By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Bird Song of the Day
Blue Mockingbird, Presa Los Zompanties, Etla, Oaxaca, Mexico. Ten minutes of mockingbird!
In Case You Might Miss…
- Charts Friday: New RCP charts (bad news for Trump); many Covid updates (a little good news).
- Kamala’s VP search
- Covid and traffic safety (i.e., cognitive issues). New study from AAA (!).
- Aphantasia and prosopometamorphopsia.
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
“Video from Trump assassination attempt victim’s POV shows figure moving on roof moments before gunfire” [FOX]. “A video from James Copenhaver, one of the victims critically wounded in the July 13 assassination attempt against former President Trump, shows a figure moving across the roof of the American Glass Research (AGR) building just minutes before gunfire rang out at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. In the video taken at 6:08 p.m. on July 13, the person appears on the roof of the building adjacent to where Trump is speaking and can be seen walking from the 1:00 second mark to about the 2:50 second mark.” • Oh. This entire story makes less and less sense as it goes on.
“Pennsylvania county law enforcement officials say Secret Service is presenting a ‘misleading’ picture of Trump shooting scene” [CNN].
2024
Less than one hundred days to go!
Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:
Drops for Trump across the board, including a 2.5% drop nationally (almost outside the margin of error, ha ha), and a blue triangle on the mao for the first time.
* * * * * * Kamala (D): “The presidential election is a toss-up” [Nate Silver, Silver Bulletin]. The deck: “Kamala Harris is giving Democrats the race that Joe Biden couldn’t.” From today’s RCP chart, that’s true. More: “[W}hen we launched the presidential model on June 26 — in the lifetime ago when Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee — the headline in the post that introduced the model was that the election wasn’t a toss-up. Instead, Biden had persistently been behind in the states that were most likely to decide the Electoral College, enough so that he was about a 2:1 underdog in the election despite the uncertainties in the race. His situation wasn’t unrecoverable, or at least it wasn’t until the debate. But you’d rather have had Donald Trump’s hand to play every day of the week and twice on Sundays… Now that the election is in kamala_mode, however, it’s far from clear whose position you’d rather be in, and I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to bet either on Harris or on Trump…. It’s also a toss-up in the states that are most likely to decide the election… And although we can’t tell you who’s going to win, there’s one thing I think we can say with some confidence: Democrats are lucky that they’re getting a second chance in this election with Harris instead of Biden.”
Kamala (D): “Can Kamala Harris Rebuild the Democratic Coalition?” [New York Times]. Nope. PMC 4EVA. That’s not salvageable. “Already, recent polls suggest Ms. Harris is not so weak. It’s still too soon to tell how strong she really is among young and nonwhite voters, as some polls — like New York Times/Siena College polling last week — find her running far ahead of Mr. Biden, while others show little change. But either way, even her best tallies still fall short of typical Democratic margins over the last 15 years. She doesn’t even fare as well as Mr. Biden did in 2020, and his performance among these groups was relatively weak for a Democratic presidential candidate.”
* * * Kamala (D): “Vetting of Harris V.P. Picks Is Said to Be Complete” [New York Times]. “Vice President Kamala Harris is already scheduled to begin campaigning with her running mate on Tuesday. The decision is now in her hands after a law firm hired to vet possible picks completed its work, according to two people briefed on the process.”
Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris’ veepstakes races toward the finish line” [Politico]. “Some of the aides and allies involved in the vice presidential nominee decision-making process are Harris chief-of-staff Sheila Nix, Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon, former Rep. Cedric Richmond and Harris’ brother-in-law Tony West, according to two people familiar with the discussions and granted anonymity to discuss a private process. The Harris vetting team has already met with Govs. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Tim Walz of Minnesota and Andy Beshear of Kentucky; Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly; and others. The team has also asked vice presidential nominee candidates for previous ads they’ve filmed…. Harris has told aides that she wants someone, ideally, with some sort of executive experience and with whom she has a good rapport. One of the people familiar with the process said Harris is ‘looking for a governing partner above all else. She knows the process better than most, and understands the challenges and opportunities.’ Adam Hodge, a former Biden administration official, noted that Harris is picking someone to potentially govern by her side for years, not just to help her in one election.” • We’ll see how that goes.
Kamala (D): “How a sexual harassment scandal involving a Josh Shapiro aide could affect the Pa. governor’s VP chances” [Philadephia Inquirer]. “Erin McClelland, the Democratic nominee for state treasurer in November’s election, drew eyeballs last week with a thinly veiled and unusual intraparty jab, saying in a tweet that she wanted a vice presidential pick who, among other things, ‘doesn’t sweep sexual harassment under the rug.’ Though she did not identify Shapiro by name, McClelland’s pointed remarks were widely interpreted as a reference to the resignation last year of one of Shapiro’s top aides and closest allies, Mike Vereb, amid a sexual harassment investigation. Vereb, 57, abruptly stepped down in September, three weeks after Shapiro’s administration quietly agreed to pay $295,000 to settle claims from a governor’s office employee who said he’d made repeated sexual advances toward her and often spoken openly — and lewdly — about her, other staff members, and a female state senator. Shapiro’s administration has largely avoided discussing Vereb in the year since, describing his departure as a private personnel matter while maintaining it “takes allegations of discrimination and harassment seriously.” His silence has drawn criticism from female state lawmakers in both parties, who have called for a more transparent accounting of what Shapiro knew about his aide’s conduct and when.” • Whoopsie.
Kamala (D): “Harris VP mystery: Signs point to Shapiro” [Axios]. “Like all big White House secrets — Supreme Court picks or the decision to drop out of the presidential race — the universe of people who have hard intelligence is quite small. But as an announcement nears, that universe starts to expand. For reporters and political obsessives, the game is on. More people know. Then more people think they know. And, finally, everyone pretends to know. Eventually the three groups converge. News leaks out, sending reporters scrambling to confirm if it’s true, which it isn’t always. Trust us, there’s nothing worse than not knowing who the VP pick is after spending months following a candidate around the country when, say, the AP has it. Minutes feel like hours. Hours like days. You wish you’d taken the bar and become a lawyer.” • A more subtle take than usual on horse-race coverage.
Kamala (D): “Mark Kelly emerges as the front runner to become Kamala Harris’ running mate; Here are the reasons” [Economic Times of India]. “In this survey, Senator Mark Kelly has emerged as the favorite among all contenders. The former Astronaut who represents the state of Arizona in the US Senate is also a critic of the gun laws in the US. Further, Harris who may lose out on the votes of white American males may count on Senator Kelly to attract the votes of this community…. Mark Kelly also may be the best candidate to take on Trump’s views on immigration. He is a Senator from a border state. 22% of the respondents view him favorably. He is also viewed negatively by 12%. He is still the best performing candidate…. Arizona is a swing state and this may enable the Democrats to focus on gaining precious votes from this state.” • Obama, according to rumor, wanted Kelly at the top of the ticket, not Kamala.
Kamala: “Who is Mark Kelly, the potential vice-presidential pick from Arizona?” [Guardian].” The Arizona senator was a US navy pilot who served multiple deployments. He was on Celebrity Jeopardy. He is a steadfast partner to his wife, former US representative Gabrielle Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt at a public event in Tucson in 2011 and has worked alongside Kelly to limit guns since. Oh, and he’s been to space multiple times because he was an astronaut, along with his twin brother, Scott. He even wrote a children’s book about it, called Mousetronaut…. He first ran for office in 2020, winning a special election against Republican Martha McSally to take a Senate seat. He won again in 2024 in the regular Senate election against Blake Masters, a well-funded Peter Thiel acolyte. To win the Senate seat in a purple state, Kelly has struck a centrist tone and proven himself a prolific fundraiser. He hasn’t inspired the intra-party ire that Arizona’s other senator , now-independent Kyrsten Sinema, has. He polls at the top of Arizona politicians for favorability.”
Kamala (D): “Mark Kelly Wasn’t There for Labor When Labor Needed Him” [John Nichols, The Nation]. “After the Democrats took charge of the White House and both chambers of Congress in January 2021, lawmakers introduced the PRO Act in an effort to expand union power. The measure is a sweeping plan to remove barriers to organizing workplaces across the country, and to make it possible for labor and national unions to bargain equitable contracts. The AFL-CIO describes the PRO Act, which is ardently backed by union activists and by Biden and Harris, as “the most significant worker empowerment legislation since the Great Depression.” Predictably, it is opposed by corporate interests and their congressional allies…. The Senate failed to do so because, in addition to overwhelming Republican opposition, a handful of Senate Democratic Caucus members were reluctant to sign on for the measure, including West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, Maine’s Angus King, Virginia’s Mark Warner, and the two senators from Arizona, Kyrsten Sinema and Kelly. In the face a major campaign led by the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) and other unions, Manchin and King joined the vast majority of Senate Democrats as co-sponsors in April 2021, bringing the number of co-sponsors to 47. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the chamber would bring the measure to a vote if 50 Democrats agreed to co-sponsor it. Strategizing began for efforts to break an anticipated Republican filibuster in order to pass the bill. Kelly was seen as the key senator to make it all happen. If he moved, the argument went, Sinema could be convinced to do the same. And if they both signed on, a massive AFL-CIO push was planned in order to get Warner on board. But Kelly never moved, assuring that the measure would, in the words of the Revolving Door Project ‘stagnate in the Senate.'” • He’s perfect!
Kamala (D): “Sen. Mark Kelly’s past days hawking vitamins in China resurfaces amid veepstakes” [New York Post]. “‘I took Shaklee vitamins and the Shaklee rehydration drink while in orbit aboard the space shuttle,’ the former astronaut boasted to the crowd…. The California-based multilevel marketing company lined Kelly’s pockets for a series of speeches in China and the US between 2011 and 2016, which the Huffington Post first reported during the Arizona Democrat’s campaign for the US Senate in 2020. His wife, former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), was serving in the US House of Representatives in 2011 — and financial disclosures show Kelly netted $50,000 for Shaklee speeches in that year alone.” • $50,000? That’s all?
* * * Cancellations:
Kamala (D): “Shapiro cancels fundraising trip in the Hamptons ahead of Harris picking running mate” [CBS]. But:
BREAKING: Gov. Tim Walz has announced the cancellation of his scheduled events for this weekend. The Governor was set to attend two county fairs, a high school football game, and go square dancing. The cancellations have been issued with no specific reasons provided.
— Amzi 🥥 🌴 (@AmziQureshi) August 1, 2024
Kamala (D): “Beshear’s absence generates political buzz as GOP set to dominate stage at Fancy Farm” [Kentucky Lantern]. “An annual West Kentucky church fundraiser famous for barbeque, political speeches and cheers and jeers from onlookers is set to be a Republican-dominated affair this weekend as the only two statewide elected Democrats will be elsewhere. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s absence from this year’s Fancy Farm festivities may produce more buzz than his presence would have — thanks to speculation that Beshear is still under consideration as running mate to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.” And–
Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris’ veepstakes races toward the finish line” [Politico]. On Friday, “Buttigieg truncated his visit to Kokomo, Indiana, due to ‘some unforeseen scheduling constraints.'”
And:
So am I right that every veep contender cancelled their events but Mark Kelly, who also released a video?
— Nomiki — "No-me-KEY" (@NomikiKonst) August 2, 2024
Lambert here: My personal theory (“without evidence,” as we say) is that Kamala already chose Shapiro, which is why she visited Philly. Why else do that? Then the Shapiro sex scandal finally punched through her staff bubble, and it was back to square one.
* * * Trump (R): “The Fight of Trump’s Political Life” [Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal]. “Can Mr. Trump shift gears? He grew up, as I did, watching ‘The Ed Sullivan Show.’ I’m sure it was on every Sunday night at 8 at the Trump house in Queens. On that show you saw every week the great Borscht Belt comics of 1950-70. Their timing—’Take my wife—please!’—is ingrained in him. What he does now is shtick, because he likes to entertain and is a performer. The boat’s sinking, the battery’s spitting, the shark’s coming!… This works so perfectly for those who support him. For everyone else it’s just more evidence of psychopathology. He has to freshen up his act. Can he?” Good point. And: Ms. Harris will dominate the coming week with the unveiling of her vice-presidential choice. Then there will be the convention, in which they’ll pull out all stops. And then August will be over. Meaning a third of the 100-day campaign will be over. Does Mr. Trump know that he’s fighting for his life?” Also good point. But: “Does she think seriously, deeply, soberly?…. Some will respond, ‘But Donald Trump isn’t serious!’ My answer would be: That’s why he lost the popular vote twice. If Democrats lose the popular vote, they almost certainly lose the election. Mr. Trump himself would reply: I controlled the nuclear arsenal for four years. Nothing blew up.” • The whole piece is worth reading in full, especially for Kamala’s positives, which are real (new, shameless on policy, born performer, beautiful, pent-up support).
Trump (R): “Hillbilly Apprentice: An Interview With Trump Running Mate JD Vance” [RealClearPolitics]. “If there is any confusion about Vance, it isn’t because he is hiding his views. While accepting the vice-presidential nomination in Milwaukee, he blamed the Biden-Harris administration for continuing the foreign interventionism, deindustrialization, and globalism that he insists have hollowed out the heart of the country. Bad trade deals, foolish economic policy, and disastrous wars: He lays it all at the feet of Democrats during each campaign stop. Yet those decisions were often bipartisan. Vance knows this and offers as much of a critique against the old GOP as a rebuke against the current White House. At each stop, Vance, a former U.S. Marine, walks on stage to ‘America First,’ an anti-war ballad from the Bush era by the late country legend Merle Haggard. ‘Let’s get out of Iraq and get back on the track,’ the song declares, ‘and let’s rebuild America first.’ Both the messaging and the foreign policy proposals espoused by Vance alarm the traditional internationalists inside his political party. The junior senator from Ohio appalled many of them while first running for election. ‘I’ve got to be honest with you,’ Vance told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon during a 2022 interview. ‘I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” The vice-presidential nomination has made him only slightly less inflammatory.'” • Not my favorite Ohioan, but it says a lot about his strengths that the Democrats dogpiled him with snark as their first move. I mean, the best they can do? (It’s also really unfortunate that the Trump campaign didn’t punch back hard, although perhaps not directly (“I want to hear him deny it”)).
Trump (R): “Trump’s Racist Attack on Kamala Harris Was No Accident” [Susan Glasser, The New Yorker]. “Harris has always been proudly biracial: she is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Black, Jamaican father, both of whom immigrated to the U.S.” • Whatever (and see yesterday’s essay on essentialist views vs. social constructionist view of race). Think of it this way. The Democrat PMC base is intimately familiar with the workings of Human Resources (HR) departments. HR departments often use forms where you check a box for your race: White, Black (or, in Elizabeth Warren’s case, American Indian).These boxes are mutually exclusive. Kamala’s campaign managed race in the rollout of her supporters just like an HR department does: Black, White, AAHNPI. The idpol verticals were pure. Kamala personally behaves as if HR didn’t exist, and that racial caregories are not mutually exclusive, as Glasser argues; it’s possible to be Black and Indian (although when Mother Jones writes “White Man Tells Black Journalists His Black Opponent Is Not Black” they’re fully on board with the HR paradigm. The issue is that the Democrats want to have it both ways: They want to appeal to a “pure” Black identity vertical, but they want a candidate is Black and Indian (and Kamala, as I documented yesterday, also presents as Indian). I personally don’t care either way, but the Democrat thinking on race is completely incoherent. Which is pretty amazing for a party whose first move is so often to play the racist card.
* * *
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!
Transmission: H5N1
“Blowflies are potential vector for avian influenza virus at enzootic area in Japan” [Nature]. From the Abtract: “High pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) poses a significant threat to both domestic and wild birds globally. The avian influenza virus, known for environmental contamination and subsequent oral infection in birds, necessitates careful consideration of alternative introduction routes during HPAI outbreaks. … Blowflies represent a potential vector of HPAI, particularly in enzootic regions. The effectiveness of virus detection from flies relies heavily on the prevalence of infected and deceased wild birds. C. nigribarbis is widespread in human-populated areas across Japan, including semi-rural regions with poultry farms. Like other insects, C. nigribarbis intermittently disperses its feces, leading to environmental contamination. In this study, we focused on C. nigribarbis because it was the dominant blowfly species in our study field and the season, but we could not exclude the contribution of other necrophagous blowflies in HPAI propagation, especially in geographical areas.” • Oh, super. An insect vector. I’m sure CDC and USDA are all over this.
Sequelae: Covid
“The Pandemic’s Tenacious Grip on Traffic Safety” (press release) [American Automobile Association]. “A new study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reveals the COVID-19 pandemic’s deadly impact on traffic safety in the United States. Researchers at the AAA Foundation found dangerous behaviors like speeding, not using seatbelts, and impaired driving contributed to a significant rise in fatal crashes compared to pre-pandemic times. Notably, the new research highlights a disparity in the pandemic’s impact on traffic safety. Black and Hispanic Americans, already disproportionately affected by traffic fatalities, saw even more significant increases from 2020 through 2022. Similarly, those with lower educational attainment experienced a much sharper rise in fatalities compared to college graduates. Foundation researchers found that 114,528 people were killed in traffic crashes on U.S. roads from May 2020 through December 2022, a 17% jump in traffic deaths (nearly 17,000 additional fatalities) compared to what would have been expected under pre-pandemic trends.” Note especially: “The increase in occupant deaths was almost entirely among those not wearing seatbelts.” No wonder the seatbelt argument didn’t persuade anti-maskers. Anyhow, go long exective dysfunction.
Lambert here: New York hospitalization leveling out, WalGreens positivity down for two weeks, and now Cleveland positivity down, are the first positive signs I’ve seen in a long time. Wastewater still going strong, though!
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
| Wastewater | ||
| ★ This week[1] CDC July 29: | Last Week[2] CDC July 22 (until next week): | |
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| |
| Variants★ [3] CDC August 3 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC July 20 | |
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| Hospitalization | ||
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data July 31: | ||
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| Positivity | ||
| National[7] Walgreens July 29: | ★ Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic July 27: | |
|
 |
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| Travelers Data | ||
| ★ Positivity[9] CDC July 15: | ★ Variants[10] CDC July 15: | |
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 |
|
| Deaths | ||
| ★ Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC July 27: | ★ Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC July 27: | |
|
 |
LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular.
[4] (ER) Worth noting Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Leveling off. Doesn’t need to be a permanent thing, of course. (The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and then around the country through air travel.)
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.
[7] (Walgreens) An optimist would see a peak.
[8] (Cleveland) Slowing. Comment on the Cleveland Clinic:
Why is the Cleveland Clinic building a new facility for a professional basketball team? These hospitals are not 'nonprofits' they are ridiculously profitable monopolies with an endless cash gusher to point at whatever they want. https://t.co/1REM2LMLjd
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) July 29, 2024
Ka-ching.
[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 rasnge. 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) Same deal. Those sh*theads.
[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.
[12] Deaths low, ED up.
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Unemployment Rate” [Trading Economics]. “The unemployment rate in the United States rose to 4.3% in July of 2024 from 4.1% in the previous month, the highest since October of 2021, and above market expectations that it would remain at 4.1%. In the meantime, the labor force participation rate edged higher to 62.7% from 62.6%.”
Manufacturing: “United States Factory Orders” [Trading Economics]. “New orders for US manufactured goods fell by 3.3% from the previous month to $564.2 billion in June of 2024, a bigger contraction than market expectations of 2.9%, to mark the sharpest decline since January. The contraction was largely due to the plunge in orders of transportation equipment (-20.6% to $75.79 billion), as the gauge that excludes transportation edged higher by 0.1% from the previous month.”
Retail: “United States Total Vehicle Sales” [Trading Economics]. “Total Vehicle Sales in the United States increased to 15.82 Million in July from 15.18 Million in June of 2024.”
Tech: “Fully-automatic robot dentist performs world’s first human procedure” [The New Atlas]. • No.
Tech: “Eerie new mind-controlling tech can manipulate emotions and even appetite without any invasive surgery” [The Sun]. “With an external magnetic field, scientists at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) in South Korea found they could manipulate nanoparticle-activated ‘switches’ inside the brains of mice. The technology, dubbed Nano-MIND (Magnetogenetic Interface for NeuroDynamics), allowed researchers to control the emotions and appetites of mice from afar…. Scientists manipulated these neurons by magnetically twisting a tiny actuator to pull or push nanoparticles implanted in the mice’s brains. But this is the first that hasn’t involved invasive surgery, and bulky external systems, which has instead allowed mice the freedom of movement. ‘This is the world’s first technology to freely control specific brain regions using magnetic fields,’ Jinwoo Cheon, director of the IBS Center for Nanomedicine, said in a statement. Cheon, a senior author of the study that was recently published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, added: ‘We expect it to be widely used in research to understand brain functions, sophisticated artificial neural networks, two-way [brain-computer interface] technologies, and new treatments for neurological disorders.'” • Just don’t tell the marketing department!
Tech: “Meta blames ‘hallucinations’ after AI error over assassination attempt on Donald Trump” [The Telegraph]. “Meta has blamed hallucinations after its AI assistant said that the recent assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump didn’t happen. Artificial intelligence chatbots are said to ‘hallucinate’ when they generate misleading responses to questions that need factual replies. ‘These types of responses are referred to as hallucinations, which is an industry-wide issue we see across all generative AI systems, and is an ongoing challenge for how AI handles real-time events going forward,’ said Joel Kaplan, Meta VP for global policy.” • They’re not “hallucinations.” They’re bullshit.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 55 Neutral (previous close: 42 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 40 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jul 31 at 2:15:54 PM ET.
Photo Book
My first serious camera was a Mamiya C330:
Yashicaflex TLR Repair + DX report pic.twitter.com/Ap2yuwcmHM
— Sarah™ (@sarahdavs1) June 11, 2021
Zeitgeist Watch
“What Happens in a Mind That Can’t ‘See’ Mental Images” [Quanta]. “Two years ago, Sarah Shomstein realized she didn’t have a mind’s eye. The vision scientist was sitting in a seminar room, listening to a scientific talk, when the presenter asked the audience to imagine an apple. Shomstein closed her eyes and did so. Then, the presenter asked the crowd to open their eyes and rate how vividly they saw the apple in their mind. Saw the apple? Shomstein was confused. She didn’t actually see an apple. She could think about an apple: its taste, its shape, its color, the way light might hit it. But she didn’t see it. Behind her eyes, ‘it was completely black,’ Shomstein recalled. And yet, ‘I imagined an apple.’ Most of her colleagues reacted differently. They reported actually seeing an apple, some vividly and some faintly, floating like a hologram in front of them. In that moment, Shomstein, who’s spent years researching perception at George Washington University, realized she experienced the world differently than others. She is part of a subset of people — thought to be about 1% to 4% of the general population — who lack mental imagery, a phenomenon known as aphantasia.” • Word of the day….
“How a Rare Disorder Makes People See Monsters” [The New Yorker]. “After he recovered, [Jason ] “?Werbeloff was eager to be around people again, and he spent a night clubbing. In the shifting red light, he looked at a friend’s face and realized that the right side looked odd. It seemed to stretch outward, like Silly Putty being pulled, and a dark, rough patch was visible around the friend’s right eye. Werbeloff blinked and looked away, and his friend’s features briefly returned to normal. Then the distortions appeared again. “That is when people got ugly,” Werbeloff told me.
In the weeks that followed, Werbeloff started to notice similar unsettling changes in everyone he looked at.” Via Facebok, Werbeloff encounters Brad Duchaine, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth College. In May, 2021, Duchaine interviewed Werbeloff via Zoom. Had Werbeloff suffered any traumatic brain injuries? (No.) Did he ever see faces change before his bout with mono? (No.) Did he see distortions on half of the face, or all of it? (Only the right half.) Duchaine said that Werbeloff seemed to have a rare and largely unexplained condition called prosopometamorphopsia, or PMO. He was trying to meet as many PMO sufferers as he could—not only to identify why the distortions were occurring but to illuminate the intricate way in which the human brain perceives faces.” • Another word of the day….
News of the Wired
“Early Bookcases, Cupboards & Carousels” [Lost Art Press]. “Although many medieval books written on thick parchment or vellum and often bound in leather could possibly stand on end, titles were not put on the spine until the 16th century. There was also no standardization of book sizes. Some books were small enough to fit in one hand, while others were so large and heavy it took two people to lift one. As a result, books were placed flat, often with the spine turned inwards. The title might be handwritten on the fore edge or foot edge. Alternatively, the title could be written on the cover.” • Like this:
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 TH:
TH writes: “I believe this is a begonia of some sort. It can be found flaunting its stuff in the hothouse of the Sherman Library and Gardens in Corona Del Mar, CA.”
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COVID-19 in Los Angels County is going up, up, and away.
Current wastewater concentration as a percentage of the peak concentration during winter 2023 – 2024
(7/11/2024-7/20/2024): 44%
http://publichealth.lacounty.gov/media/Coronavirus/data/index.htm
Why Does COVID-19 Spike In Summer? From Science Friday, 17 minute audio.
Many good points raised, and she’s a proponent of masking.
Bump in the polls, hmmm. I’m skeptical, but why not? My question is will Kamalot! The Musical still be filling theaters come November.
I find it amazing candidate Harris who didn’t perform very well in the primaries is now the greatest thing since sliced bread – and the polls show it. I’m probably wrong, but it seems to me the media has done this. I’m retired and read the day to day stuff pretty close. Over the last week (or since Kamalot was hoisted on the throne) it seems the press has gone out of it’s way, even overboard, to prop her up as the greatest thing ever.
My PMC friends think the DNC people are pure genius for picking Harris – and are totally on board with Kamalot – and whoever the VP pick is. They just love these people. The are under appreciated and great beyond words. Their smitten oozes from every pore of their body.
The election is still a long way off, so there is plenty of time to find more dirt on Trump, while hoisting Kamalot and Company higher on the pedestal. I expect Orange Hitler (and Vance) will not keep their mouth shut which will give team Kamalot more ammo to hurl at him to fire up the base. If Jerome Powell can keep the market plates spinning until November (rate cuts in September) and the market doesn’t suffer a big hiccup, nor the economy fall into a nasty recession – team Kamalot has the election in the bag.
The hate for Trump trumps Trump (and his red hat army as my PMC friends call them).
“there is plenty of time to find more dirt on Trump,”
Say what? After all this time, what more can they find? That he actually shot someone on Fifth Avenue?
Cmon. They even tried to shoot him, and missed.
It’s all about Kamala now, sink or swim. Wait for the interviews and debate(s). Something tells me that SNL won’t be doing a Tina Fey like takedown of Palin, and Jon Stewart doesn’t have the cajones to go after her ramblings.
What you’re watching right now is the literal 10% of moneyed eastern and CA. power showing up to cheer on the team with the MSM pumping the pom poms down on the sidelines. Gotta support the team! Another 10% of the voting population is following like good sheep. This worked for them in corporate America, so it’s almost automatic. The first crack appearing may be the Dems trying to pull off a Zoom nomination and convention. The rest of the world will not be so easily fooled.
Then there’s all the video remnants of her saying stupid stuff. We’ll see if YouTube censors that. Maybe.
But I think there are ways around any of those pernicious clips and actual evidence of any speeches given or word salads presented to any group of thinking adults…I suggest this to be indeed satire done well. But you just gotta ask…who are they fooling?
https://babylonbee.com/news/google-search-confirms-kamala-harris-did-not-exist-prior-to-july-22-2024
One day, with the significance of the passage of time, Kamala Harris’s new age Youtube videos will be important historical documents.
Meet the “Holistic Thought Advisor” Behind Kamala Harris’s Speeches:
https://youtu.be/r1RmWKA5Vaw?si=dbkkI7NWH89kw2YW
Yeah l’m skeptical of the polls as well, and have been ever since we started being told by our betters 20 years ago that exit polls, once the gold standard for determining election shenanigans, weren’t really accurate any more because conservatives all of a sudden didn’t want to to tell pollsters the truth and so were underreported – this in response to exit polls that didn’t match the declared results after Bush II was named the winner.
On a related note, I just revisited that comment thread from yesterday’s links about why the posted Venezuelan results were indicative if fraud. I reread it myself, and I now understand what the author was getting at – it was odd that the results would round so evenly to the first decimal place, rather than there being 2 decimals. That is reminiscent of a rather counterintuitive accounting “law” whose name escapes me at the moment. In that one, you look at the first numbers of all accounting entries and if there is an even distribution of entries starting with 1-9, that is indicative of fraud, because in reality there are more entries starting with one and fewer starting with nine. But the researcher from yesterday’s thread just claimed their results were abnormal – I didn’t see any comparison to other election results as proof.
Also, the fraud claims are based on the results of a pre-election poll, and one conducted by the US(!) at that. One would think exit polls would be a better indicator, if they were conducted in the manner that has been traditionally considered accurate.
So until more proof is shown, I’m skeptical about the fraud claims, given that several years ago the Carter Center gave Venezuelan elections extremely high marks (and yes, things can change, but I haven’t seen anybody describing changes between then and now). That, and all the coup and assassination attempts against Venezuelan leaders over the last 25 years make it very hard to believe that 60+% of Venezuelans really want the openly US-backed candidate to run their country.
Wasn’t Bush II down 10% in the Ohio exit poll 2004? How I remember it.
What do you suppose will happen the minute she has to speak without being handed a script?
In 2020 they discovered they could keep a candidate hidden all year and still win the election. So it’s small potatoes to prevent any unscripted public speaking for 3 months. There will scarcely be any public speaking at all, just the bare minimum, all teleprompter. Her public image will be all the smiling and resolute looking pictures of her in your homepage feed.
That was during a nationwide lockdown (such was the justification anyway). It’s inconceivable that Harris will not be asked a single impromptu question during the course of even a short campaign.
It *is* inconceivable that she’ll give a coherent answer, and the Democrat freakout will be amusing to watch.
Here she is without script from yesterday (from 1:08)
https://youtu.be/zkZzrjXtIX4?si=7rCs2XUbIWLfvakN
Kinda soporific and has some quality word salad. Still, placing the lumpy statue guy in front of her at least makes her look good in comparison.
Not looking good for whoever is running the US going into this election. Seems as though the recession is starting with today’s figures and interest rate drops will be late. The US is going to have to send an air fleet and special forces and marines into the Middle East to keep Israel happy and to stop them using nukes. Explaining this to the voters between now and the election is going to be quite the task. Israel can’t wait until after the election.
War in the middle east should have a stimulative effect
I don’t have a real explanation, but since I don’t believe that America is quite that gullible, I have developed an alternate theory of the Kamala bounce. I do sincerely believe that most of America really does not want a replay of any part of the last eight years. That Trump’s advantage was that Biden was even worse than he was on the domestic front (he was hideously bad on the foreign front as well, but we are talking what fuels voters and most worry about their immediate circle). I might wish that they would go for a third party, but most people are just going to stay home or vote for the lesser of two evils. Nobody thought Harris was any kind of a player in the Biden administration. She was no Dick Cheney. Here’s someone new. It is not a Clinton or a Bush or a Biden or anyone who has been a major player in those administrations. They can hope that all the reasons they voted for Biden, before they found that they were still the punching bags for the people who think things are great in America with him in office. She was a beacon of hope, momentarily as that may be.
As Benny Profane says above, it is now all Kamal sink or swim. Can the press disguise that she is a vacuous tool with nothing to offer anyone who cannot pay her for access? I don’t think she has either the ability to charm an audience, or the smarts to really fool people once they start really looking or listening. But time will tell. As the Democrats don’t really have anything to offer most of the American public, I’m not even sure she can riff as long as DJT can without saying some thing that is going to give the front away. But since I’m not going to get what I want and neither of the major candidates is going to kick Israel in the balls and call off WWIII, I really don’t have a dog in this fight.
What are the Dems gonna do/say when she wins and everything continues to fall apart?
Oh, wait… they’ll balme Putin.
They know that, the party cognoscenti. The Big K will mostly be packaged up and not allowed to speak off the cuff. Something Trump does every day, mostly to his detriment.
I was telling my spouse today that Trump had a chance to win over a lot of folks who thought he might get more humble after the shooting, but no. He has returned to default mode, and as we all know there are some people who love that and then all the others who don’t. I remain a skeptic of both camps.
So Mark Kelly is a pyramid scheme humper?
Perfect fit for a high level politician in the late stage capitalism of “our democracy”! Why not skip the formalities and just crown that ticket right now?
Right? At least it won’t be Shapiro. (I hope not to regret typing that).
Despite the common misperception, we here at the NSA Domestic Service do have a sense of humour. “No regrets, we’ll supply a few…you’ll do it our way.”
The Bachelorette in 2024. Who gets the rose of anointing to become that next special holder of all the superlative duties of a vice president? “I want to win the rose from Kamala, pick me !”
Let’s send you to the border in 2025, which I’d suggest that hypothetically Kelly should know better than most of us who live further away. One of a few random ideas I’d have, as in sending others to do such a thing instead of handling that like a supposed leader, be that a sitting President or the DHS office.
I think the appeal to Kelly is all those frequent flier miles…
Astronauts are cool. Always have been.
He did, however, lose on Celebrity Jeopardy– to a football player.
TH writes: “I believe this is a begonia of some sort. It can be found flaunting its stuff in the hothouse of the Sherman Library and Gardens in Corona Del Mar, CA.”
My mind’s eye sees it but the picture would be better;-)
Does the right half of it look monstrous to you also?
Google seems to have that thing too.
I see that my electeds haven’t been lying to me, they are merely hallucinating. Question, when I see them on tv, or in person, am I suffering from prosopometamorphopsia? Or maybe that half monster is just a mental image…..
Shapiro down a couple of points, to 68%.
https://polymarket.com/event/democratic-vp-nominee?tid=1722624073333
My mother, born in 1941, votes without fail.
She attributes this to her first memory of voting, which was done at my grandfather’s insistence that she go vote for the sake of doing so, with his only instruction being “anybody but Shapiro”
I cannot help but think of this phrase daily, lately.
I have added orts and scraps, including an important study from the AAA on traffic accidents and the pandemic. And also Peggy Noonan [heart].
I have never seen or heard of the specimen in the plantidote before, so I looked it up on google image search. It is Medinilla magnifica.. A native of the Philippines, it does indeed resemble a begonia — in pictures, but it is a shrub that grows to eight to 12 feet tall.
According to wikipedia: “King Boudewijn of Belgium [(1951–93)] was a big devotee of Medinilla. He grew them in the royal conservatories and they were depicted on the bank note of 10,000 Belgian francs.”
Concerning this monarch, wikipedia has this to say: “He was the last Belgian king to be sovereign of the Congo, before it became independent in 1960 and became the Democratic Republic of the Congo (known from 1971 to 1997 as Zaire).”
There. That’s probably more than you wanted to know.
Born performer? Does she do accents?
Pent up support? In the media and the Dem 25 percent who are glued to MSNBC that’s without a doubt. Elsewhere there are already accusations of astroturf.
This piece linked in comments this morning gets it right.
https://open.substack.com/pub/thewaywardrabbler/p/the-peculiar-partisans-of-ostentatious
Plus, as also reported here this morning, overseas events are looking ever more ominous. It’s quite likely that the public still want an escape hatch from Biden/Harris.
> Born performer? Does she do accents?
Southern, apparently.
Always made me cringe when Obama and especially Hillary tried to talk like they were farmers.
“Folks”
They probably don’t talk like that in Hawaii or Chicago.
Vance is the real deal but I didn’t find his memoir too compelling either. The atmospherics of Southern poverty are something I’m already quite familiar with having lived here lo these many years. Any of our old mill villages will do.
And perhaps Harris has hidden depths that will soon appear. But the signs so far are not pointing in that direction. Trump is equally shallow but at least he seems mostly uninterested in running the world. Put him in a stadium full of adoring fans and he’s happy.
Thanks to Lambert and the Cooler for giving us a place to kvetch.
.
I remember hearing Patrick Buchanan once put on a fake Southern accent. I immediately thought of the saying: ” In politics, sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
During my survey of black political analysts last night one other cultural appropriation that was particularly noted was her attempt to pander to the hip hop crowd. For a variety of reasons, from left to right, that was not appreciated at all.
If you are still looking for a brochure about her heritage, Sabby Sabs has dated the Indian thing back to her Senate run. So, much further back than 2020. Her discussion of this starts around the 9:20 mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVvWPXkakCY
Looking at the list of events canceled by veep wannabees I have to suspect they were asked to keep their calendars open a long time ago. So many church groups disappointed…
Kelly not canceling events harder to read, also good strategy to cancel at last minute (suggesting urgency and something big!) but only a good move if you’re getting the nod.
Decided to test the theory that The Blob really does prefer folks who went to private colleges and determined that only Beshear qualifies (Vanderbilt) altho Shapiro did go to Georgetown Law School (night classes).
Moments like these beg for Las Vegas betting odds. Think of the $$ NC could raise with a betting app in the sidebar! You’d have to take crypto but that would be the least of your moral compromises if you jump on this currently popular opportunity : )
Andy Beshear’s father, who is a former governor of Kentucky, was in a serious car accident on Wednesday. He is expected to make a full recovery but that may be the reason Andy cancelled recent events. We shall see.
Addendum: Sadly, King Baudouin was not one of history’s good guys.
Oh ho, is Lambert giving away his personalized license plate- PMC 4EVA?/s
This could be explained by a surge of suicides by car. If I were going to do myself in I wouldn’t buckle up (the nagging warning sound alone would reinforce my desire to ‘just do it’). *
*I would not commit suicide at least not by car but hearing that warning alert nonstop in your final moments would be pure Kafka orTerry Gilliam, your choice.
And then waking up to the same sound as you are being wheeled into the operating theatre at the hospital.
There is a bolga in the Inferno where all voices are filtered through autotune.
I’m going to somewhat disagree with Lambert here, the Democrats go to is not about race, it is about victimization. Trump is picking on the the black woman. Anyone points out that his major point is that she is whatever gives here an advantage, gets turned into he doesn’t understand mixed race. When the real point is that allowing that Harris does market testing when stating the dominant race among her mixed background doesn’t get them “White guy beats up on black/Indian/mixed race woman”.
One of their biggest advantages with Harris is that she is mixed race. She is female. She clicks several boxes of groups that have been and are the victims of discrimination. And that allows them to counteract reasonable, and make my words even flat out obviously true, opposition statements about Harris from a position of victimization. The obsfucation about her record is off the charts. Some of it will just be denials* usually meaningless, but whenever possible it will be two white guys picking on her. I’m sure we will find other go to responses, but that will be their first choice.
*I put the denials of her position as the chief representative of the Biden administration in charge of the border right up there with Biden is fine, his obvious physical and mental deterioration in videos is Russian misinformation!. And have reminded people that the same people denying that she was in charge and was terrible at dealing with the border issues did tell them for weeks that Biden was great!
“She clicks several boxes of groups that have been and are the victims of discrimination. And that allows them to counteract reasonable, and make my words even flat out obviously true, opposition statements about Harris from a position of victimization.”
I only learned just last night that she was lying in that debate when she said that “she was that girl” about bussing. Apparently her entire school career, from kindergarden up until high school, was in Canada. I am amazed that has never come up before.
Lying, you say?
So what you’re saying is she’s a liberal Democrat.
>Apparently her entire school career, from kindergarden up until high school, was in Canada. I am amazed that has never come up before.
Someone better tell the folks down the hill from me at Thousand Oaks Middle School in Berkeley, which she attended via voluntary bussing (it says here) from West Berkeley. They’ve got a plaque and everything.
https://www.berkeleyside.org/2024/07/21/how-kamala-harris-childhood-in-berkeley-shaped-her
That’s wild! So, the article says she lived in Berkeley until she was twelve, but there are five or six vlogs saying she lived in Canada during that time. Seems like they are all getting their info from Judge Joe Brown, who says that he knew her father. Brown specifically cites her yearbooks, and tells people you can still find them online.
That is very interesting. Like I say, I had never heard about it until last night when suddenly it was everywhere.
“. . . blogs say[] she lived in Canada . . . during that time” — as in “until she was twelve”?
I almost hesitate to ask, considering the distraction power a similar claim had in the not-too-distant past . . . but are those vlogs saying Harris was born in Canada?
So it seems it seems they both sell victimhood. I say a pox on all their houses.
Eerie new mind-controlling tech can manipulate emotions and even appetite without any invasive surgery
Television, the Drug of the Nation
On YouTube I ran across a “reaction” channel that usually reviews old songs from before the reviewers were born. This was a reaction to Trump’s interview at the Black Journalists Association. I was surprised that these young Black men were totally Trump supporters. From things they have said at least some of them are college educated. This episode from one day ago has 397,000 views already. I see they have others about Trump as well. They laughed at Trump’s remark that all of a sudden Harris had “turned black.”
I have heard the Dems talk about Black women for Harris, but I have not heard them mention Black men for Harris. Young voters don’t usually turn out to vote in great numbers, perhaps Trump will motivate more in this election.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V13lgKL8xGA&pp=ygUUQ2FydGllciBmYW1pa3kgdHJ1bXA%3D
There seemed to be agreement with the statement one reviewer made that he was “tired of white liberals telling him how he feels.”
I’m white and what used to be left and I am tired of white liberals telling me how I feel
There was a Black Men for Harris zoom call: https://www.essence.com/news/black-men-zoom-call-support-kamala-harris/
Ok, thanks. Didn’t see that.
Have you seen this one?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rkxr4NLPRN4
After all of the years that it was verboten to criticize Obama due to his race, it is just fascinating to see how fast this demographic is falling apart for the Democratic party over cultural appropriation. I don’t think Clyburn is going to be able to work his magic this time around.
Shapiro (1):
Oopsie.
Shapiro (2):
Put this with school vouchers, and he’s perfect, but–
Hmmmm, How is that going to play in Dearborn?
and
How is that going to play in my own head? I know, I know, I am “weird” – I was actually a Democrat before they were called “Democrats”, but I am not really into genocide.
Shapiro (3):
I apologize for the width and height of the image, but I don’t have time to summarize February’s Penn-Live three-parter. So this thread:
Shapiro (4). I wrote, above:
Could be I was right, especially given tweet (1). But perhaps the real sex scandal is in tweet (3).
I think you’re right! Quite a few skeletons in Shapiro’s closet. Here in Chicago, the local news keeps bringing up big JB as still being in the hunt. Seems like a long shot, but if they’re scrambling right now, we might get a surprise.
(5) To be fair, this is the stupidest timeline, and so Kamala could hand Trump the gift of “twenty stab wounds” knowing what she was getting into (and, I would suppose, servicing AIPAC). But if she can throw Biden under the bus, surely she could throw Shapiro).
If Shapiro was the guy they wanted, a couple of Me, Too type scandals aren’t going to rock their boat. TINA: if that’s your issue you’re not going to support Trump, are you? Biden had his swept under the rug, and the Dems can make MSNBC (and NBC) ignore any of those stories they want memory-holed.
But I’m sure Kamala would like to have Obama on her side, so taking his astronaut buddy might be a good unity pick. She could use him to deflect questions about her lack of solutions to the border crisis, and I’m guessing he would do way better in a rambling lecture about Space!
Turning twenty stab wounds into a suicide as a prosecutor…. Well, if that’s #MeToo, an amazing act of minimization has taken place (which, granted, Democrats are good at).
“Space! The final border!”
Genocide Josh
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=josh+shapiro
However he wasn’t a member of the IDF.
If Shapiro were the pick, this sort of leak might make whoever chose him rethink that decision.
St. Jerome in His Library
So kind of him to interrupt his studies to give aid to the lion.
“St. Jerome is the patron of translators, librarians and encyclopedists.”
The following links to an engraving by Albrecht Durer with the same subject as the one pictured above.
https://www.wikiart.org/en/albrecht-durer/st-jerome-in-his-study-1514
From the attempt to asassinate candidate Trump to the apparent coronation of a Democratic candidate for US President….it’s simply mind boggling to go back a mere what….Three weeks? Joe Biden went on a treadmill of you’re gonna go downhill and only that direction after his one debate performance.
Holy moley. Good golly this timeline is really an accelerated timeline of stupidity. It could just be me…but I don’t think it is. Maybe I should go on a long distance walk….until November 6.
I looked up this trivia just for you griffen!
I ran for a long time, just running….then I turned around…”I think I’ll go home now…”. Begs the question, if someone unplugged today and returned in say Thanksgiving week what does the country or the world look like.
For whatever are a myriad of reasons, movies of that era I find immensely quotable. Helps watching a few times…”Lt Dan!”
Plantidote, meet Citizen Science:
With Flora Incognita you can now conduct Citizen Science projects with diverse objectives, ranging from documenting all plants in a specific area to identifying selected species to address conservation-related queries. The collected data provides insights into plant occurrences, habitat compositions, and the abundance of specific plants in an area. Operating the project is incredibly easy: Participants use the app like they are used to, just add a specific keyword to relevant observations.
https://floraincognita.com/
I totally forgot to submit this (or maybe I did and forgot and forgot that I did– it’s been an F of a month), but many here might fall in love with this app– and it’s for a good cause!
I downloaded the app several weeks ago and have learned quite a lot about the local greenery; it’s easy and enjoyable to use.
The app was created by, and a project of, Technische Universität Ilmenau– a German University.
I love it when Team Blue issues clarifying statements. For example, “Weird” is when old men flounder around saying things that a majority of old white voters believe, and that the party thought was perfectly fine before they discovered Joe had contracted an incurable case of OLD.
Whereas “Not Weird” is saying we need more wars to secure peace, open borders to promote border security, censorship to preserve free speech, and removing voter participation to preserve democracy. Also, Sam the Undergarment Thief and other sad looking characters on the news speaking for the current administration over the last few years, not weird. Making fun of poor people who drink diet sodas? Not weird. Making a lot of gay panic references involving Trump and Putin? Not weird AND not homophobic. Asserting Kamala has always been black and assigning voters into vertical silos like you’re sorting legos, instead of grappling with the complexities of people who don’t fit in any single category as IdPol requires? Definitely not weird. Allowing people to publicly change gender but not race? Not weird AND not transphobic. Claiming this is the best economy ever when all the stats show your average american is suffering horribly? Super duper not weird. Accepting money from crypto and techbro donors and then suddenly deciding crypto and monopolies are OK? That has never been weird Sir! How dare you even suggest otherwise!
Trump and his team deserve to lose if can’t find any good rhetorical attacks against hypocrisy of this magnitude.
Taibbi’s latest, public excerpt. Pre-crime. Well, alrighty then.
Sir Keir Starmer’s Pre-Crime Clarion Call
After nationalist riots in Southpot, Britain’s new Prime Minister announces plans for a “coordinated effort” to arrest wrongdoers “before they can even board a train”
https://www.racket.news/p/sir-keir-starmers-pre-crime-clarion
That is the scariest story I’ve read today, even with the dire situation in the Middle East. The UK govt is 5-10 years ahead of America in electronic surveillance and erosion of civil liberties, and it’s been heading toward pre-crime incarceration since 9/11.
I said here during the election campaign that Starmer will lean authoritarian.
As Taibbi points out ASBOs (anti social behaviour orders) went very quickly from “only in exceptional cases of repeat public disorder” to “anything the local powers that be dislike including many trivial issues”.
Key here is that the powers are discretionary and do not have a clear burden of proof, evidence of guilt etc. Just police “suspicions”.
As American readers will also have seen in their own country post 9/11, if you give powers to authorities for selective use, they will very quickly use it maximally.
This is but one step of many on the UK’s path to authoritarianism. See also the recent anti-protest laws, as well as the law about insulting people which led to a woman of colour being prosecuted fir calling the Prime Minister a coconut.
The UK public has a schizophrenic attitude to this stuff. On some stuff (eg national ID cards) they get outraged. On other topics they beg to be controlled harder. Or perhaps more correctly they beg for their fellow citizens to be controlled harder.
On The Pandemic’s Tenacious Grip on Traffic Safety
So it looks like workers most likely to be exposed to SARS-COV-2 early, unlike the “frontline heroes” cheering crowd that worked from home, has higher traffic fatalities. Interesting, no? I guess we’ll see what the data tells us for 2023 and beyond, someday, as to whether this relationship holds, now that the brunch crowd is back to brunching as hard as they can.
Aerosmith Retires From Touring, Citing Steven Tyler’s Vocal Injury
COVID?
Related on work calls, one guy seems to be clearing his throat occasionally; I don’t recall this kind of thing pre-Pandemic. But I’ve noticed it sometimes with people the past few months now.
Intel’s not doing too well:
Intel has worst day on Wall Street in 50 years, falls to lowest price in over a decade
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/02/intel-share-plunge-drags-down-global-chip-stocks-from-tsmc-to-samsung.html
The Resurrection Of Intel Will Take More Than Three Days
https://www.nextplatform.com/2024/08/02/the-resurrection-of-intel-will-take-more-than-three-days/?td=rt-3a
And this is what’s up with the high end gaming geek part of Intel:
Scumbag Intel: Shady Practices, Terrible Responses, & Failure to Act
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6vQlvefGxk
If this is also happening over in the cloud/server end of the business, well, OUCH!
On Nooners and her query whether Kamala is “serious”: I’ve now looked at a bunch of Kamala clips, and gravitas is not the word that springs to mind. To me, she seems like the sort of person I’d like to be around for about five minutes, and that’s it (this could be WASP vs. California, I suppose, though Shanahan doesn’t affect me the same way). That’s how long it takes for the effect to wear off. If I were trapped in a meeting with her, that would be bad.
OTOH, on TikTok she may “hit different” because Kamala codes young and TikTok is such a short medium (and TikTok, being under assault byCongress and regulatorsm is I am sure anxious to please, so “cute” Kamala memes would be boosted (and “idiotic” ones not).
But…the TikTok is dangerous for the younger citizens? Or is it just different enough…from the company being sued by DOJ as a danger to children privacy. Just seeing a headline.
As I thought about earlier, her speech writers could stick to platitudes and gratitude, and lastly aghastitude to what the other side does. Just don’t ask her about inflation or economic policy, for starters…”groceries are higher, so yeah I get that….”
https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-lawsuit-doj-ftc-children-eb0110e6f2281d8b9a7d2cad0af2e525
> go long exective dysfunction
Not quite sure how to translate that into concrete terms, but I’m “highly confident” at a high level. And we’re seeing it all around us, are we not?
Covid or ideological path dependency, mix?
Both.
“Covid” in the sense of actual brain damage complete with (plausible) mechanisms and the studies to show it. In the real world, AFAIK, all we have had hitherto is anecdotes, albeit a mountain of them. The AAA study is the first I have seen that pins loss of executive function on the Covid pandemic on a population basis.
We are going to end up with a working class and a PMC that is sicker, less productive, has a shorter working life, and is above all stupider than before. The same goes for elites who have decided not to be #DavosSafe (which includes Biden). I don’t see how that can possibly end well on a civilizational basis (at least for most of us). A “remnant” (Isaiah 10:22) will of course display adaptability and survive. Who, what, where, why, and how that will happen is the $64,000 question (and the same goes for climate, “indoor air” nicely encompassing Covid transmission, climate (aircon), and civilization, especially if civilization includes brunch, mass gatherings, air travel, and so forth).
(By “ideological path dependency” I take it you mean a combination of the utter commitment by the political class — though no longer in the press — to the thesis that Covid is over, and, if it is not, responsibility for it is a matter of “personal risk assessment. Both factors also apply to H5N1 [folding hands in prayer, looking skyward]).
Adding, we can’t drive (for some definition of “we”). What are the implications for, say, maintaining complex software? How about maintaining power lines? Water purification? Pharmaceutical manufacturing and distribution? And on and on and on (I’m imagining an erosion of tacit knowledge).
> What are the implications for … tacit knowledge
At the systemic level, smaller specialized groups, with middlemen between the oikoi. Guilds.
At the most concrete material level, Randall Collins has a way:
>> Process or continuous line production involves taking the same materials through a series of operations and mixtures (as in oil refining, chemicals, or food processing). Here, much of the unskilled labor and a great deal of the coordination is done by the organization of the machinery; the core of the organization consists of a few skilled workers who check the process and troubleshoot the difficulties.
I’m reading a trilogy of Dune, Jaws, and The Godfather. The water is the tribes water. The air is the tribes air. Who doesn’t keep wearing the mask (stillsuit, omerta) is stealing from the tribe.
“We’re seeing it all around us, are we not?”
“Executive dysfunction signs :
1. Trouble managing emotions or impulses.
2.Problems with starting, organizing, planning, or completing tasks.
3.Trouble listening or paying attention.
4.Short-term memory issues.
5.Inability to multitask or balance tasks.
6.Socially inappropriate behavior.”
I’ll skip the Israel/our elite/etc cheap gags.
Personally, post-covid I have issues with 2, 3,4,5 and I see it in others.
1 and 6 seem prevalent everytime I look at the news or go online, but not in my everyday life. I saw it much more during 2020-2022 . This maybe because I left the USA though!
I’m not sure this can be all down to COVID, so much as it is the logical outcome of the economic, societal, philosophical and dare I add epistemological blind-alley that is our neoliberal system. Or perhaps it’s broader than that. I often ponder if we are seeing the death of the Newtonian system and the Enlightenment model of thought.
I think this is maybe what it looks like when systems die – all the old certainties are shaky and people lose it. Add to that COVID, climate and other jackpot factors and here we are: crazed, scared, angry, lost, desperate, cognitively impaired and ever less rational. A crude analogy is someone desperately holding onto a relationship despite ever increasing evidence of its dysfunction, because it’s what they know and they fear the unknown.
Viewed just through the COVID lense you are undoubtedly right. We will keep getting reinfected and the executive function (as well as a load else) will keep increasing.
I wonder if a feedback loop is possible?
-> bad decisions lead to bad outcomes leading to more bad situations to make bad decisions in.
I do not see signs of it in the Asian countries I’ve been in over the last year. Here in Vietnam, things and people seem to be functioning ok.
“Plouffe among corps of new advisers to Harris campaign” [Politico].
I’m skeptical. Have they never heard of Fred Brooks’ “The Mythical Man-Month”? I think it’s fair to classify a Presidential campaign that has a 100-day window as a “late project.” So:
To simplify — real programmers will correct me — communication between the newly added staffers more than eats up any potential productivity gains (and with a really [family blogged] project, a lot of communication will need to be done).
Now, one might respond by saying “This is Obama’s team, they already know how to work together!” But that presupposes no clashes of interest, ego, investment in ideas, etc., have developed between 2016 and 2024. It also presupposes that there is a “same page” for everybody to be on, and that the new hires will accept existing leadership and its deliverables (all Biden legacies). I don’t think these assumptions are plausible. I don’t see “getting the band back together” as a solution.
Some speculation on Trump’s curious inability to dominate the news cycle–
Despite liberal dogpiling that Trump’s would-be assassin only “nicked” him (“‘Tis but a scratch“), somebody really did try to whack Trump, and a suspicious mind would argue that the Secret Service and the FBI (though not the local cops), along with the spooks generally, were in LIHOP mode (and given both RussiaGate and lawfare, they have form).
Therefore, Trump must know:
(1) Somebody tried to kill him;
(2) The organs of state security tasked with protecting him are not necessarily to be trusted (if they ever were; certainly not now);
(3) There’s no reason to think his adversaries won’t, er, allow “another shot” to be taken, or in fact take it (Yves tells me there’s a Ray McGovern video to this effect, but I don’t have time to dig it out and then listen to it, but neither RussiaGate nor lawfare paused even for a moment, so once again these adversaries have form).
Therefore:
(1) Trump can now assume, not abstractly, but very concretely, that by going forward with the campaign he’s marching toward his own death (though perhaps he might defeat it, this time).
(2) Whatever one might think of Trump, it’s not in him to quit, and so march forward he will.
(3) Facing one’s own mortality is hard in general; I personally do not “have a diagnosis,” as it were, but I cannot imagine it’s easy to face.
(4) We humans — Trump being all too human — are emotional creatures. Emotions and feelings take time to process. I speculate and propose that all of Trump’s “psychic energy” is going into facing his own mortality (and on the campaign trail, too). Hence the curious lack of focus to his campaign, post-assassination attempt, once the convention was out of the way. At some point, I imagine he’ll snap out of it. I agree with Nooners that it had better be soon. It would be nice if the outcome was Trump as “a happy warrior,” accepting his fate, but I don’t think that’s in him either.*
A campaign’s most valuable resource is the candidate’s time. One of the little-focused-upon aspects of lawfare is that it eats that resource up (although Trump turned that, at least, so his advantage, or at least neutralized it).
If we view assassination as the highest form of lawfare, then the events in Butler had exactly that effect; in a 100 days campaign, a candidate taking 14 or 21 or 28 days to regain their emotional equilibrum is a huge loss (and Kamala, as is all too evident, doesn’t have that problem at all).
I did say this was speculation….
NOTE * I pity Trump if he tries to find spiritual solace from Christianist grifters. Yech.
They call themselves Democrats:
Say what you will about Republicans, their base didn’t wait around for the RINOs to tell them what to do. And then do it, simultaneously and joyously (“schooling behavior“).
NOTE Horrid typography, like the 2008 Obama campaign’s trade dress reproduced in brain dead fashion and then run through a commmittee (“Say, why don’t we add an exclamation point?” “Yeah, and an underline under WIN THIS!”) MR SUBLIMINAL “WIN THIS” already being all caps FFS. How much you wanna bet the next iteration makes the underline thicker?
Lambert: how do you imagine President Harris would be in a big geopolitical crisis?
I’m trying to imagine her addressing the nation on a solemn subject – war stuff, military strikes etc. And also how she’d be off camera.
I have a view, but more interested in yours
I need to know more. Here’s a barnburner on abortion Kamala gave at Howard. It’s really not bad (though the tone, all that stuff about “leaders” reminds me of Thomas Frank’s brutal “Nor a Lender Be“.)
She does have a tendency to talk down by oversimplifying a concept her audience could be expected to already understand.
Much would depend on her writers adapting the message to her register (like Sondheim writing “Send in the Clowns” for Glynis Johns). For matters like a declaration of war, say, I don’t think the writers would have an easy task (one imagines a Trump 3AM moment ad here).
Hmmmm. Maybe I’m being judgmental, but I know of a lot of people who want to be unique in some respect, even (or, perhaps especially) if it means they’ve been short-changed by Nature. If Sarah Shomstein could include in her attempts to “see” an apple in her mind’s eye, “its color, the way light might hit it.” I, personally, don’t think she was experiencing anything differently than the rest of the group.
My daughter says she has difficulty imagining images and also that she doesn’t “see” when she dreams.