Parliament Hill Viewpoint Viewers

I bought an adapter to put the Zuiko lenses from my analogue Olympus onto the Fuji. The lens I wanted to try was the Zuiko 35-105 zoom. The X-E4 made didn't know the f-stop and seemed to default to the minimum ISO in the range of the setting (160 in this case), and then made reasonable decisions about shutter speed. (The sensor knows how much light it's getting even if it doesn't know the f-stop, so it may have some default speeds against various amounts of light.)

I took a few shots just to get the feel of the camera with a heavy lens on it, and to see if the results were even reasonable. This one came out well, and the others suggested that I needed to put more work into focussing. Getting the shutter speed "right" will be about treating the first shot as a test, and making adjustments using the manual dial

 

Guitar-Induced Shoulder Ache

There is nothing like having a clenched muscle in my right shoulder to make me feel like resigning quietly from all forms of human interaction and activity. It’s a permanent reminder that something is wrong, that I haven’t fixed, as well as that I did something dumb, that I don’t know what it was.

Yes, I’ve had a massage. The poor girl had to take a break from digging her elbows in to the concrete slab that is my back if I leave it too long.

No, the massage didn’t make it go away. It was only a couple of days later I realised what had brought it on.

I’ve been playing the guitar standing up. With a strap. And I’ve been tightening a muscle in my right shoulder to stabilise my right arm, which is the one attached to the plectrum. That’s what suddenly went clench at the weekend. It’s a sod to get to, and was just one of many tight muscles that the masseuse was dealing with.

There are reasons for standing up and playing an electric guitar, mostly to do with access to the frets above the twelfth. When sitting down, the body blocks the left arm from reaching the higher-octave frets comfortably.

The trick is to learn how to hold one’s right arm without clenching any muscles, and also to get the right hang height and angle for the guitar.

The angle matters. The more towards the vertical the fretboard, the greater the difference in distance from the bridge one picks the strings: the 6th E string will be twangier than the 1st E string.

It also affects the angle at which the left arm and wrist need to be to make barre chords.

And you thought this was simple. You know, pick up my guitar and play.

Whisky, Cigarettes and the Meaning of Life - Redux

One of my constant themes is that the meaning and purpose of any person’s life is for them to choose, and exists in the dedication and work towards whatever goal they have chosen. It's not the goal that gives us meaning, but the work we do to achieve it. Any athlete, artist, scholar or entrepreneur will tell you that. Children provide meaning through the work their parents do in raising those children.

If you are religious, then God brings meaning, through your service for him in this life.(*)

Conversely, changing the objective can sometimes turn what feels like meaningless work into meaningful work. When, in my day job, I adopted the goal of making my colleagues more effective by providing them with the data they asked for (and more) quickly and accurately, what had been tedious 'SQL bashing' became meaningful. (Especially when it meant that customers got money from us: "how can I help our customers prosper today?" I used to ask one of my colleagues.)

The idea that it's not so much what your want to achieve, but that you do something to achieve it, can seem peculiar. Isn't a life spent curing people more meaningful than one spent making money in the markets? Maybe it is more valuable to other people, but the sense of meaning is personal. A doctor could feel that her efforts (to cure drug addicts) were meaningless wasted effort, and a trader could feel his efforts (on behalf of a pension fund) were useful and meaningful in that it provided money to pay the pensioners.

Or as Michael Cherrito says



For me, the action is the juice.

There's a (possibly apocryphal) story about a man who was having a slow recovery after heart surgery. One day the doctor suggested he put something on his bedside cabinet to remind him of why he was getting well. A couple of days later the doctor returns and is shocked to find a bottle of whisky and a carton of cigarettes on the man’s cabinet. “What’s all this?” the doctor asks, and the man reminds him about his suggestion. “Well, I meant a photograph of your wife and children, or a pastime like walking or sailing,” the doctor stutters. The man looks at him. “I’m not married,” he explains, “and I’ve worked hard all my life. I have no hobbies. This, the whisky and cigarettes, this is what I like to do, and it’s why I want to get better.” And the doctor did indeed notice that the man had improved even over the last two days.

The point of that story is exactly that what provides us with meaning, or motivation, is intensely personal, and may be incomprehensible to someone else. What matters is that the man started to get better, which was the point of the exercise. As with all decisions, one has to take the consequences on the chin without complaint, and not ask for a Government bail-out.

Every Current Political Issue in Two Lines or Less

What has happened to the incisive political and social commentary for which this blog was justly noted?

I write to help sort out my thoughts on a subject. When I'm sure about my views, I have nothing more to say.

As opposed to newspaper columnists, who only write something when they are sure of what they believe. At least on that day.

And the matters of the day have not changed since about 2016.

So here's a quick summary.

The Trans stuff. They should be taxed, rejected for jobs, and stand on the rush-hour trains from Richmond to Waterloo like everyone else. Of course Trans women should not compete with ordinary women, and nor should they be put in female prisons.

The War in Ukraine. Other than pointing out that not one bullet, rifle or Leopard 2 tank that gets sent over there will ever come back, of course it's a tragedy and Russia should back off.

Working From Home. If you give them pleasant spaces to work in, they will return. But they ain't coming back to the horribly over-crowded offices of 2019.

Dinghy People. What part of you-need-a-passport-and-visa-to-enter-this-country don't they understand? We don't have jobs for our own people, let alone illegal immigrants. Of course the French are practically towing them to our side of the Channel.

Human Rights Lawyers. Strangely, not one of them represents the rights of the ordinary British taxpayer. It's almost as if the lawyers who aren't working for the people traffickers, or Islamic terrorists, are working for the EU. Oh. Wait.

Nicola Sturgeon. Will no-one rid me of this turbulent First Minister?

The Covid Enquiry. Put it in a tin, shake well, and you can paint your walls white with it. (And it hasn't even begun to report yet.)

The British Economy. Would be a lot better if the bankers didn't still want Gordon Brown as Chancellor, and the civil servants didn't still want to be in the EU.

Woke Training. It's a huge grift, which would go away if about ten hedge funds dropped DIE and ESG, which they have only adopted as a distraction from their predatory investment strategies.

The Climate Emergency. An even bigger grift. Al Gore is a multi-multi-millionaire. This BS has been going on since the mid-1980's. I'm still cold every winter.

The NHS. Has a quarter of the beds, ten times the number of doctors and three times the number of nurses it had when it was started in 1949. It takes 30% of total Government spending now as against about 10% in 1949. And you can't get an appointment for a year. I say, take off and nuke it from orbit.

ULEZ. Will no-one rid me of this turbulent Mayor of London? Someone voted for him - was that you?

Low Traffic Zones. Councils should confine themselves to collecting rubbish and mending street lights. Not trying to save the planet (allegedly).

Bullshit Diet and Health advice. Will continue to thrive as long as people want quick or easy fixes.

Woke Movies. Don't go see them. Let the studios go broke.

Woke Publishing. Don't buy the Woke stuff. The publishers are re-printing Real Authors from the pre-Woke days so they can make some money.

China. Needs telling where to get off. Just as soon as we re-shore the manufacturing they do for us.

Social Media. If you ignore it, it does not exist. Let other people get turned into hypo-attention zombies by Tik-Tok.

Mobile Phones. Give your kids dumb phones.

House prices. Totally out of control. Have been since 1972 / 3.

Woke advertising and TV. Let the advertisers go broke, and the TV programmes go unwatched. Read a novel by Dumas, Victor Hugo or Emile Zola instead.

British Education. When it's good, it's very very good, but when it is bad, it is awful. Woke. Staffed by people on contracts who weren't smart enough to realise they could earn three times as much in the private sector. Nobody needs to think anymore because the Woke Manual has all the answers.

Will AI do all our jobs? Oh come on. Remember what happened to Big Data?

But robots? Will be economic in large warehouses, in the same way they are economic on huge production lines. Totally uneconomic anywhere else.

3D Printing. Is already a Thing.

Declining population. In 1954 the population of the world was 2.7 bn. A lot of the world's problems are caused by having 8 bn people on a planet that can just about take 2.7 bn.

So there you are. I doubt my views will change in the next decade.

What you really want to ask is: why are these BS issues occupying the media channels? Would it be so the real issues don't get covered?

Maybe I'll do a thing about the real issues at some point. Here's a taster: Climate Change is not one of them.

The Manosphere Posts

Scrupulous readers with nothing better to do may have noticed that a number of articles under the "Manosphere" label have been withdrawn.

The 'Sphere was a phase I went through.

Does this mean I have turned into a useful-idiot feminist white knight who bitterly regrets never being married and never having children?

Nope. Still the same unrepentant lifetime bachelor. That period was in the nature of scaffolding. Once the building is finished, one takes it down and disposes of it.

I used that scaffolding to ascend to the higher spiritual plane of bachelorhood. The plane occupied by (for instance) Henry Rollins and Bill Maher.

On this plane, one accepts that the cause of bachelorhood lies in ourselves. Marriage is a pillar of society, a source of daily joy and lifetime support, and definitely something other people should do. Sadly, we bachelors miss out on its many benefits, as being foolishly too occupied by our careers / thoughts / creative endeavours / inner peace / sobriety / housekeeping / guitar collection / bench press. Call us Peter Pan. Call us sad. Call us what you like, our lives are not going to intersect.

On this plane, one incorporates what one knows into one's actions, but no longer talks about any of it: do it but don't say it.

I have kept a handful of the articles, including...

the seminal All Hail The Reverend Lawrence Shannon

and the equally seminal post on tattoos and notch counts

and the definitive post on being a man. https://sevendialsx.blogspot.com/2012/11/on-being-man.html

My brief meeting with Tom Torero

An explanation of why I've had enough Red Pills

On being one's own mental point of origin

A rebuttal of Aaron Clary's claim that men do everything so they can get beautiful women

A discussion of men's ability to exercise and withhold empathy

A rebuttal of the idea that men are the gatekeepers of commitment...

...and of the standard portrayal of hypergamy

A comparison of the attitudes of the Red Pill and the lamented Heartiste (that got a lot of views by my standards)

An introduction to the ideas of Ester Perel

This one is still getting views

And this one on the economics of sustained daygame is an all-time hit...

...as was this one on the conversion chain of approaching.

Morning Frost, Hanworth Air Park

 Cold as it is, when the air is this clear and the sky is this blue I have to go for a walk. All the trees, hedges and plants were tipped with frost: the whole scene was slightly magical. (Which is not a phrase I would use for the Air Park.) 

The best camera is the one you have, so all these are from the iPhone. By the time I'd finished the walk, the frost in the sunshine had melted off. 

Did Anyone Think The Future Would Be Less Sucky?

There's a Reddit thread on r/GenX about Aside from getting old, did anyone think the future would be less sucky?.

I'm what Americans would call a Boomer, but this is the UK, and the UK population hump was about 1958 - 1972. The year I was born, rationing was withdrawn in the UK, so I'm some sort of Gen Post-War. Perhaps that should be Generation Candelight, because we did our homework with candle-light during the strikes of 1971/72 and were teenagers during the Three-Day Weeks.

I had no idea what my future would be. Or what the future of the country would be. Pass the exams, get a job, try to get promoted, find a place of my own, rented, then mortgaged. I can honestly say that marriage and children never featured. In autumn 1993 I went to my first AA meeting, which tells you how wonderful were all those years between being born and thirty-nine. At the time, I had been unemployed for a year or so. I had no professional qualifications, and no networks in any industry. I had no idea how to make and live an adult life, and I still don't.

Look at films and photographs of the UK even at the start of the 1970s. It looks like 1949. It was a different country. I date 'the future' to start with the Second Summer of Love (1988), and reach its peak in 2007, just before the banks frakked everything up. Personally, I think the world we have now is way better than the one of 1950, if you have a job that pays over national median wage, exercise, eat right, don't drink too much, stay away from drugs, don't buy shit you don't need with money you don't have to impress people you don't like, and if you are single, even if you have to flat-share.

So I don't think my future turned out to suck. Well, not until after 2008, and even so it's still better now than 1965. I can see how Gen X might think their future sucked. There's no doubt the Weak Men (and Women) are in charge, and that means the immediate future is going to get worse.

But since you ask...

In 2010 social media appeared on mobile phones, and the freaks, who are always with us, were granted a stage to flaunt their craziness to the world. 2016 told us that Western countries were run by people who held most of the population in contempt, and 2020 showed us that the political, media and administrative classes were so weak-minded that a simple flu virus could send them into hysterics. The posturing rich have forced DIE and ESG on companies which should be focussing on creating jobs and profits. Once-impartial institutions get taken over by activists pushing nonsensical causes, every year academic grades mean less, and money buys less. The news has turned into rehashed press releases, schoolyard gossip and glimpses of the freak-show. And people who don't speak our language, don't share our culture, have no useful skills, and whose first act here is to commit a crime by entering illegally, these people are championed and supported by politicians, journalists, lawyers, judges, and civil servants.

Those are all things I never thought I would see.