By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Patient readers, it’s been a very long week in the real world and I’m tired. So, this Water Cooler isn’t exactly an Open Thread, but it is short. And now I’m going to find a cool breeze and shut my eyes. Talk amongst yourselves! –lambert
–lambert
Bird Song of the Day
I looked for another species of songbird that mimics, and came up with the Thrasher.
Brown Thrasher, Otsego, Michigan, United States. Plus insect sounds!
In Case You Might Miss…
- New RCP polling averages: No good news for Trump.
- Reticulum networking stack
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
2024
Less than one hundred days to go!
Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:
There is no good news here for Trump. The deterioration in both Pennsylvania and Georgia is especially marked. Remember, however, that all the fluctuations — in fact, all the leads — are within the margin of error. So the “joy” is based on, well, vibes.
“How Harris Has Completely Upended the Presidential Race, in 14 Maps” [New York Times]. “We are now back to the same electoral map that we had before Mr. Biden’s summertime polling collapse: Once again, the winner in November will come down to the seven battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” • 270toWin agrees with the magnitude of the shift, although they leave out North Carolina:
“Harris has opened up a second path to victory, according to The Post’s polling model” [WaPo]. “Our modeling shows that Harris has two paths to possible success: the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and the Sun Belt states of Georgia, Arizona and Nevada as well as North Carolina (she could win in either region and still claim the White House). Meanwhile, Trump must win both the Rust Belt and Sun Belt to triumph.” • Hmm.
* * * Kamala (D): Kamala’s lying again:
Trump: I never got credit for COVID
(Over a million Americans died and he told us to inject bleach) pic.twitter.com/vww2MtJurW
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) August 14, 2024
First, Trump is not lying. The vaccines that Biden mandated were all developed by Trump’s Operation Warp Speed. Second, of the million that died, most died on Biden’s watch. Third, “inject bleach” is a lie (on a par with the lie about Vance and his couch). Again, Democrats seem to prefer to lie. Even when they don’t have to. It’s weird.
Trump (R): “Trump Gambles on Outside Groups to Finance Voter Outreach Efforts” [New York Times]. “The Republican campaign for president is quietly being remade by new federal guidelines that empower big-money groups and threaten to undermine party control well beyond the 2024 election. Former President Donald J. Trump’s team has enlisted some of these groups to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to knock on hundreds of thousands of doors across the country — saving the campaign significant money in the process. But the Trump campaign is making a serious gamble in doing so, betting that these outside groups, which they do not directly control, can carry out their marching orders without accountability…. Senior Republican Party officials fear that the decision — and the Trump campaign’s efforts — will lead to the party losing considerable control over get-out-the-vote operations, much as they have in the world of television advertising, where the scripts and strategies are often crafted by super PACs with their own ambitions and ideas.” • Another imponderable…..
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!
Origins Debate
“Pentagon still funneling money to suspended EcoHealth Alliance, unable to access potential gain-of-function research data abroad” [New York Post]. “The Pentagon is still funneling money to the suspended grantee EcoHealth Alliance and is unable to fully access data on gain-of-function research it may be funding overseas — including in China, according to a letter exclusively obtained by The Post.” • Leaving aside gain-of-function, EcoHealth is an obvious NGO cesspit of dodgy accounting and sleazy contracting, as Vanity Fair showed in exhaustive detail back in 2022. It’s hard to see why they would have any ongoing contracts.
Policy
“The World Is Not Ready for the Next Pandemic” [Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker, Foreign Affairs]. The deck: “Governments Need to Invest Far More in New and Better Vaccines.” From the text:
Officials should make no mistake: there will be more influenza and coronavirus pandemics, and any one of them could prove far more catastrophic than the COVID-19 pandemic. Whenever it occurs, it will almost certainly be a virus, primarily transmitted from person to person via the airborne route, a “virus with wings,” meaning the viral particles can be suspended in the air for long periods and distances. When such an outbreak transpires, rapid global transmission will happen before anyone realizes the world is in the earliest days of a years-long pandemic. Governments cannot wait to prepare until a virus is already spreading around the world. As the last five years have shown, even a moderately deadly disease can have enormous health, economic, social, and political consequences.
And yet, no mention of non-pharmaceutical interventions at all — even though blocking the airborne route through ventilation and masking is the only way to, as it were, “clip the wings” of the virus before it spreads, whether the virus be Covid, H5N1, MonkeyPox, or even SmallPox. (Incidentally, re: “When such an outbreak transpires”, the word transpires derives from the Latin spirare, to breathe. It’s like the return of the repressed #CovidIsAirborne.)
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): | |
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Variants [3] CDC August 3 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC August 3 | |
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Hospitalization | ||
New York[5] New York State, data August 13: | National [6] CDC July 20: | |
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Positivity | ||
National[7] Walgreens August 13: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic August 3: | |
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Travelers Data | ||
Positivity[9] CDC July 22: | Variants[10] CDC July 22: | |
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Deaths | ||
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC July 27: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC July 27: | |
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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
Housing: “United States Housing Starts” [Trading Economics]. “Housing starts in the United States fell by 6.8% from the previous month to an annualized rate of 1.238 million in July of 2024, the sharpest decline since March to the lowest level since 2020, and contrasting with the downwardly revised 1.1% increase in the previous month.”
Tech: “Fortnite Maker Epic Games Challenges Apple’s Dominance With New iOS App Store” [Wired]. “Epic Games today officially launched a rival app store for iOS in the European Union, marking the first time Apple’s own App Store has had to face a serious rival. The Epic Games Store will initially offer Epic’s games, including Fortnite, for users to download onto their iPhones, with plans to start onboarding third-party developers’ games beginning in December…. Epic says its app store will take a maximum 12 percent commission on sales, undercutting Apple’s App Store, where fees can reach up to 30 percent… Epic is making use of a new EU regulation known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which forces tech giants to make changes to give rivals more access to their closely guarded communities of users. In Apple’s case, that means the company has to allow alternative app stores onto European devices.”
Tech: “Elon Musk’s financial woes at X have Tesla bulls fearing he will liquidate more stock” [Fortune]. “Musk’s repeated outbursts against advertisers have dried up the main source of revenue for the loss-making company formerly known as Twitter. A recent decision to sue them for heeding his own advice to not buy ads on the platform hasn’t helped. At some point, he will have to provide a fresh infusion of cash to salvage his $44 billion takeover. And that might mean Musk sells Tesla stock to raise the money—hurting anyone who holds the carmaker’s shares. ‘I would be expecting something between $1 and $2 billion in stock,’ said Bradford Ferguson, president and chief investment officer of asset manager Halter Ferguson Financial, in comments posted to YouTube on Wednesday. This alone could cause the stock to lose between 5% and 10% of its value. ‘It’s a massive hole they need to plug.'”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 36 Fear (previous close: 32 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 23 (Extreme Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 16 at 1:13:54 PM ET.
Poetry Nook
“POETS Day! Useful Lines and a Favorite from Pound [Ordinary Times]. “I use a line – overuse, my children might say – from Yeats whenever the opportunity pops up; ‘O saddest harp in all the world.’ … It’s a good line to deploy when a child gives you ‘But, I did my best!’ when even without bending down you can see piles of Legos pushed under the bed in a supposedly picked up room.” • POETS = Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Which I seem to have done!
“Cleaning up the aging brain: Scientists restore brain’s trash disposal system” [Science News]. No, this isn’t about electoral politics. “Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurological disorders can be seen as ‘dirty brain’ diseases, where the brain struggles to clear out harmful waste. Aging is a key risk factor because, as we grow older, our brain’s ability to remove toxic buildup slows down. However, new research in mice demonstrates that it’s possible to reverse age-related effects and restore the brain’s waste-clearing process. ‘This research shows that restoring cervical lymph vessel function can substantially rescue the slower removal of waste from the brain associated with age,’ said Douglas Kelley, PhD, a professor of Mechanical Engineering in the University of Rochester Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. ‘Moreover, this was accomplished with a drug already being used clinically, offering a potential treatment strategy.'” • Science is popping!
Private, Secure and Uncensorable Messaging Over a LoRa Mesh” [unsigned.io]. The deck: “Or: How to set up a completely private, independent and encrypted communication system in half an hour, using stuff you can buy for under $100.” • It looks like I might have install firmware on hardware I buy to get this Reticulum stack to work. Still, periodically, I’ve muttered about how I would like to send data over (say) radio, and not over the Internet, away from the Censorship Industrial Complex. Perhaps some networking maven can comment.
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 CC:
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Nice photo. Swallowtails (assuming that’s what this one is; it looks like it may have lost its hindmost wing parts to predators) really seem to like Echinacea.
I wonder what is clipping the petals. This is happening on all of my coneflowers, too.
I see it’s not just my echinaceas/coneflowers that are getting eaten!
It was a mystery to me what was eating them for many years – never saw a bug on them but they’d slowly disappear. I’ve given up on them a few times now since they were constantly being chewed off, but then lose my mind when I go to the greenhouse and buy another one.
Turns out it’s earwigs. Couple years ago I went out at night to check and saw earwigs all over the coneflowers as well as a few other plants. Beetles might be getting some too, but the earwigs are the worst.
Once I found that out, I did a little research and saw that in general, earwigs don’t do much damage as long as there are only a few around – they won’t eat your whole plant in a night like some other pests. That looks like what might be happening in the plantidote. If you have a lot of them though, kiss your coneflowers goodbye – they will chew off every petal eventually.
I had been planting marigolds for years around my gardens since they are supposed to repel insects and animals too. And they probably do. But after a few years, I noticed my marigolds slowly being eaten away every single year. Turns out that marigolds are an earwig’s favorite food, so I had likely been inadvertently breeding them for many years. I discovered they also love bok choi and the first small leaves on bean plants.
If anyone knows how to get rid of earwigs other than by going outside at night with a flashlight and squashing them like a crazy person, well, I’m all ears.
Thanks for this. I have about a dozen vigorous plants and the blossoms are being damaged at a relatively low rate; they are fading faster than they are being eaten. But this is good to know.
Again, thanks!
Grasshoppers are hitting my flowers. Not a catastrophe but there’s some munching going on.
I’ll give Trump some credit for dealing with Covid, at least in the beginning. Some of it was luck, because I have hard time believing he actually put much thought into it, and some of it was because he took the CDC’s advice. Then somewhere he went off. Maybe when he got injected with steroids? Also remember he put Pence in charge of it all.
Fact checkers have a field day with the loquacious Trump, who is of all things a veritable quote giving machine nearly 24/7/365. Now I do anticipate some measure of fact checking as well of these varied claims to come about from the Harris / Walz ticket.
Vaccine mandates, for one. COVID was over as pronounced by Joe Biden mid 2023. Long COVID…yeah let’s head in this direction with the unwashed.
I can tell when politicians are lying, it’s usually correlated to moving their mouth. Clinton, Bush 43, and on it goes…let’s start a drinking game. Happy hour time!
Yeah, don’t hold your breath waiting for that Harris/Walz fact checking. Hell, they only started fact checking Biden when the word went out to get rid of him and even then, it was hardly the scrutiny Trump gets. (And I’m on Team “you can tell they’re lying when their mouths are moving” too. My beef is one side seems to be able to get away it and the other doesn’t. A functioning and objective media would nail both sides to the wall.)
Re Kamala’s lying again–so it’s going to be MSDNC all the way to November as her marketing team sells her like soap. And hey people buy lots of soap.
Since Trump marketed himself into power I guess he can’t complain too much but we the public can. This may be the worst election ever and the consequences may be far worse than we realize.
Arguably Trump himself is a product of the Dems (Hillary wanted him to be the candidate) and as long as the Repubs are serving the plutocrats’ needs (those Trump tax cuts) the plutocrats–Dem and Repub–are not going to complain too much. But there seems to be no way out of this two party trap. TINA doesn’t feel like democracy.
Trump getting out the vote, of concern to those GOP machine people.
He figured out that the GOP is not just stupid, but useless.
Covid zeitgeist watch:
Beginning yesterday, commercials for Paxlovid have been in heavy rotation on some of the over-the-air digital subchannels in the USA (what Yves often refers to as “Old People TV”).
Get back to me when ads for “I” start to show up. Then I’ll know ‘they’ are at last serious about Public Health.
It’s not that hard to get IVM. You just need to arrange to develop a helminth infestation first.
/s
The Kamala campaign momentum is certainly disturbing. The only good thing I see out of a Trump victory is a possible continuation of antitrust. With Harris, that’s gravely in doubt. ’tis a shame. Regardless, the ongoing Pandemic policy of stochastic eugenics will continue under either administration. And we can pick from Climate Denialism or Climate Minimalism, neither being sufficient to the task at hand.
At least we can all feel good vibes and joy if Kamala wins!
Re: “LoRa Mesh”
I’m not a networking maven, but I have flashed OpenWrt on several routers for what that’s worth. Yes, you would need to flash firmware onto hardware you obtained for it to work, but it seems like they have scripting to handle it as long as you have supported hardware. I have some questions about current installation since ‘pip’ is locked down on most Linux distributions now, so that may be more complicated.
Not sure I really believe the Georgia poll numbers. Granted, I live in a very red county, but I have yet to see a single sign or bumper sticker for Harris (and did not see any previously for Biden). On the other hand, while he got off to a rather slow start this time around, I’ve seen quite a few new Trump and Trump/Vance signs and stickers crop up over the last couple of weeks, including one that reads “Jesus Christ is my Savior. Trump is my President.” Then there are the people who never took their old Trump signs down…