2:00PM Water Cooler 6/6/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Bird Song of the Day

Killdeer, Marmon fields, Williams, North Dakota, United States.

“Why does Pantone have a color of the year? It started with … birds” [National Geographic]. From 2023, still germane: “Robert Ridgway, an ornithologist and artist at the Smithsonian’s United States National Museum from 1886 to 1929, was tasked with describing the country’s diverse bird life. To do that, he needed first to accurately describe birds’ color, from the vibrant reddish orange of an American robin’s breast to the wine reds of the purple finch. That’s harder than it might sound, as a color can appear different from moment to moment based on ambient light and other nearby shades. (Read: Tracing the roots of beautiful bird hues.) To solve this problem, Ridgway published two dictionaries of over a thousand different colors, from mustard gold to peacock blue, featuring page after page of hand-painted color swatches. These humble beginnings—Ridgway self-published the latter volume at his own expense—ultimately gave rise to the Pantone Color Institute in the 1960s. ‘There wasn’t this common vocabulary about color until Ridgway created it,’ says Brian Ellis, president of the Illinois Audubon Society and portrayer of Ridgway in living history skits. ‘He had a very specific need, but what he created quickly found a very broad use.’” • I’d like to know a little more about “gave rise to.” But nevertheless:

In Case You Might Miss…

(1) Georgia Trump case delayed.

(2) Joe and Jill Biden at Omaha beach.

(3) Don’t try this at home….

Look for the Helpers

“Creating Communities for Disability Activism” [JSTOR Daily]. ” Returning home for his senior year of high school after seven months at Warm Springs [Institute in Georgia], [Fred] Fay noticed that the physical and social accessibility issues he faced were the products of his environment, not an innate part of being disabled….. When Fay enrolled at the University of Illinois, known for its strong Rehabilitation Education Services Program, he met other Warm Springs alumni who had had similar experiences. They established a coed fraternity, Delta Sigma Omicron (DSO), and two publications that focused on educating the public about disabilities and fighting discrimination… [Lindsey] Patterson writes that DSO members evaluated the campus buildings and infrastructure and lobbied administrators to improve accessibility. They also took direct action. Timothy Nugent, the disability administrator, joined a small group of disabled students in going out at night and smashing curbs with sledgehammers to force the university to rebuild them with ramps…. As they graduated, the student activists from all three states, and others like them, extended their networks and expanded their work into fighting for disability rights at the state and federal levels. In 1972, after President Richard Nixon vetoed a bill to extend civil rights protections to disabled people, Heumann and fifty other activists used their wheelchairs to stop traffic in Manhattan, in just one of many militant actions across the country. The following year, Nixon signed the first law offering federal protection against discrimination on the basis of disability. ;Disability rights constituted a genuine grassroots movement that built momentum from successes at local levels,’ Patterson writes.” • “Direct action brings satisfaction” (but not as a lone wolf effort).

My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of “Helpers” there. In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza).

Politics

“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles

2024

Less than a half a year to go!

RCP Poll Averages, May 24:

A mixed bag for Team Trump, this week with some Swing States (more here) Brownian-motioning themselves back toward him, including Pennsylvania. Not, however, Michigan, to which Trump paid a visit. 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) (Willis/McAfee): “Georgia appeals court stays Trump election interference case until at least October” [NBC (Furzy Mouse)]. “A Georgia appeals court on Wednesday officially stayed until at least October the racketeering case alleging Donald Trump and others conspired to illegally overturn the results of the 2020 election — making it impossible for the case to go to trial before November’s elections….. McAfee had not set a trial date for the case and was not likely to do so while Trump and the others appealed his ruling that Willis could remain on the case provided that Nathan Wade, a special prosecutor she’d appointed to the case and with whom she had a romantic relationship, resigned.” • Unfortunate for anti-Trump forces that Willis shot herself (and, I assume, her chances for higher office as the next Stacey Abrams) in the foot. I have always felt that this was the most dangerous case for Trump: The Bragg trial proves what every 2016 voter already knew: Trump is a letch. But Willis’s case should have shown that innocent parties, “civilians,” were sucked into an election theft scheme as “contingent electors,” which is quite another thing from having a vivid personal life. But now that chance is gone.

Trump (R) (Smith/Cannon): “Court stops taking ‘orchestrated’ complaints against judge overseeing Trump documents case” [South Florida Sun Sentinel]. “A federal appeals court has stopped accepting public complaints against U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, many seeking her recusal from the U.S. Government’s classified documents case against former President Donald Trump, citing a flood of 1,000 filings in recent weeks that appear to be part of ‘an orchestrated campaign.’ The court acted after a general order from Chief Judge William Pryor Jr. of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, which is based in Atlanta and covers Florida, Georgia and Alabama. A link entitled, ‘Judicial Council Order In the Matter of Judicial Complaints Against Judge Aileen M. Cannon,’ appears on the court’s home page. ‘Many of the complaints against Judge Cannon request that the Chief Circuit Judge remove her from the classified-documents case and reassign the case to a different judge,’ Pryor wrote in an order dated May 22. He added that many ‘also question the correctness of her rulings or her delays in issuing rulings in the case.’ The judge instructed the clerk of the appeals court ‘not to accept further judicial complaints against United States District Judge Aileen M. Cannon’ on or after May 16 ‘to the extent they are similar to previously filed complaints.’” • Blue MAGA?

Trump (R) (People vs. Trump): “Trump supporters try to dox jurors and post violent threats after his conviction” [NBC]. “Advance Democracy, a nonprofit that conducts public interest research, said there has been a high volume of social media posts containing violent rhetoric targeting New York Judge Juan Merchan and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, including a post with Bragg’s purported home address. The group also found posts of the purported addresses of jurors on a fringe internet message board known for pro-Trump content and harassing and violent posts, although it is unclear if any actual jurors had been correctly identified. The posts, which have been reviewed by NBC News, appear on many of the same websites used by Trump supporters to organize for violence ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. These forums were hotbeds of threats inspired by Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, which he lost, and that the voting system was ‘rigged’ against him. They now feature new threats echoing Trump’s rhetoric and false claims about the hush money trial, including that the judicial system is now ‘rigged’ against him. ‘Dox the Jurors. Dox them now,’ one user wrote after Trump’s conviction on a website formerly known as ‘The Donald,’ which was popular among participants in the Capitol attack. (That post appears to have been quickly removed by moderators.)” • Hmm.

Trump (R) (People vs. Trump): “Trump wants the Supreme Court to toss out his conviction. Will they?” [Vox]. “Assume, for just a moment, that a majority of the justices are partisan hacks who are determined to remove the stigma of a felony conviction from the Republican presidential candidate before the election. Could they actually invalidate his conviction before the November election? The answer to this question should be ‘no.’ Under the rules that apply to criminal defendants who are not named Donald Trump, two state-level appeals courts should review Trump’s conviction before the justices could intervene. Both of those courts would ordinarily take months or longer to review a criminal appeal. To toss out Trump’s conviction before the election, the Court would have to take such extraordinary procedural liberties that this outcome is probably unlikely.” And: “The Supreme Court does have a process, known as “certiorari before judgment,” which can be used to bypass an appellate court and bring a case directly to the justices, but cert before judgment is supposed to be granted only in the most exceptional cases, and it’s only supposed to be available to parties challenging a federal (not a state) court decision.” • Oddly, when discussing “the basis of a recusal motion against Justice Merchan,” Vox entirely omits any discussion of section 100.3(E)(1)(d)(iii) of the Rules of Judicial Conduct for the New York State Unified Court System:

Since Merchan’s daughter is a Democrat consultant, any entity that wished to reward the Merchan clan for services rendered could launder money through her firm. I’m not saying that happened. But we have ethics laws exactly to prevent this sort of speculation.

Trump (R) (People vs. Trump): “‘We, the jury, have a verdict’” [Lawfare]. “Justice Merchan thanks the jurors for their service. And he tells them that they are now free to discuss the case with anyone they would like to discuss it with. ‘But you’re also free not to,’ he continues. ‘No one can make you do anything that you don’t want to do. The choice is yours.’” Not a peep so far. And: “Turning to Joshua Steinglass, the judge asks about Trump’s bail status. ‘There is no bail,’ Steinglass replies. Mr. Trump remains released on his own personal recognizance, Justice Merchan says.”

Trump (R): “Disengaged Voters Did Not Immediately Respond to Guilty Verdict by Abandoning Trump” [Slate]. The deck: “But then again, they’re not engaged.” More: “Add everything together, and Trump’s lead over Biden in the RealClearPolitics polling average has moved ever so slightly from 0.9 percent on the morning of the verdict to 0.5 percent as of Monday afternoon. What a roller coaster!” • But–

Trump (R): “A polling do-over finds Trump’s lead shrank after guilty verdict” [Politico]. “In a redo of a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, Trump’s three-point edge over President Joe Biden before the jury rendered its verdict shrank to just one point when respondents were quizzed after the decision. The re-canvassing of the 2,000 voters provides a data-based reflection on the first conviction of a former president, and presidential candidate, though it may be no more than a snapshot this far out from the election. Before the verdict, most Americans, polls showed, viewed the hush money case as less serious than Trump’s other legal cases. The slight shift from the initial polls in April and May was especially prominent among young, nonwhite and less engaged Democratic-leaning voters, according to the new analysis. Twenty percent of Trump’s previous supporters who are Black are now supporting Biden while only 2 percent of non-Black previous Trump supporters decided to back Biden.”

Trump (R): “Donald Trump Is Plotting His Next Crime” [Marc Elias, Democracy Docket]. “In 2016, Donald Trump seemed to pull an inside straight by narrowly winning Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin while losing the popular vote by three million. We now know, Trump committed 34 felonies to win that election. Without these crimes, he seems almost certain to have lost to Hillary Clinton.” • “Almost” doing a lot of work, there. Consider the source.

Biden (D):

Jill Biden wastes no time leading a dazed Joe Biden away from the Normandy veterans, leaving Macron to frantically make up for the awkwardness pic.twitter.com/RalCouBMop

— RT (@RT_com) June 6, 2024

Best sourcing available at press time, which doesn’t say much. Readers?

Biden (D): “Pelosi slams Wall Street Journal article on Biden’s mental acuity as ‘hit piece’” [The Hill]. Well, she would, wouldn’t she? “‘Many of us spent time with @WSJ to share on the record our first-hand experiences with @POTUS, where we see his wisdom, experience, strength and strategic thinking,’ Pelosi wrote. ‘Instead, the Journal ignored testimony by Democrats, focused on attacks by Republicans and printed a hit piece.’” Pelosi, unlike Trump, disdains the Oxford Comman. More importantly, the Journal did interview Democrats, albeit anonymously. The interesting question is why they were willing to throw Biden under the bus.

Biden (D): “Colbert mocks Biden’s border shift, joking border will have ‘gluten-free’ wall and ‘pro-choice’ barbed wire” [FOX]. • So useless.

Kennedy (I): “RFK Jr.’s VP choice ties herself to Tucker Carlson during Kittery rally” [News Center Maine]. “Those gathered to hear Shanahan represented a broad coalition from across the political spectrum, in many cases bonded by a support for the Kennedy campaign’s many conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and vaccines, as well as a desire for a different type of political figure. ‘He seems to be kind of a rare person in the political sphere who can learn,’ Dr. Christobal Alvarado, a retired physician, said. ‘He thinks for himself, he questions,’ Cathi Mavodones, another supporter, added. This unity in thought among supporters, however, was put to the test when news broke during the rally that a New York jury had convicted former president Trump of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. For some voters, like Darrian Lewry, who leans Democratic, the verdict powerfully represented Trump’s character. ‘I’m not surprised, just with who Donald is,’ Lewry said. But across the RFK camp, Mavodones disagrees, calling the case ‘irrelevant’ and ‘sensationalism.’” And: “Now, with the Kennedy campaign planning events around Maine to attempt to tap into a wide coalition, the question of ballot access—the tool needed to compete with Trump and Biden—hangs in the balance. Four thousand signatures are needed to land on the presidential ballot in November. A campaign official would not disclose how many have been collected so far in Maine, but said they are drawing close. Currently, the Kennedy ticket will appear in seven states, with enough signatures collected in eight others, according to the campaign.” • Picked this up from the Daily Beast, which leaves out the most important part: ballot access.

Kennedy (I): “RFK Jr. seizes on Trump verdict to bolster support” [The Hill]. But:

Democrats en Déshabillé

“Not All Peaceful Protests Constitutionally Protected, Police Chief Says Ahead Of DNC” [Block Club Chicago]. “Police Supt. Larry Snelling warned organizers that not all peaceful protests are protected by the First Amendment ahead of August’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, drawing immediate criticism from local civil liberties groups. ‘First Amendment protection is only there if you’re not committing a crime, and you can be acting out peacefully but still breaking the law,’ Snelling said at a press conference Tuesday to discuss safety at the political convention. Snelling went on to list blocking a roadway or venue or protesting on private property as examples of what he called crimes.” Picture caption: “A Chicago Police officer shoves a journalist after dozens of Chicago Police officers began forcibly removing the student Gaza solidarity encampment at DePaul University at 5:30 a.m. on May 16, 2024 in Lincoln Park.” More: “[Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy at ACLU of Illinois] also urged officials to release the convention’s security footprint, which has been a point of contention with groups wanting to peacefully protest. Without it, it creates ‘an environment where we are just going to go anywhere,’ Yohnka said. The security footprint around the convention will be designated areas where traffic will be limited or cut off. The Secret Service creates the footprint, and it will not be released until the end of July, officials have said. Part of the city’s reason for denying four protest permit requests around the DNC was the city does not know where the footprint will be; therefore, officials cannot grant access to an area that might be deemed restricted at a later date.” • Lovely.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Liberal Blindspots” (interview) [Chris Shaw, Phenomenal World]. “What is it about liberalism that makes it particularly unsuited to dealing with the climate challenge? ‘There is no society,’ as Margaret Thatcher put it. Hence the focus on individual change and market solutions in liberalism that guards against any systemic change. Fossil energy provides individuals with a great deal of independence from other people. Fossil fuels give individuals the ability to make choices and buy items without relying on others. One doesn’t have to work as part of a group to hunt for food each day. Instead I can go on my own in my car down to the supermarket and buy what I want. That is a lot easier than having to work with my neighbors to build a different world. And one’s consumption can be used as proof of one’s status. So fossil fuel-enabled individualism in the West is seen as sacrosanct, as it enables freedom from constraints of social obligations. ”

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!

Sequelae: Covid

“US training centre for Hong Kong’s Cathay halts cadet solo flights after serious blunders” [South China Morning Post]. “A US training centre for Hong Kong flag carrier Cathay Pacific Airways has halted solo flights for cadet pilots after an “alarming” rise in serious blunders in which students were involved in a wingtip collision, a bounced landing and an erroneous exit from a runway.” • One can only wonder why…

Elite Maleficence

Great place to work, if you can get along with eugenicists:

“New ‘FLiRT’ COVID Variants Could Be Driving an Uptick in Cases. Here’s How to Avoid Them” [Lauren J. Young, Scientific American]. As far as the “avoid them” part, IN THE FINAL [FAMILY BLOGGING] paragraph: “Chin-Hong also recommends wearing masks[1] and packing COVID rapid tests[2] during summer traveling and vacations[3]. And vaccination is still crucial for prevention[4]. ‘Everybody I saw in the hospital,’ he says[5], ‘the common feature when they were very sick right now with COVID is that they didn’t get a vaccine in the last year.'[6]” • I filed this under “elite maleficence for a reason: [1] as opposed to N95 respirators; [2] of which the CDC says you need at least 3 test to confirm you don’t have Covid, or one PCR test; [3] and not as a usual practice in crowded, close contact, closed spaces, of course; [4] but not transmission, and in any case at best prevent hospitalization and death, as opposed to Long Covid and cumulative neurological and vascular damage; [5] selection bias, since those who neglect non-pharmaceutical interventions are more likely to end up in hospital in the first place; [5] no mention of ventilation generally, or CO2 monitoring, or (again) the advantages of avoiding crowded, close contact, closed spaces, where SARS-CoV-2-bearing aerosols build up. I don’t question Young’s credentials; I just wish there wasn’t an unfortunately high likelihood that credentialed opinion-havers are going to get people sick or killed. What a debacle. Hard to believe and editor let this through.

Lambert here: Patient readers, I’m going to have to rethink this beautifully formatted table. Biobot data is gone, CDC variant data functions, ER visits are dead, CDC stopped mandatory hospital data collection, New York Times death data has stopped. (Note that the two metrics the hospital-centric CDC cared about, hospitalization and deaths, have both gone dark). Ideally I would replace hospitalization and death data, but I’m not sure how. I might also expand the wastewater section to include (yech) Verily data, H5N1 if I can get it. Suggestions and sources welcome. UPDATE I replaced the Times death data with CDC data. Amusingly, the URL doesn’t include parameters to construct the tables; one must reconstruct then manually each time. Caltrops abound.

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) Dead.

[2] (Biobot) Dead.

[3] (CDC Variants) FWIW, given that the model completely missed KP.2.

[4] (ER) This is the best I can do for now. At least data for the entire pandemic is presented.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Slight leveling out? (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) Flattening.

[10] (Travelers: Variants) KP.2 enters the chat, as does B.1.1.529.

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED not up.

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the US jumped by 8,000 to 229,000 on the week ending June 1st, well above market expectations of 220,000, to record the highest reading since the eight-month high of 232,000 from early May. In the meantime, outstanding claims unexpectedly rose to 1,792,000 in the earlier week, the highest in seven weeks. The results were further evidence of a softening US labor market, strengthening the case for the Federal Reserve to deliver multiple rate cuts this year should inflation progress in converging to its target. ”

Employment Situation: “United States Challenger Job Cuts” [Trading Economics]. “US-based employers announced plans to cut 63,816 jobs in May 2024, 1.5% lower than in April and 20.3% below the level seen a year earlier, as companies assess performance and make plans for Q3 and Q4, Entertainment/Leisure announced the most cut (9,180), followed by Technology (7,771), Utility (7,400) and Services (5,184). Meanwhile, hiring announcements are at 4,326, their lowest levels in a decade. “The typical churn in a healthy labor market appears to be stalling”, said Andrew Challenger, Senior Vice President of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. ”

Tech:

I’m assuming this only works if you gullible enough to use Adobe’s Cloud storage, and that Adobe isn’t inserting its sucking mandibles into your storage device and slurping down data. But the agreement doesn’t say that, does it?

Tech: “Study finds 268% higher failure rates for Agile software projects” [The Register]. “A study has found that software projects adopting Agile practices are 268 percent more likely to fail than those that do not. Even though the research commissioned by consultancy Engprax could be seen as a thinly veiled plug for Impact Engineering methodology, it feeds into the suspicion that the Agile Manifesto might not be all it’s cracked up to be. The study’s fieldwork was conducted between May 3 and May 7 with 600 software engineers (250 in the UK and 350 in the US) participating. One standout statistic was that projects with clear requirements documented before development started were 97 percent more likely to succeed. In comparison, one of the four pillars of the Agile Manifesto is “Working Software over Comprehensive Documentation.’” • Famously: “You guys start coding. I’ll go find out what the requirements are.”

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 44 Fear (previous close: 45 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 43 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 6 at 1:53:46 PM ET.

“We Don’t Deserve Dogs”

I can testify to the cat part:

Class Warfare

“COVID-19 Can Be Occupational Disease, Colorado Court Says in Worker Death Case” [Claims Journal]. “The appeals panel commented: ‘The novel virus raises a unique consideration under Colorado workers’ compensation law. Because of the nature of a virus, it cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt precisely where or from whom an individual had the exposure that transmitted the disease. Like the ALJ, we believe a reasoned statistical analysis can determine where the site of exposure was most probable. The ALJ concluded that it was more probable than not that the exposure site was within the facility. In our view, the ALJ used the appropriate burden of proof.; Under the law, an employee is entitled to compensation if ‘the injury or death is proximately caused by an injury or occupational disease arising out of and in the course of the employee’s employment and is not intentionally self-inflicted.’” • More like this, please.

News of the Wired

I haven’t tried this at home:

News you can use?

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)

AM writes: “An exotic looking tulip (I presume) in the garden of Dyffryn, a National Trust property in Southern Wales not far from Cardiff.” It looks like a cross between a thistle and a tulip, so maybe it’s a Scotch tulip? That migrated south?

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