By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Northern Mockingbird, Damon-Garcia Sports Field, San Luis Obispo, California, United States.
In Case You Might Miss…
- Trump border czar beats chest..
- Resistance 2.0 funders and NGOs
- Mathematical thinking .
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
Trump Transition
“Trump Border Czar: If Sanctuary Cities Do Not Assist, We Will Go Into The Community To Find Criminal Illegal Immigrants” (transcript) [Laura Ingraham, RealClearPolitics]. “Incoming Trump “Border Czar” and former acting director of ICE Tom Homan laid out his plan to deport illegal immigrants in an interview with FOX News host Laura Ingraham.” • Homan may indeed be an effective administrator, but there’s nothing in this chest-beating interview to prove it. Since “sanctuary cities” are an updated version of Calhoun’s nullification doctrine, I oppose the concept. But I’m gonna have to get my knee seen to, the way Ingraham and Homan are pounding on it.
* * * The “chaos” talking point, a hardy perennial:
“Trump’s daily chaos circus is already back in full force” [Aaron Rupar, Public Notice]. “Voters may have been willing to risk it all for slightly lower egg prices, but regardless of what they thought they were doing, they’re getting a chaos machine — and that sort of thing gets exhausting pretty quickly.”
“Chaos reigns supreme in Trump’s Washington” [Axios]. “Trump has achieved historic political success by following his instincts — and his instincts tend to favor maximum chaos…. If past is prologue, the pace of chaos is unlikely to relent even after Trump gets his Cabinet in place.”
Lambert here: Maybe I didn’t get the memo, but is there anything more chaotic than risking World War III by trying to achieve escalation dominance over a nuclear power, in their own back yard? And how about genocide? Is genocide chaotic or no? Anyhow—
“Playbook: What Trump learned from Gaetz-gate” [Politico]. “[E]ven Trump has his limits on drama. For years, the conventional wisdom around Trump is that he has a sweet tooth for chaos and that his appetite is bottomless as long as he ultimately gets the outcome he desires. But Gaetz-gate suggests that when that chaos becomes a distraction — or worse in his eyes, when it makes him look bad — he’s willing to cut bait and head home.” • And/or he’s listening to Susie Wiles.
* * * “‘I think Elon may get frustrated fairly quickly'” [Politico]. “‘I think Elon may get frustrated fairly quickly,’ Khanna said on today’s POLITICO Tech podcast. ‘I mean, let’s see if he can get defense cuts. My guess is that there are going to be a lot of the people on that committee [who] are going to want even more defense spending. It’ll be a test.’… Khanna represents a large swath of Silicon Valley and has known Musk for years. In a recent exchange on X, Musk’s social media platform, the pair appeared to agree that the Defense Department was spending too much money on large defense contractors. Khanna has previously voted against expanding the Pentagon’s budget.”
“Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene tapped to work with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as new DOGE subcommittee chair” [CNBC]. “Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has been tapped to lead a new House subcommittee that will work with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Greene and House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., have met with Ramaswamy and his team and are ‘already working together,’ a person familiar with the matter told CNBC on Thursday. Comer aims to establish the subpanel early next year, the source said. Greene’s group will be dubbed the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, allowing it to share the DOGE acronym with the outside-of-government entity commissioned by President-elect Donald Trump.” • MTG = Cover against/discipline from the base?
2024 Post Mortem
“Democrats Need Their Own Donald Trump” [RealClearPolitics]. “Perhaps the greatest indictment of Democrats’ competence is the rise of Donald Trump. After eight years of Barack Obama – an exemplar of well-polished progressivism – the American people elected a man with no government experience, whose campaign focused on the failures of the ruling elites of both parties. Entrenched Republicans were, in fact, as disdainful of Trump as Democrats were. Then, despite titanic efforts to undercut and delegitimize him at every turn, this quintessential outsider led a largely successful administration. Polls suggested he was likely to be reelected before the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Trump was returned to office earlier this month because many Americans remembered the policies of the man Democrats dismissed as a failed real estate developer and superficial reality TV star as far more effective than those advanced by his highly credentialed opponents.” More: “All of which is to say, Democrats need their own Trump – a wrecking ball who will challenge the party’s dogmas; a disruptive outsider who can force them out of their ideological cul-de-sac. The radical transformation Democrats need seems beyond the capacity of the party’s entrenched leadership: To expect people who cannot admit error to change their minds and ways seems like wishful thinking. They probably don’t need a Trump-like figure to win elections, but they need one to find a way to govern effectively.” • The hour has produced the man: Gavin Newsom.
“Column: The Trump landslide that wasn’t” [Los Angeles Times]. “But as more of the popular vote is counted, it turns out that Trump’s victory came with the slimmest of margins — a few hundred thousand votes in key places slid him into office. The Cook Political Report, considered to be the expert on these things, has Kamala Harris earning 48.24% of the popular vote as of Wednesday, compared with 49.89% for Trump. That’s a difference of about 2.5 million votes out of about 155 million counted…. [Mindy Romero, director of the Center for Inclusive Democracy at the USC Price School of Public Policy] points out that Republicans also won control of both houses of Congress, which gives Trump a ‘trifecta, and its power.’ But Republicans did it with about 31% of eligible voters going for Trump. About 30% went for Harris. Though voter turnout was strong, an alarming 36% of eligible voters didn’t bother to cast a ballot, she said.” • A “landslide” election 2024 was not. Decisive, it was, at least at the presidential level. These days, 49.89 – 48.24 = 1.65% is decisive. So is winning all seven swing states. So is winning both houses of Congress. Even more important, the “coalition of the ascendant,” the identity-based strategy Democrats have been using since at least 2008, finally crashed and burned. Oh the bright side for Democrats, many of their candidates ran ahead of Harris, suggesting that the top of the ticket was indeed problematic MR SUBLIMINAL No duh!. (At the non-Presidential level, “progressive” causes did well, and Democrats held on to all their governorships.)
“The Red Wave Didn’t Hit Statehouses in This Election” [The Nation]. “Democrats’s state power is shaping up to be the strongest counterweight to the Trump administration. When Donald Trump was first elected in 2016, there were just 29 Democratic legislative majorities in the states, and only six states had Democratic governing trifectas. That meant there were only so many opportunities for the states to quickly or effectively counter the damaging effects of MAGA federal policy. This time around, Democrats are in a much stronger position. Thanks to a decade of making investments and gains—including our 2024 wins—Democrats will hold nearly 40 majorities in our statehouses and are ready to combat the worst of the Trump presidency. We’ve also nearly tripled our number of governing trifectas to 15 states, including big blue powerhouses like New York, California, and Illinois with large populations and booming economies. Case in point: California alone is the fifth-largest economy in the world. That means state Democrats will have serious sway under a second Trump administration. If Trump goes full steam ahead on the many extreme and dangerous promises made during the campaign—including Project 2025—Democrats in state legislatures are ready to pump the brakes.” • And see below from the Washington Examiner on the “Governors Safeguarding Democracy” program.
“Throw the Groups Under the Bus!” [Ruy Teixeira, The Liberal Patriot]. “. The time, energy and resources spent on the Democrats’ cultural left agenda is time, energy, and resources taken away from promoting the economic welfare of the working class. Working-class voters are well aware of this tradeoff, even if progressive activists and ‘the Groups‘ are not. As a result, working-class voters tend to connect their economic criticisms of the Democrats to the party’s apparent preoccupation with cultural issues pushed by their liberal college-educated supporters—issues working class voters either don’t care about or are actively hostile to. This connection is clearly dragging the Democrats down with these voters.” More: “Democrats have lost the plot in the view of more and more nonwhite, especially nonwhite working-class, voters. How can they find it again? The obvious answer would be to sever the party’s connection to unpopular and unworkable social policies and re-establish a focus on the material welfare of working-class voters. The simplest way to do this, in turn, would be to forcefully denounce said policies and unambiguously break from the forces in the party that are pushing these policies—’the Groups’ and their allies that insist being a Democrat is inseparable from being a progressive as they define it. But this is hard because it entails conflict and conflict with the Groups is something Democrats have been determined to avoid. This is foolish, not least because the theory upon which this deference was based—that the Groups actually represented groups of voters—was incorrect.” • Oopsie.
“The End of Denial: How Trump’s rising popularity in New York (and everywhere else) exposed the Democratic Party’s break with reality” [New York Magazine]. “In truth, the MAGA faithful are not among the city’s upper-middle-class liberals in any meaningful way. Neighborhoods like Park Slope are some of the only ones in the city that remained dark blue this cycle. It was instead the areas of the city where some of the least wealthy and least white reside that broke hardest toward Trump. These neighborhoods, and the reasons they voted as they did, have been out of the field of vision of many of the very people, here in the country’s media capital, who have tasked themselves with reporting on, understanding, and explaining American politics. This myopia reflects a Democratic Party that in losing touch with such places is in danger of forgetting its reason for being.” • Not so. The Democrat Party is the party of the PMC. That is its reason for being, and the party has by no means forgotten that. (Another way of saying this is that the problems of the Democrat Party are the problems of the PMC itself, boiling down to a failure to deliver a humane, non-crapified baseline of services in every system where it handles governance, especially healthcare, but also education, human resources, etc.).
Governors”Billionaire Musk foe bankrolls second Trump resistance” [Washington Examiner]. A maze of NGOs: “Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay and a backer of progressive groups spearheading anti-Elon Musk campaigns, is behind a new initiative led by Democrats aiming to champion the second Trump resistance, records reveal. The initiative, called Governors Safeguarding Democracy, was profiled in the New York Times last week as a newly-formed vehicle for Govs. J.B. Pritzker (D-IL), Jared Polis (D-CO), and other governors to ‘protect the rule of law’ in states and push back on the policies of President-elect Donald Trump. On its website, GSD calls itself a “nonpartisan alliance” of leaders, though it is unclear what Republican officials, if any, are involved with the group. But, according to nonprofit donation software records, GSD is not technically a stand-alone organization. Rather, the Trump resistance operation is under the umbrella of a Governors Action Alliance project sponsored by Global Impact, a Virginia-based charity. In September, Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, a private foundation steering the left-wing billionaire’s fortune, routed $500,000 to the Governors Action Alliance to support ‘coordinating and strengthening the work of governors to address specific threats to American democracy,’ Democracy Fund’s grants database shows. Omidyar’s ties to the Trump resistance group, which operates under its parent umbrella alongside an effort called the Reproductive Freedom Alliance, is a window into how billionaire progressives are ramping up campaigns to combat speculated GOP plans on abortion, immigration, and other issue areas. Democrats are enlisting high-powered lawyers, while opposition researchers at the Democratic National Committee are compiling dossiers of incoming federal officials, the New York Times also reported.” And: “Omidyar’s group routed $750,000 in April to a project called Free Election Fund, which is associated with Marc Elias, the Democratic superlawyer who pushed the discredited Steele Dossier aiming to link Trump to Russia falsely in 2016… The Free Election Fund used to be called the Democracy Docket Legal Fund. It is housed under the Hopewell Fund, a group managed by an influential Democratic-aligned consulting firm called Arabella Advisors. In 2020, Omidyar’s Democracy Fund also granted $1.5 million to the Elias-linked legal group ‘to detect and combat suppressive voting laws and practices through litigation,’ records show. GSD, the group co-chaired by Pritzker and Polis, says on its website that it will ‘develop playbooks to enable governors and their teams to anticipate and swiftly respond to emerging threats.’ The group will also aim ‘to protect executive agencies, elections, state courts, and other core democratic bodies,’ GSD adds on its website.” • Oh, playbooks [musical interlude]. This is the Times article cited by the Examiner–
“Democrats Draw Up an Entirely New Anti-Trump Battle Plan” [New York Times]. “Democratic officials, activists and ambitious politicians are seeking to build their second wave of opposition to Mr. Trump from the places that they still control: deep-blue states…. Some of the planning in blue states began in 2023 as a potential backstop if Mr. Trump won, according to multiple Democrats involved in different efforts. The preparations were largely kept quiet to avoid projecting public doubts about Democrats’ ability to win the election.” Gad. More: “The Democratic effort will rely on the work of hundreds of lawyers, who are being recruited to combat Trump administration policies on a range of Democratic priorities. Already, advocacy groups have begun workshopping cases and recruiting potential plaintiffs to challenge expected regulations, laws and administrative actions starting on Day 1.” But: “Some of the first maneuvering by top Democrats began this past week, when Mr. Pritzker and Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado announced the formation of a group called Governors Safeguarding Democracy. Its unveiling followed several days of behind-the-scenes drama, as several fellow Democratic governors declined to join the group, at least for now. A draft news release listed six other governors as members of the coalition led by Mr. Pritzker and Mr. Polis. But four of them — Andy Beshear of Kentucky, Maura Healey of Massachusetts, Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania — declined to join, according to people briefed on the discussions. Govs. Tony Evers of Wisconsin and Josh Green of Hawaii were also named on the draft news release, but neither has yet agreed to join the group. Alex Gough, a spokesman for Mr. Pritzker, said that the group had been working with 20 governors’ offices but that ‘not all of these governors wish to be named publicly at this time for understandable reasons, including the potential threats states are facing.'” • Or maybe the reluctant governors don’t want to sign on to Pritzker 2028?
“Bury the #Resistance, Once and For All” [The Nation]. “In late September, I warned about the reemergence within the Democratic coalition of the failed #Resistance mindset that defined the 2016 election and the response to Donald Trump’s first term. Among that movement’s defining features were trying to shame or scare voters into voting against Trump, rather than for the Democrat, an over-reliance on pop culture signifiers rather than policy, and a hope and a prayer for the system, in particular prosecutors and the FBI, to deliver us from evil…. Rather than engage in meaningful self-reflection, though, many top Democrats are looking for someone other than party leadership and their own candidate to blame. Just like after Clinton’s 2016 loss, they’re landing on the progressive wing of the party and voters from marginalized groups.” • Surely one needs to include financing in a list of “defining features”? As above?
Spook Country
“DOJ Apparatchiks Told to Lawyer Up and Flee the Country. Why?” [Declassified with Julie Kelly]. “The resume-burnishing appears to extend to main Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (housed under the DOJ), and the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia office, which oversees the government’s ongoing prosecution of January 6 protesters. Anonymous ‘sedition hunters’ who have aided the FBI in targeting and identifying hundreds of J6ers deleted their social media accounts over the weekend for fear of reprisal; the FBI reportedly paid the ‘sedition hunters’ as FBI informants to help their pursuit of Trump supporters.” Nice precedent there. More: “Mark Zaid, an attorney who represented self-described Ukrainian ‘whistleblower’ Eric Ciaramella, prompting the first impeachment of Trump in 2019, just told both CNN and Politico magazine that government officials worried they will be pursued by a Trump DOJ or Republican Congress should travel ‘outside of the country’ right around Inauguration Day.” And: “But why would anyone else leave the country around Inauguration Day? To wait and see if Trump signs an executive order authorizing an investigation of everything from the Russian collusion hoax and the Ukrainian impeachment operation to the coverup of the Biden family corruption ring? To wait and see if the acting attorney general appoints a special counsel to investigate Smith’s team as well as the events of January 6? And therein lies the justified panic within the DOJ and national security state. The ground is fertile for multiple investigations with legitimate criminal liability for top officials including Smith, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and DC US Attorney Matthew Graves in addition to line prosecutors and investigators.”
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!
Morbidity and Mortality
“Oil and gas well proximity linked to higher rates of COVID-19 mortality” [Phys.org]. “But a new study by Timothy Archer and colleagues is the first, to the authors’ knowledge, to study whether proximity specifically to oil and gas development could also be linked to higher rates of COVID-19. The researchers studied COVID-19 case and death rates during the first year of the pandemic (February 2020 to January 2021), focusing on California communities located within 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) of active oil and gas wells. In addition to COVID-19 case records, the researchers…. In communities within 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) of an actively producing well, COVID-19 cases were 34% higher and mortality rates were 55% higher in the first four months of the pandemic. Though the results did not show a significant association between well production and COVID-19 cases over the entire year, mortality rates were higher in the areas with the highest production.” • Hmm.
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC November 11 | Last Week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| ★ Variants [3] CDC November 23 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC November 9 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data November 21: | ★ National [6] CDC November 21: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens November 18: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic November 16: |
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| Positivity[9] CDC October 28: | Variants[10] CDC October 28: |
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| 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
There are no official statistics of interest today.
Manufacturing: “FAA eyes new Boeing 737 MAX pilot instructions after smoke emergencies” [Seattle Times]. “The Federal Aviation Administration is weighing whether to require all pilots of 737 MAX aircraft to take off with the air flow from the main engines into the aircraft’s interior turned off — to avoid a risk of smoke flooding the plane if one of the engines hits a bird. Such a change in takeoff procedure for pilots would be temporary until Boeing comes up with a permanent fix. Devising that could further delay certification of the Renton-built MAX 7 and MAX 10 models. The FAA said in a statement Thursday that it ‘will convene a Corrective Action Review Board in the coming weeks to examine the data and develop a path forward’ and assess the options to prevent the risk of smoke entering the cockpit or passenger cabin. In the meantime, the FAA said that because pilots have been alerted to the procedure they should follow if smoke enters the plane, ‘this is not an immediate flight-safety issue.’ The proposed FAA action is a response to the safety risk exposed by two serious incidents on Southwest Airlines MAXs last year. In those two incidents, a bird collided with an engine during takeoff and the damage caused an oil leak. The oil ignited in the hot engine, sending heavy smoke and fumes into the interior of the airplane. Airflow off an aircraft’s engines — known as “bleed air” — is normally directed to the airplane interior and passed through air conditioning packs to control the air pressure and temperature inside.” • Still nothing from Gates or the Seattle Times on Ortberg’s “stop bitching” pep talk. Odd!
Manufacturing: “Boeing inks contracts worth more than $4B for KC-46s, P-8s” [Breaking Defense]. “The Pentagon this week awarded Boeing a pair of separate contracts for 15 KC-46A Pegasus tankers and seven P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft, deals that are collectively worth more than $4 billion. Although both contracts had been expected under existing plans, getting the deals signed is good news for Boeing, whose defense arm logged $2 billion in losses for its last fiscal quarter and which is facing company-wide layoffs…. ‘This $1.67 billion undefinitized contract for seven additional P-8A Poseidons not only reinforces the U.S. Navy’s commitment to maintaining a robust maritime presence but also highlights Boeing’s dedication to delivering safe, reliable platforms that enhance the Navy’s operational capabilities, readiness and effectiveness,’ [said] Tory Peterson, vice president and P-8 program manager at Boeing.” • “Undefinitized”? Is that a word?
The Bezzle: “A perfect storm is brewing for Bitcoin” [CoinTelegraph]. “Bitcoin is the world’s most reflexive asset today. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission recently approved options for several Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Once issued, these options lead to gamma squeezes, acting like reflexivity. Together, that’s reflexivity squared, leading to unprecedented price movements…. Financial markets are deeply influenced by human behavior. George Soros famously coined the concept of “reflexivity” to describe the circular relationship between perception and reality in financial markets. Bitcoin exemplifies this concept more than any other asset: As its price rises, the asset garners increasing attention, which leads to further investment, driving prices even higher. Prominent investors such as Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett have criticized Bitcoin because of its reflexive nature. They have argued that it lacks intrinsic value because its price seems to move based on perception. But that is precisely the point: Bitcoin is the most reflexive asset because its supply is genuinely finite, more finite than precious metals or top-performing equities. The scarcity of Bitcoin is what makes it fundamentally valuable.”
Tech: “‘A place of joy’: why scientists are joining the rush to Bluesky” [Nature]. “In the two weeks since the US presidential election, the platform has grown from close to 14 million users to nearly 21 million. Bluesky has broad appeal in large part because it looks and feels a lot like X (formerly known as Twitter), which became hugely popular with scientists, who used it to share research findings, collaborate and network. One estimate suggests that at least half a million researchers had Twitter profiles in 2022…. Daryll Carlson, a bioacoustics researcher at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, says she noticed the largest influx of users on Bluesky after the US election. Musk has become closely aligned to president-elect Donald Trump. For Carlson, Bluesky offers a space to engage with other scientists, as well as artists, photographers and the general public. ‘I’d really like it to continue to be a place of joy for me,’ she says.” • Just like the Kamala campaign…
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 61 Greed (previous close: 57 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 51 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Nov 22 at 1:12:19 PM ET.
Permaculture
“The World’s Oldest Forest Is Here in the Hudson Valley” [Hudson Valley]. “On the floor of an abandoned quarry in Cairo, in Greene County, researchers have found the earliest tree fossils yet discovered anywhere in the world. Dating back roughly 387 million years, the find has thoroughly rewritten the story of the origins of trees. One researcher called the discovery nothing less than ‘mindblowing.’… After beginning studies in the region in 1993, the collective made significant inroads in 2007 and 2008 when they learned to recognize the bases of two types of fossil trees. According to [Christopher] Berry, one is the large rooting system of the Archaeopteris tree, while the other is the dish-like imprint of the Cladoxylopsid tree, which contains hundreds of radiating roots… It is no exaggeration to say that this is one of the most important things that has happened in the history of the world. Those early trees absorbed carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which led to a rapid cooling favorable to more complicated forms of animal life. The shade provided by the broad, flat leaves of taller trees protected critters on the ground from the sun, and the roots limited soil erosion. ‘The arrival of these forests was the creation of the modern world,’ Berry told Smithsonian Magazine.” And: “Eventually, the remains of those early plants and trees, compacted over hundreds of millions of years, became the coal deposits that fueled the Industrial Revolution, returning the carbon they had absorbed into the atmosphere, thereby triggering the present age of global warming.” • Oh. Anyhow, here’s a picture of a fossilized root system:
“Salmon return to lay eggs in historic habitat after largest dam removal project in US history” [Oregon Public Broadcasting]. “A giant female Chinook salmon flips on her side in the shallow water and wriggles wildly, using her tail to carve out a nest in the riverbed as her body glistens in the sunlight. In another moment, males butt into each other as they jockey for a good position to fertilize eggs. These are scenes local tribes have dreamed of seeing for decades as they fought to bring down four hydroelectric dams blocking passage for struggling salmon along more than 400 miles (644 kilometers) of the Klamath River and its tributaries along the Oregon-California border. Now, less than a month after those dams came down in the largest dam removal project in U.S. history, salmon are once more returning to spawn in cool creeks that have been cut off to them for generations.” • Less than a month!!
Gallery
“Man who spent $6.2 million on banana duct-taped to wall says he’s going to eat it” [NBC]. Grocery inflation just hit its peak after a single banana was sold for $6.2 million Wednesday. Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun dropped over $6 million on the piece of produce — because it was duct-taped to a wall. The banana is part of a piece of artwork called Comedian, created by the Italian artist and satirist Maurizio Cattelan. ‘In the coming days, I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture,’ he said. Sun’s snacking won’t change the value of his investment, however. His $6.2 million purchase awarded him a roll of duct tape, instructions on how to ‘install’ the banana properly and, most importantly, a certificate of authenticity guaranteeing the artwork, when reproduced by Sun, as an original work of Cattelan’s, CNBC reported. The soon-to-be devoured banana wasn’t included in his winnings, as the fruit tends to rot quickly. But the value of the artwork isn’t in the banana itself — it’s derived from the certificate accompanying the purchase.” • I’m not sure this business scales.
“Mathematical Thinking Isn’t What You Think It Is” [Quanta]. “According to [mathematician David Bessis], the way math is taught in school emphasizes the logic-based part of this process, when the more important element is intuition. Math should be thought of as a dialogue between the two: between reason and instinct, between language and abstraction. It’s also a physical practice of sorts, like yoga or martial arts — something that can be improved through training. It requires tapping into a childlike state and embracing one’s imagination, including the mistakes that come with it.” BESSIS: “When you do math, you’re exposed to the human thought process in a way that is really pure. It’s not just about understanding things, but about understanding things in a very childish, deep, naïve, super clear, obvious way. It’s very good training for creativity. It’s a scaffold for your imagination.” • Bessis is French, and the article is accompanied by photos of Paris (and Bessis) that are so Parisian I want to find an art house cinema and start watching Truffaut movies. And start smoking cigarettes.
Contact information for plants: Readers, feel free to contact me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, to (a) find out how to send me a check if you are allergic to PayPal and (b) to find out how to send me images of plants. Vegetables are fine! Fungi, lichen, and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From TH:
TH writes: “I decided to try opening this email account on my dying computer since I was able to use it’s Picasa on some photos, and what do you know? Today it is working. This is Thunbergia growing in a lovely garden on Naples Island in Long Beach (CA).”
Kind readers, we are almost there with plant photos. Thank you! But one thing: I’m mostly seeing handles or email addresses that I already know. If you haven’t sent in a plant photo to Water Cooler, why not try it? It’s easy, it’s fun, and you get some nice compliments! (If you need directions, see below.)
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Apparently these days in Ontario, I’ve been told that students are no longer taught how formulas are derived in their science and math classes in elementary and high school. Just given the formula sheet and asked to grind through the problem sets with no understanding on why they work or how they got there which I think is problematic for things like learning geometry or physics. Talking to older teachers and looking at older textbooks shows that this was removed from the curriculum on purpose, maybe this contributes a bit to why mathematical thinking is not doing so well here?
The teachers would tell me and my wife that there was no time to teach abstract concepts. They had to prepare the students for the state standardized tests. Thanks GWB for a stinker of an education bill that did more harm than good. And never funded the schools after the schools signed on.
The scientist and BlueSky.
Let me tell you about yet another new thing I learned about BlueSky this past week or so. Another unique “welcoming” feature. The friend that this happened to calls it “The Scarlet Letter” phenomenon. This behavior is very common in cults. For example Scientology has gotten this down to a science with their strayers and scofflaws. Deviant thought requires being branded with names on your profile. Not unlike scarlet letters or yellow stars in the past.
I and most of my scientific friends gave up on this platform over the past several weeks because of what appeared to be constant hammering from bots or strangers when one of us strayed from the official narratives. It happens on Twitter too – but the BlueSky comments took on a whole new level of emotional violence. Legitimate comments from fellow thinkers were immediately and repeatedly assaulted with all kinds of drivel. Real discussions could not happen. We are all gone from BlueSky now, but while there one of my very good virology friends had lengthy discussions about N-Terminal Domains on the COVID virus, as well as vigorous discussions about its origin. The second issue in particular was really alarming the BlueSky natives. They reported him repeatedly to the Stasi, so on his profile page when you looked him up ( again he is long gone) – he is branded with SCIENCE DENIER as a moniker for all at see. Since it has his real name, he discontinued his account. I did see occasional others branded in a similar fashion – one in particular I remember was branded TRANSPHOBIC – and when I did a bit more looking into his crime, it appears he was emphatic that there were just two genders.
We all just kind of laughed about it. But it really is not funny. The entire PMC/MSNBC and the Democratic Party to some extent are setting themselves up in a nice little echo chamber cocoon – readying themselves to be lased with propaganda. It is very discouraging for me as a Dem to see this happening. But it is also very disturbing as a scientist – there is nothing about this approach that will abet the correct use of the scientific method. I just keep hearing myself say “Here we go again”. Other than running away from this kind of anti-intellectual behavior as fast as I can – I really do not know what else to do. We are slowly but surely returning to our private email groups. I find this sad – because I do think public discussions for all to read can be enlightening for everyone – and we still do it on Twitter sometimes – but BlueSky is not what I would call “enlightening.”
Other than these very minimal interactions on Twitter with known and trusted people from the real world, I have decided to leave social media behind. All of it. I think it may be the death of us all eventually.
As the scientist in this link says, there is clearly “Joy” there for these people – it is the joy of cult members drinking the holy water every day – the problem is that very soon the paper cups will be full of kool-aid laced with cyanide.
“…I do think public discussions for all to read can be enlightening for everyone…”
But how many other scientists agree? My suspicion (happy to be shown wrong) is that the average scientist doesn’t think the average member of the public is able to rationally evaluate scientific information, so “discussion” is really just a propaganda war where contrarian views must be suppressed, lest the public be misled.
I think you are talking about members of “The Science” TM –
That is not the case with any other scientist. After decades in academic medicine – pretty much all of us – looked forward to open panels and discussions in public. Indeed, members of the public often came up with the most amazing questions.
“The Science” TM – has patents, proprietary property and intellectual property to protect ( even to the point of lying and obfuscation). So, they loathe getting up in front of public and getting asked hard questions. And it is really only fairly lately that the condescension that people are too stupid to understand has taken hold.
That being said, social media like twitter, is likely not the best format for discussions.
I have learned more while trying to teach students. Many of my colleagues feel the same way. I believe scientists posting on X or Bluesky might experience the similar benefits.
As a fellow teacher, I learned more about the subject once I started teaching it. Between learning what I didn’t know I didn’t know on my own, I also learned more from student questions.
I tell them in class one; Rule one, we all must be kind to our neighbors and fellow classmates as we want our classroom to be a good learning environment for all students. We are all here to learn, including me.
I relate to this disenchantment. It reminds me of the period when I used to lurk on Twitter. I didn’t have an account, but before Muskification it was possible for me to do just about anything except post. I followed a loosely-affiliated group of people concerned primarily with criminal justice, free-speech law, and related topics. After Muskification most of them bailed, and I didn’t go to the trouble of trying to follow them to different platforms. It was only after a period of detox that I realized the people I had been following fundamentally just enjoyed arguing, and mutually celebrating their own superiority. They’re not empty suits; they do have expertise that I respect (mostly) and learned from. But they were too wrapped up in the sport of mocking their perceived rivals. That isn’t my idea of fun, nor of education.
Re: not fun or educational
I agree. Some people just like to argue and mock others for sport, engaging in endless do loop arguments with no intention of resolution.
I was going to say something about this but didn’t know how to say it. You summed it up much better than I ever could.
I was talking to the PMC/MSNBC crowd the other day and this topic came up. They were bragging on how with Bluesky they could control what they heard by blocking anything they didn’t want to hear. It’s all about controlling what they hear, see, and read. That is anti-science and anti-truth IMO, and that’s not good.
I finally heard enough, and made a huge mistake. I told them by going to a platform (or whatever) is like the digital equivalent of stuffing you head up your rear end. Oh boy, that didn’t go over well. I asked why not take the information we have (no matter where it comes from or what it is – science or whatever) and throw it on the table and have an adult conversation about this in the search for the truth. They wanted no part of that, and I was an idiot and a Trumper. Of course. If they didn’t have the “Trump card” to play (it’s always – what about Trump) they can’t have a conversation. BUT TRUMP is all they know and the final answer – always.
The bottom line from what I see – there is a large percentage of our population we cannot have an adult conversation with. They are beyond talking to and it’s not worth even trying. So sad.
I think this latest from Due Dissidence fits in here. They’re talking about the David Brooks essay in the Atlantic Magazine; the essay was linked here at NC but is paywalled. Good discussion. utube, ~35+ minutes.
David Brooks ADMITS College System RIGS SOCIETY For Elites
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARAo6Ctr0LM
Can you imagine what that place will be like in 2028 when the next Federal election rocks around? It’ll be a snake-pit. I think that it is only a matter until homes start sporting the blue butterfly logo of Bluesky in the same way that some homes started to sport the same for Twitter before Musk took it over. It will be a way of showing that you are in the club. Not to be confused with virtue signalling of course.
Speaking of Musk –
It is hard to know if it is a joke or not – but tonight on Twitter there is discussion of him buying MSNBC. I would think that would be just kidding, but the wry tweets are coming from him – in the same kind of AW SHUCKS manner he talked about Twitter before buying it.
I simply cannot imagine the nuclear detonation of bluesky heads exploding if this really happens.
That would be hilarious – I hope he does – and walks on the set of a live studio audience of The View, carrying a sink, to announce it.
Musk’s Twitter eruptions imply someone of closed mindedness about the world. I can’t imagine having him on TV. Somehow he seems to have time to tweet idiotic things throughout the day, which always sadly show up on my feed. ’tis a shame. So assured is he of his own genius in all things.
That is really a shame. Bluesky has been great for me, and there are many COVID-aware people on there. Then again I mostly interacted with the far left crowd, not the PMC/liberal types.
All of which is let’s just say, sub-optimal.
However, many/most of the people on Bluesky are weary of the TwitterX platform where the problem isn’t an echo chamber, it’s an influx and platforming of far right hatemongers. “You should be killed”, and “I am going to rape you” and “Black people are inferior” are to me, a far greater insult than what you describe above.
OH, and the inability to hide your posts from people who want to cause you actual harm, not just verbal insults, but ACTUAL. PHYSICAL. HARM.
Yeahhhhh, let’s stick around for that? Nope
I was never on T/X to begin with, but started a BS account just to see what it’s like. So far, so civil. 13 followers, and lo! and behold! Here comes KIWIFARMS, with a NAZI SWASTIKA as their header. No longer on the site, I guess we took away their free speech, the poor dears. If only they had somewhere else to go, oh wait, they do.
As to the echo chamber of the left, if that isn’t a case of “every accusation is a confession”, then I don’t know what is.
I want to share my artwork without being harassed by actual effing Nazis, it’s not a lot to ask, is it?
Apparently it is, for some.
Bitcoin is the most reflexive asset because its supply is genuinely finite, more finite than precious metals or top-performing equities. The scarcity of Bitcoin is what makes it fundamentally valuable.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
19,882,925 of something is hardly scarce, nor fundamentally valuable, but what do I know on the outside looking in on the most amazing bubble, a Seinfeldian bubble if you will, a bubble about nothing, albeit it could have come in handy back in the 1990’s in an episode with George holding the NY Yankees website hostage unless the ransom of $22 million in Bitcoin was paid toot suite!
The Franklin Mint was in their heyday when I was a kid, they were pushing sets of coins from Banana republics and commemorative medals largely, and you want scarce?
a 1973 Bahamas proof set containing 9 coins with a special mirror surface, including 4 silver coins equaling nearly 3 ounces of silver, with a mintage of but 34,815 proof sets, don’t miss out!
If you really want one, go look on eBay and there are dozens of them from $100 on up. Right around the meltdown value of the silver coins~
Copies of my classic 1994 demo tracks recorded on a 4-track TASCAM analog recorder featuring myself on guitar, bass, vocals, and drum machine are also scarce.
However, I don’t see that making them fundamentally valuable, at least nobody from what’s left of the record industry is beating my door down to get to all two of them.
Scarce and desirable is what makes the collector world go round…
There were lots of scarce and rare Chinese & Russian coins when I was in business, but no home market until after the fall of Communism-thus reliant upon overseas collectors, both were essentially the sick man of numismatics, with an extra nod to China, nobody wanted their coins.
Older 3rd world country coinage was even in more desperate straits, no matter how scarce the coins were. I knew no Haitian coin dealers~
In a similar vein, I happen to the be the sole owner of the world’s entire supply of scarcium, which is so rare as to be virtually (and actually) non-existent. Therefore, its value is practically infinite! However, knowing that you, the wise investor, may not have such funds at your disposal, I am offering my (and indeed, the universe’s) entire supply for the low, low price of $10 million. Just imagine, near limitless returns could be yours immediately!
Where is scarcium on the Periodic Table of Reflexive Elements, relative to unobtainium?*
NOTE Autocorrect turned “unobtainium” to “unibrainium,” which is pretty neat, actually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_elements,_materials,_isotopes_and_subatomic_particles
Perhaps NC can create its own periodic table of fictional elements
They are both members of the Asinine group.
Next is “Deplorium” and it’s isolopes. Deplorium has two extra electron orbits that add a certain frisson of chaos to the chemistry associated with it. Deplorium, much to the disgust of PMC chemists, is very energetic and makes compounds with just about anything.
The Asinine Group are the basic building blocks of Silicon Valley based life forms. No credit for carbon here!
“Unobtainium“, is widely encountered when one searches for spare parts for old machine tools, stereo systems, etc. of US manufacture. Not applicable, at least not yet, to classic car parts. There you occasionally run into “unaffordium“.
Retired Carpenter
Chris, rip them to digital, I’ll slap a “remastered” tag on them and will share them online with people you’ll never meet who’ll never give you any feedback but you will be in their collections for future generations to discover assuming the electricity never goes off. #immortalitybeckons
David Gregory, a Britisher who was an early critic of Bitcoin, has also said that “scarcity” does not correspond to value, using the example of VHS tapes to make his point. He says that there are about as many VHS tapes extant as there will be Bitcoin when it stops being minted , yet no one is bidding up old tapes of the Bad News Bears…
Original Star Wars on VHS for sale on eBay.
https://www.ebay.com/b/Star-Wars-Vhs-1977/309/bn_7023417981?_sop=16&mag=1&rt=nc
An outlier, no?
And I was mistaken about his name: it’s David Gerard.
If I recall rightly the only port that the USA has built recently was the one to deliver aid to Gaza.
That got blown away, bit of a metaphor really.
About that pier. As the saying goes,” You can find better but you can’t pay more”
How many hundreds of millions was that joke?
>Oil and gas well proximity linked to higher rates of COVID-19 mortality” [Phys.org]
Sounds like a research project just begging to be done in Pennsylvania with all the gas wells and fracking done there.
Salmon in the Klamath again – William Stafford would be pleased.
“Climbing along the River
Willows never forget how it feels
to be young.
Do you remember where you came from?
Gravel remembers.
Even the upper end of the river
believes in the ocean.
Exactly at midnight
yesterday sighs away.
What I believe is,
all animals have one soul.
Over the land they love
they crisscross forever. “
“ChaosChaosChaos” . . .
The PMC are now in full-spectrum pearl-clutching because Trump now uses his power to inject some chaos into THEIR lives, affecting THEM and taking them out of their comfort level. Genocide and WWIII were not chaos because THEY were in control. Now they’ll have to react and adapt instead of skating through. Que lastima . . . Pobrecitos.
I think the problem got worse when they traded in their pearls for ben wa balls and started clutching in all the wrong places.
Either way, or even the Third Way, they are emitters of “hot air” par excellence.
Re: “‘A place of joy’: why scientists are joining the rush to Bluesky”
Call it the Joy Bunker.
Re WW3
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2024/11/why-these-new-russian-missiles-are-real-game-changers.html
Moon says Putin’s latest move resurrects the Europe medium range missile danger once represented by Pershing.
And I caught last Monday’s Taibbi/Kirn which is all about Joe Ripper doing a Strangelove just before stepping down.
https://www.racket.news/p/atw-livestream-tonight-at-8-pm-et7-f0f
Biden wasn’t even in the country when the decision was announced. So who made it?
We are told everywhere today to be relieved that “everything is OK – not ICBMs” just medium range missile.
Did I miss something? – or was the entire Cuban Missile Crisis based on “medium range” missiles.
I am just amazed at how blissed out everyone seems about the possibility of a nuclear war.
Especially since all of Europe is within range of IRBM from Russia anyways…. (as is European Russian, and that was why Pershing II and the AEGIS missile launchers were/are big deal, isn’t it?)
Something is definitely “off.”
Years of Cheney/Rumsfield “we create our own reality” may have finally destroyed our capacity for critical thinking. Both Fox Snooze and CNN parrot the lie that Russia is just a gas station with nukes.
Propaganda has done its deadly job.
Didn’t William Casey, the head of the CIA under Reagan IIRC, say in a meeting “you’ll know [the CIA’s] job is complete when NOTHING the American public believes is true?”
These folks are madmen and psychopaths and they just might get us all killed and not one person in 1,000 seems concerned over here.
“Extinction-of-all-life-on-Earth is okay – if WE do it.”
“how blissed out”
Or at least how reckless. There’s a pretty good new documentary out on dvd about the Cold War cancer cluster in Saint George, Utah–downwind from the Nevada nuclear test range–and how not only the residents got cancer from the dust and the contaminated food and milk but also Hollywood stars making a silly movie about Genghis Khan. The film was called The Conqueror–and that’s also the name of the new doc. John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, Dick Powell (the director) all developed cancer within a few years.
Some time later it was learned that the Atomic Energy Commission knew all about the danger but lied to everyone downwind because the nuclear work was “too important.” They were sure the Soviets were determined to destroy America.
In American Prometheus Nolan makes a big deal about the AEC being mean to Oppenheimer, co-inventor of the terrible thing, but surely the so called Atomic Cafe of the fifties was a much bigger scandal to lay at AEC feet and particularly the Pentagon and all those Cold Warriors.
More rhyming history.
What’s more chaotic is doing all these things without anyone in charge. We haven’t have a real president for some time and the pretend/former president is going to be officially gone in just weeks. So all the chaos that we can see is being driven by the bigger (if only in consequences) chaos in high places that we don’t get to see.
> So all the chaos that we can see is being driven by the bigger (if only in consequences) chaos in high places that we don’t get to see
Excellent point. It’s as if Biden got whacked, not Trump, but nobody noticed….
Martin Armstrong described it as titans fighting under the sea and us rowers on the surface trying to divine the battle below by the pieces that floated up from the depths…
Tsk. There’s a committee in charge. The Dem estab told us so. We don’t know who’s in the committee or who made the decisions. Don’t worry, be happy. (psst… the committee is nuts, happy to play with our lives with no individual accountability. And they wonder why they lost?)
Germany’s Schultz is unpopular.
UK’s Starmer is unpopular.
Macron is unpopular.
B team KH just lost the US election.
Do these Build Back Better ‘geniuses’ listen to their voters? Do they care about their voters? If they’re willing to flirt with nuclear war for no purpose other than personal ego gratification then do they really care about their countries’ futures? Who do they think they work for?
That phys.org article on oil wells vs COVID doesn’t actually link to the correct article(?). Instead, the link takes you to “Fossil fuel racism in the United States: How phasing out coal, oil, and gas can protect communities”, by different authors. The graphic was pulled from the ‘racism’ article, and the ‘more info’ box at the bottom calls out the correct authors and title of the racism paper. COVID is not mentioned once in the paper, the single search hit is in the 259th bibliography reference. There was no study mentioning COVID in that issue of the journal. Hard to see how this was an honest mistake, since the graphic was included, unless it was a repurposed article that wasn’t completed before publishing?
(btw – don’t bother reading the racism article. it contains no data, just references to other papers in a pretty generic woke diatribe (racism is the cause of all bad things) )
This has apparently been fixed – the link works for me as described.
The phys.org article is not linked correctly to the study that the author of the phys.org article is talking about, I think. Also, the phys.org article contains incorrect info on the lead author’s name. You have to watch out for phys.org, they do sometimes get things messed up. One should always follow up their links etc, like cfraenkel did.
The link provided by phys.org leads to a paper that shows the general case that people who live near oil and gas production have higher rates of disease.
Here is a better link to a different article that gets the subject of the phys.org article right:
https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/news-media/research-highlights/covid-19-rates-in-communities-most-exposed-to-oil-and-gas-production
And here is the link to the original paper:
Upstream Oil and Gas Production and Community COVID-19 Case and Mortality Rates in California, USA
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GH001070
Here is an excerpt from the conclusion of the paper:
“…While we observed a mix of positive and null findings across the study period, elevated case and mortality rates in the first 4 months of the pandemic suggest that communities near to oil and gas production may have been disproportionately affected by severe disease at a time when testing and treatment options were more limited. Additional research in this area, particularly at the individual level, may help further characterize the observed variability and to elucidate the biological mechanisms through which exposure to environmental pollutants may affect risk for COVID-19 and related diseases. Furthermore, it may help to identify potential health impacts of oil and gas production and to identify community-level risk factors that are associated with severe respiratory disease outcomes, particularly given higher rates of production in communities with a higher proportion of Black residents. ”
Also, for further evidence of the disproportionate impact of pollution on black and poor communities, such as Cancer Alley, in Louisiana:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Alley
I have added orts and scraps. So Omidyar and Pritzker want to give NGOs lots of money, but Tiexiera wants to kill them off. I think Tiexiera is right, but who has the louder voice?
Color revolutions come to America. Billionaires using NGOs to fight over control. What could go wrong?
I think I read that novel in high school when it was considered science fiction.
Thanks for the Neil Innes musical interlude. Dry humor, quick wit, musically playful, big heart – Neil was a real mensch.
The Thunbergia is a lovely violet color with sunshine in the center. What a pretty picture.
I agree. Want try growing some. This violet/ yellow variety is called Thunbergia Erecta (good name for a Mad Max villainess?) or Bush Clockvine.
https://balconygardenweb.com/how-to-grow-thunbergia-erecta-growing-bush-clockvine/
Re: P8, KC46 order:
Boeing to build more 737-800s and 767s! Innovation! The future!
How long can they milk the military to avoid ever making a new airframe?
I don’t understand, why would someone cut bait *and* go home?
The expression I’ve always heard is “cut bait *or* go home” or that one “should either fish or cut bait”.
From the political article about Trump: “But Gaetz-gate suggests that when that chaos becomes a distraction — or worse in his eyes, when it makes him look bad — he’s willing to cut bait and head home.”
Makes no sense
Aaron Rupar, “daily chaos circus,” and still another echo chamber for snots (I glanced at his comment section).
I went through the article. Much is the usual snark, vulgarity, and prejudices. He cut his teeth in journalism on the first Trump administration? This makes him an expert?
Indeed, this is the low point: “Voters may have been willing to risk it all for slightly lower egg prices, but regardless of what they thought they were doing, they’re getting a chaos machine — and that sort of thing gets exhausting pretty quickly.”
The reason I picked up the paragraph is (1) I have seen this “slightly lower egg prices” as a meme on BookFace, (2) the oh-so-clever writing is thoroughly condescending, and (3) egg prices are a synecdoche for larger economic anxieties that Aaron Rupar and claque don’t seem to be party to. He couldn’t figure out why the eggs benedict at brunch keeps getting more expensive?
And this group of man-boys, the Hegseths, the Rupars, the Rubios, want to lead us into the horrors of full-scale war?
Rupar’s one of the first people I blocked on Twitter.
And now Twitter’s blocked me.
I’m still not seeing Rupar’s takes so all in all I feel like I came out ahead in this exchange.
I took great offense to that line as well. Obviously said by someone who has never had to consider what he can afford put in his shopping cart. These snotty condescending family bloggers really need to go away.
It all came down to how wealthy you are. After the election William Shatner wrote-
‘I don’t know why the Democrats lost. I don’t understand … Prices have come down, the economy is good. I don’t know why they voted against her, against the party.’
But I can’t see William Shatner pushing a shopping trolley around the supermarket that you do. But then again, William Shatner is on Bluesky where he is flogging off watches-
’57 years ago today the US public found me boldly going where no one had gone before. In that same spirit, my Egard Passages Watch features the Webb Telescope. Its mission is also to seek out new life & new civilizations Embrace the spirit of exploration & reserve one today.’
I’m sure Captain Kirk is all-in on the genocide too.
Well, Captain Kirk was against certainly genocide in A Taste of Armageddon, and Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, he tried to spare the mirrorverse Halkans in Mirror, Mirror, and in The Conscience of the King, Kirk is revealed to be the survivor of an Earth colony in which half the population were put to death by Governor Kodos, who he then discovers to be aboard the Enterprise, disguised as a thespian.
As a representative of the Federation, the fictional Kirk seems pretty much an old skool liberal humanist. As he has grown older, William Shatner has become more conservative, and in a way he seems to fit right in with the present-day crypto-right-wing Democrat party.
Column: The Trump landslide that wasn’t. This from Lambert’s excerpt caught my eye:
“Eligible voters”? The numbers you never see anymore? Useful context? OMG! I’d almost started to believe that almost everyone votes (except me). Apparently “everyone says so” is no longer a reliable indictator, especially when it comes to the news.
Search engine on 2020 nonvoters:
Truly do not remember reading this in real time and the source link shows it was a guest opinion published in July of 2021 at The Hill, which is a rather obscure source for a basic question that should have been in news stories/analyses in almost every newspaper nationwide. Right? Or maybe the search engine couldn’t find a better example?
Cog dis alert: they’re going to break what’s left of their believers minds with some shockingly truthful facts from the world outside their bubble. Then break your own mind by remembering that Joseph Robinette Biden set the all-time most votes ever record. Look at the low turnout states. I’m guessing those were states where people weren’t knocking on doors to get ballots filled out and turned in. Not saying that happened anywhere but it would sure explain a lot.
There is no good reason for vote counting to continue. Every state should have certified the election by now; Georgia already did.
Recounts are another matter.
Something rotten is up in CA.
Undefinitized – is it a word? It is a concept/process:
Undefinitized Contract Action.
Any contract action for which the terms, specifications, or price are not agreed upon before performance is begun under the action. Examples are letter contracts, orders under Basic Ordering Agreements (BOAs), and provisioned item orders for which the price has not been agreed upon before performance has begun. Letter contracts await negotiation to definitize prices.
https://www.dau.edu/acquipedia-article/undefinitized-contract-action
definitive – to make definite.
Undefinitized contracts are absolutely common in the government contracting sphere, but often problematic for the non government entity. If the proposed contract is subject to TINA “truth in negotiations act”, cost discovery can continue after performance begins so any potential cost savings have to be disclosed to the government which lowers the final negotiated price.
If you’re in search of some laughs this weekend…the UK’s show “Have I Got News For You” this week was quite silly imo: https://youtu.be/bBt2BDr79nY?si=fnxqvYGHN-VgSn6D
Sixty-one years ago, I was watching LBJ being sworn in on Air Force 1, having watched a full afternoon of TV.
It’s difficult to describe the optimism youth felt with JFK as president — and the feeling of having a very hopeful future yanked out from under. Coincidentally my father was hospitalized and passed away a week later. Reasons to create skepticism in a nearly teen.
Prof. Ted Postol Assessing Russian Attack on Ukraine by Hypersonic Missile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8LvIkGkfes
The first 11 minutes is skippable. At the end, Postol says the embedded video of Putin explains the situation perfectly. (In Links also, needed to be here.)
“Prof. Ted Postol Assessing…”
MIT scientist Ted Postol correctly explained in 2017 that Syria had never used poison gas against insurgents, when the US was being pushed by neo-conservatives to bomb Syria. Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard went to Syria and found that Postol was correct, and was harassed by Democratic Party leaders from then on.
Thank you very much.
Happy whenever I can see him.
Regardless of some mistakes he made recently.
Imagine where Postol came from (e.g. developing the MX-missile) and now what positions he has.
That is a remarkable proof of integrity just like with people from the Eisenhower Network, McGregor, Larry Johnson et al.
Huh? You cannot pay taxes with it, and you can’t use it in any meaningful non-monetary way, either. You can’t use it for manufacturing, you can’t use it for personal adornment. The large energy costs are ongoing.
As far as I know, I cannot go to Domino’s and get a pizza with it today, in 2024.
That said, there’s an extraordinary amount of big money behind this, institutional money, at this point, so if it does ultimately collapse, it might be quite a while. It is a sign of the precariousness of our times and lack of trust in institutions that this is happening. Makes sense that Wall Street is finally getting its cut from this mania. (Per Democrat Party identity soloed benefits, black men were offered Bitcoin by Harris! Demeaning in so many ways.)
NYT on the 21st reported about US discussion of nukes for UKR.
Trump’s Vow to End the War Could Leave Ukraine With Few Options
One question is whether the new administration and Europe will provide security guarantees to prevent Russia from taking more territory.
https://archive.is/4G56L
It´s the usual NYT bullshit-essay-length with lots of trash.
In the very end the pharagraph that matters:
“Several officials even suggested that Mr. Biden could return nuclear weapons to Ukraine that were taken from it after the fall of the Soviet Union. That would be an instant and enormous deterrent. But such a step would be complicated and have serious implications.”
Lets see how much more of this kind we will get.
Or: may be they are already trying to put them into Ukraine.
Do we have news that they were caught in the past by RUs trying to prepare such a move?
What would be the best way for them?
“Lies Wide Shut”
https://x.com/99percentyouth/status/1844320442892623889
I doubt Kubrick would have approved, but the AI imagery of our despotic overlords is pretty credible.
“After eight years of Barack Obama – an exemplar of well-polished progressivism…“ I think this from RCP is a bit misleading. It was at most six years, if not much earlier, that the people gave up on Obama and the DP.
By the 2014 midterms, the Dems had lost control of everything. They lost both houses, state legislatures, governors, and the shine was gone from Obama’s crown.
No doubt, Trump smelled blood and an opportunity in 2014, as well as the “Democrats’…own Donald Trump,” Bernie Sanders who might have defeated Trump in 2016.
It was only HRC and the DP leadership, to paraphrase Dylan, in which there was something happening but they didn’t know what it was.
Obama promised to deliver us from the evil of the Bush years but he and George 43 eventually became buddies and unsurprisingly VP Harris welcomed the endorsement of former VP Dick Cheney.
Moreover, it’s now rumored that Rahm Emanuel might be the next DNC chair proving the Dems are a disgrace.
That’s not NONpartisan — it’s BIpartisan. It ignores the dozen-years plurality of votes who identify with neither of the gravy wings of the MSM (Main-Stream Money) Party.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx