By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
European Starling, Devínske jazero – chatová oblasť, Bratislavský kraj, Slovakia. A steam train whistle in the background, I swear!
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
2024
“Trump to appear at CNN town hall in New Hampshire” [CNN]. “Former President Donald Trump will participate in a CNN presidential town hall next week in New Hampshire, the network announced Monday. ‘CNN This Morning’ anchor Kaitlan Collins will moderate the event at St. Anselm College, which will air at 8 p.m. ET on May 10 and will feature the former president taking questions from New Hampshire Republicans and undeclared voters who plan to vote in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.”
“Trump Likely to Sit Out One or Both of First Two G.O.P. Debates” [New York Times]. “In private comments to aides and confidants, Donald J. Trump has indicated he does not want to breathe life into his Republican challengers by sharing a debate stage with them.”
“Biden vs. Trump in 2024? Don’t Be So Sure” [Wall Street Journal]. “But here is the real point of this column. If it starts to seem clear that America is once again locked into a Trump-Biden race, I think the electorate is going to get frisky. I don’t see people just accepting it. I see pushback and little rebellions. Two examples: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who announced last week, this week hit 19% support among Democratic voters. That’s a lot! Especially for a guy who’s been labeled a bit of a nut. (He has been a leader of the idea that childhood vaccines are connected to autism.) But his larger general message would appeal to the edges of left and right, and blends into the general populist mood: Corporations and the government are lying to you, playing you for a fool… I say watch him. He is going to be a force this year. Second, watch a third-party bid. The centrist group No Labels says it’s provisionally attempting to get on the ballot in all 50 states. We’ll see how that works. But a third party, if it comes, could have real and surprising power in this cycle. I am the only person I know who thinks this but, again, look at people’s faces when you say it will be Trump or Biden. Independents now outnumber members of each party. No hunger for a third-party effort is discernible in the polls. So the effort would have to blow people out of their comfortable trenches and make them want to go over the top to seize new ground…. If you think the country is in trouble and needs another slate of candidates, do it. No ambivalence, no guilt about spoiling it for the lesser of evils. If you’re serious, go for it. Look at the other two guys as spoilers.” • Whatever the No Labels folks are doing, it won’t be going “over the top” and seizing “new ground.”
Republican Funhouse
Democrats en Déshabillé
Patient readers, it seems that people are actually reading the back-dated post! But I have not updated it, and there are many updates. So I will have to do that. –lambert
I have moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Party (“the Democrat Party is a rotting corpse that can’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated post, to which I will periodically add material, summarizing the addition here in a “live” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It turns out that defining the Democrat Party is, in fact, a hard problem. I do think the paragraph that follows is on point all the way back to 2016, if not before:
The Democrat Party is the political expression of the class power of PMC, their base (lucidly explained by Thomas Frank in Listen, Liberal!). It follows that the Democrat Party is as “unreformable” as the PMC is unreformable; if the Democrat Party did not exist, the PMC would have to invent it. If the Democrat Party fails to govern, that’s because the PMC lacks the capability to govern. (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” of course.) Second, all the working parts of the Party reinforce each other. Leave aside characterizing the relationships between elements of the Party (ka-ching, but not entirely) those elements comprise a network — a Flex Net? An iron octagon? — of funders, vendors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with assets in the press and the intelligence community.
Note, of course, that the class power of the PMC both expresses and is limited by other classes; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial model’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to mind. Suck up, kick down.
* * *
Realignment and Legitimacy
“She grew up believing she was White. It was a lie” [WaPo]. “Soon after I was filling out a form for school and saw the word “Caucasian.” I didn’t know what it meant, so I brought the form to my father. He said to mark myself Caucasian, which meant White. That seemed logical, judging by my skin color, which at the height of summer was no darker than caramel. And, my father was clearly White himself. In high school the bullying continued. Kids stuck pencils in my hair, called me rat’s nest, and said I had pubic hair growing out of my head. I was basically undateable. More and more, my classmates asked me, ‘What are you?’ So I went to my father again, sensing that people were not satisfied with my answer that I was White. ‘Well, Mom is actually part Cherokee,’ he said this time. ‘That’s where she got her skin tone … but don’t ask her about that, okay?’ I nodded. That made sense to me. I already understood that race was a sensitive subject, like sex or money. Not polite conversation. During my sophomore year of college, after dozens of more people had plunged their hands into my hair and called me Don King, I suspected my father wasn’t telling me the whole truth. People even asked me point-blank if I was Black.” • Sounds like she needs race-affirming care*. See Adolph Reed here, if you have not. NOTE * To spell out the irony: Sex is far more imbricated in biological realities than race is, if indeed race has any biological reality at all, and yet the first is treated as fluid and mutable, and the second is treated as permanent and immutable. It’s very odd.
#COVID19
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. We are now up to 50/50 states (100%). This is really great! (It occurs to me that there are uses to which this data might be put, beyond helping people with “personal risk assessments” appropriate to their state. For example, thinking pessimistically, we might maintain the list and see which states go dark and when. We might also tabulate the properties of each site and look for differences and commonalities, for example the use of GIS (an exercise in Federalism). I do not that CA remains a little sketchy; it feels a little odd that there’s no statewide site, but I’ve never been able to find one. Also, my working assumption was that each state would have one site. That’s turned out not to be true; see e.g. ID. Trivially, it means I need to punctuate this list properly. Less trivially, there may be more local sites that should be added. NY city in NY state springs to mind, but I’m sure there are others. FL also springs to mind as a special case, because DeSantis will most probably be a Presidental candidate, and IIRC there was some foofra about their state dashboard. Thanks again!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
MT wusses out (RM):
Biden ending the Covid Public Health Emergency is the driver; no doubt other states will drop out too….
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (9), JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, otisyves, Petal (5), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Utah, Bob White (3).
Look for the Helpers
“Our Covid Data Project Is Over, but the Need for Timely Data Is Not” [New York Times]. “The authors helped lead the effort to build the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.” More: “The four of us spent the last three years immersed in collecting and reporting data on Covid-19 from every corner of the world, building one of the most trusted sources of information on cases and deaths available anywhere. But we stopped in March, not because the pandemic is over (it isn’t), but because much of the vital public health information we need is no longer available.” • Watching the data sources go dark is breaking my heart. And yet another essential piece of infrastructure with a fragile institutional base (see here).
“Find mental health support that’s sensitive to the realities of living through COVID-19” [COVID-Conscious Therapist Directory]. • United States, Canada, International. Once again, we need a “Green Book” where all this material is aggregated.
Maskstravaganza
Report from the field:
If the state of South Carolina still has hospitals that are requiring masks, I know it’s still a major problem. Because if there is one thing that Republican run state is going to do, is Republican. So to trying to get me to believe it’s no longer a major issue won’t work.
— AshleyStevens (@The_Acumen) May 2, 2023
Very interesting:
If the state of South Carolina still has hospitals that are requiring masks, I know it’s still a major problem. Because if there is one thing that Republican run state is going to do, is Republican. So to trying to get me to believe it’s no longer a major issue won’t work.
— AshleyStevens (@The_Acumen) May 2, 2023
Can readers confirm?
Once again, whatever demonic force got ineffective masks into the ClipArt representations of masks richly deserves whatever they were paid:
Canva definitely needs some other mask designs, but this is nothing new. https://t.co/AE8rUSPQ5i
— Fit Test the Planet (@FitTestMyPlanet) May 2, 2023
Literally every Covid poster or graphic I have seen uses masks with earloops, not headstraps. That’s the message being sent: Wear a mask that fails fit tests easily. Then we say: “Masks don’t work!”
Good question:
It's like asking whether you want the restaurant staff to wash their hands after going to the bathroom. https://t.co/Li3p94t0kL
— Simon Spichak (he/him) (@SpichakSimon) May 3, 2023
Testing
More evidence for the Hague Tribunal:
Aaand there it is. The deal has been sealed. Hospitals are no longer required to report hospital-acquired COVID to CDC. I guess now hospitals can get away with infecting their own patients with SARS-CoV-2, CDC does not care. 🙈🙉🙊https://t.co/TGoYf12QiY
H/t @CapitolineTriad pic.twitter.com/1VvfDN4ifL
— Noha Aboelata, MD (@NohaAboelataMD) May 3, 2023
Bring on the lawyers!
Lawsuits do seem necessary. And peer/community organizing. At this point in the AIDS epidemic groups began forming: "Mobilization Against AIDS" in SF, "Gay Men's Health Crisis" in NY and some years later "AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power" or ACT-UP. Giving up was/is not an option.
— Timothy Vollmer, Ph.D. (@TimothyVollmer) May 3, 2023
It would be nice to see an organization as militant as ACT-UP appear (or militant until Fauci defanged them). Heaven knows there’s provocation enough. It’s also occurred to me that hospital administrative offices would be a worthy site for direct action, though I’ve been unable to think of a harmless substance to make aerosol spread vivid and concrete. Obviously not spray paint. Flour? Fog machines?
Scientific Communication
No creepier than living on the stupidest timeline:
I'm gonna say something creepy I thought the day I started hearing "we have to learn to live with the virus".
They could have said, with the same smile, "we have to learn to live with active shooters".— Xabier Ostale (xabitron1@mastodon.social) (@xabitron1) May 3, 2023
Sequelae
“Multiomic characterisation of the long-term sequelae of SARS survivors: a clinical observational study” [eClinical Medicine]. SARS, mind you, not SARS-CoV-2. N = 14. Nevertheless: “Fatigue was the most common symptom in SARS survivors 18 years after discharge, with osteoporosis and necrosis of the femoral head being the main sequelae. The respiratory function and hip function scores of the SARS survivors were significantly lower than those of the controls. Physical and social functioning at 18 years was improved compared to that after 12 years but still worse than the controls. Emotional and mental health were fully recovered. Lung lesions on CT scans remained consistent at 18 years, especially in the right upper lobe and left lower lobe lesions. Plasma multiomics analysis indicated an abnormal metabolism of amino acids and lipids, promoted host defense immune responses to bacteria and external stimuli, B-cell activation, and enhanced cytotoxicity of CD8+ T cells but impaired antigen presentation capacity of CD4+ T cells.” • It’s just like the flu!
Elite Maleficence
So CDC holds a crowded event for top epidemiopistological brain geniuses in a closed, crowded space with people in close contact who are not masking. Some of the brain geniuses then get Covid. But why??????? Commentary:
So, this has been happening to hospitals and schools on a regular basis, and CDC didn't care, but when it happens to CDC staff, an investigation is launched……
— Joan 🇮🇪 (@JoanH1999) May 2, 2023
Always remember, however, that the Newton School system — where both Jha and Walensky’s children go — spent a million bucks on ventilation against Covid starting on September 20, 2020. The elite knows the score, and knew it early. #CovidIsAirborne! But what will the MMWR will say?!??!?
The first thing we do is, let’s talk nicely to all the school administrators:
One the 60 is wearing mask. The administrator finally comes out and calls the names of three kids and asks them to meet her at the stairs. She hands them a number and says to go on ahead in and sit in the front. So, I ask her (she’s the one who assured me my daughter 2/
— Ashley S. 😷 🟧 (@sassyashieOG) May 2, 2023
* * * “In Support of Universal Admission Testing for SARS-CoV-2 During Significant Community Transmission” [Open Science Framework Preprints].
“Many hospitals have stopped or are considering stopping universal admission testing for SARS-CoV-2. We discuss reasons why admission testing should still be part of a layered system to prevent hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infections during times of significant community transmission. These include the morbidity of SARS-CoV-2 in vulnerable patients, the predominant contribution of presymptomatic and asymptomatic people to transmission, the high rate of transmission between patients in shared rooms, and the data suggesting surveillance testing is associated with fewer nosocomial infections. Preferences of diverse patient populations, particularly the hardest hit communities, should be surveyed and used to inform prevention measures. Hospitals’ ethical responsibility to protect patients from serious infections should predominate over concerns about costs, labor, and inconvenience. We call for more rigorous data on the incidence and morbidity of nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 infections and more research to help determine when to start, stop, and restart universal admission testing and other prevention measures.”
The authors are all from Boston: Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Boston Children’s Hospital. Walensky was from Mass General. So this article should get Walensky’s attention, if she has a shred of integrity. Oh, wait…. NOTE I disagree with the theory behind the article. Even the saner factions in the public health establishment are trying to turn the knobs for masking up and down, based here on community transmission (not “levels,” fortunately). It’s like they think they’re the Fed with teh money supply. I think these guys would have to be a lot smarter about messaging and a lot more trusted for that to work. In my view, the effort should be to make masking a cultural norm. If not for Covid, then for flu. If not for flu, then for PM2.5. If not for PM2.5, then for wildfire smoke. If not for any of those, then for the next airborne pathogen.
“pamphlet.pdf” [UAE Exotic FaIconry & Finance]. A write-up with which I don’t agree in every detail (Section VIII, on Paxlovid) but which is admirably concise. (The account is brilliant parody — “We provide large capital commercial entities, Sovereign funds, and falcon owners with falcons and falcon related derivative financial products” — with a Covid side hustle.
Lambert here: I’m getting the feeling that the “Something Awful” might be a sawtooth pattern — variant after variant — that averages out to a permanently high plateau. Lots of exceptionally nasty sequelae, most likely deriving from immune dysregulation (says this layperson).
Case Data
NOT UPDATED From BioBot wastewater data from May 1:
Lambert here: Unless the United States is completely, er, exceptional, we should be seeing an increase here soon. UPDATE Indeed, a slight uptick. Let’s wait and see. A chart of past peaks:
For now, I’m going to use this national wastewater data as the best proxy for case data (ignoring the clinical case data portion of this chart, which in my view “goes bad” after March 2022, for reasons as yet unexplained). At least we can spot trends, and compare current levels to equivalent past levels.
Variants
NOT UPDATED From CDC, April 29, 2023. Here we go again:
Lambert here: Looks like XBB.1.16 is rolling right along. Though XBB 1.9.1 is in the race as well.
Covid Emergency Room Visits
From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, from April 29:
NOTE “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.” So not the entire pandemic, FFS (the implicit message here being that Covid is “just like the flu,” which is why the seasonal “rolling 52-week period” is appropriate for bothMR SUBLIMINAL I hate these people so much. Anyhow, I added a grey “Fauci line” just to show that Covid wasn’t “over” when they started saying it was, and it’s not over now. Notice also that this chart shows, at least for its time period, that Covid is not seasonal, even though CDC is trying to get us to believe that it is, presumably so they can piggyback on the existing institutional apparatus for injections.
Positivity
A kind reader discovered that Walgreens had reduced its frequency to once a week. No updates, however, since April 11.
Deaths
NOT UPDATED Death rate (Our World in Data):
Lambert here: WHO turned off the feed? Odd that Walgreen’s positivity shut down on April 11, and the WHO death count on April 12. Was there a memo I didn’t get?
Total: 1,161,387 – 1,161,164 = 223 (223 * 365 = 81,395 deaths per year, today’s YouGenicist™ number for “living with” Covid (quite a bit higher than the minimizers would like, though they can talk themselves into anything. If the YouGenicist™ metric keeps chugging along like this, I may just have to decide this is what the powers-that-be consider “mission accomplished” for this particular tranche of death and disease).
Excess Deaths
NOT UPDATED Excess deaths (The Economist), published April 23:
Lambert here: Based on a machine-learning model. (The CDC has an excess estimate too, but since it ran forever with a massive typo in the Legend, I figured nobody was really looking at it, so I got rid it. )
Stats Watch
Commodities: “Copper Mine Flashes Warning of ‘Huge Crisis’ for World Supply” [Bloomberg]. “Oyu Tolgoi, in southern Mongolia just north of the Chinese border, is key to Rio’s efforts to move beyond its dependence on iron ore and expand in copper, the metal that underpins the clean energy transition. It’s also a vast deposit whose corporate, political and technical vicissitudes offer a glimpse of the red metal’s troubled future. As demand for copper surges, supply is increasingly likely to come from mines like this one on the arid steppe: expensive, technically complex, outside traditional copper jurisdictions and operating under the eye of governments jealously guarding their natural resources…. Analysts at Wood Mackenzie estimate a greener world will be short about six million tons of copper by next decade, meaning 12 new Oyu Tolgois need to come online within that period. But they aren’t — there are simply not enough new mines, much less enough large ones. The result is a gap: BloombergNEF estimates appetite for refined copper will grow by 53% by 2040, but mine supply will climb only 16%. The world’s largest miners aren’t standing idly by. After more than a decade of repenting for the excess that followed the China-led boom in demand in the 2000s, deals are back, with green metals in buyers’ sights.” • Yes, but talking their books? Can readers comment? Handy chart:
We are heading towards a train wreck. pic.twitter.com/6jeBwrHmYu
— Robert Friedland (@robert_ivanhoe) March 24, 2023
Commodities: “Copper industry warns of looming supply gap without more mines” [Reuters]. “The world’s appetite for copper to build most electronic devices will exceed supply over the next decade and imperil climate targets unless dozens of new mines are built, executives and analysts said this week at a key industry conference. The forecast lays bare the growing tension over where and how the world can procure metals for the green energy transition, including copper, one of the best electrical-conducting metals that is widely used in motors, batteries and wiring…. ‘There is no way for the world to meet the terms of the Paris climate agreement if we don’t have an increase in the supply of copper and other metals,” Joshua Meyer of mining equipment maker FLSmidth (FLS.CO), referring to the climate accord that aims to limit greenhouse gas emissions by keeping the global temperature rise “well below” 2.0 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) this century. Regulatory approval for new copper mines has fallen to the lowest in a decade, according to Goldman Sachs (GS.N), an ominous harbinger as mines often take 10 to 20 years to permit and build. Goldman expects surging copper demand to push prices to $15,000 a tonne by 2025, 67% above current levels. Much of the new demand is expected to come from electric vehicles, which are built with far more copper than internal combustion engines. But without enough copper, EV manufacturers could use less than expected or even turn to aluminum, analysts warned.” • Dr. Copper, heal thyself! (It’s interesting that the “green energy transition” requires massive expansion of perhaps the world’s ugliest industry: Mining.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 53 Neutral (previous close: 61 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 54 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated May 2 at 1:53 PM ET.
Guillotine Watch
“Jeffrey Epstein Documents, Part 2: Dinners With Lawrence Summers and Movie Screenings With Woody Allen” [Wall Street Journal]. Oddly, I can’t find an article for “Part 1.” More:
Among the new details:
- Mr. Summers continued to meet with Epstein and seek his help years after Harvard decided it would no longer accept his donations.
- Reid Hoffman, a billionaire venture capitalist and LinkedIn co-founder, visited Epstein’s private island in the Caribbean and was scheduled to stay over at his Manhattan townhouse in 2014.
- Woody Allen, the Oscar-winning movie director, attended dozens of dinners with his wife, Soon-Yi Previn, at Epstein’s mansion and invited Epstein to film screenings.
- Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, visited Epstein dozens of times and accepted flights on Epstein’s private jet while visiting Epstein’s mansions in Florida and New York.
- Leon Black, the billionaire co-founder of private-equity giant Apollo Global Management, scheduled more than 100 meetings with Epstein from 2013 to 2017.
Normally, I want relationships specified and typed, not just pointed to. However, Epstein was so odiferous, it’s hard to see how many meeting with him at all could be untainted. And if those who met with him didn’t see that, well….
Class Warfare
“One-third of US nurses plan to quit profession: report” [Reuters]. “The survey of over 18,000 nurses, conducted by AMN Healthcare Services Inc in January, showed on Monday that 30% of the participants are looking to quit their career, up 7 percentage points over 2021, when the pandemic-triggered wave of resignations began. The survey also showed that 36% of the nurses plan to continue working in the sector but may change workplaces. ‘This really underscores the continued mental health and well-being challenges the nursing workforce experiences post [sic] pandemic,’ AMN Healthcare CEO Cary Grace told Reuters in an interview.” • A staffing company. But whatever. We’ve got AI and robots!
“Q&A with Albert Phelps: The rise of the ‘prompt engineer’ and why it matters” [World Economic Forum]. Albert Phelps is a “prompt engineer”:
How does AI augment the work you do?
It’s very much a human-in-the-loop design. It’s a dialogue that you have between yourself and the LLM as you’re trying to test it and give it suggestions.
There are different techniques for prompting, so I would start off with a “zero-shot prompt”. That is essentially me distilling the task into a series of instructions that the model is then supposed to follow, without examples. Then we’ll have a look and say, “Well, it was good at this part of the task, but it wasn’t so good at this part of the task”. So then you might give the model an example of that task being performed. Many of my use cases have been in financial services and banking because that’s my background.
I know more than the LLM about a topic or at least have knowledge parity, which is important because you need to be able to spot where the model is getting the answers right and where it’s getting them incorrect. Once you’ve written the prompts and incorporated that within an application, and the model’s consistently following it, I would still want a human in the loop as that is going into production because this is a new technology with associated risks.
Mr. Phelps seems not to understand that we live under capitalism. Capital will remove the human from the loop as fast as possible, not least because these humans command high wages. In any case, the “right” answers are the profitable answers. That’s always been the tendency, but there have been countervailing forces and centers of relative of autonomy (professional guilds, for example, which are dead in the AI crosshairs). We have never generated bullshit at scale, and Phelps and his ilk will not be able to prevent that from happening.
News of the Wired
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63 comments
Comments are closed.
Lambert, you have open bold tag right before the line “How does AI augment the work you do?”
fixed it. Thanks!
Since Water Cooler takes all topics this from Andrew Cockburn is great. Rather than steal his entire post how about just the punch line.
https://spoilsofwar.substack.com/p/secret-historical-fun-facts
p.s. feeling very boldface as i write this
Thank you for this! I just read it aloud to R!! Don’t eject. I hope it’s a true story. (Always doubting)
Dunno if it’s true but I’ve read that he had a suicide capsule but declined using it.
That’s a good story.
And to think there was a time when I would have doubted this story. Now even from Cockburn, my reaction is “of course”.
You can trust the CIA like a hole in the head – sometimes literally.
“It’s a dialogue that you have between yourself and the LLM as you’re trying to test it and give it suggestions.”
It’s fun training new hires how to replace you. /s
Ashley Stephens tweet is duplicated.
Grassley was just on Fox News with an announcement that he and Chairman Comer of the House Oversight Committee were demanding an internal FBI document about an investigation of Joe Biden being bribed by a foreign individual when he was VP. Grassley said the information about the document’s existence came from whistleblower(s), and claimed that the document was currently unclassified. He expressed concern that that status would soon change.
They’re also trying to call Blinken to testify about his call to Morel about Hunter’s laptop.
Pretty amazing if Grassley isn’t being set up (remembering Mike Wallace and W’s ANG records). If there really was an investigation with a paper trail for the duration of Trump’s term, it really shows how little control Trump had of his administration.
Dan Rather…
I mean, by their (lack of) actions, the powers that be have said “we have to learn to live with active shooters”. Just in not so many words.
Lambert, you ask us to confirm a tweet that you describe as “very interesting” under the covid-19 heading. But we can’t because that tweet did not display correctly. ..
What the data says about gun deaths in the U.S. Pew Research
Scroll down to the line graph; it’s rather ominous in its verticality.
Pew usual does good research even if they have a bias. I can count on their research, reports, and conclusions to be both reliable and honest, which is really, really nice. I might quibble or just disagree, but I don’t have to stress out about possibly reading complete bull manure, unlike with the CDC.
It is interesting to see that the rate of guns deaths both as homicides and suicides had been going down since their hight in the late 60s with a temporary upswing during, I guess, the Crack Wars. Then came the Great Recession of 2008 with its bump upwards, followed by Covid and both suicides and murder just rocketing up. However, what is really scary is that while the rate in gun deaths are roughly the same as the hight of five decades earlier, the number of mass shootings while still very small in comparison to total deaths, just overwhelms the number of mass shootings of the early high. There is just a complete difference. People in our society are being driven homicidally insane.
The fans in the stands looked up from their phones, in anticipation of the big showdown.
It was late in the game for the Regional bankers, down 2-1 in extra innings. Down to their last at bat, they rested their hopes on the Mighty PivotMonger. Although the Monger had been in a recent slump, some fans no doubt recalled his tremendous string of home runs against pitchers Bernanke, Yellen, and Greenspan.
On the mound, the legendary crusher of PivotMonger dreams, Jerome Powell kicked at the mound and glared at the batter, with his best Tom Brady game face.
The stadium was still and quiet as Powell delivered the first pitch:
STRIKE ONE! (25bps fastball, right over the plate)
The crowd groaned. The Monger stepped back from the plate to gather himself. Realizing that this Powell was no Yellen, he choked up on the bat. He stepped back up to the plate, again. Pitcher Powell looked at the catcher for a sign, then delivered his next pitch.
STRIKE TWO: another fastball over the plate; no mention of pausing the game. The Monger could only watch, frozen by the masterful work of ace Powell.
The crowd sensed defeat. But a small portion of hope remained. Perhaps Powell would ease up, delivering a QE change up that, intended to fool the Monger, would instead result in a solid base hit, if not a long ball. Or maybe Powell would try the famous Bernanke “Taper tantrum” pitch; that one the Monger could crush out of the park.
But, alas, it was not to be.
Powell’s third pitch was a high riser, on target but above the strike zone. A fastball again; the monger swung hard but could not catch up to it.
Powell’s patented QT riser had gotten another victim.
STRIKE THREE, YER OUT!!
And the Mighty Pivot Monger had struck out.
But fear not, Banker fans, your next game is against the D.C. Bailouts.
this is quite good! Thank you!
News from an employer I know of:
(bold me)
Fun times, eh? If you don’t test, than almost as if magic, the virus goes away, to paraphrase Trump. Aren’t we so fortunate we elected Biden, the adult in the room, instead this time.
Thinking about this, today, it occurred to me to wonder whether the CDC still has an influenza surveillance program. It hardly seems worth tracking that disease if CV doesn’t merit close surveillance.
Maybe they’ll be willing to track the incidence of long COVID sequelae, provided they can find names for the disorders that don’t imply that they are long COVID sequelae.
In next year’s election you will not hear a word about any virus and especially not in any debates. The Democrats and the media will make sure of that and I suspect the Republicans will be in on it too. It will be a non-issue.
> If you don’t test, than almost as if magic, the virus goes away, to paraphrase Trump …
Exactly this. Cognitive dissonance is endemic to #VBNMW liberals. The same people who were aghast at Trump’s suggestion are now applauding #Jo3yNordstre4m for effectively finishing the job that Trump’s words started.
Mask up and use nasal sprays, people …
– “Biden vs. Trump in 2024? Don’t Be So Sure” [Wall Street Journal]
– “… If it starts to seem clear that America is once again locked into a Trump-Biden race, I think the electorate is going to get frisky. I don’t see people just accepting it. I see pushback and little rebellions. Two examples: Robert F. Kennedy Jr… [and] The centrist group No Labels…”
The wisdom of political pundits never ceases to amaze. The “electorate” is getting “frisky” about *Biden*; most of the Democratic base doesn’t want him. But this does not apply to Trump. While the Republican establishment clearly wants him gone, he is still popular with the Republican base. Also, the two examples here – Kennedy and “No Labels,” both threaten to sap support for establishment Democrats – from the “left” and from the “right” (the latter reflecting Joe Lieberman’s ludicrous claim that the Biden administration has become too “leftist”).
This whole farce is becoming so ridiculous that I’m beginning to think maybe the QAnon folks were right. Perhaps Trump was playing 11-dimensional chess all along, and this is all an elaborate plot to put him back into office with an overwhelming electoral mandate. Having exposed the Democrats once and for all, Trump gets back in with his mandate and *really* drains the swamp this time!
Well, maybe not. But is that any more delusional than most mainstream political analysis today?
We’re to the point where I cannot discount it out of hand.
What else should we expect from people who, convinced they were facing Hitler, thought moral posing and absurdist lawfare – Stormy, again, really? – would be the ticket?
Two grubby factions “who are but weasels fighting in a hole.”
Biden is just a placeholder, a seat warmer.
The DNC maintains a list of other villains on rotation. It’s what they do.
Short of Michelle Obama, I am hard pressed to come up with one “villain” the DNC could have on its list that could beat the guy from Florida much less Orange Man Bad.
They had to game the system for Biden to beat Sanders, something that couldn’t even be done for anyone else running.
Biden may have been considered a placeholder by the DNC in 2000, but the clear successors crashed and burned in the easy high profile administrative jobs they were given. Most of the other possibilities that have gotten mentioned over the last years either have severe regional limitations, have been run out of office or have lost their most recent elections. There is no bench. If there was anyone else, the obviously crippled Biden wouldn’t ever have been allowed to announce. But they don’t have anyone but the guy in obvious cognitive decline facing multiple corruption investigations.The one that multiple polls show the majority of Democratic voters don’t want to run is their best bet.
True, they may not have anyone capable enough, appealing enough, but they don’t need somebody who could beat “the guy from Florida much less Orange Man Bad”.
The DNC doesn’t need to win every election. They just need to stay in the game, so to speak, that’s enough, really. The operational goal is to keep USians persuaded that the Democrat party is there “fighting for” them, and is thus entitled to the continuing support of voters. I.e., not just “You can vote for us”, but “we’re your only real option — you should vote for us, you owe us your vote.” They need to maintain the idea that they’re actually doing good work in office, and not largely taking advantage of the corruption, the connections with business, the wining and dining with lobbyists, the insider trading, stuffing their own pockets, stealing for their friends, etc.
And sadly, most USians will still go along with this. Few people are questioning whether the DNC should even exist.
As you say, the DNC gamed the primary for Biden to beat Sanders, and they’ll do it again to install their own preferred candidate, whoever looks best to the party donors, to keep the gravy flowing.
I’ve passed on the tweet about Canva to someone moderately senior level I know there, for what that’s worth.
I’ve succeeded. It’s up to the Tweet author now to engage and maybe this works out to the good. I hope so.
Its the 10th birthday today for a couple in our kindle, Thor & Einstein (…the latter the brains of the outfit) which means they’ve pulled even with yours truly here at the all cats and no cattle ranch in human age equivalent, so there’s that.
Happiest of birthdays, Thor and Einstein! May all your favorites, toys, snacks, snuggles…be yours, today and every day!
Sashimi is in order!
Best of birthday wishes for your kin Thor and Einstein. Are they related as they are the same age?
They’re brothers in a litter of 6 that Gracie-the Abyssinian who wandered into our lives, had.
Thor would be a gamer who puts in 17 hours a day @ the screen if he only had an opposable thumb and forefingers, so he just sofa surfs a lot, while Einstein is one hellova hunter.
Abyssinians? They are a beautiful cat those. And two different personalities from the same litter.
Another day, another shooting in America: One Dead and 4 Injured in Shooting at Atlanta Medical Building, Police Say
Light day today…..
https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting
The “No Labels” strategy is familiar, it has been attempted a number of times in the EU. If the mayor parties are reliably neoliberal, but has lost support and unacceptable outsiders threaten the status quo, the solution is simple: form a reliable neoliberal party that is marketed as the new, fresh, outsider party!
The only case where the rebranded neoliberals has gained power is Macron, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t work elsewhere. Take UK, where media propped up a new centrist, pro-EU party Change UK as a serious party (despite being a napkin scetch). This threatened Corbyn’s flank in case he tried to neutralise the Brexit issue by treating it as fait accompli. Having served their role, they promptly dissolved after Corbyn had lost the 2019 election.
So I would say No Labels purpose is to be a stalking horse for the establishment. If acceptable candidates are presented, and no significant third party challenge looks like it could upset the apple cart, then they will not run their own candidate. But if an outsider third party challenge looks like it will kick off, or both parties has outsider candidates, then No Labels will run an establishment candidate under a new, fresh brand. And all the media will treat the No Labels candidate as the third party candidate, insisting on presence in debates etc.
• Whatever the No Labels folks are doing, it won’t be going “over the top” and seizing “new ground.”
I beg to differ. IF they manage to get onto 50 state ballots – a really big if, but not impossible – there is a blueprint for breaking the two parties’ monopoly on the ballot line. That would be useful and paid for by Joe Lieberman – a twofer.
BTW – The Democrats – the party of democracy – just filed suit in AZ to have No Labels removed from the ballot in 2024. Brandon won AZ by 10,000 votes out of 3.3 million in 2020.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/30/politics/arizona-democrats-sue-no-labels/index.html
No Labels has a fresh and honest name suggesting a clean start; it has No Content. Because it presents No Content, it suggests it has No Policy to offer. Having No Policy, it has No Obligation to voters, and so No Accountability. It must have funders, but there is No Information on them, and the public ends up with No Power.
“Jeffrey Epstein Documents, Part 2: Dinners With Lawrence Summers and Movie Screenings With Woody Allen” [Wall Street Journal]. Oddly, I can’t find an article for “Part 1.”
Here’s the archived Part 1 article:
https://archive.is/JkNcM
Caitlin Johnstone had a good take on this-
‘Jeffrey Epstein, Woody Allen, and Noam Chomsky went out to dinner one night.
There’s no punchline, that’s just something that happened.’
https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/its-good-when-idols-get-knocked-off-pedestals-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix-6f7aa44b5b12
WSJ article on Epstein, part 1 was linked earlier in the week (maybe even in the Sunday links) and IIRC was from a non-paywall source (observation in passing). That featured a discussion of the Chomsky response, and how interactions with a “reformed” pedo was not anyone’s beeswax. Elites do what they want! Be gone with thy questions.
I believe hilarity ensued and a discussion of books written on Epstein’s source of net worth.
I saw that article, but it was weird in that it was not labelled as “Part 1.”
Patient readers, there are no orts and scraps today; I had household matters to attend to!
1/3 of all US RNs plan to quit? Wow, that seems like a lot, but it does match all the anecdotal data I have heard. The situation in US hospitals is not reported on in the MSM much anymore, but it doesn’t sound like it’s improved significantly. Even a dim bulb like me could see that the government should have made some effort to support docs and nurses better all the way back in 2020.
Is this happening around the world or is it only a US phenomen?
To the surprise of no one, it turns out Ontario, Canada’s most populous and wealthiest province, has no plan in place to deal with Long Covid.
Lack of Ontario long COVID strategy risks care: ministry documents
This, despite the fact that health officials have briefed the minster and provincial cabinet has discussed the issue.
However, the ruling conservatives have found time to introduce legislation expanding private healthcare and sell the silverware to their business buddies.
Some interesting factoids introduced into the halls of power by ministry of health officials:
None of the above will come as any shock to regular readers of NC, but the 1.4 million number is something I hadn’t heard before. That’s about 3 ~ 4% of Canada’s population suffering from Long Covid as of last summer. I hope many of those have since recovered but wonder what the number is now. And the trend lines.
What’s really infuriating is that health officials seem to have a plan but just need approval and cash.
Presumably the plan will get Ontario at least on par with what others are doing.
Then again, if Bonnie Henry’s British Columbia, and Alberta, the Texas of Canada, are setting the standard, perhaps we should be aiming a wee bit higher.
Doug Ford and Co are a train wreck — they are in thrall to real estate developers and haven’t the slightest interest in public well-being.
“She grew up believing she was White. It was a lie”
There was always a simple solution by college. She just could have just stood up and said
‘I identify as white.’
If somebody challenged her on that she could have demanded to know whether they were micro-aggressioning her and whose side the college will take.
“Trump Likely to Sit Out One or Both of First Two G.O.P. Debates” [New York Times]. “In private comments to aides and confidants, Donald J. Trump has indicated he does not want to breathe life into his Republican challengers by sharing a debate stage with them.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Had this terrible imagery of Ted Cruz needing mouth to mouth resuscitation after collapsing on the debate stage, only to be saved by Donald Trump.
Ted would be forced to sign a non-disclosure agreement afterwards. “Stormy Cruz” sounds like a stripper name, though.
Another young, probably quite health person, dead: Tori Bowie, World Champion Sprinter, Is Dead at 32
Was it COVID? We’ll probably never know, but a shocking number of younger people are dropping dead, even if it isn’t a mass dire off, it’s still very unusual.
One of the latest Joe Rogan podcasts has Dr. Aseem Malhotra discussing the damage the COVID vaccines have been observed to do and other very concerning medical information. Recommend people listen to it if only to have questions to ask their doctors about what to watch out for in themselves and loved ones.
Saw this chatter on MoA and checked the twitters for people talking about it. It seems like Ukraine may have used drones to attack the Kremlin????
They are insane.
I suppose. Unless it is not about identification or description?
Instead, I see assigning a race can be used to impose on some the Original Sin of Whiteness or racial guilt, which, unlike Christianity’s Original Sin, cannot be expunged or given atonement by any deed or word. It is weirdly akin to what some racists used to justify slavery, which was the curse of Ham’s descendants.
If not used as a punishment, it could be used as a reward or a means to sort people into separate categories. I suppose that the US Census Bureau creation of racial categories over a century ago as part of racial suppression or control has nothing to do with it. Much like how the British, Germans, and Belgians used it in their empires. Like with the Hutus and Tutsis.
Al-Jazeera claims this is video of the Kremlin drone attack capturing the moment when the drone was shot down.
I guess the West/Ukrainians really want this war to end quickly. If I was Russian and had all their missiles at my disposal I’d be destroying Ukraine right now in retaliation. But if Putin and company don’t respond… maybe they’re not as capable as they have appeared?
Ukraine is about to launch its counter offensive. That is almost certain to be a disaster for Ukraine and will put Russia in a position to comprehensively defeat Ukraine.
We have stressed repeatedly that it serves Russia to continue to go slowly since they are really fighting NATO now and need to bleed NATO white. More destruction of Ukraine does not advance that end and increases the cost of reconstruction.
The video shows those were small drones and even if they had not been shot down by Russia, could not have done more than superficial damage. This was a stunt and a less effective one than the Kerch Bridge bombing. The small size is likely why they were not detected sooner.
Russia is not about to be sidetracked by the antics of drug addicts.
I get it. And I don’t have the military background to disagree. But all I can say is sooner or later they have to show that they can end this, right? Even if this was just a stunt it looks funny.
Russia (and London) were on the receiving end of MUCH more frequent terrorist events than this, which hurt no one and did not much damage. I was in London during the Troubles, when IRA bombings were a regular event and you got on a bus wondering if you’d get off in one piece at the other end. Similarly, in Russia during the Chechen Wars, my understanding is there was similarly a lot more and more consequential terrorist action.
The press is blowing this way out of proportion. It’s actually an indirect proof of Ukraine ineffectiveness. With all of these Russian speakers, you’d think they’d be blowing up malls or train stations in Russia on a weekly basis.
Putin has said he wants a negotiated end which of course means a negotiated surrender. Scorched earth may provide the “frozen conflict” that the Russians don’t want.
And I too was in Europe during the troubles and garnered more than a few suspicious looks given my then bearded and perhaps a tad swarthy countenance. I took a picture of a band stand in Regent’s Park that later was blown up. It used to be believed that overreacting to terrorism just encourages more of it. But then Dubya declared war on the thing. Putin is not Dubya (we certainly hope).
Russia did try negotiating, at the end of March 2022, and those talks were scuppered by the US. And it is, as the instigation of Zelensky, now law in Ukraine that it will not negotiate as long as Putin is President.
So I don’t understand Putin’s position being the obstacle here.
Since our Capitalist Overlords are looking to crapify even more of their companies in particular and the economy in general by replacing their people with likely not as effective, but much more cheap, with AI, what is the possibility for some group of people to start their own company using a proper number of competent people and AI in one unit?
I am not sure what the company could do, but just as I try to buy something that cost more, if it is of higher quality, couldn’t that work as well? Some people still want to know that what they use will both work well and last. Heck, quality research is always wanted especially as things go sideways.
At some point, garbage is just that no matter how low the price.