By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Generous readers, we are now at 307 231 204 177 donors, or 76% 57%51%44% of our goal of 400 donors (25 more than last year). I will have the final 2024 Fundraiser post up in a short while, but yuou have moved the needle out of the “Catastrophically Bad” zone into the “Let’s Make This a Success!” zone [lambert sighs in relief], for which I am very grateful. If you have not already done so, please support Water Cooler (or donate to provide the support that the unlucky cannot). And now to find some bird songs. –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Kashmir Nuthatch, Yousmarg Forest Area, Budgam, Jammu and Kashmir, India.
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In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Cooperation Jackson.
(2) Turmoil in the Biden advance team…..
(3) The strange death of John Barnett in the midst of his Boeing deposition.
(4) Right to Repair in Oregon.
(5) Ibogaine (and Hunter Thompson).
Look for the Helpers
“Really, Really Free Market” [Cooperation Jackson (judy2shoes)]. Saturday, March 23, 2024, 9:00 AM-2:00 PM, 939 W Capitol St., Jackson, MS 39203. “Join Cooperation Jackson and local allies and partners on Saturday, March 23, 2024 for this mutual aid exchange to meet the material needs of our families and community.” judy2shoes writes:
I’ve been following this group for a number of years now, and in spite of the head winds they’ve encountered, they’ve persevered. My heart is with them, and I hope they succeed in what they are trying to accomplish.
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Lambert here: I hope readers will send in more examples like the above (“brighten the corner where you are“). The helper(s) don’t need to be heroic, let alone dramatic, or ego-driven, and certainly not institutional. To cite, of all people, the American Enterprise Institute, writing on Occupy, and citing to David Graeber:
In addition to trucking, bartering, and knocking each other over the head, Graeber argues that human beings also engage in a wholly different kind of economic activity: We often share things we have with others. When Graeber says that we are already communists, he is referring to those quite familiar situations in which we really do operate by the maxim “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
People of all cultures, including our own, invariably practice the communism of everyday life when dealing with their family and close friends. A mother does not expect her child to pay her for her baby-sitting services. A brother does not rent out his baseball glove to his brother on an hourly basis. If a friend is sick and needs something from the store, we pick it up for her and would never think of asking for gas money in return.
As Graeber points out, this kind of behavior comes out most conspicuously during a crisis, such as a natural disaster. At such times, people will voluntarily, even cheerfully, extend a helping hand to those who are most in need of one. Less dramatically, the same principle is at work whenever we are at a store that has a box on the counter that says “Leave a penny, take a penny,” intended to help out those who don’t have the exact change. In all these cases we are witnessing the spontaneous application of the communist maxim, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
In our increasingly desperate and fragile neoliberal society, everyday normal incidents and stories of “the communism of everyday life” are what I am looking for (and not, say, the Red Cross in Hawaii, or even the UNWRA in Gaza). My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of “Helpers” there. (Yes, this is the kind of standing element I purged in the editorial redesign, but I’m going to leave it up for a bit to let the ideas sink in.)
Politics
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“So many of the social reactions that strike us as psychological are in fact a rational management of symbolic capital.” –Pierre Bourdieu, Classification Struggles
Biden Administration
“Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is putting together an investor group to buy TikTok” [NBC]. “The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bipartisan bill that if signed into law would force ByteDance to either divest its flagship global app or face an effective ban on TikTok within the U.S. ‘I think the legislation should pass and I think it should be sold,’ Mnuchin told CNBC’s ‘Squawk Box’ on Thursday. ‘It’s a great business and I’m going to put together a group to buy TikTok.’” • So that’s one motivation: A forced sale. Commentary:
The TikTok ban is not about national security. It’s about closing a channel that the Deep State can’t control because it isn’t owned by one of their big tech puppets. You find truth on TikTok that has long been banned on Facebook and Google. That’s why it has to go and X is next.
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) March 13, 2024
2024
Less than a year to go!
I guess I kinda have to:
Interesting for the swing (toss-up) states, but I don’t think worth all that much. A map of the 5-way race would be far more useful, given that Kennedy isn’t doing badly at all.
* * *
Trump (R): “Cell data contradicts Fani Willis’ testimony, court documents suggest” [Scripps News]. “A court filing in Atlanta raised new questions about Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ relationship with the special prosecutor she hired to oversee the election interference case against former President Donald Trump. Cellphone data obtained by Trump’s legal team shows Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor, visited Willis’ neighborhood at least 35 times in the 11 months before Willis hired him in late 2021. Twice, Wade arrived late at night and left early the following morning. The data shows about 2,000 calls and 12,000 text messages between Wade and Willis from January 2021 to November 2021. The data seems to contradict testimony by Wade and Willis about the timeline of their relationship. They are under scrutiny by defense lawyers who say a conflict of interest should disqualify Willis’ office from the election case. Willis and Wade said their romantic relationship began in 2022 after a grand jury indicted Trump and 18 other people for trying to overturn Georgia’s election results in 2020.” • Whoops. I wonder if their case is put together as sloppily as their timeline?
Trump (R): “Kemp signs Georgia law reviving prosecutor sanctions panel. Democrats fear it’s aimed at Fani Willis” [Associated Press]. “Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law Wednesday that lets a state commission begin operating with powers to discipline and remove prosecutors, potentially disrupting Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ prosecution of former President Donald Trump. ;This legislation will help us ensure rogue and incompetent prosecutors are held accountable if they refuse to uphold the law,’ Kemp said before signing the bill, flanked by Republican legislative leaders. ‘As we know all too well, crime has been on the rise across the country, and is especially prevalent in cities where prosecutors are giving criminals a free pass or failing to put them behind bars due to lack of professional conduct.’ Though Kemp signed legislation last year creating the Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, it was unable to begin operating after the state Supreme Court in November refused to approve rules governing its conduct. The justices said they had ‘grave doubts’ about their ability to regulate the duties of district attorneys beyond the practice of law. Tuesday’s measure removes the requirement for Supreme Court approval. The measure is likely to face renewed legal challenges. Four district attorneys dropped their previous lawsuit challenging the commission after the Supreme Court set it aside.” • Georgia politics…
Trump (R): “Fulton County ethics board drops Fani Willis complaints from hearing” [The Hill]. “The Fulton County Board of Ethics was expected to hear two complaints against Willis after her romance with a special prosecutor on the election interference case involving former President Trump raised concerns of a conflict of interest. The board determined it does not have jurisdiction over Willis, who is a state constitutional officer in her role.”
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Trump (R): “Trump “floods the zone” as general election tests desensitized voters” [Axios]. “For eight years, the hurricane of news conjured by Trump’s unprecedented behavior and rhetoric has enraged, exhilarated and eventually numbed much of the American public…. Many voters have tuned out — or priced in — Trump’s baggage and legal issues… Financial Times columnist Ed Luce calls this phenomenon ‘the banality of chaos.’ Trump’s candidacy is ‘so far off the charts it is almost paranormal,’ Luce writes, but most of the former president’s controversies no longer break through to the public.” • To be fair, just because Democrats are experiencing aghastitude over something Trump said doesn’t necessarily mean you or I should not be aghast…. But it’s certainly hard to sort.
Trump (R): “Exclusive: Trump launched CIA covert influence operation against China” [Reuters]. • “Three former officials told Reuters that the CIA created a small team of operatives who used bogus internet identities to spread negative narratives about Xi Jinping’s government while leaking disparaging intelligence to overseas news outlets. The effort, which began in 2019, has not been previously reported.” • And I bet it was just as effective as RussiaGate. How do you say “we will beat it together” in Mandarin?
Trump (R): “CNBC Transcript: Former President of the United States Donald Trump Speaks with CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Today” [CNBC]. Because I know from long experience that the press never, ever quotes Trump accurately, the transcript:
Have you changed your, your outlook on how to handle entitlements Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President? Seems like something has to be done, or else we’re going to be stuck at 120% of debt to GDP forever.
[TRUMP:] So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements [B]. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. [A] So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement. [C] I know that they’re going to end up weakening social security because the country is weak.
So, [A] Trump disagrees with the softball question on entitlements and debt, and [B] emits the standard Republican trope on waste and fraud, [C] because that weakens the programs. The proof of the pudding is that after eight years of the Obama administration seeking a Grand Bargain that really would have cut Social Security and Medicare, Trump didn’t try to do that in his first time. (Of course, the Democrats may have thought they were denying Trump a political winner, who knows.)
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Biden (D): “Biden’s advance team is rife with turmoil and toxicity, staff allege” [Politico]. “within the tight-knit advance community, there’s serious concern about the current direction of the office, according to interviews with 18 current and former White House staffers and people who have worked directly with it. The culture within the office has gotten so bad that the White House Counsel’s Office opened an investigation, according to three people who were contacted last fall by the office for interviews. Specifically, they said, investigators looked into complaints of verbal harassment by Ian Mellul, the former associate director of presidential advance. Mellul resigned March 1 after a monthslong investigation, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. Brie Moore, the former director of press advance, also resigned within the past few weeks following complaints from the press corps to the White House about her behavior, several people familiar with the office said… The Biden office has earned such a bad reputation that some seasoned vets have declined to pitch in when asked, according to four former White House staffers. Those familiar with the Biden operation said that meant more room for error, especially as the president travels more frequently ahead of the general election.” Importantly: “[S]ome upset with the culture on the advance team place blame on the person who oversaw it: Ryan Montoya…. [Some of the current and former Biden staffers] believe that because Montoya was trusted by Anthony Bernal, adviser to first lady Jill Biden and one of the most powerful figures within the Biden White House, as well as deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini, he was shielded from discipline.” • Two things: The advance team is critical to the success of any campaign, but moreso with for Biden; the advance team organizes the sandbags so Biden doesn’t fall off the stage, for example. More importantly, this is the second story I’ve seen that takes a shot at “Doctor” Jill Biden. Hmm.
Biden (D): “The Fruits of the American Rescue Plan” [Democracy Journal]. Case for the defense: “Working-class adults and their children each received $2,000 $1,400 stabilization checks. The unemployed got $300 in enhanced weekly benefits, which bought them additional time and financial flexibility to find a good job as businesses reopened. An expanded child tax credit provided parents with young children with as much as $1,600 more per child. Billions of dollars for lower-income homeowners and renters helped keep people in their homes even as foreclosure and eviction moratoria expired.”
Biden (R): “Biden’s Best Shot Against Trump Lies in ‘Blue Wall’ States” [Bloomberg]. “In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, his campaign sees signs for optimism, even as recent polling shows Biden trailing presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump in those key battlegrounds…. The Biden campaign says it ranks no swing state above another — and is focusing on all of them to keep open multiple paths to get to 270 Electoral College votes. It has ramped up sharply, doubling its battleground state staffing this month. But unique factors in those one-time Blue Wall bastions – from demographics to the presence of well-placed allies – position them as his best shot at holding the White House. Biden can clinch a victory with their electoral votes even if he loses four other crucial swing states – Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina. Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are dotted with the kinds of small cities and manufacturing centers that Biden has long begged his party to not forget. Michigan and Pennsylvania in particular are also organized labor strongholds where the president – who appeared on an autoworker picket line last year – can hammer his oft-repeated message that unions built the middle class.”
Biden (D): “How unpopular is Joe Biden?” [FiveThirtyEight]. Handy chart:
No pop from the SOTU.
* * *
“Democrats prepare to go to war against third-party candidates” [NBC]. “The Democratic National Committee is building its first team to counter third-party and independent presidential candidates, people involved told NBC News, as the party and its allies prepare for a potential all-out war on candidates they view as spoilers. The DNC has hired veteran Democratic operative Lis Smith, best known for her work guiding the 2020 presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg, to help oversee an aggressive communications component of its strategy, which also includes opposition research and legal challenges. Underscoring how important Democrats view the effort, it is being overseen by Mary Beth Cahill and Ramsey Reid, two veteran DNC insiders, who have already started issuing rare public statements rebuking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.” • Smith is good; she actually parleyed that homunculus into high office as Secretary of Transportation. It’s not her fault that after that, Buttigieg vanished mysteriously.
Democrats en Déshabillé
“Have Democrats finally stopped wimping out?” [Los Angeles Times]. “‘One of us is playing with a rolling pin, and the other is fighting with a gun,’ an aide to Senate leaders once told me, frustrated that Democrats were adhering to Marquess of Queensberry rules as Republicans busted norms to pack the federal courts. ‘We always bring a butter knife to a gunfight,’ longtime Democratic strategist Brian Fallon similarly groused not long ago.’” • Holy Lord! Ask a Sanders supporter if Democrats play by “Marquess of Queensberry rules.” And RussiaGate? Having the spooks plant an operative in the Trump campaign? Lawfare scheme like Section Three?
“Why Are Democrats Turning Their Backs On People In States With GOP Senators?” [Balls and Strikes]. “When avowed segregationist James Eastland chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1956 to 1978, he enforced a policy to keep would-be judges who supported integration off the bench: Nominees would not receive confirmation hearings without sign-off from both home state senators. This custom, known as “blue slips” after the pieces of paper senators return to signal their approval of a nominee, persists today. And despite Joe Biden’s presence in the White House, it allows lone legislators to exercise veto power over presidential appointments… in less than four years, Biden has put more former public defenders, civil rights attorneys, and other nonprofit lawyers on the bench than any other president. But those appointments are largely limited to states with two Democratic senators…. Proponents of blue slips, such as Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin, a Democrat, argue that they encourage “bipartisan cooperation” since, in theory, requiring the buy-in of home-state senators can foster compromise with the White House. In practice, that compromise seems to extend only in one direction. During President Donald Trump’s administration, Democrats returned 130 blue slips for district court nominees, leading to the confirmation of 84 judges. By January 2023, Republicans had returned only 12.” • And session after session, that is how Republicans remade the court system.
“The High Price of Democrats’ Anti-Trump Lawfare” [Wall Street Journal]. “The argument on behalf of this really quite unprecedented legal offensive boils down to one idea: No one is above the law. True. That view is sometimes known as ensuring respect for the law. My single-sentence reply is that the Democrats’ use of lawfare on this scale makes it likely that respect for the law will decline, and dangerously so, among much of the American public…. That the lawsuits have backfired politically, boosting Mr. Trump into an easy victory in the primaries, is incontestable. The media lately has been writing that the Trump legal team’s strategy of ‘delay’ is working, implying that Mr. Trump was supposed to take it all passively in the neck.”
“Don’t” order me around:
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Our Democracy”:
As I’ve pointed out many times, Brazil’s population is 215 million people: not much smaller than the US’s.
Voting is mandatory for everyone above 16. It happens on Sunday. The full vote tally is released within hours of poll closing.
The complete mess in the US is a choice: https://t.co/cYiydfZvZS
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) March 14, 2024
The United States is not a serious country.
“Anti-Israel protesters swarm The Post, NY Times printing plant, accuse Times of manufacturing ‘consent for genocide’” [NY Post]. • Interesting tactic. It would be great if the unions inside the building were in solidarity with the protesters outside (probably possible, with a level of effort).
#COVID19
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“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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Covid is Airborne
“COVID-19 outbreak at a residential apartment building in Northern Ontario, Canada” [Epidemiology & Infection (SES)]. “A case-control study examined building-specific exposures and resident behaviours that may have increased the odds of being a case. A professional engineer assessed the building’s heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. Whole genome sequencing and an in-depth genomic analysis were performed. Forty-five outbreak confirmed cases were identified. From the case-control study, being on the upper floors (OR: 10.4; 95% CI: 1.63-66.9) or within three adjacent vertical lines (OR: 28.3; 3.57-225) were both significantly associated with being a case of COVID-19, after adjusting for age. There were no significant differences in reported behaviours, use of shared spaces, or precautions taken between cases and controls. Assessment of the building’s ventilation found uncontrolled air leakage between apartment units. A single genomic cluster was identified, where most sequences were identical to one another. Findings from the multiple components of this investigation are suggestive of aerosol transmission between units.” • Amoy Gardens all over again!
The United States is not a serious country:
Today I filmed a video to present the AirFant 3Pro crbox which is very popular in China. Check it out. It will be available by end of March on Amazon US and Canada. pic.twitter.com/4Yvr7KUgBs
— Adam Wong (@Engineer_Wong) March 14, 2024
Why aren’t we manufacturing crboxes like these? (Granted, the Xi government could have used the time bought by Zero Covid to ramp up manufacturing of crboxes en masse, so they are about as serious as we are, at least about protecting their working class; I would imagine The Great Hall of the People is well ventilated. Nevertheless, kudos to these engineers.)
Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions
“Estimating The Impact of Public Health Interventions on COVID Mortality in The United States Using Reductions in Influenza Mortality as an Indicator Of Non-Pharmaceutical Infection Control” (preprint). From the Abstract: “Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) for control of COVID include a range of methods from masks to closures of schools and businesses with the efficacy of any individual strategy contingent on which other NPIs are employed and the extent of compliance with those strategies. In the case of a public health intervention, one typically looks at historical data for comparison, but, because COVID is a new disease, we have no such data. However, we do have extensive historical data for influenza, a respiratory disease with similar modes of transmission. Influenza incidence and mortality dropped dramatically during the COVID pandemic, almost certainly because of these NPIs. The extent of that drop provides an indirect measure of the efficacy of COVID NPIs in stopping the transmission of respiratory infections.” Ingenious! More: “These results provide strong evidence that [influenza mortality reduction (IMR)] is an accurate indicator of the efficacy of NPIs in controlling transmission of respiratory infections, including COVID….. The resulting model suggests that NPIs prevented 831,000 COVID related deaths in the United States over the course of the pandemic.” • So the GBD goons (hard eugenicists) and the public health establishment (soft eugenicists), both of whom fought NPIs tooth and nail, both have plenty of blood on their hands. And a second example–
“The Covid-19 pandemic killed off one strain of the flu, and that will change the next vaccines” [CNN]. “For 10 years, Americans have had access to flu shots that protect against four strains of the virus: two A strains and two B strains. Starting this fall, however, all the flu shots distributed in the United States will contain only three strains, and the change happened in part because of Covid-19. On Tuesday, a panel of experts who advise the US Food and Drug Administration on vaccines voted unanimously to recommend three-strain flu vaccines that will exclude any viruses from B strains that are part of branch of the flu’s family tree called Yamagata. Yamagata viruses were in decline before the pandemic, and all the precautions that helped people avoid Covid-19 – including masking, staying at home and better ventilation – appear to have finished them off. They haven’t been detected in testing since March 2020.” • But hopefully Mandy can bring them back!
Celebrity Watch
“Impact of COVID-19 on football attacking players’ match technical performance: a longitudinal study” [Nature]. “This study examined the impact of COVID-19 on 28 indicators of match technical performance (MTP) for football attacking players upon their return to play. Analyzing data from 100 players in the Big Five European football leagues, covering 1500 matches each before and after COVID-19 over 3 years (2020–2023), revealed significant differences in 76% of players’ MTP indicators. Notably, 14 indicators, particularly the five indicators linked to scoring, significantly decreased post-COVID-19. On average, players needed 3.09 matches to regain pre-infection MTP levels.” • The elite players recovered their soccer skills more rapidly.
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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] (Biobot) A bit “modified rapture” (“could be worse”) but we our falling curve has now reached the level of previous Trump peaks. Not a great victory. Note also the area “under the curve,” besides looking at peaks. That area is larger under Biden than under Trump, and it seems to be rising steadily if unevenly.
[2] (Biobot) Regional separation re-emerges.
[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) “Charts and data provided by CDC, updates Wednesday by 8am. For the past year, using a rolling 52-week period.”
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Not flattening. (Date for data corrected; it was a glitch.)
[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) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Flattening.
[9] (Travelers: Posivitity) Now up, albeit in the rear view mirror.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) Backward revisions remove NV.1 data. JN.1 dominates utterly.
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the US fell by 1,000 to 209,000 in the week ended March 8, 2024, below market expectations of 218,000.”
Inflation: “United States Producer Price Inflation MoM” [Trading Economics]. “The Producer Price Index for final demand in the United States rose by 0.6% month-over-month in February 2024, marking the largest increase since last August and surpassing market expectations of a 0.3% advance. Goods prices rose by 1.2%, the most in six months, primarily driven by a 4.4% surge in energy costs and a 1.0% uptick in food prices.”
Retail Sales: “United States Retail Sales YoY” [Trading Economics]. “Retail Sales in the United States increased 1.50 percent year-on-year in February of 2024, following a flat reading in January.”
* * *
Manufacturing: “The Strange Death of a Boeing Whistleblower” [Maureen Tkacik, The American Prospect]. And the deck: “There’s no way America’s last great manufacturer murdered a prominent critic … is there?” Tkacik is very good on Boeing institutionally, and that’s what this article covers (or rehashes). But the ellipses in the deck are doing a lot of work that, frankly, I would expect a reporter of Tkacik’s caliber to be doing. For example, Barnet, found dead in his car, was still holding the (a?) gun. That seemed odd — wouldn’t the recoil kick the gun out of his hand? — and yesterday IM Doc wrote:
I hearken back to my medical school classes……Sessions on forensic pathology. In that day, it was far more likely that any physician especially in rural communities would be called upon for coroner duties. This is really no longer the case in our world today.
I remembered something – and I went back to my notes today just now and I quote from the lecture notes from the pathology/coroner professor –
“If the suicidal deceased is gripping or holding the gun, one must always look for other signs of foul play. Suicide victims are simply unlikely to be gripping a firearm in any way, shape or form. Every suicide by gun I have ever seen causes the firearm to be inches or feet from the body.”
From the 1980s and my distant past and certainly not expert opinion – but still probably very germane.
Now, other readers point out that it’s not universal that a suicide victim wouldn’t be holding onto the gun. But it’s still an unaddressed oddity. Tkacik also writes:
Unlike would-be whistleblower clients who find themselves “perp walked” out of the plant without access to their phones or email accounts, Turkewitz told the Prospect, “John had meticulously documented everything, he had thousands of pages stored on his computer.”
The obvious question: Where’s the computer? In the car? In the hotel room? At the lawyer’s? With the cops? Where? And nothing new at the Post and Courier. I guess they must be waiting for the police report to write their story [snort].
Manufacturing: “Investigator says she asked Boeing’s CEO who handled panel that blew off a jet. He couldn’t help her” [Associated Press]. “The nation’s chief accident investigator said Wednesday that her agency still doesn’t know who worked on the panel that blew off a jetliner in January and that Boeing’s CEO told her that he couldn’t provide the information because the company has no records about the job…. Homendy’s latest letter to the Senate Commerce Committee was a follow-up to her appearance before the panel last week. Shortly after her testimony ended, Boeing provided names of 25 employees who work on doors at the company’s 737 factory near Seattle…. She said, however, the company still hasn’t said which of the workers removed the panel, which plugs a hole left when extra emergency doors are not required on a plane. She said she even called Boeing CEO David Calhoun. ‘He stated he was unable to provide that information and maintained that Boeing has no records of the work being performed,” Homendy wrote. Boeing did not comment on the phone call.’” • Odd.
Tech: “Oregon Passes Right To Repair Law Apple Lobbied To Kill” [TechDirt]. “Oregon has officially become the seventh state (behind New York, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Maine, and Minnesota) to pass “right to repair” legislation, making it easier and more affordable for consumers to independently repair their own electronics. The bill, which passed the Oregon Senate last month 25-5 and the House on Monday 42-13, is a bit more robust than the versions passed in earlier states. Among other things, the bill requires that device manufacturers make parts, tools and repair manuals available to consumers and third-party repair shops on ‘fair and reasonable terms.’ But it also takes aim at ‘parts pairing,’ or the practice of preventing you from replacing device parts without the approval of a company or its restrictive software. Apple, which routinely uses this practice to try and monopolize repair, lobbied extensively against the Oregon bill. As usual, under the (false) claim that eliminating parts pairing would put public safety and security at risk… In reality, Apple is concerned that the crackdown on ‘parts pairing’ will further erode the company’s lucrative efforts to monopolize repair and slow down the rate of shiny new phone sales. Apple has generally tried to pretend than its done a complete 180 on right to repair, when it’s generally been more of a 40 degree turn toward slightly more reasonable policies.”
* * *
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 73 Greed (previous close: 73 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 74 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Mar 14 at 12:27:54 PM ET.
Zeitgeist Watch
“I Always Knew I Was Different. I Just Didn’t Know I Was a Sociopath” [Wall Street Journal]. “It is a tragic misconception that all sociopaths are doomed to hopeless, loveless lives. The truth is that I share a personality type with millions of others, many of whom have good jobs, close-knit families and real friends. We represent a truth that’s hard to believe: There’s nothing inherently immoral about having limited access to emotion. I offer my story because I know I’m not alone.” • Hmm.
The 420
“Psychedelic drug ibogaine hailed as healing. U.S. patients ask why it’s illegal” [WaPo]. “[A] Stanford University study published in January showing that ibogaine dramatically improved symptoms of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder in 30 Special Operations veterans diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries. For advocates, that study offers the latest evidence that patients should have access to the drug in the United States, where it remains illegal despite decades of encouraging findings, principally for use treating addiction. Even as momentum could be shifting in ibogaine’s favor, concerns persist about the threat the drug poses to the heart, reflecting a risk-reward calculation that frames studies of other psychedelic agents. The increased interest in ibogaine arrives amid urgent efforts to ease the nation’s deadly addiction crisis and comes as companies race to develop psychedelics to treat mental health ailments.” • That, plus a population-wide of cognitive function, for some extremely unknown reason? (I’m so old I remember when Hunter Thompson wrote that ibogaine was the source of Ed Muskie’s brain paralysis.)
Class Warfare
PMCs gotta PMC:
When are we gonna talk about *why* so many people defend their desires to dine in public
From my experience in the service industry, I truly feel like a large portion of these people *need* to be served + play mind games with wait staff in order to feel alive
— potatum🥔 (@pot8um) March 13, 2024
I learned to eat in Montreal, which partakes of the Parisian notion that the server is a professional, so sheesh, mind games? That would get in the way of my enjoyment of fine dining. But perhaps people feed on things other than food….
News of the Wired
“Voyager 1 starts making sense again after months of babble” [The Register]. The flight team sent a poke, got a memory dump (!!), in response. “The time lag is a problem. A command from Earth takes 22.5 hours to reach the probe, and the same period is needed again for a response. This means a 45-hour wait to see what a given command might have done. The availability of skills is also an issue. Many of the engineers who worked on the project – Voyager 1 launched in 1977 – are no longer around, and the team that remains is faced with trawling through reams of decades-old documents to deal with unanticipated issues arising today.” • Like much else? Literally and metaphorically?
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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 No Spam:
No Spam writes: “Up the peninsula us cleaner water, these guys hanging out. Apparently the are a leaning indicator for polluted water, and given one sees ‘bazillions of cargo carriers and tankers every time you look at the ocean, in a few minutes I count more than a dozen. Twenty-four hrs a day so the shoppers can remodel.”
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