Patient readers, I’m still trying to get my arms around the Trump Transition, and so for the next day or so that will be the main focus here. After that, I will return to our various pandemics with renewed éclat. –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher, Rondeau PP–South Point Trail East, Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada.
In Case You Might Miss…
- Trump’s executive orders.
- Trump and AI.
- Oh, Elon.
- The Inaugural: Melania’s hat; the seating chart.
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
“Despite Biden Pardon, Fauci Still Faces Legal Perils. Here They Are” [RealClearInvestigations]. “President Biden’s pardon of Dr. Anthony Fauci may protect the former National Institutes of Health official from immediate criminal prosecution, but some critics say he is not completely out of legal jeopardy…. former Senate investigator Jason Foster, who now runs the whistleblower nonprofit Empower Oversight, says that Biden’s pardon creates new legal jeopardy for Fauci. Sen. Rand Paul has vowed to continue investigating the COVID origins question, and sources tell RealClearInvestigations that Sen. Ron Johnson and House Republican investigators plan to do so as well. When testifying in those inquiries or answering written depositions, Fauci will be unable to dodge questions by invoking his Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination. ‘They can ask him if he lied before, replough old ground,’ Foster said. ‘And if he lies about any prior lie, he can be prosecuted for that or held in contempt.'” That is: “Biden’s pardon negates the two Senate referrals for criminal activity. But future hearings could still require Fauci to respond to evidence that he might have perjured himself, and open him up to future prosecution if he stands by statements that can be proven to be false.”
Melania’s now a billionaire too, thanks to Bitcoin:
Well, Melania is a Vogue girl who once ruled the fashion industry. Since she is so tall, this kind of boater hat seems to suit her best! Most importantly she knows how to wear & present any outfit. Her designer Adam Lippes owns credit for this as he knew what he was doing! The… https://t.co/pC6V9xGxSt pic.twitter.com/9Xl9MHBpiy
— UB citizen (@Ehdelhii) January 21, 2025
Scamalot. (Surely, if the Democrats had or were attempting to have, an effective media operation, this joke — surely justified by the Trump family memecoins — would be all over the intertubes? Or have the tech bros sacralized bitcoin?)
The Lannisters send their regards:
Melania's elegant, occlusive, all-business, mafia boss hat said no one—but especially not the media or their cameras —will have access to her unless she grants it, not even to her facial expressions. pic.twitter.com/uiRbMmk7fv
— Amanda Fortini (@amandafortini) January 20, 2025
If this were a Velázquez, we would know the dominant figure:
Melania's hat choice was brilliant. She shielded her eyes while in the presence of people who wanted to have her son left an orphan. Never let them know what you are thinking. pic.twitter.com/NsRcEop7BP
— Old West (@OldWest1453) January 21, 2025
* * * Seating arrangement:
Scaramucci: "[Trump] is a perfectionist with aesthetics. There was symbolism to the family in the front row, billionaires in the second row, and cabinet in the third row. And there's messages there to corporate America and the global society: 'Take a bended knee to me.'" ~AA pic.twitter.com/JTepIKhPxm
— Best for Britain (@BestForBritain) January 21, 2025
Refining Scaramucci:
Trump seating for the Inaugural: front row, family, second row, billionaires, third row, Cabinet.
MAGAs? Outside.— Dare_L (@dare_l) January 21, 2025
“Exclusive: Trump starts new term with 47% approval; Jan. 6 pardons unpopular, Reuters/Ipsos poll finds” [Reuters]. • Not that high, meaning all the more reason for the Republican attaque à outrance and Democrat obstruction and, er, resistance (assuming the Democrats actually have a coherent strategy, which I doubt).
“Behind-the-Scenes Aide Narrates Trump’s Day One Executive Actions” [RealClearPolitics]. “Back at the White House, on the evening of his second inauguration, President Trump did something on the first day that his predecessor never bothered to do in four years: He sat and took questions in the Oval Office as reporters peppered him with questions. It was the newest set piece in the second season of Trump, and in that moment, as the president signed executive order after executive order, an obscure staffer was catapulted to unlikely stardom. Will Scharf, the new White House staff secretary, stood by the president’s side and before the cameras, announcing the actions just before Trump put his black Sharpie to paper. Asked Trump, ‘What’s this one?’ Replied the staffer handing him paperwork bound in a black portfolio, ‘Withdrawing from the World Health Organization.’ Said the president, ‘Oh, that’s a big one.’ In this way, Scharf served as impromptu master of ceremonies for the first step in the attempted erasure of former President Biden’s legacy.” And: “A stack of those orders, each bound in black leather portfolios, had grown into a small mountain on the Resolute Desk by the end of the evening, each a step toward achieving what the president promised would be a ‘golden age of America.’ And in that moment, Scharf was the unexpected emcee. Soon the lawyer will recuse his speaking role and likely recede from public view. His influence within the White House, however, will not.” • A well-engineered spectable indeed — especially since Scharf was only asked by Trump to do the honors at the last minute (a small insight into why his staff might be loyal to him).
* * * “Trump executive orders smash leftist pieties that kept America paralyzed’ [Editorial Board, New York Post]. More interesting is the take at the end: “Trump’s still giving his inner troll some room to play, renaming Alaska’s Denali Mt. McKinley (as it was called pre-Obama) and the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. But his vision is blessedly forward-looking — to the better, brighter vistas that Biden and his party refuse to see. That willful blindness cost them the election. America, in love with the future as always, is right there with Trump.” • The polling says that “America” is not. So we’ll see.
* * * “Trump administration directs all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on leave” [Associated Press]. ” President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off…. The executive order on affirmative action revokes an order issued by President Lyndon Johnson, and curtails DEI programs by federal contractors and grant recipients. It’s using one of the key tools utilized by the Biden administration to promote DEI programs across the private sector — pushing their use by federal contractors — to now eradicate them…. [F]ederal workers are being asked to report to Trump’s Office of Personnel Management if they suspect any DEI-related program has been renamed to obfuscate its purpose within 10 days or face ‘adverse consequences.'” That said, there are implementation issues: ‘Despite the sweeping language of Trump’s order, [Noreen Farrell, executive director of gender rights group Equal Rights Advocates] said, ‘the reality of implementing such massive structural changes is far more complex.’ ‘Federal agencies have deeply embedded policies and procedures that can’t simply be switched off overnight,’ she added.” • That’s a lot of PMC, especially in Northern Virginia and Maryland, suddenly uncertain of their employment prospects.
“Donald Trump’s Medicare Executive Order Explained” [Newsweek]. “The potential impact of rescinding executive order 14087 is as follows: 1. Halted development of cost-reduction models: The directive for the Department of Health and Human Services to develop and test new models aimed at lowering drug costs through the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation has been withdrawn. This move could slow or halt progress on initiatives that were designed to make prescription medications more affordable. 2. Potential increase in out-of-pocket expenses: Without the implementation of new models focused on reducing costs, Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries might continue to face high out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs, possibly affecting access to certain medications. 3. Uncertainty in future drug pricing policies: The rescission creates uncertainty regarding the federal government’s approach to addressing prescription drug costs, which could leave beneficiaries unsure about future measures to control or reduce expenses.” But as usual implementation: “While the executive order has been rescinded, existing laws and regulations governing prescription drug pricing and Medicare and Medicaid policies remain in effect. However, the measures from the previous administration that they say was designed to save on costs has now been disrupted.”
“A Trump Executive Order Could End The Government-Censorship Complex” [The Federalist]. “Trump’s executive order — just one in a slough of Inauguration Day measures — seeks to enforce the First Amendment, ‘essential to the success of our Republic.'” But once again implementation: “It is unclear what steps the Trump administration will take, pursuant to this order, to investigate or shut down agencies or partnerships that constitute the government-censorship complex.”
“Trump’s blanket Jan. 6 pardons stun Republicans on Capitol Hill” [The Hill]. “President Trump’s sweeping pardons of more than 1,500 people charged with crimes related to the Capitol riot of Jan. 6, 2021, including individuals who assaulted police officers, stunned Republican lawmakers who witnessed firsthand the chaos on Capitol Hill four years ago. Trump’s action, which defied assurances from his allies that he would examine convictions on a case-by-case basis and not grant clemency to people who committed violence, divided GOP senators and overshadowed talk about his first-100-days agenda. GOP lawmakers are largely willing to overlook the hundreds of people who entered the Capitol illegally four years ago, which disrupted the certification of former President Biden’s victory by several hours, but pardoning people who assaulted Capitol Police, causing dozens of injuries, was hard to swallow. ‘It is wrong to pardon individuals convicted of violent crime, especially when many of the victims of their violence were law enforcement officers,’ Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) said in a statement. Moran was expressing a view shared by many of his Senate GOP colleagues, even though many of them are reluctant to criticize Trump publicly.”
“22 states sue to stop Trump’s order blocking birthright citizenship” [Associated Press]. “Attorneys general from 22 states sued Tuesday to block President Donald Trump’s move to end a century-old immigration practice known as birthright citizenship guaranteeing that U.S.-born children are citizens regardless of their parents’ status. Trump’s roughly 700-word executive order, issued late Monday, amounts to a fulfillment of something he’s talked about during the presidential campaign. But whether it succeeds is far from certain amid what is likely to be a lengthy legal battle over the president’s immigration policies and a constitutional right to citizenship. The Democratic attorneys general and immigrant rights advocates say the question of birthright citizenship is settled law and that while presidents have broad authority, they are not kings.” And: “Ratified in 1868 in in the aftermath of the Civil War, the 14th Amendment says: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.'” • A strict constructionist reading the Fourteenth Amendment would surely support the Democrats.
* * * “How Trump Is Pushing at Limits of Presidential Power in Early Orders” [Charlie Savage, New York Times]. “On Monday, as Mr. Trump took the oath of office to begin his second term, he asserted a muscular vision of presidential power. He not only revived some of the same expansive understandings of executive authority that were left unaddressed, but went even further with new claims of sweeping and inherent constitutional clout. Among a blizzard of executive orders, Mr. Trump instructed prosecutors not to enforce a law that bans the popular social media app TikTok until its Chinese owner sells it. President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had signed the measure into law after it passed with broad bipartisan support, and the Supreme Court unanimously upheld it. Whatever the law’s merits, the Constitution says presidents ‘shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.’ Mr. Trump offered no clear explanation for how he has any legitimate power to instead suspend the law, making only a vague gesture toward his ‘constitutional responsibility’ for national security, foreign policy ‘and other vital executive functions.'” And several of the EOs (border security; energy) depend on invoking Presidential emergency powers. “But facts matter little to whether or when it is legal for presidents to invoke emergency power, declarations that are governed by the National Emergencies Act of 1976. That law does not tightly define the circumstances under which presidents may determine that an emergency exists, leaving them with essentially unfettered discretion to unlock exigent powers for themselves. But previous presidents adhered to norms of self-restraint.” • The Norms Fairy sheds another tear.
* * * “Trump announces private-sector $500 billion investment in AI infrastructure” [Reuters]. “U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a private sector investment of up to $500 billion to fund infrastructure for artificial intelligence, aiming to outpace rival nations in the business-critical technology. Trump said that ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI, SoftBank (9984.T), opens new tab and Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab are planning a joint venture called Stargate, which he said will build data centers and create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States. These companies, along with other equity backers of Stargate, have committed $100 billion for immediate deployment, with the remaining investment expected to occur over the next four years. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison joined Trump at the White House for the launch. The first of the project’s data centers are already under construction in Texas, Ellison said at the press conference. Twenty will be built, half a million square feet each, he said. The project could power AI that analyzes electronic health records and helps doctors care for their patients, Ellison said.
• That will be awesome; we’ll be able to have AI-powered upcoding then, or wherever the return is greatest (i.e., wherever fraud and rental extraction is maximized). Commentary:
Omg pic.twitter.com/UYM3eNpikc
— Daniel (@growing_daniel) January 22, 2025
“Trump highlights partnership investing $500 billion in AI” [Associated Press]. “Still, the regulatory outlook for AI remains somewhat uncertain as Trump on Monday overturned the 2023 order signed by then-President Joe Biden to create safety standards and watermarking of AI-generated content, among other goals, in hopes of putting guardrails on the technology’s possible risks to national security and economic well-being.” • Implementation again.
“OpenAI Stargate is a $500B bet: America’s AI Manhattan Project or costly dead end?” [VentureBeat]. • With the Manhattan Project, we had Albert Einstein’s blessing and the crème de la crème of European science. With Stargate, we’ve got Sam Altman (and doubtless SBF, if he weren’t in jail).
“Moderna spikes as Oracle’s Larry Ellison touts AI-driven mRNA vaccines” [Seeking Alpha]. “At a press conference convened at the White House to announce the launch of Stargate, a $500B AI initiative, Ellison said that artificial intelligence could be used to develop personalized mRNA-based cancer vaccines and early tumor detection.” • Presumably treatments, not vaccines, and rented on a subscription basis…. Commentary:
Two days into this administration and we’re already talking about using AI to pump out personalized mRNA vaccines
We need to hold Trump’s feet to the fire and make it clear this is NOT the direction we want things headed towards
— SOVEREIGN BRAH 🇺🇸🏛️⚡️ (@sovereignbrah) January 22, 2025
* * * “The Maga movement is out to get Elon Musk – and so is China” [Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, The Telegraph]. MAGA over H1B (rightly). “If it were possible to short a public figure with maximum leverage, Elon Musk would surely be the top target. The political and enterprise value of “Musk Inc” is built on treacherous ideological sands…. Tesla has suffered its first year of falling car sales worldwide. It is running into ferocious competition on price and quality in China and is rapidly losing German market share in electric vehicles (EV) to BMW and Mercedes…. The driving rationale for the parabolic spike in the share price since Donald Trump’s election is the belief that Musk will enjoy techno-regulatory privilege and crony capitalist favour. The Tesla chief was still in good enough grace to earn a spot with the Trump family at the inauguration… His privilege is recompense for spending a quarter of $1bn helping Trump over the line in swing states – whether by fostering free speech or by exploiting the black arts of algorithmic propaganda, depends on your angle of view.” But: “The problem with the market’s political bet on Tesla is that Musk has already made himself arch-enemy of the Maga priesthood, who increasingly regard him as a globalist carpet-bagger. They think he is trying to subvert the ethno-cultural revival of the American nation state, spreading money around to capture the Trump movement for his own purposes.” And: “Musk has manoeuvred himself into an invidious position, caught between the Chinese Communist Party and the Maga movement and reliant on the fickle favour of a volatile American president. Those Icarus wings of beeswax and feathers have flown too close to the sun.” • Bannon didn’t plant this, since he’s quoted in the article. I wonder if anyone else did?
“Elon Musk’s salute falls flat: Why far-right trolling isn’t working this time around” [Amanda Marcotte, Salon]. “Most people, if they made this gesture innocently, would be upset about the neo-Nazis trying to claim common cause with them. As Ed Kilgore argued at New York Tuesday, ‘there is an easy way to clear this up, particularly for someone who owns a major social-media platform and uses it very often.’ All Musk needs to do is ‘make the gesture of denouncing fascism aggressively.’ He adds that explicitly rejecting fascism and white nationalism ‘should be worth a few dozen tweets, wouldn’t you say?'”
“Dimon says he and Musk have ‘hugged it out'” [The Hill]. “JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Wednesday that he and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have “hugged it out” and resolved their differences, after Dimon’s bank sued the tech billionaire’s electric vehicle firm in 2021…. JPMorgan Chase sued Tesla in 2021, demanding $162 million from Musk’s firm as part of a stock warrant deal. The dispute centered on a 2018 tweet from the Tesla CEO, suggesting he might take the company private, and the subsequent changes in Tesla’s value. The tweet also prompted a lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that Musk and Tesla each paid $20 million to resolve in 2018. JPMorgan dropped the lawsuit against Telsa last month after the two companies reached a settlement…. Dimon said Wednesday he wished Musk and DOGE the best as they embark on their cost-cutting efforts. ‘I think it is completely rational for someone to look at our government and say it’s been ineffective,’ Dimon told CNBC.”
* * *
The Wizard of Kalorama™
Untrue:
The DNC has always struggled with respect to social media messaging…always been weak.
But the fact that they posted this cringe, resist lib video in 2025 is wild.
It’s like they’ve learned no lessons. pic.twitter.com/en9tyFHnkm
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 22, 2025
“I stand between you and the pitchforks” (of bankers) and “look forward and not back” (to torturers).
Maybe we should shut down the DNC until we find out what’s going on:
The DNC has always struggled with respect to social media messaging…always been weak.
But the fact that they posted this cringe, resist lib video in 2025 is wild.
It’s like they’ve learned no lessons. pic.twitter.com/en9tyFHnkm
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) January 22, 2025
“House Democrats privately squirm about their leadership and message” [Punchbowl News]. “The problem for Democrats is two-fold. Trump’s hardline approach to immigration is popular, including deporting migrants, although Americans are still queasy when it comes to large-scale efforts that involve a heavy-handed government approach. Secondly, with Biden and Kamala Harris no longer in power, Democrats lack a leader. Members are asking themselves whether it’s former President Barack Obama, a Democratic governor, Jeffries, Harris or someone else…. House Democratic leaders opted not to whip against the Laken Riley Act, which ended up getting 48 Democratic votes. A revised Senate version will come back up for a final House vote today before it heads to Trump’s desk. Some Democrats wish Jeffries had taken a tougher stance against the bill, which allows ICE to take custody of migrants accused of certain crimes. But Jeffries likely would have gotten flack from Frontliners if he’d pressured members to vote no. In one of the first Democratic caucus meetings after the bruising November election, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas), who represents a competitive district along the southern border, warned Democratic leaders not to tell him how to vote, according to a source familiar with the interaction. So far, Jeffries seems to be walking a very careful line. He’s made clear to members that they need to be able to vote their districts. Yet Jeffries is also counseling them not to take the Republican bait. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who has been very outspoken on this issue, says House Democrats need to take the lead for the party since they have the best chance of winning back power in 2026. That puts Jeffries in the spotlight. ‘This is where the action is. This is where the margin is tightest. This is where we’re within striking distance of winning the majority back,’ Ocasio-Cortez said. ‘That would mean our leader and our leadership here.'” • I’m so old I remember when Sanders won the Hispanic counties along the Rio Grande. Speaking of so-called “frontliners.”
“Why Are Democrats Joining Republicans and Voting for the Anti-Immigrant Laken Riley Act?” [Newsweek]. “It’s no surprise that Republicans supported this measure, as it aims to crack down on migrant crime. What’s mystifying is why some Democrats got behind this bill to hand Trump a victory on his signature issue. The Laken Riley Act is legally, logistically, and constitutionally unsound—and misguided Democrats helped make it happen. The Laken Riley Act requires the Department of Homeland Security to jail undocumented immigrants accused of burglary and theft, putting them on track for deportation. The key word here is accused. Under the measure’s provisions, people charged with minor crimes can be locked up without bail before they are convicted, even if charges against them are dropped. This flies in the face of the presumption of innocence, and violates due process, which the Supreme Court has ruled applies to undocumented immigrants…. Worse, the Laken Riley Act allows state attorneys general to sue the government over everything from individual immigration enforcement decisions to immigration policies. Why would 48 House Democrats, along with 12 senators like Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), and Mark Warner (D-Va.) support this measure? Because political survival seems to be more important to them than legal and civil rights. Reeling from Trump’s presidential victory, these Democrats want to show that they can be tough on illegal immigration. How disappointing that they embraced a bill predicated on the unfounded link between migrants and criminality. It is this sort of political cowardice that leads progressives to feel discouraged by their own party.”• Oh, I’m way beyond “discouraged.”
The beatings will continue until the dogs eat the dog food:
really wild that Trump is going scorched earth and liberal media’s response is to just keep platforming the same liberals who helped create the backlash conditions for the rampage pic.twitter.com/3RUsYRf3Fo
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) January 21, 2025
And why is the dude in the middle wearning slippers and what looks like pajamas?
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
“Aerosol research shows how easily COVID-19 can be caught through the air” [Medical Xpress]. A 2023 study, linked to here. But: “Since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been discussions about how COVID-19 infections spread. Jakob Löndahl, professor in aerosol technology and a colleague of Alsved, was one of those who got involved with the ‘new virus’ early on. He paused his research on norovirus to investigate whether the infection from the then unknown virus was airborne. Much new knowledge about airborne transmission has emerged since the pandemic, and researchers now want to see if it can be applied to infectious diseases other than COVID-19. ‘The work on COVID-19 has raised many new questions. Do viral aerosols from other respiratory infections such as rhinoviruses, influenza and RSV spread in the same way as viruses from COVID-19? When is the risk of infection highest? How effective are our various protective measures? There are many questions we are working on now,’ concludes Löndahl.” • Indeed! And one might mention H5N1 as well.
Treatment: Covid
“Azvudine beats paxlovid in reducing COVID-19 deaths” [News-Medical]. “The present multicenter, retrospective cohort study was conducted in Henan and Xinjiang provinces, China, involving hospitalized patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection between December 5, 2022, and January 31, 2023. The study population included 37,606 patients from ten hospitals in Henan and 3,270 patients from one hospital in Xinjiang…. The primary outcome was all-cause death, with 469 deaths observed: 288 in the azvudine group and 181 in the Paxlovid group. Kaplan–Meier analysis showed a significantly lower risk of death in the azvudine group compared with Paxlovid (p = 0.038). Multivariable Cox regression analysis confirmed this, with a hazard ratio (HR) of 0.82 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.676-0.987, p = 0.036). Composite disease progression occurred in 681 patients: 446 in the azvudine group and 235 in the Paxlovid group…. Sensitivity analyses supported the accuracy of these findings. Results remained consistent across multiple methods of handling missing data, alternative matching models, and the exclusion of early discharges or deaths.”
Elite Maleficence
[sigh]
“OSHA is now terminating the rulemaking via this rule because.. any ongoing risk by COVID-19.. would be better addressed.. in a rulemaking addressing infectious diseases more broadly.”
dude my coworker swabbed someone for flu, covid and strep without a mask on the other day and… https://t.co/9Y9sAgl8lD— collagen machine broke (@chronicallybeee) January 18, 2025
* * * 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):
Variants [3] CDC January 18
Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC January 11
Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data January 16:
National [6] CDC Janurary 16:
Positivity
National[7] Walgreens January 13:
Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic January 4:
Travelers Data Positivity[9] CDC December 30: Variants[10] CDC December 30
Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 11:
Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 11:
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
There are no official statistics of interest today.
* * * Bespoke Tailoring:
Eric Javits making Melania Trump’s iconic inauguration hat#FashionoftheFirstLady pic.twitter.com/8BI49BS2Qr
— FLOTUS Report (@MELANIAJTRUMP) January 22, 2025
Manufacturing: “Boeing needs another regulatory exemption prior to 737 Max 7 and 10 certification” [FlightGlobal]. “Boeing is seeking temporary regulatory exemptions for a stall-management yaw damper (SMYD) system on the 737 Max 7 and Max 10, saying a classification change left it unable to demonstrate that the system meets ‘increased regulatory expectations.’ The company on 17 January requested the exemptions from the Federal Aviation Administration. It needs the approvals to achieve certification of both long-delayed types and to roll out an angle-of-attack (AOA) system update planned for all Max models, says Boeing’s request, released by the US government on 21 January… The aircraft manufacturer has historically certificated SMYDs to ‘Level B’ standards under aircraft-software guidance published by the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics. Level B applies to software for which failures are ‘hazardous’, according to online sources. ‘During 737-7 development and certification of the yaw damper function, updated analysis led Boeing and the FAA to determine that the SMYD should now be certified to Design Assurance Level A,’ Boeing’s exemption request says. Level A systems are considered those for which failure may be ‘catastrophic’. Because the Max 7’s and Max 10’s SMYD has “not been shown to meet” Level A standards, “additional certification activity will be needed”, Boeing says. It has requested the exemption be valid through end-October 2028. Between now and then, Boeing intends to ‘complete the certification activities necessary to show compliance’, it says. “This period also provides the time needed to retrofit airplanes delivered under this exemption, in order to bring them into compliance.'” • So when exactly was the need to upgrade to Level A known, and how long was Boeing management sitting on it?
Tech: “Instagram hides search results for ‘Democrats'” [BBC]. “While users who type ‘#Democrat’ or ‘#Democrats’ see no results, the hashtag ‘Republican’ returns 3.3 million posts on the social media platform. By manually searching Instagram for ‘Democrats’, rather than clicking on a hashtag, users are greeted by a screen reading ‘we’ve hidden these results.’ ‘Results for the term you searched for may contain sensitive content,’ it says. There are also limited results when people search for ‘Republicans’ as opposed to ‘Republican.'” • Even if this is an accident, the technical capability is still pretty frightening.
* * * Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 45 Neutral (previous close: 40 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 31 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 22 at 1:34:17 PM ET.
Musical Interlude
Goodbye to Garth Hudson:
Today, we sadly say goodbye to Garth "Honey Boy" Hudson, the last living original member of The Band. A musical genius and cornerstone of the group’s timeless sound, Garth once said, “I found some true enjoyment in helping people get to the bottom of their feelings.” Through his… pic.twitter.com/IdVidFbLOp
— The Band (@TheBandOfficial) January 21, 2025
Hudson sax solo at the end:
Gallery
Picasso as Alma-Tadema:
I wouldn’t have picked it as a Picasso, nor as by a 15-year-old, which just goes to show how little I know ~ ‘Science and Charity’ (1897) Picasso Museum, Barcelona pic.twitter.com/tJ53U2MWyC
— Journal of Art in Society (@artinsociety) January 22, 2025
The Current Cinema
“‘The Brutalist’ Sparks Backlash After Editor Reveals Use of AI in Dialogue and Buildings, but Says It’s ‘Nothing That Hasn’t Been Done Before'” [Variety]. “In an interview with tech magazine Red Shark News, editor Dávid Jancsó revealed that AI tools from Respeecher — a Ukrainian software company — had been deployed in order to improved the authenticity of the Hungarian dialogue of stars Adrien Brody and Felicity Jones. Brody and Jones recorded their voices into the AI software, while Jancsó said he also fed in his voice to ‘finesse the tricky dialect.’ ‘Most of their Hungarian dialogue has a part of me talking in there,’ he added. ‘We were very careful about keeping their performances. It’s mainly just replacing letters here and there.’ Jancsó also revealed that generative AI was used in the final sequence of ‘The Brutalist’ to create a ‘series of architectural drawings and finished buildings’ in the style of Brody’s character, László Tóth.” • And so it begins.
“My struggle with doom scrolling” [All That Jazz]. Useful tip: “Doing this helped me break some old habits I’ve formed over the years with a browser I’m used to. For example, the Google ecosystem knew me too well and constantly recommended articles to me to click on. A new browser without this historical data helped me to focus on the task at hand instead of getting distracted by the shiny, new, but useless information online.” • Also, Google’s recommendation engine by definition eliminates serendipity, making you stupider (for profit, too).
* * * 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 MB:
MB writes: “Tight Hollow, near the Red River Gorge, KY. Rolleicord, f/22, Panatomic X, Microdol X 1:3, Agfa Brovira, Selenium toner. I dug deep for this one. Digital photograph of a photograph. Cheers!”
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I’d say when it comes to Felicity Jones all is forgiven except her improbable casting as Ruth Bader Ginsburg (may be good…haven’t actually seen it).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Basis_of_Sex
Felicity Jones is not the (my) problem…
Fellini’s movies were shot without sound recording with the original actors–but not always–dubbing them later. In fact this was common practice in post WW2 Europe. They could have solved this problem if they had all learned to talk American (eventually most of them did).
Film movie cameras were quite noisy and the housings needed to fix this quite bulky.
i love Fellini.
Amarcord remains my fave.
but i like all those guys from that time and place.
when netflix’ dvd thing had a deal with the criterion collection, i took bigtime advantage….made the boys watch Fellini, Kurosawa, and on and on.
they liked the Monty Python films the best.
but they still make reference to the rest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Strada
i dug that one, as well.
the best films are hard to watch.
i liked her in The Diplomat.
and i think she’s rather hot, too…so theres that,lol.
bedhead,and lots of it, is one of my things.
after 4 days in a furry hat, 24/7, you should see me….and im out of argan oil(1st world thing i treat myself to…less messy than olive oil for detangling, etc)
i expect birds to move into this nest on my head at any moment.
furry hat=acrylic walmart version of this:
https://www.furhatworld.com/beaver-full-fur-russian-hat-beaver-hats-p-442.html
i also have a big puffy one for going out to see to things when its like this.
both tie my hair in knots…like flyfishing windknots x 200.
You can get that hat in raccoon fur for not much more than the synthetic and much less than the beaver.
I’ve lived in Silicon Valley for 45 years. I used to own a long wool coat and would have killed for one of these hats. Now, it’s just tights and fleece in the winter; we’ve slowly warmed. We get no frost any more.
The lesson to be learned from the early Picasso painting is that, to break the rules, you must first understand that which you desire to transcend.
ambrit: Yep.
I am also reminded of the people who look at a painting by Picasso and blabber about how they can draw better.
Oh?
As you write, he had mastered all the basics, and he kept on experimenting.
It’s shocking that P was such an accomplished draftsman and painter at that age. Maybe his fellow classmates threw in the towel when they saw that particular work.
Since Pierre Bourdieu enjoys a certain degree of popularity here, one would be remiss not to mention his work “Les règles de l’art”.
In it, he examines the importance of the fact that “to break the rules, you must first understand that which you desire to transcend” in the succession of artistic movements.
There is much more in his book: about the positioning of artists (from tradition breakers to tradition keepers); their ways to achieve recognition (and recognition by other artists vs by institutional patrons vs by sponsors from the economic elite) vs to achieve economic sufficiency (these involve quite different strategies, achieving recognition usually involving seriously giving up economic advantages, at least initially); the importance of channels (such as art galleries or litterary “salons”) and their own positioning regarding artistic trends; the crucial role of women as promoters of artists (artists are in a lower social position and have therefore a lower social capital than the wealthy patrons from whom they seek support; the women belonging to those wealthy circles were, historically, on a lower social position than men; they were therefore best placed to serve as intermediaries between artists and the masculine economic elites — salons where they all mingled were organized by women); the relevance of the social background of the artists. And more.
I recommend that opus.
“A Trump Executive Order Could End The Government-Censorship Complex”
I can believe that Trump is closing down the present structures of controlling social media, I don’t believe he is ending control.
After TikTok reopened, users are reporting that Palestine posts and other “sensitive” topics are suppressed. We have also the example of Facebook going “free speach” by allowing calling women and lgbt stupid (in less family friendly terms). Theoretically, these rules allow for me calling Zuckerberg stupid as long as I add that I write so because he is a man, cisgender or straight, but in reality I doubt it. Maybe Zuckerberg will copy Musk and call censoring the word “cisgender” free speach? This isn’t about free speach, it is about making sure the moderation supresses the enemies and not the supporters.
Also heard from US facebook users that they have found their accounts following the accounts of Donald and Melania Trump. If anyone still uses facebook and is situated in the US, you might want to check if this applies to your account.
What differs from the previous regime’s Government-Censorship Complex is the lack of pretense. The various structures shown in Taibbis articles shows a layer of bureacrats pretending not to be censors. Trump does away with that in favour of direct contact with the tech oligarchs.
Supporters of Trump will no doubt say that when private companies suppresses speach it isn’t censorship, just as supporters of Biden have claimed that the above bureacrats merely helped with moderation. In reality, I think most can see that it isn’t the form, it is the content, that matters. And in content it is censorship whether it is bureacrats or oligarchs the will of the state flows through.
the answer to that kind of bs is, as always, to speak the forbidden words anyways.
so FREE PALESTINE.
overwhelm them with violations.
zionism=newnazis.
ukraine=oldnaziremnats.
and so on.
like that fat dude that trump likes sez, “flood the zone”.
but i am a First Amendment Absolutist…i believe it means what it says…and is pretty darned clear as such things go.
ive defended the kkk, back when…in a LTE…and was hated for it(i was already a folk devil and pariah anyway, and left for good soon after)
Free Speech means free speech.
i am free to speak my mind…and you are free to make use of the fainting couch.
i might even bring you some iced tea.
Speaking as someone in the middle of a instagram addiction, I see and have seen (since I picked it up again in september) plenty of pro-palestine content shared by friends and in the main for-you page, but not in the Reels section.
What’s curious to me is the lack of anything related to Ukraine and its Banderite tendencies. I’d love to repost that their 1+1 channel celebrated Musk’s salute, but that sort of thing really is verboten there.
Curious. We’re welcome to shout whatever we like about the genocide into a hole in the ground, but anything that might make people think that Russia may not be the bad guy in the Ukraine war, not so much.
Does anyone else have similar experiences?
i speak to ghosts and frogs and geese and such, and imaginary women(that married chick and evangeline lilly, currently), so i’m maybe not the right one to say anything….
I can’t stop laughing, and the mescal and ginger beers (the secret ingredient is sweet vermouth) aren’t helping. Thanks.
yeah. this is my life.
as i keep reminding myself.
enduring these coldspells is a lot like enduring the existential loneliness, it turns out.
and it is silly, and ironic, and all that.
i laugh at it a little more than i weep about it.
i really need a warm woman in my bed.
A line from “Shelter from the Storm” always makes me chuckle:
Of all people who have deserve companionship, I’d put you at the top of the list. Men aren’t meant to be alone. I hope someone finds you before too long.
P.s. I wonder how much Weatherwax is in your spiritual ancestry?
Yeah. As a former actuary and academic who worked for Paul Dieppe (author of a major, if not the main, rheumatology textbook for UK trainee docs circa 2000) this is very well known. The observed death rates compared to actuarial life expectancy among retired men who outlive their wives is horrifyingly high.
PS if you are puzzled by results centred on Iraq in a Google search of Paul then yes, it is that guy. PPS Amfortas pretty sure you’d live thru anything :)
Your observations re combating social media compelled me to recount a recent observation. Up until about 3 weeks ago I had a reasonably acceptable relationship with YooToob. Most videos I watched were from accounts I follow (I am always logged in) and the algorithm suggested vids were often pretty interesting. Indeed I’ve been forced out of my comfort zone by some. BTW I also use a browser on Linux to ad and sponsor block so YT has learnt to give me minimal ads when I use my phone!
Now the suggested videos are not just some “reasonably restricted” subset. They are definitely a set of 100 or so videos which just presents me with 16ish subset, just altering the subset upon every refresh. Believe me, I can spot this: “choice set construction” was my career for almost 20 years.
Something has changed fundamentally in the algorithm. I have to physically enter the kind of phrases you wrote to see videos from legit sources. The algorithm no longer puts the occasional gem into suggestions. YT has suddenly become practically unusable to me….unless I devote my long covid addled brain fogged cognition to actively search for stuff this site draws attention to. Worrying. I don’t think they’ve rolled this out globally but I strongly suspect they’re quietly piloting “changes” among subgroups who they know are most aware….. because if they can fool those of us who understand statistical design theory then what chance does the average Jo(e) stand?
I hope you managed to get your steaming hot bath. I hate being lonely. My wife left for the city today, as she must do from time to time, and well… John Sebastian nailed it for me when he wrote, within his song “Darling Come Home Soon, “…for the great relief of having you to talk to.”
I’ve got Renee Claude keeping me company on the turntable. From the lp Je reprends mon souffle, here is Le Bonheur.
Despite the West Wing and the damage it has wrought I don’t think I will ever lose my love for Annette Benning’s hair cut or Sorkin’s free speech description in The American President.
It may have taken the ACLU fighting for the right of Neo Nazi holocaust supporters to march through Skokie, but I finally got it. That’s why it is there. I hated it, but if they don’t have the right to be hateful asses at the top of their lungs, I don’t have the right to fight for what I believe in most strongly even being an ass about it. Unfortunately I no longer expect them or our politicians to fight for the first amendment.
RE: That’s a lot of PMC, especially in Northern Virginia and Maryland, suddenly uncertain of their employment prospects.
Here’s an idea – offer all those people early retirement at their full current pay with annual cost of living adjustments, until the age of 67, with SS payments being made on their behalf until that date. I know I’d bite if I got that offer.
Then next make DHS the same offer. Then a large portion of DoD. And so on.
Lots of rumours about ICE raids beginning, but I haven’t seen any photo/video proof. Does anyone have more info on that?
Edit; did not mean to reply to your post, meant this to be its own.
A homebuilding client who employs Hispanics told me some of his workers packed their bags for Mexico the day after the election. This is in bubble-land, AR, floating on a sea of CA expat equity…
“Incoming President Donald Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan is hesitating to carry out a leaked plan to flood Chicago with immigration officers during the president-elect’s first week in office, he said in an interview with the Washington Post Saturday.”
https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/01/19/trump-border-czar-denounces-leak-on-chicago-immigration-raids-says-no-decision-made-yet/
i havent seen what my half-mexican american boys call “your mexicans” in 2 months.
it is firewood season, after all…
but last time they came out and hung out, they were worried about the trump deportation thing.
i offered refugia, of course.
i told them then, that unless one of our more upstanding, town father types called it in, la migra was unlikely to come way out here for a long while.
because it will be all about the twitterspectacle.
performative, in other words…hence the chicago thing.
the meatpacking industry alone would lean hard on trump.
nasty job(ive done it) that few but the most desperate americans would want, just yet.
There are plenty of coding jobs out here in the hinterlands.. Come and apply anytime.
They should be shown the same manner of grace as people out here have been for the past decades since oh let’s say NAFTA.
The level of destruction of people’s lives has been staggering to behold since my youth. And that has been the response they got from DC.
yeah. feds suddenly ended the peanut subsidy in my county in late 90’s(why everyone out here finally switched to gop,lol..so well done, Dems!).
caused a local depression that lasted for about 5 years…until wine.
and hay for export elsewhere.
now, my long-term ejaculations in the feedstore regarding local provision of foodstuffs, just dont seem as crazy hippie, any more,lol.
those guys like trump…so support for gop will continue…but, perhaps weirdly for out here…they seem to really like the FDR-ish stuff Vance gets on about.
theres a historical memory of the New Deal…which is why i had such success at my informal feedstore parking lot evangelism for Bernie, in 2015.
these people loathe Big Ag, Big Meat, etc.
because they treat them all wrong, and cheat them at every turn.
How is this not extortion? [Not to mention flamebait] They’re literally saying, “Say something to this exact effect or we’ll say you’re a Nazi.” I’m pretty sure they’d be glad to give him a list of acceptable words to use. And no Afrikaans — that’s a racist language!
He was already subjected to the Auschwitz with Ben Shapiro holiday package.
If you have read any of Marcotte’s work, she’s been calling Trump and Musk Nazi’s for as long as I can remember, and will continue to do so no matter what they do. She helps feed the outrage machine that hates everything red and loves everything blue. She will be very busy for the next 4 years as the outrage machine is going full bore as we speak.
Great work if you can get it I guess. There is an entire industry of them. I find them entertaining and hilarious. I mean really, all we can do is laugh at all the silliness they puke out each and every day. You have the Morcotte types writing for Salon and others, the TV types like The View and a few others (Morning Joe?) and then independent media like Breaking Points with the unhinged Krystal Ball and her hubby Malibu Ken (Kyle Kulinski).
None are worth watching or reading but they help keep the base riled up and misinformed, so they have a purpose. Plus, they are funny and entertaining for being so in your face awful.
One of these people is not like the others: Krystal is an intelligent and well informed commentator who will debate issues on their merits.
It looked like a nazi salute to me. Musk is a spastic but the movement was very deliberate. Maybe he was trolling and he wants the freak out, but there’s a fine line between trolling fascist and being fascist.
RE: Trump’s blanket Jan. 6 pardons stun Republicans on Capitol Hill
Boo hoo. People who commit assault should be punished, and I know that some of those convicted have already served their time and been released, so it isn’t like everybody got off scot free. I’d guess some also wound up doing less time than they otherwise would have for actual crimes.
One does wonder if all of these people would have been pardoned if Biden hadn’t given a blanket pardon to the J6 committee, which sure insinuated they had also committed crimes. I guess we’ll never know. But I’m so old I do remember a former speaker of the house mentioning that “elections have consequences”. Of course in her case, she didn’t actually impose any consequences after making the claim, but this time someone did. Quelle surprise!
Turley weighs in – https://jonathanturley.org/2025/01/21/the-end-of-shock-and-awe-how-the-justice-department-against-the-case-for-the-j6-pardons/
“Four years ago, the Justice Department set out to send a chilling message to the nation. In an interview with CBS News a year later, Justice Department official Michael Sherwin indicated that they wanted to send a message with the harsh treatment of defendants.
Sherwin explained that “our office wanted to ensure that there was shock and awe … it worked because we saw through media posts that people were afraid to come back to D.C. because they’re, like, ‘If we go there, we’re gonna get charged.’ … We wanted to take out those individuals that essentially were thumbing their noses at the public for what they did.” ”
So right back at ya with the shock and awe, huh Republicans? That’s what you get for overreaching in the first place.
I think that a blanket pardon was the only way for Trump to go. If he had gone over each case individually to see who should have been released and who was actually violent, the DoJ would have slow-walked the whole process out of spite and it would take 10 years to sort out those 1500 people. And the media would have been disputing each and every single release as to who was “worthy’. This way, Trump short-circuited the whole thing and let them all go at once and by next week the media would have forgotten the whole thing.
RE: They [MAGAs] think [Musk] is trying to subvert the ethno-cultural revival of the American nation state, spreading money around to capture the Trump movement for his own purposes.
Or, hear me out, maybe they just want to be paid a fair wage for a fair day’s work.
Must we have the ubiquitous histrionics because interwebs revenue is generated by clickbait?
> Must we have the ubiquitous histrionics because interwebs revenue is generated by clickbait?
Quite right. The constant and universal fingerwagging and fistpounding makes me very, very tired.
thats why i take breaks from all this.
like when its really damned cold(for me, here).
i totally missed the inauguration, until today.
i was instead listening to(depending on day) west coast jazz, tomwaits/steelydan/rikkileejones, and the playlist i labeled “moderately melancholy”…and getting drunk and stoned by the woodstove in the little greenhouse…
and talking to…variously… my late wife, that married chick who’s had me confused for 8 months, uncle friedreich, diogenes, and y’all.
tending fires, and critters.
also entertained myself , briefly…but with a lasting glow…when the dnc texted me for $…and defending against fascism, etc.
and i texted back and let them have it.
gaza, ukronazis, gladio, and th whole sordid history….
and where the hell is my medicare for all?!
i wanna fix my damned teeth so i have at least a chance of running across a nubile farmgirl with which to share all this food(and cold) with….
and told them to go fuck themselves, with a horsedick.
and to, therefore, stop pestering me for cash…when i dont have any(tiny teachers survivor pension), and wouldnt spend a dime on them anyways.
In case you have been following the “it’s all about aggressive masculinity” line bruited about these days to explain the in-coming Trump administration and its many hangers-on.
Oh. Huggies among the oppressor class. I’m deeply moved. I detect something else at play: Power.
I would also remind you of this morning’s post from Politico about the execrable Elise Stefanik.
To quote.
She’s crazy. I recall her tantruming in the Congress about so-called antisemitism at Harvard.
It’s scoundrel time. And it turns out that being a scoundrel is, errrr, nonbinary.
> “it’s all about aggressive masculinity”
Joe Biden being Exhibit A, if that’s your theory….
Hillary Clinton and Mad Maddie Albright as exhibits B and C.
I have added orts and scraps (especially Melania’s hat). They are scattered throughout, so you might need to start at the top and work your way down….
On Twitter some were calling that the V for Vendetta hat. Might be on to something.
My initial reaction to the hat was that it reminded me very much of the hat Lee Van Cleef (“The Bad”) wore in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
That’s another one. Bravo.
On that note – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. I always liked the music from that movie. I’m a music fan, have the talent of a brick, but really only listen to classic rock (I’m old). I don’t know who did the original soundtrack, but you can find clones on YouTube. One from the The Danish National Symphony Orchestra.
I find it amazing how they synchronize and choreographs it all. Right down to a guy tapping a chime of some type, then muting it. Even a couple playing rock and roll type guitars. They just nail it.
The Good, Bad, and the Ugly music
Ask and ye shall receive-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good,_the_Bad_and_the_Ugly_(soundtrack)
But man, that guy really nailed it with that soundtrack. There is nothing like it anywhere.
Thank you, and yes.
That was great! – never seen it performed by an orchestra before.
Ennio Morricone is the guy who composed the songs for the movie. He just died fairly recently and he was prolific – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Ennio_Morricone
Well, you indeed are intrigued by Melania Trump’s hat.
I find all of the fussing among liberals to be louche. On the one hand, it’s a hat. On the other hand, after years of blabbing about “gaze” and women’s public image and projecting power, when Melania Trump lets loose and shows herself as much more independent-minded than people expect, we get sniping.
I’m not saying that Melania is Rosa Luxemburg, but I think that she gets an A for effort.
And I will raise the stakes with some hats and gaze and public image:
Sofonisba Anguissola paints her mom (yep, mamma):
https://www.wikiart.org/en/sofonisba-anguissola/portrait-of-bianca-ponzoni-anguissola-the-artist-s-mother-1557
Sofonisba Anguissola paints a member of the Savoy family (hat, gaze, and image, indeed):
https://thehistoryofpaintingrevisited.weebly.com/uploads/2/5/7/0/25704469/7917943_2_orig.jpg
The esteemed Rosalba Carriera paints the painter Felicita Sartori in Turkish garb:
https://eriarte.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Rosalba-Carriera-Ritratto-Felicita-Sartori-con-vestito-turco.jpeg
The juxtaposition of those two concepts is really funny.
It may have just been me – but I got a very 1980s vibe from Melania’s outfit and hat the other day. Almost like she was trying to resurrect Lady Di who wore similar hats.
Then of course, this classic 1980s look……I remember this artist from the Duran Duran album covers.
https://www.teepublic.com/pin/55462305-classy-lady-80s-patrick-nagel
Even the Jack Nicholson Joker character from 1989 got into that type of hat.
Just not sure why the 1980s ambience. What was the message being sent?
i love me some nagel necks,lol.
some of the maga twitaccts i lurk in are saying “She’s Q!”,lol.
and Reagan is the subtle message.
ie: glory years.
idk what to make of elon’s salute, really.
How old was Melania in the 80s–like, 2? Trump on the other hand strikes me as consciously shooting for Reagan (“morning in America”/”make America Great”). But then wasn’t Obama doing that too?
The highlight of the day was seeing Biden get on that helicopter.
yeah,lol.
ive never liked seeing the a$$ of an old genocider walk away more….
don let the screendoor hitcha…
never liked that guy.
he’s been a republican with a (D) for his whole time, there.
a big part of the Problem, since clinton.
(see:40+ years of CSpan vids)
and a big player in the ugliness and perfidious behavior that ended us up with trump as the damned savior….of the Republic, no less!
well done, all!
The Brutalist: Dubbing the Hungarian.
That’s what he did, dubbing.
Many, many Italian films use dubbing. In fact, some actors in Italy have been / are known for dubbing specific American actors. Oh, so-and-so dubbed Burt Lancaster. Lancaster’s famous performance as Prince Fabrizio in the Leopard is dubbed, even though he worked in Italy regularly.
Fellini dubbed much dialogue in his films.
I don’t find much of an issue with dubbing.
An Italian Wiki article specifically about dubbing in Italy, listing dozens of actors who dubbed:
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storia_del_doppiaggio_italiano
A map. Both Italy and Hungary use dubbing extensively. (Some controversies in the notes about extent in other countries.)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dubbing_films_in_Europe.png
The article seems like more of a symptom of how little Americans know of the complications of getting one’s film made and shown on a content with dozens of languages.
I don’t mind the dubbing. Just hire a human.
yeah.
i mean, under the capitalist fantasy, arent we suppose to sing for our supper?
funny how all these techlords never say a word about how the full spectrum luxury communism(ie:star trek, Picard Era) was supposed to mitigate the downsides of their Gee Whizz.
on the current track, theyll get us…instead…Terminator…then, hopefully,a Butlerian Jihad…and hopefully not the world of the Matrix.
when they roll out Replicators for free, i’ll believe in them.
until that time, i will consider them enemies of mankind…as well as potential dinner.
There are people hired to “dub” those things and they are actors. In fact many times they are the same actor as the one you see on screen. Practically since talkies began, they have had to re-record dialogue for numerous reasons, most often because for whatever reason the sound in one or more scenes from the filming just isn’t good. And really good voice actors work all the time because whether it is animation or recording the translated version of a foreign film, you need good actors doing it. I have no doubt that Fellini would be appalled at the idea of AI dubbing the dialogue in his films. Even narration needs a skilled human.
Using AI to do the dialogue might be interesting for a minute or two, but just like the AI generated you tubes there comes that moment when you know it isn’t real.
“I wouldn’t have picked it as a Picasso, nor as by a 15-year-old…”
Me, neither, at least with regard to the 15-year-old part, since I think Science and Charity was painted by a 16-year-old Pablo Picasso.
With regard to a teenage Picasso, I think of First Communion, which he painted a year earlier, when he was (not surprisingly) 15. He entered that work in the Exposicion de Bellas Artes in Madrid, where it earned an honorable mention.
And, just after this time, Picasso began skipping classes at the Academia Real de San Fernando, bored with the formalist strictures adhered to there. (Probably he felt that the school had nothing of value to teach him.) His uncle, who had been his main financial backer, cut him off without so much as a peseta, forcing Picasso to live on whatever meager assistance his father could provide, before he (Picasso, not his dad) dropped out entirely.
The most interesting aspect of Picasso’s mature paintings, imo, is the way he seemed to try to make the image itself move within the painting. You know, a profile image combined with full face image, as if you saw a face turning toward you and back again.
Until then, until cubism, movement in a painting was movement of the viewer’s eyes through or across the painting. Then came cubism: To see many sides at once. To make an image implying the movement of the painting’s subject itself within the painting was unknown. / my 2 cents.
it took shrooms for me to see what you’re talking about…but it was a frenetic time, for me, when i had access to such things.
now, in my decrepit dotage, i definitely get it.
Ever see this one from your fellow Texan? – https://laughingsquid.com/shaking-man-by-terry-allen/
Another favorite of mine from Allen, although not Picasso-esque – Corporate Head – https://www.tiktok.com/@latimes/video/7420948436414958879
shaking man hangs out on the corner of huebner and fredricksburg roads in san antonio, texas.
he yells and curses, with great force, and gestures with even greater force…at imaginary people.
who arent really there.
now that i talk to myself,as well as to my dead wife…. out loud, all the fucking time…i think of that guy alot.
That’s a really interesting comment (as your comments invariably are).
We might see that motion really clearly in Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2) by Marcel Duchamp, who himself said the painting was an exercise in addressing ““the problem of motion in painting.” (Was it cubist or, really, futurist?) It’s kind of like those stroboscopic photographic images.
“To make an image implying the movement of the painting’s subject itself within the painting was unknown [until cubism].”
Well, maybe not entirely unknown. See, for example, the “[f]ive stag heads in the Nave region of Lascaux cave [which] might represent a single stag in different stages of motion.” But that was, like, 17,000–22,000 years ago—and the Lascaux cave painting weren’t discovered till 1940—so maybe unknown to painters of the late 19th-early 20th century.
Then again, I certainly don’t claim to be any sort of art maven.
When Picasso went to visit the Lascaux caves he came out saying ‘We have learned nothing in 12,000 years’–
https://spiritofthesenses.wordpress.com/2023/03/01/lost-in-translation/
“When Picasso went to visit the Lascaux caves…”
There is no record of such a visit, and such supposed words would make no sense coming from Picasso. But, about seeing, what have we learned to see in 12,000 years is a terrific question to ask ourselves. The question was asked by the superb EH Gombrich in “Art and Illusion.”
I will add to this muddled comment, after thinking.
you remain a jewel, CA.
https://www.nytimes.com/1960/04/03/archives/image-and-idea-art-and-illusion-a-study-in-the-psychology-of.html
April 3, 1960
Image And Idea
By Alfred Frankenstein
ART AND ILLUSION:
A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation.
By E.H. Gombrich.
When Picasso visited the Altamira caves (similar to Lascaux, but in Spain), he declared that “In 15’000 years we have invented nothing!”.
lasceaux is on the ceiling above my bed.
a stare at it all the time.
and yes…i can see the relation to picasso and cubism
same with the parts of cheouvet cave, further down.
spellin -4, as usual, given its french.
er, gotta call out AP here.
“has moved to end affirmative action in federal contracting and directed that all federal diversity, equity and inclusion staff be put on paid leave and eventually be laid off”
Hey, AP. DEI is not affirmative action. Affirmative Action is based on the Civil Rights 1964 EEOC law. Get a grip.
Sheesh. Can’t even believe I need to say this to the Dem party. (Maybe that’s why the Dem party lost big time this past election season.)
shorter: DEI is not EEOC.
True, true.
Trump’s revocation refers to LBJ’s 1965 Equal Employment Opportunity EO 11246:
Executive Order 11246, As Amended
Executive Order 11246 — Equal Employment Opportunity
Part I — Nondiscrimination in Government Employment
[Part I superseded by EO 11478 of Aug. 8, 1969, 34 FR 12985, 3 CFR, 1966–1970 Comp., p. 803]
Part II – Nondiscrimination in Employment by Government Contractors and Subcontractors
Trump:
(i) Executive Order 11246 of September 24, 1965 (Equal Employment Opportunity), is hereby revoked.
History of EO 11246
For the first time, Executive Order 11246 charged the Secretary of Labor, a Cabinet–level official with strong enforcement authority, with the responsibility of ensuring equal opportunity for minorities in federal contractors’ recruitment, hiring, training and other employment practices.
Re: Birthright citizenship. I’m not a lawyer, but I am a historian by background, so here’s my view:
We should consider not only the plain language of the 14th Amendment (“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”); we must also consider, prior to that, the overwhelming weight of precedent. Even if the 14th Amendment didn’t exist, the EO would still be basically contrary to the common law here.
See the following:
I. “Nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children even of aliens born in a country, while the parents are resident there under the protection of the government, and owing a temporary allegiance thereto, are subjects by birth.”
— Justice Joseph Story, concurring opinion in _Inglis v. _Trustees of the Sailor’s Snug Harbour in the City of New York_ (1830), 28 U.S. 99. (https://en.wikisource.org/…/Inglis_v…/Concurrence_Story)
II. The opinions in _Inglis_ above rely on the 1608 English case Calvin’s Case (1608), 77 ER 377, (1608) Co Rep 1a. In that case, Lord Coke wrote: “yet it was resolved, that all that were born under one natural obedience while the realms were united under one sovereign, should remain natural born subjects, and no aliens; for that naturalization due and bested by birthright, cannot bby any separation of the Crowns afterward be taken away: nor he that was by judgment a natural subject at the time of his birth, become an alien by such a matter ex post facto.” (Calvin’s Case, 409. http://www.commonlii.org/uk/cases/EngR/1572/64.pdf)
Considered together, I would argue that it becomes clear that no mere executive order, which necessarily is limited to the Executive Branch under Art. II of the U.S. Constitution, is competent in a constitutional sense to undo either an actual amendment to the constitution, or, even prior to that, to extinguish rights which have for many centuries inhered in the Common Law.
I’m very curious to see the outcome of the suit recently filed in Concord, N.H., by the ACLU.
Re: Birthright citizenship. I’m not a lawyer, but I am a historian…
[ Really nicely done. ]
Re: Birthright citizenship. I’m not a lawyer, but I am a historian by background, so here’s my view:
Lambert is right on a strict construction of the 14th Amendment. We should also consider not only the plain language of the 14th Amendment (“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”); we must also consider, prior to that, the overwhelming weight of precedent. Even if the 14th Amendment didn’t exist, the EO would still be basically contrary to the common law here.
See the following:
I. “Nothing is better settled at the common law than the doctrine that the children even of aliens born in a country, while the parents are resident there under the protection of the government, and owing a temporary allegiance thereto, are subjects by birth.”
— Justice Joseph Story, concurring opinion in _Inglis v. _Trustees of the Sailor’s Snug Harbour in the City of New York_ (1830), 28 U.S. 99. (https://en.wikisource.org/…/Inglis_v…/Concurrence_Story)
II. The opinions in _Inglis_ above rely on the 1608 English case Calvin’s Case (1608), 77 ER 377, (1608) Co Rep 1a. In that case, Lord Coke wrote: “yet it was resolved, that all that were born under one natural obedience while the realms were united under one sovereign, should remain natural born subjects, and no aliens; for that naturalization due and bested by birthright, cannot bby any separation of the Crowns afterward be taken away: nor he that was by judgment a natural subject at the time of his birth, become an alien by such a matter ex post facto.” (Calvin’s Case, 409. http://www.commonlii.org/uk/cases/EngR/1572/64.pdf)
Considered together, I would argue that it becomes clear that no mere executive order, which necessarily is limited to the Executive Branch under Art. II of the U.S. Constitution, is competent in a constitutional sense to undo either an actual amendment to the constitution, or, even prior to that, to extinguish rights which have for many centuries inhered in the Common Law.
I’m very curious to see the outcome of the suit recently filed in Concord, N.H., by the ACLU.
Apologies to all for the duplicate comments.
No apologies necessary. Very interesting and timely comment.
So when Americans have a child in France does that make it a French citizen? Just asking. Your interpretation has been established by subsequent court rulings but the “under the jurisdiction” is somewhat ambiguous as to its meaning.
Thanks, flora, I appreciate that, and thank you Carolinian for the question.
My non-lawyer’s understanding is that there are two aspects of citizenship under question — jus soli and jus sanguinis (right of the soil and right of the blood).
Both are present in our legal system, but jus soli occurs in the common law itself per Justice Story. Jus sanguinis exists via statute, in our cases, American naturalization law extending back to the first Naturalization Act of 1790 (1st Stat. 103) and successor legislation. This establishes that the children of Americans born abroad (generally) are US citizens.
There is also English precedent here, De natis ultra mare, 25 Edw. 3 Stat. 1. (1350), A Statute for those who are born in Parts beyond Sea. My understanding is that this was a statute relating to the children of English soldiers born in France during the Hundred Years War, and whether or not they could inherit property in England.
John McCain was born in Panama so that made him technically American enough to run for President. And he wasn’t even given American citizenship itself until he was 11 months old.
You are referencing the American area of the old Panama Canal Zone.
A very dear, much older friend of mine was born in the US Panama Canal Zone some 80+ years ago, and her US citizenship was never questioned.
I always thought the Canal Zone was considered US territory until Carter admin gave it back to Panama, at least? (And even then, US military installations abroad are generally considered American soil, except Guantanamo, where US Constitution does not apply.(
Non-lawyer here, but the exact language is “…subject to the jurisdiction….”
In etymology and common usage this means “subject to the dictates of the laws.”
So the Constitutional Amendment does not apply to anyone who is not subject to the laws of the U.S., such as American-born children of foreign diplomats who have diplomatic immunity and are not subject to U.S. laws.
However, it does seem to apply to “undocumented persons”/”illegal aliens” who can be arrested in the U.S. for burglary or murder or ticketed for exceeding the speed limit while driving an automobile. They are subject to the dictates of U.S. and state laws, therefore they are “…subject to the jurisdiction….”
However, since all words are bent and controlled at will by the PTB, who knows? We may see further Orwellian destruction of the true meaning of words.
As for other countries, they are free to make their own laws concerning citizenship. I know of two examples. A person born to two U.S. parents in post-WWII Germany could claim German citizenship before the age of 18. In Ireland, under current rules, my mother could have claimed Irish citizenship before her 18th birthday because she had a natural-born Irish grandparent. As a great-grandchild of an Irish citizen, I have no special rights to Irish citizenship.
This is very well stated, thank you.
As a child born to US graduate students at a German University, in a German hospital, I was never eligible for German Citizenship. Children born in Germany in 1983 and later are eligible for citizenship, but not before. I was born in 1982, and it was never an option, I looked into it.
At the very least “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” would exclude diplomats’ children, since they have diplomatic immunity. Furthermore, “owing a temporary allegiance thereto” would not include tourists or illegal immigrants — neither owe any allegiance to the US merely by their presence.
I think that “owing a temporary allegiance to” flows from being “under the protection of.” It is not legal to break the laws of our country to abuse or harm a tourist or immigrant. They are persons subject to and protected by the laws of the jurisdiction they are visiting or inhabiting. They are under the protection of our laws, and do indeed, de facto, owe temporary or permanent allegiance to laws and hence the system of governance that determines and enforces those laws. This is not an emotional allegiance, but a legal one.
It’s a legal allegiance, not an emotional one
JustTheFacts, on the first point — yes, and inasmuch as “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is one of the phrases on which the EO turns, it’s important to note that if aliens are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, then the United States cannot enter proceedings against them.
At the same time, the new Administration is very likely to sign the Laken Riley Act in the very near future, which would instruct ICE to detain aliens who have been charged, arrested for, or convicted of certain crimes.
But if the US has no jurisdiction over these individuals, then the Laken Riley Act is null, since the US would have no authority to enter into any kind of proceedings with respect to these individuals. Both of these things — the US not having jurisdiction and the US having jurisdiction over these aliens — cannot be true at the same time.
On the second point, I am not sure I see the basis for the argument that tourists and illegal aliens do not owe “a temporary allegiance” to the US. “Allegiance” here in my view would simply signify that tourists or aliens have to an affirmative duty to obey the law in the place where they are visiting or illegally staying. It doesn’t mean they have a sense of national belonging or loyalty to such a place, I would say.
It’s also important to note Blackstone here, who supports Justice Story’s view of the matter. Blackstone writes in Book IV, Ch. 14 of the Commentaries on the Laws of England: “Therefore to kill an alien, a Jew, or an outlaw, who are all under the king’s peace or protection, is as much murder as to kill the most regular born Englishman; except he be an alien enemy, in time of war.”
In other words, aliens are, despite existing outside the national community, are still under the King’s Peace — or, the King’s jurisdiction. (The Crown having been replaced by the several States and the United States here. See Martin v. Waddell.)
Swamp Yankee, thanks for your answer. It brings up another question: I’m curious how slaves would fit into this interpretation of allegiance, since it predates the 14th amendment (and therefore occurred during slavery)?
They were born in the Colonies/States/US, but were not citizens, yet were subject to laws that would punish them if they killed someone.
To be logically consistent, it seems to me that they would have had to be claimed not to have allegiance to the Crown…
JustTheFacts,
Insofar as slaves go, slaves were explicitly not legal persons until the Reconstruction Amendments (13, 14, and 15) undid the legal infrastructure of slavery. Because of their legal status as property, there was no question of their allegiance one way or another (this was established in most cases by various colonial slave codes, this status as property in a legal sense). For this reason, slaves did not enjoy the protection of the laws (beyond that extended to property).
Page 2890 of the Congressional Globe reports what the person who wrote the 14th amendment says it means:
“This amendment which I have offered is simply declaratory of what I regard as the law of the land already, that every person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States. This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of embassadors (sic) or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons. It settles the great question of citizenship and removes all doubt as to what persons are or are not citizens of the United States”
That’s certainly an interesting citation, and I appreciate it, but I don’t think it’s dispositive. For example, if you read the debate cited, the Senators from California do not take Sen. Howard’s view of it. They take it to mean exactly what it says, and, being terrified of Chinese migration, are concerned about its implications. Sen. Howard’s contention above all seems to me to be an attempt to prevail in a legislative debate.
Moreover, it is really not the central issue, since the judicial branch interprets the law, and Justice Horace Gray’s opinion in United States v. Wong Kim Ark 169 US 649 – Supreme Court 1898, 654-55:
“The Constitution nowhere defines the meaning of these words, either by way of inclusion or of exclusion, except in so far as this is done by the affirmative declaration that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” In this, as in other respects, it must be interpreted in the light of the common law, the principles and history of which were familiarly known to the framers of the Constitution. Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162; Ex parte Wilson, 114 U.S. 417, 422; Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, 624, 625; Smith v. Alabama, 124 U.S. 465. The language of the Constitution, as has been well said, could not be understood without reference to the common law. 1 Kent Com. 336; Bradley, J., in Moore v. United States, 91 U.S. 270, 274.
In Minor v. Happersett, Chief Justice Waite, when construing, in behalf of the court, the very provision of the Fourteenth Amendment now in question, said: “The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that.” And he proceeded to resort to the common law as an aid in the construction of this provision. 21 Wall. 167.”
Significantly, today the district court judge in the Western District of Washington decided to grant plaintiffs including the State of Washington a temporary restraining order enjoining Donald Trump et al. from enforcing sections of the recent Executive Order. The decision cites Wong Kim Ark. Justice Coughenour:
“There is a strong likelihood that Plaintiffs will succeed on the merits of their claims that the Executive Order violates the Fourteenth Amendment and Immigration and Nationality Act. See United States v. Wong Kim Ark,169 U.S. 649, 694-99(1898); Regan v. King, 49F. Supp. 222,223 (N.D. Cal. 1942), aff’d,134 F.2d 413 (9th Cir. 1943), cert denied, 319 U.S. 753 (1943); see also Gee v. United States, 49F. 146, 148 (9th Cir. 1892).”
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25502862-tro/#document/p1
Maybe “with Biden and Kamala Harris no longer in power, Democrats lack a leader,” but by naming those two I would suggest the article reveals they have been lacking leaders for quite some time now.
In the news of the wired anecdote about changing browsers because a new browser won’t have your historical data, does that mean there are still people in this day and age that don’t immediately purge their history and cookies every time they exit the browser? What are they teaching kids in Internet 101 these days?
well, some of us untech codgers like having our porn in easy to find “closed windows”.
and dont care if the gooberment knows about it.
flips NSA the bird.
then moons them.
Wonder who that new Democratic leader will be? This guy?
How Gavin Newsom Let California BURN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZGJQzF8lq8
Love me some Garth Hudson–my co-favorite member of The Band along with Levon Helm. He was my favorite rock organist. If you have a few minutes, listen to his incredibly inventive organ fills on Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man” from their 1966 tour of England. Great stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bktuEflhNU
RE: “Donald Trump’s Medicare Executive Order Explained”
I did not understand this ‘explanation’. What has the Bidden executive order that Trump rescinded with his executive order accomplished so far? It seems Bidden had started three ‘models’ for lowering drug prices in design or under study but were there any accomplishments to report? Working on new models sounds to me too much like sending the issues to be studied by committee. Don’t most countries of the world have working ‘models’ for lowering drug prices?
Reciting the Democratic National Committee director Alex Floyd’s claim that “Donald Trump is already following through on his dangerous plans to jack up the costs of drugs to appease his billionaire backers after the Biden-Harris administration took on Big Pharma and won.” impresses me as more cheesy than informative. And “…the Biden-Harris administration took on Big Pharma and won.” Give me break!
Re: Ellison of Oracle last evening.
I have the “privilege” of using the AI from his company or similar companies on a daily basis. The level of errors is just through the roof. I have to proofread so carefully that it really is not a time saver at all. The care suggestions it comes up with which I have to address and deny are just comical most of the time. Most importantly, it hallucinates just absolutely crazy stuff on almost every other patient. As in out of the blue stuff that was never even discussed in the visits.
And they want me to trust this AI technology to be fused with an mRNA platform and be injected into a patient’s body? I mean, seriously? What will happen to the poor soul when oops it hallucinated a whole sequence of extraneous DNA code. He even said himself last night that these codes were gigabytes in length – who is going to proofread that. These people and their hare-brained schemes literally terrify me.
Interestingly, based on what I heard in the doctor’s lounge today – you can Cliffs Note the MD take in the following way – “we won’t be fooled again”.
Hallucinates = makes stuff up based on unaccountable, mathematical, tokenized equations. What could go wrong?
Where “unaccountable” means you can’t see the algo.
Thanks for this. I’m a computer/engineering type guy and it concerns me what this profession might have to deal with.
I don’t like it one bit. There is a difference between a machine, say a robot floor sweeper learning your homes x,y coordinates, and it thinking and making decisions on it’s own (to put it in the simplest form I guess).
I remember DOS, Windows…
A friend was disputing my belief that one of the best things that could happen would be for all AI programs to become infected and to catastrophically and irreparably crash. She was trying to come up with something and got that they read EKGs. I told her about trying to find a very old video where I was reliably informed by AI that Glenn Close had never performed at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Funny thing about that, I was there when she did “One Brick at a Time” along with the cast of Barnum. And I said when they can’t get something that simple right, why would I want them interpreting my EKG. She had to admit that hers scared her until the doctor told her to ignore it. She took it that it saw too much. I took it that it made things up. But even she had to admit if it needed to be ignored it wasn’t useful.
The pyjama pants and fluffy slippers look is a “thing” here in the North American Deep South. I have personally seen persons of both sexes thus attired at W—M—, Winn Dixie, the local Whole Foods clone, the Post Office, two Vitamin shops, several thrift stores, Target, and other places more obscure.
Add to this the truly amazing displays of female secondary sexual characteristics, (“packaged” in tight fitting items of several types,) and we see a culture firmly “on the skids.”
I’m not advocating for strict dress codes, but the concept of public decency seems to have become null and void.
Heh. It kinda recalls Jeff Bridges as “The Dude” shuffling through a supermarket in a bathrobe.
Hey!
dont knock it til ya try it!
ive worn a bathrobe to the store on many occasions.
(and many peopl quote the big lebowski at me)
and i dont have an issue, necessarily, with so-called slutty dress.
i consider it an expression, and therefore a speech issue.
what it is NOT, is an invitation.
were we a civilised nation this would be widespread obvious…and i would be on disability.
but we are not a civilisation, sadly.
we’re a loose collection of mafias and gangs and cartels.
an Hobbseian state of nature.
again, well done!
Or “Cousin Eddie” from National Lampoon’s Christmas vacation.
There is a website called people of Walmart. Just a public announcement.
I might run warm, but even I recognize that winter is cold. I often wear winter pajama pants as outerwear because paired with a light under layer or tights they work for me in all but the coldest nyc weather. They are warmer than my usual pants but I do not get get overheated as I do in more traditional winter pants. No slippers though I do have sheepskin boots.
And I am now old enough I don’t care about the norms.
“My struggle with doom scrolling” – [All That Jazz].
What tips do they have for the “denial scrolling”?
And why is the dude in the middle wearning slippers and what looks like pajamas?, He’s cool. There’s more to see. Both the wristwatch on the left and the shoes on the right appear to cost more than an average month’s rent.
Say what you will about that guy’s fashion sense, if he had been invited to Trump’s Inauguration he would have worn a business suit for sure and would never, ever have worn baggy shorts and a hoodie like Fetterman did there.
I just feel bad for Fetterman. He’s not his past self. That he was “allowed” (wife, staff, where were you?) speaks volumes about his role. It’s close to abuse.
I am no medical professional, but the nervous breakdown soon after starting his job in DC, and then the personality change after seem to be related. He must have some AOC-sized compromat.
I had to look that up. It was pretty funny. I agree he sticks out like a sore thumb, but I think formal dress codes are pretty ridiculous to begin with, so I admit to enjoying the juxtaposition.
It seems to have met with a positive response in some quarters – clearly not among any of the appalled elites in attendance, but then they’re not his constituency.
He is a bit like Zelensky as when the later is going to a formal occasion, he puts on a black sweat shirt instead of a green one.
With big run ups in the bitcoin and the Anthropic stock after SBF was decapitated the bankruptcy process ended up with all of his deposits
repaid in full. When he complained that it was a temporary liquidity problem he was not entirely wrong.
Pardon for Sam Bankman Fried!
No I am not supporting this but it would not surprise me. If they let him out of jail he could explain in detail to all his old friends how horrible life in a bunker or in a spaceship would really be.
Efforts ongoing to drive and facilitate a general mass departure from twiXtter. Unless every single person that Lambert Strether follows for covid information all unanimously go to BlueSky, Lambert Strether would need to stay on twiXtter to keep following them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/okbuddybaldur/comments/1i7ii2i/twitter_is_now_banned/
Once again again, this is an opportunity for all the ex-twitter workers in exile to rebuild twitter ( under whatever name they choose) and make it do all the things they want/wanted it to do. Not everyone will migrate to BlueSky. But “everyone” might eventually migrate to Twitter In Exile if such a thing emerges.
And the tweets can be called “tweex”.
Really great photograph by MB today!
US Justice Dept freezes its civil rights litigation
“The U.S. Department of Justice has ordered its civil rights division to pause any ongoing litigation left over from the administration of former President Joe Biden, according to an internal memo reviewed by Reuters on Wednesday.
The memo freezes any activity in the division, which is tasked with enforcing anti-discrimination laws. It directs the division to not pursue any new cases or agree to settlements, and says the DOJ might revisit some settlements forged by the Biden administration in recent months.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-justice-dept-asks-civil-rights-division-halt-biden-era-litigation-washington-2025-01-22/
New Big Serge
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/modernity-at-sea
I always enjoy reading Big Serge, but that one really hit the spot.
Seems like the life of James Buchanan Eads would make a pretty good movie. Has anyone ever filmed a scene of ironclad riverboats blowing the (family blog) out of Confederate forts?
The Treatment : Covid summary post didn’t seem to make sense – 288 deaths for Azvudine vs 188 for Paxlovid and Az was better? The group sizes from the report were omitted – 6943 for Az and 1202 for Pax, so death rates were 4.15% for Az and 15.05% for Pax. Seems like a pretty significant difference.
Here’s something interesting – the Bearded One on the Tories and Whigs of his day.
On the latter, the incremental changers of 19th century UK, there was this little zinger in the middle of a larger anti-Whig rant –
“…traffickers in homeopathical fractions of reforms…”
A nice turn of phrase!