By Lambert Strether.
Readers, my head cold continues, as does my whinging. Ugh. –lambert
Bird Song of the Day
Brown Thrasher, Davidson College–Main Campus, Mecklenburg, North Carolina, United States.
“Country diary: A bird that had existed only in my imagination becomes vividly real” [Guardian]. “We’ve come to church this morning in search of a fictional bird… So far my only sighting of the UK’s largest finch has been in my Collins Guide to British Birds…. Something moves near the top of an ash by the church tower. There, on a leafless branch, sits my first ever hawfinch. A hunk with buff breast, slightly darker crown and a warm cinnamon back with the slate-grey wing patches that tell me it is a female.
She’s eating something – most likely a yew berry. Unaffected by the toxicity, she’ll make light work of the seed inside the red fleshy aril with her specially modified bill, capable of exerting a force in excess of 450N. For a bird with a reputation for being elusive, her Latin name, Coccothraustes coccothraustes (the kernel-crushing kernel crusher), has the all subtlety of a sledgehammer. Looking at her hefty bill and thick-set body, I can’t deny that she is manifestly – and magnificently – real.” • They found the bird!
In Case You Might Miss…
- DOGE as a revolutionary NRx (neo-reactionary) project.
- DOGE seeks to avoid FOIA.
- An atmospheric Turner.
“Dog’s sudden illness reveals region’s generosity” [Ashland Daily Press (SD)]. • Dog gets a wheelchair…
My email address is down by the plant; please send examples of there (“Helpers” in the subject line). 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
DOGE
“Software, Sovereignty and the Post-Neoliberal Politics of Exit” [SAGE Journals (BP)]. Fight through the academic prose on this one: “This paper examines the impact of thinking – that of Curtis Yarvin, Nick Land, Peter Thiel and Patri Friedman in particular – on contemporary political debates manifest in ‘architectures of exit’… Approaching NRx thinking just a few years ago might have been a mildly diverting exercise; a chance to ‘connect some philosophical ideas … using some very silly right-wing nutjobs who were nevertheless … interesting’ (Sandifer, 2017: 1). As MacDougald (2015) describes, NRx writing often appears as ‘little more than a fever swamp of feudal misogynists, racist programmers and “fascist teenage dungeon masters,” gathering on subreddits to await the collapse of Western civilization’. As such, it reads like ‘all the awful things you always suspected about libertarianism with odds and ends from PUA culture, Victorian Social Darwinism, and an only semi-ironic attachment to absolutism’. However, post-2016, as Sandifer (2017: 1) expresses it in her own inimitable style, ‘everything went to shit’ and suddenly these otherwise ‘batshit crazy’ ideas, associated software projects and social prototyping experiments began to manifest across a whole range of global cultural, political and technological imaginaries. As hard as it is to fathom, NRx thinking now forms a significant part of the theoretical universe that contemporary political figures and ‘proto-theorists’ such as Dominic Cummings (in the UK) (Cummings, 2020; Lewis et al., 2002; Mulhall, 2020; Volpicelli, 2020; Wolf, 2020) and Steve Bannon (in the US) (Goldhill, 2017; Gray, 2017) draw upon and are attempting to promulgate into mainstream political discourse. As Nagle (2017: 53) explains it, supporters of NRx ideas seem to have been more adept at ‘heeding the ideas … of … Gramsci’s theory of hegemony’, especially via social media (Daniels, 2018), than have those on the left more usually associated with them (Mouffe, 2019).” • This was thrown over my transom a few days ago; and today, this–
“Subject: Capture of U.S. Critical Infrastructure by Neoreactionaries” (PDF) [anonymous]. Interesting memo, embedded for distribution at the end of today’s Water Cooler. “Rather than operating as an ally of the Trump administration, Musk has hijacked its ambitions for his own purposes. His rapid takeover of federal infrastructure mirrors the broader ambitions of the neoreactionary (NRx) movement—a small group of Silicon Valley elites who reject democracy and seek to install a “CEO Monarch” to rule by technological and financial dominance. This network includes Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, Balaji Srinivasan, David Sacks, and Curtis Yarvin, among others. Once considered fringe, purveyors of this ideology have now been embedded into the core of government operations. Musk’s maneuvering demonstrates a long-standing strategy of this elite class: not dismantling government, but replacing its power structures with ones they control. DOGE has not reduced bureaucracy—it has privatized it. Treasury has not been made more efficient—it has been placed under a billionaire’s influence. TikTok has not been secured from foreign threats—it has been delayed so Musk can position himself as its gatekeeper. President Trump, far from asserting dominance over the administrative state, may now find himself hostage to Musk.” • Normally, I don’t care what confirmed enshittifiers like Thiel, Andreessen, Srinivasan, Sacks, Yarvin et al. think, as long as they stay in their cuddle puddles; none of these rich dudes are as insightful as they think they are (and all are subject to “Big Man” syndrome, where nobody says “No” to them, which gradually poisons their worldview of that is actually feasible). And normally Lambert the Cautious wouild prefer to connect many more dots before any pronouncement. I remain cautious because I don’t know the provenance of the piece, although it doesn’t read like it was produced by the DNC. The remedies — “Launch Immediate Congressional Investigations; II. Strengthened Conflict of Interest and Ethics Recommendations” — are very weak — What, no General Strike? — suggesting to me it comes from the NGO ambit, from a shop like Indivisible. I will say it’s the first piece I’ve seen that gives an account of DOGE’s extreme speed and secrecy. Know your enemy (and that goes for MAGA, too. Which side do you thing Thiel and Andreessen were on in the H1B fight?) NOTE Adding, it’s nice to have another explanation for Mush’s frenetic behavior than Special K: By this account, he must see himself as point man for an actual revolution; I would imagine Lenin has a lot of short nights in 1917, too.
* * * “‘What Musk is doing is illegal’: Bernie Sanders slams DOGE gutting agencies” [CNN]. • Yes, that’s the point. See above.
“Musk’s Brazen Cost-Cutting Campaign Is Annoying GOP Senators, Treasury Staff” [Bloomberg]. Exremely deceptive headline: “. As Bessent was building out his team in December, he interviewed Tom Krause, who is now a member of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to a person familiar with the matter. Krause is now digging into Treasury’s systems and data. Among the topics they discussed during the interview was the very mission in which DOGE is now engaged, the person said. A group of roughly half a dozen GOP senators reached out privately to the White House to object to Musk’s accessing of Treasury systems, according to people familiar with the conversations. The senators indicated that the moves went beyond DOGE’s stated mission to save the government money. Yet , even recommending Krause for the special government employee status he now is using to plumb Treasury’s servers.” • Lends some credence to the idea broached by hamstak that DOGE started work early, and somebody badged one or more of the “programmers” in before official project launch.
“The blatant lie behind Elon Musk’s power grab” [Vox]. “‘We have $36 trillion of national debt growing at a rapid rate,’ the billionaire investor Bill Ackman posted on X Tuesday. ‘All Americans must therefore make their voices heard loud and clear about how much they support DOGE, Elon and our president’s efforts to help our country. We cannot let DOGE fail as our country is rapidly on the path to insolvency.’ There are many reasons to reject this argument. The United States is not going to become ‘insolvent’ any time soon. And preserving the rule of law is likely more important to our nation’s long-term well-being than slashing federal spending…. DOGE, meanwhile, is ostensibly focused on rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending. But it is not mathematically possible to offset entitlement spending or tax cuts by eliminating such waste (and identifying fraudulent or wasteful disbursements in advance is easier said than done). Musk has claimed, without evidence, that there is $1.7 trillion in annual waste and fraud — a figure that nearly matches the size of the federal deficit. Yet when DOGE has actually tried to name specific examples of ‘wasteful’ spending, it has offered up programs that have negligible budgetary costs.” • And not, say, the Pentagon. Or the CIA’s black budget.
* * * “DOGE Employees Ordered to Stop Using Slack While Agency Transitions to a Records System Not Subject to FOIA” [404 Media]. “The messages indicate that, under Elon Musk’s leadership, DOGE is actively taking steps to make sure its communications and records are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, a records transparency law commonly used by journalists and lawyers to hold government accountable. Instead, DOGE is asserting that rather than reporting up through the Office of Management and Budget as the United States Digital Service did for years, it is reporting through the Executive Office of the President and to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. Under OMB, it was generally subject to FOIA. Under the White House Chief of Staff, records it creates are generally not subject to FOIA.” • Hi, Susie [waves].
* * * Oh for a moment of blessed silience without Elon’s yammering:
As a Special Government Employee Musk is subject to the Hatch Act…
…which prohibits any partisan commentary while on duty pic.twitter.com/laeQY12ob1
— Brett Bruen (@BrettBruen) February 6, 2025
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: Covid
“Nearly 30% of cats, dogs owned by COVID patients had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies by 2021” [Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy]. “Nearly 30% of cats and dogs belonging to COVID-infected patients in central Texas tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, signaling previous infection, from 2020 to 2021, according to a study published yesterday on the preprint server bioRxiv.”
| Wastewater | |
| This week[1] CDC January 27 | Last week[2] CDC (until next week): |
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| Variants [3] CDC January 18 | Emergency Room Visits★[4] CDC January 25 |
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| Hospitalization | |
| ★ New York[5] New York State, data February 3: | National [6] CDC January 31: |
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| Positivity | |
| National[7] Walgreens February 3: | Ohio[8] Cleveland Clinic February 1: |
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| Travelers Data | |
| Positivity[9] CDC January 13: | Variants[10] CDC January 13 |
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| Deaths | |
| ★ Weekly Deaths vs. % Positivity [11] CDC January 25: | ★ Weekly Deaths vs. ED Visits [12] CDC January 25: |
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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) Down, 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, but no exponential growth either, Odd.
[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 Challenger Job Cuts” [Trading Economics]. US employers announced 49,795 job cuts in January 2025, above 38,792 in December 2024 but down 40% from 82,307 a year earlier. It is also the lowest January job cut total since 2022. ‘January was relatively quiet in terms of job cut announcements. However, we’ve already seen major announcements in the early days of February, so it seems this quiet is unlikely to last,’ said Andrew Challenger, Senior VP of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. Technology led all sectors in job-cutting activity in January with 7,488.”
Employment Situation: “United States Initial Jobless Claims” [Trading Economics]. “Initial jobless claims in the US rose by 11,000 from the previous week to 219,000 in the last week of January 2025, above market expectations of 213,000. In the meantime, recurring claims rose by 26,000 to 1,886,000 in the previous week, ahead of market expectations of 1,870,000. Despite remaining robust against a historical perspective, the data was in line with the view that the US labor market is due for a slight degree of softening in 2025.”
Manufacturing: “The same Boeing passenger plane keeps being diverted after take-off… what’s going on?” [Independent]. • Registration code N819AN.
Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 40 Fear (previous close: 39 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 49 (Neutral). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Feb 4 at 2:10:42 PM ET.
Turner, The Burning of the Houses of Parliament pic.twitter.com/9VJD4jpN89
— Impressions (@impression_ists) February 6, 2025
Public Health
“RealClearFoundation Launches the Journal of the Academy of Public Health” [RealClearScience]. “5 February 2025 (Washington, DC) The RealClearFoundation announces today the launch of the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, a revolutionary new scientific journal publishing cutting-edge, peer-reviewed and open access research from the world’s leading scholars of epidemiology, vaccinology, global public health, health policy and related disciplines. The Journal was co-founded by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, formerly of Harvard University. Their shared vision is presented in Dr. Kulldorff’s inaugural paper, “The Rise and Fall of Scientific Journals and a Way Forward.” • Splendid to see one of the service providers from Stanford’s house of ill fame make good. (Up until this point, I have always considered RealClear* to be conservative, but solid. No more, sadly.
I am not wired today.
APPENDIX
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 TW:
TW writes: “Hoarfrost, Christmas Day, at Patrick Marsh, Sun Prairie, WI.” Wow!
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