2:00PM Water Cooler 10/2/2024

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1. Mo October 2, 2024 at 2:28 pm

   Regarding Russian math circles, I used to make a similar point when my son was playing high school basketball. Practice was several hours a day, including early mornings Saturdays. Summer and spring leagues in addition to regular season. This just at the local high school, not an elite private school or club team.

   Yet if your child was good in math, there was no one to encourage them to do more math, let alone dozens of extra hours every week, year round. Just the opposite, in fact. Teachers didn’t like having to deal with accelerated math students.

   Where are the priorities?
   1. NYMutza October 2, 2024 at 3:31 pm

      Athletic coaches are often paid way more than teachers and tutors. Americans are really into sports, and now sports betting. Math? Not so much.
      1. ambrit October 3, 2024 at 1:19 am

         And yet sports betting is almost a purely statistical exercise. Some “star” players can shift a game with high visibility plays, but the nuts and bolts of American football is the ‘grunt’ work of blocking and tackling in general. Those aspects of the game are basic, statistically definable pastimes. What do your blocking tackles average in the ten yard dash? How much can they bench press? All basics, and quantifiable.
         Secondly, sports can be rationalized by the “average” person as an enterprise ‘available’ to almost anyone willing to do the physical training. Math? The realm of “eggheads” and “boffins,” those quasi-mythical beings hatched at Muppet Labs. It also helps that these “math circles” seem to be cooperative rather than competitive. Sports? Competitive all the way.
         Stay safe. The odds are with you.
      2. Lambert Strether Post authorOctober 3, 2024 at 4:49 am

         > Americans are really into sports, and now sports betting. Math? Not so much.

         One hand washes the other.
      3. griffen October 3, 2024 at 6:12 am

         Little Johnny gonna be a football star! And now with the proliferation of NIL money and endorsement offers,those amateur “athlete – students” can enroll for a five year educational journey that reaps the benefits ! Added….it’s no longer for the pious and pontificating head ball coaches like a Dabo Swinney reaping a cool coaching contract worth $ 7 million or $ 8 million and upwards.

         Yeah it’s as American as a Chevrolet and apple pie. But yes, the lack of focus on the math and STEM can be startling. Added, with Helene still a disruptive event locally in these Carolina cities ( both states ) the moniker of Cash money is king is highly applicable.
2. Stephen V October 2, 2024 at 2:33 pm

   And surely peeps remember!
   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose
   THE White Rose
   1. NYT_Memes October 2, 2024 at 11:08 pm

      The White Rose. Thank you for remembering. I learned of Sophie Scholl through another website. Real heroes of humanity are never mentioned. My best source for historically significant, whitewashed figures is Jesse’s Cafe Americain. Many historically significant thinkers are quoted there, and he has always been a supporter of Julian Assange and Ed Snowden. Another source where one can retain a humble appreciation of the better side of humanity that we miss so much today.

      https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com
      1. Lambert Strether Post authorOctober 3, 2024 at 7:29 am

         > Jesse’s Cafe Americain

         Another old-school blogger, still standing. Thanks for reminding me!
3. IM Doc October 2, 2024 at 2:42 pm

   With regard to the EPIC systems article above…………….

   And in an even more sinister twist……

   I have heard this same story from colleagues in every time zone so I am pretty sure this is coming for me as well.

   Much ballyhoed by our Star Trek tech loving betters in medicine the past 6-12 months – has been the introduction of AI into the patient visit. “We are doing this for the wellness and mental health of our doctors” they proclaimed at the beginnning.

   How it works – you bring an iPhone or other such device into the room with your patient – it is recording every word you say. The theory being that you as the doc are far less likely to be messing with a computer and actually paying attention to the patient ( that is literally how they are selling this monstrous intrusion to the patients!) – and then the iPhone sends off your patient visit to AI cloud-fairy land- and 20 minutes or so later appearing on your patient chart is a complete AI generated note of that visit. So, they told us, you will have far more time with each patient. And you will not have to be spending 30 minutes on each of your patient notes all evening. You can actually spend time with your kids, etc.

   Caring nothing about actual physician mental wellness and family time and so efficient was the system apparently, that the MBAs in the C suites of these “non profit” orgs have decided it is no longer good enough to see 20 people a day – this system allows you to see 28 a day. And all that extra time it saves ( on charging patients insurers ) well we will just roll that in – and you are going to be charging a lot more every day because you are now seeing 28. It is like upcoding on steroids. We are increasing our billing per physician per day by 33% – Praise be to Jesus and the Borg.

   Never mind the obvious ethical issues – like do patients really want to have their private physician meetings recorded? Do people realize that not only are we doing notes and patient data in the cloud for anyone at Amazon Web Service to look at – NOW – the entire recorded visit is being dutifully uploaded to AWS hundreds of thousands of times a day.

   And just this week – I have learned from the same Star Trek techie overlords – that EPIC will soon have AI that will be doing ALL of the communication between patient and physician – the AI will be answering questions that come in on the phone etc – why there will be no need of staff – the AI will listen to all the recorded voice mails – and “just take care of it”. How convenient…..

   I understand from multiple sources – that many private physician offices in big cities are rapidly going back to paper – and advertising this. They cannot stir the patient inflow with a stick.

   This is really getting bad. I have been screaming about this for years – and now I just do not care. It is what it is. The corruption is so horrific that everyone feels powerless.

   I am trying to prepare myself for the appropriate response when all of this wave hits my shore.
   1. steppenwolf fetchit October 2, 2024 at 3:25 pm

      If a patient demands zero presence of any such recording device, is the doctor required or even permitted to honor that patient demand?
      1. IM Doc October 2, 2024 at 3:50 pm

         I honestly have no idea what would happen in the circumstance – my guess it would vary by the institution.
         1. Kiddoc October 2, 2024 at 4:56 pm

            Almost all practices and larger healthcare venues include a fine print clause that info can be shared with vendors and contractors (who then can share with their vendors/contractors, over and over). Vendors are not held to the same standards, even if their written contract with healthcare professionals says they will hold information “confidentially”. This is one way that Facebook and Google get so much hospital info, since they manage or access so many websites at some level. Re-identifying patient info is much easier for large scale companies, able to consolidate with data from their own and others sources. Most of the healthcare/insurer company attorneys do not allow for changes in the fine print, and since most are now on computer, it is hard to cross out offensive aspects. Needy patients rarely take the risk of offending a caregiver. HIPPA allows data sharing for many reasons without patient consent.
         2. Ben Joseph October 2, 2024 at 8:52 pm

            My university medical center has already added AI permission to the consent forms one signs without reading.
            Big push to get them signed.
            I’ll retire before I comply. AI has already ruined insurance approvals with nonsense.
            Had med turned down because ‘doesn’t meet exclusion criteria ‘

            Christ.
      2. Antagonist October 2, 2024 at 4:45 pm

         I made an implicit request to not record with electronic devices to doctors to no avail. I have nothing but bad things to say about Epic Systems. I doubt you have a choice, but you ought to give an epic middle finger to Epic.

         I have been fighting with the Social Security Administration (SSA) for five years over my disability. As such, I know well that a lot of bureaucrats at the SSA and in the court systems will pore over my medical records looking for any iota of inconsistency. My words have and will continue to be misconstrued, misinterpreted, and sometimes just plainly fabricated in order to reach a conclusion that I am not disabled.

         Some mysterious force has augmented all of my senses. The whole world is too noisy, too bright, too smelly. Pleasant things like eating ice cream are so unbearably sweet that it hurts. Miraculously enough, like those Covid sniffing dogs, I can—when unmasked—smell the odor of illness from body odor.

         Because of all my strange sensory experiences, I have seen numerous doctors. I frequently ask doctors and their assistants to not point ipads and monitors at me because the light and flickering screens will trigger pain. Yet electronic monitoring devices persist in my appointments because Epic has encouraged doctors and their (virtual) scribes to spend more time recording and transcribing my words than treating me.

         On several appointments, I explicitly asked doctors to not put my forthcoming words into the medical records because I was about to speculate on how my neonatal circumcision has caused me a lifetime of pain, sexual dysfunction, and contact dermatitis. My questions and comments about circumcision and my genital pain ended up in the medical records anyway. Of course, I am now divulging these private details to you the NC reader, but I know you are not going to scrutinize these details like the SSA. I speculated with my doctors that the intense shock and pain from circumcision predisposed me to neuropathic pain and PTSD. I think it is plausible that my entire nervous system reconfigured itself post-circumcision to become sensitive to minuscule amounts of pain. Apparently, I suffer some combination of painful scar neuropathy, persistent post-operative pain, or complex regional pain syndrome on my penis. To this date, I still assiduously avoid pants with zippers, and I am, unfortunately, very non-sexual. (I am wearing athletic shorts right now with no zipper.)

         Anyway, the SSA and all the other people who have access to my medical records do not need to know about my circumcision complications, and now they do know all thanks to Epic. By the way, I am completely opposed to circumcision, but I usually keep this quiet because anti-circumcision advocates are commonly berated, suffering all manners of threats and insults.
         1. Jason Boxman October 2, 2024 at 5:09 pm

            It is shocking that mutilating babies that cannot consent is a common practice. When this is done to young girls, this is a horrific outrage, violence against women. Somehow, it is totally cool when done to boys.
            1. Angie Neer October 2, 2024 at 7:22 pm

               So-called “female circumcision” is quite a different thing from traditional circumcision, and is intended specifically to ruin women’s sexuality (while still allowing them to serve as incubators). I don’t, by any means, endorse routine circumcision of boys, but severe effects such as experienced by Antagonist are fairly unusual and not intended. For girls, they’re the whole point.
               1. Jason Boxman October 2, 2024 at 9:16 pm

                  True. There’s still a lack of consent. So there are degrees of wrong here.
   2. NYMutza October 2, 2024 at 3:37 pm

      I don’t see how what you describe can be legal under HIPPA. Patients must consent to having their physician visits recorded. Patient records (including AI summaries) must be protected in highly secure locations not accessible to AWS employees.
      1. IM Doc October 3, 2024 at 8:39 am

         Ahhh, HIPPA…….I remember 20 years ago how naive I was as well.

         They have done a masterful bamboozling. The media, Big Insurance, and Big Hospital only talk and scold and inform and advertise the privacy aspect.

         Remember, please, the 2nd P in HIPPA stands for portability. And much of that legislation had nothing to do with privacy……it has everything to do with “portability”. And believe me your data is portable. At every visit, it is going places you cannot imagine, and all kinds of eyes are all over it.

         Always remember, there are lessons on this in American history. It took a breaking and entering crime to get medical records on people like Edmund Muskie. Now it is a few clicks on a computer thousands of miles away.
         1. IM Doc October 3, 2024 at 9:58 am

            HIPAA used to be HIPPAA when it first was being deliberated

            They took the second P out fairly quickly, the P that stood for privacy.

            It now stands for Health Information Portabilty Accountability Act.

            The important P remained.

            This was also the era that brought us the Patriot Act and the Blue Sky Act.

            Make your own conclusions.
   3. Stephanie October 2, 2024 at 4:13 pm

      How does this not violate HIPAA?

      My employer just issued an update to company policy that we are never to use AI tools on any company-issued equipment for fear of violating HIPAA, and we just produce physical objects. How do health-care providers get away with it?
      1. IM Doc October 2, 2024 at 4:22 pm

         I am certain they have it all legally taken care of.

         Probably a sentence or two added to the dozens of pages of TOS signed on every visit. That is usually a wastebasket of all kinds of permissions for things like this, and billing, etc.
         1. ChrisPacific October 2, 2024 at 9:51 pm

            Sounds like we will find out the first time there is a data breach horror story, like a training data leak that reveals personally identifiable info and health records. (Doubtless they claim the models aren’t trained on patient data, which will also be tested).
   4. ambrit October 3, 2024 at 1:32 am

      I see a business opportunity here. A new field for doctors and adjacents; Post Electronic Medical Records Exposure Trauma (PEMRET.)
      Counseling for those injured by Electronic Medical Records in any fashion. Included can be: misdiagnosis, programmed ‘treatment’ rejection, Medical Records Exposure stress, Medical Records anger management, etc. etc.
      Many “Health Professionals” have a second career awaiting them; helping patients recover from “medical care.”
4. Carolinian October 2, 2024 at 2:44 pm

   Re North Carolina and voting.

   https://grist.org/extreme-weather/hurricane-helene-north-carolina-voting-elections-absentee-ballots/

   And in discussing Asheville versus the region bear in mind that those figures likely mean the city of Asheville versus greater Asheville just as the city of Atlanta is just a fraction of the population of greater Atlanta. For the region a few of the smaller towns are strung out along I-40 to the east and therefore as accessible as Asheville itself.

   Locally I went back to the library this morning where people are sitting–a few on the floor–with laptops and phones plugged into the ac outlets. My brother, who still lacks power the next town over, keeps hearing big Chinook helicopters passing over headed for NC.
   1. Jason Boxman October 2, 2024 at 5:10 pm

      I’ve seen, yesterday, several of these helicopters as well. I’m assuming national guard.
      1. Carolinian October 2, 2024 at 9:22 pm

         Today I saw my first twin rotor Osprey flying overhead.
         1. Belle October 2, 2024 at 10:20 pm

            It would not have been my first sight of one, but if you are in Spartanburg, you probably saw the Ospreys that carried Biden’s support staff or the press. Biden paid a visit to GSP in Greer to meet with Governor McMaster, as well as local officials, then boarded Marine One for an overflight of the area, then back on Air Force 1 to fly to Raleigh to meet with Governor Cooper.
            (As an aside, VMX-1 does visit our local municipal airport for refueling when they are not flying officials around.)
      2. griffen October 3, 2024 at 7:16 am

         Using the option to tune into TV stations broadcast I found a Charlotte based Fox station, and the news feed has been quite steady with air drops and many volunteer efforts to concentrate the charitable donations into areas needing it. Granted some of these are basic 2 seater planes so a heavy payload isn’t doable.

         I’d go on to suggest every single effort is helping, both from military and civilian. And adding that I’m guessing it might have been a Chinook which I heard late Tuesday afternoon. When I looked it seemed to be heading back to base.
5. Matthew G. Saroff October 2, 2024 at 2:49 pm

   One of the companies listed as having been effected by the dock strike tweet is, “Home DepoRt.”
   LOL
6. antidlc October 2, 2024 at 2:54 pm

   Drove by Costco right about opening time. Parking lot was absolutely packed. I wondered why it was so crowded.

   https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2024/10/02/port-strike-raising-fear-of-toilet-paper-shortages-and-panic-buying/75481257007/

   Pictures on social media and TikTok videos are surfacing of long lines of customers at stores with carts full of grocery items, bottled water, toilet paper and bare shelves as shortages are already being reported.

   Videos posted online claim that toilet paper is sold out at Costco stores from Arizona and Colorado to New Jersey, with one worker saying their stock was cleared one hour after opening, according to news source.
   1. NYMutza October 2, 2024 at 4:50 pm

      People are nuts. The obsession with toilet paper is largely an American phenomena. Apparently, people haven’t heard of bidets. That and many Americans are literally full of sh*t.
   2. petal October 2, 2024 at 6:33 pm

      Thanks to NC, I stocked up on TP and paper towels over the past month. Thank you, NC!
      1. albrt October 2, 2024 at 11:34 pm

         Same here. I bought toilet paper just because it’s always the first thing to go, but priorities were things like coffee and olive oil.
   3. steppenwolf fetchit October 3, 2024 at 6:42 am

      I have read that most toilet paper used in USA is made in USA. It would not be forced into shortage due to a dockworkers strike. But it could be forced into shortage by a public buying panic on the part of a public which does not know that most toilet paper is not imported anyway.

      So if anyone here finds their normal tp purchases pre-empted by a panic buyers’ rush, they might see if tp is still available at office supply stores, like Staples and Office Depot, where the average panic buyer might not think to look.
7. Bazarov October 2, 2024 at 3:02 pm

   I have significant experience teaching reading and writing to college students. I can tell you with total confidence that, yes, students are not being prepared to read at an intellectually appropriate level.

   This applies not merely to endurance–say, finding it difficult to read a book in a reasonable amount of time–but also and especially to comprehension. I could assign a ten-to-twenty page essay that advances a fairly nuanced argument written in prose that a person with a high school education, traditionally understood, should be able to read.

   However, the majority of my students, especially at the beginning of the semester, would have difficulty making heads or tails of such an essay, as evinced by their first writing assignment: to produce a summary of what they’ve read. That assignment was almost always a disaster, resulting in majority C-s to Fs.

   Students have the usual problems of not really understanding how to read carefully and just being out of practice. My best students were almost always women, many of whom still read books in their free time, believe it or not. Some of my male students confessed to having never read a book–as in: a book for adults–in their life!

   While such problems are important to remedy, as my teaching career progressed, I started to notice a different and less-often-appreciated problem arise: students are self-obsessed. What they expect from a reading is this thing called “relatability,” that the essay reflect their own beliefs and desires. They sit down to read an essay and immediately begin the process of distorting it into their own reflection. These students, primed by neoliberalism and algorithmic silos, treat these writings as a kind of mirrior-of-pleasing-reflection.

   So, for instance, a student might distort an essay’s nuanced argument into something simplistic, uninteresting, black-and-white that they could flatter themselves by agreeing with or, more commonly, flatter themselves by dismissing (thus demonstrating their intellectual superiority).

   One of my first lessons following the summary disaster (after which even the most stubborn students suddenly become open to instruction!) emphasizes that the essay is not a mirror, that their position as reader is to understand the author’s words as they are, separate from themselves. They must develop the capability to see things *in themselves,* not as they want them to be, or else they will remain intellectually weak and immature. One must climb the mountain to reach its height; the mountain will not shrink down to you.

   The good news: it turns out that students love to be told the truth about the quality of their reading and writing and eagerly accept instruction. I’ve had many come to me to say that they’ve known their whole lives that their writing was bullshit but that teachers gave them As long as it looked like grammatical English. Imagine how demoralizing years of such “education” must be!

   Once offered instruction with more integrity and honesty, students rapidly improve. In fact, some transform completely. One student emailed me years later to tell me about his voracious reading habit, that after finishing my class he purchased his first book ever, a biography. Since then he’d been challenging himself by climbing higher and higher intellectual “mountains,” strengthening mentally and spiritually in the process.

   Education, properly delivered, can rectify in a short time years of neglect and stagnation brought on by America’s high schools (I count among these fancy private schools, which sent to my classroom expert bull-shitters who were, in their own ways, just as intellectually bereft as their peers from under-funded public facilities).
   1. hk October 2, 2024 at 4:53 pm

      In agreement with most of your observations, although my teaching experience is more than a decade in the past now. I shudder to think where things are at present. The additional trouble with my experience was that my role was to teach students substantive material, not just to read. If the topic is “political” science where students are too opinionated about things (and my misguided colleagues encouraged them to be more opinionated–whereas my view was always that “political” is the problem with “poiitical science”), this was a real challenge.
   2. Kurtismayfield October 2, 2024 at 6:52 pm

      High School teacher here. The students do read novels, but it is so parsed and planned for them I wouldn’t call it independent reading. They also get books fed to them via audio books, which is totally not the same skills. There is a lot of focus on reading comprehension, but you can thank standardized state testing for that.

      As far as allowing the students to choose a book and read it at their own pace. Not unless they are high level.
      1. Utah October 2, 2024 at 10:46 pm

         I work at a middle school and our students read books out loud in class and analyse them. I think they get 4 or 5 books a year. Most schools around me don’t do that because of the way the standards are written. It’s easier to meet the standard with an excerpt. I have a classroom library, my students would rather read anime than a novel, which I don’t provide. (Not because I’m fundamentally against it, but because so much of it is graphic that I don’t want to get in trouble.)

         I would recommend the podcast “Sold A Story” about why kids can’t read, too. It’s deeper than education standards and all about capitalism, yet again, messing with the education system and getting rid of phonics instruction. So… Kids can’t read in early elementary, they didn’t get support throughout their education, and haven’t read a book ever, then they get to college and college hasn’t had the same pressure as K12, so they are still giving actual homework and assignments and these students have no idea their left from their right anymore.
         1. Kurtismayfield October 3, 2024 at 7:04 am

            Oh I know that story, getting rid of phonics Instruction and the damage that has been done. The students also don’t have to read anymore now that their lives are dominated by image and video.
   3. eg October 2, 2024 at 10:58 pm

      Education is the eternal political football because it’s impossible to get universal and permanent agreement to the foundational question, “what is education FOR?”

      Currently secondary schools are pressured to prepare students primarily for standardized testing — where literacy is concerned is anyone really surprised that this results primarily in students being assigned “excerpts, poetry, and news articles, but not a single book cover to cover?” Think of the nature of the questions typically assigned in the literacy section of standardized tests — no wonder educators pressed for time tailor their curriculum accordingly.

      Spare a thought also for the incredible variety of post-secondary destinations that secondary school “English” programs must prepare students for, and it’s again unsurprising that Humanities-specific skill sets get short shrift.
8. aj October 2, 2024 at 3:03 pm

   RE: reading books

   Part of me wants to say, “How can you not know how to read a book?” Literally, you just sit down and start reading, then keep reading until you are done. However, reading for fun and reading for school are two totally different things. It really seems to come down to lack of time management skills. I could see a college freshman already faced with multiple hours of homework a day being overwhelmed by being told they will be required to add additional hours reading several books. I’ve had professors who pride themselves on how many hours of homework they give. You get 5 professors a semester saying they are going to give you a couple of hours of homework a day and now you have 10 hours a homework every day on top of going to class and probably a job.

   The average adult reading rate is 238 words per minute. So reading Faranheit 451 (46,000 words) should take 3-4 hours, Moby Dick would take closer to 15 hours, War and Peace would take 41 hours.
   1. Michael Fiorillo October 2, 2024 at 3:12 pm

      The Gates Foundation’s Common Core Standards, rolled out in 2010 and forced upon school districts, emphasized “close reading” (Ha!) of excerpts, and de-emphasized reading entire stories/articles (let alone novels).

      I had already noticed a marked decline in students reading stamina before then, but corporate ed reform institutionalized it.
      1. aj October 2, 2024 at 3:29 pm

         Thanks Michael. I was unaware of that. To play devil’s advocate a bit, I can understand the motivation. In terms of practicality, it is more useful to fully understand smaller texts than to fully digest a large volume. Most people just need to read and understand an email or a 10-page technical document. Being able to read all of Crime and Punishment and explore it’s themes doesn’t have much day-to-day value for most people.
         1. Matthew October 2, 2024 at 5:37 pm

            More useful for employers you mean
      2. Laura in So Cal October 2, 2024 at 5:07 pm

         My kid graduated from a public high school in 2022. He was in a regular class (not honors/AP). His English instruction was mediocre. I think he read 2 or 3 full novels. Everything was short. The 2 I remember were To Kill a Mockingbird and Of Mice and Men. They also read the play “The Crucible” in class. Everything else was articles, short stories etc. And Annotations was the big thing. All about how to dissect what you read which in theory was to encourage critical thinking. However, I called the annotation process “how to learn to hate reading in one simple step.”

         I don’t think he has attempted to read a book outside class at all since high school. He wanted an old copy of “Dune” that I had because a friend loved it so we’ll see if he actually reads it.

         BTW, he comes from a home full of books and was already reading when he stared Kindergarten. I read voraciously and his Dad enjoys a few big non fiction books each year. High School, specifically,took away any pleasure he felt in reading.
         1. outside observer October 2, 2024 at 5:14 pm

            Sounds like your kid got a halfway decent education. Mine got graphic novels (what one might have called a comic book in the past) among other DEI approved fare in high school English class. Needless to say we supplemented with actual classics at home.
      3. Vicky Cookies October 2, 2024 at 11:05 pm

         I am a high school dropout, but bullshitted my way into college for a couple of semesters. Because of my lack of formal education, I was expecting to be challenged, and so went in humble and open-minded – as much so as any twenty-something can be. I was astonished that no one seemed to take learning seriously; it was all about the credential and the social experience; and the reading was merely “homework” an authority had assigned. Most of it was excerpts, which have the advantage, in ideological disciplines, of being able to sinplify and misrepresent an argument, often in a pro-status quo manner. Then, years later, our graduates can foggily recall Adam Smith having proven that landlords are productive, or some such.

         There is a class dimension to this. Sennett & Cobb, in The Hidden Injuries of Class explore how, in a Boston public school, class is reproduced by teachers who identify ‘promising’ kids and ‘troublemakers’, who develop attitudes towards authorities and institutions as a result. I’d quote the section, but I just gave my copy as a gift to a communist, who won’t read it.

         Anyways, after my brief time in college a decade ago, I am not surprised that the professions are filled with people who can’t think.
         1. Lena October 3, 2024 at 8:12 am

            I dropped out of school after the 8th grade. When I was 19, I got my GED and started college. Not having gone to high school, my first year was difficult but I persevered. I took my classes very seriously, which was something few of my fellow students who had been to high school seemed to do, as Vicky Cookies noted above. I was eager to learn.

            Eventually, I finished college, graduating summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. I had done a lot of reading on my own as a teenager after 8th grade, subjects that interested me like history, literature, philosophy and religion. The public library was my classroom. I think I was better read than most students who went to high school. I really hadn’t been learning anything in school before I dropped out.

            My mother used to call K-12 “warehousing for children” to prepare them to be docile cogs in the corporate machine as adults. She taught me so much, always encouraging me to think for myself.
         2. ashley October 3, 2024 at 6:46 pm

            I’d quote the section, but I just gave my copy as a gift to a communist, who won’t read it.

            you say this in a passive aggressive tone as if communists dont read, but its a meme at this point that communists are obsessed with reading theory.

            also, i assume you sneer at communism based on the passive aggressive tone i picked up… sure like any theory it has flaws, but marx was spot on about the alienation of labor (separation of the worker from their work) and capital relying on a reserve army of labor for capitalism to function (the existence of unemployment, the homeless, the destitute, etc keeps the rest of the labor force in check less they fall into despair like the former).

            i am curious about what your book has to say about

            class is reproduced by teachers who identify ‘promising’ kids and ‘troublemakers’, who develop attitudes towards authorities and institutions as a result.

            i was a ‘promising’ kid who became a ‘troublemaker’ anarchist adult. my attitude towards authorities and institutions is skeptical at best.

            edit: question for moderation, feel free to delete the edit: why is the comment even flagged for moderation? do certain words like anarchist or communist trigger it? passive aggressive? sneer? theres nothing abusive in the comment and theres no slurs or curses. im so confused.
   2. steppenwolf fetchit October 2, 2024 at 3:28 pm

      Those children who were immunized against reading in school by the application of Look-say, context-guessing, or other anti-phonetic/ anti-phonics methods of literacy-prevention grew up to hate books and reading . . . . exactly as trained.

      So of course they don’t want to read a book. They were carefully conditioned to regard “reading a book” as a futile feast of pain. And they were carefully prevented from learning how to read.

      They are victims of the Education-Industrial Complex’s war on literacy..
      1. NYMutza October 2, 2024 at 3:46 pm

         With the wide scale adoption of so-called smartphones attention spans have diminished significantly. Many young people simply cannot focus long enough to read more than a chapter (if that) of a book. In a sense, they are handicapped. This problem extends to adults as well. Many American adults don’t read books at all. Many homes have no reading materials of any kind. In my neck of he woods the exception seems to be Asian families. When I go to the library I see mostly Asian folks checking out books (in their native languages). Childrens books are among those most checked out.
   3. Mikel October 2, 2024 at 3:29 pm

      The article itself is more nuanced than the headline/title. They do know how technically and the issue is due to other disconnects.
      Attention span and there will ultimately be even more comprehension issues.
   4. rePiet October 2, 2024 at 4:45 pm

      Asked a former class mate eng degree 2018, so 2014 high school graduation. “You ever read a whole book for a high school class?” His response was “not once time constraints always required me to sparknotes the last few chapters and at that point there was no reason in actually finishing the book, even if I actually liked most of them.”

      As I said above eng degree and MS’d out of the PhD program, but he was not a nerd.
   5. Jason Boxman October 2, 2024 at 5:16 pm

      I’m a slow read. I just can’t do it. I can’t read the words fast enough. They resolve singly, one at a time, I can’t see whole lines at a time. I’d certainly have failed hum lit, simply because the reading required would exceed my time, even ignoring sleeping, eating, other classes, and so on.

      Interesting fact posted here years ago, probably, people don’t even read words, they pick up on the beginning and ending and make up the rest of the letters.
      1. Utah October 2, 2024 at 10:52 pm

         “people don’t even read words, they pick up on the beginning and ending and make up the rest of the letters.”

         That sounds like Lucy Calkins whole language learning model which has been debunked. Although I will say that it might work for people who are already proficient readers. I’m pretty sure I read every letter, though.
      2. gk October 3, 2024 at 4:02 am

         That’s how I read German in Fraktur. I didn’t work when I read a book by Durer, as he didn’t use standard orthography and I had to read every letter.
      3. steppenwolf fetchit October 3, 2024 at 6:53 am

         I suppose that could work with a book whose writing is mostly foam-rubber word-candy. If any readers of this comment have that skill of “getting the rest of the letters right” by reading the beginning and the ending, I would suggest they try reading books by William Albrecht, such as any or all of the books findable at this link . . . https://bookstore.acresusa.com/collections/william-a-albrecht . . . .
         and see if that method works on them.

         I remember grade school quite a few decades ago. Of course we had those nasty little Dick And Jane books, but we also got instruction in phonics and phonemics, syllables, general rules of when vowels were short or long and why, and ‘ sounding words out’ based on application of those rules.
         I learned to read IN my classes in that public school.
         1. Wukchumni October 3, 2024 at 7:14 am

            As an old coot, i’m cognizant my ability to read a couple hundred page book is challenged compared to back in the day before this contraption came along, added by the idea that I don’t dig reading books online, gotta be an actual page turner.

            Ever look at young adults writing abilities in freehand?

            (approaches the edge of dichondra with index finger of disapproval waving aloft, get off my lawn!)

            They misspell an awful lot from what i’ve seen, perhaps one of our teachers can impart on this?

            My mom related that the bookmobile driver circa 1969 told her that our family read the most of anybody on his route, and I learned to read by the letter, vis a vis the 1966 World Book encyclopedia-forever stuck in Project Gemini and no further.

            It was a great way to learn about us from Aachen to Zydeco and all points inbetween!

            And to my advantage, everything in the encyclopedia was brief, Aachen rated a few paragraphs-so you didn’t get lost in the weeds, sort of speak.

            The 10 year old present version of me back then, would now have an onslaught of a hundred Google pages on Aachen to go through, and that’s just the first word.
            1. Lambert Strether Post authorOctober 3, 2024 at 7:18 am

               > i’m cognizant my ability to read a couple hundred page book

               I spend far too much time on Twitter, and my ability to read books denser than grade B genres like detective fiction has been gravely compromised. I would imagine this is reversible with practice, however.
      4. griffen October 3, 2024 at 7:00 am

         With plenty of daylight and no other tangible option, after the hurricane blasted through South Carolina I finally reached the end of Brave New World by Huxley. I must say these novels of fiction from say 75 or 100 years ago* have a startling prescience to their themes of gratification and so on. Not feeling up to giving a deeper dive at the moment.

         *Of course I’m thinking here about Orwell and PK Dick, among others but limited to the scope of my reading only. And arguably Gibson and the Jackpot but his writings are much more recent.
   6. gk October 3, 2024 at 11:19 am

      Finnegans Wake (about 100,000 words) took me 3 years. I guess I’m a slow reader.
9. Lambert Strether Post authorOctober 2, 2024 at 3:04 pm

   I added orts and scraps; lots and lots of reactions to the undercard debate.
   1. Mark Gisleson October 2, 2024 at 3:28 pm

      Some very good stuff indeed — thanks!
10. Lefty Godot October 2, 2024 at 3:04 pm

    Maybe just tangentially related to Russian math circles, but when I look at the names of top chess players competing in US chess tournaments, those names show a remarkable ethnic concentration in Chinese, Slavic, Middle Eastern, Indian, Korean, Japanese, and Latin American. Which is not representative of those ethnicities among the American population, although it matches to a great extent the international master level chess competition. One of our top American players, Fabiano Caruana, is a dual citizen of Italy and the US, but otherwise there is not a lot of representation for ethnicities from western and northern Europe. What the significance of this is I am not sure, but it seems to mirror the decline in interest in other intellectually difficult areas of non-work activity among the traditional ethnic groups in America.
    1. nyleta October 2, 2024 at 7:26 pm

       The Russians withdrew from the Bologna system last year, while not going back to the full Soviet system of excellence now Masters Degrees will be a lot harder and the academies will come back to the fore. They finally realised their danger.

       Just a few more years would have enabled the West to white-ant Russia pretty badly but as Wellington said of Napolean these meglomaniacs lack the patience for long term operations. ( he actually said defensive operations )
11. Safety First October 2, 2024 at 3:19 pm

    Re: Math from Three to Seven, by Alexander Zvonkin

    Oh ye gods. Swallowing down lots of profanity.

    1. “Mathematical circles”. Circles! UGH! The correct translation is “clubs”, as in “math clubs”. Yes, the literal word-for-word translation is “little circle” (“kruzhok”), or a diminutive form of the word “circle” (“krug”). But no competent translator would ever use the word-for-word term in this piece or context, unless they were indulging in some bit of good old-fashioned orientalism.

    2. I don’t know who these scientists or mathematicians are that the author talked to. But “that’s not what happened”.

    In the Soviet educational system, there was a deliberate effort to implement a lot of after-school activities, mostly free of charge. Some of it was simply giving the kids something to do, and perhaps teaching them a hobby. For example, things like wood etching and macrame. But within this context, there were also a number of clubs designed to select out and develop talented individuals in specific areas, mathematics among them, with the ultimate goal to transfer these individuals to specialized schools, or prep them for examinations into specialized universities. Or military academies, by the way, though you weren’t at all locked into a specific “track” – I personally knew an individual who went to a specialized naval school as a kid, and then ended up becoming a thoroughly civilian Chemistry professor.

    Now, specifically for math clubs, this is where I clash with the author. Because he makes it sound like a bunch of hippies sitting around talking random math problems instead of (or perhaps alongside with) smoking bongs. I exaggerate only slightly. In reality, the clubs, being state-run institutions, had to conform to state priorities – of identifying, fostering, selecting out, prepping. As such, there was a metric megaton of “olympiads” at all levels, from local to national, that “math clubs”, “physics clubs”, “chemistry clubs” and other suchlike were expected to participate in. [Not so much macrame clubs, however.] So already the statement “they’re also very unlike sports teams” is rendered nonsensical, because to a significant degree they WERE sports teams, or, rather, math teams. As well, if you went to a math club, and showed you were good at it, the instructor was expected to nudge you towards either applying to a specialized math school – if one were available, which was not true of every town, of course – or to one of the high-level universities in Moscow or Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). “Was expected” is doing a lot of work here – it’s not as if a Party official was expecting regular progress reports or anything. But that was just the sort of thing that was supposed to happen, I mean, what else is the instructor for.

    Yes, I am sure that SOME clubs, somewhere, were run more like informal D&D groupings. Especially if you selectively interview advanced mathematicians, who wouldn’t necessarily be in a run-of-the-mill club to begin with. But that wasn’t the overall, the average mindset. If you took lessons in a music school, past a certain level you were expected to start prepping for the conservatory; if you joined a swim club, past a certain level you were expected to start competing and train more like an athlete; if you joined a math club, and you weren’t participating in local and regional olympiads, then what, precisely, were you doing there? In retrospect, the entire atmosphere was incredibly competitive by “Western” standards, maybe more akin to Chinese or Japanese education systems, though I have no expert knowledge of those. Except for macrame clubs, of course, you just did those for fun.

    3. The tactical does not equal the strategic. In other words, if a country says, we want to produce a high number of competent mathematicians, physicists, whatever, the means it chooses to accomplish this is a tactical question. Yes, math clubs helped, but so did math schools, math universities, and even the basic math curriculum. Regular run-of-the-mill Soviet schools did the same geometry in the fourth grade that NYS schools do, or at least used to do, in the ninth grade (MQ3-4 Regents exam, as I recall). Systems of linear equations were taught in the first half of fifth grade, vs. eighth grade here. That’s a hell of a difference in prepping an entire generation of math-literate individuals, even without clubs or whatnot.

    My point, is that the reason the US got flooded with competent Russian-speaking mathematicians in the 90s and the 00s is that the Soviet Union forcefully and forcibly developed a very large cohort of math-proficient individuals in the 70s and 80s (and then it went away, and all these people had to earn a living somehow). It was a consequence of strategy, and yet here we are spending the time talking about a supposed magic bullet tactic.

    Incidentally, since all this stuff – math clubs, math schools, school curriculum, etc. – took a huge hit in the 90s and the 00s, Russian press today is filled to the brim with “where are we going to get mathematicians of the future” type articles, ranging from doom-and-gloom to Putin-will-fix-it in tone, but nevertheless. Which is to say, since the government’s priorities are changing again from living off resource extraction rents to actually developing a homegrown science and technology sector, now they are once again looking for appropriate tactics…except that the Soviet club system would be difficult to work in today, as it would compete with all the private for-profit afterschool clubs, for one. So we’ll see how they choose to massage the problem.
    1. hk October 2, 2024 at 5:03 pm

       Who says you can’t have for-profit afterschool activities dedicated to math?

       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumon
    2. ashley October 3, 2024 at 6:57 pm

       what you are describing re math clubs – that existed when i was in school. graduated hs in 2007… wealthier public school on long island. do these things no longer exist? as far as i was aware they were fairly common in districts across the island when i was in school, rich and poor alike.
12. ChrisRUEcon October 2, 2024 at 3:22 pm

    #TimWalz

    The social media reactions bear out good reasoning. Dems got caught flatfooted in the nether region between “they’re weird” and “when they go low”.

    #MassiveOof on the Big Serge tweet in particular. I think that image is what many of us on the live thread last night were alluding to in the comments. Whether it was adrenaline, over-preparedness or under-preparedness, Walz often had that look on his face, and that was weird to behold.

    Did not have Vance playing the “weird” #UnoReverse card on my VP Debate bingo sheet …
    1. ChrisRUEcon October 3, 2024 at 2:02 am

       #Addendum

       Here’s Tim Walz from York, PA on Wednesday (via YouTube). Totally different guy … back to normal as it were. He wasn’t coached for the (TV) camera, and probably had no idea how his expressions would come across.
13. MicaT October 2, 2024 at 3:27 pm

    Solar: the vast majority of solar companies in SE Asia are Chinese subsidiaries because the US put such draconian tariffs on mainland China solar panels and components.

    Are they Chinese? Technically not I suppose. Did much of if not all the parts come from China, possibly/probably.
    So are they Chinese or not? Not sure?

    Many of the current new US solar production is of foreign made parts assembled here. It’s still usually called manufacturing but more accurately it’s just assembly. And again many/most are owned by foreign companies.

    And many of the new solar tariffs by Biden/Harris are on those same SE Asia companies.

    It just makes solar panels in the US the most expensive in the world.

    Here is a great article on the world of Chinese solar and why the IS market died.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-opinion-how-us-lost-solar-power-race-to-china/
    1. CA October 2, 2024 at 3:41 pm

       https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1840951125861933240

       Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand

       That’s actually a fascinating story by @davidfickling in Bloomberg, perhaps even the authoritative story on “how the US lost the solar power race to China”.

       The numbers are absolutely crazy: just looking at polysilicon production, the U.S. went from having a comfortable 43% market share in 2008 to China’s 6%, down to a negligible 0.9% market share today to China’s 95.4%. In just 15 years, they’ve completely lost the market, and China captured virtually all of it.

       It’s extremely consequential because in the world today, solar alone accounted for three-quarters of renewable capacity additions
        
       ( https://iea.org/energy-system/renewables/solar-pv ).

       The common narrative is that China’s newfound dominance would be all about subsidies and “unfair trade practices.” But as the story makes clear, that’s just “a comforting myth”: China’s dominance “hasn’t been driven by state-owned manufacturers, subsidized loans to factories, tariffs on imported modules or theft of foreign technological expertise. Instead, it’s come from private businesses convinced of a bright future, investing aggressively and luring global talent to a booming industry — exactly the entrepreneurial mix that made the US an industrial powerhouse.”

       More than anything, China’s dominance comes from two things: scale and policy certainty. And, as the article makes clear, the U.S’s destruction of its own industry mostly comes from one thing: bad policy, and in particular an immensely destructive trade war they initiated against China on solar in 2011.

       As the story details, scale matters enormously in the solar industry because margins are ridiculously tiny. And when margins are tiny, the only way you can drive prices down is with scale.

       And the scale some of China’s companies have achieved is absolutely staggering. For instance Tongwei, one of the leading companies, has a production capacity of 480,000 tons this year which “is enough to generate sufficient solar electricity to power Mexico for a year — or Indonesia, or the UK and Ireland put together.”

       Policy certainty is essentially the Chinese government’s steadfast commitment to its green transition, which ensured steady demand for solar products: “[China] didn’t provide any direct support for manufacturers but ensured a level of demand from utilities that allowed solar factories to grow beyond their troubled infancy to their current profitable status.”

       By contrast, the U.S. got the exact contrary of policy certainty and completely shot itself in the foot with an ill-thought solar trade war with China. In 2011, they imposed duties on China-made panels ranging as high as 250% as an initiative to destroy China’s nascent solar industry. This was extraordinarily stupid because “the US in 2011 was making more money selling polysilicon and solar machinery to China than it was spending buying completed panels”, which made them particularly exposed to retaliation. And that’s exactly what happened: China announced an investigation into whether the US was dumping polysilicon into the mainland market, which scared away a lot of Chinese buyers who “canceled purchases en masse” and started buying domestically, even though Chinese companies were more expensive at the time. Fast forward to a couple of years later and the US industry was essentially destroyed.

       Anyhow, give the article a read, it’s a great story with a lot of lessons for today as so many similar mistakes are currently being made, for instance in semiconductors.

       https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GYxdiKragAAdNmB?format=jpg&name=small

       11:05 PM · Sep 30, 2024
       1. NYMutza October 2, 2024 at 3:53 pm

          The decline of US competitiveness in solar panel production has its roots in the decline of US semiconductor wafer fabrication competitiveness. One begat the other.
14. Bsn October 2, 2024 at 3:33 pm

    Thanks Lambert! One comment regarding students reading: ….. Middle and high schools have stopped asking them to.” • Can readers confirm this isn’t just The Atlantic fomenting a moral panic?
    The answer is, no they can’t read nor are taught very well in school. I taught for 20+ years in both high and middle school. Most classes on literacy (they change the names/titles of classes every 6 – 8 years Language Arts, Social Studies, etc.) work on “reflections” as opposed to debating a position or offering up a synopsis. Sad but true. This is why so many Americans can’t “read between the lines” and are dupes to propaganda.
    1. IM Doc October 2, 2024 at 3:46 pm

       I am now confronted at times with students from our most elite university medical schools who struggle to read a single research article.

       I often hand out review articles or chapters from Harrison’s Internal Medicine regarding topics that patients present with that day. It is then understood that they will be summarizing the review for the group the next AM. It is very apparent – again in elite students – that reading comprehension is no longer an important skill in college or medical school. Not sure exactly what they are doing – but that is not a priority.

       However, if you give them a one paragraph summary from Up-To-Date – often so pared down as to be meaningless – they are all over it.
       1. flora October 2, 2024 at 3:54 pm

          Thank you, IM Doc. Methinks the emphasis on getting the right answer on grade school/high school tests, lest teachers and schools lose funding, (aka no child left behind), is having a terrible knock-on effect. Teach to the test has had a destructive effect on wider, more critical thinking in students, / My 2 cents.
          1. flora October 2, 2024 at 4:33 pm

             and adding: When did the Dem party and then Sen Ted Kennedy become such overly ‘power’ trusting doofuses, aka No Child Left Behind. / Oy
             1. flora October 2, 2024 at 4:58 pm

                adding, adding, dare one compare John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost here? Erm, probably not, if one wants to remain in the good graces of the MSM. /:)

                High on a throne of royal state, which far
                Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
                Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
                Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
                Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
                To that bad eminence; and, from despair
                Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
                Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
                Vain war with Heaven; and, by success untaught,
                His proud imaginations thus displayed:—

                https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Paradise_Lost_(1674)/Book_II
             2. NotTimothyGeithner October 2, 2024 at 8:11 pm

                Teddy was part of the HMO Act. It’s who he was.
          2. flora October 2, 2024 at 7:12 pm

             and adding, a bit too much I’m sure, here’s the old BBC’s enactment of Evelyn Waugh’s great WW drama ‘Brideshead Revisiteded.’

             https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD0nrC-vfaY&list=PLuF5POcQNYWE_GGnZ8YDMY_J-MmJlDTDV
       2. KLG October 2, 2024 at 10:14 pm

          Late to the party…I can confirm that medical students will not read. And I don’t think they can. As IM Doc knows, there are a ~15 standard textbooks containing the knowledge that every medical student must master before the third-year medical student of clinical rotations in the teaching hospital when one begins to gain the wisdom to practice medicine independently. Ha, say our current students. Videos from Sketchy (and sketchy sources), AMBOSS (We make studying a breeze), Anki digital flash cards, “First Aid” (Cliff Notes for Medicine): These are all we need to pass our first, second, and third licensing exams, so shut up and go away (they keep that to themselves, but it is clear what they mean). And Up-To-Date, it is a menace for physicians. Worse for students who are given access (which is true for our students at one teaching hospital). Ten years from now, when your doctor cannot interact with you without also scrolling on a cell phone, you will understand the reason.

          Ha, say their faculty! Who are not listened to. At all. The first Board Exam (USMLE Step 1) usually taken at the end of the preclinical first two years of medical school went to pass-fail for the entering class of 2020. The Association of American Medical Colleges has never really explained this. Believe the worst and you are likely to be correct. From now on, (dead) turtles all the way down in the form of “free textbooks” at the medical library portal. No one will actually know anything.

          Anyway, reading is so 20th century. I spent almost as much time in the History and Anthropology Departments as the Biology/Genetics/Biochemistry Departments as an undergraduate student. In two senior-level courses (10 weeks/Quarter System) on Early Modern Europe and the Renaissance, we were required to read 8-10 books in each course. No one complained. A few were short, like the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola and The Praise of Folly by Erasmus. More than a few were not short, like The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by Hans Baron. In senior-level Anthropology, Marcel Mauss, Fustel du Coulanges, Jack Goody, Marvin Harris, Levi-Strauss, Evans-Pritchard. A good education, it was. Even in my evolutionary biology class we were required to read the facsimile first edition of Darwin’s Origin. Probably a third made the attempt.

          The digital world will produce generations of illiterate, if not aliterate, people who cannot think their way out of a shallow ditch, much less the deep crevasse we are approaching steadily.

          I’ll retire to my corner now. And read a book.
          1. steppenwolf fetchit October 3, 2024 at 7:06 am

             Will not read? Or cannot read? It may not be the same thing.

             These students may have been immunized against reading by carefully engineered anti-literacy counter-education during the several crucial learning-to-read years of elementary school.
             Once they were immunized against reading and were taught to hate reading and hate books, the rest was easy. Once kids have been vaccinated against reading, it is easy to keep them vaccinated against reading.

             Someone should study what ‘teaching-to-read’ methods were used on these kids when they were in first through third grades.

             And as a commenter above noted, if millions of kids are given millions of attention span-ectomies by a malicious digital brain-immersion industry, that will also degrade their reading ability and keep it degraded.

             And I don’t think the problem is “digital information transfer” as such. After all , this blog is an example of “digital information transfer” in the form of text on a screen. That is really not the same as cell phones, I phones, Ipads Ipods, Ipodpads, Ipadpods, etc. How many of the
             heavy users of that current form of ” digital technology” would be able to even cope with the good old-fashioned ” wall of text” as exemplified by this wonderful old site called Rex Research?
             http://www.rexresearch.com/
15. WK October 2, 2024 at 3:34 pm

    Re: Books / The Atlantic

    Sad to say his was the case twenty years ago. When I was in high school we only read one or two books the whole year.

    I had certainly had difficulty in college reading several books to completion per week with a full course load (5 courses) and working 35 hours/week to pay the rent and eat.

    Unfortunately I came out with a Fine Arts/Humanities degree and the best paying job I could find was one that didnt require a degree. I just paid off almost 100k of my student loans living for the last decade plus as if I still was in college. Sure I know about Marx, critical theory, French, and neocolonialism but Ive been broke and bitter.

    I see libraries in my local public schools disposing of class sets of books (like Malcom X’s autobiography and Ayn Rand’s ‘Anthem’ (lol), books on the USSR, China, and black history), high school seniors unable to spell words like ‘resumé,’ ‘caption,’ and ‘colleague,’ and having emotional melt downs if they cant access their social media/cell phones for a few hours.

    It’s bad.
16. Mikel October 2, 2024 at 3:40 pm

    Everyday, I read the these ideas and plans for the future from the establishment and various technocrats and know that they aren’t about supporting billions upon billions of people.
17. Screwball October 2, 2024 at 3:50 pm

    RE: Reading.

    I’ve been teaching a college STEM class (CAD) for 6 years. 6 for a college, and 3 in a vocational school setting which I have now refused to do anymore.

    I can say this with confidence; the ability of students have diminished steadily in those years. I would never consider asking them to read a book. I don’t think they ever would. It’s hard enough to get them to read a 4 or 5 page handout. If you think their reading skills are bad – math says hold my beer. I am shocked at how bad they struggle with simple math and geometry (like knowing the difference between a diameter and radius).

    But they sure are good with their phones. Shocking I know, but this is what I see. I’m done after this year. I can no longer teach students who have no business being in this class (no prerequisite required).

    IMNSHO, our educational system is as bad or worse than our medical industry, or customer service industry, or our government. With the latter probably having helped create this mess by making us teach to a test.

    Caveat; I’m an old curmudgeon about this stuff, so maybe I’m being too harsh.
    1. NYMutza October 2, 2024 at 4:01 pm

       The US doesn’t need lots of literate and educated people. It can import what it needs and does so. In a sense many students are surplus, and thus in a neoliberal world not worth investing in them. Besides, the last thing the elites want is a sizeable population of critical thinkers. Drones is what they want.
       1. steppenwolf fetchit October 3, 2024 at 7:19 am

          If that is part of the reason for America’s ” War On Reading”, then a very subversive thing one could do would be teaching people how to read without fear and pain, if there were a way to do that and if people who were vaccinated against reading could even be convinced to risk the pain of trying a different way to learn to read for real.

          Rudolph Flesch wrote a book about the anti-literacy program arising in America’s public schools way back in 1955. He called it ” Why Johnny Can’t Read . . . and What You Can Do About It.”
          https://archive.org/details/whyjohnnycantrea00fles/page/n5/mode/2up
          At the end of that book he gave some exercises in phonics, phonetics and sounding words out which parents ( who had learned to read before schools taught reading-prevention) could give to their young children before school taught them how to hate reading and hate books.

          I went to elementary school in the 1960s in Knoxville, Tennessee. I know that area was considered “behind the times”, and I suspect it was “behind the times” in teaching anti-reading as well. They taught us how to read instead of how to hate reading and avoid reading.
          1. John Anthony La Pietra October 4, 2024 at 11:57 am

             The Flesch is willing if the spirit is Freire!
18. gk October 2, 2024 at 3:55 pm

    Whatever the framing of the Goya reminds you of is due to whoever posted it. The real painting looks like this.

    There’s a story that when Miro visited the Prado for the last time, he only wanted to see only 2 paintings, The Dog and Los Meninas.
    1. britzklieg October 2, 2024 at 5:08 pm

       I lived in Madrid for a year (’72-’73) when I was in high school. My dad, who was teaching that year at the Universidad arranged for University level courses and tutors to keep us on track. One of the courses was Art Appreciation which required 2 days a week at the Prado. I can vouch for both “the Dog” and “Las meninas” but Miro’s comment gives short shrift to the remarkable collection, which included Velasquez, El Greco, Murillo, Rembrandt, Titian, Bosch, Botero and many many more. I learned so much and returned to the states fluent in Spanish as well.

       Florida Board of Education refused to credit any of my studies from that formative year and I was put back a year, which would have been my senior year. So I skipped that year and took early admission to my fathers liberal arts college. Hallelujah!
       1. hk October 2, 2024 at 8:49 pm

          I suppose you pronounce ll “elye”? :P
       2. gk October 3, 2024 at 3:55 am

          Well, Miro was probably on his deathbed so he didn’t have that much time….

          When you studied El Greco, did they discuss his Annunciations? When seeing them in the Prado, I was struck by the fact that the angel always comes from the right (usually it is from the left). This may come from Eastern art, but I still wonder why he kept that particular detail. The only ones I can remember from the West are Chagall’s one of the artist being visited by his muse (but he’s from Belarus, so not really the West…) and the amazing Lotto (with the cat) in Recanati.

          > I lived in Madrid for a year (’72-’73) when I was in high school.

          So Franco was still in power. Did you learn about Spain’s “limpiezza di sangue”? I have a friend who grew up there and liked to quote it sarcastically.
19. Elijah SR October 2, 2024 at 3:58 pm

    RE: The declining quality of student… I dropped out of college six years ago, I’m sure things have changed, but my experience was worse than that. I didn’t go to Yale so it’s not an “elite” crowd, but I went to a private college that had some kind of standing.

    We were required to read complete books in high school, but nothing longer than a standard novel, and we never tackled anything particularly dense.

    By the time I got to college, the majority of students weren’t just unable to commit to reading entire books, they were unable to complete long excerpts or articles required for class. Those students claimed that the workload was too much and that they couldn’t manage the reading. We’re talking maybe a chapter of a book over two or three days. Under admin pressure to curb retention problems, the college diluted the curriculum. The school graduated students who never had to write more than a 15 page paper.

    My partner works for a private university and she reports the same thing. Students “can’t” do the work. Worse, at her faculty orientation, admin informed them that, this year, they admitted as many student as they could and had dropped their academic performance requirements. They already had students who couldn’t keep up with a basic workload, but now they’re suckering kids who aren’t prepared for college into paying a semester or two before they flame out. They’re also cutting down on student requirements, so maybe they’ll be able to hack it. She’s been sitting in on a language class and she noticed that students refuse to sit near the front of the room and do not participate in class.

    I know a few teachers/professors who have quit the profession and have cited quality of student as being a contributing factor. One of the math guys works for an insurance company now.

    I was thinking about this with the article about Gen Z turnover and while I’m glad to hear they’re not sitting down and taking it from management, I saw the same attitude towards work already in full gear in school. It was like they thought the professors were managers and they had to organize against them for giving them an assignment.
    1. Matthew October 2, 2024 at 5:42 pm

       … or is it that the lack of mental fortitude required to read a hand out is correlated with the lack of fortitude to deal with minor interpersonal hassles and challenges at work without complaining?
       1. Elijah SR October 2, 2024 at 6:55 pm

          Exactly right. Too many people are going out into the world unable to handle a reasonable bare-minimum. Reading through the other teachers’ comments here, it sounds like there’s no field this hasn’t touched and like we’ve got plenty of causes to point to.
20. CA October 2, 2024 at 3:58 pm

    About manufacturing, what is striking is that manufacturing production has simply not increased since 2020 nor increased since 2017:

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17rDJ

    January 15, 2020

    Manufacturing Production Index, 2020-2024

    (Indexed to 2020)

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=17iLF

    January 15, 2018

    Manufacturing Production Index, 2017-2024

    (Indexed to 2017)
21. CA October 2, 2024 at 4:06 pm

    Manufacturing productivity has actually ceased to increase and has rather been slowly decreasing since 2011 or over the last 12 and a half years. This is unprecedented, since manufacturing productivity before 2011 increased at a yearly rate over 2 percent:

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=m2mB

    January 30, 2018

    Manufacturing Productivity, * 1988-2024

    * Output per hour of all persons

    (Indexed to 1988)

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=Of7F

    January 30, 2018

    Manufacturing Productivity, * 2000-2024

    * Output per hour of all persons

    (Indexed to 2000)
22. Lena October 2, 2024 at 4:27 pm

    Re: Vance’s fuchsia tie

    Fuchsia is a color that makes intense blue eyes with black eyelashes really ‘pop’. It was an unconventional choice but one that worked for Vance. It also might have been chosen to appeal to women. Several friends told me that Vance looked very attractive during last night’s debate and they aren’t pro-Trump women. More like independent voters.
    1. steppenwolf fetchit October 3, 2024 at 7:26 am

       Well . . . . as long as they understand that they were being subjected to very well designed visual perception-management engineering techniques; they can use their intellectual override to think about what Vance has said and written over time, and what his policy desires seem to be, and think about these things at leisure without being swayed by his fuchsia tie “popping” his blue eyes and black eyelashes.
       1. Lena October 3, 2024 at 4:42 pm

          My comment about the color choice of Vance’s tie being flattering was about men’s fashion. My friends and I are not so shallow or stupid that we base our votes on what pundits like to call “the optics”.
23. Bosko October 2, 2024 at 4:36 pm

    I taught college for over twenty years. I can confirm that what The Atlantic says is true. I taught at a private university in New England for almost ten years, and saw that students in the ’10s had trouble with a short novel; by the time I left another university, a state one, a couple of years ago, my students considered even a ten page story to be egregiously long, and I was tagged as a professor who “assigned a lot of reading.” I eventually concluded that trying to fill class time when the entire class had not done the assigned reading was not worth the grief. Why this is happening, I don’t know. It’s certainly true that high schools seem to be graduating a lot of unprepared students, students who can’t really read. But by and large it seemed my students didn’t do the reading because they didn’t think it was necessary: they were crunched for time, and it was much easier to look for online synopses than actually handle the book. (News flash: in fact, for many students, even BUYING the assigned book is something they view as optional. They will often complain bitterly about the expense of college books. At times, I found this even more insulting than them not doing the reading. I guarantee that many of these students who wouldn’t dream of paying $11 for a novel by Henry James were perfectly happy to spend $20 on McDonalds.) For some, this might have to do with their work and home life; for many others, though, it was because they were really, really committed to college sports, socializing, and other things they thought more important. The average college athlete puts their performance on the field way, way above anything having to do with the classroom, and this can impact the other students. Likewise, I think the parents of the college student play a big role: the parents often aren’t big readers themselves, endorse the idea that the main reason to go to college is to secure a good job, and even view class work as a matter of “jumping through hoops,” an unimportant and secondary concern that shouldn’t distract the student from their real objective. (I have had students tell me many times that their parents are on their phones and obsessed with social media more than they are, so look askance at anyone who says social media is responsible for students’ poor reading skills.) I see a commenter above refers to professors bragging about assigning two hours of homework for each class… the last university I taught at explicitly informed the students that they should expect two hours of homework for each class meeting. (This was to discourage students from taking too many classes a semester in order to graduate early; what happens in many cases, especially at some state universities, is that students will try to take seven classes, fail five of them, get discouraged and drop out of college entirely.) By the end of my time there, I would have been happy with a student who had spent even half an hour preparing for class. I started to feel that to expect anything out of many of them was incredibly naive (not that they weren’t great kids–many of them were). On the bright side, I don’t really think that this is an insurmountable problem. Many of us lose the ability to read and concentrate on longer books, for a time, and the solution is just to keep reading; it gets easier. If young people had to read more, they would be able to do it better. The problem isn’t that they can’t decipher symbols to extract meaning: they’re doing that all day, often with a great deal of subtlety. But when I left teaching, it was certainly true that most students can’t read very well, avoid it all costs, and consider the prospect of reading an entire book to be “weird” and intimidating.
    1. Not Qualified to Comment October 2, 2024 at 6:33 pm

       I’d observe that reading anything is made easier if the author utilises a literary device known in the trade as ‘paragraph’.
       1. JCC October 2, 2024 at 8:54 pm

          It’s nice to finally read a comment today that caused me to smile :)
       2. Lena October 2, 2024 at 9:26 pm

          I agree with JCC. You brought a laugh on what has been a difficult day for me. Thank you.
          1. CA October 2, 2024 at 10:17 pm

             “You brought a laugh on what has been a difficult day for me…”

             Your laughing makes me glad. By the way, as I have been telling students for quite a while, I regularly listen to books.
24. Jason Boxman October 2, 2024 at 4:46 pm

    Eric Feigl-Ding leaves out that China can and has been laundering exports through other countries to get around the Trump tariffs, and increasingly taking advantage of Mexico for this purpose thanks to the renegotiated NAFTA as well. Maybe they aren’t doing that for solar panels at all, but there is certainly precedent here.
    1. Lou anton October 2, 2024 at 5:37 pm

       This was my thought too. We can say they literally come from Vietnam and Thailand, but is the parent company Chinese? What % of materials come from China and get shipped to those countries for final assembly?

       This is why I try to read everything Michael Pettis writes – it’s a global system, and country of export can be meaningless on its own. It’s like with tarrifs on China – okay, fine, the price of China widgets may (may!) go up. But then some enterprising German business can then come in and undercut domestic production, and in the end, nothing changes from an American perspective.
       1. steppenwolf fetchit October 3, 2024 at 7:37 am

          Tariffs are treated as a magic solution to trade-imbalance problems. But how much can tariffs do when the whole system around the tariffs is still a Corporate Globalonial Plantation Forcey-FreeTrade system?

          If America wants to begin the multiple-decade project of restoring some semblance of an “industrial ecosystem” here, America will have to legally and formally withdraw from every Forcey-FreeTrade Treaty and Agreement and every Forcey-FreeTrade Organization. Then America will be legally free
          to begin deciding what basic survival industries America wishes to revive in America, and begin fostering those industries by protecting them against export aggression from our various Trading Enemies.

          And we would probably have to start all over again from the ground up, slowly restoring a metals mining and refining industry, and then a metal-based thingmaking industry, etc. And as we were restoring any such industry, we could begin to ban imports from any and every country which pays its workers less, has lower pollution standards, lower safety standards, etc. And of course those countries could ( and hopefully would) ban our goods in return. That would force the pace of beneficial decoupling as we worked to build National Survivalism in One Country.
25. petal October 2, 2024 at 5:06 pm

    There are 2 older ladies standing on the corner outside my house holding Harris-Walz signs, a Joyce Craig for gov sign, and a “Teachers for Harris-Walz” sign. In the work parking lot this morning I saw this Barbie-style Harris sticker on a car. It was rather large and very very pink. Not a whole lot of yard sign action going on otherwise in this bluest of blue town. The DIE office made a bigger than normal(it seems anyway) deal about Rosh Hashanah today. Long email about that holiday.
26. LY October 2, 2024 at 5:16 pm

    Just to get a feel for the scope of the damage, hikers should avoid most of the southern Appalachian Trail.

    Hikers should postpone their trips to the southern A.T. until further notice (Georgia to Rockfish Gap, VA; NOBO miles 0.0 to 864.6). Although not all areas in this section are officially closed, there is still a risk of landslides in many areas, much of the A.T. in the south is inaccessible due to road closures, and emergency responders are at max capacity. There also may be dangers on the Trail from the storm like downed trees, severe erosion, washed out bridges, and swollen creeks and streams. Many devastated towns along the A.T. also have emergency orders in place excluding visitors so they can prioritize recovery.

    https://appalachiantrail.org/trail-updates/ga-va-tropical-storm-helene/ lists 11 state and national parks and forests that have been affected.
    1. Carolinian October 2, 2024 at 6:02 pm

       In fact the AT leaves the Smokies and crosses I-40 very near where that freeway section failed.

       Here in town the trail system that the city has been building is in horrible shape. Today I tried a section next to our creek and was quickly blocked by downed trees. You could tell that where I was walking had been six feet under water at flood stage. Meanwhile the non creek parts merely have the downed trees. Nature will heal itself. The trails???.
       1. LY October 2, 2024 at 8:07 pm

          For reference, the AT was closed on its oldest section in Bear Mountain, NY due to a storm that dumped over 10″+ of rain in a short amount of time. Nearby areas, including West Point (military academy), also had flash flooding washing out roads and damaging homes.

          The trail repairs took over 10 months to complete. Many other nearby trails are still closed.
          1. Carolinian October 2, 2024 at 9:20 pm

             Well it’s not as though we have that many trails to repair. There’s a rumor that mulch companies may be coming to collect the downed wood or pellet mills could be another possibility. Things grow quickly here and past flood events have quickly become a memory. But this is the big kahuna. We’ve never had anything like this here.
       2. steppenwolf fetchit October 3, 2024 at 7:43 am

          Any and every longer-term rebuilding done here should be based on the assumption that this storm is just a hint of raindump waterbomb events to come. And should be built to withstand them.

          In the meantime, everything there should be rebuilt fast enough to work just good enough to keep working while people work on building up the super-megaflood-tolerant/resilient/whatever infrastructure needed for the accurately-predicted global warming future which is now here and is unfolding fast.

          And the same is true for post-fire rebuilding in California and all over the West, and for wherever else in the country that Harvey-DayLoads of rain show all the hitherto-unknown flash-flood microplains to be, and etc.
27. ChrisPacific October 2, 2024 at 5:30 pm

    The ties thing just read like horoscopes to me. It’s all made up and very dependent on culture, class, regional traditions and (if you ask me) whim.

    He recommends an honest-to-goodness black tie for funerals – I had no idea those actually existed. In my view, it might be appropriate if you’re the one in the coffin. Generally speaking almost every one of his choices reads extremely conservative to me and none of his meanings align with my experience. That means that (a) the ‘messages’ the ties are supposedly sending are likely going right over the head of anybody that lacks the secret decoder ring, and (b) any ‘messages’ being sent by people like me are unintended and/or flat out wrong. Derek Guy doesn’t seem to be aware of this (‘My guess is that you already know this’). He describes a plain navy tie with a fairly unobtrusive pattern as conveying “F… you” while most people I know would not even give it a second glance.

    Meanwhile no mention at all of the knot (Vance: very good, Walz: awful) or the very obvious creases just below it in more than half of his examples, including Walz and Obama. Apparently the wrong pattern or shade of navy is a major sin but it’s not necessary to know how to actually tie the thing properly. I don’t get it.

    I guess it’s just a different world: ‘To me, this is something you wear with seersucker or cream linen suits to summertime garden parties.’ You know, as one does (certainly if one is P. Diddy, I guess).
    1. ChrisPacific October 2, 2024 at 6:35 pm

       Actually on closer examination the “F… you” tie does in fact say exactly that in the pattern, although you have to look quite closely to see it, so it’s fair to say it’s not appropriate for a funeral. I’m guessing it would be a good choice for investment bankers taking their clients out to a strip club, or well-heeled sexual predators.
    2. CA October 2, 2024 at 11:30 pm

       “[Derek Guy] recommends an honest-to-goodness black tie for funerals – I had no idea those actually existed. In my view, it might be appropriate if you’re the one in the coffin.”

       Wildly funny and surely appropriate.
    3. PlutoniumKun October 3, 2024 at 6:16 am

       That did remind me of the funeral of an in-law, where the very wayward older son of the deceased was told he had to wear something black to his fathers funeral. He actually delivered the eulogy while wearing the only black item he owned, the Manchester United away strip. And his father didn’t even like football.

       I think menswear is very much a code – the secret is to pretend you haven’t studied it, while actually putting as much effort into working out the codes as anything else in life. I’ve long been jealous of people who just manage to get their clothes right, I used to think it was a knack, now I’ve learned that for the most part, they were either guided by parents who understood these things, or have done the research. Or, for that matter, have a woman who makes the decisions. My mother used to guess correctly when a former Irish PM was with his wife or his mistress. The latter was a professional PR person. ‘Oh, he’s back with his fancy woman I see’ my mother would say watching the TV’ ‘his tie actually matches the shirt well’.

       As MenswearGuy points out, the big loss for men was old style shops where you had experienced staff who would advice the men on sizing and colour, etc. The only suits I’ve ever had that fit me correctly and looked good was when I threw myself at the mercy of a good tailoring shop and accepted what I was told. And it didn’t cost me more than the normal mid range off-the-shelf outfits.
       1. Pat October 3, 2024 at 6:50 am

          That tailoring thing is a biggie, and not just for men. Properly fitted clothing is one of the big clues that you belong and where you are in the pecking order. (There are those that can get away without it, but usually their membership is based only on wealth, not wealth and power.)
       2. steppenwolf fetchit October 3, 2024 at 7:48 am

          Doesn’t it have to look effortless and effortlessly achieved? If something gives away the amount of work and learning the wearer had to invest in it, does that get the wearer banned from certain social circles as an “earnest striver”?

          This reminds me of a decades-old New Yorker cartoon showing a garden club lady in some kind of indoor flower-show plantscape, holding a sombrero and saying: ” I wish to achieve the effect of a sombrero carelessly thrown down.”
       3. Dermot O Connor October 3, 2024 at 10:07 am

          The Irish PM, ah yes, Charlie Haughey, I think you’re referring to.
       4. ChrisPacific October 3, 2024 at 3:58 pm

          Case in point: the ‘crease’ that’s evident in so many of the ties. It seemed odd to me so I looked it up. Turns out it’s called a ‘dimple’ and it’s considered good style, not bad, as long as you do it on purpose. Kind of like the backwards baseball cap or the low-slung pants, only for upper-middle class white males.

          I used to be of the same school of thought as you – go to a shop where you can get good clothing advice and steel yourself to pay the high prices. I subsequently learned that there is less uniformity of opinion on this than you might think, and I could be criticized for poor style even when I was wearing the exact outfit that had been selected for me by the ‘expert’.

          I’ve since concluded that the idea of a common accepted ‘style’ is an illusion, and the real trick is to get the wearer to believe in it to the extent that they’ll take compliments as their due and dismiss any criticism as misguided (hopefully causing the critics to second-guess themselves, if done with enough conviction). People like me who can’t pull that off become very good at learning what will blend in and not attract attention and wearing that. Vance and Walz are doing the same for the most part (black or dark blue suit jacket, white shirt, flag pin…) I guess ties are interesting because they’re less rigidly prescribed than the other elements, so you can get a sense of the wearer’s style and personality (if you’re feeling charitable) or more easily catch them in a mistake (if you aren’t).
    4. eg October 3, 2024 at 6:34 am

       If I were to bother wearing a tie again, give me a burgundy grenadine.
28. Steve H. October 2, 2024 at 5:40 pm

    Looks like Daily Sea Surface Temperature is gonna be stuck on September 26 for awhile:

    > The OISST data on this page are sourced from the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) data center located in Asheville, North Carolina, one of many communities severely impacted by heavy rainfall and historic flooding associated with Hurricane Helene. The NCEI data center has been offline since September 27th, and it is uncertain when service can be restored.

    And just as the temperatures had quirkily crossed back over to Every Day Is A New Record. Red thingee.
    1. i just don't like the gravy October 2, 2024 at 6:13 pm

       Quick, somebody ask ChatGPT if the rice trick works on data center GPUs!
       1. ChrisRUEcon October 3, 2024 at 12:19 am

          ::chortle:
29. Justin October 2, 2024 at 6:47 pm

    That Goya painting led to an argument with a professor when I was studying engineering in Europe. In the gallery at the Prado, I had stepped fairly far back. The painting is huge. When you step back, you can see a faint Christ/King like figure on the right side that the dog is looking up at. There is a faint crown and an outstretched arm. Everything is very faint and mixed with all of Goya’s background. I even asked other students with me to confirm I wasn’t creating something not there. It’s amazing to me how in such a large painting, Goya was able to do something so faint but definitely there.

    When we discussed the trip to the Prado the next day, I mentioned it and the professor told me I was wrong. I went and told him where the faint outlines were and others backed me up. I was still told I was wrong. I really hope he went back later that trip on his own and looked for himself from a distance.
    1. Late Introvert October 2, 2024 at 11:17 pm

       A girlfriend who was attending the Rhode Island School of Design advised me to take off my glasses, step back, and squint. It’s good advice.

       I agree there is a lot going on up there, and the dog is going WTF.

       Excellent link Lambert. Never saw that one before.
    2. gk October 3, 2024 at 11:41 am

       Others have seen it. From Wikipedia

       A faint dark shape looms over the dog; this is sometimes considered to be damage or an intentional inclusion, but is generally seen as an artifact from the earlier painting that decorated the wall before Goya overpainted it with The Dog.

       I’ve no idea what the authority for “sometimes” and “generally seen” is.
30. John Beech October 2, 2024 at 6:57 pm

    Maybe Eric Feigle-Ding should stick to what he knows. Solar cells coming out of SE Asia are a dodge to avoid Trump era duties . . . they’re really made in China.
31. Enter Laughing October 2, 2024 at 8:16 pm

    RE: Eric Feigl-Ding “facts checks”

    Don’t know what Feigl-Ding is going on about with solar modules, but Vance was talking about solar panels.

    According to the IEA:

    Today, China’s share in all the manufacturing stages of solar panels (such as polysilicon, ingots, wafers, cells and modules) exceeds 80%.
32. CA October 2, 2024 at 9:43 pm

    “Solar cells coming out of SE Asia are a dodge…”
    “Eric Feigl-Ding leaves out that China can and has been laundering…”

    Forgive me for explaining, but China, which is the largest economy in the world, produces splendid goods and services. Chinese goods and services are bought, just as Chinese buys desirable goods and services, internationally.

    No matter what may have been argued in or written about an American political drama, there is no dodging and no laundering about what China is exporting in the way of products and services that are actually meant to green and rescue the world environment.
33. AG October 2, 2024 at 10:07 pm

    re: post-VP-debate-disorder-syndrom

    This is Branko Marcetic´s take and his headline finds a smart way to spin what – as far as I skimmed comments – was rather disappointment over Walz:

    “Tim Walz’s Talents Are Wasted on This Campaign”
    https://jacobin.com/2024/10/vp-debate-walz-vance-progressives

    Marcetic doesn´t seem to be one to easily sell out.
    Albeit he no question is within that “bubble”, does attempt to pierce it – half-heartedly:

    “(…)
    Tim Walz, put in a performance that was far from the smooth and polished one you’d expect from a decades-long political operator. He mixed up Iran and Israel several times, for example, and at one point said he had “become friends with school shooters.” Nevertheless, he capably and effectively both made the case for Harris’s agenda and explained how what Donald Trump and J. D. Vance planned to do would be disastrous for voters’ lives.

    Walz is where he is right now in large part thanks to his communication skills, and there’s a lot that not just wonky liberal technocrats but leftists can learn from his rhetorical style.
    (…)”

    Those who followed this event and know the matter might wanna give the article a quick try. He uses Walz quotes from the debate. And his verdict. This is about Walz not Vance.

    “(…)
    Much of this is genuinely impressive political rhetoric. The problem is, it’s at the service of an unambitious campaign of small, incremental change, even corporate appeasement, that many of us hoped the post-2016 period had eliminated for good.

    Imagine if this rhetorical style was put toward, say, reminding Americans about the nonsensical, bureaucratic cruelty of private insurance, and how it would be better to all but eliminate it and replace it with a Medicare for All system. (Walz accidentally gestured at the ease of such an argument, when he said that “making sure the risk pool is broad enough to cover everyone, that’s the only way insurance works.”)
    (…)”

    Nonetheless below closing paragraph sounds “semi-hollow” to me. Stopping short of what could be a sobering honest assessment of why after 12 years of Democrats out of 24, the country is so much worse off than 2000.

    Explain THAT to me. But of course nobody does.

    “(…)
    Walz showed last night that he has the rhetorical skills to overcome his running mate’s significant deficiencies. He could be a major political figure in the years ahead and serve as a model for progressives who have so often struggled to communicate what should be popular, appealing ideas to people who don’t share their own social and educational backgrounds. But that rhetorical style can only go so far without an actual progressive agenda that offers people new, concrete solutions. Maybe one day we’ll get both. For now, we seem cursed with only one or the other.
    (…)”
    1. steppenwolf fetchit October 3, 2024 at 7:56 am

       If we can create and grow a New Deal Revival Party of some sort, we might be able to get both with and out of such a party.

       Or if we could purge and burn every single person associated with or fostered by the “New Democrat” forces often referred to as Democratic Leadership Council, Hamilton Project, Atari Democrat, New Democrat, Clinton Democrat, Obama Democrat, etc. . . . purge and burn them out with Stalinist thoroughness . . . . so that only New Deal Revival type people were allowed to exist within the Democratic Party; then we could get both from such a disinfected and declintaminated Democratic Party.

       Which would be easier to do? In the few years remaining before decline becomes irreversible fall?
34. Stubbins October 2, 2024 at 10:13 pm

    The account of the deaf girl signing to a dog is entirely credible.

    I’m a regular among other hard-core regulars at our local dog park – 30-60 minutes a day. It’s my daily read on what’s happening in a normal, non NC-reading prole’s perception. For example, there was plenty of discussion of Biden’s doddering final debate, but no mention at all of the VP debate.

    Anyhow, at least half of us use hand signals in parallel with verbal commands. There are common gestures for sit, stay, and come, uniform enough that we can use them with other dogs and be recognized. My dogs will heed the hand signals alone, they are visual synonyms for the verbal commands.
    1. Lambert Strether Post authorOctober 3, 2024 at 7:21 am

       > There are common gestures for sit, stay, and come, uniform enough that we can use them with other dogs and be recognized. My dogs will heed the hand signals alone, they are visual synonyms for the verbal commands.

       A little language, shared by humans and dogs, with verbal and gestural modes. Amazing (though not I assume to a dog-owner).

       I wonder if that language translates to American Sign Language (the language I believe that “treat” was gestured in).
       1. Steve H. October 3, 2024 at 7:36 am

          Not so much. I’ve performed with both ASL, and once with (American) Indian Sign Language (a speech of Chief Joseph’s). While both have elements as described (‘come’, ‘go’), most images are iconic (a bonnet for ‘female’). Syntax is rhythmic, so a dog would have a hard time parsing the gestures.
    2. BillS October 3, 2024 at 12:47 pm

       I remember being stunned by this lovely video some years ago of a cat signing to its deaf human.

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