By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Another aria (with a barking dog far off in the background (also a cow!)).
#COVID19
At reader request, I’ve added this daily chart from 91-DIVOC. The data is the Johns Hopkins CSSE data. Here is the site.
I feel I’m engaging in a macabre form of tape-watching. I’ve been thinking of new charts to monitor to alert us to the next outbreak, assuming there is one, but for now, the data from the South means I’ll stick to the status quo.
Up and down, up and down, with a trendline that’s slighly up.
Case count by United States regions:
Case decline has now clearly flattened.
“COVID-19 cases rise slightly across US” [Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (antidlc)]. “The slight increase in virus activity comes as most states are reopening fully, and many states are now choosing to report new cases less frequently than they did 1 year ago. At least 24 states have scaled back how often they report COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, NPR reports. Some states have stopped reporting data over the weekends, while Florida and Oklahoma are reporting data only once a week. Public health experts worry that cutting back on daily reporting could leave states in the dark about new outbreaks. In related news, governors across the country are debating how and when to drop emergency power declarations that have been in place for more than a year. According to the Associated Press, emergency orders are set to expire before Jul 4 in roughly half of states. Currently six states have seen emergency orders expire. Republican governors have voiced their support for letting emergency declarations end as cases drops, but democratic leaders say COVID-19 variants and wavering vaccination rates are reasons to keep such orders in place. Summer is almost here, and most Americans plan to return to normal, pre-pandemic activities.” • My weekly averages are flattening out that slight rise. It’s the same story, though.
Here are the case counts for the last four weeks in the South (as defined by the US Census: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia):
Florida, capital of Latin America, has joined Texas in breaking away from the pack. To be fair, we aren’t seeing a steeply rising curve, either,
Big states (New York, Florida, Texas, California):
Not entirely good news.
Up in the South,
Hospitalization (CDC):
Continued good news.
Deaths (Our World in Data):
Continued good news.
Covid cases worldwide:
Monroe Doctrine countries not doing so hot.
#COVID19
At reader request, I’ve added this daily chart from 91-DIVOC. The data is the Johns Hopkins CSSE data. Here is the site.
I feel I’m engaging in a macabre form of tape-watching. I’ve been thinking of new charts to monitor to alert us to the next outbreak, assuming there is one, but for now, the data from the South means I’ll stick to the status quo.
Up and down, up and down, with a trendline that’s slighly up.
Case count by United States regions:
Case decline has now clearly flattened.
“COVID-19 cases rise slightly across US” [Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (antidlc)]. “The slight increase in virus activity comes as most states are reopening fully, and many states are now choosing to report new cases less frequently than they did 1 year ago. At least 24 states have scaled back how often they report COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, NPR reports. Some states have stopped reporting data over the weekends, while Florida and Oklahoma are reporting data only once a week. Public health experts worry that cutting back on daily reporting could leave states in the dark about new outbreaks. In related news, governors across the country are debating how and when to drop emergency power declarations that have been in place for more than a year. According to the Associated Press, emergency orders are set to expire before Jul 4 in roughly half of states. Currently six states have seen emergency orders expire. Republican governors have voiced their support for letting emergency declarations end as cases drops, but democratic leaders say COVID-19 variants and wavering vaccination rates are reasons to keep such orders in place. Summer is almost here, and most Americans plan to return to normal, pre-pandemic activities.” • My weekly averages are flattening out that slight rise. It’s the same story, though.
Here are the case counts for the last four weeks in the South (as defined by the US Census: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia):
Florida, capital of Latin America, has joined Texas in breaking away from the pack. To be fair, we aren’t seeing a steeply rising curve, either,
Big states (New York, Florida, Texas, California):
Not entirely good news.
Up in the South,
Hospitalization (CDC):
Continued good news.
Deaths (Our World in Data):
Continued good news.
Covid cases worldwide:
Monroe Doctrine countries not doing so hot.
Politics
“But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” –James Madison, Federalist 51
“They had one weapon left and both knew it: treachery.” –Frank Herbert, Dune
“They had learned nothing, and forgotten nothing.” –Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord
Biden Administration
The White House Press Corps reporters are little children:
Biden looked Putin in the eyes, Putin immediately looked away. https://t.co/YCJJtB7PYq
— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) June 16, 2021
UPDATE “Size matters at Putin-Biden summit venue” [Agence France Presse]. “Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Joe Biden are meeting Wednesday at the La Grange villa in Geneva, a plush 18th-century mansion surrounded by a tree-lined park overlooking the lake. The classical villa’s symmetrical design means it can be split down the middle and both leaders can have access to exactly the same amount of space…. Despite the meeting being expected to last four to five hours, Biden and Putin will not be sitting down to eat together.”
UPDATE “Live Updates: Biden and Putin hold press conferences after landmark summit” [CBS]. “President Biden was asked again whether he trusts Putin. ‘This isn’t about trust,’ he said. ‘This is about self-interest and verification of self-interest.’ Earlier in the day, there was confusion when Mr. Biden had appeared to nod his head in response to a reporter’s question about whether he trusts Putin. The White House later said the president was merely nodding to acknowledge the press.” • Actually a sane statement by Biden.
“Biden Could Cancel Student Loan Debt Right Now By Signing an Executive Order” [Teen Vogue (outside observer)]. “When the Department of Education was first given the power to issue student loans, it was also granted the power to “compromise, waive, or release any right” to collect on them, an authority known as “compromise and settlement.” Essentially, the Biden administration can suspend the collection of student debt altogether, and poof!, tens of millions of Americans would be student loan debt-free! It’d be like waving a magic wand, except the wand isn’t magic, it’s a legitimate legal authority vested in the Department of Education by Congress.”
UPDATE “Education Department discharges $500 million in debt for 18,000 ITT students in sign of borrower defense progress” [Yahoo Finance]. “The Education Department (ED) is discharging $500 million in student loan debt held by 18,000 borrowers who had been defrauded by now-defunct for-profit chain ITT Tech, a sign that the Biden administration is working to address the borrower defense backlog.” • 18,000 isn’t very many.
“Hunter Biden’s art to sell as high as $500K and the buyers will be kept ‘confidential'” [FOX]. • No opportunities for money laundering here, no siree (and amazingly, FOX doesn’t mention this angle). I actually like Hunter Biden much better than, say, that slippery little scut Pete Buttigieg. But holy moley!
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Political Partisanship Is A Propaganda Lubricant” [Caitlin Johnstone]. “[T]ickling people’s egos with hate porn and illusory validation is the best way to get clicks and generate ad revenue… In a society that’s enslaved to egoic consciousness as ours is, the things that generate the most public interest will be those which flatter or infuriate common egoic constructs. This is not unique to politics; advertisers have raked in vast fortunes by associating products with common cultural mind viruses like body image issues and personal inadequacy, and TV show hosts like Jerry Springer and Maury Povich figured out decades ago that you can attract massive ratings by letting people feel smug and superior at the sight of poor and uneducated guests acting out emotionally. To make something go viral, it needs to appeal to the ego. Advertisers understand this. Media executives understand this. Propagandists understand this…. The solution to this, on an individual level, is to dismantle any egoic attachment you might have to either of the mainstream political factions which preserve the status quo…. And of course the ultimate solution to this problem is for humanity to awaken from the ego…. Since humanity’s collective problems ultimately boil down to the fact that sociopaths manipulate our minds at mass scale, such a transformation would make a healthy new world not just possible but inevitable.
“‘Attacks on me are attacks on science’: Fauci blasts critics in fiery TV appearance” [The Independent]. Fauci: “It’s very dangerous, Chuck, because a lot of what you’re seeing as attacks on me, quite frankly, are attacks on science. Because all of the things that I have spoken about consistently from the very beginning have been fundamentally based on science. Sometimes those things were inconvenient truths for people, and there was pushback against me. So if you are trying to get at me as a public health official and scientist, you’re really attacking not only Dr Anthony Fauci, you are attacking science. And anybody that looks at what is going on clearly sees that. You have to be asleep not to see that.” • These people have lost their minds. I do like it that Fauci has started referring to himself in the third person. That’s always a good sign.
“Laws Preventing Dark Money Disclosure Are Sweeping the Nation” [ReadSludge]. “In four states, laws were adopted this year that bar government agencies from requiring nonprofit organizations to report their donors, essentially codifying the campaign finance loopholes that have allowed for an explosion of ‘dark money’ in politics. …The four laws passed this year represent the acceleration of a trend dating back to 2018, when Arizona became the first state to prohibit itself from seeking to disclose the identities of nonprofits’ donors. Mississippi adopted a donor disclosure ban in 2019, and three states enacted them last year: Utah, Oklahoma, and Virginia. The states that adopted the laws in 2021 are Arkansas, Iowa, South Dakota, and Tennessee. Penalties for violating the laws vary between the states, but in some states could include prison sentences. Iowa’s law, for example, says that anyone who knowingly discloses nonprofit donors would be ‘guilty of a serious misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment for not more than ninety days or a fine of not more than one thousand dollars, or both.'” • If money is speech, why are we trying to make it so people can’t hear it?
“Bearing gifts instead of bad news, Newsom’s political fortunes rise as California reopens” [Los Angeles Times]. ““The recall thrived because of the pandemic, and now it’s going to wither because of the pandemic,” said Democratic political consultant Rose Kapolczynski, who was former Sen. Barbara Boxer’s chief campaign advisor. ‘In the end voters know the governor isn’t perfect, but he’s delivering on what they want most, which is reopening the state.’ Given California’s low coronavirus infection rates and high vaccination levels, Newsom’s move to rescind restrictions is likely to ensure the shutdowns and political errors that helped fuel dissension fade into memories by the time voters head to the polls, observers of state politics say. The state’s recovery, combined with the desire of Californians to get on with their lives, also drains oxygen from the recall effort.” • Plus you can’t beat something with nothing. Who’s the serious Republican alternative?
“People impersonating election officials are knocking on doors in Yavapai County, sheriff warns” [AZ Central]. “People are knocking on the doors of Yavapai County residents and asking how they voted in the last election, while falsely claiming to represent the county recorder’s office, sheriff’s office officials said. The mysterious door-to-door survey, which has alarmed local officials, comes after the U.S. Department of Justice warned the Arizona Senate against plans to canvass voters’ homes as part of an unprecedented review of November’s election. Meanwhile, backers of the Senate’s audit have organized their own such door-to-door efforts.” • Why can’t Republicans go to brunch, for a change?
Stats Watch
Construction: “May 2021 Residential Building Growth Rate Slows” [Econintersect]. “Headline residential building permits and construction completions rate of growth slowed. The rolling averages improved for both permits and construction completions.”
Carbon: “Top Oil Traders Say Emissions Market Could Challenge Crude” [Bloomberg]. “The world’s largest oil traders are gearing up to profit from buying and selling pollution permits, a market that could become bigger than crude as global leaders seek to limit the impact of climate change. The global carbon market has the potential to be 10 times the size of crude oil trading, said Hannah Hauman, global head of carbon trading at Trafigura Group, the second-largest oil and metals trader. Hedge fund Andurand Capital LLP — historically known for its fossil fuel bets — expects the cost of polluting to double before some new emissions-cutting technologies kick in. Oil traders including Vitol and Trafigura, as well as a host of hedge funds have been building up trading desks to profit from one of the hottest commodities trades of the year. Traders are bracing for tighter supplies as the European Union is preparing for the markets biggest reform to date to align emissions trading with a stricter climate goal for the next decade.”
Shipping: “May 2021 Sea Container Imports Sizzle” [Econintersect]. “The import container counts for the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach rate of growth continues in record territory. Exports are still having the worst year since 2009. Import container counts continue to surge. There is chaos in container movements with containers in the wrong place, COVID port shutdowns in China, and shortages of rail cars to move containers – however, the container situation again improved this month – but there continues a shortage of containers and unloading berths.”
Cash: “Cash use plunges during pandemic” [Financial Times]. “The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the decline of cash, with the volume of UK payments made using notes and coins plunging by 35 per cent in 2020 compared with the previous year. Annual payments data from UK Finance, the banking trade body, showed a corresponding rise in contactless payments, online transactions and the use of mobile “wallet” apps that store bank and card details. But the banking trade body said it was ‘too early to say’ if this would be a permanent change in consumer behaviour. Since 2017, cash use has been declining by about 15 per cent per year, so the latest figures represent a significant acceleration. During the pandemic, shoppers have been encouraged to ‘tap and pay’ to reduce contact owing to fears about the virus being transmitted via notes and coins.” • Which is entirely tendentious, since there’s no evidence whatever for fomite transmission. In fact, I’d argue that by increasing transaction times wherever there’s line, paying by phone or card increases the chances of airborne transmission.
Retail: “Amazon wants to make your life easier. Here’s how it’s changing grocery shopping” [CNN]. “Amazon wants to make grocery shopping as efficient as possible. So it’s eliminating checkout lines. The company announced Tuesday that will introduce what it calls Just Walk Out technology — which allows customers to pay for their groceries without waiting in line for a cashier — at its newest Amazon Fresh store. As they enter the new Fresh store’s entrance, customers who want to use the Just Walk Out option will be prompted to scan a QR code from their Amazon app, scan their palm or insert the payment card linked to their Amazon account. Anyone with an Amazon account can use the technology.” • “Scan their palm.” Oh, great. What do I do when my palm data is hacked? Get plastic surgery?
Retail: “Toxic ‘forever chemicals’ widespread in top makeup brands, study finds” [Guardian (Carla)]. “Toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” are widely used in cosmetics produced by major brands in the US and Canada, a new study that tested for the chemicals in hundreds of products found. The peer-reviewed study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, detected what the study’s authors characterized as “high” levels of organic fluorine, an indicator of PFAS, in over half of 231 makeup and personal care samples. That includes lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, foundation, concealer, lip balm, blush, nail polish and more. The products that most frequently contain high levels of fluorine include waterproof mascara (82% of brands tested), foundations (63%) and liquid lipstick (62%). … Products that were checked for individual PFAS compounds contained between four and 13 types in each. The study’s authors tested cosmetics made by dozens of brands, including L’Oréal, Ulta, Mac, Cover Girl, Clinique, Maybelline, Smashbox, Nars, Estée Lauder and more.” • Teen Vogue should show the way by refusing to take advertising from these companies or recommending their products editorially, So should all other fashion and beauty magazines, for that matter. I single out Teen Vogue because they seem to have retained some conscience.
Tech: “Unreliability At Scale” [DSHR’s Blog]. “The basic point I was making was that even if we ignore all the evidence that we can’t, and assume that we could actually build a system reliable enough to preserve a petabyte for a century, we could not prove that we had done so. No matter how easy or hard you think a problem is, if it is impossible to prove that you have solved it, scepticism about proposed solutions is inevitable.” From the comments: “So here we are, we’ve populated a massive cloud with single-thread computational resources that are inherently unreliable, if only at a small rate. It’s an interesting discussion as to whether one should solve this at a hardware, software, or some “middle-ware” place. But it seems clear that it should probably be solved.” Thanks, Amazon! Two horror stories, one from Facebook, one from Google. Look on my works, ye mighty…
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 46 Neutral (previous close: 51 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 50 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 16 at 1:14pm. Still stuck in neutral!
Health Care
“How to keep workers safe from COVID-19: Focus on the air they breathe” [The Globe and Mail]. “The Globe and Mail interviewed 20 experts in fields ranging from engineering to epidemiology, occupational hygiene, aerosol science, public health and microbiology, along with employers and unions about the growing evidence of airborne transmission, and the implications for workplaces. And yet that message has not, for the most part, trickled down to some provinces, public-health units, and employers. ‘It seems like Canada has been slower to … recognize airborne transmission and really resistant and almost hostile to the idea,’ said Linsey Marr, an engineering professor at Virginia Tech who is considered one of the world’s top aerosol scientists. She calls the evidence on COVID-19 and airborne transmission ‘overwhelming.’…. ‘People ‘are trying really hard. It’s just we’ve pointed them in the wrong direction,’ says David Fisman, professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, who is also a member of the Ontario COVID-19 Science Advisory Table and an infectious disease physician. ‘They’re cleaning the hell out of everything … spending millions, probably billions of person hours, cleaning surfaces, and it doesn’t change anything.'”
“The Lab Leak Theory Doesn’t Hold Up” [Foreign Policy (dk)]. “From the outside looking in, it seems the balance of probabilities has shifted. Where once, in early 2020, the overwhelming preponderance of evidence pointed toward COVID-19 being of natural origin, now the lab leak theory is gaining steam. But it’s a mirage. Despite proclamations to the contrary, there has been scant new, hard evidence pointing to the lab leak theory. What we have are the same conclusions drawn from China’s malign incompetence, the same pieces of circumstantial evidence, and a speculative theory. None of this means a lab leak is impossible. But the “growing evidence” simply isn’t there.” And: “One of the most effective parts of the lab leak theory is not the quality of evidence but the quantity. Bits and pieces are fired out at a rapid pace, some of them even contradicting each other, before they can be adequately discussed or broken down. Take the report of the sick lab workers: ‘What does it mean that three people, out of a large research staff, were sick with flu-like symptoms in flu season?’ Goldstein said. Snappy headlines highlighting that the workers ‘sought hospital care’ fall apart when the context is considered; in China, primary care is largely delivered through hospitals, and sick notes are compulsory for time off. Visiting a hospital in Wuhan was the equivalent of a trip to the doctor’s office in the United States.” • I know a Gish Gallop when I see one! Well worth a read.
“The promise of disease detection dogs in pandemic response: lessons learned from COVID-19” (Accepted Manuscript) [Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness]. “Disease screening by detection dogs show great promise as a non-invasive, efficient, and cost-effective screening method for COVID-19 infection. We explore evidence of their use in infectious and chronic diseases, the training, oversight, resources required for implementation, and potential uses in various settings. Disease detection dogs may contribute to the current and future public health pandemics; however, further research is needed to extend our knowledge and measurement of their effectiveness and feasibility as a public health intervention tool and efforts are needed ensure public and political support.”
America is back!
Clearing out the library books on a cruise ship with bumping nightlife to slow the spread of coronavirus is some real galaxy-brain stuff! pic.twitter.com/cB5BR23pa9
— Andrew Dunckelman (@andrewdunck) June 16, 2021
Please, no. My brain is melting.
The Conservatory
“Recording of the week: A Yanomami ceremonial dialogue” [Sound and Vision Blog]. “One of the recordings that stood out to me was his recording of wayamou – a type of ceremonial dialogue that the Yanomami use to negotiate relationships, maintain peace and resolve conflicts between different communities. Wayamou is conducted at night and is performed in pairs, with one member from each community taking part. One participant will lead, and depending on whether the communities are on good or bad terms, he will criticise and reprimand the other participant, or submit requests and proposals to them. The speaker will adopt a heavily metaphorical manner of speaking to conduct these conversations diplomatically and avoid addressing sensitive subjects too directly. The other participant will then repeat the phrases, words and syllables uttered by the speaker – sometimes identically and sometimes with slight variations – to show agreement with the speaker or at least an understanding of his point of view. Afterwards, the participants swap roles so both have a chance to speak. The pair is then replaced by series of other pairs and discussions continue throughout the night. It is a duel of persuasion and negotiation, where participants have the opportunity to put words, ideas and desires in each other’s mouth. Ideally, by dawn, solutions or compromises to the communities’ problems will have been reached. The controversial anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon once described wayamou as: ‘something like a fast game of Ping-Pong, with the melodic, staccato phrases as the ball.'”
Juneteenth
“Senate unanimously passes a bill making Juneteenth a federal holiday” [CNN]. “The legislation has gained momentum since the massive Black Lives Matter protests sparked by the police killing of George Floyd last year and the Democrats’ takeover of the White House and Congress. But Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson blocked the bill in 2020, saying that the day off for federal employees would cost US taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. Johnson dropped his objection this week despite his concerns, paving the way for the bill’s passage in the Senate. ‘Although I strongly support celebrating Emancipation, I objected to the cost and lack of debate,’ said Johnson in a statement. ‘While it still seems strange that having taxpayers provide federal employees paid time off is now required to celebrate the end of slavery, it is clear that there is no appetite in Congress to further discuss the matter.'”
Guillotine Watch
“When Pop History Bombs: A Response to Malcolm Gladwell’s Love Letter to American Air Power” [Los Angeles Review of Books]. Review of The Bomber Mafia. “This is not a story of two men, as Gladwell would have us believe, tempted like Jesus was by Satan during his 40 nights in the desert. It’s rather the story of top AAF leadership accepting and then implementing plans developed as early as 1943 to put Japan’s cities on their target list and systematically burn them down. Far from going rogue, LeMay was carrying out a plan set in motion by a group of statisticians, mid-ranking military officials, and bureaucrats in Washington, DC. The incendiary bombings of Tokyo that took place under both Hansell and LeMay were practice for the large-scale bombings planned as far back as October 1943, strategized by some of those same “Bomber Mafia” members that Gladwell extols as models of military morality. So much for LeMay giving into temptation in his Quonset hut on Guam. He was following orders. The only exceptional aspect of LeMay’s implementation of the 1944 plan to destroy Tokyo was his decision to fly the planes at a low altitude at night as they released their rain of fire onto the city. While Gladwell acknowledges that “planners back in Washington” came up with the idea to destroy Japan’s six largest cities, he spends no time exploring this phase. Doing so would upend the entire premise that LeMay was leading a pack of “wild animals” that burned down almost all of Japan’s other cities. It was never that simple.” • I’m filing this under Guillotine Watch because, well, Malcolm Gladwell.
Class Warfare
“Seeding by Ceding” [MacKenzie Scott, Medium (DG)]. “People struggling against inequities deserve center stage in stories about change they are creating. This is equally — perhaps especially — true when their work is funded by wealth. Any wealth is a product of a collective effort that included them. The social structures that inflate wealth present obstacles to them. And despite those obstacles, they are providing solutions that benefit us all…. we are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others. Though we still have a lot to learn about how to act on these beliefs without contradicting and subverting them, we can begin by acknowledging that people working to build power from within communities are the agents of change. Their service supports and empowers people who go on to support and empower others. Because community-centered service is such a powerful catalyst and multiplier, we spent the first quarter of 2021 identifying and evaluating equity-oriented non-profit teams working in areas that have been neglected. The result was $2,739,000,000 in gifts to 286 high-impact organizations in categories and communities that have been historically underfunded and overlooked.” • The NGOs are listed at the end. Oddly, or not, there are no unions among them. Are we really saying that essential workers are not “historically underfunded and overlooked”?
News of the Wired
There are times when, for me, Matisse approaches wallpaper. Pretty wallpaper, but wallpaper. Not this time:
Bouquet de Fleurs pour le Quatorze Juillet, 1919 #matisse #henrimatisse pic.twitter.com/z4AQq9ZoOr
— Henri Matisse (@artistmatisse) June 16, 2021
This is lovely, too:
Woman at Her Window, 1895, Pierre Bonnard pic.twitter.com/iiZGtB4pVS
— restot (@restot50) June 16, 2021
I love Twitter artbots. “Brighten my day” is a cliché, but they do. I recommend them.
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re: “‘Attacks on me are attacks on science’: Fauci blasts critics in fiery TV appearance.”
la science c’est moi / ;)
All that’s left is for him to issue a papal bull. Or excommunicate his critics from Science.
THAT’S “$CIENCE”
Since delusions of grandeur are apparently common place just let me say:
“Will no one rid us of this charlatan”.
No, sir, attacks on you could very well be a defense of science. It all depends on the basis of the attack. You have proven over and over that science is disposable if it doesn’t advance your personal ambitions. You lie for supposedly noble reasons that when closely examined make it clear that there is nothing noble about them.
Well said Pat. Starting with the mask lie, Fauci is only interested in feathering his own nest. Not much different from Birx in my opinion.
The immortal Robert Preston playing a sketchy Doctor in Blake Edward’s S.O.B.
Dr. Irving Finegarten : Hello Polly.
Polly Reed : Irving!
Dr. Irving Finegarten : You look like an anemic turtle.
Polly Reed : You’re gonna let that SHYSTER on?
Dr. Irving Finegarten : I could sue you for calling me that, Polly! A shyster is a disreputable lawyer. I’M a QUACK!
Emissions market could challenge crude? I am just a layman, but it seems to me that you can’t have an emissions market without emissions. And creating an emissions market is a clever way to enshrine the need for at least some emissions forever to keep the emissions market going forever. An “emissions market” is simply a platform for “emissions futures” as far as the eye can see.
The Full Metal Hansen Plan seems better to me, since its ultimate intent at least is to exterminate the fossil carbon energy industry from off the face of the earth.
Not mentioned in the article is the essential second part of the Hansenist plan: To impose an equivalent tariff on carbon imports. Every item to be taxed as containing a share of the exporters’ total wellhead+imported carbon budget proportional to the share of that budget in the country’s monetary GDP.
I have not heard that part mentioned, but it would be equally necessary. Both halves of the plan would be needed to achieve Critical Plan Mass.
The only way to implement the Hansen Plan is for America to defect from the Free Trade Rules Based Order first. If we abrogated or rejected every single Free Trade and Globalist Trade agreement we have or are in, then we will be unilaterally legally free to implement the both halves of the Hansen Plan at the same time, and prevent carbon dumping from our trading enemies and our domestic trading traitors using traiding enemy cover.
It is not nice to advocate rounding up thousands or maybe millions of Free Trade supporters and mass machine-gunning them into large pre-prepared pits and trenches and then covering them up with bulldozer dirt. But I don’t know how else we will be able to take America out of the Free Trade Rules Based Order.
So if we aren’t going to round up and physically exterminate all the Free Trade supporters within our National Borders, then we have to accept that there is no solution to Global Warming and we will just have to accept that Global Warming will run away to wherever it will run away to.
Time to stick our head in the freezer and kiss our ice goodbye.
The “other way” to enforce the “other half” of the Hansen Plan would be to forbid the import of any thing whatever from any country which does not adopt the same exact Hansen Plan down to the last jot and tittle under heavy handed American supervision and oversight in their countries.
That would prevent creative games with “tarriffs” which would certainly be gamed.
In practice that could mean the forbidding of any imports from anywhere in order to protect the Hansen Plan here. People may not want that but then they should not pretend they want to solve ” global warming”.
Because if you want to “solve” global warming but you want to keep Free Trade, you really don’t want to solve anything, and nothing will get solved in a Free Trade context.
Sorry about that. If it gets too hot to survive then just lie back and think of England.
Wow you must really dislike Buttigieg.
And sources say the lack of eye contact was really because Biden was momentarily staring off into space like the geezer he is (some of us do it all the time)
How can anyone be surprised that president-for-life Bushbama Trumpbiden is both jaded and a little demented? What else would you expect after 20 years in power?
“The Lab Leak Theory Doesn’t Hold Up” – sick lab workers…
European data is showing evidence of covid way earlier in 2019. There is the infamous March 2019 sewage sampling in Barcelona, but a cancer patient trial/study in Italy that saved blood samples now shows over 10% of people had covid as early as September 2019. That means 1,000’s of Italians in September versus a few lab workers in Wohan months later. If 10% of Italians showed it in September, it had to have been in Italy way earlier if you’re following the math. Sick lab workers in Wohan can’t be patient zero evidence despite the desired attempt to make them so.
https://www.livescience.com/coronavirus-circulating-italy-earlier-thought.html
Damn the data, I’m going with Jon Stewart on this one.
A guy I was talking to at the local (as in not Home Depot) lumber yard was pretty sure he, his wife and several co-workers had it in December 2019. This is in rural NH, albeit rural NH adjacent to an ivy league school and major teaching hospital, both of which have plenty of people traveling to far away places and bringing contagion back with them.
Similar boat here. Girlfriend works at the hospital and we both came down with a case we initially thought was the flu, a brutal form that lasted a couple of weeks. IIRC, this occurred a couple of month prior to the Wuhan lock down which I recall because as a prepper, I up my game at that time. No clue about covid, just expected some supply disruptions.
The parts of Italy that covid first showed up in were in the Fashion Industry North of the country. And the Fashion Industry in Italy is tightly tied to Chinese production personnell and businesses centered around Wuhan, China. And lots of people have been coming-going between Fashionville, Italy and Wuhan for the last some years. Or so I have read.
So maybe Fashionistas and Garmentos took it from Italy to Wuhan. Or from Wuhan to Italy.
Interesting! I did not realize that the fashion industry was the Wuhan-Italian link. The September 2019 sample signal fits the fact that the WIV’s database of 22,000 bat coronavirus sequences was taken off-line on September 12, 2019. https://theprint.in/science/wuhan-labs-deleted-data-unreported-pneumonia-cases-challenges-to-natural-origins-of-covid/671984/
Also OSINT-based data obtained shows blips in Google search, Wikipedia trends for terms “Coronavirus” and “SARS”, in Hubei province in Sept 2019 https://www.indiatoday.in/coronavirus-outbreak/story/covid-global-questions-wuhan-lab-leak-sars-origin-coronavirus-1803938-2021-05-18
About that–
https://www.euroweeklynews.com/2020/04/03/the-wuhan-connection-does-new-evidence-reveal-why-northern-italy-became-the-nations-coronavirus-epicenter/
In 2019, Chinese New Year was celebrated in early February.
https://www.calendardate.com/chinese_new_year_2019.htm
What was the tagline for those “Public Service Announcements” that used to show up on TV? Oh, right, “The more you know.”
Quoting from above: People are knocking on the doors of Yavapai County residents and asking how they voted in the last election, while falsely claiming to represent the county recorder’s office, sheriff’s office officials said.
To which I say: Back in 2016, someone from an organization called Mi Familia Vota came to my door. I’d already voted by mail, and she was quite interested in who I voted for.
Welp, I wasn’t about to give out that information. Why not? Because if Mi Familia Vota didn’t like how I filled out that mail-in ballot, they knew where I lived.
I was tempted to send this door knocker over to my friend Gloria’s house. She’s a staunch Republican and I’m sure that she would have had plenty to say about how her familia voted.
What happens if everyone in America is too embarrassed to admit that they voted for either one of these chuckleheads?
Maybe they start voting third party?
I know…I know. Let’s not get carried away.
What! And throw your vote away?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7NeRiNefO0 (1:12 mins)
Would democracy allow a third party? US democracy is usually binary.
I like how everyone gets excited about the voting process and ignores the restrictions the two major parties make on smaller parties getting on a ballot. I say anyone that files to run for office should be on the ballot.
I am not embarrassed to say I voted for Tweedledum this time around. I am thoroughly convinced that Tweedledee is an extremist and probably a tool of Putin.
JK, I voted third party. Don’t remember which one, and it doesn’t matter.
“‘Attacks on me are attacks on science’: Fauci blasts critics in fiery TV appearance”
Methinks he doth protest too much!
As for a Republican Governor in CA, one has to remember the last Republican Governor (Pete Wilson if I remember correctly) went after Hispanics, in a State which was then 51% Hispanic.
Bit of a “own goal” that was.
Arnold was more recent than Pete Wilson. Right now we are effectively a 1-party state.
So are no progressives challenging Newsom? That’s what I was hoping for.
The last Republican governor of CA was Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Pete Wilson was a staunch supporter of Prop 187, which was indeed transparent race-baiting aimed at Hispanics, specifically Mexicans (and Central Americans by extension). It passed by a solid margin of votes and was only struck down in the courts years later.
Wilson retired after serving two terms, being barred by CA term limits law from seeking a third. There was no “own goal” involved. It is true that after Wilson left office, CA then elected a Democrat, Gray Davis, to serve as governor. Whether that was on Davis’s own strengths or because his Republican opponent, Dan Lungren, was a hardline conservative is an open question, but it does seem indicative that Davis bungled the job so badly that he was removed from office by a recall. That recall is what gave us Schwarzenegger in the end.
So while changing channels today I caught a few minutes of Meghan McCain going off about Biden and Putin. Among the many reason that John McCain should rot in hell, one of them is that his bull shit has let his daughter pontificate in public.
Did you know that the whole reason for the Nordstream 2 is all so Putin can control Germany aka Europe by withholding their gas? And Joe Biden allowed it!
Much as I do not agree with most of Putin’s politics, I do consider him competent. Which frankly is apparently not of much importance for most of our political class. Corrupt, biddable, corporate whore all are of more importance than competent.
Nordstream is a prime example of this. Yes, it does give Russia more influence in European politics. However the US managed to hold this off for years. And during that time did they find a way to actually get Europe the fuel they needed and open that market which US companies wanted? Now I admit they were between a rock and a hard place in that Russia was closer, their route largely landbased, and they had more access to cost controls, but once again if Europe had readily available gas supplies from somewhere other than Russia Nordstream would not be a factor. Instead America just thought to big foot it.
If our press wasn’t so deeply destroyed, most of our leaders would be out of a job, both for corruption and for their incompetence. And that would happen before showing cognitive issues. But instead we get to elect the corrupt incompetent and infirm.
As an American, I support Nordstream II. Why? Because if Russia can send a Nordstream load of gas into Europe, that helps prevent a market in Europe for LNG from America. Preventing such a market will help keep NatGas prices in America low enough to finish the job of exterminating the thermal coal industry in America once and for all.
Two, Three, Many Nordstreams!
This freaking out about gas pipelines is nothing new. Back in 1982 the Russians made a deal with Europe to build a gas pipeline to connect the two and Reagan had a fit. There were threats against construction companies by his admin and sanctions to raise the costs but the Europeans made clear that the project was going to go ahead anyway so he backed off the next year-
https://www.upi.com/Archives/1982/06/19/Reagan-sanctions-aimed-at-crippling-Soviet-pipeline/2030393307200/
Cash: “Cash use plunges during pandemic” [Financial Times].
Many places I frequent have put up notices that say something to the effect that charges for using a credit card or debit card have increased by 3.5% due to covid.
Yep. The poor starving CEOs of Visa and Master Card can only afford a single Yacht and two mistresses.
Thanks for the info. I use cash as much as possible in locally owned stores and restaurants.
As for cc and dc card increased charges: this pandemic has been very very good to them. / ;)
I use cash as much as I can also. Yet, I have yet to see any emporium, except some enterprising gas stations, offer cash prices with a discount subtracted, as an alternative to card prices. I fear that those higher credit card imposts are being added to everyone’s retail prices. I see the real ‘improvement’ arising from using cash as being the lack of tracking that using a card opens one up to. So far, using cash doesn’t provide a price rebate.
And frustrating the Cashless Conspiracy and delaying their plans.
Also, any merchant keeps more of the money if it is cash than if it is charge. That several percent “swipe fee” charged by Big Carda can make a survival or bankruptcy difference to small merchants on the edge.
Did you know that the contract between a merchant and the card company includes a provision that the merchant is not allowed to give a discount for cash, nor add a fee for using plastic? That provision has been there at least since the ’70s, probably since the first credit card. Some merchants violate the contract at least some of the time, but that’s what they have agreed to.
I get the “sales tax” discount in small bodegas and my pizza parlor. I actually consider it the cash discount but that is how it works here. (Almost 9%)
Ah. What Lanbert calls “Systeme D.”
I wonder how much the general level of conformism in the local population has to do with this. Is there a correlation between the two? Sounds legit.
I fear that those higher credit card imposts are being added to everyone’s retail prices.
Yes, I think you’re right about absolute prices. However, I also think defending “mainstreet” locally owned businesses from monopolistic, nationalized, predatory financial assaults is worth paying the same price in cash vs cc or db to a national (aka near globalized) entity trying to drive out locally owned business.
The US states’ federal system of goverment is unlike any other govt system in the world. And we can use this to our democratic benefit, imo. And to the benefit of democracy in general.
My opinion only, the local is becoming increasingly important in the tug-of-war between democracy and globalism. If my dollar is my vote then I vote local democratic control. ( yes, I know, probably too backward looking in the futuristic scheme of things. Who knew democracy was ‘backward looking’? ) my 2 cents.
adding: “backward looking” to whom? / heh
adding, adding: The US is the one western country that I’m aware of (and please do correct me if I’m wrong) which rejects one-person (aka the monarch) one rule in its national polity.
I believe that the credit card companies don’t allow for price discounts for using cash. if a merchant wishes to accept cash he cannot offer a price lower than the credit card price. This is due to the leverage credit card issuers have over merchants since most people prefer to use charge cards, rather than cash.
Therefore, paying cash gives a small financial fortification to local merchants vs the nationally owned or controlled merchants. / :)
Ah ha! So, a near monopoly uses market share to enforce conformity at the local level. I know that, if left alone, many ‘local’ merchants will squeeze extra profits form a “captive” customer base. However, as noted above, such ‘local’ enterprises are much more vulnerable to concerted action from their customer base, ie. boycotts etc.
The National Government goes along with this. That says it all.
Several local outfits here either charge less if you pay cash, or, using the stick approach, more if you use a card. We also have a fabulous little summer burger/ice cream place that just re-opened under new owners. Cash only, as did their predecessors. My mechanic also only takes cash/checks, and his business does not seem to suffer.
fresno dan. Indeed. I have been getting a discount for use of cash each week at the family-owned store where I buy most of my groceries. As well as the pistachio mamoul, of course.
Heavens, as I commented just above, we do not see such price differentiation around here. What worker’s paradise do you and Jen live in? It sounds positively civilized!
ambrit, it’s The People’s Republic of the Upper Valley…Don’t know about DJG, Reality Czar though!
Around here, it’s more like “The Valley of the Gwangi.” Watch out for those rampaging allosaurs!
ambrit: Edgewater neighborhood of Chicago, which does indeed have strong Berkeley + Portlandia tendencies.
Now that I think about it, that stands to reason. You had the Haymarket Riots and the 1968, what today’s elites would portray as, Convention Insurrection.
Stay safe there by the ‘lower’ Gitchee Goomie. [It’s all one big lake, right?]
“Could you give me a subtotal on these items please?”
Done
“Cancel the sale–what’s the cash price?”
Smart small businesses use a calculator to add up what items cost.
fresno dan, thanks for reminding me to eat at the closer Mexican restaurant tonight. They offer a 4% cash discount through some kind of merchant processor program and I needed to go back to get a link for the good people of NC in case the restaurant has successfully exploited a loophole by putting the surcharge at one remove.
Cash discount at a local Indian restaurant, and that’s Northern Pesos.
I give my teenage children their allowance in cash.
It might be interesting to see a daily chart that tracks the number of new Covid cases among those that are fully vaccinated. Seeing as how many states are gung ho on opening everything back up, it would be very reassuring to know that the vaccines are indeed working as advertised.
In fact, if this were a real Phase 3 trial, that is exactly the information the drug sponsors and developers would be required to gather. Apparently though, the FDA told them, “Nah, don’t worry about it.” Curious.
At least one state, Washington, is doing this. I don’t know if the statistics are being made available publicly but the state is expressly looking for breakthrough cases and contact tracing them.
By way of an example of why it is important to track breakthrough infections, consider this: As of June 5, there have been 3,641 cases of COVID-19 among 3,500,011 fully vaccinated individuals in Massachusetts, according to the Department of Public Health.
In May, Massachusetts reported just over 3,000 breakthrough cases. In both May and June, about 1 out of every 1,000 people vaccinated there tested positive for Covid.
If those rates of breakthrough infection rates hold steady when applied to the 130,000,000 fully vaccinated people in the U.S., then you would expect the number of breakthrough cases nationwide would be about 135,000.
There’s no way to know what the true number is however, because the CDC changed its reporting guidelines May 1, announcing on its site that the:
Additionally, the CDC is not really sure how likely breakthrough cases are to spread Covid to others, saying only that:
I’m no scientist, but that seems like a pretty big matzo ball hanging out there to me.
According to a report on Yahoo News, People hospitalized with COVID-19 now have one overwhelming thing in common. They’re not vaccinated.
Two words: Arnold Schwarzenegger.
>>>the state’s recovery, combined with the desire of Californians to get on with their lives, also drains oxygen from the recall effort.” • Plus you can’t beat something with nothing. Who’s the serious Republican alternative?
Some questions and observations.
What happens when, as it probably will, whatever COVID variant explodes in the next six months? 1/3 of the state is Red and poor, and half of the remainder, while liberal or leftist, is certainly not the fanatic “nothing to see here/believe in the magical science” Professional Managerial Class. We will be right back to last year, only with more anger.
As to the Republicans, who knows? I should follow the California Republican Party, but God help me, every year they get more fanatical, more lost in their own Galtish libertarian fantasy. Any sane, thoughtful conservative cannot run because they are enmeshed in the insanity.
But the Democratic Party does exactly the same for the old fashioned liberals or actual leftists. Newsom, Pelosi, and McConnell really are the leadership of the Blob with the help of the help of the state and local party leadership. The various Bay Area counties’ political leadership are composed of corrupt, often vacuous, mental midgets doing their Kabuki dances.
So maybe I should go back to reading about the Orange County Republicans, go to the local Democratic jokes of a meeting, check out the Greens and the DSA again, but I always wanna go hit something afterwards. What good is my knowledge, if I can’t use it? It seems to me that we need a Neo-Progressive Party or at least a true Reform Party; it seems to be a fight between the extremely corrupt wealthy and their corporations, with their helpers the totalitarian neoliberals and the authoritarian alt-right, against everyone else regardless of their personal politics. Just maybe Americans, as a nation, are ready for the hard work needed for a movement or a new party. The Progressives were both.
“And of course the ultimate solution to this problem is for humanity to awaken from the ego…. ”
I’m tired of Caitlin Johnston’s harping on ego, even if I generally agree with her point that ultimately we can’t change society if we don’t change how we think. The problem is our neurology, and anyone (I’d argue everyone, because it’s our birthright, but many people can’t remember their very young childhood) who understands something about this neurological state knows that scolding people to drop their ego is egotistical itself. Just stop it.
OMG, I didn’t mean this:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-06-16/braintree-founder-s-helmet-size-hospital-aims-to-mine-mind-data
So, the incentive to understand our neurology is to mine data and compete with AI?
Nooooo
I don’t feel scolded by that article. Feel free to read ego as egotism, if that helps it make more sense, and if I were you I might leave a note for Ms. Johnstone directly on her blog, so that it looks more like constructive crit and less like a play for dominance.
Odd how these 111 lung cancer screenees all managed to remain asymptomatic, (and no follow up has been published). But don’t fret. We’ll always have pangolins…
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/science-blog/wet-market-sources-covid-19-bats-and-pangolins-have-alibi
Gotta love the headline on this Huffpost piece:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/infrastructure-deal-senate-democrats_n_60c92165e4b02ff4d854e514
‘Here Charlie Brown. You just run up and kick this football and I will hold it for you.’
‘OK.’
Lambert – You doubled-posted the COVID graphs at the top.
I think that there is more than one issue here. “How to Keep Workers Safe,” from our Canadian brethren and sistren.
It seems remarkably refreshing that the judicial system works in Canada. Imagine this: “Pressure to change could come from the courts. In a recent ruling, a Quebec court in March determined that health care institutions should have applied the precautionary principle, given risks of airborne transmissions of the virus, and provided staff with N95s. Now, the province is updating its guidance, to reflect the ruling, which will require more access to N95 masks.”
Given the craven U.S. judicial system, such enlightened decisions are unlikely here. Buy your own damn mask, pilgrim!
Also: There is another way to interpret this sentence (given U.S. conditions): “They’re cleaning the hell out of everything … spending millions, probably billions of person hours, cleaning surfaces, and it doesn’t change anything.’”
Let’s face it: We Americans discovered that in the U S of A public facilities are poorly taken care of. Buses and subways were filthy. Chicago’s buses and subways are much dirtier than those in NYC, for instance. Airplanes? Besides the breathing, does one truly want to sit in the filthy seats against a strangely sticky headrest? And restaurants: Well, maybe the endlessly complaining owners can take some time to clean up the kitchens and bathrooms.
Just as the pandemic had a benefit of no flu season over the winter of 2020-2021, it may be that cleaning of surfaces helps, too. At least I won’t adhere to the seat on Amtrak anymore.
It’s just that, after much investigation here by the writers who run Naked Capitalism, we know that coronavirus is airborne. (The main message of the article.)
But airplanes and airports in the US of A have been, and likely still are, filthy.
They need to require LIDS on public and workplace toilets.
Windows in places need to be able to be opened.
Many US hospitals and nursing homes refused to provide protective equipment to staff, forbade mask use by staff and fired people who dared to try and protect themselves by providing their own PPE. https://www.ccn.com/covid-19-unit-nurse-says-hospital-forbade-her-to-wear-n95-mask/
This country mostly sucks.
Palms, profits and prophets: Matthew 5:30 (King James Version) –“And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.”
So, there you have it, should the forces of evil hack a shopper’s palm scan, the way forward is clear, according to a thumped bible (if the thumper still has a hand). Hack right back.
If they start using body scans, gonna have to rethink this whole scanned thing. David Cronenberg had a Canadian romp with the topic back in ’81 with “Scanners.”
COVID-19 outbreak infects 138 children in remote Northern Ontario First Nation [Globe and Mail]
Shared air and not vaccinated seems to be a very bad combo.
Three horror stories if you count the blogger’ s discussion of silent storage corruption. My thoughts immediately turned to being on the wrong end of a data processing error with .
I wonder if people wrongly foreclosed upon in GFC can class action on this with the malfescant parties?(like use it as a way to get case in court again) Probably too late, or wouldn’t work anyway…
I wish I could “scanner” people. There are people who deserve a good “scannering”. We could solve some problems if we could ” do it the scanner way”.
AI at your (or someone’s) service. (and I mean that literally.) “who are you? Who, who. are you?” – The Who. /heh
I think about Minority Report, with Cruise in the lead role. Nope that future really isn’t for me! Great movie though.
A pre cog would have an appeal. Sports betting, for one (!)
I’ve scrolled through the list of 286 organizations that MacKenzie Scott has bequested. It must be amazing for many of them to receive a $10 million dollar unrestricted gift. I’m familiar with a few of the groups.
I read the New York Times article today about Scott’s giving and there was some minor pushback. But it’s remarkable for a rich person to give directly to groups, no foundation, no overhead, etc.
The Times also stated that even though Scott has given away over $8 billion in the past year, her fortune has increased from $36 billion at divorce to now $60 billion. Good for her.
Just catching up with the news, one catastrophe at a time.
Hillary Clinton, the Sage of Chappaqua and Font of Mediocrity in an Epoch of Delusion, emerges from her lair where she was busily writing that block-buster mystery novel (what happened to that manuscript, the one in which she defeats the Benighted Slavic Threat (dare I write roman à clef?) ?) to endorse Nina Turner’s opponent:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/558750-clinton-backs-shontel-brown-in-ohio-congressional-race
The amazing thing about working in the theater is that it is nearly impossible to write anything so thoroughly pointless and tawdry. Even the King and I, in which a Hillary Clinton ancestor teaches the King of Siam how to dance, isn’t this bad.
it’s a puzzlement…
With the site admins’ indulgence; a question for the medical workers here.
I went to my six month check up at the Community Clinic. I usually present with elevated blood pressure. (How elevated you ask? Try 148/98 today. I suffer from a bad case of “White Coat Syndrome.”) At home, self asdministered blood pressure checks average around 130/85 +/-.
Anyway, my question is one of methodology.
The first thing that happens to me at the clinic is blood drawing for the various disgnostics the medica desires to do regarding me. Then I am ushered into the examination room and immediately given a blood oxygen scan, (pulse oximiter,) and then blood pressure reading, (standard pole mounted electronic device.)
Is this usual in the field? Or, quite possibly, am I being more than usually paranoid where the clinic’s motivations are concerned? {This clinic is “associated” with one of the big hospitals in the area. I have noticed that all of the references for specialist work are guided to this institution.}
Oh well. Thanks for the information in advance.
Caveat; I understanfd that medical ethics might come into play concerning someone’s reply to my querry. Don’t be afraid to tell me so. Thanks again.
ambrit, I’m not in the medical field, but your visit sounds very routine–with the exception that the pulse oximeter and blood pressure is usually done first. You didn’t mention having your pulse and temperature measured, but that’s common as well. Also, for several years now I’ve requested that the blood work be electronically transmitted to Quest in advance of seeing my doctor so we know the lab results before we meet. It seems like a waste of my doctor’s time (and my money) to have to call me after my appointment to discuss any irregularities; but your experience is more typical. Although most of what you experienced is just good medical practice, it affects the insurance coding as well.
Thank you for the ‘reality check.’ I do tend to go off on tangents on occasion.
Armbrit
That is SOP in a visit. It sounds like everything was done to form.
And grayslady, thank you for being so courteous to get labs done ahead of time. It would be amazing if everyone did that. It is incredibly difficult to track every one around for results.
I never thought to have the lab work done ahead of time. It’s a good idea. It is also easier for those tests where a fasting state is needed. The time of testing can be managed more efficiently.
Thanks to both.
Incidentially, I was probably reacting to the present state of afairs where those paying closer attention to their medical experiences have probable cause for alarm and distrust. Trust in one’s medical practitioner is difficult to maintain in the best of times. Today, oh boy.
Whitmire: Alabama lawmaker wants to ban critical race theory, so I asked him what it is
https://www.al.com/news/2021/06/whitmire-alabama-lawmaker-wants-to-ban-critical-race-theory-so-i-asked-him-what-it-is.html
Governor of NB also having some difficulty along these lines.
https://omaha.com/news/state-and-regional/govt-and-politics/gov-ricketts-says-he-is-opposed-to-critical-race-theory/article_75734a0e-cdfe-11eb-8164-0764e9d9a0db.html
“Hunter Biden’s art to sell as high as $500K and the buyers will be kept ‘confidential'”
Two people will hate this headline. George Bush will be teed off and ask why he is not being offered like sums for his own artwork. Meanwhile, Barack Obama will kick and berate himself for not thinking of such an obvious scam to launder his own bribe money.
I don’t think Hunter Biden will have free time anymore for painting: President Biden Announces Putin Meeting Was A Success, Hunter Now Has A Job With Russian Pipeline
If any other person than Hunter Biden was saying this he would have been cancelled-
https://sputniknews.com/us/202106161083171178-no-yellow-hunter-biden-slammed-for-racism-as-media-releases-his-alleged-texts-with-cousin/
I’m glad my day is getting started and breakfast awaits. Otherwise I might have lost any recent contents from my belly!
Give me a break. My belief in our elites reaches new daily lows.
“Biden Could Cancel Student Loan Debt Right Now By Signing an Executive Order”
I’m sure that he will do that. Just as soon as he repeals the Crime Bill.
Here’s an interesting bit, researchers found an intentional backdoor built in to the encryption used for GPRS, the protocol used by mobile phones in ‘2G’ mode. As they say, the odds of this being a chance flaw are negligible.
Cryptanalysis of the GPRS Encryption Algorithms GEA-1 and GEA-2
“The Biden administration is looking forward, not back.”
Congressional Democrats said they are no longer seeking records of former President Donald Trump’s private meetings with Putin, despite previous concerns Trump tried to conceal details of their conversations.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/summit-secret-happened-helsinki-putin-trump/story?id=78273344
– – –
All I can say to that is: LOL!!! The Resistance is gonna have a meltdown when they find out Dems don’t care about Russiagate anymore. It’s just too perfect. The use of the same words Obama used to dismiss Bush era war crimes is a rotten cherry on top.
If you want to read some of the meltdown here’s a fun Twitter link that’s blowing up with Liberal shock and dismay:
https://twitter.com/bensiegel/status/1405113725879730184?s=21
Make sure you have tissues. You’ll be crying you’re gonna laugh so hard! Five years of Maddow-watching has just been derailed and the train is crashing through crazy town.
Where have I heard that one before? Didn’t Obama say just about the same thing Meeks said back in 2009. He wasn’t gonna investigate George W. Bush’s war crimes cause I guess it would hurt W.’s feelings. At least the Dems are consistent.
So consider the issue of unreliability at scale intersecting with the intense computation done to “train” self driving cars. I wonder how well that will end? What are the odds the NTSB could ever unravel that kind of accident? Trust the manufacturer? (Telsa, Uber, whoever.)
There is another aspect to data unreliability at scale: Single Event Upsets (SEUs) caused by background radiation events. As transistor size is reduced in large scale integrated circuits, voltage levels are reduced as well. The voltage difference between logic levels is reduced to 1.8, 1.2 or even well under 1V. The transistor gate charges have become so small that the passage of a cosmic ray will change its state, causing errors. (This is an effect well known in space, where cosmic radiation is much more intense.) Error correcting schemes (error correcting codes, redundant computing, etc.) are used to reduce errors in mission critical applications, but e.g. redundant computing is likely to be too costly for consumer applications. Moreover, having to add logic to compensate for possible errors begins to negate the power saving and speed benefits of using the low voltage logic in the first place.
Electronics that goes into space is never the latest generation. Older chips, with their larger transistors..and flight heritage, are almost always used because they are more reliable.
Regarding data storage, cosmic rays and background radiation have the same effect on EEPROM (memory sticks, SSDs, etc.) and magnetic storage systems. “Soft” bit flips are common occurrences. Depending on radiation dose over time, permanent damage to the hardware also accrues. As long as the data is not too corrupted, the error correction schemes built into the storage devices can recover the data. That’s why disks and memory devices seem so reliable. However, once a certain level of damage is reached, the data becomes irretrievably corrupted. In short, archival storage of electronic media is an absolute nightmare, requiring high levels of redundancy and constant maintenance (copying to new media on a regular basis).
Matisse: And you know what the “quatorze de juillet” is, right? Bastille Day. Painted in celebration of the mob that stormed the Bastille, starting the French Revolution. Not just a pretty picture. “Liberté, equalité, fraternité” mes sœurs et frères.