By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Readers, this Water Cooler will be a little short. I travelled late last night, and expect some calls when Water Cooler is done. More tomorrow! –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Guadalupe Junco, Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. “Territorial song of a male Guadalupe Junco, singing from a high perch…. Mourning doves (Zenaida macroura) heard in the background.”
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
The Constitutional Order
“Maine judge defers decision on keeping Trump on US state ballot until Supreme Court weighs in” [Anadolu Agency]. “Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy said Secretary of State Shenna Bellows should hold off on implementing her decision on Trump’s electoral eligibility until the top US court issues its ruling after agreeing to take up a similar case from Colorado earlier this month…. Bellows in late December disqualified Trump from appearing on the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot in response to challenges brought to the ex-president’s nomination…. Trump appealed the ruling to the Maine Supreme Court, setting the stage for Wednesday’s ruling…. Murphy ruled that Maine’s decision should be delayed until after the Supreme Court weighs in on a similar case from Colorado, saying the remand is ‘in the public interest.'” •
2024
Less than a year to go!
* * * “Judge threatens to boot Donald Trump from courtroom over loud talking as E. Jean Carroll testifies” [Associated Press]. “Donald Trump was threatened with expulsion from his Manhattan civil trial Wednesday after he repeatedly ignored a warning to keep quiet while writer E. Jean Carroll testified that he shattered her reputation after she accused him of sexual abuse. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan told the former president that his right to be present at the trial will be revoked if he remains disruptive. After an initial warning, Carroll’s lawyer said Trump could still be heard making remarks to his lawyers, including ‘it is a witch hunt’ and ‘it really is a con job.’ ‘Mr. Trump, I hope I don’t have to consider excluding you from the trial,’ Kaplan said in an exchange after the jury was excused for lunch, adding: ‘I understand you’re probably very eager for me to do that.’ ‘I would love it,” the Republican presidential front-runner shot back, shrugging as he sat between lawyers Alina Habba and Michael Madaio at the defense table.'” • (!!).
“Georgia Prosecutors Should Go, But That Won’t Necessarily End the Case Against Trump” [Jonathan Turley, The Messenger]. Trump is lucky in his enemies: Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis “has seemingly imploded with an ethical scandal which, unlike Trump’s prior claims, appears perhaps to be more well-founded, as it appears in an official court filing. It involves reports of an intimate relationship with Nathan Wade, appointed by Willis as lead prosecutor in the Trump case. While a recusal or removal of Willis may delay the case, it will not end the legal threat for Trump. Willis is accused of having a romantic relationship with Wade when she appointed him in this historic prosecution of a former president. Wade has no experience in racketeering law, yet he reportedly was paid more than an expert on Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) cases. Willis and Wade allegedly went on lavish vacations together, and the costs allegedly were covered by Wade, who has received nearly $654,000 in legal fees since January 2022 — approved, ultimately, by Willis…. If these allegations are true, Willis is not just outside of the ethical navigational beacons. She is off the map…. A less obvious question is how their recusal could impact the Trump prosecution. Some analysts suggest the scandal removes the threat to him in Fulton County. That, however, is not likely to be true. The remedy in this instance for any unethical conduct, if proven, may be the removal of the prosecutors, not the dismissal of an otherwise valid criminal case. While I have been critical of Willis’ case against Trump, her conduct does not change the underlying allegations against the former president. The removal of Willis and Wade could also prompt the transfer of the case to a different jurisdiction. Any of these changes could take time, of course, and the delay would play to Trump’s advantage. Yet, the case still would go on. The most intriguing question is whether a new prosecutor would continue to support this controversial RICO case.”
Jamie Dimon picking a winner?
BREAKING – EXPLOSIVE: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon tells CNBC people are voting for Trump because he was right about the economy, immigration, and China, says people should be a bit more respectful of MAGA people. They know what they are doing. WATCH pic.twitter.com/fMHgLrZF0d
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) January 17, 2024
* * * He’s not wrong, is he:
Iowa’s over, and there’s still only one person who’s ever defeated Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/uE1tylKuGf
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 16, 2024
Of course, with a bench like the Democrats, there’s another slugger right behind Joe in the line-up:
What an incredibly inspiring message, delivered with such panache, passion and power: https://t.co/B4GFUpdVlY
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 17, 2024
Hair like one of Hillary Clinton’s experiments, and am I the only one who’s reminded of Pelosi’s eyes?
* * * IA: “Honestly, what did Kim Reynolds expect?” [Bleeding Heartland]. “Governor Reynolds spent much of the last two months campaigning for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and starred in a tv ad on his behalf. Yet her backing didn’t move the needle; polls showed support for DeSantis between the mid-teens and low 20s in Iowa for the last six months. As expected, he finished about 30 points behind former President Donald Trump at the January 15 caucuses. DeSantis did eke out a second-place finish with 21.2 percent of the vote, about 2 points ahead of Nikki Haley. But that more likely stemmed from the Never Back Down super PAC’s extensive field operation, which was superior to what Americans for Prosperity Action delivered for Haley.” “Americans for Prosperity Action.” Is there an algo that generates PAC names? More: “Selzer & Co’s Iowa Polls for the Des Moines Register, NBC News, and Mediacom showed in October and again in December that most likely caucus-goers believed Trump could win the next general election. Even a majority of DeSantis supporters felt that way. And really, why would Iowa Republicans believe Trump can’t win in November? They don’t think he lost to Biden last time.” • Good point!
IA: “How Trump dominated Iowa — and held back DeSantis and Haley” [WaPo]. “People close to DeSantis described searching in vain for messages against Trump with focus groups — his comments about abortion, his failure to finish the border wall or overturn Obamacare. All the while, Trump trounced the campaign in news coverage, an advantage that DeSantis’s team tracked closely. Even when DeSantis did a televised town hall, ‘half of that event is still [Trump’s] because the questions are about him,’ a DeSantis adviser said.
‘The indictments crushed us,’ said one person who regularly talked to DeSantis. ‘We sort of joked that he needed to get a mug shot to compete with Trump.'” And as for Haley: “At nearly every point in the campaign, Haley had chosen to adopt a strategy diametrically opposed to what DeSantis was doing. Her team, at both SFA and the campaign, was led by a single crew of old friends and partners who operated as a whole, without leaks. Even the Iowa press spokespeople sought approval from Charleston headquarters before talking to national reporters. While DeSantis leaned heavily on policy, Haley focused on big themes of generational change and political style. As the Florida governor’s allies announced a $100 million ground game, Haley ran on a shoestring, flying commercial for months, sometimes with just a single adviser. The DeSantis operation rented and wrapped three different buses — two for the super PAC and one for the campaign — while she had none. But the charisma that drove her campaign was not without fault. It was a simple question that threw Haley off: What caused the Civil War? She rambled and did not mention slavery as a cause until the following day. People who knew her in South Carolina said she had always been cognizant to appeal to voters who might be skeptical of an Indian American woman. Republicans and Democrats alike panned the answer. Even Trump mocked her, calling it “three paragraphs” of hokum, though he used another more colorful word. With just a day to go before the Iowa caucuses, Iowans listen to Haley speak to a large crowd at Country Lane Lodge in Adel, Iowa, on Sunday. She also struggled to broaden her coalition beyond moderate, affluent and college-educated voters.” • Turns out the Republicans have a weak bench, too.
NH: “Ron DeSantis shifts campaign away from New Hampshire days before the primary, AP sources say” [Associated Press]. “Ron DeSantis has decided to shift his presidential campaign away from New Hampshire just six days before the state’s first-in-the-nation Republican primary while his leading super PAC executes another round of layoffs, moves that reflect the Florida governor’s rapidly shrinking path to the 2024 GOP nomination. DeSantis won’t ignore the state completely over the coming days, but he’s reallocating the majority of his staff to South Carolina, the home state of rival Nikki Haley, with its primary in just over a month. That’s according to senior campaign officials who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to share internal discussions. At the same time, the pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down has transferred several of its Iowa staffers to other early states, while laying off the rest.” • Makes no sense at all, unless a donor is dictating the move and/or DeSantis is desperate for cash.
* * * Chief White House Correspondent at Today News Africa, but I think a one-man show. Nevertheless:
Always here for volatility stans!
Democrats en Déshabillé
“Senator Tammy Baldwin’s Chief to Long COVID Patients: Stop Annoying Me or Else” [The Gauntlet]. “Senator Tammy Baldwin, one of the two remaining HELP Commitee members who have not yet committed to attending the [Long Covid] hearing, expressed via her staff that the millions of patients desperate for treatment are quite the annoyance to her and her team. ‘I’m trying to be helpful,’ Chief of Staff Ken Reidy says with badly concealed irritation, going on to condescendingly explain to journalist and activist Joshua Pribanic, ‘I have about 600 emails in my inbox from your organization, from people from Scotland, from California, from Maryland. Um. Senator Baldwin represents Wisconsin. If I had every organization that just blasted my email inbox where I do my professional work, I would not be able to do my job.'” • Well, you’re certainly doing it now…. (Also, I have always had the sense that Senators have, and ought to have, a more national perspective than House members, who represent “the district.” That’s why Senators look in the mirror and see a President!)
“White House called Hutchinson to apologize for DNC remarks” [Politico]. Who? Anyhow: “White House chief of staff Jeff Zients called former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Wednesday morning to apologize after the Democratic National Committee released a snarky statement to mark the end of the Republican’s presidential bid. Hutchinson, who ran a campaign designed to take on and criticize Donald Trump, dropped out of the race after a sixth-place in the Iowa caucuses this week. The Democratic National Committee initially responded by calling his withdrawal ‘a shock to those of us who could’ve sworn he had already dropped out.’ The statement drew immediate backlash from people who said it was a gratuitous attempt to humiliate Hutchinson. Zients’ call to Hutchinson effectively marked a repudiation of the DNC — and a particularly swift clean-up job by the White House. The chief of staff’s damage-control effort reflects the central importance of anti-Trump Republicans in the 2024 campaign.” • Obviously, the Never Trumpers should simply be put under the DNC umbrella; that would put an end to these co-ordination difficulties.
“Eric Adams’s Legal Defense Trust Attorney Thanks Hell Gate for Bringing Questionable Donations to His Attention” [Hell Gate]. “The rules that govern these [legal defense] trusts, which were created by the City Council in 2019 to allow elected officials to raise money to address investigations that are unrelated to their official jobs, set clear boundaries for people who want to donate. The maximum contribution amount is $5,000, and the trust cannot accept money from the elected official’s subordinates, or people who have business dealings with the City—defined as people whose names are in the City’s Doing Business Database—as of the date of their contribution. For the latter group, their spouses are prohibited from donating as well. Donors must also submit a signed statement affirming they are complying with the law. But according to the documents filed by Mayor Adams’s legal defense trust on Tuesday, two $5,000 donations came from the spouses of people who are in the Doing Business Database. Trina Cayre and Sarah Cayre gave a total of $10,000 to the fund on December 19, 2023, according to the trust’s disclosures; Trina is married to Joseph Cayre, the billionaire behind the real estate company Midtown Equities, and Jack Cayre, Joseph’s son, is married to Sarah. Both Joseph and Jack Cayre’s names appear in the City’s Doing Business Database. The Cayres’ portfolio also includes Casa Cipriani, which is one of the mayor’s favorite private clubs.” • Whoops. I don’t know how the Democrats managed to waste a cop with a million-watt smile, but they seem to have done so.
#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; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); 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).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Covid is Airborne
Strep, like the flu and RSV, is airborne:
Strep A, Group A Streptococcusis (Streptococcus pyogenes), is airborne.
Has been known to be airborne since at least 1949, via Coburn and Young's seminal work contact tracing in the military during WWII.https://t.co/6AeZ90Op7ahttps://t.co/3h3p6FCAeW#STREPaISairborne. pic.twitter.com/fy9tpm5Ysw
— Lazarus Long (@LazarusLong13) January 17, 2024
Sequelae
“Can we cut road deaths to zero by 2050? Current trends say no. What’s going wrong?” [The Conversation]. Australia. “But while we were making good progress at reducing road trauma, this has stalled in recent years, with Australian road deaths rising to levels not seen in nearly a decade…. For the first time in decades, we’ve seen a sustained increase in road deaths in Australia and other countries such as the United States…. [T]he assumption that more people are dying because there are more cars is, at best, a partial explanation… The post-pandemic data shows several indicators of declining road user behaviour and attitudes. In New South Wales, for example, there has been a substantial increase in fines for minor speeding offences. Across Australia, the number of fatal crashes in 60–70 km/h zones has been rising, from 241 associated deaths in 2020 to 315 in 2022. Speeding is likely to play a role, but it’s unclear to what extent…. This could be due to a number of factors: speeding, risk-taking behaviours and others such as poorer infrastructure, lower levels of enforcement, collisions with wildlife, long-trips and driver fatigue.” • But infrastructure, enforcement, wild-life, trips, and driver fatigue are pretty much constants; certainly slow to change. It’s weird. It’s almost as if there were some population-wide factor that was increasing risk taking behavior.
“Blood transcriptomics reveal persistent SARS-CoV-2 RNA and candidate biomarkers in Long COVID patients” (preprint) [medRxiv]. From the Abstract: “With an estimated 65 million individuals suffering from Long COVID, validated therapeutic strategies as well as non-invasive biomarkers are direly needed to guide clinical management…. We demonstrate systemic SARS-CoV-2 persistence for more than 2 years after acute COVID-19 infection. A 2-gene biomarker, including SARS-CoV-2 antisense RNA, correctly classifies Long COVID with 93.8% sensitivity and 91.7% specificity.” • Interesting, since NIH blew a billion bucks on Long Covid and didn’t even look for a biomarker.
Science Is Popping
Oh good:
In this NIH autopsy study, 10 out 11 brains 🧠had SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA. This was then cultured in a BL3 lab, and the virus was shown to be replication competent. Listen to Daniel Chertow MD explain👇📺 pic.twitter.com/o8u62m1DNF
— Sue (@inkblue01) December 23, 2023
Origins Debate
I’m just laying this down as a marker, because an expert in sequencing I am not (nor is Leonardi, on-point as he has been for immune dysregulation):
This is a smoking gun and a slam dunk rolled into one.
SARS cov 2 has seemingly artificial sequences that would allow for assembly with a single protein out of many candidates.
That specific protein is on the grant proposals
Brace for impact as this is explained to lawmakers https://t.co/ZnHXnqcQna
— AJ Leonardi, MBBS, PhD (@fitterhappierAJ) January 18, 2024
Perhaps a Brain Trust member, or a sequencing expert in the readership can comment
Policy
A thread on the Long Covid hearing at Sanders’ HELP Committee:
Good morning! This is @betsyladyzhets, getting started with livetweeting today's hearing at the Senate HELP committee about #LongCovid. Follow along in this thread for updates throughout the event. pic.twitter.com/p3wPZWSi0S
— The Sick Times (@thesicktimes) January 18, 2024
People apparently keep taking off their masks to speak. Audience, however, is masked:
At the Senate hearing on long covid, chaired by @BernieSanders (recovering from his own recent covid bout).
Room is packed — overwhelmingly by people wearing masks — with a spillover crowd and advocates sharing handouts for https://t.co/l4JbKm9zMa. pic.twitter.com/xxMzQHDIL7
— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) January 18, 2024
Very encouraging to see the attendance!
“Addressing Long COVID: Advancing Research and Improving Patient Care” (video) [Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions]. • The full Committee hearing…
Elite Maleficence
Mandy re-appears, no mask, no explanation:
I joined @CDCGlobal‘s all staff meeting today to talk about protecting health as one team—at home and abroad! Through local partnerships, rapid response capacity building, data exchange & more, our teams around the world are working to protect our health. pic.twitter.com/JmBfJDbrfP
— Mandy K. Cohen, MD, MPH (@CDCDirector) January 17, 2024
Love the boots. Where’s the whip?
Case Data
NOT UPDATED From BioBot wastewater data, January 16:
Lambert here #3: Slight decrease in slope, due to the Northeast and the West (unless it’s a data issue). Personally, I wouldn’t call a peak, based entirely on the anecdotes I’m scrolling through, which are not encouraging, particularly with regard to the schools. Very unscientific, I agree! Let’s wait and see. Note that I don’t accept the PMC “homework” model, whose most famous exponent is Sociopath of the Day Bob Wachter, where you adjust your behavior according to multiple sources of (horrible, gappy, lagged) data about infection levels (ignoring “risk of ruin”). Just stick with your protocol day in and day out, my advice. K.I.S.S. However, tracking these trends, besides having intrinsic interest, is pragmatically useful for major decisions, like travel, cruises (surely not, readers), relocation, family events, communication with recalcitrant HCWs, etc.
Lambert #4: Looks like I was too pessimistic! (Of course, half the cases under the curve take place after the peak….)
Regional data:
Big decline in the Northeast!
Variants
NOT UPDATED From CDC, January 6:
Lambert here: JN.1 now dominates. That was fast.
CDC: “As of May 11, genomic surveillance data will be reported biweekly, based on the availability of positive test specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring every two weeks. 2. occurring twice a week; semiweekly.” Looks like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to worry about. Time will tell.
Covid Emergency Room Visits
NOT UPDATED From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, January 13:
Lambert here: Consistent with Biobot data.
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. 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. And of course, we’re not even getting into the quality of the wastewater sites that we have as a proxy for Covid infection overall.
Hospitalization
Bellwether New York City, data as of January 17:
Lambert here: Decrease for the state, decrease then increase for New York City. Hmm,
NOT UPDATED Here’s a different CDC visualization on hospitalization, nationwide, not by state, but with a date, at least. January 6:
Lambert here: “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”. So where the heck is the update, CDC?
Positivity
NOT UPDATED From Walgreens, January 15:
-0.7%. (It would be interesting to survey this population generally; these are people who, despite a tsunami of official propaganda and enormous peer pressure, went and got tested anyhow.)
NOT UPDATED From Cleveland Clinic, January 13:
Lambert here: Percentage and absolute numbers down.
NOT UPDATED From CDC, traveler’s data, December 25:
Up, albeit in the rear view mirror. And here are the variants for travelers, December 25:
Note the chart has been revised to reflect that JN.1 is BA.2.86.1 (the numbers “roll over”).
Deaths
NOT UPDATED Here is the New York Times, based on CDC data, January 6:
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell by 16,000 to 187,000 on the week ending January 18th, the least since September 2022, and well below market expectations of 207,000.”
Housing: “United States Housing Starts” [Trading Economics]. “Housing starts in the US declined 4.3% month-over-month to an annualized 1.46 million in December 2023, but above market forecasts of 1.426 million. It is the first decline in four months, following a downwardly revised 10.8% surge to 1.525 million in November.”
Manufacturing: “United States Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index in the US rose 2.2 points to -10.6 in January 2024 from -12.8 in the prior month but worse than market estimates of -7. This is the index’s 18th negative reading in the past 20 months. The indexes for current new orders and current shipments both also rose in January but remained negative.”
Shipping: “The drop in Panama Canal traffic due to a severe drought could cost up to $700 million” [Western Investor]. “A severe drought that began last year has forced authorities to slash ship crossings by 36% in the Panama Canal, one of the world’s most important trade routes. The new cuts announced Wednesday by authorities in Panama are set to deal an even greater economic blow than previously expected…. One of the most severe droughts to ever hit the Central American nation has stirred chaos in the 50-mile (80-kilometer) maritime route, causing a traffic jam of vessels, casting doubts on the canal’s reliability for international shipping and raising concerns about its affect on global trade. ‘It’s vital that the country sends a message that we’re going to take this on and find a solution to this water problem,’ [Panama Canal Administrator Ricaurte] Vásquez said. The disruption of the major trade route between Asia and the United States comes at a precarious time. Attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Houthi rebels have rerouted vessels away from the crucial corridor for consumer goods and energy supplies.” • “This water problem.”
Manufacturing:
People don't remember just how randomly reckless Trump was as President in routine decisions like this. https://t.co/ozXArFAEtT
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) January 17, 2024
I would file this under 2024 if there were a news hook from Democrats, but naturally there isn’t.
Tech: “Google News Is Boosting Garbage AI-Generated Articles” [404 Media]. “Google News is boosting sites that rip-off other outlets by using AI to rapidly churn out content, 404 Media has found. Google told 404 Media that although it tries to address spam on Google News, the company ultimately does not focus on whether a news article was written by an AI or a human, opening the way for more AI-generated content making its way onto Google News. The presence of AI-generated content on Google News signals two things: first, the black box nature of Google News, with entry into Google News’ rankings in the first place an opaque, but apparently gameable, system. Second, is how Google may not be ready for moderating its News service in the age of consumer-access AI, where essentially anyone is able to churn out a mass of content with little to no regard for its quality or originality. ‘I want to read the original stories written by journalists who actually researched them and spoke to primary sources. Any news junkie would,’ Brian Penny, a ghostwriter who first flagged some of the seemingly AI-generated articles to 404 Media, said.”
Mr. Market: “If this is all the downside the bears can deliver, then the bull market may still be intact” [MarketWatch]. “The market ‘feels’ bearish, but the indicators are mixed.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 62 Greed (previous close: 57 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 71 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 18 at 12:32:10 PM ET
Zeitgeist Watch
“A CELEBRATION OF THE DELIGHTFULLY-TERRIBLE DAD JOKE” [National Responsible Fatherhood Clearinghouse]. *.gov (!!). “What do you call a man with a rubber toe?” “Roberto.” Oh. But wait. There’s more! “What’s red and smells like paint?” “Red paint.” • Oh!
The Gallery
“After Dark, Dave Jordano Photographs the Idiosyncratic Personalities of American Towns” [Colossal]. “‘For me, it’s mostly about the quiet solitude, the empty streets, sometimes surreal nature of a city that looks and feels as if it’s frozen in time,’ Jordano tells Colossal. His photos invite us on a journey through American towns in the late hours when they are not often observed, devoid of people yet hinting at their presence through an illuminated kitchen windows or an open tavern door. He adds, ‘The pace of everything slows down, and time becomes irrelevant. Under this artificial light, the buildings often take on a theatrical look as if they’re performing for me, showing me their best side.'” • For example:
I looked over the gallery, with a view toward making the claim that Jordano’s photos could only have been taken in America. The above, certainly. His entire oeuvre? I’m not so sure.
News of the Wired
“Technology is stealing your time in ways you may not realise – here’s what you can do about it” [The Conversation]. “There is growing evidence that while digital technology may help us to save some time, we end up using that time to do more and more things. We recently interviewed 300 people across Europe to understand how they used digital devices in day-to-day life. This research showed that people want to avoid empty periods of time in their lives, so they fill those periods performing tasks, some of which wouldn’t be possible without technology. Whether it was waiting for a bus, waking in the morning, or lying in bed at night, our participants reported that time which would previously be “empty” was now filled with brain training apps, creating lists of things they should do or try based on their social media feed, and other life admin. It seems that quiet moments of people watching, imagining and daydreaming are now filled with tech-based tasks. The growth in digital tasks is happening, in part, because technology appears to be changing our perception of what free time is for. For many people, it is no longer enough to simply eat dinner, watch TV or maybe do an exercise class. Instead, in an attempt to avoid wasting time, these activities are performed while also browsing the web in search of the ingredients for a more perfect life and trying to develop a sense of achievement.” • Yves’ tax on time.
“7 Things A Happiness Scientist Taught Me About Finding More Joy” [Vogue]. “Happiness, in other words, isn’t something that just happens, or even purely circumstantial. It involves homework and awareness. Practice. So, let’s begin.” And: “joy is invariably found in its practice, rather than searching for perfection. Love is continuously vowing to show up. Love is the beauty in finding a way back to yourself, to someone, to some place or somewhere.” • Picking this up again because it’s worth thinking about twice,,,,
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SD writes: “A variety of Norway maple, I think.” Looks kinda like my very ill-shapen Norway Maple before the biggest bough fell off, almost taking my service drop (?) with it, and I had to cut it down, to nobody’s regret. Readers? Is this a Norway maple?
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Do DeSantis voters stay home, go to Hailey or Trump? DeSantis is done, but beating Hailey and ending the primary might be enough to beg forgiveness and get a top spot.
On the other hand, he may be backed by donors like the ones who backed Cruz who believe they are touching the future president and gaining the UK ambassadorship.
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/trump-holding-on-to-first-place-but-haley-continues-to-cut-into-his-lead-tracking-poll-shows/3250598/
I have heard it said that DeSantis reckons that he is the smartest man in the room. And the reason is that his staff agree with everything he says or does. Of course in the old days that was just known as having a bunch of ‘yes’ men in your employ. It would explain a lot.
Best line from the Senate HELP hearing on long COVID:
https://twitter.com/luckytran/status/1748037164913267006
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly
I cannot tell what kind of trees those are in the plantidote, but their shape infers that they grew in a forest that has since been cut down. Not misshapen by choice, but by circumstance.
Apparently it is Norway Maple, though the name seems a bit odd given that Norway is perhaps the European nation where it is least common.
I guess the naming is similar to rattus norvegicus (brown rat), in that whoever named it decided on it based on where it was supplied from.
I can certainly see why they would not like places with lots of snow and ice. The one thing that I hear about them is how brittle their branches are. I imagine that up there they would look more like bushes than trees. I think that name sounds a little suspicious as well.
I wonder who has it in for Norway? Every one knows that Vladimir Putin personally bred what ultimately became all the rats in the world in Russian Bronze age laboratories to infect Europeans with the plague. Rachel Maddow told me that, so it must be true.
Those trees are a plague. Why would anyone cut down the rest of the trees but leave the Norway maples?!!!!???!
They grow like crazy, crowd out your other plants with their extensive and shallow root systems, they drop millions of seeds twice per year that begin sprouting all over your yard, and they drop branches all the time.
The ones plaguing my yard are just on the other side of the property line so I can’t get rid of them. But I do get their windfall on my side of the fence. I’m am going to go light up my firepit with some Norway branches right under their canopy shortly, just so they can watch themselves burn.
The only reason I can think of for why they left those particular trees would be forest succession. The fact that they do propagate so quickly and do hold the soil would be a factor in any clear cut operation that wanted to keep the stream beds free of run off that they could be fined for.
Here they leave a few straggly pines, some straggly sweetgum or straggly red maple trees to try and fill that gap period between cutting down the woods and building a subdivision, but it may be Norway maples elsewhere. As with your house, the new neighborhood then has a lot to talk about when those straggly trees have to come down. The guy with the chainsaw suddenly becomes very popular.
Yes, Norway maples are regarded as an ‘invasive’ and the landscapers I know despise them. I kind of like the ones with the dark red leaves (not Japanese maples), but I wasn’t even permitted to buy one when I lived in Rhode Island, even though there were many nice-looking well-shaped ones in front of many people’s houses. I guess the more shrubby, non-red-leafed ones are the ones that people hate? I’m not clear on how to distinguish between a ‘bad’ Norway maple and all of the other maple varieties, outside of the red-leafed ones (which are definitely Norway maples as well).
Amazing that the press insist on calling Nikki Haley a moderate. On foreign policy she’s surely to the right of Trump as she showed by frequently going off the reservation at the UN. Of course presidents have little control over foreign policy. Oh wait….
And domestically she’s a Grand Bargainer on SS even as Trump now says to leave it alone.
Perhaps what they really mean is that they think she can be moderated by bigfoot elites who as we all know always have the public’s best interests at heart. Oh wait….
Trump is currently running an ad in Maine claiming Haley is going to gut social security and raise the retirement age. The interesting thing isn’t that claim, which may or may not be true – I can’t be bothered to look up her actual position, if she even has a position other than “not Trump”.
The interesting thing is Trump saying he will not let that happen and will keep protecting social security. Don’t see that from republican candidates ever, and I’m haven’t heard much about it from the other republican party either, aka the democrats.
It’s almost like Trump actually wants my vote.
Trump could be lying about not cutting SS and Medicare. He’s a politician after all.
His track record on policy stance commitment is strong, for good or bad.
Interesting that Dimon was for Haley a couple of weeks ago (I believe*) and now patting Trump on the back.
Trump is real estate rich and therefore has no reason to pillage SS whereas Haley needs the financial sector who are all for pillaging SS. Perhaps the banks are starting to worry about betting on the wrong horse.
FDR thought Huey “a chicken in every pot” Long was his biggest threat for re-election. He, like Trump, felt he had to play the “populism card” and in his case probably meant it. Maybe Trump does too. If so the banks are really worried.
*Not exactly an endorsement.
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/29/jamie-dimon-nikki-haley-00129054
This just happened a few months ago, but got buried fast in the memory hole. No doubt Xi would be treated warmly in NYC, too. I’m guessing our oligarchs are unhappy with the stupidness of the present political class, for sure.
https://www.reuters.com/breakingviews/american-ceos-serve-chinas-xi-too-rich-dessert-2023-11-16/
‘On foreign policy Haley’s surely to the right of Trump’
Haley is actually the right of Ghengis Khan. Like Lindsay Graham or Mitch McConnell, she never met a war that she did not like.
Kamala on The View. She could be a regular as far as I’m concerned. I honestly don’t know how people can watch that show, but that’s just me.
In other TDS news, the TDS OOTD (outrage of the day) my PMC friends are freaking out over is a speech Trump gave talking about de-banking. From that speech they have concluded Trump has dementia, and of course unfit for office because of it. One said Biden has been accused of the same thing, but there is no evidence of that with him. I guess that’s progress.
They also think if they end up shutting down the government, which they should if they don’t get more money for Ukraine, they should “really” shut it down. Enough so all those on SS should not get paid, and nothing for anything else either. This will show them the real cost of no collective security (as one warmonger calls it).
Great, let retirees starve so we can continue to fund never ending unwinnable wars. WTF is wrong with these people?
And we have 292 more days of this stuff. I can’t wait…
The one I am hearing is that Trump has syphilis.
From the Team R perspective, that ought to be interesting optics – Biden shut down the federal government and you are reduced to eating cat food, all because of Ukraine. This shows Biden’s true priorities – he cares more about Ukraine than he care whether or not you starve.
Cat food has gotten really expensive, we may now be down to birdseed and bug stew from the chained CPI perspective. Added bonus, chasing all those bugs down will be very slimming.
I’m in rural Ohio, Cornhole as I call it. Buy Kitty food at Kroger. $24 bucks for a 4 pound bag. Incredible.
But we need more bombs.
Isn’t that basically the same approach Ursula van der Leyen articulated? “I don’t care what voters want, Ukraine must survive!” Or some words to that effect. Why are these people allowed to run around on the loose rather than safely admitted to the nearest psych ward?
“Why are these people allowed to run around on the loose rather than safely admitted to the nearest psych ward?”
Because the lives, health, safety, comfort and reputation of people of influence and authority are not at stake. Were they to start facing consequences, politicians would be singing a very different tune, not a tune out of the NC Songbook, but a tune with lyrics like “ZOMG! Something Must Be Done! ZOMG!”
We have Biden admitting his retaliatory strikes on the Houthis have been a failure, yet he also says that he is going to keep doing them, anyway.
This is like watching the leadership of our country being held hostage by a mad king, and all we can do is look on in horror as there is nothing we as his subjects can do about it.
This is one major oversight that was not put in our Constitution…what recourse do citizens have when the defacto aristocrats in Congress are politically-aligned with the sitting president and refuse to keep him in check or remove him from office when he is abusing his power or clearly senile?
I know that the US government is supposed to have checks and balances, but the Executive branch often ignores them outright, or if there are some mutterings about it in the Washington D.C. bubble, nothing substantial ever comes of it.
I recently saw that Biden clip together with a quote from Blinken admitting that Hamas is not going to get militarily defeated. But the war must go on.
Have some fun with your friends Tell them that you heard that Trump will bring back the draft in order to send a big American army to free the Ukraine with and fight the Russian bear. If they object, ask them if they don’t want to see the Ukraine to win and why do they hate that country anyway.
Great idea! Inspiring cognitive dissonance is fun!
I’m with you, but to be honest Rev, you can’t get through to some of these people. Talking to a wall.
So sad. Won’t end well.
Correct me if I’m wrong here, but didn’t E. Jean Carroll sort of win her first suit against Trump? He was found guilty of sexual assault, but not rape which was the original charge. Then he verbally denied the assault and the current suit is in response to that “defamation” or whatever they’re characterizing Trump’s blowhardniness as, not the sexual assault at all.
For someone so concerned with their reputation, E. Jean Carroll dies seem to like to stay in the spotlight. It does make one wonder exactly how this all came about and who’s really pulling the strings.
…… And who’s opening their wallet for her purse?
You’ve got to find a transcript from today out there and read it. She’s so utterly full of herself and both sets of lawyers are in total amped up New Yawk attawney mode. The judge threatened to kick the Donald out of the courtroom for loud commentary on the proceedings and he replied, “I’d love that”. It’s a crime to not have it on the TeeVee omg.
I don’t want to critique Kamala’s appearance. It’s not only a double standard, it also plays right into the hands of Democratic Party corporatists who dismiss legitimate objections to her as motivated by sexism or racism. A better basis for criticism is what she’s saying: a vapid appeal to generalized fear from an administration that’s infecting millions here and enabling the brutal extermination of many thousands more abroad.
The entire Democrat crew in the White House is repulsive. At least Kamala is nice to look at if you mute the sound.
Extrapolating from an 2016 essay at the Archdruid Report–the 2024 presidential election, like the previous two, promises to be weird, crazy and tumultuous because Americans on team blue and red are suffering from cognitive dissonance.
Ask Democrats who their nightmare candidate would be and they would tell you that it would be a political insider, supported lavishly by big-banks and corporations, who is also a neoconservative who pursued regime-change operations and was committed to a military conflict with Russia, who has engineered proxy wars, while fully supporting a key ally carrying out genocide. That is to say the Democrats idea of the worst possible president is Joe Biden
Ask Republicans who their nightmare candidate would be and they would tell you that it would be a Yankee from New York City. The candidate would be a wheeler dealer, corrupt businessman who has repeatedly declared bankruptcy. The candidate would be incredibly vulgar and a naked hypocrite when it comes to Christianity. He would be on his second or third wife, have fathered a child out of wedlock and would be insufficiently horrified by the LGBT community. Worst of all, the candidate would loudly proclaim that America is no longer the greatest country on earth. Of course, for the average Republican, their idea of the worst possible candidate is Donald Trump.
No wonder Americans are losing their minds!
Man, I want to print out your comment and etch it onto a plaque. (Or two plaques) “A plaque on both your houses” Hahahaha – Camelotkidd, you win the internet today!
I copied your comment too. Don’t worry I will properly cite you Camelotkidd!
Yawn, before digital tech people would spend their time reading books or newspapers, doing crosswords, and similar. The major difference these days is likely the dopamine drips from “doomscrolling” and microtransaction games that are a hair away from casino games.
>reading books or newspapers, doing crosswords
Aren’t those typically construed as productive behaviors? There’s certainly a correlation with the decline of those activities and a decline in overall literacy. Half of American adults now read below a 6th grade level
It takes me most of the day to follow all the posts, links and comments right here at NC! I like to think it’s time well spent …
Gaza is horrifying, the waste is unconscionable.
There’s a constant stream of jets traveling to Israel full of bombs and flying back empty instead of being full of healthy lean (Very lean) meat.
Meat that could be used to feed the millions of American children going to bed hungry every night.
Real baby back ribs!
Marketing will be key to success, my suggestion is a ” Celebration of Modern Israeli Culture” on the Capitol Mall put together by AIPAC and the Chamber of Commerce, get George Bush to handle the Barbecue, Bud Light to provide the Beer, and Arcade games provided by the right people in Vegas.
Video games with APACHE helicopters enforcing the “Hannibal Doctrine”, F16’s bombing hospitals and shooting galleries with Pregnant Palestinian women, Israeli civilians and toddlers replacing the ducks.
I am sure that PUMAS everywhere will be delighted to hear that Biden was the only person in history who could triumph over the orange menace (that he, Obama and Clinton created). If it weren’t for blowback the Dems would have nothing to run on at all.
But how many demographics can Biden alienate before he loses the forty thousand vote edge in the Electoral College that he had in ’20? Just throwing the PUMAS on the burn pile may not help his chances.
PUMAS?
Acronym for Party Unity My Ass.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/they-were-hillary-clintons-die-hard-loyalists-heres-where-they-are-now/2015/05/02/82025cf2-e92a-11e4-aae1-d642717d8afa_story.html
Acronym Police car stops a notarist…
‘The reason i’m pulling you over, is a broken tail write on your acronym. You can’t use AS for an abbreviation for ASS, it’s against the law.
Without admitting guilt-please sign here.’
Party Unity, My As*.
HRC voters encounter Obama.
ZOMG. Some elite maleficence from the NYT’s Pamela Paul today:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/18/opinion/public-health-trust.html
TL;DR: Paul blames the destruction of trust in the public health establishment in part on “the left,” whose obsession with lockdowns and closing schools–especially in “blue states”–alienated and irritated people. This sounds like something straight from the mind of the New York Times Pitchbot. Deranged.
Paul was the editor of the Book Review from 2012 to 2023.
P.S. No way to know of course, but the episode she describes at the top of this piece and that apparently prompted it–a passing motorist yelling at her and her daughter for not wearing masks while riding their bikes outdoors–sounds made up or at least embroidered to my ear. Regardless, I don’t recall incidents like these being commonplace.
You can chalk that interaction up to failed public health messaging, if it actually took place. We know the Establishment Media had a field day shaming people for not wearing any kind of ‘face covering’ when outside in 2020. Meanwhile, during the BLM protects, being outside and participating was so essential, it was actually okay with the public health establishment. It’s hard to keep track of the correct behavior when it’s not really based in the best science at the time, but on what is most virtuous.
I am so old that I can remember when NYT columnists actually paid cabbies for their advice, now they just have to get it from random passing cabbies while they ride their bikes. That is very sad. Not only can they not afford copy editors over there anymore they have to ride their bikes to school and to work, which must be very dangerous in downtown New York.
This is all very concerning. Panhandling for stories to write about cannot be good for their self esteem. They should learn to code.
I have it on good authority that New York Times stories use lots of code.
I fear the ‘incident’ was work related. The passing motorist is purported to have called out: “Hey Lit major! When are we getting Richard Brautigan’s long suppressed review of “The Song of the Loon?””
And thus, with this flaccid obfuscation, ‘The Narrative (TM)’ is perpetuated.
An American photographer who has the eye and captures the local flavor superbly is William Eggleston from Memphis.
A Happiness Scientist…okay, maybe it’s not an oxymoron by a strict definition of that word, but what a loathsome concept. And you have to practice and do homework to be happy, in other words you have to work to get your reward. With some very questionable neurotransmitter theory tossed in.
It reminds me how alleged health scientists always insist everyone should exercise, get so many reps in, walk a prescribed number of steps every day, work hard at it, people! Like, couldn’t they instead say, “People should play more, dance more, or maybe just go outside and see what’s going on.” You know, have fun. Nope, we have to make it all work.
My favorite Dad-joke:
Q: “What do you call a fish with two knees?”
A: “Two-knee fish!”
One of my favourite Dad jokes:
Detective One: “Hmmm… Unidentified male found face down in the middle of the street after dark.”
Detective Two: “Yep. Five bullet holes in his back.”
Detective One: “Notice he was running pretty fast. He slid when he went down.”
Detective Two: “Yeah. Look at the terror you can still see on his face.”
Detective One: “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
Detective Two: “I sure am. We’ve got here a clear cut case of…”
Both together: “Domestic.”
Sergeant walks up: “I’ll bet she claims justifiable homicide.”
My favorite to date:
Q: How can you tell if a joke is a dad joke?
A: It’s apparent.
Jordano: The dead giveaway sample photo above is in U.S. is Marshalltown (Iowa). Some of the others could be from many places. This made me think of Richard Estes, who is the sin qua non photorealist painter of late USA 1960’s storefronts and cityscapes. His work is fantastic.
The first photo from Chicago (Skyway Bridge) made me think of the opening verse of ‘Red Right Hand’:
Re: Eric Adams and “The rules that govern these [legal defense] trusts…”
Here’s an idea: The rules should simply not permit them to exist at all.
Back in early 2019, 42 of the 48 (5 No votes, 1 abstention) NYC City Council members rushed through the bill, sponsored by member Stephen Levin, seeing a clever backdoor to increasing contributions.
I do wonder at the understanding of PMC types as regards how close they are to the guillotine. From down here, the answer is ‘very close’.
I have read of a mindset in which people at the top see how corrupted and incompetent the systems they are responsible for are, and begin to look out for only themselves and their loved ones. This is not a sustainable attitude: the people oppressed by this cynical, nihilistic, self-serving world view may well kill you before your decisions can kill them, it is important to remember.
I seem to recall a billionaire on MSDNC, or somewhere, freaking out at one of Sanders runs for the presidency. He was really perturbed, saying that were Sanders to be elected billionaires like himself would be executed in Central Park, and then the next story would be about millionaires and billionaires begging to be taxed more.
So, just showing that the more things change the more they stay the same, they are asking to be taxed more at Davos:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/over-200-millionaires-urge-davos-elite-to-up-taxes-on-the-ultra-rich-.html
Of course, it is an election year in which they are funding the guys who will not listen to them once elected. So there is that. But it is nice to see them sweat a little every few years.
Wouldn’t it be nice if billionaires were executed in central park? To my thinking, they should be. We both read much of the same news sources, clearly, and should be able to see who is responsible for the distressing events we read about. From my reading of these sources, it’s not the poor, nor the working class.
I don’t want to kill billionaires, just make them so poor they have to get jobs. For most that would be fate worse than death.
Best description of the PMC role in society I have ever read:
“America is caught in a confidence or credibility trap, in which the changes, investigations, and reforms necessary to restore trust to an economy or market are rendered unlikely because doing so would expose a pervasive corruption that the principals fear would destroy any remaining trust. It could also endanger the careers of politicians and business people who may have permitted and even appeared to facilitate the control fraud that caused the financial crisis in the first place. Personal risk trumps public stewardship. The fraudulent activity is covered up and therefore continues, crowding out most productive business investment and activity which cannot possibly hope to compete with the highly profitable fraudulent activity and asset bubbles under such opaque and uncertain circumstances.” Jesse, America Is Caught in a Credibility Trap, 22 January 2011
From 12 years ago, found at jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
Stock & Home Syndrome must have owners anxious of tumbling values after all that gravy ladled out since the turn of the of the century, some might feel captured by their investments/wanting to slit their risks.
Restriction endonuclease BsmBI. Many common restriction enzymes destroy the specific sequence they recognize, i.e. you can’t use them to cut the same re-ligated fragment. So the deep state kids had to order a rare enzyme. This provides a rather useful polymorphism if one is forensically minded.
This because literally ALL of the common restriction enzymes in the freezer had already been used on the corona chunks that the relevant labs had been passing amongst themselves over nearly two decades preceding 2020. One can read all about this process in the conspiratorial journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, search coronavirus cDNA, 2004 or so.
NC even featured a pre-print with commentary some time ago, authors had arrived at the same conclusion using a bioinformatic analysis that included all the covid variants.
Val, Thanks for the better explanation. I just emailed Lambert a version a few minutes ago before seeing your post but probably didn’t do a very good job. Cheers!
> This was then cultured in a BL3 lab
It’s kind of “cute”, in a snarky way, that CV researchers get to work in BSL 3 labs.
The only problem is that at the end of a safe day’s work, they get to go back to their homes, which are in communities, which have implemented level “zero” safety precautions to protect them from the very same virus, or related strains of it, that they study under safer conditions at their workplace.
wait:
” we have gold standard evidence that viable replacation competant virus has the potential to be in the brain”
of course it has the potential.
WTF department:
KTLA (Los Angeles) reports that California health officials have shortened the recommended COVID isolation period to 1 day.
https://twitter.com/KTLA/status/1748085548907176270
A new candidate for the town “Love Me I’m a Liberal” house has a sign in their front yard on a very heavily traveled main route that (I think) says “Write in Joe Biden”. The bus window was very dirty so I’ll try to confirm tomorrow.
For the Water Cooler medical file–the fakery of antidepressants.
https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/18/scientific-misconduct-and-fraud-the-final-nail-in-psychiatrys-antidepressant-coffin/
Thanks for this. Very sad that millions are addicted, but what else should we expect from Big Pharma?
Onward to ketamine, and electroshock…?
Remember when you were young, Trump shone like the sun
Sign on Jamie Dimon
Now there’s a look in his eyes, like a mortal lock-this guy
Sign on Jamie Dimon
He was caught on the crossfire of controversy and stardom
Blown out on the 2020 festivities
Come on you target for faraway vampire squid laughter
Come on you stranger, you legend, you martyr, and sign on!
You endorsed the galoot too soon, you cried for the loon
Sign on Jamie Dimon
Threatened by might-mares at night, and exposed as way right
Sign on Jamie Dimon
Well he wore out his welcome with random precision
Rode out on the 2020 breeze
Come on you craver, you seer of visions,
Come on you banker, you applied piper, you prism’er and sign on!
Shine On You Crazy Diamond, by Pink Floyd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gHSOBgb02Y
Thanks Wukchumni.
Shine on You Crazy Diamond is a favorite Pink Floyd song of mine. I love the version on Pulse, one of Pink Floyd’s live albums. Pulse, by the way, is the best live album evar. Can you think of a better live album?
Shine on You Crazy Diamond is about Pink Floyd’s founding band member, Syd Barrett, who by that time was kind of crazy. Whoever does the saxophone solo near the ten minute mark is awesome. He captures the emotion of lamenting Barrett’s departure and admiring Barrett for being a “seer of visions.”
In theory, I would like progressive rock a great deal. In practice, I seem to only like Pink Floyd. I tried but could not quite take an interest in King Crimson, Yes, Deep Purple, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Journey, Electric Light Orchestra, Rush. Maybe some others too. I am still puzzled why. Is it the space (in the temporal sense) or the spaciness (in the psychedelic sense) of Pink Floyd’s music that seduces me? Am I the only one with a specific fetish for Pink Floyd but not other progressive rock bands?
If you like Syd Barrett, check out Jacco Gardner‘s first album.
Masterful discussion of the Substack “Nazi Panic” by Jesse Singal. Read it over coffee if you’re snowed in tomorrow :)
Yeow. We had the fake Davos troll yesterday. Today, the real thing?
From the Chief of the heritage foundation (gross) but anyway, apparently what he actually said:
“ It’s laughable that you would—or anyone would— describe Davos as protecting liberal democracy.”
“ But the thing that I want to drive home here, the very reason that I’m here at Davos, is to explain to many people in this room and who are watching, with all due respect, nothing personal, but thatyou’re part of the problem.”
His policy objectives follow. And I’m not commenting on those- besides being at least a clear statement of policy from a Trump surrogate (is he?), which can be hard to find.
But he’s got the rhetorical framing down.
the amer conserv
Covid wastewater levels at Stanford are once again literally off the chart. Not as high as they were a few weeks ago, but still off the chart, and far higher than during Omicron.
I wonder if there is something about covid that makes many people subconsciously want to catch it a second (and third, and so on) time. It was found early in the pandemic that being infected has an analgesic effect. Could people be seeking out that sensation? I’m just at a loss in trying to understand why people seem to actively seek out this risk, so it is hard not to speculate.