By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Bird Song of the Day
House Wren, Coronado National Forest, Pearce, Ash Springs Trail, Cochise, Arizona, United States.
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In Case You Might Miss…
(1) Trump posts bond.
(2) Kennedy makes the ballot in NC.
(3) Shanahan: More detail.
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
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2024
Less than a year to go!
RCP Poll Averages, March 29
I think I’ll leave this up until this coming Friday, so I can at least mumble something about trends. Nationally, Trump is up 2.4% in the Five-Way, same as last week, give or take. Trump is still up in all the Swing States (more here). I’ve highlighted PA, (1) because Trump is actually down there, and (2) it’s an outlier, has been for weeks. Why isn’t Trump doing well there?
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“Trump posts $175 million bond in New York civil fraud case” [NBC]. “Former President Donald Trump has posted a $175 million bond in the New York civil fraud case, preventing seizure of his assets while the case is under appeal… Knight Specialty Insurance Co., the entity that underwrote Trump’s bond, is part of a group of companies run by Los Angeles-based billionaire Don Hankey, who is No. 128 on the 2023 Forbes 400 list and No. 317 on the 2023 Forbes billionaires list. Hankey has been an investor in Axos Bank, the financial institution that refinanced Trump’s loans on Trump Tower and Trump National Doral Miami in 2022. Axos has lent Trump $100 million in his refinancing of Trump Tower and $125 million more for Doral. Neither loan is due until 2032, according to the Office of Government Ethics disclosure Trump submitted in August.” • File that name away.
“Ex-Trump aide Hope Hicks expected to testify in former president’s New York criminal trial” [NBC]. I’ve always had a soft spot for Hicks, because one of the earliest stories I read on Trump was from a Bloomberg reporter; Hicks told him she couldn’t take his call just then because she was going to take a nap. A little taste of what was coming, I suppose. More: “‘I have learned that in the days following the Access Hollywood video [‘grab ’em by the pussy’], [then-Trump lawyer Michael] Cohen exchanged a series of calls, text messages and emails with Keith Davidson, who was then [Stephanie Clifford [a.k.a. Stormy Daniel]’s attorney, David Pecker and Dylan Howard of American Media Inc., the publisher of the National Enquirer, Trump, and Hope Hicks, who was then press secretary for Trump’s presidential campaign,” the FBI agent wrote in the affidavit. ‘Based on the timing of these calls, and the content of the text messages and emails, I believe that at least some of these communications concerned the need to prevent Clifford from going public, particularly in the wake of the Access Hollywood story,’ the affidavit said.” • Hicks will testify for the prosecution. We’ll see what she has to say.
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“Trump Media Shares Slump as Early Fervor Fades” [New York Times]. “Shares of former President Donald J. Trump’s social media company slumped more than 20 percent on Monday, as the fervor around the company’s debut on public markets last week appeared to subside. The sell-off cut the market value of Trump Media & Technology Group, which trades under the ticker ‘DJT,’ by some $2 billion, to about $6.5 billion. The value of Mr. Trump’s majority stake in the company fell to about $3.7 billion, from over $6 billion at its peak last week. Still, shares of Trump Media were higher than they were immediately before the firm merged with a public shell company on Tuesday and began trading on the Nasdaq. Strong support for the merged company after it began trading pushed its market value as high as $10 billion at one point last week. That raised eyebrows across Wall Street, given the relatively small size of Trump Media’s business. A filing on Monday showed that the company generated just $750,000 in revenue in the fourth quarter last year, bringing its full-year total to $4.1 million. Trump Media recorded a $58 million loss in 2023. It got more than $300 million in cash as part of its merger with the shell company. All the company’s revenues come from advertising on Truth Social, the digital platform that has become Mr. Trump’s main outlet for reaching his supporters and blasting his critics, political opponents and other perceived enemies, including the prosecutors and judges involved in his criminal and civil cases.” • I don’t play the ponies, so I don’t know if Trump has been able to convert any of this paper to cash, or how he would do so, absent simply sellling it, which he seems not to have done. Readers?
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“Trump’s VP search is starting to get serious” [Politico]. “Susie Wiles, a top adviser to Trump, is leading a close-to-the-vest process of narrowing a list of around a dozen lawmakers and other Republican personalities under consideration, according to multiple people familiar with the process. The campaign has already hired an outside firm to vet candidates and prepare research documents. Former first lady Melania Trump, who influenced Trump’s decision to select Mike Pence in 2016, has been kept apprised. And Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. said he speaks with his father frequently about who is in contention. While who is up or down seemingly changes by the minute, the list has included everyone from Tim Scott and Kristi Noem to Byron Donalds, Elise Stefanik, Tulsi Gabbard and J.D. Vance, whom Trump has called a ‘fighter.’ Trump, despite saying he doesn’t think the vice president matters all that much, regularly asks guests at his Mar-a-Lago club for their opinion on different options and, with a flair for suspense, teases his choices in private meetings and media interviews. The process is expected to take months. ‘He’s going to draw this out ‘Apprentice’-style,’ said one person close to the Trump campaign who was granted anonymity to speak freely.”
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Kennedy (I): “RFK Jr. has qualified for ballot in North Carolina, campaign says” [The Hill]. Swing state. “Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign has added North Carolina to the expanding list of battleground states in which it has qualified for the ballot in November. The independent candidate’s campaign says it now has enough signatures to list Kennedy as a White House contender through the ‘We The People’ party, gathering 23,000 pledges of support in the purple state. ‘We have the field teams, volunteers, legal teams, paid circulators, supporters, and strategists ready to get the job done,’ Kennedy’s campaign press secretary Stefanie Spear said Monday in a statement announcing the news. North Carolina is considered an important swing state for all parties in 2024, including a potential third-party ticket. Former President Trump won the state by just more than 1 percentage point in 2020, giving Republicans a slight edge and inspiring Democrats to try to win it this cycle. The addition of the Tar Heel state brings Kennedy’s ballot qualified total to five states so far, including Utah, New Hampshire and Hawaii. In Nevada [second swing state], he cleared the signature threshold prior to meeting the requirement of having a declared vice president alongside his name, raising questions about whether he will have to regather signatures of support.”
Kennedy (I): “RFK Jr. calls Biden ‘genuine threat to our democracy’ over social media censorship” [New York Post]. “Independent presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reiterated Tuesday that he believes President Biden to present a greater threat to democracy than former President Donald Trump. ‘Biden has done something that no other president in history has done, which is to order media — particularly social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Google — to censor his political opponents,’ the 70-year-old told ‘Fox & Friends’ on Tuesday. ‘If you have a president who can censor his political opponents, he has the license for any kind of atrocity — that is a genuine threat to our democracy.’ Efforts by the Biden administration to flag content for social media companies to moderate, especially during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, have been subject to litigation before the Supreme Court. Justices on the high court heard oral arguments last month in a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s actions. On Monday night, Kennedy caused a stir by telling CNN that he ‘can make the argument that President Biden is much worse’ than Trump in terms of protecting democracy, drawing swift backlash from Democrats.” • No doubt!
Kennedy (I): “Column: Voters wishing for an alternative to Trump and Biden got one. Unfortunately, it’s RFK Jr.” [Los Angeles Times]. “Long before Trump, RFK Jr. was the original election denier, insisting that Republicans stole the 2004 election. Before COVID, Kennedy was already famous for falsely claiming that all vaccines are dangerous and that some cause autism. He also stands by his claim that cellphones and Wi-Fi cause cancer despite the lack of evidence of an increase in cancer rates amid exploding use of those technologies. Kennedy’s default position is that official explanations are suspect, which is another way of saying that all conspiracy theories — from 9/11 trutherism to fringe theories about the assassination of his own father to the idea that the COVID virus was engineered to spare Jewish and Chinese people — deserve the benefit of the doubt. It’s as if his entire political persona were designed to monetize what the political historian Richard Hofstadter called ‘the paranoid style in American politics.’ It’s a testament to the pervasiveness of the paranoid style that it’s difficult to figure out which party Kennedy will take more votes from. ‘Our campaign is a spoiler all right,’ Kennedy said last week while announcing his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, in Oakland. ‘It is a spoiler for President Biden and for President Trump.’ But there’s the rub: The same duopoly that Kennedy is running against ensures that he can be a spoiler for only one candidate. Hofstadter also said, ‘Third parties are like bees: once they have stung, they die.’” • On election 2004, it’s a judgement call. Kennedy’s post is, IIRC, on Ohio. I live-blogged that election all the way ’til coverage ended (from a café in Philly; yes, I’m that old). There was plenty suspect shenanigaos in Ohio; I’m too lazy to dig out the links — though I will at reader request — but there were plenty of sober-minded, non-conspiratorial observers who thought the results stank. On Covid: The Times link on SARS-CoV-2 being engineered to “spare Jewish and Chinese” people links to the New York Post, which cites to a video, providing a partial transcript. So I don’t think we’re dealing with the press simply making up quotes, as they often have done with Trump.
Kennedy (I): “Why Silicon Valley Reactionaries Love RFK Jr.” [The Nation]. “Silicon Valley money, often tied to people in the circle of Peter Thiel, has fueled Kennedy’s presidential run. As Axios reported last June, ‘Several of Silicon Valley’s noisiest tech moguls have begun to support the candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vocal anti-vax activist who’s xcvkl;’ for the Democratic Party nomination.” These early backers included Elon Musk as well as venture capitalists Chamath Palihapitiya and David Sacks (a longtime business and ideological ally of Peter Thiel, a Paypal and Facebook tycoon who backed Donald Trump in 2016). Writing about this cohort in The New Republic in 2022, Jacob Silverman noted that a pivotal movement that helped coalesce the group was the successful campaign to recall Chesa Boudin as district attorney of California because of his support for criminal justice reform. Both Shanahan and Sacks contributed heavily to the Boudin recall campaign, which demonstrated that Silicon Valley money could roll back left-wing social movements. Prior to 2022, Shanahan was a typical wealthy Democratic Party donor, giving to figures such as Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. But in 2022 she joined the anti-Boudin campaign, which connected her with a wider cohort of reactionary tech figures. As Shanahan explained, she didn’t think that criminal justice reform was necessary and ‘Chesa came into a situation that needed to be maintained, in my opinion, not necessarily reformed.’ There’s a pipeline that runs from anti-Boudin sentiment to supporting Robert Kennedy, but law-and-order politics is just one component of Shanahan’s journey. Another key factor was openness to alternative medicine and quack science, defended with the familiar contrarian defense that we need to ask questions. ”
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Kennedy (I): “55 Things You Need to Know About Nicole Shanahan” [Politico]. “In divorce proceedings, which were finalized in 2023, Shanahan sought over $1 billion from Brin. The final division of assets was settled in confidential arbitration.” • Hmm. Either Brin wants it confidential because she got a billion, or she does, because she didn’t. Regardless, she has enough to help Kennedy right now. Whether she can harvest from Silicon Valley — and, if so, from whom? — remains an open question.
“Tech leaders have all the skills for politics. Still, most don’t want to run” [USA Today]. “Shanahan, a self-proclaimed “technologist,” is also a research fellow at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, which focuses on ‘humanistic coding.’” From the her Stanford bio: “Apart from the practical applications of legal technology, her academic research centers around Ronald Coase’s work on transaction cost theory. Entitled, ‘Coasean Mapping,’ she theorizes on the pace and nature of society’s adoption of artificial intelligence for law and government.” • Any readers have views on Ronald Coase and his work?
“RFK Jr.’s running mate an ‘unknown quantity’ with ‘deep pockets’ as GOP, Dems fear spoiler campaign: experts” [FOX]. “Who exactly Shanahan will appeal to, and which candidate that in turn hurts, remains unknown.” • Yep.
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Democrats en Déshabillé
“Why Democrats Can’t Quit Trump” [Wall Street Journal]. “I suspect, if I could speak uncharitably, that many Democrats secretly miss the Trump years… Most high-level Democrats had a lot more fun during the ‘resistance’ than they’ve had professing to believe, against all evidence, that President Biden is fully in control of his faculties and that his administration hasn’t been embroiled in one debacle after another from the beginning. Today’s liberal politicos look back on the years 2016-20, I imagine, in much the same way baby-boomer leftists used to talk about protesting the Vietnam War. We stood for something back then, man. We weren’t gonna let the pigs win! While Mr. Trump was in the White House, you could imagine yourself part of some noble band of freedom fighters, willing to do what it took to stop America’s slide into right-wing tyranny. Rereading accounts of the early Trump years, you can’t miss his enemies’ self-dramatization. ‘I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration . . . there’s no way [Trump] gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk,’ FBI investigator Peter Strzok texted his colleague and lover Lisa Page in summer 2016. ‘It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.’ Mr. Strzok is among the partisans who dreamed up the idea that Mr. Trump won his election by colluding with the Russians…. Or recall Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) urging supporters in 2018 to harass top administration officials in public places. ‘If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station,’ she told supporters, ‘you get out and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.’ How exciting it was to lead the struggle against dictatorship!” • It’s as if Aaron Sorkin wrote a second “West Wing,” but in their brains….
Realignment and Legitimacy
“Why are Americans so unhappy?” [The Hill]. “Overall, Americans feel broke and brokenhearted even with overall good national news on inflation.” Lol. More: “America is in a period of internal dissonance — not quite decay but something akin to it. We don’t feel like a happy country. Financial stress is one reason so many Americans want to move to another country. In a recent poll by Monmouth University, one-third of respondents said they would like to live in a different nation — a figure that stood at 10 percent 50 years ago. (Not many people had an exact destination in mind.) Other factors contribute to unhappiness, but the common issue is generalized worry about where America is going on almost every issue from education to politics, according to the most recent Gallup polling data. And the discontentment leads to a belief that America is not well respected overseas. Americans’ satisfaction with our global position is at its lowest since 2017 — also according to Gallup. Unhappiness is both a political state and a mental health crisis, although we rarely see them as interrelated. Anxiety affects 1 in 5 adults. More than 20 percent of teens have seriously considered suicide. Experts on mental health point to social media as one reason for social disconnectedness.” • A continuing pandemic would, of course, have nothing to do with “social disconnectedness.” Nor the million deaths and counting, which “disconnected” families, friends, co-workers, neighbors. Anyhow, if you’re one of that one-third considering expatriation, it might be wise to purchase a Canadian lapel pin…. (The Monmouth poll that figure is based in doesn’t take either income or location into account, ffs.)
#COVID19
“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
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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!
ake effect by summer. The move by the Democratic administration angered board members, who called it a ‘last-minute stunt’ that undermines their regulatory process. It also sparked a protest by warehouse workers, who temporarily shut down the meeting as they waved signs declaring that ‘Heat Kills!’ and loudly chanted, ‘What do we want? Heat protection! When do we want it? Now!’” • Gavin Newsom, the worker’s friend.
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!
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Maskstravaganza
“Health systems ease up on masking” [Becker’s Hospital Review]. “Health systems are scaling back mask rules for staff, patients and visitors as respiratory virus season wanes…. Now, health systems are once again loosening masking guidelines. MaineHealth ended masking requirements for staff members providing direct patient care March 18, citing ‘a substantial decline in overall infection rates’ over the past month.” • It worked, so let’s stop (which is gonna be a big problem of avian influenza gets traction). This urge to control, this urge to do homework, this urge to twiddle, must be a PMC affliction. If you’re not going to clean the air — and nothing tells me hospitals are willing to commit to this, facility-wide — then just make masks the default policy, universally. Stop tinkering! I grant that means less make-work for administrators, but surely they can find other things to do with their valuable time. Oh, and Covid isn’t seasonal. I understand the institutional — as opposed to the scientific or medical — reasons why CDC would choose to manage all viruses transmitted through the respiratory tract is if they all were seasonal, but again, Covid is not seasonal.
Elite Maleficence
But why?
1/ EXCUSE ME?!
“The King’s attendance [at church] was part of a carefully planned and pared-down Easter morning, during which he had little personal contact with others inside to shield him from infection during his [cancer] treatment.” https://t.co/EH49PJgfLu
— Dr David Berger, aBsuRdiSTe cROnickLeR (@YouAreLobbyLud) April 1, 2024
From what “infection” is Charles II being “shielded”?
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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] (Biobot) Our curve has now flattened out at the level of previous Trump peaks. Not a great victory. Note also the area “under the curve,” besides looking at peaks. That area is larger under Biden than under Trump, and it seems to be rising steadily if unevenly.
[2] (Biobot) Backward revisions, I hate them.
[3] (CDC Variants) As of May 11, genomic surveillance data will be reported biweekly, based on the availability of positive test specimens.” “Biweeekly: 1. occurring every two weeks. 2. occurring twice a week; semiweekly.” Looks like CDC has chosen sense #1. In essence, they’re telling us variants are nothing to worry about. Time will tell.
[4] (ER) CDC seems to have killed this off, since the link is broken, I think in favor of this thing. I will try to confirm.
[5] (Hospitalization: NY) Looks like a very gradual leveling off to a non-zero baseline, to me.
[6] (Hospitalization: CDC) Still down. “Maps, charts, and data provided by CDC, updates weekly for the previous MMWR week (Sunday-Saturday) on Thursdays (Deaths, Emergency Department Visits, Test Positivity) and weekly the following Mondays (Hospitalizations) by 8 pm ET†”.
[7] (Walgreens) Leveling out.
[8] (Cleveland) Flattening.
[9] (Travelers: Posivitity) Now up, albeit in the rear view mirror.
[10] (Travelers: Variants) JN.1 dominates utterly.
Stats Watch
Employment Situation: “United States Job Openings” [Trading Economics]. “The number of job openings went up by 8,000 from the previous month to 8.756 million in February 2024, above market expectations of 8.75 million.”
Manufacturing: “United States Factory Orders” [Trading Economics]. “New orders for US manufactured goods rose by 1.4% from the previous month to $576.8 billion in February of 2024, trimming the upwardly revised 3.8% drop in January, and above market expectations of a 1% increase to point to further resilience of the US economy.”
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Retail: “Amazon Ditches ‘Just Walk Out’ Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores” [Gizmodo]. “Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.” • Just like robot cars lol.
Tech: “New XZ backdoor scanner detects implant in any Linux binary” [Bleeping Computer]. “Firmware security firm Binarly has released a free online scanner to detect Linux executables impacted by the XZ Utils supply chain attack, tracked as CVE-2024-3094. CVE-2024-3094 is a supply chain compromise in XZ Utils, a set of data compression tools and libraries used in many major Linux distributions. Late last month, Microsoft engineer Andres Freud discovered the backdoor in the latest version of the XZ Utils package while investigating unusually slow SSH logins on Debian Sid, a rolling release of the Linux distribution.” • The XZ backdoor is actually post-worthy, given its social engineering aspects.
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Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 62 Greed (previous close: 72 Greed) [CNN]. One week ago: 67 (Greed). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Apr 2 at 1:49:21 PM ET.
Rapture Index: Closes down one on Plagues. “The lack of activity has downgraded this category” [Rapture Ready]. Record High, October 10, 2016: 189. Current: 187. (Remember that bringing on the Rapture is good.) • Bird flu not a concern?
Groves of Academe
“Twilight of the Wonks” [Walter Russell Mead, The Tablet]. “The pre-modern university was a small, loosely managed association, and its officials needed to pay the bills, discipline the students, arbitrate the petty jealousies of the faculty, and keep the university as a whole on the right side of the political and ecclesiastical powers of the day. A modern university, even of the second or third tier, will often be large enough to play a significant role as a local or even regional engine of economic development. It may well be the largest employer in the city or town in which it is sited. It will often manage operations ranging from top-of-the-line hospitals to world-class athletic facilities to academic printing presses and day care centers. Larger universities operate dining halls that feed thousands or even tens of thousands of people every day and carry out projects as diverse as cattle breeding and subatomic research…. At the same time, the relationship between higher education and social leadership has largely broken down. In pre-modern times, university graduates were almost entirely recruited from the upper classes, and their university study was consciously intended to equip them for the exercise of real power and leadership. The pre-modern university was dedicated to the artisanal production of new generations of elite leaders in a handful of roles closely related to the survival of the state. The modern university produces scientists, bureaucrats, managers, and assorted functionaries on an industrial scale to provide governments and the private sector with a range of skilled professionals and knowledge workers, most of whom will spend their lives following orders rather than giving them.” • Mead is a bit of a flannel merchant, but the topic is worth discussing….
The Gallery
“A Family Tree: Hippolyte Hodeau’s Trench Art (ca. 1917)” [The Public Domain Review]. “Like many soldiers, Hodeau spent hours huddled in these muddy channels. In order to kill time, perhaps, or lift his spirits, he gathered leaves from an oak tree — elongated, striated, forest green — and used a form of relief carving to inscribe the names of his daughters, Andrée and Eléonore, as well as the word ‘souvenir’ and what looks like ‘Argonne’. ‘Trench art’, as it’s called, wasn’t necessarily fashioned in dugouts and wasn’t usually so fragile. Collectors seek out letter openers made of shrapnel; crucifixes made of bullets; and artillery shells fashioned into everything from bracelets to clocks to candelabras. Wooden walking sticks were festooned with intricate carved heads, and tiny valentine pillows sewn and beaded for sweethearts back home. Hodeau’s engraved leaves are part of this resourceful genre, but there is another artistic tradition to which they also belong — that of arborglyphs, or tree carving. Humans have long regarded trees as witnesses….. As unique as his objects may seem, Hodeau was not alone in carving leaves. The art form flourished during World War I as a way to enhance letters home with a unique lightweight enclosure. Soldiers used a needle or knife to whittle between the oak and chestnut veins, leaving only words or, sometimes, an image. Due to the partial opacity of perforated leaves, the carvings are especially enchanting when lit from behind; sometimes they’re called ‘feuilles de poilus’, or ‘tree leaf lace.’” • An example (others at the link):
Zeitgeist Watch
“28 deaths at a California skydiving center, but the jumps go on” [SF Gate]. “It’s impossible to calculate the fatality rate per jump at the Parachute Center, because no one keeps track of how many people jump out of planes there — or how many have died while doing so. In 2018, [the center’s former owner, Bill Dause] told Sacramento’s KXTV-TV even he wasn’t sure how many deaths had occurred at his business. Dause declined to speak with SFGATE for this story.” • Why can’t people just make their personal risk assessments?
Guillotine Watch
“Elon Musk’s ambitions for Mars branded ‘dangerous illusion’ by top astronomer” [Daily Express]. “[Martin Rees, a leading astrophysicist and member of the Royal Households of the United Kingdom under the title of ‘Astronomer Royal’,] told the House of Lords’ podcast Lord Speaker’s Corner: ‘I don’t think [SpaceX’s plans] realistic and we’ve got to solve those problems here on Earth.’ ‘Dealing with climate change on Earth is a doddle compared to making Mars habitable. So I don’t think we should hold that out as a long-term aim at all.’ ‘I think there might be a few crazy pioneers living on Mars, just like there are people living at the South Pole, although it’s far less hospitable than the South Pole. ‘But the idea of mass migration to avoid the Earth’s problems, which he and a few other space enthusiasts adopt, that, I think, is a dangerous illusion.’” •
News of the Wired
“The Human Hemisphere” [Radical Cartography]. “Just under 88 percent of humanity lives in the Northern Hemisphere; 82 percent lives in the Eastern Hemisphere…. So it looks like there might be some justification for Eurocentrism after all, at least geographically. Ah well.” • Hmm.
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