By Lambert Strether of Corrente
Patient readers, what you see is what you get, today; I must hustle along and finish up a post on Trump. –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Mishmi Wren-Babbler, Mishmi Hills–Coffee House (52 km), Lower Dibang Valley, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Did you mishmi?
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Democrat plotting.
(2) RFK doens’t make the cut for the debates.
(3) How a serious country (Finland) handled bird flu.
(4) The physics of knitting.
Look for the Helpers
Mail from Bruce F:
Hi,
I’ve found a couple of sites that let “normal” people help each other learn languages. Sites where ordinary people can help and be helped.
https://www.language-exchanges.org/
https://www.conversationexchange.com/index.php?lg=en
The idea is that you create a profile (free) saying what language you already know as well as your target language. You can then contact others on the sites and connect directly with them via Skype. It’s an excellent way to teach, and in turn, be taught. Perfect for autodidacts.
This is a terrific tool for those of us who are following the “Comprehensible Input” method. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vrNtU8feek)
Thanks for all the excellent work over the years.
There seem to be more submissions for this category lately. Thank you!
My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). 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:
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.
BIden (D): “Biden’s Secret Weapon Against Trump: Older Voters” [Wall Street Journal]. “Senior citizens, long a reliable voting bloc for Republicans, are showing signs of turning into an election-year swing group, potentially giving President Biden an unlikely boost in his tough rematch against Donald Trump. Americans ages 65 and older turn out at significantly higher rates than younger voters do, giving them outsize clout as they choose this year between the Democrat Biden, 81, and the Republican Trump, who turned 78 on Friday…. Biden has notched about 48% of seniors in The Wall Street Journal’s national and swing-state polls this year, a number that puts him in line with his 2020 performance. The polls have shown Trump getting about 46% of that age group, down from 51% in 2020. Biden’s standing among older voters has a few possible explanations: The president has been performing well among Americans who are closely monitoring the election, giving him an advantage with seniors who actively consume cable television and news coverage in their retirement. Some polling has shown seniors with more favorable views of Biden’s handling of the economy, possibly because they feel more insulated from the impacts of higher interest rates and inflation. But Matt Grossmann, director of the Institute for Public Policy and Social Research at Michigan State University, said any feeling of dramatic movement among older voters toward Biden may be overstated. The bigger change, he said, may be that older voters don’t seem to be moving toward Trump while other groups are. Beyond that point, he said, there is the broader question of the composition of the 65-and-older voting bloc in 2024.”
Biden (D): “The Biden Campaign’s Losing Battle” [The Atlantic]. “The Biden campaign seems to believe that journalists should stop reporting on polls, rallies, and other tentpoles of traditional presidential races, and instead devote their resources to telling Americans that Trump wants to be a dictator, over and over again. If that means ignoring Biden’s missteps and weaknesses, well, the Biden campaign can accept that.”
BIden (D): We get letters:
A *.gif in the subject line is new for Mothership Strategies, AFAIK. (Actually, I don’t know who the vendor is, but the old school, direct mail style is Mothership’s.) But on that *gif: We al know about Obama’s big ears, but what’s with his expression?
Biden (D): “Biden targets Trump’s conviction as tensions ramp up ahead of debate” [CNN]. “Biden’s new ad zeroes in directly on the guilty verdict in Trump’s hush money trial and his huge loss in a civil fraud case to strike a sharp contrast with Biden’s character. As the ex-president’s mug shot flashes on screen, a narrator says: ‘This election is between a convicted criminal who’s only out for himself and a president who is fighting for your family.’ The ad marks the Biden campaign’s most explicit strategic use so far of Trump’s legal woes in a campaign message.” • We’re gonna have to pry “fighting for” out of their cold, dead hands. They deeply believe in that phrase!
Secret Democrat plot to replace Biden revealed: How Clinton, Obama, Pelosi and Schumer would topple the aging President… and when they’d do it” {Daily Mail]. This did run in Links a couple days ago, but I had to leave it on the cutting room floor. Given a debate stumble by Biden: “The only people who could force [Biden] out would be Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer,’ one Democratic strategist told DailyMail.com. ‘It would have to be the four of them collectively.’… But other party insiders concede that the candidate swap could work if everything was carefully planned and executed… However, there’s another potential complication. As the recognized leader of the Democratic Party, a stubborn Biden could refuse to step down and fight on to Election Day, even as the party grows more exasperated with his performance…. The Democratic party machine has now elected to hold an online nomination, complete with a ‘virtual roll call,’ to formally select Biden as their nominee ahead of the DNC convention in Chicago in mid-August. Part of the reason to go ‘virtual’ is to ensure a more controlled process should the party decide to select a replacement candidate. In that case, top Democratic leaders would quietly draft the substitute nominee in advance. That person would not be Vice President Kamala Harris, according to sources, who observed that Harris has already had to fend off a push to replace her on the ticket… But if not Harris, then who? Democratic leaders would quietly draft the substitute nominee in advance…. Strategists theorize that Democrats would have to hold a public event to symbolically transfer power to the new candidate. Biden, Obama, Clinton, Schumer, and Pelosi would publicly introduce and endorse the anointed nominee. They would also have to convince Harris to throw her support behind the substitute, which would be a painful experience for someone so fiercely protective of their political future.” • The headline (“revealed”) isn’t supported by the story, which is either speculation, not sourced, or single-sourced (with the single exception of sources plural saying, unremarkably, that Harris ain’t it). Note the use of the subjunctive throughout. I just can’t see a scenario where Biden and the Big Four — Bill? And not Hillary? — collectively say “Whoops!” and Biden steps down voluntarily. The insiders might think there’s no problem — after all, they’ve been gaming this out for months — but I think the country at large would think it laughable. Unless Biden’s replacement has absolute starpower — very much unlike any Democrat politician on offer — something would have to… happen to Biden. Something physical and incapacitating. Maybe somebody could stretch some fishing line across one of the steps down from Air Force one. After all, “our democracy” is at stake.
Kennedy (I): “RFK Jr. won’t qualify for June Trump-Biden presidential debate: report” [New York Post]. “Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will fall short of meeting the ballot access requirements needed to qualify for next week’s debate between President Biden and former President Donald Trump, according to a report. …. However, the independent candidate is not on the ballot in several states where he has claimed he is, and he won’t meet the threshold needed to qualify for the June 27 CNN debate by the Thursday deadline, a Washington Post survey of state election officials found.”
“Exclusive: Leading chatbots are spreading Russian propaganda” [Axios]. “The leading AI chatbots are regurgitating Russian misinformation, according to a NewsGuard report shared first with Axios. Users turning to chatbots for reliable information and quick answers to all their questions are finding that AI can also offer disinformation, satire and fiction as fact. To conduct the study, NewsGuard entered prompts asking about narratives known to have been created by John Mark Dougan, an American fugitive who, per the New York Times, is creating and spreading misinformation from Moscow. Entering 57 prompts into 10 leading chatbots, NewsGuard found they spread Russian disinformation narratives 32% of the time, often citing Dougan’s fake local news sites as a reliable source.” • It does seem as if having the Censorship Industrial Complex — i.e., the spooks — somehow certifiy the election results is becoming an inevitability. “Our democracy” in operational terms, I suppose.
Democrats en Déshabillé
“The Resistance to a New Trump Administration Has Already Started” [New York Times]. “A sprawling network of Democratic officials, progressive activists, watchdog groups and ex-Republicans has been taking extraordinary steps to prepare for a potential second Trump presidency, drawn together by the fear that Mr. Trump’s return to power would pose a grave threat not just to their agenda but to American democracy itself…. But the early timing, volume and scale of the planning underway to push back against a potential second Trump administration are without precedent. The loose-knit coalition is determined not to be caught flat-footed, as many were [although not the spooks!] after his unexpected victory in 2016…. Interviews with more than 30 officials and leaders of organizations about their plans revealed a combination of acute exhaustion and acute anxiety. Activist groups that spent the four years of Mr. Trump’s presidency organizing mass protests and pursuing legal challenges, ultimately helping channel that energy into persuading voters to oust him from power in 2020, are now realizing with great dread they may have to resist him all over again.
The group leaders say they learned a lot from 2017 to 2021 about how to run an effective resistance campaign…. The group hired the journalist Barton Gellman [hmm] from The Atlantic to help with scenario planning and tabletop exercises focused on what could unfurl during a Trump presidency, with a report likely to be made public this summer. Other work has included a focus on the Insurrection Act and the Emergency Powers Act.” • War games, just like 2020, as I’ve been saying.
“How a Network of Nonprofits Enriches Fundraisers While Spending Almost Nothing on Its Stated Causes” [ProPublica]. • Penny ante 527 stuff.
“State Department hit with subpoena over ‘censorship-by-proxy’” [Washinton Examiner]. The Censorship Industrial Complex at State. Here is the Republican framing: “‘All Americans deserve a fair shot to compete in the marketplace, and the government should not be tipping the scales against any business for their legal speech on the internet,’ [Rep. Roger Williams (R-TX)] told the Washington Examiner. ‘The refusal to comply with repeated document requests is unacceptable, especially when the livelihoods of many small businesses are on the line.’” • It would be interesting to know if WIlliams would apply that rationale to, say, the World Socialist Web Site. One would hope so.
Realignment and Legitimacy
“‘I Live in Hell’: Anti-Growth Fervor Grips US South After Pandemic Boom” [Bloomberg]. “In Gallatin, Tennessee, house prices have jumped by two-thirds since the pandemic, and one local commissioner incensed at nearby homebuilding said she ‘lives in hell.’ So many Californians have moved to the booming state that locals fear their lefty politics migrated with them, and lawn signs target the “greedy developers” they say are swallowing up farmland. Tennessee and several of its neighbors in the US South are facing an anti-growth backlash, after turbocharged migration helped boost the region’s population by 2.7 million people — the size of Chicago. As traffic snarls in once-sleepy downtowns, apartment complexes replace meadows and municipal water systems strain under new demand, passions are running high in a way that goes beyond regular nimbyism. In Sumner County, where the Cumberland River snakes through the verdant hills northeast of Nashville, the economy grew by 8.5% a year from 2020 to 2022, putting it in the top 7% of all US counties for growth. The number of apartments in the county seat of Gallatin almost doubled in the four years through 2022, according to property marketplace RentCafe. The boom — driven by transplants from blue states like New York and California — has spurred a right-wing group that marries conservative religious beliefs with restrictive policies on growth into control of the local legislative body. At a planning board meeting in May, the pressing agenda item was whether to boost minimum lot sizes in rural areas to at least 2.3 acres; big enough to ward off housing developers who need more density.”
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!
Maskstravaganza
Hospitals have regressed:
This is what happens when you allow health care systems to be controlled by sociopaths who care more about covering up their own failures than protecting the lives of little kids with cancer.
Those responsible are evil. There’s no other word for it.
Accountability now! https://t.co/6BIx77un6j
— Mark Ungrin (@Mark_Ungrin) June 18, 2024
Testing and Tracking: Wastewater
I should really file this under Maleficence:
Note that CDC puts no units on the Y-axis.
So there is no way to compare one sewershed’s levels with another’s.
CDC seems to be aiming its displays at kindergartners—their model of the public?To view the actual data—w/ Y-axes of SARS2 quantities, go to https://t.co/gqJlBBMq8n
— Lee Altenberg, Ph.D. (@AltenbergLee) June 18, 2024
For my purposes, I use CDC’s wasterwater maps, not their charts (though presumably the same data drives both, and a chart comes up for a wastewater treatment plant “dot” when you click on it). The difficulty with Wastewater Scan is that I’ve never found a way to easily aggregate the data; they want you to type in a particular location, so you can never get an overall view. If any readers have made Wastewater Scan work for them, please say so in comments.
Elite Maleficence
“We aren’t doing enough about the risk of bird flu but we can” [CNN]. “We’ve seen H5N1 coming for more than 20 years. Although the challenge was smaller because of it size, Finland stopped H5N1 in animals before it spread to humans last summer. This story, among a half dozen outbreaks that never made headlines, is featured in our new Epidemics That Didn’t Happen report. “Rapid response. Within 24 hours of the first cases being reported on a mink farm, Finland confirmed that the animals tested positive for highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1…. In the United States, H5N1 has been spreading among cattle since at least late last year. Even today, the United States doesn’t know the extent of spread among animals or humans due to insufficient testing and tracking…. Trust. Farmers already had a high level of trust in the Finnish Food Authority after years of successful programs, and had launched a surveillance program that resulted in rapid notification of unusual symptoms among their animals…. Trust toward the United States government is low, especially among rural Americans who are on the front line of these outbreaks…. Coordinated government response. Human health and agriculture officials in Finland coordinated closely, paving the way for a rapid, effective response…. In the United States, government agencies have had rocky relationships given varying priorities, legal authorities, agility and politics. There are multiple agencies involved: USDA monitors cattle health, US Food and Drug Administration monitors milk safety and the CDC monitors diseases in humans, including from animal exposure. Coordination seems to be improving, but any directives from the government should be crafted to the specific needs of each community; national mandates will likely not be practical given our country’s size and diversity.” • What a mess. And we’ve known for years — decades? — that bird flu was something to watch for. And here we are, with a government and public health response that’s worse, if that were possble, than our response to Covid-19.
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
There are no offical statistics of interest today.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 42 Fear (previous close: 42 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 45 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 18 at 8:59:52 PM ET.
News of the Wired
“Unraveling the Physics of Knitting” (press release) [Georgia Tech]. “Physicists from the Georgia Institute of Technology have taken the technical know-how of knitting and added mathematical backing to it. In a study led by Elisabetta Matsumoto, associate professor in the School of Physics, and Krishma Singal, a graduate researcher in Matsumoto’s lab, the team used experiments and simulations to quantify and predict how knit fabric response can be programmed. By establishing a mathematical theory of knitted materials, the researchers hope that knitting — and textiles in general — can be incorporated into more engineering applications. Their research paper, ‘Programming Mechanics in Knitted Materials, Stitch by Stitch,’ was published in the journal Nature Communications. ‘For centuries, hand knitters have used different types of stitches and stitch combinations to specify the geometry and ‘stretchiness’ of garments, and much of the technical knowledge surrounding knitting has been handed down by word of mouth,’ said Matsumoto. But while knitting has often been dismissed as unskilled, poorly paid ‘women’s work,’ the properties of knits can be more complex than traditional engineering materials like rubbers or metals. For this project, the team wanted to decode the underlying principles that direct the elastic behavior of knitted fabrics. These principles are governed by the nuanced interplay of stitch patterns, geometry, and yarn topology — the undercrossings or overcrossings in a knot or stitch. ‘A lot of yarn isn’t very stretchy, yet once knit into a fabric, the fabric exhibits emergent elastic behavior,’ Singal said.” • I’m picturing an Ursula LeGuin story of an Ekumen planet where the matriarchy won out, and (say) high school physics isn’t based on the movement of planets and Newtonian principles, but on…. “emergent elastic behavior” based on yarn topology. Would that world not be very different from our own?
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: This is my freshly potted (about a month ago) catmint plant. I’m pretty thrilled with it. I never knew there was such a thing. I’d heard of catnip, but no catmint. I read that it attracts cats but doesn’t have the intoxicating effect that catnip tends to have. I brought some of the flowers in and put them in a little cup. The cats, who chewed on every plant we’ve ever brought in the house, have not noticed it, so just how strong the attraction is, is under suspicion.” Very nice depth of field.
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