By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Bird Song of the Day
Purple Finch (Western), 51588 NW Hayward Rd, Washington, Oregon, United States. “Eating mulberries, sprinkler noise, towhee calls excerpted.” I love decoding the background noises, too.
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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
Lambert here: I added another “Constitutional Order” section: “Convention.” This keeps happening….
The Constitutional Order (Insurrection)
The Constitutional Order (Convention)
2024
Less than a year to go!
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Trump (R): “Trump’s NV Sweep Clarifies GOP Race, But Election Is Murkier Than Ever” [Matt Taibbi, RealClearPolitics]. Note the bio: “Matt Taibbi is an award-winning author, investigative reporter, and the publisher of Racket News. He writes an election 2024 campaign column for RealClearPolitics.” Interesting. More: “At Trump events, reporters always make beelines for caricatures in MAGA hats, ignoring the wide variety of other supporters who show up and usually watch from near rear exits or curtains. An 80-year-old Arizona resident who keeps a Vegas condo came up for the party and lingered near the press section. I asked what brought him here. ‘Just all the misrepresentation,’ he said. ‘On the UFO issue. All the bullshit.’ ‘The Area 51 stuff?’ ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen them.’ About Trump, he said, ‘I’m a big fan of him. I hate what’s going on.’ I shrugged. If you don’t hear at least one surprising explanation for coming to a Trump rally, you’re probably not working the crowd enough. This year, even UFOs aren’t exactly a far-out issue anymore. But ‘I hate what’s going on’ will be an element of almost any supporter’s story at Trump crowds. That the Nevada primary was essentially decided in a back-room deal by a Republican Party leadership that gamed the setup in Trump’s favor would be odd in any other election year. In 2024, most of the important battles have so far been held away from the ballot.” Like that’s a bad thing? In 2020, after Sanders won Nevada “a free-falling Biden was the beneficiary of another back-room deal, rumored to have been brokered by Barack Obama, in which Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar dropped out, consolidating inside-track votes behind Biden. Since that moment, very little has been predictable or logical about American politics. Here in Las Vegas, we had two largely symbolic elections, a mostly predetermined delivery of 26 real delegates, and eventually, a party. If we’re celebrating anything, it’s likely our passage to the unknown. It’s only going to get stranger from here.” • Buckle up!
Trump (R): “Trump’s Trials Are on a Collision Course With November” [NOTUS]. “‘I think Trump is out over his skis. He believes the Jack Smith D.C. case revolving around the Jan. 6 events, and related attempts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, is not going to go before the election,’ said lawyer Ty Cobb, who represented Trump during Robert Mueller’s probe into election interference. ‘It’s the only one of the cases that I think stands a chance of going forward. It’s conceivable the New York case goes, but sadly that case is the poster child for Trump’s argument that politicians are out to get him.’ Should the Supreme Court take up the case and proceed slowly, it would effectively end the possibility that Trump could wind up facing trial for charges related to election interference and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol before he is up for reelection again. As Smith’s election interference investigation hangs in limbo, Manhattan DA Bragg’s case against Trump could, somewhat unexpectedly, wind up going to trial as soon as March. Trump has filed multiple appeals that slowed the case, and recently a motion to dismiss the case on the grounds that it is political and not applicable to state law. But if Judge Juan M. Merchan declines Trump’s motion to dismiss the case this week, it could put it on track to trial in a matter of weeks.”
Trump (R): “Trump’s new Supreme Court gambit doesn’t even try to hide that it’s a delaying tactic” [CNN]. On Trump’s immunity claim: “The text of Trump’s filing to the court at times feels somewhat frivolous. In tone and depth, it contrasts to the tightly argued repudiation of his claims for immunity last week by three appeals court judges that was widely praised by legal scholars. And it reflected the extraordinarily broad and improbable vision of almost unconstrained presidential power to which Trump warmed in office and that he appears to relish regaining if he wins November’s election ahead of a term he has vowed would be devoted to retribution against his enemies.” • I don’t understand why sometimes Trump picks lawyers who are excellent, and sometimes picks clowns. Same with the staffers and entourage (like that ghoul Giuliani. Why was he anywhere near the candidate?) It’s baffling.
Trump (R): “A Brief Oral History of Wayne Barrett, the First Journalist to Doggedly Cover Donald Trump” [Vanity Fair]. “WAYNE BARRETT: When I didn’t nibble on the carrot, [Trump] tried the stick, recounting the story of how a lawsuit he filed had broken a reporter whose copy had irritated him. DAVID SCHNEIDERMAN: Then as we [the Village Voice] got closer to publishing, Trump had Roy Cohn—who was his lawyer/consigliere and also was Rupert’s guy. So, Roy Cohn called Victor Kovner, our lawyer: ‘Trump is going to sue you guys, and you’re going to be bankrupt over this.’ We don’t give a sh*t. All these things were new. We hadn’t seen Trump played out in any way. The Times had run pretty straightforward stuff about his deals. But this is all the classic Donald Trump stuff. He was going to sue us and bankrupt us. I said, ‘He’s not going to sue us, because he’s not going to destroy Murdoch’s thing. He likes Murdoch, and Murdoch likes him for the Post.’ VICTOR KOVNER: There was no suit. That was the first time, but not the last, in which Wayne focused on the Trump-Roy Cohn relationship. Cohn would complain about the Voice, but he never sued us, nor did Trump. WAYNE BARRETT: If you were in your late twenties or your early thirties and you were looking to hitch yourself to a wagon that would pull you forward—if you could sit down with Roy Cohn and be charmed—there was something wrong with you. I had lunch many times with Roy Cohn. Roy Cohn ate with his fingers. I kid you not. He brought a little glass inside of his coat pocket. He would pop little white pills when he thought you weren’t looking. He was the most satanic figure I ever met in my life. He was almost reptilian.” • Not a nice person at all. Like Roger Stone.
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Haley (R): “‘He IS Unhinged!’ Nikki Haley Tells TODAY That ‘Diminished’ Trump Is Suffering His Own Cognitive Decline” [Mediate]. • Haley’s funders paying her to hang around and mark up Trump for the general. This isn’t a VP play…
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Biden (D): “Biden’s upcoming physical exam will not include a cognitive test, White House says” [FOX]. “‘Does the White House think that the idea of the president taking a cognitive test as a part of this physical is a legitimate idea?. a reporter asked. ‘I’m just gonna say what Dr. O’Connor said to me about a year ago when [Biden’s physical] was released,’ Jean-Pierre responded. ‘The president proves every day [in] how he operates and how he thinks, by dealing with world leaders, by making difficult decisions on behalf of the American people – whether it’s domestic or it’s national security.’” • Video:
Biden’s upcoming physical exam will not include a cognitive test, White House says https://t.co/TXjR5SRf5D #FoxNews
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) February 14, 2024
Looks like Biden isn’t letting his staffers protect him; they can’t possibly have though this was a good idea.
“Democrats should grab their smelling salts for a long case of the vapors” [Irish Times]. “Once, when my father was in West Virginia on police business, a man approached him and demanded to know about “rumours” that president Franklin Roosevelt was “crippled”. The man threatened to beat up my father or anyone who said FDR was in a wheelchair. My dad, a D.C. police detective, served on FDR’s protective detail…. Like others around Roosevelt, my dad kept a tight lip about the paralysis of the president, who did not want to seem weak. Dad assured the West Virginia ruffian that Roosevelt was ‘a fine, athletic man.’” But today: “In a world on fire, with republicans in Congress spiralling into farce, the Biden crew clearly has no plan for how to deal with the president’s age except to shield him and hide him and browbeat reporters who point out that his mental state – like the delusional Trump’s – is a genuine issue. Biden is not just in a bubble; he’s in bubble wrap. Cosseting and closeting Uncle Joe all the way to the end – eschewing town halls and the Super Bowl interview – are just not going to work. Going on defence, when Trump is on offence, is not going to work. Counting on Trump’s vileness to secure the win, as Hillary Clinton did, is not going to work. Democrats should grab their smelling salts for a long case of the vapours. It’s going to be a most virulent, violent year.” • But if they start working Biden hard, this from C. Northcote Parkinson on succession problems. From Parkinson’s Law (PDF):
The only problem is that the Democrats should have started this process right after the modterms. They have X, but no Y.
Biden (D): “Democrats Might Need a Plan B. Here’s What It Looks Like” [Politico]. “A late-entering white knight candidate isn’t an option at this point, even though only about 3 percent of the total delegates have been awarded so far. That’s because by the end of this month, filing deadlines for primary ballot access will have passed in all but six states and the District of Columbia (Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon and South Dakota). Even if a candidate managed to get on the ballots in all those states — and even if they won every single delegate available in them — it still wouldn’t make much of a dent against Biden’s delegate haul. Biden will likely amass more delegates on March 5, Super Tuesday, in the state of California than from those six states and D.C. combined.” Fast forward: “Biden would announce he would not accept the nomination and release his delegates to back a different nominee….. Not long after Biden’s announcement, a spate of private polls testing various candidates in the general election would suddenly be floated to establish different figures’ Trump-slaying credentials. Between June 4 and Aug. 19, when the party’s convention begins in Chicago, senior Democrats would jockey for position to replace Biden in the kind of battle not seen in decades in American politics.” And: “The other top prospects have already been playing the long game in anticipation of such a moment, building national brands and burnishing their reputations as team players. Blue-state Govs. Gavin Newsom of California and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois have been among the most energetic surrogates, which will serve them well as they seek the allegiance of convention delegates. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has been a vigorous Biden defender, vouching for him with Arab Americans in Michigan and serving there as Biden’s campaign co-chair. The Democrats’ convention, typically a staid affair, would be filled with drama. While Democrats stripped their so-called ‘superdelegates’ of most of their power after 2016, those current and former party leaders and elected officials would get a vote on a potential second ballot at the convention. That would give them significant sway in picking a nominee in a floor fight, but perhaps at the expense of reopening the 2016-era controversy about the role played by party elites in stifling Bernie Sanders’ chances at the nomination.” • For my views on Newsom, see here; shorter: Na ga happen, too Californian. Pritzker recommends himself, despite his girth, for his home state (Obama’s, and in which very coincidentally the Democrat National Convention is to be held), his billionaire status and largesse as a donor. So far as I can tell, he’s been an OJ governor on the Democrat hot button issues (defending public libraries, and so forth). I believe he’s personable. As for “Big Gretch,” there’s that curious kidnapping episode that FBI agent provocateurs worked so hard to bring about. I suppose that makes her a feminist heroine, standing up to the loony right, and so forth, until the spooks came to her rescue, but the whole odd episode makes me wonder if she’s got backing I don’t know about. In any case, the real question is what the “schooling behavior” in the superdelegate hive mind will be, and who will drive it. Oh, and the article says that “Biden would still remain a kingmaker.” I disagree. I think The Wizard of Kalorama™ will be the kingmaker.
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Biden (D): “Opening Statement by Mr. Anthony Bobulinski” (PDF) (transcript) [House Oversight and Accountability Committee]. “I want to be crystal clear: from my direct personal experience and what I have subsequently come to learn, it is clear to me that Joe Biden was “the Brand” being sold by the Biden family. His family’s foreign influence peddling operaCon – from China to Ukraine and elsewhere – sold out to foreign actors who were seeking to gain influence and access to Joe Biden and the United States government. Joe Biden was more than a parCcipant in and beneficiary of his family’s business; he was an enabler, despite being buffered by a complex scheme to maintain plausible deniability. The only reason any of these internaConal business transacCons took place – with tens of millions of dollars flowing directly to the Biden family – was because Joe Biden was in high office. The Biden family business was Joe Biden, period. Other key players have made this point clear as well: Hunter Biden himself has adamantly stated it in a variety of communicaCons, as did another Biden family business associate, Devon Archer, in his tesCmony last year. Foreign naConals on the other side of these transacCons – including from China, Ukraine and Romania – have also explained how and why these transacCons took place. Once again, I would call that extensive evidence.”
Biden (D): “Biden met with chairman of Chinese energy firm Hunter did business with in 2017, ex-associate testifies” [FOX]. “The House Oversight Committee told Fox News Digital that it can ‘now confirm Joe Biden met with nearly every [oh?] foreign national who funneled money to his son, including Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina, Romanian oligarch Kenes Rakishev, Burisma’s corporate secretary Vadym Pozharsky, Jonathan Li of BHR, and CEFC Chairman Ye Jianming.’ Biden attended dinners at Washington D.C. restaurant Cafe Milano in Georgtown with Baturina, Rakishev and Pozharsky in 2014 and 2015. Biden also met with Li of BHR in China in 2013. Biden met with Ye at the meeting in 2017, according to testimony from Hunter Biden’s ex-business partners Rob Walker and Devon Archer.” • Burnishing the brand…
Biden (D): “Biden ID’d as ‘chairman’ in son’s Chinese business deal; president has met most of foreign execs” [Washington Times]. “Hunter Biden referred to his father as ‘the chairman’ in a group chat with business partners working to secure a multimillion-dollar deal with a Chinese energy company, according to evidence produced by House lawmakers investigating President Biden over corruption allegations.” • The House Oversight and Accountability Committee needs another timeline. Starting to be too much yarn!
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Kennedy (I): “‘The Campaign Is a Mess’: RFK Jr. Hit With Staff Exodus Over ‘Lavish Spending’ and ‘Amateurish’ Leadership” [Mediaite]. “Fourteen members of Kennedy24 have resigned since the start of the year, including 12 field staff and two main staff, according to multiple sources who spoke with Mediaite on the condition of anonymity. One source close to the campaign pinned the turmoil on two leaders: Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, campaign manager and Kennedy’s daughter-in-law, and Del Bigtree, an anti-vaccine activist who serves as the campaign’s communications director…. A major point of contention within the campaign has been the eye-watering payouts to campaign leadership revealed in FEC reports. Bigtree’s firm KFP Consulting was paid $35,000 in December; it has made $90,000 off the campaign in total so far. Starlight Saint, the LLC registered to campaign COO Matthew Sanders, makes $21,000 a month. More Beautiful World, the LLC registered to campaign adviser Charles Eisenstein, made $21,667 a month in October, November, and December 2023.’ When the reports came out and everyone saw the obscene amount of money some people are making, while they are often paying for their own promotional materials out of pocket and can’t get their gas stipend covered, many people started thinking those people are scamming and skimming to line their pockets,’ one campaign worker said. ‘This is out of alignment with the message of the candidate.’”” • $35,000? The decimal point’s in the wrong place. That said, relative to staffers paying for their own brochures and signage, it’s a lot.
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“This Is Excellent News For John McCain” [Eschaton]. “I do think immigration is almost always one of those ‘cable news bubble’ issues, and that various biases in coverage lead to ‘everyone’ thinking that whatever Republicans are pretending to be mad about that day is the central campaign issue. Could be wrong!” • If Republicans plan to become the party of the working class, they’re obviously not going to do it by giving them control of the means of production, or with universal concrete material improvements, or even with minor tweaks like (say) sick leave. But they might be able to do it by blocking non-citizen entrants to the labor market.
Our democracy:
In an election year in the UK and US, Covid is political cyanide.
All the main candidates have to pretend it’s over or instantly destroy their chances of a majority.
— tern (@1goodtern) February 14, 2024
#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!
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Elite Maleficence
“Washington Post: CDC to ease Covid-19 isolation guidance” [CNN]. “‘This is a reckless policy change that will only serve to promote more spread of Covid and Long Covid,’ Dr. Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said in an email. Topol co-authored one of the first reviews of asymptomatic Covid-19 infections. Wastewater surveillance data published by the CDC suggests that Covid-19 is still circulating at high levels across the US, but the agency notes that “infections are causing severe disease less frequently than earlier in the pandemic.’ Still, tens of thousands of people are hospitalized with Covid-19 and hundreds of people die from the virus each week. There were about 21,000 Covid-19 hospitalizations during the week ending February 3, according to the latest CDC data. That’s about 20% lower than this time last year but more than three times more than the low point from this summer.” • NOTE That’s not a bug. It’s a feature. “They want to infect us.” Commentary:
BREAKING ⚠️
CDC announcing just a brisk walk around the block as isolation for measles
— Jess (@MeetJess) February 13, 2024
And:
The CDC finally realized that people don’t have enough sick days to take off 5 days twice a year due to illness so they gave up, right?
— Disabled Doctor (@DisabledDoctor) February 14, 2024
CDC limiting access to public health data. One can only wonder why:
The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Servives is planning to limit how public health and health services researchers can obtain access to data ordinarily used to answer questions that concern emergent health risks and service changes. This is not a new form of privacy… https://t.co/XdKtJlidrK
— Stefan Kertesz, MD, MSc (@StefanKertesz) February 13, 2024
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CDPH and CDC’s balancing act:
‘Balancing’ Covid action against the economy became 0% action against Covid, 100% action for the economy. Similarly, ‘hybrid immunity’ became ‘just get infected’, minus any vaccination. As with climate action, the endgame is – do nothing. https://t.co/cEhURmHbxA pic.twitter.com/VB8EdZ3Soq
— Henry Madison (@RageSheen) February 11, 2024
Another view of CDC’s balancing act:
The idea any isolation is needed is not based on science. The virus will spread for 100000 years. It’s less lethal than flu now. Accept it and move on. https://t.co/GR1OkPSSTr
— Vinay Prasad MD MPH (@VPrasadMDMPH) February 14, 2024
Weird flex on the 100,000 year Reich, but OK. More to the point, GBD ghoul Prasad is shamelessly lying; Covid is more lethal than the Flu (JAMA; The Lancet: “In this comparative analysis of long-term health outcomes of people admitted to hospital for COVID-19 versus those admitted to hospital for seasonal influenza, we show that the absolute rates of death, adverse health outcomes, and health-care utilisation are high for both viruses, but significantly higher for COVID-19 compared to seasonal influenza.” And of course mortality isn’t the only metric.
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“Hospitals Deny Immunocompromised Patients’ ADA Requests For Masks” [Judy Stone, Forbes]. “Before a recent hospital visit, Christine Link requested that her healthcare providers wear masks because of her autoimmune disease and medications that further suppress her immune system. A phlebotomist initially refused her request, leaving her feeling ‘shocked, scared.’ Escalating her concern to the Mass General Brigham’s patient advocacy office, she received this response: ‘While the request by a patient to an employee to wear a mask is not an ADA-related accommodation, it is a patient-centered and trauma informed best practice, and we encourage patients to make this request with the provider who is ordering the testing. The provider would determine if it would be in the patients’ best interest clinically to have staff wear a mask while interacting with the patient. Then they would need to communicate the decision to all staff providing services to the patient, such as phlebotomy staff.’ The patient advocate’s response left Link feeling, ‘foolish for thinking that Mass General Brigham would actually care enough to follow the law regarding reasonable accommodations. Instead I was gaslit about my needs.’” Remember that Mass General Brigham is a big player in CDC’s HICPAC, which is setting new standards for care. This is the policy they want to impose on everyone.” And: “Link knew that the ADA includes being immunocompromised [that is, MGH was lying] as a covered condition. She is also more determined than some other patients. She called the Department of Justice’s ADA line and filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office in October, adapted from one made available by attorney Matthew Cortland on their Patreon page. She has not received any response from Massachusetts beyond acknowledging her submission. She has since written her state house representative, senator and governor, without getting any help.” • This is an excellent article, well worth reading in full.
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The felt experience of hegemony (1):
This is the part I don’t understand, the part that’s like a zombie movie.
The felt experience of hegemony (2):
Stranger in drugstore: Why you wearing a maskMe: Don’t want CovidStranger: LOL it’s here to stay Me: Why you buying sunscreen, isn’t the sun here to stay?Stranger: WhatMe: Why you buying hand sanitizer, aren’t germs here to stay? Why you—Stranger: Fuck this pic.twitter.com/LIdtc42RYF
— 🐀 (@Guiness_Pig) February 13, 2024
The felt experience of hegemony (3):
Swapped a few voice messages with a friend I haven’t spoken to in a while and the subject of Covid came up. I told them all about the research going on and described how bad Long Covid was to her and she replied saying ‘if you really worry about being sick then your mind will… pic.twitter.com/tv0P2Ffyrq
— Aaron 😎 UK Billboards for Long Covid/MECFS (@AaronCa11) February 14, 2024
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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] No backward revisions. The uptick is real (at least to Biobot).
[2] Biobot data suggests a rise in the Northeast, which drove the Biobot spike. MRWA data does not suggest that, as of February 8:
Here, FWIW, is Verily national data as of February 14:
And regional data for HHS Region, the Northeast:
[3] “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] 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.” So not the entire pandemic, FFS (the implicit message here being that Covid is “just like the flu,” which is why the seasonal “rolling 52-week period” is appropriate for bothMR SUBLIMINAL I hate these people so much. Notice also that this chart shows, at least for its time period, that Covid is not seasonal, even though CDC is trying to get us to believe that it is, presumably so they can piggyback on the existing institutional apparatus for injections. And of course, we’re not even getting into the quality of the wastewater sites that we have as a proxy for Covid infection overall.
[5] Decrease for the city no longer aligns with wastewater data (if indeed Biobot’s spike is real).
[6] 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] 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] Lambert here: Percentage and absolute numbers down.
[9] Up, albeit in the rear view mirror.
Stats Watch
There are no official statistics of interest today.
* * *
Pharma: “Biogen sees demand rise for new Alzheimer’s drug” [Axios]. • Why, I wonder. ‘Tis a mystery!
Tech: “Your AI Girlfriend Is a Data-Harvesting Horror Show” [Gizmodo]. “as your robot love story unfolds, there’s a tradeoff you may not realize you’re making. According to a new study from Mozilla’s *Privacy Not Included project, AI girlfriends and boyfriends harvest shockingly personal information, and almost all of them sell or share the data they collect. ‘To be perfectly blunt, AI girlfriends and boyfriends are not your friends,’ said Misha Rykov, a Mozilla Researcher, in a press statement. ‘Although they are marketed as something that will enhance your mental health and well-being, they specialize in delivering dependency, loneliness, and toxicity, all while prying as much data as possible from you.’ Mozilla dug into 11 different AI romance chatbots, including popular apps such as Replika, Chai, Romantic AI, EVA AI Chat Bot & Soulmate, and CrushOn.AI. Every single one earned the Privacy Not Included label, putting these chatbots among the worst categories of products Mozilla has ever reviewed. The apps mentioned in this story didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. You’ve heard stories about data problems before, but according to Mozilla, AI girlfriends violate your privacy in “disturbing new ways.” For example, CrushOn.AI collects details including information about sexual health, use of medication, and gender-affirming care. 90% of the apps may sell or share user data for targeted ads and other purposes, and more than half won’t let you delete the data they collect. Security was also a problem. Only one app, Genesia AI Friend & Partner, met Mozilla’s minimum security standards. One of the more striking findings came when Mozilla counted the trackers in these apps, little bits of code that collect data and share them with other companies for advertising and other purposes. Mozilla found the AI girlfriend apps used an average of 2,663 trackers per minute, though that number was driven up by Romantic AI, which called a whopping 24,354 trackers in just one minute of using the app.” • That’s a lot of trackers!
Tech: “Only real people can patent inventions — not AI — US government says” [CNN]. “On Tuesday, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) said that to obtain a patent, a real person must have made a ‘significant contribution’ to the invention and that only a human being can be named as an inventor on a patent. The official guidance published this week provides a boost to innovators by reassuring them that their inventions involving AI can be patented, while continuing to enshrine human creativity and ingenuity by establishing basic expectations about how AI could make or break a patent application. The guidelines reflect the Biden administration’s swift moves to get ahead of artificial intelligence issues.” • Hmm. That actually sounds like something to look into. Do we have any patent mavens in the house?
* * *
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 72 Greed (previous close: 68 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 75 (Extreme Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 13 at 1:37:54 PM ET.
Guillotine Watch
NGOs, who needs ’em:
one of the biggest scams in america is celebrity philanthropy. i know it’s in your nature to want to believe there’s rich people out here doing good by regular folks but…that’s rarely the case. once u see how the non profit scene works u will get insanely jaded pic.twitter.com/Wxx9sinQmR
— lil h (@bigsnugga) February 14, 2024
They’re doing the sort of provisioning one would expect a government to do.
Class Warfare
Harder to offshore services?
Its completely possible that the present inflation is largely stuck now because of wage-price dynamics, especially in services, and will only come down in a recession. 🇺🇸📈 pic.twitter.com/Tcahp3tw8G
— Philip Pilkington (@philippilk) February 14, 2024
“Former Home Depot CEO sounds alarm on ‘tremendous shift’ in labor market” [FOX]. “A former top corporate America executive is warning that the U.S. economy is not on a fast track to recovery, as higher inflation and more mass layoffs loom over markets. ‘The general population will not be duped by this aversion to try and blame inflation on corporate America. It starts at the raw materials, it starts at transportation, it starts at energy,’ former Home Depot and Chrysler CEO Bob Nardelli said on ‘Cavuto: Coast to Coast’ Monday. ‘A whole host of things that are driving this up, wage increases.’ ‘We’re now seeing people being laid off,’ he continued, ‘If you look at chips, they’ve laid off almost 40,000 people. We’re seeing a tremendous shift in employment out there where people are being laid off.’ In the last two weeks, companies like Cisco, Snap, Estée Lauder, Amazon, Citigroup and UPS have all announced layoffs as executives tighten their belts amid rate volatility. The pace of job cuts by U.S. employers accelerated at the start of 2024, as a recent report from business firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas found that companies planned 82,307 job cuts in January, a substantial 136% increase from the previous month.”
News of the Wired
“Things We Didn’t Know About Ourselves” [KK]. “But the smartphone — a small pocketable screen – was not at all expected. It was a complete surprise because no one thought it would be possible to engage with such a tiny screen. It was a shock to everyone (including me) that a screen smaller than my palm would be enough to watch a movie, or read a book, or get your news. That kind of behavior seemed to go against ‘what everybody knows’ about movie watching and book reading. In fact the idea of an appealing micro-window seemed contrary to what we thought we knew about our physiology – that we needed a wide view with high fidelity, and that it was unnatural and uncomfortable to have to restrict our gazes into such a tiny screen. Turns out we were very wrong. We have zero trouble watching hours of movies on this sliver of a screen. This comfort with a small screen was one of many things we did not know about ourselves. There are so many other things we didn’t know about ourselves. We had been painting and observing images for thousands of years before we discovered that we can fool our own eyes and minds to perceive motion by rapidly flicking a series of images with minor alterations. These illusions are called movies. We didn’t know we had this ability to perceive motion until we had the technology to manifest this ability. In other words, we could not have known this about ourselves until we invented cinema. We are discovering something similar with VR. We didn’t know we can be convinced of the presence of something by generating a volumetric, spatial image of it. Rendering an image spatial makes it feel like it is present, even when our logical mind knows it is not. This trick makes VR worlds feel real. We also could not have known this about our own eyes until we invented VR technology. I am pretty sure that we did not know that we humans much prefer personal attention to personal privacy. Until we invented the technology of social media, we thought we naturally favored privacy over attention, but we were also wrong about that. We found out that when given a choice people prefer to reveal themselves to get personal attention rather than the obscurity of privacy. All this should make us wonder how many other things we don’t know about ourselves?” • I’m sure the pandemic taught us many lessons….
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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 AF:
AF writes: “Here’s one of my favorite perennials. It’s a smoke bush after a light rain.”
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