2:00PM Water Cooler 8/16/2024

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!

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In Case You Might Miss…

1. New RCP polling averages: No good news for Trump.
2. Reticulum networking stack

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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

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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.

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The Campaign Trail:

Kamala:

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:

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

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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!

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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.)

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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 13:	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

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.”

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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.'”

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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!

News of the Wired

“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.

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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 CC:

CC writers: “Butterfly for Water Cooler. Been a few of them pictured lately so I thought I would contribute one to the cause, taken lately.”

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