2:00PM Water Cooler 6/18/2024 | naked capitalism

By Lambert Strether of Corrente

Bird Song of the Day

Striated Wren-Babbler. Raja Sikatuna National Park, Bohol, Philippines. “Habitat: Forest.” The jungle is so noisy!

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In Case You Might Miss…

(1) The Trump v. Biden debate.

(2) The Black vote, and who will get it.

(3) Epigenetics: Heritable memories?

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Look for the Helpers

From 2018, but still kind (dk):

How beautiful is this?

A bookshop owner in Southampton has asked for help as he moves his stock due to high rent and wants to move the books to the new location.

The old owner was surprised by the sight of more than 250 young people, elderly, and people with special needs who… pic.twitter.com/MZ6krGxu3d

— Some Guy (@in_bloke) June 16, 2024

There are other examples in the thread. Something about books….

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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

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Biden Administration

“Half a million immigrants could eventually get US citizenship under a new plan from Biden” [Associated Press]. ” President Joe Biden is taking an expansive election year step to offer relief to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants without legal status in the U.S., aiming to balance his own aggressive crackdown on the southern border earlier this month that enraged advocates and many Democratic lawmakers. The White House announced Tuesday that the Biden administration will, in the coming months, allow certain spouses of U.S. citizens without legal status to apply for permanent residency and eventually citizenship. The move could affect upwards of half a million immigrants, according to senior administration officials. To qualify, an immigrant must have lived in the United States for 10 years as of Monday and be married to a U.S. citizen. If a qualifying immigrant’s application is approved, he or she would have three years to apply for a green card and receive a temporary work permit, shielded from deportation in the meantime. About 50,000 noncitizen children with parents who are married to U.S. citizen could also potentially qualify for the process, according to senior administration officials who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity. There is no requirement on how long the couple must have been married, but no one becomes eligible after Monday. That means immigrants who reach that 10-year mark after Monday will not qualify for the program, according to the officials.” • Seems like an awkward compromise. Presumably trailing bait for the debate on the 27th, but how?

2024

Less than a half a year to go!

RCP Poll Averages, May 24:

Still waiting for some discernible effect from Trump’s conviction (aside from, I suppose, his national numbers rising). 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.

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Trump (R): Trump on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in Detroit, a critique. From the thread:

Having chaired the UNCF governmental affairs committee I personally know this is a lie. Let’s look at his first budget, FY2018. The UNCF said his budget “misses the mark.” The president’s budget proposed $245M “while UNCF requested $375 million in full funding for the grants.” 9/ pic.twitter.com/U9qmNWl4lA

— Walter M. Kimbrough (@HipHopPrez) June 17, 2024

Trump (R): “Tim Scott Leverages Billionaires to Boost Vice-Presidential Bid” [Bloomberg]. “As the veepstakes heats up, [Scott’s] best shot at winning Trump’s approval may come from his ability to charm billionaires who’ve been hesitant to endorse the controversial former president. The more money Scott can raise, the bigger the financial war chest he can offer to deploy as Trump’s running mate. Already Scott’s political action committee has announced it’s spending $14 million to boost Black and Hispanic support for Trump and Republicans in November. And his 501(c)4 nonprofit, Great Opportunity Policy Inc., offers a flexible and powerful funding route. Unlike his PAC, it’s not required to disclose the names of its funders, an appealing prospect for conservative donors who don’t want to be publicly associated with Trump. And while Trump is considering several names for his VP pick, including Ohio Senator JD Vance, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and Florida Senator Marco Rubio, he spent the most time talking up Scott at an event last week on Capitol Hill. He’s called him an ‘unbelievable’ surrogate. Scott’s appeal to these super-wealthy donors rests on both policy and personality. Griffin said he’s known Scott for over a decade and admires how his ‘kindness, compassion, and political conviction’ guide ‘a relentless pursuit of the American Dream for every American in every community of our great country.’ In a Republican party that has taken a populist turn, at least in its rhetoric, the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee sticks his neck out for Wall Street. He came from the financial world, a former insurance broker who touts his rise from poverty as proof that such success is still possible in America. Most importantly, wealthy donors and former colleagues say, Scott has a rare ability to connect one-on-one.” • Note that the USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll of Black voters (below) says Black voters would be less likely to vote for Trump if he picks Scott. So perhaps Scott could take Treasury.

Trump (R): “Playbook: Trump the team player” [Politico]. “Last night, House GOP strategists were carefully reviewing the nine candidates Trump recommended in the wake of the meeting. Several of them were inconsequential or re-endorsements of candidates who were on their way to victory, such as former Trump staffer BRIAN JACK, who is favored to win the primary runoff today in Georgia’s 3rd District. These were essentially Trump “protecting his batting average,” as someone quipped to Playbook last night. But there were two endorsements — for NANCY DAHLSTROM in Alaska and TOM BARRETT in Michigan — that stood out as evidence to Republicans that Trump is listening to Johnson and Hudson, just as he has generally listened to NRSC Chair STEVE DAINES in his Senate primary endorsements. Trump’s post about the Alaska race read as if he had just received a briefing on the state’s ranked choice voting system. Republicans believe the only way to defeat Democratic Rep. MARY PELTOLA is for Dahlstrom, Alaska’s lieutenant governor, to push Republican NICK BEGICH out of the race. Johnson chose Dahlstrom over Begich back in December and getting Trump to do the same was considered a top priority for the Mar-a-Lago meeting. It worked. Trump and Johnson uniting around Dahlstrom ‘is extremely consequential,’ said a national Republican strategist involved in House races. As Sarah Ferris notes, the hope is that Trump’s nod will ‘put Dahlstrom over the finish line in the upcoming primary, since Begich has said he will drop out if he loses, rather than run again and try his chances in ranked choice.’” • I think I liked Trump 1.0 better….

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Biden (D): “A Foreign Policy for the World as It Is” [Ben Rhodes, Foreign Affairs]. Rhodes coined “The Blob.” Worth a read; Rhodes criticizes Biden’s Gaza policy, which takes some guts. That said: “If Biden does win a second term, he should use it to build on those of his policies that have accounted for shifting global realities, while pivoting away from the political considerations, maximalism, and Western-centric view that have caused his administration to make some of the same mistakes as its predecessors.” • And a pony. Meanwhile, and by contrast:

Prof. Mearsheimer doesn’t support Trump but he credits him for not starting any new wars.He’s interested in geoeconomics over geopolitics, has realist instincts and tries to conduct serious diplomacy. He will also start weakening the Blob.pic.twitter.com/W16KuIoq50

— Mearsheimer Fan (@Real_Politik101) June 15, 2024

Biden (D): Biden’s antitrust policies don’t meet with universal applause:

The US government going after Ticketmaster on behalf of Taylor Swift™ and Adobe on behalf of upper middle class consumers before going after literal war criminals, and this being promoted as evidence of Genocide Joe admin “fighting for us” is so fucking weak

— thomas 🛠 (@t_NYC) June 18, 2024

Biden (D): “FBI knew since 2016 Hunter Biden’s team nearly scored $120 million Ukrainian deal while Joe was VP” [Just the News]. “The FBI learned as far back as 2016 that Hunter Biden and his partners had plotted to set up a new venture in tax-friendly Liechtenstein that would be capitalized by a whopping $120 million investment from the controversial owner of the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, according to documents obtained by Just the News that have been kept from the American public for eight years. The mega-deal was not referenced inside Hunter Biden’s now infamous laptop or during the 2019 impeachment proceedings involving Ukraine, but was instead chronicled in a trove of 3.39 million documents the FBI seized from Hunter Biden and his business partners during an investigation of securities fraud nearly a decade ago…. The new evidence shows the major investment plan was being built at the time when Hunter Biden was serving on Burisma’s board of directors and Joe Biden was still serving as Barack Obama’s vice president in charge of U.S.-Ukraine policy…. The evidence showed lawyers in both the United States and Ukraine were putting a final term sheet together ahead of September 2015 when Hunter Biden’s team got two consecutive pieces of bad news in a 24-hour span. First, one of Hunter Biden’s business associates, Galanis, was arrested in the securities fraud case on Sept. 24, 2015. Then, that same day, the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, gave a speech pressuring that country’s prosecutors to pursue Zlochevsky on corruption charges after months of inaction in the case.” • The only tie to Joe Biden is a dinner “at the swanky Cafe Milano restaurant in Washington, D.C.”, a dinner Biden should never have attended, but what of that.

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Biden (D): “Hollywood stars could be key to Biden’s campaign” [Axios]. “Biden’s campaign broke Democrats’ single-evening fundraising record during a previous high-profile event featuring several current and former presidents. A-listers, like those of Biden’s campaign extravaganza at the Peacock Theater, could be his secret weapon against former President Trump, The New York Times’ Peter Baker writes. Hollywood legend Jeffrey Katzenberg — a Biden campaign co-chair known for ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Shrek’ — is leading the charge. ‘While Katzenberg has not solved Biden’s age problem by any means … [he’s] helped build a war chest that has been outpacing the Trump campaign,’ Baker writes.” • I think a Trump dollar goes farther than a Biden dollar, so fundraising amounts aren’t directly comparable.

* * *

“Trump, Biden and CNN Prepare for a Hostile Debate (With Muted Mics)” [New York Times]. “The 90 minutes of debate time will begin, according to the rules circulated by CNN, once the first question is answered. Up to five minutes are designated per question: two minutes for the opening answer, a one-minute rebuttal, a one-minute response to the rebuttal and an extra minute to be used at the discretion of the moderators. Each candidate will also be allowed a two-minute closing statement.” • I wonder how “the discretion of the moderators” will play out. More on the rules:

The rules for the CNN debate:

1. Mics cut off when not your turn to speak: Advantage Biden

2. No live audience: Advantage Biden

3. Two commercial breaks: Advantage Biden

4. No pre-written notes: Advantage Trump

Surprised Trump team agreed to these rules honestly…

— Chris Cillizza (@ChrisCillizza) June 17, 2024

I’m still surprised Trump agreed to no audience.

“James Carville Says He Wouldn’t Bet on Trump Appearing at Next Week’s Debate: ‘If You Gave Me Even Money, I’d Say He’s a No-Show’” [Mediaite]. “[MSNBC’s Ari] Melber remarked on the microphone rule and asked Carville, ‘Will that matter?’ ‘Well, if I was a gambler – and actually, I am a gambler – I’d take even money that Trump doesn’t show up.’ ‘Ha!’ the host exclaimed incredulously. ‘You don’t think Trump’s coming next week?’ ‘I mean, I don’t know, but I think he’s gonna wake up and decide,’ Carville responded. ‘Just like he said he was gonna testify at his defense in his trial. He didn’t even put on a defense. Let him show up. I wouldn’t be shocked, but I certainly would not be surprised if you gave me even money, I’d say he’s a no-show.’” • Actually, Trump’s attorney’s did put on a defense; they called two witnesses. Anyhow, presumably Biden won’t be cross-examining Trump about his sex life. Although that would be entertaining.

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USA Today]. “Exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University polls of Black voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two crucial swing states, show a more complicated dynamic within a demographic group that is unexpectedly in play in November’s election…. Seventy-six percent of those surveyed in each state said they voted for Biden four years ago. Now, his support has fallen 20 percentage points in Pennsylvania (to 56%) and 22 points in Michigan (to 54%)…. The top reason volunteered by respondents in the survey was discontent with the job he’s done in the White House, followed by worries about his age and mental acuity. Third was concern about wars, including his support for Israel in the conflict in Gaza…. Biden’s big losses have resulted in small gains for Trump. In the poll, the presumptive Republican nominee was backed by 15% of Black voters in Michigan, compared with 9% who said they voted for him in 2020, and by 11% in Pennsylvania, compared with 8% in 2020… By more than 2 to 1, Trump drew more support from Black men than Black women − by 22% to 9% in Michigan, and 16% to 6% in Pennsylvania…. Despite [her] groundbreaking status, [Kamala Harris] is viewed a tick less favorably than Biden among Black voters in these two states, although her unfavorable rating is also a bit lower: 60% to 24% in Michigan and 55% to 30% in Pennsylvania…. A majority of Black voters, with percentages ranging from 55% to 59%, said they would be less likely to vote for Trump if he chose any of three Black men frequently mentioned as potential vice-presidential candidates: former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott and Florida Rep. Byron Donalds…. [Do] Black Americans [see Trump] as a fellow victim of an unfair justice system[?] By a 5 to 1 margin, 79% to 15%, Black voters in Michigan disagreed. In Pennsylvania, they disagreed by a margin of 7 to 1, 84% to 12%… Almost two-thirds of Black voters in each state − 64% in Michigan and 65% in Pennsylvania − said Trump’s conviction in New York on charges of falsifying business records in a hush-money scheme made them less likely to vote for him…. In 2020, just 1% of those surveyed said they voted for a third-party candidate. Now the drift from Biden has swelled that number to 15% in Michigan and 16% in Pennsylvania.” • Much to ponder….

“‘I’m Like Speechless’: CNN’s Harry Enten Says Trump ‘Careening Towards A Historic Performance’ With Black Voters” [Daily Caller]. Sorry, but it’s mainly quoting Enten: “‘I keep looking for this to change, to go back to a historical norm and it, simply put, has not yet. So this is the margin, or, Biden and Trump among black voters, compare where we were at this point in 2020, compare to where we are now. At this point, look at this. In 2020, Joe Biden was getting 86% of the African American vote. Look at where it is now. It’s 70%, that’s a 16-point drop, John,’ Enten told host John Berman. ‘And more than that, it’s not just that Joe Biden is losing ground. It’s that Donald Trump is gaining ground. You go from 7%, single-digits at this point in 2020, to now 21% and again, John, I keep looking for signs that this is going to go back to normal and I don’t see it yet in the polling of anything right now. We’re careening towards a historic performance for a Republican presidential candidate, the likes of which we have not seen in six decades.” • Working from the same numbers as USA Today above, but with a different tone (which I think is more appropriate).

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“Democrats and the Euroleft” [Harold Mayerson, The American Prospect]. “Unfortunately, Starmer and other Labour leaders seemed to have propelled their party from Corbyn’s radicalism and borderline antisemitism….” • Absolutely not. I certainly hope Mayerson’s falsehood isn’t the first sign that a combination of the spooks, the Israeli embassy, and the press (not just AIPAC) is going to weaponize anti-Semitism to start taking down US politicians, as they did Corbyn. FWIW — literally nothing to the powers that be — Mayerson just dropped several notches in my regard.

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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

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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!

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Airborne Transmission

“Carbon dioxide guidelines for indoor air quality: a review” [Nature]. From the Abstract: “Many current indoor carbon dioxide (CO2) guidelines for indoor air quality specified no adverse effects intended for control. Odor dissatisfaction was the effect mentioned most frequently, few mentioned health, and three mentioned control of infectious disease. Only one CO2 guideline was developed from scientific models to control airborne transmission of COVID‐19. Most guidelines provided no supportive evidence for specified limits; few provided persuasive evidence. No scientific basis is apparent for setting one CO2 limit for IAQ across all buildings, setting a CO2 limit for IAQ as an extended time-weighted average, or using a one-time CO2 measurement to verify a desired VR.” • A ways to go, apparently. Perhaps citizen science from those with CO2 monitors could help.

Transmission: Covid

Surge anecdata (1):

I know roughly 13 people in my circle who have covid right now. That’s indicative of a large surge in the Northeast.

— Shauna Allen (@ShaunaLeva) June 17, 2024

Surge anecdata (2):

Gals on Instagram posting about getting COVID.

Wave is official.

This has been the most effective early warning system for me over the past 4 years 😂🫠

— Alexander Riccio (@co2trackers) (@ariccio) June 17, 2024

Surge anecdata (3):

Ran into a new type of person while shopping. They saw my mask and said “I used to think that was crazy. I need to start wearing one. Everyone’s sick.” I think reality is setting in for some people

— Pat Just Pat 🍉 (@PatTheSocialist) June 18, 2024

Maskstravaganza

Make it make sense (1):

Doctors will do all of this but then refuse to put a mask on for 20 minutes to meet with you or perform a routine procedure. pic.twitter.com/eTZGtwVzRG

— Covid Caution KP.2 / KP.3 FLiRT Variant (@CovidCaution) June 18, 2024

Make it make sense (2):

“Surgical masks are far more effective at preventing the use of respirators than they are at preventing respiratory infections.”

– Dr Lee Altenberg

.@AltenbergLee

👏👏👏

— Barry Hunt – #DavosSafe #WHOknew (@BarryHunt008) June 18, 2024

Immune Dysregulation

“Infectious diseases skyrocket worldwide fueled by COVID-19 pandemic” [World Socialist Web Site]. “A new study has found that the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic over the past four years coincides with a new surge in many other infectious diseases far beyond their pre-pandemic levels. The study was reported by Airfinity, a UK-based data and analytics company that specializes in monitoring and forecasting trends in global disease and public health. The implication of this finding is that the systematic dismantling of public health measures by capitalist governments worldwide, allowing SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, unimpeded access to the world’s population, has created the conditions for even greater damage to human health. Airfinity previously tracked the horrendous impact of lifting Zero-COVID in China at the end of 2022, which led to hundreds of millions of people being infected and more than a million deaths. Last week the company posted a new analysis on its webpage showing that ‘the world is seeing a resurgence of at least 13 infectious diseases, with cases higher than before the pandemic in many regions. Over 40 countries or territories have reported at least one infectious disease resurgence that’s 10-fold or more over their pre-pandemic baseline.’”

Policy

Does make you wonder how Brownnose Institute gets such traction:

Surprising data.

Despite the intense partisan revisionist history, a strong majority of Americans see COVID public health policies as “generally a good idea.”

Only 20% think all were bad idea.

Does ideology matter? Yep. 71% of Democrats think all a good idea. Only 18% of… pic.twitter.com/06WihLK6Tm

— Timothy Caulfield (@CaulfieldTim) June 17, 2024

Elite Maleficence

I’m not sure the establishment view on aerosols is that concise or nonchalant:

It’s taken establishment figures 4 years to concisely & nonchalantly say how COVID is spread.

How long will it take them to be equally as open & tell the public we are all vulnerable to the long-term ramifications Covid causes increasingly so w/ additional infections?#MaskUpN95 pic.twitter.com/G1sHbxP0Qt

— Jesse International (@jesseintl) June 18, 2024

Perhaps a veteran of the AIDS crisis can tell us whether public health is moving at the same pace as it did then, or more slowly. Hard to believe they’re moving faster, and the H5N1 response is even more of a cluster than the Covid response, and I’m not the only one saying it.

“NIH email scandal: A ‘shocking disregard’ for public record-keeping or within federal rules?” [FedScoop]. The deck: “A National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases official who said he was told how to make emails ‘disappear’ shines a light on the difficult task of managing electronic government records.” This caught my eye: “The Morens incident highlights other ways that federal officials can theoretically try to avoid FOIA requests about their electronic communications. It’s not uncommon for FOIA officers to encourage requesters to share specific keywords in order to conduct records searches. But emails from Greg Folkers, Fauci’s former chief of staff at NIAID, included misspellings of key terms that individuals might have included in their request for records, such as “EcoHealth” written as “Ec~Health” and virologist Kristian Anderson spelled as “anders$n.” A Republican-led group of legislators has charged that the misspellings were intentional.” • Why not go the whole nine yards and use one-time pads?

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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] (CDC) This week’s wastewater map, with hot spots annotated. The numbers in the right hand column are identical. The dots on the map are not.

[2] (CDC) Last week’s wastewater map.

[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) A slight decrease followed by a return to a slight, steady increase. (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. I’m leaving this here for another week because I loathe them so much:

[11] Deaths low, but positivity up.

[12] Deaths low, ED up.

Stats Watch

Manufacturing: “United States Industrial Production” [Trading Economics]. “Industrial production in the US rose 0.9 percent from a month earlier in May 2024, more than market expectations of a 0.3 percent increase and after showing no growth in April. Manufacturing output, which makes up 78% of total production, advanced 0.9 percent, compared with market forecast of a 0.3 percent increase.”

Retail: “U.S. Retail Sales” [Trading Economics]. “Retail sales in the US edged up a 0.1% month-over-month in May 2024, following a downwardly revised 0.2% fall in April and below forecasts of a 0.2%, in another sign consumer sentiment is cooling. Sales of sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument and books recorded the biggest increase (2.8%), followed by clothing (0.9%), motor vehicle and part dealers (0.8%) and nonstore retailers (0.8%).”

* * *

Tech: Oops:

No cheaper than a ICE with reasonable gas mileage. Significant time spent charging. Energy to charge the car mostly provided by fossil fuels. Not seeing the benefit TBH.

— Mark A (@MEA6380) June 18, 2024

Tech: “Inside Snapchat’s Teen Opioid Crisis” [Rolling Stone]. “Between 2019 and 2021, the number of teen deaths from fentanyl tripled — and the driver of that plague, per the cops and feds I talked to, was fake pills sold online. Phony opioids that looked like Oxycontins but were cut with fentanyl, not oxycodone; bogus Xanax but with fentanyl, not alprazolam, on board. Name any pharmaceutical with a foothold on campus — Adderall, Valium, Suboxone, what-have-you — and it was instantly available via social media and delivered to your door like Papa John’s. The folks compounding those pills weren’t pharm-school grads. They were cartel adjuncts or lost-soul dropouts with a storage unit and a pill press. And whether their fentanyl came from Mexico or directly from China, they were everywhere and nowhere at once: invisible on the street but ubiquitous online; and many were hawking poison disguised as pharma drugs over Snapchat. Meanwhile, no one seemed to be doing a damn thing about it. The DEA didn’t launch its first PSA alert until the fall of 2021, and local cops walked away, or made half-hearted searches of a deceased kid’s phone for actionable links to the dealer. Those links were long gone, though, scrubbed minutes or hours after the last exchange between seller and buyer. That, Neville learned, was why the dealers had moved to Snapchat: It was effectively a safe space for them. All forensics vanished within 24 hours, wiped clean by the delete function of the app. That wasn’t a bug but a feature of Snap, the code choice that sent its fortunes soaring and marked it out from its social media rivals. On TikTok and Instagram, your DMs and photos largely lived till you deleted them, one by one. On Snap, it was the reverse: Everything turned to smoke unless you manually saved it to your account.” • Stoller comments:

* * *

Today’s Fear & Greed Index: 42 Fear (previous close: 38 Fear) [CNN]. One week ago: 43 (Fear). (0 is Extreme Fear; 100 is Extreme Greed). Last updated Jun 17 at 1:48:29 PM ET.

Health

“More good news for coffee drinkers from a study of sitting and sipping” [WaPo]. “Sedentary coffee drinkers had a 24 percent reduced risk of mortality compared with those who sat for more than six hours and didn’t drink coffee, according to the lead author of a study published recently in the journal BMC Public Health. The finding, which was not part of the original article, was calculated at The Washington Post’s request and provided by Huimin Zhou, a researcher at the Medical College of Soochow University’s School of Public Health in China and the lead author of the study on coffee and health.”

“Eating Cheese Helps You Age Better, Scientists Say” [Newsweek]. From a paywalled Nature study: “They also found that lack of activity, smoking, and watching too much TV were associated with poorer well-being, while eating more cheese and fruits were associated with better well-being. ‘We found that lifestyle factors such as sedentary behaviour (that is, TV watching time), smoking (that is, age of smoking initiation and cigarettes per day), and dietary intakes of cheese and fresh fruit, as well as behaviours and performances such as medication use (that is, antihypertensive medication and NSAIDs), cognitive performance and age at menarche, each mediated 1.82 percent to 9.54 percent of the total effect of the well-being spectrum on [healthiness of aging],’ the researchers wrote. ‘Most of these mediators were well-established risk factors associated with aging-related outcomes, and our findings extend their roles in linking mental well-being to healthy aging.’” • I’ve got the coffee-at-my-desk part down — in fact, I just bought a new (low-end) espresso machine — so now I have to get the cheese part under control. Grapes are a fruit. Does wine count as a fruit?

The Gallery

More wallpaper from the Nabis, this time Vuillard:

Edouard #Vuillard, Flowers at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille, 1904. pic.twitter.com/Nut8my3QDu

— Mordecai (@MenschOhneMusil) March 27, 2024

I Am Not An Art Critic (IANAAC), but I remember seeing several paintings from the Nabis, I think at the Corcoran, when I lived in DC. The drafting and the brushwork were not, to my mind, especially brilliant — very much unlike the Impressionists! — but ZOMG the color! The paintings seemed to float in the air, free of the frame and the wall, as Rothkos are said to do (never seen it myself, but that’s what they say).

News of the Wired

“The big idea: can you inherit memories from your ancestors?” [Guardian]. “Scientists working in the emerging field of epigenetics have discovered the mechanism that allows lived experience and acquired knowledge to be passed on within one generation, by altering the shape of a particular gene. This means that an individual’s life experience doesn’t die with them but endures in genetic form. The impact of the starvation your Dutch grandmother suffered during the second world war, for example, or the trauma inflicted on your grandfather when he fled his home as a refugee, might go on to shape your parents’ brains, their behaviours and eventually yours. Much of the early epigenetic work was performed in model organisms, including mice. My favourite study is one that left the neuroscience community reeling when it was published in Nature Neuroscience, in 2014. Carried out by Prof Kerry Ressler at Emory University, Georgia, the study’s findings neatly dissect the way in which a person’s behaviours are affected by ancestral experience. The study made use of mice’s love of cherries. Typically, when a waft of sweet cherry scent reaches a mouse’s nose, a signal is sent to the nucleus accumbens, causing this pleasure zone to light up and motivate the mouse to scurry around in search of the treat. The scientists exposed a group of mice first to a cherry-like smell and then immediately to a mild electric shock. The mice quickly learned to freeze in anticipation every time they smelled cherries. They had pups, and their pups were left to lead happy lives without electric shocks, though with no access to cherries. The pups grew up and had offspring of their own. At this point, the scientists took up the experiment again. Could the acquired association of a shock with the sweet smell possibly have been transmitted to the third generation? It had. The grandpups were highly fearful of and more sensitive to the smell of cherries. How had this happened? The team discovered that the DNA in the grandfather mouse’s sperm had changed shape. This in turn changed the way the neuronal circuit was laid down in his pups and their pups, rerouting some nerve cells from the nose away from the pleasure and reward circuits and connecting them to the amygdala, which is involved in fear. The gene for this olfactory receptor had been demethylated (chemically tagged), so that the circuits for detecting it were enhanced. Through a combination of these changes, the traumatic memories cascaded across generations to ensure the pups would acquire the hard-won wisdom that cherries might smell delicious, but were bad news.” • Hmm.

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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 DG:

DG writes: “Dwarf laceleaf japanese maple salvaged from a mid-century ranch teardown and replaced by a McMansion in MD, transplanted to near Roanoke, VA. Also columbine, creeping phlox, a bulb whose name I can’t recall, and weeds.”

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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:

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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!