2:00PM Water Cooler July 5, 2004

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Patient readers, this willl be a short Water Cooler, partly because this is supposed to be a holiday, but also because I am having a power failure. Here’s hoping the battery holds out! –lambert

Bird Song of the Day

Common Loon, Algonquin Park; Lake Sasajewan, Ontario, Canada.

In Case You Might Miss…

(1) First post debate RCP average.

(2) Biden interview; our famously free press.

(3) CDC flipflops on vax only (over the Fourth of July weekend).

(4) Consciousness: we know nothing.

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!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

First post-debate polling: Trump jumps a full point in the 5-way national race, which a Biden supporter might find concerning. OTOH, the Swing States seem relatively unaffected. 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. It would be hilarious if the Biden Debate debacle had exactly the same effect as Trump’s 34 bazillion felony convictions, i.e., none, both parties are so dug in.

* * *

Biden (D): “Biden set for rally and high-stakes TV interview as he seeks to recover from debate” [NBC]. ” President Joe Biden will hold a rally Friday in Wisconsin and then sit for his first televised interview since his disastrous debate performance last week, events could be crucial in determining whether he can salvage his embattled candidacy. The interview with anchor George Stephanopoulos of ABC News is shaping up to be one of the most high-stakes moments for a president or a candidate in many years. Democratic elected officials, donors and voters will be closely watching to see whether he can still deliver in an adversarial setting and turn in a performance worthy of being the party’s nominee to defeat Donald Trump this fall. The interview will ‘air in its entirety as a primetime special’ at 8 p.m. ET Friday, ABC said, adding that a ‘transcript of the unedited interview will be made available the same day.’” • NOTE “Biden lacked oomph, but the transcript tells a different tale” [The Hill]. That doesn’t negate what we all saw, but it does add nuance.

Biden (D): “The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden” [Olivia Nuzzi, New York Magazine]. And the deck: “The president’s mental decline was like a dark family secret for many elite supporters.” • Not to NC readers; I remember vividly — and cannot find the link; power failure is imminent and because search — posting on Biden being guided down an extremely unchallenging flight of steps by a staffer in Iowa 2020; and it would be fun to make a chart of “juiced up.”

Lambert: We tend to think of the Democrat Party as something you can draw a boundary around, like a corporate org chart, and in consequence tend to think of the Biden succession crisis os taking place within those bounds; hence the division of the Party into categories or fractions, and assessments of Biden’s support, or lack thereof, in those fractions. But in fact there are several very large, powerful, and above all extra-Constitutional* entities that both overlap and are separate from the Party, and have both incentives of their own — beyond, of course, the good of the country — and enormous influence: (1) closest to the party, but not of it: Consultants and strategists. Whichever way the battle goes, they will be enormous winners, financially, no matter the outcome, whether dragging Biden over the finish line, turning Kamala into something other than what she is, or bootstrapping Newsom, Whitmer, Pritzker, or someone as yet unknown (2) The national press. With individual exceptions, we should not regard the national press as reporters, but as information brokers who prefer and promote conflict, hoard access until its impact its greatest (see Nuzzi, supra), (self-)censor some stories and promote others, and so on. That goes double for editors (“Leslie Moonves on Donald Trump: “It May Not Be Good for America, but It’s Damn Good for CBS.” And so with the Biden succession crisis). (3) The spooks (overlaps with the press, of course). I find it excruciatingly interesting that Kamala currently serves on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence (“[T]hey have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you“), and that’s not part of the story. I suppose that means the spooks are happy with her performance. A good thing, no? All this to say that the electeds have a lot to think about while they’re talking to their constituents over the break. It will be interesting to see who says what on the Sunday talkshows!

Biden (D) “Pool Reports of June 29, 2024” [The Presidency Project]. A Biden fundraiser in the Hamptons: “Pool is holding in a living room connected to the main house and has been given shoe covers and instructed to wear them.” • “Foot covers”? Why? Somebody worried about tracking in H5N1? (Yes, there are dairy farms in the Hamptons.)

BIden (D): The man with the best track record speaks:

BREAKING: Allan Lichtman, who has correctly predicted every election, gives the strongest reasons why Democrats must stand with Biden. Lichtman also demolished Donald Trump for lying on every question in the debate. Retweet to make sure all Americans see.pic.twitter.com/OdMDckBCJD

— Biden’s Wins (@BidensWins) June 30, 2024

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!

Censorship and Propaganda

Elite Maleficence

“COVID-19 can surge throughout the year” [National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, CDC]. July 3 (!). Cutting some key points out of the turgid flow: (1) “There is no distinct COVID-19 season like there is for influenza (flu) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).” (2) “During the summer and throughout the year, you can use many effective tools to prevent spreading COVID-19 or becoming seriously ill.” • In other words, in point (1) CDC admits that its entire effort to throw RSV, the flu, and Covid into the same bucket (and presumably inject everyone for all three at the same time), is a failure. In point (2), CDC admits that the “vax-only” strategy is dead, and that layered protection is the way to go (as many of us have been arguing for [family blogging] years. Here is the image that accompanies this article (annotated in an earlier Water Cooler):

Now, it is true that CDC butchered the layers by putting masking under “Additional” rather than “Core” strategies (I would like to have been a fly on the wall for that meeting!) But at least the “facing covering” is white and not (baggy) blue, at least leaving open the possibility of recommending respirators.

“The US Primary-Care System Can’t Withstand the Next Pandemic” [Bloomberg]. You mean the one after H5N1? [hollow laughter]. Seriously, if there were a human-to-human breakout last week, with aerosol transmission, when would we know? How would we know? Bloomberg: “A stronger primary-care system won’t prevent the next pandemic. But strengthening the nation’s frontline defenses will save money and lives — and help keep strange outbreaks at bay.” • Hey, how about a solution that scales? Telehealth with AI-driven avatars! NOTE Meanwhile, I keep nudging people to straighten out their passports. Even leaving collapse scenarios aside, having a passport means “access” to health care from a human, and you won’t have to sell a kidney or go in debt for the rest of your life. Takes a little research, but it’s very do-able. Arbitrage for the rest of us!

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) LB.1 coming up on the outside.

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

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Now acceleration, which is compatible with a wastewater decrease, but still not a good feeling .(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, which in fact shows that Covid is not seasonal. At least data for the entire pandemic is presented.

[7] (Walgreens) Still going up! (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) Still going up!

[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time rasnge. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.

[10] (Travelers: Variants) Same deal. Those sh*theads. I’m leaving this here for another week because I loathe them so much:

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

Employment Situation: “United States Unemployment Rate” [Trading Economics]. “The unemployment rate in the United States rose to 4.1% in June 2024, the highest since November 2021, up from 4% in the previous month and surprising market expectations, which had forecasted the rate to remain unchanged.”

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 53 Neutral (previous close: 44 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 48 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jul 5 at 1:04:34 PM ET.

Zeitgeist Watch

“You’re Winning and Losing ‘Aura Points,’ Whether You Know It or Not” [Wall Street Journal]. “Getting someone’s phone number isn’t just a confidence boost—it can also net you 100 aura points. Tripping when you walk into a room, however, will cost you anywhere from one to 1,000 aura points. Aura—a lighthearted quantification of a person’s cool factor—has quickly become the slang of the moment among tweens, teens and 20-somethings. What started with students in classrooms and commenters online has grown big enough that shoe brands and political parties are now adopting the term, giving and taking away points at whim. Aura, or positive aura points, are a compliment. ‘When you have a really, really, really good aura, I feel like that really translates from online to the other side of the phone,’ said Hina Sabatine, a 27-year-old influencer based in Los Angeles. ‘Some people just have it.’” • I wonder if money helps. (One of the nicer things to contemplate about a post-Jackpot world is that there won’t be any more influencers. No more [glass bowls] doing multiple takes on the gym equipment you want to use.

News of the Wired

“A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications” [Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology]. “I turn again to Jerry Fodor and his pithy appraisal of consciousness theories: ‘Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious’ (Fodor, 1992). Scanning the Landscape, I’d like to say we have progressed. I’m not sure I can. Those who write about consciousness like to quote, with bemused irony, psychologist Stuart Sutherland’s cautionary words: ‘Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon; it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it’ (Sutherland, 1989).”

“Should this be a map or 500 maps?” [escape the map]. “At the end of the 18th century, Spain’s official geographer, Tomás Lopez, was asked by the King to create an accurate map of the kingdom. In an attempt to delegate the herculean labour required, Tomás drew a series of circles, picked the town in the center of each circle, and asked the local priest to answer a questionnaire and draw up a map of their province. The goal was to amalgamate the responses into a single map. But none of these priests were trained in cartography, and many of them would have had limited access to maps at all.2 Nonetheless, 500 of them tried. In one map, the entire region is represented simply by a series of letters (“A” for church, “B” for hermitage, “C” for house, “D” for tree, and so on). Another represents the surrounding villages as if they are orbiting planets. In some, the handwriting forms the topographies. In others, descriptive columns of text take center stage, as if the language itself is a landmark. Each priest implicitly reveals how they see the world around them, and the relative importance of its constituent parts: nature or people, religion or trade, architecture or landscape, precision or vibes…. Tomás tried for years to reconcile these mosaic shards with each other…. omás’ experiment failed. It failed because each amateur cartographer injected their own methodology and process, resulting in incompatible maps. But in another sense, Tomás succeeded. Sure, maybe this collection of artifacts would be useless for military strategy or commerce, but on the other hand… LOOK AT THESE MAPS, THESE MAPS RULE.” • For example:

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 Carla:

Carla writes: “Recently, there was mention on NC of the value of feverfew as an herbal pain-killer, with the claim that a strong tea made from the leaves is as effective as extra-strength excedrin. I love the plant as it makes a pretty show, & a lovely filler for bouquets. It also has an astringent scent I find quite appealing. Warning: it’s invasive as heck, and pops up everywhere. But I just pull it up where I don’t want it. Here it is backing up thyme & oregano, plus a close-up of the cheerful blooms.”

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