2:00PM Water Cooler 10/11/2024

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Tropical Mockingbird (Mayan), Casa en Cuxtitali, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. “Some of the bird species that I think this individual might have been mimicking in this cut are: Great-tailed Grackle (00:25), parakeet sp. (02:51).” Lots of great ambient sounds too!

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In Case You Might Miss…

1. Friday’s charts: RCP averages (good week for Trump); Covid (XEC has entered the chat).
2. What, again, was Kamala thinking?
3. boeing“>Boeing files unfair labor practice charge with NLRB against machinists (wowsers).

* * *

Look for the Helpers

“Two Cases in Complicity” [New York University Law Review]. “The controlling purpose of this piece is to identify and correct a snag in the way courts distinguish discrete modes of criminality: helping, doing, and trying…. [H]elping gestures are by definition outside the elements of the crime being helped; anyone who fulfills an element of the crime is committing the crime, not helping it…. My proposed fix is to elevate the function of elemental analysis in complicity, in part by reviving an esoteric English doctrine, “joint principality,” which holds that in some instances of group criminality, there is no helping; there is only doing (or trying to do). To absorb this teaching is to better understand not just the relationship between language and the world, but the stakes in mistaking attempted murder for murder. Precisely because in no jurisdiction is attempted murder punished as severely as murder, differentiating between helping, doing, and trying involves making moral—not just semantical—judgments both about what has been done and what to do about it.” • Hmm.

* * *

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

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2024

Less than thirty days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

If you ignore the entire concept of margin of error and go with the narrative, another good week for Trump, especially in MI and PA, tbough not, oddly, in the two hurricane swing states, GA and NC. Of course, we on the outside might as well be examining the entrails of birds when we try to predict what will happen to a subset of voters (undecided; irregular) in a subset of states (swing), and the irregulars especially might as well be quantum foam, but presumably the campaign professionals have better data, and have the situation as under control as it can be _{MR SUBLIMINAL Fooled ya. Kidding!}.

* * *

Kamala (D): “Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer feeds Doritos to left-wing influencer in deeply bizarre ‘communion’ video” [New York Post]. “In the short clip, posted on podcaster Liz Plank’s Instagram account, the lefty influencer was seen on her knees opening her mouth for Whitmer to place Doritos on her tongue.” • Here it is:

NEW: Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer feeds a chip to a begging liberal podcaster on her knees in an effort to get more votes for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

Whitmer joined Canadian feminist Liz Plank for an abortion podcast episode.

The pair released the following video as a… pic.twitter.com/yiSH5hypud

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) October 10, 2024

Leaving the question of why a Canadian podcaster aside_{MR SUBLIMINAL Sacre tabarnak!}, what on earth was Kamala’s campaign thinking? IM Doc posted on this in comments this morning, reading the video as a Communion parody. So much for the Latino vote! Being an Episcopalian — the priest would place the wafer in my hand — that wasn’t my first reading; I saw the video as some sort of bizarre domination/submission ritual* (and so much for those young men, along with every suburban household without a dungeon in the basement). Apparently the sub_{MR SUBLIMINAL snicker}text of the video was — please sit down — industrial policy, specifically the CHIPS act because — follow me closely here — Doritos are chips (and go long Doritos, I suppose). If I were Julie Chávez Rodriguez (campaign manager), Jen O’Malley Dillon (campaign chairwoman), Jeffrey Katzenberg (campaign co-chair), Mitch Landrieu (campaign co-chair), or Cedric Richmond (campaign co-chair), I would be getting Whitmer — also a campaign co-chair (!) — on the phone, to have a full and frank exchange of views. Of course it’s too late, but one might as well vent. NOTE * Pr0nographic in character, with Big Gretch looking into the camera.

Kamala (D): “Whitmer, Shapiro, Evers to launch battleground bus tour promoting Harris” [The Hill]. • Great idea. Will the flaming wreckage of Whitmer’s career fit in one seat? Or will they need two?

Kamala (D): Can’t anyone here play this game?

I told y’all where this was headed. Obama coming out to chastise Black men is a disgusting display of racist paternalism, and it’s unacceptable. None of us should tolerate it. Democrats want to blame everyone but themselves and people who voted FOR Trump. https://t.co/KF6cv7FHI7 https://t.co/N6Cxv4dNPs pic.twitter.com/u7Dpi20bdG

— AshleyStevens (@The_Acumen) October 11, 2024

Kamala (D): “Vice President Kamala Harris on Her Race to the Finish” [Vogue]. Worth reading in full for the atmosphere. I remember, from the movie Shakespeare in Love, a tracking shot that followed Queen Elizabeth: as she processed along, she was always surrounded by a swirl of courtiers doffing their hats and bowing; that must have been all she saw; this article describes a similar milieu. This caught my eye: “I ask what her first call would be on reaching the Oval Office. ‘One of my first calls—outside of family—will be to the team that is working with me on our plan to lower costs for the American people,’ she says. ‘It’s not just about publishing something in a respected journal. It’s not about a speech. It’s literally about, How does this hit the streets? How do people actually feel the work [what work?] in a way that benefits them?’ She says she plans to meet with ‘those who can help us put back in place the freedoms that have been taken away with the Dobbs decision’—the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade—to get Congress to pass a law. ‘That’s going to take some work,’ she says.” • This doesn’t mean anything. There’s nothing here. It comes to pieces in your hand. Anyhow, Vogue? Reaching out to those working class readers, then?

Kamala (D): “Inside the Harris campaign’s ground game” [WaPo]. “Six questions for … Dan Kanninen: We talked with Vice President Kamala Harris’s battleground states director about the campaign’s ground game as early in-person voting starts in the states expected to decide the election.” Kanninen: “We built teams in those battleground states since the beginning of the year, [starting with] serious operatives who’ve won tough races statewide in those states as leaders, and then layering in dozens of senior staff and then hundreds of organizers — now into the thousands. Across the battleground states we currently have 2,500 staff, more than 350 offices. They’ve been engaging hundreds of thousands of volunteers, tens of thousands in each of those battleground states. Last week [they] knocked on a million doors in the battleground states and [we] have continued to ramp [up] our voter contact efforts.” • Pushing a string?

* * *

Trump (R): “Trump’s small-dollar donor fundraising is beset by confusion and fatigue” [Associated Press]. “Republicans also engaged in a hyperaggressive — often combative — style of digital fundraising that is alienating voters, the operatives said. Campaigns and committees often share or rent lists of donors to each other, leading to voters being flooded with similar solicitations that can be confusing. ‘Republican vendors have so mistreated our donors that many grassroots donors don’t want to give to us anymore,’ said John Hall, a Republican fundraising consultant and partner at Apex Strategies. ‘If you make a donation to almost any Republican candidate today, within three weeks you are going to start getting 30-50 text messages from other candidates you have never heard of before.’ Hall’s firm sent surveys to Republican donors earlier this year and found that a majority of those who responded said they continued to receive text message solicitations after they had requested to be removed from a list. ‘Donors feel like they are never thanked, they feel abused, and they don’t know how to get off lists,’ Hall said. ‘This has a chilling effect on everyone’s fundraising.’ Small-dollar donors echoed Hall’s concerns. They told the AP they stopped giving to Trump’s campaign because they were tired of being barraged with solicitations for donations from other Republicans, who presumably got the donor information from the Trump campaign. Others said they were being more careful about their political giving due to financial struggles. ‘I am sick of them asking for money,; said Susan Brito, 51, of Florida, who gave dozens of small donations totaling $69 in 2022 and 2023 but hasn’t contributed this year. ‘I am disabled, you are sending me text, after text, after text.'” • Sounds like Republicans have ten or a hundred Mothership Strategies. Sloppy!

Trump (R): “Fact check: Univision debunks false right-wing claim that Harris used a teleprompter at town hall” [CNN]. “Univision has debunked a viral false claim that Vice President Kamala Harris used a teleprompter during her town hall with the Spanish-language network on Thursday. The false claim generated millions of views on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. It was made by several right-wing commentators with significant followings, including Benny Johnson, Charlie Kirk, Greg Price and Fox News host Sean Hannity. Both the moderator of the town hall, Enrique Acevedo, and the president of Univision News, Daniel Coronell, refuted the claim in their own X posts – noting that the teleprompter that was seen on the broadcast had text in Spanish, not English, and that it was material for Acevedo, not Harris. Acevedo, responding to Johnson’s claim that ‘Univision accidentally broadcast proof that Kamala used a teleprompter at her town hall,’ wrote: ‘The prompter displayed my introduction (in Spanish) and then it switched to a timer. Any claim to the contrary is simply untrue.’ Coronell, responding to Price’s claim that ‘Kamala is using a teleprompter during her ‘town hall’ with Univision,’ wrote: ‘That’s not true. The teleprompter that displays a text written in Spanish was a support element for the town hall moderator. I can tell you this with first-hand knowledge because I was in charge of the television program.'” • I almost ran Benny Johnson’s clip before I checked the text on the Teleprompter screen and couldn’t read it. And presumably Johnson et al. would have enlarged the text had it supported his talking point. So there you are. Of course, the Democrat’s propagated the false story about Vance having congress with a couch, but when the source (both editions of Vance’s book) was checked, the story was debunked. Distributing a real clip with a false implication seems more insidious to me.

Democrats en Déshabillé

“I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is” [The Atlantic]. Lead sentence: “The truth is, it’s getting harder to describe the extent to which a meaningful percentage of Americans have dissociated from reality.” And: “The world feels dark; for many people, it’s tempting to meet that with a retreat into the delusion that they’ve got everything figured out, that the powers that be have conspired against them directly. But in turning away, they exacerbate a crisis that has characterized the Trump era, one that will reverberate to Election Day and beyond. Americans are divided not just by political beliefs but by whether they believe in a shared reality—or desire one at all.” • This is especially rich, since the editor the The Atlantic is one David Frum, of the Bush Administration that propagated the WMDs narrative on the way to the Iraq War debacle, the misinformation campaign that I came to political consciousness with. The Atlantic — the house of ill-fame in which the unholy marriage of liberal Democrats and Bush Republicans was consummated — was also assiduous in propagating RussiaGate. And yet these people prate about “shared reality”!

Syndemics

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

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Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).

Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!

Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); 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, KidDoc, 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!

* * *

You do you:

Six people in California now either confirmed or suspected to have bird flu.

So the california department of public health are telling you to *protect yourself*.

But they don't tell you how.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/GPwD7AjBJf

— tern (@1goodtern) October 11, 2024

Maskstravaganza

Vaccines: Covid

Infection: H5N1

Bird flu also rolling along quite nicely:

6 weeks ago yesterday California reported its first 3 #H5N1 #birdflu infected dairy herds. Today @USDA confirmed CA's 100th infected herd.
1 out of every 11 dairy herds in CA is infected with H5 now. Staggering speed of spread.
How did this happen?https://t.co/2BioBG0wUw pic.twitter.com/VXzs4i2sjy

— Helen Branswell 🇨🇦 (@HelenBranswell) October 11, 2024

Sequelae: Covid

“Vascular Pathogenesis in Acute and Long COVID: Current Insights and Therapeutic Outlook” [Thieme]. From the Abstract: “Long coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)… manifests with a broad spectrum of relapsing and remitting or persistent symptoms as well as varied levels of organ damage, which may be asymptomatic or present as acute events such as heart attacks or strokes and recurrent infections, hinting at complex underlying pathogenic mechanisms. Central to these symptoms is vascular dysfunction rooted in thrombotic endothelialitis. We review the scientific evidence that widespread endothelial dysfunction (ED) leads to chronic symptomatology. We briefly examine the molecular pathways contributing to endothelial pathology and provide a detailed analysis of how these cellular processes underpin the clinical picture…. Overall, we emphasize the critical role of cellular health in managing Long COVID and highlight the need for early intervention to prevent long-term vascular and cellular dysfunction.” • Since I didn’t know the source, I double-checked it with KLG, and he gave it the thumbs-up: “Figure 1 is a work of art.” So here it is:

Social Norming

As usual with Tern, 10 = 50:

1
"I'm done with Covid now"
=
"I have a short attention span / compassion span"

I reply:
"Covid isn't done with you.
It's going to keep infecting you repeatedly until you die."

— tern (@1goodtern) October 10, 2024

#49 – #50:

50
"We're going to put a wall of protection around the vulnerable"
=
"I'm going to chuck billions of pounds of easy money to my friends and other random rich people"

I reply:
"You belong in jail."

— tern (@1goodtern) October 10, 2024

* * *

Lambert here: XEC moving along smartly in the national variant chart, but doesn’t appear at all in the traveler’s variant chart. Odd!

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC October 5	Last Week[2] CDC (until next week):
Variants★ [3] CDC October 12	★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC October 5
Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data October 10:	★ National [6] CDC September 21:
Positivity
National[7] Walgreens October 7:	Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic October 5:
Travelers Data
★ Positivity[9] CDC September 16:	Variants[10] ★CDC September 16:
Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC September 28:	Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC September 28:

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) Still some hot spots, but I can’t draw circles around entire regions this week. Good news!

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. XEC has entered the chat.

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

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely down.

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). I see the “everything in greenish pastels” crowd has gotten to this chart.

[7] (Walgreens) Big drop continues!

[8] (Cleveland) Dropping.

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up, though lagged.

[10] (Travelers: Variants).

[11] Deaths low, positivity down.

[12] Deaths low, ED down.

Stats Watch

Inflation: “United States Producer Prices” [Trading Economics]. “Producer Prices in the United States increased to 145.17 points in September from 145.10 points in August of 2024. Producer Prices in the United States averaged 117.54 points from 2009 until 2024, reaching an all time high of 145.17 points in September of 2024.”

* * *

Manufacturing: “Boeing files unfair labor practice charge against striking union” [Reuters]. “Boeing said late on Thursday it had filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board against the union representing its striking U.S. West Coast factory workers, accusing the leaders of not bargaining in good faith…. Boeing said on Tuesday it had withdrawn its latest pay offer to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers after two days of talks with federal mediators, citing the union’s refusal to seriously consider its proposals. In a filing with the NLRB, Boeing also accused the union’s leaders of misrepresenting the terms of Boeing’s offer to its members and of not bringing negotiators to the table with authority to make a deal. Boeing said the union had engaged in a ‘pattern of bad faith bargaining’ and its ‘public narrative is misleading and making it difficult to find a solution for our employees.'” Stuck pig squeals. More: “The union said on Tuesday that Boeing was ‘hell-bent’ about sticking to its ‘best and final’ proposal of a 30% wage increase over four years that it offered last month after the strike began. The union had declined to put the proposal to its members for a vote and said this week it planned a new survey of members. Boeing noted the union later acknowledged the planemaker had improved its offer, with IAM 751 president and lead negotiator Jon Holden telling Reuters on Wednesday that the proposed changes were ‘meager.'” • Boeing’s offer didn’t address defined-benefit pensions, requested by workers. And it’s a little rich for Boeing management to whinge about a public narrative when they issued their revised proposal through the press, and not at the negotiating table. Nice guy, that Ortberg fella.

Manufacturing: “Tensions are rising in the Boeing strike after the planemaker filed a complaint against the union” [Business Insider]. “Reinstating the pension plan remains a key issue for many on the picket line — but Boeing’s chief negotiator, Mike Fitzsimmons, told The Seattle Times there is ‘no scenario’ where this will happen. In a statement shared with BI, Boeing said it remains committed to reaching a compromise. ‘The union’s public narrative is misleading and making it difficult to find a solution for our employees,’ it added.”• So what’s wrong with the union’s “public narrative”? They weren’t Fitzsimmons’ stenographers? And their not “your” employees, buddy. Sheesh.

Manufacturing: “FAA’s ‘failing system’ of monitoring Boeing blasted by federal watchdog” [Seattle Times]. “The FAA hasn’t moved to proactively identify risk or demonstrated how it will resolve allegations of undue pressure within Boeing manufacturing, the [the Transportation Department’s inspector general] found. Among the other findings: The FAA doesn’t have an effective system overseeing individual Boeing factories, hasn’t ensured the company has effectively resolved its supplier issues, and hasn’t assessed the effectiveness of Boeing’s safety management system, which focuses on product and workplace safety. ‘By improving its oversight model to better address risk, FAA can help to improve a failing system and restore public trust in the safety of Boeing aircraft,’ the report said. In response, the FAA agreed with the recommendations and pointed to its addition of more safety inspectors in Boeing and Spirit AeroSystems facilities. The agency said it plans to fully implement the inspector general’s recommendations between 2025 and 2028.” • Do I really have to give credit to Buttigeig?

Manufacturing: “Boeing and Airbus have a major headache in common” [Quartz]. “Christian Scherer, head of the commercial airliner division at Airbus, told a gathering of French aerospace journalists that Spirit’s rate of manufacture is ‘not exactly where we would like.’ Airbus is facing pressure to massively increase its airplane deliveries in order to hit its year-end guidance, which it has already had to cut once this year amid supply chain difficulties. When the door plug fell off a Boeing 737 Max 9 in January and triggered a Federal Aviation Administration-imposed throttling of production to address quality control issues, Airbus told investors that it didn’t expect to hit any of its own plane-building roadblocks. But it has — to its customers’ frustration. (Besides the Spirit speed issue, Scherer told the French gaggle that it was also running into delays with engine supplier CFM International… It is especially ironic for Airbus because the window of opportunity that Boeing’s misfortunes opened was due to a fuselage constructed by Spirit, which Boeing spun out in 2005. In order to cut down on so-called ‘traveled work,’ a manufacturing process where plane parts are assembled out-of-order in order to speed completion, Boeing reabsorbed the non-Airbus parts of Spirit in July for $8.3 billion.”

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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 74 Greed (previous close: 70 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 73 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Oct 11 at 1:44:36 PM ET.

Zeitgeist Watch

“Calvin’s Dad Explains the Pre-Color World” [Daring Fireball]. • Please click through, but what a pleasure. Calvin’s Dad was the best bullshit artist ever.

Social Media Watch

“Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms” [Current Opinion in Psychology]. “These online dynamics are amplified by the design features and recommendation algorithms on various platforms. For instance, a recent analysis of the algorithm on Twitter/X found that it prioritizes evocative content. This incentivizes users to create this type of content which can help them build a large following while warping public perceptions of norms. Indeed, people who are focused on gaining social status are the most hostile online. These strivers may further distort norms as they rise in status This is compounded due to the fact that there is often little motivation for someone to post a nuanced or moderate opinion on social media. Moreover, nuanced or moderate posts often risk hostility from more extreme ingroup and outgroup members, especially since such hostility has little cost for the aggressor due to the social distance the online environment affords. Indeed, people who are politically moderate were more likely to report being harassed online, even though they were also less likely to post. People who hold less extreme beliefs have less investment into arguing, and when attacked by people who have more strongly held beliefs, perceive it as more hostile. The fact that people who ‘troll’ other people typically have higher dark triad characteristics also does not encourage nuanced debate.” • Hmm.

“Sex bomb: The collateral damage of OnlyFans’ explosive success” [Reuters]. “OnlyFans and its supporters portray the platform as a safe and empowering outlet for lucrative, socially acceptable sex work. Nurses, teachers, police officers and Olympic athletes have posted racy content in pursuit of extra cash. As OnlyFans takes porn into the mainstream, however, the platform also has generated ripple effects that have upended lives in unexpected and sometimes traumatizing ways. Reuters reported some of the most direct harms in investigations that exposed child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual or “revenge porn” posted on the site. Those findings were drawn from police complaints obtained from more than 250 of the largest U.S. law enforcement agencies. But the files also reveal collateral harms: families torn apart, reputations threatened, finances ruined.” • And that’s before, as is the way with all platforms, enshittification kicks in.

Class Warfare

“Here’s everyone caught in the web of the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs allegations so far” [NPR]. • Disappointing. The closest to an A-lister is Jimmy Iovine.

News of the Wired

“Cincinnati’s Gold Rush Coins, Steeped In Mystery, Are Worth A Fortune Today” [Handeax]. “We know the Cincinnati company headed westward hauling a machine for striking coins because the diary of one of Doctor Alexander Butler Nixon is preserved at the California State Library in Sacramento. According to that diary, the Cincinnati company ironically realized, once they were on the dusty trail, that they were too well equipped. John Phillip Reid, in a 1976 article for the Hastings Law Journal, described the dilemma: ‘Before reaching Fort Kearney in Nebraska the members of the Cincinnati company had discovered that their wealth was not a source of strength. It was instead a source of disharmony, dissension, and division.'” • Hmm. I’m picturing a survivalist with a machine for striking coins in their basement…

“A language of beautiful impurity” [Wrong Side of History]. “What [English] would look like if Harold II had not died at the famous (breme) battle (gouth) of Hastings – and English had not undergone Frenchification following the Norman Conquest: In this world, lamentation is sorrowword, unanimous becomes sameheart and acceptable is replaced with thankworthy. The US Declaration of Independence would be the ‘Forthspell of Selfdom’ while Alcoholics Anonymous renamed as The Unnamed Overdrinkers.• I rather like “The Unnamed Overdrinkers” (even if anonymous means I don’t choose to give me name, not that I don’t have one). Doubtless examples could be multiplied.

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Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From SD:

SD writes: “Taken a few days ago in Imlaystown, NJ. The sunflowers were full of honeybees preparing for colder days to come.”

* * *

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