2:00PM Water Cooler 9/3/2024

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

I hope everyone had an excellent Labor Day weekend!

Bird Song of the Day

Let us continue on with our catbirds!

Gray Catbird, Bristol, Massachusetts, United States. The mimics always sound like they’re having fun, don’t they?

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

1. The Democrat debate.
2. Kamala’s staff.
3. McDonalds store bans masks.
4. Florida real estate.

* * *

Look for the Helpers

I’m not sure where to file this, but the teenager did seem to be helping in some way:

As a teenager in Neustrelitz (East Germany), I painted small stones purple and left them all over town. Did it for years. It drove the police and Stasi nuts. It meant nothing. It just felt good to do something they couldn't control or understand.

— Fesshole (@fesshole) September 2, 2024

Maybe more of us should try this. Butterflies flapping their wings in Brazil, and all….

* * *

My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza).

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:

The good news for Trump is that Kamala’s post-convention “bounce” seems to have been slight. The good news for Kamala is Trump’s continued deterioration in North Carolina, plus taking a slight lead in Pennsylvania. Remember, however, that all the fluctuations — in fact, all the leads, top to bottom — are within the margin of error.

* * *

The Debate (September 10)

“The sad case of the disappearing president” [The Times]. “Since announcing six weeks ago that he would not, after all, be running for another four years in office, President Biden has essentially gone to ground. He has made three public appearances, the last of which was at the Democratic National Convention nearly two weeks ago when he gave a late-night valedictory before crocodile-tearful delegates. He spent the next week on holiday at the house of a wealthy friend in California before returning to the east coast, where he promptly repaired to his beach house in Delaware for another week of WFH. At least that’s what the official White House record shows. Actually locating him is like trying to find someone in the witness protection programme…. It’s easy to make fun of the disappearing president and no one would begrudge the 81-year-old a little downtime, especially after the stress of having had his job taken away from him by his so-called friends. But there are serious issues at stake and the increasing duration of his periods of invisibility sows growing doubts about whether he is actually performing his functions — and if he isn’t, then just who exactly is making the critical decisions?” • That’s another question Trump could ask Kamala in debate: “Kamala who’s running the country?” Because there’s no good answer. If Kamala says “Joe Biden,” then Trump says: “So Biden’s brain doesn’t work well enough to campaign, but does work well enough on the nuclear button?” If Kamala says “[mumble mumble] — she can’t very well say “me,” or “Jill,” or “Hunter”, or “his highly dedicated staff” — then Trump says: Don’t you think the American people deserve to know who’s running the country?”

“GOP Pollster Predicts Donald Trump Debate Win If He Asks 1 Question” [HuffPo] (via Mediate). “[Luntz] also suggested questions that Trump could ask to maybe confound Harris ― such as on inflation, how to bring it down and ‘most importantly’ using former President Ronald Reagan’s line of, ‘Are you better off today than you were four years ago?’ ‘If he asks that question plainly, he will be successful. I don’t believe he has the ability to do so.'” • My question would be: “Kamala, who are you?”

“Democrat governor says don’t ‘underestimate’ Trump in high-stakes debate against Kamala Harris” [New York Post]. “Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker declared Monday that nobody should ‘underestimate’ former President Donald Trump’s ability to beat Vice President Kamala Harris in their upcoming high-stakes debate. ‘He has won a couple of debates that he did,’ Pritzker said of Trump during an appearance on CNN. ‘Certainly, people would say that he won the debate against President Biden a couple of months ago,’ the Harris surrogate added. Pritzker, 59, argued that Trump, 78, bested former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in at least one of their three 2016 presidential debates and that despite Harris being a ‘tremendous person with great capability’ she should be cautious on stage with the former president.” Meanwhile: “[Frank Luntz,] pollster and political strategist suggested that voters will be interested to see if Trump can ‘keep quiet’ and ‘listen to a response’ and if Harris can ‘seem open minded’ and ‘willing to take in information.'” • Readers will remember that Trump kept quiet when Biden was impaling himself. Meanwhile, I’m not sure Luntz has the right read on Harris (though she’s so vacuous it’s hard to know what the right read might be).

“Harris should put on her prosecutor pants when she suits up for the big Trump debate” [The Hill]. “Before she got into politics, Kamala Harris was a prosecutor. She’s undoubtedly handled commitment proceedings where it was necessary to convince a jury that a defendant has a mental disorder that makes them dangerous. A good trial isn’t just about evidence; it’s about weaving that evidence together into a compelling story. Sometimes, it’s a matter of fitting the small, seemingly unrelated pieces of evidence together that really convinces a jury. In Trump’s case, that should be easy to do.” • Harris does have 50 or so courtroom appearances (although she exagerrated that number).

* * *

Kamala (D): “Inside the tension in Harris’ “Frankenstein” team” [Axios]. “The good vibes of Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign mask tensions among competing factions, as Harris loyalists and Obama alumni are grafted onto what had been President Biden’s campaign. New people are remaking the campaign on the fly. The result is a large and at times unwieldy team, with internal worries about cohesiveness when inevitable stumbles arise, six people involved in the campaign tell Axios. Biden’s campaign was insular, with a few long-serving aides making big decisions. The Harris campaign has become a diffuse “Frankenstein” team with multiple power centers. Harris kept most of Biden’s team in place. But the main architect of the Biden campaign’s messaging strategy, Mike Donilon, has left and returned to the White House. Harris has brought on her own staffers along with prominent aides from President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, while also keeping many top Biden campaign officials. Harris’ team has been wary of making the Biden people feel set aside. But that has led to some internal confusion about who’s in charge.” • No wonder there’s no messaging on policy. They can’t decide what it is. I looked at Kamala’s campaign masthead in Ballotpedia: It’s built for conflict. For example, the campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, a Biden holdover, I would grade B+; her nominal subordinate, David Plouffe, parachuted in from Obama’s faction, I would grade A. And so forth. Now, with only 63 days left, there’s no time for major schisms to appear. And her staff can endure her for that long. But 63 days is a long time in politics.

Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris’s Best Strategy to Defeat Trump” [James Carville, New York Times]. “Since the early 1990s, political history has shown us that when a popular incumbent president is not on the ballot, we have a de facto change election. If Bill Clinton prevailed in 1992 on a message of change versus more of the same, if Barack Obama won in 2008 on the audacity of hope and even if Mr. Trump eked it out in 2016 on a blank promise to revive a relic of America, 2024 will be won by who is fresh and who is rotten. It’s quite simple: The shepherd of tomorrow wins the sheep. But what’s not simple: We have an incumbent vice president running against a former president in a change election. From Labor Day to Election Day, to clinch victory and drive a nail into Mr. Trump’s political career, there are three imperatives Ms. Harris must pursue successfully to become the certified fresh candidate at the ballot box in November. 1. Help Mr. Trump hurt himself in the debate(s)…. 2. Break from President Biden on policy…. 3. Display a clear growth mind-set from the 2020 Democratic primaries.” • I think all this moves should be easy to counter. 1. Trump disciplined himself well in the debate with Biden, when he stuck in the shiv in masterful manner. 2. Breaking with Biden on policy = my Zinger Of Preferences: “Kamala, who are you?” 3. Ditto. Carville is perhaps my least favorite Old Guy, but he’s still worth a read.

* * *

Kamala (D): Collard greens:

The secret ingredient for my greens? Tabasco. pic.twitter.com/zsooG51YaW

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) September 1, 2024

“I would make so many greens that I’d need to wash them in the bathtub.” Also, Tabasco (from her purse?). I’m not saying that this isn’t totally authentic — I’m not an expert in any form of cooking — except that when anybody says “I am not lying to you”……

Kamala (D): Code switching:

Kamala “code switching” again by using an accent to be more relatable to predominantly black audience

Seriously, how low will she go for votes? pic.twitter.com/4uVNmIVNff

— Myrna 💋💄🍺 𝕏 (@GigaBeers) September 3, 2024

I don’t think Trump code switching is a thing. Trump is who he is, for good or ill.

* * *

Trump (R): “A Trump loss could stabilise US politics for a generation” [Janan Ganesh, Financial Times]. “If Donald Trump loses, there is an underrated chance that America and its politics will stabilise for a generation. “Stabilise” doesn’t mean “become Luxembourg”. Polarisation will endure. But the received wisdom that Trumpism will outlast Trump — that he is just the face and voice of deeper societal forces, liable to rock the republic for decades — is shakier than it was four years ago. The lesson of 2024 so far is that American populism will find Trump hideously difficult to replace…. Trump has political superpowers almost unique to him. I count three. The most obvious is star quality… Then there is what we might call emotional sunk cost. For voters who committed to Trump circa 2016, and who paid a toll for it among friends, relatives or social media sparring partners, abandoning him is a personal defeat. A new leader, however faithful to his ideas, can’t just inherit that support… The last and most counter-logical of Trump’s advantages is his perceived incompetence…. A politician who pairs Trumpist views with operational grip would lose as well as gain support, would frighten as well as impress. Was Trump’s rise to power a personal feat or historically ordained by decades of deindustrialisation, porous borders and other provocations that were due an electoral revolt? “Both”, no doubt: it takes a remarkable individual to capitalise on structural trends. The breakthrough of populism in other democracies suggests something deep is at work. In the end, though, especially in a presidential system, the individual is the catalyser, and American populists don’t have one on the horizon.” • The hour will produce the person…

Trump (R): “Top Trump volunteer in Mass. no longer with campaign after warning New Hampshire is ‘no longer a battleground state'” [Boston Globe]. Weird, since it never was. Did Susie Wiles think it was? More: “Tom Mountain, who had served as one of several vice chairs for the former president’s effort in Massachusetts, wrote in an email to Trump volunteers in the state that “the campaign has determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state,” and advised supporters to instead direct their attention to Pennsylvania. The GOP had been bullish about winning New Hampshire before President Biden dropped out of the race. In the email, Mountain, a former official with the Massachusetts GOP, said Trump was ‘sure to lose by an even higher margin’ in New Hampshire than in 2016 and 2020, citing ‘campaign data/research.’ He claimed resources would be suspended and the campaign would not send Trump or high-profile surrogates such as his sons. The email was obtained by the Globe and confirmed with multiple recipients.” • The odd thing is that the story doesn’t say whether the campaign fired him, or he just left.

* * *

Trump (R): “After Immunity: How Judge Chutkan Should Apply Trump v. U.S.—and When” [Just Security]. Worth reading in full, if you’re following this story. Two sentences stood out for me, however: “We conclude that the superseding indictment tightly conforms to the requirements the high court established (and is fully consistent with our Just Security analysis earlier this month of what should stay and what must go).” Yeah, it’s consistent because you, and prosecutors, and the press are all in the same blobby lawfare FlexNet. Of course it’s “fully consistent.” And: “The special counsel thus revised the indictment to focus on actions Trump took as a candidate, rather than as president. That required the deletion of some allegations and required clarification of others.” • Scratch out cat and write in dog? This shouldn’t be a whole new indictment? Legal mavens in the readership please clarify.

* * *

Stein (G): Stein sticks in the shiv (1):

This is rich coming from someone who fought court orders to release inmates from overcrowded prisons because she wanted the state of CA to have more prison labor to fight wildfires for $1/hour.

And what happened to Biden-Harris' promises to raise the minimum wage? 🤔 https://t.co/q1hCtVIWqQ

— Dr. Jill Stein🌻 (@DrJillStein) September 2, 2024

Stein (G): Stein sticks in the shiv (2):

This is rich coming from someone who fought court orders to release inmates from overcrowded prisons because she wanted the state of CA to have more prison labor to fight wildfires for $1/hour.

And what happened to Biden-Harris' promises to raise the minimum wage? 🤔 https://t.co/q1hCtVIWqQ

— Dr. Jill Stein🌻 (@DrJillStein) September 2, 2024

* * *

“The map is wide open and the attack ads are coming in ‘snap election’ between Harris, Trump” [Politico]. “At a moment when presidential campaigns traditionally formulate their closing arguments, Kamala Harris is still making her introductions. The vice president has flipped the enthusiasm gap, the money gap and the polling gap in her favor in the six weeks since she replaced President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. But the race between Harris and Donald Trump remains not only tight nationally, but in a broader range of states than before…. The enthusiasm Harris has ignited — all the more apparent coming after months of tepid support for Biden — has reminded some Democrats of Obama’s 2008 run, which many described as more of a movement than a mere political campaign…. The obstacle for Harris is that Trump’s 2016 campaign was nothing short of a movement, as well. And in many red swaths of the country — and significantly, battleground states — it remains so.” And interestingly: “But one Republican strategist in North Carolina, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, admitted things have tightened in the state. ‘I still think Trump is the slight favorite here, but things have changed,’ the GOP strategist said. ‘The anxiety is that Kamala appears to perform better with the ‘double haters,” the strategist added, in a reference to voters who viewed both Trump and Biden unfavorably before the Democratic candidate swap.” • That double-haters thing shouldn’t be so hard to fix. We’re good haters in this country.

Syndemics

“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison

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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!

* * *

Airborne Transmission: Covid

I guess it doesn’t matter how you close the sale:

This is the new angle, clean air advocates

— Amanda Hu (@amandalhu) September 1, 2024

Maskstravaganza

Where the heck are the lawsuits?

A @McDonalds declaring it will not serve a mask-wearing customer is the equivalent of @McDonaldsCorp saying it will not serve someone with HIV or cancer or immunocompromised. Shameful. And ridiculously illegal. Human rights lawsuits written all over this. https://t.co/4oXnxWMvfu

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) September 3, 2024

This looks like technology worth evaluating:

https://t.co/e41oB7Lsla has started trial operation,Supports both PC and mobile devices. supports PayPal payment, and the first batch of logistics has been opened to 100 countries. It has all the models that Zimi normally sells and produces. Among them, ZM100F (black headloop),… pic.twitter.com/xM6oJQvBAl

— Zhou Liang's mask (@zhouliang_mask) September 3, 2024

Funny where “innovation” takes place. And what kind of innovation…

Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions

“Far-UVC Light Can Virtually Eliminate Airborne Virus in an Occupied Room” (press release) [Columbia University]. From April, missed this one. “A study by Columbia researchers now shows that far-UVC light [222-nm wavelength] inactivated nearly all (>99%) of an airborne virus in an occupied work environment, showing that the technology can work as well in a real-life scenario as in the laboratory. ‘The results show that far-UVC is highly effective at reducing airborne pathogens in an ordinary occupied room, and so it’s practical to use far-UVC light in indoor areas where people are going about their business,’ says David Brenner, PhD, director of the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and senior author of the study. ‘If this virus had been a disease-causing virus, the far-UVC light would have provided far more protection against airborne-disease transmission than any ventilation system,’ says Brenner.” • Hmm. Readers?

Transmission: Covid

“Spatial and Temporal Hotspot Analysis of COVID-19 in Toronto” [medRxiv]. From the Abstract: “The COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto, Canada was unequal for its 2.7 million residents. As a dynamic pandemic, COVID-19 trends might have also varied over space and time. We conducted a spatiotemporal hotspot analysis of COVID-19 over the first four major waves of COVID-19… Results highlight potential clustering of COVID-19 case rate hot spots in areas with higher concentrations of immigrant and low-income residents and cold spots in areas with more affluent and non-immigrant residents during the first three waves.” And: “Sociodemographic and socioeconomic differences dictate the different physical/built environments residents of Toronto find themselves in, which may interact to impact the risks of acquiring COVID-19 and experiencing adverse outcomes if infected. For instance, low-income communities, which also often have higher concentrations of immigrants, tend to have larger household sizes and a higher proportion of multigenerational housing, which may limit personal space for social distancing, increase the risk of spreading respiratory infectious diseases within households, as well as facilitate spread of infection between age groups (e.g., from school children to their grandparents)…. Furthermore, these communities also tend to have a higher concentration of residents that provide essential services – working as personal support workers, in food supply, at warehouses, and in retail—often with limited access to personal protective equipment, lack of paid sick leave and fewer options to work from home or “shelter-in-place”. • So funny that the PMC, who get to say home with their laptops, do not provied “essential services.” And yet everything is optimized for their brunches. It’s a funny old world.

Infection Control

“Viewpoint: The impending pandemic of resistant organisms – a paradigm shift towards source control is needed” [Medicine]. “The United States needs a paradigm shift in its approach to control infectious diseases. Current recommendations are often made in a siloed feedback loop. This may be the driver for such actions as the abandonment of contact precautions in some settings, the allowance of nursing home residents who are carriers of known pathogens to mingle with others in their facility, and the determination of an intervention’s feasibility based upon budgetary rather than health considerations for patients and staff.. Facilities are becoming over-reliant on horizontal prevention strategies, such as hand hygiene and chlorhexidine bathing. Hand hygiene is an essential practice, but the goal should be to minimize the risk of workers’ hands becoming contaminated with defined pathogens, and there are conflicting data on the efficacy of chlorhexidine bathing in non-ICU settings. Preemptive identification of dedicated pathogens and effective source control are needed. We propose that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should gather and publicly report the community incidence of dedicated pathogens. This will enable proactive rather than reactive strategies. In the future, determination of a patient’s microbiome may become standard, but until then we propose that we should have knowledge of the main pathogens that they are carrying.” • As we said in the print shop: “There’s never time to do it right, but there’s always time to do it over.” (Boeing believes this too, although Deming did not.) Anyhoo, more work for HICPAC to avoid doing?

Elite Maleficence

Covid is not like the flu:

A vaccine is supposed to prevent transmission or harm from transmission of disease. It can’t do that if transmission is widespread and wildly out of control well before the vaccine is available. And it’s not like we haven’t seen this pattern every single summer.🤦🏽‍♂️

— Jerome Adams (@JeromeAdamsMD) September 2, 2024

CDC continued effort to force-fit Covid into the existing, seasonal vaccination schedule has been a debacle. To some desk creature inside Festung Peachtree Street, it makes sense to do all vaccination at one time; but reality is more cunning than any theory, and Covid has other ideas. (We should also stop saying “summer covid,” etc. We’ve got “Vacation Travel Covid,” “Back to School Covid,” “Holiday Covid,” and so forth. Social relations and behavior are what matter here, not the tilt of the Earth’s axis.)

About the extremely soothing color scheme CDC uses for Covid transmission:

If you want to make an ordinary COVID transmission map less informative, just adjust the hue by -150 in PhotoShop to turn scary red to calming blue. #LaissezFairePublicHealthhttps://t.co/GNniqaWShz pic.twitter.com/T9KNC6X54a

— Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA (@michael_hoerger) September 2, 2024

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC August 26:	Last Week[2] CDC (until next week):
Variants [3] CDC August 31	★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC August 24
Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data August 30:	National [6] CDC August 10:
Positivity
★ National[7] Walgreens September 3:	Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic August 24:
Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC August 12:	Variants[10] CDC August 12:
Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC August 24:	Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC August 24:

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. XDV.1 flat.

[4] (ED) Down, but worth noting that Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Flat, that is, no longer down.

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

[7] (Walgreens) Big drop, but all those white states showing no change: Labor Day weekend reporting issues?

[8] (Cleveland) Dropping.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Down. 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) What the heck is LB.1?

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up. If the United States is like Canada, deaths are several undercounted:

Tara Motarity has confirmed our fears.Most provinces are only reporting about 20% of covid deaths.Maybe even less.Which suggests the deaths are close to 5 times to 6+ times the reported figures.Nova Scotia has reported 270 so far this year. It's actually 1,325-1,700 so far. pic.twitter.com/6xF6SREyKB

— Dr.Robert Strang (@DSlayer520) September 2, 2024

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

Supply Chain: “United States LMI Logistics Managers Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Logistics Manager’s Index in the US edged down to 56.4 in August 2024 from 56.5 in July, but continued to point to a moderate expansion in the logistics sector.”

Manufacturing: “United States ISM Manufacturing PMI” [Trading Economics]. “The ISM Manufacturing PMI edged higher to 47.2 in August of 2024 from the November 2023 low of 46.8 in the previous month, missing market expectations of 47.5 and reflecting the 21st monthly contraction in US factory activity in the last 22 periods. The result extended the weak momentum for manufacturing in the US economy, underscoring the impact of elevated interest rates by the Federal Reserve in the sector.”

* * *

Real Estate: “‘Worst case scenario’ of Florida real estate crisis revealed as desperate residents flee” [Daily Mail]. “Recently, a new law was introduced that requires increased safety checks on Florida condos. The legislation was brought in following the 2021 collapse of the Champlain Tower South in Surfside, which killed 98 people. It later emerged that the condo association had postponed crucial repairs to avoid increasing costs, prompting lawmakers to introduce new regulations that are set to take effect at the end of the year. Because of this, many residents have had to leave their condos and look elsewhere to call home. ‘If the crisis deepens, there could be a mass exodus of residents from affected condo buildings, leading to a glut of unsold properties and further declines in prices,’ he said.” • Not even climate! Yet.

Tech: “Shocking leak suggests your phone really is listening in on your conversations” [Daily Mail]. “An apparent pitch deck from one of Facebook’s alleged marketing partner appears to detail how the firm eavesdrops on users’ conversations to create targeted ads. In a slideshow, Cox Media Group (CMG) claims that its ‘Active-Listening’ software uses AI to collect and analyze ‘real-time intent data’ by listening to what you say through your phone, laptop or home assistant microphone. ‘Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers,’ the deck states. The pitch deck goes on to tout Facebook, Google and Amazon as clients of CMG, suggesting they could be using its Active-Listening service to target users.” • Yikes!

Manufacturing: “On Boeing’s factory floor, workers feel ‘overmanaged and undersupported'” [Seattle Times]. Worth reading in full. “In those interviews, workers portrayed consistent problems on Boeing’s factory floor: The company hemorrhaged institutional knowledge during the pandemic and hasn’t yet caught up. Boeing pushes workers to move quickly to get planes out the door, sometimes ignoring the correct sequence of work and neglecting to document deviations. Upper management doesn’t want to hear safety concerns, they say…. Boeing lost nearly 15,000 workers in Washington — roughly 21% of its workforce in the state — between 2019 and 2020 due to retirements, layoffs and voluntary buyouts, according to company data. The aircraft manufacturer was dealing with a slowdown in air travel amid the COVID-19 pandemic and a slowdown in production after the fatal MAX crashes and subsequent grounding of the MAX fleet. It started to ramp up hiring again in 2022, bringing on more than 4,000 workers in Washington that year and 6,600 more last year. It still hasn’t reached 2019 employment levels. Today’s new hires are navigating work on the factory floor without the generational knowledge that so many mechanics relied on, current employees told The Times and the NTSB.” • But muh spreadsheets!

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 68 Greed (previous close: 63 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 55 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Sep 3 at 1:37:31 PM ET.

Rapture Index: Closes unchanged [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 182. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Hard to believe the Rapture Index is going down. Where are there people getting their news?

Gallery

Not what I expect from Cezanne:

The Feast, 1867 pic.twitter.com/Skuoyrs5a8

— Paul Cezanne (@cezanneart) September 1, 2024

The Exterminating Angel comes to mind….

News of the Wired

Fewer dimenions = greater readability?

1: #Tokyo metro map in 2D.
2: The same map in 3D.

🚇🌐🧵 pic.twitter.com/nYQSA9DvpR

— 𝚃𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚜 𝙶𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚎 🚇 (@grescoe) August 31, 2024

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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 TH:

TH writes: “A volunteer acting as guide in the San Diego Botanic Garden’s Dickinson Family Education Conservatory pointed this one out to us. It’s is a Tacca chantrier, also known as a black bat flower; a member of the yam family Dioscoreaceae.” Yikes!

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