Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher, Langford Creek Road, Tompkins, New York, United States.
In Case You Might Miss…
- Trump on the road in North Carolina and California.
- Hegseth advances to floor vote.
- Smile Nazis in action.
- Snow in the South.
“Practice Your Cursive as a Citizen Archivist and Preserve Thousands of Historic Documents” [Colossal]. “In 2010 [thanks, Obama!], the newly established Common Core State Standards program, which outlines skills and knowledge students should acquire between kindergarten and high school, did not include cursive in its English requirements. As a result, many young people can no longer read or write in cursive. But if you can—or are willing to learn—a wealth of historical documents await you in the U.S. National Archives. The federal organization’s Citizen Archivist program is recruiting volunteers to help transcribe thousands of documents in its collection. Records in need of review are categorized into ‘missions,’ like paperwork relating to women in the First World War or submarine patrol reports during the Second World War…. The National Archives also needs people to tag photographs and other materials to help identify people, events, or places. By improving searchability, the archives become more accessible to historians, genealogists, students, and the public. It’s easy to get started: just register and select a document to begin transcribing. There’s no application, and you can contribute as much or as little as you’d like. National Parks Service interpretation planner Joanne Blacoe says, ‘We wanted something that was going to last beyond an anniversary, not just in our own archives but in a place that everybody could access.'”
My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza).
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
“Live updates: Trump floats possible FEMA elimination during Western North Carolina visit” [News & Observer]. “Trump said at a storm briefing in Fletcher that FEMA needs an ‘overhaul’ and to potentially be eliminated. Instead, Trump said he prefers emergency response delegated to states. ‘That’s what we have states for … A governor can handle something very quickly,’ he said.” Except for the printing money part. And: “He repeatedly said he wants Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley to lead Helene recovery efforts and pledged additional federal assistance to North Carolina. The president also repeated false claims about FEMA’s work in North Carolina.” Which were: “Trump repeated false claims of FEMA giving support to migrants instead of North Carolina residents. FEMA does distribute funding to some migrant service programs, but those programs are funded by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, not FEMA’s disaster fund.”
“Trump’s two asks from California: voter ID laws and water flow” [Reuters]. “U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday said he wanted to secure two things from a visit to California later in the day: voter identification laws and changes to water policy in the wake of massive wildfires. ‘I just want voter ID to start, and I want the water to be released, and they’re going to get a lot of help from the U.S.,’ Trump said during a visit to North Carolina.” • Well, that’s why we have a Federal system, no?
“News Analysis: Stakes are high for Newsom and California when Trump visits L.A. wildfires” [Los Angeles Times]. ” California Gov. Gavin Newsom and President Trump shared a surprisingly symbiotic relationship during the Republican’s first term in the White House, with their public sparring and ability to work together in times of crisis elevating both politicians. Whether the two men can overcome an ugly 2024 election cycle and resume a respectful rapport for the benefit of Californians should become clearer when Trump surveys wildfire damage in Los Angeles County….” Those two demands don’t seem “symbiotic” to me. More: “The Democratic governor could end the day with a presidential example of acting like a level-headed leader capable of putting politics — and personal feelings — aside to help his state. Or, Newsom could walk away more vulnerable to criticism that his political gamesmanship and thirst for the national spotlight compromised his ability to deliver for Californians.” • I think Trump senses weakness. We’ll see.
Energy in the executive:
“Trump moves to revoke clearances of ex-intel officials who signed letter on Hunter Biden laptop” [PBS]. “President Donald Trump says his administration will move to revoke the security clearances of the more than four dozen former intelligence officials who signed a 2020 letter saying that the Hunter Biden laptop saga bore the hallmarks of a ‘Russian information operation.’ The action is an early indication of the president’s determination to exact retribution on perceived adversaries and is the latest point of tension between Trump and an intelligence community of which he has been openly disdainful.” Implementation: “The president has a lot of authority when it comes to security clearances. The problem the White House will run into is, if they depart from their existing procedures, they could set up a judicial appeal for these 51 people — and it will probably be a class-action suit since they’re all in alike or similar circumstances,” said Dan Meyer, a Washington lawyer who specializes in the security clearance and background check process.”
“Now the truth comes out: Reporters admit Politico snuffed out Hunter Biden laptop story to protect Joe in 2020” [New York Post]. “‘Politico did that terrible, ill-fated headline: 51 intelligence agents, or former intelligence agents, say that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation,’ recalled [reporter Neil] Caputo. ‘Turns out that story was closer to disinformation, because the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be true.'” And: “Caputo told his editor the outlet needed to ‘write about the Hunter Biden laptop’ but was instructed, per orders from ‘on high’ at Politico, not to: ‘Don’t write about the laptop. Don’t talk about the laptop. Don’t tweet about the laptop,’ he was told. So ‘the only thing Politico wound up writing was that piece that called it disinformation.'” More: “The 51 Spies Who Lied — ex-intel officials who signed an open letter that trashed The Post’s laptop scoop as a ‘Russian information operation’ — gave the media cover.” More likely they “briefed’ the editors and publishers. And: “If these intel veterans weren’t sure about Russia’s involvement, and weren’t trying to mislead the public, they could’ve checked with their sources at the FBI, which had already verified the laptop’s authenticity. Or just kept their mouths shut. Brennan & Co. knew exactly what they were doing.” • To the extent that the FBI can “verify” anything…
“Trump’s First Shot in His War on the ‘Deep State'” [The Atlantic]. “In response, the 51 former officials signed a letter asserting that “the arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter … has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Mind you, the signatories offered no evidence of a hidden Russian hand in all of this. They supplied no digital trails leading to Russian spies, no confidential sources claiming a connection. And they were up-front about this: ‘We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails … are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement—just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.’ That’s it. They were suspicious. Maybe with good reason. At the time, current officials, with access to classified information, believed that Russian intelligence operatives were trying to feed misinformation about the Bidens to Giuliani, as my colleagues at The Washington Post and I reported at the time. The signatories argued that, based on their long experience doing battle with Russia in the arena of international espionage, people should take their suspicions seriously. If this all sounds like what op-ed writers or self-professed experts on social media or talking heads on TV routinely do, that’s because it is. Indeed, several of the signatories were regular “Never Trump” commentators on cable talk shows, political podcasts, and Twitter.” • IOW, it’s free speech.
* * * “Exclusive — CIA Director Ratcliffe: ‘Day-One Thing’ to Get to Bottom of Chinese ‘Origins of COVID,’ Wuhan Lab Leak” (interview) [John Ratcliffe, Breitbart]. I tend not to cite to Breitbart, but here we are: “[RATCLIFFE:] You have people who have been at the different intelligence agencies for so long and focused on the Russia threat — and, as you said, legitimately because [Vladimir] Putin is a bad guy and a regime with a huge nuclear stockpile that we need to talk about — but yeah, the Intelligence Community has been slow to adjust to the fact that China is the primary geopolitical threat we face,” Ratcliffe said. “It’s the second largest economy, and they compete with us across the board on a peer-to-peer basis in a way that Russia can’t, and I think there are reasons for that that are unfortunately — there’s a financial aspect to that. From Washington, DC, to Wall Street to Silicon Valley to Hollywood, there has been a desire to keep China from being labeled a bad guy because a lot of people make a lot of money from China and in China, and China has a lot of influence in all of those places. But our intelligence is clear —I saw that as DNI and now it’s inescapable for people to not see — on how sinister and nefarious the People’s Republic of China and its various arms of the Chinese Communist Party have been. So, we’ve been slow to adjust the focus, and it’s one of the things that the president needs and wants from us.”
* * * “Senate advances Pete Hegseth as Trump’s defense secretary, despite allegations” [Associated Press]. “Rarely has a Cabinet choice encountered such swirling allegations of wrongdoing. The outcome provides a measure of Trump’s power and a test for the Senate as it considers the president’s other outsider Cabinet picks, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Health and Human Services, Kash Patel at the FBI and Tulsi Gabbard for Director of the Office of National Intelligence. Republican senators, and some Democrats, appear ready to give the president his team. Only Matt Gaetz, the former congressman who was Trump’s initial choice for attorney general, was met with enough resistance that his nomination was withdrawn.” • Well, Gaetz was trying to interfere with Congressional stock trading. So no wonder. Now to the Senate floor–
“‘Mitch McConnell Is In’: Fox News Reports On Ex-Host Pete Hegseth Clearing Key Vote Ahead of Likely Confirmation” [Mediaite]. “So that’s the two senators [Murkowski, Collins] that are out. Mitch McConnell is in as is all as are all the other senators in the conference. Roger Wicker, the Armed Services Committee chairman, had told me right before this vote I’d asked him, do you think you still have the 50? That was when Lisa Murkowski came out as she was a no and he said yes. So they walked into the room here feeling confident. They had whipped the votes for quite some time. And they knew that they had these votes and they would not need JD Vance to come in.”
* * * “RFK Jr. applauds Trump’s order to declassify RFK, JFK assassination files” [The Hill]. “‘I think it’s a great move because they need to have more transparency in our government and he’s keeping his promise to have the government tell the truth to the American people about everything,’ Kennedy, President Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, told reporters. Kennedy has claimed that the CIA was involved in his uncle’s death. ‘There is overwhelming evidence that the CIA was involved in his murder,’ Kennedy said in a 2023 interview with John Catsimatidis on New York City radio station WABC 770. ‘I think it’s beyond a reasonable doubt at this point.’ RFK Jr. said his uncle was targeted due to his refusal to commit U.S. forces to Vietnam.” • No doubt there will be redactions galore and key documents will have gone mysteriously missing. Nevertheless, such an enormous mass of material ought to be enough to make such judgments as historians make, if not the courts.
“RFK Jr.’s allies have a plan to upend childhood vaccination” [Politico]. “‘The people [RFK] really trusts are people that obviously are trying to execute a plan to totally take away vaccines,’ said one of the people with knowledge of the discussions. ‘The risk of overreach, I don’t think is zero.'” And: “‘They’re deadly serious,’ said another person with knowledge of the deliberations. ‘He’s going to move on vaccines and I think he feels he has a mandate.'” • As I’ve said, I don’t think it’s possible to have discussion on vax policy, because RFK’s anti-vaxers are coming for MMR. With measles cases already going up.
* * * “Project 2025 parallels in Trump’s executive order avalanche” [Axios]. “A review of Trump’s early executive orders shows clear parallels with Project 2025 on key proposals, such as dismantling diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; loosening environmental regulations; and ending certain international agreements. Trump also took steps Project 2025 did not explicitly mention, like declaring an energy emergency and attempting to end birthright citizenship. There are scores of recommendations in the Heritage Foundation plan, like outlawing pornography, that Trump hasn’t touched so far.” • The question for me is whether Heritage is driving the Trump Administration, or whether its proposals were already “in the air” in conservative circles, and so one would expect to see them in Trump executive orders whether Project 2025 existed or not. My sense is the latter (“in the air”). I would be persuaded of the former by extensive verbal parallels, on the order of plagiarism, and overlap in communication by topic (i.e., it’s not enough to say this reactionary dude wrote this screed on Topic A for Heritage, and then got a job with Trump; actual influence on Topic A in executive orders should be shown). Moar reporting, please!
DOGE
“Warren sends Musk 30 ideas for DOGE to cut government spending” [The Hill]. “Warren’s Thursday letter to Musk, President Trump’s close ally and the commission’s chair, recommended that he consider numerous progressive policy proposals, including allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, renegotiating Department of Defense (DOD) contracts and curbing tax loopholes for large corporations and the highest earners. ‘With regard to policy, I am disturbed by the dangerous proposals you have discussed and released to date: proposals from you and your allies to cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, veterans’ benefits, and other programs that tens of millions of Americans count on and rely on are unrealistic and cruel,’ Warren wrote in a 21-page letter. ‘It would be outrageous to cut these programs in the name of government thriftiness while handing out trillions of dollars in tax cuts for billionaires and big corporations,’ she added, but she also said the notion that the ‘federal government spends trillions of dollars on wasteful spending is correct. And if you are serious about working together in good faith to cut government spending — in a way that does not harm the middle class — I have proposals for your consideration.’ Warren’s prime proposal when it comes to slashing spending is renegotiating DOD contracts, arguing contractors often price-gouge the department.” • “Liberal Democrat writes fascist a strongly worded letter, film at 11:00.”
2028
“Kamala Harris provides a big signal about her next move” [Politico]. “Kamala Harris hasn’t made any public decisions about what her political future is going to be — but she has already created the organization that will help fuel it. The former vice president established an LLC called Pioneer49 last month in her home state of California, according to her presidential campaign’s final financial disclosure that was filed last week and confirmed by a person familiar with the organization’s plans. The disclosure form described the organization as an ‘entity to assist the former vice president’ and is likely to help fuel Harris’ next political move. There are essentially three options for Harris: run for governor of California in 2026, run for president again in 2028 or decline to run for office and be a leader of the party from the sidelines.” I suppose this entity is funding this timeline clutter:
BREAKING: Kamala Harris is out and about killing it, interacting with normal people in a way that Donald Trump could never. America messed up. pic.twitter.com/7JuE8s8Ti3
— Democratic Wins Media (@DemocraticWins) January 24, 2025
“Everyone Who Was Supposed to Protect You From This Failed Miserably” [Rolling Stone]. The deck: “Trump is president again. It was a top-to-bottom collapse and failure by every major institution that got us here.” I don’t see how that can be possible; everyone who was at “the top” before the election still is. Anyhow: “This Rolling Stone reporter tried to cover the rally as best he could, but he kept involuntarily scribbling ‘this is hell, we live in hell, I’m in Hell‘ over and over.” • This is the best line in the piece, which is pedestrian, if pedestrians can be said to screech.
DNC race continues wonderful:
Well, where were you?
AOC criticizing Biden: “it was only on his way out where he was like this country is controlled by Oligarchs, bye !
We could have used that energy years ago”. pic.twitter.com/PtBQUr7ZTI
— Winters Politics 🖤 (@WintersPolitics) January 23, 2025
Watching with the sound down: AOC needs some coaching on how to look serious (unless she wants to just stay as a represenative).
Republican Funhouse
Transparency in government:
Where could they have gotten this sense of impunity?
Realignment and Legitimacy
[Sigh]:
Every Democrat including Bernie voted to confirm Rubio as Secretary of State because Rubio is a life-long adherent to GOP establishment foreign policy, which Dems agree with or tolerate.
What they hate are anti-establishment views, and that (Tulsi/RFK) is who they want to sink. https://t.co/Ez912PRn7w
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 23, 2025
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
Malign neglect vs. ruthless elimination:
The White House site has removed its pledge for the Clean Air In Buildings Challenge. This initiative encourages companies to reduce the spread of airborne illnesses.
However, Biden never promoted this and repurposed money for ASHRAE 241 HVAC upgrades in schools to give to cops. pic.twitter.com/LohkB4tHYc
— paulypandemic (@we_are_ssd) January 23, 2025
* * * Air purifiers:
Another helpful spreadsheet comparing the specs of TONS of air purifiers across brands:https://t.co/oah8vGytEX
— Clean Air Club (@Clean_Air_Club_) January 23, 2025
Transmission: H5N1
Since we’re not getting Federal data:
Minnesota’s Department of Health has issued an urgent health advisory calling for hospitals and clinics to test hospitalized patients with respiratory illness for bird flu A (H5N1)
Mandatory subtyping within 24 hours of admission.
— Outbreak Updates (@outbreakupdates) January 24, 2025
“Boyd Gaming Prohibits Employees from Wearing COVID Masks” [Casino.org]. “Boyd Gaming just updated its grooming policy, and it now forbids employees from wearing face masks without first establishing an ADA-recognized disability with the company’s human resources department…. The memo [to employees] adds that ‘in September 2024, the CDC took the position that masks are not usually recommended in non-healthcare settings.’… As Boyd explained in an addendum to the memo, face coverings ‘impair our ability to provide a warm and welcoming atmosphere for our guests and to provide experiences that exceed their expectations.’ According to the addendum, the use of face coverings ‘dampens sound, restricts clarity of verbal communications, (and) precludes brightening a guest’s day with (a) warm friendly, and genuine [oh, totally] smile.'” • Ah, smile Nazis. But who wouldn’t smile when they were gambling with their life in the workplace?
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC January 10 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC January 18 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC January 11 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| New York[5] New York State, data January 16: | National [6] CDC Janurary 16: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens January 13: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic January 4: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC December 30: | Variants[10] CDC December 30 |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 11: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 11: |
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LEGEND
1) ★ for charts new today; all others are not updated.
2) For a full-size/full-resolution image, Command-click (MacOS) or right-click (Windows) on the chart thumbnail and “open image in new tab.”
NOTES
[1] (CDC) Seeing more red and more orange, but nothing new at major hubs.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) A little uptick.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Definitely jumped.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.
[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.
[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.
Stats Watch
Real Estate: “United States Existing Home Sales” [Trading Economics]. “Existing home sales in the US rose by 2.2% from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 4.38 million units in December of 2024, the most since February 2024. ‘Home sales in the final months of the year showed solid recovery despite elevated mortgage rates,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun.'”
Manufacturing: “Boeing came close to running out of cash in 4th quarter” [Leeham News]. “The Boeing Co. nearly ran out of cash in the fourth quarter, the company said today as it previewed earnings that will be announced next week. Boeing’s fourth-quarter cash flow was negative at $3.5bn, in part due to a strike that overlapped the third and fourth quarters.” • But fortunately, Wall Street came to the rescue!
Manufacturing: “The ‘DEI Theory’ of Boeing’s Undoing” [Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect]. “Like so many superficially inane right-wing ideas, the DEI theory of the collapse of American aviation contained a kernel of accuracy. Over the past quarter-century, Boeing had devolved from a deeply meritocratic organization into an explicitly anti-meritocratic organization. Engineers and quality officials are repeatedly chastised by their superiors for having too much “knowledge.” I recently interviewed a former quality manager who told me she was mocked and ridiculed for having graduated from aviation school. She said her bosses at Boeing in Charleston, South Carolina, made rude and racist comments about her Black inspectors even as they explicitly encouraged her to hire minorities over white men with aviation experience. That’s because Boeing views its employees as fundamentally disposable and has been for decades now at war with employees who know enough about planes to resist their constant and unrelenting orders to move faster and cut corners.” And of course: “Everyone who knows anything about Boeing understands that the “root cause” of its institutional decline was its 1996-1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas, a failed plane maker with a toxic, diabolical culture and a C-suite with an illustrious track record of fomenting distrust, plotting coups, insinuating itself into power vacuums, and bankrupting airplane manufacturers.” • Tkacik is always worth a read.
Tech: “As a 3rd-party, curious observer, I have several naive, unanswered questions about the Stargate project” [Bill Gurley, ThreadReader]. “Obviously understand that they have no obligation to disclose. Here is list with responses wide open. I would love to be able to aggregate the best answers at some point. 1. Corporate Structure The OpenA press release says that Stargate is “a new company.” Is Stargate established as a standard C-corp, LLC, a joint venture, or something else entirely? 2. CEO Leadership Will Stargate have an independent CEO? Who will lead Stargate on a daily basis, and how is that person chosen? Will they be as operationally intense as the XAI team that launched Memphis? 3. Customer Exclusivity Is OpenAI the sole customer, or will Stargate yearn to serve other businesses? Does Microsoft’s deal with OpenAI impose any exclusivity constraints (the Microsoft release suggests it may)?” • And so on up to 10; a very good thread.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 50 Neutral (previous close: 46 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 37 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 24 at 1:11:54 PM ET,
Civil War Studies
“A brief literary linguistic analysis of the Gettysburg Address” [Language Log]. “The Gettysburg Address is notable for its use of powerful rhetorical devices like anaphora (repetition of words at the beginning of sentences), alliteration (repetition of consonant sounds), antithesis (contrasting ideas), allusion (references to other texts), and parallelism (similar sentence structures), all contributing to its concise and impactful delivery, emphasizing themes of sacrifice, democracy, and the ideal of equality…. The above is not an exhaustive account of the rhetorical aspects and literary virtues of the Gettysburg Address, but I trust that it is sufficient to vouch for the verbal and mental power that is concentrated in this concise text… The raison d’être for this post is to answer the question I raised in “Machine translators vs. human translators” (1/7/25) about whether LLMs can ever do nuanced, sensitive literary translation. When I raised that question, I already felt that the answer was ‘no.’ Having completed this exercise, I’m all the more convinced that that will never happen.
Musical Interlude
Isaac Hayes with a conductor’s baton:
Isaac Hayes in the studio crafting pure funk magic with the iconic ‘Shaft’
A legend at work… pic.twitter.com/AacHkuxs40
— Melodies & Masterpieces (@SVG__Collection) January 23, 2025
Photo Book
Elegant snow umbrella, St Peter street, New Orleans pic.twitter.com/bm5TMD9dCY
— Marco (@marcorasi1960) January 23, 2025
Winter (2):
Meanwhile in Pensacola, Florida, snow covered orange trees. 🍊❄️🥶 pic.twitter.com/dO3j8q4f0I
— DK🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸 (@1Nicdar) January 22, 2025
“At a Deluxe Dining Room on the 100th Floor, a Chef Toils in Obscurity” [New York Times]. “The towers that have sprouted along Billionaires’ Row and elsewhere in New York are in competition for buyers among the top slice of the wealthiest 1 percent. Each building tries to outdo the others with spas, cold plunge pools, infinity pools, fleets of Pilates Reformer machines, steam rooms and other amenities tacked onto the cost of apartments that already are in the tens of millions of dollars…. In these buildings, offering a private restaurant where residents can pick from menus developed by Michelin-starred chefs is becoming de rigueur.” But: “Brokers who buy and sell units in the luxury buildings say these restaurants are often empty. That’s largely because their wealthy residents are busy zipping between apartments in other cities and countries. When they do breeze into New York, one of the great restaurant cities of the world, who wants to eat at home?” • Personally, I think wonderful food should be a perk of being a citizen.
“Automation in Retail Is Even Worse Than You Thought” [The Nation]. “[E]lectronic shelf labels or ESLs [are] digital displays [that] allow companies to change prices automatically from a mobile app. [Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan] warned that this so-called ‘dynamic pricing’ permits retailers to adjust prices based on their whims. … Several people interviewed for this article stressed that they were not against all forms of automation but that the innovations should be put in context. They pointed to the pandemic, when retailers blamed price spikes on chaotic supply chains and higher production costs. But studies have uncovered a different culprit: A 2021 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City attributed 50 percent of pandemic-era price increases to profiteering. And in 2024, the Federal Trade Commission concluded that companies had ‘accelerated and distorted’ supply chain problems to reap a windfall during the crisis. Joe Mizrahi believes that store automation may be another racket. Price gouging ‘is totally in line with what we have seen them do during the pandemic. They are increasing prices having nothing to do with inflation,’ he said.” • Are readers seeing any of these “electronic shelf labels (ESLs)? If you’ve got nothing to do during the day, can you stand around and watch the labels change?
Dad.
Just went to the Oreo website and hit “accept all cookies” … and now we wait
— Cooper Lawrence (@CooperLawrence) January 23, 2025
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 varnel:
Varnel writes: “Took a drive today to Ashland, WI. Took this shot at the local artesian well. Doesn’t seem like winter without snow on the ground. Black Willows on Chequamegon Bay, Lake Superior.”
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Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated:
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I highly recommend the National Archives transcription project. It’s great! I transcribed my 5th GGF’s Revolutionary War pension records, and pension records for a few other Rev War veterans in my cemetery. It’s a good brain exercise, and does a wonderful service. The transcription program they have is very easy to use. I’m pretty dumb at computer stuff and I was able to do it. Lots of different records available to work on. Find something that tickles your fancy and go for it!
On the cursive angle, one of the civil war blogs I follow had a post by a researcher who was unable to decipher a hand-written text. Thought it might have been encoded. Turns out it was written in a cursive style of Fraktur script used in parts of German Federation at the time.
Very neat! Glad they were able to eventually figure it out. It’s exciting in a nerdy sort of way. The cursive handwriting is interesting. My GGF’s had a lot of the s’s that looked like cursive f’s, the ink had soaked through both sides, there were unusual abbreviations, etc. Learned a lot. And every document had different handwriting. Like I said, great brain exercise. Wide range of topics to jump into and contribute to there at National Archives.
And the spelling, too! Good puzzlers.
I’m almost 70, so I grew up with pencil and paper – and cursive. I was (before computers) a draftsman so our writing (there is probably a better word to use) was important (all caps but still by hand).
But I don’t use it anymore, and haven’t for a long time. I can type about 60+ words a minute, but you can’t read my own signature… If you don’t do it – you lose it – it seems. It’s embarrassing at times to be honest.
But now I’m so old and I have a little bitty case of the “shakes” for lack of a better word. It is what it is. I still appreciate people that make hand written stuff so incredibly well done. Part of it I think is their natural talent of art? I have none. :-)
My GGF (grampy) could write cursive forward and backward with each hand simultaneously. It took a mirror to proof-read. I wish I had appreciated him and his stale cookies more.
Thanks for the endorsement Petal. I’m going to give it a go!
More “winter” with plants from Arcimbolo!
I had not realized that citrus was a winter fruit – it is in Italy at least.
All the orange, lemon, and grapefruit varieties we have bloom in very early spring and mature in winter, although the varieties tend to be on slightly different schedules. They can stay on the tree for several months so you don’t have to use them all at once, but in a residential setting you risk promoting roof rats if you leave them too long.
Mexican limes seem to do whatever they want and can produce more than one crop in a year, and do not stay on the tree very long.
Because citrus normally is evergreen, and because the fruits take a fairly long time to ripen, it turns out that the long bearing time is an advantage and a reason for their success as food plants.
“They can stay on the tree for several months…”
Aha – that’s what I was missing. I thought they were a spring fruit since I’d seen people picking them fresh in Greece in mid-April. When I ran across the Arcimbolo portrait I couldn’t figure out why he included the citrus around the neck until I saw a mention that it was because they were winter fruits in Italy, which had me confused since Greece is so close. Now it all adds up! The things you don’t know when you live where it’s expected to snow…
Lemon trees don’t make a sound
‘Til branches bend and fruit falls to the ground
Baby, sweet baby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4htPUK2q4ZU
Indeed a winter fruit, and those snow-covered oranges are likely ruined 🙁
We lose a lot of citrus trees in the Central Valley when it goes below freezing and warmers aren’t enough, happens about once every 20 years or so.
Florida citrus has been hit hard by HLB, the Asian psylid.
A very pretty photograph that reminds me of images of persimmon trees in the snow, something seen regularly in Japanese art.
But the fruit likely is ruined, as you write, Laughingsong.
Trees or crops are not necessarily ruined as the growers had plenty of warning. Any citrus grower worth their salt would know to spray the crop with water; locking the fruit and foliage in ice, thereby creating a mini-environment of relative warmth. The one caveat, however, was the length of the cold spell. Temps below freezing for extended periods will kill or ruin regardless.
lyman alpha blob. Italians have definite ideas about the seasonality of citrus fruits. Which was backed up by my fruttivendolo in the market in Via Madama Cristina, who, when I asked her if I could buy eating oranges in mid-April, scoffed: These are barely good enough to use to make spremuta!
I paste below a listing from an Italian site. Note that there are many, many citrus fruits in Italy. Three that are used mainly as aromatics, in preserves and liquors, and perfumes, are citrons, bergamots, and chinotti (bitter oranges). They aren’t in this listing. Limes are something of a novelty, even though there is evidence for limes in Sicily going back hundreds of years. Un mistero d’Italia.
The virtue of lemons (as Giuseppe Barbera mentions in his wonderful book Agrumi) is that they come in season later and have a long season. They are more tolerant than other citrus fruits, in a sense.
Agrumi in inverno
È la stagione perfetta per il consumo di agrumi. In particolare:
Dicembre: arance, mandarini, mandaranci, pompelmi, limoni.
Gennaio: sono ancora disponibili arance, limoni, mandarini, pompelmi.
Febbraio: ancora tanti agrumi, tranne il pompelmo.
Agrumi in primavera
In primavera si possono trovare ancora i mandarini ma la polpa solitamente è un po’ asciutta, per il resto si trovano ancora sui banchi del mercato:
Marzo: limoni, insieme alle arance e ai mandarini, ancora presenti fino alla fine di aprile.
Maggio: ultimi arance e limoni, con dimensioni un po’ più piccole, poiché siamo arrivati alla fine della stagione degli agrumi.
Agrumi in estate
Alcune varietà di arance tardive possono essere coltivate ancora fino giugno. Dopo, gli unici agrumi ancora presenti sono i limoni.
Agrumi in autunno
Con la fine dell’estate ci sono ancora i limoni, mentre da novembre anche arance, mandarini, mandaranci e pompelmi.
There are dozens of varieties of oranges and lemons, which also affects their seasonality.
Has seasonality of citrus fruits been eliminated completely in the U S of A?
Thanks DJG. Your fruttivendolo’s judgment probably explains the little dustup I saw last April when a customer complained to a Cretan waiter that the fresh squeezed OJ she ordered wasn’t fresh. I’d seen the waiter pick them fresh off the tree and assumed they’d just ripened. You’d think the complaintress would have known better, being from another Mediterranean country.
Yes, they eventually become bland and watery, but people disagree about exactly when they are best. I’ve had tolerable grapefruit picked as late as the end of May, and that’s in Phoenix where it’s pretty hot by May.
Have not seen any ESL but since I know the normal price of the things I regularly buy then I (and everyone) would notice if the price keeps jumping around. People like Liz Warren must be hard up for talking points.
The truth is that retailers do have competition and worry more about price conscious shoppers per the above than pretending their customers can’t simply drive across the street.
And re housing new Construction Physics looks at the cost of homeowner insurance. With charts.
https://www.construction-physics.com/p/why-is-homeowners-insurance-getting
Seeing ESL makes me scroll through random definitions. :)
English as a Second Language
Exsanguination as a Second Language
Enduring Sociopathic Lusters, or Lunatics
Eat Stuff Less
Exit Stage Left
Have had these ESL in the DECA commissaries for a few years. Not a problem except one day I went in and they were all flashing ——–.
Re: Ratcliff “Day One – Thing.”
As predicted by Off Guardian last week. I like skeptics challenging stuff even if they turn out to be wrong.. / ;)
https://off-guardian.org/2025/01/14/predicting-2025-covid-origins-revisited/
All right, this is what that Kit Knightly writes:
“In fact let’s say that again in italics –
The lab leak story is just a back door way of getting people to believe there was a real deadly new virus and a real pandemic.
There was NO deadly new disease and NO real pandemic.”
Oh, there was and is no deadly new disease and no real pandemic? Denial of reality, head in sand, rejection of science, etc, everything is in place to ignore the effects of other epidemics that are creeping up (avian flu being the most threatening, but mpox is worryingly tenacious, and RSV seems to be well-established now).
I think that’s one of the bits that is wrong. But, the idea we’re going to get an official revisionist history that serves other official purposes, to further the official narrative control, sounds about right to me. I’ll be watching to see if all Western countries come up with almost the same revisionist history, in lockstep as you might say. / ;)
I think the point is to blame it on China … and Fauci.
A disease that kills 20,000,000 seems deadly to me, but whjat do I know.
Are readers seeing any of these “electronic shelf labels (ESLs)? If you’ve got nothing to do during the day, can you stand around and watch the labels change?
The topic has already been discussed in comments on this very forum. Personally, I have seen these tags being introduced about three years ago (European country, not USA), and they are now becoming prevalent at least in middle-size to large supermarkets.
I saw those labels under update only a couple of times — there were many of them being modified simultaneously, which is why I noticed (and this was early during their introduction in the ALDI supermarket I patronize).
What you are more likely to see is Aldi charging the same for eggs as Lidl and vice versa. Perhaps the electronic tags will be used to talk to each other.
A probable “price fixing” model there.
Avoid outright appearances of impropriety and introduce a “Third Party Middleman” company. Say, a “service” that scans prices at all retailers and “compares” the prices for the “convenience” of the managers. Have this done at speed and some “leakage” between customer’s data streams “might happen.” Voila! Instant price “coordination.” Done automatically.
I would not be at all surprised to read that this is already being done.
Locally I purchased a dozen eggs yesterday at a nearby Ingles grocery store, pricing was right at the $4.50 price point. Hard coded price label…my guess is they have to consistently update the price …And I don’t frequently buy a dozen as it goes.
I’ll wait for a friendly reminder from the West Coast or up in the Northeast how that price for the carton of eggs, well it ain’t so bad in comparison.
Do those also talk to, or listen to, whatever is in your wallet or on your phone? Or on your face?
Pay cash, 💵 leave the phone 📱 elsewhere while shopping, wear a hat 🧢 and sunglasses. 😎
LA Times critic rates the just out best picture nominees.
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2025-01-24/all-the-2025-best-picture-oscar-nominees-ranked-wicked-dune-anora-conclave-brutalist-substance-emilia-perez
I haven’t seen most of them but seriously doubt Dune Two should or will win. I thought it floundering and miscast.
Besides being science fiction the fact that Villeneuve was not nominated pretty much dooms it. I also find it interesting that the vast majority of comments disagree with the premise that Dune should win.
A friend said after reading the nominations she realized she had no interest in the films or the winners. I don’t think she is alone.
I should admit that outside of liking the visuals and music I wasn’t impressed with Dune 1 and still haven’t bothered with Dune 2. And I read Dune at least every five years or so.
Re. “Electronic Shelf Labels”… they have been adopted in a local chain hardware store where I live. They were brought in with no notice, and the first time I saw them they were blank in an entire section of the store and blinking nonsense patterns in another due to a software error. (Or a savvy or disgruntled staff member, who knows?) I am keeping an eye on my sample store to see if maybe it’s in a pilot program. In any case, that store and the entire chain has lost me as a customer both live and online.
A recent WEF forum was funny on a number of levels.
Yale University Professor Walter Reed said: “I think we need to also factor in not only who has won (Trump) but also who has lost, which is to say us.”
“By ‘us,’ I mean the general intellectual, professional, managerial people who believed history was over, and we were merely administering and managing things according to clear and known rules,” he explained. “Something new, not necessarily better, but new, is moving into the center.”
But then you had the lady from the Manhattan Institute claiming that neoliberalism raised millions out of poverty–ALLISON SHRAGER: “I think a lot of economists are shaking their heads at this narrative that neoliberalism failed. From their perspective, the world got a lot richer, and even in richer countries, quality of life has improved significantly.”
Maybe Larry Summers believes that but the reality is that neoliberal financialization impoverished millions of Americans, indirectly resulting in Trump’s election
Furthermore, China, the leader in bringing people out of poverty, did not follow neoliberal instructions, but developed like the US did by focusing on productive industrial policies rather that extractive neoliberal financialization
If the US had followed neoliberal prescriptions we would still be exporting cotton
Last I checked, the US is still exporting cotton.
In fact, the US has often been the #1 exporter of cotton in the world.
Roughly a half of US cotton is grown in Texas; Georgia is next, then Mississippi.
Sadly, America no longer uses that cotton. The US spinning mills and clothing factories were all shuttered and sent overseas. So, that America exports a lot of cotton is no surprise. We use little of it here now. Cotton no longer comes to Harlem.
Cotton: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_production_in_the_United_States#/media/File:12-10-2019_US_cotton_harvested_area.jpg
My cotton t-shirts hole within months of ownership, cost doesn’t matter. They all do it.
There are various theories on the Internet as to why clothing now sucks. One revolves around lower quality Chinese cotton and and extra harvesting season each year, I guess yielding worse cotton.
I haven’t seen a definitive answer, maybe one does not exist.
I’ve had this problem with Merino wool sweaters, too, any price point. Extremely irritating.
https://english.news.cn/20241225/bde69f63be8941998c07216eab441db9/c.html
December 25, 2024
China’s 2024 cotton output jumps with tech boost
BEIJING — China’s cotton production saw a significant increase in 2024, driven by technological advancements and improved cultivation techniques, particularly in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.
The country’s cotton production rose to 6.164 million tonnes in 2024, a 9.7 percent increase from the previous year, with northwest China’s Xinjiang leading the growth, official data showed Wednesday.
The national growth was driven by increased planting area and improved yield efficiency. China’s total cotton planting area expanded by 1.8 percent from 2023, while the yield per unit area saw a significant jump of 7.8 percent year on year, reaching 2,172 kg per hectare, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
This improvement in productivity played a crucial role in boosting the country’s overall cotton output.
Xinjiang, China’s largest cotton-producing region, saw a 3.3 percent increase in planting area to 2.45 million hectares. In contrast, cotton planting areas in the Yangtze River and Yellow River basins decreased by 1.6 percent and 13.6 percent, respectively.
Wei Fenghua, an official with the NBS rural department, cited stable target prices in Xinjiang as a key factor in encouraging farmers to increase cotton cultivation.
Xinjiang’s cotton yield per unit area rose by 7.6 percent to about 2,324 kg per hectare, benefiting from favorable weather conditions throughout the growing season.
China is the world’s leading cotton consumer and producer, and Xinjiang accounts for nearly 90 percent of the country’s total cotton production. The region’s dominance in China’s cotton production has steadily increased in recent years, leveraging its natural advantages and improved irrigation infrastructure…
Allison Shrager is doing herself some epic gaslighting here. Saying the diametric opposite of what is true. But I guess that she will get a coupla pats on the head by the people at Davos for saying this.
Re: RFK investigating the vaccines.
It really does not matter if we think we can have a rational discussion or not.
It is becoming increasingly apparent to me as a practicing physician in this country that the choice is now binary. We can have a completely transparent investigation of every vaccine out there including completely valid safety studies OR we can have a failed and hobbled vaxx program going forward.
There are now enough people refusing and resisting any and all vaccines that if we have not already we will soon reach critical mass. Because of the complete horrific bungling of the last 4 years, the credibility has been completely shot.
I had discussions with 4 different rational people today. All 4 what I would call middle of the road Blue city Dems. 2 were pneumonia shots, one was shingles shots and one was discussing childhood vaccines in their kids, including MMR. I achieved a complete hard NO on all 4. People are now profoundly skeptical. They have seen the problems and the lies. And they just do not believe the authorities anymore – so again, we are going to have to have a transparent rational investigation OR we will have a hobbled vaccine world going forward. And it will have to involve the PCPs of America. People have literally zero trust at this point in the authorities. And all the naysayers and hangers-on in my profession are going to have to shut up and sit in the car or risk losing it all.
> We can have a completely transparent investigation of every vaccine out there including completely valid safety studies
I don’t think that option is on the table.
Then we will have a hobbled feckless vaccine program going forward. It really is that simple. There is just zero trust in a huge segment of the population.
Mandating is not going to work going forward – too many charter schools, private schools etc. They tried to tell this to the Obama admin – no one listened – and now we have home schooling syyrocketing and public schools cratering. For many reasons, but this one is major.
I also do not think after the debacle that we went through that general population mandating of vaccines will ever be tried again.
Walter Cronkite once said the only thing news companies have to sell is credibility. Doctors too?
And Yves has talked about how the business world has suffered from loss of trust versus the time when your word was your bond.
Meanwhile Biden’s last act in office is pardoning his family with no apparent concern about his “good name” that the Bard talked about. After all he’ll be gone and we’ll be gone (eventually). Nihilism rules the day.
IM Doc: It’s like the Crucible all over again. Americans panicking in face of evidence to the contrary.
I’m not sure why anyone wouldn’t risk vaccines that have been proven successful:
–smallpox
–MMR
–tetanus
–shingles
–pneumococcus.
–even the yearly flu vaccine, for all of its faults, isn’t a disaster.
Here in the Chocolate City, the region encourages vaccination. For free. I have had flu shots, the Covid booster, shingles, and pneumococcus, all for free. My “medico di base,” who is quite good, has pushed me to go get the shots when the regional health authority has pinged me with appointments.
I am wondering if the fact that Americans have to pay so much is a factor — in the sense that they are forced to pay so much for every aspect of a health-insurance system that isn’t working on their behalf or in their favor. The straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Have any of those been migrated to the new mRNA platform?
Not yet – but they are rapidly working on mRNA flu vaccines
One of the 3 RSV vaccines is mRNA – and that one is assiduously avoided by me. The mRNAs are so completely tainted that at least for this generation they will be a no-go for anything.
If you look at the moderna mRNA RSV numbers compared to the other 2 – they are just simply not being done – people are not interested in these at all.
Not surprised. We know how Pfizer and FDA played hide-the-ball with the data on the modified RNA COVID shots, and the downplaying of any side effects, and no one taking you seriously when you reported adverse events from administering these to patients.
I had my own moderate reaction, maybe from the second shot, maybe not. But without any viable data, I have to assume it was from the shot, and I won’t get any more modified RNA garbage. It is a shame that they want to roll this platform out for everything.
I never thought I’d live to a see an era of mass infectious disease; I grew up during the golden age of public health, when vaccination rates were high, and it seems like disease was taken seriously enough that none of the current debacle was ongoing. So this is all going to be a new world for many people.
In my mom’s era, infectious disease was just a fact of life, and they came out with the polio vaccine, and everyone got that, big deal. We conquered small pox. We dealt with mosquito-born illness (by spaying horrible poison causing its own horrors). I doubtless don’t even know about dozens of other initiatives.
Today, not so much. Public health is running on brand fumes. It probably has been since before 2020, given the putrid state of much of our public institutions already. The rot at FDA has been apparently for quite awhile.
“Public Health” in the USA is dead.
Thousands of years to build trust, destroyed in less than 4 years.
A betrayal that has devastated many in the Health care field emotionally, including my Sister.
The price paid will be enormous and long lasting.
Same here, but you have to book flu and Covid. The others are automatic. Free, except for the bus to get there.
Heh, the flu shot. I was fortunate in never having ever knowingly gotten the flu, or had any such symptoms that would indicate such had happened.
I did get the flu shot for a number of years, always felt awful after. Always told, ha, you can’t get the flu from the flu shot. As if, you know, it doesn’t spur an immune reaction.
The lying about shots and the condescension and dismissiveness started quite a bit before this Pandemic debacle. Somewhere along the way, our medical system got very sick, and it is on death’s door today, frankly.
When i saw T at the podium lauding Oracle and OpenAI and another computer CEO bro for their big idea of creating personalized cancer vacs – one just for you! – in near instant time, based on AI, I thought it was the nuttiest idea I’d heard in a long time. Electronic Medical Records ought to raise a note of caution. Wishful thinking meets StarTrek branding for a multi-billion dollar sales pitch.
I’m not sensing humility returning to the health care systems any time soon.
Project warped speed cubed. the AI version
Ha Ha Hee Hee
I’m a biochemist and have a patent on an early purification step for an oncolytic adenovirus (work by the brilliant Frank McCormick, PhD, FRS, DSc (Hon) David A. Wood Distinguished Professorship of Tumor Biology and Cancer Research, UCSF) The problem is that mRNA is NOT a vaccine. It is a gene therapy vector. The so called mRNA vaccine expressed the spike protein which is the most variable part of the virus and proven to be dangerous when purified and injected into mice. Vaccines against viruses have been whole dead virus so that the immune system can make antibodies to the capsid proteins that make up the outer structure that contains the nucleic acids that make the virus virulent. In the 1800s vaccines were whole dead viruses (no way to sterile filter or purify anything back then). In the 20th century whole dead virus with an adjuvant (which increases the immune response to the antigen while the immune system does not make antibodies to the adjuvant). I’m 76 and the vaccines I received were proven safe with at least 5 years of clinical trials and observations. One of the newer vaccine used a peanut extract in production and now we have children with deadly peanut allergies that never existed when I was a child. Giving large pharma complete legal immunity wrt to vaccines is a CRIME. We need to use the the older vaccines before pharma was given legal immunity. From above “we are going to have to have a transparent rational investigation” – YES!
‘One of the newer vaccine used a peanut extract in production and now we have children with deadly peanut allergies that never existed when I was a child.’
Had to wince at that one and I’m just an ordinary dogsbody. But even I could have said that this may have not been a good idea simply based on the number of children with peanut allergies out there.
Come to think of it, I have been getting the flu shot the past coupla winters but now may have to find out if they are slipping in mRNA flu shots instead of regular ones.
I have added orts and scraps. Have a good weekend!
re: As a 3rd-party, curious observer, I have several naive, unanswered questions about the Stargate project
Isn’t OpenAI the company the young San Francisco AI programmer worked for: the programmer who we’re told suicided himself? He was on the verge of releasing apparently damning information about the dangerous direction he saw OpenAI taking? I would love to know what he documented in his files. The timing of the programmer’s suppose-icide and OpenAI CEO appearing will Ellison and others for a big AI deal is the stuff of mystery novels.
Nah … It,s business nothing personal.
There is an incredible recent interview from Tucker Carlson with Suchir Balaji’s mother (the Open AI guy who supposedly killed himself). His mother took photos of the crime scene. It was definitely not suicide and there is obviously a coverup happening. It’s well worth watching.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kev_-HyuI9Y&ab_channel=TuckerCarlson
Call me vindictive.
From the Vertlartnic article above: “In response, the 51 former officials signed a letter asserting that “the arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter … has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Mind you, the signatories offered no evidence of a hidden Russian hand in all of this. They supplied no digital trails leading to Russian spies, no confidential sources claiming a connection. And they were up-front about this: ‘We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails … are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement—just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.’”
You have people with security clearances who are supposedly law enforcement (and sworn to uphold the law) playing office politics and interfering (against the interest of their own agencies) in public affairs.
Hmmm. Could that be called incompetence?
Why wouldn’t I revoke their privileges and ease them out the door to spend more time with their families if I became czar of the U S of A?
I’m so long popcorn on this one. Is it wrong to consider the not-one-but-two attempts at assassination here?
There’s an uneasiness between “free speech” and “security clearance”, isn’t there? They play it, the spooks; “if it only could be told, you’d understand” Spooks should STFU.
Trump brought up the interesting idea that just because you get a security clearance once, there is no reason why it should be for life.
That X post above by Nathan J Robinson on Current Affairs query and saying that all they got from Bernie was silence…
Same thing here when I asked Bernie’s office why he wasn’t supporting Jill Stein in the last election when clearly her platform was mostly aligned with everything he has been espousing all these years. Not that I expected a response from him.
Points of related importance:
1) The New York Times has now printed 5 articles in the last 2 months on how Beijing (always Beijing) is abusing China’s pandas (not the plushy but the real pandas) for reasons that are beyond my understanding but have something to do with Beijing wanting to send pandas (real ones) abroad to take control of zoos everywhere (spy pandas).
2) Paul Krugman resigned from the Times because his articles were being censured and actually changed and rechanged when he tried to remove the changes. A Nobel Prize winning economist who can longer be permitted to write on the economics he knows as few in the world know economics.
Electronic Shelf Labels:
The system could be hacked and a competitor could bankrupt a company by reducing prices; on the Big Brother side governments could instantly be made aware of inflationary moves.
If governments were actually proactive about inflation they would be “bringing executives in for a quiet talk” to explain their suspected and expected price hikes rather than farting around with base rates etc after the fact. I am sure AI would be a great help with that.
Pip-pip!
The whole foods near me has electronic price tags. I have not time to stand around and watch them change but they seemed suspicious to me when I first noticed them. They are e-ink displays which can be fairly cheaply sourced I believe but they would certainly need to make back a fair bit of money on the investment in what must be thousands of them by increasing average price paid by consumers.
Not sure which category this belongs to: B.C. man’s sasquatch-seeking expeditions used against him in spousal support case.
(Basic background for those unfamiliar with this bit of regional mythology, aka “Bigfoot”.)
Excerpt:
A man’s ongoing efforts to track down the elusive sasquatch in remote areas of British Columbia suggest he’s capable of working, and therefore not entitled to spousal support, a judge has ruled.
The unusual circumstances were detailed in a recent divorce decision handed down in B.C. Supreme Court, which makes multiple references to the 57-year-old’s sasquatch-seeking expeditions.
It was one such venture that led to the couple’s separation in August 2020.
His wife told the court he went on a camping trip on Vancouver Island that month in search of the mythical ape-like creature – and brought along an ex-girlfriend without telling her.
Politico is revealed as aggressively quashing any reporting on the Hunter Biden laptop story back when it mattered, and then the same Politico is cited as a source for an article about how RFK Jr.’s allies have a plan to upend the childhood vaccine schedule “according to five people with knowledge of the deliberations who were granted anonymity because the discussions are private.”
Ah yes, because nothing screams ‘trustworthy reporting’ like anonymous sources from the same outlet that played defense for the establishment when the truth was inconvenient. Carry on, Politico.
> face coverings ‘impair our ability to provide a warm and welcoming atmosphere for our guests and to provide experiences that exceed their expectations.’
I suppose that exposing guests to infection (from asymptomatic spreaders among the employees) with a virus that they didn’t ask for is a way of exceeding what the guests expected.
Re: Chef toils alone — Lambert comments “Personally, I think wonderful food should be a perk of being a citizen.”
I agree. But this citizen does not think any of the food described and/or pictured in that story sounds wonderful at all. The oligarchs can have it.
We watched the snow waft down last night while we enjoyed chicken paprikash made by yours truly. Mmm…mmm…good!
Chicken paprikash, oh. I imagine Mr. Salaam would enjoy it. I sure would. I also reckon he could make a meal you’d go back for. Maybe not on the 100th floor. He’s cooking for the clientele there.
Long ago I was food and bev manager at a fancy place. The chef and I became friends, and I’d have him up to the camp for outdoor grill or pizzas. He more than once told me how much he appreciated the simpler fare.
This line of thought has got me hankering for a kitchen throw-down, and I’ve got dough sitting.
Chicken paprikash sounds really nice.
My mom made the best chicken paprikash, yum yum!
RE: Rubio / Greenwald’s tweet – (first?) Rubio memo via RealClearPolitics: link
“The lengthy cable was sent shortly after Rubio arrived at his new post in Foggy Bottom and was obtained exclusively by RealClearPolitics. It signals a fundamental shift in foreign policy and a realignment of all diplomatic efforts toward putting American needs first.”
A fundamental shift you say?
For some reason the promise of creative exploitation is making me apprehensive…
On that Cassidy Hutchinson post: I assume by “lawmakers” it is referring to actual members of Congress. Do they mean to claim that actual members of Congress propositioned this White House aid, unsolicited (I assume), for “sexual favors” – by TEXT?? I certainly don’t deny that members of Congress are that slimy, but are they really that dumb? Personally, I didn’t believe Hutchinson’s story about Trump going nuts in the car, which was denied by the driver if I recall. Every time I’d go into our local bookstore I’d see her damn book displayed all over the place, which was irritating. But still… maybe I’m missing something. I looked up the related news stories and there really wasn’t any more information provided.
Kamala and others contemplating their futures need to consider the audiences, not potted plants.
Many saw Trump talk freely for extended periods about many topics without any teleprompter, note cards or handlers. Compare to and contrast with images of Harris and Biden, word salads, confusion and all.
Those planning more runs or roles on the big stage have much work to do in the off-season. That will be needed to attempt to counteract the hours of sound bites and memes that buried them previously.
Sometimes it is just the delivery, regardless of the appealing content.
I won’t argue against the idea that Harris and the Democrats’ delivery is dog-awful. But so is the content. Working class people of all colors know the Democrats hate them; that’s why they abandoned the party in the elections. Better “messaging” or “delivery” won’t change a thing, and The Deplorables know this, too.
Harris is fully qualified to be Governor of California.
She has a tan and nice teeth, is a Female, She is utterly corrupt, lazy and not too bright.
And most importantly, she can raise lots of money.
That’s what it takes in the “Golden State” where those with the Gold make the rules.
I just love this type of “news” and “reporting”……“‘The people [RFK] really trusts are people that obviously are trying to execute a plan to totally take away vaccines,’ said one of the people with knowledge of the discussions. ‘The risk of overreach, I don’t think is zero.’” And: “‘They’re deadly serious,’ said another person with knowledge of the deliberations. ‘He’s going to move on vaccines and I think he feels he has a mandate.’”
In other words, Mary said that Bill was there and he heard Mike say he was coming to visit at 8:00. Well, he thought I wouldn’t be here, but I am and he’s late so he must be a flake. I don’t like Mike.
Price of eggs is going up some more. Someone pasted a clever meme-pun-picture up on the glass case-cover.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1i9446s/rising_cost_of_eggs/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bx9kaa7IsBg