Flights last fortnight tonight

❦ First Published on

Sorry for the silence.

I was busy hopping across the sky on a few flying machines that don’t flap their wings to visit my partner’s family and talk politics with a few Harley Davidson advertising volunteers.

Having returned to the city yesterday, this is, in the spirit of someone whose family name recalls olive pickers, Flights Last Fortnight This Afternoon in video games, flying and other things that interest Hypertexthero’s sole staff member.

MSFS, Damselfly, Hummingbird, Seagulls and Jets

With Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 imminent also on the piping hot game download service with VR coming later in the year I think it’s worthwhile to see what reality actually looks like from time to time, so here’s a short video collage set to some raw music I made showing the following in our surreal world:

  1. Slow motion video of damselfly taking off (a good demonstration of air being an elastic medium).
  2. Passing cloud on downwind approach to Grand Rapids airport.
  3. Improvised slow-mo hummingbird through binoculars.
  4. Um aviãozinho voando baixinho.
  5. Seagull traffic pattern at Far Rockaways.

I am excited about MSFS 2020 for the ability to spin our lovely globe and go for a spin in spinning propeller machines anywhere on it in any weather or time of day without paying for airplanes, tickets, fuel or insurance.

From recent footage airplane models seem a bit stiff, especially wings and landing gear suspension systems, and I hope these will become creaky and movy and IL-2 Sturmovik-like in the future since there’s nothing like leaving behind a landing wheel or two along with the coffee in the laps of air traffic controllers when you buzz the tower and are then forced to scrape to a stop down the runway.

Aren’t these stunts what video games are for?

Nuclear Disarmament

Elsewhere in video game lands hope for humankind as complete nuclear disarmament has happened in the Playstation 3 version of Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid V, which has rewarded players with a new video cut scene, but no new gameplay content so far.

I have another reward for you, good game players, which is to tell you to go and watch Dr. Strangelove, a very good film involving flying airplanes with doomsday fire crackers attached.

Rural & City Kids Talking

A flight from this list’s subject matter in the form of a random idea I had during this trip while thinking about the lack of understanding caused by the quick-setting, cement-like conclusions of many:

A world-wide program where kids who live in cities spend a week or two in the countryside to see how people live “out there”, and kids in the countryside spend a week in a big city to see how people live in the urban jungle.

This program (does it already exist?) could also be particularly required for any elected official along with:

  1. The study and understanding of just how much money a very few people make compared to the rest of the society they depend on to make so much money.
  2. Reading Think On These Things (also on Bookshop and Amazon).

Could such a thing prevent people from being tricked into helping the greedy to elect incompetents who only care about enriching themselves and their donors? I don’t know.

Money & Balance

A softer conclusion found after asking an internet search engine why money is scarce for most people:

It’s a complex network of mental, physical and social energies, and I have focused on all three as I have progressed in my career. I respect all working people because they serve vital functions in the economy. I feel we have cancers choking off our economy right now and killing the genuine workers and thinkers. I believe that just as previous generations were limited by the gold standard, we are limited by the oil standard and that we haven’t even begun to tap our mental and social energies.

I personally want just enough money to raise my family and enjoy/employ technology; however I have no interest in unlimited money because I believe it is being misdirected and built on unnatural assumptions.

Basically we live in a world of energy, mental, physical, and social. Balance each and the money will take care of itself.

Whether we think current leaders do enough work for the society they lead, or we ourselves work too much or too little and whether that is healthy for us and society given our position in it, is up to us to decide and balance.

Comet Neowise

I leave you with the celestial long orbiter that visits us once every 6,800 years, recorded in bulb mode with my trusty Fuji X100S by sitting on a sandy lake beach and using a chair balanced against my chest as a tripod.


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