By Lambert Strether of Corrente
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Bird Song of the Day
Gray Catbird, Heckscher SP, East Islip, Suffolk, New York, United States. “Singing from a small wooded area near a marsh.”
In Case You Might Miss…
- Kamala’s Democrat prep.
- Collard greens and code switching..
- Clean air in the schools? Lol no..
- H5N1 reassortment in Cambodia.
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.
* * * Kamala (D): “Kamala Harris goes to ‘debate camp’: Insiders reveal where VP’s preparation is already going ‘sideways’ as she gets ready for primetime Trump showdown” [Daily Mail]. “Sources close to the Harris team tell NOTUS that Harris is a little rusty on the debate stage as ‘strategy sessions have careened sideways’ when Harris ‘focused too narrowly on minute details, effectively trailing the sessions.’… Despite her willingness to debate, Harris and her team are still trying to negotiate the rules of the debate with ABC News, according to a Harris campaign source speaking to NBC News.” Still?! More: “Trump and his team anticipate that Harris is preparing to interrupt him to try and ‘fact check’ his statements. The former president, however, is aware of Harris and her propensity to get lost into so-called ‘word salads’ while speaking publicly. ‘She has bad moments. The way she talks,’ Trump told broadcaster Tucker Carlson in a recent interview, imitating comments the vice president made about school buses. ‘It’s weird. The whole thing is weird.'” • Harris: “Who doesn’t love a yellow school bus, right? Can you raise your hand if you love a yellow school bus? Many of us went to school on the yellow school bus, right? It’s part of our experience growing up. It’s part of a nostalgia, a memory of the excitement and joy of going to school to be with your favorite teacher, to be with your best friends and to learn. The school bus takes us there.” It’s true that “It’s part of a nostalgia” isn’t something a native English speaker would say, but it’s the condescension of “Raise your hands” that gets me. Here’s the video:
The audience, presumably, is adult. Also, the hand gestures.
Kamala (D): “How Kamala Harris Plans to Lock In for Debate Prep in Pennsylvania” [NOTUS]. “In conversations with nearly a dozen people involved with or aware of the preparations, a set of goals emerged for the next week. The campaign is planning to tune out as much of the outside noise as possible to lock her in, aware of Harris’ relative rust as a debater and her tendency to overprepare and fixate on the details.” And: “[S]he’s once again using notecards as part of her prep, a second person familiar with the preparations told NOTUS, a habit they believe she picked up during her law school days.” I would say the habit came from college debate, in which Harris participated. More: “Allies say Harris has had to defend her ideas inside the White House over the last three years, preparing her in some ways for this moment. But Harris is, for all intents and purposes, an out-of-practice debater with people who aren’t her colleagues. Next week’s debate will come just a month shy of four years since she debated Vice President Mike Pence in Utah. For that, aides holed up in a hotel in Salt Lake City days before the debate, as she used index cards to work through talking points — including the now-famous “I’m speaking” line, which one person involved in the session said was a crowdsourced suggestion.” • Hmm. She recycled “I’m speaking,” then. That didn’t go so well. Interestingly, in neither of these two articles to we see any suggestion that Kamala would play the prosecutor (“Why am I debating a felon?”). Which seems a very obvious thing for her to do. Why go to all the trouble of doing the lawfare if you’re not going to use it in debate?
* * * Kamala (D): “The White House wants you to know that Harris was on the call” [Politico]. “Name-checking Harris — or any vice president, for that matter — is unusual and suggests an attempt to buttress her credentials as she faces questions about her ability to manage international affairs and confronts an experienced opponent in former President Donald Trump. POLITICO’s review of pool reports, readouts, transcripts of administration briefings and comments by the nation’s top diplomats and military officials found that the administration increased its mentions of Harris in public statements about foreign engagements since July, when Biden announced he would drop out of the presidential election and endorsed his vice president.” • The previous NOTUS article includes this sentence: “[T]he Biden administration is in what they hope to be the last stretch of a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas that might require Harris’ presence in the Situation Room.” Her mere presence…. I know that Harris doing debate prep while a ceasefire deal was being consummated would look bad, but avoiding a bad look seems to be the only reason for her presence.
* * * Kamala (D): “Cooking Collard Greens The Caribbean Way” [Caribbean Pot]. “Collard Green or collards is not native to the Caribbean, so it’s not something we would refer to as being traditional. However, with our love for dasheen bush, spinach, Jamaican callaloo (chorai), Bok Choi and just about every other green there is, it’s natural that collards will find a loving home in my kitchen.” • So, wherever Kamala learned to cook collard greens — Montreal? Her sorority? — it’s unlikely to be a family tradition (not on her Jamaican father’s side, and certainly not on her Indian mother’s side).
Kamala (D): And code switching:
One of my favorite accounts, on Twitter since 2011. In general, very level-headed.
* * * Trump (R): “Donald Trump Interview” (video) [Lex Fridman, YouTube (outside observer)]. • Smart move by Trump campaign staff:
Trump (R): “Questions surrounding Trump’s mental acuity are a real 2024 story” [MSNBC]. “The words below were taken verbatim from a campaign speech” [and they’re an especially dense example of free-form riffing]. “Trump’s asides stack atop each other with such density that it’s dizzying for even professional political observers to discern what he’s trying to get at…. Trump’s speeches seem to be growing more discursive and difficult to comprehend by the day. Those speeches are making it hard, if not impossible, for people listening to them to understand what he wants to do with his power in office, and they’re reportedly turning off voters. They’re also raising questions over whether the chaos he would sow in office would be even less intentional than it was last time. Trump’s deteriorating [asserted, not shown] ability to clearly communicate is a consequential feature of his 2024 candidacy. That deterioration may not have been as salient when Trump, 78, had 81-year-old President Joe Biden as an opponent. But it’s all the more clear as he now faces off against 59-year-old Vice President Kamala Harris. Questions about Biden’s mental acuity were rightly raised in this election cycle. Questions about Trump’s mental acuity should be raised, too.” • I doubt this will stick, though of course the Democrats are trying it. Trump did fine in debate when he knocked Biden out of the race. Is there any sign of “deterioration” in the hour-long interview with Fridman? I don’t have time to listen to it, but I’m guessing no, because otherwise the memes would already be out.
* * * MI: “CAIR 2024 Election Survey 0f Muslim Voters” [CAIR]. “As the 2024 national general election approaches, America’s estimated 2.5 million Muslim voters are positioned to once again play a crucial role in shaping the political landscape. With their significant presence in key swing states, Muslim voters have the potential to influence the outcomes of not only the presidential race but also numerous congressional, state, and local elections.” • Handy chart:
PA: “Taking the pulse of Pennsylvania’s Trump country, from Amish region to Gettysburg” [USA Today]. “While the election may be decided in the suburbs of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, where the majority of the state’s residents live, central Pennsylvania plays a role. It is traditionally red, with small pockets of blue in the cities, but the votes that come from the small businesspeople and churchgoers of the middle of the state – often referred to derisively as [deplorable] ‘Pennsyltucky’ – could make a difference in a state where the final results could be decided by a few thousand votes.” • Worth a read. And from the York Daily Record, so kudos to USA Today. (Pennsylvania still has a lot of smallish newspapers, as we saw with the reporting from Butler.)
* * * * * * * * *
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
“Kids Are Headed Back to School. Are They Breathing Clean Air?” [Scientific American]. Lol no. “Across the U.S., kids are headed back to their classrooms—just as COVID nears a fresh, late-summer peak. Somehow, four years into a viral pandemic that everyone now knows spreads through the air, most schools have done little to nothing to make sure their students will breathe safely. We—and especially our children—should be able to walk into a store or a gym or a school and assume the air is clean to breathe. Like water from the faucet, regulations should ensure our air is safe. ‘Air is tricky. You can choose to not partake of the water or the snacks on the table, but you can’t just abstain from breathing,’ notes Gigi Gronvall, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and an author of a 2021 report on the benefits of improving ventilation in schools.” • Somehow. Some schools are doing just fine, though!
Transmission: H5N1
“Cambodia’s recent H5N1 case involved novel reassortant” [Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy]. “Sequencing of the patient’s virus sample at the Pasteur Institute in Cambodia found that the hemagglutinin gene from the 2.3.2.1c clade that has been circulating in Cambodia and Southeast Asia since 2013. The internal genes, however, belonged to the newer 2.3.4.4b, which is circulating globally. ‘This novel reassortant influenza A(H5N1) virus has been detected in human cases reported in Cambodia since late 2023,’ the WHO said. Cambodian health officials have tracked and monitored the [patient’s] contacts, and no related cases have been found. The country has reported an uptick in human H5N1 infections since 2023, reporting 6 cases last year and 10 this year, of which 2 were fatal. In April, animal health officials in Vietnam and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) warned of the new reassortant circulating in chickens and muscovy ducks. The scientists said the virus has been circulating in the Greater Mekong subregion since 2022. Also, they noted that the reassortant had been linked to recent human cases and that the development shows the adaptive capacity of the virus and the risk of new, potentially more virulent strains.” • Musical interlude.
“”Perfect storm” of criminalization: Analyzing mask bans” [The Sick Times]. State by state list. “Most media coverage fails to connect the new wave of mask bans to the ongoing political efforts to minimize COVID-19. Overblown concerns about facial recognition and protestors are only possible with a concurrent effort to downplay the threat of COVID-19 and erase signs of it from public life — now a priority for most mainstream politicians. While the conversation around mask bans has focused on new laws and bills, 21 states and many municipalities have laws banning masks and/or disguises in different settings, which is more than other organizations have reported. Even where these bans have apparent limitations or exemptions, the finer language of the laws leaves all COVID-conscious people vulnerable. And the historic practices of police endanger people even in states with no legal bans…. Historically, mask bans tend to come in waves. This current wave has been led by Republicans, with Democrats following closely behind. While Democrats tend to pay slightly more lip service to health needs, their actions undermine their promises.” Excellent read. But then there’s this: “More broadly, activists need to build solidarity among all of the groups affected by mask bans, including disabled people, pro-Palestine protesters, religious minorities, people of color, and LGBTQ+ people.” • AND THE ENTIRE WORKING CLASS, FSS. You can’t even talk about, say, unionized HCWs betrayed by their nationals using idpol as a framework. Get a grip, people!
Vaccines: Covid
“Trying to time your vaccines just right? There are no easy answers, but here are some factors to consider” [Helen Branswell, STAT]. “The standard advice — get your shots, get them at the same time, don’t wait too long to roll up your sleeves — is designed to maximize convenience and compliance, in a way that is manageable for the delivery enterprise, say experts familiar with the enormous effort it takes to turn vaccines into vaccinations. But is it the right approach for you? Possibly not, though unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer here. Because while we talk about cold and flu season, in reality these viruses strike at different times in different years, and they do not give us advance notice of their plans. The immunity we develop from the available vaccines — at least those for Covid and flu — erodes in the months after we get them. If flu season takes off in January, a shot administered in August won’t have the impact of a shot received in late October.” • This is CDC’s advice, and the assumption is that Covid is seasonal, when in fact it’s driven by people sharing air: Social Relations. Trivially, this means not “Summer” but “Vacation Travel” season, not “Fall,” but “Back to School” season, and not “Winter,” but “Holiday” season. Less trivial, “Mobility” (especially air travel) is constant and year-round, and that’s what got us the first time, as Taleb et al. presciently showed in January 2020.
Denial and Cope
“As COVID Surges, the High Price of Viral Denial” [The Tyee]. Canada. “The subject of how to respond to a slow burn pandemic remains taboo because most public health officials have already declared the emergency over. They’ve also stopped collecting critical data. COVID-19 deaths in Canada are not reported in a readily publicly accessible fashion. And most of the media pretends that an immune-destabilizing virus that can harm the functioning of your organs including your brain has little more import than a benign cold. As a consequence, authorities can’t now turn around and admit to the breadth of their mistake, let alone acknowledge the growing disorder in public health. Nor do they dare collect critical data documenting the scale of their errors including the relentless march of long COVID…. Here, then, is where we’ve arrived. We’ve entered a vicious cycle where more infections generate more COVID variants. The new variants have become more immune evasive. At the same time society has generally abandoned masks, testing and basic public health messages. We could slow and suppress the cycle by facing the challenge squarely. For example, by cleaning dirty air the way we once tackled the disease-ridden spectre of cholera-infested water. But public health officials are afraid to talk about clean air let alone the obvious: avoiding infection. Beating back COVID requires hard work, communal wisdom and clear policies that markedly reduce the level of infection in society. To date we have chosen viral denial, dirty air and a triumphant reign for long COVID.” • Excellent article, worth reading in full.
Prevention
“Newly Discovered Antibody Protects Against All COVID-19 Variants” (press release) [University of Texas at Austin]. “As part of a new study on hybrid immunity to the virus, the large, multi-institution research team led by The University of Texas at Austin discovered and isolated a broadly neutralizing plasma antibody, called SC27, from a single patient. Using technology developed over several years of research into antibody response, the team led by UT engineers and scientists obtained the exact molecular sequence of the antibody, opening the possibility of manufacturing it on a larger scale for future treatments… During the more than four years since the discovery of COVID-19, the virus that causes it has rapidly evolved. Each new variant has displayed different characteristics, many of which made them more resistant to vaccines and other treatments. Protective antibodies bind to a part of the virus called the spike protein that acts as an anchor point for the virus to attach to and infect the cells in the body. By blocking the spike protein, the antibodies prevent this interaction and, therefore, also prevent infection. SC27 recognized the different characteristics of the spike proteins in the many COVID variants. Fellow UT researchers, who were the first to decode the structure of the original spike protein and paved the way for vaccines and other treatments, verified SC27’s capabilities.” • Funded by the NIH and the Gates Foundation, among others. Here is the article from which the press release is derived–
“Hybrid immunity to SARS-CoV-2 arises from serological recall of IgG antibodies distinctly imprinted by infection or vaccination” [Cell]. “Our findings provide a detailed molecular definition of immunological imprinting and show that vaccination can produce class 1/4 (SC27-like) IgG antibodies circulating in the blood.” • That’s the best I can do, sorry; the rest of the article might as well be written in Martian, for me. Perhaps some kind reader will translate. I do note, however, that the article is based on data from 6 (six) donors; the Ns seem to be for lineages, not donors.
Elite Maleficence
“Simple measures lessen hospital-acquired COVID-19 infections” [Burnet]. Australia. “In a new study published in the Journal of Hospital Infections, Burnet researchers found simple infection control measures could save lives and reduce costs for hospitals. These measures include testing patients for COVID-19 on admission, requiring staff to wear N95 masks in clinical areas and using Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) or Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests to prevent transmissions. One of the paper’s lead authors, Burnet Associate Professor Nick Scott, said on average, 15-25% of patients who tested positive for COVID-19 in hospital had contracted the virus after being admitted.” • But HICPAC would prefer that hospitals be death traps so, no N95s. Baggy blues only, if that!
| 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
“United States Factory Orders” [Trading Economics]. “New orders for US manufactured goods rose by 5% from the previous month to $592.1 billion in July of 2024, rebounding from the 3.3% drop in the previous month, and above market expectations of a 4.7% increase, signaling the resilience of the US economy.”
Tech: Uh oh:
Hachette v. Internet Archive is out: 2d Circuit rejects controlled digital lending theory; IA's use is not transformative; all four fair use factors favor the publishers; the public benefits from shutting down IA's infringement. #copyright https://t.co/m5mDdezoJJ
— Devlin Hartline (@devlinhartline) September 4, 2024
Tech: “Canva says its new AI features justify raising subscription prices by 300%” [Fortune]. “In the U.S., some Canva users will see their Teams subscription price jump in early December from $119.99 per year to $500 per year. The first 12 months will be discounted to $300, but it’s still more than double what users currently pay. Canva Teams will update from $10 per month per person, with a minimum of three people required for that subscription, a Canva spokesperson confirmed. Canva says its price hike is attributable to new features—particularly those that are AI-powered.” • So, lots more AI slop to justify the investment….
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 54 Neutral (previous close: 65 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 56 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Sep 4 at 1:27:54 PM ET.
Back when Intel was hot:
Navajo weaving of an Intel Pentium, 1994 pic.twitter.com/gQwNnoCcP9
— Daniel Feldman (@d_feldman) September 2, 2024
“Thousands of hotel workers continue nationwide strike on Labor Day, demanding higher pay” [NBC]. “Thousands of workers at 25 hotels across the country remained on strike for a second day Monday, demanding higher pay and the reversal of pandemic-era cuts, with members in more cities expected to join the strike. On Sunday, around 10,000 hotel workers walked off the job, kicking off the strike during the busy Labor Day weekend at 25 hotels in eight cities, including San Diego, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston and Honolulu. The workers are represented by the UNITE HERE union and work for the Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt hotel chains….. Roughly half of those on strike, about 5,000, are from Honolulu, The Associated Press reported…. UNITE HERE says strikes have been authorized and could begin soon in other cities, including Baltimore; New Haven, Connecticut; Oakland, California; and Providence, Rhode Island…. The union said similar strikes led to contracts last year for Los Angeles hotel workers and Detroit casino workers.”
“Our Animals, Ourselves” [Lux Magazine]. “Conservatives are terrified by the prospect of a society that truly values and decommodifies (non-fetal) life, which is why they promote an image of flesh-consuming masculinity. Unfortunately, it seems many socialists are not so different. Leftists rarely engage with the myriad problems of animal agriculture, and are often dismissive or contemptuous of those who do. In this, their views are utterly mainstream. A recent episode of the popular lefty podcast Citations Needed began with an analysis of representations of vegetarian characters in popular culture, and the result was hardly flattering — routinely played by women, they tend to be insufferable. Such gendered stereotyping will come as no surprise to readers of Carol Adam’s 1990 book The Sexual Politics of Meat, which weaves accounts of 19th century radicalism and examinations of 20th century marketing techniques into a pathbreaking work of ‘feminist vegetarian critical theory’ (after reading Adams, you will never hear a woman say she felt treated as a ‘piece of meat’ in the same way). Today we are often told that the animal rights movement came into being in the 1970s, birthed by the white male philosopher Peter Singer…. In the English-speaking world, many women abolitionists, suffragettes, and pacifists advocated for vegetarianism and made connections across movements and causes long before Singer… came on the scene, including the courageous abolitionist sisters Sarah and Angelina Grimké, who rejected meat in part because they thought it would hasten the ’emancipation of woman from the toil of the kitchen.’ Singer rode roughshod over these intellectual antecedents by distinguishing his supposedly rational arguments from all the emotional — that is, feminine — advocacy that came before it. In the 1800s, there was even a diagnosis, zoophilpsychosis, for the affliction of being overly concerned for animals, from which women were believed to disproportionately suffer.” • Zoophilpsychosis…
“Raw Milk and the Collapse of Consensus Reality” [Talia Levin, the Sword and the Sandwich]. “Pasteurization changed the dairy game. By 1911, Chicago and New York had mandated milk pasteurization in commercial operations, with other major cities quickly following suit; by 1936, 98% of milk in the United States was pasteurized. This coincided with lots of other medical discoveries and improvements in public hygiene, but the milk-pasteurization push had particularly drastic effects: between 1890 and 1915, infant mortality dropped by more than half. By midcentury, babies drinking swill milk and dying of diarrhea was largely a thing of the past. Most people would agree that this is, generally, a good thing. I personally drink milk daily with my coffee; I am glad it doesn’t come with a side of typhoid. But, of course, we live in a time, and in a society, where not everyone agrees. The movement for “raw” unpasteurized milk has been gathering steam for years, and is currently operating at a fever pitch, between social media influencers and right-wing figures actually affecting state laws. Which is… upsetting, to put it very mildly. Putting pasteurization in historical context makes the movement against it all the more stark: we’re talking about people who, wittingly or not, seek to bring back widespread diphtheria and babies shitting themselves to death. It’s not a good scene.” • No, it’s not. I encountered the idea of raw milk in the context of “local food sovereignty” in Maine, where it buying milk from a stand at a local farm seems reasonable (and resilient, post-collapse). Industrialized production and distribution of raw milk is not that, and it’s an absurdly bad idea. Why not give your children a spoonful of sh*t in their cereal, too? Toughen up their immune systems against cholera, unlike those pansy Victorian sanitary engineers.
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 artinnature:
Artinnature writes: “Bumblebees on Oxydendrum arboreum (Sourwood).”
79 comments
Comments are closed.
> But HICPAC would prefer that hospitals be death traps so, no N95s.
“prefer ,,, death traps” seems a little harsh. Surely they’re just trying to improve cash flow by reducing expenses; negative-for-patients consequences of this are purely incidental rather than intentional. Though, … hospital-acquired infections could increase revenue. /s
Only if “tort reform”,” statutory liability immunity, and tiny-print mandatory arbitration clauses in “informed consent” are broadly effective in favor of increasingly private-equity-owned hospitals.
But hey, those fixes are all relatively cheap, no? How much can it cost to rent a judge or legislator?
RE: Questions surrounding Trump’s mental acuity are a real 2024 story
So they’re going to go with the “I know you are but what am I?” routine. We’ve seen DC denizens described as never outgrowing their high school days, but apparently they still have the early elementary school mentality.
Personally, I found the Trump “shark v. electrocution” schtick absolutely hilarious, not a sign of mental decline, to name just one example. He knows exactly what he’s doing, unlike his former competitor who can’t find his way off a small stage.
This won’t shock anyone, but they must, I guess. There are various reports on Twitter saying pretty much the same thing. I will link to MSNBC & CNN since they are the mouthpiece of the blue party;
MSNBC link to Twitter
What it says;
Tweet from CNN;
CNN link to Twitter
What it says;
Don’t you just love it? Now we’ll get months and months of Russia election interference shrieking by team blue and their joyous followers.
Maybe I’ll take up sniffing glue.
Here is a statement from the Dept. of Justice;
Justice Department Disrupts Covert Russian Government-Sponsored Foreign Malign Influence Operation Targeting Audiences in the United States and Elsewhere
First paragraph;
Fap fap fap fap fap.
Screwball:
All I can say is that those Russians are a problem. The remarkably handsome Dimitri has shown up at my door, offering me two jars of dill pickles and a bottle of cherry liqueur if only I will vote the way that Maria Zacharova tells me to.
What’s a patriot to do?
I smell desperation. These people have not had a new idea in years. The US just interfered in Venezuela’s election. We interfered in Russia’s election in 1996. The US interfered in the Italian and French elections in the 1950s. It is part of the playbook.
I do not believe there is any particular effort from Russia to sway the vote in the US. Why bother? US self-immolation is apparent. Let it play out.
Link below. Saager Enjeti of Breaking points with this tweet;
Saager Tweet
What it says;
LOL! Sounds like the Twitter files all over again. Their base will eat it up.
Disclosure; I used to watch Breaking Points until I couldn’t stand listening to Krystal Ball anymore. That’s the only reason I knew who Saagar was. He should find another gig with someone not so unhinged as Krystal.
In 1996, we didn’t just “interfere” in Russian elwctions. We practically stuffed ballot boxes for Boris Nikolaevich.
Musical interlude:
You’d think they could come up with something original. And I don’t see this as “joy” at all. Or new and fresh. I wonder if it’s the outcome of factional infghting, because I don’t see it as part of an overall messaging strategy.
I’ll hand you the glue. I’ll get the fancy stuff that some in separate tunes. We’re gonna need it.
Wake me up when they raid AIPAC
Now do Israel!
You mean there’s no ‘American Russia Public Affairs Committee’?
Classic case of misdirection when it is really APAIC and the ADL and all of their dual passport lickspittle enforcers right here in the good ol’ USA doing the election interference.
When so many sources of authority and enforcement all converge their policies in a direction which just so happens to coincidentally increase the rate of disease and death and promote the slow-rolling Long Jackpot into the depopulated future, I begin to wonder whether it is all just “purely incidental”. Or at this point, whether any of it is.
It’s very hard to tell, for me. The people who run government, business, academia, media demonstrate their incompetence over and over again. Could they orchestrate a slow burn culling? I’m not sure they can get their s–t together adequately to accomplish that. But when they do screw up, the billionaires who want to cull are happy and let their lackeys know it, so the PMC take self-inflicted wounds (well, not technically self-inflicted) as a win. Competence can only get you into trouble.
Re Kamala and collard greens–so she does go to the grocery store? Or does she have people for that?
I believe Chameleon Kamala is a keeper. And really how in over her head is she? Making public appearances would be a big part of the president’s job. You could feel sorry for anyone being thrust into this position except that she quite clearly thrust herself into it and not in the usual way.
she looks like an amazon fresher to me
Ashley Stevens and code switching and Kamala Harris.
Ashley Stevens is correct. Kamala Harris isn’t code-switching. Kamala Harris speaks standard U.S. English with a California accent and style ( = vague). She likely doesn’t use many black expressions, Howard U notwithstanding. I will assume that she doesn’t know her mother’s Tamil, either.
So we are talking about rhetorical stance — how a speaker presents her information and herself to the public. Again, Ashley Stevens is correct.
Yet what the Democrats are worried about is that Harris and Obama are racial conveniences in a country that is still steeped in racial problems — so conveniently BIPOC, but not black in the traditional U.S. sense, and definitely not descendants of slaves (ADOS) or of free black families from the colonial era. What the Democrats are worried about is the bad faith — Harris and Obama are black as white people define black.
Ahhh, it’s all about the white people and their many perceptions. (Fcebok regularly has people posting about the brownness of Arabs, the beigeyness of Persians, the off-white-ness of Italians — it is a U.S. pastime. And sometimes, Cleopatra is “really black,” at least according to Americans.)
Wikipedia points out that, strictly speaking, code-switching is going from one language or dialect to another. In a region with many linguistic borderlines, like Piedmont, I “code-switch” at the bakery in the morning by using the greeting “Bun di,” which is Piedmontese for Buon dì (northern) or Buon giorno (standard). There is a Torinese expression for How are you?, Com’è?, that makes no sense in standard Italian, yet is well established here. So that’s two or three “code switches,” and I haven’t even had my farinata di ceci yet.
There’s a jargony side to terms like “code switch” and “theory.” People use them without knowing what they mean.
And that still leaves us with the question: Kamala Harris is busy washing collard greens. Why not turnip tops? She’s trying to go all “whoop ass.” What is she trying to do rhetorically? Who does this appeal to?
I may be wading in on something I don’t know really well…but my understanding of code switching is that it is more than knowing and using a local greeting or saying. It is done deliberately by people who want to fit in with whatever group they’re in. It can be accent, language, patois, insider sayings, etc. Code switchers belong to one, or both groups for which they switch quite authentically. I have an unfortunate habit of picking up an accent very easily when exposed to one over a short period of time. I have been accused of imitating people (it is a thing, many people do it) and I can assure you it is generally not appreciated. I am very careful now. That said, I agree with the Tweet – what Kamala is doing is imitation, not code switching and that is why people are taking offence.
I’ve noticed that when I’m talking with someone with a different accent, I have a tendency to start speaking more like my interlocutor. Harris is speaking to people on the stump and there is no back and forth going on when she switches accents, which comes off as extremely inauthentic.
Code switching means you revert to a way of speaking that you naturally use in some situations.
Unless the meaning has changed.
Recently learned that some think “the call is coming from inside the house” is a way to tell someone they’re dealing with BS they made up in their own head.
People who can “code switch” do so naturally: I will respond in English, Korean, or Spanish depending on what language I just heard, and I don’t always even know what language I just spoke (ok, that’s an exaggeration–but I don’t think about what language to respond in, provided that it’s one of these 3–even though my Spanish really sucks now, which makes it even stranger that I would automatically respond in Spanish even now.) If you have to think before responding, you are not really code switching, I think.
> Who does this appeal to?
Wypipo who believe her old campaign brochures that say she’s Black — i.e., posessing social capital as an ADOS (American Descendant of Slavery) — meaning vast swaths of the PMC.
I added a very few orts, including some important Covid links
Re: raw milk
I grew up in a rural area with many small dairy farms (pennsyltucky). There was a very small handful of families who drank raw milk, but they all did so very carefully. You didn’t drink raw milk unless you knew the farm and farmer it came from. You had to have personal knowledge that the farmer was careful about cleanliness, concerned about the health of his cows, and conscientious about the milking and storage process. Even with the care taken, the idea of drinking raw milk was considered odd and generally frowned upon. I doubt any of these families would have consumed raw milk if it was part of a larger distribution process, it was already risky enough as part of a hyper-local small scale operation.
We can buy it here in France but it is clearly marked and we use it generally for making cheese at home. I make some killer yogurt with it.
That said, there’s one local farm that I won’t buy it from because I have doubts about the hygiene there. Plus he had to cull all of his birds due to an outbreak of avian flu a few years ago. And he even had a few ostriches, which was such a sad thing to see get caught in his mismanagement.
>Most people would agree that this is, generally, a good thing. I personally drink milk daily with my coffee; I am glad it doesn’t come with a side of typhoid.
And I prefer my salad from the store doesn’t come with a side of s**t (excuse me, E. coli).
Christ on a bicycle, in this day and age ALL foods have a risk factor.
List for 2024 so far? Glad you asked
https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts
If I read this correctly, as of 8/30/2024 there are 1,119 entries.
Raw milk, yes, know your farmer and that goes for all food you buy locally.
Anecdotally. My daughter has a small raw milk dairy, as well as selling beef, eggs, chicken and pork. To sell the milk to the public ( legally), she needs to be licensed by Vt. As well as regular inspection by the state on the farm, EVERY single quart or half gallon has to be signed for by the buyer and email/contact info that they keep in a database in case they need to reach out to any customer.
Every time they bottle the milk a sample must be kept for a couple months and labeled by date, etc., for tracking.
EVERY two weeks they have to take a sample over to a state testing lab (1-1/2 hours one way, I pity the raw milk farmers doing this at the far corners of the State), so they can test the milk.
Lambert, there’s one possibility for testing for bird flu.
In many cases ( just one possibility ), the bigger danger is, like a lot of foods, poor customer handling after the sale. My daughter has annoyed her share of people that want to buy a half gallon to take home to Ct. or Mass or whatever 3-4 hour drive with no cooler and she says no. Like she says, you have to treat raw milk like it is ice cream. Without the freezing.
As an aside, in Vermont and ( I believe fed law) all milk on all farms that send to a processor gets sampled at the farm before loading into the tanker truck. At the plant it’s tested and whatever higher authority you believe in help the farmer that happened to send milk that may have been bad, say with antibiotics, because at that point it’s been blended with the rest and they are responsible for the cost of the lost milk. Theirs and all of it that’s been blended. Hey, bird flu testing at the plant anyone?
Again, why all the hit pieces on raw milk?
Buy it or don’t. You have a choice.
My apologies for the uncalled for hit piece question on raw milk. Hits a nerve for me as it’s a family thing.
Sometimes I think you could do a food recall of the day, something along the lines of the daily train derailment one commenter was doing not too long ago. Not sure what I just wrote makes sense but here we are.
My comment wasn’t intended to be a “hit piece “, it’s personal to me too, having grown up around it. My sense is that the recent push for raw milk is coming from social media influencers who have little to no practical experience and history with raw milk. It’s trendy and considered unquestionably safe by these social media idiots. The reality is that it can be safe if due care is taken.
Brian H, my apologies if my comment seemed directed at you because it wasn’t.
I found yours to be of great interest because before moving to Vt. in my late teenage years, as a kid I lived in NE PA, where you couldn’t throw a dead cat without it landing on a small dairy farm and lots of them let folks by milk out of their bulk tank, making a little extra cash. And like you said, some farms were certainly cleaner than others. Be well.
All I can say is, I wish we had a responsible source for raw milk where I live.
People have been drinking milk from cows, mares, goats, sheep and asses since time out of mind. Years ago I read a book called the Untold Story of Milk, back in my slow food days. The book provides some reminders of the history of modern milk production, one of the first casualties of industrial farming. The US once had millions of small farms that eventually consolidated under Big Ag with the unsurprising result that cows became sick, just industrial poultry are sick. So pasteurization and are used to ameliorate the method, not the animal. (Worth remembering this dynamic whenever someone suggests putting insects–a snack food in some countries–in *everything* here in the US. But I digress.)
Pasteurized milk has been recalled as have milk products. Veggies such as spinach have been recalled. The solution? Pasteurize spinach instead of clean up the methods used to harvest. I used to belong to a cow share group in NYC and consumed raw milk products for years without a problem, from small farms running a clean operation. Raw milk from small farms isn’t a panacea; I’m just pointing out that Big Ag can use pasteurization etc to hide its own issues.
I don’t care about KH’s collard greens thing.
I care about why she let Steve Mnuchin’s One West Bank off the hook and failed to prosecute him for his bank’s “irregularities” and foreclosure violations in 2013, during the GFC, when she was California’s Attorney General.
But that’s just me. / ;)
She’s about to become President. Once elected, maybe she’ll give Mnuchin some presidential cuff links like Jamie Dimon did for Obama.
What was the name of Nomi Prins’ book? All The President’s Bankers.
When the banks, spooks, and silly con valley own you – there is a payback. That day is about to arrive.
Is she about to become president, though? / ;)
As for the rest, yeah, presidential cuff links for Mnuchin … hahahaha. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.) Hey, maybe Tim Geithner is still available for the Secretary of the Treasury position. / sheesh
Maybe he’s figured out how to use TurboTax by now.
I can’t use my usual name for Turbo Timmy (family blog and all), but I would bet my house, if Kamalabanka gets in, a slippery slimy worm of the same breed will be crawling in the swamp.
Maybe another runway to foam.
> When the banks, spooks, and silly con valley own you – there is a payback. That day is about to arrive.
Not just Kamala. The entire Party. And don’t forget The Lobby!
Kamala received some contributions from Mnuchin and his now ex-wife Heather.
https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?cand=Harris&name=mnuchin
If the small amount contributed before the 2013 date had any influence, the set of contributions totaling less than $10, 000 was a good investment ($6500, $1250, $1000) given the hourly cost of a Mnuchin defense lawyer if Harris’s office had pursued the case.
The money may not be that important, but the access and signaling it provides may be significant.
Perhaps I am illustrating one Californian’s lack of enthusiasm for Harris.
Harris may fit in quite well with some other politicians CA has promoted to national office such as Richard Nixon, tap dancer-actor Senator George Murphy, actor Ronald Reagan, Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein.
Me too! I don’t understand why this isn’t brought up more. All my KH Fan friends haven’t even been exposed to this important fact from her past.
As far as I can tell, the KH people I know don’t care about what she’s done or not done when she was prosecutor and then AG in Cali. I spoke to one fan about her record, and this fan looked me straight in the face and said, “Nobody’s perfect.” Lordy.
A cousin of mine in Maryland said she doesn’t care who is put up for president, she’ll vote Dem to stop Trump.
She will get very close, and is realistically closer than Biden was pre-debate, to being the next President..mostly on the fact that she is not Donald J Trump…
> the KH people I know don’t care
1) Not Trump
2) Black or whatever (Obama II)
3) Youth (proxy for “change,” even though Kamala was part of “the same”)
4) “Joy” (tribalism)
I am not sure how much of this is preaching to the choir. Most of it, I would say….
How is it that Harris could be “rusty” on any topic? She’s been on the inside for almost four years.
What has she done every day?
I can’t believe these are our candidates.
I tripped over that one too. She’s not “rusty”, she clearly never had the chops in the first place.
“How is it that Harris could be “rusty” on any topic? She’s been on the inside for almost four years.”
Astonishing, simply astonishing.
There is a machine, like in the Jetsons, where they spit out these walking talking bullshitting robots. Now the AI people are trying to clone them.
It’s a self eating cycle of idiocy.
Suddenly, article after article is appearing in the major media telling of efforts by Russia, China and Iran to manipulate the coming election for the sake of Donald Trump. As though, Iran’s governors have decided that Trump is needed as President and is mysteriously working to get “us” to agree.
That after the conspiracy theory that Iran has a plot to assassinate Trump…
After Trump assassinated Soleimani, Iran issued an arrest warrant for Trump charging him with murder. Somehow I doubt Iran is eager for Trump to win the election.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53345885
> Suddenly, article after article is appearing in the major media telling of efforts by Russia, China and Iran to manipulate the coming election for the sake of Donald Trump
Trivially, Kamala’s internal polling must be bad (or they would hold back this card)
Less trivially, and as I have been muttering since 2016, we have insensibly allowed the intelligence community to become the arbiters of election legitimacy. Since the intelligence community is an extra-constitutional entity, that can only be a harbinger of a very bad worst case scenario for post-“election interference” (and see the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop for pre- election interference).
Everyone back down home knows the best way to wash collard greens is in the tub with a Commando 450.
Re: Vegans noticing their pop culture representatives are “insufferable women”
As the old saw goes, how do you know someone is a vegan? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
That’s hilarious. And so true. / ;)
I was an ovo-lacto vegetarian for several years, mostly because I love veggies, but I never made a big point about it. At family dinners and holiday feasts if someone asked why I didn’t have any turkey on my plate I’d say I was saving the best for last. And then I would take a small slice of delicious turkey with some cranberry sauce to complement the cook. I wasn’t a vegetarian back then for religious reasons, I just liked veggies.
The holier-than-thou vegans, or any by-choice dietary decision, taken by choice and not for religious reasons, just turn me off. I’d say the same thing about those on a carnivore diet who make a big deal out of not eating veggies. Come on, guys. Nobody cares what your choices are. So long as you don’t make a brow-beating, moralistic crusade about it. / ;)
And also, everyone I know respects religious dietary restrictions; Kosher, Halal, Sufi, fish-on-Fridays, whatever.
Suppose it was normal in human society to eat human flesh. Would it be “holier-than-thou” to reject a big steaming plate full if someone put it in front of you? Or would it totally gross you out? Would you eat a baby’s leg just to be polite to your host? Or would you think your host had horrific dietary choices?
I’m afraid a large fraction of vegetarians and vegans (including my family) see the issue that way.
Whenever a big meat delivery truck drives by, with a huge photo of cow ribs or pig flesh or chicken legs or whatever on the side, I have to look away.
Sorry. Your “suppose” doesn’t move me. At all.
And to be very clear: Do you think most USians would accept cannibalism, even with MSM promotions of same, outside of the most dire circumstances? Think “Donner Party.”
I do not think so. We may differ on the topic. / ;)
Why do you consider the murder and consumption of plant life any less “offensive” then the murder and consumption of animals? I hate to break it to you but you kill just as much as the meat eater.
And as evidence of plant sentience and plant intelligence keeps mounting, it will become harder for vegantarians to claim that plants are not really alive in any meaningfully animal way.
> Suppose it was normal in human society to eat human flesh.
One of the more excellent episodes of “The Last of Us” concerns precisely that theme.
I work at a vegan cafe. I think vegan is pretty main stream or getting there in certain parts of the country. I am in coastal central CA. I do agree that some are waving a flag, saying look at me, I am so cool. This has been going on for about hundred years, as vegan diets were hip in certain segments of society. Read spiritual posers first off.
I do vegetarian and occasionally fish.
More important what comes out of your mouth than what goes in it. So said a wise person.
>the old saw goes, how do you know someone is a vegan? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you.
I had always enjoyed the one, “What’s the hardest thing about being a vegan, vegetarian or gluten free? Keeping it to yourself”
Actually, I have noticed a difference between an older generation of vegetarians and younger vegans, who often do seem to keep it to themselves. The older generation were more likely to want to discuss/debate it, and let you know that meat = murder, etc. I have a younger friend who is vegan, and in polite company he generally tries to just avoid talking about it. If we go out to a casual dinner with others, he usually says he ate earlier and is just drinking, to side-step the whole issue. YMMV.
“Rusty” Harris is Kamala’s alter ego.
Re. Kamala, and avoiding a southern US accent to make you sound more intelligent, Bill Burr does a bit on this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sadjTA5IKCA
That’s the headline, which sounded very exciting.
The opening sentence, however, is:
(my emphasis) This sounds a lot less exciting.
It sounds more exciting than news that Big Pharma has a new batch of ‘vaccines’ they want us all to receive.
Front row kid much? Not everyone felt that way about school, but Kamala clearly is from or learned how to ingratiate herself with the cool kids. She clearly learned how social hierarchies work and how to follow directions dutifully. A great success of our education system! Wait, didn’t she grow up in Canada anyway?
> Front row kid much
Excellent point!
Now here is an interesting story from off the reddit. ” Exclusive: Jeffrey Epstein’s private island circle in ‘blind panic’ as Donald Trump threatens to release names
Donald Trump says he’ll release names of a string of high-profile men – said to include several Brits – who visited sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s Caribbean island if he’s re-elected in November ”
Here is the link.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/epsteins-private-island-circle-blind-33595988
Now . . . if this story is actually true . . . here is what I don’t understand. Why would Trump threaten to release the Epstein Island names if he wins? He has just given the Epstein Islanders a powerful incentive to prevent him from winning or even surviving. Wouldn’t it have been smarter for Trump to threaten to release the Epstein Island names if he loses? That would give the Epstein Islanders a powerful incentive to see that he wins. ( Though it wouldn’t change their incentive to try arranging his non-survival if they have the power to arrange that).
Singapore and mpox: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/mpox-vaccine-for-those-at-high-risk-in-singapore-virus-troublesome-but-can-be-managed-ong-ye-kung
– Vaccine for those at very high risks.
– Contact tracing.
– Recognising that every virus has different characteristics, he said: “Never fall into the trap of fighting the last war.”
– While the mpox clade I virus appears to be more infectious, it is far less transmissible than respiratory viruses such as influenza and Covid-19.
https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/1831345488638976346
“Prank call with Boris Johnson [17 min video]
Johnson thinks he’s talking to Jacques Attali, respected in globalist circles, believing the legend that Henry Kissinger himself confessed to Attali before his death!
Checkpoints:
1:16 – Syria was a failure of the west
2:07 – Nixon was confused about Maritime and Mauritania
4:26 – It was a naive democratic position to motivate Ukraine to fight
6:39 – NATO should not be involved
8:22 – Zelensky would accept to give away the Donbass and Crimea if it was February 2022 again.
9:90 – Preconditions should be a Russian defeat
12:00 – I wish I could go and lead a foreign legion myself.
12:35 – WW3 like escalation if we send boots on the ground
14:19 – Ukraine needs mass mobilization
14:49 – We should remove the range limits and help them to take out the Kerch bridge”
The most telling part for me is when he talks about re-enacting the Battle of Waterloo with Kissinger to find out if the wretched Krauts were really necessary for victory.
The world in the hands of infantiles …
https://youtu.be/sCrDgePJ1QI
7 News Sydney
“Financial experts warn Australia will effectively be a cashless society by 2030, and there’s nothing we can do about it. More businesses are opting to accept digital payments only and the majority of customers are happy to oblige. “
> opting to accept digital payments only
Do we have a Constitutional lawyer in the house? I want a theory whereby if I’m confronted with a demand lke that, I can take out a hammer and smash the digital payment machine into shards.