how much?

the puking buddah and i have been perusing the friday new york times...because we have a day off and some time to kill and the times is always instructive in the contradictory ways of the elite...or, at least, the daily confirmation that we can only perceive a slice of reality at a time because the totality is too complex for limited human cognition and so are completely vulnerable to contradicting ourselves without realizing it until it is far too late...for example...

this is the lede for an article that is to appear in print in the sunday magazine but is all over the website today...for me personally the lancets suggestion that zero alcohol is the safe level of ingestion would be eminently true...i am not everyone nor are they me and that may not hold exactly true for a lot of people...the times may sense this empirically and so feel completely at ease running advertisements like this...

"today and tonight only" you can have a glass of wine or get shitfaced while aiding the reconstruction of a remnant of a medieval institution based on a bronze age cult doing business in the present world...numb yourself to the exigencies and angst of these trumpist times while aiding the splendor that is france...i wonder...would this worthy endeavor make the wine sacramental?

and just so we don't lose sight of the rtime's elitist leanings here is the southeby's international real estate ad ( "your best life begins with a home that inspires you" ) for today's paper with this lising provising $39,500,00 worth of inspiration...the cheapest? $1,750,000...let me hasten to add that there is one "price upon request" listing for a home in harbour island, bahamas that would likely dwarf the cost of the "spectacular terraces overlooking park avenue"...i am, however, disinclined to inquire...it is enough to know such places exist and that there is a class of basically unwarranted wealth out there that inhabits them...frankly we have lost our way as a species...or, conversely, our path as a species has always tended to lead us to self-destructive behaviors and beliefs...either way.

some sunday observations

my ad blockers and anti-tracking add ons through mozilla firefox have vanished and there are ads everywhere they didn't used to be ( except yahoo whom i pay to keep them off )...when i try to download them again the "corrupt file please check your connection" notification comes up...my connection is fine...frontier has cut a deal with the slime at google to force me to accept their miserable ads...i have been clicking on "block this advertiser" on every ad...one wonders if i can exhaust them...net neutrality is dead and the hyenas are at hand...

the luxury condos advertised on pages two, five, seven, and nine of today's n y times magazine have an average starting price of $3998750 ( low $1,655 million, high $3.65 million ) and an average top end of $9916666 ( low $7 million, high $12 million...the one on page seven has no "high" figure..if you have to ask you can't afford it...and "penthouse information on request" )...clearly the times is still the paper of "truth"...they crow about their pursuit of it all the times...whose truth? a look at the ads will sort out who their real target audience is...state run...corporate run...their interests still stand fairly in opposition to mine.

hypocrisy is a common weapon of power

the new york times has an ongoing feature called "the privacy project" https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/opinion/internet-privacy-project.html?login=email&auth=login-email which purports to give us all the information we need on the accelerating lack of privacy in the world...wonderful...laudable..informative..and, at bottom, profoundly hypocritical...which isn't a surprise coming from and elitist organ of power like the times...but still one that should be openly discussed...the salient point is there is no privacy...or, at least, no concerted attempt to invade that shred of privacy left even on a "privacy project" web page...

when i am on the "privacy project" the "tracking attempts blocked" icon appears in the address bar...when i click on the icon for the anti-tracking software ( an add on from duck duck go ) this is what i see...

and when i click on the "6 trackers blocked" this comes up...the graphic was too large for my snipping tool so ab.scorcardreseach.com is missing from the bottom of the photo...that is the sixth tracker...the point being the n y times is allowing third par5y cookies to be injected into my computer when i a m reading their sermons on privacy...or the sorrowful lack of it...so the hypocrites strike again...their editorial stance is biased anti-trump...which aligns with mast of their readership...myself included...however they are a commercial interest that is in business to make a profit, not disseminate objective fact..they all are...fox news has a store where you can buy books about the "deep state"...the wall street journal has a store where you can buy all sorts of neo-liberal crap...the new york times store sells a lot of new york memorabilia and both the times and the journal have "wine clubs" for their hyper elitist ( or wannabe ) readership wine snobs...so there is no real source of objective fact...just "news" tailored to world views from any political/social perspective and every fucking body wants to send me targeted advertising...this is why i have reverted to reading books eclectically and why this thing is off more than it is on anymore.

cashing in on extinction ( and making you feel like you're doing something about it )

the puking buddha has had a rough time of it lately and conditions seem unlikely to improve his dyspepsia...certainly the n y times is mired in a series of hypocritical ventures...one being the tracking cookies it tries to install while you are perusing its new "privacy project" news latter...my software tells me google and amazon are the perps there however we are looking at something i ran across in today's new york times magazine that should shoot their credibility on virtually anything in the ass...or, at least, make you think twice about what they have to say,,,the times has a new partner...

the times and some outfit called everlane are hawking " a limited edition clothing selection that shines a light on the most important story of out times..."...laudable until you have a look...when you go to everlane.com/nytimes the first page has this for a header...

and we already know there's an issue...in the end snobbery is what the times is about...both economically and editorially...this is just another line of evidence...what they are hawking is this...

a line of ny times "truth" ( a massive self-congratulatory program they have been touting in full page ads in some form in most every edition they print ) t shirts and sweatshirts...the t shirts are $25 a crack...i have no clue what the sweatshirts go for...my anti tracking software won;t let me go into everlane's site...they want to know too much seemingly...i got the t shirt price from the n y times store web site..so the upshot is you can shine a light on climate change and the eventual extinction of humans while paying cold hard cash to the times and their associates and fell better about it all because you made a statement by obeying the prime directive...consume...i cannot say "fuck these people" often enough.

fifteen plays and $7,248,755

the buddha is feeling queasy again and no wonder...

the new n y times "t" style magazine is out and, "...t's editors and designers had to reimagine the publication's structure and layouts virtually from scratch..."...and why? because they are taking the daring step of presenting fifteen plays in a single issue and confusing fine arts with culture the whole time...nothing new in that...the elite are happy patrons of "the arts" ( especially as investment ) and since they are the "culture" anything they support qualifies

that, while they have presented us with this taste of haute culture that may, perhaps, allow us for the briefest of moments to share some of the special mind set that makes the elite great and so gain deeper understanding, they have raked in $7,248,755 in advertising revenue fro such things as sofas in the $10,000 price range and jewelry that, seemingly, is good enough to eat, is beside the point..our understanding of why the elite is elite is at the heart of their endeavor...

my personal favorite portal of understanding was a play entitled "the kids on the lawn:a song cycle" which opens with the line " we're still just as broke"...a lament which opened my eyes a bit wider...you may notice the inset box with "the children's act" in bold letters...it says, relative to the photograph, "fashion for a new generation, shot at the designer virgil abloh's primary school, anthony overton elementary, in chicago"...my scanner isn't wide enough to have caught the caption for that photo, however it seems those , what, generation z? children who are "still broke" are wearing at least ( one article of apparel is listed as "price on request" ) $12,546 worth of clothing...even the buddha is trying not to puke.

nietzsche and the cosmetic

"one has deprived reality of its value, its meaning, its truthfulness, to precisely the extent to to which one has mendaciously invented an ideal world." fred nietzsche from "ecce homo"_____________while strolling though a perceived upscale retailer i was struck by the counter for a cosmetics brand called "philosophy" and began to ponder which philosopher of my limited acquaintance could do justice to the irony i saw there since"'Philosopher" translates as "lover of wisdom" and "wisdom" ( whatever that is ) should, one supposes, entail some sort of "truth"...admittedly "truth" is a slippery subject and, despite the media's contention otherwise , wholly subjective...still, i can think of fewer material things more dedicated to falsification than cosmetics ( cosmetic surgery may be an even more radical falsification...however there are conditions, say reconstruction from traumatic injury, where that may be wholly acceptable )...after a quick mental rundown of a checklist ( once again, limited, others may have far better examples to use )...i lit on an old standby...fred was a weird old coot who died broken and crazy and then was intellectually disfigured by his utterly self-absorbed and nazi loving sister ( hitler was at her wake ) who took much of what he actually said out of context to justify the antisemitic scheming of her husband and so fit the fuhrer's worldview which nietzsche himself would have repudiated as crack brained...but that is somewhat beside the point ( digression is the structure of human thought )...fred was weird but could say ( or write ) things that can knock you out of your chair..cosmetics = false ideal...falsification...death of the real...more post-modern claptrap way before exaggerated french intellectualism defined post-modernism by deconstructing itself and losing some of the parts...one supposes fred would disapprove...crates of thebes would too i bet...fred just left more surviving writing behind which made him far more accessible.

synopsis ( which would indicate a lack of some detail )

that i consider politicians of any stripe to be thieving whores with the serendipitous ability to metamorphose their activities into some semblance of legality through the magic of legislation should be patently obvious by now...and the events of the past week will not put a stick in the spokes of the bicycle of state...it will embolden some...quiet none...and the wolves in the congress who feel themselves more capable of leadership than der furhair will be howling for the next twenty months or so...and virtually none of it will be to the benefit of the polity...in the wake of the "great exoneration" there is already a movement afoot ( probably spearheaded by the ever slimy mcconnell...why am i reminded of everet dirksen when old mitch is in the news? perhaps the oleaginous sycophancy is the common denominator here ) to repeal the affordable ( ha!) health care act and they will not stop there...what seriously has to be considered is the distinct possibility of a second term for trumpy if the unfortunate democratic party self destructs between now and election day ( to discount this possibility is delusional magical thinking...something the dithering left in this country seems adept at )...if that is the case they will go after medicaid, medicare, and social security with a ruthless efficiency that they are clearly capable of ...the question is why kill longstanding social programs and the answer i keep coming up with is debt...the only way to make "new" money is through interest charged on debt...the more debt the more money wealth rakes in and these people are inherently greed driven...their basic policy near as i can tell is to reduce the population at large to a sate of debt penury...they want it all...including your firstborn...and the first step in taking them is to kill anything that might prevent, forestall, or mitigate crippling debt..avarice is the prime mover...they have been making private liability into public debt for some time now...the levers of political control allow a lot of ethical latitude...trying to take it all would be the next logical step...the ghost of jay gould ( and, perhaps, charles tyson yerkes ) has returned to haunt a new age of economic disparity and gilded mansions...and the democrats...well..pelosi is wealth so she will, with a show of public reluctance, countenance this...and profit...the unfortunate few who lay to the left of her have no cogent plan ( the "green new deal" is stillborn and if there were any other "plan" it might have been able to be instituted when the shit hit the fan in 2008...there was none...one should be developed for the next time the economic equilibrium is punctuated by a greed based crisis ) all they have is an intellectual superiority complex that informs them the polity at large is far too stupid to grasp what is good for it and has to be led to it and have it rammed down its throat...which, incidentally, has a lot to do with why trump was elected in the first place...in the end all i can muster is a fair amount of disgust for the sham of "representative government" ( which has been a sham since 1789...the constitution is the counter revolution )...repulsive displays of political hypocrisy...even the buddha is trying not to puke.