2:00PM Water Cooler 6/25/2020

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145 comments

1. Billy June 25, 2020 at 2:12 pm

   ‘In short, we need a ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.’

   What they fear is a Great Reset of Decapitacion.

   Bring on the guillotines!

   Megajoules of energy not showing the massive amounts of energy needed to create the uranium fuel rods and the reactors to house them.
   1. flora June 25, 2020 at 2:24 pm

      ‘Great Reset’ of capitalism.’ Schwab also said that ‘all aspects of our societies and economies’ must be ‘revamped,’ ‘from education to social contracts and working conditions.’ Joining Schwab at the WEF event was Prince Charles, one of the primary proponents of the Great Reset; Gina Gopinath, the chief economist at the International Monetary Fund;….

      Well, at least they aren’t calling it a New World Order. /s
      1. Off The Street June 25, 2020 at 2:40 pm

         After the ongoing health news, more like the New Orleans World Order /s
         1. periol June 25, 2020 at 3:01 pm

            They should just call it YOLO and be done with it
            1. Bernalkid June 25, 2020 at 3:14 pm

               revamp social contracts, ha ha ha, more like mine them for any value the oligarchs can rip out and then tear them up and revamp them in the recycling bin, a green new deal letting the surviving peasants scratch a mere existence in a zero-hour gig “sharing” economy run by an Apple app from their silicon walled corporate castle of corporate greed
   2. hunkerdown June 25, 2020 at 2:49 pm

      EROEI on the uranium fuel cycle has been figured anywhere from 1:1 to 90:1 depending on where one draws the system boundaries. One study by researchers in the industry conservatively but cursorily estimates 5:1.

      My impression of most of the mainstream “conversation” about the manufactured “issue” is that it’s calculated to avoid talking about subjects uncomfortable for vested interests, such as alternative fuel cycles that don’t require crony capitalism to work.
   3. Jessica June 25, 2020 at 2:56 pm

      What the megajoules of energy show is that the energy in molecular bonds, the breaking of which is the energy source for sugar etc., is tiny compared to the energy in atomic bonds.
      1. Kurtismayfield June 25, 2020 at 8:36 pm

         Yes but you are not going to harness’s all of the energy from the mass defect in the atom.. just like you are not harnessing all of the energy in the molecular bonds of sugar.

         And the graph doesn’t consider all that pesky nuclear waste.
         1. Jessica June 26, 2020 at 2:06 am

            You are right. The graph does not show that we should use nuclear power, but it does show why it is so tempting to try.
            1. jcmcdonal June 26, 2020 at 10:06 am

               If we’d competently invested in it, lots of R&D etc., it would probably look a lot better. It’s not like some older reactor designs (CANDU) don’t offer major risk advantages if the concern is meltdown. And those were first built in the 70s. But oil is cheap…

               I think the relevant comparison is subway systems – if you keep building them and retain the competencies of the people doing the work, you can improve over time. Instead we like to start from scratch every 20 years.
   4. Mikel June 25, 2020 at 3:01 pm

      “Reset of the global economy”. This is the term I’ve used explaining to friends why “return to normal” is language used in order to keep the frogs in the boiling pot.
      Other sedating language: “V” shaped recovery.

      But none of the men in that meeting will feel the heat from the fallout of their sure to be inequitable and dystopian reset. Like Charles Hug Smith wrote in the article posted on NC last week: “For the Rich to Keep Getting Richer, We Have to Sacrifice Everything Else.” Everyone in that room is interested only in maintaining their massive wealth.
      They pay the politicians dearly to step up and take the heat.
      Whatever is not liked about the oligarchs’ reset is already all the “gubment’s” fault – never the oligarchs who are their true constituency. Then they use the divisiveness of policy, elections, and the MSM to keep the pleebs fighting among themselves.
   5. Pelham June 25, 2020 at 3:31 pm

      Re uranium: Good point, though I’m still partial to nuclear power as possibly the dominant means to beat climate change. But I’d still like to see some reckoning of the power downsides you mention for uranium, as well as similar numbers for various other energy sources.

      Fifty years into this environmental emergency you’d think everyone would have solid, proven figures of this sort at their fingertips.
      1. Acacia June 25, 2020 at 7:09 pm

         Downsides like Fukushima?
      2. Synoia June 26, 2020 at 11:35 am

         We know the answers:

         Wind
         Solar
         Insulation
         Conservation

         What we have not answered is the countervailing argument:

         Greed.
   6. L June 25, 2020 at 3:37 pm

      If you read through the article you find two things: First, according to the piece the plan is World Economic Forum types who are relying on armies of “Left Wing” troops to enact their change and that this will be nefarious. Second, the author is from the Heartland Institute funded by the Koch’s.

      Notably the “article” (really a hit piece) omits any discussion of what is actually being proposed or how it would work. Instead the goal seems to be to link the Davos set directly to the left-wing mobs attacking America, to … Prince Charles, in a global conspiracy to take over. This sounds more like Agenda 21 and less like an actual functional conspiracy.

      That said I am sure any attempt to “reset” along the lines defined by Schwartzman or any of the people who get invited to Davos will be bad for actual people but I don’t think the author of this piece exactly has our best interests at heart.
      1. Amfortas the hippie June 25, 2020 at 3:43 pm

         aye. Agenda 21 2.0.
         Run to the Hills!
         as a boneyfried Lefty, I am crestfallen that i haven’t got a check from Soros…or Davos…or whatever shadowy oligarch is allegedly pulling my strings.
         Heartland Institute is an insane asylum….de facto, if not de jure.
         1. Hepativore June 25, 2020 at 4:48 pm

            The antagonism of the political left towards nuclear energy is troublesome, particularly on how there are reactor types that address all of the usual issues that are raised about nuclear energy and they have existed for decades. There is also the fact that many on the left, particularly the “liberal” left (Karens) seem to be the largest component of the anti-vaxxer movement in many developed countries. As left as I am on the political spectrum I am more than aware there is also plenty of pseudoscience to be found on the political left as well as the political right.

            In any case, I think that propaganda from “liberal” corporate sources is more dangerous since many people still think that Democrats=political left as well as the media at large. So people who identify as rank-and-file Democrat are not as likely to recognize just how corporate-friendly the media they watch and their party is. I mean, at a passing glance it is evident that Obama was nothing more than a center-right neoliberal, yet he is still seen as a champion of social freedom and good governance by the populace at large in retrospect.
            1. periol June 25, 2020 at 6:21 pm

               Opposition to nuclear energy is not pseudoscience. You and I simply disagree about the long-term risks, the potential dangers that could arise in risky scenarios, and quite literally the fallout that would happen if those dangers materialize into reality.
               1. sierra7 June 25, 2020 at 7:37 pm

                  Periol:
                  +1000
                  As another earth inhabitant those have been my concerns for decades.
               2. Felix_47 June 25, 2020 at 9:55 pm

                  Good points but can we maintain the current and anticipated world population that expects a high energy air conditioned future on renewable energy? I spent years living in the Mojave desert trying to figure out a renewable way to keep cool. I tried wind, solar, evaporative. In the end I had to break down and get a gas generator running a swamp cooler which was cooling the coils of an air conditioner that was also running off the generator. I don”t think the Mojave was any different than Rajastan or most of Afghanistan, which I have visited on a few occasions as a guest. So how do we get the big loads of power that will enable us to air condition, for example, Pakistan or Palestine?
                  1. periol June 26, 2020 at 2:33 am

                     Nope, we can’t maintain. We are going to have to learn to use less.

                     If AC is an absolute requirement for some places, they’ll just have to figure out a way to allocate the power. Just because we’re heating the planet like nobody’s business doesn’t mean we should jump to solutions where the fix ends up worse than the problem it was fixing. We have a nasty tendency to do that though, so I’m not holding my breath.
                  2. The Rev Kev June 26, 2020 at 3:05 am

                     Coober Pedy in Oz may be showing us a long term solution-

                     https://www.outback-australia-travel-secrets.com/coober-pedy-underground-homes.html

                     And didn’t homes in the American SW have very thick adobe walls for the heat?
                  3. Ahimsa June 26, 2020 at 4:18 am

                     I do believe the people of Rajastan and Afghanistan have been doing without Airconditionibng for thousands of years ;)
            2. Amfortas the hippie June 25, 2020 at 7:21 pm

               aside from Thorium, I’m pretty agnostic on nuclear power. I have family history with workers on the South Texas Nuclear Project, and am therefore not at all sanguine about quality control, etc at such facilities.
               as for the rest…yup.
               stepdad, if sufficiently in his cups when we eat over there, will alway…always…end up asking me why i won’t vote Biden.
               My response is pretty canned, by now, and wouldn’t surprise anyone here.
               But both him and mom still insist that Obama was the best president evah…and as progressive and well meaning in his baby steps towards socialist healthcare as anyone…
               so…what are ya gonna do? lol
               That age cohort in aggregate is likely a lost cause, as far as democratic socialism, or defunding the cops, or reining in the military and a whole lot of things goes.
               a lot of that intransigence/inertia is where they get their news from. Msdnc is on both tv’s all day long…mom takes breaks with home and garden(which causes other domestic issues around here,lol) and stepdad takes breaks for gunsmoke and the like(and football, of course)
               stepdad is afraid of computers, and mom gets her online news from Bing and Daily Kos, and is proud of her sophistication.
               A lifetime of Cold War anticommie propaganda has also done it’s work…”socialism” is scary to them, even when i enumerate the benefits…and, indeed, how both of them have benefited from it already(VA and Tricare)
               lead a horse to water, and he’ll stand there looking at ya.
               1. The Rev Kev June 25, 2020 at 7:39 pm

                  Maybe you should tell your stepdad when he asks why you won’t vote for Biden something like this: “It’s simple. If Biden was here in the room with us, you would quickly discover that not only do you have more integrity than Biden does, but he is losing his marbles and is not the man he once was. And I believe that you should always vote a person for President that is better than you.”
                  1. John Wright June 25, 2020 at 8:09 pm

                     Even when Biden HAD all his marbles, the results weren’t good (the Clarence Thomas Hearings and the Iraq War Hearings he chaired are just two harmful and very consequential actions promoted by Biden).

                     Maybe the DNC will promote the “marble losing” Biden as an improvement on the old version.
                  2. Procopius June 25, 2020 at 9:19 pm

                     And I believe that you should always vote a person for President that is better than you.”

                     Admirable. How are you going to do that, given the parties that exist?
                     1. The Rev Kev June 25, 2020 at 9:38 pm

                        Hey, don’t pick on me. :) I have a hard enough time trying to make a choice for Prime Minister of Australia while choosing from a shallower pool of candidates – all of whom are from the shallow end of the gene pool.

                        Anyway, with that question I was trying to word it in a way that might appeal to Amf’s stepdad. if I lived in America, I guess that I would normally vote for a Green but in a time of pandemic, would not risk my life at all by voting. I should mention that in Oz that voting here is compulsory though.
            3. Acacia June 25, 2020 at 8:52 pm

               there are reactor types that address all of the usual issues that are raised about nuclear energy and they have existed for decades

               Jeremy Rifkin has argued persuasively that nuclear power is pretty much a dead end. If you can refute every point that he’s made against it, I’d be curious to hear.
            4. Fireship June 26, 2020 at 4:20 am

               If you make basic category errors like ‘liberal = left’ I don’t really trust you to understand the dangers of nuclear power.
   7. Ranger Rick June 25, 2020 at 3:55 pm

      Naked Capitalism might need another blog, Naked Political Economy, at this rate.
2. a different chris June 25, 2020 at 2:15 pm

   >“Dems warm to Biden’s bunker strategy”

   Aren’t we all? Given that the odds of Biden being the next President are at least 50/50, the less I have to see of him before then the better.
   1. jr June 25, 2020 at 2:36 pm

      In video gaming, someone who hides in a heavily defended bunker is “turtle-ing.” From now on I’m going to try to imagine Biden wearing a turtle costume whenever I have so see him…and then imagine an alligator messily devouring him.

      For the finance types:

      I found this book in my hallway, doubtless left by one of the many PMCs that are fleeing the Village. I can’t read it because of a serious allergy to numbers I’ve suffered from since birth but I thought it might be appreciated:

      https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en-us&q=Called+to+Account:+Fourteen+Financial+Frauds+that+Shaped+the+American+Accounting+Profession+Paul+M.+Clikeman&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAADXLsQrCMBAA0EEEB138gsPRoaGICN1E6CYU_AC5pmcSe72TNKH2d_xScXB8w1stthvjTFm2szwHdsfd-seZj4fT_Hzvi95WplXtzRRDSiT3SWNfTV6ZXugIBo0E7QyYk9f4WfIFmamDpHC2VrOkCmrNMREJ1EFQbECGOmLuRkgeE9w8vn7DE5wHisGi_G8QB03UB41jUIEGM8O1gAuHngaUL4uy_1G-AAAA&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjJkcXQzJ3qAhXLlHIEHf8lAVcQri4wDnoECBEQAw&biw=768&bih=985

      “Called to Account does an excellent job of presenting the frauds as catalysts for the changes that have taken place in regulation, in accounting and auditing standards, and in accounting practice over the period from the early 1900s to the first part of the 21st century. The information about the frauds is presented in enough detail so that the reader can see why the fraud was successful. I recall Professor John Willingham saying a number of years ago that most partners and managers in public practice had not been involved in an audit where there had been a fraud and thus were not as well equipped as they might be to recognize a fraud at an audit client. Called to Account provides enough detail that the readers can easily imagine themselves in the picture and being required to make the decisions the auditor had to make.“
      1. Lambert Strether Post authorJune 25, 2020 at 2:56 pm

         > In video gaming, someone who hides in a heavily defended bunker is “turtle-ing.”

         Is this generally a successful strategy? Why or why not? Thank you!
         1. jr June 25, 2020 at 3:34 pm

            I played Team Fortress 2 as an Engineer, he builds auto cannons, ammo dispenser, teleporters etc. Engies are a gaming archetype, like spy or medic. If he is properly supported, mostly against spies yes, it can work, but you have to be vigilant. It’s a balance though, you need turtles to protect flags etc. but you need a front line to slow the advance or they overwhelm you. A good team knows their positions and know what types a particular team/map needs. It’s nuts, I got my GF to play it once and she said it was the most frenetic hour of her life.

            EVE has Citadels, space castles, which have a siege mode IIRC, and some of the bigger ships do as well. It can take hours to wear those mothers down…

            https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0bjTrPutt4k

            The price tag is 100 trillion in game credits, ISK, Inter Stellar Credits (Icelandic game), a billion ISK gets you 20$, so that Citadel will run you 20K$ real world….

            I hope the book is useful!
            1. jr June 25, 2020 at 4:50 pm

               Truth:

               https://www.google.com/search?q=eve+learning+curve&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari#imgrc=KTFzy82Y0etHiM
         2. anon y'mouse June 25, 2020 at 3:43 pm

            that would depend entirely upon the game, would it not?

            i can see variants of this strategy used commonly in MMOs. we used to call it “pulling to base” or somesuch. make the enemy enter a narrow room that you have locked down with your team, and wail on them at leisure.

            in that instance, it fails usually because someone fell asleep or someone’s pull failed to weed properly down to the desired mob, sometimes called “too many adds”.
         3. Ignacio June 25, 2020 at 4:03 pm

            According to my son these are called fxxxxxg campers.
            1. jr June 25, 2020 at 4:24 pm

               They’re only campers if you are playing offense!
            2. Larry Y June 25, 2020 at 5:08 pm

               Camping is more focused on staying place in a spot. Usually a choke point, valuable resource, or high ground.

               For example, hide/stealth at an area where lots of opposing players will come through (chokepoint, valuable resource, spawn points), then ambush attack.

               My person favorite is a tower or mountain top where snipers usually hang out. Since they usually get too comfortable and oblivious, bring a buddy and just humiliatingly melee them.
         4. NotTimothyGeithner June 25, 2020 at 4:18 pm

            I presume it depends on the strategy and opponents. Against AIs in 4X games, its really all you can do because the AI usually gets too many resources to simply beat by doing what the AI does. You can “min/max” to win, but it requires basically just clicking the buttons in a set pattern. Against people, its okay until you run into an aggressive player who knows “min/max” strategies. All you can do is hope the AI doesn’t have it out for you and attacks all at once.

            The games also have bonuses which basically snow ball until you get to the end of the game where the AIs advantages are nullified in some fashion usually in game inflation.

            Its best to just play for fun on lower levels such as emperor in the Civ series and have fun.
         5. Jokerstein June 25, 2020 at 4:24 pm

            Didn’t work too well for Adolf…
         6. occasional anonymous June 25, 2020 at 4:45 pm

            Depends on the game. But generally it is a viable strategy, if you can hole up around resources. It won’t win you a game by itself though; eventually your opponent(s) will get access to late-game, long range weapons that can obliterate your defenses from outside their defensive range. You *have* to have an army, you can’t just cower behind your walls forever.
         7. Larry Y June 25, 2020 at 5:00 pm

            Depends on the game. I found the Wikipedia Turtling entry.

            In some games, the turtle is so your opponents go after easier targets – especially if the game mechanics make it very difficult to eliminate people employing the strategy.

            In fighting games, the player plays in a defensive manner and plays keep away with quick/fast attacks and ranged attacks. This is usually a more beginner friendly style.
         8. Dr. Roberts June 25, 2020 at 7:57 pm

            It’s generally done in the mid-game in order to build up forces for a decisive attack at the end, preferably after the enemy has smashed themselves against your defenses. The problem with the strategy is that it allows your enemy to build their own forces unmolested and they can generally afford to build superior forces because they’re not spending money on defenses. Not sure how this translates into politics
         9. ChrisPacific June 25, 2020 at 11:38 pm

            It helps form one of the classic rock-paper-scissors triangles in real time strategy games like Starcraft. Generally it’s strong against early aggression or all-out assault tactics, but weak against opponents that avoid confronting you directly and invest in expanding or teching up instead, in which case all your fortifications become a useless misallocation of resources and you fall way behind.
            1. Objectivefunction June 26, 2020 at 12:43 am

               Spawn more Overlords!

               Kekekekekekekekeke!
      2. The Rev Kev June 25, 2020 at 7:47 pm

         I would see this in Age of Empires 2 when nubes would build up ten or twenty layers of walls and would have towers everywhere to protect themselves with. They only cut themselves off from their own resources. If Biden is turtling, then he may be copying Hillary. In her run for President, she went without being interviewed for month after month. The Press kept a count of days without Hillary appearing for an interview. Now Joe has the pandemic as an excuse to hide away. All he has to do is film clips but I can see his staff now trying to film one-

         “OK fellas. Take 172 and if he flubs it again, we’ll break for lunch.”
      3. rd June 25, 2020 at 7:51 pm

         Sorry, the turtle costume is already claimed by the “leader” of the Senate.

         Biden should probably be a clam from the Delaware beaches.
         1. jr June 26, 2020 at 6:27 am

            +1
      4. integer June 25, 2020 at 10:42 pm

         The term “turtle-ing” (I thought it was “turtling”, but whatever) is also used in Mixed Martial Arts. It refers to fighters curling up into a ball on elbows and knees, with forearms protecting the sides of the head. It is generally used by fighters who have sustained a blow rendering them unable to fight back, but not unconscious, and is essentially a way for the hurt fighter to limit the damage they sustain until the referee steps in to stop the fight, usually about 5-10 seconds later. Occasionally the hurt fighter will recover enough during this time for the referee to allow the fight to continue. It really is a brutal sport.

         I’m guessing there’s a pretty good chance Biden will end up in the turtle position (figuratively speaking, of course) during one or more of the debates with Trump. Personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing the 2020 election being decided by a cage fight, after all Trump’s doctor has said he’s in perfect health and Biden was going around challenging people to push-up contests. I’d be rooting for a double KO (i.e. both knock each other out at the same time). It’s a very rare outcome but it does happen on occasion.
   2. Lee June 25, 2020 at 3:01 pm

      He’ll assume office tan and rested if not fit.
   3. rowlf June 25, 2020 at 6:27 pm

      “Free Joe Biden”

      “Release Joe now!”

      Maybe we need a “How many days has Joe Biden been confined” counter?
3. periol June 25, 2020 at 2:20 pm

   Re: Wirecard

   “auditors disclosed $2.1 billion of supposed deposits were missing from two Philippines banks”

   I read that the company just flat-out lied. The deposits weren’t “missing” they never existed, the two banks in the Philippines said they had never had an account for Wirecard. The company just fabricated the bank accounts and siphoned the money off somewhere else.

   https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wirecard-accounts/wirecard-ceo-exits-as-search-for-missing-billions-hits-dead-end-in-asia-idUSKBN23Q0YA?il=0

   “The document claiming the existence of a Wirecard account with BDO is a falsified document and carries forged signatures of bank officers,” BDO said, adding that it had reported the matter to the Philippines’ central bank.

   Wirecard isn’t a victim here. This is fraud, plain and simple.
   1. Conrad June 25, 2020 at 6:41 pm

      I agree completely. The unwinding of the Wirecard fraud has been fascinating to watch over the last week. I’ve been watching avidly from my daughter’s bedside as she recovers from a burst appendix.

      I can’t help but draw some parallels between the two situations. The inflamed appendage festers quietly away until it eventually bursts, putting the wider body at grave risk unless skilled professionals recognise the danger and act quickly to excise the malign part and keep contagion at bay. Fortunately for my daughter the local public hospital staff were more than up to the task. I fear the German financial regulators are likely to be less competent.

      Oh and thanks to having the foresight to be born in a country with a functional healthcare system we have no need to start a Go Fund Me appeal to cover the 20 odd dollars in parking fees the surgery and 6 days in hospital have cost us. As the late, great Fred Dag sang ‘We don’t know how lucky we are’ here in New Zealand.
      1. The Rev Kev June 25, 2020 at 8:39 pm

         A burst appendix? Yikes! I hope that she recovers quickly. Probably for her the only sign of this will be a small scar but the Wirecard fraud will still be unwinding.
         1. Conrad June 25, 2020 at 9:08 pm

            It wasn’t pleasant. She will only have three little puncture scars from the surgery. Unless infection sets in I guess.
   2. rd June 25, 2020 at 7:57 pm

      The problem with corporate accounting is that they use accountants to do audits. The system would probably be more stable if the SEC requested that audits be done by financial reporters looking for a story: https://fortune.com/2020/06/25/wirecard-auditing-is-broken-fintech-ey-ernst-and-young/
      1. Conrad June 25, 2020 at 9:14 pm

         It’s even worse than that. The German regulator took legal action against the Financial Times journalists who were pointing out Wirecards dubious accounts earlier this year.
         1. The Rev Kev June 25, 2020 at 9:24 pm

            Would those journalist be able to take legal action against the Regulator for making false accusations then? That is not a good story that. It means that the German government is giving, or trying to give, legal cover for Wirecards. But I suppose that after giving cover for Deutsche Bank, Wirecards would be a snap. The Germans deserve a better government here.
4. McWatt June 25, 2020 at 2:21 pm

   “20 June 2020 Initial Unemployment Claims 1,480,000 This Week”

   This is anecdotal, however, one company I know received the PPP very early in the process, kept their workers employed, paid their mortgage, until the employment time commitment was fulfilled, then fired everyone a week ago. I think there will be a lot of this going on.
   1. Ignacio June 25, 2020 at 4:06 pm

      Fat tailed as Taleb said.
   2. Keith June 25, 2020 at 4:11 pm

      Kind of how it was designed. The goal was to keep people on the payroll until the virus passed. Then juice it up a little to give incentive to employers to bother with the hoops the govt puts out.

      The alternative was to close early, which I recall a famous chain doing. The chef/owner figured it was best to get out early while he still had money, gave out final paychecks and would get back into the business when/if things got better. I think shutting the shop and laying everyone off early turned out to be the better idea.
5. arielle June 25, 2020 at 2:25 pm

   @chigal: tap the screen of the iphone where you want it to focus. You can select the area to focus on in this way and override what the camera wants to focus on. You will see a square box with a sun–this is the area of sharp focus and it can be moved. Can’t help you with the grid lines. Lemon tree? Very Pretty.
   1. fwe'zy June 25, 2020 at 2:59 pm

      Yes, those buds are motivating me to fish-n-kelp spray my poor lemon tree tonight! Does anybody have advice on whether I should use LawnStar surfactant to help the leaves hold onto the spray? I worry the cure might kill the patient, is that the saying?
      1. foghorn longhorn June 25, 2020 at 3:37 pm

         Dawn dish soap is a safe surfactant.
         1. Amfortas the hippie June 25, 2020 at 3:49 pm

            careful with that, though…it’ll kill whatever bees are there..and bugs in general. breaks the waxy coating on them and allows dessication.
            I use it on rare occasions i get aphids or spidermites. One drop in a regular handheld sprayer will do the truck.

            for foliar fertiliser(fish emulsion is my hands-down favorite), spray when it’s dry, and no surfactant is necessary.
            whatever falls off gets to the roots anyway.

            whomever my feedstore gets their fish fertiliser from has apparently gone out of business, so i’m stuck with my homemade cow patty tea, which can be quite vile, if i leave it to steep too long.
            1. furies June 25, 2020 at 4:04 pm

               My local hardware guy informed me when I bought the last gallon of ‘sea help’ that the source in Cresent City is running out of raw materials and looking to quit the biz.

               Amendments are finite too…o noes.
               1. fwe'zy June 25, 2020 at 4:43 pm

                  “sea help” lol … yes, it dawn’d on me how absurd it was to use sea help but there it is. Thx for replies! I kind of want to just let the spray run off and forgo the lawnstar.
            2. Billy June 25, 2020 at 7:59 pm

               Does Dawn work on San Jose scale? The mollusc like things that ants deliberately plant on fruit tree branches so that other ants can lick up the sweet insect poop.
6. Toshio_Mifune June 25, 2020 at 2:31 pm

   Apple Inc.’s decision to insource its semiconductors …

   I’d assume Apple is going to outsource its ARM chip designs to TSMC or some other foundry. There’s no guarantees on that one though and Apple certainly has the cash stockpile to set things up for themselves. Especially if they’ve identified that as being cost saving. That could potentially be pretty disruptive.
   1. Eureka Springs June 25, 2020 at 2:34 pm

      If all costs were zero would Apple make and sell a good 15″ laptop for less than 1500?
      1. Toshio_Mifune June 25, 2020 at 2:41 pm

         No, they’ve gave up that space a while ago.
      2. JWP June 25, 2020 at 2:55 pm

         With zero costs, it’d be a lot easier to sell the computer Ikea style and sell each part for a hundred or so dollars and let the consumer deal with assembly. Add on a subscription service that sends you new parts and that special glue that makes repair impossible.
   2. periol June 25, 2020 at 2:42 pm

      Ever since Apple went to Intel, Hackintoshes became a thing again (I remember some from the 90s). I still run Snow Leopard on a Hackintosh, because you can swap out individual parts easily if something goes wrong, and PC parts are much easier to find (new) than Apple parts for old machines. I also still run an i7 MBP from 2012, really the last model where you can easily swap the battery, replace the hard drive, upgrade the RAM, etc. It’s been 8 years, and still the newest models don’t blow mine out the water, because the new models basically have the same upgrades I’ve installed, and the processors aren’t getting significantly better.

      Apple making their own chips would really lock their “ecosystem” down. They’ve already made their devices as unrepairable as possible, now they dump the Hackintoshes as well – it’s full systems control. This probably means that they’re preparing for a new generation of devices, because the odds are with a new non-Intel processor many of the current programs won’t work – everyone will be forced to upgrade. Similar to a decade ago, when the transition from Leopard to Snow Leopard to Lion obsoleted all the older machines in a space of, what, a couple of years?
      1. I won't even capitalize their name! June 25, 2020 at 6:46 pm

         My apple solution was to swear I would never buy an apple product again. That was several years ago. No problem at all. They do not deserve to make any profit off you, let alone their standard gouge.
         1. periol June 25, 2020 at 8:23 pm

            I am locked in by my audio recording hardware. Even if I could afford to upgrade to high-quality hardware not specifically for Macs, I’m pretty sure at the moment I don’t want to spend the time to learn new recording software. I’m going to keep this machine alive until the bitter, bitter end. Or upgrading to one of the old model nuclear bunker Mac Pros that can run Snow Leopard. Used all the way for me.

            Before I ever spend the money to upgrade the recording hardware, I’ll be diving into 8- and 16- tracks. Been doing more and more straight to tape. There’s just some things the computer interface is really good at handling.

            Before the music stuff nabbed me I hadn’t touched *apple products out of principle since the late 90s.
   3. JohnnySacks June 25, 2020 at 2:47 pm

      Gong to ARM is a really weird decision, are performance users going to appreciate that? Why not just offer AMD and Intel, each priced accordingly, and see what the customers say.
      1. periol June 25, 2020 at 2:55 pm

         One could ask, why not offer an iPhone with and without a headphone jack, and see what the customers say?
      2. Toshio_Mifune June 25, 2020 at 3:04 pm

         ARM makes obvious sense for mobile but there’s a lot of interest in ARM at the data center level. If nothing else it has the promise of power consumption reduction and less cooling requirements. Both of which are steep costs if you have a few thousand DL360s.
         Also, the new Mac Pro not withstanding Apple hasnt been all that welcoming of power users for a while.
      3. Larry Y June 25, 2020 at 5:16 pm

         It’s not weird if you want to make your own specialized chip with all kinds of AI acceleration, specialized image recognition hardware, etc. You do that with ARM – can’t imagine them doing that by licensing AMD or Intel processor cores.
         1. periol June 25, 2020 at 8:25 pm

            Back to the good old days of fanbois fighting over which processor is better, since they absolutely won’t handle benchmarks the same day. Can’t wait.
   4. Howard Beale IV June 25, 2020 at 3:25 pm

      Even IBM got rid of their foundries and relies on their formerly-owned fab’s to make their CPUs, thereby not really disrupting their supply chain.
   5. hunkerdown June 25, 2020 at 4:12 pm

      I used to joke that Apple is trying to be a better Sony than Sony. It’s not a joke anymore.

      Apple bought a semiconductor design team a while ago in an acquisition. They have enough talent in-house to create a system-on-chip for their new devices. (Hell, I did that while slumming it in retail years ago, and I dropped out of 11th grade.) They have also invested near-monumentally in compiler (Clang) and transpiler (LLVM) technologies, and have a proven track record of successfully migrating products to new platforms.

      An instruction set architecture is just a convention specifying what the machine looks like to the programmer and what instruction bit patterns cause what changes in the state of the machine. Apple, being well-resourced and very prone to not-invented-here syndrome, doesn’t profit much from enforced fidelity to another woman’s ISA, especially when your cores, whether your code or theirs, are covenantually obligated to not even talk to the neighborhood women or unfamiliar co-processors except by standardized protocols. Apple engineers would doubtless chomp at the bit for the opportunity to make their processors “think different” right down to the machine code, helping lock people into their toolchains and slowing down the infosec community’s discovery and exposure of any security vulnerabilities that may exist.

      (Oddly, Softbank, ARM’s owner, seems to be up a bit today.)
   6. The Rev Kev June 25, 2020 at 10:09 pm

      Came across an article from a guy that is a former Intel engineer who said that the problem is that since the introduction of the Skylake architecture in 2015, too many problems have arisen leading to Apple’s decision to outsource-

      https://9to5mac.com/2020/06/24/former-intel-engineer-says-skylake-problems-were-turning-point-for-apples-arm-mac-transition/
7. doug June 25, 2020 at 2:37 pm

   Biden will be our first avatar president…
   if he wins
   1. periol June 25, 2020 at 2:52 pm

      I stumbled on a Great Conjunction conspiracy theory the other day, also apparently known as the Tecumseh Curse. Saturn and Jupiter come together in our night sky once every ~20 years or so, and it turns out that occurrence hasn’t been great for sitting US presidents. The cycle was broken only by Reagan (who survived an assassination attempt) and Bush the Younger (one could argue the real power, Dick Cheney, also narrowly survived some health issues).

      Anyways, not a good omen for Mr. Biden, but definitely a good one for his VP pick!

      http://futureprimer.com/theuspresidentialdeathcycle.html

      Anyways, the date for the Great Conjunction this year is 12.21.2020.
   2. hunkerdown June 25, 2020 at 8:15 pm

      The Max Headroom comparisons are no doubt apt, but the “Deities” episode in particular seems exquisitely applicable to our present quandary:

      The leader of the Vu Age church, who happens to be Carter’s ex-girlfriend, kidnaps Max from Network 23 and threatens to erase him to prevent Carter from running a story exposing the church’s false claim of saving its parishioners’ minds as AI constructs.
8. JWP June 25, 2020 at 2:50 pm

   Cause for concern among those on the left. First with the antifa stuff now, the intelligence agencies seem to be working towards Minority Report.
9. rd June 25, 2020 at 2:51 pm

   Abbot is suspending re-opening Texas putting a hold on new re-opening things. They are also starting to suspend elective surgeries in the big counties. https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-greg-abbott-pause-reopening-as-covid-cases-surge-2020-6

   Reality can really suck as some of these politicians are finding out. Viruses and bacteria are apolitical and don’t study economic theory. They just exploit efficient reproductive environments which many politicians are bending over backwards to provide. I finished reading John Barry’s “The Great Influenza.’ Politicians and most of the populace have learned nothing over the past century despite massive advances of the medical understanding of what is going on. There are entire chapters of that book where you could substitute “coronavirus” for “influenza” and it would read like it was happening today.

   BTW – NYC people are unaware that three-quarters of NYS even exists, so they never go east of Albany or Middleton in New York State. That is a key reason why much of upstate NY did not get hit hard – we were largely isolated from NYC, much more so than people along I-87 or I-95.
   1. John June 25, 2020 at 3:37 pm

      Makes me wish I lived in Yates County instead of Orange
      1. rd June 25, 2020 at 8:00 pm

         Yates County has internet and telephone service, so you can work from home there at a fraction of the cost of Orange County. You might even be walking distance to some of the best wineries and cheeseries in NYS, as well as lots of hiking and aquatic recreation.
   2. Jason Boxman June 25, 2020 at 4:01 pm

      These politicians are surely doing just fine. Reality isn’t sucking for them. But a lot of constituents are in a world of hurt sadly.
   3. Keith June 25, 2020 at 4:14 pm

      But how long can you keep people locked down? Look at the recent riots and looting scenes. I suspect this had more to do with people being out of work and confined than with racial injustice, which is more like an excuse to get out and wreak havoc. I believe politicians noticed this, too.
      1. rd June 25, 2020 at 8:07 pm

         Upstate NY has quite a bit open, but everybody is quite respectful, wearing masks in public etc. Our numbers are going up a tiny bit, but not much.

         This disease can be addressed fairly safely without great restrictions, but people need to follow common-sense rules, not just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Respect for others seems to be missing. I blame the political rhetoric around this disease for much of that. The sicence of it has been difficult enough, never mind when it is put into a political blender. somehow, avoiding Covid has also become realted to 2nd Amendment issues in some places? Baffling.

         My big question is “How many people need to die or be disabled for politicians to be voted out of office”?.
      2. Daryl June 25, 2020 at 8:22 pm

         You are correct that we cannot continue lockdown with our current economic scheme without mass unrest. I don’t think it is impossible though. Just impossible for us.
10. Adam1 June 25, 2020 at 3:03 pm

    The Texas Medical Center chart makes me wet my pants scared. My younger brother is a young doctor at a hospital in San Antonio! He says the case load is increasing but he hasn’t yet seen any cases (he’s a urologist) but when it gets to the point of overcapacity it’ll be all hands on deck I would suspect.
    1. XXYY June 25, 2020 at 3:55 pm

       Worse is the fact that the situation in hospitals is an indicator that is lagging by several weeks what is happening in the larger society. So the trajectory in hospitals over the next 3 weeks is already baked in, no matter what steps we take now.
       1. rd June 25, 2020 at 8:10 pm

          A lot of people under 50 seem to think that Covid-19 will not cause them issues – this show today discusses the long-term damage that can come from it, even in 20-40 year olds. https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2020/06/25/whats-it-like-to-recover-from-covid-19
11. Wukchumni June 25, 2020 at 3:10 pm

    I think that post earthquake video was @ Whitney Portal…

    Mt. Whitney area, (above Lone Pine), CA, June 25, 2020 – On June 24 at 10:40 am a 5.8 earthquake centered approximately 12 miles from Lone Pine, CA triggered several high-altitude rockslides. The most significant slide occurred south of the main parking area at Whitney Portal.

    At this time, there are no reported injuries or reports of missing individuals.

    There were approximately 40 vehicles parked in the area. Vehicles were covered in dust, but there did not appear to be damaged. The Whitney Portal store was also covered in a blanket of dust. The Inyo National Forest has not begun issuing permits to hike Mt Whitney.

    Aerial reconnaissance, as well as reports from hikers identified several additional slides; one directly above Lone Pine Lake, one about a quarter mile above Lone Pine Lake near the main trail, and three slides on the face of Mt. Whitney. It is unclear at this time if the Mt. Whitney trail has been damaged. Based on dust seen from the Owens Valley floor it appears that most canyons, including trailheads, south of Kearsarge Pass had at least minor rockslides triggered by yesterday’s earthquake.

    Due to several smaller aftershocks throughout yesterday afternoon and evening, only a preliminary search could be conducted near the slide zone. After an evaluation by a US Forest Service geologist this morning, the intention is to send in search and rescue teams and canines to check each of the debris fields.

    Today, if it safe, Inyo National Forest Wilderness Rangers will begin assessing if there is damage to the trail systems in the area. Yesterday’s initial assessment shows substantial damage to a section of the National Recreation Trail (that starts at Lone Pine Campground and ends in Whitney Portal). The focus today will be on the Mt. Whitney Trail. At this time, the Mt. Whitney Trail, The Meysan Lakes Trail, and the North Fork of Lone Pine Trail (Mountaineering Route) are closed until further notice. Permits for day and overnight summits of Mt. Whitney will continue be cancelled until further notice.
    1. Carolinian June 25, 2020 at 4:38 pm

       The area is also a classic Hollywood movie location. See, for example, George Stevens’ 1939 Gunga Din.

       I was there a few months ago on my Tour de Sierra. The gravel roads were dotted with govt land squatting RVs.
    2. anon in so cal June 25, 2020 at 7:03 pm

       Good to hear no one was hurt. The Eastern Sierras and Highway 395 are such a beautiful and still largely unspoiled area.
12. L June 25, 2020 at 3:21 pm

    China’s elites fear their working class in a way that United States elites do not.

    I disagree with this. I don’t think that they fear the working class. I think that they a) fear the class being unable to work (i.e. too sick to keep making them rich); and b) they do not hold the illusion that disease will stay contained to the class. I think they may also see a practical power advantage in controlling it better than Trump.

    I think also that Xi Jinping personally fears his political enemies close to home. He has many and they want him gone.

    Our own elites have long felt that the working class are not in any way connected to their own global wealth and so do not care.
    1. jsn June 25, 2020 at 5:03 pm

       “The Chinese working class is the most strike prone in the world.“
    2. Jessica June 25, 2020 at 10:26 pm

       The rulers of China know their history. They know that any governing regime that sufficiently pisses off too many of the Chinese ruled finds a way to become an ex-governing regime.
       They also know that invasion from the outside is one of the ways that that can happen. Particularly, for the past 1000 years (which for China is only a fraction of their history), a unified China was ruled by a government of Chinese (not foreigners) for only a small fraction of the time. One could even argue that the period since the founding of the PRC in 1949 is the only such period in the past millennium.
       So they are wisely concerned by both permanent dangers.
       If the virus situation in China and the US were reversed, the US government would most certainly be using this to reduce the power of the Chinese government and increase its own.
       Evil totalitarians though they are, the Chinese directing class is a coherent force directing their nation. The US directing class is more like foreign plunderers even within the US.
13. RWood June 25, 2020 at 3:38 pm

    It’s a funny old world we live in ,
    Not the centre of the universe , 
    Just a relatively small speck of galactic dust at the edge of the Milky Way ,
    A tiny fraction of the billion + stars in our Galaxy ,
    And our Galaxy one of billions of others,
    A tiny , tiny fraction of a billion billion stars
    Inhabited by us , intelligent apes, alongside the rest of Earth species ,
    Well perhaps not all intelligent ,
    Well yes all intelligent by comparison to other Earth life ,
    But for most of us living in decided self deception ,
    Decided self deception ? I hear you ask
    Yes Decided Self Deception ,

    Posted by It’s a funny old world at 10:55 AM No comments:

    mine: cPerhaps, holobionts
14. Wandering Mind June 25, 2020 at 3:38 pm

    New Confirmed COVID-19 Cases per Day, normalized by population

    If Texas and Arizona were countries:
    1. Arizona Slim June 25, 2020 at 4:14 pm

       Local data point:

       https://www.kgun9.com/news/state/fewer-than-200-icu-beds-available-in-arizona-as-state-reports-more-than-60-000-coronavirus-cases

       Which is why I’m staying the [family blog] home. Besides, it’s almost 110 degrees outside.
15. L June 25, 2020 at 3:50 pm

    OTOH, I’d argue that the success (at least in cultural terms) of the Sanders slogan #NotMeUs, as well as the protests generally, would indicate that matters are not nearly as bleak as this poll suggests.

    I really don’t see these points in conflict at all. I for one do believe that we live in a society where screwing people over is the way people get ahead. I have little faith in our institutions or the so called “moral values” that people preach to control that.

    But I don’t want it to be that way.

    From this survey we can’t tell whether or not the other people believe that this is a desirable state of affairs we can only tell that they think it is the way of things now. If you believe that we are in a bad place, you are more apt to rally behind a message of change to make it better. If, on the other hand, you think that things are all good, or were before the nasty orange monster showed up, then you are apt to focus on returning to ‘normal’.

    From this chart the election results make perfect sense to me. What I would want to see is whether that report that Dems are happy with Biden’s bunker antics break along similar age lines. I for one am growing less and less happy with him (not that I was before) the longer he focuses on flinging “orange man bad!” videos out the door and the less time he spends on giving a clear vision of actual future directions. But then again yes, he did promise that “nothing would change.”
    1. EGrise June 25, 2020 at 6:30 pm

       That was kinda my take too: the poll reflected situational thinking, the slogan aspirational thinking.

       Personally I suspect that what many of the youngsters meant (it seems true among the millennials and zoomers I work with) is that they assume people are bad until they prove otherwise. Which is still not great, but given the incentives in our society can you blame them?
       1. Lambert Strether Post authorJune 26, 2020 at 5:11 am

          > That was kinda my take too: the poll reflected situational thinking, the slogan aspirational thinking.

          That’s a nice distinction. I would argue, however, that Sanders campaigners (the troops) actually did attempt to act on their aspirations.
16. anon in so cal June 25, 2020 at 4:03 pm

    California has made its Covid19 data publicly available:

    https://data.chhs.ca.gov/dataset/california-covid-19-hospital-data-and-case-statistics
17. allan June 25, 2020 at 4:30 pm

    Graham Rebuffed Over Widening Barr’s Powers as GOP Senators Balk [Bloomberg]

    The Senate Judiciary Committee blocked an effort by Chairman Lindsey Graham to give the attorney general the power to veto investigations of Justice Department lawyers by the inspector general.

    The committee instead backed — over the objections of Graham and Attorney General William Barr — a bipartisan bill by Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah that would empower the department’s inspector general to investigate such allegations on his own authority.

    Graham said the attorney general, as the head of the Justice Department, should have discretion to overrule the agency watchdog in such cases. …

    But his amendment was criticized by members of both parties, including former Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, the senior Republican in the Senate.

    “I don’t care what the attorney general says on this IG thing,” Grassley said. Inspectors general need to be independent so they can handle sensitive investigations and cases, he said. …

    Too craven even for his fellow Republicans. Sad.
18. flora June 25, 2020 at 4:50 pm

    FB’s Zuch as a self-appointed global money czar? What could go wrong?

    https://twitter.com/RaulACarrillo/status/1276210191676170241
19. jr June 25, 2020 at 5:02 pm

    Field report: West Village

    There is a BLM protest nearby, it was a few blocks away and it moved before I could pin it’s location down. Everything echoes in NYC, I know it does in other cities but it’s better here.

    I’m really curious about how Pride will play out this year. I suspect less Pride tourism, more protest. Which is fine by me, cause I know how to turtle like “Sloppy” Joe…
    1. jsn June 25, 2020 at 7:16 pm

       There’s been a BLM encampment at the north east end of city hall park all week. Surprisingly light NYPD presence given its across the street from police plaza (with the city office building in between).

       The police state is being patient, what they’re doing to those two black lawyers (45 years for graffiti) is what anyone with anything to lose can expect.
       1. caucus99percenter June 25, 2020 at 9:59 pm

          Well, not just “graffiti” — the two Brooklyn lawyers are accused of throwing Molotov cocktails.

          https://duckduckgo.com/?q=brooklyn+lawyers+molotov+cocktail
20. JohnnyGL June 25, 2020 at 5:23 pm

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSb5_gr9E4o

    Glenn Greenwald’s show: System Update

    This week he does a monologue, as well as having two separate discussions. One with Krystal Ball of the show Rising on the Hill’s Youtube Channel and the other with Nathan Robinson of Current Affairs.

    It’s long, but really high quality long-form stuff. Greenwald does a nice job orchestrating.
21. deplorado June 25, 2020 at 5:35 pm

    I think this is worth sharing too. Seems promising.

    Toward a Software of the Oppressed: A Freirean Approach to Surveillance Capitalism
    (The reproduction of digital oppression through education)

    https://twitter.com/erinroseglass/status/1276239166775287808?s=20
22. a different chris June 25, 2020 at 6:13 pm

    Yeah so Biden apparently now has iCarly Fiorina’s vote!

    So he really doesn’t need mine…

    We almost all wished for the return of the old Republican Party, and here it is. But it was supposed to be a restraining counterweight to the ascendant left, not *the* left side of “acceptable discourse” itself.

    If I didn’t have kids I would laugh myself silly.
    1. NotTimothyGeithner June 25, 2020 at 10:55 pm

       Noted Ted Cruz ally, Carly Fiorina! Yeah, its not even a pretend where are the moderate Republican parties, but Ted Cruz supporters endorsing Biden. It fits his politics.
23. fresno dan June 25, 2020 at 7:20 pm

    https://www.co.fresno.ca.us/departments/public-health/covid-19

    Last updated: June 25, 2020 at 3:53 PM

    Total Cases: 3,053 (+161)
    86 (Travel-Related)
    1,619 (Close Contact)
    1,416 (Community-Spread / Unknown)
    932 (Under Investigation)
    Total Deaths: 71 (+0)
    ===========================================
    Little problem with addition – it happens
    yesterday’s total cases was 3892
    add 161 new cases and you get 4053.
24. sierra7 June 25, 2020 at 7:53 pm

    Biden:
    “The American people are tough, resilient, and always full of hope. There’s not a single thing we can’t do if we do it together.”
    Problem with that is Biden (and his cohorts) do their living and eating in Washington DC and the rest of us including those homeless have to do that living on the ground floors.
    Reminds me of a line in the Godfather:
    Original:
    “Io non mangia in Las Vegas!”
    To Biden:
    “Io non mangia in Washington DC!”
25. Daryl June 25, 2020 at 8:19 pm

    > “Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Wednesday the state is facing a “massive outbreak” in the coronavirus pandemic and that greater restrictions may be necessary”

    Abbott’s big move was suspending elective surgeries in Houston and Dallas. Nothing else. I wonder when the press will gain the courage to call this for what it is: genocide.
26. The Rev Kev June 25, 2020 at 8:49 pm

    “As hospitals fill with coronavirus patients, Florida wants to know who is in the ICU beds”

    It’s only a matter of time before Florida does a Bolsonaro and refuse to release any figures at all.
    1. Daryl June 25, 2020 at 9:08 pm

       You’d think they’d be better at covering it up, with a Medicare fraudster as Senator. But then I guess he got caught, so probably not very good at it.
27. The Rev Kev June 25, 2020 at 9:19 pm

    Yep. Old Joe is the clear-headed guy that you want as President, especially since Covid has killed 120 million Americans-

    https://www.rt.com/usa/492964-biden-americans-dead-coronavirus/

    Either that or Joe is a few planes short of an Air Force.
    1. ObjectiveFunction June 26, 2020 at 1:35 am

       It’s not Him, it’s Us. Us being the machine HerTurn was supposed to lead and blew it. Once Old Joe finally goes to the knacker’s yard, Kamala or whomever merely steps in as anointed spokesmodel for the nomenklatura.

       What’s not to like? Good looking, supercilious, nobody may disagree with a word she says without being defamed, silenced and Cast Into the Outer Darkness©.

       Ever since the Irish [and other groups] formally joined WASPS atop the American power pyramid in the Fifties, there’s been a cult crossing ideological lines that at its core wants America to be run like France, with none of those thuggish populists whipping up the idiot mob and jumping the queue for power.

       That might gladden the hearts of Francophiles, techies and weak tea SocDems here, but it also entails: governance by a caste of the Right People:
       – straight arrow from birth graduates of the Right grands ecoles
       – bellyfeeling the Right Values
       – and **New!** being collectively of the Right Ethnic Mix. Content of their character, right? (as defined by Us)

       All of them harmoniously convinced of their superior intellects, moral Rightness and Right (dieu et mon droit) to:

       1. guide the Nation, establish justice, secure domestic tranquility, feed the children, shun the wicked etc.

       2. ‘consultatively’ with other nations, guide the world order and the very planetary ecology itself.

       … Who after years of loyal service to the Team are duly rewarded upon retirement with sinecures (petouflage, amakudari, etc.) in the state-sponsored ‘private sector’.

       It’s a small corporatist world after all.

       JFK was these people’s original poster child and patron saint. BHO is his successor.

       They tried to beatify Slick Willie, but I Feel Your Pain didn’t have the self discipline to pull it off. Hillary was simply rammed down the electorate’s gullet (eww you mean we actually need to talk to those people?) And Biden is, well, liquefying before our eyes, albeit in time lapse.
28. integer June 25, 2020 at 9:49 pm

    What I don’t understand is if, with the proper depth of field to get the buds and the droplets both, the grid effect would still happen. Readers?

    Yes, it would. The shape of the droplets causes them to act as lenses, which means the light reflecting from the grid (in this case the image is being created by the grid obstructing light, but the principle is the same) is being focused by, and projected from, the droplet. Therefore the sharpness of the image of the grid within the droplet will be proportional to the sharpness of the droplet itself. You can see some examples at the following link:

    https://petapixel.com/2019/06/05/shooting-water-droplet-refractions-for-magical-macro-images/
    1. Grebo June 25, 2020 at 11:13 pm

       It seems to me that the camera has focused on the images of the background which are refracted in the droplets, rather than on the droplets themselves. To get both in focus you would have to reduce the aperture to increase the depth of field.
       1. integer June 26, 2020 at 2:08 am

          It might seem that way to you but it is incorrect. The image of the grate is formed by light rays being refracted at the surface of the droplet closest to the grate, resulting in a focused image being projected onto the surface of the droplet closest to the camera, much like a lens projects an image onto the surface of a piece of film or digital sensor. The shape of the droplet causes the image to be distorted, resulting in a fisheye effect. From there the light scatters and the rays that hit the camera lens are focused by the lens onto the surface of (in this case) the digital sensor. The macro pics at the supplied link show this more clearly (i.e. that the plane of focus is aligned with the water droplet), and it is worth remembering that DOF is very shallow at the subject distances from which macro photos are taken, even with a very small aperture (i.e. f/22). Some more images:

          https://petapixel.com/2019/09/03/how-to-shoot-refraction-macro-photos-in-water-drops-glass-beads-and-more/
          1. Grebo June 26, 2020 at 3:36 pm

             No, if the drop has a radius of 2mm the image of the background will be focused roughly 2mm closer to the camera than the front surface of the drop.

             For the image to be at the surface the refractive index of the drop must be 2, water is 1.333.

             optics
             1. integer June 26, 2020 at 5:10 pm

                Thanks. Should’ve looked at the math before commenting, my bad.
             2. integer June 26, 2020 at 6:36 pm

                Just thinking about this a little more:

                – The image of the background that can be seen in the water droplet is the image of the background as projected onto the surface of the water droplet closest to the camera.

                – As the focal length of the lens created by the droplet is longer than the radius of the droplet, the image of the background is not in perfect focus at the surface of the droplet.

                – The image of the background in the droplet appears sharp as the magnification factor (i.e. image of background in the droplet is very small compared to the actual background) hides the fact that the image projected onto the droplet surface is not in perfect focus.

                – Therefore, regardless of the surface of the droplet not coinciding with the focal point of the lens created by the droplet, the place to focus the camera for these types of pics is still the surface of the droplet closest to the camera.

                I think…

                Very interesting discussion btw.
29. 430 MLK June 25, 2020 at 10:44 pm

    I’m hoping Booker wins, but I’m less enthusiastic about what it portends. Much of his rise has come after some pretty centrist entities (KSR’s Matt Jones, Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Louisville and Lexington papers) pulled quick, long-knives-esque, endorsements once the Floyd protests (in KY also the Breonna Taylor protests) took off and held. Bottom line is that McGrath was easy to cut loose b/c she was not a native KY politician, and this has allowed a lot of entities who are big parts of the problem in the state to re-brand themselves, particularly to national commentators (and Lebron James) temporarily putting their eyes on the state because of McConnell.
    1. Lambert Strether Post authorJune 26, 2020 at 5:21 am

       All this is true. But isn’t whatever causes the DNC to suffer a good thing?
       1. 430 MLK June 26, 2020 at 10:32 am

          Nationally, yes. But at the local and state levels where good candidates sprout, I’m not so sure. The big message from the McGrath dump was ‘she’s not one of us.’ She’s an outside agitator who ruffles our good state politics.
30. Jack Parsons June 25, 2020 at 11:28 pm

    China’s elites fear their working class in a way that United States elites do not.

    Yes, the impression I have is that the Chinese government, down to the village level, is generally appointed from above. The 2000-year-old contract is that the government is an alien intervention that takes money. In return, it helps the peasants when there are floods or famines. The government’s ability to do this well is known as the “Mandate of Heaven”, that is, the emperor’s relationship with the unknowable forces that capriciously screw up life on the farm.

    The Covid response in Wuhan showed this dynamic: the people expect the govt. to not screw up the pandemic response, and they’ll go along with major intrusion (for awhile).

    This contract shows up in other ways: there are armed insurrections in mainland China every year. Nobody reports them, but there are peasants actively pitchforking around.

    Also, the government is very federalized, to a degree westerners don’t quite get. There are periodic armed standoffs, and sometimes clashes, between security forces owned by different government departments.
31. VietnamVet June 25, 2020 at 11:42 pm

    The US coronavirus infection rate chart is chilling. November is too far off. Even Lindsey Graham is warning of another French revolution. A second lockdown without federal public health control and money for the affected is in rebellion territory.

    Vaccine manufacturers are making millions of extra flu vaccine doses for next season; WaPo “CDC and drugmakers boost flu vaccine doses amid fears of an unprecedented respiratory illness season”. But if you haven’t caught COVID-19, who will take the risk of catching it to get a seasonal flu shot?

    There is no future planning. Everything is ad hoc and disconnected. It is not just government that has fallen apart in the USA. It is the ultimate failure of the entire neo-capitalist ideology that markets control everything. Greed is the ultimate cause of the burgeoning deaths and the unrest in the West.
    1. skippy June 26, 2020 at 1:26 am

       Firstly neoliberalism is just rewarmed Corporatism E.g. its a subset of Capitalism. Secondly I don’t think 19th century Eugenics in the U.S. died out, back of the bus post WWII, but reasserted itself with the advent of neoliberalism becoming dominate again in the 70s.

       Just to touch on your health care[???] point I would highlight the dramas with aged care as a final extraction point not unlike a financial abattoir administrated by MBA’s and its executives are beholden to their share holders interests E.g. its an assembly line to the final departure point of palliative care.

       Mates wife just started back to full time work after child bearing years [3 kids] and is working in aged care. She is a recent Mensa member and comes from a Japanese medical family, so shes not a pile of rocks. Anywho she is employed by an agency which flicks her around a bit [don’t want anyone in one place too long thingy] as basically a subbie. Now it gets even more interesting when one looks at how the system of work and credits is structured and how that plays out with charges and allocation of staff for it. Makes the episodes of Better Call Sal look salutary.
       1. ambrit June 26, 2020 at 2:14 pm

          Greetings from the Murky North American South.
          We experienced the elder human abattoir process from the other perspective when Phyl was involved with the Hospice company last year. The operative word in the foregoing sentence is “company.” The process was geared towards parsimony of an ‘exalted’ degree.
          The most prominent example of that being the following. We had arguments with the ‘company’ about a particular wound dressing to be used on Phyl’s tumours. The company, (henceforth referred to as “they,”) wanted to palm off the lowest cost, and quality dressings, and manage the amount of said dressings to be used per week. Phyl found out about silver impregnated bandages and their superior performance for weeping wounds. (The tumours were of a Mad Doctor torture basement quality. They never healed and kept growing, hence, the later amputation. [We were told that the ‘removal’ was a last ditch effort. It seems to have done the trick so far.]) After a few weeks of the silver bandages, which were approved by Phyl’s first RN Visitor, ‘they’ switched Phyl back to the old bandages. When asked by this messenger of the Goddess why the switch, I was told that the old bandages were “best practice.” ‘They’ never wavered in their knavery. We ended up getting the silver impregnated bandages ourselves from off of mainly e-bay for the time up until the ‘leg removal.’ I regularly managed to find the silver bandages online for about half the price that ‘they’ were paying. The Wonder of Markets???
          In one go round with ‘them’ about the bandage issue, I discovered, by accident, as I had managed to get hold of someone in the “back room” of the organization, that the office manager had priority over the nurses in the provision of supplies. The bean counters are firmly in control.
          To return to the point, the original RN Visitor left the firm after she had been seeing Phyl, once a week no less, for two months. (Later on, we re-met her. She was now the head nurse for the local hospital’s Rehabilitation Annexe.) After that, there was an ever changing stream of LPNs arriving to do Phyl’s vitals and basic evaluation once a week. These were almost all young and entrance level workers in the healthcare field. They were mostly new and a bit naive about the situation they found themselves in.
          There were two other ‘Visitors’ involved in ‘their’ scheme. One was a Social Worker, who was a nice woman, but obviously at her wits end in dealing with the situation. She seemed to be trying to “serve two masters.” ‘They’ wanted her to smooth the waters with Phyl, (I wonder why?) She wanted to shift some of ‘their’ attitudes, but was powerless to effect any change. The other was a ‘Pastor,’ to supply some moral support to the “customers.” This was a conservative fellow who had the good grace to be honest with himself and us about what was going on.
          As to your point about “charges and allocation.”
          First, I noticed right away that the Nurses, Social Worker and Pastor all drove their own cars for work purposes. Even with mileage, this is a losing proposition for the worker.
          Second, the Nurses were tasked with covering a fairly large area. Several of the Nurses spoke of driving over a hundred and fifty miles in a day, on the job.
          Third, we know, from the Medicare quarterly financials that the Hospice Company was getting over a thousand dollars a week per “customer.”
          Fourth, this payment system was structured like a HMO. The price was a one size fits all payment. Some of the “customers” had to be ‘warehoused’ at the end. that was part of the basic rate.
          Fifth, when Phyl decided to have the offending leg removed, she had to sign off of the Hospice program and re-enroll on the basic Medicare roll. The Hospice scheme was, therefore, aimed strictly at terminal patients, with no “wriggle” room. While good looking “on paper,” this guaranteed complications and delays in practice. (Everyone had reams of paper forms to be signed for any and all eventualities.)
          Finally, taking care of family members at home is a real chore, and to this spoiled scion of the Hippy Jr. Age, an introduction to the concept of “vocation.” Not only has the experience shown me reserves of ‘character’ that I never suspected that I had, but it has also exposed many personal dark corners where plenty of ‘bad character’ lurk.
          Kudos to you skippy for enduring your ordeal.
          Congratulation to “Yves” for not shirking this hard job when it presented itself.
          Everyone be vigilant and stay safe.
          Rant ends.
          1. skippy June 26, 2020 at 5:23 pm

             For all the dramas its good news to hear her sticking around longer, if just to poke they* in the eye.

             I can remember years ago when certain business sorts that had a puritan zeal were pushing the “best business” practice of breaking down human social attitudes at work, because it messed with MBA policy from above … all about malleability and setting up greasy pole competitions.

             For me I have the kids and dogs and have been able to keep working so everything else is just a matter of time. Can’t force things so its just focusing on the things I can do.

             Cheers.
    2. skippy June 26, 2020 at 1:42 am

       I would add that Yves keeping her mother out of one of these places is an act of high order. Just the relocation and time – energy spent to secure her mothers dignity at this stage in life is a sight to behold.

       So many others I know with or without means seem to want to just shuffle off the olds so they “can get on with their lives” and not be burdened with the non productive – because markets ….
32. ambrit June 26, 2020 at 12:11 am

    Just a report from the murky atmosphere of South Mississippi.
    It literally looks like the Sahara Dust plume has reached our environs. This afternoon, the atmosphere was dusky and brown, or tan coloured in our half horse town. This is very unusual for here. Visibility was half of normal, and distinctly murky.
    Some thunderstorms rumbled through the town this evening, but how well they cleaned the atmosphere up is something we’ll have to evaluate tomorrow morning.
    How long this will last is anybody’s guess.
33. Daryl June 26, 2020 at 2:30 am

    A small piece of good news. Eliot Engel defeated in primary: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/23/us/elections/results-new-york-house-district-16-primary-election.html

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