By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher, Wannagan Creek Cabin area, Billings, North Dakota, United States.
In Case You Might Miss…
- Trump transition confirmation process.
- DOGE as procurement capture?
- Tiktok users flee to RedNote.
- Boeing delivery woes.
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
Spook Country
“Head of Infamous “Information Disorder” Commission Promoted at NPR” [Matt Taibbi, Racket News]. “Amid a busy news day Monday, a familiar figure was named Chief Operating Officer of National Public Radio. Ryan Merkley, who directed the Aspen Institute’s Commission on Information Disorder and also appeared in the Twitter Files as Wikimedia’s liaison to ‘Industry Meetings’ with federal law enforcement, was elevated to the job by NPR president/Titania McGrath clone Katherine Maher…. Merkley’s name figured in several high-profile efforts to control ‘disinformation’ through aggressive content moderation…. Digital censorship years ago expanded beyond removing content, as key actors saw opportunities to promote political objectives like correcting historical injustices or advancing diversity goals by expanding the definition of ‘misinformation.’ NPR has long been an outlet in alignment with Aspen ideas, which became clear when former business editor Uri Berliner last April penned a whistleblowing essay in The Free Press. Beliner pointed among other things to NPR’s statement about the Hunter Biden laptop story: ‘We don’t want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.’ It may be that these moves become moot shortly, but they’re worth pointing out nonetheless.” • Or maybe not. See Susie Wiles below.
Energy in the executive:
True or false, it’s interesting that Haaretz published it, and “it’s out there.”
“The Trump Factor: Gaza Ceasefire Deal Appears Close” [Jeremy Scahill, Dropsite News]. “The fact that Trump emerged as the decisive player in pushing a potential ceasefire forward is evidence that Biden never used the full powers available to a sitting U.S. president to seal the deal in the summer. While Trump has publicly repeated his threat that he will ‘unleash hell’ on Hamas if the Israeli hostages are not freed, his pressure has not been solely focused on Hamas; Trump and his aides have made clear to Netanyahu that the president-elect expects Israel to comply with his demands, too. ‘I understand… there’s been a handshake and they are getting it finished—and maybe by the end of the week,’ Trump told Newsmax Monday night.”
* * * “Almost 8,000 soldiers bussed in for Trump’s ‘peaceful transition'” [Telegraph]. “Almost 25,000 police officers and 7,800 soldiers will descend on Washington DC for Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday, officials have said, as the capital prepares for a ‘peaceful transfer of power.’ Two FBI field offices, a fleet of drones and more than 30 miles of fencing will be used to keep Mr Trump, other world leaders and attendees safe as he takes the presidential oath of office for the second time. Local and federal officials revealed the security plans for the ceremony on Monday, and said that despite receiving no specific threats against the president-elect, they are ‘prepared’ for the worst.” • Presumably the “world leaders” are also bringing their own security with them, too.
* * * “Some Trump nominees face confirmation delays with ethics and background checks behind schedule” [Government Executive]. “Senate Republicans are pausing the confirmation process for some of President-elect Trump’s picks to lead agencies over delays in the vetting process as watchdogs and Democrats continue to press leadership not to move forward without first considering the finances and other parts of would-be cabinet members’ backgrounds. Lawmakers are hurrying to get at least some of Trump’s nominees into place by Inauguration Day next week, though some Senate committee chairs have said they are awaiting background checks from the FBI or reviews by the Office of Government Ethics. Some of those steps were delayed after Trump’s team spent months holding off the transition process. Many of Trump’s intended cabinet picks were scheduled for confirmation hearings this week, but some of those have since been postponed as relevant committees are awaiting background information secretary-designates. That will likely mean Trump has fewer of his picks confirmed on his first day in office than Senate Republicans had initially hoped for.”
“Scoop: Trump team sets red line on Hegseth’s FBI background check” [Axios]. “Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearing is becoming a test of will for Republicans on ensuring FBI files aren’t distributed throughout the entire Senate. The Trump transition team is demanding that the president-elect’s nominees be treated the same way they insist Joe Biden’s were. That means no FBI background check access for rank-and-file senators, according to two people familiar with the matter.”
Lawfare
“Hunter Biden special counsel hits out at president’s selective prosecution claim” [Guardian]. “The criminal charges against Hunter Biden ‘were the culmination of thorough, impartial investigations, not partisan politics’, the prosecutor who led the inquiries said in a report that sharply criticized Joe Biden for having maligned the US justice department when the president pardoned his son. ‘Other presidents have pardoned family members, but in doing so, none have taken the occasion as an opportunity to malign the public servants at the Department of Justice based solely on false accusations,’ said Monday’s report from special counsel David Weiss, whose team filed gun and tax charges against the younger Biden that resulted in felony convictions that were subsequently wiped away by a presidential pardon from his father.”
DOGE
“Understanding DOGE as Procurement Capture” [Anil Dash]. “Now, imagine you were a tycoon who is also a defense contractor that is trying to sell hundreds of billions of dollars of military equipment to the government, and you know that the procurement process requires them to go with the lowest bidder. But, since you’re a dude with hundreds of billions of dollars, it doesn’t seem fair that the system isn’t even more rigged in your favor. How would you “fix” this system? Well, you’d have to capture procurement… Say you’re a government employee trying to figure out who to buy rockets from. Maybe it better be from the guy who runs the “department” that’s in charge of deciding where money gets spent in the government! But what if you’re that government employee and you’re still trying to do things by the book, and follow the laws as written, and listen to the process that says you should go with the lowest bidder so you can spend less taxpayer money on things? Well, wouldn’t it be a shame if the guy who runs the “department” also ran a huge social media company, and also had started mentioning individual government employees by name, and had a rabid army of followers who consistently targeted those employees for violent threats — including death threats — and had in fact just carried out two different terrorist attacks in the last week while specifically talking about how enemies of this new regime needed to be targeted for violence? Would that be enough to get you to reconsider following those written policies? Maybe so.” • I don’t say it’s fanciful, and a phishing equilibrium is clearly possible, but I read it twice, and I don’t see procurement capture actually happening. Something to watch. And–
“Elon Musk Is Expected to Use Office Space in the White House Complex” [The New York Times]. “The space anticipated for Mr. Musk’s use is in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is adjacent to the White House. The location would allow Mr. Musk, who owns companies with billions of dollars in contracts with the federal government, to continue to have significant access to President-elect Donald J. Trump when he takes office this month.” And: “It was not clear whether Vivek Ramaswamy, Mr. Musk’s partner in leading the project, would also have office space in the Eisenhower building.” Maybe Susie Wiles will let him have a kennel out on the lawn? Plus more on ethics rules and financial disclosures, criminal conflict of interest laws, FACA vs. “special government employee status”, and FOIA. I don’t expect President Musk to care much about such things, but presumably some smart Republican lawyers can figure something out. Or maybe they’ll just let ‘er rip! Something to watch.
Our Famously Free Press
“Washington Post traffic craters, loses $100M amid identity crisis as talent, readers flee: reports” [New York Post]. “The Washington Post’s readership reportedly cratered during Joe Biden’s presidency — and the Jeff Bezos-owned broadsheet lost $100 million last year alone — as the embattled paper continues to suffer an exodus of top talent. The left-leaning [sic] publication drew about 2.5 million to 3 million daily users to its site last summer, a fraction of the 22.5 million daily visitors at its peak when Biden took office in January 2021, according to internal data shared with Semafor. The plummeting site traffic led the business to lose around $100 million on weak subscription and ad revenue in 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported.” • I wonder what the Graham Family thinks of Jeff Bezos’s stewardship.
Republican Funhouse
“Trump made the GOP a big-tent party. Now, he’s stuck with the infighting” [Politico]. “A coalition of MAGA die-hards, tech bros and blue-collar workers were key to Donald Trump’s November victory. Now, some of them are already at each other’s throats. Free traders and protectionists are at odds over Trump’s promise to enact ‘universal’ tariffs. Immigration hard-liners are butting heads with tech companies that support legal immigration. And isolationists are grappling with the president-elect’s apparently increasingly expansionist global agenda. And days before he takes office some of Trump’s most ardent original supporters have been the most resistant to the bigger tent.” And: “But some Trump allies argue these divides are a feature — not a bug — of Trump’s governing style. During his first administration, the president-elect was known for running his Cabinet like an executive boardroom: He brought together a cadre of diverse interests, let them duke it out and then, on his own, decided the path forward. That strategy, of encouraging competition among his advisers, allowed Trump to retain the ultimate decision-making authority and prevented any one group from gaining too much power.” I believe FDR used a similar strategy. It’s a good one.
“As Trump prepares to take power, MAGA can’t stop the ugly infighting” [WaPo]. “[T]he MAGA movement has always been a loosely stitched-together confederation led by a man with relatively few ideological convictions. It and he have always been much more animated by Trump the man than any particular set of ideals. And because Trump has proved so malleable, there is a premium on being the one in his ear. That dynamic is already leading to a rash of infighting over who grabs that ear and guides both Trump and his base.
And the fight over what Trumpism means has gotten quite ugly quite quickly.” • I disagree on “ideals.” The H1B debate on X was policy, all the way. I awarded the win to MAGA, who knew the policy arguments cold (and had, in many cases, been personally affected). Trump sided with the tech bros against MAGA on that one (and who knows how that will play out). As for Trump being “malleable”…. I know it’s a talking point, but is it true? What do readers think?
“Texas Sends Millions to Crisis Pregnancy Centers. It’s Meant to Help Needy Families, But No One Knows if It Works” [ProPublica]. “Year after year, while Roe v. Wade was the law of the land, Texas legislators passed measures limiting access to abortion — who could have one, how and where. And with the same cadence, they added millions of dollars to a program designed to discourage people from terminating pregnancies. Their budget infusions for the Alternatives to Abortion program grew with almost every legislative session — first gradually, then dramatically — from $5 million starting in 2005 to $140 million after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion…. But an investigation by ProPublica and CBS News found that the system that funnels a growing pot of state money to anti-abortion nonprofits has few safeguards and is riddled with waste…. Lawmakers around the country are considering programs modeled on Alternatives to Abortion.” • NGOs, gotta love ’em.
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, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Airborne Transmission
More good news from the schoolsL
California Department of Public Health has updated its Indoor Air Quality Guidance for Schools :
– Requirements : 5 ACH or 30 CFM/p (50 m3/h/p)
– Optimize the Mechanical Ventilation
– Open Doors and Windows
– Add Air Purifiershttps://t.co/BgISGM7NAd@CAPublicHealth https://t.co/R0JlxOc1rN pic.twitter.com/XEzEkfJido— LET'S AIR (@nousaerons) November 14, 2024
I don’t oppose handwashing, but couldn’t AP have gotten a mask in there somewhere?
| Wastewater | |
| ★ This week[1] CDC January 10 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC December 21 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC January 4 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data January 13: | National [6] CDC Janurary 9: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens January 13: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic January 4: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC December 23: | Variants[10] CDC December 23 |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 4: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 4: |
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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) Seeing more red and more orange, but nothing new at major hubs.
[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) A little uptick.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.
[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 Producer Prices” [Trading Economics]. “Producer Prices in the United States increased to 146.84 points in December from 146.52 points in November of 2024. Producer Prices in the United States averaged 118.02 points from 2009 until 2024, reaching an all time high of 146.84 points in December of 2024….”
Business Optimism: “United States NFIB Business Optimism Index” [Trading Economics]. “The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index in the US soared to 105.1 in December 2024, the highest since October 2018, compared to 101.7 in November and beating forecasts of 100.8. It is also the second consecutive month the reading stays above the 51-year average of 98, due to an improved economic outlook following the election. “Small business owners feel more certain and hopeful about the economic agenda of the new administration.'”
Manufacturing: “Boeing delivered less than half as many planes as Airbus last year” [Quartz]. “Boeing delivered 57 commercial aircraftin the fourth quarter of last year, and 348 for the entire year, the Virginia-based plane manufacturer reported Tuesday. That’s down from a total of 611 deliveries in 2023…. [Airbus] reported last week that it delivered 766 commercial aircraft in 2024 — a 4% year-over-year increase and the most since 2019.”
Manufacturing: “Boeing executive sees supply-demand balance by end of decade” [Investing.com]. ” Boeing expects to reach a balance between supply and market demand for passenger jets by the end of the decade, an executive said on Monday. ‘From my perspective that’s … about a five-year impact in terms of what we need to do … to get back to balance’ from the current supply deficit, Darren Hulst, Boeing’s vice president for commercial marketing, told the Airline Economics conference in Dublin.” • Not next quarter, then?
Manufacturing: “Akasa Air grounds hundreds of pilots while awaiting Boeing MAX deliveries” [Aerotime]. “The Indian low-cost-carrier Akasa Air has grounded hundreds of pilots after the number of Boeing 737 MAX deliveries slowed in 2024. According to the publication The Hindu, around 400 individuals out of 850 pilots are currently grounded, with only 60% currently needed to fly its fleet of 26 aircraft…. Akasa Air co-founder and CEO Vinay Dube had initially scheduled to receive 72 aircraft by the fifth year of flying after its first commercial flight in August 2022. At the start of 2024 Akasa had received 22 MAX aircraft but deliveries slowed during the year with only three arriving.”
Manufacturing: “The chart that proves Boeing has lost its battle with Airbus” [Telegraph]. “[I]t is now six years since Boeing last occupied the top spot in the airliner industry…. Nick Cunningham, an Aerospace analyst, said 2024 was ‘Boeing’s annus horribilis.’ He said: ‘You’d imagine that things really can only get better for Boeing, but it’s going to be a slow recovery because the problems run so deep. Kelly Ortberg, the new chief executive, is a really good man but there’s an awful lot to come back from. It’s a case of, ‘If you want to fix it, you really wouldn’t want to start from here.” … Boeing said it will provide an update on its production outlook with full-year earnings at the end of this month.” But: “Despite its crushing lead over Boeing, Airbus is also suffering from supply-chain issues. It originally targeted 800 plane deliveries for 2024, later revising the goal to about 770.”
Tech: “Meta Is Blocking Links to Decentralized Instagram Competitor Pixelfed” [404 Media]. “Meta is deleting links to Pixelfed, a decentralized Instagram competitor. On Facebook, the company is labeling links to Pixelfed.social as ‘spam’ and deleting them immediately. Pixelfed is an open-source, community funded and decentralized image sharing platform that runs on Activity Pub, which is the same technology that supports Mastodon and other federated services. Pixelfed.social is the largest Pixelfed server, which was launched in 2018 but has gained renewed attention over the last week. Bluesky user AJ Sadauskas originally posted that links to Pixelfed were being deleted by Meta; 404 Media then also tried to post a link to Pixelfed on Facebook. It was immediately deleted.” And: “Pixelfed is experiencing a surge in user signups in recent days, after Meta announced that it would loosen its rules to allow users to call LGBTQ+ people “mentally ill” amid a host of other changes that shift the company overtly to the right. Meta and Instagram have also leaned heavily into AI-generated content. Pixelfed announced earlier Monday that it is launching an iOS app later this week.” • Streisand effect, among other things.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 28 Fear (previous close: 26 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 35 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed).Last updated Jan 14 at 1:44:22 PM ET.
Gallery
Little bit of M.C. Escher going on?
John Singer Sargent, Staircase in Capri pic.twitter.com/3xXKG313dw
— Impressions (@impression_ists) January 11, 2025
Change vs. more of the same:
The moment everything changed pic.twitter.com/zQxnBSsoK7
— Taylor McCoy 🦖 (@TM9380) January 11, 2025
“The Case for Letting Malibu Burn” [Long Reads]. • tl;dr: It always has. Well worth a read for the history.
“What sparked the Palisades fire? A beloved hiking trail may hold the grim answers” [Los Angeles Times]. “Hikers and outdoor enthusiasts have long been drawn to Skull Rock north of Sunset Boulevard in Pacific Palisades…. Now, this area is the subject of an investigation as a potential starting point for the Palisades fire, which burned thousands of structures last week…. The general area was the site of a small fire on New Year’s Eve that burned for a few hours before fire officials said they snuffed it out with help from a water-dropping helicopter…. If it turns out the Palisades fire was caused by a rekindling of the earlier fire, it would fit a pattern. The massive Oakland Hills fire of 1991 — which destroyed more than 2,500 structures — exploded after firefighters thought they had contained it. That fire was originally six acres and was declared contained but not out.” • This also is worth a read; good detail.
“Elon Musk Exposed Over Right-Wing Lie on L.A. Fires” [The New Republic]. “Elon Musk was fact-checked on his own livestream after making false statements about the California wildfires, and Gavin Newsom was quick to call out the tech mogul on social media. In a post on X Sunday night, the California governor posted an excerpt from the livestream, where Musk was receiving a briefing with the command team handling the Palisades fire in Los Angeles. Musk asked an emergency official twice about water to fight the fires being available in the Malibu area but not in the Palisades. The official corrected Musk, pointing out there was not a water shortage but that the fire required much more water than could be pumped.”
“There Is No Safe Word” [Vultures]. The deck: “How the best-selling fantasy author Neil Gaiman hid the darkest parts of himself for decades.”• This is exceptionally creepy and nasty — way beyond “they were careless people, Tom and Daisy” — and I don’t really want to excerpt it. However, if you’ve seen oblique references to Neil Gaiman recently, this is the source.
“Good Omens Author Neil Gaiman Accused of Alleged Sexual Abuse By Multiple Women” [People]. “In a Jan. 13 Vulture report, multiple women spoke on the record about their alleged experiences with the famed novelist, 64, including Scarlett Pavlovich, who formerly babysat for Gaiman and his ex-wife Amanda Palmer.” Palmer doesn’t come out real well either. But: “Gaiman has denied all allegations since 2023.”
“Can nonviolent struggle defeat a dictator? This database emphatically says yes” [Waging Non-Violence]. “[T]he Global Nonviolent Action Database, or GNAD, built by the Peace Studies department at Swarthmore College. Freely accessible to the public, this database — which launched under my direction in 2011 — contains over 1,400 cases of nonviolent struggle from over a hundred countries, with more cases continually being added by student researchers. [T]he database details at least 40 cases of dictators who were overthrown by the use of nonviolent struggle, dating back to 1920. These cases — which include some of the largest nations in the world, spanning Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America — contradict the widespread assumption that a dictator can only be overcome by violence. What’s more, in each of these cases, the dictator had the desire to stay, and possessed violent means for defense. Ultimately, though, they just couldn’t overcome the power of mass nonviolent struggle.” • I would like for this to be true. I would also want to check those 40 cases for contamination by spook-driven color revolution, and the geopolitical context. (For example, you can conceptualize the fall of the East German regime as a case of non-violent struggle, but surely the larger context of anarchistic relations between states matters as well?)
“Chinese social media app RedNote tops App Store chart ahead of TikTok ban” [The Verge]. “RedNote, the Chinese social media app also known as Xiaohongshu, rose to the number one spot on the Apple App Store as a US ban closes in on TikTok. The app offers a mix of pictures, short-form videos, and text posts across ‘follow,’ ‘explore,’ and ‘nearby’ feeds…. RedNote, which launched in 2013 as a shopping-focused app, now has more than 300 million monthly active users and surpassed $1 billion in profit last year, according to Bloomberg…. ikTok users may be flocking to RedNote now, but the ban also implicates other Chinese-owned apps, including RedNote, WeChat, and the other apps run by ByteDance like Lemon8 and CapCut.” • Still the most encouraging news I’ve heard in some time (though wait ’til the various governments involved stir up trouble):
My Chinese Spy and I reunited on RedNote
Now in their American spy 🤧🖤 She’s been my spy on TikTok 🖤 pic.twitter.com/EdyuSLFtTF
— ☆ Kaden ☥ (@AmdusciasShadow) January 14, 2025
And:
Americans are helping the Chinese with their English homework in the comments of RedNote😭 pic.twitter.com/phHLUsG0TY
— Massimo (@massmandato) January 13, 2025
Did I mention the government:
Leftists are now flocking to RedNote, an app owned by the CCP and knockoff of TikTok.
Users notice that for some odd reason Luigi Mangione is heavily promoted by the algo. pic.twitter.com/Q3PkhhxNRs
— Susie Wiles (@RealSusiewiles) January 14, 2025
That Wiles is instantly on top of this speaks well of her capacities as a government official, but one might question exactly why our government thinks social media is so important…..
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 Doug:
Doug writes: “Amaryllis and callicarpa from the front yard. The warm fall has produced some odd pairings such as this.” Neat concept for a climate-related photobook…
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Sargent
Can any artist render whites better? He makes stairway material appear hard and blindingly bright in the sunlight. And in this linked painting you can almost feel the fabric of the girl’s dress. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Paintings_by_John_Singer_Sargent_in_the_Des_Moines_Art_Center#/media/File%3APortrait_of_%C3%89douard_and_Marie-Louise_Pailleron.jpg
I adore Sargent. Thanks for the link!
Me too! You are welcome.
Wow, amazing piece – Sargent is the GOAT
whites are so challenging to paint
RE: Hunter Biden special counsel hits out at president’s selective prosecution claim
Having a very hard time grokking what Weiss’ deal is. He famously tried to give Dear Hunter immunity not just for the crack smoking gun toting, but for anything else someone might want to charge him for later. When another judge called foul and demanded a do-over, Merrick Garland then appointed a special prosecutor, the very same David Weiss(!), which sure seemed like a big middle finger to everyone who could see the obvious crimes, both small and large, committed by the Biden clan. Like the 200 large that went into the Big Guy’s bank accounts. Weiss then goes on to re-prosecute Dear Hunter, but only on the small crimes, who is later pardoned by the Father of the Year.
I will speculate that Weiss had some sort of heads up that a pardon was imminent and the 2nd prosecution was all kayfabe. So why the crocodile tears now? What job is this grifter gunning for?
Joe Biden, malleable as he always was after all being a career politician…And now the bungled investigations ( more than one I recall ) into the activities and tendencies of a *young Hunter Biden by the authorities that Americans should likely trust to just do their jobs…
Yeah find me the tiny violin for this dude after all. Mr. Weiss, kind sir it seems from the cheap seats you were played like a fool. * and no one is above the law, let us not easily forget what they do opposite what they say
Well it is sort of a slap in the face to get bad mouthed for doing exactly what they wanted you to do. After the original carefully planned non- presidential pardon deal got nixed and he got the blame he just put his head down and kept going for the team. He slow walked the new indictment, ignored more and more evidence that there were more serious charges and essentially set up a slam dunk for Hunter to be pardoned. And then the President tries to blame him for having to protect his dear son.
Unless there was a really really good job waiting or a significant chunk of the Big Guy’s ill gotten gains coming Weiss’ way, I would be annoyed enough to not go quietly into the night.
Very nice plantidote! I have never actually seen an amaryllis blossoming outdoors before. I know them only from the gifts my grandmother loved to get, which she would put on the windowsill and watch blossom indoors during the wintertime.
Thanks. They are marginal here in Piedmont NC. But they keep multiplying in pots so off they go to an uncertain future. I am not sure we will see that one next year, given the weather so far this winter.
Wonderful photo.
I have loads of amarylli doing nothing in the ground here in Florida. I’m slowly getting some into pots to get them to pep up.
Xiaohongshu is not really Chinese TikTok tho, that would be Douyin which I think you need a Chinese phone number to register for. Probably more accurate to say their version of Instagram? Though it does seem to have more features
Re: Elon Musk being called out as a right wing nut for his comment about water shortage in the fire.
And at the end of the link – “The official corrected Musk, pointing out there was not a water shortage but that the fire required much more water than could be pumped.”
One thing we were taught from day 1 in medical school is to explain things to patients in English they can understand, and to learn to listen to their comments back to you as a way of gauging their comprehension. And for sure never get cute with words and semantics that mean something in medical jargon that is completely different than what it would mean to a layman. JUST DO NOT GO THERE. It really is that simple. And it is of the utmost importance to NEVER go there during a critical emergency.
After reading through that – I get the idea that “shortage” to these officials means something different than “shortage” means to me. I am trying to give them the benefit of the doubt here – but their condescension makes that all but impossible. It is a profound negligence in communication.
Is not the very definition of a “shortage” the fact that “the fire required more water than could be pumped.”?
These educated imbeciles say stuff like that – and wonder why regular people give them the side eye. It is just amazing to behold. And of course – Elon Musk is a right wing nut for pointing this out? LOL. And why is it that the Democrats seem to be always the ones caught up in semantics, navel gazing, and just this kind of thing? I really do want the Democrats to grow a pair and say clearly what needs to be said. You are not going to be able to triangulate your way out of this fiasco.
Sheesh. A friend of mine occasionally jokes he’s not bald, he’s just grown taller than his hair. It’s a joke.
There’s nothing joke-like about this official’s comment. Unless. . . this official and too many Cali politicians and officials are the joke.
Musk allegation was that water reservoirs were empty, in that context the response seems clear enough to me.
The pictures of empty reservoirs dating all the way back to FEB 2024 – completely empty during the actual fire season in the fall- are also very clear to me. And again – I am not exactly sure what they are saying when they use the word “storage”. This is all fun and games until we are dealing with people’s lives – not so fun anymore.
If the reservoir(s) which would have contained the water needed for putting out a fire were empty at the time of the fire that water would have been needed for, then it would be true to say the reservoir(s) was/were empty. If the reservoir(s) was/were full of water as of the actual moment of the fire, then it would be a lie to say that the reservoir(s) was/were empty.
So . . . can someone give an actual factual answer to the question of whether the reservoir(s) in question were actually factually full of actual factual water as of the moment of the start of the fire? Such an actual factual answer would help us to know who is actually lying here.
As to the official’s answer, it seemed clear to me. There wasn’t the mechanical engineering pumping capacity to pump the water onto the fire fast enough to put the fire out. So the non-dishonest answer to the official’s reply would be to ask why there wasn’t enough pumping capacity to pump enough water per unit time onto the fire to control the fire? Because water in a reservoir full of water does no good if you can’t get the water to the fire fast enough to control the fire.
Did Musk raise that question when told that it wasn’t a water shortage, it was a pumping-capacity shortage? If Musk didn’t raise that question, why didn’t he raise it? Because he is not smart enough to know the difference between storage and pumpage?
Additionally, one might reasonably wonder just how much water and pumping capacity it might take to successfully battle a fire driven by 95 mph winds, and given the multifactorial givens, is the development of such capacity even feasible.
The ocean hasn’t run dry. They are also using seawater.
Contrary to popular belief…..
This article discusses why this is not a matter of first choice-
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/planes-are-dumping-ocean-water-to-fight-the-los-angeles-fires-heres-why-using-saltwater-is-typically-a-last-resort
Google AI:
“Saltwater corrodes firefighting equipment and may harm ecosystems, especially those like the chaparral shrublands around Los Angeles that aren’t normally exposed to seawater.”
Elon should have enough on his plate.
He’s upset that some govt money is about to go somewhere else other than for what he wants.
He’ll be yelling at clouds next. Or the lack thereof.
Re The New Republic and Musk’s “lie”–so does that mean it’s ok for mountain reservoirs to be left empty because when fire comes it’s all going to burn up regardless? I don’t think the statement by the fire authorities lets the state and local govt off the hook–particularly when lack of rain should have told them that the situation was quite dangerous.
And part of that danger is that almost all western fires are started by humans either deliberately or accidentally. Here in the east the northern side of the Smokies burned up some years back due to someone using fireworks. It took out a chunk of Gatlinburg as well.
Rhetoric and the next California governor’s race aside, I’d like to know a lot more about how the water system actually operates:
For example, this isn’t even the fire season. Are you advocating for “mountain reservoirs” to be filled 365 days a year? I don’t think anybody from across the political spectrum has advocated for that.
Meanwhile — and quite naturally — nobody talks about the real estate industry, the pistachio billionaires sucking up enormous quantities of water for their own operations, etc. etc. etc.
The story I saw said that normally the reservoir would be full–regardless of what I think about the matter–but it had been emptied while a contractor repaired the cover–taking many months to do so.
Then there’s the fire dept budget cuts under this mayor. Add in all the fires that have been started by power lines and one does get the impression of state govt incompetence and, yes, favoritism to developers and orchard growers.
“Systems are designed for a typical city-based fire, not an entire city catching on fire,” he said. ”There’s no domestic water system that’s built to this scale.”
[ ] True
[ ] False
Of course, focusing on relative trivialities like reservoirs, we never do get to climate, do we? Both parties are making me sick, the dogpiling and the counter-dogpiling (Newsom ordering a study, dear Lord).
Of course, if they actually believed in climate they would keep the reservoirs filled during a drought year with increased fire hazards. One would think. / ;)
adding: there are a lot of brutally dark humor jokes out there now. One goes something like this (cleaned up): With the LA Olympics coming up LA decided to turn the Pacific Palisades area into a wildlife preserve for migrating humans.
Another joke references all the arson in NYC’s Bronx area during the height of urban renewal projects in the 1970’s, which made the rich even richer. (And the poor even poorer.) Buying up burned out properties for pennies on the dollar. / ;)
One should also remember a 1980’s job creation program
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982_Boston_arson_spree
Boston police and firemen started fires, hoping to restore budget and personnel cuts.
Kinda hurt their cause when exposed.
Authorities are sure that Fire Captain John Orr had nothing to do with the recent fires, as he’s in Mule Creek state prison.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Leonard_Orr
How could they, if the Pistacio Billionaires enforce their demand that all the water be sent to their Pet Pistacio Plantations?
Stocks and flows.
It take a second to flush a toilet, and many seconds to fill the tank back up.
Tanks and floats all the way down.
It also wasn’t just fire fighting that the water was being used for. There were lots of people who were trying to use water to keep the fire from their houses and yards, by watering them down.
So now you’ve got a huge demand for fire fighting and another huge demand for prophylactic use. On top of the normal use by humans for normal things.
The stocks were depleted. The flow couldn’t keep up.
How long do people think it takes to fill a reservoir? If they could instantly fill the reservoir, they wouldn’t need the reservoir.
The thing is, that the reservoir was also empty during the height of fire season…
> Latino
Fleeting moment of copy/paste
RIP José Jiménez.
Such a time of courage and possibility in Chicago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Jiménez_(activist)
Not to be confused with Bill Dana’s version…
It would be interesting to know more details on the reservoir that was down for maintenance. How long was it supposed to be down? Was it held up for parts or people? Plus, the LAFD had about a hundred vehicles in the bone yard waiting for maintenance. It would be interesting to know the details on those too.
I had a chat with a guy that worked for the City of Seattle maintenance yard a while back, and he commented that since the pandemic and the shutdown, they have been perennially short of both required parts, and the necessary techs to do the work. In fact, it was not even acknowledge in the local news but he claimed that a lot of the SPD’s lack of response to calls about crimes literally came down to a lack of patrol cars since they had record amounts sitting waiting for repair/maintenance.
This pretty much seems to come down to MBA managers that insist on just in time parts even when the lead time for ordering parts jumped up to over six months, and the fact that when budgets get cut, it’s almost always the maintenance budget that takes the biggest hit. I’ve seen the same thing where I worked many times.
Remember that MBA manager “do it as cheap as possible” maintenance philosophy “Run to Failure”? We finally beat back the managers by telling them a whole factory was going to burn down if they did this (and we almost had it happen):
Boeing suspends Auburn shifts after power outage
https://www.seattlepi.com/local/komo/article/boeing-suspends-auburn-shifts-after-power-outage-1310734.php
Looks like LA is living it. Run to failure.
All I can say is don’t blame the LA water department or the LA fire department. They’ve probably been screaming internally all they can to get back the funding, the workers, and the parts that they know they need.
And this doesn’t even cover the expansions of systems and resources required for climate change. Budgets, staffing and “system sizing” are often set by historical data (and I thought I heard the Chief of the LAFD complaining these were not being met) which are no longer adequate to address the extremes that we’re now going to see because of climate change.
This is often exacerbated by how real estate developers get good deals from counties that want development, but then force the costs for the necessary expansion of county infrastructure and services back onto the existing tax base rather than making developers pay the real costs.
Yes, the developers never want to pay for any infrastructure. It’s a shame too because that is the easiest and cheapest time to put the pipes in the ground.
Instead they sell lots and make everyone do well and septic systems. After a few years, the wells and septic systems start to overlap. Then the heath department gets brought in and they need a clean water act bond to run water and sewer at 100x the cost. And the people who “developed” all of this get interest free income from the muni bonds.
It’s working as it was designed. For the developers.
That is a very big question given that California has one of the most heavily engineered water systems in the world coupled with a rich history of complex law, litigation, and skullduggery.
Did everybody forget that the LA Fire Dept. generously gave away a massive amount of equipment to those wonderful, Ukrainian “Democrats” 2 years ago? (They are actually Banderite fascists and traffickers of course, no “democracy” in Zelensky’s puppetry project.)
I certainly hope the people of L.A. don’t forget this. I went to LA from NorCal 4x annually to serve on a CTA/ California Teachers Association State council, voting on policy, from roughly 2011-18. I have fond memories. Started up a flash-in-the-pan 3 month relationship with a fellow teacher finalizing her divorce in 2018, who took me to a wonderful rooftop bar, then to the “Dresden” jazz bar. Fond memories. I’m sure the rooftop bar is safe (around 20 stories tall), will have to look into “Dresden.”
This is getting tiresome.
Southern California reservoirs were full. They always are during a drought, much to the horror of everyone in the rest of the state.
The Santa Ynez reservoir is relatively teeny – 359 acre-feet in a county with over 700,000 acre-feet of water storage. It doesn’t even show up on most lists of reservoirs in California.
Should Santa Ynez have been full, even though it’s basically spare domestic water supply storage? Sure. And it would have been repaired months ago, if budget cuts due to people not wanting to pay for public services hadn’t added months and money outsourcing the work, instead of just sending out a crew to fix the damn thing. Even if it had been full, it would have added maybe a couple of hours to available water for putting out fires in Pacific Palisades. The outcome would have been exactly the same.
There’s always lots of blame to go around in a disaster. But please stop finding stupid reasons to Monday morning quarterback,
FYI – More than 20 people have died. Thousands of buildings have been burned down. Untold multitudes have had their lives completely altered.
Accusing people of being tiresome when truly trying to understand how these things happen is completely inappropriate.
There is a process in medicine called a mortality and morbidity conference. That is usually preceded by an extensive investigation of logistics and processes to uncover why someone unexpectedly dies known as a “root-cause analysis”. This is triggered by ONE PERSON dying unexpectedly – not dozens. As a profession, there is a responsibility to do this to make sure everything is done in the future to prevent it. In this process, all kinds of questions are asked and answered. Those immediately involved in the problems that led to the bad outcome are often grilled in front of the entire medical staff. Often, no mercy is shown. I just attended one of these conferences a week ago. Absolutely brutal. If anyone involved in the incident or any one in the audience had dared say out loud that the process was “tiresome”, their reputations would have been at stake.
No questions in this kind of issue are off limits or tiresome. This is especially the case in this kind of event where there are politics at play. We have all lived through the consequences in the past 5 years when these types of inquiries were not done, for example, in the case of COVID.
When an individual is the governor of a state or the mayor of a city, any kind of leadership position actually, their first and foremost responsibility is the protection of the people in their charge. It is part of the job. If you are not willing to perform this role, you have no business running for election. It is the same for me and the patients under my care. There is absolutely no priority more important than that for a political leader.
I started to become very concerned about this when it was discovered that the mayor was in Africa a full week after the weather services started to put out the warnings. Followed quickly by the admission that they had sent all kinds of equipment to Ukraine, followed by the revelation that a huge number of their firefighters had been fired over a vaccine mandate for a non-sterilizing vaccine, followed by fire equipment from surrounding states being held up for hours/days facing inspections. Just insane stuff like that is exactly what we try to deal with in medicine in these conferences. It may seem like this is a “California” issue – but the bungling is going to cost us all supremely.
I saw that Governor Newsom a day or two ago in the midst of all these problems and issues that he needs to be directly dealing with had time to sit down with the Pod Save America podcast for a fluff session. No serious questions were asked – no grilling was done. That was neither the time nor the place for victory laps. It really is a total joke.
“Just insane stuff like that is exactly what we try to deal with in medicine”
Bang up job you’re doing there….How’s the consensus?
I have added orts and scraps. Enjoy!
Regarding “the moment everything changed.”
We are not entering the Anthropocene. That implies something very long lasting. Human civilization will be one of those thin layers between geologic formations.
The 5,000 years of human history would make for our very own K2 boundary line – but it would be very thin.
The K-T line is so thin that we didn’t catch it until 1980, and couldn’t identify a probable cause for another decade. But the difference between one side of the K-T line and the other is extreme. The Anthropocene doesn’t have to last very long to be a major extinction event, on the K-T scale of getting whacked by the equivalent of a Teraton-scale nuclear bomb.
It’s actually pretty impressive how quickly humans were able to engineer such a comprehensive, geological epoch level change on a planetary scale.
I was thinking that that was a photo of the Younger Dryas “Black Mat” layer. Before that line, lots of giant aminals roaming the tundra, bands of hominid hunter gatherers, etc. After the layer, nothing for a thousand years.
Re: Understanding DOGE as Procurement Capture
While the general idea is good, the example given is unfortunate, because Musk’s rockets are currently the cheapest option. There are reasons to give contracts to more providers despite them not being the cheapest, like not wanting to end up with one monopoly provider even if it currently has the lowest price.
Matt Stoller often makes that argument about other monopoly or near monopolies, even if they have the lowest price.
Pepe E. on trumpster 2.0
https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/01/14/im-gonna-maga-you-baby/
The people with the best potential for the future (I say potential because there’s still too much global oligarch and banksta lovin’): the people in countries who see out of control oligarchs as a problem.
That’s it. That is what will make a country really different from the USA.
re: Change vs more of the same.
The geologic layer showing the results of a massive meteor strike.
see also: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe3647 which discusses the results of an asteroid striking Earth 66 million years ago.
Photo of the Iridium layer.
https://image.slidesharecdn.com/cenozoicera-130824183416-phpapp01/95/cenozoic-era-geologic-history-earth-science-lesson-powerpoint-rise-of-the-mammals-11-638.jpg?cb=1398587535
I credit this discovery with helping to stop WW3. When it was realized what it was back in the 80s, it did not take long to work out how that asteroid triggered not only mass destruction but also a nuclear winter which killed off most life on earth hence the radical changes of before and after. But then it was quickly realized that even a small nuclear war would have the same effect which put paid to Reagan’s idea that the world could survive a limited nuclear war. After that the enthusiasm for using nukes died out as it was realized that nobody could emerge a winner. That is, until Biden came along rattling nuclear threats.
The Black Mat layer:
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-geologic-evidence-theory-major-cosmic.html
Thanks for the link. I wonder if that is why the giant mammals, the megafauna like woolly mammoths and saber-tooth cats and dire wolves, etc. all went extinct between 10-12 thousand years ago.
That’s the theory. At present two Catastrophist theories are in contention for the title of All Killer. First is the Cometary Impact theory. There is a quite robust “underground” movement, populated by reputable scientists, pushing this idea. A second theory posits a massive Coronal Mass Ejection hitting the Earth and messing everything in the Northern Hemisphere up.
It is also the time that sea levels rose by several hundred feet quickly. Thus, any evidence of maritime civilizations of the time would now be buried under roughly two hundred feet of seawater.
The Black Mat is evidence of a truly Biblical holocaust. Just like after the K/T boundary asteroid strike, the smaller animals would have the best chance of survival and thus repopulate the terrestrial globe.
A similar dynamic might soon be in play as the Earth adapts to the new climate normal.
Kinda reminds me of the Hyborian Age that Conan the Barbarian stories were set in which was reckoned to be about 10,000 BC. The implication was that the last ice age ground the entire landscape free of any traces of these pre-civilisations-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyborian_Age
Come to think of it, during that ice age Chicago was under a mile of ice. If this ever happened again with another ice age, what traces would be left that Chicago for example ever existed?
A very interesting link. And as flora points out, it would explain why all those large mammals went extinct and it was not just human hunters. If I recall correctly, the entire human population got bottle-necked and the number of breeding couples went down to only about a thousand. We came that close to almost going out as a species.
As for Trump being “malleable”…
Stochastic, yes. Malleable, not so much.
The importance of social media:
Over the holidays I read a gift book, “The Unaccountability Machine” which was moderately interesting for issues of office management and controls on communications. Those parts that interested me led me back to Norbert Wiener’s “Human Use of Human Beings“, which is prophetic in many ways.
Shortly thereafter I watched Mike Benz talk on the development of Government communications controls from 1948 to present. He doesn’t mention Wiener, but Wiener is in almost every aspect of his story, and it all boils down to controlling popular consciousness through saturation media, which takes one step closer to perfection with Social Media.
Because this control works statistically, not directly, that is control is along a normal bell curve, the government has been able to get what it wants on average, but I suspect this control is subject to “reflexivity” which we’re seeing as apparently irrational backlashes against the “narrative”, which, I submit are really health skepticism built over a platform of lies and thus incoherent. But with each cycle of contestation, underlying realities are approached. The Bannon wing of MAGA mastering the Immigration narrative being an advanced example.
re: the Gallery.
That staircase! Sergeant and Hopper painted white colors with very little pure white colors in the paintings. Amazing. Thanks.
“Washington Post traffic craters, loses $100M amid identity crisis as talent, readers flee: reports”
Now that’s a damn shame.
Taibbi and Kirn’s ATW yesterday evening spent the first many minutes in very funny commentary about Jennifer Rubin leaving the Washington Post for greener pastures.
Worth watching those opening minutes as they shred the WaPo and Rubin. (It does seem like karma for the WaPo to be in this situation after their … uh … unusual reporting during and after the 2016 election. Truth dies in darkness. / ;)
ATW Live on Monday 1/13/25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YK3J3eLQ15g
“Can nonviolent struggle defeat a dictator? This database emphatically says yes” [Waging Non-Violence].
” I would like for this to be true. I would also want to check those 40 cases for contamination by spook-driven color revolution, and the geopolitical context.”
Yes, it does raise some eyebrows. However, it’s not as irresponsible sounding as the guest on Dialog Works saying it takes approx. 2 million martyrs to overcome an oppressive regime. WTF?
Well, yes or no and then again maybe or maybe not, depending on the particular situation and the context.
Non-violence did not work for the ethnic-Bamar coup-opponents in Myanmar, so the survivors of the failure of non-violence tried forming rag-tag defense militias to protect the not-yet-dead people and neigborhoods from the TatmaJunta. When they started linking up with the legacy and ongoing non-Bamar ethnic armies and movements, they were able to develop a more effective sustained violence-application capacity.
A watching world will see if violence works out better for the opponents of the TatmaJunta then non-violence was ever going to work out.
Just to put that in perspective: horrifying as that is, two million people is a little less than 0.6% of the US population.
The Great Famine in Ireland (due primarily to continued British food exports from Ireland during a catastrophic crop failure) killed about 15% of the Irish population over the course of a decade. It continues to be the defining event of modern Irish history.
Poland and Russia both lost around 20% of their population over seven years. Russia’s extreme (and not entirely unjustified) paranoia about US intentions flows directly from that experience, as does continuing Polish mistrust of both Germany and Russia. There is a direct throughline from extraordinary Ukrainian casualties at the hands of both Soviets and Nazis, and the shape of the war in Ukraine today.
China and Japan both lost about 5% of their population during World War 2, another multi-year culture-defining catastrophe that persists 80 years later.
Nations don’t come back from this kind of horror for a long time.
Israel has killed 5% of the population of Gaza in a little over a year. Barring a dramatic reversal in official Israeli policy, Gaza is on track to lose another 5% of its population over the next year.
Let me put it in perspective: that’s BS about the “martyrs”. Who decides who becomes a martyr?
That’s just one aspect where it’s a BS idea that falls apart.
“Just to put that in perspective: horrifying as that is, two million people is a little less than 0.6% of the US population.”
Sounds like something Robert McNamara would have said during war.
A blast from my past.
It’s probably been noted previously, still I found it punny to recall, sixty years since my last Chinese class, that Xiaohongshu, without tone diacritics usually translated as ‘Rednote’, could easily be rendered “Little Red Book”.
The long-term answer to the fact of repeat fires in the Chaparral Fire Ecosystem would be a hard ban on rebuilding any houses in the Fire Ecology Zone and a hard ban on building any new ones. That won’t ever happen.
A stopgap answer would be a hard ban on using any flammable material in houses built in the Fire Alley regions. That won’t ever happen either.
So the houses and stuff will all be rebuilt, all made out of flammable wood and super flammable petroleum products, and they will all burn down again, over and over again, every time there is another normal and natural Chaparral Ecosystem fire.
Till the civilization is too impoverished to build or rebuild anymore houses there. Then the housebuilding will stop.
Surprise Zeitgeist Report, arrest the usual suspects.
Our Internet connection, via Comcast, has risen yet another Three dollars for a month’s “service,” Internet, nothing else. This is a continuing strategy by the company. An increase every year, the same “small” amount, naught but cheerleading b— s— when you try to get information as to why this is happening. Originally, our Internet “service” was about $49 USD the month. Now it’s up to $69 USD the month, for exactly the same “service.”
The above, if nothing else, is a teaching example explaining the absolute bankruptcy of “Classical Capitalism.” The only “Hidden Hand” I can see is the one picking my pocket.
I am reminded of the history of the sad end of the Roman Oligarch Crassus. He died, it is said, after suffering a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Parthians. Said Parthians occupied the territory presently hosting Iran and parts of surrounding polities. Will the Hubris of our “moderne” Oligarchs suffer a similar fate at the hands of the modern Parthians? One can only hope.
Same here in the Midwest. It’s not the base price that’s increased. (A big increase in base price might draw state utility regulator attention.) It’s all the added on fees every year for this and that and something else. / oy