Fortress Of Freedom Board

Maurice Ali · Posted: Thu May 13, 2021 10:26 am Post subject:

I’m doing all kinds of mundane stuff that must be done.

I am swamped with small tasks that just clutter up and confuse your things to do list, so I am catching up on that now. First was topping up bank accounts, a monthly thing. Then finishing moving all of The Fortress posts at IAIJ to its own dedicated forum. Then a little work on the book but more substantive work in the weekend here. Then there is The Fortress. - just get the new ISSN barcode - these small things never end! Paying my bills - remember those? If there is any time left it is washing the car and that is about it.

The Fates!

I try not to worry about minor bad luck as I need it for the few moments of big luck. It always amazes me how we worry so much about the small stuff, but did it mean anything at your moment of death? The only thing that matters then is your accomplishments and possibly your wish to stay alive. Seriously all those problems you pined over - and in a few years did they really even happen or matter as they are forgotten and most of the people involved are dead now - given that - why obsess about it now? But we probably still will…..

Goodnight…..

https://youtu.be/953PkxFNiko

Maurice Ali · Posted: Fri May 14, 2021 9:41 am Post subject:

I’m running errands but will stop now and do the update…..

I’ll try to finish off the book this weekend and get it into kindle. I won’t even bother making the book on my own - but will see how Amazon handles this physical book so that at least I’ll know what that is like.

Nationalism can be counter productive in our world now as we have global problems like global warming or the pandemic or economics that influence all. Then there are the humanitarian global objectives like the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Right now all we have are nations to work with but that new layer called A Global Social Contract is a good first step to get things going and that Worldwide Vote is essential. Frankly there may be too much nationalism in a world that is increasingly interconnected, but it it may comfort the nationalist’s fears in that the global social contract “layer” may prevent the more radical upheaval of all nationalism. My way keeps everything intact as before, but just adds this new developing layer for the future.

In other news:

I’m getting ready for the Mustang’s monthly mensuration of rad fluid from the water pump. I’ve had several weeks of bone dry service so we are due for a dump. Maybe this time I’ll pull the trigger and just replace it (the water pump) on my own and be done with it. Forget Ford…..

Oh - I did have a cop car swoop in behind me and two others were waiting for me when I left work. They didn’t stop me as they scan plates on the go and it says I’m some old fart in a V6 Mustang. This is important to note as many times a week the kids with money race their cars on the streets of this industrial area. Like the fast and furious (actually it’s very close to that) but with corners, last night it was like the Monaco Grand Prix with Nissan GTRs (very common here) and maybe an Audi R8 with really loud exhausts took this corner in front my of me like an F1 race! It was impressive I must say - and where were the cops - who knows…..

The Mustang does look fast and even with the V6 it “is” fast but not for this crowd, without a pro charger anyway…..

Goodnight…..

(NSFW)
https://youtu.be/0IXg-9tKZek

Maurice Ali · Posted: Sat May 15, 2021 9:23 am Post subject:

A quickie…..

By hook or by crook the global social contract becomes a book on Sunday. I need time for the search engines to get the book ranked in its feed, so if an opportunity arrives I can take advantage of it. What I am asking for is so huge a play that a book is essential for me to be taken seriously at all! So early next week it is book number 3. It does not matter if it’s fully fleshed out. All that matters is that there is a body of work based on some empirical evidence and a new idea to put forth. My work this weekend is laid out!

In other news:

The box set of the TV serious on DVD!

I saw a package of DVDs of the TV series on my stoop! I will order more as they look absolutely great - everything worked out. There is a slight bit of melancholic sentiment as I now have DVDs of all my videos. DVDS are to me as CDs are to my musicians - a physical embodiment of their work, soon to become obsolete. Anyway I will review all stocks of material and make the final orders and finish with it forever it seems.

Remember not to be mislead by view counts in your YouTube or Instagram accounts. If you chase those things you go and review iPhone rumours or unboxing videos. You follow what the masses find attractive in order to get the most views. I am disseminating new ideas they never heard of before, so the view counts will be low until the idea gets a foot hold in the pop culture landscape. All that is important now is to have all the bits and pieces there for exploitation if anything happens. That is what is happening this weekend.

You should feel part of an exclusive audience now if anything happens in the future. For me it’s just to make the play. Sure, if I wanted to take advantage of the situation I could have commercialized it or even just used it to get a pretty girl and start a family even at my advanced age. But the stakes are too high now and I need to just concentrate on making the play. All sorts of women get impregnated by men all over the place - but how many guys have an idea to change the world for the better?

Make the play…..

Goodnight…..

https://youtu.be/N0gb9v4LI4o

Maurice Ali · Posted: Sat May 15, 2021 11:22 pm Post subject:

I’m going over the chapters but the book looks go to
go now.

I didn’t bother telling anyone close about the book - maybe one person tomorrow. Books aren’t that big of a deal to me. I even thought about a kindle for my first book about protests. But that wasn’t my first book as the first was done when I was 24. Whatever - I need this “prop” to spin the ideas I have. Even the movie and TV shows are nothing but props for the ideas. I’ll also throw in the “Rise Unite” song as it’s used as a prop for advocacy now.

It’s all about the ideas, concepts and philosophy I am extolling. Everything else is just window dressing to get the word out! I see humanity as just this mass of animated hard drives that can be reprogrammed to a certain degree. So even though I had a hard life at humanity’s hand, having the chance to change things at a base level gives me some hope that some improvements to humanity can be made and increase happiness on a incomprehensible scale.

Poppy

I’m also noting trends in the kids when it comes to music. Take YouTuber “Poppy” for instance who was just originally posting covers from her bedroom and then became this “blank” YouTube personality. Anyway I only noticed her in music with that collaboration with Grimes in 2018 that lead to “Play Destroy” and I sniped that song almost before anyone else, it was just pure luck that, but I felt like a real industry insider when that happened! But whatever, the Grimes collaboration ended in their next album for good, but here is where it gets interesting. I entered the music with most of the kids cause I wasn’t really into the music before and I steered more to metal. Same with Poppy it seems. I just can’t get into the filtered auto-tuned vibe, when you can get that big, fat and full charge from Metal. It’s hard to compare but metal just gives you “more” - that’s as close as I can compare it in words…..

Goodnight…..

https://youtu.be/k8XVZ65JEB0

https://youtu.be/izePLzAbc40

Maurice Ali · Posted: Mon May 17, 2021 8:20 am Post subject:

I burned the midnight oil - but the book is finished and should be on sale as a Kindle and paperback shortly…..

Number 3:

We will do the usual announcements and such, but I am not so enthusiastic about things as I used to be. For me this book is a prop - sure it’s an actual book at 108 pages and the vital information is there for anyone who comes off the street, but you here have heard it all before. But the book was necessary for future advocacy and that is the real takeaway here.

The hardest part is proofing and you never finish but figure it’s “good enough to go to print”. But it is done and another feather in my cap! I’m so disenchanted with Amazon killing off non-fiction on Prime Video and then killing off DVDs and CDs at the same time - I actually worry that books will be next and have to totally go it alone with this bit of physical media. But I digress…..

My first published book!

The accomplishment is shrouded in melancholy as the social contract ties together most of our main ideas. There is no starting over now - just playing things out. Maybe something happens and maybe nothing happens. My way out of total despair is that I am really just disseminating ideas and in the realm the ideas, those ideas can end up in all sorts of places and at any point in time such as while I’m alive or after I’m gone. There is just no way to know.

My first published book!

Does it replace a wife and kids and legacy that way? Who knows, but the question really should be whether I actually had that chance to begin with. All told I probably could have had that life if I gave up all my ambitions. I could not have both as the time and money would keep both from happening at the same time.

No - I took this path, I made my bed and now I’m stuck with it. This isn’t the atmosphere you would expect for a book release. Gone are the days you would sell a book at your local bookstore and have all your friends and family line up to have you sign each book (they were forced to buy), and the money made it worth the small store to put up with these theatrics. Those days are gone and as it turned out I have told no friends or family that I made another book. You here are the first to know. My mom was my biggest fan but after awhile my accomplishments kept coming in so hot and heavy she just didn’t care anymore. She still supported me but the thrill of each accomplishment got muted by the sheer volume of it all.

I wish I could be more upbeat about this moment but my feelings are more of relief and having the advocacy have something new to promote when the pandemic allows venues to open up like the old days. I will not lament the pandemic as the uncertainty in everything can only be a good thing to me.

It is what it is…..

Goodnight…..

https://youtu.be/0p9o7sjjVJY

Maurice Ali · Posted: Tue May 18, 2021 9:17 am Post subject:

The global social contract book is now on sale as a Kindle on Amazon:

Maurice Ali · Posted: Wed May 19, 2021 9:35 am Post subject:

The other shoe just dropped…..

Maurice Ali · Posted: Thu May 20, 2021 9:11 am Post subject:

The next task up is the next issue of The Fortress!

We have a long weekend coming up and I’ll take care of that then. We will publish the academic report on the global social contract there and thus dismiss any claim that IAIJ has no stake in that issue as it was in a book published by FOF. I’m just taking care of all the loose ends here.

Please remember that there are no guarantees that we will get any traction anywhere on this global social contract concept, but we have many venues as the pandemic winds down. I do have a formula for dissemination now anyway and we will just have to see how it all pans out. There just is no crystal ball here to tell you to give up because it doesn’t go anywhere and to save your money and just retire and wait to die - or - the ideas take off and become a part of the history of humanity fully justifying everything you have ever done to get to this moment of time…..

Nobody knows the future so you just have to play things out as that is all you can do. I do want the Positive Mandate for Humanity to become a proper philosophy, like the birth of Buddhism and other philosophies like that. There is a way to think, act and live with the positive mandate as your guiding light - so I’ll be the ambassador for that anyway. I did toy with changing the name to some Latin form but the Positive Mandate for Humanity or Positive Mandate (for short) “is” the name.

Apart from that, Thursday is just paying bills and working on the covers for the next issue of The Fortress…..

And: I’ll add this after the fact, nobody and I repeat - nobody - is doing what I’m doing and I went looking…… The play gets made! And if humanity turns its back on it - it becomes the base engrams for any possible sentient AI. Far out? Maybe but maybe not….. You don’t need qualifications to do this, or permission. This is so rare you just take it and do as you wish. None of the rules apply - you are your own man (in my case). This is not a job title, it is what it is…..

Goodnight…..

https://youtu.be/f4CizzE-zZo

Maurice Ali · Posted: Fri May 21, 2021 8:41 am Post subject:

Miscellaneous ramblings…..

Work continues on The Fortress and I have the ISSN barcode. For the two photos we will have one of the positive mandate book and a collage of the new music with a special section for the global social contract paper. The Fortress is like any newspaper or magazine with articles of news and culture, so it all works!

In the advocacy: If you want to know how I think - then think of humans and humanity as a very big ocean liner on a collision course with our technological culture. If human culture and technology were static we could just worry about global warming with the current tech and deal with it within the current state of development and stay there. However, our technology is progressing way faster than human development and a big crash is coming up if the ancient aspects of humans can’t be changed.

At the top what do you do? Humanity is this big ocean liner and big boats are severely limited in mobility. If you don’t slow down way-way before you would think - you will smash into the dock. If you want to turn to avid an obstacle you have to turn way-way before you would think or else you will hit it broadside. And for you ship aficionados - it’s not accurate but I need to use an analogy - so there!

So if you are at those positions of power, you may be looking at this pending calamity for humanity and know it’s too late and we are going to hit, and just go through the motions during your tenure as that is just the way it is and there is nothing else to do about it.

Then this guy comes along with a plan to change things quickly by adding a layer over top of the hard to change physical dimensions that already exist. Physical dimensions like the engine size and performance of the ocean liner that prevent it from stopping or turning fast enough. But this guy wants to add new ideas over top of the old to avoid the crash - similar to adding a huge turbo to the current engines to boost performance and avoid a previously unavoidable crash.

That is what all this advocacy of mine amounts to if you think big. And it now seems just me to be the only one holding the cards to give humanity the performance to navigate itself in technological change. It sounds like a movie plot but there you have it - reality in play….. All I can do is offer, which has been going on these last seven years.

Make the play……

Otherwise I am listening to music. Old stuff like Mangione’s “Give it all You’ve Got” (jazz) and then following it up with current Russian HardBass. Only I listen to music like this - and I really miss the wind instruments of the 60s and 70s missing in a lot of the current music. And I’ll say I love how the Russian kids have embraced the Third World military squat when they congregate. In a group it screams “tribal” which is the idea, and seeing young attractive women endorse the squat makes it actually sexy. You won’t see it in the West - but Russia isn’t the west…..

Rock on!

Goodnight…..

https://youtu.be/oMGvuiZfS_o

https://youtu.be/7FCvVLuzlbc

Maurice Ali · Posted: Sat May 22, 2021 9:48 am Post subject:

The long weekend…..

I’ll spare you the man of the world spiel tonight but when I don’t talk about that it just get so depressingly miserable. Your life is played out and there is no starting over.

But I did get my tax refund on Friday. Not a big amount but enough to get a MacBook Air! No I did t get a MacBook Air. I thought about it and looked into it and then the Apple shenanigans started to happen.

So, 18 months ago I got an Apple Watch 5. I bought an old series 0 Apple Watch a few months ago and I found it functional. So I decided to get the fifth series. They stayed fairly cheap at like 500 bucks but I didn’t want the IonX glass that scratched and the aluminum body looked cheap. I wanted a stainless steel body like my usual watches and the sapphire crystal - so - 500 became 1200 dollars. Same with upgrading the iPhone 6S Plus. Starts at like 1600 for the iPhone 12 Pro Max. But I wanted 256 gigs memory and then in the store upped it to 512 which bumped up the final price to 2300 dollars!

So - for the MacBook Air it starts at 1300 bucks which is virtually what I got back. If I want to run Mac and Windows on this machine (which you can do) but it it halves all the hardware. 50% cores and 50% ram and hard drive. But the entry level one only has 8 gigs of ram! So that leaves you with 4 gigs which would slow it down. You need 16 to get 8 for each operating system. Add to that 256 gigs SSD drive is too small to split in half. You need 512 bare minimum which is an extra 300 bucks! Anyway the bare minimum for me comes up to 1900 bucks or 2150 with taxes. No Apple Care or anything. So no go with the cash and it gets added to the advocacy war chest.

Yes I need a war chest as anything UN related is always expensive. New York is expensive with ordinary rooms going for 300 Canadian a night with nothing going on and to 800-1200 a night when some big event is happening. Don’t even talk about Geneva! It’s all expensive so the money goes there.

Anyway I have to get working on The Fortress….. It was fun to play “buy stuff at the Apple store” until sticker shock sets in…..

Goodnight…..

Maurice Ali · Posted: Sun May 23, 2021 10:46 am Post subject:

Update time!

The outside of the magazine is done. this issue is the pandemic special, so this one will recap those’s events and set up the global social contract advocacy. There will also be the usual news articles and entertainment news at Fortress of Freedom!

What else…..

The Mustang is over due to its monthly mensuration of rad fluid. It’s been weeks and weeks completely leak free - but it never lasts. Also from Tesla: The upcoming Roadster that previously claimed 1.9 seconds 0-60 (in plaid mode) now claims 0-60 seconds in 1.1 seconds in SpaceX mode. No, I’m not making this up, the car with this option will have cold air rocket boosters to do the trick. This will make the car the fastest car in the world and it comes with a recommendation that you don’t drive this thing flat out if you have a medical condition! Originally this option was to stabilize the car in corners under hard turns but we all mused about its use going forward. So that was then, but now we have one such machine in the flesh to look at! Well, now you know…..

Goodnight…..

https://youtu.be/z-7gHnm2WEk

https://youtu.be/YzIE-5xZEkc

Maurice Ali · Posted: Mon May 24, 2021 8:41 am Post subject:

Here is the cover for the newest issue of The Fortress:

Front cover of The Fortress 2021 edition!

The pandemic has kept news reports to a minimum and stopped virtually all advocacy, but there was massive growth in the music at the record label. I should also note that Sam is the editor on this one - congrats to Samantha!

Samantha Blackwell

In fact the record label now joins Fortress of Freedom and IAIJ as “too big to fail”! This means there is too much there, to many people involved to just pack up and leave town. Let’s say I wanted out of the label, not likely now but just as a hypothetical, I would sell blocks of the stock to be highest bidder with a preference to FOF people who want to keep it going. That is the meaning of too big to fail.

So even though I own all the stock at FOF and the record label, I can’t really do whatever whim I feel like. IAIJ is it’s own thing as an association and I’m just the President and Founder but easily replaced. But on the FOF side I can be easily replaced now that the experiment is over. Those corporations are becoming more like proper companies now that they have no more advocacy agenda to be beholden to. The only thing for me now in the end is the share price…..

Speaking of share price I hope none of you invested in Bitcoin. If so you lost a lot of money and may not get it back. I mean you have a guy like Elon Musk pulling out support because of the carbon imprint of Bitcoin miners. Miners are people who validate transactions by trying to guess at some long stream of characters. It’s too complicated and boring to go on to here but to “guess best” requires enormous computational power and that electricity has a carbon cost compared to other cryptocurrency. So Musk withdrew support quite publicly. And this didn’t make the news - all me here - but all those miners will be out of work when the banks go quantum computing for security and as a side “plus” those same quantum computers would excel at mining.

But much of this may be irrelevant as other cryptocurrency develops. Certainly ethereum is a better ecosystem mimicking the banking system better - but they also lost value….. Cryptocurrency falls outside of traditional banks much of which is tethered to countries and nationalistic ideas of still controlling individual economies. That’s why they still want cash. But where would cryptocurrency reside and who governs that? - A global society though a global social contract - Hahahahaha….. You knew that was coming! And what was I going to talk about at the World Bank and WTO anyway…..

Fun times ahead for sure…..

Goodnight…..

https://youtu.be/dzTAPY4uEYE

Maurice Ali · Posted: Tue May 25, 2021 6:00 am Post subject:

I’ll actually get this update done before I go to bed…..

So The Fortress is with Sam and when she is done I’ll publish it and post the online version. I actually get a breather now after the book and then this. Time off is not good for a guy like me as you just lament missed opportunities and the sad state of your life and all the rest.

I used to have flooded basements until a few years ago (installed a sump pump) and they are now gone. No squirrel in the attic but usually this is just a matter of time but no critters in the attic for over half a year – I used to dream about moments like this, but no, you live the dream but just obsess about other things. We are actually running the corporations as a business post-experiment and not going into debt, in fact the opposite. All I ever wanted was to just keep them going and so far from 2011 that has been the case; but now I’m going backward in time and into the first seven years which were the most expensive. Gradually this whole adventure will be paid off as an opportunity cost.

What I mean by “paid off as an opportunity cost” is that if I never did any of this from 2003 on I would have spent the money elsewhere. Certainly I would have driven an extra two new cars and probably pricey sports cars at that. I probably would have chased after a few women back then and dating is always expensive. Or, I could have just gotten married again and had a family. Outside of becoming a family guy, maybe, maybe, I would be slightly ahead of where I am now. But that would be a disaster for me as I wanted more legacy than financial statements. My best friend went that path and died before he could really enjoy any of it. So no, saving all your pennies for a better life in the future only works if you live to that future, and nothing in life is guaranteed.

The final goodbye after 23 years - a sacrifice for the cause!

Oh, my opportunity cost? Say 32,000 for each new car (at minimum BTW) and with extra insurance and such say 70,000. That’s half of the 140,000 budget for The Fortress Experiment on IMDB. Say 10 grand on each of two women for dating and that’s 20 thousand for a grand total of 90 thousand on the cheap! So all these experiences cost me 50,000 giving up what I would have been doing otherwise. Devide that by 216 months and you get an ongoing cost of 230 bucks a month cost to do all of this. Actually, that’s not bad! Up the price of the cars to 45 grand each and it cost me 95 dollars a month! For those who bitched about the cost when I started - this should be a wake up call…..

I see that I’m droning on, but this should explain why old people are usually so miserable, especially to young people who have their whole lives ahead of them. The old see the mistakes they made, the missed opportunities they can't get back. Maybe you saved for years only to lose the money for one reason or another. Think of the sacrifice to save, giving up on all that fun and new stuff only to have it all go “poof”! Or not trying out career decisions that would have worked out for you. Not trying a business opportunity that made someone you know rich. It goes on and on and when you get my age you can’t start over, you have to live with your decisions and with your situation. That is why I do this regularly, going over your life and decisions and even the ones you could not change. For most you just end up miserable and say snarky things to the kids because you are jealous of their opportunity. The kids will probably mess their lives up anyway but that doesn’t make you feel good as you won’t be alive to see it. There is always that…..

Goodnight…..

https://youtu.be/VASwKZAUVSo

Maurice Ali · Posted: Wed May 26, 2021 10:56 am Post subject:

The Fortress is finished…..

I got the thumbs up from Sam that it was good to go! The only noticeable change you will see is chopping down the space between the banner about the in-depth report and that it had to be centred a bit better. Also, for some reason I didn’t proof the abstract on the report properly and things got changed like don’t of the opening sentence to “do not”. Stuff like that and some stupid mistakes that dodged the Microsoft Office software. There are probably even more mistakes but if you wait for perfection the paper will never be published. It is good enough to publish and that is what we aimed for.

Nothing is officially up yet, though the on-line version of The Fortress is FTPed on the FOF and IAIJ websites. We won’t print any right now as universities are closed due to the lockdown. The global social contract academic paper has been updated and will be linked later today along with a formal announcement about the magazine. Frankly I would not mind a break from all this writing! But a thanks to all who participated in this latest version of The Fortress, and special thanks to Samantha for editing 89 pages of text on top of everything thing else going on in her life.

In other news:

I’m set for my second Covid 19 shot and I was aiming for a Pfizer shot but it looks like Canada is so short of vaccines I may have to just go and take the second booster of AstraZeneca. The guy behind that vaccine grew up in the same town I grew up in - Edmonton - and I mused that I was probably obligated to stick with the vaccine of one of my own, so sticking by his vaccine through and through. Also, they need the Pfizer and Maderna MRNA vaccines to vaccinate the kids now so I don’t want to be accused of taking a shot away from Biff or Billy cause they can’t get the AstraZeneca shot. So that’s how this should go down, but reality being what it is it may all get screwed up despite my good intentions. Nothing is set in stone…..

I saw an interesting YouTube video that started as a boring car video about an electric Porsche. But what it turned into was this reality check into EV life in Britain. This poor car nut wants to show how fast and powerful his car is but in the end it turned into this quest for a charging station. Then when found - waiting for a charging station. Then finding out not all charging stations worked. Then finding out not all cables at the charging stations are long enough to reach a car’s port - who knew…..Heheheehehe….. Then when this guy finally gets a station what works and plugs in, it only charges to over 40% and stops due to an “error”. To his credit he keeps filming to show the reality of things. But in the end spends three hours just to make it back home with the same low amount of battery charge he had when he left to juice it up. The kicker was him having to leave through the passenger side door in his garage which I have done before. He tried to be positive about driving EVs but the choice words and tone said more about things than the brave face he presented to the camera…..

Goodnight…..

https://youtu.be/XwevvreoNjE

Maurice Ali · Posted: Thu May 27, 2021 8:22 am Post subject:

So now it’s abundantly clear why we were bumped from Amazon Prime and why we will stop selling indie DVDs and CDs.

It’s because on July 5 Jeff Bezos hands over the CEO position to someone else. Also - they just purchased MGM for 8.45 billion and plan to stream all that on Prime, and that my friends is why indie was tossed out of Prime Video. Now all those dots are connected and true reasons for everything become clear…..

Anyway, if you want physical media from us, the last day is June 4 (2021). Now July 5 is special to Mr. Jeff Bezos as that’s the 27th anniversary of him starting his online internet book store. And remember you can still buy our books at Amazon, they made sure the book part was separated from the rest - probably deliberately and for sentimental reasons.

What else…..

The paper is out: