By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Killdeer, Parc Michel-Chartrand, Longueuil, Quebec, Canada. I love the name “Charadrius vociferus.” Because it is!
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Trump’s conviction continues to reverberate.
(2) Unions can defeat the right (in Europe).
(3) Happy Birthday Charlie Watts.
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
Less than a half a year to go!
A mixed bag for Team Trump, this week with some Swing States (more here) Brownian-motioning themselves back toward him, including Pennsylvania. Not, however, Michigan, to which Trump paid a visit. Of course, it goes without saying that these are all state polls, therefore bad, and most of the results are within the margin of error. If will be interesting to see whether the verdict in Judge Merchan’s court affects the polling, and if so, how.
* * * Trump (R): “Poll: 49% of Independents think Trump should drop out post-guilty verdict” [Axios]. Headline is a bit less nuanced than reality: “54% of registered voters “strongly” or “somewhat” approve of the guilty verdict compared to 34% who “strongly or “somewhat” disapprove. 49% of Independents and 15% of Republicans said Trump should end his campaign because of the conviction. The polls found the race effectively tied nationally in a 1-on-1 with Biden at 45% and Trump at 44%. While they may agree with the guilty verdict, the poll found that more voters think Trump should get probation (49%) rather than go to prison (44%). 68% of registered voters said the punishment should be a fine. The poll also revealed some deep distrust of the criminal justice system. Three in four Republican voters said the verdict made them feel less confident in the system. And 77% of GOP voters, as well as 43% of independents, said they believed the conviction was driven by motivation to damage Trump’s political career.”
* * * Trump (R) (People v. Trump): “We Are Talking About the Manhattan Case Against Trump All Wrong” [New York Times]. “the case is about preventing wealthy people from using their businesses to commit crimes and hide from accountability. Manhattan prosecutors have long considered it their province to ensure the integrity of the financial markets. As Robert Morgenthau, a former Manhattan district attorney, liked to say, ‘You cannot prosecute crime in the streets without prosecuting crime in the suites.’ Lawmakers in New York, the financial capital of the world, consider access to markets and industry in New York a privilege for businesspeople. It is a felony to abuse that privilege by doctoring records to commit or conceal crimes, even if the businessman never accomplishes the goal and even if the false records never see the light of day.” Isn’t it pretty to think so. How many financiers were prosecuted for accounting control fraud after the Great Financial Crash? More: “We may never learn which crime the jurors believe Trump was seeking to commit or cover up, but they can still conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that this was his intent.” • If Judge Merchan had wanted us to know, that is how he would have contructed the verdict sheet; with checkboxes for the object offenses. He didn’t. But if “our democracy” had been his first priority, he would have. Trump is running for office. Wouldn’t it make a difference to voters if his object offense was a Federal campaign finance violation, or a tax offense where the government made money?
Trump (R): “James Comey says a Trump incarceration is ‘obviously doable'” [The Hill]. “Former FBI Director James Comey said Sunday he thinks imprisoning former President Trump is ‘obviously doable,’ despite some logistic hurdles. In an interview on ‘Inside with Jen Psaki’ on Sunday, Comey was asked about some of the public’s concerns about the logistical challenges that may arise if law enforcement institutions try to imprison Trump — who was convicted this past week on 34 felony counts of falsifying false business records to cover up a scheme to conceal potentially damaging information before the ‘They would just put him in a double wide, somewhere out near the fence, out in the grass. And he would eat there. He’d shower there, he’d exercise there, he’d be away, as Danya Perry said, from general population,’ Comey continued, citing the attorney of Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, who served time for related crimes. ‘But it’s obviously doable,’ Comey added. Trump will be sentenced on July 11 and is not detained until that time. After that point, Comey said he wasn’t sure whether Trump will have to wear an ankle bracelet or go to jail.”• Lovingly going over the detail; it’s almost like pr0n….
Trump (R) (People v. Trump): “Alvin Bragg Was Right, His Critics Were Wrong” [The American Prospect]. “At New York, Jonathan Chait argued the case shouldn’t have been brought because only a political candidate could have committed it (which is true of all campaign finance laws, but I digress), saying it ‘is like getting Al Capone for paying off his mistress.’ At The Atlantic, David Frum made an incredulous-stare argument that it couldn’t possibly be a big enough crime to merit the first-ever prosecution of a president. At Slate, law professor Richard Hasen argued the case didn’t have legal merit. Yet it turned out that the Bragg case was solid. After just a couple days of deliberation, the jury delivered total victory: guilty on every one of 34 felony counts.” I think the lesson is that the Flex Net behind Bragg is very good at lawfare, and a combination the strategy of denying Trump his Sixth Amendment rights to defend himself by delaying revelation of the object crimes — the point of the two layer architecture that seemed so strange at the time — Merchan’s rulings, and (to be fair) excellent business records tracking by Bragg’s office enabled the prosecution to thread the needle to a conviction (and thanks to Merchan’s obfuscatory verdict sheet, we’ll never know what Trump was actually convicted of, or why). More: “And I suspect politics did play a role here. As legal analyst Michael Liroff pointed out on my Left Anchor podcast recently, it surely can’t be a coincidence that so many cases dating from such a wide span of dates all came to court at the same time.” • Oh.
Trump (R) (People v. Trump): Michael Tracey has been reading the transcripts, lucky guy:
Lack of discipline, Trump’s tragic flaw….
* * * Biden (D): “Some Democrats try to Biden-proof their 2024 campaigns” [Axios]. “To some Democrats running in key congressional races, the 2024 election is about abortion rights, MAGA extremism, inflation, the border, local issues — anything except President Biden…. Democratic incumbents, candidates and operatives described to Axios a dynamic in which many in tight congressional races are maintaining their independence from Biden without publicly rejecting him…. The prospect of Biden visiting their districts is a sensitive topic for many Democratic candidates.” Then again: “Some Democrats are looking at the glass as half full — welcoming Biden to their districts and expressing hope his poll numbers improve.”
* * * Kennedy (I): Asking for my vote:
The Ukrainian military — with President Biden’s approval— is now firing US, British and German missiles onto civilian targets inside Russia including Beograd and other cities in an attempt to bring NATO into all-out war against Russia. The Washington Post is reporting that…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 1, 2024
Kennedy (I): “RFK Jr. Is Even Crazier Than You Might Think” [Mother Jones]. A long and unexcerptable disquisition about Kennedy’s views on Event 201. “During his chat with Von, Kennedy remarked, “Any of your listeners who do not believe what I am saying can go and look up Event 201. It’s still on YouTube.” He was right about that. The video of Event 201 remains on YouTube—as does an entire website devoted to the exercise—and it in no way matches Kennedy’s description. Not even close.” The final paragraph: “Donald Trump has long pitched assorted conspiracy theories—most notably, the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Yet he does so as a carnival barker who will say whatever he needs to say whenever he needs to say it. Kennedy comes across as a true believer in the lunacy he peddles. And the depth of his battiness has not received the attention it warrants. Kennedy is not just a possible spoiler candidate; he is a crackpot candidate. The less that is covered, the greater his opportunity to spoil.” • I talked about Kennedy with a long-term fellow follower of politics, and they said (paraphrasing): “At least Kennedy is asking good questions.” He is. But the answers matter to (as do the methods Kennedy by implication recommends to arrive at those answers).
Republican Funhouse
TX: “Texas GOP divisions grow after fraught primaries” [The Hill]. “In elections that saw unprecedented levels of outside spending, the party’s so-called business faction was left battered but still standing as some incumbents hung on, most notably Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R) and Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas). Their positions, however, are precarious. In Tuesday’s vote, conservative hard-liners in the state executive largely wiped the board of holdout members — largely those who had fought the rise of privatization in the state’s massive public school system, as well as a smaller group that had backed the impeachment of Attorney General Ken Paxton (R). Tuesday’s results ‘were truly the most chaotic outcome,’ said Joshua Blank of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. ‘You had most of the targeted Republicans losing, and yet the Speaker eking out a victory.’ As a result, the primaries have widened divisions within the state GOP as a whole — a body that has been widely criticized, Blank noted, for ‘prioritizing going after Republicans more than building out the state party.’ Now, he said, ‘it looks like the party is continuing in that direction.'”
TX: “Proposed Texas GOP platform calls for the Bible in schools, electoral changes that would lock Democrats out of statewide office” [Texas Tribune]. “Passed by delegates at the party’s biennial convention, the platform has traditionally been seen not as a definitive list of Republican stances, but a compromise document that represents the interests of the party’s various business, activist and social conservative factions. But in recent years — and amid a party civil war that’s pushed it further right — the platform has been increasingly used as a basis for censuring Republican officeholders who the party’s far right has attacked as insufficiently conservative, including Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, and U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzalez, R-San Antonio. … Perhaps the most consequential plank calls for a constitutional amendment to require that candidates for statewide office carry a majority of Texas’ 254 counties to win an election, a model similar to the U.S. electoral college. Under current voting patterns, in which Republicans routinely win in the state’s rural counties, such a requirement would effectively end Democrats’ chances of winning statewide office. In 2022, Gov. Greg Abbott carried 235 counties, while Democrat Beto O’Rourke carried most of the urban, more populous counties and South Texas counties. Statewide, Abbott won 55% of the popular vote while O’Rourke carried 44%. However, some attorneys question whether such a proposal would be constitutional and conform with the Voting Rights Act because it would most likely limit the voting power of racial minorities, who are concentrated in a relatively small number of counties. (The party’s platform also reiterates its previous calls for the repeal of the Voting Rights Act).”
Democrats en Déshabillé
TX: “Houston Underdogs Beat Established Democrats in House, Senate Runoffs” [Texas Observer]. “Both Lauren Ashley Simmons, who trounced four-term incumbent Shawn Thierry to win the House District 146 race by 29 percentage points, and Molly Cook, who narrowly beat House Representative Jarvis Johnson in the Senate District 15 race by 74 votes, drew upon the community they helped organize to turn out votes leading up to yesterday’s runoff election. It paid off. Both Simmons and Cook see their wins as blueprints for not only how progressive upstarts can beat established Democrats, but how Democrats can energize a broader and lethargic base to flip seats across the state…. Both seats are securely Democratic, guaranteeing Simmons and Cook a likely win in the general election.”
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Of Men and Myths” [James Howard Kunstler]. “The mysterious cabal in power knows that they must ditch the old stumblebum pretending to run for president, and time is running out to get the dastardly deed done. They are staring down a month of dread days that lead to the proposed great debate between the major party candidates, which is doomed to play like a combo of the classic horror movie endings — the unmasking of the phantom with a wooden stake driven through his heart, with Donald Trump cast as Prof Van Helsing. Can our resourceful intel blob instead maybe find a way before that to make it look like the “president” passed away peacefully in his slumber? Or perhaps it would suffice to just leak the voice recording of his interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur and allow people to compare what’s in it with the already-released printed transcript.” • Or perhaps New York’s penal system will decide that one particular felon is a pre-sentencing flight risk….
Syndemics
“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
Covid 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!
Airborne Transmission
Yet another excellent reason to get a CO2 monitor:
Al Haddrell is awesome. ❤️👇
Watch this *brilliant* explainer of how higher CO2 levels aren't just an indicator that there is more exhaled air in a room, but a boost to viral airborne longevity.
🔥🔥🧯🧯👇👇 https://t.co/owNVgaeEcb pic.twitter.com/n5srLbjtA5— tern (@1goodtern) June 3, 2024
475 if anyone’s asking.
Airborne Transmission: Covid
Hmm:
Have never seen this before: Flight from BKK to SFO on Philippine Airlines offering upgrades by purchasing empty seats adjacent to yours. pic.twitter.com/ngfSG2KUuw
— Justin Dunne (@justindunne) June 2, 2024
Dunno if this is Covid-consciousness or just an attempt to make cattle class less painful (for a price). Nevertheless….
Maskstravaganza
“Aerosol pandemic/Adjusters” [Appropdedia]. • Tips to make baggy blues more protective.
Immune Dysregulation
“Syracuse University student diagnosed with tuberculosis” [Syracuse.com]. “The student lives off-campus and has not been on-campus since their diagnosis, SU officials said Friday.” • So that’s alright then.
“United Airlines Forced to Remove Plane For Deep Cleaning After Up to 30 Passengers From Cruise Trip Fall Sick With Nausea and Vomiting” [Paddle Your Own Kanoe]. “United Airlines has confirmed that it was forced to remove a plane from service for deep cleaning after up to 30 passengers fell sick during a four-hour flight from Vancouver, Canada [Hi, Bonnie!], to Houston on Friday afternoon. The sickened passengers were part of a larger group of 75 cruise line passengers who had just finished a trip in British Colombia and were returning to Texas. The cause of the sickness hasn’t yet been determined, although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is tracking several norovirus outbreaks on cruise ships, including the Celebrity Summit which is sailing around Alaska and British Colombia.” • On the bright side, at least United is cleaning the plane, instead of forcing the passengers to do that.
Censorship and Propaganda
Transmission: H5N1
“Massive outbreak of Influenza A H5N1 in elephant seals at Peninsula Valdes, Argentina: increased evidence for mammal-to-mammal transmission” (preprint) [bioRxiv]. From the Abstract: “In October 2023, following outbreaks in sea lions in Argentina, we recorded unprecedented mass mortality (~17,000 individuals) in southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) at Peninsula Valdes. …. [High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (HPAI)] H5N1 was confirmed in seals and terns. Moreover, genomic characterization showed viruses from pinnipeds and terns in Argentina form a distinct clade with marine mammal viruses from Peru, Chile and Brazil. These mammal-clade viruses share an identical set of mammalian adaptation mutations which are notably also found in the terns. Our combined ecological and phylogenetic data support mammal-to-mammal transmission and occasional mammal-to-bird spillover. To our knowledge, this is the first multinational transmission of H5N1 viruses in mammals ever observed globally. The implication that H5N1 viruses are becoming more evolutionary flexible and adapting to mammals in new ways could have global consequences for wildlife, humans, and/or livestock.” • Oh good.
More mammal-to-mammal transmission:
Them: but why is there such a high CFR among cats on dairy farms with H5N1 cases?
The cats: pic.twitter.com/grGTQ37aM7— Laurel Bristow, MSc (@Laurel_Bristow) June 1, 2024
Origins Debate
“Why the Pandemic Probably Started in a Lab, in 5 Key Points” [Alina Chan, New York Times]. This is a horrid mobile-friendly page, and the top half won’t load for me, so if the five key points are there, they are invisible to me. From the text: “[A] laboratory accident is the most parsimonious explanation of how the pandemic began.” That may be. It’s still the Watchmaker’s Hypothesis, beloved of anti-Evolution religionists (“Like a watch, the universe is so beautiful, complex, and functional that only a consciousness could have created it”). In any other scientific context, the Watchmaker’s Hypothesis would be rejected out of hand. As far as policy: “Given what we now know, investigators should follow their strongest leads and subpoena all exchanges between the Wuhan scientists and their international partners, including unpublished research proposals, manuscripts, data and commercial orders. In particular, exchanges from 2018 and 2019 — the critical two years before the emergence of Covid-19 — are very likely to be illuminating (and require no cooperation from the Chinese government to acquire), yet they remain beyond the public’s view more than four years after the pandemic began.” • I couldn’t agree with these policy recommendation more.
Policy
“We aren’t prepared for the next pandemic” [Understanding the Unseen]. “It will probably start with a cluster of unusual symptoms. Some of the people with the disease will know each other, but won’t have been exposed to animals, suggesting the infection can spread between people. Then more cases will start appearing in other areas, maybe even in other countries. The next pandemic could take many forms, but a respiratory infection remains high on the list of probabilities. It could be a new flu virus, or a new coronavirus, or perhaps something else. It might emerge from a market, or a mink farm, or from another source. It may be years away, or months away – or it could be spreading now, yet to be detected. People often talk about ‘pandemic preparedness’, but increasingly I think this is an unhelpful term. Only in hindsight can we sort events into ‘pandemics’ or ‘outbreaks’ or ‘isolated cases’. In real-time, all these paths begin with a cluster of infections. So if we want to curb pandemics, we need to think about what the response to a small new outbreak will look like.” • Hopefully not like H5N1 looks now….
“World Health Assembly agreement reached on wide-ranging, decisive package of amendments to improve the International Health Regulations” [WHO]. • It seems clear to me that there’s no other way to control pandemics than by governing governments, modifying what Mearsheimer calls anarchy between states; on the other hand, if the only option for implementation is WHO, it’s hard to imagine they’ll accomplish anything good, after their miserable performance on Covid. Not an ideal set of choices, here.
Celebrity Watch
Cognitive dysfunction on the tennis circuit:
Most people think cognitive dysfunction just means slowness, forgetfulness, and general thinking problems. But SARS-CoV-2 🧠damage can lead to loss of self-control and even violence. I've been ⚠️worried about this since the pandemic began, and if you look closely, you'll see it…
— Dr. Sean Mullen (@drseanmullen) June 1, 2024
Elite Maleficence
Cochrane trashing its down brand:
They can't even do hand sanitizer studies properly without having to retract them 😂😂
Cochrane has become such a joke pic.twitter.com/WMAv1mDxHl
— Jonathan Mesiano-Crookston's translucent form (@jmcrookston) June 2, 2024
“In the pandemic, we were told to keep 6 feet apart. There’s no science to support that” [WaPo]. “‘It sort of just appeared, that six feet is going to be the distance,’ Fauci testified to Congress in a January closed-door hearing, according to a transcribed interview released Friday. Fauci characterized the recommendation as ‘an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data.'” • Fauci is lying in a particularly odd way. As readers know, social distancing as a non-pharmaceutical intervention, historically, is a consequence of droplet dogma (since the droplets were said to be driven by ballistics, the distance they would travel before falling could be calculated). Social distancing didn’t just “appear” as an “an empiric decision”; it was a consequence of sixty years of bad theory, deeply embedded in the public health establishment, as the rest of the article uncrisply shows (for some reason, the reporter pulled ventilation expert Joseph Allen out of his Rolodex, instead of aerosol scientists like Linsey Marr or Jose-Luis Jimenez).
Lambert here: Patient readers, I’m going to have to rethink this beautifully formatted table. Biobot data is gone, CDC variant data functions, ER visits are dead, CDC stopped mandatory hospital data collection, New York Times death data has stopped. (Note that the two metrics the hospital-centric CDC cared about, hospitalization and deaths, have both gone dark). Ideally I would replace hospitalization and death data, but I’m not sure how. I might also expand the wastewater section to include (yech) Verily data, H5N1 if I can get it. Suggestions and sources welcome. UPDATE I replaced the Times death data with CDC data. Amusingly, the URL doesn’t include parameters to construct the tables; one must reconstruct then manually each time. Caltrops abound.
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
| Cases | |
| ❌ National[1] Biobot May 13: | ❌ Regional[2] Biobot May 13: |
 |
 |
| Variants[3] CDC May 25 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC May 18 |
 |
< |
| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data May 30: | National [6] CDC May 11: |
|
 |
| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens May 28: | ‘ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic May 18: |
 |
 |
| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC May 13: | Variants[10] CDC May 13: |
 |
 |
| Deaths | |
| ‘ Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC May 18: | ‘ Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC May 18: |
 |
|
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (Biobot) Dead.
[2] (Biobot) Dead.
[3] (CDC Variants) FWIW, given that the model completely missed KP.2.
[4] (ER) This is the best I can do for now. At least data for the entire pandemic is presented.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Still going up, though fortunately no sign of geometric increase. The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and around the country through air travel)
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). This is the best I can do for now. Note the assumption that Covid is seasonal is built into the presentation. At least data for the entire pandemic is presented.
[7] (Walgreens) Going up.
[8] (Cleveland) Going up.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Flattening.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) KP.2 enters the chat, as does B.1.1.529.
[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.
[12] Deaths low, ED not up.
Stats Watch
Manufacturing: “United States ISM Manufacturing PMI” [Trading Economics]. “The ISM Manufacturing PMI unexpectedly edged lower to 48.7 in May 2024 from 49.2 in April, below forecasts of 49.6. The reading showed another contraction for the manufacturing activity as demand was soft again, output was stable, and inputs stayed accommodative.”
The Bezzle: Well done!
That's neat, a write-up I did of Equifax's monopoly over income verification has turned into a class action antitrust suit by mortgage lenders against the credit bureau. https://t.co/Jdh5eNcB6L https://t.co/HKKXELMpI4 pic.twitter.com/sgXR3HvZAr
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) May 31, 2024
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 48 Neutral (previous close: 48 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 51 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 3 at 1:43:17 PM ET.
Rapture Index: Closes down one on Earthquakes. “The lack of activity has downgraded this category” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 188. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Bird flu not a concern, apparently. Still flirting with the 189 ceiling….
The Conservatory
When I grow up, I want to be as cool as Charlie Watts:
Charlie Watts of The Rolling Stones was born on this day in 1941. He was the engine of the band from 1963 until his death 3 years ago and is still missed. pic.twitter.com/rSAf4dna6D
— Eric Alper 🎧 (@ThatEricAlper) June 3, 2024
“Music as a Magical Language” [Ecosophia]. This caught my eye: “The point to this exercise in unfamiliar music is to get past a certain pervasive bad habit in modern books on the occult dimensions of music: the notion that music—meaning our kind of music, post-eighteenth century Western music using an equally tempered scale—is a “universal language.” It’s not. When it was first introduced to people outside the Western countries, most of them thought it was as bizarre as you probably find gagaku. Many of them are used to it now, for the same reason that you can find someone who speaks English in a really remarkable range of countries all over the world, but there’s nothing inherently universal about our idiosyncratic Western music. Western music itself has gone through a whole series of convulsions in its history, driving and driven by sharp changes in what counted as music. The medieval church insisted that the only good music was theirs, and followed strict rules that forbade certain scales from being played—today’s major scale, the one that most people who aren’t musicians think of as the musical scale, was condemned as the modus lascivius or “lustful mode.” Come the Renaissance, the medieval modes got chopped up and replaced by seven planetary modes, in which the Ionian mode (our major scale) was quite sensibly assigned to Venus, and the Aeolian mode (our natural minor scale) was given to the Moon. The odd sad flavor of Appalachian folk music? That’s because the mountain folk preserved one of the others, the Mixolydian mode, which belongs to Saturn.” • Well worth a read. Just for grins, I went back to this Keith Richards interview to see if he said music is a universal language. He did not. He said: “Give me a tribe’s music, and I’ll tell you how they live, what they smell like, almost.” And: “There’s no lying when you’re playing music.” Interesting to juxtapose the two (and Richards, amazingly enough, is a scholar in his own way).
The Gallery
Silicon Valley has lost its mind over AI:
Adobe scolded for hosting ‘Ansel Adams-style’ images generated by AI https://t.co/U49gQcD1lY
— The Verge (@verge) June 3, 2024
Can’t anybody see how destructive to value — both senses — fakes like that are?
Zeitgeist Watch
“Scents and memories at the hospital” [Scope, Stanford Medicine]. “For me [like Marcel Proust], involuntary memories are most triggered by scent. Olfaction can be considered an ancient sense — traced back to the chemoreceptors found on rudimentary bacteria. However, despite (or perhaps because of ) its antiquity, I find smell to be the most difficult sense to capture with words. Still, all of us can remember a moment in which a whiff transported us away to another time and place. In medicine, interesting smells are in no short supply. Every day, the first thing that I encounter when the hospital doors open is the omnipresent smell of antiseptic. To most people, this scent likely triggers involuntary memories of negative events — the illness of a loved one, for example. For me, the first wave of antiseptic reminds me of my previous hospital rotations and prompts me to be ready to work for my patients and for my team.” • I’m leaving out the “interesting” parts. I think there’s more here than the author realizes, but I’m not sure what….
Class Warfare
“Trade Unions Can Defeat Europe’s Far Right” [Project Syndicate]. “Across Europe, from Ireland to Germany, trade unions act as a bulwark of democracy. They counter misinformation through digital-skills trainings, provide educational materials about the anti-social voting record of far-right parties, mobilize their members to vote, and organize demonstrations to rally the general public. The 2023 elections in Spain are a case in point. When Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called early elections after his Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party suffered heavy losses in local polls, the right-wing nationalist Vox party was polling at 15-16% – high enough to form a majority with the conservative Partido Popular. But Vox received only 12.4% of the vote, and Sánchez stayed in power, partly owing to a nationwide campaign launched by the major Spanish trade union federations Unión General de Trabajadores and Comisiones Obreras. They organized workplace assemblies and powerful digital campaigns to inform their members about Vox’s anti-worker policies and highlight the progressive government’s achievements: a significant increase in the minimum wage, a new labor code, and better protections for gig workers. If European leaders want to beat the far right, they need to abandon the failed neoliberal consensus that has disempowered workers.” • Apparently, the best way to defend nuestra democracia is not with constant ritual incantations, but with performance.
News of the Wired
I am not feeling wired today.
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 Rainlover:
Rainlover writes: “This is a wild rhododendron near Mt. Walker in Washington State. The wild rhodies are blooming all along Hwy 101 on the Hood Canal this time of year. I caught a glimpse of this sweet arrangement on my way down the mountain and turned around specifically to get this shot.”
Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for three or four days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:
Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated:
If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!
81 comments
Comments are closed.
RE: AI and Ansel Adams
The thing is right now, most adults over a certain age who were around before the interwebs are able to tell when something online is completely made up. Fast forward 40 years or so though, and we’ll have a couple generations who grew up with this stuff and those who know better will mostly be dead. The vast majority of people who don’t live in ivory towers will not know anything for sure, which is likely the point of it all.
I don’t remember anybody ever asking me if it was OK to put a bunch of AI-generated crapola at the top of every search, pretty much regardless of the search engine or browser I’m using.
It’s not OK. Kill with fire.
I posted a comment in regards to his photographs over in links, and he would regularly manipulate negatives in the darkroom to get the desired result.
This is not manipulation. It is stealing images and making shit up with a push of a button. I worked in photography all my adult life, the last fifteen as a retoucher, or professional manipulator, if you will. I still do on an amateur level. First time I saw generative fill demonstrated in Photoshop, I said, that’s it, game over for the serious photography world. The only issue is that it can’t be done with high res images, yet, but 98% of the images anybody sees are low res on devices. That cat is out of the bag and roaming the whole neighborhood, making kittens. I learned long ago not to fight the tech, and this is here to stay, like it or not. Nobody in power is fighting it.
Thats true, and really in this day and age with point and click smartphones, really anybody can come up with stunning images of the Sierra, its that photogenic.
Silicon Valley on the other hand, isn’t.
Here’s the correct link for those of us who hate archive.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/6/3/24170285/adobe-stock-ansel-adams-style-ai-generated-images
And yes prohibition against using an artist’s name to sell without permission is basic IP law. The objection was about violating a mark, not Ansel’s style which of course was art and interpretation in the sense that he sought to present an enhanced version of reality (which btw is in color, not b&w).
Its called making a print, every photographer does it to achieve their vision of the image. There is no such thing as a perectly exposed neg. You will have to burn in overexposed highlights or dodge thin shadow areas. Also choose film type, lens filters to change or enhance contrast during exposure, then choose from various film developers for the different emulsions and then printing papers and their surfaces.
I taught Fine Arts photography and and Digtal Imaging at a SUNY college that at at one point had one of the better Fine Arts and Art Education Departments in the country and have been an exhibiting artist in galleries and museums for many years. I loved teaching Introduction to Photography.
It is not manipulation, it is making aesthetic decisions on achieving your vision whether you point and shoot “take pictures “ or you previsualize and make the image.
I make the image.
“The thing is right now, most adults over a certain age who were around before the interwebs are able to tell when something online is completely made up.”
Is this true? I have a sense (based on vibes and anecdotes!) that a lot of older folks on will believe anything they see on facebook, for instance.
Hear hear!!!
lol.
currently, the most gullible creatures on earth are our amurkin boomer parents.
definitely the case in my family.
(but not wife’s familia, at least to near the same extent…but they all grew up in poverty)
if maddow, et alia said it, it is simply True(tm)
This kind of generalization is given way too much power. I’ve met plenty of people of all age groups who are tragically gullible about technology, but also those of all ages who are, like little old me, reflexively skeptical (as I was throughout my 40-year career in electronic technology).
The greatest Charlie Watts story, if you’ve never heard it.
https://www.vulture.com/article/book-excerpt-rolling-stones-charlie-watts-mick-jagger-fight.html
> The greatest Charlie Watts story, if you’ve never heard it.
Covered here: “Charlie Watts, Jazz Drummer and “Pocket King”” [lambert blushes modestly]
Haha, how did I miss that? I’ve been a drummer for most of my life and he was always a role model for me. (Plus, how cool was he, right?)
So that’s where i ran into it.
A guy I know is friends with a long-standing member of the Stones crew. My pal got invited to a concert with a backstage pass some years ago. Watts saw my friend with his friend and came over for a chat.
My pal confirms: Charlie was a good and cool dude!
Holy mackerel, that NYT op ed! “Manhattan prosecutors have long considered it their province to ensure the integrity of the financial markets.” I mean, really? How could somebody type that after all crimes were ignored from 08?
> How could somebody type that after all crimes were ignored from 08?
Will Upton Sinclair please pick up the white courtesy phone?
Because it’s the NYT?
There is no news, only propaganda. Orwell is laughing in his grave saying “you should have read my book.”
Fauci is in front of congress today. Sounds like fireworks. I’m guessing the sound bytes will be good but nothing good will come out of it. Can’t watch, not enough blood pressure meds.
Marjorie Taylor-Greene (I want my M T-G!) did us all a solid – she refused to address Fauci as “Doctor”, thereby provoking the required fake outrage over her violation of House decorum:
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4700580-greene-fauci-doctor-reprimand/
(I’m sure Wukchumni can gin up an appropriate song parody … I’ve worked “Money for Nothing” to death.)
Would it have been better if she referred to him as “America’s Doctor” or perhaps quietly quacked from time to time?
They did read Orwell’s books.
Problem is, “they” confused them with instruction manuals.
> Fauci is in front of congress today. Sounds like fireworks
I don’t love Fauci, but I also don’t trust the Republicans to do any better on pandemic policy than Biden. Worse, if anything, because libertarian ideology is even more destructive of public health than neoliberal ideology (the first being, I suppose, the even more evil child of the evil second).
Has anyone questioned Fauci on how he screwed up masking and aerosol tranmission? If so, I would be very, very surprised.
Blobthink is so predictable. That’s what they get paid the big bucks for.
To them “upholding the integrity” likely means to maintain big finance’s ability to loot the rest of the world.
I work for an employee-owned manufacturing company in a niche industry that was, for a long time, considered almost recession proof. Since we’re worker owned, we’ve been getting a lot of information about how the business is doing.
Some of what we produce is used in PCR testing equipment, so the pandemic boosted our sales (something long over since we’ve all but given up testing…) We anticipated a drop, but sales have been lower than we expected. It’s interesting to see the ISM PMI trend mirrors what we’ve felt internally. We’ve were down, picked up in March, but then continued to struggle. We know there’s been a market contraction, especially in our segment, but haven’t been talking about national trends in our sector.
The decline is causing a lot of strife. Fellow workers have been advocating layoffs for the first time in 30 years. Private equity’s devoured a lot of our competitors and they’re already knocking at our door. If things continue like they did these past two years, workers might elect to sell. I can only imagine what things look like in other firms.
Speaking of worker owned business and private equity you might find this interesting from Freakonomics radio: Should Companies Be Owned by Their Workers? An interview with Pete Stavros.
I don’t know the answer to the question posed above. Perhaps you do.
Private Equity is trying to sell the company to workers because Mr. Market doesn’t want to pay the prices that PE wants. This is a way to screw workers and enrich the PE firm. Yes workers should own the business, but they should get it at market value not the over-inflated valuation the PE wants to force on them.
Thanks for this, Lee.
In short, it’s window dressing. Employee-owned companies are at most an effort to absorb worker dissent and might yield some big earnings for a small group of workers, and much bigger earnings for groups like KRR. Even at its best, it does not repesent a political economic shift in power.
There is no serious coordinated effort coming from employee-owned companies to shift wealth and power away from capital and towards workers. Employee-owned firms are not in league to make the rest of the economy employee-owned. Groups like the The Democracy Collaborative aren’t unifying a movement towards a democratic economy. These are regular firms in competitive markets and they act like it.
The employee-ownership model is not part of a political movement fighting for workers either. Employee-owned companies are isolated from the broader labor movement; employees are encouraged to think of themselves as owners and investors rather than workers. Employees who consider themselves owners are less friendly to labor and to political movements that threaten their stake in the market. Right now, our firm doesn’t do defense work because the company was founded on that principle. Employees are now eager to do away with that rule because they see the money in it and feel the pain of waning sales. While the UAW can declare for Gaza, we will continue to do business with Israel. The owners will always fight for the profit of the business first and foremost. And if we’re not getting the returns we want, we are going to sell.
When our company sells, it will make some workers millionaires–millionaires who worked their lives on the manufacturing floor, who kept living in the most impoverished county in the state, who stuck it out in a shrinking, post-industrial town. Our healthcare, retirement, and working conditions are incredible. The impact it’s had on the lives of over a hundred workers is profound. But that’s the limit.
After those workers cash out, it’ll be absorbed into some portfolio where it’ll be squeezed for everything it’s worth.
The success of unions like the UAW represents a far more promising economic future than anything happening in worker ownership.
Thanks for these insights Elijah. Worker ownership certainly sounds appealing – but lots to think about and learn.
I have to admit that I find the notion of worker owned businesses rather warm and cuddly. Thank you for reminding me of the larger context. It’s probably fair to say that prospect of cashing out and living in modest comfort is a powerful incentive for many workers. My son is a well paid electrician with a bit of family money behind him. He dreams of buying rental properties and becoming a member of the rentier class so that, among a variety of other pursuits, he may spend more time fishing, camping and hosting barbecues with friends and family. I cannot fault him for such dreams, although in the larger context which you describe, a greater collective attainment of such benefits minus the rentierism would be the better option.
So long as a human enterprise is organized around the idea of M-C-M, it will be harmful to the general welfare of the species.
Amadeo Bordiga wrote: “With a note of sarcasm, Marx observes: if the lover’s immediate object is the woman, then the immediate object of industrial rivalry should be the product, not the profit. But since in the bourgeois world profit is the name of the game (and this is true a hundred years on) the alleged productive emulation ends up as commercial competition.”
This is the text from which the phrase “the hell of capitalism is the firm, not that it has a boss” comes, though the translated quote is in fact “the real danger lies in the individual enterprise itself, not in the fact that it has a boss”. https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1957/fundamentals.htm
I added orts and scraps; lots and lots of syndemic stuff. Plus I fixed the bird song paste-o!
had to skip ahead to the comments, because this:”we’ll never know what Trump was actually convicted of, or why”….is just frelling Crazy, to me.
where the hell is due process in all that?
(usual protestations seen as read:”i aint a trumper”,”i aint a putin puppet”, etc…and am offended at being so accused)
what freedom(tm) are we defending in all these proxy wars, again?
Franz Kafka explained all this quite some time ago as I assume you know.
The more I dig into the legal system, the more convinced I am of these old adages:
“There, but for the grace of God, go I”
“Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”
>>>The more I dig into the legal system, the more convinced I am of these old adages:
“There, but for the grace of God, go I”
“Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”
True, but our betters generally and the police/security state has been steadily enhancing the legal system ability to be used both as a political weapon and for wealth extraction often in place of taxes. The Bill of Rights being made a joke is one example.
The Revolutionary War generation at least thought about the misuse of the law, how it could be used for repression, and ways to at least lessen the threat if only to prevent dictatorship and oligarchy. Our current bunch of elites are too busy enhancing to realize that the tools can and will be used on anyone eventually and often for different reasons.
For example, the Southern legal system was used to create slavery in another name first for profit, and then it was used for the suppression of the population, including the destruction of political movements, first on Blacks and then on poor Whites; slavery in fact, if not in name, for the farms, plantation, and the mines. The current use of the legal system to impose fines, fees, and prison labor is just a continuation.
That the whole system got a renaissance at the same time as Richard Nixon’s War on (some) Drugs was created to both hippie punch and destroy minority opposition is not, in anyway, a coincidence. Civil asset forfeitures being used to substitute for taxes and to enrich government officials like the police, and the Donald Trump’s politically motivated, manufactured convictions are exactly how the legal system was used in the South and is now being used in the entire country.
In the South of course, assassination and frame ups were also very common as well. Not only for political reasons, but also for business, as Boeing is a current example. It is a resurgence of the past of which many, many Americans are going to regret especially those who are so happy for Trump’s convictions or who support the security state.
I was at lunch this afternoon commiserating with some colleagues when, nearby, a loud group of the PMC began vigorously debating what Trump’s verdict means. Halfway through their stunted contemplation of why people still support the man despite being “a scumbag”, one thought out loud that people “felt marginalized” and that this was a “fuck you” to urbanites just like them. The person did not dwell on why that might be; the motive was just purely out of spite.
The bubble may be thick, but the message is still getting through by osmosis.
The power of osmosis is underrated as a social force.
Shine on, you crazy Orangeman
Remember when Trump was young?
The crime spree was fun
Shine on, you crazy Orangeman
Now there’s a look in his eyes
Like MAGA gone awry
Shine on, you crazy Orangeman!
You were caught in the crossfire
Of blob kill and stardom
Blown on a bubble’s breeze
Come on, you target, for district attorneys
Come on, you huckster, you legend, you martyr, and shine!
You reached for the secret too soon
You cried like the moon
Shine on, you crazy, Orangeman!
Threatened by liberals’ affright
And exposed in the light
Shine on, you crazy Orangeman
Well, you wore out your welcome
With random precision
Blown on a bubble’s breeze
Come on you MAGA, you slayer of witches
Come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine!
(Sung to the tune of, “Shine on you Crazy Diamond, Pts. 1-5” by Pink Floyd; lyrics come in around 8:00 mins in)
Nice effort!
Another Bidenomics sighting! Three people walking on the side of busy rural streets/highways today, one pushing another in a wheel chair. Oh! How our elite treat those of lesser value! Before Bidenomics kicked into high gear, these sighting were more rare.
I picked up some multi-color eggs at the grocery store; kind of cool, never seen such variety, all white is boring.
So this is interesting; If you request your consumer file via mail from LexusNexus, they actually send you a letter with a URL to open to get your report. It’s hard to believe this doesn’t violate the FCRA somehow? Crazy. All these consumer bureaus ought to be shutdown.
Kunstler–
Fun piece as usual, but this jarred me:
Who are those dastardly “Marxians” that have old W.H. perturbed? Back in 1971, Piven and Cloward published Regulating the Poor, the thesis of which was that the Aid for Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), part of the original Social Security Act of 1935, along with the then recently enacted War on Poverty, were aimed at controlling the poor rather than helping them. In 1972, I took a course from former Nixon staffer and future U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who included Regulating the Poor with his own recently published Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding on the reading list. Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding’s title betrayed its content, which consisted primarily of attacks on the concept of “maximum feasible participation” that was part of the War on Poverty’s Community Action Program (CAP). CAP was an attempt by someone in the Johnson Administration to counter the tendency to “regulate” the poor by giving them some say in how the program was run. This deeply offended Moynihan.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Frances Piven, who was a prof at BU at the time, as part of my research for a paper for Moynihan’s class. When I explained to her my hypothesis about CAP and “maximum feasible participation,” she wished me good luck in submitting that paper to the red-faced Irishman. Boy, was she right.
I enjoy Kunstler’s rants against Happy Motoring and the scourge that suburbs have proven to be, but his drift to the Right is something I don’t find to be a positive.
Don’t forget Kunstler defender of the genocidaires. He keeps saying that Biden is going to step aside and it keeps being obvious that he won’t. G Joe lives in his own little world of “never having to say you’re sorry.” The tag line of a cheesy Ali McGraw movie is now our president.
The Dems and Joe too think they have it made with Trump as their whipping boy. We shall see.
You should read what he says about black people. I think that 2016 finally broke his brain but maybe that is a result of all the shenanigans that he has witnessed. The guy needs to get away from it all for a month or so.
No one has mongered for doom as long as J.K. He probably will be proven right in the next 500 years or so. He has a way with words, though.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan. There’s a name that left a wake! Per Wikipedia:
Succeeded by John Ehrlichman
…
Succeeded by Donald Rumsfeld
…
Succeeded by Max Baucus
…
Succeeded by Bob Packwood
…
Succeeded by Hillary Clinton
Yeah. It’s one thing to drift far and away from the democratic party and liberalism in general and take a position far and away from the legacy parties, but it’s another thing to drift into the clutches of the far right (just adjacent to mainstream Democrats BTW). It sucks that such a talent is also lazy in his worldview and can’t discern that any Marxian or Leftist orientation is an economic or gov’t policy (jobs, housing, education…) position and has nothing to do with IDpol.
> Marxians [sic]
They’re holding such a grudge it’s enough to make you think there’s something to it!
Piven was an anarchist; it’s interesting how accurate, far-left critiques can, in some cases, prop up the status quo. I hadn’t known Moynihan used her writings. She and Piven wrote a book which I recommend at any opportunity called “Poor People’s Movements”, which I sincerely hope becomes more widely read. In it, the “unemployment councils” of the 30’s are described: people who were out of work would hang out in buildings they owned, waiting for eviction defense actions to be called, whereupon they would impede cops from throwing people out of housing. A great idea for the modern era.
Walgreen image is behind, big surge in latest. 4.3%! Deep red in most places with enough tests to report. Fun times baby! So much for seasonal COVID. Mandy, where are you at? It’s off like a rocket ship yet again heading into summer!
I have a friend in Australia, says his kid has had it 7 times now. Sigh. I shared all the tools, in case it helps, including the Nukit Tempest mentioned a few weeks ago. They have an international version. In the end people gonna do what they think makes sense.
> Walgreen’s
It wasn’t up at press time, sadly. It does seem to be a reasonably predictor of when to get worried so I’m happy it’s still going.
A short substack article from Meryl Nass. The first takeaway is interesting.
3 Takeaways from the Fauci committee hearing that just ended
https://merylnass.substack.com/p/3-takeaways-from-the-fauci-committee
Re Naiss: I’m not sure what good sourcing on this mishegoss might be, but Children’s Health Defense Fund (Kennedy’s anti-vax racket) is not one I would choose for NIH funding. (As far as the implied policy issue goes, private funding is something public health agencies should not be taking. That goes for the CDC foundation, and WHO. One more degradation of neoliberalism.)
re: Watchmaker’s hypothesis
The gain of function likely used in Wuhan was serial passage. It’s viral husbandry. Generation after generation of viruses bred and selected for pathogenicity via cultivation in human cells or genetically altered animals with human cells.
These virologists aren’t creating viruses in a bespoke manner, they are using evolution and selection (husbandry) to create more and more deadly pathogens. And within in one animal (as we have now seen with humans) you can have 100s or 1000s of generations of viruses getting better and better at the pathogenic traits that the “scientists” are interested in studying, at a BSL 2, apparently.
The notion that virologists’ are like God is something that the virologists (and other biomedical “professionals”) involved hubristically believe about themselves, which is why they are responsible for the worst (and ongoing) industrial accident in human history. The reality is that they are relying on evolutionary processes that they don’t understand, which is why many of them could and can confidently talk about things like the SARS-CoV-2 mutating over time to become harmless like other coronaviruses may have done in the human past (something that they have no actual evidence, just a religious belief in the notion that airborne viruses over time become less pathogenic because a virus subscribes to the same basis of human logic and reason that also sees value in gain of function research).
It’s the same category of hubris that encouraged the widespread deployment of a vaccine to create a veritable monoculture (that persists thanks to original antigenic sin) for the virus to adapt, further metastasizing the pandemic.
It’s flailing ignorance of a class of people who believe that they have power & control over the simplest form of life (or non-life, jury’s still out on this) that made the disaster what it is, still ongoing, and still killing millions directly and indirectly via the myriad of avenues that you have kindly catalogued for us over the past half decade.
> The gain of function likely used in Wuhan was serial passage
“Likely” doing a lot of work here, there, and everywhere, as usual. I hope it’s got a union.
> The notion that virologists’ are like God
Do consider reading the link; it’s there for a reason. You’re distoring what I wrote.
Remember when us Amerikan had freedoms, me neither.
https://www.rt.com/news/598711-us-seizes-scott-ritters-passport/
I think this is a big deal. Perhaps we will soon hear more.
I too think this is another turn of the dial on the burner that the pot of water we’re in is slowly approaching the boiling point.
The celebrated jumping fraud of cavalier accounting?
Ha – had to look that one up.
Hope you’re enjoying your new representation in Congress.
Long Fong Sue-me?
> The celebrated jumping fraud of cavalier accounting?
That’s what we need! Roundhead accounting, and no, I’m not kidding.
The Clooney angle.
https://korybko.substack.com/p/the-clooney-foundation-is-waging
In other words former wearer of the rubber Batman suit putting hiis crime fighting skills to work against those who dare to tell the truth about Ukraiine. CIA check in the mail?
George Clooney is now trying to say that she “misspoke”-
https://www.rt.com/news/598687-clooney-russian-journalists-prosecution/
What a scum bag.
Still doesn’t explain what Ritter’s dispute with Clooney is about. Maybe more tomorrow.
I know nothing about his foundation but Clooney is reportedly doing fundraisers for Biden so guess from a lawfare angle that’s accessory to genocide using the now denied logic of his employee.
Andrew Napolitano (“judge Nap”) was also going to the St Petersburg Conf but had to cancel without details. Larry Johnson made it there. Ritter will comment tomorrow on his encounter with the USAgov agents on Napolitano’s youtube.
Thanks for the update
> civilian targets inside Russia including Beograd
Assuming this is not a 2-decades-late protest of NATO’s undeclared war against Serbia, the intent is probably “Belgorod”. This is the 2nd significant place confusion I recall in a not very long history of attending to RFK utterances or tweets. I recall a YouTube segment published some time, I think, in 2023 in which RFK confused Vladivostok (a port on Russia’s East coast) with Sevastopol.
Maybe just a normal middle age problem with names, with which I sympathize, as I experience that myself. But I think DJT gaffes at this level attract notice; Biden’s misremembering tends to attract notice, too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDr_dFBG1Is&t=20s
> Fauci is lying in a particularly odd way.
Perhaps as a testimony strategy, it was less risky to describe the recommendation as “arbitrary” than to admit that it was based on the unexamined assumption (now known to have been false) that the CV was not airborne.
Perhaps not “odd” at all, but rather “clever” and “self-protective”.
There was no “assumption” that Covid was not airborne. It was a flat out lie by every governmental employee who said it, and they knew that all along. Many of them had a convoluted justification, either a BS argument about the definition of airborne or a variation on Fauci’s “noble lie,” but they all knew it spread through the air and was not containable by standard infection control methods by no later than March 2020. It was super obvious from the patterns of infection in nursing homes and other institutions, which they promptly suppressed and stopped monitoring.
Trump was talking about this fact to a major reporter in what, February of 2020. Not that he did anything about it. Nonetheless, that is what he must have been briefed on.
> Perhaps not “odd” at all, but rather “clever” and “self-protective”.
I generally write “odd” when I mean to imply “not odd at all” (despite being odd).
“We aren’t prepared for the next pandemic”
When the next pandemic hits – and there will be a next pandemic – I was thinking yesterday of how it would play out and it comes down to two main factors. In dealing with it, the needs of the economy will be always more important to the authorities than actual public health. Deaths will be regarded as collateral damage. The past four years has proven that in spades. Our betters will refuse to give up their air travel plans. The second factor is that as a result of this line of thought, that we will be on our own as far as taking precautions and the like. And to be sarcastic, if it is a flu pandemic, then I could see the WHO/CDC trying to outlaw Vitamin C as a quack treatment in lieu of the latest vaccine from Big Pharma.
Scott Ritter removed from airplane and has his passport seized?
Former US intelligence officer says was not let leave US to attend forum in St. Petersburg
https://tass.com/society/1797621
he’s live now, discussing it – episode 165: https://scottritter.com/
Thanks!
Questioning of Dr. Fauci today by the only member of Congress who actually treated COVID patients.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GgpKRoRYGE
These are the constant issues brought up by my colleagues all the time. The vaccine mandate was the single most unethical thing in medicine any of us has ever seen. The shunning, censoring and delicensing of those who were doing their level best has caused the largest exodus of wonderful docs I have ever seen. And I am not just talking about those who were punished. So many feel like a STRANGER IN A STRANGE WORLD when contemplating their colleagues and their profession. I feel it every day.
And the consequences are still unspooling. Just this weekend, 37 year old father of 2 in my very own world, attempted suicide. Since his firing over the vaccine mandate ( he refused because his oncologist told him not to secondary to his history of lymphoma – advice that is now commonplace ) , he has bounced from one severe crisis in life to the next. And he is not alone.
And Fauci just sat there bull s@#&&ing and lying. He does not care at all for those who have been grievously damaged by his folly. Hope the 710 million was worth it.
I fear there will never be accountability for this. And a huge majority of patients in my world will never trust them again. It is now becoming clearer by the day that HCW are the same. I no longer know what to say or do – other than do my very best for those in front of me.
Shame on him.
AS always, thanks for your honesty and courage:
“The vaccine mandate was the single most unethical thing in medicine any of us has ever seen.”
> The vaccine mandate was the single most unethical thing in medicine any of us has ever seen.
A crowded field, but yes. We mandated what we should not have (vaccines) and did not mandate what we should have (non-pharmaceutical interventions*).
Just so the timeline is clear:
NOTE * Which, if carried out rigorously, would have taken the pressure off vaccines, at the very least. The concept of a single layer of defense was absolute madness (except from the standpoint of profit, of course).
Max and Aaron in yesterday’s Grayzone taking down the war ghouls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86tQq_vGA58&ab_channel=TheGrayzone