JeremyThings
2026-04-15 Is Humanity a real thing
We often use the term humanity or humanitarian as if it was part of human nature.
This is I believe wrong, it is not in animal nature to care about animals outside of their own family, group, tribe etc. that they do not know, indeed they are competitors.
It is however as I have stated in animal nature to care about families, friends and loved ones.
This caring is of course part of survival, looking after your group keeping your group healthy and protected.
This works well for most animal groups where the population is at the very most a few hundred limited in size dictated by food availability and predation but of course with the human race this is entirely different. We have built civilisations, we have developed trade systems and of course we have overcome many of the things that would limit our growth through technologies.
Countries are the logical grouping and they can have many millions of people and so therefore struggle to follow the rules of normal animal nature.
In order to create some form of control over such vast numbers of people mankind invented laws, religion, governments and war
For centuries different countries acted without terribly to other countries, they would kill, plunder and enslave others without care other than for their own people.
In the past century we realised that that was not the right way to be and we saw an age where countries would help other less fortunate countries especially when they possibly created the problem in the first place.
Through globalisation we hoped to create beneficial trade across the globe but what we have now seen is in fact a protectionist approach by many countries and no consideration of the damage they do to any country that is perceived as a threat or an opportunity for profit.
2025-10-30 Internet unavailable
Recently there have been a number of internet outages which have caused issues for people around the world.
As more and more people and organisations become more and more dependent on the internet to connect them to other people, organisations and services this becomes even more critical.
If you cannot access your bank then you cannot make payments, if your company cannot order parts from its suppliers then it cannot continue to operate.
In the future more things will rely on internet connectivity, autonomous vehicles, robotic surgery, robotic farming and more and more Just In Time (JIT) company processes. Many will still work offline but they will be all but useless with only basic functionality.
There are many reasons why the internet breaks, sometimes its very local and just involves your personal computer or maybe your companies computers, this is often just a cyber attack. Sometimes it will effect a large part of the internet and this is can be a security issue or when a maintenance patch gone wrong amongst other reasons. The more complex the solutions we implement generally the more ways it can go wrong or be exploited.
We see state actors attacking our infrastructure in order to test our resilience as in the event of conflict bringing down a countries internet will be a major objective along with other internet related attacks.
Large organisations and services have their own private pathways between their systems and to the internet and these are quite secure and are generally only affected by maintenance issues however at some point their will need to be communication between their systems and the outside world and that is where the problems begin.
So what can be done, most large scale companies have some level of redundancy and mitigation for when things break but most smaller enterprises do not and when Larger companies outsource to smaller companies they become vulnerable.
The security and recovery technology keeps improving but as technology in general advances its hard to keep up.
As individuals we can go into survivalist status, i.e. keep some cash handy and tins of beans stashed under the bed but not many of us will do that and in any case cash is becoming less useful and you can only eat so many beans.
During the second world war the Germans and Italians realised that the undersea cables used by the UK to communicate with its allies were crucial and made every attempt to cut these cables. These cables were the internet of the day and there is no doubt that in a future conflict the internet will play almost certainly a bigger role than any weapon or missile.
2025-10-29 Riot Women
Riot Women is a series on BBC television during Autumn 2025, it was written by Sally Wainwright and is about a group of women in their 50's and 60's who are fed up with the way they are or have been treated in life mostly at the hands of rather distasteful men.
There have been a number of critic reviews with differing opinions and that is not surprising as most reviewers have some form of agenda to their review, in this case one reviewer whose agenda was clearly feminine oriented said it did not display feminism in a true way and another critic who was very masculine based said that it treated men very unfairly.
Yes there are gay people in the series but this was not relevant to the story, yes the women may be menopausal but again that was not relevant to the story and indeed its not right to assume that the women acted this way in the story because of the menopause.
Yes there was some joking about the sexual piss taking of one young man but this happens more to young women in real life.
There was also the terrible abuse of a 12 year old child included in the story and indeed very relevant at the time of the grooming gangs investigations currently happening in the UK
There were other elements in the story line that also contributed to the angst that was what the real story was about, these women were angry at being ignored, about being on the receiving end of men's unacceptable behavior, these I believe are real problems for so many women today, gay, straight, young or old and I see it as a play on Girl Power although slightly older than the Spice Girls.
I would recommend putting your agendas aside and look at the series and judge for yourself.
2025-10-20 Reliable Computer Systems
Recently there has been an increase in the number of system outages that we see in computer systems that we all use, shopping, banking, entertainment. To me this is not a surprise as the systems landscape has become so vast and diverse that problems are inevitable and at the same time with the wide spread use of cloud systems where a single failure can effect multiple systems it is inevitable to have far more damaging effects when an outage occurs
There is not a simple addressable reason for this in fact there are many.
In software development there is the use of frameworks which are used everywhere nowadays from web page development to back end systems, developed and maintained by many people and used by millions of developers.
These frameworks are becoming large and hard to maintain and they also add a lot of bloat to systems which can as a consequence lead to increasing the maintenance and likelihood of failure as they themselves rely on software libraries maintained by others.
We now have cloud based systems that provide solutions for every customer need CRM’s, CMS’s etc. customisable for your company which adds bloat as well as maybe compromises in your business processes.
The tailoring of these systems is often done through outsourcing of staff and projects globally where your developers may be located thousands of miles away making quality control virtually impossible, verbal fluency, time zones, culture, crime all play a role in making it hard to develop reliably in a distributed global environment.
Another problem with outsourcing staff is that they are much more mobile now and as they move from one contract or company they take their experience with them meaning that identifying problems and making future enhancements more difficult.
And of course now we have a lot more crime, fraud, political etc. and all of the issues above make crime much easier.
So what can be done, well there are options but they will add to the cost and will add to development timescales but I would argue that this is worthwhile to ensure high quality, easily maintainable systems which are a better investment than minimal viable products heavily customised third party apps developed by people you will never see again assuming you ever saw them in the first place. Keep a core expertise, employ some staff who are experts in their field and keep them and their experience ongoing.
Avoid overuse of frameworks when you can which is not easy but I rarely use frameworks nowadays as I have my own solutions for most development work. I will often use my own frameworks combined with well maintained libraries that are easy to replace if required.
Where you use off the shelf systems, have the project run locally, ensure any outsourced staff are relatively local so that you can meet face to face at key points in the project, despite the benefits of Teams, you still need to meet face to face at key points or when major roadblocks occur in your project.
This is going to add cost and make your systems more expensive but as explained above I think this would be a false economy to do anything else.
One factor that is more recent is the use of AI which is everywhere at the moment, it is great for many things that are relatively simple logically i.e. answering customer queries, writing historical fact based essays for college etc. as well as more interesting things such as image manipulation, but they are nowhere near able to produce business ready apps that are well designed, prototyped, developed, tested, documented, maintained etc. but at some point they may be, then all bets are off where that will lead us!
2025-10-15 Power Corrupts
"Power corrupts" is a well known statement and history is full of examples of this, particularly in governments around the world.
There are a number of behaviors that define humanity. I want to look at two of these (I call them Alpha and Protect factors) in relation to how we are ruled or governed. There are good and bad things from these factors when they are combined, good when governments show compassion, bad when they show bias towards a goal and ignore the cost to others. We expect our government to focus on the good points but then when things go wrong we judge them on the bad points for which there are often many due to corruption and incompetence.
It is human nature as part of the preservation instinct for humans to seek power over others, whether it be physical power, financial power, intellectual power, sexual power. These all are part of what I call an Alpha Factor that all humans have.
There is also a protection instinct that for example parents have for their family, friends have for each other and leaders should have for their people. I call this the Protect Factor
Governments should look to demonstrate the Protect Factor to protect their own and those in other parts of the world that cannot protect themselves. The Alpha factor should be used for strong leadership but always in sync with the Protect Factor. Unfortunately it is more often used for self promotion and self gain with the exclusion of the Protect Factor where it is conflicting with their power position meaning their dependent people and others often will suffer.
We expect human nature to put protection of your own over protection of others and you could argue that governments have the duty to do that to protect their own first above other but they should be open when and how they do that and not make up often shallow reasons for their actions which will only lead to distrust. We need governments with the courage to be honest, if we need to make hard decisions that will impact the lives of others we should be clear why. I understand that global politics is like a game of poker, you cannot show your cards and you sometimes need to bluff, but you have to play fair and you must not cheat.
Leaders through self interest want to stay in power and to be seen as strong above everything else and so they will plan, scheme, negotiate and often lie with whoever to stay in power and as a consequence at some point no one trusts or respects them once they have been in power for a relatively short while and there scheming catches up with them
The more complex the world gets the more the Alpha factor dominates human behavior to stay in control and as a consequence the more the people suffer from their dominance and of course we live in a world where secrets often leak and when they do everyone knows about them instantly through social media, this combined with fake news means that no politician can go long before they have to face challenges on their behavior and their honesty.
Maybe the real people in power (super Alphas) are hidden like some sect you read about in fiction and they use those who have a dominant Alpha factor to orchestrate there plans and replace them when they no longer have that power.
Ordinary people in the west are more and more demanding protection for themselves and forgetting about the protection of others. It is natural not to have primary concern about the plight of others and certainly not to weaken your own situation by supporting protection of others you do not know. But that is short sighted as we live in a world very much politically and economically connected whether in relationships or as competitors.
In the west for mostly historical reasons we have the upper hand but that is changing and we see the west now starting to fall behind the growth of countries outside of the G7. If this continues then it is very likely at some point that we may need the protection of other countries ourselves. However they have leaders just like ours and will treat us in the same way we have historically treated them and we will suffer.
So whats the answer? Obviously the only real answer is to change human nature because if we just make rules, laws, new alliances and add to the bureaucracy then we just make things worse but how can we change human nature which has developed over tens of thousands of years?
If we could then firstly we need a much smaller population, probably maximum of 2 billion worldwide, secondly we need to leverage technology to ensure we all globally have food, water, shelter and protection. Thirdly we have to develop a new concept of a true quality of life i.e. social activities, education opportunities, leisure options for all abilities.
Protection should not be necessary especially as this leads to leadership and dominance which will start the whole cycle again, we have to ensure that the whole world does not need to be protected from others and that we are not frightened of others, our education system should focus on the habits of caring and sharing and no longer on competition and winning so there is no drive to dominate any more and anyone who does develop those tendencies would not fit in.
This will never happen as we would most likely end up with a rogue group that took to dominate others and yep we are there again.
So in truth its just not going to change, even if we have a pandemic or a world war reducing the population substantially we will still see Alpha factor leaders start to rule again.
So we will continue to see humanity continue to see dominant leaders and people who will be more and more ruthless in their attitude to others as resources become more scarce.
The real solution will not be found in the human species but in a new species that will come after our's has become extinct and they hopefully will be so different in their structure that they will be neither wild beasts tearing each other apart or form civilisations who also end up tearing themselves apart.
'