By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Patient readers, I have once more been swept up in the social whirl. More soon! –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher, Yard, Bledsoe, Tennessee, United States. Lot going on in “Yard” (or “my yard”?).
In Case You Might Miss…
- New Covid charts that Lambert does not like.
- Faiz Shakir throws his hat in the DNC ring.
- Ancient Britain a matriarchal society?
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
Biden Administration
“Biden says the Equal Rights Amendment should be considered ratified” [Associated Press]. On the Friday before the inaugural? Thanks a bunch! Why not back in 2020, when it could have been part of the abortion battle? More: “‘The Equal Rights Amendment is the law of the land,’ Biden said even though presidents have no role in the constitutional process. He did not direct the leader of the National Archives to certify the amendment, as some activists have called for, sidestepping a legal battle. It was the latest in a collection of pronouncements that Biden has made in the waning days of his presidency as he tries to tie up loose ends and embroider [good word choice!] his legacy despite leaving after only one term.” And: “The Equal Rights Amendment, which would ban discrimination based on gender, was sent to the states for ratification in 1972. Virginia became the 38th state to ratify it in 2000, although years past the deadline set by Congress, leading to a legal standoff over whether it could be considered valid…. It’s unlikely that Biden’s support will have any impact. On Friday, the National Archives reiterated its position by saying ‘the underlying legal and procedural issues have not changed.'” • Oh. So I guess it’s just a fundraising hook.
“An Expert in Grand Strategy Thinks Trump Is on to Something” [Politico]. The deck: “Do you want a future in which Canada defects to the EU, Russia rules the Arctic and China runs Latin America? That’s the default outcome of non-action.” And: “Trump’s approach to international affairs reflects Americans’ judgment that we are done building a world order — which we’ve overseen from 1954 to 2008 —and now must vigorously embrace an aggressively competitive approach to this multipolar world; in other words, be less the generous market-maker and more the selfish market-player. The world’s superpowers (U.S., Europe, Russia, India, China) fear one another more and more. We sense an imperative in this re-regionalization/decoupling era — one that screams get yours now before somebody else does!” And here is the kicker: “But let’s also get more real in our thinking and the terms we offer. Justin Trudeau is right when he says Canada will never become America’s 51st state, but what if it became America’s 51st-through-59th-states? Would that be enough political power and standing for Canadians to choose over admission into the EU? Say, 18 Senate seats and more congressional districts than California’s 52 seats? That’s a respectful offer. Greenland holds two seats in Denmark’s 179-member parliament. Does that strike you as more empowering than two seats in the U.S. Senate? How about a $57 billion buy-out package that makes every Greenlander an instant millionaire? Does Trump have your undivided attention now?” • Readers, what do you think? Should such an offer be made? Having been made, should it be accepted?
“Trump Picks a Jet-Setting Pal of Elon Musk to Go Get Greenland” [New York Times]. “Ken Howery is a quiet, unassuming tech investor who prioritizes discretion. And yet, he has ended up in the middle of two of the noisiest story lines of the incoming Trump administration. One is the expanding ambition of Elon Musk, Mr. Howery’s close friend and fellow party-scene fixture since the two helped run PayPal 25 years ago. The other is the expansionist ambition of Mr. Musk’s boss, President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has set his sights on buying Greenland, the world’s largest island. As Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Denmark, Mr. Howery is expected to be central to what Mr. Trump hopes will be a real-estate deal of epic proportions. The only hitch is that Denmark, which counts Greenland as its autonomous territory, says the island is not for sale. Whether he likes it or not, Mr. Howery, a globe-trotter known for his taste for adventure and elaborate party planning, is likely to find himself in the middle of a geopolitical tempest. Mr. Trump has been explicit about his expectations for his new ambassador filling a once-sleepy post. When he announced Mr. Howery for the role, which requires Senate confirmation, he reiterated his designs on Greenland for the first time since winning the presidency.”
* * * “Trump selections for top jobs advance, despite initial controversy” [WaPo]. “When President-elect Donald Trump first unveiled his picks to staff his new administration, some of the more unconventional names sparked gasps and speculation that they could not amass enough support to be confirmed even in a GOP-controlled Senate…. But three days ahead of Trump’s return to the White House, many of his most prominent Cabinet choices have sailed relatively unscathed through their hearings and are poised to win confirmation as Republican senators rallied around them and appeared largely unwilling to defy Trump’s wishes…. Senate GOP opposition to many of the current Trump picks has not materialized, at least not publicly, after Matt Gaetz, Trump’s original pick for attorney general, withdrew under pressure. No Republican lawmakers have said they will oppose Hegseth, though a handful have not made their intentions clear. Trump’s nominees can lose three Republicans at most and still be confirmed if no Democrat backs them. It’s rare for the Senate to reject presidential picks. But Hegseth’s apparent glide path bodes well for some of Trump’s other controversial choices, like former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, his pick for director of national intelligence, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was tapped to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Their hearings have not been scheduled but are expected soon. Kash Patel’s nomination as FBI director is also considered a harder sell.”
“Scoop: Trump team sweats McConnell’s vote on Tulsi Gabbard” [Axios]. “President-elect Trump Trump’s transition thinks Gabbard, the nominee for director of national intelligence, can get confirmed even with a “no” vote from McConnell. But his public opposition — if it materializes — could open the door to other GOP defectors…. If Democrats have any chance — and it’s slim — at helping drag down a Trump nominee, they see Gabbard as the most likely prospect. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer views the party’s grilling of Hegseth as a success. He’ll demand the same for their treatment of Gabbard, HHS nominee RFK Jr. and FBI director nominee Kash Patel.”
* * * “White House’s Pandemic Office, Busy With Bird Flu, May Shrink Under Trump” [Time]. “By Inauguration Day on Monday, most of the pandemic office’s staff will have cleared out their desks. The office, officially known as the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, or OPPR, is losing more than half of its 18-person staff as the Biden Administration hands off the duties to a Trump Administration that has yet to fill multiple key pandemic-response positions, according to two Biden Administration officials. The political appointees in charge of the office—director Paul Friedrichs and deputy director Nikki Romanik—are leaving to make way for potential Trump appointments, and several of the office’s 14 career staffers, whose assignments to the White House office were temporary, are returning to their home agencies…. Supporters of OPPR point to its work in recent months addressing the spread of a virulent strain of bird flu, which was first detected infecting U.S. dairy cattle in March.” • Supporters do that? Oh….
* * * “Trump team ‘having a good laugh’ over Michelle Obama’s ‘deliberate’ decision to skip inauguration: ‘Didn’t expect her to come anyway'” [Page Six, New York Post]. “Barack and Michelle Obama’s office announced this week that Michelle will skip the 60th inaugural ceremonies on Jan. 20, but that the former president will attend. Michelle also skipped former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral on Jan. 9 because she was on an “extended vacation” in Hawaii.” And: “‘She’s never been fake and she’s never been phony. She’s always been very deliberate about where and how she shows up,’ the source said.” But: “She showed up reluctantly for the election.” Oh?!?!? So: “They were united, but she doesn’t have to unify around [Trump]. She doesn’t have to say anything. Her absence speaks volumes.” • Ho hum.
DOGE
“Two Watchdogs Were Rebuffed From Joining Trump’s Cost-Cutting Effort” [New York Times]. “President-elect Donald J. Trump’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency has been on a hiring spree, looking for tech executives and conservative activists to dig into the federal government and look for rules and spending to cut. On Thursday, two activists from a left-leaning watchdog group asked: Where do we sign up? ‘We write to request our appointment as members of the ‘Department of Government Efficiency,” wrote Norman Eisen and Virginia Canter, in a letter to Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the leaders of Mr. Trump’s unofficial effort that plans to slash regulations and spending. The Trump transition team’s response: no. ‘President Trump’s Truth made clear we have no room in our administration for Democrats,’ said Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition, in an email to The New York Times.” • Hmm.
2024 Post Mortem
Get Shirley Chisholm’s name out of your mouth:
History made. pic.twitter.com/eBVKIEU2ps
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) January 16, 2025
My Twitter feed is absolutely infested with saccharine posts from BIden Democrats that assume we’re going to be sorry to see them go because of the great job they did, and the great people they are. It’s driving me nuts. More of the same–
“‘One of the great tragedies of American politics’: Biden ends 5 decades in public life” [NBC]. “He does not plan to hold the traditional final formal news conference.” • Juice no good any more?
“‘I’m Urging You Not to Run’: How Schumer Pushed Biden to Drop Out” [New York Times]. “When Mr. Schumer arrived at Mr. Biden’s beach house that summer day, he could hear the president shouting.” • I wonder if Biden’s book will include that detail…
“The DNC race for chair was a boring technocratic debate — until now” [MSNBC]. “Former Bernie Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir has thrown his hat in the ring. Since he’s joining the race just a couple weeks before the DNC’s members vote, it will be a challenge for him to catch the front-runners…. He’s worked closely with the upper echelons of the party establishment, serving as an aide to former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He also had high-profile posts at the Center for American Progress, the premier think tank affiliated with the center-left party establishment. But he’s also worked in the left wing of the party, most notably managing Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. That campaign was far from perfect, but Sanders came close to winning the Democratic presidential primaries, losing only after the moderate wing of the party consolidated behind Joe Biden [during the Night of the Long Knives orchestrated by Obama]. He also served as political director of the American Civil Liberties Union and is currently the executive director of More Perfect Union, an advocacy journalism nonprofit that describes its mission as ‘building power for the working class.'” • Could do worse, I suppose….
“Former Bernie Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir enters DNC Chair race” [Politico]. “‘We all seemingly agree — rhetorically at least — that focusing on winning back America’s diverse working class is of utmost priority,’ Shakir wrote in his letter to DNC members. ‘But as I have listened to our candidates, I sense a constrained, status-quo style of thinking. We cannot expect working class audiences to see us any differently if we are not offering anything new or substantive to attract their support.'”… In his letter to members, Shakir laid out some of his platform for his bid, including a pledge to turn the DNC into ‘an organizing army’ with its own ‘powerful media outlet’ that will release its own ‘compelling original content.'” • OK, but if the new DNC is an”organizing army,” what is the AFL-CIO for? I know, I know, “don’t answer that,” but you see the issue….
“Faiz Shakir, Ex-Bernie Sanders Campaign Chief, Joins Race for D.N.C. Chair” [New York Times]. The deck: “Mr. Shakir said his mission, should he win the post, would be to redefine the Democratic Party as the party of the working class.” ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished (except by the Democrat PMC base, of course). More: “[Shakir] described the Democratic brand as fundamentally ‘tarnished,’ ‘broken’ and in need of repair. ‘It’s late in the game,’ he said of his entrance. ‘If we can’t have a bold [dread word; remember “bold progressives”?] debate about these issues — it’s now or never.'” And: “The intraparty debate over who will lead it has so far largely revolved around internal concerns such as how much money the national committee will allocate to state parties and who will or will not be awarded contracts to do the party’s work.” • That is, which consultants wet their beaks. It would be nice if Shakir could blow that away, but that seems dubious to me.
“Faiz Shakir’s Late Entry Shakes Up the Race for DNC Chair” [John Nichols, The Nation]. “But even if he may be coming from behind, Shakir’s candidacy should ensure that the chair’s race will be more sharply focused on ending the DNC’s deference to economic elites—a bedrock concern for Shakir, who has worked as a senior adviser for the anti-monopoly agitators at the American Economic Liberty Project.” • That’s the “American Economic Liberties Project.” Spell the name right, ffs. Still, very good news!
“Faiz Shakir, Bernie Sanders’ former campaign chief, enters DNC race” [Associated Press]. “Shakir acknowledged that it may be too late for him to win, but he said something was needed to shake up the race. ‘It feels very fluid to me, based out of a lack of energy and a sense of aimless drift that people are feeling,’ he said. ‘Democrats are in the wilderness, right? There’s no real leader.'” • Ouch!
* * * “Fetterman was elected to challenge convention. Now, he’s challenging his fellow Democrats” [Associated Press]. I don’t agree with the headline at all. Fetterman’s strategy was “every county, every vote.” It was not policy-oriented at all. Fetterman won because he went out and asked for people’s votes, and the voters concluded, rightly, that Mehmet Oz was a loon and worse, an out-of-stater, a fact that Fetterman’s brilliant social media team drove home. More: “Fetterman’s approach is reminding some Democrats of former Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, both of whom clashed with their party during President Joe Biden’s term, became political independents and didn’t run for reelection.” • Well, the party needs it’s rotating villains, and now that Sinema and Manchin are gone, look who pops up.
* * * “If Trump Wants to Unrig the Economy, I’m In” [Elizabeth Warren, Wall Street Journal]. • Excuse my French, but Christ on a crutch, Liz! Has your party been calling Trump a fascist for four years or not? And now it’s “Never mind“? Shakir is so, so right [pounds head on desk].
* * * “How Democrats Drove Silicon Valley Into Trump’s Arms” (interview) [Marc Andreesen, New York Times]. “[ANDREESEN:] Normie Democrat is what I call the Deal, with a capital D. Nobody ever wrote this down; it was just something everybody understood: You’re me, you show up, you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a capitalist, you start a company, you grow a company, and if it works, you make a lot of money. And then the company itself is good because it’s bringing new technology to the world that makes the world a better place, but then you make a lot of money, and you give the money away. Through that, you absolve yourself of all of your sins. Then in your obituary, it talks about what an incredible person you were, both in your business career and in your philanthropic career. And by the way, you’re a Democrat, you’re pro–gay rights, you’re pro-abortion, you’re pro all the fashionable and appropriate social causes of the time. There are no trade-offs. This is the Deal.” But: “[A]fter Obama’s re-election in 2012 through ultimately to 2016, things really started to change…. the unifying thread here is, I believe it’s the children of the elites. The most privileged people in society, the most successful, send their kids to the most politically radical institutions, which teach them how to be America-hating communists. They fan out into the professions, and our companies hire a lot of kids out of the top universities, of course. And then, by the way, a lot of them go into government, and so we’re not only talking about a wave of new arrivals into the tech companies. We’re also talking about a wave of new arrivals into the congressional offices. And of course, they all know each other, and so all of a sudden you have this influx, this new cohort. And my only conclusion is what changed was basically the kids. In other words, the young children of the privileged going to the top universities between 2008 to 2012, they basically radicalized hard at the universities, I think, primarily as a consequence of the global financial crisis and probably Iraq. Throw that in there also. But for whatever reason, they radicalized hard…. It turned out to be a coalition of economic radicals, and this was the rise of Bernie Sanders, but the kids turned on capitalism in a very fundamental way. They came out as some version of radical Marxist, and the fundamental valence went from ‘Capitalism is good and an enabler of the good society’ to ‘Capitalism is evil and should be torn down.’ And then the other part was social revolution and the social revolution, of course, was the Great Awokening, and then those conjoined.” • Well, fortunately the Democrats nobbled Sanders and prevented the social revolution part. But does Andreesen give them credit for that? N-o-o-o-o. Why, the ingratitude.
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban, clears way for app to shut down in U.S. as soon as Sunday” [CBS]. “‘We conclude that the challenged provisions do not violate the petitioners’ First Amendment rights,’ the court said in a unanimous unsigned opinion, which upholds the lower court decision against TikTok. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch wrote separately, with Gorsuch agreeing with the outcome of the case but splitting with the court’s reasoning. The court’s ruling comes days before the law, which was passed with bipartisan majorities of Congress last April, is set to take effect. TikTok and a group of content creators who use the app argued the law infringes on their free speech rights, and the Supreme Court heard arguments in their bid to block it one week ago. ‘There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community. But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary,’ the court’s opinion said.'” • I personally would prefer to hand my data over to the Chinese government, because what are they going to do with it? Rather than a US corporation, which has all kinds of ways of doing me harm.
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!
Celebrity Watch
Oddly, this page has disappeared from the intertubes:
Commentary:
Celebrities getting COVID at the hotel they’re all staying at and let me remind you the industry-standard US film&TV industry COVID safety protocols (vaccines, quarantines, paid sick leave, masking, PCR testing of all crew) completely ended in May 2023 and not a single one spoke
— thomas 🛠 gazafunds.com/all (@t_NYC) January 14, 2025
Not that we’re bitter.
Lambert here: I don’t like a lot of this week’s charts. In wastewater, too many red dots concentrated in the Midwest and the Atlantic coast, so I started circling areas in red, again. New York’s weirdly persistent higher hospitalization rate continues. Traveler positivity is up, and worse, the dominant traveler variants are JN* and KP*, which, while present in the national variants, are very low. And in the two death charts, the projected deaths seem to have leveled out, when in the past they decreased. Nothing earth-shattering, but it does make me queasy, and it’s well after the holiday bump.
| Wastewater | |
| ★ This week[1] CDC January 10 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| ★ Variants [3] CDC January 18 |  ★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC January 11 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data January 16: | ★ National [6] CDC Janurary 16: |
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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 30: | ★ Variants[10] CDC December 30 |
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| Deaths | |
| ★ Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 11: | ★ Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 11: |
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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
Manufacturing: “United States Industrial Production” [Trading Economics]. “Industrial production in the United States surged by 0.9% in December 2024, marking the strongest increase since February and significantly surpassing market expectations of a 0.3% rise. A key driver of this growth was a 0.2 percentage point contribution from the production of aircraft and parts, following the resolution of a work stoppage at a major aircraft manufacturer.”
Capacity: “United States Capacity Utilization” [Trading Economics]. “Capacity utilization in the US rose sharply to 77.6% in December of 2024, the highest since August, to rebound from the downwardly revised 77% recorded in the two prior months, which were the lowest since May 2020.”
Housing: “United States Housing Starts” [Trading Economics]. “Housing stars in the United States surged by 15.8% from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 1.499 Million units in December of 2024, the most since March 2021. It is the highest number of starts since February 2024, above market expectations of a softer increase to 1.320 Million.”
Tech: “KABOOM! SpaceX rocket EXPLODES as vid shows glowing debris raining down…but upbeat Elon Musk says ‘entertainment is guaranteed!'” [The U.S. Sun]. “Incredible footage shows glowing debris raining down across the sky after the 400ft behemoth failed after launching from Boca Chica, southern Texas, on Thursday…. Confirming the explosion, SpaceX wrote on X: “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn.” • “Rapid unscheduled disassembly” is, of course, GENIUS. Hat tip, McKinsey?
Tech: “Apple pauses AI-generated news alerts after headline notification errors” [Axios]. “The BBC lodged an official complaint after the Apple Intelligence summaries generated an inaccurate headline of a report by the British outlet that incorrectly represented a report on Luigi Mangione, the suspect in last month’s killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, by suggesting he had committed suicide…. Following the BBC false headline controversy, the nonprofit Reporters Without Borders called generative AI services “a danger to the public’s right to reliable information on current affairs.'” • As if anybody cared about that!
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 38 Fear (previous close: 28 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 26 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 17 at 1:37:47 PM ET.
“Ancient burials reveal ‘remarkable’ women-dominated society in UK. ‘Relatively rare'” [News and Observer]. “When the Romans reached Britain in the first century, they were shocked to find ‘remarkable’ women standing in their way. Female tribal leaders Cartimandua and Boudica became legends, leading uprisings that destroyed Roman towns and challenged the authority of the empire, and women in their community were able to own property, divorce and lead the Celtic armies. Julius Caesar himself noted the seemingly exotic practice of British women taking more than one husband in his book ‘Commentarii de Bello Gallico.’ But, because bodies were commonly cremated, excarnated or placed in wetlands during the Iron Age, proof of these powerful matriarchal lineages was absent from the archaeological record in Britain — until now…. ‘This was the cemetery of a large kin group,’ study author Lara Cassidy, a professor genetics at Trinity College, said in the release. ‘We reconstructed a family tree with many different branches and found most members traced their maternal lineage back to a single woman, who would have lived centuries before. In contrast, relationships through the father’s line were almost absent.’ This means when a man was ready to marry, he would have left his community to go and join his wife’s, and that family land would have been passed from mother to daughter, Cassidy said. ‘This is the first time this type of system has been documented in European prehistory and it predicts female social and political empowerment,’ Cassidy said. ‘It’s relatively rare in modern societies, but this might not always have been the case.'” • Headline from the original (abstract only): “Women were at the centre of social networks in Iron Age Britain.”
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151 comments
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That photo caption could also read: “Doom approacheth in serried ranks.”
Let Dusty the Adventure Dog be your guide.
I’m wondering what is happening to the myriads of “unhoused” Citizens in the Los Angeles Basin? Out to the desert with them?
Supreme Court gives cities in California and beyond more power to crack down on homeless camps Cal Matters
30 some years ago, when i lived in austin…in the brief period i was housed right before i came out here…i was something of an advocate for homeless folks. i knew a lot of them…helped them out when i could.
and went to the big protests downtown when austin was doing its “no sitting” thing.
even then, the vacant houses and even apartment complexes and subdivisions(left over from the late 80’s bust) were the obvious solution,lol….but, being a wilderness being at root, i always wondered:
if we cant do the obvious, ready made thing…why not think outside the box, and do homesteading again?
lots and lots of empty places left in USA.
i know, because i live in one,lol.
send these folks nobody wants out to the hinterlands, with basic provisions and basic tools and basic materials, and say…here, build y’all’selves a town, or something.
just within an hundred or so miles of me, to the north and west, are abandoned places…even abandoned towns.
people that own such places likely cant sell them…because there aint nothing out there…but there wasnt anything out here when my neighboring towns were built, either.
i’m aware of the “reservation” connotations, of course.
but prolly 70% of the homeless i knew back then were not drugged and crazy.
they just had a run of bad luck, and couldnt make it the modern world.
so, if the ptb, local, state and fed, cant stand these eyesore humans…give them a place to be that nobody wants…and give them the minimal resources and training to make a go of it.
when i was homeless…and alternately de facto homeless…for those ten years..i would have jumped at such an offer.
I think for many the use of torture in its many forms is the thing that matter, much as torture in the War on Terror, for it feels good to “punish” those deemed inferior or defective.
tried my whole life,but ive never understood that need in people…especially in those who(“lo there”) go about proclaiming loudly how christian and holy they are.
Humanism is dead, i suppose…and they have killed it.
perhaps reanimating that tradition is where we need to begin, no?
Phyllis remarked once that one of the big ‘drivers’ for the “Holier Than Thou” life was the sneaking suspicion that the Big Kahuna really didn’t care about conformism. The life as lived was His, Her, or It’s guide.
I remember one of the early Heinlein stories, “Coventry,” which, even then I saw as a panegyric for Libertarianism. The ‘moral’ of the story, if there is one, is that some sort of oversight and imposed equity will be crucial for the “success” of the Homelesssteading movement.
Stay safe in the upcoming Big Freeze.
Altadena was where many Black families bought homes in the 60’s, population 31% Black. Lot of Mexicans there too, they are devastated. I’ve heard 45,000 displaced. Trucks headed down from Oakland with supplies, AIM donating coats. There is a link to send funds if folks interested.
> Altadena
Thanks. Oddly, it’s not in the news very much.
Lambert, here’s the donation link below, includes a comment to specify $ for Altadena.
In addition there will be trucks leaving at the end of the week for local donations. I will have a time and place mid-week.
Appreciate you Lambert, thx.
https://blacksolidarity.org/donate
Purple mountain majesties-above the fruited plain, America.
Dusty the Adventure Dog is on my lap, dreaming of doing something daring…
aye.
last nice day.
73 degrees, but the southwest wind(gusting at 45, a few times) is chilly…but the wilderness bar is built to deflect southwest and southeast winds…and protect somewhat from the north, in at least part of the bar/library cloister.
so i’ve been out here all day.
vac sealed all that deer meat i cut up yesterday…and the big gray rooster i butchered after that.
and im cooking another leg o lamb on the smoker, re-a-l slow….
and nekkid in the sun…vitamin D, and all….
because it all goes to sh&t tomorrow afternoon, and the arctic pays a visit for a few days.
firewood is laid in…i hope its enough,lol.
water containers filled(bc ill cut off the water on sunday…lest i be pressed into plumbing when its 44 degrees and windy next wednesday)
so its been homegrown and coffee for the first half of my day….and eating like a king, in spite of the whole poverty thing….and now its beer and jazz in the sun, giving the winter salad garden a last soak, for to fortify it against the cold(ill pick a bunch of salad and cilantro manana)….and watching the turks, chix and guinneas wander around, doing their thing…not knowing that this is their last day of freedom for a while….
ill keep em in the run….or in the chix house when its really cold.
buckets of water in greenhouse to keep them hydrated during the event.
and the woodstoves are chargedand ready for the match…and ive got the heater side of the minisplit running to charge the house similarly(easier to maintain heat than to heat up)….and ive got all the western curtains…and the big baffles on the wood porch…open to let in as much sunlight as possible, on this last warm day.
and i, too, am soaking the sun into my bones…the large lizard on a rock thing.
cuz the next week is gonna suck big hairy.
seemed appropriate to switch to one of the sunday blues playlists:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spkcAjt-TKU
wind has shifted more to the west…working its way to from the north…
so longjohns,lol.
as far as im willing to go, at the moment.
i’ll end up fully wrapped by the time the leg o lamb is ready.
high clouds…scattered cirrocumulus(mackeral scales)…but diffuse…shredded by the low level jet off baja thats overhead…mixing down into this surface wind.
those clouds are hustling…racing past, and then dissolving just to my east where the dryer air remains.
all this pacific water vapor is what will give us snow inna couple of days(ugh).
so the nekkid part of my day is done.
and im feeding and putting up later than usual…because all the critters need to use this day, too.
the last nice day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zt2npNLdq7g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toqRbV7TlZ0
this is badass brother! I love your description of your prepping for onset of a cold spell. Making similar prep here in the hood where it’s also getting hella cold…..picked some extra chiles off my grandbaby’s chili plants in the yard. Strolled down to the closest taco truck for breakfast and do a little ICE watch, they’re everywhere right now statewide. Will walk over later to the coffee shop which doesn’t serve police, got to give them my business. Buena Suerte to you and all your animals.
Big hairy yarbles for sure here too. Low teens several nights next week for the North American Deep South.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHSm_ISMMBI
aussies doin our music better than us.
i reckon we’ve outsourced and offshored quite enough, thank you.
> last nice day.
“The Last Nice Day” is a great title for a short story. Perhaps about the Jackpot.
You know how the Feds are striving to keep inflation @ 2%, my home insurance bill just came in @ $8100, up from $6300 last year.
A tidy little 29% increase…
You’ve said in the past you could get a house in your hood for less thank 100k. That’s a lot for insurance.
Basic homes were $200-250k here before AirBnB showed up, and most every home like that has sold since then to speculators, who have goosed the price up to $450k.
There is a price point of around $600k and above where STR’s didn’t work, so most of the inventory of those sort of homes languished on the market, but that was before the LA Infernos, and in the past week a number of them have sold to Angelenos looking to get out of dodge.
In other AI news:
AI-designed proteins tackle century-old problem — making snake antivenoms Nature
“Proteins designed using artificial intelligence (AI) can block the lethal effects of toxins delivered in the venom of cobras, adders and other deadly snakes.”
But, after that’s done, then what?
I guess Musk could get to Mars too.
One of the originally intended uses for AI is as a tool in scientific research. The problem with that is that it does not attract investments & big money, so businessmen came up with the hype that we have going on now.
Norm Eisen applying to DOGE.
Did not have that on my Bingo card.
With regards to the Greenland “buyout” plan – I’m sure Trump’s MAGA base will love a deal that makes foreigners millionaires. The US is literally rotting from within, and someone proposes this idiotic scheme.
This is an insane idea from people that should be nowhere near any decision making processes.
Sixty billions is equal to cost of about two Friedman units in Ukraine or Afghanistan. And you actually get something tangible for it. Anyway, he can say it will be paid for by EU, and this time he even will be right, given his other plans with EU regarding US gas and military “protection”.
Why am I not surprised to find that Thomas P.M. Barnett, who has expressed the view above about the US buying out Greenland and absorbing the Canadian provinces as states, is a Harvard-trained Ph.D. in political science who supported the Iraq War and wrote various imperialist grand strategies?
(I should note by way of fair disclosure I am a UMich-trained Ph.D. in History, and should note also that as an undergrad, I did support the Iraq War from autumn 2002 through spring 2004, then publicly admitted my errors in a column in the college paper after the Shiite Revolt in the Spring of ’04, when it became clear to 21-year old me that the Bushies were just full of it and making it up as they went along. I became deeply opposed to that war, and to American empire in general, as inconsistent with republican (small r) government.)
It is, with respect for my friends and a mentor who went there, a very Harvard, and very frankly political science-y view — it essentially and basically misunderstands the situation, by refusing to recognize that there are such things as nations, and that these are things born of shared experience and bonds of sentiment that make people willing to fight to maintain their independence, in ways that the obtuse “rationalism” of certain social scientists refuses to understand. (see also McNamara, Robert. The late great Col. Pat Lang said that in his view, a lot of the problems in US foreign policy came from having political scientists and economists running things, vs. historians, scholars of literature, philosophers.)
Canadians don’t want to be Americans and haven’t for quite a long time. See, e.g., the Battle of the Chateauguay.
If Greenlanders don’t want to be Danes, I think it highly unlikely they want to be Americans.
Small nations have the legitimate right to self-determination.
he’s still suffering from Empire Disease.
the repeated allusions to russian and chinese ‘aggression’ give it away.
people who project their sins onto others are often unaware that they project, at all(see: my mom…it scales quite nicely, as a pattern to hold up to loftier places)
were we still a rising empire, i could see the strategic logic of greenland and the canadian arctic…and panama, for that matter.
but as even this dude admits…however obliquely…we aint #1! any more…we have peer rivals.
and, too, i could see the strategic necessity of those places if we abandoned empire, and tried to go all autarkik, like russia did….reinvigorate manufacturing what we need, here at home.
lots of resources in those places…untapped because it was mostly icebound and crazy to work there.
but we’d hafta import chinese and russian engineers and tool builders…for the tools that build the tools…because our betters so unwisely let all that domestic acumen go.
with all that in the pipe, lets smoke it.
we are an empire in decline, who has offshored all its wherewithal for the obscene profits of the few.
we aint comin back from that,lol.
so all this yellin about greenland and saskatchewan is just performative grasping after a thing we never admitted to, and is now long past our reach.
…why is it that Americans who never left their state are more knowledgable on geopolitics and how the rest of the world works than those folks who studied fancy courses and worked in fancy places abroad all the time…one of the mysteries of the e-lit-e
Because if you’re from “somewhere” you recognize the vacuousness of those who claim to be from “nowhere” …
There is something to that.
In “Dangerous Liaisons” Merteuil and Vicomte have the famous exchange:
“Illusions of coure are by their nature sweet”
“I have no illusions I have lost them on my travels”
On the other hand since the Middle Ages it was part of a young craftsman´s training to travel through Germany first before he would be allowed to take the “master´s exam” and set up shop somewhere. Comparable to the educational journeys among elite youth later epecially I assume GB and Germany.
I do not think cosmopolitanism as such is a bad thing at all. It used to be desireable. I think. Of course the same is true about emcanipation and race equality until they were de-contextualized.
Why have a Baerbock, a Habeck turned into such crooks?
Unlike Wagenknecht? Lacking Marxism knowledge?
I agree with everything written above. I do think that you are right amfortas the hippie — he is still fatally addicted to the empire drug. I think empire is one of the original corrosive elements seeping through the body politic. It shows up everywhere from the evening news to football games to small town police departments with various surplus War on Terror materiel and equipment.
So far as AG’s question, and eg’s answer — I think this is in fact a phenomenon, the often far clearer appreciation of the national and world-situation by people in what I would call The Provinces than in what can be characterized as The Metropoles.
I think, having been a working-class scholarship kid at an elite college, that there is indeed a moment that comes where the forces of the Man, the Establishment generally, including the Business Right and their Right-wing thinking analogues, as well as Big Liberalism, are eager to have you abandon your communities — which is, often, the first step towards the betrayal of these communities on a class basis.
If you make that decision, as in my view J.D. Vance did, or as many people I know who became Obama Admin myrmidons on the other side of the aisle did, you may use your communities instrumentally in the future (see Vance, supra), but you no longer are part of them.
And it is in being part of these local communities that one sees very closely, and without anonymity, the full cross-section of society, the working out in real time of all the things we read about in books (also, a lot of the eager capitalist quisling class described above simply don’t do or take seriously the reading).
I am reminded of what Justice Robert Jackson (who was the US Prosecutor at Nuremberg) wrote about “the county seat lawyer” in June, 1950:
The law to him was like a religion, and its practice was more than a means of support; it was a mission. He was not always popular in his community, but he was respected. Unpopular minorities and individuals often found in him their only mediator and advocate. He was too independent to court the populace — he thought of himself as a leader and lawgiver, not as a mouthpiece. He “lived well, worked hard, and died. poor.” Often his name was in a generation or two, forgotten. It was from this brotherhood that America has drawn its statesmen and its judges. A free and self-governing Republic stands as a monument for·the little known and unremembered as well as for the famous men of our profession.
In the sleek and hermetically-sealed world of neoliberalism, of the Economist magazine and fancy coffee shops, none of these things — which are life itself — are glimpsed. I think watching these things, on the other hand, especially up close, can bring wisdom and good judgement regarding our larger situation.
In Germany, the guild tradition of Wanderjahre / Walz is still alive in some trades.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeyman_years
https://roaringwaterjournal.com/tag/kluft/
“Why am I not surprised to find…”
Really fine comment, all through.
Thank you, CA, I very much appreciate that.
Wasn’t it Dick Cheney who said that the idea of nation states was “quaint?”
i think it was bill clinton who said sovereignty is quaint?
> Canadians don’t want to be Americans
That’s the Canadian people. Are they the decision makers?
Yes, even dictatorships have to obey public opinion to some extent, let alone parliamentary democracies. (Without intending to violate Godwin’s Law here, when one reads Speer’s account of the Third Reich from the inside, it is notable how much Hitler is frightened of German public opinion; this is why Speer says he didn’t go over to a total wartime economy until mid-1943, Hitler was terrified that he would lose the support of the German people if he couldn’t bribe them with consumer goods.)
If a people want to be a people and a nation, they will reject an elite class that is loyal, either de jure or de facto, to a foreign power. This is what happens in our own Revolution, when the old Royalist ruling class is destroyed — sent into exile, house arrest, socially destroyed, though rarely actually executed without cause — and replaced by a Patriot faction.
Or look at the permanent turn in Ireland after the Easter Rising away from parliamentarism and towards outright republicanism and revolution. And Canada is far stronger in comparison to the US than Ireland was to Britain.
I would also say those on the left should stand up, on principle, for the legitimate self-determination of all nations, including small nations.
We can do hemispheric defense while being good neighbors — thus the eponymous Good Neighbor policy of Franklin Roosevelt with respect to the rest of the hemisphere, particularly Latin America.
Yesterday, the thought occurred to me:
i thought about it,lol.
this last summers homegrown is rather strong stuff.
The hot topic today for the PMC people in my orbit is the TicTok ban. I don’t have the app but I do see posts in various places from TicTok. It seems very popular to the young people. Where is gets complicated is the why.
My PMC friends are all for the ban because it is a spying app from China and everybody knows it. Since this is what they think, I have to wonder what the real truth is? Given what we know from Facebook and Twitter (pre Musk) the government was pushing them to censor what they didn’t want spread. My first guess is the TicTok thing is about this as well – except they can’t influence TicTok because they are a foreign company, which is why they want it banned.
Not sure what to believe so only guessing and as usual, I have no idea who to believe.
I think you are correct that the PMC and the gummint are against Tik Tok because it is harder to censor and propagandize.
I’ve seen strong arguments to the effect that RedNote is sucking down a lot more data than United States social does (or is allowed to). But so what? If one must give up one’s data, isn’t it better to give to the Chinese, who can’t do anything with it, than to US corporations and the US government, who will use it to create actual harms? Or am I too naive here?
Even while shrieking about Toktok as the greatest threat since Chinese EVs, or Bernie Sanders, Biden and then Harris made it integral to their election strategies and for grounded their use of it as evidence of their brilliance. Are they Chinese agents or unwitting dupes?
Or is this all incoherent nonsense?
The factor of being “Chinese agents” goes back to Clinton. When thinking about that “Power Couple” I find that my lexicon of expletives is insufficient to the task of describing them and their works.
> Or is this all incoherent nonsense?
Yes.
Regarding Tiktok, I’m not sure where I am. On the one hand, I think is a legitimate forum for self-expression under the First Amendment.
At the same time, I have real concerns that it is addictive. I met one guy who was younger, in his early 20s, who said he watched 8 hours of Tiktoks in a day. At around 4 per minute (15 seconds per video is common, is my understanding, which I’m glad to be corrected on), with 480 minutes in 8 hours, that’s 1,920 videos. I think it can’t help but have a role in decreasing attention spans.
Finally, I would object to not only any foreign government, but also the US government, owning this platform; I don’t think it’s properly the role of a government to own this sort of communications universe, or if it is, it should become a public utility.
Opium War in reverse? This time the Chinese bring in the addictive “substance”?
My teenagers spend inordinate amounts of time on TikTok. It’s addictive. But when my kids finally get tired of it, they flip over to YouTube :)
my young adult male offspring do, too.(almost 19 and 24).
i asked Eldest what he was gon do when the Banhammer came down…
he said, “well, move to Red(whatever it is)”.
no big deal,lol.
the people in charge only think they’re in charge.
like the porn bans.
lol.
VPN usage through the roof almost immediately!
more and more, it looks like we’re resembling the sclerotic and moribund Ottomans, than anything like the long end of western roman empire.
altho, i still expect a hasty, at some point, retreat from brittania, out my way.
with similar outcomes…save for the gunpowder and generalised increase in knowledge, since then.
itll still be warlordism/gangland(but with white folks!).
> VPN usage through the roof almost immediately!
“Exposed: How Israeli Spies Control Your VPN” [MintPress].
The TikTok ban, imho, is because it is absolutely killing our legacy social media. Facebook is just old folks. Instagram is lame. X has the Musk problem. All the ad revenue is going to TikTok. Censorship is just a cover story.
TikTok is full of western spooks censoring whatever the west want to be consored, and the spooks themselves know very well the tales about China influence are fiction. I think it’s just collective red scare paranoia fueled by recognition that their influence in world is diminishing.
my little sister and all her little friends keep asking about why tiktok is getting banned. i relish in sharing the mitt romney quote about too much palestine support on tiktok with them. a lot of my friends are anti tiktok for brainrot reasons. but you can be anti tiktok thanks to how well it has breaded and circused the populace while being anti censorship. it’s about the precedent it sets for banning apps the government doesn’t like. also, people will just find new ways to waste time online.
quotes for reference:
“You have a social media ecosystem environment in which context, history, facts get lost, and the emotion — the impact of images — dominates.” – Tony Blinken
“Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites — it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.” – Mitt Romney
McKinsey doesn’t get credit for RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly). The terms been around for a while, but the current popularity comes from Kerbal Space Program.
(Highly recommended, if more people had played KSP, we wouldn’t have been subjected to quite as much silly conjecture by people with no feel for orbital mechanics, the whole Oreshnik kerfuffle being the most recent.)
Scott Manley can confirm.
Anybody remember when Challenger blew up seconds after launching and the controller said ‘Obviously a major malfunction.’
Yeah, and the “major malfunction” began in the managerial cadres of NASA. Morton Thiokol warned NASA not to launch when the temperature was below a certain threshold. NASA launched anyway and the rest is history.
You mean like people talking about putting satellites over Ukraine, or another country of interest.
> Kerbal Space Program
Developed in Mexico!
Remarkable women-dominated society in Britain. “Relatively rare.”
Not much data to go on, given that the scientists are trying to posit a larger society from one familial burying grounds.
But it is well known that Etruscan women were treated generally as equals, which scandalized their Roman neighbors, even though Roman women had much more latitude and rights than Greek women did. Roman women could divorce a man who abused them, for instance.
https://www.finestresullarte.info/opere-e-artisti/donna-etrusca-libera-bellissima-moderna
We don’t know much nitty-gritty about the Etruscans because their written records have disappeared. It was known that they had a revealed religion, for example. The article linked to above is in Italian, and it points to female literacy, decision making in the household, raising of all children born to a woman (without the Roman ceremony of the paterfamilias raising a child from the ground and accepting it), and public appearances at political and social functions.
But the article is in Italian, and we all know that in 400 BC, Italians were being irrational and wandering around in sleeveless t-shirts…
Thank you for this. I really was inspired and educated by this article. I have always loved the Sarcofago degli sposi da Cerveteri. The couple looks so wide-eyed and happy.
Lunker Walleye: Here’s another article from the same site that discusses Etruscan cooking and eating habits.
I didn’t know about the Roman stereotype of pingui etruschi — plump Etruscans.
I have a feeling that overweight was a class marker. Having seen plenty of Etruscan art, I haven’t noticed much of a trend toward overweight. There are chunky Etruscans on Etruscan sarcophagi — but the statues on the sarcophagi also display a curious foreshortening. On the other hand, in Roman art, almost everyone tends to be sleek — that famous bella figura.
https://www.finestresullarte.info/opere-e-artisti/a-tavola-con-gli-etruschi-cucina-etrusca-banchetti-simposi
Olive oil. Sheep-milk cheese. Pork preparations. Yum.
And for any fans of Italian antiquity, Alice Rohrwacher’s La chimera (2023) is a visually entertaining outing with a band of ne’er-do-well Etruscan grave robbers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkIC8YI9-eU
The nomadic and seminomadic people who inhabited north and west of China historically had a lot of women leaders, even in war: lots of records of warrior queens and princesses. While this scandalized the Confucian Chinese, the funny thing is that these peoples became the “Northern” dynasties during the Northern and Southern Dynasties and eventually unified all China as the Sui Dynasty (and the Li clan that supplanted the Sui as the Tang were mostly of the nomadic stock as well). The well known Chinese legend of the heroine Mulan supposesly took place during the Northern Wei Dynasty during 6th century, which makes sense in context, as it was one of the Northern Dynasties, although with a twist–it would make more sense if she were of the nomadic stock accustomed to warrior women rather than proper Han.
It does seem that gender equality was far more common around the world than one might think.
hk:
Agreed.
The problem with Anglophone feminism is that it is selective and imbued with presentism.
You can sum up the long historical view in the Anglosphere as:
“Artemisia Gentilleschi. And then Virginia Woolf wrote about having a room of one’s own in 1911. The rest is a big blank. Patriarchy!”
Unfortunately, Trottula and the women professors were adding lustre to the Medical School at Salerno in the high middle ages.
Oh.
> 1911
Copyreader correction: Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own —> 1928 / 1929
https://www.britannica.com/topic/A-Room-of-Ones-Own
caucus99percenter: Thanks.
So the history of the world started even later that I thought!
Here is a video by someone who just went to see RedBook given the upcoming TikTok ban. It is the second such video I have seen. I think it is the start of a fast-rising genre of videos, on TikTok for the next few days, and then elsewhere. This one is titled by the TikTokCringe subreddit agreggator as ” The Luigi Game is about to go Multiplayer.” Here is the link.
https://www.reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/comments/1i3f1cy/luigis_game_is_about_to_be_multiplayer/
man,lol.
the comments are pretty crazy.
“both sides” of the official continuum singin from the same approved hymnal.
they dont live in the america i have inhabited for most of my life.
and again…every single MBA should hafta spend a semester on foodstamps in a trailerpark in some backwater, as a degree requirement.
how will they know, otherwise, how it really is, way down here?
oth, young mba’s are likely tastier than their older mentors and profs and such.
so, less time in the pens, etc.= more economical…and we can thereby prevent the proliferation of said parasites.
a modest proposal, and all.
> RedBook
RedNote (RedBook being a Hearst “women’s magazine.”
>but what if it [Canada] became America’s 51st-through-59th-states
You heard it on NC first! Just follow the Wyoming Rule (min 500k pop), and you’re welcome to hang a star on the flag.
I think the most important takeaway from this is that overnight Trump has moved the Overton window and it’s not coming back. In the beforetimes, when someone would bring up this topic, it would get answered with scoffing, a snort, or a joke. Now people are seriously writing, talking, and even thinking about it.
Here in the new normal, where there are no pandemics and genocide is #I’mlovinit, we now realize that Kicking It Down The Road™ is global strategy. Why does the border split the Great Lakes in half? How different are Canadians from Americans, really, in 2025 and not 1960, when you try to map out the differences on a spreadsheet? (start with Covid, Gaza, and NATO — these should be massively different; sadly, they’re nearly lock-step).
The world is an accelerating stupid mess, it won’t get any worse by least considering the possibilities, but let’s open it up! Why should Canada join the US? Canada should join Russia! or Canada should outbid for Greenland! Quebec should separate and take Maine & Louisiana with it! Time for no idea is a bad idea and keep this party going.
its gonna get stupider, mark me words,lol.
any dissolution of an hegemony such as ours…after 80 somide years…is bound to be stupid.
the most powerful in that hegemony wont get the memo that its over for a long while, yet.
it will be considered spam, or the ravings of a lunatic.
until it isnt.
grasping and groping for the power thats slipping away…in ways that they cannot understand…one could almost pity the masters…almost.
Let their burning laurels cook them well…and may they feed the poor with their sacrifice.
While we’re at it we should clean up all the non-Constitutional territory stuff. DC, Puerto Rico, Guam, Virgin Islands, you’re in too.
so maybe usa labor restrictions shouldnt apply to these new aquisitions?
like Guam?
Guam has been a boon to what remains of usa manufacturers.
in the world, not of it, and all.
lol.
all them chinese and other south asian workers, lured with…im sure…perfectly honest promises.
capitalism is the perfect expression of FREEDOM, dontchaknow?
observe: Baywatch.
that was a foreign policy win, right there….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs1Omb47ins
Speaking of DOGE, it is now being reported that Vivek will run for govenor of Ohio, so clearly the brouhaha he started over Christmas did not sit well with Trump. I wonder what will become of DOGE now?
> I wonder what will become of DOGE now
DOGE will do fine without Vivek, just fine, and Vivek, having in essence called his Ohio voters deplorables in the H1B fiasco, will hopefully sink without a trace.
Maybe not. Musk is throwing a tantrum over YouTubers mocking him for his fake expertise in Path of Exile 2.
I’ve seen 5 year olds with more self control. Things like this add up.
Wouldn’t it be nice to hear those two little words from Trump: “You’re fired”.
“Rapid unscheduled disassembly” is, of course, GENIUS. Hat tip, McKinsey?
I can’t wait to try: “Everybody in here needs to piss off! Or I’ll make sure you all experience a rapid unscheduled disassembly!”
Well, doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but…
…it blowed up real good!
Farm Film Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHkvD7-u7y8
At HP when we had a spate of printers burning people’s houses down we referred it in emails as “rapid oxidation events.”
It was a fascinating investigation. Turns out flame retardant plastics and circuit boards aren’t really that, so much, under the right conditions. We had to redesign all our power supplies to prevent it, and HP, to their credit, did that.
Carly soon put paid to any such behaviour…..
These are classic engineering and maintenance terms. All are great :)
Thermally re-arranged = it melted
High resistance air gap at the power supply = thing was unplugged
Cycling the power supply = turned it on and off
Percussive maintenance = I hit until it started
There are many, many, more!
IT and aerospace is the richest seam.
PEBCAK – problem exists between chair and keyboard
Controlled flight into terrain
Kinetic release
Although chemistry provides some good ones. I will dig them up from in the pipeline….
> Percussive maintenance
I think Trump is “percussive maintenance,” and not only for Republicans.
I figure that Joe’s odds of making it through the weekend are pretty decent, so here is my send-off.
PS -anyone heard from Antifa?
Have a Cigar, Joe
(Melody from the Pink Floyd classic)
Come in here, dear Joe, have a cigar
You’ve really come far
You really flew high
We thought by now you’d die
But you made it to the end, we really love you!
I’ve always had the deep respect and I mean it most sincerely
The cease-fire was fantastic, that is really what I think
Oh by the way, what’s that genocidal stink?
And did we tell you the name of the game boy?
We call it ridin’ your walking cane …
We’re just knocked out
We heard about the Gaza sellout
You got a lot of pardons out
Hunter’s so happy he can hardly count
Kamala is just green
Don’t mind approval charts
Nance was really such a monster, but we’ll all pull together as a Donkey team!
And did we tell you the name of the game Joe?
We call it memory care for your brain!
Farewell, Joe. The country is in good hands with Brump. /s
But he still owes me $600.
I will not accept a portion of the Argentine gold reserves either.
Even with 10% for the ‘Big Guy,’ that’s still $540 USD. Would it qualify as “Honest Graft” for the IRS?
Just as former Bank of England / Bank of Canada head guy Mark Carney announces his “outsider” run to be Justin Trudeau’s successor as leader of the Canadian federal Liberal Party, his green capitalism pet project is unravelling. Pity that Jon Stewart didn’t think to ask about that on Monday night.
> Just as former Bank of England / Bank of Canada head guy Mark Carney announces his “outsider” run
Outside what?
I have added orts and scraps, quite late, but the charts take a minute. Have a good weekend, everyone!
Long time reader and infrequent commenter who will miss Lambert’s wit and wisdom when he retires from Water Cooler. Naked Capitalism has always been about sharing informed opinion and I offer here a somewhat unique story and perspective as a recently elected Commissioner (1 of 5) in one of the fastest growing Townships in Pennsylvania. I also have a favor to ask NC readers (see below) should it be allowed.
Myself and another man were elected, as “moderate” Democrats in an overwhelmingly Republican area of Central, PA in 2023. Either we were just lucky or there is a lesson that can be learned by what we did. We campaigned to “Preserve History and Open Space, Smart Growth, and Fiscal Conservatism” Our campaign signs said “Save It Before They Pave It” and we continue to use a website at saveupperallen.com to educate and inform our township’s 23,000 residents.
After a year of bi-partisanship and delivering a no tax increase $30 million budget, our board colleagues suddenly decided to pull the plug on an important project that we all agreed to include in our 2025 budget: The rehabilitation of the 1898 metal truss Bishop Bridge that is eligible for the National Register. The bridge can be fully restored using “old school” methods for $850,000 vs. a County estimate of $2,700,000. Saving this bridge under this protocol could save many more like it.
What changed? Our area is under intense development pressure and our County (Cumberland) recently changed the “Future Land Use” map for the beautiful area near the bridge from Rural/Agriculture to Suburban. Bingo. Our Board colleagues decided it’s now better to demolish this bridge. We don’t have much time and are circulating this petition. Please consider taking 1 minute to sign it:
Petition · Save the 1898 Bishop Road Bridge – United States · Change.org
Signed. Good luck! It’s a beautiful spot and bridge. I hope you can save it. And congratulations on your election to office.
Signed. This was the address where I found it.
I fixed the URL. This is it.
And tossed in a little coin, as well.
Good for you. Now find out who got the designation changed to suburban and punish them.
Your link thanked me for giving 20 shekels, for some reason. :)
Is the bridge on the National Register?
One somewhat eccentric idea; the old Steelworkers Union gained national prominence with a campaign of bombing non-Union jobsites. Up until the Los Angeles Times building bombing of 1910, the campaign had broad popular support.
Start videoing the bridge daily. Those r– b—–ds will try and do the demolition under cover of darkness, probably on a weekend, unannounced. Thus, 24/7 surveillance will be necessary. If the bridge does “come down,” prepare a campaign of “monkeywrenching.” Sabotage of construction equipment and supplies on the “new” suburban projects should become a constant. As long as no people are hurt, such a campaign will probably get grudging popular support. If the developers and financial backers want their suburb bad enough, make them pay a premium for it.
As the Trotskyist sniper was heard to remark: “My Capitalist targets have no hearts, so I aim for their most vulnerable spot, their wallets.”
It seems that Saint Luigi the Adjuster was a tipping point.
Thanks to everyone and especially Lambert for his support. But the link offered appears to go to the wrong place. Sorry that I am not more adept with links.
This may be the better link to get to the actual petition vs. a request for money. No money is needed by us!!! What we need – and very quickly – are signatures.
https://www.change.org/p/save-the-1898-bishop-road-bridge
Lambert is spot on about who got the designation changed. There are pro-development people at every level of staff and government around here. We often feature Thomas Nast’s ca 1871 “Under The Thumb” on our website to draw attention to it.
More details and background on the bridge are at saveupperallen.com
There was a sister bridge (Gilbert) to this one less than a mile away that was on the National Register – and still got demolished. There are now less than 200 NR eligible metal truss bridges left in PA.
Wonderful, looking at your website, you beat the Republicans through anti-housing NIMBYism. Fighting for socioeconomic segregation in a metropolitan area that is close to a million people.
A case study in the Realignment (Republicans represent working people and the Democrats the affluent and especially the affluent elderly).
from mr vlahos:
https://ronpaulinstitute.org/accepting-the-truth-about-ukrainian-casualties-is-the-only-real-path-to-peace/
from mr deisen:
https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/the-predictable-collapse-of-pan-european?r=ddqut&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
from Sony Thang:
https://x.com/nxt888/status/1879624610804802000
and a rather heartrending come to capitalism moment from a soccer mom:
https://x.com/Eivor_Koy/status/1880065249514344523
scroll down to the vid of the white chick freakin out when she realises…after talking to chinese peopl…that “it doesnt hafta be this way!”.
lol.
Thanks, lotsa good stuff.
I guess I’m old enough to tell all these people that are saying “it doesnt hafta be this way!” that it wasn’t this way back in the 60’s and 70’s. Sure, there were problems, but not like today.
Re Greenland, it’s an interesting idea, and I’m surprised to find I don’t hate it. If Greenlanders were given $1-2 million each *plus” land, I think it could be a good deal for them. But the US may not be the only suitor.
They and the Canadians should be reminded that that the US has broken practically every treaty it ever made with native inhabitants of the land in question.
368 broken last I heard.
Maybe Greenland could put themselves on the auction block – literally. The US would turn up with bids as would Russia, China and India. When it was all over the Greenlanders could be all packed up and shipped off somewhere, anywhere like the people of the Chagos Archipelago were and after they were gone, who cares what happens to them? Then the strip mining could begin.
The guy is so off in the clouds with his imperialism fantasies that he can’t even get his facts right like when he says ‘How about a $57 billion buy-out package that makes every Greenlander an instant millionaire?’ That should be instant billionaire – unless he is taking into account all those who will want to take their cut, maybe even the Big Guy.
$57 billion ÷ 57,000 ppl= $1 million/person
Unless COVID has scrambled my brain more than I realise?
If COVID has scrambled our brains, how would we know?
Actually you are quite right about that so my mistake. Thing is, there are trillions of dollars of resources on that island so offering to pay the Greenlanders $57 billion is literally paying pennies on the dollars for them. This is an echo of when Manhattan island was purchased from the Indians for twenty-four bucks worth of beads.
I agree Rev!
However, with my most cynical realpolitik hat on:
57,000 people can only retain control of those resources if more powerful actors let them. Even beyond the resources, Greenland has increasing strategic value as the Arctic melts. Perhaps it’s also a relatively safe place for the powerful to build a climate change survival home.
The Rules Based Order (sigh) is dead. Might is right is the new order. Greenland is just too juicy not to take.
So the implicit choice may be “take the million each and give up your island OR get nothing and we take the island anyway.”
A hostile takeover would be impolite, ugly and, perhaps even evil, but who would stop the US? Sure there would be outrage in Europe, but what would they actually do?
One of the things that I am most disappointed with about the 21st century is how much it is resembling the worst practices of the 19th century such as imperial land grabs and a new gilded class.
I’m thinking along those lines too. I hope the Greenlanders bargain hard.
That’s the point. Also, pennies fresh of the money printing machine, that are not even worth what they are supposed to be worth.
The offer should not have been made. It should be withdrawn. Having been made, and liable to be repeated over and over and over again, it becomes up to the Greenlanders themselves whether they want to sell themselves and their country into DC FedRegime ownership.
Perhaps they might say, in their own Inuit language, that . . . ” one does not sell the land upon which the people walk”.
I wonder if they still have time to arm up and learn the insurgency arts which the Sunni Iraqui insurgents knew how to use . . . IEDs and such.
“Apple Intelligence summaries generated an inaccurate headline of a report by the British outlet that incorrectly represented a report on Luigi Mangione, the suspect in last month’s killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, by suggesting he had committed suicide”
AI is even more amazing than I thought. It can see into the future.
The Democratic Party can’t be TAKEN over. This is a structural issue. It’s not a political party in any real sense of the word. It’s a Black Box with 500 anonymous power brokers at its center, one that has fought lawsuits AND WON in order not to have to follow the little d demands of the rabble rank and file. Fantasizing that ONE GUY engineers such a takeover? That would really be deluding ourselves. What they’ll do is keep him out and pretend that they’re going to pay lip service to his initiatives.
Meanwhile, what’s HE promising? To crank up the propaganda machine to suck in working people.
Better if he loses.
> “Trump Picks a Jet-Setting Pal of Elon Musk to Go Get Greenland”
A Thielverse core member.
Howery was managing editor of the Stanford Review (the reactionary student newspaper started by Thiel while at Stanford with Howery). Later he would co-found PayPal with Thiel, as well as working at Clarium, and start Founder’s Fund with him.
Greenland is a Thielite project?
[Apologies Lambert, I know you dislike “Thielverse” as a word]
I forgot to include my point: Howery is presented as a Musk sidekick, but is better understood as a Thiel sidekick.
> Apologies Lambert, I know you dislike “Thielverse” as a word
It’s growing on me — not very euphonious, though. How about “Blood Bag World”?
Hmm. I’m not a fan of ‘blood bag world’.
I hate to suggest otherwise bút you are hearing Thiel with the German hard ‘T’ sound (‘Teal’) right? It took a while for it to stick in my brain.
Some more ideas (although none I’m in love with):
(Peter Thiel’s OR The) Brotherhood of Soulless Vampires?
(Peter’s/The) Court of Sociopathy OR Sociopath Kingdom
To be honest I still think Thielverse has the most explanatory power.
Libertarian Caliphate?
. . . ” ‘President Trump’s Truth made clear we have no room in our administration for Democrats,’ said Katie Miller, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition, in an email to The New York Times.” • Hmm. . . .
Hmm indeed . . . . that reads as if the TrumpTeam considers the DOGE to be a part of the Trump Administration and a genuine part of the Executive Branch of Federal Government. Is that a cut-and-dried Constitutional Fact? I don’t think so, but what would I know . . .
I hope Constitutional Defenders wage Guerilla Lawfare at every level to get it on the record whether the DOGE is to be considered an Executive Branch Department or not.
Doug Henwood speaks to Yasha Levine, co-director of Pistachio Wars, on the Resnicks and water in California
https://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2025/25_01_16.mp3
movie-site:
https://www.pistachiowars.com/
Here’s something from WhitePeopleTwitter: titled ” He’s rotting away before our eyes.” I don’t know if this is true or just BlueANON cope. But if it is true, the next 4 years will be interesting.
He wanted Biden’s job. Maybe he will get to relieve Biden’s experience. If this is true, we may begin wondering who his thinking-brain dogs are, and whether Musk really is ” the President behind the President”.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WhitePeopleTwitter/comments/1i3m331/hes_rotting_away_before_our_eyes/
Washington DC residents flee ahead of Trump inauguration: ‘I can’t be here’
Guardian/PMC bingo time:
[Resident 1, a lawyer]: The DC resident said she will hunker down in a cabin with four friends during inauguration weekend and do some vision boarding…
…As much as I wanted Harris to win, there was something in me that still told me that America is not ready for their first Black woman president….
[Resident 2, a Fed HR exec turned NGOer]:
“It says to me that we’d rather have a criminal leading our country than a person of color, or a criminal rather than a woman.”
[Resident 3, not a resident of DC at all]:
In July 2024, the Houston-based physician was in a clothing boutique in Martha’s Vineyard….. Colman was so confident about Harris’s chances that she purchased airline tickets to DC on 28 July, just a week after Biden’s announcement, in anticipation of a possible Harris inauguration…..In 2016 when Hillary [Clinton] lost, we still came to DC in 2017 because they had the Women’s March,” Colman said, acknowledging the lingering political grief.”
So I guess this rules out Michelle giving Trump candy? I mean seriously. W. Bush lied into a disastrous war. Michelle is a joke.
If I were Trump receiving such an offer, I would have my food taster try one of the confections first.
Marc Andreesen makes Ben Shapiro look cool.
A feud has broken out. Here’s one side about its origins. You won’t believe the bet Musk made with Sam Harris:
https://samharris.substack.com/p/the-trouble-with-elon/
During March 2020:
“Elon bet me $1 million dollars (to be given to charity) against a bottle of fancy tequila ($1000) that we wouldn’t see as many as 35,000 cases of Covid in the United States (cases, not deaths). …”
“…A few weeks later, when the CDC website finally reported 35,000 deaths from Covid in the U.S. and 600,000 cases, I sent Elon the following text:
Is (35,000 deaths + 600,000 cases) > 35,000 cases?
This text appears to have ended our friendship. Elon never responded, and it was not long before he began maligning me on Twitter for a variety of imaginary offenses. For my part, I eventually started complaining about the startling erosion of his integrity on my podcast, without providing any detail about what had transpired between us…”
I don’t much like Sam Harris but he certainly owned Elon, who should be reminded that he owes Harris a million bucks at every opportunity.
Agree.
Re:
KoneheadAndreesen on the children of the elites:Idk. This is mos def not what I see with the students at the elite university where I teach. All-in on idpol? Absolutely. “Radical Marxist” … is he serious? Lol
Adding… man… this interview is GOLD. Andreesen really goes off on “the Biden radicalization”:
So, hang on a sec, Marc… under the Biden administration, the SEC reversed prior policy and approved a Bitcoin ETF … billions of dollars have flowed into cryptos… but, no, nooo, that was actually an “incredible terror campaign to try to kill crypto”. OK, Got it.
Andreessen — a self-identified “good” Democrat, a.k.a. a neoliberal — is complaining that the children of the elite have gone full-on “radical Marxist”… and that’s why he and fellow Silicon Valley CEOs “had to really get involved in politics” and are now sipping a cool refreshing drink at Mar-a-Lago. I shared this interview with a friend, who replied: “The ‘radical Marxist’ or ‘neo-Marxist’ tag is just an empty vessel for whatever they want it to be. It’s their bogeyman to explain why their own kids turned trans.” Lol
“The ‘radical Marxist’ or ‘neo-Marxist’ tag is just an empty vessel for whatever they want it to be.”
This. I regularly encounter those terms in the comments section under articles and columns in the Globe and Mail and it’s fairly obvious that those slinging them about haven’t the slightest idea what the terms might actually mean — they’re basically catch-all terms of abuse that also serve as a form of tribal signalling.
I’m never sure where to place Andreessen on the “idiot/disingenuous propagandist” Venn Diagram.
Also he talks about The Deal. Well, he is billionaire, so people fulfilled their part of it by letting him become rich. I wonder if anyone could ask him if he thinks he and his fellow billionaires are making good on their part of The Deal by delivering to the people?
These Scheerpost transcripts can be difficult to read but this one is interesting in light of recent discussions around here. Scheer talking:
“if you look at the area from the Palisades right up through Brentwood and down to LA, it’s all people escaping the reality that nature imposes. It’s all, I want to be urban. I want to be sophisticated. I want to be connected to the most important entertainment industry, cultural institutions, major universities. But I have to get there fast by a chauffeur driven car. You know, we have to expand the highways and freeways. And if you think of the thing that happened, particularly in this fire, the lack of water to even a very privileged place, the hydrants were empty. You have to go back to the movie Chinatown with Jack Nicholson, I guess the 1970s, and stealing the water. And why did they steal the water that was supposed to actually go to LA, to the valley, San Fernando Valley, because that’s where they were going to have this real estate explosion and they were going to expand the city, suburban, suburban, suburban. And it turns out to be untenable”
https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/17/did-mike-davis-get-it-right-in-making-the-case-for-letting-malibu-burn/
They are addressing the question that really hasn’t been talked about much. Which is whether Pacific Palisades should have existed at all, or even Malibu. Not only are these frequent fire areas but the very presence of humans probably makes those fires more likely. Scheer is picking up the issue of LA as the ultimate sprawl city that in many ways became the model for the nation. It’s a desire for urban living without the crowding and transportation inconvenience of urbanity.
They took paradise and put up a parking lot??
” Paved paradise, put up a firetrap.”
The once lovely paradise that was the Los Angeles Basin passed whatever amount of humanity it could sustain, long ago. It cannot sustain the population density and their various demands. It doesn’t have the water. The commuting times have become epic and absurd. The land has its own problems and doesn’t need any more people moving into its fault zones or other hazard zones. The area desperately needs a de-growth plan. Maybe fire and high costs are now steering the ship because the humans kept heading straight for the reef.
santa clarita at the bottom of the grapevine to san clemente is 96.8 miles of full on crazypants city freeway driving, Be ready to get passed by someone going 100 and for the car in front of you to come to a full stop at any time. and the grapevine down to santa clarita is no picnic either. LA is mind bogglingly huge and massively stressful. Some people like that I guess…
It does have the huntington, and mathias botanical garden(https://www.botgard.ucla.edu/) where I’d pass the time while moms was at jules stein…
LA is the chaparral fire country equivalent of building on a flood plain. Nature bats last, mofos …
> Which is whether Pacific Palisades should have existed at all, or even Malibu.
That to me was the subtext of the LongReads article I put up a few days ago (the one that showed us doubling down on houses built after every fire going back, IIRC, to the 1930s.
My answer is No but I’m not a real estate speculator.
Now apple, facebook, google, microsoft and amazon are going to HAVE to stop tiktok so that the supreme court, congress and Biden can be taken seriously.
If we don’t act now, what will *they* say!?
https://youtu.be/tTNJUjsNKVk?feature=shared&t=166
Big 5 briar rabbit
Even though I have a daughter with a nose ring, I think we need to do something here….
Here is an image which I neither praise nor condemn, but merely share and report . . . . that it has finally reached the on-line world. Reached it so much that even I can stumble upon it.
https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fhes-rotting-away-before-our-eyes-v0-rmogfn3bslde1.jpeg%3Fwidth%3D1320%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D816af533f7c440476d89869b3aa211cfc3f5927a
Saint Luigi the Adjuster. He displays his heart. Something that Insurance CEOs lack. So, aim for their wallet.
The Russia-Iran partnership deal evidently went through as planned, but is maybe not as defense-oriented as some people were initially portraying it. Whether that will have any impact on US/UK/Israel plans for attacking Iran is something that we’ll have to wait to find out, I guess. Maybe Israel will be content with more assassinations and sabotage instead, since there seem to be no ill consequences for them in pursuing those tactics.
I guess Biden is gonna get away with stiffing everyone in America $600. Well played, Democrats! May ye never hold federal office ever again.