2:00PM Water Cooler 12/1/2024

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Northern Mockingbird, Southeast Greenway, Mueller, Travis, Texas, United States. “All sang.” A lot going on!

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In Case You Might Miss…

1. The urban-rural divide.
2. Thomas Frank on populism (video).
3. Blue periods ….

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Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

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Biden Administration

“Here are the times that Biden, the White House said they wouldn’t pardon Hunter” [The Hill] • Dear Hunter!

Trump Transition

“Pete Hegseth’s Secret History” [Jane Meyer, The New Yorker]. The deck: “A whistle-blower report and other documents suggest that Trump’s nominee to run the Pentagon was forced out of previous leadership positions for financial mismanagement, sexist behavior, and being repeatedly intoxicated on the job.” More: ” A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct. A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team.” • And much else. “Previously undisclosed” is delicately put. From whom did Meyer get the report?

“Trump and His Team Are ‘Laughing’ at Biden’s Commitment to Decorum” [Rolling Stone]. “‘Some of us have been laughing about it,’ an incoming Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone. ‘[Democrats] spend all this time calling Donald Trump a Nazi and Hitler, and now it’s just: ‘Smile for the camera!'” • Indeed. Liberal Democrats can really turn on a dime. It’s amazing!

“Can Bhattacharya rescue the reputation of the scientific establishment?” [Washington Examiner] • By Betteridge’s Law, no.

Campaign Finance

“A Chinese national, charged with fraud by the SEC, just sent Donald Trump $18 million” [Popular Information]. “Chinese Crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun paid $6.2 million for a banana — sold by Sotheby’s as conceptual art — and then ate it last Friday. The banana is not Sun’s most notable recent purchase. On November 25, Sun purchased $30 million in crypto tokens from World Liberty Financial, a new crypto venture backed by President-elect Donald Trump. Sun said his company, TRON, was committed to “making America great again….. Sun’s decision to buy $30 million in WLF tokens has direct and immediate financial benefits for Trump.”

The #Resistance

“Will the 2025 Women’s March galvanize or repel?” [The Hill]. “Multiple women leaders of left-leaning or non-profit women’s organizations who I have reached out to since the election have said they have no interest in participating in the next women’s march, scheduled for Jan. 18, 2025, nor did they know others who planned to participate. All asked for anonymity for fear of alienating funders or colleagues, but responses ranged from a declarative ‘f-that’ to a more thoughtful take that marching would be “performative.’… There appear to be three central issues as to why some women leaders who otherwise have been at the forefront of the contemporary women’s movement for so long are now turning away from the 2025 march. [(1)] While millions took to the streets and the event inspired a flurry of civic activity in the immediate term, it was not sustained, especially in this year’s election cycle… [(2)] [F]issures in the leadership and strategy of the first march have never been addressed. The 2017 event, which sprung from a call by activist Bob Bland on Facebook, was complicated and divisive from the start, despite the massive show of unity on the march day…. [(3)] Finally, marching does not, in this case, advance the real work that needs to be done to organize and transform electoral politics over the long term.” • Hmm. I think the possibility of “schooling behavior,” as with the instant and overwhelming support for Kamala when she was blessed by authority, is being underestimated here. Further, that marching “does not advance the real work” is so unsurprising it sounds like a rationalization. Since when did an NGO do “real work,” anyhow?

Spook Country

“Note on the FBI” [Matt Taibbi, Racket News]. “The transformation of the FBI back into a J. Edgar Hoover-style domestic spy service with sweeping political ambition has been a long-developing story, obscured by a political anomaly. In the first phase of this nightmare, between 2001 and 2016, the post-9/11 Bureau used the pretext of an enhanced counterintelligence mandate to throw off some mild restraints that had been placed on it the last time it had to be slapped down, i.e. after the Church Committee hearings in the 1970s. The second phase of its transformation took place after the election of Donald Trump, when the Bureau remade itself on the fly as a kind of government-in-exile, empowered by an outpouring of public and media support to view itself as a counterweight to the Trump government. This dichotomy has probably helped prevent a full portrait of the FBI’s makeover from appearing. The more troubling aspects to phase one were mostly found in reports by a then-adversarial ACLU or in testimonials of agents and investigators who spoke out in places like Democracy Now! or the Southern Poverty Law Center, with examples being people like Colleen Rowley and Mike German. The post-Trump exposes of FBI excess meanwhile often appeared in places like Mollie Hemingway’s The Federalist or broadcasts by the likes of Tucker Carlson or even sites like The Conservative Treehouse, and the signature FBI whistleblowers of this period were agents like Steve Friend, Garrett O’Boyle and Marcus Allen, testifying in front of Republican elected officials like Jim Jordan. They were all really talking about the same subject, but their complaints were broadcast to different audiences at different stages of the Bureau’s evolution.”

“No Background Checks, No Problem?” [Politico]. “The potential end of the formal vetting process will be front and center when the Senate considers Trump’s nominees in January. So will an even more attention-getting question raised by Trump’s selections: Should we move past the expectation that presidential appointees should have squeaky-clean personal records? But a quieter conversation is going on already among insiders who work on the often infuriating background-check ritual: What would such a transformation mean for how the capital does business? ‘Right now, it would seem to me that if you’ve got a significant problem, you probably don’t apply for these jobs in the first place,’ said Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and current University of Michigan law professor who has written about the clearance process. But ‘if you know that the background check is no longer very rigorous, you might give it a shot.'” • Lincoln on Grant, pilloried as a drunk: “I need this man. He fights.” Would Grant have made it through our current process? Probably not!

Democrats en déshabillé

“Why Democrats FEAR Populism (And Keep Losing)” (video) [Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs, YouTube].

Normally, I don’t link to Current Affairs, because Nathan J. Robinson union-busted his own magazine, but for Thomas Frank, I will make an exception.l

Realignment and Legitimacy

“The Political Economy of the Urban-Rural Divide” (PDF) [Keith Orejel, LPE Project]. “But something fundamentally new occurred in the mid-to-late 1990s. A yawning gap opened between urban and rural voters, with rural Americans voting in ever larger margins for the Republican Party and their metropolitan counterparts doing the same for Democrats. While political strategists and commentators tended to point to cultural interpretations for this divide—everything from Christian Nationalism to White Rural Rage—such explanations fail to account for the fact that this transformation occurred simultaneously across the entire nation, and indeed, in many other advanced industrial countries as well. As I will lay out in this post, the urban-rural divide was first and foremost a product of political economy. Starting in the 1990s, the Democratic Party emerged as the champion of a new globalized, knowledge economy, whose centralizing tendencies concentrated the most sophisticated and profitable enterprises in metropolitan areas. As a result, the historic party of industrial workers morphed into the home of highly educated metropolitan professionals. Meanwhile, rural areas struggled to adapt to the global era, becoming a repository for slow growth sectors—manufacturing, retail, construction, agriculture, and gas and oil—that provided mostly low paying, unskilled jobs. The Republican Party capitalized on this decline, arguing that their economic agenda of low taxes, minimal government spending, and weak regulations was critical to the well-being of rural industries and their largely non-college educated employees. By examining the emergence of the urban-rural divide in detail, we can see that the results of last week’s election were by no means inevitable. The Democratic Party’s collapse in the countryside was the predictable consequence of decisions to prioritize certain constituencies to the neglect of others. If the party is ever again to capture a sufficient governing majority to enact the social and economic agenda our country needs, it won’t be through eking out 2% higher turnout in the suburbs. It will be through transforming the Democratic Party into an organization that once again can compete in both urban and rural counties.” • Yep!

Syndemics

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

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

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

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

Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).

Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).

Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

Sequelae: Covid

“Nearly half of NYC’s aspiring drivers failed their DMV road tests this year” [Gothamist]. “: Nearly half the Big Apple’s would-be motorists have failed their driving tests so far this year. That failure rate — 48% — is higher than the statewide average of 43%, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles. The odds of flunking the test within the city has risen steadily since the COVID-19 pandemic: In 2021, the failure rate in the city was 41%, the data shows.” • Odd!

I wonder why these Google Trends results:

‘Tis a mystery!

Elite Maleficence

I guess we have our answer on why the teacher’s unions were silent on school ventilation and masking:

For more on the Great Barrington Declaration, see here.

“A look back at what COVID was really like” [Kevin Drum]. “Epidemiologists initially said that COVID was spread by droplets. That’s because the evidence pointed that way[1]. When evidence piled up that aerosol transmission was also important, they changed their public statements[2]. But their safety guidance didn’t change, because in most cases it didn’t matter how the virus was spread[3]. Standard epidemic hygiene was mostly the same either way[4].” • I rarely see so much error crammed into a single paragraph. Links on request, but I think readers know all this stuff. [1]. No. There was never any evidence for droplet dogma in general, or for Covid in particular. The epidemiologists spoke from ideology, not science. [2]. No. They fought changing public statements tooth and nail, as the recent UK hearings showed; at least one wrong WHO tweet is still up (last I checked, and I’ve been checking for years. [3] Of course it matters how the virus is spread. If the virus does not “spread like smoke” you don’t have to open the windows! Or use a Corsi-Rosenthal box. [4] No. In the beginning, and in the more beknighted facilities still, handwashing is recommended against Covid. But Covid is not transmitted by fomites. Somebody tell Drum to stay in his lane.

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TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Lambert here: Even though the Covid numbers seem low, please remember that the data is not nearly as good as it once was, that it lags, and that the downside risks of catching Covid are considerable. For those who have developed their own personal protocols, I wouldn’t relax them. Maybe next year.

Wastewater
★This week[1] CDC November 25	Last week[2] CDC (until next week):
Variants [3] CDC November 23	★Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC November 23
Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data November 29:	National [6] CDC November 28:
Positivity
★ National[7] Walgreens November 25:	Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic November 23:
Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC November 4:	Variants[10] CDC November 4:
Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC November 2:	Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC November 2:

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

Manufacturing: “United States ISM Manufacturing PMI” [Trading Economics]. “The ISM Manufacturing PMI for the US increased to 48.4 in November 2024 from 46.5 in October, beating forecasts of 47.5. The reading pointed to another albeit softer contraction in the manufacturing sector.”

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The Bezzle: “Trump’s Return Heralds Litigation Peace for Crypto” [Wall Street Journal]. “The Securities and Exchange Commission sued crypto exchanges Binance, Coinbase and Kraken last year, accusing the platforms of dealing assets that are illegal to trade without regulatory supervision. Crypto executives had refused to comply with financial rules that they said were a bad fit for digital currencies.

The SEC, under the leadership of Chair Gary Gensler, mounted the legal campaign in lieu of the industry’s request to craft new crypto-specific regulations that embraced a lighter touch. Had the commission won in court, the victories would have compelled the freewheeling market to follow longstanding agency rules that protect investors who buy securities. But litigation can take many years to resolve, and with Donald Trump’s election to a second term, Gensler has run out of time before his biggest cases reach the finish line.

Trump’s return to the White House will mean a new era for crypto—with fewer government hurdles. The president-elect, shedding previous skepticism of crypto, has pledged support for the digital-asset industry [sic].” • Lordie. Cf. Veblen’s distinction between business and industry; crypto is all business.

The Bezzle: “Enter the ‘ether,’ where scammers weaponize your emotions” [WaPo]. “[Fraud prevention experts] Shadel and Pratkanis said the levers used to swindle Judith out of nearly $600,000 followed a template of sorts; a three-part strategy that swindlers customize to each potential victim…. The first step is to gain their trust…. To build this level of intimacy, scammers spend hours on the phone with their victims or bombard them with email or texts. The exchanges are intended to extract personal details to build rapport ahead of any request for money…. The second step of the fraud playbook is to get victims “under the ether,” the frenzied state in which they suspend reason…. Lastly, the impostors try to create a sense of urgency. For example, they might tell a victim that if they don’t move their money out of their accounts, the people who stole their Social Security number will take it all, or the funds will be frozen as part of a criminal prosecution. ‘It’s baked into our brains to respond to threats,’ Shadel said. ‘You’ve got to create a reason for them to do something now.’ Criminals construct a wonderland of the mind, a reality that appears authentic to the scam target. This is why the oft-used maxim, ‘If it’s too good to be true, it probably is,’ isn’t the most effective way to fight fraud.” • Seems like these methods are more universal than fraud.

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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 67 Greed (previous close: 66 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 64 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Dec 2 at 1:53:27 PM ET.

Rapture Index: Closes unchanged [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 183. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Hard to believe the Rapture Index is going down. Do these people know something we don’t?

Gallery

Musical interlude:

Pablo Picasso, The Roofs of Barcelona in the Moonlight pic.twitter.com/c3aRz3UYDX

— Impressions (@impression_ists) November 30, 2024

News of the Wired

“Fish Have a Brain Microbiome. Could Humans Have One Too?” [Quanta]. “Recently, a study published in Science Advances provided the strongest evidence yet that a brain microbiome can and does exist in healthy vertebrates — fish, specifically. Researchers at the University of New Mexico discovered communities of bacteria thriving in salmon and trout brains. Many of the microbial species have special adaptations that allow them to survive in brain tissue, as well as techniques to cross the protective blood-brain barrier. Matthew Olm, a physiologist who studies the human microbiome at the University of Colorado, Boulder and was not involved with the study, is ‘inherently skeptical’ of the idea that populations of microbes could live in the brain, he said. But he found the new research convincing. ‘This is concrete evidence that brain microbiomes do exist in vertebrates,’ he said. ‘And so the idea that humans have a brain microbiome is not outlandish.'” • How little we know about anything…

“Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom” [Frontiers in Psychology]. “As traditional handwriting is progressively being replaced by digital devices, it is essential to investigate the implications for the human brain. Brain electrical activity was recorded in 36 university students as they were handwriting visually presented words using a digital pen and typewriting the words on a keyboard. Connectivity analyses were performed on EEG data recorded with a 256-channel sensor array. When writing by hand, brain connectivity patterns were far more elaborate than when typewriting on a keyboard, as shown by widespread theta/alpha connectivity coherence patterns between network hubs and nodes in parietal and central brain regions. Existing literature indicates that connectivity patterns in these brain areas and at such frequencies are crucial for memory formation and for encoding new information and, therefore, are beneficial for learning. Our findings suggest that the spatiotemporal pattern from visual and proprioceptive information obtained through the precisely controlled hand movements when using a pen, contribute extensively to the brain’s connectivity patterns that promote learning.” • Interesting. IIRC, KLG doesn’t think much of “Frontiers in” Whatever; perhaps a reader would like to take a crack at the methodology.

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

TH writes: “We have about 4 or 5 hibiscus bushes lining our driveway. Sadley, I don’t recall their names, so I just call this the ‘pink one.'” Composition!

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