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2:00PM Water Cooler 8/12/2024

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Patient readers, I just couldn’t bring myself to begin with the Politics section today. But more to come! –lambert UPDATE All done!

Bird Song of the Day

I looked for another species of songbird that mimics, and came up with the Thrasher.

Brown Thrasher, Hammonasset Beach SP, New Haven, Connecticut, United States. But I’m not sure if this is only a thasher, or as the mote says, also American Robin, Yellow Warbler, and Red-winged Blackbird. Anyhow, Hammonasset Beach seems like a busy and lively area!

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

  1. Kamala on the cover of Time.
  2. Trump file suit against DOJ for political persecution.
  3. Thomas Frank on liberals.
  4. Front Porch Forum in Vermont.

* * *

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

* * *

Trump Assassination Attempt

“Butler residents still furious about Trump assassination attempt, say more than incompetence to blame” [FOX]. “There is a deep suspicion among residents in Butler County, which Trump won with around 66% of the vote in both 2016 and 2020, about the truth of what really happened coming out. Many say that plain incompetence just doesn’t pass the smell test, and the Secret Service’s lack of transparency is only adding fuel to their claims that there is more than meets the eye…. ‘There’s too many inconsistencies or failures for this to happen,’ vendor Bob O’Sterling said. ‘It has to be an inside job.’ ‘The Secret Service, the local police, the snipers that were there that were supposed to be covering that roof. Too many inconsistencies for that to be just a happenstance. It can’t be a happenstance,’ says O’Sterling, who was at the rally and estimated there were close to 50,000 people in attendance… ‘It’s almost like it was complacency on purpose,’ Critchcow says of the Secret Service’s security strategy. ‘You know I’m not a conspiracy guy, per se. It’s just if you let it happen, sooner or later it’s going to happen.’ ‘The guy’s crawling over there on the building with a rifle,’ Critchcow said. ‘He was known to them since he was photographed outside crawling next to the building by one of the cops, and they still didn’t detain him. They had every right to detain him after those couple of encounters.’ ‘He’s the guy that had the rangefinder that they saw him using. I mean, what more do you need?'”

Democrats en Déshabillé

“Thomas Frank: “UTTERLY POINTLESS” to Teach Liberals Their Mistakes” [Thomas Frank, YouTube]. From last year, and worth a listen:

2024

Less than one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

More Blue on the map. Trump still leads nationally, but some swing states moving toward Kamala. In particular, I’m no insider, but if I were on Team Trump, Georgia’s drop from +3.6 to this week’s +0.6 might cause me to chew my hands. Georgia? Really? Atlanta burbs no longer sitting it out? Can any readers from Georgia clarify?

* * *

The Campaign Trail:

Kamala:

Kamala (D): Suitable for framing:

She’s always looking up. The futureTomorrow belongs to me, I suppose. Weird.

Kamala (D): On Gaza:

Kamala (D): On arms for Israel and the Leahy Amendment:

Walz:

Kamala (D): Sociological context:

* * *

Trump:

Trump (R): “Trump to sue DOJ for $100M over Mar-a-Lago raid, alleging ‘political persecution'” [FOX]. “[Trump attorney Daniel Epstein’s] filing states that the ‘tortious acts against the president are rooted in intrusion upon seclusion, malicious prosecution, and abuse of process resulting from the August 8, 2022 raid of his and his family’s home at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach Florida.’ Epstein added that the decisions made by the DOJ and FBI regarding that raid were ‘inconsistent with protocols requiring the consent of an investigative target, disclosure to that individual’s attorneys, and the use of the local U.S. Attorney’s Office. Epstein argues the decisions made by Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray were not grounded in “social, economic, and political policy” but instead, in ‘clear dereliction of constitutional principles, inconsistent standards as applied to” Trump and a ‘clear intent to engage in political persecution – not to advance good law enforcement practices.'” • More reading to do.

Trump (R): “Trump shooting task force demands documents from top Biden officials in probe kickoff” [FOX]. “The bipartisan Trump shooting task force sent a pair of letters announcing its investigation will now supersede several other ongoing House investigations into the matter and asking for all information sent to those committees about the July 13 shooting so far. One letter was sent to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe; the other was addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. Lawmakers are seeking staff-level briefings from each agency and department, to be scheduled by Aug. 16 – a signal that the task force is serious about its pledge for a short investigatory timeline. Both Kelly and Crow have stressed that the investigation must be apolitical.” • Chair: Mike Kelly, R-PA; Ranking Member: Jason Crow, D-CO.

Trump (R): I have a scheduling conflict, but anyone who can watch, please report!

Trump (R): Donald, I’m begging you. Don’t do this:

(There are several screen shots running around that crop to the text only and eliminate the Truth Social trade dress, but the text is the same.) In any case, presumably somebody will interview the maintenace worker…

Trump (R): “Trump falsely claims Kamala Harris ‘AI’d’ her rally crowd size” [The Verge]. “Local news site MLive wrote that the rally at Detroit Metro Airport hosted about 15,000 people, with “the crowd spilling out onto the tarmac and cheering as Air Force Two arrived.” Other angles show large crowds, and the fact-checking site Snopes even ran the image Trump amplified through AI-detection tools, which said it was likely a real image. The image Trump cited doesn’t seem to come from Harris’ campaign pages directly, either. According to local New York outlet NY1, a Democratic super PAC video editor and former Biden campaign official was apparently among the first to post it, putting it online at 10:01PM the day of the event. (It was then shared widely by various users across the internet.) … While social media platforms are racing to figure out how to combat actual AI deception and distinguish it from ordinary retouching, Trump is using the tech’s existence as an easy way to discredit reality.” • Well, “discrediting reality” verges on the ontological (and this is the stupidest timeline, so I’d say reality is indeed pretty discredited at this time). However, Trump is discrediting all represenations of reality. Fortunately, we have a Censorship Industrial Complex to straighten that out for us. Can’t Trump just say Kamala’s not a legitimate candidate, because she was hand-picked by a cabal of eminently boo-able politicians, and never faced the voters and won a single Presidential primary? Why drag AI into this? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

Trump (R): “Behind the Curtain: Inside Trump’s slump” [Axios]. Noting that Axios is in fact a player, not simply a venue: “[Trump’s advisor’s] are pleading with him to adopt a new ‘hard-hitting’ stump speech to define Vice President Harris as liberal and weak, advisers tell us. And praying he’ll stop the recidivistic pull to simply improvise haphazardly.” • Leaving aside the after effects of on the candidate of almost getting whacked, you can’t chain Trump to the teleprompter to stop him from improvising. What he needs are new waypoints, as it were, to improvise from. That and more crowd appearances, which he feeds off. I guess his staff is gonna have to check any nearby water towers, though. I suppose the next step is for Trump to claim that Kamala herself is AI, an idoru, a somewhat more plausible claim.

Trump (R): “Trump campaign projects confidence and looks to young male voters for an edge on Harris” [Associated Press]. “With less than three months to go, senior campaign officials are focused on a group of persuadable voters that they believe is key to victory. The targets, which they say comprise about 11% of the electorate in key battleground states, skew younger and are disproportionately male and moderate. While more than half are white, they include more nonwhites, especially Asians and Hispanics, than the broader electorate. They are especially frustrated by the economy, including their personal finances, and are pessimistic things will improve. ‘It’s a very narrow band of people that we are trying to move,’ Fabrizio said of the efforts. Since these voters don’t engage with traditional news outlets and have traded cable for streaming services, the campaign has been working to reach them in novel ways. ‘There is a reason why we’re doing podcasts. There is a reason why we’re doing Adin Ross,’ Fabrizio said, referring to the controversial internet personality who ended his interview with the former president earlier this week by giving him a Tesla Cybertruck wrapped in images of Trump raising his fist after his assassination attempt. ‘There is a reason why we are doing all of those things. You know what these people pay attention to? MMA, Adin Ross,’ he said. ‘MMA’ refers to mixed martial arts.” • Interesting that AP had to expand the acronym…

Vance:

Vance, unlike Kamala, and as recommended by Zephyr Teachout, gives Lina Khan a hug.

* * *

Kennedy (I):

Spook Country

“FOIA Files: How Feds, Press, and Academia ‘Coordinate’ on Speech” [James Rushmore, Racket News]. “These emails illustrate the synergies between the ‘anti-disinformation’ industry and the national security state. In theory, the two factions are supposed to be separate entities, but in practice, they represent the same interests.” • Gramsci remarks somewhere (I paraphrase) that State and Civil Society are separable only as objects of study, i.e. there is a single ruling class (albeit with its own internal contradictions). And so here.

–>

Realignment and Legitimacy

“The friendliest social network you’ve never heard of” [WaPo]. “Front Porch Forum counts nearly half the state’s adults as active members. More than Facebook, Nextdoor, Craigslist or their local newspaper, the site is where Vermonters go to interact with their neighbors online — generally without disparaging each other. At a time when Americans are increasingly disenchanted with social media, researchers are studying Front Porch Forum to try to understand what makes for a kinder, gentler online community — and what Big Tech could learn from it. A text-heavy, newsletter-based site that reads like a cross between a neighborhood internet mailing list and a small-town newspaper’s letters-to-the-editor section, Front Porch Forum seems an unlikely candidate to outcompete the big social media platforms. It has achieved critical mass in the Green Mountain State not by embracing the growth hacks, recommendation algorithms and dopamine-inducing features that power most social networks, but by eschewing them. New research from the nonprofit New_ Public finds Front Porch Forum is one of the few online spaces in America that leaves its users feeling more informed, more civically engaged and more connected to their neighbors, rather than less so. What’s more, its users seem to genuinely like it.” And: “While most tech giants view content moderation as a necessary evil, Front Porch Forum treats it as a core function. Twelve of its 30 full-time employees spend their days reading every user post before it’s published, rejecting any that break its rules against personal attacks, misinformation or spam.'” • Besides the moderation, no stupid money sloshing in. I don’t know if the model scales beyond Vermont (which also has the the Town Meeting tradition of local democracy).

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, KF, 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!

* * *

Look for the Helpers

Covid-conscious free dental clinic:

This is awesome (though it’s a terrible indicment of our society that we even need free dental clinics.

Infection: Covid

“Virus Behind COVID-19 Now Rampant in Wild Animals, Study Finds” [ScienceAlert]. “The virus responsible for COVID-19 is now widespread in wildlife. A new study in the US identified exposure rates of up to 60 percent in some species. ‘I think the big take-home message is the virus is pretty ubiquitous,’ says Virginia Tech conservation biologist Amanda Goldberg. ‘We found positives in a large suite of common backyard animals.’ Testing almost 800 nasal and oral swabs from animals in rehabilitation centers or that were trapped and released in the wild, the researchers identified six different species with antibodies indicating they’d been infected with SARS-CoV-2 at some point. Most of the infected species are common across North America and the researchers think it’s likely that wildlife exposure to the virus is widespread. But Goldberg and colleagues stress that they found no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 being transmitted back to humans from wildlife. Sites with high human activity had three times the prevalence of viral antibodies in animals, suggesting that, as with most diseases, humans are doing the majority of the spreading. Humans pass on twice as many viruses to other animals as we receive from them. As humans rarely come into physical contact with wildlife, the researchers suspect most wildlife exposure to SAR-CoV-2 occurs indirectly through trash and wastewater.” • Trash? How?

Positivity: Covid

Like test kits flying off the shelves, ambulance sirens are another proxy for positivity:

I wonder if there’s an equivalent of ShotSpotter, but for ambulances. I’d love to see a map of the results….

Celebrity Watch

“Olympics silver medalist Malaika Mihambo collapses and breaks down in tears before being taken away in wheelchair” [The Sun]. The deck: “The long jumper is not the only athlete to have suffered from Covid.”

“American sprinter Noah Lyles says he tested positive for Covid-19, ran 200-meter race anyway” [CNN]. “The news of Lyles’ positive test came not long after he suffered a stunning defeat in the men’s 200-meter race, his signature event. Lyles finished in third, unable to overcome Botswana’s Letsile Tebogo and his Team USA compatriot Kenneth Bednarek, who finished in first and second place, respectively. However, the result of the race was quickly bumped from the headlines when Lyles laid down on the track immediately following his crossing the finish line. He was helped off the track by medical personnel in a wheelchair and taken to the medical holding area.” • The iconic photo:

Commentary:

If the message was not “Things are back to normal,” the back-up message was “Power through!” For whatever reason, I don’t think either message took.

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Lambert here: Worth noting that national Emergency Room admissions are as high as they were in the first wave, in 2020.

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC August 5: Last Week[2] CDC July 22 (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC August 3 ★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC August 3

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data August 9: National [6] CDC July 20:

Positivity
National[7] Walgreens August 5: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic August 3:
rf

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC July 22: Variants[10] CDC July 22:

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC July 27: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC July 27:

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] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular.

[4] (ER) Worth noting Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Leveling off. Doesn’t need to be a permanent thing, of course. (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 then around the country through air travel.)

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.

[7] (Walgreens) An optimist would see a peak.

[8] (Cleveland) Slowing.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time range. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.

[10] (Travelers: Variants) It’s rumored that there’s a new variant in China, XDV.1, but it’s not showing up here.

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

Inflation: “United States Consumer Inflation Expectations” [Trading Economics]. “US consumer inflation expectations for the year ahead were unchanged at 3% in July 2024, the same as in June…. Meanwhile, median three-year-ahead inflation expectations declined sharply by 0.6 percentage point to 2.3%, hitting a series low.”

* * *

Mr. Market: “Wall Street’s ‘fear gauge’ might be lying to you about last week’s market turmoil” [Financial Times]. “In a note titled “Did VIX Really Hit 65 on Monday?”, published last week, Academy Securities strategist Peter Tchir unpicked some of the odd dynamics underpinning movement in the volatility measure often labelled Wall Street’s Fear Gauge.” Since I don’t play the ponies, this is where I got lost. This seems relevant: “Part of the evidence for something being off in the VIX is the spread versus VIX futures, says Tchir (who asks ‘So, I’m supposed to trust a calculation rather than a traded price?’)…. These distortions, Tchir reckons, show there ‘was fear’ but no ‘panic’ last Monday — despite what the VIX highs might indicate.” • Maybe a reader who does play the ponies can explain.

Real Estate: “San Francisco Is Sinking in Bad Hotel Debt” [Wall Street Journal]. “In the city’s metropolitan area, the delinquency rate among commercial mortgage-backed security loans for the lodging sector skyrocketed to 41.6% in June from 5.7% in June 2023, according to data from real-estate analytics firm Trepp. It is the largest increase across the country’s 25 largest metro areas. ”

Tech: “Apple’s requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon. Here’s what you need to know” [Patreon]. “Apple is requiring us to switch over to their in-app purchase system for all iOS transactions or else risk being kicked out of the App Store altogether – and their in-app purchase system is not built with our same level of creator-first flexibility…. Apple will be applying their 30% App Store fee to all new memberships purchased in the Patreon iOS app, in addition to anything bought in your Patreon shop…. Patreon is home to an incredible range of creators, all with unique circumstances and billing needs. Apple’s in-app purchase system, on the other hand, only supports Patreon’s subscription billing model. Apple has also made clear that if creators on Patreon continue to use unsupported billing models or disable transactions in the iOS app, we will be at risk of having the entire app removed from their App Store.” • I’m not a Patreon user or subscriber, but this is ridiculous. Apple taking a 30% cut from all creator’s fees, because it can? Sounds like a job for Lina Khan.

Tech: “The US government wants to make it easier for you to click the ‘unsubscribe’ button” [Associated Press]. “In the name of consumer protection, a slew of U.S. federal agencies are working to make it easier for Americans to click the unsubscribe button for unwanted memberships and recurring payment services. A broad new government initiative, dubbed ‘Time Is Money,’ includes a rollout of new regulations and the promise of more for industries spanning from healthcare and fitness memberships to media subscriptions. ‘The administration is cracking down on all the ways that companies, through paperwork, hold times and general aggravation waste people’s money and waste people’s time and really hold onto their money,’ Neera Tanden, White House domestic policy adviser, told reporters Friday in advance of the announcement.” • Fine, now abolish the health insurance “industry” in favor of single payer. (Also, first mention of Neera in awhile; will she slither into Kamala’s good graces?)

Manufacturing: “NASA says lack of trained New Orleans workers led to issues with Boeing Artemis rocket program” [Times-Picayune (Upstatee)]. “In a scathing report issued Thursday, NASA’s Office of Inspector General cited rocket maker Boeing, which employs more than 1,000 people at Michoud, for dozens of problems on its Space Launch System rockets that are being assembled there.

An upgraded version of the SLS rocket is more than seven years behind schedule and $1 billion over budget, and federal monitors found 71 problems on the Michoud-based project ranging from minor to potentially serious. ‘This is a high number…for a space flight system at this stage in development and reflects a recurring and degraded state of product quality control,’ said the report, which covered a two-year period from 2021 through 2023…. e report said the problems at Michoud are largely due to a ‘lack of a sufficient number of trained and experienced aerospace workers at Boeing,’ which it said was ‘in part due to Michoud’s geographical location in New Orleans and lower employee compensation relative to other aerospace competitors.'” • Those union-busting MBAs in Chicago sure showed ’em!

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 24 Exreme Fear (previous close: 23 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 25 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 12 at 12:55:23 PM ET.

Rapture Index: Closes unchanged [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 183. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Hard to believe the Rapture Index is going down. Where are there people getting their news?!

Zeitgeist Watch

“Repair and Remain” [Comment]. “for twelve years now I’ve had a hybrid operation, juggling a one-man autodidact home-repair business and part-time lay ministry at a little Anglican church in Winnipeg. My basic MO in both roles is simple: repair and remain. I don’t have the know-how to build you a brand-new house, but I can help fix pretty much anything in your old one. If you do, in fact, need a new house, I’ll send you to Francesco or Myron, or James and Fiona, all of them trustworthy builders and fine people. Odds are the house you’re in right now needs a few updates and minor upgrades, and I’d be happy to help with whatever you need done: add some new windows, open up some walls, replace the old basement stairs, tile the backsplash. Repair and remain. Same with pastoring: no point thinking you need a brand-new life, but, well, let’s not kid around—you could use some serious updates and upgrades yourself.”

“The Complex History of American Dating” [JSTOR Daily]. “Dating largely replaced ‘calling,’ a practice during which a young man would come to a young woman’s home. Once there, [historian Beth Bailey] explains, he would ‘sit in her parlor, be served some refreshments, perhaps listen to her play the piano.’ No going out, no spending money, just an afternoon of respectable activities. By the 1920s, calling was considered old-fashioned, and dating ‘became a key ritual of youth culture.’ Although people from all economic classes were dating by this time, the roots of the practice were in working class communities, and the term itself came from sex work. ‘Its origins were decidedly not respectable,’ Bailey explains. “They lay in the practices of ‘treating’ and the sexual exchanges made by ‘charity girls’…. The very term ‘date’ came from prostitution.’ However, as dating aged as a practice, knowledge of its history (both class and linguistic) faded. In the run up to World War II, popularity for a young person meant going on lots of dates with lots of different people. As one sociologist observed in the 1930s, popularity meant dating success—especially for women. Like many things, notions of popularity were gendered. For men, popularity was connected to material things such as cars and nice clothes. For women, it depended on building and maintaining a reputation for popularity. They had to be seen with many popular men in the right places, indignantly turn down requests for dates made at the ‘last minute,’ which could be weeks in advance, and cultivate the impression that they were greatly in demand. Having just the one boy coming to pick you up was fine—if that’s all you could get. But as a 1940 article in the Woman’s Home Companion noted, ‘The modern girl cultivates not one single suitor, but dates, lots of them…. Her aim is not a too obvious romance but general popularity.'” • Social capital.

“How to frog-boil yourself” [Closed Form]. “Some day I would like to do a really deep dive into this stuff — the trauma-industrial complex and the suite of associated MLM scams you can enter into to receive ‘therapies’ for diffuse ‘traumas.’… My introduction to these techniques was, perhaps unsurprisingly, via credulous polyamorous people who hate their annoying lifestyle but are monastically committed to an arcane and intricate social practice they refer to as ‘healthy communication,’ which as far as I have observed means doing mindfulness exercises to make yourself think you’re not mad or jealous when you in fact are. (One might think that healthy communication means speaking honestly about your feelings, but what the fuck do I know — I was just a domestic violence and healthy relationships counselor professionally for a little bit. I certainly don’t have even one fake Microsoft Word certificate from a life coaching MLM!) The mind-body connection is extremely real. This is why mindfulness works. I’ve been practicing yoga for fifteen years, and it’s an essential part of my mental self-care routine; it’s the best single thing I have found to help with my often life-ruining anxiety. But let’s be serious for a minute. Can you vagus nerve regulate your what out of a chronically exhausting or dangerous situation? You cannot. You will become chronically stressed in such a situation. Any of us will, and most of us indeed are.” •

News of the Wired

“KnitScape” [University of Washington]. “We present KnitScape, a browser-based tool for design and simulation of stitch patterns for knitting. KnitScape provides a design interface to specify 1) operation repeats, 2) color changes, and 3) needle positions. These inputs are used to build a graph of yarn topology and run a yarn-level spring simulation. This enables visualization of the deformation that arises from slip and tuck operations. Through its design tool and simulation, KnitScape enables rapid exploration of a complex colorwork design space. We demonstrate KnitScape with a series of example swatches.”

“A UX designer walks into a Tesla Bar” [Scott Jensen]. From 2021. “Most importantly, in 99% of cars on the road today, I don’t need to RTFM to turn steer, accelerate, brake, use the turn signals, or turn on the damn defroster. That’s why these things are standardized. There are lots of things I will likely need the manual for but not these basics. The v11 design broke this.” • How the Mac used to work under the Human Interface Guidlines; everything standardized and ultimately visible. Phones aren’t standardized and hide things. People seem to like it….

“Coffee’s Epic Journey” [Archeology Magazine]. “around 30,000 years ago, the C. arabica populations on the eastern and western sides of the Great Rift Valley split. The descendants of the plants on the eastern side were eventually brought to and cultivated at the future site of the Yemeni city of Mocha, while those on the western side remained wild. Little is recorded of coffee’s trajectory for thousands of years after this, says Salojärvi. “There are old folklore stories of people eating red berries from bushes in around A.D. 600 or 700 because of their invigorating properties,” he says. It is clear that, by the fifteenth or sixteenth century, coffee was being cultivated in Yemen. Oral histories say that, around the turn of the seventeenth century, Baba Budan, an Indian monk with a passion for coffee, smuggled seven C. arabica seeds from Yemen to his homeland, from which it spread around the world. A century later, Dutch colonists cultivating C. arabica on the Indonesian island of Java produced a variety known as Typica. And, on the Indian Ocean island of Bourbon (now Réunion), the descendants of a single C. arabica plant propagated by French colonists in 1720 spawned the Bourbon variety. The Typica and Bourbon varieties largely gave rise to present-day C. arabica, which is cultivated worldwide and makes up some 60 percent of coffee consumed today. ‘Most modern coffee can be traced back to two individual plants cultivated three hundred years ago,’ says Salojärvi. Today’s coffee drinkers have C. arabica’s adaptability to thank for their daily cup of joe.” • Fast work!

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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 Carla:

Carla writes: “Sunset on Lake Erie, Cleveland, Ohio, featuring branch of an unknown (to me) tree.” Like a Japanese print!

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About Lambert Strether

Readers, I have had a correspondent characterize my views as realistic cynical. Let me briefly explain them. I believe in universal programs that provide concrete material benefits, especially to the working class. Medicare for All is the prime example, but tuition-free college and a Post Office Bank also fall under this heading. So do a Jobs Guarantee and a Debt Jubilee. Clearly, neither liberal Democrats nor conservative Republicans can deliver on such programs, because the two are different flavors of neoliberalism (“Because markets”). I don’t much care about the “ism” that delivers the benefits, although whichever one does have to put common humanity first, as opposed to markets. Could be a second FDR saving capitalism, democratic socialism leashing and collaring it, or communism razing it. I don’t much care, as long as the benefits are delivered. To me, the key issue — and this is why Medicare for All is always first with me — is the tens of thousands of excess “deaths from despair,” as described by the Case-Deaton study, and other recent studies. That enormous body count makes Medicare for All, at the very least, a moral and strategic imperative. And that level of suffering and organic damage makes the concerns of identity politics — even the worthy fight to help the refugees Bush, Obama, and Clinton’s wars created — bright shiny objects by comparison. Hence my frustration with the news flow — currently in my view the swirling intersection of two, separate Shock Doctrine campaigns, one by the Administration, and the other by out-of-power liberals and their allies in the State and in the press — a news flow that constantly forces me to focus on matters that I regard as of secondary importance to the excess deaths. What kind of political economy is it that halts or even reverses the increases in life expectancy that civilized societies have achieved? I am also very hopeful that the continuing destruction of both party establishments will open the space for voices supporting programs similar to those I have listed; let’s call such voices “the left.” Volatility creates opportunity, especially if the Democrat establishment, which puts markets first and opposes all such programs, isn’t allowed to get back into the saddle. Eyes on the prize! I love the tactical level, and secretly love even the horse race, since I’ve been blogging about it daily for fourteen years, but everything I write has this perspective at the back of it.

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117 comments

    2. Carla

      You’re most welcome. Lake Erie amazes me every time I see it. This shot was taken from an east side residential neighborhood of Cleveland. Not a fancy neighborhood, either! Some lucky folks see sunsets like this many, many evenings of the year.

    4. Jeremy Grimm

      Beautiful plantidote! Looking on it does make me feel better after reading some of the news Lambert collected today.

      1. ambrit

        Well, somebody could have predicted it, but they were “dissuaded” from going public by warnings from certain, shall we say, elite elements within the polity.
        The more I see of this slowly unfolding Jackpot, I discern underlying patterns of willful incompetence and ‘neglect.’
        Stay safe. Keep the really important documents off the property. The FBI cannot seize what is not in the place mentioned in the Warrant.

  3. Mikel

    “Wall Street’s ‘fear gauge’ might be lying to you about last week’s market turmoil”- [Financial Times].

    Well, if you think that’s confusing. Get a load of what could be coming:
    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-engineers-invent-head-123701432.html/ – Bloomberg
    Wall Street Engineers Invent a New Head-Spinning Options Trade

    “Financial wizards have conjured up possibly their most dizzying product yet in the quest to ride the derivatives boom: Cboe Global Markets Inc. is poised to offer options on futures for an index based on options on another index.

    The Chicago-based firm plans to issue options tied to futures for the Cboe Volatility Index, the famous “fear gauge” otherwise known as the VIX. That gauge is itself built using options that track the S&P 500.

    The new contracts — scheduled to list on Oct. 14, pending regulatory review — are the latest in a flurry of products unleashed by Cboe amid a record surge in trading volumes across the derivatives complex…”

    Whatever may be going on, I’d imagine there are some trying to recoup some losses through the volatility.

    1. Screwball

      “Financial wizards have conjured up possibly their most dizzying product yet in the quest to ride the derivatives boom: Cboe Global Markets Inc. is poised to offer options on futures for an index based on options on another index.

      Funny they used derivatives and boom in the same sentence. Wasn’t some of this financial engineering a problem in the GFC of 2008/2009?

      It doesn’t matter. Whoever wins the 2024 auction (looking like the Ds got this in the bag IMO) they can blow up our financial system and bail out the banks while telling us it wasn’t the banks fault, we thought it would be different this time, nobody could have seen this coming, we won’t monetize debt, and by the way, here is a get out of jail free card (autographed by Hank Paulson no less).

      What a world…

    2. flora

      The big guys were blaming it all on the unwinding of the Japanese Yen carry trade imploding after the Bank of Japan raised interest rates. Looking at JPMorgan and Citi stock prices for July-August shows a steep decline during that time frame. So, it’s a least a plausible theory.

      However, JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon said last week the unwinding was half done, half complete. How can he or anyone possibly know that it’s half complete without knowing what all hedge funds, family offices, and derivative traders around the world are holding? Can he know? Can he know the timeframe? I dunno. I’m keeping my green eyeshade on and my pencil sharp, as they say. / ;)

      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-06/jpmorgan-says-carry-trade-unwind-is-only-half-complete

      1. flora

        correction: JPMorgan FX strategies co-head made the claim, not Dimon himself. My questions and point remain.

      2. Mikel

        Do you think something that took years to develop unwinds in a couple of days?

        The happenings with the VIX are just in addition to all that…

    3. Amfortas the Hippie

      aye!
      how is this not just “Gambling”?
      just like it was last time?
      and i cant fix my teeth…nor my ankle…because “we cant afford universal healthcare”…but there will be trillions created out of thin air to rescue these people….

      1. Screwball

        Well said. I remember 2008/2009 and I will never forget or forgive.

        It was the largest wealth transfer in history and many of our pols were good with the bailouts. Foam the runway they told us…

        A guy named William Black wrote a book called the best way to rob a bank is to own one.

        He would be correct. I’m guessing not much has changed.

        1. steppenwolf fetchit

          Under Bush, S&L owner-robbers were prosecuted.

          Under Obama, bank and etc. owner-robbers were immunized, impunified, and rewarded.

          So that’s a change.

          2. rowlf

            Note that Bill Black and others from the that time are having fits with what has gone on since then.

            As a union friend noted it is like watching people now drill holes in a lifeboat hull and have cooking fires on the hull.

        2. Ekkersen

          “It was the largest wealth transfer in history …”

          Later dwarfed by covid measures, though, which had a negative effect on health but were very effective at moving trillions of dollars from the working class to the wealthy.

          1. Lambert Strether Post author

            > Later dwarfed by covid measures, though, which had a negative effect on health but were very effective at moving trillions of dollars from the working class to the wealthy.

            Needs two links, the first on “negative effect on health,” the second “drawfed by.” This isn’t a board, where you can just dump claims.

        1. Amfortas the Hippie

          yeah. just wait til the coasts are undeniably underwater,lol…thatll trickle up to the highest eschelons of finance.
          hence all the denial…it wasnt oil that was doing the denial that matters, it was real estate and insurance.
          incestuous clusterfuck will ensue.

  4. Mikel

    “Apple’s requirements are about to hit creators and fans on Patreon. Here’s what you need to know” [Patreon].

    If the AI creator theft doesn’t work out like they want, this is the back-up plan?

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > If the AI creator theft doesn’t work out like they want, this is the back-up plan?

      It’s a parallel track. This is Apple reinforcing its store monopoly.

  5. tegnost

    Real Estate… I would figure staying in an air bnb in san francisco is on lots of peoples bucket list

  6. VTDigger

    As an occasional FpF user I can say it is like a more local craigslist that has odd social postings intermixed. Very civil, fairly useful.
    However I think it is, like town meeting day, inseparable from Vermont’s hyper-local culture. Definitely not ‘scalable’ as the ghouls would say.

    Say maybe that’s an axiom, if it’s ‘scalable’ you probably don’t want it!

    1. mrsyk

      I’ll give front porch a favorable review as well. It’s where one can find a cat sitter or a used ice cream maker. I’d compare it to the penny saver. Scalable? hmmm. Is that synonymous with ruinable? I think it’s a model that could be replicated, maybe in other rural states. I guess when PE notices and decides they must own it is when we’ll find out.

    2. Swamp Yankee

      Greetings from your fellow New Englanders here in southeastern Massachusetts (from the Irish Riviera of Brant Rock to Swamp Yankee cranberry bog country of Carver….).

      We don’t have Front Porch Forum here, though we do have the very interesting, and my sense is pretty different but also with some similarities, local Town Facebook page.

      A few caveats. Despite significant differences, both Massachusetts and Vermont share, as part of the body politic, the New England Town as an ordering system (incl. the directly democratic Town Meeting). This longstanding division into something like democratic bodies politic thoroughly and inevitably shapes the expressions of this community on social media.

      Each Town has developed, de facto and very much not de jure, a main or go-to Town Facebook page, typically run for free by volunteers. Here, one can find out which dentists locally take MassHealth, whether schools and town offices are closed, who won the Town election, and more.

      To some extent, they have replaced local newspapers, but I would say that’s inexact. My town, for instance, still has its local newspaper. Rather, they remind me, as an historian who has studied early modern New England, of the democratic and often frankly odd and crazy space of the New England tavern in the 18th c. In this sense, as someone heavily involved in environmental activism and local politics, it is incredibly useful — to the extent that I can usually accurately predict elections to within ~5 points, sometimes less, just from assiduously reading what I call “Facebook radio traffic.”

      A further aspect: New England towns have distinctive cultures; these cultures have something like personalities; and these personalities and mores are expressed on the Town’s Facebook page.

      Thus All Things Plymouth (main Facebook page for Plymouth, Mass.) is very different from Duxbury Helping Duxbury (main Facebook page for Duxbury, Mass.) its smaller, wealthier neighbor across the bay. Likewise, both are distinct from the Swamp Yankee Towns of Halifax (Halifax MA Community Page) and Carver (Everything Carver), with their far more rural and small ‘c’ conservative mentality.

      In addition, usually, because the administrators of these pages exercise some minimal amount of moderation, a kind of Alt-Town Facebook page crops up, usually but not exclusively run by and for elements of the revanchist Right, for whom a post about — well, basically anything — becomes an excuse to engage in various exercises in non sequiturs, red-baiting, and nativism. So these people unsurprisingly get kicked out of the main town page, which goes by something, in my observation, akin to Town Meeting rules of procedure; and the angry local Right have their own, largely useless and ignored, alternative town Facebook pages.

      I hate Facebook, but there is no choice but to go on it if I want to inform people quickly on an important public issue (rather than waiting for the weekly Town newspaper).

      1. Amfortas the Hippie

        ive always been envious of the New England Town Hall Thing…we have pretenders to that, way out here in rural texas….but its all righty nonsense.
        assumptions abound at the root…that everyone is as crazy xtian as they are…that, of course, everyone votes goptea like they do…etc.
        i kept an eye on all such things for a good long while, as part of that grand, 7+ year study into the american right(including the locals, as a control)…but i never once engaged…intuited that what i had to say would cause them to birth kittens.
        and potentially do one of those marches down the street those people do sometimes, to run off the demons and principalities(sic).

        1. Swamp Yankee

          That’s interesting, Amfortas — and I imagine somewhat difficult to deal with (the Christian Right). The evangelical Christian Right locally are distinctly in the minority. The partisan make up of this area is roughly 50-50, which is interesting and unusual for Massachusetts.

          You should come visit some day! You would love Town Meeting!

          Lambert, thanks as always for your links, they are much appreciated. Glad to throw in some anecdata to the mix. And yes, the tavern-like quality of local Facebook pages, plus really low rates of turnout for local elections (between 1.3 and 30-something percent, at the highest, locally; it’s a national issue), do give politics here an 18th c. British feel. The population may be divided into what I have called, irrespective of economic status, the Patricianate, the governing 1-30 percent, depending on the Town; and the great mass of the people, who for the most part only take an interest in their local government when something goes wrong.

          To wit: a dispute over who has the best meat in North Plymouth (Perry’s Market or Piantedosi’s) will garner something like 1,600 comments on the All Things Plymouth Facebook page; a discussion of something significant (say, the town’s proposed new Charter, its basic law), will gain maybe a tenth of those (on a good day; often more like several dozen to 100 comments).

          People also lack basic understanding of how their local governments work. I am seriously considering doing a “teach-in” at various local Senior Centers. The Business Establishment is fine with the people not knowing how their government works, for obvious reasons; we have lost a lot with the decline of civic education. Government is complicated!

          Thanks to all.

      2. Lambert Strether Post author

        Thanks for this. I suppose, for adult voters, memes propagate at the tavern (as opposed to directly from one’s phone; or perhaps the two paths reinforce each other, I don’t know).

      1. ambrit

        (I cannot resist this one…)
        By “low triple digits” do you mean, 000…the House wins again!
        {Sorry about that. It’s the sign of a wasted High School experience. [The most ultra competitive bunch of jerks you could imagine. Me, I was just a plain jerk. Nothing fancy, a badly tailored empty suit.]}

        1. Wukchumni

          {croupier waves hands over layout and spins roulette wheel while placing the ball in action…}

          …no more bets!

          1. ambrit

            What do you mean, you don’t accept Cartas de Credito from El Banque de Uqbar?
            What can anyone believe anymore?
            Stay safe in California’s ‘Shangri La.’

            1. Wukchumni

              Drinkin’ G & T’s to ward off scurvy @ a friend’s house with a bird’s eye view of the backside of the Coffeepot Fire.

              Just glimpsed a Chinook dump it’s lode of water on the fire, some 6 miles away or so as the California Condor flies. There has been around 25-30 loads of water/retardant dropped by jets, twin engine props and helos.

              I’m definitely WUI at this point, but then again I like to watch.

  9. Mo

    That cover picture on Time isn’t even recognizable as Kamala. The only thing recognizable in the picture is the smarmy smirkiness, but Kamala’s real life smirk is 100x worse. I don’t know what the illustrator was aiming for, but they missed.

    They probably don’t know what they were going for either, since Kamala doesn’t even have a point of view.

    1. Martin Oline

      Oh hell, you made me look. I was expecting rictus on a red background but her lips are together! Could this be a deep fake? Did they airbrushed it?

    2. Art Vandalay

      She is always looking up, because she is seeing what can be unburdened by what has been (or any working memory of the thing she said she supported yesterday but now doesn’t today). At least there are no pesky policy positions in her campaign to keep track of, so that’s a win. To me she represents nothing so much as the logical endpoint of Idpol combined with corporatism.

      1. Amfortas the Hippie

        i said the exact thing to my youngest, after he asked, a lil while ago…a giant nothing burger that only those glued to cable news and daily kos will glom on to…with great JOY, no less,lol…
        i hear tell my mom sure has…as son put it…”drunk the koolaide”.
        (ive avoided her for a whole week, due to usual psychopatholgy)

      2. communistmole

        It is strange that she says “What can be, unburdened by what has been” on the one hand, and on the other “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?” and no one asks how she intends to resolve this contradiction in practice.
        In the Majority Report, someone compared the coconut statement with the famous quote from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, which just goes to show that Marx is not immune to being senselessly misused.

          1. hk

            Speaking of Australian things falling out of trees, several Univ of Cal campuses decided that eucalyptus trees are wonderful and should be planted by hundreds…in windy coastal areas. Branches smashing parked cars were a common sight and people seriously injured or even killed by them were disturbingly frequent. (NB: apparently, eucalyptus trees shed branches (even big branches) when it gets windy…)

            1. The Rev Kev

              God yes they do. We have one that I have to pick up branches of from time to time. And in a bushfire that is hot enough, the damn things can near explode because of their oils. I would never advise people to plant them on purpose but I have seen them in Greece and they are well entrenched in places like California like you pointed out.

    3. barefoot charley

      I recognize more Tulsi Gabbard in that pic. Unpleasant blend, Kamalala doesn’t improve her.

    4. ambrit

      Phyllis said that the Time cover looks like a Fearless Leader pose. At least Time Inc. didn’t have to airbrush anything out.

      1. John Anthony La Pietra

        That’s exactly what I thought of, too — though, I must confess, I just can’t see her through Ds’ eyes. . . .

  10. Samuel Conner

    > Worth noting that national Emergency Room admissions are as high as they were in the first wave, in 2020.

    I’ve been wondering what metrics of “healthcare provision system distress/damage” there might be. The original 2020 “flatten the curve” concept was notionally to avoid exceeding the capacity of the healthcare system. What has been happening to that capacity as the pandemic has ground on and on?

    1. Mikel

      It doesn’t help that people can’t get the rest needed. If one gets sick, it’s extremely beneficial to be able to avoid going into work or commuting.

    2. Mark Gisleson

      Looking at the maps I was feeling pretty smug here in SE Minnesota, then remembered Iowa probably doesn’t do any reporting and MN is probably holding back negative numbers so as to not embarrass Walz.

      1. Amfortas the Hippie

        im the same way about texas, on Lambert’s maps and charts…near as i can tell, texas has no public healthcare system,lol.
        ergo, whatever data on covid exists for my state…its hopelessly polluted.

        i get anecdata from nurse and doctor friends, but since i rarely leave the farm anymore, its not like thats real time anecdata.
        on Lambert’s maps, texas is often white, after all.
        saw school nurse at the store the other day…but we talked about what my boys are doing(and i listened to her sexy drawl and swooned, inwardly)…wasnt time to re-engage with her regarding disease surveillance, etc.

  12. Samuel Conner

    I get the impression that DJT has become deeply frustrated by the fact that he is no longer the only duopoly candidate for President who is not JRB.

  13. Mikel

    “How to frog-boil yourself” [Closed Form]

    Polyamorous people: endlessly needy and you can’t tell them any differently.
    All that emotional juggling…whew!
    At least that’s what I gather from the ones in the news profiles.

    1. Amfortas the Hippie

      theres an easier, more natural way, of course…but it takes prolly extraordinarily non-jealous people to make it work.
      when i read about these kinds of folks, i always think:”well, theres yer problem right there: youre trying to hard”…all these strugglesessions and “getting our feelings out there” like its some corporate DEI seminar,lol.
      of course its unfulfilling.
      like with regular, monogamous, relationships…one must be free to be oneselves…and to have a lot of forbearance for each others flaws.
      these people seem to let theory come before reality.

      1. mrsyk

        like with regular, monogamous, relationships…one must be free to be oneselves…and to have a lot of forbearance for each others flaws. Shelving my ego helped a lot with those two things.
        I’m not cut out for polyamory. Where to put all the baggage. Besides, twenty-eight years in and I’m still discovering my amazing wife.

        1. Mikel

          And even if I personally could handle being poly…the constant worrying about hurting someone would be a drag.

      2. Mikel

        I’m trying to figure out the freedom in all that emotional juggling.
        Why not just have a group of friends to go with the relationship? Good friends require intimacy and trust too….without all the baggage.
        Something else is going on….

        1. Amfortas the Hippie

          i suspect Bi-Erasure.
          for the guys.
          because in common understanding, one can be either straight or gay…with no in between.
          all the swingers clubs encourage female bisexuality….but, last i looked, frowned upon bisexual men.

  14. Martin Oline

    Re. that Thomas Frank clip. I watched it early this morning after Flora recommended it yesterday. I didn’t notice it was a year old until they mentioned Cornell West & the Green Party and I realized that it was an older clip. I have to say it was a very entertaining, enjoyable, and informative piece (even though I have read his books) and well worth the time to watch.

  15. Ghost in the Machine

    I find it distressing and weird knowing that events could soon unfold in the middle east that could lead to a world war and possible use of nuclear weapons and the vast majority around me have no idea. I find it difficult to care about what the people around me care about.

    1. MaryLand

      I think they are in denial and trying to distract themselves. If a person can’t do anything to change what’s happening and nuclear destruction is a possibility it could be considered a mental health coping mechanism to pretend nothing is wrong. That’s how I interpret some of the behaviors I see.

    2. Samuel Conner

      I recently (on the recommendation of NC commentariat) watched “Arrival”, and the thought occurs that if our rulers could foresee the future and the sorrowful end to which the path they have chosen would lead, … they would still choose that path.

      1. Jonathan Holland Becnel

        Denis Villeneuve is one of my favorite directors, and Arrival was my favorite movie of that year!

        What did you think of the film?

        One of my favorite aspects is the translation problem!

        1. Amfortas the Hippie

          not a translation problem…a context problem!
          as in context of a conception of Time that is so wholly Foreign, that we cant even think in those terms.

        2. Samuel Conner

          I greatly enjoyed the film, and the world-wide reconciliation implied at the end was very encouraging.

          I was intrigued by the way that “language shapes perception and thought” (and its implications for communication with other species) was so important to the story, though I think that the specifics in the story, that it could be possible with the right language/thought structure to transcend the limitations of our perception of the present as distinct from the past and future, are very implausible. I very much doubt that “[there is] no time” is subjectively possible for physically embodied organisms.

          (But the pathos of the story, which I am ashamed to admit I did not “get” until it was explained to me by a more “with it” viewer, would not be there without this premise.)

          OTOH, I’m a Dr. Who fan, and the bootstrap paradox at the climax of the film was nice. And, apparently, closed 4-D worldlines are not ruled out by General Relativity.

  16. Pat

    Not an exact match but this is what occurred to me when I read
    She’s always looking up. The future belongs to me, I suppose. Weird.

    I don’t immediately think fascist when I see beatific illustrations of a candidate who got the gig with absolutely no one voting for her but a backroom of money guys and bureaucrats. Nope

    And while I would not be surprised that Democratic event and rally attendance are inflated, I also wish that Trump would focus more on the trash canning of the primary process and who voted or rather didn’t vote for Kamala Harris to be the Democratic candidate.

    1. Mikel

      I was saying to a friend today: Remember 2020 when there were a host of candidates on the Dem Party debate and K.H. was just one of many? She couldn’t get any traction and there was no press to the rescue like now. Since, she spent 4 yrs on the DL as VP and nothing has fundamentally changed about K.H.

      1. Samuel Conner

        > nothing has fundamentally changed about K.H.

        What changed was JRB.

        KH is not JRB, and that by itself may be enough to make her competitive with DJT.

        1. Mikel

          The establishment would hype Snoopy or Scooby-Doo for Pres just because they weren’t DJT.
          That’s my overall point.

    2. John k

      I assume after the close one with bernie theyve been looking for a way to get rid of primaries in favor of the back room. Donors would certainly approve, whats not to like?

    3. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Nope

      Hell no.

      Actually, I’ve been noticing Kamala’s upward gaze for awhile. I only make the connection recently.

      I must apologize for getting the joke slightly wrong*. The song is (video) “Tomorrow Belongs To Me“

      Here is a representative frame:

      The argument could be made that I am being fanciful in making this comparison MR SUBLIMINAL ***cough*** Censorship Industrial Complex ***cough***. But Kamala’s upward look is a constant, and needs an explanation.

      NOTE * Moral: Link!

      NOTE Obama sometimes had an upward tilt to his head, but different from Kamala’s upward gaze.

      1. Cassandra

        being fanciful

        Lambert, I was going to make this comment last night, went so far as digging up the link, then deleted. Told myself, Godwin and all that. Thanks for the validation.

    4. Lambert Strether Post author

      > I also wish that Trump would focus more on the trash canning of the primary process and who voted or rather didn’t vote for Kamala Harris to be the Democratic candidate.

      Total own-goal not to do this. “They call themselves Democrats!”

      1. Randall Flagg

        And this election is all about “Saving Democracy!”
        If I had a dollar every time I hear this…

  17. flora

    re: Trump. Don’t go there.

    Yeah, a careful look shows it’s a mash-up. The first part with the airplane “elevator” bottom stairs seeming to move upward that seems fake, imo. Maybe the last part with “big crowd” is fake, too, judging by the airplane’s undercarriage horizon line changing. Maybe some kids were having AI imaging fun at home and turned it loose as a joke. I don’t know. / my 2 cents.

    1. flora

      an aside: I see job opportunities for art/art history students and photography/video/film students employed to “human-eye” visual stuff on twitter. Taking the old “continuity screener” jobs in movie and TV filming a step farther. / ;)

      1. flora

        See also Alfred Hitchcock’s early UK movies where his wife Alma Reville was the continuity screener. / ;)

      2. Lambert Strether Post author

        > an aside: I see job opportunities for art/art history students and photography/video/film students employed to “human-eye” visual stuff on twitter.

        “Authentication as a Service.” Interesting business model. I think this is a good idea (but there also needs to be a way to separate this from whatever the modern-day equivalent of arr dealer/connoisseurs might be; financial incentives and moral hazards would have to be cut out of the authentication service).

    2. Lambert Strether Post author

      > Yeah, a careful look shows it’s a mash-up.

      I don’t buy the whole scenario, which doesn’t take into account the social matrix in which the photograph was produced. Kamala’s flying around in a plane with the press, including a bunch of photographers, and presenting in front of a crowd holding up their cellphones and taking pictures or indeed video. What’s the point of introducing an AI-faked video into that mix? (It’s the modern-day equivalent of “crisis actors,” and please don’t go there.)

      I don’t buy the “careful look” argument either (and in any case “careful look” at which photograph? From Snopes, which did a lot of work on this (work I do not have time to do, which is why I distrust all digital evidence on principle).

      Summarizing:

      AI-detection software said it was highly unlikely the photo was created with AI. Moreover, other photographic and video evidence corroborated the large crowd size, and, according to the BBC, the Harris-Walz campaign confirmed that the original photograph was real and taken by a member of its staff.

      Detail:

      In many AI-generated images, people appear to have nonhuman characteristics, such as extra or too-few fingers, or unrecognizable facial features. We didn’t see evidence of that in the photo.

      Nevertheless, we scanned the image through two online AI-detection tools. The first, Winston AI Image Detector, determined the image was “96% human” — or, that it was likely photographed by someone and not created using an AI-generation tool. Isitai.com, another detection tool, described the image as “somewhat likely human generated,” estimating a 58% chance that it’s not AI.

      In any case, to straighten all out, an actual reporter, if any still remain, would go the airport and talk to, well, an actual human airport worker embedded in the social matrix I mentioned first. Maybe that’s happened, and I haven’t seen it on my various feeds yet.

  18. ambrit

    About the Michoud fabrication plant: That is a giant industrial concern. The main rocket bodies for the Space Shuttle were built there. Michoud itself is to the southeast of New Orleans and has direct access to the Mississippi River and the Intracoastal Waterway. All sorts of NASA equipment and supplies are moved about by this route. Just up the East Pearl River, (which we lived right by,) is Stennis Federal Reserve, where the rocket engines are tested before being used. Traditionally, Michoud is feted for being at the forefront of the ‘Budget Overrun’ movement.
    As for labour issues, all one needs to know is that Louisiana is a “Right-to-work-for-less” state.

  19. Wukchumni

    4.4 centered in the very heart of the Chinese community of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula.

    Do I have to be the one that mentions that the number 4 in Chinese numerology means death, or in this case, death.death

    1. CJ in LA

      Felt it pretty strongly. Quick, sharp jolt. Close aboard. Short fault, had a quake on same fault a few months ago. Not worried about a much larger one, but kinda surprised at the magnitude of this one.

    1. Steve H.

      We had one stay around a couple of weeks this year, despite the Catbirds objections. Same niche, but the Thrasher is larger. Impressive, stretched out in the bird spa of fine aglime.

  21. steppenwolf fetchit

    The apparently non-malign success of Front Porch Forum in Vermont makes me wonder if this exact particular company could try opening branches or presences operating under the exact same rules in a couple of neighboring states to see if it does indeed scale. And if it does, and if they can scale up their workforce to keep up with the scaling up, and if they can impose a rigid policy of “keep doing things exactly the same” to prevent contamination by Big Tech values and methods as and if they scale up, then perhaps they can work out a way to keep scaling up further without diluting or changing what they do.

    They could be a real life expression of the theoretical ” Shinola Social” which I have seen wished for in the past in past threads here. They would have to rigidly defend themselves against infiltration, penetration and subversion by secret agents from Big Tech worming and mole-ing their way into the Front Porch Forum workforce and management-force.

    Big Tech is not-learning-capable. Big Tech’s only response to a visible growth of Front Porch Forum beyond Vermont would be to buy it and shut it down or enshitify it so as to neutralize the threat it would pose to Big Tech. It would be up to the owners of Front Porch Forum to resist the temptation to be bought out. Their hatred for Big Tech would have to be stronger than their desire for Big Billions.
    If they would ” rather make a difference than make money” and the difference they could make would be the extermination of Big Tech from the face of the earth, would they resist the lure of a hundred-billion-dollar buyout offer?

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > The apparently non-malign success of Front Porch Forum

      Appropriately cautious! (There’s a somewhat similar venue called Patch, from which I occasionally quote, but I don’t think it has the moderation system, which seems to be FP’s distinctive competence.)

      As you argue, it would be important to prevent Silicon Valley, private equity, and so forth from snapping up a “scaled” version. Perhaps some sort of federal structure, as opposed to the classic corporate structure; if it were federal, then it ought to be possible to prevent it from being sold as one unit. Also, each Forum could act as a check on all the others. (The moderation policies would be, as it were, the Constitution…)

  22. The Rev Kev

    “Trump to sue DOJ for $100M over Mar-a-Lago raid, alleging ‘political persecution”

    Guy’s got a point. Biden had secret documents scattered around like confetti but was never punished for it because they said that he was too feeble to take to court but not feeble enough to remain as President. Trump had his in his home and would have not only had his own private security but also a Secret Service detail as he is an ex-President.

    1. Pat

      Don’t forget how polite they were checking for those documents and how long it took them. The contrast was also telling.

      I’ve never been quite sure why Joe (or Jill) didn’t have someone go in and clean up his stash with a shredder. Did he not remember he had anything or just didn’t think it would blow back on him.

      1. Pat

        I should also say that having been around a former Senator who was very careless about confidential documents (not classified) I wouldn’t be surprised if raiding any one from President to Congressional Representatives and Cabinet level officers would 9 times out of 10 or more would find something similar.

        But I also want all the President’s files to be given to the Library of Congress period. If they have something they want copies of, they should have to request it. I very much want an end to the Library boondoggle and think there should be ONE Presidential library under their auspices.

  24. The Rev Kev

    ‘Team Trump (Text TRUMP to 88022)
    @TeamTrump
    President Trump will be interviewed by Elon Musk TONIGHT at 8 pm Eastern on 𝕏.’

    “In a letter to Musk, European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton warned that Brussels will be monitoring the interview closely.

    Musk must ensure that “effective mitigation measures are put in place regarding the amplification of harmful content” in connection with the live interview, Breton wrote, before claiming that Musk had failed to stop the spread of such content during a recent spate of right-wing riots in the UK.

    “We are monitoring the potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that may incite violence, hate and racism in conjunction with major political – or societal – events around the world, including debates and interviews in the context of elections,” he continued.”

    https://www.rt.com/news/602515-eu-threatens-elon-musk/

    So the EU has jurisdiction over two Americans talking to each other on the net now? Elon Musk had his own reply to this turkey-

    https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1823076043017630114

  25. Rolf

    Lambert, thanks so much for that Frank clip. Still going through everything this evening, but grateful for a superb WC today. Kudos!

  26. Wukchumni

    There are 8 lightning strike caused wildfires in Sequoia-Kings Canyon, most of them deep in the backcountry of the ‘sleeper variety’ and are being monitored, while one is in a practically impossible to get to grove of Giant Sequoias nearer to Tiny Town, and although only around 10 acres, they really put a show on today with an aerial display of planes, jets and even smoke-jumpers, to put it out.

    https://www.yourcentralvalley.com/news/wildfires/coffeepot-fire-burning-in-sequoia-national-park/

  28. SocalJimObjects

    Nothing new here, just more confirmation on how poor the Covid precautions were during the Olympics. In the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZW4WD_el-Y, around the 1 minute mark, the content creator who attended the Olympics starts talking about how “everybody in Paris had Covid or some kind of respiratory thing while we were out there. Everybody was coughing, everybody was sneezing, it was a zoo of infection.”

    1. Lambert Strether Post author

      > zoo of infection

      I haven’t seen any triumphalism on a “Covid-free” Olympics and how everything is back to “normal.” Athletes living their athletic lives. That to me argues that the situation in Paris was….. not good at all.

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