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):
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
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….
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.
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’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.
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.
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 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.
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.
I added a bit more on the campaigns, and much more on debate tactics (and Kamala). Enjoy!
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).
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!
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. ]
‘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.
>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”
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!
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?