A Social Club of One

[Maurice Ali]

Transferring to this New Forum


Our original forum was at:


https://fortressoffreedom.com/phoBB2


However that forum is now 18 years old and needs to be retired as archival material. All the important announcements will be transferred here but many other postings of interest can still be found ther

[Maurice Ali]

I’ve started to do stuff…..



HRH Princess Victoria


First of all I’m planning my strategy post-Covid 19 and it may not be what you thought. But I’m actually thinking of petitioning royalty to help me get the word out. I noticed this years ago as sometimes an HRH would give a speech there for some advocacy at the UN. There is royalty everywhere in the world even if some of it is not in the form of a typical monarchy. However there is more of it than you would think, especially in the Arab world for one.




HRH Queen Maxima



So it is possible to either directly or on neutral territory at the UN to propose my ideas and see what happens. Royalty is aristocracy and not always with the geopolitical biases and stances that I face now. They - the aristocracy - may lend an ear to my ideas of changing the world. You just never know.





HRH Crown Princess Mary



Look, this adventure has take me places I never would have imagined and this venture into royalty is no different. It’s another play to make and circumvents some problems at the UN. A royal title still carries some weight in the world. So it is worth a try…..



Later…..

[Maurice Ali]

This is just an extra post for you gear heads out there. Three and a half years ago I bought the cheapest Mustang you could get instead of buying a Hyundai Elantra. Never regretted that move as I was set to buy the Elantra, but at the moment of truth I had to go back to the Mustang - I just couldn't do it! So a V6 Mustang after 19-20 years of V8 Mustangs but these new ones put out over 300 horsepower and because they were being discontinued and just kept for fleet sales they downgraded the output to 87 octane levels to make the turbo 4 look more attractive. So these the things actually put out 314 horsepower on 93 octane but with a procharger it puts out just under 500 and with a light injector upgrade you go right up to the platform's limits of 580 horsepower.





Actually you can go up to 1200 with an intercooler but that car is now a dragster and no daily. With the mundane "in the box" setup you can daily drive it with only a marginal rough idle, and since it works with the current platform suspension I can take it off in the winter and go back the current set up. The prices are about 8 grand Canadian new, but most buy used as many just buy it and try it out and get out quick. So for about 5 grand you get a faster car than any stock Mustang and for way less than any sale price on a stock car. I can't do any of this now as it makes the car un-drivable in the winter - but people are so desperate to get rid of these things while they can - I could just snap one up and sit on it till needed.



Decision.....decisions.....






https://youtu.be/2Q1c-7AZKT0

[Maurice Ali]

The on-line version of the 59 to Session of the Commission for Social
Development is underway.






That above was on such event at the United Nations. Of course it lacks the adventure, the vitality of actually going there. You get to New York and then get your annual UN pass (as this is usually your first event of the year) and go in. You now know people there and catch up on things. You pop into the actual session to check things out and then maybe sit in on one of the side events. Then off for lunch and out to explore a bit more of New York.


In New York you can also do FOF business as all the major players seem to have an office there. You have your regular “haunts” for food, drink or even just to hang out. The Museum of Modern Art is one as is a daily walk around Central Park.


This year there is none of that, just hanging around your house hoping it doesn’t snow…..


But (and they say never start a sentence with but. But I’m a rebel…..) everyone is in the same situation so I won’t complain too much - but I still will complain a little. Tuesday had me pass “critical mass” on the new forums and it’s just a matter of time till posts stop appearing here and all go over there. So that much got done. More work on the social contract paper. I still have time as I have two weeks off. And frankly if I didn’t plan to travel I would have just taken a week off - but two weeks forces you to finish arge projects so there is always that.


And that’s pretty much the situation as it stands. No travel and since we are locked down presently due to the pandemic, there is nothing to do at home - at least in terms of shopping and going out on the town - but it does make it easier to concentrate on necessary but onerous tasks like setting up the new board.





HRH Queen Mathilde now has clothing made with matching face mask - who can’t respect that! Anyway there are many more royals to contact, especially in Asia. I’ll leave this alone for a while as I have a more mundane persons to contact while on vacation: Tim Cook…..


Yes Tim Cook…..




Goodnight…..

[Maurice Ali]

Posted: 11 Feb 2021 06:31 am


When I got sick of transferring old posts to the new board I got worried that I was falling behind in the global citizen paper. I forced myself to start working on it - and about an hour later - the critical text is done!



Just like that - done! Of course it’s not done but needs to be fleshed out but the paper now has structure as in a beginning to body and conclusion.



As for the new board: Work continues at a pace I am comfortable with. No rush but I want it caught up quick just in case the main board breaks permanently. I will keep using the old board till it really looks like it will break - then officially go to the new one. The posts will all be duplicated there but the view counts will not reflect the real views. Even that is a two year old version as the newest requires a php version on the server that breaks the old board. But it’s easy to upgrade the new board to the newest, and the database can be swapped as it’s not corrupted. If you a user called “hidden” on this board - that is me copying and pasting posts and not some nefarious person spying on you.




Rudegal Tab cover art finalized!


FOF RECORDS Advocacy: I’ll start working on the Tim Cook letter today and courier it off before the end on the vacation. Then we shall all see the journey and destiny of a legitimate grievance to a new policy at Apple the messes up every artist‘s ability to control their branding. I’ll break the whole argument down over the next few days, but Apple started this and it’s starting to spread to there platforms so we actually have a teeny tiny chance to stop this before it becomes commonplace. This is the first fight for advocacy at our record label. We just got lucky with this one…..



Back to “Tabitha” because Apple says so!


Goodnight…..

[Maurice Ali]

Posted: 11 Feb 2021 01:59 pm


It’s looks like I still got credit for participating at the World Bank annual meetings back in 2019:


https://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/m ... t-List.pdf





This was a welcome nugget of happiness today as I was really bored and happened upon this. Yes I did apply to host an event there on the Positive Mandate but didn’t make the cut. I did download the app and tried to be a speaker there at some of the events. I guess all that was enough to make the list!



How whack is that!



I’ll take it given the present situation. This does make it easier for me to speak the next time I apply as I can list our previous participation! What a nice surprise!



Also there was another mass zoom call at the United Nations today that I participated in:





And that was the morning. More work on the report/board and Tim Cook letter. But this will be a two mocha Starbucks day today, mainly because of all the lament that I didn’t even do a recon mission at the World Bank/IMF meetings after all that hassle trying to speak there. This sort of makes up for that in a way.



Me likes the unexpected nugget of joy when things get really mundane and boring…..



Later…..

[Maurice Ali]

Posted: 12 Feb 2021 02:29 pm


A late one as we just had the IAIJ Annual General meeting.






We will make the announcement of our participation at the World Bank in 2019 as that holds us in good stead for 2021 possibly. Plus, stuff like that only keeps my hold at IAIJ as I’m definitely “the man” right now. But whatever, the advocacy carries on. What on earth could I discuss at the WTO? Well in 2019 it was AI/Positive Mandate and the Global Economy but these days a global vote at the World Bank would probably get me a speaking position….. We shall see how we proceed, but I’m not here for a lifestyle change…..



I got a shipment of CDs in for the ZX/81 album and we will probably make a little promotional blurb at FOF Records. As for Friday: More work on the new board and more work on the social contract paper.



Later…..

[Maurice Ali]

Posted: 13 Feb 2021 05:58 pm


Well I got a lot done so far on Saturday!



I got two backups of the blog done, one with fewer pictures but at around 133mb and the full archive at almost half a gig. This was something I wanted to do and never really got around to – but it is done! I still haven’t fixed the charset problem for a few years where the browser doesn’t show the Microsoft Office extra characters. I thought this was a database issue but looking into the database backups the characters are still there? Something to look into at a later date.



I still would like to save this old board and update it a bit but real problems are here. I guess the best thing is just to keep it stable for as long as possible. I will have a completely new board for when this one bites the dust and the huge archives like the blog will be there in pdf form for those interested.



We are basically at the half way mark of this vacation under lock down, but stuff is actually getting done. But that back up was a nice treat. I’ll take a break from the board stuff and catch up on the IAIJ stuff and the other things that got left on the back burner. This is turnaround time on the vacation. I have to preen myself up now, and start exercising a bit more so I’m not totally flabby when I go back to the usual routine. But I’ve earned a break today…..



Goodnight…..

[Maurice Ali]

I have the first very rough draft of the global social contract and it comes in at 24 pages. We now just keep at it.



The Tim Cook letter has its first rough draft and we keep at that.



The secondary board continues to be a work in progress. Like I said yesterday the big news was getting those personal blog backups done. Now is just having a version for reference if it does not break the data bank for visitors. I'm looking at a zipped file of that huge one thousand page set of pdfs that truncated many photos. If I can get that packet down to about 80mbs I think that is tolerable. You just keep at it.



The vacation carries on though. Work at my dad's place and things to do at my place sprinkled in with this other work. Things need to change in how I run things here but that can wait until the pandemic ends or mitigates. Time is running out and life gets harder by the simple fact that you are getting older. You look at stuff differently now. Take my car, once upon a time the car was the number one priority in my life in my 20s. Now it's desirable but still just a thing. It can get in a car wreck; I start it in the coldest days outside when I would have taken more trouble to have parked it my garage where it's warmer. "These days' having your health is what matters. Cars can be replaced but chronic illness really messes things up. No point dwelling on missed opportunities of the past because you never had a chance. Once you come to terms with that you can still move ahead. Realize that everyone is forgotten in the end. Only the new ideas matter - when last did you think about Bob Hope, or any of the others who don't have a holiday named after them? You see they all get forgotten no mater what they did. You really are smaller than you think as time goes by and you die. We all want legacy, we all want it - but the reality is that when we die there will be a small memorial service and a week later it will be as if that person didn't exist for all but family and close friends.



And so it goes with me, as we all want our name in the history books. But when people run across that name does it even matter? You are gone and dead so you get no benefit. All that matters is the ideas and concepts and philosophies that may get adopted and handed down from generation to generation. They live on as people adopt them into their lives. I know very little of my mother and fathers parents. So much for relatives, and so much for individual accomplishments. We are all just animated vessels of which 70 percent is water. Our elements are worthless; reading about some name attached to some idea means less than the idea itself. Reading about how an idea or concept or philosophy came to being has relevance but only as it related to that idea, concept or philosophy people adopt. Otherwise it is invisible as well as the people behind it. I wouldn't mind a brown face peering back at readers in some history book of philosophy as in the west they all seem white. But that's just me in my life at this point in time. My little blog only needs to be archived as to how all this came to be - and - only if people eventually embrace it. So that was what is going on about the board and the blog. A blog about just my life without the advocacy is very bad non-fiction at best - and others are better at it than me.....




Goodnight.....

[Maurice Ali]

Just more of the same and progress on all fronts.



What I’ll do today is give you an update on stuff…..







Apple watch: I wasn’t sure about this purchase but now I am. It gives me the freedom to leave my phone for hours on end without the withdrawal as phone calls, texts and emails still get though. Only the vital stuff plus Facebook, Instagram and Twitter - the bare essentials. The Apple Watch 6 was no upgrade at all and I don’t need glucose monitoring with the seven so I could keep this watch for a while. The stainless and sapphire model was the right move as it looks like a traditional watch. I baby the battery on this thing to make it last as long as possible, but I may just replace the battery and keep it rocking in the years to come.






iPhone Pro Max: I held out as long as possible but had to upgrade this year for many reasons. Next year may get tough ID which I love but since I love the largest size this would seem to also be the first to go port-less - NOT FOR ME!!!!! Slow MagSafe charging and incompatibility issues with laptops and cars mean that is too much trouble. So it’s better to suffer with mask unlocking via the watch than deal with crap like no ports. Maybe in four years but I’m not going to be an early adopter. Aside from that everything is fine with the new phone. I was worried about early hardware problems cause I got it when it came out - but none - as in no issues, so I guess I dodged that bullet. I don’t care about high refresh as it uses more battery. Curiously, I don’t really use the camera lenses as much, but the video is vital as I haven’t upgraded our codec much passed HDV. Here the iPhone shines better than any other phone today with no grain, best dynamic range and gimble like stability. This will hold me in good stead for all the musical performances/bar hoping and concerts that will soon come back again. I don’t intend to lug around a camcorder and case ever again!!!!! I still love the glass and stainless steel industrial design which brought me to iPhone 4 series. It’s perfect - and - I have a case where it readily comes out of and I just love to fondle this “brick” in my hands. I got the white with bare stainless steel sides so you can polish away scratches just like with the watch it matches - no regrets there! So the iPhone was an expensive but necessary purchase.




A V6 Mustang identical specs to mine doing donuts at YDS!



Mustang: Only fault is the monthly water pump leak - the best car I ever owned! The car noises at startup when cold were completely solved by the zero weight oil! Then engine is perfect now and I’m the kind of guy who remote starts the car and stands there listening to the engine - trust me that problem is solved! I may just replace the water pump with an aftermarket performance or Ford part but with a better gasket - on my own dime - and solve that problem that way…..




If you look around the mouth you see lines starting to appear! I'm getting old!



Glasses: New glasses so now I have replacements. I now have frames that I can cannibalize to make the previous pair new again. I just have to get it back to the jewelry guy who fixes frames on the side. My eyes didn’t really change over the last seven or eight years. No medical problems so I’m good to go.


And that’s enough for today - back to work I go!



Later…..