Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher, May 2024 Rondeau PP–South Point Trail East, Chatham-Kent, Ontario, Canada. Same location as yesterday, but different birds and even more lively.
In Case You Might Miss…
- January 6 pardons.
- DOGE Executive orders.
- Improving surgical masks (many methods).
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
Capitol Seizure
“Trump pardons roughly 1,500 criminal defendants charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack” [NBC News]. “President Donald Trump on Monday issued roughly 1,500 pardons and commuted the sentences of 14 of his supporters in connection with the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when thousands of them stormed the building amid his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him. Trump commuted the sentences of individuals associated with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy [despite being riddled with informers]. He then issued ‘a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,’ a category that included people who assaulted law enforcement officers.” • This from Julie Kelly was something I didn’t know:
Here is the raindrop theory–
“UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. JOHN DOUGLAS WRIGHT” (PDF) [Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, Criminal Action No. 21-341, United States District Court for the District of Columbia]. Kollar-Kotelly was “previously presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.” From page 24:
It would have been interesting to apply the “raindrop” theory of the case to the banksters who “collectively” caused the Great Financial Crash, causing “the unnecessary expenditure of substantial government resources.”
Lambert here: Patient readers, Trump just signed a hundred exective orders (EOs) and held a presser. I don’t have the capacity to synthesize all that material, which is doubtless creating “Shock and Awe” in the political class. The links that follow seem the most salient now, but that may change in the coming weeks. What I will say is that I have skimmed several of the orders, and this latest rollout is an amazing feat of staffwork (hat tip Susie Wiles) that the previous Trump administration couldn’t even have considered. (Some clever people will also have to lay the Executive Orders against Project 2025 and look for overlaps. My guess is that the Trump administration will have put its own distinction twists on a lot of it. Also, I’m going to scatter the EOs under the usual category headings (“DOGE” under “DOGE”) because consolidating 100 EOs in one place would be unwieldy.
* * * “Neo-Nazis Love the Nazi-Like Salutes Elon Musk Made at Trump’s Inauguration” [Wired]. “At this point, Musk put his right hand on his chest before extending it straight out with his palm facing down and his fingers touching, a gesture widely recognized as the ‘Roman salute.’ Adopted by the fascist movement a century ago, it was most famously used by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany, and is to this day associated with the fascist right, especially in Italy. After he first made the gesture, Musk then turned around to members of the crowd who were seated behind him and, with his back to the camera, repeated the gesture. ‘My heart goes out to you,’ Musk added… One of many examples: “”WE ARE FUCKING BACK” the administrator of a Nazi meme channel on Telegram wrote under a clip of Musk giving the salute.’” • I must confess that when I first saw this take I filed under symbol manipulators looking for symbols and then making leaps in reasoning based on the symbols (which is a very bad habit in the idpol space). I also felt that Musk has been awfully herky jerky lately (and there is the preliminary hand-on-heart gesture, which forms no part of the Nazi salute. But now, apparently, it does:
“It was an accident!! He’s autistic!!” pic.twitter.com/eOCgJ4cPBr
— evan loves worf (@esjesjesj) January 21, 2025
File this, at the very minimum, under “Somebody needs to get this dude under control.”
* * *
DOGE
“ESTABLISHING AND IMPLEMENTING THE PRESIDENT’S ‘DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT’” [Whitehouse.gov]. I normalize all-caps to title caps but in this case I’m not, because all the EOs have this formatting. I hope readers can give this a close reading, but while the pre-inaugural DOGE set a horrid precedent, this version seems not so bad. The EO hijacks the United States Digital Service (USDS), which Obama put in place after Silicon Valley techies saved his bacon my making the ObamaCare website work. That’s a clever idea! ” The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.” And: “In consultation with USDS, each Agency Head shall establish within their respective Agencies a DOGE Team of at least four employees, which may include Special Government Employees, hired or assigned within thirty days of the date of this Order. Agency Heads shall select the DOGE Team members in consultation with the USDS Administrator. Each DOGE Team will typically include one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney. Agency Heads shall ensure that DOGE Team Leads coordinate their work with USDS and advise their respective Agency Heads on implementing the President ‘s DOGE Agenda.” • This shows, at least, somebody was thinking about process. (“Special Government Employees” were what the the pre-inaugural DOGE operatives — the dudes going around interviewing civil servants — should have been.
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!
Transmission: Nasal Sprays
“Toward a Radically Simple Multi-Modal Nasal Spray for Preventing Respiratory Infections” [Advanced Materials (DougieD). September 2024. “This report introduces the Pathogen Capture and Neutralizing Spray (PCANS), which utilizes a multi-modal approach to enhance efficacy. PCANS coats the nasal cavity, capturing large respiratory droplets from the air, and serving as a physical barrier against a broad spectrum of viruses and bacteria, while rapidly neutralizing them with over 99.99% effectiveness. The formulation consists of excipients identified from the FDA’s Inactive Ingredient Database and Generally Recognized as Safe list to maximize efficacy for each step in the multi-modal approach. PCANS demonstrates nasal retention for up to 8 hours in mice. In a severe Influenza A mouse model, a single pre-exposure dose of PCANS leads to a >99.99% reduction in lung viral titer and ensures 100% survival, compared to 0% in the control group. PCANS suppresses pathological manifestations and offers protection for at least 4 hours. This data suggest PCANS as a promising daily-use prophylactic against respiratory infections.” • Maybe one day it will be on sale…
If you are only permitted a surgical mask:
here is a non-exhaustive thread on the various modifications you can apply to surgical masks to increase their efficacy at preventing airborne illness (95% effective like N95 masks). combining these modifications will increase your mask’s efficacy 🧵
— a southern souliloquoy (@niggasippian) January 18, 2025
Here is one modification:
here is a non-exhaustive thread on the various modifications you can apply to surgical masks to increase their efficacy at preventing airborne illness (95% effective like N95 masks). combining these modifications will increase your mask’s efficacy 🧵
— a southern souliloquoy (@niggasippian) January 18, 2025
Here is another:
here is a non-exhaustive thread on the various modifications you can apply to surgical masks to increase their efficacy at preventing airborne illness (95% effective like N95 masks). combining these modifications will increase your mask’s efficacy 🧵
— a southern souliloquoy (@niggasippian) January 18, 2025
There are a lot more techniques; the thread is worth reading in full.
Vaccines
“Former surgeon general: Vaccine-preventable diseases are still a major threat” [Jerome Adams, STAT]. The Biden Administration vaccine rollout was fantastically destructive, as we see here. “While there’s much to celebrate about the current focus on improving overall health — particularly the incoming administration’s emphasis on the MAHA agenda, which promotes better food safety, nutrition, and physical activity — it’s crucial that we remember these must be priorities in addition to addressing vaccine-preventable diseases, not in place of them. As I’ve said before, you can’t die of early heart disease at 50 if you already died from polio at 5. The reality is that vaccine-preventable diseases are still a major threat, even in the 21st century, and we ignore that at our peril. I hear from pediatricians and health officials across the country on a near-daily basis about their growing concerns over declining vaccination rates. Parents who would have once trusted their health care providers’ recommendations are now questioning vaccines that should be routine, like MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella). What’s even more troubling is that even the parents of long-term patients — children who have received all their vaccines in the past — are increasingly opting to delay or forgo these essential shots due to new doubts, often fueled by misinformation. What’s worse is that the default response to health provider recommendations has shifted. For many parents, the idea of questioning, deferring, or outright rejecting vaccines has become the norm, rather the exception. This undermines the trust that has been built over generations between health care providers and families, and presents a serious challenge for those of us trying to protect the health of all Americans, especially our children. The impact of this growing vaccine hesitancy will, of course, be felt most acutely by children whose parents are trying, in deeply misguided ways, to protect them. While we’re unlikely to see a dramatic rise in deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases in the U.S. in the near term, the personal costs are immense. A single case of measles can lead to weeks of missed school, sporting events, family gatherings, and other milestones. These are costs many Americans felt were unbearable and inexcusable during the Covid-19 pandemic, yet we’re now putting our children at risk of suffering the same disruptions — disruptions that are both preventable and unnecessary.” • As I said, it’s MMR that’s under-assault. Of course, we have already been induced to abandon our children to Covid — thanks, Great Barrington dudes — so everything’s going according to plan.
Elite Maleficence
Perhaps the CDC’s normalization of wasterwater data isn’t as bad as I thought:
Violet Blue’s correction here:
New information that OP is misunderstanding the change. Further info is here: https://t.co/PXobBA9CAg That CDC has eroded public trust on C19 hasn’t helped at all. https://t.co/TVZhOVdLmA
— Violet Blue® (@violetblue) January 19, 2025
Lambert here: I don’t like a lot of this week’s charts. In wastewater, too many red dots concentrated in the Midwest and the Atlantic coast, so I started circling areas in red, again. New York’s weirdly persistent higher hospitalization rate continues. Traveler positivity is up, and worse, the dominant traveler variants are JN* and KP*, which, while present in the national variants, are very low. And in the two death charts, the projected deaths seem to have leveled out, when in the past they decreased. Nothing earth-shattering, but it does make me queasy, and it’s well after the holiday bump.
| Wastewater | ||
| This week[1] CDC January 10 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): | |
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| Variants [3] CDC January 18 |  |
Emergency Room Visits[4] CDC January 11 |
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| Hospitalization | ||
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data January 16: | National [6] CDC Janurary 16: | |
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| Positivity | ||
| National[7] Walgreens January 13: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic January 4: | |
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| Travelers Data | ||
| Positivity[9] CDC December 30: | Variants[10] CDC December 30 | |
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| Deaths | ||
| Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 11: | Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 11: | |
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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) Definitely jumped.
[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
There are no official statistics of interest today.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 41 Fear (previous close: 37 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 27 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jan 21 at 2:00:37 PM ET.
Architecture
“The Lost Towers of the Guelph-Ghibelline Wars” [Ex Urbe]. “Looks fake, doesn’t it? This implausible Medieval forest of towers, as dense as Manhattan skyscrapers, is our best reconstruction of the town of Bologna at its height, toward the end of the Medieval Guelph-Ghibelline wars. Wealthy families built these as mini-fortresses within the city, where they could defend against riots, enemy families (think Montagues and Capulets) and invasion. Signs of wealth and prestige, these all-stone buildings were also fireproof, leading to a terrible but effective tactic: take your family, treasures & goods up into your tower then set fire to enemies’ homes and let the city burn around you while you sit safe above. This was VERY BAD for cities.” Like this:
Caption: “Looks fake, doesn’t it? This implausible Medieval forest of towers, as dense as Manhattan skyscrapers, is our best reconstruction of the town of Bologna at its height, toward the end of the Medieval Guelph-Ghibelline wars. We don’t see many such towers today… or think we don’t, but actually their remnants are all over Italy.” • Neat blog.
“On what women want” [Kat Rosenfeld, The Usual Palm Tree]. Reflections prompted by the Neil Gaiman case. “There’s a moment in the Gaiman exposé where the main accuser, Scarlett Pavlovich, sends him a text message asking him how he’s doing. Gaiman says he’s struggling: he’s heard from people close to him that Pavlovich plans to accuse him of rape. ‘I thought that we were a good thing and a very consensual thing indeed,’ he writes. ‘It was consensual (and wonderful)!” she replies. Except: she doesn’t mean it.” But: “[I]n the article we’ve been instructed, explicitly and repeatedly, that you can’t assume a relationship was consensual just because all parties involved gave consent.” And: “The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they’ll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it’s not just sex they can’t reasonably consent to. It’s medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements. Our entire social contract operates on the premise that adults are strong enough to choose their choices, no matter the ambient pressure from horny men or sleazy used car salesmen or power-hungry ayatollahs. If half the world’s adult population are actually just smol beans — hapless, helpless, fickle, fragile, and much too tender to perform even the most basic self-advocacy — everything starts to fall apart, including the entire feminist project. You can’t have genuine equality for women while also letting them duck through the trap door of but I didn’t mean it, like children, when their choices have unhappy outcomes.”
“New ‘oligarchy’ under fire as elites descend on Davos” [Agence France Presse]. Of course, the elite of the elite are at the Inaugural. “The World Economic Forum kicks off in the Swiss Alpine resort on the same day as the presidential inauguration of Trump, who will not be in Davos but will make an online appearance later in the week…. Some 3,000 participants are expected at the Swiss ski village for the forum ending Friday — including 60 heads of state or government and more than 900 CEOs — for days of schmoozing and behind-the-scenes dealmaking.” A dissenting voice: “‘I don’t want to live in a country with a few rich people and lots of poor people,’ said Morris Pearl, a former managing director at investment giant BlackRock. He is now a member of Patriotic Millionaires, a group that backs raising taxes on the rich. ‘I’m afraid that we’re going to have civil unrest if we don’t change things,’ Pearl told AFP.” • So are they, Morris. So are they.
Yikes:
Take a moment to look at this image.
For the first time in recorded history, the immediate GULF COAST is under a blizzard warning.
This is likely a once-in-a-lifetime event—a generational storm we may never witness again.#WinterStorm pic.twitter.com/Qu1as9i2DH
— Andrew Austin-Adler (@weatherman_aaa) January 21, 2025
These states aren’t exactly set up for blizzard conditions.
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 MV:
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