International Spying in the age of facial recognition is an untied balloon held by a child then let loose to sputter and whoosh spasmodically, an about to be all-at-once dissipation. Luckily we have data integration and forward-engineered security threat analysis. Luckily except if it is a technical delusion vamping as a pipe dream. HumInt departments still seeking fresh meat to have at hand and begin to let fester. The better to let loose the spoils of war.

Corporate espionage and industrial sabotage are kissing cousins of the spying, but with less romance and more factitious deniability.

In other news . . .

I tried to warn you but you won’t listen.

I tried to warn you to get away from the history before it infected you but you won’t listen.

I tried to warn you not to stop doing cocaine before you ready to stop doing cocaine but you and your tachycardia, collapsed septum, and smoked out synapses won’t listen.

Out of felony murder I tried to warn you but the scheme takes on a life of its own and anyway you won’t listen.

I tried to warn you that you were accidental, not suicidal, at night when breaking into the abandoned church and singing hymns all by your lonesome is so tempting, but you won’t listen.

I tried to warn you not to spend all your money on the classical scholar’s stern declarations and exhortations, but you won’t listen.

I tried to warn you that you can’t stop a swinging wrecking ball of brazen promiscuity with the power of self-denunciation, or else you’d get the clap, but you won’t listen, and a-clapping you go.

Maybe we should blame my homunculus or yours for this here failure to communicate.

Later on it was just two cankered souls in love with the idea of being critical.

I tried to warn how long it would take to fill out the Tannery Facility Operator License Application, but you won’t listen.

I tried to warn you that plantar fasciitis is the second worst kind of fasciitis to afflict a body, which requires alternating bouts of alienating rest and aggressive activity, but you won’t listen.

I tried to warn you about eating more than one taco, but you won’t listen.

I tried to instruct you about the arpeggios of grief and the arias of a naked need to press flesh against flesh, but you couldn’t even be bothered.

Paying tribute to the prevailing prejudices of buttoned down conformist mainstream society is a waste, I tried to warn you, but you couldn’t be bothered to even read the adumbrated book I found for you on the very same subject.

I tried to warn you not to try to cut the mustard where you eat, but you kept on doing deeds and spraying seed right there in the kitchen, at a time in life where your salary had a salary and your commission was an invitation to engineer a carry forward loss, where losing money was more than the price of risk, but a kind of internally laudable goal.

I tried to warn you that having something to lose wasn’t a condition you could try to improvise your way out of.