Energy bill

I left the energy supplier Pure Planet in late August, and went to the energy supplier Utility Point.  It was £800 at pure planet for all of my energy (both electricity and gas) but that was due to go up to £960 at Utility Point.  A steep price increase of 960/800 = 1.2 or 20% increase, but energy prices have soared in the past year and that can't be helped.

However, utility point have just gone bust (I'd signed up for 12 months fixed price for a year about five weeks ago).  So, that plan is no longer valid and I have to make a new plan with a new supplier.  I've just calculated what my total cost would be if I switched today.  Sainsburys energy supplier is the cheapest, and would have an annual cost of £1207!  That's a 51% increase.  £406 extra a year, £33.84 extra a calendar month, £7.81 extra a week!

But it doesn't end there.  I can't switch today; apparently when energy companies go bust you shouldn't do anything yourself as they switch for you .  This is a process that takes many weeks.  And they specifically say don't switch yourself as it causes confusion in the system. So I have to wait for weeks, and energy prices keep rising continually at the moment, especially gas.  And it gets even worse.  The higher prices will also increase food prices.  So, how much extra is it finally going to cost me??  Goddess knows.

This is a nightmare.  Although it's not only affecting me of course.  But poor people will be seriously struggling.  In fact, with National Insurance rises and the Universal credit uplift ending (£20 a week being taken off 6 million people in the UK), many poor people won't know what's hit them.  It's going to be chaos.

Edited to add 3.51pm:  Scratch all that.  There's been another huge price increase in the past 3 hours since I typed the above.  Sainsburys was £1207 for me for a year.  In the past 3 hours it's increased to £1,462.29 per year.  Yet another increase per annum of £254.95 in the past 3 hours since posting the above!

I've also received an email saying I've been switched to EDF.  Cannot find out the tariff, even when speaking to customer services.  But their tariff was £1400 for a 3 year fix.  79% higher than last year so wanted to switch but was told it might cause confusion.  I dithered and now energy has undergone another huge hike. 

Futile arguments on the net

 I actually often feel precisely this.

 

Ensnared in this life

We don't know our true selves because we're ensnared in this life with other peoples' conceptions of what we are, and our role in the world. We need to cease being actors and look within.

Always more downvotes than upvotes

I've noticed something rather curious; namely I always appear to get more downvotes than upvotes.  This is the case whether we're talking about my comments in the mail newspaper, my Amazon reviews (although we're unable to downvote now on Amazon), and I've just discovered today even on my youtube videos of me playing space invaders and Far Cry 3!

OK, with the mail, with my controversial views, I might expect more downvotes than upvotes as a total across all my comments, although I was unable to find anyone else where their downvotes exceed their upvotes. 

Amazon reviews are more puzzling.  But, I think on average, people tend to be more gushing in their reviews than I am, and they write shorter ones on average too.  People might tend to prefer positive reviews of products if they are looking to purchase something.

But computer games??  Here's me playing the original space invaders, and space invaders pt 2.  A total of 2 upvotes and 4 downvotes for both videos.  I had a look at a few other space invader videos played by other people, perhaps 15 or so.  There were a couple that attracted 0 votes, but none where the total of downvotes exceeded that of the upvotes.

Quite curious at this point I looked at one other video I've uploaded, a short video of me playing Farcry 3.  0 upvotes and 2 downvotes . .er . .  colour me baffled.  Why would someone click on a video of me playing space invaders or Far Cry 3 and downvote it?   

I feel this kinship with Novak Djokovic​. Neither of us are destined to be popular with the masses!

Facebook vs Twitter

I have approximately 300 friends on facebook and 248 followers on twitter. 86% of my posts (tweets) on twitter on my wall (or whatever it's called on twitter) attract neither likes, comments nor shares. This figure is only 50% for facebook. So I've concluded I'm wasting my time putting my thoughts on twitter, so I'm jacking it in. Also, I find the 280 character limit on there infuriating.

Anyway, even the 50% of my posts completely ignored on facebook seems to be pretty bad compared to the number of likes and comments other people get (and it's always the same ~10 people out of my 300 friends that ever react or comment). A lot of my comments on there I duplicate in this blog. Probably my comments are too long for peoples attention span? Even this post here that I also put on facebook only attracted just the one like and zero comments. Got to confess I was quite surprised!

On this note I found this article interesting. It says:

Someone introduces a controversial subject and people begin to choose the anger reaction button, which is worth five points each time it is used. The [meaningful social interactions metric] is rising and more users see this in their News Feed.

I think you have to either say stuff like "jus' been drinking", or post something controversial without any attempt at balance in order to attract comments and reactions. But I don't like to do that, I like to adopt a measured approach.  But that will be bad for getting my posts promoted up peoples newsfeeds!

By 2404

I really have no idea what the future might be like in, say, 400 years time or so. What will the world be like in 2404? What will have happened to the climate? They'll have been mass migration from the hot areas of the world to Europe by then since these hot areas might be too hot for human beings to exist. People will start living in Antarctica.

What will technology be like? Probably we will have a shared virtual reality pretty much indistinguishable from real life. We'll have robots that maybe look like us, but they still don't fool people for any appreciable length of time as there's something off, weird, unconvincing about them.

And will people still subscribe to philosophical materialism? Next 100 years the mainstream view might be some type of materialism, but not by 2404.

Did I say I really have no idea? I just meant to say that and nothing else! But then I started thinking.

Chatting about other people

I've heard it claim that two-thirds of human conversation is gossip about other people. Surely not?? Anyway, I scarcely ever talk about other people. It's just not something that interests me. I'm extremely bad even by male standards. 

This is problematic because it's how many people bond. They don't like talking about intellectual stuff, they like talking about whatshecalled been up to. "She did what?? Ooh, well I never!" Well, at least some women talk like that, if not men!

Anyway, more seriously, as I said it helps to bond people together . People like to share their experiences of others, especially negative experiences. They want sympathy, they want to express how they feel about others. I think it's disadvantageous having little interest in such stuff. Oh well, I've always been different.

Newton and a smartphone

Imagine if you went back in time to 1770 and showed Isaac Newton a modern smartphone (obviously can't make calls, but the camera, torch, chess programs etc would work). Would he think it was magical, produced by witchcraft or whatever? Or would he understand that the regularities (physical laws) describing reality are much more intricate than he might have supposed. Regularities that can be utilized to produce such a wonderous device?

I think the latter.