By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Patient readers, more on the day’s fireworks shortly. The New Year starts with a bang! –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
In honor of the New Year, I’m going to shift mimidae from Mockingbirds to Thrashers.
Brown Thrasher,Libertytown; Audrey Carroll Wildlife Sanctuary, Frederick, Maryland, United States. “Brown thrashers have been back in this area only 4-6 days.”
In Case You Might Miss…
- Mangione judge, defense fund.
- WSWS on managing disease through allowing infection.
- Populism and the Wizard of Oz.
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
Realignment and Legitimacy
“A look at Duke alumna Katharine Parker, pretrial judge in federal case against CEO murder suspect Luigi Mangione” [The Chronicle]. “U.S. Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker, who is presiding over Mangione’s federal pretrial hearings, graduated cum laude from Duke with a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1989. As the pretrial judge, she oversees preliminary hearings regarding the use of evidence but is not expected to preside over Mangione’s trial…. Parker was elected a fellow of The College of Labor and Employment Lawyers and named on the Best Lawyers in America list for seven consecutive years. She has also served as chair of the Disability Law Committee for the New York City Bar and received numerous awards for pro bono work and charitable service. sIn 2016, Parker was appointed to her current role as federal magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York. Parker’s husband, Bret Parker, served as vice president and assistant general counsel of Wyeth Pharmaceuticals from 2004 until 2009. When Wyeth was acquired by Pfizer, a multinational pharmaceutical company, he retained a transitional role at the company until 2010, according to a LinkedIn page under his name.”
“Defense fund established by supporters of suspected CEO killer Luigi Mangione tops $200K” [ABC]. “Several online defense funds have been created for Mangione by anonymous people, including one on the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo that as of Tuesday morning had raised over $200,000. The GiveSendGo defense fund for the 26-year-old Mangione was established by an anonymous group calling itself “The December 4th Legal Committee,” apparently in reference to the day Mangione allegedly ambushed and gunned down Thompson in Midtown Manhattan as the executive walked to his company’s shareholders conference at the New York Hilton hotel.”
Syndemics
“I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch — AND I WILL BE HEARD.” –William Lloyd Garrison
Covid Resources, United States (National): Transmission (CDC); Wastewater (CDC, Biobot; includes many counties; Wastewater Scan, includes drilldown by zip); Variants (CDC; Walgreens); “Iowa COVID-19 Tracker” (in IA, but national data). “Infection Control, Emergency Management, Safety, and General Thoughts” (especially on hospitalization by city).
Lambert here: Readers, thanks for the collective effort. To update any entry, do feel free to contact me at the address given with the plants. Please put “COVID” in the subject line. Thank you!
Resources, United States (Local): AK (dashboard); AL (dashboard); AR (dashboard); AZ (dashboard); CA (dashboard; Marin, dashboard; Stanford, wastewater; Oakland, wastewater); CO (dashboard; wastewater); CT (dashboard); DE (dashboard); FL (wastewater); GA (wastewater); HI (dashboard); IA (wastewater reports); ID (dashboard, Boise; dashboard, wastewater, Central Idaho; wastewater, Coeur d’Alene; dashboard, Spokane County); IL (wastewater); IN (dashboard); KS (dashboard; wastewater, Lawrence); KY (dashboard, Louisville); LA (dashboard); MA (wastewater); MD (dashboard); ME (dashboard); MI (wastewater; wastewater); MN (dashboard); MO (wastewater); MS (dashboard); MT (dashboard); NC (dashboard); ND (dashboard; wastewater); NE (dashboard); NH (wastewater); NJ (dashboard); NM (dashboard); NV (dashboard; wastewater, Southern NV); NY (dashboard); OH (dashboard); OK (dashboard); OR (dashboard); PA (dashboard); RI (dashboard); SC (dashboard); SD (dashboard); TN (dashboard); TX (dashboard); UT (wastewater); VA (wastewater); 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, KF, KidDoc, LL, Michael King, KF, LaRuse, mrsyk, MT, MT_Wild, otisyves, Petal (6), RK (2), RL, RM, Rod, square coats (11), tennesseewaltzer, thump, Tom B., Utah, Bob White (3).
Stay safe out there!
Elite Maleficence
“Five years of the COVID-19 pandemic: An interview with Dr. Arijit Chakravarty” [WSWS]. Every word a gem. Here’s how it starts out: “Fast-forward to today, and COVID-19 is both ubiquitous in our day-to-day conversations and still very prevalent as a respiratory pathogen in the global community. Close to 30 million people have died due to the pandemic, over 410 million people are now living with Long COVID globally, and one can assume that the majority of the world’s population has been infected with COVID on average at least three times. Are there any initial reflections you would like to share on the five-year anniversary of the start of the COVID-19 pandemic? Arijit Chakravarty (AC): Yes. This is what failure looks like. We are looking at it. No one ever said when the concept of public health emerged in the 19th century, ‘We really need an organization that is committed to serving as the doula for every newly emergent pathogen that pops out of the wild.’ The idea that emergent pathogens need to be shepherded into endemicity, this has never been in any public health mission statement.” And again: “[W]e are managing disease through allowing infections, which had never been done before.” • (Bidens’s policy of “mass infection without mitigration,” as I repeated often.) This is a must-read, and kudos to WSWS. Nevertheless, I have not seen an account based on political economy for how and why public health adopted the policies it did, and I do try to keep track. That seems to me to be a very big issue in the game. That issue is also what the word “failure” erases. Why isn’t “everything’s going according to plan” an option, analytically?
Lambert here: A little more orange and red around Ohio; no rise at JFK, EWR, ORD, LAX.
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC December 16 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC December 21 | Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC December 21 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| New York[5] New York State, data December 27: | National [6] CDC December 26: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens December 23: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic December 14: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC December 9: | Variants[10] CDC December 9 |
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| Deaths | |
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC November 20: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC November 20: |
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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] (CDC) Seeing more red and more orange, but nothing new at major hubs.
[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.
[3] (CDC Variants) XEC takes over. That WHO label, “Ommicron,” has done a great job normalizing successive waves of infection.
[4] (ED) A little uptick.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Slow and small but steady increase.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). Leveling out.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Continued upward trend since, well, Thanksgiving.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Leveling out.
[10] (Travelers: Variants). Positivity is new, but variants have not yet been released.
[11] Deaths low, positivity leveling out.
[12] Deaths low, ED leveling out.
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “Initial jobless claims in the US slumped by 9,000 from the previous week to 211,000 in the last week of 2024, contrasting sharply with the expected increase to 222,000, to mark the lowest amount of initial claims in eight months.”
Manufacturing: “Jet crash disaster in South Korea marks another setback for Boeing” [Associated Press]. “Alan Price, a former chief pilot at Delta Air Lines who is now a consultant, said it would be inappropriate to link the incident Sunday to two fatal crashes involving Boeing’s troubled 737 Max jetliner in 2018 and 2019. In January this year, a door plug blew off a 737 Max while it was in flight, raising more questions about the plane. The Boeing 737-800 that crash-landed in Korea, Price noted, is a very proven airplane. ‘It’s different from the Max …It’s a very safe airplane.’” And the Max isn’t. What horrible messaging.
Manufacturing: “Boeing’s terrible year is ending with the worst aviation tragedy of 2024” [CNN]. Every setback an excuse for a roundup like this one. Nevertheless: “The Jeju Air plane’s landing gear appeared not to be extended as it attempted to land. There had been reports of a bird strike causing the plane’s pilots to issue a distress call as it upon approached the airport in Muan, South Korea…. A 15-year-old plane, like the one that crashed Sunday, is unlikely to have problems caused by a design flaw or production problems attributed to Boeing. But it is too soon to say why the Jeju Air plane’s landing gear was not extended.” •
Manufacturing: “Boeing on track to be 2024’s biggest loser in Dow Jones Index” [Reuters]. “U.S. planemaker Boeing, opens new tab is on track to be the biggest loser of 2024 in the Dow Jones Index, tumbling 32% as it bounced from one crisis to another.” • Well, I suppose bouncing is better than crashing….
Manufacturing: “Intel’s Grim Lesson for Boeing: Sometimes Mr. Fix-It Is Too Late” [Wall Street Journal]. “Since the 2000s, both [Boeing and Intel] became too narrowly focused on present profitability, despite operating in sectors in which big spending is essential to maintain a competitive edge decades down the line. Dividend payouts and share repurchases jumped and company cultures moved away from technical talent to rewarding managers based on financial metrics instead. Investors eventually saw the folly of this approach.” Yes, after planes crashed into the ground. More: “His true test will come in a few years, when a replacement for the 737 MAX starts being developed. Almost two decades will have elapsed since the first flight of Boeing’s last clean-sheet model, the 787. Without a bold, expensive attempt to push aircraft manufacturing forward, however, the risk will be larger than ever that airlines could shop at Airbus for their next-generation jets. Yet, with much of Boeing’s old engineering talent now gone and investors hungry to recoup some of their losses, the temptation to play it safe will be strong.” • I haven’t seen a firm statement from anybody (e.g. Leeham, last I checked). Of course, Boeing can stay it the repair business for a long time; see the B-52. And maybe less air travel is good for the planet, unless your policy goal is depopulation through the spread of airborne pandemics, of course.
Manufacturing: “China steps up drive to break Boeing and Airbus grip on plane market” [Financial Times]. “China is stepping up its push to break the grip of Boeing and Airbus on the aircraft market, as the state-run maker of the country’s first homegrown passenger jet seeks certifications for it to fly beyond the country’s shores. Comac’s heavily subsidised C919, which made its maiden commercial flight in 2023, is already flown on domestic routes by China’s three big state-owned carriers: Air China, China Eastern Airlines and China Southern Airlines. From this month, China Eastern will fly the C919 between Hong Kong and Shanghai, its first regular commercial route outside China’s mainland.” And: “Richard Aboulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, said building ‘elaborate product support facilities in export markets is very hard and expensive work, and a necessary precondition for competing with Airbus and Boeing.’ While several carriers in Asia have expressed interest in the C919, some executives say privately that they remain hesitant. ‘Maintenance support is the main issue,’ said a person close to Indonesia’s TransNusa, which has already received three of Comac’s smaller ARJ21 aircraft and is considering flying the C919.” • Can’t they outsource it? Maybe Comac could built a plant in Renton, hire all those fired Boeing workers.
Manufacturing: “China’s Export Crackdown Hits Boeing, Lockheed Martin And More” [Benzinga]. “China also added 10 companies to its Unreliable Entity List for participating in arms sales to Taiwan. Those companies are prohibited from doing any business in China and their executives may not enter or live in the country. Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., General Dynamics Corp. and RTX Corp. are among the companies affected. Andrew Gilholm, a China expert at the consulting firm Control Risks, told the New York Times that China has taken similar actions on these companies before. ‘Most of this is probably at the symbolic level because so many of these entities were already subject to sanctions,’ Gilholm said.” The move is seen as retaliation to recent U.S. measures including the Biden administration’s restrictions on exports of advanced memory chips and chipmaking machinery to 140 Chinese companies and the addition of Chinese firms to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Entity List.”
Tech: “Meta’s Big Bet on Bots Why AI friends are coming to Facebook and Instagram” [New York Magazine]. “The idea of introducing AI characters into Meta’s platforms is in some ways distinct and new — we’re talking about not just automating content curation and promotion here but, in some cases, actual creation — but can also be understood as a way to rebrand an effective but alienating overhaul that’s been a decade in the making. With many AI products — from ChatGPT to a customer-support bot — the performance of personhood, which is a bit of a misleading magic trick even when done carefully, is at least as important as raw capabilities. Meta can claim it’s building technology to create social-media agents that can exist on its platforms “in the same way that accounts do,” and maybe it’ll turn out to be right. But Meta’s AI characters are also a way to slap a more friendly, humanlike face on a long, bloodless campaign of social automation.” • A platform of all bots chittering to themselves…. Every tech bros wet dream, no? Goes with my theory that there will be a quiet return to the blogosphere; there really is something to be said for online spaces were something like authenticity is actually possible. Of course, this latest idea from The Zuckerberg™ could also go belly up. Remember the metaverse, with the avatars that — highly symbolically! — had literally nothing below the waist.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 26 Fear (previous close: 27 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 33 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 2 at 1:24:36 PM ET.
Book Nook
“A Very Private Life – Nikolai Tolstoy Remembers Patrick O’Brian We look back at the life of the ‘greatest historical novelist of all time’” [Unseen Histories]. This is very long, probably best for O’Brian stans (of which I am one). “What would a working day be like for Patrick? Was he a morning person? Was he very rigid in his time-keeping? NIKOLAI TOLSTOY: Yes, rigid. He would go straight down after breakfast. In Collioure, he had a strange, tiny place which was much, much smaller than this. It was like a cave. They had a vineyard going down and sloping quite steeply from the house. They had a terrace or balcony and under it, there was a gap and that’s where Patrick did his writing like The Naval Chronicle and things like that. He didn’t have many books around him.” • Ah, workflow. And that’s the ticket: A cave.
Gallery
Snow scene:
White Frost, 1875 #artbots #monet pic.twitter.com/3Jh7TCCAGl
— Claude Monet (@artistmonet) January 2, 2025
“Populism and the World of Oz” [National Museum of American History]. “On her journey to visit the Wizard, Dorothy meets the scarecrow and the tin woodman. According to Littlefield, the scarecrow, displaying ‘a terrible sense of inferiority and self doubt,’ represents the American farmer (who made up the bulk of the Populist Party). Littlefield cites an 1896 article which accuses Kansas farmers of ‘ignorance, irrationality and general muddle-headedness.’ By extension, the tin woodman represents the hoped-for other faction in the People’s Party—the factory worker. Dehumanized, the simple laborer has been turned into a machine.” The article concludes: “Remembering the days of low-skilled but highly paid factory work, many disenfranchised Americans struggle and look for someone to blame in a world that has changed and left them significantly out of the picture.” • From 2016, still germane.
I am not feeling wired today.
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 DG:
DG writes: “From my recovery workshop to yours.” This is such a lovely photo I’m going to declare it an honorary plant, because of all the wood.
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