The IPO
Working, private parties all the way to Christmas. Or - the 19th anyways, when they close.
Tonight, private party, an IPO, bunch of doctors soliciting investors to buy into a bunch of digital medical products.
Questions like: "does it use an AI" and "how do you intend to monetize this?..."
Medical miracles forecast daily, the cell-phone, internet, AI - all set to bring medicine into the 20th century - and - more importantly - bring those wise investors who buy in early unbelievable riches...
This software analyzes the speech of babies to identify possible developmental issues - licensed to a baby monitor manufacturer - X$ per month, per license.
"Licensing" - never a product you own, merely "rent" the app or software or hardware - the new model of business, how to keep the revenues coming in, why sell somebody something once when you can sell it to them month after month. The "Subscription based" economy - you're never done paying for as long as you live.
Their partners license apps and software on a monthly basis - per customer, $5, $10, $20 a month each, times a hundred million over-concerned parents, money in lieu of time not spent with child, pluggable cellphone scopes that connect you to a doctor who will diagnose and prescribe you over the phone - just stick it in your ear...your nose, up your ass...
Others, cellphones that track eye movements... detect flush, heartrates, excitement, boredom, breathalyzers that monitor CO2 uptake, make recommendations on diet, exercise - they call it "The Wellness Economy".
Never mind that the economy - this economy - depends upon you NOT being well, or at least believing you're not, and the fact that we even have this in large part explains why you might not be.
This is all techno-quackery of the highest order, and - note they don't have to any of them buy it - they merely have to believe they can make money selling it on to other, more gullible people....buy in for this venture a mere $50,000, for friends of the founders up to $250,000 will be permitted, they're doing the research, choosing only the best of the lot, strategically partnering with those companies they feel have the best chance of succeeding, only 15 or 20% of the best tech-medical get an interview with them, and of these maybe only 25% get a partnership commitment.
The founding Doctor, at the end of it all when most of the guests have left, been feted, demonstrating a pendulum to a loiterer, the ideomotor response, this - this - says it all - how to license and profit from this? Monthly pendulum rentals, no one will figure out how to make one of their own, the "Mind-Body Connection", he's rich already, going to be richer soon, discussing the restaurant, how expensive it is, they spent almost $300 per guest, and he's explaining to a friend how it's money well spent, to lure in the rubes and the greedy...
I have a few ideas of my own, once settled, that conscience long forbid me from acting upon but now, but now, look at this, these people are Doctors and should know better, there was once a time when you would be ashamed to have investments in anything so patently at odds with medicine, science - but - this is how the world is falling apart.
Money is the answer to every one of life's mysteries. Buy in now to ensure you have enough.
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Noise
This hostel, it's loud, I've had to change my hours to work around the din & hubbub of a largely babbling clientele.
The TV, frequently on and always too loud. People always coming and going. Smells, the kitchen, some good cooks for sure, accents, some more pleasing than others (usually in languages other than English), it's raining and I need to be writing, studying the menu at work, and it's a challenge here to stay focused, forever and always the burden of other peoples thoughts voiced loudly.
Bunkmates, Steve, still, forever marginal and hanging on by his teeth, selling just enough books every day in Gastown to keep him in the hostel another night. He's growing stressed, increasingly, the rain doesn't allow him to sell, can't make that connection with people, nobody wants to stand and talk to him in the rain.
A small town German boy, here to learn to Ski in Whistler, he's terrified of the city, no bloody wonder, step outside the door of the hostel and you'd understand pretty quickly why. No one comes prepared for this.
And we've a drunk Irishman, he's in all day, then leaves in the evening - returns at 5:00 AM, coughing in the bunk below, he's a tickle in his throat, insensate, drunk, he's come in from where? The meth has irritated his throat, he lies there coughing, hacking, sleep here is precarious, Steve is annoyed, telling him to leave - he doesn't want to get sick, Anti-Vaxxer Steve, how to reconcile this? Afraid of the virus, afraid of the vaccine...
Always here there's the Noise, the traffic, periodic sirens, engines and wheels ploughing through wet streets, the rats in the walls, scratching, and - while I've a place to live I'm missing quietude of the Kootenays.
Work has become an escape.
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Kamongo or, The Lungfish and the Padre - Homer W. Smith
Picked it up, slender, curious worn cover - it's the slenderness and obscurity that draw me towards it, that and that it's priced at a dollar.
Enthusiastic reviews by nobody I've ever heard of adorn the back cover.
Written, late 1930's
A dialogue between a priest and a physiologist, both on a long ship voyage through the Suez Canal, the Priest, or Padre, on his way to a Mission in deepest colonial Africa, the Physiologist, also in Africa, studying the Lungfish, an evolutionary throwback to the days when fish breathed air before developing gills.
The conversations, on the one hand representing the evolutionary point of view, that life will out in all it's diversity, and the Priest is largely silent, his belief in something other than this - argued, but - not so much.
Not so much a dialogue as a advertisement for evolution and the randomness - and inevitability - of life.
So - always good to read - always, books from a different era, books with something to say. His Point of View stands today - even with all the advancements of science - the world is largely colored by our interpretation and understanding of it.
And there are no ready answers, which is, I suspect, as it should be.
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2 Weeks
And I mean, the longest 2 weeks in the world. I just realized it today - thinking - it was 2 weeks ago yesterday that I fled Nelson in a rumbledown jeep, blazing through floods and landslides on a wing and a prayer to...
Where?
Wherever.
And 2 weeks later here I am. Hope, the disasters, floods, meals at the church and matinees at the cinema. It seems like months, years ago even.
Followed by the trip to Vancouver, 3 days in the Hostel deciding, indecisive. And then - on the computer - looking for, finding a job - all - quite literally - in the same night.
My head spins. Work - a surreal fever dream, "The Cook, The Thief..." lived out in pantomime, imposter syndrome, wandering the Zombie land of East Hastings, Steve, the hostel, the memories crowd my head, make it seem like years have passed when really - it's only been a few short days.
Walking Vancouver, relearning it, I'm not sure I ever forgot, there are everywhere jogs for my memory, Seabus to North Vancouver today, thrifting - expensive, nothing I'm looking for, another white shirt for work, studying the menu...
Time passes.
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