By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Sedge Warbler, ‘thy’ Denmark. “Habitat: Swamp.” Virtuousic!
Patient readers, I’ve had an enormous scheduling debacle, and so must sacrifice Water Cooler to complete a post on an important court decision by the California Ninth Circuit on vaccine mandates.
In the meantime, I’m surprised Taylor Swift, superspreader, never came up with her own version of this (or maybe she did):
Instead of spaces taking much-needed steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we are asked to sign liability waivers saying we won’t sue when we get COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/3eGJIW5CVK
— Myra Batchelder (@myrabatchelder) June 10, 2024
Readers, I reverence the New York Public Library, and so this example of end-state neoliberalism fills me with appalled disgust. Do we have any New York readers and/or librarians who can find out who committed this atrocity and get them pilloried? Why the heck don’t they fix their ventilation system, make C02 concentrations visible, and have N95s available? Have fun! (Also, should be “agents,” plural, and there’s a missing Oxford comma.)
Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From Amfortas:
I believe these are Black-Eyed Susans — I recall fields of them in the Midwest — but don’t Black-Eyed Susans have yellow petals?
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36 comments
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“In the meantime, I’m surprised Taylor Swift, superspreader, never came up with her own version of this (or maybe she did):”
Do you get tickets through Ticketmaster?
https://help.ticketmaster.com/hc/en-us/articles/10468830739345-Terms-of-Use
> Do you get tickets through Ticketmaster?
I don’t get tickets. But sheesh. Swift has the clout to get this changed, too, I would guess.
I’m sad when you do this. Which proves we are so spoiled by all the work you all do. Two massive link posts a week day. damn. Thank you NC. the Conor and Nick articles are great too… rival in a big way, what I use to read in the 80’s and 90’s…NACLA, lies of our times, CAQ, and etc. Just saying, I appreciate this site so much.
> I’m sad when you do this.
I’m sorry, too. I hate it. I’m trying to change my personal schedule to avoid it, but that’s like getting a supertanker to change course, I am such a creature of habit.
My guess is that flower is gaillardia – a staple of the tall grass of the Great Plains
I think you’re right. I often buy it here in Maine – I can’t remember if they sell it as an annual or perennial here though. I put it in pots and then I’ve replanted it in the ground in the fall, but it’s never come back. Imagine my surprise when I went to TX last year and saw it just growing by the side of the road, free for the taking!
On a related note, I planted some snapdragons last year which are sold as annuals here. They kept blossoming into November so I didn’t yank them, then it froze and I couldn’t pull them and I figured I’d deal with them in the spring. But they were very resilient – before I could pull them after the thaw they started greening up, and now I have a whole bunch of them just about to bloom, looking even better than they did last year.
Not sure if I should be thrilled at my seemingly magical gardening abilities and saving a few bucks on plants, or rather worried about the real reason these annuals decided to become perennials…
And yes Lambert, the flowers I call Black-Eyed Susans have yellow petals with a dark center
Yep. Also known as blanket flower, although I’m not sure if that refers to a specific gaillardia. The ones I see in MT generally have more yellow.
One of my favorite native wildflowers and easy to grow.
https://www.thespruce.com/blanket-flowers-1402030
Yep! Over planted our septic field with them (and a mix) back in 2000, much to the consternation of our lawn-loving neighbors. If there were more sun in Outer Patagonia, I’d plant them again.
Time to do some chores around the house. Particularly setting up the “kinetic engagement pods” for when the Vaccine Mandate Enforcers come calling.
Stay safe.
Perhaps the New York Public Library is afraid of No Mask Freedumm riots by hordes of No Mask Freedumm rioters. Perhaps the Library just doesn’t want to get picketed by hordes of screaming MAGAnon rioters like the ones who disrupted various vaccination-availability events in NYC two or three years ago. ( I remember reading about that right here in NaCap and no, I won’t spend hours or days looking back through millions of words trying to find it).
New York Public Library – perhaps the library should invest in updated HVAC systems that return clean air on sixty second intervals? In 2020 Japanese gargantua movie theaters updated their HVAC and placed digital signs outside each theater with the carbon monoxide readings inside. It’s 2024 and I’ve seen exactly zero American establishments attempt to mitigate indoor air, even to the point of making some Corsi-Rosenthal boxes for kindergarten classrooms. Until if and when they do, scapegoating MAGA people is picking low-hanging fruit.
You may well be correct. I am theorizing about what the Library might be thinking, especially with regard to even daring to offer N95 respirators. ( Though of course Head Cop In Charge Adams might also try to obstruct such an offer of respirators). After all, the anti-vaccine-center disruptions actually did happen in New York City.
Investing in high-powered HVAC systems and public display CO2-level readers would be the best approach. Would the patrons of the Library all chip in if the Library were to start a Go Fund Me to raise money for it? ( Because if the various levels of Government are all part of a secret conspiracy to infect millions of people with covid deliberately and on purpose, why would any level of government invest in HVAC? )
And now that I see a new thread-entry below, it looks like HCIC Adams and his City Council are indeed the cause of the problem.
So it looks like the only way to get ventilation into the NYPL will indeed be a GoFundMe, if it can raise enough money.
I thought there already was a GoFundMe.
Taxes?
People for Tax Restoration would have to win overwhelming power over relevant levels of government to restore taxes at those levels of government. Till then, GoFundMe is all there is. Well . . . bake sales also.
Is NYC a special case? Does it collect enough taxes to support its libraries if it desupported something else? If a Public Library Party could achieve overwhelming command power over the NYC government at all levels, then it could force library support back up to viability levels.
Don’t do the clime if you can’t do Covid time (with apologies to Baretta…)
Plantidote looks like gaillardia, or blanketflower. Some of the new coneflower breeds look a bit like that too, maybe it’s faking me out.
Today’s bird song of the day is absolutely mesmerizing!
Big deal, maybe?
https://seekingalpha.com/news/4114579-intel-halts-construction-of-25b-chip-facility-in-israel-report?source=content_type%3Areact%7Cfirst_level_url%3Ahome%7Csection%3Atrending_news%7Cline%3A4
Intel has halted construction of a chip facility in Israel.
Those are indian blankets…galliarda.
Im covered up with them from may into july.
That was taken years ago where the library chicken house is today
Yes I pay for those at the greenhouse up here in New England. When I visited TX last year, I was surprised to see them growing everywhere by the side of the road, free for the taking!
> free for the taking
Arbitrage!
I have always felt they should be our national flower, since IIRC, they grow in every state.
A library chicken house? Having grown up surrounded by chickens and chicken houses … and all the books I could find …that combination is intriguing.
Yes, I too, am intrigued, and depending on what it is, I may have to build one too.
We may have to set up a means to make plans available. My wife designed what looks like a craftsman hope chest, but it actually is a cat litter box in disguise. iI looks nice, and is easy to clean out. I’ve always meant to find a good way to publish the plans so that others can build one too.
Yes please
OK, I’ll see what I can do!
I am going to lay the blame for the NYPL’s inaction on ventilation upgrade on Mayor Adams and our feckless City Council. He loves to cut the Library’s budget and they love to rubber stamp the cuts. You never hear of the Library’s funding being restored, unlike the police and sometimes the fire department (object to the first not the latter). The NYPL is fighting to keep the doors open and the buildings standing at all, not so much upgrading ventilation systems.
The Times from last year, and take the “fighting” rhetoric as we all do for most Democrats. There were further cuts later in the year
NY Times on protests to Adams’ cuts from January 2023
But the cuts didn’t end there. Here is an NYPL support request from the end of last year referencing further cuts
from Mid Year cuts and that there is further cuts planned for FY2025
And this is their press release about directors testifying before the council about those proposed FY25 cuts earlier this year
I realize that seven days a week or even five might seem like a luxury, but to put this in perspective please keep in mind that most of the public “cooling spaces” in NYC are public library spaces. They not only provide the service that is their mandate they also provide a safe space (for many things) including one that is properly cooled or heated for NYers who might otherwise not have one.
I also would throw out that NYC has too many legal grifters who would see the NYPL as low hanging fruit for this kind of law suit. it would be far easier to hit them successfully then the various David Koch supported theaters in Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall. While I think there will be legitimate suits, after finding out how pervasive nuisance disability suits filed strictly for settlement from small businesses are in NYC I am pretty sure that may be the point of the waiver.
Watched something relevant over the weekend related to casino gambling, er stock market trading in lesser than blue chip entities. Particular to this story the meme trading of stocks like a GameStop or an AMC was much in the headlines early 2021.
Has anyone else watched Dumb Money, release was late 2023 and streaming on Netflix. I had forgotten or just memory holed so much of the hullabaloo and in particular, the interval when Robin hood almost went the way of the dinosaur to extinction. Help us Obi Wan ( Ken Griffin of Citadel),you are the only hope!
It’s back in the news because Keith Gill started posting again,
But the bigger fix is in when 1 stock is headed for 15% – 20% of the S&P.
Lots of FOMO has to be generated for people to gain from very large positions and hide the delivery of the bags.
Yesterday I posted re a coreligionist whom I know via zoom; she works in Michigan. Everyone in her office is coughing like crazy. A coworker of hers tested positive for whooping cough last week and now she has tested positive as well (despite having had multiple whooping cough vaccine boosters during pregnancies) No one else has bothered to get tested yet. Even though this is a reportable illness, there has been no sign that the state health authorities are interested.
Today there was this on reddit/covid/positive:
“:Hi all. Im 31 weeks pregnant and had covid a month ago. Im having a brutal cough 😷, violent cough that is getting worse. Were any of u prescribed inhaled steroids for a bad cough that is causing vomiting? If so which? Last time i saw the ob a couple weeks ago she told me to suck it up and just take dextromethropan. Whatever its called. Been taking that non stop and this is getting worse instead of better. Any experience u may have would be great.”
I suggested to the lady that she get tested for whooping cough asap, just in case. I am seeing that a mother’s whooping cough does not harm the infant before is born, but once it is born it is a serious hazard.
I did a little bit of research on the Tdap vaccine during a recent pregnancy. There is evidence that suggests the vaccine might not be sterilizing:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6774807/
Which means the increased outbreaks could be more a sign of post-Covid immune deficiency rather than vax hesitancy. Scary stuff. It’s also a different type of vaccine than the one many of us got when we were young, which IIRC was more effective but had worse side effects. Even before Covid, Pertussis outbreaks were on the rise — but the lockdowns temporarily reversed the trend.
“Major warning as whooping cough ‘explosion’ rocks France – ‘worst in 40 years'”
(https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1907722/whooping-cough-outbreak-symptoms-france)
I guess there could be loads of vax hesitancy in France, as well as in England (where there is presently a huge outbreak of whooping cough), but I’d bet on damaged immune systems.
Is this the summary of the ruling (pdf) you refer to?
Scrolling further, one comes upon this:
Assuming a can opener, I see this can opening up and revealing a particularly delicious can of worms. Maybe they’ll do masks next. Ever the giddy optimist, me.
That’s the one!
The First Son tolls the knell of judgment day
Will he get off for his gun role play?
President hopes to have not set a precedent
Jurors will decide if he is guilty or innocent