By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Northern Mockingbird, New Providence Island; Lyford Cay, New Providence, Bahamas.
In Case You Might Miss…
- Lina Khan out.
- Arnade on McDonald’s: Trump and The Adjuster
- Kamala’s flawless campaign, lol.
- Bird flu carried by dust on the wind.
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
Musk GLP
Nothing would do more to improve the health, lifespan and quality of life for Americans than making GLP inhibitors super low cost to the public.
Nothing else is even close. https://t.co/SNGcxzkcqE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2024
‘We don’t even know who’s running the country’: South Korea’s ruling party stalls for time amid leadership crisis Channel News Asia
“‘A Gift to the Oligarchs’: Trump Pick to Replace Lina Khan Vowed to End ‘War on Mergers'” [Common Dreams]. “President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Trade Commission vowed in his job pitch to end current chair Lina Khan’s ‘war on mergers,’ a signal to an eager corporate America that the incoming administration intends to be far more lax on antitrust enforcement. Andrew Ferguson was initially nominated by President Joe Biden to serve as a Republican commissioner on the bipartisan FTC, and his elevation to chair of the commission will not require Senate confirmation. In a one-page document obtained by Punchbowl, Ferguson—who previously worked as chief counsel to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)—pitched himself to Trump’s team as the ‘pro-innovation choice’ with ‘impeccable legal credentials’ and ‘proven loyalty’ to the president-elect. Ferguson’s top agenda priority, according to the document, is to ‘reverse Lina Khan’s anti-business agenda’ by rolling back ‘burdensome regulations,’ stopping her ‘war on mergers,’ halting the agency’s ‘attempt to become an AI regulator,’ and ditching ‘novel and legally dubious consumer protection cases.’ Trump announced Ferguson as the incoming administration’s FTC chair as judges in Oregon and Washington state blocked the proposed merger of Kroger and Albertsons, decisions that one antitrust advocate called a ‘fantastic culmination of the FTC’s work to protect consumers and workers.'” • Dang…
“Trump Aims to Remake Federal Trade Commission With Two Picks” [Wall Street Journal]. “Trump on Tuesday also said he would nominate the Republican antitrust lawyer Mark Meador as a commissioner. Meador is a former aide to Sen. Mike Lee (R., Utah), who led the introduction of legislation to break up Google. His confirmation would give the GOP a majority on the commission. While Meador will require Senate approval, Ferguson won’t. He was already confirmed for his commissioner seat in March and will be able to make the transition to the role of chair.”
* * * “Crypto Doesn’t Deserve a Tax Exemption” [Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg]. “The most obvious argument against the proposal is simply that uniform taxation is better than selective tax exemptions. If a lower capital gains tax rate is preferable, then the goal should be to make a smaller cut that applies to all assets. Exempting a single kind of asset is likely to lead to abuses. You might think that boosting crypto is important now, but which sector or asset will be selected next for special treatment? It may be one you don’t think deserves it.” And: “Many of the leading supporters of Trump’s campaign were crypto-connected companies. You don’t have to think this tax proposal is some kind of payback to realize that this creates problems of perception. Next time around, companies will offer campaigns financial support in the expectation of more favorable tax and regulatory treatment.” • I still struggle to understand the case for crypto, unless it be that Silicon Valley wants to get into finance, and to compete with Wall Street they need a distinctive competence, which turns out to be fraud (amazing, I know).
* * * “Top Republicans split over strategy to move Trump’s 2025 agenda” [NBC]. “The new Congress will give Trump and Republicans the opportunity to pass major legislation without the need for any Democratic support under a process called ‘reconciliation’ But whether the GOP will try to link all of its top priorities together in a single package early next year or split major issues across two, smaller bills is a major subject of debate among top Republican leaders. The House’s top tax writer, Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., is warning fellow Republicans against breaking the agenda up into two bills, in which border security and energy policy would come in the first and an extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cut law could come in the second. Delaying the tax legislation risks jeopardizing it, Smith and his allies warn, so they want one sweeping package.”
* * * “The Bizarre Normalcy of Trump 2.0” [Jonathan Chait, The Atlantic]. So Chait got a promotion to the Atlantic (for some definition of “promotion”). “A very strange disjuncture has opened up in Washington between the serene mood and the alarming developments that are under way. The surface is calm because the Republican presidential candidate won the election, and Democrats, the only one of the two major parties committed on principle to upholding the legitimacy of election results, conceded defeat and are cooperating in the peaceful transition of power. Whatever energy the chastened Democrats can muster at the moment is aimed inward, at factional struggles over their future direction. Meanwhile, what is actually happening in the capital is, by any rational standard, disturbing. Donald Trump is filling his administration with ‘loyalists,’ a prerogative that his opponents have grudgingly accepted as his due. Yet he is defining loyalist in maximal terms, including the belief that Trump legitimately won the 2020 election and was justified in his attempt to seize power. The winners are rewriting the history of the insurrection, and their version of history is about to acquire the force of law.” And: “On Saturday, The New York Times reported that the Trump transition team is asking applicants for high-level positions in the Defense Department and intelligence agencies three questions: which candidate they supported in the past three elections, what they thought about January 6, and whether they believed the 2020 election was stolen. Among the ‘wrong’ answers, applicants say, are conceding that Trump lost the election or that his supporters should not have tried to overturn the result.” • As for the 2020 election, see immediately below. (I think all the huffing-and-puffing about Trump picking “loyalists” is absurd. After all, what is he supposed to do? Pick backstabbers? That said, a taste for Kool-Aid shouldn’t be the operational definition of loyalty. Or the ability to lie to get ahead, although this is Washington, D.C…..
* * * “Trump lawyers and aide hit with 10 additional felony charges in Wisconsin over 2020 fake electors” [Associated Press]. “The state charges against the Trump attorneys and aide are the only ones in Wisconsin. None of the electors have been charged. The 10 Wisconsin electors, Chesebro and Troupis all settled a lawsuit that was brought against them in 2023. There are pending charges related to the fake electors scheme in state and federal courts in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia. Federal prosecutors, investigating Trump’s conduct related to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot, said the fake electors scheme originated in Wisconsin. Electors are people appointed to represent voters in presidential elections. The winner of the popular vote in each state determines which party’s electors are sent to the Electoral College, which meets in December after the election to certify the outcome. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, allow their electoral votes to be split between candidates. The Wisconsin complaint details how Troupis, Chesebro and Roman created a document that falsely said Trump had won Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral College votes and then attempted to deliver to to then-Vice President Mike Pence. In the amended complaint filed Tuesday, prosecutors said the majority of the 10 electors told investigators that they were needed to sign the elector certificate indicating that Trump had won only to preserve his legal options if a court changed the outcome of the election in Wisconsin. A majority of the electors told investigators that they did not believe their signatures on the elector certificate would be submitted to Congress without a court ruling, the complaint said. Additionally, a majority of the electors said that they did not consent to having their signatures presented as if Trump had won without such a court ruling, the complaint said.” • I’ve always said that the “contingent electors” cases were the important, genuine cases in the Democrat lawfare over 2020 — don’t let the door hit you on the way out, Fani — because the Trump campaign put civilians in the line of fire, as here. So I’m glad to see this case moving forward.
2024 Post Mortem
“No, Kamala Harris Staffers Did Not Run a “Flawless” Campaign” [Jeet Heer, The Nation]. “For anyone who followed the presidential election of 2024 and regards the victory of Donald Trump as an enormous tragedy for the United States and the world, the great foe of serenity is listening to interviews with Democratic Party strategists. This is a group that has displayed a mind-boggling unwillingness to accept any accountability for losing—for the second time in eight years—to Trump.” Heer seems surprised, as if this were new behavior. More: “Stephanie Cutter told Pod Save America that “the convention demonstrated a lot of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris, a lot of freshness, future oriented, bringing a variety of coalitions together. We had independents, Republicans, Democrats, business leaders, sports figures, everybody coming together around a new way forward and finally turning the page.” It is incredibly revealing that Cutter thinks a winning Democratic coalition consists of “independents, Republicans, Democrats, business leaders, sports figures” rather than being a multiracial coalition of union members, the broader working class, young people, civil rights activists, feminists environmentalists, and anti-war activists. Hers is a profoundly depoliticized view of the Democratic Party as a vehicle of the bipartisan establishment rather than a coalition fighting to change America. This depoliticized ideology permeated the Harris campaign—and doomed it to failure.” • Driving the knife home…
“The meaning of, and in, McDonald’s” [Chris Arnade, Chris Arnade Walks the World]. “Trump’s McDonald’s photo op, which while it has been adjudicated to death, is still a great illustration of what many elites still miss about his appeal. Trump’s superpower has long been signaling to working stiffs that he’s ‘just like you’ despite being on the surface anything like them. His love of McDonald’s, which I believe is as genuine as any politician can ever have, is one of those signals, and maybe his most effective, because it makes his critics go hyperbolic in a way that signals that they are not ‘just like you.’ McDonald’s is wildly popular with every group of Americans, uniting every demographic in the US — it crosses economic class, race, gender, urban versus rural — with the single exception of the highly educated, especially academics. They alone as a group have moral issues with it, and while they might use it, they do so grudgingly, usually to appease crying kids or for a rest stop on a long trip. So Trump’s embrace of McDonald’s becomes a political twofer. He’s one of you, he is a a back-row guy at heart, and while he should be a member of the front-row, given his education and wealth, he’s not because they despise him for many of the same reasons they look down on you — for what he eats, how he talks, and for what he believes in, and how he arrives at those beliefs, which isn’t by spending years reading through approved syllabi (techne), but having gone out into the world and learned from it, one mistake after the next (metis).” • Well worth reading in full, like everything Arnade writes (for a review of his book Dignity, see NC here). And on The Adjuster, arrested in a McDonald’s, see below.
Democrats en déshabillé
“Newsom’s Big Choice: Single Payer Or His Insurance Donors?” [The Lever]. From 2022. “The current push for single-payer may be doomed to the same fate as its predecessors. Even if the bill manages to pass the assembly before the end of the day Monday and passes the state senate, there is no guarantee Newsom will sign it into law. Despite his campaign promise, the California governor has long been allied with insurance companies opposing the reform…. UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest health insurer, is also opposing the single-payer bill, and has been pressing its employees to lobby California lawmakers against passing the legislation. The insurance giant has contributed $130,000 to Newsom’s campaigns since 2011, and $513,000 to the state Democratic party since 2007. In 2019, UnitedHealth Group and one of its subsidiaries donated $100,000 to Newsom’s inaugural fund. Now, whether Newsom’s relationship with Blue Shield, Anthem, and UnitedHealth will impact his decision-making on CalCare is an open question, says Court at Consumer Watchdog.” • Social murder has many accomplices….
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Transmission: H5N1
“Central Valley is ground zero for bird flu outbreak” [Sun-Gazette]. “The Central Valley is the epicenter for the bird flu epidemic drastically reducing the state’s poultry supply and slightly dropping its milk supply…. The two farm animal businesses are some of the state’s most important ag industries, clustered in the Central Valley, often just down the road from each other. The names of the affected facilities are not made public. But when more than half of the state’s dairies are quarantined due to the virus and some 8 million chickens in the state had to be destroyed – including over 5 million egg layers representing about half of the egg laying flock in the Golden State – Californians will no doubt feel the shortages at the grocery store…. While the state is not releasing the location of the dairies, all 32 of the state’s confirmed cases of bird flu in humans were in the Central Valley, California’s nation’s top dairy producing region…. Both industries are on a similar viral infection timeline which also coincides with the annual wild bird migration, which many experts agree is the original source for the disease.” And eighteen paragraphs down, the buried lead: “Now there is concern the rapid rise in infections at both confined animal facilities may be linked, with one affecting the other. Research shows that the virus can travel on dust particles carried by wind, says the industry publication EggNews.” • Oh.
Lambert: CDC’s wastewater page loaded. No Thanksgiving surge that I can see.
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC December 2 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC December 7 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC November 30 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data December 10: | National [6] CDC December 5: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens December 9: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic November 23: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC November 19: | Variants[10] CDC November 4: |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC November 20: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC November 20: |
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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) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) Down.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Leveled out.
[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) Leveling out.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.
[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.
[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.
Stats Watch
Inflation: “United States Consumer Price Index (CPI)” [Trading Economics]. “Consumer Price Index CPI in the United States decreased to 315.49 points in November from 315.66 points in October of 2024. The annual inflation rate in the US rose to 2.7% in November, from 2.6% in October and matching markets expectations. On a monthly basis, the CPI increased by 0.3%, the most since April,
Manufacturing: “Boeing wins $450.5M contract for Japan’s F-15 Super Interceptor upgrades” [Aerotime]. “Boeing has been awarded a $450.5 million contract by the US Air Force (USAF) to support the F-15 Japan Super Interceptor Program. Under this contract, facilitated through the Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program, Boeing will acquire the systems needed to upgrade the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF) F-15J fleet.” • Industrial policy….
Manufacturing: “Boeing Stock Is Taking Off. Here’s Why.” [Barron’s]. If you play the ponies…. “Wall Street expects Boeing to reach 360 deliveries for all of 2024, according to FactSet. That isn’t enough to make money. At the start of 2024, before the door plug incident, Wall Street projected 2024 deliveries of about 700 jets and net income of about $3.5 billion. The Street has since revised that estimate to a loss of $8.9 billion. Tuesday’s gains leave Boeing shares down about 37% for the year and about 34% since the Alaska Air incident. Shares were up about 1% from just before the strike, when 737 MAX production was paused.”
Manufacturing: “Is China ready to take on Airbus and Boeing? Not just yet” [Business Times]. “One of its selling points [of the COMAC C919] is that it is more environmently friendly than its European and American counterparts. Comac designed its C919 with environmental sustainability as an objective – the jet made its first commercial flight on sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) in September. The biofuel can be made from algae or agricultural, forestry, food or even municipal waste. It is claimed to cut carbon emissions by up to 80 per cent compared with petroleum-based jet fuel. It has been reported that GallopAir, a Brunei-based startup airline, has placed an order for the C919. Vietnam Airlines, Indonesia’s TransNusa, Air Asia and Brazil’s Total Linhas Aereas have expressed interest.” • “919” reminds me of “707,” but 9 is an auspicious number in China.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 51 Neutral (previous close: 48 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 56 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Dec 11 at 1:27:47 PM ET.
Healthcare
“The meaning of, and in, McDonald’s” [Chris Arnade, Chris Arnade Walks the World]. Splitting in two what Arnade conceptualized, correctly, as a unity: “I’ve seen two questions raised. The first is, why would someone ‘so careful’ as Luigi go into a McDonald’s? The second is, how in the world was he noticed?, given that it is a soulless franchise where you should be able to easily blend in, since each is the same, bland, and heavily trafficked space. Yet, after over a decade acquiring an informal PhD in McDonald’s studies, with a minor in mental illness, I could have scripted this latest event down to the description of the regulars who first noticed him. I’m going to go out on a limb here, despite it being too early to do so, and suggest that Luigi is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. I’ve met a lot of those in McDonald’s, because besides providing them with all the things every other customers wants, it is also a ‘reality safe space.’ It is one of, it not the only, place in the ‘real world’ they can go, grab a cup out of the garbage can, and sit at their corner table and fit in, at least for an hour or two, without encountering too many dangers. It becomes, for many deeply troubled people, their only life line to normal society. It’s a role McDonald’s, to its credit, has accepted. I’ve witnessed many episodes where the employees and morning regulars go out of their way to help those who come in that are suffering the worst. From free food, to calls for help, to having their husband come and repair their broken-down car, free of charge. Which is why the second question, how in the world was he noticed, isn’t surprising at all. Each McDonald’s is a community, and despite being a franchise built for the immediate and transactional, they’ve become long-term and social. I’m writing this from the McDonald’s in my town, where I do most of my writing when at home, and I ‘know’ almost all the two dozen or so oddballs that come in, like me, and sit in a corner, either starring at the wall, ranting into a cup, or working on their beat up laptop. The morning regulars, the evolving group of five or so guys who are at the door when it opens (5:30 a.m.), as well as the afternoon regulars, and all the employees all ‘know’ these oddballs and should a new one come in, sit in a corner, and start acting a bit off, they’ll notice. That almost always that means eventually offering to help, or in this rare case, noticing and calling the police.” • For the “McDonalds as a Community” part, I think Arnade is spot on. For the “Luigi as paranoid schizophrenic” I think both Arnade and the regulars may be acting on their priors. The Mighty Wurlitzer is, after all, at this very moment cranking up to the highest possible the message that “The Claims Adjuster” was crazy, because — Soviet psychiatry comes to mind, here — he had, as the cops put it, “ill will toward corporate America.” (Arnade’s footnote 4 is an answer to this, but I think it proves too much. It would be possible, for example, to argue that all Marxists “are remarkably logical, but starting from absurd premises,” hence “High IQ paranoid schizophrenics.” The cops would love this, of course. As would many conservatives. I mean “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.” Insane?
Clarifying:
'No matter how ruthlessly'. That should work both ways then. pic.twitter.com/VFLO253yFy
— Priyamvada Gopal © (@PriyamvadaGopal) December 10, 2024
Speaking of “starting from absurd premises”….
“Luigi Mangione’s Full Story Isn’t Online” [New York Magazine]. “[W]hat’s most striking about Mangione’s extensive online dossier is that, had it been compiled before the shooting took place, it wouldn’t have raised much alarm. You can spend hours reading these posts, sifting through his follows, and looking for clues about what Type of Guy he is, but the supportable theories are pretty thin: Mangione had an online profile consonant with his identity and context. He shared and posted and followed like a 20-something striver with a foot in the tech industry, listened to Rogan, and considered himself a rationalist or at least unusually rational.
“SF tech CEO’s billboards are ‘dystopian.’ That’s how he wants it” [SFGATE]. “Thursday afternoon in San Francisco: On one side of Mission Street, hotel workers chanted and banged on a drum outside the Marriott Marquis, part of a monthslong strike for higher wages and more jobs. On the other, a tech company’s billboard proclaimed, ‘Stop hiring humans.’ Various versions of the provocative advertisements are emblazoned across the city on rotating screen displays on bus shelters and on classic vinyl billboards on poles and buildings, plugging the San Francisco startup Artisan. SFGATE spoke with Artisan’s CEO about the campaign. The company has just 30 employees and is less than 2 years old; its only existing product is an artificial intelligence ‘sales agent’ called Artisan, built to automate the work of finding and messaging potential customers. It’s a classic AI-age idea, one of many such tools flooding the tech world. But the billboards in San Francisco are less routine. Bleak might be a better word, or mean-spirited. And in a city laden with jargony advertisements, these are easy to understand. Most feature a dark-haired, purple-eyed persona and a few rows of text. Some critique humans and remote work: ‘Artisans won’t complain about work-life balance’ and ‘Artisan’s Zoom cameras will never ‘not be working’ today.’ Others are more direct: ‘Hire Artisans, not humans.’ Several include the line, ‘The era of AI employees is here.’ The gist is crystal clear: Artisan is selling automation to employers. In a video spot about the ‘sales agent’ tool online, Artisan says it works with ‘no human input’ and ‘costs 96% less than hiring someone to do her job..'” “Artisan.” Of all the names to choose.
“That Healing Sound” [Nautilus]. “Music boosts the immune system, in particular immunoglobulin IgA, a substance that travels to the site of mucosal infections by reducing cortisol. When you’re stressed, cortisol shuts down the immune system, because cortisol usually spikes in response to an explicit proximal threat, like a lion running toward you. Over thousands of years of evolution, the cortisol system figured out that if you’re going to have to fight a lion, you’ve got to preserve all your resources to fight or to flee…. So, what does preserving your resources mean at a physiological and metabolic level? It means shutting down your digestive system. That can wait till later. Shutting down your libido, because you don’t have time for that now. Shutting down your immune system. That’s why people with chronic stress have compromised immune systems. And if you can reduce psychological and physical stress, you’re enabling your body’s immune system to do what it’s meant to do. Music can promote IgA levels. They can promote cytokine production, the production of natural killer cells, T cells, plus, they can increase serotonin, which boosts your mood, which in turn, can create this cascade of neurochemical activity.” • Hmm. Not to go all woo woo, but Long Covid?
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 KW:
KW writes: “Yahara River Flowage, Madison, Wisconsin A marsh seed pod of some kind, framed in duckweed. A foot from the shore. Dredged decades ago when the neighborhood’s houses were built, these days the marsh is being encouraged to take over.”
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Yikes, that seedpod photo is very triggering to those of us with trypophobia.
it looks very familiar, but i cannot place it.
been a long time since i sojourned with swamp people in the atchafalaya basin.
…or been around anything marsh-like, at all for that matter.
out here, we have stockponds,and the floodplains of the llano and san saba rivers, as well as various seeps and springs fed from the big cracks in the granite batholiths filling up with water when it rains.
missing such wet things is one of the reasons i plan a pond here at the bar extension.
Sort of like a compound eye.
Looks like an old lotus seedpod.
Exactly what I thought. Had one years ago as a dried arrangement and it looks the same, except that ours was brown,
The point of Jeremy Kauffman’s twitter thread is that the wealthier a country is, the more it spends on healthcare, which means the cost of American healthcare is not unexpected, it occurs to me that since 12 Americans have 2 trillion dollars in wealth, while the bottom half of the nation has 3.82 trillion dollars, might explain why it unaffordable to most Americans. But there is the thread’s unexplored issue that as a percentage of the economy, America’s healthcare costs are greater than any other country on Earth.
And without delivering better results in terms of overall health.
Ties in nicely with “Newsom’s Big Choice: Single Payer Or His Insurance Donors?”
That man has done more to destroy The California Dream, the maximum manifestation of The Enlightenment, than any other human. He terms out in 2026 fortunately. Our mission as born and bred Californians is to make sure he never wins another political office and retires to run a wine shop, paid for by the Getty Family.
This years Christmas gifts are all epicurean food. No sales taxes handed to Newsom.
Unlike healthcare Calif politicians appear rather inexpensive to buy:
“The insurance giant has contributed $130,000 to Newsom’s campaigns since 2011, and $513,000 to the state Democratic party since 2007. In 2019,”
So in 13 years, the average donation is $10K /year to Newsom, probably about the health insurance premium for many families.
“UnitedHealth Group and one of its subsidiaries donated $100,000 to Newsom’s inaugural fund.”
But don’t count Newsom out, he wants to be President, following other CA politicians such as Hoover, Nixon and Reagan.
Re: Jeet Heer article: Beyond my general agreement I got nothing to add except that “Foe of Serenity” would make a great band name. The commentariat has certainly come up with a number of topical songs they could turn into hits.
Seems to me that the charts for NY Hospitalization and Walgreens positivity are showing an upswing of sorts post Thanksgiving. Walgreens went from 12.7% to 15.2% between 11/23 and 12/10. Not really a surge but, the wrong direction.
Let me not forget to say that I added orts and scraps. Arnade on McDonald’s is really good; probably the only writer around who could connect Trump’s brilliant campaign stunt and site of The Adjuster’s arrest.
Though I doubt greatly that he’s reliably able to diagnose paranoid schizophrenics by sitting down with them for 10 minutes at Micky D’s.
And I don’t think footnote 4 helps much, absent some description of what he takes as the particular “absurd” premises. Much of this country’s governing mythology rests on premises that seem absurd to me.
But generally his piece (like most of his pieces) is quite good.
In a pickle
Need some lettuce?
Giving out a $60k reward
Doesn’t upset us
All we ask is that you I.D. him
Right away
My momma’s afraid to tell me
The things she’s afraid of
I been dipped in double meaning
I been stuck with static cling
Think I got a rupto-pac
Think I got a big mac attack
Too much paranoias
Re McD–one should point out that in recent years the company has been trying to redefine itself. When Starbucks and coffee competitors became all the rage they tried to become that and more recently they have revamped their stores with smaller dining rooms and double drive thru. Old guys and homeless people may love the place but the suits would probably like to return to the original concept which was all about value and convenience and no dining room. Well maybe it’s not a return to value so much. Prices for those Big Macs have become controversial.
Still the stores have become synonymous with the heartland through ubiquity and uniformity. When you walk into a McDonald’s you know what to expect and that may define their appeal for those who like to bum around the USA (including yours truly if by car). Plus, while the food is mediocre, the coffee is usually pretty good.
NYTimes on how Trump won is deceptive reading. The Times can “see” how Trump spent media money more wisely, rushes to give targeted online media all the credit (seriously, they barely list the other outreach before dismissing it).
Impossible for me not to read this as the Times fighting to keep media spending at the top of campaign budget decisions. I look forward to the Republicans eventually explaining in detail how Trump’s low propensity voter outreach program worked. Or not. (If it works, why draw attention to it?)
>”Impossible for me not to read this as the Times fighting to keep media spending at the top of campaign budget decision”
Good point.
(So honest and to the point you won’t find it elsewhere. However the Trump-hysteria in Germany is sort of over. Hitler was elected but suddeny no one cares. Odd!)
Elon Musk: The double twixTs. First, Elon Musk thinks all of Americans should go Ozempolicious. Yep, that’ll do the trick.
Then he thinks that insurance companies are all about shareholders, and insurance is just something they do in their spare time, the occasional agreement to cover a sprained ankle.
An undesirable alien?
Throw in Vivek Ramaswamy, the daft product of 3,000 years of Brahmins discriminating against their own people.
What could possibly go wrong with DOGE? And given that they cannot make changes to the U.S. government as members of a volunteer committee, which is what DOGE is, how long before Trump has to dump the two prodigies?
Naked Capitalism betting pool?
re DOGE,lol(ruler of venice, long ago?):
few weeks ago, i stood too close to the keg, and partook perhaps overmuch of the homegrown, and was trolling twitx.
and here’s elon asking for actual geniuses,lol…like with the iq to prove it.
so im like, yeah man…i’ll fix small ag policy,fer ya, given the proper sized scythe.
feed all the boardmembers of conagra, et alia to the poor, allocate all that corn and soya money to actual local small farmers…yeah.
sure. why the hell not.
and i work for cheap, too,lol.
so this caused a kerfuffel, i learned the next day.
mostly a positive ruckus, btw.
and it turned out “real elon musk”…that one, at least…wasnt elon at all.
ha!
its ok, though…since i was already on a list.
“They” know im a nontechie luddite dude and a web babe in woods when i stand too close to the keg.
Chris Arnade and MacDo’s and missing a cultural point: If Luigi Mangione is indeed the third generation of a family of Italian descent, MacDo’s in his mind is minor. Pizza is what matters.
If I’m in the U S of A, and I want street food, there’s pizza,
— and then there’s felafel, there’s gyros, there’s shawarma.
And doughnuts are for amateurs and dyspeptics.
So I remain somewhat skeptical and unsatisfied about Luigi Mangione in the MacDo’s with his gun and in his jacket. Something still doesn’t shake out right.
Maybe he wanted to be caught, after he proved he could escape. It will be interesting to see how much of a platform he is allowed to have.
Such a pity: U.S. judge stops The Onion’s purchase of Alex Jones’s Infowars
I’m a bit surprised Arnade is putting his money down on para-schizo. But however good a chronicler of the back row Arnade is, he’s still a front row kid, with mostly front row priors I’d guess.
My guess is that Mangione is mostly sane (as sane as any of us are these days), and planned the attack very carefully, with a hope of escaping, but probably didn’t think through the longer term plan in the event that he did actually escape. He’s barely an adult, after all, however high his IQ is. Probably didn’t feel he could go home, didn’t know where to go, definitely completely stressed and expecting the heat to come down any moment (with a non-zero probability that he would get killed by the cops without a chance of surrender). Sitting in McD’s acting paranoid? He had every rational reason to be paranoid!!!!
thats sorta my grok-like take, as well.
he didnt grow up in the 80’s, so prolly didnt immerse himself in le carre…or even that loon who wrote all those Agent Ryan sagas back then.
so had no clue about tradecraft.
or OpSec, and so on.
to get away clean, one needs a more or less granular understanding of how cops work…what tools they have,tactics and strategic overview, and so on.
he knew about techworld, tho…so had the cameras figgered out, save for one or two.
but he had no even medium term exit plan…abscond to mexico or venezuela. did he speak spanish?
etc, etc.
if i were willing to shave and cut my hair…with certain preps(change of clothes and wigs and such, prepositioned)…i could likely disappear in a big city.(i evaded my hometown and environs LEO’s for about ten years, mostly by coming in at random,lol…be a lot harder these days, fer sho)
that dude doesnt strike me as someone with those kinds of real world planning and ops skills.
One of the manifestos states, ‘I am the CEO of myself’ (or something to that effect) – calling Dr R D Laing: divided self in the emergency room. Any bets he also registered a single-member corporation?
And if you take Wall Street Bets seriously, Wendy’s is a place where degenerate gamblers turn to sex work.
good to know!
What makes me think schizophrenia or other psychiatric issue is a definite possibility is that Mangione kind of vanished from view a short time ago. He stopped posting, catching up with family, etc.
Mid 20s is often when this kind of thing manifests.
I have over the course of 35 years had 2 young men – both from wonderful families, all the resources, all the education, who over weeks and months develop paranoid schizophrenia. Interestingly, both were very athletic, attractive young men as well. Very verbal and communicative and empathic. It was the kind of thing both times that everyone was literally shocked at the transformation.
Both went on long treks far from home – one to NZ one to Hawaii. Both completely cut off communications with their friends and family. Both had immediately obvious disturbed mentation when one talked with them. They both became very paranoid. And both exhibited behaviors that were indeed at times violent and competely at odds with their former selves. Both of my previous patients went missing for long weeks – with frantic parents and grandparents scouring the earth to find them. This does happen and this young man Mangione is exactly the right age range for this to happen. I must say his story has really brought back in my memory these other two young men patients of mine in my past. In other words, many aspects of this story are ringing bells for me.
We are not able to evaluate him carefully. Early paranoid schizophrenia can be quite subtle – and having a few photos and behaviors in the McDonald’s or arraignment etc are not enough. I do find it interesting that he has been described repeatedly as agitated or nervous in the courtrooms etc. This could be very well one of the cardinal signs – akisthisia. Also of note is another behavior I have often seen in men particularly – wetting the pants. Emotional outbursts of anger and rage completely unlike their past normal behavior are often very common as well.
With reflection on these other patients the past few days and some of the memories and feelings this story is bringing back to me, I would not be a bit surprised if schizophrenia turns out to be the issue. In previous centuries, this kind of behavior was thought to be demon possession – and I can assure you looking across the exam room at these other two patients of mine certainly gave me every indication why that would be so.
first, know that i respect you a whole bunch, IMDoc.
but ima gonna be yer devil’s advocate, once again.
everything you just described was what they said about me at that age…paranoia, persecution, and my unfortunate reaction to it all(ie: leaning how to be a drunk when stressed).
but the thing was, it all really happened…the things that led to that end state of paranoid drunken psychosis, and then running off.
from initially my own mother covering her ass, thus getting me on the radar, to me helping a female friend out of a jam, and her locally powerful dad using his moxy to get me tarred as a pariah…and the cops believing the bullshit about me with zero evidence….yer damned right i was paranoid and felt persecuted.
as William S Burroughs said, “sometimes they really are out to get you”.
and that knowledge is an enormous stressor.
frelled me up with regards to cops for 20 years.
because of how i was treated way back then(including burial and beating with sticks, no less.), i shook like a leaf when i encountered people in uniform…and my vibe, or whatever, seemed to trigger them into suspicious mode..”furtive movements”, etc.
so it aint all cut and dried.
i was deemed seriously mentally ill, when i was merely reacting to treatment i didnt understand, as punishment for actions i had undertook that i regarded as just, even noble(helping that girl).
My cousin developed a very tragic and textbook case of schizophrenia in his early 20s.
The first signs were problems at school. Outbursts, inappropriate behavior and the like. Then came the paranoia and terror.
Finally, he stole his dad’s car and drove it many states away, ultimately being pulled over by the police. He fought the police and the county jail guards with such tenacity that he must’ve ben convinced they were going to kill him (he was incredibly paranoid at this point).
However–and this is important–he was then and now never aggressive toward anyone. He’s not a danger. Really, the biggest danger is to himself, as his paranoia sometimes breaks through his medication and causes him to suspect that his pills are poison.
Schizophrenia is truly terrible. My cousin and I were very close when we were children. I haven’t seen him in a long time.
I hope that all that talk of his sanity is not some sort of psyops to make him out to be just crazy meaning that his own justification for that killing is irrelevant and can be discarded in court. The old Soviets used to put dissidents in mental asylums which would immediately label their views as the ravings of a nutter. If he acted paranoid at that McDonalds, perhaps it was because he had every police force and federal agency in the country hunting him down.
RE: Lina Khan
No surprise, we knew this was coming. Yet words fail to capture the depth of my disgust. Wall Street is so used to getting everything it wants, you’d think they’d not begrudge this one little corner of the law (anti-trust enforcement) was finally getting some push-back from the regulatory state.
Combined with the Chevron doctrine getting the heave-hoe from the Roberts court, we’re going to re-visit the Gilded Age. Why stop with defanging the FTC? Let’s get rid of the 40-hour work week, bring back child labor, and have the FDC allow a certain percentage of human body parts in sausage.
Just think of how far this economy can go when we get rid of these “Job-killing regulations!”
Very sad and enraging moment. Someone does a courageous and outstanding job, and is replaced by another hack to lick the boots of the monied interests. Hoping these arrogant greedheads some day get what they truly deserve.
They deserve to fall into a vat of sausage when OSHA no longer exists. Or die in a plane crash when a Boeing falling-apart airplane falls apart with them onboard. Or maybe meet up with the next Claims Adjuster.
If she has planted seeds with federal judges, Trump may not be able to rein it in. Anti-trust from the plaintiff side was quite a lucrative private practice at one time.
From my inbox/Ron Paul Campaign for Liberty news blast:
Is that the Stand With Ukraine Act – or the Suck It Up For Ukraine Act?
“Central Valley is ground zero for bird flu outbreak” [Sun-Gazette]. “The Central Valley is the epicenter for the bird flu epidemic drastically reducing the state’s poultry supply and slightly dropping its milk supply…. The two farm animal businesses are some of the state’s most important ag industries, clustered in the Central Valley, often just down the road from each other. The names of the affected facilities are not made public. But when more than half of the state’s dairies are quarantined due to the virus and some 8 million chickens in the state had to be destroyed – including over 5 million egg layers representing about half of the egg laying flock in the Golden State – Californians will no doubt feel the shortages at the grocery store….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The $6 dozen of eggs is again upon us, and really that’s the only effect i’m seeing, living only about 50 miles from the scene of decline.
If there is bird flu spread to humans, I might be the first on the NC block to know, joy joy.
I still struggle to understand the case for crypto, unless it be that Silicon Valley wants to get into finance, and to compete with Wall Street they need a distinctive competence, which turns out to be fraud (amazing, I know).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ever fancy the notion that Bitcoin in particular was thought up by Wall*Street mavens, and not some Japanese chap that doesn’t appear to exist?
Its real useful in garnering the alternative investment money, that might otherwise perhaps go towards something barbarous that they have scant control over…
How do we square the fear and loathing in the C-Suite after the Adjuster closed out a claim on one of their own, with the Nasdaq hitting 20k?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/11/business/ceo-shooting-unitedhealth-security/index.html
Silver lining – some jobs are going to be created for ex-military transitioning back to civilian life. Private security detail for a CEO – the new hot growth career path.
“Ever fancy the notion that Bitcoin in particular was thought up by Wall*Street mavens, and not some Japanese chap that doesn’t appear to exist?”
Do bears crap in the woods?
adjacent to Jeet’s thing(which was pretty good. dude might be coming around):
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/populism-democrats-campaigns-democracy/
Hightower’s hagiography for Fred Harris.
Jim Hightower is one of my favorite politicians ever…i corresponded with him by fone(pre-internet) on the remarkably good texas organic certification program campaign, long ago.
my first real political endeavor of any note….as well as the only successful one,lol.
Seems like Arnade commits a logical fallacy here. To wit: “A few of the people one sees in a McDonald’s are (arguably) paranoid schizophrenics, therefore one’s presence in a McDonalds is indicative of paranoid schizophrenia.”
Far more likely he’s one of the many hundreds of perfectly sane people who visit a McDonald’s outlet each day. But it is comforting to look for signs that The Adjuster is an Other.