By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Bird Song of the Day
Eyebrowed Wren-Babbler, Ho Ke Go Reservoir, Ha Tinh, Vietnam. Lots of jungle noise!
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Early voting and October surprises.
(2) Trump and the Latino vote.
(3) Biden and the Latino vote.
(4) Mask warriors?
Politics
“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
Biden Administration
“US officials don’t see clear path to ending war in Gaza as cease-fire talks stall” [Politico]. “‘No one is confident this deal is going to move forward in the way the administration had hoped,’ said one of the officials, who was briefed by the White House about the state of the cease-fire negotiations. ‘There are so many unknowns.’” • I was about to say “October Surprise,” but then I remembered early voting. Here is a table of early voting start dates, with the Swing States helpfully highlighted:
So maybe a mid-September surprise would be better, if it would help pick up Arizona and Georgia. OTOH, October might still work — depending on the deal — for Michigan (big Muslim population). And then of course there’s Ukraine. (I love that Pennsylvania, the key swing state, is “varied.” It would be. We’ll have to let the pros figure out where it falls on the calendar.)
2024
Less than a half a year to go!
RCP Poll Averages, May 24:
Still waiting for some discernible effect from Trump’s conviction (aside from, I suppose, his national numbers rising). Swing States (more here) still Brownian-motioning around. Of course, it goes without saying that these are all state polls, therefore bad, and most of the results are within the margin of error. If will be interesting to see whether the verdict in Judge Merchan’s court affects the polling, and if so, how.
Trump (R): “Poll: Latino voters trust Trump on immigration over Biden” [Axios]. “Once reliably Democratic voters, many Latinos are increasingly identifying as independent, and working-class voters are leaning more toward the GOP. An estimated 36.2 million U.S. Latinos are eligible to vote in this year’s election. An Equis poll released Tuesday of 1,592 registered Latino voters in seven battleground states found 41% of Hispanic voters trust Trump on immigration compared to 38% for Biden. The problem for Democrats and Biden ‘is great uncertainty in support’ for the president among Latino voters, Carlos Odio, co-founder and senior vice president for research at Equis Labs, told reporters Tuesday. Democrats don’t hold the advantage they once did with Latinos on immigration, Oido adds.
Yes, but: Immigration has shown to be lower on the list of concerns among Latinos according to various Axios-Ipsos Latino Polls in partnership with Noticias Telemundo. The top issue has consistently been inflation or the economy. ‘Immigration has never been the top issue for Latino voters. But at various critical moments, it played a role in differentiating between the parties for Latinos, even among those who themselves are not immigrants.’…. Biden’s move this week to grant protection to half a million undocumented people with citizen spouses could ‘move the needle among Latino voters,’ per Odio. 72% of Latinos in the survey who said they do not currently support Biden said they would be more likely to vote for him if he put such a program in place.”
Trump (R): “Trump’s Campaign Has Lost Whatever Substance It Once Had” [The Atlantic]. “Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign was, among other things, one of the most impressive displays of branding on a large scale, in a short time, ever. There were hats. There were flags. And above all, there were slogans. ‘Make America Great Again.’ ‘Build the wall.’ ‘Lock her up.’ And later, ‘Drain the swamp,’ which Trump conceded on the stump that he’d initially hated. No matter: Crowds loved it, which was good enough for Trump to decide that he did, too. One peculiarity of Trump’s 2024 campaign is the absence of any similar mantra. At some recent rallies, neither Trump nor the audience has even uttered ‘Build the wall,’ once a standard. Crowds are reverting instead to generic ‘U-S-A’ chants or, as at a recent Phoenix rally, ‘Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit!,’ which has a winning simplicity but doesn’t have the specificity and originality of its predecessors. In their place, Trump’s stump speech has become dominated by grievances about the wrongs he believes have been done to him and his promises to get even for them. It doesn’t quite create the festive atmosphere of eight years ago, when many attendees were clearly having a great time. Where the new, more prosaic feeling lacks the uplift of the past, though, it has still managed to generate enough enthusiasm that Trump leads in many polls and could return to the White House in a few months.” • I like this granular style of analysis very much, but I’m not sure I agree with it. For one thing, it’s also possible that MAGA and its paraphernalia are now so deep in the culture — 2024 – 2016 = 8, after all — that it doesn’t need to be reinforced at the rallies. Based solely on my admittedly hasty analysis of Trump’s Vegas speech (which I did at least read several times): (1) Trump, in my view, goes into the lawfare, but doesn’t swell on it; the speech pivoted on the border, not Trump’s grievances, (Trump also joked about his grievances, like the heat, the teleprompter, nobody caring about him, Rodney Dangerfield style); (2) “Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit” seems like a totally warranted general indictment to me, though somebody who writes articles at David Frum’s place might not see it that way; (3) so far as I can tell, the audience in Vegas, especially given the heat, was having a great time; there was plenty of laughter and chanting, and Trump did a good deal of question-and-answer with them (though this would be better seen on video, and if anybody wants to correct me based on video footage, please do).
Trump (R): “Hollywood Joe Biden’s Celebrity Party” [Wall Street Journal]. “[Biden] flew from the Group of Seven in Europe to a Hollywood fundraiser with George Clooney and Julia Roberts. You do what you gotta do. The L.A. event pulled in more than $30 million for Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign…. Days after his $30 million fundraiser, Mr. Biden announced a whopping $50 million ad spend on a commercial depicting Mr. Trump as a “convicted criminal.” Those two words will define Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign. It might work. Polls have suggested some voters would step away from Mr. Trump following a conviction. If so, the much-maligned Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who delivered the felony conviction for the Democrats, will get the last laugh.
But notice that on the day Mr. Biden tapped the Hollywood ATM, Mr. Trump campaigned at a black church in Detroit. It is becoming hard to suppress the reality reported in polls that Mr. Trump, former host of “The Apprentice,” is peeling off layers of the traditional Democratic coalition—blacks, Hispanics, younger Americans and possibly even Jewish voters. The Democratic base once had something resembling a common identity, but not so much anymore. And it’s getting late to fix that.” • Trump is surely not peeling off entire layers. But all he needs to do is chip away at the margins.
Trump (R): “Chemicals from East Palestine derailment spread to 16 US states, data shows” [Guardian]. • What people will remember is that Trump came right away, while the Democrats dithered.
Trump (R): “The Return of Peace Through Strength” [Foreign Affairs]. “And Trump was a peacemaker—a fact obscured by false portrayals of him but perfectly clear when one looks at the record. Just in the final 16 months of his administration, the United States facilitated the Abraham Accords, bringing peace to Israel and three of its neighbors in the Middle East plus Sudan; Serbia and Kosovo agreed to U.S.-brokered economic normalization; Washington successfully pushed Egypt and key Gulf states to settle their rift with Qatar and end their blockade of the emirate; and the United States entered into an agreement with the Taliban that prevented any American combat deaths in Afghanistan for nearly the entire final year of the Trump administration. Trump was determined to avoid new wars and endless counterinsurgency operations, and his presidency was the first since that of Jimmy Carter in which the United States did not enter a new war or expand an existing conflict.” • Sort of amazing that an administration where white mustachio-ed John Bolton held office was less lunatic than one with elegantly maned Tony Blinken, but here we are.
Biden (D): “Biden courts Latino voters with ad blitz during Copa América soccer tournament” [NBC]. “President Joe Biden’s campaign is drawing up a new play to reach Latino voters in key battleground states during the Copa América soccer tournament, which starts in the U.S. on Thursday. The campaign is aiming to reach the millions of viewers expected to tune in through a seven-figure ad blitz and organizing effort, a Biden campaign official said. The re-election team hopes that — with international sensations like Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Brazil’s Vinícius Júnior starring in the tournament — it can score with a diverse and hyperengaged audience that may not be that dialed into politics or the 2024 race, the official said. A 30-second spot — titled ‘Gooaalll!’ — will air in swing states that are hosting matches over the next month, like Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina, according to the campaign. The ads will run in both English and Spanish, the campaign said.”
Biden (D): “Biden’s ads haven’t been working. Now, he’s trying something new” [Vox]. “President Joe Biden’s odds of reelection may be worse than they look. And they don’t look great…. It’s not surprising, then, that the Economist’s election forecast gives Trump a roughly 70 percent chance of victory in November. For anyone who doesn’t want an illiberal insurrectionist in the White House, these numbers are concerning enough on their face. But they are even more disconcerting when one considers an underappreciated piece of context: Trump hasn’t even begun to air campaign advertisements, while Biden has been blanketing swing-state airwaves. In other words: This is what the 2024 race looks like when the president enjoys a massive advantage on paid propaganda.” • True. It’s amazing that Democrat lawfare doesn’t seem, as of this writing, to have panned out (though in typical Democrat fashion, they’ve dilly dallied about starting to hammer on Trump’s “guilt” until long after the verdicts). That said, it behooves Trump supporters to avoid premature triumphalism. A close race can, by definition, go either way.
“The mother of all US presidential debates” [Ed Luce, Financial Times]. “How do you run a debate between two men whose combined age is two-thirds that of the US republic? The answer is to have no audience, mute the one not talking and schedule bathroom breaks (calling them commercials). It would be an overstatement to say that next week’s clash between Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be definitive. But in a close election in which each candidate’s mental capacity is under scrutiny, it will matter a lot. Only three times in US history has a presidential debate arguably changed the outcome. In each case, however, they took place within weeks or days of the election. Biden pushed for a historically early date because so many Americans mail in their votes nowadays. In reality, his team wanted the earliest chance to break a polling deadlock that they assumed would have evaporated by now… On past performance, Biden ought to beat Trump. He was judged the winner in both their 2020 encounters. This was partly because Trump came across as obnoxious.” But Trump is obnoxious. Perhaps that’s what the country needs? Hard to imagine a majority would accept that. More: “The good news for Biden is that the rules mostly favour him. Trump feeds off live audiences and will have to adapt to silence. He will be inaudible when Biden is speaking. Biden would be negligent if he did not remind viewers that his opponent is a convicted felon.” It occurs to me that the flip side of not “feed[ing] off” the audience (horrible locution) is that Trump might remain more calm and controlled; no adrenaline surge. I guess we’ll find out! And: “Biden’s goal will be to ensure his age will be less of a talking point than Trump’s character. On paper his task is simple. In practice it is anything but.”
“Haberman: Trump said he interrupted Biden too much in 2020 debate” [The Hill]. “‘[Trump] has said to people multiple times that he knows that he interrupted too much in the first debate with Biden in 2020, and having just rewatched that debate recently, it’s really striking,’ Haberman said on CNN’s ‘Anderson Cooper 360.’ ‘I mean, we all talked about it at the time, but Biden could barely get a word in edgewise, and Biden was kind of smiling throughout as this was happening,’ she added. The first debate of the last presidential cycle was marked by name-calling by both candidates as Trump repeatedly clashed with moderator Chris Wallace. The 2024 presumptive GOP nominee also repeatedly interrupted Biden throughout the debate, resulting in many calling for a mute button. During next week’s debate, which will be hosted by CNN, both candidates have agreed to muting microphones throughout the debate, except when they are called on to speak. Moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will be able to ‘use all tools at their disposal to enforce timing and ensure a civilized discussion.’ Haberman said Trump is focusing on ‘policy time’ by bringing in different people, including Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.). She signaled he is also practicing how to answer questions about the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. ‘And they are focusing on various issues that could come up: abortion, health care, energy, COVID and then very specifically,’ the Times reporter said, and this was one thing that came up last Thursday, what Trump will say when asked Jan. 6-related questions, particularly his statements about pardoning some of the people who were arrested in connection with the violence that day.’” • I wonder if Trump’s riffing on electric vehicles in Vegas was a result of focusing on “policy time.” If so, Trump behaved in a disciplined fashion, a new thing for him.
Kennedy (I): “Kennedy Raises Just $2.6 Million, a Sign of Reliance on His Running Mate” [New York Times]. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign raised just $2.6 million in May, a paltry sum that speaks to how reliant his bid has become on his running mate, the wealthy Silicon Valley lawyer Nicole Shanahan. The Kennedy campaign raised less in May than it had in any previous month in 2024, according to filings on Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission. That was in large part because Ms. Shanahan, who has poured millions into their independent presidential campaign, barely contributed any additional money in May…. Mr. Kennedy and his allies have some unique costs associated with their campaign — primarily ballot-access work that can be expensive.
His campaign spent about $6.3 million in May, but almost half of that was routed through a limited liability company that focuses on ballot access. The money laid out was labeled “campaign consulting,” making his precise expenditures somewhat opaque.”
MI: “The City That Will Determine Where Michigan—and the Country—Goes in 2024” [Slate]. “It’s not news that the voters in Michigan, that ever-powerful swing state and bastion of Midwest culture, will be a key determinant of the entire country’s democratic future come fall. What may be surprising, though, is where the Mitten’s locus of power seems to emanate from these days—as well as the types of Michiganders who are gaining national attention and power as a result. For the first time in my lifetime, the real center of my home state’s political influence lies not in Detroit, Ann Arbor, Flint, or the serene forests and lake houses of Northern Michigan. Instead, it’s coming from the capital city: Lansing, the often overlooked, underfunded, landlocked municipal center of the state, home to the State Capitol and Michigan State University and Lugnuts baseball. (Also, lots of pre–Civil War buildings and potholed streets and abandoned factories and electric vehicle plants and scientific research facilities and arrays of solar panels.) It’s also coming from the suburbs and farms and professorial residences scattered throughout the lopsided district: the Greater Lansing Area, my flyover hometown situated within the borders of Ingham County.” And: “Within those big metanarratives, there’s a whole lot of Lansing. In the 2018 cycle, one of the many once red seats that fell to the blue wave was Michigan’s 8th Congressional District, which encompassed Greater Lansing. There, Democrat and CIA veteran Elissa Slotkin flipped a seat that had been held by a Republican, then-incumbent Rep. Mike Bishop. That same year saw the ascension of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Michigan State alum and former state representative for the area who took the governor’s mansion back from Republican hands.” • So, a CIA Democrat and the beneficiary of an FBI-instigated kidnapping plot are key figures in the key county of a key state. Hmm.
NY:
A new Siena poll says Biden has only an 8 point lead over Trump in New York. In a June 2020 poll, Siena said Biden had a 25 point lead. Biden ultimately won New York by 23 points. Trump has nearly *quintupled* his share of Black voters in New York — 2020: 6%, 2024: 29% pic.twitter.com/deGt1oaJBr
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) June 20, 2024
Our Famously Free Press
“The deceptive Biden G7 video was quickly debunked, but it kept going viral anyway” [NBC]. “The story revolved around Biden and other world leaders being greeted by a skydiving demonstration last Thursday at the Group of Seven meeting in Italy. Video shows Biden walking away from the leaders and toward a group of parachutists who had just landed, giving them two thumbs-up. But conservative media outlets and the Republican National Committee posted videos shot from angles that cut out the parachutists. Some of their posts said incorrectly that Biden ‘wandered off.’ Without the skydivers Biden was addressing included in those videos, viewers could be left with the impression that he was walking absentmindedly. The misleading videos were an example of so-called cheap fakes, in which low-tech editing or other minor changes to videos, along with incorrect context, can amplify false but convincing messages. The episode illustrated the dynamics of the new information ecosystem, in which tech platforms are hesitant to emphasize vetted, factual information during an election year for fear of appearing partisan — even as partisan operatives take advantage of the platforms’ attempts at neutrality.” • The real issue is the scale of the platforms; that’s what enables frictionless propagation (which is why we should return the blogosphere, sigh).
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 (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 (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, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Airborne Transmission
“The airborne transmission of viruses causestight transmission bottlenecks” [Nature]. From April, missed it. From the Abstract: “Here we show that, across a broad range of circumstances, tight transmission bottlenecks are a simple consequence of the physical process of airborne viral transmission. We use mathematical modelling to describe the physical process of the emission and inhalation of infectious particles, deriving the result that that the great majority of transmission bottlenecks involve few viral particles…. While risk calculations consider whether a person might be infected, evolutionary biology poses a different question: If a person was infected, how many viruses initiate that infection? This number of viruses, denoted the transmission bottleneck12, has important consequences for virus evolution: The tighter the bottleneck, and the fewer particles get through, the less genetic diversity will be transmitted between individuals. The absence of initial diversity can limit the potential for within-host evolution, as variants need to be generated de novo before evolutionary changes can take effect… Studies of genomic data have suggested that for influenza and SARS-CoV-2 infection, the transmission bottleneck generally involves few viral particles, with potentially a single virus initiating infection…. Emitted particles are affected by evaporation, sedimentation and diffusion. Ventilation reduces the mean concentration of particles in the air, while in the absence of immediately finding a new host, viruses in emitted particles begin to decay. Combining insights from this literature, we assess the expected transmission bottleneck for infections that occur under a variety of scenarios. Our results provide a strong indication, independent of genome sequence data, that most cases of respiratory virus transmission will involve a tight population bottleneck.” • “A single particle” sounds ominous, but the odds of tranmission (which we know how to reduce, to our betterment) are separate from the mechanism of transmission. More: “While our model of particle spread captures the basic features of respiratory virus transmission, it still makes multiple simplifications. For example, our model neglects effects arising from convection currents caused by individuals in a room41. Effects such as these have the potential to generate non-monotonic levels of exposure with distance from an infected person, as particles are carried up and across the ceiling before falling to a height at which they can be breathed in.” • Another model where “hot air rises” is not built in!
Transmission: Covid
Surge anecdata:
How to Know There Is a Covid Surge:
Step 1 = Post something about it (eg “Covid is everywhere,” “There’s an uptick in Covid”)
Step 2 = Watch for the bot surge paid to swarm in and stifle messaging
— Dr. Sean Mullen (@drseanmullen) June 20, 2024
That and the cranked up denialism, here debunked, for a pleasant change–
“Think you have a summer cold? There’s a good chance it’s COVID: experts” [CTV News]. “‘We have to remember COVID is not gone. So, this is a little different than things like influenza where we see it nearly disappear in the summer. The last two summers, COVID has really hung around and as a result, we continue to see waves and upticks of virus throughout the year,’ said Craig Jenne with the University of Calgary’s department of microbiology, immunology, and infectious diseases. ‘There’s a good chance, as we see the numbers rise in the community, that summer cold might be a COVID infection.’” • The word seems to be “uptick.” Maybe if we had some data we could tell if that was the right word!
Maskstravaganza
Dopamine:
Jury Duty – When I walked into the room of 400+ people and I was wearing an N95 and Stoggles, I felt proud and courageous. It was a dopamine hit for me. It felt like walking into a battlefield, but I was ready to kick ass. I felt love, not fear, not aggression. It was a bit fun.
— The CoVID Martian (a.k.a Mean Mr. Mustard) (@ravencallin) June 20, 2024
Rather like this:
And we know who wins, too….
Should somebody check in on Vancouver?
Family told me I’m not allowed at my own daughter’s elementary school grad tomorrow if I show up in a mask because it will take the focus away from the event
— chantzy (@chantz_y) June 20, 2024
I’m so old I remember when “You do you” was a thing….
Testing and Tracking: H5N1
“‘We’re Flying Blind’: CDC Has 1M Bird Flu Tests Ready, but Experts See Repeat of Covid Missteps” [KFF Health News]. “It’s been nearly three months since the U.S. government announced an outbreak of the bird flu virus on dairy farms. The World Health Organization considers the virus a public health concern because of its potential to cause a pandemic, yet the U.S. has tested only about 45 people across the country. ‘We’re flying blind,’ said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. With so few tests run, she said, it’s impossible to know how many farmworkers have been infected, or how serious the disease is. A lack of testing means the country might not notice if the virus begins to spread between people — the gateway to another pandemic. ‘We’d like to be doing more testing. There’s no doubt about that,’ said Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC’s bird flu test is the only one the Food and Drug Administration has authorized for use right now. Shah said the agency has distributed these tests to about 100 public health labs in states. ‘We’ve got roughly a million available now,’ he said, ‘and expect 1.2 million more in the next two months. But Nuzzo and other researchers are concerned because the CDC and public health labs aren’t generally where doctors order tests from. That job tends to be done by major clinical laboratories run by companies and universities, which lack authorization for bird flu testing…. Greninger said the delays and confusion are reminiscent of the early months of covid, when federal agencies prioritized caution over speed. Test accuracy is important, he said, but excessive vetting can cause harm in a fast-moving outbreak like this one. ‘The CDC should be trying to open this up to labs with national reach and a good reputation,’ he said. ‘I fall on the side of allowing labs to get ready — that’s a no-brainer.’” • Read for the horrid detail. This after CDC completely butchered the Covid testing itself, which users who did the “vetting” discovered [bangs head on desk].
Morbidity and Mortality
Why it’s easy to lead people to believe Covid is “mild,” “just a cold”:
Judging based on people you meet in the world, COVID will always “seem fine” because the dead people aren’t around to convince you otherwise.
— Antiviral Marketing (@antiviral_mktng) June 19, 2024
Celebrity Watch
“Glenn Close ‘hit hard’ with COVID and RSV at same time, forced to delay filming ‘Knives Out 3′” [CTV]. “The Oscar-nominated actor, 77, said in a video posted to her Instagram page on Wednesday that she has been in London to begin filming ‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,’ and that she only got to film for two days before she ‘came down with COVID and RSV both at the same time.’ ‘As of today, (it) is the first day that I feel like I am getting back to myself,’ Close continued. ‘I’ll have to start all over again and get into the rhythm of shooting. Hopefully I can be back on set tomorrow.’… In the caption of her post, Close wrote that she’s ‘finally feeling better,’ and acknowledged that it’s been a ‘crazy way to start a movie.’ She also encouraged her followers to ‘wear a mask in crowds’… ” • Listening, Taylor?
Elite Maleficence
Even leaving respirators aside, we are 100% certain H5N1 can spread through the eyes, which have avian receptors:
Malice is my guess. Here’s the latest H5N1 cartoon released by CDC. Notice minorities are featured without any airborne PPE (like fit tested respirators), no eye protection, no education about testing.
This is the sort of “guidance” I would expect to see if the goal was to harm. pic.twitter.com/0BHIloL8sT
— #RespiratorsWork #AirborneProtections (@flowermusickids) June 19, 2024
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] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. The numbers in the right hand column are identical. The dots on the map are not.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) FWIW, given that last week KP.2 was all over everything like kudzu, and now it’s KP.3. If the “Nowcast” can’t even forecast two weeks out, why are we doing it at all?
[4] (ER) This is the best I can do for now. At least data for the entire pandemic is presented.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) A slight decrease followed by a return to a slight, steady increase. (The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and then around the country through air travel.)
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). This is the best I can do for now. Note the assumption that Covid is seasonal is built into the presentation. At least data for the entire pandemic is presented.
[7] (Walgreens) 4.3%; big jump. (Because there is data in “current view” tab, I think white states here have experienced “no change,” as opposed to have no data.)
[8] (Cleveland) Going up.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time rasnge. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) Same deal. Those sh*theads. I’m leaving this here for another week because I loathe them so much:
[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.
[12] Deaths low, ED up.
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the US eased by 5,000 to 238,000 on the second week of June, above market expectations of 235,000, to mark the second-highest reading since August of 2023, only behind the upwardly revised 243,000 claim count from the earlier week.”
Manufacturing: “United States Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index in the US remained positive but eased 3.2 points to 1.3 in June 2024, down from 4.5 in the prior month and missing market forecasts of 5. It marked the lowest reading in five months, indicating the second consecutive month of slowing activity.”
Housing: “United States Housing Starts” [Trading Economics]. “Housing starts in the US fell 5.5% to an annualized rate of 1.277 million in May 2024, the lowest since July 2020, from April’s downwardly revised 1.352 million and well below the forecast of 1.37 million. This unexpected decline shows that high interest rates started to weigh again on the housing market.”
The Bezzle: “Perplexity Is a Bullshit Machine” [Wired]. “The Perplexity chatbot itself is more specific. Prompted to describe what Perplexity is, it provides text that reads, ‘Perplexity AI is an AI-powered search engine that combines features of traditional search engines and chatbots. It provides concise, real-time answers to user queries by pulling information from recent articles and indexing the web daily.’ A WIRED analysis and one carried out by developer Robb Knight suggest that Perplexity is able to achieve this partly through apparently ignoring a widely accepted web standard known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol to surreptitiously scrape areas of websites that operators do not want accessed by bots, despite claiming that it won’t. WIRED observed a machine tied to Perplexity—more specifically, one on an Amazon server and almost certainly operated by Perplexity—doing this on WIRED.com and across other Condé Nast publications. The WIRED analysis also demonstrates that, despite claims that Perplexity’s tools provide ‘instant, reliable answers to any question with complete sources and citations included,’ doing away with the need to ‘click on different links,’ its chatbot, which is capable of accurately summarizing journalistic work with appropriate credit, is also prone to bullshitting, in the technical sense of the word. WIRED provided the Perplexity chatbot with the headlines of dozens of articles published on our website this year, as well as prompts about the subjects of WIRED reporting. The results showed the chatbot at times closely paraphrasing WIRED stories, and at times summarizing stories inaccurately and with minimal attribution.” • Called it [lambert blushes modestly].
The Bezzle: “Crypto analysts warn of Andrew Tate’s DADDY coin as signs of insider trading mount” [MiTrade]. “Several crypto analysts warned on Friday about the dangers of trading with the so-called ‘celebrity coins’, the current leading narrative in the meme coin space. Social media influencer Andrew Tate’s DADDY token, which is among the most popular ones, has been surrounded by accusations of insider trading activity. Caitlyn Jenner’s JENNER, Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER and TOPG are other tokens in the category, based on meme coins referencing famous personalities that tend to endorse these tokens. Bubblemaps, a crypto data tracker, evaluated the on-chain activity in addresses holding DADDY token and noted that Solana-based token’s 40% supply was sent to the celebrity Andrew Tate.” • Gad.
The Bezzle: “This Judge Made Houston the Top Bankruptcy Court. Then He Helped His Girlfriend Cash In” [Wall Street Journal]. The deck: “Law firm Kirkland & Ellis brought multibillion-dollar cases to David R. Jones’s court, aided by a local attorney who lived with the judge; ‘Why did no one look into it?” • I can’t imagine…
Tech: “iOS 18 could ‘sherlock’ $400M in app revenue” [TechCrunch]. “Every June at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, the iPhone maker teases the upcoming releases of its software and operating systems, which often include features previously only available through third-party apps. The practice is so common now it’s even been given a name: “sherlocking” — a reference to a 1990s search app for Mac that borrowed features from a third-party app known as Watson. Now when Apple launches a new feature that was before the domain of a third-party app, it’s said to have ‘sherlocked’ the app…. With the release of iOS 18 later this fall, Apple’s changes may affect apps that today have an estimated $393 million in revenue and have been downloaded roughly 58 million times over the past year.” • One for Stoller. I’m sure whatever agreement with Apple the developers were forced to sign with Apple allowed Apple to steal their intellectual property.
Manufacturing: “Boeing committed ‘the deadliest corporate crime in US history’ and should be fined $24 billion, victims’ families say” [CNN]. “Families that lost loved ones in two Boeing 737 Max crashes said on Wednesday that the company committed the “deadliest corporate crime in US history” and asked the Justice Department to fine the company the maximum $24 billion it could face in a criminal trial. The families wrote to the Department of Justice asking for the fine as the US government considers criminal prosecution of Boeing. The Justice Department said last month that Boeing’s recent string of safety lapses and mishaps constituted a violation of its 2021 agreement that allowed the company to avoid charges for 737 Max crashes in Indonesia in October 2018 and in Ethiopia in March 2019 that killed 346 people. The ‘appropriate action now is an aggressive criminal prosecution’ against Boeing including a quick jury trial and ‘criminal prosecutions of the responsible corporate officials,’ including former CEO Dennis Muilenburg, the families’ attorney wrote. ;Because time is of the essence to avoid any statute of limitations from running (out), the Department should begin these prosecutions promptly,’ they wrote in the 32-page letter, which was sent by Paul Cassell, an attorney representing the families. The letter also asks the Justice Department for an independent corporate monitor to oversee Boeing’s safety measures and to direct it in its efforts to improve its quality.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 42 Fear (previous close: 42 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 40 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 20 at 2:29:00 PM ET.
The Gallery
More wallpaper:
And gorgeous it is, too. (There’s surely a scholarly paper here to discover whether these patterns were real, from a catalog, or not. Either way, those fin de siecle Parisians really knew how to live!
News of the Wired
“The Hacking of Culture and the Creation of Socio-Technical Debt” [Schneier of Security]. “Culture is increasingly mediated through algorithms. These algorithms have splintered the organization of culture, a result of states and tech companies vying for influence over mass audiences. One byproduct of this splintering is a shift from imperfect but broad cultural narratives to a proliferation of niche groups, who are defined by ideology or aesthetics instead of nationality or geography. This change reflects a material shift in the relationship between collective identity and power, and illustrates how states no longer have exclusive domain over either. Today, both power and culture are increasingly corporate. Blending Stewart Brand and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, McKenzie Wark writes in A Hacker Manifesto that ‘information wants to be free but is everywhere in chains.’ Sounding simultaneously harmless and revolutionary, Wark’s assertion as part of her analysis of the role of what she terms ‘the hacker class’ in creating new world orders points to one of the main ideas that became foundational to the reorganization of power in the era of the internet: that ‘information wants to be free.’ This credo, itself a co-option of Brand’s influential original assertion in a conversation with Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak at the 1984 Hackers Conference and later in his 1987 book The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT, became a central ethos for early internet inventors, activists, and entrepreneurs. Ultimately, this notion was foundational in the construction of the era we find ourselves in today: an era in which internet companies dominate public and private life. These companies used the supposed desire of information to be free as a pretext for building platforms that allowed people to connect and share content. Over time, this development helped facilitate the definitive power transfer of our time, from states to corporations.” • Right. If information weren’t free, it wouldn’t be free to be rented. And speaking of hackers–
“systemd 256.1: Now slightly less likely to delete /home” [The Register]. “Among the issues fixed in version 256.1 are that even as long as five years ago, systemd-tmpfiles had moved on past managing only temporary files – as its name might suggest to the unwary. Now it manages all sorts of files created on the fly… such as things like users’ home directories. If you invoke the systemd-tmpfiles –purge command without specifying that very important config file which tells it while files to handle, version 256 will merrily purge your entire home directory. That fun little nugget of info broke over on Mastodon and has attracted considerable attention.” And: “[I]f your command can potentially do something really dangerous, then don’t let people just run it without warning them and checking.” • Like capitalism….
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