By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Patient readers, I’ll have more on Politics shortly. Stay tuned! –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
I looked for another species of songbird that mimics, and came up with the Thrasher.
Brown Thrasher, Location, Finger Lakes NF—Interloken Trail/South Velie Pasture, Schuyler, New York, United States.
In Case You Might Miss…
- Trump/Musk Transcript
- NIH shuts down its COVID-19 treatment guidelines website for special populations.
- Geofence warrants banned by Fifth Circuit.
- €16.9 trillion in labour extorted from the Global South by the Global North.
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
Democrats en Déshabillé
“M&A lawyers call out antitrust authorities as inflation remains high” [The Hill]. “‘Jonathan Kanter at DOJ and Lina Khan at the FTC — they’re just anti-deal and in a sense they’re anti-the law. They think the law on antitrust is not robust enough, so they want to move the law to essentially be able to stop more deals,’ Scott Barshay, an attorney with law firm Paul Weiss, told a conference at Tulane University on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) on Thursday.” • Paul Weiss is, of course, fundraising for Kamala. Paul Weiss also put some of its lawyers on secondment with Alvin Bragg.
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?
* * * “Donald Trump and Elon Musk (Full Transcript) – August 12, 2024 [TurboScribe:
Two billionaires letting their hair down and chatting, an interesting phenomenon. There should be a podcast called “Billionaires Chatting.” We’d learn a lot about how the country is run! I would have expected a transcript to be immediately available from a major venue; but oddly, there isn’t; “TurboScribe” is what there is. Oh, and as usual, Trump is Trumpian; verbose, riffing continuosly, but in no way crazy or whatever the talking point of the day is (“rambling,” apparently. Probably a problem for the press because it’s not predigested talking points they previously got via blast fax, so they have to work). Of course, you could argue that Trump is exactly as lunatic as the system that produced him. No argument from me there!
On Ukraine:
[TRUMP:] But then Biden started saying such stupid things. For instance, he said that it can be a NATO country. Now, Russia, for as long as there’s been NATO, has said, we’re never gonna agree to that. And we go right up front and say that.
Mearsheimer in the vernacular.
On immigration:
[TRUMP:] And they’re coming into our country at levels that have never been seen before. And I saw an ad just before I got on the air, I’m walking over here, and I saw an ad by Kamala saying how she is going to provide border security. Where has she been for three and a half years?…. So- Well, Elon, we’re gonna have, just to finish this up, we’re gonna have the largest deportation in history of this country, and we have no choice. Otherwise, we’re gonna have a country, what they’ve done to our country.
Immigration and inflation are only populist planks remaining from 2016, and the immigration solution is super-ugly. Suppose we stash the deportees in football stadium, say, like Chile. Now we know how to do that. What next?
On government workers and unions generally:
[TRUMP:] Well, you, you’re the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in and you just say, you want to quit? They go on strike. I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, that’s okay. You’re all gone. You’re all gone.
So every one of you is gone and you are the greatest. You would be very good. Oh, you would love it.
Musk did in fact lead the way on Silicon Valley cutbacks, which no doubt endeared him to at least some of his peers.
On Covid:
[TRUMP:] We were gonna make a fortune. And then the COVID came in and we really had to divert. Then what happened is when they came in, you know, we kept a lot of businesses alive….
You know, we got over that bad period where it was everybody was dying and it was just not a good period. Interestingly, you know, during his administration, many more people died during his administration of COVID than during my administration. And we really got the brunt of it.
But people don’t realize more people died during his administration than ours. But it diverted us from doing what I wanted to do. But we had the greatest for, you know, almost three years.
Trump is in fact correct; more people died under Biden than Trump (although Trump slides by Operation Warp Speed). And while the CARES Act did shovel out a lot of money to business, it also “achieved historic gains against poverty and hardship,” so naturally Biden eliminated it as fast as he could.
On Climate:
[TRUMP:] So I think we have, you know, perhaps hundreds of years left. Nobody really knows. But during that time, something will come around that will be very good.
[MUSK:] My estimate would be, you know, a little more aggressive than that, but it’s not the sort of like, we’re all gonna die in five years stuff. That’s obviously BS. But I mean, my view is like, if you just look at sort of the parts per million that increments every year, you know, you get sort of two or three parts per million every year of CO2. I mean, I think some of that, it’s problematic if it accelerates, if you start going from two or three to say five. And then there may be some situations where you get a step change increase in the CO2. And I think we don’t wanna get too close to 1000 PPM because like that’s actually makes it uncomfortable to breathe. Like just existing in 1000 PPM CO2 is uncomfortable. That’s like a, that’s considered like an industrial hazard.
And an interesting re-framing (“nuclear warming,” i.e. World War III):
[TRUMP:] But I would think, and I have no idea because that’s not my world, but I would think that this would be something that would be interesting. But, you know, the one thing that I don’t understand is that people talk about global warming or they talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming. And for me, that’s an immediate problem because you have, as I said, five countries where you have major nuclear and, you know, probably some others are getting there and that’s very dangerous.
And when I talk about, I’ll prevent World War III, I will, but the truth is that you have to because this is no longer army tanks going back and forth and shooting at each other. This is a level of destruction and power that nobody’s ever seen before.I like the idea of reducing the likelihood of nuclear war, particularly since the Democrats have “joyfully” gotten us into in two wars involving nuclear powers, and would like to take on a third, as soon as they can figure out how to build a pier from the Philippines….
On Kamala:
[TRUMP:] Worse than Bernie Sanders. She is considered more liberal by far than Bernie Sanders. She’s a radical left lunatic.
Now that’s crazy (and note lack of agency in “is considered”).
NOTE I hadn’t heard of this transcript site before marym found it, but it’s good technology. You can click on the text and hear the spoken words. Far better than YouTube’s so-called transcripts, or C-SPAN.
* * * Trump (R): “Trump’s Crucial Power Has Been Neutralized” [Jeff Greenfield, Politico]. “But this time, the sudden elevation of Kamala Harris, along with the identity and character of her opponent, has — for now at least — made her the candidate who embodies change, no matter how little her policies differ from the current president. That this happened by accident rather than design does not make it any less potent as a political asset. And worst of all for Donald Trump, it deprives him of one his greatest powers. Trump rode to the presidency in 2016 on a promise to smash the status quo. Now he faces credible charges that he represents the past — and there’s a telegenic, younger contender eager to make that case.” • I think this is an idea, rather than a reality, at least for those not already committed to Team Blue
* * * Kamala (D): Personnel is policy:
In the coming days, Harris plans on releasing a policy platform “focused on lifting up the middle class.” Two of her advisors are former BlackRock investors. A third is a Ford lobbyist who served as a legislative dir. for Rahm Emanuel.https://t.co/pbCjU78SkQ
— Indigo Olivier (@IndigoOlivier) August 12, 2024
Kamala (D): “Harris is using Trump’s tactics against him — but will it work?” [Keith Naughton, The Hill]. “There is a difference between Team Harris and Team Trump, and it is that Harris has a competent campaign crew, lets them do their jobs and has the discipline to stick to what’s on the Teleprompter. Trump, in contrast, can’t get out of his own way. While Harris was trying to spin her way out of criticism for not picking Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as her running mate, the former president decided to post another unhinged rant. Surprising his campaign staff, Trump called a sudden press conference where he managed to waffle on his pro-life position (the worst thing you can do), keep his inane feud with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp going, cave on the ABC debate, bristle at questions and generally ignore the major issues voters care about in favor of minutiae. But at least he got some free advertising for his Mar-a-Lago club.” • Ouch! I’m not so sure about Kamala and the staff; she’s had staff problems consistently as VP. We’ll have to see what happens when the honeymoon ends. Of course, with 100 days, practically the entire campaign is a honeymoon. Which I’m sure she’s counting on.
Kamala (D): “Harris energy evokes Obama campaign for Democrats” [The Hill]. “Democrats say this surge of enthusiasm for Harris hasn’t been seen since the Obama campaign, which prompted organic support from Democrats and independent voters. Obama went on to a landslide victory, an outcome Harris and Democrats would be happy to repeat but are not anticipating. They expect the election will be razor-tight and come down to a half-dozen swing states. They also suspect Harris’s extended honeymoon period will likely end. But they are increasingly bullish as polls move in her direction and her hot streak continues…. Democratic strategist Joel Payne, who worked on Hillary Clinton’s 2016 bid, agreed with Cutter’s assessment. ‘It’s the first pure joy presidential campaign on the Democratic side in quite some time,’ Payne said. ‘The surge in energy feels like the closest thing we have experienced since Obama ’08.'” • Of course, Obama 2008 turned out to be a debacle, at least for the working class (and many others) as Obama rebooted the financial system after the Crash. Anyhow, memes, vibes, joy… One hates to be curmudgeonly, but it’s just like photos of CEOs and celebrities: If these people are smiling, watch out! And speaking of joy:
There are countless large media outlets in the last 5 days alone who have all published large pieces calling Kamala's campaign THE POLITICS OF JOY.
Not happiness, not glee, not delight, not jubilation. They all have to use the same word. One more, from The Atlantic, of course. pic.twitter.com/0i5GNXvC8L
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 9, 2024
All the players got the blast fax at the same time, I suppose….
PA: “These Pennsylvania voters illustrate Harris’ suburban challenge” [CNN]. “[Carol] Carty is part of a CNN project, All Over the Map, to track the 2024 campaign through the eyes and experiences of voters who are members of key voting blocs and who live in critical areas within the battleground states. Her views are telling, all the more so because they were shared by other supporters of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Reagan Republicans in our group. Harris’ ascendance on the Democratic ticket is shaking up the race in the pivotal suburbs. But the belief that she is to the left of Biden creates a quandary for Republicans who do not want Trump back in the White House but have policy and personal doubts about Harris.”
PA: “Pennsylvania’s I’m-Not-Weird Voters” [Compact Magazine]. “Pennsylvania is the most important battleground in this year’s election. A former manufacturing powerhouse that has played a pivotal part in the development of American democracy since the colonial era, the Keystone State is today a laboratory for the biggest trends redefining politics: above all, working- and lower-middle-class voters’ shift from the Democratic Party of their forebears to the GOP. Not to the generic Republican Party—to Donald Trump’s party. Summarized briefly, the worldview of this crucial voting bloc goes something like this: The Biden-Harris economy is battering my finances, no matter what the government statistics say; illegal immigration and crime are a big problem; the public-health response to Covid abridged my traditional liberties in intolerable ways; Trump might be an insufferable asshole, but he often has a point. And I’m not weird for feeling or voicing any of this. And therein lies the risk in the rhetorical strategy—denounced by Sen. Bernie Sanders but eagerly embraced by Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz—in framing the nominees on the other side of the national divide as ‘weird.'” • Note the complete collapse of trust in the public health establishment, which will cost many lives in years to come. Thanks, Rochelle. Thanks, Mandy.
Our Famously Free Press
“The Media’s Double Standard Favors Donald Trump, Not Kamala Harris Conservative complaints about bias miss the point” [Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine]. “The reason isn’t that reporters like Trump or want him to win. The reason is that they haven’t figured out a structural solution to the problem of a candidate whose misconduct, dishonesty, bigotry, and general pathological behavior lie so far beyond the norm. Trump is a yearslong out-of-sample event that blows up every instrument used to measure him. The media have tried, and failed, to capture his abnormality, but no workable solution has presented itself.” • Tuquoque, but: This, from the party of RussiaGate, the party of the censorship industrial complex, the party that vociferously and universally denied Biden’s cognitive issues until the moment they all turned on a dime, and decided that Biden wasn’t fit to run for President, but was fit to run the country? What, pray tell, is the “structural solution” to a party with a track record like that?
<-- Spook Country
–>
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!
Maskstravaganza
Conference masking:
The wastewater people know their sh…,,,
— 💜Martha Young- JD, MBA, N95-clean the air: (@mryoung151) August 13, 2024
Vaccines
“Regarding Prof. Vinay Prasad: An Open Letter to the Administration, Faculty, and Students of University of California San Francisco” [Pandemic Accountability Index]. “One of the very basic facts that any freshman medical student must first internalize is that vaccines are the medical world’s greatest contribution to the public’s health. Many, many years of human life have been wasted, going back to the 1800s, fighting to undermine them and their potential – and we see this sentiment stronger than ever since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Combined with the regulatory authority of public health, modern medicine has been able to greatly reduce overall mortality and extend the average human lifespan. Yet, we all see those who openly campaign to crush these gains, and personally profit from doing so via social media revenue and speaking engagement fees.” • Vinay in action:
Creepy pro-viral harassment by @UCSFMedicine professor Vinay Prasad against Black doctor Jerome Adams. A clear violation of @ucsf Faculty Code of Conduct. pic.twitter.com/9CCU63Tlui
— Pandemic 𓅃 Index (@pan_accindex) August 12, 2024
Elite Maleficence
We gave NIH billions for Long Covid research and they lit it on fire and threw it in the air. Now this:
NIH has announced it will be shutting down its COVID-19 treatment guidelines website for special populations on August 16 😲 so LCAP has archived all of the PDFs (including each special populations section) for public use 😎 https://t.co/e3sIioHRRD
P.S. this is not ok @NIH
— LCAP (Long Covid Action Project) (@LongCovidAP) August 12, 2024
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 12: | National [6] CDC July 20: | |
|
|
|
|
| Positivity | ||
| ★ National[7] Walgreens August 13: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic August 3: | |
|
|
|
| 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) Going down. 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) Fiddling and diddling.
[8] (Cleveland) Jumping.
[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
Small Business Optimism: “United States NFIB Business Optimism Index” [Trading Economics]. “The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index in the US rose to 93.7 in July of 2024 from 91.5 in the previous month, the highest since February of 2022, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine triggered commodity supply shocks and inflationary pressures across major global economies. Still, it marked the 31st consecutive reading below the 50-year average of 98.”
Inflation: “United States Producer Prices” [Trading Economics]. “Producer Prices in the United States increased to 144.67 points in July from 144.53 points in June of 2024. Producer Prices in the United States averaged 117.22 points from 2009 until 2024, reaching an all time high of 144.67 points in July of 2024….”
Tech: “Inside Worldcoin’s Orb Factory, Audacious and Absurd Defender of Humanity” [Bloomberg]. “[Alex Blania is] the chief executive officer of Tools for Humanity Corp., which uses the Orb as part of an identity verification and cryptocurrency system called Worldcoin. His company, based in San Francisco and Erlangen, Germany, is the ne plus ultra object of Silicon Valley yearning. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who started Tools for Humanity and recruited Blania, is a major financial backer, along with Tiger Global Management, Fifty Years, Khosla Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and dozens of other investors who’ve contributed more than $250 million to, as the company’s website says, ‘ensure a more just economic system.’ To achieve that not-so-modest goal, Tools for Humanity wants to create a global identity system for humans… [T]his is where Orb comes in. It takes images of people’s irises under the supervision of a human Orb associate and grants them a unique World ID, which certifies that a real person belongs to a string of characters the machine generates.” • It’s all fun and games until Tools for Humanity’s servers get hacked, and I have to go out on the secondary market for a new iris. It would be Altman.
Tech: “Federal Appeals Court Finds Geofence Warrants Are ‘Categorically’ Unconstitutional” [Electronic Frontier Foundation]. “In a major decision on Friday, the federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that geofence warrants are ‘categorically prohibited by the Fourth Amendment.’ Closely following arguments EFF has made in a number of cases, the court found that geofence warrants constitute the sort of ‘general, exploratory rummaging’ that the drafters of the Fourth Amendment intended to outlaw. EFF applauds this decision because it is essential that every person feels like they can simply take their cell phone out into the world without the fear that they might end up a criminal suspect because their location data was swept up in open-ended digital dragnet.”
Manufacturing: “Boeing Is the Canary in the Trickle-Down Coal Mines” [Civic Skunk Works]. From April, still germane: “The most tragic thing about all of this is that Boeing had more than enough money to invest in a strong union workforce that hewed to the multiple safety redundancies that the company used to bake into its manufacturing process. It could have spent enough money to ensure that every plane with the Boeing name printed on its side was perfectly safe — the same way Boeing had ensured that rock-solid safety record for 70 years before the company began cutting corners — and still turned a profit. How do I know this? Because over just the last ten years, Boeing has returned some $59 billion dollars in profit to shareholders, in the form of $20 billion in dividends and the rest in stock buybacks. That’s tens of billions of dollars that used to go to wages, benefits, and safety precautions that the company instead chose to hand off to investors with no strings attached. All Boeing got in return for those offloaded profits was an artificially high stock price that didn’t reflect the increasingly poor quality of the product the company was selling.” • G good round-up. The author locates the problem in neoliberalism. I’m unsure but it seems to me the problem is capitalism proper (perhaps neoliberalism has simply removed a veil from our eyes).
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 24 Exreme Fear (previous close: 23 Extreme Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 23 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 13 at 1:21:45 PM ET.
“Making earthly paradise” [Times Literary Supplement]. This caught my eye: “Morriss was born into a prosperous family, its wealth derived from his father’s holding of valuable mining shares.” But: “Morris fell helplessly in love with Jane Burden, the teenage daughter of an Oxford ostler, whom he met at a theatre. This was more than a matter of picking up a pretty girl and enjoying a brief fling, common enough among young men of Morris’s class and generation. Jane was a young woman of haunting beauty and considerable intelligence. Morris’s commitment turned out to be lifelong; Jane’s less so. They married in 1859 (no member of his disapproving family attended the wedding) and set about making a life together. The choices available to the young couple were not altogether straightforward. Although Jane was resolute in leaving her working-class roots behind, she embarked on her marriage with little serious education or social experience, and was clearly not equipped to become a conventional middle-class wife. A novel way of living must be constructed, which could only be managed in a radically new house. Morris had apprenticed himself to G. E. Street, a gothic revivalist architect then based in Oxford, where he met Philip Webb, who shared his medievalist ambitions. Morris, who quickly abandoned the idea of becoming an architect, commissioned a house from Webb with a view to designing the decoration himself. It was a turning point. ‘Red House’, near Bexleyheath in Kent, was to become a ‘Palace of Art’ (the phrase came from Tennyson) – a unified design where furniture and decoration would combine with architectural details to forge a new paradigm for daily life. Morris was not greatly interested in decorating grand public buildings, though he would make an exception for churches. Throughout his career he focused on household settings.” • Hence the wallpaper:
Makes me think of the British riots….
An Old Street https://t.co/QKKn6eGiil pic.twitter.com/9hOX3NCu0R
— L. S. Lowry (@lowryartist) August 8, 2024
“The 376 Most-Cited Contemporary Authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy” [The Splintered Mind]. From the entry: ” Lewis held that the best theory of modality posited concrete possible worlds. A proposition is possible if and only if it is true at one of these worlds. Lewis defended this view in his most significant book, On the Plurality of Worlds.” • I would swear there was a David Lewis episode from the In Our Time podcast — or at least an episode of a “many worlds hypothesis” philosopher 00 but I scrolled back to 2018 and couldn’t find it.
“Jack Karlson, man behind iconic ‘succulent Chinese meal’ meme, dies aged 82” [Independent]. • Quite a character. But imagine being remembered for a meme!
“Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy” [Nature]. The Abstract: “Researchers have argued that wealthy nations rely on a large net appropriation of labour and resources from the rest of the world through unequal exchange in international trade and global commodity chains. Here we assess this empirically by measuring flows of embodied labour in the world economy from 1995–2021, accounting for skill levels, sectors and wages. We find that, in 2021, the economies of the global North net-appropriated 826 billion hours of embodied labour from the global South, across all skill levels and sectors. The wage value of this net-appropriated labour was equivalent to €16.9 trillion in Northern prices, accounting for skill level. This appropriation roughly doubles the labour that is available for Northern consumption but drains the South of productive capacity that could be used instead for local human needs and development. Unequal exchange is understood to be driven in part by systematic wage inequalities. We find Southern wages are 87–95% lower than Northern wages for work of equal skill. While Southern workers contribute 90% of the labour that powers the world economy, they receive only 21% of global income.” • Interesting to see this calculated in terms of labor power (time).
Sage advice:
If you want to make over $100,000/year before you turn 20 then learn how to build, maintain, and program a control cabinet like the ones below.
There is a huge gap in knowledge on these and every tech I work with is 60+ years old. I work with a tech who is flown across the… pic.twitter.com/28RCQ2CITT
— Shelby Grosch (@ShelbyGrosch) August 12, 2024
“Is Running a More Efficient Way to Travel Than Walking?” [JoeHX Blog]. “Conclusion? Slow walks are the most efficient. But if you have to run, about a 7 minute mile is the most efficient.” •¨Good. I like to amble.
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: “Re: the peony discussion on 7/16/24, here’s a bloom from my Japanese tree peony, 35 years old & still hanging in there. The petals look like a cross between tissue paper and silk, and the fragrance is heavenly!”
Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. Material here is Lambert’s, and does not express the views of the Naked Capitalism site. 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!
File under Zeitgeist Watch:
(Also cross-filed in my bulging personal dossier “Reasons To Be Glad To Be Retired”)
Are Universities Failing the Accommodations Test?
As a recently retired academic, I found this piece to be quite thoughtful and balanced in its perspective. It also goes into some detailed accounts of how students with serious disabilities (e.g. blindness) have been left largely abandoned by the “accessibility” bureaucracy, and have to become their own advocates in order to cope with schooling.
What it doesn’t do is look ahead and consider how educational institutions are going to deal with the incoming avalanche of COVID-induced brain-rot.
Excerpts:
Since 2017, I’ve been teaching courses on writing at the University of Toronto. In these seven years, not a single week has gone by in which I haven’t gotten a request for an accommodation of one kind or another (an “accommodation,” in this context, is an adjustment to course delivery, expectations, or grading criteria). Some requests come from the university bureaucracy; others come from the students themselves. Some are backed by medical documentation; the overwhelming majority are not.
I’ve been asked, variously, to excuse multiple absences, to redesign assignments at the last minute, to offer additional make-up assignments, to give passing grades to non-existent work, to stream in-person classes on Zoom, to offer one-on-one tutorials outside of class hours, to provide written notes in lieu of missed lectures, to accept email submissions in lieu of class participation, to grade rough drafts in lieu of finished products, to extend deadlines, to extend deadlines again, and then to extend them one more time. I don’t have exams or tests in my courses, but if I did, I’d surely be asked to reschedule them or to allow students to complete them at home. Other instructors get demands like these all the time.
…
And so I respond to accommodation requests by muddling through on instinct, seeking solutions that seem fair to me and don’t inundate me with extra work. Each decision feels like a small patch to a broken system. I worry that university bureaucracies are robbing instructors of their academic freedom by compelling them to offer accommodations that don’t match their teaching styles or the content they teach. I worry that accommodations aren’t reaching the people who need them most. A student in crisis isn’t always the best self-advocate. But others—those who are unafraid to make bold demands of their instructors—may be getting help they don’t actually need.
…
The experience has left her profoundly disillusioned. A classroom, she says, is supposed to be a dynamic place, where people think out loud together. A university, moreover, is supposed to enlarge student capacity for attentive work and original thought. Elise doesn’t think her students are doing very much of that. “What skills are we trying to cultivate in this course?” she wonders. “Not verbal communication or time management or professionalism. We’re not even trying to teach basic writing conventions. If none of these things matter anymore, it’s unclear to me what does.”
The Walrus article is filled with horror stories and abuse of accommodations by some students. However, having a son with schizophrenia, the Student Accessibility Services office at University of Guelph was instrumental in helping him obtain a BSc with Honours in Molecular Biology and Genetics. Because of his disorder the accommodations were necessary; most notably proctored exams in a smaller setting as opposed to a lecture hall and a shared campus apartment. There were a *few* instances of extensions for major assignments. The accommodations must’ve added a bit of work to the profs, but not much. Nothing like the article. Let it suffice to say without accommodations he could not have completed the degree.
Unfortunately even with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the US, employment is very, very difficult. Unlike the university where one discloses a disability, it is the LAST thing a disabled person would do during an interview or probationary period. Quotas would be helpful. The ADA only works when you’re in. How I wish accommodations in the workplace were as available as at the university.
*UPDATE- WILL DONATE 10$ FOR EACH PERSON THAT APPLIES TO JOIN US- GOT ONE SO FAR- HELL YEAH*
Hey NC Commentariat,
I’d like to formally invite y’all to participate at a local level IRL and at some online political education discussions by joining this little group called Class Unity! I’d love y’all’s help and knowledge if you’re in America!
I hope Lambert (Yves) won’t mind, and I hope he will help us as well by letting me post this.
Strength & Honor,
Jonathan B
***
CLASS UNITY EVENTS
Class
Fellow Stupidpolrs, Heretics, Workers, and People of the Internet!
The great race to form a Third Party has begun! Sublation Media and their proto party, Midwestern Marx and the American Communist Party, and us idpol rejecting class firsters at Class Unity!
It’s never been a greater time to join Class Unity and participate in our great economic discussions and learn how the real economy works. Come help lead the way in your local community and make a difference!
Last week we had Professor Steve Keen on to talk about the Australian Debt Crisis in 2008. This week we have Vijay Prashad talking about US imperialism and the CIA in his book, Washington Bullets, on Thursday and Professor Sarah Knuthe talking about the role of asset management companies and investment capital in the green energy transition on Saturday. We might have the Legendary Michael Hudson in October!
CLASS UNITY WANTS YOU!
Jonathan B MemCom Chair Classunity.org
https://www.reddit.com/r/stupidpol/comments/1eqxvef/
Sounds great! Best Wishes!
Too bad I’m an anarcho-syndaclist, and apparently not welcome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0BpfwazhUA
Nice.
Does an anarcho syndicalist believe in Universal Material Benefits for the Working Class?
Do you think identity politics is the ruling class’s ideology?
Of course you are welcome! Don’t be silly!
We are called Class Unity after all!
“Of course, with 100 days, practically the entire campaign is a honeymoon.”
I think this is the only way Kamala pulls this off. If I recall from 2020, she started a (self-professed) “top tier candidate”. The media loved her. The insiders loved her. But the more the public saw of her, the less they liked her. And, as you point out, her VP staff has been a mess. But, I think the short schedule works in her favor bigly. If she can keep her nose clean, if she can keep her house in order and if she can convince the Democrats who were going to sit out to come back, she might pull this off, assuming Trump can’t get his mojo back. Of course, 84 days is a long time…
Yeah, cough cough… competent until proved otherwise say for example when the basics of policy and governing style are ever likely discussed. She’s different from the current VP, let’s count all the glorious points in the Win column for candidate Harris and her running mate! This ticket on offer is still fairly young, but let’s jump the crawling to walk phase into full and functioning adult maturity for the American population. In just a few weeks, so remarkable. Joe who?
Sarc mode at peak levels, but willing to go higher as required. Of course she might pull this off, with the aid and abetting of major media outlets.
> the aid and abetting of major media outlets
Let’s not forget the spooks. Because I’d sure like to know about that DDOS attack. I know Twitter runs lean, but it is a Silicon Valley platform and it runs at scale. (I know Verge quoted an employee saying it runs too lean, but these days I’d want data, and not just the opinion.
Me too.
(I also heard Musk offered to host Kamala as well. I’d love to see her take him up on that.)
> I also heard Musk offered to host Kamala as well.
He did. I’d love to see that too.
You think the spooks didn’t want people to hear Trump shoot himself in the foot again?
The only *data* we have so far is Musk saying it was a DDOS and totally not incompetence and incapacity on his part.
Elon Musk said Donald Trump interview suffered a ‘DDoS attack’ — X / Twitter employees say he’s lying
https://mashable.com/article/elon-musk-donald-trumo-x-spaces-conversation-ddos-glitches-viewership
I just gave up on watching a clip on Twitter/X that somebody sent. The video kept stalling.
Could it be that Musk fired too many of the people needed to keep Twitter running, and is in denial?
> Trump shoot himself in the foot
Unlike, say, the head? Unfortunate locution!
In any case, yes, I think the spooks absolutely don’t want “people” to hear Trump speak; that’s one of the advantages of lawfare: Lawfare consumes a campaign’s most valuable resource, the candidate’s time.
The common response I’ve heard to Harris making promises (as an incumbent) is blunt, and usually prefaced with the usual disdain for politicians. If she could do the things she’s saying, then what’s stopping her from doing them right now?
A corpse that they (including KH herself) are pretendibg is the president. This is a ploy perfectly too clever by half: KH is not the president, so she has no responsibility, so she can say anything and you have to believe her. How stupid do they think we (the Americans) are, and are they right?
I think the debate will be a huge pivot point for a lot of people. As blustery as Trump is, at least he can string a coherent sentence together. As far as I can tell, Kamala only speaks in word salad (feel free to google her answer to the reporter asking what she would do to fight inflation). I didn’t watch the last debate because I knew how it was going to go for Biden, but I’m definitely interested in watching this one.
> As blustery as Trump is, at least he can string a coherent sentence together.
More importantly, we’ve seen him turn the debate in a few seconds, first with Clinton, and just now with Biden (“you beat it to death”). Quite the reversal in each case. And not scripted (unlike Kamala’s “that little girl was me”).
Yeah, that’s where I think it’s going to be make or break for Trump to have his mojo back. It seems like he’s been stumbling a bit trying to figure out how to approach her. But if she gives him an opening like Biden did, at least we’ll have a good clip for the highlight reel.
Well she already said that Biden is like the greatest president ever so that outlines her positions right there. Unless she says otherwise of course.
She is the same person she was when Tulsi Gabbard posed the unanswered question. She is all in on the slaughter in Gaza … yeah, yeah, I saw the minimize civilian casualties boilerplate. How does one minimize anything when the weapon is a few 2,000 lb bombs? She is the vice president in an administration whose ambassador to Japan refused to attend the commemoration of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki because Israel was not invited. Well of course the US supports Israel, ironclad support, so that would be an insult to Israel. More have died in Gaza than died in Nagasaki. What kind of monsters can support and supply weapons to genocide? Is there another word for it? And Kamala mouths the party line good little talking head that she is. All the usual suspects have lined up and are reciting their lines, writing the stories, doing as they are told. It is a disgusting display of pusillanimity. I say no to her and no to her opponent. I do hope to survive the coming Jackpot which is not even acknowledged by either branch of the uniparty.
“…the coming Jackpot…” I fear that Ye Jackpot is already here, just running in slow motion. As with any self-respecting Catastrophe, the journey to Perdition is the point.
To cuisinart some quotes from Gibson, “the Jackpot is here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”
Sage advice:
Control panels
I made few of these EMS running HVAC, & exterior and interior lights.
You would make that kind of money today and more.
Nap time
The funny thing is that $100,000 isn’t really all that much money anymore, at least compared to a union worker at a large company if you figure in the benefits. They probably average $65-79k. I never made that kind of coin because I was a job hopper but the good side was I didn’t have to put up with petty tyrants. Now I am retired and wouldn’t want the job. There is only so much time and money ain’t it.
“It’s Alright, Ma” Bob Dylan
That’s my way of saying, “Amen, brother.”
The only way to get a decent raise these days is to job hop. If there’s another option please share below.
I was talking to an auto mechanic last week, he said his son is going to law school because the son does not want to work hard. The mechanic asked his son how much he expected to make. The son said $70k to $80k. The auto mechanic was not impressed at all by those numbers.
Agree, I built many of these, mostly for recycling systems– balers with conveyors and sorting equipment. I got into it in my early 40s after leaving LE and social work, leaving many people-problems behind.
One offer I had not long ago was for a year-long contract at $250k plus expenses.
There are many monkeys who can wire together a panel and who can program, but doing it well requires a lot of thought, a lot of study, and a great deal of patience and care, or the result is spaghetti– a mess that’ll result in considerable down-time and maintenance costs.
Many of the best panel builders probably worked their way up from production through industrial maintenance and forth, bringing their experience with them to the construct of the panel and the structure of programming within the PLC (industrial computer; Programmable Logic Controller) and HMI (operator’s touchscreen; Human-Machine Interface).
Unless you began in the field when you were 16 and had super-serious, intense training and mentoring, you won’t be seeing six-figures before 20–in your 20s, quite possible, but before 20, highly unlikely.
I really wish I were building my panels and programming right now, as I find it very enjoyable, but I’m still dealing with a seemingly never-ending family saga that began over two years ago… :-(
I’m in my 60s, left ME in 98 for IT after a year in my basement all hours self learning.
The last ME job did continuous strip galvalume lines and other types of furnace equipment, but we had a local panel shop that did all the controls. Always wanted to break into that, but the reality was there was no transition path open. They operate feast or famine on a shoestring budget.
Even at retirement, I’d still like to have the opportunity to do this type of work.
Similar to what I commented on the original ‘tweet’: The industry is feast or famine, get a nice contract, try to find another. The shops (at least the one we worked with) are small, so breaking into the gig is hard. A bachelor of science degree with similar elective choices is probably the best path, otherwise you need to start at the bottom – punching holes, pulling and labeling wires, mounting hardware. You are DEFINITELY not going to work with PLCs as part of a project. That cabinet is a critical component of a huge capital equipment investment, and a positive relationship with the principal is worth it’s future weight in gold. You will HAVE to have the initiative to learn the programming on your own, time included, and thus need a be able to sniff out a shop that will take you in for lower level work (but critically important work! e.g. a mislabeled wire will cost 100x in troubleshooting and reputation) with someone who is willing to be a mentor. The mentor part was a real problem in the 80s for me and CNC programming, and even throughout my recent IT career (having no CS background) – people are selfish with their knowledge and good mentors are hard to come by.
I likes to walk a bit and if you can’t talk while traipsing around, you are going too fast.
The worst offenders I see are on the John Muir Trail, head down, poles pumping furiously, you wonder if they see any of the scenery along the way?
Fun song from back in the day…”I would walk 500 miles, and I would walk 500 more, just to be the man who walked 1,000 miles to fall down at your door”…
The Proclaimers… I’m Gonna Be (500 miles).
> Harris Personnel is Policy
Stoller seems okay with one of the former BlackRock guys, Brian Deese. Maybe he’s turned class traitor? From a July 2022 “Brian Deese Remarks on President Biden’s Competition Agenda” (link):
And he appears to be a Khan & Kanter fan (or at least seems them as useful)?
re: Tech: “Federal Appeals Court Finds Geofence Warrants Are ‘Categorically’ Unconstitutional” – [Electronic Frontier Foundation].
Great news. Thanks.
Musk claims the Trump interview got a huge audience on X but he includes those just talking about the interview. Musk also told his would be European censor to do something with his face and another body part.
I endorse that last if not Musk, Trump.
If we had a real president and a real constitution, there should be something stronger going in the other direction. It seems that we are not doing this empire thing that well, if our alleged poodles are peeing on us.
Trump is also using Harris’ tactics against her by double daring her to show up for two other debates or he will alone.
It’s going to be the ‘I know you are but what am I?’ campaign.
Thank you for the Brown Thrasher birdsong today. The call around 3:17 was so unexpected. What marvelous creatures.
[lambert blushes modestly]
nice peony, carla! how lovely to have a tree of them!
It’s a very small tree — only about 40″ tall. But the tree peony has a small woody trunk and woody branches from which its bloom stalks emerge each May, distinguishing it from herbaceous peonies, which die back to the root every winter and come up anew in the spring. The Japanese tree peony also blooms 3-4 weeks earlier than herbaceous varieties. All peonies are gorgeous, bloom for decades under the right conditions, and all that I have ever encountered have a divine fragrance.
I have added orts and scraps. More from the Trump speech.
Taibbi’s Racket News. no paywall.
FOIA Files: How Feds, Press, and Academia “Coordinate” on Speech
Digital content moderation was closer relationship than we’ve been led to expect.
https://www.racket.news/p/foia-files-how-feds-press-and-academia
Taibbi’s latest. no paywall.
FOIA Files: Did Special Counsel Robert Mueller Rely on Clinton Campaign Operatives to Point to Russia?
https://www.racket.news/p/foia-files-did-special-counsel-robert
Thanks for posting this, Flora. I was trying to post it earlier, but kept getting an error message (“too many requests”) every time I tried to go to the page. I read the post in my email, but the share link in the email gave me the same error message. I guess too many people accessing the article is kind of a good thing.
Thanks Flora, Racket news is fast becoming my favorite source. I wonder when they will do one one the ‘Iranian’ hackers of the Trump campaign? Maybe after 51 ex-Intel chiefs sign a letter saying it’s a fact, trust us.
Yes, thanks for this Flora. One more piece of the puzzle undermining the whole Russiagate narrative. I do wish Taibbi would not use the phrase “DNC hack,” since there are serious doubts whether there was any “hack” at all. But otherwise good article.
I don’t know about that. As a linguistic “puzzle,” the word ‘hack’ has multiple meanings. I prefer to use the definition of “hack” when used in conjunction with DNC that means: “Person of low standards, follows prescribed content guidelines to the exclusion of observable reality.”
RE: NIH has announced it will be shutting down its COVID-19 treatment guidelines website for special populations
How common is it for the NIH to shut down treatment guidelines for a medical condition? Have they ever shut down treatment guidelines for anything else?
I am curious: has either campaign referring to the current admin as “Biden-HARRIS” admin much? Which side has been doing it more often, in what context? The thing that baffles me is that Dems are trying to spin the sitting VP as the embodiment of “change.” The last time they tried it, even W had a perfect comeback (Gore tried to peddle “You ain’t seen nothing yet.” W’s response: “You are right. We haven’t.”) Now, one diff is that Harris has not been the visible part of admin the way Gore was, but that can be a big negative itself–was it b/c she was incompetent? Her nom-tenure as the border czarina suggests that it was.
RE: The media have tried, and failed, to capture his abnormality, but no workable solution has presented itself.
Well I know it’s crazy talk, but if the aim is to make sure Trump is not elected again, have the media tried NOT hitting the interwebs with reams of aghastitude every time they catch the slightest whiff of flatulence emanating from the Donald’s direction, and maybe just ignoring the guy once in a while? Just spitballing…
Then they’d have to talk about things like what the heck was going on during four years of playing Weekend at Biden’s.
With all the actual death and genocide going on in the world it seems petty to get incensed at this kind of Jonathan Chait crap – but I do. The argument that the liberal media is just *too soft* on Trump, and that its vaunted “objectivity” does not allow it to adequately capture Trump’s “abnormality,” is one of the most ridiculous statements imaginable, for all the reasons Lambert mentions and more besides.
There was a contributing editor at FAIR (who I will not name) who kept writing articles like this about how the mainstream media were too easy on Trump. Though I have been a fan and reader of FAIR for a long time, I had never commented there until her articles on this subject began to appear. For a writer at such an important media watchdog to make such a claim was beyond my comprehension and contributed to the mystification of real power during the Trump years. In “fairness,” other FAIR contributors were much better on Russiagate and other related topics. But arguments like this, provided they are not just witting lies, demonstrate a degree of obliviousness that is less than useless for analyzing what the whole Trump phenomenon is about.
“With all the actual death and genocide going on in the world it seems petty ”
Such distaste for a distasteful figure is impeccable.
The media’s aim is infinite clicks and talking about Trump gets a lot for them.
This year’s coverage is partisan to the extent that reporting standards have collapsed completely, across the board (see, e.g., the couch imbroglio). This is different from past years, sheer volume of clicks aside.
I get your jist Yves but I’m not entirely sure I buy it either. Given how often you have right wingers stir up people by describing the policies of their opponents as “Socialism”, “Communism” “Marxism” et all to varying degrees of sucess, the abstraction doesn’t seem to matter when eliciting anger.
Part of me wonders if this is because there no convenient term to describe an alternative to Capitalism since messaging wise those above have arguably ran their course and failed. For the non-perverts out there that don’t obsess over politics, there’s rhetorically a need I think to have an “ism” to convey a general idea of what you are representing, for better or worse.
“Federal Appeals Court Finds Geofence Warrants Are ‘Categorically’ Unconstitutional”
EFF – Electronic Freedom Foundation – is one of the best advocacy groups out there. Just consistently doing the good work that needs to be done (and the the ACLU used to do before they became an arm of the DNC)
Give ‘em some money!
Have been for years.
If I worked there I wouldn’t get on any single engine airplanes. They won a great victory for sure and lots of enemies ’round about Virginia.
The Bloomberg transcript link is dated 7/16/2024 for a Bloomberg interview of Trump on 6/25/2024. The first link below is to a tweet claiming to link to a full transcript on a site called turboscribe. I’m not familiar with the site. A quick search describes it as an AI transcription service. The Guardian link refers to another tweet by the same author, who used to work at the Guardian.
https://x.com/LeoHickman/status/1823275511251882349
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/13/musk-trump-interview-x-social-media
Big hat tip to marym for the correction. I have revised the post accordingly. A hundred lashes for lambert.
Anyone read a non paywalled version of this? https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/the-retaliation-that-didnt-happen?utm_campaign=email-post&r=87hyo&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
asking for a friend
I did read it. I’m still a paid subscriber, but that’s hardly his finest work.
Sy Hersh’s highlights are superb, but he writes a lot of spook drivel, too. Intel world are puffing themselves up when they don’t know how Iran works and prob don’t have a lot of decent sources.
In short, don’t waste your time.
Back in the days of my childhood a sitting president didn’t run for re-election and his vice president and announced heir ran “the politics of joy” as a theme for a few months. But in the end Hubert had no reason to be joyful.
> the politics of joy
I remember that; absolutely tone-deaf move by Humphrey. The country was in no mood to hear it.
That part of Harris’s “joy” that isn’t pure tribalism I interpret as the joy of battle; the chance to really put it to their enemies, hard. That’s what they get gleeful about, after all.
Re:M&A lawyers
Once again Lambert connects the dots and reports valuable intel that MSM flushes down the memory hole. (Paul Weiss connections to Trump lawfare and Kamala’s campaign.) That’s why I’m a regular lurker and occasional donor. Thanks!
[lambert blushes modestly]
Lowry painting: I can’t be the only Brit to immediately think of bread and Yorkshire when I see this.
Britain’s favourite advert and a Ronnie Barker parody of same
Thanks for that! It is links like this that are one of my favorite things about NCs comment section
“You were lucky”!
“we used to dream of having a cup of tea”
Bonus facts: The hill in the advert is actually in Dorset. The advert was directed by Ridley Scott
Except Lowry was as Lancashire as could be!
“Harris energy evokes Obama campaign for Democrats”
Is that wise? After everybody got hyped up by so much hope and change only to find themselves sold down the river in favour of the bankers and spooks. Lots of betrayal by Obama but I suppose that to many democrats, that Obama was the best President evah – that is until old Joe came along.
Reminds me of this exchange from William Gibson’s Zero History, which I periodically quote:
2024 – 2008 = 16 years. No doubt the Democrats figured it’s OK to run the Obama play again because the history has been forgotten or erased…
Waymo cars honk at each other throughout the night, disturbing SF neighbors
“SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — For the past few weeks, Randol White has been dealing with a persistent and annoying problem right outside his San Francisco condo.
“I was like, where is that coming from? And I looked down, and I was like, I think it’s coming from the Waymo cars,” White said.
A parking lot just outside his condo full of driverless Waymo cars has had multiple incidents where suddenly the vehicles seemingly become confused and start honking all at each other.
White says he heard it the first time about two weeks ago — he was woken up around 4 a.m.
“But then it happened again, and again, and I started thinking, well this is an issue,” White said.
White isn’t the only one who’s had issues with the noises either.
Several people who live in buildings nearby the parking lot have had similar complaints.
“Over the past two weeks I’ve been woken up more times overnight than I have combined over 20 years,” said Russell Pofsky.
Pofsky lives in a building adjacent to White. He says the honking incidents have happened at random times during both the day and night – and have started to take a toll on him.
“I could not be more cranky today for a Monday after these past two weeks. It’s really at a high level. It’s just really, really… it’s tough. It affects the way you feel,” Pofsky said.
White says he and others have reached out to Waymo about the issue.
In a statement sent to ABC7 News, Waymo says:
“We are aware that in some scenarios our vehicles may briefly honk while navigating our parking lots. We have identified the cause and are in the process of implementing a fix.”
White says Monday afternoon was the first time the honking seems to have gotten better.
Despite the inconvenience, he tells me he’s still a fan of the autonomous vehicle company and uses the cars on a regular basis.
“And so I was all about it until the honking started. And all I really want is resolution,” White said.”
Waymo traffic jam:
Could be a scaling problem… What happens if they brick an entire city?
We need a word that communicates both “futuristic dystopia” and “stupid”.
That twitter account is now suspended btw
“traffic jam, when you’re already late…no smoking sign on your cigarette break…isn’t it ironic”
Too too funny, and it’s not from the usual sites for satire either !
https://winnipegsun.com/news/worker-killed-in-polar-bear-attack-at-arctic-radar-station
was it a russian bear?
Enquiring minds…
Not a Russian bear, but it was amplifying Russian bear talking points
“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”
William Morris
I don’t say the Venn diagram of the useful and the beautiful is a circle, but surely there’s a lot of overlap?
Regarding Harris, the last Presidential candidate to run on the “Politics of Joy” was Hubert Humphrey running against Nixon in 1968. Of course, Humphrey (for all his myriad faults) had some actual accomplishments and a track record to point to, but he still lost.
His agenda on paper would have been far better for America as well, but considering that I realized how much I despised Obama when he made me nostalgic for Nixon who knows. Our tendencies may only allow us to choose the more effective if not as obvious evil. Although I somehow think that Trump was the exception, hence his endless punishment by the establishment.
Corporate CEO musical chairs, quick service restaurant / coffee chain edition. Starbucks CEO is out, Chipotle CEO is now in. This may be a most excellent upgrade for the Starbucks brand, which was doing a song and dance around long waits and non speedy service just a few months back.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/starbucks-new-ceo-brian-niccol-chipotle-laxman-narasimhan/
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/13/starbucks-replaces-ceo-laxman-narasimhan-with-chipotle-ceo-brian-niccol.html