By Lambert Strether.
Lambert here: Glad I checked the Twitter before doing orts and scraps. It’s been a lively afternoon! –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher, Burlington–City View Park, Halton, Ontario, Canada
In Case You Might Miss…
- Hakeem shrugged.
- The spooks and Trump’s first impeachment.
- Dr. Bronner’s ditches B Corp Program (too lax).
- Coach Nick Sirianni To Eagles Fans.
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
Spook Country
* * * “US agency sends Trump plan to release documents on JFK assassination” [Reuters]. “Trump signed an order during his first week in office related to the release and also promised to release documents concerning the assassinations of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert Kennedy, both of whom were killed in 1968. Trump has allowed more time to come up with a plan for those releases….. [ODNI] sent recommendations last week to President Donald Trump on which classified documents he should release to the public related to the assassination of former President John F. Kennedy.”
“Scoop: FBI finds secret JFK assassination records after Trump order” [Axios]. “The FBI just discovered about 2,400 records tied to President Kennedy’s assassination that were never provided to a board tasked with reviewing and disclosing the documents, Axios has learned…. The existence of the new documents was disclosed Friday to the White House, when the Office of the Director of National Intelligence submitted its plan to disclose the assassination records under Trump’s order. The contents of the newly found records are closely held secrets. The three sources who relayed their existence to Axios said they hadn’t seen the documents…. But the discovery of thousands of records on one of the most scrutinized events in U.S. history is likely to raise questions about the procedures for vetting and releasing information across the entire government.” • Indeed.
* * * “US cyber agency puts election security staffers who worked with the states on leave” [Associated Press]. “In recent days, 17 employees of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who have worked with election officials to provide assessments and trainings dealing with a range of threats — from cyber and ransomware attacks to physical security of election workers — have been placed on leave pending a review, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly. Ten of those employees are regional election security specialists hired as part of an effort to expand field staff and election security expertise ahead of the 2024 election. The regional staffers were told the internal review would examine efforts to combat attempts by foreign governments to influence U.S. elections, duties that were assigned to other agency staff, according to the person.” • Hmm. For more on CISA and election security, see NC here.
Trump Administration
So long, DOE?
Stansbury says her understanding is the Trump admin "has been running drills for the last couple of weeks, planning for this."
She also said she expects that "the Department of Education is going to potentially be dissolved in the coming days."
And yes, this is illegal.
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) February 11, 2025
And CFPB?
Republicans have railed against companies debanking conservatives, but now the party is trying to gut the same agency that has worked to fight debanking under the Biden administration. @matthewstoller on why the CFPB protects consumers: pic.twitter.com/P4aAyWQlVK
— System Update (@SystemUpdate_) February 11, 2025
Unless the Big Banks want to get eaten alive by Silicon fraudsters using apps, they should be protecting CFPB with everything they’ve got.
* * * “SEC’s Peirce Says Agency Wants New Approach to Crypto Policy” [Bloomberg]. “‘During the past several years, enforcement cases have been used as a way to make regulatory policy; that is very atypical,’ Peirce said Tuesday during a ‘Bloomberg Crypto’ TV interview. ‘We’re trying to get back to a path where we’re really using our other tools to make policy.’ The SEC on Monday filed a request to pause litigation against Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. The regulator sued Binance and co-founder Changpeng ‘CZ’ Zhao in 2023, alleging the firm mishandled customer funds, misled investors and regulators and broke securities laws. The SEC asked for a brief stay of 60 days, citing pending development of a regulatory framework for digital assets.” • “Digital assets” my Sweet Aunt Fanny. How do you regulate an asset that does’nt exist, absent fraud?
DOGE
Judge Vargas gets to work on State of New York, et al., v. Donald J. Trump (order; analysis of initial order at NC here):
JUST IN: Judge trims order limiting DOGE access to Treasury payment systems, clarifies that Senate-confirmed political appointees can have access, approves access for contractors on rolls prior to 1/20/25 and for Kansas City fed which has a special role. Doc:…
— Josh Gerstein (@joshgerstein) February 11, 2025
* * *
I guess we’ll have to wait until the midterms:
"What leverage do we have?" says Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. "They control the House, the Senate and the presidency; it's their government." pic.twitter.com/GAI1LYQJM7
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) February 9, 2025
Maybe we should take “Minority Leader” and cross out the “Leader” part.
Then again:
the first month of Indivisible's existence in Dec 2016 we knew that something big was building because we were getting reports from all over the country of massively-attended organizing meetings. then we'd try to explain that this mattered to journalists/politicos and they mostly…
— Leah Greenberg (@Leahgreenb) February 11, 2025
No masks, please, we’re liberals:
There must have been 800 people at the @IndivCentralOH event this weekend. Wall to wall in every room. And they had to turn people away due to fire codes!#Ohio is not going down without a fight pic.twitter.com/aCjHKGLAY9
— Rachel Coyle (@RachelCoyleOhio) February 11, 2025
I grant that Indivisible has a structure, processes, documentation. They know how to run a meeting and organize an event. But if it’s just another NGO feeding cash and votes to, well, Hakeem Jeffries, I don’t see the point. Or rather, I do.
* * * “Donald Trump and Elon Musk are not tiptoeing toward autocracy” [Normal Ornstein, The Contrarian]. ” If Senate Democrats suddenly had discipline, backbone and a willingness to stay on weekends and often at night, to deny unanimous consent for all or nearly all executive nominations, and to put on blanket holds, it could keep a large number of the second- and third- tier nominees from being confirmed, at least adding to their difficulty hijacking the agencies and departments, and limiting their ability to use the Vacancies Act to fill top posts. Of course, Senate Republicans might well change all the rules, radically reducing the power of the minority. But if we do somehow manage to get through this and maintain our democracy, we will not have to worry about a couple of recalcitrant senators, like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, to alter the rules; they will already be in place. And Democrats can decide which ones to use to implement their own agenda. So what to do? It is time for House Democrats, especially, to use their biggest power, their votes in a body that is closely divided and with a Republican majority incapable of uniting on its own to pass budgets and spending bills and to raise the debt ceiling.”
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!
| Wastewater | |
| ★ This week[1] CDC February 3 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC February 1 | ★ Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC February 1 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data February 10: | National [6] CDC February 7: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens February 10: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 8: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC January 20: | Variants[10] CDC January 20 |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 25: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 25: |
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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) Down, 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, but no exponential growth either, Odd.
[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.
Marketing: “Dr. Bronner’s Is Ditching B Corp Program Because Bar Is Too Low” [Bloomberg]. “Cult soap brand Dr. Bronner’s is quitting a well-known corporate responsibility program because its executives say the standards are too weak, marking a departure from companies watering down their goals to appease conservative activists. The Vista, California-based brand won’t renew its B Corp certification when it expires in September after years of lobbying B Lab, the nonprofit behind the program, for more stringent requirements, according to a statement Tuesday… Dr. Bronner’s main complaint about B Lab is that it doesn’t require corporations to prove through third-party certifications or other tests that their supply chains protect human rights and the environment. Companies can attain the certification in part by focusing on other efforts, such as providing financial security to employees and monitoring its waste output, according to B Lab’s guidelines. That approach, Dr. Bronner’s argues, allows for greenwashing because it fails to capture the impact of large corporations with sprawling supply chains that often involve crops plagued with human rights and environmental concerns, such as palm oil.” • Not wrong!
Tech: “I Dated Multiple AI Partners at Once. It Got Real Weird” [Wired]. “[E]ver since the arrival of Covid-19 people just don’t mingle like they used to. It’s not surprising, then, that some romance seekers are skipping human companions and turning to AI. People falling in love with their AI companions is no longer the stuff of Hollywood tales about futuristic romance. But while it may feel uncanny to some, as a video game reporter the concept doesn’t seem so foreign to me. Dating sims, or games where you can otherwise date party members, are a popular genre. Players grow affection for and attachment to characters; some want to have sex with those characters. After its release, Baldur’s Gate 3 die-hards were even speedrunning sex with the game’s cast.
Still, I’ve wondered what drives average people to fall head over heels for generative AI, so I did what any curious person would: set myself up on dates with a few to feel them out.”
Tech: “BuzzFeed’s New Plan: An AI-Powered Social Media Platform to Help ‘Spread Joy'” [Hollywood Reporter]. A letter from the CEO: “If the early internet was serving beer and wine that brought people together, today’s internet is dealing crack and fentanyl that tears people apart. The consumer isn’t winning when they are addicted to a product that makes them unhappy, and when they are spending hours each day using products they would pay money to make disappear. Any theory of business competition needs to be updated with deeper analysis drawn from addiction psychology and behavioral economics. People haven’t realized it yet, but the AI-powered platforms have already shipped the dystopian AI future many people are worried might come in the future.” • Hmm.
Tech: “At work, a quiet AI revolution is under way” [Financial Times]. “On a recent flight to France, I got talking to the woman next to me and ChatGPT came up. She worked as a bank clerk, and said she now used the chatbot to write the majority of her correspondence with colleagues and customers. She explained that writing had never been her strong point, and the app was able to generate text that captured what she wanted to say better than she could. I joked that she would be using it to write messages to friends and family before she knew it, and she rather sheepishly replied that she already had, asking for help with a recent birthday text. Her unease suggested that she felt what she was doing was in some way wrong. Yet like many others, she is now using generative AI to produce vast swaths of personal and professional communication, unbeknown to those who receive these AI-generated messages.” • Are we sure it’s that unknown? Like, is everything a bulleted list? (Idea: App to rate text for the likelihood it’s AI generated.)
Manufacturing: “Boeing delivered 45 commercial jets last month, a decent start to 2025” [Seattle Times]. “As Boeing tries to recover and increase airplane production, it delivered 45 jets last month, the highest monthly total since December 2023, according to company data released Tuesday. The January delivery total included 40 Renton-built 737 MAXs. Remarks last month by Chief Financial Officer Brian West suggest at least 10 of those were MAXs that came out of long-term storage where they had been awaiting completion of rework.” And: “On the sales front, Airbus did better with 51 net new orders in January, compared to 36 for Boeing. Separately, Boeing orders for seven widebody 787s that had previously been removed from the official backlog as insufficiently firm were restored in January, while at the same time an order for one MAX was removed.”
Manufacturing: “Elon Musk effect? Boeing warns that hundreds of workers involved in NASA’s Artemis Moon rocket project may face layoffs in the coming months” [Economic Times]. “Boeing layoffs in NASA’s Artemis program are making headlines as around 400 jobs may be cut by April 2025. The decision comes as the Artemis Moon mission faces budget constraints and uncertainty. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who has been critical of Artemis, is pushing for a shift toward Mars exploration. While NASA insists Artemis is still essential, internal discussions within the White House and NASA suggest possible changes ahead. With President Donald Trump advocating for Mars missions, the future of Artemis remains unclear.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 46 Neutral (previous close: 45 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 39 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 11 at 1:35:11 PM ET.
Sports Desk
“Nick Sirianni To Eagles Fans: ‘I Hate All Of You, Fuck You'” [The Onion]. • I thought this was real. Gritty is the way.
Gallery
I don’t understand the context:
Nannies' Promenade, Frieze of Carriages (La Promenade des nourrices, frise de fiacres), detail of first panel pic.twitter.com/fV4OQqXeGt
— Pierre Bonnard (@pierre_bonnard) February 9, 2025
Is a Parisian Nannies Promenade like the gatherings of Hong Kong “helpers”?
I think Blanc is correct:
Compare what the Indivisible types are saying above. Why aren’t union halls as active?
Metadata has been around for a long time:
Long-fingered & dramatically cuffed manicules, pointing out important sections in this 14th century medical manuscript #ManiculeMonday #ManuscriptMonday pic.twitter.com/c6a4DzLmVz
— Marsh's Library (@MarshsLibrary) February 10, 2025
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