Le Corbusier Extended

Even I am stopped in my tracks, if relatively briefly, by the present insanity of the press.

Never mind, there is nothing of value to be said about them, and there are people around the place about to cut the oxygen from them.

Let us look again at the previous post regarding the political thinking behind the architecture of Le Corbusier - namely, the proposition that (his idea of) an Industrial Age needed people to be units of production, stacked together like something to fit into shoe-boxes, and then stuck onto fast moving transport systems to rapidly get them to their places of active slavery.

Take a look at Singapore. This is the ultimate upside of Le Corbusier.

You even have today, a high-rise building there of the usual crass steel frame design, with visually open-to-the-outside glass windows as walls, and in which 'luxury cars' are stacked as if the whole thing is a dispenser of 'luxury vehicles.' And that's what it's meant to be. 

So do we consider the possibility that these ridiculous ideas have seeped their way into other areas of human endeavor - let's say, to attire, fashion, even food? Well, certainly, of course they have.

So would you be able to tell the difference between a classic old building designed for human habitation and normal society, and the meaningless drivel that is passed off as architecture for today's city buildings? Certainly you would. 

A little further north and you have Penang, which has managed to
retain and maintain authenticity about itself

And would you be able to tell the difference between the signature style of a dish invented by Auguste Escoffier, and some nonsense vended as contemporary food?

And have you ever observed that for many a good long year now, fashion and designing for fashion has completely lost touch with any insinuations of actual, real sex...  

We must explore these themes more...

Preparing For The Future

A few days ago, Paul Joseph Watson, the YouTube new media journalist, put together an excellent piece which he posted to YouTube called ' Why Modern Architecture Sucks.'

I rarely refer to actual YouTube videos so when I do, it would tend to mean that particular one is something special - and it is, this one from PJW. 

Paul Joseph Watson, with Alex Jones

Taking a step back from the glittering, fizzy delight that this short video is, I can say that Watson is overdoing things more than just a bit - even though the fundamental points he makes about the suppressing nature of post-industrial 'gigant-ism' and 'industrial efficiency' brutalism in architecture are very sound. If we just jump up on his bandwagon it's satisfying to be accusatory and more or less, a 'conspiracy theorist' about modern architecture. But if we want to really understand things, then it is crucially important to realize that not all the mistakes started out from the beginning as conspiracies to suppress the 'ordinary' people and turn them into compliant slaves. Many architects had very romantic and positive conceptions about industrialism - but these ideas and ideals were completely subverted and the power of architectural design exploited through its philosophical points of vulnerability, for political ends. And only thus can we say that eventually, yes, there is a systemic fascist control mentality at work in modern design and building design.

It's not about (just) being fair to history and to the architects themselves - it's about understanding how the human race operates, how its own group psychology quickly alters and removes real human motivations and supplants them with specious justifications that cover over the crimes of idea theft and financial corruption that feeds off public building programs.

Some people used Le Corbusier - and he might not have been wise enough to pull his ego back from being tricked and his 'soul' (the energy and life of his work and ideas) manipulated for material gain by those people.

The sci-fi futurism of Le Corbusier was attractive - and easily attracted victims to itself to be slaughtered by the exploiting interests whose only objective was the theft of easy tax-payer dollars.

Sci-fi futurism is not in its own right a problematic thing; far from it. How it was appropriated by money interests running government and councils and politics is the problem.

Paul Joseph Watson, as a new media video journalist/YT blogger, must take advantage of the opportunity that news coverage of the recent massive (Grenfell Tower) building fire provides to his platform - and so it's understandable that he would be reactive to the tragic incident.

But really, if you intend to be of use to people, then you can't always just be 'reactive,' and you must place an importance on leading, trying, implementing the entirely innovative, from scratch, being prompted by positive creation and creativity, and not just reactive knee-jerking.

We talk a lot about architecture and design here - and always have done. The reality is we've talked about these things long before any tragic disaster had to take place to force our focus.

PJW will get a large audience and I will get almost no audience at all. 

But I will tell you what to do now for the problem that hasn't been foretold yet, and how to avoid future disasters that will happen but that no one or at least not many, foresee right now.

In the meantime, we can note Watson's excellent piece of journalism:

Having Things, or Knowing Things?

Well, you want a combination of both, with the bias towards the 'knowing things.'

You could have a lot of (material) things but suffer from the abject poverty of not knowing what it is that you are holding between your hands.

So I'm going to embark on an essay that is possibly of more interest to the females of the world than the males here.

Like the ice cream sundaes of which we spoke in the last missive, there are those who have walked past the windows and have seen the tall frosty glasses on the other side (of the Drake or the Algonquin or the Knickerbocker) from not five feet away - and those also who see beautiful women and how they dress - but who never have been inside the boudoirs of the truly glamorous; nor who have been at table service a la russe.

You see even if you are undertaking what you think is the highest level surveillance against someone, you may be 'seeing' them, but you may be doing it through the glass windows walking by... You 'saw' it all. Didn't you?

I'm going to tell you women out there who are as of yet, not aware, how to dress glamorously - and I'm going to tell you, as it were, as if I were 'a Watcher' so to speak; oh yes, even one of those that the SecureTeam10 kids want to call 'Fallen Angels' (LOL) as in that these characters apparently, according to the internet ubiquitous 'Book of Enoch,' gave out tips to early Earthling women about make-up and mascara.

As the Charlie Brown cartoon says, when Snoopy goes looking for his birth place
at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm, only to find it has become a carpark: 'like Snoopy's brother Spike says, Linus - you can never really go home again.'

So I'm going to tell you something along the lines of the same ideas as pertain to the genuine, albeit these days mythic 'Knickerbocker' and 'Merry Widow' ice cream sundaes. 

On the outside it looks like one thing - of course it looks great - but when you place your spoon into it and take it to your lips it's quite another thing again.

My impression is these chefs and great gastronomic creators knew things - and when they had to create and serve dishes to very wealthy people who had things but did not necessarily know things, they had the common sense to provide their paymasters with an education about culture.

In fact culture itself is an education.

All of these ice cream sundaes relate to some Gilbert and Sullivan theatre. You didn't know that did you...

And that's how you wear cocktail rings, you see

Specifically to the libretto of a two-act comic opera called 'the Sorcerer.' This story is the usual one about people trying to fall in love or desiring to make someone else fall in love with them - and seeking a magical potion in order to effect the responses they want to have happen.

So the sorcerer they find, makes a concoction which has that effect, or has that power.

This is all happening around 1876. Along comes Franz Lehar and his librettist Viktor Leon in 1905, and they write and compose 'The Merry Widow.'

So you see, for one thing, The Merry Widow comes first. Before, that is, the Knickerbocker.

And both of them come from a Central European mentality and culture and from Swiss or Austrian more likely, chefs.

A master chef at an hotel in New York creates 'The Merry Widow.' The opera is played first in the US in New York in 1907 and has opened two years earlier in London. And so, by a process of amateur and highly questionable deduction, my suggestion would be that the dessert is made for John Jacob Astor - who died on the Titanic. He was, at the time, thought to be one of the richest people in the world, a multi-billionaire by today's terms.

Astor, who crossed the Atlantic often, took with him the most prominent European chefs of the day, and installed them in his New York hotel - The Knickerbocker.

Powder snow everywhere - I could do a 'Knickerbocker snow-storm'
in New York City, but I like this pic better. It's the same idea: thigh-deep snow and
a warm light ahead...

...Now at this point, you gotta understand something here - what you're being told is worth a small fortune because you will hear it from nobody else you know and there isn't that many people in the world who know it anyway in the first place. (Even though you might not 'get' the 'secrets' although you are reading them and they are right here). In the second place - well, do you know any billionaires from the Astor social circle? You know me, at least, from this Blog. Now I have cousins from Europe whose surname means in English, something like 'three leaves of a rose flower...' Well anyway, one thing and another, they retired away from Europe during the Second World War gigantically wealthy from the fur industry. And it's possible they made some of that wealth supplying one side or another in the war with fur products. To cut it short, there are parts of their ethnic circles who never speak to them. If you get what I'm saying.

Anyway, let's move on. I have personal knowledge of the Astor Family.

Now, so. This Viennese or border Italian or something, chef, makes this concoction that is designed to twist the eater's mind into a state of la Grande Amour.  And he makes this on account of the libretto of 'The Merry Widow' which itself has come from Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer. The Merry Widow concoction contains a magical potion. And I will describe it, at least in some significant part.

And then in a great inspiration of genius, he makes another dish, which is not the anti-hypothesis, but rather, the outcome of the magical idea - and it, in an act of pure fate and destiny, is called: THE KNICKERBOCKER. ('Glory' at least); The Knickerbocker GLORY.

And this is an amazing combination of actual events, weather, visuals, sensation, colour, in every sense as much as the actual dish itself is a created thing, it is also something that mysteriously parallels real life. A Knickerbocker snowfall, is what happens in New York when powder snow falls and you have to wear boots up to your thighs to be able to get through, and then you can get warm inside the actual Knickerbocker Hotel...! 

Having things, and knowing things.
Where do you go to beyond this (immediate above)? It has to fly, surely, at the next iteration
or else this thing is 'false' or even meaningless at the present juncture.

So the magical potion is in the Merry Widow, and the magical object is the Knickerbocker.

Now unlike today when people are stupid and uneducated, in those day what I am saying is not outside the norm of social ideas at all, especially not in these circles.

There is no question that The Merry Widow contains alcohol - at minimum this is obvious in the Maraschino cherry at the top. In England this dessert has a mint leaf garnish at the top too, in the US (in earlier times) this was creme de menthe liquor. There is no 'green cherries' or fake 'green' stuff as there may be in the counterfeits made in tacky contemporary places now - this green item is angelica soaked in absinthe and snow-covered with tiny sugar crystals.

There are layers of ice cream, real cream atop, and beneath crushed ice with alcoholic syrups and warm, real authentic butterscotch. 

It is not peanuts that are crushed and sprinkled as has become common practice today, but warm or even rather hot cashew nuts in caramel and river salt.

I shall keep a few of the other ingredients back for the present. And matters to do with the construction of the whole thing.

But you have quite a bit as it is.

So let's move onto the subject of dressing for glamour and sex.

Here I speak with the tongue of the Egregoroi - unless you use your mind and you know what you are doing, you are not sexually attractive in any unique way that would place you at an advantage over anyone else... 

You must dress, like the way the concoction is made... And how it is constructed...

Now as for Astor, a short word in passing: he wrote a science fiction novel called 'A Journey in Other Worlds' - and a very very great, and strange book it is.

You Know It Too

It's plainly silly to carry on as if you can't realize or accept that digital 'virtual' currencies are here to stay. They are here, and they are here to stay. Why do we even need to spell out the 'why...'

Paper (actually, literally 'pieces of something') money is strictly a local circulation item; and that is what they always were really, in any case. 

On the one hand the internet is littered with people proclaiming various (frankly all fairly similar) ways to make a lot of money, on the other hand you almost never will see someone explicitly telling you precisely how they actually did it, or demonstrate to you that they are doing it in front of your eyes.

It's sort of a tuxedo, isn't it

For all the years that I have been in the money business, either in government positions early on, and then in private banks, and eventually just in business for myself, I have never seen the exact same way (of making seriously sizable money) duplicated by different people - it's very idiosyncratic, as far as I have been able to observe.

Millionaires - that is, actual self-made ones - are very rare. And what one of them will do is characteristically different to what the next will be inclined to do. Sure, there are obvious basic management tools they pretty much all use, but that is always confused typically by accountants and not-hands-on observers for the generative acts and thinking which actually creates the money in-flow.

It's all about personality.

At least that's what suggests itself to me, having watched a lot of people make money from scratch.

But let me show you one of the reasons for the confusion about what goes on in these cases:

We live in a world absolutely filled with 'substitution' phenomena. It looks like 'it' and so it is it... Not.

It's a modern photograph, but it's still
printed as a 'black & white'

There is no way anyone who grew up knowing what Chanel No 5 originally was, is going to be convinced that what you pay atrocious money for now is really 'Chanel No 5' as it was. You pay for the packaging, the 'official' name on the bottle, but that's all. You're being passed off with a false product in every possible way - and yet it's possible I could get sued for even saying this, regardless of the simple fact that what I'm saying cannot be argued against rationally. There is simply not sufficient raw ingredients in the world to be able to make actual 'Chanel No 5' in the volumes required by today's market - and so the producers make what they convince themselves is an adequate substitute for the real thing.

And as time goes by, fewer and fewer people are around who know what the original version of a thing might have been, with the consequence that Wikipedia, for example, is just a pack of gibberish when it comes down to it in many many instances.

Another stunning example of cultural illiteracy, and yet one that is rather 'modern cultural' is the so-called Ice Cream Sundae. What you get looks like what the thing is imagined to have originally looked like, when the lower classes walked past the huge glass windows in early last Century New York Manhattan district where hotels like the Knickerbocker were (and still are in that case). But apart from that visual rough similitude, there is nothing that is authentic about what you are getting.

As you know (well I hope you do know) Pierre or maybe his son Griswold Lorillard either invented or caused to be invented, the Tuxedo, and its color is blue not black. Black and White photographs give the unguided observer the idea that the thing is 'black.' You might as well say the jacket er, was potentially sepia too, on that basis!

And the Martini, invented by Martini di Arma di Taggia, of the previously-mentioned Knickerbocker Hotel in Manhattan, is NOT made from dry vermouth and gin. And nor is it made from sweet vermouth and gin either.

It is made from the combination of sweet AND dry vermouths, and the best quality gin. And it was made in 1912 for the tycoon John D. Rockefeller. 

A real Martini - has the same hue as a natural colored chill-filtered
Scotch Malt Whiskey

I mean the whole point of being in a 'higher society' and having the use of great wealth, is that the experiences you can sustain are (are able to be) very sophisticated and even you might say, complicated.

There is no call there for 'substitution racket' tactics because of 'austerity!'

In the same way, I personally have exact and correct knowledge of how a genuine authentic 'Knickerbocker Glory' Ice Cream Sundae is made, what goes in it, and how it is constructed and what the juxtaposed components to it all are. I mean it's not a question of some cream and sugar and a few colored syrups and some nuts.

Let me tell you, the experience is TOTALLY, COMPLETELY other than what you may have been informed that it is, or was, or is supposed to be. And I think, as I look at widely spread information resources, the exact number of people in the whole world today who know what this thing REALLY is, might be critically low to be able to carry forward the actual knowledge in the hands of human society into the future. 

You will read in many places that 'no one recipe for the Knickerbocker Glory exists as far as we understand...' Well that is just complete ignorance. The Knickerbocker Glory is exactly only ONE and a very PRECISE set of ingredients constructed in a very exacting way which allows for warm and freezing elements to be present when the dish is served.

And there are alcoholic and chemical ingredients entailed as well.

It's pretty close, it's not exactly right - which means even
these people don't actually know what they're doing... They
know what it looks like - they don't know what it is.

Just like the genuine chocolate I was a little earlier telling you about, that you can get in Switzerland, there are sensations that result from this 'ice cream sundae' that are very cleverly organised. There are so many 'tricks' and subtleties about high Epicurean arts as they were reset by the French cooks of the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries - that all in all they constitute as it were, a book of magic or sorcery with genuine secrets and rites of entrance demanded before anyone can reach the upper levels of what is there. 

I mean, just handing a girl of age or woman a straw with a glass or small bottle of Champagne is meaningless to modern classes - and is very sinister in the hands of the knowledgeable rake.

And so, if we end our epistle on the vulgar subject of money and how to really make it, at last, we ought to be able to accept that in fact money is neither 'vulgar' nor is it in the province of the lower classes, to be able to make. Sure they can seem to have it for a while, and indeed they swim in oceans of it as if they own it and are the gods of the seas. So too with banks and governments.

What a laugh.

Money is a most sophisticated thing. It is entirely outside of the province of governments and bureaucrats to comprehend. They are, by contrast, the victims, of it.

Always this is so. It has been so right throughout human history from as far back as Crassus and even before him. It was so with the Weimar Republic. It was so with the French Revolution. It was so with the Russian Revolution. It was so when the Japanese made 'banana money.'

By victims, I mean they burn and they die. Like actual victims - well in fact that is what I'm saying they authentically are. I mean they authentically burn and they die - and that's including all banks but you won't believe me right now.

Come back and talk to me right here five years from now.

Change Is Coming

General Stanley McChrystal has a new book out 'One Mission - How Leaders Build a Team of Teams.'

Those of you who read here regularly will have gathered some impression by now that there is more than just me here, 'behind the scenes' at any rate.

And you may have noticed a moment just after the election of President Trump where I suggested 'the word was out to keep one's mouth shut' - if you were one of the 'friendly parties.'

This is Thompson Silk Co's 'historical archives' area

I am a friendly party and so - as much as it personally pains me so to do - I STILL have to remain sitting on some pretty warm kettles here, let me tell you.

But you can see already that the quietness of the front-lines, so to speak, has begun to reveal the leakers - the info coming out is clearly ONLY from antipathetic sources and it becomes in fact easy to track down because it consists only of small fragments of what people genuinely FULLY on the inside would tend to know, and those fragments can easily be traced to who were selectively given them, either on a need-to-know basis, or as a trap.

Now this doesn't mean there is actually nothing going on, OTHER than what was leaked, because in fact an awful lot is going on.

But I'm afraid that 'awful lot' is going to be remaining very much unseen by the public at least until at least after Mueller steps out of his own shadows or is dismissed.

No feed thrown out to the chickens, and they all start to starve and begin a lot of squawking...

More silk, any colors...

I don't know whether this Blog here comes across as just a tease to you - I have been accused of that many times in my daily RL business life by people who assume they know me. I don't write the Blog to give hints or indications of trends of market prices - I can't say I can prognosticate with particularly any greater reliability than anyone else. So it would comes across as a huge tease if you expect direct investing 'tips.' This Blog is meant to be like a slow drip of a type of colored water, which, after a good long while will affect your mind after it has been allowed to fall on your head...!

...Well if you let it, anyway.

You see - and I'm sure you know this already, but I'll underscore it - it's the filter you look at things through, which determines what you think you are seeing. There is no possibility, in my estimation, that people who are not trained to observed things in a specific way, will comprehend what is going on right now in the economy and in markets.

When change comes it comes right under people's noses and they don't really see it with a conscious mentality.

And some things of course, are simply 'unthinkable.'

But they are going to happen anyway.

And you know it deep inside, and now I have confirmed it for you. 

When a person makes an investment decision -  and I mean when what they expect and intend is a big serious decision with large potential positive consequences - they do it alone (at least if they are the top of the line kind of investor) and they will want ALL the benefits to come to them and not have to be shared out to some sort of 'committee of decision-makers' any one of whom might claim having been 'most crucial' to the actual decision having been made.

McChristal's book deals with how you can make these kinds of decisions in today's world... ...as the result of having been given two rights, one the right to push back against hide-bound bureaucracy, and two - access to the best information at the fastest speed.

All of these specious 'probes' into collusion and obstruction and anything anti-Trump Team, detract from the ability of people to get key information out quickly - if that information is meant to be privileged to the intended recipients.

And that is fundamentally because people like myself are (surreptitiously) monitored by digital filters, as well as occasionally by live human 'over-watching' too. And that's okay with me; I don't mind.

So let me just say this much right now - there are three people who used the word 'change' in this last week: Kellyanne Conway, General McCrystal. And myself.

And all of us meant to use that word.

My estimation is that if you have been reading here for a while, and continue to look in, sooner or later lights will go on, not about what you read or see here, but to do with outside things, market things, even geopolitical things, and you won't even recognize consciously that your outlook has changed. It's all to do with being able to feel the texture, understand the fibers, appreciating the shades of color.