Nisteling

It has been quite a deliberate decision on my part to steer as clear away as possible from any reference to the ‘world at war’ business that has been going on, on all of our television screens of late.

Yeah I have been in one of these -
they are hugely FAST!

For one thing, from a psychological perspective – and don’t forget, I have had some training in a classical school of psychology under the late Paul Ritter, the polymath who was one of the people who laid the foundation stones at the original World Trade Centre sites many many years ago now – so, well, from that perspective of psychology, the talking heads on our screens are exhibiting limited dimensionality in their ‘delivery...’

One of the most important ideas I have come across in recent times is something ‘invented’ I suppose, you might say, by another Australian – Robert J. Burrowes. He calls his idea ‘nisteling,’ which is a way of ‘deep listening’ to people when they speak or deliver a portrayal of their personality, whether in entertainment or in a political message or just generally, any communication that involves and includes their physical person. As you will certainly know, another nearby resident over here – Kate Bush – after many years, returned to the stage in an acclaimed concert in England. And of course, she is another of ‘we’ interested bystanders in psychology, in her case she has been a long-time proponent of Reichian ideas on physiological expression of the human psyche.

Another great mathematician and philosopher, A. K. Dewdney, the person who cast doubt on the technical reality of mobile phone calls from planes involved in the 9/11 affair, was another with much to say about dimensionality and how people use it and how it also ‘shapes’ the ways in which we act and move.

Pietro Frua's Monteverdi -
a 'sharp' design 

With true shape and geometry, you are still able to humanise the outcomes even when you employ very sharp lines and edges. One need only reflect on the work of the greatest Italian designers of recent times to see the subtlety that sharpness may display.

By contrast, current expressions of geopolitics are crude and blunt – and polyphonic. Well perhaps not polyphonic even though there may be some effort being exerted to make it so; it’s more cacophonic.

BNY Mellon was one of the first banks to ‘discover’ the impact of internet and computerised communications and data storing and analysis systems. They started a subsidiary variously called Eagle this-and-that back in the early 90’s – Eagle Star, I believe was an iteration which was quite famous and successful. Now, they are probably the leading financial technology providers who use ‘the Cloud.’ Personally I don’t have much problem with the Cloud at all, it’s another way Boston Intelligence establishments of the US government can have some control over the world – and they do it all quite efficiently. God, without these kinds of logistical understandings, the cheeseburger is going to be quite inaccessible to poor people like myself. I am fascinated that investment funds associated with Mellon are still able to return 12% when everything has been cut-back so much in order to procure what looks like the old school Harvard Business Method calculation annual growth figure.

The only difficulty in my mind, with the nominal results, is in the human delivery of the message. Neil Woodford, the leading light of these ‘investment funds’ sounds like he is talking about a wine brand. Sounds like he is a tee-totalling accountant talking about a wine... Sounds great, just doesn’t sound right to a wine drinker though. What do I know? He’s supposed to be in charge of billions. People give him billions apparently, to ‘look after’ and to invest. Which I suppose, is a great vote of confidence for the LSE where he got most of his academic credentials.

A girl sad because her iCloud
selfie account wasn't hacked.

Which leads me to a last fascinating point for today - can you learn to make a million bucks from ‘zilch’ base at an academic institution? Well... It seems that if you are as bright as Neil Woodford, you can certainly achieve an annual return of over 10% if people give you several billions to play with.

That however, is probably not, what you or I are intending to achieve. We, being on the poor end of the social and economic scales, are after much more absurdly ambitious percentages!

But then that’s what makes Woodford look and sound like a boring twat – he’s not overjoyed by the results he has achieved. But then again, that’s the difference between Pietro Frua and some faceless committee who designs Ford cars in the US to day. Frua’s children all made it to high security museums in Switzerland where people who appreciate them still make pilgrimage. The IRS has not understood enough to thieve the ownership plate numbers from compromised design collection managers – and they never will and they do not even care.

The subtle sharpness of great design is ever comprehended only by the few and the rare. To their great joy.

Real Life

What is real life?

Well, I do spend a lot of time with my nose sunk inside of ‘luxury lifestyle’ magazines – Courchevel, Cote d’Azur, that kind of thing - whether in airports or in a recliner chair at home. Have you noticed how the photographs all have this quality about them within the image, where there is absolutely nothing extraneous in the picture; nothing just plain lying around, the detritus of actual living?

And what about extraneous people? Do you have any of those? I have absolutely none.

I used to have many. But now I haven’t any at all. Not even you. You are of a superior intelligence, I fancy. And are rightfully ‘in the picture.’

For not many will go where I would lead... Only the very clever or the secretly well-favoured by good fortune.

 

 

There are rides and then there are rides:

Would you like to ride in this?
I wonder what gets to ride in here...

 

 

Real Positive Propaganda

Coca Cola is a great company and a great brand. Not only that, but at the top levels are very very bright people. Cultured people. Intelligent people.

You haven’t heard that a lot about Coke, eh?

But here – watch this:

This is positive propaganda that is not only incredibly revolutionary, but extremely Left-Wing too. And it comes courtesy of Coke. Now if you are not a terribly musical type it might take you one or two goes at the first 3 minutes of this to ‘get’ the thing, but really, it’s not too dissimilar to a ‘cowboy song,’ a kind of pop jazz version of an old school cowboy song. If you want to know what the words are, go down to the bottom of the video and check the ‘subtitles/CC’ box and you will get a translation show up as subtitles.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=u3F7kcLrGvA#t=3

 

'Daanah Pah Daanah' - song from Coke Studio Pakistan

 

Agent Provocateur

What an agent provocateur does is, go behind the scenes, and incite someone or some group of people to rash or illegal behaviour.

Of course though, today, we know that the word is also a branded lingerie product that stresses marketing through images.

We all live in a much more sophisticated world today than ever before.  But wealthy and well-funded and sophisticated though it may be however, even the branded ‘Agent Provocateur’ company cannot spread itself so wide as to sponsor frivolous events in, say, Outer Mongolia. Or Western Mongolia, let’s be more specific, where the Republic of Kalmykia is located. (Between Russia and China). This kind of thing is reserved only for sovereign states to be able to afford.



Amir Ban, a chess engine programmer, with a Kalmyk.
Propaganda with a sinister purpose

I’m engaged in a fairly large commercial negotiation right now, and I am in a virtually unrelenting state of fear and panic. On the one hand it is very exciting, but on the other hand unnerving because I simply can’t trust that things are as airtight shut in terms of confidentiality as I would prefer them to be.

And so to skirt around things, let’s talk about Chess. Chess is most certainly, a frivolous pastime. It has little or nothing to do with strategy, since all the rules are pre-set, and the game itself produces nothing material. One can neither benefit from it by applying ideas from it about strategy to the real world, and nor can one eat the products of the game’s endeavour for there aren’t any to speak of.

Decadence, of course, is nothing if not to do with the sophisticated frivolous.



The Dolmabahce Palace

But of course I jest. Strategy is learned from many pursuits. And those of us who fancy that we understand strategy deeply, usually take the long view, and draw an often rather distant perspective on our ultimate objectives before we step into spotlights at all.



I’m not too sure that the word I’m really looking for is not ‘labyrinthine,’ rather than ‘Byzantine,’ to describe how I personally approach the art of making money.  Perhaps it is a bit of both. And yet it is the style I personally recommend, for at least in the dark and shadowy labyrinths of Byzantium, one may scratch the guilding off the walls and profit even there from alone, if from nothing else. And this means, one ought to always walk where there is money, and not where there isn’t any. Sometimes what appears like power or money is really only the phantoms flitting across the shadows of the labyrinth.

 

Next post, propaganda that is not sinister.

Sailing To Byzantium

So what do we learn from history? What do we learn that is useful to us when making financial and investing decisions?

I personally think one thing is that it is impossible or very rare to be able to change people’s minds when they have set themselves to a belief or committed themselves to an idea.

A 'diplomat's seating arrangement' in
the Dolmabahce Palace, Istanbul

When the empire of Rome fell and was replaced by what came to be known as the Byzantine Empire (330 AD onwards) centred in Constantinople, an oriental influence exerted itself on what had previously been a strongly Western European-influenced progress of ‘modern’ civilisation.

Turkey has now become – once again – as did the Byzantine Empire before it, a great economic centre-point of trade.

Turkey has immense geopolitical advantages, of course. It is difficult to see the economy of Turkey go backwards or sideways over the next several decades.

One will never be able to change the opinions of those who believe that ‘economic sanctions’ against Russia are clever.  And that New York is the greatest centre of money and trade the world has ever seen and will ever be thus.

A Byzantine form of civilization is not strictly speaking, oriental, and nor is it occidental. It is multi-faceted, and, as the Russian news service recently quoted, the lying voices against this economic and cultural precedent will now become polyphonic.



What the hell are they trying to do to her?!
(Katy Perry in a D&G Byzantine art dress)

Sophisticated people though, are well ahead of the whole game.