By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Stewart Park, Tompkins, New York, United States. “Originally recorded on 35mm film; tape speed noted as 46 cm/s…. [M]ade between 5AM and 6AM on 18 May 1929.” The Macauley Library is a library in the fullest sense of the word.
“When I Became a Birder, Almost Everything Else Fell Into Place” [Ed Yong, New York Times]. Readers will recall Yong as one of the few trustworthy mainstream journalists on Covid. The whole piece is worth reading in full, and it’s so lovely I hate to extract anything from it. But needs must: “Birding has tripled the time I spend outdoors. It has pushed me to explore Oakland in ways I never would have: Amazing hot spots lurk within industrial areas, sewage treatment plants and random residential parks. It has proved more meditative than meditation. While birding, I seem impervious to heat, cold, hunger and thirst. My senses focus resolutely on the present, and the usual hubbub in my head becomes quiet. When I spot a species for the first time — a lifer — I course with adrenaline while being utterly serene. I also feel a much deeper connection to the natural world, which I have long written about but always remained slightly distant from…. When I step out my door in the morning, I take an aural census of the neighborhood, tuning in to the chatter of creatures that were always there and that I might have previously overlooked. The passing of the seasons feels more granular, marked by the arrival and disappearance of particular species instead of much slower changes in day length, temperature and greenery. I find myself noticing small shifts in the weather and small differences in habitat. I think about the tides.” • Do we have any birders in the readership?
* * *
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Stewart Park, Tompkins, New York, United States. “Originally recorded on 35mm film; tape speed noted as 46 cm/s…. [M]ade between 5AM and 6AM on 18 May 1929.” The Macauley Library is a library in the fullest sense of the word.
“When I Became a Birder, Almost Everything Else Fell Into Place” [Ed Yong, New York Times]. Readers will recall Yong as one of the few trustworthy mainstream journalists on Covid. The whole piece is worth reading in full, and it’s so lovely I hate to extract anything from it. But needs must: “Birding has tripled the time I spend outdoors. It has pushed me to explore Oakland in ways I never would have: Amazing hot spots lurk within industrial areas, sewage treatment plants and random residential parks. It has proved more meditative than meditation. While birding, I seem impervious to heat, cold, hunger and thirst. My senses focus resolutely on the present, and the usual hubbub in my head becomes quiet. When I spot a species for the first time — a lifer — I course with adrenaline while being utterly serene. I also feel a much deeper connection to the natural world, which I have long written about but always remained slightly distant from…. When I step out my door in the morning, I take an aural census of the neighborhood, tuning in to the chatter of creatures that were always there and that I might have previously overlooked. The passing of the seasons feels more granular, marked by the arrival and disappearance of particular species instead of much slower changes in day length, temperature and greenery. I find myself noticing small shifts in the weather and small differences in habitat. I think about the tides.” • Do we have any birders in the readership?
* * *
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Ed Yong on birding (under both “Look for the Helpers” and “Birdsong of the Day”).
(2) Doubling grid capacity with better cables.
(3) Feathers over the millenia.
* * *
Look for the Helpers
See Ed Yong on birding just under the Birdsong of the Day:
Really grateful to Jenny for writing this great piece about the Spoonbill Club – our little venture to run birding trips for Bay Area folks with long COVID and other energy-limiting chronic illnesses.
(And I hope someone fulfils Molly Adams’s wish of starting a NY chapter.)
[image or embed]
— Ed Yong (@edyong209.bsky.social) Apr 13, 2024 at 12:45 PM
Neat idea, too.
* * *
My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of “Helpers” there. 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).
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
* * *
Biden Administration
These are the ships that would have bulit that pier off Gaza:
USNS 2nd Lt John P Bobo Has Engine Fire and Aborts Gaza Mission | Status of Other Ships
1️⃣ USAV Besson delayed in Azores2️⃣ USAV Wilson Wharf stuck in Tenerife3️⃣ USNS #Bobo engine fire and return to Jacksonville https://t.co/JV9IFcCess
— Sal Mercogliano (WGOW Shipping) 🚢⚓🐪🚒🏴☠️ (@mercoglianos) April 18, 2024
No doubt there’s a Plan B, but still….
2024
Less than a year to go!
RCP Poll Averages, April 5
Here this Friday’s RCP poll. Trump is still up in all the Swing States (more here), leading with one exception: PA. I’ve highlighted it again, (1) because BIden is now up there, and (2) it’s an outlier, has been for weeks. Why isn’t Trump doing well there? (I’ll work out a better way to do this, but for now: Blue dot = move toward Biden; red dot = move toward Trump. No dot = no change (presumably because state polls are not that numerous so far from election day).
* * *
Trump (R): “Trump juror previously arrested for ripping down right-leaning political ads dismissed from trial” [FOX]. “[Juror #4] was excused from the jury in former President Trump’s criminal trial on Thursday after it was revealed the man was once arrested for tearing down right-leaning political advertisements…. Juror #2, a woman who lived on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and works as a nurse, returned to court Thursday morning and said that after further thought, she had concerns about being fair and balanced in the case. ‘I definitely have concerns,’ she said, noting that her family and friends questioned if she was serving on the jury [because news stories revealed her appearance]. ‘I don’t think I can be fair.’” • To the Prosecution’s credit, they participated in axing #4. More on the jury:
They include a lawyer, a hedge funder, an investment banker, a woman in publishing, a teacher turned stay-at-home mom, and a retired college administrator. And according to @nytimes, these are not the jurors Trump’s looking for.https://t.co/hUvOC7PmRt
— Lisa Rubin (@lawofruby) April 18, 2024
Solid PMC, looks to me.
Trump (R): “Second juror dropped from Trump’s hush money trial: Live updates” [The Hill]. “Five jurors have so far been picked, after two already-selected jurors were dismissed earlier Thursday. There are 13 juror selections more to go for a panel that will include six alternates, whittled down from hundreds of New Yorkers called to serve… ‘I still have a flip phone,’ one prospective juror noted as he indicated he doesn’t listen to any podcasts. He also made clear he ‘only’ gets his news from the New York Daily News and the New York Post. Among the prospective jurors’ questions is where they consume the majority of their news.” • A juror after NC’s heart! (Still feeling my way on the sourcing here; the reporting on this live blog is better than FOX, and easier to follow than the Twitter, so I may make The Hill my primary source. Readers?
Trump (R): Trump using his phone in court:
OMG 😂 Trump’s ‘hush money’ NYC trial live updates: Ex-prez kicks off ‘hush money’ criminal trial by taking phone call inside courtroom in flagrant violation of the rules 😂 https://t.co/MxZG0XxyvG
— Karli Bonne’ 🇺🇸 (@KarluskaP) April 18, 2024
Dude, sleeping is fine. But a phone is too much.
* * *
Trump (R): “‘Smiling his ass off’: How Trump used the New York bodega visit to return to form” [Politico]. “Outside the Sanaa Convenient Store, the Harlem bodega where clerk Jose Alba fatally stabbed a customer who was attacking him — and who was initially charged with murder, before the charges were later dropped — Trump was back on familiar ground….. On Tuesday, Trump said he will ‘campaign locally‘ during the trial. And the bodega visit was likely just the first of many such appearances. His advisers have said, even on some trial days, to expect in-person and virtual events…. But as he spoke with reporters in New York, a bastion of Democratic politics, Trump’s read of the news landscape — if not the political one — seemed spot on. In the media capital of the world, Trump said he suspected there was ‘more press here than there is if I went out to some nice[ha] location.’ ‘He’s right,’ said Dave Catalfamo, a Republican consultant in New York…. But no matter where viewers stood on Trump, they could at least see in his appearance on Tuesday the kind of joy-riding former president they recognized…. The visit, said Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic strategist based in New York, was a signature example of Trump using ‘national television coverage as an advertising tool without having to pay for the gross rating points.’ ‘He’s very smart,’ Sheinkopf said. ‘Anybody who understates his capacity to use PR as opposed to normative political techniques is wrong. He’s very good at it, and what it does … it wipes away the things that people are trying to do to undercut his capacities.’” • Trump as master retail politician; who knew?
Trump (R): “A striking contrast on Trump trial day” [Washington Examiner]. “The scenario of a Democratic district attorney, Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg, putting Trump on trial amid a presidential campaign is striking in part because of a new survey showing a plurality of the public believing the Trump presidency was better for America than the presidency of Trump’s opponent, the sitting President Joe Biden. The news is deep inside a New York Times-Siena poll that found the Biden-Trump race overall almost exactly tied, with Trump leading Biden by a single percentage point, 46% to 45%. Later in the poll, the pollsters asked these two questions: ‘Do you generally remember the years that Donald Trump was president as mostly good years for America, mostly bad years for America, or not really good or bad?” and “Do you think the years that Joe Biden has been president have been mostly good years for America, mostly bad years for America, or not really good or bad?’ Trump had a solid advantage in voters’ recollections, with 42% saying his presidential years were mostly good years for America, while just 25% said Biden’s presidential years have been mostly good for America. Trump also had a solid advantage on the other side of the answer, with 33% saying his presidential years were mostly bad for America, while a much larger 46% said Biden’s presidential years have been mostly bad for America. Trump’s advantage in voters’ memories is nearly across the board.”
* * *
Biden (D): “Biden claims uncle vanished after crashing in area of New Guinea with cannibals; military has different story” [FOX]. “Biden told the [Pittsburgh] steelworkers that after D-Day, his mother’s four brothers volunteered to join the military. One of those uncles, he said, was Ambrose Finnegan, who went by the nickname Bozey. ‘He was a hell of an athlete, they tell me, when he was a kid,’ Biden said, adding that he was in the Army air corps, which was in place before the Air Force came along. ‘He flew those single-engine planes as reconnaissance over war zones, and he got shot down in New Guinea. They never found the body because there used to be, there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.’ … The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency has a different record of what happened to Biden’s uncle. The site said on May 14, 1944, an airplane carrying a crew of three and one passenger, identified as Finnegan, left Momote Airfield on Los Negros Island for a courier flight to New Guinea. ‘For unknown reasons, this plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea,’ the report reads. ‘Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard.’ The report also said three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash, while one crew member survived and was rescued by a barge. Finnegan has not been associated with any of the remains recovered from the area after the war and is still not accounted for, according to the report.” • Cannibalism in the zeitgeist, I swear. And floating around in Biden’s brain.
* * *
Kennedy (I): “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gets spot on Michigan’s ballot as Natural Law Party nominee” [Detroit News]. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom some experts view as a potential spoiler in this year’s race for the White House, will be the Natural Law Party’s nominee for president in Michigan. Kennedy’s campaign announced the news Thursday, a day after members of the Natural Law Party in Michigan held a convention where they officially picked him…. The Natural Law Party’s website touts plans to lower taxes, to make teaching ‘an honored profession with commensurate compensation’ and to enact programs ‘to reduce stress in the individual and throughout society.” • The “website” is the national Natural Law Party’s website, but the national party dissolved most of its state chapters in 2004, though Michigan is still active. Be that as it may, the stress reducer touted on the national party’s website is Transcendental Mediation™. So.
* * *
PA: “Trump’s fight for Pennsylvania” [Unherd]. The description of Trump’s speech in Lehigh County’s Schnecksville is super, but this is the meat of the piece:
Both [Biden and Trump] will be fighting hard for the overwhelmingly white, working-class vote in the state. Historically, Lehigh Valley was populated by the Pennsylvania Dutch, described by one local historian as ‘the most conservative people in America.’ But, in recent years, the make-up of the region has begun to change. Over the last couple of decades, the Valley has become the East Coast’s ‘supply-chain empire’ for transporting one-click goods on interstate highways. Given its proximity to New York and Philadelphia, the Lehigh Valley serves as a node for 100 million people living on the eastern seaboard to receive their deliveries, bringing new jobs and revenue to the region. That has also caused a population boom, much of it driven by Latinos who moved to the area in search of work. Allenstown is now a majority-Hispanic city — a demographic that Trump has been actively trying to court. A recent poll found that the GOP contender now edges out Biden among Hispanic voters, with 46% supporting the former president. A separate poll shows that 42% of Latinos now support a border wall — up 12 points from December 2021. In a state where Latino political power is growing, this could pose a threat to Biden’s re-election prospects.
And of the rally-goers:
But it is not his appeal to Latinos that makes Trump rallies so different from any other. It is how he electrifies a segment of the population in a way that no other politician can. These are people who weren’t interested in politics before Trump and, troublingly, won’t be interested in it after him. In some respect, it is a revolt of the disenfranchised.
“A revolt of the disenfranchised….” you’d think somebody would do something about that…
Republican Funhouse
“Doing ‘the right thing’ may cost Johnson his speaker’s gavel” [CNN]. “It took less than six months for Speaker Mike Johnson to reach his existential moment. The Louisiana Republican has arrived at fateful but familiar crossroads where he must either choose to honor a conventional vision of US national interests or side with the wrecking ball antics of his party’s far-right bloc…. Now, as Johnson tries to pass billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan — vital to protecting US allies from Russian, Iranian and Chinese totalitarianism and preserving US power and prestige – he’s having to put his own job on the line to confront GOP extremists who accuse him of betraying the party’s base. ‘When you do the right thing, you let the chips fall where they may,’ Johnson said in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday ahead of three critical days that could decide whether he can cling to his gavel.” • It’s highly unlikely that billions for a losing war in Ukraine and a genocide in Gaza will “preserve” “US power and prestige” (though perhaps I’m not being cynical enough. A “wrecking ball” seems thoroughly appropriate, though it would be my preference to see it swung by the left, were there any such animal.
“Josh Hawley’s Labor Revolution” [Compact]. “As Batya Ungar-Sargon has written in these pages, today’s GOP is a ‘working-class party without a working-class agenda.’” Yeah, like ownership and control of the means of production. But I digress (except not, really). More: “But there are important exceptions to this trend, and few shine as brightly as Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) when it comes to standing up for wage-earners and forging alliances with organized labor. Over the past few months, these efforts have earned Hawley justified praise—and donation dollars—from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Most recently, the Teamsters’ political action committee offered $5,000 toward Hawley’s re-election campaign in recognition of his support for striking auto workers, among other labor groups. It’s a rare feat for a Republican lawmaker at a moment when partisanship continues to divide the GOP from organized labor, even as the party under Donald Trump continues to consolidate its support among union households…. The Hawley-Teamster alliance demonstrates that it is possible for Republicans to win labor’s support, provided both camps are prepared to take trust-building steps. For Republicans, it isn’t enough to merely make vague pro-worker noises that amount to so much culture-war vibes. They have to stand with workers on material grounds, as Hawley admirably has. For unions, meanwhile, it likewise means a willingness to privilege bread-and-butter issues over the progressive shibboleths that too often lead the mainstream of the labor movement to act as slavish adjuncts of the Democratic Party.” • And “fighting against” the “progressive shibboleths” with distractions like DEI. What this article is really arguing for is a pivot from the culture wars, and about time, too.
Democrats en Déshabillé
“The very short Mayorkas impeachment trial, explained” [Vox]. “On Tuesday, House Republicans sent two articles of impeachment against Mayorkas to the upper chamber, and on Wednesday, senators were sworn in as jurors for a trial. The articles accuse Mayorkas of failing to enforce immigration laws, making false statements to Congress, and obstructing oversight into DHS policies, all charges he denies. On Wednesday, the Senate rejected both articles, voting 51-48 along party lines to deem the first ‘unconstitutional; and 51-49 to dismiss the second article and adjourn the trial before it even really began. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) voted present on the first article… while the impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas was designed to cast negative attention on the Biden administration as Trump navigates countless legal scandals of his own, Senate Democrats’ quick dismissal has dulled much of its impact.” • Effective when they want to be….
“Moskowitz confronts Greene on Ukraine, Nazi remarks” [The Hill]. “Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) confronted Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) in a Wednesday hearing about her false claims that Nazism was rampant in Ukraine — an argument frequently touted by Russian President Vladimir Putin to justify his country’s invasion of Ukraine.” • The difficulty where is that Nazism is rampant in Ukraine (see NC here, in a post that contains numerous examples of Ukraine’s Azovs being called Nazis in the US press, when it was permitted to do so). Meanwhile, who Moskowitz?
Too bad to see The Hill taking in AIPAC’s laundry.
Pandemics
“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
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Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (dashboard); VT (dashboard); WA (dashboard; dashboard); WI (wastewater); WV (wastewater); WY (wastewater).
Resources, Canada (National): Wastewater (Government of Canada).
Resources, Canada (Provincial): ON (wastewater); QC (les eaux usées); BC (wastewater); BC, Vancouver (wastewater).
Hat tips to helpful readers: Alexis, anon (2), Art_DogCT, B24S, CanCyn, ChiGal, Chuck L, Festoonic, FM, FreeMarketApologist (4), Gumbo, hop2it, JB, JEHR, JF, JL Joe, John, JM (10), JustAnotherVolunteer, JW, KatieBird, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
* * *
Maskstravaganza
“Is It OK for Internists to Wear Masks Forever?” [Catherine Sarkisian, MD Sensible Medicine]. Sarkisian is a geriatrician at UCLA Health. “I was happy to see that the VA no longer requires staff or patients to wear masks. Patients who are coughing are asked to wear masks, and staff who are sick are told to stay home.” Four years into the pandemic, and Doctor Sarkisian remains resolutely ignorant that SARS-CoV-2 spreads both a- and pre-symptomatically. I pity her patients, dealing with someone so ignorant. More: “I was unhappy to see that most doctors still wear masks. For the house-officers on my team, this included wearing masks in our private conference room. I worked with one house-officer for an entire week, and I never once saw his face.” (Note Sarkisians barely, er, masked wish to assert her authority over the house-officer — “Let me see your smile!” — by making it more likely she would be able, if infected, to infect them.) This lie trope drives me up the wall. Masks — except for industrial-strength Darth Vader masks, not at issue here — cover the mouth and nose. They do not cover the eyes, which are — follow me closely, here, Doctor, because you seem to have forgotten the anatomy part of your medical education — part of the face and are (“the windows of the soul”) capable of expressing the full range of human emotion. Half the planet wears masks regularly, including in hospital settings ffs. More: “Hiding your face from your attending and colleagues is one thing, but the more important questions is: what impact does wearing a mask have on our ability to provide outstanding patient care? How does it feel for our patients who are sick and alone in the hospital to never see a human face?” • Man, that’s a toughie. During Delta, it would have felt a hell of a lot better to see HCWs wearing masks than coughing your lungs into bloody mush. And today it feels a lot better than neurological and vascalar damage, plus Long Covid. There’s probably more and worse, but I can’t go on. “I was happy to see HCWs blithely infecting patients with an airborne pathogen, while smiling” [pounds head on desk].
Elite Maleficence
WHO actually walking back airborne transmission, after having admitted they were wrong to suppress it:
Two interviews with @JeremyFarrar.
Before and after becoming @WHO‘s Chief Scientist.
Note the difference…
*Today Jeremy Farrar will be hosting the new WHO report on the proposed terminology for pathogens that transmit through the air. Register here: https://t.co/QaYcmEvPgV pic.twitter.com/VPylztrhEL
— Maarten De Cock (@mdc_martinus) April 18, 2024
The new WHO report, a thread:
It’s out! The @WHO’s new wordsmithing report on airborne transmission. I’m going to do a little dissection on the good and the bad, who wins and who loses. 1/ https://t.co/QMaOKA76yH pic.twitter.com/7uKFu1ZtdS
— 𝙹𝚘𝚎 𝚅𝚒𝚙𝚘𝚗𝚍 [email protected] (@jvipondmd) April 18, 2024
More:
The good: An explicit acknowledgment that COVID is airborne. We’ve known this from the beginning, but only in the last month has the WHO really stopped hedging the language on this. No apology for the impact of the error though. That would have been nice, if wholly unexpected. 4/ pic.twitter.com/NrU0p1m87z
— 𝙹𝚘𝚎 𝚅𝚒𝚙𝚘𝚗𝚍 [email protected] (@jvipondmd) April 18, 2024
And more:
more bad: Multi-disciplinary engagement. excellent to have airborne scientists here. Still missing some key disciplines: no engineers, no occupational hygienists (the true mask experts). We need all brains engaged on wicked problems. 6/ pic.twitter.com/g5zPgJQEls
— 𝙹𝚘𝚎 𝚅𝚒𝚙𝚘𝚗𝚍 [email protected] (@jvipondmd) April 18, 2024
HICPAC will be happy. I’ll have to read the report myself in the near future…
* * *
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) Our curve has now flattened out at a level far above valleys under Trump. 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) No backward revisons….
[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) CDC seems to have killed this off, since the link is broken, I think in favor of this thing. I will try to confirm. UPDATE Yes, leave it to CDC to kill a page, and then announce it was archived a day later. And heaven forfend CDC should explain where to go to get equivalent data, if any. I liked the ER data, because it seemed really hard to game.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Flattening out to a non-zero baseline. I suppose to a tame epidemiologist it looks like “endemicity,” but to me it looks like another tranche of lethality.
[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) Still down.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) JN.1 dominates utterly.
[11] Looks like the Times isn’t reporting death data any more? Maybe I need to go back to The Economist….
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims [Trading Economics]. “The number of people claiming unemployment benefits in the US was unchanged from the prior week at 212,000 for the period ending April 18th, below market expectations of 215,000. Additionally, continuing claims were loosely unchanged at 1,812,000 at the start of the month, below market expectations of 1,818,000, to show that the unemployed are finding jobs at a healthy pace when compared to historical standards.”
Manufacturing: “United States Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index” [Trading Economics]. “The Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Index in the US rose 12 points to 15.5 in April 2024, well above market expectations of 1.5. It was the third consecutive positive reading and the highest since April 2022… The survey’s broad indicators for future activity fell but remained positive, suggesting continued expectations for growth over the next six months.”
* * *
Retail: “Inside Amazon’s Secret Operation to Gather Intel on Rivals” [Wall Street Journal]. “The operation, called Big River Services International, sells around $1 million a year of goods through e-commerce marketplaces including eBay, Shopify, Walmart and Amazo under brand names such as Rapid Cascade and Svea Bliss. “We are entrepreneurs, thinkers, marketers and creators,” Big River says on its website. ‘We have a passion for customers and aren’t afraid to experiment.’ What the website doesn’t say is that Big River is an arm of Amazon that surreptitiously gathers intelligence on the tech giant’s competitors…. The story of Big River offers new insight into Amazon’s elaborate efforts to stay ahead of rivals. Team members attended their rivals’ seller conferences and met with competitors identifying themselves only as employees of Big River Services, instead of disclosing that they worked for Amazon. They were given non-Amazon email addresses to use externally—in emails with people at Amazon, they used Amazon email addresses—and took other extraordinary measures to keep the project secret. They disseminated their reports to Amazon executives using printed, numbered copies rather than email. Those who worked on the project weren’t even supposed to discuss the relationship internally with most teams at Amazon.” • Oh, “Big River.” I get it. Musical interlude.
Tech: “A Rarely Used Technique Could Double U.S. Grid Capacity” [Oilprice.com]. “Much of the grid infrastructure is outdated, built to rely on electricity supplies from a few major energy hubs. However, as more green energy projects crop up in atypical locations – such as rural regions and offshore sites – it is becoming increasingly difficult to ensure that energy will reach the grid for distribution. Many energy experts believe it will take a complete overhaul to prepare the grid for the rapid growth of the country’s renewable energy capacity. Yet, some believe it may be possible to roll out a rarely used technique to upgrade old power lines across the U.S. …. Two reports released this month suggest that replacing existing power lines with cables made from state-of-the-art materials could potentially double the capacity of the grid across many parts of the U.S., allowing more renewable energy projects to be connected. The technique, ‘advanced reconductoring’, would replace the traditional approach to transmission line construction. Most of the powerlines in the U.S. are made up of steel cores coated in strands of aluminium, as electricity companies continue to use the century-old, tried-and-tested design. However, some companies have developed innovative cables, which use smaller and lighter cores, such as carbon fibre, that have a greater energy transport capacity than aluminium. While the technology is available in the U.S., many major companies have been reluctant to make the switch due to their unfamiliarity with the materials, as well as the fear of regulatory and bureaucratic limitations. Most importantly, replacing old transmission lines can be done quickly and prevents the need for regulatory approval for new power infrastructure. The technique is also significantly cheaper than a total infrastructure overhaul, costing around half the price of constructing new lines. The reports suggested that if utilities started replacing the thousands of miles of power lines they could add four times as much transmission capacity by 2035 as they are currently on pace to do.”
* * *
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 35 Fear (previous close: 34 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 46 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Apr 18 at 1:04:37 PM ET.
News of the Wired
“Why Feathers Are One of Evolution’s Cleverest Inventions” [Scientific American]. “Feathers kept [B6, a young Bar-tailed Godwit] warm overnight while it flew above the Pacific Ocean. Feathers repelled rain along the way. Feathers formed the flight surfaces of the wings that kept B6 aloft and drove the bird forward for nearly 250 hours without failing.” This is extremely nerdy: “[P]owered flight—that is, flapping flight rather than gliding flight—probably evolved multiple times in dinosaurs, with just one of those lineages surviving to the present in the form of birds. Yet only in birds did flight feathers attain the degree of shape-shifting we see today. That ability of feathers to twist in just the right way is what enabled slotting, which makes the wing much more efficient at low flight speeds. In essence, a slotted wing behaves as if it is longer and narrower than it is anatomically. Slotting also makes the wing tip very resistant to stall, whereby the airflow separates from the wing, causing a precipitous loss of the lift that keeps the bird in the air. It’s a vital adaptation that underpins an array of aerial acrobatics.”
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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 Desert Dog:
Desert Dog writes: “Good morning!!” It’s still winter!
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