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2:00PM Water Cooler 8/28/2024 | naked capitalism

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By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Bird Song of the Day

Catbirds are in the Mimidae specie (!), like mockingbird and thrashers. Readers have said they like the mimicry, so hopefully MacCaulay Library has enough recordings to keep us all satisfied, at least for a time.

Black Catbird, Aguadas al Sureste de Cozumel, Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico. I think I’m hearing a frog in the background.

“As a Writer, You Can Never Collect Too Many Endings” [Literary Hub]. “A few years ago, at dusk, I saw an owl swoop into a low branch and start poking its beak into a catbird’s nest. The catbirds inside made a terrible hissing-screeching-gargling sound—like a baby that’s been scalded—and after a moment the owl, for whatever reason, decided it was too much and flew off. After the danger passed, dusk shifted to dark. The night deepened. It struck me that the owl could come back at any moment, and that the catbirds, whose cheery songs I loved and had been listening to all afternoon, lived under perpetual threat. While I didn’t know what story from my life the moment might make a good ending for, I knew it was an ending because in the quiet of its resolution it kept gathering significance. It was factual and also metaphorical. I’ve been those screeching catbirds. I’ve been that owl.” • I didn’t search for this, I swear! It just randomly showed up in my RSS reader.

* * *

In Case You Might Miss…

  1. The DNC was a superspreading event, and adopted a eugenicist masking policy
  2. Boeing door plug debacle reveals shop floor fiasco
  3. Vermeer’s tronie.

* * *

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 one hundred days to go!

Friday’s RCP Poll Averages:

Good news for Trump in that last week’s deterioration seems to have been slowed, although we shall have to see if Kamala gets a convention “bounce.” Remember, however, that all the fluctuations — in fact, all the leads — are within the margin of error. If you read most of the press, you’d think Kamala has this race in the bag. It’s not so. Do note, however, Trump’s deterioration in North Carolina: +2.4 last week to +0.9 this week, when OG pollster Sabato moved it to “toss-up” status from “lean Republican.” No wonder Trump held a rally there this week. NOTE With Kennedy, it would seem, about to drop out, I started tracking the national percentage as “Top Battlegrounds,” where Trump’s shrinking lead is +0.1 this week (as opposed to “5-Way RCP Average, where Harris led by +1.1 last week).

Clinton Legacy

“COVID-stricken Hillary Clinton drops out of Hamptons fundraiser, Bill Clinton steps in with Doug Emhoff: sources” [New York Post]. “Hillary Clinton bowed out of a Hamptons fundraiser for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on Monday, we hear, after the former secretary of state came down with COVID-19…. The event was held at the home of mega art collectors Lisa and Richard Perry, who are known to house works by Frank Stella, Alexander Calder, Ellsworth Kelly and Donald Judd, among other blue-chip artists. Tickets at the highest tier went for a cool $100,000 each, and an invitation seen by Page Six said, ‘This is likely to be one of the last small events in the NY area before the election, so it is not to be missed.’” • “Today, Covid no longer controls our lives.” —Joe Biden, February 7, 2023.

Realignment and Legitimacy

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, KF, 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!

* * *

Elite Maleficence

The memo that started it all:

Totally not a superspreader event:

Except it is a superspreader event, exactly like the Olympics (or a Taylor Swift Concert):

“COVID-19 also attended last week’s Democratic National Convention, infecting ‘too many’” [Chicago Sun-Times]. The deck: “Health officials say they saw no sign of a COVID-19 uptick after the convention, while attendees grumble on social media about getting sick. One union official said he knows at least 14 people who tested positive since attending the convention.” The health officials “saw no sign” because the attendees flew home, bringing the virus with them. More: “How many people came down with COVID-19 after the convention? ‘Too many. I can’t even put a number on it,’ said Ronnie Reese, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s communications director…. Anthony Driver Jr., executive director of Service Employees International Union Illinois State Council, said he knows at least 14 people who tested positive for COVID-19 since attending the convention. . Many people diagnose themselves with at-home tests. With a virus incubation period of up to two weeks, many out-of-towners may just now be feeling symptoms.” • There no numbers and there won’t be because “Covid no longer controls our lives.” Except when it does:

And:

And:

Here are the views of a DNC attendee. The thread is a rich motherlode of PMC entitlement and denial, so I encourage you to click through, if you can. He keeps returning to the fray:

Classic! As if DNC attendee, who voluntarily attended the shindig in Chicago, is in the same class as the Uber Driver, who necessarily must ferry Gregory to and from the venue, to Starbucks, to brunch, because the working class must sell their labor to survive.

The venue was well-ventilated (if believe their literature) but it’s still a 3C’s space (closed, crowded, close-contact) and so a layered approach that included masks would have been the safest approach, had the heatlth of attendees and workers been the priority:

DNC mask policy:

The DNC adopted the Great Barrington Declaration’s eugenicist policy.

DNC masking policy vs. RNC masking policy:

How is it that Democrats have a more vicious and reprehensible masking policy than Republicans?

Here is a DNC minder actually getting an attendee to remove their mask:

Shortly after the convention, a Kamala operative posted this video to TikTok, from where it moved to Twitter. It shows a masked Kamala with cute children. Here is the Twitter version:

Being of a suspicious nature, I looked for the provenance of the video. The Kamala operative did not give a date or time. However, alert reader marym exercised her mad detective skillz and found the source: A school in West Haven, CT, story published March 26, . But the vibes!

* * *

TABLE 1: Daily Covid Charts

Lambert here: Readers, I apologize for butchering the table formatting yesterday; I just spent some time reformating the HTML so it’s not so fragile. Do feel free to bring formatting issues to my attention in comments.

Wastewater
This week[1] CDC August 20: Last Week[2] CDC (until next week):

Variants [3] CDC August 17 Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC August 17

Hospitalization
★ New York[5] New York State, data August 23: National [6] CDC August 10:

Positivity
National[7] Walgreens August 20: Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic August 17:

Travelers Data
Positivity[9] CDC July 29: Variants[10] CDC July 29:

Deaths
Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11]CDC August 10: Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12]CDC August 10:

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. Keeps spreading.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[3] (CDC Variants) KP.* very popular. XDV.1 flat.

[4] (ER) Worth noting Emergency Department use is now on a par with the first wave, in 2020.

[5] (Hospitalization: NY) A tiny little jump. Let’s watch carefully. (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.)

Lambert here: Since things are bad out on the West Coast, I went looking for California hospitalization data to compare with New York’s, and found this: “Due to changes in reporting requirements for hospitals, CDPH is no longer including hospitalization data on the CDPH dashboard. CDPH remains committed to monitoring the severe outcomes of COVID-19 and influenza, including the impact on hospitals. CDC’s National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) will remain open to accept data, and CDC and CDPH strongly encourage all facilities to continue reporting.” Thanks, Mandy!

[6] (Hospitalization: CDC). The visualization suppresses what is, in percentage terms, a significant increase.

[7] (Walgreens) Fiddling and diddling.

[8] (Cleveland) Jumping.

[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 range. 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) The new variant in China, XDV.1, is not showing up here.

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

There are no officials statistics of interest today.

* * *

Manufacturing: “Inside Boeing’s factory lapses that led to the Alaska Air blowout” [Seattle Times (PI)]. Deck is not, but should be: “Anatomy of a Clusterf*ck.” Do read in full for the horrid details; many of us, I am sure, have been on a similar shop floor. This caught my eye; when they first open the door plug (the one that fell off, later): ‘Filling in for the veteran mechanic on vacation, the Trainee was perhaps the least equipped to do this atypical job. He’d been at Boeing for about 17 months, his only previous jobs being at KFC and Taco Bell. ‘He’s just a young kid,’ the Door Master Lead said.”

Tech: “Tesla Drivers Say New Self-Driving Update Is Repeatedly Running Red Lights” [Futurism]. “‘Thankfully I stopped it before it ran the light,’ wrote one Redditor user in a thread with several other Tesla drivers experiencing the same thing, ‘but hopefully Tesla is aware their software is at a very dangerous level right now.’… This is all happening as Musk pivots Tesla towards robotaxis, which have run into their own issues with crashes, glitches, and unpopularity with pedestrians. Will a software patch improve the red light issue? Perhaps. But there’s something that Musk can do that’s low cost and won’t hurt anybody: stop calling the Tesla auto assist software ‘Full Self-Driving’ until it really is.”

The Bezzle: “Super Micro: Fresh Evidence Of Accounting Manipulation, Sibling Self-Dealing And Sanctions Evasion At This AI High Flyer” [Hindenberg Research]. “Super Micro Computer Inc. is a $35 billion server maker based in Silicon Valley, California that has ridden the wave of AI enthusiasm. Our 3-month investigation, which included interviews with former senior employees and industry experts as well as a review of litigation records, international corporate and customs records, found glaring accounting red flags, evidence of undisclosed related party transactions, sanctions and export control failures, and customer issues.” • The shorts have entered the AI chat. About time.

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 52 Neutral (previous close: 52 Neutral) [CNN]. One week ago: 51 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Aug 28 at 12:57:20 PM ET.

Gallery

He saw the insulators (!):

“Masterful Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer rendered famous ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ during Golden Age” [FOX]. “The painting depicts a woman, but it’s not a portrait, but rather a “tronie,” according to the Maurithshus museum, which is a painting of an imaginary figure.” • So, word of the day: tronie. Amazingly, this FOX story is straight-up informative, with no angle at all that I can see (at least not a FOX-level angle). Maybe I was ahead of the zeitgeist on this gen-u-wine, human-made art thing, and others have the same thirst.

News of the Wired

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 Carla:

Carla writes: “Perennial Hibiscus with dew on the leaves.” Lovely! (And I like the shadowy foreground with the bright background; the bright green reminds me of the bright summer afternoon lawns of my Midwestern childhood — regardless of my strictures upon lawns today!

* * *

Readers: Water Cooler is a standalone entity not covered by the annual NC fundraiser. Material here is Lambert’s, and does not express the views of the Naked Capitalism site. 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:

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