By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
David C. Evers, Schoolcraft, Michigan, United States. It’s been awhile since I played loon songs.
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
Capitol Seizure
“More Missing J6 Committee Evidence: Where are Secret Service Records?” [Declassified with Julie Kelly]. “Testimony by White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who accused Trump of attempting to take control of the presidential SUV and assault his lead Secret Service agent after they refused to take him to the Capitol after his speech, created the committee’s most dramatic moment. But nearly a year after the committee released their final report, transcribed interviews of several Secret Service officials remain missing from the public record. Further, in violation of House rules, those transcripts have not been furnished to a GOP-led committee now conducting a separate investigation into January 6 and the conduct of the now defunct select committee…. The committee’s internet archive contains no transcribed interviews of Secret Service officials that the media reported had met with committee investigators. Notably missing is that of Robert Engel, the head of Trump’s security detail who was interviewed by the committee in November 2022. Engel is the agent allegedly attacked by Trump on January 6, according to Hutchinson. But following Hutchinson’s explosive account, several Secret Service officials, including Engel, told the media the confrontation never happened. It’s safe to assume his interview would provide a direct contradiction to her account of what happened. Even Hutchinson has since backpedaled on her story; Loudermilk obtained a 15-page document known as an “errata” that made major corrections to her sworn testimony.”
2024
Less than a year to go!
“Trump says he won’t testify again at his New York fraud trial. He says he has nothing more to say” [Associated Press]. “Donald Trump said Sunday he has decided against testifying for a second time at his New York civil fraud trial, posting on social media that he “VERY SUCCESSFULLY & CONCLUSIVELY” testified last month and saw no need to appear again…. Had Trump returned to the stand Monday, it would’ve been his defense lawyers leading the questioning, but state lawyers could have cross-examined him…. The lawyer, Alina Habba, said she had discouraged Trump from taking the stand because of the gag order that is in place. The same gag order was also in effect when he testified in November.” •
IA: “Iowa Poll: Donald Trump holds overwhelming lead; Ron DeSantis edges ahead of Nikki Haley” [Des Moines Register]. “‘The field may have shrunk, but it may have made Donald Trump even stronger than he was,’ said pollster J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co., which conducted the Iowa Poll. ‘I would call his lead commanding at this point. There’s not much benefit of fewer candidates for either Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley.’ … With five weeks until Caucus Day, there’s still room for movement, even as likely Republican caucusgoers begin cementing their decisions. Forty-nine percent of poll respondents say their minds are made up, while another 46% say they could still be persuaded to support another candidate.”
IA: “Iowa poll: Trump surpasses 50% support ahead of first GOP contest” [NBC News]. “Former President Donald Trump has expanded his lead over his GOP rivals with five weeks until the first Republican presidential nominating contest, now earning 51% first-choice support from likely Iowa caucusgoers, according to the latest NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom poll. Trump’s lead — the largest recorded so close to a competitive Republican caucus in this Iowa poll’s history — is fueled by majorities of evangelical and first-time likely caucusgoers, as well as by nearly three-quarters of Republicans who believe Trump can defeat President Joe Biden next year despite the legal challenges the former president faces. What’s more, the poll finds the former president enjoying more enthusiasm and commitment from his supporters than his rivals do ahead of the Jan. 15 contest in Iowa.”
“The Nikki Haley bump is real. But can she really threaten Trump?” [Post and Courier]. “To her credit, there are signs that Haley’s slow-and-steady strategy is finally bearing fruit. Her once-stagnant poll numbers have nearly tripled since the summer. She recently earned the endorsement from the most-influential conservative network in the country. Her campaign is getting a second look from major donors, including those who previously supported her rivals. And she largely avoided any major gaffes or stumbles while largely taking centerstage in the first four presidential debates, all avoided by Trump. Haley’s supporters don’t just think she has a chance. They say she can do what other Republicans have never done: Beat Trump. In South Carolina, the list of Haley believers is growing. The Post and Courier has learned that Anita Zucker, the richest person in South Carolina, can be counted among Haley’s donors after previously backing U.S. Sen. Tim Scott’s GOP presidential bid.” • Of course, this is a South Carolina paper.
“Five Ways Biden Can Win in 2024” [The New Republic]. (1) “We are in the test-kitchen phase of the Biden reelection campaign—and research on effective messaging will probably continue through the spring.” (2) Dobbs. (3) “[T]he electoral consequences of the Trump trials.” (4) “Once Trump returns to center stage, swing voters hopefully will notice that his speeches have become darker and his social media posts more venomous and deranged.” (5) “But if Biden is still trailing Trump in the swing-state polls in late October, maybe the president can pull off a Reverse Hillary. In a mirror image of the 2016 results when Clinton fell just short almost everywhere, Biden this time around would win virtually every swing state by hair’s-breadth margins.” • Not implausible, if your paradigm is stability not volatilty. To me, one or even two brokered conventions are, like, mainstream possibilities. I have attempted to understand the The Charter & the Bylaws of the Democratic Party before. From the Bylaws:
I take this to mean that the Democratic National Convention — and, therefore, whoever actually operates it — has plenary powers. If the Convention wishes adopt a permanent rule that no candidate whose name begins with “B” may be nominated, they can do it. So the culmination point of a volatile primary might well be the mother of all rules fights. How, for example, if Biden throws a cog, are his already-voted delegates to be allocated? Something to look forward to!
“Are the Democrats Sleepwalking to Disaster?” [Harold Mayerson, The American Prospect]. “It’s already too late, to be sure, for Democrats to file for a number of states’ primaries. But if Biden’s numbers don’t improve, if, say, Dean Phillips does unexpectedly well in New Hampshire (if he does, that will be entirely about Biden, not the almost completely unknown Phillips), Democrats could still enter the late primaries and, should they best Biden, come to the convention asking Biden to release his delegates. Under this or a similar scenario, Biden, who’s done the nation great services in the course of his career and his presidency, might opt to do one more and drop out.”
“Troubling poll numbers? Biden has a plan for that” [E.J. Dionne, WaPo]. “The heart of Biden’s challenge: No matter how good the economic data is, voters remain disgruntled. A poll conducted last month by the Financial Times and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business is representative: It found that only 26 percent of voters thought Biden’s policies had helped the economy. Thus, the key components of their emerging plan: Acknowledge that prices are a problem and highlight what Biden is doing to bring them down. Focus less on the number of jobs created since he took office (even if this remains a source of pride) and more on the good wages those jobs are paying, an increase that’s especially large for those in lower-paid positions. Yes, the ‘wage premium’ for college grads is falling. That means a Democrat can argue that his policies are lifting the living standards of working-class voters who were key to Trump’s rise. Relatedly, Biden will draw a class line between the parties, much as Barack Obama did in his 2012 reelection campaign against Mitt Romney. Biden will juxtapose his ‘bottom-up and middle-out’ approach to economic growth with the GOP’s eagerness to cut taxes on the rich. He’ll contrast the GOP’s desire to maintain low tax rates for the wealthy with his own commitment to continue pushing for expanded child care, elder care and enhanced family leave.” • A “class line” is hard to draw with BandAids.
“Let’s not ignore the real reason Democrats struggle with white working class voters” [MSNBC]. “The changing demographics of the Democratic Party, then, isn’t a story about economics; it’s a story about race.” • This is, of course, MSNBC. The only surprise is that sentence isn’t the lead.
“The Biden family’s banking shell game” [Washington Times]. “The president has consistently denied awareness of Hunter’s financial dealings… New documents also reveal Mr. Biden sent at least 54 emails to Hunter’s business partner Eric Schwerin. The then-vice president’s messages were concealed under aliases including “Robin Ware” and “Robert L. Peters.” That’s a curious thing for someone not involved in the business to do…. With Mr. Comer having identified $24 million in cash pouring into 20 different shell companies linked with the Bidens and their associates, the big guy has some explaining to do. Imaginations run wild in the absence of a credible response, which is why the last thing the president and his son should do is continue stonewalling. Recall that the FBI opened a full inquiry into then-candidate Trump — using foreign-agent surveillance authority — based on a secondhand report of the sozzled ramblings of a low-level campaign aide talking to a diplomat in a London bar. As Mr. Biden’s current defenders cheered the latter investigation, surely they will urge the president and his family to cooperate fully in this inquiry.” • “Sozzled” is rhetorical excess. The point remains.
“Joe Biden was omitted from Hunter’s new indictment by design” [Miranda Devine, New York Post]. “The reason the president has gone unmentioned after a five-year investigation into Hunter’s role in the family influence-peddling racket is that the DOJ, like most of the media, corruptly protected him. As IRS whistleblowers Joseph Ziegler and Gary Shapley keep telling Congress, every investigative avenue that led to Joe Biden was blocked. This is why those IRS investigators were forced to blow the whistle.” • Many, many bullet points. Hints of FBI moles. But bullet points do not a narrative make. I prefer Comer’s patient timelines….
“She’s with him: Hillary Clinton steps out as a key player in Biden’s re-election effort” [NBC]. “[T]he 2016 Democratic presidential nominee is stepping into a role as one of the most prominent and influential surrogates in Biden’s re-election effort…. Clinton is popular with women and key parts of the Democratic base and remains a fundraising draw who can help ensure Biden has the money to get his message out. There is still a two-for-the-price-of-one theme when it comes to her family: Husband Bill Clinton made a cameo at the fundraising event at their Washington home. Clinton’s role is only expected to grow in the new year, but for now, she is filling a space that at a later point in the campaign season former President Barack Obama will join. Obama’s habit is to plunge in closer to Election Day — a reality that rankles some Democratic strategists who say the party sorely needs him right now.” • It’s going to be quite a year.
Asking for my vote:
Today’s minimum wage is still $7.25.
A third of American workers work for less than $15/hr., and half of those cannot find a place to live. A living wage in most major cities is over $20/hr.
This is how America creates, maintains and ignores a permanent underclass. It should…
— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) December 10, 2023
On Florida’s putative Democrats:
Thank you to the Florida progressive community for standing up for democracy at a time when the Florida Democratic Party is intent on suppressing it. pic.twitter.com/ay6tY6Cy4t
— Marianne Williamson (@marwilliamson) December 9, 2023
MI: “Michigan Dems acknowledge Muslim American frustration with Biden, but question Trump as alternative” [Politico]. “Michigan Democrats are acknowledging political damage for President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects with Muslim Americans in their state. But they’re also wondering whether those voters would abandon the president in favor of Donald Trump.” Yes, you morons. That’s the only way to get their attention. More: “Biden carried the state by a little more than 150,000 votes in 2020, out of a 5.54 million votes cast. There were 206,000 registered Muslim voters in the state during the 2020 elections, according to Emgage, a national nonprofit that works to engage Muslims politically. Trump carried the state by approximately 10,000 votes during the 2016 election.”
NY: “GOP lawmaker: Ousted aides targeted my daughter for OnlyFans account” [Politico]. “Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.) told POLITICO that his former chief of staff and former legislative director attempted to retaliate against him using his 27-year old daughter’s account on OnlyFans, a popular forum for people to charge for access to sexually explicit content. According to Williams, the two former staffers, Michael Gordon and Ryan Sweeney, threatened to expose his daughter after Williams fired them. Williams’ remarkable decision to go public about the feud is a bet that his political future will be improved by laying out its highly personal details… Williams, a first-term member in a battleground seat, won his race year by one percentage point. He is one of House Democrats’ top targets to unseat in 2024.” • Bidenomics = OnlyFans.
Democrats en Déshabillé
Patient readers, it seems that people are actually reading the back-dated post! But I have not updated it, and there are many updates. So I will have to do that. –lambert
I have moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Party (“the Democrat Party is a rotting corpse that can’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated post, to which I will periodically add material, summarizing the addition here in a “live” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It turns out that defining the Democrat Party is, in fact, a hard problem. I do think the paragraph that follows is on point all the way back to 2016, if not before:
The Democrat Party is the political expression of the class power of PMC, their base (lucidly explained by Thomas Frank in Listen, Liberal!). It follows that the Democrat Party is as “unreformable” as the PMC is unreformable; if the Democrat Party did not exist, the PMC would have to invent it. If the Democrat Party fails to govern, that’s because the PMC lacks the capability to govern. (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” of course.) Second, all the working parts of the Party reinforce each other. Leave aside characterizing the relationships between elements of the Party (ka-ching, but not entirely) those elements comprise a network — a Flex Net? An iron octagon? — of funders, vendors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with assets in the press and the intelligence community.
Note, of course, that the class power of the PMC both expresses and is limited by other classes; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial model’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to mind. Suck up, kick down.
Realignment and Legitimacy
“The Original Authoritarian” [Foreign Policy]. “The best attribute of Big Caesars and Little Caesars is that more than half of the book focuses on Caesars’ downfalls. Mount posits that a combination of law enforcement, intelligence, eloquence, legality, and diligence by public officials will lead wannabe Caesars to their inevitable ruin. It is precisely because of the power of propaganda that an examination of Caesars’ decline and fall is necessary—otherwise, ordinary citizens might exaggerate these leaders’ political potency.” • A nice moral to the story….
#COVID19
“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
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 (dashboard); 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, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: 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, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Immune Dysregulation
“What’s The Deal With That Cough Everyone Seems To Have Right Now?” [HuffPo]. “There’s also been an uptick in anecdotal reports of a brutal, long-lasting cough going around. As one TikTok user put it: everyone seems to have ‘a hacking cough that’s been going on for weeks.’ Doctors around the country have noticed it, too. ‘… It doesn’t appear to be the flu or COVID, but another pathogen that’s attacking and irritating our respiratory systems, according to experts.’” • So that’s alright then. If we all infect ourselves with it, we won’t ever catch it again.
“Something Awful”
Lambert here: I’m getting the feeling that the “Something Awful” might be a sawtooth pattern — variant after variant — that averages out to a permanently high plateau. Lots of exceptionally nasty sequelae, most likely deriving from immune dysregulation (says this layperson). To which we might add brain damage, including personality changes therefrom.
Elite Maleficence
Sociopath of the Day Monica Ghandi on a Parisian junket:
I can’t find a quote where Ghandi mocks Long Covid. Readers? As a subsitute, I offer this:
Even cautious among CA experts are feeling okay without a mask indoors these days. I am happy my Department Chair @Bob_Wachter went to a restaurant!! @LATimes discusses why vaccinated don’t need to wear mask (I’m quoted & also discuss long COVID)https://t.co/MXV9fVnBIh.
— Monica Gandhi MD, MPH (@MonicaGandhi9) May 27, 2021
Readers will recall that Wachter chivvied his wife into going to a writer’s conference, where she caught Covid, which turned into Long Covid.
Case Data
From BioBot wastewater data, December 11:
Lambert here: At last Biden’s beaten every one of Trump’s previous spikes, so a round of applause for The Big Guy. The slight plateauing in the national numbers doesn’t make sense to me because I can’t see an organic reason for it (unless the spread from Thanksgiving is somehow being damped out, which seems implausible). I’m guessing backward revision will make the plateau go away. Only 14 superspreading days until Christmas!
Regional data:
Hard to see why the regional split (and it sure would be nice to have more granular data). Weather forcing Northerners indoors? Seems facile. There’s snow in the Rockies (green color, West), for example.
Variants
NOT UPDATED From CDC, December 9:
Lambert here: JN.1, shown on the NowCast for the first time, coming up fast on the outside, while BA.2.86 fades.
From CDC, November25:
Lambert here: I sure hope the volunteers doing Pangolin, on which this chart depends, don’t all move on the green fields and pastures new (or have their access to facilities cut by administrators of ill intent).
CDC: “As of May 11, genomic surveillance data will be reported biweekly, based on the availability of positive test specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring every two weeks. 2. occurring twice a week; semiweekly.” Looks like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to worry about. Time will tell.
Covid Emergency Room Visits
NOT UPDATED From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, December 2:
Lambert here: Slight increases in some age groups, conforming to wastewater data. Only a week’s lag, so this may be our best current nationwide, current indicator.
NOTE “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.” So not the entire pandemic, FFS (the implicit message here being that Covid is “just like the flu,” which is why the seasonal “rolling 52-week period” is appropriate for bothMR SUBLIMINAL I hate these people so much. Notice also that this chart shows, at least for its time period, that Covid is not seasonal, even though CDC is trying to get us to believe that it is, presumably so they can piggyback on the existing institutional apparatus for injections. And of course, we’re not even getting into the quality of the wastewater sites that we have as a proxy for Covid infection overall.
Hospitalization
Bellwether New York City, data as of December 11:
Steadily up. New York state as a whole looks more like a spike. (I hate this metric because the lag makes it deceptive, although the hospital-centric public health establishment loves it, hospitalization and deaths being the only metrics that matter [snort]).
Here’s a different CDC visualization on hospitalization, nationwide, not by state, but with a date, at least. December 2:
Up, up, up!
Lambert here: “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”. So where the heck is the update, CDC?
Positivity
NOT UPDATED From Walgreens, December 4:
0.2%. Up. (It would be interesting to survey this population generally; these are people who, despite a tsunami of official propaganda and enormous peer pressure, went and got tested anyhow.)
NOT UPDATED From Cleveland Clinic, December 2:
Lambert here: Increase (with backward revision; guess they thought it was over). I know this is just Ohio, but the Cleveland Clinic is good*, and we’re starved for data, so…. NOTE * Even if hospital infection control is trying to kill patients by eliminating universal masking with N95s.
From CDC, traveler’s data, November 20:
Turning upward.
Down, albeit in the rear view mirror. And here are the variants for travelers, November 20:
BA.2.86 zipping right along. If this data were delivered in anything like a timely fashion, it would be a pretty good predictor.
Deaths
Total: 1,188,661- 1,184,559 = 4102 (4102 * 365 = 1,497,230 deaths per year, today’s YouGenicist™ number for “living with” Covid (quite a bit higher than the minimizers would like, though they can talk themselves into anything. If the YouGenicist™ metric keeps chugging along like this, I may just have to decide this is what the powers-that-be consider “mission accomplished” for this particular tranche of death and disease).
Lambert here: This number is too large no matter what. This number is too small no matter what. Iowa Covid19 Tracker hasn’t been updated since September 27, 2023. I may have to revert to CDC data. Yech.
Tomorrow, I’ll dump Worldometer, with regret, because it’s one of the very few non-CDC trackers left. Here is the New York Times, based on CDC data, December 2:
That the absolute numbers of deaths are down, but the percentage of deaths is up, is interesting.
For grins, re is the horrid CDC presentatation. They’ve gone all pastel, too; and there’s no graph, i.e. no historical comparisons are possible, which I’m sure suits CDC just fine:
Stats Watch
There are no official statistics of interest today.
Commodities: “Tighter supplies to create tailwind for copper prices” [Reuters]. “Mine closures and disruptions have rapidly changed the landscape for copper supplies and prompted analysts to lower their forecasts for surpluses in a positive signal for prices of the industrial metal…. Copper prices on the London Metal Exchange on Friday headed towards the four-month highs of $8,640 a metric ton seen on December 1, partly due to Anglo American lowering its production guidance.” • Doctor Copper? Dunno if this is supply disruption not demand.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 68 Greed (previous close: 67 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 67 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Dec 11 at 1:08:05 PM ET.
Rapture Index: Closes down one on Financial Unrest. “The lack of negative activity has downgraded this category” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 187. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) NOTE on #42 Plagues: “The coronavirus pandemic has maxed out this category.” More honest than most! • WTF.
Guillotine Watch
Bill Ackman, moral arbiter:
Class Warfare
Implausible though it may seem, the powers-that-be must have decided that COP was getting somewhere. So they decided to nobble it:
COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure. The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word. It is even worse than many had feared. It is “Of the Petrostates, By the Petrostates…
— Al Gore (@algore) December 11, 2023
“Corporate America Is Testing the Limits of Its Pricing Power” [New York Times]. “Big companies that had previously pushed through one standard price increase per year are now raising prices more frequently. Retailers increasingly use digital price displays, which they can change with the touch of a button. Across the economy, executives trying to maximize profits are effectively running tests to see what prices consumers will bear before they stop buying. Huge disruptions to supply chains pushed up corporate costs during the pandemic and forced many companies to think more creatively about their pricing strategies, Mr. MacKay said. That supercharged a trend toward more rigorous pricing, and showed many companies that they could more boldly play with prices without chasing shoppers away. The experimentation continues even as costs ease.” • Prices rise because firms raise them. Somebody tell Biden.
News of the Wired
“Why scientists are making transparent wood” [Ars Technica]. “Transparent wood could soon find uses in super-strong screens for smartphones; in soft, glowing light fixtures; and even as structural features, such as color-changing windows…. Wood is made up of countless little vertical channels, like a tight bundle of straws bound together with glue. These tube-shaped cells transport water and nutrients throughout a tree, and when the tree is harvested and the moisture evaporates, pockets of air are left behind. To create see-through wood, scientists first need to modify or get rid of the glue, called lignin, that holds the cell bundles together and provides trunks and branches with most of their earthy brown hues. After bleaching lignin’s color away or otherwise removing it, a milky-white skeleton of hollow cells remains. This skeleton is still opaque, because the cell walls bend light to a different degree than the air in the cell pockets does—a value called a refractive index. Filling the air pockets with a substance like epoxy resin that bends light to a similar degree to the cell walls renders the wood transparent. The material the scientists worked with is thin—typically less than a millimeter to around a centimeter thick. But the cells create a sturdy honeycomb structure, and the tiny wood fibers are stronger than the best carbon fibers, says materials scientist Liangbing Hu, who leads the research group working on transparent wood at the University of Maryland in College Park. And with the resin added, transparent wood outperforms plastic and glass: In tests measuring how easily materials fracture or break under pressure, transparent wood came out around three times stronger than transparent plastics like Plexiglass and about 10 times tougher than glass. ‘The results are amazing, that a piece of wood can be as strong as glass,’ says Hu, who highlighted the features of transparent wood in the 2023 Annual Review of Materials Research.” • Well, let’s hope we don’t treat trees like hydrocarbons….
“Earliest Carpenters” [Archeology]. “Rarely has a single find changed scholars’ views of the capabilities of people of the past as radically as the discovery of the world’s earliest known wooden architecture, which dates to nearly half a million years ago. The pair of interlocking logs joined by an intentionally cut notch was unearthed beneath a bank of Zambia’s Kalambo River by a team led by University of Liverpool archaeologist Larry Barham. Researchers believe the logs may have formed part of a walkway or the foundation of a platform built over wetlands. Prior to this discovery, the oldest known surviving wooden structures were built by people living in northern England around 11,000 years ago. The 476,000-year-old log structure predates the appearance of the first modern humans by some 150,000 years and was likely the handiwork of the archaic human species Homo heidelbergensis. Paleoanthropologists believe H. heidelbergensis was highly mobile. Thus, it is surprising that the hominins would have invested labor in building a semipermanent structure. ‘We haven’t seen archaic humans manipulating their environment on such a large scale before,’ says Barham. ‘It suggests an attachment to a single point on the landscape.’ At the same site, the team unearthed stone axes as well as four wooden tools dating to between 390,000 and 324,000 years ago. These included a digging stick, a wedge-shaped object, a notched branch, and a flattened log. Marks on the log, notes Barham, resemble nothing so much as tool nicks on a work bench, inviting speculation as to what other structures an imaginative H. heidelbergensis woodworker might have fashioned.” • Astonishing!
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REI writes: “Yellow buckwheat in the high desert of Oregon.” Doesn’t look much like a desert to me!
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