By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Golden-crowned Kingle, Forêt boréale de la Haute-Côte-Nord, Sept-Rivières, Quebec, Canada.
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
The Constitutional Order (Eighth Amendment)
Engoron’s penalty seems so obviously excessive it could be grounds for appeal under the Eighth Amendment, but IANAL and no appeal has actually been filed. If in fact no Constitutional issues are involved, I’ll move this story to the Trump section under campaign 2024, with the rest of the lawfare stuff.
* * * Trump quotes the Eighth Amendment:
DJT reads the Eighth Amendment pic.twitter.com/n4w4tHUstt
— QuickWitNitWit 🔍 (@Quickwitnitwit) February 21, 2024
Not seeing any lawyers jumping on the bandwagon (though see the Federalist Society’s Calabresi below).
“Dissolving Trump’s business empire would stand apart in history of NY fraud law” [Associated Press]. From January 29. ” An Associated Press analysis of nearly 70 years of civil cases under the law showed that such a penalty has only been imposed a dozen previous times, and Trump’s case stands apart in a significant way: It’s the only big business found that was threatened with a shutdown without a showing of obvious victims and major losses…. AP’s review of nearly 150 reported cases since New York’s ‘repeated fraud’ statute was passed in 1956 showed that nearly every previous time a company was taken away, . Customers had lost money or bought defective products or never received services ordered, leaving them cheated and angry. What’s more, businesses were taken over almost always as a last resort to stop a fraud in progress and protect potential victims. They included a phony psychologist who sold dubious treatments, a fake lawyer who sold false claims he could get students into law school, and businessmen who marketed financial advice but instead swindled people out of their home deeds. In Trump’s case, his company stopped sending exaggerated financial figures about his net worth to Deutsche Bank and others at least two years ago, but a court-appointed monitor noted that was only after he was sued and that other financial documents continued to contain errors and misrepresentations.” • This article was written before the verdict; in fact, Trump’s businesses were not shut down, but put under the management of independent monitor Barbara Jones. That said, the absence of victims and losses is still anomalous.
“Donald Trump Faces Potential ‘Fire Sale’ of His Prized Business Assets” [Newsweek]. “Former President Donald Trump could face many of his properties being sold by the government at ‘fire sale prices’ if he refuses to pay the fine issued to him following his civil fraud trial in New York, a former White House counsel said. ‘Can he stiff them? No,’ John Dean, who served under Richard Nixon [nice!] during the Watergate scandal, told CNN on Saturday. ‘What’s going to happen is the attorney general will come in, they’ll seize the properties and they will liquidate them at fire sale prices—and that will take more buildings than he could probably negotiate.’ ‘This isn’t something that he can just sit on. Even if he appeals, the rate apparently goes on and on. So this is growing debt.’”
“Pay to Play: Trump Faces a Staggering Cost for Appeal” [Jonathan Turley]. “The expectation is that Trump can make the deposit or secure a bond to avoid what some gleefully called a “fire sale” on this properties. The deposit is now being celebrated as an added indignity and penalty. However, as New Yorkers cheer this moment, many business are likely wondering ‘but for the grace of God go I.’ Undervaluing or overvaluing property is a common practice, particularly in real estate. That is why representations, like the one made by the Trump Corporation, come with a warning that estimates are their own and that the banks need to make their assessments. Faced with high crime and high taxes, the spectacle in Manhattan is only likely to accelerate the exodus of businesses and high-earners from the city. That prospect has already alarmed Gov. Kathy Hochul who declared ‘business people have nothing to worry about, because they’re very different than Donald Trump and his behavior.’ That sounds a lot like ‘you are fine so long as you are not Trump.’ Yet, that is not reassuring to businesses who want a legal system that is based on something other than selective and arbitrary enforcement…. That is not the type of assurance that most businesses would accept in risking billions in investment. Despite the high taxes and falling services in New York, the city remained a draw for business as a commercial and legal center. The experience and objectivity of courts in dealing with business disputes was a selling point for companies. That has been shattered by the James campaign and the Engoron ruling. Telling business to just ‘don’t be like Trump’ is more menacing than consoling. Letitia James is now the face of New York corporate law — it is the ‘face that launched a thousand ships’ toward Florida.” • Maybe. We haven’t seen that, though. Anyhow, why Florida as opposed to Texas?[Trump
“Donald Trump Able to Post $400M Bond to Appeal Engoron Ruling: Alina Habba” [Newsweek]. “[Trump lawyer Alina] Habba went on to explain that the bond, which will have to be posted within 30 days after the verdict, will end up totaling close to $400 million. According to a report by NBC News, the appeal bond equals Trump’s $355 million verdict plus a 9 percent post-judgment interest, which would be collected by the state of New York in the case that Trump loses his appeal. ‘What they’re trying to do between this case between my last case is put [Trump] out of business,’ Habba continued. ‘It’s not gonna work, number one. Number two, what they’re doing is a scare tactic. Unfortunately, they picked the wrong guy to pick on, in my opinion, because .’”
“President Trump’s Kafkaesque Civil Trial in New York State” [Steven Calabresi, Reason]. Ugh, libertarians [let me take a moment to start running a bath]. That said, Calabresi’s got hold of the right end of the stick: “The bottom line is that a never before used New York State penalty has been twisted into a tool for a grossly excessive fine and more seriously the completely inappropriate appointment of Judge Jones as an ‘independent monitor’ who can micromanage the Trump business, which she is not competent to do, and to even order the dissolution of the Trump Business in New York State…. Ms. James and Judge Engeron have essentially turned a vaguely worded New York State law into a modern day Bill of Attainder targeted at Donald Trump both for political gain and because they despise his political views and desperately want to call his truthfulness into question as he runs for President of the United States inn 2024. In doing this, the have violated Trump’s First Amendment right to freedom of speech and of the press; his Fifth Amendment right not to be deprived of liberty or property without due process of law; his Fifth Amendment right not to have property taken away from him except for a pubic use with just compensation being paid; his Eighth Amendment right not to be made to pay an excessive fine; his Article IV, Section 2 right as a citizen of Florida to do make and enforce contracts in New York on the same terms as are other New Yorkers; and his Fourteenth Amendment right to be free to pursue an occupation without unnecessary and burdensome regulation…. If the New York State appellate courts do not reverse this judgment, the U.S. Supreme Court MUST grant cert on this case and reverse Judge Engeron’s outrageous decisions.” So far as I know, that’s not an option so far. This, however, is a little over the top: “The civil fraud judgment against Donald Trump is a travesty and an unjust political act rivaled only in American politics by the killing of former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton by Vice President Aaron Burr.” • It is only of taking people’s money is the same as killing them [how’s that bath coming].
2024
Less than a year to go!
* * * Haley (R): Still in there punching:
this is honestly pretty brilliant from Nikki Haley — she hyped a major speech, getting Fox News and company to take it live thinking she might drop out, and instead she’s using it to make a campaign speech pic.twitter.com/cw8oHl0OjI
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 20, 2024
* * * Biden (D): “It’s time for the White House to put up or shut up” [Nate Silver, Silver Bulletin]. This from Silver is, in fact, well worth a read. “A lot of commentators that I respect have pointed out that Biden ought to do more public events that would help to allay public doubts about his mental sharpness. The problem is, one can infer the reason that Biden is not doing them — namely that the White House comms team is rational and has inferred that the cost of doing them outweighs the benefits because Biden is too likely to come across poorly…. Say that, in any given period of time — maybe over the course of a couple months — Biden has 20 opportunities to do what you might call Improvisational Public Appearances (IPAs). We can define these as events where Biden is not merely making pre-scripted remarks and instead faces sustained questioning from the media, voters or other public figures…. The White House has worked with Biden for a long time and they know his performance varies based on the setting, who he’s taking questions from, and his fatigue level. So what do they do? Well, they do their best to… [make] excuses for Biden to avoid these IPAs or never scheduling them in the first place….. The analogy is to an NBA player who’s aging and losing his shot. If he only takes wide-open jumpers, his shooting percentage may remain tolerable — but you can observe the decline in his skills from the lack of shooting volume… Biden’s doing a lot fewer interviews than even the media-hostile Trump. And when he does them, his performance is still just mediocre. That’s why something like turning down a Super Bowl interview ought to be highly concerning…. It’s also why the press conference from two weeks ago was worrying. This was an IPA that Biden basically couldn’t avoid. You can’t respond to your own Justice Department’s claim that your memory is failing by not saying anything at all. And yet when forced to make this appearance, Biden’s performance was poor.” And Silver’s ask: “Over the course of the next several weeks, Biden should do four lengthy sitdown interviews with … nonpartisan reporters with a track record of asking tough questions would work great. A complete recording of the interviews should be made public. The interviews ought to include a mix of different media (e.g. television and print) and journalistic perspectives…. This really isn’t too much to ask. These are the sorts of interviews that every other recent president has done…. If Biden was willing to take five hours to speak with Hur, he ought to to take five hours for this. And if he can’t, it’s awfully audacious to ask Americans to make him president for another four years.” • Yep.
Biden (D): “Biden’s reset moment” [Axios]. “Biden officials see next month’s State of the Union address as a big, public reset moment — a chance to overcome or at least neutralize concerns about President Biden’s age and vitality.” • The SOTU is hardly improvised. I think Silver’s IPA litmus test is a good one.
Biden (D): “Inside Kamala Harris’ quiet effort to break through the Biden campaign’s information bubble” [CNN]. “More than two dozen sources tell CNN that Harris has been gathering information to help her penetrate what she sometimes refers to as the “bubble” of Biden campaign thinking, telling people she’s aiming to use that intelligence to push for changes in strategy and tactics that she hopes will put the ticket in better shape to win. Multiple leading Democrats, anxious about a campaign they fear might be stumbling past a point of no return, say their conversations with Harris have been a surprising and welcome change, after months of feeling sloughed off by the White House and Biden campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware. ‘The ‘bedwetting’ complaints are running thin with people,’ said a person who attended one of the meetings, describing the general state of anxiety circulating in top Democratic circles. ‘The West Wing and the campaign need to be better.’ Harris did a good job fielding those responses, the person added, ‘and deserves credit for it.’ Many of those people also say that the conversations have shifted their opinions of the vice president, seeing her now as a more integral and complementary part of the reelection effort.” • They are desperate.
Biden (D): “How Biden Can Win” [John Nichols, The Nation]. “At the risk of deflating Joe Biden’s ego, let’s be honest: The priority in 2024 is not his reelection. It is Donald Trump’s defeat. To forge a coalition that can beat Trump and the Trump-aligned congressional Republicans, Biden must present his bid for a second term as the essential vehicle for derailing a self-proclaimed dictator-in-waiting who is uniquely unfit to occupy the Oval Office…. The voters are ripe for this argument. The NBC survey found that 61 percent of voters have major concerns about Trump’s ‘alleged wrongdoing, including multiple felony charges related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election.’ And a lot of them are Republicans or Republican-leaning independents…. The prospect that Biden could expand his reelection coalition based on a democracy and rule-of-law appeal offers the president an avenue to make the race about more than himself. Yes, of course he should talk about a robust economy. But the key play for the Democrats is to highlight the overwhelming evidence that Trump, with his criminal charges and ‘I am your retribution’ rhetoric, is entirely at odds with core values of the American experiment.” • Double down on “our democracy,” in other words. My difficulty with this is that after Bush nuked the Fourth Amendment, Democrats rationalized and institutionalized the destruction. And now their Censorship Industrial Complex is coming for the First. Anyhow, any Sanders supporter knows that the Democrat commitment to democracy is
hooeyat best highly conditional. I would bet younger voters watching Biden play arms merchant to the genocidaires would have a similar sense of Democrat chutzpah.* * * “Who Will Be the Next President?” (PDF) [Moody’s Analytics]. “The economy may not be at the top of voters’ minds in every election, but it is rarely less than a close
second. This is the principle underpinning the Moody’s Analytics presidential election model. The model predicts whether the incumbent presidential candidate will win the popular vote in each state and the District of Columbia, and thus the necessary Electoral College votes to win the election. This type of presidential election analysis is not new. The first was in the late 1970s by Yale economist Ray Fair. However, his seminal work was based on relating national economic conditions with presidential election outcomes. What sets apart our work from similar efforts is a focus on regional economic conditions that are the basis for state-by-state projections of the Electoral College. This state-level approach has an impressive, though no longer perfect, track record. It incorrectly predicted that former President Donald Trump would win re-election in 2020. He did not. The political fallout from the pandemic and extraordinary turnout by Democrat voters upended his re-election bid. Our model could not pick up the impact of the pandemic black swan, and while we controlled for turnout, we had assumed turnout would be historically typical. Given the results of recent party primaries, the most likely scenario is that this election will be a rematch between current President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. While the election will almost certainly be a nail-biter, we feel confident in the model’s 2024 prediction for who will be the next president. That is, President Biden will win re-election.” • Hmm.
* * * Kennedy (I): “Kennedy: ‘If President Biden Wants To Run’ He Must Have ‘Unscripted” Debate With Me And Trump’” [RealClearPolitics]. Kennedy: ” We need a president who is on the ball, somebody we all trust to answer that phone call at three in the morning and to handle these complexities and the nuance of the crises that face our country at a very critical point in his story. I think he needs to show people he can do that, and the best way to do that is an open debate.” • Kennedy asking for one of Silver’s IPAs.
Kennedy (I): “RFK Jr. is courting Black voters, a group he once targeted with vaccine disinformation” [NBC News]. “In 2021, [Kennedy] produced a film called ‘Medical Racism: The New Apartheid‘ which used the real history of medical racism in the United States to peddle conspiracy theories that Covid vaccines were an effort to harm Black communities. The documentary-style film features Kennedy, as well as Tony Muhammad, a minister of the Nation of Islam who has claimed that vaccines are ‘genetically modified’ to harm Black children. Kevin Jenkins, CEO of the Urban Global Health Alliance, a New Jersey nonprofit group, who claimed that vaccine campaigns were a plot to ‘wipe out’ Black people, is also in the film. The film was released in the spring of 2021, just as Covid vaccines were becoming commonly available in the U.S. The pandemic took a staggering toll on human life, disproportionately impacting Black communities. Asked by NBC News on Sunday if he regretted spreading vaccine skepticism to the African American community while the Covid shots were first being rolled out, after the issue did not come up at his campaign event, Kennedy responded ‘No.’ Once a vocal anti-vaccine activist, Kennedy has been more subdued on the topic during his 2024 campaign. Pressed if he believes that vaccinating children leads to autism, Kennedy responded tersely, ‘What I believe is irrelevant.’” • Hmm.
* * *
Republican Funhouse
“Many believe the founders wanted a Christian America. Some want the government to declare one now” [Associated Press]. “The U.S. Constitution doesn’t mention Christianity or any specific religion. The Declaration of Independence famously proclaims that people’s rights come from a “Creator” and “Nature’s God” — but doesn’t specify who that is. Yet large numbers of Americans believe the founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation, and many believe it should be one. Such views are especially strong among Republicans and their white evangelical base. Already such views are being voiced by supporters of Donald Trump amid his bid to recapture the presidency. The idea of a Christian America means different things to different people. Pollsters have found a wide circle of Americans who hold general God-and-country sentiments. But within that is a smaller, hardcore group who also check other boxes in surveys — such as that the U.S. Constitution was inspired by God and that the federal government should declare the U.S. a Christian nation, advocate Christian values or stop enforcing the separation of church and state.” • A pile of garbage persistently built over many decades. Plenty of players under Bush the Younger believed these pernicious falsehoods, but there weren’t enough of them to run a competent administration (for all Harvard’s flaws, it really does have a better law school than Liberty University, and not just because of social (networking) and symbolic (credentials) capital. Perhaps, though, things have changed.
“The Founders’ antidote to demagoguery is a lesson for today” [
Democrats en Déshabillé
“The Breakup” [Matthew Karp, The Nation]. More on Teixeira’s idpol apostasy. “Do political parties make coalitions, or do coalitions make political parties? In American electoral commentary, the commonsense view is that parties stand for certain principles or policies—on gun control, say, or taxes, or abortion—and then ordinary voters line up with the party that is closest to their own beliefs. But for Karl Marx and his acolytes, this view of parties was nonsense. Political parties were defined not by their stated platforms but by the character of their social base.” Madison, who wrote the Federalist Papers before the advent of parties, believed this of factions. ‘This fact did not need to be reduced to mere ‘egoistic class interest,’ Marx contended in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte; nor did it require a rigid view of social class itself. The party representing the petty bourgeoisie in 19th-century France, for example, was not composed only of ‘shopkeepers or the enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers.’ Its members came from a hundred different places and had a thousand different ideas; they also sincerely believed in the general emancipation of society. Nevertheless, their politics were driven, like water flowing downhill, ‘to the same problems and solutions’ that ‘the material interest and social position’ of their class suggested….. its broadest historical sense, the Marxist view is difficult to refute. In political warfare, our attention is drawn to the loud artillery blasts of candidates and campaigns, but a party’s ultimate impact generally depends on the much larger, slower infantry movements of its social base.” Concluding: “The Democratic coalition today is built to fight, and perhaps to win, [the culture war] struggle. It is not built to become a ‘party of the people,’ a vehicle to oppose elite rule, or a force for major economic reform. Insofar as the upper-middle-class Democratic base finds itself pinched or bruised by the reckless march of capital, it may consider mild adjustments to the fiscal or regulatory order; insofar as it wishes to reward the less-advantaged voters inside the coalition, it may support mild increases in welfare spending. But . Its ‘material interest and social position’ simply does not favor a transformation of class power in the United States—or, to say the same thing in different words, a government that can deliver good jobs, healthcare, housing, and education to all its people. To change the world, the Democrats will first have to change themselves.” • Which will never, ever happen. So here we are! (One comment: Karp consistently identifies identity politics/culture war policies as “left” positions. They’re not. There is only one left position: Putting capital under democratic control. There, I said it 🙂
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Lab-Grown Testicles Created In Male Fertility Breakthrough” [Study Finds]. • Make up your own jokes!
#COVID19
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
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!
Look for the Helpers
“A literature hub for tracking up-to-date scientific information about the 2019 novel Coronavirus.” [LitCovid, National Institutes of Health]. “LitCovid is the most comprehensive resource on the subject, providing a central access to 400,114 (and growing ) relevant articles in PubMed. The articles are updated daily and are further categorized by different research topics (e.g. transmission) and geographic locations.” • This is good, but the subject list reflects their ontological commitments (i.e., what’s real or not real):
Notice anything missing? That’s right: Non-pharmaceutical interventions (masking, ventilation). These guys are supposed to be the National Institutes of Health, not the National lnstitutes of Things Hospitals and Big Pharma Believe Are Important Because Reasons.
Maskstravaganza
“Supreme Court turns away House GOP lawmakers’ appeal over mask rule violations” [The Hill]. “The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to revive a lawsuit from three House Republicans after their pay was docked for not complying with a pandemic-era mask requirement on the chamber floor. In a brief order without any noted dissents, the court let stand a lower ruling that tossed the constitutional challenge filed by Reps. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.). The three conservative lawmakers were fined $500 in May 2021 after flouting the House floor mask mandate that was put in place amid the COVID-19 pandemic, kicking off a years-long attempt by the trio of lawmakers to get the penalties lifted…. The lawmakers were protesting the House floor mask mandate, highlighting the fact the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had recently said individuals who are fully vaccinated did not need to wear masks in most public settings.” • CDC, good job. After all, aysymptomatic tranmission is not a thing (nor presymptomatic).
Sequelae
“Mom, 33, almost dies of heart failure due to COVID after dismissing these signs: ‘Really confused’” [Today]. • NC readers have long known of that Covid creates vascular damage. But now it’s on The Today Show (a “mom,” of course).
* * * That charlatan Campbell’s white, fibrous clots:
These clots were removed from a fully boosted male. They are not normal. Why is MSM not talking about this? pic.twitter.com/41WyxjAKDO
— Trisha Greenhalgh (@trishgreenhalgh) February 20, 2024
White, fibrous clots (2):
Look at all of these clots post vaccination. Imagine the damage to even smaller vessels. The spiral shape is a clear giveaway that it’s from vaccine because of how it reprograms the clot response. pic.twitter.com/y2XTVV0fpW
— Michael Olesen 💉😷🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@maolesen) February 21, 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] (Biobot) Again, no backward revisions. The uptick is real (at least to Biobot). Note this anomaly:
Looks like Covid might not be seasonal? Who knew? Hoerger comments:
Bad News: Biobot #wastewater levels are still rising.
Historically, February is marked by a rapid decline in transmission. 929 copies/mL corresponds to 1.35 million infections per day in the U.S. pic.twitter.com/tRvRhU9xA9
— Mike Hoerger, PhD MSCR MBA (@michael_hoerger) February 20, 2024
And Region 2:
Verily data, then, shows no anomaly. Presumably, Biobot sewersheds and Verily sewersheds do not overlap.
[3] (CDC Variants) “As of May 11, genomic surveillance data will be reported biweekly, based on the availability of positive test specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring every two weeks. 2. occurring twice a week; semiweekly.” Looks like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to worry about. Time will tell. [4] (ER) Does not support Biobot data. “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.” [5] (Hospitalization: NY) A little more decrease, consistent with Biobot data, but not much. Let’s wait and see. [6] (Hospitalization: CDC) Still down. “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”. [7] (Walgreens) It would be interesting to survey this population generally; these are people who, despite a tsunami of official propaganda and enormous peer pressure, went and got tested anyhow. [8] (Cleveland) Flattening, consistent with Biobot data. [9] (Travelers: Posivitity) Down, albeit in the rear view mirror. [10] (Travelers: Variants) JN.1 utterly dominant.Stats Watch
There are no official statistics of interest today.
Supply Chain: “Construction of a new electric-vehicle supply chain is stalling on faltering consumer sales and tumbling prices for the sector’s bedrock minerals” [Paul Page, Wall Street Journal]. Lithium giant Albemarle is deferring spending on a high-profile project to build a processing plant and Swiss mining and trading giant Glencore suspended work on a nickel mine and processing plant and is now seeking a buyer for a stake in the project. The WSJ’s Rhiannon Hoyle and Julie Steinberg report that producers of nickel and lithium, which are used in lithium-ion batteries for EVs, have been pulling back and looking to save cash after a painfully quick fall in commodity prices. The world is suddenly awash with the metals after producers ramped up projects to feed the global EV industry and sales of the vehicles have been losing momentum. Some policymakers fear the curtailed plans will derail recent efforts to diversify critical supply chains away from China.”
The Bezzle: “Google reneged on the monopolistic bargain” [Cory Doctorow, Pluralistic]. “A funny thing happened on the way to the enshittocene: Google – which astonished the world when it reinvented search, blowing Altavista and Yahoo out of the water with a search tool that seemed magic – suddenly turned into a pile of shit. Google’s search results are terrible. The top of the page is dominated by spam, scams, and ads. A surprising number of those ads are scams. Sometimes, these are high-stakes scams played out by well-resourced adversaries who stand to make a fortune by tricking Google. But often these scams are perpetrated by petty grifters who are making a couple bucks at this. These aren’t hyper-resourced, sophisticated attackers. They’re the SEO equivalent of script kiddies, and they’re running circles around Google…. The deal we made with Google was, “You monopolize search and use your monopoly rents to ensure that we never, ever try another search engine. In return, you will somehow distinguish between low-effort, useless nonsense and good information. You promised us that if you got to be the unelected, permanent overlord of all information access, you would ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.’” They broke the deal.” • This is a must-read. Doctorow does a deepish dive into the enshittification of product reviews, including air purifiers [see next link]. Not great during an airborne pandemic!
The Bezzle: “How Google is killing independent sites like ours” [HouseFresh]. • A must-read, that clearly demonstrates how both Better Homes and Gardens and Real simple faked product reviews of air purifiers. Fake labs, fake photos, fake experts, fake everything, doing great in SEO and infesting everything, including Reddit threads. Hat tip, private equity.
The Bezzle: “Inside the Funding Frenzy at Anthropic, One of A.I.’s Hottest Start-Up” [New York Times]. “For all of A.I.’s promise of transforming every aspect of society, it has started by upending Silicon Valley’s start-up deal-making. Young companies typically raise money every 15 months or so, after showing that their businesses have grown. But since generative A.I. — which can generate text, images, sounds and video — burst onto the scene in late 2022, the rule book has been thrown out as investors have fought for a piece of the hottest developers…. Investors cannot afford to lose out on the action because “if you miss the winner in the space, you’re kind of out of the game,” said Ilya Strebulaev, a finance professor at Stanford…. Some investments in A.I. start-ups by the tech giants have recently attracted regulatory attention. Last month, the Federal Trade Commission said it had opened an inquiry into Amazon’s and Google’s investments in Anthropic for potential antitrust violations.” But: “As part of the pact, Anthropic agreed to build its A.I. using specialized computer chips designed by Amazon. If Anthropic is a success, Amazon’s shares in the start-up could pay off handsomely. In the meantime, the cloud computing deal will lift Amazon’s bottom line. The deal was structured as convertible notes, or debt that becomes equity when Anthropic hits certain milestones, two people familiar with the structure said. Some investors have questioned such deals because companies like Google and Amazon are investing money that ends up bolstering their own revenues. The companies said the arrangements were kosher.” • No doubt. I don’t play the ponies, so all this is a little beyond me. Do any readers remember whether similar deals were made during the Dot Com era?
The Bezzle: “Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up” [Wired]. • I smell business model. People really need to start designing prompts that yield corporate refunds. Or, better, have AI do it.
Labor Market: “Google Lays Off Thousands More Employees Despite Record Profits One Year After Laying off 12,000 Employees As Workers Begin Worrying AI is Slowly Replacing Them” [Yahoo News]. “The layoffs have sparked widespread concern among Google employees, not just about job security but also about the ethical implications of their work, especially as the company continues to invest heavily in advancing AI technology. There’s a growing apprehension that the push towards automation and AI could eventually lead to further job replacements, adding to the existing anxiety over layoffs… [Google’s senior vice president, Philipp Schindler] said, ‘I want to be clear, when we restructure, there’s always an opportunity to be more efficient and smarter in how we service and grow our customers.’ He went on to say, ‘We’re not restructuring because AI is taking away roles that’s important here. But we see significant opportunities here with our AI-powered solution to actually deliver incredible ROI at scale, and that’s why we’re doing some of those adjustments.’” • I would expect ginormous theft of intellectual property followed by bullshit generation to have equally ginormous ROI. Who wouldn’t?
Labor Market: “A long-running labor battle over the first big new container terminal in the U.S. in several years reached the legal end of the road” [Paul Page, Wall Street Journal]. “The U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear a case brought by South Carolina’s ports authority in a dispute with the dockworkers’ union over staffing at the new Leatherman Terminal. The WSJ Logistics Report’s Paul Berger writes the rejection lets stand a lower-court ruling that effectively pushes the Port of Charleston to use an all-union labor force at the site. The South Carolina Ports Authority says it will now work with the International Longshoremen’s Association to resolve the standoff that has hamstrung operations at the facility. Leatherman is a linchpin for efforts to expand handling capacity at the East Coast’s No. 4 port. The decision gives the ILA a victory as the union prepares to negotiate a new contract this year with East and Gulf coast ports.” • A union win from the Trump Court? Mirabile dictu!
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 68 Greed (previous close: 69 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 76 (Extreme Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 21 at 1:16:17 PM ET.
Neoliberal Epidemics
“Rise in measles cases at Broward elementary school could just be the beginning, doctor says” [CBS]. “‘Measles is spread just like an upper respiratory infection. So, ,’ [Dr. Pallavi Aneja, the program director of Internal Medicine Residency at HCA FL Northwest and Westside Hospitals] said. “If a child is sick — just getting sick with a runny nose, with conjunctivitis, which is red eyes, low-grade fever — that could be just beginning stages of measles.’” • Maybe the real pandemic was the droplet dogmatists we met along the way. Meanwhile, in Florida:
FL surgeon gen says unvaccinated kids can continue to go to school.
This is *unprecedented* Unvaccinated kids need to stay home for 21 days during an outbreak. Why? A very real chance of infection, hospitalization, death or serious damage to the immune system.
WHAT IS GOING ON pic.twitter.com/w3iStqjjH8
— Katelyn Jetelina (@dr_kkjetelina) February 21, 2024
Class Warfare
Good to see People’s CDC on CBS:
When the anchors actually connected the dots to hey, this one-day thing isn’t science, this is just corporate America saying “hey get back to work” 👏🏻
CBS News Interviews People’s CDC Doctor @larazjmd on CDC’s Proposed Isolation Guid… https://t.co/q2aSkAK5Aq via @YouTube
— Dr Rebecca Richardson (@mavisclare) February 20, 2024
Labor is the source of all value. That’s why firms have to force you back to work.
News of the Wired
“Stop postponing things by embracing the mess” [Deprocrastination]. “You have only what you have right now. If you feel okay-ish, and you have 30 minutes of largely uninterrupted time, now’s the time to do something. Expect things to not go 100% according to plan. Wake up late? Reset Meeting canceled? Reset. Morning routine interrupted? Reset. If you know that these imperfections are extremely likely, you can react with more presence of mind and make the best of the situation. For example, I write this on the train, late to my dentist appointment because it snowed overnight. Hardly an ideal situation, and yet I write. I could easily justify to myself that I should do nothing and fret over how bad this situation is (and I indeed did for about 10 minutes), but I still have 30 minutes of the train ride and so why not do a bit of work? If I hadn’t written anything on that train, I wouldn’t have had a place to continue. I wouldn’t have anything to edit, to improve, and to share. Because of my attitude to make the best out of the situation, however messy it was, I was somewhat productive, and felt better about how I spent my time as a result.”
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 SC:
SC writes: “Here is a very plain-appearing plant-start project photo that is a bit unusual because of the
species – Camellia sinensis, aka ‘Tea.’ I have included some verbiage that may interest readers who like to propagate perennials.” I am so happy to see another project from SC. Here is the “verbiage”:
For a number of years I’ve been trying to establish a cold-hardy variety of Camellia sinensis, aka “Tea”, in my yard from purchased year-old plants, but I have tended to bungle the first Winter and the plants have died within a year or so. This Winter, I’m trying to start the things from seed in hope of getting plants into the ground months earlier than I have in prior years. The plants seller, “Camellia Forest Nursery”, sells seeds as well as plants and this year the cold hardy variety, “Korea”, that I have been trying to establish was available as seed, at a price that was very favorable compared with plants. If these plants don’t survive, I’ll drop the idea, or just keep a few in containers as indoor plants. The attached photo shows three trays of starts from these seeds, started 5 to 6 weeks earlier than the year-end date of the photo. The five largest plants in the right-most tray had a “head start” in that they already had emergent radicles when I opened the seed packet (my bad for not opening the package right away). The 3rd tray at left has a couple of small shoots poking up (at this writing, 5 days later, most pots in that tray have emergent seedlings). The germination rate thus far is above 50%. Tea is a bit of work to process after the harvest of new growth; one can’t simply clip off a few leaves at any time of the year and steep them. If these survive, they may end up simply functioning as a low hedge. I like the idea of “edible/drinkable landscaping” but unless the global tea trade collapses, these may end up simply as decorations.
Readers, do any of you have your “starts” going?
Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for five or ten days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:
Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated:
If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!
