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…
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 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):
Democrats sue to kick us off ballots, hire operatives to infiltrate and sabotage us, lock us out of debates, fight ranked-choice voting, then act concerned that Greens have only won 1400 elections.
So which party is authentic, and which is predatory? https://t.co/slEsmk6Q1q— Dr. Jill Stein🌻 (@DrJillStein) September 1, 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
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
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
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC August 26: | Last Week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC August 31 | ★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC August 24 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data August 30: | National [6] CDC August 10: |
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| Positivity | |
| ★ National[7] Walgreens September 3: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic August 24: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC August 12: | Variants[10] CDC August 12: |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC August 24: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC August 24: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. Keeps spreading.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. 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?
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….
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
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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Better check to see if anyone has pulled off a triple Axel in hell today, because the NYT has just discovered that it isn’t only conservatives who say things that aren’t true on the interwebs, but liberals do it too!
https://www.yahoo.com/news/left-wing-misinformation-having-moment-113503242.html
Of course they do add qualifiers –
“The researchers emphasized that the falsehoods and exaggerations were not as entrenched or as toxic as those permeating right-wing spaces online. Several studies have shown that the political right is more likely to share false narratives and misinformation. Researchers at Northeastern University found that Democrats were generally better than Republicans at discerning true from false news.”
Oddly, or not, in this fairly lengthy article there is not one single mention of the Russiagate hoax, which was spread for years by outlets like the NYT, with no follow up mea culpas for the abjectly false “reporting”. Hold that Pulitzer tight, NYT!
“Democrats share less misinformation online than Republicans…once we remove from the statistics all of the falsehoods approved by our RightThink committee.”
In the spirit of “It’s not lying if you believe it”, perhaps one could argue in the “liberal” MSM’s defense that its reporters didn’t knowingly propagate untrue narratives.
Of course, that’s a dangerous concession, since balance would argue for extending the courtesy to the political adversaries, too.
I’m not sure whether I should consider this snark, and so don’t know whether to add a /s tag.
> Researchers at Northeastern University found that Democrats were generally better than Republicans at discerning true from false news
The Rice-Davies Law: “They would, wouldn’t they?” Thanks for the link. Leaving more than usual on the cutting room floor is getting to me.
There were similar fake news articles by Michael Gordon claiming that Iraq had WMDs. This was in the NYT….
Ah. Michael Gordon. I’m surprised he never won a Pulitzer:
Judy Miller, however, did:
Ah, explanatory reporting about terrorism. Nice work if you can get it.
A year ago my late mom was in the hospital and looking worse for wear, and my sisters and I discussed cremation as per her wishes, and what pops up on my phone, but cremation ads…
Do-it-yourself surveillance in the United Stasi of America!
A special shout out to my handler in Big Eavesdrop, Utah.
It probably goes on more than we know. A couple of years ago I was in the car with my daughter out in the middle of nowhere and we were talking about air fryers. The next day I started getting adds for air fryers on my phone and computer. Amazing? Not really.
And they show up on work computer, laptop. They know all. Including, given my email identification, that I know and shared it with you all.
You should experiment w/”Kakao Talk” as a messaging app (Android and iOS and desktop Windows). Their revenue does not come from advertising, rather by up-selling emojis, other services, etc.
Obviously no guarantee of privacy as its holding company is in the America-sphere (Korea), but at least you won’t be hounded by creepy adverts.
https://search.brave.com/search?q=kakao+talk&
I don’t know about that, as a long time occasional user. What’s worse, they actually send more intrusive ads (eg ads sent as messages that cannot be blocked) tban others.
I’ve already mentioned Sarid’s new novel, Vulnerabilities (already translated into German) which, if correct (which we may never find out) is pretty scary. Two examples
– The hero’s mother informs his father that she is leaving him and moving in with her lover. The hero isn’t surprised as he has been following the affair on their cellphones
– His sister is being held prisoner by her drug dealer. He figures out what car he drives, and downloads the manual to find security gaps. When the car is in a tunnel, he remotely freezes the steering and the brakes.
When the car is in a tunnel, he remotely freezes the steering and the brakes.
So that’s how the Duke of Edinburgh got Diana! The truth will out eventually.
Too late. He is now King, so has the same immunity as President Harris will have.
BTW, Sarid’s hero is better than the Duke. He makes sure that there are no other cars around first.
The funny thing about the objection to Snowden’s surveillance revelations wasn’t that the surveillance was taking place, but the government was doing it. Similar reactions occurred when it turned out AT&T wasn’t spying on Americans, but it was diverting their network traffic to the government; or when Google discovered its servers had been tapped.
Then there’s this from popular eavesdropper, Alexa:
https://twitchy.com/samj/2024/09/03/amazons-alexa-openly-campaigns-for-kamala-harris-no-really-listen-n2400469
That ought to kill off about half their customer base.
Was the conversation over the phone or in person and you had the phone sitting in your pocket?
I was reading up on this a few weeks ago and I do not have the link handy but it seemed like credible information. The writer said the internet companies and the governments are totally swamped with the data they have just from the phone twitter ap and the phone facebook ap and unless someone is targeting you (because you are on a terror watch list or something like that) IF you do not have twitter and facebook aps on your phone they usually do not even look at any of your data.
The phone was on, but that was it.
I would guess that even if you turned your mobile off, that the microphone would still be working along with the tracking and everything else in the background. Might have a chicken and the egg situation here. So which came first? The government converting mobiles into surveillance devices to keep watch on the citizenry or corporation doing the same to generate adds and make money off of people?
I dropped in on a colleague to give him some scripts to mark. His partner’s laptop was on while I was telling him about my plans to have a cataract operation. For the next month all of both of their searches were lined with advertisements for eye surgery . . .
Why us on Main Street can’t have nice things.
https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/ceo-greed-low-wage-workers
I’m not shocked or surprised. I would why COSTCO can make big bucks and pay well and have unions?
RE: SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater
Los Angeles Times: An even more contagious COVID strain is ‘just getting started’ amid California wave
https://www.aol.com/news/even-more-contagious-covid-strain-162454280.html
Los Angeles Times: This was a ‘prime weekend’ for COVID spread in California. Why experts see a ‘real risk’ ahead
https://www.aol.com/news/post-labor-day-poses-covid-100056276.html
I am convinced that XDV.1 has arrived from China. Last week I got hit harder than I normally get hit. That usually signals to me the arrival of a new strain. Everything on the leaderboard except XDV.1, including LB.1, is a version of JN.1.
The LA Times is reporting that public health officials have their eyes on XEC coming at us from Germany. It is clear that the holidays will be a battle between XDV.1 and XEC for supremacy.
Last week I got hit harder than I normally get hit.
Are you saying that you get regularly infected with covid-19?
Truly hoping the hit refers something work-related as a consequence of other people being infected….
I believe Roger has stated in the past that he believes he (and everyone else) get hit with low levels of Covid exposure on a constant basis.
> I am convinced that XDV.1 has arrived from China.
We’ll know in a few weeks when CDC”s traveller’s data catches up [hollow groan].
Thanks very much for this.
Say, so how’s that “herd immunity” working out that so many people in power demanded?
Covid antidote: Binge cleaning weekend and binge-listen to a doctor drama, The Resident. Mentioned Covid is airborne on two eps that aired early spring 2020. In one case, contrasting Covid to a fungus. (Also, show’s fan forums still quite active although it is long over.)
The Tokyo subway in 2-D and 3-D. For the most part, we experience our cities at sidewalk level. So a 2-D map reflects our experience. It also reflects the arrangement of streets better. The Tokyo subway system is notoriously well done yet notoriously sprawling. These are also characteristics that can be depicted with some ease on a sheet of paper.
I am constantly surprised at people with their noses stuck to a telephone, following some mysterious GPS image. There are times here in the Chocolate City, when someone has stopped me (I’m looking very native these days), and the GPS display, which is supposedly tied to their location, isn’t showing the street or its name. It’s a kind of self-map, with the person shown and the world blotted out.
Usually, the person also can’t orient the display, which is something else easily done with a 2-D paper map. One aligns the paper to the streets.
The so-called “map” in 3-D isn’t a map. It’s a load of fantasy crap — so typical of social media. A 3-D map is called a “model.” The model has to account for and depict three dimensions. The maker of the Tokyo map expects me to think that the Tokyo subway system consists of swirling roller coasters — the undulating tubules are impossible for a transit system. This person might get out of the house and see model train setups with landscapes and stations and little cows. The same thing can be done for transit systems. Who’da thunk it?
Lambert Strether’s question: Does it depend on number of dimensions? No, it depends on presentation of the data. There are crappy maps, too.
Better dopiness!, eh.
PS: Yet the pairing of efficient / analogue map with some gussied-up invent-the-wheel fantasy reminds me so much of the “improvements” we see these days, like Unsubscribe buttons that don’t work.
The so-called “map” in 3-D isn’t a map, but a buch of tubes filled with colored water. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBvHvbDiyeQ
“So a 2-D map reflects our experience.…Does it depend on number of dimensions? it depends on presentation of the data. There are crappy maps, too.”
Well, it also depends on the behavior one is executing. Navigating a subway system as a passenger simply doesn’t require someone to know anything about the relative depths of the lines (except possibly whether you have to go up or down to transfer from one line to another—and there are other, more effective wayfaring technologies, like signs in stations, for that). It’s simply irrelevant data from the standpoint of the passenger. (Some engineering company building a new line probably would benefit from some 3-D representation—its behavior in the relevant space is different—but not particularly that one. So, yeah, it definitely depends on the presentation of the data, too.)
Here is a thought. If humans had evolved from an avian species rather than a simian species, would our maps tend to be 3-D?
But, a long time ago, our simian ancestors were tree dwellers, to whom heights would have been relevant–although not as much as the birds. That didn’t prevent us from mostly thinking in 2 dimendions, even the super-bioengineered future super people. (Star Trek reference here)
Would our paper be 3-D?
My first thought was that 1-D maps are a huge growth area. It’s better than ‘invisible to the lesser sort of people’.
>>>PS: Yet the pairing of efficient / analogue map with some gussied-up invent-the-wheel fantasy reminds me so much of the “improvements” we see these days, like Unsubscribe buttons that don’t work.
Yes, the supposed improvements, which as many don’t even increase anything except the difficulty or lack of utility of using whatever it is.
A commenter on Ted Gioia’s Substack, The Honest Broker, noted that the online dictionaries were being simplified. I responded with saying that I had also noted it on both the online and the desktop ones dictionaries and thesauruses. It was nice to know that it wasn’t all in my head, and I then asked just why are they? Are they trying to save electricity somehow? From memory, it seems to be common across several of the online dictionaries.
I followed the commenter’s earlier suggestion to buy Webster’s Third International English Dictionary. All three volumes from a 1970s edition.
If I was paranoid enough, I would think that the elimination of words (and phrases) from the common references that most people use with their computers was some malicious attempt to make us all stupid. Newspeak imposed on the sly.
It occurs to me that if anyone was imposing stupidity on the masses, he is also imposing it on himself as how one talks to others is also how he thinks or talks to himself. Really, stupid conversations make for stupid people.
Being mulltilingual, I have noticed stupidification of multiple languages, in the same ways. It is organized and coordinated activity, and countless NGOs are getting mucho dinero for that. Just because I am paranoid, doesn’t mean they are not onto me.
I added a bit more on the campaigns, and much more on debate tactics (and Kamala). Enjoy!
Am I missing something, or are the two Jill Stein reports you cite not identical?
Dammit. Fixed. Stein really gives it to AOC.
The criticism of Harris’ code switching is unfair, or maybe just plain ignorant. I’m a white southerner and I code switch, as do my parents and siblings and everyone else I know who is similarly situated. Our accents are very different at home than they are when speaking before an audience of non-southerners.
You’re saying Harris is Southern now? I guess the natural question is what other codes she switches. IIRC, both CLintons did the same, so I’m not sure the ability is a recommendation (or that mentioning it is unfair).
I am not aware of any code-switching by the Clinton’s, any more than Madonna. Faking an accent you cannot master doesn’t count.
Don’t know enough about Harris to know how she speaks at home or spoke as a child. (She is weirdly different when speaking to kids. She sounds like a normal human. My early theory that she’s over or under medicated doesn’t hold for her public speaking oddness.)
> I am not aware of any code-switching by the Clintons
See, e.g., Tracking Hillary Clinton’s Use of Every American Accent East of the Mississippi. I don’t see what fake vs. real has to do with anything. It’s the intent and the effort that counts.
To be fair, there is some logic to it. For years, I had problems with public speaking (actually, just speaking with people in social settings, period–but I did have to teach undergrads for some years.). One recommendation I got was that I should try speaking with a “phoney” Southern drawl, and strangely enough, it worked. It obviously sounded fake (duh!) but somehow, I wound up speaking (especially enunciating) much better, and I ran into a few more people who did the same thing. I wonder if Harris has had the same sort of public speaking issues and got the same sort of advice at one time in her career. Wild guess, of course. I wonder if anyone noticed anything like this in the past.
If that were the case that would be her predominant public speaking style period. Location and/or audience would not trigger it to change in a traceable manner.
Why is any criticism of Harris on this point unfair?
Unless I’m missing something, she never lived in the south, so it’s unclear why she would adopt a southern accent. Also, why speak in such a manner at a rally in…Detroit?
If it was just this incident I’d be willing to cut her some slack. But based on how she has previously been, shall we say, fluid with her racial background, I’m not seeing it as a one off but a pattern of behavior.
“Why is any criticism of Harris on this point unfair?”
The criticism is completely fair to me, as important in stereotypically depicting ethnicity.
Is she speaking in southern accent, e.g. I ain’t no ways tired, or was she speaking in a way people spoke at points in her childhood and college?
Really, she kind of sounds like she’s trying to grip her dentures. She has never been normal in front of a microphone.
I remember noticing her with a southern accent on TV a couple days ago, even though she’s from California.
More though, whatever she was saying, it sounded to me like “twirling, twirling towards freedom!”
Oh no! Is that what our next election is going to be? Kang versus Kamala?
Detroit is America’s highest-percentage-of-population Black city. Black Detroiters are largely descended from Black people who moved from South to North during the Great Migration. Many Black people in the North speak with the legacy accent brought North by their ancestors.
If the recording of Harris speaking at that rally in Detroil also included many ordinary-citizen rally-goers also speaking either officially to the rally or unofficially to eachother, their accents can be listened to and a judgement made whether their accents are “Southern” or not.
Where I work I often hear Black people speaking one way to non-Black co-workers and another way to Black people especially when it is not specifically work which is being discussed.
( In all fairness, I do remember having watched-heard a Patrick Buchanan speech in Louisiana several decades ago. He put on a semi-realistic fake-Southern accent. I remember remembering the old saying: ” In politics, sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made).
So was Harris “faking Black” just like Obama did when it suited his political needs at any given moment? Or was she doing what other code-switch-capable Black people often do depending on the group-culture-context they are in?
“Detroit is America’s highest-percentage-of-population Black city. Black Detroiters are largely descended from Black people who moved from South to North during the Great Migration…”
This strikes me as a fine explanation of speaking with empathy, to identify with a community. I appreciate this analysis and explanation. Thank you.
Harris lived in California from the age of 6 to 12, in Berkeley during the week and Palo Alto on weekends. She went to one year of college in Canada and then transferred to Howard. She reports her father was not involved much with her upbringing. Her mother is Indian and Kamala ran in her first race as Indian.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/08/23/where-did-kamala-harris-grow-up/74921659007/
Kamala was in academic, not working class communities in California and California has a much lower percentage of blacks v. the total population that the US overall.
I would hazard Kamala learned to affect a black accent in college, which is why it does not sit all that well on her.
> Unless I’m missing something, she never lived in the south, so it’s unclear why she would adopt a southern accent.
Because all Black people are from the South, silly.
Absolutely agreed on pattern of behavior.
As Mz. Smith mentioned above, Harris attended Howard University. That institution is in Washington, DC, which has always been considered a “Southern” city. She can very well have picked up the ‘Southern’ accent there.
Of more concern is her tendency to switch accents to comport better with the audience she faces. This suggests an underlying lack of “authenticity” in the woman. America does not need an “empty suit” in the White House. Even if it is a tastefully designed pants-suit.
Re: “Far-UVC Light Can Virtually Eliminate Airborne Virus in an Occupied Room”
Has this one been posted on NC?
https://itsairborne.com/intro-to-far-uv-7bcfae7a0cbb
Intro to Far-UV
Under the photo:
> Dr. Kimberly Prather
Nice work, Dr. Prather.
The answer is twice in 2023 (here; and here). You can do your own Google searches, you know. It’s allowed!
It was also mentioned in January of 2023, which linked to a rather frightening ACS/EST article (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.2c00807) on the alarming levels of indoor air pollution generated by far-UV lamps. Specifically, these lamps cause unwanted chemical reactions on the exposed surfaces of otherwise inert organic materials (paint, upholstery, clothing, etc.) that ultimately release VOCs (volatile organic compounds), inorganic acids, particulate-forming HOMs (highly oxygenated organic molecules), organo-sulfur compounds, H2SO4 (a known smog precursor), etc. into the air. The impact on indoor air quality can be significant.
I would never let these devices into a facility unless they were buried deeply in the HVAC ducts, striking only metal or ceramic surfaces that would not be chemically affected by the far UV.
Far UV is indeed good at destroying COVID particles and other pathogens, but its use in open spaces significantly increases risk to human health (to the lungs, specifically). The itsairborne.com article was written in February 2023. Hopefully the people attending that “indoor air quality” conference will have learned more since then and realized it’s a bad idea.
The lawyers will do anything but guarantee a clean air environment. It’s become clear over time. Now they are outlawing masks too, so we can fight over that while ignoring the shared air, not to mention the polluted air to begin with. WAF, it’s my new acronym and I’m not going to spell it out I probably didn’t even make it up.
To me, and this is not crisp thinking, Far-UVC seems to me like a technical solution that doesn’t really fit the problem (and almost screams for rampant cheating, like just putting up a blue light bulb). At least when a window is open, it’s open. And you know if a filter is working or not. Thank for your this, it reinforces my caution.
I did a quick search on the safety far-UV a while back and the consensus seems to be that there isn’t enough information out there to come to any conclusions. The problem is that it would be hard to carry out the correct research ethically as I’d suspect that even animal models might not be entirely appropriate for confirming whether or not it causes eye damage.
It surely can’t be beyond our capacity to develop some simple combined enclosed filter/UV system that can be integrated into existing air con or light fittings, or just fitted to a wall. I use cheap Ikea filters in my apartment, I’ve often wondered if a simple UV bulb with the fan behind the carbon filter could be both effective and safe.
Open windows are good of course, but in a range of building types and uses its not always practical. I always sit by an open window in my office, but had to stop that due to the noise from construction across the street (and the works are scheduled to take at least 12 months). Likewise, you technically need two windows open to ensure decent air flow, depending on a wide variety of building layouts. There are simpler systems, like a combination of wall vents and passive vent stacks which are very efficient at ensuring an air turnover, but even then they are dependent on heat/condensation differentials to work as required (plus of course to ensure people don’t just block the vents for one reason or another).
While ventilation and filtration is very important, I do think that ultimately if our aim is to actively suppress airborne viruses, we will need some sort of disinfectant as standard, and UV seems the simplest and most effective.
You say “Google search” like it’s some kind of effective search engine
the GPS display, which is supposedly tied to their location, isn’t showing the street or its name.
Catching GPS when all horizons are blocked, so that connection with the required number of satellites is impossible, frequently causes this problem. It happens in mountainous terrain (when on the slopes or gulleys), in modern cities tightly covered with skyscrappers (“canyon effect”), inside tunnels, in old towns with narrow streets…
But it also means the persons in question are probably not very cognizant about the positioning methods available on their (“smart”)phone. There is “assisted GPS” — where the wireless network delivers information about localization without requiring to proceed with the entire protocol of gathering information from GPS-satellites. One can also determine the position via triangulation of the mobile network (a bit coarse), mobile network cell id (very coarse), WLAN (can be quite accurate), Bluetooth (ditto).
Usually, the person also can’t orient the display, which is something else easily done with a 2-D paper map. One aligns the paper to the streets.
Those persons “usually” do not know how to activate the auto-orientation of their GPS-capable map on their phone. This is something that has been existing for, well, at least 15 years on mapping software for mobile phones.
As for those 3-D models: I also have enormous difficulties to apprehend them. 2-D is better in the cases presented, because the third dimension is just plenty of noise — it does not add to our understanding of how to plan a route on a railway network. Notice that the 2-D spaces are not Euclidian either — the exact distances between stations is again noise that does not really help in determining appropriate routes: what is really needed are the stations (where one can get on/off), the connections between lines, and the number of hops (sufficient proxy for travel duration).
[ This is a reply to DJG, Reality Czar above. I do not know why some replies are not linked to the appropriate comment. ]
[ This is a reply to DJG, Reality Czar above. I do not know why some replies are not linked to the appropriate comment. ]
His comment was last on the page, and you just started typing in the box without clicking on Reply, I presume.
“…you just started typing in the box without clicking on Reply, I presume.”
It might be that but not necessarily that. See my theory here.
Your theory is the same, just with more words used. ;-)
BTW, it’s not a quirk (bug), but a feature. This site is oldschool, without all them modern bells & whistles that stress computer way too much (WYSIWYG text editing, emojis, integration with Facebok/TikTok/toaster, and whatnot). There is one text input box on page, and it gets moved around as one clicks on Reply for differen posts, or Cancel reply. It would be indeed helpful if it was more obvious that one is making new comment instead of replying to the last one. There are other quirks though (like deleted post reappearing, or some posts not going to moderation queue but straight to the void, because they have triggered some anti-spam mechanism).
“There is one text input box on page, and it gets moved around as one clicks on Reply for different posts, or Cancel reply.”
Yeah, I realized that is a much more succinct way of putting it after I wrote my far more prolix one. Thanks for the much more concise summary!
It would obviously be better if the Delete feature worked because, well, it should, but also, specifically in this context, if someone hits Post Comment* and then immediately realizes their reply is in the wrong place, there’s nothing they can do about it. (I now check obsessively that my reply is, in fact, a reply to that person.)
*That replies are referred to as “comments” and a new comment is labeled as “Leave a reply” doesn’t help.
Nothing wrong with having a map on your mobile rather than paper but why use GPS and ask it to choose your route? Just read the map!
Vao, what you describe is the connectivity graph of the network. Make it approximately with the same geometry as the geographical map and it is very useful.
I find the NY subway very hard to understand because the plan is so literal rather than functional.
‘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.”
Surpasses the desperation of a $5 crack ho’.
I think Trump has huge debate headwinds. The last time Trump debated someone who wasn’t his own age (or older!) was March 30, 2016, a long time in politics as one might say. The side-by-side contrast will be stark. It’s possible that all Harris will have to do is speak in complete sentences and she will “win”.
Also, fascinating detail about the power bases inside the Harris campaign, thanks for sharing. I look forward to some interesting books coming out after the fact, especially if they pull this off.
I have a more important question: whose mind is going to be changed by this alleged debate? Is there anything either candidate can do to win over undecideds or lose the committed?
If it was Biden sure, but Kamala is still a blank slate and I expect this will be her debut for a lot of people. Amazing how invisible a Vice President can be.
> whose mind is going to be changed by this alleged debate
That depends!
A lot of minds were certainly changed by the last one.
Per NC standard advice I told my spouse that Kamala would have to “earn my vote”, knowing full well she will not.
At the same time, Harris has her own issues.
Her recent “conversation” on CNN with Bash was a disaster even though it was very, very favorable to her. And her campaign appears to be getting more testy as time goes on – the pressure is ramping up as people are getting a bit tired of her dodging the voters.
To be clear, I have no idea who will win the debate. But both Harris and Trump have serious issues going into this and I see no clear advantage for either candidate.
Also, I am not about to allow a principal member of an administration which to me has been impossibly antagonistic in foreign affairs to win my support without an extensive justification or promise of pronounced change in policy.
Would you actually believe an extensive justification or a promise of pronounced policy change???!!!! It seems to work much better to look at what a politician has done, or what has gone on under his/her watch, and to assume that it will continue. Since the donors are don’t change that fast.
“Would you actually believe an extensive justification or a promise of pronounced policy change?”
A fine question. I am being quite naive and thank you for showing me so.
That is my thinking as well; this feels like a possible own-goal for Trump, with Kamala having this opportunity to re-define herself and whatever her positions are of late on the national stage in a debate where she’s much younger than Trump. I guess we’ll see what happens.
> I guess we’ll see what happens.
If Kamala is programmed well, she might come out of the box hard and throw Trump off-balance (doing the prosecutor schtick). I really question her endurance for the entire match. But first impressions count (“I’ve seen enough….”).
>I’m not an expert in any form of cooking — except that when anybody says “I am not lying to you”……
I’ve often wondered, are they trying to convince me, or themselves? And why do you feel the need to tell me how honest you are? Or how good you are at your job? Or how much you know about something? Or how tough you are?
Shouldn’t others do the talking for you?
“To be frank….”
“Quite honestly…”
“To tell you how I see things…”
“I am not lying to you…”
all imply that one was not frank, honest, speaking one’s mind, or telling the truth before.
“Never eat at a place called ‘Mom’s”
You can trust me, I’m not like the others.
Fear and Loathing?
The first three are all finely tuned British English phrases on the escalation path from speaking like a Japanese to speaking like an American. :-)
First, to tell you how I see things: I have a different point of view and you are failing to acknowledge this
Second, quite honestly: I think you are in bad faith and I am running out of patience
Third, to be frank: Fight! (Although probably just a prelude to stating something in four letter words).
I am not lying to you is the odd one out. Simply weird, has the reverse effect.
My pet Kamala verbal tic is “Let me be clear”. For someone that is world famous for her word salad that might be an obvious choice, but it only manages to underscore how unclear she usually manages to be.
Biden used that ‘Let me be clear’ verbal tic too a coupla years ago. Back about 2019-2020 he often said it.
Nixon often said things like that. ” Let me just make one thing perfectly clear.”
” Let me just say this about that.” etc.
Longer quote for the TV. By Carter, the media were cutting him off in mid phrase and telling us about it.
British pols have been obsessed for years with variations of “let me be clear” and “we’ve been absolutely clear that…”
At least since Cameron. Grinds my gears something awful.
And of course Obama loved to be clear
Maybe Harris’s “Let me be clear” is actually a request to her own subconscious or a prayer to the gods? Similar to “I must , I must, I must increase my bust”.
“Let me be clear” and “Let me be perfectly clear” were Nixonisms. His personators would salt their skits with it.
The fact is . . . “
“I am not a crook.”
re: purple stones
In Yellow Springs OH there is or was an artist who would paint on small polished rocks and then leave them around town. I had one for years but I think got left behind two moves ago. No identifying marks on the stones but I’m sure people go into buy mode when they see them again at her booth at art fairs.
If I were a terrorist, I would take something evocative of a horror trope like a Jason mask and I would start leaving them all over the country to rattle the natives. Purple stones? Not very threatening. But if it was somehow conveyed to the general public that small green stickers were support for Jill Stein and suddenly there were small green stickers on everything, well that would be a moment, hopefully triggering.
Not premade, just green and adhesive. A roll of green painters tape could decorate a small town (while being easily removable). And then one day you see Jill Stein on the news and she’s wearing a little ragged green sticker. Getting tens of thousands of people to green tape America is the easy part. Getting Jill Stein on the news? that’ll be harder.
Now that I think of it, the purple stones and the polished rocks remind me of Toynbee Tiles in Philly. Maybe there should be more Toynbee tiles!
Love the green stickers idea!
“Getting Jill Stein on the news?”
When she ran in 2012 she was interviewed on CNN. The segment started with a casual looking photo of Roseanne Barr (longish hair, some kind of patterned shirt), who was also running for the Green Party nomination, and a quote in support of tuition free college. Then Jill Stein comes on live, impeccable in a business suit, perfect haircut and she’s asked her position on tuition free college. I’m thinking oh, I know how the interviewer plans to frame this: 2 crazy ladies talking about free stuff. If you’ve heard Stein speak, she speaks very rapidly and in a very organized, content rich way. She gives a coherent reply on tuition-free college and moves on easily to talking about her other policies. After that she owned the interview. It was great – making it apparently both the beginning and the end of mainstream interest in interviewing her.
“Getting Jill Stein on the news? that’ll be harder.”
If the Democratic Party is on their game I foresee Stein being in the news either this evening or tomorrow for another ballot access challenge here in Georgia. There are two Green parties here; one is a state accredited political body with certified electors, the other is not.
Guess which one the Stein campaign chose to go with.
Annnnnd, there it is!
https://x.com/DrJillStein/status/1831033743148036601?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
For rattling the natives, maybe it’s time for another evil clown panic. With two evil clowns as the Blue and Red presidential candidates, it would be highly appropriate.
The death squads we backed in Central America left white hand prints painted on village houses with the slogan;
Jesus is coming.
Matt Taibbi’s latest. no paywall.
Come to My Speech in Defense of the First Amendment in Washington on Sunday, September 29th: “Rescue the Republic”
On the DC mall amid speakers like Russell Brand, Tulsi Gabbard, and Jimmy Dore, I’ll be joining a defense of civil liberties. My prize assignment? The First Amendment
https://www.racket.news/p/come-to-my-speech-in-defense-of-the
I too saw this Flora. I can’t help but think we are really in for it surveillance- and suppression-wise under another Blue regime. I think Jonathan Turley would agree. I mean IRS banging on Taibbi’s door? What have we become?
AND these recommended 100 min. between
Taibbi/Kern
“ATW Live on Monday 9/2/2024”
Some obvious but very good points scattered across the entire show:
free speech
https://rumble.com/v5dd11h-atw-live-on-monday-922024.html
The two times cited as Jill Stein sticking in the shiv are the same. I presume they aren’t supposed to be. What’s the other link?
Sorry for the duplication; it looked like my comment above had disappeared (and no 5-minute editing opportunity had popped up), so I typed in another one as shown below. I’m okay with either one being removed — or even both — as long as we get to drink in the sight of the second Stein skewer.
The two links described as Jill Stein sticking in the shiv are the same. The first one’s pretty good — please let us see the other one.
Thank you!
Real Clear swing chart.
Bloomberg is always the outlier for Harris in the swing polls. Per last Friday, with bb Harris was up 0.25 over the 7 swings, without bb trump was up 0.3. Granted, this might be part of why trump polls under estimate his performance.
Nyt/siena polls are often outliers too, but in both directions, so maybe small sample size.
So small numbers, but likely to be close again.
Regarding questions, I agree trump should ask, ‘are you better off now than 4 years ago’ – but don’t as Harris, she’s way better off now, she’s running for pres, not a bucket of warm spit. The big plane!
Trump should ask that of the working class. Over and over. Once more for the Gipper!
Harris now down slightly on Polymarket (Trump 51 Harris 48). In the past, prediction markets were more accurate than polls. Maybe now they are more gamed, who knows.
I think a lot of people who will vote for trump won’t admit it and the dems assume (in the classic sense of the vernacular) that the fear factor will drive dem votes as in the last election which imo was a classic throw the bums out election, like I was so sick of hearing about trump I hoped sort of that biden would win so they would shut up about it…but no. And now here we are again and the bums are the dems and throwing them out won’t bother me a bit. I still say they both suck, but like with the tpp trump will do things I like just because it p.o.’s the dems so on balance trump is the lesser of two evils. The dems are wasted on meritocrat crack and like all other bullies (you’ll get one increment at a time and like it) they’ll get what they deserve which is a good ass kicking. K oozes disingenuousness. The debate will be informative and there’s surely a lot of rehearsal going on as we read… We’ll see.
I’m predicting stein with a smattering of rfk and cornel will get record numbers.
I welcome the dems derision this time.
You’ll get nothing and like it? Right back atcha.
Maybe it’s because the only “TV” I watch is keeping an eye on what my daughters watch via YT and Roku — so I get to see things targeted to a younger audience. But I’ve seen, many times over, at least the start of an ad where Trump has Reagan ask that big question. (I say “the start” because the girls are both pretty quick with the “Skip” button.)
> But I’ve seen, many times over, at least the start of an ad where Trump has Reagan ask that big question.
Interesting! Are your daughters old enough to vote?
For not-plugged-in readers, Roku is a TV streaming service. This too is interesting, the medium.
The older one turns 10 on Election Day. (November 5 was also Election Day in 2014, so we had to e-mail the City Clerk to ask her to bring us emergency absent-voter ballots in the hospital. It can be useful knowing obscure state laws!) The younger one turned 3 in May and is just starting pre-school (not thrilled about being away from Mommy that long).
I haven’t been keeping track of which channel was on when this ad comes on, but I’d guess it’s most likely Disney+ if/when it’s not YT. If that guess is right, the show would probably be either Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (so the ad buyers could be aiming for nostalgic parents) or — you guessed it — Bluey (because everybody loves Bluey!):
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqR30MH-CZM
Lex Fridman interviews trump. Nothing earth shattering, but I think I did hear him plug for paper ballots.
https://youtu.be/qCbfTN-caFI?si=lPZs6mtDpo_lWvdr
Paper ballots, absentee ballot only for cause, early voting … if you insist .. only in the week before the election. Counted in public. Suck it up people and we can get rid of these digital machines. I, for one, do not trust them.
> I, for one, do not trust them.
You are 100% correct. Digital = hackable. We know this in every other sphere of our lives, so why is it different with voting?
Indeed. I remember the 1997 Blair win when part of the “spectacle” was the media all over the collection of ballot boxes across a constituency (in Sunderland?), watching the rush to get them to the central location, watching the count, wondering if the record would be broken for fastest declaration ever (IIRC it was though it might have been one of Blair’s subsequent victories). But more importantly it was demonstrably accurate.
Everything was utterly transparent. And all using old fashioned pencil and paper ballots. Not a single candidate/party had any grounds to complain. It’s about the only thing we still do right in British democracy.
apologies for not seeing this before posting the same link below.
An hour and four minutes. Try that, Kamala (and savvy programming by the Trump campaign staff).
First thing I see on screen is Lex: “Some people call you a fascist…”
Makes me wonder what Lex asked about Trump’s felony conviction (albeit being appealed). Could illuminate what Trump will say when Kamala goes into prosecutorial mode during the debate.
Idea: trump’s recent pro legal weed thing would fit with a rejoinder to prosecutor more KH of “yeah you locked up loads of black ppl for weed” which used to be a super common criticism of her.
Has anyone posted about the large hotel worker strike that appears to be growing?
I wonder how Kamala will talk about it?
A decline in real estate prices YE GODS! One can only hope. “Worst case scenario” for whom pray tell
Nobody from Naked Capitalism should be patronizing McDonalds anyway, being the informed ones. They give Israeli soldiers free food. That alone should disqualify them from being a lunch choice or any kind of meal choice.
A lot of people don’t like Lex Fridman and a lot of people don’t like Donald trump, for very different reasons, and I was surpised they sat down for an interview. Given Fridman’s laid back, and I think essentially fair, approach it comes off as very different. Some pointed questions but no “gotchas” soTrump mostly puts aside his attack dog style.
A few points:
Trump calls the last election a fraud (aren’t they all?) but admits s he “lost by a whisper.”
Trump talks about the “disaster” in Ukraine but only mentions Israel and the ME in passing and keeps his assumed support for Netanyahu to himself.
He disavows, rather completely, any knowledge about “Project 2025” says he’s not even read it.
He unabashedly affirms support for legalized marijuana and praises, in particular, its medicinal use.
An altogether different Trump than the one we’re used to, I’d say. Worth a listen.
Doesn’t change my vote for Stein in Florida but I had a much easier time listening to the Donald than listening to Harris or Biden. It’s an hour long, check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCbfTN-caFI
> Trump calls the last election a fraud (aren’t they all?) but admits s he “lost by a whisper.”
Took long enough.
> He disavows, rather completely, any knowledge about “Project 2025” says he’s not even read it.
He wouldn’t read it; it’s like a million pages long. More centrally, this was a dumb power grab by Heritage, because it puts Trump in the position of negotiating with himself. What are the deals to be had if it’s all down in black and white? If you take it seriously. In retrospect, Heritage should have focused on the part of the project that was training future Federal workers. But consultants gotta consult, I suppose.
Now if the Democrats did something like this, I’d welcome it. Something to hold them to; actual policies, what a concept, not throwaway platforms. But they are, institutionally, a very different party.
Tokyo subway 3-D map.
As pointed out by DJG Reality Czar, the map is not a 3-D map but some lines drawn by an artist. A real subway line would go up and down like a roller coaster. If it has to go above or below other subway lines it would have to have a real gentle slope over a long distance.