landscape and sandy coloured sky. At night time the desert was particularly dark because this world lacked a moon like our own. The tower was hidden in plain sight, the perfect place to keep prisoner a fourteen year old girl. Continue reading “Bella and the Tower of Bones”