2:00PM Water Cooler 2/24/2025 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether.

Bird Song of the Day

American Robin, Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge; Deadman Lake. Alaska, United States.

Readers, I’m going to close out with the American Robin, because it’s always such a lift to the spirits to hear them burbling after a rainstorm. So, robins until Friday. –lambert

In Case You Might Miss…

1. Trump and patrimonialism.
2. Elon’s “five bullets” email debacle.
3. Spooks stirring from slumber?
4. HP performs minor act of de-enshittification.

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

Trump Administration

“One Word Describes Trump” [The Atlantic]. “Weber wondered how the leaders of states derive legitimacy, the claim to rule rightfully. He thought it boiled down to two choices. One is rational legal bureaucracy (or “bureaucratic proceduralism”), a system in which legitimacy is bestowed by institutions following certain rules and norms. That is the American system we all took for granted until January 20. Presidents, federal officials, and military inductees swear an oath to the Constitution, not to a person. The other source of legitimacy is more ancient, more common, and more intuitive—’the default form of rule in the premodern world’ [Stephen E. Hanson, a government professor at the College of William & Mary, and Jeffrey S. Kopstein, a political scientist at UC Irvine] write. ‘The state was little more than the extended ‘household’ of the ruler; it did not exist as a separate entity.’ Weber called this system ‘patrimonialism’ because rulers claimed to be the symbolic father of the people—the state’s personification and protector…. In his day, Weber thought that patrimonialism was on its way to history’s scrap heap. Its personalized style of rule was too inexpert and capricious to manage the complex economies and military machines that, after Bismarck, became the hallmarks of modern statehood. Unfortunately, he was wrong. Patrimonialism is less a form of government than a style of governing. It is not defined by institutions or rules; rather, it can infect all forms of government by replacing impersonal, formal lines of authority with personalized, informal ones. Based on individual loyalty and connections, and on rewarding friends and punishing enemies (real or perceived), it can be found not just in states but also among tribes, street gangs, and criminal organizations. In its governmental guise, patrimonialism is distinguished by running the state as if it were the leader’s personal property or family business.” • Hmm. Patrimonialism seems akin to the Schmittian friend/enemy distinction.

DOGE

Elon out over his skis:

“Email starts power clash between Musk and agency leaders — even the Trump loyalists” [Politico]. “Elon Musk’s weekend threat to federal workers triggered panic and confusion Sunday as administration officials rushed to issue sometimes conflicting guidance, setting in motion a power struggle between Musk and agency heads appointed by President Donald Trump to lead the federal government. The guidance varied by agency…. It’s the latest episode of Musk’s ‘move fast and break things’ philosophy clashing with the layers of rules and laws that fortify the bureaucracy he hopes to hobble. And it’s the first sign that even staunch Trump loyalists are beginning to flex their political muscle against Musk, an unelected ‘special government employee,’ whose power stems primarily from his proximity to the president.” • Hmm. Here is the letter:

I have seen three explanations for this letter, besides sheer harassment (most employees I know of work in a chain of command; they certainly don’t need to report to Elon). (1) The letters will be fed into an AI, and keywords found will be used for firing; (2) the letters are a sorting device for stupid or loyal people, a la the Nigerian 419 fraud; (3) based on the request for that the worker’s managed be cc’ed, results would enable a more accurate, granular org chart of the Federal government to be constructed.

“OPM’s Own Guidance Says Fed Employees Never Have to Respond to the Elon Emails” [Talking Points Memo]. “Notwithstanding that what amounts to a prank email has had the entire federal government debating with itself over the last 48 hours, Musk’s own Office of Personnel Management says that federal employees never have to respond to any of these emails. After landing at the Office of Personnel Management in January, DOGE operatives first order of business was to set up a new email system through which all federal employees could be emailed through a single distribution list. They built it on a new server system outside of the established government email system. But emails it sends come to civil servants from the email address HR at OPM dot gov. This new system was given the name Government-Wide Email System (GWES). On February 5th, 2025 — in other words, well after the Trump and more specifically Musk was in charge of OPM — OPM published this document, Privacy Impact Assessement for GWES. As you can see here, most specifically in sections 4.2 and 4.3, federal government employees are never obligated to respond to any GWES emails and are under no obligation to share any information. Indeed, section 4.3 says that to mitigate the risk that the federal employees may not realize this, every GWES email should ‘explicitly stat[e] that the response is voluntary.’” • BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!

Here are a few of the better “five bullets” letters, culled from the Intertubes:

Here’s one creative way @SecretService managers told agents to respond to Elon Musk’s surprise email demanding hat fed employees list their 5 accomplishments last week. Sources said it was designed to avoid agents sharing sensitive and classified details of their work protecting… pic.twitter.com/3dSx9n0ayi

— Carol Leonnig (@CarolLeonnig) February 23, 2025

And:

And (NSFW):

“How Trump’s government-cutting moves risk exposing the CIA’s secrets” [CNN]. “The CIA is conducting a formal review to assess any potential damage from an unclassified email sent to the White House in early February that identified for possible layoffs some officers by first name and last initial and could’ve exposed the roles of people working undercover, a source familiar with the matter told CNN. That’s just one of multiple aftershocks from President Donald Trump’s push to take a jackhammer to the federal government – including the CIA. The administration’s efforts to cut the workforce and audit spending at the CIA and elsewhere threaten to jeopardize some of the government’s most sensitive work, current and former US officials familiar with internal deliberations say. And on the CIA’s 7th floor — home to top leadership — some officers are also quietly discussing how mass firings and the buyouts already offered to staff risk creating a group of disgruntled former employees who might be motivated to take what they know to a foreign intelligence service. Taken together, those actions highlight the depth of unease among career officials that Trump’s efforts to speedily slim down the US government may be putting American secrets within the grasp of foreign spies and hackers.” • So far, Trump — except for slapping those “50 intelligence officials” around for election interference — has left the spooks alone (presumably the generation of spook-related cover stories formerly undertaken by USAID will be moved to State). So is this story a message? A warning shot? What?

“Despite the hype, DOGE hasn’t found a shred of fraud” [Public Notice]. “DOGE has claimed it’s rooted out $55 billion worth of spending, a dollar amount that appears to be wildly inaccurate: As of Sunday, DOGE’s website claims it has saved or cancelled $55 billion worth of government contracts. But that same website only accounts for $16 billion in contracts. Half of that comes from an $8 million government contract that DOGE incorrectly identified as being worth $8 billion. Additionally, DOGE has been in some cases simply cancelling contracts that the government has already paid for. Some $325 million in supposed savings are simply contracts that have been repeated in DOGE’s reporting, Politico found. But actual fraud? DOGE has found nothing. None of this has stopped Trump, Musk, congressional Republicans, and their allies in rightwing media from breathlessly highlighting millions of dollars’ worth of spending as examples of fraudulent government programs. Nowhere in those lists of programs — like the USAID initiatives that White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has been lambasting for weeks, including the tortured and incorrect claim that US taxpayers funded ‘condoms for Gaza’ — is anything that even Musk or Trump themselves have identified as ‘fraud.’ Instead, the goalposts for DOGE have silently moved from finding fraud and corruption to simply pointing out and cancelling government programs that Trump and Republicans simply don’t support.” • I kinda turned off following the detail on this story after Musk went all “Ghost of COBOL” on Social Security….

Democrats en déshabillé

“AI video of Trump kissing Musk’s feet plays on TVs in HUD building” [The Register]. “A video produced using artificial intelligence (AI) showing President Trump rubbing and kissing Elon Musk’s feet played on television screens in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) building Monday in an apparent mocking of the relationship between the two men. The words ‘Long live the real king’ were displayed over the top of the computer-generated video, a reference to Trump’s Truth Social post last week in which he wrote, ‘Long Live the King!’ The Hill obtained a photo of the screens in the HUD building as the video was playing.” • Here’s the video:

I fail to understand the extraordinary hold this trope has on the liberal Democrat mind; it began, or at least was normalized, in a series in The New York Times back in 2018. Liberals seem to believe that the trope is an enormous “own” of conservatives. In fact, it shows that for liberalism — hold onto your hats, here, folks — tribalism trumps principle. In what other context would the “In this house….” rainbow-flag crowd treat gay lovers as anything other than worthy of praise, indeed emulation? But bring in a demon figure, and the deep triggers go off….

“Angry Democratic donors turn off the flow of money” [The Hill]. “Democratic donors — from bundlers to small dollar donors — say they are still angry about the election results and uninspired by anything their side has put forward since then. ‘I’ll be blunt here: The Democratic Party is f‑‑‑ing terrible. Plain and simple,’ one major Democratic donor said. ‘In fact, it doesn’t get much worse.’ A second donor was equally as pointed. ‘They want us to spend money, and for what? For no message, no organization, no forward thinking. … The thing that’s clear to a lot of us is that the party never really learned its lesson in 2016. They worked off the same playbook and the same ineffective strategies and to what end?’” • The party did great in 2016 and 2020. They crippled the left, and that’s their main goal as a party, right? Stop whining, donors! You never had it so good!

“Carville suggests Trump admin will ‘collapse’ within 30 days” [The Hill]. “Democratic strategist James Carville suggested the Trump administration will ‘collapse’ within 30 days as the public reacts to the sweeping actions from the executive branch. ‘I believe that this administration, in less than 30 days, is in the midst of a massive collapse and particularly a collapse in public opinion,’ Carville said during a conversation with Mediaite’s Dan Abrams about the Trump administration’s unprecedented recent actions. Abrams asked Carville to clarify what he meant, to confirm that Carville believes the administration will crumble shortly. ‘It’s collapsing right now. We’re in the midst of a collapse,’ Carville replied. ‘This is the lowest approval, not even close, that any president has ever had at a comparable time.’” • This is cope. Not buying it. And if I did, it would be bad: The Democrats must suffer much, much more before there is any change, inside or outside the party.

Republican Funhouse

Maybe:

Voters are mostly liking what they see in the first month of the new presidency. By 57/43 voters say Trump doing a better job than Biden in advance look at poll coming out Monday.

Job approval at 52 but closing the border, cutting waste are hugely popular. So is resetting merit…

— Mark Penn (@Mark_Penn) February 23, 2025

I’d certainly give the Trump administration more than Carville’s thirty days, though.

Realignment and Legitimacy

“Monopoly Round-Up: The Populist Revolt Against Oligarchy Begins” [Matt Stoller, BIG]. why choose to focus on Bernie Sanders giving speeches on how he doesn’t like the superrich? I mean, yawn. Right? But something about this campaign is different. It’s not so much what Bernie is saying, it’s that he is doing it to overflow crowds in Nebraska and Iowa. And it’s not just event crowds, his videos are getting tens of millions of views, and his online campaign metrics are performing remarkably well. I got a note from a contact in Bernie-world, who told me that ‘The level of engagement is higher than the last presidential.’ Democratic operatives who have traditionally disliked Bernie are noting what he’s doing, approvingly. Even billionaire Mark Cuban, who hates populism, is calling Bernie’s approach ‘really smart.’ …. This anti-big business vibe isn’t necessarily channeling itself through the Democrats, who are deeply loathed and distrusted…. What’s important about what Bernie is doing, and these other signals, is he might be showing that fear of oligarchy is the dominant view of a large swath of the public. If that’s the case, a lot of things could change, and quicker than we might imagine.” • (Readers; Please keep the Bernie grousing to a minimum. We know all those points by heart.) What I want to know is why Sanders is the only one at the podium. Let’s get some new faces up there!

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 (wastewater); 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, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).

Stay safe out there!

Measles

“Former FDA chief ‘very concerned’ about Texas measles outbreak spreading” [The Hill]. “Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said he is ‘very concerned’ about the measles outbreak in Texas spreading…. He noted that he believes it ‘will spread.’ ‘There’s been 100 cases that have been identified so far,’ Gottlieb said. ‘There’s probably many more than that. ‘So, I think that this is going to get into the hundreds of cases and could take many months to try to fully snuff out,’ he added. The Texas Department of State Health Services confirmed at least 90 cases of measles and said 16 patients were hospitalized. Just five of the patients were vaccinated…. Gottleib also noted that there could be economic impacts from the spread of measles, as other countries could place the U.S. under a travel advisory. ‘The risk to the United States right now is that a virus that has been largely extinguished from circulation in the U.S. could return and just continue to spread, even at a low level,’ Gottlieb said.”

Treatment: Covid

“Demographic Variation In US Outpatient Hydroxychloroquine And Ivermectin Use During The COVID-19 Pandemic” [RAND]. “Using insurance claims from the MedInsight Emerging Experience Research Database for 8.1 million patients from all fifty US states, we evaluated COVID-19-associated outpatient hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin use and spending throughout the public health emergency (January 30, 2020-May 11, 2023) versus pre-public health emergency rates. …. The combined overall hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin utilization rate was threefold higher in older versus younger adults. Ivermectin use was greater among patients with the highest versus the lowest degree of social vulnerability and in the southern US versus other regions.”

Origins Debate

“What sparked the COVID pandemic? Mounting evidence points to raccoon dogs” [Nature]. • Readers know I take the strong form position that any argument from the structure of SARS-CoV-2 to a claim of human-made creation is the Watchmaker Analogy, beloved of creationists, and to be rejected by Darwinians. That said, for Nature to be recycling the “authorities” who have been on this topic since before the beginning (e.g. Andersen, Pekar, Rasmussen, Worobey) just isn’t a good look. If indeed Nature wishes to “depoliticize” this issue, they should broaden their sourcing.

Celebrity Watch

Hilarity ensues:

Jamie Lee Curtis: “And the Actor goes to…the man who gave me covid at the Golden Globes: Colin Farrell”

Colin: “Guilty as charged. But Brendan Gleeson fucking gave it to me! So I was just spreading the love”#SAGAwards pic.twitter.com/BzNgtXiPG2

— Spencer Althouse (@SpencerAlthouse) February 24, 2025

There’s probably something similar in Bocaccio (though not in The Masque of the Red Death).

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) Down, nothing new at major hubs.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.

[4] (ED) A little uptick.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Weird plateau without exponential growrht

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.

[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.

[8] (Cleveland)

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Uptick.

[10] (Travelers: Variants). Don’t know what the dominance of XEC is all about,

[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.

[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.

Stats Watch

There are no official statistics of interest today.

Manufacturing: “FAA calls for testing on Boeing 757 freighter cargo doors after incidents” [Aerotime]. “The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has recommended that all worldwide operators of certain Boeing 757-200 converted freighters carry out a series of safety checks on the main deck cargo doors of these aircraft. The calls come after an incident in 2021 where the main cargo door of a DHL-operated Boeing 757 converted freighter opened mid-flight. In the incident in question, the aircraft failed to pressurize following a routine departure from DHL’s European hub located at Leipzig-Halle Airport (LEI) in Germany. Although the crew onboard was aware of the pressurization issue, it was only later discovered that the main deck cargo door had failed to latch correctly, leading to its uncommanded opening in flight.” • Since 2021…. Nevertheless, one door closes, another opens!

Tech: “AI-designed chips are so weird that ‘humans cannot really understand them’ — but they perform better than anything we’ve created” [LiveScience]. “Although the findings suggest that the design of such complex chips could be handed over to AI, Sengputa was keen to point out that pitfalls remain ‘that still require human designers to correct.’ In particular, many of the designs produced by the algorithm did not work– equivalent to the ‘hallucinations’ produced by current generative AI tools. ‘The point is not to replace human designers with tools,’ said Sengputa. ‘The point is to enhance productivity with new tools.’” • That’s what management always says. At first.

Tech: A classic “Smiley’s People” scene, but with a AI slop added:

[embedded content]

Always worth watching. But take a look:

Every day, in every way, AI makes us more stupid. (Sure, there are use cases. But civilizationally, the trend is down.)

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 31 Fear (previous close: 35 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 44 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 24 at 2:04:38 PM ET.

Rapture Index: Closes unchanged [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 180. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • This is a tough crowd. Surely Trump’s first month brought the Rapture closer?

Gallery

Seems on-point:

Class Warfare

“Measuring the Income Gap from 1975 to 2023” [RAND]. • Handy chart:

I realize the data stops 2019-2020, when Trump’s CARES Act lifted millions out of poverty, at least temporaily.

News of the Wired

“We bullied HP into a minor act of disenshittification” [Cory Doctorow]. Well worth reading in full, but here is the heart of the matter: “HP’s enshittificatory impulses run wild. They hunt relentlessly for ways to make things worse for their customers in order to make things better for themselves. Last week, they came up with a humdinger, even by their own standards. They announced that people who called their customer service line would be subject to mandatory 15-minute waits, even if there was a rep who was free to talk with them…. During this mandatory 15-minute wait, customers would be bombarded with a recorded voice demanding that they solve their problems by consulting HP’s website and its awful chatbots. In a competitive market, businesses can contain their customer service costs by making better products. In a monopolistic market like the printer racket, companies can deliberately introduce maddening antifeatures to their products, and then fob off the customers who reach such a peak of frustrated rage that they resort to calling a customer support number on chatbot that will use its spicy autocomplete to hallucinate nonexistent drivers and imaginary troubleshooting steps…. Within a day of Paul Kunert

JH writes: “In the hope you may need a couple more photos prior to your departure from NC, I have attached several photos of plants in my yard. If you can’t use them, I hope at least you can enjoy!” And:

The red flower is Maltese Cross (Lychnis Chalcedonica). I have spent an inordinate amount time and money trying to get these established. Supposedly easy to grow – but not for me in Northeast Ohio. I am fascinated by the plant’s history: First noted as planted in cottage gardens in England circa 1500, but believed to have been brought back from the Middle East in the 1100’s during or after a Crusade. It has a lovely, long-lasting flower and is best situated among other plants in an “informal” setting – that informality, which, much to my own self-chagrin, is usually “created” by me as I always procrastinate on the weeding…

I am in good shape, readers, and in fact have almost emptied the queue, which is good for all of us!

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