By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Oriental Stork, Муравьевка (Muravyevka Park), Amur Oblast, Russia. A duet for percussion and winds.
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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
The Constitutional Order
“Colorado’s top court disqualified Trump – will the Supreme Court overrule?” [BBC]. “The Colorado court said it had found ‘clear and convincing evidence that President Trump engaged in insurrection’ at the time of the Capitol riot and disqualified him from running for president, citing an amendment [the Fourteenth] to the US Constitution.” • Here is what “clear and convincing evidence” means:
“Clear and convincing evidence” is a medium level burden of proof which must be met for certain convictions/judgments. This standard is a more rigorous to meet than preponderance of the evidence standard, but less rigorous standard to meet than proving evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. The clear and convincing evidence standard is employed in both civil and criminal trials. According to the Supreme Court in Colorado v. New Mexico, 467 U.S. 310 (1984), “clear and convincing” means that the evidence is highly and substantially more likely to be true than untrue. In other words, the fact finder must be convinced that the contention is highly probable.”
The Federal statute against insurrection, 18 U.S. Code § 2383, is a criminal statute, hence “beyond a reasonable doubt” would apply (although the “clear and convincing” burden also applies in some criminal cases, the examples given don’t seem as weighty as insurrection). One might speculate that Jack Smith didn’t charge Trump under it because he couldn’t meet the “beyond a reasonable doubt” burden. A cynical observer might conclude that CREW did some jurisdiction shopping for an all-Democrat court that would minimize the burden of proof, and found one in Colorado.
“Colorado GOP asking US Supreme Court to overturn ruling disqualifying Trump from 2024 ballot” [FOX]. “‘By excluding President Trump from the ballot, the Colorado Supreme Court engaged in an unprecedented disregard for the First Amendment right of political parties to select the candidates of their choice and a usurpation of the rights of the people to choose their elected officials,” attorneys for the state Republican party wrote in a petition of the Dec. 19 ruling.”
“Gavin Newsom blasts effort to block Trump from California ballot: ‘We defeat candidates at the polls’” [FOX]. “Gov. Gavin Newsom critized fellow Democrats for considering blocking former president Donald Trump from California’s 2024 presidential primary ballot, saying that, ‘we defeat candidates at the polls.’” Well, except for RussiaGate and Dear Hunter’s laptop. But certainly in theory! More: “‘There is no doubt that Donald Trump is a threat to our liberties and even to our democracy,’ Newsom said in a statement. ‘But in California, we defeat candidates at the polls.’” • Good for Newsom, however.
“The Non-Originalist Decision That May Save Trump” [Adrian Vermeule, The New Digest]. Lengthy, but fun: ” The irony looming over the situation is that our current Court, stocked with a supermajority of Justices who consider themselves ‘originalists,’ may well end up ruling in Trump’s favor on the basis of a precedent that is profoundly non-originalist in method. Indeed that precedent, Griffin’s Case, decided in 1869, underscores what I have called ‘the paradox of originalism.’ Today’s originalists look backwards to anchor the meaning of law in the public understandings of earlier eras — either the founding era or, in the case of the Reconstruction Amendments, the post-Civil War era. But the public legal cultures, and public understandings of law, of those periods were not themselves originalist…. [Chief Justice Salmon P.] Chase held [in Griffin] that the disqualification embodied in Section 3 is not ‘self-executing.’ … Chase argued, in essence, that the consequences to the constitutional order from holding Section 3 to be self-executing would be intolerable, creating a kind of political-legal chaos and inflicting forms of targeted injustice inconsistent with the “general spirit of the Constitution.” Avoiding such consequences was itself a good legal reason to weight the scales of interpretation against self-execution.” As I have been saying from the beginning; see the heading of this section [lambert blushes modestly]. More: “Interpreting Section 3 as non-self-executing would be a far more reasonable construction, Chase argued, because it would require Congress to create an orderly, regular and fair process for determining who had or had not participated or engaged in ‘insurrection.’” Chase concluded: “To accomplish this ascertainment and ensure effective results, proceedings, evidence, decisions, and enforcements of decisions, more or less formal, are indispensable; and these can only be provided for by Congress.’” • Well worth a read. Makes clear why the “self-executing” crowd pounds the table so hard when it comes to Griffen.
“Some belated thoughts on the Colorado Supreme Court’s historic ruling” [Roger Parloff, ThreadReader]. A long thread, well worth a read. The author is a Senior editor at Lawfare. so clearly an expert in the field. From near the end, Samour’s dissent, on due process:
… Samour said the “the Section Three challenge brought by the Electors was a square constitutional peg that could not be jammed into our Election Code’s round hole,” and that “what transpired in this litigation fell woefully short of what due process demands.”. …/26 pic.twitter.com/TzF68z8ziU
— Roger Parloff (@rparloff) December 22, 2023
2024
Less than a year to go!
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“The mysterious whereabouts of Melania Trump” [The Telegraph]. “Her conspicuous absence from the campaign trail, and the courtroom, as her husband fights criminal charges and works to win back the presidency, has come to the attention of Mr Trump’s rivals…. Addressing a crowd in Iowa, [Trump] said: ‘You know, our first lady hates it when I do. She says: ‘Darling, I love you so much, but this is not presidential when you do the weightlifting, this is not presidential, or when you do the swimming thing … or when you dance off the stage’. ‘Technically, she’s probably right. But what the hell,’ he added.’” • That’s our The Donald!
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“What Biden’s rough 2023 in the polls means — and doesn’t mean — for 2024” [NBC]. “Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg said, ‘Trump’s Olympian levels of baggage and the struggles of MAGA in 2018, 2020, 2022 and 2023 are being wildly over-discounted right now,’ referring to Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ political movement. What’s also being discounted right now, Rosenberg said, is the Democratic Party’s performance in elections after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion. That election performance includes the Democrats’ keeping control of the Senate after the 2022 midterms, as well as key electoral victories in Kentucky and Virginia in November.”
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They write letters (here in full):
🚨BREAKING🚨⁰@RepJamesComer & @Jim_Jordan are investigating whether President Biden sought to influence or obstruct his son’s cooperation with the House’s impeachment inquiry.
Such conduct could constitute an impeachable offense.⁰Letter to White House Counsel Edward Siskel… pic.twitter.com/dND1WkusFU
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) December 27, 2023
The best part:
On December 13, Mr. Biden did not appear for the deposition as required by the Committees’ subpoenas. Instead, Mr. Biden appeared on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol with his attorney and Representative Eric Swalwell…. Mr. Biden indicated that he would not appear for the deposition as required by the subpoenas and that he would only testify in a public forum, a demand for special treatment that the Committees had previously rejected…. Later on December 13, when asked whether President Biden had watched Mr. Biden’s statement, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated that President Biden was ‘certainly familiar with what his son was going to say.’. Ms. Jean-Pierre declined, however, to provide any further details about the President’s actions or whether the President approved of his son defying congressional subpoenas. Nonetheless, Ms. Jean-Pierre’s statement suggests that the President had some amount of advanced knowledge that Mr. Biden would choose to defy two congressional subpoenas.
Whoops. Couldn’t happen to a nicer Press Secretary.
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“Nikki Haley declines to say slavery led to Civil War during town hall in Berlin” [WMUR]. WMUR is a New Hampshire radio station:
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley avoided using the word slavery at a town hall in Berlin Wednesday night after an attendee asked her, ‘What was the cause of the United States Civil War?’ Well, don’t come with an easy question or anything. I mean, I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,’ the former governor of South Carolina initially responded. She then asked the attendee what he thought caused the Civil War. ‘I’m not running for president,’ the man said. ‘I wanted to see your view on the cause of the Civil War.’ Haley then added, ‘I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are [like owning slaves], and I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms [to own slaves] of the people [(as least those who don’t own slaves, supposing them to be people)]. That was never meant to be all things to all people.’”
Here is the video, which is every bit as vile and stupid as you would expect it to be:
She gets some applause, too!
“”Haley declines to say slavery was cause of Civil War”” [Election Law Blog]. “This could be an easy question to answer in light of the leadership of the Republican Party in ending slavery, ensuring voting rights, and building a multiracial democracy in the South.” • Oopsie. Trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube–
“Nikki Haley in damage control says ‘of course the Civil War was about slavery’ insisting it’s the ‘easy part’ and claiming a PLANT was sent in to ask the question” [Daily Mail]. “Nikki Haley was on clean-up duty Thursday morning in clarifying that her comments about the Civil War didn’t mention slavery because ‘that’s the easy part.’ Haley told CNN that it’s ‘unquestioned’ that the Civil War was about slavery, adding: ‘But it was also more than that.’” No, it really wasn’t. More: “‘It was about the freedoms of every individual. It was about the role of government,’ she insisted. She also said in an interview with Pulse of New Hampshire radio show that she was answering the question by putting it into the context of what it means to Americans in the present day.” • RIght, by erasing it!
“Haley blames a ‘Democratic plant’ for Civil War question that tripped her up” [Politico]. “‘It was definitely a Democrat plant,’ said Haley. ‘That’s why I said, what does it mean to you? And if you notice, he didn’t answer anything. The same reason he didn’t tell the reporters what his name was.’” • Yeah, and he got you but good (and why not ask the same question of every candidate? It’s a good litmus test; I’d like to hear some “moderate” Democrats answer it). Reminds me of 1968, when George Romney shot himself in the foot by saying he’d been “brainwashed” by officialdom over Vietnam. Fine, but who wants a President who can be brainwashed? Ditto Haley. Who wants a President who gets entrapped by a plant?
One good reason to believe that the Civil War was about slavery is that’s what the soon-to-be Confederates said it was about — in the press, in their supposed Constitutions, and in the speeches of the “commissioners” who spoke before legislatures to persuade them to secede. Here is one such:
The amazing thing about the Civil War is that each Confederate state drafted public documents laying their reasons
no need to guess at original meaning or intent
below: South Carolina Declaration of Secession, 1860https://t.co/bTZZqSmhwJ pic.twitter.com/f9a8wPAFu6
— Prasad Jallepalli, MD, PhD (@jallepap) December 28, 2023
Here are two excellent podcasts on this topic, each copiously documented here with plenty of quotes. Feel free to pass these along to anybody with doubts on this matter.
“#24 “REBELLION THUS SUGAR-COATED” (podcast) [Rich and Tracy, The Civil War & Reconstruction]. “In which we continue our discussion by asking if the southern states had a right to secede, or if secession was rebellion. Then, we look at the message the secession commissioners spread throughout the South in late 1860/early 1861. Our book recommendation for this episode is “Apostles of Disunion” by Charles B. Dew.” • The “apostles” are the commissioners.
“11 – Slavery and State Rights, Economies and Ways of Life: What Caused the Civil War?” [David Blight, The Civil War and Reconstruction Era, 1845-1877]
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RFK and Israel:
Another important staffer on the RFK Jr. campaign – his senior veterans and defense policy staffer, James R. Webb – has quit over Kennedy’s horrific “unconditional” support for Israel’s wanton slaughter and ethnic cleansing campaign against Palestinian civilians in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/P73wtg59sH
— Scott Horton (@scotthortonshow) December 28, 2023
I can’t find independent confirmation, but Horton is reliable.
RFK and GBD:
RFK Jr: “I will sign a treaty…to get all nations to end gain-of-function research…It’s given us everything from Lyme Disease to COVID and many, many other diseases. RSV, which is now one of the biggest killers of children, came out of a vaccine lab.”pic.twitter.com/oN6rIYGKo5
— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) December 27, 2023
Happy (with the House) to end gain of function research, but “many, many other diseases”? Really?
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Democrats en Déshabillé
Patient readers, it seems that people are actually reading the back-dated post! But I have not updated it, and there are many updates. So I will have to do that. –lambert
I have moved my standing remarks on the Democrat Party (“the Democrat Party is a rotting corpse that can’t bury itself”) to a separate, back-dated post, to which I will periodically add material, summarizing the addition here in a “live” Water Cooler. (Hopefully, some Bourdieu.) It turns out that defining the Democrat Party is, in fact, a hard problem. I do think the paragraph that follows is on point all the way back to 2016, if not before:
d>. (“PMC” modulo “class expatriates,” of course.) Second, all the working parts of the Party reinforce each other. Leave aside characterizing the relationships between elements of the Party (ka-ching, but not entirely) those elements comprise a network — a Flex Net? An iron octagon? — of funders, vendors, apparatchiks, electeds, NGOs, and miscellaneous mercenaries, with assets in the press and the intelligence community.
Note, of course, that the class power of the PMC both expresses and is limited by other classes; oligarchs and American gentry (see ‘industrial model’ of Ferguson, Jorgensen, and Jie) and the working class spring to mind. Suck up, kick down.
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Well, so much for Ruy Tiexiera’s “coalition of the ascendant”:
JUST IN – Latinos now outnumber non-Hispanic whites in the U.S. state of Texas, census data shows. pic.twitter.com/XxX5YQ6Mge
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) December 27, 2023
“My Hero of 2023 Is the Trade Union Movement” [Bernie Sanders, Daily Beast]. “As the chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, I will be doing all that I can do to strengthen and expand the trade union movement—the true heroes and heroines in America not just in 2023, but in every year.” • All that’s fine, but the time to consolidate the union movement into a political force was 2020. And where were you when the railroad workers got screwed over by Biden?
#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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Maskstravaganza
Big Hospitals masking up (weeks too late, of course, since they’re driven by lagging indicators):
Mass General Brigham restores masking for providers taking care of patients this upcoming Tuesday according to Boston Business Journal. https://t.co/a0yjQRQ7MM pic.twitter.com/osvVrgmxp1
— Yaneer Bar-Yam (@yaneerbaryam) December 27, 2023
MGH is one of the drivers of HICPAC’s project to downgrade PPE, including masks, in hospitals and nursing homes. Think this’ll change their minds? Not on your Nellie!
Variants
“New COVID strain quickly becomes most dominant in U.S.” [Axios]. “JN.1’s surge suggests it’s either more transmissible or better at evading our immune systems than other strains in circulation, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But it’s too early to tell how much it will drive an increase in infections or hospitalizations this winter.” On hospitalizations, look at New York. I’m not so sure. More: “JN.1 estimates shot up from 21.3% to 44.2% over the two weeks ending Dec. 23, according to the CDC, which noted the variant is showing up in more travelers and wastewater surveillance.” All of which has been documented here for many weeks, good job Axios. More: “Because it doesn’t appear to pose additional risks, CDC said it was not changing its recommendations, which include getting updated vaccines and testing if respiratory symptoms arise.” • Do let us erase not only masking and ventilation, but asymptomatic transmission! This is so bad I think I’ve got to write them a sternly worded letter; contact page here.
Seems like a self-licking ice cream cone:
The ongoing pandemic, a maintained vicious circle 😷Adjusted Diagram H/T @TRyanGregory pic.twitter.com/hkaHjxi7dC
— Harry Spoelstra (@HarrySpoelstra) December 28, 2023
Clearly, our elites are conducting a massive experiment in serial passage on the entire population, without informed consent (although with, one might say, disinformed consent). I wonder how it will all work out….
“Something Awful”
Lambert here: I’m getting the feeling that the “Something Awful” might be a sawtooth pattern — variant after variant — that averages out to a permanently high plateau. Lots of exceptionally nasty sequelae, most likely deriving from immune dysregulation (says this layperson). To which we might add brain damage, including personality changes therefrom.
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Elite Maleficence
We haven’t even transitioned to “mistakes were made”!
Wrong-o, Billy Boy. No one could have foreseen this. https://t.co/syGkibkMZ4 pic.twitter.com/S8jcBuA8D8
— T. Ryan Gregory (@TRyanGregory) December 27, 2023
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Case Data
NOT UPDATED From BioBot wastewater data, December 23:
Lambert here: Still going up. As a totally “gut feel” tapewatcher, I would expect this peak to meet or exceed the two previous Biden peaks; after all, we haven’t really begun the next bout of holiday travel, or the next rounds of superspreading events celebrations. Plus students haven’t come from from school, and then returned. So a higher peak seems pretty much “baked in.” And that’s before we get to new variants, like JN.1. The real thing to watch is the slope of the curve. If it starts to go vertical, and if it keeps on doing so, then hold onto your hats.
Regional data:
Regional split continues.
Variants
NOT UPDATED From CDC, December 23:
Lambert here: JN.1 now dominates. That was fast.
From CDC, December 9:
Lambert here: I sure hope the volunteers doing Pangolin, on which this chart depends, don’t all move on the green fields and pastures new (or have their access to facilities cut by administrators of ill intent).
CDC: “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.
Covid Emergency Room Visits
NOT UPDATED From CDC NCIRD Surveillance, December 23:
Lambert: Return to upward movement. Only a week’s lag, so this may be our best current nationwide, current indicator.
NOTE “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.
Hospitalization
Bellwether New York City, data as of December 27:
Lambert here: I don’t like the slope of that curve one bit, and notice we’re approaching previous peak levels (granted, not 2020 or 2022, but respectable).
NOT UPDATED Here’s a different CDC visualization on hospitalization, nationwide, not by state, but with a date, at least. December 16:
Moving ahead briskly!
Lambert here: “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†”. So where the heck is the update, CDC?
Positivity
Lambert here: Notice that for both Walgreens and the Cleveland Clinic, that although the percentage of positives is stable, the absolute numbers have greatly increased; Walgreen’s doubled. This speaks well of people; they’re getting tested before the holidays (and in face of a shit*tstorm barrage of propaganda and peer pressure to minimize, too).
NOT UPDATED From Walgreens, December 26:
-2.3%. Down. (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.)
NOT UPDATED From Cleveland Clinic, December 23:
Lambert here: Plateauing. I know this is just Ohio, but we’re starved for data, so….
NOT UPDATED From CDC, traveler’s data, December 4:
Turning down.
Down, albeit in the rear view mirror. And here are the variants for travelers, December 4:
BA.2.86 turns down. This would be a great early warning system, if the warning were in fact early, instead of weeks late, good job, CDC.
Deaths
NOT UPDATED Here is the New York Times, based on CDC data, December 16:
Stats Watch
Employment SItuation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rose by 12,000 to 218,000 on the week ending December 23rd, above market expectations of 210,000, to suggest some softening in the US labor market before the end of the year. In the meantime, continuing claims rose by 14,000 to a one-month high of 1,875,000, as expected by markets.”
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Retail: “Amazon gets FDA letter on potentially harmful active pharmaceutical ingredients” [Seeking Alpha]. “An investigation by the FDA revealed that products labeled as energy-enhancing supplements or dietary supplements on Amazon’s site contained undisclosed and potentially dangerous active pharmaceutical ingredients, including sildenafil and tadalafil, as confirmed by laboratory analyses.”
Tech: “ChatGPT will lie, cheat and use insider trading when under pressure to make money, research shows” [Live Science] • Turing Test, here we come!
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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 77 Extreme Greed (previous close: 77 Extreme Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 76 (Extreme Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Dec 28 at 1:19:01 PM ET.
Zeitgeist Watch
“On Christianity” [Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Medium]. From 2022, still germane. “Ironically, modernists fall for what I have called the opiate of the middle classes[i.e., the PMC], that is social science and stock market speculation. They refuse religion on rational grounds, then fall for economic forecasters, stock market analysts, and psychologists. We know that economic forecasts work no better than astrology; stock market analysts are more pompous but much less elegant than the bishop, and psychology papers do not replicate meaning their results do not hold. My co-author Rupert Read and I have argued (using evolutionary arguments) that religion, via interdicts, allows the intergenerational transmission of survival heuristics and is effective in nudging people into some classes of behavior[16]. By some irony, “nudging” theory developed by social scientists (which earned Richard Thaler a Nobel in economic sciences) has been recently shown to be nonreplicable, owing to a statistical artifact[17]. Nonreplicable is the polite scientific term to mean that it is no different from astrology. Listen to the bishop — the recipient of generations of survival wisdom — not the psychologist.”
News of the Wired
“How to Build a Small Solar Power System” [Low Tech Magazine]. ” This guide brings all the information together: what you need, how to wire everything, what your design choices are, where to put solar panels, how to fix them in place (or not), how to split power and install measuring instruments. It deals with solar energy systems that charge batteries and simpler configurations that provide direct solar power.” • I bet we have readers who have done this. Readers, what do you think?
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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 and coral are deemed to be honorary plants! If you want your handle to appear as a credit, please place it at the start of your mail in parentheses: (thus). Otherwise, I will anonymize by using your initials. See the previous Water Cooler (with plant) here. From TH:
TH writes: “Call in the ladybugs, there’s aphids on those rosebuds!”
• Kind readers, I’m running very short of plants. More fall harvest photos would be nice. Or snowy scenes. Even Christmas trees. Or whatever! Thank you so much!
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