By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Patient readers, I had a Twitter debacle, and so this is a little bit light. More soon. –lambert UPDATE All done!
Bird Song of the Day
Northern Mockingbird, Big Bend NP–Chisos Basin Campground, Brewster, Texas, United States. “Singing lustily before first light.” Indeed! This spectrogram shows the virtuosity very clearly (not all do).
In Case You Might Miss…
- Trump transition: Biden meeting, Gabbard, Gaetz.
- Deploy the Blame Cannons! Democrat suicide?
- Boeing layoffs.
- “Is the Love Song Dying?”
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
Capitol Seizure
“J6 Shocker: Phone companies dispute FBI testimony on pipe bombs suspect, key lawmaker reveals” [Just the News]. “lular carriers have told Congress they possess intact phone usage data from the vicinity where two pipe bombs were planted during the Jan. 6 incident, directly disputing FBI testimony that agents couldn’t identify a suspect because the phone data was corrupted, a key House chairman tells Just the News. The revelations from Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., the chairman of the House Administration oversight subcommittee, adds new intrigue to a debate that has gripped Washington for nearly four years: Why can’t the FBI with so much evidence and manpower identify the suspect who planted the explosive devices at the Democrat and Republican Party headquarters hours before the Capitol was breached…. The concerns about the unsolved Jan. 6 pipe bombs have been heightened by evidence Loudermilk disclosed in the last year showing that then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris was taken within 10 yards of one of the live bombs on the morning of Jan. 6 because the Secret Service did not do a thorough security sweep. In addition, Loudermilk also provided security camera video footage and still photos of the suspect holding a device that lawmakers believe was a cell phone, further making the phone data a potential case-solving piece of evidence.” • We also don’t know who set up the famous gallows, or why it wasn’t taken down.
Biden Administration
“Special counsel Jack Smith stands down in Trump classified docs case, asks court to halt appeal” [New York Post]. “Special counsel Jack Smith asked a federal appellate court on Wednesday to halt his appeal in President-elect Donald Trump’s classified documents case, citing the results of the 2024 election. ‘As a result of the election held on November 5, 2024, one of the defendants in this case, Donald J. Trump, is expected to be certified as President-elect on January 6, 2025, and inaugurated on January 20, 2025,’ Smith wrote to the Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals. ‘The Government respectfully requests that the Court hold this appeal in abeyance — and stay the deadline for the Government’s reply brief, which is currently due on November 15, 2024 — until December 2, 2024, to afford the Government time to assess this unprecedented circumstance and determine the appropriate course going forward consistent with Department of Justice policy,’ the federal prosecutor added.”
Trump Transition
“Trump triumphantly returns to White House as Biden pledges ‘smooth transition'” [Washington Times]. “‘I look forward … to having a smooth transition. We’ll do everything we can to make sure you’re accommodated what you need,’ a smiling Mr. Biden said as he congratulated a man who had relentlessly attacked his mental capacity and branded his administration as a ‘disaster.’ Mr. Trump also pledged that the transition will be ‘as smooth as it can get.’ ‘Politics is tough, and in many cases, it’s not a nice world, but it’s a nice world today,’ Mr. Trump said. They shook hands in front of a roaring fire in the Oval Office.” • What was burning in the fire? The Epstein tapes and a copy of The Enabling Act?
“Donald Trump reveals exclusively to The Post what he and Biden spoke about at DC meeting” [New York Post]. “President-elect Donald Trump told The Post Wednesday that he and President Biden “both really enjoyed seeing each other” when they sat down for a historic post-election get-together in the Oval Office. ‘You know, it’s been a long, it’s been a long slog,’ the 78-year-old said during a phone interview as he left Washington. ‘It’s been a lot of work on both sides and he did a very good job with respect to campaigning and everything else. We really had a really good meeting.’ Trump said Biden was ‘very gracious.’ ‘We got to know each other again.'”
BFFs:
Biden seems happy.
Maybe people can stop wasting their energy defending him now. pic.twitter.com/HI7groP6CC
— leahmcelrath.bsky.social (@leahmcelrath) November 13, 2024
So much for all that “our democracy” hoo-ha, then. Also too “fascism.” Dear Lord, these people just turn on a dime!
“Biden, Trump Die 2 Minutes Apart Holding Hands” [The Onion]. “‘Only minutes before their deaths, they requested that their hospital beds be pushed together—it’s like they knew what was coming,’ said Marlene Kato, a nurse who confirmed that medical staff at Walter Reed Medical Center, where the two presidents spent their final hours together, were stunned when Biden died at 8:05 p.m. and Trump followed at 8:07. ‘They were rivals in life, but they came together with love in death. They were both very weak, but turned their heads to face each other and smiled. Biden said, ‘You were the only one who ever got me,’ and Trump said, ‘I know.’ I started tearing up right there and then. It was just so beautiful. Then they used their final breaths to request a shared burial plot at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster.’ At press time, a coroner’s report revealed that Trump had strangled Biden and then succumbed to a heart attack two minutes later.”• Oh.
* * * “Donald Trump Jokes He ‘Can’t Get Rid’ of Elon Musk Amid Growing Influence” [Newsweek]. “”Elon won’t go home. I can’t get rid of him—at least until I don’t like him,” Trump joked, acknowledging Musk’s growing presence in his inner circle.” And: “During his week-long stay at Mar-a-Lago, Musk has bonded with the president-elect’s family, posing for photos and playing golf, while also joining calls with foreign leaders, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He is also scheduled to meet Argentina’s President Javier Milei at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday. Although the president-elect has often said that Musk likely won’t take on a full-time position due to his other commitments, Musk—who once vowed to stay out of politics—appears to be enjoying his new role.”
* * * “Trump’s pick for top intel job has been accused of ‘traitorous’ parroting of Russian propaganda” [NBC]. • The spooks seem unhappy.
“Tulsi Gabbard’s Nomination Is a National-Security Risk” [Tom Nichols, The Atlantic]. • As do Never Trumper national security goons.
“The Curious Case of Tulsi Gabbard: Is She a Russian Asset or a Dupe?” [Jonathan V. Last, The Bulwark]. “Because for a decade Gabbard has looked and behaved like a Russian asset.” • An asset? With a handler? I’ll only believe this if 51 intelligence officials tell me so. (Sorry to go all heuristic on this, I should be assessing all this on the merits, but sheesh.)
* * * “Gaetz resigns from Congress — possibly skirting long-awaited Ethics report” [Politico]. “Dozens of GOP lawmakers indicated that leadership had told them about Gaetz’s resignation before Johnson made the announcement. Many were excitedly spreading the news, glad to be rid of the architect of Kevin McCarthy’s speakership ouster. Gaetz didn’t attend the GOP’s hours-long meeting near the Capitol on Wednesday, where Republicans elected their leadership slate. Johnson said Gaetz had resigned so abruptly because he knew how long it would take to fill the seat if he becomes attorney general…. Other GOP House colleagues believe his decision is actually tied to an Ethics Committee report investigating several allegations including that Gaetz engaged in sex with a minor, which they believe was poised to be released in a matter of days. Gaetz has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has sought to attack the panel probing various allegations against him. If Gaetz is no longer a member of the House, the report likely won’t be formally released, though it could leak. One House Republican, granted anonymity to speak candidly, tied Gaetz’s resignation to trying to ‘stymie the ethics investigation that is coming out in one week.'” • It seems to have been pretty effectively stymied already, but whatever.
“Trump Nominates ‘Khanservative’ Matt Gaetz as Attorney General” [Matt Stoller, BIG]. Stoller followed anti-trust in Congress closely. Here’s a telling anecdate about Gaetz:
At one point during the markup, at 3am or so, [Democrat David Cicilline, actually an anti-monoply ally] allowed an amendment that punched a loophole in one of the bills. The amendment would have let big tech firms purchase companies for less than $50 million in value without much scrutiny. It wasn’t a big deal; everyone was exhausted and wanted to just move along. But at that moment, Gaetz chimed in and said he opposed it. He didn’t win. But he was the only member in either party to say he wanted no loopholes, no matter how small, for big tech.
When the spotlight is on, most people do not want to appear craven. But when the spotlight is not on, when it’s 3 am and the only people who are paying attention are powerful lobbyists from organized money, well, that’s when someone tells you what their priorities are. And in that case, Gaetz said he’d fight for every inch, even if he would get no credit, even if everyone was tired, and even if he was going to lose, and in losing, upset several corporations worth a trillion dollars apiece.
The whole piece is worth reading in full, given that Gaetz seems sound on Lina Khan, defense reform, and surveillance (and actually called for Snowden to be pardoned). So no wonder powerful forces want to take him down.
“Matt Gaetz once faced a sex trafficking investigation by the Justice Department he could now lead” [Associated Press]. “The federal sex trafficking investigation that began under Attorney General Bill Barr during Trump’s first term focused on allegations that Gaetz and onetime political ally Joel Greenberg paid underage girls and escorts or offered them gifts in exchange for sex. Greenberg, a fellow Republican who served as the tax collector in Florida’s Seminole County, admitted as part of a plea deal with prosecutors in 2021 that he paid women and an underage girl to have sex with him and other men. The men were not identified in court documents when he pleaded guilty. Greenberg was sentenced in late 2022 to 11 years in prison. Federal investigators scrutinized a trip that Gaetz took to the Bahamas with a group of women and a doctor who donated to his campaign, and whether the women were paid or received gifts to have sex with the men, according to people familiar with the matter who were not allowed to publicly discuss the investigation. Prosecutors also investigated whether Gaetz and his associates tried to secure government jobs for some of the women, and scrutinized Gaetz’s connections to the medical marijuana sector, including whether his associates sought to influence legislation Gaetz sponsored, the people have said. Gaetz had remained under investigation by the House Ethics Committee over allegations that he was part of a scheme that led to the sex trafficking of a 17-year-old girl. The committee began its review of Gaetz in April 2021, deferred its work in response to a Justice Department request, and renewed its work shortly after Gaetz announced that the Justice Department had ended a sex trafficking investigation. Over the summer, the committee provided an unusual public update into its long-running investigation, saying its review now includes whether Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct. Gaetz has categorically denied all the allegations before the committee.” • Well, I suippose we can expect a leak shortly. (One reason I apply a hermeneutic of suspicion to sex scandals is that long, long ago, an Illinois Republican got taken down over sex club allegations in a set of mysteriously released divorce papers, and the Democrat went on to win. I focused my aghastitude on the scandal, but the winning Democrat was this dude named Barack Obama, who was just another elected at the time.)
2024 Post Mortem
“The Democrats Committed Suicide This Year” [James K. Galbraith, Project Syndicate]. ” Trump’s final tally will be only slightly higher than his 2020 total of 74.2 million votes. For Harris, though, we will see a disastrous decline from the 81.2 million votes that Joe Biden received, and this despite the fact that the voting-eligible population has increased by four million. In other words, Trump gained almost no support in his four-year campaign for redemption. If all the voters were the same, one could even say that he merely got his 2020 supporters to vote for him again. In fact, about 13 million people (most of them eligible voters) have died, and about 17 million have become voter-eligible, implying that Trump replaced his losses about one-for-one, while a decline in turnout cost the Democrats nearly ten million votes. These numbers cast grave doubt on explanations of the result that focus on economic conditions, and still more on the impact of advertising and get-out-the-vote campaigns. The results also deflate analyses based on the ‘American voter.’… The real story is that one side voted at peak strength, and the other did not.” More: “After we have ruled out the implausible, at least three reasonable conjectures remain. The first concerns the conditions of voting. In 2020, owing to the pandemic, voting was more accessible than ever before…. In 2024, some – though not all – of these expedients no longer existed, after already declining in 2022. It is standard in America to use the structure of voting to help determine the outcome: long lines at the polls discourage turnout, especially among working people with limited time.” Yes, the distinctive competence of the modern political party. More: “A second plausible explanation concerns voter registration. Students and low-income minority citizens move more frequently and usually must re-register every time their address changes. It is highly probable that this burden falls more heavily on Democrats.” And now: “The third hypothesis turns on the long-standing divisions within the Democratic Party…. The Clintons and Obamas are currently the de facto heads of the centrist faction, and Biden and Harris were their appointees…. The Democratic leadership engineered this situation and must therefore desire it. Win or lose, it remains in control of a vast shadow apparatus: consultants, pollsters, lobbyists, fundraisers, key positions on Capitol Hill. Any concessions to new forces within the party would undermine this control, whereas losses to Republicans do not. The Democratic leadership would far rather lose an election or two – or even become a permanent minority party – than open the party to people it cannot control. The 2024 election was, therefore, a suicide. The Democratic leadership was, at best, indifferent to the erosion of voting access, negligent in retaining 2020’s new voters, and proactive in ensuring the abstention of what little remains of its ‘left’ wing. It tried to cover this up, as usual, with celebrity endorsements and identity politics. As usual, it did not work. But the party’s mandarins and their apparatchiks will be around next time to try again.” • I could quarrel with causality (“economic conditions” is surely a little slippery), but this conforms in almost every respect to my priors (except one should hardly leave the spooks, the press, and the NGOs out of the “vast shadow apparatus”). So I like it :-)
“Trump’s Win Leaves Democrats Asking: Where Are Our Bro Whisperers?” [New York Times]. “[S]ome younger Democrats said a broader strategy shift was in order, especially in terms of how politicians approach nontraditional media. Celebrity appearances and paid endorsements from influencers come across as transactional and inauthentic, they said. ‘It’s last-second, ‘Let’s get Beyoncé onstage to say we support women,’ but that doesn’t move anyone who wasn’t already going to vote Democrat,’ said Ayem Kpenkaan, a liberal content creator who goes by @bocxtop on social media. As Democrats were casting about for explanations for Mr. Trump’s victory, posts by Mr. Kpenkaan, 25, blaming ‘alpha male podcasts’ for men’s rightward shift went viral. He suggested that Democrats needed liberal versions of media platforms that are culturally right-leaning but not inherently political — like Barstool Sports, the popular sports brand that has become so enmeshed in online culture that it has coined a phrase, Barstool conservatism. ‘We have to make entertaining, engaging content that men want to watch and care about,” Mr. Kpenkaan said. “Then, over time, you pepper in more progressive views.” • “Content creator” sounds something like a producer of “slop feedstock” to me, but what do I know?
* * * “The State-Level Differences Between the Presidential and Senate Races” [Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball]. The Abstract: “Split outcomes between presidential and Senate results saw a resurgence in 2024, as at least four Donald Trump-won states sent Democrats to the Senate. Republicans still took the majority in the Senate because while Sens. Jon Tester (D-MT) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) performed notably better than Kamala Harris, they did not do so by enough to hold their seats. Across most key Senate races, Senate Democrats ran better than Harris in rural parts of their states but were comparatively weak in some suburban counties. In one of Harris’s best states, Maryland, former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) stood out as Republicans’ top overperformer, although Harris’s 26-point margin in the state was too much for him to overcome.” • Handy map:
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Transmission: H5N1
“Bird flu: Canadian teenager is critically ill with new genotype” [BMJ]. “A Canadian adolescent is in a critical condition in a British Columbia hospital after becoming infected with a new genotype of H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). The patient, who has not been publicly identified, developed conjunctivitis on 2 November, followed by fever and coughing. While these symptoms have been common in people infected with H5N1 bird flu in North America—until now, all US cases—the teenager in Canada then developed acute respiratory distress syndrome and was admitted to intensive care on 8 November. ”
“Canada: PHAC Confirms HPAI H5N1 Genotype D1.1 In B.C. Human Infection” [Avian Flu Diary]. “We now have the answer to at least 2 of our questions regarding the H5 virus infection in a teenager from British Columbia; according to a statement from the PHAC (h/t FluTrackers) the subtype has been confirmed to be H5N1 and the genotype is D1.1. ” More on D.1.1:
Perhaps we should give consideration to invoking the precautionary principle:
We really shouldn’t play “let ‘er rip” with H5N1, but that’s what we’re doing.
Scientific Communication
Let’s do brunch over at Blue Sky:
Media
“Covid grifters are (still) wrong: the structure of esoteric knowledge” [ClosedForm]. “I could take a weathered desire path here and argue that these analyses are politically dangerous in addition to being ignorant; that they misidentify the culprits, misunderstand the problems, point people galvanized to ‘get involved’ down dead-end paths. Someone else can make those arguments. I want to talk about something weirder: the funky thread of esotericism running through the beautiful tapestry of the Covid grifter community and through its associated epistemological stance…. The Covid grifters miss (‘miss’ is a bit passive) alternative explanations because they assume that if it is published in a scientific paper, it must be true and must confirm their existing belief. This is a grave misunderstanding of what the scientific literature is. It’s not a repository of truth claims. It’s a body of work produced by people working in a specific political economy, one that incentivizes publishing ‘statistically significant’ findings (which are not the same thing as actually significant or meaningful findings), and really incentivizes publishing anything about hot topics like, say, a devastating pandemic.”
Elite Maleficence
The UK, but yikes:
Nosocomial Covid in Wales
'Number of inpatient Covid-19 cases in hospital in Wales'
On 10 November 2024, at least 67% of inpatient Covid cases in Wales were the result of hospital-acquired SARS-CoV-2 infection…
(PHW data) pic.twitter.com/HnGsHtf7hL
— Gwladwr (@gwladwr) November 13, 2024
“There’s a Better Way to Talk About Fluoride, Vaccines and Raw Milk” [Emily Oster, New York Times]. “Consider three topics of much public discussion: measles vaccines, raw milk and water fluoridation. All three represent fault lines between what is said by public health agencies and by Mr. Kennedy and other skeptics. Where their messages differ is in the strength and complexity of the evidence…. My suggestion is that when asked about these topics, health experts provide this level of detail. Simply saying that vaccines are good and raw milk is bad misses specifics that people find important. People often do their research, and if they feel the risks of raw milk have been exaggerated, it can erode their trust. Now perhaps that person is more likely to distrust the vaccine messaging, too. With more information, we provide room for people to drink raw milk but also vaccinate their kids. Which is, basically, a reasonable choice. Providing context also helps people make sense of new information…. Being more nuanced will not be easy for public health agencies. They need to put more trust in their audience…. If health experts share a more balanced message about raw milk, more people might drink raw milk. And, yes, that does entail some increased risk. I am arguing that in exchange you may get higher measles vaccination. It’s not a perfect scenario, but it may mean that fewer people get sick and die. Which, after all, should be the ultimate goal.” • The problem here is that Oster, an economist, has track record:
Here's a horrendous example of COVID misinformation spread by Emily Oster in 2020, which has been proven wrong by research many times since. Please do not listen to any of her advice about public health. pic.twitter.com/bAnP3rbXEv
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) November 14, 2024
Just like all the pro-Iraq pundits, still making bank, twenty years later…
HICPAC meeting today and tomorrow:
♒️More in🧵👆🏼
♒️#HICPAC Mtg THURS & FRI Nov 14-15❗️
♒️”CDC’s HICPAC: #COI & Process Violations Alleged in @TheWHN Suppl Complaint 2 Inspector General”
♒️Impt fr @lambertstrether❗️👇🏼
♒️Pls share👇🏽#HCW #H5N1 @PeoplesCDC @Pan_End_It @C19LH_Advocacy https://t.co/cTZ3UTQJ02
— HealthCommunication (@Comm_in_Care) November 13, 2024
I apologize for not getting to this earlier; mentally, I’m still digging out from the election. Here are the drafts HICPAC has been working from:
HICPAC is finally giving the public a look at the drafts that they will be discussing and voting on tomorrow:
Isolation Workgroup – https://t.co/jqVqN8F6P6
Healthcare Personnel Wkgrp – https://t.co/kJ5EnqTFNM— Deb Soc – #KeepMasksInHealthCare #StopTheSpread! (@dsoq) November 13, 2024
For the latest on HICPAC, see NC here.
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC November 4 | Last Week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC November 9 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC November 2 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data November 12: | ★ National [6] CDC November 8: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens November 11: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic November 9: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC October 21: | Variants[10] CDC October 21: |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC November 2: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC November 2: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Good news!
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* still popular. XEC has entered the chat. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) Down.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Steadily down.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Actually improved; it’s now one of the few charts to show the entire course of the pandemic to the present day.
[7] (Walgreens) Down.
[8] (Cleveland) Down.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Down.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Now XEC.
[11] Deaths low, positivity down.
[12] Deaths low, ED down.
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of individuals filing for unemployment benefits in the US fell by 4,000 from the previous week to 217,000 on the period ending November 9th, the least since May, and firmly below market expectations of an increase to 223,000. In turn, outstanding unemployment claims fell by 19,000 to 1,873,000 in the last week of October. The results extended the view that the US labor market remains at historically strong levels despite the aggressive tightening cycle by the Federal Reserve in the last quarters, adding leeway for the central bank to slow the pace of monetary loosening should inflation remain stubbornly high.”
Inflation: “United States Producer Prices Final Demand Less Foods and Energy YoY” [Trading Economics]. “The annual core producer inflation in the US which excludes prices for foods and energy, rose to 3.1% in October 2024, following an upwardly revised 2.9% in the prior month and slightly above market forecasts of 3%.”
Manufacturing: “Pink slips arrive for laid-off Boeing workers as company begins 10% cut” [Seattle Times]. “The cuts are not expected to hit members of the Machinists union, but they did affect members of the engineering union, SPEEA.” • Won’t they need engineers to design a new plane?
Manufacturing: “Boeing hires Northrop executive to take over Pentagon projects” [Reuters]. ” Boeing said on Thursday it hired former Northrop Grumman executive Colin Miller to head its Phantom Works research arm within the company’s defense business unit. Miller’s hiring as general manager of Phantom Works at Boeing Defense, Space and Security (BDS) had been in the works before the arrival of new Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg. Boeing’s defense business has been struggling under the weight of budget-busting older contracts, but Ortberg said in October that the unit which makes helicopters, fighter jets and missiles remains “core” to the company’s future.” • Not to triage them, then?
Tech: “Mark Zuckerberg Wants to Feed You More AI Slop” [Bloomberg]. “Get ready, folks. In much the same way that short videos and viral content took over feeds once populated with posts from our friends and family, the next wave of content will be machine-generated. A progression from personal to viral content and now to AI content seems like a dystopian direction for a social media firm that’s long framed itself as “connecting people.” But Zuckerberg calls this new trend ‘promising.’ His view is not unusual in the industry. I’ve spoken to several technology executives who believe that AI-generated content — which could make up as much as 90% of content on the Internet, according to one wild estimate — will be accepted as the new normal. AI-generated videos will eventually be called ‘videos,’ the thinking goes.” • Nice to see “AI Slop” make it into a Bloomberg headline.
Tech: “Lost In The Future” [Ed Zitron, Where’s Your Ed At]. “[E]verybody is affected by the growth-at-all-costs Rot Economy, because everybody is using technology, all the time, and the technology in question is getting worse. This election cycle saw more than 25 billion text messages sent to potential voters, and seemingly every website was crammed full of random election advertising. Our phones are beset with notifications trying to ‘growth-hack’ us into doing things that companies want, our apps full of microtransactions, our websites slower and harder-to-use with endless demands of our emails and our phone numbers and the need to log back in because they couldn’t possibly lose a dollar to somebody who dared to consume their content for free. Our social networks are so algorithmically charged that they barely show us the things we want them to anymore, with executives dedicated to filling our feeds with AI-generated slop because despite being the customer, we are also the revenue mechanism. Our search engines do less as a means of making us use them more, our dating apps have become vehicles for private equity to add a toll to falling in love, our video games are constantly nagging us to give them more money, and despite it costing money and being attached to our account, we don’t actually own any of the streaming media we purchase. We’re drowning in spam — both in our emails and on our phones — and at this point in our lives we’re probably agreed to 3 million pages worth of privacy policies allowing companies to use our information as they see fit. And these are issues that hit everything we do, all the time, constantly, unrelentingly.” • You say “unrelentingly” like that’s a bad thing.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 63 Greed (previous close: 67 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 58 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 14 at 1:45:43 PM ET.
Musical Interlude
“Is the Love Song Dying?” [The Pudding]. Horridly mobile-friendly, but data-driven and worth the trouble. Here is one handy (interactive) chart:
(Seranade = “You love someone, and they love you back”; heartache = “But what happens if you love them, but they just… don’t? Maybe you broke up, or maybe it’s just unrequited.”
So how do readers answer the question in the title?
“Jesse Sheidlower answers our questions about ‘The F-Word'” [Strong Language]. “Lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower has been researching and writing about f*ck for a f*cking long time: nearly three decades.” This caught my eye: “You cite the Internet Archive as a valuable resource this time around. Any specifics you can share? [SHEIDLOWER:] I can’t overstate the importance of the Internet Archive; it might not have been possible to do this edition without it. It holds an immense of amount of material about everything, so you don’t just get mainstream fiction (which is itself, of course, very useful), but all sorts of things you don’t normally think of. For example, high school and college yearbooks are an immensely valuable source for informal writing, but hardly anyone has used them for linguistic research before. I quote over a dozen yearbooks, all from the Internet Archive, in this edition, in many cases providing the earliest example we have: “f*ck ’em if they can’t take a joke,” from Baltimore in 1971; “f*ck you and the horse you rode in on” in Massachusetts in 1964; MFWIC ‘motherf*cker what’s in charge’ from the US Air Force Academy in 1963. This material just can’t be found anywhere else.” • Good thing the Internet Archive is not in any way vulnerable.
Gallery
I should be more of a fan of O’Keefe than I am:
From a Day with Juan IV pic.twitter.com/GrCrWy6H4g
— Georgia O'Keeffe (@artistokeeffe) November 14, 2024
I didn’t pick this one deliberately, it just came across my feed. Something about the actual paint…
Healthcare
I can’t vouch for this, but it does seem like something to watch out for:
Have any readers experienced this?
Our Famously Free Press
“The Onion Says It Has Bought Infowars, Alex Jones’s Site, Out of Bankruptcy” [New York Times]. “The Onion said that the bid was sanctioned by the families of the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, who in 2022 won a $1.4 billion defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones and his company, Free Speech Systems…. The publication plans to reintroduce Infowars in January as a parody of itself, mocking ‘weird internet personalities’ like Mr. Jones who traffic in misinformation and health supplements, Ben Collins, the chief executive of The Onion’s parent company, Global Tetrahedron, said in an interview.” • Should be challenging!
“The brain summons deep sleep for healing from life-threatening injury” [Nature]. “Immune cells rush to the brain and promote deep sleep after a heart attack, according to a new study1 involving both mice and humans. This heavy slumber helps recovery by easing inflammation in the heart, the study found…. The implications of the study go beyond heart attack, says Rachel Rowe, a specialist in sleep and inflammation at the University of Colorado Boulder. ‘For any kind of injury, your body’s natural response would be to help you sleep so your body can heal,’ she says.”• Hmm. Makes you wonder about other forms of inflammation and sleep.
Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From Carla:
Carla writes: “The last of our 2024 anemones.”
Yet again, kind readers, I tap the sign: More plant images, please. My inventory is still more nervous-making than I would like it to be. Do you have images to send in, especially of autumn produce or winter projects? I enjoy them very much, and I’m sure other readers do too!
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Maybe Joe and Donald realize that they need each other as foils, like how John Lennon’s dour, brooding, and contemplative nature had to be offset by McCartney’s happy love-song writing, to produce the brilliance of the Beatles.
Or perhaps it is more like how Diamond David Lee Roth’s selfish but histrionic front-man antics perfectly balanced Eddie Van Halen’s brilliant guitar playing. The band was never the same without him.
Or maybe, I am just over-analyzing the whole thing and they’re two rotters who deserve each other.
I think Biden is happy that Harris lost. I think he hates Harris, and so does Jill. There was a video a couple of days ago of Harris sitting beside Jill at some ceremony and they didn’t look all to happy. Also a picture on voting day of Jill wearing almost all red. A bad look? Intentional? Who knows.
Seems strange they would get along so good given what they called each other over the last 2 years, Trump being Hitler and a threat to democracy and all that. Too bad their followers haven’t kept up. It’s still hateville in the trenches.
Body language never lies … Joe appears younger and more vital. He’s going out on his terms, the only Dem to ever defeat Trump.
> Body language never lies
All that means is that the truly sly will figure out how to lie with it, too (“Genius!!” “No, acting!!!”)
That smile on Biden just reinforces the notion that all the “threat to democracy” hyperventilating is performative nonsense. None of them that matter really believe it. The problem is that performative lying is so transparent and it infuriates regular people, so they vote against it. I am convinced people don’t vote for Trump because they like him. They vote for him because he appears most likely to break a system and class (the political class) that is universally loathed.
With Biden smiling so much, perhaps it was because Trump told him that of course he and Hunter will get their pardons. It’s the least that Trump can do for Joe’s work in sabotaging Harris’s campaign at every opportunity.
– “What was burning in the fire? The Epstein tapes and a copy of The Enabling Act?”
I heard they joined hands and tossed a copy of Kamala’s campaign poster, autographed by Shepard Fairey himself, into the roaring fire. It was a magic moment.
Sleepy Joe knows that he’d never have been president without Trump to fearmonger against. Bernie would’ve waxed him.
That’s an officially published photo of the meeting, isn’t it? If so, it’s Biden once again trolling the party members that kicked him out of a second term.
> That’s an officially published photo of the meeting, isn’t it
It is. There’s another version running around that pulls out to show the microphone booms.
Have you seen recent photos of Diamond Dave? He’s not aging that well at all…
Maybe Trump is telling a funny anecdote from a round of golf…and inviting Joe and Jill to visit them in the spring at Mar a Lago..\sarc
Dave was never meant to age well.
Idk if it’s been mentioned here, but there’s a “Trump/Biden bromance vid” making the rounds on social media:
https://x.com/PhilippeCorbe/status/1857023337228013996
Trigger warning. Pretty clearly AI-generated. Educational purposes only.
Re the Emily Oster article
From a primary care physician in the heartland –
Dear alphabet agencies and big media like CBS and NY TIMES –
Please be aware, so sullied are the names of so many of the COVID experts and apologists, for example, Emily Oster, Paul Offitt, Peter Hotez among so many others that anything and everything they say is not only instantly ignored by up to 70% of my population in a blue county – but many patients often take note of what they say and proceed to do the exact opposite of what they are saying.
The entire apparatus needs a complete and total clean sweep. This is of the utmost importance for the reputation of public health and medicine going forward, but it is also critical to the health of the nation.
I know it is hard to hear – but yes indeed – it is that bad and getting worse each day there is no accountability.
Yep. From JAMA network this year:
Question: How did trust in physicians and hospitals change during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Findings: In every sociodemographic group in this survey study among 443 455 unique respondents aged 18 years or older residing in the US, trust in physicians and hospitals decreased substantially over the course of the pandemic, from 71.5% in April 2020 to 40.1% in January 2024.
(my emphasis)
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2821693
> trust in physicians and hospitals decreased substantially over the course of the pandemic, from 71.5% in April 2020 to 40.1% in January 2024.
Yikes (although I bet everybody’s reasons for distrust aren’t the same).
You have to understand that this is just Emily Oster doing her part-
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/pro-infection-doctors-didnt-just-want-kids-in-school-they-wanted-them-there-unvaccinated-untested-and-unmasked-they-wanted-them-infected/
And what better virus vector than schools.
That bird flu variant being on the move along the Pacific coast is troubling, seems like a good possibility of recombination with the cow-adapted variant as it hits Cali.
Also, two links via violet blue’s weekly covid post.
https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/sara.anne.willette/viz/USWastewaterCompositeData/SARS-CoV-2CurvilinearDashboard <- another Wastewater map, includes county risk levels, seems to pull data just from scan?
https://polybio.org/consortium-project-explorer/ <- very fancy looking overview of long COVID symptoms and groups studying them
This quote is all over Twitter so I don’t know who to link. Easy to find for sure. All these sources post the same video of Blinken and he says;
Of course. Let’s spend our money on the black hole known as Ukraine while the American people struggle. You can’t be gone fast enough. Not that I’m all that confident on the next one. But hey, you need to flush.
Unburdened by what has been (the election) Antony is free to embrace the present, by emptying every last warehouse and depot of whatever equipment remains.
I guess there’ll be nothing left but nukes for Iran.
I think Blinken is referring to “the” money which was authorized for sending to Ukraine. So he means send “that” money out as fast as possible till it runs out, so that Ukraine will have “that” money before Trump can stop “that particular” bunch of approved money from flowing in mid-flow.
Am I wrong about that?
Digital ones and zeroes aren’t the same thing as artillery shells or generators, so I think you’re more or less correct. The ones and zeroes go to some sort of accounting device (maybe a spreadsheet in the bowels of the Pentagon) and it would probably require a forensic accounting team to find that spreadsheet.
The real limits on the aid are physical, as in, where are the F-16s?
ive seen a million of those, too…usually with a comment to the effect of “what about us?”.
mostly from dems, former dems or dem adjacent voters.
dems are toast, going forward.
glad it finally happened.
and in my lifetime, too.
ive been beating that dead donkey(dems are not the same as they were, and are perfidious and vile, and hate you) since clintontimes*.
damned donkeycorpse had to literally go through all the stages of decay…all the way to the blowing dust-phase…for enough people to finally get it.
all thats left is a bleached donkey skull on some forlorn sand dune, with a mirrored interior, where the brain used to be.(how do we put it? musical interlude:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBYb6N794AQ “…and the bees made honey…”)
(*even as i sometimes allied with them(reluctantly), locally)
Don’t let them waste any resources putting judges on the bench!
Relatedly, I have seen many tweets calling for grabbing the $300 B in frozen Russian assets ASAP, and giving it to the Ukies, because the Bad Orange Man is going to defund the Ukraine conflict, e.g.:
https://x.com/tribelaw/status/1856697477866361322
Zelensky: “Can we take the $300 billion that belongs to us?”
Of course none of these brain geniuses give any thought to what message this would send to the ROW.
But hey, you need to flush.
Good one, I’m gonna use it.
I have added orts and scraps. Be sure to check the section on Gaetz.
If the anti-Gaetz lawfare campaign and propaganda barrage is discovered to be, gasp, politically motivated, would that then not be the beginning of Gaetzgate?
But try and say Gaetzgate three times real fast. Doesn’t exactly flow off the tongue.
Yes, but if you can say it three times fast, he then magically appears in a puff of sulfurous smoke!
Lee Fang substack on Gaetz. public excerpt. Unexpected headline.
The Populist Progressive Case for Matt Gaetz
The Florida Republican has championed consumer and privacy reforms, breaking up Silicon Valley monopolies, and opposes corporate money in politics.
https://www.leefang.com/p/the-populist-progressive-case-for
I am curious about the degree to which birds in one flyway share diseases with birds in the other flyways, and the speed at which this occurs. That could be a useful avenue to look into in terms of the speed at which H5N1 may propagate east (at least via avian vectors).
I worked as a wildlife disease biologist for a while and avian influenza sampling was a large part of the job in the fall when we could sample hunter harvested birds. At the time the researchers told us that waterfowl have high fidelity to their migration pathways. Most of the different species do not have much mixing between flyways on the breeding grounds.
The exception is the northern pintail. This was a high priority species for our sampling and thought to be a species that could carry AI between flyway populations.
See below.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/tbed.12872
Thank you, very informative, and as the article concludes I hope that this sampling is continuing! Also, appreciate the comments below!
the flyways are there in the first place as a phenomenon because of north america’s(and central and south’s, too) habit of arranging mountains on a north/south axis. those birds fly between the mountain ranges.
so while there may be some random interactions, its generally known that they are rather distinct populations…save at the end points, at least. in the arctic, its one giant coastal plain, more or less, for instance.
the southern ends are still pretty much divided by mountains and deserts, save for the gulf coast…pacific flyway is isolated all the way(here in texas, i never see any birds from the pacific…and only sometimes from the east)
Most birds do not move between the different flyway populations.
Northern pintails are a notable exception, and of particular interest to AI researchers because they move between flyways.
See below.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/tbed.12872
https://www.marketwatch.com/articles/government-efficiency-hiring-musk-jobs-2b473e3a?mod=mw_latestnews/
Musk’s First Efficiency Move Is to Hire, Not Fire
“We need super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting,” the department’s X account posted on Thursday morning. “If that’s you, DM this account with your CV. Elon & Vivek will review the top 1% of applicants.”
The other side of the coin of the same “we don’t have to listen to peons” full throttle BS that the alleged “libs’ are accused of.
It’s not all the right-wing Zionists who want the Israelites to smite all the Amalekites that have the Establishment mouthpieces going nuts. It’s Tulsi. They *really* don’t want her in power.
I sometimes suffer from the opposite of TDS; I call it the “Trump effect.” Whenever the intelligence community and all of their media assets start screeching in unison about someone being a traitorous Putin puppet my knee-jerk reaction is to support them, given my assumption that they are always lying. It happened quite a bit with Trump. Like Trump, Gabbard has had the nerve to say the quiet parts out loud in the past. Unlike Trump, she knows what she is talking about. I have mixed feelings about her, and I’ve learned not to get my hopes up about anything these days. But when I read stuff like these smear jobs I become a cheerleader. Apparently the 2024 election has taught these fear-mongering propagandists nothing,
ive been the same for a long time…when various certain people of a certain class(ahem) start yammering about how bad someone is…my first inclination is to go see for myself…because those yammerers have a track record of evil and lying.
as for Tulsi…yeah…except for the hindu conservatist vein, i more or less like her take on things, and think her appointment is a good thing(kinda like Biden appointing Lina Khan).
and it doesnt hurt that i find her pretty dern dreamy, either,lol.
not many women can pull off a skunk-streak.
( i really, really need a girlfriend,lol.sigh)
the Gaetz(sp-2) thing…well, i’ll take my amusement where i can get it.
not a bull in a china shop…but several walmart bags of lit M-80’s tossed in the door.
trump knew he would get this reaction….and good on him for such expert trolling.
Gaetz may be a wretched person for all I know [or care], but after reading Stoller’s background on him, I’m rooting for his confirmation. Plus, who better to run Justice than a guy who’s been a target of the Blob? [I’m sure Trump feels the same way.]
The confirmation hearings will certainly be interesting, especially with 53 Republicans in charge who are afraid of stepping too far out of line with Trump. They’ll have to weigh carefully how much political capital to expend and which of the many controversial candidates to oppose. I do wonder whether Trump is just putting these people up for confirmation to either use them or lose them . . . while at the same time knowing that even the Blob has to pick and choose and can’t hold up ALL of the appointments to whom they might object.
If he really wants to challenge the Blob, maybe Trump can pardon @snowden while he’s at it, and put him into some oversight role where he doesn’t have to be confirmed. He might want to work remotely, though!
If Trump were to pardon @snowden, @snowden should still not travel to or through any country where any Western intelligence kidnappers can snatch him for extraordinary rendition to America for a dose of the guantanamo treatment.
Agreed. They would find some other charges to nail him with so if his plane landed at some western or western-friendly country, it would be boarded and he would be frog-marched off ready to be transfered to an awaiting extradition plane.
I don’t think I have seen this linked yet. Apparently Newark traffic control was consolidated to break labor. It failed catastrophically on the 6th.
VASAviation has the coms and flight tracking for when this happened at youtube.com/watch?v=aj7RJxUls3l titled CHAOS OVER NEWYORK. The pinned comment for the video has details on the corruption and incompetence.
I’m getting an error message “this video is not available anymore”. And you only posted this 30 minutes ago.
The Barstool sports guy is a real, real scumbag. So are his followers. For example, see The Pizza Shop That Took On Dave Portnoy and Barstool Sports. The Facebook comments left by Barstool’s mindless drones are quite vicious.
I’ve had the pizza myself; it’s good. Any claims the contrary, by idiots that have never been and are rage reviewing 1,000 miles away, because the Barstool moron had a sad, are not reflective of the quality of the food.
Whatever liberal Democrats need, it isn’t more mindless authoritarian following.
And recommending a pizza based on a single magical bite is manically nonsensical as well.
A party that both embraces this, and whatever womens’ rights means to Democrats today, is schizophrenic.
This is true. And it is also true that in multigenerational households with a senior and a junior, seeing two names on the rolls at the same address leads to purging both. This isn’t new and I can’t imagine Harris lost votes but Biden did not. What next? Find out which polling locations had bad rain on election day and claim that sealed the deal?
“Trump’s pick for top intel job has been accused of ‘traitorous’ parroting of Russian propaganda” [NBC].
I’ve read this entire article. Can anyone tell me which “traitorous” statement or “conspiracy theory” she is accused of in this piece is actually false? None of them, as far as I can tell. And the policy positions she is described as holding here are the ones I hold as well. This author didn’t even trot out the old liberal standards about Gabbard being intolerant of gays or being a member of a Hindu cult. She was accused of supporting Bernie in 2016, but it mostly condemned her for calling out government lies. The nerve! Though I can see how the Mike Pompeos of the world might see calling out government lies as disqualifying for the DNI job.
Likely I fail to understand the need to show disdain for a Democratic member of Congress who was last elected by 77.4% of her Hawaiian district. Who enlisted in the military and served with distinction during the Iraq War and continued to serve, but who as a member of Congress distinguished herself in the cause of seeking peace. The New York Times however finds it necessary to show special disdain, to even question the loyalty to America of Tulsi Gabbard.
Of course, the Times found it necessary in the past to have a front page article criticizing Gabbard for wearing white. The point evidently was whether Gabbard was playing at a sort of saintliness (good grief). Still, the attacks on Gabbard strike me as merely offensive.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/14/opinion/editorials/matt-gaetz-nomination-senate.html
November 14, 2024
Trump’s Reckless Choices for National Leadership
Ms. Gabbard, who previously represented Hawaii in the House and regularly appears on Fox News, is not only devoid of intelligence experience but has repeatedly taken positions in direct opposition to American foreign policy and national security interests. She has appeared on several occasions to side with strongmen like President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
‘Of course, the Times found it necessary in the past to have a front page article criticizing Gabbard for wearing white.’
Hey, wait a minute. It was not that long ago that all the Democrat women were wearing white in Congress for some stupid stunt and they were never criticized. Was the Times criticizing Gabi because she was wearing white after Labor Day?
https://www.vogue.com/article/wearing-white-after-labor-day
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/21/style/tulsi-gabbard-democratic-debate-white-pantsuit.html
november 21, 2019
Tulsi Gabbard’s White Pantsuit Isn’t Winning
The Democratic presidential candidate has made white the staple of debate night appearances. It leaves a chill.
By Vanessa Friedman
Ms. Gabbard herself doesn’t seem particularly interested in connecting with the suffragists, but rather is using her white suits to tap into another tradition, latent in the public memory: the mythical white knight, riding in to save us all from yet another “regime change war.”
They must have gotten really mixed up to put a Sunday “Style ” column on the front page by mistake.
Another post-election analysis, here by ADAM TOOZE, on LRB.
“The Democrats’ Defeat”
13/11/24
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n22/adam-tooze/the-democrats-defeat
However It doesn´t seem he would have any serious vision in the offering. It´s rather administering the lack of it. As if preventing “Trump” would mean anything. Granted his intention here is to point out how “easy” it could have been for Dems to win. But in doing that I think he does underestimate the dire straits of reality. Since keeping the status quo for Dems to remain in power is desireable enough for him to dedicate an entire text to that task without recognizing the fears of people run way deeper. People voted for GOP because there is noone else to turn to.
As analysis I think it´s not bad.
But 1) he misses to address the social/political significance of non-voters 2) the true malignance and cynicism of Dems establishment.
So on Covid grifters are (still) wrong: the structure of esoteric knowledge, wasn’t really sure where he’s coming from. He also wrote about the Pandemic Mitigation Collaborative (PMC) you’ll see on Twitter possibly, provided by Dr. Michael Hoerger.
He walks through all the issues with the data and modeling. It seems like therefore the PMC model of active infections is likely a garbage in, garbage out scenario. See the link for the details of the methodology.
Anyway, make of that what you will.
We’re jumping into this in the middle. What’s a Covid grifter?
So this is what happens when there’s a great big void of information from public health. That void gets filled. By grifters, or people honestly wanting to provide information, or both. It’s useful to know that the PMC model probably doesn’t provide anything resembling accurate data. Regardless, SARS-CoV-2 is still spreading.
It’s true we’re left trying to interpret whatever it is other people find in research studies and statistics to understand what the current state of the Pandemic might be, and what the dangers of infection might be. Like many, I can’t independently verify much if any of this information. Evaluating myriad pre-print studies isn’t in my wheelhouse, and we supposedly have public health as an institution to do this correctly for the population.
How many of these people are grifters, how many are honest people that don’t understand the studies or see what they want to see, who knows?
It is a bleak situation. Basically:
Late breaking news, RFK jr. nominated for head of HHS.
And RFK Jr has just been nominated by Trump to be the Secretary of HHS.
Get ready for the bulldozers.
Again, I have begged and pled with colleagues for years to knock it off. They were either unwilling or unable to do so. Now, it is going to be done for them. I care not about the weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth.
I truly believe this is the last best chance for my profession as it currently stands.
We will see.
It took a Democrat to end public health; the COVID shot mandates, with lack of compliance rewarded with loss of employment, economic terrorism, did more to kill trust in vaccination, real sterilizing vaccines, than anything that anti-vax crowd could ever dream up.
What a debacle.
Gaetz, Gabbard, and now RFK Jr. Wow.
I am literally watching the opening of NBC News now. The lead story is “conspiracy theorist” RFK Jr.’s nomination. Heads are exploding.
Looks like both the FDA and CDC answer to HHS:
https://www.hhs.gov/about/agencies/hhs-agencies-and-offices/index.html
RFK jr may put pressure on the FDA, but hopefully the CDC gets some attention too.
Does the Secy. of HHS have the power to fire people in its agencies?
I wonder if Mandy Cohen is updating her Linkedin profile about now.
FDA food doesn’t seem to answer to anyone. It’s rogue. For example from 12 years ago
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/12/fda-out-lunch/
FDA et al answers to HHS, just as CIA et al must now report to DNI. If their respective nominations are approved (as they should damn well be), I would expect both RFK jr and Tulsi to be quite hands-on, potentially centralizing/focusing their positions over powers that have been fragmented across agencies for quite some time.
Quite intriguing appointees. No doubt dynamic, this cast of Trump’s final Reality Show. The sorrow of Huckabee, the wildcard at the DoD, poor Rubio who often seems over his head at any level (wouldn’t bet on him lasting too long), the hope that Tulsi and RFK can quite drastically shake things up. Much needed. Potential for quite substantial change here.
I was wondering what you and others involved in the medical profession think about the RFK appointment. On one hand, there is something a bit dubious about an ardent anti-vaxxer heading HHS. But there is also a lot of BS to be demolished and he seems to be the man to do it…except you have to worry that he’ll throw out a lot of babies with the bathwater in the process.
IM Doc weighed in on RFK jr here:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/11/links-11-13-2024.html#comment-4131918
I have no clue how this is going to work out, but I hope for the best. If nothing else, I hope this brings the “healthcare” conversation front and center. That would be a wonderful thing.
Doc, et al. Regarding RFK Jr. proposed as leader of HHS – I’ve said all along during this (continual) election period that RFK is the best choice overall. Out of 10 criteria for a strong and honest leader, anti-war, anti-censorship, pro worker, controlled borders, etc………… he was and is the best choice by far, though not perfect. Medical issues and environmental issues are in fact his strongest. Imagine if Harris would have won. Oh my. Let’s go!
About sleep and healing. I had a heart attack 3 weeks ago tomorrow. I was extraordinarily fortunate with no damage to my heart and was released about 25 hours after I was admitted. That I night I slept 12 hours straight and have slept 10 hours on many nights since then. Only in last 3 or 4 nights have I slept closer to 8 hours. Make of this what you will but it sure feels to me that my sleep has been healing.
Curmudgeon. “Good on you” as they say. Great news and keep it up, after you take a nap.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03491-2
October 30, 2024
The brain summons deep sleep for healing from…
A heart attack unleashes immune cells that stimulate sleep neurons, leading to restorative slumber.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08100-w
October 30, 2024
Myocardial infarction augments sleep to limit cardiac inflammation and damage
By Pacific Huynh, Jan D. Hoffmann, Teresa Gerhardt, et al.
Abstract
Sleep is integral to cardiovascular health. Yet, the circuits that connect cardiovascular pathology and sleep are incompletely understood. It remains unclear whether cardiac injury influences sleep and whether sleep-mediated neural outputs contribute to heart healing and inflammation. Here we report that in humans and mice, monocytes are actively recruited to the brain after myocardial infarction (MI) to augment sleep, which suppresses sympathetic outflow to the heart, limiting inflammation and promoting healing. After MI, microglia rapidly recruit circulating monocytes to the brain’s thalamic lateral posterior nucleus (LPN) via the choroid plexus, where they are reprogrammed to generate tumour necrosis factor (TNF). In the thalamic LPN, monocytic TNF engages Tnfrsf1a-expressing glutamatergic neurons to increase slow wave sleep pressure and abundance. Disrupting sleep after MI worsens cardiac function, decreases heart rate variability and causes spontaneous ventricular tachycardia. After MI, disrupting or curtailing sleep by manipulating glutamatergic TNF signalling in the thalamic LPN increases cardiac sympathetic input which signals through the β2-adrenergic receptor of macrophages to promote a chemotactic signature that increases monocyte influx. Poor sleep in the weeks following acute coronary syndrome increases susceptibility to secondary cardiovascular events and reduces the heart’s functional recovery. In parallel, insufficient sleep in humans reprogrammes β2-adrenergic receptor-expressing monocytes towards a chemotactic phenotype, enhancing their migratory capacity. Collectively, our data uncover cardiogenic regulation of sleep after heart injury, which restricts cardiac sympathetic input, limiting inflammation and damage.
#2024 #BlameCannons (Incoming!)
Nitpick on Galbraith:
2x New Left Review
1) Three Liberalisms
Tosaka and Trump
by Michael A. McCarthy
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/three-liberalisms
An interestingly contradictory text which covers various territories but which I also find unnecessarily mixing up Trump with Japanese 1930s fascism to then switch to the demise of US liberalism under the hands of the lates Dems.
He even writes almost correctly: “with Biden’s deportation numbers nearly matching Trump’s”
The first time I would read such a statement in a left publication.
2) Return to Washington
Prospects for Trump’s White House
by Ash Merton
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/return-to-washington
More conventional than above text.
In a rather quick, usual attempt of predicting how Trump´s alleged main projects will play out / fail – deportation, RFK & health “mysticism”, revenge against Dems and DOJ via allegations of voter fraud and China collusion (?!), dismantling labour, foreign policy – all to upset established rule and eventually failing due to the rigidity of system bureaucracy.
It´s really nice to know Merton basically has it all figured out already.
Thanks for this. I have actually read Tosaka and the new translation of Nihon ideorogī-ron is indeed welcome. However, there are so many differences between his moment and ours, that it really feels like a stretch to compare them. Is the Democrat party’s “politics of joy” in 2024 something akin to Tosaka’s “cultural liberalism”, or is it just a continuation of the DNC’s lame top-down marketing, branding, and perception management? McCarthy takes the further step of comparing Trumpism to the Japanism of the last century, which rather feels like apples and oranges.
Rings true, thanks!
The one thing I was thankful for to McCarthy was bringing to my attention Tosaka.
As you describe he appears to be worth a look.
Sick in body and mind
Three-Quarters of U.S. Adults Are Now Overweight or Obese
Maybe Kennedy can do some good. But only if he looks in the right places.
Not to mention, being that big feels awful. Every day. Physically. Emotionally. I don’t recommend it.
Just returned from a trip to France. Visited cities around Paris (but not Paris itself). It was rare that I saw anyone overweight, let alone obese. However, they sure do like their cigarettes there.
Well post EU lead economic implosion that might go too far the thin way [nutrition]. Friends here in Oz were at husbands generational family farm which is now a holiday retreat for almost 2 mo painting and working on the place. Ozzy gal opined that if she had to eat one more stuffed zucchini at family/friends place she was going too lose the plot [no meat anywhere thingy], not to mention a container of ice cream passed around as desert one time.
These are all people from generational landholdings and some wealth, should be noted French RCC as well predominately. All of which will make elections down the road interesting.
I get to interact with work colleagues from the Netherlands, who tend to be, well, unfiltered in describing what they see. When they relate what they are seeing around them while in the US, I like to point out that even the pets in the US are often overweight.
Dot he French enjoy drinking strong coffee? If yes, that may help explain the lack of widespread obesity. Strong coffee speeds up metabolism and also reduces hunger pangs. If one wishes to lose a quick ten pounds drink a few double espressos daily.
Being overweight has been normalized in the US. Those who are actually height/weight proportionate are often looked at as being “skinny”. A man who is 5’9″ in height should weight 160 pounds, not 200 pounds which is quite common. A woman who is 5’8″ should weight no more than 130 pounds. That weigh provides for nice curves. :)
regarding death of love songs…
I’m not sure if Blinding Lights is really a heartache song but I’ve always chalked up its popularity to having possibly the greatest synth riff of the last 20+ years.
Always loved music and been a musician all my life (long). In my early teens I got so, so tired of “love songs”. Here, regurgitate with me ……… “Yummy yummy yummy I got love in my tummy” Are you fricken serious??? I left pop music because of its inanity and got more into instrumental music, “New Music” (outside Jazz), Classical music – the more avante guard the better and so forth. Unfortunately I sold many of my Beatles and Stones LPs, but can appreciate love songs a bit now, especially Soul music or international music. This one is amazing: Lalla Fatima. Now, that is a Love Song!
Here is another kind of love song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVs5lvMLvbY
I hope Lena will enjoy it.
Retired Carpenter
A synth riff which owes more than a little to Aha’s ‘Take on Me’ from 1984.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914
The linked stuff is horrible my-old-computer-non-friendly data-driven masturbation. Searching for love in musical charts is like searching for nutritional value in junk food.
P.S. Since everyone posted a song. Here’s one.
Trentemoller – Miss You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DUCKGyojpE
Am I the only one who starts giggling whenever I read about BlueSky and wonder how long it will take for people to realize this is just this year’s version of Truth Social, just without the obvious ownership?
The blue hive is going there in droves. Imagine if Musk bought it?
BlueSky claims to run on a decentralized network of servers that communicate using the AT Protocol.
So far so good, but then how does this compare to Mastodon? A little digging:
https://itsfoss.com/bluesky-vs-mastodon/#corporate-vs-non-profit