By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
Sedge Warbler, Sinker’s Fields, Whixall, Shropshire, England, United Kingdom. “2 canal towpath 1 main drain near hide.” Short but sweet!
In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Trump riffing.
(2) Dear Hunter’s conviction.
(3) Ceiling fans and aerosol transmission.
(4) Origin of the tinfoil hat (as a signfier).
Look for the Helpers
Won’t you be my neighbor:
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
2024
Less than a half a year to go!
No discernible effect from Trump’s conviction yet (though Democrats have only just begun to exploit it). Swing States (more here) still Brownian-motioning around. Of course, it goes without saying that these are all state polls, therefore bad, and most of the results are within the margin of error. If will be interesting to see whether the verdict in Judge Merchan’s court affects the polling, and if so, how.
* * * Trump (R) (People v. Trump): “NJ reviewing Trump golf courses’ liquor licenses after felony conviction” [FOX]. “The New Jersey Attorney General’s Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control is reviewing the liquor licenses at properties owned by former President Donald Trump. The Alcoholic Beverage Control division (ABC) is considering whether Trump’s recent felony conviction violates a clause in the state law that restricts licenses based on criminal history…. According to New Jersey state law, ‘No license of any class shall be issued to any person under the age of 18 years or to any person who has been convicted of a crime involving moral turpitude.’” • Since we don’t know which of the three object offenses converted Trump’s business records misdemeanor into a felony, I don’t see how we can know whether turpitude was involved or not. This illusrates the larger point that Trump is now a felon, and imbricated within the criminal justice system, and that will have continuing and unexpected results (especially in Blue states).
* * * Trump (R): “With no teleprompter, Trump riffs with crowd at Las Vegas rally, vows to end taxes on tips” [USA Today]. “‘So this is the first time I’ve said this, and for those hotel workers and people that get tips you’re going to be very happy because when I get to office, we are going to not charge taxes on tips people (are) making,” Trump told a crowd of several thousand people.’” • Readers, if any of you spot a transcript for this speech, please send it along to me; I would like very much to compare the Trump of today to the Trump I reported on in 2016, where I described Trump as “riffing jazzily.”
Trump (R): “Why Plutocrats Are Rallying to Trump” [Jeet Heer, The Nation]. The deck: “Civic lessons won’t sway America’s oligarchs. Instead, we need forthright economic populism to bring them to heel.” Oh well. More: “The fact that so many rich people are willing to abandon democracy for the sake of money they don’t even need is a great argument for economic populism. In the past, Democrats have tried to undermine Trump’s popularity by claiming that his wealth is phony. In 2016, Hillary Clinton boasted, “I love having the support of real billionaires.” Clinton touted her support from Warren Buffett and Michael Bloomberg (who was given pride of place at the Democratic National Convention in both 2016 and 2020). But the sad truth is that Trump himself has the support of many real billionaires—and for good reason: He upholds their class interests. If the Democrats really want to rally popular support, they’d do well to mothball Bloomberg and run on good old-fashioned economic populism. Trump-loving plutocrats are a threat to democracy, and there is political capital to be reaped by highlighting that fact and promising to rein in their outsize economic power.” • Leading credence to my theory that Biden put Lina Khan at the FTC for future extortion, because otherwise, he’d be running on her record.
* * * Biden (D): “Team Biden bets an unfiltered Trump at the debate can shake up the race” [NBC]. “Team Biden sees the chance for him to go up against [Trump] as a probable catalyzing moment. That is particularly true if Biden shows up with the same kind of energy he brought to his State of the Union address in March, many Democrats say. Finally, Democrats and Biden officials hope, the public will be able to put aside the caricatures of the candidates and instead view them side by side…. Inside the campaign, aides believe Biden walks on the stage with the upper hand. Mostly, his mandate will be to let ‘Trump be Trump,’ which they believe will reveal extreme leanings and a less stable Trump than four years ago…. ‘We all get a chance to see whether Joe Biden is as feeble as Trump says he is. We all get a chance to see whether Donald Trump is as unhinged as Joe Biden says he is,’ Luntz said. ‘This is our chance to test the worst accusations of the candidates against each other.’” • Yep.
* * * Biden (D): “The Hunter fallout” [Politico]. “As we reported today, the president’s ‘team held a series of conversations at their campaign headquarters to discuss the potential aftershocks from the verdict, according to three Biden officials familiar with internal meetings who were granted anonymity to relay details of them. The general belief among aides is that it would not change the trajectory of the race but would likely become a focal point for the upcoming debate.’ The president has not yet done a formal debate prep session. That could begin at Camp David, where Biden is considering holing up for days later this month, according to two of the officials, though they cautioned that plans were not finalized. Aides to the president are of the mindset that Trump could use the debate to badger Biden as an inadequate father. And privately, there is a faction of advisers who feel the president would be wise to let out his famous temper in response — the logic being that an authentic, forceful rejoinder to an attack on a son who suffered from addiction would resonate with voters. But there is also another question with regards to how the debate will go: Will the Hunter verdict change how Biden himself addresses Trump’s own status as a convicted felon? On that front, the answer is no. Biden is still, on occasion, expected to bring up Trump’s hush money conviction — including during the upcoming debate. ‘Hunter Biden is a private citizen and not on the ballot. Donald Trump was president and is running to be again,’ said one of the officials who, like the others, was granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. ‘These are apples and oranges. We are not going to shy away from it.’ Ultimately, Biden’s top advisors believe that Hunter Biden’s issues are already baked into the 2024 election, with polls consistently showing attacks on Hunter Biden and a recent impeachment inquiry into the president having little impact.” • As of now, Hunter Biden’s conviction will have as much impact on the polls as Trump’s did. But how the candidates handle their respective convictions? That could make a difference.
Two examples of triumphalism taking the same line:
Biden (D): “Hunter Biden verdict throws ‘sand in the gears’ of GOP’s attacks on legal system” [Politico]. “‘It throws a bit of sand in the gears of people suggesting the Biden Department of Justice has been engineered to go after Trump,’ said Jason Roe, a GOP strategist and former chair of the Michigan Republican Party.”
Biden (D): “Hunter Biden Conviction Undercuts a Trump Narrative, and a Fund-Raising Pitch” [New York Times]. “Many Trump allies had been secretly rooting for an acquittal. The talking points wrote themselves: It would have been yet more evidence that the United States justice system was rigged in favor of the Bidens and against the Trumps. Tuesday’s guilty verdict was inconvenient to that narrative.”
Lambert here: The counter-example would be that Hunter — Dear Hunter! — is a sacrificial victim, as he has been all his life. A conviction on gun charges would be a small price to pay to close the books on the Biden family business, in which Hunter played such a central role.
* * * Kennedy (I): “The Quiet Voice in R.F.K. Jr.’s Ear: A Former Aide to the Clintons” [New York Times]. “Jay Carson may be the most unexpected. Now a Hollywood screenwriter, Mr. Carson, 47, has the résumé of a Democratic insider. He was the press secretary for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. He worked for Bill Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Tom Daschle, Howard Dean and Michael Bloomberg. He describes Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to President Biden, as his political godmother and ‘one of my favorite people in the world.’ He left politics more than a decade ago for show business, becoming a producer on ‘House of Cards’ and the creator of ‘The Morning Show.”‘He got divorced, got sober — he met Mr. Kennedy at one of his first 12-step meetings — remarried and settled into a new life in Topanga Canyon, Calif., with no plans to return to a campaign. But over the past year, he has become a quiet, steadying force behind a candidate who is at war with the Democratic Party. As an informal adviser, Mr. Carson has offered Mr. Kennedy encouragement and guidance on campaign staffing, communications and field operations. He produced and appeared in a 30-minute advertisement about Mr. Kennedy, paid for by a super PAC backing him. He was involved in running-mate discussions. Mr. Kennedy often texts him, ‘Please call Bobby,’ and he does.” • Hmm.
* * * “New poll goes deep on Kamala Harris’ liabilities and strengths as a potential president” [Politico]. “Harris faces pessimism about her future role in the party from a bloc of Democrats and a far larger share of independents. The poll found that a majority of voters don’t view Harris as a strong leader (48 percent to 42 percent). Nor do they see her as trustworthy (46 percent to 43 percent).” • Accurate.
“Notes on the State of Politics: June 12, 2024” [Sabato’s Crystal Ball]. A round-up of state primary races. Here’s Maine: “The biggest development last night from Maine was that national Republicans got their preferred challenger against three-term Rep. Jared Golden (D, ME-2). While Golden had no opposition in his primary, state Rep. Austin Theriault defeated fellow state Rep. Michael Soboleski 2-to-1 in the GOP primary. Theriault, a first-term legislator who is a retired NASCAR driver, had the backing of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R). While Golden has consistently been able to earn crossover support, the trend of this demographically Trumpy district is not working in his favor: in 2020, for example, most of Biden’s statewide improvement over Hillary Clinton came in the Portland-area ME-1. We are holding the contest, which will almost certainly be one of the most expensive House races, in the Toss-up column.”
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Hidden UFO civilization could be on Earth: Harvard researchers” [The Hill]. “An unidentified, technologically advanced population could be living secretly on Earth. That startling claim was made in a new paper by researchers at Harvard and Montana Technological University. They speculate that ‘unidentified anomalous phenomena’ (UAP), another term for UFOs, could be living underground, on the moon or even walking among humans…. The paper posits the possibility of “cryptoterrestrials” as an explanation for unidentified and unexplainable observations made worldwide each year…. The researchers propose the influx of sightings in similar areas is due to entry/exit points for hidden societies deep in the Earth. Other possibilities for cryptoterrestrial settlements lie nearby, like on the moon.” • Hmm. Presumably the aliens can take on human form, are smarter than we are, and have super powers. So why would the Lizard People be hiding? Why wouldn’t they be getting rich, or seeking high office?
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 (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!
Look for the Helpers
I’m glad at least one media figure is hammering away at this:
Thank you @ChrisCuomo for having me on to discuss #LongCOVID this week. It means so much to millions that you have been using your platform to relentlessly cover this issue when so many others have turned away. As this latest NASEM report shows, we need action now more than ever https://t.co/kKv8EODTZS
— Putrino Lab (@PutrinoLab) June 9, 2024
Though the irony that it’s Ratface Andy’s brother is a little heavy….
Airborne Transmission: Covid
Educational video:
If you can get infected in 5 second, surely you’d protect yourself and others.
Our Japanese neighbours show us the new 5 second rule:https://t.co/PURI1rJ76l
— Melissa Challenor (@urbanmel) June 10, 2024
“Indoor air targets must account for overdispersion and mixing” (e-letter) [Science]. “Adequate mixing is also needed to dilute transient accumulations near high-emitting infectors [superspreaders] (9), which per CDC, requires >6 air changes per hour (ACH), surpassing 14 lps for many rooms (10). Some scenarios (5) (e.g., exercise, singing, prolonged exposure in homes, workplaces (12) (13)), may need greater total airflow or ACH (11), feasible with portable cleaners (14) (15) ().” • And the follow-through:
And:
I’ve always loved ceiling fans, but now I really love them (and if you can, consider installing yours before any holiday gatherings. This is from a 2023 paper, “Transient transmission of droplets and aerosols in a ventilation system with ceiling fans“, which sadly I missed. Fifty lashes with a wet noodle for lambert!) Note that WHO butchered its technical report on “Pathogens that Transmit Through the Air” for the same reason: They didn’t model the dynamics of aerosols (in their case, they didn’t take into account the fact that hot air rises). The estimable Naomi Wu comments on a related topic but to the same effect:
After seeing @eddericu and @Engineer_Wong‘s work, I’ve been playing with laminar flow, and I gotta say- air is some bullshit. It’s like wood versus aluminum. Take a random piece of 6061- look up your cutting speed and feed on the chart or let the CAM app do it, walk away.
Wood?… https://t.co/yQhRrkmS1H
— Nukit (@NukitToBeSure) June 12, 2024
“I demand that air that just stays there and doesn’t go all over the place and do weird shit😡” Winning this one for her fans!
Transmission (Covid)
“COVID is coming for Calif., and it’s already hitting the Bay Area the hardest” [SFGATE]. “In an email to SFGATE, Amanda Bidwell, a wastewater researcher and data analyst at Stanford, said that over the past 21 days ‘consistently high concentrations’ of SARS-CoV-2 have been detected in wastewater samples collected across San Francisco. ‘Currently we are seeing some of the highest concentrations we’ve ever measured’ at these locations, Bidwell continued. And across San Francisco, the levels are approaching those last seen in December and January. Because individuals shed the virus before getting tested, this method of monitoring wastewater helps predict upcoming surges while including data from those who are asymptomatic.” • Woo hoo!
“Vertical transmission of SARS-CoV-2 from mother to fetus” (letter) [Pathology]. “We present a case of intrauterine fetal death from a mother infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The main goal of this work was to scientifically demonstrate the existence of vertical transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus from the infected pregnant woman to the fetus.” • “Why didn’t the mother mask up?” said no pro-lifer, ever.
Transmission (H5N1)
“Iowa asks USDA for help after 2nd case of bird flu detected in another dairy herd” [KHOA]. “Bird flu has been confirmed in a second herd of dairy cattle in Iowa, this time in Sioux County… According to a news release from IDALS, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig is asking the USDA to aid affected dairy and poultry farmers and to assist in disease research and response to combat the threat to Iowa poultry and dairy farms.” Here’s how:
- Providing compensation for cull dairy cattle at fair market value.
Providing compensation for lost milk production at a minimum of 90 percent of fair market value.
Revise poultry indemnity tables to better reflect the fair market value of the impacted birds and/or eggs.
Present a streamlined and timely process for farmers to be compensated for lost production and to receive indemnity.
All snark about free market ideologues aside, this seems reasonable (at least in the sense that it’s always reasonable to compensate capitalists for losses, but better than than a pandemic). I don’t think Texas would even imagine taking such steps, and that’s probably why the CAFO owners are so reluctant to allow testing.
Maskstravaganza
You’d think scientists could follow the science:
Compliance with biosafety measures in a lab or animal facility of containment levels 2 & 3.
Result of survey (🇧🇪 2007-2012):
👉 31% answered that wearing a mouth mask or respiratory mask is often NOT respected or put in practice.
(*Inhalation is main route of exposure for LAI) https://t.co/uIPDAmVOoW pic.twitter.com/4lE3I5nANO
— Maarten De Cock (@mdc_martinus) June 10, 2024
“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” Which is fine when you are the only one
afinfected.“North Carolina House Passes Revised Mask Ban” [Mother Jones]. “On Tuesday, the North Carolina GOP Representatives passed a mask ban on private property in a crackdown on protesters, even as a new subvariant of coronavirus spreads across the United States. The vote was 69 for the measure and 43 against It now goes to the governor’s desk. Last week, the House of Representatives modified the bill to allow ‘a medical or surgical grade mask for the purpose of preventing the spread of contagious disease,’ keeping some aspects of the health exemption for mask-wearing. But, on public or private properties, like at grocery stores or at a workplace, people can be required to remove masks if requested. The bill, which was drafted in response to people wearing masks at Pro-Palestinian protests and encampments, can be passed by the General Assembly even if Democratic Governor Roy Cooper vetoes it through an override.” • Of course, if the putative left had normalized mask-wearing during a pandemic, then the connection between masking and protests wouldn’t have been made in the first place. But brunch was more important!
Testing and Tracking
“Evaluating survey techniques in wastewater-based epidemiology for accurate COVID-19 incidence estimation” (preprint) [medRxiv]. I tried to study up on wastewater testing for a post at one point, but couldn’t master it in the time available. Perhaps we have a knowledgeable reader who can do better? Two bullet points caught me eye: (1) “The sampling frequency required is at least three samples per week, preferably five samples per week” (so it would be nice to know if that’s what CDC does) and (2) “Surveys need to be conducted for a period of time that includes at least 50 weeks or longer (surely that does not mean we have to wait a year to get a baseline). Readers?
Sequelae: Covid
“COVID can seriously damage your vision, even if you didn’t have symptoms, new study says. Experts say to watch for these signs” [Fortune] (mouse study). “Pawan Kumar Singh, PhD, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, led a team of researchers who found that inhaled viruses can reach highly protected organs such as the eyes, potentially causing long-term damage. SARS-CoV-2 does so by breaching the blood-retinal barrier, layers of cells that shield the retina, the part of your eye that senses light, from microbial pathogens. ‘Earlier, researchers were primarily focused on the ocular surface exposure of the virus,’ Singh said in a news release. ‘However, our findings reveal that SARS-CoV-2 not only reaches the eye during systemic infection but induces a hyperinflammatory response in the retina and causes cell death in the blood-retinal barrier. The longer viral remnants remain in the eye, the risk of damage to the retina and visual function increases.’” • Yikes!
Celebrity Watch
“Tucson icon Linda Ronstadt regains ability to speak after bout with COVID” [Tucson.com]. “Tucson icon Linda Ronstadt lost her capacity to speak and hear after a second bout of COVID earlier this year. With the help of therapy and attentive, around-the-clock care, the legendary songstress has regained her speech, she recently told a high school classmate who checked in with her ahead of their 60th reunion at Catalina High School. Though Ronstadt has regained her speech, she said her hearing loss may be permanent.” • I don’t know whether Taylor Swift has a hearing loss. She certainly has a listening loss.
Elite Maleficence
Who would have thought:
Interesting 🧐
The Infection Control community suffers from “Imposter Syndrome”
Huh 🤨
https://t.co/dTd7B9aOar— Barry Hunt – #DavosSafe #WHOknew (@BarryHunt008) June 8, 2024
Lambert here: Patient readers, I finally gave up the unequal struggle and went with CDC’s wastewater maps; they will at least give us some at-a-glance sense of how cases are changing in time and space.
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] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated.
[2] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, not annotated. Next week I will move the map at [1] to [2], and update [1].
[3] (CDC Variants) FWIW, given that last week KP.2 was all over everything like kudzu, and now it’s KP.3. If the “Nowcast” can’t even forecast two weeks out, why are we doing it at all?
[4] (ER) This is the best I can do for now. At least data for the entire pandemic is presented.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Slight leveling out? (The New York city area has form; in 2020, as the home of two international airports (JFK and EWR) it was an important entry point for the virus into the country (and from thence up the Hudson River valley, as the rich sought to escape, and then around the country through air travel.)
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). This is the best I can do for now. Note the assumption that Covid is seasonal is built into the presentation. At least data for the entire pandemic is presented.
[7] (Walgreens) 4.3%; big jump. (Because there is data in “current view” tab, I think white states here have experienced “no change,” as opposed to have no data.)
[8] (Cleveland) Going up.
[9] (Travelers: Positivity) Up. Those sh*theads at CDC have changed the chart so that it doesn’t even run back to 1/21/23, as it used to, but now starts 1/1/24. There’s also no way to adjust the time rasnge. CDC really doesn’t want you to be able to take a historical view of the pandemic, or compare one surge to another. In an any case, that’s why the shape of the curve has changed.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) Same deal. Those sh*theads:
[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.
[12] Deaths low, ED up.
Stats Watch
Inflation: “United States Inflation Rate” [Trading Economics]. “The annual inflation rate in the US unexpectedly slowed to 3.3% in May 2024, the lowest in three months, compared to 3.4% in April and forecasts of 3.4%.”
Inflation: “United States Consumer Price Index (CPI)” [Trading Economics]. “The consumer price index in the United States rose by 3.3% year-over-year to 314.07 points in May 2024, following a 3.6% increase in April and below the market consensus of a 3.5% advance.”
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 46 Neutral (previous close: 46 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 45 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 12 at 1:44:05 PM ET.
Book Nook
“Ursula K. Le Guin’s home will become a writers residency” [Associated Press]. “Literary Arts, a community nonprofit based in Portland, Oregon, announced Monday that Le Guin’s family had donated their three-story house for what will become the Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency…. The Le Guins lived in a 19th century house designed out of a Sears & Roebuck catalog, and the author’s former studio looks out on a garden, a towering redwood tree planted decades ago by the family, and, in the distance, Mount St. Helens. [Her son, Theo] Downes-Le Guin does not want the house to seem like a museum, or a time capsule, but expects that reminders of his mother, from her books to her rock collection, will remain.” • Those Sears and Roebuck house were great; shipped disassembled, they were built on site, the same business model as Ikea. We could do that today! Anyhow, I hope some great writers make the most of this.
The Gallery
Only 48?
5. It took 10 years for the Italian astrophotographer Marcella Julia Pace to capture these 48 colors of the Moon. pic.twitter.com/lNn6Didqxr
— James Lucas (@JamesLucasIT) June 9, 2024
Zeitgeist Watch
“The Fawn Response: How Trauma Can Lead to People-Pleasing” [PsychCentral]. From 2022: “Have you ever been overly concerned with the needs and emotions of others instead of your own? This may be a trauma response known as fawning… The fawn response is ‘a response to a threat by becoming more appealing to the threat,’ wrote licensed psychotherapist Pete Walker, MA, a marriage family therapist who is credited with coining the term fawning, in his book ‘Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving.’” • One more piece of armchair psychology as I actively pursue a state of non-bafflement at social norming under Covid….
“The Mythical Promise of Tin Foil Hats” [Gizmodo]. “The tin-foil hat can be traced back to 1927, first spotted by Business Insider roughly a decade ago, in a short story titled ‘The Tissue-Culture King.’ It’s a strange short story written by Julian Huxley, whose brother Alduous was a prolific writer and author of Brave New World. It was Julian, however, who was possibly the first to mention wrapping your cranium in foil…. In the story, a scientist called Hascombe gets lost in a jungle and is captured by a local tribe. He ultimately starts practicing mass mind control, eventually using it on the tribe’s king to coordinate his escape. But how does Hascombe avoid having his mind controlled? ‘Well, we had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect, and had prepared for ourselves a sort of tin pulpit, behind which we could stand while conducting experiments. This, combined with caps of metal foil, enormously reduced the effects on ourselves… We with our metal coverings were immune.’” • Wowsers.
Guillotine Watch
“Billionaire-backed plan to erect a model California city qualifies for the ballot” [Los Angeles Times]. “The group backing the measure, called California Forever, must now convince voters to get behind the audacious idea of erecting a walkable and environmentally friendly community with tens of thousands of homes, along with a sports center, parks, bike lanes, open space and a giant solar farm on what is now pastureland.” That’s what they say. It sounds like a ginormous HOA to me. More: “Led by entrepreneur Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader, the venture is backed by a sparkling roster of tech titans, including LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman; venture capitalist Marc Andreessen; and Patrick and John Collison, who founded the payment processing company Stripe.” Ruling elite doesn’t like the results of what they’ve done, so decide to clean slate everything; I can’t imagine a group more qualified to create a hellhole (and then abandon it, moving along to their bunkers. Or Mars). As Brecht didn’t quite write: “would it not be be simpler, if the government ruling class simply dissolved the people And elected another?’” • I say “selected” because I can’t imagine these tech bros would allow just anyone to move in. No poors, I assume.
News of the Wired
“jank’s new persistent string is fast” [jank blog]. • Fun. I wish I completely understood it!
“The Lens of Desire: Eye Miniatures (ca. 1790–1810)” [Public Domain Review]. “Miniatures are a subset of portrait paintings, and within miniatures is yet another, more obscure, subset: paintings of a left eye, or a right eye, amid little else…. They were set in rings, lockets, brooches, toothpick cases, and the like, and gifted between lovers. Luminous, exquisite, and fragile (a drop of water might wash away the tiny brushstrokes), lovers’ eyes did not mean, as it might seem, ‘I have my eye on you’, but rather, ‘You have my heart, and here’s my eye to prove it’. By the 1770s, miniature portraits were ubiquitous, and easily commissioned. One scholar suggests that it was artists’ boredom that led to the fad for isolated eyes, but the more compelling explanation is their clients’ erotic whimsy. A disembodied eye is only identifiable to an intimate, making it an unusually private kind of token, the exchange of which would have been amenable to couples whose understandings were necessarily secret, and also, perhaps, to couples whose understandings weren’t secret, but who appreciated the sexual frisson of code talk. The fad for eye miniatures in England began when the future King George IV fell in love with Maria Fitzherbert, a woman unsuitable to his rank (widowed, Catholic, a commoner). He covertly sent her a painting of his eye with a proposal to marry. The overture was welcome, and after a long and tumultuous relationship, he was buried with a painting of her eye.” • To me, fair friend, you never can be old, For as you were , Such seems your beauty still….”
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 converger:
Converger writes: “This afternoon in the South African section of the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum.” I have no idea what kind of flower this is, but it is pretty!
Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. So if you see a link you especially like, or an item you wouldn’t see anywhere else, please do not hesitate to express your appreciation in tangible form. Remember, a tip jar is for tipping! Regular positive feedback both makes me feel good and lets me know I’m on the right track with coverage. When I get no donations for three or four days I get worried. More tangibly, a constant trickle of donations helps me with expenses, and I factor in that trickle when setting fundraising goals:
Here is the screen that will appear, which I have helpfully annotated:
If you hate PayPal, you can email me at lambert [UNDERSCORE] strether [DOT] corrente [AT] yahoo [DOT] com, and I will give you directions on how to send a check. Thank you!
