By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Kind readers, we are now at 204 177 donors, or 51%44% of our goal of 400 donors (25 more than last year). You have moved the needle out of the “Catastrophically Bad” zone into the “Let’s Make This a Success!” zone [lambert wipes brow], for which I thank you all. If you enjoy starting Water Cooler with a birdsong, and finishing Water Cooler with a lovely photograph of a plant (or honorary plant (or reader project)), please support Water Cooler (or donate to provide the support that the unlucky cannot). I hope you enjoy the birds and plants as much as I do! –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Pygmy Nuthatch, Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, United States. “About eight.” Busy busy busy!
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) The multi-threaded epic debacle at Boeing.
(2) Spooks and gaming.
(3) What the TikTok bill really says.
(3) WHO downgrades SARS-CoV-2 to BSL2 (but there’s a catch).
Look for the Helpers
Lambert here: I hope readers will send in more examples like this (“brighten the corner where you are“). The helper(s) don’t need to be heroic, let alone dramatic, or ego-driven, and certainly not institutional. To cite, of all people, the American Enterprise Institute, writing on Occupy, and citing to David Graeber:
In addition to trucking, bartering, and knocking each other over the head, Graeber argues that human beings also engage in a wholly different kind of economic activity: We often share things we have with others. When Graeber says that we are already communists, he is referring to those quite familiar situations in which we really do operate by the maxim “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
People of all cultures, including our own, invariably practice the communism of everyday life when dealing with their family and close friends. A mother does not expect her child to pay her for her baby-sitting services. A brother does not rent out his baseball glove to his brother on an hourly basis. If a friend is sick and needs something from the store, we pick it up for her and would never think of asking for gas money in return.
As Graeber points out, this kind of behavior comes out most conspicuously during a crisis, such as a natural disaster. At such times, people will voluntarily, even cheerfully, extend a helping hand to those who are most in need of one. Less dramatically, the same principle is at work whenever we are at a store that has a box on the counter that says “Leave a penny, take a penny,” intended to help out those who don’t have the exact change. In all these cases we are witnessing the spontaneous application of the communist maxim, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
In our increasingly desperate, atomized, and fragile neoliberal society, 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). For example–
“NYC’s unlikely hero: A subway ‘ninja’ who shares vibes and canned goods” [New York Post (NL)]. “Three days a week, Ray Tarvin, 35, suits up in all black — like an ‘Old West’ ninja — and patrols the Fifth Avenue/53rd Street subway station, spreading positive vibes and handing out water and canned goods to those in need. ‘I’d see people go through trash cans looking for food — there’s a lot of them in New York City — and my heart told me to stack up on, like, canned goods and water and just, you know, pass it out.’ Tarvin, a slight and soft-spoken temp employee who works security shifts in banks by day, starts his shift in the subway around 3 p.m. most Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. He grooves to oldies on an old flip phone and gives thumbs-ups and fist bumps to straphangers.” • Flip phones are the best!
My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of “Helpers” there.
Politics
Lambert here: Kind readers: I’ve been writing daily on the American political scene since 2003 or so; I cut my teeth blogging on the Bush WMD story. And “I’m not tired,” as Arlo Guthrie sings in Alice’s Restaurant. After so many years, I don’t feel I have anything to prove, and I’m not that interested in making “calls” (though readers will recall my Trump coverage in 2016). What I am interested in: Giving you the tools to interpret the news of politics, as it is presented to us. I try to be as concrete as possible, about personalities, localities (“all politics is local”), techniques, history, all in order that you can come to the best possible political decisions (voting, not voting, whatever). to me, politics never gets old! “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?”, as Madison puts it in Federalist 51. There is always something dynamic, always something to learn! If you both enjoy Water Cooler’s political coverage and find it useful, now and over the years, please hit the Tip Jar now, because even though this coverage is hard work, I’d like to keep doing it. Thank you!
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
The Constitutional Order (Insurrection)
“Democrats’ Meltdown Over Trump Immunity Case Proves SCOTUS Is Right To Hear It” [The Federalist]. “Members of Congress and federal judges are immune from civil and criminal prosecution for their official acts. Currently, presidents are only immune from civil prosecution for their official acts. That is because the Supreme Court has never had to decide whether that extends to criminal prosecutions, as no president has ever faced a criminal prosecution until the Democrats’ four criminal indictments against Trump…. Obama-nominated Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is running the proceedings quite speedily; indeed, the case was paused only because of the immunity appeal. It is reasonable to ask whether she would have adopted the same schedule had Trump not been a candidate for the presidency, especially after the Biden Justice Department waited 30 months to bring these novel charges…. Tribe does not want voters to have information; rather, he wants voters to have incomplete information. Tribe knows that, were there a conviction, the appellate process would not come close to being finished by the time of the election.” • Table-pounding, I think — meltdowns prove nothing but the fact of a meltdown — but not bad table-pounding at all!
Biden Administration
. Somebody read the bill:
If you think this isn’t a Trojan horse and will only apply to TikTok and foreign-adversary social media companies, then contemplate why someone thought it was important to get a very specific exclusion for their internet based business written into the bill: pic.twitter.com/LnHsmEgtt9
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) March 12, 2024
Massey’s question in the second tweet is a good one (especially given that review sites are cesspits of SEO-driven enshittification). What I want to know: What does “operated indirectly… (including through an affiliate)” mean? Pretty much any site the spooks think is bad? (To me, that parenthetical means “including” but not limited to.”
“Powerful White House official — and Jill Biden’s ‘work husband’ — is a #MeToo nightmare with claims of bullying, sexual harassment” [New York Post]. ” A top Biden White House official has bullied and verbally sexually harassed colleagues over more than a decade, The Post has learned — but is considered ‘untouchable’ because first lady Jill Biden regards him as her ‘work husband.’ Anthony Bernal, whose status as the first lady’s top aide grants him enormous clout in both White House operations and Democratic politics, has repeatedly speculated in the workplace about the penis size of colleagues, according to three sources with firsthand knowledge. Two sources said Bernal, 50, shared with them a theory that the size of a person’s thumb corresponds to that of their genitalia — citing the hypothesis both at the White House and in prior roles during President Biden’s campaign and vice presidency under President Barack Obama. ‘It is to make people uncomfortable and to have power over them,’ said one source who told The Post they heard Bernal make the crude remarks over several years while they worked together. ‘It is Me Too — classic Me Too,’ the source added. A second source recounted hearing Bernal speculate ‘often’ inside the White House about the endowments of fellow political aides and even Secret Service agents.” • First shot at “Doctor” Biden, therefore interesting. Because how could she not notice it? Did nobody complain to her? If not, why not?
2024
Less than a year to go!
Trump (R): “Trump’s Georgia case hangs on key decision of a relatively new judge” [WaPo]. “Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee was randomly assigned to oversee the racketeering case against former president Donald Trump and a cast of close advisers and allies who are accused of plotting to overthrow a legitimate election to keep Trump in power…. McAfee’s ruling is likely to be a career-defining moment for the 34-year-old rookie judge…. Disqualifying Willis and her team of prosecutors would almost certainly delay, if not outright end the criminal case against Trump, one of four he faces. Allowing Willis to stay on the case is sure to spark defense requests for appeal — which McAfee would have to approve — and anger Trump’s supporters. Prosecutors have argued ‘mere appearance’ [of conflict of interest] should not be the standard for Willis’s removal, while defense attorneys have argued that’s more than enough.” • An interesting, not-quite-puff piece. What strikes me is how, well, incestuous the Georgia political world is (and those relationships are, I would speculate, a big, though unseen, driver behind the case(s)).
Trump (R): “Trump’s Campaign Is So Poor He Might Not Be Able to Hold His Beloved Rallies, Says MSNBC Reporter” [Mediaite]. “After making note of the de facto merger between the Republican National Committee with the Trump campaign, [MSNBC’s Vaughn Hillyard] also fielded a question about the whether the Trump campaign thinks they need to raise and spend a lot of money in the months before November, or if it is counting on earned media to help mitigate its financial disadvantage. ‘They absolutely believe that earned media is going to offer them a lot. But here’s also a reality at play. It takes manpower,’ replied Hillyard. ‘Money can also help towards — this is my my big shtick here — money can help towards actually putting folks on the ground in these states. In the areas where they are going to rely on to pull off victories are in rural parts of Georgia, rural parts of Wisconsin, rural parts of Michigan, rural parts of Arizona. And to get folks that normally don’t vote, you got to go and tell them, ‘We need you to come vote.”
‘And you can go and have a rally in those places, but those rallies cost $400,000,’ he continued. ‘I mean this is where — don’t expect to see Donald Trump to be parading around the country, because those events cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to put on. They’re in a predicament now, whether they like to admit it or not.’” • I don’t know if Republicans feel about the RNC the way that I feel about the DNC (which is a lot like I feel about the CDC); but if they do, then forcing Trump to gut the RNC to save money might be addition by subtraction.
Biden (D): “Biden had repeated mental lapses during special counsel interview: transcript” [Axios]. “In his five-hour interview with special counsel Robert Hur, President Biden repeatedly mixed up dates, countries and the timeline of significant events, including the years his son Beau died and Donald Trump was elected, according to a transcript of the interview reviewed by Axios. The transcript supports Hur’s account that Biden had multiple mental lapses, despite recent pushback from the president and the White House.” Hur testifies today. More: “Over the course of the two-day interview, which took place in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Biden repeatedly asked for help remembering certain important dates — and his lawyers frequently stepped in.”
Biden (D): “The Divided President” [The Nation]. The deck: “Who is in charge in the Biden White House?” More: “After the White House announced in April that Biden would be reneging on his promise and leaving Trump’s cap in place for at least the year ahead, staffers including chief of staff Ron Klain and Domestic Policy Council director Susan Rice embarked on a plan to gently nudge the president back to his original position, an effort that involved managing Biden’s temper. ‘It was perfectly clear that Biden would keep raising the subject himself, usually in meetings about the border crisis, usually with an edge of aggression,’ [Franklin] Foer tells us [in his book, The Last Politician]. ‘He moaned, ‘Can you believe that they want me to go back to those high numbers?’ At a moment like that Susan Rice would shoot a glance across the room, which told aides, ‘Don’t take the bait.’” • This is why Biden’s dogs bite people.
Biden (D): “Democrats use clips of Trump to counter Biden memory claims” [The Hill]. “Democrats on Tuesday sought to turn the tables on Republicans who zeroed in on special counsel Robert Hur’s commentary on President Biden’s memory, turning repeatedly to video clips of former President Trump mangling words, mixing up individuals or forgetting details. House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) opened the hearing with a video montage of past Trump statements in which he appeared to confuse Biden with former President Obama, mixed up former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) with GOP rival Nikki Haley and mistakenly called Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán the president of Turkey.” More: “And Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.), seeking to rebut claims about Biden’s memory, used video clips to illustrate Trump’s ‘lapse in memory during a deposition.’ One clip featured Trump being asked what years he was married to Marla Maples, to which Trump said he’d ‘have to get the exact dates.’ Asked if it was correct he married his current wife in January 2005, Trump said he didn’t know ‘relevant to that day.” • On the last example, the marriages, Trump might well say “that makes me smart!” Plus: “Toby had never once volunteered the truth, that information was money to him; even when he counted it valueless, he never threw it away.” –John LeCarré, Smiley’s People. (Actually, I kinda like the parallel between the “creep” Toby and Trump: “Shouldn’t this be numbered if it’s a Degas, Toby?” “‘Degas, that’s a very grey area, George.” Good thing Toby wasn’t in real estate!)
Kennedy (I): “How RFK could smash the two-party system” [Unherd]. “[T]he frictionless progress of both candidates through their party’s internal processes is concealing a hidden truth about this year’s election. Many Americans don’t want Joe Biden or Donald Trump. They see the race as a horror-reality show featuring two geriatrics who seem doddery, unwell, and angry at being told so. It is increasingly possible that they support independent candidates who could deprive both Trump and Biden of the votes needed to win the presidency. America could end up with a hung presidential election. How would this come about? The Constitution requires that a victorious president wins at least 270 Electoral College votes, which they must gather from some combination of the 50 states. It now looks possible that neither mainstream candidate will manage that…. If neither Biden nor Trump reaches the required 270 Electoral College votes, the Constitution dictates that the voting shifts into a “contingent election”. This means that the incoming House of Representatives will decide the winner based on whoever can form a coalition of red and blue states and win 26 of them first. The Senate would select the vice president. Given that most Republican or Democrat politicians are hardly able to look at each other, let alone agree any deals, it seems unlikely Biden or Trump could forge that coalition. But Kennedy or the as-yet-unnamed No Labels candidate, who actively cultivate the idea of returning to centrist bipartisan solutions, potentially could, should the presidency slip into the arcana of America’s 18th-century constitutional schematics.” • This topic is really something to watch, in the same way that Section Three was a topic to watch. We seem to have a dynamic where every edge case is being tested — by party operatives seeking “an edge,” as well as “the edge.”
Kennedy (I): “Big Tech’s Election Interference: Why Google and Meta Went Shopping for Former US Intelligence Officers” [The Kennedy Beacon]. “The number of former Intelligence Community staff hired by Google and Meta since 2018 is significant. Before then, there were only a few, but now the numbers are much higher: CIA – 36, FBI – 68, NSA – 44, DHS/CISA – 68, State Department – 86, DOD – 121.” No cites for those numbers, though. More: “The presence of Jacqueline Lopour as Google’s Head of Trust & Safety and Aaron Berman as Meta’s Head of Elections Content/Misinformation Policy, both with backgrounds in the CIA, highlights the significant influence exerted by the agency over online censorship.” • Ick. That said, I’ve skimmed the previous post, and this Twitter thread, and I still don’t see cites to the numbers. A table with links and names would be nice. Readers, can you spot one?
“Battle for the House: 9 races that will determine the majority” [The House]. CA-13: Republican Rep. John Duarte and Democrat Adam Gray are advancing to a rematch. CA-22CA-47: In Orange County, Democrat Rep. Katie Porter left her House seat to lodge an unsuccessful bid for the state’s rare open Senate seat. Porter and fellow progressive Rep. Barbara Lee were boxed out of the top two in Super Tuesday’s Senate primary, with Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff [RussiaGate pays] and Republican Steve Garvey advancing for a partisan showdown. MI-7: Republican Tom Barrett, who lost to Slotkin by around 5 points back in 2022, is running again for the seat, while the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has backed former Democratic state Sen. Curtis Hertel. The midterms race was the most expensive House contest in the country, according to reporting from The Detroit News — and the 2024 race is set to be another competitive battle as both parties set their sights on the opening. NY-4: Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.) is running in one of the most unpredictable toss-up races in the country this year…. [Laura] Gillen is running again and could be poised for a rematch with D’Esposito. With Biden likely to easily carry New York in November, D’Esposito will have to rely on a relatively high amount of split-ticket voters as he did two years ago to win a second term. NY-17: Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) won a major surprise victory in 2022 when he defeated Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the then-chair of House Democrats’ campaign arm, by just over half a percentage point. Lawler has sought to build up a reputation as a moderate member of the GOP conference and led the charge to expel Santos for the false claims he made about himself and the criminal charges he faces. The win was symbolic and key to Republicans winning the House majority by just a few seats. He seems likely to face former Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), who previously represented the district but lost a primary in a different district after the maps were redrawn. NY-22: Of all the potentially vulnerable New York House Republicans this fall, Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.) may have the most significant uphill battle. OH-9: Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) has represented her state’s 9th Congressional District for four decades and had a reliable Democratic-leaning constituency throughout much of her career. But Ohio’s redistricting process after 2020 made her district a battleground…. Kaptur will likely face an opponent with less baggage this time, which could make it her most difficult campaign yet.” OR-5: Also on the West Coast, Democrats are looking to take back a seat that flipped into Republican hands for the first time in decades when Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer won Oregon’s 5th Congressional District in the midterms. Chavez-DeRemer won by 2 points against Democrat Jamie McLeod-Skinner last cycle, becoming the first Republican woman to represent Oregon in Congress. McLeod-Skinner is running again.” • The primary process is not complete, so some opponents are not known. CA and NY are almost battleground states!
“Column: Biden says America is ‘coming back.’ Trump says we’re ‘in hell.’ Are they talking about the same nation?” [Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times]. “Political professionals say a successful campaign offers voters a compelling narrative, a story about the state of the nation: What’s gone wrong, what’s going right, and what does the candidate propose to do about it?… Rarely have two major candidates presented narratives so wildly at odds. They seem to be describing wholly different realities.” Perhaps — hear me out — there are class differences between the bases, or desired bases, of each party, and they really do experience America differently, and not just from partisan or ideological bias, but material circumstances. More: “If Biden’s sounds over-optimistic, Trump’s sounds cartoonishly dystopian.”
Democrats en Déshabillé
“Biden’s State of the Union got one big thing right” [Zack Beauchamp, Vox]. “One of democracy’s core premises is that elections are not like armed conflict, where either you win or you die. Since all parties accept the basic rules of the game, like competitive elections and free speech, the stakes of elections are not existential. Political opponents are less enemies than rivals; disagreement isn’t disaster. Authoritarian populists like Donald Trump win by attacking this foundational democratic norm. They demonize their opponents, arguing repeatedly that their opponents are not rivals but rather monsters bent on the country’s destruction.” • Holy Lord. From the party of RussiaGate?! The party that’s checking under your bed, right now, for Vladimir Putin? Why, that would make Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden authoritarian populists! Oh, wait… No but seriously, if fascism is a smorgasbord, both parties seem to be loading up their plates.
#COVID19
Lambert here: Kind readers: I’ve been writing posting every weekday on Covid since the pandemic began. I don’t think I have to tell you how stressful that is, or how hard to research is (not just to find the material, but to get it right). If you feel that Water Cooler has been useful to you in understanding the pandemic, or, best of all, has helped prevent you or your family friends, and community from getting sick with Covid, please hit the Tip Jar now!
“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!
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Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
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Stay safe out there!
Sequelae
Crafters and knitters, any comments?
What I’m seeing in craft circles is inability/unwillingness to learn. Doesn’t seem like an issue when people are going never mind, it’s stupid anyway” when they can’t learn to crochet, but what about when that impacts job safety & quality? (We’re definitely seeing both)
— Pretend There’s Something Interesting Here (@Sleepyweezul) March 11, 2024
Proxies for cognitive impairment at a population would be: Aircraft (manufacturing and piloting); driving; now knitting and crafts. One would expect to see markets adjust to the inability to handle complexity… Simpler knitting patterns, for example. How about games?
Elite Maleficence
WHO downgrading SARS-CoV-2 to BSL2 on the very same day WHO declared declared Covid19 to be a pandemic is a very nice touch:
But not so fast:
The document says this actually (BSL-2 for non propagative diagnostic laboratory work): “Handling high concentrations of live SARS-CoV-2 virus variants that are variants of interest (VOI) or variants of concern (VOC) or emerging strains without a known biological profile,
1/ pic.twitter.com/vqLZtviLBM— Themis (@Themislv_vls) March 12, 2024
So, BSL2 for propadanda, BSL3 in the lab? Readers?
“Wrestling with my husband’s fear of getting COVID again” [NPR]. “So while the rest of the world seems to have moved on from the pandemic, in our house, it is still 2020. We wear masks when we go into public indoor spaces. We don’t eat inside restaurants. We don’t go to movies. We have people take COVID tests before they enter our house. All this leaves me feeling torn between two emotions. I want to keep my husband safe and healthy. But I also want our old life back.” • So, on the one hand, brunch. And on the other, my husband’s heart and brain! It’s too bad NPR didn’t write a story like this one:
Recently, I was having a conversation with a close friend. I said I’d consider an unmasked visit in my well ventilated space with air purifiers, and she said “absolutely not. My job is too public. I won’t put you at risk.” Now THAT is a good friend.
— Zoe Martell (@ZoeMartell1) March 12, 2024
But that NPR published the story it did… Well, that tells us a lot about the totebag set, doesn’t it? No wonder the PMC’s Covid failure was so complete and catastrophic (“The Collapse of the Public Health Establishment is the Collapse of the Professional-Managerial Class“).
“Disabled people’s exclusion from indoor spaces is a civil rights violation, not an annoyance” [The Guantlet]. “I’m going to draw the lens back and away from this particular woman who wrote this particular article. Her attitude is far from unusual and is the result of years of minimizing, pathologizing propaganda. The focus here should be about why this attitude is so common, what this attitude implies, and for what reason major media outlets choose to platform people complaining about their disabled spouses rather than our ableist society…. NPR’s decision to platform a piece about the difficulty of navigating life with a spouse who can’t dine indoors, instead of a piece about the difficulty of navigating a society that has made dining indoors unsafe for vulnerable groups, is just that- a decision, and a political one. It is part of an ongoing effort to cast those who cannot play along with the ‘back to normal’ fantasy- those who are being harmed and killed by it- as weird, paranoid, crazy, annoying, and ‘the problem.;…. Long COVID is the faulty, load-bearing beam in the rickety pandemic denial superstructure. Were the public to grasp how common and how severe it is, the entire post-pandemic facade would come crumbling down. Therefore, as Long COVID patients become louder, as their presence becomes more undeniable, as their numbers grow, the COVID normalization project must pivot from attempting to disappear these victims to steadily stigmatizing them.” • Yep.
I also thought this thread was perceptive and sensible:
TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts
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] (Biobot) Biobot drops, conformant to Walgreen positivity data (if that is indeed not a data artifact). Note, however, the area “under the curve,” besides looking at peaks. That area is larger under Biden than under Trump, and it seems to be rising steadily if unevenly.
[2] (Biobot) Regional separation re-emerges.
[3] (CDC Variants) 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.
[4] (ER) Does not support Biobot data. “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.”
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Not flattening. (Date for data corrected; it was a glitch.)
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC) Still down. “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†”.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Flattening, consistent with Biobot data.
[9] (Travelers: Posivitity) Now up, albeit in the rear view mirror.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) Backward revisions remove NV.1 data. JN.1 dominates utterly.
Stats Watch
Inflation: “United States Consumer Price Index (CPI)” [Trading Economics]. “The consumer price index in the United States rose by 3.2% year-over-year to 310.326 points in February 2024, following a 3.1% increase in January and slightly exceeding the market consensus of a 3.1% advance.”
Inflation: “United States Core Inflation Rate” [Trading Economics]. “The annual core consumer price inflation rate in the United States, which excludes volatile items such as food and energy, eased to a near three-year low of 3.8% in February 2024, down slightly from 3.9% in January but above market forecasts of 3.7%.”
Manufacturing: “Boeing whistleblower who warned of aircraft safety flaws found dead” [NBC]. After the BBC, oddly. “The statement from Barnett’s family said he had suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety attacks and that the ‘hostile work environment at Boeing’ led to his death.” But: “His [lawsuit against Boeing] was up for trial this June, the family statement said, adding: ‘He was looking forward to having his day in court and hoped that it would force Boeing to change its culture.’” • So, if he was “looking forward”… Commentary:
Upgrading Boeing to a buy after they assassinated a whistleblower in the middle of his deposition
— The Fearless Truth Teller (@SeanMcCarthyCom) March 12, 2024
Manufacturing: “50 people injured after a ‘strong movement’ on Boeing flight to New Zealand” [NBC]. “It’s unclear exactly what caused the midflight injuries. The South American airline LATAM said in a statement that there was a ‘technical event during the flight which caused a strong movement,’ without elaborating further.” • A technical event? Like somenbody trying to re-attach a wheel?
Manufacturing: “737 Max anti-ice system fix is slow going” [The Air Current]. “Today, Boeing has yet to nail down a conclusive fix for the anti-ice system. Several options remain under consideration and its final decision may end up a combination of design changes. The company has activated a multidisciplinary team to focus exclusively on the problem. This so-called ‘Tiger Team’ is getting increased resources to design the modification for the Max 7 and 10. Neither aircraft can be certified by the FAA without this modification.” Meanwhile: “Pilots using personalized reminders for all sorts of tasks in the cockpit is extremely common, but the post-it note cue underscores the lack of detailed alerting in the master caution system aboard all generations of the 737, relying on pilot memory to switch off the potentially hazardous anti-ice system. ‘Easy to get distracted with other duties and miss turning off,’ said [Dennis Tajer, an American Airlines captain and spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association], who has been sharply critical of Boeing. “That’s why I use a decades-old technique.’” • “Easy to get distracted.” So, Tajer is assuming to general diminishment in executive function due to Covid?
Manufacturing: “Boeing Response in Alaska Airlines 737 MAX Probe Is Blasted by Feds” [Wall Street Journal]. “The company said the door plug’s removal was undocumented, so there were no documents to share.” • That’s astonishingly bad.
Manufacturing: “Airplanes and engineering: The way we were” [Star-Tribune]. When it changed: “Working for Honeywell in Minneapolis, I was involved in product developments for several Boeing aircraft: new platforms B-757, B-767, B-777 and B-787, and revisions on older designs, including the B-737. Each of these developments involved an intimate relationship between Boeing and Honeywell across multiple levels of organization. At the heart of the work were the customers’ requirements. Meeting these drove daily decisions in the project planning…. One afternoon, we started calling our contacts in Boeing Engineering. Engineering had prioritized the bidders and assured us Honeywell was their first choice. However, they would not confirm that Boeing management had signed off on the selection. We still believed we would win the program. In the past, Boeing always selected the highest technical bidder then renegotiated the price as the program phased into volume production. It was the best process to meet Boeing’s and the passengers’ quality demands… we were notified we were not selected for the program. Through several discussions with the Boeing engineering managers, we later found out that Boeing’s procurement process had changed. Boeing supply management downgraded the engineering assessment from prioritized capability to either meeting or not meeting the requirements. Then, procurement would select the lowest bidder from this pool of suppliers meeting the requirements. Engineering was no longer needed to sign off on the selection. (We heard that Boeing engineers wore a black armband for a month protesting the selection for this program.) The selection process could now be done in a spreadsheet with no account for the uncertainty that engineering often expected and hoped to have some insurance against. This would become a fundamental change in the aircraft industry.” • Worth reading in full. (The Boeing 777 was launched in 1990, so presumbly this changed happened in 1985 or so. There’s a lot of ruin in an aircraft manufacturing company.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 67 Greed (previous close: 74 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 78 (Extreme Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Mar 11 at 2:22:53 PM ET.
The Conservatory
“Smells Like Teen Spirit Cover In Classical Latin (75 BC to 3rd Century AD) Bardcore/Medieval style” (video) [YouTube].
Games
“FBI, DHS Partner with Gaming Companies to Fight ‘Extremist Gamers’” [Value Entertainment]. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are coordinating with gaming companies to root out “domestic extremist content” among their player bases, a new government report suggests. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a nonpartisan agency that audits other government departments on behalf of Congress, the FBI and DHS should use the same strategies that allow them to police extremism on social media to regulate the gaming industry. The GAO report, entitled Countering Violent Extremism: FBI and DHS Need Strategies and Goals for Sharing Threat Information with Social Media and Gaming Companies, was compiled between September 2022 and January 2024. It was first published internally on January 31st and then released publicly on February 28th….. In the report, the GAO cites interviews with five entities within the gaming and social media industries: Roblox, a popular multiplayer game creation platform, Discord, a social app popular with gamers, Reddit, an online forum social network, and two gaming companies that asked the GAO to keep them anonymous.” • Hmm.
Zeitgeist Watch
“Bad Money – Ancient Counterfeiters and Their Fake Coins” [CoinWeek]. “There were two basic ways of counterfeiting ancient coins. The first method used by ancient counterfeiters was to cover a base metal core with a thin layer of precious metal and then strike it between engraved dies. If the coating was seamless, the dies of good quality, and the weight of the finished piece close enough to the official standard, such coins might pass as genuine. They are known as fourées, from a French word meaning ‘stuffed.’ A second method used by ancient counterfeiters was to make clay molds from an original coin, and then pour molten metal into the molds, usually leaded copper alloy. Ceramic molds could be mass-produced cheaply, so low-value copper coins could be counterfeited profitably. There was a chronic shortage of small change in ancient economies, so even poor quality fakes were accepted in markets for lack of anything better. Authorities tended to ignore such forgeries, even when they enforced savage penalties against counterfeiting precious metal coins.” • News you can use!
News of the Wired
I’m not quite sure what to file this under:
Software-defined radio:
Listen to FM radio, freenet, road traffic information…. (This is Mastodon, so perhaps the entire thread will be accessible without a login.)
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 TH:
TH writes: “In front of the Frank Lloyd Wright Hollyhock House in Hollywood, California, is this landscaping of plants I can’t really identify, but I always find it curious when butterflies are attracted to greenery rather than the usual blossoms.” About the Hollyhock House: “[A]n ode to California–its freedom and natural beauty…. Hollyhock House is a harbinger of California Modernism, inscribed to the UNESCO World Heritage List.” Neat!
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