counterintuitive or rigged game?

i collected yesterday's mail from the mailbox this afternoon when i got home...magazines, and the usual junk mail...and some stuff from the auto insurance people...among the junk was an envelope from "bernie 2020" soliciting funds for "us"...i scanned it and found the usual appeals to liberal sentiments ( why they confuse me with a liberal is a mystery to me...hubert humphrey was a liberal...why would i crawl into that behavioral sump? we are all more complicated than the hegemonic culture realizes...labels are misleading shortcuts )...it wasn't very persuasive...or even entertaining for that matter...

however the disclaimer at the bottom of the last page caught my interest and it holds some insights...

that corporations active in politics ( and since all politics is an extension of economics, find me one that is not..if not publicly , then surreptitiously ) might choose not to donate to sanders is more than understandable...the ideologies are in conflict...at least for public consumption...but prohibited? it is in keeping with the war on unions that unions would be prohibited...the desire is to bankrupt them and drive them out of any position that would allow the amelioration of capital's abuses of workers...from wages to terms and conditions of work which are increasingly authoritarian and thoroughly contravening of constitutionally guaranteed civil rights...but corporations are far more powerful than the government...they own it...i actually qualify to be a donor for old bernie...a lamentable loophole in campaign finance law that will inevitably be closed because i am nothing if not a member of the rabble and a proletarian at that...no good can come of allowing me too much political latitude...ask old alex hamilton about that...or his buddy john jay...or their philosophical godfather john locke...read the fundamental constitutions of carolina locke authored in 1669..it will explain a lot...anyway...i can give bernie up to $2800 a year ( this is unlikely )...however if i give him only $200 they have to report my name, address, occupation, and my fucking employer to the feds? so a quiet letter can be sent to my employer ( who reserves the right to terminate me with or without cause [see what i mean about authoritarian and civil rights?] at any time ) can say "get your sorry socialist commie ass out of here"...and corporations whine about "regulation"...have i said fuck these people today? where is the lake of fire?

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.