By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Dear Readers, I am filling the fireworks with gunpowder in preparation for the evening’s festivities, so this is an open thread. Talk amongst yourselves, and the happiest of Happy New Years to you all. –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Northern Mockingbird, Rochester Park–Texas Buckeye Trail, Dallas, Dallas, Texas, United States.
Utagawa Hiroshige, Fireworks at Ryōgoku Bridge, from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.
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 TF:
TF writes: “Thank you for your thoughtful writing. You identified lichen as an honorary plant, so I thought you might like to see it under UV. From the wilds of Montana where I reside – it is truly a Last Best Place. We have so many stellar outdoor opportunities in our state – give a shout if you ever get out here!”
Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. Material here is Lambert’s, and does not express the views of the Naked Capitalism site. If you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for three or four days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:
Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated:
If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!
Happy New Year to all, especially Yves, Conor, Lambert, and the rest of the NC Braintrust.
Predictions for 2025, anyone?
Here are mine:
My 2025 Predictions (worth about as much as one share of Spirit Airlines stock)
Didn’t know you had a substack! I will keep an eye on it.
Agree on DOGE – gobbled up by The Usual Suspects.
My only predictions – Super Bowl – Bills and Eagles. Eagles win 28-27 when the Bills miss a last-second winning field goal – wide left this time, to complete the circle.
Bills get in by beating the Chiefs in the AFC championship game when Travis Kelce has to sit out, due to his being pregnant, carrying Taylor Swift’s baby.
I would be so happy to see the Bills go back to the Big Game, but realistically the Chiefs have some sort of good luck charm on their side. Plus Pat Mahomes.
The substack is fairly new … I will try to write something interesting when I can. Staying away from NFL predictions. Well, maybe one – Aaron Rodgers to the Steelers in 2025!
As long as the Chiefs are eliminated, I’m happy. Love the Bills most, but how can I not love the Lions, Ravens, and Eagles too–all solid working class outfits? Anything but the hegemonic KC.
Seeing the Lions, Vikings, and Eagles all doing well takes me back to 1980 … Dick Vermeil, Billy Sims, and the Purple People Eaters.
Because these are troubled times, I would be remiss not to mention that infamous German outfit Deagel that predicted a massive drop in the US population in 2025. Maybe this year will be the last Super Bowl? Bills-Lions, for the ages?
https://archive.org/details/deagel-2025-forecast-by-country
On that gloomy note, I depart for New Year’s Eve festivities.
Not an American Football fan, but do enjoy the Dodgers (baseball). I’d predict, they win it all again. They added a bit to their pitching staff, Ohtani will have his arm back – so again, a strong pitching staff. The season seems so far away at this point, but I’ve gotten tired of football and the corporate sell-out of college sport, so that leaves on only one option – baseball, for this American.
Happy New Year to all, ours is a few hours away…… and batter up!
(We want a pitcher, not a belly itcher)
“hegemonic KC”
LOL. I’ve rooted for this team since 1963, when Hunt moved them from Dallas, including the 50 years they went with one divisional playoff win, after which the Chiefs and an aging Montana lost badly in Buffalo. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just catching up.
With a Threepeat, the Chiefs would tie the 49-ers and Cowboys and be only one behind the Steelers and Patriots. Amazing time for long-suffering Chiefs fans (who need to drop the ridiculous and derivative “chop”).
I hesitate to make any predictions about this new year. I have bad feelings, more than I have had in past years, that may portend some most unfortunate events for the new year. I am not sure whether the events will affect my personal world, the larger world outside, or both. I hope I am wrong, but I sense a pall casting darkness over the near future.
As a last hurrah, here is the latest on one of Lambert’s favourite ghouls, Dr. Bonnie Henry, the Provincial Health Officer of British Columbia.
During the news dead season of mid-December, her office released her 2024 annual report.
It runs to almost 300 pages, and is rather a slog. Fortunately for us, a prof at UBC has homed in on some of its crucial weaknesses (notably, outdated references) and a buried admission that COVID is, after all, transmitted through the air. His commentary thread is a delight, with ample receipts attached: https://bsky.app/profile/mark-ungrin.bsky.social/post/3le2pf7uyuk2z
I was glad to see that Lambert’s list of personal favourite postings included his excellent omnibus overview of soil science from 5 years ago. He displayed his knack for efficiently extracting the key points on a new topic. And I had fun that day in the resulting discussion with other commenters.
I am trying to figure out what to do vis a vis my 82 year old mother. I’m on the West coast, she is in New England. She has various ailments but nothing dire (knock on wood).
She and her 88 y.o. boyfriend went to a crowded and unmasked Christmas eve day lunch in the Boston area. The next day the hostess (his daughter) texted to say she had tested positive for covid, my mom’s boyfriend actually already had symptoms at that point. The day after that the boyfriend felt so weak he could barely move (elaborate story omitted re him not answering phone and key not working and 911 not working), and was brought by ambulance to the ER. They tested him for covid, he had it, they sent him home right away (to avoid infecting the hospital) with a prescription for Paxlovid. When I write “sent him home” I mean my mom picked him up; they got home at 3 a.m.. He is improving nicely (who knows about any longterm stuff).
My 82 year old mom developed symptoms on Sunday. They weren’t terrible symptoms, but by Tuesday she decided to go to urgent care (she drove herself, masked). She tested positive for covid, and the PA said she had the option of Paxlovid or molnupavir. She (randomly, since she has no idea) said molnupavir. She went home, and then called the pharmacy, and they didn’t have molnupavir; they would have to order it. The next day she called urgent care back and said she wanted Paxlovid instead (since she could actually get it). The PA said that he’d changed his mind; that she should have molnupavir due to the other meds she’s on and her health history; he was not willing to call in Paxlovid. She called her GP and he said he couldn’t prescribe either on the basis of a positive test taken at an urgent care place (which was a couple of miles down the road).
This is very strange to me. My mom took Paxlovid a couple of years ago when she had the same meds and health issues, with no problem. I know people who have gotten Paxlovid prescribed based on a home test. My sense is that the medical system in this town (a small city with an excellent medical system) would rather she not take anything, but won’t say so directly. Her GP is extremely good and she has been going to him for decades, so maybe this is the right thing. Her symptoms are pretty mild; if covid weren’t a “thing” she would just think she had a cold (I realize long covid is a risk and is bad).
I’m wondering if I should be pushing for the Paxlovid. Or molnupavir. Or just shipping more tissues and gatorade. This is confusing. If they just said “no” I would be okay with that, but this is not that exactly.
As a side note I check reddit/covid/positive every day, to get a general sense of what is up. Yesterday, all of a sudden, the lull was over and there were a fair number of posts; not a lot but a real increase. The striking thing was that five of them were by people who had caught it for the first time (as far as they knew). My opinion from early on has been that there is going to be a variant for everyone, and I guess that that variant is showing up for a lot of laggards right now. I would recommend masking and avoiding stupid parties.
The FLCCC’s guide to dealing with Covid. PDF alert, I found figure 2 to be helpful. My wife’s parents got it for Christmas, both mid 80s. Lots of worrying, I feel for you.
A good idea to save this and store it before the powers be remove it. The important thing to remember is one doesn’t have to take every med they list.
So far I don’t have long Covid and feel reasonably lucky for only getting it twice since the pandemic started. I do believe it helped immensely. Treat early, treat well.
Thank you. I am familiar with the FLCCC and use their info myself, but I don’t dare come up with something for my mom that her doctor isn’t in favor of. Right now she seems basically fine (knock on wood); I am worried about her kidneys long term. I am seeing that antivirals are terrible for the kidneys (and so is covid), and her kidney function is just a little bit subpar presently (maybe due to her last covid infection?) and that may be why the reluctance to prescribe Paxlovid for her.
kareninca: have a good look at this site:
https://c19early.org/qmeta.html
It has all of the possible treatments down the right hand side.
I have landed it on Quercetin because it states in the conclusion, “Studies to date show that quercetin is an effective treatment for COVID-19. Significantly lower risk is seen for ICU admission, hospitalization, recovery, cases, and viral clearance. 11 studies from 9 independent teams in 7 countries show significant benefit. Meta analysis using the most serious outcome reported shows 46% [20‑64%] lower risk. Results are similar for Randomized Controlled Trials, higher quality studies, and after excluding studies using combined treatment and slightly worse for peer-reviewed studies. Results are very robust — in exclusion sensitivity analysis 9 of 12 studies must be excluded to avoid finding statistically significant efficacy in pooled analysis. Studies typically use advanced formulations for greatly improved bioavailability.”
The best “advanced formulation” is enzymatically modified iso-quercetin EMIQ. You can find it in any health food store or on Amazon. Take two tablets four times a day. It works.
Now click on some of the other treatments to see the summaries. This information is updated daily. It’s an invaluable resource, IMHO.
I agree that Quercetin looks very good, and it did from early on. Consequently I tried it early on, and it made me feel horrible. I tried several reputable brands. I don’t know how to account for that. It probably is good for most people.
Exact same issues we had. Neither mom or dad got pharmaceuticals. We focused on that bottom line in figure 2 adding cloves and ginger. I wish I had something to prescribe for the stress, well, I’m smoking more weed than is reasonably healthy.
How are your parents feeling presently? Did their doctor say no to pharmaceuticals, or did they decide against on their own?
I have been looking into baking soda for improving her kidney function. It seems to be for real, but I daren’t suggest anything. Since she does have a doctor.
I’m consuming nicotine lozenges; weed has no effect whatsoever on me.
They (my in-laws, better people than I could ever wish for) are ok. Mom (vaccine not updated) got it first, she’s on the mend and tests negative now (seven days of positive), thanks. HK (Moderna update in the autumn) got it second, he’s in the middle, doing ok, low grade fever off and on, that sort of thing. We are keeping weather eye on it.
I vape straight un-flavored nicotine. I’d bloody mainline it if I could.
Cheers mate.
That sounds good!!! Knock on wood.
I hope that your mother and her boyfriend recover well. I can imagine what it must be like for you having them at the other end of the country and not being able to keep personal watch. Stupid unmasked Christmas lunches.
Thank you. They do have a ton of support where they are; if they were here it would just be me and my husband. And there is the phone. They have gotten so much happiness out of the social stuff they have done over the past few years: holiday dinners, little kid concerts, dinners out, birthday parties. Covid is insidious in the way it infects at seemingly random intervals – you can be fine for months and months without any protection at all, and then bang you have it again. I am pleased to avoid most humans most of the time, so it is easy for me to skip that stuff, but most people seem to be desperate for it.
>>>I am pleased to avoid most humans most of the time, so it is easy for me to skip that stuff, but most people seem to be desperate for it.
Well, most people need human contact including this introverted misanthrope, and masks interfere with that at least a little. Even in my ultra Blue area hardly anyone is masking, which makes the few people who are, such as myself, look like paranoid weirdos. It makes me uncomfortable wearing a mask.
Honestly, I would love to stop buying and wearing masks, but since I have already had COVID at least twice, taking months to recover each time, I don’t dare to not wear them. Plus the medicine that dares not speaks its name. My own family is pro-vaccine and not keen on masking. Feh.
I guess I am more of an introverted misanthrope than you are, since I don’t care that I am taken for a paranoid weirdo. I don’t think I’ve caught covid yet (I test weekly since I refused the vax and so my volunteer position requires such testing, or at least it did, and I’m continuing it in order to report to them weekly that they are idiots, um, I mean that I am negative). Xlear and a daily claritin and an AirTamer may be the reason I’ve managed so far (plus masking). I’m sorry you’ve caught it twice, and I hope you keep masking.
Symptoms on Sunday? It’s a bit late, but Ivermectin! People keep forgetting that. The sooner, the better. And if your doc won’t prescribe it (likely), get some Durvet Ivm paste (1.87%). Read the FLCCC site for more specifics. I’m real hopeful for your mom and sad that America’s health car is such a sheitshow. I’m not a doctor, but who trusts doctors very much anymore? My 2 cents.
I have myself ingested plenty of horse paste, and have lots of it on hand, but I would only try it on another person in a dire situation. Fortunately things are not looking dire, knock on wood. I think she’ll be fine with a few Tylenol (barring long covid). She’s 3,000 miles away so I couldn’t get ivermectin to her all that quickly if I tried.
Happy new year to all. Special thanks to Lambert Strether, who has made a big decision. Gratitude as ever to Yves Smith. Complimenti to Conor Gallagher, Nick Corbishley, the moderators (who regularly get stuck with my various comments of wisdom). Plus regular contributors like Rob Urie, Michael Hudson, and Radhika Desai. And the wonderful people from Code Pink (Evviva!).
I made lentil stew for good luck. Now, I will just stand outside and wait for the golden coins to fall from the heavens, eh.
It has been very quiet here in the Chocolate City since Sunday, 22 December, when Italians started to travel to visit the relatives. “Christmas with the Yours,” as the song goes.
Things will pick up after La Befana visits us on the Epiphany, 6 January, Twelfth Night, which is a mixed message, I know, but Italy is all about a delightful miscela of mixed messages.
Auguroni!
we do Rosca de Reyes on Jan 6th, Three Kings Day. Rosca is a large circular sweet bread with a toy baby symbolizing baby Jesus baked into it, the one who gets the baby wins some kinda prize or maybe it’s good luck, can’t remember.
Wow. The locals in New Orleans do King Cakes for Mardi Gras season. Basically a sweet bread with sugary sprinkles on top. It also has a Baby included. Phyllis says that “in ye olde dayes” whoever “got the baby” in their slice of King Cake had to give the next Mardi Gras party. (“Getting the Baby” was considered good luck.)
King Cake is an excellent cat name.
I gotta be me, sorry.
Kings Cakes sound great, ambrit. I asked a cousin about the baby jesus. The one who gets it is obligated to host folks for tamales the next feast day.
King Cakes does make a.good cat name mrsyk.
2025 looks to be starting off with a whimper here in the North American Deep South.
I was cruising around town visiting various thrift shops. One observation I made at one place was that one of the workers there was sorting out some donations and looking items up on E-bay to set the prices asked. Thus are local prices jacked up. It is no wonder that rental rates and home prices are higher than they used to be as a percentage of the local median wage. Globalization comes with severe drawbacks.
While tooling around, I also noticed, at two separate spots, homeless types sleeping out in the parking spots of abandoned shops. One looked a bit disheveled, while the other looked like a full blown meth addict. Her legs were as thin as toothpicks.
The number of shuffling madness goers has increased greatly over the summer and fall. A local news show mentioned recently that the Half Horse Town had the highest percentage of homeless in the State. (How those measurements are taken is still a mystery to me. Real homeless avoid contact with ‘Officials’ and their minions as a basic survival trait.)
Stay safe into the New Year.
Happy new year! I hope the worst we all deal with tonight is not enough quality beverages to celebrate with :)
I feel like the situation we’re going to be looking at on 1/1/2025 is similar to 1/1/2017. Chaos and a lot of unpaid bills coming due. I think that despite our elites claiming to hate Trump they secretly love that he appears just in time to lower taxes and absorb body blows so that the Western Order(tm) can stumble forward.
I know Keynes warned us that the market can stay irrational longer than we can remain solvent, but I think we’re looking at the end of the road here for a quite a few things. We’ll see what happens soon enough I guess.
2025 is the year we find out if Deagel was on to something, or just another doom-n-gloomer.
Correct fellow Chris!
2025 is also the year we see if the coming academic enrollment cliff starts to bite into colleges and universities. If we see an acceleration in the number of institutions that close this year, on the heels of this past year’s problems after a -5% drop in enrollment, then when things really get going in 2026 we should expect all hands on deck crisis. With Trump and others in power, none of whom are interested in bailing out woke academia, this could get really ugly.
2025 is also a year where a number of French nuclear generating stations should come offline for refueling for a period of time. That will be interesting if european NG supplies are low.
2025 looks to be a year where a ton of trade fights will occur. It will be interesting to see if that causes shipping snafus again.
But if I had to put money down on a bet for what kicks off a challenging year, its when Spring hits and the commercial and residential real estate markets don’t thaw. If we keep seeing sellers hold to high prices, and the buyers strike continues, then I think we’ll see a lot of interconnected effects run through the economy. If CRE delinquencies continue to spike, I think we’ll other issues come up too. Looking forward to hearing what NC has to say about all this in 2025.
Happy New Year, all! It suddenly seems so lonely here without Lambert.
Here here. For Auld Lang Syne and Lambert, here’s to a happy new year for us all.
Thank you for everything this 2024 Lambert. Have a happy new year yourself.
It will be the best of times.
It will be the worst of times.
Gradually, at first, then all at once.
On electric vehicles, I watched a Japanese short film, by Nikkei Asia, on how Chinese EVs in Thailand are pushing out the Japanese auto makers. Market share has gone from around 90% to 77% since 2023. Japanese brands (except maybe Toyota) are either consolidating or even quitting the market. Since this is a Japanese media group, I see this an admission against interest.
https://youtu.be/w7ldtHt6Mn4?si=gJt0rmPXhGe3v7Nv
How far will the transition go in Thailand? Or will it hit a wall? Note that Chinese automakers are building factories in Thailand too.
https://www.salon.com/2012/02/06/obamas_high_tech_labor_lies/
Obama’s high-tech labor lies
We have no shortage of skilled engineers. Corporations would just rather import foreign ones on lower wages
By David Sirota
Fireworks? Hell, go straight for the cannons!
It’s kinda sobering when many of us realize, as we look back upon the years, that by all rights we should not be here today– on the cusp of a new year.
Best wishes to all, and many more.
Dear Lambert, Needless to say our weekday afternoons will be very different henceforth! So much tireless curating information with yellow waders, saving us less ambitious types to get the salient points on COVID (you have helped our family avoid ‘rona!) and the dysfunctional political system and elites.
My family has learned so much from your herculean efforts! My wife and I worked long with our consultancy but not with the daily deadlines and virtually error free writing (applies to Yves as well). We have been amazed and inspired with your energy.
Not much else to say, other than the clock continues ticking and punching out of WC leads to new things. Hopefully we’ll hear from you with contributions or comments.
Crazy World as the New Year turns again.
Best of my thoughts for Happy and Satisfaction, or Capacity, to all around this neighborhood in 2025.
I predict in 2025 there will be deceit, duplicity, dirty deeds done dirt cheap, chicanery, not to mention flim-flam, flattery gone wrong, and profit.
Don’t forget the shenanigans!
The “Power Up Tour 2025” coming to a Rose Bowl near you this Spring! AC/DC and Angus keeps rockin’!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whQQpwwvSh4
The plantidote suggests a night-sky image of an inhabited alien planet.
Happy New Year!
And hearty thanks for being an island of sanity in an increasing insane world.
Watching our Western elites slowly go bonkers as they realize that they’ve [family blogged] their nations and empire has made it a tough year because they control the MSM, and drag a lot of people along with them. The funny thing is when you tell people they sound like I did when Obama was President, they don’t take it well.
Hang in there!
We’re All in This Together https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Orjbwv8H9zM
Here’s a little video which I hope might be considered antidote-worthy, titled ” The perfect way the pieces of this armadillo fit together”. Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oddlysatisfying/comments/1hqe6oa/the_perfect_way_the_pieces_of_this_armadillo_fit/
A case of CEO cognitive dissonance-
https://xcancel.com/Pinko69420/status/1873866267071045764#m
Here’s something about President Musk titled ” The world’s riches man dogwhistling”. He has apparently renamed himself Kekius Maximum when he appears on twiXtter. Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/1hqf72z/the_worlds_richest_man_dog_whistling/
Tomorrow his Mom hosts the 16th annual Vigil for Oscar Grant, people may know about it from the movie Fruitvale Station. Seeing his daughter grow up, like a distant relative you only see in pictures. It’s his Mom’s birthday too.
Getting a cop convicted and charged, everyone expected things were gonna change. Nope
mehserle was facing 15 years, the judge set aside the gun enhancement the jury insisted on. He was back on the street in a few months.
I’ve often wondered why all the songs that come out these days say so very little. Here’s one that does: Karmageddon, and it answers my question. The label refused to publish it without changes to the lyrics, so the singer published it without a label.
Almost a quarter-million views to date!
Karmageddon Who could resist running that down to start the new year?? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y29kmnhjtc8
Quite the pleasure finding much more than meets the eye…
On Instagram, there are video clips of May working as a medical doctor, which she says she worked as full-time during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.newsweek.com/iyah-may-karmageddon-song-covid-lyrics-video-2008021&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjC5IHd29WKAxVY4ckDHdPICOEQFnoECAwQAg&usg=AOvVaw3QGYSTBy36IN3aSwVc69gK