I want my life back! Been stuck in a sadistic stalking, lockpicking and hacking nightmare since 9 June 2008. This website is currently paid for by whoever is doing this to me.
My tablet was getting really hot again and when I checked, its internet connection had been “hi-jacked” by the local hotspot again. This happened non-stop after I moved in.
Now I have several subscriptions so usually plenty of data. (Data allowance is much more generous in the UK.) A few days ago, or maybe one day ago, it started happening again.
This morning, I also saw that one of my English phones had gone offline. I decided to remove an old voice mail message – has been there for ages, didn’t matter – and to my amazement couldn’t dial out. That’s when I saw that it said “emergency only”. Immediately after that, the SIM card came online again.
WTF is going on in this teeny tiny but really really really strange town? It has a culture that I am totally unfamiliar with and I have a feeling that it might also be really helpful if I speak and write exclusively English here so that people don’t get their knickers in a twist when I use what is likely English sarcasm… England’s main form of humor.
Also, yep, it looks like I will have to purchase more AI credits, that I am gonna be just a few short. Probably just 4, for now. EUR 9.99 gets me 1000 credits. That’s a lot of videos.
It would be nice if those locals who claim to be entertaining theories along the lines of that I am actually a Martian who is wearing a highly sophisticated suit that makes me look like an earthling but am secretly plotting a coup to overtake Earth – and what not – would keep their nonsense to themselves and go feed ducks in a park instead.
I’m a little concerned about the mental health of some of the people who have been sending me emails recently.
Then again, I can’t be sure that those emails are 100% genuine.
Years ago, I tried to send spoofed mail via my own mailserver at my business address, via my smarterscience.com domain (which I let go of about a decade ago). I wanted to know how easy it was for someone else to do that. And you know what? It was a piece of cake. Yikes.
It’s no longer as easy as it was back then, I am sure, but it’s still pretty easy. It’s gotten a lot better because big companies are now regularly conned out of millions and hundreds of thousands on the basis of hijacked email communications.
Big day today. Labour is not much better than the Conservatives, but a little better is better than no improvement at all. The main question is going to be how many votes Farage will keep from going to Labour in order to try to leave the Conservatives with a majority. (He only pops up at election or referendum time.)
The Dutch news stated that the British are desperate for a stable government at the moment. Yes, and no. In Britain, people generally survive despite the government, not because of it.
(No, the Netherlands certainly is no longer my home country.) (Let’s leave it at that.)
“You have to be willing to break from whatever’s holding you down”
Also, did I really accidentally stumble upon a major fraud scheme? If I assume the sum of EUR 2000 for everyone who it concerns, and assume that it applies to 10% (but it’s already at least 20% in my situation), then that would add up to around EUR 8 million per year. Did I really just uncover a fraud scheme? Can’t believe that. But if not, then what? It’s just baffling.
Also, it looks like I am about to expand on the new business that I started setting up a while back. It’s simmering. Yes, I spent about EUR 300, among other things on setting up a website. It concerns something that I would rather see not pan out than regret not at least having tried. S
See, I just realized that I may have an actual operational umbrella going on all of a sudden. That is a lovely feeling! Is it all coming together now? A collection of ideas that I have had for years that suddenly turn out to fit under one umbrella in combination with this new thing? Hmm. I will put that on paper later today or tomorrow, to see if it’s real or a mere feeling or fantasy.
I had a startup budget and operational budget for one of the components, and reached out to two parties within that context, for training and cooperation purposes. But that’s a component that I would like to outsource and supervise rather than carry out myself. And suddenly, this all feels so very differently. Fascinating. It also all ties in perfectly to diversity and inclusion angles.
Something is happening, for sure.
I feel my chest expand and something warm and reassuring fluttering gently in my chest.
(No, it’s not my heart. It may be the absence of rising stomach acid, which I have been suffering from increasingly since I moved to Portsmouth at the start of 2009. It’s been subsiding after I left, but it’s not fully gone yet and I am certainly not out of the woods yet in many respects.)
(I’d been climbing the walls with far too little to do for so long!!!)
Many people mistakenly believe that in order to be successful, you need to generate huge amounts of money for it to count. No. You just need to do something that you enjoy doing, that enables you to support you and that adds value to other people’s lives. That’s enough. You don’t need to be rich. That idea is just a recipe for misery.
Also, whatever you do… avoid small-minded civil servants of the pen-pushing kind. They can throw so many obstructions in your path to spite you and waste a lot of your time.
I remember my boss in Florida telling me that there was a particular guy there, in the admin building, who would leave things sitting in his drawer or on his desk just so that he got a feeling of power out of it. I don’t even remember what that guy was supposed to do, sign off on paperwork on behalf of the university, something like that – but he was the cause of many delays.
Yesterday, I found a printed A4 in my postal box from an organization that previously did not respond to my email and written communication that I can always send them an email or written communication. Very funny.
Update 3 July 2024, 09:25: I am keeping this online to protect myself. I’ve now also realized why Jeroen V. – who I think is a decent guy – was behaving so bizarrely. I am pretty sure that he had been fed a load of nonsense about me, the poor guy. (His attitude, too, made me back out.) I was about to forward him an email that I sent to someone else this morning, but I won’t. There are two rotten apples in that particular bunch; the others are likely okay. Those two rotten apples are really mean-spirited, however, and they make me very reluctant to interact with any of them or their colleagues. I’ve spent too much time in Portsmouth to know that one or two people can make your life a living hell for years because the others don’t know you and are likely to take what they are told at face-value.
I want out of here asap. (Are all small towns like this? I am used to much larger towns, where most people let each other LIVE and don’t obsess over strangers.)
But my main problem remains my hacker(s). I can’t do much of anything until that is finally resolved for good; whoever this is is insanely persistent (and pretty destructive). He really enjoys thwarting my efforts, but it’s always a game of positive and negative.
For now, I have to keep focusing on generating new income, hacker(s) or no hacker(s).
He always hits out unexpectedly, also sometimes when you think that he’s finally left you in peace. Anything to pester and sabotage me. Why? I dunno. It is just the way he is. Why me? I dunno. It always has me on edge because I never know what stunt he will pull next, or IF he will pull one or not. There’s always the “nah nah nah nah nah”.
(Such as what happened at the end of 2019 and start of 2020, with payments from my oldest client going astray over 6 months. Then he started taunting me with it. And finding contact details changed in all sorts of places such as HMRC VAT and even getting a spoofed call from that client with the voice of an old friend who had just passed away and other “messages” from her and so on. The call made no sense but I was busy at the time and only gave a quick response. When I tried to call back, I couldn’t. I tried a few times.)
(People’s responses to me talking about this and asking for help almost always boil down to “women don’t know how to handle technology” or a version thereof. So I no longer talk about it. There is nowhere you can go to get help with something like this. I now know that you need to disappear to resolve a situation as crazy as this – which the Dutch police used to advise too, in the past; I know someone who had to do that – but you can’t do that without having enough cash (and/or family support) to do that. Having the cooperation from someone with a holiday hide-out somewhere – anywhere – could be very helpful too. But people don’t help. They pull away because it is all far too crazy for words, what’s been going on in my life for… wait for it… 16+ years now.)
(I’ve also dealt with years of abuse as the result of trying to explain what was going on. Stupid migrant does not know how to handle technology, and what not, it got stale, so stale. And it imposes an immense stress load because of how powerless it makes you feel. Nobody HELPS. Almost everyone simply becomes ABUSIVE when you ask for help. It’s a bit like the situation with that woman whose emaciated body was found in a closet in England a while back. Everybody around her SAW what was happening. They must have sought any excuse they could find not to help her. After she’d been beaten to death, and her body was stuffed in a closet, it was too late to help her.)
ANYONE WHO DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THAT I PREFER TO STAY FOCUSED ON THE MAIN ISSUES INSTEAD OF DEALING WITH PETTY GAMES PLAYED BY PEOPLE WHO APPARENTLY HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO WITH THEIR TIME, WELL, THAT’S YOUR PROBLEM.
(I so wish I could get my pre-hacker life back. The hacking causes so much conflict and tension in my life. People can’t figure out wtf is going on and some wonder why I am always so tense and look so desperate these days. I want my normal life back.)
Am currently working on the subtitles for my latest course. He forced me to do them in a different manner but this step is actually really beneficial. Except… it is costing me a lot more time as I have to re-render the videos and why didn’t he simply let me know about this earlier? Why the hocus pocus, the secrecy? All I am finding is that my captions aren’t being generated. They should be. It’s automatic. So then I start looking into it and he may start popping up helpful links, like when he gave me the link to an article about Murphy’s right hand legal advisor who’d been to prison for three years and was kicked out of the profession.
When he “helps me”, he (then) usually (also) does something else that does a lot of damage or that makes all that work for nothing. Not always.
UPDATE 14:32(and 17:17): It’s revenge, indeed, that I am dealing with locally, plain and simple.
I called someone out on her unprofessional clumsy behavior last year – because I was baffled by what the heck she was doing and offended as well as she was violating my rights without a word of explanation – and she took revenge. That was the impression I had at the time. That impression was confirmed just now.
Dutch legal aid had advised me to call a number for assistance, asap, and I did so, and I ended up talking with the very person who according to the people mentioned in Dutch below set all of this sordid mess in motion – which she now denies.
Turns out that she considers herself a world-class forensic psychologist and IT-specialist and she is furious that I still won’t acknowledge that and instead now think of her as a total “huppelkutje”. Actually, I’ve now dismissed her as totally immaterial, of course. I initially gave her the benefit of the doubt as she was a brand-new employee and simply seemed to have no clue what she was doing. She still has no clue what she is doing but she is a mean-spirited and vengeful person with clear sadistic tendencies and no capacity for empathy. Classic narcissistic personality.
Here is the thing that concerns me. I am not in a wheelchair and I am educated and I do not have dementia and I am not frail. If she is this horrible with me, how on earth does she treat people who she perceives as even much more vulnerable than me (who she seems to see as a mere speck of dirt on her windshield)?
I can afford to hang up on her. What about the people who can’t?
This to assuage all the fears of non-feminist men that I go exclusively after them. (I don’t “go after” people. I hold up a huge STOP sign. That’s all. Unless someone is going after lots of other people, because then I may alert, say, authorities or lobbying organizations, such as, say, for the over-55s, in this particular case.)
Over the phone she was playing despicable silly games and seemed to relish what she saw as my powerlessness.
The person who I filed the police report about is her superior.
(Another silly “huppelkutje”? Yes, I think so. There are many wonderful people in the world but some aren’t and have no excuses.)
Last year, but I don’t know when exactly, she let me know things like “if you can’t count because for example you have dementia, we can help you count”. That is all they do there, they said. They can make phone calls and send emails for people who don’t know how to make phone calls and send emails. That kind of stuff.
My initial feeling when things suddenly escalated was that I was dealing with revenge. Good to know that I was spot on. That’s highly reassuring.
The way the Dutch system works, local civil servants have immense power over the poor and over older people and people with disabilities and so on. That is not the case in England, where you can simply move to another town, for example, and retain the same rights.
If you flee from domestic violence, for example, you can’t flee to another town, in the Netherlands. You have to remain stuck in the town in which you were already stuck, no matter how small the town is. At least, those were the rules the last time I checked; some things have changed in the past 2 to 3 years.
As I was right about this, however, then I am very likely also right about the other thing that has puzzled me. You have to live in society’s underbelly to find out what really goes on. That was the case in Portsmouth and it is clearly also the case here. I’ve never lived in this country’s underbelly before.
Most of my ancestors on both sides of the family are from there. I still have close family there on both sides of the family. Our department head was from there (Jacques Touret). I’ve spent time in the geology there. I’ve interviewed a scientist and former minister there (Claude Allègre). I traveled through it. I’ve been at hotels and other facilities in places like Paris, Perpignan and Toulouse. I know two Dutch women who live there.
I started learning French when I was still in primary school.
Don’t do this. Please don’t do this. Get your act together.
The world’s become a really shitty place. Don’t make it even shittier.
Also, my tablet currently thinks it’s in Malta again. Or Google feeds it Malta stuff, to be exact. The Malta stuff that I recently posted about was on my computer. Different SIM card, different phone.
I’m a geologist, among other things. That’s also how I know that asbestos is not invisible and that it doesn’t have a smell. You can’t remove invisible asbestos; that only exists in some people’s imagination.
I remember sitting in an office at the Westergasfabriek while the terrain was being remediated. We were talking about the cyanide pollution on the site. The guy I was talking with clearly knew that I knew what’s what because when someone came in and hesitated, he got the nod. They’d found an asbestos pipe. It was under water.
Btw, some cardboard pipes look like asbestos, but aren’t.
(There was a major panic at the Westergasfabriek one summer day, when the sunshine caused the release of actual cyanide gas. I missed it. I think I was in the States at the time. See https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259841685_Living_with_cyanide/ Cyanide and manufactured gas plants or MGPs go hand in hand, but people were very sensitive about it.)
My dad had a cooling facility that was clad with Eternit plates sheets (siding, cladding). I remember that the plates sheets were cut into shape on site. At our home. We didn’t know much about asbestos yet in these days, so I doubt that protective measures were taken.
I’m sure I would have remembered, you see. There is a photo of the huge garage being built, years earlier, with me standing there in a red-and-white knitted – or crocheted – dress, sticking my nose into everything, wanting to know what was going on. I was what? 2, or 3? That curiosity is also how I once burned my hand. My dad was showing an uncle how well the fire was going in the wood stove in the kitchen and I wanted to see what was going on and put my hand on the stove surface to prop myself up so that I could see for myself.
I was born with a great deal of scientific curiosity. I observe. I analyze. I’ve always asked questions. Why this, why that? My dentist of many years sometimes had to laugh because I kept asking questions to which he didn’t always know the answer. To me, that is part of the fun in life. Finding out how stuff works. Finding out what is going on.
To come back to asbestos and Eternit, which some people might freak out about… there is a lot of cancer in my family on my mother’s side, but it’s all very different cancers. There’s no heart disease, only some high blood pressure, and no dementia. One uncle had a fatal stroke, I think, and another one had or has Parkinson’s, both on my dad’s side. Health-wise, our family is truly blessed. None of the “youngsters” have a huge chance of getting anything specific. We are all going to die eventually, but in our family, we have a lot of control over how healthy we are, because of the choices we are free to make and because no genes are destined to mess things up for all of us.
Some of us, in our family, have a negligible deformation in our spine. I have it too. It comes from my mother’s side.
I’ve worked with toxic substances (bromoform and osmium tetroxide) as well as with very hot acids in the lab. I’ve had training for how to deal with radioactive substances in the lab, both in the US and in the UK. Asbestos does not freak me out, invisible or real.
I bet that that is not what CNN called him twelve years ago.
Almost all countries have made or are making a worrisome shift to the far right.
Even the Netherlands feels extremely authoritarian these days. It’s creepy, frankly (but maybe I am mostly dealing with local corruption, which would be a different story).
It’s not just England, though. Protesting rights are being curbed everywhere, aren’t they? But perhaps more so in England than elsewhere. We’ll see what happens on 4 July. I want to see a real shift. I want to see the Green Party in power. I know that that’s not going to happen but it is the only real alternative to what we have now. Reform, Labour, the Conservatives, it’s all the same (and I suspect that Reform UK – aka UKIP – has only been revived in order to steal votes but I am not sure from which party it is supposed to steal those votes).
(Oh, wait, a few days ago, wasn’t Nigel Farage openly supporting the pretty extreme rapist and human trafficker Andrew Tate? I will look this up.) (Yeah, Farage was defending him. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-andrew-tate-general-election-reform-b2566506.html Yikes. Farage is already responsible for a lot of violence against foreigners and now he is whipping up hatred against women even higher than it already is. He was very loud up to Brexit; then he disappeared. Went – of course – abroad. Now that he’s sniffed out an opportunity again, he suddenly pops up again, like a bad Boris imitation. Boris was often terribly offensive, but I don’t think that he’s ever openly promoted violence and physical abuse.) (Caused it? That’s a different question.)
(Now I really need something to cheer me up.)
I’m becoming increasingly a fan of Japanese culture. I understand why the Japanese are often offended by western tourists. How can they not be? I’d like to learn Japanese. I’ve toyed with Chinese some years ago, but I like Japanese better. If I can find a good use for it in my life, I will pursue it.
(Now I am finding myself watching The Italian Job, first.) (I’m also making a new course.)
(OMG. The Italian Job features a stripper called Angelina.)
19:00 I just bought a ton of chocolates to use in the new course that I am creating. I already shot at least 30 videos for it.
Here is Flow State, as performed at The Globe, Newcastle for Jazz North East on 26th March 2023 (but, as she puts it “Outlines is my new avant jazz project, playing my original compositions with plenty of space for improvisation“):
(This also helps explain why I have little patience with dreamy rosy candyfloss people these days. You can’t live in England for as long as I have and keep seeing the world through pink-tinted spectacles.)
Here is an unedited ChatGPT translation of the Dutch news article:
A lawyer with connections to the Danish underworld feels remorse and offers to become an informant for a group of journalists. For ten months, every conversation in her office is recorded by hidden cameras. The result is a revealing look behind the scenes, showing how the upper and underworlds in Denmark are deeply intertwined.
The scenario seems perfect for one of the many acclaimed Scandinavian crime series. However, instead of fiction, “The Black Swan” is a documentary series that dominates conversations among Danes at the coffee machine this week.
Torture Chambers and Contract Killings
Central to the story is Amira Smajic, a lawyer who represents criminals from organized crime. After contacting a TV station, she opens a new office and equips it with hidden cameras. These cameras film officials, lawyers, and businessmen advising criminals on various matters, from money laundering through municipal funds to tax fraud and bribery. Criminals themselves openly discuss torture chambers and contract killings.
Everyone who visits the office believes they are unobserved and speaks freely. Financial-economic crime is facilitated by legal companies and service providers, resulting in millions of crowns, which belong to the state treasury, ending up in the pockets of criminals.
It all contradicts the self-image of Denmark, which is known for its transparency. For years, the country has topped the list of least corrupt nations. The public administration is highly accessible: every Dane has the possibility to inspect public decisions, while government agencies are obliged to accurately record communications around decision-making. That in such a society, lawyers and businesses consciously collaborate with criminals to circumvent the law and embezzle state funds, shocks many Danes.
This systematic undermining has caused a significant stir. Several complaints have already been filed against involved lawyers and businessmen, some of whom have already been dismissed or have resigned from their board positions. The Danish Bar Association is investigating multiple lawyers, some of whom work at the largest law firms in the country.
Uproar at the Highest Level
The issue is also affecting politicians. A local social-democratic politician has already resigned after it was revealed that he had connections with one of the businessmen featured in the documentary.
National politics is also abuzz with the documentary. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen publicly thanked the creators for their work, and the government met with opposition parties to discuss the documentary. The question arises whether the authorities possess sufficient economic knowledge to detect and prevent such crimes.
Does the End Justify the Means?
However, part of the outrage in the country is also directed at the documentary makers themselves. The public debate, for example, questions whether the end justifies the means. Is it permissible to secretly record conversations with hidden cameras? Are crimes not being incited this way?
There is also the question of the extent to which lawyer Smajic should have been protected: when it became clear upon completion of the documentary that it would not portray her entirely positively, she tried to prevent its broadcast. She says she fears reprisals from the criminal network she helped expose as a whistleblower.
It took two court rulings before the documentary could be aired. Since then, Smajic has gone into hiding.
According to the documentary makers, the societal interest weighed more heavily. They aptly named the series ‘Black Swan,’ referring to the theory that an unexpected event with enormous impact can make people view the world differently. This certainly applies to the Danish government: after the summer vacation, they will present a bill to strengthen money laundering controls.
Blue = organic and transitioning into organic (not separated) Pale green = transitioning into organic Saturated green = fully organic (as percentage of the country’s agricultural surface area)
Particularly young people aren’t doing very well at the moment. They’re lonely. It seems to be a global trend now.
Brits used to be Europe’s loneliest people, according to studies. I figured that they were among the world’s loneliest because each time when I walked down an English street and heard lively animated chatting and some laughter and the clink clonk sounds of glass and cutlery, it always came from foreigners. It also often applied when I sat in Portsmouth’s Le Café Parisien, which was one of my favorite spots for a long time.
I remember reading an article by a young English person about twenty years ago. She was on a business trip, sitting in her hotel room and realized that there was nobody she could call.
Studying how this loneliness disease came about in Britain may contain lessons for how to combat the loneliness epidemic around the world. One of the solutions is surely to stop boxing people in according to age. It does not only isolate the elderly, it also isolates the other age groups and perhaps particularly young people.
Then again, a big part of the loneliness epidemic is also surely the idea that being on your own is bad. People may be ruminating too much about their perceived loneliness instead of living their lives. Blame social media? More and more young people are now ditching their smart phones because they want to have meaningful interactions in real life again.
Statements such as “it is very humiliating for so and so” when it was others – not so and so – who did something really stupid or embarrassing to someone else made me realize that “humiliation” is as ill-defined as dignity.
When I explored dignity, it became clear to me that dignity is so personal that it can only be defined by the person it applies to. A life in dignity hence is one in which one can make one’s own decisions and opinions and communicate them, also when communicating them is not easy.
Humiliation, on the other hand, has little to do with the person or persons it is about. It is fully defined by the person or persons who find something humiliating, for someone else. What it does is express the opinion that the other person is perceived as a lesser human or a lesser being.
It’s hilarious when a pet has something on his head or a person has a piece of paper on his back, just a friendly slap and presto. But the pet or person is not aware of it, so it’s got nothing to do with the being that is perceived as experiencing humiliation.
When someone is attacked, it can also be perceived as “humiliating” but it has nothing to do with the person who is attacked. It’s entirely in the mind of the perceivers. When I looked into related word, I realized that it seems to be connected to “to bring low”, so maybe it is about making someone appear less than the person actually is.
It’s a really baffling concept when you think about it.
Just consider someone who gets soaked in a rain shower. I once read that it’s an absolute faux pas to show up at a job interview looking as if you’d just been in a shower. That it could be seen as evidence of bad planning or not being very capable. But the fact is that you don’t control the weather and if you plan to get a taxi that will drive you into the parking garage of a building so that you can enter that way, you could get stuck in traffic or find the parking garage temporarily closed. Umbrellas have their limits.
Humiliation is a fascinating concept.
Why is this “humiliating” for the dog? It’s funny. But why do some people call this humiliating for the dog?
This is hilarious, in my eyes. I can’t tell you why the lower photo is hilarious, but it is. In the above photo, it is the discrepancy. Oh, wait, that also applies to the lower photo.
But if it is also humiliating, then why?
This one is terrific, and also hilarious. Is this one also seen as “humiliating”? I bet not.
So humiliation truly is in the eyes of the beholder and as such often says more about the beholder than about the person (or being) they are looking at.
It’s related to otherization, somehow. It’s got something to do with playing with boundaries. It could hold the key to some of the challenges the world is dealing with.
It’s why people like Nigel Farage sometimes get treated to a milkshake or a cake.
(Oh, it’s just happened again! In Clacton, on 4 June. I didn’t know that.)
Is it intended to bring them down from their high horse in that case? It’s definitely intended to break their stride. Maybe it’s done to make them feel what they are doing to others. Because their rhetoric whips up a lot of hate and it leads to worse than people throwing milkshakes at them.
I can so relate to this. I really miss being able to run on the Southsea Common. Still do. I’ll find me a new one. I started running when I was still in primary school. Not like this. For me, things need to be fun. Enjoyable. For most people, not so much.
I happen to have had a physically tough week. I’m so done with that too. I need all those hippos off my chest. Be free again.
Where I am right now, it’s ridiculously similar to Portsmouth in some respects. 😁
