Sex, Lies and . . .

Traditional online news design creates views of where we are right now. The New York Times website this morning has an article about starvation in Gaza on its left hand side and an obscenely oversized giant hamburger on the right side. Does anyone else see the irony here? News and enterprise compete on nearly every page.

Then there’s the morning Globe & Mail . It’s full yet again of the story of five young hockey players and their interaction with a young woman, who took them to court for sexual assault and lost the case. On other pages. we revisit the Epstein trial and the MAGA world’s obsession with it. We move on to a certain president’s visit to Scotland where he may not receive the greatest welcome ever. It looks as though Canadians are stuck with tariffs coming soon. The Substack types feature “enshittification” all over Substack as though the term were as common as “technology”.

It's so easy to abandon all this and go to the game world of Connections, Wordle, Strands, Letterboxed and Spelling Bee - or even Tri-Mountain Solitaire and Free Cell. Piano practice is more sensible. So is getting back to painting in acrylics, no matter how amateur the result. Doing things we love, in the latter cases, is healthier.

But we can’t avoid the pain and suffering in our world and its foolishness. The additional word to be added to the title is Money.

·       The young hockey players are groomed to line the pockets of the professional leagues. They are a commodity at a very young age.

·       The young woman buys into the glamour of association that their fame and fortune creates.

·       Sex becomes a commodity for both sides here. When it all becomes public both sides lose in spite of a verdict of not-guilty.

·       Starvation is hard to imagine in a world of large hamburgers.

·       Those whose identities are tied up in conspiracy theories have a rough time, when alternative facts run amuck.

·       The Scots are big on values and honesty. We’ll no doubt read more about how that one plays out.

·       Tariffs affect all the players. We’re waiting for that movie too.

·       “Enshittification” is now the word of the year and you can watch at least three YouTube videos that explain it. But there used to be some good old words to use for many of these situations. They were pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony, and sloth. Those still seem to cover the waterfront.  If we want to move beyond them we just might have to do more about the last one.